This story! I'd lost it for the longest time and now I've found it, I think I want to do something with it.

I started this one years ago - years and years ago!

Here it is... in parts (sorry, I don't want to overwhelm you).

Pictures from Google

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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“You are in a half-state, neither among the living nor the dead. You have had an… accident.”

The pause gave Katie cause to examine the Queen’s face closely to see if there were any other clues to exactly what she meant. There were none.

“You’re in a coma, Katie,” her Grandad said. He realised that she would need more information and the Queen did not have the ability to supply it.

“In hospital?”

“No, in the woods. Your body is hidden and quite safe. You were attacked and left where no-one will find you, neither in this world nor the last, or so they thought.”

“So who thought?” Katie asked.

“The Desecrators,” the Queen said.

Katie did not interrupt again and the Queen continued. “They are a band of creatures controlled by one so evil that he is said to be an intricate part of the Unholy Trinity, the exact opposite of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”

“But why did they attack me?” Katie asked.

A flurry of excitement interrupted the answer to that question as someone pushed to the front of the crowd that had gathered around Katie.

“Why did they attack you? Because they were ordered to attack you, stupid girl!” the man who had pushed his way forward was red in the face, from the exertion or possibly anger, he certainly seemed angry. “This was a bad idea, Elizabeth. I told you that from the start. Now you’ve gone and got her involved in this and we have one of the Living amongst us for the first time in centuries. Heaven alone knows what will come of this. Harold, I’m surprised at you, dragging your own granddaughter into this mess.”

“Edwin, stop it. This was voted on and agreed to by the majority of us. You voiced your opinion at the meeting and we listened to your worries about the plan and we thought that Katie would be able to help us,” Katie's grandfather said.

He turned to Katie and took her hand again, holding it in both of his. His brow creased in worry and Katie knew that if he looked worried, then he was most likely terrified.

“We were going to ask you to help us to move. We have grown too numerous in this town. Every few centuries we have to extend the town to accommodate the newcomers. It’s a process that’s ongoing all the time but lately, so I’m told, it’s been getting out of hand. We have had more and more newcomers, the newly dead arriving, and this time, a new extension isn’t going to be enough. We need to move out, or rather up.”

“You mean to Heaven?” Katie asked.

Harold laughed at the simplicity of her question. “No lambkin, not to Heaven. We need to move up into the next level of existence. Or at least that’s the way that I understood it when it was explained to me."