Morgan Berry’s mother had always wanted a daughter and when she gives birth to a son, she simply dresses him as a girl and treats him as she would a daughter. When he’s picked on and teased at kindergarten, she homeschools him herself. Morgan is eight when his mother brings home a new beau, a no-nonsense man called Dennis O’Rourke. He compliments his new ‘daughter’ on how pretty she is and when his mother doesn’t correct the man, Morgan flees the room in embarrassment. Naturally, Dennis eventually discovers Morgan isn’t a girl. From that moment on, he barely acknowledges Morgan’s existence and is, in fact, openly hostile to his cross-dressing step-son. On the eve of Morgan’s eighteenth birthday, Dennis, now an alcoholic, bashes his stepson until Morgan loses consciousness. Morgan wakes up outside. He has no idea how he came to be under a tree on top of a small hill beneath a starry sky. He’s trying to work it out when he meets Reginald Batt, of the Big River Batts. Morgan and Reginald become inseparable and together they experience worlds of wonder and awe. Morgan is shown sights he could never have imagined and in the process he learns many things about the world, and about himself -- the most important of which is a revelation indeed.

Stranger Things

“Of course, you are, Morgan. I wasn’t entirely certain you were aware of the fact, but nor did I want to be the one to break it to you.”


Things began to add up. Helen had been as frightened of me as she had been of Reginald. That’s why she’d gasped, why she’d looked so terrified. I couldn’t have entered Heaven as a living being. How could I have been so stupid not to have realised? But now I was dead, what was I to do? What did dead people do?


“I feel like crying,” I said. “Suddenly I feel so alone. I think I actually…miss my mother.”


Reginald pulled me closer to him. I rested my head on his shoulder and he rubbed my arm. “It’s a shock,” he said. “And it does take some time to get used to it, although there’s no need to feel lonely. You have me, don’t you? And let me tell you something else. There are infinitely more spirits than there are people. Did you ever feel lonely while you were alive?”


“Sometimes,” I replied. “Often.”


Chapter 10