car ride

“Okay,” I said. “I’m a ghost and all now. And I can go through just about anything—like I went through this car door to get inside.”
“Yes,” Sir Stuart said, a faint smile outlining his mouth.
“So how come my ass doesn’t go through the seat when I sit down on—”
I was rudely interrupted by the tingling sensation of passing through solid matter, beginning at my butt and moving rapidly up my spine. Cold snow started slamming into my rear end, and I let out a yelp of pure surprise.
Sir Stuart had evidently known what was coming. He reached over, grabbed me by the front of my leather duster, and unceremoniously dragged me back up into the car and sat me on the seat beside him, back in the passenger compartment. I clutched at the door handle and the seat in front of me for stability, only to have my hands go right through them. I pitched forward, spinning as if I were floating in water, and this time it was my face plunging toward the icy street.
Sir Stuart hauled me back again and said, in a faintly annoyed tone, “Mortimer.”
Mort didn’t say anything, but when I was once again sitting down, I didn’t fall right through the bottom of the car. He smirked at me in the rearview mirror.
“You don’t fall through the bottom of the car because on some deep, instinctual level, you regard it as a given of existence here,” Sir Stuart said. “You are entirely convinced that illusions such as gravity and solidity are real.”
“There is no spoon,” I said.
Sir Stuart looked at me blankly.
I sighed. “If I believe in an illusory reality so much, then how come I can walk through walls?” I asked.
“Because you are convinced, on the same level, that ghosts can do precisely that.”
I felt my eyebrows trying to meet as I frowned. “So . . . you’re saying I don’t fall through the ground because I don’t think I should?”
“Say instead that it is because you assume that you will not,” he replied. “Which is why, once you actively considered the notion, you did fall through the floor.”
I shook my head slowly. “How do I keep from doing it again?”
“Mortimer is preventing it, for the time being. My advice to you is not to think about too much,” Sir Stuart said, his tone serious. “Just go about your business.”


Ghost Story Chapter 7, Page 68-70