We could again hear the party thumping away down below. And a gathering outside in which someone laughed. A dry tread on the stairs. Daniel coming up. Here let it be said that I was not the frightened one, but riveted, as if deep unease was something you might seek out at a theme park. The tracks crank as the roller coaster edges higher. Time seemed to slow. I heard, really, another sound. The sound of someone in the room. Almost imperceptible sounds of someone standing still, breathing, watching over us. But Daniel wasn’t here yet. I opened my eyes to catch it. Tom in sync sat up with me, holding my hand under the cover.
Against the far wall hung something shadowy, particulate, like the powder off a rose captured in old film stock. Gradually it fell. Gradually vanished. I could not turn my head away. I felt something sickly in the back of my throat. But as soon as it had gone I felt the weight of it lift. The wire of my blood, my shuddering breath too. There had been no better feeling in my life. I almost laughed from it. I almost raised my hands.
‘Who was that, Tom?’
‘James Lennoxlove, of Bitterhall,’ he said. ‘He’s always with me, James, and I am James.’
Daniel Avant
‘Here at last’, Daniel said softly, carrying a bottle of something dark.
Tom looked up at him and I thought for a moment there would be a burst of strange yelling and screaming and I braced. But instead Tom smiled at Daniel and patted the bed. Daniel hesitated – and came over and kicked off his shoes.
‘Light’s too harsh,’ I said and went about turning the sidelight on and the overhead off. The room glowed red. ‘Womb,’ I thought. I sat back down on the bed myself and bit my fingernails. Great spaces between us as we sat in our various parts. Tom propped near the wall, under blankets. Daniel in the middle, me at the very foot, legs dangling off. This tableau enacting the powerful rule of threes. A strange tale needs threes in it somewhere. Three strangers. Three choices – I scrunched up my face and tried to pin down only three, but my head just hurt. Three objects – we only had the one, I thought: the diary. Three ever-after haunted people. I was including Daniel in a haunting he might not admit to, having been offstage, momentarily as of course cynics always are. I wanted then something simple, three actions leading to a resolution and a happy ending but being not a simple person I knew this would not be my luck. Daniel wriggled and lay back, clutching the bottle to his chest like a baby. His head was in Tom’s lap.
‘I’ve been walking through this house,’ Tom said, ‘in a dream. A dream!’
‘Órla, have I missed something?’ Daniel asked.
Tom idly clapped his hand down on Daniel’s head, ‘Órla’s seen him,’ he said. He was running his fingers through Daniel’s thick hair, while looking away. I see it now, that tender, important gesture, though at the time I could have hardly noticed it being so preoccupied.
‘Who?’ Daniel said, lifting the bottle to his lips, slopping some on his face. He laughed at his own clumsiness. Tom plucked the bottle from his loose grip and drank before he answered. I got up and went to the window and peered between the blinds.
‘Don’t – ah’ said Tom. ‘Ah. The man who I’ve been seeing.’
‘You’ve been seeing a man,’ said Daniel.
‘Yes,’ said Tom. He seemed quite lucid. ‘You might have noticed I’ve been – not right. Lately.’
‘Nah,’ I said. I sat back down on the bed, on the end, and hugged one leg. It was getting late and the distant noise of the party downstairs was working again to make me the normal sort of gloomy. Home, I thought. My own bed. But something else. I looked over at the two men. My boyfriend and his flatmate, close on this bed, together.
‘All right, yes,’ said Tom, licking his lips, ‘I’ve been trying to kind of keep a lid on . . . everything. Stupid. It didn’t make much sense and I felt – embarrassed.’
‘Embarrassed to be haunted?’ I said, moving up. I needed to get in range of him, I thought. I attempted to push my hair back from my face but it was still up in fancy rolls. I touched my lip, and the lipstick on my finger was the red of the walls. Tom paused and looked back across to the blinded window and his glance caught me in the lip touch and just as I’d hoped – ‘Órla,’ he said. And then he was leaning over and kissing me. Deeply like a drowning man taking gulps of air, he pulled back, a face swimming, red colours, his terrible blue eyes. ‘He’s coming to take me away tonight,’ he said. ‘You, you two, are all I have left.’
And because I could not hope to make sense of it and because all I cared about in that moment was desire I just leaned over to sheepish Daniel and grabbed his bottle from his hand, swigged. Huge wet dribbling gulp. I closed my eyes. All the best things are done with your eyes closed. Eating something really good, kissing, pausing to take in the world through senses other than your exhausted eyes. I drank and thought about an old manuscript in a dimly-lit room, resting on a pillow. The unseen world spun about me in my drunkenness and darkness behind my eyes.
‘You’re one crazy fucker,’ I said lightly. I got off the bed and shambled to the toilet to wash up. In general I had no idea how things would proceed but the situation felt potent and deliciously murky. In the toilet I flittered about for the light switch, then screwed up my eyes at myself in the mirror. Oh hello, another reckoning with my drunkenness. Had what had taken place really just happened? Or was I overtired and playing it up? The limit seemed just about breached, but not quite. I neither felt sick nor well and the tips of my fingers were numb but I was in my body all right. I tried to think what would happen next and could only manage an image of Tom on the bed, handsomely dishevelled. I peed and flushed the toilet. This room was pristine and every element had been selected for maximum knobby chicness. Marble ledges. Bronze taps. A shower with multiple heads that came from the sides. There were cute little packets and bottles for the convenience of guests. I fumbled through them knocking several to the floor. I dabbed at my eyes and unwrapped and bashed a toothbrush around my mouth and stared at myself foaming and snorted. I washed my hands and splashed my face with water, before realising my mistake. I attempted to fix my mascara while the room stood about me, judging. I’m coming for you later I told it. Maggie was fancy all right, I thought and I dimly visualised her piled up hair and bony, freckled neckline. I supposed I might get to know her beyond the bad first, and surface, impression and like her more. In short, I delayed. I delayed – I straightened up and walked out. There, in the bed, Tom and Daniel were kissing.
To Be Suddenly Unseen
Violent alienation from yourself is almost the worst for not meaning anything to anyone else. You know when you can tell a terrible inevitability? Picture yourself in a clearing in a forest. All the birds have stopped singing, not a single leaf moves, not even the clouds are moving; they have covered the sun. There’s a sense that a spell has been laid down in the roots in the ground, in the black bark, long before you came, and is now hissing into the grove. Fate feels cool to the touch, settling down on you like that. Your own reaction to it is quiet. I stood against the wall and watched them go at it messily. Hands in hair and holding shoulders. Shaking. All of us, shaking, though they had forgotten me completely. In the few minutes I’d been in the bathroom, I had been scraped from the world like words on reused velum. Perhaps I was even invisible. I’d never been that before. People notice me, remember me. I’m brash and forceful, I know this. I know myself and the lines of me clearly enough. Here though were two men I’d thought of, I realised, as slightly opaque to themselves. Well, isn’t that an icebath to your sense of stability. I no longer felt drunk. But I had a number of questions.
For the moment though I watched them not out of voyeurism but because I wanted to let them. I was the intruder. I had walked in from the party. Another guest, another woman entirely. Here were lovers going at it fresh and new and joyous and my mistake to have opened the door. They, in their innocence, continued not to notice me.
Tom and Daniel kissing, not stopping. They moved around each other: lines of gold and ink flow
ing sinuously together. Like they were describing a beautiful and awful thought in flesh before me and in me. Desire, being formed and being brought towards its obliteration in action. It was not a comfortable or exact feeling. That is not to say it wasn’t also in some ways a pleasurable discomfort. But it took a while for me to know what to do next. Of its own volition a tear came down my face and ran into my mouth. I heard myself laugh and snivel.
They kissed; I watched. I watched myself; no one watched me. Then, coming up for air, Tom noticed me. Our eyes met over the great gap. This is not Tom. He beckoned with fingers over Daniel’s shoulders. Handsome in his body. Shirtless. Kissing still, bending to kiss. I cringed, I shivered – feelings of a terrible depth and complexity overcame me and I smiled and I cried and reached out a hand. I wasn’t wanted, how could I be wanted, to come between them now? Whoever it was with Daniel together there, ferocious with desire while I, while I. I went over to the bed anyway, stumbling a little, unsober and desiring more inclusion than anything. They drew me down. I kissed Tom or not-Tom. Daniel put his arms around us both. I kissed Daniel, and he, startled, kissed me sloppy back like someone on a dare. Then it wasn’t the awfulness of the moment before but immediately transfigured into glorious bodiliness, dragging my burning self down into one delicious evolving second after another. Hands moved soft and rough over me and I moved over others, lost my white shirt and there was laughter and throbbing heat hearts, the blanket fell off the bed and then we seemed to reach the end of the moment, and all of us stopped, and looked around, as if puzzled. Tom shook himself like a dog shaking off water and laughed again, a little gaspy laugh at what he’d done – then turned to Daniel, still smiling and decked him. Daniel flopped down. Tom was up and gone out the door.
Silence. I looked at Daniel. He picked himself up, then the bottle of booze, took a swallow and shoved it, sticky into my hand.
‘What the fuck was that?’ I said.
‘Fucking hell,’ Daniel said quietly. We sat together in the bed and held one another.
There was a clatter from the ceiling and the walls shook.
‘He’s going upstairs,’ said Daniel. ‘Oh well.’ He sighed, and clutched at the bottle, laying it on his stomach like a baby, looking at me with tender kindness. ‘That was something, wasn’t it?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’
After There is a Touching Absence
Tom was missing for three days but in all that time Daniel and I decided – repeatedly decided – we couldn’t go to the police because Tom kept texting me. Just using emojis of stars and stacks of books. Sometimes an exclamation mark. The drama consumed us both. I could put aside the PhD stuff for a while but I couldn’t put off work.
At the end of my shift, I let myself look at my messages.
Tom had texted:
Aubergine
Upside down face
Waves
Hearteyes
Book stack
Book stack
Book stack
The latter three each about thirty minutes apart.
What a fog those days. I didn’t quite miss him; I missed him like missing sugar when it seems like all the sugarcane in all the world has been pulled up and set on fire. Dipped mood, a sense that things were better this way, a sly, rotten hunger in the body.
Call
On the third day I wanted to do something that would make me happy, so I got out my Ouija board. I called Daniel up.
‘Are you home yet from the basement of replication?’
‘Yes – any news of Tom?’
‘More emojis.’
‘I’m beginning to think someone stole his phone,’ said Daniel.
‘I’m not. Anyway, we can talk about this in a bit? I’m coming round.’
At the door he greeted me with a stiff wave and an invitation to come in. ‘I’m not a vampire,’ I thought. ‘Come on. My boyfriend lives here.’ I sighed and grabbed his hand. He flinched. I held tight and led him into Tom’s room. The curtains were still drawn. Mrs Boobs was on her bed, lying like a person would if they were sunbathing. She shifted and came and sat down on the floor with us, a little white loaf of bread. I took the board out of its box and arranged the planchette in the centre.
‘Mrs Boobs must take part too,’ Daniel said. I put out one hand and scratched her behind the chin. She made no noise, and did not seem to watch what we were doing with that deliberate inattention that cats have when they are most certainly watching.
‘Put your fingers on this,’ I said, nodding to the planchette. I put mine next to his. He took in a breath.
‘You know, I read an article about the Ouija board. Did you know it named itself, using this thing? And that it was a device that was back in the table-knocking days originally seen as a wholesome way for men and women to make contact. A flirtation device. And now, I don’t think it’s come up, but you have probably realised I’m gay,’ he said. ‘Just checking.’
‘Are you telling the Ouija board? They might have a better idea than you do,’
He leaned over the board, ‘Spirits . . . am I gay?’ he said, then looked around, as if trying to spot a response in the room.
‘If there are any spirits here who care if Daniel is or is not gay, please, make a signal through the planchette,’ I said, then lifted my head. He was looking at me, right in the eyes, and I was startled by them, by something in them I still can’t identify, a place we met.
‘I wasn’t certain what you were, at the housewarming.’
‘It doesn’t matter though, does it?’
I thought for a moment, ‘No.’
‘Are we going to try then?’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I said, hesitating, ‘for doing this.’
‘Ah spirits, where is our boy?’ he said, still looking at me.
‘Do you know, Daniel?’
He looked away and down, ‘No.’ A wave of paranoia flooded over me.
‘Tell me, spirits, where Thomas Mew is,’ I said softly.
The planchette began to move.
B I T T E R H A L L
‘Bitterhall?’
‘The Lennoxlove estate,’ Daniel said. ‘Did you do this, Órla?’ he said, very softly. I shook my head. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Believe me, don’t believe me,’ I said.
We both sat back, and let our fingers drop from the planchette. Then, after a quiet moment, laced them together across the board.
‘I’m sorry,’ we both said.
When I’m Gone
Daniel had a message from Tom at last – a potential location. I helped him load a bag into the back of Badr’s car and then watched him drive the car off, holding my body with my arms, wishing I smoked. He was running off to get to the boy far in the North, where the land runs out. And me? Hours somehow drained away. I stood in the park, wandered there on my break from the tea shop. I stood looking between texts in my hand, barely visible in the smothering autumn sunlight and my mind barely audible over the rumble of a skateboard and a busker banging a drum with his palms and singing. In one text, Daniel was asking if I wanted to come with him. I had said no, it made more sense for me to wait. In the second, Tom’s emoji list. I had read both parts of these messages countless times. I touched my face and felt the bags under my eyes. I felt about in my pockets for a tissue and blew my nose. A little gasp escaped from me, and I went up to a tree of some type and put it against my back and let the gasps come again.
When people go, sometimes they are really gone, and it’s as if Tom had moved from one room of the party to another in an unreachable universe and I felt, grinding against my ribs, a sense that he would not come back. But would be everywhere. Everywhere was the dim reverberation of thirties music. In every place I was wearing my beautiful suit, and perpetually looking for Tom Mew, catching glimpses of his back as he split through the crowds.
How I imagine It Goes
I am standing in the road by Daniel’s house, Mrs Boobs
in my arms and Badr is by my side. Badr’s silver car comes lumbering round the corner. Daniel is driving, but I cannot see into the car to see if Tom is with him. I have my phone on, but as in all dreams, the print is hard to read, shifting between states, first one answer, then another. I sob, the cat leaps from me. The car is approaching. And then, I decide: he lives. Tom is right there. And then I decide: he has gone north for reasons that many go north, a catastrophe. And there is no one in the car. And the police are standing, shadowy, dream-like police are taking my details. Whatever other faults he had, he was not that kind of coward, I tell myself. I tell myself at the counter of the shop. I tell myself in the library, staring at the nothing of the page in front of me. There are no texts while Tom is missing. I mean, every book is wiped, empty vessels, as much as he is plural. There is nothing to get from clever observations; everything has been taken. Except the hours to wait.
Tom Mew
Gully
I’m fine. Where are you – really – and with me there’s a lot, two – I’ll stand up and get orientated, just give me a minute, yeah – but there’s a pounding on the rocks – here, listen, the wind’s quiet – we can set this out – straight. Just – stay back. It’s steep. No need for both of us to get hurt. You will. I think you will, or you are already dead.
So, now, right. Let me give you the whole outline, then we’ll be on track: I was born – listen – on a corpse road under a spitting willow in a smashed up car in which my father had just signed out. Move on a few years, right, I was a little boy, I had a picnic in a field of bluebells that were the memory of my mother – I held them (mother and bluebells, not willows nor corpse roads). I was a happy child, I held them against my grey plastic or whatever that material is, feels like plastic doesn’t it, the standard desks, and to hide my co-workers’ faces with such things. Like a bunch of them so really blue that nothing beyond can exist. I was drinking coffee; bluebells – I was tweeting latest client acquisitions; rockpool with my grandmother shouting in her shock cold loving voice from the white part of the shore – I pressed some woman’s head into a pillow yelling get it; bluebells and the shining light in the days before the days I had to be in. I was fine.
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