Ghoster

by Jason Arnopp

  When I check Scott’s phone, Ali Cooper’s Twitter reply screams at me. “FUCK PLEASE TELL ME THEY DIDN’T FIND A BODY.”

  Oh shit. Not yet, Ali, but they probably will. What the hell do I tell her? “No, hun, sorry. I just dreamt about her last night, that’s all. Sorry for asking.”

  “FUCKSAKE A FUCKEN DREAM YOU STUPID BITCH SCARING THE FUCK OUT OF ME.”

  “Sorry. But just to confirm… DOES Gwyneth have tribal wrist tattoos?”

  “YES SHE DOES MYSTIC MEG NOW FUCK OFF!!!!!!111!!!!”

  “So, I don’t have a tumour,” I tell Izzy. “I really did see a ghost, and it really was Gwyneth.”

  “Did I not tell you, right from the start? Ghosts are a thing, man.”

  Hundreds of faces flit through my head. The faces of all those I’ve seen die. Even though I’ve never felt able to convincingly reassure people, like Pat up in Leeds, that their late loved ones would live on in some other form, turns out they do anyway. I mean, they might be fucking scary flicker-phantoms with eyes like deep dark wells, full of rage and Christ knows what else, but they’re still out there. And sometimes, it seems, they can interact with our plane of existence.

  Fuck a duckling, this is huge.

  The whole world looks – no, feels – different, thanks to my new insight into one of its secrets. While it’s impossible not to feel awed by the apparent fact that death is not the end, this does nothing to stem the flow of my fear.

  I keep my voice hushed, in case the secret world of evil spirits might hear. “Izzy, why do they keep coming for me? Wouldn’t mind so much if they only stood there or something, like yours did back when you were young in… 1953.”

  Izzy lightly smacks the back of my head, then resumes her circle-drawing duties.

  “Why would Gwyneth’s ghost show up here?” I say. “Ghosts tend to hang around the place where they died, don’t they? Unfinished business and all that, as they try to come to terms with their deaths? So… what if Gwyneth died here?”

  “Could both of these spirits have died here and want to tell us something? Wow, a message from beyond!”

  “They could be trying to tell us that Scott killed them…”

  “Mate, seriously… what makes you even believe he’s capable of murder?”

  A swig of vodka scorches my gullet. “I always saw this… this thing in him.”

  I Am Possessed.

  “He always reminded me of a wolf,” I add

  A chill runs through me, as I remember seeing that wild look…

  … a real wild one…

  … in Scott’s eyes during sex. Before he peaked, each and every time, was he thinking about how he was going to film me asleep later? Or about how he was planning to kill me?

  How about the way Scott shot daggers at that businessman who rammed into him at Brighton train station? He’d looked like he wanted to rip out the big guy’s throat.

  … with his teeth. Because he’s a wolfman who barks at the moon.

  Izzy says, “If Scott’s a killer, then how come he didn’t snuff you?”

  I have no real answer. “Depends why he killed the others… And he might still plan to kill me. Ever since I got here, I’ve felt watched.”

  “Hey, this ghost-guy we saw… What if he’s in one of these sleep videos?”

  Again, why didn’t I think of this? I hand Izzy the phone so she can flick through the videos herself.

  “How come he’s got videos of girls and guys on there, anyway?” Izzy wonders aloud. She shows me a video thumbnail. “This one, right? I’d recognise those teeth anywhere.”

  I study the sleeping, pudgy-faced man. His open mouth packs a set of fangs that’d put Jaws to shame.

  “Oh my God,” I breathe. “There is definitely something in this.”

  Izzy fast-forwards through the clip, making the guy’s head whip to and fro on his pillow.

  “How can we find out who he is?” I ask. “What if he really is missing, like Gwyneth?”

  We lose ourselves in thought, long enough for the DJ next door to play one whole Depeche Mode song.

  “Google Images,” says Izzy, with such conviction that I want to kiss her face. She always knew so much more tech stuff than me. “You can upload a picture to Google Images and it’ll show you where else the image has appeared online.”

  “Except,” I say, “a still from these sleep vids won’t have been online before… Ah, but here’s something I can try…’

  Scott didn’t have a picture of Gwyneth on his phone, only the shot of Ali that she took, but Mr Jaws might be a different story. I tap through to the bulging Photos folder and skim through the images.

  “Yep,” I say. “Here he is.”

  The big guy’s in a bar. Wearing a Mexican hat and a Hawaiian garland, he gurns right at the camera lens. Looks like either a holiday or stag party scenario. Scott’s own stag? At this point, we can rule nothing out.

  “Izzy, this is exactly how the ghost looked. Like he was roaring at us.”

  She nods intently. “So go to Google Images and upload that pic.”

  By the time Gloria Gaynor finishes telling us how she’ll survive, we have results. The guy had posted this Mexican-hat picture on his Twitter profile. From here, we get his name: Dieter Keppler. His bio, which notes that he works in diabetes care, includes a helpful link to his Facebook profile.

  “Hold on,” I tell Izzy, when I’ve clicked through. “This is really fucking odd.”

  Izzy peers at the screen and shrugs. “How come?”

  “We’re not looking at Dieter’s profile from the outside, Izz. We’re logged into it. Look, I can totally read his private messages.” My skin prickles. “There! Doesn’t this prove that Scott is controlling people’s profiles?”

  “Okay,” she says. “I reckon it… might.”

  Flicking back to Twitter, I see that we’re logged into Dieter’s account there too.

  Back to Dieter’s Facebook. Thinking nothing of violating a new individual’s privacy, I plough through his messages. Turns out he’s one of the few who actually uses Messenger for sexting. Looks like he gets a fair bit of action, too, so I retreat to the safety of his FB wall. His latest post was earlier today, in which he – or more likely, Scott The Puppet Master – posted something about how people don’t get Type One diabetes from eating too much sugar.

  “Look through his friends,” Izzy says, warming to the investigation. “Is Scott there? Is Gwyneth?”

  While Lou Reed takes a walk on the wild side next door, I follow her suggestion and find neither of them.

  “If you’d killed someone,” Izzy says, “and you were controlling their profile, I suppose you wouldn’t wanna be on their friends list.”

  “You also wouldn’t want your victims publicly linked to each other as friends.” My skin has grown clammy. Up until tonight, the idea that Scott might be dangerously deranged had only skulked around in the back of my mind, but did I actually share a bed with – and plan a whole future with – someone who was not only capable of murder but had already taken multiple lives?

  I show Izzy inside the TrooSelf app. “Check this out. Joining The Death Grip Cult…”

  We survey the rest of the list without speaking, while Jarvis Cocker insists that we’ll never think like common people.

  I Am Possessed

  Out, Demon, Out

  My Sweet Saviour

  I Am In Love With V

  Burning New Pathways Into The Brain

  Joining The Death Grip Cult

  The End

  “Looks perfectly normal to me,” says Izzy. To my relief, her big eyes confirm she’s kidding, not to mention a tad concerned. “Let’s look at more people.”

  I lose all track of time as we cycle through our little process.

  Step One: we nominate a likely candidate from one of Scott’s sick little sleep-flicks.

  Step Two: we find a photo of them on his phone’s camera roll.

  Step Three: a Google Images search leads us to the person
’s social media presence.

  Three times in a row, we find them.

  Three times in a row, we find ourselves logged into their social media accounts.

  “So,” I say. “Scott filmed these people asleep. He has photos of them. He’s controlling their accounts, their online selves. And if someone was to contact these people’s families, do you reckon there’s good odds that they’ll have gone ‘missing’ and ‘disowned’ their loved ones?”

  Sitting there with Scott’s phone in her hand, Izzy just stares at me. She looks dazed, as if the world has spun on its axis. I know exactly how she feels, and now it’s my turn to get excited.

  “I never thought I’d say this,” I tell her. “But I’m actually starting to think police. Even though we don’t really have proof that anyone’s dead, they can look into everything. Izzy, I’m so fucking tired, and what you said was right. It really is time for me to move on.”

  Ever since I got here, I’ve based my life around trying to work out what goes on in Scott’s head. This means I’ve been making everything about him. But from now on, everything’s going to be about me.

  My heart leaps. In the bar next door, Freddie Mercury voices my desire to break free. I can practically smell my new life, back up in Leeds with Izzy, leaving all this Brighton junk broken under my wheels.

  Wait. Oh shit.

  Something’s wrong with Izzy. Very wrong.

  Why does she have this intensely serious look on her face, like she’s either furious with me or might burst into tears?

  “Kate,” she says, adopting the gossamer-soft voice that we use when breaking terrible news to patients. “I’m afraid I… Well, I’ve found something on Scott’s phone.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  28 June

  Riffing along with Scott’s whole Titanic gag, I extend my arms like plane wings and give him my best breathless, girly Kate Winslet impersonation. “I’m flying!”

  Over on the pier, a tiny red light at the peak of the helter-skelter flashes in time with my elevated pulse. I could really get used to this place. Especially this balcony. My arms tire, so I let them drop back down by my sides. Still right behind me, pressed up against me, Scott says, “Actually… out of interest… do you trust me, Kate?”

  I turn around to face him and he plants both hands on my hips. His expression tells me he genuinely wants his question answered. “That’s a slightly odd thing to ask.”

  “Curious, that’s all,” he says, but his shrug fails to convince. I search his face for further cues, but find nothing to go on.

  “You seem like a really good guy, and…”

  I’m already falling for you, but would rather jump off this balcony than admit as much.

  “… I like you. But trust you, one hundred per cent, on our second proper date? Ask me again if we’re still seeing each other in another two months. Or two years.”

  Well done, me. That struck the right balance.

  “Just FYI, though,” I add, “when someone asks if you trust them, it doesn’t necessarily make you think, ‘Ooh, they must be proper trustworthy.’”

  Oh. And now I may have gone a shade too far, on a great night. But he did ask.

  Scott nods and smiles. “I get that, yeah. I wouldn’t have asked in the first place, if DiCaprio hadn’t in the movie! But I don’t know… Actually, I suppose it’s because I’ve been accused of being shifty before. Had a girlfriend, a while back, who didn’t trust me, purely because of how I looked. Not that I’m hung up on it or anything!”

  There’s that flash of vulnerability – the thing that first drew me to Scott. “I don’t really get her attitude,” I tell him. “You seem pretty honest.”

  Does he really, Kate? Be honest. Right now, does this guy really seem to be anything but hot?

  With a flash of inspiration, I throw in, “She might’ve grown to mistrust excessively handsome men.”

  Squeezing my waist, he pulls me against his groin. “Oh, good work. You can come again.”

  “And again and again, I hope,” I say, as I kiss him, tongue first.

  Scott pulls back and smiles. Then, without warning, he looks shocked and I wonder what on Earth I’ve done wrong.

  “Christ,” he says. “I completely forgot to say… and your eyes just reminded me! You know that whole thing about the contact lenses getting lost? That was a wind-up.”

  I shake his hands off my hips and stand open-mouthed. “What?”

  A gale of laughter flies out of him. “I’m so sorry! I totally meant to tell you, but then we drank more and ended up on different topics.”

  “You fucker.”

  “Let me try and make it up to you, right now? I think I know a way.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  6 October

  Soon as I realised how effortlessly Scott had lied, I should have run to the hills.

  When he told me that contact lens story in Leeds, he even said, It’s true, I swear. I know it was only a trivial joke, but nevertheless the sociopathic prick swore his lie was true. One of many red flags I failed to spot, and now here I am, starring in a little video he made. Running time: two hours and twelve minutes.

  Sick to my stomach, with Izzy’s hand planted on my shoulder for moral support, I brace myself to watch. She and I have come back inside the living room because the wind’s getting up and the temperature has plummeted in all sorts of ways.

  Onscreen, my past self lies asleep on her back. Not on a bed, but on the living room floor. My head is resting on my own bunched-up jacket. The only soundtrack on this video comes from gulls and the occasional motorbike engine, car horn or squeal of brakes.

  When Izzy and I worked together, she was always the more thorough one. I like to think this wasn’t because I was lazy or didn’t care, but she always had the more even temperament. She’d really take her time to study patients, often spotting things I’d missed. In fairness, I’d failed to spot this video during my first skim through because the preview still didn’t show my face. The thumbnail was mostly black, because the camera only focuses on my face three seconds into the video. Scotty Boy’s direction skills were sub-par that night.

  My voice comes out cracked as a desert floor. “Looks like the first night I stayed here. But how did he get in? I had all the boxes pushed up against the door.”

  For the first time, I study the living room ceiling, looking for trap doors. I want to rush back into the hall and the bathroom and study the ceiling there, too. How could Scott possibly have got in?

  “Jesus, Izzy,” I whisper, “what if he never left? What if he’s tucked away in a crawlspace somewhere?”

  Izzy’s concern is a tangible thing, hanging in the air between us. “I’m an idiot. Shouldn’t have told you about this bloody video.”

  I clear my throat and wet my lips. “No, no. I’m glad you did.”

  The video lumbers on. Agonisingly slow and deliberate, it features so little movement that it may as well be a photograph. Only the onscreen counter changes, along with the barely perceptible motion of my chest. Thank God I stayed fully clothed that night. Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not filming you while you sleep.

  Gripped by the urge to break the video’s spell, to diminish the power it holds over me, I mumble, “Sleep’s really weird, isn’t it? When you really stop and think about it, I mean. We take sleep for granted, don’t we, and yet that’s when we’re at our most vulnerable. Our most exposed.”

  Izzy tries to chip in, but I keep on talking. “You meet someone in a bar, or at a speed dating thing, or even in your home for an impulsive hook-up. You quite possibly fuck them on the first night, and then you allow yourself to fall unconscious in their presence for… how long, about eight hours? That is fucking mental when you think about it. This person who you met only hours ago, they could do anything at all to you. You could wake up in the middle of the night gargling blood because your new partner decided to wander into your kitchen, pick the sharpest knife and then slit your thro
at.”

  To this, Izzy says nothing. She knows my venting is entirely necessary – some kind of attempt to process what I’m seeing. If we watched the violation of Kate Collins in silence, it might prove unbearable for both of us.

  I drag the playback slider. As the video fast-forwards, Past Me’s sleeping body jerks to the left, then to the right and back again.

  To think that Scott somehow entered the flat that night and stood there, for all this time, filming me. Why two whole hours? And while we’re asking questions: why at all? Could this be a power thing, getting off on people’s vulnerability? Does he stand there, thinking about all the things he could do to us but chooses not to? Does he actually jerk off while filming, or does he wait until he gets home and—

  One jarring new thought wipes out all of the above questions. “Izzy, why the fuck didn’t Scott take his phone back? Why didn’t he take it away with him that night?”

  I can see that, for Izzy, this is not a new thought. While I’ve been held captive by my emotional response to this video, she has applied cold hard logic to the situation. Evidently, she’s been left wanting, because she can only splay her hands, at a loss.

  “Izzy, why the fuck didn’t he take the phone?”

  Her eyes meet mine. “Either he’s the most forgetful bloke on the planet…”

  Jumping in, I say, “Or he wanted to leave it with me. Which almost certainly means he wanted to leave it on the balcony in the first place.” I feel light-headed. Disorientated. “You know, I kept thinking how weird it was that he didn’t cancel the phone! That’s what you’d do if you lost yours, right?”

  Izzy says, “Some people have their phones set up so they can delete everything inside, remotely. And Scott is an IT guy, right? Or did he lie about that, too?”

  The demonic window-face grins harder than ever. “I’m surprised the fucker didn’t tell me he was a hedge fund manager or something. He wasn’t a very good IT guy, though, by all accounts. Kept missing his deadlines. Might have been too busy messing with people. Or killing them.”