Ghoster

by Jason Arnopp

  “He might, through sheer spite, because of his five-hundred-quid phone and his bruised nuts. But I can report him, too.”

  “You should. Uploading pics like that, it’s gross misconduct. In more ways than one.”

  “I’m really hoping he’s learnt his lesson. I won’t report him if he stops, and if he removes all his uploads from that site. I guess he could access his SikkFuxx account from another phone and…”

  My words trail off as I make a connection that seems both great and terrible. “Izzy, we can still read the rest of Scott’s diary, by using a different phone. We still have the passwords. We can use your—”

  Izzy pulls back her hand like my hair’s on fire. “Oh God, Kate, no. No.”

  I prop myself on one side to face Izzy and the full heat of her disapproval.

  “I know, Izz, I know. But this is about more than me. Scott is dead and may have been murdered. What if—”

  “We really don’t know for sure he’s dead. He even called you on the phone.”

  “Izzy, I saw his ghost. And on the phone today, he sounded dead, just like all the other people who’ve called me. You’re right, we don’t know for sure, but I do need to know. I can’t get on with my life until I’ve found” – the words expand to fill my throat – “until I’ve found his body, all right? And the last two diary entries might help me do that. I really think Ray might have killed Scott, don’t you?”

  Everything I’m saying, it bounces right off Izzy’s stony face. “Kate, if the ambulance crash hasn’t made you see that this has to end right now, then I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a crash,” I say, hating how sullen I sound.

  Izzy heaves herself upright, like she’s about to storm out. Her eyes are windows in a burning house. “Fucking hell, you dickhead, you almost killed people. If I’d been there, I would’ve stomped that phone straight away. Tyler was actually bloody restrained.”

  “I will never, ever use a phone while driving again, or even while I’m at work. This was a blip.”

  “Oh, a blip, is that really all it was? How about all the blip sounds that the kid’s life-support machine would’ve made?”

  I picture the scene and shudder, but still my mouth won’t stop. “I just need to read the last two diary entries and then I promise you, I’m done. Will you help me? Can I use your—”

  Izzy shakes her head, slowly and definitively. “Kate, I’m gonna make this plain, okay? If you don’t shut up and get some sleep, I’m fucking off back to Leeds tonight. This whole investigation of yours is over.”

  God, I feel so angry. Could this be speed-induced psychosis? “Aren’t you even the tiniest bit curious about the last things Scott wrote in his diary? Don’t you want to know?”

  Izzy gathers herself, then lies back down beside me. This time, when she strokes my hair, it feels patronising. “What I want to know, honey, is that my best friend is safe and sane. I want to know that she isn’t going to wreck her entire career and life.”

  Frustration oozes out of me as slow tears. Izzy is my surrogate mum, telling me it’s bedtime when I really want to climb a tree. “But we’re so close…”

  With one finger, she gently dabs under my eyes, keeping her voice soft. “I know, honey. I know. Sometimes, you really do have to let go, for your own good… and for the good of others. Now please, forget about Scott. Forget about anybody else in the world except yourself and close your eyes.”

  For now, I’ll obey her orders, because my head feels so very heavy. With my drowsy, sunken voice, I say, “You’ll still be here when I wake up?”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Promise. Now rest.”

  Well, this is such a shame. I’d really thought Izzy understood me and this whole situation. Somewhere in the back of my head, a new storm warning rings loud and clear.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  7 October

  A harsh wind lets me hear Scott yell my name, then cruelly snatches his voice back away across the sea.

  He’s trapped and I have to find him.

  Here at the front of the Palace Pier, I’m flanked by the food stalls outside. The clock tower crowning the entrance declares the time to be 3.33 a.m. The front gates beneath have been locked for hours now, and yet I know I have to get in. I have to save Scott.

  Behind me, all around me, there’s not a soul in sight. The seafront bars and clubs lie dormant and dark. Over to my left, two revellers have crashed out on the beach, but aside from them I see no signs of life.

  I know this must be a dream, despite the fact that I have never felt so cold, and the only clothes I’m wearing are the same T-shirt and pants that I wore to bed. Mud squelches between my bare toes.

  Keep telling yourself it’s a dream and it might even become true.

  High above me, seagulls struggle to get anywhere. Challenged by the wind, most of them appear to hover in the same spot. Some even fly backwards.

  Scott calls my name from somewhere far off ahead. His voice carries raw, unfiltered fear, like someone about to meet their maker. With my guts knotted, I prowl the gates in search of an easy way in.

  Yes, surely this must all be the product of my sleeping head’s imagination… despite the fact that the cold air’s bite feels so very sharp, so very deep, so very real.

  “Kate? Kate! What the bloody hell are you doing?”

  This new voice belongs to Izzy. She’s calling to me, from back along Marine Parade. Projecting her voice so hard, you can hear the rips in her throat.

  This is real. You know this is no dream.

  Can’t let Izzy stop me from taking action. She wouldn’t understand.

  Do you even understand what you’re doing?

  “Kate, please, come back!” Judging by how far away Izzy’s voice sounds, she’s calling from Scott’s balcony. This means she’s too far away to catch up with me now. Good. I have to stay focused on the pier, for Scott’s sake.

  Izzy won’t understand. She doesn’t get this.

  Hauling myself over the locked gates, via one of the gazebo-style towers, costs me a great deal of sweat, but soon my feet hammer down on the other side.

  The black carpet of the pier rolls out before me. The only light visible is that single red, flickering bulb on top of the helter-skelter. I really should take this as a warning of danger, but I don’t, for the same reason I didn’t stop to consider any security cameras back there – Scott needs help and so I’m prepared to accept the consequences.

  This place feels like the world’s biggest haunted house, daring me to try my luck. Roll up, roll up, Miss Collins! Find your porn-addict ex alive, or die trying!

  My feet bash the boards as I run. Through the gaps between them, I can make out the surge of the sea.

  Izzy’s distant cries blend with those of the seagulls, and with the roar of the waves.

  The forbidden castle of the front arcade building looms over me, all locked up, but could Scott be trapped inside? I’ll break in if I have to. For now, I run around the entire left-hand side, listening out for Scott’s voice, then along a central corridor with shuttered stalls on either side. A bulky black shape jolts me, before I realise it’s a fake life-sized cow.

  If this really is a dream, then it’s an extraordinarily lucid one, in which you can properly taste the air and feel the cold sweat spread across your back.

  No, you’re in a trance. You’re being tricked. Lured. Led.

  Could I have already passed the spot where Scott’s in trouble? Clutching my sides, I stop to listen. In dreams, it isn’t usually necessary to catch a breath or massage away a stitch, so this does feel real. Which means I really am trespassing on Brighton Pier in the middle of the night, but Scott needs my help and that’s all I can think about.

  I wait for the wind to deliver his voice to me again.

  Different voices come instead. Two male voices yell loudly to each other. From the front of the pier, two darting flashlights cut through the black. Searchlights, looking for th
e intruder. Seems there may have been cameras after all. Or that interfering cow Izzy may have made a panicked call. Why doesn’t she understand?

  Scott calls my name twice, heavy with distress. He’s still so far away. Somewhere up ahead, among the fairground rides.

  When I break into a sprint, the whole pier leaps up and down. Back over my shoulder, those darting flashlights seek me out, catching up all too fast.

  Arriving at the end of the pier, the widest section of all, I’m dwarfed by the central domed arcade, the rollercoasters like skeletal dinosaur remains and the ghost train, inside which a horde of mechanical frights await reactivation. Off to my left sits the bar where blood was spilt today.

  “—ate! Plea—!”

  Scott’s voice not only sounds more frantic, but his words are truncated. This makes me picture his head breaking the surface of water, before a relentless current hauls him back under.

  The knowledge that Scott may be about to die…

  … again? He’s already dead. You’re not thinking straight…

  … makes my heart pound my ribcage. I dash past the Wild River ride to the spot by the rails where Tyler and I faced off.

  Gripping the ice-cold metal bars, I can make out a small glowing light under the water.

  Scott’s life force. That’s what this must be.

  What, wait – why? Don’t do this, it’s a trick. You’ll die.

  I have to save him.

  I have to do this.

  If Scott told you to take a running jump off a pier, would you?

  “Stop right there,” yells some guy from a good distance behind me. “You’re not in trouble.”

  “Stay calm, miss,” says another. “Don’t do anything stupid, yeah?”

  At this, a ripple of déjà vu passes through me. Both men bark in alarm, but wind blots out their words as I climb fast over the bars and dive headlong into the maelstrom.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  20 September

  The last time I ever see Scott Palmer, he and I talk about suicide.

  In the bedroom, I’ve almost finished packing the rucksack. This will be my last journey back to Leeds before the big move down here.

  “Hey, Kate,” Scott yells from the living room. “Come and look.” The dark urgency in his voice, combined with his use of my actual name, makes me run along the hall. “Looks like someone’s jumped off the pier. They must have tried to… oh God.”

  As I hurry through the archway to join him, he slides open the balcony door, filling the living room with the thrum of whirring blades. Up near the clouds, an air ambulance chops through the sky. Two ground crews have parked at the front of the pier.

  “You can always tell when something really bad’s happened,” he says. “Out come all the rubberneckers.”

  Sure enough, a pack of seafront vultures have assembled to soak up the drama. Just like we have, I think. Wrapping my arms around Scott’s waist from behind, I press myself against his back. “Fuck,” I say. “I feel like I should be out there, doing something.”

  He squeezes my hand. There’s a fond smile in his voice. “That’s you all over.”

  “But I’m only across the road. I could help out. Time is so precious with things like this.”

  “Looks like they’ve got it covered, baby.”

  “How many times a year does someone jump?”

  “Three or four. And yet this person never learns their lesson.”

  He laughs lightly at his own joke, but as I gaze out over the surging water I can only feel grateful for the gift of breath. The three waterlogged bodies I’ve seen hauled out of rivers, their faces weren’t pretty.

  “Drowning really isn’t a great way to go,” I say.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t joke. It’s just… depressing, isn’t it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. Some of the jokes we crack on the job would make people’s relatives want to lynch us. But we’re not laughing at the bad stuff. It’s like we’re trying to flush out our systems. We’re trying to stay sane. You either laugh or you cry, and when you’re on the job, only one option works.”

  A pause, and then Scott says, “I think you’re incredible, you know that?”

  Compliments make me clam up, so I close my eyes and hold him tighter. Finally, someone thinks I’m all right. Someone who isn’t Izzy. “Only two weeks to go,” I say. “Don’t go changing your mind on me, or I will hunt you down and set fire to you.”

  I feel the vibrations of his laugh from deep inside his chest. “I was about to say the same thing to you. Well, without the whole hunty fiery bit.”

  We watch the helicopter circle the pier, as the coastguard’s rescue boat cleaves across the waves to join the search for this poor lost soul.

  Standing up here in my ivory tower, cocooned by my perfect new life, I wonder what might possibly drive a person to commit such a sad and desperate act.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  8 October

  The cold black shock swallows me whole.

  My T-shirt billows up to hug my face, waterboarding me.

  What have I done? I’m going to drown and die.

  Don’t breathe in. Soon as you get water in your lungs, you’re sunk. The average person can last for eighty-seven seconds before the chemical sensors in their brain trigger an involuntary breath. Aren’t you glad we stored these handy facts?

  I try to move my arms and legs, but the sea exerts too much coercive force. I may as well be a mannequin, bobbing around at the whim of the current. Can’t even tell which way is up or down. The water pressure makes it hard to keep my eyes open, but I have to try.

  How many seconds have gone already? How long do I have left?

  I really don’t want to die.

  I especially don’t want the people left behind to think I killed myself.

  Izzy! Oh God, Izzy, I’m so sorry for everything.

  Most of all, I don’t want my mother to have the satisfaction of thinking she finally drove me to this.

  When I manage to yank my shirt back down from over my face, I see a light.

  A small glow, rising from the depths to hover right in front of my face.

  This must be the light I dove down here to find. Scott’s soul. What the fuck made me think that? Insane trance logic. God, I’m so scared.

  When I grab hold of this light, a hard rectangle fills my hand. Scott’s phone. Christ, this light has been coming from the handset’s torch.

  Priorities. Look around. My newfound torch illuminates a couple of feet ahead. Tantalisingly close, there’s a vertical pole, one of the pier’s support beams.

  I try to swim in that direction, but the current has other ideas. Pinning my arms to my sides, it jerks me way over to the left and then back again.

  Please, please, give me one chance. Even though it’s more than I deserve.

  Careful what you wish for. Look out, here comes that pole. Fast.

  My upper body collides with the metal, bashing my nose and knocking off barnacles. Wrapping both arms around the pole, I grab hold of bolts I can’t see.

  Incensed by my insolence, the current attempts to haul me away.

  How many seconds left? How long before my lungs fill with water and I become another stiff on a mortuary slab?

  At least you know there’s an afterlife.

  Fuck that, brain. Ain’t going there yet.

  I hook both legs around the metal, then monkey myself upwards.

  Why don’t you let go of the phone? That would help you to grip.

  Inch by inch I climb. My entire being screams for oxygen. I need to get my head above water soon, or any moment now my brain will prise open my mouth and it’ll all be over.

  The intense cold suggests I’m already dead. When you can’t feel your physical self, you may as well be just a soul.

  Somewhere above me, up beyond the roiling surface of the sea… is that a dim smear of moon?

  No, these are two lights, and they’re roving. Please don’t let them be the
beckoning lamps of the hereafter.

  Don’t stop. Come on, you’re almost there. Keep going. Do this for Izzy, if no one else.

  When the urge for air overwhelms me, I picture Izzy in pieces at my funeral. I picture the tears streaming down her face, as she tells an endless procession of shrinks how her best friend killed herself and she failed to intervene.

  My head bursts out into the exquisite and priceless night air.

  Spluttering, I grip the pole like it’s a child. I can still barely breathe and the cold has sunk fangs deep into my bones, but I’m alive.

  What might be any period of time later, someone yells that they can see me and my phone-light torch.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  8 October

  “So, Kate. If you’re feeling up to it, perhaps you could take a moment to talk me through your mindset last night.”

  My allotted NHS psychotherapist is Dr Jones, a Chinese man with glasses and a goatee. He exudes precisely the kind of calming vibes I could use right now.

  I will never again need to season my food. Both the taste and the lingering feel of salt on my skin are so pervasive that I feel like one almighty hunk of cured meat.

  Casting my mind back to the pier triggers mental snapshots I’d much sooner forget.

  The violent up-and-down motion of the coastguard’s boat. Someone shoving me onto my side so I don’t choke on my own copious vomit.

  Riding in an ambulance as a patient for the first time in my life. Wrapped in a red cotton blanket, immobilised, spider-strapped to an orthopaedic scoop stretcher. One of the paramedics informing Control that she’s pretty sure the patient is one of our own, then muttering my name into the radio.

  Morning hours blurring and flashing by, thanks to fitful naps on my hospital bed. Whoa, my recurring zip-wire dream came back. This time, the memory’s so much clearer: as I hurtled along the wire, I realised I was moving backwards. I knew that when I reached the platform of the tower, something horrendous would happen, but I couldn’t stop my ascent… and then I woke up.

  Probably best not to mention this dream to Dr Jones.