The Ghost

by The Ghost (epub)

  Mr Pink-Whistle is not like ordinary people. He’s half a brownie and half a person, and he can make himself invisible whenever he wants.

  Cook found this idea intensely exciting and resolved to achieve something similar as soon as he was old enough. He had mentioned this to Esther and been met with a gruff rebuttal.

  “That’s only make believe, Dor. And why would you want to make yourself invisible, anyway?”

  “Because when you’re invisible,” insisted Cook, “it means that no-one can see you and when no-one can see you, they can’t hurt you, but you can hurt them if you really have to.”

  “Yeah, but they could hear you.”

  “Not if you’re really quiet. You could wear socks.”

  The front door clanged shut. There were murmurs down in the parlour, then raised, excited voices in the sitting room, then the noise of someone running up the stairs. Cook spread himself flat under the covers. Maybe no-one would notice he was there if he was perfectly still.

  “Dorian, darling?”

  It was his mother’s sing-song voice. She saw him so infrequently, she could never seem to calibrate her mode of address with his age and awareness. Her latest guess, it seemed, was that he was around two or three years younger. Cook heard her enter his own bedroom, pause, then cross the landing. He stayed quiet, knowing it would be interpreted as a game.

  Lily slipped into the room. Cook’s concealment was comically obvious, but she played along, loudly wondering where-oh-where he could have got to. She held back a little, drawing out his barely stifled sniggers. Then, she pounced, digging her fingers into where she thought the boy-shaped lump’s ribs might be, scrabbling and tickling and forcing Cook to clamber out of her reach, up to the top of the bed. She gathered him up, squeezing, plunging her face into his neck. He spluttered on a mouthful of brightly bleached hair and shouted for her (“Mummy!”). His tone was uncertain – excited, irritated, a little scared?

  “Ooh…” She nuzzled into his cheek. “I could eat him all up!”

  Cook broke away and propped himself against Esther’s mound of pillows where he could get a good look at her and brace for what might be coming next. Lily was long and slender and, despite the cold, wore a short mini-dress patterned with psychedelic swirls. Her waist-length hair whipped and swished as she clicked open a bulky suitcase.

  “Where have you been, mummy?”

  The question carried an awkward ambiguity. In this case, Lily had ‘been’ to Spain. Her normally dry, pale skin was glossed olive, and she was a tottering Buckaroo of cases, carrier-bags and oversized souvenirs, most of which were now scattered around the floor. And now she wasn’t there, she was here, materialised and in motion but less familiar than in her usual state – the unpresent, the unarrived. Cook was confused by his yearning for Lily. Did he actually miss her, or was he just rebelling against his natural preference for aloneness? Could you really miss someone who was too rarely present to remind you of the things you were missing?

  “It’s called Lanzarote,” said Lily, fumbling inside the suitcase, “in a country called Spain. It was very hot there, Dorian. I think you’d have liked it. Cold in here!”

  “Why didn’t I go with you?” Cook was now sitting upright, vertically propped on a saddle of pillows.

  “You’re a bit too young, darling. Plenty of time for you to travel the world when you’re a bigger boy.”

  Cook was surprised to hear that his bigness was in doubt, but he had no real interest in travel. His world was tighly compacted – it extended only to the play-park at the top of his street and the oil-works that lay flat and wide and toxic at the bottom. And, uncomfortably close just a few doors down, there was the old butcher’s shop, its front and back doors obscured by crude layerings of heavy planks. Cook always took care to rush past the lonely old house on his way to school, telling himself that he couldn’t look at it because if he did, the world would explode. He knew that the world wouldn’t really explode, but he could never quite bring himself to check.

  “Here it is!”

  Lily produced a plush toy from the suitcase. It had dog-like features but was caricatured and stretched tall, with yellowy-white fur. Cook took it suspiciously and squeaked out a thank you.

  “It’s a poodle, Dor! Like Snowy!”

  Snowy was Esther’s previous pet dog. Cook was too young to remember much about him – apart from a warm tongue lapping at his cheek and a sense that the facts about the dog’s fate had been kept vague. Cook shook the toy from side to side, smiling a little at the freely suspended plastic pupils, rattling and rolling inside transparent eyeballs. The gift was another illustration of his mother’s feeble grasp of her son’s development.

  “Why don’t you live with us, mum?”

  The question ambushed Lily. She took a steadying breath, pretending to fiddle with a suitcase lock.

  “I wish I could, Dor. It’s really hard. I live with a friend. Not that far away.”

  “Is it my dad?”

  Lily sidestepped this with an agility that gave Cook his answer.

  “You can come and visit! That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? I bet you’d love the flat. My friend has lots of comics you can read.”

  Later, Cook lay next to Esther, mummified in bed-socks, mittens, double pyjamas and his late grandfather’s balaclava. He gazed at the grey outline of the toy dog, propped up inside an open drawer of the dressing table. Its synthetic fur blazed absurdly white through the icy twilight, off-centre eyes sightlessly regarding the thin curtains. Esther snored loudly and frequently, in an unsettling baritone. Cook considered refuge in his own room (he was dressed for the occasion) but decided the noise wasn’t bad enough to brave the stumble across the landing, remembering to resist glancing across and down into the oily blackness that seemed to gather around the base of the staircase.

  He removed one of his mittens and peeked a couple of fingers outside the duvet. The cold seeped over them – frosting the tips, stiffening the knuckles. He snatched his hand back, replaced the mitten and returned to staring at the dog. Soon, despite the rasping and roaring, he sank into a dream-busy sleep.

  *

  Something was coming up the stairs.

  Cook crouched in his closet, flattened into a corner, battling the urge to spring up and out and maybe dive through the window and take his chances with the pavement twenty feet below.

  He heard the Something turn the corner at the bottom of the stairs and – slowly, always without urgency – begin its thunking ascent.

  Dream-logic allowed him to simultaneously hide in the closet and watch from his window as a group of Sea Devils ambled through the shallow lake of caustic sludge that surrounded the oil-works. They slimed across the road, converging on his front door, barging into the house in ones and twos.

  Thunk.

  He heard the Something crash through the cheap bedroom door and thunk its way over to his hiding place.

  7. The Price of Admission

  “IT WAS ALL SO fucking po-faced!”

  This was Jake Saloman, broadsheet critic, chairman of Critics’ Wire, a film writers’ collective which distributed screening news and hosted an annual, under-reported awards ceremony.

  “But it’s a serious subject matter!” barked Neville Smith, part-time reviewer, full-time gadabout. “You can’t just throw in a load of irony. Sometimes you have to take things seriously.”

  Next, the overlapping squawk and squabble distinctive of a group of gawky film critics masculated by watery wine.

  “I thought there was a lightness of touch.”

  “He just makes the same film over and over again.”

  “Why do you always have to have something to say?”

  “Well, it’s like ‘My First Kubrick’.”

  Cook would normally wade in to this subjective jetsam with arms flailing, drink sloshing. But, here in the British Film Foundation bar – a menagerie of baying indignance – he was immobilised by ennui. The contact from Dennis Mountford had taken root in a gloomy
corner of his mind, and it was not something that could be shrugged back into the past or forgotten from the present. Mountford was a lifetime gone and yet right there in the room with him – across the reclaimed-wood table, perched on the burnt-orange ottoman. In this vision, his friend was still a young boy, and Cook shuddered as he realised they hadn’t shared the same space in the real world for over thirty-five years. He gazed into his barely depleted pint glass and forced a scared little smile.

  “Look at Citizen Kane…” (Saloman again). “It hasn’t aged well. The sign of a true masterpiece is timelessness.”

  Consternation, sneers of laughter.

  “And the Mona Lisa?” challenged Malcolm Parker, weekend broadsheet film editor. “That’s hardly ‘aged well’, but it doesn’t make it less of a masterpiece.”

  “We’re talking about two entirely different art forms,” snapped Charlie Brent, listings-mag film-section editor. “You can’t say that this painting is ‘better’ than that film.”

  Cook, a little drunk, drew in a steadying breath.

  “Is Citizen Kane a five-star movie?” he demanded.

  General agreement.

  “And is the Mona Lisa a five-star painting?”

  “Of course!” brayed Smith, through a splutter of house Rosé.

  “How about what everyone had for breakfast this morning? Five-star bowl of Shreddies, was it? Five-star fucking brioche and coffee?”

  “We’re talking about art, Dorian,” said Parker carefully, “not just general experiences. I know there’s some debate over…”

  “I’m talking about sensual – sensory – pleasures,” Cook interrupted, slurring the S’s. “Has anyone here ever had a five-star bowl of soup or a five-star blow-job? It’s all about the moment! You can’t judge anything – art, experience, aren’t they the same thing? – with hindsight. It’s all about how you feel and react in the moment, when you’re right there, on the ride! You can’t stick a ‘rating’ on everything and then compare the components of life and culture, based on those ratings!”

  “It’s just a convenient yardstick,” smiled Saloman. “We don’t have the time or space to have lengthy conversations about…”

  Cook yelped a strange little exclamation and held up his hand, palm facing out. It was a gesture of supreme arrogance, designed to cut the response short.

  “But don’t you think it’s depressing – how we have to view films on this sliding, five-point scale, how we’re paid to neatly package the unpackageable? It’s not a fucking ‘convenient yardstick’! It’s a dance with the marketing devil. We provide the poster-friendly quotes and star ratings, and the studios use them to sell the films. Why do we – why does anyone – even bother writing long-form reviews any more? Do you know who reads our reviews? We do! Other film reviewers! It’s not fucking ‘writing’, it’s grandstanding. No… It’s masturbating! We’re basically just sitting around, wanking off in front of each other.”

  He sprang up from his seat, swaying.

  “And you can quote me! On the fucking poster!”

  After that, Cook spent a little too long sitting in the fragranced, air-conditioned toilet cubicle, staring down at the frayed underwear stretched around his ankles. He dug out his phone and opened the email inbox. One new message.

  Enlargement supplement! Did you know that we have a formula that can elongate your manhood with no side effects?

  Cook did indeed know this. He seemed to be made aware of it roughly every hour, as his ironically enlarged Junk Mail folder could testify.

  He signed in to PastLives.com, opened the message from ‘Den’ and deleted it.

  8. How We Used To Live

  February, 1974

  The children chosen to take part in Bethesda First & Middle’s centenary celebrations were divided into two groups. The younger ones – Cook included – were allocated Victorian-era playground games, while the older bunch all contributed to a collage of thickly daubed watercolours depicting school life in 1874. Cook ground three marbles together in his pocket as he was guided to his spot on the upper-school playground. The day was being filmed for a historical TV show which uncovered evidence of past culture in present-day architecture. Cook’s school had been selected because its original buildings were a social historian’s wonderland of air-raid shelters and shoe-scrapers. The presenter – a bearded academic in a beige polo-neck – drifted around, chatting to the children. He stooped before Cook, referring to him as ‘young chap’ and resting a hand on his shoulder. As he spoke, his mouth barely seemed to open – saliva-glazed lips writhed like earthworms in the centre of the tangled scrubland that had overrun his chin and cheeks.

  Cook spent the half-hour filming time engaged in an over-theatrical ‘game’ of marbles with an older boy, David Brereton. They were instructed to repeatedly – but casually – roll smaller marbles towards a larger target ball, while everyone else skipped and hopscotched and leap-frogged inside strictly defined zones. Cook and Brereton giggled and bantered, rolling the marbles with too much pace and aggression, aiming them at a nearby group of skipping girls. Cook was pleasantly shocked by Brereton’s disregard for instructions, how practiced he seemed at appearing to comply, but always adding his own subversive little improvisations. When one of the girls slipped on a marble, Brereton was quick to convincingly feign disinterest, focusing instantly back on the ground below, and abandoning Cook to a warning from Mrs Mellor.

  On the way home from school that afternoon, Brereton caught up with Cook half-way over the zebra crossing.

  “D’you wanna go to the marl-hole on Saturday?”

  Esther had warned Cook to avoid the area near the deep pit of clay around the back of the brickworks, a short walk up from their house. Unguarded at weekends, the ‘marl-hole’ was a treacherous gouge of restless sludge, trickling screes and abandoned extraction tools. Cook definitely did not ‘want’ to go there on Saturday, but he felt oddly secure with Brereton – although he was clearly the type to attract trouble, he was equally skilled at deflecting consequences.

  “Yeah, okay!”

  “Come call for me – 28 Lowther Street.”

  Brereton veered off and Cook diverted to the corner sweet shop, where he bought a few Fruit Salad chews before rejoining his usual route home. A few minutes from his house, Cook noticed a group of boys, directly in his path, shoving and wrestling near the main gates of the oil-works. His instinct was to turn back and find an alternative route, but he buried the sweets deep in his pocket and carried on walking. As he got closer, Cook recognised John Ray, at the centre of a restricting huddle, being yanked and buffeted around by three captors. Each time Ray made a dash for escape, he was hauled back into the centre. Cook switched pavements to avoid the scene, and was about to scurry past when he saw a blue-and-white handkerchief in the middle of the road.

  “Come on!” shouted one of the boys. “You can go!”

  Cook stopped and watched. The group had parted to form an apparent exit channel. Ray bolted for the gap, but was quickly blocked and forced back into the centre. He howled with frustration, and again, Cook thought of something animal – almost alien. Like Mr Smith’s persistent hacking and heaving, he longed to silence the sound, to slice it out of existence.

  Cook walked over and picked up the handkerchief. The boys were a little older, but he was high on confidence after his role in the filming, and the new connection with Brereton made him feel more protected – at least more monitored – than usual. He forced his way through interlocking hands and offered the handkerchief back to its owner. Ray’s pallid skin was blotched red with anger. His jumper had split open at the armpit and something earthly had been ground into his feathery hair.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking the handkerchief and stuffing it into his pocket. Cook’s boldness had stalled the boys, but as he turned and wriggled out of their circle, he felt a kick to the back of his leg which toppled him down onto the pavement. The boys’ laughter was more gleeful than malicious. Cook’s misfortune had broken th
e tension and, faces saved, the group scattered and scampered away.

  “Are you alright?”

  The question could have been directed either way, but it came from Cook to John Ray.

  “Yes.”

  Ray sniffed. He took out the handkerchief, wiped his nose, buried it back in his pocket. As they walked, Cook offered one of his sweets, but Ray shook his head. For him, kindness was to be feared – it was a feint, a prelude to cruelty.

  The road levelled off near the iron bridge. Ray quickened his pace and broke away with a doubtful, “See you later!” Cook was surprised to hear that his speaking voice was clipped and precise – almost posh.

  At home, Cook dropped off his school-bag and headed straight out to call on Lisa Goldstraw. Her mum made them both a glass of diluted orange juice and they sat drinking, side by side, on the two swings at the bottom of Lisa’s vast, immaculate garden.

  “Lisa?” enquired Cook.

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you go out with me?”

  She considered this, tugging both stockings over her knees. “I can’t. I really like you, but I’m already going out with someone.”

  “But I could be, like, your second boyfriend?”

  Her silence told him this wasn’t possible. He hopped off the swing and wandered into the kitchen, where Lisa’s mum had propped baby Rebecca in a high-chair and was smearing primary-coloured puree into her reluctant mouth. Rebecca squealed with joy at the sight of Cook. She strained her tubby arms to full stretch, reaching for him. Mrs Goldstraw smiled and handed Cook the jar of baby food. He rattled the spoon around and scraped out a blob of something that smelt of sweetened carrots. Rebecca was stilled. Her shining eyes tracked the spoon’s movement as Cook lifted it towards her mouth, which opened wide, received the food and immediately re-opened for more.