Broken Ghost

by Niall Griffiths

  He turns away, leans his elbows on the low parapet, makes a face mask of his right hand. The dragon on his neck seems to throb. These surges in him a sensation not unknown, as of something leaving him and scraping bits of him out with it, both a birth and a death, of sorts, and accompanied by some of the necessary pain; a rasp on every nerve-ending. Its last invasion had occurred fairly recently, a few months or so ago, at around four on a starless morning in that damp flat up on the hill; it had pulled him gasping out of sleep and put him in a rank pool of sweat on the cushions of his couch. Then, he’d put it down to the binge he’d been on, all the booze and reeking speed but now, here at the sump of the summer, the pressure of it flattening him, little man beneath the savage weight, he knows not the provenance but is aware of the solution; just say aye to Aney Lavin. And get it arranged as soon as he possibly can; tomorrow, today, within the fucking hour. One massive trauma to the throat. Because it is not shame yet it adds to shame. It extracts from him a thing he’d wish to keep if the choice was his. It nubs his penis, wizens his balls to dried peas. The sweat he seeps smells sour. Detritus-man, scum washed up by the river, something deemed garbage. Yes, yes – big blunt force to the throat, feel the bones crack, see the light leave, plunder the stuff for yourself; capture it in a fist and bring it to the lips and slurp it down deep.

  Urgency. He spins himself away from the wall and there is a taxi smoothing over the bridge towards him. He hails it. The urgency. He sees the driver shake his head and hold a denying palm out above the steering wheel and then he refutes himself by pulling into the kerb alongside Cowley.

  —Cow! Yew alright boy?

  Cowley leans at the waist. —Stiff!

  —Yew alright, mun? Look like yewer about to be sick.

  Cowley gets in the cab. —South beach.

  Stiff shakes his head. —Jes been there. Dropped off three McBrides. Trouble in-a air, yew ask me. Am not going back yur now.

  —What?

  —A said Am not going back-a south beach. Am off-a clock, I am. Am going up-a mountain.

  —Up-a mountain?

  —Aye, up-a mountain.

  —What mountain?

  —Av got to move. Stiff Richards looks in the rear-view mirror and sure enough there is a toot from behind him. He sets the car moving, heads straight for the castle ruins and the sea beyond.

  —What mountain, Stiff?

  —Pendam. Al drop yew off by-a castle an yew can walk to south beach from yur. What d’yew want south beach for?

  —Lavins. Need to see um.

  —Ah, business, is it? A wouldn’t bother at-a mo, like, if I was yew. Them McBrides were not fuckin happy. Heard um clank when they got out, y’know under eyr coats like? In this weather! Overcoats! Hiding something, see. Ad stay away, Cow, for-a time being.

  —What d’yew want Pendam for? Everyone seems to be going up yur.

  —D’yew not know?

  —Know what?

  —What’s going on up there? On-a mountain? Yma, I’ll show yew. Have a look at this.

  Stiff pulls over, on the promenade. An area clogged with skin – moving legs and faces under hats and behind shades. Bellies, backs. Things rise from the beach; frisbees, balls of different sizes, leaping dogs. Cooked, it all is, and the meat smells that come into the car could as well be not from the burger vans parked up but from the human bodies themselves, crisped and grilled, flash-fried in the ocean’s dazzle. The wide whoosh of the bay here has, it appears, kept down the seething ire that the heatwave has produced elsewhere; here there is laughter and hoisted spirits and musics.

  And Cowley can feel it inside him: a levelling, like this tiny part of the world has lifted the gnarled tangle of him and snapped it smooth. He needs drink – water or something, not booze. How swift this change, abrupt and utter, a jerk calling some words up from Cowley’s choral past – epiphany, intercession – which he bites his tongue hard to distract himself from and what will follow them: the blood-bolstered battering ram bobbing from the parted cloth-folds. Refuse to let it in. Yet in it already is.

  —Get on this, butt. Check this out.

  Stiff has called up film on his phone. Cowley looks and re-sees it all; the ridge, the lake, the people. Hears fuzzy noise.

  —Saw this last night in Cardiff. Someone showed me.

  —Yew were down in Cardiff last night? That’ll explain the curry smell then. Caroline Street was it? Got to be chicken curry chips from Dorothy’s, right?

  Cowley does not respond. Studies the screen instead. And what a window it is; the footage is the same as that fucking lodger showed him last night but the compression of the thing that’s going on atop Pendam mountain into this palm-sized oblong; all the human traffic, here, touchable with a hand held out the window, seems shrunken next to the entire universe captured inside the phone. In it they await – there is an availability. Cowley too could be on that screen; he, too, could, and soon, be in the palm of the hand of someone he’ll never know or even meet. New Zealand. Las Vegas. And perhaps it’s just the bounce of the sunlight back off the screen but around the images there seems to be a light of some kind, a glow. Cowley watches the shape of a woman dance sinuously on a rock and her snaking arms do shimmer; her beanie’d head seems to beam.

  —Av seen this, Cowley says. —Show me more.

  Stiff starts swiping the screen. With his index finger. —Yew won’t have seen this, he says. —Only uploaded an hour ago.

  He hands the machine to Cowley and starts the car.

  —What yew doing?

  —Eh? Going up-a mountain. Jes told yew. Yewer coming with? Might as well see it in real life not just on-a phone, aye? Let’s get up yur, see what’s happening. Ad give-a Lavins a miss at the mo if I was yew.

  —I don’t know how to work this. What do I do?

  —What, the smartphone? Don’t need to do anything. Jes watch it, like, that’s all. Let it do its thing.

  Stiff U-turns. Beyond the peopled jetty, and over the harbour busy with masts, Allt Wen rises. Whatever’s going on at the foot of it, on the south beach, is far apart from the window that Cowley holds tight in his hand and which he gazes at as he is ferried through the hotly hectic town and away from the sea and up, further up. Towards the crackling static of the sun and the elevated circus baked beneath it. High above the flatlands. Cowley in his smells.

  MESSAGES

  @ThinBlueLine#battleofbeanfield#orgreave self-fulfilling prophecy! Lets bring um down boyz

  @KatieH#ThinBlueLine go get em lads! Do us proud!

  @ThinBlueLine#battleofbeanfield#orgreave#2011riots & still they didn’t learn! Scum!

  @PeopleofBritain#ThinBlueLine do it proper this time! Teach em a lesson! TRAITORS!!! No holding back

  @KatieH#ThinBlueLine#PeopleofBritain to quote one of there hero’s BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY #leftielibtards

  @PeopleofBritain dont forget dale farm! DO IT RIGHT THIS TIME TEACH EM A LESSON ONCE FOR ALL LADS#dousproud

  @Dionysus#lightindarkness#antifash fuck off @KatieH@PeopleofBritain ignore ignore! Come and join! All welcome! Funfunfun! No bigots allowed #mynyddicariad

  See the face, and so many see the face:

  YouTube:http/:watch?m=pA7&Cc41xab

  Government spokesman on the Llyn Syfydrin ‘commune’

  uploaded 5 min ago

  As I said last night, as I think we’re all aware, our, ah, the polite request that these people voluntarily remove themselves from what is essentially, what is lawful, ah, private property, well I’m sorry to say that this was met with abuse of the crudest sort. These people unfortunately will not listen to reason, I’m afraid to say. It was explained to them, clearly and civilly, that what they are doing constitutes a squatting offence and a breach of the law and moreover a safety hazard – not only in the issues of inadequate hygiene facilities and sanitation but the shooting season is soon to begin. The footage that has been released, that we’ve all seen, well that is the basest propaganda that shows nothing of the, the conditions up there, the filth
, the neglect of children, the drugs and the violence of which we have confirmed reports. Not to mention the more, ah, intangible concerns of lost man-hours and economic inactivity. It’s criminality, pure and simple. It’s betrayal; the will of the British people is that we leave the EU and it is every Briton’s duty to ensure that we make a success of that. It is sabotage. And, and there is to be wind farm expansion in partnership with our new trading partners in the Far East and as I believe I’ve already said we need the work to begin on that as soon as possible to help us realise our long-term economic plan and satisfy our new global trading partners. Whatever police actions are called for will have to be paid for by the hard-working British taxpayer. Obviously Her Majesty’s Government will do the utmost to keep the costs as low as possible which is why we do not wish to prolong this, this episode any longer. In answer to your question I do think there’ll be an eviction, yes. The public mood is in favour of such, such an action. It’s the last thing we want but frankly, unfortunately we have been left with no other option. The government’s hand has been forced. It goes without saying that we will endeavour to achieve this as peacefully as possible and the sooner we get those people off the mountain and back into work the better, every right-thinking person would agree with that. Now if you’ll excuse me.

  Comments 4

  KatieH Took the words right out of my mouth!

  1 min ago

  PeopleofBritain Bunch of whingers/hypocrites/parasites/libtards. Bet theyll be Remoaners. Get them down NOW. No happiness without order. Impose it if we have to. Traitors must lose all rights!!!!!

  2 mins ago

  Free Thinker well said sir!!! The sooner the better!!!!! Tomorrow there’s gona be some people who wish they’d never seen Lord of the Rings methinks

  3 mins ago

  Bob C dirty cunts

  4 mins ago

  From Pobl Annwyl, bilingual blogspot, Emyr Gwenallt Roberts, AKA Llewellyn Nesa, version Saesneg

  I’ve followed my own advice and this is what I’ve found: a slut and a junkie and a thug. Yes, these are our witnesses; we are meant to believe that these are the vessels of prophecy. I searched and I read and I asked and that is what I was told: a slut and a junkie and a thug. And these three are our Lucia and Jacinta and Francisco? Our innocent peasants? No, I do not think so. Where, in these three, is the Immaculate Heart? In EmmaMum1? In my enquiries I lost count of the number of men who told me they had, in their godless idiom, ‘been there’ or ‘been up it’; and, well, I cannot ignore that. I’ve never met EmmaMum1 but I will wager that her skin is red.

  And so it comes again: the disappointment. What’s happening on top of Pendam, that is no seiat, and this heatwave is only a consequence of man-made global warming, it is not the Massabielle Spring. Richard Owen spoke of ‘a whole country aflame for God’ but I have to accept that the country is aflame for nothing more than pornography and toys (and remember the burning bog at Tregaron? Those were literal flames, too, as we have been told time and time again they would be). I agree, now, with the Reverend Peter Price and Ambrose Bebb; that this so-called ‘apparition’ is nothing but ‘a wind of emotionalism’. A ‘product of fleshly, not heavenly fire’. Don’t know to what I refer? Then play with your toys. Go to Google and feed the greedy.

  So what is our ‘divine resource’? (Evan Philips: Go to your toys again.) The drug-induced hallucination of a loose woman? A single mother, neglectful of her child? Or merely a Brocken spectre, and so nothing more than a meteorological phenomenon? This is no awakening. You are all still asleep and having nightmares. Of course Pendam would not be chosen as the new Blaenannerch. How foolish you have been. Little children begging for guidance. Grow up.

  I take leave of the blog, now. It all seems so pointless. I may return to it at some future point but you will not hear from me for a while; I’m taking a sabbatical from sending parts of my soul out into the ether. She said ‘dig’, and so I dug, and I found filth. ‘Bridge’, and I put a match to it. And ‘wild’? Well, I’m angry. Can’t you tell? Again I have been let down. How many more times must this happen? Well, perhaps this is the last time because this is the Last Time. For now I must fall silent.

  Wrth ei draed cymerwch eich codwm yn deidi yn awr.

  CYSLLT

  ADAM

  Aw man. Aw man.

  I know where I am. Which in itself is a small fuckin miracle, given the places I’ve been waking up recently, an the states I’ve been in when I’ve done it. An I know how I got here. Which, y’know, is in itself a small etc., etc. An then comes a third thought – I know what to do. And this time it’s not to reach out for the nearest bottle or can an slurp down whatever slime might be in it.

  Music: ‘Dream Baby Dream’ by Suicide. Haven’t heard this in aaaages. An there’s light, flashing lights around. I’m all folded in half on the back seat of Sionie’s car and I go through, quickquick, the recent events; the jetty and the dexies and that lad with all them crappy tats on his body. The feeling of something about to happen. Something bad. Then Benji and Sion telling me off. Driving up the mountain, and Rhos, all closed an dark an empty, and, fuck, Quilty – oh Quilty – oh my little tiger tomcat. I’ll be back for you, feller. An then falling asleep and now, now, waking up again. I wait, tensed, for the hangover to come on all horrible but it doesn’t. It just doesn’t hit. Must’ve slept it off. Which means I must’ve slept for about three fucking days in the back of this car and it feels like that, in me body like – every joint aches. Me knees feel like iron hinges all rusted shut.

  I sit up. An I don’t throw up, which is a fuckin wonder. I stretch me arms and me legs, as much as I can in the cramped space, and all the joints go crack. A bit blurgh, aye, who wouldn’t be, but there’s no pain; no headache, no boily belly. Maybe I’m still half pissed. The car stinks of sweat an stale booze even with the windows open but there’s also other smells and there is the noise of music an lots of people an all the lights are flashing an I rub me eyes an look out at where I am.

  Aw man. It’s fuckin amazing. I know I’m on Pendam mountain but, God, look at it … last time I was up here there were some people asleep on the beach and there was me an that nutter with the big dragon on his neck and that girl with the sexy arse and that, that shape in the sky but now? It’s like some kind of heaven-place. Ahead of me is a line of parked cars going towards the pebble beach an the ridge at the far end of the lake an there are fires and lights an people everywhere and the movement of it all, an the sounds of it, is just, just … I can feel it all coming into me. It’s like me body’s absorbing it. To me left is the lake all dark like oil. On the right is the boggy bit with the ruined houses. A little boat drifts through the moonlight on the lake, the people in it singing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’. There’s music an lights. God almighty … what’s happening up here? This looks fuckin brilliant.

  The music changes to ‘Take This Job And Shove It’. I just sit there and listen, the knees doing a little jig. And then I give a little laugh cos The Geto Boyz comes on, ‘Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta’, and I fuckin love this song and it’s another one I haven’t heard for ages. Through the windscreen, I see a figure in a big hat, like a sombrero, coming towards the car. I lean out the window. I haven’t got the first friggin clue of what I’m gonna say to him but what comes out is this:

  —Ey, mate. Is this the Office Space soundtrack?

  —What?

  —This music. Is it the soundtrack to that film Office Space?

  His face in the shadow beneath the brim of his mad hat. All I can see are his teeth.

  —Dunno, he says. —Never seen it. Sounds are good, tho. He knows his stuff, that feller. He’s been at it for days.

  —Who, the DJ?

  —Yeh. Well, some bloke on the decks, aye. Set up a jenny on a truck. What, you just arrived, have you?

  I give him a nod. —Who is it?

  —The DJ?

  —Yeh.

  —Dunno. No one does. I’ve asked around. He just turned up and se
t up his decks one day. Never know what he’s gunner play next.

  He doesn’t say anything and I think he’s just looking down at me but I can’t really tell because his face is all in shadow. Then he says: —It’s fuckin great up here, it is, and he walks away, away from the lake, like, and into the trees behind me.

  I sit back. The phrase getting my bearings goes through me head but I don’t know why; I mean, there are no bearings to be got – I know where I am and I know how I got here. But it’s all this, this stuff, it’s all what’s going on up here … I don’t wanner go out into it just yet. Feel a little bit nervous, to tell the truth. There’s so fuckin much going on.

  I find a bottle of water in the footwell and a packet of tobacco in me jacket pocket. Smoke, rehydrate. The music changes to ‘Leave Me Alone’ by Calypso Rose and me knees start to jiggle. Not the Office Space soundtrack, then, but that feller in the hat was right – I wouldn’t’ve expected this, after the Geto Boyz, but it somehow seems to fit. A big white bird whooshes across the bonnet of the car and I think it’s a barn owl and then I remember the wooden owl that needed a hug and I take smoke as deep into me lungs as I possibly can. Think about stubbing the end out on me arm but I don’t.

  The urge to piss. Can’t remember the last time I had a piss but then why would I? A group of people pass the car and they’re talking all, like, excitedly, heading towards the lights, and they’ve got them kind of annoying studenty voices half-posh and I hear one of them saying: