by Jason Arnopp
‘It’s not unusual,’ says Chastain of the ghost’s return, as we all walk from the plaza, following the curve of the beach towards the marina. As much as she feigns nonchalance, this affair has left its mark on her too. By the end of lunch, she had succeeded in convincing the Lengs (a) not to sue her; and (b) that she fully intended to finish the job she’d begun, at no extra cost to them, but it was a close call.
‘Nine times out of ten, the first thing I try and do is reason with the spirit,’ she explains. ‘And nine times out of ten that works. But sometimes you think you’ve reached an understanding, when you actually haven’t.’
The misunderstanding, as Chastain sees it, was that she thought the entity had agreed to move on to the afterlife, when actually it had other ideas. Of course, my own view of the main misunderstanding here is that the entity never existed in the first place.
With typically wishy-washy vagueness, Chastain sees the entity as ‘possibly trapped here on earth, for some reason. I haven’t been able to confirm, in my mind, whether it’s a human spirit or a demon.’
‘Well, how could you,’ I jibe, ‘with all these multiple models flying about?’
She’s clearly stressed out of her mind, because my comment earns me a glare instead of a snappy comeback. ‘Perhaps it only thinks it’s trapped here. Either way, it has some kind of emotional attachment to this life. Our goal is to move it on.’
Her face tightens when I ask what she’ll do if it refuses to play ball this time. ‘Let’s cross that bridge . . .’ she says, trailing off and changing the subject. Chastain really is splendidly melodramatic good value.
The wind whips at Sherilyn Chastain as she stands on the front deck of the Lengs’ boat. She’s deep in concentration, arms stretched out as though practising t’ai chi.
This vessel, whose name translates as The Good Life, is a jaw-dropper. One hundred and twenty sleek feet of fibreglass. The most beautiful white bullet you ever saw. I can barely bring myself to glance at the hundreds of inferior vessels lined up all around – it would be too much of an anticlimax.
Fang tells the Lengs what Chastain’s doing (they’re blasé, having seen it all before), then explains for my benefit that the magician is ‘psychically sealing the whole boat’s exterior’. I nod with all the respect I can muster.
My phone vibrates. I hit ‘Reject’ on the latest call from Astral Way, then ask Fang if she’s actually magical herself. ‘I have certain abilities that some might describe as magical. These include remote viewing, which allows me to see a place from far away. After our first visit, I used this power to scan the boat and check we had done everything we needed to do.’
‘So you were wrong, eh?’ I say, with a winning smile.
Fang does not smile back.
Inside the boat, it’s time to bust some serious ghost. Fang stays on the bridge with the Lengs, to keep them appraised of developments (she and Chastain wear Bluetooth headsets) and protect them should the ghost turn nasty again. I jog off along that corridor with Chastain, noting that the family portrait has been reframed and rehung. Beside me, the magician brandishes an aerosol can, which she briskly describes as containing ‘High John the Conqueror Root. Perfect for casting fast barrier spells.’
‘Where’d you get that stuff?’
‘Over the counter.’
As we prowl the boat, I’ll admit to feeling a buzz, if only because it reminds me of when my brother and I would hunt for ghosts in the woods behind our Suffolk home, back when we liked each other. We’d do it in daylight, because we weren’t allowed out at night. Even as a kid, though, I thought of ghosts as a fun idea rather than something to be afraid of. One day, Alistair locked me in a pitch-black room in the middle of the house. I just stood silently in the darkness, laughing to myself, until he let me out looking disappointed.1 Nowadays, my brother won’t even return my emails. I’ve been trying to get hold of him all week, to ask if I can speak to a friend of his about analysing the video, but no response. Sad, very sad.
Holding her aerosol above her head, Chastain announces that we’re getting close. She claims to hear footsteps, but I only hear our own. I’m reminded of those interactive scary theatre productions, installed in empty multi-storey car parks or warehouses. You’re led around at high speed by a bad actor pretending to be a marine sergeant or something, only to run into a gang of unconvincing aliens or zombies. It’s a heady brew of artifice and embarrassment.
This place resembles a spotless show home – or show boat, if you will. We pass through a dining area and a richly equipped galley-style kitchen. I glimpse lavish bedrooms and a small home cinema. This boat is surely the least scary place on earth, although Chastain admirably attacks it with the same vigour she might devote to a moonlit gothic mansion on a hill.
‘There’s no way out,’ she tells the air. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s time to go. Let’s not make this harder than it needs to be, eh?’
She reminds me of a police negotiator trying to talk a pissed-up teen down from a supermarket roof. And I really feel that, as she speaks, she imagines every single word being typed straight into the pages of my book. Sherilyn Chastain, the caring combat mage. Of course, she only accepts those many thousands of Hong Kong dollars to cover her expenses, cobber.
Chastain halts in one of the boat’s many leisure rooms. Sofa, two beanbag chairs, nothing else. Clean white walls. Great feng shui. She points at one high corner. ‘Feel that?’
I make a show of trying to decide, then wonder what the hell I’m doing.
‘A fuck-load of neg energy,’ she explains. ‘Feel the temperature drop?’
Glancing over my shoulder, I spy a wide-open oblong porthole, which ushers in a briny breeze. ‘Yep,’ I say, with a sigh.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ she tells the corner ghost. ‘You’ve run out of time. There’s no need to stay in this world.’
As she awaits a response, there’s no sound besides water lapping and glopping against the boat’s hull. Here’s how this works: Chastain gets to hear this ghost’s reply but I don’t. Because she has The Gift and I don’t. That is the founding principle upon which an entire parasitic empire of faith healers, mediums and mages has been built. We are special, you can’t do this by yourself, you need us.
‘I do want to help you,’ Chastain declares. ‘But you can’t stay here.’
I’m basically listening to one side of a phone conversation. Another pause for the response.
‘Of course you have a choice,’ she protests. ‘Why wouldn’t you have a— No, wait!’ She jerks into action as the spook seemingly makes a break. ‘Come back.’
And we’re running again, back the way we came. Blurred doorways and portholes flash by. Chastain yells for Fang to leave the Lengs and cut off the ghost as it tries to return to the bridge.
Further high-octane hysterics ensue from people who, whether by accident or design, never matured beyond my and Alistair’s hijinks in the Suffolk woods. Chastain corners the ghost and demands that it see reason; the ghost refuses and flees again. Much time and aerosol spray is wasted, leaving the ozone layer in shreds.
Chastain and Fang cast their ‘barrier spells’ on every doorway we pass through. The entity starts to run out of options, a badger in a collapsing sett, until we pursue it down to the ship’s lowest level.
That’s where Chastain calls out, ‘Jack!’ as I blunder into that long corridor, confused. She stares at something that appears to head right for me, and a sudden gust of wind messes me about.
‘Get back!’ she orders.
So what do you do?
As you might have guessed, I have no intention of following her order.
Something severs the breath in my windpipe and makes me stagger backwards.
My vision blurs.
I feel squirming, bony flesh on the back of my neck.
These are Fang’s fingers. She’s grabbed the back of my shirt collar and heaved me towards her. To my mind, she did this harder than necessary. She doesn’t even dei
gn to make eye contact as we prise ourselves from each other, while the alleged ghost sails by.
‘Phew!’ I rasp, straightening my collar. ‘Close call. How can I ever repay—’
But Fang and Chastain are off on their heels again, disappearing around a corner. I hang back and lean against a wall, slick with sweat from all the running.
I sidle into a wide, sparkling bathroom and slam two big handfuls of cold water into my face, then use a luxuriously fluffy towel to dry off. In a spotlit mirror, I meet the gaze of a sleep-deprived, vitamin-poor and yet devilishly handsome rogue.
But wait. There’s something else.
Something in the background, behind me, moving.
My own face blurs in the glass as I shift focus to see what it is.
Ball of smoke. It’s Guiren’s big ball of smoke. Those are my very first, wholly irrational thoughts.
The thing hangs in mid-air on the other side of this windowless space, beside the bathtub. No bigger than a helium fairground balloon, it resembles a pregnant grey ball (smoke cloud, smoke cloud, whispers the stupid voice in my head), curly around the edges. Its density prevents you from seeing through it to the tiled wall beyond. Most disquietingly of all, the thing pulses and quivers. A cartoon pressure cooker.
Let me tell you: Theroux would shit himself.
I blink, rather a lot.
The cloud darkens as if injected with ink and floats towards me. In my head, Guiren Leng jabbers crap: ‘Suddenly it was all around me. This whirlwind: screaming, spinning me, hurling me against walls . . .’
Gripped by the urge to see this thing directly, I tear my eyes from the mirror and spin around.
I’m alone in the bathroom.
I laugh to myself and realise there must have been something stuck on the mirror – perhaps some bloody shaving foam. Yet this is not the case. I scan the room’s reflection carefully, as if expecting the cloud to reappear. But there’s nothing.
Outside in the corridor, feeling silly, I hear Chastain’s harsh tones before I see her.
‘Jack? Jack? Where are ya?’
She skids around the corner, beetroot-purple face matching the hair, and sees me standing with my back to the bathroom door. She picks up on my body language, as Fang appears beside her. ‘Everything all right?’
A simple yes isn’t good enough for her, so she lays the squint scan on me. ‘Did you see something in there?’
I’m still processing the answer to that. The last person I want to discuss it with is a loon with a spray can full of herbs.
‘Is it in there?’ barks Fang. Before I can answer, she tells Chastain, ‘It’s in there,’ and they bustle me aside to gain entry.
‘In or out, Jack?’ says Chastain, pausing in the open doorway. ‘Decide!’
And I’m back in the bathroom. Fang spray-seals the door (how does that work, anyway, seeing as spooks can move through walls?) before she and Chastain study the room, hunched, a pair of tag-team wrestlers waiting for the bell. The doofus in me can’t help glancing inquisitively in the mirror, where I see only the three of us.
‘So have you actually heard words from this thing?’ I ask.
‘You get . . . a strong sense of . . . emotion, intent, need,’ says Chastain distractedly. ‘It’s like . . . someone speaking to you . . . through double-glazed windows.’
‘You actually hear it, with your ears?’
‘You hear it with your mind, Toto, provided you’re open to it.’ She signals to Fang and gestures solemnly towards the bath.
‘Got you,’ Chastain tells a patch of air over the tub. ‘Sorry, mate.’ Fang produces a bright-red glass bottle. With a bulbous test-tube-style cork for a stopper, it looks like it was plucked straight from Shezza’s shelves at home. I learn afterwards that the bottle contains two small chips of Scottish obsidian, some salt and various herbs and spices. Chastain’s staunch secrecy regarding the exact nature of these latter items would do Colonel Sanders proud.
Fang hands the bottle to Chastain, who uncorks it and presents it to the bathtub. ‘In you go,’ she commands, ‘till we work out what to do with you.’
We all stare over the tub.
A groan from the boat. A gentle lurch.
‘Come on,’ says Chastain. ‘Don’t make me break out the imprisonment ritual. You could have killed a child.’ She thrusts the bottle again. ‘In.’
‘Is it saying anything back?’ I whisper. ‘Are you sensing its emotion, intent and stuff?’
She glances my way and darkens. ‘Give it a rest, Jack. Won’t work down here anyway.’
I try to refresh social media one more time, then shove the phone back in my pocket. Chastain begins the ritual, intoning dark and portentous words in Latin. After just a few verses, she nods triumphantly, again seeming to track some invisible entity on the move. I hear a couple of footsteps, then realise it must have been Fang. I catch myself picturing that amorphous cloud being vacuumed inside the bottle. Connections, connections, oh so seductive.
Chastain squashes the cork back into the glass neck. ‘Job done,’ she says quietly. She and Fang don’t exchange high-fives. I very much doubt Fang’s much of a high-fiver. Instead, an ominous gloom descends.
‘So, this is a good result, isn’t it?’ I offer, brightly.
Chastain speaks as though addressing a funeral crowd. ‘There’s always mixed feelings, Jack, when an entity has to be captured like this. We can talk more up top.’ She nods at Fang, then gazes up through the ceiling. ‘Let’s give ’em the good news.’
Sherilyn Chastain slams her red spirit bottle on the table in front of me, with a face full of thunder. ‘All right, you arrogant prick, I’ve had enough. Let’s see how certain you really are.’
It’s fair to say our wrap-up interview hasn’t gone well.
So, a brief rewind. After the Lengs have been assured their ghost is finally leaving in a bottle with the old witch, they call off the lawyers and head off to live happily ever after on the marina. Shezza and I agree to conduct a final interview to discuss all that’s happened. Fang peels away into the bustling marina crowds without so much as a goodbye, although I didn’t offer one either.
We select a beach bar for the interview: the delightful Ooh La La. This time, she insists on placing her own digital recorder alongside mine. Such paranoia is fine by me: I’ve nothing to hide. Our first drinks go down quickly – too quickly. We’re steeling ourselves for an ideological antler clash.
I tell Chastain about my SPOOKS List. I tell her she has done nothing to persuade me to add a third hypothesis. Her interactions with ghosts are all too convenient. Only she can hear the dead, sense where they are . . . Either the Lengs are lying and she’s naïve, or she’s a glorified confidence trickster, lying to the Lengs. Or both sides are lying to each other in an unspoken, mutually beneficial orgy of mistruth. For what it’s worth, at least I haven’t had that Truman Show feeling of watching a co-ordinated theatrical performance.
Chastain stops listening on ‘confidence trickster’. Little muscles pulse on either side of her jaw.
‘Your mind’s been shut all along,’ she spits, tapping one side of her head hard for emphasis. ‘You’re such an egotist and you don’t even know it.’
‘I get that a lot,’ I tell her. ‘Usually from Brits, who tend to hate confidence. I would’ve thought better of an Aussie. Especially a French one.’
‘Oh, you think you’re just confident?’ she fires back. ‘Nah. Nah, mate. I’ve read your so-called journalism. Do you have any idea how many times you use “me”, “myself” and “I”? Not just in your writing either.’
I try and steer her back to the subject of her work as opposed to mine, to no avail.
‘Heard of Aleister Crowley?’ she demands. As I nod vaguely, she barges on: ‘Now there was a guy who knew the power of ego. He ran an experiment where he and others cut themselves with straight razors every time they said “I”.’
She beckons a waiter, orders a drink for herself only, then screws her gaze bac
k into me. ‘Why don’t you give Crowley’s idea a go, Jack?’
‘What’s so wrong with “I”? What’s wrong with having a personality and being opinionated? And by the way: wasn’t Crowley all about ego and indulgence? He was the Great Beast, right? Why would he even do an experiment like that?’
‘Crowley,’ she says, ‘was intelligent enough to try and hack his own monstrous ego. He was all about balance. The most sensible people,’ she adds pointedly, ‘are all about balance.’
Growing bored, I ask her, ‘Have you ever actually seen a ghost?’
‘Have you, Jack?’
I consider pointing out that I asked first. Instead, being an adult, I say, ‘Look, I did think I glimpsed something in that bathroom mirror on the boat, but I’m very tired.’
She glows with vindication. ‘Anything like a ball of smoke, was it?’
‘Your turn to answer the question.’
Behind Chastain, the sun is setting on both Lantau Island and our tattered relationship. ‘It’s all about the seeing with you, Jack. The scientist demands evidence, or it can’t possibly exist. And even if evidence does pop up? Hey, let’s bury it. Doesn’t fit what we wanted.’
‘That’ll be a no, then. You’ve never seen an actual ghost.’
‘Oh, get a dog up ya.’
The word ‘dog’ comes out as ‘dawg’. Charming. ‘I’ve been thinking about something you said yesterday,’ I tell her. ‘All that Robert Anton Watkins stuff . . .’
Her nostrils flare. ‘Wilson. Robert Anton Wilson.’
‘So you’re into this flim-flam about concepts being temporary models, and yet you present yourself as a combat magician. The Lengs, and anyone else with more money than sense, pay you to be that person. And yet you don’t even fully believe in ghosts yourself.’