The Last Days of Jack Sparks

by Jason Arnopp

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I find Bex upside down against the wall of our room with her legs spread wide.

  Her face is caked in sweat. Her biceps and triceps quiver under the pressure of supporting her lower body. This is nothing new – I’m used to wandering into rooms back home and finding her contorted into some improbable position, keeping herself lithe and limber. In fact, this feels worryingly familiar. We’re already tipping right back into platonic domesticity.

  I greet her, then nip into the bathroom. When there’s a chance someone might hear, the trick is to flush the toilet then quickly snort the powder up into your sinuses before the water settles. The kind of sneaky little ritual that makes coke-heads think themselves extra clever.

  With ever-impressive mastery of her body, Bex peels out of the handstand and rights herself. Maria Corvi crawls back into my thoughts, that macabre puppet rising from the church floor, but I swat the vision aside for the tenth time today. I’m way too good at burying things. Guilt and shame a speciality.

  Pupils dilating, dopamine levels soaring, I plonk myself on the bed amid the wrappers of luxury snack items that once sat in a basket on the minibar.

  ‘Sorry,’ Bex says. ‘The hangover made me eat a load of shit today. Nothing to do with me. It was the hangover. It also made me watch a load of shit TV.’

  ‘Haven’t you gone out at all?’

  ‘Made it to a magazine stand after lunch. Apart from that, thought I’d wait for you.’

  Hope surges through me again, as much as I try to anchor it. There’s nothing worse than misplaced hope.

  ‘Well, listen,’ I tell her. ‘We’re going to start the night in a seriously glam location.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Big on the atmosphere. It’s hot.’

  ‘Way cool,’ says Astral. Sweat drips from him as he points at the bare hanging light bulb. ‘The Evil Dead, man.’

  The Paranormals nose their way around in the gloom, doing a stand-up job of pretending they’ve never been to this basement before.

  ‘You see so much more than in the video,’ marvels Howie, limping over to touch pipes, dials, everything, as if visiting the BBC’s TARDIS set. ‘I hadn’t even noticed that damn elevator door.’

  Only Bex’s reaction seems genuine. Rather than being disappointed to find we were coming down here, she’s full of wonder, taking it all in. She stays close to me, though, wary, having believed the video to be real from the moment she saw it.

  The smell of Lucky Strikes wafts down from upstairs, out by the bins. Rather than seeking Howitz’s permission, I just lied to Johnson in a conversation like this:

  ‘We need to hold a séance down there tonight with some ghost experts. Mr Howitz asked me to square it with you.’

  ‘Oh, he did?’

  ‘Yep, he wants to make you official co-ordinator.’

  I don’t care about Johnson’s job security.

  After unlocking the service door, Johnson led us down crumbling stone steps. Johann and I helped him carry a beaten-up dining table from a storeroom to the boiler area. The others separated a ceiling-high stack of plastic conference chairs. Johnson hovered, angling for an invitation to stay, until I suggested he get some air. I said he’d be the first to hear if we got results. ‘Just don’t touch no dials,’ he called over his shoulder, ambling back up to the subdued evening light.

  And now I just stand here, watching the Hollywood Paranormals do their shtick. I’m reminded of their YouTube efforts, in which they descend on supposedly haunted venues across America. Parapsychological superheroes assembling.

  ‘I definitely feel a presence here,’ claims Astral, leaning on the rickety table with both hands. ‘Felt it from the get-go, soon as we came down those steps.’ His colleagues concur.

  ‘Hella cold down here, for a boiler room,’ says Johann.

  More agreement, followed by Ellie noting that there are no windows. Bex is weirdly quiet: I sense their observations are spooking her, clamming her up. I give her a wink, and her brave smile touches me.

  Lisa-Jane screws the Mimi Experiment camcorder to its tripod, although I expressly forbid the group from uploading footage without my say-so. Pascal and Elisandro rig up all the other toys.

  Ellie beams as she produces a battered and sun-faded Ouija board. ‘And of course we got this. Been passed from generation to generation in my family.’

  For a while there, I tell them, I thought I was going to write a book about the supernatural that didn’t feature a Ouija board. I come across as typically aloof, but the war in my head feels familiar. This is the same conflict I felt when Bex suggested we visit an American medium back in Brighton. I know the Paranormals are about to put on some kind of show here – the culmination of their master plan. My head knows it will all be laughably fake. But my pounding heart is somewhere else altogether as I join the others around the table, being sure to sit next to Bex.

  I don’t know what I’m more afraid of: the séance unveiling a real ghost, or being suckered into these people’s lies.

  Blame my secret mission.

  Astral squats on a stool at one end, casting himself as banquet host, positioned so that he reaps the lion’s share of camera time. I even overhear him instructing Pascal to adjust the camcorder to frame him better. As usual, it misses me altogether, which is perfectly deliberate on their part.

  ‘We need to open our minds,’ Astral announces, his eyes swivelling my way, ‘so that we might connect with the presence here. Are we ready?’

  I nod, playing along with the game they created. Waiting for them to trip up.

  All our forefingers converge on the planchette, the wooden pointing device with its round transparent window. All the better for seeing which letters the spirit selects. We’ve formed a tight circle of fists around the window. I’m right-handed and Bex is a leftie, so our thumbs touch. I curl mine around hers and squeeze, telling myself it’s for her benefit.

  All around us, small lights blink. On the nearby monitor screen, a flat line solemnly awaits irregular activity.

  Astral closes his eyelids with a theatrical flutter. ‘We seek an audience with the spirit here. We have seen you in a video and are very interested and intrigued. And so is the internet.’

  Is he going to tell the ghost how many hits and unique visitors it’s attracted? Hey Casper, your Google ranking’s awesome, dude.

  Everyone remains very still. The only sound comes from the analysis machines and that enduring generator hum. The only movement I’m aware of is the tiny tug of Bex’s thumb on mine. I wonder if she’s excited or regretting this. And I wonder about my own place on that spectrum.

  ‘Are you here with us?’ Astral asks of the dark. ‘Please answer via the board. Are you here?’

  At least a thousand coke-fuelled heartbeats later, the planchette begins to move.

  While I feel I’m exerting no pressure myself, I’ve read up on the scientific explanation for a moving planchette: the ideo-motor effect. Involuntary, unconscious motor behaviour initiated by the mind, whether you realise it’s happening or not.

  In this case, of course, the planchette is simply being moved by seven other people – I’m excluding Bex – who have planned the outcome of this little charade.

  It edges away from its starting point at the top of the board and slides down into the alphabet.

  I follow Pascal’s gaze over to his gadgets. The flat line has begun to spike. ‘Electromagnetic energy up ten,’ he reports. ‘And a temp drop of ten.’

  ‘I feel that,’ says Ellie. And it does feel colder. I peer at the Paranormals’ machines, wondering if one of them covertly pumps out cold air.

  The planchette stops moving when its window displays the letter ‘I’.

  Everyone says the letter out loud, softly. Then we wait for the next.

  The planchette moves again. But instead of shifting to another letter, it remains on the same one.

  It sticks on the letter ‘I’.

  Circling it
slowly, ever so slowly.

  Astral clears his throat. ‘Is this the first letter of your name?’

  At this point, I think I get it. The planchette is about to head over to the word ‘YES’, which is helpfully provided on this board along with ‘NO’ and ‘GOODBYE’. I undercut the tension by murmuring how handy it would be to have an ‘OMG’ and a ‘LOL’. Only Bex and Pascal laugh.

  The planchette keeps moving, but doesn’t deviate.

  It keeps on circling the ‘I’.

  For the longest time, Astral tries to coax more from the boiler room spirit.

  He asks for the spirit’s age when it passed over. Where it was born.

  Is it happy to communicate? Are we doing anything wrong?

  There’s no response.

  I . . .

  I . . .

  I . . .

  When we finally call it a night, some of the disappointment flooding the basement is secretly my own. Where was the performance, the theatre? The climax of the Hollywood Paranormals’ cunning plan?

  ‘So have you ever received just one letter before?’ I ask Astral, in a rare instance of me talking to him directly.

  ‘It’s usually all or nothing,’ says Elisandro, speaking for him. ‘You either get no response or, like, reams of info.’

  ‘Just one letter,’ puzzles Howie. ‘Why that letter? Why “I”?’

  Johann shrugs. ‘Maybe it really is the spirit’s first initial. Maybe it got stage fright.’

  Astral heaves his bulk off the stool. ‘We could try again in a few nights.’

  Ah, so tonight marks the start of a long game. It might have seemed too instant, too convenient, if our alleged ghost started yapping right off the bat. Victorian mediums periodically claimed the dead weren’t co-operating in order to lend their own amazing powers more credibility when the spirits did play ball.

  We loiter in small groups, speaking in hushed tones. The world’s most lo-fi cocktail party. Lisa-Jane and Johann feed me all kinds of crap about their previous Ouija escapades. I barely hear any of it, because I’m looking around the area. Noticing how even the extra lights we’ve set up can’t penetrate the dark in some of the corners.

  Then I focus on Astral and Bex talking, off by themselves, near the lift door. They’re too far away for me to hear them, but Astral’s leaning against a dirty wall, striking a pose, as if chatting her up.

  Ha, I think to myself. Good luck with that, fat boy.

  Nightfall. The Sunset Strip is all car headlights, bright neon tubing and lofty spotlit hoardings. Bex and I are waiting for an electronic cross sign to let us over Sunset so we can reach Carney’s – a fast-food place installed in a single yellow train carriage just off the road.

  I should’ve waited until I’d eaten before doing more coke, but the urge overcame me, post-séance. Needed to steady myself and top up my certainty, or my denial, whatever you want to call it. And now I’m not hungry at all.

  Bex claims she wasn’t creeped during the séance. ‘The basement’s scary, but these Paraglider people or whatever they’re called, they just want to be in your book. They all have that look in their eyes, like they’re auditioning for Big Brother.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘So I’m not going mad.’ As we reach the other side of Sunset, I add, ‘If you weren’t scared, then why were you so quiet?’

  She doesn’t answer, and I notice her funny little smile.

  ‘It was weird,’ she says when I ask again. We’re heading up three steel steps into Carney’s. ‘I went all shy! I don’t usually get like that.’

  I don’t know what she means. ‘Why shy?’

  Long pause. ‘What’s that guy’s name? Is it Astral?’

  Red-hot nails poke my guts. ‘Yeah . . . so what?’

  And Bex laughs. ‘You want me to spell it out?’

  We’re standing in front of the service window inside the train carriage, where a guy in a Carney’s T-shirt and cap greets us. ‘Welcome to Carney’s. Can I take your order?’

  I ignore him. ‘Yeah,’ I tell Bex. ‘Please do spell it out.’

  ‘I think he’s kinda hot, okay? A hot hippy.’

  Those red-hot nails rupture soft tissue inside me, freeing a wave of resentment.

  ‘You are kidding, right?’

  ‘He’s got nice eyes.’

  ‘You guys gonna order?’ says one of the two muscle-vest guys waiting behind us.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’ll have ten cheeseburgers and ten fries.’

  Bex boggles at this. ‘Did you just say ten?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I say, the drug smothering any sense of how loud I am. ‘If that’s what it fucking takes, I’d better bulk up.’

  An atom bomb detonates in my head. It’s so stupid and shameful, but I walk the length of the train carriage, then head back down on to the street, leaving Bex behind.

  I stalk back to the crossing, swearing aloud, with steam blasting from my ears. Thinking how it all makes sense in a sickening way: if you stuck a pump up Zakk Wylde’s rectum and inflated him, he’d look like Astral.

  Tyres screech to a halt as I march across. Horns blast.

  When I reach the other side, that mad old woman from last night – twenty-four hours ago, when anything seemed possible – is passing by. She eyes me as if for the first time. ‘If I were you . . .’ she begins, only to cut herself short. Probably because I look equally deranged. No point preaching to the converted.

  ‘Jack!’ comes the cry from back across Sunset. ‘Jack?’

  I didn’t walk away to make Bex follow me. I did it because walking away is what I do. There was a time in my life when I managed to stop doing this – while tracking down and interviewing gang members for a book, for instance, and having guns and knives pulled on me – but it was only really for my benefit. Big social issues to make me look bigger and more important. I’ve never cared about gangs. Or, for that matter, about magicians being set on fire in the Dominican Republic, people blaming homosexuality on demons, anorexic Filipino girls being killed by botched exorcisms or any of that stuff I mentioned.

  I’ve never cared about anyone who isn’t Jack Sparks.

  There’s a smoking pit where my empathy should be.

  Last summer, my life took a turn. Ever since, I’ve been at odds with myself, because the system I built no longer offers what I need. I knew the only way I could kick drugs would be to write Jack Sparks on the Supernatural.

  You don’t understand and I can’t expect you to. I haven’t explained myself properly, not yet.

  By the time Bex catches up, I’ve locked myself in our hotel room’s bathroom.

  She sounds equal parts pissed off and confused. ‘Since when do you go off on me like that? You back on the powder, or what?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I say, pulling the two-gram wrap from its zipped partition in my wallet. ‘And I’m going to do a shitload more.’

  ‘God, so all that rehab was for nothing? I only said I quite liked that guy – what’s it got to do with you anyway?’

  I use my Amex to separate a bump of coke from the rest, then chop it up beside the sink.

  I slice lines as Bex questions me through the door. Her voice fades, even as it rises in pitch. I just focus on the powder. It’s really good to focus. These days, my thoughts are so conflicted that I’m coming apart. I want to fire my brain into orbit and leave everything else at ground level.

  Two snowbound airport runways await my attention on the porcelain. I tug a dollar bill from the wallet and roll it up.

  Bex’s yell manages to register. ‘Jack! What exactly is your problem?’

  I growl and sling the dollar tube in the sink. Leaving the coke behind, I unlatch the door and fling it open in one motion. Bex takes a few steps back, tense, ready for anything. When I see her fear, it neutralises the verbal burns I wanted to inflict. I hold the door frame and fumble for words, for the right accusation.

  ‘You don’t even remember what happened last night, do you?’ I say. Off her reaction, whi
ch looks disturbed and uncertain, I add, ‘Or are you just so bloody ashamed?’

  At first Bex seems to rack her brains for what I’m talking about. But that’s not it. She’s assessing the situation and girding herself.

  I must suddenly look as vulnerable as I feel, because she walks to me. I flinch as she places both hands on my hips. Such human contact feels strange. Nice strange. Great strange. Her hands stay in place as her eyes meet mine.

  ‘I thought you forgot,’ she says.

  And then we’re kissing. Deep, unleashed.

  Hands on buttons and zips.

  A blitzkrieg of the senses.

  I’m not going to describe anything else that happens tonight. As a member of the YouPorn generation, you can imagine it yourself. But most importantly, my work has already exploited this woman enough.

  Yes, let me get the truth about Bex down. I’m far beyond caring what Erubis Books thinks about me saying this.

  I’ve never been in love with Bex.

  Lust, yes, love, no.

  From the moment five years ago when we met and she moved in, my balls have done the thinking. But I knew it would make a better story if I loved her too. I also thought it would be better if she was a fitness instructor rather than . . . oh God . . . rather than whatever it is she actually does.

  I knew I was an egotistical prick. I also knew that people might tolerate me more if I showed a softer side, even if it didn’t exist. So I wrote my fake unrequited love for Bex into Jack Sparks on a Pogo Stick and people responded well. Almost too well. Most of the Amazon reviews ignored all the sweat and the painfully compacted vertebrae I’d suffered for that dumb road trip, and wrote instead about me and Bex. About how they wanted to see if we’d ever get it together. People lapped that stuff right up, even if they didn’t normally buy the kind of books I wrote. At book signings, guys asked if I’d shagged her. Girls asked if they could be her friend.

  So I kept the thread going through the books that followed. If I was dating someone else, I struck it from the record. Even if we had slept together, I wouldn’t have said so in my books. Because then the whole will-they-won’t-they appeal would die. We journalists eliminate whatever dilutes our chosen story, while keeping – or adding – what makes it pure. When Bex dated other guys, I became Yearning Jack in the pages of Jack Sparks on Gangs, then Heartbroken Jack in Jack Sparks on Drugs. Most readers believed Bex was the cause of my drug rampage, which was a great way for me to cover up the real reason.