The Last Days of Jack Sparks

by Jason Arnopp

  CHASTAIN: Why does he think you made your dad leave?

  JACK: I, I, I, I don’t like this. Get the ropes off.

  CHASTAIN: If you don’t answer my questions, you can die on that chair, for all I care. (Pause.)

  JACK: Him and Mum always thought Dad left home because of me, me, me, me. They didn’t say I, I, I, I was to blame all that often, but it was obvious from the way they treated me, me, me, me. And I, I, I, I . . . started thinking they were right. Dad left because I, I, I, I was this horrible, ugly, screaming little nightmare kid.

  CHASTAIN: I can see how he’d regret not aborting you. (Pause.) Now close your eyes and put yourself right back in that darkness. What happens after you realise you’ll be in there a while?

  JACK: I, I, I freeze. Just so scared. Chills all over me, me, me. The worst part is when I, I, I feel something else in the room.

  LAWSON: Feel something?

  JACK: I, I, I hear it, moving about. Smell it too, maybe. There’s all these pictures in my head: about a million different versions of how this thing might look. I, I, I stop calling to Alistair, because it won’t do any good, but I, I, I also can’t speak. There are coats hanging up and I, I, I feel around for my mum’s.

  LAWSON: Why?

  JACK: She smokes and she always has lighters everywhere. So I, I, I feel in the pockets and find a Zippo. I, I, I remember how she worked it, so I, I, I copy her and flip the wheel. I, I, I want to see this thing and face it. Make it more . . . knowable.

  CHASTAIN: Makes sense.

  JACK: But when the lighter comes on, turns out I’ve set a coat sleeve on fire.

  CHASTAIN: Do you get to see the thing in the dark?

  JACK: No, it was never there. It was just something I, I, I imagined in the dark and in the corner of my eye.

  CHASTAIN: You quite sure about that, Toto?

  LAWSON: Toto?

  JACK: So then I, I, I panic, because the coat burns fast. The smoke makes me, me, me cough. Can’t breathe, nowhere to go.

  CHASTAIN: So what happens? Because sadly, you didn’t die that day.

  JACK: Alistair sees smoke coming out from under the door. He pulls me, me, me out of there, yelling for Mum. She comes in from the garden all groggy and Alistair tells her I, I, I barricaded myself in the cloakroom and set it on fire.3 She swears her head off, fills a bucket in the kitchen and chucks it in the cloakroom. Me, me, me and her precious Alistair get checked out for smoke inhalation in A and E, then she brings us home and slaps me, me, me hard around the face.4 I’m grounded for two weeks after that.

  (Pause.)

  LAWSON: Best way to treat a needledick like you. CHASTAIN: How do you think this affected your thoughts on the supernatural?

  JACK: I, I, I . . . don’t care.

  LAWSON: Is this Real Jack or Evil Jack?

  CHASTAIN: Hard to tell. Mimi keeps clawing him back. (Pause.) How did you feel about the unknown, growing up?

  JACK: That everything could be explained away. Literally explained away: kind of . . . banished. You just had to shine a light on it. Science helped me, me, me deny so much fear. Mum was this big hardline Catholic, so I, I, I reacted against that too. I’d get back at her by talking about the big bang and stuff. And if science didn’t help, I, I, I had the Zippo. Still take it everywhere.

  (Pause.)

  CHASTAIN: Did you by any chance misplace that Zippo when you—

  JACK: Came to your place, yeah.

  CHASTAIN: You cried in the bathroom like a stupid little baby, didn’t you, until you found it in your pocket. (Pause.) For the benefit of the recording, Jack is nodding.

  JACK: It panicked me, me, me. Can I, I, I get out now? I, I, I feel better.

  CHASTAIN: No, Mimi still has a good grip. But nice try.

  JACK: I’ll rip your guts out, you know that?

  CHASTAIN: Proves my point.

  (Pause.)

  LAWSON: Why don’t you tell us the real reason you’ve been writing this stupid book?

  CHASTAIN: Oh, I worked that one out. He’s been looking for the supernatural – it’s the only explanation that makes sense. But what I don’t know is why.

  JACK: I, I, I don’t want to talk any more. And I, I, I don’t want to hurt you now, so you should let me, me, me go.

  LAWSON: Very convincing, Sir Ian McKellen.

  CHASTAIN: How do you get on with your brother now, and your mum?

  (Long pause.)

  JACK: Won’t talk any more.

  LAWSON: Do you have any idea how much I’d enjoy pulling your bandages off and rubbing this stuff in?

  JACK: Don’t you dare.

  CHASTAIN: What’s that – Tabasco?

  LAWSON: Oh, I dare. You were going to slit my throat, Jack. I wet my pants. I almost died in soaking wet pants.

  CHASTAIN: One last try before he gets the sauce. Jack, how do you get on with your brother now, and with your mum? (Pause.)

  JACK: I, I, I don’t. Well, I, I, I don’t get on with Alistair because the two of us clashed even more as we got older. He hates me, me, me now. And my mum always loved him a thousand times more than she loved me, me, me. Was it my fault I, I, I looked like my dad?

  (Pause.)

  CHASTAIN: You’re using the past tense – did your mum die? (Pause.) Jack is nodding. How long ago?

  JACK: I, I, I don’t even know exactly when. That’s how fucked I, I, I was.

  CHASTAIN: Explain? (Fifteen-second pause.) Jack, explain.

  JACK: I, I, I think I’ve lost too much blood. Feel faint.

  CHASTAIN: No you don’t.

  LAWSON: Did she die last summer? Is that why you started the drugs?

  (Pause.)

  CHASTAIN: Jack is shaking his head.

  LAWSON: Right. Which bandage comes off first? Eeny meeny—

  JACK: Two Junes back . . . Mum asked me, me, me and Alistair to visit her, together. I, I, I was this big-shot writer and I’d won an award. Thought I, I, I was brilliant, but . . . Going back to Suffolk was this big inconvenience. I, I, I hadn’t seen Mum in a couple of years and Alistair in even longer. So I, I, I turned up at this house where Alistair and I, I, I grew up – the house with that bloody room. Alistair and I, I, I kept it all very civil for Mum’s sake, but there was this weird moment between us when she was off in the kitchen.

  CHASTAIN: And what was that?

  JACK: Oh, he found some excuse to lead the way through the cloakroom. He made a point of holding the door open for me, me, me to follow. He peered over his specs at me, me, me, with this kind of butter-wouldn’t-melt, questioning look. Like: ‘Can you handle this now?’ I, I, I really wanted to be all nonchalant, but I, I, I couldn’t face going back in there, so walked the long way around instead. And when I, I, I saw him on the other side, he was wearing this cruel little smile.5

  LAWSON: He got the better of you again, even as an adult. Because you’re weak.

  JACK: Me, me, me, Alistair and Mum went into the back garden and sat down at the table. I, I, I remember the slats on the tabletop. Even, like, the grain in the wood. Birds were calling to each other and you could smell all this freshly cut grass. But then there were dark clouds and that kind of . . . heavy feeling in the air before a storm. Mum lit up a cigarette and she told us . . . (Pause.) She told us she had motor neurone disease and wasn’t going to live all that much longer. (Pause.) Maybe Alistair already knew, or suspected. Him and his wife and kids still lived locally. From the moment she opened the front door that day, something was wrong. Her speech was off and it looked like she had to make an effort to swallow. She’d asked Alistair to make cups of tea for us, which was unheard of. She always did that. When I, I, I bothered to visit, anyway.

  CHASTAIN: How did you feel when she broke the news?

  JACK: All I, I, I remember is . . . I, I, I remember all these splashes in my tea, from raindrops. Then . . . er . . . er . . . I, I, I . . .

  LAWSON: What did you do, Jack?

  CHASTAIN: Quick! Mimi weakens with every word of confession, so spit it out.
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  JACK: I, I . . . got up and walked out. Ran out, actually. Then I, I got in my car and drove back to London.

  LAWSON: You did what?

  JACK: Alistair shouted at the back of the car, telling me, me to come back, shouting ‘Coward!’ There was this flash flood pissing down, but I, I could still hear him for what seemed like miles. I, I told myself I’d left so Mum didn’t see me upset.

  CHASTAIN: But you were just a coward, weren’t you? Jack’s nodding.

  JACK: I, I ran when she needed me. Just like Dad did. I, I was terrified. The thing about believing in science, about being an atheist . . .

  CHASTAIN: It means death isn’t a door. It’s a brick wall.

  JACK: Yeah, yeah. And . . . oh God . . . I, I didn’t want my life to change. I, I wanted to keep my lifestyle and my precious fucking career. I, I didn’t want to be looking after . . . (Voice falters) and all that stuff . . . So I, I drove back to London so fast. And on the way I, I decided my next book would be Jack Sparks on Drugs.

  LAWSON: Oh. Right.

  JACK: Yeah.

  CHASTAIN: Your mum’s dying, so you fuck off into oblivion.

  JACK: Not consciously. I, I just threw myself into the book, calling it research.

  LAWSON: And what dedicated research it was.

  JACK: I, I ignored Alistair’s voicemails and emails. I, I even ignored a call from Mum. Sherilyn? I, I feel weird. Has Mimi gone now?

  CHASTAIN: Did you see your mother again before the end?

  JACK: By June this year, I, I was at my worst, totally fucked up.

  LAWSON: You were unbearable.

  CHASTAIN: Did you see your mother before she—

  JACK: I, I remember you bringing me the post one day, when I, I was in bed.

  LAWSON: Yeah?

  JACK: The windows were wide open, but reading this letter, the room still felt too hot. Alistair knew voicemail and email hadn’t worked, so he sent me, me this piece of paper with his big, angry handwriting. It said something like ‘Mum died last week. Funeral next Monday. Call me if you even care.’

  CHASTAIN: Did you go? (Pause.) Jack’s shaking his head.

  LAWSON: You didn’t go to your own mother’s funeral.

  JACK: I, I went into shock, like I’d re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The guilt and shame got so bad, drugs couldn’t paint over them. I, I didn’t care so much about Alistair, but Mum . . . I mean, she hadn’t been perfect by a long shot. Most of the time she made me, me feel so shit that I, I had to invent reasons why I, I was okay. You know when you’re a young kid and you just say the opposite of whatever anyone says to you? Well, that’s how the confidence, or the arrogance, whatever . . . that’s how it started. Mum or Alistair would tell me, me, that I, I was stupid and I’d just say I, I wasn’t, as an automatic reaction. Whatever they said I, I was, I, I told them they were wrong. And as I, I got older, I, I started to believe it. That confidence became my kind of default position: I, I was right and everyone else was wrong.

  I’m making Mum sound bad, but that’s not the whole story. She was my mum, you know? She worked two or three jobs, the whole time me, me and Alistair were growing up. She worked herself into the . . . ground. And at the end of her life, when I, I owed something back, I, I deserted her. To think of her . . . this strong woman stuck in bed, getting more ill every day, more scared, more paralysed . . .

  CHASTAIN: And wondering if her younger son would ever come back to say goodbye . . . (Jack sobs for twenty-eight seconds.) So . . . after your mum died: was this when you went to rehab?

  JACK: Pure masochism. I, I wanted to confront myself, what I’d done, while I, I was sober. To punish myself. And once I’d cleared my head in there, it was just unbearable. I, I became obsessed with saying sorry.

  LAWSON: You said it in your sleep.

  CHASTAIN: Saying sorry to your mum?

  JACK: Must’ve been.

  LAWSON: But for whose sake would that apology be? Your mum’s or your own?

  CHASTAIN: Selfish by definition, wasn’t it? Because as far as you were concerned, you wanted to apologise to a dead woman, in a world you believed offered no afterlife. A world with no ghosts.

  JACK: Well . . . I, I started to wonder . . . you know, if there might be something out there. Just . . . something after death. I, I remembered the thing in the cloakroom, for the first time in ages, and I, I drew hope from that. But—

  LAWSON: I thought you said there was no thing in the cloakroom?

  JACK: But I, I was scared of wishful thinking, too. It’s like . . . the fear of hope. Misplaced hope. That’s the worst thing: misplaced hope. I, I was so scared to leave the grid, you know, to leave science behind, because it meant—

  CHASTAIN: Facing the darkness again. Got it. So that’s why you wanted to write this book?

  JACK: I, I could keep my public face. I, I could set out on this journey with this book, keep myself going with money . . . and . . . er . . . oh God . . . I could search for life after death.

  LAWSON: Bloody hell! You hypocrite.

  CHASTAIN: Imagine Dawkins writing The God Delusion while hoping to convince himself there’s a creator.

  LAWSON: So what were you going to write if you found evidence for the supernatural?

  JACK: Well . . . I, I . . . (Pause.) I was going to keep it to myself. I had to keep that public face. My persona. My . . . my brand. (Lawson makes vomit noise.) In the book, I’d explain any kind of phenomena away as bullshit. But I really wanted to find a sign. Some sign that one day I’d either see Mum in the afterlife, or be able to contact her.

  CHASTAIN: Jesus, you’re unreal, you know that? All those believers you’ve mocked, calling them dumb, demeaning them. And yet you’ve been sliming around, trying to find what they already had.

  JACK: Yes.

  CHASTAIN: You cowardly, weak, selfish sack of shit.

  JACK: Yes. Yes I am. (Pause.) I can speak properly again. Has it worked, has Mimi gone?

  CHASTAIN: She seems to have fucked off, yeah. We’ve been stripping you of psychic armour, Jack. Getting to the core of you and purging all that ego, so Mimi had nothing left to cling to. A full transcript of this recording absolutely has to go in your book. Got that?

  JACK: Is this revenge then, Sherilyn? Not that I’d blame you.

  CHASTAIN: If I wanted revenge, Jack, I’d still be in Auckland getting first-class head. (Recording ends.)

  1 No trace of these photographs, or this account, has ever been found online. They may have been intercepted and deleted by the provider, but no records exist of this – Alistair.

  2 This is absolutely and categorically untrue. My foreword provided the correct account – Alistair.

  3 Untrue – Alistair.

  4 Again, untrue. Our mother never, ever struck either of us – Alistair.

  5 I did not. All untrue – Alistair.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Bloodless flesh valleys loop around my wrists and forearms. These marks inflicted by the girls’ makeshift ropes are small fry compared to the Crowley cuts. And the sum total of all this pain, in turn, is nothing compared with what’s about to happen.

  Sherilyn had arrived with bandages and Band-Aids. These cover half my body. In their hurry to incapacitate me, the women left me nude. Understandable.

  As I wince my way back into my T-shirt and other scattered clothes, I’m flooded with something alien. I think it’s called gratitude. So much gratitude to these two angels who led me out of the dark cave.

  Yet when I hug Sherilyn, she becomes rigor mortis personified and soon withdraws. Bex can hardly look at me, let alone brook physical contact. I try so clumsily to embrace her, the apologies spilling out of me, but she backs off, raising both palms. Those hands shake, but her voice holds firm. ‘Jack, I didn’t want anything more to do with you before you tried to kill me.’

  She does, at least, understand that I wasn’t myself, or the regular me, because she says she won’t press charges.

  Oh my God.

  Howitz.
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br />   The memory of killing him is so hazily dreamlike that I’ve almost convinced myself it never happened. Then I open the closet door, just a crack, and his cloying reek slithers into me. I see him slumped in there. Bug-eyed with fallen coat hangers on his lap, his throat an obscene red-toothed grin.

  The sight whips the breath out of me. I click the door shut and lean back against it clutching my chest, my heart thumping the palm of my hand. I look around the blurry room to check no one saw, which feels like such a Mimi thing to do.

  I should tell Bex and Sherilyn what happened with Howitz. I just can’t bear the thought of their faces changing when they realise they’ve helped a hands-on killer, even if he was possessed at the time.

  Turns out Bex missed her flight home today – yesterday now, since it’s long gone midnight – because of that passport. She’s even more pissed off when I tell her I never really had it.

  My heart skips a beat when she mounts a search of her own.

  I watch as she opens doors and hauls out drawers.

  Drawing nearer to Howitz’s resting place each time.

  Cold-sweat shivers spur me into action. Self-preservation wins once again. Have I learned nothing?

  Yanking open the nearest wardrobe, I’m relieved to spot Bex’s passport on the floor. When I hand it over, she stuffs it into her suitcase without a word. Announcing she’s heading straight to LAX after a shower, she disappears into the bathroom and jams the latch shut.

  Which leaves Sherilyn Chastain and me. Her hair now a dark green mess, Sherilyn splays herself across the sofa. ‘Tired as a cunt,’ as she puts it. I know how she feels. I bury the strong urge to ask her about Maria Corvi and that book from the future which details my death. She’s clearly still recovering from the last favour she did me. I’m supposed to be the new, selfless Jack.

  ‘How much do I owe you, Sherilyn? Do you take PayPal or—’

  She sweeps a limp hand across the lap of her jeans, waving me off. ‘If you wanna know the truth, I did this for me as much as you.’

  Off my quizzical look, she says, ‘Three months ago, I messed up a job in London. Really fucked it. Not good. Then the Lengs’ little girl got hurt in Hong Kong because I made a mistake.’