by Jason Arnopp
Yes, according to the blood from a new gash across my forehead, not to mention several freshly reopened Crowley cuts, I’m hanging upside down.
Everything’s hyper-real. Leaves and branches in such high definition. Rainbow dewdrops. I suppose cheating death does this to the perception.
For who knows how long, I just bleed and try not to faint. Then I remember Maria Corvi’s voice emerging from Tony Bonelli’s mouth: ‘I’ll be back in a few hours, okay?’
A curious statement at the time, but one that now waves a red flag.
Maria is being taken to a hospital from which she will then escape. Poor Maddelena Corvi, poor Pio Accardo. And poor me, because Maria will return to finish the job.
I can’t stay here awaiting the coup de grâce.
I engage my gut muscles and curl up to wrap my arms around a bough. My left leg spits wrath. Cold sweat breaks out all over me and my vision swims. To avoid another blackout, I bite my lip until my own blood mingles with the reddish-black gloss Maria left behind.
This leg is screwed below the knee. The skin’s intact, but the foot points to two o’clock instead of twelve. Putting any kind of weight on it makes me retch.
Having to drop the last few feet down to the ground doesn’t help. I land on my good leg and lean heavily against the trunk behind me, Sherilyn’s backpack crunching into the bark. Knowing I can’t walk by myself, I seize a thick branch and bend it down. The thing protests and warps into a U before snapping off where it meets the trunk.
Leaning against this ad hoc crutch, I take experimental steps away from the tree. It’s slow and agonising, but I can move.
When I cautiously touch the burn on my neck, a sticky glob of melted black flesh comes away on my fingers. Pledging not to do that again, I thumb the blood from my eyes and look around. I’m at the foot of the cliff face, on the edge of the woods. Since Maria plans to return to the church, I must get away from it as quickly as possible. More than anything, I must reject the notion that fate has me in its jaws, no matter what I do. That way lies defeat.
Through the trees, I see snatches of horizon, interrupted by hills. As I mentally trace a route through to those hills, a familiar beep sounds in my pocket.
The phone’s front glass is cracked, but it still works. A pop-up notification tells me that ten per cent of the battery power remains.
Behind this lies a second notification: ‘Your video Untitled has successfully uploaded to YouTube!’
It takes me far too long to work out what that means. What video? My head feels so light. My injuries are the sworn enemies of logic, memory, common sense. The stuff I need in order to survive.
Of course. It’s the video. The video I filmed in the Sunset Castle’s boiler room, before being wrenched back to 1983, then forward to this Halloween. Since the data reception here is woeful, the forty-second clip must have taken an age to auto-upload, draining the battery as it went.
And now, Past Me will see the video at Rome airport and embark on his dishonest quest. He’ll set out to debunk the video, while secretly hoping to discover it’s real. Puzzling through all this inflames my brain and slays my concentration. On my third step into the woods, I stumble and wave one arm frantically to avoid a fall.
I’m forced to move and think at the same time, despite being unfit for either. Hungry for distraction, I count my torturous, shambling steps. Only after two hundred and fifty do I allow myself to look back.
The church and cliff have been reduced to patches of green and grey, visible between snarled boughs. All these bare trees afford me less shelter than they might, but the distance I’ve covered is at least something. An achievement. I try really hard to forget how I’m unlikely to evade a being that can manipulate time itself. Don’t think about that. Just move.
The Motörhead song ‘Killed by Death’ barges into my head. The one where Lemmy rasps, ‘I ain’t gonna be easy, easy/The only time I’m gonna be easy’s when I’m killed by death.’ It’s not poetry, that’s for sure, but it’s apt. I ain’t going down without a struggle. I’ll do whatever I can to complicate this hunt. My ego got me into this, but it may also help prolong my life. One aspect of ego is hard-wired: the urge to survive. Sometimes you just can’t help being selfish.
These are your pain receptors and you’ll do anything to stop them firing.
These are your lungs and you’ll do anything to keep them pumping.
Hating myself for failing to confront Past Me, I decide to put it right. I tap in my own phone number, then hit ‘Call’.
Phoning yourself is obviously a mad thing to do. But against every law of physics, perhaps with the exception of select quantum theories, there are now two identical phones in the world. Not to mention two Jack Sparkses.
The line connects, the other phone rings and I answer. Or, rather, Past Me answers.
For the time it takes a butterfly to flap its wings, no more than that, I hear the thrum of a running car engine. Then an ungodly electronic Aphex Twin shriek bursts from the earpiece, making me punch ‘End Call’. And oh God, I feel dumb. Really should’ve seen that coming, since I’ve already lived the other side of this.
Okay, so phoning Past Me causes some kind of endless freak-out loop. The universe can’t cope. Writing off the whole idea, I jam my branch into the dirt and hobble onwards.
The signal dies, so I switch off the handset to save battery. Of course, by the four hundredth step, I’ve realised what I should have done with the phone, but it’s too late. Retracing all one hundred and fifty laboured steps back through angry thorns to the area with signal would undo all my hard work. I can’t shake the feeling that Maria Corvi’s already on my tail, so I vow to wait until I reach higher ground before turning it back on.
Each step is a real undertaking. Each new stride rams the tree branch up into my armpit until the skin breaks. All this bleeding is about as good for energy as the descending sun is for morale.
The heavens are a dull, muted red. Every shadow in sight, stretched to breaking point.
I dread nightfall. Oh, how I dread it.
Every ten steps, a single raindrop explodes on my patchy scalp. Then every five steps. Then every one. When swollen clouds finally let rip, my clothes become dead weights. The once crisp and parched woodland floor now sucks at my good foot. I pause to crane my head back and enjoy the moisture on my tongue. I truly savour it trickling into the back of my throat. A small mercy, which seems so big.
I seek shelter at the foot of a wide, knotty trunk. Sitting down harder than I’d have preferred, I hiss as I stretch the bad leg out before me. Just need five minutes’ rest, then I’ll go back at it.
When I revive the phone, its signal fluctuates between nothing and a single bar. Having managed to keep the Big New Idea in my head, I fire up the YouTube app. From my list of uploaded videos, I select Untitled and delete it. This strikes me as an ingenious plan, ensuring Past Me never gets to see the video. And you probably think you’re really clever for knowing what’s wrong with that plan, don’t you? Yeah. Hobble a mile in my shoes with a microwaved bag of shit for a head, a club foot, a gashed forehead, a cauterised neck, half your hair missing, Crowley cuts, blood squelching under your one good heel and a pissed crotch. Then we’ll see how smart you are.
I realise my mistake shortly after deleting the video. Because, yes, Past Me is already at the airport and has already seen the damn thing. Me deleting it only gets his hound-dog nose sniffing harder.
Phone battery status: five per cent. The thought of becoming too weak to press on through this darkening maze, with no link to the outside world, fosters panic. Panic, in turn, summons adrenalin, which sharpens me up. I need to do something that isn’t already part of the programme. Something that doesn’t slot so neatly into the jigsaw already established.
I need to call someone for help. Someone who isn’t me.
A concept that, again, must sound so simple to you. To me, it’s a revelation. The last thing I think to use a phone for is a phone call. These days, you phone a
person and they assume someone’s died.
I’ve no idea how to call the local police, and it’ll take too long to find out. So I can try Alistair. Sure, we hate each other. The mama’s boy might hang up on me again, but he might also take me seriously this time and organise a rescue.
This is when a genuine, forty-two-carat revelation swells my throat to the width of a drinking straw.
Oh my God. Right now, Bex is still alive. She’s no longer dead in the depths of the Sunset Castle, clogging the drains. She’s still in Brighton, high on endorphins, thinking everything’s cool with Lawrence. And everything might stay that way if some manipulative shit doesn’t break them up.
I could call Bex and tell her to never, ever go to LA.
I could save her life.
I could save her from me. From Tony.
Phone battery: four per cent. The handset’s over two years old, so its power ebbs all too fast.
I have only one guaranteed call.
One stark choice to make.
I can call Alistair and save myself, or call Bex and save her.
Either or.
All around my tree, rain hammers the ground.
That hard-wired survival thing I mentioned earlier? Here’s where it really kicks in, whether I want it to or not. Somewhere in my brain the hypothalamus is going crazy. No doubt Mimi, the goddess of self-preservation, is curled around it, helping the natural process along.
I want to live. My God, I so want to live.
On my own messed-up timeline, Bex has already died. She’s gone and the world didn’t end. But if I go, the world may as well end from my point of view. I’ve seen evidence of an afterlife – my afterlife, even – but what kind of existence was that? That blackened boiler room thing seemed to be my future ghost trapped, gone insane. Hopefully that will be a temporary stage – a penance. But what if there’s no actual afterworld, with the accent on ‘world’, beyond that? What if we all just become electromagnetic echoes clinging to earth?
When the battery hits three per cent, I ditch all this contemplation.
As I prepare to speed-dial a number, a trilogy of vivid mental images present themselves to me in one split second.
Moments later, the line connects. The other phone rings for an excruciatingly long time before someone picks up.
‘Hello, Dolly,’ says Bex. ‘You’re in Greece, aren’t you?’
I was totally going to call Alistair. Then I remembered Bex’s face as I pinned her to that hotel room sofa, deranged, waving a knife around. All that misplaced hope and trust registering on her face, in those wet eyes. Is this really the end? But that can’t be right.
I remembered Bex beside me on the big fat yellow sofa. Holding my hand, staring into my eyes and telling me everything was fine.
I remembered Bex the first time I ever laid eyes on her. Climbing down from the gym cross trainer, coated in sweat. Motivated and happy, with a whole normal life ahead of her, until I slunk cockily over to say hello and ensure her doom.
These memories resurfaced at precisely the right time. Well . . . the right time for her, the wrong time for me.
Hearing Bex’s voice jams my throat right up. There’s so much I want to say, but battery limitations dictate that I say none of it. I must warn her right off the path to her death, while my dwindling supply of lithium-ion allows it.
‘End that call,’ Bex says sharply, before I can speak. ‘Hang up now.’
And I’m confused. Because now Bex’s voice is different, and it isn’t coming from the phone. It’s coming from the ground directly ahead of me.
Straight into my ear from the phone, from Brighton, Bex is saying, ‘Hello? Have you pocket-dialled me, dickhead?’
A pool of blood has formed in the sodden earth, one step beyond the shelter of the tree. The blood seems to dance, as raindrops trigger tiny explosions across its surface.
From the centre of this pool rises the horizontal face of Rebecca Lawson. Nose first, then lips, forehead and chin. Finally her baby-blue eyes break the surface, gazing skywards, misty as old glass marbles, unblinking against the downpour. Having risen no more than two inches, her face resembles a desert island surrounded by choppy red sea.
All my pain blurs into irrelevance.
Fireworks scorch, swirl and whistle in my guts.
I end the call, cutting off Living Bex, my eyes locked on Dead Bex. As I crawl towards the blood pool, a whole flood of emotion threatens to break through the dam I’ve maintained since she died. Amid all the intense joy and amazement, there’s so much guilt, not to mention unease at how very alien, how very macabre she appears.
‘This is you, isn’t it?’ I blurt, stupidly.
When Dead Bex replies, I fully absorb the change in her voice. It’s more melodious, and carries a new accent, unlike anything I’ve heard. ‘We get to come back when there’s good reason,’ she says. ‘Unfinished business. Or someone trying to prevent your death. Genuine reasons like that, we call XXX.’
She doesn’t actually say ‘XXX’, or anything like it, but I wouldn’t know how to start spelling the actual word. It’s a fresh new alien sound from somewhere beyond the alphabet. A word I doubt the human voice box could even produce.
I’m on all fours at the pool’s edge. Rain lashes the back of my head as I stare down at this impossible apparition. Questions form in my head, then fall apart. So many questions, jostling for pole position. Yes, I saw Tony Bonelli after he died, but that felt like Maria’s doing. Yes, I saw my own future ghost, but that felt impossible to comprehend. This, on the other hand, feels like the universe raising the curtain on its ultimate secret.
I settle for gushing, ‘So there’s definitely an afterlife?’
Rain steadily washes the blood from Bex’s face, revealing the bluish-white skin beneath. ‘Better call your brother before that phone dies.’
‘Is it like heaven, or—’
‘Forget all that stuff,’ she says. ‘People waste their time guessing. You’re just worms, Jack, trying to picture what’s above the soil. The reality is way beyond you.’
I don’t remember my exact response, but it hinges on incredulous swearing. For the first time, her eyes move and lock on to mine.
‘Listen,’ she snaps. ‘I appreciate you finally manning up and putting yourself second, but I don’t want to be saved. Call your brother instead.’
As the implications sink in, my mouth is a big dumb open hole. ‘Hold on . . . that means . . . this afterlife is so good, you . . .’
‘I’m fine with having been sucked down a three-inch-wide pipe to get here, yeah.’
Ashamed, I bow my head. While Bex might be content with her new life, the fact remains that I cut her old one short. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I tell her. ‘For everything. I’ll make it all up to you.’
‘No need,’ says the face in the blood.
An idea jolts me. ‘Have you . . . have you seen my mum over there?’
‘Yeah, sure, Jack, I’ve seen your mum. Oh, and I saw Neil Yates too.’
Bex’s cloudy lemonade eyes appear indifferent as her acid sarcasm burns me. She says, ‘You know why most of us don’t hang around? It’s all this shit. All the questions. People wanting you to pass on messages and apologies. People desperate to say stuff they should have said to the living. I don’t even know your mum’s name, Jack. You never talked about her. Too busy going on about yourself.’
My emotional dam strains and creaks. A thick crack appears across it. ‘Give her a message for me?’
‘Tell her yourself when you—’
‘Bex, please! I want her to know I’m sorry.’
‘Call. Your. Brother.’
Bex’s eyes swivel to the sky once again. Then the island of her face begins its slow, smooth descent back into the blood.
That’s when my dam bursts. Those fireworks in my guts become a record-breaking New Year’s Eve display. My tears are indistinguishable from the blood and the rain. Half blind, I lurch down and hold a palm against Bex’s grave-col
d porcelain cheek. And I tell her I love her.
I tell her this over and over. First time I’ve said it to someone and meant it, let alone said it more than once. Sobbing my head hollow, I gabble at the submerging dead woman, saying sorry until her face is no longer there to be held.
As the tip of her nose sinks out of sight, I yell, ‘Did you hear me? Please say you heard. I love you.’
The aching silence seems to last a whole lifetime, before her words bubble back up.
‘Fucking funny way of showing it.’
The blood pool seeps off into the soil, finally submitting to the downpour.
I roll over on to my back and gawp crazily at the darkening sky.
The phone in my hand is soaked through. A total brick.
If I hadn’t tried to save Bex, I might have saved my own neck.
But for once in my life, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Out here in the black heart of the woods, exactly four hundred steps towards nowhere, I clamp my teeth into an idiot grin.
As the rain eases off, I cackle and whoop.
THE FINAL SPOOKS LIST (Sparks’ Permanently Ongoing Overview of Kooky Shit)
People claim to have witnessed supernatural phenomena for the following reasons:
(1) They’re trying to deceive others
(2) They’ve been deceived by others
(3) They’ve deceived themselves
(4) Group psychokinesis can produce results
(5) Supernatural phenomena are real
(6) The afterlife is real
(7) Satan is real
(8) It’s all fucking real. We’re just too wrapped up in ourselves to see it
By the light of a pale moon, I rifle through Sherilyn’s backpack. There are all manner of magical items. And a netbook. This thing will contain the latest version of this book I emailed her. If I can just get out of this rain and find somewhere to write, I can finish the damn thing.
Last thing I’ll ever do.
It is Halloween, after all. I know how this works.
Until recently, I’d never have dreamt the world could keep turning without me.
The moon melts away behind a bank of cloud, painting these woods black. I can no longer see my hand in front of my face.