Chasing Ghosts

by Dean Cole

  Noticing I hadn’t answered, Kat said, ‘Thought so. Nothing like the death of a loved one to keep you tied to the past. We put them on this posthumous pedestal we never would have done when they were alive, forgetting there’s a world full of other people out there.’

  I could have been wrong, but I detected a bitter edge in her tone, a flicker of resentment in those baby blue eyes. Had she lost someone she loved? Or was she talking about someone else who had?

  ‘Perhaps it’s time you give men another go,’ she suggested. ‘Life’s short, and Prince Charming won’t sit around waiting until you’re ready. He’s out there looking for his prince, too. Let’s just hope he has bad eyesight, or an equally awful dress sense in your case.’ With this she flashed me a wicked grin, nudging me playfully with her shoulder.

  I allowed myself a smile. But as her words lingered in the autumn air, I could feel they had hit a hitherto unprovoked nerve inside me. Luckily, nature provided a welcome distraction from the discussion of my love life at that very moment. The trees opened up to reveal a churchyard standing beyond the low stone wall that had appeared at the side of the road.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Kat. ‘Even when we go for a walk we can’t get away from the dead.’

  Her phone’s ringtone made us both jump, Destiny’s Child Independent Women. She fished it from her coat and crossed to the other side of the road to answer the call in private. I walked over to the wall and gazed into the churchyard’s sacred grounds. A small church with lancet windows and stonework worn by centuries of inclement weather stood watch over a sea of ancient gravestones. A crow swooped out of nowhere, landing on the crest of one that sported a tall cross. It cocked its head, the black, beady eyes appearing to look directly at me. I could have sworn it was one of the pesky crows from the manor. Could it be the same one that had tried to peck its way through our window? It was an ominous thought. What bird followed you around like a feathery stalker? I felt relief when it took flight again, vanishing over the church’s spire.

  There was a moment of quiet, punctuated by the howl of a growing wind, the scrape of leaves as they scudded along the road, the bip bip bip of Kat tapping the keys on her phone. She had finished her brief call and was sending a text message. I heard the click of her lighter, and a second later the crackle of burning tobacco as she took the first drag of her fifth Marlboro Light. I wished she’d stop smoking. I wished Will would, too. I had witnessed death, seen how it could take you at any moment, and struggled to understand why people were so willing to gamble with it.

  And yet … maybe it was me who was wrong, for trying to outrun it, resenting it for taking those I loved. I stared at the gravestones, their inscriptions illegible through age and deterioration. I wondered if anyone still bothered to visit them. When everyone who ever knew us is also dead and gone, what meaning does a gravestone have? It’s just stone, bones and forgotten names. I imagined my own grave, weathered and crumbled with time, my loved ones long gone, no one left to remember me. I pictured Elliot’s, which I had visited time and again, the epitaph that talked about the young man who could pet bees, who had returned to the stars, and those birth to death years so close in time compared to the dates normally seen on memorials.

  Kat was right. Life is short. She would join him one day. And Will. And Mum and Dad. The only thing certain about life is that we’re going to die, yet we never think about it, can’t believe it when it takes someone we love. Yes. Life is short. And too precious to spend it fearing what could be, what shouldn’t have been.

  ‘I think you should stop smoking,’ I said, wiping away the tear that had rolled down my cheek.

  Kat made a snort. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Because …’ I turned and looked at her. The raven curls billowed around the collar of her coat as she squinted at me distrustfully. ‘Because I like you and I don’t want you to die.’

  Like I’d thrown her a grenade, she stood there expressionless, unsure how to respond. She glanced from side to side. ‘You like me? But I’m horrible to you.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, you are. But it brings out a part of me that I actually quite like.’

  Still suspicious, but looking slightly flattered, she said, ‘OK.’

  I turned around and looked at the churchyard again. There was a pause before Kat resumed the bip bip bip on the keys of her phone. What she couldn’t see was that I was smiling.

  * * * * *

  When our walk had ended and Kat resumed interviewing the ghost hunters, I began to feel restless. So, naturally, the first thing I went looking for was food.

  The dining hall was quiet when I entered, empty except for two elderly women gabbling like parakeets over scones and tea-filled china cups at the table in the bay window. They paid no attention to me as I walked to where a buffet of sandwiches, cakes and pastries had been laid out for us to graze on. My mouth watered as I lifted the plastic covers, loading my plate with an amount of sugary pastry that would make my dentist’s toes curl. I’d just bitten into a cream cake when a figure drifted into my periphery.

  Will had materialised beside me. Momentarily startled, I just stood and stared at him, eyes wide, cheeks full like a hamster’s. He cleared his throat, pointing at his lip to tell me I had something on my face. I licked away the moustache of cream and the powdered sugar coating my lips. Will licked his lips, too. But not because he had food on them. He was looking nervous, like he had something to say.

  ‘Look, I’m only good with all that head stuff when I’m writing my characters. Real people … well, I’m still trying to figure those out. But if I offended you earlier then I’m sorry.’

  I blinked, swallowing the cake.

  ‘I only mean real offence when it comes to arseholes,’ he said. ‘Cross my heart.’

  That was … reassuring, I guess. But my face mustn’t have shown it. Will flattened his shoulders.

  ‘If you think I’m too abrupt, just say it,’ he said, a defensive edge entering his voice.

  ‘You could work on your delivery a little,’ I offered.

  His expression didn’t alter. ‘There’s a lot of fakeness about. People need to hear it like it is. They might not like it at first, but if you hit a nerve in them maybe it’s something they need to look at —’ He stopped, catching himself. ‘Fine. Point taken.’

  ‘Sorry I snapped,’ I said.

  ‘It’s cool. Just don’t do it again or I’ll have to punch you.’

  I waited for the grin that told me he was joking. Disturbingly, none was forthcoming, his face remaining deadpan. Instead he snatched a strawberry tart off my plate, turned around, then headed for the door.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Found some balls for us to play with.’

  By ‘play’ he meant join him for a game of pool. After leading me into the recreational room, a richly decorated space given ambience through the many picture lights embellishing its dark wood walls, he began setting up balls in the middle of an antique billiards table that possessed a set of very elaborate ornate legs. I set my plate of pastries on a side table positioned next to a small Chesterfield as he handed me a cue.

  The first time I learned how to play the game was on a sunny afternoon in a small bar in Southern France with Dad. It’s the only sport I like. It’s slow, intimate and requires little athletic agility. Which is good since I’m about as agile as a slug.

  Will took the first break, cursing when he failed to pot a single ball. When, much to my own surprise as well as his, I managed to pot two stripes on my first shot, Will looked as if he was genuinely regretting choosing me as his opponent. The writer had a competitive streak, it seemed.

  ‘Played a bit, have you?’ he asked, more mindful as he took his next shot.

  ‘It’s my dad’s favourite game.’

  He returned a curt nod. ‘Must run in the genes.’

  ‘He’s my adoptive father, actually.’

  Will potted a solid and glanced up. ‘Oh. That’s cool.’

  ‘Cool?’

  �
�Cool that you have a dad.’

  I bent to take my next shot. ‘Don’t you?’

  Will straightened up and with a surprising dispassion said, ‘Walked out when I was ten. Haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. Greatest thing he ever did for me.’

  We played some more. Will had soon caught up to my score, which, unexpectedly, irked more than I thought it would. Perhaps it was the casual manner he had about him, the way you felt you had to work to penetrate that steely edge he exuded, but I was starting to feel that I needed to impress him at every turn. Or was it just because he was so handsome? Beautiful people have that about them, a way of making you feel inferior but wishing you knew more about them at the same time. I was feeling prickly around the collar when he decided to probe more.

  ‘Have you ever met your biological parents?’

  ‘No,’ I said through a mouthful of Battenberg cake. ‘My birth mother is dead and I don’t know what happened to my biological father.’

  Will glanced up from squinting at a ball on the billiards table, trying to predict his next shot. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ I replied, echoing him. ‘My parents gave me a good life. I’ve been lucky.’

  The thought lingered. My parents, Belinda and Dominic Strange, certainly aren’t perfect. Belinda and I clashed more than once during my teens. She couldn’t give birth to children of her own, and failed treatments had led to much heartache and tragedy. She thought she was going to lose me like she’d lost those unborn babies, no matter how much I grew up. Her excessive worry made her question every choice I made, and the fear began to rub off on me, turning me into a persistent worrier and a hypochondriac, conditions even child psychologists and therapists failed to correct. When you spend your childhood around someone who thinks it’s a miracle you’re still alive at the end of another year, it’s hard not to wonder what dangers are out there waiting to kill you. And the influences you have around you as a kid are like the programmers that write the software you run off when you’re older. Dom is a kind, simple man, but that simple verges on being a little detached. And I sometimes wonder if adopting me was more about assuaging his wife than fulfilling his own need for a son. But these are small shortcomings for the stability and security they provided, which are the things that really matter the most when you’re growing up.

  ‘How’d your biological mum die, if you don’t mind me asking?’ Will asked, chalking the tip of his cue.

  ‘She perished in a house fire. I was eight months old at the time. She threw me to safety out of an upstairs window and a neighbour caught me.’

  I relayed the story with little emotion, but I’d had plenty of time to come to terms with the grisly tale that surrounded my origin. Belinda and Dom told me when I was thirteen, not wanting me to grow up resenting them for withholding what they considered my birthright: to know exactly what had happened to the people who brought me into this world. They couldn’t tell me who my biological father was, or what might have happened to him. My mother appeared to be single at the time she gave birth to me, as no father had been registered on my birth certificate. From what little was gleaned, she was a troubled young woman, a nomad who was treated for various mental health problems. And as shocking as the story was, I felt far removed from the situation. I was eight months old at the time. I can’t even remember having another mother, let alone remember her voice, her face.

  It’s a strange thing, knowing you’re connected so closely to someone you’ve never met. Even stranger when that person is dead. You expect to feel some heartache, but how do you mourn someone you never knew? I had wondered about them at times, though. Tried to picture their faces. Imagine what might have brought them together to create me, and where they were laid to rest — if my mother even had a memorial that marked her existence and my father had endured a similar fate. It had never crossed my mind to go digging into my ancestry. When you’ve always had a family, especially one as large and close as mine, there isn’t the incentive to desire much else. Still, it was there. The longing to know more. Maybe one day I would.

  Will whistled. ‘You really are lucky.’

  ‘Yeah, I owe my life to her in more ways than one.’

  ‘Wish I could share the same sentiment about my mother.’

  Will had stopped playing the game and was leaning against a walnut panelled wall next to a window that looked out at wiry trees that failed to hide the field bordering one side of the house. One half of his handsome face was lit with pale light.

  ‘Do you have a relationship with her?’ I asked, sitting down on the Chesterfield.

  ‘Barely. She made life hell after my old man left. Drinking, neglect, reckless relationships with various men. I buried my head in books to escape it all, became fascinated with the written word, the power it had to take you to other places, places that often made more sense than this world. Mum thought they were a waste of time. When I told her I wanted to write, she said I wasn’t clever enough, said only kids who go to posh schools end up writing books. She pushed me into dead end jobs, because, according to her, money was more important than ‘pansy art.’

  Will stared at his feet, arms crossed, a pensive slant to his mouth. I hadn’t imagined such dysfunctional beginnings. But then, what does one know about a person’s past from first impression?

  ‘Did you defy her?’ I asked.

  ‘Telling me I can’t do something is the surest way to ensure I do it, and do it well. I read hundreds of books, studied the craft every day. I’d rewrite entire classics, longhand, to break down how they were made, experience how the words felt coming off the pens of masters.

  ‘But it wasn’t just the technical aspect of the craft I loved, it was knowing I could write about the things I was itching to say. I knew I would write my own books one day. Nothing was going to stop me. No education can teach you how to write from the soul, like your life depends on it, which for some writers it actually does. It can’t teach you to dig out what’s inside a character that makes them like the reader, the thing that makes the reader forget they’re reading at all. The writer who wants it more than anything, who loves the struggle of it as much as the joy, becomes the master.’

  Will was gazing at the balls scattered over the green felt of the billiards table in a way that looked like he was trying to confirm his words to himself as much as he was to me. I regarded him from my position on the sofa, feeling both empathy and respect for what I could see was a very resilient and determined man. His eyes found my face again, as if he’d forgotten I was in the room for a moment.

  ‘That’s why I’m grateful to my old man for walking out of my life,’ he said. ‘He freed me, let me decide my own fate. If he’d been around he would have made sure I never got to do what I love. Emotionally abusive people don’t respect autonomy, when it comes to their kids or anyone else. I’m grateful to Mum, too, for not believing in me, because it spurred me on to prove her wrong. Writing’s a hard craft. Sometimes you need a firework up your arse to keep you going when the days get long and the words aren’t coming. Just the image of her smug “I told you you’d never do it” face would be enough to get me out of a slump on those days.’ Rhetorically, he said, ‘Life feels back to front, don’t you think? Like it’s inverted. The stuff we hate to go through is good for us in the end, and the stuff we love usually leads to our downfall.’

  I pondered this. And, once again, the same nerve unearthed by Kat’s comments about being scared to love again began to throb. What good was to come from the things I’d been through? And had the things I loved been bad for me? The only outcome after years of escaping into books and photography was that I had ended up more awkward and scared than ever, not to mention, worst of all, completely alone. I felt a sudden urge to change the subject.

  ‘At least you got a good name off them,’ I said, trying to lighten the tone. ‘Will Anderson. It looks good on the book.’ Then I blushed when I realised how completely ins
ensitive that sounded.

  ‘You’ve seen my book?’

  ‘One of the ghost hunters lent it to Kat. I read the first few chapters. I enjoyed it.’

  Will acknowledged the compliment with a perfunctory nod. ‘Anderson’s a pen name, though. Took it from a distant relative. My real name’s Will O’Donnell.’

  ‘Oh.’

  A silence fell across the billiards table and, too scared of putting my foot in it a second time, I decided not to break it. I didn’t need to. It seemed Will’s mind had got to thinking and he had more things to say.

  ‘Just because I found a way to turn something negative into a positive, that doesn’t mean I’m not stung by my past. If I don’t sound bitter it’s only because you can be grateful and a bit bitter at the same time. I have my scars. I just hide them well. It’s not easy living a life where you feel like you always have to prove yourself. Sometimes you just want people to accept you exactly as you are, without all the frills, you know?’

  I didn’t know. Frills were elusive things in my world. I didn’t have the talent, the looks and the magnetism Will had. Getting people to accept me with all the flaws was more my problem.

  We listened to the gentle brush of trees and a crow cawing outside the window, the faraway tick of a grandfather clock out in the hallway. Mrs Brown’s bell tinkled. Had more strangers just arrived?

  Will lit his lighter, blew out the flame, lit it again. ‘Who did you lose?’

  Distracted, it took me a moment to figure out he was talking about the comment I’d made when I snapped and left him sitting on that bench. I hesitated before answering. ‘My first love.’