The Life and Death Parade

by Eliza Wass

  “So do I.” Nikki got to his feet, left me in the half moon of his protection circle, trapped on the other side of belief.

  SEVEN

  I started down the towpath, then stopped and stood swaying on my feet. I sat down on the grass. I was in almost the same spot as we were that day, with the canal curved in a basin before me, the boat cupped in an enormous hand. Unexpectedly, I wished Macklin were there. And then I wished Nikki were there. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t—I suppose it wasn’t inconvenient enough.

  Inside the boat, the record player started up again. This time it played “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” another fairly obscure song Nikki used to listen to. It was unnerving, but was it that much of a coincidence? They both had record players. They both played songs from the sixties and seventies, when records were at their most popular. Completely explainable. But what about everything else?

  The psychic and this boy had both been part of this Life and Death group. According to the boy, so was Mum. But why had she never mentioned it to me? I would have thought the boy was mistaken, but he knew her name, recognized the rabbit’s foot.

  I took the charm out, held it up in the moonlight like it might offer some clue. I knew Mum was spiritual and superstitious, and she’d often referred to friends I never met, but I had assumed they were people she met when she traveled the world. I had never suspected they might be closer to home. I wondered if the Bramleys knew—but then it didn’t seem like something Mum would put on her CV. What was it anyway, the Life and Death Parade? A group of people who went around celebrating funerals and telling teenage boys they were destined to die. A group of people I had to find.

  I lay back on the grass, set the rabbit’s foot on the apex of my rib cage. There weren’t any stars in the sky. I wasn’t sure why; there wasn’t a cloud, but the sky was black.

  I shut my eyes and considered the castle, blessed by the clarity of distance. Maybe if I found this psychic, maybe if I found out what happened that night, maybe if all of us had some answers beyond it was an accident, but it was meant to happen, things would be easier. But how could I get the boy to help me find her? I needed him to trust me. But first, I needed to make sure he didn’t leave.

  I could bring him to the castle. I could hire him as a medium. I didn’t think Macklin or Lord Bramley would fancy it, but Lady Bramley and Holiday might. After all, Lady Bramley had told me she wished there were a way she could make sure Nikki was all right.

  Exhaustion settled in my limbs, and I rolled onto my side. I would sleep on it. I shouldn’t make any hasty decisions. I should run, I thought, but that didn’t make any sense. It made more sense to sleep. It was very, very late. Grass blades tickled my arms. Another song I recognized started to play.

  I opened my eyes as a shadow crossed the sun. The boy was standing over me, amusement tugging his lips. “Rough night?”

  I scrambled up, then shaded my eyes and peered at him. “Don’t you ever wear a shirt?”

  “Not even to church.”

  “Amen to that,” I joked. He seemed suspicious of my good humor. I should have warned him I made jokes when I felt uncomfortable, which was all the time.

  He scanned the deserted canal side. “What are you doing out here?”

  The rabbit’s foot had rolled off my chest. I picked it up and squeezed it. “I wanted to ask you something. A couple things, actually.” I stood up, wiped the grass from my elbows.

  “Shoot,” he said. He didn’t make as much sense in daylight. The sun revealed his unhealthy pallor, the lankness of his hair. The shield of jewelry that hung from his neck was rusted. His eyes were so pale they looked like they were being erased.

  “When you perform a séance, does it actually help?”

  He shrugged. “It’s kind of a mixed bag.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, sometimes it helps. Sometimes…”

  I leaned in. “Sometimes what?”

  “Sometimes it completely destroys people’s lives.”

  “But sometimes it helps?” I thought that was the more salient point.

  “Yeah. This might surprise you, but some people are actually happier after they talk to me.”

  I rolled the rabbit’s foot around my fingers. “It’s Nikki’s family. Especially his mum and his little sister. I think they’d believe you. I think it might help them. And they’d pay you loads. They’re very wealthy.”

  His eyes seemed to sharpen when I said that. “Are they the ones with the castle?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it: Mummy, Daddy, little sister, and you?”

  “And Macklin, Nikki’s brother. But he won’t be interested. Neither will Nikki’s dad. In fact, I should warn you.” I stuffed the rabbit’s foot in my pocket. “They probably won’t be happy to have you there.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m good at getting people to like me.”

  “Modest, too.”

  “You came back. Actually, you never left.” He winked at me, made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Let me put a few things together.”

  I followed him onto the boat. Light flooded in from the windows, giving the space an oddly drained quality. Everything around the boy had a strange emptiness—the boat and starless sky and his odd, colorless eyes. He scooped a doctor’s bag up from the floor and started to fill it, with crystals and candles, boxers and T-shirts, a handmade spell book.

  “What’s your name?” I perched on a window seat.

  “Roan.”

  “Roan?”

  “It’s the color of a cow. I’m the other guy who was born in a manger.” I laughed, but he didn’t.

  “And the Life and Death Parade, what exactly is it?”

  He plucked a crow’s skull from inside a drawer and considered it before tossing it into the bag. “What is it actually or what is it supposed to be?”

  “Both.”

  “Well.” He shut the bag. “It’s actually a traveling carnival and a shameless money grab. It started out as a religious practice, focused on bridging the gap between this world and the next via saints from all world religions. It’s rooted in real traditions and ritual magic from A to Zulu.” His tattoo lengthened as he stretched down to retrieve the bag. “But now you can buy the traditions, you can collect the spells, you can even buy saints and trade them like Pokémon cards. It’s kind of like voodoo in New Orleans, or every religion ever: it was great until people heard about it.”

  “And you have no idea where they are?”

  “Not right this second. But they pass through here every summer. They’ll probably be here in a few weeks.” Great. I just needed to keep track of him until then.

  “Is that everything?” I asked. He shook his head and pointed to the aquarium.

  Roan whistled when he saw Macklin’s car. He set the aquarium in the backseat, strapping it down with a seatbelt.

  “He looks quite cozy,” I said.

  He sucked the tip of his finger, then ran it along the body of the car. “Killer.” He hopped into the front seat as I started the engine.

  We sailed through the countryside in bright sunshine. We chatted about the places he’d been: New Orleans and New York and New Haven—a lot of New places. I was sort of jealous. Next to him I had done nothing, been nowhere. The farthest I’d been from the castle was a holiday in Cornwall. I was sixteen years old, and all I had ever done was stay in a place where I felt like I didn’t belong.

  I drove fast, pulled by the past. I felt like I was going back to Nikki, or at least the pieces of him I recognized. The air tightened, seemed to darken—define itself—around the edges. We were getting close. We crested the final hill.

  The castle was far from everything—from the pastoral hills and the medieval towns that sliced into them like silver scars. When it finally appeared, it was at a dream’s distance. There was an illusory stretch where the castle seemed not to get any closer. It happened every time, yet it always struck me as magical, the way the castle maintained its remoten
ess and then at the last moment expanded, as if to catch you off guard.

  “Holy mojo,” he said, bracing himself in his seat like he expected impact. His chains rang like bells.

  “It’s one of the biggest castles in England. They used to run tours through it, when we were growing up.”

  “What a magical place to grow up.” He narrowed his eyes at me.

  “What?”

  “I’m just trying to work out how someone who grew up in a castle could stop believing in fairy tales.”

  “I never believed in fairy tales. Except the one.” I circled the fountain, willing the motor to be quiet. I scanned the castle doors, but they stayed shut. For once, it seemed like I might be lucky.

  “What are you looking for?” Roan asked as we pulled away from the castle, nearing the garage.

  “Macklin. This is sort of his car. And he’s sort of obsessed with it.”

  The garage door was open. As I pulled in, I saw Macklin standing in the spot I’d vacated last night. He moved aside, and I parked the car quick as I could. Then I whacked my head twice on the steering wheel.

  “Kitty!” Macklin said. “I can’t believe you’ve taken my car without asking. I was about to phone the police.” Macklin ran his hands all over his car, like it was an animal he was soothing, checking its temperature and its undercarriage.

  I dragged myself out of the car. “It’s a car. It’s supposed to be driven.”

  “You haven’t got a license.”

  “You taught me to drive.” I tossed him the key. I had terrible aim, so he had to chase it across the floor.

  “Kitty, you can’t—”

  Roan exited the car. He stood up straight, with his jewelry and his weird eyes. Macklin took two rapid steps back.

  “Howdy.” Roan drummed his fingers along the top of the car.

  “Sorry, I…” Macklin colored and played with his hair like Snow White Uncensored. “Who are you?”

  Roan blinked at me. He wanted me to explain. Fantastic. “He’s a…” What exactly was he? A lapse in judgment? A huge mistake? “I’ve brought him here, to see your mum and Holiday. He’s sort of a specialist.” Macklin flinched. Specialist had become a dirty word around the castle.

  “Specializing in what, exactly?”

  “I talk to dead people,” Roan said.

  “You speak to, uh, the, um, dead?” Roan nodded. Macklin’s lips formed a firm line. “Kitty, I would never expect something like this from you.”

  “I didn’t realize you held me in such high esteem.”

  His eyes darkened. “What, so you think this is real? You think this gentleman in jewelry is going to speak to Nikki, is that it?”

  “It’s not for me, Macklin. It’s not for you, either. It’s for your mum. And Holiday. We might not understand them but—” I stopped. Was that part of the reason I’d brought Roan there? To make up for not understanding Nikki?

  “Well,” Macklin said. “I don’t want any part in it.” He opened the driver’s-side door and swung in. “And don’t come running to me when you make things worse.”

  “Is that even possible?” I snapped. I turned to Roan. “Sorry about that. We don’t exactly get along. Any of us.”

  “No problem.” Roan shouldered his bag. “You’ve been through a lot. But that’s what I’m here to cure.”

  I bristled at the word: cure. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be cured. If Nikki weren’t haunting us, then where would he fit in our lives?

  I jumped as Macklin’s door snapped open. “Please may someone get the snake out of my car?”

  I took Roan through the old servants’ entrance, then up the stairs so we landed in the Great Hall. The Great Hall was like a stately cavern—dark and seeming to go on to fathomless depths, badly lit by flickering gas lamps.

  There were legions of family portraits, so numerous that they overlapped in places. Nikki was the only one who’d ever explained them to me, and he changed their stories to suit his mood, so they always appeared to me as a crowd of shape-shifters. Roan gazed up at them, cradling his aquarium as the gaslight licked his pupils.

  “Is it up to your standards?”

  He cleared his throat. “It’ll do.” He gazed into the well of darkness. “You know, if this is going to work, you’re going to have to go along with it.”

  “I’ll be all right.” Tension played along my shoulders.

  “If anything I say or do shocks you”—I opened my mouth to interrupt, but he stopped me with a gesture—“don’t interfere.”

  “I can’t promise that.” I bristled. “I can’t just let you do whatever you want.”

  That smile again, like he knew something I didn’t. Then he started down the hall, in a direction I hadn’t indicated. “We should get Holiday first. A mother will follow her child anywhere.”

  My shoulders hardened but I pressed on, passing him by. “I’ll show you where she is.” I didn’t have to let him lead just yet.

  Holiday’s hallway was a swamp of inertia. Roan slowed as we approached, determination setting his features. Lillie, the nurse who had replaced Janelle after the dinner fiasco, leapt up from her chair. “I go in every fifteen minutes to check, but she doesn’t like me in there with her.”

  “It’s all right, Lillie.” I reached for the doorknob, then turned to face Roan. “I need you to promise you won’t say or do anything to upset them.”

  “How’d you put it? I can’t promise you that.” He simulated my voice so perfectly that gooseflesh rose along my arms. “But I wouldn’t worry too much. Usually the dead don’t want to upset people.”

  “Usually?”

  He reached around behind me and opened the door.

  Holiday was asleep on the bed, contained in the square blue projection of the television screen. She clung to a mangled pillow, a battered doll that once belonged to Nikki, and a sharp blue crystal. An episode of Come Dine with Me played over her. It was funny to think her mum was probably watching the same thing upstairs.

  Holiday contracted into a ball. “It hasn’t been fifteen minutes!” She pounced, jumping up on the bed and throwing the crystal in one swift motion. Roan caught it in his hand.

  Holiday’s jaw dropped.

  “Get out of bed,” he said. “We’re going to talk to Nikki.”

  The color in Holiday’s face bled out. Her eyes skidded from Roan to me. I stepped out of the shadows. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “What do you mean?” Holiday said. “We can’t speak to Nikki.”

  “He can.” I did not add allegedly or so he claims.

  “How?” Good question.

  “Get out of bed and you’ll see. Come on. Your mum’s coming as well.”

  She searched my face, like I was the thing she needed to believe in. I felt it run through me, this ribbon of something I couldn’t catch.

  “Don’t look at her. Look at me.” Roan bent down, so his chains jingled bewitchingly. He stared into her frightened eyes and he said, “We’re going to speak to Nikki.”

  Holiday nodded, eyes brimming with tears. I had to leave the room. I went into the hallway, where Lillie was scratching at her phone. I gazed down the darkening hallway and wished I could take this back, too. I shouldn’t have brought Roan. We weren’t going to talk to Nikki. It didn’t do us any good to pretend. It just hurt.

  I followed them to Lady Bramley’s room like a ghost. Holiday threaded her fingers through Roan’s, trotted along beside him. It was that easy. Her planet had found a sun to orbit, pulled in by the gravity of faith.

  I stayed in the hall while they went into Lady Bramley’s room. I had an appointment with a panic attack. I hyperventilated into my hands, which left them dripping wet, so I wiped them again and again on my jeans.

  Why was I so affected, if I didn’t really believe it? I told myself it was because I was worried it was a bad idea. That it would be my fault again when things went wrong. But what really scared me was that I might slip and fall into belief. That I might believe without planning to or
wanting to. Because what would be better actually—to believe Nikki was gone forever or that he was there, on the other side of a mortal accident?

  Lady Bramley appeared, pockets overflowing with tissues. I tried to harness my breath, wiped my hands on my jeans and my shirt and my neck.

  “What was Nikki’s favorite room?” Roan said. “Where do you feel him most?”

  “The library,” Holiday said. I saw Nikki suddenly, swaying at the top of the iron staircase. “It has to be the library.”

  I exhaled, tried to push the memory out through my lips, but it stayed there, at the back of my skull, echoing a steady drip-drip that prickled my nerves. Roan dropped back to speak to me. “Are you all right?”

  “I feel like…” I tried to think of the words. “I feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

  “You are.” He smiled. “You’re not supposed to talk to the dead.”

  “Then why do you?”

  “I guess I’m not a fan of whoever makes the rules.” He moved away from me. “You don’t have to come.”

  There it was, the perfect opportunity to leave. Holiday and Lady Bramley looked back.

  “No.” I don’t know who spoke, but it sounded like my voice. “I want to.”

  We passed under the archway. The library had once been a chapel and was the oldest part of the castle. An organ crumbled along the wall in rusted veins. The fireplace gaped. In a quiet corner, Nikki’s chair had been pushed hard against the wall. Roan walked straight to it and sat down.

  I knew all the hiding places in the castle. Nikki and I cataloged them one summer, so we knew where to go to eavesdrop on anyone. I never thought I would use those places against Nikki, but that afternoon when Lord Bramley took him to see another specialist, I waited in a linen closet beside the master bedroom.

  Lady Bramley was watching TV under the covers, where she always retreated when she was worried. Late in the evening, Lord Bramley returned.