The Book of Living and Dying

by Natale Ghent

  She pushed her way into the kitchen. There were people standing everywhere, leaning on counters, sitting on top of the table, going through the fridge. She had to reach through a group of leering guys to get the mickey of cherry brandy she’d hid inside the flour canister. The alcohol splashed from the bottle, Sarah pouring until her glass was half full. Closing the cap, she went to replace it inside the canister, then decided against it and slipped the bottle into her jacket just as Peter appeared. He picked her up, slung her over his shoulder and wheeled her around, the brandy flying in loose ribbons from her glass. In spite of herself, she shrieked and laughed, the bluegrass tumbler slipping from her hand and falling end over end through the air. She couldn’t stop Peter, couldn’t stop herself laughing, her ribs aching from the effort. He carried her through the house, toward the door.

  “Come for a walk with me,” he said as he dropped her to her feet in the hall.

  Sarah turned away from him.

  “Come for a walk with me,” he said again, moving closer to her.

  His features faded in a fog of alcohol as she tried to focus on his face, marvelling that he carried two tiny lamps where his pupils should be. And then she saw Michael, standing across the hall, watching her. She leaned toward Peter, pulled him closer and put her mouth on his. Michael was suddenly beside them, yanking Peter away from her. “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “Hey, get lost, buddy!” Peter wrenched his sleeve from Michael’s hand. Michael stood a good foot taller. He looked at Sarah, his face set with anger.

  “Leave me alone,” she groaned.

  “You heard her, pal. Leave her alone.” Peter shoved Michael’s chest and turned to Sarah.

  Michael grabbed Peter’s shirt, pulling him easily backwards. Peter knocked Michael’s hand away. “I said get lost! This is a closed party.”

  “Keep your hands off her.”

  There was a lightning pop as Peter swung and missed, striking Michael’s shoulder. Michael clenched Peter’s shirt at the throat, his fist thumping like a jackrabbit until Peter crashed to the floor, blood and spit fanning out through the air. Peter covered his ears with his hands as Michael’s boots connected again and again, the rage surging as the boys from the party tore in like dogs let loose, howling. Reaching for Sarah’s hand, Michael tugged her through the door. They slipped across the grass, voices shouting after them, growing fainter as they ducked down an alley, breathless and running, crashing over garbage cans.

  They ran through the half-lit streets, Michael pulling Sarah along beside him until they reached the bridge. Half way across, he stopped and released her hand. Sarah doubled over, struggling to breathe, the pain detonating in her head, the night spinning around her, streaked with stars.

  “You’re crazy,” she blurted out. “He won’t forget that any time soon.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I mean it. He’s a big prick.” She stood up, the world righting itself, the gyre in her head grinding slowly down. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you. What were you doing there?” She eyed him angrily, secretly hoping it was for her.

  “I was looking for you. I want to show you something.”

  “I don’t want to see any more videos.”

  “You have to let me explain.”

  And then they were standing in front of his house. Michael opened the door with the gold key. “In case my old man’s home,” he said.

  He walked through the rooms, snapping on lights, calling out for his father.

  The masks stared silently back.

  “Is he ever home?” Sarah asked.

  “No. Almost never. But he has a weird way of showing up when I don’t want him to.”

  “Like, when you’re making porn videos?”

  He looked at her, a pained expression on his face. “Come here.” He took her hand and led her down the hall to his bedroom.

  Sarah hesitated at the door.

  “Trust me,” he said. Turning on the light, he guided her to the yellow upholstered chair and made her sit. He stood before her as in confession. “I had a dream about you—after the first time I saw you, a couple of weeks before school started. I dreamt about you, like that, on my bed.”

  “Oh God,” Sarah moaned. “Donna was right …”

  “So then I made you real. I found your picture in the yearbook. I got it out of the library. I used animation software to graft your face onto a video clip I pulled off the net, used more software to put you on my bed …”

  Sarah held her head in her hands. “It isn’t normal to do things like that, Michael,” she said, talking to the carpet. “It’s weird. It’s the kind of stuff you read about in the papers.”

  “In my own defence,” Michael said, “‘normal’ is a very loosely defined label.” He smiled, raising his eyebrows hopefully. “I didn’t do it out of disrespect,” he continued. “I thought if I made it real, one of two things would happen.”

  “What’s that?” Sarah asked flatly.

  “Either I’d find you in my bed one day … or I’d secure a job for myself as the king of custom pornography.”

  “Sounds like a future,” she said wryly. But even as she said it, she could feel herself forgiving him. After all, was it so wrong for him to want her? “How many other girls have you ‘animated’?”

  “Just you. It’s only ever been you. I’m not a total creep.”

  Sarah broke down and smiled. She liked him too much to believe that he was all bad. “The other videos I saw …”

  “Just a boy whose pictures I found. I’ve been fooling around with old photos for years. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Selecting a video from the stack on his shelf, he pushed it into the VCR and turned on the TV. The video popped and jumped. The image of a small boy came into view, strolling along a beach. The boy stopped to pick up a stone, threw it into the ocean, the water radiating out in concentric circles where the stone hit the water. A rush of stars and moons and planets sprang spontaneously from the spot where the stone landed, the stars streaking across the screen, then travelling backwards, folding into the water, the ocean disappearing down a funnel with the moons and planets, until there was a single drop of water that blossomed and pulsed like the translucent heart of a developing fetus, floating in the black of space.

  He turned to her, his face lit with a strange ecstasy.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  He moved over to his desk and sat in the chair. Rolling the mouse, he clicked it and opened a window. “Look. CGI—computer-generated images.” He opened several files to show her how it worked. “I create them on the computer, then transfer them to video.”

  Sarah touched the screen. “Why video? It seems kind of … backward.”

  “I like the quality,” Michael explained. “The graininess. The knowledge of the hand and eye behind the camera. It’s like people who insist on listening to vinyl. I’m a dedicated video man in the end.”

  Sarah watched in wonder as the images flashed across the screen in a metonymic stream. “Where did you get the idea for this?”

  He stroked his chin thoughtfully as though searching for an answer that would make sense to her. “I’ve read books about near-death experiences,” he said at last. “There are stories of how some people visit rooms filled with frozen images of their own lives that hang in the air like photographs. And when they touch them, the images come to life revealing scenes from their past.”

  The idea struck a profound chord in Sarah’s heart. To see your whole life play out in front of you … how long would that take? Seconds? Hours? Days? Was it like watching a film in fast forward? Or was there the opportunity to rewind? At what point in death did this happen? Was there awareness? Emotion? Sensation? Or a kind of clinical detachment? And how big was the gap between living and dying, the dream-crossed twilight before the body was considered dead and the spirit realized that the life it once occupied was gone? It was like the philosophical question Mr. Kovski once posed: If the number of fractions is
infinite, can a door ever really close? Was time different for the dying, then? In the moment that it takes for a leaf to fall from a tree, could an entire lifetime be relived? And what of the future? Sarah wondered. Did the dying receive glimpses into that as well?

  The questions whirled through her mind until she felt that her head would explode. She looked into Michael’s eyes. Those eyes. Almost too much to bear, like staring into the sun, his honesty overwhelming her, making her want to break down and weep. He seemed to sense this and pushed his chair away from his desk. Scanning the stack of videos, he pulled the one of Sarah off the shelf and handed it to her. “Here. Take it.”

  “I guess I kind of freaked out,” Sarah said. “It isn’t every day that you find a pirate video of your naked self on a strange man’s bed.”

  “You think I’m strange?”

  “Yes, I do.” She laughed softly, the last of her resolve washing quietly away. “Can I ask you something?” she asked on impulse. “You have to promise you won’t make fun of me.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  Sarah shifted in her seat, wondering if she was doing the right thing, then blurted the question out. “Do you think the dead walk among us?”

  “What, like zombies?”

  “No,” she scoffed, as if the idea were far more ridiculous than the one she was about to propose. “Like ghosts, I mean.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said confidently.

  She looked at him warily. “You’re not just humouring me?”

  “Look around here, Sarah. This house is filled with ghosts.” He held her gaze to prove it.

  “So, what’s your theory?”

  “My theory …” he said, taking a moment to assemble one. “My theory is that ghosts are psychogenic manifestations of dead people. They’re all around us. Some people are just more sensitive to their presence than others, so they see them.”

  “What do you mean, ‘psychogenic’?”

  “A creation of the mind.”

  “So, only crazy people see ghosts, is that what you’re saying?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Have you always been this paranoid?” He reached over and squeezed her hand when he saw the hurt expression on her face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I think ghosts appear because people are thinking about that person, that somehow the mind acts as a conduit for the spirit, that’s all.”

  “Oh,” she said, regretting her hot-tempered response. It wasn’t a bad theory. After all, she did think about John—a lot. In fact, not a day had gone by since he’d left that she hadn’t thought about him. Couldn’t his appearance in her room be the result of her endless longing to see him again? Of her fathomless grief?

  Placing a hand on her cheek, Michael gently turned her face to meet his. “Are you seeing ghosts, Sarah?”

  The tears welled in her eyes. “I’m not sure any more,” she whispered as he pressed his mouth against her lips, her salty tears mingling with his kisses.

  “Stay with me,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The lock on the front door was stiff from the cold. Sarah had to jiggle the key repeatedly before it would turn. It was going to be a tough winter, the man on the radio had said. The Farmer’s Almanac had predicted it. At last the door swung open. Sarah caught it before it slammed against the wall and closed it quickly so as not to let the cold in. Unbuttoning her coat, she stuffed her mitts in the pockets and hung it on a peg behind the door. She removed her sneakers without untying the laces by stepping on the heels, then pulled her crocheted lime-green slippers over her socks. A dollar store find. They suited her. They were inexpensive and sufficiently dampened the sound of her feet against the floor. Anything to keep her mother from getting up and out of bed.

  Sarah shuffled through the darkened living room to the kitchen, reached through the door, groped for the switch and turned the light on. A ghoulish face stared back at her. She shouted. But it was only her mother.

  “What are you doing sitting in the dark?” Sarah demanded. It was the most she’d said to her in weeks.

  Her mother sat stiffly in her rumpled housecoat, obligatory cigarette in her hand. In front of her, spread out like playing cards, were dozens of photographs. Photographs of John. Sarah stepped down into the kitchen, glaring at the pictures. Were those the photos from the box in her room?

  “He was here,” her mother croaked.

  Sarah looked at her with disgust. She felt little for this woman, this old dishrag of a mother. The thin shadow that she had become, the hands, like claws, the shrunken face, wizened with care and sorrow and disappointment. She’d given up so easily. Succumbed. Sarah could see that she was upset, though. The ashtray overflowed with spent butts.

  “Who was here?” she asked.

  “John!” her mother barked, as though Sarah should have known. “He was here,” she said again, “walking through this house.” Her hand trembled as she lifted the cigarette to her pinched colourless mouth.

  “You couldn’t have seen him,” Sarah snapped back, but looked instinctively over her shoulder as she walked to the table. He wouldn’t show himself to you, she thought. He didn’t love you.

  Her ministrations were simply tolerated with quiet dignity, face turned toward the curtained window, arms held limply at either side. Her stupid attempt at comfort, sitting on the edge of the bed dutifully holding the spiritless hand. A miserable Pietà. And the painting of the deer she’d hung on the wall at the foot of the bed. “Something to look at,” she’d said, its deep colours a rich palette for the fanciful mental tapestries stitched by the mind’s slow decay. The fantastic mirages spun out like boiled sugar by morphine and hunger, eyes fluttering, pale lips moving in incomprehensible con versations with a procession of friends that paraded endlessly by, like some demonic masque.

  Sarah gathered the photos from the table, as her mother sat, unmoving. “Stay out of my things,” she ordered acidly.

  “He was here,” her mother repeated feebly as Sarah retreated to her room.

  There was the off chance that the old lady was finally crazy. That they were both crazy. Her mother had her strange ways, her coffee-and-cigarette religion, her mutterings, her loyalty to her bed, her housecoat and slippers that she wore like a uniform. But Sarah never considered for a moment that she would go totally off her nut and actually start hallucinating. He was here, she’d insisted. Why? Sarah thought angrily. To sift through the remains of spent cigarettes? Cipher the meaning of used coffee grounds in a forgotten cup?

  But she had seen him too. She would never tell her mother that—out of spite maybe, or jealousy. Jealous of a ghost. Sarah rejected the idea, trying to stem the wave of fear her mother’s admission had caused. Pulling the covers up to her chin, she confessed to herself that she was petrified he would show up again, with his muddy boots and icy hands. She was suddenly panic-stricken by the feeling that she was going to die, that death would root her out tonight, in her sleep. Maybe that’s what John was—the angel of death coming for her. Wasn’t that how it worked in the movies? Death assumed a friendly face, so it could catch you unawares.

  What form had death taken when it appeared to John? She tried to imagine what it had been like for him, wrestling with the certainty of it. “I just don’t think about it,” he had said, the morphine glazing his eyes. And then, “Could you stay, just until I’m asleep?”

  It was the sound again, the smothered baby, its plaintive cries resonating clearly in the subconscious rooms of her dreams. Sarah jolted awake, heart pounding, hands clammy with sweat. She held her breath and listened. The furnace kicked to life in the basement, whirring slowly, forcing air to rattle through the heating ducts. It was nothing, she told herself as she slumped in bed, burying her face in her hands.

  Before the baby she had been dreaming about John. It was a nice dream. Following him through the woods, moving easily through the trees. The forest murmuring all around them, calling ou
t their names in familiar voices. When John stopped, Sarah realized that they were standing in front of a tree—the oak tree. And then the dream changed. She was shut up in a room without light, the door sealed, the air thick, drawing like warm taffy into her lungs. The baby’s high-pitched wails distant and faint, emanating from the bottom of an abandoned well, then growing louder, until it sounded as if the baby were sealed in the room with her. But it wasn’t a baby. It was the sound of a woman crying.

  “Shhhit,” Sarah hissed. The familiar pain stabbed in her head as she threw the covers to one side. Her mouth was pasty and dry. She felt dizzy, too, the walls cocking slightly like a funhouse room. Her eyes darted involuntarily to the rug covering the trap door to the cellar. It was down there. Don’t get crazy, she thought. Composing herself on the edge of the bed, she rose unsteadily and worked her way to the door. There was the electric snap of fear when the door did not yield right away, and Sarah panicked, jerking it open with both hands, the jagged filament of hysteria breaking as she staggered backward from the effort. Steadying herself, she looked cautiously around the living room before walking softly to the kitchen, where she turned on the light and peered around again.

  When she was convinced it was safe, she moved to the bathroom, clicked on the light and closed the door. Her ashen face stared back at her in the mirror. She tilted her head back and inspected her nose. No blood. But her tongue was coated in a thick white film that she scraped with her fingernail, then scrubbed with her toothbrush until she felt she would retch. She ran hot water in the sink, rinsing the toothbrush thoroughly. A wave of fatigue washed over her as she dropped the toothbrush in its holder and gripped the edge of the basin, her knees buckling slightly. Leaning against the counter, she rested on her elbows until the feeling subsided. From that position she could see the underside of the medicine chest, a thin layer of mould speckling its bottom. She would need more than aspirin tonight.