The Feast of All Souls

by Simon Bestwick

  “I hadn’t heard anything of you for a few years,” he said. “So I – oh, God.”

  “It’s all right, really.” The crying had stopped at last; she dabbed her eyes dry, fumbled for her make-up case, started rectifying the damage as best she could. It wasn’t all right, of course; it never would be.

  Chris sat in mortified silence. “Forget it,” Alice said. “You didn’t know. Shit happens.” Her voice wobbled on the last word; she took a deep breath.

  “What about Andrew?”

  “Still in Sussex. I heard he’s seeing someone else.”

  “The bastard.” Chris had met Andrew at a couple of reunions. Alice had always felt he hadn’t liked Andrew much. Maybe he’d still been carrying a torch. Didn’t really matter.

  Chris coughed, slurped what sounded like half his coffee and swirled the remainder in its mug. “Anyway. You didn’t come here to... I mean it’s good to see you, but...”

  “But I said there was something I wanted your opinion on.” Alice opened her shoulder-bag. “What do you make of this?”

  Chris frowned at the object in its Asda carrier bag, looked up at her dubiously, then unwrapped it. He became still as he got his first clear look. “Good grief.” He fumbled a pair of gloves out of a drawer, donned them and eased the spearhead out of the bag. “Where did you find this?”

  “Grounds of the house I’ve moved into,” she said. That was close enough to the truth for now.

  “Amazing,” he said at last. “Really quite extraordinary. It’s in very good condition for its age.”

  “How old...”

  “Well, I’ll have to do more detailed tests to be sure. But if I’m right – and I think I am – we’re looking at two, three thousand years, at least.”

  “Jesus. Really?”

  “Well, it’s made of bronze. That makes it a lot easier to guess at the age range. After the end of the Neolithic, before the Iron Age got going...”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you mind if I hang onto this?”

  “No. No, of course not. Just... if we can keep it quiet for now? I’ve only just moved in there and I’m finally getting settled in.”

  “Sure. I mean, I’ll let you know if I think this is going to be the find of the century or something, but, you know, we’re not just gonna storm onto your property and start digging things up. Illegal, for a start.” He grinned, and after a moment Alice smiled back. “Look... if I think a dig would be a good idea, I’ll get in touch and let you know, but it’s up to you if or when anything happens on your property.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it.”

  “That’s... you’re welcome. Are you gonna be all right?”

  “I’ve no idea. I mean, not in the long run. Do you think you can ever get over something like this?”

  It wasn’t a rebuke but a genuine question, and to her relief Chris took it as such. She saw him glance at the picture of his two sons. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hope so, but...” he trailed off, caught between honesty and wanting to comfort her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “In the short term, though – yeah, I’ll be okay. Relatively speaking.”

  “Here’s my card. If there’s anything we can do – even if it’s just a friend to talk to... or if you ever want to come over, have dinner... I know Marzena would love to meet you.”

  That torch he’d carried, it had never completely gone out. “Thanks, Chris. I’ll see you later.”

  When he hugged her, she patted his back and pecked his cheek and quickly slipped away before she could start crying again.

  ALICE WALKED BACK down the Crescent and Chapel Street, then caught a bus into Manchester. She got off at Piccadilly, and once more flinched from the noise and heaving of it, the babbling, thundering, rushing crowd.

  It felt as if you couldn’t stand still for a moment, as if you constantly had to be alert and dodging other pedestrians, but she knew it wasn’t so bad. Compared to London, say, Manchester was almost sedate. The fact was that she was too used to living far from anywhere these days, staying indoors and going for a ramble on Browton Vale. She’d have to start making more trips into town. Toughen herself up a little. Otherwise she’d end up a complete shut-in.

  Somehow, she managed to get across the Metrolink tracks to Piccadilly Gardens. They’d changed significantly. When she’d last lived in Manchester, they’d been a big, largely untouched sprawl of grass, usually the haunt of the homeless and mix of subcultures – punks, goths, indie kids and crusties. Now the grass was trimmed and sculpted; there were benches and fountains, bijou restaurants and cafés. As she entered the Gardens, she found a Caffè Nero to her left; she wove through the outside tables and went inside. She found an empty table that was clean, unmarked except for a flyer advertising a double bill of Dracula and The Wicker Man at the Dancehouse for Halloween.

  She grimaced and brushed it aside. She’d always found films like that hilarious; it had always infuriated John, who’d luxuriated in their atmosphere. Her taste had run to old black and white Hollywood movies – comedies especially – and subtitled European films, while Andrew had preferred thrillers. She was almost tempted to go to the screening, though. Given what she’d seen at Collarmill Road, Christopher Lee’s plastic fangs would be just the kind of light relief she needed.

  She ordered a skinny latte, donned her iPod earbuds and sat in a soft leather chair by the window, watching the faces swarm past. Except that now another dread kept building in her, then ebbing away again. It took her a minute to realise what it was.

  The crowd moved like a tide at the shoreline, surging through seaweed and rockpools, then retreating. The bodies in it would cluster together or flow in unison along a route – and then part. It was when the crowd parted that she felt uneasy, she realised; every time it happened she was afraid of what it might reveal, what might grin or glare back at her.

  But nothing did. Not this time, anyway. She breathed out. She wasn’t a shut-in yet. Then again, that was hardly a surprise, considering what she’d be shutting herself in with. In fact, she might have to look for a hotel room in Manchester. Another night in that house – another one like last night – would finish her. She’d have to lay the ghosts – everything in her revolted at the term, but what else could she call them? – learn to live with them, or run away.

  The last option was the only one she’d flat-out refuse to countenance. She’d meant what she’d said to Chris: she had no idea what kind of life you could have when you’d lost a child. Or, more specifically, what kind of life she could. Some people did rebuild – a new marriage, new children – but could she? She honestly didn’t know. But to rebuild, you needed a foundation; you had to stop somewhere. You had to face the ghosts.

  She looked away from the crowd and switched on her smart phone. The café had wifi access, thank God. She called up Facebook and scrolled through memes and cat pictures to distract herself.

  With little success, though. The stone in the garden, the spearhead: they weren’t products of her imagination, they were physical artefacts. The fear had plagued her, on the way to see Chris, that the spearhead might prove to be some innocuous piece of metal, like a rusty kitchen knife, that some kinked portion of her mind insisted on warping into something else. But Chris had confirmed it. Unless she’d hallucinated that too – but at some point you had to trust some of your perceptions, or you’d be paralysed.

  There was a line, then: a line between what was real and what couldn’t possibly be. But it was blurred. So, she had to establish what was delusion and what was actually real. A doctor could help her with that – unless he dismissed evidence that didn’t fit his preconceptions, of course.

  So on the other front, someone needed to examine the house –

  She stopped. Then, after a moment, she began scrolling up her Facebook screen until the icons at the top were visible: notifications, messages and friend requests. She clicked on the last of these and a list unrolled.

  A short list: there was o
nly one unanswered request there. In miniature, Jon Revell’s face smiled out at her.

  Alice’s finger hovered over the ‘Confirm’ button. Here was a whole can of worms and no mistake, Dad would have said. She hesitated, her coffee cooling beside her. Finally she clicked ‘Confirm’. You and John Revell are now friends.

  There was a lot more detail now. Single, his relationship status read. Lives in Manchester. She bit her lip. Maybe –

  The phone beeped. You have one new Facebook message. Alice hesitated for a moment, then tapped.

  It was from John.

  Hi there, Alice. Thanks for the add! John x

  After a moment, she typed a reply.

  Hi there handsome.

  She hesitated, then deleted the last word. It had come to her so readily – even though when she and John had first been dating, neither of them had so much as sent an email. But it was the kind of thing she would have said, or written, back then. Christ, it was so easy – almost frighteningly so – to fall back into old patterns. She’d better be careful about that.

  Hi there. How are you? Alice. After a moment, she decided adding an ‘x’ would be okay.

  She clicked ‘send’. John replied within the minute. I’m okay. Back in Manchester.

  Me too, she typed. Didn’t know you were away?

  Here and there. Bristol for a bit. Then Reading. Glad to be oop North again, to be honest.

  Yeah. It’s cheaper, apart from anything else.

  You’re back in Manchester now?

  Yeah. Moved back about a week ago. She hesitated, then typed, I’m in town, if you fancy meeting up.

  She waited, biting her lip, until the reply came through a couple of minutes later. He’d had to think about that one, she thought. How close had he come to refusal?

  That sounds nice, he wrote. When and where?

  How about dinner at the Koreana? We used to like going there.

  Are they still there?

  Yup! She’d idly checked online earlier today – or perhaps it hadn’t been so idle. About seven?

  After a small eternity, he replied.

  Okay.

  Chapter Eleven

  One is One and All Alone

  May 2000

  IT STARTED OVER Colchester, of all places. But then it wasn’t really true to say that was where it started; it had begun almost two years earlier, when Dorothea Revell had collapsed and died on her own landing, out of the blue. That had been the first cut, severing so many of the fibres that had bound John to her, but like many mortal wounds it hadn’t looked that serious – at least not enough to be fatal.

  But when both sides of a cut are pulled different ways – however gently, at least at first – the rent can only widen, until something vital is torn away.

  “Babe?” called John.

  “Mm?”

  It was a two-bed flat in Prestwich, a neighbourhood that ranged from the posh to the grotty. Their street was neither the best nor the worst. It wasn’t bad; it was acceptable for a young couple with their sights set on the kind of jobs requiring a B.Sc. (Hons) in Physics. Except that Alice wasn’t sure if they both still wanted that now.

  She was in the living room, curled up on the sofa, reading through a sheaf of papers for the job interview, jotting down notes as she went. John was in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil.

  Alice was twenty-five years old.

  “I was thinking, tomorrow night – what do you say to a curry and a film?”

  “Can’t.”

  “You sure?” John came through, a steaming mug in each hand. “That Gladiator’s on. Thought you had a thing for Russell Crowe.”

  Alice stuck her tongue out at him, gratefully accepted one of the coffees. “Maybe the weekend? I’m not gonna be home until about nine.”

  “Say what?”

  “I told you, didn’t I?”

  “Told me what?”

  “I got an interview, for that job?”

  “What job?”

  “You know.”

  “Um...” John swept a hand over the top of his head, to illustrate the topic’s trajectory in relation to him.

  Alice frowned. “I didn’t tell you?”

  “Not unless I hit my head and forgot about it.”

  “Always possible.”

  “So, what job?”

  “Researcher. At NuTech Labs. It’s a plum job.”

  “NuTech? The hell are they at?”

  “I told you –”

  “– you didn’t tell me –”

  “– they’re in Colchester.”

  “Where?”

  “Col –”

  “Fucking Colchester?”

  “Hey! Will you not yell at me, please?”

  John snorted through his nose. “Colchester? I mean, you know where the place is, right? Like, two, three hundred miles away?”

  “It’s just an interview, John.”

  “Yeah, but it’s kind of a big thing, innit? Can’t exactly commute from Manchester. We’d have to relocate.”

  Even then, had she been thinking not necessarily, thinking you don’t want to go, stay here? Perhaps she hadn’t quite articulated such thoughts to herself, but they were there, moving under the surface, silent in the deep and waiting their time to rise. “Look, jobs like this aren’t exactly thick on the ground. We talked about this. You’ve got to go where the work is.”

  “And what about my work?”

  Because, of course, his work was so much more important than hers. “Which work’s that, John? Teaching A-Level stuff at an FE college?”

  “It pays the bills.”

  “And it can just as easily pay them in bloody Colchester. You’re in a rut. You’re comfortable there and you don’t want to move. Fine. But I do. I want to do some proper work, real work. Stuff that pays properly, not the kind where I’m always struggling to keep on top. But anyway, that’s not the real work you’re on about, is it?”

  John glared, silent.

  “No, what you really want is to keep spending your nights trying to record ghosts talking or looking at crappy blurred night-time photos and trying to convince yourself you can see a face. What the hell’s that supposed to be?”

  John turned away. “You’ve got your work, I’ve got mine.”

  “Work? It’s not even science, John, it’s just a load of airy-fairy wish-fulfilment bollocks –”

  “Hey!”

  “– and a few bloody chancers have come up with some sciencey-sounding names for the same old bullshit.”

  “You don’t know what happens when you die, Alice. That’s the whole point, no-one does.”

  “Yeah, right. Whatever. You die and you rot, that’s it. All religion’s about is controlling people and teaching them to hate anybody who’s not them. And, and, talking a load of crap about an afterlife, that’s for bloody losers, John, it’s for weak people, stupid people who can’t deal with reality.”

  She managed to stop then, but of course it was too late. She’d tried to tell herself in later years that she’d lost her temper and that her tongue ‘outran her head’ as she’d once heard it phrased, but she couldn’t lie to herself now, not seeing it all, hearing it all, thinking it all again. She’d been angry at him – not just the parapsychology but the lack of ambition, the energy being poured away into something else instead of into advancing himself, the willingness to settle. Because John was softer than her, had known an easier – or at least more stable – upbringing, not the poverty and risk Alice had.

  Maybe she’d wanted to snap him out of his apathy, or maybe, really, she’d just wanted him gone, and to do that she’d needed to hurt him. So she’d aimed for the tenderest spot, and hit home.

  The two of them were glaring at each other: John angry and hurt, because all he’d asked was that she didn’t openly mock his half-belief, his prayer, his hope that death might not be the end, that she at least left him that illusion, if illusion it was, and she’d rejected that. And her, proud in her own belief, holding it a weak
ness to spare religion or any such superstition.

  He could have said something; so could she. Something to heal the rift. But neither did, and that was it.

  She hadn’t even got the job, either, in the end. As it was, it took another five months for the relationship to die; if she had got the job they’d probably have been put out of their misery the sooner. But she’d been miserable and preoccupied after the argument, by the thought of her and John drifting apart. And so she’d been off her game, no longer so sure if she even wanted the job, and she’d known even before she’d left that she’d blown it. And that, in its turn, had ensured that by the time she got back to Manchester, she’d been angrier still.

  And five months later...

  October 2000

  FIVE MONTHS LATER she was stamping down the flat’s stairs out to Dad’s waiting van, a cardboard box of belongings in her arms. John stood at the top, watching; once he tried to pick up one of the boxes but she yanked it from his grip and walked off in silence.

  Neither said anything; there was nothing left to say. John and Dad eyed each other uncomfortably, a mix of hostility and embarrassment and even maybe a kind of uneasy kinship. We’ve both let her down, Dad’s eyes seemed to say; John seemed to nod fractionally in response.

  Or perhaps she’d just been tired and she’d imagined it all.

  She slammed the van doors on the last of the boxes and marched round to the passenger seat. She looked at John; he looked back at her, then turned and went inside, slamming the door shut behind him.

  “Well,” Dad sighed, “that went well.”

  Alice, trying not to cry.

  It was autumn and leaves were starting to fall.

  February 2001

  IT WAS LATE February and winter was almost done. When Alice went jogging in the park near her parents’ home she saw crocuses bursting up out through the earth, daffodils on a green near the pond. The air was still cold, but no longer so cold it billowed from your mouth like smoke, as if the icy scorch of it had set your lungs on fire. The sunlight was softer now, no longer hard and glassy. The earth would wake. There would be renewal, rebirth; the seasons’ ancient cycles would enter their next phase for the millionth, the billionth time, a time beyond counting.