by Paul Roscoe
He tried to summon Mary’s painting, but he couldn’t. He could only see his face, still patiently looking back at him.
The daisy chain broke, fell away, and Mr Ermey relaxed his grip.
He grinned at the mirror.
The mirror grimaced back.
As he ran a hand over his mouth, feeling its shape and trying to understand why it didn’t look right, his fingers discovered a small patch of stubble he had missed. The grimace instantly disappeared and he leaned into the mirror for a closer look; the offending hair growth was invisible, but – he ran his fingers over the offending patch once, twice, three times – it was definitely there. Without hesitation, Mr Ermey filled the sink, lathered, and shaved, pulling the razor in swift, businesslike strokes. Again, he drew blood: one nick underneath his right nostril, a slice down his left cheek, and a rash of spots above his Adam’s apple to match the others on his neck. He rinsed the razor, pulled the plug, and spun the water around to avoid leaving a tidemark. The water gurgled and then – Thud! Thud! Thud! – came the sound of it working through the ancient pipes. He listened to it as he towelled himself, trying his best to ignore it, trying his best to think of it as only water and not as the front door.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The sink was empty. The gurgling had stopped.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
A wave of weariness washed through him and for a moment he thought he might just sit down right where he stood, just sit down and let the house make its sounds, let it play its little game with him. But he stood, waiting. Apart from the slow drip from the faulty shower behind him, the house was silent. It felt good, just being able to ignore the mixed messages, if only for a moment. It felt good to be in control.
Thud! Thud! THUD!
Strength returned to his legs, and he watched himself carefully thread the towel back into its hoop, pull the bathroom door open, and step through it. Without thinking, he returned to the bedroom, but instead of picking up the casual white shirt that lay strewn on the bed, he removed his chinos and approached the mourning-wear that hung from the wardrobe doors. Quickly, he dressed for the occasion.
Nothing registered as he glided down the stairs, not the predictable creaks of the wood beneath his feet, not the bird portraits on the walls, not the stack of unopened envelopes at the foot of the stairs, not the way the light was now flooding the hallway from the glazed arch set in his front door, and not the way, even from this angle, he could see movement beyond it, a vague shadow shifting from foot to foot.
Mr Ermey almost jogged to the door. As he undid his many locks, he leant up against the warm, varnished wood and pushed his face into the glass, peering directly into the sunlight.
See? he thought. There is someone out there! Didn’t I tell you?
He pulled the last bolt free, then, shielding his face with his free hand and squinting into the sunlight, he opened the door.
Chapter Fifteen
1
In the moment between the state of pure non-existence and the first inkling of his worldly re-entry, Alex found himself in a state of utterly perfect, and utterly deep, sleep.
If the afterlife is as good as this, I don’t think I’ll mind being dead after all.
The world switched on, switched off around him. At one instant it was an endless indigo firmament, the wind lapping his face, at another it was a black, infinite nothingness in which to sink forever, sink and forget. Although neither option seemed particularly alluring on its own – they both seemed a little bleak for heaven and hell – being caught between the two was sort of fun. In that endless transitory moment, Alex began to piece together the last few moments of his life. There was the car; the woman behind the wheel mouthing ‘shit’; and the ringing of a bell that summoned an image of a yellow cartoon bird being hit by a gargantuan hammer, the bird haloed by twinkling stars, its eyes rolling in their sockets. Warner Bros should really scrap the twinkling stars and the tweeting birdies and have one very long and very high note instead. That’d be more realistic, at least. Eventually, Tweetie Pie gave way to the image of his shoe lying in the middle of the road; the damn thing had been too far to reach, and he remembered thinking, I’d better move that before someone runs over it and flattens it, ha ha someone flattened me.
What next? Oh yes – Mr Gold Star. He recognised the smell immediately; Gold Star Shaving it was his father’s choice of shaving cream and by default his also. The man reeked of it, that, and the acidic tang of panic sweat.
Alex thought Mr Gold Star was a big, dumb jerk. He had wanted to beat his fists against Mr Gold Star’s ears, sink his teeth into Mr Gold Star’s neck – do anything in fact to make Mr Gold Star stop for one moment and think about what he was doing. But Mr Gold Star had had a plan, and that plan involved jiggling Alex’s broken bones about as best he could. Mr Gold Star could go kill himself.
What next? Oh yes: the smell of bleach and other cleaning products, a hospital smell.
And then…this.
A transitory place.
Yes, you can call it that if you like.
I’ve been sleeping...haven’t I?
No. Those moments simply didn’t exist, at least not for you.
Really? Haven’t I been sleeping? Haven’t I been dreaming?
You know better than that, Alex.
Alex opened his eyes. Buddy was up close and grinning; his eyes looked fierce and alive.
“Well, well, well. Look who’s here, folks. It’s Al the man. Welcome back.”
2
Whilst dawn minded its own business in the distance, Bracton Hill slumbered. Nothing ever bothered it much. Not the constant wind, not the nearly constant rain, and not the clouds that rippled across the sky, descending as they wished. Men had come, but they would surely go again, nothing was more certain than that. Some had built walls across its pastures, some had dug reservoirs in its crevices, and some had tended gardens, planted trees, made fittings, and lit huge fires warning of invasion. There had been some mining for building materials, but Bracton Hill had been spared a motorway. So far. And even if that was somehow inevitable, it would be accepted with only a sigh and a slight shrug. Thus it was with great indifference that the mighty hill welcomed Alex Turner back into the world.
The black, fluttering shape gathered form and mass next to the beacon. The others were there, waiting. Although he had seen the swallows in Richmond Recreational Ground, Buddy was excited by the idea that this was Alex he was watching – the lack of threat made for a more voyeuristic spectacle.
“Do you think he’ll have seen him?” Tom was hunched over his crossed legs, passing Buddy’s cigarette packet from one hand to the other.
“Are you going to smoke one of those things, or what?” Mary asked, her head resting on her interlaced fingers. She had found a sheep dropping-free patch of grass roughly the size of her body and had been lying on her front for the last hour or so.
“Nah, he just likes to hold them,” Buddy said. “Why? Do you want one?”
“Sure. Give.”
Tom placed the lighter on top of the soft-pack and handed them over. Mary stuck a cigarette between her lips. She held the Zippo, contemplating it.
Buddy watched, then said, “You pull the lid back and-”
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” Mary spun the wheel and shielded the flame. She brought her hands to her face, her skin reflecting the orange glow, then closed the lighter with a snap and tossed it and the cigarettes back to Tom. “This brings back memories,” she sighed, exhaling.
“They’ve got to be pretty old memories, if they’re of smoking my fags.”
“Old’ens but gold’ens, Buddy-boy.” Mary took another huge drag and rolled her eyes. “Old’ens but gold’ens.”
Tom passed the cigarettes back to Buddy and gestured to the writhing figure which none of them had approached yet. “Do you think he’s done?”
“Let’s see.” Buddy got up and walked towards the beacon, noting the gradual appearance of Alex’s features as m
ore and more birds grew weary of their task and flew away. Buddy turned to Mary. “Did it take this long with me?”
Both Tom and Mary shook their heads.
“It’s because he wasn’t a suicide,” Mary said. “We’ve really messed things up.”
Tom shook his head. “None of us were suicides, not really. Or am I wrong? Did you actually want to kill yourself?”
“Of course not.”
“Well then.”
Mary tapped ash, letting the wind snatch it away and sprinkle it over the hillside. Orange speckles dotted the horizon. A distant truck passed over the hill. The beacon cast a long shadow in which Alex now lay, the birds finally gone. Buddy leaned over him as he opened his eyes.
“Well, well, well. Look who’s here, everyone. It’s Al the man. Welcome back big guy.”
Alex sat up on his elbows and shook his head; he yawned, gave a teary-eyed smile, and waved. “I’ve got to say it: that was the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.” He grinned at them. “I mean, come on, the dead don’t sleep any better than that.”
3
“So, did you see him?”
For a moment, Alex thought that Tom was asking if he had had a chance to talk to Buddy about Mary’s death, but then he realised that that made no sense at all. Tom had died since then, and Buddy too. And besides, he thought, Buddy and Mary are right here. Then, for a more considerable amount of time, Alex simply stared at Tom, his mouth slowly forming the first consonant of, What?
To his credit, Tom bore this with patience and good humour.
Then it came to him: the dreams.
Him.
David.
The others saw him just before they died. I know, because I saw him just before Buddy…
“I’m sorry, Tom. All I know is I got squished, and then this.” Alex spread out his hands, gesturing to the grass that rolled out before him. “I’m glad it doesn’t hurt anymore. What day is this?”
“Thursday.”
“Thursday. Right, so it would have been Tuesday night,” he pointed at Buddy, “the last night I saw you. I had a dream I saw you meet David, but it was weird: as soon as he appeared, everything went still. And all I could do was look at the floor. I wanted to warn you that he was there, but…I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
“There was nothing you could do. You were paralysed or something. I saw you.”
Alex ran a hand through his hair, and then looked at his hand. “I can’t believe I’m dead. I mean, this is so weird, turning up here with you guys again. I guess I should go home and see how everyone is.”
Buddy, Tom, and Mary simultaneously looked elsewhere and made vague noises of agreement. Not knowing what to make of this, Alex pressed on, “So how come you’re all hanging out together now?”
Tom turned at that. “We don’t have much of a choice when it comes to the mornings. This is where we find ourselves – it’s where you found yourself, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“Well, it’s just the same for the rest of us. We can pretty much do whatever we feel like, although it tends not to have an effect. Yesterday, however...”
Mary glared at him. Tom glared back.
“We might as well tell him. Yesterday, we were doing a little experiment to see if we could make a juice carton stay in one place.”
Alex raised his eyebrows.
“I know how stupid that sounds, but stick around. Anyway, the experiment was a kind of group meditation, and it was a total failure, the carton didn’t stay where it was supposed to. But there was a strange side effect.”
“Me seeing you.”
“Alex,” Tom said. “I’ve got to ask. Exactly when did you get so smart?”
“About the time I stopped hanging around with you dickheads.”
For a moment no one said anything, and then laughter erupted. Despite everything, Alex thought, their being together felt good, just as it always had.
“So in a way,” said Mary, “it’s sort of our fault that you died the way you did.”
“What do you mean, it was your fault?” Alex started to rub his temples.
“We followed you for most of yesterday, so pretty much everything you did we know about. Even when you had to go to the toilet.”
Colour appeared in Alex’s cheeks.
“But don’t worry, I didn’t follow you in there. There’s a limit to my interest, you know. Anyway the point is we followed you and we distracted you at a point when you really didn’t need it.”
The wind’s steady whisper and whistle across the beacon’s sharp edges finally made its presence known by stopping. Silence exploded like a feather pillow. The three boys stared at the girl in black, her legs tucked beneath her, her hands still at last.
She looked at Alex and was surprised by the delicate mixture of understanding and calm in his face.
“Look. I was the one that walked out into the way of that car, distraction or no distraction. It’s not like you pushed me.” He looked at the grass, shook his head and laughed softly. “It was so weird that I just froze. I mean, the pavement was right there,” he thrust his hands out in Mary’s direction, who flinched slightly, “and I remember thinking I was drunk or something. Like I couldn’t put a foot straight. In the end, I just threw myself at it, but even then my legs felt like they were stuck together.”
Alex took a huge breath that seemed to go on forever. He stopped when he realised there was no compulsion to exhale. “So when did I die?”
“Not that long after you were admitted to hospital,” Buddy said. “Some guy came and scraped you off the pavement and took you to the A & E at Bracton Infirmary. We hitched a ride with him, and stayed with you until the end.”
“Did they say anything about Mr Gold Star making my injuries fatal?”
“Who?”
“The guy that came and got me. There’s no way he should have been moving me, even I know that.”
“Oh, er, no. I don’t think so. We didn’t spend much time with him once you were in hospital, so they might have, you never know.”
Alex paused to consider this, then shrugged. What does it matter now, right?
“So you guys were around the bed when I checked out.”
“Yep,” Buddy said. Tom nodded, as did Mary.
In a voice that was little louder than a whisper, Tom said, “We thought we might have seen you, you know, enter the…spirit world right there and then. But it seems we were wrong. It appears that being on top of Bracton Hill at sunrise is most conducive to the start of the ghostly life. Heaven knows why.” Tom cast Alex a knowing look. “That is, you didn’t go anywhere else before you came here?”
“Oh, for the love of all good things in whatever world this is, Tom. I told you a thousand times already. I got run over, then I turned up here for Happy Hour.”
Tom looked away, making small nods of the head, red blotches appearing beneath his cheekbones.
“I’m sorry if I didn’t quite make the party as expected, and I’m sorry if I didn’t speak to the man in charge, but I’m here now, on schedule. Now, does anyone have any plans?”
Sat in a circle, the four teenagers looked from one to the other. Half-thoughts and guesses floated before their eyes, ideas that fell short of real suggestions, just vague hints of underdeveloped theories, angles and wonderings. No one said anything.
Eventually Mary raised a hand.
“Go on,” Alex said.
Mary’s voice was different, broken somehow, as though she was having difficulty breathing. With horror, the three boys realised that Mary Townsend was on the verge of tears.
“I’ll understand if you don’t want to go,” she said, holding an unsteady smile, “but since we’re dressed for it, I was thinking about going to my funeral.”
Chapter Sixteen
1
“You do realise that there’s no way I would ever be able to dress like this normally. I mean, talk about posh – just look at me.”
Alex was standing at the corner of Syca
more Drive, adjusting his tie. Cherry blossom littered the grass strips between the mini-roundabout and the pavement, and a mild gust of wind scattered the pink petals into the empty street. Despite there being no traffic, the sounds of cars and people echoed everywhere, as if life was something happening nearby, but forever unseen and out of reach. Everything – the family arguing over their suitcases in a nearby driveway; the postman staring into his bag; the dull-eyed woman at the window – seemed frozen in time, part of a moment that would play itself out endlessly, repeated again and again, upholding the sanctity of this idyllic suburban photograph.
An old Volkswagen Golf lay abandoned by the side the road, jutting out at an angle, its front left tyre mounting the kerb. Someone had left the window wound down. As they passed, both boys had automatically done a quick scan for the owner, but neither had seen anyone.
“I tell you what, Al, you get sick of these rags soon enough,” Buddy said, his hands plunged deep in the front pockets of his pants, making his buttoned jacket crumple and billow beneath his arms. “I’ve only been wearing mine a day, and already I feel like someone out of a gangster film.”
Tom shook his jacket off, checked for dandruff across the shoulders, and couldn’t quite believe that there was none. He shrugged it back on. “I don’t mind it so much,” he said. “It certainly beats school uniform. A higher quality thread altogether.” He patted the arms of his jacket, adjusted his tie, and fastened every button in sight.
Mary walked a little further past the boys, so that she stood at the entrance to her old street, looking in. The mouth of her driveway was visible, and parked cars were lined nose to nose on either side of the road. The reason for the abundance of transport took a moment to register, but when it did, the spaces inside her body felt tremendously light. She turned back to the boys.
“Ready?”
“Are you?” Tom asked.
“As I’ll ever be. Come on.” Without discussion, they grouped themselves around her like bodyguards, Alex and Buddy on either side with Tom bringing up the rear, and set off down Sycamore Drive.