Kiss the Goat: A Twenty-First Century Ghost Story

by Brian Stableford

  She stayed in the bed, though. This time, she was not going to get up no matter how uncomfortably full and lumpy the narrow space became. This time, she wasn’t going to walk into Rose Selavy’s trap; the ghost would have to come to her.

  But the ghost was cleverer than that—cleverer that Kit or Stephen the Art Historian could ever have anticipated, or believed. Kit never saw a thing until Stephen sat up in bed, thrusting her arm aside, staring into the wall that was only a couple of inches from the end of his nose.

  “Oh shit,” he said, faintly.

  It was difficult to tell from the quality of his voice whether Stephen was actually awake, or in some kind of sleepwalker’s limbo. What was certain, though, was that he wasn’t seeing a blank and solid wall that would have been primrose yellow if it hadn’t been so dark.

  Kit sat up too, as Stephen repeated his curse, more tremulously than before.

  “What is it?” she asked. She had to ask, and asking wasn’t enough in itself; it wasn’t until he grabbed her wrist, and squeezed it hard, that the wall dissolved for her too, and she found herself staring into...well, perhaps not Hell, but certainly not Hull or Halifax.

  When the scene behind the paint had shown itself to her the previous might it had been a picture, like a frame abstracted from a comic book. It had been as flat as a page, not even a concoction of oils but something more like plastic: acrylic, probably, or the glossy enamel sold in tiny tins for painting bicycle frames. It was not a painting now. It was a three-dimensional space, viewed directly rather than through any kind of protective window. The Devil was no mere assembly of blocks of vermilion, brown and purple outlined and shaded in black. He was something from a phantasmagoric zoo or wildlife park, displaying his absurdly polished arse while looking back at them over his shoulder, leering an invitation that might be a threat in disguise.

  Kiss the goat.

  Kiss the goat and sell your soul.

  Kiss the goat and damn your eyes.

  Kiss the goat and join the Company of the Damned.

  Kiss the goat and....

  But it was an invitation, Kit thought. It wasn’t a threat. The demonettes were hovering in space now, but the fact that they were hovering, not soaring or plummeting like hawks, made them seem more akin to hummingbirds than raptors. If Kit and Stephen were looking into Hell—if the borderlands of Pandemonium had actually opened up beside them as they slept, or didn’t quite sleep—they weren’t about to be consumed by its punishing flames. For all its redness, the landscape wasn’t giving off any heat, and the Devil didn’t seem to be in any mood for gobbling them up or rending them limb from limb.

  There was something in Satan’s gaze that Kit could never have anticipated seeing there: not pleading, or anxiety, but not malevolence either. If that was what evil looked like in its purest imaginable state, she thought, then it wasn’t as bad as it was sometimes painted. Maybe her mother had been right about the bad seed business after all, and had simply mistaken the nature of the flower that would bloom therefrom, in the right hothouse.

  And then the Devil turned away. Perhaps he had lost interest, or perhaps he was only pretending not to care. Either way, he turned way, and immediately seemed to be a million miles away rather than forty yards. Then Hell itself faded into a pink miasma of the kind that a primrose mist might generate under the influence of a red light-bulb.

  Kit knew perfectly well that she had changed the light-bulb back again, to a standard hundred-watter—but Rose Selavy didn’t seem to be afraid of minor continuity errors. The phantom whore knew that she didn’t have take any account of that kind of resistance.

  It was Stephen’s turn to look around. This time, he didn’t have anything to say, however pointless. Kit felt sure that he had been well and truly converted to belief in ghosts. It was a matter of necessity, and he didn’t even try to fight it. But would he condescend to remember his new-found faith, when he arrived at a time when he could look back and dismiss the whole episode as an illusion?

  Rose Selavy was sitting on the settee again, wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing the night before. Maybe she was working with a restricted wardrobe, Kit thought, or maybe time worked so differently on the other side that she’d come straight from that moment to this, without any opportunity or need to change.

  “Boo!” the ghost said, although there wasn’t a goose in sight.

  “Okay,” said Kit. “We’ll play. We’ll both play. Just tell us what it is you want.”

  “It’s okay,” Stephen whispered in her ear. “It’s okay. I think I know what she wants. I think I’ve figured it out.”

  “What?” Was the only reply Kit could manage.

  “I like him,” Rose Selavy said, in what was presumably her working voice. “He’s good, isn’t he? I could really get in touch with him. Nice work, love. This really is nice work. We’re quite a team, aren’t we? I think this is going to work out just fine.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kit said, insistently. “What’s going on? What do you want from me?”

  “She’s a whore,” Stephen whispered, although Kit couldn’t believe that Rose Selavy wouldn’t hear him, no matter how quietly he spoke. “I think we need to talk to her pimp.”

  Kit’s head twitched as she suppressed a reflexive urge to turn round again, to face the wall and the creature that had retreated into its purgatorial shadows.

  “Not him,” Stephen said. “He’s just a cartoon. A mask. It couldn’t the Devil that sent her. It must have been someone else. That’s how we can get rid of her—by going over her head, by going to the source.”

  Kit felt that she wasn’t keeping up. She hadn’t anticipated this. Or had she? Who was telling this tale? Did it have a conclusion already built in, or was it being made up as it went along? Did she really want to meet a phantom whore’s phantom pimp? Did she have any choice? Maybe, she thought, it hadn’t been such a good idea to get Stephen’s fertile brain involved, if he was only going to become part of the problem and not part of the solution.

  “He’s a good punter,” Rose Selavy said, still looking at Kit and still talking to her. “He’s exactly what we need to complete the picture. You’ll work well together. I can see that. Not an obvious choice, but inspired. You couldn’t have done it without him. Two heads are so much better than one. Folie à deux is always more fun, and couples have so many more possibilities. Let me go to work on him, and I’ll have him eating out of my hand—or whatever—before you know it. This really might work, you know. It really might.”

  “Who?” Kit said to Stephen. “Who sent her? I don’t understand.”

  “Can you bring him here?” Stephen said, in his normal voice, addressing the ghost directly for the first time. “Tell him we’re ready—now or whenever.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Rose Selavy said. “There are restrictions. If there weren’t, there wouldn’t be a problem. You’ll have to go to him. We all have to go to him, if we can. Most can’t. Even I can only walk the streets I know. Believe me, ducks, you don’t know what freedom is until it’s gone. You’ll have to go to him—but after that, you’ll know what you have to do. He’ll explain. He’ll set it up. He’ll take care of everything. We can all get together. It’ll be a blast.”

  “Who?” Kit still wanted to know.

  “Where?” was Stephen’s question.

  “Start in the cemetery,” was Rose Selavy’s answer. “Some things never change. It’s where all the old dead people are. It’s the crossroads, the junction, the parting of the ways. You want to see ghosts, love, go to the graveyard. It’s no resting-place, believe me, but it’s a start. A stop and a start. You can’t start from here, ducks. You have to start from the beginning. Go look in the cemetery. I’m buried there myself, but I’m no angel set in stone. You need to find the local busybody, the oldest inhabitant. The cross marks the spot. The crosses mark all the spots, all the buried treasures. No crosses for the buried trash, no matter how holy we are or were. No angels. You’ll find him there. I
t’s all a matter of timing. Just stick to the timetable. Ghosts walk at midnight—and howl and scream and screw and whatever else they do. That’s where it begins. The afterlife. Eternity. Or not. It’s where all the flowers go to die, when the grim wreather cuts them. All the redder than red roses and the bluer than sky violets and the whiter than white lilies. He’ll find you there, if you only give him the chance. He’ll tell you what to do. He’ll take care of everything. All the flowers. Even the ones that grow. You’ll find him in the cemetery, where he’s always been. Always and forever. Among the dead. Don’t blink.”

  Alas, the instruction came too late. Kit had already blinked.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Stephen was already collecting his clothes, obviously intending to get dressed. He explained, when asked, that he didn’t think it was right that Kit should have to sleep on the settee while he hogged her bed, and that it would be better for him to go home to his own bed than to use the settee himself. He seemed to be at least half asleep, but that wasn’t the relevant issue. The relevant issue was that he was in full retreat.

  Kit was afraid, but she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. The time evidently wasn’t right to engage him in a long and arduous conversation about the import of what Rose Selavy had said, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he’d already blanked it out by telling himself that it was all a dream. There was still a chance that he had taken the evidence aboard and accepted the revelation. For the moment, therefore, Kit contented herself by suggesting, warily, that they ought to meet in the Phoenix at seven. The Admiral Benbow and the Jack-in-the-Box were both closer to Cemetery Junction but she knew from driving the last 17 back into town that the Benbow was a gay pub, and anyone who’s seen the paint job could easily deduce that the Jack-in-the-Box had been taken over and tarted up by one of the godawful chains that had wrecked the town centre, and had to be avoided on a point of principle.

  “I can’t tomorrow,” Stephen said. “I’ve got something on. I’ll ring you Friday.”

  The shock of that blunt statement left her feeling slightly numb. Something on was vague enough to mean anything at all, but in Kit’s experience such formulations were more likely to be down the you’ve just been dumped but I don’t have the heart to tell you straight out end of the excuse-spectrum than the it’s my little sister’s birthday and she’ll cry her eyes out if I don’t turn up but I’ll be back as soon as I can come hell or high water end.

  “What about the cemetery?” she asked, faintly. The last word almost stuck in her throat, but she managed to get it out.

  “It’ll have to wait,” he said. Just like that: it’ll have to wait. Rose Selavy had been wrong about Stephen. He wasn’t a good worker at all. He was scared. He hadn’t been prepared to admit it while they were huddling together for warmth, but he wasn’t ready to take this kind of responsibility aboard. He didn’t want to complete the picture. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to be in the picture, now that the background wasn’t just background any more. He wanted time to think, to consider his options. He wanted time to ask himself exactly what he wanted, and whether it was what he ought to want, and what he ought to do about it if it wasn’t. He had something on all right, and not just his clothes.

  He even collected up the CD cases that were scattered on the table. He left the red light-bulb where it was, but even that seemed more like a kind of rejection than an oversight or a gift.

  “I’ll call,” he promised again, before he left.

  “If I’m not here,” she told him, meaningfully, “leave a message. I’ve got your mobile number.”

  He kissed her goodnight, but not as if he really meant it. He was in a hurry. He’d been spooked—well and truly spooked, in fact.

  It wasn’t until after he’d gone that Kit remembered that there was still a CD in the player. He’d picked up the case with the others, not realizing that it was empty. She knew which CD it was without needing to look. It was the Marionettes. The album that included Ave Dementia. And Play Dead. He’d have to come back for it. He loved the Marionettes. He’d told her that much about himself—which, now she came to think about it, was almost all that he had told her about himself. Not that she’d been all that forthcoming herself. She had told him about Dad’s HGV licence, but not about his drinking, and she hadn’t mentioned Mum at all, even though she knew full well that you couldn’t exorcise an evil influence simply by not mentioning it. Not that Stephen would have any evil influences of his own to conceal. He probably did have a little sister back home in his parents’ detached house in somewhere quintessentially nice, who probably would cry her eyes out if he missed her birthday party.

  Kit knew that she had to review the situation, and get things straight. It was all moving too fast. It was all too unsettling. He’d said, as clearly as clearly could be, that the haunting was theirs now, his as well as hers. He’d even got far enough into it to add his own ghost to hers, to deduce that there must be a pimp behind the whore, to figure out that if they were to get out of this they had to get past the vulgar, probing presence of the smutty spirit to reach something more refined, something more purposeful, something more capable. He had not merely known that but had done it. He had confronted Rose Selavy, and the Devil, and had weighed right in and told them straight that he wasn’t to be intimidated, that he knew what was what and what needed to be done. He had lived up to all her hopes...and then he had got scared. He had backed away. He had looked back into his mind and decided that he didn’t like what was growing there. He had decided that it hadn’t happened, because it couldn’t have happened, because he wasn’t about to start believing in ghosts and mixing it with the phantom world just so that he could have the dubious pleasure of banging some slapper from Sheffield that he could never take home to his Mum and his Dad and his cute kid sister, not just because Kit was a bus driver but because he had somehow worked out—even though she had been careful not to tell him—that her parents were a couple of drunks and that her Mum would put the Devil to shame when it came to playing the mother-in-common-law from Hell.

  Stephen had gone all the way—and then he’d come all the way back again. He’d put his two pennyworth into her haunting, and then he’d decided to opt out, to leave her to deal with his mess as well as his own. He’d let her down big time. He’d left her worse than he’d found her. He was a coward. He was a boy.

  Or else he needed time to think. And really did have “something on”. There was still a chance. Wasn’t there?

  And if there wasn’t, did it matter? Did it really matter? Although Even Stephen was smart, Kit thought—and he certainly was smart—he might be a little too secure in the land of the living to make the perfect partner for her just at present. Perhaps he was too cheerful, too easily able to intellectualize his theories and set aside their darker aspects. Perhaps he was too weak to admit what he’d seen, and felt, and touched. Perhaps he had tried to get into her haunting, and failed, through no real fault of his own. Perhaps he had been wrong about Rose Selavy having a pimp, given that she didn’t have a habit any more.

  Kit went back to bed, utterly dazed and thoroughly confused. She half expected the wall to open up again, and Rose Selavy to reappear—not on the settee, this time, but actually in the bed, snuggling up to her with willing fingers and a perverse thirst, wanting action rather than talk—but Rose had apparently had her fill of rambling for tonight, and there was nothing in the darkness that surrounded Kit but air: air that tasted of nothing but dust on her dry tongue, and smelled of nothing but stale Chinese food in her nostrils, and sighed in her throat as her lungs sucked it in and shoved it out again.

  Fuck fuck fuck, Kit thought. Just as we were getting on top of it. Just as we were getting close. Just as it looked as if we might make a team. Now I’m going to have to do it all by myself, whether he’s complicated it or not.

  As luck would have it, she wasn’t on the east/west run next day, so she didn’t have a chance to check out the cemetery. She had to spend the day toiling ba
ck and forth across the river on the northbound circular.

  The black swan was still with the flock under Caversham Bridge, mingling with the white ones. North of the river had once been the poshest part of town—posher even than Castle Hill—but the irresistible surge of urban sprawl had strung a noose of estates around the old Victorian village, and it was into those hinterlands that her roundabout route took her, time and time again. There was a cemetery on the route, in the grounds of the other St Peter’s church, but it wasn’t the cemetery Rose Selavy had been talking about. That was the cemetery at Cemetery Junction—there could be no doubt about that. There were too many indicators, some of them more brutal than mere clues. The church’s graveyard was private, not municipal, and it was far too exclusive to serve as a meeting-place for the likes of Rose Selavy.

  The cemetery at Cemetery Junction was a different matter; sandwiched between two major roads as it was, with a Co-op supermarket on the corner and two pubs within staggering distance, it was a ready-made place of rendezvous, whose more comfortable graves had probably seen almost as much late-night action over the years as the average whore’s attic. Now that there was nowhere safe to park and cinemas were pocket-sized cells in multiplexes, graveyards were just about the only place left where people who couldn’t take it home could have it off without fear of interruption. Rose would probably be at home there—more so, perhaps, than she was in the attic of number 21, given that the personal space she’d occupied there had been recolonized by the living. Her grave would probably be a fine and private place, where anyone and everyone could embrace to their hearts’ content...if hearts, or contentment, were ever involved in such cursory liaisons.