FAREWELL GHOST

by Larry Caldwell

  Clay hesitated. “About?”

  “About being the reason Karney started the fire.”

  Oh, that, Clay thought. And their erotic interlude in Room 1034 seemed all the more impossible, pure fantasy brought on by smoke inhalation and emotional overload. After a moment, Clay realized he hadn’t replied. “I don’t see a point in confessing. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “If we’d only saved that tape,” Savy said, “we could’ve proven what happened to Rocco and Deidre. Changed their fates forever.”

  “It’s gone though. And no one would believe it exists except you and me and Rocco.”

  “And Karney. Who’s apparently still—”

  “I heard.”

  “And The Hailmaker.”

  “Yes, The Hailmaker. Whatever he is—”

  “The devil,” she reminded him. Her words landed flatly on the bathroom tiles.

  Fiasco banged the door, making them both jump. “Yo!”

  Clay and Savy laughed nervously in each other’s faces. Finally, Clay just said it: “That room in The Knickerbocker—I think I might have lost my mind.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I was having some… very… vivid dreams.”

  “Must’ve been the smoke,” Savy told him. “It messes with your head.”

  Clay hoped the disappointment wasn’t obvious on his face. “A dream.”

  “Sure. A vivid, naughty dream that brought us back from the dead.” A moment passed, as Fiasco’s banging escalated to a gorilla pounding. “A dream’s all it was, though, and all it can ever be.”

  Her lips found the corner of his mouth and seemed to linger, even as Savy left the room.

  Ten minutes later they took the stage. There were just over five hundred people in attendance, but in the years to follow there would be thousands who swore they were there the night Farewell Ghost played its first club gig.

  Their sound was tighter than the night before. Their performance unrelenting. The shock of the day’s events finally releasing them. Or setting in deeper still. Clay’s lungs felt like they ended in his toes. He sang with his whole body, expelled every word—every syllable—as hard as he could, while Savy shredded through solos and snapped her B and high E strings and Spider and Fiasco did all they could to match their fury.

  Halfway through the show, a followspot illuminated Clay. He stared out over the fascinated crowd, no longer afraid, no longer himself. What had possessed him to think he could ever give this up? It was better than pure, life-restoring oxygen. And for people like him, like Savy, the desire to play was rooted too deep. He couldn’t live without it, wouldn’t live without it.

  Even if it meant ending up like Boyle or Karney? Or like Bennington or Staley?

  Yes, he realized. Even if it means dying in some random bathtub.

  Even if it meant having to face that figure in the dark again?

  To this, Clay’s mind had no reply. He stood there on the lip of the stage, sweating and mute, a dozen hands reaching for his legs. The Queen Bitch. The Hailmaker. The Man. Where the fuck was The Man?

  Karney’s croak answered him back. Let’s state the obvious though: He’s no man.

  He/She/It could have been here, in the club, and how would they know? Starkly lit, Clay brought the microphone to his mouth. “If Mr. Death and Doom, who snuffs candles with his long fingers, is in the audience tonight, we’ve got a message for you…” Clay paused, feeling Savy’s curiosity two feet to his right and the collective audience stare from the dark below. Slowly he lifted his middle finger to the ceiling. “Fuck! Off! We’ve no use for you. We are not afraid of you. Tonight, all of us, we live forever!”

  The darkness filled with screams. Savy launched into “Voices” and Clay lost himself in it.

  17

  THINGS THAT SCARE ME

  It had been a long day, unquestionably the longest of Clay’s life, and it wasn’t over yet. There was only one real way to end an odyssey like this and so, after they’d watched The Jerks’ set, after they’d been pulled onstage to sing backups for the encore (“Hey, what a beautiful neck tattoo. You ugly! Let’s screw!”), Savy returned the Jeep’s keys to Clay’s pocket and, despite the growing suspicions of their bandmates, they drove off together, just the two of them.

  Lights were blazing downstairs in the main house and Peter and Essie were still awake, flopped on the couch, drunk on Merlot and laughing uproariously over some inane romantic comedy. “Where have you kids been?” Peter asked, jovially enough.

  “Playing a show,” Clay told him, his frog-throat the proof, and because he was in no mood for a parental cross-examination from a guy voluntarily watching Julia Roberts, he went on the offensive: “We missed your face in the crowd.”

  “I thought that was yesterday. You said it was a private party.”

  “Tonight was our first club show. I left the address with your secretary.”

  “Shoot,” Peter said without conviction.

  It was Essie who played the better diplomat. “When’s your next gig? We’ll be there.”

  Savy told her it wouldn’t be for some time, after they recorded their demo and passed it around town, but they would keep everyone posted. Onscreen Julia crossed her eyes and Peter almost dumped his popcorn cracking up.

  “Anyway,” Clay said, “it’s been a long day so…”

  Peter gulped his wine, cleared his throat, and made a point of standing up. Oh, shit in my hat, Clay thought. What now? “Son, I want you to hear this right away—and I hope you don’t mind me saying it in front of your… um, band buddy. Essie is going to be moving in with us. We’re very much in love and I hope that can be respected.”

  If Peter was anticipating a fight, he had chosen an opportune moment to strike; Clay was too distracted, too spent, to call bullshit on his impulsiveness. “Mortal love,” he heard himself say. “So foolish and fleeting.”

  Savy gave him a sharp look, and Clay hurried on: “You two celebrate. Savy and I are going out to the guesthouse to… practice more.”

  “To practice more what?” Essie asked with a wink of the eye.

  Clay and Savy left them in suspense. They moved through the back yard and paused at the Generator’s door. Since watching Karney’s reality TV, the place had taken on a tragic new layer, one they could never unsee. Never bring to light. With a breath, Clay stepped inside and activated the recess lighting. “Rocco? Do you see him, Sav?”

  She stood with her back against the door for more than a minute before she answered. “Yes. There.”—her voice growing tighter—“Coming down from the loft.”

  Clay heard the telltale groans on the risers. At the sight of Savy, Boyle hesitated. “It’s cool,” Clay told him. “She knows everything now.”

  You two either had the best day of your lives—or the worst.

  “Both,” Clay admitted.

  Well, don’t keep a dead man in suspense.

  “We found out where Rooster lived. And we paid him a visit.”

  You what?

  “Savy knows Barry and he told us where Karney—Rooster—was living. We went there to feel him out, maybe mention I was living in your house. We thought it might’ve tempted him to return to the scene of his crime.”

  “It backfired though,” Savy added, her voice carrying the self-consciousness of learning to speak to someone there and not there. “Karney knew why we were looking for him. Or thought he did.”

  “He played a tape,” Clay said. “With footage showing what happened the night you died.”

  Our sex tape, Boyle realized. He was standing between Clay and Savy now; Clay could feel his presence like a physical thing—Savy staring wide-eyed in his direction confirmed it. I always figured he grabbed it, since the cops never found it.

  “Rooster thought we were there to do to him what he did to you,” Clay went on. “So he doused his house with kerosene—and he lit himself on fire.”

  He’s dead?

  “It was fucking awful. We almost didn’
t get out. Seriously, we almost fucking died in that house. His girlfriend did die.”

  But did Rooster die? Boyle pressed. Did they find a body?

  “He was covered head to toe in flame—but the news is saying, somehow, he’s still alive.”

  The nearest chair flipped sideways and crashed across the floor. Clay and Savy flinched back.

  I specifically told you to steer clear. Steer! Clear! You think I was sayin’ that for my health?

  “We went there for you,” Clay stammered.

  “And we did it for us,” Savy told him. “Your fans lived and died with you, Rocco. It’s not just your story, it’s ours too. We deserved to know what really happened.”

  Boyle paced the floor between them. You have the tape then? You have evidence?

  Clay lowered his head. “Everything went up in a blaze of glory.”

  Boyle stalked closer. Clay could feel his emotion, his brimming anger. Too reminiscent of Deidre, too unpredictable. Clay stepped toward the exit. You’ve no idea the can of worms you opened.

  “Maybe if you’d told me what happened in the first place,” Clay fired back. “What we were up against. We would’ve left it alone.”

  An invisible palm struck Clay in the chest. He staggered and fell against the door.

  Savy cursed and jumped forward, reaching up, as if there was something—a collar—to seize hold of. And Clay saw her body jerk back as Boyle shoved her too. “Don’t do it, man! Not her. I’ll board this fucking place up and never come back.”

  The floor creaked—Boyle turning to face him.

  “Careful,” Savy warned. “His hand’s balled into a fist.”

  And for the second time in this endless day, Clay marveled at how quickly things could go bad. He summoned whatever conviction he had left. “We saw what you and Deidre went through. I’m sorry, Roc. Our hearts broke watching it. But if you turn into another poltergeist on me, it’s you we’ll steer clear of. I mean it.”

  A moment passed. No one moved. As if everyone—Boyle included—was waiting to see which way fate would spin them.

  I’m the one that’s sorry, the spirit told them. I was a fool to think it’d be different with you.

  Savy relaxed, her eyes following Boyle. “Rocco? He’s leaving.”

  “Hey!” Clay shouted after him. “I know who the Hailmaker is.” He glanced into the dark corner, where the grotesque figure had been standing in the video, and a shiver rattled his spine. “How can we avoid him? Like, for the rest of our lives.”

  Boyle halted his retreat across the room, briefly. If Rooster’s still alive, it’s already too late. The anger was rinsed from his voice now, and in its place stood blunt fear.

  Sooner or later, the Hailmaker will find you.

  PART III:

  ALL GOES DARK

  18

  COLD FEELINGS

  No faceless boogiemen came for them. No devils in ill-fitting suits or oversized faces. And Boyle’s apprehension about the Pandora’s box they’d opened, messing with Davis Karney, was greatly exaggerated.

  At first.

  Farewell Ghost spent the following weeks polishing the five original songs in their repertoire, along with a new track they were tentatively calling “In Rolls the Storm,” an improvised jam that started as a slow-strumming shoe-gazer ballad and built over a ten-minute span to a climactic maelstrom of charging power chords and raucous distortion. Spider had secondary aspirations in audio recording (he was desperate to end up just about anywhere than as his father’s permanent Knickerbocker replacement), and he was ready to convert the Generator into their working studio—as soon as Clay gave the word.

  Clay, meanwhile, was called upon to manage the band’s Facebook and Twitter presence. More than a few high-school girls had offered to run Farewell Ghost sites across social media, but for now the band consensus was to keep their entourage small. Just Mo, as Ghost’s roadie, gopher, and poster boy for the newly sober, and Delilah Jane, Fiasco Joe’s new girlfriend, a tall, so-blond-her-hair-was-white sourpuss, who did little at practice other than to keep Fiasco in a perpetual foul mood.

  Clay googled “Davis Karney” every morning, expecting that this time, this time, he would learn of the rock star’s passing. It never happened. There couldn’t have been more than a thread of life in his raisin-shriveled body—but, for the dark heart within, the beat went on and on. On the sidewalk, four stories below his hospital room, Karney’s fans left cards, posters, Mylar balloons, flowers, and a life-size lookalike, born out of Jell-O, icing, and too much time on someone’s hands. Then someone else flicked a smoldering roach into the dried heap, making a pyre of the whole lot of it—Karney’s Jell-O face melting like his actual face, the balloons exploding like gunshots. And fan vigils were outlawed thereafter. Oooo-ah, baby, give it, pow!

  Around this time, Estelle’s worldly possessions began showing up at 88 Via Montana, overwhelming the closet spaces with her bright clothing and army of shoes. On the plus side, they finally had enough stuff to take the echo out of the larger rooms. Others might have lost their minds, gone off to find a real job and a place of their own, or at least move out to the Generator, but Clay wasn’t about to relinquish a caretaker gig where he could make his own hours and test his vocal range while he worked; and he wasn’t about to deal with a surly, celestial roommate.

  A few days after Essie took up residence, a visitor arrived at the front gates. It was a quarter past noon, and Clay had only started filling the pool with its usual chemicals, holding his breath over a jug of muriatic acid. The chlorine was bad enough to work with, but the acid was the most hazardous chemical in residence; a single whiff paralyzed Clay’s lungs. He was emptying the sum of it into the deep end when the intercom buzzed inside the house. And Clay groaned, uninvited guests being about as common as spider webs and women’s shoes here. “Don’t worry, Es, I’ve got it,” he laughed. Because Essie might have come into their lives wanting her old job back, but these days she was content to sleep and watch TV.

  Clay intended to switch the intercom off without saying a word, but the surveillance screen showed a familiar face. “Peter?” the face asked. “It’s Dave Ganek.”

  Clay struck the button that parted the gargoyle head and Dave drove through the gates, while a Dark Hollywood tour bus watched hungrily from the cul-de-sac. Ganek didn’t play an instrument, but he could have easily passed for a musician with his straggly hair, tattoos, and billy goat’s chin—even if his pressed polo and spotless jeans suggested domestication. “My father’s at work,” Clay told him. “There something I can do for you?”

  “I was just in town, visiting friends. My family loves Santa Cruz, but I’m nostalgic for the old place. I guess everyone gets curious about what the next owners do with their house.”

  Clay gave him the official tour, showing off the turret room that his father had converted into his home office, the gym, the outdoor bar that had been installed in the covered shade of the summer kitchen. Other than that, not much had changed in three months. At least structurally speaking.

  When they reached the back yard, Clay offered to show him the Generator—reluctantly. He hadn’t gone in since Boyle’s hissy fit (band practices were held over Fiasco and Spider’s, with the occasional session on The Knickerbocker’s roof), but surely Ganek would want to see it again. To Clay’s surprise, the roadie balked. “I’ve always felt uneasy in there. I almost bulldozed the whole thing.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. It’s become a music space again, for me and my band.”

  “I figured you for a band guy.”

  “I might have found something under the loose board in there,” Clay confessed.

  “If you’re talking about a Rickenbacker 370 with a fireglow paint job, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ganek folded his thick arms thoughtfully across his chest. “I figured anything that Roc hid away I wasn’t going to touch.”

  Clay nodded, self-conscious. “I have to admit I did more than touch it. Do you… want it back?�
��

  “Hell no. You own the house now, and everything in it.”

  Ain’t that the truth, Clay thought. “That’s good ’cause she’s in for repairs right now. I broke her neck at my first show.”

  “Well, that’s something Rocco would’ve been proud of.”

  Clay poured each of them a scotch from the outdoor bar and they sat out on deck chairs in the shade. “I take it you’re a Throne fan?” The look on Ganek’s face suggested he’d already answered for himself.

  “As much as anyone who hangs out in that cul-de-sac.”

  “Shirl, my wife, wanted to sell to non-fans, but I told her that was impossible.” He paused to bob his head (“Sober” was thumping on the bar speakers). “Now that you’re on the other side of the gates, though, are you getting sick of people lighting candles and shouting conspiracy theories?”

  “A little. But I can’t blame them. I mean, I believe some of those conspiracies myself.”

  Ganek drained his scotch and Clay stood to pour him another. What Peter didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him… at least until he went looking for this vintage bottle. “How old are you anyway?” Ganek asked.

  “Forty-two,” Clay said. They were becoming quick friends.

  “I guess sometimes I believe too,” Ganek said. “When the police closed the case, a few of us pooled our resources and hired an investigator. It never went anywhere—the guy was more interested in writing a book than actually proving anything. We figured if there was a killer, it was probably someone from Roc’s drug scene. He kept his music and drugs separate, and Strip dealers are a dime a dozen. Whoever it was probably slithered right back to the bottom.”

  Or straight to the top, Clay reflected with a chill.

  “Then there are other times I think the theories are nonsense. Rocco was an enigma no one could see all the way through. Not me or Deidre or anyone.” Ganek studied his already-empty glass. “He was capable of doing anything.”

  “I’ve read every biography,” Clay said. “But there’s a hole in the story I’ve never understood. The books all talk about Rocco’s time tramping around the country, and his rise on the local music scene—but they never mention his first big break. He was broke, living on the roof of a fast-food joint. Then, out of nowhere, he’s living large?”