Phantoms

by Marie O'Regan

  And we lost our ship, the refugees said. We can’t find our way into the next world without a ship. We’re lost, Denise. And we’re so unhappy. But because we’re at the bottom of the sea nobody can hear us crying.

  “You should live here,” I said, “in Tom’s house. There’s plenty of room. And maybe you can build a new ship, or maybe I can find you one. But in the meantime, you should stay here.”

  Thank you, Denise, the refugees said. We will.

  The goat man smiled at me when I left the house and gave me a nod as though he thought that I had done a good thing. It was just one of my fantasies, of course. The whole thing was.

  As it turned out, Tom didn’t get that briefing pack. He didn’t come back to the constituency after all. He went to a place called Martinique and he stayed there for two weeks. My mum said it was for a fact-finding mission but I don’t know what facts he found.

  Then Tom’s bill got its final reading, with a big debate in the House of Commons. A lot of people talked about the Wayfarer (“Bleeding hearts!” my mum said. “Hypocrites and bleeding hearts, the lot of them!”) and Tom said it was a tragedy but it wasn’t our tragedy. “It was made in Africa,” he said, “and it should have stayed there. It was no business of ours to intervene in it. It is sheer vanity to suggest that we can solve the world’s problems when we have so many problems of our own.”

  When the House voted on the bill, it passed by thirteen votes. The Daily Mail’s front page the next day was just a photo of Tom with the single word VICTORY. Mum photocopied it thousands of times for a flier that we put through every door in Coddistone.

  Then Tom got his cabinet seat and we didn’t see him at all. Mum was doing the briefing packs regularly now, every week, and mostly it was me who dropped them off. I always got Sam to play for me and I always said hello to the refugees. They were still sad, and they still talked a lot about not having a ship.

  You said you would find us one, Denise, they said.

  “I said I’d try,” I told them. “But I don’t know where to look. Please don’t be angry with me.”

  We’re not angry. But it’s very dangerous to lie to us.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’ll do my best.” And I did look up to see how close the canal came to Coddistone but it was thirty miles. And canal boats can’t even go on the ocean, let alone into the next world, so I didn’t know what I was going to do and I wished I hadn’t promised.

  I said we didn’t see Tom anymore, but of course we did. He was on TV all the time. He was still talking about refugees but also about things like compulsory registration and prison sentences and patriotism and how free speech is a paradox because it comes at a high price. “People talk more about their rights than about their duties,” he said, and he said that had to change. The Daily Mail had his picture again, this time in Parliament Square with Big Ben behind him, and the headline was TIME FOR CHANGE.

  “He’s going to go for it,” my mum said when she saw that headline.

  “He’ll get it too,” my dad said. “And he’ll make us proud. By God, he will.”

  They hugged each other, and then they both hugged me, and we did a little dance together in the living room. It was nice. I didn’t know what Tom was going to go for, but I was sure that he would make us proud.

  That week’s briefing pack had a letter my mum wrote. It was supposed to be private and I got all the way to the house without reading it but then I couldn’t help myself. You carry all our hopes and dreams, it said. Everyone in the Association and in the whole town is proud of you. I didn’t read any more than that because the refugees came and all the lights in the room got darker.

  Where is our ship? they asked.

  “It’s coming,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s coming soon.” I almost wet myself. I hadn’t done anything since I looked up where the canal went. I got out of the house quickly. I even forgot to thank Sam for playing for me.

  I had my twentieth birthday three weeks after that. My present from Mum and Dad was a coat. It had a wide collar and two rows of buttons and I liked it a lot. I remember it because I was wearing it the next time I went to Tom’s house.

  I was going to say it was the last time I went to Tom’s, but it wasn’t. It was only the last time I went inside.

  It was a Tuesday, exactly one month after my birthday. I was at the office and I was adding some more of Tom’s interviews to the database when the phone rang and my mum answered it. It was Tom’s PA, Lionel Gates. He said Tom was coming to Coddistone that night so he could have a press conference the next day on the Town Hall steps. “Thank you, Lionel,” my mum said. “Can I take it he’s going to announce?”

  When she put the phone down everyone in the room was watching her. She didn’t say a word for a long, long time. Then she said, “That’s a yes,” and everyone shouted and cheered.

  “What’s he going to announce, Mum?” I asked her. She just looked at me and shook her head. She said, “In a world of your own half the time, aren’t you?”

  Eileen told me that Tom was going to run for leader of the party now that Maura Voss was standing down. I remembered then that there had been a thing on the news about Maura Voss, so it was probably that. If Tom won the leadership it meant he would be our next prime minister, because the party didn’t lose elections anymore.

  Mum got busy making up a briefing pack. It was like her usual briefing packs except that it had a bottle of champagne as well as all the papers and the USB drive. Actually, it was different in other ways too. She went online and got all the opinion polls from the last year and made graphs and charts out of them to show Tom which people liked him for which things. It took ages to do and we all had to stay late helping her find the figures for the charts. She wanted it to be the best briefing pack ever. I think she wanted Tom to remember her, and the Constituency Association, and how they had always helped him right from the earliest days when he was an MP and before that when he was in the council.

  She asked Lucy if she could drop the pack off on her way home. But Lucy wasn’t happy about having to stay in the office until after seven o’clock and she said no. “Sorry, Mrs Tanner. I’m going to Rosehead to pick my mum up from her physio, and I’m late already. I’ll be driving in the opposite direction.”

  Mum turned to me. She didn’t look happy. “It will have to be you, then,” she said. “Put your new coat on. Make yourself presentable, in case he’s there already. And if he is, you call him Mr Peverill, not Tom.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Mum said. “Off you go.”

  It was already dark when I left the office. There was a moon, but there were clouds too, and mostly you only saw the edge of the moon behind the cloud. But it came out when I got to Tom’s house and the goat man shone like he was a light bulb.

  “Play it, Sam,” I whispered as I went past him.

  I was going to go in through the kitchen door, the way I usually did, but then I saw there was a light on in the living room. Tom must already have arrived from London, like Mum thought. So I rang the doorbell and after a moment or two the door opened.

  Tom looked tired. He was wearing a suit and a tie, but the tie was undone and hanging down. And his hair wasn’t combed properly, so it was sticking up a bit at the front. He didn’t recognise me at first, until I said hello to him. “Oh,” he said then, and he seemed to relax. “Denise. Right. What is it?”

  I showed him the stack of papers I was holding. “It’s from the Constituency Association, Mr Peverill,” I said. “Your briefing pack. My mum spent all afternoon on it.”

  Tom laughed and rolled his eyes. “My briefing pack,” he repeated. “Of course.” Then he saw the champagne bottle, which was wrapped in gold paper with a red ribbon on it. “Is that from the Association, too? Shit, you should have led with that. Come on in.”

  I went inside and he closed the door. “Living room for that lot,” he said. “I’ll take the bottle.”

  The living r
oom was the same as it always was except for a little suitcase with its handle still sticking up that Tom must have brought with him. I put the briefing pack on the biggest of the coffee tables and as I was doing that I heard the pop of the champagne cork from the kitchen.

  A few moments later Tom came in holding two glasses full of champagne. “The party never stops,” he said, and he laughed again. “Here you go.”

  He held out one of the glasses to me. There were all bubbles in it, and it looked as though some of the bubbles were bursting in the air over the top of the glass. It was really beautiful. “My mum and dad don’t let me drink alcohol,” I told Tom.

  “They’re not here, though, are they?” Tom said. He put the glass in my hand and I took a sip before I even thought about it. It was the fizziest thing I had ever tasted, fizzier than Coca-Cola when you drop the can but you open it anyway. “It’s really nice,” I said.

  “More where that came from,” Tom said. He tilted the glass when I took my next sip, so I drank more than I was going to and got the hiccups a bit.

  I could hear goat man Sam playing his pipes in the garden. It was a sweet, mournful sound.

  “Let me top you up,” Tom said. And then, “Do you want to take that coat off? It looks ridiculous indoors.” And then, “Let’s sit down. Over here. Come on. I won’t bite.”

  I was starting to feel dizzy. I don’t think I did sit down, but I was on the sofa somehow. On the arm of it and then half onto the seat, with Tom’s hands on my shoulders and Tom’s face up close to my ear. “I really feel like I ought to have taken the time to know you better,” he said. And then he licked my ear.

  It was so gross I yelled out, “Ow! Stop!” as though it hurt me. It didn’t hurt me; it just surprised me. I dropped my champagne glass so I could put both hands up to push him away. But he wasn’t going away, he was putting his arms around me and one of his hands was on my bum. When I tried to move it he grabbed my wrist tight with his other hand. “Just relax,” he said. He sounded angry with me and I didn’t know why. I wasn’t hurting him; he was hurting me.

  “I want to go home,” I said.

  Tom didn’t answer. His face was moving up and down against mine. He was trying to make his lips be where mine were so he could kiss me, but I kept turning one way and then the other way so he couldn’t.

  “I want to go home,” I said again, louder.

  Goat man Sam stopped playing. Is he hurting you? he asked me.

  No, I said. But I think he’s going to. I’m scared, Sam! Can you help me? I knew he couldn’t. It was just one of my fantasies, and I needed help that was real. I knew enough about what happened when a man is with a woman to know what Tom was going to do to me, and I didn’t want him to do it.

  No, Sam said sadly. I can’t help you. I’m out here in the garden and I can’t come into the house.

  All right, then, I thought. I’ll lie down on the sofa and then when Tom tries to climb on top of me I’ll bring my knee up between his legs. But he was sort of slantways on top of me, not properly on top of me, and I couldn’t get my leg free.

  Well now, the refugees said. It’s about time you woke up to your obligations. The music of their voices came out of nowhere, from all directions, filling my head.

  Please help me, refugees! I said. Tom is going to rape me.

  You must give us permission, the voices said. In the old words and the old cadence. Do that, and perhaps we will be able to solve each other’s problems.

  I don’t know the old words or the other thing you said, I said. Tom’s hand was up between my legs and his weight was all on top of me and it really did hurt now.

  Just repeat what we say. But say it aloud, so that all may hear. I gift you this ship, to sail in.

  “I gift you this ship to sail in!” I yelped.

  To your journey’s end.

  “To your journey’s end!”

  “Be quiet,” Tom said. “For fuck’s sake.”

  No god, nor man gainsay you.

  The words came out one at a time, because of the hiccups from the champagne and because of Tom moving on top of me to try to get inside me.

  “No.

  “God.”

  Tom stiffened, and he shook a little bit.

  “Nor.

  “Man.”

  Tom got very still again. He made a sound that was like a sigh.

  “Gain.

  “Say.

  “You!”

  Tom slid off the sofa onto the floor. His face was white, and when I bent down to listen I couldn’t hear him breathing. I don’t know how to do that thing where you feel a pulse with your fingers so I didn’t do it. Anyway, I could see that he was dead.

  Dead, the refugees said. Yes. He was a bad man. But he will make a fine ship.

  They climbed inside him and sailed away in him. Not in his body. That stayed where it was, except that it looked even deader now. They sailed away in his soul, which they hollowed out so they could fit in it. It was just one of my fantasies but it felt so real.

  I grabbed my coat and my handbag and ran out of there.

  Is all well? goat man Sam asked me.

  It’s fine, Sam, I said, as I was running down the driveway. I’ll tell you later.

  * * *

  The news said Tom had a heart attack. My mum cried and cried as if she was never going to stop. She asked me how Tom had been when I saw him and I said he seemed fine. “He was really happy. He even gave me a glass of champagne so I could celebrate with him.”

  I had to say that, because the police would have found the two glasses and they would already know I’d been in the house. But there was no sign that anything bad had happened. Tom just died because his heart stopped working, so nobody thought I could have done anything wrong and really I don’t think I did. It wasn’t my fault if Tom had wandering hands and wandering everything. It was his.

  I go back to the house a lot, but I’m really careful not to be seen and I never go inside. Sam and I just meet in the garden. It’s lovely there on summer nights when the moon is full and it’s just the two of us, but it can be a bit cold at other times of the year. Sam says we should go somewhere else. He knows a place called Arcadia where it’s summer all the time and the goat men dance and drink sweet wine as well as playing music.

  I think I’ll go with him. Politics is more Mum’s thing than mine.

  FRANK, HIDE

  Josh Malerman

  (This is for James Henry Hall. Thanks, man)

  Oh, to see Lauren again.

  Once more. In any way.

  Oh, to take care this time, to really see her exactly as she was, so that her true features might finally replace the memory he’d held onto, a memory that had blurred in the six years since her death, as though the tears he’d shed stood like a pane of glass between himself and her.

  Frank walked. Out the front door. Out onto the street.

  When he experienced guilt of any sort, when he detected it coming, he walked. Out the front door. Out onto the street.

  Toward the meadow.

  He walked.

  Oh, to see Lauren again. To hold up both hands, palms out, to say hang on, wait, wait a second while I study your face so that when it goes away again I will remember it exactly as it was. No more of this blurred vision, shaken by guilt, this interior room of darkness. He’d spelled her name wrong in a letter thanking her folks for their help with the funeral. He’d forgotten her name entirely one night, very drunk, while speaking of her. Guilt, yes, for not being able to recall the exact distance from the end of her nose to the curve of her chin. From the sides of her eyes to her ears. Shouldn’t Frank be able to recite those numbers to a man much more artistic than himself? And shouldn’t that artist then be capable of rendering Lauren exactly as she was?

  Guilt. Ugly, indeed.

  Frank walked.

  Down the street.

  Toward the woods. Toward the meadow.

  He’d been walking a lot lately. Long walks that required stretching before
hand, a bottle of water during and, often, breaks. He always took the same route; out the front door of the home that had plenty of photos of him and Lauren on the walls, all the way to where Bolton Street ended (of which Lauren had joked, God didn’t like our street, put an end to it), then over the guardrail and into the woods. To the meadow Frank would go. It burned him up inside, lit up that dark interior room, to recall how bothered he’d been by Lauren’s constant prattling about exercise and good food, laughter and sleep. By God, sometimes it sounded like she’d emerged from the nineteenth century, when doctors decided fresh air and water cured all bad things. It was easy to bring back to life the terrible uneasiness he felt every time Lauren saw him on the couch, every time her eyes traversed the length of the living room and settled on him just sitting there, watching a movie, a television show, relaxing. Oh, how she’d look out the window, silently saying, You’re hiding, Frank. From the real world. Frank often wondered: how might you rename “relaxing” if someone was constantly there to rile it? Lauren was certainly stuck on the healthy stuff. Oh, was she. Jogging. Vitamins. Vegetarian. She felt bad after every time she drank, and made sure to remind a hungover Frank of the many other ways they might’ve had fun the night before.

  Like looking at the stars.

  Like giving each other full body massages.

  Like playing classical music low and getting into long conversations that could revolve around anything so long as the echoes of progress and philosophy were involved.

  It was enough to drive Frank mad.

  So he walked. Now. He walked. To the end of the street. Over the guardrails. Into the woods.

  Today, despite the flaring anger at her ways, despite the guilt, too, Frank found himself missing the very things Lauren had said so often they’d become little hammers, tapping against his stability, until her good intentions sounded more like howling.

  You shouldn’t hide from the real world, Frank.

  He walked. In the woods now. Hidden, in a way.

  Lauren had loved a lot of things when she was alive but none quite so much as the meadow. When she’d returned from walks of her own, as Frank pretended to just be sitting down or just be getting up, the smile she wore, the contentedness he’d seen in her eyes was inarguably due to her time spent in the meadow. And on the days when she hadn’t walked, the inverse expression could be seen in her face as well, as she always seemed to be standing close enough to the window to look out through the glass, as though seeing that open expanse of glory, where the bees didn’t bother you and they expected the same.