Pretty Little Dead Things

by Gary McMahon

  "I think that went… well? Is that even the right word?" She shot me a glance, looking nervy and on the verge of tears.

  "As well as can be expected, I suppose, under the circumstances. I just hope that your cousin isn't expecting too much. Whatever the hell it is I can do, I'm not the master of it. And whenever I do seem to think I have any control over it, there's always a disaster of some kind."

  We didn't speak for a while, and I stared out of the window as Ellen drove back towards the city centre. I knew that we were heading for her hotel, but I didn't quite know how to react to the situation. Things were moving too fast; the world was spinning like an out-of-control carousel, and the ornamental horses were coming apart, sending wooden heads and hooves flying off in all directions like deadly debris.

  That was exactly how it felt: like I was dodging mental shrapnel.

  "Did you feel anything in there, or were you telling her the truth?" Ellen still stared ahead, through the windscreen. The car in front stopped suddenly, the driver slamming on his brakes as a cyclist veered into his path. Ellen reacted calmly, as if expecting the sudden halt. I closed my eyes on old, worn out memories.

  "I felt nothing, Ellen. I can only see them when they want to be seen, but I can feel them when they're near. There were no ghosts in that room – in fact, it was remarkably free of activity for a house of that age. Usually, in every home I enter I can sense layers of the dead, going back through time to before the building was even constructed. It's actually rather strange when I don't feel that, but it does occasionally happen."

  Ellen drove down the ramp into the hotel car park, not even asking me if I was interested in accompanying her inside. "I need a drink," she said, pulling into an empty space. "So do you." She turned off the engine, handed me the keys, and stared at me like it was a challenge.

  "Yes, you're right. A drink would be… well, crucial, if I'm honest."

  She smiled, the moment broken and the tension dissipating. "I'm sorry, Thomas, I'm just a bit stressed. All this is just too much. I mean, seeing you as well as Penny going missing. Everything at once… it's just too damn much."

  I opened the door. "Come on. The first round's on me."

  We entered the hotel and made straight for the bar, where a bunch of men in business suits had commandeered most of the tables. We sat at the bar, squashed into high stools like oversized children, and raced each other to the bottom of the glass. The whisky tasted like fire; it should have been cleansing but it simply stirred up old memories, ghosts I thought I had put to rest.

  "Another?" Ellen was already signalling the barman.

  "Fine. Make it a double." I decided to leave the car there, at the hotel, and whatever happened later would happen without my resistance, even if it meant me getting yet another taxi home on Baz Singh's tab. I didn't want to think about it too hard, not yet. Thinking could come later, after I'd loosened the cogs of my brain with alcohol.

  We went upstairs sooner than I expected, Ellen in the lead and armed with a bottle of decent single malt and two glasses. The afternoon was darkening; the sky looked black through the tinted lobby windows. Rain began to spatter the glass, but gently, as if it were attempting to lull us into the right mood; a drizzly serenade for reluctant lovers.

  The lift seemed to be moving much too slowly, and as it climbed I felt us drawing together, as if by some form of magnetic attraction. Ellen's leg brushed against my thigh; her gaze caught mine, unable to let it go. We stared at each other, her holding the bottle and me grabbing onto the glasses. Time seemed to bend. Seconds overlapped, folding into one another. The decades fell away like shed skin.

  We did not kiss. We should have, but we didn't. I couldn't quite break through the barriers the years of hurt had built around me like a callous.

  Once inside Ellen's room, however, those barriers began to fall, breaking apart and tumbling like the walls of a biblical city breached by a single supernatural note blown through a blessed horn. We sat on the bed and sipped our drinks, all talk forgotten. The forces around us were larger than we dared think, and I almost expected the walls to crack and the floor to shudder, sending us sprawling into each other's arms.

  But that did not happen. It took natural forces, human desires, to bring us within touching distance.

  "I don't think I can do this," I said, gritting my teeth.

  Ellen's hand went to my face. Her fingers traced the line of my jaw, fingertips rasping on the stubble. She said nothing; she did everything. Her other hand went to my chest, stroking me there, massaging me through the thin material of my shirt. I reached out and cupped her heavy breast, hurtling backwards in time. She gasped; I twitched in shock; we both began to breathe in synch.

  The old guilt flooded in, filling me up, and for a moment I felt that I might drown. If Ellen and I had not made love that single time years before, when I'd betrayed my family, I would not have felt this way. It would have been easy to fall into bed with a woman – this woman – who I had always loved yet never been able to admit it.

  I strained against my inability to embrace the moment, feeling simultaneously trapped and set free. Ellen kissed my neck. Her lips were like fire and ice; her breath burned my frozen skin and froze the flames of my ardour.

  I had spent all the dark years since their death searching for my family's ghosts, and not once had I found them in any substantial way. All I ever had were times like these – moments of guilt and loss and bereavement. I had seen too many ghosts to count, yet I had never encountered the only ones I had ever wanted to find. I could not summon them, nor could I create them from the dust of my memories. They were lost to me, wandering in some void that I had not even come near. If all the layers of reality were to be peeled away, leaving only the final reality, the one that lies beneath, would I find them even then?

  When I kissed her, Ellen put her arms around me, running her fingers across the nape of my neck. "I'm sorry," I said: to my dead wife, my dead child, my cold, dead heart. "I'm sorry."

  Later I sat on the end of the bed and stared at the dark screen of the television. Ellen sat behind me, miles from sleep, studying me. "Those names tattooed on your back. What do they mean?" I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of my heart beating. "They're the names of all the people I have failed. I add each name to the list in the hope that it might be the last. Sometimes it seems like I'll run out of skin before I run out of people to fail."

  I felt the mattress shift and heard the bedclothes rustle as she leaned forward; then I felt the heat of her hand on my back, laid out flat between my shoulder blades. "So many names…"

  I nodded. Tears filled my eyes.

  So many names.

  "Are you sorry we did that?" her voice was quiet, like the night, like the voices held always within the dark.

  "I can't be sorry, but I do feel that I've failed them again."

  "Your family," she said; a statement not a question. "One day you're going to have to let them go."

  "I can't," I said, staring at the dead screen and thinking that just for a moment I saw something moving in there, a flicker, a reflection of a memory. "I can never let go, not until I've seen them and I know that they've forgiven me."

  "What's to forgive?" The hand drew away from my skin; Ellen sat back against the pillows, understandably aggrieved. "What's left to forgive after all this time? It's been over twenty years since we did what we did – and they've been gone almost as long. Fifteen years, Thomas. Fifteen years of grief. How long until you forgive yourself?"

  "What's left to forgive? Far too much to speak of." I stood and went to the window, glancing out into the darkened street below.

  Fifteen years of grief…

  Standing in a bus lay-by across from the hotel was a short, broad figure with a bald head. He was staring at the window, as if he had been doing so all night, waiting for me to look out. He nodded once, and I knew him. I knew him but I could not say who he was or what he might be. Like a song from the depthless regions of space, he was
a thing that should not be, an echo of a scream made by someone who had never existed.

  When I turned back to face the bed, Ellen was already asleep. Or perhaps she was only pretending.

  FOURTEEN

  I left early the next morning, before breakfast. Ellen watched from the bed in silence, allowing me the space to make a fool of myself. I washed and dressed and kissed her cheek, then headed for the door. I paused with my fingers around the door handle, knowing that I should say something but unable to speak in case the wrong words came out.

  "Just call me later, when you've had time to think." Her voice was not filled with anger, nor where her words unpleasant. She was simply voicing an undeniable truth.

  I opened the door and left her there, possibly thinking worse of me than she ever had before. During the drive home I thought about Ellen, trying not to allow Rebecca and Ally into my head. It was difficult, but I managed – my usual penchant for self-flagellation was put on hold for now. Instead I thought about other things from the past: the things that came after.

  My memories are all in present tense; I can relive them no other way because they are always happening, even now. Running on an endless loop like a faulty film strip. They will probably never stop.

  Fifteen years of grief…

  • • • •

  When finally I leave the hospital (to the great relief of Nurse Haggard, who has now run out of ways to sensibly avoid me), I am unable to go back home. There are too many memories residing in the empty rooms, and the walls and floors and ceilings are strewn with reminders of what I have lost. My family sit in the musty darkness, waiting for me, but I know that I will be unable to see them.

  And do I really want to see them? It is a question I cannot even begin to answer.

  I check into a cheap city centre hotel and try to come up with a plan, a way of helping people deal with their grief whilst helping myself come to terms with my own pain and the things it has made me able to do.

  One of the other guests has just lost her father, and I offer her a shoulder to cry on. It doesn't end well. When I tell her that I am trying to contact her late father, she thinks I am mad and runs from me in tears. I begin to think the same: that I am mad. Is that what's happened? Have I stepped off some mental ledge?

  I leave that hotel and try another. This time I am more careful, but the end result is the same: however hard I try, I cannot get in touch with the spirits I choose. It takes me weeks to realise that it is they who must come to me, and all I can do is wait.

  Wait to see if I am sane, or if the whole thing is a product of my unresolved guilt and overpowering grief.

  I drink a lot and watch bad daytime television. The counsellors the hospital recommended have no idea what I am experiencing, and I go through them like a series of cheap suits that don't quite fit, feeling slightly sorry for them as I fail to keep appointments or follow up phone calls. I do talk to the surgeon who patched me together after the accident, and he helps without realising that he is doing so. It is because of him that I do not open my veins in a warm bath, and I'll always be grateful for this at least.

  I begin to feel hemmed in, as if the city itself is preventing me from reaching out. I need a new environment, if only to find some space to breathe. Thoughts of suicide now put behind me, I am at last able to picture a future that doesn't involve the grave. But only if what I feel is true; only if the ghosts are real.

  I find the number of a caravan park in a local newspaper. When I ring the number I'm told that the only caravan available immediately and on a long-term lease is one of the older models, with basic amenities. I don't mind; the sub-standard living quarters will be part of my punishment, a self-imposed isolation from my fellow man. All I need to go with it is a medieval hair shirt.

  I am checked into my new accommodation by a small yet morbidly obese man in a stained shirt and torn jeans. He doesn't say much as he hands over the keys and briefs me on the rules of the site – no parties, no loud noises after 10pm, no breakages. I smile and nod in all the right places, and I am glad that he shows no interest at all in the reasons behind my being here. Anonymity seems to be something I can get used to.

  After the caretaker has departed I walk to the site shop and stock up on supplies: eggs, bread, milk and lots of alcohol – as much as I can carry back to the caravan in three trips. I plan to lose myself in booze, to ride the waves of whisky and wine until it is time for me to come up for air, or perhaps drown in the process.

  The message I received in hospital prompted me to make a firm decision. I told myself that I would deal with my loss by trying to help others who have suffered similar bereavements, but it didn't quite work out that way. I imagined myself as some kind of supernatural crusader – a champion of the grieving. But instead I found out that I was even more lost than those whom I sought to help, and the realisation of my impotence almost broke me in half.

  I went looking for ghosts and found only glimpses of something I could not understand. The spirits I wanted to grasp remained out of reach, eluding my attentions, and I found only scraps and strays. The fragmentary messages these fluttering shades offered meant nothing to me, and after a short time I realised that whatever was happening to me – this strange thing I was perhaps capable of – was entirely beyond my control.

  So I made my way here, to this squalid camp site, where I could be alone with my demons and try to silence them with an ocean of drink…

  I spend six weeks locked up inside the caravan, drinking heavily and staring at the walls; eating little enough to stay alive but not enough to give me much energy. I had originally planned to lose myself in thoughts of my dead loved ones, but I'm unable to focus and my mind feels plucked at from all sides, as if small hands are raking through my subconscious, looking for gaps.

  At the end of this six week period I receive a visitor and everything changes.

  It's close to midnight and I'm still awake, drinking as usual. The whisky is running low but I don't want to communicate with anyone to restock my supplies. It's a tricky dilemma, the solution of which is taking up much of my diminishing mental faculties.

  There is a knock on the caravan door. At first I think that I must be hearing things, but when the knock is repeated I realise that there is indeed someone out there, trying to get my attention. I wonder if it's a ghost – the very thing I've been waiting for. I've had plenty of glimpses in the past few weeks, but nothing solid or tangible: fleeting wraiths gliding through the trees, a woman standing knee-deep in the river at the west end of the caravan site, a small child staring into the shower cubicle with a strange grin on his face…

  I knew they were ghosts because nobody else could see them, but I also doubted my own ability to recognise what was real and what was not.

  Because I was stupid enough to ask if he could see the child in the shower, the caretaker now thinks that I am some kind of lunatic. He doubled my rent, but that doesn't concern me. The insurance money is enough to keep me going for some time yet, even after I've paid off the mortgage on the house my dead wife and daughter loved.

  I realise that I have been lost in my thoughts for several minutes, and go to the flimsy caravan door. I can sense someone still standing on the other side. This is not the result of any kind of special power; it's always so simple to pick up the presence of another where before you were completely alone.

  "Who is it?"

  There is no immediate answer, but I hear the sound of feet shifting on the metal steps outside the door. Whoever it is cannot decide whether to stay or flee.

  "There's nobody home." I turn away from the door, giving them the easiest option.

  "Thomas? It's Ellen. I'm sorry to disturb you this late, but I've only just managed to find out where you were staying."

  I turn back to the door and approach it slowly. Then I open it and see her standing there, the black sky creating a dramatic backdrop behind her, and I feel like crying. "What do you want?"

  "Can I come in? I've gone through a lo
t of shit to find you. The least you can do is to offer me a drink." She is wearing dark jeans and a brown leather jacket. Her breath spills from her lips in thin white plumes: more ghosts, but these ones lacking either form or substance.

  I turn away, not inviting her inside but not telling her to go away either. I leave the decision to her. She follows me into the caravan, closing the door firmly behind her. "Nice place," she says. "I'm sure you and the cockroaches are very cosy."

  I try not to smile but it's impossible, yet the expression feels all wrong. I shouldn't be smiling when my family are dead; I should be screaming into the void and raging at the cosmos, attempting to tear down the walls of heaven.

  Something like that.

  Ellen sits down on the cushions opposite me. Only a scarred foldaway dining table separates us, but we might as well be on different planets. She stares into my eyes and I'm unable to hold her gaze, so I pour whisky into two glasses and slide one across to her. Without flinching, she picks up the glass and finishes the drink in one.