Mortal Ghost (40 page)

‘I don’t understand.’

‘
The web of dark threads is superposed and entangled in time.’

‘Red?’ he whispers.

The sphinx opens her wings to full span and flicks them as if to rid herself of an annoying fly or other minor nuisance. Or to demonstrate her power, for even the smallest movement sets the air in motion. It eddies in gentle ripples outwards from her shoulders, and a rainbow of colours shimmers around her. For a moment Jesse sees another image transposed over her original appearance, but before his mind has time to register properly what he’s seeing, it’s gone. He can’t help wondering if she’s shown him this other manifestation deliberately, or whether he has been an inadvertent witness to a deeper truth. Or perhaps he’s even learning to see . . . He studies her carefully, but her expression is neutral, and her body, entirely solid if far from ordinary.

Jesse stares down at his father. The sphinx waits while he considers, while he struggles with his fiery demons, while he rises to his feet and hugs himself, slowly shaking his head.

‘
No,’ he says. ‘Tell me how to bury him.’

She throws back her head with a scream of laughter. Then she gathers the limp body of Jesse’s father in her jaws, a cat collecting its mouse, and with a clench and thrust of her hindquarters, springs into the air, spreads the cabled strength of her wings, circles once overhead, and is gone.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jesse says, his eyes blurring with tears. ‘Dad, I—’ If he can’t trust his memory, what about his feelings? Certain connections in the basic-emotion command systems are supposed to be
indelible
, even if the way you act upon this affective circuitry is not: the frontal lobes are terribly powerful. He’s done the reading. (Hasn’t he tried desperately to understand the source of his fire?) But some very odd things are wired into his brain—hardwired? soft? or . . . ?

Dispirited, he makes his way back to the edge of the sea. He removes one of the cigarettes from his packet, straightens it as best he can, and lights it with the solid comfort of his—Finn’s—Zippo. He smokes the way a shaken survivor smokes, needing every drag he takes, inhaling deeply, drawing the smoke down into the least used cul-de-sacs of his lungs, his muscles liquefying with relief.

The sea rolls seductively before his feet, and though he knows he should soon make the attempt to return to his world, the temptation is simply too great to resist; or his need too great. When he has finished smoking, he pinches out the butt and drops it into a pocket, unaccountably loathe to leave any earthly objects behind, though he supposes his own urine, the moisture evaporating from his pores, the atoms touched by his skin or breath will also taint this world.

Jesse strips and wades into the waves. Cold, but not as icy as before, or his body is adjusting better. He splashes a little water on his torso and back, then with a small cry dives beneath the surface and opens his eyes. The water is clear but salty; he’s never swum in any but freshwater before and is surprised at how quickly his eyes begin to sting. He swims underwater against the current, which, though strong, isn’t more than he can handle. There seems to be no fish; he must have frightened off the seabirds’ meal in his vicinity. He breaks surface to breathe and then continues to dolphin in playful lazy circles not far from shore. He has no desire to encounter a shark or whichever creatures this ocean might conceal; no desire to find out if he might be edible fare.

He’s about to dive underwater again when he feels something brush against his chest. Startled, he recoils, rolls onto his side, and swallows a gulp of seawater, then sputters and flails a little in the waves. He’s in no real danger of going under but needs a few minutes to recover from his momentary panic. He treads water, not even trying to re-establish the easy rhythm of his stroke, and looks all round nervously. There’s no sign of a fish or other sea dweller on the surface. Still, better to be sure. Surprises are always unwelcome in the water. He takes a deep breath and plunges below the swell. A small figure, blurred and shadowy, slips past him. Impossible . . . how could a naked infant—a little girl—be swimming here? For a moment he thinks of Ariel, the magical sprite who can fly and swim and even plunge into fire, who sometimes takes the form of a water nymph, who sings of
a sea change, Into something rich and strange.
Quickly he strikes out after the child and glimpses her again, fleetingly, her hand waving in a friendly gesture, but straightaway she’s gone, and his lungs are soon asking for, then demanding air. He rises to the surface. Though he tries diving and searching a few more times, he sees nothing other than the vast silent roam of dark green water saturating to black.

When his muscles begin to tire, he heads back to shore, clears a space free of shells, and flops down on the sand, but finds that he’s shivering despite the sun. The birds have grown accustomed to him, and a few come close till he gets up again and jogs in place. He rubs his arms and legs, and dresses as soon as he’s no longer dripping wet. He can’t seem to keep still. His thoughts are as unruly as his body, returning again and again to that light, almost ghostly touch and to the sighting of the little underwater swimmer. There’s something he’s missing, something his mind is trying to tell him. Finally he gives up. It’s like a word on the tip of your tongue, refusing to surface no matter how much you tug at the mooring chain. Maybe if he leaves it alone for a while, stops worrying it. The tide washes up untold treasure.

Jesse lights another cigarette. The swim has made him even hungrier, but rather than try to deal with the problem of food, he decides it’s time to face the real issue, the one he’s been avoiding; dreading.

After his smoke, he makes his way to the ash tree. The dead branch is large and unwieldy, but he needs something he can use without doing too much damage. A rock would be risky. Besides, a piece of the tree is more likely to cross with him; there must be
something
to all those fantasy tropes, the same way myths contain vestiges of primal experience. Using his knife, he half cuts and half snaps off a stout length and removes all the smaller branches and twigs, smoothing the ends and surface as much as possible. Now he has a good-sized club. He tucks it under his right arm, then takes out his top.

Jesse holds the little toy in the palm of his left hand and stares at it, trying to quieten his monkeyhouse mind. It isn’t easy, for he’s genuinely frightened by what he hopes to do; and even more frightened by the possibility of failure. It has to work, he tells himself. What other choice does he have?

He finds it difficult to focus. First he closes his eyes, but images strobe in bright distracting flashes; he opens his eyes—words tumble and bound and cartwheel; he closes them—flames flicker, rage into life, then die back again; he opens them—the notes of a saxophone, loud and brash; he closes them—wild reckless feelings . . .

 . . .
Jesse
 . . .

His mind twists and turns like a beast caged, desperate to escape; it throws itself against the bars again and again—bruising itself, howling in pain, then scrabbling, gibbering, into a corner before launching itself yet again against the iron—screeching, retreating, clutching its genitals, then running full tilt at the unyielding bars beyond which lay his world—

—
no world . . .

With a cry Jesse flings the top away. The makeshift bludgeon drops to the ground, unheeded. He spins round and gazes out to sea. For a moment he considers going down to the water again—cold, clean, pure. You could swim forever in its icy black ink.

 . . .
Jesse
 . . .

He covers his face with his hands but the voicings jutter on. What am I going to do? Stranded here alone, with only memories for company, and words and words to speak—bleak black words with no one to hear. He could conjure water, food too, probably . . . but a living creature . . . a dog . . . a companion . . .

Nubi’s rabbit-crazy bark sounds behind him, twice on a rising note. Jesse shudders and blocks the sound from his consciousness with an anguished exclamation. The bark doesn’t come again. No! Not that. Never that. He imagines what it would mean to summon a person. There are worse things than loneliness: like never knowing whether he’s holding Sarah, or a clone or a golem . . .

 . . .
Jesse
 . . .

He has to find a way back.

Once more he hears the sphinx’s laugh, a hot lance in his head. A taunt? Or a challenge? The way back is knotted forward to back to forward to

 . . .
Jesse
 . . .

He lifts his head to listen. Faintly at first, but then louder—Sarah’s voice spiralling lissom and sinuous and slender as fluted quicksilver towards him through the harsh cacophony in his head.

Jesse, where are you?

Of course. He’s hung from the tree. He’ll return not because he has to, but because he chooses to, because it’s his world, and hers, and it has chosen him too. Even if he could survive in this herenow, he’ll not live out his life in solitude, in a place without dance. One by one the other voices fall away.

‘Jesse,’ Sarah calls, ‘where are you? Down in the kitchen?’

He bends, retrieves the cudgel, securing it again beneath his arm, and the top, which he holds out before him on the flat of his hand. It rises in the air and begins to spin, slowly at first, then fast and faster until he can only see a blur, a flare of light, a flame.

~~~

Jesse hefts the length of ash. It won’t be long now. His back to the tree, he’s wedged between the moment of arrival and that of departure, the moment when he’ll complete the circle ordained by his birth—or his conception, or his great-grandfather’s decision to ride to market on that particular rainy Saturday in June, for who knows wherewhen anything begins or ends. ‘Nubi,’ he hears his earlier self call out. Footsteps approach, then stop. He takes a deep breath, grips the cudgel tightly, and rushes forward. His aim is good despite the darkness. At the moment of impact, both his alter ego and the piece of wood disappear. There are no fireworks, no heavenly choirs, no mushroom cloud. Jesse—the
other
Jesse—simply winks out. He closes his eyes with a sigh of relief. It’s done.

He opened them again when Nubi nudged his hand with his wet nose. The dog sat down at his feet and regarded Jesse with the expression which all dogs reserve for their owners—devoted, puzzled, a little wistful (after all, a dog biscuit was not that much to ask for, a bone). There was only the faintest glint of red in the depths of Nubi’s eyes, so vague and indistinct that Jesse thought he must have imagined it, for when the dog yawned it was gone. Gone too, the tenderness at the back of Jesse’s head; the twinge in his shoulder, the abrasions on his palms and the soles of his feet.

Chapter 31

Sarah and Jesse took a bus as far as the river, then walked in the direction of the docklands. It had turned hot again, one of those late summer days when it seemed that school, and winter, could be postponed indefinitely. The air felt Mediterranean—dry and heavy and faintly laced with a smell reminiscent of sweet oranges. Even now, with the sun already sinking, the glare off the water smudged the colours so that the opposite bank had the look of a watercolour thrust into a portfolio before it had quite dried. Not a cloud in sight, the hue of the sky a mere premonition of blue.

‘Ben finally texted. They’ll be back tonight, we can have the board tomorrow,’ Sarah said. ‘Or do you want me to try someone else?’

‘Tomorrow’s fine. Anyway, it’s too hot to skate.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘A secret,’ Jesse said, his eyes gleaming.

‘Your secrets have a habit of biting back.’

At a solitary willow, Jesse stooped to pick up a handful of small stones lying scattered about. He stepped to the river’s edge and skipped them lazily, one by one, across the water. His movements were spare and graceful, though Sarah knew that years of practice lay behind that kind of perfection. Her chest ached to watch him. He was like one of Finn’s photographs, startling and beautiful and addictive: the more you look, the more you want to look, and the more you find. She thought she could never get enough of him.

When the last ripple had smoothed out, he continued to stare into the depths of the river. Sarah wondered what he was thinking. His face had an odd look about it, as though he were watching something only he could see. The colour of his eyes had intensified to a rich gentian blue like the little bulbs which carpeted her grandmother’s garden in early spring.

Believe me, the factory’s no place for her. She’ll be bored out of her mind. Scared, too.

It’s none of your business.

Your business is my business. Get used to it.

Look, just back off, will you.

All our meals are going to be joint ones from now on. No side dishes.