Mortal Ghost (50 page)

‘I didn’t know you’d had a dog.’

‘Peter’s really. A young golden retriever, who doted on him, and vice versa.’

‘What happened?’

Finn bent to pick up a half coconut shell that had somehow found its way under the bush. He rubbed his fingers along its rough surface, its broken edges. His fingers worked by themselves, for his gaze was fixed on a spot above the woodpile.

‘Finn?’

Without dropping the shell Finn finally looked at Jesse with deep van Gogh eyes—loneliness and pain and despair, and that touch of madness.

‘When I learned of Peter’s death, I led Surfer out here that night after supper. She was very trusting. I didn’t even need to tie her up to shoot her.’

Jesse’s hand tightened around the gun. ‘Sarah’s said nothing about a dog.’

‘We never talk about it. She and Meg think I gave her away.’ Finn indicated the gun. ‘Go ahead. Use it.’

‘What?’

‘Shoot yourself. One shot through the mouth will do.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘Sure. Why not? I’ll bury you right here next to Surfer. No one need know. You ran off again, that’s all.’

‘You’re fucking crazy. I don’t want to shoot myself.’

‘OK, then do you want me to do it for you? If you’re worried about Sarah, she’ll get over it in time. She’s young. She’ll cry for a while, grieve for a while, but then she’ll move on. There’s school, and there’s dance, and there’s friends, and eventually there’ll be someone else. And in twenty years, every once in a while, but not often, when she hears a certain line of poetry or smells tobacco or is baking brownies, she’ll remember the sweet crazy blond kid with his strange talents—what was his name? Jeremy? Joshua? no,
Jesse
—and wonder what ever became of him, and she might even find herself crying a bit, the way you cry at a Hollywood tearjerker where the hero gets killed in a tragic accident, maybe a fire while he’s rescuing someone, but the kids will be wanting their tea, and the older lad is sweating his maths, and she still has a report to finish for work, and she needs to ring her mum, who hasn’t been feeling well lately, and her husband will certainly want to fuck after the kids are in bed, and she enjoys it too, so the moment will pass and it’ll be another year or so before she remembers Jesse again.’

Jesse’s throat had closed. He stepped back in order to brace himself against the wall of the shed. He needed the feel of the shiplap edges digging into his skin, the solidity of wood.

‘Well, what about it?’

Jesse could see the leaves of the lilac moving in the breeze, the shifting patterns of greenish light under the rhododendron. But he could hear nothing. All sound had been swallowed by whatever madness had seized hold of Finn.

Slowly Finn moved in close. Jesse held his breath. Without touching him, Finn stretched out an arm, pressed one palm flat against the cladding above Jesse’s shoulder, and leaned as if his legs could no longer support him. Jesse held himself very still. He caught a strong whiff of Finn’s sweat, which brought a prickle of tears to Jesse’s eyes. He blinked rapidly, not wanting Finn to notice. There was no way he could use the pistol against Finn, nor anything else in his own arsenal.

Finn lifted his other hand, which still grasped the coconut shell. For an instant Jesse thought Finn intended to wield it as a weapon. Then with a snap of his wrist Finn tossed the shell towards the woodpile.

‘There it is. All the truth I can offer you, Jesse. Like every one of us, you get to choose between the terrors of living or death. It’s up to you, but I’d suggest giving intimacy your best shot.’

The coconut shell hit the stacked wood with a soft thump and rolled away. A kestrel keened overhead.

Jesse dropped the gun to the ground and stepped into the circle of Finn’s arms. He laid his head on the older man’s shoulder. His breath came in loud gasps—the end of the longest swim yet. They embraced for a long time without speaking. Finn’s skin was warm, it melted the cloth between them, the cold metallic rivets of fear, so that an indelible imprint of Finn’s essence was melded like a fingerprint—a birthmark—onto Jesse’s skin. While Finn also took up his share of scars.

Finn eventually released his hold on Jesse and bent for his pistol.

‘You scared me,’ Jesse said. ‘I thought you’d flipped.’

Finn smiled. ‘Not yet.’

‘The dog. Surfer. How could you do that?’

‘Grief makes everyone a little mad.’ Finn tugged at his beard, and Jesse could tell that he wanted a smoke. ‘You’ve got to forgive yourself, Jesse.’

‘Have you?’

‘A bit. And a bit more each day.’

‘Would you really have shot me if I’d asked you to?’

‘You tell me.’

Jesse swept back his hair, which was sticking damply to his forehead. From his jeans pocket he removed his cigarettes and lighter, which he offered to Finn. ‘Yeah, I couldn’t have hurt you either, even to defend myself. Not you. And not Sarah’s dad.’ Then he grinned his lopsided grin. ‘I think.’

They both laughed. Finn lit their cigarettes, and they stood for a while in silence, smoke curling between them in a holding pattern before dissipating. Then Finn showed Jesse the gun.

‘Look here, it’s got a safety catch mounted on the slide.’ He demonstrated how to push the lever into the fire position. ‘At some point I’ll teach you how to shoot. Useful skill, though I hope you’ll never actually
need
it.’ With a decidedly provocative glint in his eyes, he struck the Zippo again. ‘Unlikely, eh?’

‘What you said about Sarah—’ Jesse began.

Finn snapped the lighter shut, cutting off the flame. ‘I know it hurt, and I’m sorry for that, but it’s part of the truth. Or what could be the truth. We’ll have to see.’

‘If there’s nobody to remember us, were we ever alive?’

‘Herregud, you ask the damndest questions. Why don’t you just take it day by day? I’m not much interested in whether someone a century or two from now knows who Finn Andersen was.’

‘That’s because you already know who you are. And that you’ll live on in Sarah and Sarah’s kids.’ Jesse was proud of himself—his voice was very steady over the mention of her future.

Finn walked to the area he’d cleared with his foot and crouched down. He stubbed out his cigarette, picked up a handful of rotting leaf, and crumbled it through his fingers.

‘I miss him so much,’ Finn said. ‘You’re right, you know. In sixty or seventy years, there’ll only be a few photos and an old woman’s memory, then nothing. As if he’d never lived.’

Jesse shivered. A flash of Sarah white-haired, wrinkled, those speaking eyes, dancer’s back erect as ever, still beautiful—foreknowledge? memory? imagination? Perhaps it made no difference. Are we not already mortal ghosts?

‘He lived,’ Jesse said. Now, he thought, tell him now.

But Finn rounded on Jesse, suddenly fierce. ‘Then live for him. You know your Dylan Thomas. Don’t ever give up. Live, and rage, and go out blazing.’

Chapter 39

A few hours afterwards Jesse was seriously annoyed with himself for letting Sarah drag him to this party. ‘It’s not really a club,’ she’d said, ‘just an end-of-the-holidays sort of thing, all my mates will be there, Katy, everyone, you’ll get to meet a lot of people, please come.’ He knew she longed to go, and knew she wanted to take his mind off Nubi’s death, and Daisy’s, so he’d given in. She kissed him then, and he buried his hands in her electric cloud of hair. For a moment it had felt so good—so real, so free, so safe—until his memories flooded back.

The air was dense, filled with smoke, and the stink of spilled beer and sweating bodies, and the cloy of perfume and aftershave and hair gel, all mixed together with another, more sinister smell. Jesse tried to put a name to it, but all he could think of was desperation. These kids were driven, frantic to escape the senselessness of school and parents and money, lots and lots of money. He lit a cigarette then stubbed it out after a drag or two. For the first time in weeks an iron band had started to tighten around his temples, and his vision was even a touch blurred. If he didn’t leave soon, there was a good chance he’d be sick.

Jesse fought his way through the throng and the brutal pulse of the music. Sarah was dancing with a tall, older-looking bloke in battered jeans and a soft leather vest. His hair was long and straight and black, his eyes the jet and tilt of the Orient, and he had a thin nose, even thinner lips, and a very studied stubble, as if he were a French film star slumming for fresh young blood. Jesse realised that most women would find him extremely good-looking—sexy, Jesse supposed grimly. His heart began to pound as he saw how Sarah danced, and how this character watched her. She should never have worn that silvery spandex top; the heat had pasted it to her skin like a cheap swimming costume, every detail of her anatomy on public display. As Jesse approached, the would-be film star moved in very close and with a faint smirk pinched one of Sarah’s nipples hard enough for her to gasp, lose her chill, and take a step backwards. But she didn’t leave. Don’t get angry, Jesse told himself. Keep a low profile. There’s no problem.

Jesse gave the man a small nudge. His face paled greenly, and he put a hand up to his head. Without a word he turned and pushed towards the edge of the dance floor, stumbling and bouncing off gyrating bodies, then staggering on again like an eccentric billiard ball, finally coming to rest by lurching against one bloke who grabbed him and from the expression on his face seemed to be swearing violently. It was hard to tell from here. A few steps away from Jesse, Sarah watched as her future superstar vomited on the spot, splattering not only the lad who’d caught him, but his girl as well, who jumped back and retched visibly, shuddering with disgust. Her bare belly and navel piercing were now splashed with puke. The band continued to play, and the strobes flashed in nauseating spasms of colour.

Sarah rounded on Jesse. ‘You didn’t have to do that! I was perfectly all right.’

Sweat broke out on Jesse’s forehead. He was overtaken by a fit of shivering so strong that he had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering. Her anger forgotten, Sarah took his arm.

‘You’re ill.’

He nodded, unable to speak. He leaned heavily against Sarah, who led him slowly towards the small brightly-coloured tables scattered like confetti at the fringes of the room. Jesse floundered more than once, nearly dragging them down. When she finally had him seated, she examined his face in dismay. His eyes were ringed in black, and his skin the colour and texture of old suet, and slick with sweat. He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the wall.

‘Stay here,’ Sarah told him rather unnecessarily. ‘I’ll be right back. I’m going to fetch some cold water for you.’

He spoke without opening his eyes. ‘Wait. Don’t go. Something’s wrong.’

‘I won’t be long,’ she promised.

Jesse sank into a doze—or something closer to a fugue state. Disjointed images floated in and out of his consciousness: skewed contorted faces, red and orange screams, a strong pungent odour that slid into his mouth and down his throat like an obscene tongue. Lines of flame zigzagged through his flesh, lacerating, tearing. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘No.’

‘
The band’s not that bad,’ a familiar voice said.

Jesse opened his eyes, slowly, his lids struggling with the weight of the coruscating lights. He squinted at the figure behind the voice. Tondi? Her image rippled and heaved and broke into pieces of coloured glass, then flowed together again. Tondi.

‘
What do you want?’ he managed to croak.

‘
You’re green as mouldy bread. A bad hit?’

Jesse licked his lips. It wasn’t worth making the effort to answer. Where was Sarah? He needed a glass of water. He needed her.

‘
Here, drink this.’ Tondi was carrying two glasses of coke, one a good half-litre. She handed the smaller glass to him and sat down opposite. ‘Go on, you’ll feel better.’

He drank it down. It had an odd metallic taste, like a cheap aluminium spoon. Jesse shivered—all the signs of an impending migraine.

‘
Got a fag?’ Tondi asked.

‘
Leave me alone,’ he said, but laid his packet on the table. She shook out a cigarette, lit it with a disposable lighter from a pouch at her belt, inhaled. Eyes bright, she slipped off a shoe and lifted her foot to his lap. With a mocking smile she flexed her foot, then rotated it first in one direction, then the other. Jesse’s eyes were riveted on her smoke rings, which seemed to taunt him, draw him into their midst. The air was thick, suffocating. The circles grew larger and more insistent. Suddenly she increased the pressure. He inhaled sharply at the familiar response, despite his revulsion.

‘
Stop,’ he said hoarsely.

The room swam in and out of focus. Jesse closed his eyes and balled his fists, trying to fight the nausea, the waves of sensation from his groin, the heat.