The Last Days of Jack Sparks (19 page)

World needs to know how crazy Jack Sparks really is.

I never wanted him to join the experiment. I got talked over, then outvoted. Astral pushed for it big-time, saying we needed to take our group ‘to the next level of visibility’. Being in Sparks’ new book was supposedly the key, because he’s some big-shot Brit writer and has like 260K followers (but only follows thirteen people back, including Richard Dawkins and Ricky Gervais). No one except me and maybe Lisa-Jane seemed to consider the fact that Sparks is an atheist, which is about as closed-minded as you can get. Maybe God doesn’t exist, who knows, but why do people like Sparks feel such a burning need to slap their chips down by the roulette wheel? Makes no sense.

This fucking guy.

I don’t know whose bright idea it was to invite him to the after-session drinks at the Beanery. Probably Pascal’s. Just from the obnoxious way Sparks insisted on naming the ghost, it was obvious he wouldn’t gel with us on a social level.

The guy was already drunk during the session, but then he gets wasted when we all hit the bar. He keeps dabbing a finger on his gums and also hits the restroom a lot. Nothing suspect there, right? And he wonders why we can’t understand half of what he’s says, when he’s so clearly wasted. Starts talking about ‘bloody Yanks’. We all feel embarrassed for him, but keep the conversation alive.

We try to ignore him dropping a glass, then leaving us to alert staff. We try to ignore his clumsy attempts to hit on Ellie, not knowing or caring she’s with me, saying how she’s ‘a really hot mama’. We try to ignore him yelling in Johann’s bad tinnitus ear, ‘You just got back from a war – why are you hanging with these losers? You should be off your tits in a brothel!’

Myself, I try real hard to stay polite when he makes fun of my oriental dragon shirt, then asks me where he can score some coke. Because I’m half Mexican and so obviously
must
have big-time contacts along the border.

This fucking
guy
.

I don’t know which idiot orders him an Arrogant Bastard, because it sends the prick into space. He interrogates us endlessly about his dumb YouTube ghost video, which I kind of suspect he filmed himself as a publicity thing, but I hold back on saying so. We try to offer opinions but he steamrollers over us. Why ask questions then not listen to the answers?

The real problem starts when he asks about ‘the three words on the video’. There’s a pause, then Lisa-Jane asks what he means, and Sparks just says the same thing again, like it’s obvious.

Ellie says, ‘Oh, you mean the camera person saying “Oh God” and whatnot?’ Sparks, all aggressive, he says no, he doesn’t fucking mean that. He says he means the three separate words: one spoken at the start of the video, another halfway through and the last one right at the end.

We just stare at him, like he’s trying to test us.

I say, ‘Are these words subliminal?’ That gets a laugh, so the crazy Brit slams a palm into the table, spilling Ellie’s drink.

‘No!’ he says, ‘They’re not subliminal. They’re the opposite of subliminal.’ Then he says the three words, but he’s so trashed we can barely understand them. He adds, ‘They’re all demon names. Why am I having to tell you guys? You should know this stuff.’

We just keep staring at him.

This fucking guy
.

Then he’s waggling a finger, looking us all in the eye one by one. And he’s laughing, which comes as a relief to the more sensitive among us. He says, ‘Hahaha, you guys. Very good, well played, you got me!’ Pascal and Ellie start to laugh along, but Astral pulls his big leader thing and shuts them down.

‘We honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he tells Sparks. ‘I’ve watched that video many times, full volume, and the only words spoken are “Oh God . . . this is it”, like Ellie says.’

But Sparks is still laughing, still waggling that finger, as a big pizza arrives for everyone. ‘Fuck you,’ he says, slurring, grinding his molars, pulling out his phone. ‘That’s right – haze the new guy. This is a sorority initiation thing, yeah? What’s all that sorority stuff about anyway? What a pack of bollocks.’

Then he’s asking his followers. Takes him five whole minutes to tap out, ‘Hey! The Scary Video. What do you make of the 3 words at start, middle and end? Adramelech, Mephistopheles and Baphomet?’

So we sit there, waiting for the response. Ellie isn’t eating the pizza because she’s too tense. I wink to reassure her, but I know she’s thinking, ‘I have to spend
two weeks
with this imbecile?’

I check out the responses to Sparks’ post. It’s one never-ending column of question marks.

‘Huh???’

‘What words??’

‘All I hear is “Oh God, this is it”, dude?’

‘WTF?!??!’

‘Haven’t heard those words. Played it again. Still don’t hear them??’

‘This a joke?’

Let me tell you: as Jack Sparks reads through these replies, we watch smoke gush from the volcano, expecting the worst. He grips his phone so hard, his hand shakes. Then, before anyone can stop him, he erupts. Heaves the table up, trying to flip it. Our pizza slides off and slops on the floor. Sparks screams in my face, I can’t even remember what he says. I scream back and the security guys are coming over. Astral gets up to intercept them, but they practically walk through him to manhandle Sparks and me. Jack’s shouting all this stuff about ‘fucking liars’ and shit, all the way to the kerb, which his ass hits hard. Security know me, so I don’t get the kerb treatment, but I do get kicked out of my favourite night spot.

This.

Fucking.

Guy.

Astral and Lisa-Jane talk to security, trying to explain, but I’m still not allowed back in. All I can do is watch Sparks lying on his side on the kerb, and he’s crying. Actual tears on the guy’s face. He’s like, ‘What the fuck, what the fuck, no no no . . .’, all fear and snot.

The others come out to join me and someone calls a yellow cab. By the time it arrives, Sparks is sitting upright on the sidewalk, playing the YouTube video on his phone. He thrusts the phone at us, asks, ‘Hear that?
Do you hear that?
’, then drags his finger across the screen to rewind it yet again.

But we hear no words.

We help him to stand then put him inside the cab, his clothes all peppered with cigarette butts. He doesn’t resist, his face still wet. We give the poor driver a twenty and tell him to keep the change, just to take this pain-in-the-ass the short distance back up the hill to his chichi hotel.

As the cab pulls away, we hear Sparks inside. We see the blue light of his phone screen. ‘Hear that?’ he asks the driver. ‘You hear “Adramelech”? For fuck’s sake, listen again!’

Through the rear windscreen, we see the silhouette of the driver shaking his head. Raising a hand to tell Sparks to knock it off.

The seven of us stand on the sidewalk, watching the cab blend into traffic. Wondering what just happened. Tomorrow, Astral will wake to a garbled email threatening us all with ‘severe legal action’ if we mention those three devil words on the video. Sparks says he’ll deny ever having heard them. He’ll also tell his followers how he was only kidding about the three words – of
course
they’re not on the video, ho ho ho. Try to pass it off as ‘a social experiment’.

‘Well,’ says Lisa-Jane, sparking up a smoke. ‘I think we can do without that guy.’

‘No,’ says Astral. ‘He stays.’

‘What?’ says everyone else.

‘He has to stay,’ says Astral.

We are dumbfounded.

The big guy finally confesses over stiff drinks in the next bar. Before coming out to LA, Sparks agreed to fund most of the experiment. He’s covering half the meeting room rental and our new equipment, plus Professor Spence’s flights and accommodation. I have no idea why, and neither does Astral, but he reminds us that our two Kickstarter campaigns failed horribly. Few people care as much as we do about some experiment from the seventies. Although one day soon, it’ll be a very different story. After this experiment, man, we’ll be paraded through the damn streets on people’s shoulders.

Until that day, all of us are stuck working jobs that just about cover our rent, food, gas, little else.

So . . . yup.

Turns out we can’t change our lives without this fucking guy.