The Last Days of Jack Sparks (26 page)

I can still turn this day around, and every other day that follows.

I can get to the bottom of what’s going on with the video, with the Paranormals, maybe with my own paranoia.

I can make things work, really work, with Bex.

Everything’s fine and that’s a fact.

Astral soon dents my titanium. He takes me aside and says, ‘That girl Bex, man . . . Is she with you?’

My reaction is pure knee-jerk. ‘Yeah, she is.’

‘Cool,’ he says, nodding furiously. ‘Hey, you did good there, buddy.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I’ll treasure that note of surprise forever.’ Then I give him just enough cold, dead eye contact to communicate that this subject is closed. Of course, I know Bex isn’t
with
me, but there’s no way I’m letting Astral barge in.

I sit and fume over his impudence as the others crack on. Pascal musters the gall to speak at length about how quantum physics has made time travel all the more likely. ‘It’s possible,’ he says, ‘that what we see as ghosts are in reality time travellers. It could be that séances are a safe way for them to communicate with us.’ This notion is greeted by much earnest nodding and stroking of chins – as is Ellie, when she broaches the idea that this experiment could potentially attract a ‘genuine passing spirit’.

These sycophants congratulate Astral on a social media competition he’s running where the winner gets a follow-back from him. An idea he copied from me. The team are also ‘excited for’ a local radio interview Astral and Elisandro did about the experiment. An interview I never knew was happening and which probably doesn’t even mention me.

Checking my phone, I discover that my social media accounts have all disappeared.

Just . . . gone.

When I try to access them from my phone, the log-ins no longer work.

Speechless, I stare at the screen. I will it to change. A brand-new suspicion blooms: can this sabotage be sheer coincidence, the day after I refused to boost the Paranormals’ profiles any further? Is Pascal the friendly computer genius avoiding eye contact, or am I imagining that?

I cycle through apps and sites, hitting the same buttons again and again, but the results stay the same. The cornerstones of my online profile have been demolished. Only YouTube remains.

These people leeched me for followers, many thousands of followers, and now they’ve shut me down. Anyone invested in following the experiment can only get the skinny from them. The Paranormals jumped up on my shoulders, then gagged me. The one guy in the experiment who’s going to question it all.

I’m falling through a void. My cheeks are red-hot chilli peppers.

Everyone else keeps on delivering monologues about themselves.

I am Mount Vesuvius, circa ad 79.

Just as I’m about to let rip and roast them, that’s when the table starts to move and the face appears in mid-air.

* * *

‘A face? What do you mean, a fucking face?’

Here’s Bex on a high stool beside me at the Sunset Castle’s Tiki Bar, out by the pool. She’s demolishing a pina colada, still very much in holiday mode. Not to mention WTF? mode, now that I’ve mentioned the face. The moving table means nothing compared to the face.

‘And in
mid-air
?’

I’m still rubbing my bruised jaw as I nod, then tell her what I’m about to tell you.

Lisa-Jane is saying how she once sent Marilyn Manson a vial of her piss, when one corner of the table rears up all by itself.

The words curl up and die in Lisa-Jane’s mouth.

You can sense our collective pulse.

‘Okay,’ Astral intones, a tremor in his voice. ‘Let’s just keep on talking, guys.’

I abandon my chair and squat down, trying to find an angle where I can see everyone’s knees at the same time. I observe how the table shifts from standing on two legs, to one, back to two.

Catching my perplexed expression, Lisa-Jane sneers. ‘Time to open your mind, huh?’

‘If opening my mind involves trusting you,’ I say, ‘then forget it.’

Her nostrils flare. ‘Meaning . . . what?’

‘LJ,’ snaps Astral, more imperious by the minute. ‘Let’s stay focused here. What did you do when the pee overflowed on your fingers?’

I sit back down beside the others. All our fingertips rest on the table’s surface as it rises and falls in unexpected places. When one leg lands heavily on Howie’s alleged gimp foot, his howl of pain is lost among our excitable whoops.

Yes,
our
whoops. I kind of get swept away. Might as well enjoy this bullshit while dismantling the Paranormals’ reputation. Do the others look delighted because their specially doctored magic stunt table is functioning well? Yes. Could we achieve this same movement on any table, anywhere? No.

This particular table must conceal small motors. Tiny gyroscopes. Remote-control receptors, accessed by someone’s hand buried in their pocket. Or it’s controlled by an outside accomplice, monitoring everything through a camera hidden in one of Pascal’s gadgets. We live in an age where you can use a smartphone to switch on your central heating from the other side of the world. Or, according to Howie, induce a fatal insulin overdose via Bluetooth. Making a table move is no kind of stretch.

Lisa-Jane nods over at the camcorder: ‘Please say we’re rolling.’ Pascal nods.

I’m pretty sure Ellie sees the face first.

I think she says, ‘Oh my God, guys,
guys
. . .’, but it’s hard to be certain because the moment is so very shocking and she’s soon joined by everyone else gasping, swearing and fumbling for their phones.

Chills rush up my arms. This floating face is looking directly at me.

It’s suspended high enough so that most of us have to crane our necks. Same size as a human head, and with a human face, but genderless and strange.

I mean, it has two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth, but the nature of each element keeps changing. Slowly, fluidly, continuously. The eyes switch from brown to blue to green. The ears, nose and mouth change size and shape. Even the colour of the skin is restless, darkening and lightening.

The only constant is the attitude this apparition gives off.

It grins.

Not what you’d call a benign grin, either. This grin is more ‘Yeah, I’m here, motherfuckers, and now the fun starts.’ The eyes gleam. Mimi looks as pleased to see us as the Paranormals are to see it.

Is this supposed to be the same Mimi we created? It doesn’t even look like a woman. Although, thinking about it, we never bothered to discuss how Mimi looked. We just wanted results. Bragging rights.

Our first instinct is not to communicate with this entity, but to capture it.

‘Sweet mother of God,’ says Astral, stabbing sausage fingers at his phone screen. ‘I need to get a picture to Fox News.’ Elisandro tilts the camcorder upwards on its tripod, homing in for Mimi’s close-up. Pacing around in circles, Ellie says she’s going to call
American Idol
host Ryan Seacrest.

I couldn’t say how I feel. My stomach does a figure-eight.
What is this thing?

It’s the same push and pull of emotion I’ve felt while writing this whole damn book. That same internal war. As everyone else’s phones make their digital photo-snapping sounds, I don’t know where to look. I’m transfixed by the floating face, while trying to work out where the holographic projector must be. Even though holograms only work in dark rooms with special lighting rigs. Could this be some new, cutting-edge holo tech? Is that even possible? What kind of hologram were Tupac and Michael Jackson?

If the Paranormals have seen this spectre a hundred times during dress rehearsals, their acting is once again exemplary. While they gush and drool and photograph the face, I’m almost more tempted to photograph
them
, to document how genuinely blown away they appear.

When I get it together to take my own photograph of Mimi, I discover what the others are realising. When I tap the screen to zero in on the face, the little focusing square doesn’t materialise. You’d swear there’s nothing there to focus on . . .

‘Fuck,’ breathes Johann, goggling at his screen. ‘It’s not showing.’

I snap Mimi, then join everyone else in examining our camera rolls.

We’ve taken a whole bunch of pictures of the ceiling and the ceiling alone. Elisandro’s shoulders heave as he reviews the camcorder footage, which doesn’t show the face either. He then channels all his zealous steam into an attack on me. ‘There you go, Mr Big-Shot! That’s why there aren’t more real ghost videos.’

Astral beats him to the punch. ‘Yes, some of these things
don’t come out on film
.’ He says this unhappily, because he now has nothing to send Fox News.

The Mimi face beams down, as if enjoying the friction.

‘Why’s it looking at me?’ I wonder aloud.

‘It’s not,’ says Astral. ‘It’s looking at me.’

‘Bullshit,’ says Howie. ‘It’s looking straight at
me
.’

Everyone else says the same. Mimi is somehow looking at all of us at once, which makes me feel ill deep inside. Do we all need MRI scans? I certainly need some cocaine and a tequila slammer.

‘Mimi,’ says Lisa-Jane, her cool evaporating, those drawn-on brows urgent squiggles. ‘Is that you? Nod if it’s you.’

Astral growls and opens his mouth to reprimand Lisa-Jane for taking control. Then his mouth stays open when the Mimi face nods its head.

Everyone cheers. A team who just scored the winning goal.

Contact has been made.

Discipline gives way to chaos, as people fire questions up at the face.

Ellie: ‘Are you really the Mimi we created, or are you a spirit passing by?’

Johann: ‘Is there life after death?’

Pascal: ‘Are you a time traveller?’

Howie: ‘Can you confirm that my neighbour is trying to kill me?’

I want to ask a question too, but everyone’s so loud and my throat is sandpaper and there’s a jackhammer pulse in my temples.

Everyone yells questions up at Mimi. Pure word salad.

Elisandro puts his hands together, then jerks them apart: ‘Stop!’

Mimi vanishes into thin air. It doesn’t blip out, but rather melts away.

Something desperate ignites me. Something that believes Mimi is a real ghost. I flash my teeth at Elisandro and snarl, ‘Oh, nice work, dickhead.’

Elisandro launches himself across the table and clocks me one on the jaw.

I grab him and topple back blind, losing my balance, dragging him down with me, white hot with hate. Before we hit the ground, my knuckles slam into something small and round and hard in a sea of soft flesh. Elisandro makes a glottal choking sound as his falling body weight smacks the wind from my lungs. He wrenches himself away in panic, crawling off across the carpet. Ellie stoops, her arms outstretched to intercept him. Mother and toddler.

‘Asshole,’ she spits at me.

Johann’s eyes are molten grey steel. His whole body flexes as he steps towards me, pauses, mutters some admonishment to himself, then joins the others crowding about Elisandro. I just loll around on the carpet, winded, checking that my jaw still works.

Elisandro clutches his throat and croaks as Ellie cradles him from behind.

This transient physical pain feels secondary to my mental anguish.

The push and pull.

Science sweeps in to provide a crutch, just as it has since I was five years old. I’m reminded, with as much impact as Elisandro’s fist, that this experiment actually isn’t good fun. Neither is my determination to expose them for making the video.

All of this is tearing me apart.

The firestorm of fear and rage at the back of my throat engulfs the room. ‘You think I don’t know this is all total bullshit? You really think I’ve been going along with this
utter crap
?’

Our astonishment after seeing Mimi invests this war of words with an electrical charge. Forked lightning flashes out of me as I accuse the Paranormals of rigging the whole Mimi Experiment. They deliberately alienated Professor Spence, I say, because they knew he’d see right through the artifice when the table started moving. Probably because he and his own bunch of fakers had employed the same tricks in the seventies. So they’d wanted him on board at the start for the PR cachet, then just blanked him till he walked.

Astral’s face turns purple as he tries to bellow me into submission, while Lisa-Jane screeches that I’m ‘a paranoid coke-head prick’, but I just keep repeating myself until the full force of my disgusted bile sinks into their dumb heads.

‘And I know full fucking well,’ I tell them, my forefinger a jabbing gun, throat sore from shouting, ‘that you stupid shits made the YouTube video. And now it’s all going to blow up in your faces.’

Bex stirs a straw around in her new pina, making the little umbrella fall out.

‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘So much for the whole stealthy-playing-along thing.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, tonguing a cracked tooth. ‘That’s gone for good.’

‘So all this stuff happened this afternoon? What did they say when you accused them of making the video?’

‘Oh, there was a whole load of shouting and big eyes and American stuff, until we all got tired of fighting. So we shifted to this other meeting room – one without a table – and made a circle with our chairs, talking it out like adults.’

She’s getting impatient. ‘And the outcome?’

Despite my nagging need for coke, I’m unable to suppress a smirk. ‘I pissed them off even more.’

‘You’d better be kidding,’ says Johann. The others, even Pascal, are equally aghast.

‘I’m serious,’ I say. ‘Either we relocate the whole experiment, or I’m out. I won’t even include this farce in the book. And you’ll have to sell your arses on Hollywood Boulevard to fund the rest.’

Howie scowls at my ignorance. ‘
Hollywood Boulevard
. You mean Sepulveda.’ He then looks relieved when Lisa-Jane breaks the silence.

‘How exactly do you think we achieved the illusion of a floating fucking head today, Jack? I’m so psyched to hear this.’

I shrug. ‘Who knows what your fancy gadgets do?’

‘I’d be happy to talk you through it again,’ says Pascal. Even my favourite Paranormal’s gone all passive-aggressive.