Ghoster

by Jason Arnopp

  So that’s decided. I will not open Scott’s phone.

  Hey, seems I can be a grown-up after all.

  With an old-school ping, a text arrives on my Nokia.

  Here’s Izzy, impatient for an update. Talk about a timely sign that I’ve made the correct choice. Opening up the chat, I give her all the latest news from my mad, bad life.

  IZZY

  whoa slow down slow down… how can all scotts stuff be gone

  KATE

  By virtue of not. Being. Here. Any. More. The electricity doesn’t even work.

  IZZY

  whaaaaat… thats crazy… so you think hes done a runner

  KATE

  I honestly don’t know what to think, Izz.

  IZZY

  i dont get whats happened… so hes still not replying on his phone… obvs not i spose

  IZZY

  … are u still there…

  KATE

  What if something terrible’s happened to him?

  IZZY

  have u checked to see if hes posted on the socials… want me to look again

  KATE

  Ulp. Shit, no, I haven’t. Didn’t think. Okay… Go on, then.

  IZZY

  k… lets have a look

  KATE

  Don’t give me any Sarah Harding fake news this time.

  KATE

  I’m in serious suspense here, mate.

  KATE

  Has he posted or not?

  IZZY

  right… call off the cops… scotts been tweeting today

  IZZY

  i can also see a couple of public fb posts…

  KATE

  You have got to be fucking kidding me. What’s he posted?

  IZZY

  a load of old shit… mostly shares of jokes… cat vids… memes… 12 mins ago on twitter he posted a pic of a gin n tonic in a bar with the words LOVIN LIFE… jesus im so sorry kate

  IZZY

  what a cold mofo this guy is

  IZZY

  kate you still there hun

  IZZY

  kate

  IZZY

  kate

  IZZY

  ???

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  3 October

  Rage makes a statue of me. My hands are stone gargoyle claws. Can’t move, can’t make a sound.

  The living room seems to darken, heat up and expand. How incredibly stupid I’ve been. All because I believed Scott Palmer was the man to banish loneliness for good.

  I was in love with not only him but the idyllic picture we’d created. Never wanted to pop that bubble or break that spell – because I might have ended up by myself again.

  I needed the illusion. Scott recognised this and decided to milk me for all I was worth. The fucker exploited me.

  What to do with all this hatred? My heart may well stop beating, through sheer astonished apoplexy. I want to destroy everything. Melt everything down into one brick and use it to pulp Scott’s evil brains.

  My hands ball into fists as I cross the floor to punch a wall, any wall. The first impact sends a jarring shockwave up along my arm and through the rest of me. Can’t lie, this feels pretty good, so I do it again, and again. I snarl and yell and even treat myself to a banshee-scream, until I’m flat-out jack-hammering the walls with both fists, like the world’s least tolerant neighbour.

  To think I was actually worried about Scott’s safety!

  Even thought the fucker was vulnerable.

  Scott Palmer, you have screwed over the wrong person. Carry on lovin’ life while you still can, mate, because that bliss will soon die when I hunt you down and confront you.

  Fuck my past and fuck the dangers. Let’s have a damn good poke around inside this phone.

  As I pace around the cardboard Manhattan of my boxes, Scott’s phone shows me numerous missed calls and texts. The front screen’s wallpaper image is a photo of The Artist Formerly Known As Prince (or Symbol Boy as I used to call him, before he passed away and it no longer felt respectful to do so). Only a few weeks ago, Scott had my picture here instead.

  A horribly familiar mixed-bag of conflicting emotions floods over me. The fear, the compulsion, the queasy thrills. The sense of having little control over my actions, as if someone else is calling the shots.

  Flying in the face of the sensible decision I made only ten minutes ago feels deeply disquieting. I was too ashamed to tell Izzy that I have Scott’s phone, but now that I know he’s alive and all too well, my desire for payback cancels out all that crap.

  Rage has unlocked my right to unlock this phone.

  Could this be how it feels to smoke a cigarette? You know it’s going to kill you, but you do it anyway, through some crazed desire for self-destruction?

  When I try to skip past the lock-screen, the display transforms into a stern security keypad with numbers from zero to nine. Apparently, I could also gain access with the correct fingerprint, but that won’t be an option unless Scott accidentally left one of his digits behind too.

  What kind of guess-work can I use to figure out this passcode?

  Nothing springs readily to mind. Funnily enough, over the course of our epic three-month courtship, Scott and I never discussed our favourite numbers.

  Sitting with a G&T, lovin’ life! My face burns and I can’t breathe straight.

  Numbers, fucking numbers. How do people choose their passcodes? What about Scott’s date of birth? Nah. Might have worked, if only the slippery prick had told me his real age. Still, the day and month are likely to be right, aren’t they? What could Scott’s real age be, if not thirty-seven? Since he lied, then surely he has to be at least forty.

  I plug Scott’s possible date of birth into the keypad.

  Wrong passcode. Okay, so let’s try him one year older…

  Nope.

  One more try on this tack. Might Scott be forty-two?

  Computer says no. Bloody hell, 3 August might not even be his birthday. He probably just wanted me to make a fuss of him, as if I didn’t make enough already. Thinking back, it was quite the coincidence that his “birthday” fell on one of my days off…

  The fucker never even knew when my birthday was. Never even asked.

  Still pacing, I glare at the phone’s impenetrably black screen. Little pig, little pig, let me in…

  Outside, the snow has become heavy rain. All I can make out are the smeared colours of the pier, the street lamps and the zip-wire tower.

  Barely visible in this light, the demonic window-face looks on, mocking me, as I mentally replay conversations that Scott and I had. When this technique fails to dish up any viable numbers, I grab my own Nokia and scroll through every text we ever exchanged.

  Painstaking and painful.

  The simple act of sitting down on my boxes gives me a jolting reminder, but one that has nothing to do with passcodes. Frantic seconds later, I haul open the sliding door and retrieve the box I’d left out on the balcony. Soaked through with rain, the cardboard and the books inside may as well be toilet paper.

  As a pool of rainwater creeps out from around the base of the ruined box, my hope wanes. Like most people, Scott probably chose some arbitrary array of digits that were simple enough to remember. Is it even worth trying 1234? Nah, he’s way too tech-savvy for that. But is he even really an IT guy? For all I truly know right now, he might have earned his keep by frying chips on the pier.

  With a heavy heart, I try 1234 and notch up another failure. After a few more fruitless attempts to break in, I toss this stupid secure phone aside.

  Need a break. Need time to think properly about this passcode.

  Not too much time, though, because it may have been at least twenty-four hours since Scott left his phone here. When a phone gets lost or stolen, people contact their service provider to get the old SIM card cancelled. Scott clearly hasn’t done this yet. Why? Does he think he lost it in his new place, or while en route, or does he believe he packed it into a hurriedly assembled moving box? What
ever the case may be, as soon as he realises the truth it’ll be thank you and goodnight. I’ll be blocked out of this handset for good.

  All this space around me seems to span out forever. Here in this gutted flat, I’m stuck between a vast coastline and a sprawling, rainswept city in which no one gives two rats’ asses about me. Hello, deep blue sea. Hello, Devil.

  I feel tiny and humiliated and entirely out of control. Desperation surges from my belly to the back of my throat. Abort, abort! I grab the Nokia and make the first call.

  This is insane. I need to go back to Leeds and I need to go back there tomorrow. I can take Scott’s phone with me if I want…

  … and you know you’ll want to…

  … but surely it can’t be too late to reboot my old life up north.

  From the moment my old boss Patrizia answers her phone, I may as well be trying to walk up a down escalator. “Kate, we filled the position two weeks back. Something might come up, but… what’s happened, love? You seemed so certain about this move.”

  “I’m so sorry, darling,” says Mr Gluck, the man who I thought would be my last ever landlord. “The contract’s signed, the new tenants move in tomorrow.”

  Can’t move forward by opening this phone, and neither can I move back. I’m trapped with an emotional time bomb that’s about to blow.

  Might it be possible for someone to cry so hard, and for so long, that they die through dehydration?

  Woohoo, there’s only one way to find out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  28 August

  Scott and I are on a train from Brighton to London’s Victoria station. This is the tail-end of my glorious seaside visit, during which Scott asked me to move in with him. I’m on my way back to Leeds and he has a handily-timed meeting in London, so we get to cuddle up at the rear end of this carriage like teenagers in the back row of a cinema.

  An elderly couple occupy the row in front of us, but they’ve chosen seats across the aisle from each other. Beneath the man’s crop of white hair sits a joyless face, as if he’s sucking on a plum. The woman displays an equal lack of joie de vivre. Despite the summer heat, she’s still bunched up in her fleecy coat as if trying to gain maximum insulation from her husband.

  Neither of them has spoken to the other during the first half of this journey. They just sit there, eating salmon sandwiches that stink out the carriage. As Scott and I chat lazily to each other, I can’t help but wonder how many secrets, lies and betrayals have divided this older couple over the past decades.

  A certain smugness grips me when I compare them to me and Scott, but this is undercut with fear. I never want our bubble to pop.

  By the time the old coots unwrap their packed dessert items – tangerines, which at least help to erase the reek of long dead fish – I catch Scott contemplating them too. I lean over and whisper into his ear.

  “God. Let’s pledge to never be like them, eh?”

  He nods gravely. “No salmon sandwiches. Ever.”

  I laugh, then tickle-jab him under the armpit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  3 October

  Why did Scott really crack that joke? Could it be that he didn’t understand what I meant about the great divide between the old couple on the train? Or did he understand only too well, and simply knew that he and I would barely even last three months, let alone as many decades?

  Inside the impenetrable fortress that passed for Scott’s head, he may have been thinking about all the secrets he’d already kept from me. All the lies he’d told. The massive bait-and-switch he may already have had planned, as I sat beside him, so deeply smug and naïve.

  Who knows? The fucker might even have laughed to himself as we rolled on towards old London town.

  I couldn’t say how long this great flood has lasted. All I know is that the tears have given way to numb exhaustion. Tomorrow is my first day at work, so I need to rally myself and get practical. If I try to sleep in the bedroom, too many memories will scuttle across the carpet to torture me, so the living room floor will do for tonight.

  As I circle my boxes, trying to work out which might contain my bedding, a terrible feeling creeps up on me. Subliminally at first, then with mounting clarity until the unease sinks bone-deep.

  I am being watched.

  I can’t say why or how I know this. I just know.

  My skin feels way too tight.

  Very carefully, oh so slowly, I turn on the spot, scanning the room for any sign of an electric eye.

  What do secret surveillance lenses even look like these days? Exactly how tiny can they be? The size of a pinhead? Smaller?

  Could their size be inversely proportional to my paranoia? Am I the pinhead here?

  Possibly. But my gut instinct has served me well in the past, apart from when it comes to choosing men. I should trust my instinct now, or at least treat its suspicions with respect.

  What if Scott has done all of this for some kind of sadistic enjoyment? He’d want to see your reaction, wouldn’t he? He’d want to film you. Thanks to the magic of night-vision cameras, he could be watching you right now. Scott Palmer’s azure blue eyes burning into you, from some remote location.

  These thoughts drag ice up my spine. The man who I thought I knew and trusted, not only abandoning me but actually doing so with glee, like a mean kid watching an angry wasp trapped inside a bottle.

  Please tell me I’m not starring in some banal hidden-camera show. Any second now, will a broadly grinning Scott walk in through the front door, joined by cameramen and a goofy YouTube personality? What a hoot that would be.

  Actually, I can’t decide whether this would be better or worse than my current situation.

  When TV spies conduct a security sweep, where do they search? Under lampshades usually, but there are none, so I just check everything in sight.

  Prowling around, I use Scott’s phone torch to examine the walls, the skirting boards, plug sockets, curtain rails, light fittings and the dead radiators.

  In the kitchen, the boiler has a detachable metal cover. A big red label stuck to this cover declares PLEASE LEAVE FOR YOUR SAFETY, which does little to ease my nerves.

  The harder I search, the heavier my eyelids become. Eventually, having found nothing of note, I’m forced to call it a night.

  Raising one middle finger, I slowly rotate 360 degrees, to ensure the message gets across to Scott, just in case. This really does make me feel deranged.

  I’m so tired of myself and this bear-trap of a day.

  Drawing on my last vestiges of strength, I push my three heaviest boxes across the living room floor and out through the archway, then stack them against the front door. Scott used to make me feel so safe and so protected. And yet now, the thought of this man sneaking in here during the night, perhaps to try and recover his lost phone, gives me the creeps.

  Please leave for your safety.

  Barricading this door feels like taking back at least one iota of control.

  Staying fully clothed, I hunker down on the living room floor. I no longer have the will to find my pillow or blanket in these damn boxes, so I’ll make do with tucking my balled-up jacket under my head and braving the cold. Feels like a fitting end to one of the longest and worst days of my life.

  What I have here, with Scott’s phone, is Pandora’s Box. Can’t stop thinking about what might be inside. Tomorrow, I’ll take this thing to a shop and get it opened.

  What happened with Pandora, again? I mean, I know she unleashed all the evils into the world and stuff, but apart from that everything was fine.

  Steel drums summon me back up from the depths of a bad dream. Something to do with the zip-wire tower on the beach, but I can remember no more than that.

  I’ve been rudely woken by the incessant noise of a phone. The True Romance theme, to be precise.

  Groggy, disorientated and cold, I sit bolt upright. A full moon has lent the hard floor a white sheen. Even though I’ve stayed in this flat so many times, the place may as
well be the surface of an alien world.

  The more gunk I wipe from my eyes, the more the fierce glow of Scott’s phone slides into focus. An incoming call. Unknown Number. Do I pick up?

  Of course I do. I want to know who’s calling Scott.

  But what if it’s Scott himself?

  Why the hell should I worry about that? He’s the one who should be afraid. I have nothing to fear.

  Not even here, all alone, in a flat with no lights?

  Shut up. Look, I’m answering the call, see?

  What I hear on the line is the sound of nothing. The sound of low, grey static.

  Instinct tells me not to speak first. What if this is Scott’s secret other woman, or merely one of them?

  In my ear, the nothing-buzz continues.

  I really want to ask who this is, but hold my nerve.

  This may only be a spammer. One of those infuriating calls that waits to detect that a human has answered the phone before launching its pre-recorded spiel.

  Somewhere in the midst of all this static, I’m pretty sure I can hear someone.

  Someone breathing. Calm, steady.

  Scott?

  Pressing the phone harder against my ear, I try to filter through the noise. I try to differentiate between the inhale and the exhale.

  The voice of a stranger lunges out from the static, clear as a bell. Beyond the Scottish accent, this guy’s voice sounds flat and dark, as if his words have been recorded, then slowed down for playback.

  “You’re going to love it here.”

  Before I can prise open my sticky mouth to ask who this is, the static is replaced by a monotonous, dead hum.

  Call Ended.

  Before the screen can fade to black, I push a couple of buttons in the hope of exploiting some magical loophole to bypass the security system. Taking none of my shit, the phone dutifully locks itself up nice and tight.

  Who was that speaking? One of Scott’s mates, joining in on the fun? If so, what’s next on their agenda: knocking on the door, then running away? What a truly risible pack of bastards. Next time someone calls, I’ll give them a message to pass on to Scott – one that’ll wipe the wolfy smirk clean off his face.