Broken Ghost

by Niall Griffiths

  She takes Emma’s hand and leads her across the dance floor and through the people who part. Some will is being done. In a damp cave a squirt of oxytocin lights it all up. The hand in Emma’s shrinks and for a moment takes on the dimensions of Tomos’s but then the bar is there and Emma needs to hold on to the lip of it. The woman orders two Lady Di cocktails.

  —What’s in one of them?

  —You don’t need to know. She has a great and unusual half-smile, this woman, the top lip curving to show just a chip of tooth. —They get the job done and that’s all that counts, amma right?

  The drinks are two half-pint glasses brimming with foamy blood. The woman clinks her glass against Emma’s. —Down in one.

  And it doesn’t burn it hums behind the sweet redness. Finds Emma’s belly in a rolling rush and then scoots upwards to her head.

  —Just to be sure that I’m reading the signs right. The woman engulfs a piece of Emma in a large-ish hand and squeezes and in her glare is a warning allure: this is a new land. —You want this, don’t you?

  —Yes. Emma’s not entirely certain if she’s spoken aloud so she nods her head to be certain. And then says it again, or for the first time: – Fuck yes.

  —Good. I thought so. Follow me to the bog, then. And we’ve got to be quick cos my man’s on his way.

  If Emma is observed there is no way she could know because the world has shrunk to the woman’s back and another inking there, what is it, Emma blinks twice, a yellow circle of some sort with wavy lines around it to indicate heat or radiance. Emma wants to touch it. Which she will, and very soon. She’ll fuckin lick it, nibble at it and at other places with the teeth of a weasel.

  Fuelled by driftwood blue shoots and green thumbs sprout within the fire’s red wrestle. It has turned the space beneath the jetty into a hearth-side which could be described as cosy, in another actuality. The people gathered here like jetsam. Their limbs.

  The bottle of sherry comes Adam’s way again, handed to him by a topless, skinny guy with the crappest tattoos Adam has ever seen – inky-dinks, needled in with the point of a compass, six-inch nails, with soot for ink. Adam accepts the bottle and bows his head in thanks and takes a gulp. Sour, so sour, but it is sherry. A film all over the inside of his face; the drink seems to draw mucus out of the ducts and glands that produce such stuff. He passes the bottle to the figure on his right, long beard and woolly hat, even in the heat, browny-reddish the beard with springs of white. Not old, yet he appears to be trying to look old.

  —Ah thankee.

  —What?

  —Ah said ah thankee.

  A strange accent.

  —Where you from, mate?

  —What?

  —Where you from?

  The man pokes the bottle into his beard and tilts his head back. The fading light sliced by the boards above into three stripes across his face. His eyes close as he gulps. Then he passes the bottle to his right.

  —Whoy might you need to know?

  —No need about it, mate. Just wondering, that’s all.

  —Ask me no questions. None. Hoy do not care where you are from after all.

  Adam had forgotten this about such gatherings, such clusters – the paranoia, the simmer. The enclosure of the self, that smithereened thing, in an armour so fragile that the steps from small talk to hospitalisation seem to stem from a kind of logic. He’d forgotten it, yes, but he’s always known it lies in places like this.

  The skinny guy on Adam’s left nudges him in the ribs.

  —Pay him no mind. He’s harmless if you don’t speak to him. Most of the time. Just pretend he’s not there.

  Adam nods. The bottle travels around the fire clockwise, through the people who sit and squat, six of them, no, seven; there is a figure lying down and covered entirely by an overcoat, except for two small red trainers. The bottle is passed over this person. There is a smell under here, briney, on the edge of rancid; probably just the general shore-reek but Adam cannot stop himself from thinking of the armpits of these people, their groins, their feet, their breath.

  —I’m Darren by the way.

  —Adam.

  —Alright man.

  They talk in a whisper. Everyone here does, excepting the guy to Adam’s right who says nothing, does nothing, just gazes into the small burning.

  —Who’s everyone else?

  Darren shakes his head. —They come and go. Weather like this, you can kip on the beach.

  Which is no kind of answer. —Who’s under the coat?

  —A doll-woman. Tiny twt of a thing. Thought she was a midget at first but she’s just way tiny. A right twt she is. Scottish lady like but she’s Chinese. From Glasgow.

  A spark leaves the fire, drifts like a seed towards Adam’s face but then, as if snagged, veers vertically up towards the jetty boards against which it dunts and dies. The bottle comes round again. Adam drinks and passes it on wordlessly. Feels a lurch inside himself, an abrupt shift in his fathom; he will soon be unable to stand. Soon he will fall flat back on the shingle and know nothing at all for several hours.

  —Yma, Adam. Eat these.

  —Eat what?

  Darren takes one of Adam’s hands and puts two pink pills in the palm.

  —Get em down. I can see you about to go.

  Adam laps the pills up, crunches to bitter chalk, swallows. And then he asks what he’s just eaten.

  —Dexies. Got me script today I did. Could see your eyes going. Figured you could do with a boost. This is not the place you wanner fall asleep, shag.

  So that’s it: another boundary breached. He imagines a sapling stamped back into dirt. And he never thought it’d be dexedrine, prescription as it is, unadulterated; he thought that, when, if, he ever did regress, it’d be a swooning back into that which his soul called out for; mounds of dirty speed, cut with all kinds of filth and the ensuing vileness of the comedown with the sick and suicidal thoughts and the horrible marathon wanking sessions, the frantic friction taking his dick, and his mind, into a state raw and bloodied. The dirtiest of drugs, that’s what he’d always imagined; a resignation without hope. It is shame that he needs, only shame. It is a craving. It’s always been that way, with him. Even more so now.

  —They’ll sort you out, shagger. Quarter of an hour and you’ll be throwing some shapes, guarantee it. And I don’t need a thank you.

  —Sorry man. Big thanks.

  Darren gives him a smile. God his tats really are bad; like he’d been infected with burrowing insects and then painted himself with blue ink and then took a shower. Vermiform traces all over him; stickmen and truncated words.

  Adam looks into the fire, already a bit less drunk. An arrangement of wood collapses into two, the crosspiece burning in the middle but unlit at each end, just slightly blackened. In one sudden movement the man to Adam’s right leans with a grunt and takes this piece up in his right hand and begins to smack it into the palm of his left, repeatedly, a swarm of sparks instantly busying the darkening space beneath the boards.

  —Aw fuck. Darren grabs Adam’s arm. —Time to move, man. Now.

  Adam is pulled upright and out onto the beach and up the steps onto the promenade. Quick, quick. Half aware of the people moving around him and the rest of the life up here, in the proper world, the noises from the amusement arcade and the smell of chips and the lights in the buildings over the road, the Chinese takeaways and the rooms above them. Darren pulls a long piece of cloth out of his jeans pocket like a magician and it becomes a shirt which he starts to pull on.

  —Just in time, that. Close one.

  —To what? What were we close to?

  Darren buttons his shirt across his torso’s smudges and angles. —Nothing good, I’ll tell you that.

  An echo. Bouncing off the chambers in Adam’s beginning-to-buzz skull.

  —You feeling them dexies?

  —Aye, yeh. Think so.

  —Good boy. Got a party to go to, me. Wanna join? Know a boy just bought a bag of rocks down from Rhyl the
size of my head.

  Darren rolls the sleeves of his shirt up with quite precise movements, neat folds, each arm, up tight to his elbows. Tucks himself in. —Be a laugh, shag. Town’s been clean for months, so. Celebration, like. What else you gonna do?

  And the question is a good one. What else other than accept. Let the wave take you. Deposit you smashed on whatever shore except shore is the wrong word. Perhaps because catastrophe itself is its own anchor, a ruination self-willed is just a holed boat when everything is sinking anyway and oh the thrill of the plummet, the deepening of the colours from green to blue to black. What does the jumper see between the twentieth floor and the ground? In those seconds, what choirs are heard in the whistling zoom of the air? Now there is a boom in Adam’s chest. Just step off because there is nothing up here. Nor is there anything down there but the space between the two is fuller than forever. You’ll be able to scream so fucking loud; you’ll be permitted, in that compressed universe of unrule, to see everything hidden. Just step off. Be true to yourself at all times. And if there is to be any disappointment in the recognition that the plea repeated in reverie and entreaty to do it all over again could’ve possibly been referring to this, this, well, the roar and frenzy of that shortest of journeys will be all the distraction that could ever be required. Enough, even, to reduce the crash and splatter of terminus to just a small tinnitus in the ear.

  It’s all in there, amongst the roofs of this small town by the sea in this summer of scorch. In this small town with the mountains behind it the frazzled peaks of which hold lakes so cold and blue.

  —Alright, Adam says into Darren’s waiting face. —Take me with yeh.

  And step off. But someone is calling his name; he can pick out his name amongst the general jabber of the promenade.

  —Who’s that?

  He looks and sees a car at the kerb. And someone is leaning out of it and calling his name.

  —Adam! ADAM! What-a fuck yew doing with him, mun? Get-in a car! Aw Christ. Look at-a fucking state of yew.

  Cowley nods at the figure on the settee but it’s no kind of a hello.

  —Ooer fuck’s him?

  The man looks up, over the top of his iPad. Raises an eyebrow.

  —Lodger, brar, says Rhys.

  —Didn’t tell me yew had a lodger.

  —An yew needed to know, did yew? I need the fuckin money, mun. Fuckin bedroom tax innit.

  —Does he speak?

  The man smiles. —Fluently. Like a proper grown-up and everything.

  Rhys sits, takes a half-smoked thing up from the ashtray and relights it. —Be nice, brar.

  —I am being nice, Cowley says. —And what’s this fucking ‘brar’?

  —It’s just what they say.

  —Not what I say. It’s what women keep eyr tits in. Yewer not from Cardiff, Rhys. Talk like yewer fuckin meant to.

  —Jesus, mun, what’s up with yew? Me only fuckin brother, haven’t seen yew in ages and yew come in havin a go. Sit down, have a can. Chill out, fuck’s sakes.

  There’s a spare chair at the end of the couch. There’d be room on the couch itself if that lodger wasn’t spread out across it like the shite of a moor-dwelling crone, smiling and swiping his finger across the screen; little finger, as well, and that in itself puts a tight circle around Cowley’s neck, constricting. Grinning to himself he is like there’s a great big joke going on that only he understands.

  Cowley sits. It’s a kitchen chair, hard and uncomfortable, and after the hard and uncomfortable bus seat for hours. Rhys leans to one side, straightens up with a can in his hand, passes it through the fuming air of the small room to his brother.

  —Have a drink.

  Horrible fur in Cowley’s mouth. Over his tongue and between his teeth, a grout of grot. He swills it away with warm lager. The beginnings of a headache appear, between his eyes.

  —How’d you get down, bus?

  —Aye. Four fucking hours.

  The lodger looks over the top of his screen. —Four hours? From where?

  Rhys answers for his brother. —Aberystwyth, brar. Home town like.

  —Aberystwyth. The finger pecks at the screen and swipes. X Factor is on the telly in the corner but the sound is low and Cowell is making his tongue move around the outside of his mouth. The main ambient noise enters through the window, open in the heat, admitting the hard city summer in all its clottedness; and all the sounds of traffic, both mechanical and human – a siren, of course, and revelry. All exhaust. And the smells of Splott, curry spices behind the overnote of civic whiff, bronze coins touched by a thousand hands. Cowley drinks. Magazines are on the floor and on the cover of each is a massively developed man pulling a pose; cable veins and pumpkin muscles. Cowley points.

  —What’s all this gay stuff?

  —Gay stuff? It’s bodybuilding, brar. Supplements and exercises and that. Been hitting-a gym, I yav.

  And a certain inflation of Rhys seems to have occurred since last the brothers met, Cowley can now see; the puffed-up neck and the rise of the pectorals in the V of the jumper.

  —What ’roids yew pumping in?

  —’Roids? Fuck off, this is protein shakes, that’s all. An loadser red meat. Steaks. Don’t need ’roids, just fuckin diet. ’Sall it is. Protein.

  —Yew don’t get that big that quick without steroids, Rhys. Bet yewer dick’s like an acorn now.

  Rhys laughs. —Don’t yew wish. Cos then yew’d feel less inadequate, innit.

  —Inadequate? I’m not-a one livin in-a fuckin gym. An calling everyone ‘brar’.

  —Yew wanner try it.

  —Don’t think so, brar. I’d sound like a twat.

  —I mean the gym, dopey bollax. Works wonders, it does. In-a head, I mean.

  Cowley finishes his can and holds his hand out for another. —In-a head?

  Rhys nods. —Yew know what Am talking about.

  —Do I? News to me.

  —Yew do. Cos-a last time I got out of-a hospital with me fuckin knee held together with pins I knew I had to do fuckin something. Eating me up it was. Yew know what I’m talking about, mun.

  The warm lager goes down. Cowley wonders why he came all this way on the hard-seat bus, for a headache and a sermon from his pumped-up brother. No one glows anywhere. Set up for life said Aney Lavin.

  —I haven’t got-a first fuckin clue what yewer on about, Rhys.

  —You’ve got to let it go, brar.

  —I didn’t come all-a way down yur for this.

  —This what?

  Cowley just drinks. —I came yur to see what’s left-a me fuckin family. Wanted a break that’s all. Don’t need this shite. And stop calling me ‘brar’.

  Rhys shakes his head sadly with a kind of quarter-smile on his face and at that, if he wasn’t blood, that’s what there’d be: lots of it and suddenly, all up the walls. Cowley watches his brother drop the dimp of whatever he’s smoking into a beer can and hears a tiny hiss.

  —Don’t yew fuckin …

  —What?

  With his flat in the capital and his new body. With his fuckin lodger, dicking about on his screen. —Just fuckin don’t, Rhys.

  —How can I not do what I don’t know what the fuck yewer tellin me not to do?

  —Yew know.

  —Here we go again. Why-a fuck—

  A loud voice bursts from behind the iPad. —Oi! Like the fuckin Gallaghers, you two! The lodger turns the screen to face them. —Stop squabbling and have a look at this.

  —What is it?

  There’s like a party on the screen. People dancing, and music, and much movement amid the rise of high peaks.

  —This is on YouTube. This thing going on up in Aber. You not heard about this?

  The question is aimed at Cowley who doesn’t answer, just leans in to see the small screen. He asks again: – What is it?

  —This great big party on top of a mountain outside Aber. Been going on for ages, it has. All over the web. It’s like a big gathering. Not heard about it up there,
no?

  And again Cowley does not answer. He sees people; he sees a crowd. He sees a ridge that he recognises on which shapes and forms of women stand and he sees the sheen of a lake that he has seen before. The noise of the scene that leaves the screen is loud laughter, mostly, and music, and chatter, heightened and excited; faces that look happy appear on the screen then move away and are replaced by similar others. A laughing man holds up a small child. Behind him a stick is thrown into the lake and a dog leaps in after it. Some words appear beneath.

  —What does that say? Can’t read it from here.

  —Llyn Syfydrin, says the lodger, using the ‘l’ and not the ‘ll’ sound. —That’s the name of the lake. I’ve been following it. Apparently it all kicked off when some girl saw something on that ridge, there.

  —What girl? What something?

  —Dunno, some girl. She blogged about it and it went mad. Viral. All over the world, judging by the comments like.

  —Aye but what did she see? This girl?

  —Said it was like a kind of floating woman. In the blog, like. A woman floating in the air and she spoke to her. Or that’s what she said.

  The people still. End of footage.

  —It was just-a sun coming up, says Cowley.

  —Well that’s what some people are saying yeah but everyone’s going up there anyway. It’s become this, this big party place. Thinking of going up meself next week. You don’t know about this, being from Aber and everything, no?

  Cowley shakes his head. —What else is there?

  —You mean from the lake? God, there’s loads of stuff. Everyone’s posting. Here’s something, look.

  He swipes, and a talking head appears. Uncreased features and neat hair. Rhys and Cowley lean in and the lodger makes a space with his forearm on the coffee table and arranges the screen upright, angled a bit so that he can see it too. The man on the screen is earnest.

  —Oo’s this cunt?

  —Some government prick, looks like, Rhys says. —Looks the type. Now whisht, brar, I wanner listen.

  —Can’t hear a word. Turn it up.

  The lodger does. They’ve been told to remove themselves civilly, and with respect, the man on the screen says. And I have to say that, ah, that this polite request, from our police force who were simply doing their job, just doing the right thing, this polite request was met with the foulest of abuse. These people were warned, moreover, that if they do not remove themselves voluntarily then, well, force may have to be used. It is private property that they are squatting on and as they know, as they SHOULD know, such behaviour constitutes a criminal offence.