by Mark Morris
“Not so easy, is it?” Henrik says.
“Someone must have given me something,” she says, panic rising. She can’t remember her own fucking name; what else is she blotting out? “I need to go to the, what’s it called? Building with off-white corridors, smells of disinfectant?”
“The hospital.”
“That’s it. Tell the taxi to take me to hospital.”
“I think it’s a bit late for that, sweetheart.”
She tries to stand but nothing happens. “Was it you? Did you do this?” She’s shouting but her voice sounds far away.
“Ssh,” Henrik says. “Take things slowly. No one here did anything to you. Take a good look around. You’ll get it soon enough.”
“Can you just fuck off?”
He doesn’t just fuck off. “Notice anything odd about the smoke?”
There is a lot of smoke in the room, even for after a lock-in. So she still knows her pub etiquette. Trust that to be the last thing to go. Also, the smoke isn’t hanging in ribbons; it courses round the room as if it has a destination in mind. The room doesn’t smell of smoke: it smells of bleach, coffee, greasy chips and beer. And if no one’s smoking, the doors are open and the fire isn’t lit, then there shouldn’t be smoke at all.
“You’re almost there,” he says. He looks sad. His tone is tissue soft. “Look closer.”
She gazes into a streak of smoke as it passes the table and feels as if her heart has been placed in the ice bucket. There are faces in the smoke. Noses, mouths, eyes that do not see and limbs that move quick as a flick-book. See-through and swift, there are people, almost people, moving en masse like mist.
Or ghosts.
She tries to get up but her legs won’t move. “What are they?” she says.
“Don’t worry, they can’t harm you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“What do you think they are?”
“Don’t give me this Socratic shit, you know what I think they are.”
“Tell your little friend to shut up,” Carny shouts over without even looking at them. “Or I’ll shut her up.”
“Nice place you’ve got here,” she says. “Arseholes at the bar and ghosts taking up valuable drinking space.” She watches two spectral faces turn her way as if they can hear, then they’re gone. “What do they want, anyway?”
“A drink before their flight, a drink after their flight, a break from working on security, a few minutes not to talk, a burger and chips before their sister arrives… they’re all here for different reasons, just like us.”
“Us?”
“They’re the ones with busy lives. We’re here to watch them.”
The air around her feels thickened, as if it has skin. She reaches for her glass, able to move now but it takes a huge effort, as if pushing back something she can’t see. She needs just one drink to steady her nerves. Her fingertips reach the glass, and pass straight through.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“You’ll remember soon enough,” Henrik says. His eyes are the soft amber of a cloudy pint.
“Remember what?”
“How you died.”
“What’re you talking about now? I haven’t died, they’re the ones who are—” She breaks off. One of the spirit people, a man, leans over to grab the glass. His arm brushes through hers, making her feel colder than ever before. He looks straight at her, blinks and shudders, then whisks back into smoke. And then she knows. It’s the way he looks at her: she is the ghost.
* * *
Three days have passed, three days in which she’s pushed Henrik away; tried to leave but couldn’t move from her booth; wrestled with death and being yet dead, denying it, crying over it; tried to remember something, anything. You’d think she’d recall, wouldn’t you, how she died, at the very least? But no: she just sat here, staring into the table as if it’d open into a brown pool where she could tickle out memories as if they were trout. But nothing surfaced. All the while the giggling river of the living flowed past, eddying, flitting, alive. At least she thinks it’s been three days, it’s hard to tell, minutes go so quickly: hours pass across the face of the clock over the bar like micro-expressions. Clocks should have days and years on them. They should hold onto time more tightly.
She should’ve held onto life more tightly. This wallowing has got to stop. She’s all for spending your life in a pub, but what’s the point if you can’t drink?
“Henrik,” she calls out.
Henrik looks up from trying to soothe an exchange between Carny and another customer.
“It won’t make a difference, you know,” Carny says, his mouth contorting, as Henrik walks over to her. “You can help as many people as you like but you still failed her. You’re weak. You’re water to her whiskey, you always were. You’ll give in, down the line.”
Henrik closes his eyes as he sits down next to her.
“What was all that about?” she asks.
“There’s something he wants to know and I won’t tell him. Never mind that. You’re looking a little brighter,” he says. “I was worried about you. We all were.”
“Apart from Carny.”
“Carny only cares about himself.”
“What is this place?” she asks. Her voice comes out stronger. “Hell? Limbo? Valhalla?”
“You didn’t say heaven,” Henrik says.
“We may be in a pub but this isn’t heaven. I’d be feeling more guilty if this were heaven.”
“It’s none of those, as far as we know, although limbo is nearest. We’ve no real idea, though. There’s no authority figure to tell us what’s happening, only guidance passed on by, and to, the passed on.”
“‘The passed on’. So life looked at me and said, ‘I’ll pass on her having her thirty-third birthday.’”
Henrik clapped his hands together. The sound was empty. “That’s a good start, you know how old you are.”
“Maybe it’s all coming back.”
“Give it time. Anyway, sometimes it’s the other way round. People pass on life for their own reasons.”
“I’d never pass on life,” she says.
“Good for you,” Henrik says. “As far as what this place is, we think it’s a literal last chance saloon.”
“What’s the last chance?”
“The chance to do it again, to relive a section of our life and make decisions that will lead to us not dying, not so soon anyway.”
She feels hope flow. “What do I need to do?”
“That’s the tricky bit,” Henrik says. “You’re going to have to remember who you are.”
“And then what?”
“The people you see moving around you are, in a way, ghosts—they’re in the past. Each one is in their own timeline running up to their death. At some point in your past, you came here. Your job is to wait and then find yourself among the millions.”
“Then what?”
“Then grab hold of you, fold your future spirit into your past body and persuade it not to die.”
“Piece of piss, then,” she says, clinging to sarcasm like splintered driftwood at sea. “Seeing as I’ve no idea what I look like, what my name is or how to move in this weird space/time fuck-up.”
“We’d better get you moving, then,” Henrik says.
* * *
An hour, a day or a year later, she has managed to cross halfway across the pub. Somehow, knowing that she is on a different plane to the febrile world of the living helps her move through it. A year, a day or an hour later, she’s standing in the Departures hall. Streams of the living weave in and out like DNA strands. They twist round her, flinching as one if they accidentally touch her.
Spectres gather. Lots of them. They stand by departures boards, check-in desks and cafés. Heads slowly turning, scrying for past selves in the smoke. Henrik says that the dead are found in places where large numbers pass through— museums, concert halls, terminals. She’d never liked airports, found them too crowded and frantic, but m
aybe she knew, deep down, that the dead were waiting, that it was far busier than the living imagined.
She wanders slowly through security and into the perfumes hall; the mist of sprayed fragrances feels heavy on her spectral body, as if walking into doorway beads. What had she been thinking about? A man. She’d been talking to a man. In a pub. Memories of him are disappearing like flights from the departures board. Henrik. That’s it.
People pass, leering at each other as if in masks, mouths stretched wide. So many of them, as overwhelming as the intersecting smells of alcohol and aldehydes. And she has to recognise herself among them. It’s impossible. She’ll never get out of here. She sinks to the floor and curls up as the feet of the fleshed flow past.
* * *
“Didn’t I say, ‘Don’t go too far on your first trip’?” Henrik says when she comes round. She’s back in the pub.
“You did, but then I didn’t remember.” All she wants is to lie down on her banquette and sleep.
“That’s why you shouldn’t go too far. The pub keeps our memories, don’t ask me how. It’s like they’re pickled in alcohol. Staying conscious helps, if you can.”
She concentrates on the poster by the bar. It’s a traditional Irish prayer that appears on tea towels, magnets and beer mats. You’ve probably seen it on a mug at your auntie’s house—it starts with the words, “May the road rise up to meet you,” and ends with the blessing,“May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.” In this poster, though, the last three words have been eroded, either by time or sun or adjacent packets of pork scratchings.
Henrik follows her line of sight. “It’s why we call this place the Hollow.” He crosses himself then says, “May God hold us in the Hollow.”
“I thought the aim was to leave,” she says.
“We’ve been given the opportunity to redo parts of our pasts, I don’t know if everyone is as lucky. As far as we know, some people go straight to the next stage, if there is one. Or go nowhere at all. Being held in the Hollow is an opportunity, a blessing.”
“Tell him that,” she says, watching Carny stalk the smoke in the room. The living move away from him as if he were bellows. She feels their panic. It changes the taste in the air, adds iron, like a mouth filling with blood. The ghosts stay away too.
“What’s his problem?” she asks.
“He was killed,” Henrik says. “Don’t ask me the whys and wherefores, and definitely don’t ask him, but that’s what drives him—finding his murderer and killing him.”
“But he’s a ghost. I saw him struggle to smash a pint glass. He wouldn’t be able to kill anyone.”
“Well, that’s the other side of the blessing,” Henrik says.
“Isn’t the other side of a blessing a curse?” she asks.
“You could say that, although the curse is on both us and the living: if, for example, you think you’ve found your past self and embrace her but get the wrong person, then you’ve marked that human for death.”
“Shit.”
“Yes, they may die straight away, in weeks or years, but before their time. And you’d fade away instead of living again. We only get one choice. One chance.”
“This is what I’m here for? Who made up this game?”
Henrik shrugs. “Don’t know. But those are the rules.”
In the smoke, a family passes, pulling suitcases, then two women, hand in hand, kissing: happy people off on blink-quick holidays.
“Fuck you,” Carny shouts into the smoke, nostrils flared, hands in fists. She knows how he feels.
* * *
After that, she only goes into the airport on short sorties before circling back to the Hollow. Atoms of memory reattach themselves. She knows now that she lived in Dún Laoghaire and that Shirley Bassey recorded three James Bond theme songs.
And she’s remembered her name. Sian.
That evening, or another, she sits with Henrik in the Hollow, staring into the people stream.
“What do I look like?” she asks.
“Well,” he says, squinting at her. “You’ve got dark brown eyes, like stout. Got as much in them as stout as well.”
Sian laughs.
“Your hair is brown with blonde bits in, like my wife used to have. And cheekbones that could crack open a can of Batchelors.”
“You don’t talk about your wife much.”
“No. Well,” Henrik says, looking away. “I don’t like to. She’s my angel’s share.”
Moaning comes from the booth next door, as if someone were writhing in pain.
“That’s my cue,” Henrik says. He gets up, then turns to Sian. “Do you want to help?”
She shrugs. It’s something to do.
A newly made ghost is on the neighbouring banquette, arms looped about her knees, rocking. She whimpers. She’s young, in her mid-twenties.
“It’s all right, everything’s all right,” Henrik says.
Sian stops herself saying that it really isn’t.
The young woman looks up at Henrik; then, on turning to Sian, her eyes widen, her pupils slowly eclipse the blue. It’s as if she knows Sian. Has known her. She shakes and Sian wishes she had the ability to hug her. Her eyes close.
“We’re here when you need us, just say,” Henrik says softly, and leads Sian away.
The next day, the young woman is more alert, looking around the pub. When she sees Sian, she almost smiles. Sian moves over from the bar and sits down next to her while Henrik begins his slow, kind unveiling of the Hollow, the airport and the search that goes on inside. The words drift past Sian as she takes in everything about the woman: tight jeans, Flaming Lips T-shirt two sizes too big; her hair, shaved at the sides and a rumpled quiff. She is lucky enough to remember her name: Marta.
“Have you got any words of wisdom, Sian?”
“What?” Sian says.
“Any sage advice for Marta, here? You’ve been through this recently.”
“I don’t think I’m the one to ask. I’ve only just worked out what my name is.”
Marta looks down at her lap as if disappointed.
“I can tell you one thing,” Sian says quickly. “The living look scary but they’re frightened of us, for some reason. We’re not out to hurt them.” She looks across at Carny. “Not all of us, anyway.”
“But we can hurt them. Get it wrong and we condemn them to an early death. They know that by instinct. The living haunt the dead and the dead the living; that’s the way it’s always been,” Henrik says.
“Well, that’s a cheery thought to wake up dead to,” Marta says. Her voice is quiet. Her sarcasm is as refreshing as the first pint at the end of the day.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Henrik says, then walks slowly over to the corner where Carny has the ghost of a guitar player backed against the wall. Carny holds out a warning hand to Henrik; Henrik backs away.
“Who’s that man?” Marta says. She’s staring at Carny, her hands making claws and trying to grab the edge of the seat.
“That’s Carny. Not a happy man. There are plenty of good people in here, though. It’s got that waiting room spirit thing going on. If we were alive we’d be passing around sweets. All we’ve got to share are stories and I haven’t got many of those.”
“Why not?” she says. As she looks at me, a current of past and future runs between us.
“I don’t know how I lived or how I died. Henrik says memory loss can happen in death, during trauma. So I think we can say I didn’t die well.”
“Who does?” Marta asks.
“Joan Crawford. Apparently her housekeeper prayed for her and Joan shouted: ‘Damn it! Don’t you dare ask God to help me!’ Don’t ask me how I know that. I didn’t know I did.”
“The last words Bogie said to Bacall were,‘Goodbye, kid, hurry back.’”
“Wouldn’t it be great to know someone as well as they did, to have them know you?”
“It would,” Marta says.
* * *
They go everywhere together: they walk
through Departures, even into Arrivals; sit in silence watching the ghosts of the living; talk for whole turns of the clock as thin films of memory return: Sian’s stray cat, Patricia Wentworth; a holiday in the Highlands with her first girlfriend; the clothes left in the airing cupboard. Sometimes they go looking for themselves, or to watch others find themselves, like a reunion show on TV. One afternoon, they’re sitting on a bench near check-in when a ghost cries out in joy and moves towards a passenger, holding out her arms. The passenger turns. It’s not the same person. Sian calls out but the ghost has already descended on the living person like dusk. They both stagger back, sharing a scream and nothing else, till the woman grabs her left arm and falls onto the ground, dead.
They sit in silence. It’s too big a risk. They can’t leave each other for that. Anyway, having found each other, the importance of finding themselves is receding. Marta turns to her and moves forward. Their lips do not touch, as they never can, but they miss each other in the same space and that’s almost nearly good enough for now.
There’s a lot of almost kissing after that. They’re nearly kissing in Sian’s booth when Carny kicks off.
“He’s here. The cunt’s here,” Carny says, pointing into the smoke. His face is a red knot.
“Who’s he talking about?” Marta whispers.
“The man who killed him, I think,” Sian says, standing up.
Carny strides around, herding the billow of smoke. The adrenaline tang in the room soars. Sian moves towards him.
“Let it go, Carny,” Henrik says gently. “You tell me to mind your own business, how about you do the same?”
“He murdered me. He placed his hands round my neck and strangled me into this place. This is my fucking business,” Carny says, staring at the large man he’s isolated from the flitting living. The man runs towards the door but Carny is there. Wherever the man goes, Carny is there. Carny reaches for his throat.
