by Kealan Ryan
She’s still like that, at times. She’s just sadder now. But I love when she can forget about me for a minute and crack one of her gags, or smile at somebody telling a joke or at a funny ad on TV. It’s beginning to happen more and more now, though she’s still a far cry from her old self. Everyone is sound in the office where she works, but it’s still a grind for her to act normal. She’s doing her best to get on with things. To bury her grief and her fear of being left alone deep down, where it becomes numb.
Christ, the first month was unbearable. I have to hand it to her friend Orla for being there the whole time. I’d never liked her – not because she was a bad person or anything, just because I thought she was a bit of a muppet. She’s one of those people who would say things like, ‘I had every intention of walking that path but then life tapped me on the back and pointed me in another direction’, or ‘Thanks a thousand’ instead of ‘Thanks a million’. Head wrecking. But she really came up trumps for Pamela, so I’m grateful to her for that. I have no idea how the fuck she put up with all that crying for a full month. I wouldn’t have been able for it. Mind you, I wouldn’t have been able for Orla for a full month either.
It’s good that she has such a close friend. Pam is oblivious to Orla’s shit because she’s known her for so long. Same way that I am to John’s, I guess, and he is to mine. We’ve been friends since we were four – our first week at primary school, to be exact. The pair of us were kicked out of class for talking too much. Neither one of us gave a damn; we thought it was great – so much so that when the teacher came to get us we were nowhere to be found. We spent the next hour wandering around the corridors, nattering away, and have been best friends ever since. More like brothers, really.
I think he misses me almost as much as Pamela does. I’m with John a lot. He’s getting married in a few months and I was supposed to be the best man, but now that’s shot to shit. I feel bad because I’ve put a dampener on the whole thing; he’s lost all interest in it. His soon-to-be missus, Niamh, can’t help getting pissed off sometimes at his lack of enthusiasm and then he gets furious at her for being annoyed: ‘I just lost my best friend, for fuck’s sake. Sorry if I don’t give a shit about who sits where!’ So they’re fighting a fair bit now. I’m trying to send out positive energy in the hope that John will get more into the whole thing, but I’m so damned depressed I don’t think it’s working.
John’s a great guy, though; he’ll make it work. The poor bastard’s just so down. He works as a landscape gardener. He did our garden, put in mainly stone slates so I wouldn’t have to do much with the lawn mower. It looked the business. The part that did have grass was surrounded by flowers and then near the back wall he put in a water fountain. Pam wasn’t mad on that bit. She thought an angel pissing into a pond was too tacky, but I reckoned it was ironic or something. Plus, I figured Robbie would think it was gas when he got older.
I watch John at work now, the way he puts his back to anyone who might be around when he’s digging a hole or whatever, working hard, and I can see tears running down his face. It happens to him a couple of times a week. He seems to be okay when he’s working with someone else; it’s when he has to do something by himself that I see him welling up. It’s difficult watching the people you love be so upset, but as hard as that can be at least you know that you were loved, and there is a certain warmth in knowing that I am missed.
Still, when this happens with John, I try not to look. My attention moves to his shovel and down to the grass. I can feel the grass grow, which is another unexpected perk of being dead. Sounds boring, but it’s not; there’s something incredible about being able to feel life growing so slowly and continuously, to feel the wind around it, the moisture in the air grabbing hold of a single blade, forming tiny, almost invisible beads of water that run down till they hit the soil. That journey might take all day, but then, I’ve got nothing but time. Besides, I like it – to rest on a little drop of water and ride it as if it was the slowest roller coaster known to man. I always go back to my family and friends eventually, of course, but it’s nice to be alone too sometimes.
So this is how the day passes for me. Half the day, anyway. Watching Robbie stumble around. Waiting and hoping for Pamela to smile and loving every second that it lasts when she finally does. Checking in on John, or my folks and my two brothers, Tim and Brian.
They’re two gas men – I’ve always loved watching them bounce off one another. I’m nine years older than Brian, the older of the two, so I was never as close to them as they are to each other. That never overly bothered me, though. I loved how close they are and love it even more now. They still joke and laugh together – maybe not as much as they did before my death, but they’re still fun to watch. Tim in particular cracks me up; he’s a wild fucker, but he’s all heart. Total alcoholic, but he’s only twenty-four so he gets away with it. He’s a happy drunk, though; I saw a guy start on him once outside a pub, but instead of fighting back he wrapped your man in a hug and wouldn’t let go until he hugged him back. He’s a strong lad too, so it’s not like he was afraid – he just didn’t want to fight. He’s a great knack for sidestepping a fight no matter how imminent it might seem; he’d challenge opponents to blinking competitions, thumb wars, hug-offs. Anything to defuse a dodgy situation, which, to be fair, he often landed himself in in the first place. You just can’t stay mad at Tim, even if he vomited on your brand-new suede shoes. Which he actually did to me once, the little bollocks.
Brian’s a wonderful older brother to him; he’s always looked out for him and never treated him like a younger brother. Never. Even as kids, when a two-year age gap can seem like a lot, Brian included him in everything. He always took his side too, no matter how wrong Tim might have been. He still does, their dynamic hasn’t changed in the slightest from when they were four and six.
I was never like that with them. I preferred the idea of being the big brother, so much older and aloof. I tried to cultivate the image of being kind of an enigma who they’d have to look up to. It didn’t work. Tim looks up to Brian instead and – as an extra kick in the nuts – Brian actually looks up to Tim in return.
Apart from John, I don’t visit my pals as much as you’d think. They’re all getting on with their lives. I’ve sat with them at the pub once or twice but I never stay. They don’t talk about me enough and I’ve never enjoyed watching people get drunk when I wasn’t drinking anyway.
Besides, I have more important things to do, someone else to visit. The rest of my time is spent with a man named Danny Murray, a man I only met once.
The man who killed me.
5
Danny Murray wakes every morning at 6.45 a.m. and presses the snooze button for half an hour. Once he reluctantly crawls out from under the covers, he doesn’t bother showering, he just suits up, scoffs a big bowl of oatmeal, then rides on the number 37 bus into his workplace in town where he sells mobile phones. What he doesn’t know is that I ride along with him. I can’t help it; I’m drawn to this bastard whether I like it or not and if it takes me the rest of his life I’m going to get back at him somehow. I’m dead, that makes me a ghost, so I should be able to haunt the person who killed me, right? I’m just not sure how I’m going to do it, exactly.
I do feel a connection with this guy more than anyone else, though; more than my son, even, which only gives me another reason to hate him. He’s the only person who might be aware that I’m around – although maybe it’s just his conscience at him – but I think it’s more than that.
I know he’s frightened.
When I say haunt, by the way, I don’t mean sneak up from behind and spook him with a ‘Wooooooo’. I want to really fuck with this guy’s head, make him suffer. He took everything from me, all that could ever be – my whole life, you son of a bitch. You walk into work acting like nothing happened, you know what you did and you’re going to pay, you prick. How can a person take another man’s life and then go into
work pretending that everything is cool?
The only problem is I still don’t know how I’ll get back at him. I wish I had someone to help me, like the way Swayze in the movie Ghost had that ugly bastard ghost from the subway. But as far as I know I’m alone; I’m sure there are other poor pricks like me out there, but I can’t see them.
I have to figure this one out for myself. It’s a pain in the ass because I’d love to be slamming doors on him, knocking books off the shelf and all that to freak him out, but I’m a total fucking amateur and haven’t a clue where to begin. Although, I think he might sweat more when I focus on him. Also, the other day as I loomed over him, I could feel him shiver. No one else reacts to me like that. Maybe it’s the hatred I have for him that carries over – I don’t know.
I can’t stand the fact that I spend so much time with him. I’d rather spend it focusing entirely on my family, but I need to find out more about him. It helps that I can still keep an eye on them even when I’m with him – I’m always aware of what they’re doing the whole time. In the same way that I’m aware of what he’s doing all the time when I’m with Pamela or Robbie or John.
That need to know more about him is so strong within me that I won’t be ready to let go until we’re even. It’s funny. I do believe that I’m a better person now than when I was alive – or, at least, I’m starting to become one – but while I was alive I never had the urge to kill anyone.
And now I do.
6
Danny’s girlfriend, Michelle, is the only one close to him who knows what he’s done and the crazy bitch doesn’t seem to mind too much. ‘I still love you, Danny … I’ll stick by you no matter what you’ve done.’ Scumbags.
Danny’s dad actually seems alright. Wait till he finds out what his shit-bag son is after doing. Danny will have to tell him sooner or later; everyone will have to find out.
You’re up in court, aren’t you, dipshit – and you’re fucking sweating it.
I have to laugh when I listen to Danny and his bird talking in bed, Danny crying like a baby, ‘What’s my dad going to say, he’ll hate me, won’t he?’ No mention of me, though, is there? What will my wife say? What will my boy say when he grows up? They’ll fucking hate you anyway. But you don’t give a shit about that, do you? All he talks about with Michelle is how is he going to tell his dad and how is he going to get off? Is there any way he can swing this without going to prison? No remorse, he’s just pissed off that he’s put himself in such a lousy position. He’s a big brute of a fucker and doesn’t look like the type of guy who’d be afraid of what his dad might say – can’t always judge a book by the cover, I suppose.
Danny has a beard. That’s another thing that pisses me off about him, because I had always liked a man who wore a beard. Hipsters took from them a bit, of course, but even with those knobs I’d always admired a good beard. When I was a kid my dad had a beard and I grew one when I was nineteen. Well, I grew what I could – which back then meant hairs sprouting in random tufts on my face. Danny has a good beard, I’ll give him that – kept short, the same length as his hair.
He fancies himself as a bit of a fashionista. Wore the skinny jeans before anyone else and got slagged off by his mates for wearing half a wet suit. Of course six months later they all had a pair. Danny’s mates are all dicks, just like him; each has a bigger mouth than the next. All talk about how many pints they had the night before, who puked where and who can stay up the latest – that kind of shit. They’re from the same middle-of-the-road-type background as me, everyday fools, but these tits act as if they’re street – starting fights the whole time and thinking it’s great, still acting like they did when they were eighteen. I mean, Danny’s twenty-eight now and still acting like a tosser. More than that, he’s a bad fucker, and I’m not just saying that because of what he did to me. He sits there with his mates, doesn’t shoot his mouth off as much as some of them, but just sits there, grinning. Knowing that no matter how many layers of bullshit they pile on top of each other, he is the toughest of the lot.
Why don’t you tell them, Danny? You fucking want to: ‘I killed a man.’ They’d all think you were the big swinging dick then, wouldn’t they? Not the nobody you are now.
He’s waking up a lot in the middle of the night. I often wonder if it’s because I’m there. I think it is. I hope it is.
I hang over him, willing him to wake, roaring at him, putting all my energy into brightening up the dark room as much as I can. Pitch-black night, but under his little eyelids I imagine it being as bright as the sun until he opens them. Slowly, just enough for me to know that he’s awake, just enough for me to believe I’ve disrupted his sleep. I can do this all night, Danny. Do you know I’m here looking at you? I think you do. You’re scared and you should be. I’m going to figure out this haunting thing sooner or later.
Six
Months Dead
7
I remember the first time I knew for an absolute fact that Santa Claus was real. I was six years old and beginning to hear on the grapevine that the Santy thing was one big hoax. All I wanted for Christmas that year was a cowboy wagon complete with horses that I had seen in some obscure Spanish magazine my parents had brought home from our summer holidays. I thought it was the most badass thing ever. At about a foot and a half in length, it was a proper replica of an old frontier stagecoach, not a toy at all, but was instead intended for middle-aged nerd enthusiasts of the American Old West. Of course, I didn’t know that it wasn’t a toy; all I knew was that it had real canvas for the covering, a long stick brake for the wheel, a jockey box at the back and – my favourite of all – a holster for keeping the shotgun up front. Savage yoke altogether.
Looking back, I feel sorry for my mother because I was convinced Santy would get it for me. She of course (being Santy) knew for a fact that she could not. It was a real make or break Christmas – John had claimed that he saw his mam putting out the presents the year before. That cast a pretty big doubt in my head, but when I opened up my present on Christmas morning to find the exact – and I mean exact – wagon that I’d asked for, all my doubts went out the window. ‘See, Mam? I told you. Brilliant!’
All she did was smile. Turns out she’d been up North one weekend when she happened to walk past a shop window with the wagon on display. She almost started to believe in Santa Claus herself at the sight of it. The silly price to spend on a six-year-old didn’t matter – not if it meant keeping her boy believing in magic.
I was the oldest kid I knew who still believed in Santa – right up until I was twelve, for fuck’s sake. Granted, I kind of milked it the last year, but still. It was because my folks went all out each year. The best was when, one year, they got a pair of wellies and stuck their soles in the soot from the fire, then made footprints all the way from the fireplace to the Christmas tree – fading with each step. That kind of thing has caught on a bit now, but it was unheard of when I was a kid.
I had planned to continue the tradition by doing little tricks like that for Robbie. He was too young to know what the hell was going on the Christmases I had with him. Pamela’s family weren’t as into Christmas when she was growing up, so she wouldn’t have known about half the shit I was planning. Fuck, now that I think of it, who’s going to put up the lights this year? We had the best lights in the estate last year and I’d bought loads more in the January sale to make sure we were the best again this year. Bollocks, I suppose no one will. First Christmas without me, they’re probably going to keep it low key.
8
You know the way you hear that Christmas can be a sad time for a lot of people? I never really got that, or at least I’d never experienced it. I get it now, alright, because everyone I’m watching is having a shit time.
Pam had grown to love Christmas almost as much as I did, particularly after Robbie was born – but now she’s miserable. I was right about the lights too; the house looks fucking bleak. The only
reason she even put up a tree was for Robbie – she would have preferred nothing. My folks are the same. In past years, Mam always went all out with the presents, giving us some from them and different ones from ‘Santa’. The first year me and Pam were married the lads gave us an awful slagging because the pair of us stayed over in my parents’ house Christmas Eve, and, in the morning, we ran down the stairs as if we were kids, rushing to open the presents under the tree along with my two brothers who were themselves in their twenties. We always got loads of deadly stuff. But this year my mam said, ‘Let’s just take it easier, okay? I really can’t face shopping for everyone.’ It’s gas because I could see that Tim was a bit disappointed. Obviously he totally understood, but he couldn’t help being a bit pissed off that he’s getting fuck all pressies this year.
Sorry, buddy.
***
Danny has bought his dad a phone for Christmas – what a crap present; he works in a phone shop. You’d think he’d put a bit of thought into it. Suppose all he can think about is the court case and how he will have to tell his old man what he’s done. The idea of prison sickens him. I love watching him get so stressed. I can feel the butterflies in his belly when I focus on him. Feel them weighing him down. He has them all the time, fluttering away, upsetting his stomach. Sometimes he can’t eat he’s so afraid. He’s been so cocky all his life, but now he’s shitting it. He knows he’s not a real tough guy, so how the hell is he going to manage in prison surrounded by fucking animals? He’s decided to hold off until the new year to tell his dad: ‘Happy New Year, Pop; I killed a dude.’ Should be good.
When his dad finds out he’ll be in bits. I can’t help feeling sorry for him. Like I said, he seems alright, he just raised an asshole. Danny’s mam died of cancer when he was seven, so it was only the pair of them in the house. They always got on very well, but Danny still acts like he resents his dad sometimes for turning into an alco after the wife died. He pulled himself out of it, though; he hasn’t drunk in, like, fifteen years.
