Kiss the Goat: A Twenty-First Century Ghost Story

by Brian Stableford

  When Kit checked in at the garage after her mid-day break there was a flap on. She was a trifle surprised, because timetable-trashing absenteeism was mostly a weekend problem, but it turned out that there was a game on. Kit could remember the days when the football season ended at the beginning of May and didn’t restart until the end of August, but everything overflowed these days and the off-season was interrupted by all kinds of extra cup competitions with stupid names. Kit didn’t put up much resistance when she was asked to work an extra half-shift, even though it would put her over the technical limit for driving hours within a working week. It wasn’t as if she had anything else to do, and the Caversham circular always ran nine-tenths empty after seven, at least until the first wave of drunks started lurching out of the pedestrian precinct heading home in every direction. The second and third waves, mercifully, were only a problem for taxi drivers.

  The extra half-shift did tire her out, though. She could never figure out why she got so tired at work—after all, it wasn’t as if she actually had to bear the weight of the damned bus on her narrow shoulders—but driving was always more taxing when there were hills to climb than when it was all on the level, and the route she was on climbed quite sharply once it was over the bridge and round the corner by Waitrose. Logically, freewheeling back down again ought to have offered some compensation, but it never did—it just left a phantom imprint of a brake-pedal on the sole of her foot, which sometimes lingered for hours.

  She had to go home before she went to the cemetery, to get a bite to eat and change her clothes. When she got to the second landing she saw that there was a man sitting on the stairs outside her bedsit door: a drunk too plastered to know what year it was. He was a small, thin man, no taller and no heavier than she was. She knew the type of old, more intimately than she could have wished; wiry drunks seemed to have some kind of selective advantage in the struggle for derelict existence. His face, unshaven for a week but not possessed of anything that could decently call itself a beard, was vacuous; his eyes were so deeply sunken as to seem black, like windows into a lightless infinity.

  “Rose?” he said, as he got to his feet, lurching down the stairs towards her.

  Kit didn’t feel like arguing, and she didn’t imagine for a moment that the intruder would take her word for it that she wasn’t Rose Selavy, never had been Rose Selavy, and never would be Rose Selavy, so she stayed on the landing, took a long step back, waited for him to arrive on the level, then launched a savage kick at his groin.

  There was a good deal of pent-up aggression in that kick, but when it connected the drunk just looked surprised. He didn’t fall over.

  Kit was amazed. She had been watching TV all her life, and it hadn’t all been Countdown and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? She had seen dozens of men kicked in the balls. They always fell down. They always writhed in pain. They usually retched. They were acting, of course, but it had never occurred to Kit that they weren’t being utterly and absolutely realistic. Somehow, she must have missed the target. Somehow, she must have failed to connect.

  The drunk just looked surprised.

  “Rose?” he said.

  Kit screamed. It was a terrible scream, so weak that it was barely a yelp. She hadn’t filled up her lungs with air. She hadn’t put her heart and soul into the cry. She was too inhibited. She couldn’t kick a man in the balls effectively, and she couldn’t even scream properly—but a nearby door opened anyhow. Mancunian Liz was out but Liverpudlian May was in, and so was her boyfriend. May’s boyfriend was big, and it wasn’t all middle-aged spread.

  “Who’s he?” May wanted to know. “Another fucking nutter?”

  Kit felt her head nodding, and wished that she could find the breath to say “yes”.

  The drunk didn’t wait to see what May’s big boyfriend was going to do about the fact that there was another fucking nutter on the landing. Kit’s kick hadn’t crippled him, but it had been one of those pictures that proverbial wisdom equated to a thousand words. The message had got through to his addled brain. He threw himself at the next set of stairs—the ones leading down to the first-floor landing—and clattered down them, maintaining his balance with uncommon skill if not much grace. Three pairs of eyes watched him go.

  It wasn’t until the front door banged that May said: “Are you all right, love?”

  “Sure,” Kit said. “Startled me, that’s all.”

  “Those buggers downstairs ought to be more careful,” May opined. “You get all sorts round here. Still, no harm done.”

  “No,” Kit agreed. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” said May’s boyfriend.

  “Kick’em in the balls,” May advised. “Works every time.” She too had obviously watched a lot of TV in her time, without ever finding the opportunity to put theory into practice—unless, of course, she had a knack that Kit lacked for finding her way around the inside of a man’s trousers.

  “I’ll try that next time,” Kit promised.

  “Goodnight,” said May’s boyfriend, cheerily, as the door eased shut behind the two of them.

  Kit went up to her room, and did what she had to do. Then she went out again. There was no sign of the drunk out in the street. Kit had half-hoped to find him there, suffering from a delayed reaction, writhing in pain and retching, but she was glad that she didn’t have to listen to him whispering Rose’s name while fixing her with those empty eyes, which seemed to have so far given up on reason that they could see the dead more readily than the living.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The driver of the last eastbound 17 was probably on an extra half-shift too, because he had to squint at her to figure out who she was and why she didn’t have to pay her fare, but when he did figure it out he didn’t even raise an eyebrow at the fact that she was heading away from the hostel instead of towards it. Kit wondered if the driver who’d taken her and Stephen into town from the Rifleman on Monday had spread the word around that she was hanging around with a student.

  The bus dropped her at the cemetery at ten past eleven, but Kit didn’t mind being early because it gave her a chance to look around. She didn’t disturb anyone having it off on the graves near the entrance, but she did disturb some kind of animal in the deeper shadows in the base of the triangle whose arms were the two roads. She didn’t get a clear sight of it, but the noise it made as it clattered through the bushes told her that it was way too big to be a urban fox, so she figured that it as probably a dog—a mastiff, maybe, or a wolfhound. Kit didn’t like dogs, but she relaxed when it didn’t come back.

  Rose Selavy had suggested that she look out for stone angels, so she did, but there weren’t that many. Cramped as it as by the two roads the cemetery wasn’t actually that large even though its walls were longer than a couple of football pitches stuck together, so its monument collection tended to the economical and the downright miniature. Some of the older graves had exceedingly substantial lichen-encrusted stone crosses, but the angels she found were mostly slimline tending towards anorectic. It was too dark to read the names on any of the tombstones that were set more than fifteen feet from the walls over which the yellow street-lights towered, so Kit didn’t even try. It would have been a hopeless task searching for Violet Leverhulme’s grave in any case, even if it were marked, because it wasn’t Violet Leverhulme that she had come to see. It was someone else. A man. Rose’s pimp—except that he could only be a pimp in some loosely metaphorical and perhaps entirely figurative sense, because living off immoral earnings wasn’t really an option for a ghost, not so much because of the immoral part as because of the living part.

  There was a church of sorts on the far side of the junction, but it was some kind of non-conformist protestant church so it didn’t have bells and couldn’t let her know when midnight came. That was a pity, in a way, because she might have appreciated the count-down; after all, given that she had been conscripted into a horror story, she was entitled to feel slightly cheated if she couldn’t get the benefit of the melod
rama and suspense. On he other hand, there was a definite frisson to be gained by being taken by surprise, and because she didn’t know that midnight arrived she didn’t realize that anyone was behind her until the voice came out of the shadows.

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” the voice said.

  Kit whirled round, and couldn’t help taking a step back on to one of the graves, knocking over the chipped pot that would have contained flowers if anyone had cared enough to bring any.

  “I know,” she said. “Stephen had something on.”

  The newcomer didn’t step out of the shadows. He was wearing an overcoat and a hat, so it was difficult to see what he looked like. The hat and coat might have been very old, but they might equally well have been picked up just this side of Christmas out of one of the local charity shops for a couple of quid by some rough-sleeper who’d died of bootleg vodka and hypothermia anyway.

  “That’s all right,” the ghost said.

  “Not really,” Kit told him. “I don’t even know why I’m here—not really. I’m getting out of my depth. Living in a haunted room was one thing, but going out looking for more ghosts is something else. More like actually going mad. I don’t know what to expect. This was Stephen’s idea, but he’s not here to explain. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “I’m glad you did,” the ghost told her, in a tone that must have been intended to be soothing. “These things are always easier when you have adequate moral support, but you’re the one we need. You’re the one who can do what needs to be done.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “All in good time. You mustn’t be afraid. No one’s going to hurt you. Even if you were to refuse, you’d be perfectly safe.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Kit asked, thinking that he certainly didn’t sound like any kid of pimp.

  “One whose name was writ in water,” he told her. “As are we all—even those of us whose names are patiently chipped out of polished marble or Cornish granite. Names don’t last. Impressions do, sometimes, but poor Violet’s ultra-violet now, and the blush is fading from the rose.” It wasn’t until he had made that little speech, recalling Rose Selavy’s in its near-disconnectedness but delivered with far more dignity, that Kit got a real sense of the ghostliness of the ghost. Even in the shadows he was a blacker-than-black spot, and there was a coldness about him too, as if the effort of his presence were leaching warmth from the air.

  Kit decided that pretentiousness was a game two could play at. “Under the pressure of enlightenment,” she quoted, “ghosts have no alternative but to fade away, becoming tenuous and enigmatic where they were once right in your face. Don’t you think you’re overdoing the enigmatic bit, though? I think I’d prefer it in my face—metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  “That fade-out was the prologue to a new horror of death and existential angst,” the shadow-man reminded her. “These things affect us all. You can call me Michael, if you wish.”

  “As in Archangel?”

  “No. If there really were angels...but that’s not the issue. The question is: will you help?”

  “Help who? You and Rose?”

  “There are more of us than that. I don’t know exactly how many can still be helped, or might be willing. Twenty, at least. Perhaps forty.”

  That was when Kit guessed what the dark man wanted, and why Rose Selavy had come to her. She didn’t say anything out loud, though. She wanted time to think about it. She wanted time to ask herself what she wanted, and whether it was the sort of thing she ought to want. She also wanted time to figure out where Stephen fitted in, if he fitted in at all now that he had decided not to be here for her, although he’d been the one to point her in the right direction.

  “May I come a little closer?” the dark man asked, when the silence had endured a little too long.

  “Do you need my permission?” Kit countered, although she inferred readily enough that he almost certainly did, as a matter of etiquette if nothing else. This wasn’t a seduction, let alone a scaring-half-to-death. This was something else. Unlike Rose Selavy, who was haunting her own attic, and her own bed, and might be said to have some kind of proprietorial right, Michael was asking Kit for a favor. A big favor.

  “Let me see your face first,” she said.

  Michael took off his hat and changed his stance, so that his features caught the faint vestiges of the light of a remote street-light. His face was just a face, not a skull devoid of flesh. He wasn’t the grim reaper, or even the grim wreather. He wasn’t some down-and-out who’d died of booze and cold either. He was old in one sense, but young in another. Kit guessed that he had been dead for a lot longer than he’d ever been alive. The cold hadn’t become any more intense, but no one could have looked directly into his eyes without knowing that he was dead, and had been dead for a long time.

  “How come you got to hang around so long?” Kit asked, curiously. “What did you do? Or was it something done to you?”

  “It’s not like that,” he told her.

  “What is it like?”

  “You’ll find out,” he said. “Not here, not now and not yet, but you’ll find out.”

  Kit shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “How close do you want to come? There’s no room inside me. No room at all.”

  The shadow man replaced his hat, carefully shielding his face. “It’s not that kind of deal,” he said. “A fingertip touch will do it—just a gesture. But you have to be honest about it. This is for real. You have to know that, and accept it.”

  “You haven’t told me what the deal is,” she reminded him.

  “You know what it is,” he told her. “Not everything, but enough to decide whether you want it.”

  “I think I know what you want me to do. I don’t know what you’re offering in exchange.”

  “The trade’s unbalanced,” he admitted. “It always is between the dead and the living. These things used to be easier when the living had a keener sense of their indebtedness to generations past. I can’t even promise you that there’s no danger involved, even though no one wants to hurt you, but I think you can do it—without the boy, if you have to.”

  Kit had already agreed, but it wasn’t until she had nodded again that Michael took a tentative step forward, and then another. He put out his right hand. He was wearing black leather gloves, so she couldn’t see the hand itself. His face was still hidden, but Kit was prepared to believe that it hadn’t changed.

  “What the hell,” she said, and reached out to touch him, fingertip to fingertip. His fingers felt like fingers, not like talons, and they weren’t noticeably cold—although it was difficult to be absolutely sure of either fact, given the glove.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “I haven’t done anything yet. When?”

  “I need a little time. You’ll know. Rose will collect you, but you’ll know before then. You’ll be ready. We’re in this together now. We were lucky to find you—seers are scarce enough at the best of times, and it’s rare nowadays to find one who doesn’t turn away. We owe you—but you owe us, too, did you but know it.” His attempt to make his voice soothing were bearing fruit now; Rose felt more relaxed. She realized that she was getting used to seeing ghosts, and talking to ghosts, and making deals with ghosts. It was like everything else in life—just a matter of practice. Anything could become ordinary, she realized, if you put your mind to it.

  “When I was thirteen or thereabouts,” she said, her voice not much above a whisper, “I had a rough time at school. It wasn’t just that I was clever—more that I wasn’t seen as the kind of person who could or should be clever. I was small, thin—not because I had some kind of eating disorder but just because I was late developing any kind of obvious femininity. No tits, wiry hair, tomboy temperament...it was a temporary thing, of course. All it needed was time. I hated my mother. I shouldn’t have let it show, but I did. She was okay sober, but she wasn’t often sober by the time I got home. She didn’t appreciate being disliked by anyone, although it nev
er made her try to be more likeable. She used to talk about bad seed, meaning Dad’s genes rather than innate evil, but I had this fantasy about turning out to have been adopted, and not being who people thought I was at all. But I didn’t want any fairy-tale mother and father from some nice middle-class neighborhood who’d managed to lose me when I’d been snatched from a cot. I wanted to be the Devil’s daughter. I wanted Lilith herself to come to claim me, to say okay, kid, you’ve done your time in purgatory—now you can get your own back; who do you want to deliver into eternal torment? But it was just a game. I never really wanted to go to the Devil, or to be damned. I grew up. My looks improved. I put cleverness on the back burner. I fitted in. I learned to drive. I never asked for any of this. I never invited it. I’ll do what you want me to do, but only once. It’s not a vocation. I’m not going mad. At the end of the day, I want to be like Stephen. I want to be able to forget it all, as if it never happened. I want you to understand that. I’ll do the job, but I’m not yours for life. I need to know that it’ll be over. I need to know that I’m going to come out of this in one piece, with my fate in my own hands and all the time in the world to work it out. That’s the deal. I just want to be certain that we both understand it. I’m not selling my soul and I’m not asking for anyone to be delivered to eternal torment. I’m just doing what you want to get both of you off my back forever. That’s the deal, okay?”

  “If that’s the deal you want,” Michael said, lifting his head so that his eyes caught a faint glimmer of light, glowing yellow by reflection, “that’s the deal you’ve got. You’re in control. The living are always in control. The living always dictate the terms on which they see us or don’t see us, although they won’t always admit that to themselves. Whatever you want is in the deal—all you have to do to get it is make sure that it’s really what you want.”

  He didn’t tell her not to blink, but it wasn’t her blinking that banished him. He just faded away, into the shadows from which he’d come, leaving the cold behind him.