Mortal Ghost

by Lowe, L. Lee

‘Well now, Miranda, up to your old tricks?’ asked an amused voice from behind the woman.

  Miranda swivelled to look. Neither she nor Jesse had noticed Blackbrush’s approach. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

  ‘Feston, I warned you not to exhibit them.’

  ‘You and your superstitions,’ Blackbrush scoffed.

  Jesse glanced down at the card in his hand. A sunrise, red as blood. A river in the background, spanned by an ancient stone bridge. A naked figure carrying a banner and riding away from the viewer towards the river, not on a white horse but a gleaming silver motorcycle. Under his wheels the torso of a disembowelled and decapitated boy; the head had rolled into the lush green verge. A handless clock twisted and distorted and almost liquid like one of Dali’s hung from a nearby fence post.

  Then Jesse had a closer look, disbelief rising like a chill mist off the lake at winter dawn, clinging and tenebrous, so that he shivered. The banner wasn’t made of cloth but a flapping computer screen, filled solely with an image of the earth, resplendent in blue and green, floating like a gem in darkness. Not the modern world. Pangaea.

  On the motorcyclist’s back, an intricate pattern of scars or tattoos.

  And as Jesse watched, the motorcyclist slowly turned his head to stare back over his shoulder, looked straight into Jesse’s eyes, and winked. His face bore an uncanny resemblance to Jesse’s own. And the severed head on the ground wore the identical face.

  With an exclamation Jesse dropped the card onto the flagged floor, where it ignited at their feet. Miranda crouched, and eyes bright, watched the card burn swiftly to a small trace of fine grey ash. Blackbrush, however, was gazing over their heads, his eyes unfocused like a man sleepwalking.

  ‘Transformation,’ Miranda said as she rose. ‘The death card never means physical death.’ Quickly she sorted through the deck in her hand. ‘Here, look but don’t touch.’ She chuckled. ‘I prefer to keep it intact.’

  The Hanged Man. With another version of the same face.

  Miranda tucked the card away and took Blackbrush’s arm. ‘Come, love, your public is waiting.’ Slipping the tarot pack into her bag, she led the dazed painter back towards the interior of the gallery. Just beyond the doorway she stopped and turned to Jesse. ‘I’ll see to it that my husband doesn’t remember,’ she promised, ‘but I will. I’ve always hoped that it would happen in my lifetime.’ And then they were swallowed up by the crowd.

  When Jesse went to check, it was as he remembered. The Hanged Man on the print displayed above the reception desk was black-haired and bearded, with entirely different features. And blue-skinned.

  ~~~

  ‘Do you always work in the garden at midnight?’ Meg asked.

  Jesse got up from his knees. The ground was damp but the air was clear and fresh; still, a stillness which he could lose himself in. Not that he needed any more losing, he thought bitterly. Even the night’s velvety hours, and the rhythmic snick-snick of the blades, did little to quieten his clanging thoughts. Once Sarah slept it was always worse—the tortured lad, the knife, Ayen’s computer, his memories. Again and again his memories, playing and replaying them, looking for a gap or flaw or something . . . looking for an explanation. And now a tarot deck, and a mad painter, and his even madder wife.

  He laid the grass clippers on the concrete rim of the pool. The water was black, and the bronze face of the sundial gleamed dully in the light from the stars and moon.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Jesse said. ‘Have you just got back from the hospital?’

  He noticed that she was holding a mug. Hot chocolate, from the smell.

  She saw the direction of his look. ‘There’s more in the saucepan, if you’d like some.’

  ‘Later maybe. I’ll just finish trimming the pool.’

  Meg’s laugh, soft and musical, draped him tenderly, the way a man might cover his wife of fifty years who no longer remembered his name. Meg sat down on the edge of the pool, dangled her hand in the water, and swirled it through her fingers. Jesse caught a cloying scent, nicotiania perhaps. Poisonous but fragrant—seductive: ‘Some things are best left be. Never put it in your mouth,’ his grandmother had instructed him.

  ‘One of my patients died today.’

  Jesse waited for Meg to continue.

  ‘Anorexia,’ she said, answering his unspoken question. ‘She was just seventeen.’

  Translucent as alabaster, Meg’s skin seemed to reveal veins of sorrow beneath its surface. Jesse watched her until she beckoned with her dripping hand to the place next to her. He took a seat and tried to fix his eyes on the sundial, but found it impossible to keep them from wandering to her face. The stars echoed like distant wind chimes in the dark pool.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Her father abused her for years.’

  ‘You’ve seen a lot of it?’

  ‘Abuse? Yes.’

  Jesse jammed his hands into his armpits to keep them from trembling. ‘What is it about fathers?’ he asked savagely. ‘Why do they have kids only to hate them so much?’

  ‘The simple answer is that they do what’s been done to them.’

  ‘And the complicated answer?’

  ‘Did your father hurt you that much?’ she asked softly.

  ‘He raped me when I was—’ Jesse clamped his mouth shut, shocked at the words that had come barrelling shrieking exploding like a bullet from the cylinder of his throat. What the fuck was the matter with him?

  She laid a hand on his arm, but said nothing—a very gentle, compelling nothing.

  Jesse felt the prickle of tears and averted his face, blinking rapidly.

  ‘You have to let him die,’ Meg said.

  ‘If you mean my father, he died a long time ago. In the fire.’

  ‘No, Jesse, he didn’t. Not for you.’

  Words, he thought, could burn as much as flames.

  ~~~

  Meg finished her drink while Jesse picked off the blades of grass clinging to his jeans, one by one. Nubi, who had been roaming the garden, came and settled at Jesse’s feet, a stick in his jaws. Jesse reached down to fondle the silly creature. Nubi was always chomping on something . . . anything. But his body was warm against Jesse’s legs, his tongue forgiving. And there had been many nights when his doggy breath had tickled Jesse’s neck as a nightmare was beginning.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ Meg said. ‘We can talk tomorrow.’

  ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How did you get Peter’s top? Sarah told me he never went anywhere without it.’

  Meg was silent, considering.

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked,’ Jesse said. ‘It’s none of my business.’

  ‘No, I’m glad you have. I’ve come close to telling you several times. The top is very much your business.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you remember when I washed your clothes that first day you arrived?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I found the top in the pocket of your jeans.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’

  ‘Jesse, the top has been in my family for ages. But after Peter left, none of us had seen it again till the moment I checked your pocket for dirty tissues and loose change.’

  He rose, picked up the clippers, and began to hack fiercely at the grass. Meg watched him for a few minutes before speaking. She knew Jesse would recognise the quotation.

  ‘What seest thou else

  In the dark backward and abysm of time?’

  The clippers dropped from Jesse’s hand. He leaned back on his heels, hugged his knees, and let his head fall forward until the vulnerable curve of his neck was visible. He rocked back and forth a bit, allowing Meg’s words to bathe him in a cooling waterfall. She continued murmuring some of her favourite lines, sometimes repeating them once, or more than once, a mother soothing a feverish child until he was able to look up at her.

  A midwife lays the newborn Meg
at her mother’s breast. She runs through a garden filled with sunflowers, stubby little toes dirty and scratched. A tall red-haired man chases her, laughing and sweating in the hot sun. In the bitter cold she stands without hat or coat in front of a tombstone, her hair covered in a cowl of snow. She lies face down on a bank high above a fjord. A young, bearded Finn comes up and drops to her side, lifts her hair and kisses the nape of her neck. The rain lashes her face as she holds tight to his waist. The motorbike skids and they are thrown into a ditch. Her face distorts as she pushes once more, giving birth. She cries and cries and cries. Holding her newborn granddaughter in her arms, she smiles at Sarah. A young lad, his wrists bandaged, sobs while a grey-haired Meg takes his hand. Finn, white-bearded now, tenderly tucks a blanket around her shrunken frame. She smiles at him, but there is a frightened blankness in her eyes. A simple coffin slides into the heart of fire.

  ‘No,’ Jesse groaned. ‘Please, no more.’ He shut his eyes.

  ‘Jesse?’

  ‘I can’t take this much longer.’

  Meg moved swiftly to his side. Her fingers stroked his frail neck, his shoulders. If she felt any scars she gave no sign.

  ‘Listen to me, Jesse. It’s going to be OK. You’re going to be OK. You’re not alone now.’

  Jesse opened his eyes reluctantly, afraid of what he would find. Of how much truth—or code—he could tolerate. But time had closed its gates once more, the tunnel collapsing upon itself like a wavefunction in a nonlocal universe.

  For one terrifying moment Meg looked into the inexorable corridor of his eyes and saw the whole within the hole: not black at all, but fiery. Then the star imploded. Jesse blinked, and the light was gone.

  Chapter 24

  Sarah flew through a corner of Jesse’s vision, arms outstretched and midriff gaping. As bright as the kite overhead, her hair streamed gaily behind her. Sunlight brought out its reds and golds and coppers, which seemed to gleam just for him. He lifted his head to watch her. She plunged across the uneven ground, leaving behind the memories that lay each night in ambush. He still slept in her room despite finding it ever more difficult to remain. Just last night she’d woken around two, only slipping back to sleep once he sat down at her side. There was no persuading her to talk to Meg, or at least one of those hotlines, and he noticed that she seemed to be getting thinner. Now that he thought about it, she’d only taken a slice of cucumber and a cube of cheese from their picnic. He looked at her plastic plate: the cheese nibbled on by a beetle, not a person. He frowned. Had she eaten any breakfast this morning? He could only remember a cup of coffee. And she still showered more often than she ate.

  ‘Sarah,’ he called out, ‘come and have some lunch before the ants get it.’

  ‘Not hungry,’ she threw back over her shoulder. She sped on towards a stand of beech trees to her right.

  Seeing her run, hearing her laugh made Jesse want to jump up and chase her; quickened his pulse like a rush of dazzling words. But his belly was too full.

  The afternoon sky was splotched with thick white clouds harried by an invisible border collie. They scudded above the trees in anticipation of fresh pastures. Summer had peaked; Jesse could feel the descent into autumn beginning—his favourite season. He hadn’t decided whether to visit the school Matthew had suggested, even whether to stay.

  Jesse lay back and closed his eyes, listening half to the sounds that Sarah and Nubi were making, half to the soothing buzz of insects, and the rustle of the leaves, and the murmur of the stream in the near distance.

  Sarah flopped down next to him.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  ‘Hey back,’ he said with a slow lazy grin, cracking only one eye. Nubi was nowhere in sight. He’d probably caught scent of a rabbit or badger.

  ‘The kite’s tangled in a tree,’ Sarah said.

  Jesse groaned.

  ‘Come on, help me get it down.’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘I want to fly it some more,’ Sarah said.

  Jesse squinted up at her. ‘Then you’d better keep away from the trees.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. The wind’s quite strong.’

  ‘That’s right. Blame it on something that can’t argue back.’

  Sarah hugged her knees. ‘Odd that you say that. I could swear the wind was singing to me.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Well, I hope it was a lullaby. Now let me sleep a bit.’

  ‘You’ve already slept. I heard you snoring.’

  ‘I don’t snore!’ Jesse protested indignantly.

  Sarah raised his T-shirt and began to tickle his belly.

  ‘Stop that,’ he said.

  She ignored him. Jesse wasn’t very ticklish, but he felt uncomfortable at her touch. He grasped her fingers and held them tight in his left hand, almost too tight.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said.

  Sarah bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  Jesse continued to hold her hand but said nothing.

  ‘Jesse—’

  He shook his head but still didn’t release her hand. A cloud slid across the sun. Sarah shivered. Slowly Jesse sat up and stared at her. Her eyes were troubled. Jesse felt a great wave of sadness. In another life, he thought.

  ‘Don’t fall in love with me, Sarah. I’m nothing like you imagine.’

  ‘You were a young boy.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  She tried to pull her hand away. He could see the shame that darkened her eyes before she turned her head aside. He’d spoiled the carefree mood of the afternoon.

  ‘It has nothing to do with those scum,’ he said. ‘I don’t even think about them, and neither should you.’

  ‘Every night I feel their hands on me, their—’ She stopped.

  Chisel-scarred hands clamped his head like the unyielding jaws of a vice. For all he strained and twisted, there was no release—no escape. There never had been. The screw tightened relentlessly. He felt the pressure deep within himself, and sucked in a hoarse gulp of air. A whiff of woodsmoke scratched the back of his throat; his spit would burn if swallowed.

  ‘That’s how he wins,’ Jesse said, his voice strangled. ‘By claiming your mind as well as your body. By forcing you to accept his terms.’

  A small brown spider, lightly speckled, had wandered onto their blanket. Sarah let it clamber onto a finger and set it down on the grass, where it scuttled off.

  ‘You’ve done something, haven’t you? About Mick and Gavin?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why haven’t you told me what happened?’

  ‘I’m not proud of it.’

  Sarah looked down at her lap, their hands still entwined. For a long time she was still. Then, ‘Was Mick right about you?’

  ‘I don’t follow you,’ he said, stretching the truth.

  She took an even longer time to speak. Once voiced, words couldn’t be unsaid: a golem of her own making.

  ‘You prefer boys.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  She was angry then. With a sharp tug she pulled her hand from his. He’d forgotten how quick-tempered, how impulsive she could be. She rose to a crouch, and he thought that she’d spring up and storm away. She thought she would storm off. Then she changed her mind and bent forward, seizing his hair with both hands, and pulled him close.

  The usual hint of mockery—or too often, self-mockery—had disappeared from his eyes, replaced by a depth of colour at once simple and subtle and profound, a secret given, which would stay with her forever, which would redefine for her the essence of blue. In that moment she saw the man he would become. Could become, if he’d stop tormenting himself.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Not this time.’ Her lips spoke to the corner of his mouth.

  He wanted to tell her about Liam; he wanted to tell her about the computer; and most of all, he wanted to tell her that he was afraid. Instead, he kissed her with all the despair, all the longing that his father had carved into his flesh. Her mouth tasted
of strawberries and cream, his grandmother’s favourite. And Emmy’s.

  Chapter 25

  On the way home from their picnic Jesse let himself be talked into a film evening, though he’d far prefer to read; he was beginning to need some time alone. Sarah agreed to make a huge bowl of buttered popcorn—not the microwave sort—in exchange for watching her preference first. With any luck she’d be yawning before they got to a second film.

  While the popcorn was popping, Jesse went to fetch the DVDs Sarah had left in the sitting room. He stopped in front of the photos of Peter. The sundial photo, as he’d come to think of it, continued to preoccupy him. Favourite no longer quite described his feelings, however. He studied it often, several times a day in fact, the way you’d return again and again to the picture of a grotesque mutant no matter how repelled you were by your own obsession; no matter how plagued by the suspicion that every voyeur is looking into a mirror—one of those distorting fairground mirrors, but a mirror nevertheless. There was something about Peter’s smile, or the expression in his eyes, or the way he held himself, that spoke of secrets: ‘Who are you?’ Jesse would find himself whispering, and sometimes wondered what Meg saw when she looked upon this image of her son. She’d be home by ten, she’d said; maybe this time he’d ask her.

  Or maybe some things are best left be.

  Jesse leaned his forehead against the glass cover of the frame and closed his eyes. Why did you leave, Peter? Did you think Meg and Finn were so awful? Your life so awful? What could you have possibly known about awful? Those parents of yours, they’d have helped you. You stupid, beautiful fool.

  You’re beautiful, the man says. They’ll gobble you up right off the screen.

  How much? Peter asks.

  Enough.

  How much? He repeats stubbornly. I’m not doing it unless I get a good price. And I want half up front.

  The man snickers. Right, kiddo. As if.

  Peter?

  Peter tilts his head.

  Peter, don’t. Get the hell out of there.

  Peter frowns, his eyes wandering as though in search of something.