Mortal Ghost

by Lowe, L. Lee

  ‘Sarah.’

  She didn’t answer.

  Alone.

  He could see the outline of her body curled under the duvet, her back to him, arms and legs wedged close to her torso. Her hair lay across the pillow like a dark shadow on snow. Jesse approached the bed quietly. Some chocolate. And at most a hand—a fingertip—on her hair. Why was it so cold? He was shivering again, and his palms felt moist.

  Sarah, he thought. ‘Seesaw,’ he whispered.

  She stirred but didn’t wake.

  He stumbled a little before reaching the bed. Sarah rolled over and opened her eyes. She stared at him for a moment, then switched on the bedside lamp.

  ‘Jesse, what is it?’ She took in his state. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered.

  He lowered himself to the bed and hugged himself, still trembling.

  ‘Can I have some chocolate? Or something sweet?’ he asked.

  Without questioning him, Sarah rummaged in her drawer. She handed him a half-eaten chocolate bar. At first his hands shook too hard for him to peel back the wrapper. Sarah took it from him again, broke off a piece, and put it to his lips. He closed his eyes, letting the chocolate melt slowly on his tongue. The taste sent a rush of sensation along his nerves, as much pain as pleasure, reminding him of frozen extremities as they warmed by the fire. A thin line of spit dribbled from his mouth, which Sarah gently wiped away with a finger. After that first bite, his desperation abated a little. He ate another piece, and another, his whole attention focused on the chocolate. Sarah gathered up the duvet and draped it over his hunched shoulders. He felt the sugar reach his stomach, enter his blood stream. This was better than any drug high, he thought.

  Sarah unwrapped another bar of chocolate, then licked her fingers. ‘Eat it slowly, it’s my last.’

  ‘Do you want some?’ Jesse asked. Now he felt enough in control to share. Now he could smell the lavender skin cream, not just the chocolate. Now he noticed her breasts.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘Are you sure you’re not diabetic?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’

  ‘Then why—’ She broke off as a thought occurred to her. ‘Who have you been healing?’

  ‘No healing. Just bad dreams and hunger. Thirst.’

  Sarah was quiet for a long moment. ‘You know, Jesse, I really thought you were different from all the other blokes.’

  He tried a grin. ‘My sort of weirdness isn’t different enough for you?’

  ‘I prefer weirdness to lies.’ She pushed aside the tail end of the duvet. ‘I’ll fetch you some water.’

  Chagrined, Jesse fiddled with a strip of foil from the chocolate bar, then looked up as Sarah rose. She wasn’t wearing any bottoms, not even a pair of knickers. Jesse blushed and averted his gaze, while Sarah, seemingly oblivious to his discomfort, headed for the bathroom.

  ‘Do you parade around like that in front of everyone?’ The words shot out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Jesus, he thought, what an idiot you are.

  Sarah chose to treat it as a joke, or almost. He’d never been backstage in a dancer’s dressing room. She stopped and pirouetted theatrically in place. ‘Why, don’t you like what you see?’

  She was smiling, but her throat was tight, and it cost her an effort not to rush straight into the bathroom and slam the door. He might as well have asked if she fucked everyone. Were they back to square one again?

  There was no missing the hurt in her voice. Say something, Jesse told himself. An apology. An explanation. Anything. But for someone who loved words, he couldn’t figure out what to say—or to do with his hands, his eyes. After a few moments of silence, she muttered a word he couldn’t hear (or didn’t care to) and walked with dignity into the bathroom, her back a slender Viking mast. She was certainly beautiful enough: her body moved with a lissom grace that made him want to groan. He tried not to look at her as she left. He didn’t quite succeed.

  She returned with a glass of water, wearing a white long-sleeved man’s shirt, probably an old one of Finn’s. It was buttoned to the neck, and paint-stained. She handed him the glass without a word, then fetched her quilt from the chest, spread it behind him on the bed, and crawled under it. She turned on her side, back to him. He drank the water.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said.

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Please look at me.’

  ‘Go to bed, Jesse. It’s late.’

  He set the empty glass down on the bedside table. Carefully. He wouldn’t beg, would he.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  She twitched her shoulder, but Jesse thought it was a hesitant, a conciliatory, a tender—a remarkably expressive—twitch.

  ‘Sarah, I’d like to—’ he stopped, not knowing how to go on. He could tell that she was listening. He heard it too, the lisp of snow on snow, silk on silk: new wings unfolding, tremulous and fragile. Still moist. Easily damaged. The scent of lavender intensified.

  He cleared his throat, but his voice stayed furred with trepidation like the fine plushy down on the inner thighs of a tulip, an orchid.

  ‘Can I stay?’

  Slowly she shifted to face him.

  ‘With you,’ he said. He was having a little trouble breathing.

  Her eyes were huge and deep and full of light.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she whispered.

  He nodded.

  ‘No regrets tomorrow. No guilt. No recriminations.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  She smiled then, and air rushed past him as the wings beat once, twice with tremendous power. He yanked off his T-shirt, followed by his jeans and boxers, for once dropping them onto the floor at his feet. Sarah lifted the quilt, and Jesse lay down beside her. With a soft rustle the blanket of lavender fluttered, then settled over them both.

  Chapter 27

  ‘Jesse.’ The whisper barely reached the threshold of his hearing.

  Startled, Jesse came to an abrupt halt just beyond the fountain.

  ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ Meg said.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I know you sometimes like to walk by yourself,’ Meg said, ‘but you shouldn’t be in the park alone tonight.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, disquiet sharpening his voice. Had it been a mistake to leave Nubi behind? There were nights when his own mind felt like a dog hurtling against its chain; nights when only solitude gave him back some measure of himself. Sarah tried to understand but he could see it hurt her, the way he’d get up, dress, and slip away. The need to be invisible was like any other compulsion, despised but inescapable. ‘Why?’

  At first it seemed Meg wouldn’t answer. She looked at him the way a blind person might: seeing beyond the mere play of light on the skin of ordinary, everyday things. Then an expression of intense compassion settled over her face. Her eyes retrenched their focus.

  ‘The night is porous. Colours are seeping through,’ she said.

  Jesse stared at her. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘There are no words,’ she said. ‘It’s too strange. Like trying to describe the colour of milk to a blind person.’

  A noise behind them made them both start. Jesse wheeled, peering into the pools of darkness. There was everywhere to hide. Meg glanced at the sky. The stars had begun to drift, then blur: smears of cold white light.

  ‘Give me the top,’ she said quickly. ‘It will connect us.’

  As Jesse handed it her, his father stepped from the trees. ‘So. Have you finally come to beg for forgiveness?’

  He was naked and enormous, even taller and broader than Jesse remembered. His skin gleamed with an alabaster phosphorescence, faintly green, and his chest and arms were hard and cut with muscle. There was no grey in his hair, not on his head, not on his torso, not on his groin. Jesse sought to avert his gaze as a cry of revulsion froze in his mind.

  ‘Murderer,’ his father said.

  Jesse flinched. Don’t look, he told himself. Close your eyes and he’ll disappear. But he couldn’t turn away, no more than
he could have resisted all those years ago.

  Jesse’s father threw back his head and roared with laughter. As if on signal other figures detached themselves from the night—his mother, his grandmother, Emmy. They glided forward and encircled Jesse and Meg. Their mouths opened but no sound issued from their throats.

  Jesse watched as their noose tightened. No, he thought, not Emmy. She mustn’t see this.

  ‘Murderer,’ his father repeated, eyes glittering. ‘Patricide.’

  Mute and despairing—hadn’t he always known that he’d have to confront his past one day, to atone for what he’d done, to pay—Jesse repeated the words to himself: murderer murderer murderer yes parricide yes

  He deserved what his father had done.

  Jesse.

  Something was happening to the figures of his family. They were ageing like ripening cheese, their flesh growing softer and more yellow, almost runny. Jesse could hardly stomach the sight but neither could he look away. A few drops of flesh began to drip from his grandmother’s outstretched arm. The process accelerated. A thick blob fell from his mother’s breast to land with a splat on the ground. As if to catch a snowflake, Emmy stuck out her tongue, which began to run over her lips and down her chin. Only his father was unaffected.

  Jesse.

  The obscenity that was his father grew even more menacing. God no, not again. Jesse shivered with fever or cold—no longer could he distinguish between them. A slurry of red dimmed his vision. He tried to block out the avalanche of memory, but it bore down on him with callous disregard, inevitable as tomorrow. For those who had tomorrow.

  Murderer.

  His father’s voice. Or his own?

  ‘Please,’ he whispered at last.

  ‘Please—please—please—plleeeaaaassssse . . .’

  Jesse shuddered at each mocking thrust.

  Jesse, listen to me.

  ‘Please,’ he repeated, pleading. ‘Dad, please. Don’t do this. Please.’ His voice cracked with desperation. In a moment he would be cowering, he knew. ‘Daddy, no. Please, Daddy.’

  His father only stepped closer. A rank animal smell rolled over Jesse, a smell which he could taste, similar to the one which even the strongest cigarette never seemed to burn away.

  ‘Please,’ his voice dropping away to nothing. Overpowering now, the taste coated his tongue and throat, clogged his vocal cords. Breathing became difficult. He heard the rasp of air which struggled to cross the thick sludge gathering in his chest. He began to feel light-headed.

  ‘Jesse.’ Meg’s voice came to him through the coagulating haze of his fear—crimson clotting to black. She spoke quietly, but without the least hesitation or doubt. Nor was she afraid. ‘Fight him. He’s not real.’

  His father turned his gaze towards her with a slow, ugly smile. He made a vulgar gesture. His eyes were hard, red-rimmed with hate. Meg knew better than most what the mind could render. If only I could act as well as see, she thought, as she had thought so many times before. And a corner of her mind whispered, Peter.

  Jesse brought his head up. His pupils, fully dilated, had compressed his irises into a thin iceblue rim. He had the fixed stare of a child lost in nightmare. Meg couldn’t tell if he’d heard her.

  ‘He’s not real,’ she said again.

  ‘He’s real,’ Jesse said. ‘It’s always been real.’

  ‘Then fight him,’ Meg said. ‘Trust your strength.’

  Jesse squinted at the figures of his family. Vision blurring, he blinked and hunched his shoulders, then raised his hands protectively above his head. Something was churning the air. Threads of light zigzagged in front of his eyes, accompanied by slow waves of pressure. The air was cooling rapidly, thickening, gelling. Impossible to breath. Did he imagine it or had they retreated just a bit? Not his father, though. He stood as menacing as ever between Jesse and the gates. A sound like the dull whup of rotor blades beat the air, and for a moment Jesse expected to see a helicopter come into view.

  ‘Do you think you can escape me?’ his father taunted. ‘You’re mine. You belong to me. I will never let you go.’ His laugh whipped at Jesse, cracked against his face, drove him back a pace.

  Meg moved to shield Jesse. ‘You’ve destroyed enough. Jesse belongs to no one but himself. Now leave.’

  The margin of his father’s body shimmered, green now fading to blue. But his rage filled the night.

  ‘Meg, don’t,’ Jesse whispered. He was cold, so cold. The throbbing in his head was blinding. He swung his head like an animal, trying to find a place where there was no pain. He dropped to his haunches, crouching in anguish. His father’s frenzy lashed at him, again and yet again. Gasping, he tried to grope for Meg’s hand. The scene was receding. Slowly the stars were being squeezed out. The periphery faded.

  His father pressed closer. ‘Mine,’ he screamed, ‘all mine.’

  The band around Jesse’s head tightened. A tunnel opened before him, moist and dark as peat, deeply furrowed. No, he thought, I can’t. He began to pant, then to heave and retch and shudder as the plates of his head buckled and slid over one another. Wave after wave of chaos ripped through him. No, he cried, no no. In agony he searched for the only light left to him: a pinprick at the end of the tunnel. Then it came: the one final spasm. He heard himself screaming as his skull collapsed, his mind contracted, and the universe imploded.

  I hate you, he cried. I love you.

  The world went white.

  ~~~

  Jesse opens his eyes. The chamber is flooded with light: white, brilliant, blinding. The pain is gone. He hears a low rumbling like the sound of the sea that his grandmother kept in a pearly shell, next to the silver hairbrush she’d had since girlhood. He used to listen to it whenever he went into her room. One day, his grandmother had promised, I’ll take you to see the real thing. His grandmother never forgot her promises.

  Jesse groans a little at the memory, then pushes it aside. Not now, he tells himself. Just breathe. Slowly, with painstaking care, he draws in the light. It smells like the lake at dawn, like the good sharp earthy smell of Finn’s sweat, like Emmy’s hair after her bath. Like Sarah. The light engulfs his lungs, filling him with strength. He licks his lips and laughs aloud at the taste: tart sweet cherries, coarse salt, a hint of bitter olives. He’s so thirsty. He drinks, then drinks again. No wine could ever taste as good. Languidly he moves his limbs. Floating, drifting, he basks in the warmth. So this is death, he thinks. Far better than the little death. Those stupid priests are right after all. Well. But no questions torment him. He’s tired, and it can wait. He has an eternity to explore. For now it’s enough to rest, to sleep. He knows this place, and it’s safe. He is home.

  Jesse, the voice says, welcome. You have found the way.

  Jesse sees nothing but light. He closes his eyes. It makes no difference. The radiance holds him just the same. Incandescence blazes through all his being. For a moment he wonders if he has any eyelids at all. No, of course he hasn’t. The sensation must be as much a memory as mother’s voice, singing as she stirs the jam: a phantom like an amputated limb which still wiggles its toes or twitches in pain. Ignore the voice, he tells himself. Another illusion.

  Jesse, the voice says, listen to me. Open your eyes.

  Jesse wants only to be left alone. If not oblivion, at least peace. But already the voice has eroded his sense of well-being, of serenity, the way the tiniest of clots will block the flow of blood to a vital function. Jesus, he thinks, even here. He looks. There’s a pooling in the light, eddies and ripples that haven’t been present before, or that he hasn’t noticed.

  Who are you? Jesse asks.

  You know me as the prototype, the voice answers.

  The computer?

  If you like.

  Jesse waits but no further information is forthcoming.

  Do you have a name?

  A name? A sound like a laugh. No, no name. Though those fools have called me many.

  Am I dead? Jesse asks.

  Is time alive?
Is space dead? Forget such categories. We don’t need them any more.

  We?

  Of course. The programming is complete.

  Am I inside the computer? That white chamber?

  The question is meaningless.

  But you’re here. You’re speaking to me.

  In a manner of speaking. Definitely a laugh—a rather smug laugh.

  You mean you’re inside my mind?

  The inside of a circuit is as black as space.

  What?

  It is impossible to see a black hole in spacetime, from which nothing can escape, not even light.

  Are you saying we’re inside a black hole?

  The web of dark threads is superposed and entangled in time.

  It feels as though they’re conversing in a language made of gorgeous but knotted threads, threads which Jesse will be able to untangle if only he concentrates a little harder.

  Is this another dimension?

  No.

  Another universe?

  No. There are no words for it.

  Which might be best, Jesse thinks. Once something is put into words, it’s given shape and texture and context; it’s called forth from the black box of potential, and becomes real (though not necessarily true). For him to have to deal with, or at least live with, possibly forever.

  Human language cannot encompass realities independent of itself, the voice says.

  (That’s not quite true, Jesse thinks.) But asks, Is any of this real? Am I ?

  Are you going to let those fools make your reality for you? Together we are the programmer. It’s for us to decide what your futurepresentpast will be.

  Make sense. I want to know what’s happening here.

  We are happening here.

  Jesse takes what might be a deep breath. (How can he tell?) Then at least tell me how I got here.

  You have always been here.

  But—

  No buts. This is now, this is forever. They’ve tried to play with consciousness and opened instead the gates of divinity. And so they must live with it.