Requiem for Rab

by Marie Treanor

  In spite of everything, laughter caught in my throat. “You would, too, wouldn’t you?”

  “Anything for a laugh.”

  “It’s a tragedy,” I objected.

  “Anti-capitalist Mary Queen of Scots? Don’t be daft, it’s got to be a comedy.”

  “Philistine.”

  “Pseud.”

  When we arrived at Waverley Station, he stood and bowed me off the train. I kept waiting for him to disappear, but he walked beside me down the platform, his long, easy strides eating up the distance far more easily than my half-run.

  “Are we in a rush?” he enquired.

  “I promised to be back at rehearsals by six. I’m already late.”

  “You don’t fancy a pint then?”

  I glanced at him, met his grin. “Wouldn’t do my reputation much good to be seen sitting at an Edinburgh bar talking to myself, would it? Might be worth it to watch a ghost drinking Guinness, though.”

  “Let’s do it. After your rehearsal, we’ll experiment with Rab’s ghost.”

  “Don’t,” I said with difficulty, and his hand slipped into mine, his fingers sliding between my own and gripping.

  We walked together out of the station, pausing only to let Rab vault over the automatic ticket barriers, and went out into the early evening sun.

  The Fringe was already beginning. Street performers were everywhere, bright, loud, colourful. Rab and I strolled peacefully among the international throngs, hand-in-hand, not speaking. African drum music gave way to a large, lively jazz band. Farther on, a ragged medieval musical trio introduced a miracle play. And through it all, high above our heads, blackbird song mingled with the cooing of pigeons.

  At the theatre door, I halted and turned to face him, my mouth already open to warn with great severity against interfering with the rehearsal. Which was when Rab chose to seize the moment. He simply bent and kissed my lips.

  I really think he meant to draw back at once, but he didn’t. And God help me, at the first touch of his mouth, I didn’t want him to. His hand slid up my wrist to my shoulder, drawing me closer, held my head while his other arm wrapped around my waist. His lips parted mine. I opened to him and was lost, for it seemed alive or dead, Rab’s kiss could still melt my bones to water. Very hot water.

  The years of pain and loneliness fell away. There was only the excitement of the street performers’ cries mingling with distant music in my ears, and the scent of a man, of Rab, in my nostrils. It was the most natural thing in the world to kiss Rab, and the growing hardness of his erection pressing against my stomach was at once achingly familiar and excitingly new.

  His mouth moved across mine, his tongue seeking and dancing with mine. I hung on to his shirt and deepened the kiss even further.

  Rab. My Rab…

  I gasped. My own tears trickled into my mouth and I whispered, “Bastard. How can you do this to me now?” When there was no hope of him. When he was dead.

  He drew back. His arms loosened. Behind the unmistakable lust in his darkened eyes, he looked—stricken.

  I bolted through the door into the theatre foyer and there halted, my head back against the door to keep it shut, my eyes closed to get control of the stupid tears. God knows what passersby would have thought about me standing there with my mouth open and my tongue hanging out. Like a parody of ecstasy. Quite a street performance.

  Laugh, damn it!

  I couldn’t laugh.

  With a shuddering breath, I straightened and began to smooth down my jacket and jeans—which is when I saw the blood stains on my shoulder. Smudges that must have come off Rab’s wound. I stared at them, fascination warring with horror as they slowly faded and vanished to nothing.

  In sudden panic, I wrenched open the door to the street. “Rab? Rab are you still there?”

  But there was no sign of him. Only a man in a top hat on hugely tall stilts, walking past with a gaggle of children.

  Desolation washed over me, more intense than any I could remember in the last two years, since I realized I’d finally lost him. Well this was final. Death was irrevocable.

  Then who the hell just kissed me?

  Unseeing, I stared out into the cobbled street. I no longer heard the bright cacophony of noises drifting between the tall stone buildings. I felt…something. The air seemed to crackle with it. It was almost like in the carpark in Glasgow when I touched his blood.

  Almost.

  “Rab?” I whispered. Then, louder, “Rab!”

  Reluctantly, I went back inside. The feeling faded, but didn’t disappear. And I was late. I really didn’t need a reputation for unprofessional behaviour.

  But on impulse, I walked straight past the auditorium door, through the stage door and kept going through the narrow passage that led to the door at the back of the building. Unlocking that—the great, old-fashioned key was still in the lock—I opened it and stepped outside. It was a dark back court, surrounded by tenements. Rapacious weeds grew among the cobbles. Two large grey wheelie-bins stood on one side, almost bulging with assorted rubbish. But my gaze was drawn past them to a narrow, overgrown passage that led between this court and others, presumably winding its way out on to another street.

  I walked toward it, my heart drumming now because the feeling I couldn’t name had intensified.

  Rab, is that you? Are you out there now?

  I pushed the bushes aside and peered into the suddenly sinister passage.

  A man loomed up from the left: short, bald, stocky. Gasping in fright, I leapt back just as another man, taller, in white shirt-sleeves, appeared on my right.

  “Lili Graham?” said the stocky man. “Can I have your autograph?”

  “Lili!” The cry came from behind me at the back door, loud, exasperated. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  “Menzies!” In relief, I swung round to face him. A rustling in the undergrowth told me my creepy fans were beating a hasty retreat. I hurried back toward Menzies, ready to embrace my normal world with enthusiasm.

  Chapter Four

  Much later in the evening, I slammed my flat door shut and shouted, “Rab? Get your ghostly bum back here! I need to talk to you!”

  Annoyingly, the flat remained silent.

  “Typical,” I muttered, dropping my bag and jacket on the sofa and heading for the kitchen to make coffee. After I switched on the kettle, I checked the bedroom, just to make sure he wasn’t there, either.

  I’d left in such a rush that morning I hadn’t made the bed. Mechanically, I began to smooth the sheet and draw up the quilt—which is when I realized the blood stains had gone. They’d faded to nothing, just as they had from my jacket.

  I’d never heard of a haunting this weird. The man—whom only I could see—dripped blood like Banquo’s ghost, only it vanished from my garments and didn’t show up at all on his—except for the T-shirt.

  I’d never heard of a ghost wearing a T-shirt either. Come to that, I couldn’t remember ever hearing about a ghost solid enough to sit on my bed, catch a train or take me in its strong arms and kiss me. Of course, I’d never made much of a study of the subject, but I was sure it was weird. Something was definitely wrong here.

  Well, there was nothing I could do about that. Far too esoteric for me. On the other hand, solid, physical things, maybe I could help with. And who knew, perhaps if I helped find Rab’s body and his murderers, he could move on…to wherever it was dead people went. I was damned sure it wasn’t normal for them to hang around my flat or the 5.15 express from Glasgow Queen Street.

  Taking my phone back into the kitchen, I scrolled down to Tony’s number, pressed call, and stuck the phone between my neck and my ear while I made the coffee.

  But once again he answered very quickly. “Tony? It’s me, Lili,” I said, hastily dropping the kettle and grabbing the phone more securely.

  “Heard anything?”

  “No, but I had a thought at rehearsal while we were all gibbering away about the casket letters that do for my poor old
Queen of Scotts. What did Rab do with his games? Where did he keep them?”

  “The new ones? His own stuff? They’re safe. On disks in banks. Why?”

  “It just struck me, killing Rab wouldn’t do them any good unless they had the games.”

  “Ah.” Tony sounded more unhappy than ever.

  “What?”

  “Well, I know they’re in a bank—several banks—but Rab thought it would keep the bad guys away from his family if he told them the disks went everywhere with him, that he never let them out of his sight.”

  So they could have shot Rab believing they could then simply remove the disks and hand them over to Head, or the company buying them out who would then produce the games as their own.

  Only Rab hadn’t had the disks on him. No doubt he took perverse pleasure in thwarting them, but to me it was as if he’d died for nothing.

  Defeated, I said, “Okay, Tony, thanks.”

  Disconnecting, I picked up my coffee cup and went to run a bath.

  ***

  It seemed I’d only just fallen asleep, when I sprang back into wakefulness.

  “Oh mama mia, mama mia,

  Mama mia let me go!

  Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me,

  For me, for ME…!”

  Queen.

  In my living room. What the…?

  Blindly, I stumbled out of bed, pushed open the bedroom door and blinked in the lamplight.

  “So you think you can love me and spit in my eye?

  So you think you can love me and leave to die?”

  It was like a time warp.

  Rab sat at the old desk, hunched over a computer, singing along to loud rock music, his gaze glued to the screen while his hand flew across keys and manipulated the mouse at the speed of light. How many times over the years had I discovered him like this, at all hours of the day and night?

  The only difference was the absence of his big tower computer. He was using my laptop.

  At least I knew what to do. Crossing the room, I turned down the stereo to don’t-force-the-neighbours-to-call-the-police volume, and went to stand beside him.

  Quite naturally, his arm came out and drew me to his side. He didn’t look up from the screen, but he did stop singing. Which was a relief to all.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, still suffering from a weird sense of déjà vu.

  “Looking up mediums,” was the unexpected answer. His hand moved on my waist, absently caressing. Little sparks of pleasure ran up to my breasts and down to my stomach.

  “Mediums?”

  He shrugged. “Makes sense. If I can get through to one of them, maybe she’d be able to track down my body.”

  “Why can’t you track it down?”

  “No idea. One article here was wittering about the dead body repelling the spirit. Suppose it would.”

  He glanced up at me, still half-absorbed in his research, but almost at once, his eyes cleared and softened. He drew me onto his lap and held me loosely in both arms.

  “There’s one in Morningside. She looks the genuine article.”

  I glanced at the screen. A plump middle-aged lady gazed back at me. She had short, grey hair, dangling earrings and a no-nonsense smile. Above her, a plain banner proclaimed, “Rose Colvin, Medium”. So far as I could tell, there were none of the obvious clichéd images on her site. She might have been advertising a cleaning service.

  Against the curve of my bottom, I could feel Rab’s erection growing. Excitement warred with disbelief. How did ghosts get erections? I twisted round to face him. “Will you go and check her out?”

  “Yes…” His eyes darkened. His arms tightened, and I felt his hand slide up from my waist along the side of my breast. “Tomorrow,” he breathed.

  I swallowed, unmoving as his hand roamed back and around, touching the sensitive underside of my breast, brushing the nipple that reached out to him without permission.

  “Tonight, I wish…”

  “You wish what?” I managed.

  “I wish…” His gaze roved over my unbuttoned nightshirt, came back up to my face, unsmiling. “I wish we could make it right.” He touched my cheeks, my lips, with the sensitive tips of his fingers. “I wish we could wash away all the crap and just leave the one thing that matters.”

  “Death,” I whispered.

  His lips quirked. “Love.” He brought my face nearer and fastened his mouth on mine.

  It wasn’t like the last time, in the street outside the theatre. This was a ravenous kiss, consuming me from the outset. He attacked my mouth with lips and tongue and teeth, taking fierce possession, and the fire surged from him straight through me.

  I gasped into his mouth. “And when you’re gone?”

  “Then you’ll have it to remember as you get on with your life. And we’ll both know that for this night at least, we loved each other. And, Lil…”

  “What?” I gasped as he dragged my nightshirt over my head and threw it over his shoulder.

  “I loved you every night. And day. The ones in the pub as well as the ones at home. The ones on computer games and the ones pissed in our bed or on somebody else’s floor. The ones I fucked you and all the ones since you left me. I never stopped and I never will.”

  “Oh, Rab, don’t make me cry,” I choked.

  He seized my mouth in his, cupping my breast and kneading, groaning deep in his throat, “Can I make you come?”

  “Can ghosts have sex?”

  “This one bloody can.”

  Laughter caught in my throat, feeding the frantic lust. “Then do you fancy a shag?”

  He left my mouth, smiling, to kiss my breast instead. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  His lips brushed my nipple, pulled at it while his tongue flicked over it wickedly. Moaning, I arched up into his mouth. I felt his teeth grazing my nipple, teasing. His hands were busy on his zip.

  He lifted me by the waist and I watched with blatant desire as his cock sprang up between our bodies. God, I’d missed that… Big, blue-veined, purple headed and thick. Watching my face, he began to lower me on to it.

  I gasped at the shooting pangs of delight as its blunt head probed among my folds. It brushed against my clitoris, found my soaking entrance which already throbbed uncontrollably as if trying to draw him in. Then he pushed up into my body and I cried out in shock and delight.

  “Oh, fuck, I love being dead,” he whispered, and drew back to push in a little farther. “There was never anyone like you, Lil…”

  The feel of him inside me was incredible, filling me, so that for a moment I couldn’t move. Then, when he began to thrust, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him. I began to rock on his cock, lifting up as he pulled back, pushing down as he returned. The pleasure was so intense I thought I’d explode.

  His hands held my bare buttocks, caressing them, and he purred deep in his throat, “Lili’s ass…”

  I rubbed my breasts against him, felt the orgasm begin to gallop up from somewhere near my toes.

  “Squeeze me,” he whispered. “Squeeze my cock with that tight, wet pussy of yours. I’ve missed your heat…your everything. Christ, I love fucking you.”

  I came, shuddering around his cock in ecstasy, my mouth open in shock because it had been so long and it was so bloody amazing. And it was Rab.

  “And I love watching you come…”

  “Can ghosts come?” I gasped, still trembling in the throes of orgasm.

  “Oh, I hope so.”

  “Then come. Fuck me hard and come.”

  He took me at my word. Holding me by the hips he pounded up into me while I writhed on his cock, rasping the root against my clitoris, rejoicing as the sparks caught again. I heard the rumblings of his climax begin and squeezed him hard. Seizing his lips, I pushed my tongue inside and fucked his mouth, and he shouted out in massive joy.

  I fell over the edge with him, crying out at the overwhelming intensity. Just for a moment, I heard our voices blended in perfect harmony, as if we were
absolutely, completely one, and a different euphoria joined with the physical joy to devastate me utterly.

  Rab, my Rab… The words echoed in my head over and over as our bodies finally stilled. Only when he smiled and kissed me lethargically did I realize I was saying them aloud.

  “Always,” he said.

  I kissed the trickling sweat off his upper lip and his forehead. Ghostly sweat was as salty as any other. And it tasted of pure Rab. I laid my forehead against his. “Was that really meant to be closure?”

  “Not yet. Not yet.” He stood with me in his arms, his cock still inside me. I gasped at the new rush of pleasurable sensation, and he seized my mouth in his again. A flood of delicious desires washed over me. To feel his kisses all over my burning body, on my breasts again, on my pussy—oh, God, yes, the things that man could do with his tongue! To watch him come, and feel every pulse of it while I sucked on his cock. Just to have him hold me and make love to me long and slowly with every inch of his big, lean, sensual body. We had all night to do these things—or at least, surely, a few more hours…

  The doorbell rang.

  I stared at Rab as if it was his fault. Reluctantly, I detached my lips from his. “Who the hell’s that?”

  “Persistent, whoever they are.”

  “You mean it rang before?”

  “You were having this delicious orgasm at the time. I was screwing you.”

  “I remember,” I purred. He began to walk, carrying me across the room, every movement a new delight inside me. “Where are we going?”

  “To bed,” he said, as if surprised I needed to ask.

  The doorbell rang again, and at last it penetrated my fog of lust and stupid happiness.

  “I’ll have to see who it is,” I moaned.

  “Ignore them.”

  “But it might be about you.”

  Unusual uncertainty flitted across his shadowed face. Reality had intruded on him too.

  I tightened my grip around his neck. “Rab,” I whispered, “If we never have anything else, we’ve had this moment. You’ve made it right, and I love you all the more for it.”

  His eyes widened, softened. I kissed his mouth and he kissed me back lovingly, seriously. Then, slowly, he lifted me off his cock and let me slip down his half-clothed body to the floor. With a quirky smile and a flourish, he kicked the clinging jeans from his left ankle, sending them spinning across the floor.