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Grave Refrain
Sarah M. Glover
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Omnific Publishing
Dallas
Copyright Information
Grave Refrain, Copyright © 2012 by Sarah M. Glover
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.
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Omnific Publishing
P.O. Box 793871, Dallas, TX 75379
www.omnificpublishing.com
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First Omnific eBook edition, February 2012
First Omnific trade paperback edition, February 2012
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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Glover, Sarah M.
Grave Refrain / Sarah M. Glover – 1st ed.
ISBN: 978-1-936305-90-2
1. Love—Fiction. 2. Paranormal Romance—Fiction. 3. San Fransisco—Fiction. 4. Ghost—Fiction. I. Title
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Cover Design by Micha Stone and Stephanie Swartz
Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna
Dedication
To Peter and Natalie, for their belief in ghosts.
1
* * *
NEIL ST. JOHN WANTED the young man to kill. He had killed the last two nights—brutally according to certain rumors, beautifully according to others. Unfortunately, Neil had not been there to witness it.
The mob pressed him on all sides as he battled his way to the last remaining table near the stage of the dark, subterranean club. The air reeked of pot, of hot, close bodies covered in sweat and anticipation. These were the scents he remembered from his youth, when the buzzing energy of bands drugged and seduced him with their violence and sound. And although this time he had come to London for other reasons, he inevitably found himself drawn back into the clubs, to where his life had begun so many years ago.
At about nine-thirty the opening act, an accordionist trying his best to channel They Might be Giants but without the requisite wit, abandoned the stage to two guitarists and a drummer. They hustled into position to raucous applause, waving briefly at the audience who appeared to know them well. They were clothed in the nameless rugby shirts and torn jeans that were the uniform of every other indie, pseudo-intellectual band Neil had encountered over the last decade, fresh from college, with little representation and even less money. A chosen few he had gone on to manage—to guide them to success, broker their recording deals, oversee the production of their albums, and stand behind them as they collected their fame—but most he had dismissed after hearing their first set.
Neil knew the sound he expected to expect tonight. There was little new under the sun, and all bands these days stole their styles from somewhere or someone else. “They’re X, with some Y, reminiscent of Z,” he had been quoted as saying recently in one of his rare interviews. For him, the variables and the math might change, but the songs remained the same. He had spent the last twenty years of his life searching for it to be otherwise, to find a group that gutted reason, battered his senses, and made him want to want. He sat straight in his chair, readying himself, each time expecting that miracle to happen.
His attention, as well as the rest of the room’s, quickly focused on the lead guitarist, a young man who stood under the lights and stared out at the crowd. He wore the defiant awkwardness that most young rockers strived for, although the boy’s face held something more. An impatience, perhaps? Whatever it was, it only intensified as he adjusted his guitar, checked his pedals, and tossed the ratty red scarf he wore about his neck. Closing his eyes, he whispered bitingly, “One, two—one, two, three, four…”
Sound exploded against the walls. Sound so raw and vibrant and—there were no other words for it—fucking joyous. The crowd screamed while young girls rocketed from their seats below the stage and gripped the edge of the small tables, their flame-colored nails impaling the bar napkins against the wood. Within minutes, those young men owned the universe, and all around them gathered there, in from the frozen London streets, a crowd lucky to be alive at that moment, to be in their orbit, to hear their words.
They played two more songs, each one ratcheting up the already eardrum-splitting cheering in the club. By the fourth number, people were on their feet, bodies slamming, arms over their heads. Ecstasy shone on the young man’s face as he saw the crowd going wild. He closed his eyes and let loose a string of profanities so sharp, so wry and vicious, that Neil gripped the table himself.
The song ended in a blistering solo from the drummer, nothing but elbows and angles, his face a younger version of an older John Lennon—complete with round glasses—his coiled arms given license to bash and thrash. Next to him, the bass guitarist swayed on with his head down, all handsome dreadlocks, brown skin, wide open face, and bliss. He nodded to the lead guitarist, sharing the inside joke that lived in each band, the one you’d kill to know.
As the applause died down, the lead guitarist approached the microphone with a tense smile and leaned forward. “Thanks, thanks truly.” In the harsh focus of the lights, sweat glistened on the converging angles of his face; a flush of red swept from his temple to his jaw, mirroring the scarf around his neck. His skin, a ruddy golden hue, was only slightly lighter than the disarray of his brown hair. Everything about him seemed alert—manic, even—from his eyes to his shoulders and forearms, down to his fingers that twisted continuously about the neck of his guitar. No part of him could stand still.
He shook the hair from his eyes, and in a fit of apparent frustration, blew the strands away with a loud raspberry followed by a muttered, “Christ.”
Neil’s breath stopped short; a ghost passed through his heart. He remembered the woman who had long ago done the same thing: over books, over a pint of bitter, over him.
“Evening. Thanks for coming out in this god-awful shit, yes? Snow? Ludicrous stuff, makes you want a drink, doesn’t it?” He took a swig of a Guinness and toasted the shouting crowd, waiting until only a few hoots and cat calls remained. “Just finished our first album today. Thought it might be wise since we’ve left university a tad prematurely.”
More shouts erupted as the bassist strummed the classic Pink Floyd riff dissing the need for education, which made the young man laugh. Neil was aware that everyone around him laughed—they had to, the young man had laughed.
“That’s Christian Wood on bass, by the way—for your listening pleasure. And the incomparable Simon Godden on drums.” He offered up another smile, but this one was filled with self-conscious gratitude. “And I’m Andrew Hayes. We are The Lost Boys.”
In Neil’s mind, the memory of the woman smiled. Yes, as if he could ever forget any detail about her. He’d heard she had a son. This boy couldn’t be more than twenty-two, twenty-three at most, old enough to be her first born, perhaps.
Before Neil could orchestrate his thoughts any further, Andrew unplugged his guitar and set it on its stand. “This has been coming to me for a while now. Mostly in my dreams. Hope you like it. Okay, right…yes, right.”
Neil watched Andrew’s band mates watch Andrew. It was an ingrained response he had developed over years of practice. He learned more that way, studying a band’s dynamic, searching for holes in their fabric, uncovering any potential warning signs. In this case, it distracted him from the danger
ous path where his thoughts were heading. He saw concern battle curiosity as the boys stared at Andrew while he tightened a tuner and plucked the harmonics on the strings. Especially the drummer, who raised his chin, his eyes fixed on the guitarist’s back.
The beginning chords were haunting, the words oddly poetic in their way, and Neil could understand the band mates’ unease. Andrew had deviated from the set list, and by the looks of things, this was evidently a common occurrence. Not good.
It marked the young man’s first mistake; it was too pretentious a choice for this crowd—a beginner’s muck up, understandable but second-rate. He was too cheeky, too manic, and although his voice was poignant when stripped of everything else, he didn’t have the gravitas to carry off this piece and not appear the sincere young man with his sincere guitar, busking on a street corner. This was the last thing this fired-up horde wanted to hear. Coughs would come next, followed by averted eyes, laughter, and then the cringing descent into heckling and boos. He felt sorry for this Andrew Hayes, but it was a necessary evil; every performer had to learn to read one’s audience and recognize one’s limitations. It also made Neil feel infinitely better. He could return to his accustomed sense of superiority, as the previous minutes had left him badly shaken. No, it was good to know the way the world turned.
Except the world had tilted. For everyone there, every man, every woman, responded to this young man. His music uncoiled, recalling memories of loss and longing and of words uttered too late. But it also offered hope—didn’t swear it—just gave it away. And because of that, eyes teared up, couples grasped hands more tightly, and Neil knew without a shadow of a doubt that a great deal of people were going to get laid that night.
All too quickly the song ended. Then silence.
No one clapped. The young man sat there stoically, his hand muffling the strings as though they would give him the answer he was looking for. Then his painfully familiar face rose from the guitar, and the house came down.
Surprise overtook Andrew Hayes, or it might have been embarrassment. In response, he grabbed his Stratocaster like armor, and the three of them, these Lost Boys, ignited the stage in the same frenzied style as before.
Neil had to meet him.
“Well, I’d say that definitely didn’t suck,” Simon announced as he snapped shut the last of the equipment cases and shoved his drum sticks in the back pocket of his jeans.
The club had cleared out; only the bartender and a few waitresses remained. Andrew hadn’t realized he’d been staring at one of them until she tilted her head in invitation. Immediately his gaze shot to the floor, an embarrassing blush heating his face. Ridiculous, he knew, given his stellar performance, not to mention his age. All he would have to do was smile in return; she would approach, he would crack a few jokes, and good night to all. Except he was too restless for sex, too restless to concentrate on pleasing someone. What he wanted was a cigarette, but he reminded himself he had quit, or tried to, or had at least hidden them in the glove box of the truck. Christ. Why wasn’t she here tonight? He swore she would be here tonight. And that too was ridiculous.
“Yeah, if they all could suck like that, man,” Christian crooned, his New Orleans’ patois ever the perfect counterpoint to Simon’s staccato Irish brogue. The beads on his dreadlocks clacked their approval, and he looked up at Andrew with a dazzling grin. “Though I got to say, that was a fine piece of music you played tonight. When did you write it?”
“That? That’s nothing.”
Andrew did not want to get into the details. They would only razz him, and he was too keyed up from coming off the high of performing for such an appreciative crowd. He needed sleep, yet he knew he wouldn’t get more than his usual four hours. Plus, he was wallowing in self-pity again. She was not here tonight. Why did he feel like she would be? Romantic tosh, he knew it was, all of it. He shook his head hoping to toss away the thought.
“You’re getting that look again, my friend,” said Simon. “We need to ditch the equipment and get you some fine—What’s the name of the place across the street?”
“The Rat Hole,” Andrew answered archly and slung his gig bag over his shoulder.
“Hmmm. Well then, some fine Rat Hole grub ’tis. Just bat those Byronic eyelashes of yours in the closest serving wench’s direction.”
“Will you let it lie, already? I do not have Byronic shit, understand?”
“He doth crap and the poets weep,” Simon intoned, his hand over his heart.
“Sod off.”
Simon took endless delight in quoting the most recent write-up the band had received. It had appeared in the local newspaper a few weeks earlier, and the writer, who could not control being twenty, pert, and blond, evidently could not control her painful vocabulary either and opted to gush nauseatingly about the band, Andrew in particular. A coiled spring of Byronic sex, was the most ghastly of the epithets she had burdened him with. But the gibe stuck.
“Come on, Paulie boy. I’m going to gnaw Christian’s arm off if I don’t get some food soon, so let’s be off.”
“If you stopped wearing those hideous glasses, you could be Paul instead.”
“I’ll never be Paul. No need.”
Simon pushed his glasses up his long, thin nose with a pronounced shove of his middle finger, exactly as he had when Andrew had met him in their first year at school. He’d been a boy, all skin and bones, a veritable eleven-year-old Iggy Pop, wearing those same wire-rimmed, round glasses and a Chairman Mao jacket, forever searching for a fight or a rehearsal room.
The Rat Hole proved to be a postage stamp-sized restaurant that, from the chalkboard menu and the sticky Naugahyde booths, seemed to specialize in grease. A waitress stalked over to their table wearing an untied apron and a closing-time scowl. The few patrons remaining, pale and hunkered down over their drinks, appeared too intimidated by her to ask for another as she passed, but the moment she laid eyes on Andrew, Simon, and Christian, her pen and her smile clicked to attention.
Simon peered over his glasses at her waxy fuchsia lips. “What’s your name, love?”
“Gloria.”
He carefully spelled out her name as though gaining enlightenment. Before anyone knew what was happening, a grin burst across his face and he began to wail the chorus of the iconic song, causing the stricken waitress to drop her pad with a cry. Confusion reigned as Simon kept on, pausing only to order, while the other customers around them hunkered down further in their seats.
“Hit me,” Christian shouted to Andrew over the din.
“You or him?”
“Him, actually, but hit me with it.”
“‘Gloria’ by Van the Man, with his band at the time, Them. Recorded it in sixty-four on the B-side of ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go.’ And Shadows of Knight released it in sixty-five and got it all the way to number ten.”
“Covers?”
“Covered by every damn man alive, although I’m digging Simon’s take on it. It’s almost religious—makes you wish for death.”
It was their thing. Christian or Simon would name an obscure lyric and see if Andrew could place it. He could—always—as well as the original recording and any subsequent covers. It drove them insane.
A few minutes later, the waitress returned and crammed a pyramid-like pile of burgers, onion rings, and pints of Guinness around them before swiftly departing.
“I’ve been in touch with some people in Amsterdam,” Andrew announced midway through the meal, gauging his band mates’ reaction on whether they paused in their gorging or not. “We can line up a decent string of gigs there after we finish our rounds here, then start up in Prague again before Berlin.”
Simon swallowed hard in response, but his protests were interrupted when the door of the restaurant opened and a tall gentleman entered. Andrew hadn’t fully appreciated the true squalor of the restaurant until it served as the backdrop for the man’s Savile Row coat. Together with his tailored clothes and silk tie, Andrew reckoned his outfit probably cost more tha
n their van and their equipment and their last two nights’ draws, all combined. As the man approached, the anemic overhead lights accented the highlights in his dark-blond hair and the laugh lines near the edges of his eyes that had left white quotation marks against his tanned skin.
“Cleaned favored and imperially slim,” Andrew whispered to himself, quoting Richard Cory. It was the curse of his almost poetry major to see everything in stanzas, second only in uselessness to his almost music major. The man must either have been lost or needed to take a piss.
“Andrew Hayes?”
The fact that he knew Andrew’s name didn’t bode well. Andrew stood and extended his hand; good manners had been drilled into him since he had been old enough to slouch, and he reasoned whatever was coming, it would be better to just get it over with.
“The same,” said Andrew cautiously.
The man removed his glove and offered his hand, his grip hard and immediate, like a polite arm wrestle. “May I?” He nodded to the booth where Simon and Christian sat.
“If we owe anything, we can’t pay it. At least not until the last check clears. But we’re good for it, or at least he is,” Simon stated, pointing his finger at Andrew.
The man smiled and took a seat before motioning to the bartender to replenish the empty glasses on the table. Curious silence held them together, as though they were watching each other through a zoo enclosure. Andrew especially felt the man’s scrutiny. Had they damaged something at the club? Was he some girl’s father? Was he a dealer? He knew Simon had been clean for years, so he couldn’t be a dealer. Christ, please let him not be a dealer.
The tension finally got the better of Simon, and he asked, “And you would be?”
“Neil St. John.”
Andrew fell into his seat, not realizing he was still standing. His mind shot into overdrive. The name…he knew the name, but from where? Images flooded his consciousness first, as they always did, and then came the torrent of words and sounds: his favorite band, a television reporter, a face responding to questions. How do you account for The Fractures’ meteoric rise to success, when a few short months ago they were playing dive bars? Then the screen cut to a face that held a curt smile and feigned interest. They needed the proper help. The caption read Neil St. John. The Neil St. John. But he had retired after helping to produce The Compositions’ last album and was currently living in—oh, where the hell was it…San Francisco.
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 1
