Pretty Little Dead Things Read online

  The kettle boiled. I poured hot water over instant coffee grounds. It tasted bitter, like my life, my experiences. I drank more, burning the roof of my mouth but barely even feeling the thin layer of skin as it peeled away in tiny patches from the muscle and bone.

  I walked through into my bedroom and opened the patio doors, then sat down on the old patio chair, resting my feet on the low table I kept there for use during rare moments of relaxation. The sun was rising in the east, a vague ball of light struggling to illuminate the dark corners of the world. I watched it as it crested the rim of the horizon, weary and unimpressed by nature's wonders. Too many times I had seen beneath the façade and confronted what lay there, concealed by natural mysteries. The underside was not so different from what everyone else saw: it was just as grubby, and just as open to interpretation.

  There are no easy answers to be had – the major religions have it all wrong, each in their own way, and at best they simply brush up against a possible truth without even acknowledging it in their simplistic doctrines. Nietzsche was wrong, God isn't dead; he was never actually alive in the first place. Original Sin. Karma. Reincarnation. Heaven. Elysium. It all amounts to so much bullshit.

  The truth is that there is no truth: everything is negotiable.

  My head ached. I drank more coffee. The sun shuddered, threatening to go back into hiding. For a moment I fancied that I could hear the sound of the world turning: the dull hum of complex machines, the flat screams of the lost and the lonely, the endless wailing of children never fed, never clothed, never loved… My own impotency surged within my throat like bile, reminding me of the sheer lunacy of existence, the nonsense of simply being.

  Gradually, I began to hear the shrill sound of the telephone ringing inside. I got up and walked through the house into my study, hoping that the ringing would cease. The thing kept on, uncaring, insistent. Wondering why I always found it so difficult to ignore a ringing telephone, I answered the call.

  "Yes?"

  "Hello, Thomas."

  My throat tightened. I recognised the voice immediately, but did not want to acknowledge that it was her. I waited for her to speak again, but she was also waiting – waiting for me to break the silence that stretched between us like a canyon with no apparent bottom.

  "Ellen."

  More silence, as if she'd suddenly changed her mind. I imagined her lips resting inches from the telephone receiver, and my hand went cold. I stared at the veins in my forearms; my blood pumped slowly, reluctantly, as if it was afraid to circulate around my body and animate my limbs.

  "How are you?" Her voice was low, as if she were afraid to raise it and draw attention to the inherent redundancy of her question. "You okay?"

  "I… yes. Yes, I'm fine. It's been a long time, Ellen."

  The sound of her voice took me right back, to a time several months after my body had recovered from the injuries I'd sustained during the accident. Ellen Lang had been a GP back then, and it was mostly because of her that I managed to find the will to carry on. She believed me when I told her about seeing dead people, and her advice was simple and direct: just keep going, don't look back and never look down.

  But even before that Ellen and I had a shared history. I'd known her since I was seventeen years old, and in the early months of my marriage to Rebecca, when I was too young and far too stupid to realise the damage I was doing, Ellen and I had slept together. We both regretted the transgression, and it had never happened again, but the bond between us, instead of weakening, had grown stronger, culminating in her becoming my saviour when I needed one.

  "I didn't even know you were back in the country. Isn't NASA missing you?"

  She laughed then, and everything seemed fine for an exquisite moment, as if nothing else in the world mattered more than the sound of this woman's laughter. I recalled as if it were yesterday the image of her bare legs, the shape of her naked thighs, the way she'd whispered nonsensically in my ear as she came.

  "I'm on extended leave. Family business."

  Fearing that I might fall, I lowered myself into an armchair and just about managed to focus on what she was saying. "Nothing serious, I hope."

  Another pause, but this one was pregnant with possibilities. I knew that this wasn't a social call – she'd had plenty of opportunities for that since moving to America. No, she wanted my help. She wanted my help and I was more than willing to give it.

  "Whatever it is, Ellen, the answer is yes. I owe you far more than anything you could ever ask."

  She coughed softly and I realised that she was probably trying not to cry. "Have you seen the news?"

  "Some. I've been busy. A lot has changed since I last saw you. As I'm sure things have changed for you." I paused, allowing her to move the conversation forward at her own pace.

  "Could we meet? Have dinner, perhaps? I know it's been a long time, and I realise that I'm asking a lot here, but I really need to see you. A lot of it is to do with this family business I mentioned, but also I want to see you. I haven't thought of you for ages, but as soon as the plane landed at Heathrow I pictured your face, even started scanning the crowd in case you'd caught wind of my arrival. I was disappointed when you didn't turn up to meet me. Stupid of me, eh?"

  Rebecca was the love of my life, but like most men I'd also loved others. I would have died for my wife, but I would kill for Ellen Lang. The depth and nature of my feelings had always confused me; she had always been second best, and she knew it, but I had never been able to shake off the effects of her presence – or the wonderful, deeply torturous memory of that one night, long ago, that we had spent together.

  I felt guilty even speaking to Ellen. My entire life was constructed around the vague hope – the yearning – that one day I might see the ghosts of my wife and daughter, yet here I was having dirty thoughts about a woman from my past. It didn't make sense. Nothing added up. But then I reminded myself that I was still human, despite my unique ability, and human beings are flawed and self-destructive. No matter how tense or tricky the situation we find ourselves in, we can always manufacture a way to make things worse.

  "If I'd known that you were coming I might have done just that. You're my oldest friend, and we haven't spoken in such a long time. I think that probably warrants some kind of ostentatious gesture."

  "I'm sorry that I cut you off." Her voice was almost a whisper. "I thought it was for the best. I never intended it to go on for this long – just a break in communications. But I got busy and my life got messy, and before I'd even paused for breath a year had passed. Then another. Then it was too late. I know it's a lame excuse, but it's the only one I have. I really am sorry. It should have been easy to pick up the phone."

  The distance between us narrowed, and I felt that I could almost reach out and touch her, just to reassure her that everything was fine between us. "I could say the same. I didn't even send you an email." The truth was that I'd written several, and then deleted each one without sending them. Some relationships are not meant to change; certain kinds of love are too fragile to ruin with romance.

  "Listen," I said, taking control of the conversation. "Let's not do this to ourselves, and to each other. We've both been a bit shoddy. We can leave it at that, or talk about it later, over dinner."

  I could sense her slow smile. "Okay, Thomas. I agree. There's no point in…"

  "Waking the dead?"

  She laughed, and the tension was gone.

  "Where are you staying?"

  "The Crowne Plaza Hotel, in Leeds city centre. Do you know it?"

  "Yes, I know it. I performed an exorcism there five years ago, left a double room in one hell of a state. There was spit and ectoplasm everywhere."

  "No matter how well I know you, I can never get used to this stuff." Her voice sounded hollow; the tension was returning.

  "I was joking, Ellen. I stayed there once, but not on business. I attended a psychology conference in the dining suite."

  Thankfully, she laughed again, but this tim
e it was more guarded. My stupid quip had reminded her all over again of the crazy parts of my life, the things I'd seen and done, the dangerous situations I often found myself in. A lot of it was what she had run away from: she simply couldn't handle the knowledge I possessed. Nor was she prepared to let our relationship play second fiddle to Rebecca's lengthy absence – and I couldn't bring myself to blame her for that.

  "Dinner? Tonight?" Her voice pulled me back from the brink of too many painful memories, and I clung to it as if her words were a series of narrow ledges over a vast pit.

  "Yes. That would be nice. How about I meet you at your hotel? Eight o'clock? I'll book a table at a nice little Italian place I know around the corner – you do still enjoy good tiramisu, don't you?"

  "If I could, I'd eat nothing else."

  When I replaced the telephone in its cradle, I experienced an odd sensation that felt like I was rushing backwards to meet something terrible. Ellen's call and the events of the past twenty-four hours had forced me to think about things I had not dwelled on in years. I moved across the room as if in a daze, groped for the drinks shelf, and poured myself two fingers of Bushmills single malt. Then I poured some more.

  This was at least a three-finger memory.

  When I left hospital after the accident my body was almost fully healed. I had a few scars here and there, and my neck ached if I didn't exercise it every few hours, but overall my frame had held up well to the impact.

  The psychological scars, however, proved a lot more difficult to treat. I'd spent hours with surgeons to mend my body, but would have nothing to do with the useless counsellors and therapists recommended to me. They did not know me; they had no knowledge of my life before the accident, of who I really was.

  And, of course, there were the ghosts.

  I see the first one three weeks after the accident, and even then I am aware that never again will I experience it so vividly, so… simply. It is long after midnight, possibly somewhere close to 3am. I am sitting up in my hospital bed, staring at the blank wall opposite, when a young man calmly enters the room. I have been transferred to a private room because my depressive moods and late night rages were affecting the other patients, and to be honest I am glad of the time alone. The young man has no business coming in here, and I turn my head to tell him so. But the young man is no longer there.

  Not there; not visible, yet still present.

  I feel the first pangs of terror as a faint gnawing sensation at the base of my spine, then, gradually, it begins to spread, like a virus.

  Initially I think I am experiencing a hallucination, having seen him only at the periphery of my vision. But, no, that is impossible. The details are too clear. I know, for instance, that he is wearing faded jeans and no shoes. His hair is long, the ends resting on his collar, and he has a short dark beard reaching across his cheeks and under his chin.

  Fear gnawing. Spreading. Flowering towards my heart.

  If the young man had been some kind of vision, a waking dream bleeding over from my subconscious, then surely I would not be able to process such tiny details. Yet still disbelief hangs over me – I am not a superstitious man, not once in my life have I experienced anything that could be described as otherworldly.

  I close my eyes. Open them. I expect to see a dark veil, my fear manifest, terror stretched across my vision like a drawn curtain. My heart swells, pressing against my ribs.

  The young man is now squatting in the corner, his big bare feet splayed wide apart and one hand resting palm down on the floor between them. His face is raised, and his pale blue eyes are staring right at me.

  "Hello," I say, too grief-stricken and depressed to fully understand. Too frightened to know how I should act. "What do you want?"

  What I really mean is: What is happening to me? Why have you come? What have I done to deserve this unwanted attention? Are you even real?

  The young man smiles. His front teeth are crooked, the incisors yellow. His mouth begins to move, the thin lips forming words, but I cannot hear his voice. It is as if he is speaking to me through a layer of glass – a barrier which cuts out the sound. He continues to speak, smiling, nodding, punctuating certain passages with a knowing smile, and after making an odd circular motion with his hand – the one that is not resting on the floor – he suddenly stops.

  I realise that I am holding my breath. Since being admitted to the hospital, this strange unannounced visit is the only thing that has provoked any kind of reaction other than anger. I am curious, but I am afraid. So very afraid. Of him, and what he might represent.

  Unless I have lost my mind, the young man is clearly some kind of phantom – what else could he be? He can not possibly be anything else: his edges are ill-defined, almost ragged, and whenever he moves I catch glimpses of the dull grey plaster behind him. The light from the hallway outside the room, when it catches him, pierces his body and opens up bloodless wounds through which I can see the clumsy brush strokes on the painted skirting boards his crouched body would otherwise have obscured.

  "Are you dead?" At any other time, and in any other company, it would have been considered a stupid question. Right here, right now, in this squalid little hospital room, it seems the most sensible question in the world.

  Too many questions, with no answers forthcoming… The only reply I receive is more fear, more doubt, more screaming inside my head. I wish that I could pull the covers over my head, like I did in childhood; that single action always kept the monsters at bay.

  The young man grins and shuffles around on his haunches like a monkey, turning his back on me. At last I see what he has been trying to tell me. The back of his skull is matted with blood, with white splinters of bone showing through the clumped hair. What can only be brain matter oozes through the cracks, bulging like porridge from a shattered bowl. His narrow back is bare; the light green T-shirt he is wearing has torn right down the middle, the split in the material following the line of his spine.

  Damaged vertebrae show through his pale skin like the plastic components of a child's toy.

  I press my lips together, holding back a scream. I can feel my eyes growing bigger and wider and coming loose in their sockets.

  Those bones. So clean and white. Poking through his back.

  Then, slowly, the young man stands, and once again he turns to face me. Tears shine on his cheeks like slivers of broken glass; his eyes are becoming dull, glazing over.

  "I'm sorry," I whisper, unable to think of anything else to say. "So sorry." Sadness replaces the fear, acceptance pushes aside the doubt. I am not insane. This is all too matter-of-fact to be anything other than reality.

  The young man waves at me, still smiling, but the smile is fading like the final rays of a weak winter sun. He leaves the room by the door: no walking through walls, no magical vanishing acts. He even closes the door behind him.

  The bloodstains he leaves behind soon recede to dusty marks on the wall and floor, and after a short time they fade completely. I sit and stare at the spot on the wall, and at the floor around the place he had been. There is nothing there, not even the shape of my fear.

  Nothing there: everything there. This, I think, is where it begins. And then I wonder where the thought came from, and what it could possibly mean.

  I know that I will never forget that young man.

  The following day I ask a nurse if anyone with head injuries has been admitted overnight. She looks at me strangely, backing away a couple of steps without even realising it, and nods. "A nineteen year old boy. Billy Adams. He and his girlfriend were involved in a motorcycle accident. She was driving his bike. He died five minutes after we got him in the emergency room. Why do you ask? Did you know him?"

  "No. No, I didn't. Not really." I thank her for the information and stare at the wall whose subtle imperfections I am growing to know and love. The fact that the boy met his end in a similar type of accident to the one I have survived is not lost on me. Is it simple irony, or a small component of some kind of gra
nd design?

  After staring at the breakfast I cannot even think about eating I leave my bed for the first time in over a week (apart from reluctant trips to the toilet) and go looking for the young girl who was in the crash with Billy Adams.

  I find her on the women's ward – she is lying on her back with her face turned to the wall. The nurses are busy so no one sees me approach her bed. I sit down at her side, clasp her hand, and wait for her to see me. Finally, after long minutes of pretending that I am not there, she reluctantly turns to face me.

  Looking at her battered face, into her eyes, the fear returns. Am I doing the right thing, here? Is that what is expected of me? Was that a dream last night, a fragment of nightmare wedging itself into my broken little corner of reality? I have no way of knowing; all I have is a memory, and the hope that I am not losing my mind.