Pretty Little Dead Things (6 page)

  
The branches of the tree are bare and black; thin appendages clutch
blindly at the darkening sky. As the darkness spreads, threatening to
steal my vision, I see that there is something held suspended within
the spindly branches – or rather, something dangling from them.

  
A dark, squat bundle, something which resembles rags but I know
is something more, hangs limply from the burned limbs of the tree. At
one time it must surely have looked more like a human being, but now
it is like sticks wrapped in untreated leather. I can make out no fea
tures; can barely even locate the skull, so when it begins to twitch I
initially blame a breeze that is not actually present.

  
The bundle slumps downward, falling clumsily through the thickest
of the denuded branches. Then it gets caught on a stubby limb and
halts its agonising descent. What looks like a ragged arm falls from
the main body and dangles freely, its motion sickening and somehow
unnatural as the darkness turns the sky to onyx.

  
The last thing I see before I can see no more is the suggestion of a
raised head – at least I assume it must be a head, for surely no other
part of the human anatomy, however mutilated, could swivel at such
a hideous angle…

  
Then the tree ignites in a flash of yellow-white flame, and the vision
is gone.

I woke with a scream stuck in my throat but thankfully it did not budge. My lips were sealed with congealed spit and the lower part of my face was numb, as if a cold breeze had been blowing all the time I slept. I sat up and blinked back tears, wondering where they'd come from and why I was so ashamed of them. The dream was thick in my mind, like a mental mud, and I could not rid myself of the terrible image of something dark stirring in that skeletal tree, turning its blaze-blasted face towards me.

  I sat up on the bed and rubbed my eyes. They were gritty, aching. Blinking back the sudden moisture, I wondered where the imagery in the dream had come from. Was it an attempt by some restless spirit to contact me or simply the result of my own stressed-out mind approaching a breaking point? There were no answers forthcoming, so I stood and walked to the kitchen, craving strong coffee and something to eat.

  It was still dark outside. I'd fallen asleep early, slept all night, and woken an hour or so before dawn. I liked this time of day best of all, when everyone else was still in their beds, the spirits were mostly restful, and the planet seemed to move slower than at any other time. It was almost as if I could see the workings of the world.

  I filled the kettle with water from the tap and set it to boil. My hands looked old, worn; the knuckles were swollen and the skin on the backs of them was dry. I held up my hands and examined them, feeling ancient, like a man well past his best. But I had been that way for a long time now – indeed, because of the loss of my family I had never been allowed to enjoy any kind of so-called prime. The best of me had been sliced away like meat from the bone, taking with it any promise of future good times. A loss of such great magnitude destroys people in ways they don't even recognise until much later, and by that time the damage is too old to repair.

  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 time 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.