10. Silent as the Grave #2
“Gary Runcorn, sweetie,” she says. “This is my room. Even with the remnants of your entrails all over my rug, this is my space. It was when I was living, and will remain so until the day I ‘move on.’ After that, you can all fight each other for this suite, but until then, it’s best you let my friend Trystan locate a more suitable spot for you. ”
“Oh, what’s that?” Camille says, pretending as though they’ve heard a voice calling for them from the corridor. “It’s seven thirty on a Tuesday? Isn’t that when they do jazzercise in the dance studio?”
“Yes, yes, it is,” agrees Pixie. “I think I’ll come with you today. Stove?”
Stove startles and pulls a face like he can smell eggs. “Me? Jazzercise? Fuck that, but I do have an appointment to throw pebbles at kids on the beach. I really can’t miss that again. We’re getting into autumn now, and my opportunities will be fewer and farther in between.”
The three of them leave through the walls.
“Nice to meet you, Gary,” Pixie calls out as she vanishes.
“Yes, I hope we become good friends,” Camille says.
Silence from Stove.
At some point, Josh must have slipped out unnoticed, and now it’s just Trystan, Jeanie, and me in the suite.
But something strikes me as strange. “If this is your room, do you stay here when there are guests?”
“Oh, usually. Sometimes if there are solo travellers, I’ll simply sit in my chair over here and watch the ocean.
Sometimes I chat to them. They never talk back, obviously.
When there’s a couple here, I will usually hang around with Pixie for the evening, or until they’ve finished their business. ” Jeanie gives a little laugh.
“Is that where you were last night?” I ask.
She startles, and panic?looks at Trystan. “Oh, well . . . no, I wasn’t with Pixie last night. Or anyone else for that matter.”
I don’t say anything, but I let my eyebrows and firm expression do the talking.
Eventually, she obliges. “I . . . went out. For a walk. Yes, that’s what I was doing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s getting rather late, and I think you should set out to find your own place.”
“Shall we?” Trystan says, motioning towards the door with his head.
“We’ll reconvene at a later date to discuss our murders.” Jeanie smiles at me. It’s pleasant, but unspoken words are screaming, “Now get the fuck out of my room.”
“Is Stove really going to lob pebbles at children on the beach?” I ask once we’ve floated through the wall of Jeanie’s suite.
The corridor looks the same as it did yesterday, only now there’s barrier tape over the room’s double doors to keep Joe Public out.
Two thoughts are bouncing around my mind.
One, will I evaporate into miasma the second I cross some invisible afterlife cordon?
And two, what will happen to me if a person, a living fleshie, passes through me?
And three, what will happen to them? Four, what does it feel like?
Would I accidentally possess them? I think six, how do you possess someone?
Oh, I’ve lost count, but why would you want to?
Though, if I could take hold of a body, that means I could eat again, right?
I could go into M&S and crouch in the dessert aisle with a spoon until shop security turfed me—or the person I’d possessed—out.
I wonder if possession would be as morally corrupt as the other ghosts are making it out to be if all I do is have a cup of tea, eat a packet of custard creams, and actually sit in a chair and not float through it.
So maybe there are a few more than two thoughts in there. Jeanie was right, I need some R and R.
“No, of course not. He’s not strong enough to lift the pebbles. Even being that much closer to the ley lines,” Trystan says, and it takes a moment for me to remember I asked about Stove.
But I’m suddenly not interested in talking about that capricious boom operator. “How do you like being a ghost?” I ask him instead.
Trystan thinks for a few seconds, and we move along the corridor despite being able to pass through walls. “It’s incredibly freeing and at the same time, it’s the most trapped you’ve ever been or could imagine being.”
Deep.
Deeper than anything I was expecting.
He doesn’t elaborate on either point, and I guess I can’t really blame him.
“So, where do you think you’d like your new room to be?” he asks.
I cannot even begin to consider what my needs would be as a recent divorcee of my body. What size space will I require? What kind of stuff should it contain? Do I actually need stuff any more? Does the area need to be weatherproof?
“Do ghosts sleep?” I ask.
“Ehhh, not really,” Trystan replies. “Like, technically you don’t need to sleep any more, but we go into this sort of stasis, which is a bit like sleep.
It can last minutes, hours, days, or even years.
You don’t have to lie down for it to happen either.
You can literally just like . . .” He straightens his spine and crosses his hands over his chest, like a vampire in an upright coffin.
Another thought. If ghosts are real, does that mean vampires are too? And werewolves? I shake my head. Don’t be stupid, Gary.
Although . . .
“Most people spend their first few weeks as a ghost fighting the urge to go into stasis until the need to rest becomes too overwhelming. Imagine a toddler up past their bedtime trying to prove to their caregivers they’re not tired. It sort of looks like that,” he says.
“You’re saying that’ll be me in a couple of weeks?”
“It happens to everyone. That’s why it’s a good idea to find a space that’s all yours. Plant your metaphorical flag.”
Makes sense.
“If Jeanie has the honeymoon suite, what’s everyone else’s room like? Do you just take a hotel room somewhere? What if there are paying guests staying there for the night . . . or a week or two? Where’s your room?” I feel as though I’m suffering from question diarrhoea.
“I can show you mine if you like.” Trystan smiles, and suddenly I’m a thirteen?year?old schoolboy who’s just won the crush lottery.
“Okay,” I try to say, but it comes out as a rasp.
We reach the top of a narrow staircase, and Trystan begins to descend.
His limbs move in the proper manner like he has muscles and bones and a motor cortex that drives each movement.
Mine, on the other hand, ping-pong between splaying out in every direction as though I’m wearing roller skates and not moving at all.
“You’re really good at that,” I say, pointing to his feet.
“Why, thank you.” He smirks, and I’m not sure if he’s taking the piss, but I genuinely mean it.
“I’ve been dead for almost thirty years.
I’ve had a lot of practice. But sometimes, it’s really fun to just .
. .” Trystan jumps upwards and lands as though standing atop a skateboard or .
. . of course, a surfboard. He holds his hands out dramatically, one in front of him, one behind, and he “rides” the air all the way down the steps.
When he reaches the corner of the staircase, he momentarily mounts the wall before sliding down the next set.
“You try it!” he calls up from the bottom.
“Yeah, no. I’m good, thanks,” I yell back.
“Okay!” Trystan magically floats up to me again. “It’s your afterlife. Want me to carry you down?”
Yes. “Of course not.”
He shrugs. “Well, I guess you’ll figure it all out at some point.”
I brush down my overalls and take a step towards the staircase. My right foot sinks thirty centimetres into the tiles. My left foot shoots out behind me. I throw an arm out for balance, but I start sliding.
And I slide, and I slide. I slide so far that I end up in a bedroom. A queen size bed is made up in the centre, and the gauzy curtains flap in the breeze from the open window. Luckily, it’s empty. I gather my composure, or at least attempt to, and pass through the wall again.
Trystan’s doubled over in laughter. I wish I were the type of person who could easily laugh at themselves and their failings, but I already feel my ghost face flaming.
“Only seven more sets of stairs to go,” he says, and I groan. “Offer’s still there.” Trystan holds out his arms like he’s waiting for me to jump into them.