17. The Big Sleep #2
Sometimes Stove’s beatboxing is interrupted by his laughter.
Sometimes Josh switches up his rhythm mid-strum and launches into some wild bass solo.
Sometimes Jeanie tires of backing vocals and embellishes the tune with random jazz sax.
And I realise Pixie was right, it’s impossible to fuck it up, and damn it, now I’m having fun.
Even Peter is smiling and tapping his foot.
At the end of the song, everyone claps and cheers.
“Not bad for a ghost-jam virgin,” Pixie says.
“Wanna switch instruments?” Camille says, and before I can argue, they “shove” their air guitar into my arms and place their hands out as though holding my pan flute.
I sigh but concede. We play another of Pixie’s tracks and then begin playing more modern songs.
“They play them at the hotel all the time,” Trystan tells me when I ask him how they all know Amy Winehouse, or Rihanna, or Billie Eilish. “In the gym, or when they do disco nights, or guests listen to them on their radio phones.”
It feels like we’ve been jamming for hours when we decide to call it a day, and I’ve had a go at all the roles except vocals, because no, absolutely not.
Peter vanished a long while ago. Simply took himself out of the auditorium at some point.
Nobody really knows when, probably to resume stalking Helga.
“That ghost has an unhealthy obsession with his wife slash murderer,” I say to Trystan as we float through wall after wall to reach the hotel’s rear gardens.
Jeanie had asked if I’d found a room of my own yet, or if I was to spend the night with quote unquote “my handsome surfer friend.” I blushed so hard I momentarily became radioactive.
“Well, that answers that,” she’d said before drifting upwards through the vaulted ceiling, presumably back to the honeymoon suite.
I’d briefly wondered if they’d scrubbed my crusted blood from the antique rug yet, but Trystan had nodded for me to follow him to his hut, and I forgot the concept of murder ever existed.
“I’m pretty sure that if unfinished businesses are real,” Trystan says as we hit the moonlit night outside The Paragon.
“That Peter’s is tied up with Helga somehow.
That’s why he doesn’t care either way about you solving the murders.
He’s not worried—or excited—that he might evanesce when the truth is revealed because he knows that he’ll only move on when his wife leaves. ”
“Do you think she will?” I ask.
Trystan holds his arms out for me, and I hop into them without protestation while he floats down the side of the cliff to the surf hut at the bottom.
“I think that Helga is this hotel now. And this hotel is her. So maybe not. Though I guess she’ll have to retire at some point, but she’ll always be a part of it.
I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for her to call in the ExorSquad and possibly say goodbye to Peter forever. She talks to him, you know?”
Someone’s already locked up the hut for the night, the lights have been switched off, and the lifeguard surf instructors have toddled off home. Trystan plops me onto the sand, and together we pass through the shack’s shiplap exterior.
“What does she usually say when she talks to him?”
“Oh, all sorts, really. She’ll tell him about the problems she’s having at the hotel with the guests, or the staff, or the suppliers, or sometimes the ghosts.
” He laughs. “She doesn’t much like the penises on the mirrors.
If she’s had a few drinks, she’ll tell Pete that she’s forgiven him and ask him for her forgiveness in return. ”
“Forgiveness for what?”
Trystan shrugs and drops to the mouldy sofa. “Whenever I’ve asked Pete, he’s just said they had marital problems before he died, and then he’ll say something like she couldn’t keep her legs closed, and Pixie will whack him with Stove’s mic.”
“Peter thinks she killed him.” It’s not a question, but as someone who’s been around long enough to provide an in-depth and somewhat bipartisan character assessment of both individuals, I value Trystan’s insight.
“Well . . .” A smile ticks the corner of his mouth and he licks his lips.
My heart flutters like a bloody teenager with a crush, and I concentrate extra hard so that I don’t lose his words to my runaway imagination.
“Maybe. Maybe she did. I wasn’t around, so I can’t say for definite.
But I will mention that I’m about ninety-nine point nine nine per cent sure she didn’t kill the rest of us. ”
I eye the empty sofa cushion beside Trystan. What I wouldn’t give right now to sit next to him, sidle up, feel the press of his leg against mine. “Why do you think that?”
“She’s . . . too pure of heart. She’s been at The Paragon almost since before I was born, and she only cares about one thing—making this hotel successful.
I’ve spent a lot of time listening to your radio programme and you talk about facts and that, but where’s Helga’s motive?
Peter may have been a crime of passion, jilted lovers or whatnot, but why would she kill the rest of us?
Jeanie brought heaps of publicity and cold hard cash to the hotel.
And what did Pixie do, or Stove, or Josh?
And Camille, and you? Why hire exorcists just to murder them? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah, I agree with that part. Killing Peter would be one thing, but laying out a fifteen-year-old boy, even if he had been sneaking around the staff only areas of the hotel and stealing chocolate muffins . . . well, that takes an entirely different kind of person,” I say.
Trystan watches me for a moment. I doubt he’s aware that he’s doing it, but his eyes travel up and down my body.
I’d love to know what he thinks of me beyond Gary Runcorn, radio guy, and yet I’m terrified.
He’s a ghost, but he’s no different from everyone else.
I can already sense the disappointment from here.
Gary Runcorn, what a letdown.
Gary Runcorn, tubby and boring.
Gary Runcorn, better for everyone if he just keeps himself out of functioning society.
“Do you want to sit?” he asks. “You’ve been standing all day.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” I reply, instead of mentioning for the millionth time how difficult I find sitting. “When I was alive, standing for this long would’ve been torture, but I don’t even have a back ache or sweaty feet or anything.”
“That’s fair, you just look . . . like you’re gearing up to leg it or something.” He presses his lips into a tight line to stop his smile. “I could teach you?”
“Sure, why not?”
Trystan bounces to his feet. “Yeeew, okay, so . . . We can’t actually sit on anything or lie or . . . in any way interact with objects. It’s more a case of . . . make believe.”
“Oh,” I say. Well, that makes sense. “How?”
“You said that you’re not uncomfortable or achy from being on your feet all day. Basically, it’s the same as standing, but your body is in a different shape. Like this . . .” Trystan sits, but mid-air. He’s floating.
It’s jarring to my brain. I want to pull him down because he looks like an Olympic gymnast during a strenuous static rings set. Only his body is perfectly still. His muscles aren’t quivering like the guys I see on TV.
“Try it,” he says, kicking his legs out in front of him, crossing his ankles, and folding his arms behind his head mid-air.
“I don’t have the . . .” Stamina? Core strength? Flexibility? But I’m a ghost. I’ve been embedded into the floor. I’ve travelled through walls. Do I even need those things any more?