21. Cease and Desist
twenty-one
Cease and Desist
“Hello ghouls, gentleghosts, and those still in the land of living, it’s Gary Runcorn here with the second instalment of the Unalive on Air podcast.
“Before we get into it, I just want to clear the air about something. Last week, after the first episode went live, I received an email from my old boss at Swindon Sounds. A cease and desist, and well, I’ve already done those things.
Quite literally. I’m not frightened of a few legal procedures. In fact, bring it on.
“Okay, now that’s out of the way, I want to talk to you about the revelations since last week’s episode, as well as what’s coming up tonight, and it’s a doozy.
“Most of you will know and love Imogen Savona from Peggy in the Middle, and at first, I didn’t think her acting past had any bearing on the tragedy to befoul her, but I’ve uncovered what I believe is irrefutable evidence that we have a serial killer on our hands, and that the killer is a Peggy in the Middle superfan . . .”
“That’s Angel, then!” Peter shouts as soon as the episode’s over. And, I suppose, kudos to him for waiting until the red light went off, so he didn’t interrupt the show or have his ghost voice heard.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He briefly glances at Jeanie, whose brows have knotted together in one thin, black, wibbly line. “Angel has a signed photo of him and Jeanie on his wall.”
“Well . . . it’s not enough to finger-point right now. Jeanie was a famous local. Anybody could have had a picture taken with her and hung—” I begin.
“And he has memorabilia,” Peter continues. “I’ve never seen the programme because I was dead before it came out, but I know for a fact that he has a pipe from the show, and some sparkly things from a chandelier, and a jam jar, and it all has certificates of authenticity.”
“Okay, yeah, that’s a little more . . . suspicious,” I say. “How do you know?”
“I’ve seen it all at his house. I’ve been a ghost for so long now that I can go almost anywhere in town before I reach my boundary. I’m telling you, Angel’s weird. He calls himself a collector, but he’s always been obsessed with Jeanie. He’s definitely what you’d call . . . a superfan,” Peter says.
Jeanie waves Peter away. “No, no. He’s not a ‘superfan.’” She adds a mocking tone to the word.
“He’s just a regular man with a hobby. And yes, fine, that hobby happens to be the BAFTA winning television show I co-wrote and starred in as the titular character, but honestly, I don’t see what’s wrong with that. ”
“Nothing’s wrong with that per se,” Pixie says. “Unless, of course, he fucking killed us.”
Jeanie flinches and Camille steps between her and Pixie to separate the pair.
“He wouldn’t.” Jeanie sounds close to tears. “He . . . wouldn’t . . .”
I sneak a glance at Trystan, who, behind the actress’s back, mouths, “I don’t know.”
“I need to find a way to watch Angel. I know his funeral home is outside most people’s boundaries, but I’d like to try.” The worst thing that can happen is I end up evanescing into Jeanie’s room, but since I want to chat with her alone anyway, I’m willing to take that risk.
“I’ll take you to see him,” Jeanie says, with the confidence of someone who knows my boundary lines won’t extend that far. “But only if he stays here.” She looks at Peter. Everyone else looks at Peter. Peter pretends to be offended, but I know he relishes being excluded.
“We can come, though, yeah?” Josh says, in his whiny teenager voice.
Jeanie thinks about it for a second. “Fine. Whatever. But we’re going right away.”
Josh is the first of the seven ghosts to evanesce. Which is strange to say the least, because even though he’s technically the youngest, he’s not the newest. That would be me, followed by Camille.
“Alright! I made it about six metres farther than last time,” he says, moments before his body dissolves. It’s like candy floss in the rain, or an effervescent pill in water, or my ability to think straight when Trystan is near me.
“I was curious what that looked like.” I stare at the spot where Josh stood only five seconds ago. The imprint of his long limbs and lanky hair is silhouetted against my retinas.
We push on. There are about four fields between the hotel and the town, and I could pop off at any moment.
Camille is the next to vanish with a double?devil?horns gesture, then Pixie—“Catch you on the flip side”—proving to me there’s no pattern or reason to the boundary lines.
As we float through field after field, I’m aware I could disappear soon. I’ve been dead for two weeks. In theory, my boundary shouldn’t be this wide.
“What does it feel like? When you evanesce?” I ask no one in particular, yet I’m secretly praying Trystan answers.
He does. “It’s . . .” He gives a sideways glance to Stove, and a smirk follows. “It feels kinda nice. Like . . .” He draws up closer, leans his head down until he’s at my height. “Feels a bit like coming.”
My body’s still moving forward, but my thoughts have frozen.
“Only not as intense as that. More like . . .” Trystan does a half-snort kind of laugh. “Have you ever been in a situation where . . .” But he bites his lip and doesn’t finish the sentence.
“It feels like,” Stove interrupts loudly. “When someone’s giving you a BJ, but they pull off your cock just as you’re about to come, but you still come anyway, only it’s not as good as it would’ve been if they kept sucking for a few more seconds.”
Trystan raises his hand and inhales deeply, readying himself to argue, but evidently changes his mind. “Actually, yeah. It’s a lot like that.”
I force a word out so that neither of them think I’m weird. “Okay.” But it’s nothing more than a breath.
Daydreaming of Trystan in those scenarios whilst alone in a secure space with my dick in my hand is one thing.
Daydreaming of them in broad daylight as Trystan walks beside me and the most antagonistic guy I’ve ever met is completely another.
I can’t risk arriving at a funeral home with a raging boner.
Luckily, Jeanie comes to my rescue. “Boys, always so bloody lewd with you.” She turns to me. “Gary, it’s like a sneeze. A gentle whole-body sneeze.”
Jeanie doesn’t see the silent laughter Trystan and Stove hide behind her back. Stove has ghost tears running down his face, and the freckles on Trystan’s cheeks have blended into the newly formed blush.
I’m desperately trying not to imagine what Trystan’s orgasm expression looks like, and though these overalls probably do a great job of hiding the evidence, I’m too frightened to look down in case I draw attention to myself.
“One time,” I say—sort of shout, actually. “I sneezed so hard I threw my back out for a week.”
Trystan and Stove both burst out laughing. Even Jeanie looks over her shoulder and offers a half?bemused tongue click.
“Real sneeze or uhhh sneeze?” Stove asks, making a sex noise.
“Real sneeze, sadly. I was on the sofa the whole time. Couldn’t get up. Couldn’t do anything.”
“Once, whilst surfing in Indonesia, I broke a rib,” Trystan adds. “Yeeww, it was so painful. I almost lost the championship that day. That’s how bad it was.”
But Stove’s no longer the only one laughing.
“There was a world of difference between living you and living me,” I say.
A second later, Stove evanesces. “Bye, losers,” he says, and now it’s just Jeanie, Trystan, and me.
I expect at any moment I’ll disappear into nothingness, or Trystan will, but against it all we keep going.
We pass a small, old-fashioned shepherd’s hut nestled into the gorse.
We pass through a directional crossroads sign on a footpath and narrowly miss a group of ramblers, and we walk by a cluster of cows.
The bovines lift their heads and follow our trajectory as we go.
“So, animals can see ghosts?” I ask.
“Oh, yes. Animals, especially cats, are very astute like that,” Jeanie adds.
A thought pops into my head. Something that had been nagging me since day one.
“Jeanie, whatever happened to your dogs?”
Jeanie whirls around on the spot. Her expression is a mix of nostalgia and sadness. “Didn’t you hear the policeman on the news after they found my skeleton?”
I think back to the other day, when Trystan, Josh, and I were half focusing on the breaking headlines and half reading Josh’s phone.
“No, sorry, I don’t remember.” Damn, I’d been so carried away with my Peggy in the Middle revelations that I hadn’t been paying attention to the actual evidence rolling out right in front of me.
“Buried with me they found the partial remains of what they believe to be Poppy and Marsha,” Jeanie says.
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I say, because I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re meant to say in these situations. “Partial remains, though?”
“They found bones belonging to dogs of Corgi size, apparently, but they must not have been as well buried as I was because I guess some other animals had dug them up.”
To an extent, it rules Jeanie out of my suspects list. Suicide, maybe, but peticide? Okay, not technically a real word, but it’s the type of thing only psychopaths do. Like, literally, pet murder is one of the first indicators that something is amiss with a person.
“Helga said your dogs were noisy?” It’s a question designed as a statement.
Jeanie smiles. “Oh, yes. They loved a good yarn.”
“She told me she couldn’t get within a few metres of you before the dogs quote unquote, ‘screamed bloody murder at her and tried to bite her fingers off,’” I say.
“No, of course not. I was their mother, their alpha. Naturally, they would protect me. Especially Marsha. She was a rather vicious bitch, but you know what they say about dogs and their owners?” Jeanie says with a laugh.
“Was there anyone they allowed near you? Anyone who they didn’t attack?” I ask.
Beside me, Trystan makes an “ooh” sound. He’s so close to me that his fingers accidentally brush my knuckles. I suck in a breath.
Jeanie either hasn’t noticed this or doesn’t realise the earth-shattering significance of Trystan’s ghost flesh touching mine.