Ghost Machine - NaNo 2016 Days 4&5

IV

“You're morbid. Why do you have to be so morbid?”

My mother's voice, muffled and subdued from passing through the stone and plaster that separated their small bedroom from my even smaller bedroom. I didn't know what time it was as there was no clock in the bedroom but I had been lying awake from what felt like an impossibly long time, chasing sleep but too frightened to close my eyes. I didn't like what had been painted on the inside of my eyelids when I did, and so lay there with the light on, listing to the gap toothed whistling of the wind, pulling my thin covers closer to my chin and staring uselessly at the white washed walls which were naked save for one amateurish painting of a house by the sea. I didn't like my bedroom of the cottage. I didn't like that painting or the wind that always got inside the house, perhaps invited in by that silent spectre that had followed us since the previous winter. The personification of loss. 

It still follows me.

Join the queue I tell it.

It was the night that followed the day of the newspaper article (such were the days in that cottage that there was resolutely nothing more of note to that day and so, even now, I refer to it as such), and my parents had gone to bed some time after me. They made little effort to keep quiet, their footfalls up the bare staircase exacerbated and amplified by the wine my mother had consumed, the whisky my father had drank. I hated the smell of it on his breath the next day, what drinking it did to his temperament, not even at the best of times. I was young. Too young. What could I say? I just made sure that I stayed out of his way the following morning whenever I caught a whiff of it on his breath.

He was morbid, my mother said. I didn't know what that meant but I got the just of the rest of the conversation. It wasn't difficult as I was able to hear most of it once I got up from my bed and moved towards the inner wall.

He had gone to the beach that morning. Just briefly, he said. To see if there was anything to see.

“Like what?” My mother replied shrilly, the wine lending her a slight slurring to her inflection.

My fathers voice - deep, resonant – replied that he didn't know why. Just that once he had read that article he wanted to go to the beach, to see where the “old bugger” had been found. He said that he felt drawn there. He asked her: “Don't you feel that it's a bit odd sweetheart, that we were there the same day he was found? A bit, I dunno, fated?”

My mother couldn't comprehend what he meant, although I think I knew. Even then, I think I knew.

I didn't wish to hear any more and went back across the cold floor to my bed, climbing in and drawing the covers over my head, soon (but not soon enough) succumbing to sleep. My first of the dreams followed me into the darkness. I dreamed that I was standing on the beach alone in still twilight. There was no breeze, no sound. The tide was all the way out, the sand vast and I stood there for some time, trying to perceive the where the sea ended and the sky began, the horizon a faded watercolour blur. I began to become aware of a whistling behind me. The sound increasing in volume, coming closer, until I could feel the breath on my neck. Smell the damp leaves and black bags. I wasn't afraid, although I still did not wish to turn around.

I walked forward, slowly at first and then my pace increasing until I broke into a run. I was scared then, the whistling right behind my ear, the stench now suffocating. He was still right behind me and this time there were no parents to run to, nothing except that horizon. I ran on, unable to feel my heart or hear the breath which surely escaped my lungs in staccato heaves. My feet were wet, my pace slowed and I looked down to see that I had reached the ocean. It was so still, surface like glass. I moved as quickly as I could, that whistling still right behind my ear.

The water was nearly waist height and I dared to go no further, coming to a standstill in the motionless sea and steeling myself. I would turn and I would face him. I would show him I was not afraid. The smell was making me gag as I turned. I could feel my hands opening and closing. A tight fist, knuckles white, and then open, my finger tips touching the cold stagnant water. I couldn't see beneath the surface, I didn't want to. I could feel something soft underfoot, something that shifted to accommodate my weight. Just sand, yet alive, undulating beneath me.

I stared into his dead face then and I awoke suddenly, the morning light burning against my curtains.

The mattress was sodden, my legs soaked. I had wet the bed.

Mother made me wash it myself, filling a great iron basin that was kept in the outhouse full of warm soapy water and watching soundlessly as I scrubbed at it. There was a washing machine in the cottage. She didn't have to do that, but she did. I didn't see my father for most of the day.

I had the same dream often since then. Mostly the same. I was always the same age in it, even as I grew older, I was always looking through that six year olds eyes as I ran across those static sands to a familiar resolution. In fact I had it on the bus that day three (or four) years later. I think now that I must have been nine, as our teacher for that school trip was Mr Barron, I'm sure of it. I'm also fairly certain that I had Mr Barron in primary five, but I could be mistaken. It's hardly an important detail. Yet I feel now I must get it correct. All these things matter now don't they? It's not like they never did before, but I think they must matter more now. 

Because if what you say I did.

Because of what you say I am.

I'm not refuting it, but as a teacher of mathematics I feel that there must be an equation that fits this. I have the answer. You have the answer. How do we solve for this answer?

“You're going to need a bigger blackboard”, Roy Scheider didn't say.

He died not long ago if I remember correctly. A cancer of the blood. White plasma cells. The ones that produce antibodies, that protect our body. The irony I'm sure is lost on no one. That which should protect us end up destroying us. 

Sand in the blood.

I don't know where that came from. I'm telling you about this ghost. 

It was him you see. The old man. The vagrant. It's often him (but not always) that I saw as I was growing up. My art teacher said I had a magnificent imagination. She also said I was morbid (you're morbid, why do you have to be so morbid) sometimes, and that perhaps my choice of subject matter was perhaps a bit “gothic” at times. The truth was that I would often just paint and draw what I saw. It's not my fault she couldn't handle it.

I had that dream on the school bus as my year travelled raucously to Stirling Castle, a rare trip out but something to do with the topic that we were discussing that term obviously. Medieval history perhaps, or castles. It could have been school buses for all I can remember. I was excited to go, we all were. Well, except Alan Farley who had detention on account of sneaking into the girls toilets and drawing a four foot high penis on the mirror using the lipstick he had taken from his mother's handbag before leaving the house that morning. He would have actually gotten away with it as well, seeing that nobody noticed him sneak in or out, but he felt that he had to exclaim it loudly in the playground at the exact same time Mr Barron was walking over from the staff room to take the register.

I had the dream regularly, although I distinctly remember that I was having it a little less so by that point, perhaps only once every other week. Thankfully the bed wetting that initially accompanied it when I was six soon stopped as my subconscious regained control of my bowels. That would have been far worse than the cold sweat I awoke in, running my hands through my hair and turning my face to the window so nobody could see that I was upset. It had ended the way it normally did, me turning to look upon that wicked visage. I couldn't change the course of the dream any more than I could later control the passing of time, no matter how much I wished it.

The towns and villages passed the window in a blur, the rain coursing down the glass in rivers. The songs sang at the back of the bus becoming more and more blue until Mr Barron saw fight to take control of the situation, standing up at the front and signalling with both arms that perhaps it was time to stop the songs. I remember the book I had in my bag, Haunted Britain. It had the listings of every known haunted location across the UK, and I was keep to know if Stirling Castle was indeed haunted by the ghost of a pink lady, like the book suggested. She was said to be a widow of a man who lost his life during a battle in the castle's earlier history. There was also a ghost said to be a man in full highland dress, or a lady in green. I studied the finer details of the book as the bus pulled up and Mr Barron ushered us off and split us into groups, reeling out our assignments for the day, but I wasn't listening.

I saw the ghost that day, but not the one I thought I would see. 

My group were tasked with visiting the chapel, armed with a sheet of paper each containing a list of items that we had to tick off once we had found. There was room in the bottom third of the sheet to write any anything that we had found interesting. I had stopped to read an information board situated just inside the main entrance and began to scribble on my sheet, writing awkwardly as I leant it against my knee. The royal chapel, as it so happened, dated back to 1593 and was one of the first protestant kirks in Scotland. King James ordered it built in just seven months for the baptism of his son, Henry. James VI was actually the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and ruled over Scotland and then England (as James I) in the union of the crowns. His second son would rule as Charles I, the ill-fated king who was executed at the end of the Civil War. Partly the fault of his father James, who instilled in him the divine right of kings, leading Charles to believe he could rule according to his own whims. Something which did not turn out particularly well for him. It was under King James rule that the gunpowder plot was hatched and subsequently foiled as well, and I still remembered being taught all about Guy Fawkes earlier in my school life. I took a book from the library to find out more, revelling in the illustrations of the executions of the accused.

(you're morbid, why do you have to be so morbid)

I had run over, turning my sheet and continuing my scribbles, the lead of my pencil piercing the thin paper and nipping my leg through my school trousers. I didn't notice, just wrote on until I had exhausted all that I knew. I was apt to do that, do run over, My school work beset with comments in red ink like “good work, perhaps a little long” or “remember to answer the actual question”, sometimes just “see me”. I would approach the teachers desk tentatively to be reminded about the dangers of “going off on one of your many tangents”. Something which I apparently did often. I didn't even know what tangent meant when Mr Barron first mentioned it and had to ask him.

“Going off in different directions Malcolm” he said as he packed the class's school books into his large battered satchel. He used to tell us that that satchel had travelled the world with him, that he had been on many great adventures in foreign lands. We never knew how much credence to put to his stories, as they quite often seemed quite fantastical. He could never quite keep a straight face as he regaled us, as though not even able to believe what he was saying himself. 

Once he told us about a three month tour of Africa, becoming separated from his native tour guide and having to survive in the wild himself for days until he found his way back to civilisation. He would, he said, collect various herbs and plants, keeping them all in his large battered satchel, brown leather so heavily creased, stained and wrinkled that if one wanted to, one could readily believe his tales. He would cook a stew of the herbs and the animals he caught (he was a skilled hunter, he said, learning to adapt quickly, and fashioning a spear from a stick and splinter of stone) over a camp-fire. Once the fire was out, he said, he would lie back in the hammock he made himself from creeper vines and stare up at the stars. “There was no other light there you see,” he said, perched on the corner of his desk, “not like there is here. When you go home today, later tonight, you should look up at the sky. I'll bet you can't see much past the odd star here and there. If you were to go out into the countryside though, ah well, it would be much like I saw, but I saw more than that.” He had a far off look in his face as he spoke then, his kind eyes drifting towards the window, his hand going to his salt and pepper beard, brushing it absently. I always thought him to be around my fathers age, but I found out later that he was much younger. Something had aged him.

“I saw the universe” he said, the giggle from Alan Farley bringing him from his reverie. Strange thing to say that, I remember thinking at the time.

A few years later Mr Barron was dead. I found out at high school, the news like wildfire through us that had been in one of his classes in primary school. The story went that he had killed himself; specifically that he had hung himself. The story grew wings of its own of course and a mere week or so after we first found out a whole manner of grisly details had been added, until if you wanted to believe such things you would think that Mr Barron had shot himself in the head after killing his wife and children, scrawling all manner of satanic symbols on the wall first in their blood before turning the gun on himself. Children are so 

(why are you so morbid)

gruesome.

Mr Barron once spoke to me about Mikey (there, I finally said his name), asking me how I was was and if I ever thought about him. He stopped me just as I was leaving the classroom and called me back to his desk. I thought I was in trouble, thoughts flying through me head, trying to remember if there was something I had forgotten to do, or if I'd inadvertently done something wrong. I could see by the look on his face that I wasn't however, and he sat me down in front of the desk on his blue plastic “see me chair”, the early afternoon sun catching the motes of dust that swirled around us ion the air. A personal universe. I don't know why he wanted to ask me about Mikey, about what happened years before. I didn't even think he knew. Yet he did, although I surmised afterwards that he had probably read it from my school records. I thought that such things were probably a matter for my file.

Name: Malcolm Patience

Brothers or Sisters: One – Dead.

So he spoke softly to me for some time as the dust settled around us, Helios taking the sun on it's course across the sky in his chariot. The leaves had yet to brown and the days were long. I thought then how strange it was that an adult was speaking to me as Mr Barron was then. Not like an adult at all. Like we were equal. He spoke about a brother he once had, about his own childhood. He said that it was okay to want to be by myself, but I had to remember that there were other children that would be happy to play with me. He said what a good pupil I was and when I stood up, he clapped my lightly on the back, telling me that if I ever needed someone to speak to, someone other than my parents, then I could speak to him.

I was upset when I found out he had died. I wanted to go to his funeral but mother wouldn't let me, she said that it was 

(morbid, so morbid)

not “the right thing to do” on account of the fact that I didn't really know him. That funerals were more of an adult thing. I think it was more that she herself couldn't face it, knowing that she would be the one to take me now that father was off-shore again.

Too many memories.

Yet I still scribbled my notes on my paper, wanting to impress Mr Barron (this was even before we had the “chat”) until I could write no more. I folded it and stuck the paper in my jacket pocket as I followed my classmates into the main body of the chapel itself. 

It was bright and airy, the light streaming in through the window despite the fact that it wasn't a particularly bright day (at least the rain had stopped as we got off the bus) and I found my gaze wandering around the interior. Catching sight of the large frieze painted not long after the completion of the chapel in expectation of a coronation visit by Charles I. I thought I should mention that in my notes as well and I wandered over to have a better look. My classmates lost interest quite quickly and were already exiting through a set of double doors at the rear of the building as I traversed along the body of the chapel. The was an older couple behind me, whispering to themselves (something about the visitation of a large older building prompting one to whisper instead of holding a normal conversation) about the sandwiches they had consumed earlier in the Castle's visitor centre cafeteria. The man was saying softly how he thought the tuna tasted a little odd, whilst his wife admonished him, saying that he was fine, but they would find out soon enough if he had food poisoning. They soon drifted towards the same set of doors my classmates had exited from and I found myself alone with merely the echoes of my footfalls on the expansive floor and the sound of my own heartbeat.

I wandered aimlessly up and down, casually glancing towards the windows and the arching wooden ceiling. In truth, I was enjoying the silence, the space, the feeling one got being in somewhere that had so much history to it. I reached into my jacket pocket and took out a Polo mint, popping it in to my mouth and sucking it as I wandered, my tongue unconsciously exploring the ever increasing hole in the centre of the mint. 

The double doors were up a small flight of stairs, recessed back at the end of a small mezzanine, and so I decided to follow my classmates and the older couple of make my way outside. There was a lot more of the castle to see and after checking my watch I discovered that I still had the best part of half an hour. I frowned as I approached, seeing that both of the heavy wooden doors were shut. I was sure they had been open when the elderly couple had left, and I had not heard the sound of doors shutting. I outstretched my hand and wrapped my diminutive fingers around the large iron ring that served as a handle. My hand snapped away. It was cold. Freezing cold. I tried again, tapping it lightly with my fingers to acclimatise my skin before gingerly wrapping my hand around once more, turning and pulling. The door would not move. I turned the handle the other way and pulled. Then I pushed, turning, pushing. No movement. I tried the other door to have the same result. Neither door moved. Both either stuck fast or locked.

A trick? Alan Farley and Thomas Whyte probably hiding behind the doors, giggling as I tried to open them? My heartbeat increased along with my breath. I shivered. The light behind me changed slightly. Grew dimmer. Fresh rain began rattling against the large windows like the drumming of skeletal fingers. The air was so still yet I began to hear a familiar gap-toothed whistle. I tried the doors again, hammering a hand on the dark surface of the wood. I shouted, was there anyone there? I strained for the sounds of laughter. Of running footsteps. the doors remained closed.

Of course, there was another way out. The way I had entered the chapel the entrance hallway at the other side of the long building. Someone must have though the chapel was empty, locking the doors. Perhaps the doors weren't meant to be open in the first place and a member of staff had noticed when the elderly couple had left, closing them after they departed. It was no big thing really, there was another way out. I would just walk back the way I came and leave. There were no doubt other visitors in the chapel by now.

Except there were not. I stood on the mezzanine as the light dimmed further, the skeletal rattling growing louder. A staccato rhythm over the steady bass drum beat of my heart. A soft sigh as the sand shifted in the dunes behind me

(what dunes?)

and I walked forward along the floor of the chapel towards the door. But it was there in front of me. Between where I walked and the entrance vestibule. At first I didn't know what it was, and stopped short, squinting to try and make it out. I thought perhaps that a cleaner was in the chapel, and it was he or she who had shut the doors. These were rubbish bags, collected from the various bins around the castle and placed in the centre of the floor whilst whoever it was busied themselves in an unseen part of the royal chapel, away perhaps to collect more. It didn't make sense really, but that's what my mind first told me as I looked upon the dark shape ahead. 

A soft sigh as more unseen sand shifted. A soft whump as the dunes breathed.

The bags were rippling. A wind I couldn't feel was coursing through the bags, causing them to undulate wildly. I didn't want to be there anymore. There was a smell drifting over from the bags. Old leaves. Mildew. Something dank and foul. I would need to pass these bags to reach the exit and so I willed my legs to move. They did so, albeit woodenly, my whole body walking stiffly forward like a marionette. 

I kept my eyes on the door, refusing to look down as I drew level with the bags. I was closer to the windows, the rain still hammering down. The bags shifted beside me, the smell was nauseating. I turned then, I couldn't help myself, as he sat up, turning his head to look at me. 

Not bags.

A rattle escaped his throat, and explosion of foul air. He raised his right hand as my nerve failed me and I ran for the door. 

(please be open please be open please be open)

I could feel sand underfoot as I ran, causing me to slip, crashing into the archway that lead into the vestibule, pain racking down my right arm. I steadied myself and rounded towards the door that was open, the inner courtyard outside full of tourists, undeterred by the rain. Ten more steps and I would be outside.

Except he was right behind my. Hot decay on the back of my neck.

Seven steps.

An arm was outstretched, I could almost feel the fingers on my neck.

Four steps.

A cry began to escape me.

Two steps, nearly there. Fingers touching my neck.

(not real not real not real not real)

Outside. I didn't stop running until I found Mr Barron, standing under a canopy near the palace with a different group of my class. I stumbled into the group, my expression and manner prompting confused laughter as I struggled to regain my breath. Mr Barron looked at me quizzically, said something to the effect that it was nice of me to join the group, but I really didn't have to be so eager to hear him speak. More laughter and faces turned away from me as he continued his earlier talk. I was soon forgotten. I couldn't pay attention to what was said for the rest of the trip. I even forgot to hand in my notes, finding them in my jacket pocket weeks later. All I could think about for the rest of that day was the beach and the sand. An outstretched hand and a malevolent smile. 

This is how it began, far from how it ends.