Josh

Visiting rights. I’ve been here over a year and they’ve finally granted me visiting rights. Merry Christmas, Josh. Season’s bloody greetings.

We’ve come to some sort of equilibrium. I don’t act mad. They don’t think I’m quite so mad. But since I refuse to backtrack on my story and they refuse to believe that it’s true, it’s always going to be an uneasy truce.

I’d like to see my parents and Kyle. They want me to see a psychiatrist, a care worker and a priest. Presumably to receive my gold, frankincense and myrrh. A psychiatrist to continue probing my mental well-being, to ascertain whether I’m making stuff up. To clamber into my dim, dark recesses and hope to emerge unscathed. A care worker to follow up on the psychiatrist’s report and assess whether I’m a danger to myself or to others. A priest to tick another box. So I’ll see their troupe and then I’ll get to see mine.

And in the meantime, I’ll continue trying to make sense of it all in my own head. Because believe me, none of this makes any more sense to me than it does to them. Except I know who I am. I just don’t know what happened to the date. It feels like I’ve spent time on a film set surrounded by actors speaking lines about some time in the future and when I finally get out of here it’s going to be the mid-eighties and everyone’s going to laugh and point and say got you there, Josh, had you going, two thousand and nine, two thousand and ten, ha ha ha. Big joke.

It doesn’t feel like over a year. I’ve lost weeks, months. I went through a period where I was kept sedated. A soporific case study. Then I’d sleep for long periods and they’d hook me up to some piece of equipment that monitored my dreaming thoughts. And in my dreams, I was always back in the forest, back in the glade. With Kyle. Back in the day. And then I’d be falling, falling, down into the darkness, down into Alice’s rabbit hole. And when I woke, I’d be here and the only thing that would change would be the seasons I’d see out of the window, summer rusting into autumn, decaying into winter.

I don’t get to mix with the other patients. I say patients. Inmates? I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse. I hear them, sometimes, some of them. Shouting, arguing. Instead the only other people I’ve seen have been the staff. Probably about half a dozen in total. There’s two of them I really like, whose visits I look forward to. One of them’s a nice guy, around forty, I guess. He talks to me about his wife and kids. Plays cards with me, blackjack mainly, plus he’s teaching me poker, five card stud. He tells me about the poker nights he has with his buddies, how they play for small amounts of money. It’s nice to hear about something normal. The other’s a junior doctor, a girl in her late twenties. She’s got the most amazing blue eyes and short cropped blonde hair. A cute little nose stud. I like her a lot. She talks to me about music. Except I’ve never heard of any of the bands she tells me about. She finds it amusing that I’ve genuinely never heard of Kings of Leon or Bloc Party or the Killers. I told her I like Talking Heads, the Cocteau Twins. She said she thinks she’s heard of them, that she’s read about them. Like they’re ancient Egyptians, or something. I think she’s beginning to believe me. She won’t admit it to herself, though. Flies in the face of her professional opinion, and all that. She says I’m like Artemis Fowl if he were written by HG Wells. I say Artemis who? She laughs.

Kaitch

There’s a guy claiming to be you, Josh. Is it you? Could it be? Sitting there in your amour-plated chair, like Schrödinger’s conundrum.

They say it isn’t, that it couldn’t be. Too young, too young. Too wrong. But then they only see with their eyes, Josh, only see with their eyes. Only see what they’re told to see. What they want to see. What they need to see. Which means they see nothing at all. Put away those optic nerves, baby, wrap them up and keep them safe. They’re strictly for navigation purposes only. Don’t need no navigation to see. Hide those baby blues. Erwin’s kitty just don’t work the peep show circuit. Time to cover up with a pair of those 4D wraparounds, sit back in your seat and open up to the possibilities. And don’t forget the popcorn because this could be one long adventure trip.

Alive or dead? Or both states simultaneously. Josh, or not Josh? Or both –

I should go and find out. But all the time I don’t, the paradox remains. The hope remains. The truth remains. It’s Josh and it isn’t Josh. If I go, I unleash the diabolical mechanism. Josh becomes not Josh. Because no one else will see. They see nothing at all.

The Clergyman

You take a deep breath. You remove a handkerchief from your trouser pocket. You wipe the gun with the handkerchief. You place the gun in the still warm hand of the dead man. You curl his still warm fingers around the gun. You place his still warm index finger around the trigger. You take care not to touch the gun again. You step back. You wipe his blood from your face with the handkerchief. You roll the handkerchief into a ball and stuff it back into your pocket. You walk over to the tape recorder. You press Stop. You press Eject. You remove a cassette tape from the machine. You put the tape into the pocket of your overcoat. You walk towards the door, past the gothic ephemera, the metal skulls, the bones, past the Sailor Jerry posters, past the shelves of classical CDs, past the shelves of inks, past the framed and signed photographs of celebrity clients gone by, past the metal sign advertising Vincent Motorcycles, past the blood, the red, red blood. You open the door with your hand protected by your coat cuff. You step out into the dark, immoral night. You mutter under your breath.

‘I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.’

Later, at home, you place the cassette tape into a metal dish. You fetch a bottle of lighter fluid and you pour it over the cassette. You strike a match and drop it into the metal dish.

The DJ

‘Coming up in the next half hour, we’ve got new music from Foo Fighters, Plan B and the Gaslight Anthem, plus tracks from Kings of Leon and the Cribs. But first, a classic from the nineties. It’s VivaFish.’

Your kisses are sweet dynamite, your heart’s a neutron bomb
Your touch is electricity, one look and I’m all gone
You tie me up, you shoot me down, you massacre my mind
But I’ll keep coming back for more, I’m not the hurting kind
Shoot me, baby! Shoot me, baby! Give me
Heart-shaped candy gunshot from your Little Gun
Heart-shaped candy gunshot from your Little Gun –

Alfie and the Clergyman

‘– Alfred, are you recording this?’

‘I am, Reverend, I am.’

‘To what purpose?’

‘Because it might be the last thing I do. At least this way something’s left behind for posterity.’

‘Surely things can’t be that bad. Let us talk things through. You know it doesn’t have to be like this.’

‘The recording or –’

‘Not the recording, Alfred. That seems pretty inconsequential, does it not?’

‘Not to me it doesn’t, no. In fact it seems entirely appropriate. When you’ve spent most of your adult life working with ink, creating permanence for people, on people, bringing their sense of self-image right out front, making them look how they really feel, the idea that a final act should be recorded and therefore not go unnoticed seems completely logical.’

‘Not inconsequential, then. But I was referring to what you call the final act. You know there doesn’t have to be a final act.’

‘Oh, but there does, Reverend. All the great plays need a final act. And now that the Queen is dead, well, there’s nothing left for me to do but join her. And bring the curtain down.’

‘The Queen. Your wife.’

‘Yeah. My wife. My Ruthie. She was my Princess. She became my Queen. To be honest, Reverend, without her there really is no point. All’s cheerless, dark and deadly, as the poet said.’

‘Byron?’

‘Shakespeare, Reverend, Shakespeare. Kent to Lear on the death of Cordelia.’

‘Ah, Alfred, ever the classicist. So this final act that you talk about. What do you mean by it? Is our conversation to be your final act?’

‘Part of it, Reverend, part of it. But then again, it’s only final to the here and now, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not sure that I follow you.’

‘It all depends on your concept of finality, doesn’t it? I mean, take your lot. People of religion, I mean, and with respect, of course. You believe in an afterlife. Transcending into Heaven and all that. So is whatever happens here final?’

‘Ah, I see. And you, of course, who has no religious belief, still has your own faith in something other than just the here and now. After all, we’ve discussed it many times. It’s one of the remarkable things about you, Alfred, your faith in something other. That and your ability to remain a confirmed atheist and yet engage me with talk of theology that I find wholly fascinating.’

‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how you just used the word confirmed. Another might be avowed. And yet, it’s my atheism you’re referring to with these terms that reek of Christian religious practice.’

‘The routes of Christianity run deep, Alfred.’

‘Do they? Do you really think they do? A couple of thousand years? I’d say that when compared to what the universe can offer as mere theories of an other, as you say, a couple of thousand years is a blink of an eye. Anyway, Reverend, not tonight. I’m not in the mood for debate, theoretical or otherwise tonight. I just needed a witness, to see that there’d been no foul play. And I thought who better? We might disagree but we at least share the ability to question, to wonder at what lies ahead. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve found our discussions fascinating too. But now, it’s time I took a bow.’

‘Alfred, wha – is that loaded? Alfred, please –’

‘Don’t worry, Reverend. I need to go to her. I need to see if I can find her. Goodbye, Reverend. And thank you.’

‘Alfred, stop! –’

‘–’

‘–’

‘I thought it would be so easy. I didn’t see how hard it would be. I need to be with her, Reverend, I need to go.’

‘Alfred, Alfred. My friend. Give me that. Don’t cry, Alfred, it’s alright, it’s all alright. Don’t cry, my friend, don’t cry. That’s it, that’s it. Lean on me. Don’t worry. Don’t –’

BANG!!

–

Josh

They say there’s a time and a place for everything. A time. And a place.

The time was 1985. They said it was 2009. I knew it was 1985. Everyone said it was 2009. Eventually they convinced me it was 2009.

The place was a green, green glade in a green, green wood. Except it wasn’t. The place was a hospital bed in a secure room with triple-glazed, reinforced windows and green, green walls and staff that wore green, green tunics. It was all the wrong green green.

They asked me my name. I told them it was Josh. Joshua Xavier Horsbrecht. They said they’d check. They checked. They told me that Joshua Xavier Horsbrecht was declared dead in 1992. They told me that by now, Joshua Xavier Horsbrecht would be in his late thirties. Whereas I, I looked no more than sixteen, seventeen. So they didn’t believe I was Josh.

I told them I could prove I was Josh. I told them about Kyle, Josh’s brother. My brother. I told them about my parents, Josh’s parents. I told them about our friends, my friends, Kyle’s friends.

And that’s when things started to go really wrong.

First, I became A Suspect. They assumed that because I appeared to know plenty of things, know plenty of stuff, have plenty of information about Joshua Xavier Horsbrecht, that I must have had something to do with the fact that he was no longer alive. Despite the fact that he was. I was. Do you follow? Not that I’d killed him, of course, I looked too young to have even been born in 1992. But they thought I must know something.

Next, I became The Accused. And after a while, when there was no evidence to suggest that I’d ever been involved in anything remotely connected with anything homicidal, I was Patient 6024. That was a bummer. Having ridden out the storm of being The Accused, I had hoped that I could become something more like myself again.

Ok, Joshy, I thought to myself, this is a fix. They think you’re mad. Nuts. Barking. The proverbial box of frogs. For a while, I tried reasoning with them. Tried to engage them in conversation. I tried talking about things that showed them I wasn’t a lunatic. Philosophy. Shakespeare. The weather. Cricket. The rise of the moderates in El Salvador that had brought Duarte to power. Anything. They wrote things on pads. They consulted clipboards. They smiled their patronising smiles.

Right, I thought, if they think you’re mad – be mad. I took to staring out of the window for hours on end. I asked the kitchen for some jam with my breakfast. I put some of the jam into a clear plastic drinking cup. I stood by the window and I started catching flies in the cup. I thought about Renfield, the lunatic in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I thought about his great physical strength. I thought about his morbidly excitable nature. I remembered that his habit was to eat the creatures that he caught in the hope that he might obtain their life force. I washed out the clear plastic cup and threw the flies away. I wasn’t that mad. I wasn’t even mad.

I started muttering. Song lyrics, mostly, reciting them as a religious man might the Koran, or the Torah, giving them emphasis, giving them meaning. Mumbling them under my breath, just audible. To stand within the pleasure dome, decreed by Kubla Khan. That was a good one, had one or two of them fooled. Xanadu by Rush, from the Farewell to Kings album, if you’re interested.

Soon, though, I started to grow weary of who’s fooling whom. Stopped treating it as a game. Days became weeks. Became months. I started to wonder if I really was mad. I started asking questions. Started making demands. Let me see my parents. Let me see Kyle. Help me. Help me –

Wendy

It’s dark outside now. I’ve been sitting here for hours, looking out of the window, watching the cold grey wintry light ebb from the day until nothing of it remains.

I’ve been thinking. Contemplating, you might say. Thinking about the change that’s in the air, a palpable, heavy, almost suffocating change. Thinking about what it might mean. Thinking about the time it happened before.

I’ve always had the gift. My mother had it, and her mother too. It’s passed down through the generations like some sort of heirloom, or a congenital predisposition to a malignant disease. When I was a little girl, I used to think that it was completely normal. Couldn’t everyone do this, couldn’t everyone see? I felt like I had more friends than anyone else, more people to play with. I certainly never felt alone. But then as I got older, I don’t know, eleven, twelve, it started to scare me. I realised it was different, that I was different. And I didn’t want to be different, I wanted to fit in. It was an awakening, like finding out that Santa isn’t real or that your father isn’t perfect. Something that I had accepted as implicitly mundane and everyday was suddenly taboo. Mother sat me down and explained it to me just before my thirteenth birthday. So by the time I reached my teens, I knew that I could communicate with the dead. And that they could communicate with me, or at least, through me. A conductor, Mother said, an aerial. The Other World Service. Her little joke.

As I got older, I began to embrace it. Or maybe it just embraced me, I don’t know. It became my calling. I remember the night that Granny died. She told me herself, sitting right there, at the end of my bed. And in the morning, when I woke and went downstairs for breakfast, Mother took one look at me and she knew that I knew. She just squeezed my hand and I squeezed hers and there was nothing else that needed to be said.

Over the years, I’ve felt useful. Needed. I’ve thought of the spirits as my friends, friends in need. It was, I’ve liked to imagine, an equitable relationship. It still can be, for the most part. But there was that one night. Back in 2000, I think it was. The first time that I felt what I’m feeling now.

It had begun as a conventional séance. And yes, I appreciate that there are those who might think that a contradiction in terms. There were six of us, myself and five guests. Jane was one, or was it June? Small, nervous woman. There was a doltish girl whom I found to be somewhat insolent. And him, of course. The musician. He was, I’m sure, the catalyst.

It had all started nicely. We had a visit, from a spirit, that’s why I remember June, yes definitely June, the spirit wanted to talk with her and she was too timid, silly woman, too timid. The whole reason she was there and she missed her chance. But what followed –

– What followed had never happened to me before. It wasn’t just the physicality of it. It was how it made me feel, for months afterwards. It wasn’t normal, wasn’t like anything I’ve ever known. How can I explain? It’s as if when a spirit uses me, uses my body, I can feel myself filling up with its presence and that presence feels thin, gossamer, like smoke. But that night it wasn’t like that. It was as if the presence that entered me was dense, somehow, heavy, like a gas. It had a weight, a definite weight, as if my blood had turned to mercury. And for months afterwards, whenever I tried to communicate with the spirits, I’d get the same feeling, the same heaviness, the same weight, as if something fundamental had changed.

And then, after a time, it stopped, it just stopped. I remember the relief one summer’s evening. I was sitting alone, listening to some Mahler on the stereo, when I felt the familiar tingling chill and I knew that I’d been joined by a presence. And all of a sudden I felt the lightness, the beautiful lightness envelop me and it was like the first time all over again. And do you know, I danced that night, around my sitting room, the spirit and I danced to Mahler. Imagine that.

But now it’s back. The weight. The denseness. It’s barely perceptible, but I can feel it’s there. It’s changing. And I’m scared.

Joe

It’s weird. I get flashbacks. Flashbacks to a different time, a different place. Sometimes they’re like the purest memories. Other times it’s more déjà vu. Too much booze, perhaps. Too many lines. Mostly I ignore them. It’s easier that way, safer. I’ve pretty much given up the booze now anyway and the last drug I took was a Lemsip. I say pretty much. What’s a wagon if not something to fall from? But I fall rarely and never far. Straight Joe, grateful Joe, back from the abyss and not wanting to return to it Joe, that’s me. And I stay safe within her arms.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’ve become all puritanical. There’s still twenty cigarettes a day, still the parties, still those times when the only thing to do is say feck it and give in to a reckless urge to do something precisely because that little voice that lives in the back of your head, that bastard little voice, says don’t do it, Joe, don’t do it, what will they think, what will they say? Well, they can mind their own business, can’t they? They’d never understand anyway. Besides, there’s a buzz to be had from going to a club, dancing, playing, laughing, acting like the funniest guy in the world and then driving yourself home, knowing that you’ve had nothing stronger than a couple of spicy tomato juices and a fizzy water, watching as the drunks are assaulted by the cold night air and seeing them reel towards empty taxi ranks and the Kubrick-like lottery of the nightbus. Stay safe, sister, mind how you go, brother, reality’s round the corner and it’s armed with a hammer. Bang bang. Plink plink fizz. Ouch.

And yet even within the safety of sobriety, there are moments. Moments like last night. Last night, as I stood huddled in a doorway, jacket collar turned up against a wind on vacation from Svalbard, feeling the beats from inside pounding the walls like artillery shells, sucking on a Marlboro Light, when I saw – what? Who? Someone, something in the shadows, something or someone, lurking just out of reach of the cool electric glare, a someone or something not quite there, a someone or something without a true form, not quite whole, not quite there. But here. It was here.