The Everlasting (6 page)

Scott nodded. “Maybe we do.”

Helen went back to the kitchen to choose a new bottle, leaving him alone in the living room. He approached the window. The silhouette of a bud-heavy stem of the rosebush rose and fell in the strengthening breeze, whispering across the glass. Whispering, not scoring.
Not the rosebush
, he thought.

He cupped his hands to the glass to cut out reflection from the living room light, held his breath, and pressed his face close.

He remembered Papa sitting on that fallen tree, the whisper of wood ants hanging on his every word.

A car passed beyond their garden, and Scott grasped at the normalcy of the scene. Mrs. Hacker from along the street was walking her dog. She was a beautiful woman who thought herself ugly, and Scott had always perceived a sense of tragedy about her.

Papa staring into the distance before lowering his head, closing his eyes, uttering those strange words.

The street scene was completely normal, but that was beyond the garden. It could have been a whole world and thirty years away. Scott closed his eyes and, as that long-ago scene played out in his memory, he matched the words and tune Papa had uttered word for word. It felt strange, twisting his lips and tongue and throat in strange shapes, making it feel as though he had something in his mouth, something alien that did not belong there, but which he himself had deigned to swallow.

He opened his eyes. And screamed.

The garden was full of dead people.

Helen shouted something, came at him with hands held out and eyes wide, but for those first few moments Scott could not hear her. Perhaps in her terror at his sudden cry she could not form words. That, or the blood pounding in his ears had stolen his hearing.

It was still his front garden. He recognized the plant pots in the shape of Wellington boots, the inexpertly trimmed bushes, and the gate with one broken hinge. And beyond the garden the world was still there; Mrs. Hacker was in the distance now, and Scott could still see her casually wild brunette hair farther along the street, and neighbors' cars sloping into and out of the gutter.

But standing in the garden were monochrome images of people he had never known, and none of them were alive. He would have known that even if it were not for the evidence of their deaths: fractured skulls, ruptured chests, pale, drawn faces still twisted with the pain of their final moments. A few of them looked almost serene, but their eyes always bore the truth. These ghosts were haunted.

None of them were completely motionless. A few wavered in his sight, as though distorted by heat haze. One or two swayed where they stood, like drunks at the end of a long, dark night of obsession and addiction.

Others were moving slowly toward the house.

Scott gasped and tried to scream again, but his throat had dried and it came out as a pained rasp. Helen grabbed him and he jumped, pulling away from her and searching her eyes for life. He found it and gave in to her hug. She pulled him close, squeezed tight, and her body warmth was welcome.

“What is it?” she asked, still a whisper.

Scott could barely shift his gaze from the garden. They were all looking at him.

“Scott?” Louder this time, as though his shock were fading.

“In the garden,” he said, though that explained nothing. He tried to pull away, but Helen had him tight. “In the garden!”

“There's nothing there,” she said.

One of them—an old woman—had raised her hand, leaning forward for support as she took hesitant steps across the lawn. She wore a shawl that should have been multicolored, but death had grayed it. A young man was one of those shimmering in Scott's vision, features uncertain, leather clothing catching a weakened dusk, the wound on the side of his head obvious even through distortion. His eyes were wide: terrified or angry.

“Dead people,” Scott said. “Ghosts.” But these were nothing like the time he had seen Lewis days after Papa's death. He had been solid, tactile,
there
. “Wraiths,” he said, and that seemed to suit better.

“There's nothing out there, babe.”

Scott closed his eyes for a few seconds, hoping he could refresh his vision. When he opened them again something had changed, and it took him a few seconds to make out what: that shimmering, heat-haze effect had transferred to a few more of the wraiths.

He shut his eyes again, fighting every second to keep them closed against the idea that the wraiths were advancing, using his momentary lack of vision to close in on the house and Helen and him, and perhaps while he was not looking their bearing would change, anger overcoming lethargy, and violence born of anger—

Helen tried to pull him out of the living room, and he looked again. They were fading. Those that had been wavering to begin with were almost gone, and the others were starting to lose definition. Two that had been moving slowly forward stood directly outside the window now, pressing ahead as though leaning on the glass. Their features were blurred and confused.

He closed his eyes, whimpering and desperately grateful for Helen's clasp. When he looked again most of the wraiths were gone, and those that remained were shadows on the air.

Scott started to cry.

“What is it, babe?”

“They're almost gone,” he said, gasping through his tears.

“Good. That's good.”

Scott shook his head and started to shiver. “I can't see them anymore,” he said, “but they're
all still there
!”

He pulled away from Helen and she let him go, following him back into the hallway to the bottom of the staircase, where he sat and curled up and tried to remember exactly what Papa had told him about life and death.

“I want to run,” Scott said. “I want to run away and find somewhere safe.”

“We're safe here.” Helen had barely left him untouched since he had seen the ghosts, leaving only to
fetch a clean shirt. She did not believe him—that was obvious, and understandable—but she was with him, and he loved her for that.

“Maybe,” he said, but there was so much he didn't know. “But I still want to go.”

“We can if you want. It's not midnight yet. We can jump in the car and go for a drive, find a hotel. Book in as Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

Scott managed a wan smile. Then he thought of those wraiths standing before the house, and the smile slipped away. “They were there for a reason,” he said. “Only in the garden, not beyond. All looking this way. All of them just—”

“That fucking letter,” Helen said. “It's all because of that.”

“Yes!” Scott said, but that was not what she meant at all.

“You've got Papa on your mind, and you said he was always talking about stuff like this. Ghosts and death and weird stuff.”

“Death's not weird.”

Helen only shrugged.

“And maybe it is the letter,” Scott said. He sat up straight on the settee and stared at the picture above their fireplace. It was a modern painting of a seascape, blazing colors of sky and sand all converging into a deep, dark, blurry line tipped with a splash of white. A tiny white horse was just rising from the sea, and many nights Scott had sat back with a glass of wine, urging it to grow.

“We should sleep,” Helen said. “Too much wine. And you've been dwelling on that letter all day. Just remember, babe, you should have had it when you were sixteen. Not now. You're an old man now.”

“Thanks.”

“Pleasure.” She smiled and touched his shoulder, squeezing like a friend. Was she so angry with him that her affection now came to this? He leaned back to look at her face, and saw that she was very tired.

“Let's go to bed,” he said.

She nodded and yawned. “It'll be better in the morning.”

Sometimes things were. But not this. If Scott went to the window and pulled back the curtains he would see darkness, but those wraiths would still be out there, and perhaps they could see him even though he could not see them.

Could they enter the house? Come upstairs, push through closed doors, avoid all those loose floorboards that gave the building its voice? If in his sleep he muttered those words spoken by Papa in that clearing long ago, would he wake to see those ghosts surrounding his bed?

His heart stuttered in his chest, his breath came fast and shallow, but Scott did his best to hold himself together. Helen deserved that, at least.

He made sure every window and door was locked, all the while avoiding looking outside. He was so afraid that he would see an empty garden and imagine it full.

He dreamed of Papa, coming home from the hospital after thirty years and being cured of suicide. Scott was delighted to see him, and in the dream Scott and Helen had three children, all of whom recognized Papa instantly as their great-grandfather. But there was sadness, too. Scott told him about the ghosts, and Papa was devastated that it had come to this. “It's just not right,” he said. “I did everything I could, and still . . .”

Scott woke up, opened his eyes, and felt the dregs of his dream filtering back into sleep. He saw shapes in the room, and all of them he recognized: chair, wardrobe, pictures on the wall.

“Papa,” he whispered, but none of the shapes moved.

He remembered that he and Helen did not have children, and he was sad. It felt as though a chunk of his life had been knocked away. Then he recalled that Papa had died thirty years ago, and another slice was taken from his world.

Scott sighed and turned over, taking comfort from the warm shape of Helen beside him.

And now that what he lacked from his dream hit home, those extra things in his life began to pour in. The letter, the odd things it said, the memories of Papa unremembered before now, the broken drawer . . . the ghosts.

The shapes in the garden, crowding his home almost without moving.

Those words he had uttered. Papa's strange song, which had lifted the veil on his reality and shown him more of what there was to see and know.

Scott sat up and glanced quickly around the room. The familiar shadows were still there, with nothing new. Fear heightened his senses, but there was nothing out of place.

He stood from the bed, careful not to wake Helen, and moved to the window. Shifting the curtain allowed the half-moon access. It caught the hairs on his arm and hand and spilled to the floor behind him, revealing a long-forgotten coffee stain.
Moonlight makes everything clear
, he thought, though he did not know where that came from.

He looked down into the garden. Everything seemed as it should be. He closed his eyes, sang those guttural words he had remembered Papa saying, and opened his eyes again.

The shadows in the garden changed. Most were still, but some moved like thin trees in the breeze.

He was the center of their attention.

Scott dropped the curtain and stepped away. He nudged against the bed and sat down heavily, creaking the mattress and causing Helen to stir. She rolled over, muttered something, and went back to sleep, snoring softly.

“They're still out there,” Scott whispered. He looked around the bedroom—empty. “Only out there. Maybe.” Standing, he padded quietly from the room and stood on the landing. It was also empty. He leaned around the corner and glanced downstairs, terrified of what he
would see, glad when he saw only shadows that belonged. Across the landing, shifting aside the net curtain that covered the window there, looking down onto their driveway, he saw more of the shadows, and the strange shadows they cast. They seemed semisolid, as though the moonlight could not make up its mind whether or not to pass through them.

He gasped, stepped back from the window, trying to breathe slowly and heavily to still his frantic heart.

“They'll get in,” he whispered. “Papa, they'll get in. Unless . . .”

He had seen some of those wraiths moving toward the house, but as yet he was not sure that any of them had actually reached it. He had to go downstairs to find out.

“Look after me, Papa. Your words do this, so you must be with me now.
Must
be.” Scott hoped for another of those fresh memories of his grandfather—something that would perhaps explain what was happening to him right now—but as he descended into the cooler, darker downstairs, none came.

It was silent, and it felt more still and dead than upstairs. At least up there he had the knowledge of Helen sleeping in their bed, even though she was not a part of what he was doing. Down here there were only the empty rooms, and their familiar shadows, and those other things outside perhaps straining to get in even now.

He stood at the bottom of the staircase for a long time, alternately breathing softly and holding his
breath completely in an attempt to hear anything amiss. Other than the usual sounds of the night—the unknown ticks and creaks of the house, a breeze playing around the eaves—there was nothing.

He wished he'd checked the time before leaving the bedroom. It suddenly seemed very important.

“Papa, make me strong.” The blinds beside the front door felt heavy, sodden with darkness. Scott pulled them aside, and a face stared in at him.

Somehow, he did not scream. He dropped the blinds and stepped back quickly, tripping over the bottom stair and falling onto his rump. Moaning softly, hands clasping his face as if to hold in his sanity, Scott stared at the blinds where they had fallen back into place.

It had been a young boy. Something was wrong with his head, his skull, its shape all deformed.

His face had almost been touching the glass. Almost.

“Papa,” Scott whined. “Papa.”

And then a memory, shocking in its suddenness and intensity, equally startling because of its brevity.

Papa is swishing at a hedge with his walking stick. Scott has a stick as well, and he flicks the heads off stinging nettles as though it is a sword. It is a hot day, one of those long-ago summer days that seem to go on forever, still existing and continuing in some childish, forgotten corner of his mind. They have done more than is possible to fit in one day already, and lunchtime has only just passed. It's a time full of potential.