Ghosts

PROLOGUE

I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to make it back.

I should never have tried journeying so far away. I know my strength has been fading lately. My kind don’t live half as long.

I summon desperate memories. Thomas was just two when he spelled ‘DADDY’ with his blocks. If he knows I’m coming home he goes on his old 1950s tricycle to the edge of the village to wait. God I hope he’s not like me. Alice, my dear Alice, who I’ve still never dared tell because she’d bawl me out for the sheer waste of ability. The house we bought in the countryside. The new start far away from all of this.

But it’s not enough. I’m not going to make it. Already my capacity to care, to feel, is like paper burnt to smoke on the wind.

Hold on! Hold on for God’s sake! I have gold for them. So obvious! It makes sense of everything, but their wrong assumptions have prevented them from seeing it. Hughes is obsessed; he’ll pay ten times, twenty times the normal for this nugget. Enough to get me out of this damned business for good.

If I can just make it back.

But my will to take another step is gone. Why hold this miserable form any longer? This shadow of my lump of flesh and bone. It’s failed all it loved.

Everything is grey and unappealing.

But I can let that go. It’s the way to be free.

I sink to the pavement. The street is crowded, but of course no-one notices me lying here.

I cease to notice them in return, and it’s only a relief.

Why should I try ever again? It’s better this way.

Such a burden, a mortal life.

I release myself from it.

Ahhhh…

1.

"That's it, just let sleep come," Mother used to whisper in those empty evenings after Dad had gone. Its arrival always eluded me though. Instead I would start to drift and next thing I knew I would awake with a head full of fading dreams. The loss of control infuriated me.

Then one night I caught it. I spotted the transition from a little outside myself, because that's where I’d taken to being, but with my waking mind. In that instant there was some changing of the guards, and it occurred to me that the cunning captive might escape.

Not that my body was a prison. No, I'm fond of it and it serves me decently, but bodies are so observable and dense-yet-fragile, and I desired otherwise.

I practiced nightly and was soon able to become a apart at will. I revelled in achieving distance. I moved my existence to a thumb, the tip of a toe. Then I broke bodily contact altogether.

Instantly I was scared. I thought this might be how you died. I rushed back from the foot of the bed into my corpse, but it was breathing away, heart still beating and none the wiser. It had done with me and the world for the day, recumbent and recovering its energies.

I suppose I’d hoped Dad might be there in the shadow world, watching over and waiting for me. He wasn’t, but I was used to swallowing mortality’s bitter medicine by now. I focused on something I did know about: from the comics I read, super-powers. I was eager to explore mine.

Leaving the room - moving out of sight of my physical self - was the most daunting step, but I grew calm about taking it. Despite having abandoned my eyes and ears I could see and hear. As I moved through the hall I noticed I didn’t reflect in the mirror. I had achieved invisibility.

On the night of my ninth birthday I contrived a secret mission that would take me out of the house. I would travel the fifty or so feet across the road to the village post office and shop and finally get up close to the shelf of sweets behind the counter. I would not take anything of course. I was an honest-enough child, but more pertinently, in this state I could not interact with objects, merely perceive them.

I left our red-brick house via the wood of the door - passing through solids remains to this day an odd experience - and entered the shop through its glass window. It was strange being here without old Mrs. Jones' beady eye tracking me. It was exhilarating. I crossed the threshold of countertop and rose to the sweet jars to float right inside amongst those sugared forms.

The experience, though, was sterile and anticlimactic without my body and its insatiable craving for sweetness. Still, I persevered onwards to the chocolate bars: Marathon and Mars, Yorkies, Crunchies and Drifters, each bigger and unhealthier than Mother would allow me in any one sitting. Novelty was wearing off now and I was increasingly underwhelmed, so I decided to end my excursion at the tubes of Rolos, my personal favourite. It was as I tried to infuse myself in their chocolate-and-caramel essence that I noticed one packet was different: the wrapper had writing on it. I didn't know why, or even how I knew this since it was printed on the inside, but it was the third packet from the right. I formed a new plan, but I would need my body for it, so that was where I returned.

The next morning, a Saturday, I was awake early. I wheedled permission to buy chocolate, and, flush with a handful of coins, was waiting as Mrs. Jones opened the shop bang on nine.

"Bin your birthday then has it, young Thomas?" she asked, eyeing the two-shilling-that-was-also-ten-new-pence piece I was brandishing.

"Yes Mrs. Jones. I'm nine now. Can I buy a packet of Rolos?"

"Nine eh? Well course you can. 'Ere you go."

"Not that one!" I squeaked. "Could I have the third from the right one please?"

She sighed in the way of people for whom all is onerous, but moved her hand.

"No, my right. Your left that would be."

"Make up your mind then," she complained, rolling her eyes, but she was now holding the packet I wanted.

I paid, returned home, and rushed to the kitchen table to unwrap it with trembling hands.

The words were there!

I squawked, causing Mother to bustle over. She commandeered the foil and read out what was printed on it: the Rowntree company, upon receipt of this lucky wrapper, of which there were only a dozen in all of Great Britain, would present me with a brand new Raleigh Chopper bicycle. There was much joyful delirium and saluting of my good fortune.

She didn’t know the half of it though. My talent was proven as no dream. I truly could walk in the spirit land. Through doors and windows and walls and into even the most heavily-guarded buildings evading all detection.

How would I use it, I pondered? How would it bring me fortune, fame, my heart's desires?

And that, in the twenty-one years since, is the question I've never managed to answer.

My trick of perceiving text by contact alone has found me a few winning lottery scratchcards, but it transpires there aren't many out there worth serious money and you often have to buy twenty or more worthless predecessors so barely come out ahead.

If I could see the future that would make things easy, but all my ability opens up for me is secrets. Doubtless some of the financially savvy types I studied alongside at Oxford could find lucrative angles to work, but any scheme I've ever dreamed up has quickly hit the buffers of practicality, immorality or illegality and scared me off.

I suppose science should know what I can do, but to what end for me? Become a lab-rat for clinicians eager to dissect my brain? Find myself abducted to a ‘secure facility’ by the CIA? No thank you! For a time I imagined myself spying for England, but I have to say I have my doubts about England’s character and motives.

Could I have gone public instead? A magic act: The Amazing Thomas Harrison will name your card or duplicate your drawing? Perhaps I could have been famous and rich that way, except the entertainment industry is full of people who are either similarly talented or clever charlatans, and what they possess that I don't is showmanship.

No, I've been wise never to tell a single soul what I can do. My preference has always been to tuck myself away into a quiet corner and immerse myself in a book. This is probably why I read English Literature and ignored the sirens of other lives to became a writer.

Could my ability help me find success in this profession? For now can we just say I did explore that, but it's a double-edged sword.

Best leave it at that, if you don't mind.

How to distract from this sudden moment of awkwardness? Love; everyone likes love. Am I lucky in love? I must at least be well-informed enough to stay ahead in the game, no?

Ish, I suppose. The problem is that when your search for a soul mate involves espionage, well, that's already going wrong. You also tend to find out things you'd rather not. For instance:

"Methinks. Got to. Melists! Best way! Tall and gangly, but handsome, like that one who died out of Monty Python. He’s so intellectual-looking, always brownish hair tousled and blue-eyed gaze faraway above that patrician nose. Maybe he should smoke a pipe or something, if that wasn't so foul. Then he might fit together and not always be otherworldly and slightly ill-at-ease. But no: he does have this musty, academic charm which is actually quite endearing…or was at first. Yet and yet and yet; detached, absent, elsewhere are the words which stick. He’s just gone a lot, even when he’s right there. And it's boring now. He has no real Earthly passion. That’s it! No vivacity. Not of his own. But what if he ever found that? If it wasn’t me - and clearly it isn’t or I’d know - then would I even matter? So I can’t trust him, and there’s never any getting past THAT, is there? Which equals going to have to have The Conversation, aren't I Dear Diary. Ohhh, Mesighs!"

An extract from the pretentious secret journal of my ex-girlfriend. I managed the small and vicious satisfaction of breaking up with her first, but it was cold comfort because I'd liked her and thought she liked me too.

So, three years into this new millennium and turned thirty, I'm not famous and I have no fortune. I don't even know who or what my heart's desire might be. Only that I'm as far from it as ever, save perhaps for when I was nine and for a fleeting while it was that fortuitous bicycle.

A body I may possess, but what's in charge of it is passionless. The ex- was right. I think it's because I can escape, so I do escape, and so it's easy to never engage. I'm grey and insubstantial.

I’m a ghost.

Which is ironic.

2.

…Running clear, holding the tiny life with its little fast-beating heart tight against his sweating, six-packed torso, he made it out just as one of the upper floors crashed to the ground. Only feet behind him Biblical flames spewed through the doorframe and windows, sending a swarm of sparks out into the night sky.

“Frank Geyser!” came the tough bark of the shadowy figure standing watching the whole show. Big Len. Of course. Nothing happens in the East End that Big Len doesn’t know about first, remember? His bomber jacket glinted like prescient coal in the firelight, but his eyes were dark as ocean whirlpools beneath a starless sky. “I cannot believe you went back in there…for a dog!”

Frank straightened, drawing breath. “I ’ad to Len. You know ’ow Rosie feels about this little fella.”

There was a long pause. Crackles and pops from the burning building. Distant sirens, the fuzz coming to trample around in their size twelves.

“And ’ow is it you feel about my Rosie, Frank?” The question was spoken with the menace of a missile launcher’s swivel.

Say it! Go on!

“I love ’er Len. Always ’ave since the second I laid eyes on ’er.”

There! Would he wind up in The Thames with chains round his ankles for daring to feel this way about the gangland kingpin’s daughter?

Big Len’s jaws pummelled gum. Finally he growled, “Geyser. I’ve always wondered about the name. Polack is it?”

“That’s right Len.” Frank drew himself tall with a pride he would never disown. “My grandad come over in thirty-nine to join the RAF. Fought in The Battle of Britain. Fell for an English nurse while ’e were laid up recovering from a shrapnel wound and never went ’ome.”

“’Eroes every man wot took to them skies. Rosie loves you too, does she?”

“I think so. I ’ope so. Sir.”

“And you’d treat her right would you?...Nah” Big Len’s sudden laugh was like the staccato crackle of fireworks on Bonfire Night. “Bang out of order to ask that when you’ve just risked your ’ide to save that pup of ’ers, now ain’t it? I’ve ’ad my eye on you for a while, an’ you’ve passed the tests. You’ve got my blessing, Frank Geyser.”

Frank’s legs were as well-muscled as a professional footballer’s, but they were like jelly as he shook Big Len’s extended hand. Finally he and Rosie could drop all the secrecy and come clean to the world. It was going to be perfect. As he thought this the little dog squirmed to be put down and Frank placed it gently on the tarmac. Yapping happily, it ran towards the curvaceous figure on stilettos approaching them, her golden perm glowing like a halo in the Shoreditch streetlight. “Muffin!” she cried out, and knelt to embrace the puppy.

Big Len was looking at him, his eyes now twinkling with the amusement of a boy with a pocket full of pennies at a fairground. “Well go on then. Go to ’er. You go on, my son.”

‘My son.’ Big Len had called him ‘my son’! Frank Geyser nodded respectfully to his future father-in-law, then kept it down to a manly stride over to the love of his life.

He’d been accepted into East End royalty, and he wasn’t going to let no-one down.

Not now.

Not never.

The End…for now! Frank Geyser will return in [TBD: title]

O sweet bejesus how I nauseate myself.

Still, it wraps book five of the series, in which Frank Geyser finally achieves legitimisation. Shinelle, for whom I’m paid decently to write this simile-fest drivel, will be delighted.

Tarquin will too, even though he seemed a little off his usual assured game last week. I’m not sure why, since he knows I produce reliably. As agents are always cheered by a completed manuscript, especially one three days ahead of schedule, I decide to share the happy news with him right away. I call his office but his secretary says he’s out and about. I try his mobile. It rings and rings. I let it, because I’ve seen him trying to work one.

“Thomas?” From the background noise he’s on a busy street somewhere. His voice sounds strained. I can picture him: immaculately turned out by his family tailor, six inches taller than everyone around him and staring furrow-browed over their heads in that upper-class bafflement everyone mistakes for profundity. “Look, I was rather hoping you wouldn’t get wind of things, but all is not a lost cause.”

That slaps the dozy smile off my face. “Wind of what things Tarq?”

“Ah. Eh? Oh, minor things. Piffling. For another time. Over coffee perhaps? New Swedish place almost next door. Supposed to be interesting. How ARE we Tom? What news?”

I could call him out, but my natural tendency is to play the game. “Good. Very good. Frank Geyser just got his Rosie and the manuscript’s ready to send on to Shinelle. In fact if the brief’s there for the next instalment I can keep right on going, now I’m in character and whatnot.”

“Hmm. Super! Would that all writers could turn the handle like you do Tom. Wonderful. Best to give Frank a little time off though. At least until after we’ve met The Witch.”

“The Witch? Is she coming to London?” The Witch is Robyn Brookes from the US partner of Tarquin senior’s literary agency. A visit is a rare surprise, and never a welcome one.

“Flying by, yes. Flying by and dropping in. But she did mention recent developments she needed to share. Calling you was literally next on my to-do list. Listen, can you pop over to Southwark tomorrow? The Witch is due at noon, thus a brew at eleven-thirty? Cover a spot of preamble?”

I say yes. What else can I say? Etonians learn to hide all feelings aged eight so I’m not going to winkle anything out of him sooner. Wind of what? The Witch? I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit. Urgency in the literary world always goes hand-in-hand with some tension. Damn it, what can it be?!

An annoying byproduct of being able to find out secrets like I do is that you hate the ones hidden from you more.