Ghosts

Shortly after my eighteenth birthday my younger brother went on a school trip to Japan. About fifteen of them and a teacher went to see the sights; Kyoto and all that. But they didn't come back. The bus came off a track and went into a river. None of them survived.

I first hear when my old school's name is mentioned on the TV. I've just moved out of my aunt's house and got my own place. I'm on top of the world: eighteen and free from the woman who had housed me since my parents died when I was thirteen. She loves Thomas but she dislikes me, I guess because although when Thomas moved in he was young enough to be moulded into her design I already had far too much of my father in me.

The TV gives me a number to ring. It takes an eternity to get through just to be told to go down to the school and wait for details. When the headteacher tells me and the other families that none of the children will be coming back everybody is too horrified to speak or even to move. It happened on the other side of the world. It wasn't real. I'm not crying.



Wind hisses through the trees. Traffic hisses in the background. In the park they sound the same.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go. How bad is that? I skipped out on my own brother’s funeral. I took one look at the church, the sobbing relatives I hate, the gathering black, and fled. At least my aunt organised the thing, not me. I’ve only let myself down.

Near the church I’ve found a park set back from the city. Old, pretty terrace houses face the park, a ditch of green, but no pond.

I don’t do funerals. It’s wrong, so much of other people’s raw emotions on display repulse me. Thomas is dead. Whether I attend his funeral or not doesn't matter.

A girl walks towards me, a breezy dress around her figure, a near finished cigarette in her fingers. She’s slender and pretty, if it weren’t any other time I would seriously consider chatting her up.

She stops a few metres from me and takes the last drag of her cigarette before tossing it on the floor. She turns. I’m still staring.

“You look as if you’re going to a funeral,” she says.

“I am.” Telling the truth about what I’ve just done is not an option.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, sitting next to me, horrified. “I didn’t realise.”

“It’s OK,” I say. “No harm done.”

She opens up her purse: a golden box of cigarettes. She offers. I accept. Like a thousand times before I balance it on my lips and she lights up for me then gets one for herself.

“I’m genuinely sorry about before,” she says.

I say stop mentioning it, it wasn’t for anyone important, anyway.

She nods. “Do you have a name?”

“Xavier.”

“Amy.”

“What brings you to this park Amy?”

“Not sure. Homing instinct, I suppose. My gran used to bring me here when I was a kid. It’s just comforting to come here now. She’s dead.”

“I understand. Why you so down?”

She sighs. “I got dumped again, didn’t I. I always manage it somehow. Usually because I’ve cheated on them so I can’t really complain.”

A shitty pop song comes out of her bag and she produces a tiny doll’s telephone. “Hello? Hi, what’s up? Really? Oh no… well… OK, take care, love you.” She hangs up. “Whore!”

“Who?”

“My friend. We were supposed to be going out tonight but she blew me off. For some bloke, no doubt.”

“Where were you gonna go?”

“Don’t know. Just some bars near the harbour.”

I smile. “I know somewhere good near there.”



She lives in one of the old terrace houses but the carpets have been pulled up, the floorboards polished and the furniture replaced with Ikea. We drink some wine, talk about shit; college, work, films.

When we are getting ready that evening she changes in her room and throws me some of her ex-boyfriend’s clothes. A taxi, a walk and we’re in that club. The music is awesome, the drinks are flowing, the night’s gonna be a good one.

She’s drinking out of a fancy cocktail glass. “So,” I venture to show my extraordinary powers of deduction, “you drink cocktails? Expensive tastes.”

“It’s worth it,” she says. Matter closed.

“The music’s great in here, isn’t it?”

“I don’t rate it, not my kind of music. I like more vocal music.”

“But it doesn’t matter when you’re dancing. You go here to get fucked not for stimulating lyrics.”

She thinks about this. “I suppose it must be good to dance to.”

So we dance.

For hours on end.

(With a little help from something I get from some guy in the toilets. They make me feel a bit better but I suspect someone has fobbed off speed to me.)

At about half one (far too early) she moans about being tired. We get a taxi to her place, I pick up my clothes and give her my (wrong) phone number before getting another cab home.



Later that morning Thomas is sat on the end of my bed. He's wearing his same old jeans and Ajax t-shirt, chatting away and doesn't seem to notice that I'm half asleep in bed.

“I said to him 'as if! That was blatantly a fucking dive.' Mind you Ronaldo's such a drama queen you can never really tell.”

“Huh? Ronaldo?”

“You really did get pissed tonight, didn't you?” he asks affectionately. “Zuibun nonda deshou?”

This is as surreal as a dream.

“What?”

“I've learned Japanese, remember? I'm asking if you got pissed?”

“Must have done, I suppose.”

“Typical. You pretend to be too upset to go to my funeral but you find enough strength to take some tart out on the town. Anyway, what do I care? Wasn't like my body was there anyway.”

“What are you talking about, Thomas? Have you been taking ket?”

“No, stupid. I'm dead! Drugs don't have much effect on me now. Not that I was ever into that shit anyway. That was always your filthy habit. All I'm saying is my body wasn't at the funeral. They never found me, remember?”

“So where's your body?”

“Dunno. Nothing to do with me any more. Most likely stuck in a ravine somewhere in rural Honshu.”

I nod. What he's saying seems to make sense, despite the bizarre circumstances. “Are you a ghost?” I ask.

“Something like that. I'm not quite clear yet on the organisational structure, and this is all a dream anyway.”

“A dream?”

“Shit, I'm not supposed to...”

I wake up. I am alone.



I don't go in for this bullshit about ghosts and clairvoyance and speaking to God. There's a simple explanation: a dream as a result of my traumatised and drug-addled mind. It wasn't vivid, it wasn't real. Just a coincidence. My friend Matthew is the sort of guy who goes in for that rubbish. He claimed that he predicted the 11 September attacks several weeks in advance as well as that drought a few years ago. When I mention the dream to him in a phone call he seems very interested.

“I had the weirdest dream last night.”

“Go on.”

“Thomas was in it.”

“Bound to happen, Xavier.”

“Yeah, but in it he was talking to me, like...this is gonna sound weird but it was like he was speaking to me from beyond the grave.”

“How so?”

“He just kept on talking about what it's like to be dead. And he said they never found his body.”

“Didn't they?”

I suddenly realise I don't know. As soon as he had died I let my Aunt sort everything out. And I never went to the funeral.

“Xavier?”

“I didn't go to the funeral, Matthew.”

“I know. Your aunt rang. I tried to call. Why couldn't you do it?”

“Let's not go into it.”

“OK, mate.”

“So what about this dream, then?”

“How do you mean?”

“It's not real is it? Thomas is not talking to me from the grave?”

“Do you know what happens when we die?”



I'm gonna have to face my aunt at some point, I guess. It may as well be today. I don't think I can feel any worse so all she can do is yell at me.

When she answers my knock at the door she doesn't let me in.

“I always thought you were a worthless little shit, but skipping out on your own brother's funeral! That's low even by your standards.”

She won't hear my explanation, she's more concerned with acting properly than with my well-being. She seems to have forgotten she's my only living family.

“What does it matter? His body wasn't even there!”

“Well what do you think we put in the coffin then? Cake?”

“But they didn't find his body.”

“You...you...” but she starts to cry and slams the door in my face.



I ring Matthew.

“Do you know anybody who sells drugs round the harbour?”

“Probably.”

“I need to get hold of a guy who was there last night.”

“A Tuesday night? There's only one guy in this town who sells drugs on a weeknight.”



I sit in my living room, off my box. The stereo is turned up to maximum and the neighbour are probably yelling. But I don't care. I will see Thomas again. Even if it's not real.

Somebody comes, but it's Amy. “You didn't give me your real number! How am I ever going to find you?”

I shut my eyes and ignore her.

When I open them again it is morning. I'm never going to see Thomas again. In the letter box is a postcard from, Kyoto. Now I'm crying.