Getting later each day. Damn, I'll have to wear yesterday's boxer shorts. No one will notice with an extra squirt of deodorant. Aargh, the shock of black wavy hair. Must be something wrong with that mirror. I should've shaved last night; never mind it's only half a millimeter longer. No time to make toast—just marmalade-splattered bread—make some tonight for tomorrow. These stairs—shouldn't gallop down them this fast. No time to open the post—I'll read it on the bus.
There it goes, off to the city center with its cargo of well-breakfasted commuters. Another ten seconds and I'd have caught the bastard. Only eleven minutes for the next but it'll mean being late for the second time this week. My face is flushing. Anger control, Ingram, come on. So I'll be sacked. Worse things can happen and look, here comes a private bus poaching London Transport's business.
Bugger! We've rocketed off before I've found a seat. Christ, he took a wing mirror off that parked Volvo. Idiot girl in the next seat laughs hysterically. Her purple eye makeup dares me to disapprove. They must have recruited the driver from Death Wish Inc., but despite my spine jack-hammering the seat, I'm able to glance at my post.
To Mr Ingram Vardon—shaky writing, maybe a fellow passenger. I take out a shred of grey paper.
"Ingram, don't go to work today. Meet on the 31st. Usual place. Bryant."
What? My brother, Bryant, died two years ago. This is a practical joke. That reprobate Colin. Always scamming, trying to get my job. Ha! I'll get him. What's the postmark? Bloody hell, it's Solihull. Where a speeding Ready-Mix concrete lorry crushed Bryant in his Ford. I got there just as cyanosis blued his screaming face. His own fault; a shit, but he didn't deserve that. His horrible death destroyed our parents; they followed him to the after-life by inconsolable grief and sheer self-neglect. I should have known and when I did, it was too late. It's why I left the city of my birth.
I shake off recriminations and focus on this prank. Colin might try and freak me out by sending a letter from beyond, but surely he doesn't know it happened in Solihull; that was a year before I moved to London.
What does that mean? Bryant transmogrified into a spirit guide? Get real, Ingram. Should I agonise? Not my thing. Suppose Bryant is communicating—he knows something's going to happen and trying to warn me. Yeah right, he hated me when he was alive, so why help me now? Unless there's something in it for him. What am I talking about? Even if he existed in the ether, his soul scamming away up there with other poor sods, how could steering me round a problem be beneficial to him? Nah—but maybe he'll get himself a better deal on the other side if he can get some credit on this. The note says to meet in our usual place. We haven't met since leaving school. OK we've turned up together at the odd funeral, the last being his. Maybe he thinks I've been visiting his grave—to spit on it. That's in Solihull—whether he's still in it is another matter.
Argh, it's doing my head in. About time I ran a sickie. Real estate jobs are ten-a-penny. It can't really be Bryant, but I've convinced myself to find out one way or another. I'll catch a train to Solihull.
A graduate of the 'Aving a Larf School of Passenger Care is terror-driving this clapped-out heap. Now he's lurched passed my stop. It's time for an attempt at escape. The purple-eyed girl follows me, falling into me as a frantic swerve avoids a bike courier mouthing retribution.
"Hey driver, Marylebone Station. You've missed it—give us a break, Sunshine, and let us off before we throw up!"
Other victims, including purple eyes, nod furiously. Although she still laughs we all have to cling with grim determination as the driver stamps on the brake and disgorges us onto the pavement.
Moments later I shiver outside Marylebone Station. It's not the weather; it's damn trains. Mobile people coffins with limited options. There it is, a black-and-red steel python, swallowing its victims whole; hissing with anticipation. A nightmare journey waiting to torment me for its scheduled two hours and three minutes. There's more passengers than I'd like. Five, but I can claim a window seat. More passengers clamber on to share my air. We move, so I am to reach Bicester without a sweaty new friend to crease my coat.
Bicester empties itself into my train. Most crush into my carriage but my seated newspaper and empty coke can scares off the too friendly. Here we go, a mobile is tweeting its owner. Hello, another mobile is replying, and another. Bloody hell, everyone has a chirping right hand and a red ear. I can't help being annoyed. Is it because no one is calling me? No. My Zen is being disturbed even over the clackety-clacks. Let them all get off at Banbury.
Not only do the trilling sods stay on, they multiply. A tramp squashes my newspaper as he falls into the adjacent seat. There goes my buffer zone. His tatty brown coat is decorated with ciggy burns and held together with an evil stink, like someone poured a can of sour milk over him. I'm out of here. I'd rather stand even if it means hanging on to the exit door. I scramble past him: "Excuse me." The crumpled bundle snores in response. I feel like giving him a kick in the shins but hammer him with a raised voice instead.
I shouldn't have; I'm hotter than molten lava with thirty pairs of eyes burning into me.
"Excuse me, mate. I want to get past." Bugger, he might as well be in a coma. They still stare at me. I stare back.
"Get back to your mobiles!" Did I say that? No, but I thought it real hard. I have to step over the tramp's skanky knees. Hope he doesn't wake up now—with me straddling him. A snigger from the seat behind. My anger seethes back but the derision proliferates. A young woman stands, laughing, and points her finger at me. It's the purple-eyed girl from the bus. Can't be. Too weird. I have to get out of here even if it is only to the transient area between carriages.
I lean on the windowed-door, urging the scenery to fly by faster. It takes no notice and blacks out into the womb of a tunnel. If only the Victorians hadn't been so anally retentive they wouldn't have felt the need to replicate their alimentary canals where simple cuttings would've done. I hate this: the jolting, no comforting light and the unearthly fiends in there.
I should've ignored the note from Bryant and gone to work. Eighteen minutes to go before I leave this nightmare and face another. I bet it's a wind-up. God, this tunnel's been stretched. It never takes this long. Argh, my ears fill with screeching. It sounds like brakes and the swaying yanks me around. I look in the carriage window and the mobile glows are extinguished - no signal. The squeal returns at a higher pitch, making my ears really hurt - I wonder if anyone else can hear it. I'm not asking. No point. I wouldn't believe anything they said. The noise is so shrill it's white, wiping out the clatter of the wheels.
My feet are doing my head in: I can't keep them on the floor with the train rocking violently. I'd be better sitting after all.
I hit the door button and going in, grip a seat-top looking desperately for a vacant spot without an odorous heap next to it. The lights come back on and I see all the faces staring at me.
The noise and swaying subside as we glide to a stop but the weirdos evil-eye me all the same. None of them would've stayed sitting next to Humanity's arsehole, so why look at me?
"Out the way, nerd," says a hooded youth shoving me from behind. I fall on a woman whose mouth opens in sync with shocked eyes. I death-grin apologies, relieved to know the gawpers in here ogle the mobsters, not me. Three of them scare-waving down the carriage. Mobile phones leap into owners' pockets, briefcases dive under tables and everyone shuffles closer to windows. It's a laugh but I daren't. Close my eyes for self-control and feel the train accelerate.
Opening my eyes I find they're all staring at me again. What's with these creeps? Oh, I get it—there's another one those hoodz behind me. I turn and confront him. Except that it's Bryant. I release a rasping gasp as weird thoughts gallop through. My brother died eventually in hospital. He doesn't look well. Had he really died then? Or had some conspirator whipped away his body and miracle-drugged him back after three years? Get real, Ingram. Of course it isn't Bryant—just someone who looks like him. Not even much of a resemblance now I steady my nerves and focus. He brushes past me. I've had more physical contact today than when I played rugby.
Now what? The train is jerking us about like puppets. Damn, the only free seat is the window next to the stink. I'll risk having a fairground ride by the door.
At last the suburban residue of Solihull struggle into view and moments later I disembark. I speed walk to the cemetery since, logically, it's the last place I met Bryant. He wore pine at the time, sharp creases. The black marble headstone swirled with vandal paint as were others. It leant backwards years before it should. Maybe Bryant kicked it from below. Hey, it's moving. No—my imagination moves. Nevertheless, I feel uneasy among the spooks and struggling spirits. The note didn't give a time, just today's date. I suppose time doesn't matter if Bryant is here anyway. Where then? Behind the few mossy trees or one of the high-capacity tombs? There's someone standing on a distant path. I can't see his face but it's the right height—for a dead brother. The trembling in my stomach is travelling to my knees. I want to be able to stride confidently to my undead brother but now my shoes are infected with the shakes. I feel sick.
"Don't turn round," snarls a man behind me!
I'm snuck up on and within moments of wetting myself. I stare at the distant man who wanders off. A decoy or coincidence?
"W-what do you want, Bryant?"
"You."
I struggle to push brain signals to my legs to make a run for it.
"Y-you a g-ghost?"
"Not really."
"B-but you're dead!"
"So what do you think you are?"
It's been a long time since my synapses had to work so hard, so fast. He's dead, not a ghost, I can hear him; sort of. He's not come back to haunt me: I've died—that creaky bus or the ghastly train. No wonder the passengers looked weirdly at me. It wasn't them who were bizarre, it was me. It is me.
So, I'm dead; what a turn up. No more rent to pay and it'll teach my line-manager to whinge at my occasional days off. No wonder I feel queasy—ill even. That's a laugh. I need to know what happens next. If only I was religious then I'd know.
"Bryant, what's the deal then?"
No answer. Shall I turn and if I do can I stand the sight of Ingram, skull, maggots or just a green pallor? What choice do I have?
"Bryant?"
Still no answer so I crank up the effort needed to turn. I inch round but there's empty cemetery where I expected an apparition. I look down at his grave and it's no different than the others. Did I imagine it? How can you tell you're dead when you feel odd but still seem to be full of rhythmic gurgling stuff? It's because my brain still sort of works—electromagnetic fields generated by thoughts racing around neurons—whatever. The secret of spectres: bodies rotted but memories and evil designs still exist.
Bryant has thought himself into a hole somewhere. Damn him. I want to ask him what happens next. Maybe it's because I've never supplicated to a deity that I'm in limbo. No point going back to London. Or is there? Bigger place, more evil spirits so maybe there's a special blend there making the dead different: the London scene.
I wander out of the graveyard feeling very strange. Light-headed, I look at people expecting to see them differently. Thought I'd detect auras, see translucent ghouls floating with glowing eyes and make yelping dogs run away. It all looks disappointingly normal. I wonder, being still opaque, if I can have a last drink.
The Skull & Gravedigger, what a name for the closest drinking hole to the cemetery. I'm sure the barman looked straight through me but the pint goes down a treat, as does the second with its whisky chaser, I swallow as time is called. This Solihull pub still closes after lunch till five. I stagger rather than float—bit of both. What has this all been about? Must be a part of me wanting Bryant to have survived his ghastly accident and it's preying on me. Just as that Colin's been creeping around the office: arriving early, leaving late but not working any harder. No extra apartments sold. I see through him, hope the boss does. Not bothered about the job but I hate being scammed. I'll get him back. I shouldn't drink so much—can't think straight. I must have been hallucinating before but now I have demons flying around my head—inside and out.
I don't see the bus coming at me until too late.
As real blood dribbles down a conveniently close gutter drain, I realise I've been had. That damn Colin at work, playing me for a blinder. Hope he's too shocked to sleep at nights. I'm giving instructions now to my electromagnetic field: directions to Colin's house, my spirit's new address.