Mr Ermey's Funeral Page 12
When they reached the gates, Alex hooked a right and headed towards a new road that used to just be dirt track. Right away, Buddy understood where they were going: an old hangout that no longer existed. Heaton’s farm. Even back in the days of the old gang it was no longer a working farm, just some disused barns and a derelict farmhouse, but the farmhouse had been good for windows to smash, and cupboards to go through. When bored with either of those distractions, they’d take it in turns to stamp on the upstairs floorboards to see if they could break through them. (Buddy once did, scouring the inside of his right leg in doing so). Bored with that, they’d play Battlefield across the no man’s land of the many hallways and stairs, although a near on-stairs collision with a tumbling fire grate eventually put a stop to that game.
Alex and Buddy walked past where the Heaton’s forecourt used to be, and followed the long, black arm of fresh tarmac into the field. The arm widened a little, readying to meet an invisible junction that someday would send a road straight through Tithborough woods. The road stopped dead in the middle of a meadow. Small clusters of weeds and tall grasses sprouted around the tar slops and stone chip piles. Wide, brown rents opened up the land beyond them; familiar hedges and trees were now missing. A white sign with a small cartoon tree declared that this was Another Firdale Housing Development. Alex sat down on the tarmac, digging his heels into the grass. Buddy removed his Marlboros from his back pocket and did the same.
“You first,” Alex said.
3
Sunday
Dreamt of the day we dumped Mary again. I know it by rote now. When I’m dreaming it, I feel like I can step outside the dream and spin it around, turn it this way and that. There is this heavy cloud that hangs over everything we say – it’s a guilt dream, obviously. The thought that someone came along and took him after we left – that’s something you try not to tell yourself. I cling to the idea that whatever trouble found him, it would have found him anywhere.
But that’s just bollocks, of course.
4
“So what’s in the diary?”
Angela had stopped crying and was slouched down on the bed, her head resting against the headboard in what looked – to Mary at least – like a most uncomfortable position. Considering she’d been reading like that for the last hour or so, Mary assumed it mustn’t be as bad as it looked. Who knows, maybe she’s dead too.
The voice in her head had a slightly hysterical quality to it.
“Tom, what’s in the diary?”
Tom turned and looked at her for the first time since they had arrived. He wore an expression that said: Oh, it’s you. He returned his attention to Angela, his hand having never left her ankle since joining her on the bed. For a fleeting moment, Mary wondered where Tom’s hands would be if she wasn’t supervising, but then dismissed the image before it had chance to take shape. She reprimanded herself the best she could, but boredom confiscated its sincerity. “Tom, come on, maybe we should leave her to it.” She hoped this sounded gentle and caring, but suspected it sounded patronising instead. It was hard; she’d never done this before.
What, you mean to tell me that you’ve never found yourself reborn as an invisible embodied spirit, trying to persuade another spirit to quit haunting a girl who is now mourning him? You mean to say that this doesn’t happen to you all the time?
Again, that inner voice seemed a little high-pitched and wavering and she didn’t care for it one little bit.
Tom nodded, slowly. He removed his hand from his girlfriend’s leg and rubbed his eyes, and then he got off the bed and stood up, but lingered still. She would have repeated herself, maybe even found the right soothing tone of voice this time, if it wasn’t for the strange thing she had just noticed. It was just one strange thing amid many, but she suspected it could have real bearing on what should be done here.
And on what they were doing here.
Mary stared at the bed, at the place where Tom had just been. There was no pulling on the sheet, no springs reshaping themselves, no after-impression. She focused on the duvet, willing it to move, to show at least some recognition of Tom’s weight no matter how small.
Nothing happened.
Well of course nothing happened, you’re both invisible spirits, aren’t you? You said it yourself. All this time you’ve been walking around quite happy with the idea that no one can see you, but it’s only just occurred to you that along with being invisible, you have no real body. Nothing you do has any effect.
Panic, hot and breathless, rose in her throat and she fought it, allowing the reality of her – their – situation to make itself known once again:
Yes, Mary, you are dead. You are not simply visiting a friend’s room. You are not hanging out. You are haunting out. That boy over there is dead too. That’s his living, still breathing girlfriend. Tears are drying on her face for a good reason, and you’re a part of that reason. No one can see either you or the boy, but you can see each other. Does that just about cover it?
Yes, it did. And as the world around her settled into being the same world it had been just a moment ago, she tried to re-evaluate her new form of existence. It’s just a case of getting used to the new rules, isn’t it? But what are those rules? She couldn’t say exactly, but she thought she was starting to understand them little by little. It’s all the small stuff that’s missing, that’s the key. Doors seemed to open when she pushed them, but when she turned to close them, she found that they already were closed.
It made no sense.
It made perfect sense.
Anything she picked up or moved was the same: books, CDs, magazines, they could be used as normal, but the moment her attention wavered, they disappeared – back to the shelf, or wherever she had found them. It was like being followed by an obsessive-compulsive God, constantly tidying up her things. Nothing she did made any real difference.
But if that’s the case…then why are we here?
Maybe this happens to everyone when they die. Maybe they just get to spend a few days wandering around on the earth, coming to terms with the idea of not being around anymore before they finally move on to wherever it is they go. Or before they just wink out of existence altogether.
Mary looked out of the window and wrinkled her nose. A line of uneven rooftops followed the road’s gentle incline, satellite dishes and television aerials poked at a clear blue sky. That’s right, she thought, summer’s come early this year. I almost forgot. A bus passed, gleaming, making a tree sway in its draft.
“Are we going then?” she asked at last.
Tom wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeves and, without looking back, walked out of the room. Mary followed quickly, purposefully holding the door handle tightly, pulling the door closed after her. The latch fell into position with a satisfying click that she both heard and felt. You can get used to the new rules all you like, she thought, but there’s nothing wrong with doing a better job of fooling yourself too.
The two invisible spirits walked down the stairs and out of the front door into the heat. Neither loosened their sombre uniforms.
5
Monday
When I think about that first dream, it makes me wonder how long I had been dreaming it before realising it. Was it just my recent poor sleeping habits that alerted me to its presence?
Dog dream again.
6
Buddy sat down beside Alex, lit up a smoke, and exhaled slowly into the morning air. He looked out into the deserted building site and for a moment could not remember why he was there. Not that it felt strange – bunking off school for no particular reason was an old habit – but this was not one of his regular haunts. Too bleak.
“You first,” Alex said.
Oh yes. That. Buddy tried to gather his thoughts; beyond the numb shock of Tom’s death, they were a crisscrossed mess. He tried to pick between them, but they tumbled into one another, simply becoming one thought, and before he knew it, that thought was just a series of small vibrations in the air:
Alex was nodding, which was an immediate relief.
“God knows who, but I can’t see these two suicides – if that’s what they are – as coincidences. Even if everyone else has forgotten, we know how Mary and Tom knew each other.” Buddy flicked the ember into the bright sunshine. “And then there’s this dream I keep having.”
“So you don’t think they committed suicide?”
“Of course not. First thing, it’s not Mary’s style. She was too tough for that. Second thing, why would Tom want to kill himself? You saw how he was with that bird of his. Practically married.” Buddy turned and took a drag. His eyes narrowed. “Why, do you think they killed themselves?”
“Well, if that’s what the police think.”
Buddy coughed smoke. “You and your sodding police. Do you know how much I’ve been dreaming about you whining on about the police? Yes, alright, yes, we should have gone to the police straight away. Satisfied? But even you’d agree it’s a little too late for that now.” Buddy dug at the edge of the tarmac with his heel; a small clump fell away into the weeds.
“You’ve been dreaming about the time we dumped Mary?”
“Bingo.” Buddy wrapped his arms around his knees and leant forward. “And I know you have too, so don’t bullshit me. And I bet the same thing goes for Mary and Tom. Everybody dreaming about the same thing.”
“Crap.”
Buddy shrugged. “If you say so, big guy. But for someone who hasn’t been dreaming about that day, you seem a bit shocked that I have.”
Alex stood up and returned to the Firdale sign; as he spoke to Buddy’s back, he made feeble attempts to straighten it. “Maybe I have been dreaming about that day.” His voice was quiet, but it carried easily enough – apart from the whistle and chatter in the treetops, the world was silent. “But even if I have,” he let the sign alone, “how the hell could you know about it?”
Buddy flicked ash into the scrub, dragged hard, then tossed his smoke. He immediately fished out another. “Yesterday morning, I just knew. Even though I missed the actual announcement, I knew that Mary was gone. It was more a feeling than a knowing, but you know what you feel.”
Alex stood by the sign and said nothing.
“Maybe I’d actually heard the announcement through the walls. Or maybe I’d overheard some of the teachers talking about it. Or maybe I’d heard it on Sunday and not put two and two together properly. Or maybe I don’t think so.” He pointed out at the ruined land. “As everyone at assembly started in on the Hail Mary, I just knew. I didn’t remember, I knew. Boom! – there it was. Mary, hanging from a rope in her dad’s garage. The same thing happened this morning as soon as I woke up.”
“What happened?”
“Tom, lying there, passed out on his bed. And not sleeping off a hangover. His lips were blue. And that’s when it clicked.”
“What clicked?”
“It was in their faces, you see. They both looked confused, like they didn’t know what they were doing, not really.”
Alex returned to the edge of the road and sat down next to Buddy. A sense of surreality overcame him. Any minute now the old farmhouse is going to re-materialise before our eyes, brick by brick, stick by stick, and the two of us – both suddenly much younger, of course – are going to go over there, find Mary and Tom still alive, and we’ll start throwing fire grates at each other again. Alex looked at his blue school bag lying by the side of the road, as crumpled and tattered as ever, and then at the piles of stone chippings. The tufts of weeds stayed just so.
“So how do you commit suicide and not know about it,” Alex asked, “unless you’re on LSD or something and you try jumping off a bridge to see if you can fly?”
“That’s not far off what happened, I reckon. I don’t think they were on drugs – at least nothing that could make them see those sort of things – but I think they did see things anyway,” he said. “And why not? Aren’t we seeing things?”
“Well, I’m not.”
“I knew it,” Buddy said, taking a drag, then another.
“You knew what?”
Buddy turned towards him. “This. You. I knew you’d blow me off.”
“I’m not blowing anyone off. We can talk about dreams as long as you like. Sure, I’ve been dreaming about the time we made Mary play a phoney game of hide and seek ‘cos none of us had the balls to tell her to get lost. And for what it’s worth, last night that dream extended a little, only Tom disappeared at the end of it. But that’s about it for me. I’m hallucination free, I think.”
Buddy stared at him. “You sure?”
Alex shrugged. “Sure I’m sure. Unless this is one. What about you?”
After a moment’s silent contemplation, Buddy told him about the bird-thing in the park. When he was done, Alex asked if there was anything else. The boy in the grey blazer ran a hand through his long, black hair, and then rubbed his nose. “That’s it. But I know when someone’s got it in for me.” He measured Alex in a glance. “And so should you.”
Alex nodded again. The sense of surreality had gone, and things seemed closer somehow. In this closeness, they became lost in practicality. Things were in motion, as yet unseen. He was talking with Buddy; it was nothing new. They would discuss, then they would act, each clear in their roles without needing to if, and, or but. It was the mark of an old working relationship.
“I only started dreaming about Mary on the day she died,” Alex began. “Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but when I got up on Sunday, there it was, hovering around in the back of my mind. The main feeling was guilt towards David.”
Buddy grunted agreement.
“I’ve not seen half the stuff you’ve talked about. No strange men made out of birds, no premonitions of dead bodies, just the dreams about the day we dumped Mary. The details are pretty much the way I remember them happening in real life, with the exception of this newer version. What did we do after we left Mary?”
“We went into the woods.”
“But what did we do there?”
“It was a damp squib.” Buddy offered Alex a cigarette, who took it without question. “I think we did play some football – or at least you and Tom did – but after that, we just wandered through the woods, nobody saying much.”
Alex leaned in towards the offered Zippo. He had never taken up smoking, but he had never refused one of Buddy’s smokes either; it tasted sweeter than he remembered, almost like treacle. “Didn’t we wind back around to the playing field, then head back towards school?”
“That’s right. We went back to see if Mary was still looking for us.”
“We were worried that someone had come to take her, like they took David.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, that’s what I think we were doing. Why else would we trudge all the way back?”
“Alright, alright. We were worried about her. But what does it matter what we did on the actual day? Tom didn’t go off like he did in the dream.”
Alex’s eyes opened wide. Buddy gave him a knowing nod that said, Yeah, me too. Alex took a large drag, and had to steady himself against the floor, which seemed to rock slightly. Talking about a shared dream was like talking to himself. “Yeah, but that’s my point. When we all got back to the school grounds, Mary was still there. Do you remember?”
Buddy’s eyes lit up.
“She hadn’t been crying or anything, and she didn’t really look that upset, either. She was just sitting against the school doors, watching us pass by.”
“And that was the end of the old gang,” Buddy said. “Right there and then. She just said something like, ‘See you at school’. And, I don’t know about you, but I knew it was over between the four of us.”
“We all knew.” Alex crossed his legs and continued to smoke. Watching the blue smoke wisp and curl into the bright nothing, the same combination of exhilaration and sadness he had felt about leaving school flowed through him once more.
“Well, don’t you see? It’s the differences between what happened and what we’re dreaming about that fit in with the deaths. Tom wandered off on his own in this last one, and now he’s dead. I’d bet you anything that when Mary dreamed about that day, something different happened after we left.”
“Whatever it was, it was the thing that killed her.”
“Exactly.”
“There’s one problem though, Alex. This isn’t A Nightmare On Elm Street. We can’t start stocking up on coffee and trying to fight Freddy Kruger or whoever it is that’s messing around with us. The idea’s bollocks.”
“You’re the one that said that someone was out to get us.”
“I know, I know. But all this stuff about dreaming’s getting us nowhere. I was more meaning that someone knows about what we did way back when, and has decided to punish us.”
“Okay then, who?”
“I don’t know. Apart from us, no one seems to remember how Mary and Tom knew each other. But maybe there’s other things we could find out. Maybe we might be able to spot things others wouldn’t.”
“Meaning?”
Buddy stood up and dusted down his trousers. Alex ditched the first cigarette he’d smoked in five years, stood up, and ground it underfoot.
“Meaning that maybe we could cook up some excitement for ourselves tonight.”
Alex stared at his old friend and marvelled at the fact that, although he had only been back in Buddy’s company for half an hour, he was already willing to do something illegal just for the hell of it. He also realised he was grinning.
“I guess it’s better that we do something,” he said, “rather than sit around doing nothing.”