Bryony Pearce - The Weight of Souls

“You think I’m going to hell for you? If it’s a case of me or Tamsin, I know who to pick.” I curled my lip. “You don’t believe in the Mark anyway.” He lurched towards me and I stepped out of his reach. “Don’t touch me.”

“You… you bitch.” The flesh of Justin’s face was paler than ever. His hair flopped over his forehead and his eyes were wild.

“You think you can get away with anything because you’re cool and good-looking and everyone likes you. Well, things have changed, Hargreaves. No one knows you’re even here. No one but me that is. And I don’t like you. So tell me how you died.”

Justin’s fists clenched compulsively. “I was going to tell you. You didn’t need to threaten me. I just needed a bit of time.”

I cradled my Marked hand as if it was burnt. “It’s not simple any more. We’ve got to work out who killed you before I can Mark them. Who knows how long that’ll take? You’ve had time. Now you have to talk.”

Justin hung his head. “Can we at least talk outside?”

I nodded. “Fine. But you’re telling me what happened.”

The clouds outside were low and the late afternoon looked more like early evening. We stood on the pavement at the crossing outside South Ken tube station and silently watched the river of traffic pour past.

Justin shuddered each time a body passed through a part of him, but to the press of people heading to one of the three museums he was nothing but air.

I turned from his discomfort and watched two teenaged boys swagger from the station. Earphones still dangled from their ears and they talked loudly over their music. So loudly I could hear them over the other noise.

“Dude, did you hear? They found a dead kid in the building site round the corner from me.”

“No way, man.”

“It was just on the news, aren’t you listening?”

“Radio bores me.” He patted his iPod. “I’m playing tracks.”

“Whatever. They reckon he slipped from the scaffolding.” The boy’s watch jangled as he gestured. “It’s creepy. The police have been looking for him and the whole time he was just lying there round the corner from our bus stop. If the developer hadn't run out of money they'd have found him a week ago, but no one's been working on the site.”

His friend hissed. “Nasty. Maybe he was high then his crew ran out on him.”

“Or he’s a total Darwin Award.” They nodded together.

I turned my head to track the conversation.

“I must’ve walked past him, like, three times.”

“How old was he?”

“Our age. I’ll get such a lecture when I get home.” He put on a falsetto voice, his Mum’s. “ You keep away from that building site. No climbing on scaffolding .”

I couldn’t help myself. I shouldered a tourist aside and took a step away from the road. “Excuse me.” The boys turned. “The boy you were talking about, the one that’s been found. What was his name?” Their eyes widened at the interruption and I quickly explained myself. “There’s a boy at my school gone missing.”

The boys relaxed and the taller one gestured at his iPod. “It was just on the news. It was Justin something. Hargreaves I think. Yeah, Justin Hargreaves.” He scratched his chin. “So, is it him? Did you know him?”

“Yes. That’s him.” In front of me Justin had frozen.

The smaller of the boys shuffled his feet. “Harsh.”

I glanced behind me as Justin’s shoulders started shuddering. I pressed my lips together. “Well, thanks.”

“See ya.” The boys took off and I moved back to the edge of the pedestrian crossing. The light remained red and the traffic still sped past.

I took a breath. “You heard?”

Justin said nothing. I didn’t dare step forward to look at him in case I was knocked into the road, but his back was stiff as marble. “I guess you did.”

Slowly he started to shake his head. His hair flipped around his collar as he moved faster and faster.

He was about to run. Without thinking I touched his sleeve with my fingers. A businessman standing next to me moved sideways with a frown. I ignored him. “It had to happen some time. Someone had to find your body.”

“No.”

Terrified I was going to lose him again I closed my hand around his forearm. “You knew you were dead,” I murmured.

“Not like this. Not…” He fell silent. Then he shook his arm free of mine. The traffic screeched to a halt and the green man started to flash. “Let’s go.”

We crossed the road and Justin carried on walking.

“Where’re we going?” I scurried to keep up with him and adjusted my bag.

“Princes Gardens, it isn’t far.”

“Right.”

We turned the corner and I disturbed two pigeons pecking at a discarded McDonald’s wrapper. My looming shadow made them jerk back, but they kept pulling at the manky bun with frantic beaks, as if their heads were on elastic.

I shook my head and tucked my hands under my armpits. Then the boy’s words came back to me: his crew . Maybe Justin hadn’t been on drugs, but he hadn’t been alone either. I thought about the last time I’d seen him alive.

“Were you with Tamsin?”

“Huh?” Justin’s eyes when he turned to me were red-rimmed.

“You’re in your uniform. You must’ve died Friday night.”

Justin turned his head to watch the pecking birds.

I was about to push him further when my palm tingled. I clenched my fist and the shadows beneath a Kensington-monogrammed bin caught my eye. I shivered; right at that moment there was nothing passing to make those shadows move, yet they were twisting as if caught in a trap.

A breeze lifted my hair from my ears as I did a quick scan of Princes Gardens. It was filled with gasping grey-tinged trees choking in the polluted London air. They weren’t dead enough to bother me.

Apart from Justin and myself, there was only an old guy slumped in the shade on a bench next to a building marked “The Goethe Institute”. His hat was pulled down low over his ears; who knew how long he’d been there.

Satisfied that the place was safe for me, I sat with my back against a tree and wriggled between its roots until I was comfortable.

Justin looked as if he wanted to lean on the tree himself but it had too much life-force to support him.

He stretched out on the grass. “I can’t even feel this.” He went to pluck a blade and his fingers came up empty. “It’s like lying on cardboard.”

He fidgeted and rolled until my glare pulled him up short. “Did it go down like those boys said?” I asked.

“That I was climbing scaffolding?” Justin rolled until he was staring at the cloud-pocked sky.

“Were you?”

His head lolled towards me, his expression such a blend of defiance and misery I knew what he was going to say.

“Yes.” He cast his elbow over his face. “I’ll always be the stupid waster who killed himself climbing wet scaffolding. That’s going to be all anyone remembers about my life. What a legacy.”

I shrugged, scraping my shoulder against bark. “At least you’ll be remembered.”

Justin jerked.

“I mean it.” I inhaled and the scent of shorn grass relaxed me. “Sometimes I have to look people up, find addresses, that sort of thing, and when I start asking questions no one remembers the dead guy. It’s like he never lived. That must be hard to find out. For the ghost, I mean.”

Justin thumped the ground. No dirt puffed under his fist. “I’ll be remembered as an idiot.”

I shrugged. “If it helps, I would have remembered you as an idiot anyway.”

He inhaled sharply and I raised my hand. “Sorry, let’s not do this again. Can you talk about what happened now?”