Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

Dear Robbie,

Thanks for the stuff you sent me. It was great. It’s cool that we’re interested in the same things and OF COURSE I won’t stop writing to you.

But DON’T WORRY! I know things can seem really bad but like my nan says it’s always darkest before the dawn and I know this is going to work out for you and you’ll get away from that awful place. Just HANG ON IN THERE and thanks for sharing this with me, I feel really privileged.

Look, Robbie, I’ve got a lot to do with exams and stuff coming up, so if you don’t hear from me for a bit don’t think I’ve forgotten, all right. Love and GOOD LUCK!

Merrily read it again. There was no signature.

‘Well done, Mrs Watkins,’ Mumford said.

‘It looks like he’s copied the e-mail onto a document, deleting the signature and the e-mail address. He’s hidden it away where nobody’s likely to look for it and if anyone finds it they won’t know who sent it.’

‘Mabbe scared of his mother or Mathiesson getting into his computer when he en’t around.’ Mumford scrolled up. ‘Hang on, here’s another.’

Dear Robbie

You’ve made me cry. I just wept when I read your mail. Those bastards! You can’t let them do these things to you. You have to tell someone, do you understand? You could even tell the police, never mind about your stepfather or whatever he is. You’ve got to do something, do you understand? I’ll tell the police for you if you want, I don’t mind. Just DO SOMETHING!

love

‘I take it all back,’ Merrily said.

‘You didn’t say anything.’

‘I thought it. I thought you were making something out of nothing.’

Mumford scrolled up again. No more e-mails.

‘We need to go through everything, Mrs Watkins, no matter how unpromising. He’s probably got stuff scattered all over the place.’

Merrily read the last one again. ‘Obviously a girl. A boy would never admit to crying. It’s also someone close to his age…’

‘Because she talks about exams.’

‘And if we assume the last one was sent first…’

‘Then he’s replied to it, obviously,’ Mumford said. ‘He’s replied and deleted his reply from his own computer. He’s upset he’s made her cry, and so he’s saying, Oh, things en’t that bad. And he’s told her something. And he’s sent her something.’

‘ “Thanks for sharing this with me”… what’s that mean?’

‘Sounds like he’s told her about some plan for getting away. Right.’ Mumford straightened up, rubbing his hands. ‘I’m taking this computer home. Then I’m gonner come back tomorrow and talk to Angela. You agree? I en’t overreacting?’

‘No, you’re not overreacting.’

‘Accident – balls,’ Mumford said. ‘That boy killed hisself.’

‘It’s starting to look more like it.’

‘And if I—’

Mumford spun round as the garage door came up suddenly and violently, like a car crash. Breath shot into Merrily’s throat and she toppled a box with her elbow, spraying books across the floor. She saw still figures in the gaping night.

Silence except for a metallic chink.

There were four of them. One, in a hooded top, had something like a dog-chain doubled up and stretched between his fists, and he kept pulling it tight, letting it go, snapping it tight.

Chink.

THE CLAUSTROPHOBIA IN the Departure Lounge was so intense that Jane had to go into the kitchen for a glass of water. Didn’t like this at all any more.

Dipping into the Internet was sometimes like lowering yourself into hidden catacombs or potholing. Going down… click, click, click… one site dropping into a deeper site, crawling through narrow tunnels, until you found you’d sunk so far that, when you looked up, the patch of light over your head had totally vanished, and the air was too filthy to breathe.

Of course, she knew what this was: too many bad experiences with confined underground places linked with death – the cellar at Chapel House, the crypt of Hereford Cathedral. It was close to phobic, and she resented that but it still didn’t mean she could handle it.

She filled a tumbler with sparkling water. All she needed now was a bottle of old-fashioned aspirin to wash down. Twenty should do it, right?

Naw, twenty is nowhere near enough , Karone the Boatman, from Nevada, had written for the benefit of Dolores, from Wisconsin. Ya don’t just wanna be sick …

Jane had started with the new teen-oriented search-engine I Wanna, which dealt mostly with shopping wannas. Shopping to topping yourself was quite a long and tortuous trip and meant circumnavigating all the agony-aunt sites that wanted to talk you out of it.

But she was getting better at this, nearly as good as Eirion now at knowing what to look for. Which was how she’d wound up with the disgusting Karone the Boatman in the Departure Lounge.

Welcome to the Departure Lounge. Take a seat. You are among the best friends you have ever had, perhaps your last good friends. Help yourself to a drink (see our wine list, left). Listen to some music (see our selection, right).

As you can see, the Departure Lounge has two doors. You may leave at any time, through the door on the right. Or you may choose, if invited, to enter, through the left-hand door, into the Inner Lounge.

If invited? It was confusing. The walls of the Departure Lounge kept shrinking and expanding, and the doors on both right and left would alternate from black to white, and sometimes they were both grey. This was technically quite a sophisticated site. More sophisticated, at least, than some of the sickos who hung around in the virtual lounge like virtual pimps.

Karone the Boatman, from Nevada? Jane guessed he’d taken his name from Charon, the boatman who ferried the dead across the Styx in Greek myths… only he’d never read any Greek myths; someone had probably just told him the name, mispronouncing it, and he’d never even bothered to check it out. She pictured some earnest, humourless, semi-literate, burger-munching git in a sweaty baseball cap, who was arrogant enough to imagine it was his mission in life to help other people end theirs.

Karone kept printing up a link to his personal website, on which Jane had tentatively clicked, thus learning how to make a foolproof noose. Shutting down the site at this point, before slime could start oozing through the monitor.

She went back and perused the music selection: some classical stuff and a few names Jane hadn’t heard of. Plus Leonard Cohen’s ‘Dress Rehearsal Rag’, which it said Cohen had banned himself from singing – was this a joke? – and a song called ‘Gloomy Sunday’, which definitely was not a joke.

God.

‘Gloomy Sunday’ – also known as ‘The Hungarian Suicide Song’ – had been written and recorded in 1933 by Rezso Seress after breaking up with his girlfriend.

In the song she dies and he decides to follow her. The actual girlfriend later killed herself, leaving a note saying only ‘Gloomy Sunday’. Rezso Seress himself jumped to his death from his apartment in 1968.

‘Jumped to his death.’ Jane found that she’d whispered it.

She was starting not to like this. She learned that the song had been banned by the BBC and other broadcasters because it had been linked to so many suicides, some within the music business – one of the more recent had been one by the Scottish duo, The Associates, who’d recorded it in 1980.

But the most sinister version remained the original, which had recently been cleaned up. It was said to promote nightmares, depression and irrational fear in listeners, but was not available for downloading on this particular site.