Illegal scientists, like my mother, love the ghosts. She goes on expeditions across poppy fields and cliffs, secretly taking photographs, which she develops in special chemicals. We stick them on the basement walls, all sizes and colours and fantastic shapes. Sometimes my mother invites these spirits home for dinner and I get to feed them their favourite food: electricity. They hum and fizz like jellyfish and dance around in circles. Then they giggle, giggle, giggle. We record their sounds and guess their names before they fly away.
The only ghosts we sell at the market are the ones I steal from school. Mum says we have to have a stall for show, but we only sell to jar-breakers. Not to priest-doctors or witches or anyone else. Though once I gave a ghost to a very old man who said he needed company. I told him to open the jar when he got home, introduce himself calmly and see if the ghost wanted to stay.
I think about him sometimes. I wonder how he’s getting on.
History:
Do you feel the presence of the past in your breath?
My grandma used to sit me on her knee to tell me stories about the early ghosts. The first one she’d ever seen hovered over the Green Sea, like fog. Except it moved with purpose and it was magenta, and when she closed her eyes she could hear it singing in a language she’d never heard before.
‘I think that ghost came from another country,’ Grandma said. ‘Some shipwrecked spirit, roaming. Looking for another home.’
Then came reports of ghosts interfering with radio waves, floating through TV screens. An Other, from goodness knows where, until we realised we’d started birthing them ourselves. Like cold breath in the morning, except, with that breath, a memory escaped, too. A little part of us, pushed into the air: up, up and away.
‘And here we are,’ my grandma whispered, surrounded by ghosts. One hugged her chest, and she patted its head. ‘Some say we’ve become ugly. They think that we’re dying. I say: look at all the colours, floating in the air.’
The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night
It’s 3 a.m. Everything’s quiet, bar the sound of a clock on the bedroom wall. JULIAN is in bed. EVELYN is sitting by the window, looking out at the garden.
EVELYN [whispers]: Julian … Psst. Julian!
[Pause]
EVELYN [louder]: JULIAN!
[There’s a thump as EVELYN throws a pillow at the bed. JULIAN stirs]
JULIAN: Huh?
EVELYN: Have you looked at the tree?
JULIAN [yawning]: What?
EVELYN: The apple tree, outside. Have you looked at it?
JULIAN: Apple tree …?
EVELYN: Yes.
JULIAN: Evelyn … It’s … it’s three in the morning!
EVELYN: Well, that’s not answering my question.
JULIAN: It’s answer enough for three in the morning. I’m not getting out of bed to come and stare at a tree.
EVELYN: Fine.
[Pause]
JULIAN: What’s so exciting about it, anyway?
EVELYN: I love this tree, you know I do.
JULIAN: I do?
EVELYN: It’s the one you proposed under.
JULIAN: Oh, that one. Is there any particular reason you’re staring at it? I can’t imagine it’s doing much.
EVELYN: That’s exactly what it’s doing. Absolutely nothing. I’m just trying to catch it off guard.
JULIAN [confused]: Well, once you’ve worked out how to catch a tree off guard, please do let me know. Come on, come back to bed. You’ve got to be up early tomorrow. Well, today.
EVELYN: I know, but this is just – it’s been bugging me. You pruned the branches and they’re already sprouting back again.
JULIAN: That’s what trees do, Evelyn. You’ve got to cut them back so they can grow.
EVELYN: But I’ve never witnessed this tree actually growing. It was simply not there at all, and then suddenly – bam – it’s everywhere.
JULIAN: Things creep up on you.
EVELYN: Hmmm.
JULIAN: Come to bed.
EVELYN: But … Where do you think it begins?
JULIAN: Where does what begin?
EVELYN: The tree. Keep up.
JULIAN: Oh.
EVELYN: When did it begin growing, I mean? It was in the garden before we moved in, but I don’t know if it’s been on the earth longer than we have, for instance. How could we find that out? Is there a record somewhere?
JULIAN: … I don’t know.
EVELYN: Where does anything begin, anyway? Where do things start?
JULIAN: I’m too tired to think about it.
EVELYN: All beginnings begin at their beginnings, where they belong.
JULIAN: Right.
EVELYN: There are many beginnings, though. Somewhere, underground, there should be a massive row of filing cabinets, winding and branching out across the country. And each of them should contain everyone’s – and everything’s – beginnings. Labelled properly. Correctly. Where we can see them.
JULIAN [sarcastically]: Underground, where we can see them?
EVELYN: You know, you’re very talkative for someone who can’t be bothered to get out of bed to look at a tree, worrying about me having to ‘get up early tomorrow morning’.
JULIAN: Not tomorrow, today.
EVELYN: Whatever. Where do days begin?
JULIAN: Now you’re just being silly.
[Pause]
EVELYN: I think, tomorrow—
JULIAN: —today?
EVELYN: Today. I’m going to write our names on our tree outside.
JULIAN: Why?
EVELYN: I’ll use one of the kitchen knives.
JULIAN: Don’t go using one of my good knives; you’ll ruin it. Anyway, I thought you’d be worried about hurting that bloody tree, seeing as you love it so much.
EVELYN: They’re made of strong stuff.
[Pause]
EVELYN [sighing]: They won’t cut it down, will they?
JULIAN: I don’t know. There was another letter through about it today.
EVELYN: Did you read it?
JULIAN: I skimmed it. It’s downstairs somewhere.
EVELYN: Where?
JULIAN: I don’t know. Somewhere. I’ll find it in the morning.
EVELYN: They can’t cut it down. It has great sentimental value. And they definitely and absolutely can’t cut it down if it has our names written on it. That would be like taking an axe to our souls.
JULIAN: That’s a bit dramatic.
EVELYN: It would be, though. Carving our names into the wood would indicate that the tree contains our inner selves. As though we’d put them into another living thing. For safekeeping.
JULIAN: Hardly safekeeping if there’s a threat of said tree being cut down by the council.
EVELYN: That man next door is such a pathetic git. What was it he said? That the branches block his sunlight? Well. It’s our sunlight, or lack thereof, too, and I enjoy both that and our tree in equal measure.
JULIAN: You would. But that’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying that the roots of the tree are going into his garden and are damaging the base of his house.
EVELYN: Evil man. Making up rubbish.
JULIAN: Evelyn, he says that his living-room floor is beginning to tilt.
EVELYN: He probably only thinks that because he spends his afternoons drinking. Everything tilts to him. He can’t even walk straight.
JULIAN: Now I think you’re talking rubbish, Evelyn.
EVELYN: I have seen that man drinking!
JULIAN: When?
EVELYN: Well, I er … He drank that wine we offered him when we invited him over for our house-warming a few years ago.
JULIAN: I seem to remember you drinking your fair share of wine that night, too.
EVELYN: Yes, but I’m not the one who says her living-room floor is tilting.
JULIAN: That’s because ours isn’t.
EVELYN: Hmmm.
[Pause]
EVELYN: Julian?
JULIAN: … Yes?
EVELYN: Are you still awake?
JULIAN: … No.
EVELYN: Oh.
[Pause]
EVELYN: Julian?
JULIAN: … YES?
EVELYN: I think you’re lying.