‘I call them verses, not chapters. You’ll find it’s a bit of everything, poetry, philosophy, you name it. Unique. You could even say it’s theological, a religion. It’ll be one, I’m sure of it. And when it’s all nicely typed and ready, we’ll take it to your agent. He can negotiate with your publisher, like he does with your stuff. But that’s ten years’ work on that table and in those files. I don’t want to get ripped off.’
Seb had nothing more to say. He’d run dry of everything, language, hope, even feeling that particular kind of despair constructed from boredom and pity. He yawned, stood up and left the room.
Ewan appeared puzzled by Seb’s departure. ‘Where are you going?’
Downstairs, Seb closed the door to his room and killed the lights. Still wearing his dressing gown, he slumped onto the bed. Physical and mental exhaustion slowed his thoughts towards paralysis. He slipped earphones inside his ears and selected Beethoven on his MP3 player.
When Seb felt able to leave his room again, in the early evening, the first thing he smelled in the corridor outside his bedroom was Ewan.
During the hours he’d been alone in his room, he’d decided he would read the stinking pages of Ewan’s manuscript. He’d do that this evening. If Ewan then refused to leave his home, and to take up residency in a guest house at Seb’s expense, he’d call the police. He would risk whatever it was that Ewan decided to cast at him, whether he was awake or asleep. If this didn’t end now, he sensed that a turning point in his life was imminent. One just ahead of him that would swing him about and compel him to revisit the hardest and unhappiest years of his life. It was that simple.
Still tired and delicate, as if hungover from that day’s binge of emotion, Seb went upstairs and checked the living room.
Ewan wasn’t inside but the television was still on, as were the ceiling lights and a lamp on a side table. The bulging bin liners and rucksack were still in place beside Seb’s favourite chair. Cider cans littered the floor, the rug was stained in three places and the floorboards were tacky from spillages.
Seb turned the television off. The house fell silent.
He searched for his guest and found him behind a closed door on the first floor, passed out, mouth hanging open, lying on his back. He’d eventually gone into one of the guest bedrooms and climbed onto a bed, fully dressed. There was a long, arcing smudge of dirt at the foot of the white duvet cover. Seb anticipated burning the bedclothes in the garden later.
Maudlin and feeling sorry for himself, Seb returned to the living room, removed the empty cans and dropped them into the recycler. Ewan had also eaten three bags of crisps, two Magnum ice-creams that he’d found in Seb’s freezer, and put bread in the toaster but forgotten about it.
Methodically, Seb cleared away the mess.
At seven he rinsed the mop he’d used on the living-room floor a final time and straightened his spine, rubbing his lower lumbar. And immediately became dizzy as if the blood had drained from his head.
Blinking rapidly, he tried to clear his eyes of the red motes of light that fell through his darkening vision. The ambient sounds of the room, and the sea beyond the nearby cliffs, retreated as if sucked down a drain. Sensing a scrutiny from behind, he turned.
Ewan stood at the far end of the dining room, seeming taller than ever, his form entirely dark save for the bloodless face. Seb dropped the mop.
Ewan smiled and stretched out a long arm to point into the living room, to somewhere near Seb. Through the unnatural silence came Ewan’s voice, but in a tone that was older and gentler, even emotionless. For a moment Seb was unsure whether the voice sounded from within the house or inside his head.
Work to be done.
Seb stepped backwards and submitted to an overpowering compulsion to look down. The first thing his startled eyes settled upon was the stained covering sheet of Ewan’s manuscript, spread out on the coffee table. Breathe in the Astral.
Seb peered back at the doorway. Ewan had vanished.
Through the open balcony doors returned the distant buzz of a lawnmower, the soft hum of a car engine, the song of the thrushes in the garden below.
Inside the kitchen, a room now pungent with lemon disinfectant and bleach, there was no sign of Ewan.
Unsteadily at first, but gathering purpose as he moved, Seb walked downstairs to the bedroom that Ewan had occupied.
And found him lying upon the bed. His eyes were closed but twitching. His chest rose and fell.
You have no idea. No idea. Ewan’s voice announced itself from behind Seb, or again from within.
Seb turned as if he were turning inside a dream, and in the hall outside he saw the black form of a man, Ewan, who stepped away, out of sight and deeper into the passage.
Seb forced himself to follow. He heard no footfall, not even his own, and passed into an empty hallway. There was no way that Ewan could have hidden himself in so short a time by making it into another room. Besides that, the man was still stretched out on a bed in the spare room.