A tiny catch of breath, almost a gasp, from somewhere else in that condensation of darkness.
I asked, ‘Why you?’
‘I told you. I couldn’t hear.’
‘This morning you said you and Chris weren’t close.’
‘We weren’t.’
‘So it’s not like he misses you so much, he had to come back and tell you that.’
Nothing.
‘Rebecca.’
‘Probably not. I guess. I don’t know.’
‘Not like he was secretly in love with you, no?’
‘No!’
I said, ‘You know how you looked, in there? Scared. Like, really scared.’
‘I saw a ghost. You’d be scared too.’
The raw flick of defiance: she didn’t sound like a mystery now, not like a danger. Sounded like a kid, just a teenage kid. The power was seeping out of her; fear was seeping in.
Julia said, ‘Don’t talk to him any more.’
I said, ‘Did you think he was going to hurt you?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Becs. Shut up.’
No way to tell if Julia was just wary, or if she was starting to understand. ‘But,’ I said, fast, ‘but Rebecca, I thought you liked Chris. You told us he was sound. Was that a lie? He was actually a dickhead?’
‘No. He wasn’t. He was kind.’
That flare of defiance again, hotter. This mattered to her.
I shrugged. ‘Everything we’ve learned, he sounds like a dickhead. He used girls for whatever he could get, dumped them as soon as he wasn’t getting it. A real prize.’
‘No. Colm’s is full of those – they don’t care what they wreck, they’ll do anything to anyone as long as they get what they want. I know the difference. Chris wasn’t like that.’
The white outline moved. Things rising up underneath it, bubbling.
Rebecca felt them. She said, ‘I know the stuff he did. Obviously I know he wasn’t perfect. But he wasn’t like the rest of them.’
A raw choke that could have been a laugh, out of Julia.
‘Lenie. He wasn’t. Was he?’
Selena moved. She said, ‘He was a lot of things.’
‘Lenie.’
They had forgotten me. Selena said, ‘He wanted not to be like them. He tried really hard. I don’t know how much it worked.’
‘It did.’ Rebecca’s voice was spiralling towards panic. ‘It worked.’
That ugly twist of sound again, from Julia.
‘It did. It did.’
Something crunched behind me, a branch whipped. Something was happening. I couldn’t tell what, couldn’t afford to turn. Had to trust Conway and keep going.
I said, ‘So how come you were scared of his ghost? Why would it want to hurt you, if Chris never would’ve?’
Julia said, ‘Specially since it’s not fucking real. Becca? Hello? They made you imagine it like some Omen thing. If you decide to imagine it as a purple turtle instead, then that’s what you’ll see. Hello?’
‘Hello yourself, I saw him—’
‘Rebecca. Why would it want to hurt you?’
‘Because ghosts are angry. You guys said that, remember? This afternoon.’ But the panic was taking up more and more of Rebecca’s voice. ‘And anyway, he didn’t hurt me.’
I said, ‘This time he didn’t. What about next time?’
‘Who says there’ll be a next time?’
‘I do. Chris had something to say to you, something he wants from you, and he didn’t get through. He’ll be back. Again and again, till he gets what he wants.’
‘He won’t. It was because you were here, you got him all—’
‘Selena,’ I said. ‘You know he was there. You want to tell us whether you think he’ll be back?’
In the slow fall of silence, I heard something. Murmur of voices, away down at the bottom of the slope. A man. A girl.
Closer, in the cypresses behind me: a sound like the muted first breath of a roar. Conway, moving among the braches to cover the voices. ‘Selena,’ I said. ‘Is Chris going to be back?’
Selena said, ‘He’s there the whole time. Even when I don’t see him, I can feel him. I hear him, like this humming noise right inside the backs of my ears, like when the telly’s on mute. All the time.’
I believed her. Believed every word. I said, heard the hoarse note in my voice, ‘What does he want?’
‘At first I was sure he was looking for me. Oh God I tried so hard but I could never make him see me, he never heard me, I was begging him Chris I’m here I’m right here but he just looked right past me and kept doing whatever he was doing, I tried to hold him but he just dissolved before I could—’
A high keening sound from Rebecca.
‘I thought it was because we weren’t allowed, like punishment, always looking for each other but we’d never be allowed to— But it’s because it isn’t me he wants. All that time—’
Julia said, ‘Shut up.’
‘All that time, he was never looking for—’
‘Jesus Christ, can you shut up?’
Something like a sob, from Selena. Then nothing. The low roar among the cypresses wavered through the air and was gone, rock in a cold pool. The voices at the bottom of the slope sank with it.
Rebecca said, in the empty space, ‘Lenie. What’s he want?’
Julia said, ‘Can we please fucking please talk about it later?’
‘Why? I’m not scared of him.’ Me.
‘Then duh, start paying attention. He’s the only thing we need to be scared of. There isn’t anything else. This ghost bullshit—’
‘Lenie. What do you think he wants? Chris?’
‘OhmyGod, he doesn’t fucking exist, what do I have to do—’
Kids fighting, they sounded like. That was all. Not like Joanne’s lot, cheap sneer-and-peck by numbers, every word and thought worn threadbare before it ever reached them, not that; but not the enchanted girls, soaring among tumbling arpeggios of gold, that I had come hoping for just that morning. What I had seen before, that triple power, that had been the last flicker of something lost a long time ago. Light from a dead star.
‘Lenie. Lenie. Is it me he’s after?’
Selena said, ‘I wanted it to be me so much.’
The rune shimmered and crumpled. One fragment snapped off that solid dark mass, found a shape of its own: Rebecca. Sliver-thin, kneeling on the grass.
She said, to me: ‘I didn’t think it was going to be Chris.’
I said, ‘The ghost?’
Rebecca shook her head. She said, simply, ‘No, when I texted him to meet me here. I didn’t know who it was going to be. I’d’ve bet anything it wouldn’t be Chris.’
‘Oh, Becs,’ Julia said. She sounded folded over a gut-punch. ‘Oh, Becs.’
In the cypress shadow behind me, Conway said, ‘You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence. Do you understand?’
Rebecca nodded. She looked frozen to the bones, too cold even to shiver.
I said, ‘So when you got here that night, you were expecting to meet one of the dickheads.’