The Weight of Souls

15 REMEMBERED AS AN IDIOT

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?”

Justin exhaled. “OK.” He continued to stare up through his crooked elbow. “It’s all blurry, like a bad dream.”

“That could be because of the trauma,” I shrugged. “Or maybe you haven’t really accepted what happened. Most of the dead that track me down have been that way for years. They’ve had time to get used to it, to dwell.” I scraped my scalp on tree bark as I shook my head. “Just tell me what you can.”

“I still don’t think I was murdered.”

There was nothing left to say. I glared and Justin’s lower lip disappeared under his teeth. “Fine, OK. I don’t really know where to start.”

I twitched and anger started to fill me again as if I was a waiting jug.

“No, listen, there’s stuff you don’t know. Background. It's important.”

Across the path the trees shadows lengthened as if the sun had jumped across the sky. I held my elbows and watched the movement closely. It stopped.

“Go on then,” I sighed. “Tell me everything.”

Justin rolled onto his stomach and rested his chin on his palm. For one tiny half-second with the scent of grass in my nose and the feel of the tree at my back, I forgot to hate the boy lying in front of me.

It didn’t seem so bad that he’d called me Godzilla, or that he was now one of the hounding dead. It felt like a normal moment with a boy from school, something I hadn’t had for years. Five years.

Then his dark eyes looked inward and he gave a sort of shrug. “It started on my first day. James made me play Truth or Dare. You told me to take the dare.” His eyes narrowed. “You had to have known how bad it would be.”

My jaw slackened. “How could I have known?”

His glare intensified. “You knew James. I didn’t.” He shook his head. “I had to make Mrs Pickard cry. On my first day I told her she smelled and made the whole class laugh. Dad went nuts.” His own jaw tightened. “James thought it was great.”

I nodded. “The Truth or Dare thing was a bit of a craze for a while.” I tried a smile that felt uncomfortably like a too-tight mask.

As Justin’s face hardened my breath stopped. His eyes suddenly seemed darker than the tentacular shadows cast by the tree branches. “You thought the game went away?” His voice was bitter as dark chocolate.

“Well, yes. It was banned,” I frowned. “Oz smoked that whole pack of cigarettes one break and had to go to hospital.”

Memories swirled like fudge in the recesses of my mind. That time was kind of a blur for me. Back then it was as if school had stopped being real, as if my life only happened when the dead forced me to dance for them.

“The game didn’t die.” Justin shook his head. “It went underground. It evolved.”

“You make it sound–”

“It isn’t really a game, Oh.” Justin was no longer looking at me. His eyelids seemed half closed, threaded by a network of tiny blue veins as he stared downwards at an ant scurrying through the grass. “It’s more like a way of life. If you want to play, if you want to be ‘cool’, you have to join the V club. V for Veritas. Truth.”

“James came up with that? It doesn't sound like his style.”

Justin shook his head. “The club isn't James’ baby. It's been around for a while. I think his stepbrother put him onto it. There’s even a motto: Qui audet vincit. Who dares wins.”

“Wait a minute, didn't Mr Barnes say that?”

Justin nodded. “I think the club has been around for longer than even James realises.”

“But Mr Barnes...”

Justin’s eyes flashed upwards. “Once you’ve done the initiation and joined the club, you’re in for life.”

“You think he’s an old member? Don’t you think we would have heard something about it?”

Justin shook his head. “There’s no talking about it with outsiders, no telling what’s said in the confessional, that’s where we hear truths. There’s no discussing the dares. If anything goes wrong, there’s no admitting that you were doing something for V.”

“Pete’s in your stupid club, isn’t he?” I thought about my friend, how, just after our fight, he’d suddenly become popular.

Justin nodded.

“But how can you say you’re in the club for life? What happens when you all go to uni or whatever?”

Justin swung into a sitting position and crossed his legs. “Something was going to happen at the end of this year. James had a dare, something huge involving everyone. Something so big it would tie us together for life.”

I leaned forward. “Why don’t you just say no?”

Justin’s long fingers weaved in and out of his fists. “You don’t understand. When you’re there, with everyone watching, you follow the rules. You just do.”

“So take truth. After all this time there can’t be much they don’t know about you.”

Justin fidgeted. “The rules are a bit more complicated than that, mostly it’s easier to take the dare.” He twisted his tie between his fingers. “Anyway, what’s important is what happened Friday night, right?”

He dropped his tie and his hands lay on his lap like poisoned spiders.

I nodded. “Tell me.”

His fingers twitched, but didn’t rise. “You can probably guess, I was doing something for the club.”

“A dare.”

“I was hoping it was my last one.”

“It was.”

His hands curled into fists. “I had a plan. It should have got me out. But I had to do this one last big thing. I had to climb to the top of the scaffolding and walk along one of the pipes. It was only maybe fifty centimetres or so without a handhold.”

“If this is what the dares are like, I’m surprised no one’s died earlier.”

“The stuff we’ve been doing, it’s only been getting really dangerous recently.” He groaned. “I know how it sounds. It’s one reason I didn’t want to talk about it.” Justin looked away from me. “So now you know.”

“I need to know more. Did you go to the building site alone?”

“Dares have to be witnessed by at least three other people, and videoed. I went with–”

“James, Harley, Pete and Tamsin.”

“Right.” He hunched his back. “You saw us on the bus after we checked it out the first time.”

“Well, what happened when you went back?”

“We got to the building site, there was a bit of banter and then I went up.”

“You didn’t see anyone else?”

“It was deserted, I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

“So… you went up,” I prompted him.

His shoulders tensed as if he was still climbing. “I must’ve reached the top. I-I remember stepping out onto the scaffolding. It hadn’t looked so high from down on the ground. The others waved to me. Tamsin blew me a kiss. I waved back.”

“And you fell?”

“No. I was holding on tight.” His hands closed around a bar that wasn’t there. “I gripped the best I could with my trainers and edged towards the bit without the handhold. Maybe I should have taken my trainers off.” He glanced at his feet.

“Maybe.” I rubbed my eyes. “Then what?”

“I-I reached the bit with no handhold.”

“And you let go.”

“No! I could hear the wind below me. I could barely see Tammy. I stretched out as far as I could, so I wouldn’t have to be too long without holding on. But I didn’t let go of the bar behind me. I edged forward and my foot just slipped. It flew out from under me and I-I swung out. I was only holding on with one hand. I think I heard Tammy shout, but I’m not sure. Then I f-fell.”

I was silent for a moment. Justin’s cheeks were colourless and his hair was a black wing against his face.

I inhaled. “No one pushed you. No one distracted you.”

“No.” His voice was as colourless as his face. “See, I wasn’t murdered.”

I looked at my hand and then across at the barely twitching shadows. Across the park the old man had shifted position. I turned back to Justin. “You were murdered. I wonder if…”

“Hey, do you know that guy?” Justin pointed. The old man had levered himself up and was ambling across the garden towards us.

“No,” I dismissed him. “He’s just leaving the park. You need to focus.”

“It’s just that he keeps looking at you and there’s something about him.”

I lifted my spine from the tree trunk. “He keeps looking at me?” I frowned. “It looks like I’m talking to myself, Hargreaves, I’m going to get odd looks.” Still, I shifted onto my heels. “How long’s he been looking at me?”

“I haven’t been paying him much attention, Oh.”

As the old man drew near I studied him. His trousers were frayed at the bottom and his great coat was warm for the weather. But he was old. Old people liked to keep warm, didn’t they?

He kept his eyes cast down. When he reached the tree nearest me his head rose. Our eyes met. He touched the brim of his hat with twisted fingers, nodded and went as if to walk on. “Kids.”

Hope lit Justin’s eyes like a sunrise. “You can see me?”

“Crap.” The old man’s face twisted and he lunged at me.

I dove sideways and his arm hissed through the tree trunk where I’d been sitting.

“Geezer, what’re you doing?” Justin scrambled to his feet. The ghost ignored him, focused completely on me.

“I can’t take another Mark right now,” I cried. The Darkness was already moving and if he touched me I’d be carrying two Marks, with no idea who had killed Justin.

The ghost lurched towards me, grinning hugely. “You can help me. It won’t take long.”

I tried to get to my feet but slipped on the grass. “Leave me alone.”

The old man bent over me. His hooked nose had a bead of moisture on it. It trembled above my face as he reached for my cheek with cracked fingers. I scrabbled backwards but he was faster than he looked.

Suddenly he grunted and flew sideways.

I blinked. Justin had tackled him and now he had both arms round his waist. “Run,” he shouted.

I leaped to my feet. “Justin–”

“Go.”

The old man was wriggling and swearing viciously.

“Meet me at my house. Do you know where it is?”

“Pete pointed it out once.” He renewed his grip on the great brown coat. “Go.”

I looked back once. The old guy had removed his hat. He was hitting Justin with it and tears were streaming down his face.

Bloody dead people.