And then Kyle came home. I saw him looking at something I was holding. I looked down, mildly surprised to see the glass of whisky in my hand.
‘What are you doing home so early, Dad?’ Kyle asked.
I slurred out something about not feeling well.
I didn’t get better.
I lost my job. I lost my confidence. I lost all hope.
Until one morning I’d had enough. It wasn’t something I’d planned, it wasn’t something I had to build up to. I just woke up one morning and wondered, What’s the point?
Kyle was old enough to do without me. Londie sure as hell didn’t need me any more. I’d lost everything. So what was the point? Funny how I remember that morning better than all the previous month of mornings combined. Kyle made me breakfast, but my head was ringing and my stomach churning and I just couldn’t face it.
‘Dad, you need to eat. Whisky isn’t food!’ Kyle shouted, his voice amplifying the rate at which my head was pounding.
I shook my head, wishing to God that he’d shut up.
‘Dad, please eat. It’s only porridge.’
‘Kyle, will you piss off!’ I pushed him away.
As I poured myself a glass of the sickness and the cure, Kyle said quietly from behind me, ‘You’re a selfish bastard, Dad. At least Mum went through the door to leave me. You couldn’t even be bothered to do that. You just stayed put and left.’
I swung round, but Kyle was already out the door.
Tosser! I thought as I tossed back the hair of the dog.
And throughout the day I grew more and more angry. Three words played over and over in my head like some kind of tune I just couldn’t get rid of – What’s the point?
Kyle just didn’t appreciate what I was going through. Neither did Londie. Why didn’t they get that? I … cared for them both. I was brought up to be the man, to take care of my family, to be in charge. All those times I sat on the sofa or at the dinner table with my family and I just wanted to hold out my arms to them, to tell them how much … how much they meant to me.
But I couldn’t. It wasn’t what I was supposed to do. All my life I’ve done what I was supposed to do. Different thoughts stampeded through my head, corralled by the drink I couldn’t leave alone.
Hell! If Londie and Kyle needed proof of how much I loved them, then I’d give them proof. I glanced down at my watch: 3.50 p.m. Kyle would be home soon. Kyle … He wasn’t the only one hurting. I’d show him just what I was going through.
I went into the bathroom and found Londie’s bottle of sleeping pills in the cabinet. The bottle was three-quarters full. I took it and headed back downstairs. Sitting in Londie’s favourite armchair, my whisky glass in one hand, the uncapped bottle of pills in the other, I checked the time on my watch again: 3.57 p.m. Kyle would be home in what? Twenty minutes? Thirty max. I tilted back my head and poured the whole bottle of pills down my throat. They were dry and bitter on my tongue. I washed them down with the whisky but that sour taste still sat in my mouth. Leaning back, I closed my eyes. I waited until I began to feel sleepy, but I didn’t. I just felt hollow inside.
‘I love you, Londie,’ I whispered. ‘I love you, Kyle.’
I’d never said those words out loud before. They were slurred, almost incomprehensible, but I’d said them. And then it hit me. The words weren’t slurred with drink. They were slurred because my hold on life was slipping. What was I doing? I was being ridiculous, stupid.
What the hell was I doing?
Open your eyes, Tony. You need to be sick. Get this junk out of your system. Just open your eyes …
But I couldn’t. Gravity had changed. Every part of me was being dragged downwards. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. I was melting, merging into the chair.
For God’s sake, Tony, open your eyes …
I didn’t open my eyes again.
You see, Kyle didn’t come straight home. He went to his friend Steve’s house for a couple of hours. Why rush home to me? Why hurry home to clean up my alcohol-induced vomit and take off my dirty clothes and wash them and clean the house and do his homework and pretend to everyone outside that everything inside was just fine? Why run home to lies? So he stayed at his friend’s house. And I didn’t open my eyes again until it was too late … until it was over and I couldn’t come back.
And that’s when my nightmare truly began. Because hope was no longer something that was part of me. I’d relinquished that along with my life. It was only when it was too late to turn back that I realized what I’d done. I’d given up. I’d left my son Kyle behind.
How could I have forgotten about my son? The blinkers covering my eyes had been snatched away by Death and I saw my true self for the first time. And my reflection was jagged and misshapen, like looking in a broken mirror. Only it wasn’t the mirror that was broken, it was me. I could see it all now – the past and the present. The future was easy to see because I had none. Not any more.
If only I could turn back the hands of time, go back to yesterday, go back just a couple of hours to the moment when I opened the bathroom cabinet. If I could do it all again, I would close the cabinet door immediately, then go into my room and look at the photograph of Kyle, his mum and me in happier times. I’d cling to those happier times until they forced a smile from me. If I could only go back …
But life and death don’t work that way. My deepest regret was my son. I should never have left my son. I have to find a way, somehow, some way of letting him know how much he means to me. Please, God, let me find a way.
I can’t rest until I do.
I have one shot at this. One chance to get it right. I’ll have to pick my moment so carefully. A point in time when Kyle will be able to see me, to hear what I have to say. If I try to go to him now, he won’t hear me because he can’t hear anything. He’s too locked in his own grief to see anything outside himself. I wish I could show him that he’s not alone. But how? How?
Kyle’s thoughts have opened my eyes. His thoughts, like mine, now run along the lines, What’s the point?
I can’t let him think that. I won’t. I’m going to show him how wrong he is to think that. But how? How? And how do I make my way back from this place? This … Hell?
What have I done?
28
I LOOKED AT the man before me. I could see his trainers, his faded blue jeans, his grubby blue T-shirt with a stain in the middle. He was just as I’d found him all those months ago. I took a step towards him, wondering if my senses were deceiving me yet again.
‘Dad?’
The man raised his head to look straight at me. ‘At last,’ I heard him whisper. ‘At last.’
‘Dad!’
We were now less than a metre apart.
‘Hello, Kyle.’ Dad smiled at me, a smile like I’d never seen from him before. A smile that said so many things. Maybe I really was imagining things, because first and foremost the look on Dad’s face seemed to say … No, I had to be dreaming.
‘You’re the one who’s been calling me?’ I asked, astounded.
Dad nodded.
It was him. But how could it be? I didn’t understand.
‘Have you come to … take me with you?’ I whispered.
‘No, son.’ Dad shook his head, his eyes the root of the sadness on his face. ‘The last thing in the world I want is for you to end up in the same place as me. I needed to see you, to talk to you before it was too late.’
‘Too late for what?’ I asked.
Dad was standing in front of me. He was actually standing in front of me. I still couldn’t wrap my head around that. I needed to know who he was, what he was. ‘Are you … are you Death?’
‘No, I’m your dad.’ The twinkle in his eye was so recognizable, as was the slightly ironic smile. This was much more like the dad I remembered – before Mum left.
‘But you’re d-dead …’
Dad’s smile instantly fell away from his face. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about – and I don’t have much
time.’
What on earth could be so urgent that it’d bring my dad back from the grave?
And then Dad said the very last thing I’d expected. ‘Kyle, you’ve got to stop blaming everyone except me for what I did.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Son, I died,’ Dad said gently. ‘It wasn’t your mum’s fault. It was my decision, Kyle. My stupid decision. I’m the one who literally threw my life away.’
‘I know that.’
‘Then when are you going to stop punishing your mother?’
‘I’m not. It’s just … it’s just that …’ Like fizzy drink from a shaken bottle, the words erupted. ‘Mum didn’t want either of us when you were alive … I mean, around. It shouldn’t have taken your death to bring her back, not if she really wanted to be with me. But it doesn’t matter ’cause I don’t care. I don’t need her or her guilty conscience.’
Dad sighed. ‘The moment your mum heard what’d happened she came straight back. No one had to go out and find her, she came home. Doesn’t that tell you something?’
I didn’t answer.
‘And Kyle, when are you going to stop blaming yourself?’
‘Blaming myself?’
‘For my death,’ said Dad.
‘I don’t—’
‘Kyle …’ Dad spoke softly, shaking his head.
The lie died on my lips. I could feel tears stinging at my eyes.
‘What happened to me wasn’t your fault either,’ Dad continued.
‘If I’d come straight home from school instead of going round to Steve’s …’ I began, putting my secret thoughts into words for the very first time.
‘Kyle, what happened was my misguided way of trying to get your mum back,’ Dad said sombrely. ‘Maybe it was a desperate cry for help. But it wasn’t your mum’s fault and it certainly wasn’t yours. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame me for getting lost in a sea of guilt and more than a little self-pity. You’ve got to stop blaming yourself – you’re breaking my heart. And much worse than that, you’re beginning to think that what I did was right.’
How did he even know that?
Dad regarded me, waiting for me to deny it. We both knew I couldn’t. I was beginning to wonder more and more often, What’s the point?
How could he know that unless …?
‘Have you … have you been watching me all this time?’ I wasn’t too keen on that idea. ‘Have you been watching every little thing I’ve been doing?’
Dad did his best not to smile but failed miserably. ‘It’s not that I’ve been watching,’ he said, his lips still twitching. There was a pause as his smile slowly faded. ‘But I could sense you. I could sense how hurt you were inside – and how the feeling was beginning to swallow you up.’
‘Sense it – how?’
‘Kyle, when we die, we get to feel all the joy and all the pain we’ve brought to others. Except with you the feelings of pain didn’t stop, they just got worse,’ Dad said, his voice sorrowful. ‘Your pain became mine.’
‘So you did all this?’ I waved my hand at the destruction all around us.
‘Of course not, son. I don’t have the power to affect things in that way. Just being here is taking all my concentration.’
‘So no one caused this crash?’
‘The dead don’t have the power to affect events like this. It doesn’t work that way.’
‘So why appear here? Why now? Why not a month ago or six months ago?’
‘It took this crash and your friends’ nightmares and the very real presence of Death for you to accept me,’ said Dad.
‘Accept you?’
‘I needed your belief in the possibility of me before I could appear. Without that, I’d never have been strong enough to reach you. I couldn’t do it on my own.’
‘I don’t get it.’ I frowned.
‘If you don’t believe in anything outside yourself, then how can those things really affect you, how can they touch you? If you don’t believe in ghosts, one could be standing right in front of you and you’d never see it. To butcher a line from one of your mum’s favourite films – if you don’t have a dream, how will it ever come true?’ But he’d barely finished speaking before he began to fade out, like a shifting hologram.
‘Dad? Dad!’ I shouted.
He was back and solid again, but I could see the effort was wearing him out. His shoulders were slumped, his skin ashen, his eyes, oh, so tired.
‘Dad, are you all right?’
‘No. But I will be if you’ll believe me when I tell you that my death wasn’t your fault,’ said Dad.
Behind me Rachel began to slow-clap at my dad’s words. I turned in surprise. To be honest, I’d forgotten all about her.
‘Very touching,’ she told him.
‘You need to stay away from my son,’ Dad said quietly.
‘But we both know I can’t do that.’ Rachel shrugged.
The two of them watched each other, their eyes holding a silent conversation from which I was totally excluded.
‘Dad, this is Rachel. She’s been helping me.’
‘Kyle, helping you was the last thing she had on her mind.’ Dad spoke to me but his eyes never left Rachel.
‘You’re wrong. She’s the one who made it possible for me to hide inside my friends’ dreams.’
I looked at Rachel. That slight smile I knew so well tugged at her mouth. I turned to Dad. He looked at me and shook his head, and then I knew I’d got it totally wrong.
I looked from Rachel to Dad. ‘It’s you, not Rachel, who’s been helping me, isn’t it?’
‘It was the only thing I could think of until you could see me,’ said Dad.
‘But Rachel said we had to try and escape from you.’
‘Yes … Rachel …’ Something in the way Dad said her name sent a chill down my spine.
‘D’you know her?’ I asked.
‘We’ve met. Just once before this. Just once. But it was enough,’ Dad replied.
As I stared at Dad, it was like opening my eyes for the very first time. I finally realized what Dad was trying to tell me. Horrified, I stepped away from Rachel, backing up towards my dad. My eyes were drawn to her T-shirt again. The message on the shirt no longer seemed innocuous or intriguing. It had taken on a more sinister turn:
I didn’t need to ask her to take off her jacket so I could see the back of her T-shirt. What would be there? One simple, monosyllabic word or a hooded skull or a skeletal hand clutching a scythe or just an image of her face? I didn’t need to see the word or any of the images. I knew who she was now. Why hadn’t I figured it out sooner? I turned to my dad. I needed to look at something real now. Something recognizable.
Feeling like I was emerging from fog, I picked my way through the words.
‘So she …’ I turned to face Rachel. ‘You’re on this train … collecting …’ I couldn’t say any more.
Rachel smiled. ‘Of course. This crash is going to be called the miracle of the decade. A number of injuries but only one death. Imagine that. I only have one name on my list.’
Ice-cold pinpricks danced down my spine. I stared at her, horror-stricken. ‘My name …’ I realized.
‘Your name,’ Rachel confirmed.
I’d spent the last few months in a haze, wondering what was the point of carrying on? Now at last I had the answer. Life was the point. It was as simple and straightforward as that. But looking at Rachel, I began to recognize that maybe I’d learned that too late.
‘I’m not dead. How can you take me if I’m not dead?’
‘But you were supposed to die,’ said Dad from beside me. ‘I wanted you to hide out in your friends’ dreams until I could get to you, but she got to you first.’
‘Anthony, your attempts to stop me were so pathetic.’ Rachel grinned. ‘Hiding your son inside the dreams of others was a clever idea, I’ll give you that – until I found a way to use it to my advantage. But did you really think I wouldn’t find him?’
‘It sl
owed you down though,’ said Dad. ‘At least until Kyle was ready to see me.’
‘But you’re the one who took ages to appear …’ What was Dad talking about? I was always ready to see him.
‘Kyle, I’ve always been here but you only saw what you expected to see. It was only when you were ready to face me that you saw me for who and what I truly am,’ said Dad.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘That’s the other reason I wanted you to live through the nightmares of some of your friends in this carriage, just for a little while …’ Dad began.
I considered his words, having to rethink all my conclusions again.
‘It was so that I could see I wasn’t alone …’ I realized slowly. ‘That, for whatever reason, everyone has fears they have to face sooner or later.’
Dad nodded. ‘Only it took longer than I anticipated and I had to let you jump into the nightmares of strangers. I just had to trust that you’d find your way out again.’
‘But Rachel kept encouraging me to stay inside the dreams,’ I said. ‘She said it was the only way to escape from you.’
‘Because if you made the decision not to come back, as long as each dream featured her in some way, then she’d still have you.’
‘Have me how?’
‘Your body would’ve still been on this train, but your mind … To all intents and purposes you would’ve been brain dead,’ Dad replied. ‘Rachel was more than willing to settle for that if she couldn’t have all of you. To everyone else your mind would be in a vegetative state and that’s the way you would’ve stayed until your heart finally ceased to beat.’