“Mom, I’ll be home soon. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”
Four AM. I got a few hours’ sleep, but my troubles chased me down. It’s ten in Ireland, though, and Morgan bought me a calling card when we went shopping.
Mom’s voice is frantic, angry. She’s demanding things I can’t give her. Demanding I come home immediately, demanding I tell the police they’re wrong about me.
Wish I could help you. Seriously.
“Mom, I’m trying. Trust me. I want to come home more than anything in the world, I —”
There’s a series of knocks on my hotel room door. No one seems willing to leave me alone.
“Mom, listen, I have to go. I’ll call you again later, I promise. Mom, someone is at the door. I love you.” Not sure if she hears me through her own rebuttal, but I hang up anyway.
There’s another set of knocks as I stumble to the door and open it.
It’s Morgan. Black blazer over a charcoal dress, perfectly composed. Nude makeup lacquered; all paradox. “Get dressed,” she says. “We’re going to see someone.”
Suddenly aware that I’m only wearing a pair of boxers. I watch her notice this, but nothing registers. Not embarrassed, or impressed, or laughing.
“Okay. Who are we going to see?”
Morgan doesn’t answer me. “Knock on my door when you’re ready,” she says, then turns and leaves.
The door shuts, cool night extinguished with it.
I get dressed, use the toothbrush and razor she bought me. My new wardrobe hangs in my closet—better than what I wore before. She picked up a thousand dollars of clothes, and she paid for them like it was an afterthought.
Once I’m dressed, I grab my phone. Earlier, I turned notifications off, since the texts are constant at this point. Another fifty in the past six hours.
I tap the screen. Today’s messages start decent enough. Some from Eric—I like Eric, we played soccer together. The first two sound normal, asking if I can talk, if I’m okay. Then he asks why I did it.
There’s three from Anna. She’s sweet, a pretty redhead. The sentences are perfectly crafted, with immaculate punctuation and spelling. And, they are mostly different ways of promising I’ll burn in hell for all eternity.
Then, there’s a sharp decline. The rest of the messages are from numbers that aren’t in my phone, people I probably never met or spoke with.
And they are bile. Words beaten with sledgehammers then sent tottering at me, suffering misshapen things. All capitalized, misspelled, misused. Shambling, tortured language.
Torture me. Castrate me, burn me with hot irons. Brutalize my mother in front of me, murder my father, hope I get raped in prison daily. A litany of curses from four dozen voices, some howling discordant melody.
Dinosaur minds, cold and dumb and certain.
The door opens; Morgan stands in the frame.
I stare up at her, wet-eyed. “Sorry, I just—my phone.”
“Stop looking at it. Come with me.”
I follow her out of my motel room and across the night. She flows over the parking lot, long skirt swaying around hips. The single streetlight shines down on a rose red Cadillac, maybe ten years old, a sedan with clean angles like medieval armor. The lights blink in recognition as she presses the unlock button, then we’re inside.
“You didn’t even ask where we’re going,” she says as the engine rumbles to life with the twist of a key.
“I’ll find out when we get there,” I respond, counting as I exhale.
She takes us into downtown Port Lavaca, down Main Street. We don’t see another car the entire way. The shop windows are deep ebony, stop signs and mail boxes cast in steep shade by the occasional street lamp.
None of these shops ever seem crowded, even in the daytime. Pet groomer, refrigerator repair, bullshit trinket shop, shoe restorer. The last few things you can’t get done at one of those super stores, the stores people actually shop at.
A traffic light turns red, and Morgan slows to a halt. “My sponsor wants to meet you,” she says quietly. “I don’t know for sure what will happen.”
“Sponsor?”
She nods. “My benefactor. The guy who makes this possible.”
“You mean faking your death?”
The question floats restlessly around the car. The light turns green, and Morgan gently brings us up to speed. Even now, with no one around, she obeys every traffic law, and I never see her go past the limit.
“I can’t help you unless he agrees you’re right for it.”
“Right for what?”
Again, no answer.
We move through Main Street and toward Port Lavaca’s marina. A ragtag armada bobs there: some shrimp boats, one decrepit yacht, and a neighborhood’s worth of house boats. Some of these have lights on, and I see silhouettes cast through the yellow glow within portholes. Shadow theater of the forlorn.
She parks in the gravel lot beside the docks. A row of wooden posts connected by thick ropes marks the edge of the lot; from there, a ten foot drop down to the gulf.
We get out. Morgan retrieves a small flashlight from her purse, and twists the top so it beams to life. I follow her through the gravel parking lot, rocks grinding beneath our feet. Then I’m on the old pier, and can feel the boards sway as waves throw themselves at the pillars and are broken.
The dock is broken into sections, each long pier leading to a dozen boats. From down here, this little floating village is more alive than it seemed. Somewhere, Tejano music plays softly. Televisions whisper from cracked windows, and a dirty looking man slumbers on the deck of what barely qualifies as a raft.
I follow the flashlight over cords of rope, a dead seagull and the mangled cardboard remains of a box of beer. At the end of the pier sits a houseboat that’s not particularly distinct from its neighbors. Blue and white, with the words “La Vittoria” painted on the side in faded cursive. It seems more like a house than a boat; two small rooms nailed to a shallow hull. An iron pipe rises from the center, and smoke drifts out.
Morgan stops outside the boat and raises her hands to the door. “This is it,” she says. “Think before you talk.”
I nod, but do not move. The white door of the boat shifts gently in the water, and the world is so dark in contrast that I’m hypnotized. Just me and the door; the rest of the universe ceases to exist.
“Inside,” Morgan clarifies. “You need to go inside.”
With one hand on the wooden post the boat is tied to, I step aboard, walking carefully over the wet wooden slats until I’m standing before the door.
I knock twice, quietly.
“Come in,” a voice says. Friendly, an older man’s voice.
I twist the knob, push. It opens easily, but with a creak.
Inside, an elderly man sits beside an iron stove. There are no electric lights, and so the chamber is cast in an orange glow, silhouettes constantly shifting as the fire flickers. The stove clads the blaze in a suit of black armor—a pipe acts as chimney and reaches through the roof and beyond.
The man wears a white button-down shirt and red tie. A bowler cap sits in his lap, and his right hand rests across the brim. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up around his forearms, and a dark tattoo snakes down his wrist to the edge of his hand. In that hand is a small, square glass of an amber liquid.
He looks to be in his sixties, with silver hair buzzed down to his scalp. As he leans to the side to welcome me, his rocking chair tilts back. An identical, empty chair sits across from him.
“Come in,” he repeats, calm smile on his face. “Have a seat.” He taps his middle, ring and pinky finger against the glass of liquor as he speaks. When his ring finger connects, his wedding band clinks—the result is a hushed drumbeat, two thumps around a high hat.
I move slowly, and hold the sides of the wooden rocking chair as I lower myself down.
“You’re Sean Reilly?” he asks.
I pause, and he smiles, then speaks: “Bet you hear that a lot. I already know who you are, of course. Most everyone who asks you that knows it’s true, but they want you to admit it. They want you to agree you’re the entity they need to hold responsible.”
“Was wondering why I hear that so much,” I say good-naturedly. “What should I call you?”
“You should call me Mr. Banks,” he says.
“Okay, Mr. Banks. How are things?” I plant my feet on the floor, so that as the boat rocks against the waves, the chair remains balanced.
“Things are good, Sean. Would you like some scotch? Islay, a single malt. Aged in a cave in Scotland for twenty-one years.”
I hesitate, then: “Yeah, sure.”
He cracks a grin and picks up a glass identical to his own from the floor near his chair. The bottle is in his other hand, and he’s poured an inch of auburn fluid into the container. Mr. Banks hands this to me.
“No ice, I’m afraid,” he says.
I take a sip. It’s strong, more sensation than flavor, just the chemical burn of alcohol. I immediately feel a tiny bit more relaxed.
“I like ghost stories, Sean,” he says. “Not scary stories, necessarily, but stories about ghosts. Are you a fan?”
I think about this for a moment, stopping to take another sip. This one is easier, like the first drink burned away most of my taste buds.
“Not particularly.”
“Let’s see if I can get you interested.” He uncrosses his legs then leans in his chair, which rocks back treacherously far. “All cultures write about ghosts. It’s called a universal symbol—there aren’t many things that all cultures share, but this is one of them. All through history, pretty much everyone thinks something happens after you die.”
Mr. Banks scratches his beard. “Not all ghosts are scary, you know. It’s just like someone’s soul, the same thing. In those old paintings, the ghost is shown as a vapor image of themselves, looking exactly the same, otherwise. Not evil, necessarily.”
He takes a sip of scotch, rolls it around his mouth, then swallows.
“Suppose it’s true, that someone becomes a ghost after they die, just an invisible version of themselves flying around. He sees his body get buried, all his stuff is given away. Everyone he knows will cry and believe he’s dead. So, where does that leave our ghost? He’s still the same person, after all, the same person and the same mind. But he’s not, at the same time. He’s something new, and separate, and the life he knew is gone. So, what is he?”
“Alive,” I say.
Mr. Banks takes another sip of his scotch. A log snaps and tumbles deeper into the stove.
Now his voice is low and serious: “When I extend a policy to you, it will be under a condition which I can only express here in this room today, but that you must follow precisely. You must write a suicide note in which you take credit for killing Kayla McPherson, and write that you lied about Kayla faking her death. You must say that you invented Jack Vickery.”
I open my mouth, but only cough out half a word.
He rises. So do I, almost automatically. “Thank you for your time,” he says. Mr. Banks points toward the door with an open hand.
I find myself outside, wondering what he gained from this short exercise. Morgan is on the dock, grinning.