Dead Men's s Boots

I let a new phrase sneak in now, on a minor key – something I’d designed for my best friend Rafi, after I’d lost the plot and let one of the most powerful demons in Hell weld itself to his spirit. What I was playing now was something few exorcists ever bother with, because for most of them it doesn’t really pay its way in the standard repertoire.

This was a lullaby.

Gradually I let the second phrase ride in over the first, run through it and colonise it. Then I played the tune out until there was nothing left of it except three descending notes, each held for as long as my breath lasted.

The silence afterwards was like a roomful of applause. Nothing moved in the pillaged room. The ghost was still there, but the oppressive weight of it had lifted and faded. The sense I was left with was a dull, distant echo, not the roaring dissonance I’d walked in on.

I went out and down the stairs, back to the road. Carla was leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. The dog-end of another lay stubbed out between her feet.

She stared at me – a wordless question.

‘He’s fine,’ I said, for want of any halfway-adequate way of putting it. ‘I sent him to sleep, the same way I do Asmodeus when he’s getting too frisky. Carla, how long has this been happening?’

She shook her head, looked away. ‘Since the day John died, Fix. Six days ago. It was almost immediate. It started maybe two or three minutes after I heard the shot.’

I exhaled heavily. ‘Jesus!’

‘It was how I knew he was dead. He’d locked himself in the bathroom, and I couldn’t get in.

I was hammering on the door, shouting his name. And then something- I can’t describe it. Something went down the stairs, behind me. I could hear each footstep. The boards creaking, all the way down, as though – whatever it was, it was a massive weight. And I knew. I thought “That’s John. That’s my husband, going away from me. He’s dead.” Only he didn’t go away. He stayed. He stayed and—’

Seeing the trembling start in her sht wart in oulders, I looked at the ground.

‘You should have called-’ I began. Called who? Me? That was a hypocritical bridge too far, while I was standing there longing to be out of this. ‘One of us,’ I went on.

‘I didn’t know what to say.’ Carla’s voice was thick and choked. ‘Fix, what am I going to do? I can’t live like this.’

‘You don’t have to. Have you got somewhere else to stay?’

She took a step back from me as though I’d pushed her, and her eyes as she looked up at me registered shock and hurt.