The Life and Death Parade Read online

  He scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I want to do something important. I want to make a difference.”

  “You’re quite good at archery.” This was what they called the English sense of humor.

  “Cheers. But I don’t have any immediate plans to join the Hunger Games.” I was good at archery, but Macklin had missed my true talent. What I was really good at was losing people. Mum was dead. Dad didn’t want to know. I had family in the States, and although the Bramleys had offered to send me there to visit, I was too afraid to go. Afraid that if I did, the Bramleys might suggest I didn’t come back.

  Macklin scooped up his keys. “I wish he’d hurry up. Everyone’s starting to go now.” He was right. Whatever spell had held the party captive was starting to dissipate. The air was thinning. People were exchanging kisses good-bye. We were allowed to leave.

  Right on cue, Nikki staggered up the hill. He tripped and stumbled. Money fell out of his pockets. Macklin went to pick it up.

  “I hope you’ve had your fun,” Macklin called up from the ground.

  “I want to go home,” Nikki said in a dull zombie voice. He wandered toward the road in a daze.

  Macklin and I exchanged glances. Nikki never wanted to go home. “He’s having us on.” Macklin stuffed the money in his pockets and moved to follow.

  Nikki hummed as we crested the hill, something like a funeral march, off-key.

  “You’re having us on,” Macklin said again.

  I tried to smile, but my lips wouldn’t lift. “You’re joking, right, Nikki?”

  We climbed into Macklin’s car. Nikki lit a cigarette. Macklin ordered Nikki out of the car. We waited for him to smoke it.

  “I hate when he does things like this.” Macklin drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “You don’t believe it, anyway.”

  “No, but it’s self-indulgent nonsense. Nikki in a nutshell, matter of fact.”

  Nikki finished his cigarette and got into the car. We pulled out onto the road. Macklin drove extra flashy because he wanted to annoy Nikki. Still, Nikki didn’t say a word.

  “Well,” Macklin said. “Who ever would have predicted? You’ve learned to keep your mouth shut.”

  Nikki’s eyes seemed frosted over. My throat tightened. I was afraid of something that I didn’t know the name of. We had driven clear of the Hartford Estate and settled into the isolated patches of countryside when Nikki finally broke. “She told me I had no future.”

  “What?” Macklin said. “Did you pay her?”

  “She wouldn’t touch the money.”

  “I’m sure her hands were all over it the moment you left.” Macklin whacked the steering wheel. “Unbelievable. You can’t pay someone to tell you that you have no future.”

  “We pay the college.”

  “Are you having a laugh?” Macklin said. “Did she or did she not say that?”

  “She said I had no future, and then she escorted me out. She did apologize.”

  “I don’t believe it! Of all the—” Macklin inhaled through his nose. “I’m going to be contacting someone about this. Certainly there’s some sort of watchdog organization.”

  Nikki laughed. The world was back in order then, dragging along in his wake.

  I leaned between them. Nikki had a heat to him. Perhaps it was delirium. Perhaps the psychic had slipped something into his tea. “Did she really say that, Nikki?”

  “What does that even mean: no future?” Macklin said.

  “I suppose it means I’m going to die.”

  “Don’t say that, Nikki.” I squeezed his shoulder. “That’s not what it means. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything because she’s made it all up.”

  His forehead had a cool sheen, like he was sweating out some wicked dream. “Listen, Kitty, if I’m going to die, I’m going to die and that’s all there is to it. It happens to everyone. Allegedly.”

  “It’s not funny, Nikki,” I said.

  “You’ll have to take that up with God, my dear.” He slumped in his seat. “Look at it this way: you lot don’t believe in this sort of thing, so you needn’t worry.” I felt a slight relief then; maybe Nikki was just trying to prove that we did believe.

  We drove the rest of the way home in near silence, only broken when Nikki asked if he could have a cigarette in the car. Macklin said, “Over my dead body,” but nobody laughed.

  We rolled down the final hill and the castle rose cryptlike at the end of the road. The Bramley Castle was known for being a bit of a mess. It had started its life as a domed cathedral, then a fortress was added on around it. There was a Gothic extension and a Victorian wing and a lone, unfinished tower.

  It was something to be seen, and it could be; tours were available Monday through Saturday from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. They were limited to the stately rooms in the castle. When we were younger, Nikki and I would sometimes sneak in and pose like dummies.

  Macklin’s car pulled around the mammoth fountain, where Adam and Eve were forever having a snake-fetish bath, and alongside the stone steps.

  Nikki whacked his forehead as the car pulled to a stop. “Rubbish! I’ve only left my cane on that bloody boat.”

  “Well, we’re back now,” Macklin said. Nikki was always losing things. He had lost, had stolen, or had given away nearly every one of his considerable possessions over his short lifetime. It was a standing joke in the family.

  “But it’s my cane. I need my cane.”

  “You don’t actually need your cane, do you, Nikki? You were walking perfectly fine when you suddenly decided to have a mental relapse.”

  “I’m making up for how good I was about not using one when I did need it,” Nikki argued.

  “The party will be over. I don’t fancy traipsing around the canal after dark.”

  Nikki seized Macklin’s elbow. “Please. We have to go back. She lives on a boat. She might not be there tomorrow.”

  “Nikki, you’re always doing this. You need to learn to keep better watch over your things.”

  “Please, Macklin.” Nikki tugged at his arm. “It’s my favorite cane ever.”

  “It’s your only cane ever.”

  “So you’re with me?”

  “I would think someone who had been told by a psychic they were going to die would be rather more eager to get to bed.”

  Nikki kicked the floor of the car, which was not a good way to cozy up to Macklin. “I don’t want to die in my sleep. I want to die for my cane.”

  “I wish everyone would stop saying that word.” I frowned. “You know I don’t like it.”

  “Die, die, die. We might as well keep saying it till it loses its power.” Nikki was going into a sulk.

  “Well, I’ve had enough predictions for one day.” I shoved the door open.

  Nikki was undeterred. “Please, Macklin. You can go back there and demand a refund!”

  “If we go back there, she’ll be the one dead tonight,” Macklin said.

  Nikki giggled manically.

  I shut the door behind me and walked up the steps as Macklin said, “You can buy another cane. You can buy a bloody hover board.”

  Holiday was perched at the top of the grand staircase. She raced down to meet me. Holiday was the “happy” accident in a family with an heir and a spare, so she was over ten years younger than the rest of us.

  “How was it?” she said, gathering up the boy’s nightshirt she was wearing. She’d had to miss the party because she was recovering from a cold. “Where’s Nikki?”

  I looked through the front windows, but the car was gone. “They must have gone to the garage.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Exactly like every other party ever.” Holiday huffed, so I elaborated. “There were fairy lights. And Nikki spoke to a psychic.” I knew better than to tell her about the pony rides.

  “Really? What did the psychic say?”

  I felt a chill, like what I already knew had taken me by surprise. “Nothing im
portant.”

  “I wonder what my future is.”

  “You will go to bed,” I intoned.

  Holiday patted me on the shoulder. “That’s very good. I’ll tell Nikki to go to you next time.”

  “Good night, Holly.”

  She scooted down the hall. “Tell Nikki he has to play with me tomorrow. It’s not fair always being the one left behind.”

  I went to the staff kitchen and had a supper of instant oatmeal. Then I sat at the top of the stairs and watched Edgar throw drop cloths over the more impressive statues so they looked like a procession of poorly realized ghosts. I was tired, and my mind was hazy with the day, so the castle softened around the edges.

  The Bramley Castle was a magical place to grow up. The fact that it didn’t belong to me only made it more appealing. There is a certain romance in distance, in being so close to something but never quite being able to touch it. The way Nikki looked sometimes, like all the secrets of the universe were spinning somewhere in the warm recesses of his magnetic brain…I could never quite touch him, I could never quite know what he was thinking, and then he would smile his double-edged smile and I would think I didn’t need to know everything, anyway.

  The sun set beyond the enormous glass windows, heavy shadows seeped in to fill all the cracks in the universe. My eyelids started to droop, so I pulled myself up and walked down the stairs toward my bedroom.

  I always woke up at three o’clock in the morning. Mum used to say that was the hour when the veil between the real world and the spirit world was thinnest, but it was still pretty thick, in my opinion. That morning, I tried to go back to sleep. I put on the audiobook of The Power of Now; Eckhart Tolle’s narcotic tones nearly always set me to snooze. Still, my heart raced in my chest. I called it anxiety; Mum would have called it a sign, which only gave me more anxiety.

  Eventually, I threw off my covers and got out of bed. I went up the stairs and along the hall. Nikki’s door was open. I could see him just inside it, as if he were waiting for me.

  “What are you doing up?” I said, coming through the door.

  He was sitting in front of his dresser with a candle lit, staring at himself in the mirror. “Hello,” he said. His face still wore that spooked expression. I could tell the psychic’s prediction had really upset him. He had arranged all the objects on his dresser in a weird pattern around the lit candle.

  “You should be in bed,” I told him.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You’re not still worrying about what that woman said?”

  His smile was hesitant. He was wearing a coat I’d never seen before—dark blue and military. It wasn’t unusual for Nikki to acquire other people’s clothes, usually by trading them for his more expensive pieces. The clouds parted somewhere, but I only saw it on his hair, where light spread in a halo.

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry.” I fingered the sharp end of a cracked crystal, resting at the center of his makeshift shrine. “You were right at the party, about…You know what you were right about.” I spun around to face him. “I do love you. I do want to be with you. But I’m scared.”

  He was quiet for a while, his expression impossible to read. “Love is a scary thing,” he finally said.

  “Are you going to bed?” I said. “Because I couldn’t sleep and I thought that maybe I could…” I had slept in Nikki’s bed before, once or twice by accident, sometimes on purpose, always in secret.

  “Yes.” He got off the chair and climbed stiffly onto his tall canopy bed. I took a deep breath and followed him up. He lay on his back, still in his clothes, with his hands over his heart. I moved in close behind him. I felt his breath catch, shudder through him.

  “It’s all right, Nikki,” I said, to comfort him and myself. “It’s not real. No one can see the future.” I pressed my nose against his neck, and eventually his breathing steadied and the world dropped away.

  It was beautiful and wonderful until I woke to him screaming. Not a dignified scream, but a loosened, wild one—the sound of a voice that couldn’t hear itself. He was slick with sweat and muttering loud and persistent nonsense, and I couldn’t wake him up. I tried and I tried, and I couldn’t wake him up.

  He was alive. He was there beside me. But he was trapped in a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.

  PART 2

  I wasn’t sure whether it was me

  or had I died, But

  HONEY, SWEET THING

  HONEY, I’M ONLY DREAMING

  HONEY, SWEET THING

  TUPELO IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS

  —Alan Wass

  THREE

  Nearly a year later

  I crouched inside the private altar in the library, finishing off my schoolwork. I had sat for my GCSEs. I had left school. Now I had to destroy the evidence.

  Lord and Lady Bramley,

  We are writing out of concern to let you know that Katherine Damice’s academic performance has fallen drastically since her mocks last year. We are concerned that Katherine doesn’t seem to care….

  Their concerns burned. Ashes to ashes, etc. The flames bit my fingers. I stifled a gasp and released the fireball. It streaked to the floor. Then caught the edge of a seventeenth-century rug. I leapt up, stamped out the flames with my trainers, then I sat down to inspect the damage to my soles.

  What Ms. What’s-Her-Name, the concerned, didn’t understand was that my academic performance meant nothing. I was going to die and she was going to die and it all meant nothing. It was a warming thought, although possibly that was because I’d just burned my foot.

  Anyway, she needn’t have been concerned about the quality of my work. I left most of the questions on my GCSEs blank. On occasion, I was inspired to philosophical discourse, when I wrote engagingly about the futility of life. I didn’t think I would get very good marks, but I liked to think that one day, possibly fifty or so years in the future, Ms. Concerned would be on her deathbed when my words would come back to haunt her, and with a last dying gasp she would realize I was right.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a chilling scream. I shifted the wooden altar to cover the burn in the rug, then ducked out of the vestry, stumbling on my way down the short wooden steps.

  We had all been impressed to believe Holiday was very ill. She had concocted an illness of ever-changing symptoms. Whenever it sensed a cure was closing in, it morphed into something else. Holly had gone through twenty-three different nurses in less than a year, and by the sound of it, twenty-four was on the cards.

  I knew better than to expect that anyone would try to rescue her latest victim, so I dragged myself toward the sound. I entered the hallway outside Holiday’s bedroom in time to hear her shout, “What are you trying to do, kill me? Are you trying to kill me?”

  Her bedroom door flew open. Her breakfast plate sailed and shattered, expelling guts of limp sausage and spattered eggs. The nurse, Janelle, came next, not thrown, but bouncing against the wall after the plate. The door slammed. Janelle gazed at it as if she’d been chucked off stage mid-production, then stuck up two fingers, then saw me.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, flashing my two fingers back. I bent down to pick up the pieces. She wiped her brow and got down beside me.

  “I’ve had enough of this. I didn’t sign up to look after Colin Craven.”

  “Nice reference.” I scooped up the eggs with my fingers, then realized that was a mistake. “Anyway, you’re doing a fantastic job. I’ve never seen her so good: transformative.” The door shook on its hinges.

  I passed her the pieces of plate, but thought I’d better keep the egg. She tilted her head, considering me. “How can you stay here?”

  It was a funny question: how, like it shouldn’t be possible. “I grew up here.” I wanted to say, This is my home, but I didn’t believe it. Sometimes I imagined myself leaving, going somewhere far and foreign, only in those dreams I was someone else, and I was clever enough to know that wasn’t possible. Wherever I went, what h
ad happened would follow me, the way the moon followed the sun, over every hill and valley in the world.

  “But it’s so…cursed.”

  I cringed. I hated that word. “It’s not cursed. It’s a thousand-year-old castle. It’s England.”

  “I just don’t see how I’m helping.” She lifted the tray and headed toward the kitchen. “It’s not that I don’t care. I think it’s terrible, what’s happened to them, but they’re all so infected by it. I can’t help thinking this isn’t the last bad thing that’s going to happen here. Holiday and her screaming, the mother in hysterics, the father so angry, and the way that boy drives his car…”

  “One day at a time. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”

  “Or I could walk away.”

  “Or you could do both and walk away in one day.”

  We separated in the hallway. I paused in the bathroom to wash the egg off my hand. I generally avoided the mirror, except to check whether my piercing was infected again. I had done it myself, with the help of a dodgy YouTube video: one hole in my face above my lip. I had also shaved my head, mostly so people would stop touching my hair. And I wore a green men’s army jacket every day, so taken together I looked like a radicalized guerilla warrior on the lam. Especially when my piercing was infected.

  It was pus-free today, but it had a fetching redness. I left the bathroom and analyzed the area for maximum isolation. I was an orphan and this wasn’t a Dickens novel, so when I wasn’t putting out fires or poking holes in my face, I was hiding.

  I bunkered down in a room filled with Victorian automatons—mainly smoking monkeys that were apparently hilarious to the Victorians, seamlessly combining animal abuse and addiction. It was probably the least popular room in the castle because the automatons were downright creepy—the way they moved and weren’t alive, the warped shapes of their monkey faces.

  I sat in a wingback chair, just sat in an empty room that felt crowded hoping it would make me feel less alone. I took Nikki’s lucky rabbit’s foot out of my pocket, untangled the two black ribbons tied to the top. I tried to concentrate on being present, on not falling back into the past, on not wondering where it all went wrong, on not thinking it was somehow my fault.