Spirit by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

ever, and was lying chilly as ice in her coffin, and that was all.
    At those times, she thought about Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, too, lying concealed beneath the shed.
    As they crossed the hallway to the crowded living-room, Johnson Ward laid his hand reassuringly on Elizabeth’s shoulder. ‘When my older brother Billy died, I was so cut up that I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t write and I couldn’t even think. You know what that’s like, when you can’t even
think?
Your head’s no more good to you than an empty cooking-pot. You can bang on your skull with your knuckles for all you’re worth, but there’s nothing inside, only echoes. Those were bad, bad times for me, those were.’
    He stopped, and looked down at her. ‘But do you know what happened? I went to Havana, for the principal purpose of getting drunk. I gambled at the casino, and I smoked big cigars the size of telegraph poles, and I got drunk. And I was sitting in the Plaza de Armas, with a mouth that felt like a cat’s favourite cushion and a headache that felt like an iron Derby that was half a size too small, when a Cuban boy came up to me, and stood staring at me. He was wearing a white shirt and khaki pants and sandals with open toes. He stood and stared at me and I sat and stared back at him. And do you know what he said? He said, “Bronco, don’t you recognize me?”
    â€˜Well, I stared at him even harder, and maybe there was something familiar about his eyes, but that was all. But then he said, “It’s Billy, your brother.”
    â€˜You can imagine that I went shivery all over, just like somebody had emptied an ice-bucket down the back of my shirt. I said, “It can’t be. Billy’s dead.” But he stepped a little closer and he looked at me just the way I’m looking at you now, and he said, “It’s Billy. I just want to tell you that everything’s fine.”
    â€˜ “Fine?” I said. “You’ve turned into a Cuban and everything’s fine?” ’
    â€˜ “Couldn’t be sweller,” he said. And he turned around, and walked across the plaza, and that was the last I ever saw of him.’
    â€˜Was he a
ghost?
’ asked Elizabeth, in awe.
    â€˜Uh-unh. I don’t think so. I think he was just Billy.’
    Elizabeth wanted to ask Johnson Ward if it might be possible to find Peggy, too, amongst the crowds around the Plaza de Armas, or anywhere else for that matter. But before she could do so, mommy came across the room, black-veiled, tilting slightly.
    â€˜Johnson!’ she exclaimed, and flung her arms around him.
    â€˜Hello, Margaret. Please accept my condolences, and Vita’s, too.’
    Mommy turned her head this way and that. ‘You didn’t bring Vita?’
    â€˜Vita’s not too well. Nothing serious, but she couldn’t face the journey.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ said mommy, in a tone of voice that suggested that she wasn’t sorry in the slightest. ‘How’s the writing coming along?’ She pecked at the air with two black-gloved fingers, in a charade of somebody trying to find their way around the keyboard of a typewriter.
    â€˜Slow,’ said Johnson Ward. ‘You know me. Three words a day if I’m lucky.’
    â€˜I’m surprised you can still find anything to write about, after
Bitter Fruit.
’
    â€˜Well . . .
Bitter Fruit
did have a little of everything in it, didn’t it?’ Johnson Ward smiled.
    Elizabeth’s mommy swayed, as if she were trying to keep her balance on the deck of a ship. ‘You know what the trouble with you writers is, don’t you?’ she demanded.
    â€˜I’m sure you’re going to tell me, Margaret, whether I know or not.’
    â€˜The trouble with you writers is that you think you’re realer than we are.’
    â€˜We do?’
    â€˜Of course you do! But that’s