Walking with Ghosts

His father’s forehead was sticky and cold. Squashy on the surface and slabby like rubber underneath, and much colder than anyone William had ever touched before. And there was something else, that he’d noticed earlier, but that now he was sat on his father’s shoulders was nearly unbearable. And that was the smell.
    William had never smelled something before that got inside your mouth as well as your nose. It was a vile and rank odour that clung to his tongue, crept down inside his throat so that he thought he might suffocate. He retched and his stomach moved inside him, his mouth filled with bile, and he spat it out, over his father’s head. The stench remained. The nearest he could get to it, it was like the time the freezer broke down and all the ice cream and meat melted, and when they came back from holiday the floor was covered in blood and maggots.
    He was sitting on Daddy’s shoulder, hanging on to the rope, smelling the smell and trying to work it out in his mind when the men arrived in their uniforms. At first there was just one of them. He came through the house and out of the back door. He was dressed in black, with boots and a leather jacket, an enormous crash helmet, so you couldn’t see his face. He looked up at William, his hands on his hips, and he said, ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ and he shook his head and walked back towards the house.
    Then there was another man, and another two with a stretcher. And the new man came over and took hold of Daddy’s legs to stop them swinging, and he reached up towards William and said, ‘Come down, son. It’ll be all right. I’ll catch you.’
    And William might have come down then, only the original man came back, the one in black with the crash helmet, and he said it again, ‘Jesus fucking Christ, d’you believe this?’ He picked up the stepladder and set it up, stood on the bottom rung. William was suddenly frightened and he stood on Daddy’s shoulders and caught hold of the upper branch of the tree and climbed up on to it.
    ‘No, not that way,’ the crash helmet said. Then to the other man: ‘For fuck sake, it’s bad enough without the kid. Stink’s worse than the wife’s breath.’
    William kept climbing. He climbed to the very top of the tree, where the branches became thin, so that if he’d gone further they wouldn’t hold his weight. They tried to coax him down for a long time, but he wasn’t going to move, not as long as the one with the crash helmet was there. You couldn’t see his eyes under that thing.
    William watched as the photographer arrived, and while he took photographs of Daddy. And then there was a much older man with a white beard and a briefcase who had one of those things they stick in their ears so they can listen to your heart. Crash helmet held the stepladder for him and the bearded man climbed up and listened to Daddy’s heart. ‘This is ludicrous,’ he said as he was climbing back down.
    Eventually they concentrated on getting his father down. But they didn’t undo the knot, like William expected. They cut him down. One of them did the cutting and the other one tried to catch Daddy. He had him by the legs, and the first one said, ‘You right?’
    ‘Yeah. I’ve got him.’
    So the first one cut the rope and William’s father plunged down on top of the second one. The stepladder slid away and it ended with Daddy and both of the policemen in a heap on the grass. The other two men with the stretcher laughed, but William didn’t think it was funny.
    After they’d loaded Daddy on to the stretcher and taken him away, the policeman with the crash helmet left and the nice one asked William to come down from the tree. When he got down the policeman said he’d been very brave and he could cry now if he wanted to.
    But he didn’t feel like crying.
    Later, when he pushed his plate away, his mother said he should eat something. But he didn’t feel like eating.
    And the next day, when Diana said she was going to the shop for some sweets and he could go with her, he didn’t feel like moving.
     
    *
     
    Seventeen years later, he remained inert, naked on the bed for an hour and a half, his mind working, his other bodily systems flickering uncertainly. He didn’t shiver once, though he gritted his teeth for the last twenty minutes as the morning air chilled him to the bone.
     

22
     
    You gag with pain as an iron bar leaps through your body. Diana spins from the window and comes forward, fear in her eyes, and in