Page 44 of Unalive On Air

“Sure. The sea is very erotic, does all sorts of trippy things to a libido. People fuck here all the time. When I was alive, I myself did a lot of fucking in this very hut.” He waggles his eyebrows.

And great, now I’m trying to scrub that mental image from my mind.

“But you know what’s gross? That he was probably here at the time, watching me, jerking his ghost knob.” Trystan shivers, then fake gags.

By the process of eliminating men who died after Trystan, I already know exactly who he’s referring to. “Peter?”

He curls his lip and nods. “Don’t fall for his little wife devotion ploy. The man is a grade‑A perv. I’ve caught him and Stove hanging around outside the honeymoon suite on wedding nights. It’s . . . sick. And not in the good way. Josh is eternally fifteen, and even he understands that people having sex or masturbating in the hotel does not equate to a free porn show. It’s one of the reasons Jeanie’s so insistent she has that room, to stop those letches.”

“How do you find living with them?” I already have my instincts about those two blokes, and I want to see if I’m on the money, or if ghost-spying on unsuspecting lovers isn’t a friendship deal breaker.

“Pete and Stove? Don’t get me wrong, mostly they’re tolerable, much more tolerable than Magnus, anyway. Besides, we only really hang out once a week when we listen to Unalive . . .” He cuts himself off, scratches the back of his neck. “Huh, I guess we don’t even have that any longer. The rest of the time we just do our own thing. I spend most of my days and nights in the ocean, surfing or scubaing. Do you know you can go so deep now without a snorkel and see all the fish? Fishes? Is it fish or fishes?”

“Fish if it’s one fish or multiple fish of the same variety, and fishes if it’s more than one type.”

“Every day’s a school day.” Trystan smiles, then narrows his eyes like he’s onto me. “Why? What are your first impressions of Pete and Stove?”

“Uh . . .” I adjust my ExorSquad uniform to grant myself a little more thinking time. I can’t just out and out say that they both give me the ick. Or can I?

“I hear ya,” Trystan says with a laugh. The more time I spend around him, the less he fits the himbo stereotype I’d conjured in my head.

“Pix hates them, and I don’t think Camille’s a fan either. Pete’s from a different era. Things were different in his day. Jokes were at the expense of other people, usually minorities, and he’s the type of guy who’s . . . very unadaptable. Unwilling to be adaptable, actually. And Stove is like . . . the most contrary fucker you’ll ever meet. He’ll say the opposite of whatever opinion you give just to watch you twitch. You could say the sky is blue, and he’ll tell you it’s red, call himself the devil’s advocate, and watch you boil trying to defend what you know is the right answer.”

“Nowadays, we call those types of people edgelords,” I say.

“Edgelord,” Trystan repeats, rolling the word around his mouth, testing it out. “That guy is such a fucking edgelord, but when you’ve been stuck with the same bunch for twenty, thirty years you kind of learn to tune out the bad stuff because . . . who else is there? I can’t spend an eternity avoiding them, and they’re not all villains. Sometimes, on Thursday nights after the pub quiz, we’ll jam together in the auditorium. There are shows on occasionally. Bands come to play, local and national theatre groups do productions. There are usually a few weddings in the summer too. Those are fun. Stove and Peter are like those uncles that everybody outwardly hates but secretly finds very entertaining. Unfortunately, you’ll just have to get used to them. Though if it ever gets too much for you, any of it, I can show you my favourite hiding spots.”

That might be the offer of the century.

“No, I get it,” I say, recentring the conversation back to the original topic. Or at least attempting to, and trying—and failing—not to imagine myself hunkering in some remote, romantic bolthole with Trystan.

This is my future now. Learn to ignore the ick Stove and Pete give me, or what . . . start a fight with someone I can never truly escape from? Spend forever and ever running from any chance encounter with them?

At that, a thought pops into my head. “How far can we go outside of the hotel before we . . . evanesce?”

“Hmm . . .” Trystan arches his eyebrows. “It’s different for everyone. And I’m sure that the distance you can go before evaporating gets wider the longer you’ve been dead, and how close you are to the ley lines. And before you ask, no, you can’t actually see the ley lines. I’ve checked myself. It’s nothing but rock and then sea.”

“Helga mentioned something about ghosts being able to travel the country using the ley lines. A bit like train tracks, I suppose,” I say.

“I can’t, but I’m not a poltergeist, or a witch, or a mage, and neither are you, so you’ll just have to experiment with boundary walls and expect to piss Jeanie off a little.”

I hold my finger up. The question “There are witches and mages?” hangs unsaid on my tongue. Not sure I need everything I’ve ever known to be true or untrue blown apart again today. Once is enough. Knowing ghosts exist is fine for now.

The two young fleshies bid their goodbyes to each other, hang up lanyards and whistles, and depart the hut, leaving Trystan and me entirely alone.

“Anyway, this is my ‘room’ as it were, and you’re welcome to stay here with me until you find a place that feels more you, or we can go look around the hotel now? See if anywhere jumps out at you?”

“Stay with you?” The words are out before I have the chance to stop them. My non‑existent heart is racing.

“If you want to, that is. I know how . . . disorienting finding out you’re dead can be, and it could help to have a friend walk you through it.”

I’m too caught up on the word “friend” to really hear what he says next, but it sounds something like, “Though I have to say, you’re taking it a lot better than I ever did.”

“Am I?” I guess through a particular lens, complete and total numbness can be viewed as “handling things well.”

“After I died, I spent months trying to find a necromancer in the village, or begging the Old Scares to do something, anything, let me steal a body, reanimate mine. I couldn’t accept that was it. I was gone, and there was nothing I could do about it. Never get old, never have kids, never travel again. Never speak to my family unless they just so happen to die right here. I don’t know how they are, what my mum’s doing, where my sister is. Are they even alive? Dell would be about fifty-seven, but Mum’s got to be in her eighties, and I have no clue about my dad. They used to visit the hotel from time to time, usually around Christmas—this place is beautiful at Christmas—but nobody’s visited since we went into lockdown a few years ago.”

I suddenly get the feeling that staying here with Trystan would be more for his benefit than mine.