First Kiss, Last Breath Read online

  Grandpa was dead. And Andy had left him rotting in his armchair.

  Chapter 4

  Only the page mattered. Thoughts of Grandpa, death and any semblance of a plan were small, eclipsed by Andy’s rampaging creativity. He was trance-liked, the puny practical portion of his brain anaesthetized into dormancy.

  Andy didn’t look up again, didn’t need to. He had captured Caroline Harper in one glance, his mind stealing a photograph, translating her into broad, sweeping strokes. Somewhere in the background the drilling continued, but he was oblivious to it, immunized to the noise by an absolute focus. He changed his grip automatically, adjusting pressure without thinking, exercising subtleties in depth and texture, the detail to bring light and shade to life. Here, on his page, Caroline Harper had become the sun. He had created light. The edges of the paper were dark, an empty mass of contrast. Caroline Harper’s hair became majestic swirling solar flares–like an ancient goddess.

  He worked furiously.

  Sketch. Sketch. Sketch.

  Wasn’t that what artists did? Bled their pain onto canvas. Wasn’t an artist supposed to suffer for his art? Or was he some twisted cliche? Two-dimensional like the sun on his page.

  Andy sat upright, stopped. He was breathless, his hand ached and his heart beat hard in his chest. He set down his sketchpad, stretched out his legs and wiggled his toes to wake them. He ran a hand through his hair and discovered he was covered in sweat.

  The sun was like nothing of this world. It was jagged and sharp, foreign in its lack of shape. It burned from the page. Andy was unclear as to where the detail had come from. It was as if a stranger had completed the drawing. He sighed and placed his sketchpad on the dry grass where he sat a few hundred yards away from the boundary of the cricket pitch. He was unable to dismiss the strange sensation that the picture existed in its own right before he drew it. It was as if he had simply brought it into this reality from somewhere else.

  Andy battled against a swell of self-loathing as the ludicrousness of what had become a reoccurring fantasy struck him, that he could create real things through his sketching, that he was able to drag things through a door in his mind to this world from another. That was how he explained Glib in his lowest moments. The demon was a creature of nightmares, plucked from some terrible place. He knew at present this was not true, but there were times, quiet often, when notions such as this were as real as the air he breathed. When flights of fantasy ruled, the demon, his monster, was responsible for Grandpa’s death.

  It was because of the dream, the dream where Glib had stolen Grandpa’s soul.

  Andy shuddered, found himself staring at the sun he had penciled. He could barely remember yesterday or the day before. He cradled himself and somehow held back more tears. Grandpa was dead. He had to do something, tell someone, the police or the hospital–anyone. How long had it even been? Grandpa was deteriorating physically with every passing minute, his body decomposing to mush. Soon he would belong in a Romero flick. Andy tried to think of something different, wanted so much to forget, but his mind kept drifting back to the sitting room, to the darkness, to the smell of rotten flesh. He could hear Channel 4 whispering in the background, playing broadcasts Grandpa would never watch.

  Andy closed his eyes to picture Grandpa as he had been, alive and full of life. At first he felt nauseous, unbalanced. He drew in a shaking breath but stuck with it. The darkness, those snaking tentacles, began to withdraw, and Andy relaxed enough for some more pleasant memories of Grandpa to pop in his head. He saw them both, Grandpa on the armchair with a mug of steaming tea, and himself as a child cross-legged by the base of the chair, normally scribbling with crayons on a pad of paper, as the television carried them both to some remote plain. He opened his eyes and looked deep into the morning. He could hear Grandpa’s voice, distant but clear, as he talked about how he loved animals and how he loved the ocean. It was an interest that had started when Grandpa had been stationed in North Africa, after an encounter with a small mako on one of his frequent fishing trips off the coast of Tunisia.

  “I’d have been the English Jacques Cousteau if I hadn’t grown up in Middleton,” Grandpa had often joked. “That’s why when I completed my tour I trained as a plumber, so I could still work with water!”

  Andy recalled Grandpa’s laugh then. He drew his knees into his chest, sketchpad forgotten. He liked it when Grandpa laughed, loved the way his eyes twinkled with mischief and how the sound was throaty and hoarse from years of indulging in too much tobacco.

  “We didn’t know back then, about the cost,” Grandpa would often say, misty-eyed, the shadow of lung cancer reflected in his expression. “But now we do, and if I ever catch you smoking, lad, I’ll tan your backside so hard you won’t be able to sit down for a week.”

  Andy tried to smile again, but couldn’t. He wondered, as he often used to in his early teens, when he had started to become more aware that his parents were dead, whether Grandpa had ever cried after losing his son. Andy barely remembered his father. He was nothing more than an intuitive memory. But Grandpa must have suffered every second of the cancer first hand. He had watched his son eaten by tumors, and that must have hurt so much. All Andy could remember was Grandpa’s kindly face, a barrier to any notion that raising a grandson was a painful echo of years and loves gone by.

  He sighed, trembling. How quickly his mood had changed from inspired to overcome. He wished he could be tougher. Grandpa had been tough, a boxer in his youth, turned professional for a year after his service in the army, but he had quit prematurely when he had suffered a detached retina in his third fight.

  “I had to choose between being a world champion and risk going blind, or to stop, to walk away from boxing for good while I still could,” Grandpa had said once. “It wasn't worth the risk. Only a fool wouldn’t want to look on your grandmother every day, lad. She was a real beauty. God knows how she ended up with an ugly old lump like me. Plus I couldn’t punch, ha, but I could take a beating with the best of them. Tough as teak, your old grandpa.”

  The memory brought Andy to his own time boxing as a child, trying to emulate Grandpa. He hadn’t been too bad, either. McGregor, the coach at the local gym, had said his low center of gravity and his small physique were perfect for a flyweight. Only he hadn’t inherited his Grandpa’s gluttony for punishment, and getting hit was something he didn’t enjoy. His technique wasn’t bad, though, and he had liked striking the pads and enjoyed the feel of the impact on his fists.

  Andy imagined punching something now, if only to release his frustration. There was simplicity in boxing, a release in the training that might soothe his unease. It wasn’t like real life. Everybody was equal, stripped down, vulnerable. Families didn’t matter, only hard work. Everybody was alone in the gym.

  It was funny how many things were coming back to him. The past few days it had felt as if his mind was slipping away, but now pieces were returning. Andy remembered he had been eleven years old when Grandpa had stopped him boxing. Grandpa had seen his first paintings.

  “You’re a good little boxer, Andy, but you’ll become a better painter. I can see it already. You have something special in those fingers, in that heart,” Grandpa had said before pressing a gnarled hand on Andy’s chest. “In there, that’s where the talent lies. And we can’t risk you getting beat-up knuckles like your old lump of a grandfather. You’ll be famous one day for your paintings, lad. Trust this retired plumber from Middleton. He knows special when he sees it.”

  Tears stung Andy’s cheeks and he wiped them away before collecting his sketchpad. He unzipped his rucksack with shaking hands and reached for his paints. He needed to work again, to stop his wounds from widening even further. He would breathe color into Caroline Harper.

  He froze when he saw the yellow tube, the paint he had last used to bring Glib’s vile eyes to life.

  A shiver crept along the length of his spine. Those eyes were the first thing he had become aware of when Glib had initially appeared. They had
materialized out of the darkness at the edges of his perception, like gleaming headlights growing in brightness as they moved into focus. Even then, before Andy saw the rest of the demon, he knew the malice and the hunger that existed in that wicked stare.

  And the sound.

  Gliiib, Gliiib, Gliiib.

  It was excruciating, the noise the demon made as it greedily drank the souls of its victims.

  When Glib moved into view in that first dream, Andy had been paralyzed, reduced to a ghostly spectator. The demon was a horrid, hairless ghoul of impish looks, with taut blue skin stretched across sinew and bone. His parents had been there, idling, innocent. He tried to warn them Glib had come, that the demon was hiding, stalking them from the shadows.

  Only they hadn’t listened. They had refused to respond to Andy’s cries. He couldn’t save them.

  Then Glib struck. The demon pounced on his father then his mother and, in turn, the monster stole their souls by pressing an ugly, blackened mouth against their lips.

  Gliiib, Gliiib, Gliiib.

  Andy shivered, reliving the nightmares, remembering how his parents’ deaths became increasingly brutal with every passing night, how cruel it was to see their faces blurred, always beyond reach, familiar only by some distant, instinctive yearning he had for them. Besides, the demon was so striking and clear, so real.

  That was why he painted Glib, because he had no choice. Grandpa was ill, getting worse, and Andy’s fantasy had been that the Emerald Forest would be the perfect prison for his nightmare creature. Only it hadn’t worked. It was after he painted the demon that the monster came for Grandpa.

  “You make a funny face when you draw.”

  Andy dropped his bag, recoiling in surprise. He snaked his hands back to his sides and didn’t quite know what to do with them. An Indian girl, maybe even shorter than him, stood there. She smiled, and her features that might have otherwise seemed plain, sparkled.

  The girl allowed him time to answer but Andy didn’t speak. Some weird paralysis held him and his throat felt like it was blocked with glue.

  She grinned. “Mind if I sit?”

  He wanted to answer but felt a rush of heat that made him light-headed.

  The girl sat anyway. Andy blushed.

  “And there was me thinking you looked funny when you were drawing. Ha! You should see your face now! Don’t worry I won’t bite.” The girl laughed and took the sketchpad from his weak grip. Andy stared at her in horrified disbelief.

  “Can I look at your–” She fell silent immediately as she noticed the upside-down tree he had drawn where the roots drank from the sky. She wordlessly thumbed a page.

  Andy remembered to breathe and air escaped him in a wobble. Heat drained from his face. If the girl saw, she didn’t react. Instead she continued to flick through his work–sketches, paintings, a few collages. Some were works in progress, others complete, or as complete as they could be for now. She stopped at a sparkling lagoon, a companion piece he had planned for the Emerald Forest before Grandpa got sick. She stared at the painting for some time. Andy glanced around, half expecting a sniggering crowd to have gathered. They were alone, save for the cricketers on the neighboring pitch.

  The girl didn’t move from the lagoon and, as she studied it intently, there was a softness in her face, albeit when she eventually looked up Andy couldn’t place exactly what was in her expression. His gaze darted from hers before she noticed.

  “Wow,” she said. “I watched you drawing, and I knew you were good. I could see how much you put into your work, but... I never expected you to be this good. These are...beautiful, really beautiful.”

  Andy nodded weakly. He managed to smile at the girl, this wondrous girl with dark, unruly hair to her shoulders, who wore very little makeup and dressed simply in a pair of faded denims and some scuffed black Adidas trainers. Her Radiohead t-shirt was ripped a little, although Andy suspected she knew this and didn’t care. A set of bulky headphones hung limply from her neck, connected to the yellow tape-deck, clipped in place to a studded belt. A faint beat came from the headphones.

  “I’m Norinda.” She held out a hand. “You can call me Nor.”

  Andy stared at her, astonished.

  “This is the part where you tell me your name, maybe even shake my hand?”

  Andy grabbed her hand a little too quickly, pumped it hard, alarm and self-loathing soaring inside him simultaneously. “I’m Andy. You can call me...”

  “Were you about to say ‘You can call me Andy’?” She laughed loudly. “Brilliant. It’s a good job you’re super at painting isn’t it?”

  Andy smiled nervously, not sure where this was going.

  “You’re in my English class, when you bother turning up,” Nor said. “You should try going to a few lessons sometimes. You might learn how to introduce yourself.”

  Andy laughed then and felt his fear drift away. Nor grinned and he imagined a beam of sunlight on him.

  He tried to think of a witty response. “Umm.” Nothing came. Nor leaned in a little, raised her eyebrows. “Umm, I can’t think of a good comeback. I guess I’m not as funny as you are.”

  Nor burst out laughing. “Few people are, Andy, few people are. You cutting class again?”

  He nodded.

  Nor motioned toward the playing fields. “I’m supposed to have cricket.”

  Andy smiled politely. Nor didn’t seem the athletic type.

  “Long story. Dad wanted me to do PE as an extra A Level,” she said. “Anyway, I forgot my kit–accidentally of course–and that bastard Conroy said I had to wear one from lost property. So I told him I couldn’t for religious reasons. You should have seen his stupid, ignorant face. He believed me, you know. Anyway, I get to watch in the sunshine, while they all get sweaty playing with their balls. That’s why I came over, because I was so bored.”

  Nor pointed to the sketchpad before Andy could think of a response. “Mind if I take a proper look?” She lifted the headphones from around her neck and offered them to him. “You can listen to this if you like?”

  “Okay,” he said. He took them from her numbly. “Umm...what is it?”

  “The Stone Roses. You like ’em?”

  Andy shrugged.

  “How can you not know whether you like The Stone Roses? You raised in a bubble or something?”

  He squirmed with embarrassment.

  “So what music do you like then?” she asked.

  “Umm...” He paused, not wanting to say.

  “Go on. It’s not techno is it?”

  “Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin...”

  Nor grinned. “Rat-Pack, eh?”

  Andy floated. “Yeah, my Grandpa likes them.”

  Nor leaned over and helped him put the headphones in place. Andy stared at her hand so close to his face. Nor smelled of something sweet. Her perfume reminded him of apples. She rewound the tape until it clicked to a stop.

  “Try this. It’s called Made of Stone.”

  Andy sat upright, crossing his legs. The wire from the tape-deck hung loosely between them. Nor scrutinized his sketchpad. Andy watched her as a drumbeat invaded his head. He noticed her trace the outline of a rock outcrop with her fingers. It was the entrance to a cavern, formed from a vista of rolling clouds, a world within the sky he dreamed up as an entrance to Heaven. The painting was the first in a triptych. The second featured the mouth of the cloud-cave with the sprawling earth seen far below, and in the third he delved into a deeper perspective of the paradise, complete with rock stalactites melting into a crashing waterfall. Andy wanted to paint his parents there, but he couldn’t. He lacked the vision to imagine them in the afterlife. He sometimes worried that if his mind was a portal, then maybe the reason he couldn’t paint them in the cloud-cave was because they had never made it there and if his parents never made it to heaven then it was likely he would never get to see them again.

  Andy shook the idea from him, conscious that he didn’t want to wobble in front of Nor. He focused on the music and
the first words of the song struck him like a blade of ice being plunged into his gut. It was about pain and loneliness, the dreams of something better. He drew in a shivering breath and hoped Nor didn’t notice.

  Andy was motionless, rigid as he listened to the music play out. His heart beat quicker. The song finished and another came on in its place. It wasn’t the same band. This was more like clashing guitars and immediately he lost interest. He returned to watching Nor and the song faded to little more than background noise. She was engrossed and Andy watched her happily examine his sketchpad. He noticed the nuances in her face and, for once, the detail was welcome. His brain didn’t hurt. Nor pursed her lips a little when she concentrated and, every so often, she would tuck strands of her hair behind her ears. Sometimes, if she liked a particular drawing, the corners of her mouth arched into the faintest of smiles.

  When the music finished Andy’s head felt heavy, as if he had slept for hours. He couldn’t work out what had spirited him away. He removed the headset and passed it back to Nor.

  “And?” she demanded.

  Andy considered the first song. “It was...good. It...” he paused, not wanting to continue. He felt like he’d said enough.

  “Go on.”

  Pressure expanded within him, almost to bursting point. He couldn’t tell her that for the first time it felt like a song had spoken to him.

  “It was, umm, great.”

  “I’ll lend you the CD if you like?”

  “I, um, I don’t have a CD player.”

  “It’s nineteen ninety six!” she exclaimed. “How can you not own a CD player?”

  He remembered how much trouble his grandpa had setting up the VHS, let alone a CD player. A small spike of anger flared inside him. He pointed at the tape-deck. “Funny but that doesn’t look like a CD player to me.”

  It was Nor’s turn to flush with embarrassment. “I haven’t got round to buying one yet!” She fell quiet. “I have one at home, but Dad won’t let me buy a Discman until my grades improve.”