chase marmalade vodka is not the only spirit

It all started the night that Laura set herself on fire.

Okay I thought that would be a dramatic opener but I now realise that “Jessica died” obviously also happened that night and that's way more exciting. I guess I don't really think of it like that anymore--like Laura screaming and writhing around while her LBD ate itself in the flames is such a spectacular memory, and when Jess died she kind of just lay back and none of us even noticed until we went to order pizzas and she didn't tell us as she normally did that the Dominos app is far superior to Just Eat 'cause you can get Double Decadence™ crust and it doesn't matter what you put on top she doesn't even care as long as there's no meat but that shit is so good.

“Chloe, is Jess asleep? Why is she lying down?” Laura asked me. It was Laura's cellar so she'd been upstairs to change and was now switching between tapping the phone in her lap and trimming the singed ends of her hair with a pair of nail scissors. She'd washed her makeup off, too. Usually she wore a tonne of baby-pink blush, but right now her face was clean and white; the pink ball studs in her cheeks were little isolated dots of colour. Laura was naturally blonde so her eyelashes and eyebrows were pale in the parts that hadn't been singed off but she'd dyed it so the hair she was trimming was the colour of chewed-up Hubba Bubba.

The scissors in Laura's hand were from the manicure kit Aashi had lifted back in June when I'd suggested we paint sigils onto our nails. The spell of attracting wealth hadn't worked as far as we could tell--none of us were precise enough with the art tool to get the symbols tidy enough--but Aashi had pronounced them “bomb” and recorded an Instagram story so it had been an overall success. We were always trying to impress Aashi even though she had been the last one to join the coven.

We weren't sure if Aashi was a natural witch, although she did eat a chilli pepper on a dare at Jasmine's 16th and her eyes didn't even water. She had this thick, enviable black hair to which clung the faint scent of cloves and Batiste dry shampoo, and she always had traces of ink on her hands from her weekend job at Ryman where she did nothing but reorganise the pens for them, in slow motion, for the entirety of her six hour shifts.

Right now, meaning in the past, specifically the night Laura set herself on fire and Jess died, Aashi was frowning. She was also gazing at Jess, who wasn't moving, and she was smoking one of her sugary cigarettes that crackled each time she inhaled. Laura usually made us sit by the window if we were lighting up but as the whole place smelled of burnt hair anyway Aashi was leaning against the sofa in the middle of the room, beside the duck-egg blue pentagram Laura had drawn on the floor with hair chalk.

“Her eyes are open,” Aashi said after some consideration, and exhaled a fragrant plume.

We all looked at Jessica now, who at that moment was supine with one tan arm cushioning her head. Her wheat-blonde hair covered her face a little. I reached over to touch her and I think I must have gasped, because she felt kind of cold, and I realised that her skin was mottled--like super pale under the Fake Bake. Her elbow had a smudge of sky-blue chalk on it.

That's when we realised that the enchantment she'd been trying to cast earlier in the evening had finally worked. I mean, I guess it was kind of my fault that we'd mistranslated the name of the spell, but Laura hadn't really been hurt by her spontaneous combustion so we were all feeling pretty confident that nothing would go, like, fatally wrong that night.

The woman in the illustration from the book had been holding an elaborately-hilted dagger flat against her breast. Jess was convinced that she could conjure it into being by reciting the incantation that appeared beneath the picture. She had wanted a new wand; the long, tapered piece of fluorite she usually used as her magical conduit, according to Jess, had recently soaked up an extreme amount of negative energy because she'd been trying to charge it while she was watching TV and an image of Katie Hopkins had come onscreen. None of us really paid attention to this story--at that point we were focused on Laura, who had bought a spell online that the Etsy seller had promised her would make her really hot. She was holding a print-out in her hand.

Laura let me take the book home, after the ambulance came and we'd given statements to the police. It was a big leather one with most of the passages written in Latin. Laura and I had originally found it in the second-hand bookshop on Charlotte Street but had to get Aashi to lift it the weekend after, because neither of us had big enough coats.

I flicked through the book and found the word 'spiritus', which I thought could maybe be a Talk-to-the-Dead spell (because, you know, 'spirit'), but then I recognised the picture of the girl pressing the dagger over her lungs. Her eyes were kind of glassy-looking and her lips were parted but the centre of her mouth hadn't been inked in all the way. I turned the page to what looked like a sun-summoning spell. Closer to the end of the book, I came across an illustration of a man surrounded by vaguely people-shaped outlines. He was covering his eyes and looked kind of distressed. However: he was capable of seeing the figures around him if he'd wanted to, at least. This is what I had in mind. I didn't want to take any chances though, so I used Google Translate to make sure it wasn't a Kill-Me spell. (It wasn't.)

I cast it and nothing happened.

The next day, though, there were a bunch of dead guys hanging around in the underground. Like literally hanging. They all just kind of hovered there motionlessly until the breeze from an oncoming train puffed them around and they all swung backwards in unison, disappearing into the black tunnel.

Ghosts look exactly as you might be picturing them. They're like, if you use the greyscale filter on Instagram. Like you can pick out tones in their hair and clothing and skin but you can't really be like: oh, your suit used to be blue, guy.

So ghosts are real. That was good to know. The next thing to learn was whether or not they could be communicated with--and it turns out you can talk to them--to them--by standing on a train platform and speaking into the empty air like a madwoman. (I mean, to other people the air is empty. To you, you're talking to a dead guy in a maybe-blue suit.)

“I'm looking for my friend Jessica,” I called down the tunnel to the nearest floating semi-transparent man, who looked absolutely miserable. “She's, um, really pretty and she has a tiny gap between her front teeth. She's wearing jeans.”

He noticed my attention and moved his mouth mournfully, but I couldn't hear any actual words. Then another train came through and sucked him deeper into the tunnel. So much for that.

I gave up on the idea of school that day and went back up to street level where I realised, now that I was paying attention, that there were dead people literally everywhere. They floated along like dust motes through the air, propelled by some unseen force. Wind, or air currents. They didn't seem to be able to move through any will of their own. Though a few of them looked frustrated, faces strained with misspent effort, most just looked bored. I guess some of them had been flying around randomly for a while. I tried to grab the attention of those closest to me but they couldn't make themselves heard. It was like they were on mute. Mute motes.

I got the bus to Laura's house. Nobody was in, so I used the spare key to break in and check the cellar. Jessica wasn't there but there was a fan blowing and the double-glazed window was open.

Fast-forward several days. I'm feeling kind of bummed out, to be honest with you, although obviously I knew Jessica may still have been floating around somewhere. I was fingering the necklace she had made me for Christmas: a milky chunk of rose quartz on a silver chain that matched absolutely nothing I owned. I slipped it over the blouse I'd worn to the funeral that day and the weight of it was comforting.

The girls and I had stood together at the fringes of the wake and decided to hold a séance during the next full moon. I'd never seen Laura look sad eating cake before.

It had reminded me, though, that I already owned an ouija board. Jess and I had made it on the inside of a cereal box in grade four. I found it and set it up on the floor of my room, placing beside it an eyeshadow palette she had left at my house a couple of weeks earlier, some blonde strands of hair I'd extracted from my hairbrush, and a lit candle. I didn't want to wet the cardboard to cleanse the board, so I rubbed it with a handful of sea salt, and set an upturned shot glass in the centre.

I knelt on the carpet and put my fingers to the glass. For a brief moment I wondered if I should be sky-clad (FYI: that means naked, but don't be a perve about it) but it was honestly so cold with the window open I doubted I would be able to concentrate on the ritual at all.

I spoke the first invocation I could think of. “Spirits of the honoured dead, by this flame I summon thee. Harm not nor be... silent... but speak instead through the medium of this board. This card board. Um. In front of me.”

The temperature dropped infinitesimally. I held my fingers rigidly, forming an inverted V with my hands, and tried to relax the tension in my shoulders without changing my posture a whole bunch. “I'm going to... I'm going to commune now, okay? Am I speaking to someone from the other side?”

I watched by low candlelight as the glass pointer moved to YES. Well, that was a start. “This is Chloe Adeline Finch, do you know who I am?” It didn't budge from YES. “Um. Spirits?”

My hands moved of their own accord parallel to the board. I held my breath. There was no sound save the whispering slide of glass on paper. Between my fingers, the circle of the planchette framed the letter O. The M. Then it stopped on G.

“Jess?” I asked. The candle's wick burned with a low, clear flame. The upturned shot glass between my fingers suddenly sprang to life.

ITSMEYEAICANHEARUBUTITSLIKEWEREONASKYPECALLBUTIH

AVETOTYPEINSTEADOFTALKCOZMYMUMISAWAKELOL

“Jess!” I squealed. “Hold on. Go slower--if you can. I can't follow you.”

THIS IS SO WILD

I cast my eyes around, but I couldn't see any ghosts in the room. From my window I could see the road outside, which was empty of cars but full of spectral traffic. Long ropes of mouse-grey dead shot with tremendous speed past groups that barely moved at all, or swirled with fallen leaves, or bumped into the edges of houses and trees. I was fairly certain Jessica wasn't out there. “Yeah, it is. Are you... okay?”

OBVS NOT IM DEAD LMAO

“Ah, yeah! I'm so sorry! Did it hurt?”

KIND OF BUT ITS OK

A siren blared somewhere, very far away. I shifted so I was sitting cross-legged. Crystals of white salt bit into my knees but I didn't dare move my fingers from the makeshift planchette to brush them away. Outside, phantasms blown in the breeze reflected none of the light of the streetlamps above.

IM GLAD WE DID EACH OTHERS BROWS LAST WEEK MY CORPSE WAS ON FLEEK

“You saw it? God!”

YEAH I CAME OUT LIKE STRAIGHTAWAY AND WATCHED WHILE U ALL TRIED 2 WAKE ME UP I WISH I COULDVE FOLLOWED ME AND LIKE GONE 2 FUNERAL BUT I CANT WORK OUT HOW 2 MOVE BY MYSELF YET

“That sucks. I'm going to read up on this ghost stuff, okay?”

SURE

“I miss you,” I said.

I MISS U 2

My new Ouija board was a glossy pine square on my floor. The board might have been pretending towards antique aesthetics, but my old grey carpet actually was antique. Like, it had been there when we'd moved in ten years ago.

HOW DO U SPELL WEEJEE IM HAUNTING LAURA 2 AND SHES LAUGHIN

I realised with a stab of annoyance that Laura hadn't been able to wait for the séance either. “O-u-i-j-a.”

HUH THATS SO WEIRD

“You can remember it like... oui, ja. Yes in French and German.”

UR SO SMART OMG

“So Jess, I've been reading up, and if I could do some sort of spell to control the weather I might be able to enchant a wind to help move you from one location to another--like a tornado--but it looks super advanced. I might need the girls' help.”

YEAH THAT SUX 4 U BECAUSE IM ALL YALLS AIR WITCH

“I know. We might even need to get Emma to help.”

UGH NO

The streetlamp outside cast a square of ochre onto the floor through the open window, giving me just enough light to read the ouija board by. I always left my window open now. The sound of televised voices and the occasional clink of cutlery drifted from downstairs, where my parents were. My own room smelled faintly of garlic and butter though the plate on my dresser sat untouched. “Maybe not though.”

REMEMBER WHEN WE TRIED TO DO A RAIN DANCE WHEN WE WERE IN GRADE 2 AND UR MUM STUCK THE SHOWER HOSE OUT OF UR WINDOW AND SPRAYED US

“Yeah.”

THAT WAS RLY FUN

“Yeah, we were a lot more gullible back then.”

BE CAREFUL OK U REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME OH SHIT ACTUALLY MY GHOST FRIENDS SAY THAT WIND MACHINES R RLY GOOD

“Wind machines? Like they use in photoshoots?”

YEAH WHEN THEY WERE INVENTED IT WAS LIKE REVOLUTIONARY 4 THE SPIRIT REALM THESE GUYS WONT SHUT UP ABT THEM

“So wait... so like wherever there is a wind machine it's blowing a bunch of dead people around?”

YEAH EXACTLY

“That's so--” But my fingers were still moving, the planchette circling letters rapidly.

LIKE LADY GAGA IS A HIGHLY CURSED PERSON

I laughed. “Where are you at the moment?”

IM UNDERWATER ITS CRAZY I WISH I COULD SHOW U THESE FISH THEY R LIKE SWIMMING RIGHT THROUGH ME ITS MAD

“You're a mermaid! I'm so jealous!”

DONT BE IM PROB GONNA END UP AT LIKE THE NORTH POLE AND BE STUCK THERE WITH ALL THE OTHER STUCK GHOSTS UGH

“If I can find you and find a wind machine we can get you somewhere safe.”

YEAH LIKE I ALWAYS WANTED 2 C THE WORLD BUT LIKE

I watched the planchette. It wasn't moving. I opened my mouth to speak to the empty air but my wrists began to twitch again.

BUT LIKE I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WOULD BE WITH YOU ITS DUMB IDK

“Jess...” For the first time, I was aware of the sound of my voice in the empty room. “I always wanted that too.”

Aashi and I spent a long afternoon in the Occult section of Waterstones working our way through the books.

“She should see if she can manipulate objects. Like turn lights on and off. Knock ominously on doors. The stuff you see in films.”

“I'll ask her,” I said, toying with the chain on my necklace.

“Then she can try possession,” Aashi added offhand.

When the store closed, we went back to her house and watched Charmed on Netflix. I wanted to work on predictions, like I used to do with Jess. We'd skip randomly around the episode and try to guess what the next word spoken would be, or who would be on the screen.

“That's dumb,” Aashi said, and lit a cigarette.

“By the power of the ocean's tide, harken from the other side. Be this candle glow a beacon to thee, mine hands are thine instruments to speak to me.”

I didn't really have seawater. It was a bowl of tap water that I'd sprayed with Aussie Miracle Beach Waves Spray, but I'd hoped it was enough to evoke the element. The scent of it lingered on the air; I could already feel Jessica's presence.

I TRIED THE HAUNTING STUFF AND THIS GUY TOTALLY FREAKD OUT

“What'd you do?”

I MADE HIS KITCHEN LIGHTS FLICKER AND THEN I MADE THE DOOR TO HIS FRIDGE OPEN AND HE KEPT SLAMMING IT SHUT AND I WAS LIKE UMMMMM EXCUSE ME IM UR POLTERGUEST LET ME HAVE

A SNACK BUT I DONT THINK HE COULD HEAR ME

The planchette beneath my fingertips stilled itself. “Jess, that's great!”

YEAH IT WAS PRETTY FUNNY

My fingers wavered back and forth. I could tell she was thinking of what to say next. In life, when she was thinking deeply, she would catch her lower lip between her teeth; the smallest sliver would protrude between her incisor gap.

BUT I THINK HE WENT INTO HIS BEDROOM AND PUT HIS DUVET IN HIS MOUTH AND MAYBE HE WAS CRYING I FLT PRETTY BAD I COULDNT SEE AND THEN I GOT BLOWN OUTSIDE AGAIN

“We'll find you something more permanent soon. Aashi and I have been reading.”

I THINK IM SOMEWHERE SUSSEX IM GONNA TRY THE POSSESHUN THING TO GET CLOSER IF I CAN

I sat up straighter. “Where are you right now? Jess?” Unthinkingly, I broke the connection by reaching for my phone. The idea of getting a late night Uber--to be able to see Jess, in whatever form she now embodied--god, it was so exciting. But I'd lost the link of conversation and I couldn't summon her again that night.

Laura's basement was thick with smoke again, this time from the sage smudge that Emma had performed as soon as she'd arrived. It mingled with the scent of the patchouli oil warming in an oil burner, and Aashi's ubiquitous clove cigarettes. The room was suffused with a warm, yellow artificial light. The atmosphere was heady and borderline soporific but now and then, when I passed close to the altar Emma was setting up, the sharp smell of alcohol greeted me from the fancy orange bottle of Chase vodka that Jess had once stolen from her mum for one of our coven chill sessions. She'd been the last to drink from it.

We wouldn't normally have asked Emma to one of our hang outs, but times were desperate. Emma was a girl from college who ran this gore Tumblr full of depression memes and passive aggressive text posts. But she was talented in ways we were definitely not, and she'd performed a séance before for her cousin when her hamster had died. So she was experienced.

“We must darken the room,” she said. Over by the stairs, Laura obliged her by switching off the light. The full moon cast a tawny light down Emma's right side. Even in the dark you could tell that she was literally wearing a cape. “I shall now put myself in a trance and allow our departed friend Jessica to communicate through my body.”

Aashi eyed her and took a sip of her Diet Coke. The bubbles fizzed in the can.

“It is imperative nobody does anything to upset the communion,” Emma continued. “No noise. Nobody should touch me.”

Laura flared her nostrils but didn't say anything. We all moved and sat in a semi-circle before Emma, who closed her eyes and began to chant. She became very still and, I'm not kidding: her eyes flew open and Jess' inflections of speech came right out of her mouth.

“It's like two thin layers with cream cheese between—ah? AASH? Is that you?!”

“Jess! It's me!” Aashi grinned. “We're all here. I'd hug you but we're not allowed to touch.”

I waved from my seat beside her, a little self-conscious. In front of us Emma continued to sit motionlessly, her lips the only part of her moving. It was kind of spooky how animated Emma's voice sounded and how extremely still she was.

“Chloe, holy shit! Laura! Your hair's grown back! It's so good to see you guys, oh my god. Ah, there's a big-ass wind machine at the O2. I've been hanging out with this girl who died in the 70s, we've just been riding it all day. They're setting up for some gig tomorrow night.”

“Stay right there,” Laura said. “We're coming for you girl.”

You might not believe me, but it is insanely difficult to get Taylor Swift tickets with less than 24-hours' notice. We managed to get our hands on two, so Laura and I rocked up with the cordless hairdryers we'd bought that afternoon at Argos. The venue was packed, with all the girls and gays and ghosts you'd expect. Most of the spectres wafted amongst one another on the stage, where the singer was already doing her thing. It had been an effort to get the hairdryers past security, which meant we hadn't been able to catch the opening act.

But we weren't there for the music.

I shoved my way through the crowd and looked up at the throng of silvery spirits, haunting the stage in their indiscriminate way. To be fair, the ghosts who so happened to hover a safe distance from the stage seemed to be enjoying the show as much as those audience members who still had working kidneys, but the wind machine in front of Taylor Swift created a strong jet of air which meant that the rest of the spectres flew together in a blur, passing through the singer en mass and hurtling toward the back of the arena. My eyes darted all over the place. I couldn't see Jess, in fact the whole scene was becoming lost behind the film of frustrated tears that swam in my eyes, but I said the words to summon her anyway.

On the stage, Taylor Swift's body suddenly convulsed and she fell silent mid-song. Her eyes lit up. “Chloe!”

Tears ran down my upturned face as I looked up at the stage. “Jess!” I clambered up, and kissed the blonde starlet.

The ground gasped.

The crowd fell silent.

Then the crowd went mental.

“A chimpanzee has thumbs. It could perform sign language, or write with like a pen, or type.” I spun in my desk chair to face Jess. “We could learn sign language together!”

On my bed, Jess chewed Taylor Swift's fingernail. “Nah...”

I nodded my acceptance. “Alright. What else could you possess long-term...” I was quiet for several minutes while I clicked through my other Wikipedia tabs. The doorbell sounded for the hundredth time that day. We ignored it. “Oh, here. African grey parrots live forty to sixty years in captivity.”

Jess rose from the bed and wrapped the bedsheets around Taylor Swift. She crossed the room and leaned over my shoulder to read. “Scroll down to conversation--oh wait that says conservation.”

“They can talk though! Look: 'The species is common in captivity and is regularly kept by humans as a companion parrot, prized for its ability to mimic human speech, which makes it one of the most popular avian pets.'”

Jess sighed and dropped into a crouching position beside me. She laced the fingers of her right hand with those of my left. “Chloe,” she said, her new American accent subtly shifting the vowels in my name. She looked uncomfortable. “You know I'm a vegetarian.”

I exhaled. “Yeah, I guess it's still taking an animal's life.”

“I don't really want to be a monkey, or a parrot,” she murmured, “'cause then I can't do this.” Opening my robe, she took my nipple in her mouth.

I stroked Taylor Swift's blonde hair. “Oh, Jess...”

It was crazy how, without even realising it, I had waited my whole life for someone that I'd seen every day.

Jess-as-Taylor took a pull from the bottle of marmalade vodka and offered it to me. I shook my head, but pressed my lips to hers. She tasted the way nail varnish smells. I opened my mouth, greedy for more.

I was learning so much that summer, and university hadn't even started. The afterlife was real. Possession was real. My feelings for girls were real, and really... nice.

“Get a room,” Aashi suggested.

Jess pulled away from me. “This is my room, Aash.”

It was true. We were hanging out in the house of the late Jessica Palmer. Jess' room hadn't been touched since she'd died, although her parents had let their Netflix subscription lapse so we were watching freeview on her TV instead.

Laura had parted the lace curtains to place an unlit red candle on the windowsill. It soaked up the dying sun's rays as she chanted. “Sun to bed, sun to bed. Burning red, burning red. This candle feed, candle feed. Now cease to bleed, cease to bleed, cease to bleed.”

“Thanks,” says Aashi, palm to abdomen. “It'll start working when I light it, yeah?”

Laura nodded. “I use it to stop mine.”

Aashi lit the candle with her lighter. Then she turned to Jess to continue their earlier conversation, before me and my hormones had interrupted. “Think of it as activism. You're a blonde rich famous white girl. Think of what you can do with that.”

“I don't know guys.” Jess sighed, with Taylor Swift's breath. “I'm experiencing a pretty major guilt spike right about now.”

“Ah, the morality of immortality,” said Emma.

“Immortality implies she's still alive, Emma,” said Laura, lowering herself into a beanbag chair that rustled beneath her weight.

“This is why you should all have familiars,” continued Emma, unperturbed. “My Gabriel came to me in my darkest hour. He is an intelligent creature yet I know that he would give his feline sentience--or his life to ease the burden of my own magic path.” She stressed the word 'life', stretching her mouth as if she was taking a bite from a particularly large apple.

“Shut up Emma,” said Aashi, closing the lace curtains anew to thwart the photographers in Jess' front garden. “Everyone knows your cat has worms.” She lifted the candle in her hands and touched its flame to the tip of her cigarette.

“I think the fairest thing is for us each to host you for a week at a time,” said Laura to Jess.

“Like couch surfing,” I added.

Jess seemed to be considering this. “It's okay 'cause it's consensual,” she mused. Outside the paparazzi waited in the waning light for another glimpse of their pop idol, who currently had her slender arms slung around the waist of her girlfriend.

Me. I was Jess' girlfriend. And it felt so good.

At length she spoke. “I wish I could find something like this. It's so sad she's not,” she nodded downward to herself with her sharp chin, so we knew who she was talking about, “like, evil. She's got like a soul in here.”

Emma picked up the remote and switched to a different channel, causing a chorus of protests from each of us who, let's be honest, weren't paying the slightest attention to whatever had been on the screen a moment ago.

“Ugh, Emma.”

“Not Kate Hopkins, she's so vile!”

“Can we please turn this horrible woman off.”

“Who keeps putting her on TV?”

Aashi interrupted us all, her eyes wide and fixed to the television. “Shut up guys.”

“I can't stand how--” I began.

“Shut up shut up shut up.” She flapped her hand at us, fixing her gaze on the screen with an intensity and single-mindedness she rarely displayed.

“Oh my god,” Laura whispered, touching her lips with her fingertips.

“I don't... OH!” said Jess, Taylor Swift's grey-blue eyes rounding in realisation. She turned at looked at me from beneath eyelashes thick with mascara. “Do you really think I could?” she asked me.

“I think you can do anything,” I told her honestly. “I think you could change the world, Jess.” And she smiled back.

“To being some body,” said Emma, tugging the bottle of vodka from Taylor Swift's hand and raising it in a toast.

“To being some body,” we echoed. The sentence itself seemed to hold magic that night.

Outside, men with cameras leaned against their cars and puffed on cigarettes. If you followed the wisps of smoke closely, you could see the paths of the dead. Inconstant, ruled by some hidden pattern--just like life. The pull of it as irresistible to those caught in its throws.

I kissed my best friend and, in silence, we watched TV.

THE END