“More to the point,” he persisted, “I would like to know if the spirit of Rocco Boyle still wanders this property? And if so, does he need help?”
Nothing. Only a mounting sense of embarrassment, of doing something that crossed the line. Like after his eighteenth birthday party, when he’d snorted the last of Renee’s coke and caught up with his father’s secretary outside as she waited for the hotel valet, pinching her ass through her dress and asking if she wouldn’t mind taking him somewhere to make a man of him. And she had calmly informed him that if he continued in this fashion she was going to kick his groin up into his throat, and that would be very bad for both of their futures. Clay had sobered quickly, managing an apology; but he imagined he had looked in that moment much like he did now: Like a delusional boy failing to achieve the impossible. A fool, as Shakespeare would have cast thee.
“And since I’m already crazy, it doesn’t hurt to say I could use your help too, Rocco,” Clay added, smirking now. “Because there’s this girl—you might’ve noticed her earlier. I’d like to get to know her better. Things have never really gone well for me in the lady department, and I feel like if I could… just… hang with her, the world would come back into focus. Girls have that effect, right? So… you know… if you’ve got any sage advice—”
The floor creaked. Briefly, subtly, but there was no ambiguity to it. No way to deny it had happened. It was the loose board with the motorcycle skid, and Clay hadn’t only heard it, he’d seen the board move, bending as though a foot had suddenly pressed down on it. And even if the planchette was lifeless under his fingers, the bulb hanging over the room was swaying now. As if… As if someone just walked under it.
Bullshit. That’s bullshit.
The floor groaned, right in front of Clay.
Bullshit! At the precipice, his mind could not accept it, would not accept it.
But what happened next happened quickly.
The Ouija board jumped like the table had been kicked. The planchette flew from his grip and struck the wall. Clay gasped and fell backward as he tried to stand, and the Rickenbacker fell with him, twanging.
On the floor, Clay gaped back and forth. There was no one, nothing in the room with him. And yet he heard the distinct scratch of fingers poking around in the Ouija’s box. A pad of paper had come with the game, along with a stubby black pencil, and now the pencil rose in the air, like some kind of magician’s trick. It touched down on the Ouija board, which had flipped over, its backside a blank expanse of scarlet cardboard.
And Clay only stared as the pencil scrawled out a series of looping black letters.
been talking since
the moment you
set foot in here
“I… can’t hear you,” Clay replied, his voice high and tight in his throat.
not really listening
open your ears
The pencil fell limp on its side, rolled, and went off the side of the table.
Clay took a shuddery breath and all he could hear was the whomp of his own heart, blood rushing in his ears. How could he be expected to hear anything else?
Then, stretching, stretching—
The whispering again.
Coming from far off, down an impossibly long tunnel—even if Clay suspected the ghost was standing right over him. Too low, too guttural. A hungover, first-thing-in-the-morning voice.
The… to… art… wry… sic!
Hoarse or not, distant or not, the syllables conveyed the timbre of their speaker—and there was no voice that Clay would have recognized faster.“I’m not getting every word,” he heard himself say. “It’s like a call that keeps cutting out.”
The pencil rose from the floor, returned to the Ouija board.
keep listening clay
break through
The sight of his name on the board made Clay dizzy. His inhalations came quicker. He covered his eyes in both palms and did all he could to concentrate on the silence. On the silence under the silence….
The only way… th… girl’s…art is… to write… zing music.
“The only way to that girl’s heart is to write amazing music,” Clay repeated.
Yes! the voice shouted back, sounding every bit as astonished as Clay felt.
“I can hear you,” Clay marveled, “and you can hear me.” He lowered his hands from his eyes. Saw that he was still alone in the room. Started to hyperventilate.
Breathe, brother, the voice replied.
Was this happening? Or was he already drug-dreaming in a psych ward?
Even as Clay questioned himself, some deep and primal instinct seemed to affirm that he wasn’t crazy, that it was for real. And all the grief he’d felt when he heard Rocco Boyle had ended his life, all the time he’d spent coming to terms with the fact that there would be no more music, no more shows, no more of Boyle in his life or anyone else’s—just pre-recordings, artifacts of a genius mind voluntarily abandoned, nostalgia and memories that you could never quite touch the same way again. And yet somehow…
It’s got to… awkward meeting… way, Boyle said, and his voice was coming easier now. It was no less hoarse, and it continued to drift down a miles-long tunnel, but the words were clearer, the song at last identifiable through the ocean of radio static. And how liberating it must have been. How lonely to exist when no one could hear you.
After all this time, Rocco Boyle was still determined to be heard.
“No,” Clay told him. “I’m glad you’re here.” And he broke down, his shoulders shaking, the tears coming fast. Wracked with sobs as if his own mother had appeared to tell him that she had never really died carrying his stupid fucking laundry down to the basement and that she forgave him all the times he’d lied to her and broken her heart. He wept, while Boyle waited. And there
