Skippy Dies: A Novel

At night is when it happens the worst: he’ll wake up and feel it, like actually be able to feel it, another constellation of moments disappeared out of his memory. Where exactly did Skippy sit that day in the Ref? What was it he always took out of his burger, the pickle or the onion? What was the name of the dog he had before Dogley? So many things to remember! And though Ruprecht tried his best to hold them in place – lying in bed, reciting them to himself, avoiding talking or listening to people, to keep new images, new memories, from pushing out the old ones – still he forgot and at last he realized that the forgetting was never going to stop, that no matter what he did the moments would keep trickling away, like blood from a wound that could never heal, until all of them were gone. That realization was almost worse than anything that had come before. It made him so angry! He churned, he seethed, he boiled with anger – at himself, at Skippy, at the whole world! – and in his fury, he vowed to forget everything once and for all, get it over with. But it turned out he couldn’t do that either, all he could do was become angrier and angrier on the inside, while on the outside he grew evermore fat and pale and dead.

When they went to the park he hadn’t thought about science in a long time. He hadn’t turned on his computer in weeks, he didn’t even use that part of his brain any more, because what good had it done, M-theory, Professor Tamashi, any of it? Wasn’t Dennis right, wasn’t it just a giant Rubik’s cube for Ruprecht to while away the hours with, arranging its blocks and colours safe in the knowledge that it could never actually be solved? And yet when Howard mentioned the scientist it was as if he, Sir Oliver Lodge as he turned out to be called, had reached across the decades and tapped him on the shoulder. And ever since, no matter how much Ruprecht wanted him to go away, he’d remained there. Tapping.

He should have known better than to expect a teacher to shed any light on it though. What do teachers know about what is true? Look at all the falsehoods they teach every day! The maps in Geography that make Africa look small and Europe and the US really big, the books of Euclidean geometry that says everything’s made of straight lines when nothing in the real world is made of straight lines, all that stuff about how good it is to be meek, and how if you’re meek and follow the rules everything will turn out great? When it obviously won’t? So when Ruprecht returns to his room from the Doughnut House he tries a different source. And on the Internet he finds quite a different story from the one Howard told him.

In this account, Victorian science was a long way from the materialistic, conservative affair the teacher described; and Lodge’s experiments, far from being the manifestations of a demented mind, were only one element of a concerted scientific effort to undo the final mystery of life after death. Other participants included Alexander Graham Bell, with his telephone, Thomas Edison, creator of the Spirit Finder, John Logie Baird, inventor of television (to whom Edison’s ghost appeared in a seance), William Crookes, Nikola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi – in fact, when you looked at it, almost all twenty-first-century communication technology originated in scientific attempts to speak to the dead.

And for a time, at the start of the last century, they seemed genuinely to be on the brink of something. The succession of discoveries one after the other – Hertz, Maxwell, Faraday, Lodge, Einstein with his undulating space, Schwarzschild with his dark star as it was called at first, and then black hole, a hole in the actual universe – and simultaneously, the rise of the table-turners and the clairvoyants and the spirit-photographers, the battery of knocks on walls that had no human source… At that time as never before it seemed the whole of reality warped and rippled, as if with the shape of invisible fingers endeavouring to push through the skin of what was, the ghosts of words, spoken by long-lost voices, becoming almost audible in the new hiss and new static…

Then it all stopped. The trail went cold. Was there just too much death to cope with, was that it? After devoting itself for two world wars to perfecting new methods of annihilation, did science no longer want to hear what the annihilated might have to say? Whatever the reason, scientists turned away from the spectral, confined their attentions to this side of the veil. They built computers to establish a new reign of logic; they created polymers shapeable to every transient human wish; the hidden dimensions, and the efforts to find them, were carefully forgotten – well of course they were forgotten, fool, because Lodge was wrong, all of them were wrong, there is no ether, there is no magical connector joining the higher dimensions to our own, there is no door, there is no bridge! And you’re banging your head against a brick wall! Uttering a cry not unlike a goat’s bleat, hurling away his unused but heavily chewed pencil, Ruprecht thrusts himself away from his desk, fragments of truth pinging around inside his head like a malevolent multiball in an insomniac pinball machine. Night swims around him, the school’s dim chorus of snores. He sets off for the toilet, as much for a change of scenery as anything else.

In a less preoccupied state the telltale whiff of smoke escaping from underneath the door might have diverted him to the toilets downstairs. But he pushes on in oblivious, only to find himself face-to-face with Lionel – sprawled languorously on a commode, inhaling deeply on a cigarette, unperturbed by or possibly even relishing the stench of piss he imbibes with every drag, like a malign Black Prince in his stinking marble court, waiting for some unfortunate to appear on whom he can take out his boredom.

‘Well, well,’ Lionel greets him cheerily. He flicks his cigarette into the urinal. ‘Well, well, well.’

The pleasing absence of authority figures means that Lionel can take his time; furthermore, he has the run of six separate cubicles, so he isn’t hampered by that pesky wait for the cistern to refill. The only curb on what could be the Ultimate Bogwash is Ruprecht’s considerable weight, which Lionel has to haul from one toilet to another. This he does manfully, however, and Ruprecht soon resembles a just-born baby – teary, purple-headed, tiny eyes blinking desperate and unseeing, mouth howling at the savagery of the world it has been introduced to. ‘What’s that?’ Lionel bends down to Ruprecht, who is gasping something. ‘Your asthma inhaler? Hmm, I don’t see it, maybe it’s down here…’

Plunged below the waterline again, Ruprecht feels his lungs and throat close up with an air of finality; and now the cataract of stale water and supermarket bleach slowly fades out, yielding to something starless and black that reaches for Ruprecht with glomming hands, squeezing its inky fingers around his heart, his lungs, squeezing and squeezing…

And then in the distance – as if arising out of this blackness – he hears something. A moment later, the pressure at the back of his neck disappears, and there is the sound of footsteps receding at speed. With the last of his energy, Ruprecht hauls his head out of the toilet bowl and he slumps, panting, against the cubicle door. A tuneless whistle echoes down the corridor: Mr Tomms, on a rare late-night patrol. Ruprecht listens to it louden and grow faint. And then it hits him.

Music.

Thursday: two days until the curtain rises on the 140th Anniversary Concert. A palpable elation infuses the school; down in the fell Mines of Mythia, however, it’s business as usual. Of late, the lusty band – Blüdigör Äxehand (V. Hero), Thothonathothon the Mighty (B. Shambles), and Barg the Dwarf (H. Lafayette) – have been joined on the trail of the legendary Amulet of Onyx by a swash-buckling new companion, Mejisto the Elf (G. Sproke), bearer of the storied Shield of Styx, which will carry its owner across the most raging of torrents. Today the dauntless fellowship has just unlocked the mysterious Casque of Quartz, but within find a nasty surprise – a brace of Hellworms, hungry for flesh, who seize on hapless Mejisto the Elf!

‘Who’s the elf again?’

‘You are,’ four exasperated voices chorus.

‘Oh right.’

Thothonathothon, Blüdigör and Barg valiantly come to the aid of their hapless elven friend, dispatching the Hellworms with blows from their halberd (2d6 HP damage), broadsword (1d10) and flinten pike (3d4). But another shock awaits our courageous fellowship – an underground river, too furious to be crossed by ordinary means, with the drawbridge raised on the other side!

‘Wow, how are we going to cross this?’ Mejisto the Elf wonders.

‘It is too furious to be crossed by ordinary means,’ Valdor the Dungeonmaster (L. Rexroth) repeats.

‘Wow,’ Mejisto says again, shaking his head.

‘By ordinary means,’ Valdor says. Looks are exchanged among the other members of the band.

‘Hmm,’ Mejisto says.

Barg the Dwarf passes a hand over his face and rubs his temples.

‘The shield!’ Blüdigör Äxehand exclaims at last, in the hope of getting at least ten feet further along in their quest before lunch break is over. ‘The Shield of Styx! That’s the whole point of it, is it carries you over every kind of a torrent!’

‘Oh great,’ Mejisto says. ‘Who’s got that then?’

It’s beginning to look like the inseparable comrades may actually be on the verge of, if not separating, then saying things they might regret – when the door flies open and Ruprecht Van Doren bursts in. It is a long time since Geoff has seen Ruprecht burst anywhere, but he finds he is not completely surprised: some small, amulet-like part of him always knew that one day his overweight friend would come crashing through this door or another, with the maniacal sheen glistening on his brow that indicates that Something is Up. At the same time, who would have guessed that his first words would be, ‘We need to find Dennis, fast!’?

On the way to the park, Ruprecht explains his new plan. The maniacal sheen did not deceive: this is big, extremely big, with many complicated scientific elements that Geoff loses track of almost immediately. But he is too excited to care, because it is so much like old times; and descending the hill to the lake where Dennis and his smoker friends stand smoking, he feels a big yellow glow of anticipation fizzing up inside him like a Vitamin C tablet in a glass of water.

Dennis, though, is not all that pleased to see them. ‘What do you want?’ he says.

‘Listen to this, Dennis. Ruprecht’s got an amazing plan!’

‘Well, I don’t want to hear it,’ Dennis says, fumbling a fresh cigarette from his packet and jabbing it in his mouth.

‘But you’re a part of it! The whole quartet is in it!’

‘I don’t care!’ Dennis shouts. ‘Leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m smoking?’

‘I think we may be able to get a message to Skippy,’ Ruprecht says.

Dennis turns ghostly-pale and lowers his lighter. ‘What?’ he says.

‘Music,’ Ruprecht explains. ‘There’s a certain amount of evidence that music of various kinds is audible in the higher dimensions –’

‘He’s going to use the Van Doren Wave Oscillator, Dennis!’

‘No,’ Dennis interrupts, more loudly, ‘I mean, what – the fuck?’

Ruprecht, checked, glances over to Geoff uncertainly.

‘Skippy’s dead, Ruprecht,’ the words appearing in a rush of sepulchral white smoke. ‘Haven’t we been over this?’

Ruprecht begins to explain about the historical precedent, but Dennis cuts him off: ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he says, pursed lips the only part of him not trembling. ‘Skippy’s gone, why can’t you leave him be?’

‘But Dennis,’ Geoff intervenes, ‘see, he’s in the hidden dimensions, remember, like those fairy-tales in Irish class?’

‘Geoff, do you really understand what he’s talking about?’ Dennis turns to him. ‘I mean, really, do you have even a vague idea?’

‘No,’ Geoff admits.

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Dennis says. ‘It’s bollocks.’

‘But you haven’t even heard it yet.’

‘I don’t need to hear it. All he’s ever told us is bollocks. The castle on the Rhine, the private tutor flown in from Oxford, the magic portal. Fairy-tales, you said it yourself.’ He drops his cigarette and crushes it under his foot.

Ruprecht, forlorn, unblinking, says, ‘This could actually work.’

Dennis laughs. ‘You’re lying, and you don’t even know it! You can’t even tell what’s true and what’s a lie any more!’

‘No, this is true. I know it. But it has to be tomorrow night. The concert is our only chance.’

‘Fuck you, Von Blowjob. Find some other chump for your gay plan.’ And turning on his heel, Dennis marches back towards Niall and the other smokers.

Geoff covers his face with his hands.

‘Please,’ Ruprecht says.

Dennis turns round. ‘You asshole, what is it you even want to say to Skippy? What do you have to say that you couldn’t have said before, if you hadn’t been too busy trying to prove what a great scientist you were?’

Ruprecht’s whole body slumps, his second chin slipping down into his third and fourth.

For a long moment Dennis holds his gaze; then, ‘Forget you,’ he says, and strides away.

Ruprecht watches him go with an expression of agony, as if Dennis too were passing beyond the veil; his lips tremble with words he cannot quite bring himself to say – and then at last, in a bark like a gunshot, he exclaims, ‘I didn’t have a private tutor.’

Dennis stops.

Ruprecht is standing there in a daze, as if he’s not sure where the words have come from. But then reluctantly, ‘I didn’t have a private tutor,’ he repeats. ‘You’re right, I made that up. I went to boarding school in Roscommon. My parents moved me to Seabrook after I… I…’ He takes a deep breath. ‘One day after swimming I got an erection in the showers.’

The sea comes to them in gusts, barrages of white noise like great cargos of emptiness crashing onto the shore.

‘It just happened,’ Ruprecht concludes dismally. He bows his head, stranded in the grass like some spent atoll.

Dennis is still turned away. For a long time he does not speak; but then, Geoff sees his shoulders begin to shake. A moment later, over the wind and the waves, the first chuckles escape him. ‘A boner in the showers…’ He throws his head back and guffaws. ‘A boner in the showers…’ He laughs for a long time; he laughs and laughs until he is doubled over, until tears stream down his cheeks. Then he stops, and straightens, and regards Ruprecht closely, Ruprecht’s pleading eyes like shiny buttons in his doughy gingerbread face. ‘You poor fuck,’ he says at last. ‘You poor fat fuck.’