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There was a ghost in the halls of residence.
Monday, Alex had banged on his door in the black of night as Graham laid sweating off wine in his bed, thrown in and out of sleep by feverish dreams about post-war rationing tickets and oil paint turning to water in his hands. He thought he was still dreaming until Alex whispered his name, in wild contrast with his fist pounding on the wood.
Once woozily let in, Alex asked for a fag and ranted about waking up to a shadow standing at the foot of his bed, didn't let Graham interrupt with his opinion that one of his love-struck girls had figured out his lock was broken and demanded he sleep the rest of the night with Graham.
Graham’s shutters wouldn’t roll down so he had stolen a staple gun from the shared art supplies and hung up ripped up bedsheets on the window frame to block out the light. Through round bullet shaped holes made by the unfortunate trajectory of cigarette ash, the moon made Alex’s very white skin glow. He looked a ghost himself. He was only wearing his underwear, which Graham knew was a thankful step-up from his usual sleeping attire, and with his dark eyes and the long hair tantalizingly brushing the bone of his shoulder he could have been a very flat-chested girl.
They had to scoot quite close to each other on the bed because of its general shape and size and because of the ambient temperature (the heater was broken as well). Graham had burrowed his face into his pillow, feeling himself slowly sink through the mattress and to the other side of it, into the formless black arms of Sleep.
Before he could completely surrender, the hand resting on his waist slid softly down over his skin until it touched the ridge of his pajama’s waistband, about four fingers below his navel. When he opened his eyes, Alex’s were looking back already, enormous. The moon was lighting a patch of skin on his cheek, right where he had a beauty mark.
“Graham,” he whispered.
“Go to sleep, Alex,” said Graham and very gently took Alex’s hand to place it back where it was on his waist, secured by tangling their fingers.
On Thursday, Damon listened intently to Alex recounting the story, maybe interested in something he said for the first time since they’d met. Damon was very into woo-woo shit, was almost a complete hippie about most things and was only really saved by his love of charity shop clothes and his decidedly un-peace-and-love personality. Still, he wore sandals almost everywhere, took his shirt and shoes off in public parks, smoked a ton of weed and believed in auras and energies and fairies and phases of the moon and protection afforded by their twin necklaces—“It’s because of love that it works,” he had said to Graham once when he was drunk, his fingers brushing Graham’s neck just under the beads and Graham’s breath had been too knocked out to laugh.
Graham expected him to suggest an exorcism or a sage-cleansing ritual but instead he asked Alex who the ghost was.
“What does it matter who it is?” Alex asked with the mild disdain he infused into most of the sentences he addressed to Damon.
“Well, if you know who it is, it would be helpful to figure out what it wants to do with you.”
“I’ll tell you what it wants to do to Alex,” Graham interjected with only mild slurring, “and I think he should start sleeping with a bear trap—”
“Shut up, will you?”
“—if he doesn’t want to get raped.”
“Don’t be disgusting, Graham.” Damon said, grinning. His warm hand found Graham’s knee under the table. The sleeve of his too-big shirt had ridden up to reveal how tender and pale the inside of his elbow was. Graham felt sort of like he might be sick. There were blue veins spidering all under the vulnerable skin like cracks in marble. This was where you’d shoot junk, Graham thought, if you were wanting to take a knife to the Mona Lisa.
Damon and Alex were arguing in a pleasant hum about the best way to get rid of a ghost. Damon insisted that the ghost materialized to warn Alex of something unresolved in his life. Graham wished he were a cat or a dog or a kind of burrowing creature so he could crawl in his lap and hide himself in the space between Damon’s collarbone and his Adam’s apple, chew his throat to pieces with his sharp teeth.
Damon proposed to stay over at the student housing—meaning, Graham’s room—that night to see if he could talk to the ghost. He squeezed Graham further up his thigh before raising his hand to scratch Graham’s head like you would an affectionate pet, just like he read his mind. Graham let himself lean into it a bit and didn’t mention that the ghost never appeared in his room.
Damon sighed. “It’s like a bomb has gone off in here.” He picked at a bit of wallpaper that was peeling off next to the doorframe. Shirts, socks, jackets and dirty underwear carpeted the floor along with balled up sheets of paper, empty beer bottles, cassette tapes and oil paint tubes. Damon toed at a precarious pile of striped shirts to reveal under it the crumpled pack of Camels where Graham kept his guitar picks. On the windowsill, next to the staple gun, sat a brown paper bag full of slowly rotting satsumas Graham’s mum had shoved into his hands the last time he’d visited. Damon had been trying to stave off Graham’s possible beer-and-chips-diet-induced scurvy in almost the same way, by bringing him old croissants and orange juice rescued from his job.
Damon bent at the waist to retrieve a pair of checkered boxer briefs and brought it to his face, sniffing it.
“Damon, that’s disgusting,” Graham squeaked. Damon bared him his teeth and dropped the knickers to rugby tackle Graham to his bed, springs groaning in disapproval. He buried his nose in Graham's neck, taking a deep, ticklish inhale. Graham tried to dislodge him by twitching his shoulder towards his ear, but Damon only giggled.
“Mmm, unwashed art student, my favorite,” he said, tasting his skin. Graham's head spun. Damon nosed his way down his torso, pushing his sweater up to his armpits, vulnerable skin to cold air. Graham's heart beat in his ears.
Damon mimed biting at one of Graham's nipples before growling like a dog and bending his head to stick his wet tongue in Graham's belly button.
Graham yelped and brought his knee up hard into Damon's stomach, making him roll over in pained groans, the wind knocked out of him.
Graham pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, mortified.
“Quit taking the fucking piss, Damon.” His voice was as meek and shaky as it had always been and Graham wished not for the first time that he'd be anyone else. Stars bloomed in his vision.
Graham felt Damon settle back on top of him, his breath near his waistband making him shiver. “I'm not taking the piss,” he said to the beginning of Graham's pubic hair. “I'm not,” he repeated and gently took Graham's hands away from his face, an unspoken command to look at him.
His eyes were very dark in the low light of Graham's bedroom. The sky was too full with clouds for the moon to shine that night and Graham felt absurdly grateful to be protected from its gaze, reassured that it couldn't see this.
Slowly, to make sure Graham could see and potentially stop it, Damon dragged his fingers down Graham’s skin and zipped open his jeans. Graham felt another insurmountable surge of embarrassment go through him, embarrassed of his own behaviour, his dirty room, how much he'd drunk, of his old underwear that was so worn the elastic was starting to slacken at the waist, but most of all embarrassed by his cock, embarrassed that it was hard at all because it meant that he wanted it.
Damon kissed his cock through the fabric, his mouth nestled between the open rows of teeth of Graham's zipper. Graham imagined a great big shark swallowing both of them whole and slowly digesting them until nothing was left but clean white bones that were so tangled no one could tell which ones were whose. He thought of their two skeletons laying on a big table and a little old man with a pair of tweezers trying to figure out if a rib was his or Damon's and mistakenly attributing it, and tangled his fingers in Damon's blonde fringe.
When Graham was a child, his mother used to put him on mushroom cleaning duty. It was a delicate task, not really suited to a little boy, but she had had to take potato peeling away from him after she caught him biting them raw—though she couldn’t stop him from licking his dirt-speckled fingers after each mushroom. To clean those small white mushrooms, with their delicate heads, you had to first remove their stem by gently wiggling it back and forth until you felt it detach, and then slip your thumb under the cap to pinch the dirty skin and peel it off. If the mushroom is small enough, when your thumb breaches the underside its skin is first a very soft ring of fuzz that envelops your finger completely for just a second before you break it. It weakly grabs at you as its very last defense like it can feel you are about to violate it.
It wasn’t to say that sodomy—“Don’t call it sodomy Graham, it’s not the 19th century”—was very much like it, but it wasn’t completely unlike it to the degree that Graham thought about it nearly every time he did it. Once when Damon was cutting up magic mushrooms to put in a tea with his pocket knife, in that stressful way he cut slices of bread and cheese as well, like an old fisherman, cradling it in his hand and bringing the knife towards himself, stopping the trajectory of the blade with his thumb so rapidly that Graham expected a drop of blood at every pass of the knife, maybe even yearned for it so he’d put his finger in his mouth or cloudy the tea pink—this was the kind of thing Graham thought about as well each time Damon spat or swallowed—, Graham asked him how they cleaned mushrooms at his house and he replied that they had a little brush for the dirt and oddly he’d felt like crying.
Someone’s elbow struck him harshly in the flank, jolting him awake. Graham turned over on his back to see Damon sitting up very hunched over himself in the bed. When Graham tried to shift up on his elbow, something crinkled under him.
“What are you doing?” and when he didn't seem to answer: “You’re freaking me out.” He looked like a creature, deformed like he was by the shadows. Damon’s head pivoted to look at him. The weak street light just outside caught his hair and turned it a sickly orange. “Well, I saw the ghost.”
Graham made to turn back over but Damon grabbed his wrist. “I was just writing there, you know.”
“In the dark? Can’t song lyrics wait?” Graham opened his eyes as wide as he could over and over again, like it would help his pupils catch better snatches of light in the room.
“They weren’t song lyrics. I was writing poems. Graham—”
“You are not up writing poems half-pissed in the dark.”
“I was thinking about the moon.” Graham had been thinking about the moon too, somehow. A strange silver coldness went through him and he dragged the blanket higher over his naked chest.
“What, is it in retrograde?”
“Only planets go into retrograde. Graham, I’m serious.” The way air passing through his front teeth made him whistle on s's was even more noticeable when he whispered. Graham found himself annoyed by it this time, instead of charmed.
“You saw a ghost.”
“It was you.” It was like being doused in cold water. Graham refused to flinch and give Damon the satisfaction.
“Fine. I’m going back to sleep, why don’t you talk to him instead?” He mimed rolling over.
“You were wearing a helmet like a World War II parachutist. Very cute.”
“I’ll leave you to it.”
“You’re just going to go to sleep?” For the first time, Damon sounded actually shaken. The lilt of his voice made him sound like a little boy asking for his mummy to leave the nightlight on.
“I have to get up early in the morning; I’m being deployed over Berlin.” He turned back around for good this time, though he shuffled closer to Damon's body heat and fell back asleep by counting his breaths.
Saturday, Damon made Graham sit in a church with him for over an hour. He was seeking guidance from the statues. Graham tried for a bit to stare uninterrupted at Mary’s kindly face like Damon was doing but after a while she started to split and deform into a comedic, then tragic theater mask. When she began to look like his mother, then his old primary school teacher who used to whack him with her ruler, he gave up and slumped over Damon’s shoulder to try to sleep.
He smelled like old wood and incense. Almost unconscious of it, Graham nosed further into his neck to see if he could find Damon under the musty smell of church that had coated him. Damon twitched under his mouth and murmured “Graham, we’re in the house of the Lord.” Graham dozed off, insensible.
“The catholics have kept very pagan rituals,” Damon said around his ciggie once they were outside. “The olive, sage branches, the incense grains to burn. And the statues, of course. Not that scared of idolatry, really. I mean they're keeping bones and hair around like witches.”
Graham glanced at his profile. His perfect upturned nose. The smattering of acne on his jaw where the skin was not quite totally familiar with the razor. He was speaking quite loudly, like he wanted to get the attention of the few churchgoers milling about their bench. Getting beat up by a pious little old lady would certainly be a first for him. Damon noticed him looking and leaned in conspiratorially. “That’s what Joan of Arc used to do, you know. She stopped in churches to talk to statues of Mary.”
“And now you know how Joan of Arc felt,” Graham said in a posh drawl.
Damon grinned and very sweetly kissed the corner of his mouth as if to reward him. Graham shivered, trying not to look around anxiously. They did not usually do this in public, or indeed sober at all. When he pulled back, Damon frowned at a spot below Graham's jaw. “Who gave you that?”
“The hickey?” On instinct, Graham's hand had shot up to cover it.
“Boy or girl?” Damon took away Graham's hand and replaced it with his own, softly rubbing his thumb over the broken blood vessels and leaning to see better like the answer was written on the skin.
“Obviously it was a girl. Damon!” Graham jerked back to avoid getting his hair singed by Damon's cigarette. He didn't want to admit it to him but he had gotten freaked out by his dark room and hadn't wanted to sleep in it alone Friday night. For a good part of the night, Graham had laid listening to the hallway flooring creaking and staring at the light from sleepy cars passing over Selena from Anatomy Class's hair and protruding freckled shoulder blades.
“It was you I saw,” Damon said suddenly, his voice oddly deepened by the smoke trapped in his chest.
“You can't have seen me. I'm not dead, I can't be a ghost.”
“That's what I'm worried about. You know in celtic folklore if you have a vision of someone you know to be alive it means they're really dead, or very close to being.” He wouldn't look at him as he said it.
“Please don't say that,” Graham muttered. “It's upsetting.”
“Sorry.” Damon looked at him. “Sorry. I don't think this is it, so you don't need to be scared.”
Graham knew about the statues. It was really a psychological phenomenon that looking at a human face made it easier for you to project your thoughts, like they were speaking to you.
“What did Mary say?”
“I dunno.” Damon's eyes fell to his hands. White, middle class hands, unmarred yet by life or guitar calluses. “She said to take arms and fight.”
“The Virgin Mary told you that?”
“It must have been a metaphor.” He shook his head. “She said… It's not how you might think. The shapes of the words aren't— That's what I felt she said.”
Graham thought that many sentences Damon heard seemed to take this kind of shape in his head, but he didn't say so because he didn't want an argument. He wanted very much to take him in his arms and bury his face in his hair, but he felt peeled and vulnerable in the winter sun and didn't know if Damon wanted the same. Across the street, the strong voices of a choir began, built up and loudly echoed out of the opened door of the church. They both looked at it and Graham imagined that he could float away, carried by the music until he touched the dome of the sky. This must have been why thousands of believers had killed themselves building cathedrals.
Damon took Graham in his suitcase with his laundry when he went back to visit his parents the following weekend. Damon scribbled on bits of paper while Graham stared out the train window, biting his nail, at London flying past him and disappearing into brown upturned fields. There hadn’t been any more supernatural incidents since Damon’s church trip, or at least none that couldn’t reasonably be only borne out of Graham’s own paranoia.
In the pocket of a pair of jeans he bought in a charity shop he found a small silvery pin representing a lute, complete with the almond shaped body and bent neck, and had thought it a good luck charm he was now keeping affixed to the inside of his corduroy jacket. He hadn’t mentioned it to Damon because when he did to Alex, he had said that Graham ought to know that in paintings playing the lute or the guitar used to be reserved to women with loose morals and that having a lute meant you were a whore, if Graham was reaching for symbolism. Graham had gone back to the halls of residence and slashed with orange paint a woman bent over a chimera of a string instrument into a canvas, her face obscured by Vermeer-reminiscent ringlet curls, himself almost mute with annoyance. He didn’t want to show it to Damon for fear of him misconstruing it as Graham’s hideous and jealous want to join his band, which it wasn’t, but Damon thought nearly everything was about him.
Call-us-Keith-and-Hazel greeted Graham as warmly as they usually did and kissed Damon despite his attempts to wriggle away, his face pink with pleasure and embarrassment. Graham couldn’t remember many dinners he’d shared with Damon and his parents that didn’t play out in much the same way this one did.
Infallibly, Keith and Hazel would show themselves to be open and supportive of Damon's every endeavour no matter how odd, doomed, or unlikely to make any money it was and Damon in return would try his hardest to reach the limits of their patience. Graham had been there when he'd announced he would be going to acting school; he hadn't been when Damon'd said he was dropping out of said acting school to be a practically gigless singer, but he assumed the reaction must have been sensibly the same cheerful encouragement.
Damon, aside from his obvious love of his parents (It was impossible to not love Keith and Hazel, even if you were their barely-out-of-his-teenage-years son) and his occasional ribbing of their hippie-ness, was clearly upset at their non-compliance with his romantic ideal of the starving artist shunned by his family and was considering firm measures according to the private threat he made to Graham of telling them they’d decided to forsake women and elope together to see if they’d disown them then and that he’d only given up when Graham told him he’d kill him if he did it. He seemed to content himself with trying to kiss Graham in his childhood bedroom knowing his parents wouldn’t be in bed yet and pouting when Graham told him to fuck off.
Damon’s room was almost the same as Graham had always known it to be: gray and cluttered, still devoid of records but now littered with piles of old textbooks and balled up sheets of construction paper his sister had left there while he was away. Even with the window shut you could hear the rumbling of drunk people coming out of the pub into the alleyway, shoes dragging on the pavement next to the glass. Graham remembered them both, younger and legless themselves balancing on Damon’s desk to reach outside and grab the unsuspecting ankles of poor sods out for a piss or a fag in front of the window, laughing until they got afraid they’d throw up.
Graham was meant to go back to his parents’ the next day, after being dazzled—Damon’s words—by his performance at the Colchester Arts Centre but instead they got thrown out of a pub in the small hours and had to crawl back to Damon’s parents’ because Damon insisted he couldn’t remember the way alone and if Graham left him on the road he’d be eaten by stray dogs or cows.
The country wind kept stealing away the flame of Damon's lighter. You could love anyone if you saw them shivering struggling to light a cigarette, Graham suddenly thought. Even attempting the precarious rolly-polly-esque position of curling over yourself enough to cut off the wind but not so much you got too dizzy and were sick, his parka around his elbows, Damon looked as much a famous person as he did on stage, as he did at thirteen.
Graham wasn't sure how Damon onstage looked to other people, but it was unthinkable that he was the only one that felt so profoundly can-opened and almost embarrassed by Damon's stage antics.
There was nothing worthy of shame in Damon's performance, no matter what people thought of him pogoing and throwing himself about, climbing lighting rigs and amps and twisting on the floor of the stage like subject to immense torture or pleasure, rather Graham was embarrassed at the display of such an open passion. No matter if the crowd was ten or a hundred art students, Damon always gave himself away to every person in the audience. It was his privilege to have them all see him be entirely consumed by music, always teetering on the edge of genuine physical harm. Hazel had once told him she wished he wouldn't go quite this far every time and Graham had found a very small and secret part of him that agreed. It was always embarrassing to see someone so naked it made you feel clothed.
Damon turned and offered the slightly wet filter end of his cigarette. Graham took a drag, thinking of spitting and swallowing and blood in magic mushroom tea.
He would be in an almost contemplative mood if he hadn't drunk to the point of almost complete oblivion and it was difficult to walk straight without tripping. Behind him, probably judging him sufficiently distracted, he heard Damon's shoes skid on gravel as he took a running start and launched himself at Graham's back.
The precious cigarette flew out of Graham's hand and they both collapsed in a heap on the ground. Damon was trying to catch his breath while doing his hiccupy laugh, which absolutely meant he was about to throw up. Graham, his ankle trapped under Damon’s stomach, turned over on his back to stare up at the sky.
They weren't far enough from London for it to be as pregnant with stars as Damon told him it was in Nordic countries where they got those ribbons of green light like someone had slashed the fabric of the universe to slip their fingers through and caress their Nordic heads, but it was still a full dark blue instead of an ill black-yellow like in the city, and the moon was enormous and bright silver in the sky. It felt kind and benevolent that night and Graham thought of sheepishly apologizing to it. Aren't we silly?
Damon hiccuped again, then made a retching sound right above Graham's head, his only warning to quickly twist out of the way before Damon upended his stomach all over the road, right where Graham's face had been milliseconds before.
Being mostly red wine, it was very dark and liquidy vomit; at least a little splashed in Graham's hair and it looked as black as a pool of blood would in the moonlight.
“Sorry,” Damon sing-sang before his back spasmed again under Graham's soothing hand and he threw up a second time.
“You’re alright,” slurred Graham to his shoulders and mop of hair. Damon muttered something he didn’t catch. “What?”
Damon turned his head to look at Graham. “I said,” he articulated, “that I should be the one taking care of you.” A strand of his blonde hair was stuck to the corner of his mouth by some remnants of bile. It struck Graham as horribly lovely and young.
“Damon, I'm not some… some thing you have to protect.” It was very difficult to be coherent in this state. “I'm doing fine.”
“You are… You are. But…” Damon's head lolled on his shoulders for a second before he raised it again to look Graham in the eye. “I want you to join my band.”
His face was so white and stark, lit like it was. “You're wasted, putting— putting phones in fruit bowls.” This would have earned him a punch on a different night, but the moon was so benevolent. “You need to make music with me. Graham.”
He seemed almost transparent for a second, before he bent in half and groaned. “I think I'm going to be sick again. What do you say.” He took Graham's gravel-encrusted hand and brought it palm up to his filthy mouth. “Right?” He looked at him through his fringe.
Graham let his fingers touch that stuck piece of hair near his mouth. “Yeah. Yeah, bloody alright, Damon.” Light glanced off the glass beads of both their necklaces for a blink, and then it was like they were alone.