by

I’ve always been fascinated by sanity; its link with the emotions has intrigued me for years.

It first seduced me when I was young and inquisitive. In those days I used to trap bluebottles and beetles inside an overturned tumbler so I might mess with their minds. It’s surprising how ultraviolet light or rapid side-to-side motion can warp even the tiniest psyche; and in legion, say ten or twenty captured behind a wall of paraffin, they squirm all the more frantically, wrestle and writhe as though the threat of death is all the more terrifying if experienced in company.

However, the creature for which I have the highest regard has to be the butterfly. I caught my first when I was seven in the summer of ‘74. After transferring it to a bell jar, I took it to the garden shed to test its mental resilience. My father interrupted me seconds after I’d lit the blowtorch. For a moment he just stood there and stared, the warm interior of the shed silent save for the sound of wings against glass. Then he took a strip of bamboo from the tomato plants and, speechless with rage, hit me until the cane broke in two. As I lay on the floor he took the jar from the bench and went in the house.

He put my butterfly to sleep and added it to the thousands of others in his collection. As long as I remember he always kept that one separate from the others, locked in a cabinet at the back of an unlit cupboard. Only once, when he and my uncle had been drinking all afternoon, did he mention why. He said he could tell by the tremors in its wings seconds before death that it had gone insane. He deliberately turned the conversation before my uncle could ask how, or who’d managed to net such a beauty. Which was typical. Even at that age he never gave me any credit.

But for all his faults I must admit he was a great butterfly collector. Indeed, he was respected by all in the field. His cases still delight anyone who steps into his study, though I can’t help feel that their colours fade once they’ve been suffocated and pinned to a board.

Anyway, he gave all that up years ago. Now, at eighty-seven, my father collects days, and as with his former hobby each is more precious than the last, more elusive, and trickier to catch.

*

The first time he mentioned the ghost we were in the middle of dinner. He rapped on the table to get my attention.

"What?" I asked. "Food not good?"

He shook his head, put down his knife and fork and reached for the pad. As he wrote his brow creased with concentration, and a length of sputum from his lip lowered itself into his meal. He didn’t notice; or probably didn’t care. Since my mother passed on I’ve prepared all the food. Without me he would starve, but not once has he thanked me or complimented me on a sauce or a particularly tender piece of meat.

He finished the note and slid it down the table to me. It said, "I’ve seen a ghost."

I knew he wasn’t joking but I laughed all the same. His soul has searched for a tonic ever since he lost my mother, and each new medicine is more and more strange.

"Where?" I asked.

He motioned for the pad. I walked around the table and gave it to him. I looked at him as he wrote the reply.

Old age ensured he could express no other emotion but sorrow. His eyes were heavy, the lower rims drooping as if the removal of skin from his head had already begun. His jowls hung too, as did his bottom lip and the large lobes of his ears. In actual fact his entire face looked set to slip from his skull.

He gave me the notepad. "In my bedroom," it said, "two nights ago."

"So," I said, "what did it look like?"

Once more, he took up the pen.

"We haven’t had a decent visitor in years," I remarked, crossing to the bar and pouring a brandy. "Except Austin, and he wouldn’t come if it wasn’t for the groceries." I sipped the drink. "I could get used to living in a haunted house," I said, glancing up at the high ceiling. "We might even make some money out of it."

He motioned that he’d finished. I read what he’d written:

"I woke and he was standing in the corner. He was about eight-years-old. He had on a blue jacket with a fur collar that was pulled up around his ears. On his head was a purple hat, and looped through the sleeves of his coat were woollen mittens with cats on. His face was round, and beautiful and affectionate. By the time I’d gathered my wits he’d stepped into the corridor and vanished. But I did see him! It wasn’t a dream."

I threw the paper on the table in disgust. "You are a stupid, stupid old man. Don’t think I don’t know who you’re describing. Do you really think he’d still be hanging around this place after so many years? For what? Certainly not for you or I. As a father you stifled him, and as a brother I..."

Though his temples throbbed, and his lower lip quivered, he refrained from answering. I wouldn’t have read it anyway.

Exasperated, I drained my glass, banged it down and stormed out. I left the house, slamming every door I went through, and headed down to the beach.

*

I often take the stairs down to the beach at night. If my father has been especially troublesome I will sometimes strip and roll naked in the pink granules. Local historians argue over why the sand down there is the colour it is. Most believe it was used during the 16th and 17th centuries for animal and human sacrifice. But recently an article appeared in the local paper claiming that The Who staged a secret concert on the cove in the sixties, and that a riot broke out in which fifteen people were trampled to death. I prefer the modern theory. When I think of their final thoughts, of how scared they must have been, my heart beats faster and I am forced to walk into the sea to calm myself down. I always stop when the water reaches my neck, though. Only once have I gone the whole way. Being under the sea at night is like sleeping with your eyes open. I wanted to stay forever, but on that particular evening I had an appointment to keep in the beer garden of the Horse and Hounds in the village.

The night of complete immersion was also the night I conscripted William. I couldn’t believe he actually showed up. After I’d explained my requirements to him the day before he’d greeted my request with an incredulous silence, and obvious trepidation.

I sat at the pub, dripping salt water in my pint and explaining his duties. He listened carefully and asked only one question, that of payment. A rate agreed, he drained his shandy and hurried home.

I stayed at the table long after he’d gone, trapping moths in a beer glass and burning them with my lighter.

*

Though I didn’t submerge myself on the evening we argued over Adam’s ghost, I did manage to subdue my temper by the time I returned home. It was gone midnight. There was no sign of my father, who would’ve gone to bed hours ago. I locked the doors, shuttered the windows, and went up to my room in the far end of the west wing, overlooking the sea.

My quarters are minimally furnished. I have only the necessities - a bed; a clothes cupboard; a sink; three bookcases and a battered typewriter. Tacked to the wall is a six-by-six photograph of a human brain. In the adjoining room I have several volumes of eastern literature, a pile of Victorian pornography, two carcasses and a chest containing the remains of my mother’s estate. That secondary room also has a narrow chute drilled through the ceiling and out to the roof; its position is such that birds and mice climb into it with the intention of gaining entry to the house, only to find that once they’ve skidded down there’s no getting out of the cage attached to the end. I haven’t used the contraption in years; nor will I. It was a vulgar phase I went through in my late teens which I prefer to forget.

I undressed and got into bed. I started to drift to sleep. The beginning of a dream rippled in my head, but didn’t have chance to enrich itself beyond a pale nonsense before a noise splashed it away.

I sat up, fully awake.

I listened.

I could hear a voice.

Swinging my feet to the floor, I focused my hearing. It sounded like a baby mewling; wet gibberish, as if whatever was speaking hadn’t had much practice.

I left the room and walked along the corridor in the direction of the noise. As I progressed the words lost their ambiguity, and I knew, before I’d rounded the corner to the landing, that the noise was my father attempting to talk.

He was leant against the banister, desperately trying to shape his mouth into words. Each syllable was crippled; distorted between brain and tongue. For a brief moment I hated myself. But I bit it back and stepped towards him.

I tapped his arm but he ignored me, continuing instead to stare over the balcony at the hallway below. I followed his vision.

Kneeling in the centre of the brown, polished floor, engrossed in a game of marbles, was Adam. His back was hunched in our direction, his face turned away over his game. He had on his blue coat and his purple hat. His shoes were muddy. As he played he hummed.

We watched for a minute or two as Adam, or whatever vestige the house was remembering, amused himself with the simplest of pursuits.

My father suddenly started shaking. I clasped his hand loosely in mine. He turned and met my gaze. His eyes, which usually wept with age, now wept with tears, a wetness that had not graced those cheeks since the purple crematorium curtains had closed around my brother more than three decades before.

*

Adam was born with Down’s Syndrome, and as a result garnered more love and dedication from my family than I could ever have hoped to draw forth. He was never struck, nudged aside or ignored. On Christmas morning he would topple under the weight of his presents, and his nightmares always won cuddles not yells. To them he was special; a gift, a test of their love. To me, a boy who’d never had Downs Syndrome explained to him, he was like a pet.

After lunch on Sundays, while my mother read and my father pored over his collection, I would see how far Adam’s benign nature could be stretched. We’d play games, in which I would quickly switch from comrade to tormentor, and inevitably bring him to tears. I was never so uncouth as to hurt him physically. Rather than that I would lie to him, usually about how our parents had saved him as a baby from being flushed down the lavatory by his real mother, an obese lady in a freak show, the inspiration for which I got from a copy of Weird Tales. For days after hearing this he would refuse to sit on the toilet, and insist instead on using a bucket outside in the garden. My parents complied. I think they thought it cute, as though he’d taken his first step or filled his first nappy. To them he was a permanent two-year-old. He could have burnt down the house and still got a chocolate bar for his troubles. I don’t know why they were so accommodating. Perhaps they felt they owed him.

On the last day of October, when I was twelve and Adam seven, I made the decision to show him Butterfly Island.

The weather had turned that week; each night crept further and further into day. It was late afternoon and the clouds rested between showers.

I went into Adam’s room and told him I had something very important to share with him. He was free from suspicion; like a trusting canine he always forgot my little teases and acted as if nothing had happened. Without questioning, he dropped his crayon, put on his coat and hat, and followed me out of the house.

We walked along the cliffs, a mist around our ankles. Adam asked me where we were heading. I said it was a surprise, but he would certainly enjoy it. He said something I couldn’t understand. He had difficulty with speech, such was the nature of his condition, and only a select few, including me, were able to translate his stunted dialogue. Even so, when he got excited it was nigh on impossible.

Further inland a main road connected our village to the nearest town. During peak times it would get busy. I held Adam’s hand until we’d safely crossed.

On the other side, across a number of boggy fields, was a wood. It didn’t have a good deal of wildlife; birds in summer, the odd squirrel. But about a third of a mile into the trees, beside a pond, was a small hut. Deserted, and ramshackle, it must have been hidden for years. I’m not sure what its original purpose was; something to do with forestry, perhaps, because when I’d first ventured inside, one day in June, I’d discovered a set of rusty tools and a two-handed saw. Apart from those, and a faded copy of Mayfair, it was empty. A board had been tacked over the window, which I replaced on my second visit with a blanket, so I could regulate how much sunlight got in. I dedicated most of the summer to making the hut hospitable, and to building Butterfly Island. Adam would be the first to step inside.

He complained about getting mud on his new shoes as we followed the path through the woods. I sensed, when we were outside the door, his mood change from adventure to apprehension. I told him there was nothing to be scared of, and that I would enter first. I undid the lock, removed the bricks which I always piled across the entrance, and pushed open the door.

It was too dark inside to see anything. I went in, and beckoned for Adam. After a minute he stepped inside, glancing back at the sky and the woods.

I guided him towards the tank. Beneath my hands Adam’s shoulders trembled, made nervous by the fluttering noise that had been sparked by our presence. However, he seemed to calm a little once he realised he was in the company of animals. He was always drawing cats and dogs and horses. I think he felt an affinity with them, what with them being pretty much incommunicado too.

I left him standing before the tank and went to the window. I clutched a corner of the blanket in my right hand.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said, despite the single gender, "I give you Butterfly Island."

I ripped the blanket off the window. Nails cascaded across the floor. Light rushed in. The hut went wild.

Twenty-four butterflies, their ridiculously small brains remembering a life prior to this, beat themselves against the inside of the tank as if trying to bash away memory.

Adam’s eyes opened wide. He blinked several times, staring at what he’d always called "father’s flying colours". He grinned, and laughed, and performed tiny jumping actions on the spot. Then he noticed how Butterfly Island was constructed, from what it took its name, and he stopped and pointed at the creatures, saying the word "help" in his own unique way over and over again.

The main body of the island was an old tank I’d rescued from the household waste disposal site. It resembled a transparent oil drum. I’d attached to the top a number of upturned bottles, the type sold in pet shops for hamsters, except larger, each of which contained a colourless acid. There was enough in the bottles to fill the drum twice over. Running from each bottle, through an oval grill in the drum’s lid, was a thin reinforced tube. The inner walls of the drum were also coated with acid, should any of the seven butterflies - one for each of Adam’s years - have attempted to cling to the sides. None did, but perched instead on an upside down plastic bucket positioned on the floor of the drum.

A single tear of acid would squeeze from the tubes every five seconds. It collected in a pool around the bucket’s rim, through which it was beginning to eat. I didn’t know how long it would take to rise to a level at which the butterflies would melt; or if a dripping droplet would get them all first, catch them one by one in mid-flight.

I watched distress slowly overcome Adam. Even if he’d been unable to work out what would happen, there was an atmosphere about the place that was unnerving, like walking down a darkened aisle in a battery farm.

He lurched for the door and disappeared outside. I heard his feet in the undergrowth.

I intended on giving chase but my attention was snatched by something in the tank. It looked as if one of the butterflies had committed suicide in the last few seconds. It lay on the edge of the pool, slowly vanishing.

At that moment I considered freeing them. But why? Innocent as they were they were still guilty of being alive.

I darted into the woods. Adam was almost gone; he was a dim speck of colour in an otherwise uniform landscape. I called for him to stop. I apologised for scaring him, and offered to clean his dirty shoes. He didn’t slow, or even look round, but continued until well out of sight.

I returned to the hut, tacked the blanket back over the window and locked the door. Then I started home.

It was twilight by the time I reached the road. Because I was coming out of the trees I didn’t see the crowd until they were upon me.

An elderly gentleman was waving the traffic around a stationary car. A younger man, presumably the driver, was sitting hunched on the kerb, his hands over his eyes, while a woman, her Fiat parked further along with its hazard lights flashing, shone a torch on the red, green and blue marbles that were scattered like bits of butterfly on the road.

*

Four days later my father collapsed in the garden, and from thereafter sounded as though the spirit of his son spoke through him. When I visited him in hospital a Polish doctor told me he’d been touched by an angel; that half of him was with God. A nurse took me aside and tried to explain about strokes. I listened, but preferred the heavenly version. I thought being eased an organ at a time into death befitted him. He’d always enjoyed nurturing dead things; it was only right he carry some round with him awhile.

A fortnight after Adam died, I came home from school and found my mother swinging in the hallway. Her left slipper had slipped from her foot and the other was hanging precariously from her toe. It seemed she’d threaded one of Adam’s belts through the railings on the landing, popped her neck through the loop, and kicking and shitting gone to search the afterlife for her baby.

I wished her luck.

*

The ghost of Adam lasted twenty days and twenty nights. It contained all the characteristics of a ritual. My father would sneak from his room just before midnight, sit at the top of the stairs and peer down into the hall. Sure enough, within half an hour Adam would emerge from the kitchen or lounge, and my father would clutch the banister and shake with sheer love at the sight of his son.

He came to depend on those nightly visitations, and wrote of nothing else all day. He would bring me things, too; toys, clothes and books he said he’d found strewn around the house. His boy was here, he said. He was here to see his Pa.

On the twenty-first night, with my father in his room, I left the house and went down to the garden. I lit a torch and walked to the perimeter of our premises. At the end of the lane, where our land leads on to the village, I stepped into the bushes and extinguished my light.

Soon, a torch less powerful than mine came into view on the road. It advanced towards the house. I flicked my beam back on, strode forward and shone it in William’s face.

"It’s over," I said.

"Oh, so I don’t have to do it tonight...?"

"No. I said it would be about three weeks. I’ll pay you for the full period."

I gave him the money we’d agreed upon; not much to me but a lot to him.

"I’ll be needing the key back."

He dug in his pocket and relinquished it. "What about the clothes and the toys?" he asked.

"Can I trust you to throw them in the sea?"

He nodded.

"Then do that. Actually," I said, struck by a thought, "do it a week from today, when the tide’s in." It was father’s birthday and we would celebrate it with a walk along the cliff-top. With luck the floating anorak might catch his eye, which would certainly prove interesting.

"Your family still moving on?" I asked William.

"Next week. Nottingham. My dad’s got a stall on the fair."

"Good. Make sure you don’t wander up this way before you leave. He mustn’t see you again."

He shrugged to indicate it wasn’t a problem.

I shook his hand and brought our partnership to a close. At this point in his life he really was a deadringer for Adam; a year or two on the resemblance would likely fade. But a year or two on he’d probably have forgotten all about his brief stint as a ghost.

*

Loss, I have learnt, is the factor most likely to addle the mind. I’ve seen it with animals, with birds; steal their young or slaughter their mates and they’re just as inept as us when we stare into dust.

The loss of his son twice in the same lifetime almost killed my father. It certainly killed any spirit he had left.

For several weeks after the termination of William’s service, I observed him carefully. He refused, until hygiene persuaded him otherwise, to forsake his place on the landing; and when he did at last move he would force me to bathe and dress him as quickly as possible, lest he miss the phantom’s return.

When his vigil proved fruitless he performed a thorough search of the house, certain Adam was hiding from his father for some misunderstood reason. He ransacked cupboards; tore through the attic and the cellar; prised up floorboards and cut into walls. He gashed his hands in the process, and clutched his chest several times at the exertion.

I’m sure he won’t quit until either he finds him or else drops down dead. Chances are the latter.

But it won’t upset me. I did all my mourning for my father years ago. The day I lost him. The day my brother was born.