Burial Read Online Free Page A

uncomfortable.
    Bob changed the subject. He said, 'So. Do you have any drugs?'
    They stopped off at the bar. Sara was still in conversation with Howard, but they'd been joined by a number of other party goers. She looked like she was enjoying herself. Making friends. Wherever she went, she made friends.
    Clutching a bottle of gin in one hand and three wine glasses in the other -- one glass full of ice -- Bob sidled alongside Nathan.
    'She with you?'
    'Yeah. Well, nominally.'
    'Lucky man.'
    Nathan ignored that -- it hardly mattered to him any more that Sara was good-looking.
    And, actually, Nathan got the impression that Bob had disliked Sara on sight. Not many men did that, and Bob kind of went up in his estimation because of it. In some strange way, it made him an ally.
    They hurried up the main stairwell. On the first-floor landing, they turned down a half-lit, door-lined hallway.
    Nathan said, 'Have you been here before?'
    'Nah. I'm following the vibe.'
    'Right.'
    'I know it sounds like bollocks. But you attend as many hauntings as I do, you learn how to read a house.'
    He tried a door handle, moved on. Tested another; the door opened. He groped in the darkness and a light came on. They stepped into the room and Nathan closed the door.
    It was a guest bedroom, impersonal as a Holiday Inn. A double bed, a bedside table, a mirrored wardrobe.
    Nathan turned on a standard lamp that stood in one corner; it shed a more pleasing glow, so he killed the overhead light.
    He said, 'You really believe that stuff?'
    'Yep.'
    Nathan took from the wall a square mirror, about the size of an LP, and lay it mirror-side up on the quilted bed. Then he kneeled and laid out four lines of cocaine, a cat's claw gash across his reflection.
    Bob
    went hunting in his thick, greasy wallet. He produced a ten pound note. Two lines each.
    Then they were sitting on the floor with their backs to the bed, sniffing.
    'So,' said Nathan. 'Have you ever actually seen a ghost?'
    'Not as such.'
    'What does that mean, not as such?'
    'It means, I've seen their effects.'
    'Effects like what?'
    'Anomalies in haunted houses. Electrical disturbances. Cold spots.
    Poltergeist phenomena.'
    'No way.'
    'Yes way.'
    'As in, you've seen a ghost that throws stuff around?'
    'People used to think it was that. But we're pretty convinced it's some kind of geothermic reaction - like an intense, very localized electrical field. It sort of charges things up - and yeah, throws stuff around.'
    'No shit?'
    'No shit. A professor I know in Copenhagen, he built a poltergeist machine. Honest to God. He built a room inside a kind of electromagnetic chamber. He filled it with everyday stuff-chairs, furniture, newspapers, mugs. Then he runs a charge through it, a really powerful charge. And guess what? He reproduces poltergeist phenomena, right there in the lab: things levitate, fly across the room.
    All that.'
    'You've seen it?'
    'Seen it.'
    'What's it like?"
    'Creepy as shit.'
    Nathan was enthusiastic. 'So you think that's what it is, the supernatural?
    Just natural phenomena.'
    'Pretty much, yeah. Ninety-nine per cent of it.'
    'And the other per cent?'
    'It's the other per cent that really interests me. Probably a good ninety-nine per cent of that last one per cent is explicable. We just don't know how yet. But the remaining one per cent of the one per cent?'
    He pinched his nostrils and closed his eyes.
    'Jesus. Do you have a cigarette?'
    Nathan could feel each cell of his body vibrating.
    After hoovering the last of the cocaine, then wetting their fingertips with spit and rubbing the bitter residue into their gums, Nathan refilled the wine glasses with ice and Bombay Sapphire.
    Bob sat rigid on the bed, holding his glass by the stem.
    'Fucking hell,' he said.
    Nathan told him, 'I stopped taking this stuff two years ago. Can you imagine?'
    Bob said he couldn't imagine.
    They went quiet.
    The quality of the light seemed to change.
    Bob said, 'What's wrong?'
    'Nothing.'
    'Something's wrong.