Most six o’clocks I’m still in the van. Winding round the back roads, just leaving a job, leaving the scrappies or the timberyard. They’ve got this woman on the radio. Joanne McTeagan: Scotland’s Psychic. They tease her. She speaks to your ghosts for you. I’m not daft, I know it’s not real.

Usually it’s me, James and the apprentice boy we got last year. We drop him off at his Mum’s, then round to James’s place, then back to mine. We sit in traffic, listening to Scotland’s Psychic speak to people. Dead grannies are always keen for their grandkids to make time for themselves. Dead Aunts and Uncles are always on the lookout for exciting opportunities. They want to tell folk, don’t let it slip by. James and the apprentice had been daring each other to ring the radio. They called thinking they’d get through to her straight away. They don’t tell you, but they have to call back. It’s all arranged to fit around the adverts. James answered all their questions and scheduled a ring back, but left my number without me knowing. It was supposed to be a joke.   

‘Where are you?’ They asked me. My voice was being transmitted live across the central belt. I had to pull over.

‘Driving,’ I told them. ‘I’m driving home.’

‘And are you looking for something in spirit?’

I couldn’t really say no.

‘I’m sensing a young man,’ Scotland’s Psychic sounded like she was about to cry. ‘Does that mean anything to you? Maybe a relative, or a friend?’

When you see a photograph of a brain, it has all those wiggly lines around it, and a deep cut, right through the middle. I picture that as a motorway. And the wiggly lines are back lanes and country roads. You want to keep away from the motorway. But if you’re not watching, the back roads will return you to the main road. You have to pay attention, and keep making decisions to turn away. That’s what I’m like. I’m reading the street signs out loud, I’m singing along to the radio, I’m calling people when I’m stuck in traffic. But if there’s ever a bonfire, or a waterfall, or an incoming tide, if I let my thoughts drift, I return to the motorway, and I think about Patrick.

We’d both just passed our driving test. I told them all this. The Psychic, the DJ and his producer pal. How the police said it wasn’t my fault. But it had to go to court anyway. And everyone said there was nothing I could have done. And even Patrick’s Mum and Dad said they were sorry for the hassle.

Scotland’s Psychic told me that Patrick was a ghost now, and he was saying I had to let go.

I told her I was fifty-three and had two kids. If that’s not letting go and moving on, I don’t know how else you’d go about it. They thanked me, and she offered to give me a private reading. I guess she was going to read my palm, though how you’d do that over the phone I don’t know. Never found out, as soon as the boys on the radio said goodbye, the line went quiet. Maybe I was supposed to just sit there. Hazards on, double parked, phone to my ear, creeped out thinking about Patrick. Twenty, no, thirty odd years ago. I caught my own eyes in the mirror and jumped.

My daughter Claire’s been seeing this guy who calls himself The Mighty Elk, it’s meant to be some music thing. He’s got a website and all that. Soon as I’m in the door, I spot The Mighty Elk, sitting at my dining room table, eating my bread and drinking my coffee. He said he heard me on the radio. They had the laptop out and they were trying to scrub back to my segment.

The Mighty Elk told Claire to stop clicking things. ‘You have to let it think, you have to let it catch up.’

Claire told me she’d never heard the story, and didn’t know anything about Patrick. She wanted to know why. You’ve got to talk about things, she always says, and she said it again. ‘There’s no point bottling things up.’

I told her that when you don’t bottle things, they spoil. You can freeze dry, you can pickle, you can vacuum pack. But you’ve got to do something. You can’t let it lie there.

Unfortunately, I’m divorced, and no one on the apps is that interested in me, so I’m in bed by nine normally. Read my book with a wee glass of whisky, sip that and I sleep like when I was a teenager. But that night, I saw Patrick at the foot of the bed. Wearing his overalls, holding a paint roller.

‘You alright?’ I asked him. He went and got a screwdriver. He started to pop the lid off a tin of paint. Deep green. He was mixing and pouring, then he started painting the room.

‘Patrick.’ I tried to get his attention, ‘You haven’t masked off the light switches.’

He couldn’t hear me.

I didn’t drive for a year or two after what happened. Not legally speaking, like I said, nothing happened to me. Got off scot free. Just couldn’t face it. Whenever I thought about driving, my legs would clamp back down on that brake and my hands would grip the steering wheel of a car long since stripped and sold for scrap. It got silly. Couldn’t look at lampposts, couldn’t stomach the smell of petrol, started even avoiding the bus. But when I finished my apprenticeship, they gave me a wee van. My Dad was pretty old school. He had me driving him to Campbelltown, Inverness, Fort William, Peterhead. He had me reversing down whole streets and round corners, parallel parking between bin lorries and police cars. I was so frightened of him I forgot to be frightened of what happened.

That Mighty Elk prick had been taking to sleeping over. She has to make her own mistakes, but we all have to suffer the consequences. He was eating my cereal and watching my TV, reading the back few pages of my newspaper. He works in a pub round the corner. He probably couldn’t tell you an elk from a moose, but there we go. He passed me over the paper and said, ‘There’s your medium.’

Probably, he was trying to tease me or something. Didn’t work.

Scotland’s Psychic had a night organized. An Evening With Joanne McTeagan. I didn’t know what to expect. Everyone was all dolled up, spangly dresses and earrings, drinking, having their dinner, maybe you shouldn’t say this, but they weren’t half cackling.

But it wasn’t all women. Maybe seventy, eighty odd per cent. Whole families out in force, a half dozen grannies and aunts, twenty odd cousins, somebodies pal from work and all their sisters, grannies and aunts and then the odd husband tacked onto the end. I was looking at these poor bastards with all this condescension and pity until half my pint was gone and I could have done with someone to talk to. But hey ho, when you’re divorced, you divorce all the sisters and cousins as well.

Scotland’s Psychic took the stage. Tall woman, blond, very confident. All smiles. I was watching for agents in the crowd. Folk listening in to conversations, getting details about your life and feeding them back to the Psychic. But I didn’t hear or see anything suspicious. Maybe they do it all digitally now. Scan your bank card and look up the electoral roll, that kind of thing. I wrote my name down when the man came by. Almost forgot I’d done it, dozens of people went up. You had to admire her, she had a knack. She had them laughing, then greeting, then laughing again before they went. She didn’t make any promises. She offered forgiveness, closure and love from beyond the grave.

When they called my name they mispronounced it. But I had a wee ticket with a number on it, like at the tombola. I thought I might just sit there, let them call. Let the crowd search its ranks for the odd one out. The unbeliever. The chicken. But the woman standing by my table noticed the ticket in my hand. She pushed at my shoulder and whispered into my ear, ‘Don’t be frightened. You came here for a reason.’

The Psychic asked me if I’d been reluctant to come onstage.

I covered the microphone with my hand, and tried to lie to her, tried to tell her I was half deaf.

‘Into the mic darling, so we can all hear.’

I reminded her of my radio appearance, but she couldn’t care less. She asked if I had come with anyone.

‘All on my lonesome,’ I said.

She asked if I had someone special.

‘Long past that now, I’m divorced.’ I tried to joke around, ‘You can’t bring her back can you?’ I had my head tilted, my eyebrows waggling, every bit of me strained to convey the joke, but the crowd was completely silent. ‘Is it just the dead ones that want to speak to me?’ I wanted to laugh, but they wouldn’t let me.

She nodded in this genteel kind of way, like she was forgiving me. ‘It’s OK to be nervous,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to joke.’ The front few rows, that’s the faithful I’m guessing, they were all full of forgiveness, but the cheap seats were full of pity.

‘Let’s look to spirit.’ Scotland’s Psychic closed her eyes. She searched the hall. Searched the stage. Searched the back curtain. Looking for Patrick. She found him.

‘He knows you’ve been living carefully. You wanted safety for the family. But now, he wants you to take a big risk. He was a big risk taker, wasn’t he? He wants you to learn from him. He wants you to a take a big risk. Does that make sense?’

My shirt was soaked in sweat. Voice was trembling. When I walked back through the crowded tables, they were all applauding.

‘Tough going, isn’t it? Getting up there, in front of all they people.’ A woman spoke to me at the bar, she was about ages with me, nice looking, straight black hair, curly at the sides, very friendly. ‘Louise!’ She had to shout her name into my ear. Took me to her table and introduced all her pals and cousins, a sister, an auntie, and a few other waifs and strays they’d picked up. Their ghosts had been out in great numbers. The table was scattered with crumpled tissues. Their faces were red, their makeup was smeared, but they were laughing, convinced that the ghosts were with them now, laughing along. Enjoying life. That’s what matters isn’t it? Getting together.

‘You were great up there,’ they said. ‘You were really good. Really open, wasn’t he?’

They all agreed. I seemed like a good man, they said. I seemed like I cared a lot for other people.   

‘Who was Patrick?’ Louise sipped at a bright red straw, which led down, to a glass full of crushed ice and mint leaves in her lap.

‘Just a boy I used to know.’

The table was all quiet, watching me.

‘Just a boy that died.’ It wasn’t enough, I had to give them more. But I couldn’t be honest with them. Maybe if there had been a sunset or a shoreline to look at. A fire to stare into. But there was only the distant stage, the bar opticals, or their eyes. I lied. I said there was nothing I could do, I said there was something up with the car.

They winced and bit their lips. And Louise reached out her hand to touch my shoulder. After an hour, she was holding me by the arm, cradling her cheek into my shoulder and over the noise of the night ending, she was describing her ghost. A dead father. His approval. His say so. She knew it was a lot of nonsense. ‘No offence,’ she said, searching my face to see if I really believed in it all. She just needed the ghost to say it was all OK. Scotland’s Psychic made the ghost say the right things. ‘That’s all you want, isn’t it? Somebody to say you were right all along.’

As we all filtered out to the car park, the women checked their phones and watches. Pubs would be closing, they were too old for the dancing.

‘Speak for yourself,’ Louise laughed. She was barely thirty, she said. Barely forty. OK, forty-one, but forty-one wasn’t old, was it?

She turned to me.

‘Spring chicken,’ I said. ‘Spring chicken.’

‘Casino’s open,’ one of cousins said. ‘We feeling lucky?’

‘Fancy it?’ Louise asked. ‘Here’s your chance to take a big risk.’

The bouncers waved the women in, but scrutinized my driving license like they might take it off me. 

‘It’s an old picture.’ I said. ‘Put on a few pounds since then.’ I slapped my belly.

They let me in to the casino. I wish they’d rugby tackled and battered fuck out me. The women watched me lose and lose and walk to the bank machine and lose all that, and walk back to the bank machine and back to the tables. They listened to me explaining probability, they blew on the dice for me, they kissed my cheek when I rolled a six, they were sure my luck would turn around.

A few of them left. Twenty quid up, fifty pound down. Happy with the evenings entertainment.

‘This one’s the lucky one,’ we all agreed. Then they brought me a glass of water. Asked me to step outside for a minute, get some fresh air. The sun was nearly up. My stomach was grappling upward. It wasn’t the drink. I thought the cash machine was laughing. The slot looked like a little mouth. Where was Louise? I asked.

‘If it’s fate, you’ll see her again, I believe in that,’ the cousin said.

‘But giving me her number. Couldn’t that be fate too?’

No, the cousin said. Fate was more like leaving them alone.

Now I’m driving back at eight o’clock, nine. I can’t hear the radio when I’m working, so I’m spared the sound of Scotland’s Psychic. I didn’t bother to tally up how much I lost, nobody at home knows cause they don’t need to know. I’ve got ’til springtime to book the holiday, and if I need to, I can always put it on the credit card.

Patrick appeared the week after the big loss. Smug fucker, cutting in the top corners of my bedroom. Big drips falling all the way down to the skirting. I told him that sloppy work like that meant he’d never pass his apprenticeship. He’ll never own his own business. He’ll never not be nineteen.

Probably made the money back by now. Scheduling pishy wee jobs that I wouldn’t have bothered with before. Fifty quid. Lifting and shifting, that kind of thing. One wee utility room needing wallpapered? Skirting boards needing a sand back and a touchup? I’m your man. James couldn’t be bothered with it. Said the company might work all hours, but he works ’til seven. That’s his cut off. The apprentice boy doesn’t have that luxury. Still, he kept trying to tell me it’s quicker to take the motorway. Quicker and easier. How he’d been out with his driving instructor, and the driving instructor said we’d be home about half an hour quicker if we didn’t waste so much time in the back roads.

‘Is it aye, is it quicker?’ I lost my temper, burled the van about. Main road. Motorway. Straight past the spot. The lamppost they had to replace. The car they had to destroy. The windscreen smashed. The seatbelt cutting into me. The lights. The motors fleeing by. The man that pulled over. The police. Having to tell them. Mum and Dad. Having to say to them what I did. The speed I was going. How they said, don’t tell, and I didn’t. No cameras back then. And no witnesses. But they had slippy roads alright. They had them.

We were back in ten. The apprentice boys Mum came out and told me he couldn’t be out working all hours. He had a life you know, he had things to do. He had friends, he had a family.  

I took the main road straight back to the house. Claire was crying her eyes out. She was all done with The Mighty Elk. Who knows who we’ll have next. Some kind of antelope maybe, some kind of deer.

Patrick wasn’t a good person. Not that any of us were saints back then. But him in particular. The stories he told. What he got up to. I would have thought he’d have other things to do as a ghost. Sneaking into shower rooms and all that. But I suppose if he did to me what I did to him. I’d probably come back and haunt him a wee bit. I’d do worse things probably. I’d do anything they let me.

But if even Patrick gets to come back, it made me think, how am I going to spend eternity? Probably the same way as I spend empty weekends and bank holidays. Watching TV, reading my book, sipping a beer, waiting to work again. Mixing paint, sanding back skirting, climbing up and down ladders. I’m not daft, I know none of it’s real. Even if they gave me the choice, I wouldn’t even want to be a ghost. I’d be happy just lying back in the grave. Lying back getting rained on.

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Chris Kohler is from Glasgow, Scotland. His short stories have been published in Egress, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Gutter and Dark Mountain. His first novel, Phantom Limb, will be published by Atlantic Books in 2024.