Page 69 of Unalive On Air

“I can’t.” I step backwards, waving my hands to create a barrier between us.

“Sure you can,” Pixie says. “What instruments do you know?”

Fuck. “Uh, just the triangle.” Though I doubt my skills have improved that drastically since my year five Christmas performance.

“Pfft.” Jeanie floats off the stage, grabs my arm, and pulls me with surprising strength into the beam of the super trooper. “You should play the pan flute.”

“What?!”

But she’s already running back into position.

“I can’t do pan flute.”

“Believe in yourself, Gary.” This comes from Josh. Josh, of all people, and I feel like I now understand the phrase “rock bottom.”

“Do you know the song ‘Everyone Hates Your Stupid Shoes?’” Pixie says. It’s another Sex Pigs from Hell tune. I don’t remember how it goes, only that it wasn’t actually about shoes, but some kind of metaphor for celebrity culture and dogmatism.

“A little. Not really, though. I’ll . . . butcher it if I try,” I plead.

Pixie shrugs. “So what? Nobody cares if you fuck up. Have you even heard Jeanie’s backup vocals?”

“They weren’t bad,” I say.

“Exactly, but there aren’t any backup singers in ‘Incarnadine.’ J was freestyling. It’s impossible to fuck this up,” she says.

“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll do it.”

Jeanie cheers and waves her hands about. “Pan flutists stand right here on the stage.” She seizes both of my arms around my triceps and manoeuvres me closer to Trystan. So close, in fact, that if we had actual instruments, I’d be standing right inside his keyboard. I don’t protest, and when she walks away from me, she indiscreetly winks. Pretty sure Trystan’s clocked it.

And now I need to find a hole to crawl into and die all over again.

“Ready?” Pixie says, either oblivious or deliberately ignoring my discomfort. “One, two. One, two, three, four . . . I know it’s all the rage . . .” she croons but stops mid‑sentence and turns to me. “Gary, you’re up, my dude.”

“Right. Yep. Okay.” I clear my throat, then hold my hands out below my mouth as though I’m grappling with a pan flute. Here goes fucking nothing. “Wheeew, whuuuuh, wheeew,” I sing.

Pixie’s face cracks into a wide grin, and she resumes singing. “They tell you who to love. They tell you who to hate. But what if you listened to yourself for once?”

The rest of the ghosts join in. Camille makes electric guitar sounds. Josh “bum-bums” on his bass. Jeanie “ahhh-ahhhs.” Stove beats his imaginary drums, and Trystan hums and pretends to tickle keys.

So I keep up my breathy whistling. I only vaguely remember the tune, but as Pixie sings on, I realise she’s the only one who does. Everyone else is making it up as they go along.

Sometimes Stove’s beatboxing is interrupted by his laughter. Sometimes Josh switches up his rhythm mid-strum and launches into some wild bass solo. Sometimes Jeanie tires of backing vocals and embellishes the tune with random jazz sax. And I realise Pixie was right, it’s impossible to fuck it up, and damn it, now I’m having fun. Even Peter is smiling and tapping his foot.

At the end of the song, everyone claps and cheers.

“Not bad for a ghost-jam virgin,” Pixie says.

“Wanna switch instruments?” Camille says, and before I can argue, they “shove” their air guitar into my arms and place their hands out as though holding my pan flute.

I sigh but concede. We play another of Pixie’s tracks and then begin playing more modern songs.

“They play them at the hotel all the time,” Trystan tells me when I ask him how they all know Amy Winehouse, or Rihanna, or Billie Eilish. “In the gym, or when they do disco nights, or guests listen to them on their radio phones.”

It feels like we’ve been jamming for hours when we decide to call it a day, and I’ve had a go at all the roles except vocals, because no, absolutely not. Peter vanished a long while ago. Simply took himself out of the auditorium at some point. Nobody really knows when, probably to resume stalking Helga.

“That ghost has an unhealthy obsession with his wife slash murderer,” I say to Trystan as we float through wall after wall to reach the hotel’s rear gardens.

Jeanie had asked if I’d found a room of my own yet, or if I was to spend the night with quote unquote “my handsome surfer friend.” I blushed so hard I momentarily became radioactive.