by Paul Magrs
I blushed, pouring the dark tea.
‘I hope I haven’t embarrassed you.’ It was her turn to blush.
‘How could you tell?’
‘Professional.’ She tapped her snub nose and produced a business card: Lisa Turmoil: Hairstylist to the Stars.
I wondered what her rates were like, compared to Rini’s.
‘And I’m not just the hair person on this show.’ She grinned. ‘They’ve put me in front of the cameras, too - only because I’m already on the payroll and I’m a good screamer.’
‘A screamer!’ I laughed. ‘Oh dear. Is the show very frightening?’
‘Don’t you watch it?’ She seemed surprised. ‘I thought everyone did. We’re a cult hit.’ She looked very proud.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t watch much television, as a rule. And I don’t like anything spooky.’
She nodded, sipping her tea. ‘It doesn’t bother you, then, all of this stuff going on next door, raising the dead, and so on?’
‘I didn’t get much choice,’ I told her.
It was years ago, now, that I went to see spiritualists, a fad that didn’t last long. I don’t know what I was trying to prove or what I wanted to find out. Something drew me, though. I went to those amateurish little services and sat quietly at the back, mumbling along with the not-hymns and the not-prayers. I sat among those friendly, well-meaning people and I wondered, But what if something comes through for you, Brenda? Something startling and true? What will that do to you?
The other people at those events were wrapped up in their private determination to prove that spirits existed and visited us in our world. They were still grieving for lost loved ones. They wanted to be haunted by them because they were proof that another world existed beyond some mystic veil. Did I want that proof ? Is that why I skulked out on Sunday nights to sit at the back, listen, mumble and observe apparent visitations?
No. I wanted to learn that it was all fakery, which would have reassured me. I wanted to discover that those psychics were charlatans, that their beliefs were laughable. I wanted to be a materialist and discover that this world was all. For ever and ever, and that’s your lot. Amen.
I hoped against hope.
I didn’t want anything beyond this vale of tears.
I wanted to return to the dust.
In the end I stopped going. I could see that my search would end in disappointment - for me. When I stepped into those places a shiver went right through me. Dread. Conviction. They were saying to me, those spirits, Here we are. Taunting you. Waiting for you. We’ll get you one day, Brenda. What right have you to walk upon the earth when we can’t?
I wanted no truck with them.
Effie, now - I know Effie is very interested in all this business. She’s drawn to spooky things. You just have to look at the books in her house, hidden among all the layers of junk. There are shelves and shelves of arcane, leatherbound volumes about witchcraft and demons. Those nasty tomes had belonged to her female forebears. I could picture them, generations of Effie-like hags, stretching back and back into the past, all stirring, spelling and writing down their recipes for disaster.
Effie doesn’t seem to know half of what’s contained in that house of hers. Or what it has contained and experienced. Which, as she explained to me, later that afternoon, was what compelled her to contact the production team. ‘In any case, I’m a huge fan,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the few television programmes I regularly tune in to.’
She was beside herself with excitement. Her hair was frosted and teased, and she was all dolled up to look her best for the cast and crew of Manifest Yourself ! When I had explained who was staying at my establishment she could barely contain herself. Eunice! Lisa Turmoil! And . . . Brian the psychic was gracing my B-and-B with his divine presence!
She perched herself carefully on my settee. I could tell she was light-headed - from peroxide fumes as much as anything.
Brian was installed now in my smallest room, at the back. I hadn’t seen much of him. He’d been reserved and hunched in an anorak, face and demeanour like a bloodhound’s. He had arrived alone from the station and had wanted to go straight to his room for a lie-down to ‘replenish’ himself, as he put it.
‘Didn’t he say anything else?’ Effie asked. ‘Has he started picking up vibrations yet? Has anything flashed across his consciousness?’
I shook my head. Effie hadn’t said a word about my hair. She hadn’t even noticed that Lisa Turmoil - bless her - had given it a shaping, a setting and a going-over with her miraculous hot tongs. I was very proud of my do. I was in my new lime-green frock, too, with all the ruffles at the front. It’s a bit bosomy and daring and I don’t know why I was going to all the effort, but there was something in the air. A touch of excitement and celebrity, I suppose. A sense that great things were about to unfold.
‘You look very, very nice, Brenda,’ Effie said.
Sometimes she’s not such a bad best friend.
I was beaming at the compliment when Brian the psychic walked into my front parlour. And what a transformation from earlier! Now he was definitely ‘on’. He was in a long black leather coat - everything he wore was black and purple. His golden hair was teased up into a bouffant and he was rattling with jewellery. He was heavily tanned and lined - as if he had taken the sunbed a bit too far, I thought. There was a sofa-ish, Italian-leather look about him. But, still, it was an impressive entrance into my front parlour.
He paused before me and Effie, then raised his jewelled hands before his face. ‘Ladies . . .’ he said. ‘I wanted to apprehend this opportunity with you, so to speak, before the evening’s events, to allay your fears, such as they might be.’ He smiled at us. Dazzling. He’d had a lot of dentistry.
‘Fears?’ I said. Effie was staring at him, as if he himself were an apparition.
‘There is no necessity for fearfulness,’ he said. ‘None whatsoever. The beings that will manifest themselves literally from the ether and elsewhere are benign. I sense that. Yes, I can sense that now. My spirit guide, Rolf, is telling me that we will encounter nothing, so to speak, that will give us cause for alarm tonight.’
He was speaking a curious form of English that I was having some difficulty in following, and his accent was broad Geordie, which I’ve always found hard to understand.
‘Are you . . . are you reading anything right now?’ Effie asked hesitantly.
Brian’s expression went vague and he looked as if he was listening to a distant noise. ‘Various things,’ he said. ‘Nothing palpable yet. Nothing concrete. I’m still acclimatising myself to the environs. You’re Effie, aren’t you?’
She shook his hand, flushed with pleasure. I sloped off to make tea for them, and when I came back Lisa had joined them, worn out after Eunice’s beauty regime.
Shortly afterwards Eunice made her spectacular entrance. Effie was even more star-struck at meeting her. I had assumed she’d think Eunice a vulgar sort of person, especially in the tight-fitting jumpsuit with the zip pulled artfully half-way down. But Effie behaved as if she was meeting royalty.
I wheeled in the tea and coffee, biscuits and sticky buns. I answered a series of knocks at the back door, and let in the production team with more bits of equipment. Everyone had a clipboard and everyone was frowning in concentration. Only Brian sat serene, smiling vaguely and listening, presumably, to his spirit guide.
The producer - a slick young man called Trevor - asked Effie to sign a sheaf of forms, something to do with injury or disaster. She was signing away her right to comeback, I realised, should anything go wrong this evening. I raised my hand, tried to say something, to stop her, but Effie had signed with a flourish. Well, I thought, if she’s not bothered, then I’m not.
I was holding a china plate of French fancies under Brian’s beaky nose when I heard him say, quite clearly, ‘You still think about him, don’t you, Brenda?’
I jerked back. ‘You what?’ My eyes narrowed. ‘What did you say?’
‘He was your . . . int
ended.’ Brian’s eyes looked into mine. ‘He had every intention . . . but it all went to the bad, didn’t it? Ah, now . . . the signal’s faltering . . . weakening . . . Wait! I feel now that you . . . were prevented from having the kind of consummation you both wanted . . . It was all tumult and confusion, wasn’t it? And . . . he ran away into the night, and you were separated for ever . . . But you wonder sometimes . . . Sometimes you have nightmares - and your leg! Your poor leg! Will you ever dance on the stage again? Oh - that must be wrong . . . But you wonder whether anything will come right . . . and whether you will be happy . . . even so long after. Even now.’ He stopped and frowned, as if whatever jumbled voices he was listening to had faded again.
‘No,’ I said stiffly. ‘None of that is true.’ I jabbed the plate at him and, bewildered, he took a squashy yellow cake. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
In the end I had no choice. Effie cajoled and persuaded me to go next door with them and be part of the show. It wasn’t until the moment that they all stood up with their clipboards, brushing off the cake crumbs and setting down their tea cups, that she asked me. She dragged me to one side and practically begged me to come for the filming. They were starting at ten and going right through the night.
Effie didn’t want to be alone with them: ‘Heaven knows what they’ll call up.’
‘But you should have thought of that earlier!’ I had pictured an early night for myself. I wanted to dispel all thought of ghosts and apparitions.
‘Please, Brenda. Now that they’re here I’m rather nervous . . .’
Odd to hear her sound discomfited. We’d faced a few unusual events in recent weeks, and I’d heard her terrified, perplexed, furious and horrified, but never spooked like this. But I was feeling spooked too. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be on camera, though.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Just stand in the background, then. No one will see you. They film in the dark with infrared or whatever they call it. Everyone just comes out as a green blob anyway, so you needn’t worry.’
When we were in Effie’s house, and Eunice was doing a few factual, linking pieces to camera - breasts pushed up, voice all breathy and mysterious - I was more interested in having a good look round. I’d never been in the upper storeys before and I hadn’t realised how extensive the place was. Effie must have had twenty rooms at her disposal, all book-lined, stuffed with antiques, dust sheets and the ineradicable scent of must. I hung back with her as the crew went from room to room, deciding on locations and making plans. They kept ticking things off on their clipboards.
Poor Effie, I thought. What a gloomy place for her to live. No wonder she can be so snappish and unfriendly. Why didn’t she get it sorted out? She couldn’t be short of a bob or two. It was hard to credit that next door, through that brick and plaster wall, my B-and-B was so light, comfortable and warm. Effie had hardly any mod cons and the house was freezing: we were all huddled in our coats as we stood on Effie’s landing.
‘Now, you’re Effie, aren’t you, and you’re the current owner of this eighteenth-century townhouse near the centre of this ancient fishing town?’ Eunice was interviewing her earnestly, pushing the microphone into her face.
‘That is correct,’ said Effie. ‘I’ve lived here all my life. My family has been here since the house was built.’
‘Wow,’ said Eunice. ‘That’s just so amazing. So there’s a lot of, like, history here for you, yeah?’ She glanced at her clipboard. ‘And a long history of sightings and paranormal activity on the site.’
‘Almost from the beginning,’ Effie said. ‘Among all the books here, there are various journals left behind by my relatives - my great-great-aunt Lucy, for example - and some describe hair-raising phenomena, visitations, you might call them, down through the years to the present.’
I was pleased that Effie was more fluent than Eunice, who stammered and kept looking at her notes. Perhaps she was nervous.
‘I must say,’ Eunice said, with a glance at Phil, the cameraman, who was peering into his lenses, ‘there’s a very strange atmosphere here that I felt almost as soon as we stepped inside. All these old things, all this junk lying about, adds to it.’
‘It’s the books I’m curious about,’ Effie piped up. ‘One of the mysteries I hoped we might look into tonight.’
Eunice frowned. ‘Why are they mysterious?’ She picked up a battered volume from a nearby stack. ‘This is all in foreign . . .’
Effie nodded. ‘Some are in very strange languages. And many seem to be filled with magical lore. Somebody, at some time, was heavily involved with witchcraft and magic. Maybe they all were.’
Eunice drew a long, over-dramatic breath. ‘And . . . are you a witch, Effie?’
‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘That tradition has not been continued in this house. But I would like to know more about some of the secrets it must hold.’
‘Cut there.’ Eunice beamed. ‘That’s marvellous! Just the right note of intrigue and menace. You’re a natural, Effie. A star.’
Effie patted her hair. ‘Really?’
‘Can we take the lights right down now,’ Eunice called, ‘and bring in Brian? We might as well see if he can pick anything up.’
Suddenly I saw that Eunice was calling all the shots. She was behind every decision. She was much more than a bosom and a husky voice. As all the men rushed to do her bidding, and Lisa applied fresh hairspray to all of our dos, I touched Effie’s elbow and drew her aside. ‘What was all that? You’ve never told me that you come from a long line of witches. Were you making it up for the cameras?’
‘What?’ She was scandalised. ‘Of course not! Haven’t you looked at any of the books in my shop?’
I couldn’t say that I had. When I read I like spanking new volumes. Old books make me think of dust mites, mouldchomping worms and my father working late in his cellar. He had lots of ancient texts. Old books give me the willies.
‘This house is full of magic,’ Effie said, as someone turned down the lights. ‘The air is thick with sorcery . . .’
Now the only light coming into her upper rooms was from the lamps in the sloping street outside. We could hardly see each other, but the cameras were still trained on us, ready to record every flinch, twinge and shriek . . .
‘. . . as we prepare to spend a whole night in the haunted house of the Whitby Witches!’
‘Oh dear,’ Effie moaned, as Eunice finished. ‘It does sound a little cheapening, doesn’t it? I wonder what poor dear Aunt Agatha would have to say about all of this.’
‘You might find out,’ I told her.
Brian the psychic had joined us. Apparently they had made him wait outside until they were set up and ready for him. Eunice liked him to arrive cold, as it were, so they could record his first impressions of a place. I must say, they were keen to keep everything on the level. They didn’t seem to be fakers.
Brian smelt of fish and chips and best bitter. Lucky beggar! With all the excitement I’d forgotten to eat anything.
He moved into the room stealthily, holding up both hands, his face pale and vague in the weak light. ‘Ah, yes . . .’ he murmured gently.
‘Is Rolf, your spirit guide, telling you anything?’ Eunice asked.
‘Not as such, Eunice. Nothing from Rolf just . . . Ah, yes. Hello? Oh. Hello?’ He sounded like an old-fashioned switchboard operator. But then, I reflected, to the spirit world, that was probably what he was.
But there I went again, believing in it all. Unquestioning. I’m supposed to be a rationalist, materialist. That was what my father intended. ‘Spirit? Pah! Religious twaddle!’ was what he would shout. ‘Show me where the spirit resides!’ Thwack! would go his hand on the anatomy charts. I would gaze at those gorgeously colourful maps of the human interior. ‘Where?’ he would demand. ‘Where is there room inside us for something so ineffable and vague? Twaddle! It’s all twaddle!’
But you would have had a hard job convincing any of the group in Effie’s house that th
ere was no such thing as the spirit. They had their microphones, their infrared cameras, light meters and heat sensors turned up to maximum sensitivity so that they would pick up the tiniest footfall, cough or spill of dusty particles. They said they were looking for evidence, but they were already convinced. They had worked on the series for three years, I had been told, and had seen things to make my hair stand on end - they had stared at my newly brushed-up wig.
We listened. We waited. We crept from room to room, en masse, thirteen of us, shuffling and dragging electrical leads with us, like the Ghost of Christmas Past with his chains. Our faces glowed green on the monitors as we tensed, jumped and cried out at the slightest sound: boats honking in the harbour, calling to each other, seagulls screaming and wheeling over the chimney-pots. Effie and I heard those noises every day and night, but now every one was determined to be sinister.
‘Sinister,’ Eunice said, echoing my thoughts. ‘That’s the word for this house. It has a sinister atmosphere. Sorry, Effie. That’s not nice, given that it’s your home . . .’
Effie was at my elbow. ‘That’s all right, Eunice. I know what you mean. But, as I say, I’ve never lived anywhere else, so I wouldn’t know what a . . . normal place feels like.’
‘It feels like someone . . . brooding,’ said Eunice. ‘Making horrible plans and stewing over them. Plotting revenge . . .’
‘My female relatives - the ones I knew - were never a happy bunch,’ Eunice said, and bit her lip. I think she was starting to regret this night: maybe she felt she was letting them down, airing their woes on national television.
But nothing had happened. Not yet.
The next thing was the vigils. We were given walkie-talkies and told to sit and wait in the dark for unusual events. Effie and I were packed off to one of the book-lined rooms at the top of the house. Downstairs, the stars of the show were doing the same.
‘Is that one of those orbs of floating light?’ I asked. We were both perched on a saggy chaise-longue and I was squinting at what I thought might be a manifestation.
