by steve higgs
‘Good morning, Frank,' I replied, ignoring my desire to throw him into the river, ‘How unsurprising to find you here. The officer and I were just discussing the case. Or rather, I was asking questions and the officer was deciding how to answer them.'
PC Hotstuff, as the chunk of my brain controlling my penis had now labelled her, had a question, ‘I have been stood here for two minutes and so far, you have been called Mulder and Dangerman. Do you get called a lot of names?'
Halfway through turning to look at Frank I turned back to her, smiled and said, ‘What I get called depends on whether I have been naughty or not.'
She just rolled her eyes. I had been aiming for cheeky scamp but had clearly missed in her opinion.
‘So, what's the plan Tempest? What are we up against? Lone vampire or nest? Personally, I think a lone vampire is more likely and a very young one. Very unusual for them to make this much mess and leave bodies around the place. Only a young, inexperienced vampire, a new-born, would be so amateur,' I swivelled to look at Frank's face, but he was of course completely serious, ‘Traditionally, vampires prey on those that won’t be missed or on rural communities, which has, of course, become far harder this century with the internet, CCTV, mobile phones etcetera. The TV wants to show them as flamboyant creatures that live among us and impress us with their charm and looks, but they are shadow creatures in reality, keeping to the dark and trying to remain unnoticed.’
‘In reality?' PC Hotstuff had an incredulous look on her face and was staring at Frank as if trying to decide whether he was dangerous or just stupid, ‘A young woman had her throat ripped out twenty yards from her door by a crazed murderer. If it turns out that the perpetrator is some pathetic moron acting out a vampire fantasy…' she trailed off as if unsure how to end the sentence.
‘What she said,' I chimed, agreeing completely but also noting that the victim was a young woman and very local, which given the geography must have meant that she was on her way back from the pub and only had a two hundred metre walk. That alone explains what she was doing out by herself in the dark on a dodgy looking path at night. Not a good place to walk, but if it is only a few hundred metres and the alternative well-lit route is over a mile then I'm sure most would have taken the same option as she had. Doubtless, she had taken the same route home hundreds of times before.
‘Frank, you are completely mad, yet thoroughly entertaining at the same time,’ I said turning back to face PC Hotstuff, ‘You have my card. See you around.’ I popped the camera back into my bag and left to head back to the car.
Behind me, I could hear Frank explaining to PC Hot stuff that the world Joss Whedon created for Buffy the Vampire Slayer had been quite accurate on some of the details.
Poltergeist. Thursday 23rd September 0942hrs
Walking back to the car, I considered my sum total of facts pertaining to the case. Three victims over two weeks, all within a mile or so of each other and all brutally murdered by having their jugular punctured. Details regarding the first two murders had been sketchy and I had not paid much attention to the case until now. I needed to know where they had been killed, what they had been doing before-hand and try to find some kind of link. From memory, the first victim had been a middle-aged man and the second a little old lady. No obvious connection with either of them to the third victim, but perhaps some delving would reveal something.
I pointed the car back to the office and continued to mull over the vampire case. It would be easy enough to search for all the reports written in the papers and more specialised paranormal press. It might not reveal much but would allow me to create a timeline and map and sieve through some data to get a handle on what was known.
The phone began to ring in my bag and a second or so later the hands-free kit in the car picked it up so that I could answer it while driving.
‘Blue Moon Investigations, Tempest Michaels speaking.’
The call was from a Mr. Winston Cranfield of 37 Buckley lane, Rochester.
He reported that he had a poltergeist in his house and both he and his wife had fled to the Travelodge on the Rochester/Maidstone Road. A quick mental calculation told me that the address was not far from my office, so I sold him the concept that it was clearly a high priority task for me and he seemed somewhat relieved that someone was taking him seriously. I told him I could be there in under thirty minutes and got off the phone.
I pulled into the Travelodge car park twenty-two minutes later and went into reception to wait for Mr. Cranfield. The lady manning the reception desk by herself called through to their room to check they were expecting a visitor and buzzed me through the entry door anyway. I met Mr. Cranfield coming out of his room.
Mr. and Mrs. Cranfield, or Winston and Barbara as they insisted I call them, were a lovely couple in their late sixties or early seventies which I had already guessed from Winston's voice and mannerisms on the phone. Winston had a firm handshake and commented on the veterans badge I had pinned to my collar just before I left the car. I suspected he would at least have completed National Service and I was right. Like so many of his generation, he could remember the war, sort of, but most certainly the sense of pride the Nation felt towards the services at the time. His father had served, and we spoke briefly about the army following the usual question about which branch I had been in.
Winston was neither short nor tall at about five feet nine inches and had probably been taller in his twenties. He wore a pair of hopsack trousers with a collared shirt and pullover, all in new condition. His wife Barbara, "Call me Barbara," she had instructed, was wearing what I believe was called a housecoat dress. I may have that completely wrong, but it was the sort of patterned dress that little old ladies wore and still managed to look smart in. I remembered my grandmother wearing them along with a scarf around her head when she went outside.
The clothes told me that the Cranfield’s were not poor, and I knew their house to be in a good area of Rochester. This was important because I don’t want to rip people off but must still charge them a sensible rate for the work that I do. I can’t work for free but had done so a few times in the past when presented with a case I wanted to take on involving persons without the funds to pay me. Anyway, it seemed likely that I need not be concerned this time.
Mrs. Cranfield busied herself making tea. I noted that she only had two cups due to the nature of their lodgings but bit down my initial need to tell her to keep it for yourself as it seemed likely her dignity would prefer to be able to offer me something. She had apologised several times already for the lack of biscuits and the fact that it was not her usual brand of tea nor her good china.
While Barbara made the tea, I took over. There were two chairs and a table in one corner of the room by the window, so I sat on the edge of the bed, which was still perfectly made, leaving space for the two of them to sit close to each other at the table. To me, they seemed calm but perhaps a little upset or confused.
‘It all started about two weeks ago,' stated Winston when I encouraged him to tell me in slow and patient detail what had led them to make contact, ‘Barbara and I,' he motioned to his wife who had now delivered the teas and had sat beside him at the table, ‘went up to bed after Midsomer Murders on Saturday night.'
‘So, that would have been just after ten o’clock,’ Barbara interjected.
‘That's right, love,' he said, patting her hand across the table, ‘We usually go up around that time.'
‘And then we read for half an hour before we turn out the lights,’ Barbara chipped in again.
‘That’s right, love.’
‘So, this is Saturday night?' I clarified, making a note on my pad and jotting down the date.
‘Yes, dear,' confirmed Barbara.
‘And then what happened?’
‘Well, we woke up when there was a bang from downstairs and then…’
‘One moment, please. What sort of bang?'
They looked at me without responding.
‘I mean, was it like a fir
ecracker exploding or like a book falling off a shelf or something completely different?’
‘Oh,’ they said more or less together. They looked at each other for a second or so and I wondered if they just needed to think about it or if the question had thrown them because this was all made up and rehearsed poorly. It would not be my first wasted call.
My concern evaporated when they said simultaneously, ‘Like a book.’
‘Okay. Please continue.’
‘Then we heard an awful wailing from downstairs and yelling and more noises like things being thrown around and a noise like you get when you drag furniture across the floor,’ Winston paused to have a slurp of tea. His hand was shaking a little and he used the other to steady his mug.
I watched while he took a drink. Someone had done a number on this lovely older couple. They were genuinely scared. Barbara was also watching her husband. Her hands were clasped in her lap and her feet were crossed one over the other and tucked to one side under her chair. I wondered if this was a pose she had been taught as a girl - this is how a lady sits.
Winston put his mug down. His wire-rimmed spectacles were a little steamed as he looked back up at me and I took a sip of my tea as he removed them.
I was about to prompt more story when he restarted anyway.
‘So, I went downstairs to see what it was.’
‘Well, we both went, dear,’ reminded Barbara.
‘Yes, dear, you did come with me. But the noise stopped as soon as we got out of bed and when we got downstairs, we found that our living room was wrecked. The furniture had been moved and the pictures were crooked.'
‘Two of my ornaments were broken,’ chipped in Barbara again, ‘One of them was the little crystal mouse my mother gave me. I can’t replace that. How am I supposed to replace that?’
I assumed it was a rhetorical question and pressed on, ‘Was there anything new in the room?’
They looked at me quizzically ‘Something new? Like what?’ asked Winston
I was wondering if the culprit has gone to the trouble of leaving ectoplasmic slime or something of that nature. I had encountered it on a previous case a couple of months ago, collected it and had paid a chemistry teacher at a nearby college to tell me what it was made from. The answer was:
1 teaspoon soluble fibre (e.g., Metamucil psyllium fibre)
8 ounces water
food colouring
glow paint or pigment
Not remotely paranormal and could be made in a few minutes from ingredients found on eBay.
‘I was just curious,’ I offered rather than giving them the full explanation, ‘Was there anything missing?’
‘That was what Winston said,' replied Barbara, ‘Winston said we had to put the room straight and work out if anything was missing. I was going to call the police, but Winston checked the doors and windows and they were all still locked, so Winston said it could not be a burglar.'
‘Was there anything missing?’ I asked after no one spoke for a few seconds.
‘Oh. Err, no,’ finished Barbara, ‘Not that we could see, and we even checked the level of the brandy in our decanter in case it was tearaway kids breaking in.’
‘So, we went back to bed,' this from Winston, ‘But we didn't really sleep, and we got up around six o'clock.'
‘I checked the living room again in the morning in case we had imagined the whole thing, but my ornaments were still broken.’
‘We pretended like nothing had happened and we didn’t tell anyone because we didn’t know what to tell them.’
‘I almost called our son, but he would have sent for the men in the white coats. I think we both knew it was a ghost even then, but we didn't talk about it.'
‘Then it happened again a few nights later and again the night after that and we moved out after the third time and went to stay with our son in Brighton. When we told him we had a ghost, he said we were being silly and that we must have imagined it all.'
‘We called the police, but they said they had no time to look into hauntings,’ Barbara said this with a tut, ‘We came home after a day and then it happened again the next night. Winston slept in the living room the night after that and the night after that but the only thing that happened was his back gave out from sleeping awkwardly,’ Barbara gave her husband a look that may have been annoyance that he did not catch their ghost or may have been sympathy. I found it hard to tell.
Winston fidgeted slightly before restarting his story, ‘So, then I went back to our room to sleep, that would have been on Saturday night and we had the worst attack yet that night.'
‘We couldn't stay there after that, so we packed a few things and came here,' added Barbara, ‘It's my Auntie Margaret you know,' she stated, looking directly at me and speaking with a hushed voice like it was a big plot reveal.
‘It’s not auntie Margaret, love,’ said Winston
‘She always resented me getting the clock. It must be her. It’s ten years since she died.’
‘But it’s not ten years to the day is it, love? Margaret died in the July.’
‘What clock?’ I interrupted.
It turned out the clock in question was a family heirloom antique looking thing that sat on their mantel. A glass face hinged open at one side so the movement could be wound by use of a key. It did not look like it was worth much to me, but I acknowledged that I didn’t know much about clocks. It had been passed down through several generations but had gone to Barbara's mother Ophelia rather than to her older sister Aunt Margaret due to some long-running dispute between Margaret and her mother. When the clock was passed down again to Barbara the Aunt had turned up demanding that the clock be turned over to her as it was rightfully her heirloom as the eldest child. Barbara had said no, and the rift continued. Quite why someone would think this might cause a haunting was beyond my comprehension. Clearly, it made sense to Barbara though.
I convinced them to return to the house with me right there and then after promising them that I would stay at the house with them. They changed out of their house slippers and into shoes, sort of bumping into each other politely in the confined space of the room and I excused myself to make some extra room.
Waiting for them in the car park, I checked my emails and ate an apple from my bag. They shuffled out of the door before I had finished it, both getting into a new plate white Vauxhall Astra. I signalled that I would follow them even though I knew where I was going, and it was almost one straight road from the Travelodge to their house.
Four minutes later we were in their road. They pulled onto their drive and I parked in the street in front of their house. It was a 1930s-semi-detached place with several period features around the door, windows, and roofline. The front garden was well tended with mostly maintenance-free plants and overall it looked like a house that was loved. I noticed though that by contrast the house to which theirs was attached was overgrown with weeds, the windows were dirty, and the paint was flaking off.
Inside, the house was pleasant in an older couple sort of way. The décor was dated but very neat and tidy. We went into the lounge straight away without exploring the rest of house. There were lace thingies on the corners of the felt covered sofa and armchairs and more lace under pot plants and the like. The real point to note though was that the room was trashed. If I was making a room up so that it looked burgled this is the look I would have gone for. Pot plants were dumped on the floor, the contents spilling out. Pictures were either skewwhiff on the walls or now sat on the floor with the frame cracked in several cases. Nothing was straight. On the mantelpiece, very prominently as if all the other ornaments were set up to draw one’s eye towards it, was the clock. The face was open, and the hands were both bent outwards at a stark angle.
‘When did this happen?’
‘On the third night,’ replied Barbara, ‘On the first two nights, the clock was just moved about or turned a bit.’
‘Have either of you touched the hands of the clock since you found it like this?’
They looked at each other again. Winston had his left arm around Barbara in a protective stance, perhaps as much for his comfort as hers. ‘I didn’t. Did you?’ he asked.
‘No, Dear. I didn’t even notice it at first. You had to point it out to me while I was cleaning up the dirt from the clematis.’
‘You are both sure?’
They looked at each other again and briefly discussed it but decided that they were indeed sure that neither one had touched the hands of the clock. The clock hands were delicate and made of brass, if a person were to adjust the time, they would do so by moving the hands manually. However, to do so one would press lightly on the edge of the clock hand, not grab hold, so the fingerprint I could clearly see on the reverse side of the big hand was left there by the culprit.
I said, ‘Good. My dear Winston and Barbara, there are fingerprints on the hands and ghosts don’t leave fingerprints, so whoever is doing this it is not a ghost, phantasm or spirit from the netherworld,' while I explained this to them, I had my hands fishing around in my shoulder bag from which I produced a basic fingerprinting kit.
‘Oh,’ said Barbara sounding distinctly deflated, ‘So, who is it then?’
