Strange Sight

by Syd Moore

  Joel made a funny noise, then rubbed his hands across his face and groaned into them. ‘What you gettin’ at? I heard about people like you.’

  ‘Just saying I wouldn’t want to go like that.’

  Joel jerked himself up. His lips, I saw, were drawn back, eyes narrow with rage, and watery. ‘I know your game. I know what you’re doin’. Well, it won’t work.’ Corners of his lips were strung with saliva.

  I wasn’t completely sure but I starting to think ‘nice mode’ wasn’t working on him.

  Joel’s index finger jabbed in my direction. ‘You’re tryin’ to work me up so that I confess. I’ve seen it on TV.’ His lips quivered.

  ‘I am not!’ I said.

  ‘Well, it won’t work!’ he thumbed his chest. ‘Not on me.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I put my hands up in mock surrender. ‘I was just saying—’

  ‘Weren’t me!’ Joel repeated then, just as quickly, withdrew back into the folds of his sweatshirt, head retreating like a tortoise. From the depths of jersey fabric he protested, ‘I didn’t have nuffin to do with it.’

  I repressed the urge to point out his double negative, ‘Of course not.’ No, this was not going as smoothly as planned. Best say nothing and wait for the diplomat of the team to return to the negotiating table.

  But after a moment Joel broke the silence. He huffed his arms together and stuck out his chin in a gesture of defiance. ‘He was fit, Seth. He worked out. It’d be well hard to kill him. And I got no reason, ’ave I? To knock Seth off? Why would I? Plus, I didn’t find him or nuffin neither,’ he said, less combatively this time, regarding me with new suspicion from under his sparse brow. ‘Mary did, if you want to know.’

  ‘What?’ I said in as neutral a tone as I could muster. ‘And did this Mary have a motive to kill him?’

  ‘No, no! Fuck’s sake!’ He was like a tightly coiled spring. Uncoiling. ‘Mary found him,’ he overemphasised the verb so there was no chance of misunderstanding.

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said, waiting for him to point out the relevance. ‘And?’

  ‘They say don’t trust the finder but, in this case, they got that wrong.’ He was back up now, hands near the ashtray. ‘Mary ain’t done nuffin, I can tell you now. None of us done it. We wouldn’t. Why would we? He was savin’ that place, Seth. No one got reason to do him in. ’Specially not me.’

  Did I detect a note of pleading in his tone? I wondered, as Sam’s shadow fell over us again.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said soothingly. Boy, was I glad to see him back. ‘Rosie’s not accusing you, are you, Rosie?’ He sent me a sharp look.

  I wondered how much of ‘nice mode’ he’d overheard.

  ‘No, no.’ I smiled but with only half my mouth.

  He had brought three tumblers filled, this time, with a couple of inches of yellowish liquid and cubes of ice. ‘There you go, Joel. You’ve had a shock, mate. Drink this.’

  I’d never heard him say ‘mate’ before. It sounded inauthentic but Joel didn’t notice. He merely smiled, accepted the glass then took a big gulp of it down. I followed suit. It was hard being nice.

  ‘Now, tell me about Mary,’ Sam continued. ‘She found the bod—she found Seth, did she?’

  Puckering his lips, Joel nodded. He’d completely changed his attitude to Sam. I noted a kind of grudging gratitude. The kid fumbled for a fag.

  ‘She’s real nice, Mary. Ray’s daughter.’ He popped the cigarette in his mouth.

  Sam picked up the lighter and lit it. Joel nodded a brief thank you. ‘They got her down the nick. Think she’s a suspect. But she wouldna done it. Though it’s her what’s seen most of the funny stuff, true enough.’

  I was going to ask him to elaborate but Sam hushed me with a glance. I was guessing he wanted to guide this one.

  Sam replaced the lighter on top of the cigarette box. ‘What sort of funny stuff are we talking about, Joel?’

  Expelling a long lungful of smoke, Joel said, ‘Well, we all seen some of it. Things ain’t right here. A lot of things ain’t right here.’ He looked hard at Sam and paused. ‘But Mary, she reckons she’s seen a woman round the place. Goin’ though walls and that. Nasty feel. Not a normal lady but like old-fashioned. With clothes from the olden days.’

  Sam nodded. He opened his notebook and began writing. ‘Do you know any details of what she looked like?’

  Joel shook his head. ‘Just that she wasn’t from now. She was a – like a ghost.’ He brightened suddenly and wagged his cigarette at Sam’s notebook. ‘But she did say once, she wore a hat.’

  He paused to watch Sam note it down.

  Part of what he’d said had also caught my attention. I mean, it was one thing, someone saying they could see a ghost, but was Joel suggesting others had witnessed it too? ‘But you said you’d all seen funny stuff?’ I pressed Joel. ‘How do you mean?’

  He looked at me, his body growing rigid again, features all sulky, and took another glug of whisky. ‘This place,’ he said, looking back at Sam. ‘La Fleur. The restaurant. See, it’s cursed.’

  ‘Cursed?’ I repeated, unable to hide the disbelief in my voice.

  ‘Is it? How?’ Sam interjected, all bassy and serious.

  ‘Different things,’ said Joel. He shrugged and rolled the cigarette between his thumb and index finger. ‘Lots of ’em. We kept puttin’ ’em down to bad luck till one night, back in March, this thing happened.’ He took a long drag, brought his shoulders to the table and lowered his voice.

  Sam and I responded to his conspiratorial tone by bringing our faces closer in too.

  Joel looked from side to side, checking there was no one nearby, then whispered, ‘We all thought it was some kind of joke. But now, I dunno. Wasn’t very funny. Didn’t think so at the time neither.’

  ‘Go on. What happened?’ Sam nudged gently.

  The kitchen boy wiped his mouth with the cuff of his sweatshirt. ‘It was well cold that night.’ He bent his shoulders lower over the table. ‘Well cold. And misty, you see. Don’t know if that had anything to do with it. Kind of unreal though, that night, outside. You could feel something in the air. You know when sometimes you is cruisin’, mindin’ your own business but you feel like everyone is watching you or like you’re in a film or somethink. That’s what it was like. But we was busy so when trade started kickin’ in you didn’t have no time to think about it. Must have been a Friday,’ he nodded. ‘No. Maybe Thursday. Didn’t feel like a Saturday. Wasn’t full but was fast enough for us to be sweatin’ it in the kitchen.’ His eyes darted around the pub.

  Sam and I exchanged glances. He had taken something that looked like a Dictaphone out and laid it quietly on the corner of the table. Sam obviously thought this was meaningful. I followed his cue and bent closer to Joel.

  The kitchen boy cleared his throat and whispered, ‘So I was on the salads, right, shaving the cucumbers.’

  I frowned and dismissed the mental image of a salad vegetable in a barber’s chair.

  ‘When John comes in all funny,’ Joel said. ‘Flustered, right. He’s one of the waiters. Normally he all useful, solid. You know – Australian. Likes cricket. Goes on all the time about this Gabba thing they got over there. But not tonight. Tonight he is shoutin’ for a bucket, right? Honest to god I swear I did a double-take when I first sees him because there’s all this dark shit down his shirt.’ Joel rubbed his own hand on his sweatshirt to illustrate then gulped down a mouthful of liquor. The memory was clearly disturbing him. ‘Thought he bin shanked first off. But he says no, it ain’t his blud. Says it’s comin’ out of the light, spurtin’ from the ceiling and I need to get in there and sort it out pronto. ’Cept he didn’t say pronto, he said “quick-smart” or somethink. So I races round to the cleanin’ store, nabs a mop and soon as I walks out on to the floor, I sees it.’ He took a final drag of his ciggy and stubbed it out. ‘And it makes me stop dead. Right there, halfway across the floor. Strangest sight I ever did see.’ He paused, shook his head and reached into his tracksu
it pocket. ‘I filmed it. Just a bit. Before I got caught. But I dunno, it looked like somethink out of a horror film.’

  He scrolled through his videos then put the phone on the desk and pressed play.

  You could make out the dining floor of La Fleur. It was a view from the perspective of the kitchen doors. The mobile operator, Joel, was walking on to the floor. He must have been holding things because the camera work was very unsteady – one-handed. As he progressed into the dining area it became obvious that something shocking was going on. The tables in front of him were empty, half-eaten food had been abandoned, knives and forks scattered across the top, glasses overturned and spilling wine over one of the tablecloths.

  He turned slightly to the right and caught a line of startled diners all of whom appeared to be looking in the opposite direction. Joel swung the camera round to focus on whatever was appalling them so, and settled on the chic sweeping chandelier, the statement feature of the room that was suspended over the diners.

  This time it didn’t look sexy and smart.

  It was dark. Not bright and sparkling like it had been this morning. A viscous red liquid was cascading down its crystal beads.

  Joel laid both hands on the table. ‘It was drippin’. Mucky red stuff. Comin’ all down the chains, goin’ into the bulbs, slip-sloppin’ on to the customers, the tables, the food and all over the floor like some Stephen King waterfall.’ He shuddered and shook his head.

  I was impressed by the simile. He was right too – it looked like something out of Carrie. It must, I reflected, have been a bit of a showstopper in such glitzy surroundings.

  Someone off camera shouted, ‘Christ mate, you’re meant to be cleaning it not filming it. Get on.’ And the image froze, then went to black. The film clip ended.

  Sam nudged the recorder closer to Joel.

  ‘That was John,’ he said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have whipped the phone out but you could see what it was like. Got worse too, cos the lights,’ he said, ‘in the chandelier, they was dimmin’, getting sticky with the stuff. Some of them was flickerin’. A couple exploded while I was standin’ there moppin’ before the customers start freakin’. But that was way too late to clear it up and pretend nuffin had happened – they not stupid or blind. They all seen it. But John goes over and starts explainin’ there is a leak. I said maybe there was too. Cos the offices above, they was empty. The landlord was refurbishin’ so he could up the rent.’

  ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh,’ I said, unable to drag my eyes from the blank phone screen. It had looked very nasty but also mesmerising.

  Joel shifted and lit another fag. ‘And now the blood that was comin’ down, it were getting thicker and faster. And Mary-Jane, she’s another waitress, well fit, pretty, you know, I like brunettes. Well, she was comin’ over and she says she’ll go upstairs and try and sort it. So off she goes and so I get in with the mop proper. But there ain’t no mistakin’ it, I tell you, it well looked like blood. And it was spreadin’ across the floor, big puddles of the shit.’

  I looked at Sam. ‘Could be rust?’

  He nodded and shushed me. ‘Go on, Joel.’

  ‘So I’m getting busy with the mop but you can hear, at the tables all around us, the diners they moaning and moaning and one party gets up to leave when just then – bang! All the lights goes out.’

  Sam and I stirred and leant away from him.

  ‘They fused?’ Sam offered.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Joel. ‘’Cept for the ones on the mezz over the pictures. They on a different circuit. So everywhere, right, is in darkness, ’cept for up on the mezz. And everyone looks up there and then someone starts screamin’, “Oh my god!” He shrieked this in a high, camp voice. ‘“Look! Look!”’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What was happening?’

  ‘Because,’ Joel knew he held us in his thrall. He paused, looking from me to Sam and back again, ‘there was words on the walls.’

  Sam stopped writing and gave Joel his full attention. ‘Where?’

  ‘At the top of the stairs: they was glowin’.’

  ‘What did they say?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I took a photo,’ he said with caution. ‘Don’t tell Ray.’

  We both agreed not to.

  ‘But it was so weird. Shiny. Kind of green. Horrible. And the words, they was well creepy.’

  Joel scrolled through the phone again till he came to the right image. ‘Here,’ he said, and showed us.

  You couldn’t see much. It was dark, but just as Joel had described, there was something up on the walls. Thin yellow-green curves and lines, luminescent. I picked up the screen and made the image bigger so that I was able to read what was written there.

  ‘Till the blood gushed from her eyes,’ Joel read out. The look on his face mingled horror with triumph, the cat presenting the dead mouse.

  Whoa! Nasty. That indeed was quite a story.

  I passed the phone back to him. You could certainly see how that might affect the staff. No wonder Boundersby had got in touch.

  Sam was staring at Joel, nodding his head slightly up and down. The words had made an impact on him too, you could tell.

  When neither of us spoke Joel went on, ‘So do you think they was there because—?’ He stopped. A hand went to his mouth as something in his head shifted a gear. Darkness passed across his face. ‘Oh god.’ He rubbed over his face where stubble might have grown. ‘Seth! Oh god.’ He sat back up again, cheeks paling. ‘Do you think it was a warning? The blood?’ His hands came down quickly and gripped the table as he tried to master himself.

  ‘It certainly sounds ominous, I give you that,’ Sam picked up his glass and took a sip.

  Joel released his grip on the wood and drained the final dregs of his drink. ‘Mary thought it was for her.’ He licked his lips uncertainly. ‘From the ghost woman she bin seein’.’

  ‘Mary,’ Sam repeated. ‘She’s the kitchen manager, yes?’

  Joel nodded. ‘She seen the bitch. We should have got rid of her. Should have.’ He shook his head.

  ‘The bitch?’ I was getting slightly lost in the narrative.

  ‘Ghost,’ he said. ‘Wot done it.’

  Ah, I thought. Here we go. I tried to lock on to his flitting gaze. ‘Okay, Joel, it’s probably time for us to assure you that there are lots of explanations for ghosts. Striking phenomenon, like this,’ I gestured at his phone, ‘that at first sight appears to be extraordinary is often something else. Usually something quite mundane.’ I looked at Sam meaningfully, wanting him to back me up, but he didn’t. He was drumming his fingers against his chin this time and frowning hard.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Joel’s voice was hopeful. He wanted this reassurance.

  ‘Yes,’ Sam came in, amusement playing on his lips. ‘Do expand, Rosie.’

  They were both looking at me, waiting for my pearls.

  ‘Well.’ I threw back my shoulders ready to hold this court. ‘People often put two and two together and make five. They interpret things differently. All over the world. I mean, the power of suggestion is just that – a power in its own right. It can make people see things that aren’t really there. Like, before the incident in the restaurant, Mary had already suggested that the place was haunted, right? So everyone was or might have been a little on edge, watching out for the extraordinary anyway. When it came, that’s what they attributed it to.’

  Joel looked doubtful. Sam backed me up with supportive grunt, so I continued.

  ‘Therefore when the blood chandelier episode happened and you all saw the words on the wall, you also assumed that they were connected, right? And connected to what Mary had seen. Therefore supernatural or further evidence of haunting.’

  ‘But they weren’t there before,’ Joel whined. ‘Not before the lights went off.’

  I didn’t want to get drawn into particulars right now. ‘I agree that it’s odd that they were there at all, but there will be a reason for that. The chandelier episode was probably random. I mean, what evidence did Mary have that the p
lace was haunted anyway?’

  ‘She seen things. That woman round the place.’

  ‘Lots of explanations for that.’

  Sam raised his eyebrows. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, there’s pareidolia,’ I said, and smiled at Sam. ‘Have you heard of that, Joel?’

  He dropped an inch into the seat and shrugged.

  ‘Shall I or will you?’ I asked Sam, aware I was playing a dangerous game: everything I knew about the condition I’d learnt from him. I wasn’t in a position to show off yet, not really.

  He opened his hand. ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘Well.’ I turned to Joel and tried to make my voice sound kind and motherly. ‘This is a very natural condition when you perceive angles and curves that your mind translates into human features or patterns. Sometimes we see what we want to, other times we see what we don’t want to.’

  Joel’s jaw hung low, his mouth gaped open. I wasn’t sure if he was really getting it.

  ‘It’s called pareidolia,’ Sam added then switched his eyes to me. ‘Very good, Rosie. And?’

  My smile began to falter. ‘And what?’

  ‘You were telling Joel there were lots of explanations.’

  ‘She did,’ said Joel, and nodded in slow pointless male solidarity.

  I squared my shoulders at them both. ‘Well, then there’s the most obvious explanation. The one everyone skirts around.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Joel’s eyebrows perked up.

  ‘Being mental,’ I said clear and loud. ‘It accounts for a lot of reported phenomena.’

  Joel flushed. Sam grimaced. ‘I think what my colleague—’

  ‘Cheeky,’ I cut in. ‘Employer.’

  He rolled his eyes and continued. ‘What the owner of our splendid witch museum means is there may well be a biological, anatomical or neurological reason for Mary Boundersby’s convictions. And, by the way, Rosie, not everyone who sees a ghost is mentally ill.’