Charity Shop Haunted Mysteries

by Katherine Hayton

  “Are you happy with my opinion or would you like to stall on your tests for a while longer?”

  Caught out. Emily gave a small smile. Today was the closest to human the neurologist had ever been.

  “Good.” He ran through the routine tests, having her touch her nose or tug on her ear, with her eyes open, then again when closed. She drew hands on a clock, showing the time as ten minutes to eleven. He had her peer in different directions and push her hand against resistance, up and down, side to side.

  “And what were the three words I gave you at the beginning of the appointment?”

  Emily opened her mouth to answer, the words sitting right on the tip of her tongue, then… Nothing. They’d gone.

  She leaned forward, brushing a piece of imaginary fluff off her trouser leg. “Just a second, I’m feeling a bit hot.”

  “Mm. At the end of the day, the air conditioning sometimes gets a bit lazy.”

  “Come on. Answer the man so we can get out of here.” Mrs Pettigrew said, walking over and poking her head through the door to look outside the office. “I want to see if Peanut’s turned up yet.”

  Emily bit her lip, chewing at it so hard a metallic tang filled her mouth. She released it, not wanting to bite it clean through. There’d been an animal. A cat? Or was that just because the ghost had mentioned Peanut? One of the words related to something in the room. Furniture? Carpet? The lamp?

  “I’m not sure I heard them clearly.”

  “Okay. That happens. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Are you crazy?” Mrs Pettigrew stared at her. “Just tell him.”

  “I might schedule an appointment for a scan,” Mr Robertson said, drawing his keyboard towards him. “It’s been six months, so it’s time we took another look in there.”

  “To check the bone fragments?”

  He glanced over, frowning. “Sure. To see if they’re moved.”

  The scar down the side of her face throbbed. Emily put a finger up to touch it, letting herself be seduced into running along its entire, crooked length.

  “How does four-thirty on Friday suit you?”

  “Good. I can finish up at work early.”

  The doctor pressed a button and a printer beside him whirred into life. “Here you go. I’ll meet you there beforehand, this time. If I sit in the room while they perform the MRI it gives me a better feel for what’s going on.”

  “What is going on?” Mrs Pettigrew walked closer, reaching her hand out toward Emily who jerked away. “Tell him the three things. He thinks you’ve got brain damage. Apple. Coin. Table.”

  A buzz started in the back of Emily’s head. The lie about feeling too hot had morphed into truth. Sweat popped out on her forehead.

  “Stop ignoring me, Scarface. Repeat the words. I need you out and about, helping to catch my murderer. Not locked up in a padded cell or dribbling into a hospital bed.”

  “What?” Emily raised her eyes, staring in horror at the man seated across from her.

  The smile on his face slipped. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Apple. Coin. Table. Apple. Coin. Table.” The ghost snapped her fingers between each word. “Apple. Coin. Table.”

  “Leave me alone,” Emily shouted, turning on Mrs Pettigrew with a sudden explosion of rage. Her head swelled, her brain crushing to mush against the inside of her skull. “I don’t need you yelling at me. If I wanted to tell him the words, I would. I can’t remember them. If I don’t know them myself, it’s cheating.”

  “Don’t talk to me! The doctor’s sitting right there. He’ll think you’re crazy.”

  “I am crazy,” Emily yelled. In a blinding flash of consciousness, everything slipped into place. It all made sense.

  The skull fragments had shifted, pressing into a different part of her brain. How many times had the doctors warned her this might happen?

  There was no ghost. There was no murder.

  There were just boxes of goods in an attic room over the charity shop and no one to greet her when she got home at the end of the day.

  “You don’t exist,” she whispered, staring as Mrs Pettigrew dissolved in front of her eyes. “You never existed.”

  As the neurologist ran around the table, calling for a nurse, Emily slumped in the chair. The world around her shattered as though her tears were made of glass.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emily grunted as she pulled her leg up to her chest. “Just get it over with and tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” Joanne asked—her face a mask of innocence.

  “Tell me that it’s my own fault for overdoing it and you warned me repeatedly this would happen.”

  Joanne wrinkled her nose as a strand of thick blonde hair escaped its ponytail to fall forward and frame her face. “What kind of support buddy would I be if I always said, I told you so?”

  “The type who’s in the right while I’m in the wrong.” Emily collapsed back onto the floor, her body protesting with a shriek from every muscle. “And that’s the sort I need.”

  “Well…”

  Emily raised her eyebrows.

  “I seem to remember, I might have warned you about some consequences to your actions.” Joanne held up palms up. “But it was all so long ago.”

  “At least enjoy it.” Emily sat up and reached for a towel to wipe the sweat from her forehead. “One of us should get something out of my complete mental breakdown.”

  “Considering you’d recovered by the time the doctor checked you into the hospital for an emergency MRI, I don’t think it really counts as a breakdown.”

  Joanne held out her hand and Emily grasped it with a grateful sigh to pull up to her feet.

  “I certainly hope it’s the closest I ever get, anyway.”

  A shadow moved in the corner of her eye and Emily jerked around, but it was just the shadow of a patient walking on the other side of the windowed door.

  “You seem a bit jumpy.”

  “Yeah.” Emily finished wiping herself down and threw the towel in the wicker basket. “I didn’t tell you but while I was”—she crossed her eyes and spiralled her finger around her ear—“I managed to steal a cat.”

  Joanne’s eyes opened wide and a short laugh wheezed out of her.

  Emily held a finger to her lips. “But I’ve grown rather fond of Peanut, so keep it a secret, okay?”

  “Okay. I doubt the police will worry too much.” The woman hesitated. “You didn’t take it from a family with little kids, did you?”

  “No. It was from the house of the dead woman.” Emily didn’t need to say which one. A flush warmed up the skin of her chest, then its crimson fingers crept a stealthy path up her neck until it reached her cheeks. “And he’s really old. Fifteen.”

  “Well, you probably shouldn’t keep animals at your stage of recovery but promise me, you’ll set up a system so you never leave the house without checking his food and water bowl are filled up.”

  “I’ve done that,” Emily said, running a hand through her sweaty, grey curls. “Not to mention the kitty litter tray.”

  “Good.” The physio clapped her on the back. “On top of that, you need to remember to do the stretching exercises I gave you. With the tension you’re carrying in your hips, your muscles are prone to cramping.”

  “I’ve been doing them every day. The poster is covering the television, so I don’t forget.”

  Joanne searched Emily’s face for a second, then gave a nod. “Okay. Since your neurologist gave your head a workup, I might get you into the hospital to give your body the same. We’ve got your group meeting in a few days, so it’ll be good to cover all bases.”

  The meeting wasn’t something Emily looked forward to, although she supposed she should be grateful. Every six months, the team looking after her physical and mental health met with her and the case managers in charge of her accident compensation.

  They were meant to do it to come up with a plan to get her back into the regular workforce, but each meeting pushed that dream fa
rther away.

  As Emily walked out to her car, her mind worried at the idea of more tests. The worst thing was when a doctor said they were just routine—a red flag to show they thought something was wrong but didn’t want to concern her. As though being lied to was somehow better.

  A week ago, the trip to the hospital had been filled with pain and confusion. Mr Robertson hadn’t accompanied her, but the nurse from his practice had travelled in the ambulance, holding Emily’s hand until the paramedic moved her out of the way.

  The rush of terror, that she might lose her cognition just because a piece of bone fragment had decided to take a trip, was overwhelming. Even now, beads of sweat popped out on Emily’s forehead as her emotions relived the journey.

  Somewhere on the jolting trip between the ambulance and the MRI machine, stored in the hospital’s lowest floor, the fragment had slid back into its previous position. Crisis averted. Until the next time.

  Although she’d never admit it to her doctors, Emily had held out hope the fragments in her brain might move, but she’d expected it to reopen the world currently closed to her. Just a fraction of a millimetre might leave her able to once again process written language. Turning her literate in a snap.

  The fear they’d move and wipe out even more of her life hadn’t been part of her considerations. Now, it stood out in sharp focus. The terror was stronger than the threat of death, to lose more of her abilities while retaining her cognition.

  But life could be lived with fear without it incapacitating her. Emily drove home, relaxing as she pulled up outside her door.

  Peanut greeted her with the loving admiration of a hungry belly. Despite his advanced years, he hadn’t lost the kittenish habit of chasing after her, making walking a game.

  Of course, she only had her mucked-up brain to tell her the cat was old. The white hairs on his belly might just be his natural colouring. With a can opener in one hand and the pet food in the other, Emily stared at the animal with a frown.

  She didn’t have to take the ghost of Mrs Pettigrew at her word since the hallucination only existed within her damaged frontal cortex. Unless she’d overheard the information elsewhere, she might have invented it.

  “Perhaps I should book you a check-up with the vet,” she said, reaching down to stroke a finger along the cat’s back. It gave an annoyed flick of its ears. Dinner was no time to start doling out affection, there was work to be done.

  How many other ideas did she have knocking around in her head right now that were just the result of her extended hallucination? The information about seeking a divorce came straight from the ghost’s mouth. The vision of Gregory standing over his mother, blood streaking his hands. That came courtesy of her rude apparition, too.

  Did Peanut even belong to the household?

  For a second, Emily greeted the thought with hopeful enthusiasm—perhaps keeping him wasn’t a crime—then she remembered. Abraham had cradled the cat to him and escorted him indoors. Definitely the Pettigrew’s cat.

  He also saw the cat reacting to the ghost’s touch.

  Emily shook her head. A nonsense thought. She’d found those popping into her head for the past week, too. Like a desperate plea not to write off her experiences.

  But just because a cat acted funny while outdoors, didn’t mean it was because a ghost was stroking him. Her mind had taken that real vision and inserted the spirit as an overlay on the scene, fitting what was already there.

  Her phone vibrated, and Emily pulled it out. The snapshot she’d taken of Crystal Dreaming flashed onto the screen as it buzzed again.

  Emily’s thumb hovered over the green phone icon, then she switched and clicked on red. The image disappeared, retreating behind the home screen of Emily’s fiftieth birthday celebration. She popped the phone back into her pocket and opened the fridge.

  Although the medium had seemed like a friend a week ago, now Emily saw the truth. The woman had been hanging around to take advantage of her. Thank goodness she hadn’t handed over any money, or she’d feel like worse of a fool.

  If you didn’t give her any money, how was she—?

  Emily cut that thought off before it could gain traction. She was home. Her only job now was to feed the cat—tick—and feed herself. Once done, she could perform her stretches in front of the television, then reward herself with an episode from her favourite Netflix show.

  Routine meant harmony. It meant getting a little better every day. If Emily kept to the path she’d been following, she should end up in a good place. Not the world she’d once belonged to—that was gone forever—but a good approximation.

  When her work life was settled, and her medical concerns had faded into the background, Emily could consider making friends.

  You wanted to go along to the felting club, remember? You said it sounded fun and Crystal’s face lit up at the thought of your company.

  No. Until the rest of her life was in place, there was no room for crafts and hobbies. Emily held her hands out and watched them tremble. These weren’t hands that could hold a delicate needle, anyhow.

  She pulled cheese, milk, and spinach out of the fridge, and grabbed the eggs from the kitchen bench. An omelette sounded good for tea. Cutting back on carbs couldn’t hurt, not at her age.

  When the phone vibrated ten minutes later, Emily turned it onto mute and placed it in her handbag. She didn’t need distractions when her focus was on getting well.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning, a Tuesday, Emily walked into work to find Pete standing by the counter with a concerned look on his face and a newspaper in his hand. “Isn’t this your friend?”

  Emily took the folded paper and squinted at the grainy newsprint. “Yeah. Crystal. Though, she’s not really a friend of mine. I just met her a few times.” She handed back the pages. “What happened?”

  “It seems she held a séance for the wrong people,” Pete said. “Do you want me to read it for you?”

  “Nah. I’ll catch up with it on my laptop while I’m working. Did you see the stack we got in yesterday?”

  He nodded, his grin opening up wide enough to reveal his gap-teeth. “I think we can all thank the ground Marie Kondo walks on for that.”

  “Well, it better not continue.” Emily knocked her knuckles on the counter. “If everyone’s involved in the business of giving their stuff away, nobody is going to want to buy.”

  “They’ll buy.” Pete walked behind the counter, pacing around his stool a few times before sitting on it as though he were in the world’s loneliest game of musical chairs. “Giving stuff away because it doesn’t bring you happiness is a rich person’s game. They’ll tire of it soon enough and the rest of the population aren’t in a position to even start.”

  “Well, that’s a cheerful thought for early in the week.”

  Pete laughed and leaned forward, his arms folded on the counter. “It’s good if you’re on this side of the equation. The people keep coming and we get to keep serving them. Community spirit at its finest.”

  “If it earns me a living, I’m all for it.”

  “Speaking of which…” Pete pulled the keyboard out and tapped away at the keys, then gave a sigh. “Not there yet. Hopefully, by this afternoon.”

  Emily laughed. “You said that yesterday. And on Friday.” She moved away and crossed to the stairs. “How about you just tell me when the auction house deposit actually turns up?”

  “But it’s the suspense that makes it so much fun!”

  She would have answered, but the stairs took up her breath. The muscles in the back of Emily’s legs didn’t want to move this morning. The hard work she’d done in physio over the past year seemed wasted.

  With the crush of donations that had arrived the day before, Emily hadn’t done much besides stack the incoming boxes against the wall. She grabbed a box cutter now and began to slice open each one. Cataloguing these would take twenty-four-hour days if she needed to sort through each one.

  Luckily for her situa
tion, and unluckily for their recipient charity, many of the items inside were junk. In one, Emily couldn’t spot a single saleable item and ended up just strapping the top closed again in despair.

  Why anybody thought a charity shop would need torn clothing and an assortment of tea cozies, she couldn’t guess. Just because someone once paid money for a piece of clothing didn’t mean it was worth anything at the other end.

  “Oh, my,” Emily said as she spotted her first real find of the day. “Look at this!” She pulled out the Royal Dalton mug, without a crack or blemish on it. The sailor depicted leered at her—an amazing feat between the squint in his eye and the pipe.

  Emily turned, ready to show Mrs Pettigrew, then remembered. She shook her head, feeling silly, then swallowed past a lump in her throat. Suddenly, she wanted to be downstairs, talking things over with Pete, not stuck up here by herself.

  She dragged herself to her feet before thinking twice and pulling over the laptop instead. The music player had some of her old favourites on there and she could set it playing, knowing she wouldn’t hear a repeat for the rest of the day.

  The computer opened on a browser tab, left on the paper’s home page. Emily recognised the photograph of Crystal Dreaming again, the same as Pete had shown her downstairs. Before she could change her mind, she clicked on the article to have it read aloud to her.

  “Crystal Dreaming has been the sole proprietor of the Rainbow Psychic Company for the past seven years. It’s not the first name of the company, which has gone through sixteen variations throughout the life of its business. A startling number of changes for a standard enterprise, but the psychic assistance profession is anything but standard.

  “In the last year, Crystal Dreaming’s company has declared over four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ‘donations.’ Unlike a normal transaction with a set price and delivery, the service depends on word of mouth and repeat customers pleased enough with the outcome to continue paying hundreds of dollars for just a few minutes of work.

  “And what is the work involved? For the two reporters who have been tracking Ms Dreaming’s business model for the past eighteen months, it appears that is… Nothing.”