by Cat Knight
Lucy remembered how she and Oliver had been practically holding their lips shut with their fingers to stop from laughing throughout most of the conversation. When Mia had got to the bit where she had shown the ghost the door to the other side, and she watched an electric blue light flash through the room and up through the ceiling, Lucy had nearly spewed her ale out and Oliver excused himself to the men’s room. Now, however Lucy rubbed her forehead so hard it hurt.
“You’re saying someone – like a ghost is living in my new house?”
“Perhaps, and maybe that spirit likes it the way it is, not the way you’re going to make it. Or maybe it’s someone who is a trapped spirit with unfinished business and can’t move on.”
Lucy’s words were snappy. “Spirits don’t paint scary threats on the walls, do they? Or disappearing paint messages? I thought it was all moans and grunts and the swish of silk in the halls.”
Mia took a deep breath. With some satisfaction.
Lucy could see that from Mia’s point of view, this conversation wasn’t going well. For some reason, it pleased her. Mia let her breath out and started again.
“Manifestations come in many forms. I’ve heard of spirits that rearrange the embers in a fireplace to send a message. The message disappears as the embers die.”
“Convenient.” “
Absolutely, but true. So, disappearing paint isn’t so barmy.” Lucy eyes misted over.
“Come on Lucy, chin up. It’s not that bad. It’s nothing that can’t be handled. We just have to figure it out.”
Lucy sipped her ale and fell silent. She was petulant, like a child who had found that the thing she wanted most in the world was not what she wanted at all, and her fantasies were dashed. “So, I’m supposed to just give up my house and everything I’m doing until it all gets figured out?”
“No, of course not.”
“But I’ve got to be out of my flat in a few weeks. The landlord’s put the rent up now— for the new tenants. I won’t be able to stop on for longer. And I’m not prepared to pay more for that dingy little place anyway.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Mia said. “The thing is, some spirits are brutal, so tied to a time and place that they become a menace to anyone who disturbs them. Sometimes, they are entities who have found a comfy spot and decided they’re going to hang around no matter what because it’s the only comfy spot they’ve ever known.”
“So, you think I’ve got a freeloading spirit? What do you suppose - I’m supposed to forget my house or build a nest or something where it can rest and then scare the living daylights out of me whenever it wants? It’s bloody ridiculous.”
“Steady on… I didn’t SEND it there you know.”
“Sorry. I know you’re trying to help.”
“Come on Lucy – you’re braver that this. As I said, you don’t have to do what it wants. This is the home of the living. Our plane doesn’t belong to those who should transcend. And you’re in luck. Because you just happen to know someone who can help you with this spirit, someone who can help you rid the house of it.”
“That someone would be you, wouldn’t it?” Lucy asked a tiny, almost playful smile fleeted across her lips.”
“That’s the spirit, no pun meant. Buy me another ale, and we’ll decide how to go about this.”
Chapter Five
Over the next hour Lucy and Mia argued.
“I know you think I’m crazy Lucy, but I’m not. I can’t leave you alone with it. You’ve got to deal with it. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. You’d probably haunt me, and I wouldn’t want that.”
“Thanks Mia, but if I’m honest then I have to believe it’s probably just a squatter waging war with me. I’ll just need to catch whoever it is in the act.” Lucy could see where a squatter might be upset by being forced to move. “After all Mia, no one likes to get kicked out home.”
“And what about the disappearing phone messages. At least I believe you. But maybe you are bonkers, and there was never any paint, never any messages!”
Lucy looked down at her nails and picked at her quicks.
“That’s not it Lucy. I know that’s not it. Admit it. At least part of you knows I’m right. It’s not a squatter. Not a living one anyway.”
“Alright… for arguments sake, what if you are right?”
“The first thing that has to happen is we have to figure out why the spirit is there.”
“Perhaps it’s just luck of the dice?” Lucy massaged her temples. The entire story was just too much to deal with and suddenly she was very tired.
“Like I said, often, a spirit or ghost stays because the death wasn’t a good one.”
“What death is a good one?”
“One that releases the spirit.” Lucy nodded at Mia vaguely, thinking perhaps it would have been better to have called a shrink, or better yet a private investigator. This conversation wasn’t going anywhere, and there had to be some rational, yes rational, explanation.
“Look Lucy, I know you don’t want to believe it but sometimes people die before they’re ready. If someone leaves
something they really, really wanted to finish, or if they died in a fashion that was not right – well, they can hang around.”
“Are you saying there’s been a murder or something like that committed in my house? Wonderful. Just ducky.”
“No. I’m not saying that happened, I’m just trying to explain. Sometimes, the spirit has nothing to do with the place it haunts, it’s simply a convenient place to stay. Not every ghost wants to move on.”
“How am I supposed to discover which sort of ghost I have?”
“You start with history. Who built the house, who lived there, and particularly, who died there.”
“If no one died there?”
“Then, it’s another issue. You face that later, after you’ve done the background work.”
“I’m a working girl, Mia. I don’t have a lot of time for chasing down former owners.”
“Oliver.”
“Oliver? What about him?”
“Oliver likes you, and as he happens to be between gigs at the moment, I think he might be persuaded to help with the research.”
Lucy narrowed her eyes at Mia.
“Perhaps, but using Oliver comes with a price, a price I’m not sure I’m willing to pay.”
“If you ask me, he’d be happy to help, and I’m guessing he won’t be available all that long.”
“Why? What do you know?”
Mia smiled.
“Hardly anything. But give it some thought. Think of it as helping Oliver fill in time he would otherwise waste in the pub.”
“If I lose my mind like I think I’m doing, I’ll be swigging pints with him in no time.”
“If you like, I can approach him. I can say you’re too shy.”
Lucy snorted. He wouldn’t believe it for one thing and for another, in her entire life, no one had ever accused her of being shy.
“No, I’ll do it. I’ve been doing my own dirty work for a long time now.” As they walked out the door, Lucy felt a bit better. If trying to chase down a ghost was to be taken seriously — and since she was going along with it anyway — and, if it was possible to do that with something other than abject terror — well that was a good thing wasn’t it?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
At home, Lucy made tea and opened her laptop. While she browsed familiar sites, her brain kept circling back to her new house and the mysteries it jealously hid. Had someone actually died in that house? Death was a natural occurrence. She supposed that there wasn’t a square foot of England that hadn’t seen someone’s death. Over the eons, people came and went on a regular basis. Well, they mostly went.
What if the ghost was evil? What if it didn’t appreciate sharing the house with a flesh-and-blood human? How dangerous could such a spirit be? Painted messages to scare people were one thing. But sinks that fell off the wall were altogether different. Lucy started to half laugh, half cry.
Somehow, although precisely when, she couldn’t say, but she had joined the loonies. She was entertaining the real possibility that a spirit had stayed behind to devil her and she would have to get rid of it. She fell asleep with the sincere prayer on her lips that her house-sitting ghost would move on.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Look I only bloody well signed the things the other day. Why can’t you just let me swap. I’ll take a smaller house, with a lesser yard. I don’t care. Someone else can have the corner one. I just don’t want this one anymore.”
A dark-haired man with a calculating stare folded his hands on the desk in front of him. He seemed to be sizing her up for insanity, or maybe subterfuge. Yes, that was it — subterfuge.
“It’s a legal agreement Ms… Clark. We can’t swap it over. You own it now. Look at it this way, if you bought it via the usual route, you wouldn’t expect a real estate company to let you swap houses, would you? It doesn’t work this way does it?”
Lucy felt the urge to swat at him, knock his patronising tone to kingdom come. That feeling was happening a lot today. In the back of her mind, she was wondering if she was fit for the loony bin after-all.
“You’ve got it for five years and then you can do what you like with it after that. You’re not allowed to get rid of it until then, or you’ll face a hefty fine. We don’t like flippers Ms Clarke.”
Lucy leaned in close. She had been here over forty minutes and she had to get back to work.
“I am not a flipper. I’m telling you the house is off. Weird things happen. It’s got a ghost or something. And I don’t want it. Me and ghosts just don’t get along. Just change the paperwork and give me another.”
He looked uncomfortable now. At least he has the grace to do that, Lucy thought.
“Look, I know that’s what you say you think it is — but between you and me, this is buyer’s remorse isn’t it?”
“Between you and me it’s a feckin ghost.” Lucy sighed suddenly exhausted from the fight and fearing once more for her sanity. “Or at least, it’s probably a ghost. If it’s not a ghost it’s a squatter, but I haven’t actually seen him, or her yet.”
“All these houses are bound to have teething problems.”
“But…. please… couldn’t you do it just this once… make a swap just this time?”
“We all know ghosts don’t exist Ms Clark. And if it’s a squatter then that person has vacated already.” His grey eyes turned steel and Lucy knew she had lost; if there had ever been a possibility that she might have won. He moved his head slightly glancing at his watch. Her time was up.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Oliver agreed to meet for lunch. He suggested a pub; she insisted on something less dedicated to drinking. They ended up at a small table in a small outdoor eatery. Since the day was pleasant, it turned out to be the thing.
“Hey, ho,” Oliver said as he sat and smiled. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Actually,” Lucy said. “I need a favour.”
“I’m chock full of favours,” he said. “Especially where you’re concerned. What is it?”
“Let’s eat first, OK?”
“That bad?”
“Not really. I mean, it’s not going to turn your stomach.”
“Fair enough.”
They ordered and chatted about the weather then the parliament and then the latest scandals. Not that they cared, but it was something to talk about. They shared similar views for the most part which rendered the banter easy.
Oliver was smart and half-handsome and having sunshine for the first time in weeks was the cherry on the sundae. “All right,” he said. “Now that you’ve plied me with food that will steal blood from my brain and render me helpless to your charms, what is this favour?”
“You were helpless to my charms before we ate,” Lucy answered. “But let’s not quibble. It seems my new house came fully equipped, even with its own ghost.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. Listen for a moment.”
Lucy launched into a rendition of what had happened to her inside her new house, from the locks that didn’t work to the messages that disappeared from her phone.
She outlined her chat with Mia and Mia’s opinion about a possible spirit. And, finally how she had tried to offload the house, but the council wouldn’t let her.
As she spoke, Oliver leaned away, almost as if he thought she was crazy, or he was looking for a quick escape.
She didn’t blame him. Who wanted to sit and listen to someone bonkers enough to believe in ghosts?
“So,” Lucy finished. “Mia said I need to discover the history of the house. Who lived there and especially who died there. It seems spirits like to hang around places where they breathed their last.”
“I had a great-aunt who believed in ghosts. She swore she once saw a water-soaked woman with seaweed in her hair. It was in some old manor house on the channel. Of course, my great-aunt had had her portion of wine before the appearance, but she claimed the wine had nothing to do with it. The owner of the house pooh-poohed my great aunt. No ghosts had ever been seen before. But my great aunt didn’t back down. A year later, the house burned to the ground.”
“I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen to my house. But I was wondering. Would you mind researching it? Researching my new house, I mean? I would do it, but I’m really busy, and well, you’re not yet working, are you?”
“I have two more weeks before I fly to Canada.”
“You were hired?”
“Indeed, and I’m afraid I’ll be in Canada for the better part of a year. I haven’t told anyone because, well, because I didn’t want to look into maudlin faces. After all, who really wants to live some place where it never gets warm? Even England eventually gets warm.”
“I’m sure Canada will be warm enough,” she said, surprisingly disappointed to hear he was leaving and pushing that thought aside. “So, you’ll help?”
“How could I not?”
He reached across the table, and she took his hand.
“If you’re being hounded by some less than happy spirit, then I will be happy to help you send it on its way. And to think of all the times we laughed behind Mia’s back.”
“I know.” Lucy agreed. “She’s having the last laugh now though. Us chasing around after a spectre. But we can do it can’t we?”
“Of course.”
He smiled, and she knew for the second time in a single minute that she would miss him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The afternoon proved long and boring. While Lucy might have wished to leave early, it was not to be.
She worked to her regular time and hurried out. She hoped she would arrive at her new house in time to talk to Ronnie. While she didn’t want to be a bother, she did want to hear about the daily progress. Everything needed to be moving forward because there weren’t any pounds to spare. As she turned onto her street, her heart jumped into her throat.
An ambulance waited in the road lights pulsing. And the ambulance was right in front of her new house.
Chapter Six
As Lucy hurried forward, two paramedics wheeled a gurney out of her house. A man, eyes closed, was under the sheet which seemed like good news to Lucy. The sheet hadn’t been pulled over his head. That would have been the worst of omens. As she watched, the paramedics loaded the man into the ambulance and drove away. She supposed that the lack of a siren was good news too.
“That’s my best wirer.”
Lucy turned to Ronnie who had emerged from the house.
“What happened?” Lucy asked.
“He was installing some sockets, and he swore he had cut the electricity before he started. He’s very careful that way.
Well, he either turned off the wrong circuit breaker or simply supposed he had done it. Because when he started on the socket, he got quite a jolt. He’s lucky he’s not dead.”
“He’ll
be all right?”
“They’re going to keep him for a day or two. Make sure the electricity didn’t rewire his brain. I read once where a woman got struck by lightning. When she woke up, she could speak nine different languages, languages she didn’t even know existed.”
“I don’t think she found that unlucky, did she? I mean, having nine new language skills might open up new career fields.”
He laughed.
“I doubt Cullen will learn anything but a new way to curse his own luck.”
“I suppose, we should consider ourselves fortunate.”
“Aye. Talking of luck, we’ve seen a better spot of it today. Would you like to see what we’ve done?”
“Certainly.”
The tour of the house took less than twenty minutes, and while Ronnie was pleased with the progress, Lucy was less enthused. Yes, some tasks had been accomplished, but at the rate they were going, it would be months before the house could be inhabited. Perhaps that was a good thing. She would have more time to relocate the resident ghost — if there truly was a resident ghost. In her heart of hearts, she couldn’t be sure if she were just loopy or the whole afterlife thing was true.
Still, she was thankful that the electricity had been switched on, and that there was actually light in some of the rooms. It was progress.
Outside the house, Lucy shook hands with Ronnie before he turned for the tube and his ride home. She wasn’t going to join him on the walk. She was going back inside and look about for a few minutes.
If there was a spirit lurking, she wanted to engage it. Well, she thought she wanted to engage it. A spirit that had flipped a circuit breaker in order to fry an electrician might not be the sort of spirit she wanted to befriend. But she was getting mightily fed up with shenanigans.
Lucy stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind her. She started her phone’s torch app even before she had entered. If there was a ghost, it would most likely hang out in the rooms that were dark. And this hallway was dark. Ghosts were like that weren’t they – dark preferring creatures? Darkness had never been Lucy’s own favoured companion and she was very happy about the small amount of light she had.
