Blessed by Fire

by P W Hillard

  There was a crackle. “Hello?” A woman’s voice croaked through the speaker.

  “Yes, can you buzz us up please. It’s the police.” Mark said, leaning close to the squawking metal box.

  “It’s the police Gerald, what do they want? What have you done!” scratched the intercom, the person at the other end forgetting to take their finger off the button.

  “Nothing ask what they want!” shouted Gerald loud enough for the intercom to pick him up.

  “We can’t ask them what they want, it’s rude and it’s the police,” said the first voice. She was whispering rather than letting go of the button. “Come right up!”. There was a clack as the door before them opened slightly. Mark pushed it, revealing a set of stairs with worn green shag carpet. He walked slowly up the stairs, Aasif and Jess following behind.

  The office that lay atop the stairs was the opposite of the glitzy letting agency below. The green shag carpet of the stair way ended bafflingly at pale brown linoleum that covered the entire office floor. There was a handful of desks scattered around, huge lumbering things made of black metal and MDF boards that must have been white originally but had long since faded into a kind of off yellow colour. The desks were taken up with computers Mark had last seen as a pre-teen. Huge CRT monitors and towers, each a uniform beige colour. Along the wall to the right of the offices was a large glass cabinet. Inside were trophy’s, plaques, and commemorative silver plates. They glistened polished to shine and completely at odds with the decrepit office that housed them. Mark stepped over and looked through the glass. A large cut glass trophy read “Gerald Griffiths Medium of the Year.”

  “Hello?” shouted Jess. The office was oddly empty of people. “Hello?”

  Two people emerged from behind a pale green partition. A man and a woman both in their late fifties. The woman wore a power suit last available sometime in the mid-eighties. It was bright pink with a purple blouse, it shoulder pads puffing her up like an angry cobra. The man was portly, his gut exposed through his shirt which was much too tight. His hair had long since lost the battle with his bald patch, the few defiant strands brushed over into could only be called a comb over if you were willing to except an exceptionally tiny comb. The man barrelled at them hand outstretched.

  “Gerald Griffiths,” he said, shaking first Marks hand then Aasif’s. His missing Jess did not go unnoticed by her. “Head of the British Society of Spiritualists and Mediums. BSSM for short. This is my wife Carol.”

  “That your name on the trophies in the cabinet then?” asked Marked gesturing to the glass with his thumb.

  “Sure is, I’ve won the BSSM Medium of the Year contest six years in a row.” Gerald grinned proudly.

  “Isn’t that your own organisation though?” Jess asked puzzled.

  “Beat out a lot of competition to win that,” Gerald continued ignoring her. “Very proud.”

  “Uh huh I bet. I’m D.C Holden, this is my partner D.C Curren.” Jess flashed her I.D “We’re here to ask a few questions about your,” Jess pulled out her notebook and flipped a page open for dramatic effect. “Haunted doll.”

  “Oh Isabella?” Said Carol. “What do the police want with her?”

  “We’re here to confiscate her sadly. A doll matching her description was reported stolen,” Mark said. He shrugged trying to sell the lie.

  Gerald’s friendly demeanour dropped, his face swapping to a scowl in a moment. “That’s not true. I know you’re lying. This is about the paranormal stuff that’s been going on around town isn’t it.”

  “I’m not sure what you me- “Mark began to reply.

  “Oh please. I know your type.” Gerald took two steps towards the nearest desk and sat down on the desktop. “You think this is all nonsense, I could tell from the moment you came in. I can read you like an open book if you’ll excuse the cliché.”

  “Cold reading is an impressive skill,” Mark admitted, holding his hands up as if to say he had been caught. “There’s nothing supernatural about it though.”

  “True enough, and I’ve made a long but not exactly lucrative career out of it. But that’s not how I started. Been able to speak with spirits since I was a kid. Scared me at first but I soon got used to it. Decided when I was younger to give the medium thing a go and very quickly learnt that being truthful is not what people want.” Gerald sighed. “People want to hear their gran is in a nice place, or that their kids love them. They don’t want to hear uncle Jim beat aunt Mable and now she’s an angry ghost who won’t move on.”

  “I’m the same,” said Carol taking a seat beside Gerald. “Well not exactly the same, Gerald can hear spirits, I can sense auras. It’s how we found each other.”

  “It’s funny. You never reacted to me asking about the paranormal, like its everyday for you. What are you some kind of ghost police?” he joked.

  Jess laughed. “Close enough.”

  “Well you caught us packing out stuff to leave. Carol says she senses a nasty aura and its growing worse. And there’s a ghost I can hear wailing in my dreams on the old house up the valley. We weren’t keen on sticking around. Isabella is packed up in a box. Was trying to sell her on eBay but no one wants to buy a haunted doll.” Gerald hopped down from the desk. “Come on. What do you need her for?”

  “We need it to try and stop what’s happening around here. What do you know about it?” Mark asked as he followed him. Jess and Aasif staying behind to question Carol.

  “Nothing specific. I know those two murders have something to do with it, and I know there’s a bunch more deaths you’re covering up. Those spirits are particularly pissed. If my wife feels something she thinks is dangerous enough we need to leave, I know enough to listen to her.” Gerald thought for a moment. “I mean, I do what she tells me to ninety percent of the time anyway. Women eh?” Mark nodded awkwardly. He followed Gerald to a small store cupboard at the far end of the office. Gerald reached up and pulled a small wooden box from a shelf. He slid off the lid and offered it to Mark. Laying within the box on a bed of shredded paper was a porcelain doll. Its face was heavily painted, its woven pigtails frayed. It wore a pale blue plaid dress. It was the very epitome of what people expect when you describe something as a haunted doll. “We picked her up from the old owner, paid a pretty penny at the time. It’s a famous doll. Worked out well as a fundraiser for the Society.”

  “It always amazes me what people will pay to see,” said Mark. He reached into his pocket and produced the divining crystal he had searched for the onryo with. He held it over the doll and it span slowly in a wide circle.

  “You know your stuff,” Gerald said, evidently impressed. “Don’t worry, its only slightly haunted. Head turning on its own, whispering in the night. That kind of thing. Take it, if it helps stop whatever is happening around here you’re welcome to it.”

  The trunk shut with a clunk, followed by the metal slam of the van door being shut. The doll had been sealed inside its box and placed amongst the stashed occult objects in the back of the van. Mark had tried to assure Aasif that the warding on the case would keep the doll under wraps without much success. Aasif had seen cannibalism, corpses, possessed people and whatever the thing at the care home was but the doll was the one thing that had really creeped him out so far.

  “I just don’t like it,” he said as he started the Van and began towards their next stop.

  “It’s just a harmless doll, what are you scared of,” mocked Jess.

  “You don’t find it creepy, those beady little dead eyes?”

  “I checked it, it’s not a particularly strong spirit. We’ll be fine,” said Mark.

  “Really? I thought you said that the ghost at that house is much stronger than it should be, that it turned vicious suddenly. What’s not to say the same won’t be true of that doll? Can’t be a coincidence right, this Jinn turns up around the time a ghost goes nuts? Must be a link there.” Aasif checked his mirror as he turned the van on a junction.

  “That’s… that’s an excellent poin
t,” agreed Mark. He turned to Jess who had drawn the middle seat short straw this time. “You think maybe the Jinn being around is what made our ghost friend go all Fatal Attraction? Jinn apparently get in through weakened barriers between worlds. Maybe that’s letting the ghost manifest more solidly?”

  “Maybe, maybe it’s the other way around though, the ghost getting angrier is what weakened the barrier in the first place.” Jess slipped a notebook from her jacket pocket, draw a short pencil from the metal rings at the top and scrawled the word barrier on the page. “Could be that something else weakened the barrier and it both bumped the ghost up a tier and let the Jinn in. It is a bit too convenient timing wise.”

  “Good thinking that man,” praised Mark. “I think I’ll just shut this divider.” Mark pulled the small metal window between the back of the van and the cabin shut. “Can’t be too careful.”

  Jess sat at a large round table, paperwork scattered all over it. Around her the libraries shelves seemed to swallow her, as though the forests worth of paper had reanimated into a thick dark wood. She looked up from the files she had checked out and groaned. Aasif was resting both hands on his chin. Jess was sure he was sleeping. The silence of the library was broken by the tapping shoes as Mark walked the aisles towards them.

  “I put a bunch more warding up inside the Van, just you know, in case of killer doll,” he said taking a seat at the table. His voice was lowered to a whisper. “I let Raj and Dale know we got that particular ingredient, so we don’t double up. That would be our luck wouldn’t it, two scary dolls. Hey that might be a good horror film, two haunted dolls trying to get each other. Find anything?”

  “Too much. It seems like this town is half abandoned buildings with all this lot.” Jess gestured across the table at the sea of news articles and deeds. “I kind of went off horror films when I started doing this. Put me off a little.”

  “I know what you mean. I watch them, but its more to find what’s wrong more than anything. Is he asleep?” Mark asked.

  “I think so, leave him be. It’s been a rough couple of days for him.” Jess picked up another building plan, looked at it for a moment and then tossed it onto a pile which tipped over spilling paper across the floor.

  “You know I had to mention him in the report after the care home business. The boss heard him over the phone. That’s it for him, he’s one of us now.” Mark picked up one of the plans, stared at it for a moment, turned it around. He looked at it some more before turning back the original way he had it.

  “I know.” Jess held her head down solemnly. “I thought maybe we could shield him from this. Sort it all out and send him back to his old life. It’s rough doing this Mark. All the darkness, the violence. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”

  “And yet you do it every day.”

  “What does that say about my opinion of myself. I don’t know how you’re so cool and collected with it all yourself.” Jess leant back in her chair stretching out her limbs.

  “Hah, the answer there is plenty of medication and unhealthy coping methods.” He tapped the plan he was holding.

  “I’m sorry, I had no idea, you never talk about yourself that much.” Jess brought her chair back to the seated position with a loud clack that echoed through the library.

  “It’s not a big deal. Beta blockers for panic attacks mainly. Plenty of people are on tablets like me. Not so different than taking insulin or heart medication. You’re sick so you take your medicine, right? Here look at this.” Mark handed her the plans he had been examining.

  Jess took the paper and stared the plans over. She thought for a minute. “You are a right pain in the arse you know that? You walk in and find it on the first try. Maybe our luck is turning. This is perfect, it has everything.”

  Mark nodded. “I know right.” He stood up from his chair. “I’ll go phone London, let them know we found a site. Wake sleeping beauty up and hand all this stuff back in.”

  Chapter 18

  The crossing button clicked as Rajan impatiently pressed it, his childhood belief that the more presses the faster the crossing lights would change lingering well into adulthood as a habit. He stood staring at the London traffic, thick vehicular cholesterol in the arteries of the city. He stood directly across from a tall three-story building, a thin spindly thing jutting from the Islington streets squeezed between two much larger structures, a thorn between toes. It was a Georgian building, white stone and doorways flanked by columns. Long ago it had been converted from a home to an antiques shop. Each window blocked entirely by roughly stacked furniture and precarious bric-a-brac. There was a beeping and the crossing lights went green. Rajan jogged across quickly followed by Dale, each trying to clear the road in the short pedestrian unfriendly time given. Above the doorway was a hand painted sign, declaring in an elaborate cursive they had arrived at “Johnsons’ Emporium of Antiquities.”

  The inside of the shop was a maze of mahogany and china. A confusing mess of blocked walkways and imposing cabinets. The two men edged their way through like explorers, ducking through a collection of low hanging glass lampshades, bursting forth from the tinkling foliage victorious. After a few minutes of meandering they arrived at a clearing in the jungle, a large desk centred within. From here the rows of objects splintered off, as though this were the centre of a spider’s web. Sat behind the desk was a small elderly man. A thin ring of white hair circled his otherwise bald head, rough stalks of darker hair erupting from his ears. He wore a moth-eaten red cardigan that seemed older than some of the antiques he sold. He smiled as Rajan and Dale approached.

  “George,” said Rajan as he approached, he nodded at the man behind the desk.

  “Detective! Such a pleasure to see you again. How can I help our fine constabulary today,” said George, his voice was faint and gravely, as though his breath was dust.

  “I need to procure some…objects. I was hoping you might have them.” Rajan unfolded a sheet of paper he had slid from his trouser pockets. He handed it over to an eager wrinkled hand.

  “Let’s see, oh, well ok I most certainly can help with these,” scratched Georges voice as he slipped a pair of glasses onto his face, the bridge held together with what looked to Rajan to be a medical plaster.

  “That’s great, we need them pretty urgently,” interjected Dale. Rajan rolled his eyes.

  “Oh urgently! Well why didn’t you say!” exclaimed George, sensing an opportunity to squeeze some extra money from the transaction. “Some of these items, ooh, very rare, very pricey.”

  “Do you have them, or do we need to go see someone else?” asked Rajan. He had dealt with George before and knew the greedy little man would try and squeeze as much as he could out of the transaction.

  “I have them, I think there is a transaction that could be made here to benefit both of us. Right follow me then, we’ll see what we can do.” George hopped out of his chair with a sprightliness that defied his age and wandered between two book cases. “Come on then, you did say urgent right?”

  The shopkeeper led the two policemen across the cluttered room to a flight of stairs. The stairway filled a thin corridor its tight walls squeezing at their shoulders uncomfortably as the stairway climbed to the second floor. The second floor was much like the first, a dense collection of objects that seemed to fill every corner of the room. George navigated the stacks of chairs, wobbling vases and lacklustre art like a cat, twisting and turning to avoid baroque carvings jutting from Victorian furniture. They crossed the room slowly, the route across a circuitous nightmare. When they finally reached the other side of the room there was a large heavyset solid wood door, years of thick paint peeling away like skin. George reached inside his worn cardigan and pulled out a small brass key on a chain. He lifted the chain over his head and placed the key into the door turned it with a satisfying click. Happy, he placed the chain back over his head and slipped the key back inside his shirt.

  The doorway led to another cramped staircase. Beckoning that they follo
w him, George led Dale and Rajan up the second stairway. When he got to the top, he stopped for a moment, made the sign of the cross over his heart and stepped across a threshold onto the third floor. Dale followed behind him.

  “Jesus Christ!” he shouted. Stood immediately beside the doorway was a glass case. Within it was a desiccated corpse. Its mummified face leering at him.

  “Not quite,” laughed George. “That’s just old Saint Edmund. Cost me a fair bit he did.”

  “Why do you have the remains of a saint?” asked Dale, “Where would you even get those?”

  “This gentleman is one of the best wards you can get. Real power in someone like this.” George tapped the glass with his knuckles. “Helps keep out…unwanted…clientele. And you don’t want to know where I got him. Right, shall we get working on this list.”

  The third floor couldn’t have been any more different from the rest of the shop. Each item placed carefully in its own glass case. A macabre collection of strange weapons, misshapen bones and unsettling carvings. It was as though a curator had gone mad and run through a museum’s archives picking objects at random. A roman Gladius shared a display cabinet with a set of broken ornately carved nun chucks. Two stone tablets rested against each other, one with what Dale recognised as Egyptian hieroglyphs, the other covered in symbols he had never seen before. It was hard to imagine a more esoteric collection. In one corner of the room was a large counter, behind which were rows of jars filled with various herbs. It looked like an apothecary’s had been transplanted into the building. George lifted part of the counter on its hinge and dropped it behind him. He leant on the worktop, the list Rajan had given him clutched in his hands.

  “Ok so, so first thing is a haunted doll?” he asked, peering over his glasses.

  “Oh, scratch that off,” replied Rajan, “We managed to get one of those.”

  “Really? I have a cupboard full of the bloody things. Ok well, next up here is some Jagdiga. Right here we go.” George grabbed a jar from the shelves, it was filled with bright purple petals. He opened the jar sprinkling some onto a large set of brass scales that rested at the far end of the counter. Pleased with the amount, he tipped the flowers into a small brown paper bag. He walked back over to the two men and set it before them. “Right that’s one lot of Tibetan flowers. Ok the next thing…”