Chapter 7: Ghost Busters
I did try to ignore the phone at first, but I had set it to ring really loudly and it was pretty hard to ignore something that could have raised the walls of Jericho. Jez tried to ignore it as well, unfortunately I had also set it to vibrate and it was buzzing madly in my bag which was somehow trapped between us in our embrace. He had to pull apart as my phone buzzed and vibrated right next to his... well, you get the idea.
Our lips parted and I noticed a small group of people were frowning at me for disturbing their peace. I threw my Mary Poppins bag to the floor and began rummaging within for my phone. I found everything but the phone and as soon as it stopped ringing when it went to voicemail it would begin ringing again. Someone desperately wanted to get hold of me.
"I'm sorry Jez," I said, "I really need to take this - perils of working for yourself."
I tried to follow the buzz and finally tracked it down only for it to stop ringing. I was pressing a button to find out who had tried to call me when it rang again.
"Hello, Paranormal..."
"He's screwing around!" a tear-sodden voice screamed down the phone.
I smiled apologetically at Jez and turned my back to try and put some privacy in the conversation.
"He was meant to be meeting me in Spizzico for our anniversary meal tonight and he never came!"
I recognised the voice now - my client, Miss X.
"I waited for hours and kept calling him, but he never picked up. He must be with her - but what if it's not a her, what if it's a him?"
"Calm down," I said, hoping I didn't sound like Michael Winner, "tell me everything."
"We always spend our anniversary in Spizzico - it's the restaurant we went to on our first date. We have a long standing booking with them. Every year. So I was there and he never came - never! I felt like a complete fool and I kept ringing and ringing and it's not like him to have turned his phone off! He's having an affair - I know it!"
"I didn't find any evidence on my surveillance."
"He's with this person now, you have to go and find out for me! I'll pay you double, only please, please go!"
I looked round at Jez who was leaning on the side of the bridge looking out at the river. "It's kind of awkward right now."
"But it's your job! I want you to go and find out who it is he's screwing!"
"Okay, okay."
I hung up the call and looked apologetically at Jez. "I'm sorry," I said, "it's a job I'm on at the moment."
He turned and looked at me. "Maybe it's for the best, eh?"
What? What the...
"Yeah," I said coolly, "for the best. Well, I've dragged you away from your party for nothing."
"I'll walk you to Waterloo."
"No need."
"It's late and dark."
I looked at him with angry eyes. "I was fine when you fucked off to America and I'll be fine now."
"You told me to go!"
"Like it would have made any difference if I'd asked you to stay!"
"How would you know? You never asked me."
My lips began to form a word - I just didn't know what I wanted to say yet. I screamed a frustrated 'oh' and marched off down the bridge.
"Fine!" he called after me, "Walk away like you do every time things get a little bit too deep."
"Blah, blah, blah!" was my witty reply as I continued my march.
It was late and it was dark, but I think my furious stomping would have deterred any would-be assailants. They would have been mad to try and assault someone in a mood as foul as I was.
If it was 'for the best' that we were interrupted why did he kiss me in the first place and why did he seem to enjoy it so much? Maybe he had a girl in every port and I was his London stop over?
It was only when I stopped my furious pace at Waterloo I realised my new shoes had rubbed my feet raw and they were a red and bloody mess. All for nothing! I stopped long enough to retrieve my old shoes from my Mary Poppins bag so I could change... they weren't there. I must have left them on the bridge when I was searching for my phone. I sighed, then slipped off the new shoes and walked to the escalator and down to the Northern line like a hobo - barefoot. At least I was still warm in Jez's jumper. It smelt of his aftershave... I loved that aftershave.
I fell asleep on the tube, another advantage of living at the end of the line - you could fall asleep safe in the knowledge it was impossible to miss your stop. The problem was, I didn't live exactly at the end of the line - I still had to get a bus back to East Barnet. Then I would have to change, pick up my car and head over to Friern Barnet and find out what was going on with Mr X. I yawned.
I don't imagine I looked good as I made my way home, but I'm sure there are those who have looked worse after a night out. Even if I had been followed this far and this long by fairies or their kind I doubted anyone would recognise me as the same person who had met Orla earlier in the day.
It took a long time for a bus to come and there was no way I could have walked barefoot that far. By the time I made the short walk from the bus stop to my flat it was very late and I was very tired.
From the snoring coming from the living room I surmised Bob was asleep on the sofa and I could have a shower without being disturbed by requests for me to eat his culinary creations.
My feet were filthy and it took some scrubbing to clean them. I then applied antiseptic cream and put on the softest, comfiest pairs of socks I owned.
In a pair of jeans and an old t shirt and sweater I was ready to go out again. I glanced at the clock, it was after one am.
It took my car the customary twenty minutes to warm up and clear the screen, I dared not sit in there as it was doing so, as I was guaranteed to fall asleep, so instead I walked up and down the car park.
The moon was beautiful, waxing and bright. Even some stars were fighting through the light pollution to be seen.
"Sh up there!" came a rasping voice as I walked over the patch by Trevor's culvert, "some of us is tryin' to get to sleep down here."
Car clear and warm I drove to Friern Barnet and, given the hour, felt safe to make the presumption of parking in the visitors' car park. I hadn't figured on the gates being code access so I had to park on a nearby residential road again and walk over. It was getting increasingly hard to ignore the pain in my feet.
When I got back to Princess Park Manor I had to climb over the wall to get into the grounds - not an easy task, but one I managed eventually with very little skill or grace. Then I would have to dodge security as a place like this would undoubtedly have a heavy presence.
Princess Park Manor was truly a beautiful building. The Victorians were a weird lot, think of all those parks they set up as philanthropic interests - Britain would look a very different place with them. It was a time of great cruelty and hardship and yet enough people believed in giving the poor access to open spaces to found parks. They may have treated the mentally ill at best with ignorant good intentions, and at worst with knowing cruelty, but they housed them in these amazing mansions of great beauty overlooking beautifully sculptured grounds.
Mr X's flat was within the main building set behind pillars and beneath a dome. They may have been flats rather than houses, but you still had to pay over a million pounds for each one. No wonder Miss X saw her future with him. Who'd let a man with that much money get away?
I had to walk around the large building to find a way of getting in. The main entrance was out of question without a code. At the back there appeared to be some kind of service entrance and the door was open. I looked around. No one was in sight, I crept inside.
"Yolanda!" barked a voice.
I froze.
A greasy haired man was wagging a finger at me. "Yolanda from the agency? You're late! You were meant to be here an hour ago." He pointed at his watch in case I struggled with understanding his words.
I shrugged.
"Get changed and get to work!"
He threw a uniform at me. It was a maid's uniform, only a few inches away from being a French maid's costume. Shit, I wasn't meant to be a hooker was I?
I grinned nervously.
"Get changed and get up to the second floor! I want the dusting done and the polishing. No hoover, comprende? It's too late for hoovering. Hoovering no, yes?"
Was I meant to be foreign? "Si."
"Get to it!" He was obviously from the school of 'shout louder and the English language is immediately translated into the mother tongue'. He gestured to a small changing room lined with lockers and after closing the door I slipped out of my clothes and into the maid's uniform, making sure my phone went in the dress pocket as I would need it to take photos if I found Mr X messing around - not my favourite bit of the job I assure you, but clients never really believed you even with photographic proof. Even then some tried to find a rational explanation why their spouse was naked and in close proximity to another naked person who was not them.
The room seemed to exist entirely for the cleaning firm and there was a list of apartments on a small whiteboard that obviously paid extra for the inside of the flats to be cleaned. I looked along the list, yes - Mr X's was one of them which meant there would be a spare key kept somewhere in the vicinity. After a little search I found a small wall mounted metal cabinet. It had a lock but on investigation it had been bent and knackered so much that a vigorous pull opened the front. Inside was a selection of keys, all clearly labelled. I put Mr X's in my pocket with my phone.
I locked my clothes into one of the lockers and then thought better of it as I might very well have to scarper quickly. I tucked them in a bag of cleaning cloths and reappeared in the hallway holding the bag.
"Second floor!" he said again, pointing down the corridor.
I nodded. "Si."
"Cleaning thingies in cupboard, yes?"
"Si."
What a piece of luck - I was in and all I had to do was a bit of polishing and dusting. I didn't go to the second floor, after raiding the cleaning cupboard and leaving the supervisor behind I went to Mr X's part of the building.
The plush surroundings were deathly quiet, it was too late for anyone to be about - apart from the cleaning staff that is and they so far seemed to consist of me. I did a bit of polishing the brass fittings as I went and stumbled on another cleaning cupboard where there was a state of the art vacuum cleaner and even more supplies of brass polish, cloths etc.
It was a bit spooky moving through a silent building where people with mental health problems had been imprisoned over one hundred and fifty years ago. Even my overpowering sense of logic could not completely eradicate my sense of unease at this late hour. It didn't help that as a child I had been utterly and completely petrified of ghosts, to the extent that an imagined one could send me into a screaming fit. I may have been older and wiser, but I was fundamentally the same person with the same irrational fears.
Outside Mr X's apartment I listened carefully, ear to the door. I couldn't hear anything and there wasn't a beam of light under the door crack. I reached for the key and inserted it silently into the lock. It turned easily and I pushed the door open and slipped inside, closing it quietly behind me.
As it was dark my other senses went into overdrive. The carpet beneath my feet was thick and plush. The apartment smelt clean, but also of new things which made sense as he had only recently moved in. I used the screen of my phone to illuminate my path through the entrance hall. Some of the internal doors were open, living room, spare bedroom... as I made my way deeper into the apartment I began to hear muffled noises, like someone having a bad dream. I tiptoed towards the noises and what I presumed was the bedroom.
I put my phone on to the camera setting ready as you often didn't get a second chance at these things. I made sure the screen darkened so I would not take any light into the room with me. I placed my hand on the door handle and turned it slowly.
The door opened with the silence of being well fitted and as I stepped inside the noises became clearer. There were definitely noises coming from two people, this didn't bode well for Miss X and her would-be future children.
I blinked and let my eyes adjust to the light. It was lighter in the large bedroom than it had been in the passageway thanks to the light of the moon outside the window and the open curtains. Within a few seconds my vision had improved to see the sight before me.
Mr X was asleep - or seemed to be, his face was turned towards me, his eyes shut and a troubled look on his face. His lips parted and he mumbled incoherently as people do in their sleep. He was one of those people who slept naked. I knew this because he was lying naked on the bed, a sheet twisted off on to the floor. Riding him hard was a pale figure in a floaty, see through robe. She seemed to be shagging him in his sleep. And believe me, she was getting a lot out of it.
Then I realised she wasn't exactly human, she was almost entirely see-through. I took a step back, my heart rate shot up and the only thought in my head was - flee!
The ghostly figure's head turned toward me as no human's could. Her mouth opened wider than should be possible and a furious scream erupted from deep within her.
I heard another scream. It came from me.
I stumbled backwards and fell on my arse, I scrabbled desperately to get up again as I felt rising panic growing within me. I felt like a child again, there was a memory trying to nudge through and it made me sick right to the pit of my stomach - my mother was there, in this memory, and I think perhaps my father too so I must have been very young. I repressed it - sent it back to the recesses of my memory where it had come from.
On the bed Mr X blinked awake and started as he saw the female figure on him, he cried out and tried to claw himself away from her.
The figure growled and began to float towards me. She obviously blamed me for spoiling her fun and meant to have her revenge.
I looked past her and into the terrified face of Mr X.
"Oh God," he said in a trembling voice, "please help me!"
On my feet again I ran through the corridor like those girls you see in horror films, panicking and looking everywhere for escape, heart pounding and breathing hard. The door leaving the flat should have been easy to open but my hands slipped and I couldn't think how to open the bloody thing. All I could think about was 'she is going to get me'. I made the mistake of looking back, she was closing in on me.
"Help me!" came the voice of Mr X again.
The image of her fixed in my head like a photograph. She was in one of those old fashioned down to the floor, up to the chin night gowns. She was mid-twenties and had long, long hair. She was also utterly mad. Oh shit, I thought, I'm going to get killed by Bertha Mason.
Her claw like fingers reached out to my neck and I felt a tightening pressure in my throat.
Finally I managed to fling the door open and I fell forward onto my hands expecting her to be on me any second. I steeled myself and turned around to see that she seemed to be caught within the threshold of the door. She couldn't cross it. Her face contracted in a snarl. Then she looked back to Mr X who was now standing in the doorway of his bedroom, clutching the door frame for support. Her lips curled into some kind of wicked smile.
I left them to it. I had to get out, I had to be safe. I ran the length of the building, it was the longest corridor in Europe when built in 1850, and at the end I had to stop because there was no breath left in my body. I leant over, hands on knees, as I tried to get some oxygen back into my body.
I wanted my mum or dad, someone; someone I could turn to for help and reassurance. It was gutting to realise there was no one in my life that could fulfil that role.
My hand hesitated on the handle to the stair door. Something was stopping me, there was only one thing more powerful than fear - guilt. I was leaving Mr X to her mercy - he may have never been conscious before when she... had her way with him, but due to my actions he was now very much awake and just a
s scared of her as I was. I could not just leave him to her, I had to help him.
I turned around with bravado I did not feel and began a very slow walk back to Mr X's apartment. With every step I felt sick, but this was something I had to do. I helped people, it wasn't in my nature to let people down when there was something I could do about it. Damn my father, he was right - it was my duty.
Okay, presuming she was a ghost who could physically manifest and, going on what I had seen, that was my best guess, how did I... exorcise her? The only people I could think of who did this kind of thing were priests, Bill Murray and Jensen Ackles. Since I was not ordained into holy orders and was out of salt I was more inclined to take the Bill Murray approach, only I didn't have one of his ghost buster back packs. I stopped and thought. I could improvise, it might not work, but I had nothing to lose by trying. Except possibly my life and sanity.
I went to the cleaning cupboard and took out the vacuum cleaner. There was a plug socket near Mr X's door, which was still open, and the cord looked long enough to reach into the bedroom. I fired it up to test it, which also had the benefit of drowning out the terrifying cries coming from Mr X within the apartment. I turned the machine off and readied myself.
Taking a deep breath I crossed the threshold and began the journey towards the bedroom.
The first thing I did on entering the bedroom was to flick on the lights - there was no need for surprise now. She knew I was coming.
Mr X was on the bed again, but awake and not in a state of sleepy excitement any longer which seemed to annoy her. She was pressing her hands upon him which had the effect of making him cry out in pain.
I took another step forward but was pulled short by the tightening of the vacuum cleaners cord. Dammit.
"Quit it bitch," I said, attachment in hand.
Slowly she turned to me. I felt cold.
She toyed with him, lifting off her hand and then pressing it on to him again. His moans were too much for me.
"I said, quit it bitch. What - couldn't find any men in your time? Got to get a shag by haunting a man in his sleep? Man - that is desperate. That is sad. Shame he doesn't seem to be... up for it when conscious. Not very flattering for you is it? Got to get them when asleep have you Bertha? No wonder Jane Eyre whooped your ass."
She left him and began to approach me, she did not have to rush, she knew by going slower the fear was building in me.
I braced myself and let her get closer and closer to me. I ignored every urge that told me to get out of there. A cold sweat covered my face. I didn't even know if this crazy idea was going to work.
Just as she began to reach her hand out to my face I kicked the start up switch and the vacuum cleaner roared into life.
I pointed the long attachment at her. Nothing happened other than she looked a little puzzled. Then particles of grey smoke began to float towards the end of the attachment. Her surprise then turned to horror as she began to be pulled in towards the attachment. Then with a whoosh and a look of surprise she was gone, sucked into the vacuum cleaner in entirety. It was done.
I looked a little surprised myself and put my eye to the end. I couldn't see anything.
My goodness, it had worked. I had just captured a ghost in a vacuum cleaner.
The warmth began to return to my body.
It was a shame, in life she must have been good looking. How did she end up here in a mental asylum? Had she been mad or had a crime been committed against her? One thing was clear, she was definitely a little sex obsessed.
Mr X looked at me. "Who are you?"
"Your guardian angel, now put some clothes on and I'll make you a cup of tea."
Mr X, whose name turned out to be Len Simmonds, had a fairly large and well stocked kitchen and a nice beech wood table by the window. By the time he had put on a pair of pyjamas and a dressing gown I had made the tea and was sitting at the table. I had set a large bowl of sugar beside the tea.
He sat down without a word and I pushed one of the mugs of tea towards him.
"I suggest you put in loads of sugar," I told him, "for the shock."
His hand was still trembling slightly as he put three teaspoons of sugar in his tea and stirred. We drank in silence.
His kitchen window was almost as large as the wall space and looked over the thirty acres of parkland that Princess Park Manor was set in, although it was still too dark to see and appreciate them.
It was late. Scrap that - it was early. On the horizon the sun was just beginning its daily exercise and a band of light was just appearing. There were not many occasions in my life when I have been in a position to see the sun rise and despite the overwhelming exhaustion and the fact my feet were now reminding me they were bloody killing me it was a very beautiful and calming thing to witness. It really felt like the dawning of something new.
The sun was gently lighting the park by the time Len was ready to talk. He pushed back the now empty mug and looked at me.
"What was that?"
I shrugged, "I have to be honest with you - this is not my normal line of work."
"She was a... ghost, right?"
I nodded. "The rational part of me thinks I must have dreamt it or something and I'm sure in time we will look back and believe that. But now, now I know it was real."
"Look," he rolled up his sleeves, "she caused me so much pain and yet there is not a mark left upon me. How is that possible?"
"I'm sorry, but I really don't know how all this works. I got lucky with the hoover. It would help me if you could fill in any of the details."
He sat back in his chair with a sigh. "All I know is since I moved here I've been knackered. I sleep all night, but never feel rested. I guess that makes sense if she was..."
He pressed his lips together.
I patted his hand. "It wasn't your fault. It would have happened to any man who moved here. She must have been an inmate here, died here probably. I guess she may have been here for her... sex addiction for want of a better word. There is no way Victorian men would have understood a woman with a racing libido."
"No, I suppose not."
"Perhaps we should feel sorry for her then?"
He frowned. "How did you get into my apartment anyway?"
I waved a cleaning cloth from my pocket at him. "Housekeeping!"
"Thank you... what is your name?"
I hesitated. "Yolanda, my name is Yolanda."
"Thank you Yolanda. I'd like to say thank you."
Despite his shock he was prepared for this and pulled a chequebook and pen out of his pocket. Did anyone write cheques these days?
"If anyone hears of this, especially my girlfriend, well... I'm worried what they would think. My girlfriend would definitely not understand. I'd like to pay you for, well for saving me from whatever that was. As a cleaner you can't get paid much."
Nope, not as an investigator either. How could I say no? I had rent to pay.
The ink was barely dry as I whipped it out of his hand. Doing ones duty had some payback after all.
"Just tell your girlfriend you were ill. She'll understand, especially if you ask her to marry you."
"Do you think she'd accept?"
"Definitely."
Now he had bought my silence he wanted rid of me and I was happy to oblige. I said goodbye to him and left. I was not sure what to do with the vacuum cleaner so I thought I had better take it with me and pulled it behind me as walked out of the Manor. I went to the security man at the main gate.
"Cleaner checking out."
He looked at me in my uniform and trailing the vacuum cleaner behind me. He buzzed me through. As the gate closed behind me I heard a voice.
"Yolanda!"
I turned. It was the greasy haired cleaning guy, he had run after me and was now out of puff.
"Yolanda! You're never gonna work in cleaning again!"
I shrugged and gave him the finger as the vacuum c
leaner and I made our way off into the sun rise.