The Ghostman

by Maxwell Grantly

reveal an empty room. By this stage much of the upstairs furnishings had been packed away and there was an eerie reverberation in the room as we stepped inside. As the couple walked to the far side of the room, their footsteps echoed on the bare planks of the floorboards and the only light in the room was provided by a single bare light bulb hanging precariously from the ceiling, casting strong defiant shadows across the four walls of the room. I tried to follow but I felt a slight tug at my hand by the young girl. It was obvious that many of the fears of the couple had manifested themselves in the mind of the youngster. I turned to offer a reassuring smile but this time my grin was not reciprocated. I looked at the juvenile face of the girl and she seemed to be truly terrified. Her face became contorted and fretful and she began to shy away, towards the open doorway, pulling my hand at the same time. I could see that this was going to become quite an ordeal for her and I didn’t want to add to her panic by forcing myself to continue to follow after the couple. I let go of her hand and turned to face the far corner of the room, where the couple now stood.

  “Please, if you mind, I really would like to leave now,” I began. “Your daughter obviously is very uncomfortable and I don’t feel at ease when she is so distressed.”

  Immediately, the faces of the two people dropped and their pallor drained to the palest of hues. The woman took the barest number of great strides towards the door and within seconds she had disappeared from sight down the staircase.

  The man followed very quickly in her wake, whispering to me as he passed my startled presence, “We don’t have a daughter, we have no children. There are only the two of us living here!”

  I glanced around the room and peered up and down the hallway. There was no sign of another person, no sign of the young girl at all. All I saw was the backs of the two people, heading downstairs with great haste. Very soon, I was the third person to follow them except, rather than head to the back of the building, I made my way straight to the exit and directly to my awaiting car in the car park. Within minutes the bleak structure was nothing more than a silhouette in my rear view mirror and I made sure that it would stay that way by promising myself that I would never return to that imposing, isolated building.

  Since that evening I have thought about the events that happened that night again and again. Even now, every detail plays in my mind once more, like the reoccurrence of the background in some animated cartoon, and I wonder what it was about my background or make-up that allowed me to view something that I know, in retrospect, was not physically possible. Perhaps my route from conjuring into mentalism was not as accidental as I once thought – perhaps there is some tangible force of destiny that has controlled my fate. All I know is that I need to explore this area more thoroughly and that is why I adopted the third name of “The Ghostman” as I began my quest for this answer.

  Blind Claude and the Ghost Dog

  I very soon discovered that, in my role as a mentalist, there was very little demand for performances on a Sunday. Most of my work came from bookings from the numerous pubs in the area and, with the advent of the new week, there was little demand for a gig on a Sunday evening. This then was to be become my time, the time that I would set aside for recreation and leisure and soon I had settled into a routine of even refusing to accept the rare offers of work on a Sunday evening. I had, over the years, formed a sound friendship with Claude (a close colleague of mine from the past) and it was at this time of the week that the two of us would meet in our local pub to socialise and chat about the week’s happenings. Over the years, Claude’s eyesight had begun to fail and now, as he was approaching his sixty-fifth birthday, he was completely blind. This did not bother me though as he was a fascinating companion and could always engage in a lively and energetic banter.

  During each week he was cared for by Ellie (his faithful wife of so many years) and then, on a Sunday evening, I would collect him from his home and walk him to our local pub whilst she entertained her own close knit friends for an evening of card games.

  In his day, Claude had been a vicar at a small North Yorkshire church and had moved to the coast when he retired early, due to ill heath on account of his failing eyesight. I had originally known Claude many years earlier when I had been a student at university and had been a regular member of his congregation. It had just been a remarkable coincidence that he had chosen to retire to the very area where I had made my home and it was only a matter of time until our paths had crossed again and we were able to rekindle our friendship after the passing of these years.

  I recall one occasion from my past when Claude (known then as Rev Rogers) had conducted a “Celebration of All God’s Creatures” and we had been invited to bring any pets or animals to the service. I remember the mayhem and bustle before the service as the pews began to fill with congregation members carrying yapping dogs, squawking parrots in cages and whining cats, only to find them all break into a startled moment of blissful hush as soon as the Reverend begun his service. He certainly had a burly air about him. He had been a strong young man with a powerful physique but yet an unusually gentle aurora. Despite his size, he had the ability to pacify and settle any stranger, putting them at immediate ease in his presence. This is the characteristic that I recall most strongly about Claude and one that I most respected.

  After Claude had moved to east Norfolk, our paths crossed again when I found myself performing a gig in his local pub and it wasn’t too long before that we began to rekindle our friendship and reminisce about the “old times.”

  Despite Claude’s early retirement, I was aware that it was coming up to his official retirement age of sixty-five and I wanted to celebrate this occasion with him in an appropriate way. I had wanted to find a suitable present but was at a loss as to what I should acquire for someone with no sight.

  My problems were answered one Sunday morning when I was strolling around a local car boot sale in a neighbouring village. I passed one stall full of gadgets and antiques and saw a small dark brown bedside cabinet scarred down the front by a series of deep scratches. Immediately my eye was drawn to the lovely deep chestnut hues of the wood and as I ran my fingers across the surface, I realised that I had stumbled across an ideal gift. The wooden surface was rich and warm and felt like a cross between a silky cloth and a mirrored surface. My fingers could feel no imperfections in the surface of the waxed top and it caught the sunlight as perfectly as a sheet of glass. I pulled open the top drawer and it rolled out effortlessly, as if on a series of tiny wheels. There was a satisfying “clunk” as the drawer reached the end of its range and it locked open in this position until I raised the front and pushed it back into the closed position. I looked down to the front of the cabinet and glanced again the set of deep parallel scratches in the door of the front. Apart from this the cabinet seemed in perfect order. I caught the eye of a lady from behind the stall and asked her for the price. At the same time, I enquired about the cause of the scratches that were so evident on the front. Her face reddened and she began to stutter. The man alongside her quickly came to her rescue by interjecting with a quick response.

  “Please excuse me wife,” he apologised. “It was our dog that scratched this cabinet but you can hardly punish the animal for what was our mistake!”

  I enquired further as to what he meant and the man continued with his explanation.

  “This old cabinet had been filled with towels, moved into our garden shed when we brought some new bedroom furniture and we left it there for a few days whilst we decorated our room,” he explained. “At that time, Sheba, our dog was pregnant and settled down in the shed to give birth. It was only later in the evening that we realised that she had done this when we began looking for her. It was impossible to count the number of her litter as initially we didn’t want to disturb her. We were worried that the puppies wouldn’t survive outside if there should be a sharp frost that evening so we made the dreadful mistake of moving them all inside to the warmth of the utility room.”

  The man paused fo
r a moment and I could see that he too found this a difficult subject to talk about. I offered him a respite and tried to change the subject but he stubbornly continued with his explanation.

  “Sheba seemed somewhat unsettled by the move and it was only later the next day when we went outside that she pushed past us and ran into the garden shed to claw at the front of the cabinet. You can imagine how heartbroken we were when we discovered the cold lifeless body of one puppy at the back of the compartment. It seems that we had made a dreadful mistake and overlooked one of the puppies,” he said.

  His face fell as he opened the door again and I thought I might have spied some very faint scratch marks on the interior of the door too but my memory may have failed me. I can’t recall exactly whether I did actually see anything there or whether it was simply the glance of the bright morning’s sunlight from the grain of the wood. I ran my fingers along the groves in the outside surface of the door – I was sure that, with some careful renovation work, I could repair the