The Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings

by Lily Morton

  “Well, normally you don’t talk in a voice that only mice could hear.”

  “What is it, Mason?” I sigh.

  There’s an offended pause. “Can’t I ring you now?”

  “No,” I say patiently. “You can’t. We’re not together anymore.” I pause. “And Sean might not like it.”

  “It’s nothing to do with Sean,” he says sharply.

  “Like it or not, Mason, it is, and that’s down to you. Now, what is it? I’m on my way out.”

  “Oh, you have plans.”

  “Of course I have,” I say, stung because I really haven’t unless you count stalking Blue.

  “A man?”

  Blue’s voice speaks from outside.

  “You could say that.” The voice stops speaking, and I curse. “Shit! I’ve got to go. Bye.”

  I click End on the call and Mason’s very irate voice, and dash to the door, but when I fling it open, the group is nowhere to be seen. There’s a flash of blue at the top of the lane and then he’s gone.

  Shit! I hover for a second, undecided, but then a floorboard creaks overhead and that makes my mind up quickly. I pull the door closed and lock it before throwing my coat on against the cold. I pelt down the lane, my feet slipping slightly on the wet cobbles.

  It’s a cold and damp Saturday night but there are still a lot of people about in York. Couples stroll along dressed up and hand in hand, and I dodge around a group of women who are on a hen night, judging by the banner wrapped around one woman which proclaims her to be a learner. She’s either the bride or an over-enthusiastic learner driver. She’s also wearing a tiara. The women’s shrill voices rise into the cold air as I look around frantically for the ghost-walk group.

  I’m about to give up when the crowd clears and a blue head comes into view. He’s moving along at a rapid pace, throwing remarks over his shoulder to the group as he crosses into the Minster Yard, the large paved space outside the Minster. I follow them over the ancient flagstones gleaming from the rain.

  The Minster is the largest medieval Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe but at the beginning it was just a small wooden church. Kings came and went and that little church was destroyed and raised again, taking different forms until it reached its current glorious golden form. Although I’ve learnt that it takes constant maintenance to keep it looking so beautiful. If you spend any time in York, you’ll find the air is always filled with the sounds of hammering from the stonemasons who seem to spend most of their lives up scaffolding.

  It still amazes me that all this history is at the bottom of my lane. I’ve spent many happy hours wandering around here and marvelling at it, which makes me pretty sure that the ghost tour is heading towards the Treasurer’s House, although some of the roads around that are gated off at night due to the private residences.

  I follow them past the bronze statue of Constantine the Great who reclines in his chair as if he’s at home and waiting for the wife to get dinner. Then it’s a turn to the left past the Minster stonemasons’ yard, and I finally catch up with the group on the corner of College Street where Blue stands outside a small house. It looks very old, and the group are looking up at it and whispering.

  “Okay, we’ll stop here, so gather around,” he says, pitching his voice louder for the people at the back of the group. It’s a rich voice with a hint of an Irish accent, and the group listen raptly. “In 1665 the plague came to York and brought with it fear and pain and paranoia. People were rightly terrified of catching the disease as it guaranteed a terrible end. However, they had no idea of how the plague was spread, and, as such, anyone who even appeared sick was considered dangerous. When the little girl who lived in this house became poorly, her parents and the locals got scared, and rather than nursing the poor child, they decided to take a horrible action. They locked her up in the house without any food or water. Of course she died, but it wasn’t from the plague. Maybe it was heartbreak, because to this day, her small, tearstained face can be seen at that very window.”

  He gestures flamboyantly at a small window, and I wonder idly whether the owner of the house is an old hand at this, or if right at this moment, he’s hiding behind the curtain so as not to be caught naked apart from a tea towel.

  Then Blue tips his top hat back and the light from a nearby lamp plays over his features. My thoughts fly away, because he’s stunning. His face is angular with very sharp cheekbones, a long nose, and full pink lips. A silver ring pierces the lower lip. His hair is shaggy and casts shadows on the clean line of his jaw.

  It’s a strangely timeless face. One I seem to have seen in many portraits over the years. He’s wearing a Victorian outfit of black trousers, white shirt and cravat, an ornately embroidered waistcoat, and a long black velvet coat. He looks a little like a ghost on this cold night. I look at the hair and combat boots. Or a character from a steampunk gothic novel.

  His audience are raptly hanging onto his every word, but attention is disrupted when a large group approaches. At its lead is a thin man with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. He’s handsome, but his expression is discontented and his mouth is sharp. He’s dressed in similar clothes to Blue, and he carries a large wooden box.

  The group moves past us, coming to a stop a few yards away. The man places his box on the ground with a rather dramatic precision. My mouth twitches as he climbs on with a great deal of dignity.

  “I’ve brought you here,” he says in a ghoulish tone, “to talk about plague and death and a terrible end in solitary confinement locked away in a small house.”

  “Excuse me.” Blue’s loud voice cuts straight through the man’s dramatic spiel.

  The man stops talking with an impatient sigh. “Can I help you?” he asks.

  “I’ll say you can,” Blue says sharply. “This is my pitch for the next ten minutes. That’s the agreement if I keep off the York Devil bit until last thing.”

  “Well, Frank changed the route. Sorry if you didn’t get the memo,” Box Boy says in a bored voice.

  “You don’t sound sorry,” Blue says calmly. “You sound quite cross.” He pauses. “Or constipated. I never could tell the difference.” He looks him up and down. “Both ways were a build-up of shit.”

  The man seems to lose his grasp on his temper. “You don’t own York,” he says loudly.

  “Obviously not,” my guide says patiently. “Or I wouldn’t be doing ghost tours.” He clearly remembers his audience and turns back with a charming smile. “I would, of course, still be doing ghost tours for wonderful groups like this even if I owned the city of York, because I live to impart spectral knowledge.” The other man snorts slightly, and Blue smiles at us kindly and winks. “You’ll have to excuse us,” he says. “We used to date. Can I just say there is no correlation at all between box size and penis size?”

  I snort out a laugh despite myself and watch as the other man picks up his box and gestures to his group in a bad-tempered way. I watch him go, smiling. The grin drops away as I suddenly become aware that the group is staring at me and our guide is talking to me.

  “Sorry,” I say quickly. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Obviously,” he says. “Because you missed the bit where I said I wasn’t a resident charity.”

  “I think I’ve missed something,” I say slowly.

  The other members of the group shift slightly, obviously enjoying the entertainment, but not wanting to draw too much attention to themselves in case his laser gaze turns on them.

  “You have missed something,” he says. “You’ve missed the part where you pay for the tour.”

  “Oh fuck, sorry.” I edge forwards and dig in my pocket for my wallet. “Of course I’ll pay. How much is it?”

  “Well, usually it’s six pounds.” I open my wallet, and he stares at me. “But that’s for people who are on time. You, however, are late, so it’s a tenner.”

  I’m about to argue with this logic when a big man stirs at the back of the group. “Can we get a move on? It’s
fucking freezing.”

  “Could you watch your language?” another man says crossly.

  “I can. I just might not want to,” the big man says.

  My guide sighs and glares at me. “See what you’ve done now? This was a very well-behaved group before you turned up. You’re like a human grenade.”

  I open my mouth to refute this unfair observation, but he shakes his head.

  “Okay, people,” he calls out to the group. “Let’s be off to our next stop on the ghost tour led by the Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings.”

  “Sounds like a circus act,” I mutter. Then I pause. “Is your name really Blue?” I exclaim.

  He stares at me. “Yes.”

  “You’re kidding,” I say far too loudly, making him and a couple of other members of the group jump. “Sorry,” I say quickly. “It’s just that it’s what I called you in my head.” I realise what I just said and flush.

  “Okay,” he says slowly. “And do you talk to the voices in your head?”

  “Oh no, I’m not mad. Not that you’d have to be bonkers to hear voices,” I say quickly to a lady who’s staring at me and attempting to edge away. “I mean, who doesn’t have a voice or two in their head?” I end slightly desperately.

  A couple of people obviously don’t as they move away from me too. Incredibly, Blue smiles. It’s a real smile, not one of those sharp, toothy ones he seems to give everyone else, and I blink, struck by his quirky beauty. Then he turns, and I hasten after him as he sets off at a fast clip through the streets of York, his top hat set at a jaunty angle.

  It seems to lose its jaunty air, however, as the tour progresses, and his ex turns up at three quarters of our stops, talking loudly over Blue, his larger group shifting us over.

  Nevertheless, it’s a testament to Blue’s charisma that no one in our group gets fed up or demands their money back. Instead, a sort of solidarity grows up amongst us, and we start to boo the ex when he turns up at the last site. In the end he departs with his box under his arm, flustered, his group trailing after him.

  We’re on a shadowy cobbled back lane lit only by the desultory glow of a streetlamp. Around us are old Victorian warehouse buildings. No doubt some of them are flats now, but it certainly looks spooky, as if we’ve travelled back in time led by our guide.

  Blue paces back and forth in front of us. “We’re standing on the site of a very famous murder,” he says, his voice carrying on the stillness.

  Some of our group don’t appear to be breathing, and I’d lay odds on this site being the reason for their attendance on this tour. From the smile on his face, I’d say Blue knows it too.

  “This is the scene of the fifth and final murder committed by the person we know as the Devil of York.” He looks around at us solemnly. “Emily Harper was a prostitute. She lived not far from here in one of the little mazes of slum dwellings. In her early twenties, she had long red hair, and despite her occupation and poverty, she was known for her cheerful disposition which her neighbours said was made even cheerier by her love of gin.” He winks. “But then whose mood isn’t improved by gin?”

  He sobers. “There wasn’t a lot to smile about at that point in York, however. There had been four murders over the last two months. The women, who were all prostitutes, had been disemboweled after having their throats cut. There were whispers that Jack the Ripper himself had left London and set up business in York. How true that was, we’ll never know, but the police took it seriously enough to send down the police officer in charge of the Ripper murders. He spent a few days here questioning the local force. There were also incidences of body parts turning up at tourist spots wrapped up in brown paper like presents.”

  Blue smiles faintly as some of the tour members gasp. “No one knew if the two things were connected, but it had an effect on customers, and on October the twenty-third, the streets of York were quiet. However, staying in would mean that she’d starve, so Emily, along with a few others, had been forced out onto the streets looking to make some money for rent. By eleven o’clock, Emily had in fact already made that money twice over during the evening, but a weakness for drink meant that she’d spent it and needed one more customer. She left the local pub and bid farewell to her friend with whom she’d been drinking. The last her friend saw of her was Emily’s figure trotting down the road as the mist rolled in from the River Ouse.”

  Blue’s eyes gleam as he lowers his voice slightly. “Her friend was the last known person to see Emily alive. An hour later, a man called out in a panic to a local copper that there was a body on the ground and that the Devil had struck again. The policeman hastened to investigate, and by the light of his torch saw a bundle of rags on the ground. Moving closer, he was shaken to see the body of a woman.” He pauses dramatically and waves his hand lazily at the ground. “Right here, in fact.”

  Such is the power of his voice and the atmosphere that one of the women in the group squeals and moves back. He tips his hat at her. “Emily’s throat had been slit from side to side, but the killer hadn’t stopped there. They found bits of her scattered all around.” He pauses. “The thing is, they never found her heart or her eyes. They also never found her killer. After this murder, he disappeared into the shadows and the murders stopped. However, Emily’s spirit is supposed to remain here hovering over the site where her body lay. She’s been seen many times.”

  It’s difficult to take my eyes from Blue as he talks. His smile is wicked, the arching curve of his lips somehow devilish. He’s very thin, but he’s all wiry tensile strength. His face is vivid and engaging, with hollowed-out cheekbones and dark smudges beneath his eyes.

  He looks up and catches my eye, and for a second he falters. Then he bows, removing his hat and flourishing it as if he was on the stage. I suppose he has been. The streets of York appear to be his stage.

  “Well, that’s all for tonight, folks,” he says. “Try to have sweet dreams.” The group stirs as if waking from a dream, and he grins at them. “If you’ve enjoyed tonight, please leave a review on TripAdvisor.”

  He’s surrounded in seconds by people shaking his hand and asking questions about the York Devil. It’s probably only me who sees the way his eyes keep straying to the street corner where a tree blows in the breeze, layering the spot in moving shadows.

  I go still when a figure appears there, standing in the flickering light. In the next second, the breeze shifts the tree branches again, moving the shadows, and I want to laugh. I am actually seeing things now. Fucking York. A few months here and I’m seeing spirits. Give me another few months and I’ll be fucking drinking them.

  “You alright?”

  I turn to find the rest of the group dispersing slowly with a lot of loud laughter and chatter. Blue is staring at me.

  “Oh yes, I’m fine,” I say quickly.

  He looks at me quizzically and then buttons up his long overcoat, obviously about to walk away. “Well, goodnight,” he says. “Try to join other ghost tours on time if you do it again. The other guides won’t be as pleasant or as understanding as me.”

  “That was pleasant and understanding?” I say, amazed.

  He grins. “Well, pleasant by my standards.”

  He winks and starts to walk away.

  “Wait,” I say, far louder than I need to judging by his jump. “Sorry,” I say again. “But do you fancy going somewhere?”

  A hard look appears on his face, and he shakes his head sharply. “Ah no, I don’t do that.”

  “I meant do you want to go somewhere for a drink?” I jerk out. “Sorry, that was badly worded.”

  He stares at me, surprise and something else running over his face. “An actual drink? That’s what you mean?”

  “Yes,” I say slowly. “That is what the words ‘do you fancy a drink’ usually mean.”

  He shrugs. “You’d be surprised.” He studies me for a second. “You don’t look the type to pick up strange men leading ghost tours.”

  “It’s my first time. Be gentle,” I say w
ryly and then pause. “Wait. What do men look like who pick up ghost-tour leaders?”

  He looks me up and down very slowly. “Not you.”

  I rake my hand through my hair. “I don’t think this is quite going the way I meant it to. Let me start again. I’d like very much to talk to you about my house, so would you like to go for a drink?”

  Blue shakes his head. “This is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had. Why would I want to talk about your house? Is it made of gold or gingerbread?”

  I want to smile. “No, it’s made of bricks, and it comes with the unfortunate nickname of the Murder House.”

  I say the last with dramatic relish and there’s a startled pause. He looks at me closely before recognition dawns and he throws his head back, laughing loudly. It’s an infectious laugh, and my own lips twitch in response. When he’s finished, his eyes are watering.

  “Shit, it’s you.”

  I nod glumly which brings on more laughter.

  “Fucking hell,” he says, “that was priceless. I can still see you standing there with a dish cloth over your goolies and a hand over your nips. If you’d had pigtails, you’d have been a dead ringer for Babs Windsor in the Carry On films.”

  I shake my head. “Thank you so very much. York is proving very good for my self-confidence.”

  He laughs harder, his blue hair falling over his eyes for a second before he pushes it back. “One of the old ladies still believes you’re a ghost. I saw her yesterday. She’s christened you the Naked Little Sprite.”

  “That’s not very complimentary,” I sniff. “It was a cold night, and I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

  He chokes and splutters while I stand patiently fighting a smile. When he sobers up, he stares at me. “I can’t believe you’re living there. What’s it like?”

  “Different,” I say. I pause. “Do you have time for a drink?”

  Something plays over his sharp face, and then he shrugs. “I suppose so.”

  “You’re killing me with your enthusiasm.”

  He laughs. “Better that than with my pepper spray. Okay, let’s go.”