Oh Great, Now I Can See Dead People

by Deborah Durbin

  After another hour of snuggling up in bed, I suddenly realise that I must hurry up if I’m to get to Harvey Nicks with Ange and back to Bath in time for my mother’s séance at the WI tonight.

  How I managed to get talked into that I will never know. Somewhere between worrying about the sale of the cottage going through, worrying about Missy settling in, talking to the dead, that kind of thing, I somehow managed to agree to conduct a séance for the local WI. Not content with shocking the nation with their nude calendars, the Women’s Institute is now set on introducing ‘new and modern interests’ to the members of the hundred year-old institution, including dipping into the paranormal, apparently. Whatever happened to learning how to do macramé or filling shoe boxes for third world countries?

  I mean, I’ve never had to conduct a séance before. In fact, I’ve only just got used to being able to speak to people who are, how shall we say, well … dead as dodos. And although I’ve learned a lot with Miracle and the Psychic Academy, I tend to stick to what I know, and that is, what to do when you find that you can hear dead people talking in your head. Not how to organise a bloody séance!

  I’ve watched every episode of Ghost Whisperer and searched everything from Doris Stokes to Colin Fry on the internet, but I’m still not a hundred per cent sure of what I am supposed to be doing.

  ‘Just make sure that you close the circle when you finish, especially considering you’re doing it on All Hallows’ Eve. The veil between the two worlds is more transparent,’ Miracle warned me when I phoned her with my concerns.

  ‘Oh, and don’t forget to ask Ange to help you,’ she added. Fat chance of that; she’s been too busy flicking through a What’s Happening in London brochure I picked up at the tube station.

  I asked Gem if she would like to come along for the fun of it. With her husband, Si, duly despatched to Afghanistan, she needs something to take her mind off things. No sooner had I asked Gem than Mrs Jackson phoned me to ask if she could come along too. Then Mr Brent from Brooke Cottage said he would like to come along for the ride. I’m not altogether sure if men are allowed to WI functions, but it looks like I’m going to have a car full of enthusiastic amateur ghost hunters anyway!

  ‘You’d better go,’ Jack says as he reaches over and looks at his watch, and then kisses me on the nose. ‘I wish you didn’t have to.’

  ‘Me too, but who else is going to get this house sorted, run a séance, plan a wedding and sort out the lovelorn Missy? Besides, I don’t really fancy spending the week in this hotel room on my own while you rehearse.’

  ‘You could always be our backing singer.’ Jack smiles.

  ‘Have you heard me sing?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I have. Strike that thought then.’ Jack laughs.

  ‘You cheeky sod!’

  I jump on top of Jack and hold him down. Jack’s mouth twitches.

  ‘So, what are you going to do with me now then, Miss Ball?’

  ‘Well …’

  Ange will just have to wait a little bit longer to go shopping…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘No, Mum, I won’t be late and yes, Mum, I will drive carefully,’ I shout into the speaker on my phone as I wash the shampoo from my hair. ‘I’m just getting ready now then I’m picking up Gem and Mrs Jackson. Oh, and can Mr Brent come too? I think he’s interested in getting a spirit to help him scare the tourists off his garden!’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that will be OK, love. Now what time will you be here?’

  ‘We should be with you by about nine thirty.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a bit late, Sammy. Mrs Horsham likes to be in bed before ten if she can. Poor Mr Horsham sleepwalks, you see, and if she doesn’t get an early night, she will be murder tomorrow morning at the Save the Children coffee morning. She’s an absolute saint, is Mrs Horsham. Every time her husband gets out of bed she has to go and find him and bring him back again. She found him in the neighbours’ shed the other night. Trying to start their strimmer of all things. Thankfully it was an electric one and not petrol. The neighbour’s don’t have electricity in their shed, not like the Webbers, two doors down. They’ve got one of those fancy shed office type things, with computers, printers, electric and everything in there. I’m sure they’re running some illegal dealings there you know. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve got some illegal immigrants stashed away, two a piece in those fancy filing cabinets of theirs.’

  ‘Mum, Mr Webber is a business consultant who just happens to work from home.’

  ‘Exactly!’ my mum says. You know, I do wonder about my mother’s state of mind sometimes and this conversation is making me late. I haven’t even stepped out of the shower!

  ‘…and Mrs Samuels – she’s the one with one leg shorter than the other, although you’d never guess; it’s amazing what they can do with shoes these days. Anyway, she says she must take her medication at quarter to ten promptly, otherwise it puts her all out of sorts and if she takes her tablets at the meeting, she’s likely to go giddy. That won’t affect the séance, will it, Sammy?’

  ‘Look, Mum, it was you and Marjorie who asked if I could make it as late as possible because, if you remember, you wanted to give the ghosts, as you like to call them, a chance to get out to trick or treat first, being as it’s Halloween, remember? If Mrs Horsham has to get an early night, then she will have to miss it and Mrs Samuels will just have to be giddy!’ I snap. God, my mum could talk for England if you let her! ‘Now my hair is rapidly drying itself into tumbleweed and I am freezing my butt off in here!’

  ‘Why on earth is your bottom cold? I hope you’re wearing something appropriate, Sammy! You’re not wearing some skimpy little leather number, are you?’

  ‘Mum, I am freezing my bottom off because I am trying to have a shower! And I have never worn a skimpy little leather number in my life – that’s of course if we’re not counting the time you made me dress up as Freddie Mercury for the St Martin’s primary school fancy dress parade.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right! Oh, you did look cute. I think you would have won first prize had your moustache not got stuck to your bottom.’

  ‘Yes, and thanks to that I was known as Freddie Hairy Bottom for the rest of my time at St Martin’s.’ I cringe at the thought. Kids can be so childish sometimes!

  ‘Well, you’d better get a move on, Sammy. You’re going to be late if you keep me chatting, dear.’

  Grrrrr! This is where I hang up on my mother, before I scream at her.

  ‘Now are you sure you have everything?’ Gem asks, as she carries my CD player out to the car.

  ‘I think so. Thanks for your help, Gem.’

  ‘No problem. I’d only be sitting at home on my own watching re-runs of Casualty and getting up and down to answer the door to trick or treaters all night. Now, are you really sure you have everything?’

  ‘Yes, I am really sure.’ At least, I think I have everything. I’ve spent a great deal of time quizzing Miracle about what I should be equipped with to conduct a successful séance – you’d think by now they would have a Dummies Guide to Séances, wouldn’t you? I have a list as long as my arm of things I must remember to do, say and take with me. Gem takes the list from my hand.

  ‘Candles – purple and white?’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Incense – two sticks?’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Music?’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Full moon?’

  I look out of the window. Yep, one full moon as requested.

  ‘Check.’

  ‘One medium psychic?’

  ‘Damn, I knew there was something I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Come on, or Mrs Jackson and Mr Brent will wonder where we’ve got to,’ Gem says as she hurries me out of the door.

  The thirty minute journey into Bath is nothing if not an interesting one. Mrs Jackson spent the entire trip grumbling with Mr Brent about the recent influx of tourists during the summer months and how you never see a police officer in villages these days.
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  ‘In the good old days you’d see PC Drummer walking his beat up and down the village every day. PC Drummer wouldn’t have put up with those blooming people trampling their way up and down the village, taking photographs of people’s houses and gardens as if they owned them. I blame that Dr Doolittle myself. We even had a police house back then, didn’t we Mr Brent?’

  ‘That we did, Mrs Jackson,’ Mr Brent muttered in the back.

  Gem and I try not to laugh at the double act in the back of my mini, moaning and groaning about the modern world.

  ‘I’m hoping Samantha’s little meeting might bring about a solution for us,’ Mr Brent muses. I do hope that Gem has told him that it is actually a séance that we are attending and not a parish council meeting, otherwise he’s going to have one hell of a shock when he gets there.

  By the time we reach the memorial hall that is home to the Bath Women’s Institute, on the outskirts of Bath, it is almost nine thirty and my mother is pacing up and down outside the building.

  ‘Oh Sammy, there you are!’ she exclaims breathlessly. ‘Now, everyone who has been invited is here, apart from Mrs Landsbury. She’s on her way, but said she will be ten minutes late because she’s just washed her poodle and has to blow dry it.’

  I do hope my mother is talking about Mrs Landsbury’s dog.

  ‘Now,’ my mother continues, ‘we thought it best to put the table in the centre of the room, to enable everyone enough room to get up to spend a penny if they need to.’

  ‘Mum, they can’t just get up and break the circle,’ I say as we unload neighbours and boxes out of the car and onto the pavement. ‘Once we’re sitting down, we all have to stay put, so you’d better tell anyone who has a weak bladder to go to the bathroom before we open the circle.’

  ‘I wonder why it’s called a circle and not a square,’ my mother muses as she takes a box from me.

  The memorial hall looks as though it’s about to fall down around our ears. Cheap paint is peeling off the walls and many of the wooden beams in the ceiling look as though they have been eaten away by some kind of creature that likes nothing more than munching its way through wooden beams. I hope they don’t fall on someone. Still, I suppose it all adds to the authenticity for a séance on Halloween. Along with the natural cobwebs in the main hall, there are numerous spooky things dangling from the ceiling and adorning the breeze block walls, left over from a children’s Halloween party earlier this evening.

  As I carry all my ‘ghost hunting’ equipment into the main hall I find myself being accosted by a six-foot, glow-in-the-dark skeleton. It reminds me a little of Clive and a shudder goes down my back. Oh, I do hope this goes OK and Clive doesn’t make another appearance.

  ‘Right, I’ve told everyone to go and spend a penny – there’s a bit of a queue forming out there now,’ my mum says with concern. ‘I’ve told Mrs Samuels just to take her medicine and if she feels giddy we’ve always got Marjorie on hand for first aid. She’s a fully qualified first-aider, you know,’ my mum continues as Gem and I throw a dark blue satin sheet over the large oval table, which is placed in the centre of the room.

  ‘How many are coming, Mum?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh well now, let me think. There’s me, obviously. Marjorie is here – I think she’s on bathroom duties at the moment. There’s Mrs Horsham. Mrs Samuels is here – the one with one leg shorter than the other, but you’d never guess. You’ve got Mrs Jackson and Mr Brent, so that makes six, and then there’s Gemma, that’s seven…’ my mum counts on her fingers.

  ‘The number has to be divisible by three,’ I say, as I try mentally to count how many people are coming and whether a) we’re going to have enough room around the table and b) we’re going to have the right number of people.

  ‘Three? Oh no, Sammy, we’ve got more than three.’

  ‘No, the number of participants has to be divisible by three for a séance.’

  ‘Why’s that then?’

  ‘Um … something to do with the number three being a magical number,’ I say quickly.

  To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest idea why the circle has to be a circle and not a square or why the number of people has to be divisible by three, but if Derek Acorah insists on it, then that’s good enough for me.

  My hands shake as I try to light the twelve purple and white candles – again, the number of candles has to be divisible by three. I get Gem to light the incense sticks, which fill the room with a hint of frankincense.

  ‘A bit nervous?’ Gem asks with a smile.

  ‘Does it show?’

  ‘Nah, you’ll be fine,’ Gem assures me.

  I mentally ask for Ange to come and help me.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I was just admiring that lady’s bag. Is that a Lulu Guinness?’ Ange asks.

  I have no idea, Ange. I do hope that Ange is concentrating on this. We had words earlier about her being here to protect me and make sure that nothing goes wrong, but at the moment I’m not altogether sure her mind is on the job.

  ‘Ask her, ask her, Sam. I’m sure it’s a Lulu.’

  ‘No Ange, I am not going to ask that woman if her handbag is an authentic Lulu Guinness. Now, please concentrate on the job. You’re supposed to be helping me here, not admiring other people’s handbags.’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Did you get this week’s copy of Heat for me?’

  Oh boy, I can already see this could all go horribly wrong at any given moment! When did someone write this in my life’s grand plan, I wonder? Who thought, I know what we’ll do, we’ll make Samantha hear dead peeps and instead of, oh I don’t know, working in an insurance office or a bank, like other twenty-somethings, we’ll give her a job as a psychic and she can run séances for the Women’s Institute; oh, and she can have a spirit guide who is as mad as a box of badgers as well. Everyone in favour say ‘Aye’.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Having established that we have fifteen people in total to sit around the table, Marjorie, who as well as being on every committee known to Bath is also the Bath Women’s Institute ring leader, or whatever they call themselves, jingles a small brass bell to signal that the meeting has commenced and, well, basically to tell everyone to shut up and listen to her.

  ‘Welcome, welcome, one and all on this very special night,’ Marjorie, who is dressed in a sensible beige Marks and Spencer suit begins. ‘Now, as you are aware, tonight is All Hallows’ Eve, otherwise known as Halloween, and we are truly honoured this evening to have a very special guest in our presence. Miss Samantha Ball, also known as Crystal Ball, psychic to the stars, has very kindly offered to perform a special Halloween séance for us.’ A cheer goes up from the back of the hall. It’s coming from an over-enthusiastic member who has already got her flask of tea out of her bag and is offering a cup to Mr Brent – at least, I think it’s tea.

  ‘Now, as anyone who has watched Most Haunted will know,’ Marjorie continues as if she has taken on the presenting role of Yvette Fielding, ‘one can often feel a bit funny if it’s one’s first time, so if anyone feels a bit giddy, just put your hand up and Samantha will stop the circle.’

  Stop the circle? I don’t know if you can just stop the circle once it’s started. I make a mental note to ask Ange about that in a minute. I wonder how many séances Marjorie has actually attended. She certainly sounds as though she’s an authority on the subject, or perhaps, like me, she’s just researched it all on the internet.

  I think I’m looking suitably mystical tonight in a full-length, black velvet dress with very tiny silver stars hand embroidered on it. Valerie made it for me, and I have teamed it with a black pashmina draped over my shoulders, making me looking appropriately mystical, if somewhat a bit black widowish. Unlike Gem, I decided not to complement the outfit with a pointed black hat, thinking that it would look a bit too over the top. Gem, on the other hand, has gone for the full monty witch effect and has even got a realistic wart on her petite nose. I’m sure it must be stuck on, unless the mere mention of Halloween has suddenly made her come o
ut in lumps and bumps.

  ‘Now, before we get on with this evening’s entertainment, can I please remind those of you who are members that fees are due in and must be paid by the end of the week,’ Marjorie says, ‘and can I finally say congratulations to Mrs Bannerman for coming second in the Bath Horticultural Society’s competition with her home-made green tomato marmalade? Very well done, Hilary.’ A round of applause rings around the hall for Mrs Bannerman’s attempts at making the most unusual conserve. I wonder what was awarded the first prize? Sprout jam?

  ‘Now, if everyone is comfortable, then we will begin. Over to you, Samantha,’ my immaculately dressed host says from the stage.

  I stand up and make my way nervously to the stage.

  ‘Um … hello,’ I stutter, and wave for those who are hard of hearing. You would think with all the readings I’ve given, I would be used to speaking in public by now, but I’m not. In fact I’m a big bag of bloody nerves. ‘Thank you for coming this evening. Now, I can’t promise that anyone will receive any messages tonight, but I will certainly try my best to contact your loved ones.’ I can see my mum, sitting next to Marjorie and smiling in an approving manner. ‘Now, if you would all like to choose a seat at the table in the middle of the room, we will get started.’ I signal to Gem to press play on the CD player and the haunting sounds of dolphin/Enya type music wash around the room. Incidentally, this was one of the many CDs that my agent Larry asked me to endorse for a new age music production company, meaning that I could have as many free CDs as I wished. Not that I’m a great fan of singing dolphins, but it’s an improvement on the pan pipe drivel I was also asked to put my name to.

  Gem lights the candles for me and orders my mum to dim the lights. In no time at all the hall is transformed from a draughty old memorial hall into an appropriate place in which to conduct a séance – it’s still draughty, but at least it has a realistically spooky atmosphere.

  As I take my place at the head of the table I hear the sound of clattering and I look over in the darkness to where the kitchen hatch is, to see my mother placing cups upside down upon saucers.