by Allyson Bird
“Now, I don’t mean to scare you but there is a woman by your side with a scowl on her face and I have to say that she isn’t happy with you. Can you place her?”
Jean shook her head.
“Well, she says that she is here for you—well not here for you but wanting to tell you about her confusion.”
Another shake of the head.
“Does the name Jean mean anything to you?”
“My name is Jean.”
“I’m sorry. You’re Jean? She says that you know her. She’s definitely here for you, my love, and she’s showing me a picture of a train…not a train…but a train station..but she can’t remember why. Another Jean and a train or a train station—do those details mean anything to you?”
Jean shook her head again.
“Would you like to join me on the couch, my love? Perhaps we can help this person remember what happened. She is very distressed.”
Calvin addressed the spirit to his left where the audience could see nothing. “All right, my dear, we’ll sort it out,” and he pointed directly at Jean.
“Yes—you my dear. I have a person here who clearly wants me to talk to you on her behalf, but is holding back.”
Jean shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
Calvin turned to talk to the invisible person at his side. “Don’t be shy love—I’m here to help you. I’m here in this world to help you communicate from the next. That’s it love, come on through—”
Calvin had a small, reverent smile on his face as he stepped back. His expression then changed, it contorted with his effort to speak. The alteration was dramatic: he looked like someone who was in great pain and his features were definitely not his own.
The audience gasped and one or two got up to make their way out of the studio.
“Stop!” he said in a commanding voice.
Everyone trying to leave the studio halted immediately. Some in the audience were quite clearly terrified, others looked on with scepticism, and still others just stared open mouthed.
Calvin began to speak. “She was there at my death. I wish to speak to Jean. My name is Jean.”
With that, the Jean in the audience fainted.
The recording of the show stopped briefly, whilst she was attended to in the green room.
Brenda fussed over her, squeezed her hand and apologised yet again.
“I’m sorry, dear. I shouldn’t have asked you to come. I had no idea that your mum’s passing, and Stephen’s…would have this effect. I’m so sorry.”
With a wave of a mysteriously thinner hand she pushed Brenda out of her face. “Brenda, stop it. It isn’t that. I’ll be okay. I just want to get out of this hot studio.”
“You’re not fine, Jean. There is something obviously wrong.”
“Brenda, get a taxi. Once we get to the station I’ll be fine.”
“But I thought that we would stay over, get a meal and take in a show—you know that you don’t get out much. I’ll ring for a taxi. Are you sure you can—”
The glare in Jean’s eyes was all that Brenda needed to send her scurrying away to find a phone.
Calvin Caldwell had never, in his entire life as a psychic, taken a spirit home with him from the studio—until now. She followed him, the doppelganger spirit of the woman who had fainted on prime time.
“Listen love, you have been sitting on that couch for the last hour. You won’t speak to me, you just sit there, and you won’t go no matter what I say or do.”
He paced the room, working himself up into a sweat. He hoped that the doppelganger would be scared off by his insistence. This proved not to be the case. Her dull, grey eyes followed him up and down the room and around the sheepskin rugs that clung to the floor.
Calvin shook his head. “How can I do anything when you won’t tell me what you want?”
As he voiced an emphasis on the last word the spirit became more solid, stood up and grasped his arm to pull him towards the front door of his apartment. Once out on the street she pointed to a taxi that was speeding by and finally Calvin hailed one down and they got in. The spirit faded a little as she followed him inside the taxi and sat opposite him.
The taxi driver waited patiently for directions and turned round when nothing was forthcoming.
“Well, Jean?” began Calvin, staring straight at the spirit that faced him. She sat with her back to the driver.
“Well what?” the cabbie asked.
“Sorry, just a minute. I’m trying to find out where to go.”
“What? Ain’t you that psychic fellah off the telly? Don’t you know where you’re going?”
“Not yet—no. Just hold on a minute please.”
“Ere, you ain’t doing one of those séance thingies in my cab are you?”
“No, I’m just talking to someone who won’t leave me alone.”
“Well, don’t leave it alone here. I don’t want any company on me travels. I like working alone and I don’t need no ghost to tell me how to find my way. I did the Bible, I did, and perhaps you would like to take your ghost friend and walk to where you want to go—when you find out.”
The spirit sent Calvin the image of the train again.
“Where’s the nearest station?”
“St. Pancras.”
“I guess that’s where we’ll start then.”
The internationally famous façade of St. Pancras Station came into view. During the Blitz of the Second World War part of the station had been bombed.
The taxi drew up to the curb.
“That’ll be ten pounds. No extra charge for the other passenger.” The cabbie laughed at his own joke.
In Death’s dominion there are no rules of engagement; up until this point Calvin Caldwell had thought that there were, but all indications to the chance that he might regain control of the situation disappeared when an air raid warden, complete with gas mask box over his shoulder, opened the door of the taxi.
The cabbie caught sight of the door opening, but couldn’t see who had done it.
“Ere—how did you do that? Come on, don’t play any tricks. The fare, please.”
Calvin moved closer to the edge of his seat and stared through his phantom companion, who had faded away even more.
“I can assure you, sir, that I didn’t open the door and have every intention of paying the fare.”
Calvin fumbled in his pockets for a few seconds and mumbled a few choice words under his breath before realising he had left his wallet back at his apartment. He had no loose change either. Jean was still staring at him with her cold, grey eyes and the air raid warden still had his hand on the door handle. The air raid warden beamed at him.
“I—I haven’t got any money,” said Calvin.
“What? All this palaver and you haven’t got the fare?”
“Yes—look. You obviously know who I am. Could you have it on good faith that I will give you the money when we get back from—wherever we’ll be getting back from?”
“Faith? Faith? I never had any faith in anything but myself. Look—”
Before the cabbie could finish Calvin had bolted through the open door and run off into St. Pancras Station.
“I’m not having that,” the cabbie muttered under his breath, “don’t care who he is.”
Once inside the station Calvin stopped running. The phantoms, Jean and the air raid warden, stood silently on either side of him.
“What now?” he demanded.
St Pancras Station; the location for the Spice Girls first music video, the movies Batman Begins and Harry Potter. Calvin Caldwell, psychic star of his own programme, felt as if he was well beyond what usually happened to him.
On the telly he was good at using clues, unknowingly given to him by his audience and the vague images that appeared in his mind. But today for the first time images were turning into something a little more solid and as a result he was genuinely afraid that he was going mad, at the worst, or at the very least was stuck with Jean’s doppelganger. To add to that, there w
as the new apparition of the air raid warden who seemed as resolute as the other to stick by his side.
Within seconds Calvin could hear the wail of air raid sirens and suddenly the air raid warden became more substantial—he flung Calvin to the floor, under the feet of the commuters who had just come off the two-forty-five train from Birmingham. The crowd looked on in astonishment as Calvin thrashed about on the floor in an effort to escape the arms of the still beaming, still unseen air raid warden, who was evidently as pleased as punch that he had managed to protect the man.
Only two people stopped to help.
“Hold his arms—he’s having a fit,” said a man carrying some parcels, who stared down at the medium.
Calvin struggled for breath, “You can’t hold my arms, someone is already holding them!”
“Hey—is that, that…Calvin—what he is called?” said the man.
“Calvin Caldwell,” answered a thin woman in a grey coat.
“Serves him right—come home to roost and all that,” replied the man.
“Look, can’t you hear the sirens?” Calvin shouted.
“Sirens? Sirens? Of course we can’t hear the sirens. There haven’t been any sirens here since the last war,” said the woman. “Poor chap, shouldn’t we just go along with him to calm him down?”
“Leave well alone I say. Dipsying about with all those spirits has turned him mental,” answered the man. “You don’t believe in all that rubbish, do you?”
“Of course I don’t. My mum does, though,” the woman offered.
The sirens, which were causing Calvin an immediate, great headache stopped and the air raid warden (still wearing a silly smile) released his arms. Calvin got to his feet.
“Oh dear, Mr. Caldwell, were you possessed?” said an elderly lady in red who had just joined the two bemused travellers.
“Not exactly,” he answered her.
Calvin headed for Europe’s longest champagne bar and ordered a bottle. He quaffed two slim glasses of the sparkling stuff before he realised that—he still hadn’t got his wallet. Crestfallen he poured another glass and glanced to his left. His taxi driver had hitched himself onto the stool and asked for another glass of his own. The bartender poured the cabbie some of Calvin’s champagne. He took a dainty sip and licked his lips.
“So, what now mate? I caught your little performance back there.”
“Performance. It wasn’t a performance. I was pushed.”
“Aren’t we all mate? Aren’t we all?”
Looking beyond the cabbie (who introduced himself as Quinn), Calvin could still see the beaming air raid warden who looked even more pleased with himself. On his other side stood Doppelganger Jean, but Calvin was even more surprised when he looked over his shoulder and saw the women from the studio; Brenda, and the other Jean, hurrying towards him. It was then when Calvin finally knew that he would never—ever—really have control of the situation.
“What do you all want?”
“I have got what I wanted!” beamed the air raid warden.
“What is that?” asked Calvin.
“To save you from the air raid.”
“But I didn’t need sav—” Calvin was talking to an empty seat. The bartender wondered if he should pour him another glass of champagne. Calvin noticed, and pushed his empty glass towards him. The bartender obliged. Refreshed for a moment Calvin looked at Quinn, and Doppelganger Jean.
“Don’t you think that I’m going anywhere until I get my fare,” Quinn warned him.
“I don’t think anything. I just want to know what’s going on.”
Calvin took another gulp of champagne and pushed the empty glass towards the bartender once more. Quinn, with a cheeky smile, did the same.
“You’re driving,” said Calvin.
“Not now I’m not.”
“Well, obviously not now, but in a minute you are.”
“Nah, not me I’ve finished for the night now. Ted’s got the keys.”
“Who’s Ted?”
“The night shift driver.”
“When, in the name of henbane, hellebores and Hades did you give him them?”
Quinn looked at him thoughtfully for one moment. “Those first two are plants. They don’t quite go with Hades. Well…henbane sort of does because it is a plant used to create supernatural phenomena—but not hellebores. Now, if you had said in the name Hecate, Herodiades and Haborym—them being names and all—or Hell, Hades and, say—Hepatoscopy that might be okay…but that last one being divination through the liver or entrails from lizards, black hens, bats, toads and cats, perhaps not—”
“I like cats,” interrupted Brenda.
Calvin stared incredulously at them both as Jean, her white cheeks even whiter, stared at her Doppelganger self.
“What, in the name of—“ he hesitated and glared at the cabbie, “in the name of—anything, do you all want?”
It was Doppelganger Jean who broke the ice. “I want my life back.”
“To be done with it all,” stated Jean stated blankly as she twisted her wedding ring on her ever-thinning finger. Funny, she thought—it has always been so tight before.
“Revenge,” Brenda shocked them.
Everyone right down the bar, and the bartender, stared at little, mousey Brenda.
“I was happy for you Jean—happy to know that someday you would lose him too. You only wanted him because he was mine, but then you pushed me aside for too long. I knew that you would want me more after his death. I counted on it.”
“—to tell the both of you that I don’t think that I loved either of you at all,” said Stephen.
Amazed and bemused, most of them stared at Stephen. Actually, the bartender looked more bemused than amazed. Stephen then added, “well, perhaps Jean early on in our marriage.”
“Who the hell are you?” sputtered Calvin.
At this point the bartender, observing the fact that one of the gentlemen before him seemed to be conversing with the thin air, reached for another bottle of champagne, all the while trying to decide where he had seen this gentleman before. The bartender had been bored and this was the best entertainment that he had seen all day. He popped the cork and poured himself a glass whilst staring at Calvin—
“Can’t you place him lad? He’s that geezer off the telly, that fellah who talks to ghosts,” Quinn enlightened him.
“Oh, I knew he was,” said the bartender…unconvincingly.
“Look!” said Calvin, flustered and finally now feeling the effects of the champagne, “just what is going on?”
“If you don’t know, how do you expect us to?” said Quinn, pointing at the bartender and then at himself.
“Shit,” muttered Jean as she slowly faded away, to be permanently replaced by her far superior doppelganger, who then walked off arm in arm with Stephen; a Stephen—who, in actual fact, seemed far too solid to be a ghost?
“That wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t supposed to have any happy endings for anyone except me,” Brenda protested as she stared openmouthed at the pair who seemed so happy together.
“What I want to know is—” said the bartender as he poured for himself (smiled at Brenda), and then poured Quinn another glass, “is—just who is going to pay the bill?”
Calvin put his head down on the bar and held it tightly in both hands.
Blood in Madness Ran
“Let now your visionary glance look long,
On this your race, these your Romans,
Here Caesar, of Iulus’ glorious seed,
Behold ascending to the world of Light!
Behold, at last, that man for it is he,
So often foretold to your listening ears,
Augustus Caesar, kindred of Jupiter.
He brings a golden age.”
From The Aeneid by Virgil.
It slithered away from her with a tail the colours of gold, green, and blue. Although it was slippery she held it in her hand and looked at the wonder of it, before she placed the eager creature
on the mustard green seaweed. It was a tiny version of her, complete with coppery hair that fell to its small waist. Soon there were more of them, a dozen in all, scaled from the tail to the neck, with arms and upper bodies that bore the traces of their affiliation with human beings. Their pale faces looked human but human they were not.
How could she keep them safe this time? They were so small but not entirely helpless. They were wildly curious and indifferent to the many dangers of the sea. Her cavern would be their sanctuary for a while but keeping them contained had always been a problem. Her last brood had fallen prey to sea-hunters and also her tiny creatures had fed upon one another to survive.
Lamia would bring them food for a while but then the lure of the open sea, with a thousand different enticements, would be too much for them and they would be gone.
A snowstorm reared its head, unusual for any time of year in that part of the world, and headed towards the island where lay her cave. A ship was heading her way too, and that meant food for the Lamiae; her children would not go hungry as they writhed and explored the swells of water that threatened to send them crashing against the cavern walls.
“Eleven, only eleven now,” hissed Lamia to her offspring. Small, sly faces with eyes the colour of green ice laughed back at her as she offered her breast to each in turn. She would have to get food for them before the storm, as they grew too quickly to be only fed by her, and besides they latched on to her too savagely with their sharp needlepoint teeth. She would not leave them in the cavern with the threat of being pummelled against the rocks. In her lair she had a fisherman’s net that she gently lay and bound the baby Lamiae within, placing them above the water in a niche far from the cavern’s entrance. In a flash of coppery green Lamia swam deep under water, out of the cavern, leaving her infants screaming behind her.
The ship had anchored in the natural harbour and seemed to be safe from the rising storm.