Oh Great, Now I Can Hear Dead People: What Would You Do if You Could Suddenly Hear Real Dead People?

by Deborah Durbin

  As the security guard checks I am who I say I am, I chuckle as I see an image in my head of him struggling to get into his uniform trousers. A woman, who I presume is his wife, is laughing at him and teasing him about losing weight.

  ‘It’s not a laughing matter, Samantha,’ another woman’s voice comes into my head – oh will I ever get used to this? I must have one of those bemused looks on my face because the security guard looks at me and asks if I’m all right.

  ‘Um… yes, fine, thank you,’ I mutter.

  ‘Tell him if he doesn’t lose weight soon, he will have a massive heart attack,’ the voice continues. Oh blimey! I can’t tell him that!

  ‘Nice day today isn’t it?’ I venture.

  The guard, whose name badge reads Gerry, looks up from my paperwork and nods. Oh dear, this is going to be more difficult than I thought.

  ‘Think I might go for a run later,’ I say, looking up to the sun in the sky and dramatically stretch my arms out. ‘Do you run?’ Now I bet he thinks I’m taking the piss out of him.

  ‘Eh?’ The guard says, looking at me as if I’m stark raving bonkers.

  ‘Run. Do you go running?’ I ask, praying that he isn’t going to clobber me over the head with his truncheon or spray me in the face with pepper-spray.

  ‘Do I look like a runner, Miss?’ Gerry asks.

  ‘Well… you could always start. Did you know it only takes 30 minutes a day of gentle jogging to burn up 300 calories? I mean, you don’t need to run if you don’t want to, you could always walk… quickly, if you prefer...’ I say, desperately trying to sound cheery and not condescending.

  ‘Oh, right,’ the guard seems unimpressed.

  ‘There are loads of parks round here, you could use one of those,’

  ‘Yeah, right. There you go. Make sure you wear this pass at all times because they will check you inside,’ says Gerry.

  I don’t think I’m making a big impression on Gerry the security guard, but I did try. I mean short of saying, “Oi, fatty, lose some weight, or you’re gonna die!” I don’t know what else to say. I thank him and walk inside to the TV studios.

  I have to say I am looking suitably cosmic-happy-ass in my attire of a long black and purple panelling dress, with my pointy black boots just poking out at the bottom of my skirt and a nifty little black shawl – actually the dress and shawl came from last year’s Halloween costume where I morphed myself into the evil witch from The Wizard of Oz, courtesy of Jack’s uncle, but obviously having disappointed the staff at Town FM by turning up in jeans and a t-shirt, I thought I had better make the right impression this time – it is TV after all. I just hope people don’t take one look at me and start shouting ‘Burn the witch!’

  Having located Anya and her posse on the sixteenth floor – another memo to myself to get fit – I do my best impression of someone gliding sophisticatedly into a room. It is a typical meeting room. The walls are white and beset with framed black and white photographs of brick walls - odd.

  It’s only 8.30am and the building is already buzzing with activity. Tours around the studios start from eight o’clock and it looks as though the first coach party consisting of many Americans, a few media exchange students and the odd pensioner have arrived and are assembled in the car park below us.

  Anya is already in the meeting room ready to greet me and does so with a great show of enthusiasm, throwing her arms around me as if I am a long-lost friend.

  ‘You look gorgeous, Darling!’ she says, holding my arms out and looking me up and down. Anya is equally gorgeous in a black trouser suit – in fact Anya could look gorgeous in a Tesco carrier bag. This woman just oozes gorgeousness. She’s one of those people who doesn’t need to try to look gorgeous – unlike me who needs a good three hours of plucking, moisturising, exfoliating and scrubbing to look as though I’m alive and not an extra on Dawn of the Dead.

  ‘Oh, thanks.’ I say, a little embarrassed.

  ‘Now before the production team comes in, I wanted to brief you on a few ideas.’ Anya says as she shows me to one of the fourteen chairs that surround a huge oak table placed in the middle of the room. She passes me a bottle of mineral water and sits down next to me. Her place at the table is littered with folders, paperwork and an official looking BBC clipboard from which she flicks sheets of paper up and down. ‘Since Trisha defected to Channel Four, we’ve been filling our morning slot with programmes like, How Much for Your Junk and Pet Disaster and all that sort of crap. Anyway, the people at the top have decided to have something similar to This Morning on ITV. They know it’s going to be tough competition, because Phil and Holly have such a huge following…’ I’m tempted to tell her how much I love Phil and Holly from This Morning and that they have been my life-line to sanity for the past year or so, but seeing as they are the opposition I think better of it.

  ‘…we need to have the best lifestyle magazine programme going and being new we are going to have to make a big visual impact,’ Anya says. All this media speak is going way over my head, so I just nod in agreement. ‘Now, in two week’s time we are going to be launching a new morning programme called Morning Latte – I know, not my choice of name, but there you go – anyway, if we are going to be bigger and better than This Morning we are going to have to recruit bigger and better guests and have some regular lifestyle slots. The current trend is leaning towards healthier lifestyles, mind, body and spirit and all that malarkey, so what the creative team are looking for is someone who can do live readings, initially one morning a week, probably on a Wednesday… ah, here’s the team now,’ she says, as a number of media types enter the room.

  There are eight of them and they all look as though they have just stepped out of a student disco – maybe I should have just worn a t-shirt and jeans after all. I’m introduced to one after the other by Anya and they all seem friendly enough.

  ‘So guys, this is our little mystic star, Crystal. I’ve quickly briefed her as to what we are going for here, so shall we start with a questions and answers session?’ Anya says, clapping her hands in an authoritative manner. The team sit down and help themselves to water and shuffle various bits of paper around in front of them. A small oriental woman stands up first.

  ‘Hi Crystal, I’m Honey, the features development editor for Morning Latte,’ she says with a smile, ‘Anya has filled us in on your recent radio experience, but what I want to know is how you think TV work is going to differ from that?’

  ‘Well… obviously I’ll be on screen rather than just being a voice,’ I hope I don’t sound like I’m stating the bloody obvious, but I didn’t realise I was auditioning for Question Time. ‘So presentation is very important,’ I add.

  ‘Good. And how do you feel about millions of people tuning in to see you?’ Honey asks.

  ‘Oh fine,’ I say. Actually I’m not sure how I feel right now at the prospect of millions of people watching me, though pooping myself comes to mind at this very moment. I mean, how many millions are they talking here? And what if all my skeletons come tumbling out of the closet? Have I got lots of skeletons? I should look in my closet. Well, Amy and I did try smoking a joint at the back of the youth club once. Oh and then there was that time when we went into the corner shop and nicked a Milky Bar and a bag of jelly babies…

  ‘Good because we have a feeling that once we feature this slot, you are going to be inundated with requests for readings.’ Honey smiles as she writes down some notes on her official BBC issued clipboard.

  The meeting goes very well, as one by one, the various members of the team fire questions at me. Anya spends most of the meeting writing down my answers and nodding in agreement with the rest of the team. I have to say, there is a huge amount of positive energy in this room and I don’t know why I was the least bit worried about meeting these people. In fact by the end of the meeting, I feel positively happy here and excited at the prospect of appearing on their new programme.

  Once the team have been dispatched to their various offices, Anya goes thro
ugh the official looking contract with me, including what I can be expected to be paid for what turns out to be 25 minutes of work on a Wednesday morning - £750 plus expenses such as travelling up to London. I do a quick mental calculation. Bloody hell! That works out at £30 per minute! Because the BBC don’t have advertisements, Anya warns me it might be hard going to talk continuously for 25 minutes, but she is going to try to get a break thrown in and feature other highlights of the day’s show then. I nod in agreement and go through the rest of the contract with her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  So now I am really, really nervous. No, really, I am. I have just signed a contract with the BBC to present the Mystic Crystal slot on Morning Latte live, every Wednesday morning starting in two weeks’ time and I am so anxious, nervous and any other negative adjectives you can think of ending in ‘ous’. In a moment of panic, I call Miracle as soon as I get out of my meeting with Anya.

  ‘That’s wonderful news!’ Miracle screams down the phone. ‘I am so proud of you!’

  ‘Is it? Are you?’

  ‘I told you, Sam this is your vocation in life. Didn’t I tell you that you were looking for things in the wrong place when you first phoned Mystic Answers? Didn’t I tell you that you were a natural at this?’ she reminds me.

  ‘You did… but TV, Miracle! I mean, what if I mess it up? It’s going out live to millions of people every morning.’ I say, feeling as though I’m going to be sick.

  ‘Why do you think you’re going to mess up? Have you ever messed up on the phone lines? Have you ever messed up on your regular radio slot?’

  ‘Well no, not really,’ I say. What I don’t add is that on the majority of the readings I have done, I have been very lucky and managed to blag my way through them all. Okay, so I hear voices in my head now, but do I really? I mean no one else can hear them, can they? It would be a different kettle of fish if other people could hear them too, but I appear to be the only one here that can hear them. Now, being a qualified therapist I think I have enough training to know that one of the classic signs of being one strawberry short of a full punnet is that you can hear voices in your head! So with this in mind, I frequently ask myself, am I going mad?

  ‘Well there you go then.’ Miracle interrupts my thoughts just in the nick of time, before I slam the phone down and ring for the men in white coats to cart me off. ‘You are going to be fine, and if you feel nervous just ask your dad to help you,’ she says. My initial reaction is to remind her that he is in fact dead. She knows this of course.

  ‘OK, but if I mess this up I’m going to blame you for telling me to go for it.’

  Miracle laughs her hearty laugh.

  ‘You do that then. Now let me tell you all about my day in Bath…’

  The rest of the week passes in a bit of a blur and soon my nearest and dearest all know about my impending debut on TV thanks to Matt, who has a complete inability to keep anything a secret.

  ‘Well they’re going to see you on the telly next week, you muppet, or were you contemplating putting a bag over your head so they wouldn’t know who you were?’ he says when I tell him off for telling Mum, who in turn told Amy, who then told Jack, who then told all the band members, who told everyone in our local… At this rate the whole of the southwest will know that I’m gong to be on TV and in fact it’s not long before they do.

  Come Sunday, just before I’m about to do the Sixth Sense show on Town FM Annette, who is back from her accident with dodgy brake pads, announces live on air that everyone must tune in to see me on Wednesday at eleven o’clock on BBC1 – Aghhhhh!

  ‘Annette, I didn’t want the whole world to know, you know.’ I protest.

  ‘Oh it’s not the whole world, just the whole of the south west, that’s all,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘And, besides, I’m so proud of you and still feel very foolish for not taking your advice about the car,’ she adds pointing to the neck brace decorating her neck. ‘I was going to get it serviced – I even had a post-it note stuck to my fridge – but I kept putting it off. That will teach me, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes it will and thank you, but in future, if I tell you something, make sure you listen!’ I say, waggling my finger like my mother does when she is making a point.

  And speaking of mothers, at this very moment mine is sitting in the staff canteen with none other than Colin the Carrot Man! Having spoken to my mum at length about his carrots and his desire to meet her, my mum took no persuading in clambering in my car this morning, notebook in hand and hitched a ride to the studio with me in order to meet the elusive Colin.

  My mother listened intently in the reception room to Colin’s explanation of the theory that if you ate nothing but carrots your skin would turn orange. I do hope Mum doesn’t try this at home. Apparently it’s true. A student at the local college tried it. She wanted to test the theory and spent the following two months eating nothing but the orange coloured root vegetable. And she did indeed turn a nice shade of orange thanks to her diet of carrot cake, carrot soup, carrot juice… well, you get the idea. Whether or not she turned back to normal after her unusual experiment after she made herself look like she’d been Tangoed, I’m not sure, but I bet she saved a fortune on food – a diet of carrots surely can’t cost that much.

  Colin went on to explain the composition of pesticides and what they actually do to carrots and my mum scribbled away in her notepad, listening attentively to his wise words of the vegetable world.

  Meanwhile, I am busy chatting away to callers who all want to know, a) when they will meet Mr or Miss Right, b) when they will win the lottery, c) when they are going to become famous, or all/any of the above. What happened to finding your spiritual path in life? Or inner peace? I chat easily to most or them and find that I’m finally getting the hang of reading the cards.

  ‘So do you think I’m doing the right thing?’ A caller named Emily asks in relation to whether she should continue chasing after a man who has obviously no interest in her whatsoever.

  ‘I’m being told that you are fighting a losing battle here, Emily.’ I say and surprisingly enough I am being told! A little voice in my ear keeps saying, ‘Tell her to stop pissing around with this guy and go out with Richard.’ The voice in my ear is a woman and I try mentally asking her what her name is. Finally she tells me she is called Maria.

  ‘Do you, or did you know someone called Maria?’ I ask the caller and wait with batted breath.

  The line goes quiet for a moment.

  ‘Emily?’

  ‘Sorry, yes, I do. She’s…she was my best friend. She died in an accident last year.’

  ‘Well Maria has just told me…oh, I’m not sure if I can say this on air…’ I look at Annette who mouths ‘No swearing’ to me. ‘Well, I won’t say the exact words, but Maria just told me to tell you to stop messing around with this guy and to go out with Richard instead.’

  ‘Richard?’ Emily shrieks. ‘But he’s just a friend.’

  It amazes me that Emily doesn’t sound the slightest bit surprised by the fact that I’ve just had her dead friend rabbiting in my ear telling me to pass on a message to her, nor the fact that I just mentioned her male friend’s name! I’m still not used to this talking in my head. I’m sure it’s not right, but obviously other people assume it’s something that happens to people like me every day of the week.

  ‘Well Maria says you should give him a try.’

  ‘Oh well, if Maria thinks I should…’ Emily muses down the line.

  ‘Yes, she does. And she also says that she doesn’t mean to be rude, but she doesn’t like your new hair-cut. You should have left it long, but not to worry, it’ll grow back again.’

  ‘OMG!’ Emily shrieks. I can imagine she is holding on to her hacked locks as she does so. ‘Is it really that bad?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue, I’m not that good a psychic, you know,’ I laugh. ‘But your friend obviously thinks it’s sh…no, I can’t say that …thinks it looks better longer,’ I say, hoping that I haven’t spoi
lt the poor girl’s day.

  ‘Oh I thought it looked quite nice. But Helen… the hairdresser I usually have… was on holiday and I had to have some girl who had just started. I knew she wasn’t very experienced…’ Emily says. As conversations go, this will go into the, one-of-the-most-unusual-conversations-I-have-had-to-date, pile – having said that the one with the girl who murdered her boyfriend is probably still at number one right now.

  The rest of the show runs smoothly as one caller after the other is put through on the line. I look over to Liam who is in the sound box and he winks at me. I smile shyly. What is the matter with me? This guy is young, good looking, single and kind and yet I don’t get that excited feeling you’re supposed to get at the start of a relationship. Grrr, me!

  Right, that is it. I am damn well going to give this guy a chance. He’s got everything I’m looking for. I have to make the effort to be nicer, I tell myself. After the show I will ask Liam if he wants to go out this evening.

  ‘OK we are just breaking for a moment to give Crystal a breather and then we will be right back to take more of your calls. The lines are very busy at the moment, so if you can’t get through immediately, just keep trying.’ Annette says in her best radio presenter voice, ‘here’s Queen with Radio Ga-Ga.’ She flicks a few switches and slumps down on her chair.

  ‘Another successful show.’ She says and smiles happily at me.

  I too slump down in my chair. I’m exhausted. All this talking has made my throat hurt.

  ‘How’s your neck now?’ I ask concerned as she winces and massages her neck brace with her un-broken arm.