A Spookies Compendium

by David Robinson

  “No,” Kevin disagreed. “Pete’s the one with the magnetism.”

  “I’m talking about real magnetism,” Sceptre pointed out, “not Pete’s theoretical charms. Let’s check the counter for magnetic variations.”

  “And how do we do that?” he demanded. “Rap three times on it and see if it takes the rings off my fingers?”

  Sceptre held up a magnetometer. “With this.” Switching on the detector, she wafted it backwards and forwards across the counter and studied the readings. “Nothing.” As if to dispute her findings, the needle suddenly leapt to the top of the scale and back again. “Wait. I got something then.”

  Kevin pointed at the electrical outlet on the tiled wall, where the kettle was plugged in “Yes. You got the wall socket.”

  “That’s plastic, not metal,” she pointed out.

  “Sceptre,” he said with enforced patience, “I don’t remember much of what they taught me at school, but I do remember that electricity and magnetism are almost nearly the same thing, only different. Where you get electricity, you get magnicity.”

  “Magnetism,” Sceptre corrected him. “Why do you do that, Kevin? Come across as an idiot when you’re not?”

  He smiled childishly. “I was trying to lighten the mood.”

  *****

  “Did one of you pass the sugar and milk to Mr. Keeley?”

  Sir Henry and Aggie greeted Fishwick’s question with an air of false innocence.

  “Well?” demanded Fishwick.

  “Listen, thee,” snapped Sir Henry, “don’t forget that when tha were alive, tha were a lot lower down t’ social scale than me.”

  “But now that we’re all dead,” Fishwick pointed out, “we’re all equal.”

  “He asked for t’ sugar, so I give it him,” said Aggie, “he asked for t’ milk, so I give it him.”

  “He didn’t ask for the teaspoon,” Fishwick objected.

  “No, but like that strumpet said, that lass o’ thine, he couldn’t stir without a spoon, could he?”

  Unable to refute Aggie’s logic, Fishwick left the hall’s resident ghosts to themselves.

  *****

  “You know,” said Sceptre, “a lot of tonight’s events have centred on you.”

  “I’ve been saying that since I came out of the cellar,” Kevin pointed out. “You think this Henry the tea-making whale hunter has got it in for me personally?”

  “It’s possible,” Sceptre agreed, “but unlikely. Sir Henry probably never made a cup of tea in his life. It was probably one of the servants.”

  “Great,” whined Kevin. “Now they’re all after me.”

  “We could try hypnotic regression with you tomorrow. See whether you knew the Melmerbys in a past life.” She thought a little more. “On the other hand, it may be that you’re an unconscious telekinetic.”

  Kevin took instant offence. “I’m as sane as Pete.”

  “Who’s as sane as me?” asked Pete as he entered the café.

  “She’s just said I’m a subconscious telly frenetic, Pete.”

  “Is that the same as an imbecile?” the ex-cop wanted to know.

  Sceptre shook her head. “First the CD, now the sugar bowl and milk jug. I think Kevin has the unconscious ability to move objects without touching them. He seems to be the focus of much of what is happening.”

  With an air of calm composure, Pete asked what had happened. Kevin explained in detail and concluded by adding, “Not only is Henry wotsisname after me, but so are his servants. You watch. They’ll be chucking the furniture around soon.”

  Pete looked up above the area of the counter where Kevin had been preparing the cups. There was another metal rack half a metre higher up.

  “That’s probably where the spoon came from,” he muttered.

  “And the milk and sugar?” demanded Kevin. “I suppose they just hopped on a number 37 bus and made their way to my right hand?”

  “No. The 37 doesn’t come this way.” Pete grinned. “I think it’s the 24 that comes this far out of town.”

  “Pete…” There was a dangerous edge to Kevin’s voice.

  “You got them yourself, Kev. They were obviously closer to hand than you thought.”

  Kevin opened his mouth to protest. Sceptre did likewise.

  Pete held up a hand for silence. “You’re scared, Kevin. You’ve been crapping yourself since we got here. I think your fear is producing lapses of concentration and memory.”

  “We will find out,” Sceptre declared. “Fishwick!”

  “Right here, Madam,” her butler’s voice came into her head.

  “Fishwick,” Sceptre demanded, tartly. “Have you solved the mystery of the milk, sugar and teaspoon?”

  “I have, Madam,” Fishwick reported. “Aggie passed them along.”

  “Thank you, Fishwick. That will be all for the time being.” With a triumphant gleam in her eye, Sceptre turned back to her living colleagues. “Aggie passed the milk, the sugar and the spoon to Kevin. Fishwick has just told me.”

  “And you expect me to take Fishwick’s word?” asked Pete. “I can’t see him, I can’t hear him, so I don’t believe in him, and I won’t believe what you say he says.”

  “Well, we’ll know tomorrow,” Sceptre affirmed. “We’ve had video recorders in here all night, and I turned that one …” She indicated the nearby tripod and camera. “… to face the service counter about ten minutes ago, when Sir Henry appeared by the drinks machine. We can check the playback tomorrow.”

  Kevin suddenly became very angry. “When Sir Henry appeared by the drinks machine? You said we’d set off the alarms in here.”

  “You were frightened, Kevin,” Sceptre excused herself, “and I didn’t want to scare you any more, so I lied.”

  “Well thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Let’s all calm down,” Pete cut Kevin off. “I’ve checked all over the house and there is nothing and no one here but us three.”

  “Then who set the rocking horse going in the attic?” asked Sceptre, explaining what she had witnessed. “Fishwick assures me it is the spirit of a child.”

  Pete snorted. “Bloody Fishwick. I wish he’d bugger off and open a fish shop. It was probably me that set the horse in motion when I left the room. Closing the door set up a movement of air in the room and it caused the rocking horse to move.”

  “This entire house has been causing a movement of air in me,” complained Kevin.

  “So we’ve noticed.” Sceptre faced Pete. “There is no way that closing the door could have made a heavy, wooden rocking horse move like that. Face facts, we have paranormal activity here.”

  Pete accepted a cup of tea from Kevin and warmed his large hands on it. When he spoke, it was in the patient voice of one addressing a child.

  “Sceptre, you’re very sweet, but you’re very naïve, too. You believe in ghosts, I don’t. I’d like to, but I’m an ex-copper, and I need proof. For everything that’s happened, there are alternative, logical explanations.” He pointed an accusing finger at Kevin. “This dipstick has mistaken me for a ghost twice. Once in the cellar and once in the master bedroom, where you, too, thought I was a spook. Now get ghosts off the brain and employ some logic. Look for the supernatural after you’ve discounted everything else, not before.”

  Sceptre turned away, angry and disappointed. Kevin stood up to his old friend. “Now look what you’ve done.”

  Pete waved him away and turned to Sceptre. She looked forlorn, hunched over the computer. He sat beside her and took her hand, gave her an encouraging smile and said, “I’m not putting you down Sceptre, just trying to keep our feet on the ground.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “I know you are, but even you must be puzzled by some of the...”

  BOOM!

  The noise echoed around the cavernous building and cut Sceptre off. All three held their breath for a moment, waiting. When nothing happened, Pete and Sceptre turned their attention to the computer.

  “Nothing. There’s n
o indication.” Sceptre’s voice was incredulous.

  “I thought we had the entire house covered?”

  “We do. All except for...” Sceptre’s pretty features became strained.

  “What?” asked Kevin. “All except for what?”

  Sceptre did not answer. Once more her face became strained, as if she were listening.

  “It’s Fishwick. He’s warning me of something happening in the stables.”

  *****

  Pete and Sceptre ran for it; Kevin followed, his less athletic body straining to keep up. They burst into the rear courtyard. Pete stared around, his eye settling on the partly open gates.

  “Kev, I thought you closed them.”

  “I did,” wheezed Kevin.

  “Then how come...?” Pete eyed the warehouse opposite, where the door was also open. He marched to it. More wary, Kevin and Sceptre hung back.

  “Damn.” The curse came from Pete in the warehouse.

  Slowly, cautiously, Sceptre and Kevin stepped in.

  Pete stood in the middle of the floor. The five pallets, which had been there less than nine hours earlier, were gone.

  Kevin was distraught. “The whole lot gone. I knew this place was haunted.”

  “Oh, yeah?” demanded Pete. “And what the hell are Aggie Devis and Sir Henry Melmerby gonna do with 25,000 pirate DVDs? Hand ’em out to the other spooks as Halloween presents? And how did they get ’em away? You figure these ghosts have access to a ten ton truck?”

  Alongside him, Sceptre became suddenly intent as she listened once more to her butler. When she spoke, it was with extreme distress. “Pete, something terrible has happened here.”

  “Yes. Someone’s been taking the mickey with us all night.” He pressed his hand to the engine of the forklift truck. “Warm. They must have loaded these things onto a lorry while we were fooling about in the house.”

  “And we didn’t hear them?” Kevin did not believe it.

  “We wouldn’t, would we?” Pete snapped. “We were too busy chasing ghosts. And all the time, they were creating those ghosts. One of them was wandering about the house, keeping us busy.”

  Kevin objected instantly. “That doesn’t make sense, Pete. Sceptre saw that orb on the landing and I nearly saw the rocking horse, and how did they chuck the spoon at me? Besides, you said there was no one in there but us.”

  “I was wrong. They’ve been clever, that’s all. And when I get them …”

  Sceptre’s brow furrowed with worry. “Fishwick says this place holds a terrible secret.”

  “Stuff Fishwife.”

  “Fishwick.”

  “Whoever,” growled Pete. “I’m looking for the thieves who…”

  “Pete, will you shurrup and listen to her?” Kevin pointed at Sceptre.

  Sceptre was trembling now, near to tears. “Fishwick feels the pain of others because of what happened to him on the Somme. Pete, I’m scared. Something awful has happened or is about to. There’s another spirit nearby. The one from last night and he’s angry. Very angry. So angry…” She trailed off.

  “Yes, well, he’s not the only one, is he?” Pete interrupted

  “Pete, I’m being serious,” Sceptre wept. “Something evil has happened here.”

  Terrifying visions from every horror movie he had ever seen filled Kevin’s thoughts: vampires, werewolves, mummies, and grotesque monsters walked across his fertile imagination. He could not help it. With a loud raspberry he broke wind. Pete and Sceptre frowned and gave him disapproving stares. To get away from them, Kevin wandered into the narrow alleys between the racks while Pete and Sceptre continued to argue.

  “Pete,” Sceptre cried, “angry spirits will try to vent their frustration on the living. We have to calm this spirit down, bring him peace, or he’ll turn on us.”

  Pete glared at her. “Sceptre, you might fool Kev and a bundle of no-hopers in the mission hall with your act, but don’t pull it on me. The only spirit we need to be concerned with is the spirit of petroleum.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  “A gallon of gas,” he said furiously, “which I’m gonna use to torch the buggers when I get my hands on them.”

  *****

  Trying to ignore their argument, Kevin wandered through the racks, which had held the supplies Melmerby Manor used in its day-to-day business of catering for visitors. He was not looking for anything in particular, just something to alleviate the sense of loss he felt at having the DVDs nicked from under his nose.

  He found nothing of interest, other than the same stuff he had noticed on their earlier visit. Farther along the alley, he found half a dozen one-gallon containers of floor cleaner, a few mop heads, a few kitchen towel rolls which might save him a few pennies the next time he visited the supermarket, several pairs of metre-long metal tongs for picking up litter.

  Kevin hefted a pair of the tongs in his hands. He tried to calculate their value on the black market and dreamt of new uses for them: picking up socks to save wear and tear on his back, reaching for the TV remote control when he couldn’t be bothered moving, stealing sweets from his local shop when the counter assistant wasn’t looking.

  He noticed a heap of sacking on the floor at the end of the aisle, close to the rear wall. There was only one reason people dumped sacking on the floor: to cover something up which they did not want anyone else to find, usually something valuable, like... like… well, he couldn’t think of anything offhand, but there was one way to find out.

  Playing with the metal tongs, he hooked the end of the Hessian with them, peeled it back ... and almost threw up.

  There, under the sacking, lay a young man, and he was dead. Kevin knew he was dead. No one could still be alive with such a large crater in his head and his face covered in such a mass of congealing blood.

  Chapter Eight

  Kevin cried out. Sceptre and Pete promptly abandoned their argument and rushed down the narrow aisle from which the cry had come, and found Kevin cowering back against the metal racking.

  “H-he’s d-d-dead,” stammered Kevin, pointing a shaking finger at the corpse.

  Pete bundled his best friend into Sceptre’s arms, and she led him away.

  Left alone with the body, Pete looked it over. The corpse was a man in his early twenties with a head of cropped, fair hair just beginning to grow after it had been shaved, and a large, bloody dent in the side of his head where someone had struck him. There wasn’t much point, but Pete reached gingerly out and touched his neck, feeling for a pulse. The skin was icy cold to the touch, and there was no trace of a heartbeat.

  Satisfied that the man was dead, Pete studied the battered face, compared it to a database in his brain, and identified him as Steven Bilks. He dug into his pocket for his mobile phone, switched it on and strode back along the aisle while he waited for the instrument to boot up.

  He found Sceptre perched on one raised fork of the truck, her arm hugging Kevin who sat trembling beside her. She eyed the phone in Pete’s hand. “Ambulance?”

  He shook his head. “No point. Police.”

  “Pete, you can’t do that. They’ll think we did it.”

  “Sceptre, if this was just a break-in, I’d ring them anonymously from a public phone, but Bilko was murdered. We have to tell the law.” He punched in the number and jammed the connect button. “Whatever you do,” he said while waiting for the connection to be made, “don’t touch anything else. They’ll want our dabs for elimination.”

  “They’ve already got mine,” wailed Kevin, regaining some of his colour. “They’re all over this house, and the minute they set the dab men to work, they’ll wall me up for life.”

  Tears welled in Sceptre’s eyes. “I told you something awful had happened, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did. Hello, Police? Give me CID. Tell ’em it’s Ex-Detective Constable Brennan.”

  There was a delay before a gruff voice came on. “Brennan? What do you want?”

  “Nice to speak to you, too, Chief Inspector Locke.”<
br />
  “Cut the crap,” ordered Locke, “and tell me what you want.”

  “To report a murder,” said Pete.

  “Now listen…”

  “No, you listen,” Pete interrupted. “I’m in the stables at Melmerby Manor with my two business partners, and we’ve got a fresh stiff in here. Bilko. Get your people out here and we’ll wait for them.” He closed the connection and looked Sceptre grimly in the eye. “I told you there was something going on here didn’t I? While we’ve been fooling around chasing ghosts, someone dragged a lorry up here, took all those pallets of DVDs and left us Bilko instead.”

  Sceptre pulled herself together. “You …you’re sure it’s him?”

  Pete nodded. “It’s Bilko all right. Kev and I have known him for years.”

  Kevin shuddered. “I saw someone.” Suddenly he had their full attention. Once more he drew in his breath to steady his nerves. “Earlier. When you asked me to shut those back gates. When we first got here. I saw someone running into the woods.”

  Pete’s features darkened. “Why the hell didn’t you say so?”

  Kevin raised his voice to a defensive wail. “Because we’d just had that do in the cellar, and Sceptre had told us the woods were haunted. If I’d told you, you’d have said I was imagining it.”

  He was right, but that knowledge only irritated Pete all the more. Angrily, he snatched up his torch and walked out of the stables. Directing the light towards the ground, he picked up the heavy tyre tracks of the forklift truck. Judging from the tracks, it had made the journey from the stables to the rear gates and back many times. Instead of stopping at the gates, however, it had then turned towards the manor house’s front and the exit to Melmerby Lane. Recent, heavy rain had turned the path alongside the house to a mud bath; there in the mud, he could see the impression of lorry tyres meeting those of the forklift about five metres from the spot where the forklift had angled off. He could also see a variety of footprints: boots, shoes, even a pair of lady’s high heels, enough to suggest a team of four or five. He estimated that even working as a team, it must have taken the thieves 30 to 45 minutes to load the lorry, but he and his partners had been so busy chasing round the house that they had heard nothing.