Paranormal Nonsense

by steve higgs

  ‘I wouldn’t go on record with that, but yes essentially it appears to be the same.’ Even up close it was difficult to see his features, but he sounded weary and stressed. Amanda had seen a few bodies, murder in Kent was relatively rare but she had been around long enough to have attended a fair number of murder scenes. The recent series, if they were allowed to call it that, were something else though. Each of the three victims, assuming this was number three, had been alone when attacked at night and were found with wounds to their throat. The press had gotten hold of it almost two weeks ago two days after the second murder and were already calling it the vampire attacks or other such crude but catchy names. The term The Vampire had been coined immediately by The Weald Word, a local paper more used to reporting jumble sale successes and prize-winning turnips. Their lead reporter, if such a small paper can claim one, led with the legend “Vampire killer loose in Maidstone” the morning following after the second murder. This had been seized upon by the National press in what was a slow news week and now it was hard to think of the perpetrator by another term.

  Amanda squinted at her Sgt’s face trying to get a read of his expression in the gloom. ‘So, what is the scene like? Likelihood of useable evidence? she asked.

  ‘Just like the last two I think. Not much of anything to help us.’ he replied, his tone carrying little inflection. ‘There will be saliva around the wound, but that has already been checked and lead us nowhere. Other than that, this guy does not leave anything we can use. The SOCO chaps will be thorough, but whether they are able to find anything helpful…’ he tailed off just as his radio squawked, the sound cutting through the quiet stillness of the dawn in a shocking burst of noise. The call was for him so he left her there with a brief nod as he went.

  Another forty-five minutes passed as the sun struggled lazily upwards. It lit the sky and it felt like morning when PC Brad Hardacre emerged from the trees surrounding the tented crime scene. She spotted him because she was looking the wrong way again thoroughly bored with watching the ducks sleep on the bank next to her. Just before 0600hrs she had actually performed her function and turned away two joggers as they ran down the path towards her presumably on their usual route. Other than that, she had done nothing for the last two hours.

  She checked her watch: 0602hrs. ‘Good morning Amanda, how has your day been so far?’ hallooed Brad as he approached. Brad was an okay guy, most of them were with the odd exception, but she quite liked him and might have been interested if they did not work together.

  ‘It has been sucky mostly, Brad, but nowhere near as bad as the girl lying over there had it.’ she gestured with her head to the tents.

  ‘Another Vampire victim?’ Brad asked while making his canines stick out below his top lip.

  ‘Didn’t you check in with control when you arrived?’ she asked with exasperation. ‘You know the protocols Brad. How can you know what is happening if you avoid getting a brief?’

  He smiled and waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially. ‘I quite like the idea of a vampire in Maidstone. It adds a bit of badly needed cool and hipness to the dreary landscape. Vampires are cool, right? Besides, the Chief can eat my pants.’

  ‘If you are a teenage girl and a virgin and have watched too much Twilight then maybe vampires are cool. Otherwise they are for geeks with Buffy the Vampire Slayer fantasies.’ she looked him dead in the face ‘I doubt the victim will agree that vampires are cool.’ This was a little hard on him, a little banter around horrible events is completely normal, a coping mechanism, but he needed to reel it in for his own good.

  ‘Well, now that you are here you can stand watch on this lonely, boring path while I get warm, get some blood back into my limbs and get a cup of tea. I’m off to see what is going on.’ With that she headed over to the tents covering the body.

  Rochester High Street. Thursday 23rd September 0830hrs

  I was oblivious it the latest murder at this point and was sat in a coffee shop opposite my office in Rochester High Street sipping a fresh, strong brew while reading the papers. I should probably introduce myself though since this story is largely about me. My name is Tempest Danger Michaels. You are probably thinking ‘What a ridiculous name.’ Most people do.

  It was not of my choosing of course, you understand how it works. As a child, I thought nothing of it until I started school and the reactions began. Of course, I introduce myself as Tempest, which raises the odd eyebrow but little more than that. It is not until my middle name is discovered that real comments begin.

  My Father explained that he had wanted me to have a memorable name that would assist me in life. Personally, I think he watched too many adventure films and got carried away with romantic notions of heroes saving the day. I admit that I have used the line “Danger really is my middle name” and proceeded to prove it a few times as an adult by producing my driving licence and that once or twice it has resulted, part way at least, in getting me laid. So, I guess there are advantages and disadvantages to my name as much as there are to any other. The problem generally is that people assume I have changed my name, that I chose it myself because I wanted to say “Danger is my middle name” before diving out of a window or something equally moronic.

  Now that I have explained about the name I am still faced with the unfortunate task of telling you what I do for a living. I have my own business and that of course always sounds good, but when you are on the second date and the lady wants to hear more about you there is simply no good way of telling her that you are a paranormal investigator. The reactions have been entertaining I suppose. Some freeze and ask me to repeat myself, some laugh and ask me what I really do. One called me a total loser and walked straight out of the restaurant. However, not one lady has ever been impressed with my current job. Doubtless you are on their side but let me explain how it came about and let me first reassure you that I in no way believe that the paranormal exists.

  My two-room office sits above a cheap, and by all accounts crap, travel agent in Rochester High Street. The location is fantastic though sitting in the shadow of the Cathedral and surrounded by amazing architecture. Outside my door are myriad public houses, restaurants and shops selling baked wares, the smells from which combine to assail the nostrils and imbue hunger. The pavements are cobbled, the mere fact that it is a tourist location means it is always clean and litter free and at different times of the year, such as Christmas it is delightfully decorated and cheer inducing.

  The office is rented from the owner of the travel agent, a chap that appeared to have been boil washed. Tony Jarvis Travel was a sorry little place which might have been a booming business twenty years ago, but had the appearance of a shop lost in time and purpose. The décor and displays were at least a decade old and poor Tony had the haunted look of a man that had already given up. Mousy, thinning ginger hair and a very pale complexion added to a tiny frame led to my boil washed analogy. I had heard his wife, had to be a wife because no one else would speak so harshly to a person, berate him for not trying hard enough to bring in customers. Despite her feelings on the matter a slow, but steady stream of pensionable age citizens shuffled in and out.

  Anyway, I lost the point there. I joined the British Army as a young man and made a good career of it. However, they very generously offered me a substantial sum of money to leave during one of their draw down periods and I took it. I was mid-thirties by then and was due to end my contracted twenty-two-year career at forty anyway. The pay out from the voluntary redundancy combined with my gratuity and immediate pension benefits made my bank account look quite healthy so I felt no desperate rush to move into my next career. I had no idea what I wanted to do after the Army anyway, so for a period I bummed around walking my dogs, visiting places I had only seen on TV and doing a bit of DIY to the house I had bought as an investment a few years ago. This went on for a few months until my Mother asked, “Are you planning to never work again?”

  My Mother generally didn’t leave much wriggle room, so I set about find
ing a job. Disinterested in virtually everything that was on offer to me it was only when a friend enquired whether I had considered setting up my own business that I hit upon the idea of being a private investigator. I didn’t come up with the idea all by myself; it was not an epiphany or lightning bolt moment, instead I happened to be leafing through a magazine designed for forces personnel leaving the services and looking for new careers. There I found a half-page advert for starting your own investigation business. Curious, I grabbed the yellow pages and discovered that in my local area, which had several million people in it, there was not one private investigator advertised. This, I considered meant there was a niche market, a gap, an opportunity and thus I applied to take the course and buy the equipment.

  When considering what to call the business I immediately hit upon the name Blue Moon Investigation Agency and could not work out where I had got it from. A quick google search revealed that it was the name of the agency in Moonlighting, an eighties TV series that I had watched on reruns as a teenager. It was the show that launched Bruce Willis into the limelight. I saw no reason why I should not use it and it had a certain cool vibe to it so the decision was made.

  Anyway, I contacted the Yellow pages and they were jolly expensive, so I went with a local newspaper that advertised local businesses. Best to start out small and keep the overheads down was my thinking. Life likes to laugh at my plans though so what happened was the paper ran my advert under the title Paranormal Investigation instead of Private Investigation. In a loud and somewhat apoplectic voice, I asked them how this happened the day the paper came out. They said that the girl writing the ad up saw the Blue Moon name and wrote paranormal without even noticing she had got it wrong. They apologised and made some placating noises, offered to run my advert correctly for a month for free, that sort of thing. The paper was published and in circulation though so for the next two weeks I would be a paranormal investigator at the Blue Moon Investigation Agency.

  I remember being distinctly irked about the advert and sitting in my office convinced that I could just shut up shop until the advert ran correctly again in two weeks’ time. Well, I was wrong. The morning the advert ran I received my first phone call at 0912hrs and had a further three enquiries the same day. I have enjoyed a steady stream of business clients ever since.

  That was six months ago. I kept the business name, kept the advert running and keep wondering if maybe I need to take on additional staff. Mostly I investigate strange events which turn out to be one too many vodkas, but mixed in with the stupid are cases that take some effort to solve. Included in this list have been a man that was attacked by a werewolf, which of course turned out to be a drugged-up, hairy, homeless person with no shirt, a couple that had suffered a series of bad luck incidents and believed they have been cursed by their great Aunt Ida (who is definitely a witch, she has a black cat), but were just plain unlucky and an old lady that who was being kept awake by ghostly noises but turned out to have a flatulent dog.

  Knowing with utter conviction like any sane person, that the whole paranormal world is a load of fantastic nonsense meant that I could ignore exploring the possibility that a werewolf was actually running around Chatham or Aunt Ida really was a witch throwing curses at her lesser relatives and thus find a solution to each case that generally presented itself as obvious once the paranormal had been discounted. The best bit was that people paid me to politely point out how daft they were.

  Today was a day like any other day. It was a Thursday, so my internal calendar was programmed for me to be doing some form of work but on this particular Thursday I had no live cases. Despite that I had risen early, lifted some weights and walked the dogs. I was now sat in a coffee house opposite my office reading the news and relaxing with a cup of tea. The front page of the Times was mostly dedicated to further trouble in Syria with a large picture of the new Princess baby being held for the camera at her first outing. It was nothing that I found noteworthy

  I switched to a local paper, the one that ran my business advert actually. On page four, just after a report of a stolen river boat, I found an interesting headline which declared “Bluebell Hill Big Foot?” above a grainy picture of a blob on a landscape. The first few lines gave the usual overview of the entire story, which was about reports of a large beast that had been seen several times in the last few weeks. Kent has a lot of country side, but not so much that a Sasquatch could be living in it with no one noticing. The paper was not given to tabloid nonsense though, so I read on. The first sighting had been three weeks ago, on a Sunday afternoon. Mr and Mrs McCarthy of Aylesford had been walking their Labrador, when they saw a large, hairy bipedal creature walking upright no more than thirty metres away. It disappeared into the treeline before Mrs McCarthy, fifty-seven, could get her phone out to take a picture. The Labrador gave chase but returned when they called it back. Clearly shaken they stated that the creature was not a bear, which was their first thought, but moved like a man and by judging the apparent height of the Beast against the trees they estimated its height at over seven feet. There were no footprints, they said because of the recent dry period and hard ground. The creature was muscular around the thighs and shoulders and thick at the waist. They did not report the sighting until a local radio station ran a story a week ago following several other sightings. The radio had brought in local Doctor of Zoology and second person to have made a sighting, Dr Barry Bryson. Their Expert witness had apparently supported the notion that there could indeed be a large bipedal mammal living in Kent, but was quoted as having said “The United Kingdom has over seven hundred thousand hectares of forest, most of it linked to support wildlife migration patterns. That there are creatures we have not yet discovered, living right next to us, is highly likely. Siting’s of a creature matching what I saw have been reported several times before in the same area over the last few decades. It is entirely tenable that a large nocturnal bipedal mammal exists and that we have not seen it because it lives underground and only ventures out at night to forage.” Was there a big foot living in the Kent Weald? Where had it come from? The article went on to recount in less detail the reports of three other persons that had claimed to have seen the Big Foot. Each one reported more or less the same description. Dr Bryson had gone on to tout a novel that he had written loosely based on the subject. When asked if he felt the creature posed a threat his response was “Absolutely. It is most probable that this creature is either carnivore or omnivore, it is doubtful that it would see a human as a viable meal but if startled it may attack as a defensive measure.”

  I looked up as the door chimed. Two young ladies dressed for office work came in chatting. Both were pretty, but a little young for further attention.

  I cast my gaze back to the article. Dr Barry Bryson, Manager at Kent Predator and Prey Park, a failing local wildlife park just outside Maidstone had seen the creature from his car, he claimed. Driving to work early on a Tuesday morning he had suffered a puncture and pulled over onto the hard shoulder of the A229 to deal with it. It was early morning, so traffic was very light and he spotted the creature moving away from him. He pursued it and found a giant footprint perfectly preserved in thick mud where the Big Foot had disappeared into the wood line. The print measured over eighteen inches in length and showed five toes with no claws. The writer proceeded to discuss what creatures in the natural kingdom could leave such a print, concluding with none other than the North American Big Foot. The footprint was shown in a picture which was better quality than the grainy photograph shown earlier and was considered to be fairly concrete evidence that something was out there.

  The story had not attracted the interest of National press yet. It was the first I had heard of it, which made me feel like I was failing in some way since I am the only paranormal investigator in the book. Since it was probably a homeless man or a chap out shooting ducks illegally and wearing a camouflage suit I was not going to let that trouble me too much.

  Sat there pondering whether I should pop to th
e gents now or wait until I had walked the fifteen metres to my office I was interrupted by my phone receiving a text: ‘Third vampire victim found by the river 200m south of River Angel Pub. Fresh scene, go check it out.’ the text read.

  It had been sent by Sharon Maycroft, a former several nights stand and current local newspaper journalist for the very paper I held in my hands. Sharon was one of the few that accepted my profession without the slightest interest as it had no impact on what she wanted me for, which was mostly sex, but had on occasion resulted in conversation. It had been more than a year since I had last seen her, but we moved in the same social circles occasionally and had an amicable relationship. She clearly believed I would be interested and was very kindly supplying me with information.

  Would the information from Sharon require reciprocation? If so would that mean a nocturnal activity session? Buoyed by the thought of that I folded the paper and returned it to the little rack on the wall. I had discovered some time ago that an old school-friend, a chap I met on my very first day in school in fact, was a PC in the Maidstone police force and had utilised the connection a few times to get vital nuggets of information. I flicked to his number and pressed the green button to dial his mobile.

  Calling Darren Shrivers was displayed on the phone but it did not connect. When it switched to voicemail I hung up and tried the number I had for his work desk. It rang briefly and was answered by a female voice.

  ‘PC Callwell.’ was all I got.

  ‘This is Tempest Michaels calling for PC Shrivers.’

  ‘May I ask what it is pertaining to?’

  ‘I’m an old school-friend, I am just calling to arrange meeting for a few beers.’ I lied rather than compromise him in any way. ‘Please don’t drag him away from anything he might be doing, I can catch him later. Or could I leave a message for him?’ I suspected she would not disturb him if he was busy anyway.