Andy looked back at the screen, with the words sitting there, impotent, in front of him. He couldn’t get the piece to sound the way he wanted, or spooky or interesting enough. In his head it sounded good, exciting, edgy and a sure hit with the public. On screen, it looked like crap.
“Fuck it…” he muttered. Let Luke rewrite it. It was the reporter’s job to make it sound more interesting, not his; he was not a writer, nor did he want to be one.
As Andy stood up, his head began to slowly fill with intrusive thoughts of Rachel, curled up in a ball on the floor, with blackness everywhere. He walked to the bed and frowned. Picking up his phone, he decided to call her; he wasn’t sure why, but he felt he needed to check in. It rang for a moment, and then the dial tone changed; the sound reminded him of an overseas call. There was a long purr then a click, a long purr then a click. He started to feel uneasy, but carried on waiting. After a loud click at the end, he heard rasping breathing.
“Rachel? Rachel? Is that you? It’s Andy… Are you OK?” He was starting to panic. There was nothing good about the sound coming from the other end of the line. The breathing became quieter, followed by a long, feeble moan. “Rachel? Are you ill? Shit!” He didn’t know what to do. Maybe she had experienced another brain bleed; he needed to see if she was OK.
High-pitched laughter erupted from the earpiece, like a crazed, chattering primate…
Andy hung up, grabbed his keys and swiftly left the house. Something was wrong. He knew it. After jumping into his car, he sped off towards Rachel’s flat, with his heart racing and the sick taste of bile burning the back of his throat as he drove. The road seemed more empty than usual; the street sounds were quieter and muffled, similar to when heavy snow had fallen.
Within twenty minutes, he pulled up outside her flat. It was in darkness. He got out of the car, hopped up the steps and knocked on the door.
“Rachel? Rachel?” he called frantically.
Even though he was sure the door was locked closed, when he knocked again, he noticed it was open an inch. After pushing it gently, he entered the darkness of the hallway.
“Rachel? Are you OK? Jesus…” He had visions of her dead in bed or on the floor somewhere. When his father had died, he had been urged to go and see him lying in the chapel of rest, but Andy had refused. He had only been a young man at the time, but he had known for certain that he wanted the last mental image of his father to be one of him alive and laughing, not waxen-faced, cold and dead in a coffin.
Ahead, he saw the kitchen; an odd, purple haze was coming out of the door in wisps. Slowly, he crept towards it, his mind racing. Had she killed herself with some odd fumes or something?
Looking around the doorframe, he saw her. Just as in his mind’s eye, back in his room, she was on the floor on her knees, with her head lowered as if in a yoga prayer position. Above her was a swirling, thick, black mist, as dark as ink and totally impenetrable, with an outer layer of what looked like softly glowing, purple dry ice.
He just stood there, stunned. He had never seen anything like this. What the hell was it? Had Rachel been pissing about with Ouija boards or something? He wasn’t scared, because he didn’t fully understand what he was looking at, but it seemed to have some control over her. It was clearly some kind of paranormal thing, that much was for sure.
He took a deep breath and bellowed, “Step forth ye spirit…” but held off asking it to show itself, as it was apparent that it was actually showing itself enough already; any more showing of itself might be a very bad idea indeed.
The dark black and purple mist that was enveloping Rachel seemed to freeze in mid-air. He heard Rachel gasp gently as she was engulfed by the smog.
“Begone, vengeful spook. Leaveth this place,” he commanded as he edged his way towards Rachel, his head filled with the thought that he should have brought his special Stetson. As he got closer to the mist, every bone in his body started to ache, and it was as if time was slowing down. It felt like minutes passed before he managed to get to Rachel’s limp body, though it must have been only seconds. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her towards the kitchen door.
Andy thought the mist would somehow stop him, but it didn’t seem to. He dragged her out the door and along the hallway. As he neared the front door, he had visions of it being stuck shut, as often seen in horror films, but it opened easily enough, and they got out into the street.
Once out into the colder air, Rachel began to revive. He sat her on the steps and propped her up against the handrail, to prevent her from slumping onto his shoulder in an overly intimate fashion.
Coughing, she opened her eyes slowly. “Wha… what happened?”
“I don’t know; some kind of entity is in your flat… At least, that’s what I think it is,” Andy confirmed.
“Oh God.”
“Are you OK? What happened?”
“I can’t remember. I went to the kitchen to get a drink, and I… I remember feeling faint. I fell to the floor, then the face… it was over me…” She turned to look at him.
He could see she had a bruise on her cheek, probably from falling.
“Can you get rid of it?” asked Rachel. “You are a paranormal expert, after all.”
A paranormal expert Andy was not. He bit his lip a little. Most of the so-called hauntings he visited were either in the mind of the person who called him, which accounted for 85% of his visits, or were caused by something very normal like a knocking pipe, an inquisitive magpie or buildings just making the normal creaking noises that they do; they were not paranormal in nature at all. He had experienced a couple of cases where, to be honest, there was an element of paranormal behaviour about them, but he had resolved them more through luck than proper investigation or exorcism. He wouldn’t have a bloody clue what to say to the mist, entity or whatever it was.
“Andy… can you get rid of it?”
“Why do you think it’s haunting you?” Andy questioned.
She wiped her nose with her sleeve. “I first saw the thing in the sheikh’s house, at the top of his stairs; I think it kind of followed me home. Can entities do that?”
“I guess they can do what they want. Maybe it felt drawn to you or something…”
“Oh God.” She buried her face in her hands, and then looked up. “You can get rid of it, can’t you?”
“At least you managed to get to the phone when I called you, thank God.”
“The phone? What phone? What do you mean?”
“I just thought you were in a bad way, I don’t know why, so I rang you… You answered, remember? But your breathing sounded a bit dodgy. I thought maybe you were having a bit of a funny turn, because you started laughing.”
Rachel looked at him. “I didn’t answer anything; my phone is on charge in the bedroom. I don’t have any family and no kids, so there’s no need to have it to hand; no one would ring me… I didn’t answer any phone. I went into the kitchen, and the thing was there.”
What the hell had answered the phone then? Andy peered back through the crack of the open front door. Whatever the entity thing was, it appeared to have gone now, from what he could see. The mist certainly wasn’t present anymore.
Silently, just below where Andy and Rachel were sitting, behind the steps and shrouded by darkness, stood Dr Maxwell. It was unusual for a ghost to worry about being out of sight – being seen wasn’t much of a problem for a spirit, as most people couldn’t see him – but he knew Rachel could, so he kept down low.
He often watched her house at night, being as he never slept. He thought about her in there, alone; how he wanted to go up the steps, slide through the door and see her. But he never did. He was also quite worried about the Jewish men who gathered regularly outside her house. He had managed to fob them off last time, saying there were not enough of them in their crowd to have much effect. The rabbi appeared to take it to heart and left; maybe, upo
n reflection, this had been without enough argument for his liking. As far as Dr Maxwell was concerned, there surely weren’t enough dead Orthodox Jews in the area to make the group much larger, so there was hardly a great risk of them returning with double the number. It hadn’t been the greatest idea he’d had for dispersing the chanting men, but it seemed to have worked, at least for now.
Tonight, he had been standing in the street as usual, watching the sleepers curling up on the pavement or going in nearby houses, pretending to enter the embrace of slumber, like fools. But then he had seen Andy turn up and rush to Rachel’s front door. He wanted to follow Andy in, but decided it might be more prudent to stay outside. He didn’t like to interfere with the lives of the living; it wasn’t his place. But, in Rachel’s case, he would sometimes make an exception. After all, she was interfering with the lives of the dead.
He had heard their entire conversation afterwards. It appeared that an entity had now lodged in Rachel’s flat, and had clearly followed her from somewhere that she and that blasted Andy had visited; what did she say, a sheikh’s house? His face darkened a little; this was the price to pay for interfering in what did not concern them.
Dr Maxwell had never been interested in the Middle East. He had known of fellow doctors travelling to the land of scalding sand and blazing sun, to seek out cures and do research. But, in his view, the hard way of life, dangerous infections and terrible heat in that part of the world (he hated heat) had convinced him to not follow in their footsteps. He had never met a sheikh, nor did he want to.
He briskly walked away, hoping Rachel would not look up and see him; it was clear that Andy could handle the situation, and it did look like the entity had run out of steam. Rachel obviously needed help; her power was going to get her in trouble if she wasn’t careful. Perhaps this entity was what she was alluding to when they spoke together on the hospital benches. He had been stupid and played it down, confirming it was a sprite, but this was no sprite. At least there was something good in this: an entity wasn’t good news, but there were things far, far worse than that in the underworld. If Rachel had an entity attached to her, she would be able, somehow, to get rid of it. There were things that simply couldn’t be destroyed or got rid of. Things could be worse indeed.
He had heard Rachel mention the name of the sheikh once before: Sheikh Mohammad bin al-Rahman, he believed his name was. There couldn’t be many men called that in London, so he would ask Henry to help him find the address. Then what? He hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Henry was a nuisance most times, but, in finding out information in the world of the living, he had become very useful indeed. Henry had become especially taken by the new invention of the internet. William did not understand the internet at all; many ghosts were afraid of it, what with its magical powers of connecting those all over the world at great speed, the amount of information it held and how it was accessed by using a machine called a computer, or other similar contraption. William had looked at a computer once, trying to work out how the steam that powered it entered the system; he had seen a small plastic string attached to it, and had assumed the steam somehow went through that. But Henry enjoyed finding out how it worked; he even once foretold how one day it might be possible for spirits to merge with the internet and become as one.
Ghosts in the machine indeed. It was not to Dr Maxwell’s taste at all. Give him a pretty young woman singing at a piano any day; blasted modern inventions.
Chapter 38
It had taken Henry just one day to find the address of the sheikh. He had told Dr Maxwell he had used the internet and discovered a story about a big celebration that had been held at the sheikh’s house to mark the acquisition of an important racehorse. The street name had been in the piece and, after that, the residence had been easy to find.
Henry had insisted forcefully on accompanying William to the palatial home, and, at first, due to misjudgement, the pair had manifested in the gents’ toilet of a nearby downmarket public house. A quick adjustment later, and they reappeared in the magnificent courtyard.
Henry tugged at his wig. Today, as always, he was – in Dr Maxwell’s opinion – dressed garishly. Wearing a fancy, large, red coat, trimmed with gold edging, white hose on his legs, and large, black buckled shoes, he looked quite the dandy. William even fancied he saw a trace of lip stain at his mouth.
The doctor thought about remarking that Henry looked more like a maid than a boy, but then decided against it.
“So, what are your plans whilst here, Doctor?” Henry asked.
“I am unsure. I am going to go into the house, see if I can find out any more about the entity that has attacked Rachel, and then go. I do not plan to stay for long,” Dr Maxwell explained.
“I will accompany you.”
Abruptly, William’s eyes went round with silent alarm.
“Er… no; no, Henry you are best placed to stay here. Keep a watch on the courtyard, so as to see who comes and goes.”
Unconvinced, Henry sat on a small stone lion under a weeping willow tree; he didn’t look happy.
“Very well. I will remain here, but if you are longer than the turn of an hour, I will come for you.”
“Indeed,” muttered Dr Maxwell. William was unsure how Henry, who, if he remembered correctly, was from the 1700s, could possibly know when an hour had passed. Did they have watches back then? If so, did Henry come back in spirit form with his own timepiece? William remembered in life that he had a fine golden pocket watch that had been presented to him from the College of Surgeons. When he died and came back in spirit, it seemed the watch had not returned with him. For some reason, known only to God, William walked the land of the dead with only two remnants of his old life; these were an old handkerchief and a miniature of his mother-in-law. But no pocket watch. No matter how hard he tried to imagine it, the watch would not appear. The last thing he would have wanted to take into the spirit realm was any memory of his mother in law, perhaps God was trying to prove some kind of point.
Leaving Henry to the now familiar whittling stick, Dr Maxwell slipped silently through the main doorway. He looked about at the opulent hallway and staircase. Walking slowly down the entrance hall, he turned his head into the living area, and then walked in unhurriedly.
He had visited some exquisite houses of wealth in his lifetime, the homes of important surgeons and heads of state, but this was by far the most splendid modern living space he had ever seen. Large, framed paintings adorned the walls, thick carpets and polished floors were underfoot, and there was gold everywhere, like the inside of a mythical palace from a storybook.
In the corner of the enormous room sat a smallish, older, Saudi Arabian man, dressed in a flowing, white robe and headpiece. Around him, were five younger men, again Saudi Arabian, dressed in the now familiar identikit robes. William drew closer and watched the older man as he waved some papers in the faces of the others – this was probably Sheikh al-Rahman – and he appeared slightly angry. Speaking in quick, fluent Arabic, one of the other men tapped at an iPad and held it up, pointing to a graph displayed on the screen, which was presumably meant to appease the sheikh. Instead, Sheikh al-Rahman’s voice rose to a chattering crescendo as he threw some of the papers on the lap of one of the other men and began waving his hands about.
Bored, William left the living room and looked down the hallway. Slowly, his interest was drawn to the sweeping, large staircase; after pausing to glance back at the shouting sheikhs, he ascended the stairs.
On the landing, he stopped and looked towards the spotlessly clean wall that faced him. Touching it with his fingers, he recoiled; something paranormal had been here, perhaps the entity, but maybe something else. Before his mind could follow this train of thought for too long, his interest was gently tugged by a large, gold-framed door to his right.
Slipping through the door, he found himself in what was clearly an important person’s bedchamber; look
ing around, he saw the usual colour scheme of gold and red covering just about every surface: the floor, walls, chairs, etc. As he went to walk further into the room, he saw her.
She was an exquisitely beautiful woman in her mid-to-late twenties, with long, thick, brown hair tumbling down her back, and was wearing a small vest top and loose-fitting, black, silk drawstring trousers. With pale skin and bright, brown eyes, she was half sitting, half lying on the bed, reading a thick, bound book.
At that very moment, he saw her, and she looked up and saw him. Both started, with William stepping back and the girl visibly jumping, causing her book to smack onto the floor.
It took a good ten seconds for William to realise she could see him. Recovering swiftly, he reached for his hat to lift it by way of introduction and apology, realised he had not put a hat on that day, and slowly dropped his hand to his side.
“Mistress, my apologies. I am not used to being visible to the living,” he offered.
“So I see,” she said aloud.
“My name is Dr William Maxwell, from East London; I died in a fire.”
She sat up unhurriedly and signalled that he should sit in a large chair in front of her. As he sat, she said, “I am sorry to hear that. I am Laya, wife of Sheikh al-Rahman…” She paused, her eyes unfocussed for a second. “Well… one of the many wives of Sheikh al-Rahman. You haven’t come here to see me I suspect…”
“No, madam… no… Unfortunately not… I have a… friend… I believe she came here. Her name is Rachel Holloway; she sees the dead…” He was still contemplating being in the presence of another living person who could see him. He wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not. Dr Maxwell always preferred to be in the shadows, and anonymous, both during his lifetime and deathtime.
“Like me.” She smiled at him.
He was taken by her beauty, and her dark-brown eyes were like small pools; a man could find himself falling in if he weren’t careful. “Indeed… ahem… yes. She came here a while ago with a nincompoop called Andy Horton; do you remember them?”
Seeing Things Page 22