The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1)

by Robert Wilde

“Hello,” Joe said as he turned the machine on. A babble of voices came through.

  “Is Mr. Clarke there?” he asked. The babble went on, and on. Then finally someone said “why do you want him?”

  “Well,” and Joe grinned, “we have been able to prove his wife is a paedophile and her lover killed him. Both are now in custody awaiting trial, and we’ve even bought a copy of the newspaper to show you.”

  “That’s…good.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Clarke,” Pohl said, screwing up her face.

  “I’m not Clarke.”

  “Well who are you, and where’s Clarke? It’s not like he’d have wandered off.”

  The chatter now came to an end. “Tell them,” someone whispered.

  “Clarke went missing a few days ago.”

  “Missing? Disappeared?”

  “Yes. But worse than that, he was taken.”

  “Go on,” Dee said as the group zoned in. “Did someone dig him up?”

  “No. There was a van, and a group of people, two men and a woman. They had some sort of machine with them, and they were able to, well, err, grab Clarke and take him away.”

  “Someone kidnapped a ghost?” Nazir didn’t believe it.

  “Exactly that.”

  “What sort of machine?” Joe asked.

  “We don’t know, we weren’t paying attention at first, why would we, we just live here. But Clarke went over to see what was happening, they turned it on, and the next thing we know he was trapped and they all left.”

  “Do you have a registration number?”

  “No, just a big blue van.”

  “It didn’t have anything written on the side?”

  “We’re dead, not stupid, we’d have remembered that.”

  “Sorry, sorry. So a stolen ghost.”

  “Will you find him?”

  Joe smiled, “of course we’ll find him.” He didn’t add ‘because I want to learn all about this rival machine and get some answers’, although he thought it, and everyone else in the quartet knew he was thinking it too. Some even starting thinking it themselves.

  “We’ll get a reputation,” Pohl protested as Dee pulled the car up at a new location.

  “We’ve already got reputations,” Dee sighed.

  “We sure have,” Nazir grinned. “I’m considered a country wide expert in…

  “Yes, alright, we get it, you love cock.”

  “I was going to say electronic subterfuge, but clearly another reputation precedes me.”

  “Are you really that renowned?” Pohl asked.

  “Yes, although under an assumed name of course. I’m not stupid enough to log on under Nazir.”

  “And what is your assumed name?” Dee decided she’d indulge him.

  “Panda.”

  “Panda!?”

  “What’s wrong with Panda?”

  “It’s not exactly Skull Beast 600 or whatever people usually have in the web.”

  “I did consider Thundercock.”

  “Now that’s more like you,” Dee admitted and got out of the car.

  They were in another graveyard, and this one was the closest they could find on their maps to the place where Clarke was taken.

  “What are we looking for again?” Pohl checked.

  “We’re going to ask this lot if anyone’s been stolen. I’m sure they’d have noticed.”

  The group walked on in, this time finding a stone pavilion along with the benches. “We’re not classy enough to be buried here,” Dee moaned as they sat down.

  “It’s okay Dee, the worms will still eat you,” Nazir retorted.

  Joe switch on and a crowd of spirits gathered to ask what the machine was, could they hear, and could they take messages to the living, which soon filled up a side of Dee’s notebook. But it was then time for business.

  “Have any of you gone missing?” Dee asked.

  “Missing? Like we don’t know where they gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Well that didn’t work then.”

  “But two of us got kidnapped.”

  “That’s what I…” she breathed, “okay, they were kidnapped. By who?”

  “Two men and a woman in a blue van. Clean van, not your average van.”

  “Did you get a registration number?”

  “Yes, yes,” and there was a conflab, before one was handed over.

  “Excellent, that will help us greatly.”

  “Are they to do with you?” the spirits asked.

  “No, our project is much smaller and, Nazir why are you pulling a funny face?”

  Nazir was indeed scowling, and he’d pulled his phone out. “That registration number is funny, let me just check something…”

  “He puts those of us who’ve lived here all our lives to shame,” Pohl concluded.

  “…right, here we go, and…it’s not a real registration number. It just looks like one, to fool people glancing, but it doesn’t exist.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Pohl wondered.

  “Must be to stop idiots like us running a check on it.”

  “But what if the police saw it? Aren’t they going to realise? Or if they went into London, they’d get picked up.”

  “I know Joe, and here’s what I think. We’re dealing with someone really paranoid about being found out, so paranoid they’d cut this van loose if they were caught.”

  “Presumably the machine isn’t incriminating?” Pohl checked.

  “Unless it’s got plutonium in it, how many police are going to realise they’ve caught a ghost?”

  “Right, right, so we’re dealing with total paranoid bastards. That’s got to be an advantage, right?” Nobody agreed with Nazir.

  Chairman Malveo was sitting at his desk drinking a peppermint tea, when he heard a knock. There could only be Steve around at the moment, so he shouted for his secretary to come in. He did so, and had a piece of paper in his hands.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of this message?”

  “It’s from our agent in the field. He has detected something unusual about the group we thought were ghost hunters.”

  “I see, unusual ey?” and he took the paper. “What exactly constitutes unusual? God forbid a group of amateur bunglers actually sees a ghost.”

  “More talks to them.”

  “What? Talks…” and he read the paper. Then read it again. “This says the quartet are able to speak with the spirits via a machine they are carting round with them.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Are we quite sure our man is sober?”

  “Most definitely sir, most definitely.”

  “Well this is very interesting, and whatever they have certainly overlaps with what we have here.”

  “I thought so sir and brought it straight through. Shall we monitor them?”

  “No, no, acquire them and bring them in.”

  “Acquire… that’s what we do with the spirits sir?”

  “I know, but we must have this technology, it will blend so well with the rest of the project.”

  “Kidnap them then?”

  Steve looked at Malveo, and saw a hunger in his eyes. There was something going on here that the secretary wasn’t fully aware of. And it wasn’t good.

  “Yes, kidnap them. Alive of course.”

  “What did we do before mobile dongles?” Dee wondered entirely sarcastically as she drove along and Nazir used his laptop in the back.

  “We had boring car journeys and we asking if we were nearly there yet.”

  “Okay, it’s an improvement. What have you got?”

  “Even I need time to read it.”

  “Fine, let’s go for a coffee while you do.” Dee put her foot down and the car began to move.

  With a previously absent comic timing Joe asked “are we nearly there yet?”

  Dee concluded he must be feeling better. She drove to her favourite abandoned café, and they trouped in ordering coffees and four plates of all day break
fast, heart buster edition.

  “Okay, I think I’ve got something,” Nazir said. “Or rather the absence of something.”

  “Go on,” Dee said perplexed.

  “There is surprisingly little online about how to grab and move ghosts. Plenty of people wanting to see ghosts, plenty wanting them gone in an exorcism, but very few wanting to take a ghost with them.”

  “When you say few, how little?” Pohl asked.

  “In a niche subject, this is the mouse hole in the cellar. All I can find are tales of people’s spirits moving when their bodies were moved, nothing about rituals or machines or any way to do that.”

  “So we’re dealing with groundbreaking technology,” Joe said mostly to himself, obviously impressed.

  “Indeed.” But lunch was served, so everyone tucked in and tore through most of a pig and plenty of other tasty treats. When they finally finished Nazir eyed up the dessert menu.

  “You’re supposed to be searching,” Dee told him, and looked herself. “I think we’ll all benefit going out working than having a Chocolate Apocalypse.”

  “Spoilsport” Nazir moaned.

  “Hah, you watch your figure more than me!” Although, strictly speaking, Joe watched Dee’s figure more than Dee.

  They left and walked back to Dee’s car.

  “Explain to me how registrations work and don’t work,” Pohl asked.

  “Right,” Nazir said and pointed to a van, “you see that registration number, well, err, oh that one’s fake as well.” He then saw it was a blue van. “Oh fuck.”

  “Don’t move,” came a voice from behind them, and the group turned to see a semi-circle of men and women, all armed with pistols just removed from pockets.

  “Thank you for spotting that Nazir,” Dee dripped in sarcasm, “it’s not like we’ve been sat by a window for the last twenty minutes.”

  “Someone will see you?” Joe tried helpfully, aiming to put the gun people off.

  “Joe,” Dee whispered, “we just ate at a diner with so few people they don’t need to clean.”

  “Please get in the van,” came a forceful voice.

  “At least they’re politer than the last time I was abducted,” Joe told the group.

  “They haven’t stuck a syringe in my neck, I’ll give them that.”

  “In the van.”

  The journey took an hour, and the quartet knew this because they still had their watches and could check the time. They could have used their phones as these were still in their pockets, but the two men in the back of the van with their guns put foursome off looking. The gunmen sat with their backs to the door, while the four friends were arranged along the driver’s partition, and Pohl was sat a little further forward as she was just that little bit smaller.

  So far the gunmen had resisted any attempt at conversation, so topics like ‘where are we going’, and ‘why are you kidnapping ghosts’ were unanswered. And then Dee’s phone rang.

  As everyone turned to look at her, Dee looked at her pocket.

  “Is that the theme to The Bill?” Joe asked disbelieving.

  “Maybe.”

  “What’s The Bill?” Nazir asked.

  “Old TV show, about coppers.”

  “Ah, so Maquire is calling.”

  “Can I answer this?” Dee asked the gunmen, who shook their heads. “It’s my boyfriend,” she tried sweetly, and had never mastered flirting her way to results so they shook their heads again. “He a policeman?” she tried as a last result, and that brought a scowl but no solution. The phone rang for thirty seconds, stop, then ring for thirty seconds again. After that it finally rang off.

  “Persistent isn’t he,” Nazir said.

  “Yes,” Dee said proudly.

  “Is he like that in bed?”

  “This is neither the time nor the place.”

  When the hour was up the van pulled to a halt, moved again, then pulled to a halt, and the driver and passenger could be heard to get out. Then the back of the van’s door was knocked, opened, and everyone got out.

  The quartet found themselves stood in a car park, surrounded by tall trees which blocked out the road and everything beyond. All they could see was the white plastic and glass building which stretched off into the distance. “Well they shit on our old lab,” Joe sighed.

  “You sure it’s a lab?” Nazir asked.

  “Must be. This is another group of dodgy scientists.” Joe was wondering whether his own team would have counted.

  “We seem to be drawn to them like a fat kid to pizza.”

  “I prefer flies to shit,” Dee told Nazir.

  They were beckoned inside, marched through corridors, and shown into an office that was impressive for both its tidiness, and the number of model machines scattered about.

  “Hello, nice to see you,” said a tubby man who wore his weight well.

  As he shook their hands Dee pointed out “you do remember you’ve kidnapped us right?”

  “Yes, yes, but I’m sure we’ll be able to share knowledge which will make your trip worth it.”

  Dee doubted it. “Let’s start with your name.”

  “I’m Chairman Malveo.”

  “My daughter has a cat called that,” Pohl said.

  “One, it’s Chairman Meow,” Dee hissed, “and two, the idea is to not get us killed.”

  “No offence is taken. But how about you show me this marvellous machine of yours. In the backpack I take it?”

  “I’d rather withhold that information for now,” Joe explained.

  “I’m sure you realise that’s a little odd given we have you prisoners. Co-operation brings rewards.”

  “Then why don’t you go first?”

  “Very well, very well. Come with me,” and the group were led through the building, Malveo in front, armed men at the back, until they came to a long corridor. There were doors every so often all leading to the right, and large windows so you could look in.

  Malveo stopped at the first door. “In this room we have been working on, and perfected, a device for being able to capture ghosts. The spirits you are used to talking to, they’re tied down, hard to move. Our little device, which is self-powered and completely portable, will seize a ghost and allow us to move them.” The visitors nodded, looking at the little box which had pipes and wires running out of it. “We have created a case for more portable ones.”

  “I know how that goes,” Joe said out loud.

  “But you’ll want us to prove we can do it, so we have also developed this,” and they walked to the next window. “In here we have developed another device, sadly not portable, which allows us to see the ghosts we have captured.” As he waved his hand a white coated lady inside flicked a switch, and a green light appeared, and within was a twisting, struggling shape. “A spirit!” Malveo proudly announced.

  “Why are you doing this?” Joe asked, feeling cold.

  “Come to the next room, and here we are. This is the bank where we collect the souls,” and a light was on, revealing thirty tormented spirits trapped within the confines of their machines.

  “That doesn’t answer why.”

  “This last room does, look inside.”

  “That’s a prosthetic arm?”

  On looking through the window at the electronics inside, Dee had focused on a robotic arm which was sticking straight up from a table, its shoulder disappearing inside more machinery.

  “This is our pride and joy. We have developed a machine which can be controlled by a soul.”

  All looked at Malveo. “A soul? It can move the arm?”

  “Yes, under lab conditions at the moment, but yes.”

  “Amazing.”

  “So, please, how does your machine work?”

  “I don’t know,” and Joe looked down.

  “You don’t know? Did you steal it?”

  “No, no, I was on the team, I put it into the box. But none of us know how it happened. It was a total mistake.”

  Malveo scowled. “I have a top sec
ret laboratory spending millions of pounds in carefully sourced money, and you found it by accident?”

  “That’s basically it, yes.”

  Dee wasn’t feeling happy. “So, the fact you just told us all about your top secret project means we’re not making it home for tea?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Good thing we had such a large lunch,” Nazir said, looking on the bright side.

  Malveo ordered them searched, and their phones were removed, as was the machine which the Chairman was last seen taking into one of the lab rooms. The group were then led back down the corridor, into a small room with no windows and a door that was electronically locked behind them.

  “Did you see those souls?” Joe said.

  “Another laboratory, more locked doors. We need to get ourselves guns or something.”

  Pohl wasn’t keen on Dee’s suggestion. “Guns cause more problems than they solve. We’d probably have been killed in a firefight.”

  “Kung fu skills then. Would be handy if we could beat the shit out of a few people…hang on, you said no guns? You’re the woman who stabbed a bloke to shit.”

  “I’m learning and moving forward without violence.”

  “Bloody therapy.”

  “But did you see those souls,” Joe said again, louder, to the group.

  “Yes, we saw them,” Dee snapped.

  “No, really see,” and he looked her directly in the face: “those souls were distressed, tortured. They were no better than lab animals, captured to be experimented on.”

  “You never used animals,” Dee remembered.

  “No we did not.”

  “But what can we do, realistically? We’re stuck in a room.”

  “Working on it,” Nazir said, and they turned to find him fiddling with a small phone.

  “They removed our phones?” Pohl queried.

  “Only my main one, I keep a sneaky backup for emergencies.”

  “I dread to think where you’d hidden that,” Dee sighed.

  “Calling the police?” Pohl asked.

  “No, I, duck, people are leaving.”

  The group went into nonchalant mode, as five thirty pm had arrived and the science staff were knocking off. Nazir continued to work knelt down so close to the underside of the window he couldn’t be seen. And then the door went click.

  “We are in business,” he said rising, but Joe got to the door first.