by Brian Hughes
“Dustpan an’ brush from Gerald’s ’Ardware.” Jess held up the instruments for examination. He was not, on the whole, impressed.
“And Madam Victoria’s pet tortoise, Rupert,” he added for good measure, holding up a shoebox with several holes in the lid.
“Yes...” Ben frowned. “I’m not convinced of that tortoise’s ability to detect the dead you know? Cats and dogs, yeah sure. I’ll go along with that. But it’s hard to imagine a tortoise cowering in the corner of some haunted mausoleum howling.”
He noticed the look of growing frustration on Jess’ balaclava surrounded head and hastily continued with the catalogue. “Elysium Spirit Enticer and Reinforced Trap.”
“Shoe box containin’ a bit of old cheesecake.”
Doubt crept back into Benjamin’s mind. “We’re not exactly over equipped are we? I mean, I wouldn’t like any menacing Astral Warrior hordes filling their spectral Y fronts from the threat of our advanced technology.”
Whereupon Jess reached the end of his tether. His large, hairy knuckles pounded hard on the latticed panes with an ominous accompaniment of high-pitched cracks.
“Stop bloody moanin’ and let’s just get the job done!” His face became lost in an expanding mushroom of breath.
Benjamin stood on tiptoe. He could just make out a shape hurrying anxiously down the hallway. A blurred, amoebic form beyond the yellow glass that looked vaguely female.
He rocked back on his heels as the door inched cautiously open, letting the tiniest crack of light spill out. It was accompanied by a female head that at the sight of Jess’ imposing red face hesitated.
Then Mary’s fear came flooding back with a vengeance. “QUICKLY! You must help! My poor little boy’s gone!”
Under pressure, as opposed to any other time, Jess was always quick to respond. His normally lethargic nature tended to stiffen into resolve. Especially if there was a reasonably attractive woman to impress.
“Out o’ the way old bag,” he muttered discourteously, taking his machismo to insulting new depths. He hewed Mary aside and forced his way into the house. “Let the professionals through!”
Mr Wambach knelt beside Joseph’s cot, his hands meshed so tightly together that his knuckles resembled a row of embarrassed oysters. The prayer he was babbling incoherently was brusquely interrupted. The bedroom door exploded into the room in a shower of splinters off the end of Jess Hobson’s Doc Marten.
After a struggle to dislodge itself, the boot disappeared. With all his weight concentrated behind one shoulder, Jess smashed the rest of the door out of its frame. Hinges and shards of timber crashed onto the carpet.
Mr Wambach looked up, terrified, as Jess proceeded to charge headlong into the room. He skewed to a halt on the rug, taking stock of the situation behind a set of glinting teeth.
“C’mon get me y’ phantom bugger!” he shouted at the house in general, his sledgehammer fists clenched.
Mrs Wambach nervously appeared behind him as the sawdust started to settle. “Actually the door was unlocked.”
Jess spotted Mr Wambach in his subservient posture, decided that ‘The Time for Thinking was Over: This was a Time for Action’ and charged the balding accountant with the delicacy of an enraged bull. He wrestled Jacob’s bony head into an arm lock and, with the sort of deftness normally associated with pickpockets, pulled the child’s water pistol from his pocket. Then he rammed the damp barrel against Jacob’s cheek.
“Where’s the kid y’ disgusting, bulb ’eaded freak? Or would y’ rather suffer a face full of holy...” Jess suddenly remembered Mrs Wambach in the doorway and decided against using language that might offend her. “...Babies’ Billy?” he added, impotently.
Ben had entered the room and now stood over this tableaux with his arms folded.
“Excellent Jess. Our first client in eight months and you make the poor sod look like the prize winner of the Summer Fete’s Constipated Beetroot Contest.”
Ben enjoyed long-winded metaphors. God alone knows where he dredged them all up from. However, there was a certain amount of truth about his statement. The strangle hold on Mr Wambach’s head was fast turning it from pink to purple.
Mary approached the confusion meekly and leant down to talk to her startled husband.
“Jacob dear. These are the two young men from the ’Paranormal Research’ Agency.”
“Gleezed ’oo ’eet ’oo.”
Ben placed a reassuring hand on Jess’ shoulder. “Would you like to release Mr Wambach now Jess, before his head ejaculates?”
Embarrassed, Jess released his grip and stood up straight, leaving his victim to cough up what felt like part of his oesophagus.
“Can’t be too careful with demonology, Mrs Wombat. Just letting the bast...” He coughed. “...The buggers understand that we mean business.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed and his mouth stretched sardonically. “Yes...I wasn’t aware that the sort of business we were in meant spraying potential investors with infant urea. There’s an old expression I heard somewhere that runs, ‘You stupid, gonad-headed git!’”
“There’s another old saying that goes, ‘Shut it, before I dislodge y’r teeth with me steel toecap!’”
Mary sensed an argument brewing and tried to diffuse it. “Would you like a cup of tea or something?”
Jacob added his own diplomatic effort, to show that he felt no animosity for what had just happened. Unfortunately diplomacy was something that Jess had little time for.
“I’m afraid we don’t have any spirits in the house.”
“You tryin’ to be funny you old cretin?”
“No, I…”
“Well don’t!” Jess wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries. He’d been disturbed from a drunken torpor for this rubbish and he wasn’t best pleased. “Just you and Mrs Wanker get out and let us get on with our job,” he concluded bluntly.
The couple stared at him.
“Okay?”
With a couple of submissive nods the Wambachs left, supporting each other on the way through the door.
Time moves on. The hands on the clock crank forwards, brushing Brock the Badger’s nose. November 1st. 4:30 a.m. ‘Paranormal Investigation’ in progress.
Sort of.
Actually Jess Hobson is half-asleep in the kiddy’s armchair in one corner of Joseph’s nursery. It took a considerable amount of effort to contort his giant torso into those miniature folds. He’s going to suffer for that in the morning.
The chair is surrounded by a dozen empty lager cans, all crushed into the shape of Jess’ forehead. Several ashtrays piled high with dog ends can be discerned through the haze. Benjamin Foster turned the page of the newspaper with stealth, but the crackle was enough for Jess to open one eye.
“Mr and Mrs Womble got off then?”
“Yeah. I gave them a couple of Madam Victoria’s Horse Sedatives. That should do the trick.”
“I bloody ’ope so. The last person ’oo took one of them had to get Little and Large to their hospital bed to pull ’em out of it.”
Ben checked his watch, breathing down his nose in frustration. “Half past four in the morning and the closest we’ve come to any paranormal activity was that daddy long legs tickling your mouth when you fell asleep.”
Jess’ nostrils contracted as the memory swam disturbingly back. “Bastard.”
“What makes them do it?” Ben continued thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s a bit of a spasticky life anyhow, scrabbling about in peoples’ houses like Lena Zavaroni, and then suddenly, ‘Oh look. A white-hot light bulb. Let’s see if I can snap me spine on it!’”
Jess tucked himself up beneath a blanket of grumbles.
“Ben...” The shoulder came up to act as a duvet. “Shut y’ flabby gob son before I fill it in with me fist. I’m trying to get some shut eye here.”
A thought occured to the more actively participating partner. “Hold on a second. We’re on stakeout. Y’ can’t just go to sleep! What if something paranormal happens?”
“Like what? Like the spirit of the cranefly comes back to flutter pathetically round me ’ead?”
Jess thought for a moment, then added, “Actually, wake us up if that ’appens. It might land on a spectral light bulb or somethin’ an’ explode. It’ll be the only interestin’ thing that’s bloody ’appened this evenin’.”
Benjamin’s thoughts began to turn inwards. The newspaper wasn’t interesting enough to keep his attention. Bits of gossip about what priest had bonked what parishioner. Surely life was more important than that?
“You know I never expected it to be like this.” He muttered to himself. “Paranormal Investigators. Sounds so exciting doesn’t it?”
That was rhetorical. A look of resignation settled on his tired features and constructed a home there.
“Eight months of hanging around bored followed by four hours of monotony watching kamikaze invertebrates do the splits at a hundred miles an hour.”
“Ben, I know that you enjoy talking out of y’r arse, but it’s goin’ to be pretty difficult with me Doctor Marten wedged up it!” Jess tried to pull up the blanket, fumbled awkwardly, realised there wasn’t one there, and got cross. “So put a sock in it, pal. Before y’ get to examine y’r internal organs from an external point of view!”
Back to the newspaper then. Ah, back to the Jumbo Cryptic Crossword. Now there was something to curb the ruminations of an intellectually tired mind. Fishing out his pencil, Ben settled back. He folded the paper in half and smoothed it out on his torn kneecaps.
“He discovers the crease backwards and turns up unexpected.”
The pencil tapped his front teeth as he repeated the absurd statement whilst concentrating on the ceiling. It was an old habit that. And a pointless one. Ben had never yet found the answer to any of his problems amongst the rafters. Having said that, he had discovered a number of Jess’ old bubble gum pellets set into the mock-stucco work over the years.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he went on quietly, his features screwed up in a puzzled aureole. “He discovers the crease? What’s that? Some sort of reference to buttocks?”
“Will YOU BLOODY SHUT UP BEFORE Y’ GET TO EXPERIENCE Y’R FIRST TASTE OF YOUR OWN BOLLOCKS!”
That was enough of the crossword then. Ben placed the paper down on the child’s desk beside his arm. Then, in the full knowledge that overnight programmes consisted of awful adult gameshows that would offend the intelligence of primary school children, he reluctantly leaned over and turned on the telly.
Something dark filled the room.
A distorted face appeared on the screen. And laughed. A disturbing laugh. A disfigured face that seemed vaguely familiar. Older somehow. More bristles. Fewer teeth.
It spat its words in a husky, broken voice. “Now you will regret your stupid meddling, spawn of Satan’s loins!”
“Bloody Hell. Pete Waterman’s looking a bit rough.”
The head twisted, bulging as it drew nearer the front of the television.
“The foul rankness of your vile stench offends me, son of Foster.”
The voice chilled Benjamin’s marrow, sending messages directly into his brainstem, unearthing horrors he’d long since forgotten.
“Before the morrow is done you shall be returned to the earth for the worms to feast on.”
He was starting to suspect that something was wrong. (Editor's note: Hardly surprising really...) The suspicions grew stronger when he switched off the television and discovered that the face was still there.
He checked back in the direction of the tiny chair to see if Jess had fallen asleep.
“Er, Jess? I think that something paranormal is about to take place...”
“You are the product of an unhealthy bowel.” The grotesque head loomed into room.
Benjamin suddenly felt very peculiar. His lifetime experience seemed to be being drawn from his body and sucked through the speaker in a foggy scarf crocheted from his soul.
And there was nothing that he could do about it. The words ‘Unhealthy’ and ‘Bowel’ were ringing in his ears, his body turgid, his consciousness balanced on the edge of splitting.
The screen exploded.
Jess’ boot had collided with it.
Inside the television the head buckled and shook as glass shattered outwards onto the carpet. There followed an eerie, spiralling scream of “MUUUUuuuuummmmmyyyy’ that evaporated into the walls.
Then all was silent. Ben uncovered his head from where he’d adopted the foetal position and peered up at Jess standing over him, fists on hips and one eye screwed up so that he resembled Popeye.
“Well, I’ve ’ad me cornflakes this mornin’ y’ bugger! So shit off!”
Chapter Five: A Rhapsody in Black
7:30 a.m. Much later that morning. The curtains were undrawn at Mrs Prune’s. The dawn outside was just beginning in a symphony of golds and autumnal browns, but Mrs Prune had already had one Hell of a morning. She hadn’t time to bother with curtains, birdsong and such. After causing Ben and Jess so much trouble the previous night, she believed she owed them one.
And what better way of sorting out emotional problems than a good old hearty English breakfast? Mrs Prune was basically a stout old woman with her heart in the right place, even though some of her ideas on psychology might have strayed from the conventional.
Jess Hobson and Benjamin Foster sat at the kitchen table, their hands wrapped around their mugs of coffee. The smell of grilled sausage surrounded them in a comforting blanket.
Mrs Prune approached her boys with two plates, both heaped high with sausage and eggs. It was enough to make your arteries harden just to think about it.
“I ’ear you ’ad a bit o’ rumpus at the ’ouse next door, last night?”
Jess looked up, a moustache of froth lining his lip, and took the plate.
“Well,” he grumbled, squaring himself firmly against the chair back. “Benjamin’s pants expanded so much that ’ee could ’ave stood in the Rochdale By-election, but I won’t be losing too much sleep over it.”
Despite the flippant attitude there was a greater depth to his eyes this morning. “Just some goblinesque TV presenter oo’d been watching too much Jeremy Paxman.”
“There was something familiar about that face...” Ben clutched his mug as though it were a teddy bear. Mrs Prune laid down his breakfast before him and hobbled back to her oven.
“I just can’t place it.” Ben looked at Jess. “Those features. That half shaven head that resembled a gurning coconut.”
Jess was attempting to cram as much food into his mouth as he could in one go. Realisation began to dawn as to whom the hideous old man had resembled.
Mrs Prune returned to the table with her own contribution to helping bring down the EEC food mountain. She launched herself into the discussion.
“You know, w’en I was just a down trodden, rag-a-muffin girl...” She pierced a sausage so that it popped with a tiny release of air. “Nothin’ more than a gnat’s chuff to a Tom cat’s whisker, me grandfather used t’ tell me stories.”
Ben took another mouthful of coffee and swallowed. “He used to tell your grandmother stories as well from what I’ve heard.”
“Well, yes, those was different sorts o’ stories. Usually involvin’ large strumpets who ’ee was ’elping on account of ’em ’aving fallen over. No...”
She thought more earnestly and her voice dropped slightly. “These stories was about your great-granddaddies.”
Jess stopped eating, a half-chewed sausage in his mouth. It looked like a tortoise waking up. “My great-grandfather?”
“Ey, an’ Benjamin’s.” Mrs Prune leaned across the table. “They lived in this very ’ouse just over an ’undred years ago. At least, Samuel Foster did. Thomas ’Obson was always round ’ere though. ’Ee was one of the great Presbyterian ministers of the day.”
She sat back. “’Course things was very different then. All very plain an’ miserly like. Right pair of skinflints they was.”
Ben rested his chin on his fingers whilst Mrs Prune looked from side to side, conspiratorily. “Thomas ’Obson. Now there was a great bugger if ever there was one! Devoted ’is entire life to burnin’ old biddies.”
That seemed to have the desired effect. Ben and Jess were both gawking at her despite the histrionic pause.
“’Ad this ambition to purge Britain of Satan’s work, ’ee did.” She prodded her fork at them to emphasise the point. A circle of sausage dripped fat on the cloth. “Witches! ’Ee ’ated us lot wi’ a passion! Said ’ee wouldn’t be ’appy ’til every last one of us was dead. Very proud man. Nothing he liked more than throwing an octogenarian onto a pile o’ logs an’ puttin’ a light to it ’iself.”
She sat up straight, a sort of nod that was more of a wink signifying that she knew something most people didn’t. “The kiddies thought it was great fun.”
“Sounds like my sort o’ bloke.” Jess bit into a slice of fried bread and the grease dribbled down his red chin. “Gotta be a relative of mine.”
“’Ad ’is own ducking stool he did. Built one in his bathroom. If the old woman floated, she was guilty and her ’ead was chopped off! If she drowned, she was innocent an’ allowed to go free.”
“Yes...” Benjamin pushed his breakfast to one side. “There’s been one or two improvements in the legal system over the past few years, hasn’t there?”
“Many an old biddy was put to death just ’cos she ’ad a wart on the end of ’er nose, or a grimace ’cos of her piles. Then...” Mrs Prune’s voice became more vibrant. “One day, in a terrible fit of rage, Samuel Foster clubbed the great minister t’ death over dinner.”
Pause for thought.
“The sprouts must’ve bin over done or somethin’. Any’ow...an ’undred and one years ago yesterday, it was. In this very ’ouse. And they do say...” She leaned a little closer again. “That ’ee carved out ’Obson’s heart with a bread knife an’ hid it under the floor boards of the house next door.”
There followed several moments of silence.
“’Course...they could have bin lyin’.”