Authors: Phil Chard
She looked at her watch:
1:23 a.m
.
Juliet had not even seen a CD player or stereo system in the house, but the song was being played at an ear-splitting level from somewhere within the house.
Her heart rate was quickening ―
it was
showtime
.
She shuffled from her makeshift bed onto the floor and switched on a light which momentarily dazzled her eyes. Her ears searched for the music’s origin; once tuned in, they led her to the foot of the staircase.
At the bottom of the staircase was a decadent three pane window which overlooked the garden outside. It was positioned with architectural precision, presenting anyone looking out with a picture-postcard view of the exterior garden. But at night, wonder became fear. The moonlight made sinister tree shadows on the grass. Where birds had rested during the day, now a madman could easily hide and lie in wait with an axe.
Juliet chided her imagination. There was work to do.
The song continued; it drew her in like a magnet. Her feet slowly thrust her forward. The music was amplified with every cautious step; it was accompanied by another beat; she could feel the quickening beat of her heart within her ribcage; her face was suddenly feeling flushed as images of Emily Houghton’s bludgeoned face entered her mind…
Stop.
She counselled herself and obeyed the voice. She was frozen on the staircase.
Deep breaths
.
She took exaggerated breaths for a minute.
The music carried on, oblivious to her struggles.
Calmer – and angry that she’d experienced fear – her steps resumed.
Ancestral voices fill the air…
The forest strips your senses bare…
Upon reaching the summit, she quickly reached for the light switch.
Click.
Nothing.
She retried, several times, all the time knowing the light was not going to come on.
Damn it
.
Juliet’s eyes tried to make sense of shapes in the darkness. As her eyes adjusted to the environment, familiar shapes started emerging from the fog of darkness. The upper floor was stately; the stairs led onto a square perimeter walkway surrounded by a guardrail balustrade. It was the kind of image that harked back to a thousand horror movie scenes where the hero or villain would crash through the guardrail and fall to their death; a twitching corpse on the ground floor, with legs twisted at unnatural angles.
The design was a pain, as well as eerie, you had to walk all the way around the perimeter to get to any of the rooms. At least the space was clutter free ― with the exception of the carved wooden sculpture of two Siamese cats entwined. On all sides of the perimeter walkway was a confusion of doors – ten in total.
Ancestral voices chant and plea…
The high volume easily identified the room of the song’s origin ― one of the empty bedrooms.
“I’m here to help.” Juliet tried to shout over the music, but her words were drowned out.
A dancing sibyl calls to me…
She walked towards the room, bypassing the tacky Siamese cats decoration.
Conscious mirage melts away…
Her bare feet were becoming icicles on the unforgiving wooden floor.
The secret rainbow covers me…
She stopped at the door; it was ajar by the smallest of margins. Her flat palm nudged it open another quarter inch. Encouraged by a view of emptiness inside, she nudged it open further. The room was still barren, exactly how she remembered it from the dozen or so reconnaissance trips of the house that she’d undertaken. Yet music was coming from somewhere in here.
She tiptoed inside, heartbeat gathering pace again. In the curtain-less window, a moonlit starry night stared back at her. There were two new objects in the room: a chair in the right hand corner and a small compact CD player in the opposite corner, the power cable snaking around to a plug socket nearby. Both objects were new to the room. Her eyes moved between chair and CD player, trying to forge a logical argument for how they had made their way in here. There were none; the spook had finally arrived and it was playing games.
Secret rainbow tap the vein…
The speakers struggled tinnily against the volume.
Secret rainbow cover me…
She jabbed down on the stop button on the CD player and then took in the silence, studying the room for movement, inch by inch. The only noise now came from the whistling wind, which was softly buffeting the window that she was sure had been closed tightly.
She repeated her mantra, “I’m here to help.”
There was nothing; no movement, no sound except the window in the wind.
“I’m here to help.” The words were uttered softly, as if she were a mother reassuring a child with a grazed knee.
The wind still toyed with the window; apart from that the room was silent. Seemingly resigned to failure, Juliet sighed, made her way over to the window and locked the catch tightly.
When she turned back from the window, the sight that greeted her was happening too quickly for her to react to it: a second after registering that the chair was hurtling towards her head, she found herself on the ground and her world soon turned to darkness.
Chapter XII
As soon as her eyes flickered open and registered daylight, the pain attacked her in savage waves. Juliet felt at the considerable bruise now attached to her forehead. She sat up in the room she’d lost consciousness in the night before and tried to marshal her mental faculties back to operational endeavours. Birdsong floated into the room from a fully opened window behind her. Her mouth felt tangy; she felt blood sliding down her throat and nearly choked before spitting it out and staining the floor.
*
Juliet stared at her bloodied face in the mirror, then grimaced and threw more of the sink water onto her face. She dried her face carefully, painfully aware that any rough treatment would aggravate the pain.
For the rest of the day frozen peas and cold compacts were adorned to her head. Fleetingly, she thought of leaving, but the idea was quickly dispatched; the incident had just made her more determined to get rid of it ― and as it was now in the mood to play, it was time for her to reveal her hand...
Chapter XIII
Day 6
The music started at 2:57 a.m. Juliet wasn’t asleep this time; she was still bug-eyed from cola drinks and cappuccinos.
Ancestral voices fill the air…
The song was getting boring now. She jumped up and headed for the staircase. The music stopped. Undaunted by this change of tactic, she walked up the stairs and stood arms crossed on the first floor.
“I’m running out of patience with you,” she bellowed. “I can help you if you want, I can stop this nightmare.”
One by one, doors to each of the rooms on this floor started slamming shut. Her eyes followed the theatre, more than a little uneasy. Door seven shut. Door eight shut. Door nine shut. Door ten… remained ajar.
“OK.” she said out loud with a confidence that belied her fears.
She made her way to the room, keeping close to the walls, keeping far from the guardrail, nervous but trying not to show it.
Upon entering the room she switched the light on, shut the door quickly and stood with her back firmly against it while her eyes roamed the room suspiciously. The chair had gone – Juliet had removed it earlier, but had left the CD player to give the spook a means of playing an opening gambit. Now she walked into the middle of the room.
“I take it you’re in this room?”
The room remained pin-drop quiet.
“If you are, then I want you to give me a sign ― a
non-threatening
sign.”
Juliet felt a shove and stumbled, but managed to retain her balance.
“I said a
non-threatening
sign!” Juliet’s tone was firm. Then in a softer voice: “I can help you. If you want to be helped, then give me a sign.”
An eerie silence followed, which was only broken when the front cover of the CD player opened.
Juliet nodded. “OK.”
She closed her eyes, concentrated on entering the
condition
and successfully stepped out of her physical body. The first thing her spirit-self saw was the incomprehensible face of
It
.
It
was, or had been, a man in his late twenties. He had dirty blonde hair and was good looking ― a fact Juliet ascertained despite his
Oh My God
expression.
“What the…?” he asked.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” It was a line that Juliet never tired of using.
“What the…?” he said again, looking at the dual images he now had of Juliet. One of the images had its eyes open and was looking in his direction. The other was rigid, eyes closed, motionless. It looked like the girl who was now staring directly at him had just walked
out
of that particular body and before him now stood a duplicate ― a duplicate that was staring right at him.
This girl could see him!
“Neat trick, huh?” said Juliet, attempting to gate-crash the man’s racing thoughts.
“What the…?” he was still stuck on monosyllables and studied Juliet like she was in a glass case in a museum.
“You do realise that you’re dead, don’t you?” Juliet said. She’d realised long ago that there wasn’t a tactful way to pose that question.
He looked directly at image two, the one that had addressed him, “Yeah, I know I’m dead. That’s been apparent for some time.”
He looked at twin images of the girl and then said, “Who the Hell are you?”
Juliet gestured to the physical body that her spirit had just walked out from. “One is the physical body, one is the spirit. Being a ghost you should be able to understand the concept.”
“But you’re alive… right?”
“Yeah, I’m alive.”
“How did you―”
“How am I able to do this? You ever heard of a man named Jack DeGrisse?”
The man nodded. “Serial killer? The torturer... right?”
“That’s right. Killed four girls. I was to be number five, but I was the one that got away. I was held on a torture rack for five days. You see... Jack enjoyed torture in the same way that children enjoy sweets. Knives, whips, burning steel rods, he had a full repertoire of instruments of pain. But see, one time he was having his fun and I was in so much pain, I literally couldn’t cope anymore ― at that moment, I suddenly found I was floating above my physical body, looking down on myself; my physical body was still screaming in pain, but I felt nothing, I was detached. I mean I thought I was dead, which was a whole other thing, but I wasn’t, I found I could go back. I could leave my physical body and return to it. When he tortured me, that’s what I did, I left and when it was over, I returned. I’ve been able to do it ever since.”
“How does the body―”
“Carry on?” she interrupted. She was used to the questions they ask. “My body continues to breathe, my heart still beats. The machine rolls on, when I’m ready I walk back in.”
He seemed to register this remark with considerable interest. She understood why.
“Don’t even think about it.” Juliet said, firing him a warning look, then gestured at her physical body, “It knows its owner, it won’t let you in. Be my guest, go ahead and try.”
He walked up to Juliet’s physical body, put a hand on its shoulder, felt it, examined the head, pretty soon the man determined for himself that she was telling the truth and walked back. He then felt the arm of the Spirit-Juliet.
“You feel solid. To me, your spirit body feels solid too.”
“Well it’s not. Everything is an illusion. You don’t seem to know a lot about the
condition
you’re in. What’s your name?”
“Simon ― Simon Fell”
“Juliet Spiers.”
“Juliet... I like that name.”
He threw her a smile that had no doubt won him admirers in the physical world he’d left behind. Juliet was a professional Necromancer, her expression remained icy.
“So tell me the story of your death, Simon, Simon Fell.”
“I was murdered, Juliet.”
Juliet remained silent at this revelation. This wasn’t something she had encountered before. It threw her. She regained her composure. “When was this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand time when I’m in this
condition
.”
“You’re not always here. I’ve been looking for you. I know that you’re not always here, so where are you?”
Simon seemed confused. A very human furrowed brow registered on his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought maybe you could tell me.”
“There is a lot I now understand about this
condition
, but I don’t know it all.”
“I’d really love a cigarette.”
“You’re not in a physical body anymore Simon. You can’t smoke a real cigarette. In this
condition
, all you have left is thought. Why do you think we’re wearing clothes?”
Simon examined what he was wearing ― the same clothes he had died in ― he hadn’t thought about this before. He then looked to Juliet, who was wearing the same clothes that her physical body displayed.
Juliet said, “You really think spirits actually wear clothes? Why do you think you can walk through walls? This is a different state, it’s a
condition
; you have to learn how to master it. I’ve learnt some neat tricks.”
Juliet reached into her ethereal pocket and produced a cigarette packet and a lighter, which she threw in his direction. The ghost caught the offering after a comic fumble; he then used the lighter to light himself a cigarette. He inhaled with gusto.
“My God!” His smile was wondrous; a kid at the gates of a theme park. He started to blow smoke rings.
“Why didn’t you go through the Light?” Juliet asked.
“What
Light
?”
“The Light, it must have been there, when you died.”
“I don’t remember no Light. I remember having my head forced under the water of the pool. Then I remember watching my body floating on the surface. I remember hearing the murderers talk about where they were going to put the body.”