Ghost Whispers

He spotted him immediatley.

The jogging bottoms splashed with white paint, not a lot but enough for the doy decorator or the half arsed handy man. The white t-shirt with the gravy stain. The dirty fingernails, the nicotine stained finger. The spittle collecting in the corner of the mouth and the slippers. That was a nice touch, indoor shoes outside.

It’s the details, everything means something. The underwear would be white turned grey with holes. You wouldn’t see it but it’s there. The hairy arse crack when he stretched or bent down. The too loud grown when he did so.

The constant chatter to know one and everyone. The annoyed, harrassed tone.

It all adds up.

And here he was, stood at the front of a long queue in this stifling petrol station.

There’s a slight smell of sulpher, mini farts. Yes, he’s letting one seep out every few minutes.

He has a partner somewhere, Jimmy can sense it.He has a quick look around and therer they are, it’s obvious to him straight away. A woman, late 50’searly 60s but looks older. Probably smells of stale cigarettes. Talks but looks right through your, probaly coughs without covering her mouth. She’s talking to a customer but she’s clearly saying something that is annoying them…

He turns his attentiion back to to the queue killer.

This routine is kind of stale, he’s seen it before but it does have flashes of inspiration. The guy sniffs a lot. Not big sniffs, almost micro, not enough for you to notice normally but if you are tuned in they’re enough to drive you insane.

This kind of act is honed to perfection though. From the moment Jimmy had walked in to the building he could hear the guy with his negative whine. It was vocal but almost like an annoying song. It had a frequency to it that just grated. Jimmy had watched him quietly and then thought that he’d better get to the front of the queue quickly. This place was starting to fill up. Then the fat man burped. Wet and trumpet like it had reverberated off glass that made up the whole of the front of the builiding.

Jimmy made his way to the tills

He was too late.

“How the fuck did that happen” he thought.

The fat man had beat him to it.

And here they both were now but the queue and built up. Maybe 10 people behind Jimmy. No other tills working and the self help till broken. The fat man knew what he was doing.

The shop assistant asked was running the mans items through the scanner. “How the hell did he accumlate so much stuff” Jimmy wondered, almost impressed.

The guy waited until the scanning was finished.

“Bag”, he said quietly.

“Pardon?” the assistant replied.

“Bag?

A moment passed and the assistant sussed out what was happening and gave the man a bag.

“Bags are 10p”

The man mumbled, shook his head and started to pack. Slowly.

He dropped items. Bent to pick them up which gave him the opportunity to give everyone a good look at his hairy arse crack.

That’s when Jimmy heard the first tut. At the back of the queue he guessed from the volume.

Jimmy knew this act, had seen similar before. There were variants but essentially the same.

The fat man was a demon. Low level, bottom feeder demon who fed on anger and frustration.

People whould be raging when they left here soem would be mildly annoyed some would be furious. Late and flusstered they would go through there days ruining other peoples. From petty arguments with lover ones to snidey jibes at co workers to assault of family members and in some cases possibly random acts of violence in the street. It all came to the same thing. Disruption, chaos and malevolence.

 

 

 

You don’t always see it

Sometimes on tne landing when the light flickers on you see a shadow, a memory?

Sometimes when I aalk from the bedroom to the bathroom I glance downstairs and I think I see a shape move swiftly…you doubt yourself…mind playing tricks!

 

There’s a ghost in my house…

 

That’s how it startted. Just small interuptions but then things started moving. One moment my keys would be by the door and then they’d be gone only for me to find them in the trash.

The tv would come on in the middle of the night.

 

There’d be a knock knock knocking somewhere in the house.

Breathing in my ear when I was sleeping.

The toilet flushing.

Cupboards slamming.

 

I know I’m not going mad now.

 

It’s worse now.

Each night they come and sit by my bed.

They whisper in my ear.

‘M’ ‘Muh’ Muh’

Tonight I’ll ask them what they want.

 

I feel the air go cold.

A wind moved the curtain.

A shadow on the wall.

They are there.

 

‘M’ ‘muh’ ‘mmmuh’

They say. Cold as ice.

‘M’ ‘muh’ ‘mmmmuh’

I opwn my eyes and turn to my side.

I look into ‘her’ eys.

What do you want I say.

Muh’ mmmuh murder she says

I ask her again, what do you want?

Muh, mmmmuh murderer my dead wife says….

Joanne

As a kid I used to babysit for a family friend. They lived in an old terraced cottage. The road on which the house sat only had houses on one side. To the back they had a garden that disappeared into a sloping decline which led to what we used to call as kids, a dell.

The house itself was old fashioned even then, they hadn’t painted so the walls still had old white paint and there where exposed beams painted black with a tar like substance.

On the walls there was one of those pictures of a woman that you used to get in th early 80s. Either side there where these brass trinkets. Something to do with horses I think. Just tat really.

At some point they’d had a picture of a boy, creepy think it was. They got rid of it when a rumour went around that anywhere housing such a thing had burnt down.

I would always be dropped off by my parents and at the end of a night the parents of the children would pay me and for a taxi to take me home. It was a good gig. There was always food and they gave me cigarettes as well.

 

 

… First I heard a voice, feint, shaky….’Mark?’ too distant sounding to be real, too thin… I heard a creak on the stairs, unnerved I looked at the door. The handle started to move, slowly. Then the door swung open and there stood william, 6 years old fully clothed.

 

‘William’, I said, ‘Are you ok?’

He looked at me and pointed up the stairs,

‘Joanna’ he said quiently.

 

I got up from the couch and walked over to where he stood.

I looked up the stairs and saw nothing and then came Joanna, she walked to the the top of the stairs, looked down at me and held 1 finger to her lips.

 

‘Shh’ she was telling me and then she was gone, disappeared by a shadow.

 

I tried to run up the stairs but my legs betrayed me. My knees buckled. I turned to William and said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute William. You stay there’

I then started to make my way up the stairs.

I then felt the cold, I saw my breath in the air before me. A chill ran down my spine. This isn’t real, I thought.

 

It felt like a lifetime walking up those stairs, I finally got to the top and opened Joanna’s bedroom door and there she was, in bed soundly asleep. |Relieved I breathed out and turned around. I waved at William at the bottom of the stairs to say all is fine when I heard a voice, ‘Mark?’, I turned to the source and saw William in his pyjamas, rubbing his eyes stood in his bedrrom doorway.

 

Panicked I turned my head to the bottom of the stairs.

No William, just a silouette of a man fading to shadow.