Flash Fiction – Prompt is good/bad day in the city
Definitely over ambitious for this one. It’s a hybrid ghost story/locked room mystery which needed more than 1000 words to give it justice.
Maybe one day I’ll expand it.
The Ghost Hunter
I’m a ghost hunter by trade. My natural habitat is draughty stone castles, creaking timber squire houses, wretched little workers cottages. It’s rare I venture even into a town let alone a city and certainly never London before.
I endure a cramped forty minute tube journey pressed against the doors and a young girl who I feel compelled to apologise to despite my inability to place myself anywhere else. I hump my equipment up the station steps and then twenty minutes along a never ending road of newsagents, fried chicken shops and outlets that can apparently transfer my money to anywhere in the world.
By the time I reach number 43 I am no longer surprised by my lack of work in London. The unquiet spirits would have to make a hell of a din to be heard above all this racket. Number 43 is a three story Victorian terrace. I give the door a quick rap and it opens almost immediately.
It is not till we’re sat on one very squashy pristine white sofa in a blanched room that I get to scrutinise my client.. Early forties, slender too slender in my opinion for her collar bones are sharply defined above he scoop of her neckline, blonde hair and hands that refuse to stop moving.
“Now if you can explain what’s been going on Mrs Ludgate?”
She nods, hands wringing together, “It happens every night when I go to bed, a scratching, a scratch, scratch scratching in the walls and the ceiling. It doesn’t stop, it goes on and on and on.”
I close my notebook. “Could it be mice or rats?”
“Oh no, it’s not that. Stewart had Rentokill in and they found no evidence of an infestation. Nothing, not a single dropping.”
“Stewart?”
“My husband.”
I leave a pause for her to tell me he’s at work, instead she says, “He’s left me. For that teenager that rents the top room in Number 49. He wants this house though, apparently it’s the perfect family home because of course she’s pregnant.”
“Is it just the scratching noise?” I ask trying to get back on topic.
“There’s the banging and then and then,” she leans forward, I do likewise and in a hushed tone she says, “Its whispering my name Sarah. Like this Ssssarah, Ssssarah. I feel I shall go quite, quite mad.”
I was pretty sure she was already there and this whole trip had been a complete waste of time. But I dutifully ask to see the bedroom in question, determined to earn my fee legitimately.
It’s a room on the third floor of the house, a king size bed with a gold coloured bed spread, a wardrobe, a dressing table, curtains to match the spread and a ceiling painted white with gold swirls. The glint of the sun off the ceiling blinds me. I walk over to the sash window, try to push it open.
“It’s painted shut,” Sarah tells me after I’ve spent half a minute heaving.
“Are you going to use your instruments?” Pointing to my suitcases.
I know it will be pointless, the drone of the traffic outside will mask any spirit voices I might otherwise record. And the rumble beneath my feet as I waited for her to answer the door confirmed that the house is built over the tube line which rules out any measurements on vibration divulgings.
But she looks so hopeful that I don’t feel I can refuse. So I unpack my stuff and point it purposefully about knowing full well I’m not going to get any useful readings.
After half an hour of this pantomime she asks, her voice cracking, “Have you got it? Does that tell you what it is? Can you tell it that I’m happy for it to stay if only it stops the scratching and the whispering.” Her hand shoots up to her head, “I can’t stand the voices, I just can’t stand them.”
Unnerved I tell her that I’m going to check the rest of the house to compare the readings. I slip out down the first flight of stairs, stand on the landing taking deep breaths contemplating knocking up one of her neighbours to warn them of her mental state.
Its then that I hear it. A scratch, scratch scratching coming from the floor above. Instinctively I hold up my counter, the needle turns a fraction.
Then suddenly from up the stairs, from within the bedroom there comes a bang, then a clattering that shudders the floor beneath my feet.
“Mrs Ludgate?”
A scream, followed by more clattering like the wings of a dozen metallic birds. I run up the stairs fling open the door. “Mrs Ludgate?”
And there she is lying face down on the floor, a knife plunged into her back.
The inspector is struggling with my account.
“And nobody ran past you?”
“No, I was stood by the bottom step the whole time.”
“Could the murderer have got out by the window?”
“It’s painted shut.”
After a good ten minutes of heaving he agrees with me. A thorough investigation of the wardrobe reveals only clothes and nobody is underneath the bed.
Which left?
One visitor from the country who was the only other person in a locked house with a murder victim. Not that the inspector says this, he reels off some tosh about me coming down to the station to help.
It’s as we are getting into the police car that I gaze upwards, the sun blinding me that it hits me.
The two of us gaze upwards at that painted gold and white ceiling, after a good few minutes of study we see it; a single golden ring hidden amongst the pattern.
Using a pole the inspector hooks hold of the ring and pulls. There comes a bang and then a clattering as the metal steps unfold before us.
There’s nobody in the attic naturally. There doesn’t need to be for this is a terrace and there is but one long shared space across all the house of the road. Across Number 49 where the teenage lover lives and where Mr Ludgate is undoubtedly hiding.
