A Ghost Tale
Sometimes we can’t help but get involved with’the Other Side’. But do we really believe in it? Or not?
My company’s office was a large shiny glass and concrete block sandwiched between a Victorian Pub and a Bank of the more brutal modern type right in the City Centre. It was our name on the building “Union Insurance”, but we only occupied the ground and first floors and the basement. Various organisations inhabited the upper floors, and the general atmosphere was busy and businesslike. I liked it.
Same with insurance really. A real killer at parties ‘I’m in Insurance’ is almost as much of a turn off as saying you’re in the funeral game. And everyone has their pet stories they are dying to tell you about how they have been through some disaster and either been taken to the cleaners or overpaid by the insurance company. Hey Ho, grin and bear it. It’s a good living, it’s interesting, and my staff are on the whole a young and lively lot. And there is a bit of light relief to be had. Some of the claims you wouldn’t believe. There is said to be a file, with all of the juicier ones preserved. I have never seen it of course, or made any enquiries. Live and let live!
On this particular Monday morning one of my Section Managers stood awkwardly in my office shifting from one foot to the other. He didn’t quite know how to broach the subject but one of his juniors had come up from the basement in a bit of a state. She had seen something. I was busy.
“What do you mean? What something? Not rats again? Surely you don’t have to bother me about rats? Get pest control in”.
He backed away a little and became even more embarrassed. Was I a little sharp? Me? I am an absolute pussycat.
“Well”, he stammered, “she had seen a ghost.” I couldn’t help laughing, but I was annoyed too. Had this nonsense been openly discussed in the general office? In heaven’s name, why hadn’t he brought her straight to me? Talk about light the blue touch paper and retire – it would be all over the place by now that we had a basement full of spooks.
I told him to bring her to me. Not a person I had ever really noticed. In her twenties I suppose, slight and pale. Her light brown hair hung perfectly straight, shiny clean, partly obscuring her face. Her unmade up skin was almost transparently fine, and she had those light tipped eyelashes that seem to disappear and give the face a delicate look. Her name was Clare. I chose my words carefully; what did she think she had seen. I had to be careful not to give the impression that I believed in any of this.
Quietly she described how as she had walked along the filing bays the air had seemed to get colder and heavier, until she could hardly breathe. Then the figure had gradually taken shape. A man. He seemed agitated and had shaken his head at her repeatedly before disappearing into the wall. She had turned and stumbled up the stairs, feeling sick and faint. I felt sorry for the girl. She must have something very seriously upsetting her and projecting itself into this fantasy. Surely this was a cry for help? I took her home myself, and her landlady who seemed a motherly soul, promised to keep her company until her partner came home from work.
Back at the ranch the place was seething with excited theories. You can imagine. Everyone seemed to have some supernatural experience to recount, never first hand of course, but always relating to some friend or relation of unimpeachable integrity. The group who came back from the pub next door after lunch had the complete explanation. The landlord had told them the story of a previous owner who, in 1892 had gone down into the cellar, the very cellar that adjoined our basement of course, and committed suicide by hanging himself.
Within a few days the place was buzzing with sightings. One evening a cleaner felt suddenly cold and then a hand on her shoulder as she was vacuuming on the first floor. Someone coming downstairs after working late up on the third floor felt a rush of cold air which nearly knocked him down. Everyone was becoming very jittery.
I personally experienced nothing except exasperation at the gullibility of human nature. But I had to be careful not to ridicule. We all had to work together when this silly patch was over. I particularly wanted to protect Clare. She had refused to see a counsellor, which was a pity because I felt that what was happening was inside her mind. After all, I did see my father on a fairly regular basis. It was there in me, the remnants of an old grief that still had the power to hurt. On that Wednesday night in particular his face, grown old, looked very directly at me from the window of a Number Fourteen bus. He even turned his head, this old boy, and looked at me long and hard with his very blue eyes as the bus pulled away. Nonsnse, just nonsense.
Friday was a nightmare. Clare saw the figure again. He had left his basement haunt and appeared in broad daylight at the foot of the main stairs.This time the man was injured and bleeding, and this time he gave her a warning. Something terrible was going to happen tomorrow. Here. She begged me to close the office and keep everyone away. She was distraught; her knuckles white as she gripped the back of a chair. I was really getting a bit sick of all this. I calmed her down as best I could, and sent someone home with her in a taxi.
The day ended at last. I managed to block the office out of my mind and spent a pleasant evening messing in the garden, coming in latish to sit down with an extra large gin and tonic. But dammit why do ghostly warnings keep invading my mind. I don’t believe in it. Do I?
But what if you are wrong? It’s a load of hogwash, superstitious nonsense isn’t it?
But what if it isn’t?
Hysteria, that’s all it is hysteria spreading like wildfire.
Are you sure you want to ignore it all? Are you sure you are willing to be to blame for whatever might happen?
But nothing is going to happen is it?
Is it?
I picked up the telephone and rang the security company. Heard myself tell them some tale about gas main repairs, and instruct them to lock and alarm the building. They were to put an apology on the main doors and leave. Still on Auto-Pilot I gave the same story to all section managers with instructions to tell their staff. The rest of the building would be unoccupied. We were the only mugs who ran a Saturday shift.
I couldn’t help it, I was shaking. What had I done.. How would I explain a day’s work lost? That really must have been a very large gin! I would have to try the old gas main story again. Would they swallow it at head office? Want proof? I was too tired to care much, and feeling very stupid, and yes, angry with myself for being so weak I went off for a restless night’s sleep.
The bomb went off at 10.30next, morning destroying a large part of the City Centre. First reports said that there had been no official warning. The explosives were packed into a large white van which had been noticed on traffic police cameras. Someone, thank God, thought it suspicious that the van remained parked unattended for so long, in an illegal spot outside the Union Insurance Company building, my building, which took the worst of the blast. They had even managed the impossible and cleared the area of thousands of Saturday shoppers.
It took me a while to gather my senses together. Then my first thought was for Clare. The poor girl had really suffered over the last week, and she had been right, somehow, no matter how. I got into the car and drove straight round to her rooms.
Clare and her partner had gone. They had left no forwarding address and no money owing. The rooms were clear and clean. It was as if they had never been. The landlady had checked straight away.
“‘Well my dear” she said ‘I thought they must have been going off with half my furniture when I saw them driving off in that big white van.”