Chapter Forty-Three
I stared in horror at Hetty’s inert body just as one of the colourful scarves was whipped to one side. Alice stuck her head through the opening.
‘How’s it going?’ she chirped.
I looked at my friend with wide eyes, unable to speak. Instead, I pointed to Hetty. The old lady was now sprawled across the rug at a peculiar angle. I had a horrible moment of déjà vu – Peter spreadeagled at the bottom of our staircase, his complexion changing from pink to waxy grey.
Alice’s head swivelled forty-five degrees. She gaped at Hetty. The pensioner’s turban had partially fallen over her face. She still looked pink. Or… did she? Was I imagining it or were her lips turning blue?
A strange noise began to fill the tent. Gurgling. Hetty? Perhaps not. It seemed to be coming from me – or my larynx, to be precise. A quivering of some sort. It was making my vocal cords pulsate. Now it was waggling my tonsils. Uh-oh. I tensed as a tsunami of noise erupted out of my mouth.
‘AAAAH!’ I screamed, making Alice jump. ‘AAAAAAAAAAH.’
‘YAAAAARGH!’ she bellowed back, eyes round and horrified.
‘REEEEEEEEEEEE!’ I declared.
‘NAAAAAAA!’ Clutching her heart, she began to sink down.
‘NOOOOOO!’ I shrieked.
‘Can’t…breathe,’ she gasped.
‘HELPPPP!’ I squawked, as Alice nosedived forward. She knocked me off my cushion, her shoulder biffing me painfully on the nose. ‘SOMEONE HELPPPPPPPPP!’ I screeched, trying to shove my friend off me.
First Hetty. Now Alice. Bodies. Oh, my goodness, I was surrounded by corpses. This was what Hetty had meant by death snapping at my heels. Dear God, help me. Yes, that’s it, Jen. Start praying.
Hello, God. It’s me. Again. I think I last spoke to you when my husband died – you remember.
It was after that spot of bother where I pushed him down the stairs.
And I did rather wonder if he’d been hanging around the house.
His spirit, I mean. Because, you know, the air sort of shakes sometimes, as if an invisible energy is holding space and dancing about in it, like a boxer jabbing his fists.
It’s not nice. Not pleasant. Anyway, Hetty over there, has been killed by Peter.
He tried to possess her, and the shock has taken her.
And then Alice came by, took one look at the lifeless Hetty, and has promptly had a heart attack.
A sob rose up in my throat. Alice! My lovely new friend. No more. It was a struggle to draw breath because her sizeable chest was threatening to smother me.
Lord, can you please shift Alice? She’s a curvy girl and I’m having trouble getting oxygen into my lungs. In fact, if I don’t get some air in them soon, I think I might die.
Panic was really starting to take hold of me.
I wriggled frantically under Alice’s weight.
Marvelous. Were two bodies about to become three?
Of all the potential ways to die, I never thought it would be like this.
Especially at a fete that had attracted lots of publicity.
This would make the local paper – and they were notorious for getting their facts wrong. I could see the headline now.
A CRYSTAL BALLS-UP
Tonight the parish of Starbright Loft is in mourning following the sudden death of three residents.
Letty Carter, aged 888, unexpectedly demised following an all-day stint at a fete raising funds to save the village wall.
The pensioner, a self-taught psychedelic, was giving an end-of-day reading to two residents – Fen Armour aged 64, and Alice Artwork, who recently turned 3.
Villagers were alerted to screams coming from Lettuce’s stall – a makeshift bed – where Letter’s clients asked pertinent questions about a shared dead husband reputed to be haunting the neighbourhood.
Paramedics rushed to the scene but later declared that all three women had died of fright.
Police are keen to trace an extraordinarily pale man, last seen hovering over a field of cows and shouting, ‘Woooooo.’
The floorboards beneath me began to vibrate, and a pounding noise filled my head. This must be it. The moment of death. Where the soul peels away from the body.
I wondered who would greet me from beyond the veil. Hopefully my loving grandfather, and not my angry husband. The entire tentlike structure now seemed to be collapsing in on itself. I shut my eyes tightly and hoped for the best. Alice’s weight miraculously shifted.
‘Jen?’ said a familiar voice.
‘Grandad?’ I whispered uncertainly.
‘I’ve been called many things by a woman, but never that.’
My eyes pinged open. And there, like an angel sent to save me, was Liam Lancaster.