5. The Graveyard Shift
five
The Graveyard Shift
Eleven Hours Before I Die
There’s barely any paperwork on her desk either, only a state?of?the?art, paper?thin desktop monitor (white), a lamp (also white), and a coffee mug, which immediately draws my attention because it’s orange and red.
The air smells of leather and artificial grapefruit.
It makes a pleasant change from the black mould I undoubtedly breathed in at Doughlicious a few days ago.
She perches herself behind her desk and taps away at her keyboard.
“Sit,” she says, pointing to a chair beside the monitor. I do as instructed, and a moment later, a whirring sound fills the room. She reaches under the desk and passes me a piece of paper.
On it, is a list of names and dates of birth. They’re separated into two columns: CONFIRMED DEAD and MISSING PERSONS. An asterisk pulls my attention to the bottom of the page.
*from 1984 – today
“That’s taken directly from my personal files. Please don’t share the information with anyone else.” Helga watches me over steepled fingers as my eyes flick over the names. “This is simply to help you in your ghost extraction.”
CONFIRMED DEAD
1. Peter Roskelly 14/01/1954 – 28/07/1984. Cause of death: accidental stabbing
2. Pixie Maynard 01/09/1970 – 29/05/1993. Cause of death: overdose (accidental? Who knows)
3. Trystan Retallack 25/04/1972 – 02/08/1998. Cause of death: drowning
4. Stove MacLeod 12/06/1980 – 12/06/2007. Cause of death: head injury (stalactite falling)
4.5. Unidentified male guest (lower half) ??? – 06/06/2012. Cause of death: unknown
5. Josh Little 20/11/2002 – 27/06/2018. Cause of death: exploded
7. Camille Ciel 24/10/1990 – 01/07/2025. Cause of death: broken neck
MISSING PERSONS (last sighted at The Paragon)
1. Jean Johnson (a.k.a. Imogen Savona) 04/08/1960 – August 1995?
3. Saul Rainer 03/02/1966 – July 2019?
4. Jason Barlby 27/02/1948 – July 2019?
5. Elsie Maplethorpe 13/06/1924 – 12/06/2024
Besides Imogen and Peter, the other names are only partially recognisable from my skimmed research on the hotel, though I have time to find out a little more about each person before I record my episode.
There’s already one thread that connects each name on this list, and it’s screamingly obvious.
Every death, every disappearance happened while Helga was working for the hotel. There could be a simple explanation for that. Perhaps it was just when she began keeping a register, or perhaps she’s only interested in the cases that have occurred in her timeline.
But the other rationalisation is that this list is a . . . memento of sorts. A catalogue of accomplishments.
“Were there any mysterious deaths before nineteen eighty-four? Or did the . . . spectral activity begin with Peter?” I ask.
She raises an eyebrow. She’s onto me.
“I only want to grasp the full scale of the problem so that I understand . . . how many ghosts I’m dealing with here, and how . . . high I need to set the PolterPulse gun to, you know, get rid of them.”
Helga relaxes a little. “Of course, of course. Like I said, I don’t have any of those people on my list. You’d have to check in with the local funeral home for a full record of those names, but . . .”
“But?”
“Angel, the person who runs it is, well, they’ve got beef with me. With the hotel, maybe. I dunno. I don’t fully understand. Do you ever get the sense that somebody doesn’t like you, but you’ve no idea why because you’ve never had any cross words with them?”
I nod. Leave my silence hanging there.
Helga obligingly fills it. “Angel’s been doing the job since before I was even born, I reckon. I just don’t know why a person would stay in a job they loathe for that long.” She shrugs. Apparently, this is the end of her mini tangent.
“So, Angel’s mortuary has been, for want of a better word, trading at least since eighty?four? How old are they?” I ask.
“Seventies, easily. But it’s difficult to know for sure. I don’t remember a time when Angel didn’t operate from the village.”
“Interesting.” I scribble Angel, Helzephron funeral home onto my notepad. I feel like there could be a link there, but I have no idea what that might be yet.
I do, however, suspect my investigation is veering too closely towards murder mystery and too far away from ghost locating, and I don’t want Helga to get suspicious.
“Have you ever seen any of these ghosts?” I ask. “In person?”
“Well, yes, and no. I’ve not seen a level four apparition, but I’ve experienced other phenomena.”
Level four apparition. Something tells me I need to re-consult that awful handbook Ted gave me if I want to convince her of my exorcising expertise.
“Tell me more about the phenomena you’ve witnessed. Is it . . . friendly or hostile?”
Helga smiles, and I feel like I’ve asked the right question.
“Oh, both, I guess.” She sits back in her chair.
“Some people have reported feeling very frightened, very on edge in certain rooms. Some people have said they feel like they’re being watched.
Some have said they’ve felt a heavy presence on their chest while they’re in bed, and a few times folk have claimed they’ve been dragged out from under their covers. ”
I raise an eyebrow. My silent “You?” hangs between us.
“No, not me. The worst I’ve ever had has been ghosts hiding my stuff and leaving messages on the mirrors in steamed?up rooms.”
“What kind of messages?” I’m picturing the cliched LEAVE NOW or DIE DIE DIE.
Surprisingly, Helga laughs. “You have to understand that one of the spirits is a fifteen?year?old boy.”
Ahhh, sure, sure. “Say no more.” As a onetime fifteen-year-old lad, I immediately know that there’s an extremely high probability these “messages” are in fact doodles of cocks and balls.
The kind one can typically spot Tipp-Exed onto any given British bus-stop shelter.
Possibly including the obligatory six straight pubes. Possibly even jizzing.
It gives me pause for thought. I’ve only known Helga for an hour max, but she seems way too strait-laced to finger-paint dicks into bathroom condensation.
Which leaves three alternatives. Either she’s forcing herself to draw them to “prove” the existence of ghosts, she’s lying to me, or someone else drew them.
As a prank?
I check out the list of names again. Josh Little, born 2002, died 2018, making him fifteen. Seems a bit, I don’t know, convenient. Cause of death—
“Exploded?!” I read it once more just to be sure. “Cause of death: exploded.”
Helga grimaces. “It happened in the dining hall. Kid took one bite out of a breakfast muffin and BANG, gone. Helluva mess. Newspapers had a field day.”
“From a muffin? I’m sorry, but are you telling me that a ghost exploded a child with a fucking cupcake?”
She sighs and stands. “I know it sounds far-fetched, but there are no other explanations. It was just a regular muffin. No explosives. No evidence of tampering, and it happened in front of about fifty other guests and staff.”
“Were you there?” Wow, that came out a lot more accusatory than I meant it to.
Luckily Helga doesn’t seem to notice. “No. I was working as the night manager back then, but I was told about it that afternoon before I started work because when I’d arrived, the hotel was teeming with reporters.”
Still, there’s a possibility Helga could’ve snuck in that morning, or planted a bomb small enough to fit inside some confectionery. She’s right, it’s far-fetched, but perhaps if I can figure out why Josh Little, why this teenager, I might be able to find a link that connects all the victims here.
“Was an investigation conducted into the exploding cake? Anyone charged?”
“Nope. The cake turned out to be just that, an ordinary choc-chip muffin.”
Weird. “Did it explode in his face, or from his stomach?” I mime something akin to a Facehugger’s egg bursting out of my abdomen.
“I’ve got no idea.” Helga sounds exasperated now. “They won’t share the details with us. All I know is that a boy got exploded, but no explosives were found.”
“Interesting, interesting.”
“But Josh’s spirit doesn’t seem to be malicious. Just . . . well, juvenile. He’s forever fifteen. Apart from the occasional anatomically questionable doodles, he’s harmless. He’s not the one terrorising our guests.”
I want to stand on her desk and scream from the top of my lungs, “Do you really think a fucking ghost killed your husband and the rest of these people?” But I stop myself.
She hired ExorSquad, she’s in need of my assistance.
If I go shouting my mouth off, telling her ghosts aren’t real and it’s obvious to anyone that if there’s any blame here, it’s a living human, she might end the contract early.
Turf me out of her hotel, and then where would I be?
Caseless, jobless, programmeless, incomeless, and on my way to being homeless.
Instead, I ask, “Do you know which of these ghosts . . .” I brandish the list at her. “Is the one terrorising the guests, then?”
Helga looks away from me, down into her lap, and then at the certificates on the wall. She sighs. “I don’t think it’s any of those. Whatever killed all these people was here at The Paragon before Peter and I showed up.”
Super cool. I don’t ask her why she wants me to exorcise all these spirits.
Seems, I dunno, like a waste of my time, but I do need to find out as much as I can about their potential murders, so I press on.
“Can you walk me around the hotel and show me where all the bodies were discovered? I’m trying to work out if there’s something tying all these incidents together.
Perhaps there’s one . . . like, extremely evil spirit who’s just offing everyone.
The big bad. I want to know why. Is there a pattern to its selection? ”
“Let me show you around a bit,” Helga says, and leads me out of her office into the main foyer.
Guests mill about, wheeling suitcases to the front desk or dragging sandy kids in towel robes behind them. Despite the gloomy weather, it seems that folk are determined to enjoy their holidays.