10. Silent as the Grave
ten
Silent as the Grave
Recently, I’ve gained a bad habit of not listening when people try to warn me about shit.
First it was Gerald, with his whole “Do you believe in ghosts? You will do” speech. Then it was Helga with her “It’s seven and a half now. That form should’ve been updated.”
Well, guess what? Now it’s eight and a half spirits, and everyone else was right, and old muggins here was very wrong and now I’m very dead.
In light of these recent epiphanies, I have decided to deprioritise paying the east wing and the abandoned lighthouse a visit.
I don’t really need to know the distinction between a regular ghost such as myself and an extremely powerful and mercurial level four entity with the ability to eat my soul like a bowl of cornflakes.
I’m not an agreeable person at the best of times. Nah, think I’ll keep my ethereal ass to the west wing, thank you.
Helga inches towards the door. Her gaze continues to roam about the place, and her expression is a strange mixture of curled lip and red-rimmed eyes.
Even I, with all my people?watching expertise, am having difficulty placing her emotions.
Perhaps she’s mourning the life of a stranger.
Maybe wondering what family I left behind.
Maybe wondering if my last few moments were those of extreme pain.
Perhaps she’s grieving any opportunity she had to solve this ghost puzzle once and for all.
Perhaps she’s lamenting all the missed revenue the hotel will no doubt experience now that the room with the highest earning potential is out of action.
It could be all the extra paperwork and hassle my gruesome death has brought about.
Or maybe she’s just fucking done with it all. Tired. At her wits’ end.
Honestly, I’d probably have given up years ago if I were in her position.
Or maybe what she’s feeling is something closer to guilt . . . or pride or . . . arousal, or whatever it is serial killers feel after they know they’ve got away with it again.
I wish she’d talk to herself like a movie psychopath. Alas, the only noise Helga makes is the occasional agonised sigh, which is immediately swallowed by the other ghosts’ gossipy chattering.
Just as she’s about to leave, Helga spots a piece of folded paper on the ground. A rusty brown stain traces the centre crease. As she opens the note, sanguineous flakes drift to the ground like macabre confetti.
It’s the list of dead and missing that she’d given to me yesterday in her office.
It was tucked away in my back pocket, sandwiched between my heavy body and the mattress, and must have fallen out when Laurel and Hardy moved me onto the gurney.
I put my hand in my ghost butt pocket, and my fingers brush against the smooth edge of a folded note.
A spectral version of the note, this time unblemished and free from bloodstains, sits in my palm. It’s exactly as it was the night before, with a list of everybody who either died at the hotel or went missing, and my additional scribbled notes.
Angel, Helzephron funeral home
Franny Driscoll
Sergeant Dave Davies
I shove my hand into my pocket again and close my fingers around something else.
A plain, stubby little pencil that I “borrowed” from a large chain of Swedish furniture stores a few months ago.
It’s delightfully pocket-sized, and I’d taken to carrying it on my person should the need for urgent note taking seize me.
I test it out by scribbling in the corner of the list. For some reason, I hadn’t expected it to work, but there now sits a tiny doodle of a pentagram on the top of the page.
“Will that last? Or will it revert to its original state?” I ask no one in particular.
A few ghosts who had broken off to start their own chat spin around.
“Hmm?” Jeanie says, peering down at the slip of paper.
“I just drew a star in the corner with my . . . ghost pencil. Will the mark stay there or will it—”
“Oh, wow, look at this,” she says, summoning over every other ghost. “It’s a catalogue of everyone, when they died, and how they died.”
“Accidental stabbing my arse!” Peter snatches the note from my hand and steps away so he can scrutinize it.
“Pix, it’s got you down here as an overdose,” Stove says, yoinking the paper from Peter’s hands and passing it to Pixie.
“Let me see,” she says, her face immediately creasing into a deep frown. She looks at me and brandishes the list. “I’m not surprised, but this is wrong.”
“Did you have drugs in your system when you died?” I ask.
Pixie throws a hand to her hip, crinkling my note in the process. “Are you saying I deserved it because I was just another ‘junkie?’”
Shit, that’s not how I meant it. “No, no, no, sorry. I would never suggest such a thing, and I’m not judging you at all.
What I’m trying to say is that the drugs in your blood—the existence of which will have been proven by toxicology reports—coupled with your public persona and lifestyle make the presence of drugs a very convenient cover-up story.
All someone needed to do was present those two things as evidence, and the registrar, without seeing a photograph of you after death, would easily have recorded the cause as overdose. ”
“Well, I didn’t take any drugs, so if there were some in my system, I never put them there,” she says. “Or somebody lied.”
“Who discovered your body?”
“Franny.”
No shit.
“And I’m assuming the principal police officer at the scene was Sergeant Davies?”
“You would be accurate in that assumption,” Jeanie says. “Though, not a sergeant at the time, only Constable Davies. He didn’t become a sergeant until after I’d died.”
“And the undertaker?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“Angel,” Trystan says, causing my pulse to spike.
“Was Helga present at the scene? Did she ever see your body?” I’m acutely aware of Peter’s attention snapping towards me.
“She wasn’t there at the time I died,” Pixie says with a sideways glance at Jeanie. “I was found right here.” She walks over to the chaise longue under the window furthest to the left and lies spreadeagled on the ground, so that the seat is half inside her body and half out.
My hand itches to scribble this info down, but Pixie’s still holding my now crumpled sheet of paper.
Instead, my fingernail finds the crooked scar tissue that splits my moustache.
“Was a coroner ever involved?” If there was never a coroner, it could suggest Davies sweeping evidence under the rug once again.
As Pixie is only the second name on the list, it means there was only one possible ghost witness I can interview. I want to ask Peter if he saw Pixie’s body and what he can tell me about it, but Helga’s leaving the suite and Peter is following her out, his spectral cape flapping in his wake.
“If a coroner wasn’t involved, then at least one of those people mentioned—Franny, Davies, Angel, potentially Helga—were complicit in some base?level deception,” I say. “It would be really interesting to know if Franny—”
Jeanie puts her hand on my shoulder, interrupting my comments and thoughts. “We’re all thrilled you’ve agreed to help us solve these mysteries, but Gary, don’t take this the wrong way, you’ve only just died. You don’t want to spend your first few moments analysing every detail from our deaths.”
“I don’t?” I say, like a question, because if given the choice, that’s probably exactly what I’d opt for.
“One doesn’t die every day,” she says simply.
“I suppose you’re right.” It’s literally a once in a lifetime experience for most folk.
“Why don’t you take a few moments to yourself to figure out what your spirit can do without the hindrance of flesh and organs and complicated bodily systems?
It’s Tuesday evening, and for most people in the hotel, life goes on.
Sad, but true. Why not explore the grounds, the town, choose a room that’ll be your home for the . . . foreseeable forever.”
Choose a room? I nod. “Okay.” Actually, respite from my racing thoughts would be pretty welcome right now. I don’t even think it’s properly sunk in yet.
I’m dead.
I’m so fucking dead.
I’m never going to be living any more.
Nope, still not sunk in.
Right now, they’re probably trying to contact my next of kin and figure out where to send my body.
Should it be cremated or buried, or blasted into space?
I never made a will. Never needed to. Didn’t own any property or even any moderately valuable assets.
The only thing I had to my name, Unalive on Air, the radio station stole when they sacked me.
“Sure, I guess I could . . . chill out for a bit.” And do what, Gary? Think about what?
I stumble over to one of the cabriole settees, forget that I can’t sit down, and sail right through, only stopping after I’ve sunk a few inches into the wooden floor.
It’s difficult to “feel” stuff when you’re a ghost, but I can feel the coldness from the water pipe passing directly through my appendix.
Trystan holds out two hands, like a basketball player helping a teammate up.
“Oh.” I grab his hands, which are calloused yet have no warmth, and he tugs me to my feet. “Thank you.”
“No worries, dude. It takes a while to get used to everything,” he says.
“You could do with a mentor. Someone to show you the ropes of being a ghost,” Jeanie says. There’s a wry, calculating smile on her face.
“I could assist Ga—” Camille starts, but Jeanie cuts them off.
“Trystan, why don’t you help our newest recruit find his feet around here? Help him choose a place to call his own.”
“It’s fine,” I say, and immediately want to hurt myself. Why am I trying to sabotage this? “I’ll just stay here.”
The remaining ghosts all turn to me. Some are smiling, some open-mouthed. All have their eyebrows up near their hairlines. They then look at Jeanie.