15. Spirited Away
fifteen
Spirited Away
Peter suddenly has a choice to make.
Talk to Helga. Speak to his wife. Let her know how much he still thinks about her, how closely he watches her, how she continues to occupy his every thought.
Or carry on with our equipment transportation mission.
He glances over to our approximate location, though he can’t see us well.
Stove mimes zipping his lips together. I guess Helga might hear him too.
“You okay, Franny? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Here, let me help with this.” Helga grabs the bag from Peter and grunts as she transfers it to her own shoulder. “Jesus, what’ve you got in this? A body?”
Peter laughs nervously. His gaze flicks over to us again. Helga notices, and her eyes follow suit, and for one very long, very stomach-churning second, she stares right at me.
She sees me.
My instinct says I should duck. Or run. Or wave hello. Instead, I just stand there like a fucking lemon.
Helga tilts her head to the side and frowns. She doesn’t take her eyes off me. “What? . . . How is that possible?”
I’ve forgotten how to breathe. I’ve also forgotten that I don’t actually need to.
Beside me, the rest of the ghosts have also frozen in place.
In a way, it’s awesome that she sees us.
Can we communicate with the living? Can we ask her all the questions we don’t have answers for yet?
But also . . . what if she exorcises us?
Hires a proper one this time. Not some sceptic hack in a Ghostbuster’s onesie.
I’ve only just received my undeath citizenship, and now this could be taken away from me too?
Helga takes a step closer. She’s two feet from me. Another step. I’m about to find out if ghosts can pass out.
“No, no. This is wrong,” she says, hand held out in front of her.
Then she walks right through me.
“This is three months out of date.” Helga rips a WHAT’S ON AT THE PARAGON flyer from the wall and scrunches it up. “Franny, has that poster been there for the entire summer? It says May on it. Why wasn’t it changed with the rest of them?”
“Uh . . .” Peter clears his throat and affects Franny’s northern accent. “Apologies. I . . . must have overlooked it. I’ll make sure it’s on my list for next time.” It’s so far from her actual accent that it would have been a wiser decision to pretend Franny had a cold.
“It’s fine. You’ve got a lot on your mind, what with . . . Well, we both have,” Helga says, frustratingly refusing to elaborate on anything. “Where are you taking this anyway? Wasn’t this Gary’s bag? Davies didn’t want it at the station?”
Again, Peter’s eyes dart towards us, begging for help we can’t give him. “Yes, yes. It was brought down from the honeymoon suite yesterday and left in my office, but there isn’t really any space, so I thought I’d just put it with the rest of the storage things in case Sergeant Davies needs it.”
Helga doesn’t question the reasoning. She hums to herself instead and secures the rubber strap pad on her shoulder. When we reach the trophy room, she opens the door, dumps the bag inside, and then closes it again.
“Thank you,” Peter says.
“No problem.” Helga smiles expectantly at Peter—at Franny, actually. “Callum said they’re running out of robes in the spa and asked if you could put an order in with the embroiderers for him.”
“Uh . . .” Peter nods. “Sure.”
“Can you find out exactly what they need? He said they’re especially low on XL sizes . . .”
“Okay . . .”
Helga’s hands land on her hips. “Okay, then . . .”
It dawns on Peter that she expects immediate action. “Righty-ho!” He spares us one last withering glance before he turns to leave, but then spins around again. “Hels?”
As a group, we collectively hold our breath. What’s he going to do? Is he about to give the game away?
Peter grimaces. “I . . . forgive you too.” Then he’s off. Helga waits outside the trophy room door until Franny’s clunky footsteps have retreated.
“Weird,” she says to herself, but doesn’t follow Franny for clarification or open the door to check the contents of the bag.
It’s almost twenty minutes before Peter comes back.
We wait inside the trophy room. The ghosts who know how to sit are showing off by lounging on the chaise longue and the various chairs dotted about the place, while Camille and I sort of hang about, and I try my hardest not to wander over to the Trystan shrine and drool over his photos.
“I’m still not great at sitting,” Camille says with a shrug. “Lying, I’m the best at, but sitting . . . Who knew that would be so difficult?”
“Right?” I say. “Can’t believe how I used to take it for grant—”
BANG!
Something smashes heavily into the door. Seconds later, it swings wide open and Peter walks in, massaging Franny’s forehead.
“Fucking forgot I can’t pass through closed doors any more, didn’t I?” he groans. “Also forgot how horrible physical pain is. Sorry, Franny doll, but there’ll be a nasty egg on your head in the morning. Where are you guys?”
“Over here,” Stove shouts from the chaise longue.
Peter picks up the bag again. “Where do you want it?”
“Bureau,” I say, and Stove copies me with a shout.
“Bureau!”
Peter opens the swooshy bit—no idea what it’s called—of the antique writing desk and heaves the bag onto a nearby chair. He pulls out objects and places them on the desk top.
“Tell him to connect the control board to the laptop,” I say to Stove, who repeats my words.
“How do I do that?” Peter asks.
“With this cable.”
Via Stove, I give Peter step-by-step instructions on setting up my equipment, making sure we leave space for Josh’s phone should we need it, and Stove’s mic.
“What now?” Peter says, stepping back and staring at the jumble of recording apparatus as though it fell off a spacecraft.
“We need him to turn the laptop on, log in, and connect to the Wi-Fi,” I say.
“Turn the laptop on!” Stove yells.
Peter glances around the empty room.
“Open it up!”
“Open it . . . how?” he says.
How I wish the person who was best at possessions hadn’t died before this tech existed. I do some quick mental calculations. If Peter were still alive, he’d be in his eighties.
Without being ageist, it explains a lot.
“Tell him there’s a latch in the front that he needs to slide across to open it,” I say. Stove repeats.
Peter finds the latch and prises open my twelve hundred and ninety-nine pound ninety-nine pence lapt—
“Not too far! Holy shit!” I scream.
Stove makes a seagull screeching sound, and Peter stops his motions a millisecond before snapping my computer in two. He then tells the magician to rest it on the table in an L shape. “Press the on button!”
“This one?” Peter pushes Franny’s finger onto the power key, and the screen whirls to life. “Ooh.”
“I don’t know why he’s being so ridiculous about this,” Camille says, with an air of impatience that fits sickeningly well with their Francophone accent. “He’s seen laptops before. Plenty of guests bring them out in the communal areas.”
Jeanie tears her eyes from the screen. “Ah, but Cam, this is the first time we, as ghosts, have ever had control of one. The possibilities.”
“It’s asking for a password,” Peter says, yells in fact, as though we’re the ones who can’t hear him.
“Ready?” I ask Stove. He nods. Okay, here goes any semblance of mysterious suave I may have held. “It’s capital C, then lower case u, s, t, a, r, d, capital C, lower case r, e, a, m, s, a, r, e, k, i, n, g, exclamation mark two six four.”
“Custard Creams are king?” Trystan says, hiding his smirk behind a surreptitious nose scratch.
My dead cheeks blush. “I really like biscuits,” I say to my feet.
“What’s the significance of two six four?” Pixie asks.
Ahhhh, man. “That’s the total number of episodes of Murder She Wrote.”
“Cute,” Camille says.
“You say cute, I say cringe,” I whisper.
I didn’t think it was possible for me to get any more embarrassed, but as Peter taps the enter key and the password is accepted, I remember with horrifying clarity the image I’d saved as my desktop wallpaper.
Pretty sure I’m about to die all over again.
Jeanie tilts her head to the side. “Goodness me.”
“Is that . . .” Pixie frowns at the screen. “Is that supposed to be Sherlock Holmes bathing John Watson in a clawfoot tub beside the fireplace?”
“It’s fan art,” I say meekly.
“You drew this?” Jeanie asks. “It’s very . . . suggestive.”
“No, I’m nowhere near this talented.” Oh my Jesus.
“I downloaded it from a website that . . . has a lot of stories about characters, not just Sherlock and Watson, having relationships with . . . other characters that are sometimes outside of their canon.” I don’t know why I’m trying to defend all of this, but if I can’t shut my mouth soon, the hole I’m digging for myself will be bigger than The Paragon.
“What the fuck does canon mean?” Stove says. “And what website did you download it from?”
“Huh?” Peter says, having heard Stove’s voice.
“Wait a second . . .” Jeanie draws closer to the screen. “What’s that poking out of the water? A mushroom?” She gasps. “Is that Watson’s—”
Camille puts their hand in the air. “I’m more of a Sheriarty fan myself. Love a bit of enemies to lovers.”
“Thank you,” I mouth to Camille, and before anyone else can comment on my choice of wallpaper, I puff my chest up and raise my voice. “Okay, so we’re gonna need Pete to connect my laptop to the hotel’s Wi-Fi.”
Trystan’s watching me, his lips pinched together, but his eyes are crinkled at the corners.
Awesome, and now the coolest person I’ve ever met, dead or alive, knows I’m a pervert for cartoon porn.
Entirely my own fault, though how I was supposed to risk-assess a future scenario where a crowd of ghosts hack my laptop, I’ll never know.
“What’s Wi-Fi? Where do I find that?” Peter yells after Stove repeats my commands.
“See the icon in the bottom right of the screen that has four lines in a fan shape?” I say. Stove parrots.
“What? There is no icon like that? Wait, what does icon mean?”