28. Bucket List
twenty-eight
Bucket List
“It was you in my room that night. You were calling out my name, not Stove. You were messing with the light switches. You were the shadowy figure by the window,” I say.
“At first, I didn’t think you were tall enough or angular enough to fit the shadow I saw, but I keep forgetting about your magician’s top hat.
“What I believe happened is that once I recorded my episode, you went to discuss it with the other ghosts in the orangery, and when you could be certain Jeanie wasn’t returning to her room for the night, you came back yet again, concealed inside the body of a staff member.
A staff member you knew would be on site but wouldn’t start their shift until a couple of hours later.
“I don’t want to get this person in trouble because they weren’t in control of their functions at the time and will have no recollection of the moment, but I’m one hundred per cent certain that if Sergeant Davies had done his job properly and swabbed under said staff member’s fingernails, the police would’ve found traces of my DNA.
Or if they’d taken fingerprints from the PolterPulse gun that was used to shoot the chandelier from the ceiling and then hastily stashed back under my pillow, they would find this person’s prints.
“You killed me because of the information I had, and the information I, as an inquisitive living, breathing busybody, could gain access to. You said so yourself. ‘How will you solve a murder if you can’t interview the suspects, inspect the evidence, operate computers, or communicate with the police?’ You killed me because you thought it would stop me.
“I should just like to point out now that my end-of-year school report always said the same thing. ‘Gary is a very smart boy, but he needs to stop talking so much in class. Gary’s propensity to chat is taking its toll on his school work. I have no doubt Gary will go far in life, so long as he can learn to mind his own business.’
“I couldn’t be silenced at age four, eight, eighteen, or twenty-five. I won’t be silenced now. And I’ll tell you the moment I figured it all out, when the lightbulb finally pinged over my head. It was your obsession with a certain silver-haired undertaker.
“Once you realised Jean Johnson’s involvement in your demise, you sought to punish her in ways that went beyond taking her life.
You knew that even in death Jean’s heart belonged to Kelsey Cobbledick, and you made it your own personal mission to pin every murder on him.
You couldn’t physically plant evidence at the crime scene because you can’t touch or move objects, and Kelsey stopped visiting the hotel many years ago, so you cherry?picked moments or methods of death that reflected the ones seen on Peggy in the Middle.
I believe Pixie’s and Jean’s were coincidental, but the rest less so.
For instance, why squish me with a chandelier when you could simply shoot me with my own ghost-extractor gun?
“I’ll admit, I played right into your hands with that one, and dedicated my entire show to the incontrovertible coincidences of these deaths.
Everyone in the village knows what a huge Imogen Savona fan Kelsey is, but apparently they weren’t making the connections, and still no arrests had been made.
“So, for a final time, you took matters into your own hands. You possessed your favourite host body, marched right over to Constable Zhou, who was in attendance at Jean’s burial site, and you told her a whole heap of information that only the true killer would know.
Including that Kelsey had suffered dog bites from Jean’s very own animals thirty years ago.
They arrested Kelsey, and you could finally relax.
Years of manipulating the perspective of what really happened had paid off.
“Except, no. Because I did something I’d been advocating was wrong for years and years, and I got my feelings and intuition involved. I made a whole bunch of friends, and I learned that love can exist after life.
“I saw love from so many new angles that I became a collector of it. I saw friendship. Enduring romantic love. Maternal and paternal love. I saw love of a job, a place, a business, a town. I saw love within the actions of doing something you truly care about. In these past four weeks, I have experienced love in so many new ways, and I’ve never been richer.
“But it opened my eyes to those incapable of loving another, and I found that some people disguise coercion and control and jealousy as love. You’ve been manipulating Helga for years. Long after you died you still held the puppet strings—”
“I never possessed Hels!” Peter snaps, sitting forward. “Helga, sweetheart, if you’re hearing this now, I never possessed your body.”
But I already figured this out. “Possessing your wife would be too easy, wouldn’t it? You’re about smoke and mirrors, Peter, and putting on a show. You needed Helga to believe she was making these decisions of her own free will.”
He’s shaking his head, but it might as well be a confession.
“There’s a term that’s become quite popular in my time, and that’s gaslighting.
You gaslit Helga. Made her believe she still loved you, that she owed you.
You’re the reason she’s still here, forty-two years later, hundreds of miles away from her family.
You made her think she was slowly losing her mind.
Until she started to fight back. Came around as if stepping out of the fog.
She began a list on her computer of all the deaths that had happened.
She conducted her own investigations. She figured out the causes originated from paranormal activity. She hired Camille, and then me.
“You managed to wipe certain names from her file because they didn’t fit the Kelsey Cobbledick narrative you were pushing.
Trystan had told me they didn’t hang out with you much as a ghost, but with me you were always lurking.
And now I understand you were terrified of what I might uncover, so you kept a close watch on me. ”
I check the time on the computer. I’ve been talking nonstop for nearly two hours. “So, Peter, on a scale of one to ten, how accurate would you say that assessment is?”
Peter places his hands into a steeple shape and rests his chin on them.
Magnus magics a microphone right in front of his mouth.
I spare the demon a quick glance, and he’s once again changed his outfit.
Now he’s in full jockey regalia. Jodhpurs, riding boots, a helmet and whip, and pink and yellow diamond?print silks. His breeches are indecently tight.
“Very good, Gary Runcorn. Very well surmised.” Peter pauses and puffs out a long stream of air, evidently buying himself thinking time or deciding on his next words.
“So, we have the murder expert in the house, and we have the ghost expert.” He glances at Camille, and then at Magnus.
“And we have the blisteringly moronic turnkey ready to hand me over to the poltergeists, no?”
The jockey leans against the wall and idly inspects his fingernails. “In about thirty?five seconds, you’re really going to regret your word choice.”
Peter raises a brow in challenge. “Something I’ve learned in my forty-odd years of being dead is that the more lives you take, the more powerful you get.
I’m no longer, as Camille puts it, a level two entity.
In fact, I may be stronger than the Old Scares themselves.
About your little speech, Gary . . . I know how much you and everyone else here craves closure, but .
. . it’s not for me right now. Thank you. ”
And with that, he vanishes.
“What the fuck?!” Stove says, suddenly able to jump to his feet.
“Where did he go?” Jean asks.
“Did he go into stasis? Will that make him return to the auditorium?” But as I say this, I know that’s not how it works. I’ve spent many a night sleeping in Trystan’s hut or on the beach with him without returning to the honeymoon suite.
Magnus steps forward, as unbothered as a cat readying itself to dive into a pile of feathers. “Not on your nelly,” he says, adds, “brB,” and with an echoing whip crack, he’s gone too.
“Did he just say brB?” Stove asks.
“What does it mean?” Jeanie says.
“Be right back,” he says.
A second later, Magnus stands in the trophy room, holding Peter by the scruff of his neck. “Whelp, forgot my clothes again.” Then he magics himself into a black T-shirt and grey jogging bottoms, and it’s so bizarrely ordinary that it’s weirding me out. “Thought he could run away, didn’t he?”
“Petey, what did you expect to happen?” Jeanie doesn’t even sound angry any more. Now she sounds disappointed. “You can’t leave the hotel grounds. You can’t escape us.”
“What are you going to do with him?” Trystan asks.
Peter struggles against invisible barriers. It’s like he’s standing in a transparent tube that’s just about wide enough to fit his frame.
Magnus casually hefts a shoulder. “Eh, whatever you want me to, really?”
“I thought you didn’t mess around in people’s lives?” Peter says, jerking his upper body against his bonds.
“My friend, you are not alive. You have no life to meddle in,” Magnus says.
Something clicks in Peter’s brain, and unbridled fear washes over him, draining him of colour.
Stove takes a step closer to Peter, and another.
He stops a metre away from him, just out of swinging reach.
“You killed me, you cunt.” His voice is even, devoid of emotion.
It’s not the laddish, jokester Stove I’ve come to know and love.
“I had a fucking girlfriend. We were gonna get a flat together. We had a cat. She was called Bonnie. BONNIE, PETER! YOU FUCKING KILLED ME!”
I suddenly remember we’re still live on air. I whirl around to the microphone. “Hey, so . . . sorry for the bad language. I’m going to end this episode here. Tune in next week to find out what happens. Bye.”