“Location, Location, Damnation” – An Excerpt
Trev Irwin didn’t believe in ghosts, which meant it was something of a shock when he saw one.
Ghosts were just one of a number of things Trev didn’t believe in. He didn’t believe in UFO’s, reasoning that any alien species intelligent enough to cross the vast gulf of space would surely have better things to do with their time than flattening crops in Wiltshire and anally probing people called Bubba in the Deep South.
He also didn’t believe in telepathy, logic dictating that if there were people out there who could read minds, he’d probably get slapped in the face by attractive women several times a day.
He certainly didn’t believe in spiritualism, tarot card reading or fortune-telling, though he did believe that practising them was probably a symptom of the menopause.
He scoffed at the Loch Ness Monster, chuckled at Bigfoot and rolled his eyes at the Beast of Bodmin.
In short, he was both a sceptic and a cynic. The type of bloke who would point out the inconsistencies in a dinner-table anecdote, no matter how entertaining it was; spoil everyone’s enjoyment of a film by cataloguing its plot-holes; and think it was funny to tell small children that there was no Father Christmas.
Most people can suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy a story. Trev’s disbelief was on duty 24/7.
But despite all this, he saw a ghost.
Even a sceptic like Trev, when pushed, would have suggested that the most likely place a ghost might appear would be a haunted house of some kind, or maybe a graveyard, or an old battlefield. He wouldn’t have suggested the Hot Cuisine Cafe on Brackenford High Street, but then neither would anybody else. Still, that was where he was when he saw the apparition. Or rather the first of them.
He went to the Hot Cuisine every morning when he was working. Not to eat, because sensible people (and Trev definitely considered himself one of those) didn’t eat there if they knew what was good for them. People who didn’t know what was good for them sometimes ate there, but then life is a learning experience.
Trev went to the Hot Cuisine for its amazing coffee. The amazing thing about it wasn’t its aroma, flavour or quality; the amazing thing about it was that no military super-power had yet adopted it as a chemical weapon. It was frighteningly strong, and nobody ever knew how long ‘Oily’ Ollie Pound, the Hot Cuisine’s proprietor, had kept it stewing on its hotplate. Ollie didn’t seem to believe in making a fresh batch, preferring to just top up what was already there. The result was a mug of hot, slightly viscous liquid that would instantly banish all lingering sleepiness, which was exactly what Trev needed it for. He just wasn’t a morning person.
Trev's first reaction when the pool of shadow in the corner opposite him began to take on a life of its own was to aim a suspicious glance into his chipped mug. Ollie’s coffee had never triggered hallucinations before, but there was a first time for everything. Trev was usually careful not to drink more than half a cup because he didn’t want to spend the rest of the day so wired he couldn’t blink; maybe this time he’d had a bit too much and the caffeine had finally got the better of him.
He looked up again, training his gaze across the cafe’s dingy interior. The Hot Cuisine’s premises were small, with just six four-seater tables arranged in two rows of three on the grimy flooring. Trev sat at one of the middle tables, facing back towards the narrow counter at the rear where Ollie served his customers. The man himself was busy frying some threatening-looking sausages in a blackened frying pan, which Trev estimated had last been cleaned when Atlantis was still on the maps. Absorbed in his work, Ollie paid no attention to Trev or to his other customer, a middle-aged man whose last few threads of hair were dragged forlornly across his scalp in a misguided and unsuccessful attempt to conceal his baldness. He sat in the corner opposite Trev, facing the windows at the front of the cafe, his blank gaze focused on what looked like a small photograph.
Behind the man, whom Trev had already mentally christened Captain Comb-Over - the fact that the man hadn’t hit him just added more weight to Trev’s theory about telepathy - was a patch of shadow. It was moving, even though the man casting it wasn’t.
Trev stared. The shadow appeared to be slowly expanding, swirling and writhing as it did so. Trev blinked and shook his head slightly to try and clear his senses, then looked again. The phenomenon continued. Aware that Captain Comb-Over might think he was staring at him, Trev tilted his head and tried to watch out of the corner of his eye. Ollie continued his attempts to subdue the sausages, humming a little to himself as he did so, oblivious to what was happening behind him.
The shadow continued to spread, and the core of it appeared to be getting darker, blotting out the stained floor and the corner of the counter. Trev became aware that although the shadow was expanding and moving outward, it was doing so in a specific direction. It was moving towards his fellow customer.
Trev turned to look through the windows behind him. There was nothing happening outside that could account for the strange shadow. It was still early, and only a handful of people were walking the High Street. None of them as much as glanced into the Hot Cuisine.
Trev returned his attention to the shadow. It now covered most of the area immediately behind Captain Comb-Over. As Trev watched, two thin tendrils of pure darkness extended from its centre, twisting and thickening as they did so. The ends of the tendrils began to separate, splitting into thinner strands that looked almost like...
Fingers. They weren’t shapeless tendrils at all; they were arms, each with a hand that seemed to caress the air as if feeling for something, sensing something.
One of the hands gently touched the back of Captain Comb-Over’s neck and Trev flinched in his seat, expecting the same reaction from the other man; but he remained still and silent, his eyes never leaving the picture he held.
The shadowy hands spread themselves out across the man’s shoulders as if they were about to give him a massage. A new shape began to seep forth from the pulsating shadow behind Captain Comb-Over, a rounded form that Trev thought looked very much like a head. It slowly wriggled from side to side, like someone trying to pull on a sweater with a tight neck, and Trev got the impression that it was straining to free itself from the darkness that surrounded it. After a few seconds’ struggle it appeared to succeed, suddenly moving with much more speed and purpose.
The arms and hands passed inside the man’s jacket, flowing down into his own limbs with an almost graceful ease. The shadowy head followed behind, and just as it was about to merge with the Captain’s own, Trev was sure it turned to look at him. Two bottomless patches of pure blackness that could only have been the thing’s eyes regarded him, and Trev almost recoiled from the sheer hatred that seemed to emanate from them. Then the head was gone, disappearing inside.
More of the dark matter spewed out and passed into Captain Comb-Over, and as it did so the inky blackness started to dissipate until there was nothing left but the normal, common-or-garden patch of shadow Trev had first seen.
Trev ran his hands over his face, his eyes screwed shut, his logical, sceptical mind desperately trying to provide an explanation for what he had just seen. The best it could do was that old chestnut ‘it was all a dream’. Maybe he’d dozed off, just for a moment or two, but long enough to have a mini-nightmare. He could almost believe it, were it not for the fact that he’d just drunk half a cup of Ollie Pound’s coffee. Dozing off after that was, at best, unlikely.
He opened his eyes again to see Captain Comb-Over staring at him. The man’s blank expression was gone, replaced by one of simmering anger that was about to come to the boil.
‘What are you looking at, you little tosser?’ he said, standing up so quickly that his chair clattered over backward. The noise caused Ollie to finally look around, leaving himself open to a counter-attack from the spitting sausages.
Trev opened his mouth, then closed it again. Normally he’d have laughed at being threatened by some sad old git, but all of a sudden the bloke looked genuinely dangerous. His eyes burned into Trev’s with a frightening intensity.
Trev swallowed hard. ‘Nothing,’ he eventually managed.
‘So I’m nothing, am I?’ came the all-too-predictable response. In three quick strides Captain Comb-Over was across the room and looming over Trev, his face red and sweating, his fists clenched. Trev noticed that the photograph was crushed up in one of them.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ quavered Trev, trying to edge his seat back slowly. The chair’s feet made a low screeching sound against the floor.
‘No?’ said the Captain, leaning forward to follow Trev as he reversed his chair. Trev swallowed again, preparing to put his martial arts training to use. He was a master of the Way of the Hedgehog, an ancient fighting technique which involved curling into a ball and hoping his aggressor would decide he wasn’t worth the effort. Pathetic whimpering was optional, but approved of.
Captain Comb-Over glowered at him for another couple of hour-long seconds, then flung out his arm and swept Trev’s coffee mug off the table and onto the floor, where it shattered messily. The spilt coffee immediately began to bleach the linoleum.
Trev stayed on his chair in the foetal position, anticipating the first blow, until he heard the cafe’s front door crash shut and Ollie’s voice say ‘It's all right, Rocky. 'E’s gone now.’
‘Oh. Good,’ said Trev, removing his face from his crotch with as much dignity as possible, which was very little indeed.
‘What the ‘ell was that about?’ asked Ollie. The last word came out as abaaht; Ollie had a strong East London accent, although it wandered enough to make Trev suspect that it was just an affectation. Possibly the big man thought it gave him some sort of Cockney geezer credibility, notwithstanding the absence of jellied eels from his café's menu.
Ollie turned down the heat under the sausages, which sizzled menacingly before subsiding. He cocked his head to one side, his doughy face screwed up into a quizzical expression. Trev estimated that Ollie was about forty and probably weighed over twenty stone. At any given moment he looked seconds away from a massive coronary, though if he’d got that fat eating the same food he served his customers he was probably immortal.
‘Buggered if I know,’ said Trev. He very briefly considered telling Ollie about the (ghost? shadow creature?) thing that he’d seen, before deciding against it. Ollie wouldn’t have understood. Ollie was a bit, well, stupid. Word had it that his café was only called the Hot Cuisine because Ollie had misheard the phrase ‘haute cuisine’. Trev could well believe it. ‘I suppose he thought I was looking at him.’
‘And were you?’ asked Ollie, shovelling the charred sausages into a heated tray to keep warm. ‘Dangerous thing, lookin’ at people.’
‘Might’ve glanced at him,’ conceded Trev. ‘I wasn’t staring or anything, though.’
‘A glance is enough, sometimes,’ said Ollie with the air of someone passing on some deep wisdom. He pulled a dustpan and brush out from under the counter and moved round to sweep up the broken mug. Trev noted that the grease-clotted brush was actually making the floor dirtier.
‘Only if you’re a psycho,’ he said. ‘Have you seen him before?’
‘’E’s been in here a few times before,’ replied Ollie, using the filthy brush to scratch his nose. Trev tried hard not to retch. ‘Not usually this early, though. Never says much, just has his bacon sarnie and his coffee and buggers off.’
‘Right,’ said Trev. He self-consciously smoothed down the front of his suit. ‘Well hopefully he’ll be in a better mood next time.’ He made a show of checking his watch. ‘I’d better get going. Sorry about the, er, spillage.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Ollie, waving a greasy hand. ‘This floor’ll clean up good as new.’ This last statement flew in the face of all the available evidence. ‘How's the property game, anyhow?’
‘All right, not too bad,’ said Trev, edging towards the door and wishing that Ollie had never found out he was an estate agent. Like a lot of people who dreamed of making easy money, Ollie watched the thousands of property programmes on TV and seemed to think that you could buy a house for ten quid, renovate it for twenty and sell it for half a million. He always wanted to talk about “the property game” and he always asked if Trev had seen any properties he might be "interested in”. It was bloody irritating, and Trev had even less time than normal for pleasantries that day.
He really wanted to leave, to get away from Ollie and his dirty floor and his pointless questions and the spilt coffee and the shadows. There seemed to be quite a lot of them now, though it was probably his imagination.
Probably.
‘'Ave you seen anything I might be interest-’ started Ollie.
‘See you,’ said Trev, and with that he ducked quickly out of the door and scuttled off up the High Street.