Perceptions (17) Lara, Lara, Lara. Why did you come here? I moved towards the house, scanning the vicinity before I went inside. No bolt and no lock in the world could keep me out any more. I stood in the narrow hall, suddenly familiar to me. Through Lara’s eyes I could see - feel - the cold terror that had driven her to crash the front door in a desperate bid to escape with her life. I heard her crying in my mind. Wait. Those sobs were coming here and now! There was someone in the house! I moved on into the living room, and there, on the sofa, I saw an old woman with her head clutched in her hands, weeping softly. Watching her a moment, filled with surprise and sentiment, I tried to understand her distress, wondering at the same time what she was doing here. Was she a prisoner? Surely she was too old for their sordid uses. My anger at the two men swelled up another notch. She appeared alone, strangely enough, but I was yet to search the house, when she abruptly ceased her crying and looked up - directly looking at me. ‘Who are you?’ she mumbled, her frail old face trembling. I whirled round, saw no one, and looked back at her, stunned. ‘My name is Mark. You… you can see me?’ ‘Have you come to take the house from me?’ ‘No. No, of course not. Mrs…?’ ‘Rice.’ ‘Mrs Rice, what are you doing here? What’s happened?’ Her miserable eyes examined me. ‘I live here. Lived here… before they came.’ It was obvious. If she could see me, she was dead; a spirit, like myself. ‘Mrs Rice, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your home. I was looking for someone. I didn’t know you were here.’ I knelt down in front of her in an effort to lessen my imposition. She was emotional enough without yet another stranger in the house. ‘Was it two men, Mrs Rice? Did they attack you?’ ‘Are you a policeman?’ ‘No, but I want to help you if I can. I’m a spirit, like yourself. My name is Mark.’ ‘You’re not an angel, then?’ ‘Sorry. No.’ ‘Then I don’t suppose you can help me very much.’ ‘I don’t know, honestly.’ I shrugged. ‘But you don’t have to be alone. I have friends, others like us…’ I didn’t want to mention the word dead, just yet - ‘and we can -’ ‘Can you give me back what I had? I didn’t have much, not in the way of money, and not many friends either. I was so alone here…’ Mrs Rice broke down momentarily. I felt so sorry for her. It was clear that she would have died here, forlornly, sooner or later, but her world shouldn’t have ended so pre-maturely and violently. ‘They said they were from the water board. They wanted to check the meter. They seemed so nice at first, especially the young one. He was so charming. He reminded me of my grandson. He was talkative, too. I offered them a cup of tea, but they said they didn’t have time for one. Mr Boyce wanted to read the meter… but he went upstairs.’ Boyce? That was the killer’s name? He could have lied, just as he’d lied about the meter. ‘He ignored me when I called him, but young Mr Daly said that the water pipes upstairs needed checking as well. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful so I didn’t argue. Besides, young Mr Daly was talking to me and keeping me company.’ Keeping her occupied, more like. ‘We were chatting so nicely when Mr Boyce came back down. I was just about to ask him if everything was all right when he put a horrible smelly hanky in my face. I must have fainted after that.’ Chloroform. Daly had knocked out Lara in the same way, and had probably done the same to the other girls. I wondered where their spirits were. Mrs Rice looked into my eyes. ‘Afterwards I found myself in the living room, and I watched them ransack the house, shifting things around upstairs during several days, using my keys to get back inside. Bastards.’ ‘I’m sorry for what they did to you, Mrs Rice.’ She had skipped a vital part of the story. Where had they hidden her body? ‘Do you know what they did - uh, with you… afterwards?’ ‘You mean after they’d killed me? Don’t be afraid to say it. It doesn’t hurt any more. All my pains are gone now. At least they did mean a favour in that sense. I’m no longer a burden to society. But I really wanted to join my Freddie. I know he’s waiting for me in heaven.’ The palm of her hand reached for her eyes. ‘I wonder if he knows what’s happened to me.’ She’d diverted. ‘Where did they… put you, Mrs Rice? After they… afterwards, I mean.’ ‘Oh. That. The garden. I watched them dig a little hole, and they put me in it. No ceremony, no formality, just soil. God won’t want me now. I’ll be stuck down here forever.’ Tears swelled her eyes. ‘I’m outside, in my little garden, right next to the weed-infested tomato patch that my Freddie used to dig every year, God bless his sweet soul. He was such a good man.’ Nice Mrs Rice. Now, she did cry, and I didn’t know what to say anymore. They came back unexpectedly, or at least Pete Daly did. I’d lost track of time, so I couldn’t say how long we’d waited for this, Mrs Rice - Mildred, and I. Not unexpectedly, though, Pete was with a young girl. Pretty, buxom, about the same age, I would say, as Lara, and certainly as keen on him for the sex; little did she know that he was a hopeless lover, and a bastard, too. Mildred and I watched him about to perform his drinks-in-the-kitchen routine, an exercise that she’d seen him execute more or less in the same manner eleven times already. She’d told me all about it. Pete Daly made me angry. Watching him now, made me fume. ‘How are we going to stop him, Mark?’ she asked. ‘I can’t stand to see this any more. That poor, naive young girl.’ Her name was Lisa, and she was drunk. Ravenous, playful, eager, she had her arms wrapped around him as they swapped tonsils. How far could I let him go? ‘Leave her alone, you animal!’ Mildred shrieked, surprising me with her animosity. ‘He can’t hear you, Mildred. Don’t waste your breath.’ ‘I don’t have any to waste, no thanks to him and his killer friend.’ I looked at her rather sheepishly. ‘I’m sorry I put it quite like that. Just let me handle this. I’ve had a little practice.’ And I was mad enough to hurl him against the wall as he helped himself to a feel of Lisa’s fetching bust. Focusing on the light switch, I caused the ceiling light to flicker. It was enough to interrupt their embrace. Daly’s face frowned. ‘Your bulb’s about to blow, Petey,’ Lisa breathed in his ear, and her right hand lowered to squeeze his balls teasingly. ‘You’ve got this love-nest rigged just nicely.’ His attention re-acquired, they began to kiss again, inflaming me. I threw an ashtray at his back. The couple split like an apple. ‘Shit!’ he cried. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ That’s more like it, I thought, planning my next move. Daly and Lisa exchanged fearful glances, and he bent to pick up the ashtray, glaring at it. ‘You haven’t brought me to a haunted house, have you?’ Lisa joked, the alcohol in her system depriving her of common sense. ‘I’ll show you haunted,’ I murmured, and slammed the living room door shut. Lisa screamed and backed into Daly, who could only take her in his arms and stare with alarm at the door. ‘There’s someone else in here!’ Lisa blurted. ‘Pete!’ ‘Take it easy! Take it easy!’ Simply said, but he was visibly on edge himself. Fear, I knew, would be his downfall, if pressed enough; and the swinging lampshade unnerved him further. Ditto Lisa. She was beginning to sober fast. ‘Pete,’ she wailed. ‘I don’t know,’ he interjected, unable to prise his eyes from the deranged lighting. I pulled open the door, and their jaws dropped simultaneously. Mildred began to enjoy herself next to me. ‘Give him hell, the little shit!’ ‘Okay.’ Lisa began to make her way toward the open living room door. She screeched as I levered her with an invisible shove in the back all the way to the front door. Daly was rooted to the spot. ‘Pete!’ she hollered, but she didn’t need an invitation to wrench open the front door and flee screaming. ‘Don’t forget his name,’ I called after her, watching her disappear into the dimly lit neighbourhood. I slammed shut the door and returned to where Daly was cowering in a corner, his eyes on stalks awaiting the next event. I spotted a small picture frame with an old photograph of Mildred together with her beloved Freddie, standing on a shelf. I launched it at Daly, and he ducked in fear of being struck, only he wasn’t. Deliberately, I hung it in mid-air, and waited for him to turn slowly and see it. The horror on his face was worth the admission price alone. ‘No!’ he howled, lowering himself on his haunches and raising his hands across his face. ‘It can’t be, it can’t be!’ He scrambled across the carpet towards the living room door. It slammed shut before he could reach it. Braking in terror, he rose and headed for the kitchen with the flying picture frame chasing him. Pete Daly screamed like a girl, screamed as Lara and ten other girls had screamed before her. He turned with nowhere to run and faced it. There was no escaping the conclusion. The old lady of the house was back with a vengeance. ‘I’m sorry!’ he cried. ‘I’m sorry!’ I positioned the picture closer to his face, and he tried to push it away. It came back, undeterred. ‘It wasn’t me! It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t kill you! I didn’t do it!’ Relishing my power, I decided to step it up further. I had to make him want to confess, to call his partner Boyce, or better still, call the Police, and admit to everything. I withdrew the picture slowly from his nose, watching him mesmerised by its flight-path. I’d noticed the telephone positioned on a small table next to the armchair facing the television set, and that was where I parked the frame. By now I was in my stride. I had enough in me to flick the receiver off the hook. I heard its dialling tone. I couldn’t make the suggestion any plainer. ‘Go on, you little bastard,’ I hissed under my breath. ‘Use it.’ Daly took a tentative step forward, afraid of another assault. He gingerly approached the armchair, nervously looking this way and that. ‘Don’t hurt me, please. I… I understand what you want. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.’ ‘You’d better!’ growled Mildred, pleased with my progress and probably wishing to get in on the act, if only she knew how. His shaking finger pressed ‘9’, then a second time. He hung up before the third, chickening out. For this refusal he received a smack on the head by the picture frame. ‘Okay, okay! I’ll do it!’ This time there was no hesitation. He pressed 999 and waited for the response. When prompted, his quivering voice bellowed Police. To urge him on when asked for his location, I rattled the picture frame on the table. We were getting there. By the time the Police arrived, I’d reduced Pete Daly to a quivering wreck. He was more than happy to see the boys in blue, and he didn’t have to get up from the sofa to let them in. With my aid, the two police officers entered the house, and their caution changed to a puzzled expression on their faces as they pushed open the living room door to find him sitting there with a wild-eyed appearance. It was about to go downhill for Daly from now on. ‘We killed her,’ he blurted, foolishly, and he continued to use the term ‘we’ with every sentence that further incriminated him. If they had started to think he was a juvenile nut, their minds soon thought differently when he took them outside to show them Mildred’s grave. ‘I don’t think you really want to see this, do you, Mildred?’ Her face had lost its beam now that the fun was over, and the gruesome prospect of seeing her own body unearthed cast a shadow on her features, so to speak. Lara’s recovery was pretty much assured, if the conversation of the two remaining doctors who were attending her was anything to go by, and once she was able to communicate her side of the story and identify Boyce and Daly, our triumph would be complete. The celebration of our victory was somewhat tempered by the addition of poor Mildred to the hospital’s growing ghouls fraternity, but we couldn’t change the fact that she was dead, so her presence among us at least provided her with some form of companionship, except that she would miss her Freddie terribly. Away from all this excitement, I found myself alone in the Intensive Care unit standing over my own body still attached to the life support machines. ‘What are you thinking?’ inquired a voice that I recognised. I looked across the bed towards the door and saw Sonia. ‘Hi.’ ‘Hi, yourself,’ she said. ‘I wondered where you’d got to.’ Sonia positioned herself opposite me so that we faced each other over my physical self. ‘Don’t you find this rather disturbing? Looking down at yourself, I mean.’ ‘I do, as it happens. It’s kind of weird. You know, I’ve often dreamed this scenario. I never thought it would really happen. I never truly believed in ghosts until now.’ Sonia smiled. ‘What makes you think you’re not dreaming now?’ ‘What?’ ‘Interesting isn’t it?’ A hundred thousand thoughts flashed through my mind. Was Sonia right? Was I only dreaming? ‘That isn’t possible,’ I replied, dismissively. ‘Sure about that?’ I wasn’t, not really, and Sonia’s persistence triggered doubts in my mind. ‘How can I test it? How do you know you’re dreaming when it’s so totally real? I mean, even when you’re awake you sometimes feel it’s only a dream. Where’s the borderline?’ ‘You’re asking me?’ ‘You started this. I assumed you knew something.’ Sonia’s smile only broadened. ‘What? What aren’t you telling me?’ ‘Nothing,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘I’m winding you up.’ ‘How do I know that? If I’m dreaming, then you’re not real and I’m winding myself up!’ Sonia broke into real laughter. ‘You’re funny.’ ‘No I’m not. I’m confused. Sonia, stop laughing, this is serious now.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ She collected herself, barely. ‘But look at the situation.’ ‘After everything I’ve been through, you telling me this has suddenly made me think.’ ‘But nothing’s changed. Are you still asleep?’ I frowned deeply, and waved my hand through the core of the bed in front of me. It didn’t prove anything. ‘How do I know anything? If I’m asleep I should wake up, eventually. Shouldn’t I? How long can a dream last?’ ‘As long as you’re asleep, I suppose. How many dreams can you have in one night? How long is a dream?’ ‘That’s like asking how long is a piece of string?’ ‘I suppose.’ This conversation was going nowhere. It simply widened the choice of questions. I’d read somewhere that some dreams could be so vivid, so believable, that if for example you dreamed of having been in a fight, you could wake up with the bruises. I glared sternly at Sonia. ‘So, am I really in a coma or am I dreaming?’ ‘Or are you in a coma and dreaming?’ My shoulders drooped. ‘Fuck. This gets worse.’
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