............not one for the faint hearted. Hope you enjoy it.
Pennies from Heaven
They were lucky to get it; a nice little two bedroom flat in a leafy suburb of London Cardiff
‘Quite a house, eh?’ he pronounced. They’d parked the van right outside the front door and stood for a moment taking it all in. Despite being chopped up into flats, the place still retained its own grandeur. It was a classic rambling late Victorian mansion. ‘1887’ was worked into the red brickwork on an oval plaque. There were two main gates from which the drive curved in a semi-circle, enclosing a wide expanse of grass. Two large beeches stood slightly to the right.
‘This must have been a beautiful garden once, Stella.’
‘It’s still not bad. You should see round the back’.
Michael drank it all in. It was just his kind of house. No particular order to it but plenty of style. The white woodwork was well painted. Taking a quick ten second look, the observer would come away with an impression of comfortable well being. A house built for pleasure in the style of its day with a blatant disregard for order and symmetry. Instead, a hotchpotch of gables and little balconies, red brickwork and hanging tiles amidst a glorious confusion of assorted windows.
‘Come on then, let’s start getting these boxes in. And so Stella broke Michael’s reverie and the heavy but gratifying task of moving in to their new home began.
They had far too many things. Until there was time to sort out what they really wanted to keep, they’d have to put up with little columns of boxes dotted around the flat. Michael had a good deal more ‘stuff’ than Stella.
‘I’ve already decided’ she said. ‘You have the bigger bedroom. This one at the end of the corridor will suit me just fine’.
The corridor itself was by no means poky but, just before the little bedroom at the end of it was a curiously over-sized fire-place. Gazing up to the plaster embossed surface, they noticed that it disappeared into what was obviously a false ceiling.
‘Come on, Stella. Let’s see what’s above this plasterboard’.
Clambering onto a stool, he pushed up one of the panels.
‘You’ll never believe it!’ he said. ‘The ceiling goes up another couple of feet and there’s some marvelous coping. What a shame it’s all covered up’.
‘Let me see’ – and Stella peered into the gloom of the hidden ceiling. ‘The lay-out of this flat has got nothing to do with the original plan of the house’, she said. ‘The plaster details go straight into the wall’.
They both immediately abandoned the sorting and began a serious exploration of the flat.
The little bedroom was painted swimming pool blue. It was cold, despite its homely size. Michael gave a little shudder and secretly felt relieved that his cousin had generously conceded him the larger room. The mystery of the lay-out began to unravel. Rising up to the right of the window was a plaster arch which not only disappeared in the false ceiling but curved into the dividing wall of the adjacent flat. The decorative coping hidden in the secret void ran straight into both side walls.
‘You know something’ said Michael excitedly. ‘This entire flat was not even just one room. It’s half a room. The other half must be our neighbours' and this enormous chimney breast is part of a central fire-place.’
Houses weren’t really her thing but Stella loved Michael’s enthusiasm and was quickly infected by the same curiosity.
‘I wonder what it can have been used for?’ he continued.
Stella ventured a suggestion,
‘Perhaps a games room?’ Michael looked quizzical but as no other option came immediately to mind he just hummed thoughtfully.
‘No doubt, we’ll find things out from the neighbours’. Best get on with the job in hand, eh?’ He closed the loosened panel and they set to work.
The next couple of weeks were taken up with the usual business of finding places for things and transforming a series of rooms into some sort of a home. The corridor and blue room were on the dark side but the rest of the flat was bright and sunny. The windows in the remaining part looked out onto a small courtyard and beyond to one of the large flats at the rear. It was quiet and very calm. You could hear nothing besides the odd sparrow and even they were infrequent visitors.
‘John’s coming round this afternoon’ shouted Stella from the kitchen. ‘That all right?’ ‘Yes, great!’ nodded Michael. Stella’s brother, John was always a welcome visitor. There was still plenty to do and he was quite ready to muck in.
They scrubbed tiles and floors, sorted books and hung pictures; always just another something to be done.
A welcome lasagna and a glass of chardonnay ended the evening. It was too late for the tube so a camp bed was squeezed into the hall and John bedded down for the night.
‘Sleep ok?’ asked Stella brightly the following morning. John mumbled something pertaining to yes and shuffled off to the bathroom. He had an appointment at 9.30 a .m. and got himself away fairly quickly. He couldn’t say what it was but he felt a curious sense of relief as he stepped into the drive and gratefully filled his lungs with the fresh morning air.
Stella worked nights; not every night, of course; one on, one off. That suited Michael fine. He could enjoy the luxury of simply doing his own thing and, if that meant a lump of cheese and a rice cake for supper, so be it.
They’d been living there for almost two months. Still not much sign of the neigbours but they had finally met the land-lady; a curious woman of around seventy. Friendly she certainly wasn’t, but she was courteous enough. Her hair was silver grey and hung shoulder length. It was smooth and silky. The eyes, however, were cold and lack lustre. She wore almost no makeup but beneath the deterioration of her face a handsome bone structure remained.
‘She must have been a beautiful woman once’, remarked Stella as she closed the door.
‘Yes, but the alcohol can’t have helped much. Couldn’t you smell it on her breath?’
Stella confessed that she had. She remained quiet for a moment.
‘What a sad woman’, she though to herself. ‘Sad and wintry, as though she were all closed up to everything and everyone’.
‘I don’t supposed we’ll be inviting her much round for coffee’, piped in Michael.
‘No’, sighed Stella. ‘I don’t suppose we shall’.
A glorious spring morning; the sun was spilling through the white nets and filling the living room with a delicious freshness. Stella poured the tea and then, in mid pour, stopped and looked seriously at Michael.
‘I’ve got something to tell you’, she said.
Michael put his cup down and looked up with curiosity.
‘I know what I’m going to say may sound ridiculous’, she began, ‘but…’
‘Well?’, asked Michael.
‘It’s just that… I… well…, it’s simply that I think we’ve got a ghost’.
‘A what?’, laughed Michael. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’
‘Look, you know me’, she continued. ‘I don’t believe in these things, I don’t even believe in God, but there was definitely something in my room last night. I didn’t see anything but I heard it’.
‘Heard what?’, asked Michael, the cheerfulness having left his voice all of a sudden.
‘I can only describe it as a kind of mumbling; a funny low mumbling that sounded – well, I don’t know what it sounded like. I just know it wasn’t nice – and that’s it’.
She was looking down at her tea cup. Michael pushed back his chair and put his arms round her shoulders.
‘Look, I’m not saying you didn’t hear something’, he said. ‘But let’s be honest, you could have been dreaming and you could really have thought you heard this mumbling, whatever it was. Let’s just wait and see, shall we? And if nothing further happens – and I’m sure it won’t, we’ll just put it down to a bad dream, ok?’
She nodded, pulled in her lips thoughtfully and the two of them went back to their breakfast. At that moment the sun slipped behind a cloud and an unwelcome dullness invaded the room.
-------------
Stella’s night on and Michael had the flat to himself. There was a good murder mystery on the television but, though he loathed to admit it, he consciously avoided watching anything remotely creepy. Instead, he put on some 1930’s dance music and settled down to a collection of Saki short stories.
The following day was a busy one. The graphics studio had a commission to submit by 5.30 p.m. and the entire staff threw itself into the task; not even time for lunch.
‘I’m taking an early night’, he said to Stella that evening and, leaving her in the company of ‘Newsnight’, thankfully slipped into the comforting folds of his duvet.
Some five or six hours had passed when a sudden brightness woke him up. He turned his head and there were Stella by his side, her hand still clutching the light switch and her face completely drained of colour.
‘Whatever is it and whatever time is it?’, he said.
The hands of his clock read 4.00 a .m. There was a curious rattling sound. It was Stella’s teeth. She was actually chattering with fear.
‘My God, Stella. What’s happened? What on earth has happened?’
He swung his legs out of the bed and held her close to him. She was shaking all over. Her lips slowly form the words, ‘There’s … there’s something in my room’.
He didn’t think about anything. He simply strode into the corridor and towards the little blue room. The wardrobe towered ominously to the left and for a moment the word ‘poltergeist’ scuttled across his mind, but he continued marching and stepping straight into the room shouted.
‘Who’s here? Who’s in this room?’ His enquires were met with silence. The wardrobe remained firmly where it was and, apart from the dishevelled bed clothes, the room was perfectly in order.
‘Come on, Stella’ he said. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea and you tell me all about it’.
They settled round the kitchen table and with hands clasped around the staunch British comforter, Stella began her story.
‘It was like this. I was sleeping fine, I know I was and then suddenly my dream, whatever it was, changed and it became horrible and frightening and I wanted so much to wake up – and when I did, I felt what I suppose can be described as a terrible heaviness in the room – and then I saw it’.
‘Saw what?’
‘It wasn’t anything specific. It was dark, remember. But I distinctly saw the outline of a man, standing just at the foot of my bed. I didn’t stop to think, call it police instinct, if you like, I just lurched forward with all my strength and tried to grab him.’
‘And…, go on, Stella’. She was having difficulty to continue, Michael hastily poured her more tea.
‘I just, kind of grabbed myself and fell onto the bedstead’.
‘And then what did you do?’ Michael’s eyes loomed large over the rim of his cup.
‘I didn’t do anything. I was all crumpled up but – oh God, it was horrible’.
‘Please, go on.’
‘He, it, the thing, started speaking’.
‘Speaking?’
‘Well, no. Not speaking, but mumbling. Much louder than the first time. It was low but so aggressive. It sounded like a lot of bees, but bees speaking Arabic or Turkish or, I don’t know. And then, don’t ask me why, but I tried to talk to it.’
‘Talk to it?’ Michael’s voice was only just above a whisper.
‘Yes. I couldn’t believe I was saying it but I asked it what it wanted. It’s like a film, isn’t it?’
‘And then what happened?’
‘Oh, then it was just the worst part. My whole bed simply started banging against the wall. I was being shaken about and the mumbling was getting louder and louder. I tell you, Michael. I have no idea how I got to your room. I just don’t know, I just don’t know’.
A silence slipped in between them. Finally, Michael said,
‘What are we going to do?’
Stella stared hard at him.
‘I tell you what I don’t want’, she said. ‘I don’t want any priests or that kind of nonsense. You know I don’t believe in that stuff.
‘Yes, all right, but you believe in this thing whatever it is’, he protested, and then a horrible thought came into his mind.
‘You work nights, Stella. I’m going to have to sleep here on my own’. She stretched her arm across the table and squeezed his hand.
‘Yes I know. I’m sorry, Michael, but this is all so confusing. I’m a policewoman for God’s sake. I can’t have people knowing about this. Nobody will believe me. They’ll all think I’m raving mad. It’ll be terrible for me’.
‘So, what do you propose then?’ said Michael blankly.
‘That we just try to saw this out ourselves. Maybe we’ve induced it; maybe it’s just in our minds’.
‘So far it’s just in your mind’ – but Michael kept that thought to himself.
‘Ok, he said, we don’t tell anyone’ he yawned suddenly. ‘Look, Stella. It’s almost five a.m. We’ve both got to work. Let’s try and get at least a couple of hours kip. We’ll keep the hall light on, all right?’
Stella nodded and the two of them went to their respective rooms.
Was it something they were passing on to each other? Was it self induced? The theory made no difference to the fact. From that night on, without fail, they would both wake up at exactly four a.m. and always, whatever they might have been dreaming would become a nightmare. Before long, they never turned off their bedside lamps at all. Michael slept with his wooden cross in his hand. ‘Please God’, he prayed. ‘Whatever happens don’t let me see it, please don’t let me see it’ – and he never did. But he felt it sure enough. He described it to John one day, their only confident.
‘It’s like a presence, a heavy presence. I know when he’s in the room. It feels just like a really muggy day and, I talk to him’.
‘You don’t, do you?’ said John incredulously.
‘Yes, I do’ replied Michael. ‘You see, I feel sorry for him’.
‘What you say?’ he asked.
‘Well, I say what I genuinely think. I tell him, ‘Look, I don’t know who you are or what has happened to you. I hope you’re not suffering but – and I can hardly believe I say this, - I’m alive and you are dead. I need my sleep. I can’t sleep properly with the light on and I’m becoming exhausted’. Always, when I’ve finished speaking the pressure goes away and I can quite easily go back to sleep, but you know John, I really am getting tired. It just never stops’.
John remained silent for a moment and then he said ‘Have you tried talking to someone?’
‘Oh, I can’t do that. You’re the only other person who knows about it’.
‘Yes, I know Michael, but maybe you can find out something about this house; anything that might give you a clue as to what is causing all this’.
‘It seemed a reasonable suggestion and the following afternoon, he put John’s advice into practice. He’d often seen a middle aged man around the house fixing things and doing odd jobs. They’d only been on nodding acquaintance but Michael decided to break the ice and push for a conversation.
‘Hello’ he said. ‘I’m Michael from flat 2A’.
‘I know’, said the middle aged man. ‘I’m Derek, Derek Sutcliff’.
- ‘The land-lady’s son’ thought Michael.
Derek was bending over some wiring that he’d pulled out from the skirting board. Under normal circumstances Michael would have taken the hint but he had to find out at least something.
‘How much do you know about this place?’ He tried to sound nonchalant.
‘Oh, plenty’; was he going to talk?
‘You’ll have met my mother, I suppose?’
‘Mrs. Sutcliff? Why yes, urmm, nice lady’
‘You’d be the first to say so’ he didn’t take his eyes off his work.
‘Not an easy lady to get on with. I have as little to do with her as possible – which isn’t too difficult. She hasn’t got much time for me either. She’s got her dogs, a dozen maybe and her gin. No, the old girl can’t do without her gin’.
It was incredible the way the man was talking about his own mother. Michael couldn’t resist.
‘And did you, I mean, she, ever live in this house?’
‘I never lived here. This belonged to her first husband. Sure, she lived here in the beginning but that was back in the thirties. That’s how she got this place’.
‘There really couldn’t be much love between mother and son’ thought Michael. The guy was so eager to spill out the family history.
‘Nope’, he continued, pushing in the bunch of wires back into the skirting board. ‘Mother was no fool’. Know how she got this place? Michael shook his head gravely.
‘Came over from Sweden
“Yes, err, yes, thank you’, said Michael and he watched Derek pick up his tool box and walk across the hallway to the front door. He stopped suddenly and turned round. ‘Can’t be too hard on the old girl. Guess she was too beautiful for her own good’.
The door clicked shut and Michael saw the blurred image of his informer through the decorated frosted glass receding into the distance.
Nothing concrete to explain the disturbances in the flat but plenty to feed the imagination and plenty to tell Stella. They discussed it eagerly over supper. Who could the spirit be? They knew it was a man. Perhaps it was the butler, angry and resentful at the foolish whishes of his master? Or was it the old man himself, cursing at his own gullibility? Or, if he had been murdered, was this his tormented soul forever wandering his old home bitter and unforgiving? If anything, their sympathy for whoever he was increased but it didn’t alleviate the sleepless nights. It was after one particularly bad experience that Michael decided to take action. He had woken at 4 a .m., as was customary and saw very plainly his cousin pass in front of his open door and into the bathroom. He could hear her moving about but, as though mocking this living world with its trivial banalities, his nightly visitor was sitting on his throat. The pressure was intense. He could hardly breathe let alone move his limbs. He felt his heart would burst. He clenched his diaphragm and with all his might, squeezed out in a tiny voice “St-e-ll-a”. The weight lifted slightly. She didn’t respond at first but, in what seemed an eternity, put her head round the door.
‘Did you just call me?’ she asked. Immediately, he could breathe freely again.
‘Yes, yes I did’ he panted. ‘It’s all right now. It was just Mr. Mumbles’. And it really was all right. Everything was back to normal.
The next day Stella was on day shift and Michael had the whole flat to himself. He didn’t exactly plan anything. It was more of an instinct really. ‘Pennies from Heaven’ – a delightful double album of wonderful songs’ from the 1930’s from a successful BBC series. He knew all the words from beginning to end. He placed the first disc on the turn table, walked in to the little blue room and began the musical exorcism.
‘Life, can’t go on without that certain thing, be no wedding bells, no wedding ring, no Sir, not without that certain thing’ – and another. Mr. Mumbles had to hear them all.
‘You’ll find your fortune falling, all over town, be sure that your umbrella, is upside down’.
The tunes went on and on. The rhythm, like a heart-beat resounding in all corners of the room and Michael singing for all he was worth.
‘I’m alive’, said the songs. ‘Life is for the living. And while I’m here, however brief or long, I shall live it to the full’.
The last song of the last side came to an end. Michael felt exhausted but strangely elated. There was no more to say. The message had been played and delivered. He had literally sung the sadness away.
*******
In late August, the inhabitants of the rambling house decided to hold a barbecue. It would be nice to bring everyone together and a chance for a little more than mere passing conversation on the stairs. Michael and Stella’s story had remained undisclosed. There were about twenty-five residents altogether; ten flats in all. It would have been far more sensible to have people standing and milling but then this was an English barbecue and people felt more secure glued to their chairs rather than running the risk of starting up conversations with people they barely knew.
Nobody noticed how it began but it spread like a bush fire.
At first Michael and Stella were incredulous. It was as though something they had believed to be utterly secret, personal and guarded had been all the while existent in the lives of everybody present.
‘Oh, yes!’ Mrs. Barnes was saying ‘My boys were always having friends home from school to stay over. Bangings on pipes ands doors opening and closing – what a commotion! Nothing more than that, though’.
‘How many times the radio’s gone on by itself’ said old Mr. Carter from number seven. ‘But I just goes and turns it off again’.
‘And there was one night’ said a tall thin man, who shared an upstairs flat with four other men ‘do you remember it, Pete? We were all kept awake by constant walking backwards and forwards across the living room. Everyone was accusing everyone else of keeping the others awake’.
‘And what was strange?’ asked Michael.
‘Well’ said the tall man. ‘We had none of us stayed up. We were all of us in our rooms. It was something else that was stomping about – but we heard no mumblings, mind. I don’t think I’d like to have heard no mumblings’.
‘Vwat mumblings?’ said a slightly tremulous voice with a thick Russian accent. A young couple had just appeared. ‘V’re from flat 2A. V’ve just movt in. Vwat are ziz mumplings you are sayink?’
‘Have a sausage’ interjected Michael quickly. ‘I’m sure you’ll find them very tasty’, and the conversation hastily moved on to another topic.
