Justin Richards - The Death Collector

Liz on the other hand seemed to be completely taken in. She sat carefully and attentively at the large round table in the middle of the cluttered parlour and seemed to hang on Madame Sophia’s every word.

There were six of them in all. Madame Sophia’s husband was a small man with a sharp nose on which was perched a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. He was forever rubbing his hands together and had a permanent stoop that George thought made him look like a fictional money-lender. Madame Sophia introduced him as ‘my husband Gerald’.

Mr and Mrs Paterson made up the six. Mrs Paterson was a small, timid, white-haired woman, while Mr Paterson was a huge, broad-shouldered man who was so fat he had to sit well back from the table. His hair was as black as his wife’s was white, and slicked across the top of his head with oil.

‘I do hope the spirits will be kind to us tonight,’ Mrs Paterson said as husband Gerald turned down the lights. Her voice was shrill, like a bird pecking for a worm. Gerald was preoccupied with something on the dresser at the back of the room.

‘Oh so do I,’ Liz said, sounding eager and excited. ‘It’s all so enthralling.’

George said nothing. In the near-darkness, he was aware of Mrs Paterson’s fingers coldly meeting his own as they spread their hands across the table. If they hadn’t been twitching, he might have imagined he was touching a corpse. On his other side, Liz’s fingers were warm and comforting.

‘Is there anybody there?’ Madame Sophia repeated.

George looked round, trying to see if everyone else was attentive. Something moved at the corner of his vision, a slight ripple of light in the emptiness. For a moment his heart flickered — a spirit? He stared, trying to make it out.

A bell rang. The sudden jangling made Mrs Paterson’s hand leap away from George’s in surprise. ‘They are here!’ she hissed. ‘The bell!’

‘What bell?’ George asked, despite himself. He could see now that the dim light from one of the gas lamps had caught on a thread as it moved. A pale, thin thread that stretched across the back of the room.

‘On the dresser,’ Madame Sophia explained. ‘The spirits have taken to ringing the bell when they are preparing to make themselves known to us.’

George grinned in the dark. ‘How very convenient for us,’ he said. The thread he had glimpsed stretched to the dresser, and he would be willing to bet it was attached to the bell. But before he could decide whether or how to tell Liz, he felt her hand shift too.

‘Look!’ she gasped. Liz had raised her arm, dark silhouette pointing across the room towards the door. ‘A spirit,’ she breathed. ‘At the door.’

George shifted slightly to see the door. And sure enough, a pale, ghostly face was staring back at him.

‘Don’t look,’ Husband Gerald whispered loudly. ‘They don’t like you to stare.’

‘And please don’t break the circle,’ Madame Sophia said. ‘That could be very dangerous indeed.’

‘Of course,’ Liz said, returning her hand to its position next to George’s. He thought he could detect a hint of amusement in her tone, and as if to tell him he was right, her fingers tapped the back of his hand.

‘Yes,’ Madame Sophia was saying. ‘Yes, I can hear you … You wish to speak to someone here?’ Her voice had taken on an ethereal, sing-song quality. The bell rang again. ‘You do!’ Sophia exclaimed in delight. ‘And your name is … Edward.’

‘Edward?’ Liz’s voice was shaking with emotion. ‘Not Edward?’

‘You know an Edward? Someone who has passed over?’ Husband Gerald asked. There was a glimmer of satisfaction in his voice.

‘Why, no,’ Liz said. ‘It just sounds such a nice name. For someone who is dead.’

George stifled a laugh. ‘I don’t know any Edward either,’ he said helpfully.

‘It’s a small world,’ Liz told him in apparent seriousness.

‘No wait,’ Sophia interrupted quickly. ‘Edward is his spirit name. Here on Earth he would have been known as …’ She hesitated, for all the world as if listening to a voice that George and the others could not hear. ‘As …’ she added impatiently after a few moments. ‘It isn’t,’ Mrs Paterson said in a squeak. ‘I mean, it couldn’t be — could it?’ She gave a table-jolting sigh. ‘Not little Andrew?’

‘Why yes.’ Sophia seemed surprised. ‘That is what he says his name was. Andrew. There is another name …’ She made no effort to give it.

‘Griffiths,’ Liz said with conviction.

‘Andrew Griffiths,’ Sophia agreed. Then she realised that it was Liz who had spoken. ‘Er, is not the name,’ she finished.

‘Andrew Jones?’ George suggested.

‘Do we all have to guess?’ Mr Paterson asked. He sounded bored.

‘My brother,’ Mrs Paterson explained with an oblivious sob. ‘He … passed over when we were children.’

‘It is a child,’ Madame Sophia confirmed, as if this was something that she had simply forgotten to mention in all the excitement.

‘We were hoping for an Albert,’ Liz said sternly.

George sensed she had had enough of this. ‘Or a Percy,’ he added, trying to sound equally stern.

‘The spirits are not at our beck and call,’ Husband Gerald reprimanded them.

‘Oh, aren’t they?’ Liz murmured, just loud enough for George to hear. Then a moment later: ‘Look!’ she gasped.

Their eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness now, and everyone looked where Liz pointed. They all saw a white shape, formless and ethereal, hanging in the air above the table. It shimmered and twisted as if trying to become real, dancing across the room towards the dresser. It disappeared into the darkness and the bell gave a startled jangle.

Mrs Paterson clapped her hands together in delight. ‘A ghost. Oh, do say I have seen one of the spirits.’

But Madame Sophia did not answer. She was staring open-mouthed across at the dresser. ‘I don’t …’ she muttered. ‘I never …’ She turned white-faced towards Husband Gerald. But he too seemed pale and shocked.

‘Is that the end?’ Mr Paterson demanded. ‘Show over, is it? Can we go home now?’

George was about to say that he thought they probably could. But then, the table levitated. He was not actually aware of it happening until Liz gave a startled gasp. ‘The table,’ she cried out. ‘It’s moving. Can’t you feel it?’

Her eyes were wide and pale in the gloom as she looked round at them. ‘There it goes again. Oh, my goodness — it’s rising up. You must be able to feel it.’

George could indeed. And by the ashen expressions on the dimly lit faces of everyone else so could they.

‘You can tell it’s moving, can’t you, Mr Smith, dear,’ Liz said to George. He nodded dumbly, really nervous for the first time since they had sat down. But despite her apparent anxiety, she winked at George. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said as she did so. ‘Here it goes again.’

The new delivery boy was charming, if rather scruffy, Mrs White decided. She was surprised he had been sent out so late, but the lad insisted that this was his last delivery of the day and he would be off home soon. But could he beg a quick cup of tea before he went — just to keep out the cold of the night?

Mrs White was the cook, not a maid, so she wasn’t in the habit of making tea for delivery boys. But he seemed so cold and exhausted that she made an exception. And after all, he had come out late in the night to her kitchen. He was a chatty boy. Well, he didn’t talk an awful lot, but he was interested.

He told Mrs White that he had heard that the house was used for seances and the like. ‘Are you a believer in the afterlife and all that?’ he asked her.

So she told him. Yes, she thought there was probably something in it. So many people thought so, after all. Not that you would want to come here to find proof, she told him.