Someone To Talk To

A Ghost Story for Hallowe’en

I could have ignored it. When you hear what I am about to say, you might tell me that I should have ignored it. But I didn’t ignore it, and so here we are with that contraption on the table between us, recording me.

It’s good to have someone to talk to. What paper are you with? Warden says he’ll get me a copy when it comes out, so make sure you represent me well. Hope you’re not in a rush. Me, I have all the time in the world. Going nowhere for a few years. I take it that shrug means you have time. I’ll take you back to the start.

Everyone who lives alone talks to themselves. Fact. I know it, you know it, and neither of us need some peer-reviewed academic paper by so-and-so Professor of Psychology from Magdalen College to tell us. Always chatted to myself, a commentary whilst making dinner, a chunter in the bath, a word or two to the television or radio, but then I found myself doing it when the TV or radio was switched off. It’s one thing barking at Johnson, shouting him down, telling him what’s what when he’s giving some daft stutter of an answer on the teatime news, but it’s another answering back to a voice whispering through the bedroom darkness when all devices are switched off.

I assumed it was in my head – of course I did, I’m not mad you know – and so, when I spoke back, I knew full well I was talking to myself. Yet, the funny thing was, I never knew what the voice was going to say next, even though I was certain the voice was me. Became quite pleased with my imagination. Didn’t know I had it in me, that level of creativity. Unusual conversations, left of field, inspired, you might say. If I thought about it too much, tried to summon the voice, it would remain quiet; only when I zoned out, and my mind was blank did I hear it. Then I came to question if it was my imagination at all. You see, the voice had a vocabulary beyond mine, words I had to check in a dictionary, otherwise the conversation would grind to a halt.

‘Tonight is the anniversary, it happened on this date, and you must make a piacular offering in my memory.’

Memory. All right then, he was dead, that much I understood, but the rest stumped me. I looked it up. Piacular: making or requiring atonement.

‘What do you have in mind?’ I spoke aloud to the empty room.

‘You must act with the utmost celerity,’ he said.

‘Hold on,’ I said, flicking the pages of the dictionary to ‘c’. Celerity: swiftness of movement. ‘Got you,’ I said. ‘You’re in a hurry. What do you need me to do?’

Inexplicable that I would consent so easily, agree before I even knew the task, but yes was the right answer, I can’t explain it, as right as making a cup of tea for myself first thing in the morning.

‘I lived in this flat before you,’ he said.

‘The person here before me was a woman.’ And I stopped from saying the rest, saying that hat I knew her story, her sorry end.

Then the oddest thing happened, I began to hear her voice as female, not as mine anymore, but a mellow and mellifluous woman’s voice. Have you ever heard Nicola Benedetti speak? Well, that’s just what she sounded like. A voice like expensive brandy, smooth and calming, despite what she was telling me. Couldn’t believe what I was hearing, had to pour myself a drink.

She had been seeing the man across the stair for a year, then met someone else and wanted to end it. He wouldn’t accept it, said if he couldn’t have her, no one would, and out she went. Defenestrated. That’s another word she taught me. Such an elegant word for a horrible act.

‘I was told you fell out washing the windows.’

‘You have the suitable appurtenances for the job,’ she said. ‘Act quickly.’

Considering the context, I had a fair notion what ‘appurtenances’ meant, but I looked it up, to be sure.

He still lived in the block, same flat, across the landing from me. I’d never warmed to him, always complaining about the weather, or grumbling about the man on the top floor with the dog that wouldn’t stop barking, or denouncing the new young couple in the garden flat whom he blamed for leaving the garden door open and letting mice in. I looked at my hands. I had the suitable appurtenances for the job. Time to right a wrong.

Followed through that day. Popped over to tell him I’d noticed a wasp nest at the head of his window, brought an aerosol, even held the ladder steady while he climbed up to find it. ‘Can’t see anything,’ he said, and then the ladder went out from under him, quick as anything. But here’s the rub: the police can turn a blind eye to one act of defenestration, but two, two in the same block, it transpires, are worthy of investigation.

No regrets. I did the right thing, and, fair play to her, she has not abandoned me, visits all the time.

Like I said, it’s good to have someone to talk to.