Paranormal Investigations: No Situation Too Strange (18 page)

"You didn't fail - you stopped the ring being used as a tool of power.  You were never meant to stop him - this was a battle not the whole war.  It's a small part of the whole and to him it already happened and could not be changed.  Surround yourself with good people.  Don’t do it all alone, sweetie.”

I frowned.  “I’m used to being alone.  I’ve always been alone.”

“And for that I am sorry.  There's so much more I want to tell you, Leo - I just don't have time.  I suppose you'll just have to figure it out for yourself."

"Why do you always harp on about time?  That watch beeps all the time and you're off, no matter whether I need you or not.  It's bad enough I never had a mum to help me in my life, but at least she had a good reason for not being there.  You just waltz in and out of my life when you feel like it."

"I don't have a choice, Leo.  I had to make some tough decisions."

"You're never there when I need you!" I sounded just like a sulky teenager, but I couldn't help it - he hadn't seen enough of my sulky teenager at the time, so he was getting it now.

"I've always been there when you really needed me Leo, that's when I was with you.  When you needed me.  Think about it."

I did.  I thought about all the times he had deigned to turn up in my life.  I could easily count them on my two hands.  The night I came home from school sobbing because I was being bullied.  He had turned up then with Tiddles, taught me how to care for the cat that I now knew was actually a baby griffin.  He had wiped my tears and tucked me up in bed.  Once he had sat with me in the college library testing me on A Level Literature the night before my exams.  There was the time he turned up with cake just after Jez left.  I think I told him to eff off then, but true - he turned up and I did eat a mouthful of the cake he left before leaving it to moulder in the fridge.  It was good cake, but I was too miserable to take pleasure in it.

"Even if you did occasionally turn up," I said, "that doesn't amount to a hell of a lot of time over the course of one life time."

He looked at his watch.  His eyes appeared to be glinting with tears.  Surely not?  Surely my dad couldn't cry?

"No," he said, shaking his head.  "Over the course of your life time it amounts to twenty three hours and thirty seven minutes."

"Huh?"

He looked at me.  His eyes were full of tears.  "Leo - what do you remember of the night your mother died?"

"Nothing."  That was a lie, but to be fair it was the lie I told myself.

His eyes bore deep into me.  "What do you remember?"

I shrugged.  "It was night.  It was dark and cold.  I
don’t
want to talk about it."

"We were out at a fireworks display," he said, "it was the fifth of November.  There was an enormous bonfire and a guy being burnt at the very top.  We were probably too close, but everyone was.  Health and safety would never allow it these days.  You were little, it had just been your birthday and I lifted you on to my shoulders so you could see everything.  You held a sparkler in your hands.  You were wearing new gloves.  Birthday gloves.  Your face was lit up in pure joy, as if it was the most exciting thing you had ever seen.  Then the fireworks began to go off.  It was the most beautiful display and stood beside the two people I loved most in the world I knew I had done the right thing in becoming mortal.  When He created us, the angels, He had not realised that in sparing us pain and old age and death He was also depriving us of love and life and joy.  It was one of the best nights of my life, alongside the night I met your mother, when I married her and the night you were born.  I counted myself a very fortunate man that night.  I was filled with love and joy."

Did I remember that night?  How could I tell if my memories were of that night and not of some other fireworks display?  Of course - it had been the last time we were all together, because later that night my mother had died.  That was a black hole in my life that I refused to peep into.

My father looked at me.  "Do you remember how your mother died?"

"No - and I don't want to, so don't remind me please."

"Do you remember how I died?"

I looked at him in shock.  My stomach opened into a wide swirling pit.  "You?"

He looked at his watch again.

"You died?" I repeated.  "How?  I... but..."

He took my hand in his own and looked into the distance.  A tear rolled down from his eye.  "I have been living this one day for twenty two years Leo.  It's hard to make twenty four hours last your daughter's life time so I picked the most important moments, the ones where you really needed someone in your corner."

"I don't understand."  My voice was so choked with tears it was painful to talk.

"I made a bargain at the end - one day to spend with my daughter, but I've not been playing fair, Leo.  I've been taking parts of that day at different times and now my time is out."

I grabbed his wrist and looked at his watch.  It was counting up to twenty four hours and read 23:48.  "Twelve minutes?  That's all you've got left?"

He put his arm around me and pulled me close.  "Perhaps we could just watch the sun rise together?"

"But there are so many things I want to talk about, things I need to know..."

As a large sob escaped from me I nestled into the nook of his arm.  Looking at the sun neither of us had to see the tears flooding from our eyes, although it was harder to ignore the shaking that the sobs were racking from our bodies.

The sun rise helped me ignore the imminent and inescapable future of the next twelve... eleven... ten minutes.  The sun was no more beautiful than usual which seemed wrong.  Surely if it was going to be someone's last sun rise it should look more than the usual mediocre ball of yellow in the sky fighting through morning mist?  It should be a thing of awe and beauty.

"Daddy?"

"Yes sweetie?"

"I'm sorry I wasn't a better daughter."

He pulled me close and kissed my forehead.  "I couldn't have wished for a better one."  He pulled me close into a hug.

Fathers are not meant to cry.  They are meant to be strong and calm and the rock to which a child can anchor themselves.  To see your father cry is the worst thing in the world because it tells you the world is a bad and painful place, that even fathers need to sob out their pain sometimes.

"Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

"I know you do."

I pulled my arms tight around his neck as if I could keep him from slipping away.  His watch beeped and I wrapped him closer, closer, closer and then he was gone.  There was nothing left. 

He was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When it's all over we still have to clean up

My kitchen clock had stopped when the power had been cut.  It showed the time as 10:34 pm.  I looked at it for a while when I got home, as it was the only sign of the evening before.  That evening that already seemed half a lifetime away.  The clock's hands were caught in that moment and in truth I think a part of me was there with it, trapped forever in time.

The window had been replaced and everything cleaned.  Not a grain of salt was in the wrong place.  Nissa had been good to stay and work without my leaving out a dish of milk.  I opened the fridge and poured one out for her now.  I made a mental note to add full fat Jersey milk to my shopping list.  A Brownie who dealt with the mess left behind by rampaging demons and cherubs deserved only the best. 

As I closed the fridge door I caught sight of a postcard tucked under a magnet.  It was from this summer when an old friend had gone to Spain.  'Wish you were here' it said across the front, a picture of green trees and sandy desert. 
Andalucia. 
I looked up to the clock and then back down to the postcard.

The sofas that had been up ended were now back where they should be, Bob's blanket neatly folded on one arm. 

I looked up at Bob who had followed me into the flat and looked just as confused as I did. What happened next, now all the drama had been played out?

"I think I’ll go to bed,” I told him, even though it was morning.  “Goodnight."

He looked at his blanket.  “Me too.”

I gave him a sad smile and he smiled back.

The duvet was warm, once I pulled it around me and cut off all the gaps where a draft could get in.  I knew I wouldn't sleep, my mind was too busy.  In a frantic rush my mind replayed everything and then debated the millions of variables that could have occurred if I had made different decisions.  No matter how much I thought, nothing would change and nothing would make me feel better.

I reached into a drawer for a hand full of knock-off sleeping pills and swallowed them dry.

*

I woke when it was dark, popped more pills and slept again.  My sleep was good - it was empty of dreams.

*

It was definitely the next day when I woke, or it could have been the day after that. 

A hungry stomach got me out of bed and made me walk to the kitchen.  As I was rummaging in the fridge I noticed Bob was sitting on the sofa with the local jobs paper spread before him on the coffee table.  He was serious then.

I took a spoon and a bowl of cornflakes to the other sofa and sat down.  As I ate, I regarded Bob and watched the rapt interest at which he read all the advertisements, he even had a red felt tip pen in his hand, ready to circle the ones that interested him.  He scratched his head, right by his little stubby horns.

"Er... Bob..."

He looked at me and blinked.

"I don't want to throw a spanner in the works or anything - but how are you going to get away with... with -
them
?" and I gestured to where the horns were on his head.

His hand followed mine and he felt his horns as if he had forgotten all about them.  "Oh, I've been letting my hair grow.  I can back comb it into an amazing afro, the local hair dresser showed me how.  I told her I was a genetic freak.  She even sold me the comb to do it with."

"And your feet?"

"I'll get human shoes with inserts.  No one will ever notice."

"Oh, okay."

I went back to eating and he went back to reading.

"Er, Bob..."

"Yes?"

"What qualifications do you have?"

"Huh?"

"Qualifications.  What qualifications do you have?"

He scratched his head again.  "Well, I was many years with the fairies..."

"You can't tell them that.  You need bits of paper, bits of paper that say you can do things."

"Can't I just show them?  Show them how well I can do the job?"

I shrugged.  "I think employers like bits of paper."

He gave me a nonchalant expression and settled back into his reading.  I obviously hadn't put him off because he continued to ring the adverts that interested him.

Mind you, I couldn't really criticise - a drama diploma and a certificate in stage combat didn't really go very far.  It got you about as far as your great aunt's investigation agency anyway.

I could have stayed around moping, but that's no fun when you share a flat with a half-goat half-man and have an obsessive compulsive Brownie who wouldn't allow any mess to remain for longer than it took you to turn your back.  In my mood a bit of mess would have been reassuring.  So there was nothing to do but shower, dress and drive up to the office in Cockfosters.  Perhaps it was time real life started again.

*

The office building was as deserted as usual.  I had no trouble in finding parking since my car was the only one that ever parked there - apart from the occasional intrusion from the odd commuter departing from Cockfosters tube. 

It was a cold morning, winter was truly here and as I stepped from the car I wrapped my coat close about me.

I walked into the building and up the stairs.  Reggie was at work on the floors.  I bade him good morning and he didn't even blink. 

I hesitated with my hand on the brass door knob to Paranormal Investigations, looking at the dripping gold letters.  This was it now.  This was my life.  I would never play Lady Macbeth, I would never be a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.  I was doomed to work for my aunt and scrape a living spying on errant husbands and the occasional sexed up ghost.

I entered and was met with an accusatory glare from Rose at her desk.  She peered over a pile of papers and through her glasses at me.

"Where have you been?" she demanded.

"I got married."

"Humph," she said with a sniff, "very funny.  Would it kill you to call in to the office?"

I sighed and sat down in the visitors' chair opposite her desk, reached for a biscuit off the plate she kept handily on her desk and munched.  "Well Rose, it was a bit chaotic what with time travelling with my father, fighting off demons and fairies and then having a showdown in Highgate cemetery when I had to persuade Karl Marx, the zombie version at least, not to ally himself with the forces of evil, but it was okay because it seemed he just wanted to get laid anyway.  Oh and the only way I could defeat the bad guy
was
to marry him."