Paranormal Investigations: No Situation Too Strange (5 page)

"I'm relieved," he said, "I worried when I couldn't get hold of you."

I had ignored all his messages from Los Angeles.  "You were busy, you didn't have time to worry about me!"

"And then you wouldn't return my calls."

"I was busy." Busy watching Jeremy Kyle and feeling sorry for myself.

"Well, anyway - I'm back now and it looks like the third part of the trilogy will be filmed in Europe so I can base myself here for the most part."

I was unsure what to say to this - did he mean he was back and we could hang out as friends or did he want to resume where we had left, but without the freezing-cold-because-we-can't-afford-heating bit?

I managed to reclaim my hand under the pretence of organising the rubbish into one easy to dispose pile.  All other conversation between us was suspended by the arrival of two teenage girls, the bolder of the two was nudging her friend with an elbow.

"Told you it was 'im," she said in a rough London accent.

A magical change almost came over Jez - a fan had spotted him and now he needed to go into business mode.  He smiled at the girls and this gave them enough confidence to approach.  Their entire body of energy was directed straight at him.  Me they ignored.

"It is you, innit?" the bolder one said, "Jeremy whassisname?"

Jez smiled patiently.  "Busted."

"Can I 'ave an autograff?"  She supplied a paper napkin, luckily Jez had his own pen.  I'm not sure she was the type of girl to own one.

"What's your name?" he asked her.

She said something like 'Shannicka' so Jez asked her to spell it.

"S H thingy A N I Q U A."

The 'thingy', when she drew it to explain, turned out to be an apostrophe.

Patiently Jez signed her napkin and then, when a camera phone was thrust at me without a word, he posed for a photo with the two of them (I later saw it in HEAT magazine, but funnily enough I didn't get a credit as photographer).  When Sh'aniqua asked for a kiss, I decided it was time to intervene.

"Sorry girls," I said trying to sound business like, "Mr Flynt has a strict no under-eighteens kissing rule."

The pair gave me what my teenage self would have described as dirty looks and scampered off giggling.  Sh'aniqua was on her phone straight away loudly asking her mum to guess who she'd just met.  Her mum, from what I overheard of the loud one sided conversation, didn't guess correctly.

"So I guess you're pretty busy." Jez said, trying to ignore the loud teenager.

"You couldn't imagine!" I said as I tucked a wrapper into a cup.

"I hope you're not too busy to come to my first night, I'd like you there - as my guest."

My tummy did a flip, honestly - it did.  A genuine smile lit up my face until a man passed my eye line as he entered the eatery.  Then I frowned.

"You can make it Leo?"

"Wouldn't miss it!"

"Good, they can be quite posh affairs, all the angels come and the critics.  I'd appreciate a friendly face out there."

For those of you not wholly consumed by the business that is show, angels are financial backers.  They put their money into producing theatre and got a set of tickets to first night out of it.  Very rarely they got some money back too.

"Text me all the details and I'll add you to my diary." I said with a smile.

"Yes Mum!" Sh'aniqua said, "He's here now!  Tell Aunty Katie and the girls to come down!"

It was time to leave so we both rose.  He made to go one way, I made to go the other.

"I'm going the other way Jez, so I'll say goodbye."

He slipped an arm around me.  Damn feminism to hell, that made me feel secure.  This time when he kissed me I managed not to fidget and he did get my cheek although that produced no less amount of electricity pounding through my body.  I watched as his dark figure walked away, then - when he was out of sight - I headed back into the eatery.

Inside I sat down at a table.  The man already sitting there looked up.

"Hello Dad," I said.

*

Dad looked up.  He didn't look any different although it had to be at least a year since I saw him last.  He smiled at me, but I detected some concern trying to hide behind it.

"Good afternoon Leo," he said.

With Dad there was never any point of berating him for missed birthdays or Christmases - he always gave off this air that suggested there was a good reason for his not being there at the key moments of your life.  Already he was looking at his watch nervously.

Dad didn't like time wasters, so I wasted no time.

"Dad - why did you send me Bob?"

"Bob?"

"You know - the small guy with the goatee beard and the... oh, I don't know -
goaty
hooves?"

"Ah, he has a name now does he?"

"Why did you send him to me?"

"It's your job."

"My job is to investigate for clients who
pay
me to do so.  Clients who are a little more..." I lowered my voice to a whisper as one of the uniformed employees walked past, "human!"

"Well you can't talk."

"Dad you sent me a man who looks like a goat who made me get him a troll for protection!"

"Ah," Dad smiled, "he got a troll then.  I told him a troll would be his best bet, I'm glad he listened."

"You know about trolls?"

"Of course I do.  You didn't?"

"Hmm, well - that kind of stuff is not supposed to exist!"

"But sweetie, you're almost twenty five and you run a business called
Paranormal
Investigations.  What did you think the paranormal bit stood for?"

"Great Aunt Mildred's insanity?  Anyway - why does it matter that I'm almost twenty-five?"

"Well it's by that age that it's clear whether you have the skill or not."

"What skill?"

"Seeing.  If you haven't started seeing and believing by that age you never will.  Your mother started seeing properly at twenty-two and that was quite late."

"
Seeing
?" My head spun, "You've lost me Dad."

"You are a Seer, from a long line of Seers."

"A
Seer
?"

"It's exactly as it sounds.  I'm sorry to be blunt Leo, but I don't have time to talk in anything other than direct terms.  You See things other people don't, you can See beyond the projections of the supernatural - See things that other people never know are there."

"Oh right - okay, sure.  And if this is true - why on earth didn't you tell me any of this before?" It was lucky there was nothing weighty to hand as I would gladly have pummelled his head in at that instant.

"It sometimes skips a generation.  If someone without the gift was told about the supernatural world they might very well lose their sanity.  I was more concerned that you were one of those who had the gift but was also too grounded in logic to accept it.  You are much more... modern than any of the Seers who have come before you.  I feared you would be one of those who would never acknowledge what was in front of your eyes.  I've been trying to help you see the truth."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, like that cat I made you look after when you were twelve - you called it Tiddles."

Ah yes, another of Dad's charity projects.  Tiddles had been a brown tom cat as vicious as hell.  I had looked after it for two weeks before it did a bunk over a neighbour's fence and was never seen again.

“Tiddles was not a nice cat.”

"Sweetie, it wasn't a cat - it was a baby griffin."

I narrowed my eyes.  A baby griffin? 

He continued: "I had to provoke you into Seeing and Bob, as he is now known, really does need your help.  The fairies are a tough bunch and when they want something done it gets done."

"But Dad, I already have a job at Paranormal Investigations."

"This is the job of Paranormal Investigations," he said, "your job is to facilitate the smooth existence of two worlds side by side just as your mother and great aunt did before you.  Paranormal Investigations is your job, Seeing is your job.  That's why Paranormal Investigations exists.  To make the Seer accessible to both worlds, the natural and the supernatural.  You have to help Bob - it is your duty."

My head was filling with questions that my mouth did not have time to process before my father's watch beeped and he stood up to leave.

"Hold on..." I said, "you can't just say these things and leave!"

He looked at his watch.  "Sorry Leo, but I have somewhere else I need to be.  You'll understand one day."

"What - why my own father swans in and out of my life at will?  Tells me I have to help strange goat men because it's my duty and then leaves before actually telling me anything?  Some chance."

He looked at his watch again and shrugged his shoulders.  "See you soon Leo."

"Huh!" I replied and slumped into my chair as he moved rapidly out of the restaurant.  Bugger him, I'd do what I liked.  I didn't have a duty to anyone but myself - never had.  If he wanted a daughter who was bound by duty he ought to have raised one.

CHAPTER FOUR

Seer

I walked back to Waterloo and then had the whole forty minute journey to think.  Not about what Dad had told me, but about how not to be crushed in a commuter’s sweaty armpit.  When the train became overground after Highgate the carriage began to empty out and I managed to get a seat.  Then I began thinking about what Dad had told me. 

Seer.

What was that? 

"You are a Seer, from a long line of Seers."

Mum had been a Seer?  She had seen goat men and trolls?  If it was true, what else had she seen?

I knew so little about my mother.  She had died when I was six and my memories were all mixed up.  I never knew what was real and what was imagined because I had no one around to ask. 

Sitting on the train, I squinted and tried to look at everything differently.  Nothing changed.  The man in the suit reading his paper was still a man in a suit reading his paper.  The woman who looked like she regretted her choice of killer heels that morning was still rubbing the sole of her foot.  No ghosts or ghouls appeared.  Nothing spooky.  Nothing paranormal or supernatural.

And yet, that very morning I had seen not one, but two trolls and was currently flat sharing with a man who was not entirely human.

I thought back to what Great Aunt Mildred had told me when I started at Paranormal Investigations, not that I paid her much attention in my heart-broken and self-neglected state.

“You can start on the missing pets,” she had said, “I’ll deal with the roguish husbands until you find your feet.  Everything
else
goes through me…” then she had looked at me as only wizened old women can: “…for now…”

Was that why she was so singularly obsessed with my twenty-fifth birthday?  If I didn’t See by then what would happen?  And did seeing a goat man and two trolls count as
Seeing
?

*

I got home in the dark and was crossing my flat building's car park when I thought I had better check in on Trevor and see if there had been any trouble.  It was a couple of paces to the brook side.  I leant over, trying to touch as little of the sap-rotten, peeling-red-paint railings as I could.  I peered into what Trevor had disdainfully called a 'culvert'.

"Trevor," I called, "it's Leo - has there been any bother?"

I expected his rasping voice to respond or his knobbly green figure to appear.  Nothing.  The young black cat that lived in the flats behind the Chinese take-away came to investigate and gave a sniff as if she could sense something new and unusual.  Then she looked up at me.

"It's a troll," I told her, "and hopefully he won't be here long.  I wouldn’t get too close.  Trolls look pretty hungry to me."

She gave me what could be described as a nod and turned on her heel, sashaying off through the car park.

"Trevor!" I called louder.  Still no response.

Perhaps I should have been alarmed that Bob's body guard was not at his post, but I still had trouble imagining Tinkerbell being capable of murder.  And until I saw a fairy I would not be convinced that they even existed.

All was well until I climbed the stairs and turned the key in the lock of my flat door.  Immediately I heard unfamiliar sounds and was on high alert.  I had no weapons to hand, so I slipped my key between my knuckles, ready to poke anyone should the need arise.  Cautiously, I slipped down the small hallway and burst through the living room slash kitchen door.  A riot of noise greeted me - I had not known my TV had such a loud setting.

"
I think you could make a handsome profit with this ewer
," came a voice from the TV, "
It could easily sell at auction for more than..."

In surprise at the sight that greeted my eyes, I dropped my keys and stared open mouthed for a second before logical thought came back to me.