Chapter 22: Twenty-Two - A London Haunting: A Christmas Ghost Story

“Lottie, there was another thing I meant to say––”

“Hang on, Cam. Can you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Is that…? Is Reggie…whimpering?”

She’d opened the front door, stepped into the porch, and was pushing through the inner door when she heard it – when she saw it too, if only in her mind’s eye – what she’d expected to see the first time she’d come here: the house as it used to be. Piles of clutter everywhere, floors littered; no care taken with anything. No pride.

And yet, once upon a time, a younger Reggie had left this house each morning to work – tall, straight-backed, stone-faced Reggie – smartly dressed, diligent, earning enough to get by. Yes, she could picture it vividly enough: a man of order and precision in the world outside, no one suspecting the chaos behind closed doors.

Then one day, he’d simply rid himself of it all. Stripped life down to the bare essentials. All to prove something: that he was in control.

Maybe it had worked for a while. He’d fooled himself, just as he’d fooled everyone else, and the haunting – however it had manifested back then – had stopped.

“But it’s like placing a bandage over a wound,” she murmured.

“What?” Cam asked.

She turned to him. “It’s like placing a bandage over a wound, what Reggie was doing, when what you really need to do is treat the wound itself. The source of infection. That’s what we have to find, Cam. The source. Come on.”

If he wanted to question her further, he didn’t, clearly sensing that now was not the time. Conjecture and theory could wait. What mattered was the truth – however bitter it might be, however raw it remained. The exorcism lay in facing it.

As Lottie took the stairs – two at a time, just as she had the last time she was here – Cam was at her heel. But so was someone else.

Bobby.

Lottie could feel her presence as surely as his, the whisper that brushed her ear. And Lottie whispering right back. “I know, Bobby. I know.”

At the top of the landing, they turned towards Reggie’s room. He was in there, only a few feet away – whimpering, definitely whimpering. She had to hurry, she tried to, but the corridor ahead felt endless, stretching miles into shadow.

Illusion, Lottie, she told herself. It’s just illusion.

As well as that, she was seeing what wasn’t there again: the rubbish of ages, heaped in mounds she had to wade through, the floorboards shifting beneath her feet like quicksand, a swamp intent on dragging her down, swallowing her whole.

Stopping her.

Why, Reggie, why? We have to face this.

He couldn’t go on like this. He wouldn’t, she realised.

He was giving up.

He wanted peace at Christmas after all.

But, Reggie, where’s the peace in this?

She moved forwards, as did Cam.

Remember what I said…

It was Bobby again, her voice faint now, her presence thinning. Her work here was done. It was only Lottie and Cam who had more to do.

And Reggie. He did too, of course.

They reached his room. Lottie threw the door wide, revealing the bedlam Reggie could no longer hide from, no matter what he did, how hard he tried.

A stifling heat hit her straightaway, as suffocating as it always was, such a brutal contrast to the cold outside, the crisp, cleansing bite of winter she swore she’d never complain about again. The mess was only hours old, not days or weeks, but already it was bad enough – the sour stench of uneaten takeaways nauseating.

Turmoil.

And an old man in the midst of it.

As she rushed to him, her eyes found the photo frame and the broken clock – both lying on the floor where they’d been hurled against the wall. No carer had picked them up, or perhaps they’d been told not to. Barked at to keep away.

Even so, a flicker of hope sparked in her because of it: that they were there, rather than returned to the mantelpiece – no longer occupying the prominent spot they had for years. Did it mean a letting go of some kind? And if so, was it the good kind – the release of memories? Or the bad kind – the surrender of life itself?

There was only one way to find out.

Reggie sat in his chair, hands gripping the armrests, but he wasn’t a man made of stone, as cold as marble. No. The heat of the room burned through him too. Simmering, then boiling again. Simmering, then boiling.

A man writhing with emotion.

He whimpered louder the moment he realised she was there, his entire body trembling at the sight of her, and with it, the floor seemed to quake too, other things about them stirring, as though shuddering in response to her presence.

“Cam,” she called. “The heating––”

“I’m on it. I’m on it,” he replied.

How Reggie had survived in this furnace, she’d never know – nor how she had, all those months sitting opposite him, reading.

“Lottie! Look out!”

She was halfway out of her coat when Cam yelled.

The chair she’d just been thinking about – hard, wooden, uncomfortable – lifted off the floor, hovering for a breath before tipping her way.

Cam lunged, grabbing it before it could strike, wrestling it under control.

“Forget the heating,” she said, “drag that out instead. Everything that might cause damage – get it all onto the landing, and then shut the door on it. Quickly!”

No words from Reggie as all this went on, just that wide-eyed terror, that wide-eyed…fury. But that was okay. She didn’t need words.

Cam did as Lottie said, grunting and gasping with the effort. Sweat poured off him, as it did off her. What a way to spend Christmas Eve – a night neither of them would forget, just as Reggie had never been able to forget one of his. Events had unfolded that day worse than anything she would ever want to imagine, and yet that was exactly what she had to do: see it with him, feel it, scene by scene, step by step.

Whether he willed it or not, and no matter how hard Reggie fought her, what she was doing was for the greater good. What was happening at No.142 Long Mere Road would never stop otherwise – just another London haunting with no conclusion.

Reggie spoke at last, now that there was no distance left between them, now that she stood at the edge of the abyss beside him – an abyss she had to topple into despite Dot’s warning, falling and falling as he had, no matter how deep the drop.

“No, no, no,” he was saying. “Leave me. Just…leave me. I don’t want you here.”

“Sorry, Reggie, but I’m afraid you’ve got me.”

“But…why?” He was almost pleading now. “Why won’t you leave me be?”

“Because I think you’ve been left before. And the loss…it was too much.”

He stared at her – now more stunned by her words than agitated – and as she knelt, she reached out. Behind her, Cam was still busy clearing the room. Soon, though, he would close the door, and have to lean against it to keep it that way.

All while she laid hands on Reggie, while she emptied her mind, making space for his memories to come crashing through – those of a Christmas long ago.