Chapter 26: Twenty-Six - A London Haunting: A Christmas Ghost Story

“Where’d you want the table, pet?” Tony asked. “In the centre of the room?”

“Centre of the room’s perfect,” Lottie replied. “Mum? You got the tablecloth?”

Jenny nodded, and Lottie sighed with relief. It was an old wallpaper pasting table being pressed into service, kept in the Becks’ garage for an age. Reggie had had a dining table once – a decent piece of furniture, he’d said – but he’d paid clearance men years ago to get rid of it, along with so much else in his home that couldn’t be nailed down. No matter. They’d make the one they had look lovely, regardless.

With the table in position, Jenny got to work – a rather red-faced Jenny, having just lugged in her prized bronze turkey along with the huge nut roast she’d made for Amelia, trays of roast potatoes and vegetables, and jugs of gravy. She set everything down in the kitchen, then rummaged through drawers and cupboards that Tony had recently unscrewed, searching for extra pots and pans to heat it all up in, as well as any plates and cutlery. Jack and Amelia joined in, washing the grime off everything.

Christmas Day, and it was all hands on deck at No.142 Long Mere Road.

There wasn’t even a hint of snow in the air – the skies promised rain instead – but the smiles on their faces more than made up for it, brighter than any Christmas tree. Just as well, because it was gone – banished, the tree that had stood in Reggie’s window day in, day out for several years now, prompting not just kids but passers-by to do a double take, to laugh, to mock.

Lottie and Cam had disposed of it the previous evening, with Reggie standing by the door at first, watching, then finally coming forward to help remove the faded baubles one by one. He’d faltered only when he held one that was once pure white. As he’d stood there with it – something that had never quite reached its potential – there’d been a faint rattle at the window, though outside the evening had been calm, the boughs of the trees lining the road perfectly still. It had subsided, though, and the bauble soon joined the others in one of the bin bags Lottie now kept there.

When they’d placed everything in the outside bin, they realised what an appetite they’d worked up and ordered food in – though not from Chicken Cottage.

“No offence,” Reggie had said to Cam. “It’s just…I’ve rather had my fill of it lately.”

“None taken,” Cam assured him, grinning.

They’d ordered from the local Chinese place instead, some noodles and duck with pancakes, and Reggie had tucked in eagerly enough, the tears he’d cried – and there’d been plenty, as there had been from all of them – long since dried.

Lottie thought he might want to rest after they’d eaten, that she and Cam could do a quick tidy-up, then help him to bed, making sure he was asleep before they left. But Reggie had wanted to talk at last about the truth of what had happened.

“After their deaths,” he’d said, “I couldn’t stay in the flat, couldn’t bear to, so I moved around, rented for a while. Despite insisting it was my fault, I wasn’t charged, though I think it would have been better if I had been. A more…tangible punishment, at least.” His smile was a wry one. “I never had another relationship after Rebecca, couldn’t even contemplate one. I threw myself into work instead, let it consume me, and did well enough, I suppose. Excelled, some might say. Bought this place – somewhere I knew Rebecca would have liked, the home we’d once dreamed of.

“The years went by. I stayed at the firm, other people coming and going. My parents died, and I lost touch with my brother – none of them able to forgive me for what had happened, though my parents tried to be civil at least. Once they were gone, there was no one left in my life who remembered what I’d been involved in. All they saw was a successful man, somewhat aloof, who didn’t tend to mix, but as long as I did my job properly, who cared? People left me alone, which suited me, was what I wanted. Rebecca and our unborn child were buried, but I wasn’t permitted to attend. Her parents refused to have me there. And I buried myself too, in the only way I knew how, deep inside myself, forgetting rather than remembering, pushing the memories further and further down with each passing year. So much so that when Christmas came around, as it always did – the anniversary – I barely noticed.”

Reggie took a breath. “And then came the rats.”

“Rats?” Lottie said, while Cam grimaced.

He nodded. “Becca had always been the messy one, content to let it build and build. I was tidy. But after the accident… Though I was so well-presented on the outside, though at work there wasn’t an item out of place on my desk, my reports always meeting if not exceeding the highest standards, at home I couldn’t be bothered to tidy either. The house filled with rubbish and mould, and I just ignored it. It didn’t matter what was happening on the inside, as long as the veneer on the outside was maintained. That all changed with the rat infestation. I had to do something. I’ve never liked those creatures; they’ve always made me shudder. I couldn’t bear to think of their beady little eyes watching me.”

“What did you do?” Cam asked.

“I hired a cleaner.”

“A cleaner?” Lottie gasped. “To deal with rats?”

“I had pest control in before,” he admitted. “They sorted that problem, at least. This was after I’d retired, in my late sixties, though I’d wanted desperately to stay on, needing the distraction, but…it was younger people the firm wanted by then. It was one of the men from pest control who recommended Nelly, actually – the cleaner.” He gave a small shrug, also wry. “Perhaps not recommended, coerced. And I thought, why not? Though I had time to do it myself, I had no inclination. Even so, I didn’t want the rats back. ‘She won’t judge’, he said. And he was right – she didn’t.

“She came along, a woman people round here might call ‘salt of the earth’. She never commented on the state of the house, just slowly, slowly did what needed doing, working more hours than I paid her for, I was certain. And…and I found I liked her weekly visit, the companionship. Though we rarely chatted, or at least I didn’t tend to chat back, she never minded. She could talk for the both of us.

“Her presence here offered some sort of…normality, I suppose, when normality had been long gone from my life. When she did what she did, she wasn’t to know. It was out of the kindness of her heart. Truly it was. Nelly was like you, you see, Lottie – nothing but kind. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. I…”

“Reggie,” Lottie said, taking his arm, only as a gesture of comfort.

“It was Nelly who bought the Christmas tree and put it up,” he said, “while I was here in my room. She clearly thought it would be a nice surprise for me to come down to.” He swallowed. “As soon as I laid eyes on it – it was so like the one Becca and I had all those years ago – there was a rattling at the windows. There used to be a mirror over the mantelpiece in the living room, and that started to sway. It was barely noticeable at first, but became more so – swinging. I went over to it, steadied it with my hands, and as I did, a door banged elsewhere in the house, as if a sudden breeze had blown through, though all the windows were shut against the cold.”

Reggie had been looking at Lottie and Cam, but now he lowered his head. “I’m afraid I screamed at Nelly to get out, told her she had no right to do what she’d done. ‘How dare you bring that thing in here?’ I said. ‘How dare you!’ She fled in tears, but things didn’t stop after she left. They got worse. The sofa would move in that room. The table lamp toppled to the floor and smashed. There used to be a bookshelf too, and books would go flying from it. I’d find them the next day, scattered everywhere.

“I never celebrated Christmas after the accident. How could I? But though I’d tidy the mess that had been made, one thing I couldn’t do was go near the Christmas tree. I couldn’t touch it. That’s when I made another phone call, this time to clearance, asking them to empty the room of everything while I was out.”

“Everything?” Cam said. “But the Christmas tree…?”

“That was part of the instruction,” Reggie replied, “but when I got home later that day, it was still there. It had been left. And…it felt deliberate. As if they couldn’t touch it either. Something about it defiant. Refusing to be ignored. So, I…” He took a deep breath before continuing. “I locked the door on it. It was the first room in this house to be emptied, to be locked. But yes, it was the tree that began the haunting.”

“The poltergeist activity,” Lottie corrected.

Cam frowned. “I get what you mean when you say that, Lottie – Reggie does – but it’s a lot to get your head around, understanding the different types of haunting.”

“It’s going to take a while for all of us to get to grips with, I think,” she replied.

As both continued to gaze at her, she explained it wasn’t only Aunt Dot who’d talked about various London hauntings – all of them seeming to have one thing in common: the mention of the word poltergeist. Janice had cottoned on to it too, back at the library, when Lottie confided in her about Reggie – told her everything.

The librarian had sat back in her chair, thoughtful instead of shocked, used to all kinds of stories, just as Lottie had hoped, before suggesting that instead of digging any further into historical records, trying to find a Reggie who, for one reason or another, remained stubbornly absent, she should dig into that subject instead.

“Just a thought,” Janice had said with a shrug, but a good one as it turned out, pieces of the puzzle drifting together the more that Lottie read.

And then Bobby – good old Bobby – had confirmed it.

Lottie didn’t tell Reggie everything she’d found out – just the basics. He’d been through enough for one day, they all had. If she and Cam were tired, then he must be exhausted, all that emotion pouring out of him like that. There’d be time to go over it again later, if he wanted to. Because though Reggie might no longer need to employ her, or anyone – burning through his life savings – she and Cam would be visiting him anyway, as regularly as any member of a close-knit family.

Poltergeist activity, Lottie said, wasn’t, of course, confined to hauntings in London. “They happen all over the world. And it’s not only the young who experience it, even though that’s what most people think. The usual idea is that it’s teenagers – pre-teens even – who are most at risk. Basically, those going through big hormonal changes, trying to deal with everyday stresses and feelings that just get too big for them. They can’t express what they feel – maybe they’re not even allowed to – and so they bottle it up instead, pretend everything’s fine when it’s really not.

“Emotions are energy,” she continued. “You and me – we’re made of it. And energy has to go somewhere. If it can’t escape naturally, it finds another way. Sometimes that shows up as illness. Or, like in your case, Reggie, as actions that seem to be happening outside you, when really, it’s all coming from within.”

She gave a little shrug. “So yeah, that’s it, the pattern that usually shows up in poltergeist cases. But the truth is, it doesn’t just happen to teenagers.”

At the library – and later, alone in her bedroom – Lottie had read about the Ghost of Nyack case in New York, the Doris Bither Case in California, and the Great Amherst Mystery in Nova Scotia, indeed a whole litany of cases, all involving fully grown adults living with grief, guilt, or trauma they’d never really faced.

“And it’s all to do with emotions?” Cam checked.

Lottie nodded. “Repressed emotions. That’s what’s key here.”

“So…what are the results of it?” Reggie asked somewhat tentatively.

“Oh, all sorts,” she said. “Doors slamming or rattling – windows too, of course. Lights flickering. Things moving or flying through the air. Furniture being shifted, no matter how heavy it is. Even people being scratched or shoved. All kinds of things.

“So, when it happens, what do people think? Exactly what we did – what anyone would. They assume it’s something external. A ghost. That’s literally what poltergeist means – noisy ghost. It’s a German word. You assume you’re being haunted, and if you believe you’ve got reason to be…well, that’s a potent mix.”

“And you’re sure about this? That that’s what’s happening here?” Reggie asked, needing her to say it, perhaps to hear it again and again. “Absolutely sure?”

“Reggie,” Lottie said. “How does the atmosphere in this house feel to you now?”

“Well…I…”

“You don’t need to answer straightaway. Take a moment. Think.”

He did. Then after a pause, “It feels…clearer.”

Lottie nodded. “Lighter.” With a smile, she added, “Normal.”

Reggie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes. Normal.”

“And how do you feel?” She tapped gently at her chest. “In here?”

“Lighter too,” Reggie said, and this time he didn’t have to think about it.

Lottie squeezed his hand, her touch lingering, and no complaint from Reggie because of it. “Long may that continue, because what happened was never your fault. And now you’ve remembered that, perhaps you can finally live again.”

He raised a brow. “At my age?”

“Especially at your age,” Lottie declared.

He nodded, then finally admitted he was tired and would like to go to bed.

“We’ll stay with you till you’re asleep,” Lottie said, but he waved a hand.

“No need. I’ll be fine. But thank you – both of you. Truly.”

Before they left, he conceded one more thing: lunch the next day.

Not a Christmas lunch – there’d be no mention of the C-word – but lunch with family and friends all the same, and no less special for it.

And certainly it was no less hectic.

As Reggie sat in his usual chair, brought down from his bedroom to the living room and plumped up with a few cushions, a chorus of banging and clattering came from the kitchen. Jenny might even have sworn at one point. When Lottie glanced over to check his reaction, she found only a smile on his face. He knew it as well as she did: all this chaos for a big dinner was normal.

Gloriously normal.

Jenny appeared in the living room doorway, grinning.

“I think we’re just about ready,” she said. “And I hope you’re hungry, all of you. That turkey I bought – there’s enough to last us well into next year, I reckon. Lottie, come on! Stop dawdling and give us a hand. We can’t expect Amelia to do it all.”

Dawdling? She’d been setting the table!

As she followed her mum through to the kitchen, the front door burst open and Cam came rushing into the hallway, a flurry of apologies tumbling after him.

“Sorry, I’m late,” he said. “It took ages to get away. My brother got his girlfriend so many presents for Christ––”

Lottie shot him a look, and he stopped mid-word.

“Sorry,” he muttered, before calling out towards the living room. “All right, Reggie? Turkey makes a bit of a change from chicken, eh?”

“Takeaway food,” Jenny muttered when she heard him, unable to resist launching into her usual tirade. “Just how long has he been living on that stuff? We still don’t know. Well…today marks the end of that. Lottie! Come on!”

Jenny, Tony, Jack, Amelia, Cam, and Lottie all trooped back and forth between the kitchen and the living room with various dishes, setting them down on the table before finally finding a seat, again several having been borrowed from the Beck’s garage, including a couple of camping chairs.

Tony poured wine into tumblers, there being no wine glasses to be found in Reggie’s cupboards, and Jenny raised the first glass.

“Happy…dinner, everyone,” she said, before glancing at Reggie in particular. “May it be the first of many.”

“Happy dinner!” they each returned, even Reggie, whose smile carried everything at once: happiness, sadness, love, lost love, regret, but also a quiet satisfaction.

It expressed them all – beautifully.

Dinner ensued, filled with laughter and chatter, everyone complimenting Jenny on a meal splendidly done while getting to know the other newcomer in their midst – Amelia, who was sweet and funny, and instantly at ease.

It was the best family meal Lottie could remember, held on 25th December, with not a Christmas tree, a bauble, a strand of tinsel, a party hat, a snowman jumper, a Rudolph headband, or cracker in sight. And still the spirit of Christmas filled the room – an abundance of it – what it truly came down to: connection.

No psychic ability needed to achieve it.

At least, not with Reggie anymore.