Page 35 of Unalive On Air

“There’s a post box in the hotel foyer for sending out holiday postcards and such,” Jeanie explains. “Peter’s the best at possessing people, so, as morally ambiguous as it is, he took hold of Fran just to get the letter in the box.”

“Possession?” Excellent, we’re back onto this subject. I turn to Peter for an explanation, but Stove jumps into the conversation on Peter’s behalf.

“Pete’s the only one of us who can actually do it for long enough. And it’s tough. Possessing someone is really hard, it properly wipes you out,” he says.

“All I did was walk Fran from her office to reception. I don’t think I’d have managed much longer. It’s not like it was a big upset for her. As far as she knew, one moment she was at her desk, and the next she was standing beside Hel, completely unaware that she’d lost three and a half minutes.”

“I know it sounds ethically . . . questionable, possessing somebody without their consent and using it for our own means,” Jeanie says. “But sometimes, needs must, and this was just something we had to try. You should understand that it really takes its toll on Peter’s well‑being. Possession can be traumatic to our incorporeal spirits. It took him weeks to recover his strength from that brief episode. Whereas there are next to no negative aftereffects to the fleshie. Memory loss, sure. A bit of a headache. A little dizziness for a few hours. Vertigo.”

“Bright red face,” Trystan suggests, as though they’re now playing a game of listing side effects. “Like they’ve been drinking.”

“Ooh, yes, I’d forgotten about that one, but really, it’s fine. They’ll live to see another day. That’s the main thing.”

I say nothing. I haven’t been dead long enough to form an opinion on possessions and consent or its moral integrity. Besides, I’m secretly chuffed to bits that as a group they decided contacting me was worth all that trouble and personal upheaval. Nobody has ever gone to that much effort just to speak to me.

“After that,” Jeanie says, taking my silence as acceptance. “It was just a case of waiting and hoping the letter would arrive okay, and praying that you’d respond. We never thought you’d come in person, and although it’s all terribly sad that you’re dead, I for one am thrilled to finally meet you.”

I feel the buds of a blush rising in my cheeks. “Uh, thanks, I guess.”

“Thank you for calling Dead Good Cleaning Services. Do you have your account number to hand?” a tinny voice from Helga’s phone says.

Helga rushes over to pick up her device from the comparatively blood-free desk, turns it off speaker phone, and presses it to her ear. “Hello? Yes, it’s four . . . seven . . .”

“Specialist cleaning company all the way from London,” Peter says over his wife’s chatter. “She always uses them. They’re the absolute cream of the crop. Will have the hotel back to normal in no time.”

One of the benefits of being the quiet, observant, lonely, only child is the unrivalled ability to really hone your people‑watching and evaluating skills. There’s something unsaid in Peter’s body language. It could be a sense of pride in his wife’s efficiency and dedication, or it could be longing or grief, or guilt, but there’s definitely something I need to spend more time dissecting.

I guess it must be difficult to see the person you love every single day and not be able to hug them, or kiss them, or say hello and ask them how they’re coping right now. I wonder if Peter’s ever Oda Mae Browned Franny so he could chat with Helga, or hand thrown a misshapen vase to the dulcet sounds of The Righteous Brothers.

“You can be here tomorrow? Oh, bless your souls, thank you so much,” Helga says, running a fist through her hair. Her shoulders drop in relief. She looks close to tears. I feel for her, trying to keep this business afloat and rid the place of ghosts, but more folk are up and dying on her, causing her more stress, more work, and less of all the things she needs right now.

This is probably the most emotion I’ve experienced in a long time.

“Really? How much?” Helga says, her face crumpling again. “Yes, yes. I understand the emergency call‑out fee. Sadly, this isn’t even my fifth rodeo . . . No, I didn’t forget, I just . . .” She puffs out an exasperated sigh.

“Emergency call‑out fee?” I accidentally say it aloud. “Surely a business that deals solely with cleaning up sudden deaths works only on emergency call‑outs. Who plans a slaughter sterilisation in advance?”

If Helga’s responsible for the murders, the Helga I met earlier, the one whose office is pristine white with not a speck of dust out of place, the one who’s struggling to keep afloat a financial sponge of a business would have factored in the cleaning call‑out fee. Surely if Helga had killed me, with the motivation of saving a flailing hotel’s reputation, she would have chosen a far less messy option. One that could be dealt with quickly, without exorbitant cleansing costs, and one where the room could be used again the next night by a paying guest.

Say, for example, by pushing me off a cliff.

But then why would she call me out here, pay Gerald’s extortionate exorcism rates to rid the spirits from the building only to kill me in my sleep with a chandelier? Unless she doesn’t want to save the hotel . . .

Maybe she wants it to fail? I should look into insurance payouts or redundancy clauses in her contract.

The other thing could be that someone is deliberately trying to sabotage her efforts to save the place. But who would do that? Franny? I haven’t met the woman yet, but I get the sense she’s as entwined with The Paragon as Helga is. Sergeant Davies? Though he fabricated evidence, the man couldn’t be bothered to follow even the most basic protocols, I can’t imagine where he’d find the energy to haul his ass to the hotel in the dead of night to whack-a-mole me with an antique light fixture. How about Angel? This mysterious undertaker everyone seems baseline frightened of.

A thought suddenly occurs to me.

“Did anyone witness what happened to me last night?” I ask.

All heads turn in my direction. “No,” they all say.

“But you were all here. You were haunting me.”

“We weren’t haunting you,” Peter shouts, somewhat affronted.

“We were merely trying to communicate with you,” Stove says, standing beside the magician.