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Paranormal Investigations
Paranormal Investigations
Paranormal Investigations
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Paranormal Investigations

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Leo Fey runs 'Paranormal Investigations', the problem is Leo doesn't believe in the paranormal and spends most of her time spying on spouses. Then, as her twenty fifth birthday draws closer, Leo realises the paranormal does exist - or so the zombies on the underground tell her.
Please note this is the original written-in-a-month Nanowrimo version. An updated, typo free version is also available.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherEH Walter
Release dateNov 2, 2011
ISBN9781466186231
Paranormal Investigations
Author

EH Walter

EH Walter is from Hampshire, but now lives in North London where she lives the impoverished life of a writer. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter to be kept up to date and have the chance to contribute names for characters.

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    Paranormal Investigations - EH Walter

    Paranormal Investigations

    EH Walter

    Copyright 2011 EH Walter

    Smashwords Edition

    Cover created by Michael Farmer of New Splicer

    Discover other titles by EH Walter at Smashwords.com

    The Fallen http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26601

    Smashwords Edition, License notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    Chapter 1: Lost Cats and Errant Spouses

    Good morning, Paranormal Investigations, I said in my best give-me-a-case-because-I’m-broke manner.

    Snickering came down the line. Okay, I was used to that. It’s what you got when you claimed to investigate the paranormal. I say claimed because I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually investigated something, anything and all my so called paranormal cases tended to have rational explanations, even if cuckolded spouses believed enchantments were the root cause of infidelity I had to enlighten them that infidelity happens, suck it up buddy.

    I pressed to end the prank call.

    You may think it’s really cool to be proprietor and lead investigator of what amounts to a detective agency, it’s not. I wish I could make it sound glamorous but normally I’m too busy hocking bits of old jewellery to pay the rent. Truth be told, this was not the life I had envisaged for myself. I went to drama school dammit. I was meant to be treading the boards at The Globe as Lady M, Titania - even fairy at the back would’ve done. No, I get lumped with Great Aunt Mildred’s legacy.

    The phone rang again. It was Rose, from my office – yes, I have staff! Well, a staff of one unless you count the postman and the guy who hoovers the office building. I once asked Rose why she worked for PI (she had been another inheritance from GA Mildred). Well it was this or down the Oxfam, she told me.

    Rose was not overly familiar with modern technology and mobile phones were her least favourite device. She thought you had to shout to be heard, when Rose talked on the phone all of Starbucks heard.

    I’m reminding you about your ten thirty! she bellowed, Miss X.

    I know Rose, I replied, trying not to shout back, I’m here in Starbucks already. Most of my meetings were held in Starbucks, my office being a little too... everything you wouldn’t want a client to see: peeling paintwork, soiled ceiling tiles and crappy old furniture. Still, it was cheap – mostly because we were kind of squatters. Lloyds bank had rented most of the building and the landlord had never noticed we did not move out when they did. We had the whole nine storey office complex to ourselves. God bless lackadaisical landlords. That should have been their name really – Lackadaisical Landlords Limited. They were actually Georgiou and Son of Cockfosters, but whatever.

    Miss Fey? came a quiet voice. I looked up and almost started – the thin, blonde woman in front of me looked very similar to the only girl I had dipped my toe into the lesbian waters with back at sixth form college. You are Miss Fey?

    I am. How did she know? I looked around Starbucks, I was the only woman not attached to a small infant. Not a hard one then. Miss... X?

    She nodded and slid into the spare seat opposite me.

    Would you like a drink?

    She shook her head. I was relieved, the only way I could sit here for so long was because I could just about afford £1.65 for a tea. Fancy coffees and whatnot were out of my price range. A client had once asked for a frappaccino and I had to pay for that on a very old credit card, I was still paying off the interest two years later.

    She rested her skinny arms on the table, fingers clasping and re-clasping. Then she played with a turquoise coloured beaded bracelet at her wrist. She kept her eyes downcast.

    You may think me crazy, she said softly, but... I think my boyfriend is... cheating on me.

    I sighed. This case would be no different from any of those that preceded it. At least it might give me something to pay the rent – if there was a case here at all.

    What makes you think he’s playing around?

    She drew her lips together into a thin line. He... he no longer wants to have sex, it’s as if he’s getting it from somewhere else – he’s always had a really high sex drive you see, but not anymore. Her pale cheeks took on a pink tinge.

    Sometimes other factors have an effect, for example is he more stressed at work?

    No, she said definitely, I know something is wrong.

    Do you live together?

    No, he’s just moved into this new flat over at Princess Park Manor in Friern Barnet.

    I knew it, it was expensive.

    I live in High Barnet. We used to see each other most nights, but now he says he’s too tired. She let out a gasp that was a strangled cry and bit her trembling lip. Please just find out so I know one way or the other. You see, I thought he was the one... I had imagined him as the father of my children. Please. I just need to know.

    I exacted a retainer from Miss X before she left, escorting her to the nearest hole in the wall. I had found out, to my cost, that sometimes people didn’t want to pay up after finding out the truth so I always asked for most of the fee upfront. She had scribbled her number down for me on the back of her boyfriend’s picture and disappeared into The Spires shopping centre, although whether so few shops ever qualified as a ‘centre’ I’ll never know.

    I hopped on the bus (cheaper than parking up there) and tried to sit with the least smelly people. After a while you got to know the regulars on the bus; the lady with the baby carriage that actually contained a small Maltese Terrier (you should see people’s faces when they bent to fuss over a child and saw a dog), the man who talked to everyone as if he’d known them for twenty years and the mother and daughter who looked like cockney elves. What they thought of me, I don’t know.

    The PI office building is on a busy road leading up to the M25, it is a typical seventies office gulag although built on a slight curve although it’s no Royal Crescent. Crossing the road from the bus stop can be tricky, some people really don’t know when they’re not on the motorway anymore – normally knob-ends in sports cars who play for one of the big premiership football clubs around here.

    Inside the building the lifts had long since ceased to work so I had to climb the stairs to the seventh floor. From the lift there was a long corridor to our corner of the building, the floor tiles were those cream coloured plastic ones with designer grey smears, very 1970s. Reggie was there, as always, polishing the floor. I said hello and he ignored me, as always.

    Our door was off the main corridor, the lock had long since broken but no one came into the building anyway. It was one of those with a half glass panel – ‘Paranormal Investigations’ was painted on the door in gold paint. GA Mildred had done it herself, it showed – the long letters had drips clinging to them that had long since hardened. I sighed as my hand rested on the doorknob, this was not my life. Every time I crossed the threshold I got a sense of unease, as if my life had gone off track and was now veering out of control and I was not sure how to reclaim it.

    From the door I could hear Rose talking to GA Mildred on the phone, it was difficult not to with her voice.

    Well yes dear, she is making bit of a hash of it. Rose was saying as I opened the door.

    GA Mildred had retired to Torquay, the British version of Florida but with slightly less palm trees, however that did not stop her interfering.

    I’ll take it from here, I told Rose and put my hand out for the phone.

    Rose pushed her glasses up her nose and blinked at me.

    Rose’s office was an annex to my own. You might almost mistake it for a garden centre as she had different varieties of plants in pots all over the place. I suspected some were plastic, but I had no proof.

    Bourbon? Rose asked, proffering a plate of biscuits with one hand and passing me the phone with the other. Honestly, sometimes I think she only worked at PI for the biscuits. I shook my head.

    Hello Auntie, I said with little enthusiasm into the phone.

    Is it your birthday yet? GA Mildred barked, cutting right to the point. Where some elderly female relations obsessed about potential husbands and the pitter patter of tiny feet, GA Mildred was singularly obsessed with my twenty-fifth birthday. She had one of those loud voices that demanded to be listened to, I think old boarding schools must have taught people to talk loudly and with confidence – shew your class gels!

    No Auntie. You know my birthday is at the end of the month, the thirty first of October.

    Yes I know, twenty five on the thirty first. What’s the date today then?

    October fifteenth.

    Oh. She sniffed. Got to go. I’ve got Agatha Christie coming over for afternoon tea.

    Like many of her generation she hung off without saying goodbye.

    Stupid old bint, Agatha Christie had been dead since 1976.

    My office had been built in the seventies, the decade that taste forgot. It might have been quite stylish when GA Mildred first moved PI to Cockfosters. Now it was as dilapidated as the building that surrounded it. The furniture hadn't been new then and I suspected GA Mildred had herself inherited it. Some of it was Victorian, other pieces heavy pre-war oak and the rest unidentifiable clutter. GA Mildred didn't like to throw anything out and I didn't feel the business was sufficiently mine to do so myself.

    On my messy desk I had a pot plant, a rubbery green thing which needed no watering as the leak in the ceiling above did that for me. The plant was the only sign of life in the office - you couldn't really count Rose, she was pretty ancient and gave no indication of a beating heart and breathing lungs - unless there was a plate of biscuits in the offing and then she had the instincts of a ninja.

    I went into my office and shuffled papers for a bit. It did me good to make the office look used by moving things from one side of the desk to the other, in truth there was little work to do as the last case had been a missing cat three months ago and that situation had been wrapped up when I informed the client her cat had been adopted by, and was currently being overfed by, her neighbour. The business should really be called ‘Lost Cats and Errant Spouses’ rather than ‘Paranormal Investigations’. There was no hope of things ever getting better. You see, the problem is I don’t believe in the paranormal. It just doesn't exist. No sir. Not ghosts, ghouls, demons, aliens or anything else that might be described as supernatural. I think the name holds us back, but GA Mildred would not hear of changing it, it’s part of her legacy she says, and the name stays. Stupid old bint. I hated the fact my work was a joke and there wasn’t even a decent wage in it for me.

    Two years ago I was a jobbing actor, busy failing at auditions and being told a size twelve was too fat to fit in the pre-made costumes. I was used to rejection, poverty and defeat. It was my way of life and strangely – I was happy.

    For years GA Mildred had told me there was a place for me in Paranormal Investigations and for years I managed to put her off without offending her – she was practically my only family after all. Then, two years ago, it had seemed everything was going wrong – the love of my life went to try his luck in Los Angeles and I crumbled. I was not sure I had ever told Jez he was the love of my life and perhaps I should have, it might have made things take a different path. It’s hard though, when you fall into a relationship from a friendship, to make that leap into saying ‘I love you’ whatever the comeback may be. I had not taken the risk and had acted so cool at his leaving he left thinking I didn’t care at all - see, those three years at drama school weren’t completely wasted.

    Heartbroken and alone GA Mildred sucked me in. Help me out for a while, she had said and like a fool I had moved north to 'help her out'. I started by watering the plants and doing the filing. Then she had asked me to do more and more: answering the phones, meeting clients and finally stake outs when her 'varicose veins hurt too much'. Last year she had retired and left me to it. I had been out of acting too long to return and I felt I would be letting her down if I didn't keep the business going.

    The next morning I was up early. I had a cheating boyfriend to catch in the act.

    I ate my healthy porridge to a background of the BBC Breakfast News. Sian and Bill were wittering about some theft from the British Museum. Good luck to anyone trying to sneak anything out of there. They also informed me the Prime Minister was having 'credit crunch crisis' meetings. What's new?

    Miss X had given me a photograph of the suspect and on the back had placed his details and her phone number. The photo was one of those cheesy ones of a couple in love. They were at a party, there were fairy lights in the out of focus background, and he had his arms wrapped around her. He was decent looking I suppose, but not the kind of man you would give a second glance to at a bar. She evidently adored him though, in the photo she looked a completely different person to the one I had met in Starbucks. Her eyes were alive and her face illuminated by

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