The Outside Of Everything

Chapter 19
The Ghost Story

The past few days I’ve been pleasantly absorbed in the stories of W H Hodgson and the Casebook of Carnacki – Ghost Finder. A little to my surprise, as none of us were ever really ones for the supernatural. Let’s be honest, we had enough problems coping with the everyday and ordinary. So the paranormal didn’t really have that much appeal. This guy we knew, a bit of a hippy who had an anarchists’ bookshop. He tried to get us into Arthur Machen, and that kind of thing. But it wasn’t for us. We were like that line in that old song by The Fall. We did laugh at The Great God Pan. And I don’t think it was a book that was meant to be funny. So we weren’t the types to sit round clutching Poe paperbacks, scaring each other witless with ghost stories. Nevertheless this is our own ghost story.

This story starts with an old friend Taj, a compulsive dreamer that I used to bump into regularly round the reference library. He always had his head buried in the most convoluted of text books, all in the name of self-improvement, as a step along the way to world domination. He had the burning ambition we so sorely lacked. And yet the path to fame and fortune for Taj was anything but straight forward. In his eyes, the authorities would conspire against him, and so he was forced to make ends meet from time to time in the most mundane of ways.

One such time found Taj doing some bookwork for a company that specialised in finding work placements for the long term unemployed. One of those situations where supposedly everyone’s a winner. The authorities get another unemployed statistic off the books. And the company concerned gets paid by all concerned for simply making some introductions. All very neat. Looking at the books Taj realised just how neat it all was. Small fortunes were being made. Well, so what, you might say. Business is business, and all that. The unappetising thing in this case was that the company was run by a pool of local councillors, which all seemed a little too cosy. Particularly when Taj pointed out where most of the money was being made from. Yes, all very neat indeed. We thought the top cat in that particular company needed to be taught a little lesson. I mean, call us biased if you will, but we also happened to know his saintly son from schooldays. And he was as sanctimonious and smug a prig ever recruited into the ranks of the Young Conservatives.

It was Taj sitting shaking his head, and saying how all this scared him that stuck in our minds. It was that word scare that appealed to us. This was the era of Ghost Busters and a thousand other films dealing with the supernatural. Interest in poltergeists and the like had never been higher. It was easy to whip up interest in any aspect of the other worlds. And there were a couple of things in our favour. One was that our canny conning councillor lived in a sprawling and handily secluded old too-many bedroom house. He thought classy. We thought creepy. He thought it out of the way. We thought it time to play. It just so happened that we had a friend of a friend of a friend who was something to do with the Fortean Times, and always on the look-out for weird news and strange tales.

Strangely enough there seemed to be quite an appetite for a story on a local councillor visited by the spirit of his hero Winston Churchill at special times for a spot of discussion and solace. Special times apparently meant key dates throughout the year, coinciding with the legendary statesman’s birthday, the anniversary of his death, and so on. After the visitation apparently there would be the lingering aroma of a half-smoked Maduro cigar. Now I couldn’t for the life of me begin to think where these stories started, but by a strange coincidence the councillor concerned just happened to be our canny conning chap. Life’s full of strange coincidences like that.

Now while this may all seem far-fetched we did have it on good authority that old Winston really was our councillor’s hero, and he did think he had a special spiritual relationship with the statesman. Oh you know, a word to the wise when it came to making a difficult decision, a few bons mots when it came to preparing an after dinner speech for the local Rotarians. That sort of thing. The good authority we had it on was the man’s own spectacularly smug son, who had a touching tendency to boast of his dear papa’s idiosyncrasies. Very handy background information it was too for the psychic phenomena posse.

So there we were. 30 November. The great statesman’s birthday, or something. A few specially invited experts from the world of extraordinary happenings crouched down in the bushes with an array of monitoring equipment, spirit levels, or whatever it is they use in such circles. Watching our canny conning councillor’s anything but humble abode. The man himself handily on his ownsome. Clearly visible conducting along to some to us unheard symphony or James Last record. The wife out at a ladies do. The son out at a golf club drinks. All the signs seeming fortuitous for an apparition. When our man had calmed himself down, and put aside the Andre Previn pretensions, choosing instead to sit there meditatively, we thought the time was right for a spot of judicious wafting of old cigar smoke, the best that came out of Havana no less. A tricky manoeuvre as none of us were smokers, and we were doing our desperate best not to cough and splutter and give the game away. We were hardly in the blowing smoke rings league, but we did what we could. And it worked. The spectral recording equipment went into overdrive as apparently the psychic vibes were in the ascendency, and the spirit twitchers went away happy as sandboys.

It was then that the phone calls started. A call from a source pertaining to be The Fortean Times keen to do a piece on a current councillor visited by the spirit of Winston, claiming they had crucial proof. And our conceited canny conman lumbered straight into a trap that all the media training in the world can’t guard against. The trap entitled vanity. Oh yes, I receive advice from the great man, said our man. Well, you could see how that one was going to pan out in print. Chinese whispers being what they are, and the media being what it is, by the time it reached the local paper in a suitably bowdlerised version, our councillor was a laughing stock.

It has to be said he played it all wrong. Initially flattered to be associated with the great Churchill he played up to his new found fame until he found it bought ridicule rather than respect. Quite a giggle it was. All the local herberts were waving two finger salutes everywhere our councillor went, and suggesting novel uses for Havana’s finest. Being detached observers of all this, of course, we were shocked at how rapidly a respected public figure could fall from grace. And we expressed suitable concern when Taj rang us excitedly one morning shortly after to report that our canny conning councillor had resigned from his cabinet post, and would not be seeking re-election at the next bout of voting. Alas and alack. With the loss of prestige seems things went from bad to worse and some of his erstwhile business associates began to seek links elsewhere. Oh well. Churchill had his ups and downs too. And life being what it is our man soon bounced back, but a little chastened and a little more cautious. I wonder if he ever realised the debt he owed to The Outside of Everything? Spooky eh?