Haunted is a Strong Word

Prologue

This is not your typical ghost story. Yes, it does involve someone being haunted, but then again, haunted is a strong word. This is more of a fairy tale, a modern fairy tale that is. There are no ghouls or goblins, good and evil aren’t particular factors, and it would stretch the definition to call our hero a hero. Like all modern fairy tales, the story begins with a night out on the town.

Nicolas was the first of the group to disappear that night. It was like something out of a sketch show; there they all were, walking through town as a group, and then a larger group of women on a hen night walked past them and suddenly Nicolas was no more. There was no trace of him beyond this group of women, and yet there seemed to be no disruption to their ranks, as if they were some large farm equipment that harvested him like they were ploughing a field. They group would often joke amongst themselves that Nicolas was a sex addict, but an unsuccessful one. Nicolas was a sex addict in the same way you could be a shopaholic without access to funds. Though he had gained quite the reputation as a Lothario in University, a case could be made that he has not spent the night with a woman since then. The group was now two years removed from their glory days of University, and Nicolas’ quick defection from the squad that night was a harbinger of what the next near decade would be for like Callum Wynyard.

Callum was never the most dynamic of the group, and in his quiet moments of reflection and self-doubt he had settled on being the glue that kept the group together. The fact that he was not able to get Tom and Matt out for this night did not discourage him, since the couple would often say they couldn’t spend too long away from “the babies”, which naturally were two Labradors and a Bearded Dragon. In fact Callum was uncharacteristically confident on this night, it may have been that the hand of fate was constructing tonight as linchpin of his future, but more likely it was the imported Tequila that Carl One had brought back from his trip to Madrid.

Like all desultory formed groups, this squad of friends had two Carls as members. Originally unhappy with the nickname Carl Two (simply as a victim of timing upon the first meeting in the Student Union) suggested that Carl One instead be called Ringo; coincidentally, Carlo Two was now dating Jessica, of whom the rest of the group tret like a Yoko. Carl and Jessica were seemingly in the middle of an argument, one that Carl didn’t care to elaborate on at the time, so he was clearly at fault.

The night took its typical journey, somewhat of a routine pub crawl down West St Moorlands Street, through to East St Moorlands Street and then off into the town centre. Callum always loved his Friday night clubs: ‘Dub Plate’ for the freshest beats and sweetest of old school hip hop, or the ‘Pig Pen’ for ugly singing Emo anthems and doing their best growls to Heavy Metal. Unfortunately, his once large group of friends had grown up and grown out of this kind of music and stuck now to the safety of chart dance music, and lowest common denominator Indie, the kind where the lyrics were mostly: “la”, and “da”, etc.

Upon Callum’s near insistence the group started at ‘The Loom of Fate’, which had started off as a real Indie-Goth establishment for things like Depeche Mode and The Cure, but within a few weeks they saw much higher traffic when they played Kaiser Chiefs and Girls Aloud. They mostly chatted while we were in there, the music isn’t too loud because it’s across the street from a student accommodation and there always seemed to be some kind of commotion with the manager and the rest of the neighbourhood. Many a night would see the guy having a blazing row with pyjama clad teenagers from their windows, and almost like a tradition, he would end up with water being poured on him from a second story window, like a cheating spouse in sitcom.

The pub crawls greatest hits tour ended at ‘Elsinore’, this oddly decorated but incredibly popular night club. At this point in life the Bouncers knew group by name; a somewhat dubious honour, and reliably the music rarely changed. This wasn’t Callum’s kind of music, it reminded him too much of the radio school bus home, but his friends liked it, and he felt he wasn’t in a position to be steering the ship more than he already had. The club was three quarters full, an ideal amount as it wasn’t too busy, but enough to avoid seeing how jarringly old fashioned the decor looked when there was too much empty space on the dance floor. It was a like a mix between a canteen from a 70’s space opera, and what people who don’t go to clubs think a cool club looks like when they are designing one for a PlayStation 2 game. After a few rounds and agreeing they weren’t “dancing ready”, they congregated by this large cage at the opposite side of the from DJ area. The cage was clearly for dancers once upon a time, now a relic of a bygone era, and now housed a dying Christmas tree.

“It’s to stop dumpster divers,” Carl yelled over the music, “I’d know because that’s how I have all those fir trees in the garden at home.” Carl wasn’t joking.

“Jessica’s here”, other Carl said, he looked so serious, like readying for a rumble in the 50’s musical. Sure enough Jessica, along with three other girls, were stood at the other corner of the room. Carl stormed over to the point where the others were concerned there was about to be a serious fight. Almost instantly, however, it turned out to just be a seemingly nice little conversation between the five of them with some light chuckles and lighter kisses between the two. Callum downed the last third of his beer, hoping it would give him the courage to speak to one of the other girls, but instead it nearly made him throw up.

He took solace in the smoking area, down some steps through the back, a small cubby-hole of an alley, where you would struggle to fit two of those outdoor pub tables with the lager sponsored parasol on, so they only squeezed in one. It had started to rain lightly, so most of the people smoking were in the building in the doorway, the bouncer had not noticed though, he was at the bottom of the alley and was perched halfway up the iron gate looking down another alley onto the main street. He looked like a dog at the gate waiting for the Postman, and it was difficult to tell if he was posted like this because he saw some kind of commotion or he was having a crisis of wanderlust of Bouncing for a different club.

Callum chose to brave the drizzle and smoke under the parasol, for fear of the drawing the Bouncers ire upon dismount. Three girls giggled as they rushed with coats protect their hair from the rain, and when under the parasol, they pulled their coats down to reveal it was Jessica and two of her friends. Callum smiled at Jessica when making eye contact, and she mouthed “hiya” at him. Their relationship was tenuous since he had been the first person to joke about her as Yoko, mostly out of jealousy that another friend was being stolen away; so he wasn’t offended by her not fully engaging with him. That being said, one of the other girls noticed the mouthing and looked at him and smiled, and then the other noticed, looked him up and snarled. Shortly after the girls agreed to take a rainy selfie, and Callum tried to make sure that he was subtly angled out of the shot.

He was trying not to eavesdrop, but it was clear that the girls were talking about the popular at the time show ‘Heroes’, of which excited him at the prospect of the other attractive girl who smiled also had the same interests as him. For what would be the final time he dared to ‘spark out’ his cigarette for potential approval; this is where the cigarette is pointed ember first into the hand, then hands clap together in a ‘job well done’ sort of fashion, results being a shower of sparks. At the time he thought it was an epic way to dispose of anything ever, through his modern eyes, he would cringe.

The next few hours went by as a standard affair of drinking and dancing, until halfway through the David Guetta feat. Akon’s ‘Sexy Bitch’, they were face to face. The conversation was strained due to the volume of the music, and rather than sound like Charlie Browns parents, they mutually agreed to kiss.

“I don’t live too far away from here, if you want to come back to mine?” He chanced hours later, as the house lights turned on, wincing at how eager that came off.

“No, I can’t” she said while scrolling through her phone, “I have work stupidly early in the morning”. She looked him dead in the eye, expressionless, “but you can come back to mine?”

Callum was a 60-minute man when he arrived at hers. Five minutes of excellence, then fifty-five minutes of a parched animal crawling through the desert gasping for water. It had certainly been a while. He awoke sans hangover, but with a blaring alarm ringtone that scared him to sit up straight. She did not stir, to the point where he was scared she was dead, but about 15 seconds into this dubstep alarm clock, she reached without opening her eyes and stopped the alarm; she is not the ghost in this story. She opened her eyes and looked at Callum, and then immediately looked under the bed sheets at herself.

“Hey! Why am I naked!?” she said loudly and sternly, but as soon as she did this she burst into giggles “I’m just kidding”. She seemed funny, he liked it.

The room was hangover-proofed with bottles of water and oranges, and she ushered him to get dressed as she had 10 minutes to get ready before her dad would be dropping her off at work. Seeing how everything she had was close to hand, he quickly connected that this was her bedroom in someone else’s house, her parents house. She assured him they wouldn’t mind, and that he could even get dropped off at home, an offer that came with a swift decline. He took her number, and playfully (but secretly seriously) pretended to be sneaking out of the front door.

He didn’t immediately recognise the area but throwing up a map on his phone showed that he was a brisk 30-minute walk away from home, so walk he did. He strutted victoriously through the streets on a beautiful sunny day, no headphones, and realising he lost his coat as a sacrifice to the nightclub gods, and yet, all was well in the world.

When he arrived back at the house share, we was greeted by Matt and Tom, who eagerly awaited the gory details. He was ashamed to admit that he didn’t remember her name and checked his phone. She was saved in the contact list without a name, and with a twelve-digit phone number, one too many. He was slightly crestfallen but was still riding the high of spending so much time with friends and garnering the attention of an attractive young woman. Little did he know this was closing chapter of his happy years. Invites to spend time with friends shortly dried up after, and the invites he sent would be denied before being ignored completely. Within six months of the night out, Callum was moving out to a different city, unsure of why his friends had grown out of him, and was off to search for greener pastures elsewhere. The pasture would end up being call centre work, and the fools gold would cost him his spirit. Not his literal spirit. He is not the ghost either.

Chapter One – The New Normal

Callum was sat in the rustic coffee shop checking for any lint or hairs on his nice new waxed cotton jacket, then checking his fresh new hair cut in his spoon. Ideally, he would have checked how he looked on his phone, but he hates when he sees people do that. He would have gone to bathroom to check the mirror, but the date was already five minutes late, and from what he could tell the door had a code and he didn’t want to ask the person at till, who already seemed disappointed that he had only ordered the cheapest type of Cappuccino. He was pretty pleased how well he looked; the spoon was his friend today. See, he had wanted this coat for a while, was in desperate need of a haircut, so last month he upgraded four customers to the elite packages and the bonus had afforded him a glow up.

A woman with bright pink messy hair came in and sat at the table, she was wearing a turquoise vest top and sandals:

“Callum?” she said already sat down at the table.

“Diana?”, he said with surprise.

“Yeah, it’s me. How are you? Gosh you don’t look anything like your profile picture!” She exclaimed laughing.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around,” Callum mumbled noticing that she had also dyed her eyebrows pink. “I, er, just got a haircut so-

“Aw, I liked it the way was before. Oh well. Do I look like you expected me to?” She interrupted.

“Er, sure” he said uncomfortably.

“I think you look exactly like I thought you would” she smiled. Callum was confused, didn’t she just say that he didn’t look like his profile picture? He chose to ignore this.

“Can I get you a drink?” he offered.

“A drink? Of what?”

Callum looked behind him at the large menu written in very large print.

“Coffee?” He checked.

“Oo I don’t like coffee sorry.” She admitted.

“But this was your idea to meet here…” He said perplexed.

“Yeah because I work across the street, I’ve got a drink waiting there anyway. So, it was lovely meeting you!” She got up nudging the table and leaned in for a kiss, Callum opened his mouth in shock and quickly turned his head and received a wet kiss and light licking on his check, she whispered “message me later, ok?” and walked out the door.

Callum was a movie buff and one of those romance factors that he wanted in real life was when you watch that special someone walk away. Callum did not turn to watch Sophie walk away, but couldn’t help but still see her out the window as the traffic lights were taking a ridiculously long time to change. When the man turned green, she ran full speed across the street, which would have been something he would have laugh/cringed at, however, everyone in the coffeeshop probably assumed this was his girlfriend and the cringe factor was on him.

This was in fact this was the latest in a long string of bad online dates, he didn’t like the generalisation of ‘she was crazy’ but the evidence was really starting to pile up, but worst of all he would still try for a second date and they would say no. He was getting desperate, he could feel it, and he hated that development amount himself, and there wasn’t a whole lot that he could do about it. He didn’t feel like drinking the rest of his drink, he had set this whole day aside for a date and instead got a fly by. He put his drink by the till.

“Oi! Does this look like the dirty cup area?” the man at the till said loudly and angrily enough to get other people’s attention. “Over there” he pointed to the other end of the café where there was a table with three cups.

Callum sullenly picked up his cup and walked the length of the shop, pierced by the eyes of the patrons, then back again. He took one quick look in the reflection of the door as it opened, yeah, that’s a nice haircut.