The Suicidal Ghost

 

Dave fawcett

 

 

 

 

 

The room was perfect. It had four walls, a ceiling, a bed, and a couple of ancient armchairs. It was also very cheap! Without any prospect of a job in the near future I couldn't afford to be too choosy. “I'll take it” I said, opening my wallet and thrusting a couple of ten pound notes into the wrinkled hands of the ancient janitor cum letting agent.

Alone in the room finally I began to take stock of my situation. I was in a new city , alone, jobless and with what little money I still had running out fast. On the plus side I had managed to get out of an abusive relationship with my sanity intact!

The room itself was unprepossessing. It was large with a high ceiling and original frieze and cornice moulds around the top of the walls. In the centre of the ceiling an unshaded light bulb of indeterminate age and power hung from an ornate ceiling rose. A sagging bed stood against the back wall, old but clean looking bedding folded neatly on the battered and slightly torn mattress. Two old box armchairs stood like sentinels on each side of the window with a wardrobe large enough to contain the secret door to Narnia facing them on the opposite wall. The centre of the room was occupied by an elegant but battered dining table and two mismatched chairs.

The fourth wall supported the fireplace. That's an understatement! The fireplace looked large enough and solid enough to support the entire Victorian house. Carved in mahogany and inlaid with marble tiles it climbed magnificently to the shoulder height mantelshelf. Above that an over-mantel rose in tiers of shelving and inlaid mirror glass almost to the ceiling some eleven feet above. This wasn't a fireplace; it was an architectural monster. Snuggled incongruously in the hearth was an ancient gas fire, the kind which has a gas tap on the side to control the gas and is lit with matches. It must have been almost as old as the house itself.

I spent the evening settling in. What few clothes I still owned were put in the wardrobe and I scattered my other odds and ends around the room; a photograph on the mantelshelf looking lost; my few books propped on the window ledge and my record player with its small collection of albums on the floor next to the room's only power point.

Sitting in one of the armchairs I surveyed my little domain for a few minutes. It looked odd! Feng Shui was still unheard of, even amongst the Bloomsbury cognoscente but I knew instinctively that the room ‘felt wrong'.

An hour later and with much effort and sweat the room was much more to my liking. I had moved the furniture into different positions several times until I found an arrangement that felt right. The bed and wardrobe had swapped walls and the two armchairs were now in front of the fireplace with the dining table under the window. Finally satisfied I got ready for bed, turned the light and fire off and retired for the night.

It must have been about 3am when I suddenly woke up. The room smelled strongly of gas! Clambering groggily out of bed I managed to get to the window and opened it, letting in a welcome blast of cold air. When my head had cleared a little I crossed the room to the fireplace and got down on my hands and knees to check the gas fire. The fire was cold but the gas tap at the side was turned slightly on; enough to let gas seep into the room. Turning the tap off firmly I scrambled back into my by now freezing bed and snuggled down again. I assumed that, being unfamiliar with such an ancient contraption, I simply hadn't turned the fire off correctly when I had gone to bed.

I wouldn't have given the matter another thought if the same thing hadn't happened on the second night too. Once again I woke up to find the room full of gas but this time I knew that I hadn't messed up with the tap. My only conclusion was that one of the other tenants had a key to my room and was playing very dangerous games with me!

I decided to stay awake on the third night and catch the culprit red handed. I lay in bed listening to music and reading by the light of a small bedside lamp until the early hours of the morning. I don't remember falling asleep but I vividly remember waking suddenly and violently. On the other side of the room next to the window a young man was getting up from a sitting position where one of the chairs had been. He appeared quite solid to my eyes except for the fact that he was rising right through the dining table. Transfixed and rigid with fear I watched him walk across the room Skirting the space where the table had been he walked right through one of the armchairs in its new place. Reaching the fireplace he bent down and turned the gas tap on before retracing his steps, sitting back down through the table and slowly fading from view.

Petrified by now, I scrambled out of bed and scurried across the room to turn the gas tap off again. Then, dragging a pair of trousers and a shirt on, I ran from the room as fast as I could and bolted from the house, preferring to spend the night on the street rather than staying there. I only plucked up the courage to return the following morning.

Back in my room I scrabbled round, throwing my possessions into the various bags and suitcases as quickly as I could. There was no way I was going to stay there after an experience like that. I had left the room door wide open and when the knock came I turned round startled to find the old woman from the next room standing there.

“You're leaving?” she queried

“Too bloody right I am!” I replied and proceeded to tell her what had happened. When I had finished she smiled.

“You've done quite well considering” she commented. “Most of the tenants in that room only manage one night; two at the most. You lasted three nights”.

In spite of my terror I was intrigued at what she was hinting at. “What happened here? Do you know?

She paused for a moment and then proceeded to tell me the story of one of the previous tenants, not that there was much to tell. “About five years ago a young man rented this room. His name was Peter and he would be about your age at a guess. I used to chat to him occasionally and he used to tell me about his problems. He led a pretty sordid kind of life. Not to put too fine a point on it he was a male prostitute. He would sometimes bring his clients back here until the landlord found out and threatened to evict him; hypocrite that he was. Once he knew about Peter's lifestyle he began to pester him for sex. Peter used to give in to him even though the bastard never paid. He seemed to think it was his right as Peter's landlord to abuse him”.

“In the end I think that was the final straw for Peter. He'd had a lot of other problems too. He gassed himself one night in that room. No-one has ever been able to stay there since. Everyone says its haunted!”

This story is true. I know! I was the three day tenant!