10 A Horrid Shock

By R.M. Hamilton

“Hurry up, child!” shouted Miss Polewidth. “Get in the car and tell us where we can see this ghost!”

“I don’t want to go with Jezebel!” said Debbie in a panic to David.

“But you must! If they come over here, they’ll catch me playing around with Uncle Octavius’s car!”

Another loud, rude honk sounded from Miss Polewidth’s car.

“You’ll be alright,” said David. “Miss Polewidth is awful, but I don’t think she’ll let Jezebel do anything to you. And Jezebel didn’t see you or me under her caravan at the circus.”

“Alright. Good luck with Gamaliel!” Debbie ran towards the car at the gate.

“Hurry up and get in!” boomed Miss Polewidth. “Now, tell me where this ghostly occurrence is going to take place. I have my clairvoyant, Madam Claudine and Mrs Potbelly, the deputy editor of Glorious Living here to help.”

“Miss Polewidth, that’s not the real Claudine!” said Debbie desperately. “That’s Jezebel Plank and she’s a criminal and she stole Uncle Octavius’s car this evening!”

“What a revolting little girl,” said Jezebel in her most Claudine-ish voice. “She has an obnoxious aura.”

“Yes, I noticed that myself,” said Miss Polewidth hastily.

“My readers will be interested to know about a child with an obnoxious aura,” said Mrs Potbelly, scribbling on her note pad excitedly. “They will want to protect their own children from catching it.”

“But she’s not even called Claudine!” shouted Debbie. “Her name is Jezebel and she’s just wearing a rolled-up bath towel on her head to look important!”

“How typical that a child with an obnoxious aura wouldn’t understand my Turban of Mysticism,” said Jezebel coldly.

“Now, Debbie,” said Miss Polewidth. “We understand that you can’t help having an obnoxious aura, but you can stop saying terrible things about Madam Claudine. Where is this ghostly happening going to occur?”

Debbie gulped. It was clear that Jezebel Plank, parading herself in a bath towel turban and a curtain cape was going to be part of the evening, no matter what she did.

“At the Berrima Gaol,” she said.

“Oh no,” snarled Jezebel. “We can’t go there tonight!”

“Why not?” asked Miss Polewidth excitedly. “This is marvellous! We’ve been wanting to catch a glimpse of  Lucretia Dunkly ever since she started manifesting as moving lights! How did you find out that tonight was the night, dear?”

 She sounded almost friendly towards Debbie.

Debbie wasn’t sure what to say, but Jezebel began bouncing around so much her bath towel turban began to unravel. “We can’t go there tonight! Next week, I’ll be taking an entire TV show through the gaol in an attempt to make contact with dead convicts! You can come then! That will be the time to look for ghosts. The moon is all wrong tonight! The spirits won’t be friendly. It will be a harrowing experience! Think of your safety! Think of your sanity!”

“I never expected meeting with the ghost of an axe murderer to be anything other than harrowing,” said Miss Polewidth in a brave, noble sort of voice. “If we perish, we perish.”

Miss Polewidth was, Debbie thought, enjoying herself immensely.

“And a harrowing ghostly experience will sell ever so many more copies of Glorious Living than a regular ghostly experience,” squawked Mrs Potbelly from the back seat of the car.

“NO! I forbit it!” screamed Jezebel.

“Of course, Cowardly Clairvoyant Wimps out of Ghostly Encounter will do just as well for the front page,” murmured Mrs Potbelly. “In fact, that might sell even MORE copies of Glorious Living!”

“No one is wimping out,” said Miss Polewidth sternly. “None of you can, because I am now driving very fast and I have no intention of slowing down until we reach the gaol. If any of you attempt to jump from the car, I imagine you’ll become a ghost, so you might as well all sit tight and shut up.”

This was a very rude way of putting things and it didn’t seem to sooth Jezebel at all. She began to  scream and swear at the top of her lungs. It might have gone on the whole way to the gaol, but Mrs Potbelly (who had been scribbling with increasing fever on her pad) began to read out in a loud, doleful voice, “as we sped along towards the haunted gaol, our psychic became increasingly unhinged. Thrashing about like a hooked eel, her turban unwinding itself about her ears, screeching like a banshee, her face breaking out into unsightly blotches...”

“WHAT?” demanded Jezebel, putting a swift cork in her histrionics. “How can you even see my skin in this dark car?”

“I can’t,” admitted Mrs Potbelly. “But you sound like unsightly blotches.”

Jezebel lapsed into a sulky silence.

Miss Polewidth turned the car into the road that led to Berrima. “How do we go about contacting this spirit?” she asked Jezebel.

Jezebel perked up. “My gift tells me that Lucretia is a sensitive, shy spirit and we should park away from the gaol to ensure she comes out.”

“How far away?” demanded the deputy editor of Glorious Living from the back seat.

“Across the village,” said Jezebel.

“I thought you’d say that,” said Mrs Potbelly, sternly. On her pad she wrote, in a new show of cowardice our psychic attempted to…Then she stopped writing. She couldn’t think of a word scathing enough in the moment.

“I have never considered axe murderers to be overly sensitive people,” said Miss Polewidth. “I will park the car next to the courthouse and we can go and sit in the gaol grounds and see if we can make contact.”

They sat on the gravel that surrounded the rose gardens. “Can’t you do something to get the ghost to show up, Madam Claudine?” hissed Miss Polewidth, jabbing Jezebel in her ribs.

“I’ve already explained to you that this isn’t a good idea,” said Jezebel.

A loud beeping sound made them all jump. Jezebel jumped most of all. “The spirits are warning us with vibrations from beyond the grave!”

“What rot!” Mrs Potbelly stood up. “That is merely the sound of a delivery truck backing into the gaol. Presumably they are lost. We will go over there and help them on their way so we can get back to contacting this tardy spirit.”

“No, stay put!” Jezebel grabbed at Mrs Potbelly’s leg.

“Don’t be so childish, Madam Claudine,” said Mrs Potbelly. “Yoohoo! Over here, in the garden!” she yelled towards the truck.

“Shut up,” hissed Jezebel.

But it was too late. The beam of a flashlight swept over the rose gardens. Behind the light, they could make out the shadowy figures of two men.

A cross, deep voice boomed out, “Jezebel! What are you doing here?”

“Why do you call her Jezebel?” asked Miss Polewidth. “Are you lost?”

The man ignored her. He began crunching over the gravel towards Jezebel.

“It’s not my fault, Keith!” howled Jezebel. “I didn’t know they were coming here! I tried to stop them when I realized! Anyway, I always said using a famous old gaol for hiding stolen pictures was a bad idea!”

“Oh, nice going, Sis,” said the man angrily. He turned to the other man. “Can you believe our dumb sister would go and blurt all of that out in front of these strangers?”

‘Yes, I can,” said the second man sourly. “I don’t care what Mum says, we’ve always known Jezebel has the brain of a tadpole.”

“HEY!” screamed Jezebel.

“What’s going on here?” demanded Miss Polewidth, standing up and glaring around. “Who are you? What do you mean about stolen pictures? And why do you keep calling my medium Jezebel?”

The men looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Oooh, still stalking people on social media and calling it magic, is she?”

“SHUT UP!” bellowed Jezebel.

“Ernest, what are we supposed to do with these idiots at this fake séance?”

“I suppose we’ll just have to load them into the truck and deal with them later. We’ll leave the drawings in the gaol like we planned.”

“We will not be going anywhere with hoodlums like you.” Miss Polewidth glared at the men.  “We’re going to walk down the road to the police station and tell them to arrest you.”

“Err, no, you won’t,” said Ernest. “We both have handguns and we’ve very good shots, so unless you want to end up as human colanders, you’d better get in the back of the truck.”

“I bet you don’t have a firearms licence! I shall look into it, and if you don’t, I shall write an exposé on you in Glorious Living,” yelled Mrs Potbelly, unwisely. About the surrounding village, a few lights began to turn on. This seemed to embolden Mrs Potbelly.

“HELP! HELP! FLOOD, AVALANCHE, BUSHFIRE!” shrieked Mrs Potbelly with vigour, if not accuracy.

“Shut up and get in the truck!” snarled Ernest.

“What about the art?” asked Keith.

“We’ll have to drop it somewhere else; the whole village is waking up!” said Ernest. He waved his gun at the group. “Get in the back of the truck and don’t make any noise or else.”

“And hand over your phones,” said Keith. “We don’t want any nosey parkers showing up.”

Inside the truck was dark. In the brief time it took for them to get into the truck, they could see rows and rows of flat packages stacked against the sides of the truck and held in place with bungy cords.

Then Ernest shut and bolted the doors.

Jezebel, still arguing with her brothers had got into the cab. Miss Polewidth, Mrs Potbelly and Debbie were alone.

The truck bounced along the road.

“This is most uncomfortable,” grumbled Miss Polewidth. “Worst séance I ever attended by far!”

“I’ve figured it all out,” said Mrs Potbelly. “Madam Claudine isn’t really Madam Claudine! She’s a crook and her real name is Jezebel!”

Debbie was beginning to get fed up. She didn’t want to be rude, but someone had to take charge and it was apparent that neither Miss Polewidth or Mrs Potbelly was up to the job.

“We all know that, Miss Polewidth,” she said. “We need to work out how to .”

“But how?” wailed Miss Polewidth.

And as they rattled along in the dark, Debbie couldn’t think of anything.

Come back next week to find out what happens next! Follow me on Facebook and Instagram at Ruth Marie Hamilton to never miss an instalment.

The photograph of the creepy room is courtesy of Pixabay. The writing and the designs belong to R.M. Hamilton.