Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives

There are very few hauntings in the Nightside, as such. The atmosphere here is so saturated with magic and super-science and general weird business that it swamps and drowns out all the lesser signals. Though there are always a few stubborn souls who just won’t be told. Like Long John Baldwin, who drank himself to death in my usual bar, Strangefellows. Dropped stone dead while raising one last glass of Valhalla Venom to his lips, and hit the floor with the smile still on his face. The bar’s owner, Alex Morrisey, had the body removed, but even before the funeral was over Long John was back in his familiar place at the bar, calling for a fresh bottle. Half a dozen unsuccessful exorcisms later, Alex gave up and hired Long John as his replacement bartender and security guard. Long John drinks the memories of old booze from empty bottles, and enjoys the company of his fellow drinkers, just as he always did (they’re a hardened bunch, in Strangefellows). And as Alex says, a ghost is more intelligent than a watch dog or a security system, and a lot cheaper to maintain.

I could feel a subtle tension on the air, a wrongness; as though there was a reason why the ghost shouldn’t be there. She was an unusually strong manifestation; no transparency, no fraying around the edges. That usually meant a strong character, when she was alive. She didn’t flinch as I looked her over thoughtfully. She was a tall, slender brunette, with neatly-styled hair and under-stated makeup, in a long white dress of such ostentatious simplicity that it had to have cost a bundle.

“Do you know your name?” I said finally.

“Holly De Lint.”

“And what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dive like this?”

“I don’t know. Normally, I wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this.”

We both smiled slightly. “Could someone have brought you here, Holly? Could that person have…”

“Murdered me? Perhaps. But who would I know, in a place like this?”

She had a point. A woman like her didn’t belong here. So I left her sitting at my table, and made my rounds of the bar, politely interrogating the regulars. Most of them didn’t feel like talking, but I’m John Taylor. I have a reputation. Not a very nice one, but it means people will talk to me when they wouldn’t talk to anyone else. They didn’t know Holly. They didn’t know anything. They hadn’t seen anything, because they didn’t come to a bar like this to take an interest in other people’s problems. And they genuinely might not have noticed a ghost. One of the side effects of too much booze is that it shuts down the Sight; though you can still end up seeing things that aren’t there.

I went back to Holly, still sitting patiently at the table. I sat down opposite her, and used my gift to find out what had happened in her recent past. Faint pastel images of Holly appeared all around the bar, blinking on and off, from where she’d tried to talk to people, or begged for help, or tried to leave and been thrown back. I concentrated, sorting through the various images until I found the memory of the last thing she’d done while still alive. I got up from the table and followed the last trace of the living Holly all the way to the back of the bar, to the toilets. She went into the Ladies, and I went in after her. Luckily, there was no one else there, then or now; so I could watch uninterrupted as Holly De Lint opened a cubicle, sat down, and then washed down a big handful of pills with most of a bottle of whisky. She went about it quite methodically, with no tears or hysterics, her face cold and even indifferent, though her eyes still seemed terribly sad. She killed herself, with pills and booze. The last image showed her slumping slowly sideways, the bottle slipping from her numbed fingers, as the last of the light went out of her eyes.

I went back into the bar, and sat down again opposite Holly. She looked at me inquiringly, trustingly. So what could I do, except tell her the truth?

“There was no murderer, Holly. You took your own life. Can you tell me why…”

But she was gone. Disappeared in a moment, blinking out of existence like a punctured soap bubble. No sign to show that anyone had ever been sitting there.

So I went back to the bar and told Maxie what had happened, and he laughed in my face.