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Leanne:

Wasting Company Time presents Tell No Tales, Episode Five: Eat the Rich

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[SFX: Recording Begins, Classical Music Playing]

Leo:

Audio diary of Leo Quinn, assistant to Frank Williamson, director of Better Place. It’s, er, it’s been a while since my last set of notes. What was it, Highgate cemetery right? Right, yeah, a couple of weeks ago. Things just got mental here at the office. I’ve been spending some time at home fine-tuning the recorder and sifting through old data but I haven’t had any in-office Frank-free time until today. Plus I’ve been working on the whole social life thing a bit. Or, more like, I now have someone other than Riley who invites me places? Julia keeps suggesting group drinks after work or lunches at fancy central London business hangouts, and like, that’s all well and good, but aside from me being flat broke already, I now have to work around the significant amount of distraction Julia poses. Because, I mean, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but she’s excessively gorgeous. Like, sure, Julia, I’ll go grab some overpriced sushi with you at lunch, then I’ll just go back to the office and spend the remainder of the workday thinking about that dimple, and the way your hair always seems to fall just right even when you’ve just run your hands through it, yeah that sounds like a sensible idea for someone who’s swamped with work. God, there was even a close call a while back where Riley, ever the wing-person, tried to get me talking about my mystery tech project, and I swear I’ve never started sweating so quickly and so profusely in my life. All Julia needs to do is look at me long enough and I’ll spill every secret I have. I’m not even sure how I got out of that conversation to be honest. I think I blacked out for a minute. Christ, I have got to get normaler. Buuuuttt, I won’t. Instead I will use the brief time I have with no work to make more work for myself. We’ve got a category two fresh in today that won’t be handled until Monday, so that seems a good place to start.

Case RM#2228, Category 2, Case status-active. Reported via email by a… (POINTEDLY) Mrs. Barrington-Wright. hm. Initial report: To Whom it May Concern, I am writing regarding a potential haunting at my family home in Hampstead. The home had been standing empty for some time since the passing of my father, but after the birth of my youngest, my husband and I made the decision to move in last year. In that time, what I mistook for a feeling of unsettled grief during my brief visits since my father’s passing has progressed into something more ominous. It began with flickering lights, strange gusts of wind within the rooms, small fires starting with no discernible source that we have thankfully been able to put out in time. The most recent was a horrible infestation of spiders. We’ve moved out of the house temporarily into our second home in Cornwall, and once payment is agreed upon I’ll be happy to disclose the location of the spare key and authorise you to access the property to resolve the problem. I do not believe this is the spirit of my father, as it seemed far too malicious and my father and I were very close, so I have no qualms regarding your swift removal of whomever it is by any means necessary. Many thanks, Patricia Barrington-Wright…

Mmhmm, I’m sure Mrs. Barrington-Wright doesn’t have any qualms at all about the removal of some stranger from her house, not from the comfort of her second home in Cornwall, yeah, uh-uh. Not that I, in this scientific capacity, am trying to pass judgement or anything (COUGHS) eattherich (COUGHS) who said that? She did get one thing right though, the spirit almost certainly isn’t her father. He only died about four years ago, and a spirit usually takes at least a few years to manifest at all, let alone progress to a category two. Riley was the head researcher on this case, and they found that the spirit likely belongs to Mrs. Barrington-Wright’s grandfather, a Charles Barrington. They also found that there was some dispute with his will. He had, apparently, written his eldest son — our client’s father — out of the will, but the son in question had appealed it as an oversight, and won, inheriting the house that Charles apparently did not want him to inherit. Riley thinks it’s potentially a case of late manifestation — the spirit of Charles Barrington stayed behind to settle whatever issue he had with his son, but by the time he was manifested strongly enough to be noticed, his son had passed and he had all this anger that could only be taken out on his granddaughter and her family. So, you know, some people stay behind because of the love of their lives, some people stay behind because of their violent murders, and others, I guess, stay behind because they’re bitter about who inherited their obscene wealth? Yeah, screw no judgement. Come on man, have better reasons. Make better choices. On the plus side, if he’s like any other rich man I’ve ever met, I won’t have any trouble getting to him to talk about himself. Heh. Er, anyway, wish me luck!

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[SFX: Recording Begins, Mouse clicks, classical music begins playing]

Leo:

Well. That went… I mean, it certainly went. I was right at least, he definitely seemed comfortable monologuing about himself. He also felt very comfortable turning on all the horrifying paranormal security measures to keep the proles off his property. Not that I’m bitter or anything but that house had seven bathrooms. Seven. In London. Anyway. I found the spare key, and used that to get in. It was unsettlingly still. Not just in the sense that the house was empty and quiet, but like the house itself was holding its breath. My first mistake was opening my mouth. I just called out. “Mr. Charles Barrington, are you here?” And everything came alive. I don’t know if I just alerted him to my presence or he heard the hints of Scouse in my accent and it put him on edge. But either way he didn’t seem happy

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The lights in the house flared up for a moment, every light I could see, for just a moment, before fading a little, continuing to flicker faintly with a low, twitching hum. I had my EMF reader at the ready, and it had already begun to buzz, picking up readings from apparently everywhere. The high ceilinged rooms seemed to be filled with static air. I decided to walk further into the house, trying to find where the readings might be strongest. It was the strangest feeling, like I knew that I wanted to go further in, but there was a tugging feeling somewhere in the back of my mind telling me not to. Like when you know there’s something you should be anxious about but you’ve forgotten what it is. I pressed on though. I wasn’t about to be bullied by some ghost whose whole afterlife was devoted to keeping people out of his 5-million-pound house… Roughly, I looked up the other houses in the area for reference, not the point. I made my way upstairs, and as the readings got stronger, so did the thick static feeling in the air, that and… something else… was that? Yep, smoke. It was definitely smoke. I followed it to one of the bedrooms, where a small fire had started in the centre of the bed. There was nothing that could have caused it nearby, just a sprawling double bed with flames eating away at the duvet. I only panicked for a second, before grabbing the edges of the duvet and balling it up around the flames to snuff them out. I stayed that way for a long time, clutching the material tight against itself, until I unfurled it slowly to make sure it was out. There were some blackened marks where the fire had burned, though no actual damage, like the fire had only been near the material, not on it. And in the centre of the dark smudge sat… A spider. Like. A pretty standard-looking spider. Or it would be standard-looking if it hadn’t seemed to have been born forth from the flames. And, look, I don’t know much about spiders. I generally try to not look too hard at them if I can help it. But this one looked like it was ready to pounce. I just bundled the duvet back up around it, something inside me snapping. “Alright Chuck, buddy, listen here. I know you want me and everyone else out this house, but the sooner you talk to me, the sooner I’ll go.” There were some readings on the EMF meter, but they weren’t as strong as they should have been, so I stormed out of that bedroom and down the hall, peeking my head into each of the rooms that I passed. Of course it was the master bedroom that the readings really picked up. “Alright Charles, no getting rid of me that easy,” I called out. “Tell me about your arsehole son.” That worked. A bit too well, actually. The EMF reader went wild, and in the same rhythm as the pulsing lights, the chandelier — yes, you heard me right, there was a whole entire chandelier — began to sway and shudder. I eyed it cautiously as he spoke, wanting to tell him to stop but unwilling to interrupt now that I’d gotten him going. When he was finished, the static feeling in the air had only increased, and I started to worry that the whole place might ignite. Which, yeah, I know, the sensible thing to do after having that thought is to get out, but my logic was, the sooner I could get enough data, the faster I could leave. So, I spoke again. “Did you know that your son lived a full life, and died of a stroke as an old man four years ago? You’re late. No, er, no pun intended. The family who lives here now belongs to his daughter, what grudge do you have against the granddaughter you never met?” For the first time since I started doing this, I felt suddenly glad that I couldn’t hear what he’d been saying when the readings picked up steam again. They built to a roar, the lights growing brighter and steadier, and when they reached the limits of the cheap EMF reader’s bulbs, I felt the effects in the quaking of the room, the rattling of the chandelier, the faint smell of burning that seemed to fill the whole room. Then everything kind of happened at once. The chandelier finally broke, crashing down in front of me, the glass and metal and shattered bulbs spilling out across the room as I scrambled backwards towards the door, and in the moment of its impact, there was a whooshing of air as something in the room ignited. The flames didn’t seem to catch on anything at all, just that the air filled with them, and they were everywhere. The room thick with smoke and heat and something else, and I couldn’t see the door any more, I couldn’t see anything but the flames that should have been burning me but were just choking me, consuming me in some other way, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t do anything, but I used the last of the air in my lungs to scream. Not a scream of terror but more of anger. Maybe I was just growing immune to spooky ghost crap, maybe it was just the class-rage. But I think it surprised him. Enough for the flames to falter just briefly, long enough for me to find the door, stumble towards it, falling back into the hallway and running at full speed downstairs and out the house, seeing the smoke billowing from the window as I tore down the gravel driveway.

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I did call 999. I didn’t think the fire would actually do any damage — It wasn’t really burning me, it was all heat and no bite — But, I thought it best to play it safe. I told the operator to send fire fighters, and that I was a concerned neighbour who happened to know the house was standing empty while they awaited a visit from Better Place, so at least the fire department would know what they were getting themselves into when they came. I didn’t wait around to see them arrive though. At least he gave me enough data to keep me busy for a while. Who knows when I’ll next get a chance to work another case. Frank’s just been here all the time. And when he has gone away, whatever he’s been doing hasn’t been in his schedule so I can’t know how long I have before he comes back. I miss that brief but wonderful time when he was away interviewing all the time. Though, it’s weird… The timing of that doesn’t quite add up. He was interviewing for a full week, then literally the next day, Julia started. Even if she didn’t have any kind of notice period — come to think about it, I don’t think she’s mentioned where she used to work — but even still, it’d surely take longer than a day to get the paperwork through, HR is notoriously slow, and they definitely do not work out of office hours. It’s just weird. I dunno, maybe I’ve just got Julia on the brain. No normal person would be looking this deeply into it. It’s fine, I’ll just plug along tinkering with the recorder after work and hope another chance to work a case comes up soon. Until next time, audio diary.

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Leanne:

Episode Five of Tell No Tales, Eat the Rich, was written and performed by Leanne Egan. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to support the show is to spread the word. Leaving us a rating and review in your listening app of choice is a huge help, or you can follow us on Twitter or Tumblr @tellnotalespod Links and information about transcripts can be found in the show notes. Tell No Tales is distributed by Wasting Company Time Productions, under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial share-alike 4.0 international license. Thank you for listening, and remember: the dead don’t bite.

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