Is There Anybody There?

A story to make you smile

Is there anybody there?” said a disembodied voice. Carol snorted as she tried to hold in a giggle. Then she looked across the table and caught her grandmother’s eye. Granny was frowning in a very disapproving way.

Shutting her eyes, Carol concentrated on not laughing. Her grandmother, Beryl, and all her friends took the whole psychic thing very seriously. Which was fine. Carol was all for live and let live – or should that be, die and let die! – but the problem was that Beryl was convinced Carol was a natural medium, and she just wasn’t. She didn’t even believe in the paranormal.

Nevertheless Beryl had insisted she should come to the séance.

“Having you there will increase our chances of making contact with the other side no end,” she’d said.

“It won’t, Granny,” Carol had said. “I’m not a medium, or a psychic or a clairvoyant. I’m just me.”

As Carol had predicted, her presence didn’t appear to have any effect on the supernatural activity and after about half an hour, the séance fizzled out.

“Maybe you haven’t grown into it yet,” Granny said. “But you will.”

“I have no intention of growing into it,” Carol argued back.

“Now then, weren’t you the one who divined where Great Aunt Marion had hidden her jewellery box after she died and no one could find it?”

It was true that Carol had been the one to suggest they look in the bottom of the old linen chest in the attic, but that wasn’t psychic ability, it was just common sense. If Carol had wanted to hide something valuable, that’s where she would have hidden it.

“And wasn’t it you who tracked down next door’s cat when it went missing?”

There was only one answer to that. “Pilchards,” Carol said. “What?” “The cat came home because I put pilchards out for it. Seriously, Gran, I don’t have a psychic bone in my body.” Beryl wasn’t to be convinced. “Do stay a bit longer,” she said. “Elsie’s grandson will be here soon. He’s very gifted psychically, apparently.”

Great, Carol thought, that’s all I need. Some spot ty youth who thinks he’s a spirit guide.

Poor Terence has been held up at work,” Elsie said, as they finished their tea and biscuits.

Work? He must be a bit older than she’d imagined, Carol thought.

“Should we start again without him?” one of the other ladies said.

“I think we’re going to have to,” Elsie said. “He can just sneak in quietly when he arrives.”

Carol finished her chocolate biscuit and resigned herself to another half hour of boredom tinged with hysteria. Beryl and her friends took their psychic gatherings seriously, but Carol couldn’t.

She pressed her fingernails into her palms to try to stop herself from laughing and glanced at the clock on the wall, hoping the ladies would settle for a short second session. Especially if there was no psychic activity… which there wouldn’t be, as it was all nonsense.

After the first round of Is there anybody there? Carol’s mind wandered.

It really was about time she organised herself a social life that didn’t involve sitting around waiting to talk to dead people, she decided. But with work and

the fact that all her friends seemed to be settling down, getting married and having babies, the opportunities just didn’t seem to be there these days.

It wasn’t exactly that she was lonely, more bored, and really not sure where her life was going. Which, surely, was another sign that she wasn’t psychic!

Carol closed her eyes – she was never sure on the etiquette of this; some of the ladies did and some didn’t – but she’d had a long day at work, and the lights had been dimmed anyway, so it couldn’t do any harm, could it?

With her eyes closed Carol knew the main challenge would be not to fall asleep, so she tried to concentrate on the clock ticking as time passed and the moment that she could decently go home drew closer.

She was just in the middle of a daydream about meeting a gorgeous unattached man when suddenly something really unexpected happened. The table shook. It wasn’t like the time earlier when the ladies had been convinced that there was movement from “the other side”. That time it had just been a gentle tremble, almost certainly caused by someone leaning too hard on a wonky table leg or shifting too abruptly in their chair. This time it was a proper, prolonged shaking.

Carol froze. What on earth was going on? Beryl and Elsie and the others couldn’t have been right about séances attracting people from the other side all along… could they?

Her heart pounded as she tried to decide whether to open her eyes or not.

Then she heard a polite cough next to her and looked up.

“Sorry,” said a voice. “I’m Terry. Is it OK if I sit next to you?”

Ah, the spotty teenager had arrived. Carol couldn’t actually see through the darkness whether he really was spotty or not, but she had no reason to suppose he wasn’t. www.myweekly.co.uk

Terry sat down next to her, shaking the table again as he lowered his surprisingly tall frame into the chair.

The ladies twittered as they settled down again. Maybe now Terry was here there would be some psychic activity, Carol thought. In fact, if he had a reputation to keep up, she wouldn’t be surprised if he engineered some sort of manifestation himself. But no. Another grindingly slow twenty minutes passed and still nothing happened.

“I think we might need to call it a night,” Elsie said.

“I’m dying for another cup of tea,” Beryl said.

“I’ll go and put the kettle on.” Carol sprang up out of her seat, desperate to get out of the room before she either died of boredom or got collared by Terry trying to tell her how he normally managed to summon up the spirits of an Egyptian mummy, a Victorian kitchen maid and a whole army of laughing cavaliers and maybe it was her negativity putting them off.

In the kitchen she took a deep breath, flicked the kettle on and looked around for clean mugs. She really was going to have to find a way of breaking the news to Beryl that she didn’t want to come to these psychic evenings any more. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t a medium, it was that she wasn’t remotely interested.

“Your grandmother tells me you’re a medium,” said a voice behind her.

She turned and found herself looking at Terry and was surprised to notice that now she could actually see him he wasn’t that bad looking. He also wasn’t a teenager, but probably about her own age. That was irrelevant though. Even if he’d been drop-dead gorgeous, she still wouldn’t have wanted to encourage him. She wanted to extricate herself from the séance evenings, not get even more deeply embedded.

“I’m not,” she said, wanting to make it clear from the start. “I know my gran tells everyone I am, but I’m really not.” “Snap!” said Terry. “What?” said Carol. “But I thought you were some hot-shot spirit guide, Terence?”

“I think both our grandmothers are mistaken. And please call me Terry,” he said as he came and joined her by the kettle. “Here, let me help.”

“Thanks,” Carol said as they loaded up the tea tray.

“Erm, before we go back in… tea’s not really my thing. I don’t suppose you fancy coming to the wine bar over the road with me instead?”

Together, they took the tea and coffee into the ladies whose spirits seemed not at all dampened by the lack of… well… spirits.

“Gran, Terry and I were thinking of popping over the road for a glass of wine. You don’t mind do you?”

Beryl exchanged a conspiratorial look with Elsie.

“So nice to see you two getting on,” Elsie said comfortably.

“We didn’t see that coming, did we, Elsie?” said Beryl, stifling a smile.

Suddenly the penny dropped and Carol realised that she and Terry had been set up.

“Well,” she said, returning Beryl’s smile. “I didn’t see it coming either.” “Didn’t you, dear?” “No,” said Carol, taking the arm that Terry was offering her. “So I think that proves once and for all that I’m not psychic, doesn’t it?”

The table SHOOK, and this time it was a proper PROLONGED shaking