Page 115 of Unalive On Air

He continues speaking. “In all honesty, I didn’t know what I was gonna do with her. I took her out of the hotel. I didn’t know where I was going, so I followed the dogs to K—’s house.”

Okay, Magnus blanked the name out. I am really starting to like this guy. If I don’t float off into the ether after this podcast, we should definitely hang out more often.

“Go on,” I say, and I wonder if Peter’s voluntarily offering this information, or if another, higher power is releasing it for him. Either way, I’m past caring.

“K— had all the tapes from Jeanie’s films and shows, but he wasn’t there. I didn’t know how long he was going to be and I missed being alive. I missed eating and bathing and being able to change the TV channel, so I watched every episode of Peggy in the Middle, and all the movies she ever made. I ate all the food in the fridge and freezer and all the tomatoes from the vegetable patch, and I thought I would just live inside of Jean for the rest of her life, but a couple of days later, I heard K— walking up the path. The dogs got excited, and since I still wasn’t yet proficient in puppeteering another person’s limbs, I slipped over and smacked my, I mean Jeanie’s head on a garden gnome. I panicked. I assumed she was dead, though I saw no ghost yet, but when K— walked through the front door, I switched bodies. One of the dogs attacked me while I tried to move her, and they were making so much noise that I thought the neighbours and police would surely get involved. So I took care of them too, and moved the three bodies to a place I never expected them to be discovered.”

“Peter . . .” It’s Jeanie again, but this time her voice is pained, not angry. “You left me to die in a hole. You and Pixie were my first friends when I became a ghost. I trusted you.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have. You knew what I was capable of with Helga, since it had been your idea to switch roles,” he says, clear as day into the microphone. “I’m bored with talking about Jeanie bloody Johnson, can we move on?”

“Sure,” I say. “The next two people you murdered died for the same reason.”

Beside me, Trystan rests his hand on my thigh. Peter raises a brow.

“Trystan Retallack and Stove MacLeod both died because they’d discovered the sword hidden in the cave.”

“Oh my god,” Trystan says, his grip tightening on my leg. “I remember now. Oh my god. I’d found something shiny, glinting from a hole, and I radioed F— to let her know, and then I went inside the hut and sat on my surfboard, and . . . that was the last thing I remember.”

“Ordinarily, a regular person, particularly the person whose body Peter stole, wouldn’t have the strength to drown a six-foot-three professional surfer, but I have witnessed the extra power a ghost spirit can provide,” I say. “After Peter killed Trystan, he dragged his lifeless body up three hundred plus steps and dumped it in Helga’s office.

“It’s my belief that you wanted Helga to take the fall for this. You wanted her to suffer, but you didn’t count on the inanely incompetent Sergeant Davies dismissing it immediately as an accident.”

I look over at Peter for his insight into this, but his mouth stays stubbornly closed. Then I look at Trystan. My fear of accidentally finishing his unfinished business goes unfounded, as he remains solid and present by my side. Not floating off to some other realm, thank fuck.

“And at first I assumed Stove MacLeod was killed because of the investigations his production team were doing into Jeanie’s disappearance, but now I realise it had always been to cover up the original sword crime, protect your reputation, and continue gaslighting your wife from the grave.

“You possessed a member of staff, then waited on the beach with the film crew, ready to ward anyone away from the cave, but Stove MacLeod’s not exactly the type of person to heed warnings. In fact, he’s the type of contrarian who’ll do the exact opposite of what’s asked of him simply to shove it to the man.”

“Yeah, I will,” Stove says from the other side of the trophy room. He flips Peter off, then draws a line across his neck with his thumbnail and jerks it towards Magnus.

Peter doesn’t react.

“Now, the murder of fifteen-year-old Josh Little. Josh isn’t in the room with us at the moment. For those listening at home, don’t worry, he’s fine. He’s probably haunting the teen zone on the first floor.”

I want to say something directly to Josh’s family, tell them he misses them and thinks about them often, but it’s not my place to stir up grief amongst the living. Maybe one day, Josh and I can find a way to contact them that won’t cause further trauma.

“Peter, you said so yourself, harming a youngster is more abhorrent than killing an adult. Is that because you still feel guilty about Josh?”

Peter looks at me and slow blinks his eyes closed. His mouth stays firmly shut.

“He’s playing the silent game again, folks, so I’ll fill you in on what happened. The year is twenty nineteen. A fifteen-year-old Josh sits in his hotel room. His parents are in the gym, getting in an early game of badminton. His eighteen-year-old sister has plans to meet up with that summer’s surf instructor. Josh is alone and hungry. Instead of waiting until the agreed breakfast meet-up time, the teenager goes in search of sustenance. But as curious adolescent minds are wont to do, he finds himself snooping about in places he shouldn’t be. Namely, Helga’s office. Josh begins opening drawers, looking in cupboards, and checking Helga’s laptop.

“Peter, you panicked once again. Having died in the eighties, you never used a computer or learned how to use one. All you understand is that youngsters are very good with them. Years of psychological warfare on your wife had led her to start keeping lists and information relating to all the deaths and disappearances that’ve happened over the past few decades. There’s a possibility that Josh stumbled upon this material. Not willing to take the risk, you created an impromptu plan to kill him.

“Instead of possessing the boy himself, or another member of staff. You possessed the chocolate muffin he’d stolen from Helga’s office.”

“Ooohhh,” several of the ghosts say as they figure out the rest.

“Recently, I was informed that as a ghost, I can possess an object. Any object. Great if the urge to feel solid once more ever gets too overwhelming. Not so great if the object gets too close to living people.” I think of the tennis ball Camille exploded when a racket hit them. “See, what happens when ghosts possess objects is that the electromagnetic frequencies we emit can get so jumbled and volatile that all it takes is for one touch, a finger, a foot, a set of teeth, to disturb those frequencies and you have yourself an incendiary device with enough localised explosive power to take a life.”

Again, Peter says nothing, but he hangs his head in shame and covers his face.

“Josh was fifteen, Pete. A child. You stole his future because you were worried about something that’d happened forty years ago. I believe that was the turning point for Helga. Not least because the hotel’s reputation and guest numbers were now suffering due to all these unexplained and gory deaths, but because she was finally moving on from you.

“She then hires ExorSquad to remove the ghosts. In twenty twenty-five, they send out Camille Ciel. An expert on spirits and the paranormal, Camille manages to locate the many ghosts of The Paragon Hotel, choosing to focus their energy on what they believed was a level four entity. Only, they’d found you.

“Over the decades of your ghosthood, you’ve grown and become stronger than any of us could ever fear to be. When Camille cornered you on the east wing staircase, you pushed them down the stairs. Using the raw power of your heightened emotions and borrowed force from the ley lines, you were able to physically shove them down the fifty or so marble steps. Camille broke their neck, and you scarpered, letting the other ghosts discover their spirit first.