Ghosts For Hire
Chapter 12: Where Aggie Vows To Be Useful
‘You’re a ghost you say. Who’s seeking employment,’ said Aggie.
Useful Pondgrubber nodded.
‘Which means, if I’m not mistaken, you’re currently unemployed.’ Aggie took a long draw on her pipe. ‘And how does that happen, if you’re a ghost. You got the sack? You turned up late for work? You wasn’t professionally fulfilled?’
Useful sighed. He explained that for near on a hundred years he’d been haunting the Grubby Gosling pub in the village of Great Doome. The pub was where he worked as a bottle washer and where he’d met his untimely end. By partaking of too many snifters of the house brewed hooch, falling down the cellar stairs and breaking his neck. The Grubby Gosling became his afterlife home, a place that made him happy and somewhere Useful diligently haunted. He was good for trade as folk came from far and wide to try and catch a glimpse of him in the cellar. Others, when chosen by Useful, would see an empty bottle move across a table, feel a tap on their shoulder or, his speciality, glimpse his grinning face reflected in the pub’s windows. There’d be a cheeky wink and then Useful would fade into nothing.
‘I had job satisfaction, prospects.’
‘Useful by name and useful by nature,’ said Aggie.
‘Truly! I was a pub ghost par excellence, I delivered. Not like some of the other lazy so and so’s I could mention. Which I will!’ Useful got himself all worked up into an indignant froth. ‘Eileen Muckchucker at The Naughty Gobbler. Been there five hundred years, five hundred years! And all she does is, and only occasionally mind you, unseen, is open and close a door. Where’s the art, where’s the drama in that? That’s not haunting, that’s just … entering and exiting.’
‘Or a draft,’ said Aggie, unheard as Useful ranted on.
‘Nigel The Tailwafter, at the Three Gawping Ganders Inn over in Lower Midden. I’m not sure I should even deign to tell of what that ghost thinks is rib tickling amusement.’
‘But you will.’
Useful did.
‘He blows customers’ crisps off the table. Ha, ha, ha? Not at all, it’s pathetic.’
Or a draft again thought Aggie, who, if Useful continued blathering on would soon lose the will to live herself and join him in the afterlife.
‘No finesse, no awe-‘
‘And then? Can we get to the “And then” if it’s not too much bother.’
‘Yes. Sorry.’ Useful indulged in another sorrowful sigh. ‘The Grubby Gosling was redeveloped … into The Happy Hatchlings Nursery. I can’t be haunting the little ones now can I. I lost my raison d’être. That’s French by the way for-‘
‘I know,’ said Aggie.
‘You do?’
‘Losing it continually myself. It’s why I have to have my special tobaccy to help find it. Parlez vous on.’
‘Right, yes. Erm … Could you …’
‘Redeveloped,’ reminded Aggie.
‘Thank you. Exactly. I needed another pub. This seemed perfect, it’s cosy, busy. Without doubt a very splendid place.’
A morose Useful Pondgrubber caught the look on Aggie’s face. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’
‘Was that you chunneling Audrey?’
‘I saw it as an … opportunity. A display of my spectral abilities, I know I could do good work here in the Chatty Goose.’
Aggie glanced over to the bar where Sally and Clothilde breathlessly chatted ten to the dozen about the day’s events, wide eyed and rapt by the ghostly advice. Useful had already done a good job.
‘All that clanking and clattering, the regurgitations, and the nippy gusts up the gusset. That you as well?’
‘Not me,’ said Useful. ‘It’s the other ghost, Arthur Clanger by name it seems, who’s beaten me to the post. His repertoire is rather impressive I have to admit. I shall have to move on and find somewhere else … if there is anywhere else.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked Aggie.
‘The ghost code. Only one ghost per pub, inn, tavern, bar, saloon, or other such to be named watering holes past, present and future, in all known and to be known dimensions. The code is unbreakable, it’s very strict,’ said Useful.
‘And if you don’t find somewhere else?’
Useful fell silent.
‘Something really bad happens?’ said Aggie.
‘An eternity of limbo-’
‘What! You have to dance under a pole forever! That’s terrible wrong, that is. What kind of sick mind-Your back’d never recover-‘
‘No, it’s … It doesn’t matter. It’s that in life I was never very much, just a crummy old second-rate bottle washer. But I’ve found my path in passing over, I’ve learned things in these years and there’ll be more to learn. Things I can pass on to help people. I’m a USP, every pub needs one.’
‘USP?’ said Aggie.
‘Unique Spooky Person. But maybe not to be anymore …’ Useful looked as desolate as a fire sale.
Aggie was touched. She was touched in many ways most of which defy explanation, but here it was her heart. A big soft one too often hidden. For haven’t we all felt at times that we’ve passed our sell by date, stinking out the top shelf of the fridge simply waiting to be tossed down life’s garbage shute and taken away to be landfilled. The likes of the nobility perhaps not, because nobility could hire folk to stink for them and be thankful for it. Though not Lord and Lady Swiftwing, or Lady Amelia, let it be recorded. They were beyond reproach, lovely people, lovely.
Aggie had had her moments on that top shelf, and if not for Audrey and Anne’s selfless actions – even if they daily reminded her of such and expected abiding gratitude, usually in regularly treating them to cake and sticky buns at Muddy Puddles Tea Shop – Aggie may well have been cleaned out like a piece of mouldy cheese. You help those that need helping, even if they are dead.
She determined to be useful to Useful - and do whatever was needed to save him from limbo dancing ever and a day.
‘You listen to me, that’s not going to happen.’ Aggie downed the last of her Squelchy, snatched another almost full glass cruelly abandoned by who matters not, but clearly pleading for Aggie’s intervention, and took several gulps. She could feel the cider’s gratitude, which in about five minutes would take over her brain. The glass was slammed down on the table.
‘Cos I say it’s not going to happen!’
‘What’s not going to happen, Aggie?’
She turned. Edmund Meadowmist and Reggie Reedpaddler had arrived back after taking Audrey home.
‘The Inn ain’t going to run out of Squelchy, is that it?’ continued Reggie. ‘You and Anne would be in a fine mess if it did.’
‘Useful Pondgrubber here needs help,’ said Aggie.
‘Who?’
Aggie turned back. Only a scintilla of Useful’s spirit form remained, and even that disappeared with a whispered plop.
‘Bugger,’ said Aggie.
TO BE CONTINUED…
In case you missed the beginning:
CHAPTER 1: Where the villagers of Misty Bottom have their feathers rudely PLUCKED!
CHAPTER 2: Where we find out that a little bit of Onkyye goes a long way
CHAPTER 3: Where Lady Amelia Loses Her Baubles
CHAPTER 4: Where Inspector Pecker Crashes Into Misty Bottom Society
CHAPTER 5: Where The Handsome Reward Becomes Even More Handsome
CHAPTER 6: Where Lady Amelia Gets Uppity
CHAPTER 7: Where Suspect Geese Get Grilled
CHAPTER 8: Where There Is Unbridled Joy
CHAPTER 9: Where Audrey Gets Tittle-Tattled
CHAPTER 10: Spooked!
CHAPTER 11: Wisdom on Toast
Publisher’s Note:
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This collaboration crosses (much like an inebriated person) the boundaries of reality and fiction and was born out of these toy geese’s unstoppable desire to become fictional characters.
Please consider reading the explanatory articles here and here if this is still unclear.
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Thank you.
Don't know where this is going but I'm waiting to find out. Aggie's a hoot, and like all of these wonderful geese, possessed of a big heart.
I like how recently the story has taken a mysterious twist. Each chapter bites on the edge of something new!