Séance Frequency

My name's Aly, I'm fifty-four, and I own a ghost tour company in Edinburgh. Small one. One bus, two guides when I can afford them, and a refurbished double-decker I bought off a council auction four years back. Tonight I was running a private after-hours séance for a group of paranormal enthusiasts, and I was nervous for a reason that had nothing to do with ghosts.

Karl was coming. Fifty-one, UX researcher, works remote for some tech firm. We matched on a dating app two months ago and talked most nights, and he'd never once said anything boring, which is rare. First date, and I'd talked him into spending it on my bus in a municipal lot next to a cemetery. Romantic, right? He said it sounded like the best offer he'd had all year, and I couldn't tell if he was taking the piss.

I'd been on the bus since five, straightening velvet curtains that didn't need straightening. Red rope lights along the ceiling, a little round table in the back for the séance, candles that were battery-operated because the fire inspector and I have history. And bolted to the back wall, my pride and joy: a vintage payphone. Sixties, green, dented. I rigged it years ago so if you dial the right number it plays a loop of spooky messages I recorded myself doing a voice. Guests love it. It's a gag. It's always been a gag.

At a quarter past six there was a knock on the folded-out steps, and there he was. Tall, grey at the temples, holding a paper bag like an offering.

"You said no flowers, so I brought shortbread," he said. "It felt thematically Scottish."

"Get up here, then."

He gave the bus the full tour. I showed him the upper deck where the seating flips into a circle for the séance, the smell of old upholstery and the smoke machine I swear I'd cleaned, the curtain I'd hung to hide the driver's cab.

"And that," I said, pointing, "is Gerald. He's a payphone."

"Gerald."

"Every prop needs a name. Dial five-five-five and he'll tell you your fortune, badly."

"Does Gerald get much action?"

"Only when somebody's drunk enough to try him. He's more decoration than anything."

He laughed at that, and I liked the laugh, and I had to go check on the candles that weren't candles so I'd stop standing there grinning like an idiot.

The guests arrived at eight. Five of them, all adults, all die-hards. There was a couple from Leeds, a quiet man named Tom who brought his own EMF meter, a woman called Adaeze who'd done fourteen of my tours, and a lawyer named Donna who asked more questions than anyone I'd ever hosted. I did the usual talk, phones on silent, no heckling the dead, and we killed the overhead lights so just the red rope glow was left.

We sat in the circle and I did my opening. Hands on the table, breathe slow, name something you want to say to the other side. I was halfway through the standard speech about energy and intention, really getting into it, when Karl leaned back to get comfortable and put his elbow right on the shelf under Gerald.

The phone rang.

Not a dial tone. A full ring, loud as a fire alarm in that little room, and then the loop kicked in. Static, my fake ghost voice whispering about the toll road to the other side, the whole thing I'd recorded in my kitchen with a fan running for atmosphere.

Everybody froze. Then everybody leaned forward at once.

"Was that. Did anyone else," Donna started.

"It's coming from the phone," Tom said, and his EMF meter was already up. "The phone is ringing. Phones don't ring."

Karl, bless him, hadn't moved yet. He was frozen with his elbow still on the shelf, looking at me with enormous eyes, and I made the call in about half a second. I was going to play along and kill the power later.

"Something's trying to come through," I said, all solemn. "Everyone stay calm. It may not have the strength to speak twice."

It spoke twice. Because Karl shifted his weight, the receiver jiggled, and Gerald fired again. Ring, static, whisper. Then a third time, because the loop had somehow jammed and now it just kept going, a whisper every forty seconds like a haunted metronome.

The Leeds couple were gripping each other. Adaeze had her phone out before I could say the rule about phones and was filming the ceiling. And that's when the rope light over the cab started flickering. I could claim that was planned, but it wasn't. That was a loose connection I'd been meaning to fix since March, and the vibration from the phone speaker had apparently rattled it loose for real. Flicker, flicker, dark, flicker.

"Oh my god," Adaeze said. "Oh my god, it's responding!"

"Stay with us," Donna said to the room at large. "We're friendly. We're friendly and we want to hear you."

Then the curtain came down. The whole rod, curtain and all, right across the driver's cab, and I knew exactly why, because I'd hung that rod with two screws and a prayer, and Karl's elbow had shaken the shelf the rod was screwed into. But try telling that to five people in red light with a whispering telephone. The Leeds woman screamed. Tom's meter was chirping. And the lawyer Donna, who'd asked all those sharp questions all tour, went white as the tablecloth and slid right out of her chair onto the floor.

She wasn't hurt. She came to in about ten seconds, sitting up with Karl holding her shoulders, saying she was fine, she was fine, she just needed air. What she needed, it turned out, was off the bus, because the moment she was upright she looked at Gerald and said, "No. No, I'm sorry, that thing is not a prop. I do due diligence for a living and that is a haunted object and I want to leave."