I'M A DOCTOR, CHAPTER THREE
Aoife, the maid, greeted them all.
"If you'd like to wait in the lounge here, my colleagues and I would like to welcome you to Redmyres Grange. Refreshments will be provided while you're allocated your rooms.
Almost as soon as they were sipping their coffee or tea, the problems began.
"Mr Keogh and Mr Chiltern are in the rose room, but if it's easier, that's room number four. The doors are all numbered."
Dylan's colour drained.
"I can't stay in any room that says 'four' on it."
"Oh pull yourself together, Dylan, this if for a childrens' charity" Connie rolled her eyes. Lofty glared at her. Connie would normally have reminded Lofty that this was an ED team exercise and she was still in charge, but she was too amused. She'd known Lofty had feelings for Dylan for some time, and now he'd proved it to her.
"Could we not have another room?" Lofty asked politely.
"Sorry, Sir, too late at this stage. It's a lovely room though."
I don't care if it's the loveliest room in the universe, it's upset my Dylan, thought Lofty, enjoying the luxury of thinking of Dylan as 'his' Dylan.
"Could we maybe swap with somebody else?" Dylan pleaded.
"Mr Harper left strict instructions that the rooms were to be kept to."
"And where's Mr Harper now?"
"Barbados, Sir."
"Oh, wonderful. Whoopie doo."
Dylan brooded silently while everybody else was allocated their rooms.
When almost everybody had filed upstairs, Lofty walked over to Dylan and said quietly:
"This might help."
He took a little crucifix from his own neck and handed it to Dylan.
"Ben, you're a kind man. That'll help indeed."
Dylan put the little cross around his own neck.
Cal had been looking round the female staff hopefully. That Aoife was cute, so was Ruth, the housekeeper, except Ruth was a little sober-faced.
"Nice to see you'll be looking after us tonight" he grinned at Ruth.
"Thank you Sir. But I won't be here tonight."
"Oh, a staff changeover?"
"No, Sir. None of the staff stay here after dark. The food's kept warm on a hostess trolley for you all and the fridge is full of cold desserts."
Ethan's face fell; he'd been hoping for hot fruit pie.
"But, what if there's a power cut, or…"
Ruth was implacable.
"The staff will all be leaving at six sharp, Sir. We'll be back in the morning to serve breakfast so you won't have to lift a finger. Torches and candles are provided in this cupboard right here."
"I've gone right off you" thought Cal.
"Now" Ruth said sternly, "I've had more instructions. We're taking your mobile phones and locking them away till you leave on your final day. Part of Mr Harper's instructions.
Robyn's face fell. She'd been hoping to put in her earplugs and lose herself in her phone that night.
Keira and Orlando saw the phones being locked away in the cupboard. They were straight through the keyhole and messing around with the phones without a second thought. Instead of a fluffy kitten on Robyn's screensaver there was now a tiger with bloody jaws. On Cal's phone, his action shot of Lauren Cohen from "The Walking Dead" had been replaced by a Zombie which could now come right out of the screen and grunt "I'm coming for you, Cal."
"Let's see what Curly Bonce has on his phone."
"I like him, he's got a kind face" Keira protested.
"Here… ooh, look."
Orlando was surprised. Lofty's screen saver was a boring old phone screensaver with a sea view on it.
After Orlando's naughty little fingers had made the adjustments, a sea monster reared from the depths, growling "I eat curly gits."
Next that ginger-haired doctor. Oho, an old grey dog…. This should be fun, thought Orlando.
"No!" Keira said firmly, "It's a nice doggie. We're not changing her."
Orlando shrugged. It wasn't a bad old dog and they could change somebody else's phone.
"Look at this. It's just a boring old Greek Urn. It belongs to that guy with specs."
"Snakes coming out of it, snakes coming out of it."
Once again the naughty little fingers went to work.
"They'll never forget us when they go back home."
"IF they go back home. They might die of fear. I'm betting curly git's first to go."
"No, that red-haired chubby one."
"A double bed" Dylan sighed, "You'd better not kick, Chiltern."
Don't let me kick, don't let me snore, don't let me break wind, prayed Lofty. He didn't know what he did when he was asleep and the thought of doing horrid things in the same bed as Dylan freaked him out.
Connie was sulking. She'd never expected to have to share with Rita, especially as Robyn had a single room, thanks to Harry Harper's stupid iron-cast rules. Robyn and Dixie both had singles and she, Connie Beauchamp had to share. What was Harper playing at?
Iain was disappointed too. He was in a triple with Cal and Ethan. Why? As far as he knew, there were plenty of spare rooms. But the rules were printed clearly on several printed checklists: no changing rooms from the ones allocated or not a penny would the children's ward receive.
If they'd realised how the room planning worked, they would have been very upset.
Harper had deliberately put the most vulnerable people in singles. He'd have allocated a single to the nervous Ben Chiltern but he wanted Chiltern to annoy Dr Keogh enough to make the latter lose his temper. It was the same with the brothers and the paramedic. They all had volatile tempers and there were several sharp instruments, even an old revolver, around. The ghosts meeting ten living humans was bad enough, but for them to meet five or six dead humans and help them to the Other Side, leaving the survivors to take the blame, was priceless.
He'd reckoned without Robyn Miller being a bookworm for a start.
Robyn, feeling full and relaxed after a surprisingly good dinner and a surprisingly powerful shower, was totally absorbed in her paperback, the new Gina Rand. Gina wrote 'it's grim up North' type thrillers in which the cops were anything but squeaky clean. DS Marian Chase now, she was taking backhanders from DI Mark Leyton, and sex from Constable Will Perkins. Boris Leatherhead had shot a man in the course of duty, but was awaiting trial for it as there was doubt over how much danger Leatherhead had been in at the time. And if the cops were bad, the serial killers were spectacular.
Robyn was just reading the bit where the Whip Man was approaching his next victim, her eyes wide.
She realised the curtains were open and went to close them, but not before she'd seen a flash of red outside. But Taylorette didn't need curtains, if Keira and her pesky brother could glide through keyholes, Taylorette could slip through the tiniest gap in a closed window.
Robyn shrugged and went back to the huge easy chair she was sitting in. Taylorette was sitting in it, wafting her hands over Robyn's face.
"Robyn Miller! Where is my baby, Robyn Miller?
Robyn heard the chanting voice and turned away. The next minute her beloved Gina Rand book was whisked out of her hands.
"Give that back, bitch!" she snapped.
Taylorette held it above Robyn's head tantalisingly. Robyn punched her in a rage, but her hand went straight through the ghost.
"Bugger off!" she bawled.
Then she suddenly caught a glimpse of Taylorette's face. Hanging and the effects of the passage of time had made Taylorette look pretty grim.
Robyn fainted and mercifully stayed unconscious till morning.
But it was what happened to Ethan Hardy that really made the dark night even darker.
Ethan had foolishly gone for a walk, leaving Iain and Cal discussing back issues of "Bosoms and Butts and Eager Sluts", their favourite magazine.
Suddenly Ethan staggered into the room, clutching his heart, his eyes wide.
"I've seen it! On the Rose staircase!" he gasped.
"What?" they both snapped.
"Me! My face in a portrait on the stairs! Me, but not me. Y-you know the doppelganger legend?"
"The what?"
Ethan shivered.
"I-If somebody meets a stranger who bears their face, they will die!" wailed Ethan.
And he fainted. Cal and Iain nudged the magazine from under him and continued ogling.
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