Day 304. In the beginning Marley was dead. (31/10/13)

In keeping with this night then; this night when the spirits walk abroad, when mischief roams and the supernatural surrounds us, in keeping with this night of nights, I shall tell you a ghost story.

I should say straight away that I believe in an afterlife, an existence that continues after we have left our mortal shell, a continuation of the soul a mere heartbeat away from our mundane reality. I have seen enough in my life to be convinced that, in the words of the bard, 'there is more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy.'

There are tales that I could tell you; not tales that happened to a friend of a friend, nor tales that were handed down through the gaps in generations. These are tales that happened to friends which I witnessed in the process of their happening, tales that I was the centre of myself; but these tales are too personal to relate in a forum such as this so my concentration must alight elsewhere.

As stated previously, at this stage in my life I believe but at the time that the incident that I will relate occurred I was but a callow youth and unsure of the mysteries beyond the visible world.

As a younger man I was employed in a junior managerial position in a store which served to vend musical recordings. On occasion my duties included the closing of the store and the resolution of the day's takings.

One such occasion came about in the days approaching the Christmas of my 23rd year; I had secured the store and settled the monies but still had some time before my carriage home was due. I decided that this would be a suitable moment to attend to the call of nature before my onward journey.

I should, perhaps, point out at this juncture that the store that I was employed in was an old building, large, rambling and attached at odd junctions to the neighbouring establishment, an opticians of some local note.

Our portion of the building, set in a row of similar merchants, consisted of four floors; a basement wherein the store's stock was prepared for sale, a ground floor that served as the sales area of the store, a second floor which would, in time and with the expansion of the business, serve as further sales space and from there a staircase set behind a door which sat flush in a wall leading up to a narrow space that contained both the ladies' and gentlemen's lavatories.

It was only in years to come that I would discover that a security employee of a previous tenant had collapsed and died in this stairwell, at this time I was unaware of the unknown gentleman's sad passing.

I had spent a certain period of time placed in charge of the preparation of stock in the establishment's basement and had grown accustomed to hearing the occasional cry of a baby through the wall that separated ourselves from the aforementioned opticians; it being a business that predominantly employed young ladies it seemed only natural that a former colleague, now married and a mother, may visit from time to time with her child.

On the late December evening that I had commenced describing I had, as stated earlier, closed the store for the evening and was, at the time that I decided to attend to my toilet, the only inhabitant of the building. The opticians, not of itself the manner of merchant that necessitates opening late into the evening in order to capture the anticipatory Christmas rush, was now long closed and had settled into darkness some while earlier.

I closed and secured the store's office and made my way to the first floor, walked the length of the floor from the winding, in store, staircase to the door to the stairwell lit only by the glow of the street's Christmas lights shining weakly through the large windows at the front of this empty area and wended my way up the narrow stairwell.

I had barely entered the bathroom and was lost deep in my own thoughts when I heard it;

Three floors above the basement where I had become used to hearing it, where I had developed a plausible explanation for hearing it, three floors above and several hours later than would make any sense, from a door into a closed and long empty store....

I heard a baby cry.

I made no effort to reassure myself that there could be any form of logic that could explain this event; I fled.

I refused to look over my shoulder as I threw myself down the narrow, now far too dark, stairwell taking the steps at a minimum of three in each stride. Cast no glance to either side as I fumbled for my keys with fingers that no longer seemed to have the purchase that they would normally possess. Took no time to survey the darkness of the store as I turned the key in the lock in a state of panic. Focused on nothing other than the street in front of me as I hurled myself through the night air not stopping until I was safely within the confines of the rail station and once more in the midst of the living, breathing, vital hordes of shoppers embarking on a homeward journey.

There are many events that carry rational explanation within themselves and then there are those that defy any explanation other than that there is something in the universe that is beyond our knowledge.

This would not be my last exposure to such an event but as my first it was preparation for an understanding that there was much that we would never understand.