WARNING: this post contains offensive language

A key turned in the lock of an imposing, grey steel prison door. A bolt was pulled across with a clang, then a prison guard swung it forcefully open. 

“New inmate for you, Higgy. As agreed. Look after him and I’ll see you right. Sweet dreams.”

A thin, morose-looking young lad shuffled apologetically into the tiny cell, clutching a bag that contained his meagre possessions. He went and sat on the edge of the cot, tears streaming down his face.

The door slammed shut.

Higgy barely looked up from his crossword. 

“Snivelling little runt. Four letters, first letter C. Any ideas?”

The lad didn’t reply. 

Higgy looked across at him from his bed. “For fuck’s sake, lad. You’re not going to last five minutes in here unless you toughen up. Get a grip of yourself. What’s your name?”

The boy flinched. “Carl.”

“Well, Carl, what are you in for?”

“I stole some money. From a bank.”

“Piss off! You robbed a bank? You? You can barely punch your way out of a paper bag. How the fuck did you rob a bank?”

“It’s easy. Their online security is shit.”

“Not that shit. You got caught, didn’t ya?”

The lad nodded. 

“Still, ya got my respect. How much did ya get?”

“Six months.”

“Not your sentence, you prick. How much money did you nick?”

“Eighty grand. Give or take.”

“Fuck me. Seriously? Total respect, son. That’s impressive. Well, look. Stay out of my way. I don’t want to hear you snivelling and crying, or I’ll give ya summat to cry about. You got that?” 

The lad nodded again.

“And one more thing. You don’t ask anything about my business. You keep out of my stuff and stay in your lane.”

The boy didn’t move. He couldn’t have been much more than eighteen years old. He was barely shaving.

“Who’s Claire?” he asked. 

Higgy glared at him. “What did you just say to me?”

“Claire bear? Was she your wife? A sister maybe?”

Higgy erupted from his bed and launched himself like an Exocet missile at the young lad. He grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and beat him over the back of his head. “Don’t you ever say her name again. Do you hear me?”

The boy whimpered. 

“Where did you get that name from? How do you know Claire?”

“She’s crying. Telling you to stop. This is how she died. Your temper. She’s saying you never change.”

Higgy slumped to his knees in shock. 

“You killed her. She was young. You were jealous of her.”

Higgy slid back to his bed dejectedly. He sat on the edge, the anger draining from him. “Well done, lad. You read up on me. Bravo. Clever little fucker, aren’t you?”

There was a long, pregnant pause. 

“I haven’t read up on you. They didn’t tell me who I was sharing with.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know it would be you, Higgy. I swear.”

“Then how the fuck…”

“She’s here. Claire. She’s attached to you. Her spirit. She’s on your shoulder.”

“Don’t fuck around with me, lad, or I swear to God…”

The lad pleaded with his inmate and held up his hands. “I’m not messing with ya, Higgy, honest. I can see things, that’s all. Spirits and stuff. It’s a gift.”

“Fuck off.”

“Straight up. Honest.”

“And she’s here? In this cell?”

“She’s crying. She’s telling me about that night. The night you…’

Higgy interrupted him. “Yeah, alright, I get it. I’m just not sure I believe you.”

“She can’t move on until you do something for her.”

“What’s that?”

“She wants you to promise to stay out of Jess’s life. She’s still scared of you. Afraid you’ll hurt her.”

Higgy’s face looked ashen. “I’d never…”

“She said she doesn’t believe you. Look at what you did to her.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“Claire said, not anymore. You lost your right to that when you killed her.”

Higgy didn’t reply. He sat in silence, processing what had just happened. Eventually, he spoke. 

“Like I said, she’s my daughter, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Ghost or not.”

Carl stared into the air around him. “She said she’ll make you regret this. She’s furious. She’s not happy at all.”

Higgy laughed bitterly. “Fucking women. There’s no pleasing them, is there? Well, it looks like you’re stuck haunting me, Claire darling, doesn’t it? I’m shitting myself with fear already.”

Days passed in the cell, with nothing much spoken about the supernatural goings-on. Carl kept his head down. He only went out of the cell when he absolutely had to. In his mind, he had imagined all manner of evils would happen to him in prison, but the reality was that the whole place was just full of messed-up, pitiful men who weren’t able to think properly. They were dogged by their own fears, were victims of circumstance, and clouded by substance abuse. He had imagined people would be violent to him at every opportunity, that he would be bullied, or worse, stabbed, but nothing was further from the truth. People respectfully nodded at him, or tried to give him strange handshakes that he always fumbled. They said ‘respec’ to him a lot and couldn’t have been nicer. “If you need anything, you just shout out to Manny and I’ll fix you up, ok?”

It was only after a few days of this that it suddenly dawned on him why. Higgy must have told them about him, and word had gotten out. “Sure, I did,” he said brightly when Carl confronted him in their cell later that day. “Gotta protect my new investment now, haven’t I?”

“Investment? You’ve invested in me? What do you mean? Am I gonna be sold on, like a slave or something?”

“Chill out, man. Jesus, you’re a nervy fucker, aren’t ya? I’ve just told everyone to back off. Let you settle in. I don’t want no pumped-up junkie giving you heat.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate…”

“And then, when you’ve found your feet, you can start doing consultations.”

“Consultations?”

“Think of them like little cosy fireside chats where you tell them about the fucked-up, delusional female who is haranguing them from beyond the grave. They’ll like that in here. They love to wallow in self-pity and play the victim.”

“It’s not like that, Higgy. My gift isn’t reliable. I just wait to see if I connect and if anything comes through. Often it doesn’t. It makes me look stupid sometimes. Some people aren’t connected to the other side.”

“Calm down, lad, you’re gonna give yourself a heart attack. Just make shit up if you don’t see anything. These stupid fuckers won’t know the difference. Tell ‘em not, and they’ll swallow it.”

“What if I get it wrong and tell someone a bad message? I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.”

“People just want to hear the same old shit again and again. Love and regret, that’s all it is. I mean, surely they know their mother loved them, right? They could write their own messages, they don’t need a psychic.”

“I don’t want to do this in front of people. I suffer enough anxiety as it is. I wouldn’t know how to perform.”

“Anxiety. For Christ’s sake, it’s just another made-up word for weakness. Grow a pair of balls, will ya? You’re not going on stage – not yet anyway. You’re just gonna do a few one-to-one chats. ‘Do you know anyone called John, Peter, David’ all that sort of shit. Do what you did with me. You had me fooled, and that takes some doing.”

Carl did not reply. He sat on his bed and allowed negative thoughts to fester and ruminate through his brain. How the hell was he going to pull this off? He wasn’t a performer or a mystic. They would see right through him, and he’d be shiv’d in the toilets or something. Eventually, he fell asleep, only to have the negative thoughts wrap themselves back around his mind when he woke. Later that day, when they had their exercise, Higgy brought someone into their cell. He was a thin, wiry-looking man, with a goaty beard and bad teeth. 

“This is Scotty. Do your shit on him,” was all Higgy said. Then he slunk into a corner to watch the proceedings.

“What do we do? Do we hold hands?” Scotty ventured. Higgy laughed out loud, but quickly bit his lip. He didn’t want to distract his new prize pet. Carl glanced over nervously at Higgy but continued. 

“No, just sit on the bed, and I’ll see if you give off any auras I can pick up.”

Scotty sat down but looked nervous and edgy. “I wanted to contact my brother. He died a few years back. We fell out.” 

“Like I said, not everyone.”

“I paid a lot for this,” Scotty snarled viciously. “It better not be a con. If it is, you’ll fucking get one in the gut, you little shit.” 

Higgy leapt from the bed with all the power and fury of a caged beast. He grabbed Scotty and lifted him from the bed effortlessly with one hand. He flung him against the wall and was just about to launch a fist into his face when Carl shouted out.

“Stop! Stop it. I can see him. Your brother. He’s here. It was Graeme, wasn’t it? He was called Graeme.”

Higgy looked at Scotty, whose face was white with shock and fear, then released him. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it. He was called Graeme.”

Higgy slid quietly back to his corner, silently. He had demonstrated who was in charge and proven his point. No one was going to harm his asset, not least of all this skanky drug dealer. Scotty had been carefully chosen to be an easy introduction. The kind of gullible fool who would pay top dollar and believe any old crap.

“He’s posh. Rich. Or was. He died of cancer, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, yeah, cancer, that’s right. He was a top banker in Glasgow. A proper money man. A real gentleman he was. Fucking hated me, of course.”

“He never hated you. He said stop saying that. He loved you. He was your big brother. He tried to help you, but he just felt like a failure.”

“Ah, tell him not to blame himself. I couldn’t be helped. I was just a waster. The drugs got me. I found my level. I’m a loser.”

“He’s getting angry at you. He says don’t say that about yourself. You were a good kid. He says do you remember that time you and him ran away from home with jam sandwiches and a bottle of pop?”

The words pierced Scotty’s soul like a lance. He erupted into tears. “Yes, yes, of course. I think about that a lot. We stayed out all night. The police were out and everyone was looking for us.”

“He says your Mam wasn’t. She didn’t look for you because she was off her head. That’s why you fell by the wayside. With parents like that, you didn’t stand a chance.”

“Look at you. You did alright, Graeme.”

“No, you’re wrong, he’s saying. He went to live with your Gran. You didn’t get that chance.”

Scotty was sobbing uncontrollably now. “I didn’t know why you left me. I needed you, but you weren’t there.”

“He knows. He’s sorry. He tried everything to help you. He doesn’t blame you for what you’ve become. The drugs, the thieving, the crime, he knows why you do it. It’s not your fault.”

“Tell him I love him,” Scotty wailed. “I’ll see him soon.”

After Scotty left the cell, Higgy was unusually quiet. He lay on his bed and didn’t say a word. This kid was scary. There was no way he could have had any prior knowledge about Scotty, and yet he knew things that were off the chart. It was beyond anything he’d seen in his life. He thought about the financial possibilities of the situation. Carl was the real deal, and yet he was green as grass. He was perfect for exploiting. With the right handling, this could be a big money earner. If they were on the outside, he could book concert halls, do tours, maybe even TV. Hell, the sky was the limit here. There was just one problem. Higgy was ten years into a twenty-stretch, and Carl would be out in six months. How the hell was he going to sort that out? He didn’t have the answer. Yet.

Word got out from Scotty that Carl was amazing, and everyone started asking him for a session, but he laid off pushing him too hard. He was a real jelly belly, a sensitive type, and he wasn’t exactly known for his tact and diplomacy. He’d have to try. This was too good an opportunity to mess up. So he tried talking to Carl, to get to know him, and find out his past, but as ever, the kid was hard to talk to. All he did was blubber on about his depression, his anxiety, or his mental health problems. It was depressing Higgy just listening to it. ‘How do people live like this?’ he thought. Things were easy in his head. If you could do something about a problem, then do it. If you couldn’t, then what was the point worrying about it? Life was easier in black and white. 

“Look, son,” Higgy said one afternoon. “You’re going to do a session for me, right? This is for a top guy in here. You don’t mess with him. He is serious shit, so I want you on your best behaviour, right?”

“Will they hurt me if I say the wrong thing?”

‘I’ll fucking hurt you if you don’t,’ Higgy thought to himself. “Let me worry about that, Carl. You just focus on doing what you do. All I’ll say is, think carefully about what you say before you say it. You do not upset Mr. Carlotti.”

A couple of days later, they went to a very plush cell in the East Wing to see Mr. Carlotti. Carl had never seen anything like it. It even had wallpaper, carpet, and a plasma TV screen on the wall. Furniture and photographs decorated the rest of the space, which had a comfortable, homely feel. Higgy was unusually nervous and quiet, not his usual cocky, arrogant self. A stocky, well-built man with olive skin sat in a huge red leather armchair. He gestured for Carl to approach him and sit on the stool at his feet. 

“This gift of yours. Tell me about it,” he said, getting straight to the point.

“Well, it…”

A huge burly guy grabbed Carl’s shoulder with a vice-like grip. “You will address Mr Carlotti as Mr Carlotti.”

Carl winced. “Sorry, Mr Carlotti. Yes, well, sometimes the spirits appear as shadows, occasionally as a translucent figure bathed in light, but never as a solid person like they were when they were alive. And they don’t hold conversations with me or speak directly as such. I hear a voice in my head, or a thought of a voice appears in my head. Sometimes they are far away, and I have to really concentrate to hear them because they exist in another dimension to us.”

“Interesting, go on.”

“They aren’t connected to earthly troubles. They are free from worries and fears. Most are blissful. Our loved ones just want to tell us to stop worrying about them. It’s just a few that get stuck, the ones who’ve died badly or are restless. They can be difficult.”“

“How so?”

“They play tricks on us, move things, give off bad energies.”

“Much like my ex-wife then,” laughed Mr. Carlotti. “Right. Let’s get started. What do you see?”

Carl looked around the room, desperately trying to find and tap into any spiritual energies, but nothing came. Higgy glared menacingly at him. He could see the fear in his face. Mr. Carlotti began to get impatient. He started tapping his leg, and his brow began to knit together to form an irate frown. Try as he might, Carl saw nothing. Not a thing. Eventually, Mr. Carlotti had enough. He looked at Higgy.

“Get this muppet out of here Stephen,” he said using Higgy’s Christian name. 

“I’m so sorry about this Mr. Carlotti. He’s usually brilliant. I can’t understand what’s wrong with him today.”

The burly bouncer stepped forward, hoisted Carl from his seat and thrust his towards the door. 

Higgy glared at Carl menacingly. He was not going to take this lightly. Suddenly a flash of inspiration came to him.

“Who is Tony?” he said, turning to face Mr. Carlotti. “He said he was your driver.” 

Everyone in the room froze.

“Go on,” said Mr. Carlotti, gesturing for Carl to sit back down. 

“He says he was innocent. That he didn’t grass you up. You got it wrong. He says there’s only one other person it could have been. You know who it is and it wasn’t him.”

Higgy’s face turned white as all the colour drained from it. He quickly backed towards the door. “He’s talking shit Mr. Carlotti. He’s got it wrong. I would never grass you up. Never. I’ve been loyal to you all my life.”

Mr. Carlotti stood up, his face becoming clandestine with rage. He glanced at his bouncer who leapt on Higgy and effortlessly subdued him. “You. You were the one who betrayed me. I always wondered how Tony could have known about my operation. He wasn’t privy to it, but you, you were. You let me dispose of him and didn’t say a word. I’m only in here because of you. You’re scum.”

“Please no, Mr. Carlotti, I didn’t do it, I swear I didn’t grass you up.” 

“Get him out of here. Make sure the snake doesn’t get the opportunity to grass anyone else up. I don’t want to see his face again.”

Another enormously built guy appeared out of nowhere and joined his associate in removing Higgy from the cell. His screams and pleas could be heard all the way along the corridor, until at last they dissipated. Mr. Carlotti looked at Carl. 

“Go,” was all he said. 

————-

A few months later and Carl was released from his stretch in the maximum security prison. He didn’t have any family or friends to meet him. In fact, the guards were rather concerned. He had taken to talking to himself. Not just odd words, but whole conversations. Still, there was nothing they could do. They weren’t mental health professionals. All they could do was to tell him to look after himself and make sure he got some help and support as they watched him walk out of the gates towards the bus stop. 

“Just shut up will you. Shut up,” he kept saying. “I’m not going to go onstage. I don’t want to be famous. It’s not your life, it’s mine. Just leave me alone. Claire was right about you. You’re a bully. Well, you can’t boss me around like that. Go away.” 

The bus came and he got on it. He sat down and looked out of the window.

“Oh it’s you,” he said into thin air. He gestured wildly with his arms, annoying the old man who was seated next to him.

“He’s bothering me again. He won’t leave me alone. He’s so annoyed about what you did to him.

….You used me. You tricked me into deceiving Mr. Carlotti like that. Higgy didn’t grass him up did he? That was naughty what you did.

….What was that you said? Yes, I know you warned him. I know he’s a nasty piece of works, but he didn’t deserve that.

….Hmmmn, yeah ok, I suppose you’re right. He did murder you after all.”

People on the bus were staring at him.

“Well, I guess so. That makes sense. Jess can settle now. She’ll be safe, and if it helps you move on then I suppose it’s ok. No, I’ll be alright. I can cope with Higgy. He can’t hurt me. You rest easy now. Take care. Bye Claire.”