Surprisingly, still naked, Selmira then sank to her knees on the Sajada, tears flowing freely. Her head bowed, she said in a deep, mournful voice, “Allah, forgive me. I’ve killed the one person I loved and the one who had saved my life, all those years ago.” She stayed like this, praying quietly, for several minutes before rolling up and returning the Sajada to its safe place, then composing herself enough to complete her grizzly task.
She stood up, seemed to come to a decision and pulled her clothes on before searching through drawers and cupboards. Eventually, she found a double sheet and, after folding the sheet in half, she sliced along the fold, creating two smaller pieces. Returning to the bedrooms, Selmira, again, used the parcel tape to secure the sheets over the openings.
She stepped back, as if to admire her handiwork and followed this by getting her mobile phone and recalling a number from the contact list.
“Hello, this is Selmira Ademovic from Eastcroft Road in Sale. You did some work for me a couple of years ago. I need some joinery work and decorating. Could I arrange an appointment for you to give me a quotation? As soon as possible, please.”
Within a couple of days, she had a quotation and the work started. Selmira had instructed the workmen to fix a twenty millimetre thick plywood panel over the full height and width of each chimney breast, before decorating both rooms with wallpaper. She had told the workmen how cool the rooms were because of the open flues.
I watched this from my vantage point in the ethereal world, with increasing anger and annoyance, as my wife did everything possible to hide my body and the deathly crime she had committed.
This anger increased to bursting point when Selmira invited her lover, David Allinson, to move in with her. Understandably, he was worried about a confrontation with her husband and asked about me. “Don’t worry about him”, she laughed. “He’s gone back to Bosnia to take care of an elderly relative.”
“You lying bitch!” I shouted, even though my words of anger could not be heard in the real world. “You know that neither of us has any living relatives!”
Accepting Selmira’s explanation, Allinson brought many of his possessions to the house and made himself comfortable with Selmira.
Trapped in the world between the living and the resting dead, I felt the pain of betrayal as Selmira and Allinson had frequent, energetic sex in our bed, yet I felt unable to do anything to the couple. I was proved wrong when I discovered that I could make my presence felt in the real world.
The couple soon began to realise that, even in death, I was still able to disturb them. Allinson’s suitcase flying across the room and hitting the couple as they reached their sexual climax, followed by dropping the room temperature to near zero and switching the radio or television on or off to frustrate the couple as much as possible.
David Allinson could only put up with the demonic disturbances for a few days.
“I don’t know why this fucking house is haunted, but I have had enough. If you want to come to my flat, you are welcome, but I can’t stay here any longer.”
Selmira felt unable to give the house up, knowing that the hauntings were as a result of her own actions in killing me, yet was not willing to give up the house she had wanted for so many years. “Go, if you must, but, as far as I am concerned, I don’t ever want to see you again!”
“That’s fine by me. If that’s what you want, stay in this hell-hole of a house until it drives you stark, raving mad! And don’t you dare to crawl back to me when you think that you need me!”
Hearing his rebuke, she was furious with him and told him to remove himself and his belongings from her house, immediately, though her choice of words were stronger than I had ever heard emerge from Selmira’s mouth, over all the years we had been together.
Even after he had gone, I still haunted and taunted Selmira, disturbing her sleep as much as possible. Eventually, she had suffered enough and put the house up for sale. She would not even wait until the house sale had gone through, preferring, instead, to let the selling agent and solicitor do all the work without needing her involvement, even though it would cost her more for the extra administration charges.
Once she had moved out, I felt abandoned, until the day when Tonie Buckingham had bought the house. My restless spirit had to do something to make the new occupants aware of my plight. I did feel bad that I had to let this young man and beautiful partner suffer from my anger at being trapped in this land between the living and the resting dead.
It did prove fortunate that Tonie appeared to be so receptive to my spiritual communications, particularly with the automatic writing.”
I was physically drained and had a splitting headache after being controlled by this man’s spirit for such a lengthy time, yet both Suzanne and I had gained a great deal of information and knowledge about Ivanko and Selmira’s turbulent lives. But, what should we do with it? We could hardly tell the police such an unbelievable, incredible story. At best, they would think we were crazy, possibly making up the events to gain fame and recognition in the eyes of the public.
At worst, they may believe us to be complicit in the actual crime, since we knew the real events of Ivanko’s murder and location of his body parts. We both agreed that what we had learned from the automatic writing must stay with us.
Too exhausted to think any more of the situation, we went to bed, where, thankfully, we slept undisturbed right through the night. Hopefully, Ivanko would leave us in peace now that we had made contact through the automatic writing and revealed the deadly secrets to the Police.
Part Three: Another Perspective
Chapter Fourteen: What can be done?
During that Saturday, Suzanne and I thought about and discussed our next course of action. Perhaps we should try to discover more about David Allinson, Selmira’s man-friend. We knew that he worked at Wythenshawe Hospital in the X-ray department. The problem with this would be how we knew about him. In addition, according to Ivanko, the only thing that David did wrong was in having a sexual relationship with Selmira, yet it was she who had the nerve to actually kill her husband and brutalise his body. What I don’t understand is why she felt it necessary to kill her partner of over twenty years?
“She sounds to be a very unstable and dangerous person, but, how can we find just where she’s living, now?”, Suzanne asked.
An idea sprang into my mind. “The solicitors must have that information, if only to know where to send the money from the house sale.”
“That’s true. There’s not much we can do about it, today, though. We’ll have to wait until Monday before we can contact the solicitor.”
Of course, she was correct and, even though I desperately wanted to do something to provide practical help for Ivanko, I knew that nothing could really be done, for now.
Suzanne and I went out to do some shopping, enough to fill the fridge and freezer for a while. It was fun to discover each other’s likes and dislikes and, surprisingly, our tastes were remarkably similar. Apparently, Suzanne had tried living as a vegetarian for a period of a few weeks when she was eighteen, but realised that she had missed eating real meat more than the desire to survive on vegetable equivalents. Instead she came to the conclusion that she would have to exercise more regularly and enjoy a ‘normal’ diet.
I did offer to help her with exercise and, over that Saturday night and most of Sunday, both of us burned off many calories in the most enjoyable ways possible.
When Suzanne and I arrived at the office on Monday morning, we had decided to tell our colleagues about the police and what had been found in the bedroom chimney breasts. As expected, everybody was shocked by the horrific discovery, yet, at the same time, quite curious and inquisitive. We told them as little as possible, yet, hopefully, enough to satisfy their understandable interest and curiosity in the gruesome discovery.