The Rubber Bands Mystery

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The Rubber Bands Mystery - An Archer Stanley Mystery. 

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There are some jobs that you just don’t want to do and this was one of them. I’d been putting off the trip up to the big house for days, until Molly insisted I went. She was sick and tired of Mrs Collymore’s constant calls. Mrs Collymore was an old widow, who kept herself to herself. She’d lived alone up at the big house since her husband died some 40 years before. I’d done business with her from time to time, she wasn’t as crazy as the schoolyard tales made her out to be,  but she was a bit of a strange fruit. The first time I’d worked for her she’d been convinced that her family were trying to kill her. They weren’t, they were planning a surprise party for her. The second time she wanted me to save her cat from a tree, like I was some kind of private fireman. So god knows what she wanted this time.

‘Mr Stanley, thank you for finding time to come,’ she said. Did I detect sarcasm in her voice? I smiled and nodded.

‘How are your cats, Mrs Collymore?’  There was certainly sarcasm in my voice but she didn’t spot it.

‘Oh they are just fine,’ she said. ‘Tipsy here had an operation a few weeks ago, but she’s better now, aren’t you Tipsy? And you know my son Dave has a new wife? Oh he is so happy.’

I didn’t know Dave and I didn’t care about his wife. ‘What can I do for you Mrs Collymore?’

‘I think I have a ghost,’ Mrs Collymore said. I tried not to roll my eyes; she really knew how to waste a man’s time.  

‘Every morning I wake up and I find these scattered around the house,’ she said, and held up some coloured rubber bands. ‘Someone or something is scattering them around the house.’

‘Could it be the cats?’ I asked.

‘No, they are kept in one room at night and the bands are always in exactly the same place,’ she said.

‘This isn’t really my thing, Mrs Collymore.’

‘Make it your thing, Mr Stanley,’ she said and handed me a large wad of cash, enough to certainly tempt me into becoming a Ghostbuster.

I didn’t believe in ghosts, I was brought up in the Scooby Doo school of thought; you just needed some pesky kids to uncover the truth. It looked like I was taking the role of the pesky kids.

I got back to the house at 10pm, the time Mrs Collymore said she went to bed. The plan was that I would sit in the living room and watch for the ‘ghost’.

I settled down on the sofa and took a mouthful of the coffee Mrs Collymore had made for me. Man it was sweet, she must have put half of Jamaica in it. I decided I didn’t need coffee to keep me awake. I bade Mrs Collymore a good night, turned the lights off and waited.

The first hour passed without incident, I wished I was home in bed with Molly but instead I was in a stuffy sitting room waiting for a non-existent ghost to appear. The second hour I got fidgety, tired, bored, frustrated. By the third hour, I was fast asleep, snoring contentedly on the sofa – maybe I did need that coffee. 
But then I was wide-awake, sitting up straight wondering where the hell I was. My heart was beating, there was sweat on my brow, the hairs on my arms were standing up and I had goose pimples on my legs. Something had disturbed my slumber, I sat in silence listening for sounds. I‘d remembered where I was now and my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, but my ears were still my best tool. The old house was quiet, I’d probably just heard a creak or a crack of the floorboards or the cats playing, or maybe my brain had told me I shouldn’t be sleeping and woken me up with a start. My heart rate was getting back to normal.

But there it was again. A noise, a small, dainty noise like someone tiptoeing around the house. It was getting closer, small steps, pause, more steps, I tensed. I’d had guns held in my face, been hit by baseball bats, come face to face with gangsters but I’d always felt in control. The only control I had here was an element of surprise but could you surprise a ghost?

I tried to pull myself together, I knew there was no such thing as ghosts but it is hard to convince yourself of that when you are sitting in a large, old house in the dark in the middle of the night, listening to a strange noise coming towards you.

The living room door creaked; surely ghosts don’t need to use doors. My eyes were glued to it waiting to see who or what would come through it. The door swung open, there was nothing, no one came in; the room went cold, freezing cold. I shivered, the draught cooling the sweat on my brow. I knew I had to get up to see what was there but for now, I was glued to my spot.

Then a ghostly figure came through the door, grey, drawn, dressed in white. I jumped and moved to the furthest corner of the sofa as the 'ghost' of Mrs Collymore came through the room, carefully places rubber bands in different places. She was oblivious to me, her face contorted in concentration. The placement of rubber bands seemed to be precise and pre-planned. Once she had completed her task she turned and went back through the door, closing it carefully behind her as if not to wake herself up.

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