The Ghost of a Chance – Serial Week/Dickens – Bentley 60

[For a quick guide go here: Quick guide.]

[Old back story is here: Story so far at 30 Nov 2020 and read more recent Bentley episodes especially this one.]

[Other back story through in-links.]

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Bentley was locking his flat carefully. He had too many precious things inside his home now to risk anyone coming in. A cardboard box of money, a wooden jewellery box, a birth certificate. He locked the front door and passed through the kitchen to lock his balcony door. Perhaps over zealous. As he did so he failed to notice that every Yale lock bore the face of Jaggers. Apart from the toaster which seemed to be reflecting the face of his absent cat.

He pulled the covers of his bed up to his chin and checked the jewellery box was still next to his pillow, and the box of cash was at the foot of his bed. All was quiet. 

Bentley was awoken by a slowly dropping sound. At first it was just on the edge of his consciousness but it slowly drip-dripped in, until he realised it was getting louder, closer. The sound reminded him of someone dropping golf balls onto a hard surface.

Opening his eyes the room swam into focus. It was his usual room but now, positioned at the foot of his bed was Jaggers. But what version of Jaggers was this? Pale, colourless about his features, entwined around Jaggers’ face, neck and body was a seemingly endless trail of Christmas lights, flashing intermittently, giving his otherwise white skin splashes of red, amber, green, yellow, purple.

“Beware, Bentley,” moaned Jaggers. “Beware!”

Bentley pulled his covers further to his nose. “What are you?” he challenged the apparition. “And why are you dropping all those golf balls in my bedroom?”

“The balls and the lights are the trivial things I concerned myself with in life,” said the ghost, regretfully. “I am now cursed to walk through eternity, tripping over golf balls and getting a stinking headache from all these lights.”

“Well,” said Bentley, “I’m sorry about that and everything, but to be honest, this is a dream and I’m not eating another ready-meal from Budgens again.”

“Change your ways, Bentley,” wailed the ghost, regardless. “Change before it is too late.”

“Late, you say? And yet here you are at three in the morning…”

“Yours is a ponderous Christmas light display, Bentley…”

Bentley closed his eyes. And then screwed them up extra tight to see if that made Jaggers disappear when he opened them again. It didn’t.

“The birth certificate,” moaned Jaggers.

“Yes, I know,” said Bentley, “The birth certificate. It was in the jewellery box and the name is John Smith. John Smith could be literally anyone. Why should I care?”

“He was wronged fifteen years ago,” persisted Jaggers. “For fifteen years I walked this earth knowing that he had been wronged and yet I did nothing. And now you, Bentley, you can do something about it.”

“I can?” Bentley was uncertain as to whether he really wanted to anyway.

“Right the wrongs of the past,” advised Jaggers, his ghostly gold tooth glinting partly through the Xmas lights, partly through the neon light straying through the crack in the bedroom curtain. “Find the boy…. Find the boy…”

“You honestly think I can find the right person? Called John Smith? Although of course they might have changed their name - or indeed had their name changed for them.”

“You can right the wrongs of the past,” insisted Jaggers.

Bentley sighed. “Well, I’ll see what I can do and everything, but no promises. I’m an old man if you hadn’t noticed. New hip and everything. I’ll see if Lawrence and Natalie have got any ideas.”

“Beware!” Moaned Jaggers with new vigour, “Beware! Those who seem to mean you well may mean you harm!”

“Bah!” said Bentley. “Tell me something I don’t know. You think I’ve survived this long by relying on others?”

“Beware Berkhamsted!” said Jaggers, alighting on a new subject.

“Berkhamsted?” said Bentley incredulously, “Berkhamsted, are you kidding me? Are you just making this up? You try and give me some deep and meaningful message about the birth certificate and then… Berkhamsted?"

But Jaggers seemed to be fading, his light guttering and becoming translucent. His voice echoing as he fizzled out: “Don’t blame me if it all goes tits up…”

There was a sharp buzz and Bentley’s alarm clock woke him. Despite the alarm and the time of year, it was still dark outside, disorientating Bentley.

From his lying position he found his mobile phone and flicked on the light, whirling it around the room. 

“Who’s coming next?” He said to the room. “Thimble? Fred Thimble? Are you out there? Or in here? Come out, come out wherever you are!”

But there was silence, the room illuminated by his phone stared back at him, but remained empty. 

“Is there anyone out there?” asked Bentley, still not sure if he was awake.

“Yes,” came a voice and the bedroom door opened. “Are you OK?”

“I fell out of bed, Lawrence,” said Bentley. “Nothing to get worried about. Go back to sleep.”