Jessica Bannister and the Vengeful Spectres

By Janet Farell and ttl

Supernatural gifts can be a boon and a burden in equal measures, as investigative reporter Jessica Bannister is finding out. While she often finds them helpful for solving mysteries of the paranormal kind, they have an unerring tendency to place her slap bang in the path of malevolent spirits hell-bent on vengeance for wrongs they feel were committed to them in life. It’s fair to say the London City Observer’s number one journalist would have a much easier life if she wasn’t constantly having to deal with poltergeists, killer waxworks, witches, and demons all setting their sights on her while she’s busy trying to unearth her latest scoop. Unfortunately for her, it seems to be par for the course, and even though death is stalking her around every corner, she remains determined to help the innocent and bag the story her readers desire, even if it means scrambling over broken glass or walking through fire to get it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: J-Novel Pulp
• Release date: May 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781718323582

Book preview

A Haunting in Nice

By Janet Farell

I parked up on the edge of the old town, leaving the top down on our hire car as Jim Brodie — with his camera slung over his shoulder like always — and I headed for the historic part of Nice. We strolled past the old buildings towards the flower market on the Cours Saleya, which they held every weekday between two and four, and it felt like something was drawing me there — a premonition of some kind. Every fibre of my being was telling me that something was going to happen there...

‘What a beautiful sea of flowers,’ Jim remarked, taking in the countless flower stalls flooded with gorgeous, fragrant blooms.

It wasn’t just the plaza that was swamped with flowers, however: every step in sight and even the ground floors of the houses overlooking the plaza were deluged with flowers. In fact, the houses themselves looked like they were growing out of a vast flowerbed, which seemed to have attracted crowds of people — tourists and locals alike — all inspecting the flowers with smiles on their faces.

‘If I had the money, I’d buy every flower here so I could give them to you, Jessica,’ the wiry photographer added as I went in to take a lungful of the sweet scent of a particularly beautiful bunch of anemones, which suddenly withered in my hand!

It happened so fast: one minute, I was holding a bouquet of gorgeous pink and white flowers in full bloom and the next, they had shrivelled up and withered, as if someone had pressed the fast forward button. At first, I thought it must’ve been some kind of chemical reaction, and I could tell the stocky woman who owned the stall had come to the same conclusion. She was mid-conversation with another customer when she glanced over and noticed the wilted flowers, before eyeing me suspiciously.

‘Mademoiselle! What did you do to my poor flowers? As pranks go, this is a bad one. Are you from that TV show?’ she said to me in French.

Truth be told, I only really understood about half of what she was saying as my French wasn’t very good. The woman went off on one — though the only word I could really make out was ‘television’, which luckily, is the same in French as it is in English — as the unusual sped-up withering effect spread across the other flowers on the stall until the whole stand was full of wilted flowers, at which point the strange phenomenon jumped the gaps to the neighbouring stalls and continued spreading.

Jim Brodie’s conspicuous, professional-looking camera only made us look even more suspicious, as we stood and gawped at the flowers on the stall — it took just under a minute for them all to wilt and die, and we had no explanation for it. It was as if they’d gone without water or hadn’t seen the sun in a week. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a throng of customers and passers-by, fronted by a phalanx of stall owners who started hurling swear words at us in French, their fists being shaken threateningly in our direction. I was slowly starting to get worried for our safety.

The people in the south of France had a reputation for being hot-blooded — the famed ‘Gallic temper’ as it was known — and a het up mob of florists could prove to be a mite problematic for Jim and me. A broad-shouldered flower seller dressed in light summer clothes grabbed Jim by his lapels and shook him. Jim Brodie could do little against this giant of a man, so I stepped in to try to calm the situation down.

‘Let go of my friend, Monsieur!’ I pleaded. ‘We didn’t do anything.’

It was only the fact that I was a woman that saved me from the same treatment as Jim. By this time, even more flowers had wilted, necrosis spreading like a plague through the sea of petals, and it wasn’t long before all the flowers within a fifty-metre radius were dead. I briefly wondered if this was how it looked when defoliants were used to clear away vast swathes of jungle. Even the fruit stands were being affected by this wave of pestilence as ripe, luscious fruit shrivelled up and rotted away in seconds.

The crowd around us was getting angrier and we found ourselves completely penned in as they called us every name under the sun and hurled swear words in our direction that would’ve made a sailor blush. The French equivalent of ‘Bloody pests!’ was one of the milder insults I managed to decipher.

I heard the word ‘television’ again. This time, I also made out the name of a regional station and the title of a TV programme, which is when I understood what was going on. Just like in the UK — and in fact, in many other countries around the world — they had TV shows where ordinary folk would have pranks played on them, so that their reactions could be recorded and replayed for the amusement of viewers. The market stall owners thought that we were off the telly and that we’d intentionally poisoned all their flowers with some sort of chemical just so we could film their reaction to it. From the general mood around the plaza, it would seem they didn’t find that prospect very funny at all.

‘We’re not off the television!’ I yelled. ‘We’re English! I’m an English reporter! Now let us through! We’re not responsible for what’s happening here!’ But it was clear the marketplace crowd didn’t believe me or didn’t understand what I was saying.

They were all yelling, gesticulating, and battling to be heard over the din of everyone talking at once. From what I could make out with my non-existent French, some of the stall owners seemed to be demanding compensation, and it looked as though plenty of passers-by had been drawn into the tumult, some siding with the flower sellers, while others appeared to be on our side.

I was getting royally fed up with the situation and I demanded that someone fetch the police to sort all this nonsense out, but almost as soon as I’d said it, something new happened. All of a sudden, the plaza was swarming with fat, ugly, black toads! It was like they were falling out of the sky as well as surging up from underground. One minute, the marketplace was decidedly toad-free, and the next, there they were, with their grotesque croaking and hopping.

‘Those are the kind of toads you see in marshes,’ Jim said. ‘They don’t even live in these parts. This is worse than a Biblical plague.’

The more sensitive women in the crowd and the children all ran away screaming. The stocky woman who had been the first to start berating me when the flowers on her stall had wilted pulled a toad out of the front pocket of her pinny and threw it away from her in disgust.

The fat, warty toads hopped and croaked merrily to each other, and they seemed to be everywhere: on the awnings, nestled between the flowers on the stalls, and... yes, I could even see a number of them jumping out of the back of a truck transporting flowers that had just had its tailgate dropped and its trailer door opened. At first, the sight of all these toads disgusted me, but I reminded myself that they were living creatures too, and while they may have looked disgusting, they were relatively harmless even if there were a shedload of them.

‘Maybe they’re coming up from the sewers?’ Jim speculated.

I shook my head, and as I did so, I felt a veil descending over my consciousness. Whatever this strange sensation was that whipped through me like a bracing gust of air, it was definitely supernatural in nature. It was clear that something — or rather, someone — was causing this phenomenon through paranormal means.

Even the crowd were starting to look a bit unnerved by this turn of events, and they seemed to be edging away from us. The man who’d rattled Jim’s fillings pointed at the toads and said: ‘Television?’

‘Television, non,’ I replied before giving up on trying to make myself understood in French and resorting to English. ‘We have nothing to do with this!’

The market folk and the passers-by who’d been sucked into the confrontation all looked at one another, and to my relief, no one was haranguing us now. A loud whooshing sound filled the air and I felt a breeze brush past my face, except... it wasn’t a normal gust of wind; it was more like a whirlwind or a mini tornado. Dozens of flowers were picked up and tossed through the air or simply fell from their perches on the stalls, until all the nicely arranged floral displays were well and truly mixed up, and flowers were lying here, there, and everywhere, all higgledy piggledy. The maelstrom wasn’t catastrophic per se, just chaotic, but it was yet another unexplained phenomenon to add to the list.

‘It’s the Devil’s child — the Poltergeist Girl!’ one of the stall owners cried as she crossed herself three times. ‘May the saints protect us! It’s Monique Brassé!’

No one was paying any attention to Jim Brodie and me now, and I could see the far end of the crowd parting to form a kind of funnel which tapered towards me and Jim. At the wider end of this funnel, we saw a seven-year-old girl with black hair and blue eyes and wearing a blue dress holding the hand of a terrified-looking, dark-haired young woman, who I guessed must have been the nanny. Everyone sensed that the vortex of air was emanating from this little black-haired girl — it was, after all, coming from her direction and there was a feeling that she had to be the source of it, which the crowd accepted without question.

‘Monique, please stop!’ the nanny pleaded quietly — so quietly in fact, I could only work out what she was saying by lip-reading. The girl looked up at the young woman, but I didn’t understand what she said to her.

I nudged Jim in the ribs. ‘Time to get snapping. We’re in Nice because of this girl. Eyes on the prize.’

Jim Brodie seemed to wake from his stupor and went to work — he was usually very on the ball when it came to photographing anything of interest, and in normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have needed my prompting at all, but the strange events we’d witnessed seemed to have thrown him for a loop. He raised his camera to his face and started taking pictures of little Monique and the devastation caused by the supernatural maelstrom that had started to die down, the whooshing noise growing weaker with every passing moment until it had subsided completely and everything was still again.

A few withered petals fluttered down onto the utter chaos that littered the market stalls, while the toads were still merrily croaking and hopping around the disaster area. Superstitious fear seemed to have got the better of the onlookers as not a single one of the stall owners or bystanders dared to utter a word against the little girl, and she simply stood there with her hand in her nanny’s, who was struggling to keep it together under the intense stares and looked like she might faint at any moment. All the while, Jim’s camera clicked away, the gears whirring inside it.

‘That’ll do,’ I said, laying a hand on Jim’s arm. He lowered his camera.

I couldn’t tell what the little girl was feeling from looking at her, but it was clear that she had been the cause of all the strange things that had happened at this market. I couldn’t help thinking that she must have tremendous paranormal powers to do all of that. She’s telekinetic, I thought. A person who can move objects using the power of their mind. Though, I realised it was more than that, because conjuring up toads — or at least, summoning them from wherever it was they’d been hiding — and causing flowers to wither and die went way beyond telekinesis. This power was enormous to the point of being unparalleled, and the fact that it was such a young child wielding it seemed almost paradoxical.

The people all around us seemed scared of her, which I put down to superstition for the most part. Everyone was silent and the plaza was so quiet, you could’ve heard a pin drop. I couldn’t work out from the child’s facial expression whether she was pleased with the devastation she’d caused or not. Suddenly, the sound of a siren from an approaching police car filled the air, but it was clear the ‘flics’ — which is what the French call their coppers — wouldn’t be able to do anything about the seven-year-old Monique Brassé.

Monique curtsied, which was something of a grotesque display, before turning around, her face remaining borderline expressionless. She tugged at her nanny’s hand as she set off, eventually managing to drag her away — at which point, the young woman almost broke into a run, so happy was she to flee the scene hand-in-hand with little Monique. The people around us let out an audible sigh of relief.

‘Thanks heavens. She’s finally gone,’ I heard someone say. ‘One of these days, she’s going to end up killing someone again or setting the city on fire. What can we do?’

‘That child is possessed by the Devil,’ murmured a toothless old woman standing behind one of the stalls. ‘She should be sent to Devil’s Island where we used to send all our prisoners and never be allowed back on French soil again.’

‘If she was my daughter, her bottom would be getting a few short, sharp smacks, let me tell you,’ said a fat man in Bermuda shorts.

What an idiot, I thought. As if that would do anything to stop someone using their supernatural powers. I pulled Jim Brodie over to one side as the police car pulled up.

For the next half an hour, everyone in the market was hard at work collecting all the fat black toads, either with shovels or just their bare hands, so that the police, some private citizens, and the disaster relief personnel could load them into vehicles and take them to nearby waterways to release them into the wild again.

Some of the toads were sent to the police lab and the vet’s in order to be examined to determine what kind of creatures they were, though I was convinced they were ordinary toads, even if their origin and how exactly they got here was something of a chin scratcher. The wilted flowers were also taken to the lab to be examined — I made a mental note to ring up the authorities in a few days’ time to clarify whether some kind of chemical agent, such as Agent Orange, had been involved.

‘Boy oh boy,’ Jim said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that. All rather creepy, if you ask me. That little girl is gonna be a real sensation, Jess!’

‘That remains to be seen,’ I said. ‘The question is, how happy is she that she has these powers?’

‘You mean, is she naturally evil and gets a kick out of using her powers to frighten and torment people?’ Jim summarised. ‘Or is she unable to control her abilities and she ends up being the one who suffers when they overwhelm her?’

‘Yes, exactly that,’ I said.

‘She looks like an innocent angel,’ Jim remarked.

‘Looks can be deceiving,’ I pointed out. ‘There are plenty of murderers out there who look like harmless, angelic boys, while there are guys who look like ugly brutes but turn out to be loving fathers — the kind who put their family first. Anyway, we’ll go to the Brassé family home and see if we can have a little chat with Monique.’

But first, we’ll need to speak to her parents, I added in my head. Jim took a few more photos as we walked away from the flower market, which was winding up for the day. I told him to be careful where he was putting his feet because he nearly stepped on a fat toad, which stared up at us, the air sac on its throat expanding as it croaked softly.

‘It’s such an ugly creature,’ Jim remarked.

‘Ugliness is all relative,’ I said. ‘It probably thinks we’re ugly too, and from its point of view, we are.’

With a shaking of his head, Jim followed me to our hire car, which wasn’t exactly what you’d call top of the range, but it fulfilled its purpose of getting us to where we wanted to go. My mind turned back to the day this assignment had landed in our laps and how it had brought us to Nice on the sunny Côte d’Azur. The stuff of fantasies on the face of it, but as we were finding out, this was an assignment that also unfortunately came with a large dollop of danger.

***

Two days earlier, Jim had come up to me in the open-plan office of the London City Observer and told me that our editor-in-chief, Martin T. Stone, was planning to send us to Nice. We’d just got back from an assignment in Scotland, where we’d been hot on the trail of the Loch Maree monster which culminated in trying not to fall victim to a dangerous Satanic cult, but it looked like there was no rest for the wicked and we’d be off on our travels yet again.

My specialist field as a reporter was the occult, which meant all stories concerning hauntings, people with paranormal abilities, and any other kind of supernatural phenomenon you cared to name would usually end up in my lap. At the Observer, I’d earned myself the nickname ‘Spooky Jess’ and I sometimes heard my colleagues gossiping about me behind my back, but my articles went down well with our readers, so that was the main thing.

The newspaper’s owner, Sir Arnold Reed, even invited me to his home on the outskirts of London once just so he could heap praise on me for my work, and he prophesied that a stellar career lay ahead of me if I continued down the path I was on. Though, unfortunately, all this praise didn’t come with a pay rise.

The journalistic success I’d tasted in the field of the occult was largely down to the visions and premonitions I’d been experiencing ever since I was a child, and I found that I had some kind of intuition that zoned me into stories of a supernatural nature — a special talent that always brought me into contact with the occult time and time again. My gift wasn’t always a blessing, however. A pretty, young reporter in her mid-twenties already had enough chaos in her life and her job without the added stress of dealing with ghosts, ghoulies, and other preternatural oddities — and that’s without even mentioning all the danger that seemed to go hand-in-hand with encounters of a supernatural kind.

Fortunately, only my great-aunt, Beverly Gormic — or Aunt Bell as I called her, the woman who raised me after the untimely death of my parents — knew about my gifts, because I felt if others had known about them, everything would’ve been that much more complicated...

Jim and I made our way up to the editor-in-chief’s office, and his new secretary — who’d only been working there for two days — waved us straight in. Martin T. Stone’s desk was piled high with draft articles and other scraps of paper as per usual, and there was only a small corner of the desk that was empty enough for him to work on.

I’d always admired Stone’s photographic memory, and it was on show again here as he reached into the stacks of paper with one decisive swoop of his hand and found exactly what he was looking for. I compared this display to Aunt Bell, who’d often potter around the house for up to two hours in search of her reading glasses, only to find that they’d been on her forehead the whole time.

Stone motioned me towards the chair in front of his desk and I sat down on it. The editor-in-chief was in his mid-forties, with dark hair that was going grey at the temples, and while his dress sense was what you’d describe as moderately conservative, his shirt sleeves were almost always rolled up and his tie was often at an angle.

The editor-in-chief was tall and regal-looking; an attractive man, most definitely, but I saw him as more of a father figure. His expectations were always high, but he always stood by his reporters whenever we were accused of printing falsehoods or sending our ‘attack dogs’ after someone. In my time at the paper, I’d learnt a lot from Stone, who knew his craft inside and out — he had printing ink in his veins, as they used to say in the newspaper game.

‘Jessica, from that smirk on your face, I can see Mr Brodie’s already filled you in.’ Stone didn’t even bother with any niceties, just got right to the point. ‘Can you leave immediately?’

I told him I could in principle, but it would depend how long we were going for.

‘A week, though if you really need it, you can stretch it a few extra days,’ Stone said. He tossed a dossier on the desk, which included a profile, a handful of photos, and one high-quality, laser-printed photo. ‘Take a gander at that. My secretary will book you a flight. I’ll speak to the penny pincher myself and make sure it’s all authorised. You can be in Nice by this evening.’

The ‘penny pincher’ he was referring to was the newspaper’s head accountant, who was in charge of authorising all reporters’ expenditures, and it was often said by particularly irate journalists that he’d squeeze every pound coin so hard before handing it over, the lions on the reverse side would mewl in agony.

Stone had been a little optimistic with his schedule, but we were eventually booked in for the early plane from Heathrow to Nice the next day. As we waited for our flight in the terminal, Jim Brodie downed glass after glass of tomato juice to perk himself up a bit, complaining that a departure time of 6:15am was inhumane, especially as we had to be at the airport an hour and a half before that to make it through security and leave plenty of time for boarding.

‘I nearly scared my landlady half to death when I got up at quarter to four,’ he said. ‘She thought I was a burglar. You know, it took me a good five minutes just to open my eyes at that ungodly hour.’

The flight took less than an hour and a half, during which time I flicked through the material Stone had given me again. The laser-printed photograph was of a sweet seven-year-old girl with shoulder-length black hair in a blue dress, who was clutching a doll in her hand.

The girl had been photographed in a garden, it looked like, surrounded by green plants native to the Mediterranean region. There was a terrace with stairs leading up to it off to the right of the girl. It seemed to be filled with potted plants as well as a plinth with the bust of a particularly strong man — if his broad shoulders were anything to go by — whose sculpted hair was in the style that would have been in fashion in ancient times.

The girl’s gaze was fixed, as if she was concentrating or withdrawn or perhaps even hypnotised, and in front of the girl, three rocks were hanging in midair. There was something about this photo that strangely fascinated me, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. In fact, it wasn’t until a stewardess spoke to me as she placed a complimentary snack on the tray table in front of me that I was able to look away from the photograph.

I ate the snack and glanced at the other photos. One showed the girl in a white Cadillac with the top down, while another showed her on a yacht with her parents and another dark-haired woman who looked to be in her late twenties. Nothing about these particular photos suggested she was capable of the kind of paranormal activity present in the laser-printed photo.

The profile page in the dossier listed the girl’s name as Monique Brassé and said that she was the daughter of forty-eight-year-old international art dealer, Armand Brassé, and his second wife, Denise. There were photos of the Brassés in here too, sent over to the Observer by some press agency or other. Armand Brassé had a high forehead with slightly thinning hair cascading down over it, and he was sporting a goatee that was peppered with grey. He looked extremely well-groomed and if you’d told me he was an aristocrat, I wouldn’t have doubted it. His wife was what you’d call a blonde bombshell, with full lips and the figure of a movie star.

The couple’s personal details were all included — such as birth dates and so on — and according to the file, Madame Brassé was fifteen years younger than her husband. The moderately pretty, black-haired younger woman was little Monique’s nanny, who went by the name of Solange Parrier. I scanned the rest of the info and found out that Monique lived with her parents, her nanny, and a number of other servants in a beautiful villa in Nice — one of those vastly expensive private residences on the world-famous Promenade des Anglais that ordinary folk could only dream of affording.

The seven-year-old first attracted attention due to a number of strange, completely inexplicable events at the primary school she attended, and it seemed like everywhere Monique Brassé went, there were incidents of a supernatural kind. Just like haunted houses had a tendency to draw the attention of the press, so it was with little Monique. Local reporters had pounced on her and the Société Parapsychologique in Paris had expressed an interest in the ‘Poltergeist Girl’, which is what the more sensationalist papers were calling Monique.

The mayor and the authorities of the city of Nice weren’t particularly happy about their newest local attraction, and her parents were even less so. They rightly feared that all this attention would harm their daughter’s development and that she could suffer real psychological damage from it, so before the hype surrounding the ‘Poltergeist Girl’ could get out of hand, Monique’s father stepped in and took her out of school, shutting her off from the world and having her privately tutored instead. He hired bodyguards and enlisted the help of friends, family, and neighbours to make sure no reporters could get close to little Monique. I read in the dossier that Armand Brassé had even gone to court to try to prevent stories about his daughter appearing in the press, though he didn’t have much luck there.

So all in all, the situation in Nice was tense, with interim injunctions filed left, right, and centre, and lawyers involved every step of the way. The fundamental question that was being grappled with was this: is a child’s right to privacy more important than the public’s interest in her? The second-highest court in the land had already made a judgement on this, and soon enough, it would be up to the highest court in the land to make a ruling on it. Brassé’s lawyers claimed that the articles being written about her were not in the public interest, but the media outlets defending their right to report on her strongly disputed this point of view.

I wasn’t really up on French law, I had to admit, but I knew that, after the high-profile death of Princess Diana in Paris — which was blamed on the paparazzi chasing her and by extension, the press in general that encouraged that behaviour — journalists had to be very careful in this country. There were a number of editors who thought twice about publishing a story on the Poltergeist Girl because they knew all too well that if there was even the merest of factual errors in their reporting, they’d be taken to court and a complaint would be made against them to the press regulators.

I felt sorry for the kid, and I knew researching her wouldn’t be easy as there was open hostility between the Brassés and the press. I decided I’d call Martin T. Stone as soon as I landed in Nice to speak to him about it, and I cursed myself for waiting until I was on the plane to read through the dossier in detail, because if I’d had chance to flick through it earlier I would’ve voiced my concerns about this assignment before jetting off, maybe even tried to talk him out of even sending me to the south of France...

As we flew over Burgundy and got closer to the Maritime Alps, I took another look at the laser-printed photograph and noted how extraordinarily lifelike the picture of Monique Brassé looked on the A4 sheet of paper — almost like she was right there in front of me. I couldn’t quite work out what the look in her eyes was trying to convey: was it a hostile look, intimidating and full of menace, or a balefully surprised and concerned one? What was wrong with this child? Was there an evil spirit residing inside of her, or was she more like me and she really did have supernatural abilities but was simply unable to control them? Or was there something or someone else in the background who was playing an as-yet unknown role in all of this?

Every single one of these possibilities was plausible, and in fact, I’d encountered examples of all of the above. That’s why I didn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that the press had: that it was definitely Monique Brassé who was responsible for all of the supernatural events that seemed to follow her around. It could just as easily have been someone else in her immediate vicinity who was using her as a cover while they got up to mischief — the nanny perhaps, or another kid in her neighbourhood.

I was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery because it was about more than just the headline that would be splashed across the front page of my newspaper — I wanted to be there for this seven-year-old child. If it turned out she wasn’t evil, being made a pariah and being given the nickname ‘Poltergeist Girl’ must have been a terrible experience for poor little Monique. All those people pointing their fingers at her and fully-grown men and women gossiping about her behind her back... Even children refused to play with her. The suffering that little girl must’ve endured in that situation while also potentially fearing her own incomprehensible powers...

When I aired my thoughts to Jim Brodie — who had drunk so much tomato juice by this point, it was practically leaking out of his ears — he didn’t seem very understanding at first.

‘Christ on a bike, Jess, we’re reporters. If I had to think about what kind of life everyone I photograph for the paper had, where do you think I’d be now?’ It was clear that he’d become desensitised, which was hardly surprising considering how many times he’d had to photograph murder victims and the gruesome tableaus that were fatal car accidents.

‘But she’s only a child!’ I insisted. ‘Think about it, Jim: how would you have felt if you’d had all that stress to deal with when you were seven?’

‘When I was seven, I was stealing apples from the tree in our neighbour’s garden, having kickabouts in the street, and getting into fights with other boys,’ he reminisced. ‘Not to mention, pulling girls’ hair...’ He paused and thought about what I’d said. ‘I’m sure it’s a horrible situation for little Monique, but we’re not going there to add to her pain, we’re just doing our job and writing an article on her. I’ll take the pictures and you’ll write something.’ He ran his hand through his messy hair. ‘Come on, you know I’m all heart, but unfortunately, my rent’s due on the first of the month and I need the money, which means I have to work and it just so happens that I’m a press photographer. I can’t make a living by taking pictures of rolling green landscapes and a dozen or so sheep standing in a field.’

He was right about that, of course, but I didn’t want to accept it that easily. My eyes flicked back to Monique’s file. I’d rather jack in this damn assignment than cause you any harm, I silently swore to the little girl. Yet again, I could sense a strong aura coming from her laser-printed photo and my gaze was suddenly drawn to the top right-hand corner. The details of the photograph suddenly began to blur, and I saw something there that I hadn’t noticed before — it appeared that my supernatural abilities had kicked in and they were revealing the outline of a pale child’s face, though it was tough to make out. It was then that I started sensing the thoughts of this childlike figure. Why are you alive? it asked me. Don’t get too close to me or I’ll kill you!

Then, all of a sudden, I had a vision and in it, a doll was having its arms, legs, and head ripped off by some invisible force. The torn-off doll parts whirled around in midair and I heard a child cackling — an evil, cruel-sounding laugh that was repulsive and terrifying, and I could hardly believe that it was coming out of a child’s mouth. An ice-cold shiver shot up my spine as if I’d just seen a ghost. Go away! I heard the voice say in my head. Or you’ll end up just like this doll. Believe me, I have the power to do it. Do not disturb my sphere of influence!

I suddenly jerked awake because Jim Brodie had touched my shoulder and was looking across at me with a worried look on his face. ‘Jess, what’s wrong? You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

‘I’m just feeling a little airsick,’ I said. I didn’t feel like telling him the real reason — after all, Jim Brodie had no idea about my supernatural abilities. True, some of the things I said and did at times meant that I was a complete mystery to him, but being the good friend that he was, he didn’t bombard me with questions or feel the need to pry into what made me tick.

The laser-printed photo of Monique looked normal again — or that’s what I thought until I took a closer look, because it was only then that I noticed the doll in the little girl’s hand had had its head ripped clean off! I was certain the head had been there before my vision, but it was nowhere to be seen now. Feeling a little unnerved, I folded the photo back over and placed it back into the file. Had the Poltergeist Girl really just sent me a sign? Or rather, a warning? Whatever it was, I was sure we’d have a lot on our plate when we made it to Nice.

The captain’s voice crackled on the tannoy and announced that we were on the final approach to Nice-Côte d’Azur Airport and he wished us all a pleasant time in the city. I put up my tray table and fastened my seatbelt when the sign came on as the Super-Caravelle floated down over the Maritime Alps. Somewhere down below, Nice was waiting for us...

***

We made it through customs and passport control, then jumped on a train to travel the remaining six kilometres to the city itself. To get to Hotel Colbert — where rooms had been reserved for us — we simply had to exit the train station, cross Place Masséna, and wander down a side street.

Our hotel was a concrete block of a building — fairly modern, but with thin walls and offering little in the way of comfort to its guests. I couldn’t have come up with a starker analogy of my position at the London City Observer, because after all, Martin T. Stone or any of the higher-ups at the newspaper would no doubt have been booked into one of the palatial grand hotels that lined the Promenade des Anglais, the pedestrianised boulevard which was known the whole world over. I didn’t mind though, as I wasn’t really planning to spend much time in the hotel anyway.

Before I even took a peek at the wonders — or lack of — that my room had in store for me, I went straight to the phone in the hotel lobby and shoved in the phone card I’d conveniently remembered to buy in the airport. The first person I phoned was Aunt Bell, just to let her know I’d arrived in one piece, and afterwards, I rang Stone, interrupting him while he was in a meeting.

‘You didn’t tell me how strained the Brassés’ relationship with the press was, boss,’ I said.

Stone’s response was an airy one. ‘Well, I hope you’ll handle this one with plenty of sensitivity, Jessica. I know you’re not one of those cheap, sensationalist hacks.’

I might not be ‘sensationalist’, no, but if my salary’s anything to go by, ‘cheap’ is probably an accurate description — was what I was tempted to come out with, but I bit my tongue.

‘I have total confidence in you. I’m sure that you’ll abide by all the principles of what makes good, ethical journalism and still deliver a first-rate article,’ Stone continued. ‘Or should I say, several articles, naturally. I can’t wait to read them. Even the owner is looking forward to reading them.’ With that, he said a short ‘goodbye’ and the line went dead.

He’d dismissed my concerns quite elegantly with the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head, and well, how was I meant to respond to that? But that’s how he treated people, dismissing their concerns entirely but in a way that turned it into a compliment of your skills. I knew it would be quite some time before I could bat away someone’s misgivings that smoothly, and until I could do it as well as Stone, I wouldn’t be wholly unsuitable for the role of editor-in-chief.

After putting the receiver down, I went up to my room, which was modern and perfectly functional in terms of its furnishings. Jim Brodie was already fast asleep next door, which wasn’t all that surprising considering it had been his friend’s stag party the evening before and he’d partied late into the night, which he was paying for today. At least I couldn’t hear him snoring, which I guessed was a sign that the hotel was sturdier and more soundproof than it had looked from outside.

I was wondering whether I should wake Jim up or just head off into town alone to start doing some groundwork, when suddenly, it happened! An inner voice whispered to me that I should go down to the flower