I’ll never know how the unfortunate man died. Did he walk off the designated route only to find himself hopelessly lost as the blue arrows on the floor disappeared? Was he crushed by a piece of large flatpack furniture while pushing a trolley filled with candles, knick-knacks, and bargain glassware? Or did he simply sit down somewhere, feet aching, and expire from weary legs and a fatal ennui? All that I do know for sure is that the IKEA store was haunted and the ghost needed exorcising.
It started innocuously when a colleague arrived one morning to find two dozen boxes of mini Daim chocolate bars torn open. The plastic wrappers were discarded on the ground creating a trail, like breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel, leading directly toward the bedroom department. The next day, the disturbance was greater still with four packs of hot-dogs torn open in the dining area, three of them left burning to cinders beneath a grill. The first incident was written off as some sort of cleaning accident, or perhaps a prank. The second. Well, fool me once and all that jazz.
“You reckon it’s some kid or a homeless person after sneaking in,” I asked Marty, my fellow security man, in the control room. “Is there anything showing up on the CCTV?”
“That’s the weirdest fooking thing Dermo,” he said. “They show static.”
“Every one of them?” I asked.
“More like this person is knocking them off as they move around the store … maybe with a jamming device or something.”
We both scratched our respective beards, both in an advancing stage of grey. It all seemed a little too sophisticated just to pilfer some rock-hard chocolate, cheap hot dogs, and mulled wine.
“And there’s nothing else showing up as stolen,” I said to him rhetorically.
He nodded his head in confusion, as if he’d been given the honours Maths paper by mistake while sitting his Leaving Cert. “Bit of a fooking mystery all right.”
“Who’s on the night shift tonight?” I said.
“McGinty,” he replied, easing back into his chair in front of the bank of closed camera TV screens.
“That’s no good,” I said, “he’ll snore the place down.”
“Well I’m not coming in anyways,” said Marty, and I could nearly hear the rusty engine of his brain spluttering into life trying to conceive of a plausible excuse. It wasn’t his characteristic laziness though. Truth was behind that bushy beard and the thick glasses, a zygote of fear was beginning to rumba.
I dashed off a quick email to my boss in headquarters, said we had a ‘teeny little problem’. Nothing to get unduly worried about but might be no harm to have a second torch shining in the store that night. He responded quickly, said he would pay me double time for my trouble. “Do a full recce while you’re at,” he said, “see if you can see how they’re getting in.”
It was going be a long night so I drove home to Finglas, snatched a couple of hours sack time. On the way back to work, I was yawning, still trying to break out of the uncomfortable embrace that came from unscheduled snoozing. So I bought a couple of cans of Red Bull at the local service station, downed one of them quickly and burped. When I arrived, McGinty was there already. He seemed sober, smelt noxiously of Lynx deodorant; he’d probably been warned by one of his compadres that he would have company that night.
“You sure you used enough spray,” I said to him. “Nearly choking me here.”
The IKEA store is a peculiar place at night. Once the doors close to the public, activity continues with shelves getting tidied up and restocked, while the warehouse is resupplied with Billy bookcases and Malm beds. But then the midnight lull comes and the vast furniture cathedral falls into a deep silence. Without customers or staff, the showrooms feel artificial like a film set. I’d never felt nervous before, walking down the canyon-like aisles, my footsteps clomping. But that night, knowing something was lurking, I felt profoundly uneasy.
It was a little before 1am when the static of the walkie-talkie brought me to attention.
“Canya hear me Dermo,” McGinty said over the radio.
“Roger,” I said because that’s what you seemed duty-bound to say in such circumstances.
“Something funny happening with the CCTV in the living room department.”
“All right, give me a few minutes,” I replied.
The oddest thing was how the temperature seemed to drop as I walked from the cavernous warehouse into the showrooms, precisely the opposite of what would normally be expected. And it wasn’t just a little cold, it was biting, like I was outdoors bare-armed in the frosty early November night. There was an uncanny scent gushing through the air too, like a strange amalgam of smoked fish and vinegar.
“Living room CCTV active again,” said McGinty, “cameras down in work spaces and kitchens now.”
I followed the floor path footprints, a snaking route I must have taken a thousand times before. It continued to get colder so that my arms bloomed with goosebumps, and my teeth began to gently chatter. As I approached the dining area, I could see a hulking figure seated at a kitchen table. He had his broad back to me, seemed oblivious to my approach. There was a large bottle of sparkling pear drink in his hand from which he appeared to be drinking directly.
“Are you OK there Sir?” I said with a frail bravado.
His head began to move left and right, upwards then, surveying the ceiling as if he’d never heard a human voice before.
“Sir,” I said, louder this time, my voice now shrill.
He began to turn although that is not the proper word. His body pivoted centimetre by centimetre, like a stop-motion clay model. One moment, he would seem entire, the next a blur. Formation, deformation, reformation – in what seemed to my disbelieving eyes like slow-mo. Each transition seemed like torture to him so that as the sharp features of his wounded face came into view, he would grimace, crack, then be restored.
“Can I help you?” I said.
“Lost,” he said and his despair seemed to burrow directly into my skin and gravitate towards my heart. “I am lost,” he repeated.
“What can I do?”
He stood up then. And that fear when I thought he was going to come towards me – even now when I recollect it, I cannot help but shiver.
“Lost. Way,” said the ghost, and I could see what looked like slush running from his eyes. I can’t be sure what happened then but it seemed as if I fell into some kind of delirious trance.
“Cameras working again,” said McGinty through the walkie talkie, his voice like an alarm clock. My eyes opened slowly, my consciousness slowly recalibrating. My uniform shirt was damp with sweat. The ghost was gone. All that was left was a broken bottle on the floor.
I tried to speak but no words would come through teeth that were so tightly clenched, it seemed as if the enamel might begin to crack.
“You there Dermo?”
Ten seconds passed, maybe twenty.
“Can you hear me?” said McGinty.
“Roger,” I said. “Just knocked a bottle over here. Need to clean it up. All clear otherwise.”
The broken glass at least gave me time to compose myself so that when I got back to the control room, I felt a little steadier.
“You all right?” said McGinty, “you look like … like you’re coming down with something.”
“Yeah, think I must’ve a cold coming on.”
“Why don’t you head off home? I’ll ring you if I need you.”
I just my nodded my head and packed up my things. On the journey back home, every traffic light and turn was taken with only muscle memory. The late hour at least meant there were no pedestrians around and I drove so slowly that a couple of cranky taxi drivers overtook me on the straight stretches of road, parping loudly as they passed by.
Thank god for me old ma Betty because in the fortnight that followed, I was sick like I’d never been before. My temperature topped out at 103 degrees, and only for the fear I have of doctors, my mother would certainly have called one to the house. I drank Lemsip by the bucketful but it hardly touched the aches that ran up, down, and bone-deep in my arms, legs, fingers and toes.
The most curious thing though was how my sense of taste and smell would come and go. Sometimes, my nose and tongue would pack in completely and other times, they’d be filled with an overpowering sour taste or smell of pickled fish or meatballs. The nights were even worse when I would have feverish dreams of the IKEA ghost, the unfathomable misery and suffering in his face, movements, and words. “Lost. Way.” Those two words repeated, over and again.
I kept in touch with work as my malady began to ease. They were considerate and told me not to rush back. I had an unblemished absence record so there was no questions asked of whether I was malingering. The disturbances in the store continued: moving furniture, beds apparently slept in, food packages torn asunder, cooked, half-eaten, then tossed aside. But as to who was responsible – that remained a mystery to all but me. The gardaí were eventually called for, only asking if anything valuable had been stolen. They said to keep them posted. It wasn’t as if there was a shortage of serious police work to be done in and about Ballymun.
All the while, this feeling grew like I had to do something. And as my strength slithered back slug-like, I began to search for a solution. The internet was never my thing but my old ma had a tattered Yellow Pages downstairs from some time in the 1990s. Sitting up in bed, I began to leaf through it but when I searched ‘E’ for exorcism, there was no entry. I racked my brain for alternatives – clairvoyants, fortune tellers, soothsayers, and spiritualists. At last, I found something called ‘The Bureau of Divination’, operating out of a premises on Capel Street. I dialled the number.
“The Ex-Father Crowley speaking,” said a gravelly voice.
I had rehearsed how I was going to give my account but I was left stuttering and stammering as I tried to squeeze the words out.
“I have a ghost problem,” I finally settled on saying.
“Shush now,” he said. “We do not speak of such things on the telephone.”
“Well, how am I supposed to explain it?”
“2.30pm, my office, tomorrow. X Capel Street – top floor.”
Before I even had a chance to confirm my attendance, the mysterious ex-Father had hung up the call.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect as I approached the given address the following afternoon. The office was above a furniture store that sold cheap house fittings intended for bedsits and cramped flats. I scanned the intercom, where I found scrawled in pen ‘The Bureau of Divination’ on the third floor of the run-down red-brick building. I was buzzed in and ascended the stairs, passing a watch repair shop and a Chinese food importation business. The door of an accountancy firm was open, and a supernumerary rushed to slam it shut when he saw me passing, returning I suppose to some deeply creative book-keeping.
On the uppermost floor, a sign hung skew-wise with the word ‘Divination’ on it. There was a hole in the bottom part of the door as if somebody had given it an almighty kick. I was about to knock but before I did, I heard a voice ushering me inside.
“Dermot, I’m sure,” he said as I entered the cramped office.
“That’s me,” I said.
The Ex-Father Crowley was eating a tinfoil tray of duck noodles and some of the chow mein sauce had taken up residence in a bushy moustache and white beard that seemed more like fur than hair.
“Are you a man who enjoys an afternoon drink?” he said. “I like my customers to be at their ease.”
In actual fact, I didn’t much feel like one what with the residue of my arcane flu but it seemed rude to decline. He rooted around in a locker to see what he could find, at last emerging with a bottle of Kilbeggan and two dainty tea-cups.
Pouring out two generous measures, he said: “Tell me of your troubles son.”
I told him of the ghost, of the various disturbances, of the heartbreaking movements and demeanour of the phantom, how he seemed trapped in some sort of flat-pack purgatory.
“Very sad,” he would say. “Awful sad.”
“What can we do?” I asked.
“We just need to help him find his way out,” said the Ex-Father.
It was a few nights later when I pulled up outside the diviner’s bungalow on Blackhorse Avenue. There was nothing too remarkable about the house except that the Christmas tree was up and it wasn’t yet December.
“Bit early for the tree,” I said to him as he sat into my Fiat Punto, a black and yellow Stanley toolbox on his lap.
“I keep it up all year,” he replied. “It lifts my mood.”
We were headed in the direction of the North Circular Road, a late night talk show on the radio.
“How do you listen to that drivel?” he said to me.
“It’s just in the background,” I replied. “You can change it if you want.”
The next second, Raidió na Gaeltachta was playing instead, a céilí session from some village hall in Connemara. Nothing terribly abnormal with that except the Ex-Father had never moved his hands to switch the station. I tried to make small talk with him, as his left foot tapped rhythmically to each jig and reel. But it was obvious he wasn’t in the humour for chit-chat as if he was psyching himself up before a county final.
I knew McGinty was on duty that night which was ideal because he wasn’t one for asking questions lest people started asking him some back.
“This is a private investigator friend of mine,” I said, the ex-Father standing beside me. “A new set of eyes might be no harm for our little problem.”
McGinty nodded, sat down in his office chair, and instantaneously fell asleep, snoring deeply.
“Where to?” said the Ex-Father.
We tramped off towards the warehouse, the diviner occasionally sniffing the air, like a dog trying to locate the scent of sausages frying on a pan. “Hmmm,” he’d mumble. “Not here.” As we entered the showrooms, the temperature began to drop. I looked at the Ex-Father, his striking light blue eyes began to twinkle.
“Through this way,” he said, knowing his quarry was nearby.
The ghost was seated at a dining table, another bottle of sparkling pear drink in his hand, a plate of food in front of him. The diviner approached unhurriedly and took a seat, the phantom once again all but oblivious to our arrival.
“Do you mind if I join you?” I saw that same stop-motion as the ghost’s head turned, heard some words being mumbled, and then the Ex-Father put his arm over the apparition’s shoulder. Something happened then and the ghost took on a semi-permanence, like he was neither here nor there, no longer changing form.
They stood up from the table, the enormous ghost – at least eight feet tall, the squat diviner, no more than a couple of inches above five foot, right beside him. It almost looked like some outsized dad walking his son to school. But it was the ex-Father who led his companion in the direction of the fire exit. He pushed open the door. The fire alarm briefly sounded but only for half a second before it was silenced by some unearthly power.
The diviner re-entered the building, his toolbox in his left hand though whether he had cause to use it, I cannot say.
“All done,” he said. “He’ll have peace now.”
We walked back to the control room in silence, the ex-Father humming a lively tune that he had heard on the radio. McGinty was still fast asleep in his chair.
“How much do I owe you,” I said as we approached the exit.
“I don’t bother myself with money.”
“I’ll jump on the bus.”
“Can I at least drop you home?” I asked.
And sure enough, outside the door, a blue and yellow double-decker was waiting, not a single other passenger on board. The Ex-Father stepped on, flashed some type of card, and took a seat right down the back above the engine. I looked at my watch. It was 1.37am. And I could have sworn the last bus on the schedule departed before midnight.
Listen to this story being read on the Kaidankai Podcast from June 2024.
