For me, a solo flyer all these years, it was a wake up call now being an employer. A boss. A mentor. A tired weary step-father of chatterboxes.
It’s not that I was isolated from acquaintances of every kind because I had clients and suits and overalls bouncing in and out of 333 with frequent ease. But they were always people doing their thing, knowing how to do their thing. Whilst now being ‘responsible’ meant, well being responsible.
With Embla joining me at 333, I was fully aware there would be a period of adjustment, both of us getting to know this and that, but I trusted my instincts that she would be perfect for my universe. Just as importantly, I trusted her instincts that she was ready and willing to fly with me.
I joked at her interview that I would need to hire a cleaner as we both seemed magnetically clumsy in each others company but in truth 333 already had a janitor. A sort of handy man. Admittedly a not very practical caretaker. Well actually he was more of a non-reactive first responder. Always first on the spot of an event but not really doing very much about it.
‘They call me Skips’ he grinned like a stoned Cheshire cat offering his hand for Embla to shake. And stood there with an awkward silence accompanying his silly smirk.
Skips, now how do you describe Skips? He would be the perfect Grandad I guess. Not only in appearance. Balding and always dressed cosily. But his warm manner and endless lifetime stories for each occasion.
When I say each occasion I mean, he actually has an experience for every imaginable occasion. Mostly because they are stories he invents in his head as his mouth his moving. Then once you add his over-excitable posture and expressions, he becomes super convincing.
In fact generally as he tells his tales, his audience listens with raised eyebrows and shrugged shoulders because, well who knows? It could be true. Probably isn’t. But could well be true.
‘Let me join you both on this tour of 333 That Street’ he smiled with a random little bow, a half curtsey.
As he was using the word ‘join’ I also knew that he meant ‘hijack’ with the intention of filling her head with various articles of nonsense. Well Embla would have to discover this for herself some day, so it might as well be now.
Also I might interject my own narrative here to say the word ‘janitor’ isn’t entirely accurate. Skips was simply a guy who rented one of the rooms at 333 and had taken the role of janitor upon himself. Unqualified I imagine. Unpaid I know for sure. Unchecked by any form of health and safety authority. But hey, who was going to get in his way.
Effectively Skips would be first on the scene of any drama at 333. He would tut tut and shake his head. He would assess in a non-assessing way. He would tell tales of where he had seen this before only much much worse. Then he would call a professional fixer in and I would get a bill in my post box soon after.
Also. Being unqualified, unpaid and unofficial meant everything was done according to Skips time zone. Having hijacked the tour he then decided to make a phone call, which we could loudly hear was to his wife, telling her he was about to give the new girl a tour. Gossip was his thing. Live gossip his bigger thing.
His wife by the way, no-one had ever met or seen with their own eyes. You could hear squeaks and warbles on the other end of the phone when he called her. So maybe she was real. He also once said he was on the phone to a Chinese foreign minister, the noise on the other end sounded similar to potentially fake wife’s warbles, and Skips was clearly making up words that he believed sounded Chinese, in an accent clearly copied from the Karate Kid movies.
So as Embla and I stood like a pair of lemons in the reception area of 333 That Street, waiting for Skips to stop talking about us, in front of us, to a possibly fictional wife, wagging his finger as if to say wait one more moment please, I explained the address of this grand building.
‘You see this house, with a blue door, and four floors with many other doors used to be the only residence for miles’ I proudly acclaimed. ‘No address. Just ‘That House’ with the blue door. If people would write letters that’s how they would address it and the postal people just knew. Even today we will have post arrive here addressed that way.’
‘If it’s the only house then why is the number 333?’ Embla questioned almost as if she was trying to trap me, like I was Skips buffoon side kick.
‘I genuinely don’t know the truth for that’ I honestly replied, about to mention some ancient local theories, when Skips stepped in to answer.
‘You see this is an old house with a very chequered history’ Skips whispered as he seemed to talk with his eyebrows and crouched as if ready to tell haunted tales around a camp fire. ‘If you look at the back of the house, engraved in the old brickwork are the numbers 333’
Embla looked at me for confirmation. I nodded, this part was in fact true. 333 scratched chaotically with some sharp metal object.
‘To mark a house of witchcraft’ Skips continued waiting for some form of gasps of intrigue I guess ‘To display a theatre of devilment.’
Embla again looked at me for confirmation. I shrugged my shoulders. A universal reaction to Skips commentary ‘who knows if its true or not.’
‘So why 333?’ asked Embla making no sense of the tale so far or where it was going ‘Is that how many crimes she did or something?’
‘Well’ continued Skips moving his body mysteriously before pausing with dramatic effect. I guess he imagined he appeared mysterious to us. We simply saw him wobbling like a cute Grandad in a cardigan. ‘Here’s the thing. The old lady witch was powerful. Yet small. It is said that the phrase – all bad things come in small packages – was a tribute to the woman the knew as half devil.’
I decided to move the tour along at this moment figuring he meant she was half of a devil and that means half of 666, a 333 witch. Plus his small packages quote was simply a very lazy cheeky reverse.
Embla laughed at exactly the same moment my internal calculator figured it out and Skips knowingly frowned at us both. This would be the first of many Skips facts that Embla would have to endure.
Having said that, and having seen the glint in her eyes as she realised the janitor may be as useful as a chocolate tea pot, it was another Embla light bulb moment for me. She knows without being told what she needs to know. That wavelength, that connection. Skips felt it too. She was perfect for 333. We all knew each other knew, but we would still do the things we do.
‘So welcome’ grinned Skips like a Yorkshire Frog on a trampoline ‘welcome home Embla’ he celebrated his arms aloft as if this was his Kingdom.
Embla thanked him but before he left to go do whatever Grandad fake janitors do he remembered one last thing she needed to know. Urgent information.
These are the moments he did his Columbo hunch and remembered something just when you thought you had seen the last of him. I didn’t expect someone her age to get the reference but she did laugh knowing there would be days you would struggle to shake him off.
‘The elevator’ he announced as if he was the voice of a Horror film trailer. ‘Best never never use it alone. And best still’ he paused with drama in his fearful eyes ‘you never use it at night.’
I wasn’t sure at this point if we would all need to be seated, passing around a hip flask, but Embla was grinning and obviously ready for the next tall story.
‘They say this place used to be an old wool factory’ he whispered deeper than before, pausing to give his eyebrows time to dance and wriggle with intrigue. ‘They say the daughter of the business owner fell to her death down the lift shaft as it was being built’ Pause for gasp or maybe asthmatic wheeze?
Embla glanced at me briefly, probably to see how engrossed I was in this new information but I could tell she had no idea herself at this moment which of his words were fact or fiction. Fact and fiction often cross over at 333 That Street.
‘Her father never returned to the factory again and it lay desolate until the brave Mr Bugle took on the blue door at 333 That Street.’ He nodded. As if knowingly.
And as I was about to say lets move on with the tour, after looking at my non existent watch a dozen times, Skips put his hand on my arm to halt me and looked at Embla with concern. A warm look as if he was her loving protector.
‘Sometimes, even now, late at night, you can hear the screams of the young girls ghost echo around the lift shaft and empty corridors. Hundreds of years of pent up pain and loneliness shrieking from the little girls ghostly lungs and….’ another pause which quite clearly very bad acting ‘the lift doors have been known to open by themselves, and a whirlwind of little girl poltergeist flies through the lobby banging on the windows to be released.’
To be fair to Skips this did seem quite convincing despite his super cheesy narration, it was possibly true and / or possibly well rehearsed although having known Skips for decades I was fully aware how accomplished he was in the art of story telling. Or some would call it extreme bullshitting.
‘Which is why’ he paused again, raised eyebrow, little smug grin ‘we always leave that little quarter window open for her to fly to freedom.’
He pointed to the front building wall and of course both Embla and I looked and strained for confirmation that there was a quarter window open. Neither of us saw any such thing.
As we turned for whatever was coming next there was a brief glimpse of Skips running up the stairway next to the elevator. His dreadfully obvious attempt to vanish in a puff of smoke to make the story even more mysterious. But we did see an old mans backside in corduroy trousers vanish awkwardly up the stairway.
We smiled at each other of course. That was 15 minutes of our lives we would never get back but it was 15 minutes of our life well spent. Possibly.
‘Listen before we continue with the tour of 333 I’ll just show you what to do should there be any poltergeist activity in the elevator’ I said smiling at Embla and pressing the open button of the lift door. ‘This plague here has the emergency number to call in case of any problems.’
I pointed my finger at the plague landing it on the health and safety note which clearly stated the elevator was installed in 1971.
