A Tenor in Aisle Three

"Anything?" Chloe whispered, her voice filled with a reverence usually reserved for libraries and cathedrals. She held her EMF meter out like a crucifix, its little needle twitching nervously.

"Just the microwave oven and about twelve feet of dodgy wiring in the ceiling," Raj replied without looking up from his screen. He had three different audio waveforms scrolling by. "Whatever Mrs. Higgins heard moaning last week, it wasn't electromagnetic."

"Spirits aren't always electromagnetic, Raj. Sometimes they're emotional imprints. A psychic residue left by a traumatic event," Chloe said, narrowing her eyes at the pickle jars.

"Like someone discovering the price of cheddar these days?" Brenda mumbled through a mouthful of crisps. "That's traumatic."

Suddenly, the lights over the dairy aisle flickered violently, then went out, plunging half the store into shadow. Chloe gasped. Raj's head snapped up.

"Okay," Raj said, tapping at his keyboard. "That's not the wiring. That's a breaker trip. Localized to this section."

As if on cue, a single tub of yoghurt launched itself from the top shelf, sailed through the air in a perfect arc, and splattered against the far wall. Strawberry.

"Did you get that?" Chloe hissed, fumbling with her night-vision camera. "Classic poltergeist activity! A kinetic projection!"

"A kinetic projection of... yoghurt?" Raj said, peering into the darkness. "Bit dairy-specific, isn't it? Maybe it's the ghost of someone who was lactose intolerant."

A low moan echoed through the shop. It was long and mournful, rising and falling with a heartbreaking cadence. Brenda froze, her hand halfway to her mouth.

"That's it!" Chloe whispered, ecstatic. "That's the sound Mrs. Higgins described! It's the lady of the lard, the spirit of the woman who supposedly slipped on a sausage roll in 1983 and died right here, in aisle two."

"Slipped on a sausage roll?" Raj repeated, raising an eyebrow. "That's the origin story we're going with? Not a disgruntled employee or a victim of a robbery, but death by baked goods?"

The moaning grew louder, filled with sorrow and pain. It seemed to be coming from the back of the store, near the staff-only door.

"Come on," Chloe urged, grabbing her gear. "We have to make contact."

Nessun Dorma in the Stockroom

They moved like a well-meaning but clumsy special ops team, creeping down the aisle of cleaning supplies and tinned goods. Raj had his parabolic microphone aimed forward, Brenda was wielding the bag of pork scratchings like a weapon, and Chloe led the way, whispering encouragements to the spirit world.

"We're here to help you," she murmured. "We mean you no harm. Can you tell us your name?"

The moaning crescendoed into a full-throated, operatic wail of pure anguish. It was genuinely unsettling. The sound bounced off the shelves, making it seem like it was coming from everywhere at once.

"It's coming from the stockroom," Raj said, pointing at the door. "I'm getting a massive audio spike."

They paused at the door. A strip of yellow light was visible underneath. The wailing from within was now so loud it was vibrating the door itself.

"Ready?" Chloe asked, her hand on the doorknob. Brenda nodded grimly. Raj just sighed.

Chloe threw the door open. "Spirit, reveal yourse—!"

They stopped dead. The stockroom was a cramped space, piled high with boxes of toilet paper, crates of fizzy drinks, and a precarious tower of instant noodle pots. In the centre, sitting on a stool under a single, bare lightbulb, was an old man in a blue 'Stop & Shop' tabard. He had a pair of oversized headphones on, and in his lap was an ancient Walkman. He was singing along to the music, his eyes closed in ecstasy, his voice a surprisingly powerful tenor.

He held the final, soaring note for a full ten seconds before finishing with a flourish. He opened his eyes, saw the three of them standing in the doorway, and slowly took off his headphones. The tinny sound of a full orchestra leaked out.

"Puccini," the man said, his voice now a quiet, gravelly baritone. "Turandot. You can't beat it."

Chloe, Raj, and Brenda just stared.

"You..." Chloe began, her voice barely a squeak. "You're the ghost?"

The man, whose name tag read 'Mr. Henderson', looked them over. "Ghost? No, love. Night shift. Been doing it thirty-two years. Now, are you going to buy something or are you just letting the cold out?"

"But the lights... the flying yoghurt..." Brenda stammered.

Mr. Henderson reached over and picked up a small remote control from a stack of newspapers. He pressed a button. The lights in the dairy aisle outside clicked back on. He pressed another. A single chocolate bar on the shelf behind them wiggled and fell to the floor, pulled by a piece of fishing line so thin it was almost invisible.

Raj started to laugh. It was a quiet chuckle at first, then it grew into a full-blown, wheezing laugh. "Oh, you're magnificent," he said, wiping a tear from his eye.

Mr. Henderson gave a small, proud smile. "Gets boring around three a.m. Heard from Janice on the day shift that some paranormal investigators were coming in. Figured I'd give you a bit of a show. The yoghurt was a nice touch, I thought. Good splatter pattern."

Chloe looked utterly crestfallen. "So... there's no lady of the lard?"

"Never was," Mr. Henderson said, popping his cassette tape out of the Walkman. "Worst we ever had was a lad who tried to deep-fry a Mars Bar in the pasty warmer back in '96. Set the fire alarms off. Now that was a traumatic event."

An hour later, they were all sitting in the stockroom, sharing Brenda's pork scratchings and listening to Mr. Henderson's opera tapes. He had a story for every aisle, every strange stain on the floor, every flickering light. The Stop & Shop wasn't haunted by spirits, but by thirty-two years of human eccentricity. As far as Chloe was concerned, it was even better.