Ghostly Hitchhiker Box Set

by Rodney Strong

  (I doubt it.)

  ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Jennifer said sleepily.

  ‘Nothing honey. I’m just going to get a drink of water.’ He put on his dressing gown and went through the dark house to the kitchen.

  Closing the door behind him, Oliver paced around.

  ‘Listen, I’m still not convinced that you’re not a manifestation of my mind, but if this is real and you are a ghost, and you’re not going anywhere until I help you, then there needs to be some ground rules. And rule number one is you don’t eavesdrop on me and my wife making love.’

  (Is that what that was?)

  Oliver glanced at the closed door and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘And you certainly don’t get to critique what we do.’

  (Sorry Oliver. But I need your help and I’m along for the full ride. I can’t turn it off or on. What you see, I see.)

  He stopped pacing. ‘Then close your eyes.’

  (Now what would be the fun in that?)

  He switched on the laptop and opened a search window. He hesitated, trying to think of the right words, finally typing in ‘hearing voices’. The first result informed him that hearing voices may or may not be associated with a mental health problem. A dull ache formed behind his eyes. He read on, randomly selecting articles and websites as the headache grew into a small one man band thumping away on his drums with glee.

  (This is amazing. When I was alive if we thought someone was crazy we just asked our grandmothers and they told us.)

  ‘Please shut up.’ The one-man band had put on some tap shoes.

  (Look I don’t know if you’re crazy or not, but I don’t think it’s important.)

  ‘It’s extremely bloody important to me if I’m crazy.’

  (Suit yourself, but instead of wasting your time, can I suggest you use that thing to look up talking to ghosts?)

  ‘What a ridiculous idea,’ Oliver retorted, and then he did it. The results were even less helpful – they were all about using a Ouija board or talking to mediums. He dismissed each one as complete quackery.

  ‘Dad?’ Rose shuffled into the room, rubbing sleepy eyes. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing bub.’ He slid off the bar stool. ‘Do you need to go to the toilet?’

  Once she was safely tucked back to bed Oliver closed down the laptop and slipped beneath the covers next to his wife. Her shallow breathing indicated she was asleep, but he found achieving the same thing difficult. He would have liked to blame Violet and her sudden appearance into his life, but it was more likely to be the four-hour nap.

  The next day was Tuesday, which from a school week perspective wasn’t greatly different from any other day. Except Reed had guitar lessons during school, and Rose told him after he’d made her lunch that she didn’t like honey anymore and wouldn’t eat her sandwich.

  Violet was quiet the whole morning and as time stretched on Oliver began to convince himself it had never happened. A happy thought that lasted until he had done school drop off and was back home. Then he sat down on the toilet, content that he could do so without children banging on the door to tell him about the latest atrocities inflicted on each other.

  The first house I grew up in didn’t have an indoor toilet.

  Oliver jumped – no easy feat with his pants around his ankles. Then again, he was in the best possible place for a sudden scare.

  (We used to trek across the back lawn, even at night. I can tell you, it’s not easy to pee in the dark. And the moths, some of them were the size of your hand.)

  ‘Can you sod off while I’m on the loo,’ Oliver snapped.

  (I told you, I can’t do that.)

  ‘Then at least stop talking.’

  (Why? Do you need to concentrate?)

  ‘No, I just don’t want to hold a conversation while I’m….’

  (Crapping?)

  ‘That’s enough,’ he said in exasperation.

  (Okay, I’ll stop talking.)

  ‘Thank you,’ he grumbled.

  (But I’ll still be here.)

  True to her word Violet let him finish in peace, although he knew she was still there, lurking, waiting to make some sarcastic comment on his bottom wiping technique.

  (Things would go a lot easier if you just accepted me for what I am and help, she said as he washed his hands. The sooner we find the woman who stole my name, the sooner I can leave you alone.)

  He reluctantly admitted that made sense, but his mind still rebelled.

  (Why don’t you use that box to look for the woman who took my name?)

  Instead Oliver stubbornly got the cleaning products out and scrubbed the bath.

  (What’s wrong with your leg?)

  He instinctively rubbed his left knee. ‘None of your business.’ Realising he sounded childish he relented. ‘I injured it running several months ago. It still hurts sometimes.’

  (Oh dear. Who were you running from?)

  ‘No one, I was just going for a run.’

  (For fun!)

  ‘Yes, and for fitness.’

  (Gosh, how strange.)

  Oliver stood up and stretched the ache out of his back. ‘Can you just shut up.’

  (I could.)

  He let out a sigh of relief.

  (But I’m not going to. In fact, if you don’t get on with helping me then I’m going to talk non-stop forever.)

  Oliver stared in horror.

  (So say goodbye to sleep.)

  The full implication of her words sank into his skin, setting off a shudder. In resignation, he went to the laptop and typed Violet’s name into a search engine. Nothing came up.

  ‘What now?’

  (Let’s drive into the city and ask around. It can’t be that hard to find her.)

  Oliver laughed. ‘Sure, I’ll just stop everyone we meet and ask them if they’re using a dead woman’s name.’

  (Only the women.)

  ‘I don’t know how many people lived in Wellington when you were alive, but these days there are a lot. It’s going to be impossible to find one woman.’

  (It will be if we don’t leave the house.)

  Oliver stood up in frustration. ‘I’m not just randomly driving around the city on the off chance that we find the right person. It’s madness.’ He flinched at the poor choice of words. ‘How do we even know she’s in Wellington. She could be in Auckland, or Christchurch, or England for all we know.’

  (She’s here.)

  ‘How do you know,’ he pressed.

  (Because I’m here. If she was in any of those other places I’d be there.)

  ‘How is it you’re so sure about that?’

  (Because I am.)

  ‘That’s the sort of argument my kids would use.’

  (Well it’s the best I’ve got. Now stop wasting time.)

  ‘Wasting time doing what? We have no clues, no idea where this person is. It’s hopeless,’ Oliver said.

  (Have you ever heard Is You Is or Is You Ain’t Ma’ Baby? It’s a great song. It’s my favourite.)

  She sung a few lines.

  It sounded to Oliver like someone had stood on Kaos’s tail. ‘What about it?’

  (So I’m going to sing it over and over and over until you want to cut your ears off, only that won’t stop it because it’s not in your ears, it’s in your head. It will never stop. Unless….)

  Oliver listened to the determination in the words and swallowed nervously. ‘I don’t have a choice do I?’

  (Took you long enough. No, you don’t. I’m dead and desperate and bloody furious. So stop flapping your lips and let’s go find the scrag who stole my name.)

  Oliver glanced at the clock on the oven. ‘I have to be back in time to pick the kids up…’

  Violet started singing.

  ‘Alright,’ he cut in. ‘I was just saying we’ve only got a few hours.’

  Since it was outside peak travelling time it only took fifteen minutes to get to the city. Wellington was a small, wind-swept city where you were
never more than five minutes from a hill or the harbour, and Oliver couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Far from being the restful, thought dwelling trip that Oliver usually had when driving alone, it was like having one of his children in the car. The silence was routinely broken with exclamations of ‘What’s that?’ and ‘Holy heck look at the size of those buildings!’.

  He took the first exit, winding past the stadium, and the wharves filled with fallen forests waiting for shipment. He snagged a car park opposite the train station.

  ‘What now?’

  (Can we go in there?)

  Oliver turned his head. ‘You know I can’t see where you’re looking,’ he said gruffly.

  (The train station.)

  ‘Is she there?’

  (I don’t think so.)

  ‘Then what’s the point?’

  Violet didn’t answer. With a sigh Oliver got out of the car, walked across the brick promenade, up the steps and into the main foyer. He stopped in the middle, unsure where she wanted to go.

  (I was here when it opened. It was 1937 and I was twelve. My dad took the day off work and brought me down to watch the first train pull in. There were so many people there. We waved like crazy at the train driver and he tooted the horn, and afterwards we got chocolate ice cream.)

  For the first time Oliver thought of Violet as a person and not a voice in his head. A person who’d lived and had a family. ‘I’m sorry. You must miss your father,’ he said.

  (Not likely – he was a violent narrow-minded pig who used to treat me and my mum as slaves. But it was a nice ice cream.)

  ‘Oh,’ Oliver replied, unsure how to respond. An elderly man in a suit glared at him, and Oliver remembered he was talking to himself as far as everyone else was concerned.

  (What’s that place over there?)

  ‘The coffee place?’ he muttered.

  (They have a whole place for coffee? Can we go see? I only drank it once and you don’t want to know what I did to get that.)

  Oliver glanced at his watch, hoping Violet would get the hint that they were on the clock, but she remained silent. Grudgingly he walked over to the coffee kiosk. The blonde woman behind the counter smiled at him as he ordered a long black. This had been his local coffee spot when he was working in the city so she either recognised him or smiled at everyone. Oliver preferred to believe she remembered him.

  (Geez, are they all different kinds of coffee? That’s crazy. When I was alive you drank it black, that’s it.)

  ‘Things have obviously changed since then,’ Oliver snapped. The girl behind the counter, who’s name tag read Elissa, gave him a strange look and he glanced away in embarrassment. Suddenly he thought of something. Pulling his phone out he pretended to be on a call.

  ‘I’m not going to be much help to you if I’m locked up for being insane,’ he whispered.

  (Okay, I get it. But I’ve been gone for a long time, so I’m going to say stuff, and if you’re going to blow a fuse every time then we have a problem.)

  The girl called out Oliver’s name and he gave her a reassuring, I’m-not-crazy-smile which she returned with one that said you’re-a-nut-job-and-I-hope-you-never-come-here-again.

  Oliver slipped his phone away and strode across the foyer to the front doors just as a large man pushed through. Oliver quickly dropped his eyes, working on the theory that if he couldn’t see the other man then he couldn’t be seen.

  ‘Oliver,’ boomed a voice. ‘You’ll never see opportunities on the floor.’

  He raised his eyes and feigned surprise. ‘Hi Jason.’

  Jason, taller and wider than Oliver, grabbed his hand and pumped it twice before releasing. Oliver’s fingers tingled at the sudden assault and he carefully flexed them to restore blood flow. Jason had been his boss at the bank, until – according to Jason’s speech at the farewell morning tea – he had gone bonkers and packed it all in to be some arty farty type.

  ‘How’s the great New Zealand novel coming along?’ Jason’s voice filled every corner of the vast space.

  Oliver cringed and gave the stock response. ‘It’s going well, thanks. How’re things at work?’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Jason replied, and for a moment Oliver wondered which part he was responding to. ‘Your replacement, Troy, is a moron.’ He straightened his tie and flattened it over his immense stomach.

  Oliver would have been flattered if Jason hadn’t regularly called him a moron too.

  ‘You should give up the writing lark. I’ll get rid of the idiot and you can have your old job back.’

  (I like him.)

  ‘I appreciate the offer Jason, but I think I’ll stick out the writing lark a little while longer.’

  Jason grunted disapproval. ‘Being at home is making you fat.’

  A quip about pots and kettles lived and died on Oliver’s lips.

  ‘How’s the family? Wife come to her senses and left you yet?’ Jason laughed heartily at his joke and Oliver smiled. ‘You tell her I’ll be waiting when she gives you the flick.’ He slapped Oliver on the back and barrelled off.

  (I really like him.)

  ‘He’s a good man,’ Oliver agreed.

  (But wholly molly, the size of him. He looks like he could eat both of us and still want pudding. How does a man get that big?)

  Oliver unlocked the car door and glanced back at the building. ‘His wife and daughter were killed in a car crash eight years ago. He’s been eating himself to death ever since.’

  (Is that true?)

  ‘I don’t joke about things like that.’

  (Oh. Poor man.)

  Oliver felt an overwhelming sadness sweep down his body and out his fingertips. He frowned. ‘This is a waste of time. We’ve only been in one building out of hundreds, and even then we could have walked straight past her and not known. Hell, she could have been the woman who made my coffee.’

  (Turn around.)

  Puzzled, Oliver did as he was told.

  (She’s that way.)

  ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  (You keep talking about hell like you have personal experience. Let me tell you something, hell is a pantyhose shortage when you have a dance to go to.)

  Oliver thought about that but there was no obvious come back. He re-locked the car and walked to the intersection.

  (Straight ahead and up the hill.)

  He crossed the road, then one more, passing parliament buildings on the right and puffing slightly as commercial buildings bled into residential.

  ‘Do you actually know where you’re going?’ he demanded.

  (I think so.)

  ‘Couldn’t we have driven?’ There were a couple of twinges in his knee, but it was the extra five kilograms around his stomach that made it hard going. Finally they reached the traffic lights at the top of the hill. To the left were the botanical gardens, to the right a row of old wooden buildings housing an assortment of boutique shops and cafes.

  ‘Which way?’

  (Right.)

  He turned right, walking slowly while his heart rate crept towards normal.

  (STOP.)

  It was so sudden he half fell as his feet instantly complied. ‘What the…?’

  (In there.)

  ‘How do you know?’

  (Stop asking stupid questions.)

  The shop in question was an antique store, its windows stripped straight from a Charles Dickens story and cluttered with trinkets of silver and crystal. An old painting was perched to one side, the frame tarnished and dull. When he opened the door a small bell tinkled discreetly from deep in the shop.

  Inside was equally crammed with items ranging from large wooden dressers, to display cases containing rings and fob watches. Halfway back into the tiny shop was a counter, with an ancient till and an out of place modern electronic payment system. Oliver fully expected an elderly gentleman impeccably dressed in a suit and waist coat to shuffle from the back. The illusion was spoiled by the appearance of a man through a doorway at the back of the shop. He was
in his early forties, wearing jeans and rather disappointingly a Doctor Who T-shirt.

  He offered Oliver a polite smile. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’ Then he turned to the other customer in the shop. She was bent over examining an old wooden desk, her hair falling in such a way identification was impossible.

  ‘On initial investigation it appears that your painting could be quite valuable.’

  The woman straightened and smiled at the man. Oliver’s pulse quickened. Even from side on he could tell she was beautiful. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with long brown hair framing her face, and a light blue dress that stopped just above her knees.

  (Wow.)

  Oliver had to agree.

  ‘Really? How wonderful – I had no idea.’ Her voice was soft and warm, flowing over the man like silk.

  His smile widened to match hers.

  ‘Now you say it was an inheritance?’

  ‘That’s right. My uncle had it sitting in his attic for years. He passed away and I’m the only remaining relative.’

  The owner adopted a solemn expression of regret but his eyes were ablaze with possibility.

  Oliver pretended to examine an extremely ugly wooden carved box. ‘What are we doing here?’ he murmured.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear of your loss Miss…?’

  ‘Tumbleton, Violet Tumbleton.’

  Oliver jerked in surprise, knocking into a shelf, and causing several items to teeter agonisingly close to oblivion. A small china bell slipped off the edge; Oliver lunged and his fingertips knocked it away, onto the floor where it smashed.

  (That dirty louse!)

  Five

  The shop owner scuttled across the shop floor, horror etched into his face.

  ‘I..I..I’m so sorry.’ Oliver’s face burned with embarrassment.

  ‘This is most unfortunate,’ the man replied. Up close Oliver could see he wore a name tag identifying himself as Peter Yarrow, owner.

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ Peter replied primly. ‘But accident or not, you owe me $400.’