Ghosts

by Tess McLennan

  “No, you just focus on dance. And besides, we are doing okay. I’m ahead on the rent, and I just paid the bills for this quarter. We might even be able to eat steak this week.” I pulled my pasta out of the microwave. The aroma of garlic and basil met my nostrils. I always looked forward to eating my own cooking. Even if it was pasta again, for the third day in a row.

  Clem stared past me at the television set on the wall, as I sat down at the rust coloured table in the centre of the lunchroom. A news story was on about a missing girl from Ridges Point, one town over from Miller Creek, probably for the hundredth time that day, boring all the housewives half to death. Emma Thomas had gone out for her usual morning walk with her pet Rottweiler, and never returned. The dog had turned up in a park some distance away from Emma’s house, apparently unharmed. It didn’t matter that there weren’t any leads in the case – the news report was the same, every hour.

  “Do you think they’ll find her?” Clem asked, still staring at the screen, as she pulled some strawberries out of her bag, on special for $2.49 a pack. I had become very good at shopping on a budget. I considered it one of my special talents. This sort of methodical planning was how we didn’t totally end up living in a ditch, and my mind was always tick, tick, ticking away with due dates, bill amounts, roster hours… Tick, tick, tick. Never stopping. No time for the unplanned.

  I shrugged my shoulders. I tried not to watch the news too often, in an effort to avoid stories like this one. It was stories like these where the comparisons to Marella’s disappearance started… was it the same perpetrator? Is there a serial killer out there? Blah, blah, blah… it was all the same, and nobody ever came any closer to a conclusion.

  Clem saw my hesitation to talk about Emma Thomas and changed the subject. “So I’ve decided, I’ll get a job here if I don’t get into WAAPA. I’ll go to uni in Brisbane. I can help you with the rent, and the food.” Clem placed a strawberry in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, apparently pleased with her plan.

  She was right. School had let out for Grade 12 in mid November, and I could tell Clem was getting itchy feet with being a high school graduate already. She was stuck in that chasm of time between finishing school and waiting for her real life to start. Clem had auditioned for the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and was waiting to hear on the results. She belonged on the stage, she deserved more than anyone to be accepted to WAAPA. And deep down in my heart, I knew working at Johnny’s was helping her to achieve her dreams, despite her constant protestations that I’d put my entire life on hold for her. The thought that my job might help Clem get to WAAPA was what got me through my day. It was a better alternative to a slug of vodka in my morning coffee. I was doing better than the week before, when I’d almost sliced off my fingers in the machinery in my drunken haze, and realised I needed to clean up my act or risk having a stump for a hand.

  “It’s not too late to take your photographs to that guy Dante either. He still calls sometimes asking for you. And his space isn’t going anywhere.”

  My heart sank at the thought of my camera, out there in the hands of some amateur teenage photographer. The type that bought an expensive camera, then only used it to take selfies. It was like buying a beautiful vintage dress, only to wear it with a hoodie and thongs. To me, things like that had the potential to incite total civil unrest.

  Or the camera was most likely sitting under their bed, like a discarded toy. It was traded in to buy food for our table, like we lived in some ancient civilization where survival meant hocking off the family silver. Dante, who owned the local gallery, had been calling every couple of months for the past few years, hoping I’d come back to the game. He’d seen a number of my photographs of Clem, and had proclaimed loudly, “Genius!”, although Dante’s larger than life personality meant most things were a great exaggeration of the truth.

  My mind flashed back to the days and weeks following Marella’s final disappearance when the hocking of the camera took place. It didn’t matter that she’d gone off before, for a few days at a time, sometimes on a bender, sometimes with a man… she always came back. And when she did, we would always eat a roast dinner together like nothing ever happened. One big happy family. For Clem, it was water off a duck’s back. For me, the chip on my shoulder just kept getting bigger and bigger with each disappearance.

  Then, one day she was gone for good, I got a job at the supermarket, Clem continued dancing, and my story ended there. At that moment, as I sat opposite Clem in the lunchroom of the supermarket where I worked, I doubted whether anything more would ever be written about me.

  I chewed my pasta, savouring each bite and counting the minutes before I had to return to work. The news story about Emma Thomas had ended, and the newsreader was now reporting on the death of a celebrity I’d never heard of. Clem always came and sat with when I had lunch, and I knew each time, she felt guilty for me still working in the dead-end supermarket to support us while she lived out her wildest dreams. I had always been adamant that my time would come when hers did. I hadn’t lost all spark of motivation in my body yet, but the clock was ticking and the burning fuse was slowly fading away.

  Clem continued talking, while I pretended to listen, lost in my own thoughts.

  “Anyway, results are supposed to come out today or tomorrow. I guess whenever they make their decision.” She put her hand on top of mine across the table. “Did somebody say something to you today about Jim?”

  “About Jim?”

  “Yeah. Well, no. They usually don’t say anything. They just stare.”

  Clem stood up, grabbing her bag. “Keep your chin up.”

  I put my empty container back in my handbag. “Shouldn’t I be telling you that?” Apart from the overheard conversation with the obnoxious customers, I hadn’t given Jim a second thought. I rarely thought of him at all.

  “You do enough.” She smiled. Clem was remarkably insightful for a girl her age.

  I said goodbye to Clem at the door of the lunchroom, and watched her walk back towards the sliding doors of the supermarket. I re-entered the delicatessen, as another line of customers began to form in front of me. The enemy on the front line. I realised long ago that my daily struggle was not only with them, but also with myself. Battling with the swelling discontentment in my heart, discontentment that could make you feel so closed in, making it hard to breathe. It was a disease, eating away at the soul slowly, and you’re left struggling to get out of bed each day, wondering where the purpose lies, what the point is. I had been such a hot shot, so goddamn aware of myself, my talents, and I used what I had to get ahead. Now, I couldn’t shake that feeling that bigger things awaited, the feeling of wanting more out life… and that worthwhile, memorable things were happening to everybody else but me. Things I’d always imagined would be happening to me. Things I’d planned to happen to me. How the mighty had fallen.

  Every single day, it was the same routine. Get up, go to work, go home. Repeat. 7-5 five days a week at Johnny’s. Get up, go to work, go home, repeat.

  My grandmother Noreen used to say that discontentment could make the rich man poor, and I realised as I shovelled ham into a bag for a rather obese man with suspenders, that I was that rich man, disguised as a supermarket clerk.

  4

  Miller Creek was one of those small towns where everybody knew each other, one of those places that still held onto it’s country charm, despite the addition of a McDonald’s, KFC and a number of Indian restaurants. If you walked down the main street of town, you were always guaranteed to see at least a dozen people you knew. Buying groceries was the social event of the week for many of the older ladies, and the town was always rife with gossip. The people of Miller Creek were never polite about keeping others’ business to themselves, and if you happened to find yourself at the centre of a scandal or other noteworthy affair, you were talked about endlessly, until the next interesting thing came along. Miller Creek was a town divided firmly between those who believed in the devotedly spiritu
al, the occult and UFO activity, and the bigots who tolerated them, but refused to move away.

  Finishing work at Johnny’s each day gave me immense relief, like a weight being lifted off my shoulders. I walked out the sliding doors at four-thirty on the dot, the bright December sun shining in my eyes, heat whipping my face as I left the cool air-conditioned supermarket. I always found it funny how I could be inside the supermarket all day, never knowing what the weather was like outside, for the lack of windows. I made my way down in the escalator to my car, parked in the basement car park and I pulled my phone out of my handbag. Be home soon, I typed to Clem, hitting send.

  Suddenly, my head jerked backwards, and I found myself looking at the concrete roof above me. I reached to the back of my head, scratching at the hands around my ponytail, my phone flying out of my hands and smashing with a crack onto the hard ground.

  “Hey!” I heard a girl’s voice yell, followed by the sound of heinous laughter from a number of others. “Hey bitch!”

  I couldn’t make out how many were around me.

  My attacker then pushed her face up against mine, her hot breath making me gag. It was the putrid smell of an unhealthy, festering person.

  It was Britney Ivenhoe, a notorious bruiser in town. She and I were in the same grade at school, and I never had a problem with her, until now. I kept my head down at school, trying unsuccessfully to blend into my surroundings. Britney was a girl who liked to throw her exceptionally large weight around, to compensate for her lack of personality or any other defining characteristic. The perfect example of white trash, her hair was always dyed platinum blonde, and her clothes consistently two sizes too small. Her acrylic nails were more like the talons of a crow than a fashion accessory.

  “What!” I screamed, surprising myself at the volume of my voice. It echoed through the basement carpark.

  “Michael! I know about Michael!”

  I didn’t know that Michael was otherwise tied down to Britney, as he clearly never thought to mention it. We never spent much time talking about the important things in life, so I supposed the beating I was about to get from Britney was well deserved.

  “You got anything to say?” I could see one of the other girls cracking her knuckles out the corner of my eye, clearly enjoying the cliché.

  “Get her!”

  Like a dog trainer giving the signal by clicking her fingers, the canines attacked on cue. Britney let go of my hair, and she joined the girls in their scratching, kicking and punching. I covered my face with arms in defence. They had me surrounded, and it seemed like I was huddled in the same defensive position for hours as they laid one blow after the other into me. Eventually, the force of their attack became too much, and I fell to the ground, arms still covering my face.

  “Hey!” I heard somebody yell, after what seemed an eternity. “HEY BRITNEY!”

  Britney was suddenly airborne, as somebody grabbed her from behind and pulled her away. The sound of shuffling feet could be heard on the concrete as the other girls quickly backed away from me.

  “Henry! We was just playin!” I heard Britney shriek, followed by another cackle of God-awful laughter. I uncovered my face just in time to see Britney and her pets taking off from the carpark in their dodgy old Corolla. Their tyres screeched on the concrete floor, leaving a faint smell of gasoline and burnt rubber in the air.

  He was tall, with dark, wavy hair and piercing blue eyes. I didn’t even mind the three-day stubble on his face, despite my absolute no-beards policy. He could have easily been Clark Kent in a Superman film, and for a second or two, I thought I was seeing a mirage. I always believed men who looked like that, and turned out to be genuinely nice guys, must make their mothers cry with happiness. I supposed it would be like winning the child bearer’s lottery, to have created and then raised such an exceptional being.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, holding out his hand to help me up.

  I nodded. “I think so.” My arms and legs ached from being kicked, and I could feel the air starting to set into some of the deeper scratches. I leaned down to pick up what was left of my phone.

  “Let me take you to the hospital.”

  “No, I can drive myself, it’s fine.”

  “Well, let me follow you at least.”

  I insisted the hospital wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. Despite the fact he was handsome and obviously a Good Samaritan, there was no way I was going to let myself be locked in a car with a complete stranger for the drive over the hospital in Ridges Point. My arms and legs ached as I drove, the man following close behind. I expected him to veer off into a side street, figuring it was too much effort to keep up with me, but he didn’t. We sat for an hour and a half in the hospital waiting to be seen, despite my constant protestations that I was fine, and that he should go and get on with his night. He just smiled and shook his head, saying it was fine, and he wanted to make sure I was okay. After a five-minute exam, the doctor prescribed me some painkillers and told me to come back if I felt sick in the stomach.

  The man’s name was Henry. He was a few years older than me, and a music teacher. He had been teaching his private students that afternoon in the town hall, and needed to buy eggs for his sister from Johnny’s, when he had spotted Britney and her mates.

  Afterwards, Henry insisted that we get something to eat together. We walked down the main street of Ridges Point, entering a retro diner named Martha’s, decked out like a diner in old American movie. So retro, it even had a bell on the handle to signal our arrival. I handed Henry a $20 note and asked him to order me a hot tea and a burger, as I excused myself to the bathroom to check my appearance. My hair was a mess, and I quickly tied it back into a topknot, before pulling some powder out of my bag, and patting my face. I thought I looked pretty decent for someone who had just emerged from a punch-up. I even added some extra mascara to my upper lashes.

  I walked back to the table where Henry had found us two seats. He had ordered two teas, English Breakfast, and they sat piping hot on the table, steam rising from the teapots. The teapots were printed with black cats all over them. He held the twenty-dollar note out to me, and I shook my head at it. He folded it, and slipped it into my shirt pocket. It was an oddly intimate act for a person I’d only just met. I knew then that if we ever met again, we’d probably end up having heated sex in the back of his car.

  “Thank you again for helping me,” I said, as I poured tea into our mugs, pushing the pocket incident out of my mind. The mugs matched the teapots. “Nobody else would have dared get involved with those girls.”

  “Well, Britney was a friend of my sister, and she’s always had this weird respect thing for me. She’s always been a bit of a thug.”

  “How awful for your sister,” I said, sipping slowly, trying not to burn my tongue. I added more milk to the tea.

  “Well Aggie should have thought twice before she got herself pregnant to Britney’s brother.”

  “Now she’s never going to get away from her,” I said bleakly.

  I sipped again, waiting for him to ask me what my beef with Britney was. It wasn’t far off the story of Aggie getting pregnant. Why was sex always the culprit in these things? Funnily enough, it wasn’t the beating I endured from Britney and her mates that made me swear off ever seeing Michael again right then and there, but the story from Henry about his sister. It was probably the wakeup call I needed.

  “So what did you do to her?”

  “I’m not sure, I guess she was just looking for a bit of fun,” I lied.

  “Funny. She doesn’t seem like the type to just go after random people.”

  I nodded in silent agreement.

  “Pardon me for asking, but you’re Imogene Fuller, right?”

  “Yeah, I am. How did you know?” I knew exactly how he knew. I’d been down this very road before. Imogene… as in Fuller? Oh, I saw you in that newspaper that time.

  “I’ve seen your name around in… in places. And Imogene isn’
t a very common name. Your sister is an amazing dancer, isn’t she?” The waitress appeared with our burgers at that point. Henry thanked her with a flash of his brilliant smile. The waitress blushed, as she handed our plates over.

  “Yeah, Clementine...” I let my voice trail off, not wanting to give away more than necessary.

  Simultaneously, Henry and I both began to cut our burgers in half.

  There was a moment of silence again, and I felt as though Henry was holding back his questions out of politeness, something that always agitated me more than the actual questions themselves.

  I put my knife and fork down with a loud clank against the china plate. “Look, if you have questions, all you have to do is ask. Don’t beat around the bush.” I was tired of people always skirting around me.

  Henry put down his knife and fork too, without looking offended at my outburst. “Okay, I’m sorry. It was rude of me to keep hinting and to expect you to lay it all out on the table so easily. I guess with the Emma Thomas thing that’s going on lately, there’s been renewed interest in you guys too…”

  I shook my head, and continued eating. The last thing I wanted to talk about what Emma Thomas. The news reports now seemed to end every story on her case with possible links to Marella. “It’s okay. I get it a lot actually.” I felt like retreating into my little shell and never coming out.

  “Its just, well you know… the talk in small towns. Imogene and Clementine Fuller, well they’re practically household names. I mean you were on the front page of every newspaper in the country at one point. You’d have to be living under a rock not to notice that.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Sorry, is this making you uncomfortable?”

  “No, no. It happened a long time ago,” I lied again.