Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 12, Issue 2

by Jason Fischer

  ‘Does it sound like something to joke about, Mitchell? We need to find him. Tonight. I’m sure you can guess the urgency.’

  ‘I got my nose broken by a dead girl, so yeah, I kinda can.’ I huff in reluctant amusement, and hear his answering chuckle. It’s not mended, this thing between us, but there’s a light out there somewhere. One day, he could maybe stumble back to a non-terrible interaction. ‘Lachlan said he’d be partying on a ghost ship in the Harbour. A boat he heard about from a Chilean exchange student. I thought he was just being dumb. I swear, Ollie, if I’d known… I thought he liked her.’

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ I sigh. At Ae-Cha’s murmur in my ear, I ask, ‘Does this ghost ship have a name?’

  ‘The Merry Caleuche. He said it’d pass under the Bridge at sunrise, something about a fresh start to the year.’ There’s the faint background noise of a tap, of a glass being filled. ‘Lachlan was wasted when I saw him, he got pretty intense. Said a ghost ship was the perfect place to leave his ghosts behind him. I thought he was talking metaphorically, but if what you say is true… Be careful, Ollie.’

  In the same way they are drawn to isolated boats, ghost vessels are drawn to the pageantry of flotillas and festivals. And on this night of all nights, when yachts and ferries and tiny dinghies crisscross the length of the harbour in search of the best view—of the fireworks display, of sunrise, of the sheer spectacle of Sydney on New Year’s—the shifting darkness is thick with spectral sights. The newer ghost ships of the harbour are almost indistinguishable from the real ones in the dark, red and green navigation lights drifting like foxfire over the waters, winking out as soon as they brush too close to mundane prows. I press up against the railing, elbow knocking Melbo’s as we each strain to read the names of boats as they pass through the faint illumination cast by the city and the arching bulk of the Bridge. If the water weren’t so far below, I’d dip a hand in and ask my cousins to break from their own festivities and join the hunt.

  Meanwhile, Ae-Cha is fretting. ‘Are you sure you want to come with us, Soph? My grandma’s spell didn’t say anything about saltwater, it could be dangerous if you fell in—it could just unravel.’ Her long fingers perform an awkward, tangled dance.

  ‘No way I’m pacing up and down the foreshore while you confront Lachlan.’ Soph scowls, squinting in the dark. One of her snakes flicks its tongue out near my face, black eyes shining under the street light. I raise my hand to brush its blunt head—Soph doesn’t seem to realise they’re getting restless—but it turns its length seaward in one smooth surge, its sudden interest mirrored by its sisters. Soph lifts her chin as if scenting the breeze. ‘Besides,’ she drawls, a note of triumph entering her voice, ‘you lot clearly need me. My head’s coming this way.’

  She points across the harbour, and at last I see a sleek white cruise ferry cutting through the ink-black waves. It moves with the easy roll of a drunkard, slightly out of time with the swell of the water. The heartbeat thump of dance music is the only sound as it draws near.

  Dom unbends from his slouch. ‘Why is it coming so close?’

  And it is coming close, bow pointed at the shore and no sign of slowing. I step back uncertainly, news stories of ferries run aground filling my mind. The tiered decks loom tall in my vision, beautiful and disconcertingly old-fashioned. It sits low in the water; the bottom deck threatens to kiss the waves with every pitch.

  And then, blessedly, it turns away. Water slaps against the stone wall beneath my feet as the ship sweeps past, decks bright-lit from the lights inside. I get an impression of a press of people inside, half-seen bodies dancing past the windows, pounding bass resolving into a familiar song. The Merry Caleuche rolls easily along, running parallel to the seawall, so close you could—

  You could almost touch it. You could almost—

  ‘Come on!’

  Soph comes to the same conclusion a half-second before me and takes off along the footpath. I follow, and the others aren’t far behind. The Merry Caleuche presses close on my left with every tock of its sway, a pale behemoth lumbering in casual pursuit. I put on a burst of speed. Even in these shoes, I manage to outpace the ghost ship.

  Soph has already clambered over the fence, balancing precariously on the narrow footing with one arm looped around the metal post. I hoist myself up next to her. The sandstone blocks curve away beneath me to a straight drop into the harbour some three meters down. I’ve never liked heights, but at least I’m surefooted above the brine. Ae-Cha is gripping the railing like she’s planning to take it with her, and Dom hasn’t even gone over the fence yet. Melbo is all knees and elbows, and his wings are out.

  The ghost ship rocks slowly past, near-far, near-far to its own rhythms.

  To my surprise it’s Ae-Cha who jumps first. She clears the railing and lands heavily on the deck, stumbling to her knees. Melbo lands a half-step behind her, black wings flaring to catch his balance. They stand back from the ship’s railing.

  ‘You can do it,’ Ae-Cha says, voice shaking a little. ‘You just have to time it right.’

  Soph’s eyes are fixed on the hypnotic sway of the ship. Her snakes are bunched close to her head, necks flattened with discomfort. ‘Swear to god, Liv, if I fall and melt like the Wicked Witch, put my glitter in a snow globe.’ She glances back, then coils and leaps.

  She lands so safely, I’d swear the boat rolled off-beat to offer its deck to her. The ship wallows for a moment, then I see a subtle change in its movement. The Merry Caleuche is beginning to pull away.

  ‘C’mon,’ I say. ‘We’ve got to go.’

  Dom has paused in the act of climbing over, perched on the top railing with an expression of trepidation illuminated by the ghost-light. ‘Why’d it sail right here, though? There’s no way we’re that lucky—’

  Soph is at the rails, hand outstretched. ‘Hurry up, you’ll miss it!’

  The jump isn’t so easy now. I set my feet, choose my moment. The ship starts to cant away and I spring forward with all my strength. The heel of my shoe snaps off on landing and I roll awkwardly, but I made it.

  Ae-Cha helps me up, and we cluster at the side of the boat. ‘Dom, there’s no time—are you coming or not?’

  ‘I—fuck, gimme a sec.’ He bobs, trying to judge his leap against the ever-widening gap, and launches high off the railing. For a moment he hangs between. Then his slick-soled shoes hit the broad beam of the handrail and he lands on our side of the gulf, teetering on the rail like a novice gymnast. He finds his balance, and cracks a grin.

  ‘No way!’ Soph crows in delight. ‘I can’t believe you m—’

  The Merry Caleuche yaws into the rough waves of another boat’s wash, and Dom pitches overboard with a yelp.

  He surfaces gasping, clawing at the choppy little waves that buffet him against the sandstone seawall. There’s no lifejacket or anything to throw him, and already he’s almost lost in the churning wash of the ship.

  ‘I’ll get him out,’ Melbo says, pulling off his boots and pegging them over the seawall fence to safety. ‘You do your thing.’ He drops over the side. The last I see of him as the ship pulls away is a black swan diving below.

  The ship is cutting across the harbour in a wide crescent. The bright lights of the CBD rise up behind Circular Quay, making ghosts of the stars and deepening the darkness. I can’t see it yet, but I know dawn is almost here. I take off my damaged shoes, stand still for a moment adjusting to my own height again. The deck is night-cold and tacky with sea-spray.

  Stashing the broken heel in my purse, I look to Soph and Ae-Cha. ‘Just us girls, then.’

  Soph is twitchy, one hand tugging absently at the sudden knot of her serpents. ‘This place reeks of sulphur.’

  ‘More like fireworks,’ Ae-Cha says, wrinkling her nose. ‘Do you want to go up or in?’

  Soph is silent for a moment. ‘Up. Lachlan wouldn’t stay with the crowd.’

  The boat is like an aerodynamic wedding cake, glass-walled decks pierced by metal stairs that clang mu
sically as we climb to the next tier. To get to the stairs to the top level you have to cross a dance floor full of partiers: ghosts and living revellers both. I try to move like I belong, just another tourist to the afterlife. Dancers in zoot suits and flapper dresses, ripped jeans, party frocks, a whole timeline of fashion trends push up against each other, more lively than the mortals in their midst. The music shifts like a poorly-tuned radio as I pass through. Whatever songs they hear bring joy to their eyes and fever to their heels.

  The upper deck is quieter, an empty dancefloor and tired people standing in ones and twos along the balcony, staring out at the lights or the shadowy water, voices hoarse with a night of yelling over the music. I do a loop of the deck, but there’s no sign of Lachlan.

  I almost miss the narrow flight of stairs at the back, cordoned off with a small staff only hanging lopsidedly on a single loop of white chain. Ae-Cha runs her fingertips along it, hunting for any curses scratched in the paint, but its only magic is the ordinary kind of lines and official-looking messages. She unclips this last barrier.

  I pause a couple of rungs up these final stairs, glancing out across the bay. A pale grey light is creeping from the east, though the city is still in darkness. Soph looks up at me from the doorway, backlit by the lights of the dancefloor, and for a moment she seems haloed in a nimbus of shining gold. She lifts a hand to tuck a wayward snake behind her ear, shedding glitter as she goes, and I realise the truth. Ae-Cha’s magic is unravelling.

  Ae-Cha notices at the same time and spins around, trying to snatch handfuls of fine glitter from the air. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry, it shouldn’t be doing that.’ She pats Soph’s skin, to little avail. The glitter sifts away in the ship’s breeze.

  ‘How long do we have?’ I ask, struck with sudden fear.

  Ae-Cha cuts little cantrips in the air a mere breath from Soph’s temples, fingernails lit with licks of foxfire. ‘I don’t know. It’s like some part of you’s trying to jump out of this skin. Go somewhere better.’

  ‘Or older,’ Soph says darkly. ‘Listen, give me a minute to draw his attention. I swear I won’t punch him.’

  I share a look with Ae-Cha. ‘Just… don’t be a hero, okay?’

  She slides past me, leaving smears of gold along my left side. Her heels strike sharp metallic echoes as she goes.

  It’s easy to move quietly beneath such ostentatious cover. We creep up until our heads are just below the top step, Ae-Cha’s elbow digging into my ribs with every breath. Soph skirts around some unseen obstacle and walks out of sight. I tense, ears pricked for any hint of danger, and I wait.

  At first there is just the sound of her footsteps charting an arc away from me. Then, Lachlan, she says, and I hear his bubbling chuckle near the front of the boat.

  ‘I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.’

  Soph’s voice is taut but steady. ‘I like to make an entrance.’

  I ease forward until I can just see the top of Soph’s head. She’s positioned herself on the far side of the top deck, her back to the water. As I watch, Lachlan stands up into my field of vision.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and I remember Mitchell telling me how drunk he’d been. He doesn’t look it now, just rumpled, with the slightly manic energy of an all-nighter high.

  Soph’s expression darkens, and her snakes roil suddenly in the tangle of her hair. ‘Are you seriously asking me to forgive you?’

  ‘I’m not looking for forgiveness, Sophie. I just want you to understand. I didn’t—I did it for a good reason, okay? My mum was sick, the doctors were doing nothing, and you—’ He breaks off, lowering his voice. ‘I remembered my dad telling me a story about his deployment. How this gorgon in his unit drove over an IED, and they couldn’t save her but her blood saved a guy in the same attack. And you’ve got no one—I mean, Olivia and Ae-Cha and them, but no family here. I was going to lose my mum. So I did what I did. I tried to make it quick, but… you were still moving, and your wound was healing, and there was—god, there was a lot of blood. And in the end it didn’t fix a damn thing.

  ‘So, I’m sorry. I know I did an awful thing. But I can’t live my life always looking over my shoulder for you.’

  Soph looks down near his feet, and says, ‘What’s with the tote bag, Lockie? And the ash circle—can’t commit to graffiti, or is this your temporal artwork phase?’ Clear and carrying, so we know what she’s seeing.

  ‘Powder from a leftover firework,’ Lachlan says. ‘And you’re not dumb, Sophie, I think you can guess what’s in the bag.’ He kneels out of sight, rummaging. ‘This is just to bind you to the ship, okay? They told me that this place—it’s like being alive again. I’m not a sadist. But I need the closure. I don’t ever want another nightmare about you.’

  Soph has been feigning nonchalance, but this last is too much for her. ‘You’re whinging to me, the girl you killed, about bad dreams? You want closure, I’ll give you goddamned closure—’

  Soph takes a step forward, lips curled in a snarl. I can’t see Lachlan, but I doubt he’s looking anywhere but her. I slip up the last few stairs, smooth as a flowing stream. Now that I’m standing, I can see it all in a glance: the spiralling spirit-trap filling the floor of the upper deck in swirls of grey powder, Lachlan crouched with one hand in the lumpy black bag at his feet, a lighter in his other fist.

  Soph lunges around the side of the trap as Lachlan pulls his hand out of the bag, and I’m suddenly confronted with its contents as he tosses it in the centre of the spiral: Soph’s face in death, gaunt and terrible, bronze skin dull and fleshless. The snakes flop slackly as the head hits the floorboards. I’m briefly caught in its gaze, and I can’t look away.

  ‘Get moving!’ Ae-Cha drags me forward as she sweeps a swath through the trap with her foot, cutting across the lines. I realise what she’s planning scant seconds before she slaps her open palm on the deck. Lachlan spins towards me, eyes wide with surprise, and I shield my face just as Ae-Cha lights the black powder with foxfire. The pile ignites with a flash that outlines my arm in green-tinged brightness.

  I scoop Soph’s dead head up in the bag and dodge past Lachlan. He’s still dazzled by the small explosion, but he manages to get a fist in my hair. The momentum yanks me around. Soph lands a blow on his chin but pulls back, cradling her hand. I catch a glimpse of glitter dribbling down her fingers, swirling towards the bag in my arms. Then I’m too busy grappling with Lachlan, twisting and struggling across the lines burnt in the floor. I knot my fingers in the handles and turn, bringing my weight down on his inner elbow. He loses his hold and for a second I’m free. I’m off-balance, though, and when he tackles me, I fall against the railing hard enough to bruise my hipbone.

  ‘Give it to me,’ he growls, trying to wrest the bag from my grip. I’m pressed up against the railing—half over it, really. Any second now he’ll realise we know he killed Soph. I don’t know what he’ll do when he realises the shit he’s in.

  I’ve got to get him away from her before then.

  He’s got one arm hooked around my neck. I grip it tight and roll further forward. There’s a brief moment of equilibrium. Then gravity takes over, and we both plunge into the waves.

  At any other time, I would slip into the sea without a ripple. But Lachlan’s got one bag handle clenched in his fist; I need the leverage of human bones and tendons and sharp nails. I hit the surface with a smack, half-stunned by the force of the entry. For a moment I’m caught in the churn of the boat as the Merry Caleuche rumbles overhead. I tumble, tangled in the clinging weight of another body. It is dark down here, barely touched by city lights or the increasingly pale sky. Lachlan kicks, struggling to reach the surface without releasing his grip, but I pull deeper. His movements become more desperate as his air runs out, and I feel his fingertips loosen on the bag. I take my chance in the dark. Hand in the bag, grasping for softened skin and hard bone, searching for a firm hold.

  Then I spin out of his arms. My hair twirls around me like seaweed. For a moment I watch h
im groping blindly at the suddenly empty water around him and think how easy it would be to echo my sisters of old and pull the flailing boy down to the silt and trash of the harbour floor. I leave him to kick his way to the surface, to whatever help he finds. And with Soph’s head cradled in my liquid embrace, I swim with the cross-currents towards shore.

  By the time I’ve pulled myself up a ladder and made my sodden way pierside, the stars have almost faded. The waterfront is littered with the detritus of the night’s party. I sit myself down on the pier on the sunward side of the Opera House, and settle in to wait. All along the walkway and on the steps behind me are the people who’ve stayed up to see New Year’s Day dawn. Some are sleeping, curled on hard concrete. Some are hung-over. Some are probably still drunk, laughing too loudly at their friends’ jokes. I hear snatches of languages from all over. Young, old, families and couples and mates, they’ve all come here to mark a new beginning. I hope that’s what I’m doing, too.

  After a time Dom and Melbo join me, both still dripping from their dunking. Dom drapes Soph’s head in his sopping jacket to hide it from passers-by. The night has well and truly caught up with me, exhaustion clinging like wet sand. I have my mobile clenched between my praying hands, but they haven’t called. I can’t pick out the Merry Caleuche from the other boats on the harbour. Assuming it’s even visible now.

  The darkness is seeping away.

  ‘Would you believe,’ says a familiar voice over my shoulder, ‘that a ship full of ghosts had no lifeboat?’

  I twist around, a burning joy kindling in my chest. Soph is smirking down at me, Ae-Cha picking her way barefoot over the asphalt behind her.

  ‘We had to hitch a ride with the Gull Girls.’ I look up, and catch a glimpse of white-winged harpies circling away to the Quay. Time to worry about what form that favour will take later. Right now, I’ve got Soph, and I’ve got her skull, and the air is turning violet with the encroaching sun. Time to come clean.