That ghost had caused a lot of trouble. I had lost a tooth. And Aunty Flo had wasted two hundred dollars.
7
I didn’t see the ghost again for about a month. I stayed away from the bottom of the garden at night time. I only went in the day. He didn’t come in the day any more. All the same, I made my visits very short.
I did a lot of thinking about that ghost. Who was he? Why was he hanging around a dunny? I asked Aunty Flo about Old Ned who had died down there. ‘Aunty Flo,’ I said one day, ‘you know that old man who lived here when you lost your painting? What did he look like?’
She looked sadly at the place where her lost painting used to hang. And then she said, ‘He always wore an old hat. And he had a beard. A long grey beard.’
I knew at once that the ghost was Old Ned. I felt a bit sorry for him. Fancy having your skeleton sitting on a dunny for a year.
All the same, I wished he would go away. I didn’t want to see him again. But of course I did.
One night I just had to go. You know what I mean. I got my torch out and I went out into the dark, down to the bottom of the garden. I was scared – really scared. My teeth began to chatter again. They were really clacking. I was worried about my plate. With all the clacking it might break. I took it out and held it in my hand. There I sat, tooth in hand, and my real teeth chattering enough to wake the dead. I left the dunny door open. If Old Ned showed up I wanted to get away quickly. I didn’t want to be trapped.
I did the job that I went for. Then I pulled up my pants. I reached up and pulled the chain. As I did so I could feel someone watching me. My hands started to shake. Badly. The plate slipped out of my hand and into the dunny. In a flash it was gone, flushed down the loo.
When I turned around I saw Old Ned standing there. I could see right through him – through his hat, through his beard, through his hands and his face.
He looked very sad – very sad indeed. I didn’t run. I didn’t feel quite so frightened now that I could see him properly. He was trying to say something. His mouth was moving, but no sound came out. And he was pointing. Pointing to the roof of the dunny. I looked up, but there was nothing to see. Just a rusty old roof.
‘What do you want?’ I heard myself say. ‘Why are you hanging around this loo all the time?’
He couldn’t hear me. He just kept pointing at the roof of the dunny. Then he started to fade. He just started to fade away in front of my eyes. Then he was gone – vanished.
I walked slowly up the path. I wasn’t scared any more; not of the ghost. He looked harmless. But I was scared of something else. I was scared of what Aunty Flo was going to say when she found that my plate had gone.
8
The next morning I jumped out of bed early. I wrote a note for Aunty Flo. It said:
Aunty Flo
Gone for a ride on my bike.
I will be back for tea.
Bob.
I set out to look for my tooth. I wanted to find it before Aunty Flo knew that it was gone.
I knew where the sewerage farm was. It was twenty miles away to the north. My tooth had gone north.
It was a long way. The road was very dusty and hot. The paddocks were brown. All the cows were sitting under trees in the shade. There was no shade for me, but I kept riding.
By lunchtime I could tell that I was getting close to the sewerage farm. I could smell it. It was a bad smell – a terrible smell. As I rode closer the smell got worse.
At last I reached the farm. It had a high wire fence around it. Inside were a lot of brown ponds. In the middle of all the ponds was a hut. Inside the hut I could see a man. He was writing at a desk.
That man had the worst job in the world. He was sitting down working in the middle of a terrible stink – a shocking stink. But he didn’t seem to mind. I held my nose with one hand and knocked on the open door.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
He was a little bald man with glasses. He looked friendly. He didn’t seem to care that I was holding my nose. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Have you seen a plate? Has a plate come through the sewer?’ It was hard to talk with my hand holding my nose. It sounded as if I had a cold.
‘A plate?’ he said. ‘No. A plate could not fit through the pipes. It would be too big.’
‘Not that sort of plate,’ I told him. ‘Not a dinner plate. A mouth plate. A plate with a tooth on it. A false tooth.’
‘Ah,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Why didn’t you say. False teeth. Yes, we have false teeth.’
He went over to the wall. There were a lot of baskets there. They all had labels. One said ‘pens and pencils’. Another said ‘watches’. He brought over a basket and dumped it in front of me. It was full of false teeth.
They were all dirty. They were brown. The man gave me a pair of tongs. I started to sort through them slowly. I felt a bit sick. I felt like throwing up. At last I found a plate with only one tooth on it. My precious plate! It looked yucky. It was brown and slimy. And it stank. I thought of where it had been. And where I found it.
I didn’t know if I could ever put it in my mouth again. I wrapped it up in my handkerchief and rode slowly home.
When I reached home I went up to the bathroom. I scrubbed the plate. I scrubbed it and scrubbed it. It got a lot cleaner but it was still the wrong colour. The tooth was not white enough. Next I boiled it in water, but it was still a bit grey. That was as clean as I could get it.
I put it on the table and looked at it. I looked at it for a long time. Then I picked it up and closed my eyes. I shoved it in my mouth very quickly.
9
Old Ned had a lot to answer for. He had caused a lot of trouble. But all the same I felt sorry for him. It couldn’t be fun hanging around a toilet. I wondered why he was there, and why he looked so sad. I decided that I would go and see him to have a talk. I wasn’t scared of him any more.
I waited until Aunty Flo had gone to bed. Then I took out my torch and set out for the dunny. It was very windy and wild. Clouds were blowing across the moon. The trees were all shaking. Leaves blew into my face. It seemed a long way to the bottom of the garden.
When I reached the dunny it was empty. There was no sign of Old Ned. It was cold out in the wind, so I went inside and sat down.
I waited for a long time. The wind started to get stronger. It blew the door shut with a bang. The moon went behind a cloud. It was very dark.
The dunny started to shake. The wind was screaming and howling. Then the walls started to lean over. The wind was blowing the dunny over with me in it. There was a loud crash and the whole thing collapsed. It fell right over on its side. Everything went black.
When I woke up the wind had stopped. My head hurt. But I was all right. No broken bones. Someone was bending over me. It was Old Ned.
He was just the same as before. I could see right through him. But he was smiling. He looked happy. He was pointing at the roof of the dunny. It was all smashed up. I went over and had a look.
Under a piece of tin was a picture frame. It was Aunty Flo’s missing painting, the stolen painting.
I picked up the painting and put it under my arm. Aunty Flo would be glad to get it back. Very glad.
I started to say thanks to Ned. But something was happening. He started to float up into the air. He was going straight up. He looked happy. Happy to be leaving the earth.
He floated up towards the moon. He grew smaller and smaller. At last I couldn’t see him any more. He was gone. I knew he wouldn’t be coming back.
10
Aunty Flo was very pleased to get her painting back. She was so happy that she cried. She hung it on the wall in its old spot. She kept looking at it all the time.
I didn’t tell her about Old Ned. She wouldn’t believe it anyway. But I think I know what happened.
Old Ned stole the painting. He hid it in the dunny roof. When he died he was in Limbo. He was not in this world because he was dead. He could not go to the next world because he had do
ne something bad.
So he had to hang around the outside loo, hoping that Aunty Flo would find her painting. Now that she had got it back he was free to go. When he floated off into the air he was going to a happier place. Wherever that is.
Aunty Flo put in a new toilet. An inside one. It was all shiny and clean. A push-button job. No cobwebs, spiders or ghosts.
Well, that is just about the end of the story. Except for one thing.
One day I was looking at Aunty Flo’s lost painting. It was a painting of her house in the old days, when it had just been built. It had no trees around it. Out the back you could see the outside dunny with the door open.
I looked very closely at that dunny in the picture. Someone was in it! Sitting down. I went and got a magnifying glass and looked again.
It was Old Ned, with his hat and his long beard. He looked happy. He had a smile on his face, and one eye closed.
He was winking at me.
Someone was playing music in the middle of the night. It sounded like a saxophone, or maybe a clarinet. I could only hear it when the wind dropped. But there was no mistake about it.
I shivered even though I was snug in bed. I wasn’t cold. I was scared. Stan and I were the only people on the island, and he was in bed in the next room. I could hear him snoring. So who was playing the music?
It was cold outside and a storm was brewing. I could hear the sea pounding against the cliffs. I got out of bed and looked out of the window. All I could see were the black clouds racing across the moon, and the light from the lighthouse stabbing into the night. The music seemed to be coming from the lighthouse.
I thought about waking Stan up, but I decided not to. He was the lighthouse keeper. He was a nice old boy but I didn’t want him to think I was scared. I was hoping to get a job as a lighthouse keeper myself one day. This was my first night on the island and I wanted to make a good impression.
I climbed back into bed and tried to get to sleep. I tried not to listen to the music. It was soft and far away, but it crept into my brain. It was like a soft voice calling to me. It was saying something; it was speaking without words. I knew I had heard the tune before, but I couldn’t think what it was. It was a slow and haunting tune. Then it came to me. I remembered. It was called ‘Stranger On The Shore’.
Somehow I knew that the music was meant for me. I was the stranger. I had just arrived on the island. The supply boat had dropped me on the shore that very day. But who was playing the music? And why did it make me feel so sad?
I listened more carefully. It was a clarinet. It was definitely a clarinet. And man, I will tell you this: whoever was blowing it knew how to play. It was the saddest and most beautiful music I have ever heard.
Then the music changed. There was something different about it. Finally I realised what it was – another instrument had joined in. It was a saxophone. They were both playing ‘Stranger On The Shore’. It was so sad that I felt like crying, but I didn’t know why.
After a long time I fell asleep with the music still sounding in my ears.
2
The next morning at breakfast I asked Stan if he had heard anything. ‘No, Anton,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear anything. I never do. But I know there is something there. Visitors to the island always hear it. Most people can’t stand it. They get scared and leave. You are the third helper that I have had here this year. The other two left because of the music. They said it kept them awake at night. But the real reason was because they were scared – scared out of their wits.’
He looked straight at me when he said this. He was wondering if I was going to run off too. He glared at me with his one eye. He had a patch over the other one. He looked like a fierce pirate, but he was really a friendly bloke. He loved that island more than anything in the world.
‘Well, who could be playing the music?’ I asked him. ‘And why can’t you hear it?’
He looked at me for a long time. He looked straight into my eyes, as if he was trying to see what I was thinking. Then he said, ‘The last boy went up to the lighthouse one Friday night. The music always plays on Friday night. He took a torch and went off to see who was playing. He was gone for two hours. When he came back he wouldn’t say anything about it. He just said that he was leaving. He wouldn’t speak to me. He wouldn’t answer any questions at all. He just sat and looked at the wall. A week later the supply boat came and he left.’
‘He must have seen something terrible,’ I said. ‘Don’t you have any idea who could be playing?’
‘Put on your coat, boy,’ Stan said, ‘and come with me. I’ll show you something.’
A strong wind was blowing. It was coming from the south west. Stan took me along a track which ran along the top of the rocky cliffs. There were no trees; the wind was too strong for trees to grow on the island. At last we came to a small fence in the shape of a square. Inside were two graves. The headstones faced out to sea. It was a lonely, windswept spot, high on the cliff.
We opened a small gate and went inside the cemetery. I looked at the headstones. The first one was engraved like this:
CAPTAIN RICKARD
1895–1950
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER FROM
1915–1950
R.I.P.
The second gravestone was not much different, but it had another name on it. It said:
ALAN RICKARD
1915–1960
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER FROM
1950–1960
R.I.P.
Stan pointed to the grave of Captain Rickard. ‘He was my grandfather,’ he said. ‘And Alan Rickard was my father.’
Both gravestones had a small drawing in the corner. The one of Captain Rickard had a clarinet. Alan Rickard’s grave had a saxophone.
‘All the lighthouse keepers have been musical,’ said Stan. ‘The Captain played the clarinet. And my father played the saxophone. I play the violin. Do you play anything, boy?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I play the flute.’
3
Stan and I walked slowly back to the house. The wind was blowing strongly. It flattened the grass and made my hair whip into my eyes. Stan had to shout so that I could hear.
‘I can’t play the violin any more,’ he told me. ‘My fingers won’t work properly. I have arthritis. The violin is in the music room at the top of the lighthouse. My grandfather and father used to play up there when they were alive. It was something to do when they were on duty. I don’t go in there any more; I can’t bear to look at my violin.’
Stan’s eye was wet. Perhaps the wind was doing it. Or was he crying?
We walked back to the house without speaking. I didn’t know what to think. Did the two graves have anything to do with that sad music? The dead captain had played the clarinet. And his son had played the saxophone. But they were dead, and dead men play no tunes. Or that’s what I thought.
One day I decided that I would go up to the top of the lighthouse. I might find some clues. But I was not going to go in the night time. Nor was I going to go on a Friday.
The next day was Thursday. I told Stan I was going for a walk to look around the island, but I went to the lighthouse. I had been there before. Stan had taken me up on the first day. I had been in and seen the huge light that went around and around at night. But I had not been in the music room, and I had not been up there on my own.
I pushed open the door at the bottom and went in. It was gloomy inside. There were small windows in the wall and they let in a little bit of light. The stairs went around and around. Stan had told me that there were twenty turns altogether. I went slowly up the stairs. It was as quiet as a grave. About half way up I looked over the side of the stairs. It was a long way down; I felt giddy. I sat down on a step and listened. Nothing. Not a sound. I was sure that I was alone.
At last I reached the top. There were two doors. One led into the light; the other was the door of the music room. I tried the handle. It was stiff, but it opened, and I stepped inside. The room looked like a cabin in a ship.
It had bunks against one wall and maps all over another. There was a desk with a globe of the world on it. Instead of a window there was a small, round porthole. Pointing out of the porthole was a telescope. There was a music stand and a small table. On the table was a clarinet, a saxophone and a violin.
I went and looked at the musical instruments. They were covered in dust; they had not been played for a long time. The violin had a spider’s web inside it. I picked up the clarinet and blew it. A terrible noise came out of it – it sounded like a bullfrog choking.
These instruments could not have been playing on Friday night.
They had not been played for years. I had not got any closer to solving the mystery, but I knew that the music had been coming from that room. I could feel it in my bones.
I decided to leave. There was something creepy about the room. I felt as if someone was watching me.
4
Over the next few months I was kept very busy on the island. I had to measure the rainfall and record the weather. I had to man the radio and listen for ships that were in trouble. And every night at five o’clock I had to climb the stairs of the lighthouse and start up the light. I didn’t go into the music room, and I didn’t say any more to Stan about the music.
But every Friday at about midnight the music would start. It was always sad, haunting music. I could never sleep while it was playing. It seemed to be calling me. The names of the tunes always seemed to have a special meaning – a meaning just meant for me.
It was upsetting. I wasn’t scared any more, but I couldn’t sleep on Friday nights. I just lay there waiting for the music to start. And then I lay awake waiting for it to stop. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wondered who was playing and why.
Paul Jenning's Spookiest Stories Page 3