Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 5, Issue 2

by Penni Russon

  Ghost shrugged and twirled a pile of spaghetti onto her fork. ‘It was okay.’

  Week One had only been three days, and she had spent most of them sitting quietly at the back of various classrooms, trying to be invisible. Her mother had been wrong, as it turned out. Most of the kids knew one another from primary school and Ghost had found it hard to insinuate herself into their clearly established friendships. Recess and lunch, she’d sought refuge by herself in the library. But the expression on her mother’s face was so bright, so hopeful, that she didn’t want to disappoint her.

  Jemima, apparently, had no such qualms. ‘It sucked. I hate that school.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ their mother said. ‘I’m sure it will get better.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t.’ Jemima kicked the leg of the table, hard. Juice sloshed in their glasses. ‘Everyone’s so stupid, I hate them all.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Jem. Once you get to know them—’

  ‘I don’t want to know them. I want to go home!’ Abruptly, Jemima stood up, fork clattering onto her plate. ‘You’ve ruined my whole life, don’t you understand that?’ Her voice broke on the last words and she stormed off. From down the hall came the sound of her bedroom door slamming.

  Ghost swallowed a mouthful of spaghetti. ‘She’ll be okay, Mum.’

  Her mother’s smile was a thin, brave line. ‘Eat up, kiddo. It’s getting cold.’

  * * *

  Ghost sat cross-legged on her bed, surrounded by Flotsam. She’d found a hairclip in the school library that afternoon, tucked between the cushions of one of the reading chairs, and she was trying to decide whether or not to add it to her collection. It was pretty—a glittery combination of red and purple beads fashioned into flowers—but it was also broken, and she thought maybe it was just junk after all.

  ‘She stole it,’ a voice said softly from the other side of the room.

  Ghost jumped. The girl from next door was standing in the corner beside the door—which Ghost had not heard open or close again—winding a long strand of hair around her finger. She was wearing the same baggy smock-thing, and her feet were still bare.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Ghost asked.

  The girl took a couple of steps forwards. ‘You can see me.’

  ‘Of course I can see you.’

  ‘You’re the only one.’

  Ghost stared at the girl. Hard. There was something weird about her, quite apart from the fact that she was standing uninvited in Ghost’s bedroom. Then she took another step and Ghost realised what it was: the girl cast no shadow. She was simply there. Bright and almost glowing, like old-school computer graphics or cheap 3D effects.

  ‘You’re not real, are you?’ Ghost asked.

  ‘I’m real, I’m just not here anymore. Not the way you are.’

  ‘So, you’re...’ Ghost fumbled for the right words, not wanting to be rude. ‘You’re, um, dead?’

  The girl nodded. ‘For a long time.’

  ‘Wow.’

  The dead girl nodded again, then pointed to the hairclip in Ghost’s hand. ‘The girl with braids stole it from her friend with blonde hair. She stamped on it so it would break, and then she hid it in the chair. I think she was jealous.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I just do.’ The dead girl shrugged. ‘I can tell about lost stuff.’

  Ghost set the hairclip down and picked up the ceramic angel she’d found in the front garden. ‘What about this?’

  ‘The lady who lived here had heaps of little statues like that. She had a scruffy brown dog as well, and he used to sneak them away in his mouth and bury them. Mostly, she found them again, but not all the time. She didn’t find that one.’

  Ghost was delighted. She thought for a moment then selected another piece of Flotsam, the tiny blue sandal she’d discovered outside her old house. ‘And this?’

  The dead girl’s fingers were curling themselves into knots. ‘The baby was crying because he had a wet bottie. His Mummy just wanted to get him home and change his nappy and when he kicked off his shoe, it fell out of the stroller and she didn’t notice until they were all the way home again. The day was so hot, she couldn’t bear going out to try and find it, and that made her cry too because now she would have to buy her baby new shoes.’

  Frowning, Ghost dropped the little sandal back into the Flotsam box. The story made her feel bad for keeping the shoe. Maybe if she had left it where she had found it, the mother would have come back the next day.

  ‘Hey—’ she said, meaning to ask the dead girl if she could see where the baby and his mother lived, thinking that maybe it wasn’t too late to give it back, but the dead girl had vanished again.

  * * *

  She came back, though. Almost every night, standing shadowless in the corner or sitting on the end of the bed, telling her Flotsam stories. Most times, the stories were kind of sad. Sometimes they were boring. The dead girl didn’t know the names of the people who had lost the bits and pieces she talked about, or whether they could be returned, so Ghost decided it was best to keep everything in the Flotsam box after all. At least they would be safe there. At least they still had someone to care about them.

  The dead girl didn’t remember her own name either. Ghost started calling her Fidget, because she could never keep still. Her fingers were always restless, fiddling with her hair or the hem of her smock, or just winding and unwinding around themselves.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Ghost asked one night.

  Fidget rubbed her lips together. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  The dead girl pressed her hands over her middle, as though she had a bellyache. ‘I don’t want to remember.’

  * * *

  Jemima was crying. Walking back from the shower, Ghost paused by her sister’s bedroom door and held her ear against the white-painted wood. Muffled sobs and sniffs, like someone pressing their face into a pillow.

  ‘Jem?’ Ghost rapped gently on the door before turning the handle and pushing it open. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Go away,’ her sister mumbled. She was sitting on the floor beside the bed, knees hugged close to her chest. Her cheeks were blotchy and wet. She glared at Ghost with red, watery eyes. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I just...’ Ghost bit her lip. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Jem said. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I might,’ Ghost offered. Half of her was bursting to tell her sister about the dead girl, to show her how much she really did understand about all sorts of adult stuff, but the other half wanted to keep Fidget tucked deep down inside. Her own special secret. Something that no one else knew. Not Jemima, not even their mother.

  That felt more adult than anything.

  Jemima shook her head. ‘Get lost,’ she snapped. ‘Go play with your junkyard.’

  Wounded, Ghost closed the door and walked down the darkened hall to her room. Fidget was standing in the corner, fingers twisting frazzled ringlets into her hair.

  ‘She lost the ring,’ the dead girl said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your sister. She took your mother’s ring to school and now she’s lost it.’

  Fidget had to be talking about their mother’s engagement ring. A slim gold band with three little diamonds. She’d stopped wearing it when their father left, kept it inside a small square box in her top dresser drawer. Ghost knew Jemima snuck into their mother’s room from time to time. She knew her sister took the ring out and slipped it onto her finger, stared at herself in the mirror and made soft little gasping sounds. Oooh. Aaah. What she didn’t understand was why Jemima had taken it to school.

  ‘She wanted the other girls to think she had a boyfriend,’ Fidget said. ‘But she lost the ring and now she’s scared your mother will find out. She’s scared your mother will be angry, but she’s even more scared that she’ll start crying and won’t ever stop.’

  Ghost sw
allowed. ‘Do you know where the ring is?’

  The dead girl’s smile was like a crescent moon. Thin and pale and gleaming with promise.

  * * *

  The ring was right where Fidget had said it would be. Under the seats at the side of the school gym, where it had been kicked unnoticed after slipping from Jemima’s finger during basketball. It was way too big for Ghost to wear—even on her thumb—so she tucked it inside the pocket of her tunic. At lunchtime, she saw Jemima sitting with a group of Year Ten girls but her sister gave her such a scowl that Ghost didn’t approach.

  Fine, she thought, let Jem worry about the ring some more.

  When Ghost got home that afternoon, there was a long, white caravan parked in 27A’s driveway. The blinds were pulled up in the front rooms of the house and the windows were open. From within came faint sounds of classical music. Ghost wondered what it must be like, travelling in the caravan, visiting any place you wanted, coming and going just as you pleased. It must be like being on holidays forever. No school, no homework, no worrying about anything much at all.

  Ghost shook her head and let herself into 27B. With Jemima hanging around with her new friends and their mother still at work, the house was empty. She poured herself a glass of orange juice then hurried to her bedroom.

  ‘Fidget?’ she called, closing the door behind her. ‘Are you here?’

  There was no answer. The dead girl seemed to come and go just as it pleased her as well. Ghost retrieved her mother’s ring from her pocket and dropped it into the Flotsam box where it would be safe until she found a chance to give it to Jemima. If she gave it to Jemima. Maybe she should just sneak it back into her mother’s dresser and let her sister spend the rest of her life worrying about when she was going to get into trouble. It would serve her right for being such a cow. Ghost sat at her desk and dragged the heavy, red maths textbook from her backpack. Three pages of algebra to finish, plus a journal exercise for English. Sooner begun, sooner done, as her mother liked to say.

  ‘Fidget?’ Ghost called again, hopefully.

  Still no answer, not even the faintest prickle of being-watched. She sighed and opened the book.

  * * *

  ‘Ghost? Wake up, Ghost.’

  The voice was right in her ear, right in her head it seemed, and Ghost groggily opened her eyes. Her bedroom was dark, with only the pale light of a nearly full moon shining through the gap in the curtains, but it didn’t matter. Fidget was standing right beside the bed, and she was shining like a sun.

  ‘Wake up,’ the dead girl said. ‘I need you to find something.’

  ‘I am awake,’ Ghost muttered.

  ‘Get up, I have to show you.’

  ‘Fidget, it’s the middle of the night. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’

  ‘No, I need to show you now.’

  The dead girl wasn’t shouting exactly, but her voice was louder somehow. The words felt heavy as they bounced about in Ghost’s head. They felt sharp. She decided not to find out how loud Fidget could get if she became really upset.

  ‘Okay, calm down,’ Ghost whispered, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She paused. ‘We’re going outside, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fidget said. ‘Meet me out the front.’

  Ghost put her dressing gown on over her pyjamas then shoved her feet into her ugg boots. Trying to make as little noise as possible, she slipped down the hall to the front door and inched it open slow enough to avoid its usual squeaks. She left it slightly ajar, hoping it wouldn’t slam shut behind her.

  Fidget was waiting in the yard. ‘Hurry,’ the dead girl said, then pointed to 27A.

  The caravan was still in the driveway, now joined by a large, black four-wheel drive. The house was dark.

  ‘But they’re home,’ Ghost protested. ‘I can’t go in there.’

  Fidget shook her head. ‘Just to the garage. Please.’

  Ghost winced. The dead girl’s words were getting sharp again. Heart thumping in her chest, Ghost followed her down the side of 27A, squeezing past the back end of the caravan and trying not to let her boots scuff on the concrete. Every sound she made seemed to echo far too loudly in the still night air. The driveway ended at a small, single-car garage, just like the one at 27B. It was made of bricks, with a metal door that lifted up. Ghost turned the handle, but the door didn’t move. ‘Locked,’ she whispered, somewhat relieved.

  ‘No,’ Fidget said. ‘Over here.’ She beckoned, then disappeared around the side of the garage. Ghost took a deep breath before following her. The dead girl stood near the back corner, pointing a glowing finger towards the spot where brickwork met overgrown grass. ‘See the loose one? You need to pull it out.’

  Dubious, Ghost kicked at the wall where Fidget pointed. Sure enough, something shifted beneath her foot. She crouched in the dew-damp grass and ran her fingers around the edge of the wobbly brick, which sat two rows up from the ground. A chipped corner gave her something to grip onto and slowly, carefully, she worked it free. The gap it left stared at her, black and reproachful.

  ‘Feel inside,’ Fidget said.

  Ghost shook her head. ‘There could be anything in there.’

  ‘Please.’

  Ghost squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers trembling as she reached into the hole. There was another wall of bricks directly behind, but the inner edge of the row beneath was broken away and something smooth and soft had been wedged there. Awkwardly, she pinched it between her fingertips and wriggled it loose. When she pulled the thing out into the moonlight, the sound Fidget made was somewhere between a sigh and a sob.

  It was a coin purse. Smaller than the palm of Ghost’s hand and possibly made of leather, although it was too damaged for her to tell without better light. Its metal clasp felt rusted shut. When she shook it, there was a faint rattling sound.

  ‘Don’t open it!’ Fidget shrieked. ‘You’re not allowed to open it.’

  Ghost covered her ears. It didn’t help; she wasn’t hearing the dead girl with her ears.

  ‘You have to take it to her,’ Fidget said.

  ‘Take it to who?’

  ‘The lady who lives here.’

  Ghost looked over at the darkened back windows of 27A. ‘It’s the middle of the night, Fidget. She’ll be asleep. I should be asleep.’

  ‘Please.’

  Ghost ground her teeth together. The word felt like needles in her head. ‘Tomorrow, okay? I’ll take it to her tomorrow, straight after school.’

  The dead girl crossed her arms over her chest. ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise, I promise!’

  Fidget stared at her for a moment, hard and sharp and wordless. Then she was gone. Ghost returned the loose brick to its place in the wall before slinking up the driveway and hurrying home to 27B. She half expected to see the place ablaze with lights, to be greeted by her mother with phone in hand, furious and frantic in equal measure. But everything was still silent and dark, and Ghost was able to creep unnoticed to her bedroom. She hid Fidget’s purse beneath her pillow, then curled into a tight little ball and pulled the covers over her head.

  * * *

  The woman who answered the door to 27A had a kind, wrinkled face and a smile that was both welcoming and warm. ‘Yes, dear? Can I help you?’

  Ghost held the coin purse behind her back, freshly smeared with dirt from the garden, but the story she’d practised all day at school seemed to have fallen right out of her head. ‘I... I mean, we... we moved in next door.’

  The woman’s smile widened. ‘Oh, how lovely. I was meaning to pop around and say hello to you all, but we only got back yesterday.’ She nodded towards the caravan in the driveway then held out a pale, wrinkled hand. ‘I’m Carol Eddington. You can call me Carol if you like, we don’t stand on ceremony around here.’

  ‘My name’s Gina.’ Ghost took a deep breath and, before she knew it, the words were tumbling from her mouth. ‘While you were away, Jem and me—that’s my sister—we were playing, um, with a basketball and it
went over the fence into your yard and, um, I hope you don’t mind, but I came in to get it and then I found this, um, kind of buried near the garage?’ She brought the purse out from behind her back. ‘I thought maybe you, um, lost it sometime?’

  Frowning, the woman took the purse from Ghost’s hand. She held it between her finger and thumb as though it were a dead thing. ‘It was buried, you say?’

  ‘I saw the clasp bit sticking up,’ Ghost said weakly. She knew the story wasn’t a very good one but it was the best she’d come up with. And it was a lot better than trying to explain about a dead girl who glowed in the dark.

  Carol brushed away some of the dirt on the purse, revealing the patchwork flower that had been stitched into the leather. ‘I know this pattern.’ The woman’s fingers were shaking a little as she worked the clasp, trying to force the crumbling metal lips apart. Finally, with a spray of rust, the purse opened. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, my.’

  ‘What is it?’ Ghost asked, leaning forward.

  ‘I never thought I would see this again.’ She wiped one hand clean on her blouse then reached into the purse and brought out a heart-shaped pendant dangling from a chain. The gold was tarnished and glinted dully in the late-afternoon sun.

  ‘It’s pretty,’ Ghost said.

  ‘Yes, it is.’ Carol’s voice was hoarse and her eyes glimmered with tears. ‘Look here.’ She eased a thumbnail into the side of the heart, splitting it open to reveal two small, black-and-white photographs: the faces of two girls, one of them grinning widely at the camera and the other—

  Ghost sucked in a mouthful of air. The other girl, the one with dark hair and deep-shadowed eyes, was the spitting image of Fidget.

  ‘Who are they?’ she asked Carol.

  ‘That’s me.’ The woman pointed to the smiling girl. ‘When I was about your age, I’d say. And the other one is my younger sister Emily.’ A tear ran down her cheek and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. ‘She died a long, long time ago.’

  ‘What happened to her?’