Gap Year in Ghost Town

by Michael Pryor

  Me? I admit I don’t know everything about ghosts. I’m learning, and I just hope I’m learning fast enough.

  I have picked up one thing, though, in my time. Just because people can’t see ghosts doesn’t mean that they’re harmless. Give them half a chance and they’ll latch onto you, unseen, whispering away underneath your notice, and they’ll drain you in an effort to keep themselves around. Mostly, you won’t die – although it depends on how healthy you are to begin with – but they’ll definitely affect your quality of life. You’ll get sick easier, you’ll find things harder, you’ll get less joy out of things you used to love. On top of that, the stronger ghosts will do you more harm, in nasty ways, just because you’re real and they’re not.

  The next day, when Dad arrived at the bookshop, I was ready to give him my report. I wasn’t going to mention much about Rani apart from the fact that she’d been there and she was interested in the Marin approach to ghosts.

  I admit, her words had stung. I was ready enough to doubt the Marin family cause, but I wasn’t ready to agree with strangers who doubted the Marin family cause. Were we just paddling around the edges of the ghost business? Were we really doing anything much to help the fight?

  I moved on pretty quickly to the details of the ghost encounter itself.

  This was an important part of the whole gig. Dad had a big notepad and jotted down the details of the location, the time, and the ghost itself. He drove particularly hard on details of clothing and then the memories that I’d experienced at the moment the ghost dissolved. He made me go over that four or five times, each time extracting a little more that I hadn’t remembered first time around.

  Since I’d started ghost hunting seriously, I’d added a couple of things to the project. In lots of ways, Dad was old-fashioned. Technology had never really made it onto his radar, since he didn’t understand radar.

  Joke.

  One of the first things I’d done when we’d agreed to my ghost-hunting gap year was to add GPS coordinates to every ghost location I came across. Explaining GPS to Dad took some time, but he got it in the end, and actually became a fanatic for exact coordinates. He insisted that I buy a top-of-the-line unit to carry with me (Spectra Precision!) and he started insisting on the same level of accuracy from his network of informants.

  And so we took ghost hunting into the twenty-first century with tiny baby steps.

  He studied his notes when we finished. ‘A straightforward enough encounter, Anton.’

  ‘As straightforward as an encounter with a ghostly groundskeeper can be, I suppose.’

  ‘And you’re sure that not a hint of a name came to you?’

  ‘Nothing. Sorry.’

  He tapped his teeth with the fountain pen he’d been using. ‘Still, I have enough to work with. Good.’

  Dad stood, patted me absently on the shoulder, and wandered out of the kitchen. After a minute or two, I followed.

  Dad was nowhere to be found.

  I grinned. This was my favourite thing in the shop.

  Now, just having a bookshop was pretty cool in itself. But having a bookshop with a secret room was even better. And best of all, this secret room was reached through a Revolving Bookshelf Wall!

  I got to the room – the last one before the kitchen, on the right – and heard the ‘snick’. I ignored the sign over the door (‘Philosophy, Eastern. Railways, European’) and entered the room that was just like all the others in the shop. No windows, but a skylight let in murkiness enough. Bookcases lined the walls, and four rows of free-standing shelves filled the middle of the room.

  I went to the far corner of the room. Being as tall as I am, finding the catch isn’t hard. The shelf is so well balanced, thanks to Dad’s clever carpentry, that all it takes after that is a gentle tug and a metre of bookshelf, hinged at the far end, opens enough to slip behind, into the secret room that holds the Marin archives.

  In some ways, the secret room is the heart of the Marin ghost-hunting enterprise. It’s long and skinny, running behind three whole rooms on the right-hand side of the shop. It’s chock-full of tables, desks, filing cabinets and map cabinets (those sets of really slim drawers). Some of these cabinets are spanking-new space-age metal, probably titanium or beryllium or something, and some are wood milled from trees that suffered from dinosaur nudges. Oh, and there’s everything in between.

  Dad had a bunch of new index cards – we have a stationery supply – and sat at a very small desk. He began to turn his notes about my encounter last night into official Marin family records. When he was done, they’d become the latest addition to the archive, an archive that goes back to the early nineteenth century, documenting all the ghost encounters Marins have had.

  On top of that, the room is also a repository for all the texts Dad has assembled about ghost hunting. There’s a small publishing industry among ghost hunters for thoughts and observations about the business. Not blockbuster bestsellers, maybe, but they’ve always found a ready readership among those who are in the know.

  I like to wander around this room, pulling out records and reading them at random. Sometimes when Dad’s here, I’ll ask him about his grandfather, or go even further back in family history. It depends on his mood what sort of answer I get.

  The most complete records only go back to the 1940s, when Great-granddad came to Australia. He wasn’t able to bring much from the old country, and this caused him much heartache.

  Now, I’m not saying that Dad was over-compensating for the incompleteness of the old records by being extra, extra obsessive about the most recent ones, but someone else might. If I told them about it, which I wouldn’t. Not straight away, anyway.

  Lately, I’ve been going through the journal Aunt Tanja left behind. She was right out there on the edge of ghost studies, in thinking and experimenting. Dangerous stuff, but the more I read the more I want to read, you know? I just wish she was still around to help me with it all.

  I left Dad happily recording away and went back to being bookshop guy. This meant sitting at the front counter and answering questions like ‘Biographies of Jazz Musicians?’ with questions like ‘Continental or North American?’ and ‘Have you found our Lord and Saviour?’ with ‘Why? Have you lost him?’

  Small things can make life worthwhile.

  I gave Aunt Tanja’s journal a rest, and started poring over some stuff about the Company of the Righteous that I borrowed from the archives. When it got too baffling, I plugged away at the spreadsheet. The whole paper-based system was an omnishambles, but I wasn’t going to let it beat me.

  When the telephone rang, I was so engrossed in rows and columns that I didn’t grab it straight away. When it cut off, I guessed that Dad had grabbed the extension in the secret room.

  It wasn’t long after that when Dad emerged, looking thoughtful. That’s not unusual for him, so I didn’t give him a second glance. That is, until he came and stood behind me.

  I looked over my shoulder. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the front door.

  ‘That was the phone,’ he said.

  ‘Looked like a white station wagon to me.’

  ‘Before,’ he said without a trace of impatience, which started alarm bells ringing. Dad didn’t have a great record of appreciating my sparkling wit. In fact, phrases like ‘Can’t you be serious for just a minute?’ and ‘Was that meant to be funny?’ were on high rotation in the Marin household.

  I’m undervalued, I tell you.

  ‘When it rang,’ he said without taking his eyes off the door and the world outside. ‘That was the phone.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘It was Grender. He’s late, but he’s still on his way.’

  ‘Ah. Oh.’

  Now, I may have given the impression that seeing and hunting ghosts is a thing that solely belongs to certain families bound together by centuries-old traditions in this liminal world. Well, that’s not the whole picture.

  Think of ghost sensitivity as a spe
ctrum. Me, I’m right up one end where I can see them, interact with them and, hem, hem, ease their passage to the next world. Rani and her like are up at this end of the scale, too.

  Right down the other end is the bulk of humanity. You could hit them over the head with a soggy ghost and they wouldn’t have a clue.

  Now, between the bulk and the big cheese ghost-hunty types is a range of people with a range of abilities. Just like some families will throw up a redhead without any redheads on either side of the family, sometimes someone will be born who has a level of ghost sensitivity. Ah, the wonderful world of genetics!

  Grender was one of Dad’s most useful informants, and he was one of those with a tad more ability than most. He could see ghosts, dimly, and could sense when they were about. Of course, it helped that he hung around a lot in the sort of places ghosts congregated. Basements. Subways. Underground lairs. Graveyards. Which should give you a clue as to his sparkling personality.

  ‘Grender has a sighting for us,’ Dad said.

  ‘And he wanted to share it with us through sheer generosity?’

  ‘Cash,’ Dad said. ‘Half now, half when confirmed.’

  ‘The usual, then.’

  A shadow fell on the window. A few seconds later, it was followed by a roughly human shape that waddled to the door, hesitated, looked around, then squeezed into the shop.

  Grender was as avocado-shaped as a human being could be without being declared a new species of fruit. He looked as if a massive three-metre-tall bald guy had been compressed until he was about a metre and a half tall, with most of the compression bulging out around waist level.

  He wore a black jacket, black trousers, black knee boots, a chinstrap beard (black), sunglasses and a black beret.

  There is such a thing as trying too hard in this quasi-occult world we work in.

  ‘Marin,’ Grender said after he’d closed the door and put his back to it. He grinned. His teeth were surprisingly small for such a bulky man. ‘And Marin Junior.’

  I leaned back in my chair. ‘Hey, Grender, nice beret. You mug a poodle?’

  Grender worked his mouth for a while but all he could come up with was ‘Yeah, as if.’

  Score: Anton, about a billion. Grender, zero.

  Dad put his hand on my shoulder. ‘What do you have for us, Grender?’

  Grender shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

  He looked positively smug. One of his many business ventures must be paying off for him, in money or in chuckles. Grender’s idea of chuckles, though, made me shudder a little.

  ‘Yes, we would like to know,’ Dad said. ‘You did call us, after all.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Right.’ Grender pulled a hand out of a pocket and consulted his phone. ‘This is a hot one, okay?’ He glanced right, then left. ‘You interested in an asylum ghost? I’ve got information about an old one taking shape.’

  ‘Asylum ghost?’ Dad made a face. ‘Some dreadful deaths in those asylums.’

  ‘Yeah, you bet.’ Grender was cocky. Grinning, he consulted a little black notebook while he held his phone in the crook of his arm, then clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. That cocky. ‘You heard about Yarra Bend Asylum?’

  I flipped my gaze up to the ceiling as I tried to see a map in front of me. I mean, I couldn’t exactly nip into the secret room and grab a map while Grinning Grender was here, could I?

  Right, Kew is over there, across the Yarra. Downstream is Clifton Hill and Collingwood. Too far. Back up a bit. Yarra Bend.

  ‘Fairfield?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s right. An asylum used to be there, near where the Merri Creek runs into the Yarra. Up from the golf course, down from the TAFE.’

  ‘Right where the freeway goes through,’ Dad murmured.

  ‘Pretty much.’ Grender put his phone away. ‘I heard there’s a Watcher there. Normally, I’d go and check it out first but I thought you might like it quick smart, right?’

  I nearly groaned. Watchers are pretty common, for ghosts. They rarely pester people and often go unnoticed, even by super-sharp pros like us. They haunt places in the most ghostly sort of way, almost invisible, hardly pressing themselves on the fabric of this world, which means they don’t need a lot of life to stick around.

  Small stuff. Rani’s words came back to me and made me wish Grender had brought us a Growler, or a Thug, maybe. Something more sinister, more challenging.

  Dad’s eyes went distant. ‘I’ll have to check the records, but I don’t think anything’s been seen in that vicinity for decades.’

  ‘No idea about that,’ Grender said. ‘All I know is I’ve found one, and it’s an earner for me.’

  He held out his hand.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ Dad said.

  ‘You doubt me?’ Grender spread a hand on his chest. It left plenty of chest uncovered. ‘I have a reputation to uphold.’

  I snorted at that. I had suspicions that these days Grender subcontracted all his ghost spotting to lesser talents, no doubt skimming off the fat part of the money for himself.

  Dad paid Grender after a bit of haggling. Grender handed over a scrap of paper with the location on it, then left.

  ‘He’s had good information in the past,’ Dad said before I could express any doubts.

  ‘Maybe, but remember that Mocker he sold us a couple of months ago? The one near Spotswood station? Turned out to be a bust but he claimed someone must have got in before us?’ ‘So he isn’t one hundred per cent trustworthy,’ Dad said. ‘Still, you should investigate tonight.’

  ‘Sure. Investigate, and scratch one Watcher.’ I flexed my shoulders. ‘It’s a big night coming up for Anton Marin, Ghost Hunter.’

  ‘Wear something warm.’

  ‘Will do.’

  I’d only been home for a few minutes and was preparing for my sleep, when Bec came over.

  She barged straight in, a new board game in her hands. ‘Telestrations,’ she said. ‘You’ll love it.’

  Bec is the queen of board games. We’ve spent hours and hours absorbed in them at my place, her place, on holidays, when it’s raining, when it’s not. Even though she’s always getting me to play new ones she’s picked up – I don’t think I’ll ever get over my first game of Cards Against Humanity – we often go back to old favourites, like Catan, just for nostalgia’s sake.

  ‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘Not a game. Not now.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I won’t need it as an excuse to talk to you about stuff that’s been on my mind.’

  ‘Bec. Sorry. Don’t get me wrong, but I have to go to—’

  She kept marching down the hall, leaving me at the door, and kept talking as if I was trailing behind her, which I was forced to do by the momentum of her entrance.

  ‘This whole ghost thing is pretty interesting,’ she was saying. ‘It could open up entire new areas of science.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure if it is science,’ I said.

  ‘Everything is science,’ she said. ‘If you look hard enough.’

  ‘Well, yeah, maybe. Is that the time?’

  Bec reached the kitchen and went straight for the tea-making facilities. We had lots of them. She’d made sure of that.

  I’m not a tea drinker. I have nothing against tea, mind, apart from it tasting like a bunch of wet leaves, but I’m quite happy to have it around, instead of in a special tea-drinking bunker some distance from any inhabited area, as many sensible people have suggested.

  The result of this is that Bec, like many tea drinkers, has built up a huge stock of boxes, sachets, packets and bottles that hold the makings of a cup of tea. Despite the fact that some of these vegetative conglomerations have nary a trace of actual tea, she is quite happy to swap from one to the other, according to mood.

  She saw my face while she was adjusting the water level in the kettle. ‘The trouble with you, Anton, is that you laugh at anything you don’t appreciate.’

  ‘That is so true,’ I s
aid. ‘I also laugh at lots of things I appreciate.’

  ‘So,’ she said, sitting down with her concoction du jour and interrupting my almighty yawn. ‘I thought I’d help you out with your ghost hunting.’

  I sat opposite her, put my elbows on the table and rested my head in my hands. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Wait – I actually know it’s not a good idea.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘It’s dangerous, for a start. Actually, that’s for a finish, as well. Ghost hunting is dangerous.’

  ‘I’ve gathered that. Some of the stories you tell…’

  Well, maybe I’d exaggerated when re-telling some of the stories Dad had told me, but only a little. Still, it wouldn’t hurt if it kept Bec at a distance from ghosts.

  ‘You know that ghosts want to latch onto people and draw off any vitality they can.’

  ‘It’s such an old-fashioned word, “vitality”.’

  ‘It’s what the books use. I guess you could substitute “essence” or “soul” or “cosmic energy”. The result’s the same.’

  ‘I know – lethargy, weakness, increased susceptibility to disease, headaches, skin rashes, ringing in the ears.’

  ‘And stuff that’s even harder to pin down, like paranoia, irrationality, vague feelings of being unwell. People can die from a ghost attachment, though most don’t.’

  ‘So that’s why I thought I could help out in a back-room capacity.’

  ‘Who’s the what?’

  ‘I’m going to work out the best way to digitise your family’s record-keeping and archives. That stuff’s too valuable to leave lying around on paper.’

  ‘Bad idea.’

  ‘Explain.’

  I ran both hands through my hair. I needed to get some sleep, but I also needed to sort this out with Bec. ‘One: Dad won’t let you touch his precious records and archives. Two: there’s so much there that it’ll take you forever. Three: some of the records are likely to drive you insane.’

  ‘Oh. Magic stuff that’ll eat my brain?’