Gap Year in Ghost Town

by Michael Pryor

  Eyes aren’t meant to move like that, though, and mouths aren’t meant to do that sort of writhing. It was upsetting to look at her, upsetting at a really deep level, the place inside that shouts, ‘It’s WRONG!’

  The Rogue giggled, a sound that was muffled, as if it came to us from inside a plastic bag, then she spun, twirling like an ice-skater, arms outstretched so we could see that one of her nails, left hand, was dripping red.

  ‘I guess that when a Rogue goes Froot Loops,’ I said to Rani out of the corner of my mouth, ‘it really goes Froot Loops.’

  From deeper in the apartment, a woman – a living, breathing woman – stepped into the living room and I nearly lost it. She had an armful of manila folders, but that was about the only sane thing about her. She was wearing a pale yellow dressing-gown, unbuttoned, over a flower-print nightie with a torn and muddy hem. She had one green slipper. The other foot was scratched and bleeding from dozens of places. At least one toenail was missing. Her hair was dark and tangled, with a half-tied blue ribbon draped over one shoulder. She stared at us, with eyes that were wide and red-rimmed and unblinking.

  She made the Rogue look like she’d won the Ms Normal of the Year Competition.

  She let loose a wild cry and flung the folders from her. ‘Get them!’ she shrieked, pointing at us, and that explained why the Rogue was still here. Guard duty.

  Immediately, the Rogue snapped out of her dainty twirl and launched at us.

  I threw myself to one side, but Rani didn’t. She just leaned a little and went snicker-snack with her blade and one of the Rogue’s hands fell off. The Rogue howled and thumped me with the other.

  My shoulder went cold and my arm wouldn’t work properly. I nearly went to pieces, then. I scrambled away, on my back, on all threes, moaning, and collided with a kitchen chair.

  The Rogue had bounced off the wall hard enough to leave cracks, and was advancing on Rani again. The crumbling plaster and the dust was evidence enough, if we needed any more, of the substantial nature of this ghost. She was here, she was plenty solid, she was crazy and she was angry.

  Rani had her back to the wall. Her face was calm, almost serene, as she held her sword vertically, hands at waist level. The Rogue was advancing slowly. She was solid, but she looked as if she was having trouble remaining so, that (tiny) analytical part of my brain noted. She flitted erratically between opaque and translucent, everywhere apart from the arms, hands and teeth.

  The ghost feinted right, then darted left, but Rani wasn’t fooled. She was ready for it, and all her weight went to her right foot.

  Which tangled in the phone cord that had been yanked out of the wall.

  In close-quarters hand-to-hand stuff, split seconds can result in split people. The Rogue came at Rani while she was off balance, slashing at her with her one remaining hand, and Rani went down.

  I grabbed the kitchen chair, rose and swung it with my one good hand.

  The chair was old, and made of the sort of wood that previous centuries would have built warships out of. And I’m tall, remember? My exceedingly wide arm span meant that the heavy chair picked up a fair bit of momentum on its journey, so that when it crashed into the Rogue, the impact was really, really satisfying.

  The ghost wailed, which is an upmarket keen, I guess. Then she rounded on me. I was prepared for that – as much as anyone could be – and swung the chair back and forth between us. ‘Come on, ugly! You haven’t got a chance against the Chairmaster! Or Furniture Man, if you prefer!’

  She snarled and lifted her claw. She swatted at the chair, which splintered. I swallowed and imagined writing a short paper for Dad and calling it ‘The Use and Misuse of Taunting When Facing a Rogue Ghost’ because if I was writing such a thing it would mean that I’d made it through this sticky little encounter.

  The nice aspect of working as a duo, though, is that your partner can come through for you.

  Rani did. She rose behind the Rogue and with the nicest double-action razoring I’d seen for ages, bisected the ghost at waist level, backhand, then came back again with a deadly diagonal shoulder downwards cut that left the ghost in pieces, writhing on the floor.

  Rani didn’t stop this time. She used her feet to flick the ghost pieces up in the air, one by one, where she slashed them into tiny, tiny bits that fell to the floor like dog-food kibble. They soon evaporated like rain on a hot road.

  I watched, trying to feel my numb arm, and being extremely impressed. This was movie-magic style sword work I was seeing, right in front of me. Rani moved smoothly, mostly using her wrists. Her face was calm, with just a single frown line on her forehead indicating how hard she was concentrating on whirling that blade around.

  When she finished, Rani nodded, not panting at all. ‘Anton, there’s a body here with a cut throat and I’m standing here with a sword. We need to leave.’

  I blinked. She was right. ‘The woman?’

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Wait. Wait a minute.’

  ‘Not sure that’s a brilliant idea.’

  ‘I might have a job to do.’ My pendant was still humming away on my chest. In all the commotion I hadn’t noticed. ‘Oh.’

  Rani came and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Anton.’

  ‘Do you feel it?’

  She touched the bracelet at her wrist, then cast her gaze around the room. ‘Where?’

  ‘There, in the corner.’

  It was a Weeper, hunched by the tipped-over philodendron, hiding behind the glossy leaves. It was sobbing soundlessly, knees drawn up with arms around them, head down.

  It was Grender’s ghost.

  Grender had been killed, violently. No wonder a ghost had been spawned. It wept, and its bald head and stocky frame were unmistakeably those of Grender.

  This was the first ever ghost I’d seen that had been spawned by someone I knew. Those old traitor knees nearly let me down again, and the room went all wobbly for a few seconds. I took a few deep breaths and steadied myself.

  I had to keep reminding myself that this ghost wasn’t Grender. It looked like him, but it was a result of his death, not a continuation of his life.

  Rani had her sword half-drawn, took a step towards the ghost, then with an effort, stopped and thrust the sword back into its sheath. ‘Anton?’

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  I didn’t care about dignity. I dropped to the floor and crawled – my shoulder where the Rogue had thumped me was working again, painfully – skirting the body and the blood, until I came close to the Weeper. ‘Hey there,’ I said. ‘Easy, now.’

  The Weeper shuddered, but didn’t raise his head.

  I moved forward a little, and then nearly yelped as my hand came down on something sharp. Grender’s phone, or the remains of it, crunched to pieces.

  I picked some plastic bits out of my palm. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, the all-purpose words that didn’t mean what they said, but packed a bucketload of comfort. ‘It’s all right.’

  I rocked back on my knees. I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly and sought for calm inside me. Then I opened my eyes and reached for the ghost.

  My hands sank into him, I wrenched and felt as if I were being pelted with tiny balls of ice as I was assaulted by impressions, shards of memory.

  All of them were recent.

  Now, maybe I’m a newbie at this whole ghost interaction business, but in my experience the memories that rush out of a ghost at this moment of transition always start with the earliest. There’s something about early childhood memories that means they’re precious or important – and ghosts seem to harvest them best.

  But this ghost’s moment of transition was different. I was nearly knocked over by a series of static images, a sort of spiritual PowerPoint presentation that went wham, wham wham, a sequence of punches to the head.

  It was Grender’s last moments.

  I saw him on the phone, I saw the door of his flat opening and the Rogue pushing in and stopped by the barrier sand. I saw
and felt Grender’s terror as the Rogue eventually breached the sand and came for him, and I saw the fateful slash. And, behind the ghost, outside the door against the concrete balcony, I saw the wild-eyed woman who’d sicked the Rogue on us.

  Now, Rogues are twisted with all sorts of nasty emotions, but this woman made them look like happy little Vegemites. Nausea and hatred and flat-out mind-warping fury all battled for facial real estate, and the total effect was inhuman.

  Grender fell, holding his throat with both hands. His last images were the ceiling, soiled with cigarette smoke and cracked near the shabby light-fitting, and the Rogue circling overhead.

  Rani had to shake my shoulder a couple of times before I came out of it.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she said softly. ‘You helped it on.’

  She gave me a hand and I struggled to my feet. ‘That Weeper was in pain. A bad death.’

  ‘And doesn’t that open up a discussion topic about good deaths versus bad deaths?’ she said. ‘But I think we need to get out of here rather than start waxing philosophical.’

  ‘We’re in big trouble.’

  ‘So it would seem. We can’t faff around and let the police catch us here.’

  ‘It’s not that. Not just that. We’ve got a person who can control Rogue ghosts.’

  I used my pendant to lock the back door, but before we could leave, Rani stopped me. ‘Stay alert,’ she said, and she bent to scoop the rubbish outside the door back into the bin, which she tipped upright again after she’d finished.

  ‘Do we have time for that?’ I was bouncing from foot to foot, keen to get going.

  ‘It’s important. Broken windows, mess like that, will attract attention.’ She had a large piece of cardboard she’d ripped from an empty box in the living-room mess, and a roll of sticky tape. She taped the cardboard over the broken window. ‘Good enough,’ she said. ‘Quick. Out the back way.’

  Ten minutes later, on Punt Road, my breathing and heart rate were starting to feel normal. Rani’s hands were steady on the steering wheel as we slid through the traffic.

  ‘How long were we at Grender’s flat?’ I said aloud.

  ‘Ten minutes.’ Rani accelerated a little to get across the Bridge Road intersection before the lights changed, then she shuddered. ‘That woman. Do you think she had anything to do with the Rogue we saw last night?’

  ‘At Yarra Bend? I’d say so. I’ve never heard of anyone ordering Rogues around like that before, but two Rogues appearing like that in two days? Too much of a coincidence to think that they have nothing to do with each other.’

  ‘Since she certainly had something against that Grender fellow, could it be that she thought he’d be at Yarra Bend instead of you?’

  ‘Possibly. Grender wouldn’t tell anyone he was on-selling a tip to us. He kept his business practices close to his chest.’ I made a face. ‘But what exactly did she have against him?’

  We punched north, over Victoria Street, heading Clifton Hill-wards. ‘I have a Company of the Righteous help number,’ Rani said. ‘They should be able to send in a cleaner.’

  My heart was still beating hard. ‘Pulp Fiction? Samuel L Jackson? Someone to come in and make a crime scene look as if nothing had ever happened?’

  ‘He was in Pulp Fiction but he wasn’t a cleaner in it. That was Harvey Keitel.’

  ‘I’ve never seen it.’

  ‘Never seen Pulp Fiction? Anton, you’re sorely deprived.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘What’s to think about? Sometime, someone will go into the flat. All it’ll take is one look at that carpet and the police will come running. And we probably left plenty of forensic traces around all over the place.’

  ‘I know.’ Rani’s grip on the steering wheel had gone white-knuckled.

  ‘So can we call on the Company of the Righteous Cleaning Services or not?’

  ‘I don’t want to. Not yet.’

  I could have asked an annoying clarifying question of someone who clearly didn’t want to talk about it, or I could take a stab in the dark.

  I went all stabby. ‘You don’t want to call on them because it’ll make them think you can’t handle this position.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She nodded, slowly. ‘But if we sort things out and I can have some useful information ready to hand them, then I could give them a call.’

  ‘They’d be grateful rather than the other way around. Nice.’

  ‘So, why don’t we quickly find this person, the one who’s ordering a Rogue around, and then I can compile a careful report for the Company, full of insightful detail about this phenomenon, while adding a request for some top-class forensic cleaning?’

  ‘That shows a devious and underhand mind. I like it.’

  Rani slipped into the left-hand lane in time to turn into High Street. Rucker’s Hill never looked so inviting. ‘I’ve never seen a body like that before,’ she said.

  ‘Dad and I saw a motorbike hit a tram once. The motorbike rider was dead, and didn’t look like he had a scratch on him.’

  ‘The tram driver, was he all right?’

  ‘She. Badly shaken. Couldn’t stand up.’

  More silence, more time alone with our thoughts as we drove towards the bookshop. ‘I know ghosts can kill,’ Rani said, ‘but we spent most time on the pernicious death, the slow draining, the leaching. We covered Rogues, but it was almost as if they were a mythological beast, like a dragon.’

  ‘I knew about it, but it’s one thing knowing in theory…’ I rubbed my face with both hands. ‘This sort of changes my outlook on the whole spook enterprise.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Hey, you’re not thinking of giving up, are you? I mean, your whole life has been dedicated to ghost hunting.’

  ‘Giving up? Hardly. What about you? I don’t suppose you can walk out of the family business very easily.’

  I flinched. ‘Ah. And that’s a touchy subject.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what a gap year is? Sorry, of course you do. Dad and I have an agreement about what I’m doing in mine.’

  And that’s how I told Rani Cross, rival ghost hunter, about my gap year in ghost town.

  CHAPTER 10

  We all have an embarrassing habit we’re not conscious of until someone else points it out. With me it’s whistling when nervous or stressed or feeling awkward. It was Bec who did the pointing out. Of course.

  So I know that I can start whistling at inappropriate times, like in Grender’s flat. I know it but I can’t help it.

  Bec was also the one who told me that my attempted smart-guy comebacks were probably a cover-up for a feeling of insecurity, and then she claimed that this insecurity all went back to when my little brother Carl died. But since I was eight when that happened and I’d been coming up with smart comebacks since I was in nappies, I told her that her theory was about as convincing as the latest celebrity diet cookbook.

  And she said that the lameness of that comeback was pretty much proof positive of her theory.

  Bec does smug pretty well when she puts her mind to it.

  Maybe. But just because she could have been right didn’t mean I had to think about it.

  Carl was three when he died. He didn’t get caught in some arcane battle between our family and a fanatical element of the ghost-hunting community, or savaged by an out-of-control Rogue or anything like that. It was one of those ordinary tragedies, the ones you read about or hear about, that make you feel glum for a second or two before you move on.

  It was so stupidly ordinary. Carl was out in the veggie garden, helping Mum in the way little kids help parents who have a job to do. Mum was tying up tomato plants, doing some weeding, that sort of thing. Carl had a little trowel, a kids’ version of Mum’s, and he was bumbling around picking up stuff and digging little holes where he shouldn’t.

  He was a good kid, Carl. I was five when he arrived, so I was old enough to know what was going on. I was all set to do the big-brother t
hing and excited at the idea of having someone to play with. When I saw him at the hospital, though, I remembered thinking that it’d be a while before we’d be kicking the footy together or anything like that.

  He was so small.

  Dad had to reassure me that all babies were tiny, but it took me some time to reset my plans, brother-wise.

  He was a quiet baby, in a good way. He slept, that meant, and I can remember Mum and Dad both congratulating themselves on having a good sleeper this time, a remark that usually went with a sideways glance at five-year-old me. So I was a night owl, even as an infant. Good preparation for now, I say.

  I got to feed baby Carl, which I thought was a lot of fun. He had a cool trick where anything he hated, he’d take spoonful after spoonful of without swallowing. He’d hold it all in his mouth until he’d had enough and then he’d give it the old high-powered spray-gun ejection.

  And then he’d cackle that high-pitched baby laugh that always cracked me up.

  I was inside when Carl was helping Mum in the garden. I can’t remember what I was doing when she screamed. I galloped out in time to have her run past me with a limp Carl clutched to her chest. She went straight through the house and out the front door.

  She ran all the way to the Children’s Hospital down the road, but they couldn’t save him.

  I was left at home, by myself, terrified and not knowing what to do. I stayed like that until Dad appeared. He took me in his arms, held me for a long time and he told me that Carl had seen something in the garden and bent down to pick it up. A bamboo garden stake had gone right into his eye and killed him.

  The next few days, as far as I can remember them, were a jumble of people coming and going. Mum and Dad were zombies, pretty much, as you’d expect. There was a funeral, and what upset me about that more than the fact that Carl was dead was the way the grown-ups were taking it. Their grief frightened me and made me feel worse.

  Looking back, I don’t know if Carl’s death tore my mum and dad apart. Nothing happened straight away, anyway, not that eight-year-old Anton noticed. Mum left when I was ten, and if it was Carl’s death that was the issue she would have gone straight away, right? Or maybe not. Maybe it was the start of a long, drawn-out falling apart, or another thing added to a whole heap of other issues that I had no idea about.