I stood staring at the floor for a while, with the barest whisper of a whistle leaving my lips. Grender had been killed there, horribly. I’d eased his ghost and it had gone. I couldn’t feel a thing – no presence, no scratchy tickliness.
Did anyone mourn for Grender? His flat didn’t remember him – did anyone? Did he have family? Did they even know?
I’d check on that.
As we nosed around, it became pretty obvious that Grender had been a bit of a slob. Surprise, surprise. Loads of dirty dishes in the sink, lots of garbage sitting around the bin in the kitchen, and the bathroom was a horror from the lowest levels of hell. No home-beautiful awards would have gone his way, that was for sure.
The flat smelled bad.
I found the manila folders that Stacey Evans had dropped when we saw her here. I sat cross-legged on the floor and flipped through them. Printouts and newspaper cuttings, lots of highlighting and underlining and annotations – in Grender’s writing. All of them concerned people who must be on the Evans hit list. A judge, a barrister, some police officers, others. She’d been working with Grender for a while.
The second bedroom was mostly full of crap – boxes, two exercise bikes and two cross-trainers that were heavy with dust, makeshift racks of clothes, plenty of shoes. It wasn’t hoarder heaven, but it was getting close.
The tiny desk in the corner under the window was also groaning under rubbish. Lots of papers, piles of books, an old computer and printer.
Rani found gold inside the printer, in the paper drawer.
‘He had to hide it somewhere,’ I murmured as Rani handed the little black book over. ‘In a messy life, it was his one little oasis of organisation.’
I flipped through it. Dozens of names, many crossed out, all showing the way Grender moved through the murky world of Melbourne’s fringes. The book also showed how he didn’t trust info like this to a phone. Smart guy, Grender.
‘Stacey Evans,’ I breathed. ‘Two entries.’
‘One’s in Nagambie,’ Rani said.
‘That’s near Seymour. Where the family lived. Before, you know.’ I shook my head. ‘It must be Grender compiling background stuff on her.’
‘We need to investigate this Kensington address.’
We were a grim pair as we cut through South Melbourne and whipped up CityLink to Kensington. No chit-chat, no friendly Melbourne tourguiding. We were going to a confrontation, one I wasn’t looking forward to. Grender’s grubby death and the ghost it spawned was really getting to me and making me – all over again – question this shady world I’d signed up for.
I sent a text to Dad and Bec so they’d know what Rani and I were doing. I hoped they’d get it in the morning. By then we’d have everything neatly sewn up and we’d be sipping coffee at the bookshop.
The Kensington address was tucked in behind the busy multiculturalism of Racecourse Road, towards the end of a neat row of terraced cottages. Nine out of ten of them had picket fences. Ten out of ten were as cute as a button.
We drove past, turned and came back again, noting that no lights were on in the place before parking fifty metres or so up the road.
‘There’ll be a lane at the back,’ I said to Rani. ‘All these early inner suburbs have them.’
‘For nightsoil collectors.’
‘You know about nightsoil collectors?’
‘I know far more about sewerage, drains and other sanitary arrangements than I really want to.’
‘London ghost hunting?’
‘London ghost hunting. It isn’t all castles and grand houses.’
Rani locked the car and we walked down the lane until we were behind the right house. I counted three times to make sure.
The back fence was newish corrugated iron with a gate of the same material. Rani took care of the lock with her bracelet, drew her sword and stepped inside.
The backyard was tiny, but large enough for a plum tree, bare now, and a small sandpit.
Rani wafted up the three stairs and over the minuscule deck. Two glass doors opened onto it, under a verandah that bent around at right angles and led to another door. Rani stood alongside the glass doors and peered at the darkness inside.
She looked back at me. I’d taken up position by the sandpit, just in case, you know, nasty sand monsters erupted from it.
Rani had the doors open. She beckoned to me and I joined her. I had a hand on my pendant. It was reassuringly still, but that didn’t stop me trying to look in all directions, anticipating something appearing at any time, and my hands started to shake. Rani saw this. She put a hand on my upper arm and left it there as we scanned the room that looked out over the backyard. A sofa, two stuffed chairs either side of a door that led to the rest of the house, a TV and an empty bookshelf. I gestured at that. It didn’t look like the bookshelf of someone who had been here long – or who was staying long. If it was, I didn’t want to meet them. No books, what kind of craziness is that?
The reality of the situation bit. Either we were going to find Stacey all nicely tucked up in bed – unlikely – or she was out in the night pursuing her revenge.
Of course, there was a third option.
My pendant buzzed, that annoying prickly, itchy sensation on my chest, and the light snapped on.
‘Oh, visitors! Lovely!’
Stacey Evans stood in the doorway, gaunt, eyes wide, hair all over the place, dressing-gown buttoned up on the wrong holes.
‘Come in,’ she croaked, ‘and we’ll have a nice cup of tea.’
CHAPTER 24
I’d spent a lot of time, lately, dealing with things that would freeze the blood of any ordinary hard-working citizen of our great city, but they had nothing on Stacey Evans. It wasn’t just the glassy, half-there look in her eyes, or the stuttering jerky way she walked, it was her hair.
Her hair freaking well moved by its freaking self.
At first, I thought a breeze from the open doors was stirring the hair on her head, but I couldn’t feel any air movement at all. It creeped me out, her hair curling and uncurling slowly, writhing like some sort of underwater plant, something unwholesome and poisonous.
It was also a lot greyer than it had been in the photos. Almost white, really. White, writhing, unwholesome. Yep, not exactly a candidate for a shampoo commercial.
The glass doors closed. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now we won’t be disturbed.’
I know, spooky door-closing is a horror movie cliché, but it added a lovely little layer of creepiness to the whole scene. My stomach did a terrified flip-flop.
Rani gripped my upper arm. I swallowed. ‘We’d love to,’ I said, ‘but I just realised what the time is. We have to dash.’
‘Tea,’ Stacey said, and then she swivelled like a shop mannequin given a good hard spin, and disappeared. A few seconds later the sounds of tea making came from further inside the house.
I stared at the glass doors. ‘Rogue,’ I whispered to Rani.
This explained the way my pendant was behaving. An extremely unhappy Rogue had closed the glass doors and was standing with his back to them. He was male, bald and wearing ragged robes. Judicial, maybe? His face, though, was – to use an unusual description for a ghost – haunted. His eyes were dark-rimmed, his teeth were bared and his hands were curled into claws, but he wasn’t attacking us. His gaze darted from side to side as if he desperately wanted to get out of there.
Rani had her sword raised. ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Let’s watch and see what happens.’
‘You’re learning,’ she replied, ‘but pay more attention to your own role than mine. I know what I’m doing.’
‘How do you like your tea?’
Stacey Evans was back, carrying a tea tray.
I nearly said, ‘As far away from me as possible,’ but I caught Rani’s hard stare. ‘Black,’ I said.
‘Milk and one sugar,’ Rani said and I glanced at her in disbelief. We might be in danger, but it wasn’t the time to betray principles.
Stacey put the tray on
the table between the chairs and the sofa, which Rani and I took. I was nearest to the doorkeeper Rogue, which made me a tad edgy. Rani laid her sword across her knees. The action drew Stacey’s attention but she barely glanced at the weapon, frowning, before turning to pour herself a cup of tea. ‘Delicious!’ she announced. ‘There’s nothing like a good cup of tea, don’t you agree?’
She poured Rani and me a cup each. I sipped it, keeping an eye on her.
I nearly spat it out. It was stone cold.
I stared at it and then at Rani. She’d seen the expression on my face and had put her cup down before tasting it.
Stacey Evans was beaming at us, eyes glassy and wide, teeth bared. In another person it would have looked like a horrible mixture of hilarity and terror. On her, it looked at home, which made it all the more terrible. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘You’re the young people who’ve been flitting around the fringes of my doings. What brings you here?’
Of all the possibilities, a polite sit-down chat wasn’t high on my list. In fact, I think ‘asteroid strike’ was higher.
I glanced at Rani. ‘We wanted to see you,’ I said carefully.
‘Well, isn’t that nice,’ Stacey Evans, phasmaturgist, said. ‘I haven’t spoken to anybody for simply ages.’
‘Not since Grender?’ Rani ventured.
‘Grender?’ A brief frown creased her brow, but it was gone in an instant. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know any Grender.’
‘Avocado-shaped guy,’ I said. ‘With reasonable ghost sight.’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘You killed him.’
She jerked as if she’d been struck. Then she chuckled. It was a horrible thing, as if something both spiny and slimy had lodged in her throat. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been killing so many people lately that I can’t be expected to keep track of all of them.’
Okay. So the accountant from country Victoria had apparently gone the full Hannibal Lecter.
Stacey Evans, or the person who had been Stacey Evans before she was transformed into this supernatural serial killer, put her hands together on her lap. ‘Would you like a biscuit? I have Tim Tams somewhere, I’m sure.’
I hesitated. After all, Tim Tams.
‘No? All right then, I have two questions before I dispose of you.’ She stirred her stone-cold tea for a moment. ‘Why are you here, and why did you disturb my holy place?’
Holy place? Rani and I shared a look, one that told me not to make any stupid quips. ‘We’re here to help you,’ Rani responded.
Stacey’s grin went even wider and even more horrible. Something was stuck in her front teeth. I guess dental hygiene hadn’t been at the front of her mind these past few days. ‘Oh, I don’t need your help,’ she said. ‘I have all the help I need.’
At this, Rani leaned over and, smoothly, took hold of Stacey Evans’s hand. The woman’s eyes went wide, then she jerked her hand away and was on her feet, snarling and hissing like an angry cat. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What is this?’
Rani stood and I scrambled to join her. ‘She’s possessed,’ Rani said to me. ‘I could feel the presence of a Rogue inside her.’
So the pendant vibration I’d assumed came from the Rogue also came from poor, benighted Stacey Evans. Possessed? It explained how a grieving mother had so quickly become a powerful phasmaturgist. Forget trying to get even through normal, civilised means like suing those responsible. She’d been so traumatised that she’d been jolted out of the ordinary world into the world of those who dealt with ghosts. To achieve her revenge, she’d made an unholy bargain with a Rogue – one that Grender found? – for power, skipping all those boring steps like committing arcane lore to memory.
Caramba.
My pendant went crazy and the after-midnight tea party exploded into an action scene. The Stacey Evans Experience – the human/Rogue hybrid – backed away, growling from deep in her chest. The hovering Rogue by the door flew towards us. Another Rogue started to take shape as it pushed through the wall on our left.
We wasted no time on words. Rani and I swapped positions. I had to leap over a footstool to get there, and it put my timing off enough so that the Rogue emerging from the wall got a good swing in. She smashed me on the side of the neck and sent me spinning, and I almost fell across an easy chair. When I twisted around to face her, she wrapped me up in her ghostly arms and dragged me closer to her choppers.
With my arms pinned to my sides – this Rogue was pretty substantial already – all I could do was twist, kick and wrench my head from side to side to avoid those horrible, misshapen, snapping teeth.
I yelled, too. I yelled a lot – and jerked and flapped as if I’d been tasered. I hate ghost teeth.
In a blur, Rani was there. She ripped the Rogue apart with three precise cuts, freeing me before she whirled back to her original foe, the door Rogue.
I fell over, coughing and pushing myself away from the Rogue pieces Rani had left behind. They were trying to reunite themselves, squirming in a way that made my stomach heave.
I used the wall and dragged my useless self up in time to see that Rani had lopped off the other ghost’s arms. It was doing a fair Black Knight impersonation and was screeching at her, not taking a backwards step. Or backwards drift. Whatever.
I gathered myself. ‘I’m going in,’ I called. Rani nodded without looking at me, then kept her sword in front of her, wrist movements only, limiting her back and side swing to allow me past.
The footstool, though, succeeded where it had failed the first time. It tripped me a beaut.
Instead of wasting time and energy swearing I went with the flow and dived straight at the Rogue, hands extended. ‘Look out!’ I shouted desperately. ‘It’s the Ghost Destroyer!’
The ghost heaved itself aside, and I crashed into the wall. This time, I swore – because it hurt.
I rose just in time to tangle with Rani as she stepped up to confront the Rogue. She stiff-armed me aside with a push to my chest. ‘Out of the way.’
I staggered backwards, barely staying upright. The Rogue had seen Rani’s sword. It oozed back through the wall as Rani slashed, carving a gash in the plaster.
She glanced at me then, and without a word, she bolted after the ghost.
I followed, swearing some more under my breath.
The Rogue was halfway through the back gate, snarling and frothing at the mouth. Rani was nearly on it but it pushed through the corrugated iron.
Someone screamed.
By the time Rani had the gate open, I was there. In the lane, in the shadows, a slight guy wearing a black beanie stood motionless. The Rogue was confronting him, a towering, gibbering presence distilled from nightmares.
Beanie Guy had time to whisper, ‘Oh, God,’ and then the Rogue was on him. He started shrieking.
Rani pointed at me. ‘Stay back.’
She darted forward and lashed out with a kick that connected with Beanie Guy somewhere meaty. His shrieking turned into a scream of pain.
A metal bar hissed past Rani’s head, only missing because she’d jerked back as it came. She drew a long, wicked slice across the ghost’s shoulderblades, then kicked again, and Beanie Guy tumbled out of the clutches of the Rogue and sprawled across the bluestone.
The Rogue threw his arms up, screeched and twisted to face Rani, but she had her sword ready. She was fast and ruthless, and she cut the ghost to tiny, tiny pieces while Beanie Guy sat on the bluestone, wide-eyed, swearing softly and continuously, running one word into the next in a stream of terrified consciousness.
All I did, though, was stand there and get the shakes. I’d messed up, badly, when those Rogues came at us, and now the near miss hit me hard. I grabbed one arm to stop the trembling, and then the other, and I ended up sort of hugging myself – but that couldn’t stop my legs and I was as unsteady as anything.
Slowly, Beanie Guy got to his feet. He held his iron bar in front of him.
Rani approached him. ‘Are you all right?’
He moaned.
‘Don’t you come near me.’
He dropped the iron bar, turned and ran.
‘A burglar, most likely,’ I ventured. Dogs were barking in nearby backyards. ‘Explains the iron bar.’
Rani wiped her sword on a piece of cloth she pulled from a pocket. She gave me a look, started to say something, but then pushed past me in silence. She went back through the gate and left me shivering, staring at the shadows. I was already replaying the events of the last few minutes and my part in them was depressing. That guy, in those movies, the one with the small role and is credited as ‘Stupid Bystander’. Yeah, that was me.
Rani reappeared. ‘Stacey’s gone. The other Rogue has, too. We’ll have to start over.’
‘We?’
‘That’s usually how I refer to you and me when we’re hunting ghosts.’
‘Yeah, right.’
She clicked her tongue. ‘We’ve no time for this. Let’s get to the car.’
I went with her. I could manage that, at least.
‘You’re not the first one, you know,’ Rani said as we took off.
‘First one to what?’
‘To go to pieces in a hot situation.’
‘You think that’s it, do you?’
She drove in silence for a while before answering. ‘Ghost hunting can hit people hard. We have a whole medical unit devoted to PTSD.’
‘You think that I’m feeling the after-effects of a nasty encounter? Is that it?’
‘Easy, Anton. You don’t have to shout.’
I looked through the window. I had a sour taste at the back of my throat. I swallowed, hard, and grimaced. ‘I’m just being rational about this whole deal.’
‘Go on,’ she said warily.
‘I said I’d give ghost hunting a go – the gap year, remember? The way I stuffed up tonight makes it pretty clear that it’s not my bag.’ I scrabbled for my pendant and dragged it off. I dropped it in the centre console. ‘Let someone else have a go.’
‘Don’t be an idiot.’
‘I’ll choose what to be, thanks.’
Gap Year in Ghost Town Page 21