by T M Creedy
The streets of Ararat are easy to drive around and I spend some time just exploring the rest of the town before I park at the large Coles supermarket which is on the road leading back to Crowlands. Foreign supermarkets always fascinate me – the strange foods and smells, different products, different fruit and vegetables and that burst of bittersweet homesickness when you spot something from home. PG Tips teabags or Hobnobs, and you’re blinking back tears of wistful longing for good old Blighty. I take one of the wheeled trollies, anticipating needing a large amount of stuff. I need to buy new toiletries to replace the ones I emptied down the sinks at Heathrow Airport, to make room for the hidden bundles of cash, as well as stocking up on fresh food. The supermarket is quite big and I can see some aisles of clothing further down so the lady at the café was right, and I will be able to get some basics here. I fill the trolley with all sorts of good things – fresh baked cheese-topped bread, dishes of hummus and salads from the well-stocked deli counter, a hot roast chicken stuffed with sage and onion. My mouth waters and it seems a long time since the coffee and muffin earlier in the day. I fling strange packets of crisps, pasta sauces, chocolate bars and bags of instant noodles in the trolley, for once in my life I don’t have to worry about the cost, and when I reach the wine section I put, not one, but five bottles of local red in the wire basket. I stock up on shampoo and conditioner, shower gels and toothpaste, treating myself to a leg waxing kit that I wouldn’t have dreamt of buying before. The clothing section contains cheap and cheerful printed t-shirts and odd shaped trousers but I manage to find a couple of plain tops and some denim shorts, some plain tracksuit bottoms for comfort in the evenings, and I buy twenty pairs of new, simple cotton underwear and some sports bras.
My trolley is piled high when I find the nearest free checkout and I’m impressed that the staff not only scan your shopping, but pack it too, in numerous free plastic Coles bags. The final total comes to an eye-watering three hundred dollars but I did go a bit mad, I suppose. It’s the newness of it all – both buying things I’ve never seen before and being able to afford it. I shoehorn all the bags into the passenger side of the ute, resting everything on top of each other, until they threaten to topple over and spill their contents when I’m driving. I can’t wait to get it all home and unpack, thinking of the hot chicken which smells delicious and homely in its foil bag, and I’m looking forward to trying some of that new bread I bought.
When the house comes into view after driving back to the farm I’m reminded of the cover of the book on local history I borrowed from the library. It might be interesting, learning about the early years of the place. Mac alluded to some kind of scandal which was covered up so I wonder if the book will tell me anything more. It takes me several trips to bring all of my shopping inside and it’s not until I bring the last few bags in that I notice it.
The door to the laundry room is wide open.
I distinctly remember pulling it shut last night after turning the light off and I haven’t been near that door this morning. It creeps me out and I can hear the awful man at the library telling me this place is haunted. It’s not that I don’t believe in ghosts; I’ve never really had much reason to think about them, but now, with this strange little room with it’s on/off lights and open/closed doors it’s easy to imagine the spirits of long ago residents going about their spooky daily business. I shiver, and the now familiar feeling of being watched hits me between the shoulder blades again. I spin on my heels, searching the empty room for any signs of movement and for a split second I swear I see a shadow moving across the hallway by the main stairs. It’s a tiny shift in the stillness, no more than a flicker in my peripheral vision, but to my overactive imagination it looks like there’s a child, dressed in a long old fashioned nightdress, standing on the bottom step, staring back at me. I blink and it’s gone, there’s nothing there but the usual tasteful wallpaper peeking through the polished wooden bannisters. With a mental slap across the face I give myself a stern talking to. There’s no such thing as ghosts. I’m just reacting to that man at the library telling me the house is haunted; it’s nothing more than subliminal suggestion. And besides, what kind of self-respecting ghost would be seen in broad daylight at, I check my watch, two o’clock in the afternoon? They’re supposed to only come out at night, dressed in sheets and wailing piteously. I smile, taking the piss out of myself is working and I feel better. I will not let something so unthreatening as an open door scare me stupid. I stride across the kitchen and pull the door to the laundry room shut with a bang.
‘I want it closed, please, thank you very much!’ That’ll tell them. I’m the boss here for the next year and I’ll do things my way.
With the television on for company I set about making a hot chicken sandwich for lunch and take it out onto the verandah with my history book, and a large glass of cloudy lemonade, feeling the hot sun ease the chill in my bones as I sit on one of the wicker chairs. The book isn’t very long and the good Reverend B. P. Taylor goes in-depth into the history of the farming community and the outlying landscape, mentioning how this part of Australia was one of the most prolific in removing the original Aboriginal inhabitants from the land, by foul means or fair, which included the forcible removal of children from Aboriginal families and housing them in institutions, like the one at Crowlands House. I remember Mac telling me that Crowlands House used to be a home for ‘backwards’ kids and I wonder if they thought all Aboriginal children were somehow mentally deficient in those days. There’s mention of the birds that give the Crowlands its name and the book explains how ravens are supposed to be the gatherers of souls, flying the spirits of the dead to their ancestral lands. Each bird waits for the soul of a newly deceased person, cawing loudly to encourage the spirit to depart. I think of the never-ending screeching of the crows in the gumtree outside the house. Who are they waiting for?
CHAPTER TEN
From my place on the verandah I have a good view of the front driveway and I can see a flash of ginger as Bali stalks something in the long grass. All is peaceful now, the terrors of my nightmare last night are already distant and fading into a sepia-blurred memory as dreams are wont to do. A faint whistle from the fields makes me look over and I can see the black and white blur of Bonnie racing over the hill towards me, with Drew ambling along behind. Bonnie comes crashing into the garden, causing Bali to spit and hiss and arch her back, before scaling one of the smaller trees at the front of the property like a monkey. The dog grins at me, her tongue lolling out from the side of her mouth.
‘Hey Bonnie! Hey girl. How are you? Do you want a drink?’ I fuss over her and pat the side of my leg, trying to get her to follow me inside where I can put down a bowl of water for her, but she retreats with a whine, and lays down on the grass in front of the verandah.
‘She won’t go inside the house.’ Drew appears from around the side. ‘Never has done. Not really an indoor dog, is Bonnie, she prefers being outside if she can help it.’
‘Does she want some water do you think?’
Drew shrugs, rolling a cigarette with his strong, work-hardened hands.
‘You can try, if you want.’ I find a large metal bowl in one of the kitchen cupboards that Margie probably uses to bake with and send up a mental note of apology that I’m now using it as a dog’s drinking vessel. Filling it with cold water from the tap I take it outside to Bonnie, but she only takes a few half-hearted laps before losing interest and sniffing around the garden, on the scent of the cats. Drew perches on the edge of the verandah next to my chair companionably, drawing on his smoke and saying nothing at first but the silence is easy between us.
‘Drew,’ I begin. ‘Do you know anything about the house being haunted?’
‘Who’s been filling your head with that rot?’ He laughs.
‘Oh. Just someone at the library today. He said it was.’
‘And do you believe him?’
‘No, of course not. Only….’ I pause, trying to find the right words that won’t make
me sound like a silly scared little girl. ‘Only, there’s been a couple of weird things happen.’ And I tell him about the laundry room, about the ute keys and how I always feel like I’m being watched. ‘And then there’s the noises at night, a sort of scratching and thumping.’
‘That’ll just be possums.’ Drew isn’t mocking me; he’s just trying to be helpful.
‘That’s what Mac said they were. Oh, that reminds me, there’s a window open on the top floor which I meant to close today. I don’t suppose you’d come up there with me? Margie said the floors were a bit dangerous in some places so I’m a bit worried about going up there on my own.’
Drew shrugs again which I’m learning is his way of assenting.
‘Bonnie’ll have to stay out here though.’ He gets to his feet and takes his dusty old boots off, pale white toes peeking out from the holes in his socks. I follow him through the living room and up the main stairs, watching as he takes in every detail of the newly decorated space.
‘Sure looks different to how I remember it.’
‘Haven’t you seen Margie’s improvements then?’
‘Nah, haven’t been in the house for years, not since I was a nipper. My nana used to help out in the kitchens sometimes and I used to run up here to do some odd jobs now and then. My mum never liked us being up here, says there was a bad kaditcha about the place.’
‘What’s kaditcha?’
‘Um, it means a curse, or fear or terror of a place.’
‘Oh. Nice.’ I say weakly.
We reach the narrower stairs to the second floor and he pauses as he looks up and sees the plastic sheeting covering the entrance to the upstairs hallway.
‘It’s sealed off until they get back and make a start on this floor.’ I explain. Drew seems to be listening to something else I can’t hear, before shaking his head slightly and climbing the stairs.
‘I’m just going to get my phone. If there are possums up here I want to take a photo. I’ve never seen one before.’
Drew smirks his half smile at me and starts pulling aside the tape holding the plastic to the wall, waiting while I dash to my room for the phone.
‘Which room is it; do you know?’
‘I think it’s the one next to the far end on the right at a guess. I could only see it from the back garden. While we’re up here I want to look at the room above mine as well, see what’s making the scratching noises.’
On the other side of the plastic the light is dusty and dull, with all the doors on both sides of the hallway closed. The walls are painted the same drab green as the laundry room with the woodwork and doors picked out in a dingy, matte cream. Everything looks scuffed and worn, particularly the lino on the floor which is worn through in several places, with big craters gouged out in others. We creep through, as if afraid to disturb the sleeping dust motes, tiptoeing down the length of the corridor to the last two doors at the end. Drew turns the old fashioned metal sphere on the door and it swings open silently. I’d been expecting a true haunted house creak and I find myself stifling a giggle, partly nerves, and part excitement. The room is smaller than those on the first floor, of meaner proportions but it is still a good size. Bare floorboards, bare windows. This is the right room and one of the metal framed windows stands open, propped up by a broken steel arm. Drew covers the room in three strides and levers the window shut, twisting the latch so it can’t swing open again. The only other things in this room with us are the rusting frames of several narrow metal beds, some of which have collapsed in heaps on the floor and lie forlornly in a tangled mess of wire and old mattress stuffing. I count six beds in all, there must have been very little space between them when they were being used. The room has a depressing quality; the painted over wallpaper peeling in places and drooping down in sheets like sagging folds of skin. Something catches my eye in the corner and I walk over to where the paper has been torn slightly above the wide skirting board, which is painted a hideous mustard colour. Underneath the paper I can make out a scribble of pencilled words on the white plaster behind.
RosieEllie
KirraMalinda
PeggyBabygirl
Girls’ names. All in different, laboured scripts and I can picture each girl, using a stub of stolen pencil and tongues sticking out in concentration as they each write their name in this hidden place behind the wallpaper. How rebellious and naughty they must have felt marking the walls, marking the space where they spent their childhoods.
‘Hey, look at this.’ I show Drew and he reads each of the names one by one, out loud. ‘I wonder who Babygirl was, if that was a nickname.’ I muse.
‘Kirra and Malinda are both common Aboriginal names for girls. Maybe Babygirl was called that by her family, as a term of endearment and she wanted to keep it, to remind her.’ We both look at the names in sad silence before Drew takes a hold of the corner of the paper and pulls gently upwards. ‘I think there’s more written here.’ And indeed, more names are scrawled further up the wall.
Ivy Alice EstherKimba Susan Janet
‘How many of them lived here?’ I breathed, as each name was revealed.
‘I don’t think they would have all been in here at one time, maybe it was a tradition when you left the home – you wrote your name on the wall.’ Drew keeps on tugging at the paper until a big piece rips off in his hand. In bold capital letters above the names are the words:
HELP US. HE HURTS US.
‘Oh my God. That’s so sad!’ My heart constricts at the thought of these tiny helpless children being beaten, or worse. Drew is quietly angry; I can feel it.
‘Poor bastards. Come on. Let’s look at the other rooms.’ We leave the tangible sadness of this room behind, Drew deliberately leaving the door wide open. ‘I reckon they’ve had enough of being shut in.’
Along the hallway is the room directly above mine, making up the top corner of the house. The same bare boards and twisted bed frames clutter up the space but the difference in here is the built-in cupboard which separates this room from the girls’ room next door. There is nothing in the cupboard except some spare shelves, leaning up against the inside wall. No paper in this room, just dull green paint on the walls. I can’t see any sign of rodent activity and Drew pokes around the cupboard, knocking on walls and floorboards for evidence of nests. Working out the position of my bed in the room below, the noises are coming from the wall by the cupboard, maybe from inside the cupboard itself, but the panels are solid and show no indication of mouse holes. There are no tell-tale droppings either like you’d expect from an infestation of rats or mice.
‘Nothing here.’ Drew scans the ceiling. ‘Must be in the roof space itself.’
We poke through the rest of the rooms on this floor and I can’t help but notice that there is no sign of the rotten floorboards Margie warned me about, it all feels solid and sturdy. There are two more rooms which were obviously dorms at some point and two smaller rooms which house single beds on their own, and still have other sticks of furniture in them; dressing tables and chests of drawers. There is even a chipped floral washbasin and jug set sitting on top of one of the dressers, as if the occupant of this solitary room has just stepped out, and will be back to wash their face and hands later. We decide these must have been bedrooms for the staff, or servants. They’re not as grim as the dormitory bedrooms but I wouldn’t want to be spending any length of time in one of these rooms. Behind the next door is an enormous enamelled bathtub and sink, with two old-fashioned toilets, cisterns high up on the wall and black flush chains dangling. Drew turns one of the taps at the sink, and a faint clanking sound comes from the pipes in the wall, but no water spurts from the spout.
‘Pretty fancy for its time. Indoor bathroom, not many around in those days.’