Ghost

by Charmaine Ross

  I glanced at the phone; the timer read 127 minutes. While I’d slept, she’d been talking with Mum. I took the handset. Round two. Mum could go on forever. She didn’t get much conversation in the middle of the outback.

  “You hungry?”

  I nodded and Laura went into the kitchen. I spoke into the phone, “Hi, Mum.”

  “Oh my God, Cassie! Laura told me the whole thing. You’ve been under too much pressure. I know all you doctors work around the clock, twenty-four, forty-eight-hour shifts. No human can do it. This is what happens when you don’t give your body time to rest. It’s not good for a girl of your age to be working as hard as that.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that at twenty-nine I could hardly be classified as a girl, but she went on without waiting for an answer anyway.

  “What possessed you to become as surgeon, I don’t know. I always thought you’d be a great pediatrician. Lots of single dads out there, you know.”

  I leaned against the door-frame to the kitchen, watching Laura place a container in the microwave, “Got any aspirin?”

  She lit an incense stick and the heady scent of something exotic wafted through the kitchen. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Clears the air of negative energy.” If only I could clear my head like that. Light a stick and it all goes away. Poof. Instead, the heady scent made me sneeze. It did nothing for Elliot, who watched Laura with an incredulous look on his face.

  She handed me two Panadol with a drink of water and I threw them down my throat. She also had two. Mum tended to have that effect on the both of us. I put the phone back to my ear and Mum was still chatting. “Mum, do you want to hear what happened or not?” There was a pause. I never cut Mum off. In fact, I find it therapeutic to let her waffle on. Bit like white noise. But right now, I didn’t have the energy for it. Besides, it would be good to hear what she had to say about my state of mind, not just her opinion about what I should be doing with my life. Not to mention my lack of love life which she always managed to put into any conversation.

  “Go on,” she said. I’ve never known her to be a woman of few words and it took me by surprise. I crumpled into a kitchen chair and explained the whole story.

  “And this man—Henry. He wants you to do things for him?”

  “Yes. He’s worried about his will.” I rested my forehead on my free hand. Laura placed a hot cup of tea next to me on the table and I gripped the mug, letting the warmth flow into my fingers.

  “Drink your tea, love. It’ll do you good.” My head snapped up. Henry sat in the chair opposite, just as though we were having a friendly catch up. A familiar portly older man with thinning hair and white bushy eyebrows.

  The phone clattered to the table top and I fumbled with it before I managed to get it back to my ear. I pointed at Henry, my hand shaking, “You...you’re not here! Again!”

  Laura turned from the bench, facing me. She glanced at all the chairs and I could tell she couldn’t see Henry. He just sat there, sitting and smiling at me like he was here for Sunday Afternoon Tea.

  “Tell him to leave,” Mum said. “If you don’t tell them to leave, hundreds will knock at your door. Believe me. It starts with one, that's all it takes. Once they see you help one, you’ll open the floodgates. It happened to your grandmother. It happened to me and it will also happen to you. Our family has generations of destroyed lives because of this curse.”

  “Well, it skipped me, didn’t it?” Laura said.

  “Laura, I’ve told you before. You don’t want this to happen to you, too. Just be thankful it never appeared when you were a child,” Mum said.

  “But it didn’t appear when I was a child either, did it Mum?” I asked, the words coming from my lips that were numb.

  There was a long pause which I didn’t like. A dawning sense of dread thickened the blood in my veins. It never took Mum any time at all to talk. “I saved you, Cassie.”

  “What do you mean, you saved me?” I asked.

  The pause went on for a much longer time than before, “You were just one when I first noticed it. You gazing into the faces of people that only I could see.”

  My mouth worked but nothing came out. She’d stopped me seeing ghosts. As far as I knew, that was impossible. “I can’t remember.”

  “You were too young. They were chatting with you. Interacting with you. I wouldn’t let strangers just come up and start talking to you. What made them think they could just do that now they were dead! The nerve,” Mum said.

  “But, how did you do that?’ I asked. In the long list of family members who had the gift, there’d been no records of anyone who’d beaten it before. I knew various aunts and distant relatives throughout our family history had been recorded as having the gift. None coped with it.

  Mum sniffed. “The power of suggestion. At one, the mind of a child is malleable. Yours was no different. I simply told you that you couldn’t see them. After a couple of years, the spirits gradually faded from away from your attention. At three, you gave no indication that you noticed them no matter how loud or hard they yelled at you.”

  I gaped at Laura, although she didn’t know what Mum had just said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” My voice came out all strangled and chocked out.

  “Some things are best left alone. I wanted you to have a life, Cassie. A normal life. Something I didn’t get to have.” Mum’s words were clipped. That meant the argument was done and dusted. “How many are with you now?” To confirm, Mum changed the subject.

  “How many what?” I asked, half of my brain still trying to contend with the fact I’d been able to see spirits.

  “How many spirits?”

  I looked around, but the kitchen was bare. “Well, I can only see Henry here.”

  Mum offered a disgruntled sound. “For now. Believe me, they will come. You won’t be able to turn around without bumping into one of them.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Henry politely asked.

  I sighed, put the phone on loudspeaker so we could all talk without me parroting. “Henry, this is Laura, my sister.” I indicated where Henry sat. “Laura, this is Henry.” I indicated the phone. “Henry, this is my mother-and this is ridiculous!”

  “Have you thought any more about getting my will? I did ask you in the morgue, but you fainted before I could finish. I can tell you where I live. And where it is in my house. If you can just hand it to my lawyers - Elder and Slate - I won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

  “Why didn’t you make sure you gave it to your lawyers before you went into hospital? What happened to you, Henry? You were doing well the last time I saw you. And why did you sneak up on me like that in the morgue? Didn’t you know it would give me one hell of a fright!” It all came out in a rush of words that didn’t seem to faze him.

  “You’ll have to excuse my behaviour, but I didn't know I was dead.”

  My brain started to throb. I put my hands over my eyes, “This is crazy! I really am talking to dead people.”

  Mum spoke, “I prefer to call them spirits, rather than dead people. Sometimes they think that’s rude.”

  “I agree. It does sound a bit rude to me,” Henry said.

  There was an iron clamp around my lungs which prevented me from breathing. I went to speak, but nothing came out.

  “Relax. And breath,” Laura said.

  “It’s nice to watch someone breathing,” Henry shrugged. “I took the whole breathing thing for granted. It’s a nice feeling, breathing in the fresh air, the smell of flowers, the grass after a rainfall. I’ll never smell that again.”

  I glared at him. “You’re not helping.”

  “I was told you could help me.” Henry’s bushy brows lowered. “I thought I was going home, and the next thing I know, I’m dead. Not that I blame you for any of this. Not at all. You were a good doctor to me. Very nice. I like you and I told my friends if they have any heart conditions you’re the woman to see.”

  “Great. Recommendations from a gh
ost. Sorry. Spirit,” I muttered.

  “They will say whatever it takes to get you to help them. Do it once and the others will come, Cassie. You’ll never have any rest again,” Mum said.

  Henry leaned close to me, “Could you turn whatever you have off after you help me? After all, you are my doctor and it won’t take you long. They said you would help.”

  My brow knotted. I didn’t recall seeing, or having, any help what-so-ever. In fact, I’d never felt so alone as now. “Who is they and what is this help, Henry?” It was all very vague and my brain was now pulsing with a life of its own.

  “There were no faces. It was just—voices. Like a choir. They said you would cope with my request. They said they would be sending someone to help you now that you had opened up.”

  It clicked. Henry asked for help and then Elliot suddenly appeared at the same time. “They sent Elliot.”

  Elliot stood in the kitchen door-frame. I assumed from the expression on his face that he’d heard the whole conversation. For some reason, seeing him there was more comforting than anything.

  “Did you come when they called?” I asked.

  He shook his head, “I don’t remember voices. I don’t know why I’m here. And I don’t know…how.” He looked so confused I wondered how he thought he could help me.

  “You’re the one they sent to help her,” Henry said.

  Elliot turned his attention to Henry. A distracted thought, but it was good to know spirits saw each other. Then again, at this stage my brain was pretty fractured. “I can’t help Cassie. I don’t even remember who I am. I don’t have a single memory before I was in the morgue. I was simply just there. I don’t know anything.”

  “You’re dead. You should know,” Henry grumbled.

  Elliot’s shoulders crumbled as though he was sinking in on himself, raw emotion sucking him inwards. Moments stretched. A myriad of emotion poured across his face and although it was silent, I felt them all screaming at me. I so wanted to do something, but didn’t know how the hell I could. “I’m dead? Yes. I have to be…it’s the only sensible reason. My memory loss. Laura walking through me at your office. The fact I recognise almost nothing about me…but if I’m dead, I should know how to help someone like you, Cassie. Surely someone would have sent someone a little more…”

  “Used to being dead?” Henry suggested.

  “Henry! Stop!” I growled, “Just…let me think!”

  Moments passed, then more moments passed, then more unanswered questions filled my mind. Elliot was right. If he suffered from a ghostly form of amnesia, why did they send him as help for me? Why not someone more qualified? Hell, I couldn’t believe I was even thinking these thoughts. “What could the purpose be?” I whispered, watching Elliot.

  Elliot’s deep gaze snagged mine and I saw the same questions in it, full of frustrated agony. That was the pertinent question. Why was this happening to me? To us? Why, with just the crack of my head, had this kick-started me seeing anything at all? There had to be some reason I was missing.

  I sighed, the exhaustion of the day and a fitful sleep catching up with me. Before me stood two men, scratch that—two dead men—who desperately needed my help. If I didn’t help them, where would they go, who else could they turn to? Certainly not Mum, who had a lifetime of turning ghosts away. Were there many people like me? I just didn’t know. I couldn’t send these souls away without the answers they desperately sought.

  I would have to help. I couldn’t turn my back, but after that I would set about stopping this damned curse that followed my family and destroyed our lives.

  “If I help you, Henry…will you leave me in peace?” At Henry’s nod, I continued, “I’ll do it, but tell anyone else you meet—out there—I’m not available for business for anyone else. I’m doing this for you because you’re my patient…then you leave me alone.”

  “Cassie, if you do this once, they’ll all come. Please believe me,” Mum pleaded.

  I held Henry’s gaze, “Do you promise, Henry?”

  “I’ll tell them.”

  Fool I might be, but I believed him, “Then I’ll help you.”

  As soon as I agreed he vanished. I looked over my shoulder at Elliot’s ashen face. He was so utterly defeated. I knew somehow, someway, I had to help him too. I couldn’t let him drift back into whatever abyss he’d been dragged from. “I’ll help you, too, Elliot. Just as soon as we know what it is I need to do.”

  “You’ll be sorry, Cassie. Very sorry,” Mum said quietly.

  I couldn’t help but agree.

  Chapter Three

  We stood in front of a pretty little cottage that was typically built in the early era of nineteen twenty Brunswick. A large bullnose veranda with an ornate iron-work trim fringed a burgundy door with a large brass knocker. Window frames either side of the door had been detailed in the same colour burgundy and made the front of the house look like a welcoming face. A fragile-looking wrought iron chair and tables for two decorated the end of the veranda and had been painted in a deep emerald green.

  The front garden was no more than a couple of meters deep, but what there was of the land was meticulously maintained with little shrubs of frilly colour, seaside daisies and some sort of fragile looking spindles tipped with tiny pink flowers. A well-swept red brick path that led to the front steps let in the right amount of dappled sunlight onto the ground. A garden I would have loved for myself, if only I had the time to maintain it.

  I opened the gate, which swung open on soundless hinges. I felt as though I were about to be caught in a break and enter. I hunched my shoulders and looked around the street to see if anyone had noticed people walking into a house of a deceased person.

  “Look like you belong,” Laura whispered in my ear. “Besides, they probably don’t even know Henry’s dead.”

  I gave her a brief look, before stepping onto the neat little path, “And how many break-ins have you been involved with to know that?”

  “Relax. I do this all the time.”

  “She’s right. If you look like you belong, people won’t question you being where you shouldn't be.”

  I glanced at Elliot who hadn’t left my side since I’d woken, “You, I can believe,” I gestured at Laura with my thumb, “She shouldn’t know about things like that. She’s a writer, not a thief.”

  Laura didn’t respond and walked ahead, away from the crowd of questions in my head. Soft rose petals brushed my arm and scattered on the path as I tried to catch up to my sister. I knew she was into the occult, and had been for some time because of Mum, but I didn’t think it included illegal practises. Now I wasn’t so sure I knew exactly everything she did.

  I climbed the wooden front steps to the veranda and was enveloped in the aroma of oak and bees-wax. Elliot stepped soundlessly behind us. I reached over the top of the front door and felt along the top beam where Henry told me the spare key was kept. As I neared the centre, my fingers brushed something metallic and the key fell to the boards.

  “Right where Henry said it would be,” I said as I picked it up and stared at the silver key in my palm. It was more than just a key. It was solid proof that I did actually see Henry and I had spoken to him after his death.

  “I can’t believe this is happening to you. You know, people would kill for your gift. I know people who have trained in mediumship for twenty years and still don’t get solid evidence of the afterlife,” Laura said.

  I fought the sick feeling in my stomach, “I can’t believe people train for this type of thing.” It was completely unnerving. Finding the key was confirmation that this was real. The spirits were real. Their stories were real. And I was up to my eyeballs doing the exact thing that Mum told me not to do.

  I pressed the key into my palm, curling my fingers over it so that it dug into my skin. The pain was good. It glued me to this situation that was borne from the nightmare of the past two days. Forty-eight hours that had marked the kink in my quiet, peaceful days. The start of a life so different I could only
begin to imagine what the rest of my days might be like. If they were like last night, I’d taken a southern step towards hell. I’d slept fitfully, my dreams filled with people moaning and screaming for help, reaching and clawing at me until I had no choice but to help them, as I walked over the bodies of my dead patients who then came back to haunt me.

  I’d had but a taste of what Mum had, and I was over it.

  Shoving the thought as far into a corner of my mind as I could, I opened the screen door, thrust the key into the lock, and gave it a twist. My eyes adjusted to the gloom inside when I saw a figure silhouetted in the hallway.

  I screamed and jumped back from the door as my heart hammered up my throat. Laura stepped up behind me. “There’s nothing in here, Cassie.”

  “Th...there’s a person inside,” I said, willing my heart to stop punching my breastbone.

  “There’s no-one in here,” Laura turned questioning eyes to me. “Well, no-one I can see, anyway.”

  Tentatively I looked past the doorframe and peered inside. The figure stood in the middle of the hallway. I put my hand on my chest, willing my heart to resume its normal pace. “Bloody hell, Henry. Don’t do that! Ever again!”

  Laura walked into the hallway towards Henry.

  “Laura, stop...” I called.

  She stopped, whirling around to face me. I gasped, then gagged. She’d stopped directly where Henry stood. They sort of melded together, one body with disjointed arms and legs sticking out of it. Laura’s chest disappeared into Henry’s side. Laura moved her head, and her cheek came out of the side of Henry’s head.

  “No...don’t stop. Keep walking!” I yelled. Ghosts were meant to be transparent filmy things, but Henry looked as solid to me as a normal living body. I hoped Henry wasn’t going to have any ideas about either using Laura’s body, or groping her. And I didn’t want to be around to witness either happening.

  Laura quickly stepped away. She un-melded from Henry’s form and their bodies came apart, like a drop of mercury halving. Laura bent over, breathing hard. “Oh, I feel so... lightheaded. And tired.” She sucked in a deep breath. “That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of this happening. Oh…I think I’m going to faint.”