Gap Year in Ghost Town

by Michael Pryor

  Rani spread her hands. ‘It’s rather delicate.’

  ‘What? Since when are ghosts delicate?’

  Rani started. ‘You’re a civilian.’

  ‘I don’t have the ghost sight, if that’s what you mean.’

  Rani turned slowly to me. ‘I don’t believe it. You’ve told a civilian. You’ve broken one of the fundamental principles of our calling.’

  ‘Well, there it is, then. We Marins, right out there on the edge, ghost-business-wise. Show me a rule and I’ll break it.’

  Rani fumbled for words for a moment before she gave up. She threw her hands in the air, then paced up and down the length of the front room.

  She stopped and pointed at Bec. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I think you could be useful.’

  ‘You want me to stay now?’

  Rani crossed the room, flipped the lock of the door. She turned the dangling card from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. ‘Let’s talk.’

  CHAPTER 3

  The kitchen, right at the rear of the bookshop, has an actual window to the outside world (well barred, of course), a sink, some cupboards and room for the Gaggia espresso maker. No automatic settings on this venerable machine. It’s mano a mano coffee making in our bookshop.

  The kitchen also has a round table with chairs. None of the chairs match, but we sat on them anyway.

  Rani cut to the chase. ‘I want to know more about you.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘Don’t be. I used the plural “you”. I want to learn about the Marin family.’

  ‘Burn,’ Bec said. ‘Nice one, Rani.’

  My mouth runs away with me sometimes. Most times. All the time. For some reason, this irritates some people. Mostly those with no wit of their own. Jealous, I suppose.

  Rani pointed at me. ‘I want to know about what you were trying to do with the ghost last night, before I saved you.’

  Bec said to Rani, ‘Please tell me there was sword work.’

  I had to squirm a bit when Rani recounted her version of last night’s events to a rapt Bec. I mean, the outline was consistent, and most of the details. Let’s just say that the emphasis was different. In my version, I was calm, self-possessed, elusive and attractively mysterious. In Rani’s version, not so much.

  ‘That’s one evening chock-full of ghosts,’ Bec said when she’d finished. ‘It’s not usually like that, is it, Anton?’

  ‘Not that I have a lot to go on, but no. And what about you?’ I asked Rani.

  ‘It was sometimes like that during my training in London.’

  ‘You trained in London?’ Bec rubbed her hands together. I nearly groaned. London is Bec’s favourite city in the world, and she was planning to get there soonest. In the meantime, she collected any traveller’s tales she could.

  ‘That’s where I was living before the Company sent me here,’ Rani said.

  ‘The Company?’ I echoed. Alarm bells were ringing, great big ones.

  ‘The Company of the Righteous. That’s the ghost-hunting organisation I belong to.’

  I’d been half-expecting it, ever since she said the word ‘Company’, but it still hit me like a sock full of gravel. ‘You’re a member of the Company of the Righteous?’

  ‘On probationary assignment here in Melbourne.’

  ‘This is the same Company of the Righteous that the Marin family split from a hundred years ago?’

  She nodded slowly, never taking her eyes off me. ‘We’re taught that they were expelled for heretical approaches to ghost hunting.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was taught that the Marins couldn’t stand the close-mindedness of your Company and they had to go their own way to preserve their integrity.’

  ‘Point of view,’ Bec said.

  We both looked at her. She shrugged. ‘You’re both right, depending on your point of view.’

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding. My shoulders were tense, too, and I rolled them, stretching. ‘Okay, I can see that. It doesn’t explain why you, Rani, Company operative and all, are hanging around with a nasty heretic Marin.’

  ‘I came to see if you’d come back to the Conservatory tonight.’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘There’s still a ghost roaming about. I want to see what you plan to do with him.’

  ‘You don’t want to just charge in and chop him up?’

  ‘If you’re not interested, just say so.’

  ‘Oh, I’m interested. I just want to make sure I know what I’m getting into.’

  Bec nudged Rani. ‘London must be full of ghosts, right?

  Rani smiled. ‘They’re thick on the ground, especially around places like the Tower. I’ve got a link to a special Google Maps overlay somewhere. I’ll show you if you like.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Bec said, with one hand on her heart.

  Rani pushed her hair back. Today it hung loose on her shoulders. ‘When I took up the Melbourne posting, I hoped I might meet someone from your family.’

  I nodded at Bec and pushed my chest out. ‘Famous.’

  ‘Or infamous, really, in Company terms,’ Rani said. ‘The Marins and their unorthodoxies were mentioned, in passing, in our history lessons. A footnote to something else, really, but it was enough to intrigue me. Our training emphasises that we should observe as well as act.’

  ‘Gather intelligence.’ Bec nodded. ‘Good field practice.’

  ‘It underlines that your club is a quasi-military gang,’ I said. ‘Explains a lot.’

  ‘So who’s right?’ Bec asked. ‘Destroy ghosts or ease their passage?’

  Rani and I looked at each other. She spoke first. ‘I was taught that destroying ghosts was the only way to protect humanity.’

  ‘There is another way,’ I said. ‘The Marins have been doing it for a long time now.’

  ‘Show me, then,’ Rani said. ‘Show me tonight.’

  ‘You’re serious.’

  The rear door swung open. Rani was on her feet and had flowed – that’s the best word for it – so that her back was against the wall behind the door, and she had the sword half-drawn.

  Dad staggered in with a large cardboard box. He dropped it on the table as we jerked back, then he stumbled, panting, to the sink.

  Dad is old, as fathers tend to be. He’s tall like me, but he’s gone through the filling-out stage and passed through to the other side, where he’s getting a bit gaunt around the neck and cheeks. Most people wouldn’t see it, though, because of his beard. Black and grey, reasonably close, with short straight hair to match. Sad eyes, and large-knuckled hands. He was wearing one of his waistcoats over one of his T-shirts atop one of his pairs of jeans. He has other outfits, but the never-ending combination of waistcoats, T-shirts and jeans takes care of ninety-five per cent of his clothing needs.

  ‘Anton,’ he wheezed. ‘More boxes in the van. Hello, Rebecca. I like your helmet.’

  ‘Hello, Anton’s father Leon,’ Bec said distinctly enough for Rani to hear. ‘You want me to help?’

  ‘Sit, sit. Anton can manage while you introduce me to your fierce friend behind the door.’

  Rani slid the sword home and stepped out into the room. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Marin. Forgive me.’

  Dad straightened – at some cost to his chronic bad back, I knew. ‘Welcome to our biblio-emporium,’ he said as he flicked some dust off his waistcoat. ‘But I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘Rani Cross. And I was just about to go.’

  ‘Go? No, don’t do that. I haven’t had a chat with a member of the Company of the Righteous for ages.’

  Rani speared me with a look, and all I could do was shrug. ‘I didn’t say a word. He’s just sharp. And he can spot a sword a mile away.’

  ‘Boxes, Anton,’ Dad said. ‘They won’t shift themselves.’

  By the time I’d carried in the six boxes of books, Rani and Dad were getting on as if they’d known each other for years. Dad can really turn on the charm when he wants to.

  Then R
ani was up and on her way. ‘I’ll see you tonight, then, Anton.’

  Dad’s eyebrows rose but before he could get in with one of his supposedly suave observations I just nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I left my number for you, just in case.’

  A slip of paper sat there. I grabbed at it, decided that was a bit needy, let go and it fluttered to the floor. Cool as, I pretended it wasn’t there. ‘Great. Tonight then, at the Conservatory.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘I’ll text you.’

  Rani smiled a little and then left.

  The straightforward world of ghost hunting that Dad had promised me had become just a tiny bit complicated.

  ‘So,’ Dad said, ‘she doesn’t seem like a representative of the oppressive organisation that nearly killed all our ancestors, does she?’

  ‘You talked about that while I was carrying boxes?’

  ‘We talked about Melbourne. And London, didn’t we, Bec?’

  ‘She lived in Bayswater,’ Bec said. ‘That’s right near the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park.’

  ‘This statue is on your list of places to see in London?’

  ‘It’s about number sixty-three, from memory. It doesn’t mean it’s not important.’

  Dad straightened his waistcoat. ‘Be careful with this Rani, Anton. The history between our family and her organisation…Now, Rebecca, tell me what you’ve been up to lately.’

  I thought I’d better do some catch-up reading on our family story. I had a feeling I’d missed the juicier details.

  Bec happily told Dad about her uni studies, her bike-riding regime and the cosplay convention coming up in a few weeks. Bec’s a mad-keen cosplayer as well as a mad-keen football follower.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, slipping into a conversational pause just like a dancer into a revolving door, ‘I was thinking that Bec could help with our business.’

  ‘The bookshop? I’m not sure if we need any extra help.’

  ‘I meant the other business – the ghost-hunting business.’

  Dad put a hand to his chest, almost as if he’d been shot. Even if he didn’t have the family gift, he’d been brought up in its principles. And, probably to make up for his shortcomings, he adhered to them extra hard. ‘Careful, Anton, careful.’

  ‘It’s okay, Leon,’ Bec said. ‘I know about the ghosts.’

  Dad immediately went stony-faced. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Rebecca.’

  ‘Anton told me all about it. The ghosts, the family business hunting them down, the protecting and all that. I think it’s cool.’

  ‘Cool,’ Dad repeated in a voice of doom. ‘Rebecca, I think you had better leave us now. I need a private talk with Anton.’

  Bec blinked. She looked slowly at me, then back to Dad again. ‘Leon?’

  ‘Now, please, Rebecca.’

  Bec swallowed, stood, fumbled for her pump and left with a few dozen looks back over her shoulder. I mimed ‘I’ll call you’.

  After Bec closed the door behind her, Dad sighed. He spread his hands palm down on the table.

  ‘Tell me, Anton, tell me everything. Company of the Righteous? Rebecca knowing about our calling? What’s next? You’ll meet up with the Ragged Sisters and then open a twenty-four hour Ghost TV channel?’

  I have to hand to it to Dad. For someone who’s proudly Stone Age when it came to technology, he can cut a pretty good hi-tech reference when it suits him.

  Where to start? You see, Dad takes the ghost business seriously. That’s not to say that I don’t – hard not to, the way I was raised – but while I had my doubts, Dad was one hundred per cent committed to it.

  Dad’s grandfather brought the family out to Australia after the war. Apparently he’d been concerned that he’d have no work to do here, but the situation in Europe was so bad that Australia was the lesser of two evils. He needn’t have worried, though. One hundred and sixty years of European settlement meant one hundred and sixty years of European ghosts. He had plenty of business on his hands easing the passage of the lost, distressed, traumatised fragments we call ghosts. His son, my grandfather, took up the calling and continued the family tradition.

  Then came Dad. He didn’t inherit the talent for seeing ghosts, let alone for helping them leave this earthly plane, and it was a tragedy. He tried, and I can imagine how hard he tried, but nothing happened.

  Now, this would have been hard. Dad would never talk about it, really, but from stuff his sister Tanja had told me, it was really, really tough for him. She had the sight, so she was respected, like a true Marin. He wasn’t mistreated or abused, but he was made to feel deficient.

  To show that he was a true blue Marin, Dad turned his energy to learning; he constructed family trees, studied the theory of ghost hunting, collected books and anecdotes – anything he could do to be connected to a world that he was barred from by his genetics.

  So when I came along and the talent showed itself in me nice and early – scaring me half to death, I might add – he was relieved. Aunt Tanja had no kids before she disappeared when I was fourteen, so I was in line to keep the family calling alive.

  The trouble was, Dad was also jealous. Not that he’d say so, but every so often I could see his wistfulness when I reported on my fumbling efforts to intersect with the world of ghosts.

  He was a hard taskmaster, too. He was upholding the family name and he wasn’t about to let me do otherwise.

  And here I was, breaking one of his prime commandments. Ghosts were not to be discussed with ordinary civilians.

  Why don’t we tell civilians all about it and enlist their help? Believe me, it’s been tried. Have you heard of the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials? That’s the sort of reaction we get when we share. So excuse me if we’re a bit wary of going public.

  And by now my brief mention of ‘a hundred and sixty years of European ghosts’ has really been getting to you, hasn’t it? You’ve been agog, wondering about the other forty thousand years people have lived on this continent and what’s going on there, right?

  Nothing. There’s nothing going on – at least that I know of. I don’t see any Aboriginal ghosts. No one in my family has. It made my Aunt Tanja wonder if this whole ghost business isn’t a cultural one where we’re attuned to the death rituals we’re bound up with, and we’re locked out of those we aren’t. Different traditions of death and afterlife spawn different ways as beliefs and traditions and stories combine. The people who’ve lived in this wide brown land longest have their own way and we simply don’t intersect.

  It’s sensitive. I’d like to discuss it with someone who knows what they’re talking about but it’s a great taboo. I wouldn’t know where to start without putting my foot in it.

  ‘Dad.’ I studied my hands. Book dust all over them. ‘It just came out.’

  ‘You wanted to talk about it to two pretty girls to impress them, you mean.’

  Ouch. Low blow. ‘I’m happy to impress pretty girls. Any girls at all, really, as soon as I find out how to impress. But that wasn’t it.’

  I explained that I had to tell Bec. She didn’t believe me when I told her I wasn’t going to uni because I needed time to find myself. In fact, she nearly laughed herself to death.

  ‘Hm.’ Dad rubbed his beard. ‘I suppose it could be worse. Rebecca has kept you out of trouble in the past. Remember when you were little and you lost your swimming costume?’

  I hurried on to my encounter with Rani.

  ‘Did Rani tell you much about her Company of the Righteous?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘An old outfit, very old. I haven’t heard of their being in Melbourne before.’ He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. ‘I wonder what they’re doing here now.’

  Slicing up ghosts, to judge from last night. ‘What do you want me to do about Bec?’

  ‘Rebecca? She can keep a secret, can’t she?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t tell you about our love child, did she?’

  That got me a st
artled look before he recovered. ‘Rebecca has better sense than to partner with you. I hope that’s a way of pointing out that she has the good sense to keep a secret.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ll want to talk to her.’

  ‘I’ll get in touch. Tomorrow?’

  ‘Not tomorrow. I have someone coming.’

  ‘Here? Someone with books?’

  ‘Someone.’

  Sometimes I think Dad overdoes the mysterious occult guy thing. One day, he’ll trim his beard into a goatee and start shaping up a wicked widow’s peak.

  CHAPTER 4

  It’s funny, but real down-to-earth practicalities are as much a part of ghost hunting as any spooky supernatural stuff. Sleep, for instance; sweet, sweet sleep.

  I generally catch some sleep time in the afternoon and evening. I used to come home after a night of tracking down ghosts and try to sleep then, but the adrenaline buzz kept me wide awake.

  Another advantage of homeschooling, this was. I couldn’t imagine a regular school letting me lie down for a snooze in the afternoon. Damn that inflexible education system. Build sleeping time into the regular school day, I say.

  So my usual daily schedule is this. I get up at around eleven at night, prepare, then head out into the world to hunt ghosts. Mostly, that means following up on leads that have come Dad’s way, to which I’ve added the much more efficient scanning of social media, mostly Twitter, for bizarre and unexplained sightings.

  On top of that, there’s a fair bit of wandering around the city. I’ve got to know the gloomy and suspect places, the ones that spawn or attract ghosts, and I have a schedule for checking on these regularly. Hospitals. Old buildings. Cemeteries. Stations. You’d be surprised how many ghosts cluster around stations. Waiting for that train that never comes, I expect.

  Since ghosts can’t usually be seen in daylight, most of my work is over when the sun rises. This means I can get to the shop in Thornbury and open it at eightish. I front the shop until Dad gets in around midday. Then I head home. Once I get there, I prepare some stuff for the next scouting trip, do household maintenance stuff – washing, cleaning, cooking, the usual – and try to relax before I haul down the blackout curtain I installed in my bedroom and try to get some sleep before rising and repeating.