Gap Year in Ghost Town

by Michael Pryor

  I didn’t wait for her reaction. Quickly, I turned – hiding my blush – and gave the other bunch to Bec. ‘And for you, Bec.’

  This was my masterstroke. The flowers could mean whatever you wanted them to mean. Yes, it was an apology to Rani, but by giving them to Bec, too, it took some of the pressure off, made it less of a possibly romantic statement than a generally chummy one, team-oriented, solidarity, stuff like that. ‘Irises,’ Dad said as he walked in. He was wearing a black turtleneck under his vest. ‘And what’s this for, Anton?’

  ‘I was just going to ask that,’ Rani said. If pressed I would have said she looked wary. The optimistic take would have been ‘overwhelmed and hesitant’. The pessimistic would have been ‘embarrassed and looking for a way to leave unseen’.

  I can read a whole trilogy’s worth of meaning into a simple facial expression. I didn’t need a reminder, but just in case this let me know that flowers, while nice, were no substitute for genuine openness, something that glib Anton sometimes had trouble with.

  Bec poked at the flowers then pointed at my helmet. ‘You’ve left your lights on.’

  ‘Anton?’ Dad said as I nearly dislocated my arm until I found the switch and cut the helmet light off. Saving batteries is important. ‘Reason?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘does one need a reason to give flowers?’

  ‘Possibly not,’ Dad said. ‘And possibly one would like the reason to stay personal?’

  ‘I’ll get a vase,’ I said. As an attempt to shut down that avenue of inquiry, it was an inspired one. Relevant, pithy, helpful, and provided a chance to hide my face as I ratted away under the sink.

  There followed the business of undoing the bunches and arranging them, while chatting inconsequentially. Did Rani and I size each other up? Who’s to say?

  She smiled as she arranged and chatted. It wasn’t a brittle smile, or a wistful smile, or a frozen smile. It genuinely looked genuine. Pleased. Relaxed. Amused even.

  I figured I’d made amends. I’d make two mends if given the chance. I really liked her.

  Flowers arranged, mess cleared away, we were set for business.

  I sat next to Rani and put my hands on the table. She touched the back of one of them. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

  Bec leaned over. ‘You’ve still got your hi-vis vest on.’

  ‘It might look like a hi-vis vest, but it’s actually an original fashion jacket from Milan, the summer collection.’

  ‘You’re wearing another jacket underneath it.’

  ‘And that’s the layered look, direct from Paris.’

  ‘You’re full of it.’

  ‘Yes. Yes I am.’

  ‘And you still owe me an interesting question.’

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  Dad tapped the table. ‘Rebecca and I have made some progress. Rebecca?’

  Bec was immediately all business. ‘It looks like this woman, this phasmaturgist, the one at Grender’s death site, is the key to what’s going on.’

  ‘I have a few questions I’d like to put to her,’ I said. ‘“Crazy, much?” would be the first.’

  ‘We need to find her.’ Rani drummed her fingers on the table. ‘How?’

  ‘Come on, Bec,’ I said. ‘You got something?’

  She gave me a look. ‘Sure, Anton. I’ll just use facial reconstruction software to work up an image based on the description you gave us, then I’ll hack into the police database and run a matching algorithm. While I’m at it I’ll look for correlation patterns based on Grender’s known activities over the last few months. I’m sure I can enhance some fuzzy images, too.’

  I put my fingertips on either side of my head as I squinted. ‘Fry Face. Not sure if Bec is serious or not.’

  ‘Not,’ Bec said.

  ‘But geez, Bec, that’s what happens in the movies! You get all digital and hacky and find out all sorts of stuff! Are you telling me that the movies aren’t a realio trulio guide to life?’

  ‘I hate to disappoint you.’

  ‘No you don’t. You love to disappoint me. You were the one who told me the truth about the Tooth Fairy.’

  ‘And the Easter Bunny.’

  I slumped. ‘I’m still not over that.’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Leon has something.’

  Dad looked up from his notepad. ‘Rebecca has been doing some fine computer work,’ he said, ‘or so I understand. While she’s been at it, I’ve been operating in a more old-fashioned way. I’ve been making phone calls.’

  Dad’s informants were a rag-tag bunch. Some were other ghost hunters we got on well enough with. Independent operatives. Small enterprises or family businesses like ours. Add to that lots of loners, misfits and shady customers, all with at least a touch of ghost sight. Oh, some were dedicated upright citizens, but there’s something about the interactions between ghosts and humans that seems to put these people out on the fringe of society.

  Wait, what am I saying?

  ‘Did they have anything useful, Leon?’ Rani asked.

  ‘It has been…interesting.’

  I sat forward. ‘Interesting’ was one of Dad’s code words. In that tone of voice it could mean anything from ‘mildly diverting’ to ‘earth-shattering, world-changing stuff’. Whatever, it was worth listening to.

  ‘All of them – all of them, even Sightless Sally – reported seeing frightening stuff. Lurkers and Ragers in many places, but four of my informants thought they’d seen Rogues.’

  ‘This place is going to hell in a handbasket,’ I observed. ‘And don’t ask me how you can fit the whole infernal region in a basket, unless it’s a junior-grade Tardis.’

  Dad underlined something and looked up. ‘One of my informants has left the country, his partner said. Others are lying low, not interested in scouting, not for any monetary inducements I could offer.’

  Rani raised an eyebrow. ‘This is the city I’ve landed in? Brilliant.’

  ‘I switched tack,’ Dad went on. ‘I started asking about Grender. It took some time.’ He shook his head. ‘The fear that is out there, I haven’t seen its like before. Finally, though, Bao was willing to talk.’

  Bao was good. She’d given us some of the most reliable leads in the west of the city – Footscray, Spotswood way. She was also one of the few ghost people who didn’t mind technology. She ran a sort of coded Twitter account where she noted sightings, for the benefit of those in the know.

  Bao was genuinely concerned for the welfare of ghosts, too. She took money, but never as much as Dad was willing to give her.

  ‘She said she’d seen Grender three times in the last fortnight,’ Dad continued. ‘And he’d been with a woman – an older woman. Bao said that this woman wasn’t well.’

  ‘If it’s the same woman Anton and I saw, I’ll endorse that,’ Rani said. ‘She was in a bad way.’

  ‘Dealing with this sort of magic can stretch a person’s sanity,’ Dad said.

  ‘So we just have to find this woman,’ Bec said. ‘Should be easy. Half this city is women.’

  ‘We need some more details,’ I said. ‘Did Bao have anything else?’

  Dad flipped the pages of his notepad. ‘Bao told me the three locations she’d seen Grender and this woman. And a fourth, but she was hesitant about this one.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was coming back from a trip up north, driving home along the Hume Highway. At night, just after the Seymour turn-off, she thought she saw Grender and this woman standing on the side of the road.’

  Grender? Out of the city? Unheard of. ‘But she wasn’t sure.’

  ‘At night, driving a hundred and ten clicks? No, she wasn’t sure, but she noted GPS coordinates.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling that this unlikely one is the important one?’ I asked the ceiling.

  Stupid ceiling. Didn’t have an answer.

  ‘Don’t tell me you have a feeling about it,’ Rani said.

  ‘Not a feeling.’ I put a hand to my forehead and tried to lo
ok mystical. ‘Just a touch of foresight, which is one better than—’

  ‘Threesight,’ she finished for me. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘So now it’s the Marin Ghost Hunter Detective Agency?’ Bec said.

  ‘And Associates,’ Rani put in. She and Bec bumped fists. I groaned.

  ‘So it would seem,’ Dad said. ‘It’s all we have.’

  ‘Something must be done,’ Rani said.

  ‘And we’re the ones to do it,’ Bec said.

  ‘Oh, geez,’ I said, ‘I can feel a musketeer moment coming on.’

  Rani stood. She had her car keys in her hand. ‘Leon, do you have the addresses of those locations?’

  Dad tore a sheet from his notepad and went to hand it to Rani.

  She studied it for a moment, then handed it back. ‘Humour me, please, Leon. Add the Hume Highway location too.’

  I made a noise that some could interpret as sceptical.

  ‘Think about it,’ Rani said. ‘The choice location, the meaningful one, the right one, is going to turn out to be the last one on our list. They always are. I’m suggesting we should start with the last one and save time.’

  ‘Hume Highway?’ I said.

  ‘Let’s Go North.’

  We left Bec trying to explain metadata to Dad. Hunting ghosts and avoiding Rogues was easy compared to that.

  I wanted to go up through Whittlesea and cut across to join the highway at Wallan. Rani favoured Plenty Road to the Ring Road then joining the Hume Highway because that’s what the car’s GPS said. We compromised by taking Plenty Road to the Ring Road and then joining the Hume Highway.

  You have to choose your battles.

  With my backpack at my feet, I drummed away on the dashboard for a while, both hands, my version of a contemporary take on African rhythms, more or less.

  Rani tolerated it.

  ‘Rani and Anton,’ I said after a really excellent thumping flourish, ‘riding around in a car, just shooting the breeze.’

  ‘Always struck me as a naff phrase,’ she responded, ‘“shooting the breeze”.’

  ‘It’d either be really easy or really hard, depending on the way you look at it.’

  ‘Uh huh. On another matter, you don’t mind being in the passenger seat?’

  ‘I accept that I’m not likely to get my licence anytime soon, and I don’t take it as a moral failing.’

  ‘So what would you see as a moral failing?’

  A snappy answer rose to my lips, but, for a change, I forced it back down again. ‘Letting people down.’

  ‘That happens. We can’t be perfect all the time.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that.’ I thought hard. ‘It’s when you make a commitment, when you say you’ll do something but, in the end, you don’t.’

  ‘So, not when you try hard and fail?’

  ‘No, that’s different. If you promise, and then you do your best – really do your best, not faking it – then that’s okay. Disappointing, but okay.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Rani said and we drove on for some time in silence.

  ‘Right,’ she said suddenly, just north of Craigieburn. ‘Let’s try again.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Sharing. Let’s try again.’

  I was determined not to bungle things this time. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Janez.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Janez. My middle name. You told me yours, now I’m telling you mine.’

  ‘That’s a good start. I appreciate it. Anything else?’

  ‘My Aunt Tanja showed me most of the practical aspects of ghost hunting because Dad couldn’t.’

  I looked around. Where did that come from? If it wasn’t a blurt, it was the next best thing – and I never blurt.

  ‘Ah. That explains quite a deal,’ she said. ‘It hurts him, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And has forever, I think. He covers it up by dedicating himself to the job in a different way.’

  ‘Through you.’

  ‘That’s okay. Mostly.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure? Me? I’m never sure about anything. I live in a state of constant uncertainty.’

  ‘And Leon’s not the only one who’s covering up, is he?’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. Hey, is that an emu?’

  ‘It’s a bush.’

  ‘Nice work, Sherlock.’

  ‘Here’s a test, then,’ she said, a little later. ‘Who’s your favourite Holmes?’

  ‘Mycroft,’ I said. ‘Who’s yours? Cumberbatch or Downey?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Oh, don’t tell me you like Miller?’

  ‘What if I do? It takes all types. I might prefer Jeremy Brett for all you know.’

  ‘You know the thing that puzzles me about fandom?’ I mused. ‘It’s the way the object of your obsession is the best, better than anything else, and anyone who fancies anything else is strange or mad.’

  ‘You make it sound like religion.’

  ‘I do?’ I considered this. ‘I mean, that’s my point, in a profound and original way.’

  ‘I thought so. I’m looking forward to the groundbreaking blog post: “Religion and Fandom: Same Thing, More or Less”.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll make a movie out of it. I’d like that.’

  We overtook a truck, one of those big B-doubles. ‘You understand, of course,’ Rani said when we were back in the left-hand lane, ‘that you are a champion deflector.’

  ‘It’s better than being a champion defector. What?’

  ‘There you go again. It’s mostly automatic, I’d say.’

  I thought carefully before I answered. ‘We all have ways of managing ourselves.’

  ‘True. Snappy answers are a fine way of deflecting, diverting attention. Covering up, in other words.’

  And didn’t that give me something to chew on.

  I’m not sure how long the silence lasted before Rani broke it, because I was doing some deep thinking of a sort that I wasn’t used to.

  ‘You began telling me about your Aunt Tanja,’ she said.

  I nodded, and when I started talking about family in a way I never had before, it was easier than I expected.

  ‘Aunt Tanja hunted ghosts with a fury. On top of that, she was a fiend for ghost-hunting lore and family history. Dad says that, in some ways, she cared more for ghosts than real people, which sounds like code for “difficult person”.’

  ‘We have many of that type in the Company,’ Rani responded. ‘Single-minded.’

  ‘That’s it. Single-minded. And her mind was first-class, apparently. She was always scouring the Marin archives, and she was in correspondence with ghost hunters all around the world.’

  ‘Bec showed me some of her work,’ Rani said. ‘“Apparently first-class”? Sounds as if you didn’t know her well.’

  ‘I was fourteen when she disappeared. She kept to herself when she wasn’t instructing me, so I didn’t see this ghost expert side of her. Dad did, and told me about it later.’

  ‘She sounds remarkable.’

  I shrugged. ‘According to Dad, she wanted to come up with better ways to find ghosts, better ways to ease their passage. And she wanted to know more about their origins, about what they mean for humanity.’

  ‘There’s too little of that about,’ Rani said softly.

  ‘She was good to me when I needed it,’ I added, equally softly. ‘I miss her.’

  As we drew closer, I used my GPS unit to zero us in on the location. As Dad had said, it was just south of one of the Seymour turn-offs.

  When we pulled off the road, Rani didn’t open the door. She wound down the window. ‘We’re at a memorial site.’

  ‘You see anything?’

  ‘You mean apart from the flowers and the crosses and the grief?’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no.’

  The shrine was in the median, that strip that divides the highway. About eighty, a hundred metres across? Lots of trees, scrubby scrub, stuff like t
hat. Knee-height wire barriers to step over. A wasteland, really; it wouldn’t see many visitors.

  Before we got out of the car, Rani pointed. ‘I’ll head to the north, and circle around the back of that tree that looks as if it’s the centrepiece. You angle across to the south and we’ll meet up. Keep an eye on that stand of trees to your left.’

  ‘This is your combat background talking?’

  ‘Learning to read the landscape quickly could save your life.’

  When I got out of the car I already had my torch in hand because I might need to see some colour instead of relying on the silver-greys of my dark sight. The night was cold, but still. No clouds, and out here the half-moon was bright enough to turn everything sheeny. I wished I’d brought my greatcoat, and a scarf, some good gloves and one of those furry Russian hats, but you can’t have everything so I just wrapped my jacket around myself and plodded over to the huge river red gum that was the centre of all the mourning.

  Just like most people, I’d seen these roadside shrines up and down the highways of this great nation of ours, and I’d always felt sad as I zipped past. Someone had driven off the road, been killed, and the friends, family and relations had pilgrimaged to the site and marked it. Sometimes they were maintained for years: the flowers renewed, the crosses straightened after falling. Mostly, though, the initial anguish faded, the flowers withered, the crosses blew over, the heartfelt messages painted on the offending tree faded back into the ordinary roadside scenery, and those passing didn’t see it at all.

  This one was fresh. Lots of wreaths and floral arrangements. A photo in a frame, nailed to the tree, just over a horrible gash that was still raw.

  I realised that I was whistling softly through my teeth, and I cut it out.

  Rani stood with her hands in her pockets. ‘Where do they go?’ she said suddenly.

  I was crouching, just about to flip on the torch so I could study the photograph better. Rani’s question was so unexpected that I stood, pocketing the torch. ‘Who?’

  ‘Ghosts. I know what the Company says, but my doubts about the Company’s dogma are now growing, thanks to you Marins.’

  There was no heat in that remark – it was more thoughtful than spiteful. I rubbed my hands together for some warmth as Rani studied the tributes. She was tall and straight in the moonlight. ‘That’s a boggy metaphysical swamp to fall into,’ I said. ‘What happens when we die? What exactly are ghosts? Why do ghosts appear at some deaths and not others?’