Graveyard Shift in Ghost Town Read online

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2019

  Copyright © Michael Pryor 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 393 0

  eISBN 978 1 76087 157 4

  For teaching resources, explore

  www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover & text design by Ruth Grüner

  Cover illustration by Craig Phillips

  Set by Ruth Grüner

  To Gerald Moran, Mark Blackney, Anthony Berger and Tom Morris, for work done – and done well.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  So, you ask, how’s this gap year going? Is it actually giving me a taste of the Marin family ghost-hunting business? Or is it just introducing me to encounters that could end up with me dead?

  To tell you the truth, as a wise man once said, there’s been a lot of ins, a lot of outs, and a lot of what-have-yous. So many what-have-yous.

  Plenty of good, grown-up-style learning, though, about things like maintaining a healthy work/life balance. You know, making time for exercise, relationships and the day-to-day business of taking care of yourself while going out every night and battling unearthly creatures.

  Is my mind made up about whether I want to follow the family heritage and make this my life’s work? Not so much.

  That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t getting on with the job. Rani – my newish ghost-hunting partner – and I had to, because ghosts were coming out of the woodwork in good old Melbourne town. We were up to our necks in Ragers and Mopers and Lurkers and the whole spooky crew, manifesting in the sort of numbers that they invent new names for, like zongillion or quodwillion or pootillion.

  Was the job all running around and tackling apparitions? No way. A lot of ghost hunting is waiting for the pests to manifest, which is what Rani and I were doing at the Royal Society of Victoria.

  The Royal Society of Victoria building is one of those places that thousands of Melburnians go past every day and never notice. It’s near the Exhibition Buildings, on that weird triangle of land bounded by Exhibition, Victoria and La Trobe Streets, the part of town that’s still plenty busy after midnight when Rani and I were doing our surveilling.

  Heh. Surveilling. Rani’s quasi-military approach to ghost hunting was rubbing off.

  We were following a tip-off, but I’d done my research, too – with a little help from my best friend Bec and a lot of help from Google – and this two-storey rendered brick goes back to the 1850s, which is really early for Melbourne. It’s sort of a clubhouse for science. Over the years, the Society has done stuff like sponsoring the Burke and Wills expedition. This was an outstanding example of incompetence, really. They tried to cross Australia south to north in the 1860s, unworried by the twin drawbacks of no organisational ability and no sense of direction. Even though they took a grand piano with them, they failed and died out there in the desert.

  Repeat – they took a grand piano with them while trying to cross Australia for the first time. History. It’s full of stories you couldn’t make up.

  Rani let me go on and on when I told her all this. She has the sort of patience help-desk operators should have but don’t. ‘We have a Royal Society in London, you know,’ she replied when I eventually ran out of historiotrivia.

  ‘Truly? This place was founded in eighteen fifty-four. How about yours?’

  ‘Sixteen sixty, Anton.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Your guys have a head start in this sort of thing, then.’

  ‘You might say that.’

  I forgot to tell you that it was Rani’s idea to take up a watching position in one of the trees opposite the RSV building, in the Carlton Gardens. It was my idea to be sceptical about her idea but, in the end, tree perching is what we did, even though it was a bit nippy on this early spring night. I was snug though, thanks to my new – op-shop new – scarf and nice grey tweed jacket.

  Dark Dave, one of our long-time ghost spotters, had messaged the tip to us. Way before everyone in the world had web handles, ghost watchers came up with equally daggy nicknames. Dark Dave was a great big guy who had a liking for black leather wide-brimmed hats. He had enough ghost sight to know what was going on with the world, and since he was one of the good guys he sent all his sightings to us. He also had a sense of humour, because he ran Melbourne Ghost Tours on weekends, herding bunches of giggling tourists around some of the city’s grubbier locations, and no one wised up to the fact that he could actually see the ghosts that he sometimes wove into his patter.

  The problem with Dark Dave’s tip was that he hadn’t got close enough to offer even a wild guess at identification. ‘Nothing too bad,’ he’d said after I asked. ‘Lurker, probably. Maybe a Moaner.’

  Which was pretty much like saying ‘default ghost’. Lurkers and Moaners are your basic low-level manifestation and make up the bulk of sightings. Rani and I had eased the passage of dozens of Lurkers and Moaners in the last couple of weeks, but the deluge didn’t look like stopping.

  Tree branches aren’t exactly built for comfort and it didn’t take long before keeping one arm looped around a handy branch – for safety, you understand – was giving me the start of a major cramp situation, and the rustling overhead had me on edge because you need to spot the possums before they spot you.

  I had a Formative Ghost-Hunting Experience involving a possum not long ago, and as well as teaching me to remain highly alert whenever one of those oh-so-innocent-looking beasties is around, it helped shape me into the ghost-hunting machine I am today, which could be some sort of origin story one day when I’m the hero of a major graphic novel.

  Still, wa
iting can get boring, and this is one of the benefits of having Rani as a ghost-hunting partner. Before she showed up, all the way from London, and agreed to come on board with Marin Ghost Hunting Inc., I had to do all this waiting by myself. Solo surveilling gave me a chance to read, true, but reading while keeping an eye on a possible ghost manifestation zone meant bobbing my head up and down, which was a literal pain in the neck.

  Chat with Rani ranged from truly deep and meaningful (‘Where does the solidity of ghosts come from?’) to trivial but interesting (‘Isn’t Bob Loblaw the best name for a minor TV character ever?’). History featured heavily, too, because it can be very useful when ghost hunting to have some idea of the possible background of the ghosts you’re rounding up. She wasn’t that impressed with Melbourne history, though. So many old buildings in London meant that over there, something like our RSV building would just be the corner shop. This was fair enough, but I was able, then, to point out that she was being Eurocentric, and forgetting that here there was in fact 40,000 years of human history. Rani conceded this and awarded me two extra points because I used the word ‘Eurocentric’ and followed it up with ‘colonial mindset’.

  Then she declared me the best tree-based debater she’d ever known. I think she was being gently sarcastic by then so I stopped arguing.

  A little later, I was about to take a risk and ask her if she had remembered any more about her parents when she gripped my arm and pointed with her other hand.

  Traffic on the street in front of us was light but constant, and it took me a while to see between the cars. But eventually I saw the ghost drifting around the Exhibition Street corner and along the Victoria Street rear of the building.

  I tentatively tagged the ghost as a common Lingerer, probably Edwardian, from the big floppy hat, extensive dress and puffy sleeves. Lingerers are the sort of low-level ghost that often hangs around historic places like the RSV building. The alarming thing was, though, that a young guy was ambling along the footpath and the ghost was making a beeline for him.

  Lingerers don’t do that. Lingerers generally steer clear of warmbloods like us. Like real estate agents, they’re all about location, location, location – they’re attracted to place, not people. Yet this one practically pounced on the unlucky passer-by, latching onto his head with both hands as if she was a ghostly nutcracker and his skull a tasty macadamia.

  Rani was there and then not there, out of the tree and landing like a cat. Me? I slid and scraped my way down the trunk like another sort of cat, one that spends too much time indoors and aims to catch mice by toppling on them, but I joined her as she raced across the road, unsheathing her sword as she ran.

  Yep, Rani is a sword-wielding ghost hunter. This is incredibly cool, you understand, even if she was feeling ambivalent about her training and her ghost-hunting upbringing.

  By now, the Lingerer was smashing the Lingerer job description to pieces. She wasn’t just latching onto the innocent passer-by – the IPB – she was going to town on him. The poor guy had fallen to his knees and was moaning semi-coherently.

  If you forget about Rogues, Thugs and Gnashers, most ghosts are pretty subtle in their interactions with us. They don’t vampire us, sucking all our vitality or life-force in one go. Their assaults are more gradual than violent. Most people hardly notice – they don’t feel quite right but put it down to diet or lack of exercise or something. If it goes on too long, though, that’s heading into the danger zone, Lana.

  Whatever this ghost was, she definitely had no patience for the usual moves. The IPB looked as if he had the worst migraine ever, and his whole body was shuddering.

  Ghost hunters to the rescue!

  Rani used the flat of her sword and smacked the ghost a good one on the side of her head, hard enough to break her hold on the IPB. He toppled, barely getting his hands out in front of him in time to stop a sickening face/asphalt interaction.

  Close up, the ghost was definitely First World War or thereabouts, and a couple of interesting ribbons on her front could have been suffragette issue, but we had no time for that as she swung around, snarling, hands clawing as Rani carefully backed away.

  Which was all according to plan. With the Lingerer’s attention on Rani, I could muscle my way past the fear that rolled off the ghost like bad deodorant, approach her from behind and plunge my hands into her back.

  This is what our ghost hunting was all about. We weren’t hunting them for social media fame or anything like that; we were dedicated to easing their passage, sending them to the great beyond, helping them to go Elsewhere. This was my family tradition: being kind to ghosts instead of destroying them by chopping them into tiny pieces like most ghost hunters do, Rani’s old organisation included.

  The ghost stiffened as I groped inside her ghostly substance. I brought my hands together and twisted, like wringing out a wet cloth. Bam, she flew apart, scattering her substance in confetti-like shreds, and I was battered by memory fragments – metres and metres of fabric, the sensation of scissors at work, aching fingers and, finally, the sound of a baby crying.

  I staggered back a step or two. Even though I knew that being hit by these impressions was a standard part of ghost dissolution, it was never easy. These slivers of lives lived long ago weren’t just like video snippets. They were saturated with feelings like loss, longing, joy, fear and thousands of other emotions that have no real name. One of the hardest parts of my job is to not be overwhelmed by them.

  Rani was helping the IPB to his feet. ‘My head hurts,’ he said in a thick, unsteady voice.

  ‘It’s a gas leak,’ I said to him. ‘A very localised, soon-to-be-fixed gas leak that won’t be mentioned in the media.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Get yourself to a doctor,’ Rani suggested. ‘It’s probably nothing, but you can’t be too sure.’

  He blundered off without a backwards glance.

  I wiped my hands together. ‘Let’s savour this moment. Another happy customer, another example of the finely functioning team that is Rani and Anton, ghost hunters supreme—’

  Rani had gone, heading towards the front of the building, gliding through the car park in the shadow of the peppercorn trees at the eastern edge of the RSV building, coat flaring around her – a new coat, a very cool metallic blue, dark enough for night work, stylish enough for a quiet drink in a laneway bar afterwards. I shrugged and jogged after her.

  My ghost-detecting pendant was buzzing on my chest as I rounded the corner, where I nearly smacked into Rani. She was holding up a hand like a traffic cop, because at the top of the stairs to the entrance was another ghost. Shifting in outline and slightly translucent – timeless ghost style, never out of fashion – he was a worker of some kind, with heavy boots, a piece of rope for a belt, a battered waistcoat and a hat that looked as if it had lost a fight with a drop bear. He was facing away from us, arms extended, hands feeling the stone on either side of the grand double doors.

  ‘Another Lingerer?’ I suggested in a low voice.

  ‘He looks attached to the place, but after the way that last one behaved …’ Rani shrugged. ‘Are our ghost categories getting dodgy?’

  ‘All of them are getting more grouchy lately, even Lingerers.’

  ‘More of them, and more aggro. So let’s be extra careful, shall we?’ Rani flipped her hand in a classic ‘over to you’ gesture.

  I shucked off my backpack, took a few deep breaths and sneaked up the stairs, but I needn’t have worried. The ghost didn’t even notice me. He was inspecting the masonry with a melancholy concentration, down on one knee and running a misty hand across the threshold stone, totally absorbed in what was probably some sort of echo from the life that spawned him. Yes, he radiated the traditional waves of fear generated by any ghost, but they were pretty feeble.

  Ghost fear is a spectrum. This poor little guy was right down one end, the ‘faintly upsetting’ end, which was a long way from the ‘gut-grinding dread and terror’ that Rani and I had run into with Rogues. Even fo
r experienced ghost hunters like us – and I still wasn’t used to thinking of myself like that – spooks that could pump out that sort of fear were hard to handle.

  This guy, though, looked like a piece of cake. I touched my gently vibrating pendant and spread my hands. ‘It’s okay. Everything’s all right. It’s okay.’

  The ghost glanced at me, and despite having dealt with dozens of ghosts now, I flinched and had to look away. Ghost eyes. They do me in. There’s nothing behind them, and that void is a scary glimpse of the Elsewhere beyond our own reality – a lot scarier than his pathetic Miasma of Fear™.

  I gently placed my palms on his back, and that was the end of the gentle part of the transaction. As soon as I made contact, he reared, swung his arm backhanded, and whacked me on the side of the head with a ghostly masonry mallet.

  It was ghostly, not wholly substantial, and it only clipped me. Otherwise, I would have had a crushed skull on my hands, so to speak. In any case, it hurt.

  I spun away, falling in what felt like slow motion while my brain – which was definitely in slow motion – thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to fall down those really hard and probably dangerous bluestone stairs.’

  Rani caught me, which was the only thing that stopped me from fracturing my already tender skull. ‘You plonker,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you see that happening?’

  She cradled me in her arms like a baby. It was very comfortable. After a moment or two, I was able to form words. ‘Who? Me?’

  Bad idea, as both words thundered in my head, adding to the thumping ache that was already stomping around inside. ‘Ouch,’ I said, meaningfully.

  Rani set me on my feet. ‘Are you all right?’

  At that moment, my stomach volunteered to push the last thing I ate – some toast and some very good homemade apricot jam – up my throat. I thanked it for its initiative, but declined. It settled, unhappily. ‘Can’t say I’m a hundred per cent,’ I said, ‘but I’ll make do.’

  Rani looked into my eyes. ‘You could have concussion.’

  I went to nod and thought better of it. ‘Let’s take it easy, then.’

  ‘As long as you consider it a learning moment.’