Ghosts Read online

  The café kicked us out about an hour later when they announced they were closing for the night.

  “Come out with me tonight,” Henry pleaded.

  I drove home first to check on Clem, but found a note saying that she’d gone to a party. I changed into something cleaner, and jumped back into Henry’s car. This time, I let him drive. I felt tiny waves of excitement in my stomach.

  “So where are we going?” I asked.

  “It’s a surprise.” He suddenly leaned in and kissed me. “You smell nice.”

  I could feel my face burning, I wasn’t used to such spontaneity. I told myself quietly to give the methodical planning a rest for the night. The whole world wouldn’t fall apart if I didn’t know what was going happen in the next five to thirty minutes.

  Henry and I chatted as we drove to the outskirts of Miller Creek, past my old high school, and the new housing estate. Even as someone who had lived in Miller Creek their whole life, I had no idea where we were going. Eventually, after driving up a mountain on a winding road, we parked at the edge of a forest.

  “It’s a secret place, nobody knows about it. That’s what makes it the best place in town.”

  “A place that the people in Miller Creek don’t know about?” I responded, amazed at the prospect. But I took his hand anyway, and let him lead me up the hill, through the trees. I wondered if this was a bad idea – stranger danger, and the like. I felt like I barely knew Henry. Yet, I was letting him take me into some bushes in the middle of nowhere.

  Eventually, we got to the top of the hill. I looked out over the cliff to see the bright lights of Miller Creek before me. It looked like a small city from there, and I imagined it being a sprawling metropolis one day.

  “It’s beautiful,” I cried. “I didn’t even know this was here.” I wished then for a camera to take pictures of the stunning view.

  “Neither did I – until Aggie showed me.” Henry put his arm around me. I turned and kissed him again. I began to reach for his shirt buttons, a force of habit.

  “Wait,” he said, pulling away and looking at his watch. He then pointed out over the cliff.

  The Miller Creek fireworks. Every year, people crowded into the town square to see them, rather than going into Brisbane and being packed like sardines in one tiny place. This year, we had the best seat in the house.

  “Happy New Year,” we chanted at the same time.

  When the fireworks were over, Henry stated that he had one more place to take me.

  He led me back down the hill, and took a sharp left through the trees. The night was clear enough for us to see in the dark without torches. Eventually, we emerged into a clearing, a small glistening lake in front of us.

  “How could I have not known about this?” I said, amazed.

  “Well you do now.” Without another word, he kissed my neck and started to peel off my clothes. I then pulled him to the ground next to the lake, in a naked tangle of arms and legs.

  Afterwards, we waded into the lake, hand in hand until we were neck deep in the water. Henry pulled his body close against mine.

  I’m not really living, I thought sadly to myself. How often did I do anything like this? Something spontaneous, something fun. Something magical, memorable even. Everyday I felt like one of those beautiful, colourful species of birds that you see trapped in metal cages, when they should be out in the wild, in their natural habitat, thriving, alive… Being alive is not the same thing as living, I realised right there. Again, I had the distinct feeling that I was dying slowly from the inside out. My life would flash before my eyes, and I would one day be forty or fifty years old, and wonder what I had to show for myself, for my life. And I would cry, and be filled with more regret than I already felt. I would resent myself, I would resent everyone and everything around me. Such was the confusion of the young – I knew I probably wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

  Henry smiled, a flash of white teeth against the dark sky. I had been lost in my own thoughts. “I think there’s somebody you should meet.”

  We dried ourselves and drove back into town. We pulled up at a house, where I was greeted by one of the most beautiful creatures I’d ever seen in my life. Her face was painted a flawless white and lips bright red, her eyes lined carefully with black makeup, her hair cut into a blunt fringe at the front, with wispy curls around her face. She was dressed in a beautiful vintage frock, pale blue crepe silk with a lace collar that accentuated her pregnant belly. She was also wearing bright red heels that were sky high. I marvelled at her for a moment, before she extended her hand out to me, nails a perfect shade of red. She looked to have just returned from a New Year’s Eve party.

  “Hello, I’m Aggie. Pleased to meet you.”

  6

  THE VOYEUR

  They weren’t supposed to meet, but clearly, fate was something I could not control. Only God Almighty could do that, and I was merely one of his messengers. I could do nothing but use my weak, humanly interventions to stop what had clearly become inevitable.

  I stole through the window of the flat to take away the Tarot Card, the one point of contact between them, when I was confronted with a ghost. A young girl with ivory white skin and dark curly hair. She was wearing a shirt with the name of a ballet company printed in large bold letters. She was beautiful to behold, a vision.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “I’m here to save you all.” I took the Tarot card and vanished out the window. I could see her dismayed expression as I blew away into the night. How I would have loved to spend a night wrapped in her arms. She shut the window after that, making sure it was locked tight. On other nights, I would go back and watch her through that window, watch her dance when alone, watch her undress. Until one day she vanished out of sight and my interest began to wane.

  I refocussed my efforts on keeping Imogene and Aggie apart. The fate of a community rested on this – the continuation of a line, the continuation of God’s work on earth.

  In my car, I began to follow the man with the guitar on his backseat. He was driving to the supermarket, THAT supermarket. I pulled into the right lane, my car parallel with his, and began to swerve like a maniac, trying to bump the car out of action, which really meant driving it into a nearby ditch. His defensive driving was excellent – he just banged on his horn, and kept on moving. I pulled over to the left lane, in a fit of rage. I had floundered again. Clearly determination was too strong here. Imogene and Aggie were going to meet no matter what I did. So our battle plan became about what happened when they did. We were ready.

  7

  IMOGENE

  Aggie Bishop. How to describe Aggie Bishop. Someone once told her she was an enigma wrapped in an enigma. At the time, Aggie laughed it off as a ridiculous pick up line. But years later, she would begin to enjoy the poetic nature of it, the way it described a part of her that was hidden from the world on purpose. What made her valuable was what she didn’t share with you – her exclusive opinions, open to only a select special few, and her time, well, she would never have wasted that on people like you.

  After we greeted each other, Aggie excused herself and went upstairs. I assumed she was either sleeping or had snuck out of the house again, because she didn’t reappear until the next morning. While Henry was still asleep, I slipped downstairs for a glass of water.

  “Good night?”

  I was startled, almost dropping the glass from my hand. I spun around to find Aggie sitting at the kitchen counter. I could have sworn she wasn’t there when I walked in. She was already dressed, face immaculately painted on, hair perfectly placed in a messy bun on top of her head. She made it look so effortless, and instantly, I envied her. She was pregnant, but still made it look like the most glamorous condition on the planet.

  “As good as any New Year can be in Miller Creek.” I splashed more water down my throat. I hesitated for a second, but then pulled a chair out and sat down next to Aggie.

  Aggie pulled the nailpolish remover that was
sitting on the counter towards her, and began removing the bright red colour on her fingernails. Close to her sat a yellow wallet, cracked mobile phone, and car keys thrown carelessly into a pile. It looked like she’d already been out that morning. “I spent one New Year in Paris. It was fabulous. I don’t usually tell people that actually – it sounds so made up.”

  “It wouldn’t even compare with Miller Creek,” I answered, suddenly feeling meek and utterly stale next to Aggie. With my self-imposed statute of limitations, I didn’t even bother to tell Aggie I had been to Paris once too, many moons ago.

  “Last night’s party was lame compared to Paris.” She picked up the broken mobile phone and waved it at me. “Case in point.”

  All I could do was nod. I felt intimidated, strangely scared of her.

  Aggie put the cap back on the bottle of nailpolish remover. “Let’s go out for breakfast. Get to know each other.”

  Again, I hesitated. But I suddenly found myself dressed and buckled into the passenger seat of Aggie’s Volvo, flying down the highway. That was the first, and certainly not the last, time that Aggie Bishop wielded her exceptional powers of manipulation over me.

  Aggie drove us to the same diner that Henry and I had gone to the night we’d met. I thought it may have been a special place for them, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. It felt like prying.

  “So how did you meet my brother?”

  I told her the bare minimum, the details of the car park and coming to Martha’s Diner, leaving out Britney and the sex by the lake the night before. Aggie nodded as though she approved. The waitress approached us and we ordered.

  “Treat him right – he’s been with a few crazies in his day.” It sounded like a warning.

  “Oh really?” I asked, eager to find out more.

  “Yes,” Aggie answered bluntly, quickly changing the subject. “We play in a band together, our next gig is next week, you should totally come. It’s –”

  Aggie suddenly stopped mid sentence, her eyes falling on somebody behind me. Her expression changed from cheerful to irate in a matter of seconds, as she got up from the table and strode over to a man, who was standing in the doorway of the diner. They exited, and started shouting something inaudible at each other on the street. I watched them through the window as Aggie waved her arms around furiously. Then my eyes fell on the man’s tattooed bicep, two intertwining bodies that together created the image of a guitar. It was beautiful, and I had to stop myself from staring.

  Eventually, Aggie threw her hands up once more and reentered the diner, slamming the door behind her, the bell on the handle rattling wildly.

  “Who was that?” I dared to ask.

  Aggie gave me a cold stare, and I knew I’d overstepped a line.

  “Nobody.”

  I said no more, and we resumed eating our breakfast in silence.

  “Imogene… do you ever think about how temporary everything is?” Aggie asked me after a brief silence.

  “No… I sometimes wish things were temporary,” I answered, thinking of Johnny’s.

  “That we could be here one second, and gone the next. How a life can be created, or extinguished in no time at all.”

  “No…” I answered weakly.

  “And once something exists, there will always be a trace of it, no matter how hard you try to erase it...”

  I couldn’t follow her train of thought, so I said nothing in response.

  “Well, that’s my struggle today…” Now Aggie’s expression was forlorn, defeated. Meanwhile my head began to hurt with the yo-yo of emotions at our breakfast table. The steam had barely cooled from our hot coffee.

  As we exited the diner after breakfast, a man pulled up in a sports car, and waved impatiently at Aggie. It was a different man entirely to the one I had seen outside the diner earlier. “Imogene, will you drive my car home, pretty please? I will repay you, just got something important to do.” Aggie suddenly seemed thrilled again.

  She didn’t wait for me to answer before she tossed me the keys, and made for the sports car.

  “Come to our gig on Wednesday night!” Aggie called over her shoulder. “It’ll be a riot.”

  I was left with my mouth hanging open in dismay and confusion, as the flashy car roared away into the distance.

  That night as I tried to sleep, I couldn’t stop my mind from churning, with thoughts of Aggie and her strange behaviour. The strange men that had shown up at breakfast. Her moodswings. And yet, despite feeling as though Aggie was high maintenance, I still felt like I wanted to know her, wanted to befriend her. I felt like she already had some sort of power over me, and we’d barely even met. I tried to push Aggie out of my mind, and focus on sleeping. It was amazing what my mind could manifest when the lights were out, thoughts I couldn’t even fathom during the daylight.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The sound came from the window. I imagined long bony fingers reaching out into the black night, eyes peering in through the tiny gaps in the blinds. Always in slow groups of three, tap tap tap…

  I often imagined things when trying to sleep… sounds, shadows around my bed… But after the second lot of tapping, my body froze in its position – too afraid to turn over, to reach out for the light. Too afraid of the dark enveloping the room. The tapping continued, and I buried myself further under the covers, like I used to do when I was a child. If they can’t see me, they can’t hurt me. Soon enough, the tapping turned into full-blown knocking. Hard knuckles rapping against the cold glass outside my blinds.

  I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to give away my position. So I stayed, frozen under the covers, praying for the knocking to stop, for Clem to walk in and turn the light on. A child would have run to their parent’s room. I sadly was on my own.

  I made a decision. I could stay frozen like a coward, or face whatever was on the other side of the blinds. I took a deep breath, counted slowly to three, then threw back the covers and raced to the window. I ripped the blinds open, and fell backwards, hitting the bed with my arm and knocking my alarm clock off the bedside table. A large, black figure roared at me from behind the glass. It was otherworldly, with long claw like fingers, wings, and a grotesque face that had no resemblance to anything I’d ever seen before. Not animal, nor human. It roared again, a sound that should have woken the entire neighborhood – but nobody stirred, nobody turned on their lights, nobody came. I ran back to my bed and covered my head with the blanket, panting please go away, please go away, please go away…

  The next thing I remembered was waking up, the sun gleaming behind the blinds, which were firmly shut. The alarm clock was back on the bedside table, untouched. I was certain I hadn’t dreamed it, the black figure, the claws, the tapping… The only tell tale sign was a bruise on my arm from where I’d fallen. I got out of bed, and started to get ready for the day, not mentioning anything about my experience to Clem. One of us jumping out of our skin was quite enough.

  8

  THE VOYEUR

  I always loved watching people panic. The chaos it caused, the tangible scent of fear that always came afterwards. Panic, then fear. That’s the way it always worked. The way their bodies froze up, the way their thoughts start racing as fast as their hearts, and the sweat that dripped down their foreheads, pungent sweat, sweet and hot. There were always people who tried futile control methods, like breathing, or repeating calming affirmations. And all the while, I admired their optimism. Others just had simple meltdowns, which made my work easier. But nevertheless, it always ended the same way – fear and chaos for them, pleasure and delight for me. No matter how hard I had to work, panic became my drug, and I was addicted. Always needing more.

  It depended on the level of chaos I decided to wield in a night – I always wanted to cause an avalanche, or an earthquake. To see people running for their lives, praying to a God that doesn’t exist for mercy, to see fear, so palpable you could cut in in the air with a knife. But small pleasures wield greater results. Smaller earthquakes, smaller a
valanches… Panic, then fear. Panic, then delightful fear…

  I sat outside Imogene’s window for what seemed like hours. My interest had been renewed lately, but it would never be the same as when I used to sit and watch my dancing girl. Night after night, I would watch and wait for her. Her mere sight food for my hungry eyes.

  Watching Imogene wasn’t quite the same, but since her and Aggie had met, things were different. Things were moving faster than I ever imagined. I needed to make her realise she wasn’t alone. Her first mistake was thinking that she could slink around unnoticed in the world, just like me.

  I held back a chuckle of delight as I began to tap on her window.

  And then, I was falling. Somebody had taken my place at the window, and I muffled a surprised scream as I landed in the bushes below. The foliage obscured my view, and I scrambled back to my feet, brushing the leaves off my clothes. Before I could even look up, my assailant disappeared and stillness fell on the night once again. I kicked at the shrubbery in anger. I clearly would not be getting my fix that night.

  We are never alone, because there is always someone watching, always someone waiting. There’s someone standing under the lamppost outside your house, watching you park your car at night. There’s someone standing in the corner of your parking garage. There’s someone outside your window, watching you sleep through the crack in the curtains. Foolish is the person who thinks they are always alone, because by morning, they’re never there to tell anyone about it.

  9

  IMOGENE

  A few relatively sleepless nights later, I walked into the dimly lit bar where Aggie and Henry were playing their gig. Bleary eyed with fatigue throbbing in my temples, the tapping at the window was still firmly planted in my mind. Ever since that night, I had been on edge. Startled by the slightest sounds, nothing seemed to settle me, and I began to fear I was really losing it.