Walking Through Albert

  ‘An old sword? Cool!’

  ‘Yeah, from the Boer War, Mum figured.’ Emma doesn’t look too impressed. ‘And she can find out lots of things about this house, she reckons, because some famous woman used to live in it. Florence Thingummy.’

  ‘Yeah? What was she famous for?’

  ‘Oh, she was an architect and a votes-for-women woman. Whitton—that’s her name. Florence Whitton.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘Well, Mum reckons she was famous. Doesn’t mean she was famous like Michael Jackson’s famous or anything.’

  ‘Was she rich, then?’

  Emma shrugs. ‘Well, she had a couple of servants and a carriage, so I suppose she’d have been doing okay.’

  ‘Where does your mum find out all this stuff?’

  ‘Library, council records. There’s a local history section at Baytrees Library. She keeps coming home from there with “treasures”.’ Emma gives a big yawn.

  ‘So is your sister a history nut too?’ I haven’t met the sister; she lives in close to the city with her university friends.

  ‘Fia?’ Emma snorts. ‘She hates all that stuff. You can tell by looking at her. She’s got this hair, like black glue. And her navel’s pierced.’

  ‘Yeah? Is she going to have that showing for the wedding?’

  Emma rolls her eyes. ‘Nobody knows what she’s going to do. She changes her mind every second second. The latest is, she wants to get married up in the Hills, at Fingal’s Leap.’

  I crack up. Fingal’s Leap is a famous suicide spot. ‘Sick nurse! And what do your mum and dad reckon?’

  She gives me a look. ‘ “Oh sure, Fia, sure we’ll drag everyone out to a clifftop and all stand there in the howling wind while you and Chris shout ‘I do’—because it’ll be so amusing and fun.” ’ She snorts. ‘Put it this way—they’re not majorly blissed out.’

  I have another laugh. ‘What’s her boyfriend like, the guy she’s marrying?

  ‘Oh, he’s a deadhead. Hopeless. Chris,’ she adds witheringly, as if that proves it. ‘He’s a computer programmer—like, super dull—but he likes to break out, out of work hours. He dresses sillier than Fia in a blue fit. And she acts sillier—it’s all giggle-giggle, smoochy-kissy-kissy when Chris’s around.’

  ‘Blurg.’

  ‘It’s sickening,’ she agrees. ‘Their poor children—that’s all I can think of. I’ll have to help them divorce their parents.’ She sighs and rustles the paper bag next to her. ‘Here. I brought some grapes.’ She brings out a perfect, cone-shaped bunch, every grape fat and green.

  ‘Mad. Want some of these?’ I hold up a packet of Nutt-Os.

  ‘Mm, what are they?’ She rips open the packet. ‘Oh, cool—my parents would never buy these. Look at all that salt.’ She holds a red one up so the salt glistens. ‘And the colouring—it’s practically fluoro!’ She crunches into it. ‘Mm. Yum.’

  ‘So what’s the Welshes’ place like on the inside?’ says Mum as Lee and I sit at the kitchen table drinking hot chocolate before bed.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Lee eagerly—just as if he hasn’t seen for himself!

  ‘Oh,’ I begin, all off-hand, ‘It’s a bit of a mess, with the floors up and everything.’ I have a long, leisurely slurp of hot chocolate while I think. ‘But basically, big. Basically, humungous.’

  ‘Well, that much is clear from the outside, Ren.’ Mum puts away the milk and starts wiping down the sink. ‘Have they uncovered anything exciting?’

  ‘Yeah, like treasure?’ says Lee. Then he jogs my elbow so I nearly spill my hot chocolate. ‘Like anyone’s skeleton under the floor?’

  ‘Nah, just these fireplaces they reckon are pretty crash-hot, made of marble and stuff.’ I don’t look at him, as if I don’t notice his eyes boring into me. We haven’t properly talked about that house, about the thing in that house, but I know it’s stuck in his brain like a bindii, the way it’s stuck in mine.

  ‘I guess we’ll see it some time, if you and Emma are friends,’ says Mum.

  ‘I guess.’ I bury my face in my mug.

  When we’re in bed, before Lee’s had a chance to ask anything, I say, ‘No, it hasn’t happened again.’

  He wriggles. ‘I don’t know how you can go over there, Ren. I couldn’t.’

  ‘Yes, you could. It feels so normal. It’s different with all those people around, and things being done. Not scary at all.’

  ‘So you reckon it’s safe now?’

  How would I know? How’d I know something like that? ‘Sure feels safe to me.’ And I noisily turn over to sleep.

  3

  Emma cops it

  It happens when I’ve almost forgotten it could happen. I’m not even wondering about it as I swing myself up into the tree. Emma’s already there, super-neat as usual, except that she’s crying. Well, not full-on crying—kind of leftover sniffling. Her face is all puffy and pink, what I can see of it.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, and a little shiver goes through me.

  She glances at me and then looks away, not saying anything.

  ‘Did you ... was it ... is this that thing in the ... in your place? Like, in the hall?’

  Slowly she turns to face me. Her face grows redder and redder. ‘You mean, you knew?’

  ‘Well, I—I guess I did. We weren’t sure—’

  She’s over on my branch, shaking me. ‘You rat! How could you know something like that, and not tell me? How could anyone—’

  I manage to push her away without either of us falling out of the tree. ‘And what was I supposed to say? “Oh, I wouldn’t move in there if I were you—that house’s haunted”? That would have made a heap of difference!’

  ‘At least it wouldn’t’ve been such a shock—’ She sits back on her branch, glaring at me.

  ‘So, did your dad see it too?’

  ‘No, just me, all on my own,’ she says. She gets out her hanky again, wipes her eyes and sits down properly on the branch.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I say. ‘Tell me if it’s the same thing.’

  ‘Well, I was going into the house from the kitchen, and right by the stairs I had this weird feeling, as if everything all around me was falling away and I was standing on a tiny little bit of ground. I was going to fall away any second, too. Everything went way off balance.’

  ‘Yeah? I don’t remember all that—but then, I was a bit busy being knocked over by Lee.’

  ‘And then there was a ... a horrible rushing feeling, as if my body was being invaded, and I just felt as if I’d got mixed up with someone else, who was—’ She breaks off, and then gives me the absolute creeps, because she straightens up on the branch, and puts her arms out and stares straight ahead, just like that guy in the hall.

  ‘Aak, don’t do that!’ I shake her arm and her eyes focus properly again. ‘Yeah! And he says something! He puts his arms out just like that, and shouts something—’

  ‘Someone’s name.’ Her arms fall. Her eyes close. ‘Someone at the door, in some sunshine, a big burst of it. Someone he’s, like, really, unbelievably happy ... to see.’

  ‘Yeah?’ My hair’s trying to pull itself out and walk off my head. ‘Did you see the person at the door?’

  She opens her eyes and shakes her head. ‘I told you, I didn’t see anything. It was more ... knowing—knowing the light was there, knowing there was a person in the light, even though the light was so dazzling. And the guy knew that person, knew the person’s voice. They’re men,’ she adds suddenly. ‘Both of them are men. I just know that, too ... didn’t see ...’

  I stare at her, adding all this to what I remember. ‘So, did you get goosebumps?’

  ‘Oh, yes, the most! Kind of—until it almost hurt!’

  ‘Mega,’ I agree.

  ‘Oh, the worst feeling. It was so strong, you know?’

  I know. I nod.

  ‘And then it all faded out. Well, nothing else happened, but I could still feel them there—no, actually I could feel that they’d been there, that was all.’ r />
  We sit there staring at the ground for a while. Then she gives me a waking-up kind of look.

  I hold out my hand. ‘Welcome to the club.’

  She shakes it limply. ‘It’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me,’ she murmurs.

  ‘I know.’ Even thinking about it, even just listening to Emma describing it, has sent remembering gooseflesh swirling all over me, remembering shivers trickling down my back. ‘What is it? Is that what a ghost is?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ We’re both talking really quietly, as if we’re scared of being overheard ...

  ... so quietly, we easily hear the smashing crash from Emma’s house, and the frightened shout. We freeze on our branches, staring at each other—then we’re out of the tree, on Emma’s side of the fence, and running.

  4

  A heavy-duty headache

  Emma’s dad is sitting in the hall, just inside the open back door. He’s dropped a box of china plates; some have slithered out and smashed on the floorboards. He’s looking all around as if he’s thinking, Who pushed me? How’d that happen? And as we get closer to him we both feel it—I can tell, the way Emma pauses and sniffs and glances around.

  That smell is there, suffocating and sweet. And the air is ringing, as if someone crammed a church-full of space into this hall and rang a bell in it.

  Mr Welsh is very carefully lifting his foot towards him, as if it were made of china and couldn’t move itself. ‘Aah! Aah!’ he says. He folds back his trouser leg and pushes down his sock very delicately. ‘Fetch me some ice, would you please, Emma?’ he says faintly.

  He takes his shoe and sock off, and then it’s obvious how bad it is, what a terrible, angry dark colour the ankle is and how it’s ballooning out.

  ‘Better elevate this,’ he says, when Emma gets back with the ice in a damp teatowel. ‘Would you two please help me to the couch?’

  He’s not a big guy, but it takes us a while to reach the lounge-room. He can’t even touch the bad foot to the floor, and his face looks awful, white and sweaty. ‘Can you call Doctor Genero for me, Em?’ he says faintly.

  ‘Sure.’

  We park Mr Welsh on the lounge, make a pile of cushions at one end and slowly lift his foot onto it. Emma runs out to make the phone call.

  ‘Is it broken, do you think?’ I ask him. The ankle and foot are looking less like they belong to a human being every minute.

  ‘Well, that’s what Ken’ll be able to tell us,’ Mr Welsh says in a quiet, distracted voice, as if he hasn’t got much voice to spare from dealing with the pain.

  ‘I’ll get you an aspirin,’ I suggest.

  ‘I’d appreciate that, Rennie.’ He lays his head back on the arm of the lounge and closes his eyes.

  Emma and I get back to him at the same time.

  ‘Dr Genero says he’ll come here at six,’ she says to her dad, and he does that cool thing with his watch on its chain. ‘He says just to put the foot up and take something for the pain.’

  ‘Here’s something for the pain,’ I add, giving him the glass.

  Emma pulls a footstool up beside him, sits on it and fixes her eyes on her dad’s face. ‘So what happened, Dad?’

  He takes a sip of aspirin-water and lays his head back. ‘I tripped and fell, that’s all. I felt my ankle turn, and next thing I knew, the second-best dinner plates were in pieces all around me. Pure clumsiness.’

  ‘That’s not like you,’ Emma says severely.

  He shrugs. ‘Anyone can get tired and clumsy. Maybe I’ve been overdoing the work, in my enthusiasm ...’

  ‘Did something distract you?’ Emma leans at him.

  So do I. ‘Any ... sounds or anything?’

  ‘Well, actually—’

  We lean farther forward, expecting our ghost story to come tumbling out of his mouth.

  He looks from Emma to me and back again, as if we must be playing some trick on him but he can’t quite figure out what it is. ‘Actually ... my ears popped.’ He takes another sip and lies back and closes his eyes again. ‘And now I’ve got a heavy-duty headache as well as a foot the size of a watermelon.’

  I look at Emma and mouth, That’s all?

  ‘That’s all?’ she says. ‘Just the ears popping?’

  ‘Yes ... like ... air pressure. It must have thrown my sense of balance. I’ll talk to the doctor about it.’

  Emma looks as if she’d like to ask more, but she sits back. ‘Can we get you anything? To eat? Or a book to read?’

  He shakes his head, eyes closed. ‘Just ... stay nearby, would you? Have you got some homework you could do in the study?’

  ‘Sure. Ren, you should bring yours over. We can do it together.’ She gives me a big wink.

  At home I grab my music project and some maths. ‘Where are you off to?’ Mum calls out from the kitchen window as I run back across the yard.

  ‘Over to Emma’s. We’re gunna do homework!’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ She sounds astounded. I turn around and wave the maths cheerfully. Lee’s at her elbow, staring. His eyes follow me over the fence, like two brown bead-headed pins in my back.

  ‘ “I’ll ask the doctor about it,” ’ Emma quotes her dad in a whisper as we set up at the big table in the study. This is the fabbest room since they put the floors back in—high and dark and full of books on shelves, in glass cases. ‘Meaning, “It’s too scary to talk to you kids about.” ’

  ‘I know. Did he look haunted or did he look haunted?’ I laugh softly. I’ve got brave from my little trip home.

  ‘Definitely. The smell, the sounds—’

  ‘But he just thinks it’s him, and his sense of balance.’

  ‘But what about the voices? How does he explain that horrible voice?’ hisses Emma.

  ‘Maybe you should see how he explains it to the doctor.’

  We hear Mr Welsh moving on the couch in the other room, then, so we stop talking and start doing homework. In the middle of the maths, stuck on a problem, I say, ‘So obviously it doesn’t happen every time you go through the hall.’

  Emma looks up immediately. ‘I know. Like, weeks without it, and then twice in one day! Oh, I’m glad it happened to Dad. I don’t feel so bad now. Oh, and to you. I just thought it was me going crazy, you know?’

  ‘You know what’s weird? Walking down the hall just now, and everything feeling so ordinary—like, something like that could never happen! It’s hard to even imagine! That’s what makes you think you’re crazy, it being so ordinary in between.’

  Mr Welsh calls out to Emma to get him a cup of tea, and I get back to my maths. We work away for ages. Knowing that a haunting might happen any second is very good for my brain.

  When Emma’s mum comes in the front door, she sees us in the study first. ‘Oh, hello, Ren!’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Welsh.’

  She puts her briefcase and keys on the hall table, glancing at us and our papers in an impressed way. ‘What a nice idea, to do your homework together!’

  ‘We’re looking after Dad.’ Emma points to behind her.

  She glances into the lounge-room. ‘Oh my goodness! What happened to you?’ She forgets even that I’m there, and goes in to him.

  Even though our ears are out on stalks listening, Mr and Mrs Welsh talk too quietly for us to hear—now, you’d never get that with Mum and Dazza, except maybe just before Christmas.

  ‘They’re not exactly freaking out,’ I say.

  ‘Mum and Dad never “freak out”,’ says Emma. ‘They “discuss things rationally”.’

  ‘How are they going to manage that with a haunting?’ She shrugs. ‘We could get a drinking-glass, and listen through the wall.’

  ‘Does that really work?’ says Emma doubtfully.

  But right that minute Dr Genero knocks on the door, which means it must be six o’clock, which means I’d better be getting home for tea.

  Emma comes part of the way with me. We stand in the hall, looking around, listening with our ears and our skin.

  ‘Nothin
g,’ I say, relieved.

  ‘Not this time.’

  Poor Emma, having to stay here, having to live here. I say goodbye and get back to my own house so fast it’s like I beamed myself there.

  Under cover of an ad break and the loud sizzling of sausages out in the kitchen, Lee hisses, ‘She’s seen that thing, hasn’t she?’

  I look all innocent. ‘Who’s seen what thing?’

  ‘Whatever it was we—over at Emma’s place. You know.’

  ‘She hasn’t seen anything, just like we didn’t see anything—’

  He clicks his tongue. ‘Here.’ He shoves something at me, a scrap of newspaper. I have to lean over to see the writing in the light of the TV. ‘ “Spells cast. Amulets—” Oh, this is that silly witch!’

  I shove the paper back at him, but he won’t take it. ‘How do you know it’s silly?’ he says.

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘If you hadn’t felt it yourself, you would’ve thought Emma’s house thing was silly.’ He goes back to watching the show. The paper lies on the couch between us.

  ‘You’re nuts.’ I pick it up and read it. Protection, assistance, the sight. I like those words. They sound like what I need, what Emma needs, and her dad. In the end, I don’t chuck the bit of paper in the bin.

  5

  Fia

  When I go back to Glenorchie after school the next day, there’s a cranky-looking girl standing in the back yard smoking a cigarette. She’s got a silver ring through the bit of skin between her nostrils. Her clothes are black rags, and her black hair looks like she’s stuck her fingers in a power point. She glares at me as I cross the yard.

  ‘G’day. You’ve gotta be Fia.’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes,’ she says, and drags on the cigarette.

  ‘You’re the one that’s getting married, right?’