Walking Through Albert

  ‘It doesn’t stop!’ She starts to look totally freaked. ‘Ever since I finished the spells!’

  Tap-tap-tap, goes the thing under the floor. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

  Then in a flurry—a totally silent flurry—we’re both out of there with the door shut behind us.

  ‘Oh, sheesh,’ pants Emma. ‘What’ve I gone and done?’

  ‘Come over to my place. Leave a note,’ I urge her.

  We stand there panting. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I’ll—I’ll sleep in the study.’

  ‘But what if it’s there too?’ I have serious worries that Emma’s eyes are going to pop right out of her head. ‘I’ll listen with you. If it’s there, you can come home with me.’

  We go along the hall to the study. Well, I couldn’t sleep in there, that’s for sure, with all those dark bookcases looming over me, those little desklamps sprouting up like aliens’ heads. I don’t say this to Emma, though—I just sit beside her on the cold leather couch with my ears twitching about like an elephant’s trying to catch the tiniest sound.

  ‘Sounds like you’re okay,’ I breathe, eventually.

  ‘If it starts up, I’ll come and tap on your window,’ says Emma.

  Oh thanks, I think, and freak me right out. ‘Okay,’ I say.

  She lies down and pulls a throw rug from the back of the couch. I can’t imagine her eyes ever closing, they stare so wide in the half-darkness. ‘Thanks for coming over, Ren. I’d be a screaming heap by now if you hadn’t turned up.’

  ‘That’s okay. See you tomorrow, then.’

  Getting out of that house nearly makes a screaming heap out of me. My feet feel as if cockroaches are crawling all over the bottom of them, and the hall’s chockablock with person-sized shadows, and things—hat-stands and hung-up coats and a big, ticking clock—that are too easy to imagine watching me and leaning out at me, or bursting into life. I get the back door closed just about soundlessly, but it doesn’t shut away all the scary things. Now even the trees seem to be focused on me, and the house behind me is all hollow windows, and the stable door-shadow gapes for me.

  Tippytippytippytippy: I run so fast I make a breeze in my ears. I swing myself up into our tree and run very sure-footedly along Emma’s branch and then ours. I’m inside and tucked up in bed quick as lightning, and then Emma and I both lie there, our backs to the walls, staring down the night.

  8

  An overdose of ghosts

  Next day, straight after school, I climb over the back fence, and nearly run smack into Emma at the corner of the stables. We both nearly have heart attacks. Emma looks pale and scared. ‘Just what I needed!’ she says. Then she grabs my arm. ‘Come with me.’

  ‘It’s worse?’ I try to hang back a bit until I know what to expect.

  ‘Oh, man,’ she moans, hurrying me across the yard.

  ‘What is it? That noise in your room?’

  ‘That’s nothing. You should see—oh. Hi, Fia. Thought you were up with Dad.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’ Fia sits at the kitchen table over an ashtray and a glass of fizzing aspirin, scowling.

  ‘Come on, Ren.’

  ‘Nice to see you again, Fee.’ I give her a cheery little wave, and her scowl darkens as Emma drags me away.

  Mrs Welsh is standing at the bottom of the stairs in her dressing gown and slippers, with her hand to her forehead. She turns slowly and peers at us, clinging to the stair-post for support.

  ‘I thought I felt better,’ she says in a pale voice. ‘I—’ She turns and starts super-slowly up the stairs, slower even than Mr Welsh would be on his crutches.

  ‘Here. In the study.’ Emma pushes the door closed behind us.

  ‘What, it was in the study? It followed you here?’

  ‘Stand over by the window,’ she commands.

  ‘Not on my own, I won’t!’ Now I’m dragging her.

  We stand there. ‘Move over a bit. Yeah, here’s where it was.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  Emma says a rude word. ‘It was really strong before. Come upstairs.’

  Out we go, and clatter up the stairs.

  ‘In here. This is going to be my room, so—’

  A noise cuts her off, plus that feeling of the air going all saggy. No! gasps a woman’s voice, taller than either of us. Don’t tell me!

  It’s not so bad, says another woman behind us at the door. He’s only missing, not—not—

  ONLY missing! ONLY missing! Oh, Mother! She finishes on a terrible, hysterical roar, and then the two of them run into us and hug each other, right there.

  ‘You see?’ squeaks Emma. I can see her squished-up face through the feeling that I’m being pulled into complicated knots. As the feeling fades (and so does the women’s terrible crying), my body starts to shake.

  I go and sit on the floor, leaning against the wall. ‘Yeah, I see. Sheesh. That’s heavy.’

  Emma just stands there. A last sob hangs in the air, fading. We wait until it’s nothing, until everything’s normal except the thundering noise of our hearts, and our eyes being as big as dinner-plates.

  ‘At least ... at least you can hear proper words now,’ I say feebly. ‘Instead of just that horrible gargle-bargling noise the bloke makes in the hall.’

  She looks straight at me for the first time. ‘He says, Master Albert, is it really you? And then a woman in a frilly dress runs down the stairs and says, Thank God! Thank God! and zooms along the hall.’ Emma shivers and goes and sits opposite me under the window. ‘And the man at the door—you should stand inside him some time. He’s so full of ... He’s really happy, but scared, too, and nearly in tears—he’s so mixed up, that guy. It tears you apart.’

  We sit recovering. Fia comes up the stairs and along the hall to Mr Welsh’s room.

  ‘Come on,’ says Emma. ‘Let’s try the kitchen again.’

  ‘Geez, Emma, I don’t know if I can—’

  ‘Come on. It’s not so bad.’

  ‘Yes, it is!’

  She’s hauling on my sleeve. ‘Come on—I need you to feel it too. Being the only one is heaps scarier.’

  I drag myself after her. Down in the kitchen she kind of prowls around the table. ‘It’s here,’ she says. ‘He sits here and reads the paper, all hunched over. And he’s really, really worried, and then this big stab of surprise goes through him, like he gets a terrible shock. It’s just—it’s awful.’

  ‘Great.’

  She doesn’t seem to hear me, pacing back and forth frowning. Finally she looks at me. ‘Well, he’s not here. You want a cool drink?’

  ‘Sure. Anything’s better than going on with this ... this ghost patrol.’

  ‘Ghost patrol—I like that.’ She lets herself have a little laugh as she goes to the fridge for ice. I get two glasses out of the cupboard beside me.

  My ears pop as I put them on the table. ‘Uh-oh.’

  Emma’s standing by the fridge holding the ice, her eyes swivelling from side to side. ‘It’s over here!’ she whispers. I want to run away; instead, I take a deep breath and creep around to beside her.

  It doesn’t take me long to wish I hadn’t. Ooh, it’s cold, and not just because she’s had the freezer door open. It’s wintry cold, and there’s a wintry smell of dead fire. Some people are here, but the voice of one of them, like curling dark smoke, hides them as it unwinds and coils into me, down deep in my insides like some awful worm. The words aren’t words I recognise—they’re shaped differently from English words, with hardly any vowels and lots of Ms and Zs and Xs, so that they sometimes don’t sound like a voice talking, but more like some strange machine whirring and buzzing and clicking. And there’s real smoke, too, as well as voice-smoke—sharp, powerful smells burn up my nose and into my brain and scramble it just the way you’d scramble an egg. Through this disgusting feeling I can hear a loud, slow tearing, as if a really super-strong kind of cloth is being pulled apart, a few twanging threads at a time. The dark worm keeps squirming inside me; my brain
keeps scrambling.

  I lose sight of Emma and the kitchen. I’m being pulled, out from myself, out through the ragged opening torn in the universe. I can’t help myself; I can’t stop myself; there’s no point trying. I’m sucked right through, into blackness.

  Next thing I know, my name’s being called and I’m being slapped on the cheek. I open my eyes, but it takes a while for me to organise what I see: a table leg, floorboards stretching away, scattered ice-cubes, Emma’s knees and the pleats of her gym skirt, her hand flapping in my face.

  I groan and push her hand away. It feels great to groan, as if I’m pushing all those weird smells and the strange darkness out of me with every breath. I sit up and groan and groan.

  ‘That’s a new one to me,’ says Emma shakily. ‘That’s not the one I brought you down here for.’

  ‘Didn’t see any newspapers.’ The words slur in my mouth. I blow out a bit more darkness until I feel like I’m almost myself again. Emma looks pretty green still. ‘Did you pass out too?’

  She nods. ‘I guess that’s what it was,’ she says. ‘Just plain old fainting.’

  ‘Man. It’s no good, Emma. This isn’t just everyday stuff, no matter how many plain old things you recognise.’

  ‘I know.’ Her hands wobble as she scoops up ice-cubes and plops them into their tray.

  ‘I think you might need help with this.’

  ‘I got help. The help stuffed up, that’s all.’

  ‘I mean, like, grown-ups?’

  ‘Andy’s a grown-up,’ she says stubbornly.

  ‘I mean—I mean—’

  ‘You mean parents.’ She picks up the tray and dumps the ice in the sink.

  I try standing up, holding onto the table just in case anything gives way again. ‘Yeah, parents.’

  She’s not shaking any more. She’s standing with her back straight and her chin stiff, staring out the kitchen window.

  ‘Why not?’ I ask her. ‘Look, Emma, this is getting dangerous—for you, not just for people who are “resisting”—’

  ‘I’ll go and see Andy again—I mean, his spell did something, even if it didn’t do the right thing. He’s got some kind of power.’

  She turns and looks at me. She’s pleading with me to say this is a good idea, but I think it sucks, and I make a face that says so.

  ‘Well, I’m going to tell him what’s happened, anyway,’ she says. ‘I’m going right now.’ And she runs out.

  I don’t feel well enough to run, so I follow her out at a walk. She’s gone around the corner of the house; when I get there she’s not in sight up the drive. I stand there feeling as if I should follow, but eventually admit that I won’t. I’ve had enough for one day. I’m going home.

  ‘You okay, Ren?’ says Dad at dinner.

  They all turn and look at me. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Just tired.’ I’m not about to tell them about fainting this afternoon. Pretend that didn’t happen, I tell myself. If you pretend hard enough, maybe you’ll actually undo it!

  ‘Early night,’ Mum prescribes. Dad gives me one last critical look before getting back to his steak, but Lee keeps on staring until I stick out my tongue (with some chewed-up peas on it)—and even then he just looks away thoughtfully.

  ‘What’s happening over the back?’ he hisses at me in bed that night.

  ‘Dunno.’ I sigh. I’m sick of thinking about it. ‘That witch buggered things up. Emma’s trying to fix it.’

  ‘How? What do you mean, “buggered things up”?’

  ‘I mean, things like that-thing-in-the-hall are all over the joint now.’

  ‘Dead set? Oh gee, so what’s she going to do?’

  ‘Well, Lee, what would you do, if you were Emma?’

  There’s a very thoughtful silence from down below—a thoughtful silence that goes on and on.

  ‘Goodnight, Lee.’

  Sigh. ‘’Night, Ren.’

  We both turn to the wall.

  9

  Keeping calm

  ‘I’m sorry about yesterday.’

  Emma’s at our back door, clutching a roll of white cardboard, a notebook and a pencil case.

  ‘Gee, that’s okay—you don’t have to apologise.’ I know Mum’s in the kitchen and can hear us—I signal this to Emma with my eyes. ‘Is that homework?’

  Emma shakes her head. ‘Yeah. Is it okay if I come in here and do it? You’ve got a big desk in your room, haven’t you?’ She flashes her eyes back at me.

  ‘He sure has,’ Mum calls out, ‘under a pile of Lego and old socks and comic books and grown-out-of T-shirts and whatever. There’s a desk under there somewhere—’

  But we’re gone, into Lee’s and my room. I push the door closed, and Emma spreads the cardboard out on the floor.

  ‘I should’ve come with you,’ I say. ‘To see Andy. I know I wouldn’t want to go there on my own. I’ve been telling myself off about it ever since.’

  ‘He’s all right—although he does keep hassling about wanting to come around and do everything in person, which is pretty impossible to arrange.’

  ‘Without your parents’ permission, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah. And the problem with that is—well, there are two problems. First is, how do I get them to believe this stuff’s happening? They just think they’re “under stress from the wedding” or “overdoing it at work” or clumsy, or they’ve got a virus.’

  ‘A virus?’ I crack up. ‘What kind of virus runs down your front hall, calling out Thank God?’

  ‘I know. It’d be funny if it weren’t so scary. Well, you know, Dad had that bad headache when he did his ankle, and Fia keeps getting one too, whenever she steps inside the door, even though her forehead’s gone down, and Mum stayed home with another migraine today. So Dad reckons it must be a virus they’ve all got, now that he’s had the all-clear on his brain tumour or whatever he thought it was. Ross River fever, he says, or this other one—Barmah Forest fever.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know, I’d never heard of it either. You get it from river red-gum trees. Mosquitoes carry it.’

  ‘Mad. Barmy Forest fever.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Emma giggles, then sighs. ‘It’s like they don’t notice all these extra people around.’ She waves a hand at the cardboard, which keeps rolling up. We put shoes on the corners to hold it flat.

  ‘Man, you’re organised.’

  Drawn on the cardboard is a beautifully neat plan of Glenorchie, upstairs and downstairs. Little red numbers in circles are dotted about the place: in the front hall, in Emma’s two bedrooms—the veranda one and the empty one upstairs—and in two places in the kitchen, and in several other rooms.

  ‘These are all—’

  ‘Yep.’ She shoves the notebook at me.

  Inside, each number has a page of its own. The haunting’s described, and underneath are the dates it’s happened so far and the names of the people it’s happened to. I give a whistle. ‘Whoa, you are together!’

  ‘Well, it just makes me feel better. I can see that the whole house isn’t filled up with ghosts. Also,’ she admits, ‘if it ever does come to telling Mum and Dad, if I’ve kept track of them all—I mean, they know I couldn’t make up all this.’

  ‘So did Andy say he might not be able to fix it?’

  ‘He said—’ She slumps. ‘He said a whole lot of things, and I didn’t understand it all. He said we might be under “psychic attack”, whatever that is. He said he could protect Mum and Dad and Fia and anyone else I could give him the name of, from getting hurt or having headaches or whatever. He’s done that by now; he was going to do it as soon as I left. But he can’t actually try to get rid of the ghosts until next month when the moon’s waning again.’

  ‘But next month’s the wedding! Sheesh, that’s a lot of people to protect—all the guests, all the caterers, all the people who are coming in to work on the house, all the—’

  ‘I know. Well, he got out a calendar and he reckons the best time to do it is a couple of days before the wedding. So, apa
rt from spooked house-painters, we should be all right.’

  ‘If it works.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘If what works?’ Lee pushes the bedroom door open.

  ‘Nothing. Buzz off.’ I turn my back on him.

  ‘Andy’s next spell,’ says Emma.

  ‘Em-ma!’

  ‘Well, Lee knows what’s going on. He was right there with you, the very first time.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ I still feel like kicking him out, though. Partly I’m just annoyed that he’s butted in, partly I figure it’s better that he doesn’t get too close to all this stuff. Better for him, and better for me, because if anything does happen to him, you can bet I’ll cop it for letting it happen.

  Anyway, Lee’s not bothered; he comes in and has a good stickybeak at the house plans. ‘Are they all ghosts, those red things?’

  ‘No, they’re bunches of bananas, stupid.’

  ‘Yes, they are ghosts, Lee,’ says Emma. She takes the notebook from me and hands it to Lee. He starts labouring through it; he’s not crash-hot at reading people’s handwriting.

  Emma and I look at each other over the red-sprinkled house plans.

  ‘So ... did you get yourself protected?’

  ‘No. I kind of forgot. And also—’

  ‘Em-ma! So now you’ll keep fainting and freezing and freaking and everyone else’ll be completely okay. Won’t that look a bit suspicious? Like, won’t they spot that something’s wrong? And they’ll think it’s you that’s the problem, not the house.’

  ‘Yeah, but I figure, if I go on ghost patrol and just keep track, I might be able to work out if there’s some kind of pattern—such as, the one in the hall happens twice every three days, the one in the study hardly ever happens. Be scientific about it.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe. It just doesn’t seem all that scientific to me, what’s going on—it’s all about people’s feelings. Like, because they felt things so strongly, they left a kind of print in your house, and now—maybe it’s the renovations—now those prints are ... evaporating or something ... being uncovered ...?’

  ‘Is this the same person?’ says Lee, just as I’m about to find the right words.