Walking Through Albert

  MARGO LANAGAN was born in 1960 and grew up in Raymond Terrace (New South Wales) and Melbourne. She has travelled to places around the world, from the Nullarbor Plain to Paris, been to university and worked in factories, kitchens and offices. She gets her best ideas while washing the dishes.

  Margo lives in Sydney with her partner and their two sons.

  By the same author

  JUNIOR NOVELS

  WildGame

  The Tankermen

  YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

  The Best Thing

  Touching Earth Lightly

  MARGO LANAGAN

  WALKING

  THROUGH

  ALBERT

  Copyright © text Margo Lanagan 1998

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be 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.

  First published in 1998

  A Little Ark Book

  Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd

  9 Atchison Street

  St Leonards NSW 2065, Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 9901 4088

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  E-mail: [email protected]

  URL: http://www.allen-unwin.com.au

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  National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data:

  Lanagan, Margo. Walking through Albert.

  ISBN 978 1 86448 440 3.

  eISBN 978 1 74343 217 4

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Cover and text designed by Beth McKinlay

  Set in 12½ pt Garamond

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria

  Contents

  1 New arrivals

  2 Glenorchie

  3 Emma cops it

  4 A heavy-duty headache

  5 Fia

  6 Witchery

  7 Night terrors

  8 An overdose of ghosts

  9 Keeping calm

  10 Ghost-nest

  11 What it’s all about

  12 Ghost patrol

  13 Emma loses it

  14 Andy blows it

  15 Sleeping beauties

  16 A heavy day

  17 Babies and bad weather

  18 The rip in time

  19 Mud cake

  For Steven, Jack and Harry,

  and with thanks to Jan, Adrian, Connor

  and Darcy for the use of their rat

  1

  New arrivals

  Nothing might have happened if Lee hadn’t jumped me. Okay, he was supposed to—why muck about in an old empty house if you can’t spook yourselves silly? But I didn’t expect to be distracted, by a ... by a kind of ... a change in the weather of the hall there ... a kind of ...

  Anyway, ‘Raargh!’ he yelled, and threw himself down on me from halfway up the staircase.

  Lee’s younger than I am, but he’s heavier, for sure. Bang! went my head on the floor, and then we both just lay still, as if someone had nailed us down.

  Someone else was suddenly there with us. Not just next to us like a normal person, but right there on the same spot as us, taking up the same chunk of space.

  Aargh, it was the most horrible feeling. It was like super-gooseflesh, running all over me; it was like millions of ants rampaging under my clothes. Lee lay on top of me whimpering. And in the air over and around us, a grown man straightened to his feet, and stretched out his arms towards the front door, and cried out in a terrible, echoing non-voice.

  Then he walked out through us. I felt his legs go through—my skin went all swimmy with little whirlpools of gooseflesh. Spots swam in my eyes from Lee lying on me, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t push him off—I could only lie there, swirling in the draught the man made, invisible light bursting in on me through the front door.

  Then it all stopped, sort of suddenly and sort of not. We could move again; I rolled over and flumped Lee onto the floor. There were all these echoes in the air—a really strong feeling, leftover floating bits of the light and the man’s cry, and a smell, really thick and sweet: frangipani flowers, a summer smell—but it’s not summer. It’s not even spring yet.

  Lee and I looked at each other. It was almost funny how scared he looked—the only reason I didn’t laugh was because I knew I looked the same.

  ‘I’m out of here,’ we both said in these weeny, wobbly voices, and then we flew out of the house, across the yard and over the back fence to our place—I don’t reckon we even used the tree. All I know is here we are, home, glued side by side too close to the TV, with the sound and colour up really loud, trying to get back to feeling halfway normal.

  A few afternoons later, I’m up in the tree. Strictly, it’s over-the-back’s tree, but this branch snakes over into our yard, so I figure I’m not exactly trespassing. It’s a sunny nearly-spring day, I’m full of lunch, I’ve got my new Techno-Yo and I’m breaking in this cool purple string. I’m not even thinking about the house over the back. I’m not even thinking about what happened the other day in there with Lee.

  Then three people walk into sight around the big old brick outbuilding behind the house. I stop yoyo-ing and try to turn myself into part of the tree, watching them.

  It’s a family—a mum, a dad and a girl a bit older than me. They’re dressed neater than our family ever dresses, and kind of old-fashioned-ly. The father wears a proper suit, with a tie and a waistcoat with a watch-chain gleaming across the front of it. The mum’s got a best-clothes kind of dress on, and a big straw sunhat. The girl wears a long, dark school tunic that I don’t recognise, practically down to her ankles. The girl and the mum have both got long black hair in a plait down their backs.

  ‘They’d be the stables, I suppose, with a house this size,’ says the dad.

  ‘Possibly a gardener and a stablehand would have slept out here, too,’ says the mum.

  ‘It’s a good solid building. Make a good “studio apartment”.’ Sounds like he’s joking.

  ‘Or “granny flat”,’ she says, and they both laugh.

  ‘Or stables again,’ says the girl, ‘We could keep a horse and carriage in it!’

  The mum puts an arm around her shoulders, as if she’s saying, What an imagination you’ve got. ‘Come and give us a guesstimate on that kitchen, Tom,’ she says.

  The dad slips a big silver watch from its pocket, checks the time, snaps it shut and tucks it away, all in one smooth movement. Cool. Then the two grown-ups go back around the stables.

  The girl starts to walk in a slant towards me. It’s like I’m a magnet, the way she veers across the grass. Or maybe the shade of the tree is the magnet—she must be hot in that tunic.

  She stops under the tree. From here I could do a Round-the-World and brain her with the Techno. But of course I don’t. Instead I say, ‘G’day.’

  ‘Muh!’ She spins round, and her head connects with a branch. She just about whangs herself unconscious.

  She rubs her head and scowls up at me. I don’t blame her for being cranky, but I can’t help laughing. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she says. ‘Are you a neighbour?’

  ‘Dunno. Are you?’ I nod at the house behind her.

  ‘Not yet.’ She says it as if it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened in her life. ‘Nearly, but not yet.’

  ‘Mad.’

  She pulls her mouth up at one end, as if I don’t know what I’m talking about. Then she climbs up into her side of the tree.

  Her name’s Emma, she tells me, Emma Welsh, and the Welshes have just bought that big old house, that huge old house—Glenorchie, it’s called.

  ‘Sick,’ I say. ‘W
e’ve never had neighbours in there.’

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ she glooms. ‘It’s a wreck. But my parents, they’re restoration fanatics.’ She rolls her eyes.

  ‘Yeah? Is that bad?’

  ‘It’s bad, all right: being dragged all over town because they’ve found another house to fall in love with; changing schools every two years, just when you’ve managed to make some new friends; always having a house full of people in overalls, ripping out and repairing things, putting in the pipes and the wires and the floors and the whatever.’ She tears a leaf off the tree and starts shredding it.

  ‘Sounds okay to me. More interesting than anything that ever happens at our place.’

  She looks glum. ‘But it’s never going to stop! They’ll just go on and on and we’ll never settle anywhere for good and never have a proper home, that’s ours, forever.’

  ‘Where are you living now?’ I ask her.

  ‘In the Hills. In a “beautifully restored family residence,” ’ she says bitterly. ‘I just wish we’d stop and live somewhere, without our house being a project all the time.’

  ‘Geez, I’d do anything to get out of our place. It’s a dump.’ That’s not true, actually—I mean, it is a bit of a dump, but I wouldn’t do anything. I wouldn’t move into Emma’s new house, for one thing, restored or not—not after my last visit there.

  But I won’t talk about that. Well, you can’t exactly tell people to stay out of their own front hall, can you? And actually, I wouldn’t know how to start describing what happened that day—it’s just ... too weird for my brain to know what do to with. And part of me doesn’t even want to think about it, it’s so creepy. So I don’t mention it.

  2

  Glenorchie

  ‘She’s a nice old place.’ That’s the way Dad talks about Glenorchie—as if it was someone’s grandma.

  It’s actually a big old dump, if you ask me. Maybe it used to be nice, but it certainly isn’t now that the front and side verandas are closed in with fibro. The place sags all over like a broken-down concertina, in the middle of a big spread of tough, weedy grass.

  At tea, when I say there are people moving into her, everyone’s interested. Even Dad looks up from reading the local newspaper. He’s still wearing his work tie—pulled loose, though, to show he’s not working.

  ‘Yeah? What are they like?’ he says.

  ‘I only talked to the girl. She’s okay.’

  ‘Have they got money? They’ll need a pile of money just to make it liveable,’ says Mum, waving Lee’s finger away from the mashed-potato bowl. He sighs and picks up the serving spoon.

  ‘They’re going to do it themselves, she says. She says they do it all the time.’

  ‘Phew, doing it the hard way, eh? Spending half their lives down the hard-way shop.’ Dad grins at his own joke. You’d have to use a bulldozer to get him into a hardware shop.

  ‘When are they moving in?’ says Lee through a mouthful of mashed potato.

  ‘On the weekend. And her big sister’s getting married there, in November.’

  Dad laughs. ‘What, they plan on having it all fixed up in three months?’

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘this girl reckons they’ll put in, like, a proper kitchen and bathroom, but the rest they’ll fix up the way it was a hundred years ago. Her mum knows all the history—she teaches history, to grown-ups, at university.’

  ‘Well, good on her,’ says Mum, pushing the vegetable dish towards me. Lee looks at me sideways.

  ‘Crikey, the things people put in the papers,’ Dad’s saying. ‘Listen to this: “Baloo-bubby. Still love oo. Ring me tonight. Whiskers.” Puke!’

  ‘Yeah. And Emma reckons our block was probably part of their land once.’

  Mum finishes buttering her bread. ‘No thoughts of claiming it back, I hope?’

  ‘All the land around here was, she says. All part of the estate.’

  ‘I guess she’s right.’ Mum sounds dreamy. ‘Theirs would have been the big house on the hill, with fields all around, before the suburbs caught up with it. Nice.’

  Dad again: ‘Here we go. “Spells cast. Amulets assembled. Protection, assistance, the sight. Your local witch can help. Call Andy.” ’

  ‘Cut that one out.’ Mum wakes up from her dream. ‘She might help the kids see the state of their room.’

  ‘Or help Lee see where he left his Mighty Ducks cap,’ suggests Dad.

  ‘Or protect us against you guys,’ I add, ‘like the Children’s Helpline.’

  Mum gives me quite a nice smile. ‘Believe me, Ren, it’s us oldies who need the protection.’

  ‘So, d’you think they know?’ says Lee in the dark from the bottom bunk. ‘The new people, I mean?’

  ‘Nup. Haven’t got a clue.’

  I’m lying under my glow-in-the-dark stickers. It’s just about brighter with the light off than with it on; you can actually read the Techno-Yo guarantee label by the stickers—and that’s small writing. Dad says, ‘You’ll give yourself cancer, Ren, lying under all this phosphorescence every night—or you’ll turn green and start glowing in the dark.’ Cool idea—I wouldn’t mind that.

  ‘You think we should say something?’ says Lee, stirring uncomfortably.

  ‘Okay, what’ll we say, smart bum?’

  ‘Geez, I don’t know. Maybe that there’s ... maybe that we ... that it’s not a very nice house to live in, maybe ... ’

  ‘But they’re nuts about old houses, the girl reckons. They’d think we were just trying to make trouble.’

  I can hear the little wheels whirring in Lee’s brain. Finally he sighs, and says in a very quiet voice, ‘What was that?’

  ‘What was what?’

  ‘That thing we saw that day. You know, in their house.’

  ‘We didn’t see anything.’ I turn to the wall; a glow-in-the-dark skull grins at me.

  Lee’s voice floats up and over my shoulder, like a little cold draught. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know any more than you do.’ I use the voice that usually shuts him up.

  It doesn’t, this time. ‘What do you think, though?’

  I shut my eyes firmly. ‘I think it’s something you don’t want to go talking about at night time, if you know what I mean.’

  He sighs again. After a while he says, ‘If they’re moving in at the weekend, I guess it’s too late anyway, to stop them. To tell them.’

  ‘Yep.’ I fake a huge yawn. ‘I reckon they’re stuck with it now.’

  After the Welshes do move in, I see a fair bit of Emma. She starts at the Hilda Street school, so I get to hear a lot about how they do things there. After school, whoever makes it out to the tree first waits, and the other one turns up eventually. We bring stuff to eat, and swap it. Emma brings this kind of storybook fruit, shiny red apples and yellow bananas without a single black speck on them, and I bring Wacky Shapes or half-boxes of Breakfast Loops, and we both look at each other’s idea of snacks like it’s alien space food before we get into it.

  I always feel like saying, ‘Watch out for your clothes,’ when Emma climbs up to the sitting branch, because every time I see her she’s wearing what looks like a brand-new, perfectly clean set of clothes, but she’s the sort of person who just doesn’t get grotty or snagged up on branches or pooed on by birds. She sits there all neat and tidy, eating Breakfast Loops one by one. It’s really hard to imagine what she’d do, if what happened to Lee and me happened to her. Maybe things like that don’t happen to her, either.

  When we’ve had our snack, we go to one of our houses—I like to go to hers most, because all sorts of interesting stuff’s going on there. Her dad and his helpers have ripped up all the carpets, and quite a lot of the floorboards, and there’s usually some mad bit of machinery parked somewhere, or some pile of boards or cables Lee would kill to make cubbies out of. The first few times I visit, whenever I go into the front hall I just whip through as quickly as I can, with my heart thumping. But nothing happens.

  We ne
ver see Emma’s mum—she’s always off at work until the evening. Her dad’s usually busy in the house somewhere. His name’s Tom, but I call him ‘Mr Welsh’ because he always acts like a Mister. I mean, he’s quite nice, but he’s not like my dad, who everyone calls by his nickname, Dazza. You can’t imagine anyone calling Mr Welsh ‘Tommo’. Just for working round the house, he dresses better than Dad would do for a funeral. He rolls his white shirt sleeves up really neatly, and—the coolest thing—he always wears a waistcoat with the watch on the chain, which he checks every now and again, just as quickly as anyone checking a watch on their arm. And while he works he whistles, long, trilly, sad-sounding tunes. He really likes doing all this stuff on the house, not like my dad. You get three days of groaning and swearing while my dad works up to changing a light-bulb.

  Emma and her mum and dad are living—she calls it ‘camping’—in the fibro veranda rooms while all the ripping up and re-stumping’s going on. She reckons she hates it, but I think it’s cool. Imagine having so much room in your house that you can rip up half the floors and still have plenty of space to live in. I mean, there are six or seven different rooms she could’ve chosen for her own! ‘You could have a different one every night of the week!’ I say.

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘I dunno—just because you can?’

  ‘Gee, Ren, it’s bad enough moving from house to house all the time, without moving from room to room as well!’

  There’s a pile of stuff being done on the roof, too; there are guys on ladders all over the joint, and they’re chucking all the old broken slates off the roof and carefully stacking all the good ones to re-use.

  ‘It looks like your parents’ll half-demolish the place before they get started fixing it,’ I say, climbing down from higher in our tree where I’ve been watching the roof work over the stables.

  ‘I know.’ Emma looks gloomy. ‘It’s always like this. Mum and Dad love it, especially Dad. He feels weird if there’s a proper roof on top of us instead of a sheet of blue plastic. He likes everyone to see a house’s “bones”; reckons it’s a shame to cover all that. And Mum goes over all the inside with a magnifying glass, looking for “artifacts”—you find an old penny in the foundations, she’s rapt to the back teeth. We found an old sword up the chimney of one place—she nearly cried for joy.’