Razorhurst (3 page)

The ghost tried to pull one of the boards from the fence. When his hands went straight through, he bellowed.

“Here,” Dymphna said. “Take my hat.”

Kelpie took the small, blue-veiled thing that wouldn’t keep rain or sun out of your eyes. It looked like something you could eat.

“Her arse is too big,” Tommy said. “She’s gunna break the fence.”

He was leaning against the warehouse opposite, not grinning now, laughing. “Good apples, eh?” He slapped his thigh. “
That
was a corker. Don’t think I’ve ever done better. Heard the coppers coming, didn’t I? I seen her watching you, see? Plenty of times. Reckoned it might be fun to see what’d happen.”

Kelpie ignored his stupid blather. If he weren’t already dead, she’d do for him herself. Not another word to the rat-featured little bastard, she vowed.

Tommy grinned widely. “Looker, ain’t she? I never seen a chromo look as good as her. Most of them hard-faced sluts’d make a rat look good. She almost glows.”

The other ghost shot Tommy a poisonous look and tried to help Dymphna. Kelpie was sure now that he was the dead man—what had Dymphna called him? He didn’t know he was dead yet.

“Hard to imagine her killing anyone,” Tommy said, though he was doing just that. “She’s too pretty.”

Kelpie wasn’t going to correct him. Whoever killed that bloke would be covered in blood. Not shiny clean like Dymphna Campbell. Kelpie put the hat down, grabbed Dymphna’s hands, and pulled, both feet braced against the kerb. Fabric tore.

“Harder,” Dymphna said. “Don’t worry about the skirt.”

“Don’t hurt her!” the ghost cried.

“Leave the fat cow!” Tommy yelled. “Save yourself!” He laughed harder. “Pity you ain’t invisible, like us. Stupid breathers.”

Kelpie heard metal on metal. Louder even than Tommy’s maniac laugh. The bolt on the back door. She strained so hard tendons stood out along her arms, so hard it felt like her eyes would pop.

Dymphna ripped through the fence, knocking Kelpie over. Kelpie scrambled out from under her and onto her feet. Dymphna grabbed Kelpie’s arm and used it to stand up. The back of her skirt was torn. She bent to pick up her squashed hat.

“You have to stick with me,” she whispered harshly in Kelpie’s ear, gripping harder as Kelpie tried to shake free.

Why did she have to stick with Dymphna? That dead man had nothing to do with her.

Dymphna staggered a few more steps away from Mrs. Stone’s. It was obvious she had no idea where to go.

Behind them Kelpie could hear shouting. They must’ve got the back door open.

“They’ll kill us both,” Dymphna said. “We’re both in this.”

No, they weren’t. It wasn’t Kelpie’s name on that card what’d been on a dead man’s chest.

Tommy snorted. “Jeez, sounds like there’s an army after you! Don’t fancy your chances, Kelpie. Wonder where you’ll haunt. Right here on the lane with me? Won’t that be cosy?”

“This way,” Kelpie said, Tommy’s comments deciding her. She pointed at the Darcy place. No one would be awake but Neal Darcy, and he’d be too focused on his writing. “Let’s go.”

Dymphna complied but kept a grip on Kelpie’s arm. Kelpie dragged them three doors up past leaning fences covered in choko vines that were still months away from fruiting.

Kelpie pushed the loose board aside and scrambled into the Darcys’ backyard on hands and knees, landing next to the dunny. Dymphna scraped through behind her. Kelpie turned to stop the board from swinging. They were both breathing too hard.

The ghost of Dymphna’s dead boyfriend appeared next to her. Cripes but he was a huge bugger.

“It’s me, Dymph,” he said. “I know it’s all gone bung, but we can fix it.”

His hands pawed uselessly at Dymphna’s side. Kelpie shuddered. She hated when ghosts touched her.

“Why won’t you answer me, Dymphna?”

Kelpie could hear men on the lane stomping and yelling.

“I’m sure it’s the cops,” Dymphna breathed. Her gloved hands shook. They weren’t shiny clean anymore.

Someone cleared his throat.

Kelpie turned to see Darcy sitting on the back steps, cigarette in hand, staring at Dymphna.

“And who the fuck are you?”

Miss Lee

Miss Lee had been dead wrong about Kelpie’s age when they first met. Not that she ever knew that.

Miss Lee had a heart as soft as bitumen on a stinking hot day and thought it a disgrace that Kelpie had been abandoned on the streets to fend for herself. What was the world coming to? The little girl was skeletal, dressed in rags, and all alone. When Miss Lee had discovered Kelpie could see ghosts, the little girl wasn’t even wearing shoes! Miss Lee had determined at once that she would find the poor child food, clothes, and shelter; she would protect her.

Miss Lee would have been even more shocked had she known that Kelpie was not a child. When they had met, Kelpie had been about to turn fifteen. Malnourishment had stunted her growth and prolonged her childhood. If you could call it a childhood, out on the streets, ignored by all but ghosts and that hardened standover, Snowy Fullerton.

But Miss Lee did not know how old Kelpie truly was. How could she when Kelpie herself had little idea? If she had, Miss Lee would have seen it as her duty to prepare Kelpie for womanhood. How would the child know what to do when her monthlies began? Kelpie knew nothing of what her body had in store for her. Miss Lee would have taught her.

Miss Lee liked to teach. It had been both her profession and her vocation.

Kelpie was grateful to have found Miss Lee, for the prim ghost had the run of the Hills. Miss Lee was one of the few talkers who could move around. She spent her time going from house to house looking for open books or, best of all, someone reading.

“Could be looking at anything,” Tommy grumbled. “
Anything
. A picture show. Could go to one of Glory Nelson’s houses. Watch them girls. I’d like to see
that
.”

Miss Lee ignored Tommy, something Kelpie all too often failed to do.

“Can’t turn the pages,” Miss Lee explained. “Have to peer over their shoulders and hope they don’t put the book down right when it gets exciting.”

It was spring when they met. The first hot day. Miss Lee had been so thrilled to find someone alive who could see her that she’d urged Kelpie all the way to the public library. Kelpie had let herself be bullied because she liked Miss Lee. She was enthusiastic. All most talkers did was complain or be mean.

Not Miss Lee.

Besides, a ghost who could travel without haunting someone was a novelty.

Kelpie had had to sneak past the woman at the front desk. Kids weren’t allowed, and even if they had been, it was school time—still a few more weeks before they were released for the summer. The librarians would have handed her to Welfare if they’d caught her.

She’d never been inside a library before. It was dark, full of dust, and echoingly quiet, but it wasn’t damp, and nothing was rotting.

“Over here,” Miss Lee yelled. “Get down
Great Expectations
.” She clapped her hands. “
Finally
. Died less than halfway through, didn’t I?”

Kelpie reached for where Miss Lee was pointing. She wasn’t quite tall enough. She pulled out a big volume from the bottom shelf and stood on it.

“Oh no, not on a book!”

“Won’t hurt it,” Kelpie said, quiet as she could. “It’s thick as a brick. Which one d’you want? This one?”

“
Great Expectations
.”

Kelpie slid a red volume from the shelf.

“No, no. Didn’t you hear me?
Great Expectations
. The one next to it. Oh,” Miss Lee said. “You can’t read, can you?”

Kelpie’s face got hot. Miss Lee thought she was stupid. She wasn’t. She wasn’t!

Kelpie ran.

Bolted out of the aisle of books, past the librarian with her mouth wide open, and onto the footpath, almost knocking over a pedlar’s wheelbarrow full of several-days-old fruit and veg most likely scrounged from the ground at the markets. She ran hard and fast until she pulled up in Moore Park, scrambling up the nearest fig tree.

Miss Lee appeared beside her, and Kelpie was less charmed by her ability to go wherever she wanted. She screamed at her to “Bloody bugger off!”

Miss Lee disappeared. That sudden vanish all ghosts could do that never stopped making Kelpie’s skin crawl.

Though worse was the slow fade. Because then they never came back.

Next morning Kelpie woke to Miss Lee whispering in her ear. Kelpie had kipped down in what had been Frog Hollow, inside a broken packing crate on a pile of discarded fabric, wishing Old Ma was back.

Miss Lee whispered a story about a selfish giant. Kelpie pretended to be asleep until she was finished. When she opened her eyes, Miss Lee was smiling.

“I’ll teach you to read,” she said. “It’s easy.”

DYMPHNA

Dymphna Campbell smiled at the handsome young man smoking on the back steps. She held a finger to her lips, curving them as charmingly as she could, meeting his eyes, willing him not to betray them, trying to slow her breath, the beating of her heart, all while the ghost of Jimmy Palmer begged her to stop ignoring him.

“Please,” she whispered to the young man, who almost smiled back at her.

Jimmy Palmer dead. Jimmy Palmer a ghost.

Dymphna did not glance his way. She kept her eyes on the young man. Watching him watching her.

She had plenty of practice not looking at ghosts. Most of her life she’d concealed her ability to see and hear them. Unlike Kelpie she knew ghosts could drive you mad.

She could even ignore a ghost like Jimmy—a man she’d known, a man she’d tried to love—while he loomed over her, taller than a house, stronger than an ox; big, Jesus, he was big. Take two of that young man to approach the size of Jimmy Palmer. Though the boy was much prettier.

Jimmy waved his hand back and forth in front of her face. Dymphna didn’t blink.

He tried to put his arms around her. They slid through as if he were separating Dymphna’s body from her soul. She didn’t shudder, though it made her guts quail. She was already quailing—huge Jimmy Palmer, robbed of heft, light and airy as any ghost half his size.