Laying Ghosts
Laying Ghosts
A Selkie Moon Mystery
Virginia King
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Prequel to:
The First Lie
The Second Path
The Third Note
Folktale Companion for Laying Ghosts:
Leaving Birds
First published in Australia 2016
by Celestial Hedgehog Pty Ltd
http://www.selkiemoon.com
Copyright © Virginia King 2016
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Right) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted un the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9945923-3-0
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Cover design: Julia Kuris www.designerbility.com.au
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Laying Ghosts BF Version
Laying Ghosts
Your Companion to Laying Ghosts
Author’s Note
Free Download
Sneak Peek
For more mythical mysteries ...
About Virginia King ...
Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder;
certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck.
-Memories and Portraits, Robert Louis Stevenson
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Laying Ghosts
The text message arrives while I’m home alone, enjoying a glass of wine. Andrew’s at a conference – a resort in Vanuatu where the accountants get to swap their neckties for mai tais – so the next four days are mine. He’d booked me to go with him as an accompanying delegate, but I’ve feigned the flu all week to get out of it. I’ve got a phobia about beach resorts and he knows it. Which is why he insists.
He warned me before he left, “Don’t suddenly start feeling better, Elkie,” – he’s never called me Selkie, the name my mother gave me – “and decide to meet up with any old friends.”
“What friends?” I murmured.
He’s turning me into an agoraphobic: ‘Andrew adores that girl so much he won’t let her out of his sight.’ Lately I’ve wondered if he could have stooped to putting a tracking app on my phone.
The text message makes me jump.
Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.
Rina? I stare at her name. How long’s it been? Four years without a word. Marina Polivanova. Rina for short. We used to joke that even though I’m afraid of the sea, I chose a best friend called Marina. Spooky. And then she abandoned me to chase after that creep Frank. I was gutted. Still am. She was a kindred spirit who understood my issues with Andrew. And I was worried about her, worried what Frank would do to her. After she left there were a few texts, boasting that they were on their way to London with his band, then they were getting married. Then she stopped writing altogether.
Now other memories flood back, bringing a surge of affection. We met at university when we were thrown together on a project: ‘Feminism in the 1970s’. Over bottles of cheap wine we created a post-modern play, laughing and crying at our clever monologues that contrasted the reasons for the choices women make. Ironic that we both flipped from feminism to living under the close control of our men.
Hey, babe, I text back. Long time. Welcome back. How did you guess I’ve got a free weekend? Spooky.
We were always saying that: spooky. Especially when we ended each other’s sentences like twins. It reminds me just how much I’ve missed her.
The reply is swift.
Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.
The same words again. Spooky is right. It’s as if some troll has hacked my phone. Is the message from Rina at all? And why Crystal Cottage, the scene of that unspeakable weekend? Unless some real estate agent is getting creative with his holiday promotions. But I haven’t been browsing Crystal Cottage. No way. What happened there still gives me nightmares.
Crystal Cottage. A weekender at Pearl Beach. Four years ago it had just been renovated, so the owners asked Frank to live there while he created an outdoor oasis to complement the new interior.
“I’ve got the run of the place,” he told us. “Come up and party like nobody’s listening. Because they’re not.”
Andrew wasn’t keen. For a start Rina was my friend – she called me Selkie which made her ‘subversive’ – and the few times Andrew had met Frank he’d found him crass. But we ended up going because I didn’t want to go – not a beach house, not a house on the beach. Andrew’s crazy about the sea and always pleased to push me towards my greatest primal fear. As if his ego isn’t already the size of Texas, he needs to make me look inferior.
Four other people were invited. A really tall guy – Stork – who used his altitude to peer down the front of my top. A nerdy guy nicknamed Lute – I remember him because of the role he played. One of the women was Jules. And there was a redhead whose name has disappeared into the ugly blur of that night.
My screen’s gone black. When I illuminate it, the text hasn’t changed.
Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.
Why would it change? Stupid thought. But there’s something about it. Something ... spooky.
It’s what we said about the cottage itself. Crystal Cottage sounded like a café that did psychic readings. But then we saw that all the streets in Pearl Beach are named after gems: Diamond Road, Agate Avenue, Tourmaline Street. Not spooky, kind of quaint. Until Frank ruined it.
Is Rina back because she’s finally given up on Frank? I wish. Anyone could see that he was bad news, that a gorgeous woman like her could do so much better than the charismatic, part-time musician who drank too much and turned ugly. But when he asked her to marry him and go on tour to the UK, she was gone like a shot. In spite of what he did to her at Crystal Cottage.
I’ve only taken a sip of wine. It’s Friday night. Andrew’s away. Rina’s back. Why not glug down this glass, then another?
Because I’m going to do what the message says: help Rina. I’m going to drive to Crystal Cottage, the house opposite the strand at Pearl Beach. A place I never wanted to see again. Am I mad? It’s six p.m. With daylight saving I can be there before sunset.
On way. See you soon, I text back.
After tossing a few things in my little red suitcase and the wine in a cooler bag, with Andrew’s warning to stay home buzzing in my ears, I’m backing out of our driveway. Pearl Beach is a tiny resort north of Sydney, with a calm ocean beach and a lagoon nestled behind the main street. It’s only accessible by a long slow road, with development limited by the conservation area around it. It means it’s remained a sleepy backwater although the trend for designer beach houses is gradually relegating the humble old cottages to history.
I’m enjoying the freedom of the open window and the wind in my hair on this steamy late spring evening, but beneath my excitement at seeing Rina something feels wrong. How does she know my phone number? Surely I’ve changed it since she left. And what’s she doing back at Crystal Cottage of all remote places? For the first time I panic that Frank might be back too.
In spite of how we parted, I did try to track her down on social media to make sure she was OK. I figured if she married Frank, she’d have been qui
ck to lose her Russian name Polivanova – a name she always had to spell while also inspiring the nickname Pollyanna – and adopt his. Green. The colour of his thumbs, Frank used to say – and, I thought, the puke inspired by his jokes. I googled his name and various combinations of both their names with no luck.
The evening peak has dwindled, the Friday night exodus of commuters returning to an affordable house. As the dusk descends the memories return in a rush.
Frank greeted us at the door wearing a pair of shorts and a serious tan. His rugged good looks were marred by a sly tongue and a cocky manner. We followed him into the stainless steel kitchen where Rina was putting roast chickens in the oven, still in their takeaway bags.
“Can’t get takeaway round here,” Frank said, “and the touchy bitch at the general store said not to bother coming back. ‘Suits me,’ I said. Jeez. I only mentioned that she might like to stock some real food and not bloody brie and paté and fruit paste. We had to drive to Woy Woy for supplies.” He opened the enormous fridge, showing shelves stacked with beer and salads in takeaway containers. “Good though. Found something else up there, eh Rina? To get the party going.”
Rina grunted and I sensed she was upset. She’d said ‘hi’ without turning around, and now she was halving giant bread rolls with intent, wielding a state-of-the-art bread knife – its mates gleaming from a block – before slathering the rolls with butter and putting them back together. So the menu was chicken rolls and beer, with a few token shop-made salads. Frank’s answer to gourmet.
Andrew helped himself to a beer from our cooler, then followed Frank outside to inspect the progress on the garden, leaving me alone with Rina.
“Are you OK?” I asked, brushing her blonde hair off her shoulder.
In response she turned and buried her face in my neck. “He’s got porn,” she said, her voice muffled.
“What?”
She lifted her head. “Porn. He got some videos in Woy Woy and he’s going to play them. Tonight.”
I suddenly felt trapped and a long way from home. “That’s gross.” This was plumbing new depths, even for Frank.
“He said it’ll get the party going.”
“What kind of party? Are the others into porn?”
She didn’t know what the other guests did in their own homes.
“Private’s different,” I said. “But eight people watching sex together – people who don’t know each other – that’s meant to lead to one thing, isn’t it?”
An orgy.
It made me want to run. Being paired with Andrew since my teens meant I’d led a sheltered life. No lovers. No experimenting with substances. No orgies. A few years back Andrew did bring home the occasional video – soft porn, titillating and funny. After my initial horror, and a few glasses of wine, it excited me and gave me something else to think about during sex. Otherwise I was an innocent, even avoiding X-rated movies because I couldn’t face the violence. But I remembered a movie based on the Profumo affair in 1960s London. A graphic scene came back, showing what the politicians were getting up to with the callgirls at weekend house parties. More than pillow talk. I remembered a hazy room full of boozed people draped on sofas in various states of undress and coupling. It was obscene.
I shook the image from my mind and poured us both a glass of bubbly.
“Andrew won’t stand for it,” I said, imagining a confrontation.
For all his faults, Andrew wouldn’t let anyone near me. He supervised my clothes and how I wore my hair, but even though his possessiveness was stifling at times, it had a protective benefit – he would keep me safe. But I wasn’t at all sure about Rina.
It was obvious that Rina had fought with Frank about the videos.
“Did he hit you?” I asked, making sure he was still out of earshot. Her face was red, but it might have just been from crying.
She avoided a straight answer. “He started drinking in the car on the way back. That’s when he said if I love him I should trust him, let him show me how to be the woman of his dreams.”
“By having group sex?”
When Frank was sober he had a rough charm, but I’d once seen the way he treated her at the pub. We’d gone there after work to listen to his band, and he’d tried to unbutton her shirt and show off the sexy bra he’d bought her.
Rina took me upstairs to the room Andrew and I would be sleeping in. I was wondering what to do about the video situation when we heard another couple arriving. Jules and Stork.
“Hey Pollyanna,” Stork said when Rina greeted him. He bent to kiss her on the cheek then tried to move to her lips.
She pushed him away. “I’ve told you not to call me that.”
He laughed and winked at me, getting a steely look that matched Rina’s. Was there a collective noun for more than one creep? He shrugged, and conversation turned to squeezing their grog into the fridge, putting a bottle of champagne in the freezer, then opening packets of chips. No mention of plugging their sex toys in to charge. I decided to relax. There were plenty of guest rooms on the new upper storey, each with its own bathroom. If nobody wanted to watch the videos, Frank would be on his own.
When the other couple arrived – a redhead in a retro frock and the nerdy guy with a button-down shirt and glasses called Lute – Jules and Redhead helped tear the chickens apart and put them on a platter. Then we carried the food to the outdoor table that overlooked an empty pool and a garden full of holes.
“Got a rabbit problem, Frankie?” Stork joked.
Frank snorted. “I could use a few bunnies round here, mate. A guy gets lonely. Nope, I dug ’em myself. The owners have paid serious money for the palms.”
Beside each hole was a large palm tree ready to be planted. I winced. The local flora consisted of low coastal trees and the occasional Norfolk pine, giving a feeling of bushland with nestling houses. A garden of imported palms was another kind of pornography – a travesty of the real thing.
“Almost done,” Frank added. “Just waiting on the pagoda.”
“Pergola,” Andrew said. “A pagoda is a temple.”
“An orna-fucking-mental pagoda,” Frank said, slugging down another beer and losing his charm by the nanosecond. He tossed the empty can into one of the holes and Stork clapped.
Some of us started making our chicken rolls. I whispered to Andrew, “I wouldn’t mind some brie and fruit paste,” and received a rare chuckle. Should I warn him about the porn? If it didn’t happen, he’d mock me about it for weeks.
We drank like we didn’t have to drive. It eased the interaction of our odd mix of strangers. Behind us the beach front was wave free, protected by a wide bay, and I forgot about my phobia. And as the conversation buzzed, I started to forget about the videos.
Then Frank produced some hash cookies from a tin, boasting that he’d grown the stuff and baked them himself. Everyone except Rina and me gave them a go – our tension about Frank’s agenda was back. Stork ate several and was soon stripping down to his jocks, climbing into the empty pool and singing. I told myself it was harmless. Then a cold breeze came up straight off the sea, so Stork covered up and we all moved indoors to the circle of sofas.
“Any requests?” Lute asked, looking through the music collection. He’d told me he was the new bass player in Frank’s band. But Frank had us where he wanted us. He dimmed the lights.
*
I turn off the freeway and take the long road towards Woy Woy, then another turn-off and the long narrow road to my destination. There’s some traffic, no doubt local commuters lucky enough to live in Pearl Beach and holiday makers grabbing a weekend in paradise. I wonder how many are responding to a strange message from a long lost friend. My phone has buzzed, but I haven’t checked it. When I stop outside what I think is the right house, there are two more identical texts from Rina.
Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.
Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.
And one from Andrew. What are you doing on the Central Coast? So he’s tracking me and
doesn’t mind if I know. The bastard.
Helping Rina at Crystal Cottage. Then I sign off, Selkie. I’m so powerful when he’s away.
There’s a light on inside the house. As I approach, my emotions swirl – excitement tinged with anxiety. I haven’t seen Rina for four years and our last conversation ended in tears. My tears. Now her face pops into my mind, her pale skin and blue eyes, and I can’t wait to give her a hug. I raise my hand to knock, then stop. The view through the front door, down the hall to the tiled sunroom, brings everything back. I haven’t seen Frank for four years either. What if he’s here too – and the reason Rina needs my help?
*
“Cop a load of this, ladies,” Frank said.
In preparation for his big moment he’d fast-forwarded to a graphic scene. The TV took up most of one wall, so the image that assaulted us was huge – lurid close-ups of the tools-of-the-trade of several players, with plenty of glossy lubricant and a soundtrack of grunts. Frank turned up the volume.
Redhead started laughing hysterically, but she was mesmerised by the screen. Everyone else ‘copped a load’ in stunned silence. You could almost hear each mind wondering what this party was really about, and whether they were up for watching it – or joining in.
“Come on Jules,” Frank said. “Teach us a few tricks. You know you want to.”
Redhead’s hysteria was starting to sound like hyperventilation as her struggle for breath matched the fake orgasms on the screen.
“Not tonight,” Jules said. “These lovely people might like it with the lights off. And I’ve got a nasty touch of you-know-what.”
“Jeez,” Frank said. “Now you tell me.” He scanned the rest of us women, dismissing Redhead and me. For now.
I wanted to leave, but I wasn’t going to abandon Rina. When the video started she’d disappeared, but now Frank was pulling her out of the kitchen. She dropped to the floor, but the tiles made it easy for him to drag her into the centre of the room. No one else moved.