Laying Ghosts Read online

  “I was on that sofa,” I say, my voice shaking. “Then I heard roaring and ran in here.”

  They look at each other. “Buy a lottery ticket,” the first one says. “You’re one lucky lady.”

  “Anyone else here?” the other asks.

  “Only me. I thought I was meeting a friend but ... she didn’t turn up.”

  “We’ll check around, just in case.”

  They permit me to creep into the kitchen and sit on a stool. But they don’t want me wandering about. My car is under a branch.

  “How did you get through?” I ask, imagining the only road blocked by tree trunks.

  “That’s the odd part,” one of them says. “That was a hell of a storm alright, lots of debris everywhere, but nothing big. Nope, this seems to be the only house that’s damaged.”

  “Them palms don’t usually topple over,” the other says. “Specially a young tree like that. Looks like one of them willy-willies, a tiny tornado, blew up the beach, across that vacant block opposite, uprooted that palm tree and torpedoed it into the windows. Took the gazebo with it.”

  I turn my attention to what I can see of the garden. Frank’s pagoda is on its side, tipped over by the uprooting of the tree. Frank’s folly in more ways than one.

  “Weirdest thing,” the guy continues. “Must get a photo or the blokes back at headquarters will never believe it.”

  There’s nothing to do but perch at the breakfast bar surrounded by the carnage, and try to eat some cereal. My hands are shaking as I pour the milk. I’d kill for a cup of tea.

  My mind wanders back to last night, and I remember hearing the song just before the crash, the one Frank Underwood sang. Frank – an eerie coincidence. And in my disturbed state I linked it to the music in the garden. Something about Polly – Rina’s reluctant nickname. More proof I made it up.

  There’s a shout from outside, and through the windows that haven’t imploded, I can see the rescue guys staring into the crater left by the palm. Now one of them is making a call. When they run down the side path I ask them what’s happened, but they only call over their shoulders for me to stay where I am. The police are coming.

  In a flash I know what’s happened as the words of the song come back.

  He led her through valleys and forests so deep.

  At length Pretty Polly started to weep.

  “Oh Willy, you’re angry, it makes me afraid.

  I fear you are planning my life to betray.”

  “You’re right, Pretty Polly, I’ve dug you a grave.

  This is what happens when you don’t behave.”

  A grave and, beside it, a spade did she see.

  She cried, “Why must this be a bride-bed for me?”

  Then she knelt down before him to plead for her life.

  “Please let me be single if I can’t be your wife.”

  “Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, that can never be.

  Your recent behaviour’s humiliated me.”

  It must be what happened after I left Rina here with Frank. I knew she wasn’t safe. He’d already dug the holes for the palms. I can see him completing the landscaping with cool intent, but leaving just one tree unplanted – for her. Then going overseas straight afterwards with Rina’s phone, and firing off a few texts as a smokescreen. Where is he now, the murderer? My rage is the only thing keeping me from total collapse.

  And I don’t want to think about the texts that brought me here. Where did they come from?

  After the police arrive there’s a lot of movement in the backyard, an endless procession coming and going. All I can do is watch from my front-row stool at the breakfast bar. Then two detectives press me about my reasons for being here and breaking in, and what I know about the skeleton buried under the fallen palm. At the word ‘skeleton’, reality hits me and I burst into tears. Then I tell them about Rina, spelling her full name just like she always had to do. They write it down and exchange looks. They tell me nothing, but they want to know everything I can remember about that weekend four years ago, about who was there and what happened. Realising now just how powerful humiliation is, I describe how Frank’s cred was totally demolished when his finger connected with the knife. A little blood, a little pain, and he flipped from bullyboy to blubber-boy before our eyes. None of us could ever look at him again without seeing the real Frank. When he locked himself in the bedroom the morning after, was he already plotting his revenge?

  They want me to write it all down – and it’s the least I can do for Rina – so I use their laptop and record everything that’s happened since I got the strange text. A text from a dead woman, how do I explain that? I don’t try. The words flow, all my thoughts and fears, all my memories in detail until the battery is almost flat. Then they let me go.

  My car is going nowhere without a tow truck, so one of the rescue guys who’s heading back to Sydney gives me a lift. My emotions are still raw. My detailed statement has given the police enough to track Frank down, and the forensic evidence should do the rest, but none of it will bring Rina back. I’ve lost her twice and, after expecting a reunion at Crystal Cottage, grief almost overwhelms me.

  “You know who’s in the grave?” my driver asks, fishing for gossip.

  “My best friend.”

  “That’s tough. Strange storm, too. Uprooting that very tree.”

  “And the pagoda.”

  “Frank’s Folly,” he says.

  I start in my seat. “Why do you call it that?”

  “The sign on the pagoda. Frank’s Folly.”

  In the dark I didn’t see it.

  “It means some bloke named Frank,” he says, “did something stupid, I s’pose.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Something stupid.” He killed my best friend.

  My driver insists on dropping me home and I’m glad Andrew isn’t around. I need to be alone, but the silence of another empty house feels eerie.

  I plug in my phone, fearing the chirp of texts. There’s a whole string of them from Andrew, threatening all sorts of sanctions. I’ve been telling myself it’s what happens when you marry someone older – they get over-protective. Now I see it for what it is: control.

  *

  As Andrew and I drove back to Sydney that weekend, I had to say something to explain my tears. “I can’t believe Rina’s staying with him after what he did to her.”

  “What he did?” Andrew said. “Rina stabbed him.”

  “By accident.”

  “What, she accidentally got a knife? Get real.” It was the tone he still uses when he’s belittling my opinions. “Rina doesn’t know the first thing about keeping a man,” he continued. “A good-looking woman like her holds all the cards – especially with an oaf like Frank who keeps his brain in his dick.”

  “What should she have done? Let him rape her with an audience?”

  “You’re so naive sometimes, Elkie, it’s embarrassing. It was Rina’s choice whether he raped her or not. She held all the power, a woman always does.”

  “How?”

  “If she’d gone along with it, it would have been fun. We’d all drunk enough to find it a laugh. Instead, Rina backed herself into a corner and lost her power. Instead of keeping Frank happy – and having him eating out of her hand – she’s humiliated him big time.”

  I didn’t get it. “Eating out of her hand sounds like serving up his favourite pizza. We’re talking about sex. In public.”

  “Pizza. Sex. A woman keeps a man by giving him what he wants.”

  “But what if she doesn’t want it?”

  Andrew laughed his patronising laugh. “Of course it’s her choice. She can always choose to be stupid.”

  *

  Now I’m staring at his texts with new eyes. He wasn’t talking about Rina. He was talking about me, confident that I’d learnt my lesson from her folly. Give Andrew what he wants, no matter what.

  Bullshit. The realisation sends me spiralling into the exhaustion I’ve been fighting off all day. The empty bed feels symbolic. It�
�s a mild night, but I’m freezing. I wrap myself in a blanket and fall into a fitful sleep.

  There’s an email when I wake up. And no more texts from Andrew. I can’t believe it.

  ‘Buy a lottery ticket,’ the rescue guy said. It must be my lucky weekend.

  After an almighty row with Andrew a few months back, I responded to an email offering the lottery. When I didn’t hear anything, I forgot about it. Probably spam. It must be a rolling lottery – once your name is in there, it can come up any time.

  Now I’m staring at the notification that says I’ve won a green card. All I have to do is pass an interview, and I can live and work in the United States. In defiance I even applied with my birth name: Selkie Moon.

  Unless it’s some kind of scam, wanting my mother’s maiden name and all my passwords and credit card numbers. But as I scroll down there’s a list of eligibility criteria. It looks legit. How can I check? Not till Monday. And if it’s true, then what?

  A tree smashes a window and my whole world fractures into shards.

  There are so many things to think about that I think about nothing. I clean the house. I wash every item of bedding and clothing, and hang them out on the line. I ring the car insurer and arrange repairs. I iron all of Andrew’s shirts. I sort my books and fill a box to go to the op-shop. I set up an online grocery account with a regular delivery. I wait for the phone to ring. It doesn’t.

  In the afternoon I ring my sister Gretel and tell her everything.

  “It explains why you never heard from her again,” she says. “She didn’t abandon you.”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do with the green card?”

  “I can’t think about that. Rina’s a skeleton, for God’s sake.”

  “Nothing’s going to bring her back, Selkie. And she’d want you to think about yourself. Now, about the green card?”

  I love Gretel.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “I do.”

  “What?”

  “Leave. Right now. The universe is giving you a gift – if you’ve got the courage.” She drops her voice. “Look what happened to Rina.”

  “That’s different,” I say. “Frank was a bully. She wasn’t safe with him. And Andrew will never let me leave.”

  “So you haven’t heard the news.”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of washing.”

  “There’s a cyclone in Vanuatu. The storm we got was the edge of it. There are no flights in or out, so Andrew won’t be back for days. And they’ve got no power, so he won’t be sending any more texts.” She laughs. “You’ll have to make decisions all by yourself.”

  “Shit.”

  That’s when I look around and see what I’ve been doing.

  Leaving.

  *

  Gretel and Barry are letting me stay for a few days while I sort out the final arrangements. It’s the only way I can do it. If I have to face Andrew when he gets back, I’ll lose my nerve. Now I’m sitting in a Chinese café at Central Station waiting for a train to their place, with everything I care about packed in my little red suitcase. In the end there wasn’t much – a couple of business suits, a pair of killer heels, a keepsake or two. When I closed the front door for the last time, it felt like I’d always been a stranger there, in spite of my efforts to make it my home.

  Everything has happened in a blur. The interview for the green card could have taken weeks, but I got a cancellation. And passed. Then I went into work and gave them the news – my contract was due for renewal, so that was easy too. Everyone hugged me and wished me luck, and one of the techies killed the tracking app for me. But will I be able to survive in the US? On my own? There’s still time to change my mind.

  The lunch special includes a fortune cookie. I’ve barely started on the spring rolls before I’m cracking it open and letting a paper strip decide my future.

  There is no way to both stay and go.

  Shit. It makes me laugh and cry all at the same time. The oriental wisdom is reading my mind.

  Then my phone rings. One of the detectives from Gosford. I tell him I’ve decided to work in the US – one whole minute ago – and he says to keep in touch about my whereabouts.

  “Have you found him?” I ask.

  “We’re still following up leads.”

  “I bet he changed his name.”

  He pauses as if deciding how much to say. “Frank Green’s family hasn’t heard from him since he left for London four years ago, but they were never close. And the body could be anyone who stayed in the beach house around that time. Or it could have been opportunistic. Someone looking to dispose of a body, a freshly dug garden, an unoccupied –”

  “I told you, it’s Rina.” My tears are back.

  “We haven’t identified the skeleton yet,” he says carefully. “But I can confirm one thing ... it’s male.”

  What? I almost choke on my spring roll as my head spins in total confusion. Not Rina? Does this mean she’s alive? Then who the hell’s in the grave?

  That’s when the song returns, bringing the words I’d forgotten.

  Then she knelt down before him to plead for her life.

  “Please let me be single if I can’t be your wife.”

  “Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, that can never be.

  Your recent behaviour’s humiliated me.”

  But Polly was smarter than he ever knew.

  She’d brought her own knife and ran Willy through.

  Now I see a terrified Rina sensing the anger under Frank’s cool charm and wondering desperately how to protect herself. But then I’m doused by a sudden chill. She knew how. The words that sliced through our friendship are back: ‘I know what I want. See you ... Elkie.’ She fabricated that bizarre conversation ... out of love. She wanted me out of the way. She knew she’d never be safe from Frank – unless she killed him.

  But the chill deepens. Humiliation works both ways. Frank had humiliated her. Did the moment with the knife give Rina a sense of power, so she stayed to exact her own revenge?

  I’m sobbing now. Rina made sure I was long gone when she finally got away from Frank, but thanks to my evidence the police have all they need to bring her in.

  So why send me to Crystal Cottage? If the texts came from Rina. Surely she didn’t have a sudden urge to confess. The whole thing was so weird. There was nothing to see at the beach house. The truth was hidden – until the storm. Only that one palm was uprooted ...

  “The reason I rang,” the detective is saying, “is to tell you about Marina Polivanova.”

  As he stumbles over her name, I’m alert. “Yes?”

  “She’s not our skeleton but there’s bad news, I’m afraid.”

  Has she been arrested already? I’m suddenly cold.

  “A woman known as Polly Vanova was crossing a London street on Friday morning when she was hit by a car.”

  Friday morning. Friday evening here.

  “She was in a coma for a few hours,” he says, “and they thought she’d pull through, but then her heart stopped. We’re still checking her full identity, but everything indicates she’s your friend. I’m sorry.”

  A screeching of tyres, then she was gone,

  But her soul wasn’t free, she had to hang on.

  She’d an old friend to call, a secret to tell,

  Before Pretty Polly ... could bid her farewell.

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  §

  Your Companion to Laying Ghosts

  The Selkie Moon books are modern mysteries with clues tangled up in folklore and mythology. I’ve found that reading folktales always triggers ideas for my books.

  Leaving Birds is a folktale companion for Laying Ghosts. In various ways, the stories in this collection provided inspiration for Laying Ghosts. If you’ve enjoyed Laying Ghosts, you’ll enjoy the creepy adult tales in Leaving Birds.

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  Buy the book here: https://www.books2read.com/u/bPJKjz

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  About Leaving Birds

  Murder. Magic. A ghost or two.

  Three spooky adult tales inspired by folklore:

  Once deep in a forest there lived a strange and magical woman. She had no mother or father, and no-one knew how she came to live alone in the crude hut she called home. But in their dreams, the local men were haunted by her beautiful presence for she had long hair that reached to her waist, the colour of spun gold. They called her Gilda.

  “The Woman with Hair of Gold”, retold from a Russian folktale

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  §

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  It was when I was suddenly awake that I realised I’d been dead to the world. What had woken me? A noise? The darkness was complete, and as I lay there straining my ears I had the strongest sense that something was in the room with me. Surely I could hear breathing, or was it just my own ragged breath? Then a weight landed on my legs and I almost cried out.

  “Peig’s Place”, a modern ghost story reimagined from and Irish folktale.

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  §

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  He pierced her body till the blood it did flow,

  Then into the grave her body did throw.

  He covered her body, then home he did run,

  Leaving none but birds her death to mourn,

  “Polly’s Folly”. Sleuthing out the clues to the possibly true crime behind the traditional English murder ballad, ‘Pretty Polly’.

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  Discover the chilling power of folklore with Leaving Birds.

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  Buy the book: https://www.books2read.com/u/bPJKjz