Elysium Read online

  ‘I was sleeping in an old bed-and-breakfast once, when in the middle of the night my covers were pulled right over my face,’ Joyce told us. ‘As if someone was trying to make the bed. I screamed, of course, and pushed them back. But when I turned on the light, no one else was in the room.’

  It was nice, being surrounded by people who believed in ghosts. Most of the time I don’t talk much about Eglantine. Well, you know what it’s like. If you mention the ghost that used to be in your brother’s bedroom, everyone thinks you’re a lunatic. That night, however, I didn’t have to worry. Gordon and Joyce were eager to hear about Eglantine – as well as every other ghost I’ve ever had to deal with. (Note to Bettina: I think they may want to visit your house some time. Just because it was haunted, once.) Sylvia was also very interested. Even Matoaka seemed to lap it all up.

  Only Dad and Paul disapproved. When Dad wasn’t clicking his tongue over the fact that Bethan and I were eating red meat (‘Do you know what sort of hormones get injected into that stuff?’), he kept shaking his head sadly whenever anyone mentioned the word ‘ghost’. ‘People shouldn’t search for meaning in death, instead of life,’ he lamented. ‘Nothing could be more unhealthy.’ It seemed odd to me that someone who lived with Matoaka should disapprove of ghost-hunting – because Matoaka, after all, had been talking about her Native American spirit guide. But perhaps Dad regarded ghosts as being different from spirits. Especially if the spirits were Native American and the ghosts were Anglo-Saxon.

  At least Dad took the whole subject seriously, though. Paul just thought we were stupid. I could tell. When he let rip a huge, stinking fart, he didn’t apologise. He simply glanced around the table, with a sneer on his face, and said, ‘Don’t look at me. The ghost did it.’

  Bethan laughed, of course. He’ll laugh at anything to do with farts, I’m afraid.

  As for Rosemary, I don’t think she had made up her mind about ghosts one way or another. I happened to sit next to her, and she turned out to be really nice. In fact I could see why Richard preferred his new girlfriend to his old girlfriend, even though I like Delora a lot. For a start, Rosemary doesn’t smoke, so she doesn’t cough as much. She’s also about the same age as Richard. And she’s smart, too. Delora isn’t dumb, but Rosemary is super-smart, like Richard. The only trouble is, she’s not clever about everything. She certainly doesn’t understand ghosts.

  For instance, I overheard her talking about a dream she’d been having, almost every night for weeks, and I couldn’t believe what she thought. She thought that she was going to have to make an appointment with a counsellor, or a psychiatrist.

  ‘My grandmother’s been dead for over a year,’ she said to Sylvia, who was sitting across the table. ‘It doesn’t make sense, but I think that I must have bottled up all the grief, so I could be strong for my mother. And now I must be paying the price.’ She explained that, in the dream, her dead grandmother had been appearing at the foot of her bed, wringing her hands and crying. ‘It’s so real,’ she finished, ‘that I actually stopped sleeping in my own room. It was disturbing me too much. That’s why I think I should talk to someone about it.’

  Sylvia started nodding sympathetically, but I shook my head.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ I objected. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you, I bet. It’s your grandmother. She has the problem, not you.’

  Rosemary stared at me in astonishment. Sylvia winced.

  ‘Uh – Allie . . .’ she began, and I knew what she was going to say. She was going to say something about exploring all the other possibilities first. It’s what she always says. But she hasn’t encountered as many ghosts as I have.

  ‘It’s probably your grandmother’s ghost,’ I pointed out to Rosemary. ‘And ghosts never turn up unless they want something. You should find out what she wants, and then she’ll go away.’

  Rosemary gave a kind of embarrassed half-smile. Even so, she was interested. She’s one of those people who are interested in just about everything.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The fact that the dream seemed real meant that it probably was real, I decided. ‘You’re lucky, because a lot of ghosts don’t actually appear like that – as a person. If you were feeling miserable all the time, or if a stain kept appearing on your blankets, that might be a ghost too. Only you wouldn’t know who they were, so it would be much, much harder to find out what they wanted. Why don’t you ask your grandmother what she wants, next time?’

  Rosemary’s mouth dropped open. Before she could reply, however, Richard stood up to make a speech. He said that he was pleased to welcome everyone to this, the second ghost tour organised for PRISM members and friends. It was gratifying to see how many people had shown up.

  ‘Every Saturday night a ghost tour is conducted here,’ Richard said. ‘It’s done for one simple reason: this place is notorious. There are no end of stories told about phantom tour groups, strange noises, lights going on and off – you name it. In fact they leave the lights on in the Caves House corridors at night for this very reason. Furthermore, the room in which you are actually sitting is supposed to be haunted.’

  I looked around at the carved wooden mantlepiece, and the coffered ceiling, and the red-and-gold wallpaper, as Richard repeated what he’d said earlier, about the souls of people who can’t bear to be parted from the Jenolan Caves. I couldn’t see any pictures of Miss Chisolm anywhere. Opera music was spilling out of black speakers mounted on the walls. Around us, the other tables were filling up. Waiters hurried about laden with plates of lamb and duck and barbecued octopus.

  It didn’t much look like a haunted room. But at night, perhaps, when the lights were off . . .?

  ‘Now, before I finish, I just want to run through what’s going to happen after dinner,’ Richard concluded. He looked slightly uncomfortable in his linen jacket, which must have been brand new; he kept scratching his neck, adjusting his cuffs and yanking at his lapels. ‘At eight-thirty, we have to be waiting at the entrance to the hotel car park, under the shelter shed. That’s where our guide is going to meet us. I’ll be taking my electromagnetic field detector, but I doubt we’ll be seeing any action. From what I can gather, most of the sightings happen when guides are alone, collecting rubbish or otherwise tidying up. Still – you never know.’ He glanced around the table with a bashful grin. ‘Maybe tonight we’ll get lucky.’

  ‘Here, here,’ boomed Gordon, as Richard sat down. Then Sylvia tapped on her wineglass with a fork, and gave a quick speech about how grateful we were to Richard for organising this terrific opportunity. (While she was talking, Paul peeled a scab off his elbow, looking thoroughly fed up.) After that, we all ate dessert – even Michelle’s mum, who’s usually on a diet – before everyone rushed off to make last-minute ‘preparations’.

  ‘There are no toilets inside the caves,’ Mum warned Bethan, when he protested that he didn’t need to empty his bladder. Mum also went to the toilet, and made Ray change his shoes. Bethan and I had to clean our teeth, as well. There was so much to do that we were the last people to reach the car park entrance, at eight-thirty.

  Even Dad was waiting there when we arrived. He was wearing the baggiest cargo pants I’ve ever seen.

  The guide was there, too. His name was Greg. He reminded me of a teacher I once had: thin and young, with a big, white smile and lots of energy. He explained that he would be taking us through little bits of the Orient, Ribbon, River and Lucas caves as part of our ghost tour. These caves were on the southern side of the Grand Arch. According to Greg, Gurangatch, who created the caves while fleeing from the giant quoll Mirrigan, was supposed to have been a water dragon. ‘And one day,’ he added, ‘that dragon’s going to wake up and kill us all – or so the story goes.’

  Paul snorted loudly. He was chewing bubblegum, and blowing noisy bubbles. Greg asked him to please remove the gum from his mouth before entering the caves. No food or drink from this point on, said Greg, and asked if anyone
had any questions.

  Richard cleared his throat.

  ‘Uh – have you ever experienced anything strange, underground?’ he queried.

  Greg smiled. ‘Not me personally,’ he said. ‘But a lot of the other guides have. So . . .’ He looked around. ‘Everyone still ready to go in?’

  We were. By this time the sky overhead was dark, and full of stars. It was also very quiet. Greg led us up a steep path to a door in a cliff-face, which marked the entrance to the Binoomea Cut. This tunnel had been blasted through solid rock in the 1950s, Greg informed us. (I wrote the date down in my notebook.) It was long and straight and damp, with nothing to see inside it but a series of metal doors. As we trudged along, I prayed that no one was going to be really, really pathetic and make a ghostly ‘ooo-ing’ noise.

  Alas – my prayer wasn’t answered. We had reached the Orient Cave when I heard it: ‘Ooooo-oo.’ But to my surprise, Bethan wasn’t to blame.

  Paul was the culprit.

  ‘Okay,’ said Greg, ignoring this feeble attempt at humour. He had paused by a bank of electrical switches, which he began to turn on. Bursts of light flared up all around us. ‘This is the Persian Chamber,’ he said, ‘and as you can see it’s quite spectacular. The Pillar of Hercules, down there, is one of the caves’ highest stalagmites. There are stories about how people who approach this chamber often hear the sound of singing – which stops as soon as they get inside. The guy who actually discovered the cave was named James Wiburd, and he was an interesting fellow. In fact, if there’s anyone haunting the Jenolan Caves, it would have to be James Wiburd.’

  I looked around. In the glow of the electric light, everything shone and glittered. There were formations like ice-cream cornets, like tripe, like frosting, like teeth. There were minarets and shawls. There were patches of white and pink coral.

  It was amazing.

  ‘O-o-oh,’ Mum sighed. ‘Oh, Ray.’

  ‘How can anyone be interested in unnatural manifestations,’ said Dad loftily, ‘when the natural world is so full of wonders?’

  ‘Look,’ said Bethan. ‘That bit looks just like chicken nuggets.’

  Taking us through to the Egyptian and Indian chambers, Greg went on to describe how James Wiburd had been the caves’ foremost explorer. But then the government destroyed a third of the Ribbon Cave to create better access. So James had left in a rage, taking his diaries with him and covering up some of the cave entrances, vowing that no one would ever find the things he’d seen.

  ‘Sometimes, even now, we stumble across new caves with Wiburd’s name written in them,’ Greg added. ‘Ah. Now here’s an interesting spot. This is where a guy I know kept seeing someone out of the corner of his eye. But whenever he flashed his torch towards this mysterious person, the torch went dead. The light would only come back when he shone it away from that spot.’

  I looked around hastily. From where I stood, I could see ice-white stalactites, and strange, pinkish slabs of rock ribbed with narrow threads of white – like slabs of raw chicken – and weird growths all over the ground that resembled the surface of someone’s brain. I could see petrified cascades of creamy calcite deposits, drooling and dripping off enormous stone wedding cakes. But I couldn’t see anything ghostly. Not unless you counted the formations themselves.

  Some of the stalagmites were tall and wide enough to seem vaguely human in shape. (If you were almost blind, and had very little light with you.)

  Michelle made an explosive noise beside me.

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ she muttered.

  Glancing back, I saw what was upsetting her. Sylvester and her mum were dawdling behind the main group, kissing and cuddling. It amazed me that they could ignore what was around them, and concentrate on each other. Neither of them looked nearly as nice as the cave did.

  ‘Up ahead is the entrance to the Ribbon Cave,’ Greg continued, shooing us on again. He tended to lag behind, rounding up stragglers and closing gates, before scurrying to the front of the group again. Sometimes, however, he got carried away, marching ahead until he reached the next set of switches. ‘Mate of mine called Dan went up to the end of the Ribbon Cave, once, to change a light bulb,’ he said. ‘All the way up, Dan felt a breeze on the back of his neck. When he came to a halt, he heard the sound of a throat being cleared just behind him. Then someone grabbed his shoulder with very long fingers.’ Pausing, Greg surveyed us, his eyes glittering. ‘When Dan turned around, there was no one. Absolutely no one. He was alone in the cave.’

  ‘All-right,’ said Bethan, softly.

  In the hush that followed, Michelle shivered. Gordon gave a sigh of satisfaction. Joyce nodded, smiling to herself.

  Then Sylvia yelped.

  ‘Paul!’ she screeched. ‘Don’t do that!’

  Most of us jumped, and stared.

  ‘Scared ya,’ Paul smirked.

  ‘Yes, you certainly did,’ said his mother, her hand to her heart. ‘It’s all right,’ she gasped, smiling unsteadily at Richard. ‘He grabbed my shoulder. It was a joke.’

  Richard raised his eyebrows. Michelle and I exchanged glances. Mum whispered something to Ray.

  Greg fixed Paul with an intent look, but didn’t comment on his behaviour. Instead he remarked, still gazing at Paul, ‘James Wiburd was supposed to have had very long fingernails. Because he liked digging in the mud.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all very well, but what about all these beautiful decorations?’ Dad asked impatiently. ‘How were they formed?’

  Greg’s face suddenly brightened. He immediately launched into a long geological lecture, which lasted about fifteen minutes as we slowly made our way out of the Orient and down towards the River Cave. We carefully descended several old metal ladders, using cable handrails. At the bottom we plunged into a network of round tunnels that Greg called the ‘mud tunnels’. Some were so low that we had to bend over. There were holes in their roofs: little depressions like hoof-marks, or holes so large and long that you could see right through them to parts of the Orient Cave, just above.

  ‘This is where we get most of our ghost sightings,’ Greg announced. ‘Here and around the corner near the Temple of Baal. There’s a squeaky iron gate up here that sometimes closes by itself – without squeaking. And in the passage to the River Cave something interesting once happened to a guy in my tour group. Every single light bulb went out as he approached it, and turned on again as he passed.’

  Everyone – even Paul – peered hopefully up at the electric lights over our heads. But nothing happened.

  Richard, I noticed, had produced his electromagnetic field detector. He was studying it in a surreptitious way, as if he didn’t want to make a big fuss.

  ‘This place must be Elysium for ghost-hunters,’ Joyce observed, smiling at Greg. For a moment he looked confused.

  ‘Pardon?’ he said.

  ‘These caves. They must be heaven on earth. For people like us,’ said Joyce, adjusting her glasses.

  ‘Oh!’ Something changed in Greg’s expression. He began to nod. ‘Oh, right. Heaven on earth. Elysium. Yes. Sorry – I got my wires crossed. There’s a chamber in the Elder Caves called Elysium, you see. I thought that’s what you were talking about.’ Urging us forward, he continued to talk, while we passed yet more wonderful formations: crocodile’s teeth hanging from the ceiling, petrified water spilling from a pot, plucked chicken’s legs sticking up out of the ground. (I wish I had written down more of the scientific names for these things. Looking through my notes, I can only find straws, flowstones, cave pearls and helictites.) ‘As a matter of fact, we’ve been wondering if the Elysium cave might be haunted,’ Greg admitted. ‘I haven’t been there myself, because it’s so hard to get into; only a small person can squeeze through all the tiny holes. But I’ve seen photographs. It’s one of the jewels of the caves. Not open to the public, of course.’

  ‘But why do you think it’s haunted?’ Richard wanted to know, back behind me somewhere.

  ‘Because a party of guides did visit it abou
t six months ago, and returned with a very strange story.’ Greg halted, so abruptly that Mum nearly ran into him. ‘See that needle-like formation, over there?’ he said. ‘That’s calcite which has crystallised on wire. Scientifically it’s very mysterious, because it forms a lot faster than normal straws or helictites.’

  ‘But what about Elysium?’ Bethan wailed impatiently, and Rosemary giggled. Ray put a hand on my brother’s head.

  Greg flashed a grin at him, before shooing us down another passage.

  ‘Well,’ he said bringing up the rear, ‘to begin with, while it’s common for people to get stuck in the chute that leads up to Elysium, and to go sliding back down in a panic, it’s not common to feel someone dragging you back by the ankles, as one of my friends did. What’s more, when the party finally managed to squeeze their way into Elysium, the whole place was filled with a terrible smell.’

  ‘Gas?’ Dad suggested.

  ‘Dead animal?’ Richard proposed.

  ‘Nup,’ Greg replied. ‘There were no carcasses. No piles of animal droppings. If it was gas . . . well, it’s the first time we’ve ever encountered gas like that, in the caves. There can be too much carbon dioxide, sometimes, but nothing that sulphurous. Very strange.’ He was squeezing past the rest of us, making for the head of the queue again. ‘Now . . . just up ahead – those at the front can probably see – is the Pool of Reflections. I suppose you could call it a kind of lagoon belonging to the underground river, here, which we call the River Styx. Back in the old days, people used to row a boat across to the other side.’