Eustace Read online

  ‘This is my friend Michelle.’ I looked around. ‘Where’s Delora?’

  ‘Down there.’ He pointed. ‘She’s getting a feel for the place. She needs to be alone.’

  Shading my eyes, I saw that Delora was way down at the bottom of the garden, where a collapsing post- and-rail fence separated Samantha’s land from a great big patch of blackberries. Delora’s hair was now a kind of purplish red, instead of blonde, but I couldn’t tell if she was wearing her pink leather pants. There was a kiln in the way.

  ‘Has she sensed anything?’ I inquired, and Richard shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘She hasn’t said. I certainly haven’t.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Nothing exceptional.’ He turned to Samantha. ‘High volumes of electromagnetic activity are usually associated with reports of apparitions. But I can’t see any anomalies in the readings I’m getting.’

  Samantha treated us to one of her nervous little laughs. ‘I never knew technology had advanced so far!’ she twittered. ‘Imagine being able to scan for ghosts!’

  ‘It’s not foolproof,’ Richard admitted, ‘but it’s very useful.’ Gazing around, he added: ‘It doesn’t feel right. Do you know what I mean, Allie? Your house felt different when Eglantine was there.’

  I understood exactly what he was saying. Taylor’s cottage seemed to be sinking into the ground behind a sunlit screen of herbs and daisies and climbing roses, like a cat drowsing in a bush of catnip. Bees hummed. Birds twittered. Everything looked warm and sleepy and contented.

  As Richard had said, it didn’t feel right.

  ‘What I’ll do tonight, though, is set up my cameras and see if we can spot anything,’ he went on, turning back to Samantha. ‘Did you say that things only get broken or rearranged when you’re out of the house, is that right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Samantha, blinking.

  ‘Then maybe you and Hessel could pop out for a couple of hours, when it gets dark. Just in case Eustace is a bit shy. Would that be okay?’

  Samantha said that she supposed it would be. She said that she and Hessel could always go to the pub. Or maybe they could have dinner with Judy, at the camp site. How did that sound?

  The question was aimed at me. I didn’t know how to respond to it.

  ‘Things are pretty weird down there, right now,’ I said at last. ‘Maybe . . . that is, I don’t even know how long we’re going to be here . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’ The lines around Samantha’s eyes became deeper and darker. ‘I thought you weren’t leaving until tomorrow?’

  ‘It all depends . . .’

  ‘On what?’

  I had to explain. I told them about Jesse and Tony and the mineshaft. When I got to the bit about Jesse blaming Abel, Samantha began to squeak and gasp.

  ‘I’ve heard about him!’ she cried. ‘Somebody mentioned him the other day, at the pub! He’s supposed to be a prospector, isn’t he? Or released from a mental hospital, someone said. One of those hopeless cases . . . comes and goes . . . never talks to anyone . . . bad tempered, but basically harmless. That’s what they said. Oh, my God!’ She shuddered. ‘How awful! But it might have been a misunderstanding, don’t you think?’

  I shrugged. Richard pushed his glasses up his nose.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘Is your mother all right, Allie?’

  ‘She’s fine. But she had to stay with the other kids. That’s why she couldn’t come.’

  ‘What’s happening? Have they called the police?’

  More explanations. This time, however, Michelle joined in. I was talking about the ambulance, and the district nurse, and Officer Gorridge, when she suddenly blurted out: ‘We think Abel Harrow might be a ghost.’

  I shot her the dirtiest of all my dirty looks.

  ‘A ghost?’ Richard echoed, and Samantha giggled.

  ‘Because Abel Harrow’s name is on a gravestone in the cemetery,’ Michelle continued. She was beginning to lose courage; I could tell.

  ‘But there might have been more than one Abel Harrow,’ Richard pointed out gently. ‘Names do run in families, you know.’

  ‘Evie must have been a relative,’ Samantha butted in. ‘Her name was Harrow. Do you remember, Richard? Evie used to live in this house.’

  ‘Yes, but he had no eyes!’ Michelle gabbled desperately, ignoring Samantha. Richard was the one she wanted to convince. ‘Jesse said that the old man had no eyes! He must have been a ghost. And Allie saw him too – she says he was really weird, there one minute and gone the next. Didn’t you, Allie?’

  I couldn’t deny it. I mumbled something, scratching my cheek.

  ‘Did you notice his eyes?’ Richard asked me. ‘When you saw him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he look strange to you?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Sort of,’ I muttered. ‘He . . . he . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He moved so fast!’ (How had he managed to stay out of sight, when Peter and I turned that corner?) ‘Unless he was hiding in holes, or something. I thought he might be hiding in the old mineshafts.’

  ‘Which is creepy enough in itself,’ Delora piped up, from behind me. I nearly had a heart attack; no one had noticed her approach. ‘Hello, Allie, poor baby, give me a kiss,’ she squawked, and left her lipstick on my cheek. The lipstick was a very, very dark red – almost purple. She was also wearing a fluffy lime-green jacket, black lycra pants, snakeskin boots with high heels, and a ring in her belly button. The skin on her face was even more leathery than Samantha’s. ‘So you’ve found us another ghost, have you?’ she went on, gazing into my eyes. ‘It doesn’t surprise me. I said to Richard, when I first saw you, that girl has the darkest aura I’ve ever seen. She’s a troubleshooter. She’s special.’ Turning to Michelle, Delora added, ‘Hello, sweetie, what’s your name?’

  ‘Michelle.’

  ‘I’m Delora. That’s a gorgeous bracelet. Real gold? Yes, I thought so.’

  ‘It’s my mum’s.’

  ‘Gorgeous,’ Delora repeated. ‘Mind if I have a smoke out here, Sam? That won’t bother you, will it?’

  ‘Well – no-o-o . . .’

  ‘I’m dying for a ciggie. Takes it out of you, opening yourself up like that. Leaves you so drained.’ She began to feel around in her purse, without pausing for breath. ‘Not that it did any good, mind you. Pointless. A pointless exercise. Can’t feel a thing.’

  ‘No disruptions?’ Richard asked, leaning forward.

  ‘Not a thing. Zilch. Inside and out, the whole place. Not so much as a quiver.’ She produced a cigarette, and put it in her mouth. Flick, flick, flick went her lighter. ‘Talk about rest in peace. This place is comatose. No spirits that I can sense.’ Delora can speak quite clearly even when she has a smoking cigarette hanging out of her mouth. I don’t know how she does it.

  ‘But the broken dishes!’ Samantha protested. ‘The little trail of throat lozenges!’

  ‘Sweetie, I’m only telling you what I felt. I felt nothing. Which isn’t to say that I’m not having an off day. It happens.’ Delora coughed a hacking cough, giving Richard time to interrupt.

  ‘I’ll have a go tonight,’ he said. ‘Just to see. Everyone else can slope off to the pub, and leave me with my cameras for a couple of hours.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a good idea.’ Delora nodded. ‘I might even join you. Now, what else is going on? What’s this about a ghost with no eyes?’

  It surprises me the way Delora, who’s supposed to be a psychic, always has to be told things – like people’s names. You’d think she’d already know them, wouldn’t you? But she doesn’t. She’s as keen to hear gossip as Mum is. So we went into the kitchen, drank tea, ate pumpkin scones and talked about Golden Gully. I didn’t really want to talk about it, mind you, but I didn’t have much choice. Everyone else was too interested. And I must admit that I didn’t have to put up with a lot of snorts and titters and sidelong looks when the word ‘ghost’ was uttered. Richard and Delora ar
e quite comfortable with the idea of ghosts. They don’t think you’re a weirdo just because you raise the possibility of a house (or a gully) being haunted. They’re even willing to visit the gully, and take electromagnetic readings, and try to break through to the spirit realm.

  ‘But not now,’ Richard said. ‘Not with everything happening over there. Maybe tomorrow morning, on our way home. When those poor boys have been . . . um . . . sorted out.’

  ‘Yes, I hope they’re going to be all right,’ said Samantha. ‘I wonder if we can do anything to help? What do you think, Hessel?’

  Hessel grunted, and shook his head.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ his wife agreed. ‘We’d probably only get in the way. Tell you what, though – why don’t we have dinner at the pub tonight? With Judy? The poor thing, she’ll need a stiff drink after what she’s been through today. What do you think, Hessel?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ Hessel growled.

  ‘Did you hear that, Allie?’ Samantha turned to me. ‘Tell your mother we’ll stop by on our way to the pub, and pick her up. You too, if you want. Tell her we’ll make it about . . . let’s see . . . seven-thirty? We’ll pick her up then.’

  ‘If we’re still there,’ I murmured. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was nearly four. Getting late, in other words. ‘We’d better go now,’ I said. ‘Mum will be wondering where we are. Thanks for the scones. Bye, Richard. Bye, Delora.’

  But Michelle and I weren’t allowed to make such an easy escape. Delora wanted to check out some of the Hill End sights before everything closed, and insisted that she and Richard drop us at the camping area. Then, when we arrived, she made a point of talking to Mum, who had to fill her in on the latest developments. It seemed that an ambulance had taken Tony, Jesse and Mrs Karavias to Mudgee hospital. No one yet knew what Tony’s condition might be, though Jesse seemed okay; he had only gone with Tony because it was felt that a doctor should look at him, just to be on the safe side. Mrs Patel had decided to accompany them both. She had been told that the police would probably have to interview Jesse once he’d been examined by a doctor, and she wanted to be on hand when that happened. Our bus was supposed to pick her up in Mudgee at two o’clock the next day.

  Meanwhile, we kids were supposed to carry on with our scheduled activities, and be good for the parents who were now in charge of our welfare.

  ‘Which I suppose means that we carry on with that gold-panning session tomorrow morning,’ Mum remarked in a worried voice, as Tammy’s mum and Amy’s dad and Delora and Richard clustered around. ‘I mean, we’ve booked it. We’ve paid for it. And I suppose it can’t do any harm – as long as we don’t let the kids wander off anywhere.’

  ‘What gold-panning session?’ asked Amy’s dad. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, there’s some guide who’s going to show us how to pan for gold,’ Mum replied. ‘Isn’t that right, Esme?’

  Tammy’s mum nodded. ‘He will come here tomorrow,’ she confirmed. ‘Eight-thirty, Mrs Patel said. He will go with us, show us some things . . . how to find gold.’

  ‘Real gold?’ It was Amy, hovering behind her dad. ‘You mean there’s still gold out there?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ her father retorted. ‘You’d have to be pretty damned lucky. This place has been picked clean.’

  It was then, because of what Amy’s dad said, that I suddenly had my idea.

  My idea about Abel Harrow, and how he might be made to stop chasing people.

  CHAPTER # eight

  ‘No,’ said Michelle.

  The stars were out, and sausages were still crackling and spitting away on the barbecue. Michelle and I had eaten one each, with bread (but no butter), tomatoes, lettuce, fried onion, and a couple of shortbread biscuits. Our greasy plates were sitting on the grass, beside our half-empty cans of soft drink. Mum wasn’t with us; she had gone to the pub with Samantha, Delora and Hessel. Peter wasn’t with us either; he had got up and joined the line near the barbecue, where he was waiting for another sausage. So I had decided to explain my idea to Michelle – quickly, before Peter returned – in the hope that she would think it a good one.

  She didn’t, at first.

  ‘But this bracelet is Mum’s!’ she protested, covering it with her hand. ‘She lent it to me!’

  ‘Yes, I realise that.’ Patiently, I tried to make her understand. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, though. You said she only lent it to you because she never wore it. And you also said that we should do something about Abel Harrow. Well – this is something we could do.’

  ‘I said we should stop him! I don’t see how giving him my bracelet is going to stop him!’

  ‘I thought you said it was your mum’s bracelet?’

  ‘Whatever.’ Michelle sounded really cross. ‘It still doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Michelle, I just told you. There are two good reasons why Abel might be hanging around Golden Gully. One is what you said before: that he’s guarding a secret hoard of gold. That makes sense. Maybe he found it just before he died, and now he doesn’t want anyone else going near it – even though it’s not going to do him any good.’ I took a deep breath, and glanced over at the sausage queue. In the faint light of various torches and lanterns, I could see that Peter was now at the head of it. ‘Another good reason is that he might never have found any gold,’ I continued. ‘Maybe he spent his whole life searching for it, obsessing about it, and now he can’t rest in peace until he finds some. So he’s guarding his claim in case somebody else stumbles on a bit of gold there, and snatches it out from under his nose.’

  ‘I still don’t see why you want to bury my bracelet.’

  ‘Because it might do the trick, Michelle. Once Eglantine finished her book, she could rest in peace. Maybe it’s the same for Abel. Maybe, once he finds some gold – like your bracelet, for instance – he’ll disappear. Because his hunger will be satisfied.’

  Michelle gave a snort. ‘Do you know how busted I’ll be, if I bury Mum’s bracelet?’she said.

  ‘You can say you lost it. We’re on a camping trip. People lose things on camping trips.’

  ‘I’ll still be busted!’

  ‘I don’t see why. If your mum doesn’t wear it any more, why should she care what happens to it?’

  A dark shape was heading in our direction: Peter, with his sausage. Leaning forward, I addressed Michelle in an urgent whisper.

  ‘Just think about it,’ I urged. ‘I’ve still got to work out how we’re going to get back to Golden Gully, tomorrow. Or maybe Richard can do the job for us. He said he’s going to stop there in the morning, and check it out.’

  ‘Check what out?’ asked Peter. He sat down next to me, his sausage rolling around on his paper plate.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied.

  ‘Are you still talking about Tony and Jesse?’

  ‘No.’ We had already discussed Jesse’s police interview (when it would happen, where it would happen, how it would be conducted) until we were blue in the face. ‘I can’t believe you’re having another one of those things.’

  ‘They’re awful, aren’t they?’ Peter agreed, with a beaming smile. ‘They look like great big turds and they taste like great big turds. I suppose it makes sense, though. Aren’t sausage skins made of pig-guts, or something? Guts are where turds come from, after all.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Michelle objected, screwing up her face. ‘Don’t be disgusting.’

  ‘Amy’s dad can’t cook for nuts, can he?’ I said, in an attempt to change the subject. ‘I wonder why he volunteered?’

  ‘He didn’t.’ Peter began to saw away at his charred sausage. ‘Angus’s dad did it last night, so it was someone else’s turn tonight. Angus’s dad cooks a great sausage,’ he added, and flourished a battered morsel on the end of his fork. ‘Sure you don’t want one?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Sure?’

  He stuck the thing in my face, grinning fiendishly. When I pushed it away, I managed to up-end his plate,
causing bits of burnt sausage to spill over the grass.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feeling guilty. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he sighed.

  ‘You shouldn’t wave those things at me.’ I couldn’t understand what he had been trying to do. It wasn’t like Peter to act so . . . well, so Bethan-ish. ‘It’s scary.’

  ‘I know. They’re dangerous.’ He stood up. ‘Well – back to the line, again.’

  ‘It’s quite short, now,’ I offered, raising my voice, as he headed for the barbecue. Then I turned to Michelle.

  ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. The bracelet,’ I murmured, and she shook her head.

  ‘It’s too much of a waste,’ she replied.

  ‘Even if it gets rid of Abel Harrow?’

  ‘We won’t know that, though, will we? We’ll never know. We’ll walk away and never know.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Not if Richard’s with us. He might be able to get some readings.’

  ‘Richard with the glasses, you mean?’ Michelle seemed sceptical. ‘I don’t know, Allie. He didn’t seem to believe in Abel. And he didn’t look very . . . I mean, he looked a bit . . .’ She searched for the right words, but I could sense what she was trying to say. Richard wasn’t old enough. He wasn’t serious enough. He didn’t have white hair and a dark suit and a foreign accent.

  ‘Richard is good,’ I assured her. ‘He knows what he’s doing. And he’s got lots of equipment.’

  Michelle made a face. I decided that Richard must have really offended her when he questioned the fact that Abel was a ghost.

  ‘Honestly.’ I didn’t know how to convince her. ‘He was the one who filmed Eglantine’s writing, remember? Appearing on the wall. You haven’t seen him in action.’ And all at once, something occurred to me. ‘Do you want to see him in action? Because you could.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘We could go up to Samantha’s house and watch him. Right now. If you want to.’

  It took Michelle a moment to work out what I meant.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You mean that stuff he’s doing up there? To see if he can spot Eustace?’

  ‘That’s happening right now.’