Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (32 page)

And she’d come this far, hadn’t she? There wasn’t any harm in trying. She knew the door would be locked.

But the door opened smoothly, without so much as a creak to disturb the perfect stillness of the night.

Inside was a hallway, dark and gloomy. Her body in the doorway blocked what little light there was, but her eyes nonetheless plucked a few reluctant details: high ceilings, skirting-boards of a polished dark wood, a landscape in watercolours, two doors leading deeper into the house, a vase of flowers on a pedestal by the door—all clean, tidy and as sterile as a museum.

At the very end of the hallway was a flight of stairs. The landing on the first floor was hidden by darkness.

So,
she wondered,
now what
?

Mourning shadows clustered around her, rich with mystery. Part of her wanted to explore further, seeing she was inside, but a greater part urged caution. The sensation of age radiating from the walls of the house had been joined by loneliness, emptiness and great sorrow. She knew instinctively that someone—or something—had died here, a long time ago.

Why that made a difference, she didn’t really know, but it did.

Then, as she hesitated on the lip of the door she saw something move. A sliver of darkness descended from the top of the stairs, followed shortly by another. The slivers became longer, one step at a time, one after the other—until, with a thrill of fear, she realised what they were.

Feet. Followed by legs.

Someone was coming down the stairs.

Frozen in place, she watched in terrified fascination as the occupant of the house descended. She could see waist-high now, more with every step. Definitely male, although in outline only; as the person stepped into the faint light, he remained a shadow—an extrusion of the darkness at the top of the stairs.

Hands appeared—black paws without definition—then the abdomen and chest. No impression of age, nor any sound. Shoulders came next, followed by a neck ...

She stifled a gasp when his head completed the silhouette. Nothing was visible of his face—no lips, no chin, no ears, hair or nose—apart from his eyes.

The light caught
them,
at least—unblinking, cold-grey, and fixed squarely on her.

I should run now,
she thought through a thick fog,
before be gets a good look at me. If it’s not too late.

The shadow reached the bottom of the stairs and continued towards her. Even as it came closer, it remained featureless, faceless. And still she couldn’t move.

I’m sorry,
she tried to say,
but I thought your house was empty. I only wanted to see inside
—

But the words refused to come. All she could do was watch, frozen, as the shadow reached out a hand to touch her cheek, and uttered one word:

“Misty ...”

“Oh my God!” Shirelle Parker put her hands over her mouth, bracelets tinkling. “What did you
do
?”

“Turned and ran, of course.” Beth giggled, but the humour was forced; the memory of her experience the previous night was still too vivid to have lost the fear associated with it—like a nightmare upon waking, except that she hadn’t been dreaming. “He could have been a rapist or a murderer, or anything.”

“Or someone sick of being woken up by people wandering into his house at all hours of the night.” Shirelle rolled her eyes. “Probably drives him crazy, strange women breaking in all the time—”

“I didn’t break in. I told you: the door was unlocked.”

“So? You didn’t have to open it, did you?”

“But he was waiting for me. He—” She bit her lip.

“He what?”

Beth toyed with her salad and avoided her friend’s gaze. She hadn’t mentioned the last part of her adventure. Shirelle wouldn’t understand.

He called me Misty.

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?” Shirelle eyed her with genuine concern, imagining all manner of unspoken horrors behind her sudden reticence.

“Positive.” Beth forced a smile and changed the subject. “We’d better head back soon, hadn’t we?”

Shirelle polished off her meal with quick, business-like mouthfuls, and Beth thought the conversation finished. But when the waiter had taken their plates away and they gathered handbags and jackets in preparation for the walk back to the office, Shirelle took her arm in one hand.

“Beth. Promise me you won’t go back.”

Beth stared at her friend for a long while, knowing the correct response but unable to say it.

“I can’t promise that.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t, okay?”

“But what if he’s a
ghost
?” Shirelle gave the word all the emphasis of someone who had spent too many late nights watching
Nightmare on Elm Street
films.

“So? He might well be.”

“Doesn’t that frighten you?”

“Of course, but ...” She hesitated, remembering the shadow’s silent approach, the glinting of its eyes, its hand reaching for her face—and the terror that overwhelmed her, like a rabbit caught between headlights. “But if I don’t go back, I’ll wonder for the rest of my life who or what he was.”

“Fine.” Shirelle shrugged, flicking long, blonde hair back over her shoulders. “I don’t understand you, Beth. You know that?”

“Yes.” She smiled openly and patted her friend’s hand. “And that makes two of us.”

Work was brisk but tedious. Data-processing insurance claims kept her busy for most of the afternoon: an endless stream of meaningless numbers, faceless names and impersonal tragedies. All of it was just background noise for the thoughts and images echoing through her head.

When her extension buzzed at four-fifteen, she dragged herself out of the daze and took the call.

“Beth? It’s Simon.”

She instantly focussed. Simon was an old friend—and just a friend—currently employed by the planning department of the city’s civic council. “How did you get on?”

“Not sure. Let me check I wrote down the address right, first. Seventy-two Burden Street? Is that what you said?”

“That’s right. Is there a problem?”

“Sort of. It doesn’t exist.”

“But—”

“Wait. I know what you’re going to say. Your information is partly right. The council changed the name back in ‘55—nobody remembered the old Captain any more, I guess—so Burden Street
was
real enough. It’s the number that must be wrong. What was the date on that death certificate?”

She thought for a moment. Simon was working under the misapprehension that she was researching her family tree, which wasn’t so unlikely. Her father had died shortly before her birth, her mother seventeen years later; an only child of two only children, she had never known what it was like to have cousins. Locating distant relatives was something she genuinely planned to do, one day.

“Nineteen-thirty-eight,” she improvised, picking the date at random.

“That can’t be right.”

“Why not?”

“Number seventy-two was subdivided by the local council back in May 1927 and equal halves allocated to each of its neighbours. The house would have been long-gone by ‘38.”

She resisted the impulse to protest
—But I was there
!

—and asked instead: “Why did they subdivide it?”

“Doesn’t say.” She could hear the shrug in his voice. “Maybe the house fell down, or the neighbours demolished it after they bought the land. It occasionally happens, you know, for extensions or a swimming pool or just for the extra yard. Might be worth checking the old papers for additional information. You never know.”

“Thanks, Simon, that’s a good idea.”

“Always my pleasure, Beth. Oh, and this might help: the name of the final owner was Gerard Maddock. He owned the house from 1902 to when it was sold, or whatever.”

“Thanks again.” She wrote down the name and date he had given her on a yellow stick-pad, thinking:
Another mystery. Maybe I
did
dream it.
“I owe you a dinner for all your help.”

“Sounds lovely. Let me know if you find your great-aunt, won’t you?”

She promised she would, and hung up.

The upper levels of the State Library were surprisingly alive after nightfall, full of students, researchers and the idle curious. A low murmur of conversation battled with the whispering air-conditioning for control of the near-silence, creating a pleasant if slightly soporific atmosphere.

Deeper in the library, however, down where the archival microfilms were kept, the silence was more pervasive, undisturbed for decades. It had settled across the shelves and books like a shroud, invisible but heavy, suffocating even the potential for sound. The clicking of her heels on the scuffed lino echoed like gunshots.

A young librarian showed her how to use the readers and change the films, explaining with an ease that came from obvious experience how the catalogue was arranged by date, month and year, with separate files for
The Advertiser
and
The News.
All very simple, he said, but if she needed any help, he would be only too happy to oblige. She detected a subtle proposition in his patient helpfulness, but politely deflected it.

Another time, she might have said yes, or at least considered it before saying no. Shirelle frequently complained that she should get out more often, and privately she agreed. But there always seemed to be something more important to do, and she’d never really felt confident around strangers—especially men. Books and the occasional film were much safer, and less demanding.

Beth smiled to herself. Anyway, she
was
out, wasn’t she? Although this probably wasn’t what Shirelle had in mind.

When the librarian had finally gone, she selected April, 1927, and started to browse.

The first thing she noticed was how little the papers had changed in seven decades;
The News
in particular might have been staffed throughout its entire existence by the very same people, only folding in 1992 due to the death of its last surviving reporter.

The headlines were full of the major events of the times, reflecting concerns that she found surprisingly familiar. There were articles about international crises in the post-war world, industrial strikes, sports (especially cricket), shark attacks, mining accidents, exchange-rates, the royal family, elections, and even complaints about Adelaide’s drivers.

A few of the headlines caught her eye for their strangeness— “Steals Overcoat: It Was Raining”, “Bogged Two Hours In Renmark Street”, “Gripped by Water-Snake, Clerk Tells of Narrow Escape”—while others displayed a relish for gore no less bloodthirsty than that of modern times: “Mangled by Trains: Unknown Body Found”, “Trapped Between Wall of Flames: Peasants Rush In Terror to the Sea”, “Brain Bright Blue: Post Mortem on Miner”.

But nowhere did she find a mention of the house on Burden Street, or of its owner, Gerard Maddock.

She persisted, turning to the advertisements for amusement when her attention flagged. What were now the cinema pages had then advertised music recitals and stage plays as well as movies, boasting celebrities she had never heard of. There were classified ads for matrons, maids, Turkish Baths, steam engines, and houses for sale for as little as nine hundred pounds in areas that now begged six figures. Other ads seemed very similar to their modern-day equivalents, peddling clothing, liquors and motoring aids with equally grandiloquent promises.

There were even whole pages devoted to women’s issues, which made her smile, remembering her mother.

Marjorie Taylor had hated magazines like
Cleo
and
Cosmopolitan
on the grounds that they forced people of both sexes into artificial moulds. A feminist and free-thinker, she had been an exponent of all things New Age, although the term had not yet come into its own during her heyday. Beth’s childhood had been filled with fragile crystals, strange aromas and mysterious herbs. Vegetarianism had been the rule, a habit Beth still adhered to, and hints of psychic phenomena were not unknown; the spirit-world, if there truly existed such a thing, had had a firmer grip on the Taylor household than the twentieth century. But it had been, for the most part, a pleasant upbringing, one full of creativity and fantasy if light on reality.

The recollection of her mother—billowy red hair, brightly-coloured smocks and glittering rings, still vivid even after so long— brought back other memories too, some less welcome.

At the age of five, she had suffered a series of terrifying dreams: of lying in her bed, staring upwards at the ceiling, in which appeared five golden doors. Through the doors, she could hear strange noises and voices calling to her, sometimes pleading, sometimes in anger. She never once moved to open them, afraid of what might come out, of what she might set free. She simply lay curled in her bed, covering her ears with a pillow until the sounds went away or she awoke.

Her mother had expressed dismay that she should be so unwilling to explore the realms offered to her in her dreams. Feeling jealousy, perhaps, she had bewailed the “reluctant mystics of the world, forever blinkered and afraid to open their higher selves to the wonders of the Beyond.”

Beth, at the age of five, hadn’t understood, and had misheard the word “mystic” for “misty”. As the dreams continued and her mother became increasingly frustrated, the nickname stuck. “Reluctant Misty” represented the part of her that had potential access to the unknown, but was too frightened to explore it. Her mother patiently encouraged Misty to open the doors, but without success, and, at the age of six, the dreams stopped. Much to Beth’s relief.