No Room for Ghosts

The way time passed for ghosts was a mystery to me. I thought that, maybe, it was a kind of overlay, like a frame that sat on top of the real world, or a lens that distorted it somehow.

There was no doubt that the policeman had been very old. I had encountered no-one like him in my lifetime. Even pictures of people from his era, which I vaguely recalled seeing in old family albums and the mustier parts of libraries, were poorly-preserved, faded and dog-eared at the corners. They didn’t look like the kind of photos that were snapshots of real people, or contained things that had ever been more than pictures.

Now that I thought about it, he even seemed to shimmer around the edges. He put me more in mind of a long exposure photograph, the kind where lights leaves an impression by drenching a plate over a long period of time. I had no idea how long it must have taken him to etch his presence here. He traced the path of his haunting loosely, so that his image became fuzzy, and his imprint was saturated until it was almost white.

Yet, the child, who was as modern and normal-looking as Leanna concluded, had been known to him. I didn’t understand it. Was she then a blemish on the photograph, something that darted through the long exposure, leaving a mark on his image?

Would he continue to question anyone who crossed his haunting about whether they had seen her? I imagined him as an actor in period costume, repeating his part in a drama. Would the missing girl be part of his routine forever?

Further questions sprang up in my mind, streaming from an endless fountain. What about other people he encountered? Were they blemishes, too? I wondered if enough of them would accumulate, eventually, to wipe him out. Where would he go when he was erased? It was baffling, but there was one person who could make sense of it.

‘Since we’re here anyway, why don’t we go and see Randolph?’

Leanna suggested it. I concurred. She grabbed my hand, apparently as in need of something solid as I was. I clenched hers tightly.

As we set off, hand in hand, down the sidewalk, people jostled and shoved. Another couple skipped directly through us, swinging hands that were clasped as well. For a moment, they looked blank-faced, as though they had hit a blast of cold air. Leanna and I exchanged spontaneous looks, and laughed.

As if my own image had been tweaked, I was starting to view the city in a different light. Everything was more colourful, and the speeding traffic didn’t bother me. It was simply water coursing through a matrix of riverbeds, eroding the tar and concrete in an impossibly incremental way. The clamouring cars and buses and the rattling monorail cars couldn’t overtake me, either. Instead, it was I who passed them by.

I stood outside the chaos that belonged to the commuters, the taxi drivers, the tourists, employees and backpackers. I was free from the hordes of pedestrians wrestling their way from the underground, free from the timely reminders of bells, free from the nagging toll booths, and not tethered to the park, the skyscrapers, or the great, Gothic university. I was free to roam. Like the sandstone buildings, wrought from history and fantasy, I was excused from the everyday grind. Like the seagulls circling above the Harbour, who saw things from above, patterns in the city existed only for my appreciation.

Even the neon signs and indifferent, flashing displays seemed quaint to me. I knew that they would be replaced, as perhaps the stores closed, or, eventually, entire streets were remodelled. Even colossal St. Mary’s Cathedral and the heritage houses squashed between banks and shopfronts, which held ghosts much older than me, were temporary.

Only I would get to see history evolve. I think it was because of my newfound ease that I was starting to see them, too.

They lingered on every doorstop, and peeked from every foggy window. Schoolchildren in wide-brimmed hats and starched breeches, like the carnival boy, sprinted up and down the inclined main street, chasing a bamboo hoop. A war veteran in a woollen uniform loitered by a bronze memorial. An old-fashioned lady in a crinoline, like the one in the graveyard, wandered vacantly towards the park, tugging a poodle on a leash. A tweed gentleman smoked a pipe. A child in a pastel dress clung like a monkey to a signpost with directions to the Harbour.

A child in a pastel dress.

‘Leanna, wait!’ I pulled her more violently than I had meant to when I stopped, so that she was jerked abruptly like a ragdoll.

‘What?’

‘That’s her! That’s the girl in the photo! Where’s the policeman?’ I did a quick scan of the bustling streets, but of course, he had vanished. I swore under my breath.

‘Where?’

I pointed at the place where the little girl had been, but she had swung around the pole and was now drifting, arms afloat, into the oncoming traffic. A neat mushroom of chestnut hair bobbed under a paper crown, like a party hat. One of her shoes had slipped off by the signpost.
She couldn’t see us.

‘Hey!’ I shouted, and couldn’t think what to say next. ‘Little girl!’

She paused on the edge of the curb, and for a moment I thought she might have heard me, but then I saw that she was simply rocking, teetering on the edge with a wide-eyed expression that drank in everything with indiscriminate affection. Then, her head snapped on her neck, and I saw that she had spotted something on the other side of the road. My heart fluttered. Was she going to cross?

Would the cars hit her? Could ghosts be hurt?

Leanna was watching, too. Her good hand, which had been wrapped around my own, now hung limply by her side. The traffic was changing as the lights at the intersection flashed amber, and the girl seemed to make her decision.

Three things happened, very quickly.

Firstly, I ran. I felt my arms pumping by my sides and my jacket catching on the wind like a sail, slowing me down. I let it fall, and sprinted as fast as I could, pushing through the living so that several people spun in turn to see what had bumped them. The pavement flew beneath my feet.

Secondly, the girl put one foot forward, stepping gingerly onto the asphalt as though testing the warmth of a pool. Traffic moving one direction rolled to a standstill, and the city held its breath. Then, just before I could catch her, she dashed awkwardly into the middle of the road, and the third thing happened.

I leapt. A car, gleaming silvery in the sunlight, careened around the corner of the intersection. It screeched violently, skidding on locked wheels, but didn’t stop before it collided with her.

There was a scream and a sickening thud, and they were both pushed out of my path. The arc in which I’d thrown myself brought me back down through an empty cloud of burned rubber and exhaust fumes. Having intercepted nothing, I hit the ground heavily, feeling my ribs squash as I was winded against the baking road.

I groaned and rolled over, squinting in the fumes. The atmosphere was dead silent in the aftermath. There were no engines rumbling. Not even birds squawked, but maybe that was just because time stood still.

The first thing I saw was her other shoe, alone and useless, nearly within reach of where I sprawled. The second thing I saw was Leanna, covered in blood.