Status: Re-uploaded for colibri 20/09/12.
No Room for Ghosts
IX
We were out all night. Leaving the cafe felt a bit like being evicted, ejected from a warm cocoon into the confronting outdoors. Even if Leanna had hated its stark furnishings and food-related paraphernalia, it had been our bunker when the bomb had dropped. We emerged from it changed.
Together we stalked the streets, where sheer or tinted stockings made shimmering wisps and dusky creatures of the girls in the streaking lamplight. Some were bright-lipped like reef fishes, with delicately pleated garments like fins. Others were demure oysters, smoky-eyed beneath hats or hoods. They darted in and out of hidden crevices and coral-neon nightclubs, preyed upon by lobster-like men in studded leather armour. Occasionally, a jellyfish skirt would billow in the slightest breeze, as Leanna’s cotton dress had done.
Submerged in the never-quite-darkness of the city, where smog smeared the horizon and cast greasy halos around the streetlights, these women were as foreign to the waking world as we were. They used to be like us, a part of our adopted ecosystem, and yet, we went unrecognised by them. Sadness camouflaged us, I thought. We didn’t want to be seen, and so we weren’t.
The strange sense of distance that created was something I wanted to escape. I was glad of another graveyard hunt, even if this one felt more like a lucid dream than an adventure.
Tonight, we were going to find Leanna’s grave.
To do that, we had to cross once more through the permanently-altered metropolitan district. Every whispered or shouted word, every click of heel against pavement, I now found, reminded me that time was still passing. The world no longer belonged to me. It had slipped through my fingers as easily as I now slipped through it. Any concept of a future was something I had passed on, and that would be transformed by its inheritors, who lived in progressively distant times, until it became frightening to me.
Life in all its vibrant forms would flourish and evolve, while I remained forever frozen. At this thought, my pulse quickened. The sounds of voices, cars, alarms and pedestrians rushed together in a steady, ominous chorus, drowning me like the crushing pressure deep below the ocean. I looked around, and saw that the colourful reef had become a lurid, hostile environment. Every footstep taken in any direction was one that overtook me. Every flushed cheek and reddened pout was the product of a heart that beat as part of the human whole, passionate in its desire to exclude me.
‘Don’t, Harvey.’ Beside me, Leanna tugged on my arm. I hadn’t noticed that I was dawdling.
We took a bus to the outskirts of the suburbs, slipping in behind the other passengers. The late hour meant that it was half-empty, and hollowed out like the inside of a submarine, ferrying people to and from the sunken city centre. The floor-to-ceiling windows made it feel very much like being inside a tank, or one of those boats with the glass bottoms. As the bus jostled through the narrow streets, we came face-to-face with people standing on the curb, but were invisible to them. As our tank travelled, the whole world was an enclosure for us to view. It was like being in an aquarium.
Forty minutes later, the bus turned away from blocks of dwindling warehouses onto a thin ribbon of road that was, by its dusty hue, evidently non-urban. Seas of grass sprung up around it, each stalk topped with a plain flower like a tiny star. They undulated softly, and, overnight, thousands of spiders had spun webs between them. These were glossy with dew in the budding morning, so that an army of bluebottles appeared to float on the tide.
Further up, palm trees also reared their leafy heads, marching in single file as we hurtled past them. They were squat and fat, plated with thick bark around their bases, and erupting in fans of fronds.
Curled up against me, Leanna might have passed for asleep, had anybody seen us. It was only when a sign announced the turn-off for the cemetery that the bus shuddered to a halt, and the driver scrambled out of his seat, cursing a broken fuse. The automatic door unsealed so that he could step outside, and we trailed swiftly after him, making the exit before it could slide shut again.
Leanna raised an eyebrow. I showed her my upturned hands, bemused by my success. I wasn’t sure how I created the diversion. I’d more or less just willed it to happen. As we turned and wandered down the gravel shoulder of the road, we glimpsed our unwitting ride right itself and roll back onto the asphalt, and laughed.
Excavating the precious scrap of paper from her pocket, Leanna matched it to the sign. ‘Rookwood Cemetery,’ I read, squinting over her shoulder.
This was the place, then.
Our laughter seemed to die as all sounds do in such a sober setting. Black, wrought-iron gates, sharp-tipped and slightly rusty, rose out of swarming weeds. They seemed to hang perpetually ajar, and although there was no wind to move them, I could almost hear creaking, or the long-silenced echo of creaking.
Sounds left their imprints here, much as people did. The air sighed as it combed the still palm fronds, and every pebble that scraped beneath our feet seemed to protest our intrusion. Leanna’s body might have been interned here, but as long as we prowled, I got the sense that the graveyard would resent us.
‘Where are all the others?’
I could only shake my head. There was nobody else here, nobody else at all. That made it surprisingly lonely. I had always thought that graveyards were designed for people who had died, but I was even less comfortable amongst the headstones, other, absent people’s headstones, than I had been in my grandfather’s garden as a child.
This was a memorial, not a home. It had an air of rigid functionality. It wasn’t a place for the restless dead, any more than a boarding school is a place for children to play.
It was almost as if we had walked in on a sleeping dormitory. Leanna was out of bed, and I was something else– a vagrant who had snuck in, perhaps. There were apparently degrees of death, and either we were the wrong kind of spirits to be here, or we had broken the rules of dying.
I spotted a faint, yellow corona rising in the direction of the distant coast, and sighed reflexively. The dawn was breaking, and with it would come the living. I was glad.
This was no place for ghosts.
Together we stalked the streets, where sheer or tinted stockings made shimmering wisps and dusky creatures of the girls in the streaking lamplight. Some were bright-lipped like reef fishes, with delicately pleated garments like fins. Others were demure oysters, smoky-eyed beneath hats or hoods. They darted in and out of hidden crevices and coral-neon nightclubs, preyed upon by lobster-like men in studded leather armour. Occasionally, a jellyfish skirt would billow in the slightest breeze, as Leanna’s cotton dress had done.
Submerged in the never-quite-darkness of the city, where smog smeared the horizon and cast greasy halos around the streetlights, these women were as foreign to the waking world as we were. They used to be like us, a part of our adopted ecosystem, and yet, we went unrecognised by them. Sadness camouflaged us, I thought. We didn’t want to be seen, and so we weren’t.
The strange sense of distance that created was something I wanted to escape. I was glad of another graveyard hunt, even if this one felt more like a lucid dream than an adventure.
Tonight, we were going to find Leanna’s grave.
To do that, we had to cross once more through the permanently-altered metropolitan district. Every whispered or shouted word, every click of heel against pavement, I now found, reminded me that time was still passing. The world no longer belonged to me. It had slipped through my fingers as easily as I now slipped through it. Any concept of a future was something I had passed on, and that would be transformed by its inheritors, who lived in progressively distant times, until it became frightening to me.
Life in all its vibrant forms would flourish and evolve, while I remained forever frozen. At this thought, my pulse quickened. The sounds of voices, cars, alarms and pedestrians rushed together in a steady, ominous chorus, drowning me like the crushing pressure deep below the ocean. I looked around, and saw that the colourful reef had become a lurid, hostile environment. Every footstep taken in any direction was one that overtook me. Every flushed cheek and reddened pout was the product of a heart that beat as part of the human whole, passionate in its desire to exclude me.
‘Don’t, Harvey.’ Beside me, Leanna tugged on my arm. I hadn’t noticed that I was dawdling.
We took a bus to the outskirts of the suburbs, slipping in behind the other passengers. The late hour meant that it was half-empty, and hollowed out like the inside of a submarine, ferrying people to and from the sunken city centre. The floor-to-ceiling windows made it feel very much like being inside a tank, or one of those boats with the glass bottoms. As the bus jostled through the narrow streets, we came face-to-face with people standing on the curb, but were invisible to them. As our tank travelled, the whole world was an enclosure for us to view. It was like being in an aquarium.
Forty minutes later, the bus turned away from blocks of dwindling warehouses onto a thin ribbon of road that was, by its dusty hue, evidently non-urban. Seas of grass sprung up around it, each stalk topped with a plain flower like a tiny star. They undulated softly, and, overnight, thousands of spiders had spun webs between them. These were glossy with dew in the budding morning, so that an army of bluebottles appeared to float on the tide.
Further up, palm trees also reared their leafy heads, marching in single file as we hurtled past them. They were squat and fat, plated with thick bark around their bases, and erupting in fans of fronds.
Curled up against me, Leanna might have passed for asleep, had anybody seen us. It was only when a sign announced the turn-off for the cemetery that the bus shuddered to a halt, and the driver scrambled out of his seat, cursing a broken fuse. The automatic door unsealed so that he could step outside, and we trailed swiftly after him, making the exit before it could slide shut again.
Leanna raised an eyebrow. I showed her my upturned hands, bemused by my success. I wasn’t sure how I created the diversion. I’d more or less just willed it to happen. As we turned and wandered down the gravel shoulder of the road, we glimpsed our unwitting ride right itself and roll back onto the asphalt, and laughed.
Excavating the precious scrap of paper from her pocket, Leanna matched it to the sign. ‘Rookwood Cemetery,’ I read, squinting over her shoulder.
This was the place, then.
Our laughter seemed to die as all sounds do in such a sober setting. Black, wrought-iron gates, sharp-tipped and slightly rusty, rose out of swarming weeds. They seemed to hang perpetually ajar, and although there was no wind to move them, I could almost hear creaking, or the long-silenced echo of creaking.
Sounds left their imprints here, much as people did. The air sighed as it combed the still palm fronds, and every pebble that scraped beneath our feet seemed to protest our intrusion. Leanna’s body might have been interned here, but as long as we prowled, I got the sense that the graveyard would resent us.
‘Where are all the others?’
I could only shake my head. There was nobody else here, nobody else at all. That made it surprisingly lonely. I had always thought that graveyards were designed for people who had died, but I was even less comfortable amongst the headstones, other, absent people’s headstones, than I had been in my grandfather’s garden as a child.
This was a memorial, not a home. It had an air of rigid functionality. It wasn’t a place for the restless dead, any more than a boarding school is a place for children to play.
It was almost as if we had walked in on a sleeping dormitory. Leanna was out of bed, and I was something else– a vagrant who had snuck in, perhaps. There were apparently degrees of death, and either we were the wrong kind of spirits to be here, or we had broken the rules of dying.
I spotted a faint, yellow corona rising in the direction of the distant coast, and sighed reflexively. The dawn was breaking, and with it would come the living. I was glad.
This was no place for ghosts.