The Endsister Read online

  Mama doesn’t have enough money in her purse. She gathers Sibbi in her arms, and rings the doorbell of Outhwaite House. Luckily Daddy is home. He comes out and pays the taxi man.

  ‘Do you know how much that cost?’ Daddy says to Mama when he comes back into the living room. Mama lays Sibbi down on the couch and smooths her hair, hoping she will fall asleep.

  ‘I honestly don’t care,’ Mama says. ‘I’m just so glad to be back.’

  Daddy doesn’t say anything more about the taxi money. He says quietly, ‘I’ve just had a call from Australia.’

  ‘And? Was it my parents? Was it my supervisor? Oh, Dave, it’s bad news, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe not in front of Sibbi.’

  ‘I think she’s asleep. Sibbi?’

  Sibbi keeps her eyes closed.

  ‘It was Bill Wilson on the phone,’ Dave murmurs. ‘Aunty May’s nephew. Aunty May . . . passed away.’

  ‘Aunty May!’

  ‘Not entirely unexpected.’

  ‘But still. It’s so sad. She was our friend. She was so kind to us.’ Mama sits down next to Sibbi. Sibbi opens her eyes a little. Mama has her hand over her mouth. ‘Well, that’s it then,’ Mama says. ‘That’s it for the cottage on the hill. We won’t be going back now. We won’t ever be going back.’

  Sibbi closes her eyes again.

  ‘No,’ says Dave. ‘But we knew that.’

  ‘Did we?’ Mama asks softly. ‘I suppose we did.’

  ‘He’s offered us the chance to buy it – the house and the cottage.’

  ‘Oh, Dave!’ Mama’s voice rises. ‘Really? Could we?’

  ‘Olly! We can’t go back. The house, this house . . . it calls on me, in a strange sort of way. I have an obligation. This is our home.’

  ‘The cottage was our home first. It was our home for a long time. Sibbi was born on the lounge-room floor. There’s still the stain of it on the floorboards. Oh, Dave. If only we had never inherited this house.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense either. Before Outhwaite House, before Dorothy, we couldn’t have afforded it anyway.’

  ‘We might have been able to,’ Mama says, ‘if you’d gone back to being a lawyer. How much do they want for it?’

  ‘Market price, maybe even a little less. He’s not being greedy. They want to avoid the hassle of putting it on the market. He said if we could agree on a price, we could avoid the real estate fees, and just arrange it through the solicitor. But it’s still a lot of money. The market’s still booming in Australia.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him no, did you?’

  ‘I said we’d have to talk about it and he doesn’t seem to be in any great hurry. But I said it was unlikely.’

  Sibbi listens to the words she knows like cottage and Aunty May and words she doesn’t know like solicitor.

  She wonders what passed away means. She remembers her dream – Aunty May, ready for a journey with her packed suitcase. Perhaps she went away, and then she went passed away, until she was very far, very far indeed.

  ‘Why are you home anyway?’ Mama asks Daddy.

  ‘Well, I had Jonty recommend somebody to help us with the attic. They’re coming this afternoon.’

  ‘What do you mean, like a builder or interior decorator?’

  ‘Well, no. Not really. More like . . . Are you sure Sibbi’s asleep?’

  ‘She must be exhausted.’

  ‘Okay, look. I know how this is going to sound. To help us with Sibbi’s ghost.’

  Mama laughs. ‘Oh, wait. You’re serious!’

  ‘Look, it’s getting out of control. This endsister. You can’t say you don’t find it creepy.’

  ‘But you don’t actually believe it’s a ghost, do you?’

  ‘When I was a kid I thought this house was haunted.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I knew this house was haunted. I saw ghosts. Two of them. One was, like, an Edwardian nanny or a maid or something. I was never frightened of her. The other was a posh sort of early Victorian teenager. She always looked . . . annoyed. I’d completely forgotten them both until the other night, when we were opening up the attic.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Dave. A friendly maid and a surly teenager. I mean, even if they were real, they don’t sound very threatening.’

  ‘But there was always something else too. I was terrified of that door as a kid. Dorothy, my parents, everyone avoided it. It was like they pretended it wasn’t there. But whatever was behind the door seemed to work particularly on me. It was like a noise in my head, a persistent buzz, and I’d do things I wouldn’t normally do . . . just senseless naughty things, like Sibbi drawing on the wall and cutting Else’s violin strings.’

  Sibbi is surprised to hear that Daddy heard the buzzing too. She wonders what naughty things little Davey did.

  ‘You think Sibbi is being haunted?’ Mama says. ‘You think we all are?’

  ‘I knew you’d think that was irrational. But let’s say Sibbi believes she is being haunted. Why not ask someone to come and take the ghosts away?’

  ‘It sounds risky. We might just be telling Sibbi that we think the ghosts are real too.’

  ‘The other kids are starting to buy into it. It’s getting out of hand. Even I – I can’t say I definitely don’t believe it. What if the ghosts are what’s preventing you from really settling in and enjoying London? What if the ghosts are why Else is stealing violins and moping around, and why Sibbi looks so ill all the time?’

  ‘Dave,’ says Mama quietly. ‘What if we’re just unhappy? What if some of us want to be here and some don’t? What then?’

  ‘Well, then the worst-case scenario is that this doesn’t fix anything. I figure there’s no harm in playing along. Play the game out to its logical conclusion.’

  ‘Logical? None of this sounds logical! One minute you’re saying ghosts are real, and the next you are saying it’s a game.’ ‘What’s the difference between a game and reality?’ Dave asks. ‘When you live inside a game, it is real.’

  Sibbi forgets she is pretending to sleep. She starts to weep. ‘I know what an endsister is,’ Sibbi says, but, as usual, no one in her family understands the important thing she is trying to say. She knows what an endsister is. It’s a kind of a ghost.

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ‘SEE,’ SAYS ALMOST Annie, nudging Hardly Alice. ‘He remembers us.’ But as they listen her face drops. ‘What does he mean, take the ghosts away? Take us where?’

  ‘Dorothy would never have allowed this,’ says Alice.

  ‘Well, Dorothy is no longer here,’ says Annie. ‘Have you ever wondered why that is? Why we are here, but not Dorothy?’

  ‘Dorothy did not pass over at Outhwaite House.’

  ‘Pass over? Oh, you mean die? And yet think of all the people we have seen die here. Dorothy’s father died in his sleep in the bedroom, and her mother a few months later in the same bed. And there was poor old Mr Arnold who fell down the stairs and Biddy the housemaid, who caught that terrible influenza after the war. And yet here we are. You and I. Why are we ghosts and not any of them?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Alice asks. ‘Do you think I wanted to spend eternity stuck with you in Outhwaite House?’

  ‘I wasn’t even born here,’ says Annie. ‘I was merely the nurserymaid and my little charges have grown up and so have their children and theirs. It seems at least a little odd that something should hold me to this place. I’d always imagined that in death I’d be restored to the people I loved in life.’

  ‘Humph.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be cross. You know I am glad to have you. But despite all these many years, we are still strangers to each other.’

  ‘It is not my fault I have forgotten who I am.’

  ‘And well you may have forgotten, though sometimes I feel certain you must recall something. Tell me this, do you know what was in that attic? I feel it, don’t you? Prowling the borders of the house, trapped inside the walls, like a half-starved cat, looking for a way in,
or a way out. I hear it whine and then the lights flicker, the screens switch on and off again, plates fall from the shelves. It frightens me, Alice. More than the idea of Dave wanting to get rid of us. More than the thought of the children’s poor mother going back to Australia and taking the children with her. It frightens me, but I pity it too. What sort of wounded animal is it? What sort of dark, wild thing?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ hisses Hardly Alice, haughty with fright. ‘There is nothing. There never was anything. It’s not here. It’s nothing to do with me. Do not speak of it again!’

  CLANCY

  THE DOORBELL RINGS. I know Dad is busy breaking the unhappy news about Aunty May to Mum, I can hear them talking in the lounge room, though I can’t hear what they’re saying. It sounds like they’re disagreeing about something, but maybe they’re just feeling emotional.

  I’m hoping it might be Pippa at the door, but a woman is standing on the doorstep. She looks very businesslike, with a clipboard, and a blue suit that kind of shines in the light and high-heeled shoes. She wasn’t the sort of person we knew in Australia, but I don’t feel terribly surprised to see her here.

  ‘Is your father home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s expecting me.’

  I leave her on the doorstep. ‘Dad!’ I go into the lounge room. ‘Someone’s here.’

  Dad jumps up and goes out to the hallway. Mum comes and stands at the lounge-room door, her arms crossed.

  ‘Ms Lane?’ Dad says. ‘We talked on the phone. Please come in.’

  The woman steps into the hallway. ‘Please, call me Bridget. You have an occupancy issue?’

  ‘Occupancy?’ I ask Mum.

  ‘Ssh,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll explain later.’

  ‘Shall we start with the attic?’ Ms Lane asks Dad.

  As they ascend the stairs, I turn to Mum again. ‘Who is she? What’s she doing here?’

  Mum shakes her head, looking mostly bewildered. ‘She’s a spiritual hygienist or something. She’s here about Sibbi’s ghost.’

  ‘The endsister?’

  ‘Oh, Clancy, really? You don’t believe in it too, do you?’

  ‘You have to admit this house is objectively creepy.’

  Mum shivers. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, Clancy. But I do feel haunted here. By the ornaments and the good china, by the portraits on the wall, the paperwork. It all needs me to make sense of it, and I don’t know how.’

  ‘Can I go and watch Ms Lane?’ I asked. ‘I’m kind of curious. From a scientific perspective.’

  Mum nods. ‘As long as you stay out of the way.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ I say. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I’m always tired, Clancy,’ she says, but she never used to be.

  I go upstairs.

  Dad is saying, ‘I can’t help thinking that it’s my fault. If we could just settle the estate, then the family can settle, and the estate might settle too.’

  ‘Nonsense. Think of it more like a rodent problem. An infestation. Mice don’t move into your house because of unresolved history or bad feelings. They move into your house because they are parasites.’

  I can’t stop myself from saying, ‘Mice aren’t parasites.’

  ‘Not now, Clancy,’ says Dad.

  ‘But mice are mammals, like humans. And they’re actually quite intelligent. They form friendships. They bond with their children. You can teach them to answer to their names.’

  ‘Oh, child, don’t be foolish. If you don’t eliminate mice, they will take over your house. Ghosts are like that too. Look, don’t think of them as people. They don’t think or feel. They don’t want or need anything. They’re just bits of leftover energy, disrupting the normal flow of good, clean energy in a house. Sometimes they get tangled up in someone’s energy field, usually pets or small children, I find.’

  ‘How do you know ghosts don’t think or feel?’ I ask. ‘Have you ever talked to one?’

  ‘Isn’t he clever?’ says Bridget Lane, coldly. ‘You must be so proud.’

  ‘You said they get tangled up in someone’s energy field?’ says Dad. ‘Could that be what’s happening to Sibbi?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’ Bridget Lane doesn’t sound very worried about Sibbi though. ‘Have you thought about selling this house?’ she asks. ‘I happen to know of an overseas buyer who’s interested in converting houses in this area. That’s where the real value is. Londoners don’t want to maintain houses anymore. Everyone’s downsizing into apartments.’

  Dad looks confused. ‘We’re not looking to sell,’ he says. ‘We just want to get rid of the ghosts.’

  Bridget Lane smiles. ‘Just thinking out loud. Wait till you’ve survived a London winter in this big draughty house. You might change your mind about selling. But who knows what the overseas buyers will be investing in by then!’

  The front door opens, letting in a quick, noisy blare of light, and the twins tumble inside, arguing about something.

  ‘Goodness,’ says Ms Lane. ‘Just how many children do you have?’

  ‘Can you help us with the ghosts?’ Dad persists. ‘This thing about the ghosts getting caught up in Sibbi’s energy field has me feeling a bit concerned about Sibbi. She’s really not been herself, has she, Clancy?’

  And I have to admit, she hasn’t.

  ‘Of course. It’s a simple procedure. Let me get my equipment from the car.’

  Ms Lane passes the twins on the stairs. Finn says hello, but gets no response.

  ‘Who’s she?’ Oscar asks Dad.

  ‘She’s here to get rid of Sibbi’s ghost.’

  ‘The endsister?’ says Finn. ‘Is it actually a ghost then? I thought it was only kind of a ghost?’

  ‘Oh, wait,’ I say. ‘I thought she meant a kind of ghost like camembert is a kind of cheese.’

  Finn nods thoughtfully, but Oscar grunts. ‘We should have stayed at the park.’

  Ms Lane returns with a suitcase. When she opens it up, it’s full of electronic equipment, little white plastic boxes that look like phone chargers. ‘I’ll need to plug one of these in on every floor of the house. Then we’ll need to switch them all on at the same time. It disrupts the electrical fields that give ghosts cohesion.’

  ‘Sounds legit,’ I say, dryly. I waggle my fingers to make quote marks. ‘“Science”.’

  ‘Will it hurt the ghosts?’ Finn asks.

  ‘It will redistribute their energy into the environment,’ says Ms Lane.

  ‘But will it hurt?’ Finn presses. ‘Sibbi likes the other ghosts, the teenager ones. She wouldn’t want them to be hurt.’

  ‘Teenagers?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Don’t you listen to anything your children tell you?’ Oscar asks, and slopes off moodily to his room.

  ‘You stay here, with this one,’ Bridget instructs Dad. ‘You come with me to the middle floor,’ she instructs me. ‘And then I’ll go down to the ground floor, and when I give the signal, we each turn our boxes on at the same time.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ I ask Dad.

  ‘Clancy,’ says Dad.

  ‘All right. All right. I don’t believe in it anyway.’

  Finn waits with me. ‘Can’t you see the ghosts?’ he asks me.

  ‘Of course not,’ I say. ‘Well, except . . . Last night when Dad opened the attic, just for a moment or two, I thought I saw someone. I’ve thought about it and I think it was probably some kind of afterimage. You know when you look at the light globe, and then when you close your eyes, you can still see it? She looked like Else. Well, a bit like Else. I mean it was probably just . . . an after-image of Else. Even though Else wasn’t actually in the room at the time.’

  ‘I know who you mean,’ says Finn. ‘I’ve seen her. She’s moody like Else, and there’s something similar about her face, but she’s wearing all that old-fashioned gear, nothing like Else wears. And then the other one, she’s friendlier, though I think she might be a bit lonely.’

  ‘Do you really see them?’ I
ask. ‘Can you see them now?’

  ‘Not all the time. Just glimpses in the background. They don’t frighten me though.’

  ‘They don’t sound frightening. But whatever was in the attic –’

  ‘It’s in the walls now. Listen. It’s so high-pitched that it barely registers.’

  I listen. ‘I can’t hear it,’ I say. ‘But you might just have better hearing than me.’

  ‘Oscar says he can’t hear it either.’

  ‘All right,’ Bridget Lane calls from downstairs. ‘On the count of three.’

  ‘Do you think she has any idea what she’s doing?’ asks Finn.

  ‘No. I don’t think so. Probably not.’

  ‘One, two . . . three!’

  I flick the switch.

  The lights in the stairwell begin to flicker. And suddenly I do hear the high-pitched whine Finn was talking about.

  Dad comes down the stairs. ‘What do you think, guys? Is it doing anything?’

  ‘Dave,’ Mum calls from downstairs. The sound is getting louder, and the lights are going crazy. We go down, Dad, Finn, me, even Oscar. We all crowd into the lounge room. Bridget Lane comes in last.

  ‘This is normal,’ Ms Lane says. ‘I assure you, this is all perfectly normal.’

  Sibbi is sitting up on the couch clutching her ears. ‘Stop it,’ she whimpers. ‘I hate that sound.’

  ‘Is anything happening?’ Finn asks Bridget Lane.

  ‘We have to build up enough electricity to scatter the energy,’ Ms Lane says.

  Whatever is happening, it is happening to Sibbi. She cries, clutching at her ears. ‘We hate it,’ she says. ‘We hate that sound. Stop it. Stop it.’

  ‘I think we’ve had enough,’ Mum says to Bridget Lane. ‘Let’s switch it off now.’

  ‘This is only the first phase,’ says Ms Lane. ‘If you turn it off too soon . . .’

  Sibbi screams.

  ‘It’s hurting her,’ Finn says.

  ‘Is it getting rid of the ghosts, though?’ asks Dad. He picks Sibbi up and holds her head to his shoulder while she whimpers. ‘Is it working?’

  ‘Dave, this is crazy,’ Mum says. ‘Boys, turn it off.’