ST2.10 | "On the Air"

PROMPT: Every town has a legend of a haunted place, and in most cases, those legends and haunted places involve a crime. This month, we want stories about legends, real or imagined, the crimes that inspired them, and the way those legends affect those living in their shadows. Make it dark. Make it gothic. Make it undeniably Stone’s Throw.

ON THE AIR

by Justin Walsh

Of course the kids say Norah haunts the lookout at Galley Tops. Of course they do. It’s the sort of story she and I would have spread and maybe believed a little bit when we were 12. At that age, a local ghost legend is dark and irresistible, like a cave.

So when Samantha tells me what the kids have been saying, I’m not offended on Norah’s behalf. In fact, I like the idea a little. If she’s there, I tell Samantha, she’ll make a beautiful ghost.

Samantha visits me once a week, when John and Angela—my live-in carers—have the afternoon off together. The time she spends with me earns her credit towards a health science unit at school, and that’s OK. She’s 15—the age Norah was when she died.

I had just turned 16 then, and I’m twice that now. I’ve never left Conleigh—I couldn’t if I wanted to—but the thing is, in all these years, I’ve never felt Norah near. Not at our old schools, not at the playgrounds or the sports field or the shopping center or at church, not on the street where her family lived, and definitely not by her grave.

I’ve never been back to the lookout. I don’t think anyone would have taken me if I’d asked; anyway, it was closed for ages because of rock falls. A few years ago, a big boulder dropped into the little car park and that’s when the park service started doing stabilisation work further up the hill. Samantha shows me an article in the Chronicle—lately they’ve rebuilt the platform and the barrier, extended the parking area and put in ramps instead of steps. Now I can go there if I want to, and I decide I will.

I want to fill this Norah-sized hole inside me. I’ve always wanted that. I’m not hoping to be visited by her ghost, but I want to feel her nearby. Within me or around me, maybe coming in on the air, just now and then. That’s the kind of spirit Norah would have wanted to be. So I think if she’s waiting for me anywhere, it might be up at Galley Tops.

 ***

Was there a moment when we could have saved ourselves? Did we make a dumb decision, did we miss a chance to step out of the asteroid’s path? These are the things I think about. We were sitting on a bench in the riverside park, late on a cool September evening, when Reynolds and Kepper parked their big brown van nearby. We didn’t recognize the van; they weren’t locals.

I guess we could have just walked away before they got out of the van, or run when they came over. But we stayed. Maybe it was because we had just been talking about boys, and Reynolds—anyone would agree—was good-looking and charismatic, like the lead singer in a band. Soon we were in the back of the van, both of us winded by gut punches and slapped into a daze, wrists fastened with thick white tape. Reynolds had a big knife and a wild laugh. Kepper drove, nervous.

They took us out of Conleigh to the south, away from the river and into the hills. They parked in a lane I’d never seen before. Later, Detective Todd told me it was a driveway going to a derelict farmhouse. It was dark by then, and the only light came from the van’s cabin when the doors were open.

***

On the weekend, John says the weather will be fine over the coming days and asks if I’d like to go out. Let’s go for a drive outside town, I say—if we go on Wednesday afternoon, maybe Samantha can come. John books the minivan and checks the air in my outdoor chair’s tires.

Wednesday comes, it’s cool and there’s a breeze. We decide the trip is on and Samantha texts to say she’ll come if we pick her up at school. Angela rugs me up, rigs my bottles—fluids in and out—and asks again if I’m sure the lookout is a good idea. It will be fine, I tell her. There’s nothing to be afraid of; there are no bad things left to happen.

Up at Galley Tops, John wheels me down the minivan’s ramp and I feel the air moving all around us. While Samantha stows the ramp and locks the hatch—one of those demonstrated competencies in clinical support, she calls them—John walks my chair in a slow circle. I can’t turn my head far, so he always gives me what we call ‘the three-sixty tour’ when we arrive somewhere.

The scene is familiar and different. I saw this place a few times as a kid, always in daylight. I couldn’t see much here on the night Norah died. Today, it looks like a cleaned up, polished version of the old lookout. What hasn’t changed is the air—the way it seems to flow up out of the valley, folding around us, audible in the trees overhead.

‘Ready to go to the platform?’ John asks.

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Sam, lead the way.’ And we go down the curving ramp, across the little bridge and out towards the cliff edge.

I ask John to park me in the middle of the platform. I don’t want to look over the edge. But he and Samantha walk over to the barrier.

‘Hey, Norah,’ I say out loud. ‘Are you here, girl?’ Samantha turns and looks at me. John keeps looking out into the valley. The air moves around us, then there’s stillness. For a moment.

***

Kepper held the knife for a while, but he didn’t hurt us. A psychologist told me later that Kepper thought he was in love with Reynolds, and he found sexual intimacy with him by enabling the rapes.

When Reynolds was finished with me, he dragged me around to the back of the van, where Kepper was sitting beside Norah. I looked at Norah, wanting her to meet my eyes so I could let her know I’m OK, and we’re going to get out of this. But her head was down.

Reynolds shoved me towards Kepper.

‘She’s got short hair, pretend she’s a boy,’ he said. His laugh was mad. ‘I’m gonna need some time with this other one.’

He grabbed Norah by her ponytail and started to pull her away. I charged at him then, but my shoulder just bounced off him. He let go of Norah, gripped my taped wrists in one hand, held me arm’s length and smashed his other fist into my jaw. I heard a sound like rocks splitting and I don’t remember anything clearly after that.

Later I think I was conscious for a few minutes in the back of the van. I sensed we were going uphill, Norah was beside me, breathing but not moving at all, and the men were in the front. Then we had stopped and Norah was being pulled out through the back door. I tried to say her name but everything was wrong in my mouth, my teeth and gums all jammed up, blood over my lips. Kepper looked in at me and said something like, hey, it will be over soon.

Then Reynolds was back. He pulled me out and hoisted me over his shoulder. I remember it was really dark and we were going down some steps, wind in the trees, that sound filling the air and I thought the lookout oh Jesus he threw Norah over I’m next, our father who art in heaven I pray the lord my soul to keep.

As Reynolds tipped me over the railing, I snagged my fingers in his long hair and that’s what saved me. My grip broke but I slid down the cliff face rather than going out into the air. Then I was falling free for a moment, until I slammed onto the spiky rock that broke my fall and my spine.

I have only scraps of memory after that. There was pain, like one big pain around and inside me, but nothing that connected to any parts of my body. The sky got lighter and I knew I was cold but I couldn’t feel the chill on my skin. Later, when the sky was bright blue, someone high above me was shouting. Then there were some ropes hanging and a man wearing an orange helmet was in the air beside me, talking into a radio.

***

On the drive back to town, Samantha asks me what I think about ghosts.

‘You first,’ I say, which is what Norah always did when someone asked a question like that. People who ask for your opinions mainly just want to tell you theirs, she’d said.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘There’s the body and the soul, right, and life leaves the body when you die, but maybe not every soul is ready to leave here at the same time. Maybe it needs to stay?’

‘Well, I’m not religious,’ says John, who is old enough that he’s lost a lot of people. ‘So I don’t see it as being about souls. When someone dies, they’re mostly gone. Some people say you live on in the memories of the ones you leave behind. But I don’t know if that’s really living.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘What I think is, we only really die when everyone who knew us has died too. As long as someone’s thinking about you, you’re partly still here.’

‘What about you, Lesley?’ Samantha asks.

‘Let me think about it for a while,’ I say. ‘I’ll get back to you when I know.’

The truth is, I’m feeling something change inside me. I’m feeling Norah, for the first time since she died. It’s not that I sensed a ghostly presence up at the lookout or anything like that. No invisible hand touched my cheek; no disembodied voice murmured in my ear. But as we get close to town, something inside me seems to settle into place. A gap is closing over.

That night, after Angela has put me to bed, I check—and I can’t feel that Norah-sized hole anymore. She’s not with me, but she’s not utterly absent like before. You’re just away for now, I think. I’ll feel you again soon.

***

I didn’t have to testify at a trial. Detective Todd told me that Kepper had agreed to cooperate when they promised he could serve his sentence in the same prison as Reynolds. Reynolds was going to plead not guilty, but the prosecutor had the idea of bringing me to a meeting with his lawyer. I think the lawyer looked at me in my chair, strapped upright with my head braced to a column, wires and tubes going everywhere, and realized his client should not let a jury decide his fate. So they took a deal, too.

Reynolds, who was 23, got life without parole. Kepper, already in his forties, got 28 years. As soon as the sentences were formalized in a hearing, they were sent to prisons at opposite ends of the state.

Reynolds didn’t live long. Another prisoner beat his head to pieces with the seat of an exercise bike. Detective Todd told me that he’d driven out to give the news personally to Kepper, along with a little cardboard box. His squad partners had pasted together a shard of an off-white china bowl that they thought looked like a skull fragment, some dark hair snipped from a wig and a scoop of pork mince. The warden let him give the box to Kepper—thought you’d like something to remember Reynolds by. He left Kepper howling and cursing.

I got a smile out of that story. Believe it or not, I can be lighthearted about dark things. I’ve been medicated against depression for the last ten years. These days, I don’t really have strong feelings about anything.

But I’m glad to have Norah with me again. I’m sure I can find her whenever we visit the lookout. And I hope that one day, if I’m sitting by an open window at home, she might meet me here, too.

Then she’ll leave again, the way she left the first time, on the air.

Justin Walsh (on Twitter / X @juswal) lives on the land of the Guringai people in eastern Australia. A long-time avid reader of crime and spy fiction, he’s trying his hand at creative writing.