Distressed Sale

“Why don’t I spend the night there?”

I’d been lurking by Jason Tsang’s desk, waiting for him to show. Luckily, the property editor was an 8:00am starter; my shift had finished two hours ago.

Jason looked at me blankly as he put a glossy leather satchel down and draped a tailored suit jacket on the back of his chair. At least someone was getting paid properly. Never underestimate Sydney readers’ appetite for stories about houses they can’t afford.

“I’m Jo,” I said. “I do the overnight shift. I read your story about the unsellable house and I thought I could spend the night there, write some colour, tell prospective buyers it’s not … haunted, or whatever?”

Jason looked dubious, so I went on: “Look at your poor agent, she needs all the help she can get.”

The photograph on the front of the Property section showed a middle-aged woman in a silky blouse, smiling rigidly under a For Sale sign in front of a rundown Federation cottage in Marrickville. Even she looked less desperate than I sounded.

“You want to spend a night in that old house? For a story?”

Did I want to? No. But did I want a story that wasn’t another overturned truck on the M4, party brawl or house fire? Did I want to survive the looming round of redundancies and maybe even get off the night shift?

“Yes.”

Jason’s face processed this.

Outside my comfort zone, I saw him think.

Then, But that agency is a good advertiser.

Finally, I’ll get credit if it does well and blame her if it goes south.

“I’ll pitch it at the 10:00am and let you know,” he said.

---

When I woke up at 5:00pm there was a text from Jason: “Burko’s keen, he wants you there tonight. Helen will leave keys under the mat, she’s 0879 411 511 but don’t call too late.”

I felt a tiny rush. Rhett Burke was the Globe’s editor, and now he knew who I was.

Another text from Phil Mason, the pic editor, said he’d organised a freelance photographer: “Hi jo. Guy will come take some shots probably after midnight. U volunteered for this?!”

Even better—with Guy Mansour along, this could actually be fun.

But several hours later I was standing in the dark outside 38 Randall Street with a backpack, camping chair and sleeping bag as my Uber pulled away, feeling stupid and alone and questioning all my life choices.

---

According to the Globe story, the four-bedroom single-storey house had been a rental for five years, but no tenants had seen their lease through. In a rental crisis that was weird, and no reasons were given as to why they’d all broken their leases. The current owners had moved in after buying it for the bargain price of $849,000 in 2017 after it had stood empty for years, but they had moved out after less than a month and now live in France.

The house had been up for sale now for a whole year—also very weird in this hectic market—with a succession of price drops to match the succession of interest rate rises. It had been sold twice, but both buyers had backed out during the cooling-off period.

This was a distressed sale for sure

The house looked shabby but harmless enough, with a low brick wall, a rusty iron gate and a dead front lawn with one stubborn, scrubby citrus tree. I went up to the porch and found the key with a curt note: “Hi Jo, key is for front and back. Electric, water all fine. Stick to the main rooms, the attic has possums. Thanks for doing this! Helen”

How keen did she think I was, to go poking about in an attic at night like I’d never seen a movie? Also, come on—possums are the first thing you’d deal with if you didn’t want your house to sound haunted.

As I turned the key and pushed the door open there was a sound like a gasp, as if the house was breathing me in. There was also a smell, maybe damp, but overlaid with a pungent burnt herbal something.

I dumped my stuff in the hall, took out my notebook and did a whirlwind tour. Unpolished floorboards, hasty paint job in basic white, original mouldings and probably mould too; ornately framed full-length mirror fixed to the wall in the hallway; big bedrooms either side; dingy, yellow-tiled bathroom; living room and dining room with no furniture except more big mirrors; Nanna’s mesh curtains; brown 70s kitchen. The horror, the horror.

I looked at the sad cabinetry and the hole where the fridge would go, and felt a bit sorry for the unloved house. You and me both, house.

The back door, complete with dusty fly screen, opened on a back yard as bleak as the front, only bigger, the skeletal arms of a Hills Hoist glowing in the light from the kitchen.

I set up my chair in the living room and decided to do a detailed tour of the rooms to find some colour, some character—Christ, anything would do. I hadn’t given much thought to what I’d actually file, but I would have to file something. If it was good, it might go some way to getting me off the night desk. If it wasn’t…

The smaller bedrooms gave me nothing except one of those hippie dreamcatcher things, crushed and forgotten in a corner with the dust. These rooms also had a mirror screwed to one wall, and they were becoming unnerving. Each one managed to startle me with a different view of myself.

I sat and scratched some notes, but it was hard to sit still in the silence. Nearing midnight I went into the biggest bedroom, sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor and imagined it was mine. How would I arrange it? Bed probably here, not facing the massive mirror, thank you; clothes rack and chest of drawers on that wall. I ran my fingers along the boards beside me and felt something that made me snatch my hand away, but it was just hardened drips of white candle wax.

Something else was sticking up between two floorboards: a tiny corner of purple paper. I teased it out with my fingernails and unfolded it, releasing a dusty shower of what looked like dried herbs. Written in dark red ink in a swirly script were four short lines in Spanish, or maybe Portuguese, surrounded by symbols. A poem? A … spell? A tenant doing some amateur witching? That was a fun detail not to put in my story, I was thinking, when there was an intense flash of light in the mirror, and I screamed.

I was on my feet when the flash went off again in the doorway and I remembered: Guy.

“You fucker! You gave me a heart attack! I didn’t even hear you come in.”

“Gotcha,” he said, grinning in the hallway.

“Christ, Guy. You could have texted.”

We’d been out on three or four jobs together since I’d started on graveyards. He made working nights seem fun, an adventure. I’d begun to find myself secretly hoping that our on-staff night photographer, Harry, would be unable to make it on jobs. There had been one night where—well, nothing had happened. But it had felt like it might.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist.” He stopped smiling. “Who was that in there with you?”

I froze and stared, until his dark eyes crinkled with laughter.

“Bastard!” I slapped his arm.

“Got you again! You’re too easy.” He looked down the hall over my shoulder. “So, this is the place. And it was your idea?”

“I needed a night out of the newsroom.” We moved down the hall to the living room, such as it was with only my lonely camp chair for furniture.

“Jeez, it must be grim there. Seen any monsters yet? Phil thinks you’re nuts, by the way—but then he’s quite superstitious, our Phil. I think he believes in … things, you know.”

The gruff pic editor had never struck me as the type to believe in “things”.

“Serious. About 10 years ago when we were at the Advertiser, he called me to come to his place urgently, he had to show me something. He was editing shots he’d taken of this abandoned roadhouse out in the sticks at sunset and he thought he’d captured a couple of ghosts—he was freaking out. Showed me the frames, but all I could see were some pale smudges, probably reflections. If you squinted your eyes and stood on your head they’d look a bit human. He was deadset they hadn’t been there when he pressed the shutter button.”

“Creeeepy.” I tried to sound sarcastic but my heart was still racing from before. I moved my things so he could get a clear shot of the empty living room.

“Yep. Anyway, since then he’s pretty jumpy around old buildings after dark. And he would hate these mirrors. He even covers his at night.”

“The mirrors? What are they going to do, suck out my soul?”

“He reckons they can reflect more than, well, the outer you.”

“OK. Like what.”

“Secrets, guilt—eh, what do I know. What about you, Jo? You believe in ghosts? Vampires?”

“I don’t believe in chiropractors.”

“Ha. Well, the night is young. So—is this a positive story? We want the place to look normal, not like the vibe’s off?”

I nodded. “The only monster in this story is the Sydney property market.”

He walked around the house turning on lights and taking photos with a flattering wide lens, like for a real estate brochure. The muscles in his back and shoulders moved interestingly under his white T-shirt. I tried not to look like I was watching him.

At one point his chest brushed mine as he moved through the doorway I was hovering in. “Sorry!” he said, but he didn’t look entirely sorry. His woody scent stayed with me as he moved down the hall, past the mirror.

As I traipsed back into the living room I felt a text buzz in my pocket. “Sorry mate not going to make it there tonight. Big factory fire out at Dundas, going to take me a few hours and I have to file for the wires by 5. I’ve let phil know. Good luck!”

It was from Guy.

I backed against a wall and stood there not breathing. The house had gone silent.

My brain twisted the situation like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to find a way in which this was OK and made sense. But it wasn’t and it didn’t. The door from the living room into the hallway was by my right shoulder. Finally, I breathed, smelling the faint odour of burnt sage—which had clearly not worked—and turned toward the doorway.

A figure stood in the hallway in front of the mirror. But it wasn’t Guy. It was Anna.

“Hello, Jo.”

My brain dropped the Rubik’s Cube.

“Anna. You’re not here.”

“Of course I am. Because I’m here.” She reached out long fingers and touched me softly on my left temple. I let her. The touch was cool on my face, which was fever-hot with shock, and with shame. She was wearing the clothes I most clearly and painfully remembered her in: faded jeans and my original 90s Ritual de lo Habitual T-shirt.

She’d been my first—OK, only—serious relationship, and I’d been a complete arsehole. The memory is so jagged, so nauseating, it’s one I only pull out when I really want to ruin my day.

“I see your journalism career’s really taking off.”

“Funny.”

She was entitled to a little light sarcasm, whatever she was.

We’d met at uni. I was a lazy middle-class kid who wanted to be a journalist. To break into this relatively romantic occupation you need either a lot of hunger and tenacity and talent, or patient parents who’ll sustain you while you work for terrible pay. I had the latter.

I lingered over an arts degree, farting around at the uni newspaper, then when no job appeared, farted around even more getting a masters in journalism. Anna, who was undramatic and sensible, studied nursing and got a job straight out of uni. I moved into her flat without really asking, to get out of my parents’ house, and wore a groove in her couch while she worked her arse off at Royal Prince Alfred.

She was better than me and I punished her for it. Even cheated once when she was on night shift. During one argument about my unemployment I even said it was all right for her, she’d chosen a “straightforward” career. After that disgrace I applied for every job I saw including one in Leighton, a cattle town six hours from Sydney, which is the only one I got. She drove me to make sure I got there OK—taking out the trash. I cried the whole way.

I thought I’d spend a year there tops. After three I knew I had to get out or I’d spend the rest of my career writing about farm equipment and the rest of my sex life with people who read about farm equipment. That’s when I applied for the Globe and took the night shift.

There was another reason I had to leave Leighton, but that’s another terrible story.

And right now, right now, Anna was looking at me with that saintly look that used to infuriate me.

“I saw you’d come back to town,” she said. “I even saw your byline on a story. Why didn’t you look me up?”

“For obvious reasons. Wanted to forget I’d ruined your life.”

Anna laughed. “Ruined my life? Oh honey, so dramatic.” The sainted look again. “Honestly, you weren’t that big a deal. You were more of a … blip. I’m married now and I’ve specialised as a trauma nurse.”

“Oh. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Trauma’s great. I get to see things like this.”

There was a shriek of tyres and a crunch as her head nodded and her face caved in. Gore exploded from her head and chest and stayed suspended in the air like a bloody mane.

I jolted backwards, fell over my feet and crashed to the living room floor. I looked up at the mess that was no longer Anna. It was shorter, it wore a pink tracksuit and its hair, where it wasn’t bloody, was blonde. It spoke through broken teeth, lisping and gurgling.

“Don’t you know me, Jo?”

I vomited on the floor where I lay, turning my head just in time.

Kristin Price. The other, terrible reason I had to leave Leighton.

“Don’t worry, Jo. No one blames you. Nobody knows.”

A single-vehicle accident on a forest road, no witnesses. I hadn’t even seen it myself—I found out later it had happened after we’d passed each other on a bend, when I’d been distracted and had drifted into the middle of the road. Dobbing myself in for a charge of dangerous driving causing death wouldn’t have brought her back, I’d rationalised. Later, I’d told myself there was room for doubt. Kristin had been deep in a mental health crisis. Maybe it had nothing to do with me.

Obviously that was a lie.

“Kristin.”

“Don’t apologise. You cured me. Hard to have mental health issues when your brains are on the dashboard. You never did write that career-launching feature on rural social dysfunction, did you? The one you were concentrating instead of the road? Shame.”

Shame was dissolving, digesting me from the inside. Unless that was the stomach acid in my gullet. I turned my head and spat on the floor.

When I looked up again, the figure was a girl I’d told lies about in year 9.

“No!” I yelled. “Fuck you, I’ve had enough of this.”

I staggered up, grabbed the chair, collapsed it into a club and swung at the apparition, which melted away. “It’s you, isn’t it,” I muttered, giving the hallway mirror my best cover drive. It shattered, millions of tiny shards tinkling to the floorboards.

I ran around the house smashing mirrors. At this point I didn’t feel my luck could get much worse. When the last one was in pieces, I was hit by exhaustion and sudden sobriety, like when the lights come up in a club. I found the cleaning cupboard, mopped up my vomit and swept up the mirror glass, which I tipped into the big bins outside. Whatever this house was, municipal services apparently still applied.

Then I took my sleeping bag outside and curled up on the clumpy grass under the Hills Hoist. I woke to orange light and birdsong.

I had to go back in the house to get the rest of my things. I was stuffing the sleeping bag away when a movement across the living room made me jump. It was my reflection, in the large old mirror still bolted to the wall.

I didn’t check the others. I didn’t know what worse things they could pull out of me but they weren’t getting the chance. I just picked up my stuff and ran, leaving the key in the letterbox and kicking the For Sale sign on my way out.

---

The next night I hacked out a story that was not this one. I managed to fill 40cm with the house’s “good bones”, despite its horror 70s décor, unloved vibes, the creepy sounds of what were probably possums in the attic and those dominating, outdated mirrors that the agents really should get rid of (I liked to imagine the conversations with enraged tradies if they tried).

I didn’t write that the house clearly wanted to be left alone, and that its ingenious way of staying vacant was simply to show the occupant who they are, and let them haunt themselves.