The House

Housing commission in Western Sydney early 1980s. The Australian nightmare in large blocks of dry, arid dust. Grass and weeds in brown thatches on yards that see water only when it rains. When it does, the yards convert into dark patches of unusable wet dirt that have the poor attitude of not turning into mud.
Herne Bay. Built on the land of the Pemulwuy and the Bediagal clan of the Dharug people, now called Riverwood. Salt Pan Creek sat beyond the park, past the open-form rubbish dump traversing into a smelly, toxic valley. The river sat, as it was more a solid bed of modern neglect and Australian marshes. Black deep mud helped tiny crabs plop from holes at the edge of the creek. The crabs shared space with the wastes of factories and warehouses. Life existed by sheer brute force in a ruthless environment.
Middle and older sisters had worlds of their own. Three worlds exist together, but solar systems are apart. The older sister would disappear with her girlfriend for days at a time and the middle sister was an apparition that tried to hide from the house like she could feel the terror, if not understand the fierce nature of what those feelings meant.
Parents were a rare occurrence in these laid-back days of the latchkey kid and independent free thought. Parents could disappear for whole weekends and still, the world would turn. The sailor father would be away for months at a time giving the family rest. The mother would work at a paint factory checking lids on paint tins, up to five thousand a day. The children were told they worked so hard so that we could have a better job than punching tins day after day.
Dodgy activities were the daily grind as we invented new and innovative ways to get ourselves into trouble. Front yard cricket, setting up bike jumps in the park using stolen pallets from the factories.
Kids went missing from time to time. Bodies were found across the expanse of Riverwood. Some were found naked, tied up and beaten. Some were found in their school uniforms, dead but with no blood. Three children have not been found; parents are sullen in their denial.
The police seemed concerned for enough time for the reporters and cameras to evaporate and then they would care about housing commission kids at the same level they did before.
Stealing cigarettes and selling them at the pub. The pub was always full of those missing parents mentioned before. Once the money was earnt, we could go to the pool and get some hot chips on the way. If the sales were good that day, we could even play some space invaders at the milk bar.
The house was haunted. Besides the occasional family fight and a couple of ghosts, the house was nothing exceptional. The fibro monstrosity had one large loungeroom with a rarely used kitchen poking into the middle part with a door to the laundry and then to the huge dusty backyard. Not a house that you would expect for a proper haunting. Set on brick pillars, leaving a gap under the house, for rats and cockroaches to create homes of their own.
Nothing grew well in the backyard and darkness existed at noon. Darkness existed in that house and every step felt like a stone placed on a wall. The safety you were building to hide behind or to build in front of the monsters that crept into the house.
The older sister had some kids over. Dope smoking pashing and all the usual latchkey kid, unsupervised, behaviour you would expect.
‘This land was owned by people who were torn from it before their time,’ explained my sister in the big room that they shared. There was a cheap metal two-level bunk bed shoved into one corner. The mouldy walls and low ceilings made the dope-ridden room seem that more acceptable to a proper haunting.
‘Let’s have a séance,’ exclaimed the older sister late one night in the house.
‘Let’s fucking not,’ shot off a middle sister who like me knew of the black fate that bubbles at the surface of each nail and fibro board of the house. Stoned teenage hustle and some loud whispers produced a makeshift table in the centre of the room. The séance started with a Ouija board present in the middle of the room. The lack of ventilation and the summer heat made itself absent when a chill occurred. A chill, not sudden, not slowly creeping. It felt as though it had always been there, waiting to exist.
When my ghosts decide to show up, they float on a feeling of mist, there is no sudden scary moment. The moment is as long as it takes for the ghost to form and stare. My ghosts take their time to terrify me. The room stayed still, the others in the room were silent. One ghost appeared and then the other two formed and stared accusingly. At this point the Pemulway elders appear, taking my ghosts away in a celebration of death and acceptance. The Elders looked protective and never stared or gave me attention.
What was that sound?
Ghosts. Ancestors of the Pemulwuy peoples?
Through walls as thin as the underlying darkness the house possessed, the rusted crappy Holden could be heard clanging into the driveway. The boy ran to his room and shut the door. He looked at the unmade bed and silently slid into the sheets. He forgot to turn off the light and shot forward to turn it off and the door opened. Father back from sea.
‘Go back to bed kid, I’ll speak with you in the morning,’ he said through the slur of someone who had stopped at the pub on the way home.
With the father back from the sea will children become scarce again. Will the murders continue? Housing commission or not, the house was haunted, whether the evil is alive or not, there is darkness, chilling, unforgiving and relentless.
Days go by and the three siblings become ghosts of their own as they avoid the house and the parents.
The sisters could sneak in through their window after the lights were off, and the brother could sneak in through the floorboards in his bedroom. He would then push his bed in front of the door, for the safety of known evil, unknown evil was best dealt with when it appeared.
Little brother woke to the sound of many adults in the lounge room. He moved the bed, got dressed in clothes that could pass for clean from a suitable distance and poked his head around the loungeroom door to survey the scene.
The little brother read the headlines, ‘TWELFTH CHILD MURDER IN RIVERWOOD.’
‘We need to start protecting our children,’ said a mysterious stranger, probably a local parent.
‘It’s a bit fucking late,’ said the mother. Younger brother noticed she was crying and shaking. A cheap plastic wine glass was in front of her, filled with cheap wine.
The ghosts of the house said nothing. The room froze in silence.
Little brother walked out of the loungeroom, and down the hall, feeling the chill roll in as he stepped into the sisters’ bedroom. Little brother found the Ouija board and put an empty glass in the middle. His new fourth ghost formed from a mist into a transparent silver apparition, pointing an accusing finger at the younger brother.
The spectral bodies of the original landowners formed a protective circle around the fourth ghost and as one, they pointed at the younger brother.
‘Many more where this one came from,’ said little brother sitting above four buried bodies, below the floorboards, under the house.
Middle sister slid from evil's view, for now.
Apparitions moved through the loungeroom, unseen. Older sister drifted among the Pemulwuy Elders as they escorted her away to Salt Pan Creek and her place among the ancients.