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GHOST TOW N

GRAV E YA RD SH I FT I N
Lingerers. Moaners. Thugs. Weepers.
So many ghosts. Not enough graveyard shifts in a night.
When an extreme ghost plague descends, Anton and Rani
must work overtime to keep the city safe – with plenty
of back-up from Bec. And when Anton’s long-lost aunt returns
and the ghost hunters become the hunted, it’s peril galore.
The team will need all their wits about them
if they are to manage the ghost influx, work out if they
can trust Tanja, and get to the truth about the malevolent
presence from Elsewhere.
Full of nail-biting action, Graveyard Shift in Ghost Town
is a thrilling and hilarious adventure through
a spook-riddled city.

‘MASSIVELY ENTERTAINING’—THE AGE

MICHAEL
PRYOR
COVER ILLUSTRATION: CRAIG PHILLIPS
COVER DESIGN: RUTH GRÜNER

# L o v e O z YA
FICTION

ISBN: 978-1-76052-393-0

9 781760 523930
To Gerald Moran, Mark Blackney,
Anthony Berger and Tom Morris, for work done –
and done well.
Chapter 1

So, you ask, how’s this gap year going? Is it actually giving me
a taste of the Marin family ghost-hunting business? Or is it
just introducing me to encounters that could end up with me
dead?
To tell you the truth, as a wise man once said, there’s been
a lot of ins, a lot of outs, and a lot of what-have-yous. So many
what-have-yous.
Plenty of good, grown-up-style learning, though, about
things like maintaining a healthy work/life balance. You know,
making time for exercise, relationships and the day-to-day
business of taking care of yourself while going out every night
and battling unearthly creatures.
Is my mind made up about whether I want to follow the
family heritage and make this my life’s work? Not so much.
That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t getting on with the job.
Rani – my newish ghost-hunting partner – and I had to,
because ghosts were coming out of the woodwork in good

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old Melbourne town. We were up to our necks in Ragers and
Mopers and Lurkers and the whole spooky crew, manifesting
in the sort of numbers that they invent new names for, like
zongillion or quodwillion or pootillion.
Was the job all running around and tackling apparitions?
No way. A lot of ghost hunting is waiting for the pests to
manifest, which is what Rani and I were doing at the Royal
Society of Victoria.
The Royal Society of Victoria building is one of those
places that thousands of Melburnians go past every day and
never notice. It’s near the Exhibition Buildings, on that weird
triangle of land bounded by Exhibition, Victoria and La Trobe
Streets, the part of town that’s still plenty busy after midnight
when Rani and I were doing our surveilling.
Heh. Surveilling. Rani’s quasi-military approach to ghost
hunting was rubbing off.
We were following a tip-off, but I’d done my research,
too – with a little help from my best friend Bec and a lot of help
from Google – and this two-storey rendered brick goes back
to the 1850s, which is really early for Melbourne. It’s sort of a
clubhouse for science. Over the years, the Society has done
stuff like sponsoring the Burke and Wills expedition. This was
an outstanding example of incompetence, really. They tried
to cross Australia south to north in the 1860s, unworried by
the twin drawbacks of no organisational ability and no sense
of direction. Even though they took a grand piano with them,
they failed and died out there in the desert.
Repeat – they took a grand piano with them while trying

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to cross Australia for the first time. History. It’s full of stories
you couldn’t make up.
Rani let me go on and on when I told her all this. She has
the sort of patience help-desk operators should have but don’t.
‘We have a Royal Society in London, you know,’ she replied
when I eventually ran out of historiotrivia.
‘Truly? This place was founded in eighteen fifty-four. How
about yours?’
‘Sixteen sixty, Anton.’
‘Oh. Right. Your guys have a head start in this sort of thing,
then.’
‘You might say that.’
I forgot to tell you that it was Rani’s idea to take up a watch-
ing position in one of the trees opposite the RSV building, in
the Carlton Gardens. It was my idea to be sceptical about her
idea but, in the end, tree perching is what we did, even though
it was a bit nippy on this early spring night. I was snug though,
thanks to my new – op-shop new – scarf and nice grey tweed
jacket.
Dark Dave, one of our long-time ghost spotters, had
messaged the tip to us. Way before everyone in the world
had web handles, ghost watchers came up with equally daggy
nick­names. Dark Dave was a great big guy who had a liking for
black leather wide-brimmed hats. He had enough ghost sight
to know what was going on with the world, and since he was
one of the good guys he sent all his sightings to us. He also had
a sense of humour, because he ran Melbourne Ghost Tours on
week­ends, herding bunches of giggling tourists around some

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of the city’s grubbier locations, and no one wised up to the fact
that he could actually see the ghosts that he sometimes wove
into his patter.
The problem with Dark Dave’s tip was that he hadn’t
got close enough to offer even a wild guess at identification.
‘Nothing too bad,’ he’d said after I asked. ‘Lurker, probably.
Maybe a Moaner.’
Which was pretty much like saying ‘default ghost’. Lurkers
and Moaners are your basic low-level manifestation and make
up the bulk of sightings. Rani and I had eased the passage of
dozens of Lurkers and Moaners in the last couple of weeks,
but the deluge didn’t look like stopping.
Tree branches aren’t exactly built for comfort and it didn’t
take long before keeping one arm looped around a handy
branch – for safety, you understand – was giving me the start
of a major cramp situation, and the rustling overhead had me
on edge because you need to spot the possums before they
spot you.
I had a Formative Ghost-Hunting Experience involving a
possum not long ago, and as well as teaching me to remain
highly alert whenever one of those oh-so-innocent-looking
beasties is around, it helped shape me into the ghost-hunting
machine I am today, which could be some sort of origin story
one day when I’m the hero of a major graphic novel.
Still, waiting can get boring, and this is one of the benefits
of having Rani as a ghost-hunting partner. Before she showed
up, all the way from London, and agreed to come on board
with Marin Ghost Hunting Inc., I had to do all this waiting

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by myself. Solo surveilling gave me a chance to read, true, but
reading while keeping an eye on a possible ghost manifestation
zone meant bobbing my head up and down, which was a literal
pain in the neck.
Chat with Rani ranged from truly deep and meaningful
(‘Where does the solidity of ghosts come from?’) to trivial
but interesting (‘Isn’t Bob Loblaw the best name for a minor
TV character ever?’). History featured heavily, too, because
it can be very useful when ghost hunting to have some idea
of the possible background of the ghosts you’re rounding up.
She wasn’t that impressed with Melbourne history, though. So
many old buildings in London meant that over there, some­
thing like our RSV building would just be the corner shop.
This was fair enough, but I was able, then, to point out that
she was being Eurocentric, and forgetting that here there was
in fact 40,000 years of human history. Rani conceded this
and awarded me two extra points because I used the word
‘Eurocentric’ and followed it up with ‘colonial mindset’.
Then she declared me the best tree-based debater she’d
ever known. I think she was being gently sarcastic by then so
I stopped arguing.

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Chapter 2

A little later, I was about to take a risk and ask her if she had
remembered any more about her parents when she gripped
my arm and pointed with her other hand.
Traffic on the street in front of us was light but constant,
and it took me a while to see between the cars. But eventually
I saw the ghost drifting around the Exhibition Street corner
and along the Victoria Street rear of the building.
I tentatively tagged the ghost as a common Lingerer,
probably Edwardian, from the big floppy hat, extensive dress
and puffy sleeves. Lingerers are the sort of low-level ghost
that often hangs around historic places like the RSV building.
The alarming thing was, though, that a young guy was ambling
along the footpath and the ghost was making a beeline for
him.
Lingerers don’t do that. Lingerers generally steer clear
of warmbloods like us. Like real estate agents, they’re all
about location, location, location – they’re attracted to place,

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not people. Yet this one practically pounced on the unlucky
passer-by, latching onto his head with both hands as if she was
a ghostly nutcracker and his skull a tasty macadamia.
Rani was there and then not there, out of the tree and
landing like a cat. Me? I slid and scraped my way down the
trunk like another sort of cat, one that spends too much time
indoors and aims to catch mice by toppling on them, but
I joined her as she raced across the road, unsheathing her
sword as she ran.
Yep, Rani is a sword-wielding ghost hunter. This is incredibly
cool, you understand, even if she was feeling ambivalent about
her training and her ghost-hunting upbringing.
By now, the Lingerer was smashing the Lingerer job
description to pieces. She wasn’t just latching onto the innocent
passer-by – the IPB – she was going to town on him. The poor
guy had fallen to his knees and was moaning semi-coherently.
If you forget about Rogues, Thugs and Gnashers, most
ghosts are pretty subtle in their interactions with us. They
don’t vampire us, sucking all our vitality or life-force in one
go. Their assaults are more gradual than violent. Most people
hardly notice – they don’t feel quite right but put it down to
diet or lack of exercise or something. If it goes on too long,
though, that’s heading into the danger zone, Lana.
Whatever this ghost was, she definitely had no patience
for the usual moves. The IPB looked as if he had the worst
migraine ever, and his whole body was shuddering.
Ghost hunters to the rescue!
Rani used the flat of her sword and smacked the ghost a

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good one on the side of her head, hard enough to break her
hold on the IPB. He toppled, barely getting his hands out in
front of him in time to stop a sickening face/asphalt interaction.
Close up, the ghost was definitely First World War or
thereabouts, and a couple of interesting ribbons on her front
could have been suffragette issue, but we had no time for that
as she swung around, snarling, hands clawing as Rani carefully
backed away.
Which was all according to plan. With the Lingerer’s
attention on Rani, I could muscle my way past the fear that
rolled off the ghost like bad deodorant, approach her from
behind and plunge my hands into her back.
This is what our ghost hunting was all about. We weren’t
hunting them for social media fame or anything like that; we
were dedicated to easing their passage, sending them to the
great beyond, helping them to go Elsewhere. This was my
family tradition: being kind to ghosts instead of destroying
them by chopping them into tiny pieces like most ghost
hunters do, Rani’s old organisation included.
The ghost stiffened as I groped inside her ghostly
substance. I brought my hands together and twisted, like
wring­ ing out a wet cloth. Bam, she flew apart, scattering
her substance in confetti-like shreds, and I was battered by
memory fragments – metres and metres of fabric, the sensation
of scissors at work, aching fingers and, finally, the sound of a
baby crying.
I staggered back a step or two. Even though I knew that
being hit by these impressions was a standard part of ghost

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dissolution, it was never easy. These slivers of lives lived long
ago weren’t just like video snippets. They were saturated with
feelings like loss, longing, joy, fear and thousands of other
emotions that have no real name. One of the hardest parts of
my job is to not be overwhelmed by them.
Rani was helping the IPB to his feet. ‘My head hurts,’ he
said in a thick, unsteady voice.
‘It’s a gas leak,’ I said to him. ‘A very localised, soon-to-be-
fixed gas leak that won’t be mentioned in the media.’
‘Huh?’
‘Get yourself to a doctor,’ Rani suggested. ‘It’s probably
nothing, but you can’t be too sure.’
He blundered off without a backwards glance.
I wiped my hands together. ‘Let’s savour this moment.
Another happy customer, another example of the finely
functioning team that is Rani and Anton, ghost hunters
supreme—’
Rani had gone, heading towards the front of the building,
gliding through the car park in the shadow of the peppercorn
trees at the eastern edge of the RSV building, coat flaring
around her – a new coat, a very cool metallic blue, dark enough
for night work, stylish enough for a quiet drink in a laneway
bar afterwards. I shrugged and jogged after her.
My ghost-detecting pendant was buzzing on my chest as
I rounded the corner, where I nearly smacked into Rani. She
was holding up a hand like a traffic cop, because at the top
of the stairs to the entrance was another ghost. Shifting in
outline and slightly translucent – timeless ghost style, never

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out of fashion – he was a worker of some kind, with heavy
boots, a piece of rope for a belt, a battered waistcoat and a hat
that looked as if it had lost a fight with a drop bear. He was
facing away from us, arms extended, hands feeling the stone
on either side of the grand double doors.
‘Another Lingerer?’ I suggested in a low voice.
‘He looks attached to the place, but after the way that
last one behaved . . .’ Rani shrugged. ‘Are our ghost categories
getting dodgy?’
‘All of them are getting more grouchy lately, even Lingerers.’
‘More of them, and more aggro. So let’s be extra careful,
shall we?’ Rani flipped her hand in a classic ‘over to you’
gesture.
I shucked off my backpack, took a few deep breaths and
sneaked up the stairs, but I needn’t have worried. The ghost
didn’t even notice me. He was inspecting the masonry with a
melancholy concentration, down on one knee and running a
misty hand across the threshold stone, totally absorbed in what
was probably some sort of echo from the life that spawned
him. Yes, he radiated the traditional waves of fear generated
by any ghost, but they were pretty feeble.
Ghost fear is a spectrum. This poor little guy was right
down one end, the ‘faintly upsetting’ end, which was a long
way from the ‘gut-grinding dread and terror’ that Rani and
I had run into with Rogues. Even for experienced ghost
hunters like us – and I still wasn’t used to thinking of myself
like that – spooks that could pump out that sort of fear were
hard to handle.

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This guy, though, looked like a piece of cake. I touched
my gently vibrating pendant and spread my hands. ‘It’s okay.
Everything’s all right. It’s okay.’
The ghost glanced at me, and despite having dealt with
dozens of ghosts now, I flinched and had to look away. Ghost
eyes. They do me in. There’s nothing behind them, and that
void is a scary glimpse of the Elsewhere beyond our own
reality – a lot scarier than his pathetic Miasma of Fear™.
I gently placed my palms on his back, and that was the
end of the gentle part of the transaction. As soon as I made
contact, he reared, swung his arm backhanded, and whacked
me on the side of the head with a ghostly masonry mallet.
It was ghostly, not wholly substantial, and it only clipped
me. Otherwise, I would have had a crushed skull on my hands,
so to speak. In any case, it hurt.
I spun away, falling in what felt like slow motion while
my brain – which was definitely in slow motion – thought,
‘Hey, I’m going to fall down those really hard and probably
dangerous bluestone stairs.’
Rani caught me, which was the only thing that stopped
me from fracturing my already tender skull. ‘You plonker,’ she
said. ‘Couldn’t you see that happening?’
She cradled me in her arms like a baby. It was very
comfortable. After a moment or two, I was able to form words.
‘Who? Me?’
Bad idea, as both words thundered in my head, adding to
the thumping ache that was already stomping around inside.
‘Ouch,’ I said, meaningfully.

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Rani set me on my feet. ‘Are you all right?’
At that moment, my stomach volunteered to push the
last thing I ate – some toast and some very good homemade
apricot jam – up my throat. I thanked it for its initiative, but
declined. It settled, unhappily. ‘Can’t say I’m a hundred per
cent,’ I said, ‘but I’ll make do.’
Rani looked into my eyes. ‘You could have concussion.’
I went to nod and thought better of it. ‘Let’s take it easy,
then.’
‘As long as you consider it a learning moment.’
‘I promise that I’ll never again try to ease the passage
of a ghost while standing at the top of stairs. Unless there’s
someone very cool at the bottom who can catch me.’
‘What if I’m not there?’
‘I’ll get a trained monkey to follow me around with a bean
bag to throw onto the ground to break my fall.’
‘I could be replaced by a trained monkey?’
I’d walked into that one. ‘Never.’ I took her arm in mine.
‘Come on, let’s get a cup of coffee.’
It was like trying to shift a rock. Rani was frowning and
clasping her bracelet. This was her equivalent of my amulet,
and it heightened her perception of ghosts, let her see in the
dark and stuff like that. ‘Not while we’ve got a job to do.’
Mr Mallet Ghost was still where I’d left him, puttering
around the door as if cracking skulls was all in a day’s work.
‘A little help?’ I suggested to Rani.
She bounded up the stairs. This time, when the ghost
twisted and swung his mallet, she caught the handle on her

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sword, angling it so the mallet slid off to the side, harmlessly.
This gave me time to limp up and approach him from
behind. Plunge, twist, goodbye ghost guy. Then I was lost in
the whirlwind of memories that the Lingerer gave up when he
departed – the noise and the dust of a quarry, the howling of
a stone saw in a masonry workshop, the pain of a broken
thumb, the warm and welcome sweatiness of Boscoe, his pony
who grew up with him and was the only thing he ever truly
loved.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands. ‘Coffee time
now?’
‘Hardly. He’s not the only one.’
I blinked and touched my pendant where it lay on my
chest, under my jacket and T-shirt. It was buzzing away like a
little kid who’s got into the red cordial. ‘Inside?’
‘I’d say so.’
Rani held her bracelet to the lock in the double doors.
They sprang open and we were in a little vestibule in front
of another pair of doors, because some nineteenth-century
builder thought that’d be the coolest entrance ever.
We closed the doors behind us. The area inside was
furnished with old bookcases, cabinets and chairs, and
displayed lots of science-related posters. A kitchen was to
our immediate left, and an office was to our right, with desks
and the standard computers, phones and photocopiers taking
up a room that must have had five-metre-high ceilings, and
cornices that looked like they’d been extruded by a cake
decorator right at the top of their game.

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Straight ahead a hall bisected the building and led to the
arched back door, but before it were the stairs that led to
the second floor. Descending the stairs was a pair of ghosts.
They were marching down, brows wrinkled as if they
expected the whole staircase to collapse, all done up in high
Victorian frock coats and neckwear, with facial hair that would
make any hipster contemplate giving up hipstering and taking
up something less challenging, like deep sea diving.
It was the way they were marching, I guess, that did it. Arms
swinging, lifting their knees up high, with the thunderous
expressions of unquestioned privilege. The combined effect
got me murmuring, ‘Apparitions, quite patrician, are coming
down the stairs . . .’

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