Ghost Bus - Tales from Wellington's Dark Side

Introduction

This collection of stories started life as a National Novel Writing Month entry. While I didn’t finish the 50,000 words needed to complete the challenge, I did end up with a sort of warped love letter to Wellington.

Some of these stories are spooky, some are silly, and some have a pretty high body count, but all of them will, I hope, in some way make you smile. They are escapism, pure and simple – my gift to a world that might just need a little bit of that right now.

This is my first foray into fiction, but when I was putting this together for publication, it wasn’t the ghosts, aliens and witches that stood out – it was the normal things that aren’t so normal anymore. Hanging out in book stores, catching a packed bus, buying a kebab at 3am.

What this book has actually turned out to be is a love letter to a Wellington that was – a Wellington I miss, and one I very much look forward to seeing again.

Thanks to my editor Jana Mittelstädt for helping me shape this bundle of strangeness and to Catherine Slavova for the stunning cover. A shout out too to the Wellington Sculpture Trust for making the research for the first story incredibly easy. I apologise for what I have done with your beloved sculptures.

Anna Kirtlan, May 2020.

The Ministry for Public Art

Dedicated to the Wellington Sculpture Trust

It’s amazing how short people’s memories can be or perhaps – to be more charitable – how quickly we protect ourselves by blocking out traumatic events.

I can understand it coming from tourists, but when locals ask why we have so many statues of women outside parliament, I must admit it makes me a little afraid.

It was October 7, 2018 when the Len Lye kinetic sculpture, the Water Whirler, was snapped in two on Wellington’s waterfront. The sculpture wasn’t even running at the time. It was fenced off and under maintenance when a tourist took it into his head to climb it. As it gave way, he plummeted into the water, whacking his head on the way down.

The culprit, a man in his 20s, got away with a gash on his forehead, a $1000 fine and a whole lot of public outrage. Through the power of social media, he was tracked down and interviewed. His reason for assaulting the artwork? He was bored.

The second time, the Water Whirler ended up in the news was much more gruesome. A couple were walking along the waterfront when they noticed something looked off in the area the sculpture was situated. On closer inspection they saw that, once again, it had been moved from the base. This time though, it had company.

The Water Whirler was doubled over but it hadn’t snapped. Instead, something was holding it up. That something was a young man. The pointed end of the sculpture had pierced right through his chest, leaving him dangling there with bulging eyes and gaping mouth. The amount of blood pooling at the bottom of the artwork left no doubt there had been no chance of survival.

How am I able to describe the scene in such detail? Well, other than the couple who discovered him, I was one of the first on the scene.

I’m a photographer. One of the few specialists still employed by the news media. However, with the popularity of point and shoot digital cameras, the quality of lenses on phones and the multi-tasking journalists are expected to do these days, work has dried up a bit. So, to make ends meet, I double as an on-call snapper for the police when they need it.

I can tell you right now I have seen some things. But nothing will ever top that month – the October that began with the Water Whirler.

The crime scene investigation threw up nothing. No witnesses, no prints, no obvious enemies. I’m only the photographer but I still pick up on things, and what I picked up was that the constabulary were utterly bamboozled.

Of course, the rumour mill kicked into gear. It was someone hired by the sculptor’s family or art fanatics getting revenge. Though none of those people were particularly well known for their capacity for brutal murder.

The second crime scene I was dispatched to that week was eerily similar. The first sign of disturbance was a statue out of place and next to it, someone who was definitely quite dead.

This time, it was the Fruits of the Garden statue situated above Frank Kitts Park. Sculpted in bronze by Paul Dibble, it includes ferns and a woman’s torso, chopped above the belly button and below the thighs, with an apple balanced on top. To be honest, I had always found it a little creepy, though I would never say that out loud now.

If you didn’t know what the statue was supposed to look like, you could be forgiven for not noticing anything was amiss. A more eagle-eyed public sculpture enthusiast, however, would pick up fairly quickly that the apple had gone AWOL. The dead body lying on the ground with a bronze apple shoved in the vicinity of its mouth would have been the giveaway for the rest of us.

I say ‘in the vicinity’ because, while the obvious intention was for the apple to be shoved in the victim’s gob, the fruit in question was much too large for a human jaw and the end result had destroyed most of the unfortunate chap’s face.

There are some things that are best not described in detail, and this is one of them. As I said before, I have seen some things, but that was the first crime scene I had shot where I had to quietly go and vomit in the bushes once I was done.

By now, the media was having a field day. Wellington had a serial killer with a statue fetish on its hands. Kooky conspiracy theories abounded on social media and parents banned their kids from going to town. Two days later though, and even the wildest speculations were blown out of the water.

***

I was walking along the waterfront, as I do most mornings, when I heard an ear-splitting scream followed by a splash.

That is the last fucking time someone sticks a novelty hat on me! a male voice roared.

I looked towards the source of the yelling to see the most bat crap crazy thing I had ever clapped my eyes on – up to that point. A cast iron, naked man had a tourist in a headlock while dangling another over the ocean by his wrist. A sparkly fluorescent green fedora and feather boa were floating in the harbour while two phones were in the process of sinking.

The phrase ‘cast iron’ is not a euphemism either. The man in question was actually made of metal. He was Wellington’s iconic Solace in the Wind statue. A two-metre-tall iron representation of a naked man leaning into the wind over the harbour, his arms flung back as he embraces the elements.

Created by sculptor Max Pattè, he is arguably Wellington’s most photographed statue. The sight of tourists posing next to him, leaning towards the water with him – and undoubtedly falling into the drink on occasion – was just part of the parcel of a Wellington waterfront walk.

He was also one of Wellington’s most dressed up statues. Santa hats at Christmas, bunny ears at Easter, all manner of ridiculous get-ups when Wellington hosted the Rugby Sevens. It appeared the unfortunate duo the statue was yelling at had attempted to dress him up in dollar store party gear for a photo shoot.

Take your selfies. That’s fine, flattering even, but stop sticking crap on me. Show some damned respect!

Trying to process what I was witnessing, I stepped forward, distracting him mid-rant. It was lucky for the tourist he was dangling over the ocean that I did because if the statue had tightened his grip any harder, he could have broken the man’s wrist.

Dropping his victim disdainfully into the harbour, Solace turned to the other tourist in his grasp.

NO MORE PARTY HATS! he roared. Tell your friends!

Sniffing in disgust, the statue tossed his victim aside. In all his naked glory, Solace in the Wind strode off towards the city, leaving a quivering pile of human on the pavement and another flailing in the ocean.

Can you swim? I yelled to the man in the water, after checking that his friend, while hysterical, was going to survive.

Yes! he sputtered.

Swim over to me. There’s a ladder right here you can use to climb out, I yelled, leading him to the exit point, most likely put there for photography accidents by the council. I helped haul him up the ladder and reunited him with his friend. Both clearly in shock, I called an ambulance to make sure they'd be okay.

At this stage, quite a crowd of concerned onlookers had converged on the pair. I waited with the statue’s victims until help arrived, trying to explain as best I could what had happened without sounding like an utter lunatic. The complete absence of a statue was at least one point in my favour.

Once satisfied the pair were in good hands, I walked in the direction Solace had headed, in a bid to find out what was going on.

***

It wasn’t hard to work out where to go next. All I needed to do was follow the screaming.

The bulk of the noise was coming