by L. J. Fox
“What? When?” Layne was horrified.
“Last night. It happened over near the library. You know, the bushes near the car park.” She replied.
“Who was attacked?” Layne asked.
“I don’t know. I just heard this morning because Hans saw the police there and it is all taped off.”
Layne spent her entire time in class obsessing about the attack. Who was the girl? Was she ok? Who was doing this? Was it the same man or a different attack? She had to know. Maybe she would know if it was the same person.
At lunchtime she found Andy in the cafeteria. He looked surprised when he saw the serious expression on her face and the purposeful walk.
“Come with me” she said quietly.
He picked up his sandwich and they walked out of the cafeteria and across the grounds, heading toward the library. She was relieved that Gregory was nowhere to be seen. One of the benefits of the Bray training was that she now could tell how far away he was, up to a point.
As they neared the carpark next to the library, they saw a small group of about eight students standing in a circle talking. They were angry and concerned about the latest attack and talked of starting a little vigilante group and guarding the campus grounds at night. There were some raised voices and one girl was in tears as it was her best friend who had been attacked. Andy asked them where the attack had happened, and a girl pointed to some bushes about fifty metres away. Andy and Layne wandered over slowly. They did not want to look like they were snooping around with people watching and just wanted to appear a bit curious.
Layne wandered as close as she could trying to appear conspicuous. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. She asked Andy if he would mind standing further back so she could use her senses better. He obliged, hoping his body odour wasn’t that bad. Layne closed her eyes and concentrated. She breathed in, concentrating on smelling. She could smell him immediately. It was the same person who had committed both assaults. She could smell his Polo aftershave and his perspiration. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Despite his expensive aftershave, he was dirty and smelly. She could also smell semen. He had completed his assault this time. She could also smell the girl he had assaulted. She could smell her perfume, her deodorant and her shampoo. She could also smell blood. She wasn’t sure whether the girl had been injured during the attack, whether the blood was from the hymen breaking, whether the girl had been bitten again or whether the girl had been in the midst of a monthly period, though she shook her head. She was sure that was not it, but there definitely was blood.
The scene was mingled with the smells of other people such as the police who had attended and the medics. She could distinguish between the various smells and associate them with various people. She stopped and realised how far she had come. Now she understood what Narelle had been explaining to her about concentrating.
“It is the same guy.” She told Andy.
He looked at her, amazed that she was able to identify this information based on smells.
“They have his DNA now.”
She closed her eyes again and tried to detect anything extra. There was something about the blood that kept dragging her mind back to it. She breathed in deeply and tried to shut out everything except the thought of the attack and the blood. Without realising what she was doing, her breathing became very laboured. Andy was concerned and stood close to her, looking into her face. She looked to be miles away and in some sort of alternative place. After a few minutes, Andy reached out and touched her arm.
“Layne. Layne. Are you ok?” he asked gently.
Her eyes snapped open and focused on him.
“She scratched him and drew blood.” She looked excited at the prospect.
Andy thought for a moment.
“For DNA?” he asked.
“They have his DNA from semen, but if she scratched him on the face or hands then it will be visible. If he is a student, we may see someone with a scratch.”
“Oh. Ok. I see. You can’t exactly tell the cops to look for a guy with a scratch, can you. You can’t explain how you know that.” He deduced.
“No. Of course not. We can keep a look out” she said.
Chapter 31
Layne had a never-ending list of questions that she presented to Narelle. She found the whole thing so fascinating and so surreal. This group of people existed and lived among normal people and no one had a clue. She had even googled it and only found one small reference in a publication from 2002. A journalist had written a small comment in a local newspaper stating that he would have some earth-shattering news to report in the coming weeks, and that it involved super-humans called the Brays. She couldn’t find anything else so was unsure whether the earth-shattering news ever eventuated, or whether subsequent newspapers had not been digitised. Clearly, it had not been too earth-shattering at the time.
Now that she knew how to detect the Brays, she found herself doing it all the time. It got easier the more she practiced. She was shocked at how many there were, particularly in the higher levels of management everywhere she went. Narelle had even implied that the Prime Minister in Australia was a Bray, but she just couldn’t believe it, and she couldn’t get close enough to him to sense him. From what she could understand, the politics of the Prime Minister was aligned with the Brays. They wanted to look after the higher level of people and high end of business.
In many ways, instead of attending university in Melbourne, she felt like she had arrived on a distant planet and was now living with strange aliens. Every day brought new revelations and new questions. The one question she wanted to know but was still not able to ask was what happened to her parents. Narelle had been very forthright with her about many things, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask the most important question.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to spend time with Andy alone. Gregory still watched like a hawk and she now knew that the Brays could sense where she was within a certain distance. She also knew that a tracking device had been placed under Andy’s car. The most recent time she had been in the car with Andy had been a quick drive-through at McDonalds when her study class were in the mood for cheeseburgers. She could hear the tracking device immediately and signalled to Andy. She thought it was highly likely that there were wire taps on her mobile phone, as well as Andy’s phone. The Brays did not trust her, and she understood that. It just made any private conversation with Andy very difficult. In the end, they resorted to writing notes on paper and then flushing them down the toilet after being read.
She knew Andy was frustrated with the situation, as she was, but she didn’t have an answer. Her perfect scenario was that they would let her walk away from the Bray life and live a normal life, possibly marrying a normal person one day and having normal children, but she knew they were not going to let this happen. That was obviously what her mother had wanted, and something or someone had prevented that from happening. Would she fall to the same fate if she was truthful with the Brays?
If she couldn’t walk away from the Brays, then what was the answer? Did she have to marry a Bray, have arrogant Bray children and be a leader? She couldn’t do that. She was not prepared to do that. She could feel the pressure mounting.
Sometimes she thought about the fact that she had grown up in the normal world, with loving and normal grandparents. Was that why she craved a loving and normal life? If she had grown up in the Bray world, would she be cold, arrogant and have the same urge for power that they did? Her mother had grown up a Bray, and yet, she had sought a normal existence. Every now and again, she saw a flash of humanity with one of the Brays, but it was few and far between.
She lay awake many nights trying to find a solution. She also worried about the number of Brays already in powerful positions in the community. She guessed this might be the same the world over. How long would it take until the Brays controlled the world, and what would that mean? Was it even a bad thing? They didn’t have a very good opinion of normal people, considering them lowly
and inferior. She couldn’t imagine that leaders with this frame of mind could govern people in a fair fashion.
It came as no surprise the next day when the black car came to pick her up and she was told that Warren wanted to see her. She only thought of him as Warren, never as her grandfather. She had been expecting that he would want to see her before long. She had been spending a lot of time with Narelle and hadn’t seen Warren in weeks.
He greeted her in the same room as the one where they had first met. He took her two hands in his and welcomed her while searching her eyes. She wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find. Did he think she may be pleased to see him? If that was what it was, then he was in for a disappointment.
“Sit down. Sit down. I hear your training is coming along nicely.” He said with enthusiasm.
“Yes. Narelle has been very patient and very informative.” She answered carefully.
“I am delighted to hear that you are such a quick learner and have quite strong powers. Have you had any thoughts about your future?” He asked looking intently at her.
“Well. I have a few more years left of the degree I am doing, then I was thinking about the police force or criminology.” She knew he was testing her.
He rubbed his chin as if in thought.
“Why would you wait a few more years to finish your degree? You know you can just fast-track it. You know, be completed early.”
She nodded.
“Yes. I know I could do that, but I am actually enjoying my time at the university and the socialising, plus I am only nineteen years old, so plenty of time for the future.”
Warren got up and slowly paced. When he spoke, his voice sounded controlled.
“These ones you are socialising with … they are only normal. They are not the right people for you to be socialising with. Age is unimportant when what you can offer is for the good of the group. You see, the individual does not matter.” His eyes stared into hers.
She could feel her anger threatening to spill over, and she did not want to show that emotion to him. How dare he tell her what she would be doing in the future. How dare he tell her who she could socialise with. They were pulling her in tighter to the group, to the Brays, and she did not want to be there. She knew she had to stall this decision somehow.
“I … don’t feel I know enough about the group at the moment. I have only known about you for one month and I still have so much to learn before I can be on any use.”
She looked down, trying to look humble. She saw him contemplating her answer.
“Yes. There is still much to learn. Please consider the fast-track.”
“Yes, I will.” She said and smiled at him.
Later that night, she wrote a note to Andy telling him she felt she was running out of time.
Chapter 32
Andy paced his room. He was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the situation with Layne and was worried sick that she would disappear. From all accounts, these people were very powerful and influential. If it were true that they disposed of Layne’s parents, then they were capable of anything. Layne had written to him last night after her most recent encounter with Warren and told of how the Brays were supposed to do what was best for the group and not for themselves. A man who thought like that, who could eliminate his own daughter, so why would he have any problem with eliminating his own granddaughter?
Andy sat on the edge of his bed. What could he do? The only answer he could come up with was a big fat zero. He felt totally useless. He was one man and they were a whole race of people. It wasn’t David and Goliath. It was David and a country full of Goliaths. Yet, he could not sit back and wait for it to happen. He didn’t even know what was going to happen, but he thought the most obvious thing was that Layne would leave university, live in the Bray world, marry Gregory and work toward the Bray goals. He couldn’t face the thought of the worst thing that could happen.
He couldn’t phone Layne’s grandparents and talk it over because he was sure the phone line was tapped. He could not drive up there as he knew there was a tracking device on his car. He felt like an animal in the zoo with every movement being watched. He knew that Layne was still phoning her grandparents twice a day but was giving them a happy, condensed version of everything because she didn’t want them to worry, and also, she knew someone was listening on the phone line.
What options were there? He could run away with Layne, but he guessed that is what Layne’s parents must have tried to do, and that did not seem to have worked out too well. Where would they even go? How would they stay off radar? Her grandparents could not leave the farm and Layne would never disappear from their lives.
Could he go to the media and break the story about the super-human race of people who were trying to take over the world? Who would even listen to him? How could he prove it? There was a good chance that the Brays had their tentacles high up in the publishing world as well, and the story would never see the light of day. Hell – Murdoch was probably a Bray. No. He was too ugly. If it was to be published, would the public think it was a joke? Would the police get involved, assuming that the Brays were not already controlling the police force?
He stood up and paced again. They hadn’t broken any laws. There was nothing that the police could charge them with. It was not against the law to want world domination or to talk about it. It was not against the law to live in a world where you think you are better than everyone else. The few things that they had broken the law with, could not be proven. It felt so hopeless.
He remembered that Layne had told him about googling the Brays and found a comment from a small newspaper. Andy decided that he would follow it up. It could be a complete waste of time, but he had nothing, and he could not sit and do nothing. At least this would give him something to focus on. He didn’t want to do the Google search on his own laptop in his room in case someone could trace what he was doing. He decided to research it on the Library computers which were used by a plethora of students on a daily basis and would be more difficult to trace.
It didn’t take him long to find the reference that Layne had mentioned. It was from a journalist named Ed Makin and was dated Thursday 2nd May 2002. It was published in the Shepparton Adviser and stated:
Next week I will publish a special report on the earth-shattering news that there are super-humans called The Brays who walk among us. Stay tuned.
Too wary to take a screenshot, a photo with his phone, print out the comment or even write it down in case he was deliberately relieved of these items, he memorised the name of the newspaper, the date, the journalist name and the comment.
In May 2002, Layne would have been a three year old, which is about the time her parents disappeared. He wondered if her parents had spoken to this journalist. Was that a possibility? Shepparton was not far from Katunga where Layne and her grandparents lived, and where her father had lived. He searched the White Pages for a telephone number for an E. Makin in Shepparton or the surrounding area. Nothing. Of course, he could have moved to another location in the past sixteen years. Makin was not a very common surname, so he searched for any other Makins in Shepparton. He couldn’t find any. He then tried any Makins in the general area and found a S. Makin who lived at Tatura. Tatura was only twenty minutes’ drive from Shepparton. He knew he would not be able to remember the phone number but at least he knew it existed and how to find it again.
Next, he searched for Layne’s parents. He knew their names as Bradley and Beverley Harrison, so he Googled the names. He found a few results from May 2002 where the Herald Sun published a small item stating that their car had been found on the side of River Road at Kialla but there was no sign of the young couple. He brought up Google Maps and identified that Kialla was in between Katunga and Shepparton.
A few more small items from the Herald Sun and Shepparton Adviser in the months after stated that the couple had not been located, had not used bank accounts or credit cards and fears were held for their safety. There was mention of Ross an
d Nina Harrison and three-year-old Layne.
He found Bradley and Beverley listed on the National Missing Persons Register. He looked at their photographs. It was the same photograph that he knew was in a frame at the Harrison’s farmhouse, but the time had not been right from him to study the faces. Now he looked at the two of them. Layne was a mirror image of her mother. The golden honey coloured hair, the bright blue eyes, softly tanned skin and the same smile. He looked at the face of Bradley. How happy and excited he looked on the day of his wedding. Andy sighed and sat back. What on earth had happened to this beautiful young couple? Would the Brays really harm someone, especially one of their own? It was so incredibly sad for the Harrisons and for Layne.
Andy left the library deep in thought. He needed to follow up on the Makin lead. What could he do and how could he do anything without someone watching? He couldn’t drive his car to Tatura, and he couldn’t phone Tatura. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced he needed to visit Tatura and Shepparton. He went to bed thinking of possibilities and after a sleepless night, he greeted the morning with a plan.
Chapter 33
Layne met again with Detective Sergeant James Baring. He seemed surprised to see her and anticipated that she had remembered something else that may help the case. He showed her through the office and they sat at his desk. He sat quietly looking at her and waited for her to state the reason for her visit.
She paused and looked around the room to identify how far away everyone else was and what the chances were of them hearing anything she may say. She already knew that there were no Bray’s near her at that moment.
“So … there was another attack.”
It was a statement more than a question, to initiate the conversation.
“Yes. Unfortunately, there has been another attack.” He confirmed without giving any extra information away.
She looked down at her hands, trying to decide how to continue.