by John Larkin
I duck down as he looks up and down the platform. When I stand up he’s no longer on the platform. He’s either gone back up, or he’s on the train.
Then I see his huge bulk barging through the other carriage towards the door that leads into this one. He pushes the door open and then he’s in the carriage with me. We stare at each other and he smiles. He’s obviously retrieved his test- icles from the back of his throat or wherever they’d got to and now he’s standing there leering at me. It’s that ‘gotcha’ sort of leer that I’ve seen before. We’re still separated by the length of the carriage – he in one entrance, me in the next. But it’s over. He knows it. I know it. Or at least I want him to think that I know it. Defeated, I drop my sleeping bag onto the floor and hold onto the pole for support. Pretend cop is still staring at me but he’s staying where he is. He’s got that look in his eyes. The look of a predator.
Apart from a young Asian couple weighed down with bags and the grime of two hemispheres, the carriage is otherwise empty.
‘Hey,’ calls pretend cop. ‘He wants to talk to you.’
‘Don’t you come near me!’
He holds up his hands to indicate that he’s staying where he is and then shows me his mobile. He mimes sliding it down the aisle. I don’t want to agree with anything this trained baboon says. Any friend of Creepo’s is an enemy of mine. When he sees that I’m not going to respond he slides it down to me anyway. It sits there on the floor like a hand grenade. I feel like smashing the thing into a million pieces. Instead I tentatively pick it up.
I don’t want to say ‘hello’. That seems too polite. In the end I settle for, ‘What do you want?’
‘Enjoying life on the streets?’
‘Enjoy the dog shit in your bed?’
‘You’re disgusting!’
‘Disgusting? I’m not the twisted pervert trying to rape my niece.’
‘That was you tempting me and you know it.’
Unbelievable. ‘You’re sick.’
‘Look,’ he says. ‘We can have this pleasant little father–daughter chat for hours but we’ll just go round in circles. All I want is the money.’
‘Too late. Spent it.’
‘You better not have.’
‘What do you think I was doing at the airport when your goon spotted me?’
‘You can’t have been going anywhere. I checked. You’re not allowed to without permission from your legal guardian. That would be me.’
I thought that was probably the case, which is why I didn’t really buy a ticket to London. Just fantasised about it.
‘Okay then, I gave it away to charity. It’s dirty money, anyway.’
‘I don’t think so. I think it’s still there in your backpack. But you can’t really do anything with it. You can’t rent a place, you can’t buy anything, nothing big anyway, because that would look suspicious. You’re stuck with a whole lot of money that you can’t use.’
‘I’ll throw it away then.’
‘I’d think really hard about that if I was you. Really hard about it.’
‘Can’t you just leave me alone?’ I’m trying hard not to plead. ‘I won’t say anything. I won’t go to the police.’
‘You think you’re so smart. I’ve already been to the police. Told them you stole from me. Told them you ran away. Told them that you’re a complete liar.’
‘What if I tell them about my parents and they decide to look for them?’
Creepo laughs. It’s a cold bitter laugh that tells me he’s thought about this too. Maybe Marco Rossini is right. Maybe I have underestimated Creepo.
‘Your parents left here five years ago. It’ll be on the Department of Immigration’s records. True, no one has heard from them since then. Something must have happened to them when they got home. Something terrible. Serena and I reported them missing both here and back home and in some quarters we’re considered saints for taking in their daughter and raising her as our own.’
I close my eyes and try to think. How could the Department of Immigration believe that my parents left the country? I trawl back through my mind. There’s something there. Something about Creepo and a blonde woman. Just after I moved in with them he grew a moustache. Serena said it was to make me feel more at home because of my father’s moustache. It actually creeped me out at the time because he did look like a younger version of my father. And then there was that blonde woman who came over with a suitcase. She was obviously wearing a wig but she was a dead ringer for my mum. Although Serena was crying, Creepo said that they had to go. It was the only way. I watched through the window as Creepo kissed and hugged Serena, and then the taxi driver helped put their bags in the boot. Then the blonde woman hugged Serena too. Hugged her like she was her sister-in-law, even though Serena just stood there like a statue. And for a while it was just me and Serena and then when I saw Creepo again about three weeks later, his moustache was gone and so was the blonde woman.
‘I know how you did it.’
‘Did what?’
‘You and that bimbo left here on my parents’ passports, and came back on your own.’
Creepo laughs. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sounds like another one of your stories to me.’
God! I have underestimated him. Just like I underestim- ated Narelle’s intelligence. There’s book-smart and there’s street-smart and I don’t think Charles Dickens and Jane Austen would stack up too well against the LA Bloods.
Finally, the doors start to close. Better late than never. This is it. I have to hold my nerve. I don’t even look at them. They’re of no interest to me.
‘No deal, Creepo. The money’s burnt.’
I’m about one-third of pretend cop’s size so I have to time this right. I wait until the last possible moment. Until there’s barely enough room for a broom.
I can hear Creepo screaming down the line.
I hold up the phone to pretend cop.
‘Catch!’ I pull back my arm and hurl the mobile at him with all my might. Then, while he’s fending if off, I snatch up my stuff and bolt for the door, tossing out my sleeping bag and backpack ahead of me. Although my trailing leg gets snagged on the door on the way out, I make it onto the platform with just a bruise. The doors close and the train moves off, sliding past me with pretend cop jabbing his finger on the window and yelling something that doesn’t sound polite, even though I can’t hear a word. I pick up my stuff and am about to flip him the bird but change my mind and give him a little wave instead. For some reason it seems even more insulting. Then I walk up the steps and over the line for the trains to the north.
My heart is still pounding as I slump onto the seat. I can’t believe where the day went. I was having a wonderful time at the airport, fantasising about escaping, but when I found that quiet spot I must have slipped almost into a coma. Then of course Creepo’s goon shows up. Or did he? I was on a plane and now I’m on a train and I’ve got no idea at which point I woke up. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Exhaustion? Stress? It’s all getting too much. I think I might be starting to lose my mind.
By the time we pull in to the northern junction station it’s well after ten. It’s too late to get into the rail yards. There’s no one around to interview about the procedure. The trains that were on day shift are all tucked up in bed, Thomas the Tank Engine singing them a lullaby and discussing further engine maintenance issues. The ones that are still out will probably prowl around for a while and then stop running after midnight.
The train I’m on is heading up to Death Valley and beyond. Even though I could probably manage a two-hour walk on the sand, in the dark I wouldn’t be able to find my hollow or uncover my camouflaged door number 4. And it’d be an early start to get to school on time. I’d only get a few hours sleep, if any.
I’ll head south-west, find somewhere to crash
closer to school. I gather up my stuff and step off the train and onto the platform.
As I’m standing there I notice a broken old man shuffling along the platform towards me. He appears to blend into the darkness, more shadow than human. As he gets closer I realise that if I hadn’t seen him, eventually I would have smelled him. Where’s a bottle of Cologne d’aviation when you need one? Where’s a peg?
‘Evening,’ he says, doffing his imaginary hat to me.
I try to smile but I catch a whiff of him and I’m forced to hold back vomit instead. His stench is so overpowering, so all encompassing, I’m starting to feel light-headed. His suit and jumper look as if he dug them out of a bin in the early nineteen-seventies and has had them on ever since, while his beard is so long and snarled it could comfortably house a flock of magpies, providing they’ve had their nasal passages hermetically sealed.
He steps onto the train and turns around. ‘You coming?’ he asks.
Despite his overwhelming hygiene issues, he seems friendly and pleasant and oblivious to his own repugnant reek. Oh how I wish he had a place for a little soap, toothpaste and deodorant in his life.
‘Well? Are you? Are you coming?’
‘Coming where?’
‘Kathmandu,’ he announces and then laughs like it’s the most hilarious thing that anyone has ever said. ‘Ding, ding,’ he continues, ringing an imaginary bell over the door. ‘All aboard. Last train to Kathmandu.’
Kathmandu? I close my eyes and pull up an atlas from my long-term memory. Kathmandu . . .? This train can’t be going to Nepal. Not without a massive tunnel beneath the sea. The poor guy’s obviously barking mad.
The old man grins at me and reveals his tombstone teeth.
As he dings his imaginary bell again I notice the dirt ingrained into his skin. The poor guy doesn’t need a bath so much as a scrape.
‘Last train to Kathmandu,’ he announces again and laughs some more, though in my opinion this gag has run its course.
‘The last train to Kathmandu?’ I shrug my shoulders. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘You homeless?’ he asks.
I make to say something in protest but then decide against it. What’s the point? ‘Yeah.’ I stare at the ground because it’s the first time I’ve acknowledged it. ‘Yeah. I’m homeless.’
‘C’mon then.’ He beckons me on board.
The recorded message announces the train’s imminent departure.
‘Hurry up, sweetheart.’ He’s so nice it’s actually tempting. But I know that ten minutes surrounded by his inescapable stench and I’ll be hurling myself at the window like a demented fly trying to get out. And by the time I’ve finished contemplating it the doors have closed.
I hold up my hand to say goodbye and again he doffs his imaginary hat and throws in an elaborate bow as well.
I don’t know who the hell that was, but I bet he would have an interesting story to tell.
As the train begins its slow slide out of the station, I notice that despite the late hour, there’s quite a few passengers on board, most of them sound asleep. And then I see the threadbare blankets, the bags, the shopping trolley, the bags, the clothes scavenged from charity bins, the bags. Just about everyone on board the train is like him. Like me. This is some sort of homeless special. The train of lost souls. The last train to Kathmandu.
My tears slide down my cheeks and splash to the floor. They’re mine. They belong to me. I don’t want to let them go. I don’t want to let anything go. I move my feet so that my salty misery is absorbed by my shoes.
Despite Miss Taylor’s straw hat and blazer scholarship plans, I’m going to end up like them. I just know it. Riding through the night on a ghost train bound for nowhere and smelling like a skunk’s armpit, dreaming of what was, of what might have been. Where the only happy place to go is inside your head.
It’s so easy to slip into my fantasy world, where it’s safe, where it’s warm, where no one wants to hurt me, where you can fly business class to London with British Airways, or escape to Venice in a first class sleeper cabin on the Orient Express. It’s just not so easy to come back. I’m already starting to have trouble recognising the difference between fact and fantasy and I’ve only been homeless for a week, most of which I spent in a five-star hotel. God help me when things get really rough. I’ll probably end up escaping into my head permanently. It’s not the insane who end up homeless, but the homeless who end up insane.
By the time I lug myself the half-kilometre from the station to school it’s starting to drizzle. It’s that pathetic sort of misty rain that doesn’t seem very heavy but somehow manages to soak you to the bone. Hopefully the rain, plus the fact that it’s getting on towards midnight, will mean that most of the vermin have scurried back to their rat holes.
I know it’s not safe, but where else could I go? Death Valley? A hostel? A doorway? A skip? My old school’s church? A park bench in the ivy belt? The last train to Kathmandu? I don’t think I could stand the stench. And no matter how much cash I have on me, I couldn’t lie my way into a hotel at this time of night. No one would believe that my barrister mother would be at a high-powered meeting now, leaving me to fend for myself. So I guess here’s as good a place as any.
I don’t think any buses will be running now. I remember something in the news a few weeks ago about how the bus drivers in one of the outer suburbs had gone on strike. It just got too unsafe. Rocks, abuse, robberies, violence. I’m pretty sure it was around here somewhere.
I roll out my sleeping bag along the cold, hard aluminium bench. From the dim glow of the streetlight I can see that there’s broken glass scattered about underneath the bench. Maybe I could use a piece in self defence if any human vermin turn up.
I squirm myself deep into my nylon cocoon, turning onto my side in an attempt to get comfortable. Unless the wind suddenly swings around, the bus shelter will keep out most of the rain. The shelter itself is made of toughened glass, but every panel has been shattered so that I’m encased in a sort of opaque spider web. It’d be quite artistic if it wasn’t so damn violent.
Apart from everything that’s happened, there’s something about today that’s bothering me. I can’t quite connect it to anything, but it’s been hovering over my head since I emerged from my hollow up at Death Valley Beach this morning.
I fidget restlessly and the streetlight glints off the face of my watch.
I look at it closely, squinting against the dark. How could I have missed that? Today’s date. I’ve got about five minutes left.
Well, I’m not spending it here. Stuck in a rain-soaked, shattered bus shelter on a hard, cold seat surrounded by broken glass.
I close my eyes and join the flight somewhere high above South East Asia. I can’t be me any more – not this version anyway.
I summon the flight attendant over.
‘How may I help?’
‘Would it be possible to get a glass of champagne?’
‘Certainly. Anything else?’
‘A hot chocolate and a cupcake.’
‘Of course.’
She disappears and returns a few minutes later with my bubbling glass of champers and cupcake. The hot chocolate will take a little longer, she says. They’re just getting the marshmallows and sprinkles from the galley.
‘Celebration?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I reply.
She’s waiting for me to elaborate but I want to enjoy the moment by myself, and she’s smart enough to recognise this.
‘Enjoy,’ she says, before moving off.
I pick up the champagne flute and stare out into the pitch-black night. There’s nothing out there but my reflection, distorted by the spider web of shattered glass.
I hold up the champagne in a toast. ‘Happy birthday,’ I say and chug the glass in one swig.
&nb
sp; IT’S GETTING HARDER TO DIFFERENTIATE REALITY FROM FANTASY.
That’s the point. It was for me too. But think about it this way. Given the choice between spending the night in a broken-down, rainy outer suburban bus shelter or British Airways business class, what would you choose? I didn’t even have to try to fantasise in the end. My brain just took me away. It was as if it was trying to protect me.
The giveaway was when you went to board the plane and you said the flight attendant ticked you off her list, when they actually put the boarding passes through an electronic swiper.
Well, I hadn’t flown before so I was just making it up.
Also when you went from the check-in area through to the departure gates you would have gone through customs.
I know that. Of course they wouldn’t have let a kid that age take off overseas by themself; not without the necessary paperwork, anyway. But that’s the thing with fantasy. Reality doesn’t have to get in the way.
Was the security guard real?
Yeah. I should have known that Creepo would have people at the airport. What with all his scams and everything I forgot that he had some legitimate businesses too. One of them was a security company. I found out later that he didn’t own it himself, not entirely, but he had a share in it. That pretend cop was one of his goons, one of the boys. But . . .
[Pause]
But what?
He wouldn’t have shot me. I mean, I know I had the gun and everything . . .
At the airport?
I know. I just didn’t think but I’m sure Creepo’s goon wouldn’t have shot me. It was too risky. No matter what Creepo told him, he couldn’t have known for certain that I had the gun in my backpack. They were just trying to scare me. And boy did it work.
And that train. The last train to Kathmandu. Was that real?
Doesn’t seem like it, does it? But it was. I heard more about it later, from my friend Cinderella. And I saw it again a few times. It was surreal. A train full of shadows. Of living ghosts. On a journey to nowhere.