by Iain Ryan
A fat bearded elf appears on the other side. He nods.
‘Calm now,’ says the nun.
The whole antechamber shakes.
‘What horror is—’
‘Calm,’ snaps the nun.
The floor emits a loud grinding din and the entire room begins to rise. This is surely the drug because a floating room such as this cannot exist in the human world.
‘This will take time,’ says the nun.
She carefully sits in her robes. She closes her eyes.
The fear and the drug keep you alert. What could be minutes pass like hours until the room slows and the ceiling comes to rest against a hard surface.
The nun opens her eyes. She points to the iron gate. ‘You go through there alone. May the afterworld remain vacant of you.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘Do you seek safety?’ She pushes you. ‘Go, now. And, in future, try not to be a blight on the world.’
You draw your sword and step through the gate into a red hallway. The hallway opens out onto a space vast enough to occupy the entire circumference of the tower. There are no torches or candles. Only the drug allows you to see. In the centre of the room, there is a bed and a chair – a bulky piece of furniture, slightly raised, a throne – and on the throne, in the darkness, sits a figure.
‘Rohank?’
The figure raises a hand. ‘It is I.’ His voice is like the vile croak of a toad. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m without name.’
‘Ahhhh. Come closer then.’
The details of Rohank come into focus as you approach. He is completely naked. A two-score man with a pale short beard and the arms and torso of a soldier. His eyes shine like jewels. Two horrible pink sparks.
‘Of the spiral,’ he says. ‘Interesting. Strange to see one such as yourself this deep into Emery.’
‘The spiral?’
‘The tattoo on the other side of you. Do not play with me, barbarian. Do you remember receiving these markings?’
‘No. That’s why I’m here. I’ve been told you can help restore memories.’
‘Have you now? I can’t mend you. Only the spiral mends your sort. But I guess I can help. You must need it if you’ve come all this way to see me. I take it the sister tested you.’
‘She asked her questions.’
Rohank lowers his head. ‘And you answered?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a lie.’
You can’t argue it. ‘Something answered with my voice.’
‘OK, then,’ he says.
Without warning, a disturbing sensation wraps itself around your body like a gust of hot wind. The room tightens. To your horror, you watch as an orb of light emerges from Rohank’s chest, morphing, stretching out, becoming a pulsing beam. Raw terror blasts through your veins but your body is paralysed as the beam wraps itself around you.
You rise into the air.
This is surely the end of this life.
Driven and burning.
To rise beyond …
What is this?
Rohank speaks with demonic clarity, the sound like a spear through your eye, Thee of suicide, thee of unlord, open thyself to me. I can see you, inside you, staring through.
‘What is this terror I seek?’ you say but you are not in control.
The room begins to strobe.
Light sparks.
Red.
White.
Red.
White.
Re—
Total darkness.
Fading glare.
Heat.
Sand.
Wind.
Flying over a desert now, past the walled city into the night and down into dark blood-red sand and through it to passages of coded language and numerology and through further to the arteries of some subterranean world and then, into a lake of cold dark water.
Black water.
Endlessness.
Rohank screams into your mind:
Go under.
Dora. Dora. Dora.
This is your heart, barbarian! Inherit your life!
Dora. Dora. Dora.
Your truth, your memories, your history, your life, it is not of this world and this is the portal.
GO UNDER!
GO TO DORA!
Rohank laughs, clearly insane. His voice echoes around the room.
Speak clearly to Dora, barbarian. Speak clear—
‘The …’
What!
‘The spiral’s end,’ you hear yourself say.
ERMA
I stake out Sam Hell even though I suspect my dictaphone isn’t in there and it isn’t worth risking my life for anyhow. I tell myself I’m collecting data, conducting research until the police call me back. I want to have something substantial to tell them. And I feel it in my gut: there are answers over there in the basement.
I spy on Sam Hell at different times of the day and night and log observational data. I build up a picture of how the street looks across a twenty-four-hour period. I conduct an ethnography of this shit hole.
I spot trends.
Roberto Agrioli starts his day at the club every morning. Roberto arrives in a clapped-out car – a tan Holden Commodore, 766 VAL – and parks in a rear dock, taking the back entrance into the club. A woman – always the same woman – steps out at eight thirty and heads up to the McDonald’s in the mall where she buys breakfast for him and brings it back. Every day, same routine.
The other men I saw in the club – the three guys dressed in black shirts who threw me out – they’re the bouncers. I’m yet to see them all rostered on together but it probably happens on the weekends. Each weeknight thus far, one of them is on the door with one of the dancers helping out.
The club does a brisk trade. It’s a downmarket crowd but not too tragic. Lots of single men, lots of older men. No couples. No groups. They turn away bucks parties and football teams. Sam Hell is on a steady course and trying to stay that way. Maintaining a low profile.
The only surprise is who I spot heading in there one bright Tuesday afternoon: Craig. He’s in and out in about five minutes while the woman from the house – Carrie – double-parks in a bus zone out front. Neither of them look super excited to be running this particular errand. Craig almost makes me as they peel up Brunswick Street. His eyes catch mine. I duck into a side street. Wait a beat. Step back out and see the car idling at the lights.
I can read the number plate. I write it down.
They drive away.
The rest of the time, I try to appear normal, untroubled. I go to the Centre. Take lunch with Kanika and listen to her stories. She has a new boyfriend. He’s an Althusser guy. Really laying it on: smokes a fucking pipe, tells her he hates his father. I don’t give an opinion. I want to care, to help even, but everything sits behind a buffer I can’t turn off. It’s not a choice anymore.
At the gym, I’m strong and moving well. My wrists ache for an hour every morning but my cross is really coming along. One night in sparring, I catch one of the trainers with it and he laughs and says, ‘Lady, you’re getting fast.’ It’s true. I guess a near-death experience is good for something.
What it hasn’t solved is my HR problem. The UQ unit overseeing my case starts calling me so often I have to answer. A man tells me that they’ve set a date for a ‘hearing’. It’s just another meeting but I need to come prepared to argue a defence. He reads out a bunch of instructions and policy numbers. A week from today, he says. I don’t write any of it down. It’s all pointless detail. Minutia.
It’s Wednesday night. My apartment is abnormally quiet. I live beside a tall, eight-storey apartment block that overshadows my building, and it’s loud, even on a weeknight, and it’s New Farm so there’s always foot traffic as well. Wealthy neighbours taking a stroll after late dinners, students fresh off the bus, girls on smoke breaks from the halfway shelter down the road. There’s always something going on. But not tonight. Tonight, it’s so quiet that the quiet wakes me up
.
My phone rings. The landline, in the living room.
I let it go.
Harlowe stands up on the end of the bed and watches the empty doorway.
The answering machine clicks in.
Archibald Moder’s tinny voice echoes out:
—isn’t it? I think it really appealed to the young man in me. Role-playing games are quite open. A player can do a lot with their character, everything from naming them, writing their history, their backstory and so on, through to embodying their mannerisms during the game. I played with a woman once who insisted on playing men, affecting a gruff voice, sitting with her legs splayed and all of that sort of business. Have you ever played one of these games, Miss Wasserman?
It’s not my sort of thing.
No other role-playing then? Somewhere else, perhaps?
No.
Hmmm. I think we all play roles, Miss Wasserman. It’s what I could never understand about the eighties panic, all that media attention and so forth. All the moral arbiters were so scared of losing the youth to fantasy. But is it such a fantasy? To act as someone else? To pretend as a means to collaborate with others? To cope? Isn’t that—
Beep.
I run to it, play it back. The audio quality is the same as last time. A recording of a recording. But this time someone is moving around on the call. Not Moder, not Jenny, this is someone else on the other end of the phone, holding a device. The recording phases in and out, louder and softer. On the line, I can hear someone snap the audio off before hanging up. A cold flush of blood flows down my neck and into my arms.
That’s the fucking dictaphone.
4.03 a.m. Pre-dawn.
Panicking.
Screw it.
I call Detective Edwina at the police station and get some lackey instead. I rant into the receiver like a madwoman.
Five minutes later, Edwina calls me back. ‘Wanna drop by the station?’ she says, tired and bored. ‘I’m rostered on.’
The Valley police station is an old stone building on the outskirts of the precinct. I wait in the foyer. This place looks like some relic from the colonies: the exact sort of thing every Aboriginal teenager dreads, no doubt. A couple of years back, the cops who worked out of this monument rounded up young black troublemakers and drove them out to the suburbs where they dumped them, sans shoes. It was a warning. The cops who did it are still on the job. They could be here this morning. That’s Brisbane for you.
I wait on a bench. On the wall opposite there’s a message board full of flyers. Most are Crime Stoppers bills but there’s a large picture of a handgun sitting on some old paint tins and the title: ‘Any Illegal Firearm Is a Terrible Crime Waiting to Happen’. Another reads, ‘Be Security Smart This Weekend’.
Christ.
Good advice.
Along one edge of the message board, there’s a column of ‘Missing Persons’ notices. Mostly men. A lot of young men. A wash of hard stares and bad hair. They all look four-fifths psychotic but there’s one guy whose face looks uncannily familiar. Something I can’t—
‘Miss Bridges?’
A thin man in a uniform stands behind the counter. He waves me over to a side door. I get up and stand waiting beside it.
‘Damn. Ya fit aren’t ya, Miss Bridges?’ says the cop behind the counter. ‘Hey, Linda. Come look at this girl’s arms.’
Another cop puts her head around. They both give me the once-over. I’m in my gym sweats.
‘You ever think about becoming a cop, Miss Bridges?’ says the policewoman.
‘No. And it’s Doctor Bridges, if we’re going with the Oxford pleasantries.’
The door emits a harsh buzz.
‘In you go,’ says the policewoman.
I shove the door. It’s heavy and opens with a loud click. There’s a hallway behind it. Detective Edwina stands in a doorway halfway along. ‘In here,’ she says.
It’s an open plan office. No privacy, but there’s only one other cop in here tonight. Edwina’s desk is across the room and it’s a pigsty. Towers of files and books, piles of food wrappers and half-empty water bottles, dozens of loose-leaf pages pinned to the cubicle walls. Half the desk is taken up with an ancient printer, a big boxy thing.
‘I’ve been meaning to call you,’ Edwina says. ‘So, what’s up?’
‘Sure. I told the guy on the phone. Did they tell you?’
‘Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Something about a prank call. And you think, what?’
‘I think it’s related.’
‘Related to what? The break-in at your place last year?’
Is that what they’re calling it now?
I look at my hands. ‘They’re leaving recordings of her on my machine.’
‘Who?’
‘Jenny. The girl who shot me.’
‘OK. So, tape recordings.’
‘They’re from the work Jenny was doing for me. She was interviewing people. Someone is calling me and playing the interview recordings down the line.’
‘Are they threatening?’
‘Yeah, it’s scaring the shit out of me.’
‘Right. But what’s actually said? Do they threaten you personally?’
‘Nothing’s said. It’s just a recording. I can play you one.’
‘No, that’s all right.’
‘I brought it down with me.’
‘No, it’s fine. Look, I can’t really do much until they threaten you. You don’t have caller ID, I’m guessing?’
‘It doesn’t come up. There’s some other stuff. I found out Jenny was stripping. She worked in a club up the road called Sam Hell. I think that’s where she got the gun.’
Edwina purses her lips. ‘But we’ve got the gun. And stripping’s not illegal. You’re not snooping around, are you? I told you not to do that. I told you that last time. I definitely told you that.’
‘I know but that fucking … that recording they’re playing is important to me. This can’t be legal. It’s harassment.’
‘It’s something,’ says Edwina. ‘It could be anyone. You have enemies at work? Friends of Jenny’s? Does anyone know you’re looking for this stuff?’
‘Everyone knows I’m looking for it.’
An uncomfortable smile creeps across her face. ‘There’s not much I can do. Not yet. My advice is, go home and change your phone number and see if that works. I’m pretty sure it will. Now, is there anything else?’
‘Jenny’s boss, at the strip club. He’s one of the Agriolis.’
Edwina runs her hands down her thighs. ‘OK. And?’
‘Well, that’s important, right?’
‘Not really. They own clubs all over the Valley. Listen, Erma, I know this is tough to hear but here’s the thing. We have to move on as well. It’s not just you. The fact that someone might have given your friend a gun isn’t really new information. I can’t do anything with that at the moment, OK?’
‘You said you were going to look and see if any of Jenny’s stuff was here. Did you do that at least?’
She stands up. ‘I looked. There’s nothing here. Let’s get you out of here. Go home, change your number. See what happens.’
She takes me back to the hall and yells, ‘Davie? Door.’
On the way out, I stop by the missing persons wall and look at the message board again. That one poster jumps out. The same guy.
Something about him.
A nondescript young white dude.
Blue eyes.
Short hair.
Could be one of a dozen of my students. Two dozen.
His poster reads, ‘Police are appealing for public assistance to help locate missing man Andrew Michael Besnick. Mr Besnick, 20, is known to frequent St Lucia, West End and Fortitude Valley, and in July of 2004 he advised family that he was moving from Highgate Hill to New Farm. He has had no contact with his family since that time and was reported missing in September.’
St Lucia. That’s the campus.
Student.
I inch closer. I glance
around. The cops at the reception desk are hunched over, looking into a computer screen, eyes averted.
I rip the poster down.
Hit the doors.
It’s cold out. An empty Wickham Street. Light on the horizon. A new morning.
We have to move on.
They don’t want to deal with this.
Can’t.
Won’t.
It’d be nice to have choices.
In 1984, Bantam cashed in on the success of the Choose Your Own Adventure novels with a new series: Time Machine. There are two major differences. Firstly, Time Machine presents a type of YA historical fiction. You can travel back to the ice age, to the American Revolution, the Spanish Inquisition and so on. Second, in Time Machine the stories all have a fixed ending. One ending. The reader works to find this conclusion, encountering dead ends and correcting decisions along the way. It’s interesting that branching narrative evolved towards something fixed, towards something closed and limiting, rather than the other way around.
As a kid, the Time Machine books were always my favourites. Sail With the Pirates. Wild West Rider. Secret of the Knights. I felt smarter having read them. And I loved the rules each book contained. Getting the reader through these books required a bit of scaffolding, hence the same four rules were outlined in the introduction to each book:
1.Don’t kill anyone.
2.Don’t change history.
3.Don’t take anyone with you when you jump through time.
4.Follow the instructions.
Funny, as rules to live by – as an adult – they’re not bad. You could do worse. But in a series completely fixated on course correction – all to get to that satisfying, singular conclusion – the reader absolutely has to break rule number two and change history. At least your own history anyway. You spend the whole book reversing your mistakes, which is a beautiful lie, isn’t it? No wonder they sold so many copies.
This isn’t even my main critique of the Time Machine books, or the genre as a whole. My main problem is that these books force an account of you. We’re talking about fictional novels that, in a quiet, sneaky way, dominate you. These novels interpellate you. Do you want to correct your mistakes? Then be the hero these novels want you to be and don’t deviate from the story.