Mnemo's Memory

by David Versace

  He was still upset after the meeting with all our parents. His father asked him to stop making the documentaries. Nathan argued with his father, which I don't think he had ever done before.

  Despite his nerves, he completes his recounting of the details of each murder without pause. The camera follows him on a wayward route down the street, checking in on a series of numbered plastic markers. Each is a memorial to an unlucky bystander picked off in Lidija Hummel's branch of the 1893 rampage.

  Michelle falls in step alongside him. Her glance to camera, no more than a blink, is heavy with emotion. The rebuke that followed Jan's stunt was still fresh in our minds, as was the implied threat that our grade would be withheld. Michelle does not care to hide her anger.

  Nathan arrives at a patch of dappled shade beneath a stand of thin white gum trees. In two upturned palms, he raises a flat, curved blade covered in wriggling marks like the scribbled bark patterns behind him.

  The Other Girl stands beside him, her tied-back hair and oversized shirt unaffected by a light breeze that ruffles Nathan and Michelle. She frowns and often glances away to one side as though she is waiting for a late bus.

  "What sparked the Wisdom Street massacre, we don't know for sure," Michelle says. "When Lidija Hummel hanged herself from the branches just above us, she took the answers with her. None of the other participants in the bloody all-in brawl outlived her by more than an hour."

  "Eyewitness accounts agree that a strangely-shaped blade changed possession several times among the Wisdom Street killers. Some historians hold that an argument broke out over its ownership. The suggestion remains unconfirmed and no such weapon was ever found. Until now." Nathan holds a knife, which I believed until that moment to be a replica.

  As Michelle takes over to recount the bizarre circumstances that drew seven previously unconnected townsfolk into unexplained mutual butchery, a man in a grey suit with an emerald green tie joins them in the shot.

  He listens to their presentation with an expectant look. He does not appear perturbed that neither has acknowledged him.

  The Other Girl's pinched face registers hostility. She pulls at her hair with some ferocity, retwisting her scrunchie like a sailor securing loose ropes in a storm. The man in the grey suit ignores her.

  As the historical presentation ends, the man in the grey suit leans towards Nathan and whispers something in his ear.

  Nathan looks at the knife and runs his finger along the edge, where a dark red smear appears. The man in the grey suit smiles like an encouraging teacher.

  Nathan raises his eyes and looks into Michelle's as if he sees her for the first time. Michelle is looking at the knife and at the blood dripping from Nathan's fingers.

  The Other Girl touches the man in the grey suit on the shoulder. He reacts, shaking his head at her without turning, a disdainful dismissal.

  The Other Girl squeezes, the coil of bangles on her wrist shivering against one another. Smoke or perhaps steam curls from the collar and cuffs of the grey suit.

  Michelle swears and snatches the audio bud from her ear. She slaps a hand against the side of her head, grinding her palm against her ear.

  The man in the grey suit disappears. The Other Girl falls to her knees and coughs. Michelle's equipment does not pick up the sound of her coughing.

  Nathan puts the knife down. He looks at his hand and squeals in pain. "Oh hell. I need stitches."

  Jan and Greg never showed up for the recording. When they recorded their introductions at school the next week, Greg told Michelle that they had been grounded by their parents. Jan told me that they lost the address details.

  I don't know why they bothered lying to us.

  #

  Excerpt from Episode Eight: 'The Farm' (episode not broadcast)

  I have tried every trick I know to clean up the footage from the hay shed. I have run a stabilisation filter. I have cut the worst bits. I even tried centring each image frame by hand. It's no good. I couldn't stop my hands from shaking when we recorded.

  The cut on Greg's forehead is deep but the flow has stopped. Except for the bite on his shoulder, his clothes are more torn up than his skin. He is sitting on the hay-strewn floor of the shed, legs folded, holding his foot with both hands. He stares at everything with a bewildered fury held in check by shock. He says nothing. He does not understand what has happened.

  Jan is so pale her eyelids and lips are almost blue. "Charles?" she says, to camera of course. "Charles?" She still wears her head microphone, carefully raising and lowering the pickup arm every time she speaks. "Charles, where is he?"

  Michelle grabs Jan's bare arm and squeezes until a halo of red skin surrounds her hand. "He went to get help," she says, flat and merciless. "He went because you told him to. You selfish—"

  Jan slaps her hand away. "Me? We wouldn't be here if not for your stupid club. Think about that."

  Michelle drops to her knees and starts unscrewing the boom stand into its component metal rods. "Sounds like your problem to me. I don't remember inviting you."

  She shakes her head. Her hair has grown out since the first episode. I didn't remember that at the time, but now the contrast is striking. Her flat curls have stretched and dangle, reaching for her shoulders. Her skin is too dark to show signs of shock. But then, she shows no other signs of shock either. She looks to the camera. "We can't broadcast this footage, you know. It'd mess up the court case."

  "What court case?" says Jan. "He's going to kill us. He'll kill us and he'll get away with it because he always has."

  "Speak for yourself," says Michelle. She hands one of the dense metal tubes toward the camera; my hand extends forward to claim it. "This is just to keep the dogs off, okay?"

  We can hear the baying in the distance, getting closer. I think Greg might have managed to kill one of the dogs, or at least hurt it badly. There are at least six others, not to mention Ponsford himself.

  The camera pans around the interior of the feed shed. Hay bales are stacked ceiling-high against the corrugated aluminium interior walls.

  The Other Girl is not with us, which must mean she's outside with Nathan. I think that's where she's been for a long time.

  "Why did we come back here?" I reframe on Greg, who has raised his hand to ask the question. I freeze the frame to get a better look at what I saw a second later. The floor's discolouration is obscured by leg movements and patterns of dirt and hay. Did I really see it on my own or did I have help? I still can't tell.

  "Get up. Get him up." My own voice sounds tinny and hollow. Michelle half lifts, half drags Greg out of the way. I set the camera at floor level. My feet appear, kicking a clearing in the straw, stomping to sound out which parts are concrete and which parts are a grey vinyl sheet camouflaging an iron manhole cover.

  The Other Girl brought us here. Nathan claimed it was all his own idea. Maybe he was just trying to protect her.

  "Help me with this." Michelle takes one side of the metal ring handle and together we lift the manhole cover. The lid flops open with a crash and the two of us look inside.

  I drop to my knees and vomit on the straw. Michelle's legs buckle a little but she keeps her feet. Jan can't resist. She comes over to look. Her cry is cut off with a thick sound as Michelle's hand claps over her mouth.

  There is a crash at the shed door. "Let me in," calls Nathan. More shakes. The footage of Michelle reaching out to lift away her improvised door bar is unwatchable as I unsteadily retrieve the camera.

  Nathan falls through the door, holding Greg's mobile telephone. The Other Girl steps through behind him, looking like she is queued up for a Duran Duran concert.

  "Did you—?" Jan's voice is guarded to the point of despair. She lost hope quicker than you would expect.

  Nathan nods, catching his breath. He is not a good runner. Another reason Greg would have been preferable. "I got a signal near the ridge. I called the police. Greg's father, too." He bites his bottom lip and shrugs when Greg does not respond.

  Michel
le gets it first. "Where's the goat farmer?"

  "He's busy with his dogs. But he's nearly done." The dogs' barks have reached a primal ferocity. Their chorus is getting closer, but contains fewer voices.

  Jan starts turning to each of us. "He's coming. He's coming. Why did we come back here?"

  The Other Girl kneels by the open manhole, looking down with an apologetic expression. I didn't take the shot until much later, but it's no mystery what held her gaze. One of the ruined gelatinous faces staring back from empty sockets wears braces over shrunken gums and a green scrunchie in its matted thicket of hair.

  Greg's mouth moves but his expression does not change. "You killed his goats. That's why he's angry at us. You killed his goats."

  Nathan shrugs. He did and didn't. He was not in the driver's seat then, any more than he was when he threw himself into a creek to wash the blood and gore away.

  I'm the first to notice what he's missing. "Where's the knife?"

  "I gave it to him," Nathan replies.

  "You what?"

  "I had to, otherwise he wouldn't have murdered his dogs."

  There's a final helpless yelp from somewhere nearby and then the noise steadies into a ceaseless monotone mutter of swearing and violent threats. The sound comes closer. The shed door thumps once, shaking the whole structure.

  Michelle takes up a spot beside the door. She has a short metal pole in each hand. She gives the Other Girl a hard look and I think it's the first time she's ever seen her. "You got us into this, chicky-babe. You got what you wanted, now you do right by us, hey?"

  Nathan and the Other Girl reach out together for the door handle and pull it open.

  The goat farmer is there, eyes wide and mouth dripping red, holding Nathan's knife like a short sword. In person Bryan Ponsford was just in his blood-soaked working clothes. On film, he's wearing a grey suit with an emerald tie.

  He sees the Other Girl and he takes a half-step back. Michelle slams his wrist with her improvised club, hard enough to break skin and bone. She put her weight into it.

  The knife drops in front of Nathan and the Other Girl. They kick it across the floor into the manhole.

  Ponsford howls unintelligibly and grabs at Nathan. The Other Girl grabs his arm and stops it from reaching Nathan's throat.

  Michelle hits him again, this time on the back of his head. Ponsford's hat spins off into the straw. Ponsford takes one more step and collapses forward. His face bounces off the rim of the manhole. He stops moving, his face hanging into the hole like he's vomiting into a toilet.

  Michelle says, "Let's go now."

  For some reason Jan picked that moment to start screaming so I stopped recording then.

  #

  Excerpt from Episode Nine: 'Final Report' (episode not broadcast)

  When we filmed the final episode two nights ago, Jan wanted everyone to sit in the same places. She gave up when Greg pointedly refused to surrender his crutches and sit down.

  Her webcast-host face is gone, replaced by serious-student face. It is no less insincere. In comparison to the footage I was looking at a minute ago, her transformation is unsettling.

  "We've had an amazing semester," she says. The frame tightens on her face; I wanted to get through this in one take and I didn't want anyone else's expression to distract attention from her. "The Wattle Creek Spook Hunters have looked Ashburnham's darkness right in the eye and brought it into the light. We're so proud that you've been able to join us on this journey. Your emails of support and encouragement have kept us going in the past few weeks. I wish I could thank every one of you in person."

  "This series started as an extracurricular project for credit towards our final Year 10 certificate. But it's become more than that. And I'm not just saying that because Ms Lautner abandoned her teaching responsibilities and convinced the principal to cancel our bonus marks. That doesn't matter anymore because the great news is that our last episode had over seventy-five thousand downloads. You banded together to create a real community. You've all rallied behind us and I know that this is just the start of something big and important. I just know that when the legal injunctions on our latest episode come down and you finally get to see it, you're going to lose it. You guys can't get enough of Spook Hunters and I love you for that."

  The camera pulls back as she speaks. Nobody is looking at anybody. Nobody says anything with their eyes. When Jan finishes, she leads an infectious round of applause that nobody catches.

  Greg nods once and settles his crutches into place. He turns his back on Jan and makes a painstaking, lumbering circuit towards the front door.

  "Where are you going?" Jan seems too surprised to be angry.

  "Coach says I have to keep up physical therapy if I want to start training." With a little shuffling manoeuvre to get the crutches out of the way, he opens the door.

  Jan tries to save the moment. "Don't you want to tell the viewers about what's coming up in Season Two?"

  "I can get graduation credit from footy. Can't get anything I want here." Greg closes the door behind him and for once Jan's media presence doesn't rush to fill the vacuum.

  "I'm gone too," says Michelle, picking up her bag.

  That snaps Jan out of it. "Fine, you bugger off on walkabout or whatever. We can do this without you."

  Michelle stands, breathing quietly and holding herself very still, for a long time. She says, "I'll see most of you at school on Monday. Good night."

  I pause the shot just as the camera pans past Jan's face. Her flaring nostrils look out of place at the centre of a cracked mask of bland good cheer.

  I admit it. I enjoyed the moment. Maybe I'm not as good a person as I tell myself.

  I restart the footage.

  The pan resumes to the floor, where Nathan sits cross-legged. To his left, the Other Girl wears a sweet smile and, for the first time in our acquaintance, she has changed out of her old clothes into stonewash jeans and a Spin Doctors t-shirt.

  Nathan puts an arm around the Other Girl and says, "This is Sally. Well, that's what we're calling her right now and I'm sure she'd let us know if she minded. I don't know if you see Sally. Not everybody does. But she's been with us for a while and she's planning to stick around from now on, helping us to help other people."

  Jan looks at Nathan like he's on fire and ignoring it. "Who are you talking—?"

  Nathan goes on. "We have a debt to repay to Sally. The first thing we're going to do is find out her real name. Who she was."

  Nathan looks to camera. His replacement glasses are so fine they almost vanish from his face. "We're going to make another change next season. Together. All right? Together or not at all."

  The picture wobbles just a little bit. I don't intend to fix it.

  I walk around and take my place next to Nathan and Sally.

  See you next season.

  'Seven Excerpts' was my stab at translating the shaky-camera-with-night-vision-filters ghost-hunting subgenre of reality television to the written word. If me and my high school friends were growing up now, I am 100% sure we would have created something like this in a bid for YouTube stardom. Though I'm not sure how we'd have fared with an Australian country town this drenched in murder, monsters and the supernatural.

  'Seven Excerpts from Season One' was first published in At the Edge (Paper Road Publishing 2016), edited by Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray.

  Gorilla Dentists

  The old saying goes, "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

  But as telepresence technology evolved from primitive videoconferencing, through phase after high-fidelity phase of virtual reality, to remote capture of domestic synthdroids, it was increasingly the case that nobody needed to know who anyone was.

  Take the case of Ambrose Brook, who pioneered the practise of home dentistry in the mid-21st century. Brook, an unusually gifted dental surgeon, suffered from a range of severe social phobias and anxieties which limited his contact with patients.

  The dentist's frustrating set
back coincided with the emergence of a consumer trend popular among his erstwhile clientele in the upper-middle class: Takahashi Robotics' Silverback model of household synthdroid.

  Silverbacks were full-size replicas of Western gorillas, programmed for home maintenance and security duties. Like other fifth-generation synthdroids, the Silverback executed its routine functions independently and without the need for supervision. Though of course it was the charming novelty of watching a half-tonne primate washing dishes, pushing a vacuum cleaner and unclogging roof gutters which drove the model's surging popularity.

  It was a feature new to fifth gens which caught Brook's attention. Silverbacks could be remote-operated by skilled technicians to perform more complex tasks.

  Initially these were restricted to security operations; when a paranoid householder hit an alarm, their home security provider could have one of its on-staff counter-terrorism specialists remote-jack the domestic synthdroid, whereupon it suddenly became a Silverback with fifteen years of military situational awareness training and hand to hand combat skills.

  Brook saw an opportunity to expand into the same market. He underwent intensive remote capture training. After honing his technique by treating family members and close friends, he found in the Silverback's high definition sensors and state of the art controls a greatly improved precision to his telemanipulation skills. He also devised a "home dentistry" kit of disposable tools and supplies which could be shipped at minimal cost to the patient's residence.

  To his delight, he found he did not even require an assistant – the Silverback's prehensile feet were so easily adapted to selecting tools, applying suction and holding out cups for the patient to rinse with, it was like having a third hand. If Brook could think of an action, the household Silverback he logged into could perform it.