by Paul Collins
Everyone shifted in their seats.
Detective Barnes said, ‘Both times? She died twice?’
Milo nodded. ‘She was asleep, but not the dead “putting your cat to sleep” kind of sleep, just the normal kind. She woke up when I shook her and then she saw me and then she screamed and then she dropped dead.’
Kosta muttered something that sounded like, ‘I’m starting to feel envious.’
‘Then what did you do, Milo?’
‘I administered CPR, like on ER.’ Milo formed his hands as if applying compressions, ‘One-two-three-four-five-breathe . . .’ He inflated his cheeks and blew out long and slowly.
‘And then what happened?’
‘She woke up.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘What happened next, Milo?’
‘Oh, we had a chat. She said she’d just met her Uncle Joseph who’d been dead fifty years. She was very happy. She said she forgave me for murdering her.’
Detective Barnes smiled for the first time. ‘She did, did she? That was nice of her.’
‘She was very nice. But I think she was in a hurry.’
‘To do what?’ asked Kosta.
‘To go back and see her uncle again.’
Kosta’s eyes went stony and flat. She leaned forward. ‘Are you telling us she wanted to die?’
Detective Barnes cleared his throat. ‘So then Mrs Appleby told you about the blood, right?’ Milo nodded. ‘And then what happened?’
‘I think she was about to tell me where to find my mum when she died again.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘She couldn’t breathe properly so I gave her some of my asthma medicine.’ He pulled the asthma pump out of his pocket. When he’d arrived at the police station one man had taken it from him but another had returned it a few minutes later with an apology.
‘So you’re saying you tried to save her?’
Milo nodded again, sadly this time. ‘It didn’t work. I think she was allergic to my asthma medicine. I think that’s what killed her. Are you going to put me in prison for the rest of my life?’
‘Have you used that asthma pump since then, Milo?’
‘Yes.’
Detective Barnes opened a drawer, removed a plastic bag from a box of them, and what looked like a large cotton bud in a container. He took the bud, ran it around the edge of the asthma pump’s mouthpiece, dropped the swab inside the bag, sealed it, and handed it to Kosta. ‘We’d better get the lab to run it against the old lady’s DNA. I doubt we’ll find any but it’s worth a try.’
Milo spent a very scary and uncomfortable night in a holding cell. His dad came to see him just before midnight but said little. Mr Chrysler seemed shell-shocked. In the morning Milo was arraigned on manslaughter charges. The judge, noting Milo’s age and that he had exams coming up, released Milo into his father’s custody, and – as per the new juvenile fast-tracking programme – set the court hearing for just over two weeks time.
Detective Kosta, who’d given evidence at the arraignment, took Milo aside afterwards and made it quite clear that Milo would be ‘going away’ for a very long time. When Milo asked where, Kosta had grinned. ‘One of those homes for dangerous boys – the kind with big fences topped with barbed wire. Just the place for a little yobbo like you.’
She walked off whistling happily. It was late that evening by the time Mr Chrysler was allowed to take Milo home.
His dad didn’t speak to him as he signed documents and filled out forms; indeed, he was all hunched up and tight, as if he was expecting an attack.
On the way home in the car his dad thawed a little. He said he didn’t believe Milo had deliberately meant to hurt Mrs Appleby and that he had been hoping Milo would only be charged with breaking and entering. Milo nearly pointed out that actually it had been ‘entering and breaking’ (after all, he’d busted the vase stand after he got inside the bedroom) but in his head he suddenly saw his mother’s hand, held up in that familiar gesture, so he said nothing.
His father sighed. ‘But my God, Toby . . . manslaughter! What are we going to do?’
Milo had been wondering about that himself.
At home, Mr Chrysler got a beer from the fridge and sat stiffly in front of the TV. He made only one comment. ‘What’s going to happen to you, Toby?’
Milo very much wanted to go to bed but he’d had an idea on the way back in the car after he’d heard a film review on the radio about a cop who talked to dead people.
‘What’s a séance?’
Mr Chrysler looked up. A moment later he smacked his forehead. ‘You don’t give up, do you, Toby? Don’t you get how serious this is? You could be locked up, you could go to jail! At the very least, a juvenile detention centre. Do you understand that?’
Milo said nothing.
His dad sighed again. ‘I know what you’re thinking, so forget it.’
Milo felt a touch of panic. Could his dad read his mind?
‘You’re thinking that if you could talk to Mrs Appleby “on the other side” she might finish that sentence.’ Mr Chrysler had been regaled, in great detail and in Milo’s presence, by Detective Barnes as to the afternoon’s events. Mr Chrysler shook his head. ‘Jesus, Tobes.’
Milo looked down at his feet.
‘You’re grounded until the hearing. You go to school and come home. Nothing else. You don’t go to the corner shop without asking me first, do you hear?’
‘What about afterwards?’ said Milo.
His dad looked down at his hands. They seemed to be shaking slightly. ‘There may not be an afterwards.’ He looked up at Milo, his eyes shining. ‘Do you understand, Tobes?’
Milo nodded.
‘Do you really, Toby? Do you really?’
Milo shuffled his feet and nodded. His father told him to go to bed. Head down, Milo went upstairs and quietly phoned Fluke who seemed surprised that Milo wasn’t on his way to a high-security prison like Sing-Sing (which actually sounded like a friendly place).
Milo kept his voice low. ‘Mrs Appleby said you have to help me find my mum.’
‘Okay. Nothing ventured, nothing sprained.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Paste makes waste. When do we start?’
‘Tonight. We don’t have much time.’
Clarity begins at home
Milo watched Fluke climb onto the brick wall in the backyard and from there scramble onto the roof of the back porch, before crawling through the bedroom window.
Fluke’s eyes started darting about as soon as he was inside.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Milo. One of the things he liked about Fluke was that his friend frequently volunteered what was going through his mind without Milo having to decipher complex facial expressions. When he didn’t, Milo felt quite comfortable asking.
‘I’m nervous.’
‘My dad’s asleep,’ said Milo. ‘He never wakes up.’
‘Okay.’
‘Did you bring it?’
Fluke nodded and removed his school backpack. Five minutes later they were squatting on the floor, a Ouija board laid out between them. ‘Not so hard,’ said Fluke. ‘Just put your fingertips on the edge of the glass lightly, like this . . .’ Fluke rested his fingers on the rim of the small upside-down glass. ‘Try and move it now.’
Milo reached out and shifted the glass easily beneath Fluke’s fingers even though the other boy kept them in constant contact with the glass. ‘See?’ said Fluke.
They had to stop at one point when Mr Chrysler got up to go to the toilet.
‘The wardrobe!’ Milo hissed while he dived under the doona.
When the house had fallen silent again Fluke crept out. ‘I thought you said he never woke up!’
Milo said, ‘Once he goes to bed he never wakes up before I go to sleep. After I’m asleep, how do I know what he does?’
Fluke pursed his lips, then nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Clarity begins at home.’
They resumed the séance.
<
br /> Milo had taken some time to formulate his question and so they’d just practised for awhile as Fluke said they needed to warm up anyway.
‘You ready?’ Fluke asked.
Milo nodded.
‘Ask your question. Keep it simple.’
Milo took a deep breath. ‘Mrs Appleby, could you tell me what street I should look in for my mother?’
Fluke nodded appreciatively. ‘Good question,’ he whispered. ‘Now concentrate.’
Milo kept his gaze glued to the glass. His fingertips sat lightly on its rim and he held his breath. He noticed that Fluke was holding his, too.
But nothing happened. He reviewed the question in his mind to see if it was too difficult but he couldn’t think of a better way of phrasing it. He was about to suggest Fluke ask a question in case Mrs Appleby had changed her mind about forgiving him, when suddenly the glass moved – all by itself.
Milo felt an electrifying thrill of fear shoot through him. Mrs Appleby was talking to him!
The glass circled the board three times, moving quite quickly. Milo had a hard time keeping up with it. Twice his fingers lost contact, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Mrs Appleby was clearly in an enthusiastic mood.
All of a sudden, the glass came to a stop. Both boys looked at one another.
Then, very slowly, the glass moved out from the centre towards the ring of letters. It hesitated a moment near the ‘C’ then went decisively to the ‘O’ then it looped around and went back to the ‘O’ – Milo wasn’t sure if that was a mistake or a double-O – then it slid across to the ‘R’ before darting across to the ‘D’. Although puzzled and even a little disappointed, Milo didn’t let go. In quick succession the glass spelled out six more letters: ‘I’ then ‘N’ then ‘A’ then ‘T’ then ‘E’ then ‘S’, after which it moved back to the centre of the board and stopped.
Fluke’s eyes were shining. ‘Wow. It worked!’
‘Did it?’
‘I’m excited, aren’t you?’
Milo frowned, decided he was, despite a lingering disappointment. ‘Yeah, me too.’
But Fluke must have noticed something. ‘What’s wrong?’
Milo shrugged. ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like the name of a street. And Mrs Appleby was about to tell me to go see someplace.’
Fluke shrugged. ‘Now she’s telling you “coordinates”. Strife is a numbers game.’
Milo’s face fell. ‘But what does it mean?’ But even as he said it, he knew the answer. In fact, he could ‘see’ it. In his mind’s eye, he re-ran the moment when her hand wove through the air . . . it was very clear to him now. Mrs Appleby had been air-writing, and as he watched the scene in his mind, he realised she had been writing numbers and letters.
3-7-4-7-2-6-S-1-4-4-5-8-2-2-E.
Just then, the phone downstairs rang.
Fluke’s eyes widened. ‘That could be my parents. I better get tough while the going is hot!’
He had the Ouija board packed away and was out the window even before a very grumpy Mr Chrysler had marched past Milo’s door on his way to the phone.
‘See you in school tomorrow!’ Milo mouthed silently from the window.
Next day, during lunch break, Fluke kicked the ball. It sailed off across the school soccer field and the two boys strolled after it.
Fluke counted his steps as they strolled. ‘One, two, three . . .’
Milo didn’t kick balls anymore. Not since the time Nicholas Fawnley had smashed a classroom window with a soccer ball and had then promptly kicked it to Milo so he’d get the blame. Milo, a wake up to that old trick, had promptly kicked it back. It smacked Nicholas in the head. He was in a coma for a week.
‘Penny for your noughts,’ Fluke said. ‘Sixty-one, sixty-two . . .’
‘We have to go to 3-7-4-7-2-6-S-1-4-4-5-8-2-2-E.’
Fluke nodded cautiously. ‘You can’t ignore extra-century perception,’ he said. ‘But how do you go to 3-7-4-7 and the rest?’
‘They’re map coordinates.’
Fluke’s eyes went wide. ‘Wow. Mrs Appleby gave you map coordinates?’
‘She knew I liked numbers.’
‘So where is this place?’
‘It’s a street four blocks from here.’
‘How do you know?’
Milo shrugged. ‘Sometimes I read maps. 37 degrees 47 minutes 26 seconds south by 144 degrees 58 minutes 22 seconds east is O’Grady Street.’
‘Cool. When do we go?’
‘The police are watching me,’ Milo said. ‘And Dad’s grounded me.’
‘Ah, Mrs Appleby’s godiva isn’t even cold and they want to nail it on you. They’ll make you an escape-goat, you know. You’d better be careful!’
While Milo was trying to work this out, Fluke squinted across the field to where the ball had rolled into a clump of banksias. ‘You going to the funeral? Seventy-one . . .’
‘Dad said he didn’t think I’d be welcome. He said Mr Appleby might want to make it a double service.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Dunno.’
They reached the banksias. ‘Grown-ups are weird. Like legal aliens, only different. Ninety-eight steps. That’s not bad.’
Milo knew he was ‘different’. He knew very well that people thought he was strange but as he thought they were pretty strange, it kind of evened itself out. In any case, the Prime Minister kept telling everybody they had to embrace their differences. Milo wasn’t sure he wanted strange people embracing him. One or two might be nice, though.
Just then the Principal, Mrs Petersham, went past, escorting some student teachers around the sports field. She was a tall stiff woman with dark glaring eyes. She glared at Milo. Mrs Petersham had hated him ever since Milo could remember. She certainly wasn’t the embracing sort.
‘Heard from your mum?’ Fluke asked.
‘She phoned the day before yesterday but I was being arrested.’
‘That sucks.’
‘I miss her,’ said Milo.
Fluke patted Milo on the shoulder. ‘It’s a shame people don’t stay with their partners. That’s what monotony is for. She still hasn’t written to you?’ Milo shook his head miserably. ‘Hey, maybe your dad’s stealing her letters?’
‘I’m home before he is.’
The first bell went. They ambled back towards the school buildings.
Fluke said, ‘So when do we go?’
Milo had been thinking of nothing else. Time was running out. In less than two weeks he’d be going to a juvenile detention centre, probably forever. He had to find his mum before then or he would never see her again.
‘What do you think?’ Milo asked. If the other kids at school thought Milo was strange, they pretty much all thought Fluke was stupid, but that was because they didn’t know him. Milo sometimes thought he was the smartest person he knew, despite his creative approach to the English language.
‘We lay low for the first week and lull them into a false sense of secretary. Then we strike!’
Milo nodded. That seemed like a good plan and he’d still have a whole week to find his mother.
‘You need to show saint.’
‘What?’
‘You know, very good. Show your dad – and everyone else – that you’re a goody-goody shoo-shoes. That way, they drop their regard.’
‘Okay,’ said Milo, his spirits soaring.
‘See?’ said Fluke. ‘When at first you don’t succeed, cry cry again. That’s the secret.’
The second end-of-recess bell rang and they headed to their classroom.
‘We’ll find her,’ said Fluke. ‘My dad says sometimes you just gotta change your latitude.’
The phone was ringing when Milo got home. He rushed to pick it up. ‘Mum?’
Silence.
‘Quite a bit’s happened since you last called, Mum. I went to the police station but Dad came and got me. Mrs Appleby died and the police think I killed her, but I didn’t mean to. All I wanted to do was find out where you are
. But she died before she could tell me . . . Mum? Is that really you?’
Milo waited for a response. He could hear traffic in the background. At least she wasn’t staying in some remote place like the Simpson Desert.
He told her quickly about his day at school leaving out the plan to come looking for her.
He was afraid she might do an adult version of hide-and-seek, and she was hard enough to find already. ‘Well, I better go now, Mum. Thanks for calling. I love you.’
Milo replaced the phone on the cradle.
A week later he and Fluke wagged school.
Extra-century perception
Milo had photocopied previous letters from his dad explaining why he could not attend school on a particular day. In one, Milo had to see the doctor on a matter of urgency; in another he had a dentist’s appointment. In yet another, he had to go to court for a ‘minor’ matter. Fluke had even written one for him, but Milo doubted that having ‘loose vowels’ was going to get him out of PE.
After Mr Chrysler had left for work, Milo got out of his school uniform and into his best clothes. They were the last things his mum had given him: a black ‘Einstein Rules Relatively Okay’ T-shirt, black jeans and Vipa sneakers. He wore these so that he’d make a good impression when he found her.
He also put on his Collingwood cap, in case he needed a disguise.
O’Grady Street was easy to get to, being only four blocks away, but it did mean passing uncomfortably close to the local police station and courthouse. Milo pulled his cap down tight and hunched his shoulders as they passed the station on the other side of the street. He had the odd prickly sensation that somebody was watching him from the station’s window but if Kosta or Barnes had seen him, neither emerged to pull him up or follow him.
Ten minutes later, Milo had a different problem to deal with. Though he fully appreciated the ‘No Canvassers’ sign on some of the gates in O’Grady Street, he didn’t feel he could skip houses – the one he missed might be the postman’s place! And anyhow, the signs could be old, put there by previous grumpy owners. Add in the signs that said ‘Beware of the Dog’ (and one that urged ‘Never Mind the Bloody Dog’) and Milo reckoned he’d have to avoid half the houses in O’Grady Street.