by A. A. Bell
‘She has escaped with Ben Chiron before, though, hasn’t she?’
‘I can guarantee she was here. Her walking cane and key have GPS chips that record all her movements.’
‘And she has them with her? Excellent. Then you can ping them and my people can pick her up off the streets.’
Mira shivered, grateful now that Freddie had smashed them.
‘Not until you tell me what’s happened,’ Sanchez argued. ‘She’s my ward, for God’s sake!’
‘Certain aspects of this project are classified. All I can say is that there was an argument today that blew up into an all-out urban war.’ A phone buzzed, interrupting them. ‘Garland here,’ the woman said, then her voice lowered and turned away from Mira, making it impossible to hear what she said amidst the noise of the diners.
‘A woman called General Garland is here talking to the matron,’ Mira whispered. ‘She mentioned Colonel Kitching’s name and that she’s about to intercept the doctors. Does that mean catch them?’
‘I’m afraid so. What did Kitching tell her?’
‘I don’t know, but the general wants to ping my GPS cane so she can catch me.’
‘On my way,’ Garland said, ending her phone conversation.
‘I’m amazed you could get reception down here,’ said Matron Sanchez.
‘One of the benefits of heading up the research division. Bad news,’ Garland added. ‘Our eye in the sky just scanned the taxi and there are only two heat signatures aside from the driver. They’re arriving at the local hospital as we speak — security cameras confirm the passengers are the doctors.’
‘Then where are Ben and Mira?’
‘My question exactly. I’m stationing two of my people here in case they return — Corporals Uno and Cinq.’
PART NINE
Forever the Last Kiss
Yesterday is a dream, tomorrow a vision.
Look well to this day therefore and live it well
Sanskrit inscription
THIRTY-SEVEN
Mira gripped tighter onto Ben and tugged him as swiftly as she could manage in the opposite direction.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Didn’t you hear that?’
‘Hear what? All I can hear is a happy crowd.’
‘They know we’re here, Ben! We have to get away! The general’s got two corporals here to look for us!’
‘Is Kitching here too?’
‘I didn’t hear his voice, and Petal said there were only three extras in here before us, so I’d guess no. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if he’s here or not. The general wants to catch us as well. Generals command colonels, don’t they?’
‘Usually, I guess …’
‘Then who’s to say she’s not the ringleader? She refused to tell Matron Sanchez what really happened.’
‘Good point. Well, we signed in at the gate, so it doesn’t matter where we go inside Serenity — they’ll find us eventually. We need to get out of here in a way that makes it look as if we’re still here.’
‘Hey, that’s right.’ She halted again and Ben bumped into her. ‘So we can’t go past Petal. She knows my name.’
Mira opened her eyes and scanned the brightly lit yester-week version of the room through her sunglasses. Along all four walls were metal doors painted brightly with stars and flowers, and prison bars decorated with tinsel streamers and balloons. In two corners roped-off corridors stretched into darkness.
‘What are you thinking?’ Ben whispered.
‘I’m thinking one of those corridors might lead to another exit.’
‘Well, don’t look at me. I got all turned around in here.’
Mira grinned, feeling more confident. ‘Relax. We’ll go this way. The admin building used to be a cell block, so the dungeons might have been connected across to it. It’s worth a try.’
Mira closed her eyes again and placed Ben’s hand firmly onto her shoulder. ‘Slower now,’ she warned. ‘I have to use a combination of what I can see and feel, and if something’s in the way, it gets … well, a bit confusing.’
She made it to the rope at the mouth of the corridor, unlatched it to allow Ben through and then latched it closed again behind them.
‘Boy, and I thought it was dark before,’ he whispered.
‘It gets dark here for me too.’
She used the broomstick to find the wall to her left and followed it until darkness consumed her. Then she came to another wall, this one blocking their path. She explored it with her hands. ‘Feels like bricks.’
‘Sloppy job,’ Ben said. His hands bumped into hers on the wall and they both flinched. ‘I guess we go back?’
Mira gripped his shirt. ‘Give me a second. If these dungeons are a century old, maybe there was more light down here then?’
‘Don’t push yourself. If it’s too scary, we can always go back and face the general in front of a few hundred witnesses.’
Despite his reassurance, she could hear the worry in his voice, and his palm was damp with sweat where it touched the shoulder of her dress.
She backed against him, needing a pillar of reliability, then steeled herself and lifted her sunglasses. She sighed in relief to find she wasn’t entombed in solid earth. The corridor stretched away in both directions, opening into larger dungeons at each end, both lit by lanterns.
‘This wall wasn’t here. There’s much more tunnel behind it.’
Exploring the wall more thoroughly with both hands from corner to corner, she found a small unlocked door in the adjacent wall of a cell. Opening it, and stumbling through a short corridor of boxes, chairs and crumbling Christmas decorations, she found another brick wall — and another invisible door.
‘Boy, if I thought it was dark before,’ Ben whispered.
‘You already said that. You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?’
‘I didn’t think so until now. Are you confident we shouldn’t turn back?’
‘Trust me …’ She opened the second door. ‘This was a storeroom. It takes up a section of the tunnel and at least two cells on this side, which is why we came in through a side door, but there’s a second big dungeon ahead of us now.’
Running the broomstick against the stone wall to her left, she led him more confidently past the last ten cells in the corridor.
In the larger dungeon at the end, bodies littered the dirty straw scattered over the earthen floor. Another two prisoners were roped against the wall; a shirtless guard flogging them even though blue blood already ran in rivulets down their raggedy pants. Nearby, four other guards shared the contents of a fat bottle and laughed.
Mira covered her mouth, trying to hold down the contents of her stomach.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ben asked.
‘There are prisoners here — being tortured to death. And the guards are enjoying it!’
‘They can’t hurt you now, Mira.’ Ben wrapped his arm around her waist and hugged her close. ‘Can you see how they got down here?’
As Mira looked up, a square hole opened in the roof at the far end of the dungeon and another prisoner fell through it. A guard was lowered down after him, his foot hooked in the noose of a thick rope.
‘Well, there’s a rope and a trapdoor over there,’ she said.
‘No stairs? A rope isn’t likely to be safe after a hundred-and-twenty-odd years.’
‘No, but we can build our own stairs with the boxes from the storeroom, so long as the trapdoor still works.’
‘And it hasn’t got furniture parked on top of it.’
‘Let’s test it.’
She stepped over a ghostly corpse and tugged Ben by the hand, carefully using her makeshift cane to ensure he didn’t bump into any solid hazards.
The broomstick found another wall blocking their way.
‘Uh-oh. Stay here.’
‘More brick?’ Ben asked as she explored the wall.
‘Much longer this time. I think it spans the whole width of this … Ah. Here it is.’
She hu
rried back for him and led him to an invisible door in the corner.
‘Hey, there’s light through there,’ he whispered. ‘My turn to be useful. Wait here.’
His footsteps padded quietly away, then came jogging swiftly back.
‘All clear. Bit of a maze, though. It’s an abandoned wine cellar. Give me your hand.’
She sneezed as he led her forward, nearly forcing her to tread on the legs of a skinny prisoner who was shackled to the stone wall.
‘If it’s abandoned, why can you see light?’ she asked.
‘Someone’s been down here recently. They’ve left their candles burning — old rags for wicks, stuffed into wine bottles … Watch out for that barrel!’
Mira donned her glasses again and the blue dungeon vanished, replaced by a stack of purple wine barrels and twelve aisles of wine racks. At the far end of them was a ladder made of bedsheets and slats from a wine crate.
‘This way,’ Ben said, leading her towards it. As she passed the last aisle, she saw a ghostly Freddie Leopard squatting in the corner — or someone who could have been his twin brother. He was feeding food scraps out of his pocket to a trail of ants.
Ah, so? she read from his lips. This seafood stick fails to interest you, my little pets, which means someone is trying to pass it off to me as safe food.
She sneezed again and he looked up. He stared straight at her and mimed: Hello, Mira. The end is coming. You must hurry.
She stumbled into Ben. ‘Out! Out!’ she urged, pushing him towards the ladder. She heard the timber rungs creak, followed by a heavy thud as Ben declared victory on the latch of the trapdoor.
The ghost turned his head in time with her footsteps, watching her the whole way. Mira didn’t take her eyes off him either, all the way up the ladder.
She scrambled to her feet — they were in an office — and slammed the trapdoor shut.
‘Lock it! she panted.
‘There’s no lock, but I think this mat was hiding … Hey, calm down, Mira. We’re in the matron’s office.’
Mira felt something sticky and stringy leashing her to the floor. Panicking, she struggled to rid herself of it.
‘Hold still. It’s just a cobweb.’
He peeled it off her shoulders and face. Relieved, she took a moment to catch her breath.
‘What’s got you so rattled?’ Ben said. ‘All we have to do now is borrow a government car. The side gate between the loading bay and kitchen opens automatically for authorised vehicles on their way out.’
Mira shook her head. ‘It’s not that. I … I saw another ghost down there — and he saw me!’
‘Like the boy at the Drift Inn? Isn’t that a good thing?’
‘How could it be?’
‘Well, for one thing it means you’re not alone; even without me.’
‘I guess so.’ Somehow, it did not make her feel better.
She looked around the room and saw a collection of paintings that showed Likiba Isle over the centuries. The biggest was a sketch of prisoners trudging downhill alongside a bullock wagon full of garden tools, their untidy ranks flanked on each side by three guards on horseback.
‘1882?’ she read from the caption. ‘Hey, look! This is what I saw from the sky! These buildings — these saplings and all the people! This artist saw the same thing as me!’
‘Nothing surprises me anymore.’ Ben’s footsteps crossed the room. ‘Hang on. I take that back. There’s a note here warning us against taking a government car with GPS. It was sitting on a pair of bedsheets with a hot pink set of car keys.’
In the cellar, Fredarick remained silent in the darkest corner.
How easy it would have been for him to burst up through the trapdoor like a jackass-in-the-box and shout ‘surprise’ before they had left. Freddie would have done that. He would have tried to stop them again, in his own wacky way, as he had when he’d smashed Mira’s key and cane near the gate.
Instead, his shyest and wisest alter-ego had left gifts for them — everything they’d need to slip away for their one final moment of bliss, however brief.
Yet guilt and fear still plagued him — no less now than that first day a fortnight ago, when he’d been feeding ants and been startled by the echo of footsteps and voices in the quietest place he’d ever found on the island.
‘Hello, Mira,’ he’d said, recognising her voice at once and knowing that one day, after the screaming echoes had become whispers, she would see his ghost and read his lips.
Should he have warned her to hurry, when he knew too well the fate that awaited them? He lived in hope that nothing unheard of would happen — unheard of through future echoes — or at least nothing to make the situation any worse than it already would be.
Every second counted now, but at least he knew Ben and Mira would make the most of their final moments together. He waited until he knew they were gone, then slid up through the floor, like the ghost Mira had thought him to be, then tidied the rug, and took his place in the oldest visitors’ chair by the desk.
‘Now it is time,’ he said to the long dead faces on the wall, ‘… on the brink of too late, that I must wait here in the warm cocoon of my beloved’s locked office. Just me, and you, and these obsidian Greek Gods who pretend not to be guarding her desk.’
He turned up the volume on his headphones until he could feel the silent throb of the music, a beat that also quickened his heart. He’d listened to the echoes of his angel’s footsteps for so long, he knew exactly when to look to the door to greet her.
Outside, her silent key was rattling its echoes into the past, and as she entered, a heavenly silence followed her.
Hands only, he signed. For a few precious moments of bliss.
Sanchez started at the sight of him.
Fredarick! she exclaimed with her hands. How did you get in here? She leaned closer, noticing his wig was on backwards. Or is that you, Freddie? I’ve had search teams hunting everywhere!
He shrugged, and invited her to sit.
I’d love to, honey, but I’ve got an important call to make.
No need, he signed in reply. Ben turned off his phone.
Sanchez tried anyway, but the automatic voice on the other end of her connection confirmed it. She looked at Fredarick. How did you know that?
He rose and signalled her to follow him to her rug, which he rolled back to reveal a trapdoor with a latch that lay flush to the parquetry floor. Opening and lifting the door, he revealed a ladder down to an old cellar and a flickering light below, which drew her attention like a moth to a flame — seven flames to be precise, all blazing from rag wicks and wine bottles.
Greek Gods, she thought, but he slapped a hand over her mouth before she could say it.
Silence, please, he pleaded with his eyes as well as his hands. There’s already a dreadful racket down there in my sanctuary. All those workmen.
Workmen? She listened, but couldn’t hear so much as a spider rolling a fly in its web. What is that? she asked. A dungeon or a wine cellar?
First one, then the other. All answers you seek are down there. He scrambled down first, proving the ladder was strong enough to take her weight, but she couldn’t spare time enough to risk it herself — not with Ben and Mira out there somewhere, needing her help.
He looked up, asking for her to follow, but she shook her head. Show me later. I have something urgent —
No, wait! He signalled for her to stay, then vanished briefly into the flickering darkness. Upon his return, he held a thick wad of paper; almost a full ream. At first, Sanchez guessed it might be his play, but it appeared to be blank — the top page at least.
He scrambled awkwardly up the ladder with the pile of papers tucked tightly into his armpit, and handed them up to her, since he needed both hands to climb out.
She took the opportunity to flick through them and found every page filled with Braille — all five hundred odd pages. At least now she knew who must have taken the missing Braille typewriter. No doubt it was down there somewher
e in Fredarick’s secret sanctuary.
He kicked shut the trapdoor but didn’t bother to tidy her mat. ‘Safe to talk now,’ he said, still shaping words awkwardly with his clumsy tongue. ‘After you read it.’
‘Now?’ She gaped at him, wondering if he was kidding, but he peeled off the first sheet and pushed it up to her face.
Firmly, she pushed the page away again, but only so far as her personal focal length.
Aside from the complex array of depressions on one side and bumps on the other, the page still appeared to be blank, but she could read Braille from sight without needing to explore it with her fingers — and Mira’s name leapt out at her.
… the time had come to confess the evil he’d committed upon Mira.
You wrote your play about that? she asked.
He poked her cheek with his bony finger to return her attention to the document, then flipped back a page to take her to the top of the scene.
Fredarick’s straitjacket was warm.
His headphones were slipping, though, killing his music. Now jackhammers drilled inside his head; voices screaming, echoing. Every sound permeated from every tomorrow, rippling back to him through time like raindrops on a pond, ever dissipating as ripples do, until each of the weakest whispers break the soft end of the sound barrier.
Overwhelmed by the significance of the passage as a breakthrough, Sanchez slumped in her chair to read it again. Aside from speaking about himself in the third person, the document promised insights into his perspective that exceeded all hopes.
‘Is it all about that incident with Mira?’ she asked, knowing she’d have to filter through it to sort out the facts from his fabrications. ‘Or is it mostly fiction?’ Either way, it would provide something solid to discuss in future sessions.
He shrugged. ‘Echoing from yesterday to tomorrow, this tale is a lie that tells the truth.’
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what that means. If you claim to hear the future, like Freddie, then don’t you mean “echoing from tomorrow to today". you know, backwards in time?’