Dead Souls

by Campbell, Ramsey; Warren, Kaaron; Finch, Paul; McMahon, Gary; Hood, Robert; Stone, Michael; Mark S. Deniz

  By late April the State election had usurped the headlines. “HOW TO VOTE LIBERAL AND GET THINGS RIGHT. WITH ASKIN YOU’LL GET ACTION”. My father went out to vote on 1 May. He reckoned Askin was “a good bloke”. “Likes a bit of a flutter,” he said. He should have been voting Labor; that’s where his roots were. But the ALP was moribund and mistrusted by the Church. That night the count was indecisive. Renshaw’s government was in trouble and, though it would take a while before the final count was in, once it was done Askin would be premier, opening the gate on an era of organised crime such as Australia hadn’t known before.

  “I voted for him,” said Patrick proudly. “He’s going to be premier.”

  “Long live King Robin!” snarled my uncle George, who was a Labor voter and, at that moment, slightly drunk.

  “Robin?”

  “Sure,” said George. “That’s his given name. But he doesn’t like it. Prefers Robert. A damn snob.”

  Suddenly memory tossed up its flotsam and I knew.

  “Hates gettin’ called that,” Dean said, laughing.

  “Called what?”

  “Robin Hood, you dick...Wants to be called Robert.”

  Dean was a bagman for someone with the identical name problem. A gambler.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Dean?”

  “I’m big-time, man. Boss’ll be king in May.”

  ****

  When I could, I visited State parliament, sometimes sitting in the public gallery, sometimes hanging around outside in Macquarie Street. I was there when Askin entered the House as Premier, and I watched the MPs with their grey and brown suits and their folders and briefcases, scanned the faces of passers-by, took mental snapshots of assistants and lackeys and visitors. There was no sign of Dean, not during those scattered days. And why, I asked myself, should I expect to see a thug like him in that high place of rule?

  At home, in bed, darkness roared in my ears; I saw parting flesh, blood, sun sparking off a bracelet, twitching fingers; heard screams; felt the knife in my back. Crawling in the sand. Always crawling.

  “What’s the matter with you, boy?” asked Patrick. “You on drugs?”

  My investigation, such that it was, ended on a cloudy day in July as I walked away from the parliamentary gates toward St James’ station, intending to catch the train home. I glanced across at the statue of a dribbling pig in front of Sydney Hospital, and from the corner of my eye I spotted him. Dean. He was coming along in the opposite direction, dressed in dark slacks and a sports coat. His hair was shorter, but still strawy. His lips were pouting, as though he was thinking about some slight done to him. He was carrying a briefcase. I didn’t move.

  “Do I know you?” he said.

  In his eyes I suddenly saw recognition and my own death. Up until that moment I’d been nobody, forgotten. He hadn’t known who I was and hadn’t bothered finding out because I was just some arsehole kid, some ghost of a memory of that day, made insignificant by the razor-sharpness of the passion and the blood-letting.

  “Hey,” he said, reaching toward me, “Mike, wasn’t it? You come to dance?”

  I stepped back and he grabbed at me, pulling at my shirt. I struck his hand, making him let go with a yelp, and took off down the street, dodging a few pedestrians while trying to glance back to see what he was doing. He hesitated for a moment, then came after me.

  I’ve participated in my fair share of chases, shoot-outs and confrontations, and most of them are just a blurred memory of violence; but that one remains crystal clear in every detail. Padding down Macquarie Street toward the park, fear like nausea in my chest, the air hot and oppressive on my face; nearly running into a woman with flaming red hair, who stumbled out of my way, cursing; men in suits and a group of kids, one of whom tried to trip me; a bus roaring past unexpectedly, against the curb, so that I was almost pulled under the wheels by its gravity. I glanced back and realised I’d gained distance but that I’d just lost it again by looking. Stumbled against someone — I remember a blue jumper — and ran on as Dean approached. He yelled, but I couldn’t hear words, only the threat in his voice.

  Pedestrian lights changed to DON’T WALK ahead and I sprinted across the road in front of the just-moving cars. The traffic thickened up behind me. If it stopped Dean at all, it didn’t do so for long; there was a screech of brakes, horns blasting, and then I could hear the thumping of his feet on the concrete path. I glanced ahead: the Archibald Fountain, its waters glistening as the sun broke from behind a cloud, trees and open grass, the footpath, the road, cars, St Mary’s, more cars...

  Faced with a multitude of choices, I found myself leaping downstairs toward the underground, into shadow, into obscurity. Even as I turned toward the moving footway that led to the Domain carpark, I knew it was a mistake, a narrowing of options and a retreat from the busyness above-ground that might have at least hindered Dean from acting. Stupid, I thought, really stupid. But there was no time for regret. I fled down the narrow rubberised path, gaining speed from its movement, pushed past an old bloke and stumbled, clutching at the rail. Tripped against an angle, fell. “You okay, son?” the man asked. I didn’t waste breath on an answer, but was up again, running as hard as I could. I nearly lost it at the bottom, where the moving footpath came to an end; momentum made me stumble, falling headlong. But I regained my balance and ran on, ducking out of my pursuer’s line of sight as soon as possible by turning through a gap in the wall.

  A low concrete roof and rows of cars seemed to close up around me, despite the vastness of the area. I hid behind a Vanguard and peered across the black curve of its hood, looking toward the gap through which Dean would have to come if he chose the right way. I was sure he wouldn’t have seen which way I took. A minute went by, then another. Dean hadn’t appeared. I waited while my breath echoed through the car park and tried desperately to calm myself, to limit the sound. Nobody came. After a few minutes more, I edged away from the Vanguard, keeping low, flitting from car to pillar in a zigzag motion toward the exit ramp which led down the outside of the building, and the pedestrian stairwell I guessed would be in that direction somewhere. My eyes remained fixed on the receding entrance.

  It was chance that I heard a scuffing noise in the stairwell I’d been about to enter, and froze against the wall. Dean’s head appeared. He’d got behind me, by going down to the lower level. I tried to duck away, but he’d seen me, or heard my feet on the concrete floor. He was right behind me.

  I don’t think I’ve been as afraid since as I was then. The horror of what I’d seen on the beach, the mortal truth of it, came from Dean like a shadow, and it seemed inevitable that he’d get me, sooner or later. Mingled with the fear, making it sharp and harder to limit, was a buried fury, a desire to gain some sort of revenge and by doing so to escape both Dean and his shadow.

  But I couldn’t stop, couldn’t face him. I raced down the ramp, leapt up onto the wall at the bottom and flung myself toward the ground. Impact jarred my legs. I tumbled, rolled and, glancing back, saw Dean climbing onto the wall above, planning to follow but hesitating because he wasn’t blinded to other dangers by fear and found himself more daunted by the drop. I didn’t wait to see what he chose to do; I turned and ran toward the traffic, then up the hill in the direction of the city centre.

  Behind me a horn blared; this was followed by a screech of brakes. I thought I heard a shriek. Despite myself I stopped and looked. Dean wasn’t racing after me. Instead there was a figure sprawled brokenly on the ground, half under the wheels of a Ford panel van. The driver was just emerging from the car; a pedestrian gestured and yelled, while others gathered. Apparently Dean had decided to jump after all — right in front of a car that was starting to accelerate away from the concrete edifice after having paid the parking attendant at the gates. He hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard it, fooled by the overhang. I’d jumped down to the same spot, but I’d been luckier.

  I waited some distance away while an ambulance and the cops came, and they sc
raped Dean off the road and took statements. One of the witnesses — the attendant — pointed in my direction, though he surely didn’t know I was there. But I understood he was describing me and where I’d run to and I decided that was my cue to get lost.

  I felt like I’d had a reprieve. Though the nightmares of Wanda Beach continued, as the days passed I became more and more convinced that Dean was dead and that somehow I was safe, not just from him, but from other threats as well. Soon memory matched the conviction and I slept in peace, at least for a while.

  ****

  “What’re you staring at?” The drunk was narrowing his eyes at me, suspiciously. I realised I hadn’t said anything for some minutes.

  “You remind me of someone I knew once,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Tony. Tony Gibson. Why?”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” For a moment my pulses had been racing, surprise and anticipation rising like a fever. I let them settle, emptying my glass in one swallow.

  “Another drink?” he said.

  “You offering to shout?” I asked with a sardonic smirk.

  He looked hurt and indignant. He took an old wallet out of his coat and waved it at me. This time the shock of recognition was like a knife thrust.

  “I got some money,” he said. “I got some dignity.”

  It was my wallet. The one I’d lost on Wanda Beach so long ago. The initials ‘MC’ were inscribed on it in worn gold-embossed lettering. Gibson saw me staring at it.

  “This belonged to...to someone I knew,” he said, flipping it open. “From the old days. I keep it to remind me. Still got his stuff in it.” He took out a faded, crumpled photo that had been cut out of a TV Times. “He liked Hayley Mills. You remember her? Dunno where he is now, but I wonder, I always wonder. He feels close, you know. Close. I keep expecting him to turn up,” he glanced around in a haunted fashion.

  “You scared of him?”

  He looked at me. “Scared?” He laughed nervously, weakly. “Funny thing is, all along I’ve waited. For twenty years I’ve waited. That’s somethin’, eh? That you can let someone, some fuckin’ kid...” He didn’t finish. He closed the wallet and shoved it into his dirty coat. Showing himself like that had disturbed him. It had disturbed me, too. Dean was alive after all. Both the accident and the name had been a lie.

  I became aware of the gun in the shoulder-holster under my arm. Fingered it mentally. For twenty years I’d wanted to kill him myself. The accident that had rescued me from him had always seemed like a cheat and the pressure of the remaining memories had demanded release.

  Now he was there in front of me. Given to me. All I needed to do was get him out of the bar, to somewhere far from the light...

  “I hate that kid,” he said.

  It wasn’t anger. I looked into his eyes, and understood the depth of his fear — an ingrained fear that had lasted twenty years and become a way of life. There was nothing I could do to him that would be worse than that fear. I didn’t want to do him any favours.

  “Gotta be off,” he said, dispirited. He stood, tried to smile, and failed. I didn’t help him. He nodded, as though replying to some unspoken statement, and limped away.

  He stumbled through the door and disappeared into the darkness beyond it.

  I let him go.

  ****

  the beast without

  ****

  tatsu

  Reece Notley

  Don knew the first time he saw Tsukoi, that he’d met the man who would fulfil his desires.

  He’d heard of the party through other people, deciding to crash it before he went home. It was in an area used to being cool; sprawling urban lofts filled with expensive liquor and women and the streets bristled with flashy imports, their paint jobs gleaming under the street lamps.

  The guys standing outside nonchalantly gestured with burning cigarettes, saying hello to one another with silent upward jerks of their heads. A trail of women eyed the men up as they chattered past, their eyes meeting to pick off favourites like selecting a choice fruit at the market.

  Don wondered what it was like to be one of those guys; mulling over which ripe, succulent peach to bite into before the night was over.

  Wandering through the labyrinth of rooms, he stumbled from dancing to games of quarters, rounding a pool table where a group of solemn faced Japanese watched him back out slowly from the door. If he had to swear to it, Don would have said he’d spotted the dull gleam of a gun on the table’s polished wood rim.

  He looked for someplace to be. Any place would be preferable to a room filled with flat-eyed stares. What he found down the hall made him swallow his soul.

  An almost nude woman lay on a flat chaise, her face hidden from Don’s view. Her legs were endless and a towel draped over her hips, providing the barest hint of modesty. The white fabric tucked up against her mons, a darkened sliver hinted at her sex, a shadowed promise behind the cloth.

  She’d be a bitch, he thought. She had that air about her, like the women coming through his work place. The skank would look right through him, passing by as if he weren’t in front of her. He knew her kind all too well.

  Don couldn’t hear her speaking above the noise of the machine and the music pounding through the house but he imagined her husky whispers tickling the ear of the Asian man leaning over her. One bare hand rested intimately on her hip, the other working the rattling machine back and forth, filling in fractures, scales of an uncompleted dragon.

  As the man moved back, the twisting shape revealed itself, powerful and fierce in its stark state. A Japanese dragon reached over her back - its front claw piercing one plum-tipped breast - and moved down her length, wrapping its frilled tail around her upper thigh. She seemed uninvolved in the inking, even as blood ran down her hip, pooling between the man’s fingers as he stretched the skin to work. Stopping briefly to tap the needle head into a well of blue ink, he continued to shade in the lines of the dragon, going over a scale with skilled precision.

  It was not what Don expected to find in the back room of a house party but sometimes destiny had a strange way about it.

  “What’s up?” Don choked briefly over his own tongue. It dried against the roof of his mouth, clutching to his palate when the artist stopped and looked up at him. Don skittered, took another look, a harder look at the slender man balanced on the edge of his stool. The red vinyl creaked and the machine stuttered to a stop as the artist’s foot eased off of the pedal.

  He could have been the woman’s twin, barely masculine and too beautiful. Don could break this man in two if he wanted. He immediately stopped that thought, seeing the strength in the other’s hands, the stains of ink under his fingernails. Here was someone who ground out the weakness in those who lay under him, turning the cast off grit of a man’s skin into stained glass. Here was someone Don needed.

  “What do you want, howaido?” The artist dipped the tip of his finger into the murky tea of blood and ink pooling on the woman’s thigh. Sucking the liquid from his finger, he lapped at the granules clinging to his upper lip.

  “He’s turning green, Tsukoi,” The name had an intimate sound to it and she yawned as she stretched back. “Fugainai.”

  “Did Heng tell you to come back here?” Tsukoi looked up, the dimness of the room masking his face. “What do you want?”

  “That.” Don jerked a thumb at the tattoo, keeping his eyes on the man’s face. “I want what you’re doing to her…on me.”

  “Why?” The artist moved and his eyes flared amber from the light bounced into the tiny room from the open door. “What do you think it will give you?”

  Don’s answer came easily, rising off of his tongue. “Power,” He said with a long smile. “And respect.”

  ****

  Banks of rolling fog caught on the bay’s orange lace bridge, pouring around its slender metal threading and stretching over the shore line. The low keen of a ferry echoed around the scattered islands dotting San Francisco’s cold waters, th
e chilly bay now a stark black ooze pushing up against the bleached sky.

  The City by the Bay took advantage of its coy veil, hiding behind thick white mists. Long trails of BART line wound through tangled streets, their cars bloated with warm, drunken human bodies. The trains smelled of puke, sweat and beer, the evening’s riders adding to the pungent aroma with various degrees of dedication.

  Grumbling under his breath, Don bumped shoulders with the tall blonde woman he’d been eyeing for the last few miles. When the train hissed to a stop, he jerked against her body, nearly knocking her to her knees. She slanted him a hard look and teetered off the car on unsteady feet, grabbing at the door as she stepped off. Don watched the plump flesh of her ass jiggle just above the hemline of her short nylon dress, its horizontal stripes widening over her curves.

  “No time to chase some tail,” He mumbled and stepped off onto the curb. The foreignness of it caught at him, a cling of earthy spice tickling his nose as he walked through the streets. He hated the oppressive feeling of secrets lying beneath the surface of San Francisco’s winding roads. The signs offended him sometimes, a straggle of lines and dips he couldn’t make out. There weren’t enough real words on them for his liking.

  A florescent walled dim sum restaurant nearly hid the place’s entrance. Don spotted a small white sign over a slender doorway, its English added in a handwritten scrawl beneath bold black kanji. The addresses seemed to be a jumble of numbers, like the puzzles Don’s mother did in the middle of the night. The foreign lettering looked the same to his eyes, aggressive black slashes against crackled white paint.