Fearsome Magics

by Jonathan Strahan

  The authorities compared notes, re-assessing all the cuts and bruises in Petra’s medical records and the various claims that she had been followed or kidnapped. Her story about Atlantic-spanning phantom bridges was reinterpreted as a ‘cry for help’. With dread inevitability, it became clear that she would be taken away from her uncle, who received the news with a devastated calm. Petra felt just as numb, even when Lauren’s parents swooped in and asked to have her stay with them, ‘for now and then we’ll see how it goes’.

  She only cried when she was alone with Lauren, half-crushed in the taller girl’s hug.

  “It’s my fault the dog died,” was all she could say.

  “He knew what he wanted,” Lauren said at last, after letting Petra cry herself out. “He wasn’t sorry, either. Was he?”

  Petra shook her head, and sniffed messily.

  “He knew what was important to him,” Lauren went on. “And that’s the big thing, isn’t it? Knowing what to keep, what to throw away. We all make choices like that, and mostly we don’t even notice. Picking which dreams we give up. Choosing the people we spend time with, and the ones we don’t.”

  “But I don’t get to keep anything!” exploded Petra. “I just lose things. The bridges are eating me, one bite at a time.”

  “You don’t just lose things,” said Lauren, who was big, stubborn and right about everything. “All the weird places you’ve seen—they’re making you smarter, tougher and stronger. You’re beating the Devil every day, Pet. You’re growing faster than he can prune you. Some day soon, nobody will be able to force you to do anything any more. You’ll be the one calling the shots.

  “And I’m so proud of you for not bridging back from New Jersey. Because for years you’ve been holding things together like a broken jam jar. You’ve dropped it at last, and that’s good. After this you’ll have a home with food, and the weirdos won’t know where to find you. I’m sorry, but there are some things you’re better off losing.

  “Just... don’t lose me, OK?”

  Petra held on tight, with both arms and all of her considerable will.

  “I won’t,” she said.

  THE NURSERY CORNER

  KAARON WARREN

  NOW THAT I am old myself, with grandchildren, one dead husband and a lover of twenty years, I feel odd twinges of pain that cannot be explained by anyone but myself. I know that somewhere in the Nursery Corner Mario Laudati is playing a game with a part of me I will never get back.

  IT WAS NO secret that my father died violently.

  “He was under the table and it was like a fountain,” I told everyone at school. “Blood gushing up and banging under the table and coming back on top of him. He was so covered in blood, he kept slipping out of the ambulance men’s hands.”

  I squeezed my hands together. The other kids all thought I was fascinating, anyway. I lived in a bigger house than any of them, and my mum worked in the old people’s home there, and I always had stories to tell. I was popular because I took them stuff from the home, like little sugars and soaps. I took them hand lotion and packets of biscuits. They didn’t mind the old-people’s-home stink, but I tired of it, and I kept clothes at a friend’s place, wanting the smell of the place off me, out of my hair. I used a highly perfumed shampoo my mother didn’t approve of, it’s so bloody expensive, just use the home stuff, my mother said, because everything we had was taken from the home. Shampoo, soap, biscuits. Chips, sometimes, frozen meals, medicine, plates, glasses. I hated the supply cupboard, though. The old people would corner me and try to hug me, they’d make me hold their teeth, they’d make me hold their dry, weak hands.

  I didn’t miss my father. He’d been away a lot, mining (and yes, I had a nice collection of rocks but I didn’t know what any of them were) and when he was home he was nasty to be around. Falling asleep, drunk, under the kitchen table. I’d sit there, eating my cereal before school, his snores shaking my bowl, his stink making me ill. Only the cat sitting on his chest, enjoying the rise and fall, could make me smile.

  He wanted us to move to Far North Queensland, so he didn’t have to fly in fly out. He wanted us to be with him, up among the dust and rocks, where women and children stayed home unless they went to the movies on Saturday night or sometimes shopping.

  Mum talked to the patients, not really thinking they’d understand, needing someone to vent to. “He really expects me to pack this in? Move up north, live in a tin shed? What’s Jessie supposed to do? She needs good schooling, lots of friends,” her voice strong, full of courage.

  “God’s country, this,” one of the old men said, but many Australians say that about their hometown. Our quiet Sydney suburb was pleasant enough, but God’s country? That was pushing it.

  Dad didn’t like what he overheard, and I slept with my pillow over my ears and my cat curled up against my cheek because I hated the shouting.

  Mum was cheery the next day, with bruises up her arms, one on her chin, one on her throat, and it was the same every time he came home.

  We smiled through it, and I hardly ever saw her cry, but even at six years old I knew this was not how things should be.

  She had a job to do though; looking after them and me and she did it so well we all adored her.

  The compos mentis old people gossiped together. I learnt most of what I know from listening in. The old men were the ones who decided. You wouldn’t think they could manage it, and no one else believed it, but it was them. He was weak and pathetic, snoring under the table like he did, bottle spilt out beside him and it was a simple matter, they told me, to slit the bastard’s throat. They left the knife in his hand and it would have taken a family member to push for a real inquiry, and that didn’t happen.

  These men had been to war. They’d killed before. They told me all this from the age of six, competing to horrify me with stories, giving me nightmares about the enemy begging for mercy, and watching souls rise like steam.

  They saved us from my father, and I was always kind to old men because of it.

  AFTER DAD WAS buried, Mum signed a four year contract to manage the home, and there was a little party to celebrate. The gossipers said she got it because the owners felt sorry for her, but no one seemed to care what the reason was. I was happy. I liked it there most of the time, with the old people being kind to me when they remembered who I was and when I was too fast for their grab hands, and where my mother felt confident and safe.

  She set up special places for me here and there. A windowshelf with knickknacks, like a snowdome from Darwin, which made us all laugh because snow in Darwin! And puzzles carved from rainforest wood. And there was a bookshelf with a secret stash of lollies. And a place she called the Nursery Corner, which had a soft blanket, toys and some of my pictures pinned to the wall. It was a dull place, really, and none of the children who came to visit sat there. Mostly they hunched near the exit, trying not to look at the residents.

  Things happened I would never tell a soul about. The bodily fluids that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and the evil things they’d say, some of them. Bile spewing out of their mouths, telling me awful things a child shouldn’t know. We took the people other places rejected. Reform School for the Elderly, my mother joked.

  She started to bring in entertainers for the patients, and I could invite friends along and often the room would be filled with children sitting on the floor, the buzz of them making the place so much brighter, so much further from death.

  Mostly the entertainment was awful. The old people didn’t mind it except Aunt Em, who hated everything.

  “You can call me Aunt Em,” she said when she first moved in, as if hoping a friendly name would soften her edges. Nasty woman with pursed lips disapproving all the time as if she thought life doled her out something wrong, as if everyone around her was wrong. She liked me most of the time, though.

  I avoided the entertainment when I could. Elderly magicians. Singers, dancers. There was nothing wrong with being old, but these people had always been crap.
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  The musicians in particular were tragic. They played slow music, the old people clapping out of time, vague memories lapping at them of what it used to be like to listen to music. To dance. To be moved by the notes. Some wept and instantly forgot why they had wet cheeks.

  Doesn’t it take you back, they said. Listening to songs from fifty years ago. Doesn’t it just! Remember that as clear as a movie.

  Some remembered nothing, or were stuck in a single moment in time.

  “Wasn’t that marvellous?” the residents would say afterwards, as if they’d seen the Bolshoi Ballet.

  All the entertainers flirted with my mother. “Look at Matron blushing,” because they wanted more work and she was charming. Even as a kid I knew that, and she was at last free of Dad’s rules, his disapproval and his desire she be nothing but a cipher for him.

  Mum rarely got someone back twice.

  That changed when I was about twelve and Mario Laudati appeared, with a magic chest of goodies, bright clear eyes, a warm, strong handshake. He had one earring; a flashing LED light.

  He said, “I’m an all-rounder. Take a tape measure and you’ll see. One hundred centimetres all the way around. Can’t get much rounder than that!”

  They loved him, including Mum. He was a bit older than she was. Save me a chair, he said, I’ll be moving in here before long, clapping his hands, bright and breezy, and they all chuckled because clearly he would never be old enough to sit with them, unmoving for hours. He was so lively, hopping from toe to toe.

  He made me nervous, thinking he wouldn’t like me. He asked odd questions, as some adults do, trying to disconcert me.

  “Is this place haunted? Any nasty ghosts I should know about?” he asked me.

  I nodded. Thinking on the spot, I said, “It’s haunted by all the people they’ve killed.”

  He laughed. “Are there many?”

  I counted on my fingers, holding them up like a child in kindergarten showing how old she is. I looked sideways to see if he found me funny and he was smiling, a big, genuine grin I wanted to see all the time.

  He set me up in the front row to be his assistant. It was all about light and dark.

  Somehow he seemed to have control over our electricity because the power went out, leaving him in the dark, standing with a swinging lantern. The old people were quiet; was it the first time ever? He walked around us, telling a story I can’t remember, making cats appear in the shadows, and children playing with a hoop. “There I am!” Aunt Em said. “That’s me with my hoop!” and others clamoured to be the one.

  If it wasn’t hypnotism, it came very close.

  For a moment, between the flickering lights, I saw him with a different face. He looked like a teenager, like one of the boys I admired at school, perhaps. The ones on the train my mother would tug me close to avoid. She seemed to think teenagers were the worst things on earth and would have kept me locked up if it would stop me becoming one. She didn’t accept that some of the old people she looked after were worse. Mr Adams, with his hysterical scratching. Martha Jones, who could shift from a quiet mouse to a woman so filled with fury she tore opem the throat of a patient one time. These were not the only ones.

  When their attention wandered Mario drew them back with a sharp clap of his hands.

  When the lights came on people had shifted around. Some had lost their socks, others found a rose on their lap. For them it was mostly meaningless because they were used to the disconnect of change. They were used to appearing at the breakfast table and having no idea how they got there.

  “Isn’t it magic?” the residents said. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

  I had seen that other face, though, and I couldn’t look at him in the light. I went to the corner where Mum kept my box of rocks, and I ran my fingers through them, thinking of my father before he died, when he would show me the rocks and tell me their long-forgotten names.

  “What’s that you’ve got there? A boxarox? I know a lot about rocks.”

  Mario picked up a pale blue one. “This one is called a poo pellet.” I giggled. This was silly. He went through my box, naming them all. He was so rude, so outrageous, that I wept with laughter and the old people, those who could move, came to watch.

  This was the moment, I think, that they came to consider him a suitable boyfriend for Mum.

  She kept a lot of secrets. I remained unaware of their changing relationship, even as he came to perform again and again.

  He had yellowed fingers but told me he hadn’t smoked for a long time. He lit a cigarette, “Don’t smoke,” he said, “Don’t you ever,” and he held it up. “I love the smell and the burn,” he said. “That glowing red tip.” He touched it to a patient’s hair, which flared brightly before fizzling out. It was our secret.

  I STARTED TAKING my friends on private tours of the place when I was fifteen. Like most kids, we were obsessed with ghosts and killers, with creepy people and disgusting things; we loved to be scared. I’d lead them through the hallways, making up stories about what the residents had done. Showing them where my father had died, lifting the table to show them his blood. I asked the old people to lend me a dollar and you should have seen them, searching for wallets or purses they no longer owned or, if they still had one, opening it again and again and again, looking for money that wasn’t there. My mother didn’t notice until the man who called himself John John moved in.

  John John would cut himself with anything. Plastic forks, the edge of the drink trolley, a sugar spoon. It was a challenge for him and it was terrifying for my friends to watch him. If you took his weapon away he’d scream like a hyena. He’d attack the nurses or anyone who got close, so we stood far away. Until one of my friends snuck up to him, wanting a closer look at all his scars. John John roared, stabbed the boy with a key he’d stolen. The boy was fine but it meant Mum finally found out.

  Jesus, when Mum found out. It was her disappointment that got me more than anything else. “I can’t believe you could treat them this way. Such disrespect,” she said, her voice flat, depressed, as if I made her very tired. She laid her head on Mario’s shoulder. We sat in her office with the door shut, the old people shuffling outside, wanting to come in.

  Mario said, “Jessie has the greatest respect. She’s allowing them to entertain, one of life’s great privileges.” He was on my side; he understood me. He’d comforted me when one of them threw shit at me. He’d said, “It’s okay to be upset, but I know you want to be strong for your mum. You don’t want to freak her out.” He’d brought me shampoo, a secret supply, stuff that didn’t smell like the home. He really did understand.

  The old people scrabbled at the door, and my mother had to call for backup to get them all settled down.

  Once they were all drugged and asleep, Mario said, “I’ve been thinking of something for a while now, something that might work here. Let me play with the Nursery Corner. I’ve done it before. I’ll make it a place for calm reflection. You’ll see. It might help with people like John John.”

  “It’s Jessie’s corner. Your time. It’s up to you two.”

  “What do you think, Jessie? Do you mind if I mess your corner up?”

  I didn’t mind for a second.

  HE WAS BACK a couple of days later, laden with a carpet, a chair, other stuff. He stacked all my toys from the Nursery Corner into a box and handed it to me. “Bin it if you like,” he said. The residents started to gather as they often did when he was around. The drugs made them slow, made them flap their gums, suck on their teeth. The sound of it made me ill.

  Mario moved around among them, talking, building his corner.

  “Keep watching!” he said, and it seemed to me as if the residents stiffened, lost control of their ability to move.

  First, he rolled out the carpet. It was bright yellow, like a sun, with purple edges and a large dark stain in the centre. “I was born on this carpet,” he said, “right there, so it symbolises the beauty and the miracle of birth. The beginning.”

 
; They barely reacted, except Aunt Em, who had no children yet loved to judge those who did.

  “I can still see the bloodstain.”

  “It’s possible I top it up every now and then. For the sake of a good story.”

  He placed the rocking chair on the carpet. It looked rugged, unpolished. There was a crocheted cushion cover, filled with a thin cushion, and a white fluffy blanket.

  “I’ve travelled the world with this chair,” he said. “It’s all that is left of the place I was happiest in all my life. School.” Some of them shifted in their seats. Others were asleep. One ground his finger into the back of the woman in front of him; she acted as if it wasn’t happening.

  “Imagine a time,” Mario said, “before we had light at the flick of a switch. He remembers, he was there!” pointing at Jerry Everard who, at 98, remembered very little.

  Some chuckled. I sat on a chair with my knees tucked under my chin until a nurse told me down. They usually used single syllable words with me, as if I was a dog. They mostly didn’t like me there; they thought I was a distraction, that I upset the patients. It wasn’t true; the patients liked me. The staff were jealous, more like.

  He set a bowl of jelly beans down on a small table beside the rocking chair. I did not ever see that bowl empty.

  “That’s when my school was built. It was a place for the lost, the lonely. It was the place we could go when our families didn’t want us and nobody could teach us. It sat out in the bush, bright, with impossible gardens around it.”

  Were they listening? It was hard to tell. Jerry smiled, but that was his default expression. “It was full of lost children. All of us being given a future. And then… it burnt down.”

  There was no more reaction to this than to anything else he said. “How did it burn down?” I asked.

  He closed his eyes and tears squeezed down his cheeks. “A horrible bloody accident.” He swung his lantern. “No one’s fault.” He didn’t try to make it funny; he’d stopped entertaining.