by Chele Cooke
José shifted in his seat and glanced at Paul. His confident glare faded into concern.
“Are you up for this, Tack?” he asked.
Lachlan gritted his teeth. He knew he had to explain. José wouldn’t drop his misstep earlier in the day, and if Lachlan didn’t put a stop to it, the story of him cracking would be all over the station. He’d always liked José but he had no doubt the man liked a story just as much as the rest of them. He couldn’t risk his reputation on that.
“Look, I’m sorry about before,” Lachlan said. “I have reason to believe that the liquor isn’t the only source of mind-altering substances in that cirque.”
“I only drank lemonade,” Paul said with an understanding nod. “Felt like death this morning.”
Lachlan nodded.
“If they’re spiking then it’s all the more reason to take them down. Children are drinking that stuff,” Fred agreed with a solemn nod.
“José, I really am sorry about the way I spoke to you. I wasn’t myself,”
José frowned and stared at his boots. For a few seconds, Lachlan wasn’t sure whether the other man would forgive him but, finally José nodded and looked up.
“We’re good,” he said. “Thanks, Tack.”
Getting to his feet, Lachlan replaced the chair back against the wall.
“So, we’re all in agreement? Cirque from opening and we’ll be back here at two?”
The men nodded.
“Good. I’ll make some notes on what I want you to pay special attention to. We need to get a good drop on these guys, so we’ll split up the site. And no drinking.”
“You said that yesterday,” Paul snorted.
“Yeah, well, this time I don’t just mean the liquor,” Lachlan said. “I don’t think we should touch anything in that place. These guys are dangerous, who knows what they’ll do to save themselves.”
“You know something we don’t, Tack?” Fred asked.
Lachlan stared back at them from the doorway. He didn’t dare tell them about the murder. He should, he knew, but telling them would be to admit that he’d been so out of it that he’d not reported it straight away, that he’d let the night continue, that he’d not told the Staff Sergeant because he wanted to go back. The workers would have gotten rid of the body by now. His butcher was probably laying face down in a ditch for carrion birds and wild dogs. Taking a deep breath, he straightened up.
“Just be careful, alright. I’ll see you at shift end.”
“Captain?”
Lachlan turned on his heel as one of the soldiers, Lampros, hurried along the corridor towards him. The sound of his boots against the floor thumped uncomfortably through his head. Grimacing a smile, he kept his hand on his office door.
“What is it?”
“I was told to come ask you what to do about the cells, Sir.”
Frowning, Lachlan released his hold on the door handle and crossed his arms over his chest. His gaze swept over Lampros, from the fact his jacket was suspiciously missing, to his unbuttoned collar, rolled-up sleeves, and dusty boots. The young soldier, barely through his training, scuffed his foot against the floor.
“What about the cells?”
Lampros glanced over his shoulder and when he turned back his eyes were wide. He rubbed his shoulder and shifted his weight uncertainly.
“Well, they’re full, Sir,” he said.
“Full?” Lachlan snorted. “We had three people in there this morning waiting for transfers. Are you telling me you can’t deal with three men in cells?”
Taking a step back away from him, Lampros looked down at his boots and shook his head. He wrung his hands in front of him.
“There are twenty-seven men in the cells, Captain,” he mumbled. “The patrols have been bringing them in all morning.”
“What?” Lachlan spluttered. “You’re kidding. Twenty-seven? Why?”
“Gods, uh, well,”
“Spit it out.”
Lampros rubbed his elbow vigorously. He straightened the top half of his sleeve and stared down the corridor. His mouth moved constantly as he counted in little more than a whisper.
“Three waiting for transfer,” he said finally, marking the crimes off on his fingers. “Seven thefts, eight for assault and public brawling, one suspected blackmail, three counts of destruction of public property, four counts of intoxication, and one act of public indecency.”
The soldier blushed red as he tried to hold back a snigger.
“Dare I ask what sort of public indecency we are talking about?” Lachlan asked, grimacing.
Lampros snorted and quickly covered his mouth with his hand. He tried to straighten up and keep a straight face, but he snorted again and had to stare past Lachlan’s shoulder as tears of laughter welled up in his eyes.
“Mr. Hale was found in a state of undress offering to help women learn how to swallow swords.”
Lampros’ shoulders shook and the blush on his cheeks spread to the rest of his face at the effort of not laughing. Balling his hands into fists, he inhaled deeply, but it did little good. Even Lachlan had to bite down on his tongue at the story. He couldn’t laugh. This was not appropriate behaviour.
Taking a deep breath and turned away from the soldier, trying to regain his composure. When he felt he had a handle on it, he turned back. It did no good. The moment he saw Lampros still trying to contain himself, he felt the laughter creeping up again. It was completely ridiculous. He gulped again, thinking instead about the other crimes.
“Alright,” Lachlan said finally. “Alright, get Paul Valdez, tell him to make that god awful concoction he was telling me about and give it to Mr. Hale and those charged with intoxication. Once they’ve sobered up, release them with a warning.”
“And the rest, Sir?”
“I want the basics from the reports on all of them. I want to know what sort of destruction, or theft, or whatever we’re talking about.”
Lampros hurried away down the corridor as Lachlan opened the door and slipped into his office. Leaning on the wall on the other side of the door, he let out a deep breath, the urge to laugh gone. In Lachlan’s service they had never filled the cells of the south-east quadrant. At their worst, they had a dozen people, usually after a tavern brawl after a suspected liquor hit. Now they had more than double that after one night at the cirque.
Fred had been right. If they were spiking the lemonade, it was reason enough to take them down. Any unsuspecting citizen could found themselves wrapped up in it, and who knew what would happen to the children.
Lachlan left his door open and returned to his desk. He had half-opened his desk drawer to retrieve his litcom before he remembered he’d left it at home. They’d need to get in contact with the central station if they wanted to transfer prisoners, and who knew how bad the other quadrants were suffering.
The thrill of returning to the cirque had all but disappeared. Closing his office door, Lachlan set off towards the cells to find out how bad things truly were.
The box had a thick layer of dust over the brown lid. Even when Hadley blew on it a thick residue remained on the plastic, grim and grey. Carrying it through to the kitchen, Hadley held it up whilst Jack cleared away space for her to put it on the table. She pried the lid from the box with a pop and placed it to the side. Peered down at the contents, she took a deep breath.
She’d not looked inside the box for a long time. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d felt the urge to get it down. Lachlan didn’t like it. She wasn’t even sure why he had kept it all this time, knowing how little he liked the contents. Still, no matter how much he hated the contents, the box was kept hidden at the back of his cupboard, stored on a high shelf that required a chair to reach it.
A tiny yellow knitted cardigan lay on the top alongside a white envelope that she knew contained a loop of mahogany hair and a tiny white tooth. The envelope was sealed and Hadley had never brought herself to open it. They were memories for a parent, not a child. Unwrapped inside the box t
here was also a faded ball, a stuffed elephant with oversized ears, and pictures. Piles of photographs were banded together with elastic and string, their corners curled and many of them faded to shades of yellow.
Jack watched her pull the items out one by one but he didn’t comment. He stroked one of the ears of the elephant with a long thin finger, smiling fondly before he pulled back, setting his gaze on her again. Knowing that he was watching her made her neck warm and as she pulled out the photos from the very bottom of the box, she didn’t know whether her trembling fingers were because of his gaze of what she knew she would see.
She’d been eight years old the first time she went looking for the brown box, balancing on the back of a chair. The plastic had been just out of reach as she stretched and climbed higher on the chair. When she ran to Lachlan with a cut on her temple she hadn’t been able to admit what she’d been looking for. Before too long he saw the blood on his bedpost, however, and he knew. He didn’t scold her for it, nor did he take down the box for her to see. The box remained on the top shelf, waiting until she was old enough to pluck it out for herself when he wasn’t looking. That had been when she knew for certain. Lachlan would not stop her from remembering, but he wouldn’t help her either.
Sinking into a chair, Hadley unknotted the string from around the last collection of photographs and picked off the top one. It had been so long that it stuck to the photograph behind it, peeling flakes of colour from the surface. She handed the photograph to Jack.
“My parents,” she said. “I was seven when this was taken.”
“And that’s Lachlan?” he asked, pointing at the dark-haired teenager grinning at the camera. Hadley nodded.
“He would have been fifteen there. It’s the last photograph we took of the four of us.”
He placed the photograph down on the table so gently that it might have flaked into a hundred pieces if he dropped it. His gaze darted to her and back to the photograph. He traced the edge with his finger.
He watched her, his brow furrowed. Hadley looked back at him, wondering what he was thinking but not daring to ask. He sighed and looked back at the photograph. Scratching behind his ear, he eased himself further back in the chair.
“They died?” he asked.
“They left,” she said. “One night while Lachlan and I were asleep. We got up the next morning and they were just gone.”
The silence was as gentle as his handling of the photograph. It settled like dust, only disturbed when it became too much to take, when she just had to go searching through it. Jack kept his gaze on the photograph as Hadley picked up the elephant and clutched it against her chest. The fluff that might once have been silver and soft was now a browning grey, clumped in places and missing in others. It had been Lachlan’s first, his favourite toy, only given up when Hadley had decided it was her favourite too. By the time she got it, the elephant was already missing some of its fur and one of the plastic nails on its back foot.
“It’s why Lachlan is the way he is,” she said, stroking the back of her finger down the elephant’s trunk. She didn’t know why she had to explain her brother’s actions. He was doing his job, which should have been enough. But after everything Jack had told her about the fortune teller and about the things her brother had seen, her brother’s position wouldn’t be enough to make Jack understand.
“He raised me. He was sixteen and he became my whole family. He took the Coalition position two years younger than most so that he could bring money in. Made sure that I could stay in school and we could keep the house. He became one of the youngest captains they’ve ever had, all so that people would stop whispering about us.”
Jack leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. Resting his chin in his palm, he gazed at her in that way that made her uncomfortable, like everything around them was invisible.
“Whispering what?”
Hadley laughed. It was a sour sound. She’d not talked about her parents with anyone for a long time, not even Lachlan. She placed the elephant on the table.
“That we would become just like them,” she muttered, taking back the photograph and laying it on top of the pile. Tying the string around it with Lachlan’s precise knots, she sighed. She could barely look at the faces before she returned the pile to the box. “Criminals and good for nothings.”
“I don’t understand.”
She began putting the items back into the box in the exact order she had pulled them out, settling them into the correct position. Lachlan knew she looked at the box from time to time, he had to know, and yet she always put things back so that he wouldn’t notice.
“Everything Lachlan does is to put off the whispering just a little while longer. This is a small city and people like gossip. If he takes down a cirque…”
The thought was there and then it was gone, whisked away by a sudden breeze. Lachlan’s laughing eyes looked up at her from one of the photographs, a boy of nine or ten. He had such a look of mischief that she couldn’t remember seeing on her brother with her own eyes. She’d only ever seen that bright and naughty little boy in photographs. His eyes were so blue, no longer dark, but as bright as the summer sky as she stumbled back into her seat. The pile slipped from her hand. The knot opened and the photographs twirled like leaves in an autumn wind that took the kitchen with it.
Colour melted away, carried off in the wind until Hadley stood in the middle of a field of black. The smell of rust and engine oil was suffocating. Despite being able to see nothing and everything through the black, everything felt too close. There was no escape.
Hadley turned in a full circle until Lachlan’s blue eyes shone back at her. They were so familiar but filled with a fear she had never seen.
“Please…”
He reached out. His hair was longer and disheveled, red dirt smeared down his cheek. His coalition jacket was unbuttoned and torn at the cuff.
“Lachlan?”
Lachlan took another step forward, only to jump back again, his hands raised. His gaze went straight through her. A thin scar ran down his cheek from temple to jaw.
“No, you don’t understand. Listen to me.”
Hadley glanced behind her but only the darkness crept in over her shoulder.
“Lachlan, it’s me, what’s going on?”
He shook his head frantically, strings of dirty hair slapping his temple.
“No, stop! Stop, please!”
Another step back, another breath of fear, the gun appeared in the bottom of her vision.
Hadley screamed and turned around again. There was nobody there, no one to hold the weapon she could see pointed at her brother.
It wasn’t like any gun she had ever seen. Bronze twisted around the handle and barrel like vines, so highly polished that they shone, even in the dark. The hammer had a ball on the end and the thumb that pulled it back left a print on the top. Underneath the vines, the barrel was onyx and gleaming.
Her hand passed straight through the barrel as she tried to swipe it away.
“No, please! It’s me! It’s me!”
In the distance, Hadley heard the voice of the person holding the gun, too far away to grasp onto. Desperate anger and bitter betrayal flooded every inch of her body, swirling and overwhelming.
The crack of the gunshot echoed in every direction. The beautiful gun jerked backwards. Blood splattered across the shadows and Lachlan hit the floor in the silent settling of dust. Smoke billowed from the end of the barrel and obscured everything in a heavy black fog of screaming.
“Lachlan, it’s me. What’s going on?”
Jack slowly got to his feet as Hadley turned in a circle. Her hair whipped around her face as she looked for something that wasn’t there. Breathing fast and hard, she swiped her hand at the air in front of her, still searching for something invisible to him.
He’d seen Annalise slip away from him before. There was a blankness in her eyes that had been hard to put his finger on at first. He’d gotten used to it after a while, the quiet a
bsence until she came back to him. There was nothing to do but wait when she slipped away like that.
He could see the same blankness in Hadley now. However, where Annalise had been content to observe until the vision finished, Hadley was twisting and turning, trying to alter whatever she was seeing. Jack pushed his chair back away from her, gulping. Hatliffe had said Hadley would take on Annalise’s gift, but he’d still not been sure he believed it. There was no denying it now.
Perhaps Annalise had been like this in the beginning, not understanding that she was seeing a fraction of the future. Maybe she had attempted to fight it, even change what she was witnessing. He’d not known her when she first received her gift and he’d never thought to ask what the first vision was like. Hadley had said Lachlan’s name, and he wondered whether Annalise’s first vision had been personal as well. Was it the vision of a loved one, the baby she’d mentioned time and time again in her final hours, that had forced her to accept her place on the ship?
Hadley jumped backwards. Lurching for her as she clipped the chair, Jack grasped her elbows. She wobbled but stayed on her feet in his grasp. Her arm flung out as she launched herself forwards. He retreated quickly, grabbing the chair and pulling it away from her. Beside the table, Hadley fell to her knees, clutching at the empty air.
“No! No! No!”
“It’s alright, Hadley, it’s okay,” he told her, moving around her though he knew she would neither hear or see him.
He looked down, balling his hands into fists. He couldn’t touch her. If he tried to drag her back, she might end up hurting herself or him. It had to run its course, and while it did his only option was to ensure there was nothing she would crash into.
But he longed to touch her. Every instinct told him to gather her up in his arms. Tears streamed down her face as she shook the air. Her breath came faster, hiccupping gulps even she could not control.
“No!” she cried. “No! You can’t…”
Her screams deafened him. Clawing at her face, she hunched over into a ball, rocking as she cried. Jack could only stare in horror.