Out of Time

by John Marsden

  ‘Continued interest in the story of this child has of course been due to the repeated and well-verified sightings of a ghost who resembles the boy in every material detail. Always seen in the west wing, and always in the month of September, the child is dressed in the livery of a nineteenth century servant. Many people claim to have held short conversations with him. They report that his initial lively demeanour soon gives way to a doleful and tragic expression, and the boy then fades away, literally in front of their eyes. Since the first sightings, in 1871, after the rebuilding of the west wing, a number of guests, frightened by these encounters, have left the castle vowing never to return. Others have not been so morbidly affected by the experience.

  ‘Throughout the seventeenth century the main reception rooms of the castle were also supposed to be haunted, by the eighth Duchess, who committed suicide in 1601. However no sightings of this apparition have been reported since the early 1700s.’

  The book went on to discuss other tragedies associated with Castle Dundas, but Luke had read enough. He put the book down and sat staring straight ahead of him. There was consternation in his eyes, confusion and horror in his mind. How could something be real and not real? Be there and not there? People either lived or they didn’t. How could somebody disappear as Alexander Karatzann had disappeared?

  When Luke finally crept back down the long corridor he had no answers; indeed, an hour before he had hardly known that the questions existed.

  *

  JAMES HAD A whole day with Max and Sybil. They spent the morning at an aid organisation for which the two teenagers did voluntary work, packing medical supplies for a field hospital. Sybil explained about the war, who was fighting and why. She showed him the main cities on a map and the places where the worst battles had been and the current location of the field hospital. She explained how a massive bomb, which exploded among fleeing civilians, had overloaded the hospital’s facilities – hence the urgency of the need for equipment. James was fascinated. And he liked the neat arrangements of the supplies in their crates. He enjoyed helping. Later in the morning a young doctor who had been working in the hospital less than three days earlier came in to arrange consignment of the cases. They talked to her for a long time too and she described some of the patients and the difficulties of the work. James thought that he would like to be a doctor.

  For lunch Sybil and Max and James went to an Italian restaurant which Max had heard was ‘great. . . the best’. It was informal enough not to intimidate James, but the meal still did not go smoothly. As Sybil read the menu a corner of it got too close to the candle in the middle of the table and within a moment the menu had caught fire and was burning vigorously. Sybil threw her Coke over it to put it out, as the waiters came running. It was a long time before they were able to order from the now charred menu. Then Max went to the toilet and came back with his fly undone. As he hastily did it up, with much embarrassment, he did not notice a waiter move the chair behind him to give himself a better route. Max sat down quickly, but kept going, straight to the floor. The whole restaurant was again disturbed. For the rest of the meal the waiter and even the customers gave their table a wide berth.

  But even before that the service had been poor and the food was worse. They were all disappointed. They decided to cut the last course and the coffee, and get a Norgen-Vaas along the street. Sybil and Max went to the counter to pay the bill, James following them. He was startled to see Max, while the bill was being rung up on the cash register, pick up a couple of pieces of garlic bread from a basket on the nearest table, and, after easing up the cover on the Expresso machine, drop the bread into the bubbling coffee. James opened his mouth as if to say something. But Max caught his eye and winked. James shut his mouth again.

  When they were back on the street again Max gave an exultant whoop. ‘Fixed their coffee for them,’ he laughed, dancing along the street, in an excess of delight.

  THIS HOUSE IS full of quiet cold air. My room’s the only place where it doesn’t spread, although sometimes people open the door and let in the draft. It smells minty. They don’t open it easily or comfortably, for the door is shut with my mind and my will as well as with its own metal grip. I hear them slowly disturbing the air in other parts of the house too with flat deliberate movements, a walk of footsteps, the ‘aarrchhh’ of a chair being pushed back, the commotion of plates and cups.

  I keep my room warm with my books, with my clothes thrown across the floor and stuffed into drawers, with my drawings and posters stuck on the walls, with my smelly old sneakers wrestling with each other in a corner, with my tree at the window. I keep it warm by sitting at my desk and thinking and writing.

  The heart of the room is the bottom drawer of my desk. In there sits an envelope. It’s so warm I can’t pick it up but sometimes I open the drawer and peer in to make sure it’s still there. It always has been so far. In that envelope are all the little bits of her, like the fragments after an explosion. There are only two photos (all the ones in the house were gone). One of them I cut out of the school magazine in the library. It’s just the ordinary old class photo. She’s in the back row, third from the left. The other one is from a time capsule we buried in our cubby when we were little. And there are three birthday cards she gave me; and the lucky dollar that she lent me for the slalom championships, that I forgot to give back; and her silver chain with a cross that I found behind the washing machine a long time later; and her little Teddy Bear – the size of a bottle of Liquid Paper – that a friend of hers, Van, slipped into my pocket at school one day, without saying anything; and a note she wrote me, nothing important, just saying she’d taken back the videos; and her broken pencil sharpener; and half her book mark and her tooth that I’d replaced with two dollars when I was baby-sitting one night. I think that’s all. I know that’s all.

  Sometimes I think if you understand things then you can fix them.

  Maybe in this cold quiet house there are other little warm spots, glowing with secret life. Where are they? If I look, will I find them? They used to be so obvious: the biscuit jar, the television, the fireplace, our cubby, her bedroom, the old chair with its worn arms where our other grandmother used to sit. Maybe the other people who live here have their own ones. I suppose they must.

  And what about me? Me, the person me, I mean. My cold quiet body, I mean. When I’m in my room I feel that little parts of me might be alive – my mouth, my heart, my hands. When I’m in my own room, yes, I feel something.

  My favourite poem is so light in words, so heavy in everything else:

  I never parked in my own driveway

  In case you wanted to leave.

  And sooner or later you all did.

  I waved you down the path

  Then turned

  And went back inside the house.

  I used to keep it on the wall but now it’s on the desk, under some books.

  There’s movement downstairs again: footsteps echoing like a pulse. The third step from the bottom of the staircase sends a quiver along the upstairs corridor when anyone treads on it. The building trembles.

  THEY WERE ON holidays when Ellie had a series of asthma attacks so bad that she was admitted to hospital. The attacks continued and she had to stay there for some weeks. For James the days passed with little distinction between them. The holiday turned into a long one; they were forced to keep extending their booking at the big resort hotel.

  They were staying near the sea. Only a golf course lay between the hotel and the barren rocky coastline. Inland was all farming country, soft green that rolled on and on for many miles. The soil was rich; a dark brown that looked good enough to eat.

  James roamed the hills freely. He became a little wild. His parents preferred the attractions inside the hotel: the bar, the casino, the swimming pool. They went to the hospital to visit Ellie: James did not know how often. He himself went every couple of days. He did not mind going, but he had to be sought, through the paddocks, on the distant hills, and called a
nd called, reeled in on an invisible line of obedience and family. The line was a long one and it had its weak points, where James stopped to examine a tree trunk or a hole in the ground. It never brought him in directly but always in wide, far-reaching zigzags, like a salmon fighting an angler.

  After he’d visited the hospital a few times he started to notice the boy in the bed next to his sister. Thin and pale, the boy never seemed to have visitors. James approached him with extreme diffidence but was surprised and relieved by the boy’s eager welcome. Each time he visited Ellie he made a point of spending some time with the little boy, more and more on each visit, until he was splitting the visiting hours equally between the two.

  Ellie looked terrible, using an oxygen mask frequently, struggling to breathe, struggling to speak. James hated seeing her like that. He didn’t understand asthma: it was a disease that defied his imagination. He could imagine what it would feel like to have a broken leg; he understood the logic of cancer and heart attacks; he had himself struggled through childhood bouts of scarlet fever, mumps and measles. But asthma was an enigma, a frustrating and elusive illness that made him angry and upset.

  One day, in a paddock behind a line of trees, out of sight of the nearest farmhouse, James cornered a small pocket of sheep. Although one after another slipped under his guard and accelerated along the fenceline James gradually closed in until he could grab one of the startled, heaving beasts by the fleece. When this sheep bolted too, James used its momentum to swing himself onto its back and ride it for a few breathtaking, jolting metres. The sheep, however, showed surprising intelligence. Or perhaps it was lucky, and its instincts coincided with its interests. Whichever, it suddenly swerved, continuing to gallop parallel to the fence, but now so close that the barbed wire dragged along James’ flank, tearing at his clothes and his skin. Suddenly the ride became a panic-stricken struggle by James to get off. It took him so long that he felt he would never succeed. His dismounting was half a tumbling twist by him, half a bucking twist by the sheep as it ran. He landed on his shoulder, then rolled over and over in the dirt, panting and crying. ‘Damn sheep,’ he swore futilely, angrily. ‘Fat, stupid, bloody, ugly, dumb bastard. I hate it, I hate it.’ He could not understand how something apparently so benign could so thoroughly overthrow him.

  He told no-one about the sheep except the little boy in the hospital. The boy laughed and laughed. As James was leaving the ward the charge sister said to him, ‘My word you’ve done Alex good with your visits. He’s been a different boy since you took an interest in him.’

  James felt confused, but proud and delighted. A few days later Ellie was discharged and they were able to begin the long journey home. James never saw Alex again but he often wondered about him, hoping the child had recovered from his illness and been allowed home.

  THE GIRL LAY listlessly in her hospital bed. Somebody, in an effort to cheer her, had cut out various articles from an old Australian magazine and pinned them on the wall. The girl practised her English by reading them over and over. The one she read most often showed a photograph of an ancient, incredibly lined black face, with eyes that seemed to gaze through and beyond the camera and the viewer and even time itself. Its headline read: ‘Language Passes with Moonlight’. It told how an Aboriginal woman called Lardie Moonlight had just died in the state of Queensland. She had been the last person to speak an Aboriginal language called Kalkadoon and with her death the language had gone forever. It had been a complex and sophisticated language and, although its basic elements had been recorded by linguists, its subtleties were lost – and it would never be used in speech again.

  The article went on to say that what had happened to Kalkadoon was common. In Australia alone hundreds of languages had disappeared.

  There were eight articles stuck on the wall, although two soon fell off and wafted under the bed where they lay gathering dust. Of the ones that remained, most were light and bright. In fact the space seemed to be taken up mainly by advertisements: Coca Cola, Seppelt’s Wines, Target Stores. But it was the article about Lardie Moonlight that fascinated the girl. It made her feel empty and awful and hopeless, yet she kept rereading it.

  One day her tired eyes were resting on an advertisement for a range of watches called Wardill. On the golden-brown skin of a model’s arm gleamed a golden watch. The caption read, ‘For people who don’t always care what time it is.’ The girl amused herself by straining to read the time on the watch in the photo but she was a little too far away. She could not be sure if she was seeing the hands of the watch or just imagining lines on the paper. The effort made her eyes hurt and she screwed them shut for a long moment, then opened them again. To her astonishment a boy was now standing between her and the magazine pictures on the wall. She had not heard him come in and she could not imagine how he had come there so quickly. He was of Caucasian appearance, about twelve years old perhaps, with light brown hair and darker brown eyes. He was watching her tensely, unblinking. The girl gulped and swallowed. Suddenly she was tired of not speaking. She said in her own language, ‘Where did you come from?’

  He came a step closer to the bed but he showed no understanding of her question. She repeated it in English. This time he answered.

  ‘Oh. . . um. . . out there.’ He waved vaguely towards the door. His voice was very husky and faint. Then he asked, ‘You’ve broken your leg?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There was. . . a big bang. Everything fell over. It was a bomb, I suppose.’ Suddenly she was very tired. She closed her eyes for a minute. When she opened them again she expected to find him gone. But he was still there.

  ‘Where are your family?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She began to cry. ‘They were in front of me. I stopped. . . then everything fell down. I don’t know where they are. I think they’re dead. In the ground and dead.’

  ‘When did it happen?’ he asked. His voice was gaining strength and sounded urgent.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe a week. Maybe two. I was under the wall. . . for a long time.’

  Frustrated, the boy looked around the room, searching for clues. There was a collection of scraps of paper tied to the wall with a string which hung from a nail. He detached them and looked at them. They were in a language he did not know. He brought them to her.

  ‘What are these?’ he asked. She peered at them.

  ‘That’s my name,’ she said, pointing to some words at the top of the first page. She read on, translating, in a faltering voice.

  ‘It says I am found buried,’ she said, ‘about a kilometre from here in the Freedom Square. . . I am. . . I’m not sure how you say. . . asleep?’

  ‘Unconscious,’ he prompted.

  ‘I have the broken leg. And other things. Cuts. And bangs on my head.’

  ‘When was this?’ he interrupted.

  ‘July 8,’ she read.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Half past three in the afternoon. . . ’ She read on. ‘But. . . I am in the ground. . . maybe three days. It says ‘Bury by bomb explosion since 11 am, July 4.’

  ‘11 am,’ he repeated. ‘July 4.’

  She put the notes down and lay back on the bed. ‘Who are you?’ she asked again. ‘Why do you want to know? Are you sick too? Do you work here?’

  ‘I’m a visitor,’ he said. ‘Just a visitor.’

  She was puzzled by this.

  ‘Where do you live? Where are your family?’

  ‘A long way away.’ He grinned shyly. ‘A long way away.’

  ‘If you want to help me,’ she said, and her eyes filled with tears again. ‘Find my parents. . . in this Freedom Square.’

  ‘How will I know them?’ he asked.

  She frowned with the effort of remembering, and spoke slowly: ‘My mother wear a blue and white scarf. Dark blue and white. She is small and old. She has a mark on the back of her neck. . . like this.’ She touched her face, paused a moment, then kept talking. ‘My father is taller. His teeth are not very go
od. The front one is chipped. He wear glasses. He has no hair on the top of his head. His eyebrows, they come together, nearly, in the middle.’

  Her voice had been fading for the last few minutes. Now she closed her eyes. Her breathing gradually became even and audible. James waited for a few minutes to see if she would wake up. When she didn’t he reached into his pocket and took out Mr Woodforde’s machine.

  WITH FEAR FLAPPING and squeezing inside his chest James moved slowly through the square, searching the faces of the people. His hands were sweaty but soon he was sweating everywhere. Many people glanced quickly and curiously at him, for he did not look like any of the others who were using the square as a thoroughfare. But they were too intent on their own interests to give him any lingering attention. He was free, as free as the traffic and his fear would allow, to conduct his search.

  Knowing that the timing given on the sheet was likely to be an approximation, he had set his arrival for ten fifteen. It was obvious that the square was whole then, teeming with uninterrupted life. He edged backwards and forwards through the people, scanning the faces, aware of the price of failure. His hand was on the Return button, always, but he also knew that if he was at the wrong spot at the wrong time his reflexes might not be quick enough.

  At about ten to eleven a new wave of people came through the square. James saw a group of nuns, their habits dusty at their ankles, moving through the crowd like beetles in a drought. He was alarmed to see a soldier approaching him with a purposeful look in his eyes. The boy began sidling away. As he did so he thought he glimpsed the girl, about forty or fifty metres away. He turned and plunged towards the spot, intent upon getting there before looking for her again. He knew that if it were she, he might have only seconds to make the vital contact. He wriggled and worried his way through the cumbersome, overloaded people. But when he had travelled about thirty metres he nearly ran into her. He pulled up with a little cry of surprise. She glanced at him without expression, then looked again, this time with puzzled eyes. ‘Was that a glance of recognition?’ he wondered, feeling somehow, illogically, guilty as he slipped around behind her. She was wearing a grey cotton shift over grey cotton trousers and carrying an assortment of heavy bags. Her long black hair ran straight and pleasingly down her back. She stopped and changed several of the bags around, to alter the balance of the load. As she did so, two people in front of her turned. The man was tall, with thinning black hair and dark eyebrows that nearly met in the middle. He was wearing glasses. The woman was smaller and looked older. She had a blue and white scarf around her neck. She smiled at the girl. Then the two adults turned back and continued to forge their way through the throng.