A New Kind of Dreaming

by Anthony Eaton

  Jamie drained the glass of water.

  ‘No point sittin’ here all night.’ Leaving the glass on the top step, he headed around the side of the house to the road, careful not to make any noise.

  As he walked he got the feeling that something or someone was nearby, watching him. A couple of times he stopped and turned suddenly, hoping to catch whoever it was by surprise, but all he ever saw was the empty street dappled with deep, still shadows.

  In the dark, Port Barren was a different place. It had the same eerie atmosphere, but the absence of light made everything seem closer, more stifling. The houses took on a dead and sinister quality. The town felt soulless. Back in the city Jamie often used to go walking at night. Sometimes he’d roamed for hours through the streets, enjoying the darkness and the shadows, trying to make himself blend in. It was different though. In the city there were still signs of life; the houses looked asleep, not dead as they did here. There were streetlights, and the occasional flickering blue glow in a window of a night owl watching late television. Kids’ bikes were left in front yards, and the odd car would cruise past.

  In Port Barren, apart from the clicking of the cicadas in the scrub, and the odd animal noise that drifted across from the desert, a total, unsettling stillness pervaded. The wind had dropped and the air itself was as lifeless as the darkened houses. In the city the dark had been a friend, but in Port Barren it was a different creature, full of menace and shadows and hints of movement in the corners of Jamie’s vision, which vanished as soon as he looked. The longer he wandered the more uneasy he felt. The night settled upon him like a thick, suffocating blanket dropped from the sky.

  He found himself by the side of the highway about a hundred metres from the admin building. The town’s only street lamp threw a dirty puddle of light at the base of the front steps, and a single, naked bulb in the eaves above the admin door cast a dim glow along the verandah. Everything looked normal, quiet and dead, but the sensation that he was being watched became stronger. Hairs prickled along his arms and the back of his neck and he stood totally still.

  ‘Stop it,’ he told himself. ‘Bloody well calm down.’ Some deep breaths slowed his pulse a little. He took a couple of steps towards the admin building and then stopped, a cold shiver running the length of his body.

  There was a person on the verandah.

  The figure stood in the shadows, out of the pool of light cast by the bare bulb. Whoever it was shifted their weight from one leg to the other. A small movement, but enough to separate one shadow from the rest. Having spotted him, Jamie could make out the person easily – a tall, slim shape, motionless. Watching.

  He was still a little distance away, but if he ran he’d be noticed for sure. All he could do was to wait until the man on the verandah went away or looked somewhere else, and then try to fade back in the direction he’d approached from.

  It seemed an eternity that the two of them stood, as still and silent as the Port Barren night, Jamie feeling hopelessly exposed in the middle of the road, and the stranger on the verandah content to remain in the shadow of an upright roof support. Jamie could feel the weight in his belly growing heavier and heavier. Sweat broke out on his forehead and he tried desperately to control his breathing, to fight down the wave of panic that threatened to swamp him.

  ‘I should run for it.’ His voice was an almost silent whisper, more for reassurance than any other purpose. He could try to just creep away into the darkness, disappearing silently into the night. Or he could run. Hope that he got clear. Try to get back home.

  In the end the decision was made for him. As Jamie watched, the figure came to life, searching its pockets and then placing a cigarette in its mouth. In the brief flare of the match, Jamie could make out the man’s face. He drew a sharp breath. It was a face he recognised. The young cop. The expressionless one leaning against the police truck watching when Butcher had introduced himself.

  ‘Oh shit!’ The last thing he wanted was to be found by the cops, wandering around town alone in the middle of the night.

  The flare of the match died and was replaced by the tiny red pinpoint at the end of the cigarette. The cop walked slowly the length of the verandah and stepped into the glow of the light, so that he stood directly under the bulb.

  This was Jamie’s chance. In the light the cop would be blind to anything in the darkness outside the verandah. Jamie was edging backwards when the man took a final deep draw on the cigarette. He flicked the butt away, where it exploded on the hard ground in a miniature shower of sparks. Looking up, he exhaled the smoke; Jamie watched it curl lazily around the light bulb. The young cop stared directly into the darkness at the spot where Jamie stood. Then a tiny smile twitched at the cop’s mouth and he raised his right hand in a kind of half salute – his eyes locked on Jamie.

  Jamie ran. Taking flight into the shadows of Port Barren.

  five

  ‘So have you met Cameron yet?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Cameron Michaels. The other senior at school.’

  ‘Seen him around.’

  Lorraine’s office was just as cluttered as usual. Jamie sat on the same old chair and tried to look as uninterested as possible.

  ‘Have you been getting out much? I imagine you’ve had a good look around town by now.’

  ‘Not really.’

  Since the midnight encounter with the young cop, whose name, Jamie found out by listening to the kids at school, was Constable Robb, Jamie had been lying low. He’d fallen into the habit of heading straight back to Archie’s place when school got out for the afternoon and then staying inside. For the first time in years, he was getting his homework done.

  ‘You should introduce yourself to Cameron. He’s a nice guy, I’m sure he’d love to show you around.’

  Jamie had seen this Cameron kid. He was the only year twelve in the tiny, single-teacher state school. There were a couple of girls in year ten and a handful of eights and nines, but that was it for Port Barren Secondary. Less than twenty kids all up, in one classroom, with one teacher. Most of the town’s kids got sent to boarding school as soon as they were old enough, or the whole family moved away when the kids reached high school. The older kids, Cameron and the year ten girls, were doing correspondence courses for most of their subjects. They were only at school a couple of days a week, to get work checked or to hand in assignments. The rest of the time they worked at home. Jamie was flat out catching up on the basics that he’d missed over the last few years. School hadn’t been one of his priorities for some time.

  ‘Yeah, I might.’

  ‘You should. I think you’d like him, and you need someone to hang out with.’

  A few seconds of silence.

  ‘How’s school going?’

  ‘Okay.’ Jamie would never have admitted it, but he was actually enjoying school. Without his mates to distract him he’d found it was pretty simple.

  Lorraine put down the file she’d been reading, took her thick glasses off the end of her nose, and leaned back in her seat.

  ‘You’re sure there’s no problems?’ She had a strange expression on her face. Something was bothering her.

  ‘Nah. No worries.’

  ‘It’s just that . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not sure how to put this. It’s just . . . well . . . Sergeant Butcher came to see me the other day, over in Karratha.’

  ‘What was he doin’ there?’

  ‘He comes across from time to time, for various bits and pieces.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He’s concerned. About you.’

  ‘Me? What for?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Since you arrived there’s been a few cases of vandalism about the place. He’s worried that you might be involved.’

  ‘What cases?’

 
‘Nothing major – a window broken at the back of the pub the other night, and someone’s let a couple of car tyres down. That’s all.’

  ‘Wasn’t me.’

  ‘Jamie, Port Barren is a small place. Someone new arrives in town and suddenly there’s an outbreak of vandalism, well, people notice. And talk. That’s all I’m saying.’

  Jamie knew what she was really saying.

  ‘This is bullshit!’

  ‘No one’s accusing you of anything. I thought you should be made aware of the situation. That’s all.’

  ‘I’ve been home every day. And every night. Right after school. You go and ask Archie. Go on.’ He slammed his hand against the thin wall next to his chair. The whole building trembled. It was one thing getting busted and sent up here – it sucked, but it was fair enough. Getting accused of stuff he hadn’t done was something else altogether.

  ‘Calm down, Jamie. You’re not getting blamed for any of this. I just wanted to make sure that you were warned about it, that’s all. If you’re staying out of the way then that’s good. Keep doing it. Just don’t get yourself caught out. Remember, people around here notice things and, let’s face it, you don’t exactly have the best record.’

  ‘How does anyone here apart from you know my record?’

  Lorraine looked momentarily startled. Disconcerted.

  ‘Jamie, it’s pretty clear why you’re here. We’ve had kids sent up by the courts before, and Sergeant Butcher . . .’

  ‘Butcher’s an arsehole.’

  ‘He’s just doing his job . . .’

  ‘Crap. He’s trying to make me look bad. I bet he did the same thing to that last kid too.’

  ‘What last kid?’

  ‘The one that vanished.’

  Lorraine went very still, and leaned forward in her chair, giving him a hard look.

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  He’d made a mistake. Jamie remembered that he hadn’t told Lorraine about Butcher’s performance and their conversation that first day. He hadn’t wanted to stir things up.

  ‘Overheard a couple of the kids at school talking about it.’

  ‘Did you?’ One of Lorraine’s eyebrows twitched involuntarily. It was only a small movement but Jamie noticed it. She was still leaning right over the desk towards him, studying him closely.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Jamie could tell she didn’t believe him.

  After what seemed like ages, Lorraine leaned back in her seat again. When she started speaking, she talked slowly, choosing each word carefully.

  ‘That boy had major problems, Jamie. He was nothing like you. And when he vanished Sergeant Butcher was quite upset by the whole thing. He was in charge of organising the search, you know.’

  ‘He did a pretty average job of it.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ He’d never imagined Lorraine having quite that sharp tone of voice. She became more and more agitated as she spoke. ‘He does the best he can for this place, and he did all he could to find that boy. So don’t you go making judgments about things you know nothing about. You weren’t even here. They searched around this town for days. It wasn’t the Sergeant’s fault that they didn’t find him. Sometimes people just disappear.’

  ‘Do they?’

  Lorraine was still upset and ruffled, and she answered without thinking.

  ‘Of course they do. God knows it isn’t the first time around here.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Who else vanished?’ Jamie slipped the question in, almost catching her out again. She nearly answered straight away, but then stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who else disappeared round here? You just said it wasn’t the first time.’

  ‘Well . . .’ She paused, thrown by the sudden change of subject. ‘The other one was different again. A couple of years earlier. There was this girl . . .’

  She trailed off as she looked at her watch.

  ‘My God! Is that the time? I’m sorry, Jamie, but I’d better get moving if I’m going to get back to Karratha this afternoon. I need to see someone there today.’

  ‘What about . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Lorraine was already up and out of her desk. The movement broke the mood. She was bright and cheerful, trying hard to be her usual self. Too hard, Jamie thought. ‘I’ll be back in town next Tuesday. I don’t need to see you here, but I might pop in to the school and check on how you’re doing with Mr Scott.’

  ‘Yeah. Whatever.’

  She walked down the stairs with him. At the bottom she suddenly turned and spoke to him in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

  ‘Jamie, be careful. You need to make a new start here, look forwards.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Don’t go digging around in the past. Not here in Port Barren. Let people have their secrets.’

  Then she was gone.

  six

  Jamie lay awake, tossing and turning. The disturbed feeling still sat heavily upon him. The desert wind dropped slowly and by half past two the night was still. A mosquito had found its way inside and he could hear it humming in the darkness. The air was stifling and the constant drone seemed to be coming from right inside his skull. Once or twice he slapped at the unseen insect, his hand striking out in the thick black air. One time he thought he’d got it, then after a few seconds the humming came again, relentless and annoying.

  Tonight a tightness knotted his muscles, and his whole body was tense, as though waiting for something to happen. It was as if he was being called, drawn by an unseen force. Jamie sat in the dark, head in his hands, trying to throw the feeling off. Eventually he made his way silently outside to the front of the house.

  The night was still. Even the crickets, usually so constant in their chirping, were quiet. Jamie moved cautiously through the streets, slowly, staying deep in the shadows of the houses and scrub, prepared to dive for cover at even the slightest hint of movement.

  There was nothing – no twitching of blinds at windows, no flickering sensations at the corners of his vision, nothing but stillness. Beneath his feet the hard dirt crunched gently, and he stepped lightly, keeping sound to a minimum.

  He found himself at the beach. When he’d been a kid he and his brother had gone to the beach a few times. The memory of white sand and foamy crashing surf was still vivid. He had played for hours in the shallows, getting burnt to a crisp, while his brother and their mates tried to surf on an old board they’d dug up from somewhere.

  The Port Barren beach was nothing like that. Jamie scrambled over sharp rocks exposed by the low tide, down onto the sand. His eyes had adapted to the faint starlight and he could see a fair bit. The sand wasn’t the bright white of the beach back home; it was the same dirty red as the rest of the town, right down to the water. There was no movement, no noise. There wasn’t the usual hissing of waves running onto rocks, no scraping of sand and pebbles being washed up and down, nothing. Here, the water looked like a solid, dark mirror. The ocean lay still and heavy at the edge of the sand. A different sort of desert from the one that stretched away behind Archie’s house, but a desert all the same.

  A little distance to the east an old wooden jetty jutted out over the sand. With the tide out, almost the entire structure stood above the waterline. A single light on a pole stood a solitary vigil at the end, its dull glow reflecting off the steely black water. Jamie headed west along the beach, away from the town. The last couple of houses fell behind, and clear of the threat of discovery he tried to relax.

  He still couldn’t shake the idea that something was drawing him. The sensation that he was being called along the beach was too strong to ignore. With every step it seemed to grow in urgency, until it was like a living thing, pulsing and throbbing at the centre of his brain.

  About two kilometres out from the town he spotted som
ething on the beach ahead. A large black shape crouching in darkness. He increased his pace a little, certain that this was his destination. It loomed larger and larger as he approached, slowly taking on the form of a boat.

  It had a raked bow and blunt stern, a solid, box-like appearance that suggested it had been designed to do lots of hard work. It lay half on its side, propped up on a couple of old tractor tyres, well above the tide line. Sitting in the gloom on the dark sand, it seemed huge and whale-like.

  He stopped a couple of metres away. One thing was obvious; this wasn’t a local boat. It didn’t look like any of the small fishing and recreational craft moored off the township; it was large, unwieldy and wooden. The wheelhouse was the only structure on the deck. There were no masts and no rigging.

  Slowly, aware of the building tension in his body, Jamie walked around it. Even in the darkness he could see the gaping holes where planks had rotted and come away from the ribs.

  The whole boat had a curiously dead feeling about it, as though it hadn’t just been abandoned, but rather that it had never been alive. There was something familiar about its design, something suggestive about the sweep of the deck.

  Tentatively, Jamie crept forward until he was standing right alongside the hull. His heart pounded in his ears and the night air seemed to take on a whole new thickness – he felt as though he actually had to suck it into his lungs. He reached out with his right hand, stretching towards the rough planking. His fingertips brushed against the timber.

  It was like an electric shock. Spots flashed in Jamie’s vision and his whole body stiffened, then he fell in a crumpled heap onto the hard red sand beside the boat.

  ‘Hey! Wake up. You okay?’

  Sunlight. Hot and blinding, dragging him back to reality.

  ‘Huh?’ Through the bright haze Jamie made out someone standing over him. The rising sun behind the figure shone a bright halo around his head and shoulders, hiding his features.