The Repossession

by Sam Hawksmoor

  days she imagined she saw him in the arms of another.

  Slutty Sylvie, for example, who was always flaunting her boobs and saying that Rian had a cute butt. Some days she lost all faith, all confidence, and knew he was kissing someone else and had completely forgotten her.

  These were the days and hours when she wanted to kill herself. They occurred more often now. Time in this house moved in slow motion. Ice Ages could come and go and she would still be in this room waiting for the devil to show up. She would be the winner of Spurlake’s Young Miss Havisham award for patience.

  Somewhere outside she could hear a young girl was laughing, riding a bike up and down the street, like she was just learning to ride and couldn’t get enough of ringing that bell. A dog was barking some place further up the road. Wind rustled through the fir trees in the backyard. Somewhere out there, people were alive.

  2

  Bunk Science

  Rian passed the salad and tore off a piece of the French breadstick to eat. He wasn’t hungry but had to make like he was. At his mother’s insistence the Tulanes ate together at the table. The last family in Spurlake that still communicated, his mother often boasted, even though it was just the circumstance that forced the issue. Her being in a wheelchair following the road accident. There was no Mr Tulane at the table since last winter. His father had been driving fully loaded when he was hit by another vehicle on the highway in snow. He’d walked out of the wreck unscathed. His mother broke both her legs and was still in a wheelchair most of the day. The insurance paid out. By sheer luck his father never got tested for booze – at least not within forty-eight hours, as he had wandered off and found a doctor who said he’d had amnesia caused by the crash. By the time he showed up he was sober and clean and no one was any the wiser, except Rian’s mother who blamed him entirely.

  They had moved to a better, more suitable house where

  his mother could run her life and her insurance business without feeling anyone had to help. Mr Tulane was not needed on voyage and he’d gone. Rian wasn’t sure he missed him, or his drinking. The house was quieter without the shouting. Mr Yates was his father’s replacement. He was there for dinner Monday to Friday, some nights too. He was an accountant, and quite what his mother saw in him, with his red face and weight problem, Rian wasn’t sure. He had contrary opinions about everything, but his mother needed him and his ‘many kindnesses’. Few other men, she told him, would have such patience with her in this situation, so Rian accepted that he was a fixture. At least he didn’t drink.

  But he always had to have the last word.

  ‘All I’m saying, Rian, is that just because someone thought of it, it doesn’t mean it will come true. Teleportation is bunk. Pure bunk. No one will ever beam up Scotty. It’s impossible. The future never happened. There are no aliens and we don’t commute in flying cars. Star Trek is rubbish science. Bunk.’

  The usual dinner conversation. Rian would say something and Mr Yates MBA would pounce on it, try to make himself look clever, and his mother would eat it up.

  Nevertheless, Rian defended his position.

  ‘I’m just saying that if we accept climate change as

  inevitable then teleportation would eliminate air travel and that’s a whole lot of pollution that goes with it. We could save the polar ice caps and the bears.’

  Mr Yates stared at Rian a moment and Rian could see the muscles in his thick red neck pulsating as he sought to deliver a withering reply.

  ‘You shouldn’t bait Mr Yates, Rian,’ his mother said.

  ‘You know science fiction is just that – fiction.’

  ‘The problem with science fiction,’ Mr Yates finally barked, ‘is that it makes people believe that there are solutions for everything. There aren’t. Take teleportation.

  What you envisage is just magic. It can’t happen. The amount of energy needed to deconstruct a human made up of trillions upon trillions of atoms would be equivalent to the energy output of ten nuclear reactors, at least. Plus, reassembling those same atoms back in the right order is a monumental logistical task. Way beyond what any software program could do. We are talking turning your whole body into digital form, into photons, and sending them across town by light waves, then putting it back together exactly as it is now. Your clothes too.

  Impossible. One slight wrong calculation or dropped piece of code and your arm will come out your head or you’ll just collapse into a heap of jelly. It would have to reassemble skin, bone, and eyes.

  ‘It would need the basic carbon raw materials to generate it at the end destination. Any idea how complex your eyes are? Hell, just putting your feet back together would be beyond the power of any machine for decades ahead. Decades.’

  ‘Scientists say—’ Rian began again, but Mr Yates interrupted.

  ‘Quantum physics states that you cannot say for definite the position and velocity of any single particle.

  More importantly, Rian, for teleportation to work –and let’s assume someone actually has all the computer power in the whole world at their fingertips to store a trillion, trillion atoms – in order for you to be “transmitted”, much like an email with an attachment say, you, in the process of being disassembled would be destroyed. The new you across town would be a copy and each time you moved you would be another copy.

  Can a computer also deconstruct and store your memory? Your imagination? If it can’t, you would be a sixteen-year-old baby with no memory of anything. Your memory would get wiped every time you teleported.’

  ‘Never mind losing your soul, Rian,’ Mrs Tulane interjected.

  Mr Yates beamed at her ‘Quite. Every human is

  unique – I’m telling you it will always be totally impossible.

  We should not play God.’

  Rian looked at him, his fat fingers and smug expression.

  ‘But if you could do it,’ Rian insisted. ‘You could add DNA, like a smarter memory. People could use it to make themselves brighter, better, fitter.’

  His mother smiled. ‘Well, that might be popular.’

  Mr Yates frowned. ‘Don’t encourage him. Rian, it can’t be done. Consign it to the dustbin along with time travel and men on Mars.’ He took a mouthful of food and chewed. He looked out of the window as the curtains flew up momentarily from a gust of wind. ‘Better get the shutters fastened and the windows closed. They say there’s quite a storm coming up tonight.’

  The conversation was over. Rian looked at them both, so smug, so happy to be smarter than him, but all they were good at was imagining how nothing could happen, never what might be possible. One day he’d find someone with whom he could discuss Genie’s amazing pre-cognitive abilities. He was wasting his breath here.

  Mr Yates would say it was all bunk. Everything was bunk. Rian checked his watch. An hour to go. Everything was going to change. He’d never have to watch Mr Yates eat ever again, or suffer his mother’s despair that he

  was never going to make it, never going to amount to anything, just like his father.

  He nibbled on his food and smiled to himself as he imagined teleporting out of there.

  ‘Another child disappeared today,’ his mother suddenly stated. ‘It was on the news. Boy from your school again. Anwar – such an odd name. Sixteenth child missing since school broke for the summer, they say. Reverend Schneider is leading a prayer group tonight for him in Princeton Park.’

  Rian frowned. Reverend Schneider was always first one there leading a prayer group and speaking on local radio about the tragedy of Spurlake that the kids seemed so desperate to leave. Well, just ask Genie if the Reverend was the saint everyone thought he was. Get her on local radio and she’d open a few eyes.

  His mother was still talking.

  ‘I can’t believe how many are missing now. There’s a pile of flowers left beside the community noticeboard on Geary Street and countless candles burning. I just don’t know what’s going on in this town. If parents ate with their kids like we do, maybe they’d know what the
y’re thinking. It’s just so scary. If I hear of one more 1-800

  number to call if you know anything, I’ll get hysterical. I keep hearing about Mr Harrison out with his flashlight.

  He’s been roaming the hills for a year. That boy of his is gone and he isn’t going to call. None of them are coming back, get used to it already.’

  Mr Yates helped himself to more cheese.

  ‘You’re right, m’dear. Those kids have gone. The town just can’t hold them. Happening right the way up to the Okanagan. They just up and go with no thought to the pain their families must feel. I blame crystal meth. It’s destroying our society. Once those kids get their hands on it – their lives are already over. There’s talk of a government task force coming in to control it, but you think it will stop the kids disappearing? I don’t.’

  ‘I don’t know any kids doing meth,’ Rian said.

  His mother looked at him with relief in her eyes.

  ‘Well, I for one am glad about that, Rian. I don’t know what I’d do if you started taking drugs.’

  ‘You’d throw me out, just like all the other kids who’ve been thrown out of their homes in this town for doing something their folks didn’t like.’

  ‘And you’d deserve it,’ Mr Yates said, pointing his knife at Rian.

  Rian glared at him, but let it pass; no point in arguing, he’d be gone soon enough. He’d never heard of Anwar, but then again there were hundreds of kids at his school he didn’t know. Tonight he and Genie

  would be joining those names on the community board if everything went to plan. He briefly wondered if his mother would set up a 1-800 number herself and make Mr Yates comb the hills at nights. Almost made him laugh to imagine it.

  He’d started making plans the moment he realized that Genie was being held prisoner. He’d arranged to see her the day after school ended but she didn’t show. Then he’d heard about the girl possessed by the devil on Maple Street and knew the moment he walked over and saw the Reverend Schneider’s car that they had Genie. Genie’s mother had turned her water hose on him. No boy was coming near her house and that was that. The language she used certainly wasn’t Christian.

  It had taken weeks of organization, but this was the night Genie would be free and they would leave, start a new life somewhere. Everything was prepared.

  ‘Your mother was talking to you,’ Mr Yates informed him.

  Rian focused on his mother. She was looking at him oddly. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I was asking if you knew any of these missing children?’

  Rian shook his head. ‘No. But I guess some are pretty desperate. They don’t have a choice I guess, some

  families are pretty messed up.’

  His mother looked at him sharply. She knew about Genie and how he liked her. Never met her of course, but a mother can tell when a son is distracted. ‘That poor girl.

  I know you miss her.’

  ‘The Magee girl?’ Mr Yates asked, like he knew something about her.

  Rian was surprised they knew he liked her, let alone seemed to have discussed it.

  ‘Mother got her locked up in the house, believes she’s possessed,’ Rian explained.

  Mr Yates looked exasperated. ‘There is no such thing as possession. God, we might as well live in the middle ages.

  The County should take her into care.’

  ‘Reverend Schneider sits on the Board of Governors,’

  his mother informed him. ‘He sees Satan’s hand in everything. That unfortunate girl.’ She looked at Rian with pity. ‘Poor you, finally got a girlfriend and she’s possessed by the devil.’

  Rian heard the sarcasm in her voice.

  ‘Poor family stock. The father was a lawyer but her mother is a Munby and y’know . . .’ Mr Yates declared.

  Rian didn’t know. ‘Munby?’

  ‘Not here. Not at the table,’ his mother insisted. But then she said, ‘Shame, a Munby. That’s a special curse

  all of its own. Poor thing.’

  ‘Genie isn’t crazy. She isn’t possessed. She’s the only sane person in that house,’ Rian declared, trying to control his anger.

  ‘And you’re going to save her?’ his mother cooed, definitely mocking him now. ‘You can’t save a Munby girl.’

  The wind slammed a window shut upstairs. Rian stood up sharply. He wanted to be far away from this table before he exploded. ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Don’t forget the shutters,’ Mr Yates called after him.

  ‘I’d better get going. If a storm’s coming, I don’t want to be on the road.’

  Rian stomped up the stairs. This would be the last time he would go upstairs, he was thinking. In just one hour he and Genie would be free of this town forever. This particular Munby girl was going to be saved.

  3

  A Warning

  The lights played on the wall beside her. Genie was sitting at her dressing table in her boyshorts, rubbing antiseptic cream on to the burn on her arm. The blisters were taking a while to heal, leaving a distinct outline of a Celtic cross. Her feet rested on broken pieces of wood hidden by her old clothes. She’d begun this breakout plan, already broken off enough of the panelling on the wall to wiggle her feet through to the next room, but discovered the hole she’d made came up behind one of Grandma Munby’s heavy oak chests. It was never going to shift and now she had a problem of how to hide the hole.

  She’d be beaten for sure if her mother found out.

  The evening was warm; the breeze outside was growing louder. Bad weather was coming. She didn’t mind, it would be something to listen to at least. The house was already creaking. She looked again at the bobbing shadows on her wall. She could make out the reflection of a tree and something else, like a face but in the negative.

  She tried to make it into Rian’s face, his fine nose, the

  wild eyebrows, tried to give it the last smile he gave her as she promised to meet him the day after school ended.

  Rian, her only hope, and she didn’t know for sure that he even missed her.

  The shape on the wall changed again. She blinked. A chill swept across her, giving her goosebumps. The image looked back! It was no longer indistinct. It was a human face, a real human face and she thought she knew who it was, a kid from school.

  ‘That’s so weird,’ she was thinking. Then the eyes opened. She was transfixed, her palms began to sweat and she was a little scared. The shimmering image on the wall was staring at her, the lips began to move, soundlessly, but she knew exactly what he was saying. It was impossible.

  She had finally gone mad like Granny Munby. The face faded a moment as the sun went in, then came back fiercely. It was Anwar somebody, Anwar from Palestine or some place. He’d been in her Forces and Energy class . . .

  He was staring at her and his lips moved again. ‘ You’re next,’ he was saying. ‘ You’re next.’

  There was a whoosh as the wind swept up through the side of the house. The sun went in and the image on the wall abruptly vanished.

  She tried to remember Anwar. A bright kid, lonely, third from the left in class. Arrived suddenly in the middle

  of term the year before. No one ever talked to him. His English was perfect, he had polite manners and, fatally for him, a glass eye from some explosion in his hometown of Gaza. You could hardly tell, but that’s all the excuse anyone needed to shun him. A freak in a school of anti-social freaks. Anwar had been on her wall and he’d definitely said, ‘You’re next.’

  Genie continued lying there, chilled to the bone.

  ‘ Next what? ’

  She looked out of the window and saw that the trees were now swaying in the stiff breeze. The sky was darkening. She had that prickly feeling she always got when the weather changed.

  She urgently needed to talk to Rian. Something was happening out there. Something bad. High school would begin in September. She would leave this room, leave this house. Leave this town. She would leave a note for her crazy mother. Scrawl it right across the living room wall if n
ecessary. ‘I am not possessed. You are.

  I am not evil. It’s you who’s full of hate. You’re the devil.

  It’s you he came for and already took you away.’

  Yes, Anwar was right. She was next. Damn right. ‘I’m next!’ she shouted to the room. She threw her book against the wall. She really had to get out of here.

  4

  Freedom

  Tunis drove by and flashed his lights. Rian grabbed his backpack, jumped out of his window and dropped with practised ease to the ground below. He ran silently towards Tunis’ pick-up truck, flung his backpack in the back before climbing in.

  Tunis was driving away already. Slightly nervous about what they were about to do this night. He brushed his dark floppy hair out of his eyes and looked at Rian and nodded. ‘You heard?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anwar, the Palestinian kid. He’s disappeared. It’s on the radio, got a CTV crew here and everyone praying again over on Geary Street. So many flowers left there now it’s getting to be a hazard. He was in your year?’

  Rian shrugged. Couldn’t put a face to the name. ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘Police definitely going to start tagging the kids now. Sixteen kids in like six weeks. I mean, that’s over thirty kids disappeared from this area alone this

  year. Four brothers vanished from Hope, one after the other, and I heard they got a child watch thing going up in Lytton and Lillooet to make sure no kid leaves –they all have to go around in pairs, they’re so spooked.

  I’m so glad I ain’t a kid any more. Where the hell do they all go? How come none of them ever come back, or even call?’

  Rian shrugged. ‘Mr Yates blames it all on crystal meth.’

  ‘No way. Those losers just turn up dead in doorways.