The Repossession

by Sam Hawksmoor

  Electricity follows lines but you can get lost. Here’s safe.

  This farmhouse is the middle. Electricity just flows right across everything, but when you’re in it, you can’t look right or left or straight on or . . . Cary Harrison is the only one who’s tried to go outside the circle. He only just got back in one piece. You might meet him, he’s bright, but he’s not very sociable.’

  Rian discovered he’d hit a raw nerve.

  ‘I don’t even know why I care,’ Renée declared. ‘I don’t know why I’m here or why I’m alive or if I’m dead or just a ghost . . . I don’t know anything, Rian.’

  ‘We have to figure something out,’ Rian told her, trying to sound positive, even if he didn’t feel it. ‘You’re my sister, remember. We have to find a way to get you back.’

  Renée shook her head. ‘There’s no back. The moment you enter the Fortress, you’re dead, Rian. I’ll never bleed, never have a headache and I’ll never be real. Ever.

  Whatever they promise, never listen to them. They don’t know what they’re doing.’

  They heard footsteps on the stairs, Rian looked towards the door.

  ‘Genie,’ Renée said softly, then vanished.

  Genie burst into the room. She looked flushed and excited and very pleased to see him up. ‘Hey, you’re dressed.’

  ‘And you’ve been chopping wood.’

  He picked off some wood chips and she fell into his arms.

  ‘Hell, yeah. See my blisters?’

  She pulled back to show him her wounds. ‘Going to be sore. Can’t believe how much sweat you generate, splitting logs.’

  She hugged Rian and he held her tight, inhaling her scent.

  Rian grinned. It was so good to feel her in his arms.

  Then immediately felt guilty. All these simple things Renée could never do. Must send you crazy to be like that.

  Genie was looking at the sweat-stained bed. ‘You smell great. Those sheets on the other hand . . .’ She pulled away and stared at him. ‘You’re looking better.’ She looked around the room. ‘Was she here? Did she come?’

  ‘Renée?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s been sitting here for days waiting for you to get better. Never seen anyone so worried.’

  ‘You talked to her?’ Rian was surprised. Last he remembered she was jealous.

  ‘Well, she’s your sister. Half, anyway. That’s important, right. She had to tell you. I insisted.’ Genie pulled a face.

  ‘She’s shy. Scared too.’

  ‘I’d be scared if I was like that. I’m freaked, Genie. I mean – I have a sister and my Dad lied to me all those years. He had another family, for God’s sake. I’m still freaked. But she does look a lot like Dad. She seems nice.’

  ‘She is nice. She’s lonely too. We’ve both got to help her.’

  Rian took Genie’s hand. ‘But that’s just it. How?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ri. Don’t know why they think we can help. Did she tell you about Reverend Schneider? I couldn’t believe it. He’s involved somehow. It’s him driving a wedge between families and their kids. I saw him. Marshall took me back to Synchro. I was actually in there speaking to Denis, don’t ask me how, and then suddenly Schneider was there. He saw me. How weird is that? He put his fat hands around my neck. I screamed.

  Poor Marshall’s still deaf.’

  Rian was bewildered, so much information to take in.

  He kissed Genie’s forehead. ‘We’re going to nail him. Nail him good.’

  Genie nodded, smiling. ‘Welcome back to the living, Rian Tulane. I missed you.’

  She broke free and headed back to the door. ‘Marshall’s making meatballs. Grab those stinky sheets and bring them down, I have to cook the pasta.’

  Rian smiled. He was hungry. Genie still loved him and they had an evil enemy to defeat. That’s the way life should be.

  He turned back to the bed and began to strip the sheets.

  His legs seemed to be made of sponge. It was as if Genie had switched him on when she came into the room and switched him off again when she left. That, he realized, was exactly what was happening to Renée.

  Renée watched him leave the room with the sheets bundled under his arms. She could still feel the tingle from where he’d tried to touch her. Genie had been right.

  No use staring. She had to tell him and now she had. He seemed to take it pretty well. She was no longer alone, even if she was never going home.

  18

  Orange Juice and Muffins

  Of course, it is one thing to say you will help people.

  But where to start? Marshall hadn’t met either Reneé or Denis, and he remained to be convinced they even existed or even could be ‘helped’.

  For Rian, getting himself and Genie well was the priority. Genie felt guilty about that, but sometimes even thinking about the impossible gave her a headache and she still had nightmares about seeing Reverend Schneider in Synchro. The truth was, they had no workable idea of how to free Renée or Denis or any of the other kids trapped in the Fortress. As Marshall explained, even if you could get into the Fortress and assemble all the different bits of their electronic files, and actually get out again undetected, they weren’t exactly going to fit on any memory stick he knew of.

  The weather seemed to return to normal as September progressed, with warm days and pleasant nights. The atmosphere in the farmhouse was almost impossibly cheerful and each night as they cooked supper they talked

  and argued about stuff, almost always ending up back where they started. But for Genie this was all new. She’d never lived in a place where her opinion was counted, or even listened to, and even if they pointed out she was wrong more than a few times, at least she’d been heard.

  It was sheer bliss. No pressure, nothing evil happened at all. She concentrated on getting stronger, cooking, sketching, learning how to take care of the pig and the dog and collecting honey from the beehives in the orchards. She was scared to death the first time she did it, but Marshall suited her up and once she realized the bees couldn’t sting her and, in fact, didn’t seem to want to, collecting honey wasn’t such an ordeal. Bees, she learned, were essential to pollinate the apple trees. All these simple things she discovered, things she’d never been allowed to do before, and she felt she was finally making sense of her life. OK, so pig care wasn’t particularly high on her list of things she’d wanted to learn, but the pig had needs, wanted to be friends, and even though she was huge, she had, as far as she could tell, quite a sense of humour. It liked to hide and suddenly rush her when Genie came out with scraps. She liked to rub itself against Marshall’s apple trees and try and catch the apples as they fell. Loved that game!

  Marshall seemed happier too. He was content to let

  them do as they wanted as long as they helped with chores and listened to some of the old jazz CDs he blasted out from his old hi-fi system. Dizzy Gillespie was a god in Marshall’s house. Genie realized that she was even humming the tunes as she worked, stuff her grandmother might have boogied to. Now that was weird. She knew from overhearing a conversation with his son on the phone that he was reluctant to let them go. Not in a bad way. He told him that he’d never seen a girl take to country life so quickly as Genie and it was true. She was happy.

  Rian was kind of enthusiastic, but not quite as captivated as Genie. For a start he’d always had some freedom. All right, he’d had to cook and clean for his mom, but he’d never had the restrictions Genie had, or the hatred that her mother had for her.

  He had started to make the kind of recovery that boys always made. He was taking advantage of the good weather to build up his strength and learn some new skills. As he told Genie, they were on their own now and they’d have to earn a living. Anything Marshall could teach him was going to be useful. So he’d painted walls, learned how to fit a doorframe and door, dug new post holes for a fence Marshall was putting in. He wanted to try everything. Which is why he was on the barn roof

  with a clawhammer removing rusted t
in whilst Marshall gave him instructions from the ground.

  Genie was preparing fresh squeezed orange juice.

  They’d both be thirsty. It was one of those late summer hot days with the temperature hovering around 30˚C.

  There wasn’t any wind but Marshall had promised a thunderstorm. He could predict the weather by his leg.

  If his leg said rain, it was guaranteed. He didn’t explain how, but Genie believed him, all evidence and a perfect blue sky to the contrary.

  ‘You all right up there, boy?’ Marshall was calling up.

  ‘It’s going to rain for sure, got to get that hole fixed. Can you see it?’

  Rian was standing firmly on the barn roof, enjoying the experience. He had a metal sheet in his hands to replace over the rusted section. The roof was blazing hot and the soles of his borrowed shoes were sticky. He had a sudden whole new respect for roofers.

  He ripped off the rusted corrugated sheet that practically disintegrated in his hands and tossed it off the roof. There was a gaping hole now down to the floor of the barn. One slip and he’d crash through it.

  ‘Whole roof’s rusted, Marshall.’

  ‘Brush the area clean around the edges of the hole, then lay the new sheet with the top lip under the

  higher section, bottom lip overlapping the lower. Should fit snug. Use the watertight nails like I showed you.’

  ‘Won’t it slide off?’

  ‘No. Make sure it’s well caulked under at the top. Got to replace the whole roof soon anyway, been up there forty years I should think.’

  Rian sweated in the heat, but followed the instructions to the letter.

  Genie arrived below with the iced juice in a jug.

  ‘He all right up there?’ She hardly dare look. ‘Is he safe?’

  Marshall squeezed her shoulder. ‘He’s doing fine.

  Mighty hot though. He’s going to need that juice when he gets down.’

  He called up again. ‘Check it’s well wedged in, OK?

  Got to make it good and watertight.’

  Rian signalled that he had it hand. ‘I know. You forget I spent the summer fixing Maclean’s barge.’

  ‘If I recall, it sank without trace,’ Marshall remarked with a sarcastic smile.

  Rian laughed. He shifted his weight. He was getting roasted now. He was enjoying being out here in a different way to Genie. School had been back almost two weeks already. He’d worried about missing it at first, but realized now that he enjoyed working with his hands.

  Never thought he would. His mother had always wanted

  him to go to law school, but you’d never get a lawyer up on a roof fixing leaks, never get a suit stripping off the old plastic wood-effect cladding in the basement and taking it back to the original brick. Marshall wanted the basement for a music room, and Rian had enjoyed planning and working out how to do that.

  He made sure everything lay down perfectly and he felt a small sense of accomplishment. Felt his feet burning from the heat too.

  ‘I hope you got a good grip, Rian Tulane.’

  Rian looked down at Genie staring up and he grinned.

  ‘I’m cool. I’m done. Coming down.’

  Genie turned her gaze away. She didn’t want to look.

  One trip and he’d be squished.

  Marshall saw what she was doing. ‘Don’t worry. He’s a natural. He could teach a goat how to climb.’

  ‘What you see up there?’ Marshall asked as Rian paused to put all the tools in his pockets. ‘Any clouds?’

  ‘Nope. Not one. No way it’s going to rain, Marshall.’

  He could see right across the forest and the power lines that straddled it. ‘Which way is the Fortress?’

  ‘Due south-east. Behind you. In winter, at night, you can see the light from it reflected on the snow caps,’

  Marshall told him.

  ‘You must be right between the Synchro and the

  Fortress buildings.’ Rian was thinking about his previous conversation with Renée and how she said this farm was almost in the middle of the circle.

  ‘Almost. It was kind of convenient when I worked there. Always had to be in one building or the other.

  Come on down, your girl has been squeezing oranges for you. Enjoy it now before she gets bored of you and starts watching the shopping channel.’

  Genie turned and kicked Marshall on his false leg.

  ‘That’s not nice. Don’t listen to him, Ri.’

  ‘I’m not listening. He’s a bitter man, Genie. Coming down. I think I earned my Spiderman wings.’

  ‘For that you have to leap whole buildings,’ Marshall retorted.

  ‘Why didn’t you leave here, Marshall?’ Genie asked suddenly. ‘I mean, when you had your accident?

  Why didn’t you just go, live on the islands or someplace? Why did you stay in this old place so far from anybody?’

  Rian was down on the ground safely. Genie took him a large mug of iced juice and he drank it all down, dribbling some as he tried to cool off.

  ‘Ace,’ was all he said as he held it out for more.

  Marshall was thinking about his reply, staring up at the mountain.

  ‘I could never quite see myself leaving the farm. See the mountain? We’re higher up than Spurlake here, on a plateau. Cold in winter but we get the sun pretty much all day long and hot long summers. Important if you grow fruit trees. Farmer who started this place knew what he was doing ninety years ago. We’ve got water from our own reservoir. Soil’s good. Besides, Genie, my son will want this place for himself one day. He loved growing up here. Had the horses then. But of course, he was young and Spurlake was where the action was, and the girls of course. It’s natural he left. Max won’t always be a cop.

  No one is ever particularly grateful or respectful. I think he’s finding that out for himself. Also, being honest,’ he scratched his head a moment, ‘I guess I just could never quite believe I was off the project. I never quite understood that they didn’t need me any more.’

  Genie turned to go. That was the real answer. Heard it in his voice. And maybe the truth was that he was looking for a way back in. She had no idea why she thought that, but one thing she had learned in her life so far was that what people said and what they did were entirely different things.

  ‘Hey, where you going?’ Rian asked.

  ‘Martha’s on TV. Got to learn how to make chocolate muffins from scratch.’

  Rian watched her go with amusement. Marshall called after her.

  ‘You go girl. Muffins are the way to a man’s heart.’ He winked at Rian and Rian just shook his head. But it was true, thinking on it a moment. He could really appreciate some muffins right about now.

  Rian watched her walk back towards the farmhouse and he felt real pride in her. She stopped to give him a little wave.

  ‘Muffins in one hour,’ she declared. ‘I hope.’

  He grinned, still couldn’t believe she was all his.

  Marshall walked towards the fence posts, stacked ready to go in the ground.

  ‘We got work to do, Rian. And we still got to smoke the orchards so the wasps don’t take hold there. They burrow into the apples, rot them out. They’ll be ready to pick in about ten days. I sure hope you guys will still be here to help. Be a pity to let them go to waste.’

  ‘Who picks ’em normally?’

  ‘Max and his wife used to come up with some friends.

  We shared the profits. But they’re busy this year, what with the flood and everything. A pity. Organic apples fetch a premium and it’ll be a good crop this year.’

  Rian nodded, looking back at the orchards. There were hundreds of trees. That would be a lot of hard work.

  Marshall sure knew how to keep him busy.

  Marshall looked up at the sky. Still a perfect blue.

  He frowned.

  ‘I don’t know where the rain is coming from, but it’s coming. I know it. Leg’s never been wrong.’

  Genie left the chocolate muffins to cool. It
was her first time baking and she acknowledged they could be a better shape, but they sure tasted all right and the smell was divine. She ventured outside, smelling smoke. She could see Rian and Marshall sending a really dense white cloud of smoke billowing up through the lower apple orchard.

  She worried about the bees a moment then realized that they were in the higher orchard. Country life was complicated. Everything was alive and you had to worry about just about every little thing.

  ‘Come on Mouch, we’re going for a walk.’

  Mouch let out an excited yelp and immediately headed for the back field. Genie followed. Marshall had mentioned there were bald eagles flying up by the reservoir earlier and now she was determined to head for the ridge to get a closer look. His field glasses were really heavy around her neck and only moments away from the house she was regretting bringing them along.

  She went behind the house, following the dog, and

  crossed the hayfield, almost overwhelmed by the scent of wild mint that grew in clumps amid the hay. Moucher jumped and darted this way and that as he spotted rabbits.

  No matter how fast he ran, the rabbits ran faster, and he was exhausted just crossing the field, returning to her, panting hard.

  ‘Foolish hound. I didn’t bring water, Mouch. You’ll have to wait till we get to the reservoir. It’s a long walk, dog, pace yourself.’

  On the other side of the field, she found a dry stream bed and followed it up the slope, stumbling over rocks from time to time where exposed lizards would be caught by surprise and scoot for cover. She was thinking that it must have taken a lot of effort and money to build a reservoir up on this ridge. The boulders everywhere were huge. Looking back for a moment she realized just how vulnerable Marshall’s place was if any of them ever got loose.

  The walk was tougher and hotter than she had expected, the route practically vertical in places. There would be waterfalls at these spots when it rained, she realized.

  Moucher led the way, finding paths where she saw none and they pressed on, the idea of a cool vast expanse of water for a swim more appealing by the second.

  It took a full hour climbing, longer maybe. When she