Pandora Jones: Admission

by Barry Jonsberg

  ‘How wonderful. I think I prefer the firing squad.’

  ‘Were you always so hostile, Pan?’ said Dr Macredie. ‘I’m curious.’

  Pan regarded her carefully.

  ‘I’m told you’re not actually a doctor at all. Is that true?’

  ‘Absolutely correct. I was a nurse. First of all in my native Aberdeen in Scotland. When I emigrated to Australia I worked in a number of hospitals in Sydney. But I was always interested in psychology and at the time of the virus I was finishing my Bachelor’s degree. I like to think it was only a matter of time before I got my doctorate.’

  ‘Psychology?’ said Pan. ‘So do you really need to ask why I am so hostile? Everyone I loved is dead. Everyone I ever met is dead, I’m haunted by horrific dreams and I’ve just been assaulted, threatened and forcibly injected with drugs. What do you want me to do? Audition for the next school musical? Put myself up for Head Girl? Maybe I’m entitled to be hostile.’

  Dr Macredie sighed.

  ‘Ay, maybe you are. But you must understand that we are all in the same situation, here at The School. And that our only hope is to stick together.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘You talk about dreams. Okay. Let me share something. Every night I watch my husband die again. Suddenly, and in great pain. Then my ten-year-old daughter. I hold her in my arms and wipe blood from her face and watch her . . . go. If I’m lucky, that doesn’t rewind and I move on to the bodies in the streets. Everywhere panic and death. If I imagine what Hell might be like, I think it would involve reliving all that, night after night. Does this sound familiar, Pan?’

  Pan didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m not saying I had it worse than you, Pan, or anyone else here. We are all damaged. But maybe it’s because I’ve had longer to adjust than you. Now I see life as the greatest gift ever.’ She smiled. ‘I always said that. Before the virus. It was an intellectual point of view. Now I know it. I believe that you see The School as ugly and cheerless and bleak and cold – a place of misery. I see people living here – living, not dying – and it is the most beautiful place in the world. I hope you will come to that view yourself one day.’

  Pan thought. Like Dr Macredie, she knew others were going through private anguish, but no one talked about it. Everyone pretended it hadn’t happened and got on with the daily routine. It was only at night that the monsters emerged. She felt somehow petty, as if she had been behaving like a spoilt child.

  ‘What was your daughter’s name?’ she asked finally.

  Dr Macredie smiled and gazed off through the dusty window. For a moment, Pan thought she wasn’t going to reply.

  ‘Hope,’ she said, her voice even fainter than normal. ‘How’s that for irony? The death of Hope. But it wasn’t, Pan. Hope can’t die. I’m sure of it.’

  A shadow appeared at the door frame and Pan narrowed her eyes to see who it was.

  ‘Hey, Pandora,’ said Nate. ‘Ready to shovel some shit, girlfriend?’

  Dr Macredie laughed. ‘Go on, get out of here, the two of you. Just take some friendly advice. Do not try to get over the wall again. I can’t promise The School will be so lenient next time.’

  Pan walked over to Nate and put a hand on his arm. She turned back to the woman on the bed.

  ‘Tell me, Dr Macredie,’ she said. ‘All that overreaction – and it was overreaction, despite what you say – what does it signify? What is on the other side of the wall?’

  When Macredie’s reply came, it was so low that Pan could barely make out the words.

  ‘There is evil on the other side of the wall, Pan,’ she whispered. ‘Danger lives there.’

  ~~~

  Pan laughed when she saw that Nate still had the shoe polish on his face.

  ‘You cut a dashing figure, Mr Mitchell,’ she said. She ran a finger across his brow and then showed him the blackness on its tip. Nate laughed and brushed Pan’s cheek. She shivered.

  ‘Thus speaks someone who cannot see her own face,’ he replied. ‘Maybe we should keep this on. It’ll protect our skin from the joys of the septic tank.’

  ‘And it’ll be useful the next time we go over the wall,’ said Pan.

  Nate smiled. ‘I had a feeling you were going to say that.’

  The sun, pale though it was, felt good against their blackened faces. Pan checked her watch. Close to eleven. They’d missed most of the class on agricultural methods, which suited Pan fine. She’d found it difficult to become enthused about ploughing techniques in the absence of heavy machinery.

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Nate.

  ‘What?’

  He pointed towards The School buildings. It was the middle of class time, yet the paths were swarming with students. ‘Something’s going on,’ he said.

  They walked quicker. Within a couple of minutes, they saw a figure break free from a knot of students and come running towards them. A few seconds later Pan recognised the willowy frame of Wei-Lin. She was running flat out. Pan felt a chill run down her spine. She and Nate ran towards her.

  ‘It’s Cara,’ gasped Wei-Lin when she finally came to a stop beside the couple. ‘She’s missing.’

  Chapter 14

  ‘Cara disappeared sometime last night,’ said Dr Morgan. He paused and gazed over the assembled students. It was the first time Pan had seen all of The School’s students gathered together in one place, the running track at the base of the Garden on Top of the World. It was a surprisingly large crowd. Dr Morgan brushed a strand of hair back in place and continued. ‘Her bunk has been slept in, but it’s clear she disappeared while everyone else was asleep. We have no idea when. Staff have conducted a quick search but drew a blank. We are all concerned for her wellbeing. As a result, normal classes are suspended today while we organise search parties. Miss Kingston is in charge of the organisation. She will allocate specific areas for each group to search. Cara’s group – a word in private, please.’

  Pan’s group waited while the other students rushed over to where Kingston stood with a clipboard in her hands. She could see her own fears and guilt reflected in the faces of her group. Wei-Lin was on the verge of tears.

  ‘You know Cara better than anyone else,’ said Dr Morgan after they had formed a horseshoe around him. His tone was unusually grave. ‘It follows, therefore, that you might have some insights into her whereabouts. So, any ideas?’

  There was silence for nearly a minute.

  ‘I’m afraid none of us know Cara well,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘She is very . . . private. Keeps herself to herself, you know.’

  Dr Morgan shrugged.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘In that case, report to Miss Kingston. Let’s get this search started.’

  ‘Except . . .’ said Wei-Lin. She looked at her feet.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think Pandora Jones might be able to find her.’ She gave Pan an apologetic glance. ‘It’s just that . . . Pan can find things. Lost things. So I thought . . . maybe she could find a person who’s lost. I don’t know. Thought it might be worth mentioning, that’s all.’

  Jen snorted and Dr Morgan looked at her briefly before replying.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I have worked with Pan in personal development sessions and I know she has had success locating things.’ He turned to Pan. ‘Think you could help, my dear?’

  Pan laughed, but there was no humour in it.

  ‘I’ve found watches,’ she said. ‘Articles, personal possessions. Sometimes. And Cara is a person. It’s not the same thing at all.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It just isn’t. All that other stuff. It’s a game, really. It would be wasting time.’

  Dr Morgan twisted his mouth.

  ‘We’ll have four hundred students searching. I think we can spare one person. I mean, it wouldn’t hurt, would it? If you just gave it a go. If you can’t locate her, you can’t. Nothing lost, but maybe, just maybe, something gained.’

  Pan glanced along the row of faces as if for support. She found none. Jen wore impatience
on hers, and as her eyes met Pan’s, she abruptly broke from the line.

  ‘Do what you like,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I’m getting instructions from Kingston.’

  One by one, the rest of the group joined Jen, though Nate squeezed Pan’s arm before he left. Eventually, only Pan, Wei-Lin and Morgan remained.

  ‘Please, Pan,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘As Dr Morgan said, there’s nothing to lose by trying.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t have any idea where to start. When I found your watch I touched you. It gave me a sense of . . . connection.’

  ‘Maybe it’ll work the other way round,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘If you touch something that belongs to Cara, you might get that connection in reverse.’

  ‘We’re clutching at straws.’

  ‘Like I said,’ put in Morgan. ‘There are plenty of others doing the leg work. We can afford for you to clutch at a straw.’

  Pan sighed. ‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll give it a go, but I don’t hold out much hope.’

  Wei-Lin smiled. ‘Let’s go to the dorm,’ she said. ‘Find something that belongs to her.’

  ~~~

  Cara’s bed was dishevelled. Maybe it was Pan’s imagination, but she thought she could see the faint outline of Cara’s body on the bottom sheet. She put her hand on the bed but felt nothing, not a trace of dissipating warmth and certainly no kind of connective charge. Wei-Lin opened Cara’s bedside drawer.

  ‘That’s strange,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her watch is in here. Why would she take off her watch? I never take mine off, not even in the shower. And Cara always wears hers, too.’

  Pan sat on the bed and took the watch in her right hand. She closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind. But her mind refused to empty. Wei-Lin was right. Leaving the watch was strange, particularly since Cara must have made a conscious decision to do so. A thought tingled at the back of Pan’s mind that maybe Cara had left the watch because she knew she would never need it again. The implications of that thought were too dark to pursue, so Pan blocked it and attempted to relax her mind. She sat for five minutes, but all that fluttered at the back of her brain was a vague sense of wrongness.

  ‘It’s no good,’ she said, putting the watch back on the bedside cabinet.

  ‘Try this,’ said Wei-Lin. It was Cara’s journal. Pan had seen her writing in it almost every night, an obsessive outpouring. Why hadn’t she talked more to Cara? Pan vowed she would be a better friend in the future. She would try, at least, to be a friend.

  Pan took the book in her hand. Almost immediately she felt the weight of despair contained within it. It almost took her breath away and she felt a strong urge to drop it on the bed. But she forced her hands to keep a tight grip.

  ‘I don’t want to read this,’ she whispered. ‘This is her personal diary.’

  ‘We are probably beyond respecting privacy,’ responded Wei-Lin. ‘Cara’s life may be in danger, Pan, and there could be clues in there.’ She put a hand on Pan’s shoulder. ‘Look, I’ll leave you to it, okay? Do what you think is right. That’s all you can do.’

  Pan closed her eyes again and didn’t see or hear Wei-Lin leave the dormitory.

  ~~~

  Pan closed the journal and dropped it on the bed. She wasn’t even aware how much time had passed.

  The diary had been powerful reading. It wasn’t that Cara was a good writer. Far from it. But somehow, the poor quality of the writing made it more compelling as an expression of feelings. The first part of the diary had concerned her life in Christchurch, New Zealand. Even then, Cara had been unhappy, a loner. She’d lived with her mother, who had not been around much. The subtext indicated she’d been more interested in drinking than looking after her daughter. Then came her memories of the virus and its aftermath.

  Cara hadn’t seen her mother that day and when it became clear that death was all around she went looking for her. The description of what Cara saw as she walked through the streets was the most moving part of the whole journal. Pan read of bodies hanging from trees in parks; a family in a four-wheel drive on one of the main streets, still strapped into their seat belts as if on a family day out; a five-year old girl playing with a doll beside the body of her mother. The girl coughed continuously, her white dress stained with blood. Pan had had to put the journal down at this point and calm the hammering of her blood because the images summoned her own experiences so vividly. Only when she felt more in control, could she pick up the diary and continue reading.

  Cara wrote of the day-to-day routine at The School, how she had no friends, how she had been made to feel expendable. Pan was pleased, yet saddened, that there was a brief entry concerning Pan’s defence of her during Miss Kingston’s class. But that could not banish the conviction that she could have done so much more. Cara also mentioned her dreams and how they haunted her each night. Most recounts dealt with the same images of death, but she also wrote about other dreams, strange dreams in which she was pursued by a menacing figure. Pan read those lines over and over. She found it disturbing that they had shared a similar dream. What was it Cara had said that night when she had come out of the shower? I don’t even trust my memories . . . What I can’t cope with is the other dreams, the nightmares that make more sense. Why did that strike such a nerve? Pan had forced herself to read on.

  Most of the final entries contained nothing extraordinary. There was no sign that Cara was more depressed than anyone else, no indication that she was thinking of attempting an escape or, worse, taking her own life. What had possessed her to get up in the middle of the night and leave for an unknown destination? There was no reference to anyone she might conceivably meet, no indication of a place she favoured where she could be by herself. But the final sentence was interesting. The watches are wrong, she had written. Yet the watch she had left behind was keeping perfect time.

  There are puzzles within puzzles here, thought Pan. Why can I not even see them clearly?

  She rubbed her eyes, put the journal carefully back into the drawer and left the dorm. Pan stood and gazed out over The School and its surroundings. The afternoon was drawing towards dusk. People were out there, searching. But soon the search would have to stop for the night. Torches of the kind she and Nate had used to climb the steps to the Infirmary would be no use. They illuminated a circle only a metre in diameter. Soon it would be impossible to find Cara if she didn’t want to be found.

  Pan sat down on the rock she had sat on when talking to Cara that night. She suddenly felt weary. She closed her eyes and thought about Cara. What she had read in the journal, what she remembered of their infrequent conversations. Then she found herself thinking about the young boy, Tom, and in particular, his falcon. The bird of prey that had swooped straight to her despite the gloom, and torn a mouse to pieces. Pan had almost forgotten the episode. So much had happened since and there seemed no good reason to be thinking about it now. But she couldn’t wrench her mind away from the bird’s flight path as it carved through the air onto her hand. She felt again the thud as its body impacted on her arm. She saw the bird’s eye as it tore and ripped at flesh.

  Something strange was happening. Pan knew it. And as soon as she thought about the strangeness of it, the images faded. She cleared her mind as best she could and there was the bird’s eye again, wide, unblinking, focused. The eye expanded, filled her vision until the eye was all there was. It seemed to suck her in. For a moment or two there was a battle within Pan’s mind. Part of her resisted. But another part welcomed it.

  And then she was inside the bird.

  Pan gasped. She could feel her back arch and the shock almost wrenched her free. But she fought against it. Fought to stay where she was. The panic inside faded, and slowly she lost all sense of where she was, there on a small rock outside a deserted dormitory. She opened her eyes and looked around.

  Her vision was breathtakingly clear. Nothing in the surrounding landscape escaped her attention. She could see the minutest details at the greatest d
istance. Down on the plain, she saw search parties returning home. She saw Nate in absolute clarity, down to the mole on his right cheek, close to his ear. He was grim-faced and tired. His group had found nothing, though what they were looking for she had forgotten. Her mind was in a different place entirely. A place where the concerns of these creatures were unimportant. Pan scanned the rest of the landscape. She saw other people in startling detail. Then, before she was aware of it, she moved. She felt the rush of air against her body as she moved at phenomenal pace towards the looming mass of a grey, heavy cloud. Pan had no time to react. She simply allowed herself to be taken.

  The ground swept under her. Then she looked down and there was a dizzying drop. Not dizzying, exhilarating. She rejoiced in flight. She was the master of space and her eye ruled the universe. She could feel the air beneath her wings. She soared higher, banked, and swept in a fast arc towards the wall and the sea. Within moments she had cleared the thin band of wall. The village below was bustling with movement. People. Children. Animals. None took any notice of her. She took no notice of them. Instead, she passed over sailing boats, wheeled out to sea, then banked and floated on air currents.

  The landscape was clear. Her eyes searched out all movement. Nothing escaped her attention. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Pan performed an arc and headed back to land. This time she went higher. The ground rushed away from her, but her eyes still ruled over everything. She soared over white peaks and picked up a movement a thousand metres below, a dark streak across the white. Food. A rodent. She ignored it, though instinctively she wanted to swoop. She glided further into the white, spotted something else, stooped to get a clearer view. It was what she had been looking for, though she had no idea how she knew this. The shape below meant little to her. Pan banked to her right. The white plain swept by beneath her, was replaced by rocks, buildings. She flew towards a nondescript building. She picked up speed.

  Pandora Jones’s body jerked and her eyes snapped open. For a moment she was still drunk with flight. But then the solidity of her body, clumsy and earth-bound, pulled her back to reality. She rose unsteadily to her feet, was overcome with dizziness and had to sit down again.