Afterlight

by Lim, Rebecca

  ‘Opportunistic?’ I wailed, pulling free. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me. It was better not knowing.’

  ‘See what I mean about knowledge?’ Jordan replied. ‘But, anyway, he’s benign. He just doesn’t like the poker machines you’ve installed in the Sports Bar. The noise… bothers him. And the floor is his way of telling you that. That, and he’s not going anywhere any time soon. He likes it here. He died decades ago, right in that very room. But he loved the place so much, he never left.’

  I froze in the act of reaching for the door handle. ‘He’s dead, Jordan. He’s not supposed to have opinions.’

  ‘The floor’s only going to get worse unless you do something,’ Jordan added helpfully. ‘Just saying.’

  I glared at him. ‘I can change the fit out of the Sports Bar about as much as I can change my bra size,’ I snapped before my brain caught up with my mouth. ‘And you bloody well know it. Gran hates the things, but we only just put them in and it’s our livelihood we’re talking about and we have to survive somehow.’

  Now I was channelling my own grandmother. Things couldn’t get any better.

  Jordan’s eyes glinted down into mine in amusement as he leant against my bedroom door, his rangy leather-clad torso framed by my rampaging glitter sticker collection. I swore to myself I would remove every stupid, shiny thing before the week was through, even if it meant breaking every one of my fingernails.

  The heaviness in my chest returned as Jordan continued to hold my gaze.

  ‘Marshmallows like you don’t stand a chance,’ he grinned suddenly and it was like a bolt of electricity hearing him refer to me the same way Mum used to.

  ‘So it’s lucky you’ve got me.’

  It was so far away from the truth, I looked away, hurt.

  ‘You can go now,’ I said, staring at my feet. ‘I’ll let you know what I find—if and when.’

  Jordan lifted my chin so that I was forced to look into his eyes.

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ he chided, ‘and I meant what I said as a compliment. Eve really must have been something when she was alive. She must have been some kind of nuclear-powered bitch who specialised in getting her own way. It still comes through, you know, that can’t-take-no part of her. To me, they’re like…bars on a light spectrum, some are so faded and pale they’re easy to ignore. Press the symbols and they’re gone, dismissed. But she’s fierce, Eve, white-hot. Sometimes, when she’s showing me something she thinks I need to see, I forget she isn’t a real person anymore. Someone as soft-hearted as you needs a watchdog. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Can I go now?’ I pleaded.

  Jordan shocked me by shaking his head.

  ‘She did use you to get to me,’ he insisted quietly. ‘There’s always background noise around me, things I see out of the side of my eye that shouldn’t be there, odours that persist when they shouldn’t, things I know before I should even know about them at all. As soon as I was forced to look at you, really look, I could see her, too. That’s what she wanted. But I resisted for as long as I could…’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, miserable, ‘because I’m so resistible, I get it. I get it.’

  Feeling betrayed, I yanked on the door handle, placing my body in the widening gap. ‘I’m here now, I’m “safe”,’ I said, face burning, ‘so take your misguided sense of chivalry, Jordan, and go. I’m perfectly capable of finding Carter Kelly on my own. I work better solo. I have form.’

  I tried to shut the door in his face, a half-sob caught high in my throat, but Jordan’s right hand shot out and held me in place.

  ‘My guard was down,’ he growled, ‘because every disembodied spirit from here to Kingdom Come seems to know you’re my weak spot, Sophie Teague. I was never going to do anything about it because what would have been the point? My last girlfriend, let’s see, two schools back, tried to stage an intervention that involved several extended family members, a lay priest, a large wooden club and rolls and rolls of cling film. I declined to press charges in the end. But there you have it, now you know.’

  My mouth was doing that falling-open thing again, until I realised, and shut it with an audible snap of teeth.

  ‘I want to be here,’ Jordan said. ‘I didn’t at first, you’ve got me there, but now I do. I’d resigned myself, don’t you see? I didn’t see a way to be like this’—he gestured roughly at himself—‘and still be with somebody else. But now I’m officially un-resigning. You didn’t run away. That’s what Eve saw in you, too. I’m not normal but neither are you! If I had to be stuck working errands for a pushy dead woman, you’d be the one I’d want on my side. You’ve proven yourself over and over. You’re gold. You’ve been unreal, I don’t think you realise how much.’

  He pulled me into him and I could feel my bedroom door swing open behind me the same way something inside my head seemed to be shifting to let the light in.

  ‘Since you came to Ivy Street you’re the first person I look for, every morning, did you know that?’ His voice was strangely urgent. ‘Even if it’s just a glimpse of your bright hair, drifting past. And I always told myself I’d talk to you one day, but then the side of me that believes in sense and logic would talk me right back out of it, because how would it be fair to inflict me on someone? It’s never going to go away. The weirdness. Not ever. Not until I die. Daughtry says so. You don’t choose this, you’re born with it and you just learn to…cope. The more you see them, the more you see them, Soph. It’s not a “gift”. It’s the worst kind of curse.’

  Jordan made a hiccupping sound that I realised was forlorn laughter.

  ‘When I can’t cope’—he looked down and flexed his partially inked right arm—‘I just get more of these. Soon I’m going to run out of space.’

  It was maybe the most Jordan Haig had ever said to me, or anyone, in a single go, in his entire life.

  But when I still didn’t reply, mainly because I couldn’t find any words, he muttered, ‘I noticed you the minute you walked into our form room. You were so tall and pale that the sun seemed to be shining through you. But you were too busy looking for crumbs of kindness from all those try-hard morons to even make eye-contact and then the pattern was set. It was me and Hendo and Seamus versus everyone else. It’s like we’re ring-fenced by electricity. Everyone treats us like we’re freaks.’

  ‘More like apex predators!’ I murmured finally, too dazed to take it all in. ‘It’s the tatts, Jordan. They give you this untouchable aura...’

  Jordan looked down at his bared forearms ruefully. ‘Which is only supposed to work against the dead, not the living. And I like that you’re tall...’ he added so quickly that I almost missed the words, ‘…because it makes it so much easier for when I want to kiss you…’

  And then he did, and we staggered backwards through the open door of my bedroom, pressed together, clinging to each other like two drowning people, and it was only the thought of having the most precious moment of my entire life witnessed by some punter who’d missed the turn off to the toilets and kept climbing that made me tear my lips from Jordan’s and plunge my scalding face into the side of his neck.

  ‘You taste like a packet of Butter-Menthols,’ Jordan murmured into my hair.

  ‘There are at least a dozen semi-leg
less adults downstairs,’ I whispered, half ecstatic, half terrified, ‘and my gran, who knows and sees all. We’re supposed to be doing research, remember?’

  Terror and lust warring in me, I reached around him and pushed the door closed, so that only a narrow band of hallway showed through.

  Seemingly oblivious to my tissue-infested room, the purple and orange pair of discarded undies on the floor right by his foot, Jordan linked his hands at the small of my back and pulled me close again.

  ‘This is research, Soph,’ he murmured. ‘I’m finding out about you and how you react to me. I’ve never wanted this gift: I spent my whole life trying to ignore it, keep it hidden. But it brought me you. Somehow Eve knew to involve the one person at Ivy Street High that I seriously don’t hate being around, who sees me the way I am and isn’t…afraid.’

  I discreetly nudged the underpants back under the edge of my quilt with the toe of my grubby trainer as he pushed my heavy hair back off my face.

  ‘Doesn’t it worry you?’ I whispered. ‘That she slipped your defences? It worries me lots.’

  Jordan laughed. ‘Yeah, I lie awake at night wondering what kind of undead Trojan horse I’ve let in. But what’s the worst she can do to us that she hasn’t already inflicted on you? The cat lady looked baaad.’

  ‘The cat lady pretty much took the cake,’ I agreed, swallowing.

  Jordan leant forward and kissed me lightly on the mouth and my cheeks flamed up so brightly it made him laugh.

  ‘See? And you managed that one all on your own. You’re the bravest person I know, Soph. And now there are two of us to work out what Eve needs.’

  He flicked my cheekbone with one finger and smiled.

  ‘And after she’s gone, we’ll still be here, trying to figure each other out. So let’s get to work and get her the hell out of our lives already, okay? Because we don’t need an audience. Not for this.’

  It was nearly dinnertime, and the light outside had long since faded to a pink-limned grey.

  As I continued to hesitate just inside the door, Jordan strode across my bedroom with a long-limbed grace and threw himself into the creaky captain’s chair in front of my open laptop, powering it up before peeling off his leather jacket and slinging it over the curved chair back. He clicked on my sticker-covered desk lamp and rolled up the unbuttoned sleeves on his denim shirt, querying, ‘Password?’ as if he hadn’t just been kissing me breathless moments before.

  I perched on the edge of my battered desk, shielding the screen with the curve of my body as I quickly typed in my password and brought up the residential directory for the state.

  There was a surname box, and I typed in: Kelly. In the blinking box beside it I typed: Carter.

  Nothing came up.

  So I cut the word ‘Carter’ down to a ‘C’ and, literally, one hundred and one hits came up, citing addresses everywhere from Spotswood to Bonbeach and places I’d never heard of before that sounded far away and impossible to get to like Kurunjang and Barnawartha.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ I blurted out, as Jordan scrolled down the long list of names. ‘We can’t call them all and ask if they take a size “M” in men’s tees and, by the way, do you know an insistent, deceased woman called Monica?’

  ‘Let’s try a slightly different angle,’ Jordan murmured, nudging me aside. ‘What was that guy’s name again? The shooter?’

  I watched, stunned, as Jordan typed in, O’Loughlin, K.

  Name and address details popped up obligingly. ‘Just seven,’ Jordan said with satisfaction.

  ‘You’re not serious?’ I exclaimed. ‘The guy’s supposed to be a psychopath. You can’t just call a psychopath asking for answers!’

  Jordan dug around inside his leather jacket and pulled out his mobile phone. ‘Why not? What are the chances any of these people have Caller ID?’ he said, already dialling.

  ‘He killed someone, Jordan!’ I squeaked, aghast, as Jordan said, ‘Oh, good afternoon, I was wondering if I could speak with Keith O’Loughlin?’

  ‘That’s right, Keith.’ There was a brief pause then Jordan rolled his eyes at me and said cheerfully, ‘I’m terribly sorry, I must have the wrong number,’ and hung up.

  He did that six more times before conceding defeat. ‘I guess he’s not listed.’

  ‘D’uh!’ I said, relieved. ‘Man on the run, remember? Shove over, Sherlock.’

  I brought up a new window and a different search engine. ‘What was her real name? Eve’s? Monica what?’

  Jordan rested an elbow on my knees and it felt so right it almost took my breath away. While my insides did an uncoordinated happy dance, Jordan frowned into the screen.

  ‘She didn’t introduce herself, if that’s what you mean,’ he muttered. ‘The way I got her name came out of something she showed me. It was dark, really dark, and I saw something, like a, I dunno, path? Beside a river? Running water, anyway, I could hear it, and someone was calling out quietly, like they didn’t want anyone else to know—Mon-ica? Mon-ica? Like the way you’d call a cat. I could hear footsteps behind her, the sound of his breathing.’

  Jordan shivered and I tensed, knowing he was sparing me the full story, all the little Panavision details.

  ‘Try him instead, the O’Loughlin guy,’ Jordan murmured, shaking himself. ‘I still think he’s the key to everything. What’s his story? How big a psychopath are we talking here? Just big? Or big big?’

  Reluctantly, as if typing in the man’s name would somehow enable him to see us through my webcam, I did what Jordan asked. I started feeling sick as news stories, weeks old, flashed up: of some outlaw bikie kingpin walking into a strip club at 6.17 one morning and dragging his topless ex-girlfriend, Monica Cybo, straight out of her shift and into a laneway already filling with office workers. There, Keith O’Loughlin shot and killed an innocent man who’d tried to intervene on Monica’s behalf, critically wounding a backpacker who also came to her defence. A woman in her car at a set of lights was also hit, but was expected to live.

  After that, O’Loughlin and Monica had each vanished into thin air. No one knew what had become of either of them. One reporter speculated that O’Loughlin—head of the Reavers outlaw motorcycle gang—was presently employing a vast, interstate network of bikie brothers-in-arms to stay under the radar and that he was holding Monica somewhere against her will.

  But Jordan and I knew something that none of the papers did: Nadja herself had said that Keith O’Loughlin had gone to the Maximus Lounge looking for Monica, even after what he did. Somehow, against the odds, she’d gotten away from him that day. But then she’d died and become the thing I’d come to call Eve. Had O’Loughlin found Monica after all?

  Ice! Vodka shooters! Strippers! Roid Rage!

  ‘She’s the one,’ I said shakily. ‘The one they were all talking about until all that stuff about me pushed all that stuff about her right off the telly and the front page. Jesus.’

  I studied the grainy black-and-white head shot accompanying the news article. It showed a middle-aged man with a slick pony tail and pronounced widow’s peak, taken with a long lens. The quality was hopeless, but it was the only picture on file of the notorious biker. I could feel my teeth
chattering and they seemed beyond my control.

  ‘I was right! He killed her, Jordan, he must have. That’s why no one’s seen either of them for weeks. And you just tried to call him direct! What if he finds out?’

  I hastily punched the window closed and all the news stories on Keith O’Loughlin vanished, to be replaced by the list of seven K. O’Loughlins we’d found in the residential directory. Revolted, I quickly clicked the back button, and one hundred and one C. Kellys from here to the state’s borders filled the screen again.

  The feeling of wanting to throw up intensified.

  ‘Why did you have to go and die?’ I wailed, looking for her in the ancient plaster ceiling rose; in the amber glass teardrop chandelier some colourblind dag had installed in the 1970s; in the dark and dusty corners of my bedroom; but seeing nothing. Oh, I could almost smell her though, almost feel her lurking, waiting to see what we would make of all the crappy, unhelpful little clues she’d let fall our way.

  ‘It’s not enough, Eve,’ I mumbled, ‘give us more.’

  I had been about to add: Damn you, but bit back the words. That part had already happened.

  I was tired. My mouth felt like sawdust and my head seemed filled with molten lead and all I wanted, really, was to crawl back into my bed cave, preferably with Jordan by my side, and never come out.

  But they have opinions. They possess some animalistic, residual ability to reason, some kind of low cunning that persists, even after death. I knew that, because of the man in Room 3, with his hatred of the pokies in the Sports Bar that had never existed when he was alive.

  If they could reason, they could be goaded.

  I sat bolt upright and told Jordan: ‘Go get something to eat.’

  ‘Hey?’ Jordan replied, surprised, squinting up at me.