"Hello," I said.
"Hi Emily," said Max. There was a lot of distortion on the line, so it sounded more like “Hi – (crackle) – ly.”
“How are you?” he said.
“Fine,” I said.
So far the conversation had proceeded along fairly mundane lines. I tried something more interesting and relevant.
"Did you find out why my house vanished?" I asked.
The distortion was bad. There was a moment's pause.
"Well," he said. "That's where...now...get... (crackle)... and see...(buzz)...rself."
"What? I didn't catch that."
"...esting phenomenon," he tried to continue. "(Crackle)...come on over... (click, click, crackle)".
"You want me to come over there?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "I think you'll...(hiss)...surprise."
"We'll be right over," I said. "Bye." I sat up and gave Joanna her phone back. "Got to get home. Max has found something."
Joanna shut her book with a snap. "We'd better all go," she said.
I was surprised by her enthusiasm. "I thought you weren't interested in scientific explanations."
"Who said anything about an explanation? You said he had found something. We'd better be there to make sure it's investigated properly."
That's why I liked Joanna. No crap. You go, girl.
***
The Moon had set long ago, and darkness shrouded the outside of the house when we arrived. There were plenty of lights inside, however, painfully bright and white. A car and an ancient VW minivan were parked in the front yard. A generator was growling next to the van, with cables snaking into the house. The landlord was not going to like this.
We had collected Heather from her parents' house on the way, as I felt she had an interest in this too, and we four – me, Joanna, the Maestro and Heather – walked between the cars and up to the front door.
It was open. There were voices coming from inside. We stepped past the large boxes and various pieces of photographic equipment on the porch and found the hall as bare as it had been since yesterday. The Maestro paused on the threshold and breathed in deeply, his eyes shut. "Space," I thought I heard him mutter, and then he stepped inside. He opened his eyes and looked at me. "I knew it was space," he said. I wondered how he could possibly know what space was like without having been there. Joanna was also looking about keenly, running her hands over the paintless walls. There was a light in her eyes. "This is fantastic," she said.
Heather and I went through to the lounge. It wasn't easy. There were studio lights and video cameras and equipment everywhere. A stack of electronic gear had been set up in the doorway. Two men in the middle of the room were bending their heads close together, tapping on an iPad they held between them. One of them was Max. He looked up as we entered.
"Emily!" he said. "Glad you could get here."
I introduced Heather who, at the sight of Max, stared at him in the same way I had done when he was on television. Max indicated the other man. "This is Dr Nabarlambarl," he said. "He's with the University of Queensland. He's a physicist."
Dr Nabarlambarl was about my height, with a friendly smile and brown eyes that never stayed focussed on anything for long. He was dressed casually in an open-necked shirt with sleeves rolled back to the elbows and green pants. His short black hair had a few flecks of grey through it. I placed him in his early forties. He didn't seem at all like a scientist: there was none of Max's air of superiority for one thing. He wrung my hand firmly and said, "Call me David."
“Call me Emily,” I said.
I nudged Heather in the ribs to stop her staring at Max long enough for her to say hello too. Joanna and Birgili had come through by now. Max and Joanna said hello but not in a very friendly way. Ah, yes: cousins, I remembered, and not too fond of each other. Birgili politely shook hands all round. He kept staring about him as if seeing things no one else could. Maybe he was, maybe it was just a habit of his. The others looked at him, not sure who the hell he was or what he was doing there.
"So what have you found?" I asked.
"Well –," began Max, but David stepped in.
"This is a remarkable place," he said. "Almost as interesting as what's been happening in the sky in the last couple of days."
"Any theories on that?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Not yet. But I'm working on it." He flashed his teeth. "So, you want to know what we found? Max, try the camera again."
Max went over to a camera mounted on a tripod and pushed a button. He shook his head. "Sorry, David, nothing yet. There's still too much distortion."
"Unfortunately, we've been having lots of problems with the camera equipment," explained David. "There's a good deal of electromagnetic interference in this room." He glanced at Max. "Maybe I should show them what we found?"
"That might be an idea," said Max.
David spent a few moments taking his glasses off and cleaning them and putting them back on again, then fumbled around again for a cigarette. He took it out of the packet, put it in his mouth, took it out again, held it in his hand, played with it, put it back in his mouth, but never actually got around to taking out a lighter and smoking the thing. I was to discover he did this all the time when getting excited. It drove his students crazy.
The room, and the house, were still completely bare except, of course, for the equipment that had been brought in. One end of the room had been left empty, but there was a green chalk circle about a metre across on the floor, and I noticed it was towards this circle that the cameras were pointing.
"Perhaps the best way to tell you is to show you," said David. "Stand back please, and watch this."
We all lined up against one wall: Joanna, Birgili, Heather and me. Max stayed behind the camera. David nodded at him. "Roll it," he said, "for what it's worth." He stood near the centre of the room and picked up a metre ruler from the floor. He held it vertically and tossed it into the middle of the circle.
The ruler landed on one end, the metal ringing loudly off the bare walls. It bounced into the air again.
And it stayed there. Vertically. Balanced on nothing. It wobbled a few seconds, and then went still. A moment later, it began to tilt, turning in mid-air, settling at last on about a 15˚ angle from the vertical towards one side of the room.
We all made suitable gasping noises, except for Birgili, who said "Görim", as if he knew something we didn't.
David gestured for us to come forward. We moved closer to the ruler, which continued to balance there as if resting against something. But of course it wasn't. I noticed everyone was looking a little expectantly at me, as if they were watching what would happen when I approached the ruler. I didn't blame them, I was a little curious myself, but I held back a bit. I was nervous.
"Incredible," muttered Heather.
"We noticed this effect this afternoon," said David. "It's only this room, and only in the centre, in the circle. It works with anything, though, not just metal. Wood, plastic. Watch this."
He reached forward and touched the ruler, which allowed itself to be pulled out of the circle. David did not seem to exert any effort to do so; as if the ruler was only very lightly held by whatever force was affecting it. David held another object now, a wooden cube. He tossed this into the centre.
The cube described its expected arc towards the floor, then stopped about twenty centimetres from the boards. It spun a little, then settled down as the ruler had done, aligned along two of its vertices that pointed in the same 15˚ angle towards the same side of the room. It stayed hovering twenty centimetres off the floor.
David smiled and passed his hand under the cube. There was no apparent interference.
"Still nothing, I'm afraid, David," said Max, taking his eye from the camera eyepiece. "Nothing but static."
The Maestro suddenly spoke: "Put Emily in the circle."
This was not a suggestion I'd been expecting. No one else had either, by the way they all looked at him. I had serious objecti
ons to it myself.
"Will that be dangerous?" I asked, since no one else did. Selfish of me perhaps, but there you go. "I mean, what's going on here?"
The Maestro turned to me and made that slight inclination of his shoulders I had seen before which passed for a shrug. "I don't think it will be dangerous," he said. His confidence was hardly encouraging.
"You're connected in some way with the circle," piped in Max. "That much is obvious. Perhaps we should see what happens when you enter it. Just out of scientific curiosity."
I looked at Joanna. She shook her head quickly, and opened her mouth as if to say something to the Maestro, but he held out one hand, index finger extended towards her. The protest died on Joanna's lips, and that was that.
"Let her approach," said the Maestro.
David reached into the circle and removed the cube. I stepped forward a pace, then halted.
The circle certainly seemed innocent enough, about a metre across, outlined in green chalk. Nothing about it seemed threatening. But...
"It is happening again," said Birgili suddenly. "Her yerde sosis var."
I wondered what he meant and was about to ask Joanna for a translation, then noticed sausages had started appearing in the room, singly and in little bunches, pink and slimy and squirming and obscene.
"I don't think this is a good idea," I said.
But then I couldn't help myself. I started to feel a pull towards the centre of the room. I found my feet scraping along the floor. I was no longer walking; I was being dragged across the floorboards towards the chalk circle. Joanna uttered her little squeal. Max swung the camera on me although I didn't know if it was working now. David was standing next to the circle. As I approached him he took hold of my arm, but did not try to stop my circleward movement. Nevertheless, I felt a comfort in his firm touch. Whatever was happening he, at least, seemed calm.
It took only a few seconds to cross the floor and enter the circle. My feet lifted and I found myself floating like the cube, as if held there by some unseen and unfelt force. There was no bodily sensation other than that of floating in the air, and the touch of David's arm.
And then, slowly, I tilted forward, settling 15˚ towards one wall, my feet pointing down. David slowly let go of me. I continued to float.
"Are you ok, Emily?" he asked.
"Yes, fine," I said. "It's actually – quite – comfortable ."
"Can you see anything?" asked the Maestro.
"What?"
"What can you see?"
"Nothing. Well, I mean, the room - you lot..."
And then I saw.
It was no more than a flash of something subliminal, like a shutter opening and closing in the mind, a tiny fraction of a second long, a vision seen only in memory.
Light...coloured light...blue, green...some red off in one corner...movement of the colours, swirls and fractals and moiré patterns...
...there was something like a wave, something like spears of light, something tessellated, something like a cloud, something very like a whale...
...over, above, behind, beneath: darkness...
...lightning, scoring across a shape...geometry turned and twisted back upon itself...point/line/plane/sphere combined in one...
...a glowing centre, a flame there, burning hot and bright, eternal, constant, a nucleus of heat that could not be focussed on, disappearing when looked at directly, always on the edge of sight...elusive...
I felt a thrill of fear. This wasn't just happening now, it was also a memory. I had seen it before. Last night, I had seen this vision of the light in my dreams, as I lay in a pathetic heap and alcohol turned my brains to mush. For an instant, perhaps, it had flashed behind my eyelids. Just like it had now.
Then I saw the room again, and I stood suspended in space.
I was once more in my star-like state. Those who had not seen me as such were showing signs of surprise, but were obviously trying to stay detached and scientific. Max had stopped trying to film me and was now helping David to take measurements with rulers and theodolites and pieces of string.
"Stay there," said Max. "Just a few more moments." He thrust a tape measure in my face and marked my height above the floor.
In one corner of the room, Heather and Joanna were pushing vast quantities of sausages out of the way. They had started to pile up, making it difficult to walk and interfering with the measurements.
The Maestro stood with his right hand on his chin, his left clutching his walking stick, the thumb rubbing at the wood grain, peering intently at me.
Perhaps he expected me to do tricks, spin around, pretend I was swimming. I felt like a circus animal under his gaze. Or a lab rat.
"Ok, thanks, Emily," said David at last.
"Wait," said the Maestro.
But David could see I had had enough. He reached in and touched my arm. His fingers went through me. He snorted with surprise and pulled his fingers away. A moment later, as if in response to his touch, I assumed my real state. He managed to grab me then and gently pulled me from the circle. As I crossed the line of green chalk I dropped lightly to my feet. The circle's grip became weaker as David helped me move away, and soon I was able to walk by myself and I felt wholly normal again. The others gathered around me. Joanna hugged me, looking very concerned. I smiled to let her know I was fine.
It was a lie.
And that, my friends, was the end of the second day.
PART TWO
READING THE FLAMES
Branwell’s Second Law: Shit sticks.
There are few situations these days where total peace can be achieved. In fact, rarely in my life have I ever attained a state that could be called peaceful at all, even in the most favourable circumstances. For instance, I once attended a meditation retreat in Nepal, back in the days when I had cause to examine life and question some of the eternal verities, when I was backpacking around the world long ago.
Last year, in fact.
I was made to sit on a cold, hard floor, breathe deeply and think about one hand clapping. The whole experience was only slightly more exciting than death (I presume), and the awareness that I was bored shitless kept nagging at the back of my mind, intruding into my consciousness. As a result, I found no answers, about one hand clapping or anything else. It turns out I've never had much time for eternal verities, or verities of any sort. I hastened out of Nepal, leaving behind a thousand unanswered questions, which quite frankly haven't bothered me since. Life, I decided, must be taken as it comes.
And if it won't come, grab it where it hurts and pull.
However, there is one place where peace comes to me almost unbidden, where the very act of being there allows me to descend into calm, and all is temporarily right with the world.
I was in the bath.
Lying there, eyes closed, hair floating out around me, nothing but face and knees and nipples above water, I was able to forget all the bizarre things that had happened in the last couple of days – or at least let them sink to the bottom of my mental ocean for a while, until they floated once more, scum-like, to the surface.
Of course, this whole series of weird events in the last couple of days had begun in the bathroom. It had been after a shower that I had found that first sausage the day before yesterday. But they were coming into existence around me so frequently now that the sight of any number in the vanity basin was not going to raise an eyebrow. In fact, in this book I shall henceforth only refer to the appearance of sausages should they require a special mention for narrative purposes.
In the meantime:
ASSUME THAT SAUSAGES ARE RANDOMLY APPEARING
and we can save a lot of ink.
It was the morning of the third day. As the events of the third day are going to occupy the rest of this book, I suppose I should get on with it. But, since we're here, let's just take a moment to lie back and be still. What I did not know then, but will tell you now, was that by this time tomorrow everything would be over and all questions answered. But t
hings were going to get slightly hectic before then, so relaxing a moment will be good for both of us. Put the book down, have a stretch, then lie back with your eyes closed and let your mind switch off for a minute or two. Feel free to have a bath if you like.
Ahh.
***
I opened my eyes; calm and relaxation vanished. I was a prune from the hot water. There was a knock on the door.
"Yes?" I said, my voice echoing in the tiled stillness of the bathroom.
"Breakfast's ready," called Joanna.
I sat up and started to squeeze my hair out.
"I'll be two minutes," I called back, groping for a towel.
It took closer to five, but when I emerged it was to breakfast. And I looked and saw that it was good.
Everyone was there. The six: me, Heather, Joanna, Max, David, and, sitting in his usual chair under the African mask as if both he and it shared some unknowable bond of mind and spirit, Maestro Birgili. It was interesting to observe the different factions that had emerged during the night. On one side were the scientists: Max and David, two PhD's. On the other were the psychics: Joanna and the Maestro. Off to one side, not sure who the hell to trust, was Heather. And, of course, in the middle of it all, the object of everyone's interest, me.
The scientists spent a large amount of time typing on their iPads, surfing the Internet and talking polysyllabic words into their mobile phones, presumably with other scientists listening at the other end who inserted suitable jargon in their turn. The psychics were less vocal. Joanna spent a lot of time consulting her books, while Birgili sat and stared at the activity around him. He said little, moved less. It was almost as if he was just observing, making a note of what everyone else was doing, contributing nothing. Poor Heather drifted from one group to the other, making coffee, cleaning up piles of sausages and trying to comfort me. She seemed to have taken on a mother role.
There was one other faction I forgot to mention, but they were less a faction than disinterested observers: Bruno and Mike the Plant. They tended to stay out of things pretty much, kept their comments to themselves, and generally didn't give a damn. Fear not, they seemed to say, our day will come.
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