by AA Bell
‘Does it hurt too much?’ Ben asked.
‘My own fault.’ She rubbed circles against her temples until the pain subsided. ‘Can’t help testing my limits, sorry.’
‘You want me to give the lecture today?’
She waved him off, knowing that one by heart already. ‘Take it easy. Take my time,’ she recited. ‘But it’s not just the pain, Ben. This was a crime scene.’ Her stomach soured more at the thought of describing it. ‘A nasty one.’
‘Anyone … get hurt?’
She heard him gulp.
‘Nobody we know this time, so relax. There’s no way I’d put your life at risk again by blabbing about it.’
‘Your life too,’ he reminded her. ‘There’s a trio of fishermen behind us on the old tram bridge. If they’ve noticed us poking around down here …’
‘It’s a public park, isn’t it?’
‘Sure, but hardly anybody ever comes here. Fishermen and a few local glue sniffers.’
‘It’s still public. We have every right to be here. Besides, nobody else was involved — at least not as far back as I can see.’
‘Is ten days not enough?’
Mira shrugged. ‘I missed the worst bit — but I’m not sorry. It’s bad enough just looking at the aftermath.’
‘So it’s possible there was someone else involved?’
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s history now. Doesn’t affect us.’
‘If you missed the worst bit, how can you be so sure? Please, Mira, I need to know if there’s anything here that can affect us.’
‘What else can I say? What’s done is done. It’s not like I can change anything. Seeing back through time isn’t nearly as useful as going back in it.’
‘No, but it can be more dangerous here and now.’ He lowered his voice, muttering a curse for losing his patience. ‘Sorry, I can only imagine how hard it must be for you, living in the past as you have to, but you know the risks. There are too many people out there who’d kill to get you on their slab as a lab rat! If anyone could ever replicate what you do, there’d be no secrets safe from them. We need to be better prepared from now on and that means I need to know as much about the dangers around us as you do, okay? There’s no good can come from trying to shield me — especially when it’s me who’s meant to be the guardian, for all intents and purposes.’
‘But it’s just a dead girl on a beach.’
‘Just a dead girl on a beach? Oh, yeah. That’s very helpful and reassuring.’
She sighed and gave in. ‘Come here, then.’ She led him down the path to a rack of timber boards which held the sand together loosely in the shape of steps.
‘It happened there …’ She pointed to the woman’s body, but now that she was much nearer to the scuffled patch of sand, her eyes followed the rumpled trail of boot prints to a second lifeless shape in the murkier shadows under the bridge. Unlike the woman, his ghostly corpse was face down between the pylons with a fishing knife still embedded in his back and one arm twisted around as if he’d died while struggling to pull it out himself.
‘An open and shut case,’ she declared, as the past continued to play out around her. She saw the first ghostly tour bus of the day head over the bridge to Serenity and recalled how festive that day had begun before turning to near tragedy for Ben. Then to her left, she noticed the helmet of a ghostly police officer as he pulled into the car park on a fat patrol bike, but Mira didn’t need to watch him to know that he’d soon read the rest of the crime story from the sand, just as she had.
‘Open and shut,’ Ben echoed. ‘I thought the same thing right before I was framed and locked away for six years.’
‘Hardly the same, Ben. This victim was a beach jogger with nothing worth robbing.’
‘And the killer?’
‘He’s a fisher … okay, so maybe he hung out with the trio on the tram bridge, but it hardly matters now. He’s dead too. They killed each other.’
‘If you didn’t see it happen, how can you tell who killed who? Or that a third person wasn’t involved like I said before?’
‘It’s obvious from their positions, their footprints, the murder weapons and everything else that’s here. I’d really rather not go into the gorier details if you don’t mind.’
‘It’s the details that matter most, Mira.’
‘It’s the details that make me sick!’ Queasy in a way she hadn’t felt since the first time she’d seen a ghostly guard molesting a male convict, while torturing him to death with a knife and branding iron. At the ‘old’ gaol, violence like that, and worse, was a regular occurrence. She gulped and realised Ben was still waiting. ‘Look, it’s simple. He attacked her, she stabbed him, he shot her. Case closed.’
‘A fisherman with a gun? Do you mean a spear gun?’
‘No, a normal handgun. I can’t see the specific make or model from here but it’s too big for a pocket, plenty small enough to conceal in his fishing sack. Obviously, he waited for her. He’d had time enough to catch four whiting and a flathead.’
‘The knife was his, too?’
‘Yeah, probably. Not many pockets in a bikini. And it does look like a fishing knife — as much as I can see sticking out of him anyway. Big handle, like the ones with serrated blades on one side for scraping off scales.’
‘Okay, that’s good. Try again with these now instead.’ He tapped her shoulder with something that felt cool, like the metal arm of his own sunglasses. ‘They’re darker but if I remember right, they let you see back only about a week.’
‘Here’s hoping with less carnage.’
‘Yes, here’s hoping.’
She sighed, and closed her eyes for the swap. ‘Crime really does happen in waves, like light and water, you know. I’ve seen it for centuries, and I’m beginning to think that my knack is for glimpsing the worst of it.’
Opening her eyes again, she saw purple sand washed over with a muddier shade of violet. The cop disappeared along with both bodies, replaced in the same instant by four teenaged boys who were playing beach ball over a tattered strand of crime-scene tape.
‘Oh, yes. Now here’s my kind of crime … just kids bending rules in a ball game.’ She noticed that the sun had also leapt a few hours higher. ‘But the faster light hurts more.’ Closing her eyes again, she returned the glasses. ‘Can we go now, please? I just want this day to be over and done with.’
‘Me too.’ He waited until she headed back up, then fell into step behind her, making the sand squeak under his shoes. ‘Hey, did I mention I bought a few other shades from the hospital canteen? Only ten bucks a pair, so I grabbed every colour they had. We can try them later today; see how many new dates you can see — if you’re up to it?’
‘Sure, when we’re far from here.’ She reached the sandy steps and the path, wondering why she didn’t feel any better to be on her way to his car, unimpeded finally. ‘I spent my monthly allowance on extra glasses last week too, but I left them in my room when I went for a shower and someone crept in and smashed them.’ She didn’t need to say who she suspected.
‘What about the first pair I gave you, and the ones that let you see yesterday? At least with those you could glimpse your own body occasionally.’
‘Smashed too. Damn doors that only lock from the hallway. If I hadn’t been wearing these in the shower to help me see the water, I’d be stuck in last century again.’ With her naked eyes, that was all she could manage.
He overtook her on the path, then she heard the familiar clunk of the passenger door opening. Her stomach growled in reply, but it wasn’t just her revulsion at returning to Serenity in time for breakfast.
‘I feel sick,’ she confessed as he helped her to find the invisible seat. ‘What if the matron changes her mind about letting me leave?’
‘She won’t. It was partly her idea.’ He stretched out her seatbelt and wrapped it around her, his hands so large as they brushed her arm and yet so gentle.
‘But what if the review board overrules her? She’s only one p
sychologist against many.’
‘She’s the one who knows you best.’
‘And they know me the least. That’s my point! This could be my last trip to the mainland. As far as they’re concerned, I’m still psychologically unstable, and let’s face it, Ben; this is only your first year out of gaol.’
‘None of that matters now.’ He leaned across, unavoidably close to her, and fastened the buckle with a metallic click. ‘We’re both special cases, you and me, or else we wouldn’t be alone together now, would we?’ He adjusted her seatbelt a little tighter. ‘Today we start a new life together. Purely platonic. No strings attached. So forget the past. Forget everything that’s ever happened. It’s all down to you, me and the next steps that we take together.’
She gulped and hoped it would be as easy as that. ‘Tomorrow starts today,’ she said, reciting another of his regular lectures, but repeating it aloud did nothing to quell the growing queasiness in her stomach. Not just nerves any more. More like a swelling sense of dread that grew more intense as Ben closed her door and jogged around to take his place behind the wheel. He slammed his own door twice to close it as if the old car was also feeling reluctant. Then the engine chugged twice and finally cut out on him.
‘Hold this,’ he said, dumping his slim elastic sling in her lap. ‘It’s more of a pain on while I’m driving.’
Wringing her fingers in her lap, Mira worried what kind of last-minute hurdles and tests awaited her, while Ben cranked the engine.
‘Come on, baby,’ he said cranking it again. ‘No sulking.’
Mira screwed up her nose. ‘I’m not sulking!’
‘I was talking to the car.’ He cranked it again and the engine responded with a splutter and purr. ‘Now that you mention it, you only do that with your hands when you’re sulking or scared. So which is it now?’
Flexing her fingers, she splayed them flatter against her thigh, trying to convince herself he was wrong for once. ‘Would you believe hope?’ She tried to brighten to prove it, but her deepest fear rose, washing another frown over her face. ‘I’m hoping I won’t have to face him.’
‘I knew there was something else eating you! Okay, now tell Papa Benny bear all about it.’
‘Papa Benny bear?’ She grinned, realising he didn’t need a backhoe after all. ‘Is that so?’
‘I might as well be your father after today.’
‘You’re barely ten years older than me.’
‘Big brother then. Quit dodging the subject. Enough’s enough.’
With a huff, she folded her arms. ‘What’s the point? In facing him, I mean. A final test, I don’t need. If I’m really being allowed to leave today, I’ll never have to deal with him again.’
‘True, but the fear would remain.’
‘Hey, when it comes to facing my fears now, Ben, I’m a gymnast! I’ll leap straight at it, but in his case … Please, no. It’s not fear. It’s prudent planning. He could ruin everything.’
‘Prudent planning.’ Ben chuckled and gunned the engine. ‘Congratulations, Mira. You finally nailed the right attitude. Of course, I knew you would. So I rang ahead a few days ago from the hospital and arranged to have him locked away with loud music.’
‘How can you be sure that would work? We have no idea how far ahead he can hear. If you believe some of the other patients, he predicted my initial transfer to Serenity almost a month before I knew of it myself.’
‘Not accurately. The further away in time, the more confusing it is for him to hear any whispering from the one true future among the cacophony of all the alternatives. With accuracy, it’s only two days — three days, max — and he’s been locked away for twice that.’
Mira shook her head, unable to believe it. ‘If he’s been locked up all week, who smashed all my sunnies?’
‘Anyone who’s jealous of your special treatment. You’re the only patient who’s ever had a chance at leaving permanently, and certainly the only one who’s had all their privileges restored without any need for additional medication.’
‘So you’re sure he can’t possibly interfere?’
‘Or listen in. Relax,’ he added as he skidded backwards from the kerb. He turned the car sharply and accelerated for the bridge. ‘By the time I’m done as your guardian, you’ll be a new woman — confident enough to cope with anything. Even him.’
TWO
Freddie hugged himself inside his straitjacket, enjoying its warmth.
The batteries in his headphones were dying, though, killing his music. Now jackhammers drilled inside his head — voices, whispers, screaming. White noise. Echoing.
Every sound permeated from every tomorrow, rippling back to him through time like raindrops on a pond, ever dissipating as ripples do, until the weakest whispers broke the soft end of the sound barrier. Light and sound. Sound and light. All waves of one sort or another; ever forcing him to listen forward in time while forcing his nemesis, Mira Chambers, to look back.
He bumped his bald head against the padded wall, a human ball, having strived for ten days to stay deaf to it all.
‘Dysfunctions of his inner ear should guarantee it,’ he’d been told — by six decades of specialists. ‘Basilar membranes in the human ear just don’t shake this way.’ As far as the medical world was concerned, he was deaf, and the torment of hearing voices anyway had pushed him over the edge. But she knew differently now; Matron Madonna Sanchez. His spike-haired angel. Forewarned is forearmed, she would say, and she’d know. Together, they’d walked this path before — history repeating itself and yet ever changing in small ways.
Instinctively, he glanced up and saw his young angel watching him again through the full moon of his observation window; neon pink tips in her dark hair, bright as stars. The white light behind her in the hall was her halo, but he couldn’t bear to look at her; porcelain pale.
My Beauty, he sobbed. I am your beast, yet in our saga, there dwells within me no prince.
She stroked the glass moon with her petite hand — curled by the childhood foe of polio, long defeated, as if to remind him that he wasn’t alone in his zoo of mime artists. He knew she would also reassure him, if he could only turn his head long enough to read those precious plump lips, that as matron of Serenity, she would leave no rock unturned in pursuit of a little peace for him. Even a heartbeat of true silence would be bliss. Yet already the pain of failure had etched his sweet cherub with tears that had seared even deeper into him. All Mira’s fault, if not his.
He shook his head, knowing it was mostly because of him that his angel suffered at the sight of him; his fault that she knew the truth of what he was and what would happen to her soon if she failed to heed his warnings about Mira. The burden of his foreknowledge weighed so heavily upon him now that he could no longer stand on his own feet. He had to do something.
He pounded his bald head into the corner, trying not to hear the screams which still echoed back to him from tomorrow’s tenants — until time slid by enough that he noticed his own sobbing become ominously absent from the racket.
Glancing to the glass moon, he saw his precious matron there yet again, just as he feared. She was trying to smile, but her sweet mouth was already trembling. Fear made her lips so hard to read, but he’d listened to the echoes of this moment for so long, there was no need. He saw her eyes discover the damp stain on his pants and knew that she knew it too.
The day had finally come to confront his nemesis.
The foyer of the administration building smelled the same as it had every morning for the last fortnight; fresh paint, lavender air freshener and lemon floor polish. Through her violet sunshades Mira could see everything as it had been ten days ago, bustling with ghostly visitors for the inaugural Serenity Festival. At the far end of the hall, she watched a large tour group of businesslike men and women, all wearing matching blindfolds as they fumbled to find the stairs to the dungeon, where a black-cane luncheon awaited them later in the day — serving up the experience of being blind and dining in utter
darkness while also lightening their wallets for the worthy cause of funding more improvements and renovations.
The other memories that went with that day made her shiver.
‘Mind if I swap glasses again?’ she whispered, leaning closer to Ben. ‘I’d rather not see a replay of the day you got hurt, if that’s okay.’
‘Sure,’ he said, taking hers in return. ‘I don’t need them inside anyway.’
Closing her eyes long enough to complete the swap, she opened again to his muddier shade of violet. All signs of the festival disappeared, corridors emptied and the grounds and gardens through the waiting room window looked deceptively more serene. Inside the building was less bright so it didn’t hurt quite as much to process the faster light. With binoculars, she might even be able to watch the teenaged boys on the far side of the bridge more comfortably.
Mira glanced to the vacant desk at reception instead; at the clock and desk calendar, and saw that the date was now only eight days old instead of ten. ‘Hey, it’s lunchtime,’ she said cheekily. ‘Time to leave for that café?’
‘Nice try,’ Ben replied. ‘It’s barely 7am. But if you’re hungry we could drop into the dining hall?’
She shook her head. At reception, a chime sounded and Mira heard an electronic voice that called her by name and advised her to go through to the matron’s office. Ben followed her down the long hall. His hand touched her back, electrifying her nerves as he ushered her around an invisible obstacle.
‘Sorry, old photocopier,’ he explained. ‘It’s been put out with a note for disposal.’
Mira noted its position, before realising that was her old way of thinking, taking note of any potential way to hide or escape the place.