Catching Teller Crow

by Ambelin Kwaymullina

We say them together.

  ‘Granny …’ Trudy Catching

  ‘Nanna …’ Sadie Catching

  ‘Grandma …’ Leslie Catching

  ‘Mum …’ Rhonda Catching

  ‘Me.’

  Even if I forget again, Crow will remember.

  I’ll endure.

  Until I get away.

  Until the Feed knows fear.

  That fear will wear my face.

  Speak with my voice.

  And I’ll be terrifying.

  Catching went silent.

  Dad didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. No words would come out of my mouth. I was too shocked. Too horrified. Too enraged.

  My father was angry too. I could see it in the tightness around his mouth and the glint in his eyes. But his voice was gentle when he spoke to Catching: ‘If someone has harmed you, I can protect you. I can protect your friend.’

  ‘Trying to save me?’ Her face was stony and remote. Like the rock that endures. ‘Too late.’

  Dad tried again. ‘If your friend is in trouble …’

  ‘She’s not.’

  That had the ring of truth to it. But I was convinced now that everything Catching said was true in some way.

  Dad took his card out of his pocket, placing it on the drawers beside the bed. ‘This is my number. You can call me anytime.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll so be doing that.’

  He sighed. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else you’d like to tell me?’

  Catching flopped back against her pillows and closed her eyes. Dad took the hint. ‘I’ll let you rest.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’ll be here tomorrow, and we can talk again, if you’d like.’

  He walked out of the room with slow steps, giving her the chance to call him back. But she didn’t speak or move until the door swung closed behind him. Then her eyes flicked open and she sat up.

  I wanted to say … I didn’t know, something, although everything I could think of seemed shallow and stupid next to the awfulness of her experience. I spoke anyway. ‘I know you don’t want Dad’s help, but if I can do anything …’

  She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘You want to help somebody, Teller? Try yourself.’

  ‘I’m fine!’

  ‘You’re so not. You don’t want to move on to what’s next? Fine. Be stupid, and don’t. But you can’t go back. Your dad can’t either.’

  He can! I can! But those words sounded ridiculous even inside my own head. I’d died. I was different. Dad was different. I couldn’t reverse that.

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t known it until this instant.

  Catching studied my face, and whatever she saw in my expression made the half-smile return to her mouth. She lay back, apparently feeling she’d made her point. ‘Get out of here. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  I left, drifting out of the hospital into the darkening light of the late afternoon. My father was pacing back and forth by the car, talking on his phone. He hung up just as I reached him.

  ‘Break in the case?’ I asked.

  ‘No, just getting someone to take a look at that rehab facility Catching was in.’ He cast a worried glance back at the hospital. ‘I think someone really hurt her. Maybe at that facility. Or maybe before then. It’s hard to tell, with the way she’s mixing everything together.’ He sighed. ‘Unfortunately, there are limits to what I can do if she won’t give me more to go on.’

  ‘I think the story might be all you get, Dad.’

  Because Catching didn’t want to be helped. Only heard. And while I hadn’t believed that at first, I was starting to. She obviously thought she could look after herself. And I supposed it was no surprise she didn’t want to rely on anyone else, when there’d been no one to come the time she’d needed it most.

  Dad’s phone rang. He pulled it back out and looked down at the name of the caller. Aunty Viv.

  I rolled my eyes as he shoved the phone into his pocket. ‘You’re not going to be able to ignore her forever. Grandpa Jim’s birthday is coming up, you know.’ Mum’s dad was going to be eighty-two in a month. ‘What are you going to do, avoid Aunty Viv for the entire party? Because that will be weird.’

  ‘I’m probably not going,’ Dad said.

  Just like that. As if it was nothing.

  ‘What do you mean, you’re not going? You have to go!’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Of course you do, y—’

  ‘Leave it, Beth!’ he snarled.

  I took a startled step back. Dad’s gaze dropped to the ground. He shifted uncomfortably and mumbled, ‘Sorry. Um. Guess we should be getting back to the hotel.’

  He went to the car and opened the passenger-side door. It was a thing he did sometimes, opening doors for me as if I couldn’t phase right through them. It usually happened when he most wanted to pretend I was still alive. I was supposed to let him pretend, the way I always did. That meant getting into the car and shutting up about Aunty Viv.

  I flashed back to being outside this hospital with Dad yesterday. The only thing I’d cared about then was him not being sad. I would have let go of Grandpa Jim’s birthday, thinking I could always talk to him about it another time.

  Yesterday was a different world.

  Today I did something I’d never done before.

  I walked away.

  Dad called after me. But I sped up, running back to the hospital and right through its walls, then through building after building in the streets behind. When I felt sure Dad wouldn’t be able to find me I shifted onto the footpath and slowed to a stroll, going nowhere in particular except away from my father.

  I couldn’t believe Dad. This was Grandpa Jim. My grandfather with the big white hair. The man who’d taught me card tricks, and who hadn’t spoken a single word for a full three days after I’d died. The parent who’d always treated Dad like one of his own sons.

  It had never occurred to me that Dad wouldn’t go to Grandpa Jim’s birthday party. Aside from anything else, it was the first family birthday since my death. Everyone would be sad and happy at the same time – or at least trying to be happy. And they’d all expect Dad to be there.

  I could just see Aunty Viv, her eyes darting constantly to the front door as she waited for Dad to walk through it. When she finally realised he wasn’t coming … when they all realised he wasn’t coming … I knew exactly how it would be.

  Aunty Viv would deflate like a balloon with all the air let out of it. Aunty June would stomp around, muttering under her breath. Uncle Mick and his husband would try to cheer Grandpa Jim up with a card game, but Grandpa wouldn’t really be having fun no matter how many times they let him win at rummy. And Uncle Kel and his wife would go cook something. But not even Kel’s best stew or Marie’s most chocolate-y pudding would comfort the cousins, who’d go quiet the way they only ever did when something was really wrong. It would be awful, and I wasn’t sure Dad would ever be able to make up for it.

  There was a queasy sensation in my stomach. Had I been getting things wrong, all this time? I’d been focused on getting Dad back to who he’d been before I died. Now I was thinking I should have been helping him to go on to become a person who knew how to live in a world where I wasn’t alive. A person who’d go to Grandpa Jim’s birthday.

  I had no idea what to do anymore.

  I also didn’t know when it had become night.

  I stopped, puzzled; I hadn’t noticed the light changing. Then I realised I could see twilight in the distance. It wasn’t night. But I was enveloped by a huge shadow with curving shapes at the edges. As if some big clawed thing loomed at my back …

  I spun around, heart pounding. There was nothing there.

  Maybe the shadow was the big clawed thing.

  And I was inside of it.

  I sprinted for the twilight, reached it, and kept going. But the shadow followed, streaming over the earth to flow at my heels. I ran faster. The shadow flowed faster. I pulled every last scrap of speed from my body, my arms and legs pu
mping until my chest was tight and my limbs were trembling. I couldn’t keep this up! And the shadow was still coming.

  Maybe I could escape it by reshuffling the world. I tried focusing on Dad. But my mind couldn’t seem to grab on to him. I tried thinking of Catching instead. That didn’t work either, and my legs were rubbery and weak and slowing down. The thing was almost upon me, and I’d reached the limits of my body’s endurance.

  Except that I didn’t have an actual body. I was dead.

  With that realisation I burst through limits that weren’t there anymore and ran as I’d never been able to before. The shakiness in my arms and legs vanished. The pain in my chest vanished. Only the joy of motion remained – my hair whipping back from my face, the thud of my feet on the earth, the cool sting of the wind on my skin. I was faster than the shadow. I was faster than anyone or anything. I’d never felt more … alive.

  Something shining flashed into existence in front of me.

  I skidded to a halt, casting a glance back over my shoulder. But the shadow was gone. There was only what lay ahead: a sea of colours brighter than any I’d ever seen. I took a curious step forward. The shining, writhing coils were a strange sight, and yet I wasn’t afraid. Somehow, I knew these colours; more than knew them – loved them and had missed them, although I hadn’t known it until right now. A fierce longing overtook me. I wanted to go home.

  I bounded forward. Then I realised what I was seeing and feeling, and stopped.

  At least, my brain decided to stop. But my legs kept on moving, carrying me to where my heart wanted to go.

  I focused my will and staggered to a slow and reluctant halt.

  The colours were the place I’d glimpsed right after I’d died. The other side. And they were singing, or someone was. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like a welcoming song. The kind a mother might sing to her child.

  I’d finally found Mum. Except she’d been with me all along, because I knew the sound of her voice. I’d heard it a thousand times, only I’d thought it was my own voice. She was the part of me that said everything will be all right and you did great at that and it’s going to be an amazing day. Mum had been there my whole life, helping me be a butterfly girl.

  Maybe all hopeful thoughts were just someone who loved us, reaching out from another side. Which meant I could be there for my family even after I’d crossed over!

  Joy bubbled up in me and I leaped forward, rising into the air. Then I thought of my father and fell back to earth.

  I couldn’t go. Because while the rest of the family could have a relationship with who I was now, Dad could only manage one with who I’d been before. He needed me to be here in the same way as I had been when I was alive, or as much like it as was possible.

  I took one last, long look at the colours, and sucked in a steadying breath.

  Then I turned my back.

  There was a popping sound. The whole world turned dull. The colours were gone. I fell to my knees, sobbing into the skirt of the stupid yellow dress I’d wear forever.

  I sat there until my tears ran out and the world grew dark. It was really night, this time. The shadow hadn’t come back. Maybe it had been my own death, chasing me to where I was supposed to go. I didn’t know, and I didn’t have the strength to care. Turning away from the colours had taken everything I had.

  I stood up. It seemed to take a lot of effort. Maybe I should sit again? Except I was already on my feet. I took a step; another step; a third. Now it seemed easier to keep on walking than not, so I kept going, making my way to the hotel.

  The light was on in Dad’s room, shining through a crack in the curtains; he was still awake. Unless he’d fallen asleep with the lamp on again, but it seemed too early in the evening for that. I squared my shoulders, bracing myself to find him crying, and walked into the room.

  He wasn’t crying. He was sitting in a chair with his back to me, staring at a wall filled with sticky notes grouped under three headings: ‘ISOBEL CATCHING’, ‘SARAH BLUE’ and ‘THE HOME’.

  I blinked in surprise. ‘Dad, you made one of your thinking walls?’

  ‘Beth!’ He leaped up. ‘You’re back! I didn’t know when—You’ve been crying.’

  My eyes felt red and gritty. Stupid, Beth. I was usually so careful to make sure he never knew I cried.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dad rushed on, ‘so sorry I snapped at you. I didn’t mean to; I just … I’m sorry.’

  I wanted to tell him I hadn’t been crying because of that. Except I didn’t want to talk about the colours. ‘S’okay.’

  Dad didn’t seem to know what to say, and I couldn’t find any more words either. Finally he waved at the wall. ‘I’ve been mapping everything out. Seeing if anything connects.’

  He paused in a hopeful kind of way.

  You want us to be friends again, Dad? Promise to go to Grandpa Jim’s birthday.

  But he was trying, and I was too worn out to fight. ‘You think it is all connected?’ I asked.

  Dad’s face lightened, relieved to have gotten a response out of me. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Except I can’t see a link between Sarah and everything else.’ He cast a frustrated glance back at the wall. ‘About the only thing I’m sure of is that I need to confirm whether anyone has actually seen or spoken to Alexander Sholt since the fire.’

  ‘His dad saw him,’ I pointed out wearily. ‘He said Sholt left for the city this morning, remember?’

  ‘Someone else.’

  I didn’t see why that would be important— Wait. Suddenly I wasn’t so tired. ‘You think it might have been Sholt who died in the fire? But why would his father lie?’

  ‘Family pride? He could be trying to buy time for Derek Bell to cover up whatever Alexander was involved in. Or he could be moving his son’s money around, hiding funds he doesn’t want uncovered in a police investigation into Alexander’s murder.’

  That made sense. Not much else did. ‘If Alexander Sholt died first, who killed everybody else? Bell?’

  ‘Possibly, but …’ Dad shook his head. ‘I can’t see it. He seemed genuinely shocked this morning when those bodies were found.’

  He turned back to the wall, frowning. I walked over to stand with him. The pieces of this case had just been flung up into the air, and I was struggling to put them into an order that formed a coherent picture.

  I knew this was a victory, of sorts – Dad was properly back to work. A few days ago, I would have been jumping for joy. Now I wanted more. I wanted him to talk to Aunty Viv. I wanted him to go to Grandpa Jim’s party. I wanted him to reconnect with the world. Because then I could …

  I turned my face away from Dad.

  Then I could go.

  I loved my father. But I knew something that I hadn’t known before – at least, not all the way to my bones the way I knew it now.

  I didn’t belong here anymore.

  It was morning and I was standing by the window, watching Dad take the sticky notes off the wall to keep them from the prying eyes of whoever cleaned the rooms. We’d sat up half the night poring over those notes and got nowhere. Then Dad had fallen asleep and I’d paced the room, thinking. Only not about the case.

  I was trapped between two different sides to the world, and not truly a part of either one. But there was no changing that unless I could change Dad. I had to help him become the Michael Teller who could accept who I was now. And if he never did become that person, I guessed I was here forever. But I wasn’t going to think about what years upon years of this dreary half-existence would be like. I wasn’t thinking about anything that weighed me down. I still wanted to be a butterfly girl, even if I couldn’t fly away.

  Dad was taking a long time with those notes. If he didn’t speed up, he’d be late to meet up with the city cops, who’d arrived early this morning. He just didn’t seem able to remove the last note, the one that said ‘SARAH BLUE’. He kept reaching for it and then letting his hand fall.

  ‘Did you figure out a connection between Sarah and
everything else?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ He finally took the note down. But he didn’t tuck it away in his suitcase with the others. Instead he stood with it cupped in his hand, holding the paper as if it was something fragile and precious.

  ‘It wasn’t done right,’ he said softly. ‘The investigation, after she disappeared. That file …’ He shook his head. ‘There are things you do when a kid goes missing, and none of them were done. Someone should have noticed.’

  ‘It’s no big surprise that Derek Bell’s dad didn’t get called out for sloppy work,’ I said. ‘He was the boss cop, back then.’

  ‘That wasn’t why no one noticed,’ Dad replied. ‘Or not the only reason. If a white girl had gone missing like that, just vanished on her way home from school’ – he shook his head in disgust – ‘there’d have been an outcry. It would have been on the news, in the papers, something everyone talked about on the street. Instead, the only people speaking for Sarah – her family, her friend – were ignored.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Gerry Bell got away with not doing enough because people didn’t care enough. No one was paying attention.’

  And Dad took that personally. He pretty much took all injustice personally, but especially anything to do with Aboriginal people not being treated right. And as he’d told me a thousand times over, growing up in his father’s town had taught him that one person in power could do bad things, but it took lots of people to let those bad things continue.

  Dad didn’t want to be one of the people who didn’t pay attention. He didn’t want to be anything like his father, either.

  I’d always wanted to be exactly like mine. Only I was Mum’s daughter, too. I knew how to leave behind the things that had to be left behind. And it suddenly dawned on me that Dad – who carried the weight of unjust things – might be holding on to something that wasn’t his to bear.

  ‘Dad? You do know that you couldn’t have saved me, right?’

  Dad bent to put the note away, placing it gently into his suitcase. Then he straightened up and spoke in a voice so low I had to edge forward to catch the words. ‘It was my job to keep you safe.’