‘It’s just that …’ My best friend Zoe died of cancer, and cigarettes’ll kill you, just like they did her, and don’t you know the damage each cigarette does to your lungs? Obviously the truth wasn’t going to cut it. ‘… I still feel a bit queasy from, you know, fainting out the front on Friday afternoon.’
Zoe blew a plume of smoke out the side of her mouth, away from Holly.
‘Oh, yeah. That guy. But otherwise you’re okay?’ she checked.
Holly nodded. It was so odd, this girl just appearing in the lounge room so unexpectedly. Holly went to say, What are you doing here? but then she remembered the phone call from last night. Susie Sioux had said something like, See you tomorrow, unless your mom’s antistudy, ha ha.
The two of them stood there in silence for a moment, Holly suddenly feeling the natural shyness that came with standing in a room alone with a complete stranger. Then she said, ‘I should go and grab my books,’ impressing herself with her ability to think on her feet. ‘For us to study,’ she added.
Any excuse to leave the room and compose herself.
Susie Sioux blinked at her and slowly blew out another plume of smoke. ‘Okay, seriously. What are you talking about?’
‘You know. You said on the phone we were going to study today.’
Susie Sioux’s gaze solidified into a long stare.
Silence.
Then she let out a shout of laughter. ‘Ha! Good one. For a minute there I thought maybe your head injury was more serious than anyone suspected.’
‘Boo!’ Two hands clapped onto Holly’s shoulders from behind. Startled, she turned to face a girl with shaggy, softly curling blonde hair, eyes heavily lined in black.
April. Aprilmayjune. Another friend with a lifetime of shared memories.
Water-balloon races down the driveway at April’s house. The enormous fig tree in her front yard, the three of them sitting on their favourite branch for hours talking.
‘Have you been ignoring me?’ April said, putting her hands on her hips and pouting.
‘No. What do you mean?’ Holly said. Then again, maybe she had been. Who knew?
‘You haven’t returned any of my calls. You’re lucky I came today. I nearly wasn’t going to. But’ – theatrical sigh – ‘you know, when a séance is on offer, who am I to refuse?’
Holly looked from Aprilmayjune back to where Susie Sioux was now crouched on the floor pulling a wooden board out of her bag. She held it up for them to see in a ta-dah moment. ‘Ouija’ was written along the top, with ‘Yes’ on the left, ‘No’ on the right. The letters of the alphabet were ranged across the middle like a rainbow, numbers ‘1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0’ ran underneath that, and the word ‘Goodbye’ signed off at the base.
A chill ran through Holly. Everything was surreal enough – she didn’t need spirits from another dimension trying to speak to her. She was struggling with how to respond to real live flesh-and-blood people.
Holly turned from Susie Sioux back to Aprilmayjune, who was watching her carefully.
‘Something’s different about you,’ April decided, frowning.
Holly shifted her eyes away, feeling crushed on both sides. Susie Sioux knew something was up because she wasn’t smoking. Aprilmayjune could sense her fakeness. Holly had known she couldn’t maintain the façade for long. There were too many things to get wrong. Subtle differences, nuances.
‘It’s your hair,’ April finally announced.
‘She’s not wearing eyeliner either,’ added Susie Sioux.
‘Gawd, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without eyeliner. Not since junior high. Who are you and what have you done with …’ April said, not even bothering to finish the phrase.
And Holly had to laugh, because, yes, right, exactly. Who was she? And what had she done with … ?
1.17 pm
Holly’s bedroom was quiet and dark. The door was shut, the curtains were closed, and there was the sense that the entire room was sucking in its breath. The three girls were sitting cross-legged on the floor around the ouija board.
‘Your room’s very clean,’ April whispered.
‘If the spirits don’t scare us, the cleanliness of your room is guaranteed to,’ Susie Sioux said.
Holly felt the thud of a headache slowly building, like she’d been awake for days and could no longer think straight. The incense burning on the edge of the bedside table, which Susie Sioux had lit ‘for mood purposes’, wasn’t helping.
‘Okay, fingers on,’ Susie Sioux said, putting her pinky on the planchette that she’d placed in the centre of the board, then nodding across at Holly and Aprilmayjune to do the same.
A ripple travelled down Holly’s back, as though cold liquid was filling up her spinal column.
‘This is a mistake,’ she muttered. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’
Aprilmayjune winked open an eye and grinned over at Holly. ‘I know, how cool is it,’ she said, then shut her eye again.
‘And now,’ Susie Sioux whispered, getting into the zone, her hair merging with the gloom of the curtained room, her fringe casting shadows over her eyes, ‘I summon the spirits of this house...’
No, Holly wanted to say. Don’t summon them. We don’t want them here. Spirits, don’t come. You’re not welcome.
‘I call for a groundswell of the cosmic energy – a convergence of supernatural beings to answer our questions …’
No groundswell. No convergence. We have no questions for you. Holly wanted this train to stop before it got wrecked.
Sensing her discomfort, Aprilmayjune slid her gaze in Holly’s direction before closing her eyes again.
Susie Sioux continued talking, her intonation mesmerising. ‘We ask you to cross over into this world of the living,’ she whispered. ‘Speak to us. We are ready to hear from you.’
Holly felt a draught at her back, like the door had been opened. She turned around to check. It hadn’t been. They’d all felt it. The three girls looked up at each other.
‘Are you here?’ Susie Sioux asked.
The planchette moved slowly to the top left corner.
‘Yes.’
Holly breathed out, a long deep breath, reminding herself that séances weren’t real. They were hoaxes. Rubbish. She just had to go along with it. This was a lark. Not to be taken seriously. Schoolgirls couldn’t call spirits to them with a ouija board and planchette.
‘What’s your name?’ Susie Sioux asked.
I don’t believe in you, Holly thought. You’re not real, this is a game, ghosts aren’t true, you aren’t here in my house, in my bedroom, in my head. Goodbye.
The planchette started moving to the bottom of the board. Towards goodbye. Holly watched it sliding down the board with a mix of horror and relief. If it could hear her inside her head, maybe she could simply wish it away.
‘No, wait,’ Susie Sioux said. ‘Don’t go. We have questions to ask. You don’t have to tell us your name if you don’t want to. We invited you here. We want to talk. Please stay. Do you have a message for any of us?’
Holly repeated to herself, inside her head, Go away, go away, go away. If the spirit was real, if it could hear her, it would get the message.
But the spirit was ignoring her, responding to Susie Sioux instead. The planchette started moving across to the ‘H’. It stopped there a moment. Then backwards, to the letter ‘E’. Then across to ‘L’. Over to the ‘P’.
‘HELP.’
Then nothing.
‘Oooh,’ April said. ‘Scary.’ Her eyes were wide, her mouth grinning.
Susie Sioux looked from Aprilmayjune to Holly, thrilled that her séance was off to such a dramatic start. ‘Help? Who’s in danger?’ she asked. ‘Which one of us?’
The planchette started moving again. ‘T’. Back a couple of letters to ‘R’. Back further to ‘I’. Forward to ‘N’. Around to ‘I’, ‘T’, ‘Y’.
April and Susie Sioux flicked their eyes over at Holly, whose cheeks were burning, as if caught out in a lie. And then th
e planchette started moving again. Faster this time. ‘H’. Then ‘O’. Back to ‘L’. Stop. Around the board, then doubling back to the ‘L’ again. Forward to ‘Y’.
‘Holly?’ Susie Sioux asked. ‘Who’s Holly? Do we know a Holly?’ She looked straight at Holly.
Holly shook her head, traitor that she was.
‘Or maybe it’s a holly bush?’ April suggested. ‘Maybe you need to be careful of a holly bush?’
And then the planchette moved towards the edge of the board, the tip pointing straight at Holly, accusing her. She’s a fraud! She’s not who she says she is! This is Holly, here! This one!
Holly felt as if extra weights had been slipped onto the ends of a psychic barbell she’d been trying to keep above her head ever since she’d woken up here. Her muscles were turning to flimsy ribbons. There wasn’t enough air in the room, her heart was pounding, her psyche was being crushed. She wanted to stand up, toss the board away from her, leave her bedroom, but she was paralysed, unable. She wanted to at least take her finger off the planchette, to stop participating, to turn her mind blank, to not listen, to not see the words. But it was impossible. HELP TRINITY HOLLY was seared into her brain.
From behind them, a harsh metallic clattering sound came from the typewriter, from Brother Orange, as if a ghostly secretary was typing out a letter, a couple of quick words. Then, just as abruptly, it stopped, so quickly that it was hard to know if it had happened or not.
All three girls let go of the planchette and squealed. Holly leapt away from the board, jumping up and flinging open the bedroom door. She pushed open the curtains to let in the daylight. To get rid of the ouija madness. Susie Sioux and April were both still on the floor, looking terrified but also laughing at the craziness of it all. A possessed typewriter. Séances didn’t get much better than this. Or much worse, depending on your perspective.
Holly went over to the desk to see what was written on the typewriter. But, of course, there was nothing there, because there wasn’t any paper scrolled in. And anyway, typewriters didn’t type randomly without someone to operate the keys. Except as she stared down at it, she noticed two black words registering faintly against the black rubber of the roller. Fuck off!
An involuntary prickle crawled through her hairline like nits.
‘Did that just happen?’ April said. ‘Did the typewriter just type on its own? Seriously. I heard it typing on its own.’
‘That was the best séance ever,’ Susie Sioux said. ‘I can’t believe that happened.’
‘But what does it mean?’ April said, looking to Susie Sioux for answers – it’s your ouija board, you should know what’s going on. ‘And why was it saying you need help?’ she added, turning to look at Holly. ‘Or is it some person you know called Holly who needs help? I’m confused. That was so awesome.’
Holly stared at the typewriter, focused on bringing her heart rate down, not wanting to look up and face these girls she’d never met until a couple of hours ago. It was all too much. She felt a pulsing pressure in her ears, an intense feeling of vertigo, a huge desire to vomit, the struggle of keeping the dead weight of her body upright.
‘Trin,’ Susie Sioux said. ‘You okay?’
Holly nodded. Just.
‘Do you know a Holly?’
She shook her head.
HELP TRINITY HOLLY.
Fraud.
5.13 pm
April and Susie Sioux had left not long after the séance, after Holly said she was feeling dizzy and strange. Holly had immediately climbed into bed, pulled the blankets over her head and fallen into the sleep of the truly overwhelmed. When she woke up, dusk was starting to deepen in the sky and everything came rushing back. She lay there trying to keep her mind a blank, but her brain was filled to bursting.
She shifted so that she was lying on her side, facing the desk.
Brother Orange. It was impossible that the typewriter had typed on its own. It couldn’t have. But what else could explain what all three of them had heard? She pushed the blankets off, swung her legs out of bed and padded over to the desk. The ghostly imprint was still there on the roller. Fuck off! She felt sick just looking at it.
The typewriter was the common denominator. It was here, and it was in the future (her past, if that really was the future). The answer had to be locked inside that orange enamel body. It had called to her during the séance, asking her to come sit with it. It made as much sense as anything else that had happened these past few days. She didn’t want to, but she had no choice. She had to know what was going on, and she felt that the typewriter had the answer. She rolled a sheet of paper into the body of the typewriter and waited.
Nothing. Silence.
Holly scratched at her neck, then pushed her hair off her face. It was impossible. Typewriters didn’t type to you, you typed into them. It was a law of physics.
(Other laws of physics dictated that people didn’t leave their bodies and end up in someone else’s life, so clearly you couldn’t always rely on physics.)
She wondered whether she had to type something to get it going. Maybe a few sentences about how she was feeling would trigger it – whatever it was. Standing over the desk, she positioned her fingers on the keys. Pulling them back, she pressed her palms together as though in prayer, then she leant forward, put her fingers back down on the keys and started typing:
What
She was going to type, What do you want from me, something along those lines, but before she could get it out, black letters started hammering up onto the page. The words slammed of their own volition onto the pristine white paper, the sound like a volley of bullets ricocheting from her bedroom walls.
Holly leapt away from the desk, as far away as she could get, her back huddled against the wardrobe. It was, frankly, terrifying. The séance typing had been one thing – the three of them hadn’t even been sure it had happened. But this was, without a doubt, a fully fledged possession.
And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Holly didn’t move, not wanting to break the silence. When she’d worked up the courage, she slowly made her way back over to the desk, ready to scramble if the keys started up again, and looked down at the page.
What the fuck is going on? I ran out onto the street just before and some guy just told me I’m in Melbourne. In AUSTRALIA! IN 2020! But that’s not the worst of it. Not even close. Melbourne, Australia in 2020 would be chicken shit compared to everything else that’s going on. I’m not me, I’m some old lady with bad hair and terrible clothes. I’m not me. And no matter what I do, I can’t get back to being me. I’ve done everything. I’ve chopped off all the hair ripped up all the clothes tipped the house upside down and I’m still this old person. I don’t know how you did it, but it has to be your fault, because you’re the only thing I recognise in this whole helltown house. What am I doing here PUT ME BACK! Just put me back or I’m gonna chop you to bits, I’ll rip every single key off your keyboard and you’ll NEVER be able to DESTROY anyone else’s life ever again. Just CHANGE ME BACK you FUCKINBGasdfkljdlfkjs dlfkjsdazfcxvlaerhi’yoagjio;ijoajlijlagejlag erjklaasdjlkadsfasdflijadfjklzjlzjkljkljlkrefsla egriouaehtasdfajkoeiaeourtzndfgka;ertioaeior; gjagjslagleijagrjldkasdjlkadgfj;iadfo;iadguio garaiouaegriouagrehiougareijogarlbfdzlmkaj dwaeiafdmaeoitaegrjaefiawemdfjcviou aekwt4ip3q3jkk;ldfspi,ldcoawemdjcvmew aod mwepcoiwadopaweid la f ksa heoaew adzkowroiOKAAEPDadsjlkaeoiuawejlkdfsoi
And that spread down the rest of the page, right through to the end.
Holly’s best guess was that the gobbledygook was due to Trinity pounding her fists up and down against the keys in anger and frustration – trying, through sheer force of her fury, to change the way things were.
Holly stared at the words, feeling the confusion and turmoil and rage that was steaming off the page from Trinity’s side of the … what? Typewriter? World? Universe? Up until this moment, the sum total of Holly’s assessment had been that she’d somehow woken up in Trinity’s body, and Trinity’s soul was asleep while her body was t
aken over. But judging from this letter, Trinity had been flung, at the same moment, into Holly’s life, forty years into the future. And it seemed fair to say that Trinity wasn’t happy about it.
Holly couldn’t even begin to imagine how a sixteen-year-old girl would go about processing all this surrealness. She worried that Trinity might hurt herself while she was pushing back against the situation. And let’s be honest – it wasn’t Holly being selfless when she worried about Trinity hurting herself. Trinity hurting herself would actually mean hurting Holly – not something she wanted to have happen. Also, what was all that about chopping off her hair? Ditto the ripping-up of her clothes?
Holly needed to calm the situation down. She took out a fresh piece of paper. She wasn’t sure if this would work, but it was worth a try.
Dear Trinity, she typed.
It’s me. Holly. The person whose life you’ve woken up in. That bad hair? It’s mine.
She had been aiming for light-hearted, but maybe now wasn’t the time.
I’m kidding. I mean, I’m not kidding. It’s really me. Don’t freak out. It sounds like we’ve swapped lives. I woke up out the front of your place on Friday afternoon – your birthday. 29 Feb. And I’m guessing that you woke up in my house on Saturday afternoon – my birthday. Also 29 Feb.
She wondered how much she should say.
Obviously the whole thing is weird and makes no sense, but don’t panic! We’re going to sort this out together, I promise. No need to tear clothes or cut hair or wreck things. Please. Best I can figure, the typewriter has something to do with it, and it looks like you’ve worked that out too. I think it’s something to do with the fact that we’re both leap-year babies. Apparently 29 February is also called the Date of Resetting, when time travel is possible. And 29 Feb 1980, your birthday, was especially powerful because it’s the last leap day of the century AND millennium, so I think what’s happened is your birthday fell on a kind of once-in-a-thousand-years, turbo-charged, super-powerful Date of
Resetting. Somehow, we’ve both been caught up in some once-in-a-thousand-years soul swap.
It's Not You, It's Me Page 6