by Ophelia Keys
INDIGO
Ophelia Keys
copyright 2012 Ophelia Keys
****
INDIGO
Let’s get one thing straight before we even start. I am not a hunter. I’m the bait, the decoy. I create a moment of attention. And then I let others take over. Usually it’s a bunch of men all psyched up for a fight. Funny thing is, the fight just never comes.
Most animals would rather run from a confrontation. It’s the same with them. They’d rather slip into the shadows at the first sign of trouble. Most of the time, they never come back. Direct stares, bright lights – that’s what gets them. I really don’t know why, but they’re afraid of being seen. I bring them out into the light, name them, create attention. And then I get the hell out of there – just in case.
****
Chapter 1. INDIGO LOST
tuesday, november 3
Indigo
I walked into the bar keeping my face very still, setting my jaw a little. The place was full of men. They all watched me walk in. It was clear to all of us – I was not where I belonged. I sat down at the counter. The air stank of old beer. The barman gave me a look. I appear much younger than I am. Not glamorous young. Child young. But he said nothing when I ordered a drink, just shook his head a little. I didn’t really want a drink, but I had this feeling someone would offer to get me one if I waited too long. And I wanted to be on my own. It looked awful when it came, luminous green. I didn’t drink it, just sat with my fingers resting on the damp glass, trying (and failing) not to think too much. There was a score of reasons why I should never have come. When ten-thirty passed and my client had still not arrived I was about to give up. A bit relieved really, but he sat down beside me very suddenly and was talking before I even turned.
‘You’re Indigo? I’ve got him. I just need the bait.’ He was older than I expected. He looked like he’d been drinking, but he waved away the barman.
‘Where is he?’ I asked. I was careful to say ‘he’ rather than ‘it’. I didn’t want to scare him away. He handed me a crumpled piece of paper with the address of a grand, old hotel. He must have been from out of town, to think I needed it written out.
‘I’m the bait then?’
‘That’s what we agreed.’ He had gone red. ‘I thought you said you could handle it? You look just like her from the back.’
I gave back the paper and stood up.
‘That’s not enough. What did you bring?’
He pulled out a green scarf. I took it quickly and shoved it into a plastic bag. It was perfect. It would have her scent on it.
‘Ten o’clock Friday night. At the bar,’ he said. ‘He’s there every night. But I can’t seem to get hold of him. I’ll have two men with me. Don’t talk to us. Don’t even look at us.’
He actually had a nervous tick next to his eye. I tried not to think about what his stupid plan might be. It shouldn’t even matter, once I looked this thing square in the face and said its true name.
‘Five hundred dollars,’ I said. ‘And if you ever see him again, I’ll give it back.’ As you can imagine, I regretted that last part as soon as it came out. I really had no idea what I was doing.
‘We’ll see.’ Clearly he was as unconvinced as I felt. ‘Cheque’s in the post.’
I needed it now, but I’d never been great at confronting people. The electricity bill would have to wait another couple of days.
‘That’s great,’ I said. I don’t think he even caught the sarcasm. We walked out together. He glanced at me, hesitated. He smelt of too much aftershave and fear-sweat.
‘I just hope you can do this,’ he said.
I didn’t answer, just waited until he got uncomfortable and walked off. I knew he had a new car. He had new car smell on his hands. I had seen the way he glanced away as he spoke to me. He was thinking about where he had left it. Whether it was safe. It’s not that he wasn’t worried about his wife. He just didn’t understand yet. He didn’t know what followed her. Well, I thought I understood and I was worried.
When I turned to go I saw that they were all watching me through the bar window. It must have looked like we’d done some sordid deal. But the truth is so much stranger.
When I said they’d rather run from a fight, I wasn’t talking about ghosts. Perhaps that didn’t even occur to you. But just in case it did I want to say, for the record, I have absolutely no skills or understanding when it comes to ghosts. Of course, I’ve had as much experience with creepy houses as the next person. Like the share house in Canning Street where I always found my clothes thrown onto the floor each morning. Or the bed in the spare room of my Park Street house. It wasn’t ever used but the sheets were always getting twisted up – you’d swear in the shape of a sleeping child.
Even in my current house there were what I liked to call Unexplained Happenings. It was a grand old Victorian place, gone shabby over the decades, and the whole ground floor was blocked up. I got in through an outer stairway at the back, where they’d knocked in a door at the second floor. The creepiest place was the inner stairs that went up to the highest level. That’s where you could normally have gone down to the first floor too, if they weren’t all blocked up with panels. I heard things all the time on that hidden stairway. Mostly these noises were just below the range of real hearing. But often it was the almost imperceptible, quick melodic sound (boomp-boomp-boomp) of an animal’s feet ascending the hollow wood. I guess we had a feral cat living down there. But it made the back of my neck creep every time I heard it. Let’s just say I’m no specialist on hauntings and I never want to be. That’s Dylan’s thing and he’s welcome to it. My area was a little different. More practical, you might say.
Have you ever passed someone on the street, met someone at a party, who just gave you the creeps for no reason? Granted, some of them are just creepy people. But you should be aware that some of them aren’t people at all.
I was sixteen when I found this out. I’d just moved out of my parents’ place and I was desperate to be a proper grown up. A man asked me out. He was what I’d been half dreaming of for a long time. He had dark eyes and a lovely smile. Not handsome, but there was definitely something there. Funny thing was, when he looked into my eyes I had the strangest feeling. It was as if on the inside, all my fur went up and my back arched and my eyes went into little slits. I put it down to childish jitters. Just a little hurdle you had to jump before you became a proper woman. I was going to be brave and take the plunge. Yes. I was a fool. You don’t have to tell me.
When did I realise I was in over my head? It wasn’t over the first drink when he brushed his hand against mine and every muscle in my body went hard and painful. It wasn’t when the band started up, loud enough to hurt my ears and he grabbed my arm and drew me into the hot mass of people (his fingers on my arm turned me ice-cold, but how was I to know that wasn’t how it should be?). It wasn’t when he took me outside, my ears singing painfully, my legs all befuddled from drinking. It was the first kiss. Through the haze of cigarette smoke, I saw his eyes. They were flat and black and not even slightly human. The silly thing was that even then I didn’t say or do anything about it. Because it was all just intuition, airy-fairy stuff, as my dad would say. The embarrassment of seeming young and naïve was the worst thing I could think of. Of course, it didn’t take long to discover what was actually worse.
It was his dirty apartment, where he played heavy, claustrophobic music. It was being all tangled up in the messy sheets and having him speaking to me in another language that I somehow understood, but wished I didn’t. I came over all queasy and had to be sick in his bathroom, but that didn’t bother him one bit. He came right in after me. I don’t remember much after that. Which is kind of a blessing.
Eventually I found I was walking fast down a
too-dark street in an unfamiliar suburb. I didn’t have my shoes on. It was horribly quiet out there. Like I’d landed on the moon. I kept looking behind but he didn’t follow. At last I found a train station and sat on the platform, feet and hands like ice, blowing out frigid clouds with each breath. The first train was at 5.18am. It was only three. There was a youngish man waiting there too, which had me in a kind of panic. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. He had a notebook that he was scribbling in, and perhaps he was a bit disheveled (thought she, in bare feet). But he kept looking at me strangely. I was close to getting up and searching for a taxi, only I had this idea that I wasn’t safe out on the streets. Not to mention I had no cash at all. I’d spent it all getting drunk in order to be brave enough to ‘lose my innocence’.
Well, I was feeling pretty wise in the ways of the world at that stage. I was cold and miserable and my feet were caught between pain and numbness. There was an itch on my neck. I kept scratching at it. And this boy would not stop looking at me. I tried to tuck my feet under the bench and be as small and unnoticeable as possible. At last he stood up and walked over, causing my blood pressure to shoot up so fast I could hardly hear him talking.
‘Hello, I’m Dylan.’ (Thump, thump, thump …). My heart seemed like it was trying to burst through my ears.
‘Hey,’ I answered, not committing, not even looking at him. I was just waiting for him to plant himself next to me and start some spiel. Or something worse. I was pretty jittery to tell the truth. He leaned a little closer and my heart was going so hard it was actually hurting.
‘What happened to you?’
It was only then I looked down and saw the mess my clothes were in. That’s when I realised that annoying itch on my neck was a great big wound. It was only when I saw the blood that it started to hurt. But it was the look on his face that really got me. Funny how you only freak out when someone else looks frightened for you.
You could call it our first date. Possibly the worst first date in history (except, of course, the one I’d just had). We talked until dawn. Only I didn’t really know it was dawn, because it was just one long fluorescent haze in the emergency room. He must have got me there in a taxi because I don’t remember any sirens. Frankly, after I’d seen my clothes I got a little woozy. Intermittently there were doctors and questions about haemophilia. Dylan seemed to be constantly lapsing into another language (‘desmodus rotundus salivary plasminogen activator’ he later repeated for me). The doctors would look at him in a pitying fashion and leave for another hour. Let’s face it, doctors hate when you speak medical talk to them. Meanwhile I was seeing stars, literally. Beautiful little white points of light that hurt my eyes. But, on the plus side, when Dylan held my hand it made me feel peaceful and warm and I realised that terror was not a necessary prerequisite for romance.
That was my first night with Dylan, but it was also my first encounter with them. And Dylan seemed to be full of information. Although, to be honest, he shared very little of it with me. He did let slip that the night we’d met he was doing ongoing research on the paranormal in the Footscray area. Cue disoriented girl with bare feet and neck wound. It was meant to be. Why did I believe him straight away that this was not just an ordinary creep? I can’t really tell you. But I suppose if you’d seen those strange, black eyes you’d believe it too.
‘I’m doing something about this’, I told him a few weeks later. ‘You can’t just sit around taking notes.’
He looked at me with deep misgiving. I knew he was already regretting he’d told me anything at all. I suppose with all the blood and bright lights he’d got a little bamboozled and forgotten his usual policy of total non-communication.
‘We’ll do it together,’ I said.
‘Can I be chevalier Dupin?’ he asked, all sarcasm.
‘Whatever. But what’s the point of all this research, if you don’t do anything with it? This is real. We can’t just let these things happen to people.’
Let me just pause for a moment and say that I’ve always been prey to delusions of grandeur. A single example: once we had to make papier mâché heads for my primary school’s performance of Wind in the Willows. I decided I was not just going to make the weasel I’d been assigned. I was going to make everyone’s. And they were going to be so good, they would just have to use them. I don’t know why it was so important to me. Maybe it was because I wasn’t noticeably good at anything. I pictured them amazingly life-like. By the time I was on the second weasel I was in tears. They looked like lumpy amoebas. But I did about seven of them anyway, sobbing brokenheartedly the whole time. My mother was so concerned about it she sent me to the school counselor the next day. We can all laugh about it now.
Anyway, that gives you an idea of how I can be when I get an idea in my head. It was a little less obvious how this latest project of mine was going to work. I threw myself into it anyway, with Dylan’s reluctant and very occasional help. Actually, in retrospect, I think he just did it to keep an eye on me. He always thought it was a bad idea. I kept messy notebooks full of sketches and quotations and ramblings. Lots of them were just things like – ‘heard someone telling a story on the tram the other day – another Victorian house’.
By a Victorian house I mean the ones that are spread all over Melbourne, sweet little single stories covered in cast-iron lacework, or pompous two-story monsters with pediments and balustrades. Anything that has been lived in for over a hundred years is bound to have an interesting atmosphere. Anyway, without going into too much detail, these houses seemed to be a particular source of trouble in all shapes and sizes.
Dylan’s work was on a different scale. From what I understood he was compiling some kind of massive account of Melbourne’s supernatural life. He had shelves and shelves of hand-written books, but he always said they were ‘personal’ and kept the cabinets locked. I guess he thought that if a little bit of knowledge was a dangerous thing, then a whole lot might be even worse. I pretended not to care, in the deluded hope I could work on him through reverse psychology. But he was much too set in his secretive ways. I had just about the opposite approach. I felt it was my duty to tell everyone what I was doing. Most people politely changed the topic. But some didn’t. Friends of friends were starting to call whenever anything slightly unusual happened. Most of it led nowhere. Or to bad-vibe houses (all I can say is move out, there’s nothing I can do). But now and then there’d be something real.
That’s for another time, though. If I start telling those stories we’ll be here forever, and I just want to sketch in some sort of background for you. The point is I knew Dylan had loads of useful knowledge, and I was pretty confident I could get more out of him, given time and careful planning. Except that he left me after six months. He said I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just stirring things up. The world was no better than when I started. Maybe it was worse. And I was moving toward trouble. I was focusing on them, asking them into my life. He wasn’t going to watch me get hurt. That’s how he put it – funny how you always resort to clichés when you’re breaking up with someone. I might have said that stomping all over my heart was a funny way to protect me from being hurt, but I was so mad at him for patronising me, I told myself I didn’t even care that he was gone. And then something happened that made me think he was quite possibly right. A child was taken. And I’m pretty sure I was responsible.
It’s better I don’t talk about it, I think. That was the end of everything. I stopped answering my phone. And people stopped calling. I started working in a market research office. Data entry. Fours years later, out of the blue, a man calls about his wife. Friend of a friend gave him my number. He was desperate.
Did I hesitate? I’d like to say I did. That I’d learnt something. But I simply needed the money. And to be honest I was bored. It seemed so long since it had all happened. Besides, there was no child this time. This time it would be completely different.
wednesday, november 4
When I woke up I just lay q
uietly for a while, watching a bird pecking around the window box outside. Then I reached out and played the message again.
‘I don’t know if you can help. A man has been following my wife. For a long time.’
Hearing his voice again, I could just about see that nervous tic by his eye. I had suspected a follower as soon as I got his message. It was the sudden weakness in his voice. ‘For a long time’.
I never really gave names to them. None of the standard names seemed to convey what they were. ‘Ghost’ for example, doesn’t that just conjure up a kid in a white sheet? What’s the name for that feeling you get at home alone when you see someone disappearing quickly into the passageway, so fast it’s almost imagined? And I’m hardly going to say aloud what I thought my first ‘lover’ had been. In a way, it was unspeakable.
Well, this ‘man’ had been following the woman for ten years. Without making any contact with her whatsoever, without even looking her in the eye. Just there. I really would be amazed if he turned out to be a human being. Of course, it was a possibility. It just didn’t seem very likely.
I reached out for one of my old notebooks. I had reread the passage over and over in the last few days. It was one of the rare occasions that Dylan ever said something useful. Oh, again with the child! I guess I just won’t be able to let it go until I write down the whole thing. You see it began while he and I were still together. A woman called me on the phone for help. Dylan had overheard it all.
Dylan calls it a follower. It’s been following the child for four years. Since it was born. Don’t know what it wants. It just follows. Looks like a young woman with a thin face. Dylan says you should confront it. Call it by its name. But keep the child away from it.
Of course, he was only talking about it in theory. It was a non-specific ‘you’. He was just reacting to the child’s story as if it was something he was hearing on the news. Something we couldn’t do anything about. He’d let slip those few useful words, then stopped suddenly.
‘But, seriously, you’d better let this one go,’ he said. ‘Trust me, Indigo.’
That was three days before he left me. We weren’t really speaking to each other after that. Truth be told I was feeling pretty angry, reckless you might say. I called the woman back and told her I knew how to get rid of this ‘person’ who was following her child. It’s painful to think how stupid I was. How utterly arrogant and stupid. Though I suspect I’d have been far less ignorant if Dylan actually shared some of his precious notebooks with me.
I waited with the both of them in the Exhibition Gardens, right near the pond. That’s where it had last appeared. What better way to catch it? The mother was standing there nervously, with the little boy in the pusher. She was looking at me as if I was slightly mad, but she was too desperate to really care. I was the first person who’d offered to help her. Sure enough, the ‘woman’ was suddenly there, thin-faced and hungry-looking as a junkie. I had marched up to it.
‘Hey you! Follower!’ I shouted. It was gone. I was looking right at it and then it was gone. I couldn’t tell if it had vanished or flitted away into the trees. Losses of concentration were common around these things, according to Dylan (so, just keep away from it, Indigo). Then I heard a terrible sound. Not really a scream. More like strangled gulps of air. The child was gone, his mother searching frantically through the bedding. I almost laughed, but that was only because I was on the edge of hysteria. For a moment it looked as if she believed he’d become tiny and she would still find him in there. It was the worst thing I ever saw.
The answering machine had played out its message and was beeping for my attention. I pressed the palms of my hands into my eyes to try to control the nauseating guilt that still took me whenever I thought about it. That woman had screamed and screamed at me, right there in the park, in front of everyone. And I had deserved it, of course. And more. Quite frankly she could have killed me then and there. I deserved it. There was no evidence at all that I had taken the child. I was interviewed only three times. I think they even suspected the mother for a while. Her name was Grace. I hadn’t thought of her name in a long time.
I fumbled to turn off the answering machine and just ended up playing his message again. A man has been following my wife … I wasn’t sure that I was ready. But it was only myself I was risking this time. His wife would be nowhere near us. This was the key. I tried to picture how it would happen. It would see me in the bar, wearing her scarf. It would follow me out. My client would be waiting with his friends. And then? And then it wasn’t my problem anymore. I’d just bring it out into the open. Just like Dylan had said. No child this time. I took a very deep, calm breath, but my hands were shaking.
Dylan wasn’t at home, but I found him at the grubby, laminated laundromat beside his house. There was no air-conditioning; the humidity was horrible. The humming, banging machines pretty much drove me crazy. He said they helped him work.
He was sitting in his regular place, scribbling away. But I was kind of glad to meet him there. His apartment was full of tiny bird bones.
‘I need you as back-up at this bar on Friday,’ I said, casually.
He didn’t say anything. Just kept scribbling.
‘I’ll give you a fifty, just to sit at a table and get yourself a drink.’
‘Back-up?’ Dylan stopped writing and looked at me. It seemed my words were finally sinking in. ‘Back-up for what?’
‘For me, obviously.’ He just looked at me, not the hint of a smile.
I had a vague memory of finding his grey eyes rather compelling, but I’d got too used to them boring into me accusingly. Like they were right at that moment. It wasn’t going well. Time to try the guilt thing.
‘A man’s been stalking my client’s wife. I’m going to help them out. I just need to know someone’s looking out for me.’ I really had his attention now. He put down his notebook.
‘What kind of man?’ he asked. He leaned forward. ‘What do you mean ‘client’?’
‘There’s a creepy guy following this woman. I just want to help her.’
He sat back, suspicious. ‘Didn’t you get a job at some phone company?’
‘I quit two weeks ago. I already told you that.’
‘Sorry, I’m busy Friday.’ He went back to writing. ‘If he’s an ordinary guy, why don’t they just report him?’
I sat for a moment, but I couldn’t admit it was a follower. He would bring up the child. I couldn’t bear to have him bring that up. Couldn’t even bear he knew I was responsible for something as bad as that. I guess he would have found out anyway, if he’d come with me. But it seemed very different to telling him right there, in the harsh summer light in the laundromat. I walked out with a hot core of anger inside me. But the further I walked, the more I wanted to turn around. By the time I reached my laneway, I realised I was really scared. It was like a fist squeezing all my insides, and I was cold, even with the sun beating down on me.
I’d left my back gate open, but I still got a horrible fright when I saw that someone was standing at the top of my stairs. It was a girl, stretched up on tiptoes and trying to peer the wrong way through my peep-hole. She looked down and saw me and didn’t seem at all embarrassed. For a moment I thought she might be my client’s wife. But he had described her as looking just like me, while this leggy, tanned blonde looked pretty much my opposite.
I clanged up the spiral stairs. They always felt particularly rickety with two people on them.
‘Hi, I’m Ani,’ she said, thrusting out her hand at me. ‘I’m here about the room.’
I had a vague memory of leaving a note up on a Carlton billboard, but that had been months ago.
‘Come in out of the hot,’ I said, at last, a bit alarmed to see anyone in singlet and tiny shorts in the ferocious midday sun. I unlocked the door and she followed me into the coolness.
‘Wow!’ she said straight away, and I wasn’t sure that she meant it in a good way.
She walked in slowly, looking all around her.
I started to feel a bit self-conscious about the crumbling plaster and dingy carpet. I took her past the blocked off stairs, up to the front room. It had a balcony and looked down onto the street through two huge windows. It was crowded with junk, but I was still sure it was pretty impressive. She was starting to look happier.
‘Fifty a week, are you sure? This place is totally amazing.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said, wishing I’d asked for more. ‘It’ll take me a while to clean out.’
‘That’s no problem, I’ll help. Can I take it now?’
I was speechless. She was smiling at me, thrilled, as if I’d already said yes.
‘I’ll pay you a hundred straight away. I’ve got nowhere to stay tonight.’
‘Okay.’ I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no. I could hardly tell her I was in the middle of some sort of supernatural crisis.
‘Great!’ she actually clapped her hands together and bounced up and down. I’ve got some suitcases in the car.
‘Don’t do any cleaning without me.’ She rushed out without waiting for a reply.
I just stood there and looked around the room, with the uneasy sense that there were all sorts of things I didn’t want her to see in there, including a virtual library of occult books hidden in various piles. I started for the nearest stack, hoping I could get rid of the worst of it before she returned.
friday, november 6
Ani said she’d be out late, which suited me fine. She didn’t have a key yet, but I was sure I’d be back before her. I washed very carefully and put on an old dress that I didn’t much like. I had new clothes that didn’t have any recent human smells on them. I would put them on just before I reached the hotel. I closed my door and breathed in the air. It was a very clear night. Warm. No moon yet. I had to go sideways down my metal stairway, the shoes were so high.
It was a fifteen-minute walk into the city. My heels clicked loudly, telling the whole neighbourhood – young woman, walking alone, hampered by stupid footwear. But he had described her as always wearing heels. It seemed an important detail. Five minutes into the walk I was furious at myself for not carrying the heels and wearing flat shoes. Complete idiot. I would have to wash them too. They’d be all sweaty. Worst of all was the way they slowed me down. I had to take little delicate steps. It made me feel shackled somehow.
I walked through the park, strange and shadowy. Possums darted between the trees, looking down at me with their sweet faces and harsh hissing. The shopping bag swung against my legs. I had a bottle of soapy water. Her soap.
Sounds strange I know. But I had a theory about this creep. It was all about the smell of her. It was like an animal. That’s all it really was. Perhaps I was just trying to make myself feel better about it with all these theories. Because really I had no idea what it was.
I stopped before I reached the hotel. I slipped into a laneway. Really it was quite a public laneway and I had to sink into a shadowy corner and hope no one happened to look down it. Not that I was ever really bothered about that sort of thing. I pulled off my dress. I poured the bottle over myself, over the stupid heels. Then I dried myself with a hand towel from the plastic bag. I was washing away my own smell. It felt strange and dangerous and when I put on the new clothes I felt entirely different, as if I really had transformed. It was such a warm night the soapy water tightened across my skin immediately. My heart was starting to race. I brought out her scarf and wrapped it over my head. It might sound dumb, but I’d always wanted to wear a scarf like that. And I wasn’t that tall, the top of my head would probably be the closest thing to its nose, even with the stilettos on.
I wove through the gaudy theatre crowds. The hotel was one of those grand Victorian places that have seen better days. The linen tablecloths and chandeliers barely covered the smell of rising damp. To be honest, I loved it. It was a Melbourne institution. Shabby-grand, was how I would describe it.
There was a van parked, right in front of it. I saw the little glow of a cigarette. I stopped. It must be them. Oh God, surely they’re not going to put it in the van? I don’t know what I was expecting. I clicked quickly past, a panicky feeling was rising. Stay calm, stay calm, I told myself. It will probably disappear the moment you say its name. Anyway, you just need to get it outside. Then it’s not your problem anymore. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t going to go for them out in the street. I wasn’t even sure you could touch a follower. Or that it could touch you.
I put my hand against the glass and hesitated. It was really too late to think about it. I had already accepted the money. There were three men waiting with a van. Turning around right in front of them and going home didn’t seem like an option.
So this was it. I breathed out slowly and pushed open the door. I walked into the bar. It was covered in sporting paraphernalia and the flicker of plasma screens. There were three men there watching the golf. I sat down at the bar. Everything I did felt mechanical and obvious. The scarf must look ridiculous.
As I ordered, the barman glanced over my shoulder. And, just like that, I felt it behind me. I’m not exactly sure how I knew, but there was an awful prickling sensation up the back of my neck. And a feeling I had forgotten with the one in the park, but now came right back to me, a heavy feeling, as if I were locked up in a closet full of stale air. I wasn’t expecting it to appear so soon. I didn’t turn around. What should I do? Confront it right here? I tried to slow down my breathing. Stay calm. I would just quietly stand up and leave, without meeting its eye. But would it follow me? The van out the front seemed so damn obvious. So I just sat there, stiff as a startled cat, feeling it right behind me.
I couldn’t seem to turn around. The prickling had become a tingling that spread right down to my fingertips. Then something truly horrible happened. I felt fingers brush against my head. It was like a nasty electric shock into my skull. I jumped up and twisted around.
It looked just like an ordinary man. Except for the smell. Actually, to be specific, it was the total absence of smell. Definitely not the scent of a person, or even an animal. Just nothing. You don’t realize how important smell is until it’s just absolutely gone.
‘You,’ it whispered, in a strangled voice, as if it was not used to speaking.
And even though it was looking straight at me, I knew it thought I was her. I could see it in the soft line of its mouth. I saw its eyes, blank and ordinary. Not at all unusual. That unsettled me, because there should be some sort of clue in its eyes. Windows to the soul and all.
‘Follower,’ I whispered. There was not even a flicker of hesitation. I don’t think it even heard me. ‘Follower,’ I said, louder. ‘I know what you are. You don’t belong here.’
No one was watching the golf anymore. I could see out of the corner of my eye that they were all staring at me. One old guy had half-stood up, as if he could see something wasn’t right. It raised its hand very slowly, as if to touch the scarf again, leaving its fingers hovering in front of my face. I felt like I was going to be sick. Ten years of waiting, of following. Never speaking or touching. And I had broken the ice. Good one, Indigo. I wasn’t thinking of the plan now. I just had to get out of there. The non-smell of it was setting off a million panic synapses in my brain. But I just stood. And then something really bad happened. It leaned forward, staring at me, and spoke very clearly.
‘Indigo?’
A glass dropped and shattered. Someone swore. I bolted. I burst through the doors, out onto the street. I pushed past a man, I guess it was my client. I was running fast, tearing off the scarf. It clung to my throat for a moment, like a horrible web. Then it slipped away. I weaved through the crowd outside the theatre. I couldn’t stop running. Some primitive part of my brain had taken over. I flew across the big intersection on Victoria Street, cars swerving and beeping. I was still running when I reached Cardigan Street, passed the looming façade of my house, wishing I could somehow fly straight up through the windows. Finally I reached my laneway, fumbled to unlock the gate and to lock it agai
n.
I was past the abandoned servant’s quarters, the blank windows breathing malice down my neck. I crashed up the stairs, banging my shins on every step. At the top of the stairway I stopped, pressed my back against the door, and looked down. I could see my little narrow garden. It was too deep-shadowed to see anything clearly. I could see the high metal gate. I could even see the back street, over the wall, still and very empty. I was listening hard, but all I could hear was the heavy whooshing of my own blood, loud enough to drown out any stealthy sounds below. I unlocked the door, still watching. I slipped inside, slammed the door behind me. Then I pressed my back against it and all the breath heaved out of me in a strangled little noise.
I slid right down to the floor and just slumped there. Now I was safe I could feel the deep marks from the horrid strappy shoes. I began to unbuckle them and ease them off my feet. Little lines of blood were appearing where the straps had been, making perfect red outlines, like ballet-shoe ribbons. I was shocked. I didn’t even think it was possible for me to run so fast for so long. I suppose I hadn’t been thinking at all. But it had said my name. And I knew that was very bad. With all the thoughts crowding through my head it took me quite a while to notice that the light was on. I sat there, gulping for breath, looking down the bright passageway, at my peeling white walls and the grand plaster roses of the ceiling. I was pretty sure I hadn’t left my lights on. And I knew Ani didn’t have a key yet.
Someone stepped out of my bedroom. My heart contracted. It was Dylan, holding my notebook in one hand.
‘Dammit, Dylan!’ I yelled. He seemed surprised but walked up to me and gazed down.
‘You don’t look so good’ he observed. He pushed his reading glasses closer to his eyes. Having got a better look, he frowned, put the glasses in his pocket and sat down beside me. I shut my eyes and rested my head against the door.
I sort of remembered the non-smell of it. I remembered it reaching out to touch the scarf. But I couldn’t call up the feeling that I’d had. The feeling that had made me run and run until my feet were bleeding. I guess I’d simply panicked. Lost my nerve at the crucial moment. My client would think I was an idiot. I would have to agree with him.
‘I didn’t know you still had a key,’ I managed, finally.
‘I kept one. In case of emergency.’
‘I’m fine. Just an ordinary creep, I told you.’
Gingerly I touched the lines criss-crossing my ankles. My knees were throbbing. I had taken the skin off my shins on the stair. Really, my whole body was aching from the sudden tension release.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’
Quietly, Dylan opened up my notebook. I had left it on the table by my bed. I saw my writing there. Dylan calls it a follower. He looked pointedly at my battered legs.
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?’
I didn’t answer straight away. I dragged myself to my feet, using the door handle, and went to the kitchen. I would need a stiff drink if I was going to tell him the whole story. It didn’t take long to tell. ‘Man’ follows innocent woman. Plucky girl takes on ‘man’. Apparently not so plucky girl panics and runs away. It sounded much worse when put into a few short sentences.
Dylan didn’t say much but made me a cup of tea, which I think was his way of heading me off from the liquor cupboard. Once the tea was ready we just sat for a while. The kitchen window was open, and I was not happy about it, though we were more than two stories up. I was trying to appear calm while my teacup rattled against its saucer. It seemed that now that the panic was over, a deep shaking was taking control of my whole body.
‘I’m not used to running so far,’ I said, in explanation.
He just looked at me. He had the unnerving habit of just looking, with no effort to say anything that might make the moment easier. In his defence, there was no ‘I told you so’s. No lectures on the dangers of meddling with the Unknown. But I was filling in his silence with all sorts of imagined accusations. I sipped on my tea and managed not to meet his eye. I must have jumped about a foot when I heard the banging on the metal gate below. Dylan simply frowned, as if this jumpiness was further evidence of my messed up state.
‘Oh, it’s Ani,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘I just got a house mate.’
‘I’d better let her in,’ he said.
I was relieved. I couldn’t face the thought of walking down alone, the empty windows of the house looking down on me. Yes, I was afraid of my own house. I was in a bad state. Even now, I turned my chair around a little to keep my eye on the doorway, while not fully turning my back on the dark square of the window. What I hadn’t told Dylan was really playing on my mind. That the follower had said my name. And I couldn’t help but think that now, just maybe, it was my follower. I had meant to tell him, but as the story came out it all sounded so bad. And the whole time he was looking at me with that penetrating look, as if he was seeing right past whatever angle I might be trying to put on things. Seeing right to the heart of it. To the fact that I’d messed up again. I didn’t want to give him any more ammunition. Flimsy excuse I know. But the truth was I wanted him on my side.
I was glad when I heard he and Ani coming up the outside stairway. Even more when they were in the house and I heard their steps on the stairs. Ani was smiling her huge smile, but it faltered a little when she saw me.
‘What happened?’
‘I just got mugged,’ I blurted out, seeing Dylan giving me a look from behind her.
‘Oh no!’ she exclaimed, with such a look of dismay on her face that I’m embarrassed to say I immediately dissolved into tears. She rushed up to me and enfolded me in her narrow arms. And I just couldn’t stop sobbing. I’m not much of a crier at the worst of times, and not all that fond of being hugged by people I barely know, but it seemed I was in some sort of shock and I no longer had any say in the matter. I was painfully aware of Dylan, still standing in the doorway and looking everywhere but at me. I didn’t blame him.
‘I’m alright,’ I said, finally disentangling myself. ‘They didn’t manage to get my bag.’ I added, having noticed at that moment that it was sitting on the table right in front of me.
‘Still,’ she said. ‘How terrible!’
‘I’m just going to have a bath, I think.’ I stood up and winced at the stiffness in my back. I really just wanted to get away from the embarrassment of it all. The shame really – because Dylan and I both knew that I had walked right into it, and so all of Ani’s sympathy was just the product of a big lie.
I didn’t have a bath, just hobbled into bed. In the distance I could hear the vague hum of Dylan and Ani’s voices. I wondered, with an unwelcome sting of jealousy, what they could be talking about. I suppose Dylan was simply elaborating on my mugging lie, though I think I’d been pretty convincing in my role as shaken street-crime victim. I shut my eyes and tried to breathe calmly. I’d thought all my aches and stings would keep me awake, but I fell asleep almost instantly.
saturday, november 7
When I woke up there was a book on the foot of my bed. I couldn’t quite believe it when I picked it up. It was one of Dylan’s ‘secret’ notebooks. I just sat there and stared at it. After so much time wanting to read one, I felt strangely hesitant to open it. I flicked through it quickly first, seeing Dylan’s regular, sloping letters all the way through. I was kind of touched at the thought of him bringing it back for me while I was asleep. With the guilty feeling of peeking at someone else’s diary, I settled back in the bed and began to read.
Interviewer: The recorder’s on now. It’s the sixth of March, two thousand and five. So, you wanted to tell me about this boy?
Int. 3: Yes. My grandfather was followed by a young boy for twenty years. I know you won’t believe this (laughs) but the boy never aged.
Interviewer: What did he look like?
Int. 3: I only saw him twice. Once when I was younger and then a few days before granddad passed away. He was kind of sweet. He had blonde hair. He was about seven
. The second time I saw him walk past the door. I was in the study. I thought he was heading for granddad’s room, but when I went in he wasn’t there and granddad was asleep. I guess he was some sort of ghost (laughs). You know, I don’t actually believe in ghosts.
Interviewer: You think it was a ghost?
Int. 3: I don’t know (laughs). What else could it be? My grandfather always thought he was a real person. He used to tell us whenever he saw him around, but we just thought he was joking. He did that a lot. But then I saw it. I remembered seeing it when I was little. And on the night he died I thought I heard it talking to him. But it wasn’t there when I went in. If it wasn’t a ghost, what was it?
Not surprisingly, Dylan didn’t answer this. Just continued with the next question. At least, I was assuming Dylan was the interviewer. I thought I recognised his particular way of asking all the questions and not answering anything. I read through the whole book. There were nine cases described in it. It was always the same. Either it ended in the person’s (apparently) natural death, or the person would disappear. Only two of the people he’d interviewed were actually the ones being followed. Their later disappearances were described by Dylan, briefly and (I thought) much too dispassionately, with the date and a note of where they were last seen (walking down Queen Street, on St Kilda beach).
Dylan never mentioned the word ‘follower’ to any of them. It seemed like he didn’t share any information with them at all. Just recorded. I was deeply angry about that. But it made me feel better about the pathetic wreck I’d been in front of him last night. Because at least I had nothing to be ashamed of. I was trying to help. He never did anything at all, just sat safely on the sidelines.
After the transcripts Dylan had written my story – the story of the child – as if I were a stranger. ‘The attempted intervention failed. Only the child was taken.’ And then a passage that really froze me:
These followers never acknowledge anyone, except the object of their obsession. They have been known to speak to this person, usually saying their name, or expressing their devotion. The occurrence of these conversations generally presages the disappearance of the person soon afterwards. Once the person disappears, the follower is never seen again.
I paused for a moment, really just having a bit of a blank. A note slipped out and I picked it up a little numbly.
Indi, I hope you have read all of this. It is all I have on followers. They’re really very rare and I haven’t looked into them much. I used to think they were something like the Irish superstition of the ‘fetch’, but they don’t quite seem to fit. Perhaps you can add to this now? I’ll be back tonight because I imagine you don’t want to be on your own. I think you’ll understand now why it’s best not to contact your client or his wife again. I don’t think there’s anything you can do to help them. You may simply speed the course of events. Rest up today, it can be draining just to be near these things. But I don’t need to tell you that. D
I read that phrase a few times – ‘speed the course of events’. Couldn’t have put it better myself. And I guess the ‘draining’ bit was his way of saying, don’t feel bad for blubbing like a little kid. For which I mentally thanked him. He had used his old nickname for me too, which showed he was worried for me rather than disapproving. Not that it really mattered to me. Frankly, the idea of participating in his infuriating research did not appeal. Honestly, an Irish ‘fetch’? What planet was he living on? I shut the book with a snap. But I couldn’t seem to resist those blank pages. At last I grabbed a pen and wrote it all down, even the bits I’d left out last night. It occurred to me that if I disappeared, at least there would be some sort of record of what had happened. I was going to get up when I finished. But I found I was exhausted. I just lay back down and drifted into an unsatisfying sleep.
When I woke up it was quite late, I could tell straight away from the golden light and the changed songs of the birds. I was still feeling pretty drained. I decided I’d better eat something at least. A kind of evening breakfast. Ani didn’t seem to be at home, but she had filled the fridge with health food and had left a little note telling me to help myself and signed it with about ten kisses. I took out some carrot and celery, thinking some sort of hearty soup was in order. Really I felt quite strange, kind of insubstantial and empty. I was having to really focus as I chopped the vegetables. The last thing I needed was a slip of the knife.
The funny thing is that I’d always prided myself on my instincts. Not my forward planning perhaps, but my instincts in the moment. And when I heard the creak of the carpeted stairs I just assumed it was Ani. It was that moment of twilight where everything is becoming indistinct. And I was dreamily feeling that I was becoming indistinct too. I was pretty glad to have Ani back – she would cut through my strange mood at least. I was even opening my mouth to say hello, still chopping away. Only, as you’ve probably guessed, it wasn’t her at all.
By the time I felt a prickling at the nape of my neck and turned around, the follower was standing in the doorway, effectively blocking it. I’d been calling the follower ‘it’ the whole time, in my mind. But the more I saw it, the more I had to admit it had its own consciousness and was very definitely in the shape of a man. I can’t really say if that was a shape it had chosen, or whether it was some sort of spirit and had been a man in life.
Even now it’s still so hard to describe him. It’s not that I could ever forget any detail of his face, it’s just that he was so unremarkable. He wasn’t very tall, but still a little taller than me. His hair wasn’t particularly light or dark. His eyes were a kind of mid colour, I couldn’t even say if they were grey or brown. I don’t know what age he was, if he was an age. He neither seemed particularly young nor old. The one thing that was remarkable was the look on his face. It was a kind of bland, soft look – the way a mother might look dotingly at her child.
It may sound strange, but we simply stood there for a long time. At the edge of my vision I could see that the sky was gradually taking on that kind of turquoise, underwater look it gets when yellow sunset dissolves into blue evening. I was aware of the changing light quite distinctly, as if the situation in the room was not entirely related to me. I think we could have stood there like that forever, except there was a sudden clanging of feet on the outer stairs and a loud knock at the door.
Still, I couldn’t seem to say anything. I don’t think Ani could have heard me anyway unless I really screamed, and I was not a screamer even, it seemed, in the midst of a life-threatening situation. Although I couldn’t be sure he was threatening my life. Really, all he was doing was standing there in the doorway. Yet my hand was curling around the sharp little knife on the bench behind me, as if it had a will of its own. I heard the key in the door, and knew that it must be Dylan. At the same moment I realised the follower was moving slowly toward me. He was already halfway across the small room. I had no memory of him starting forward at all.
The sound of the key had galvanised me. I was completely focused now. I held the little knife ready for when he would come within range. He had touched me before, so I knew he had some kind of physical body. And if he had a physical body, I could hurt him.
I like to think it’s not just me, that we all carry the instinctive readiness, the expectation even, that we may need to defend ourselves to the death at some stage. I’d like to believe I’m not a danger to others. But let’s just say, if he’d been human, he’d be in very serious trouble.
I let him move slowly toward me and stop just within arm’s length. I was vibrating with a kind of sick expectation that something huge was about to happen. Slowly he reached forward to touch my face and I knew this was the moment. He would have no time to jump back. He was too close. But even as the knife arced around towards him I realised that I had made a mistake. You see, his fingertips touched my forehead. And, just like that, I was gone.
****