Forever Shores (16 page)

His visions had started on that night, and he wondered if they were connected at all to the incidents on the ship when he'd been attacked.

Three days later, Barker was reminded of his thoughts on the deck, the night of the first attempt on his life, as he crossed the hotel lobby and noticed the foliage. Very exotic, potted palms of that size, and clearly healthy. Someone's pride. Not unlike one of his three mysterious packages, up in his room. The concierge watched him, as he did whenever Barker left his room, as he had briefly for the past three afternoons. The inspection had a hint of curiosity, with a hint of knowing that Barker, really, had no idea where he was or what he was doing there.

Barker made his way to the bar and drank what he had become used to calling beer. The beverage and the afternoon trips to the bar were concessions to boredom, the boredom an extension of the long ocean voyage, which had descended soon after the beginning of his self-imposed exile to the hotel room. It was principally because the beer was cold that made the beverage so unlike the lagers and ales he'd grown accustomed to at home. But it was definitely flavoursome, beneath the chill, and he suspected the hotel, being what it was, served the very best.

A vision came to him as he sat on a bar stool. It dizzied him and he steadied himself as he sat, leaning heavily against the grey and tan swirl of the marble counter.

‘Easy there, friend,' came a soft voice, American. A strange man sat one vacant stool away, sporting a wide smile. He was slender, his thin and lightly balding grey hair slicked back, with kind eyes over a beaky nose. His mouth seemed too wide for his thin jaw and pointy chin. Barker suspected he would have been twenty years the man's junior.

‘You're sure a drink is what you need?'

There was an impish quality to the man as he smiled.

Barker shook his head and smiled politely. ‘I'm not drunk, thank you. Just a light turn, must be the climate …'

‘British, huh? I've heard of something called the Melbourne flu, maybe you've got that? Never had any trouble with it myself.'

True, the elfin man was not simply thin but lean and graceful. There was elegance in the way he sipped his glass of lager, in his poise on the stool.

‘I don't think I'm ill, actually.'

Barker wondered: was this his contact? Was this how it would work?

‘To be quite frank, I've been having visions,' Barker confessed.

The elfin man shifted his gaze directly to him. He was dressed smartly; navy slacks, a white blazer and white shirt, with a stylish navy cravat about his wiry neck. Very good shape, Barker assessed, for a man in advance of fifty years.

‘Visions?' he raised a thin eyebrow. He was not handsome, in fact he looked a bit like an old woman. His forehead was huge. But there was something in his eyes, and simply in his general demeanour, that made Barker like him almost instantly. ‘Is this an everyday thing for you?'

‘No, just the past three days. Since I arrived.'

‘And …' there was a slight tone of scepticism, but it was playful. ‘How often do these visions …' the elfin man flicked his hand gaily as he searched for the word—‘manifest?'

‘One or two a day,' Barker shrugged, a little embarrassed.

The elfin man was now well and truly intrigued. ‘What do you see?'

Barker spoke unselfconsciously, simply relaying his feeling of the vision without mental edit. ‘This time I saw … a rush of energy, of youth. In the future, perhaps a decade away. Colour and … dreams. Smoke and music.'

The elfin man leaned back, assessing Barker, doubtfully, yet with sympathy in his eyes.

‘Perhaps a drink is exactly what you need, friend.'

He waved at the bartender and a glass of beer was poured and appeared quickly on the bar before Barker. He sipped. Frothy, bitter … cold. But he was getting used to it.

‘I've never experienced anything like it. It's like … flourishes of energy conveyed over time. Quite extraordinary.'

‘I dare say, I dare say,' the elfin man uttered.

‘My name's Barker.'

‘Is it, now?'

‘Barker Moon.'

‘And that's not a stage name?'

‘No, it's real.'

‘Your real name. Well, I have a stage name, but my real name is Frederick. Frederick Austerlitz.'

Frederick's hand was thin and wiry also, but the grip was firm, more solid than Barker's given that he had held back for fear of too tight a squeeze.

‘I'm sorry to unload all of this on you, but it's come to be rather overwhelming. I'm babbling a bit with the disorientation, I think.'

‘Well that's alright. I think we all do that from time to time. You really don't know who I am, do you?'

‘I'm sorry. Are you famous? Are you on the stage? Or in the movies? I don't go to the movies. My nephew is a projectionist. He tells me the stories, but I prefer to read. Perhaps I'd know your stage name?'

‘Perhaps,' Frederick smiled. ‘Well, I never. Perhaps if you imagined me in a top hat?'

‘I'm sorry. I don't mean to embarrass you, but I really don't …'

‘Well. How refreshing. So, Barker, what brings you to the end of the world?'

‘The end of the world?'

Frederick smiled and handed Barker a newspaper from the end of the bar. Barker's mind was still coming into focus, but the headline and accompanying article was to do with a Hollywood actress who was in town, making a movie about the end of the world. She had claimed, the headline stated, that Melbourne was an ‘ideal place to film the end of the world'.

So that was where he was. The End of the World.

‘She didn't mean it of course,' Frederick smiled. ‘I believe there is some doubt as to whether or not she actually said it. But I don't suppose that matters. It is a terribly good quote, even if it is quite unjustified.'

Very well spoken for an American.

‘The beer here is very good for a start.'

‘I'm taking a while to get used to it.'

‘Good-looking fellow like you, I think you're going to get along fine. The key to getting along in a city is letting the city get to know you. If you sit around here for a while, you never know who you might meet, or where it might lead you.'

‘Actually, I was hoping you might have some idea as to what I'm doing here.'

‘Me?' Frederick smiled. ‘I'm just here to get away from things for a while.'

‘Oh.'

‘You're expecting to meet someone, is that it? Pen friend perhaps? A lady pen friend?'

‘No,' Barker smiled simply. ‘Nothing like that.'

Frederick nodded and contemplated his beer.

‘Yes, a good beer they do here. My father came from a long line of brewers. So I should know.'

Frederick finished his beer and stepped as gracefully from his bar stool as anyone could.

‘Well, I must be going. You take care of yourself and watch out for those visions. You never know where they might lead you either.'

Frederick smiled, charming as he looked Barker up and down.

‘Why are you here, Frederick?' Barker asked.

‘Oh,' Frederick beamed, ‘I make visions. At least, I help.' He turned and walked cheerfully from the bar. ‘When I can.'

And Frederick was gone.

Barker assessed the paper again and read the article. It was the third of June already. It had been the end of March when he'd set off. He'd heard of Ava Gardner, he thought. But as the closest he came to movies were his nephew's relayed silver screen experiences, he really had no idea of context. She was a movie star, however, and it was to be expected that their names would achieve some sort of accreditation in the mind.

‘One of a kind, that one,' the bartender said to Barker.

He didn't know if the bartender meant Ava Gardner or Frederick, but the elfin chap had been gone a while and Barker suspected he meant the actress.

Barker returned to his room and assessed his packages again.

To call them packages was not exactly accurate. There was one true package, a spell book he assumed from the feel of it. A short examination, early along the voyage, had revealed within the leather satchel an item that had been wrapped within purple velvet cloth. He had not opened the satchel past that initial cursory inspection and it resided within his travel trunk under his shirts and trousers. He had received the distinct sensation that the parcels were not to be tampered with. The sorcerer who had summoned him and sent him off on his mission for the Supernatural Council had not specified as such. It just went without saying. Take them with you, keep them safe, do not touch.

Any sorcerer would feel it.

Alongside his brand new travel trunk, an older one. Much older, he perceived. Not just from the look, but from occult vibrations it gave off. And much heavier than his own. It weighed a ton.

Finally, the most unusual. A plant. A wine barrel, sawn in half, about twenty inches across, within it soil and shrub. He did not know what sort of shrub it was, but it was about three feet high and its thick diamond leaves, dark emerald green, extended probably three inches over the side of the wine barrel pot. His only additional instruction had been to water it once a week. Just one fluid ounce.

Each of his trunks was at the foot of the double bed, an extravagance that the Council had seen fit to provide, for which he was grateful. The potted shrub sat in the corner by the window with the view of the city.

London it was not, but the end of the world …? The weather was gloomy, but that was all he'd heard about Melbourne before departing. It rained all the time. No, come to think of it he'd heard something else. That Greeks liked to emigrate here.

Funny, Barker smiled to himself, the things one picks up without knowing.

The visions came increasingly to him in the days that followed. And Barker would follow each with a short trip to the bar and a cold beer. After a week, he grew accustomed to both.

He supposed that the Council would send someone to get him in due course, and that the dreams and visions were a side effect of the power emanating from the book.

In the visions he saw men returning from the Great War, and things he supposed were in the future. He discovered that he was in a state of Australia called Victoria, and supposed that after all his reading back in London he already knew this. He saw the Olympic Games in Melbourne, which had occurred only a few years before in 1956, and saw another similar event in the future. Such wonders he beheld, and colour and technology. He saw the first settlers in 1835, one hundred years before his own birth, led by a man called Batman, and was briefly, though vividly, exposed to some of their struggles in settling a village on the river which at some point was named Yarra.

After another week he ventured out more often, risked leaving the hotel and inner city entirely, relying on a strong protective spell he'd cast over his room to prevent theft in his absence.

He wandered suburbs with names like Carlton and Collingwood, and would occasionally stop for a cold beer. The suburbs weren't so different, but everything seemed newer, fresher. There was something about the fact that nothing had been here for much more than a century, if that, which made him feel cheerful. It made him miss London, but made that city seem simultaneously over-laden with history. The people were here for a new start, for the beginning of something. At least, they were on a historical scale.

In one suburban pub he saw a working man bring a glass of beer out to his wife, who was knitting in the front passenger seat of a huge white car called an FJ Holden. They did not allow women in the front bars, and some larger hotels had a separate lounge for ladies.

After a while the winter gloom brought about mild bouts of depression, only a few hours each, as indeed the dark weather had at home. He supposed it was something to do with loneliness. During these times, in which he would return to his room and read, it seemed the more time he spent in his room, the more frequently the visions would descend.

The concierge looked at him less and less, but, when he did, with a higher degree of suspicion.

He thought the shrub in the wine barrel was growing, but could not be sure. He thought occasionally of opening the ancient trunk, but always thought better of it. He never considered opening the leather satchel.

As another week passed, it always seemed to be raining. Drizzle, if not heavy showers.

Barker's bouts of depression lengthened and then started to get the better of him. He started to wonder if anyone would ever come for him. The visions became ever more distinct and yet more banal. They flooded his mind sometimes two or three per hour, sometimes lasting up to a minute each.

He made the acquaintance of several regulars at the bar, including the two regular barmen and a barmaid who worked at night, but never spoke meaningfully with them, and never again openly discussed his mission or his visions the way he had with Frederick. When a vision came while he was at the bar, he would drop his head into his arms and remain that way until the sounds and images passed. One of the young ladies he'd met, who was staying there with her mother while they were on tour, had assumed he was drinking away some great romantic sorrow. She took quite a shine to Barker, he saw, until one of the barmen had whispered something to her about visions. Then she kept her distance.

After that he ceased frequenting the bar, lest they start to believe he was more odd than they already did.

The worst of the visions came with the fourth week.

Everyone knew, had seen the pictures. But the visions presented themselves as though one were really there. It was horrifying. The mushroom cloud and blast of heat. And the noise. The flash, then the explosion. Horrendous.

Anyone would have been terrified at the sight. But to a sorcerer, with a sorcerer's perception of nature, the horror was ten, perhaps one hundred fold. A sorcerer manipulated nature. Or, rather, found a way to bend the course of nature to his will. But manipulation of nature to this level … it was like rape.