Hindsight (6 page)

‘Tragic,’ Ben conceded, ‘but still not
her
responsibility!’

‘Count yourself lucky, then, Mira. Changing sunglasses is enough to turn your life around, but can’t you now see better than anybody? Light waves, sound waves; they can’t be too different, surely? Unfortunately, I can’t even begin to help Freddie until he talks to me — and he’s refusing to talk to anyone now, until he sees for himself that you’re home, safe and staying.’

‘He doesn’t need to
see
me. He hears
everything
.’

‘She’s been back ten days already after her first overnighter,’ Ben said. ‘He must have heard something, if not himself, then through the rumour mill. Staff talk as much as the clients around here and all voices echo back to him until they happen.’

‘Being back and staying for good are two different things,’ Sanchez argued. ‘This is Mira we’re talking about, and Mira, honey, you’ve fought tooth and nail for ten years and tried every option short of killing yourself to escape places like this. So if you, of all people, can bring yourself to say those words to his face — that you’re staying — let him read it from your lips himself, then there’s no way he can doubt it.’

‘Just tell him she’s in solitary,’ Ben suggested. ‘It was status quo around here for so long, it’s as good as the truth. Besides, she’d need to be sedated or cloud-nined anyway if news ever came that I couldn’t be her guardian or authorised escort.’

Mira shivered. ‘Don’t even
think
about that. I’ll go rabid.’

‘I rest my case,’ Ben said.

‘I’ve already tried that angle,’ Sanchez replied. ‘Face it, Ben. Freddie’s not going to stop obsessing about Mira until he sees it on her own lips that she’s staying.’

You want me to lie?
Mira asked with her hands.

‘Two words is all I’m asking.’

I can’t lie, especially to him! I never want to see him again!

‘You won’t have to
see
him, Mira. I’ve shifted him down to the old music room. By all reports, he’s never been down there, so there’s no chance of glimpsing his ghost for another — how long is the lag time with that shade?’

‘Ten days. But that music room is under the women’s wards!’ …
and I’ve already bid good riddance to that place before I left my unit this morning. If I’d walked out naked, the sterile smell of those halls would have been too much luggage. There’s no good reason for me to go back there.

‘Freddie’s worth it, honey, and so are you. I know this sounds crazy but just imagine the mess you’d be in by now if he hadn’t stitched your eyelids closed in time for your first day with Ben?’

‘I’ll admit, it made me pay a lot more attention to you,’ Ben said. ‘A blind girl who’d beg her enemy to help her stop “seeing things”? No way could I give up on you until I figured that one out.’

‘But I can’t face him!’ Mira leapt to her feet and paced the rug, feeling the walls closing in. ‘Can’t you see? He doesn’t
need
to hear anything from me. But if that’s what he wants — if it’s what he’s manipulated you into thinking he needs — then he’s plotting something!’
And don’t tell me to be quiet
, she added with her hands.
It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t protest!

‘He’s not plotting anything,’ Sanchez said, taking Mira’s hand for silent finger Braille. ‘This is mostly my idea.’

Mira recoiled bitterly. ‘Maybe it isn’t enough for him any more if I stay here. Maybe now he wants me dead? Who knows what else he’s been planning, given so much time alone in a rubber room to think?’

‘Mira, he won’t need to plan anything that drastic if you tell him yourself that you’re staying.’

‘He knows how much I hated my room! He’s never going to believe I’d choose to stay there. Much safer for him to kill me.’

‘And yet you’ve been here for the last ten days safely and the only one he’s tried to hurt is himself. He knows you’re on the waiting list for a ground floor unit overlooking the bay. We’re just finishing the renovations to enable the window to open and catch a breeze.’

And when he finally figures out the truth?

‘Listen, I only need him happy and cooperating long enough to find a solution for him. I’m not asking for any ongoing contact from you. I think I’m already onto something with ear muffs, but I need him to be talking to me long enough to figure out how to filter out all the alternate futures, and I can’t do that while he’s still jealous and obsessing about you.’

Mira sighed and glanced sideways to the corner of the matron’s desk, where her obsidian statuette of the Greek King Sisyphus struggled forever to push a boulder to the peak of a hill in Hades — now harder than ever as a snow globe, since the first glass boulder had smashed. Either way, stone or snow, Mira knew how he felt.

‘Mira,’ Ben said, unexpectedly using that gentle tone that always melted her. ‘How will we know what he’s up to, if we don’t give him a chance to reveal his hand? If we do it on our terms, you’ll be safe.’

Oh, please,
Mira signed.
Not you too?

‘It’s not as if you’ll have to invite him into your room here every day.’

‘Two minutes and two words,’ Sanchez reminded her. ‘Such a small price to pay for peace.’

Maybe for you.
Mira turned her back on them, knowing if they didn’t understand her reluctance to lie by now, they never would. Freddie certainly understood. She’d spent the last ten years telling nothing but the absolute truth, however crazy it sounded, so she’d always know she’d never once deluded herself, at least not deliberately. One deliberate lie — no matter how small nor how good the intentions — and she’d lose that level of confidence in herself forever.

‘Maddy’s right,’ Ben said, taking Mira’s hands gently again and splaying them against his in preparation for silent finger Braille. ‘For peace.’

Mira’s heart pounded higher into her throat, dreading the inevitable extended lecture about doing the right thing, if only for her own long-term mental health.

I’ll tell him
, he signed, surprising her.
If u don’t argu hel belev it. Can u handl that much?

Mira gulped, trying to swallow her fear. She felt cornered, but if she couldn’t trust Ben to keep her safe around Freddie, what chance did she have?

Ben took her hands and cupped them softly in his. ‘You may have been locked up all these years
physically
, Mira, and your delusions have certainly tormented you, but in your mind, you’ve always been free — whether in solitude, in the quiet spaces between events, or fighting tooth and nail to escape — so for you, it no longer matters where you live. But for Freddie, it’s been the opposite. You tell me, Mira, which is crueller? Can you honestly let him suffer another day?’

‘Okay,’ she conceded finally. ‘I’ll see him. Across the room should do, but if he starts accusing me of colluding on Maddy’s death with his brother again, I’m out of there. No straitjacket or rubber room in the world could hold me.’

Former Colonel Kitching stood in the middle of his military cell with his back to the gate and arms folded.

For the past ten days, he’d replayed the events of his arrest, frustrated to know it was only due to a crazy, blind girl; little more than a lab rat who’d been involved in one of the research projects into interrogation of the human subconscious. A volunteer, of all things. He could have vetoed her involvement before she’d become such a threat to him. Until he’d crossed paths with her and her remarkable gift, he’d managed to stay ten steps ahead of anyone who’d suspected him of being dirty. Physically, he was still her superior; twice her weight and towering head and shoulders taller than her, and yet it was his neck that bore the scar of where she’d nearly strangled him with her little lace brassiere.

If only he hadn’t been so focused on the young soldier who’d been held captive in the same cell that day — and been so surprised to see that he’d worked his chains loose from the floor and ceiling during his last interrogation session — he never would have turned his back on her. He would have noticed that she’d somehow removed her bra without removing her sundress.

He should have chained her up too. A single step backwards had been all it took to bring about his downfall. She’d caught him from behind and the concrete floor of the cell had become their unexpected equaliser. Adrenaline gave her the edge, along with a lot of leverage and the tactical advantage of staying beneath him. She’d needed much less strength that way to keep a tight hold of him, also forcing him to spend most of his energy struggling for every breath.

‘Come into the darkness with me,’ she’d whispered, but she must have weakened just as he’d lost consciousness.

Next time, he wouldn’t underestimate her. Any lab rat could be clever if conditioned properly, and since she was already clever, all she needed was the conditioning. A few days of creative persuasion in a private cell; he’d take great pleasure in that process personally — far more than his incomplete attempt to convince that soldier to accept blame for eliminating a lowly snitch from the organisation. The court martial in a few days might hang on answering for that himself, if his associates failed him.

Mira’s gift should be his to command by the end of the week. She’d cooperate almost willingly after that, and in so many ways, it excited him like a young man with his first tommy gun. There’d be no goal he couldn’t attain. No secret that his enemies or rivals could ever hide from him. And all because he’d been disciplined enough while recapturing her to shoot her favourite person in the world, without killing him. She’d be traumatised by that for months, if not years. They both would be; off balance in a way that made them all the more vulnerable. Prone to weaknesses.

‘Colonel,’ whispered a guard with the hint of a Japanese accent. ‘It begins.’

T
he short walk to her old ward felt like a death march; a feeling made all the more real when she lifted her glasses briefly and saw the hanging tree for convicts ahead of her with its great boughs ripe with human fruit.

The tree itself still lived — a two-hundred-year-old Moreton Bay fig that disappeared behind the most recent extension as soon as Mira repositioned her shades, but she saw it again in all its solemn majesty as they rounded the corner, now fenced into a pretty courtyard. An arch of wisteria dripped tears of violet petals onto the cobbled path and into the tinkling waters of a small fountain. Sandstone dormitories loomed around her too, crowding out the light for the formal rose garden.

She passed through the courtyard, flanked invisibly on both sides by Ben and Matron Sanchez, with no sign of any crowd of Freddie’s minions as spectators. Through the violet haze of her sunshades, the only spectre she could see was a one-armed gardener who was snipping off a few blooms from the roses — ten days ago. His ghost remained as oblivious to her as Ben and Sanchez now seemed to be. They didn’t touch her. They didn’t say anything, and that made her worry even more that they were silently communicating — again or still, she couldn’t be sure.

Did either of them suspect she was counting her steps? She hoped not, keeping her head movements small as she took note of every potential escape route in case she really was being lured back into solitary.

She crossed the internal road which led to the staff car park and licked her dry lips. As she reached the foot of the steel wheelchair ramp which led up to the glass doors, she clutched the rail — and felt it vibrate. If she hadn’t been so sensitive and alert, she might have missed it, and at first, it seemed as if her shaking hands had caused the ramp to shake.

She steadied herself, and felt the tremble continue like a small bug struggling in a spider’s web. Inside the rail?

Recoiling her hand, she stumbled back from it. Ben grabbed her elbow. Sanchez grabbed her other, but she wrenched away from them.

‘I can do this!’ She bit her lip, reminding herself that self-control was the primary trait she needed to demonstrate to win her independence, especially if they were really luring her back to her room, since it was always easier to slip the grip of most staff if she could keep them at ease first, and off guard.

‘We can’t stop our natural reflexes to help you,’ Ben said, ‘any more than you can curb your reflexes to pull away.’

‘I know, I’m sorry!’ She leaned more heavily against the rail and noticed it was still trembling. Every step towards the glass doors only served to intensify the sensation, until an automatic sensor detected the matron’s security tag inside her collar and welcomed them inside with a hiss and a cool gust of air-conditioning.

Inside, the whole building seemed to be throbbing. Mira felt it in the air against her skin, through her shoes and as a small tickle deep inside her ears.

‘How safe is this place in an earthquake?’ she asked.

‘Not an issue,’ Sanchez replied. ‘There hasn’t been an earthquake in the Moreton Bay region since 1954.’

‘Quit worrying,’ Ben added, ‘this’ll be over soon.’

That’s what worries me,
she thought. ‘Seriously,’ she asked. ‘Can’t you feel that?’

Their footsteps paused a short distance ahead and behind her.

‘Feel what?’ they asked together.

Mira touched the wall and felt it there too. ‘Don’t tell me it’s nerves!’ Ahead of her she could see fourteen doors down each side of the hall, each with circular windows that glowed like violet moons — all except for the door to her own room, nine doors down on the right, where light had never been of any use to anyone except staff during their brief raids to force-feed, clothe and tend to her.

As she drew nearer, she smelled freshly oiled leather — too familiar! A stale pocket of rum-scented cigars — not smoke, just the bitter after-scent of a wardsman whose clothes and breath always reeked after taking a break, and she knew Neville Kenny must be somewhere near her door, wearing his handmade leather shoes today.

‘Hello, lass,’ he called, conjuring a storm of bad memories all at once. ‘Back already?’ He laughed, and she could only hope he was joking.

‘Bad timing, Neville,’ Sanchez said. ‘She’s in no mood to spar with you this morning.’

‘So business as usual then?’ He laughed again, as if baiting for trouble, but Mira only chewed on her tongue, wary of saying anything that might echo back through time to Freddie Leopard.

She wondered if Sanchez had reminded the staff to guard their tongues too. Now was hardly the time to ask, however, in case Freddie’s minions were watching her through the full moons of their windows.

Ben led her closer to her old room, and she fought the urge to run past him for the nearest exit. She couldn’t help it. Ten years of confinements drugged out of her mind most of the time and terrorised by ghosts every time she opened her eyes. Her own ghost was probably still inside going stir-crazy. The air itself seemed to grow even more intense, virtually throbbing with its own raw fear around her. Still he led her closer to that door, even though he could have chosen two alternative halls as their route down to the music room.

Another test?
It had to be. Six doors to go … Five … Four.
Surely Ben wouldn’t betray me now after all we’ve been through?
Everything he’d ever done and promised had been working towards this day with her. They’d also begun to plan so many things to do later, and yet it wouldn’t surprise her if Neville Kenny leapt at her with a needle and sedative. She tensed, clenching her fists, relying totally on Ben to keep her safe.

Three doors to go … Two.

More footsteps ahead warned her that the hall wasn’t as vacant now as it had been. Movement behind her too! A food trolley rattled out of a room. More shoes! All around her now. Was it only the end of breakfast? Just dishes being whisked away from the other room-bound residents?

Someone grabbed her elbow, and she spun about, coiling to fight.

‘Steady, Mira!’

The voice was Ben’s, then she soon realised, so was the hand.

‘There’s a packing box in front of you. Come this way a little more or you’ll trip.’ His hand shifted lower to the small of her back as he guided her around it. ‘Hey, relax, will you?’ He kept a firm hold of her arm. ‘I won’t let Freddie anywhere near you.’

She nodded, drawing comfort from his gentle touch, but her attention remained fixed on her old door until he led her beyond it and she sighed. Then she noticed the air still seemed intense, and the vibrations through her feet grew even stronger as they neared the lift.

Doors chimed and a friendly electronic voice invited them to step in. However, to Mira, through the purple haze of time, the flashing lights on the wall indicated that the elevator was still above her, lifting up between floors.

Clamping her eyes shut, she trusted her hands to find the truth and the open threshold. Ever cautious of falling down the shaft that appeared as soon as she leaned through the ghostly door, she stretched forward with her foot as well to find the invisible floor. She knew she must look insanely over-cautious to anyone else.

Inside, the walls were trembling so much, she could hear the light fixture above her rattling.

‘Don’t tell me you can’t feel
that
?’ She pressed her fingers flat against the side, daring them to do the same. ‘This whole building is shaking!’

‘Oh
that …
’ Sanchez patted her shoulder, making her flinch. ‘That’s only Freddie. Press the button for the basement, honey, and cover your ears.’

Braille on the buttons made it easy for Mira to find the invisible controls, provided she kept her eyes closed to eliminate distractions from standing mid-air in the ghostly shaft, and she didn’t dare to open them for fear of heights.

‘Is that his music?’ Ben asked. ‘Must be loud if we can feel this much through all the sound-proofing.’

‘Well, I did say he could go crazy down there. Then again, I’ve noticed he does usually seem happier underground. The soft walls also offer additional benefits, especially if he starts banging his head.’

‘He’s still supervised?’ Ben asked.

‘Remotely. I’ve got two cameras on him until he’s through this. He’s also wearing a straitjacket, so he’ll be perfectly safe with Mira.’

The lift thudded to a halt and doors chimed as they slid open, revealing a ghostly crowd that filled the foyer and music room, both rooms with tall carpeted walls and ceiling lights that flashed slowly in sequence. All the ghosts had their backs to Mira, mesmerising her as they swayed hypnotically in time with the lights — all except for a silent band of four women who played on a raised platform in the furthest corner — while a much faster racket assaulted Mira’s ears and continued to shake the walls.

‘Rock’n’roll!’ Ben shouted. ‘I can
feel
the noise!’

Mira moved out and mingled with the ghostly crowd in the foyer — until Ben grabbed her arm.

‘Wait!’ he warned. ‘Let Maddy unlock the doors first, and turn down the concert.’

Mira bit her lip, trying to keep her thoughts straight over the noise, and noticed she couldn’t hear the matron’s distinctive footsteps any more. If the electronic voice in the elevator had announced their arrival, she hadn’t heard that either.

‘Poor fellow, deaf as dirt in the real world,’ Sanchez shouted, her disembodied voice carrying her away across the foyer. ‘Still, he can’t get enough bass! Makes no sense. You’d think all those extra future echoes must be downright torturous.’

‘Just another form of self harm,’ Ben yelled.

Mira slapped her hands over her ears, and as expected, the rock rolled out even louder as the doors opened.

‘Watch out!’ Ben shouted. He wrenched Mira roughly behind him. ‘He’s out of his straitjacket!’

Inside, Freddie hugged the subwoofer; rhythms beating him, soothing him, keeping him sane enough, barely, between the accolades. No applause, just all the braces of bass and all the living noise, rippling back through time to him.

‘Deaf as dirt,’ his angel had said, but only to every now and every yesterday. He’d heard every whisper of their next conversation as she’d brought him down to this place. The batteries in his headphones were dead.

Try them instead,
she’d said with her hands, and led him through to the drumheads, where the speakers sat askew, bidding him to sit a while too.

Enough!
he thought, bumping his head against the padded wall.
Pound me with fouled rhythm long enough and I become it!
Yet silence carried the sweetest poetry and the constant thrum of a hard bass was the closest he could get to it.

‘Feel the noise,’ Ben had said.

Yes, that’s it exactly.
Sound waves striking each other at just the right moment in time could cancel out each other, leaving only the truest whispers of the future to echo back to him. So he salved himself with The Beatles and turned up the speakers — a difficult task with his arms crossed and bound inside the white jacket.

Once free, he’d made a dash for the music room noticeboard where most of the brass tacks had been pre-arranged into golden Braille patterns a fortnight before by a female member of his blind faithful, since male members weren’t permitted in the women-only wards. Some tacks had strayed over the days. He recovered them, and re-forged one message to frighten them all. They’d never forget it. Braille so huge, his trio would see it from across the room:
the lie is true.

Mira read the warning and took a step backwards, not knowing or caring how Freddie had worked his wicked magic in a room where he’d allegedly never been before. The ghostly message was there on the noticeboard, and who else but Freddie or his female friends would have arranged it? The only other living beings who knew about making palm-sized Braille out of thumbtacks, were Ben and the matron. Yet if Ben was lying about being her authorised escort or co-guardian, what were they doing? Did they really need her cooperation so badly first, to help Freddie?