Walking Shadows (13 page)

The idea of genuine texts almost made me salivate. "I know some archivists who could
probably make something of it."

"I've read what I could. I don't think there's much there."

"Worth a look though."

"Sure."

The source of his reluctance was unclear to me, especially since he'd been the one to raise the
subject in the first place. Before I could ask he made for the door.

"Anyway," he said, "I should get that train."

I wouldn't let him go without a hug. He hesitated, then gave me a gentle squeeze back. He always
seemed afraid to hold me too tight. Either he was so unused to hugs he didn't really know what to do
with them or he was genuinely concerned that he could break my ribs if he got too enthusiastic.

"Be careful," I told him, "Call me when you get home."

"I don't have a phone."

"I put Skype on your computer, remember?"

"Aaahhh." By which I figured he'd misplaced the instruction sheet I'd printed out for
him.

"Email me, then, as soon as you're in."

"You sound like my mother," he said, but he was grinning, more relaxed.

"Yeah. Well. So what?" All flummoxed by the comparison.

"So nothing. I'll email."

"You better." I reached out and ruffled his hair, because the way he pulled faces and
tried to straighten his fringe afterwards was funny.

To look at us, you'd never think we had killed someone that morning.

The email confirming his unmolested arrival came in a little before midnight. It
was constructed in Gary's usual technology-challenged fashion, with manually inserted returns in odd
places. On the plus side, the text was refreshingly grammatically correct, with perfect punctuation.
It was like getting a letter from Nanna.

It would be a lie to say I slept well. I had nightmares and woke up hyperventilating and with leg
cramps. I kept dreaming I was running up a vertical hill with a pack of rabid dogs behind me and a
fire up ahead and, really, I was happy to pack it in when I woke for the third time, before dawn.

At least it is never too early for the internet, even on a Sunday. One of the academics had, in
her part of the world, found time to answer my questions. More to the point, she'd sent scans of the
original English texts along with notes about the source, bless her perfectionist archival heart.
The document, a diary found in a monastery in northern England, had been dated and authenticated,
although the author had not been identified. The message drew my attention to passages near the end
of the diary and included a polite request to see the final essay. Yes. Well. Maybe I would write it
next semester.

The image files were huge and amazing, photographs of the pages of a 200-year-old diary. The
handwriting, in faded black ink, shifted from large looping script to a tight, cramped scrawl,
depending both on whether the diarist was trying to cram a few more words onto the bottom of the
page and how frenetic the entry had become.

This, I thought, is someone else who
knows.
Someone else who discovered these impossible
embodiments of things beyond the scientific and quantifiable; whose world had been gutted and
reformatted in a way that few others would ever see or understand. My fingertips brushed the
computer screen, as though by doing so they would brush against the paper and ink on the other side
of the world, and through them the hand of the man who had written it.

Miriam has suffered much, or would if her small body still experienced
suffering in the way that God's children do. Yet it cannot be comfortable, and I can see her exposed
bone and flesh. Truly, as a medical man, I am inclined to make sketches of the movement I see
within. If only the heart I glimpse through her wounds was still beating, I am sure I could learn
much. I am not a good man, to think such things of the sister that I loved. I struggle to believe in
a merciful God, now that our lives have come to this.

Miriam assures me the pain is not so great, except where the flames have ruined
her flesh. She cries for her lost hair, about which she was always so vain, though not a tear is
shed. I imagine worse is in store for her in the eternal fires to which she is surely to be
consigned, yet I feel pity. Surely God will not censure me. She is still my sister, after all, for
it is her voice that speaks to me, that reminds me of our shared lives. I hear my little Miriam beg
me for release from an eternity in this maimed and undying body.

The men that did this to her are doing God's work, I know, but I cannot thank
them for it. Joshua Williams has the eye of a fanatic, a man who may have moved in high circles had
he lived at the time of Torquemada. I can believe his declarations that he has burned his way across
Germany and Spain, purging this evil. His young companion was quieter and more frightening to me.
Still as death, speaking only to praise God in the highest of exhortations. It is he, I am sure,
who, with his youth and strength, has found the power to defeat and kill that which cannot die. I
would not for the wealth of all Europe's crowns, nor that of the orient, be counted an enemy of God
by that boy. How I wish I had not told him of my sister's lodgings.

The next entry was some days later.

Miriam is dead. I cannot sleep for nightmares of her ending and the
difficulties in removing the heart and head. It is done and she is, if not at peace, then at least
still. The sheriff is coming to call me to account for her murder, though she has been dead these
long years. God will not banish me from His sight for my compassion. I believe this, and I pray for
Miriam's soul along with my own.

After this, there were entries from the doctor's brief time in prison. Lots of
entreaties for God's forgiveness and compassion; hopes that the local authorities would see he had
acted as a good Christian and a loving brother. A modern court would never see it that way, but in
1816 there was leeway, apparently. The final entry noted simply that:

I am banished, for fear that others of my sister's ilk will seek their revenge
upon me and so my neighbours. I do not believe there is any such danger, but I will go. The grief
and betrayal in our mother's eyes is worse than the vengeance of all hell.

The Bishop has demanded I leave my writings here, no doubt to burn, and I would
have it so. A new beginning, perhaps in the Americas, is all that is left to me.

The original article had quoted selectively from these passages, talking about how
a genuine belief in vampirism had led to murder, or at least euthanasia, and the lenience of both
church and state.

For my part, I wished there were a way to send a message to the long-dead doctor.
I
understand.

A vivid image of Kate lying mutilated and undead-yet-dying and begging me to release her, gripped
me. I had to take great, gulping breaths of air to clear my head. Kate, I reminded myself sternly,
was having a fabulous and hopefully deliciously wicked weekend with Anthony.

Maudlin-cum-horrifying mornings are so not my thing. I needed to get out and away
from all this…everything. I needed sunshine, happy noises and, if at all possible, no dead
people.

St Kilda. Whatever else you could say about it, it was noisy, sunny and as lively as a bucketful
of eels.

My thanks to the professor were emailed away before I leapt into the shower. I slurped down
plunger coffee between dressing and throwing things into my satchel. Breakfast would be at Acland
Street, I decided. Maybe at a proper café, maybe at a cake shop. Rum baba for breakfast
sounded perfectly reasonable. Positively necessary, even.

With my bag slung over my shoulder, I left.

While I was waiting to cross Swanston Street for the tram stop, a glimpse of a woman walking
alongside the Yarra made me catch my breath. I only saw her from behind, dressed in Toorak-matron
glam - designer skirt, matching jacket, chunky jewellery, black high heeled shoes with gold trim.
She had my mother's walk and that sweeping gesture of her hand as she makes a point, her hair
coiffed
just so
. Not her, surely. My mother knew better than to ever come back here.

The weirdest thing about seeing this doppelganger was the double lurch of emotion, so close to
one another that I hardly knew which had come first. The fear, or the sorrow. That a bit of my heart
still missed my mother was impossible to believe.
I want her back the way she used to be, before
Belinda died.

Stupid heart. My mother could never be like she used to be. She'd made her choice, and I'd made
mine, and we were never ever going to be able to fix it.

The woman turned abruptly and waved to some nearby friend. Even with the giant sunglasses, I
could see she wasn't my mother. Relief and disappointment collided briefly. Relief emerged the
victor. That made me feel sad too.

Despite knowing there was not enough sunshine and cake in the world to make any of it better, I
boarded the tram. Those are the only choices. Stagnate or move forward.

In St Kilda, dark clouds were gathering across the bay, promising one of Melbourne's periodic
summer squalls. I'm not one for portents and symbolism. This is Melbourne. It rains sometimes. I
would simply avail myself of the open-air craft markets while the weather was warm, and take refuge
in a bookshop or a café when it got wet, along with everybody else. So deciding, I jumped off
the tram along the Esplanade and beelined for the row of temporary white tents along the broad
pavement. Maybe I could find welcome home presents for Kate and Oscar.

The weather held. I found a couple of little treasures for my sister, a farcically butch collar
for little Oscar and, for Gary, a notepad of thick hand-made paper, bound within the hardcover of an
old 1940s maths textbook.

It would be fun to see Gary's reaction to an unbirthday present, after the astonishment generated
by my buying him a new T-shirt for his birthday last September. That reaction was undiminished when
I got him a Christmas present as well.

The weekend before Christmas I'd been to visit him and he'd plunked a box in my hand like it
didn't matter, and then hovered, anxiously asking if I was going to open it
now
. I'd never
had anyone wait so eagerly for a reaction, and be so nonplussed at getting it.

The enthusiastic embrace was well warranted. He'd given me a beautiful brooch: an elegant, art
deco nautilus design of black Bakelite and coral which had belonged to his mother. I often wore it
on our film nights to demonstrate how much I appreciated it.

The discovery of a new stall at the market near the Acland Street end of the tent parade
simultaneously fascinated and bothered me. Rows of shadowy charcoal-and-pastel drawings looked out
of place in this bright, bayside suburb. Old buildings, some of them recognisably Melburnian,
populated with hazy figures, loomed out of the thick paper: figures with mesmerised eyes and mouths
open in lust-or-fear, others with hints of sharpness and darkness and dead white skin.

The seller didn't look familiar. While I waited, a tiny, white-haired, bright-eyed woman with an
age-seamed face returned with paper cups of coffee. She caught my eye and smiled, an expression both
conspiratorial and challenging. Hell, we didn't need a code word. Those of us who
knew
could
recognise each other by scent, just about. The drawings were hers, no doubt about it. I had never
seen her at the Club, but I wasn't that frequent a caller. I wanted to talk to her. Someone slipped
in ahead of me, so I took my time looking at the pictures instead.

The glass-framed pictures were priced beyond what was sensible to pay for a for-the-hell-of-it
present for Gary. There was also the risk that I would kick start a whole new subset of
collectormania. Though maybe that was a good idea. A man who doesn't sleep needs to find ways of
filling the time. Then I thought that hauling an A3 framed picture around for the rest of the day
wasn't going to be fun either. I settled on a much smaller card-framed charcoal drawing of a figure
lurking near Flinders Street Station. The hint of watchful eyes and sharp teeth were unmistakable. I
had no doubt that Gary would like it. It would be, after all, one of the few things in his
collection that reflected reality.

The artist had finished talking so I handed the cash over. She wrapped the picture carefully in
bubble wrap and newspaper. She leaned close as she handed it to me, so that I could just hear her
murmur "Be careful with them, dear."

"Always," I murmured back, aware that we were not talking about the art.

"Extraordinary, aren't they?"

The voice startled me and I looked up. And up. He was tall with a beaky nose and prominent
cheekbones - the guy who had just been talking to the artist. He was examining the drawings with the
same intensity I felt. Even some of the same circumspection. He
knew
, too.

"Ahh. Different. Yeah," I semi-agreed.

"Disturbing too, don't you think? The smaller figures look like birds hypnotised by
snakes."

"That doesn't really happen you know," I felt honour-bound to point out, "Outside
of
The Jungle Book
anyway." Then I wondered if I was being rude. "They do have a
kind of bunny-in-the-headlights thing there. Well, if the bunny in question has a suicidal devotion
to six cylinders and really sweet paint jobs."

A woof of laughter greeted my analysis and he grinned down at me. His eyes were green, I noted,
and it made me suddenly sad.
Daniel's eyes.
If he'd lived, Daniel might have grown old to
look like this lanky stranger.

"Oh," he offered a chastened, apologetic syllable at my change of mood,
"I…"

"No. It's me. I'm having a weird weekend." My pitch for 'understatement of the year'. I
smiled to show all was well. He smiled back. He had a nice smile. Tentative, like he wasn't sure
smiling was allowed, or he was out of the habit. He was kind of good looking. Tall and skinny, the
way I like 'em, with close-cropped dark hair, greying slightly at the temples. His ears were large
and stuck out so that they softened the general serious-sad of his expression with their comical air
of being too alert. His green eyes looked like he'd seen too much of the world, and that made me
feel like we had something else in common. There were crows' feet around his eyes that crinkled
pleasingly when he smiled. Older than me, but not really
old
. Thirty-five, maybe.