“I can tell you what happens with your sister, and maybe we can talk more about your extended senses.”
“That’d be great,” I said, meaning it.
I cut through backstreets until I came out along the bus route. I could have walked home, but I felt really tired, so I boarded the late bus, which I knew would be half empty. It wasn’t until I got off that I realized Mirandah had also been on the bus.
“How come you’re getting home late?” I asked.
“Art,” she said. I stifled a yawn as she launched into a description of a printmaking process she had been learning. “So?” Mirandah suddenly turned and poked me in the arm.
“Pardon?” I asked, realizing I had phased out completely.
Mirandah gave a huffing sigh of exasperation. “Honestly, Alyzon. You are as bad as Serenity.”
That woke me up, because it made me realize that none of us talked to one another about how Serenity had changed. “How come you’re so down on poor Serenity?” I asked to provoke a reaction.
“I’m not down on poor Serenity,” Mirandah said indignantly. “She’s down on us, or hadn’t you noticed? We’re part of the great silent mass who fail to act decisively to stop injustice. Or are you telling me you haven’t had the ‘we are as guilty as the guilty if we don’t act’ lecture?” Mirandah said sardonically. “Or what about ‘cruel times need cruel measures,’ or maybe the most recent? ‘The sleepers awake’ diatribe? That one’s a doozy.”
I stared at her. “Serenity doesn’t lecture me. She doesn’t speak to me.”
Mirandah gave a short laugh. “Yeah, well, maybe she thinks you’re too far gone. Lucky you.”
“So what does she expect us to do? Does she say?”
“Who knows. Blow up the government, maybe.”
We came around to the back door and I stifled a groan at the sound of Rhona Wojcek’s voice. Mum was in the kitchen placidly feeding Luke a shiny blob of mushed-up banana in his high chair, her head swathed in clouds of blue and silver.
Mirandah dropped her bag and sat down to watch Rhona with apparent devotion. I had to suppress a smile, because I knew that she was merely gathering material for an increasingly accurate and hilarious Rhona imitation she was developing.
I slipped out the kitchen door, intending to go upstairs and change, but to my surprise, Da was sitting on the bottom step, his coffee-ground scent overlaid with a confusion of other smells—new rope, tobacco, perfume, pine needles, detergent—but stronger than all the rest was the heavy reek of ammonia.
“Rhona?” I said sympathetically.
“She wants your mum to exhibit in a gallery that will cost an arm and a leg.”
“I thought galleries just took a percentage of what sells.” I sat down beside him.
“They do, but Rhona wants a big opening, and we’ll need to pay for it.”
“So don’t do it. Mum won’t care.”
“She won’t, but maybe Rhona’s right about the need to attract buyers and gallery owners ….”
I clamped on my senses hard enough to see the effect Da had on the air. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that the distortions were weaker than usual. “Are you OK, Da?” I asked. Tell me what is wrong, I thought at him.
He turned his handsome face to me. “I guess it’s that for once I have the potential to earn the money we need. Only …” He shook his head.
“Only what?” I pressed.
“I did that big charity function for Aaron Rayc this after noon, and it turned out not to be a solo job after all. I ended up fronting another band, and afterward Aaron asked if I would like to do a second gig with them. So what we’re talking about now is a gig fronting another band.”
“He lied about today’s gig,” I said.
“Well, no,” Da said. “The lead singer was ill, and Rayc asked me to fill in. It made no sense to switch halfway through to a solo act, so we did the whole show together. Afterward Aaron offered another gig with the band because the singer is going to be out of commission for some time. It’s a big gig with a good paycheck ….”
“Didn’t you like the band?”
“It’s not that,” Da said. He laughed. “I guess I just feel that by taking these gigs, I’m slipping further and further away from Losing the Rope. In the end, I told Aaron I’d pass, but he told me to think it over. Then I get home and find Rhona talking about a big, expensive gallery opening.” He winced as the agent’s laughter rang out.
“Oh, Da,” I said.
He smiled fondly at me. “I don’t know why I’m so down, really. It’s just one gig, after all.”
Rhona exploded out of the kitchen and into the hallway, trailing fringes and silk draperies. She stopped and stared at Da and me sitting at the bottom of the stairs. But Mum, coming along behind her, only smiled at us both and ushered Rhona the rest of the way out.
* * *
I went up and lay on my bed, wondering if Aaron Rayc was really out to separate Da from Losing the Rope. Did he truly believe Da would be a better property if he was a soloist or played with some other band?
I fell asleep and dreamed one of those chaotic and troubling dreams that metamorphose slowly but spectacularly into a nightmare. I was at one of Losing the Rope’s gigs, only the band seemed to be missing half their instruments. Mel went to find them, and when he didn’t come back, Neil and Da sent me to get him. I ended up blundering into some sort of nightclub, peopled horribly by animated corpses.
Finally one of them noticed me and leered, baring sharpened teeth. It was Aaron Rayc. “I see you,” he hissed. And suddenly the air was full of tiny creatures biting and tearing at me. I staggered back in terror, but he grabbed me and shook me and shook me.
* * *
“Alyzon! Come on. Dinner’s ready.” It was Jesse shaking me hard. I sat up groggily heavy-eyed and jittery.
Over dinner, I studied Serenity, looking for clues that she might know she had been followed, but she was exactly the same as usual: pale, silent and withdrawn, pushing food around her plate. After dinner she went straight up to bed.
I didn’t want to go up with her, so I hung around downstairs listening to Da and Jesse jam. Then I had a shower. As I was coming out of the bathroom, Jesse told me Gilly had phoned earlier in the afternoon. “I meant to tell you right away when you got home, but Rhona came and you know how she obliterates consciousness.”
I laughed, relieved. “It’s too late to call her back now. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
* * *
I woke to the déjà vu experience of Jesse shaking me, but it felt too early and too dark for school.
“Phone,” Jesse said softly. “It’s your friend Harrison, and he says it’s urgent.”
I dragged on a robe and slippers and hurried downstairs, my heart yammering. “Harrison? What’s wrong?”
“Gilly just called,” he said. “Her grandmother’s house burned down on Sunday night.” I gasped. “It’s OK. No one got hurt. Her grandmother was at the opera, and Gilly was with me and Raoul, visiting Sarry. She only found out after she left us and went home in a taxi. She didnae call straightaway because it was totally chaotic. Her grandmother was in shock, and there were police asking questions, and they had to get some clothes and find somewhere to stay.” He paused for a moment. “Whoever did it threw gallons of gasoline around to make sure the fire was hot.”
“Someone did it on purpose?” I asked, horrified. “What about the housekeeper and the driver?”
“They have a house separate from the main residence, but they were out as well. The movies. The police think that’s why it happened. Unfortunately, it also means that no one saw anything.”
“But why would anyone do such a thing?”
“It could have been a robbery and someone wanting tae make sure it would be hard for anyone tae figure what had been stolen. Or vandalism. A sort of payback for the rich. There is a lot of that happening, apparently. Anyway, I’m sorry I called so early, but I didnae know what time you left for school and I thought you’d
want tae know. Gilly won’t be at school again today, of course.”
“Where are Gilly and her grandmother now?” I asked.
“The Hotel Marceau. Would you like tae go and see her tonight? We could meet as we’d planned at the library, then go tae her hotel afterward. I think she’d be glad if you’d come.”
“Of course,” I said.
Only after I put down the receiver did I realize that he had not mentioned Serenity.
“What’s up?” Jesse asked, passing me a mug of tea. Da came in carrying Luke halfway through the story.
“That nice, gentle old lady,” he said when I had finished. “Alyzon, let Mrs. Rountree know that if there is anything she needs, to just call.”
Even in the midst of my shock, I was touched by the thought of Da offering help to someone as rich as Mrs. Rountree. On the other hand, perhaps there was a kind of help someone like Da could give that no one else could. I was thinking of Portia Sting and the way Da had radiated sparks and bent the air the night of the Urban Dingo gig. Perhaps his bending of the air was some sort of positive or healing force that helped anyone within range.
* * *
I was thinking about Gilly and the fire when I got off the bus, and saw Harlen standing a little way along the fence from the school gates with the same older guys I had seen him with the day I had fled from him. I hadn’t even mentioned Harlen to Harrison. This was such a strange omission that it made me wonder if my own senses had somehow subconsciously stopped me.
I went straight over to Harlen, refusing to think about anything but the apology I owed him. When he saw me, his eyes went cold and flat, but his mouth kept right on smiling. The smell of rot coming from him was overpowering, and suddenly it didn’t seem the least bit exaggerated to think he might carry a contagious sickness of the spirit.
“Harlen, I’m really sorry I didn’t come to Eastland on Saturday. I didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday, but I was on my way to meet you when this girl I know had a fit. I would have called from the hospital, but I didn’t have your number.” I said this looking right into his eyes, all the time screening so hard it was making my head ache.
“A sick friend,” one of his companions said with sneering disbelief.
I glared at him with genuine indignation. “I wouldn’t make up a thing like that.” I looked back at Harlen. “My friend really did have a fit, and you can ask Gilly because she knows her, too. Why would I lie, anyway?”
There was a strangely long pause, and then the second guy said mockingly to Harlen, “Seems like she might be telling the truth. Too bad, eh?”
Harlen snapped at him to shut up, and then he stepped closer to me. “I was pretty mad,” he said. “I thought you had stood me up for Gilly.”
“I would never deliberately stand someone up,” I said.
“An honorable woman,” said one of the others, leering at me.
I was glad, because looking at him let me turn away from Harlen. For a moment, instead of his sick, rotting stench, I was enveloped in the boiled cabbage and dirty track-shoe odor of the other guy’s essence. “Are you a friend of Harlen’s?” I asked, because unpleasant as his smell was, it was infinitely better than Harlen’s.
“I’m Quick,” he said. “This here is Breeze. We used to go to school with Harlen until it closed down.” He gave a delighted chuckle.
“Shut up,” Harlen said again, forcing my eyes back to him. “So, Alyzon, if you really didn’t mean to stand me up, how about meeting me tonight?”
“Oh, I can’t,” I said. “Haven’t your heard? Gilly’s house was burned down on Sunday. I’m supposed to go and see her and her grandmother tonight.”
For a second Harlen’s face was so still it was like someone had used a pause button on him. Then he said, “Gilly’s house burned down? Incredible. Who do the police think did it?”
The bell started ringing before I could answer.
“Time to rock and roll,” Quick said, and he slouched off down the street with Breeze in tow.
“Who were those two?” demanded a teacher as Harlen and I came through the gate. “I’ve seen them hanging around here, and I’m not keen on it.”
“They were asking directions,” Harlen lied coolly, shooting me a look of smiling complicity. I forced myself to smile back, glad that the teacher was coming along right behind us.
Never had school seemed less relevant than it did the rest of that day. My thoughts kept jumping from Gilly and her grandmother losing everything in the fire; to Serenity eaten up by grief and rage; to Aaron Rayc trying to separate Da from Losing the Rope; and then to poor Sarry at the mercy of a doctor who smelled of something old and rotten. And, of course, I thought of Harlen.
It felt as if a shadow was creeping through the world, darkening all the separate threads of my life.
At lunchtime I made for the library, intending to use the computer to learn more about Aaron Rayc, but Harlen was there before me, leaning over the checkout desk and smiling at the woman behind it. I backed away hastily and headed for the computer room instead.
I sat down and got out the business card I had filched from Da’s coat pocket that morning. “Rayc Inc.” was printed on the heavy card in elegant gold lettering. Under it was the word “Consultants” in smaller but equally elegant script. Then in the bottom left-hand corner was an address, a fax number, and a URL. The only other thing on the card was an obscure logo that meant nothing to me.
What struck me was how little information the card offered, unless you took the luxurious quality of its production as part of its message.
I typed in the URL, and the logo came up on screen. I clicked on it, and the image flickered like a flame and vanished, leaving a coil of white smoke that wound itself into a single line of text: “Light the flame and all shall be consumed by your radiance.”
It sounded vaguely religious to me, or like something from Dante’s Inferno or William Blake. But either way, it was totally unexpected. I was still staring at the words in bafflement when they quivered and vanished.
What came up next was possibly the plainest home page I had ever seen. There was just “Rayc Inc.” and “Consultants” above an old-fashioned photograph of a two-story mansion. “Castledean Estate” was written on a plate by the door, and under the picture was a Remington address. There was nothing to say what purpose the house served, but there was a paragraph explaining that Rayc Inc. had been founded decades ago, although there was no information about what the company actually did, and there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go from that page.
I wondered if Rayc Inc. was some sort of charity organization. After all, most of the gigs Rayc had given Da were to do with charities, and it might explain the religious-sounding quote. But where was the plea for a donation?
I looked back to the photo and noticed that the panel with the name of the house on it looked computer-generated. I clicked on it, and the photo began to fragment and blow away like leaves in a high wind. Then I was looking at four lines of text.
The first said, “Who would teach the world, enter here.” The second said, “Who would change the world, inquire within.” The third read, “Who would save the world, come hither,” and the last, “Who would despair of the world, come forth.”
I moved the cursor to the first line and clicked. Nothing happened, nor did any of the other lines yield more than their text. I scrolled in all directions but could find nothing else.
Then all at once the screen image began to fade away. The mouse wouldn’t respond, and a moment later, to my mortified horror, a bondage site came up, complete with a picture of a naked woman tied up and grimacing in pain. I was astonished, because the monitoring software the school used ought to have immediately blocked the download. I was still trying to get rid of the image when the bell rang. There was nothing to do but switch off the whole machine.
I made my way to the art room, thinking that Aaron Rayc’s Web site was like a game and a virtual idiot like me was not going to crack it without help.
Mirandah might manage, but she could never have kept her mouth shut about the fact that I was looking into Rayc Inc.
I was soon up to my neck in paints and linseed oil, making my usual inept mess. Whatever else had changed, I had not developed any artistic abilities, but at least the class took my mind off everything else. Because of the need to clean up after, the class always ran over, and for once I was glad because it meant I would not have to worry about Harlen waiting around for me after school. But it did mean that I had to run to make the city-bound bus that would bring me to the library in time to meet Harrison.
When the bus pulled up at the library, however, Harrison jumped on before I could get off. “This bus stops close tae the hotel, so I thought we might as well go straight there,” he said when he was seated beside me. “There’s a park right beside it where we can go for a walk.”
I asked if he had seen Sarry again, and his face lit up. “Raoul and I went tae visit her last night, and she’s fine. In fact she’s more than fine, because not only has the fill-in doctor dropped the dose of drugs, he has agreed tae sign a release to allow Sarry tae enter a convalescent home in Remington. Which means she is permanently out of Dr. Austin’s clutches.”
His mention of Remington gave me a little start, because that was where the Castledean Estate was. Harrison went on, saying he had been thinking that we ought to check up on Dr. Austin and find out exactly when he had started treating Sarry. I opened my mouth to tell Harrison about Harlen, and this time I definitely felt a resistance to speak. Maybe it was just that we were among other people who might overhear. I decided to wait until we were in the park to try again. To my relief, Harrison switched back to talking about the convalescent home, telling me it was called Bellavie and describing its facilities. It sounded so luxurious that I wondered aloud how Sarry could afford it. Harrison said lightly that Raoul would take care of it. We fell silent then, because the bus was getting really crowded, but when we were in the park alongside the hotel, Harrison told me Gilly had said her grandmother seemed to be getting more devastated by the fire as time passed. “It’s the photographs and mementos she minds most. Gilly said she seemed really lost and apathetic, as if nothing matters anymore.”