by Penny Knight
Oh my god, this is fucking hilarious. I hear Topher laughing uncontrollably in his mind. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t bloody laugh.
Leo is now looking at me bemused. He must think I am totally bananas. Thankfully, the doctor breaks my embarrassment to say his goodbyes. I thank him while I walk him to the door. Anything to get away from this situation.
I close the door and turn back as Leo is walking towards me.
“It’s been a big day for you,” he says. He has no idea. I just nod in response. I don’t trust what could come out anymore.
“I shall leave you to rest.” He stands right in front of me. “When are you leaving Adelaide?”
“Tomorrow,” I lie.
He smiles at me and moves closer. “I think your assistant may have got it wrong again, he has checked you in for two nights.”
I bite my lip, bloody Topher. “He’s not the smartest, but he tries hard.” I shrug and ignore Topher’s profanities he is thinking.
“Hopefully you will be well enough to travel tomorrow. If not, your booking will stand. You may want to consider resting up before flying out.” He moves towards the door.
I move well out of his way, avoiding any contact, just in case. “Thanks, I’ll be fine.” Topher is right again. He is bossy.
He opens the door to leave, turning one last time. “Goodnight, Elita. I will see you soon.” His voice is smooth like silk. He walks out, closing the door.
No, he won’t. I turn to Topher. “We need to get out of here.”
Saying I wasn’t prepared is an understatement. Walking out into the foyer of the hotel, it hit me hard. After the encounter in the room, I just assumed I could only hear Topher’s thoughts. I was wrong. Dead wrong.
I clench Topher’s arm, trying to steady myself. The voices are everywhere. They won’t stop. It’s uncontrollable. They’re so loud, merging together unable to make out who is thinking what.
My stomach is queasy, and I struggle to see clearly.
“Are you ok?” Topher asks.
“It’s too much.” Tears start to fall.
He looks down, his expression doesn’t surprise me. I’m certain I have paled like I saw a ghost and he rarely sees me cry.
“You can do it. Let’s get out of here,” he says quickening his pace.
I don’t think that I can, the voices are all getting tangled into a deafening pitch. I cringe and close my eyes, my legs will not hold up. What the hell is with me fainting all the time lately? I hate this place.
His grip tightens. It might be painful normally, but I can’t feel anything. I’m just glad he is keeping me upright.
Finally, we burst through the doors outside.
“Almost there,” Topher encourages me. His van is in sight. We quicken our pace and once we reach the door, he rips it open, and all but throws me in the front seat. I slump and huddle in the fetal position. Outside there are more voices and screams, it’s overwhelming.
He starts the car. She looks bad. Maybe I should take her to the hospital. She doesn’t look well, Topher thinks, and I am surprised I could make it out from the noises swirling in my head.
“No, please don’t,” I cry.
“You just look so bad. I don’t know what to do.”
“Just get me home.”
If only I could block it all out. To drown out the noise. Something louder, something to overpower this heinous sound.
The radio.
I lean forward and turn it on, pumping the volume to full blast. Loud music fills the car. It mutes the screeching voices and grounds me back to reality. My head is pounding, but I can deal with that. Laying back I close my eyes, eventually sleep takes over.
The ship’s horn bellows through the open iron-barred windows. The sun still hasn’t risen, but I always love to watch the opening of the Birkenhead Bridge as it provides safe passage for the vessels travelling through the Port River. I climb out of bed and walk to the corner of my room to where the steel ladder is. This is the only access to the rooftop, it’s always been sacred to me. My own little piece of the world to retreat to. It’s my favourite place in the warehouse, especially the moment before the sun rises over the wharf.
The latch opens and the small door flips wide. The breeze hits my face, and I let it refresh me. The night’s temperature hadn’t dropped below 25 degrees, so this morning air is welcome.
My bare feet hits the concrete roof and the smell of the Fisherman’s Market reaches me. Most people might not like the smell of sea and fish early in the morning, or at all, but it has now become attached to my feelings of peace by being up here. I reach the double brick ledge and watch as the sun rises over the opening of the bridge, a deep fiery orange with streams of bright yellow greets me.
I slept from the moment I closed my eyes in the car and briefly remember Topher helping me inside. I was more like the walking dead and dropped straight onto my bed. How I made it up the steps is a skill in itself. My talents must have stopped there because I am still in my skirt and blouse.
Now, I’m finding it hard to believe everything that has happened. Maybe it was all a dream. Inside, I can feel it’s not. I have changed, I feel it in my bones. This is the first time I’ve been able to breathe and really try and dissect what has happened.
There was the girl in my dreams, the girl who had called me mother. She had done something to me. When she placed her hands on my head, the pain was excruciating. I know my dreams left me waking with a migraine normally, but I had never heard of experiencing physical pain in dreams. The girl, Anna, had done it on purpose, like she was passing something to me. It sounds crazy, but how else do I explain waking to hear Topher’s thoughts? Or maybe I am actually crazy. But no, the girl said it had to happen. It was meant to be. Whatever the hell that means. Argh! So frustrating.
The ship blows its horn as it goes under the bridge. Maybe it’s a warning they are passing through, or maybe a thank you to the operators for opening the bridge. Nevertheless, the sound soothes my nerves. How will I be able to venture out with my mind open to all the thoughts forcing their way through? Well, not everyone. I couldn’t hear Leo. Nor the doctor. Why not? So many questions I need answers to.
Leo. There is an anomaly. He affected me so much before my dream. Nothing will compare to that pain. God, I hope nothing does. After though, there wasn’t pain, but there was something else. He still affected me, but differently. That’s why I knew as soon as he left I needed to distance myself from him.
“Thought I would find you here,” Topher says, breaking my thoughts, which is probably a good thing since I wasn’t getting anywhere.
Can you still hear me? He thinks.
“Yes,” I nod. He reaches my side and leans beside me.
Ew, it smells. I hate this time. I hate fish. Why am I even up so early? It is pretty though.
I can see Topher looking at me out the corner of my eye, but my gaze is fixed to the ship as it sails out toward the ocean.
If she can hear my thoughts, oh, that means she hears everything. Crap, what if she can hear something I don’t want her to? Like me making her an online dating profile last week? Shit, I just did.
I slug his right arm.
“Ouch!” he cries out.
“Serves you right. A dating profile? Really, Topher?” I shake my head.
“I’m going back downstairs in case I get myself in any more trouble.” He just about sprints back to the manhole. Not before he spews more secrets while he flees. Accidentally letting it slip what really happened to my pants.
“They were my favourite pair of jeans!” I yell out to him as his mind keeps spewing confessions.
“I’m sorry. I can’t stop thinking,” he yells running down the ladder. Then disappears along with his thoughts, the more distance he puts between us.
I rub my eyes, trying to not get angry at him. It’s not his fault I can hear his thoughts. Although that doesn’t make it right for him to keep things from me. I don’t want him to have to run off every time
I’m around. Even being a loner, that’s a depressing, isolating life ahead of me.
My phone rings in my room, Topher’s ringtone. I race to the ladder and jump down, straight to my dresser and answer it.
“Are you angry at me?” he asks.
“Yes, no, not really.”
“Can you hear me think through the phone?”
Good question.
“I don’t know, think of something,” I say. There’s a short pause.
“Did you hear that?”
“No, nothing.” I sigh in relief.
“Good,” he says. “I am going into work today. I think you should stay home and rest.”
“You mean you don’t want me around?” It’s sad, but I can understand. I would hate it if someone could hear what I was thinking.
“Yes, but that’s not the only reason. It was a rough day for you yesterday. You need a day off.” I really could use a day or five to recover. Plus, it’s not that appealing being around other people, especially after what happened leaving the hotel. “I have to give Tony the footage from yesterday. It should be enough.”
I had forgotten about our assignment. Topher’s right, he needs to go in. Tony lives for his company. It’s surprising he hasn’t rocked up at our door last night wanting to know where we stood on the case. Normally I would do a quick check in with him.
I hear rummaging in the kitchen. “Ok, sounds good. Hey, put on a pot of coffee for me while you’re there,” I say.
“Already have, E. Oh wait,” he pauses. “We have a few messages.” He presses the play button on our old school answering machine and I hear a familiar Prussian accent.
“Elita,” he says. “You better come down here right now.”
I reach my old hometown of Tanunda in record time. Just under forty-five minutes but it still wasn’t fast enough for me. I was worried every second of the drive. Franziska had sounded panicked. She never asks for me to return to her so abruptly. Something must be wrong.
The large white stone arch welcoming travellers to the small town feels smaller than I remembered. When I arrived on a charter bus as a child, I thought this place was huge. The main street, filled with small businesses, cars lining the road, townspeople and tourists huddled at the small cafés. Everything was unknown, I hadn’t even known where I was going to be living, or who I was going to be dropped off to.
Navigating the familiar streets, I pass through the town onto Smyth Road. I see the steel rusted letterbox, marking the entrance to the first place I ever felt safe. I slow the car when entering the pebbled road, winding through the dead grass and stale trees. Summer has always been dangerous in the hills, water was sparse and the normal luscious greenery wilted away. As I pull up to the front of Franziska’s house, I notice the twenty metre clearing circling her house and the clear and pruned surrounding area as always for this time of year. Already prepared for the bushfire season.
The first summer I was here, Franziska pulled me out the front, waved her hands and said, “One spark,” in broken English. “Poof. All gone,” she clicked her fingers for effect. That is when she put me to work, and we both spent a week getting the house ready. Clearing the space around the house and on the street just in case firefighters needed to access the area. We cleaned the gutters and hosed them down once a week, pruned all the trees and removed the dry shrubbery. Anything we could do to be proactive against the threats. I worked tirelessly wanting to please her, I wanted to make sure she didn’t leave or want me to.
The bluestone cottage stood perched on the elevated land. Franziska is waiting, sitting on the white wooden swing chair we had purchased together from the annual town fair in Tanunda when I was ten. I stop the car and race toward the old Prussian woman that had taken me in.
“Elita,” Franziska welcomes me with a warm embrace. I squeeze her tight, I have missed her. I should come back more often.
I pull back, holding her at a distance to survey her. She looks ok. Healthy. “You had me so worried!”
“Dear, you are the one that has me worried.” She pulls me in for another tight hug.
I was anxious on the drive up, wondering if I could hear her thoughts? Standing in front of her and nothing, silence follows. Maybe I couldn’t hear her thoughts, either. It’s strange, I heard the attendant at the service station when I stopped for petrol on the way out of Port Adelaide. The customers behind me waiting, too, but nothing with Franziska.
“Come in.” She puts her hand on my back, ushering me through the double wooden doors.
Sage, musk and pastries fill the air. I close my eyes while I inhale, taking it all in. Nothing has changed. I doubt it ever will. Franziska was a stickler for routine: breakfast at five, lunch at eleven thirty, dinner at six. It’s always the same, without fail.
I pull the chair from the round kitchen table and sit in my usual place. Franziska walks over with a silver tray filled with shortbread and a pot of tea. Her frail hand pours it into two saucers. Her normal precision not in sight, and tea spills over the cups. Is she sick? Nervous? There is something wrong, and it’s bad.
“Are you wondering why you cannot hear me, Elita?” She sits beside me. “You are wondering why you cannot hear what I am thinking. You are wondering what is happening to you. What it all means. I wished this day not to come, for you to live your life as a normal child and now a woman,” she says, her hands closed together looking as though she is about to pray.
“How?” I stammer in utter shock.
“I should have told you earlier.”
“Told me what?” My eyes water. She holds my hand in hers.
“Oh, Elita. The chosen one.”
The clock on the mantle chimes, while I wait for Franziska. Who’s disappeared to get something. Apparently, to help explain what the hell she’s talking about. My eyes dart to her liquor cabinet. I really could use something stronger than tea right now.
“Our family migrated to this town,” she returns before I have had a chance to add anything to my cup.
She places a brown leather album on the table and sits. “In 1840, from Prussia, they were run out because of our beliefs. They faced persecution.”
I nod. Remembering the story, she used to tell when I was younger.
“I’ve never seen this before.” My hand brushes over the old cover and turn to the first page.
“No, you have not.”
The once black and white photos behind the clear film have faded to a dark brown and cream hue.
“My great grandfather.” She points to a stern-faced man with an overgrown moustache. “He was a valued member of a congregation. He also had a gift.”
“Like mine?” Am I not alone? That would be nice to know.
“No.” She gives me a small smile. “He had visions.”
Ok, visions. This conversation is beyond anything I could imagine. Are we really talking about this? I massage my temples to prepare for the rest.
“One night he saw a devil. An immortal rising on the largest hill in Kaiserstuhl, not too far from here.”
I keep my eyes on the book and do not react to the thoughts of a devil rising. What the hell? Literally.
“They waited for days on end,” she continues. “They waited for it to rise. So they could capture it and end the threat. But, they waited, and nothing came.”
Right, because they sound like lunatics. Obviously, no devil is going to rise.
“Wait, how does this affect me? It doesn’t explain why I can–?”
That’s when she turns over to a page in the album. The mark, my tattoo. A brown piece of paper sitting under the film, mocking me. I stare open-mouthed at the same mark that was branded on me as a kid.
Did she do it? I always thought it was my mother. I swallow hard.
“My great grandfather had a vision. He saw this mark. Long before you ever were born. He would go on and on, about how this mark would be the saviour. He was not sure how or what form it would come to us. But he was firm. We must protect it.
“The day you appeared on the footstep of my sister’s house in Portland the mark had been delivered to us. It was on the back of your neck.”
Thank God. I don’t think I could’ve handled it, if it was Franziska who done this to me.
“You were in danger.” She touches my hand lightly. “Do you remember the men that were looking for you?”
“I’m not sure.” Those memories were in my box, vaulted up. I made a vow to never open it and look back. It’s how I survived. I cannot hide anymore. Not if I want to understand what is happening to me.
I try hard to pull those memories up. I remember running for what felt like hours. What was I running from?
“Drink the tea,” she says. “It will calm you and help you remember.”
I drink and finish the cup, and it comes crashing in waves. Like I’m right there.
I’m only eight years old and my mother had left me. It was Tuesday, I remember it clearly. I was meant to hand in my class project at school. I spent hours making a model of our house. Spending days outside collecting bags and bags of sticks. I sat in my room and individually sanded each one of them, making sure they were smooth and all the right sizes. I spent hours, weeks on the project. It was my escape. While my mother was in and out of the house, drinking and taking drugs in the lounge with a constant flow of men, I sat in my room and meticulously crafted my house.
That Tuesday I wanted her to drive me to school, I would never normally ask, but I wanted to make sure the model house was safe. I worked so hard on it. Opening my mother’s bedroom door, I knew something was not right. Normally she would be lying sprawled out on her bed, head hanging over the side, bottles of vodka on her nightstand right next to her needles.
She wasn’t there, her bed unmade, which wasn’t unusual. Her nightstand was empty, her wardrobes open and bare. There were no clothes, none of her makeup or perfume. It was all gone. That’s when I heard the noise, glass breaking in the kitchen and the voices of men in our house.
Scared, I ran back to my room, past the broken desk where I had put my house project on the night before, and straight into the air vent. Where I had spent many nights curled up hiding from her when she was on a bender or from random men that had peeped their heads into my room.
