Dyschronia

by Jennifer Mills

  Sam touches the wall behind her with her hands. She has hands, a body now. Blue paint flakes from the ply and settles on her fingers. At the wrist, the curved hem of a pyjama sleeve. Something shakes her from the heels up. The buzzing drone, but something else as well. She mustn’t look at her feet in the gravel. She must look out at the world, take note of everything.

  The monster, there. This strange enormity, stranded in the park like driftwood. It is a white thing, curved and tentacled, laid out on a slab. A single broken eye. Looking into it, she thinks of dead things washed up by the sea, their smells of rot and vinegar. Not her memory, just a ghost.

  Above it hangs the wheel. A Ferris wheel, so this must be a fairground. But there’s no-one here, no fair and no festivity. Half a gate stands alone in the field. Ornate black iron with letters she has to squint to read:

  Over the letters, the points of the bars are bent and twisted.

  Everything is too small, set too close together. The hands on the railway station clock don’t move, and the whole edifice lists slightly. She can see where the light comes through between the panels. There’s no back to it. It’s all fake, even the hands of the clock. The time’s been painted on, and it’s useless.

  She scans the puzzle of red-brick and weatherboard houses, suburb-solid, that lie beyond the park. The browned trees. In the distance, the familiar barren hills brushed pink. The same old hills, the same houses. But something’s wrong. The hills hang unfinished, like a sentence with no full stop. It’s here, it’s home, but so much has changed.

  There’s a movement in the corner of the Ferris wheel; she thinks maybe it’s turning. All she can hear is the drone, the drone, and her head hurts. It’s hard to pay attention. She watches it until it’s clear the circle’s not revolving. But there is something moving up there. Something crawls on one of the spokes, a dark insect in silhouette. Sam watches it stretch itself, creeping in along the limb until it reaches the hub of the wheel. It curls, descends. The insect grows two legs, two arms, resolves itself into the shape of a person.

  She feels sick. More deaths, more falling.

  She closes her eyes but it hurts her head to keep them closed. And when she looks again it isn’t climbing up, the body, it’s climbing down. Whoever it is has reached the centre of the wheel and turns at the top of a metal ladder set against the frame. Then they calmly begin to descend that too. She watches them until they reach the bottom, step onto concrete, still holding the ladder, shaking. White marks on their jeans, their hood over their head. They turn and push the hood back with a hand.

  It’s a woman, her features dark, her ears protruding from straight black hair. Familiar, though it’s hard to see from here. She sways, lets go of the ladder. She stumbles to the edge of the cement, and her hair falls across her face in a wet tangle. She shakes her head at something, then steps off, one hand to the edge.

  She lands on her own feet, then disappears behind that white monster. Its plaster tentacles stretch out, its broken eye is darkly watching. Sam feels a shudder run through her, so deep it might come from the earth under her feet.

  When the woman appears again, a man is with her. Half-hidden in the weeds, a clean stranger in navy suit pants and a straw-coloured shirt, he moves his arms to help her walk. She pushes them away. She takes a step. She lifts her face in Sam’s direction.

  Their eyes should meet, but they don’t. There’s no connection. She looks and looks without seeing. It’s so unsettling.

  Sam feels a drop of sweat run down her back, a warm thrum of fear. She sinks onto her heels to steady herself. She has never felt so known.

  The unfamiliar man, dark hair in a neat fringe, too well dressed, out of place. A small orange box at his waist, like a tape measure, but blinking. He puts a hand across the woman’s back and tries to guide her. He is speaking to her, reaching a hand to her face, but he’s looking down at his orange box. The woman’s eyes are large and hollow through a crosshatch of hair. The ears. First, Sam thinks of her mother. But she’s darker, her skin. And her mother’s right here, in the room with her. Another here, pressed against this one, like that warm hand against her back.

  From where she crouches Sam can see herself shiver. Her hair is wet, stuck to her forehead; it must have been raining. The ground is uneven, weeded with prickle-bush and the high stalks of wild barley. Walking it Sam wavers, almost falls. Then she stops to retch into the tall grass. One of her hands pushes against the shoulder of the brother. Sam makes a guess at brother, though she doesn’t have one. It’s just that Sam touches him in a familiar way, like family.

  There’s another rattle in her body, from her body or the earth beneath, or from the struggle to remain. Like the feel of drilling somewhere below. The others feel it too, this rattle, she sees them flinch with it, reach for each other. They turn their heads as a tentacle drops from the body of the monster and shatters on the ground. The plaster makes a tiny white cloud, but no sound. The shaking stops.

  They make their way across the field now, edging closer. The detail is present, excruciating. Sam can feel the splintered wood prick her shoulder blades through the t-shirt. She can feel the paint scatter at the small of her back, the concentration of her own weight in parts of her feet. Her bare toes press into the sharp gravel. Touch, vision are clear, even the edges of smells, but like always this drone noise, drowning out all sound.

  They come close enough for her to read their faces. Sam opens her mouth. The mouth says something like Same. So far the same. The shapes exaggerated. She knows she can’t be heard.

  The eyes look through her.

  Pain, for certain. Fear. And something else, a sort of laughing at the spell of the words. Same, she says again. She’s saying her own name. Sam wants to wave, yell out, to help somehow, but she can’t move. They have already turned for the gate.

  ‘Fuck,’ she says. She swallows. It’s not a word she’s used to; she doesn’t know why she’s said it. Her voice doesn’t work, it hasn’t made a sound, but even so she is worried that Ivy can hear her, in the room at her back. Time tugs her back there like a hook tugs fish. But she wants to stay.

  The figures are rushing now. No fence; they step around the gate. Through the iron, the houses are known but wrong, walls false or broken, their gardens overgrown, windows smashed, some with sections missing or collapsed. That place with the tree growing through the garage roof, she knows that house, the tree’s limbs going grey. She glimpses some other structure to the north, curved glass winking just enough to guess it’s there. Then the hills disappear.

  A chalky cloud takes shape, spreads out and down. Sam feels that rattle through her feet, jarring up through her heels and spine, the belch arriving on delay. The chalk fog eats the land beyond the town, swallows the strange building with its glass curve perched beyond the houses.

  The fog creeps, quick then slow. The houses seem solid again through its filter, then they go.

  Someone runs through it, stumbles, falls like a doll in the road. Blonde hair spreads thin and still across the broken asphalt. The doll doesn’t move now. She can’t see it move.

  Fog curls through the gate like a thousand hands. Silences the world.

  All of this now will be gone.

  The sound of the bottle cut into the pain, and Sam felt Ivy flinch beside her. She pressed her slight body against her mother’s back, protective of its turned warmth. Her heart stumbled in her chest. The things she had seen made little sense, but the images were clearer, they were more sustained than they had been before. She had to concentrate, to think about what they meant.

  ‘Are you all right?’ mumbled Ivy, in her sleeping voice.

  The fog was dissipating. The noise had all but gone. Piece by piece, that world dismantled. No more harm and no more damage. Just a heart punching too much blood, and an echo in her head of breaking glass. There was no relief in speaking.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ sai
d Sam. ‘A bad dream.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Ivy muttered, curved in sleep.

  12

  Outside, the world we built is soon dismantled. The hire companies come and take the machinery and the chain-link fence and the scaffolding away, and the buildings are exposed. The barn a stark blue box, the toy train station nothing but a false front: a single, flimsy wall with its painted clock. The wheel remains in the centre, bold and bright and motorless, like the spine of a prototype animal rejected by God in development, like the bones of a house after fire.

  We watch this happen through the windows of the village. A construction in reverse.

  We did not go far. It seemed to us the most logical thing was to move in the direction we had already chosen. Not all of us. Many simply kept moving. Some left in daylight, driving slowly up Kurrajong Street, waving and honking their horns, like they were off to a wedding. Others went at night, saying nothing. The Ellisons moved in here and then disappeared, leaving all their stuff behind. We went through their belongings and redistributed them, pleased with our toasters and glassware and books. It is only fair, when there is a need. It is not as if anyone has died, we say, and catch ourselves saying it, and our smiles are grim.

  We try to make ourselves at home, to improvise. We’d like new blinds; the treeless yards of the village feel exposed, and the outside air has a lingering scent. But we’re hesitant to make big purchases. We don’t know what’s in store for us yet. It’s wise to take things one day at a time.

  After a few weeks the smell has mostly gone, or we’ve gotten used to it. We are settling in, adapting well. We raid our old houses, take taps and basins from old kitchens and fit them to the new. We make lists of things we want: curtains, kitchen furniture, a floating floor. We don’t leave the units much, in case someone comes (who would come here, after this?), but we make it fun. If we go out, we go down to the Commie. Carl keeps the place open most days, but the bar feels empty, and we find we prefer to buy takeaway bottles and bring them back here to sit in our courtyard, under the dome. You can’t be too sure of the air.

  We let the sea wash out. Let it have what it has taken. The water’s retreat has shortened our horizon. We focus on the near things: interiors, housekeeping. We work at a manageable scale. We hang flags and blankets to screen out the glare, the dust, and we make our places nice, in tentative ways. We think it’s temporary, even when we say it’s feeling more and more like home.

  Most of us don’t go down to the park. It’s better not to think about what’s left behind. Only Roger goes there most days to take his photographs.

  ‘It’s got something,’ he says. He doesn’t say what.

  One day, we follow him into the ragged field. Weeds are sprouting in the shadows. The gate looks lonely now, standing there without a fence keeping it company. We see Jill walking across the other side of the field, carrying a bag into the barn, and we call out to her.

  ‘All right?’ she asks.

  ‘We thought you’d gone with your mum and dad,’ we call, and walk closer.

  ‘Nup.’ She smiles, hefts her bag. ‘Work to do.’

  ‘That’s great,’ we say. We look expectant. We know the kids are taking from the old houses too. Furniture, wiring. The bag is full of something, but it isn’t obvious what. Jill sees us looking.

  ‘Got to get ready for tourist season,’ she says.

  Our feet shuffle closer together. Perhaps she is joking. ‘And how is Sam?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Sam’s not with us.’ Her eyes are bulging, but she’s only seventeen, it’s not unusual.

  ‘Not with you.’ It could mean a number of things. We have a sense there’s something we’re supposed to take care of, somewhere we’re supposed to be. But we’ve all had this feeling on and off for years, since we stopped working.

  ‘She isn’t talking yet,’ she says, slow and clear.

  ‘I see,’ says Trent. We aren’t sure what to make of that. Not talking at all, or just about this?

  ‘Tourist season,’ says Jean. ‘What do you mean, tourist season?’

  ‘It’s just an idea,’ Jill says, and sighs. ‘Look. Don’t worry about it. We’re taking care of it.’ She turns towards the barn with her load.

  We watch her go. A breeze weaves around our legs like a dog’s ghost, makes our clothes flap sadly.

  ‘Good luck,’ Roger says, watching Jill’s broad strides. She doesn’t turn. ‘Luck!’ he calls out again. He has hold of the word like a stick. We can’t seem to think past it. We have stayed outside too long today. Our thoughts are foggy. If Jill has heard, she doesn’t answer.

  ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ Roger says.

  ‘This,’ says Curdie, gesturing. ‘Really?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. People like this kind of thing.’ Roger kicks half the gate with one foot to make his point and it falls into the newly sprouting grass.

  ‘There you go,’ says Jean.

  The headcount at the bar doesn’t take as long these days. The list of who has gone, counted on bent fingers at the checkout in the Foodtown, grows longer than the list of those who stay. Within weeks, we find we have begun to forget their names, the ones who’ve left us; we’ve stopped wondering where and how, and started to accept their absences as facts, to expand our lives into the space made available. It’s like when someone dies. You have to go on living.

  We have quite a bit of room to live, now. We emerge into our common courtyard, stand around under the dome and peer at the enormous barbecue. We count heads. We often have a sense that we should all be present, as if someone’s going to come and check. But who would come? No-one does.

  Annette is the last to go. She takes Andrew and the station wagon, leaves Curdie the ute. We are childless couples now, empty nesters. A few singles. Fiona’s still got Quayde, a sweet boy, although he’s never going to be independent. We come down to an even dozen. There is plenty of room. Enough space for everybody, and visitors too, if anyone comes. Roger maintains that they will, any day now. We don’t believe it.

  The first carload arrives on a Sunday. They drive up in a station wagon with a blanket rucked up against the back window. We’d get backpackers now and then in the old days, grubby youths on camping trips, usually lost; they’d stop for directions, maybe a beer and chips sitting at the Commie’s outside tables, then head back to Hummock and the main road west, off into the romantic discomfort of the desert. We have heard this desert is coming to us, metre by metre, year by year. So there’s not much point in going there ourselves.

  We watch this group out our windows. We would peer through our blinds, if we had blinds, but we still don’t; some of us peer through bedsheets, others through blankets or Australian flags. The adjustable tinting in the glaze offers some protection, but it’s not enough. We watch the station wagon pause at the gate of the park. Half the gate, really, since no-one’s picked up the half that fell.

  ‘We should fix that,’ Curdie says.

  ‘Go ahead,’ says Jean. He’s been looking for something to do.

  ‘What do you think they want?’ asks Allan.

  Roger shushes him. The makeshift curtains ripple. It’s like we’re on safari.

  ‘I’d better go down to the shop,’ says Trent, and grabs his keys.

  The backpackers get out, their sunburnt legs shining, and after looking at the wheel for a few seconds they turn so that they are facing away from it. They reach out with their phones in their hands and raise them, lower them, raise them. They position themselves, arms around each other, the still wheel behind them. It’s only when they pass their phones around afterwards that we realise they’re taking selfies.

  They get back into their car and drive twenty metres to the Foodtown. We watch Trent come out to point up the hill to the village. We duck behind our curtains, but when we see the station wagon coming up the road we go out and stand in a driveway and wait for them
.

  There are two women, almost identical – chubby and pink and singleted – and two men, almost opposites – one tall and black, the other short and fair with a red beard.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ we ask them.

  They look puzzled. ‘Here,’ the tall one says. He raises his arms to embrace the air, and lets them fall. A whiff of his young-man sweat flickers at our memories. The short one just looks at his phone.

  We don’t know what else to ask. The tall one lifts his camera up, seeking permission, and when we nod he starts taking pictures of our makeshift curtains. He takes pictures of the distant hills. He takes pictures of his friends subtly posing while talking to us, the unfinished park in the background.

  ‘Nice camera,’ says Roger.

  ‘Thanks, man,’ he answers, with a sad little smile.

  ‘You’re down here on holidays?’ asks Jean. She does not sound too incredulous.

  The picture-taker ignores this until he has finished collecting. Then he scrolls back through his photos on the camera’s screen. When he has satisfied some internal checklist, he looks up and crinkles his brow at us. His lips are moving.

  ‘Is this everyone?’ he asks.

  We have counted heads already, and know we are eleven, but we count again. ‘All but one. Trent at the shop, whom you met.’ Jean has somehow wound up as our spokesperson. It’s an easy transition from the pub. ‘Oh, and the kids,’ she says.

  ‘Insane,’ he says, cheerful. There is a pause, during which we all beam at each other. One of the women looks off towards the hills, shading her eyes with a hand.

  ‘A real live ghost town,’ she says, to nobody in particular.

  There’s more beaming back and forth.