Dyschronia

by Jennifer Mills

  When she put her hand over the side, it was quickly numb from the cold. They didn’t go out far before Curdie switched the motor off and let them drift. The water was gentle, as flat as a lake. Down below, Sam could see a few faint shapes shuffling around. They were smaller and less impressive than she remembered them. She felt different out here with them, but couldn’t put her finger on how.

  The cuttlefish glittered and glowed feebly in the seagrass. There were only a few of them, and they were hard to make out from the surface. Their skins were flickering dully, and their sleepy eyes seemed half-closed with some private sickness. Frills fluttered without conviction, with the raggedness sea creatures had before dying. They had the addled, beaten look of migraine sufferers.

  ‘I want to go back,’ said Sam.

  ‘Feeling seasick?’ Curdie yelled, after he’d switched the outboard back on.

  She nodded. But now that she thought about it, her nausea had gone completely. For the first time in months she was lifted clear of sickness. Only when she stepped into the shallows with Jill, waved the men back out into the water, and began the long wade through the shin-deep expanse to dry land, did her body remember its affliction.

  The two of them walked the shoreline for a while without talking, turning small cuttlebones over with their toes. They were getting smaller and harder to find, though the reams of plastic persisted. The horizon fizzed with rain and the wind blew sand into her eyes. The cuttlefish might not be there in great numbers, but their bones were still washing up.

  ‘Maybe they just found some new spot out there, a better one,’ Jill said.

  ‘Maybe.’ Sam crouched to examine a red pebble that turned out to be a smoothed chunk of roof tile. She picked up a plastic bottle cap, thinking she might at least try to pick up some of the debris. There was a feeling she had near the sea, as if she owed it something. But when she turned the cap over in her hand, she saw that the thread inside was encrusted with tiny periwinkles, huddled there like refugees. She threw it across the sand, and got to her feet.

  A print of pain flickered at her temples. She looked out to sea and, for a sick moment, the water was completely still. Frozen. White light was breaking through. Her eyes blacked and cleared; she’d got up too quickly, that was all. She reached for Jill’s shoulder to steady herself, and the water rushed in towards her. It washed over her bare feet, personable, affectionate, coaxing.

  It wasn’t a person. It couldn’t die. It moved with its own logic and rhythm. Like time, a constant, always in motion.

  Jill’s arm fitted around her shoulders. It was starting to get dark.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ she said.

  They climbed up to the car park to retrieve their bikes. Something was caught in Sam’s throat, a stone that prevented her from speaking. They rode back from the jetty’s stump, sprinting all the way to town, pedalling fast over the cracked asphalt, dodging potholes filled with sand. Sam felt the road hard in her jaw. The breath burned in her throat.

  The park was empty now of workers, its safety-orange bunting flapping in the dusk breeze. The Giant Cuttlefish lurked in its enclosure at the centre. The frame curved out and upwards. It took the shape imposed on it by necessity, its weight borne by brackets of steel and timber, like ribs. It was an oddly mammalian beginning for a mollusc.

  It was still different. It was going to be different.

  ‘Why the big rush?’ Jill asked, panting as she leaned her bike beside Sam’s.

  ‘I just needed to see it,’ Sam said.

  They stared in at the unfinished park. The blank clock face on the station was dark and moving subtly. Sam thought that she was seeing things, her mind playing tricks, but it didn’t feel like a migraine.

  ‘Can you see that?’ she asked Jill, pointing.

  ‘It’s moths,’ Jill said, still a little breathless. The empty clock face was carpeted with them. They must have mistaken it for the moon.

  33

  We don’t blame Ed. He was doing his best to help, and if he didn’t tell us about all this at the time, about what was stored up there, it could only be because he wanted to protect us.

  The suicides were still fresh. The earth was still settling on the graves of our neighbours, our colleagues. It was never official, but we knew there was a connection. The air we breathed had long been full of infiltrations; our minds were clouded by smoke. We were just getting free of it, just getting clear. And Ed was kind, always looking for the best in the situation. Always finding a way forward. He would have wanted us to feel safe, to believe that the earth beneath our feet was solid, to believe that the money coming in was an investment in our future, as well as a reparation for our loss.

  It was never just a theme park. It was a promise, and a hope. An act of faith.

  ‘I think I sort of knew,’ says Candace. ‘I think I sort of guessed something was buried up there. You get a feeling for a place. I thought it was an old feeling, just something from before our time.’

  ‘And I thought. Well. The dogs,’ says Ken.

  ‘What dogs?’ asks Greg.

  ‘They don’t go near the place,’ he says. ‘They always go around.’

  ‘I never noticed,’ says Trent. ‘I noticed the trees, though.’

  We turn to him.

  ‘They all turned grey,’ he says.

  Each of us steps back into his or her own considerations. Memories slide into place like pins in a lock. There were challenges each of us avoided, perhaps, questions each of us refrained from asking. We only saw what fitted inside our own story.

  ‘But Sam saw it,’ says Roger. ‘She saw the flood coming.’

  Greg looks at Ivy, but she doesn’t speak. ‘Even if she did, that doesn’t make it natural,’ he says.

  ‘Poor Sam,’ Fiona says, stroking Quayde’s hair. He wriggles out from under her hand, much too big for petting. ‘She was just different. Kids don’t realise the consequences, often. I’m sure she never meant any harm.’

  ‘She got everything turned around in her head,’ says Trent. ‘It wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘She had a gift,’ says Roger. He gets up out of his chair and walks over to where Ivy’s sitting. He squats beside her, puts a hand on the armrest of her chair. Ivy doesn’t turn her face. In the artificial light it looks drawn and sickly, almost grey. ‘Sam had a gift. She still does, doesn’t she?’

  Everyone’s looking at Ivy now, but she still won’t speak. She looks distant, distracted somehow. She’s not drinking any more. She’s folded into her body, holding it neatly still.

  ‘They had a name for it,’ she says at last. Even her voice sounds compacted.

  ‘Dyschronia,’ says Roger. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Ivy turns to him, her eyes hollow. ‘No,’ she says, frowning. Roger sinks back onto his heels, but he doesn’t stand.

  ‘Sequestration,’ she says.

  ‘Ed did mention something about that,’ says Bob. ‘Draining the reservoir.’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Greg. ‘It had to be drained before we could use it to store the material.’

  ‘Carbon dioxide, is it?’ Bob’s voice is almost hopeful.

  Greg smiles thinly. ‘It’s a range of substances.’

  ‘Then that’s what the trucks were looking for,’ Jean says. ‘They were checking for leaks.’

  ‘How long have they known it was dangerous?’ Fiona asks. ‘This is criminal.’

  Greg clears his throat. ‘It passed all the risk assessments. It wasn’t illegal, not at the time, it was thought the technology would develop.’ The voice has some of his father’s reassurance, we think, an inherited strength, and then we remember it can’t be genetic. ‘We didn’t think the containment would break down as fast as it has. The water table shifted faster than anyone predicted. And besides, it was the only way to keep the income stream flowing. How do you think we paid for all
this?’

  And we look around us at our courtyard, which once felt like such luxury. Now we see the shabbiness of the place, its timbre of loss: the unfinished edges where walls meet floors, the cracks we’ve hidden behind furniture, the thin doors between us, and the monasticism, the cell-like living, where we now huddle.

  The dome, though. State-of-the-art protection.

  Is that why?

  Teams of stars twinkle overhead. It’s a fine night. It’s getting late.

  ‘It’s not much, is it,’ says Jean. ‘We’re not worth much.’ She yawns, and the yawn is passed around the room until Quayde enjoys it too much, exaggerating, and Fiona has to quiet him.

  ‘It isn’t personal,’ Greg says. ‘I’m trying to make the transition easy for you.’

  Bob sits forward, leaning on his knees. ‘If we go, what happens to the site? They just let it leak away into the atmosphere?’ There are rules about this now, laws that prevent delayed emissions. There are probably ways to get around the rules, like there always have been.

  ‘The company’s obligated to recoup the loss for shareholders. There’s still some interest in the reservoir, as it happens. There’s an offer being made, but it’s conditional.’

  ‘Conditional on what?’

  ‘On its being post-settlement.’ He won’t look any of us in the eye. Not only are we worth very little, we’re a liability. Just being here, we erode the value of a dumping ground.

  We look over at Ivy. She looks like she has fallen asleep, her head against her chest. Sunk into her jungle of sadness like one of those statues from a lost civilisation. A place where some tragedy has been forgotten. Suddenly sleep is all that any of us want. It’s been a long day.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ says Greg, as if reading our minds. He opens his case to put the tablet back inside. He takes out an orange device, studies it for a moment and then returns it. We have a strange prickling of déjà vu. ‘Are there any questions?’

  ‘How do we know it’s safe right now?’ Roger asks.

  ‘Nothing bad will happen while I’m here,’ says Greg. ‘I can promise you that much.’

  Ivy wakes with a snort. She looks exhausted.

  We’re all so tired. It crashes over us in a wave, like something underneath is pulling us down by our feet. All we want is the reprieve of a night’s unconsciousness. All we want is not to have to move, just for a few hours, not to have to think. We show Ivy and Greg where the spare rooms are, the extra units we left furnished in case our grown kids ever came to visit, or needed to come back. No-one ever has.

  ‘You’ve got till tomorrow,’ Greg says, yawning. ‘That’s the best I can offer.’

  We’re safe, we remember, so long as he’s here, and we move towards our separate cells, passing the light switches, feeling our way by the walls, knowing it like sleepwalkers.

  34

  As she climbed out of the car, Sam saw that a tarpaulin had already been unfolded on the sand and Curdie’s boat was being dragged up through the shallows, heave by heave, by a dozen people, six either side. It was raining, the drizzling, indecisive rain of spring, and although it didn’t seem heavy she was quickly soaked through. Lightning flickered in the distance, out over the sea, too far to hear the thunder. Half the town was already there; still others were emerging from their cars behind her. By the time she and Ed and Ivy got to the tarp the boat was sliding to a stop.

  Their bodies surrounded it, arms reaching to hold still the frame. It was hard to know what the thing in it was, the way it lay there. There was a long part, mostly white, and then there were tentacles, or arms; eventually Sam could make out suckers along them. It was so huge and they were so uncertain of its structural integrity that even when they had got the thing right up to dry land, moving it required some plan, some discussion. Besides that, there was the smell.

  Most people had already covered their mouths. Sam inhaled the complex odour, following an impulse to process the information before it was lost. Ammonia and rot and something else, some olfactory intruder. Her neighbours shot her curious looks, a question in them. She covered her mouth, shook her head. She hadn’t seen this happening.

  She had seen something like it, though. Bodies lying out across the sand, much worse than this. A smell so terrible that she could hardly breathe. The sea’s unsound retraction.

  This was different. Something had changed.

  The smell was not overwhelming, but it felt alive. It stretched its tentacles around her face, pressed wetly into every orifice. Her ears were blocked by it. She heard it humming.

  It wasn’t just the smell. The creature, the rare giant squid, was singing.

  It hummed of its journey. It sang of becoming a ghost of itself in the water, rising and rising from the deep, still self-propelling, but growing weak. Then riding up and down for a time without sinking, touched and tugged by whatever ate it from beneath. Backwards and forwards. The gradual inclination towards death. Stripped of its pinkish skin until it was this yellow-white and slippery thing. A net had swept beneath it and, bonelessly, it had slid from the net and into the belly of this little boat. Now it would have to slide out of that belly, and onto the sheet, and then.

  It wasn’t singing. It was dead.

  A decision had been made; Sam stepped back as a dozen people lifted one side of the boat and tipped it. The animal slopped gelatinously onto the tarp like a bowlful of overcooked noodles. She could not have said it had a face, exactly, but the way it landed, its one intact eye was pointed right at her. It sat neatly in position, this eye, a glob of black and white the size of a human head. Sam stared back at its huge dead stare. The humming sound was in her mouth, and it tasted like diesel fuel.

  ‘The King of the Sea,’ Carl said, with some ceremony. They let the boat fall back again. Men and women stood around the tarp, arms folded behind their backs, ready to move as one. It was like a funeral, solemn and public, fragile to the spoilage of sudden laughter.

  ‘Queen,’ said Curdie. ‘She’s a female.’

  Carl frowned. ‘How can you tell?’

  Curdie nudged the mantle with his boot. A spill of tiny, pearlescent jellies rolled out across the tarp. Other animals had ripped her open in the water, and she had been dead for a while; her eggs would have been lost anyway. Now they gushed out, followed by a slug of some sticky black substance which must have been ink, though it was much thicker and reeked of tar. Curdie counted her remaining arms and single tentacle, the end of which was chewed to string.

  ‘Weird smell,’ he said.

  So it was not just Sam. No-one else seemed bothered by the humming, but they all raised hands to cover their faces against the odour. The squid had been rotting for days already, and now, exposed on all sides to the air, that process was intensifying. A few flies buzzed around Sam’s face and she brushed them away. Roger took photos on his new digital SLR, unobtrusively circling the group to shoot between bodies. When he passed Sam, he pressed one heavy hand against her shoulder.

  ‘Let’s get her out of here,’ said Annette.

  She had driven the ute down the track through the dunes and backed it as close as she could get to the tarp without getting bogged. Now the tray was open, bags of ice spread out along each side. She’d been on the phone to the museum already; they were on their way. Keep it cold, they’d said. Frozen, if you can. It might already be too late.

  They did not have much time.

  Sam joined the procession. She reached for a section of wet plastic and walked alongside her neighbours. They hauled the giant up the ramp, dragged her to the trailer on her stretcher. It was like a burial at sea played out in reverse, solemnity turning to euphoria. Young children followed beside them with eyes wide. She wasn’t as heavy as Sam expected, just awkward to lift between them, spreading like liquid. Most of the tiny eggs spilled out on the sand behind her in a mass, joining with the rest of the waste that lay there.<
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  As they lifted, the group compressed, and Sam was shoved aside. She let go, turned to look behind her at the sea. It was shifting in its unrelenting way, reaching and retracting. White peaks formed in the windy distance. Beyond that it became a grey blur, indistinguishable from the sky. It persisted.

  At last they had the whole tarp on the tray and quickly wrapped the sides over her. As if at a signal, the rain became suddenly heavy. It ran down over the tarp and into the tray, poured out of the gaps at its edges and into people’s boots. Curdie pulled the cover over quickly, and the rest of them made their way up to the road. The hum was blunted, then went silent.

  Ed appeared beside Sam as she was walking, a weight and warmth without words. She expected him to say something, but he didn’t speak. When she got in the back seat of the car, he was watching her in the rear-view mirror, his expression grave.

  ‘Bit of a surprise,’ said Ivy, buckling her seatbelt. Sam couldn’t see her face, but the tone made her prickle.

  Ed cleared his throat, rested one hand briefly on her mother’s knee.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sam kept her voice even, though her head was churning. But Ivy wouldn’t answer.

  Their car followed the road with the rest, the ute moving more slowly through the sand. Ivy did not look at her until they pulled up in front of the pub, and then only smiled thinly and withdrew. On the veranda, a small crowd had already gathered out of the rain, waiting for the spectacle to arrive.

  Annette backed the ute into the driveway, and the tarpaulin was lifted into the loading bay, carried through the insulated doors, and placed gently on the polished cement floor of the cool room. Carl had taken all the beer out, stacked it out of the way, and turned the air to freezing. He was the only one who had got used to the temperature; the others shuffled out quickly.

  Sam took a seat at the bar with the others, watched Jean pour out instant coffees. Her mother had disappeared into the crowd with Ed, and she did not want to find her.