by Rebecca Lim
The world shrinks down to the screen before my eyes. The noise of the refrigeration units and the industrial-strength rangehood, the passing traffic, a nearby building site, all fade away.
I study what’s written on Ryan’s page, which isn’t a whole lot: his birthday, his mobile number, what he thought of some movie he saw last night. I see that he has two hundred and seventy-one friends, and I mirror Ranald’s actions, moving my finger along the touch-sensitive rectangle at the base of the keyboard to be taken to page after page of profile photos and names. Good-looking teens, moody teens, a smattering of adults who favour group family shots in matching sweaters, people signified by cartoons, obscurely posed objects or a humanoid-shaped blob.
I see that Brenda Sorensen is there, Ryan’s ex- girlfriend. Richard Coates, Lauren Daley’s boyfriend at the time she was snatched right out of her bedroom. It doesn’t surprise me that Lauren herself isn’t there, after what she’s been through. I wonder how she’s doing; if you ever really come back sane from something like that.
I click the Back button until I’m staring at Ryan’s photo again, and find myself hunched over a little, shivering, arms crossed over my belly as if I’m in pain. My left hand no longer hurts, but the feeling inside me is as if acid is running through my veins now, not blood.
Still, I hesitate. I’m not a member of Ryan’s tribe, could be any old psycho out there in the world who’s chanced across his picture, but isn’t that almost the point?
I move my finger along that sliver of touch- sensitive steel again and the small arrow drifts erratically towards the send message option. I click on it, finally, and a small window opens, Ryan’s image in the top left-hand corner.
I’m no typist, but I’m a fast study. I scan the keyboard before me and tap into the window:
Ryan, it’s Mercy. Don’t look at the photo for clues because you won’t see anything more than sunlight. There’s no connection between her or Carmen. No rationale for why she was chosen, and not by me. Never by me. I’m still the random by-product of some process I don’t quite understand.
But I remember Lauren, I remember the pine tree you wasted, Mulvaney’s, the drive out to Little Falls, to Port Marie, in your car. All of it. Don’t ask me how, but I do.
I’ll find you. You know I’m nothing, if not stubborn. Just tell me where you are, and quickly.
I add:
I need go off-road for a while.
Then I click send and the words and the window instantly vanish, leaving only Ryan’s profile page, that heart-stopping photograph in which he is looking away from me.
Chapter 9
I sit there for a few minutes flicking between his window and my window. There’s no change to either.
I add Ryan as a friend. Still nothing happens.
Ranald wanders back over, clearing his throat politely just in case I hadn’t seen him coming. ‘All done?’ he asks hesitantly, lifting the chewed fingernails of one hand to his lips, then remembering and dropping them again. ‘I do actually kind of need to get back to work now. Without me, P/2/P would fall apart. I personally wrote most of their applications — they’d be nothing without me. Even though I get treated like the company punching bag most days. I keep threatening to leave, to take them all down with me, but no one ever takes me seriously.’ He gives a small, self-deprecating laugh.
‘Of course. I’m sorry,’ I say and get up, disappointed that I can’t linger over the machine, obscurely disheartened by the fact that Ryan hasn’t replied straightaway.
I mean, what had I been expecting? I don’t even know where he is. He could be asleep. He could be out of town.
Or with Brenda Sorensen, points out that little voice inside.
Now that Lauren’s back safely in the fold, Ryan’s free to get on with his life. I know Brenda wanted him back pretty badly, and what Brenda wants, Brenda usually gets. Ryan may take one look at the message sent to him by a total stranger from Melbourne, Australia, and hit delete. There’s no guarantee he’ll even read it.
Despite all that, I’m hoping he’ll see the message, understand it and act on the feelings he had for me. He has to, or Luc and I might never ‘reconnect’ again. There’s a lot riding on this.
And truth be told, I’m kind of sick of having to be self-sufficient and resourceful, you know? It’d be nice to have someone in my corner for a change; to be appreciated — loved, even — for myself, no matter what face I might be wearing. I’m the first one to tell you that self-pity is for idiots, but I wasn’t made to bear these burdens alone. I was part of something bigger than me, once. I was made for a purpose and, in some way, I know that I’ve failed.
I want to come in from the cold. I don’t want to be an exile any more. And if there are consequences, then so be it.
I catch myself drawing one finger down the side of Ryan’s face on the screen and hastily close the window.
‘Sorry,’ I say again, hoping Ranald didn’t catch my moment of weakness. ‘And thank you. You’ve been very generous with your equipment, and your time.’
Ranald stares down at me for a moment, and his eyes seem very dark. ‘You take care out there,’ he says quietly, tapping one ragged fingernail on the screen, which has now turned black. ‘It’s called a “web” for good reason. Newbies like you can get eaten alive.’
‘Thanks for the tip,’ I reply.
As I move out of my seat, I push the screen down towards the keyboard, thinking to shut the machine.
‘Wait!’ Ranald exclaims. ‘Let me shut it down properly first.’
I’d thought it had already turned itself off, but as I watch, a thin ribbon of white appears in the inky background of the screen, so faint that at first I think it’s just a trick of the light. It streams towards me in a hypnotic, side-winding fashion, like a cobra preparing to strike. As it expands and grows brighter, I see that it isn’t a snake at all, but a quote in stark white text on that field of black.
It reads: Abyssus abyssum invocat.
Literally: Hell invokes hell. I frown. In common speech, I suppose you could say it means something like one bad thing begets another.
‘It’s my screen saver,’ Ranald says quickly, eyes bright. ‘Do you speak Latin?’
Why do I get the sense that it’s almost like he wants me to?
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘None at all.’
He doesn’t need to know that Latin is like mea lingua to me, my mother tongue. I speak it and read it almost as if it is the language in which I think, in which I dream. Where this facility comes from is anyone’s guess.
‘Not many people do,’ he replies with a small smile, sending his laptop to sleep and shutting it with a snap. ‘Which is a loss to the world, as is the death of anything beautiful.’
I give him a small wave and head back towards the counter, my eyes colliding with Sulaiman’s as he stares out through the serving hatch, an unreadable expression on his face.
As soon as I leave here today, I’m going to that internet place in Chinatown to see whether Ryan’s responded to my message. I don’t know if I can wait that long, or what I’ll do if he does reply. How do I get from here to where he is? Lela’s got no money, and I can hardly materialise there again, like I did once before. It doesn’t work that way, no matter how much I might wish it to.
First step hardly even describes the journey I may have to make to get back to Luc.
And what happens to Lela’s dying mother if Lela suddenly vanishes off the face of the earth? Because that’s what I intend to do. I can’t just abandon Karen Neill to save myself, can I?
But theremesno point obsessing about any of this until I know if Ryan cares enough about me, Mercy, to reply. It all comes down to him. What he does next determines the course of everything for me.
A customer blocks my way as I head back to the counter. It’s the corporate gnome from yesterday morning who called Justine a hooker — probably back to settle a score with me. Well, join the queue, bozo, I think.
Aloud, I say, ‘Can I help you?’
I know it’s a warm day outside but that can’t possibly explain why the gnome’s sweating as if he’s in the grip of a terrible fever. His skin is slick and shiny with moisture, his thinning hair, moustache and beard are dark with sweat, although the air conditioner is on full blast in here, as are the two ceiling fans. The man’s eyes are wide, a blank terror in them. He looks wired.
He reaches out for my arm like a zombie and it’s instinctive when I reply sharply, ‘Don’t touch me. What do you want?’ in almost the same breath, the words running together.
‘I want you to sit down,’ he says in a weirdly controlled voice. ‘And you, and you, too.’ He swings and points a shaking finger at Sulaiman, at Cecilia behind the coffee machine. ‘Get out here.’
Cecilia and I exchange glances before she slides around the counter and comes to an uncertain standstill in front of the hot food counter.
‘You,’ he addresses Reggie, who’s just come bustling into the café swinging a couple of shopping bags, ‘lock the door and put up the Closed sign. No one comes in or goes out.’
‘Now just a minute!’ Ranald blusters, computer bag on one shoulder, on the verge of leaving. ‘I’m already late.’
‘Sit,’ says the gnome, stabbing one finger at a table near the door.
It’s clear from Ranald’s face that he hates being told what to do. But, responding to something in the man’s voice, he reluctantly slides into a seat with a frown and places his computer bag between his feet.
Reggie takes the fight right up to the guy. ‘Franklin Murray, I know who you are. You buy a chicken salad sandwich from me every week. Which doesn’t entitle you to do shit, in my book, let alone pull this kind of stunt.’
Something in Reggie’s waspish tone seems to harden the teetering resolve inside Franklin Murray’s soul. Because, suddenly, the terror is gone and his face grows pale and set. He roars, loud enough to make Reggie lose her grip on one of her bags in surprise, ‘I want you all to SIT DOWN. WHY WON’T YOU SIT DOWN?’
‘I’ll call the cops,’ Reggie snaps, brassy to the last, hooking up the fallen shopping bag by one of its handles. ‘Don’t push me.’
‘Don’t push ME,’ Franklin screams again, shaking bunched fists at Reggie like an apoplectic dwarf. ‘Don’t ever push me again, you hard-faceditch of a woman. Because I have a gun.’
He pulls it out of an inner breast pocket of his suit jacket and points it at my temple.
Reggie takes one look at the weapon and quietly locks the door and turns the sign to read Closed.
‘Pull down all the blinds,’ Franklin orders.
Reggie does as she’s told without even a hint of backchat. He waves his gun at her and she sits at an empty table, shopping abandoned in the walkway near the door.
‘You!’ Franklin addresses Sulaiman rudely. ‘You deaf as well as stupid? Get in here with the rest of them.’
Sulaiman complies, but takes his time. He doesn’t look afraid; in fact, he’s showing no emotion at all. He’s like a man mountain, broad and well over six feet tall. The man with the handgun would be lucky to clear five and a half in lifts.
‘SIT,’ Franklin yells nervously at him.
‘I would prefer to stand,’ Sulaiman rumbles, wiping his hands on his apron front then tugging his cook’s cap off his head of short, black curls.
‘I’ll hit her,’ Franklin threatens, indicating me with the muzzle of the gun.
Sulaiman glances sharply at me before pulling out a chair and sinking into it carefully. It creaks as he pushes it back to give himself more leg room. He tosses his cap onto the table in front of him as if he is throwing down a challenge.
Satisfied, Franklin marches me back over to the seat I’d only just vacated and pushes me down into it. And that’s when I feel it. Like an energy, at once hot and cold, hair-raising, like a hum, like vinegar in my bones.
I glance around sharply, looking for the source of that feeling, see an errant patch of light move across the wall near the air conditioner, see it fly across the face of the coffee machine a second later, get lost in the lit-up hot-food display, in the reflective chrome of the chair legs and seat backs.
The malakh’s inside the room with us, and no one knows it but me. The real world, the other world, quietly, imperceptibly, bleeding one into the other.
Franklin waves his gun at Cecilia without speaking and she slides into an empty chair, crossing her arms protectively around herself.
‘What are you planning to do to us?’ Ranald calls out. ‘People are going to miss me, you know. You chose the wrong guy to mess with.’
‘Oh yeah? You look like a low-level functionary to me,’ Franklin shoots back, and Ranald’s expression darkens into fury for a moment. ‘I want you to pray, that’s what I want you to do. Because I’m going to kill every single one of you and then I’m going to kill myself. That will show them.’
‘Show who?’ I ask quietly, and the black, single- barrelled handgun swings back in my direction.
Out of the corner of my eye I watch a smudge of light settle on the floor at Ranald’s feet, slide on a moment later, pool beneath the table at which Cecilia is seated.
The malakh’s so close now that the energy it gives off is almost painful. The grating zing, zing noise it makes every time it moves is vibrating in my bones.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I say into the barrel of Franklin’s gun, more curious than afraid. ‘What would drive you to destroy a room full of strangers? Or yourself?’
I don’t believe for a second that he means it. I don’t need to touch him to know that he’s literally oozing fear. He’s a coward, a bragger, a big-noter. He’ll never pull the trigger. On me, or himself. The man’s just looking for a spot on the nightly news, crying out for some good old- fashioned attention.
‘I poured my blood into that company,’ Franklin’s voice begins to shake, along with his gun hand, ‘and they “rationalised” my job out of existence. I’m fifty-two years old. My wife . . .’ he’s openly weeping now, tears streaming down his cheeks, into his beard, snot running down his face, ‘will not remotely understand when I tell her that I will shortly be forced to declare bankruptcy. She buys a new wardrobe for each goddamned season. She’s the type of woman who throws new clothes away unworn with their tags still attached. She will not comprehend it when I tell her that we are on the brink of losing everything.’
I frown, watch the blur of light leach slowly across the floor. Settle almost up against one of Franklin’s shiny Italian loafers.
‘I’m going to make them pay — in blood,’ the little man sobs.
‘You will be in hell, Franklin,’ Sulaiman warns from his chair.
‘SHUT UP!’ Franklin yells. ‘I didn’t ask for your opinion, darkie. There’s no such place as hell.’
‘It’s not just a place,’ Sulaiman answers, undeterred. ‘It’s a state. And your soul will be lost to it immediately if you do what you say you intend.’
The little puddle of light seems to shiver, to lift partway off the greasy linoleum, at Sulaiman’s words.
‘Do you want me to shoot you first?’ Franklin shrieks, peeling the gun off me and pointing it at Sulaiman. ‘Because I will. I’m not here for a lesson in theology from someone like you.’ He spits on the ground.
‘You wouldn’t know the first thing about someone like me,’ Sulaiman answers gravely.
Franklin cocks the hammer of the gun with the thumb of his right hand and steps backwards into the pool of light at his feet.
In the strange manner I sometimes have of taking in too much too quickly, I register in an instant that the light is gone. Gone into Franklin Murray.
Franklin begins to claw wordlessly at his corded neck with his free hand as the malakh takes possession of his body. ‘I — can’t — breathe,’ he gasps, eyes bulging. He seems to be dancing on the spot to some crazy beat that only he can hear. The malakh’s power must be weakening because Franklin’s actually trying to fight it off
.
I see Reggie shoot a look across the room at Cecilia. Ranald is watching the little man scratch at his face, at his torso, with wide eyes.
Franklin’s skin is giving off that sickly grey glow now, although no one in the room but me seems to notice.
‘Give me the gun, Franklin,’ Sulaiman says with narrowed eyes. ‘You don’t want to do this.’
His words have the opposite effect. In a state beyond rage, beyond reason, Franklin pulls the trigger.
Do I imagine that I hear the firing pin striking the primer, the explosion of some unstable compound within, the roar of a secondary ignition, the cartridge leaving the chamber? Do I imagine that I react in the same moment that the bullet enters the barrel, surging out of my chair and pushing the man’s gun hand upwards with my left hand as my right reaches towards his face?
I wonder where my anger has gone. It’s been replaced by a terrible sadness, a bone-deep weariness. There is so much desperation in this world, played out at the margins, hardly disturbing the surface. I wonder, not for the first time, whether it really is possible for me to die in another’s body, or whether I’ll just wake up somewhere else, as someone else, when it’s all over.
I guess I’m about to find out.
The instant the heel of my right hand touches Franklin’s forehead, I see —
— everything that is running through his head in technicolour. The face of his exacting wife, coldly beautiful, expensively maintained; the memory of when each son was born, both now in their late teens, both taking after their brunette mother in looks, in attitude, with their constant want, want, want; the first dog Franklin ever owned; the funeral of the first person he ever knew to die; a marketing presentation where the audio system failed, leaving him speechless before an audience of hundreds; his first promotion; an argument with his father that resulted in blows and a rift that never healed; the moment he was fired and told to clear his desk out within the hour. There’s his fear, too, that he might be suffering some kind of stroke, some kind of seizure. Just a jumble of ordinary things; the quantum of a life reduced to mere seconds, mere flashes; a sound and light show amped up by adrenaline, by the belief that he will shortly depart this life and it will all have been for nothing.
