by A. A. Bell
For my sons,
whom I shall haunt with love
forever from the echoes of yesterday.
CONTENTS
COVER
PART ONE The Butcher’s Surgery
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
PART TWO The Prophecies of Freddie Leopard
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
PART THREE Ballad of the Poet Trees
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
PART FOUR The Brown Fog of Yester-week
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
PART FIVE Thresholds of Clarity
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
PART SIX Echoes of Dying Innocence
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
PART SEVEN Insights
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
PART EIGHT Future Witness
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
PART NINE Forever the Last Kiss
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
PART TEN Sacrificed for Silence
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Books by A.A. Bell
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
PART ONE
The Butcher’s Surgery
No great genius has ever existed
without some touch of madness
Aristotle
ONE
For longer than she cared to remember, Mira Chambers had suffered her worst days after hearing one of three questions whispered on the far side of doors and observation windows.
‘Why bother blindfolding a blind woman?’
‘Why restrain her?’
Or: ‘How much trouble could she be?’
This morning, though, she had heard all three, and all from the same newcomer. The musk of his aftershave lingered, even though he’d only come in long enough to clear away her breakfast scraps.
She couldn’t be sure how much time she had left before he returned to begin a long day of torturous routines, so she tested the strength of the restraints that bound her wrists and ankles to the wheelchair. Only small movements at first, since struggling often caused them to tighten — as they did now.
Wriggling caused the chair to bump against her steel bunk and its thin mattress, despite the wheel locks, and she grunted, trying to jump the whole thing closer to her door. Too heavy. She gritted her teeth and strained anyway, frustrated even further by the electronic purr of the overhead surveillance camerathat had been installed since her last escape attempt. Was that yesterday or the day before?
She couldn’t be sure of that either, since regular sedation and the lack of sensory contact with the outside world made it difficult to keep track of time. But she remembered waking to an argument between two gruff female staff as to whether a second surveillance unit should be fitted in the adjoining storeroom, which, at the time, had been undergoing renovation to provide her with a shower and toilet. She could still smell the fresh paint.
The newcomer’s rubber-soled shoes squeaked outside in the hall.
Her stomach tightened.
The door creaked, spilling a gust of warmth onto her face, until the hiss of a piston drew it closed behind him. The lock clicked heavily.
‘Sorry, Mira,’ he said as his soft soles squeaked around behind her. ‘It’s a madhouse out there.’
He chuckled, as if the idea amused him.
His large callused hand touched her shoulder and she tensed, inadvertently making the straps around her wrists bite harder into her skin. Everyone else had soft hands.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to take this off today?’ He tapped twice gently on the side of the bandages that covered her damaged eyes.
From somewhere else in the building she heard the echo of an older woman screaming.
Trembling, she shook her head and tried not to cringe away from him. Of the many male voices she’d encountered so far in this new facility, his was the gentlest. A pity that would change soon.
‘It doesn’t look good for me, you know.’ He touched the buckle of her wrist restraint, making her flinch. ‘Makes it look as if you’re feral. Not a good start for our first day together, is it?’
She shook her head again, trying to guess the responses that would placate him or at least prevent him from calling for help from the man who always smelled of oily leather and stale cigars — or worse, the woman with the Taser.
‘I’ll make a deal with you.’ His crisp cotton clothes rustled as he shifted around in front of her. ‘I’ll let you keep the bandage on. It must look better than those stitches in your eyes at the moment. But you have to promise first that you’ll let me roll you out of here today without misbehaving.’
She nodded.
‘Okay, so we’re not going to need these nasty old straps to hold you down, are we?’
She nodded again and he gently eased open the buckles beside her ankles, then worked both leg restraints off at the same time in a daring show of trust. Or was it control over her? She wondered what trick he might be trying to play.
‘You remember what happened yesterday?’ he asked.
She turned her head away, suppressing a small smile. The man who smelled of oily leather and cigars was probably still picking fragments of her dinner plate out of his groin; her pain, in comparison, had faded swiftly at the tip of a cold needle.
‘That’s not going to happen with me, I hope?’
She turned her head in small movements from side to side.
‘Let me hear that sweet voice of yours so I know you mean it.’
‘I’ll be good,’ she whispered.
Outside in the hall, she heard the soft shuffling sounds of more rubber-soled shoes approaching; almost silent, with a subtle but regular scuff of one heel that sent a cold shiver down her spine. Her nostrils flared, expecting to smell leather soon and the stale breath that always accompanied those shoes.
‘Promise?’
She chewed on her lip, considering her alternatives, then nodded twice and hoped it looked convincing.
‘Good girl.’ He released both restraints from her wrists. ‘Now we can relax and enjoy each other’s company. Okay?’ He kicked off the brakes to her wheelchair. ‘We’re going to have lots of fun today.’
A knock at the door attracted his squeaky shoes away from her.
No brakes, she thought. Is he testing me?
‘That was quick,’ he said, as the door creaked open. ‘Thanks, Neville. If there’s one thing that bugs me about starting as a temp again, it’s all this extra red tape.’
Mira heard paper shuffling as someone thumbed through a thick file. She tensed at the scent of oiled leather drifting in on the air conditioning.
‘Prep her for me,’ Neville said, his voice sounding as slimy as his skin. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour.’
‘No!’ Mira slammed her fist down on the arm of her wheelchair. ‘Stay away from me!’ Her leg flailed out, threatening to kick anyone who came within reach.
Neville laughed. ‘I see her seds have worn off. Has she started rantin’ about her poetry yet?’
‘Not poetry, poet trees!�
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‘Yeah, yeah. There’s a whole book of ‘em on the floor where you threw it yesterday.’
‘Poet trees, you pig! Poet treeeees!’
‘I don’t think she likes you,’ chuckled Mr Squeaky-shoes.
‘She hates everybody.’
‘I do not! I promised him I’d be good today!’
‘Calm down,’ crooned Mr Squeaky-shoes. ‘I’ll take you anywhere you need to go, Mira, if that’s what you prefer. But first we have to make you look presentable, okay?’
‘Good luck,’ Neville grunted. ‘You’ll need it if you’re dumb enough to let her loose like that an’ turn your back. Just remember she has to stay barefoot. No bra for the same reason. She used the last one as a garrotte on Ged Stevens — the guy you’re replacin'.’
‘She killed him?’
‘Damn near. He’s over in Q-block now with the quadriplegics.’
‘You’re pulling my leg, right? New kid on the block?’
Two voices laughed at him from the hall. The woman with the Taser had managed to creep close to Mira’s room again without making any sound.
‘A little tug never hurt nobody,’ Neville said. ‘Ged’s working over there. Light duties only.’
‘His confidence is shot for good,’ the Taser woman added.
‘And he’s not her first victim,’ Neville warned. ‘She goes off with the fairies, she does; big, hairy, nasty buggers who drive her crazy.’
‘But how can she hallucinate if she can’t see anything?’ the newcomer asked. ‘She was blind even before that butcher got to her, wasn’t she?’
‘You’re forgetting why you’re here, Benny,’ Neville said. ‘If she was just blind, we wouldn’t need your particular talents. But Freddie can’t have butchered her in a random attack. No anaesthetic? She must have been in on it. She’s a queer one, I’m telling you, so if you’re not up to the job, you’d better say so now, while you’re still fully capable of walking out of here.’
‘And if you still think we’re joking,’ said the Taser woman with a chuckle, ‘try convincing her she’ll still be as blind as a batfish after those stitches come out.’
‘No!’ Mira screamed.
Neville laughed again. He muttered something to the Taser woman and they left, still chuckling all the way down the hall. The door clicked shut, sealing Mr Squeaky-shoes in with her.
‘Never mind them,’ he said. ‘It’s me they’re poking fun at. I used to work in a children’s ward on the mainland, but... Well, let’s just say I had to take a break for a few years and now they’re rubbing me the wrong way.’
Who cares about you?
He crossed the floor to her side, papers shuffling most of the way until she heard him set them down on the small round table where three bland meals were ritually served to her every day. Although she’d never actually seen anything in this latest cell, she knew every corner of the windowless room by touch and smell. Perhaps even better than he did, rusty and inexperienced as he claimed to be. Strange that they let him near her at all, considering how careful they’d always been in keeping everyone but the highest-trained staff away from her — especially since Ged Stevens. If that was the new matron’s mistake, let them live with it!
Soon, she decided. Instructed by them, he’d soon become like them, just as his first awkward steps at the morning ritual seemed to suggest. Probably working off a list, like the last six.
He lifted something from the top of a wide chest of drawers where they stored clothes that someone else purchased and regularly laundered for her — a hairbrush, she guessed, or maybe make-up; always one and then the other.
‘Do you want me to brush your hair, or can I trust you?’
Mira uncurled her right hand, hoping he’d place the potential weapon into it.
‘Ask nicely, Mira. I want us to be friends, remember?’
‘Please,’ she whispered.
‘Please, Ben,’ he persisted. ‘Friends talk to each other calmly, using their first names.’
‘Please... Ben.’
He touched the hairbrush gently down on her palm.
She clenched her fingers around the handle, knowing he was beside her now, the most vulnerable part of his body roughly level with her elbow, just as Neville had been when she’d last tried to escape.
‘Okay, be good now,’ he warned as if he realised his vulnerability. ‘And let me untie your bandage.’
‘No!’ Her hands slapped up to protect her face. ‘You made a deal!’ She hunched forward, one hand clutched firmly onto the blindfold and the other coiling the brush in close to her chest like a knife, ready to protect herself.
‘You don’t need it anymore, Mira. I’m told the stitches should have stopped bleeding yesterday.’
‘I can still see light and dark through my eyelids! I promised I’d be good, I did! Please, don’t take it off me.’
‘Okay, okay!’ He took a noisy step backwards. ‘We don’t need to take it off completely. Hold it over your eyes until I’m done with your hair. Our deal is a two-way thing, remember, Mira, so calm down and behave now, please, while I untie it, so I don’t have to call for an extra dose of your medication.’
Static crackled and she knew he’d flicked the button on his two-way radio as a warning that help would come running if he chose to ask for it.
Mira hugged herself, rocking backwards and forwards in the chair that rolled gently in time with her. She wondered why he didn’t rush to immobilise her like the others usually did, twisting her arms, pulling her ponytail or using the Taser.
‘And for the record,’ he said, ‘in case your head isn’t in the right place at the moment, I haven’t hurt you yetthis morning, have I? Sure, it’s only my first day with you but I can assure you I don’t intend to hurt you either.’ He chuckled. ‘Unless maybe you enjoy that kind of thing?’
Mira shook her head cautiously, then straightened herself in the chair, still keeping a tight grip on the handle of the hairbrush.
‘There now. That’s a good girl. Calm all the way down. Think of your favourite place, maybe. Does that help?’
A white flash stung the darkness inside her blindfold. Memory of pain seared through her eyes to the back of her skull and hot flushes rippled over her skin. She saw a vision of her favourite place: in her father’s forest, a treehouse overlooking a secluded bay. But that was so long ago, before he died, before the soldiers and government doctors came for her, and before those rude ghosts appeared to torment her each time she opened her eyes.
‘Mira, I asked you a question. Did you hear me?’
She nodded, and drew the brush up to her bedraggled ponytail to pull out the cropped tangles below the blindfold, the ends still annoyingly uneven since the last time she’d woken to find her curls stolen.
‘Well, that’s a start,’ he conceded. ‘But you’ll have to do much better than that today. We’ve got special visitors.’
The brush snagged in her hair. ‘Doctors?’ Her hand trembled.
‘Specialists,’ he replied, as if that made any difference. ‘And before you start freaking out on me again, they’re not here to pull out your stitches. These guys are only conducting a survey. In fact, they’ll be doing checkups on everyone this week, staff included.’
‘Doctors for you too?’
‘Specialists,’ he reminded her. ‘They’re not even going to touch you.’
Liar. ‘How can they do checkups if they don’t touch me?’
‘They just want to make observations while they ask a few questions. Look, if it helps to set your mind at rest, I’ll go first and you can hold my hand while they run through the process. How’s that?’
‘No pain?’
‘No pain,’ he promised. ‘Come on now, we have to hurry with your hair or we might be late. What say we test our friendship a little more this morning?’
‘So long as I don’t have to —’
‘— take off your bandage. I know. But I have to check there’s no blood or pus at some stage today.’
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‘There’s no pus or I’d feel it.’
‘Okay, for now I’m happy to take your word for it. But we still have to brush your hair. What if you hold the bandage so it doesn’t fall away from your eyes while I undo it?’
Cautiously, she nodded, but as his fingers touched the knot, another white flash of pain stung through her eyes to the back of her brain.
‘Mira, are you ready? I’m going to release it now.’
She nodded again, but also clamped her eyes shut tight behind the blindfold to prevent any trace of light from making it through her eyelids. The stitches snagged on the soft felt and she whimpered.
‘Relax. You can trust me.’
That’s what he said, she thought. She’d heard the same words in another time, another place, and remembered the soldier wading through floodwaters with his three-man team to reach her. Then she saw herself as a nine-year-old, soaking wet and naked except for a bath towel as she huddled against the largest tree in the bayside grove that had become her family’s tombstone. A pair of silver ghost gums towered over her, their slender branches sparkling with intricate goldpatterns of Braille poetry. She heard her mother reading; her voice fragile, like an angel’s hymn whispered to the wind. Then she glanced at the soldiers again and knew what would happen if she couldn’t stop them from wading closer. She clutched both hands over the blindfold, still holding the hairbrush, and clamped her eyes shut even tighter, trying not to remember what happened next.
‘I won’t hurt you. Cross my heart and hope to —’
‘No! That’s what he said!’ Her stitches snagged again and her pain shot to agony.
‘That’s what who said?’
