by A. A. Bell
She stopped, pulling Ben to a stop too.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
The boy kicked at her — at her shin, she guessed, although she couldn’t see anything of her own body — and his ghostly foot passed painlessly through her. He kicked again and she kicked back at him, causing him to baulk and fall backwards. He stared up at her defiantly with round glassy eyes. I’m not scared of ghosts! he shouted silently, then made a fist at her andpulled himself up from the tiles. He scurried back to his mother, who scolded him soundlessly for running away.
‘Mira?’ Ben persisted. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘That kid saw me!’
‘What kid?’
‘That little boy, right there!’ She shivered and pointed towards the elevator.
‘That’s two old men,’ Ben replied. ‘Come on. I’ve got you.’
He tugged her along a little further, but she faltered as she drew nearer to the ghostly boy, who still glared at her. He poked his tongue out at her and she poked hers back at him.
‘Mira?’ Ben chided. ‘What was that for?’
‘He’s a brat. That’s his language.’
‘Which one?’ asked Duet. ‘The one with the walking cane or the one in the wheelchair?’
‘It’s a good thing they didn’t see you,’ Ben warned. ‘Behave yourself now. We’re in public.’
‘Sure; I’ll just pretend I’m good.’
‘You are good,’ Ben insisted. ‘You just haven’t had enough chances to practise. Describe what you see,’ he said, leading her across the broad foyer towards another set of hallways. ‘It’ll keep your mind busy.’
She nodded and increased her pace in time with him. ‘We’re inside the Drift Inn …’ She saw the name of the hotel to her right in large letters above a desk labelled Reception. Underneath it was a plaque that said Established 1891. The carving was intriguingly intricate; it’d take a whole day to explore with her fingers. ‘I like this place … especially the ceiling. It’s like looking up into the upside-down hull of a timber ship.’
‘It is,’ Ben agreed. ‘Have you been here before?’
She shook her head and pulled away from him to dodge a ghostly timber podium that held the hotel’s guestbook for visitors to sign. ‘I’ve never been into any hotel.’
‘I’ll have to take you away on a holiday one day. You’ll love it — hotel staff at your beck and call day and night.’
‘Ha! Matron Sanchez would tell me I have that already. I still prefer my poet trees. Ghosts don’t hurt me at home, but busy places with ghosts and invisibles living together are downright confusing.’
Ben chuckled grimly. ‘It’s not so long ago,’ he said, patting her hand, ‘that a conversation like that would have me calling for your next batch of medication. I sure hope today’s session can throw more light on what’s really going on.’
‘You said it, Ben — in bold Braille the size of thumbtacks!’
‘Down here,’ Duet called as his shoes padded onto carpet.
Beyond the sound of his shoes, Mira spotted Hawthorn’s ghost in the hall, standing outside a door, as if guarding it. His head turned towards her and she smiled in greeting, but wasn’t surprised when he failed to acknowledge her.
As she drew nearer, she heard voices, muffled and soft, from the closed room behind him. One she recognised as Dr Van Danik’s.
‘… rock-climbing, and seventh in the Tour de France that year,’ he boasted.
‘I prefer hang-gliding,’ said a female voice she didn’t recognise. ‘The last time I raced cross-country was in March, on a camel.’
‘At a zoo or travelling circus?’
‘Through a minefield actually, with a sick child who barely made it to the nearest field hospital.’
‘Finally,’ Duet announced. ‘Here we are.’
A latch creaked; it sounded as if he’d shoulderedopen a piston-hinged door. Mira heard the air compress, but the ghostly door didn’t budge. She gripped tighter onto Ben’s arm and closed her eyes, allowing him to lead her through the illusions of both Hawthorn and the closed door to get inside.
‘Don’t you know how to knock?’ snapped Van Danik. He sounded embarrassed. Mira couldn’t see him. The only ghost in the large room was that of Dr Zhou.
‘What’s going on?’ Duet asked. ‘Why are you hooked up to that thing? And where’s Dr Zhou?’
There was a sound like wires being shuffled and a chair rolled softly over carpet. Mira caught the very faint scent of spring flowers and hairspray.
‘Who’s the lady?’ she whispered to Ben.
‘Duet’s partner. Her name, if I remember correctly, is Karin Sei.’
‘She can see now?’ Van Danik asked.
‘I’m asking the questions,’ Duet insisted. ‘Why is Karin hooked up to that thing?’
‘You game for a go too, meathead? We’re confirming mutual trustworthiness.’
‘Biological compatibility too, no doubt. Where’s Dr Zhou?’
Duet was still near the door. Mira guessed he was holding it open since she hadn’t heard the piston decompress yet.
‘Out,’ Karin replied.
‘You let him go out by himself?’
‘Not out out,’ she replied, equally accusatory. ‘He’s next door in the business centre, making phone calls, and he wouldn’t have been there alone if you’d been back on time. What kept you?’
Duet didn’t reply, but Mira guessed that he must have made a signal or face at her or Ben, because the woman muttered something under her breath.
‘This is a hotel not a battlefield,’ Van Danik said. ‘So get off her case. And stay out of my way,’ he added as his tone became more jovial, ‘while I clean off these sexy fingerprints.’
Sexy fingerprints? Mira wondered what he meant. He hadn’t said anything last time about her fingerprints. She rubbed her fingertips together, wondering what the difference was between her prints and the woman’s who’d been sitting in the char.
‘Does he mean oily?’ she whispered to Ben.
‘No, I think the oil comes later,’ he said with a laugh.
‘That means her fingers are dry now?’
‘It means,’ Ben said, raising his voice, ‘the doc’s got a crush on his bodyguard.’
Van Danik laughed too. ‘Do me a favour and don’t tell Zan.’
‘Don’t tell me what?’
Zhou’s voice came in through the open doorway. Mira hadn’t heard any other door opening or closing nearby, which suggested he’d come from further down the hall instead of the neighbouring business centre.
Unless that room doesn’t have a door?
‘Hello, Mira. Ben.’ Zhou’s sleeve brushed her arm as he walked past her.
‘Never mind,’ Van Danik said. ‘How went your quest?’
‘How do you think? The nearest optometrist’s is an hour away. Sorry, Mira,’ he added more kindly, ‘I was trying to get a pair of cosmetic contact lenses for you. They’ve got colour embedded in them to make your eyes look any colour you want, which will cover over your own pigments. But I can’t get any until Monday, so I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with your sunglasses until then.’
‘They’re better than nothing,’ she said. ‘I wish I’d had some years ago. Thank you for trying, though.’
Ben’s arm moved but he didn’t let go of her. Plastic rustled on the other side of him and he leaned away for a moment. ‘I think we’re onto something,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ Zhou was beside her now, at the table, shifting a chair. It sounded as if he’d sat in it, but his ghost was already there, seated and playing with screens on his laptop.
‘More glasses,’ Ben explained. ‘Each style seems to have a different effect on her. My old pair, for example, gave her brown-hued hallucinations, while no glasses at all gives the illusion of foggy blue sky. This pair,’ a pause suggested he was showing them around, ‘frightened her so much on the way here that she practically threw them back at me, while Duet’s prescription sunglasses resulte
d in visions that she said were the clearest yet.’
‘What did you see that frightened you the most?’ asked Van Danik.
Mira shivered at the memory of red fog and the killer koala. ‘I’m not sure, but it had lots of teeth and claws.’
‘Don’t worry until we get you into the hot seat,’ Zhou said. ‘If the various filters are having an amplified effect on those remarkable eyes of yours, it will be a fairly easy theory to put to a test.’
‘What about that boy?’ she said, allowing Ben to lead her to the chair. ‘It doesn’t explain how he could see me.’
‘What boy?’ asked Zhou.
Ben pulled the chair back and guided her into it. ‘Mira claims she saw a boy out there near the elevator —’
‘Not just claim — I did see him! And he saw me. He was mongoloid, you know, very cuddly looking with a big round head and eyes like my father.’
Ben crouched beside her. ‘Your father had Down’s syndrome? That’s not on your file. Why didn’t you mention it earlier?’
‘It wasn’t important … was it?’
Van Danik whistled. ‘If both parents carried the Fragile X gene, it would certainly help to explain your mutation.’
‘Mutation?’ Mira frowned. ‘So I really am a mutant?’
‘Oh no, no, no!’ Zhou replied swiftly. ‘With or without your eyes, you’re still the same lovely person. It’s just rare — almost unheard of — for a Down’s syndrome male to sire a child, let alone one with such fine motor skills as you have.’
Mira blushed and fidgeted. Dr Zhou thinks I’m lovely! She wondered how close lovely was to sexy.
Sensing the warmth of Ben’s arm on the table close to hers, she edged a little closer to him. He responded by clasping her fingers and his warmth engulfed her. She blushed again, trying to relax and forget what Van Danik had said about her mutation.
‘I still have doubts,’ Ben confessed. ‘If her father suffered Down’s syndrome, how did he manage to run the bird sanctuary? I mean, obviously there’ve been cases where sufferers have received so much therapy and attention as children they’ve managed to develop well enough to lead close to normal lives as adults, but if that were the case, surely it should have been documented? There has to be something else going on.’
‘He didn’t run the bird sanctuary,’ Mira said. ‘My grandfather did, and when he died of a heart attack, my father pulled down the sign at the gate and told any visitors who came to go away.’
‘How long ago was that?’ asked Ben. ‘That your grandfather died?’
‘I’m not sure. My first year at school, I think, so I must have been five or six.’
‘Regardless,’ Zhou said, ‘you have a unique condition, young lady, that seems to be limiting oramplifying what you’re seeing. Are you ready to find out which it is?’
‘Am I ever!’
Mira listened to the sounds of Van Danik retaking his seat, then allowed him to take her hand away from Ben’s and guide her fingers onto the cool glass receptor. Zhou assisted her with the remote EEG units for her head, and Ben helped attach the heart monitors to her chest, although his fingers seemed almost hesitant.
‘We need to calibrate,’ Zhou told her, ‘so please could you take off your glasses for the control questions.’
‘Didn’t you ask all the control questions last time?’
‘Standard procedure,’ Van Danik explained. ‘Your body’s metabolism runs slightly differently every day, depending on how you’re feeling, what you’ve eaten … Even the ambient temperature and surroundings can affect our readings. So we need to recalibrate our equipment each time.’
‘If I have to start with my glasses off again, can we turn off the lights, please? The bright light hurts me.’
Van Danik and Zhou agreed as one voice.
‘I’ve got the switch,’ Duet offered, still near the door. ‘Karin, you stay in here. I’ll keep watch from the hall.’
‘Isn’t Mr Hawthorn already doing that?’ Mira asked.
‘What did you say?’ asked Duet, sounding shaken.
‘Mr Hawthorn — I saw him out there.’
‘Sergeant Hawthorn? Are you sure?’ asked Karin Sei, equally surprised.
‘Sergeant? I don’t know about any sergeant, but Mr Hawthorn was out there. His first name’s Hank, isn’t it?’
Footsteps hurried past Mira in a perfumed breeze, but when someone bumped against the wall near the door, Mira couldn’t guess if it was Duet or Sei. They were both there and their movements seemed agitated.
‘The hall’s clear,’ Duet reported.
‘Where did you see him?’ asked Sei.
‘He was just there in the hall. I walked through him to get in here, but his ghost goes much slower than his sounds, so maybe he’s still coming?’
‘Oh …’ Duet sighed. ‘I forgot you were crazy.’
‘That’s enough,’ Zhou snapped. ‘Get out and let us get started.’
‘And if you see a waiter,’ quipped Van Danik, ‘order a platter of jelly snakes for us and some chocolate for Mira.’
Mira brightened, surprised that he, of all people, would remember that chocolate was the only sweet she liked.
She heard the door close and the perfume wafted past her again. A chair rolled away from her on casters across the carpet, and she guessed it was Karin Sei rolling her seat to the furthest corner of the room. The chair and her footsteps stopped at the window, and the cushion sighed as it took the weight of her body.
Sighed sexily, Mira thought. She shrugged her hair back off her shoulders, hoping it made her look prettier.
‘When you’re ready,’ Zhou said. ‘The lights are off now, so you can take off your glasses any time.’
Mira took one last look around the foggy room: the lights were still blazing, and there was no sign of Van Danik’s ghost there to assist with the equipment. But she shunned the fear that was swelling up in her chest and resolved to trust them, or at least to trust them not to hurt her any more than was necessary. She didn’t bother to close her eyes this time. She prepared herself mentally for the pain and the terrifying leap into foggyblue sky, then took off her sunglasses in front of Zhou’s ghostly ophthalmoscope.
His ghost and that of the scope disappeared upwards in time with the raising of her glasses. So did the desks, chairs and heavy drapes at the window, replaced by a ghostly blue bed with the bulge of a young couple wrestling … Not wrestling, she realised as the bedcovers fell back. They were naked!
She blushed and looked away, only to find herself inside an old timber wall that had appeared immediately behind her, halving the room. Startled, she shied away from that too, trying hard not to look at either it or the Olympics in the bed.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Ben. ‘What do you see?’
‘It’s a hotel room! What do you think I see?’
‘Can you be more specific?’ asked Zhou.
‘Everything’s blue.’
Metal brushed her cheek and she startled again, but settled quickly, guessing Zhou had adjusted the scope into a slightly different place to its ghost, which she couldn’t see now anyway. She tried to stay still and look around by turning her eyes.
‘You’re in the sky?’ Zhou asked.
‘No, thank goodness. I’m still at ground level, but this conference room is now a bedroom, and we’re not alone. There are two … two ghosts in here.’
She glanced at the lovers. The woman had switched places with the man and was now on top, writhing and silently panting. Her long hair fell wildly down her back, her face contorted and she looked anything but sexy! More like a feral animal.
‘Is it hot in here?’ Mira asked, feeling flustered.
‘Your body temperature has risen a little,’ Van Danik reported. ‘Are you feeling okay?’
Mira tried to concentrate. ‘It’s much smaller in here. There’s a new … I mean an old wall behind me that’s new … The door and window stayed the same, except for the curtains, and all the paint is gone.’
&
nbsp; ‘Paint?’ asked Ben. ‘You mean paintings?’
‘No, the walls are all bare timber now. So is the floor, except for a big sheepskin rug near the bed. Oh, and the light fitting has changed. It’s not a long fluorescent tube anymore. It’s just a bare light bulb.’
‘You have an excellent eye for details,’ Zhou replied. ‘Better than many sighted people. That sounds like an old house I used to live in as a child. It was built during the Depression, when paint was expensive, and my parents were poor political refugees so it never did get a coat before it burned down.’
‘All true as far as she’s concerned,’ Van Danik reported. ‘But she’s still spiking off the scale, same as yesterday. Brain activity, cognitive patterns — they’re all haywire — almost as if she’s getting too much blood supply.’
Mira closed her eyes briefly to ease the pain of trying to focus through a haze. Without the sunglasses, she could feel the perpetual ache beginning to sharpen. She rubbed her eyelids.
‘Hey, look!’ Van Danik said. ‘Do that again, Mira.’
She complied, leaving her eyes closed longer this time and clenching them tighter to maximise her relief.
‘Yes, look, look!’ Van Danik shuffled something metallic across the desk. ‘See that spike, Zan? What do you make of it?’
‘It’s a glitch, unless …’ Zhou moved something else on the desk. ‘Keep your eyes closed, Mira … Now relax your eyelids.’
She obeyed, keeping them closed, but a three-pronged shadow whisked past her face with a breeze and she flinched.
‘Whoa!’ Zhou cried. ‘She saw that!’
‘I saw what?’
‘You tell me,’ he replied. ‘Ask your subconscious.’
‘Please don’t tease me. I had my eyes shut, so even I know I couldn’t see anything.’
‘Even so, you detected something specific — admit it.’
‘Of course, I felt your —’
‘No, Mira,’ Van Danik interrupted. ‘We’re not interested in what you could feel. This scan clearly shows that your brain just received data from your eyes, even though they were closed.’
‘That’s crazy!’ she complained.
‘No, that’s quite normal,’ Zhou replied. ‘All sighted people can detect a certain degree of light through their eyelids, and the brain uses this information to keep reflexes and instincts alert to danger, especially during rest or sleep. Your striking response simply suggests that you’re hypersensitive to this too. So go ahead and ask your subconscious what you think you saw.’
