by Alan Carter
He swirled the remains of his brandy. ‘I suppose it couldn’t hurt, could it? Shouldn’t take long.’
Julia beamed, excited. ‘Right, then! What do I need to do? Am I all right sitting just here, or should I move to a more conducive chair?’
He told her she was just fine where she was. He fished out his sterling silver pocketwatch, given to him by his own family when he reached his majority, more than thirty years ago. The case was elegantly engraved; it would fetch a sizeable sum at auction, should he ever be foolish or desperate enough to sell it. ‘All I need you to do, Miss Templesmith, is to relax, take deep, slow breaths, and keep your eyes on my watch here.’ He sat on a stool before her, and dangled the watch from its fob chain; it turned this way and that, glittering like liquid gold with reflected firelight. ‘I want you to relax as much as you can, from the tips of your toes, all the way up to the top of your head. If you feel a need to settle back in the chair, please feel free. I just want you to relax, relax, perhaps think about some of those favourite places from your childhood, and keep watching the light on the watch here …’
I had to force myself to look away; I was feeling rather sleepy myself. Soon she had drifted away into a state somewhere between awareness and sleep, and she curled up in the large chair, looking like nothing so much as a little girl. She wore a small smile. The firelight flicked across her face.
‘Now what?’ I whispered, trying not to sound too impressed.
‘First, we give her a subconscious trigger so that we can bring her back to consciousness immediately if anything worrying occurs. Then another trigger that can be used, in the future, should we need to induce this state again.’
‘Why would we want to do it again?’
‘It’s what Freud does, though there I suppose he’s thinking about recurring weekly visits.’
We decided to omit the latter trigger. Soon Julia was ready.
Gordon took her back to her home, more than three months earlier, to before she began experiencing the disturbing dreams. At the time Julia had been living at the country home of her cousin Jeremy, an earl, and his wife, Countess Mary. It was a modest holding, four hundred acres, in a picturesque valley not far from Leeds. ‘What do you do each day, Miss Templesmith?’
She spoke in a quiet, sleepy sort of voice, and described wonderful meals, extensive reading of newspapers and novels, visits into Leeds for afternoon tea with local friends, visits to the library each day for fresh books, evening walks through the hills with Jeremy and his dogs. It sounded like a wonderful, uncomplicated sort of life — except for the manner in which Julia was handed around between all the relatives. She did not like her own home these days, but could not bring herself to sell it and move; this was the family estate: it had to remain in the Templesmith family, even though she was the last of the direct line.
‘All right,’ Gordon said, ‘let’s go to the first night you experienced the dream.’
Julia looked anxious, shifting in the chair.
Gordon said, ‘It will be all right. Nothing can hurt you.’
She settled. He proceeded.
Julia went on to describe the first dream, which, perhaps disappointingly, consisted of no particular distinct imagery, but instead a growing sense of cold unease that built, slowly, into panic — and then something indefinable that made Julia blurt out my name, gasping, as if afraid for her own life.
‘Bring her out, Gordon!’
Julia was greatly distressed, crying now, ‘Oh my God, Ruth! No, not Ruth!’ She went on and on. I gathered this was how it had been, that first night. Gordon interrupted, and brought her away from the source of that fear, brought her back to a safe, quiet place. She calmed. I dabbed at her tears with my handkerchief.
‘Now what?’ I said.
‘We need to find out where this is coming from. It seems unlikely that, in the middle of an otherwise serene sort of life, she should suddenly get upset over something to do with her niece, whom she hasn’t seen in years. Makes no sense.’
‘I would not say we are close, but we have always gotten on well, after a fashion.’
Gordon went back to Julia, and asked her if she could go back to the point where she first felt that anxiety. She nodded, and said, fidgeting already, ‘All right. I can feel it. It’s cold. I’m so cold.’
‘Where is the cold coming from, Miss Templesmith? Is it like a wind or a breeze?’
She looked confused for a moment, then ‘looked’ to her left. ‘Yes … yes, I can feel it coming from …’
I was feeling cold, too, listening to this, and wondering where Gordon was going.
‘Julia, I want to see if you can move into the wind. Can you do that? Can you see where the cold wind is coming from?’
She was shivering, but looked determined. It was easy to imagine the child Julia looking like this on finding a secret passage in the old house, and intent on finding out where it went, regardless of the possible danger of exploring in a darkness lit only by candle or lamplight. ‘I can feel it growing stronger. It’s … so cold …’ I could see her chin trembling a little. She rubbed at her arms. I fetched a blanket, and Gordon used suggestion to help her feel more protected from the wind.
‘Tell me what you see now, Julia?’
‘I’m … I’m in a sort of tunnel, or a passageway. It’s very dark. The floor creaks. Things are fluttering around my face. Moths, I think, perhaps. There’s a bad smell. I’m not sure. I can just barely see.’
‘How is the wind?’
‘Stronger. Much stronger. It’s …’ She frowned. ‘It’s hard to press ahead.’
‘You have the strength to get there, Julia. You have the strength.’
‘I’m not sure I want to get there. I’m scared. It’s … not just cold. There’s something else. Something bad.’
‘Gordon? Is this wise?’
He glanced at me. ‘I’m not sure how many chances we’ll have to do this.’
‘Be careful!’
He nodded. ‘Julia?’
‘Yes?’ It was a little girl’s voice.
‘Can you go on?’
‘I want to.’
‘Let me know if you want to stop. Just raise a finger or use the trigger word, all right?’ The trigger word was, prosaically enough, ‘Exit!’
‘All right.’
‘What can you see now?’
‘There’s a light.’
‘What sort of light?’
‘C-candles, I think. There’s a room.’
‘Is the wind coming from this room?’
She nodded slowly, and looked very frightened. Her eyes still closed, she looked around. Whispering, she said, ‘It looks like a cellar. Smells dusty, and there’s old bottles and casks in racks, and some steps.’
‘Is anybody there with you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. There’s just … there’s … a circle thing … on the floor …’
‘A circle on the floor?’ I did not like the sound of this. ‘Is it painted or drawn in chalk?’
‘It looks like paint,’ she whispered in the tiniest voice, ‘but it doesn’t smell like paint.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s dreadfully bad …’
‘Is this a room you have seen before?’
Julia shook her head again. ‘I’ve seen rooms like it. It smells.’
‘Can you move into the room?’
Feeling tense myself, I said to Julia, ‘It’s all right, Julia. You’re safe.’
But she was shaking her head again. ‘It’s not safe! It’s cold here, it’s cold! I’m freezing to death, it’s, it’s … like a blizzard, I want to go!’
‘Gordon, bring her out!’
He wanted her to stay under a little bit longer, to learn more, but Julia’s desperation was all-too-palpable. ‘All right. Julia?’
Julia suddenly gasped in fright: ‘Someone’s coming! Footsteps!’
‘Julia — exit!’
(From Black Light, a novel, forthcoming, 2015.)
CONTRIBUTORS
K.A. BEDFORD is the author of such recent books as Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait and Paradox Resolution. He lives with his wife Michelle and dog Freckle in the radiation-blasted wastelands north of the river in Perth, Australia. He is twice winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel. Look him up on Twitter, @kabedford.
ALAN CARTER was born in Sunderland, UK — long long ago and far far away. He now lives in Fremantle with his wife Kath and son Liam. He works as a television documentary director. In his spare time he follows a black line up and down the Fremantle pool. This extract is taken from Prime Cut (Fremantle Press 2011), which won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction. Its sequel, Getting Warmer, was published in 2013. The third Cato Kwong novel will be published in 2015.
MARTIN CHAMBERS was born in Perth, the son of two journalists. He is married and has two adult daughters. He has worked as a biologist, a tour guide, a whitewater rafting guide, a lab assistant, a publican, a kayak designer, a ferry skipper and in mineral exploration. Between episodes of cycling, kayaking, sailing or travel, he writes. ‘The Pit’ is taken from his novel How I Became the Mr Big of People Smuggling (FP 2014), which was shortlisted for the T. A. G. Hungerford Award.
AMANDA CURTIN has published, to critical acclaim, novels Elemental (2013) and The Sinkings (2008) and short story collection Inherited (2011). She is also a book editor, the current fiction editor for Westerly and a presenter of workshops for writers. She has a PhD in Writing and is an Accredited Editor. Being a mildly phobic kind of person, she associates white knuckles with summer, heights, small planes, yoghurt and tofu.
PETER DOCKER was born in Narrogin, Western Australia, the son of a motor mechanic, and grew up on remote Lort River Station, Coomalbidgup. He studied writing at Curtin University, Perth, and acting at Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. Never much of a pugilist, Docker has had his nose broken three times, suffered fourteen broken ribs, and one cracked cheekbone. Docker was once ejected from Steve’s Hotel in Nedlands for fighting in the nude. Having been locked up in four states, Docker feels that the East Perth lock-up is the most conducive for writing poetry. Whilst a member of the Army Reserve, he was charged and almost court-martialled for his overenthusiastic (and perhaps inappropriate) use of high explosives. ‘Nana Was Right’ is extracted from Sweet One, Peter’s third novel, following Someone Else’s Country (FP 2005) and The Waterboys (FP 2011).
When JON DOUST was in primary school he played it safe, but as he moved through high school he developed a taste for the occasional rush of fear and trepidation. As a consequence he lived a dangerous and exhausting life until he met his second wife, who almost tamed him, and forced him to sit quietly for long periods. He began to write. He has not stopped. His first novel, Boy on a Wire (FP 2009), was longlisted for the 2010 Miles Franklin and his second, To the Highlands (FP 2012), was shortlisted for the White Knuckle Ride of 1968. The books are part of a series, One Boy’s Journey to Man, that charts Jack Muir’s rocky path to manhood — and Australia’s rocky passage to nationhood. Jon is currently at work on the third novel: The One-Fingered Hitchhiker.
ROBERT EDESON was born in Perth, Western Australia, and educated at Christ Church Grammar School, the University of Western Australia and the University of Cambridge. He has been a consultant anaesthetist and researcher, publishing in the neuroscience, biophysical and mathematical literatures. The Weaver Fish (FP 2013), Edeson’s first work of fiction, won the T. A. G. Hungerford Award. It features, inter alia, renowned linguist Dr E. O. M. Tøssentern, who vanishes into thin air during a balloon expedition. The extract reproduced here is taken from an address entitled ‘Thomas MacAkerman to Josef Ta’Salmoud: A Century of the Weaver Fish’ delivered by Dr Tøssentern to the Lindenblüten Society in Nazarene College, Cambridge.
RON ELLIOTT is a scriptwriter, director and academic, and author of the novel Spinner (FP 2010). ‘Double or Nothing’ is an excerpt from a novella of the same name, and is taken from Now Showing, a collection of crime related fiction (FP 2013). Ron’s directorial credits include a noir feature film, Justice, and episodes of ABC programs such as Dancing Daze, Relative Merits and Studio 86. He has written for Home and Away, Minty, Wild Kat, Ship to Shore and the AFI nominated telemovie Southern Cross. Ron is currently writing a thriller novel, Burn Patterns.
GOLDIE GOLDBLOOM is the West Australian author of The Paperpark Shoe (FP 2010), which won the USA AWP Novel Award, and the Novel of the Year from the Independent Publishers Association, as well as a collection of short stories, You Lose These (FP 2011). Her story ‘The Chevra’ won Hunger Mountain’s 2013 Non Fiction award. In 2014, she received both a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Brown Foundation Fellowship at Dora Maar House in France. Goldbloom teaches creative writing at Northwestern University and is a well-known speaker at international writing conferences. She is also an LGBT activist and the mother of eight children.
ADAM MORRIS is an Irish-born author and the lead singer-songwriter for the Murder Mouse Blues Band. He has won numerous international awards for his songwriting and performs regularly throughout the world with Murder Mouse as well as being a much sought after solo performer. He is currently undertaking PhD studies at the University of Western Australia. ‘Reunion’ is taken from Adam’s first novel, My Dog Gave Me the Clap (FP 2011).
DEBORAH ROBERTSON was born in Bridgetown, Western Australia. Her first book, Proudflesh (FP 1998), won the Steele Rudd Award for the best Australian short story collection in its year of publication. Her first novel, Careless, won the 2006 Colin Roderick Award and the 2007 Nita B. Kibble Award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. A second novel, Sweet Old World, was published in 2012. Deborah lives in Melbourne.
JULIENNE VAN LOON is the author of Road Story and Beneath the Bloodwood Tree. She won the The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award for Road Story, which was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book (Asia and Pacific) and for the WA Premier’s Book Awards for Fiction. Julienne teaches writing at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. Her shorter works have appeared in The Monthly and Griffith Review. ‘He Lost Her Twice’ is an extract from her third novel, Harmless (FP 2013).
DAVE WARNER is the author of nine novels, including the winner of the 1996 West Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction, City of Light, and six other non-fiction titles. Dave Warner originally gained national recognition as a musician-songwriter. His nine albums include the gold album Mug’s Game and in 1992 he was the inaugural inductee into the West Australian Rock’n’Roll Hall of Renown. Dave has written for feature film, stage, television, radio and newspapers and has published a successful series of children’s novels. ‘Jasper’s Creek’ is an extract from his forthcoming novel, Waiting for the Cyclone (FP 2015).
