August

by Gabrielle Lord

  ‘Perfect,’ he said.

  Sharkey pulled over where I indicated, and both Boges and I scrambled down from the truck.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said again. ‘I thought I was done for back there. Let’s hope you don’t have to do this for me a third time.’

  We flashed the light from our mobile phones ahead of us, carefully walking into the darkness of the drainage system, down a steep slope.

  ‘Boges to the rescue,’ I commented to my faithful friend.

  I could see his grin through the shadows.

  ‘I wasn’t happy about you going anywhere with Griff Kirby,’ he explained, ‘so I followed you. I let you out of my sight once at your meeting with Rathbone, and look what happened there. I didn’t want to let that happen again. When I was hiding outside that Dr Leporello’s place I started noticing a few things that troubled me. Like a squad car slowly cruising up and down the street. Like three cops having a deep and meaningful and looking around, as if they were planning something. Another thing I noticed was a guy, like me, hiding and scoping the place out. He matched your description of Sharkey, so I approached him. We teamed up and the rest is history.’

  The slope we were walking on levelled out. It was a cold, humid place, with condensation on the walls and the smell of rubbish and rotten leaves.

  ‘I ran in here once some time back,’ I said to Boges, ‘when I needed a place to hide. I stopped at this spot here.’ I swung my light around the tunnel. Above us on the roof was the ‘No Psycho’ tag. ‘There’s a small landing space up there,’ I said, shining my light towards it. ‘I used it as my bedroom last time I stayed here.’

  ‘Nice,’ he said sarcastically, before squealing and skipping away from a rat that suddenly ran past our feet.

  I looked at my mobile and checked for a signal. I had some reception, so I pulled out the piece of paper Leporello had given me, and dialled the number written on it.

  It went straight through to an automated voicemail. I hesitated for a moment, after a digitised voice prompted me to leave a message after the tone.

  ‘This is Callum Ormond,’ I finally said. ‘I have a number of items in my possession that you will find are essential to you. The information I carry is priceless, and not only that–alone I am worth one hundred thousand dollars. I’m offering myself to you and all the information I have in exchange for the safe return of my sister, Gabbi Ormond. Call me to arrange a meeting.’ I left my number and hung up.

  Boges was looking at me nervously. ‘Big move, dude,’ he said, ‘offering yourself like that.’

  ‘Nothing matters if something happens to Gabbi. Dad wouldn’t have wanted that, and neither do I. I’d take prison any day so my sister can be free. Although I’m hoping to come up with a plan that means we’ll both walk free. Anyway, the ball is in their court now.’

  I squatted and pulled my backpack off me. I felt totally wrecked.

  Boges slid down the wall to sit beside me. ‘Cheer up, dude. You need a good night’s sleep and so do I.’

  The wall and ground we were sitting on started vibrating and thundering noise reverberated throughout the tunnels. I jumped up, alarmed, thinking for a second about floodwaters.

  ‘What the heck is that?’ asked Boges, flashing his light around. Almost as quickly as it started, the sound faded.

  ‘It’s just the trains,’ I said. For a moment I thought of Repro.

  ‘We should get going,’ said Boges.

  Boges and I went our separate ways into the night. I was walking along, thinking I’d call Winter and see if she was at home, when I saw someone on the other side of the road at a wall with a spray can. It was the guy I’d sprung the other day!

  Roughly my size, his hair was long and light blond like mine used to be, sticking out from underneath the hoodie he was wearing over dark denim jeans and black sneakers. He was tagging the building with a bright yellow ‘No Psycho’.

  He turned around completely to check that no-one had spotted him, and that’s when I saw who it actually was.

  I was frozen in shock, and he froze in shock himself!

  It was him!

  My double!

  ‘Hey! You! I want to talk to you!’ I yelled out, starting to run towards him. This time, I was going to catch him. This time, I was determined to corner him and find out who he was, why he looked exactly like me and where he fitted into my story.

  He took off, chucking the spray can away as he ran. We were almost evenly matched, but he did have quite a few metres’ head start and that gave him an advantage.

  I kept after him, taking the same tight corners, skidding around, my footsteps thudding along, echoing his. On and on we ran, with him occasionally looking back to see where I was. And I was right on him.

  He took evasive action, running up a fence and jumping over it. I copied and did exactly the same, landing heavily on the other side, straightening and running hard again after his vanishing figure.

  Soon we were crossing a wide football oval. He jumped a low fence on the other side of the oval and kept running, past rows of houses and apartment buildings. I could see he was tiring. So was I, but I’d had more training in the last six months, and had been well fed and looked after at Winter’s.

  I chased him around a corner and pounded along to keep up with him. I didn’t want him disappearing into one of the houses or buildings before I made the next corner. He almost did, but not quite. I caught a glimpse of his figure running into a tall apartment block and within moments, I was at the heavy glass security door, grabbing it just in time to stop it from locking behind him.

  I hid behind a pot plant and watched where he went. He stopped halfway up the stairs–about the third level–and looked down for me. I was hidden from view. He smiled, panting. He thought he’d lost me.

  Slowly I crept up the stairs after him, keeping close to the wall. I could hear him fumbling with keys.

  I raced up the stairs, pushing myself to take two steps at a time. I flew up the last few and into the corridor. A couple of doors down, my double spun around, his panic-stricken face staring hard at me. He shoved the door open and raced into the apartment, but before he could turn and slam the door behind him, I was already there. I’d thrown my foot in and it copped the brunt of the force.

  He vanished inside the apartment. I ran in after him, pausing to work out which room he might have gone into.

  I heard the sound of a window opening and ran into the furthest room just in time to see my target leaping out of it. He ran along the flat roof of the adjacent building, and I climbed out of the window, dropping the metre or so onto next-door’s roof. I got to my feet and took off towards the door to the staircase. He disappeared into it before I could reach him. I raced over to it, but he’d locked it behind him.

  I rattled the door and swore.

  I’d lost him.

  I went back to his place to take a look around.

  I flicked on the lights and saw that I was in his bedroom. There was a shelf filled with books and trophies and school photos. A pile of clothes lay on the floor, the bed was messy and half-made, and a dirty sock hung over a small flat-screen TV. The room reminded me of my own back home in Richmond.

  I picked up a school textbook on his desk. ‘Ryan Spencer,’ I read, scrawled inside.

  He was in the same year as me at school–in the school I’d seen him leaving one time before. I looked at his photos in disbelief. It could have been me, instead of him, posing in the pictures. There was a photo of him with a soccer team, one of him in a wetsuit holding a surfboard … and there was one of him hugging an older woman who I guessed was his mum. Even more bizarre, was a small photo of him as a two-or three-year-old. He even looked the same as me then.

  I heard a sound outside in the corridor and came to my senses. What was I doing standing here? Any moment Ryan’s mum or dad could show up, and I’d be arrested.

  As I was turning to leave the room, I saw something on a shelf that sent a shockwave of fear running through my body,
transfixing me to the floor.

  It couldn’t be!

  But it was!

  Another sound came from outside. I tore myself away from the object I’d been staring at, grabbed one of the photos of Ryan from his desk and ran out of the bedroom. I took off through the front door, into the hall, down the stairs and out of the building, without even checking if the coast was clear.

  I couldn’t concentrate. I almost ran under a car, failing to see it until it was almost on top of me. With a screech of brakes, it stopped just in time.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen in that bedroom.

  A call on my mobile interrupted me and my confusion.

  ‘Yep?’ I asked, not slowing down.

  ‘We received your message,’ said the distorted voice. The kidnappers! I flung myself behind a wall and stopped for a second. ‘We accept the deal you offer. Wait for further instructions concerning the time, date and place of the exchange. We will contact you again shortly.’

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted, wanting them to assure me Gab was OK. But the line was already dead.

  I was shaking all over. The kidnappers had contacted me! They’d accepted my offer!

  Immediately, I phoned Boges, but he didn’t answer.

  boges! kidnappers made contact. call me.

  Next I called Winter, just to check it was OK for me to come up. I wouldn’t tell her anything yet.

  I didn’t stop running until I reached her door. She opened it like she was just standing there waiting for me.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, her face pale and concerned. ‘Are you OK? Has something happened to Gabbi?’

  ‘They’ve made contact! They’re going to call me again soon with details for our exchange!’

  Winter’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘You must stay here,’ she said, grabbing my arms and pulling me inside. ‘I want you here when they call. And you’d better call Boges. He should be here too.’

  ‘I sent him a message already,’ I said as I followed her inside. ‘But I have no idea when they’re going to call again. Do you think Gab’s OK? I didn’t get a chance to ask them anything.’

  ‘I don’t think you should consider the possibility of anything else, Cal.’ Winter stopped and put her hand on my brow. ‘Are you feeling OK? You look really pale. Paler than I’ve ever seen you before.’

  ‘Well, there’s another thing,’ I began, my pulse beginning to slow down. ‘Something really freaky has happened … and it’s nothing to do with the kidnappers.’ I shook my head in disbelief.

  ‘Cal, tell me,’ Winter gently pleaded, taking my hands again and sitting me down on the couch. She grabbed a bottle of water and handed it to me.

  ‘What I am about to say is going to sound crazy,’ I warned, ‘and I can hardly believe it myself.’

  ‘You can tell me,’ she urged.

  ‘I’ve seen something from my nightmare.’

  ‘What do you mean “something from your nightmare”?’

  I stuttered, not knowing how to begin.

  ‘Take your time.’

  ‘Winter,’ I said with a shudder. ‘I saw that guy again. My double.’

  ‘But you’ve seen him before, a few times, right?’

  ‘That’s not what has me spooked. My double was spray-painting this “No Psycho” tag that’s all over the city, and I followed him, chased after him … all the way to an apartment building. He thought he’d lost me, but he hadn’t. I got into his house, but he took off through the window. His name is Ryan Spencer.’

  I pulled out the photo of him I’d taken from his room, and handed it to her.

  ‘Whoa,’ she said, looking at Ryan’s picture–it was of him in a red canoe, holding up a big barramundi. ‘That’s an incredible likeness. And it’s so good that you found out who he is at last.’

  Winter was impressed, but I knew she was still confused about why I was so shaken up.

  I took a deep breath before I spoke again.

  ‘And so in the room–his bedroom–I saw something,’ I gulped. ‘On his shelf was the white toy dog from my nightmare.’

  ‘You saw a toy that looks like the dog in your dream?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, no, no, not looks like. Is. It is the dog. It’s the exact same dog from my nightmare–worn and threadbare. When I think about it now … Look, I have goose bumps! How come Ryan Spencer has the dog from my recurring nightmare?’

  I shivered as I held out my arm to see all the hair follicles rising.

  Winter stared at me. ‘There could be a lot of those toys around,’ she said. But even she looked unconvinced that it was just a coincidence.

  ‘How can something from a dream creep into the real world?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s more likely,’ Winter began, ‘that something from the real world crept into your dream.’

  I stopped to think about what she’d just said. ‘So are you saying that you really believe he’s my twin? That at some point we have both known the same white toy dog?’

  She nodded. ‘One was found and the other one lost,’ she said, repeating the haunting words from my great-aunt’s song. ‘Which begs the question … which one was found, and which one was lost?’

  It felt like the room was whirling around me. I was positive my parents were my own. I was positive I was an Ormond. I looked like my parents.

  Ryan Spencer looked like my parents, too.

  In an attempt to distract me from thinking about Ryan Spencer, Winter started showing me through some of her DMO notes.

  ‘It comes from a poem called La Châtelaine de Vergy. “Châtelaine” is a word meaning “mistress” of a place and “Vergy” is a place in the south of France.’

  ‘First Ireland, now France,’ I muttered. ‘This is wild.’

  ‘Cal,’ said Winter in a gentle voice, ‘we’re uncovering more information all the time. Once you have Gabbi back–’

  ‘What if I don’t?’ The thought was too horrible to bear. ‘When the kidnappers call me, we’re going to have to work out a way to doublecross them. Get Gabbi back safely and also keep me out of their clutches so that we can return to solving the mystery of the Ormond Singularity. And get the Jewel and the Riddle back.’

  ‘We’re smart enough to outwit them,’ said Winter. She considered something, her head to one side. ‘Maybe Griff Kirby would have some good ideas about doublecrossing people.’

  I shook my head. ‘He’s unreliable and untrustworthy. He was probably the rat that almost got me captured after I went to see Leporello. It has to be just us, the people I can trust,’ I said. ‘I want to protect my sister. I want to bring her home to convince my mum that I’m not a psychopath and I’d never hurt my family.’

  127 days to go …

  I watched Boges discreetly from behind the heavy curtains. He was walking up the driveway, wheeling a pushbike, and carrying two mop buckets and a helmet in one hand. I let him in when he reached the front entrance, where he dropped the cleaning gear and the bike and came inside.

  ‘Heard anything more?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  I had to admit I was losing faith every day. I refused to believe my sister was dead, but it was so hard to get on with life, day after day, not knowing what to do next. Being completely out of control of a situation.

  ‘They’ll come through. So when are we going to meet up with Nelson Sharkey?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him a couple of times, but I don’t think there’s any point until I’ve had word from the kidnappers. Unless, of course, one of us finds something out before then. The plan is to doublecross the double-crossers.’

  ‘Speaking of doubles,’ said Boges. ‘Any more thoughts on Ryan Spencer? Or the white toy dog? Have you had the nightmare since?’

  ‘It’s not a coincidence, Boges,’ I said, sensing my friend’s cynicism.

  ‘I believe you, I believe you,’ he repeated. ‘I guess we can investigate that as soon as this trade with the kidnappers takes place. Anyway, I can’t stay; I just wanted to bri
ng the bike over to you, help you get around a little bit faster. It was dumped at the tip, but all it needed was a new link in its chain and air in the tyres. Just watch out for Zombie Two if you’re planning on swinging by either of Sligo’s places.’

  From behind the wreck of a rusty yellow Volkswagen, I watched Vulkan Sligo’s car yard. Riding the bike over had been so good. I’d left it in bushland a few metres back.

  It was very quiet.

  At one point, I thought I saw someone wandering through the piles of car parts. It made me think about Winter again, searching for the wreck of the car that killed her parents.

  But I must have been imagining things.

  Oriana de la Force’s place had a little more going on today. Sumo was there, taking boxes in and out of the house. I tried to sneak around to the dark blue Mercedes to get a peek inside one, but it was just too risky.

  When he had finished at the house and squeezed himself back into the car to drive off, I decided to follow him.

  I had to keep up with him, while also staying a good distance away from him. Luckily he stopped at a few consecutive red lights, giving me the chance to keep sight of him.

  He first called into a betting shop. Impatiently I waited across the road, by a charity bin, hoping he wouldn’t be in there all day.

  About an hour or so later he came out, folding a wad of cash into his wallet. He then proceeded down the road, past five or six shops, and entered a big pharmacy on the corner.

  I chained my bike to a pole and wandered down after him on foot. Curious, I watched him through the plate glass front window.

  He was wandering up and down the aisles, clutching a jar of vitamins. I was about to hurry away, when I saw someone announce something from behind the prescription counter–Sumo responded as though his name had been called.

  From a dispensary behind the counter the pharmacist gestured to something in a plastic tray. I edged closer and squinted. I couldn’t read what the package said. I needed to get inside.