A New Kind of Dreaming

by Anthony Eaton

  Jamie struggled to make sense of what the old man was talking about. He knew that there was something in it. It had to do with the girl in the boat, and perhaps even Cameron’s strange theory. The two stories sounded sort of similar. Archie had stopped speaking.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s just the start.’ Archie went quiet again, until finally Jamie had to break the silence.

  ‘So how’s it finish then?’

  Again the stare.

  ‘That,’ said Archie, ‘is up to you.’

  The old man took a sip of his tea and started to read his paper again. Jamie sat thinking for a few moments longer, then got up and left the kitchen. Flopping onto his bed he tried to decipher the story. It was weird – no beginning, no middle, no end, no plot. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something important behind the strange words. He pondered it but couldn’t make anything of it.

  ‘Bunch of crap,’ he finally announced, though not loud enough to be heard from the kitchen.

  The day passed and the temperature climbed. The rest of the house was insulated, but over Jamie’s bed there was only the corrugated tin roof between him and the sun. Eventually, bored and unable to take the heat any longer, Jamie pulled on a tee-shirt and went outside. In the backyard he stood under the rusted Hills Hoist and looked at the desert stretching out in front of him. Two thousand kilometres of nothing.

  Where the backyard ended was a thick barrier of scrub. Dry, thorny bushes formed a natural, almost impenetrable wall of spinifex. In Archie’s yard there’d at least been a token effort to keep the scrub further back than the washing line and the old water tank. Jamie wandered along the edge of the yard until he spotted a small game track between the bushes. The spiny brush scratched and caught at his legs and thighs as he pushed his way through. He flinched as a thorny twig buried itself in the soft flesh of his lower leg. Thinking it might have been a snake bite, he stopped to examine the wound. It was bleeding slightly, but on closer inspection it proved to be little more than a scratch. Jamie pressed on again through the scrub, and after five or six metres he found himself standing at the edge of a large patch of red sand.

  He was in the desert.

  A couple of steps and he sank into the red dirt up to his ankles. It was roasting hot and filled his sneakers, burning his feet and calves.

  ‘Shit!’ Hopping around, he tried to shake the sand out and only partially succeeded. Slowly, though, his feet grew accustomed to the increased temperature and he meandered through the scrub, sticking to the edges of the sandy patches and moving steadily south, away from the town.

  Under the constant glare of the sun the landscape took on a strange quality, as though he was standing in the middle of a huge painting. Everything seemed flat and two-dimensional. The horizon appeared to be at once a thousand kilometres away and right in front of him. Pushing through the thick patches of scrub and spinifex, the thought of snakes crossed his mind, but the threat remained somehow unreal, like the landscape itself.

  Jamie wandered for about an hour. It might have been more – he had forgotten his watch, and the desert glare seemed to affect his sense of time. A tree of some kind crouched against the enormous horizon off to his left, and he gradually worked his way across towards it. It was scarcely more than a few ragged, stick-like branches clinging to an emaciated trunk, barely thicker than the limbs themselves. Here and there a dusty, murky green leaf fluttered uneasily in the light stirrings of hot air. It wasn’t much of a tree, but it was life, thought Jamie, amazed that anything could survive in the thin, dry, baked dirt.

  Easing himself to the ground, Jamie rested gently against the trunk. It flexed slightly under his weight.

  He tried to picture the girl wandering lost in this inhospitable, sandy wilderness. It was impossible to believe that she’d even managed to get away from the town, through that first barrier of scrub that lined the roadsides and yards.

  They’d been promised paradise – a land of oases and palm trees, of cool, deep, green waters. The words from Archie’s story came floating unbidden into his mind.

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Not a lot of that out here.

  Stretching out, he closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself a thousand kilometres from Port Barren, not on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert but out in the middle. Away from Butcher, the other kids, and the constant tightness in his guts. Lying there he became aware of the sounds of the desert. The gentle rustle of the bushes as the beginnings of the afternoon wind stirred at their branches. The occasional click of an insect. A louder noise made him sit up.

  On the other side of the clearing, startled into stillness by Jamie’s sudden movement, stood a racehorse goanna, staring at him. For seconds that seemed to stretch into hours, Jamie and the goanna remained motionless, each eyeing the other warily, until the reptile whirled and vanished in a blur of movement. The only signs it left of its presence were a trembling branch and tiny footprints in the hot, red sand.

  The sounds of the desert washed over Jamie. The tightness inside his chest seemed to have gone, perhaps because he was a fair way out, on the other side of town from the boat. Cameron’s story about the prison in the city drifted into his mind. That’s really what Port Barren was meant to be for him. A prison. A place for the court to send him to keep him out of the way and out of trouble. But he thought about Eddie, locked in a steel and concrete cell, with barred windows and doors and suddenly even Port Barren didn’t seem so bad. For the first time since arriving in the town, Jamie felt at ease. Gradually, without even realising it, he drifted off to sleep.

  eighteen

  It was the noise that woke him. Not the occasional rustles and clicks that he’d heard in the still heat of the day, but the chirping of cicadas. Thousands and thousands of them. He opened his eyes and a myriad of stars glowed in the sky above him. It was dark.

  ‘Oh shit!’

  Beneath him the sand was still warm. The moon was rising over the southern horizon, full and blood red, and in the sky the stars gleamed with an intensity that Jamie had never experienced before. Somewhere off in the distance a dingo howled, perhaps inspired by the rising moon. The mournful sound carried through the still air as Jamie leapt to his feet.

  His first reaction was one of panic – that he’d not be able to find his way home in the dark. However, a bloom of light filled the horizon in front of him. The lights of Port Barren. Against the desert night, the few streetlights and house lights cast a reassuring glow.

  Jamie started directly towards the town, but soon found his way blocked by a large clump of spinifex. It took a couple of minutes to find a way around it, and then seconds later he was confronted with another patch. In the dark it was impossible to spot the tiny game trails that he’d used that afternoon and he was forced to walk long detours.

  He’d begin to follow a path through the scrub and then it would run into an enormous clump of spinifex and end abruptly. This meant that he would have to backtrack and make his way to where the ground was more open, continuing in this way around the edge of the scrub. Again and again he came to dead ends – it was like being in a darkened labyrinth of thorny walls.

  However, the glow was coming slowly closer. He guessed that his route was taking him around the edge of town, but as long as he kept moving towards the lights he knew he’d be safe.

  Even so it was a long time before he pushed through the last patch of scrub and found himself by the highway on the opposite side of the town from Archie’s place. A ten-minute walk through the streets of Port Barren and he’d be safely home in bed.

  He glanced instinctively towards his left wrist, forgetting that his watch was beside his bed at Archie’s place. It must have been pretty late. The roads were still and silent, as were the houses. Even the pub was closed.

  He hoped that Archie hadn’t worried about him or waited up. The old man noticed
everything he did, every time he came and went, but he never commented. It was strange being able to make decisions for himself. It took some getting used to. In the past, everything had been decided for him – by his mum, by his foster parents, by Eddie and finally by the court. For him to be able to make up his own mind was a new experience. What Jamie couldn’t work out was whether or not Archie worried about him. Creeping through the night, that was his biggest concern.

  As he made his way past the school, however, that concern was driven abruptly from his thoughts. A movement down near the end classroom caught his attention. Ducking into the shadow of a parked Landrover, he watched from across the road as someone crouching low to the ground hurried around the side of the building and stopped for a minute in the deep shadows under the verandah. The figure stood and Jamie drew in a sharp breath. Only one person in Port Barren was that size. Butcher took a few steps out into the square of the playground, in the moonlight there was no doubting his identity.

  ‘What’s that bastard up to?’

  No sooner had the whispered words passed Jamie’s lips than there was a spark, and a tail of fire streaked across the ground from where Butcher stood. For the briefest of seconds the night seemed to stand still, and then a loud ‘WHUMP!’ shattered the silence, as the side of the school erupted into a wall of flame.

  Breathless, uncertain, staying deep in the shadows, Jamie watched the chaos develop across the road. The flames took only seconds to find their way into the timber supports for the verandah and the wooden beams that held up the floor and roof. The entire building was being consumed. As the dry wood began to combust faster, the roof started to sag and the whole structure began to creak. Against the evil red and yellow light, some of the internal supports stood out clearly, the heat twisting the prefabricated steel into tortured, skeletal shapes.

  Even from across the road Jamie could feel the heat on his face. He watched in horrified awe as a column of flame shot high into the still night. Air was sucked into the inferno with a rushing, roaring sound, and there was the occasional explosion of glass as windows burst into fragments, the shards glinting in the light as they were flung outwards into the playground.

  Butcher was nothing more than a black silhouette against the inferno, standing with his arms crossed. It was easy to imagine the tiny smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

  The fire continued to grow, and Jamie became so caught up in watching it that when he next looked for Butcher he was nowhere to be seen. Jamie noticed the lights came on in the house behind him.

  ‘Shit!’

  He had to run. His only concern now was to be nowhere nearby when people arrived. Somewhere up the street a car door slammed, an engine fired up and roared off into the darkness. Jamie crept further back into the shadows away from the fire as people started to come out of their houses, dressed in tattered gowns and shorts, pulling on tee-shirts and rubbing sleep from their eyes.

  A couple of streets away he began to move more quickly, confident that anybody who was awake would be moving towards the school, not going in his direction. Stopping on one occasion, he glanced back to where, over the top of the houses, the column of flame and smoke was clearly visible as it leaped into the darkness.

  Five or six minutes of jogging in the shadows saw Jamie turning the final corner at the end of Archie’s street. He relaxed. The house stood clear in the moonlight a couple of hundred metres away, a dull glow reflecting off the rusted tin roof. The windows were dark and he assumed that Archie was fast asleep in bed; he’d have no trouble creeping in through the back door. Casting a last glance over his shoulder, Jamie saw that the flames from the school were already dying, the inferno consuming itself almost as fast as it had grown.

  With home in sight, some of the tension drained from Jamie’s shoulders and neck. A last quick survey of the neighbourhood revealed everything still and silent, as it should be. Jamie suddenly felt very tired.

  He jogged down the side of the road, moving faster now but still keeping his footsteps as silent as possible.

  About five metres from the front gate a spotlight beam sliced through the night and trapped him in its merciless glare.

  flaherety’s curse

  nineteen

  ‘Well, look who we have here.’

  Butcher’s tone was light and cheerful.

  ‘I’d say you’re in a little bit of trouble, son.’

  Transfixed, Jamie blinked and stayed silent his mind almost as paralysed as his body. After the initial shock of discovery he tried to think of a plan, an approach, a way to deal with the situation. Nothing came. The only thought that ran through his mind was how close he’d come to the front gate. Another few steps and he’d have been home. He realised with a shock that even though he’d done nothing wrong he felt strangely guilty. Innocent or not, Jamie knew he was in trouble.

  Butcher moved out from behind the police truck that was parked behind a thicket of scrub opposite Archie’s house. The spotlight stayed locked unwaveringly on Jamie. He sensed rather than saw the movement of the cop and for a brief second toyed with the thought of escape.

  ‘Don’t bother trying to do a runner,’ said Butcher, as though reading Jamie’s thoughts. ‘I wouldn’t want to have to shoot you, would I?’ The tone of his voice made it clear that there was nothing he’d like better. Jamie remained still and silent. The adrenaline coursing through his system heightened his senses, he picked up the crunch of footsteps on gravel as the large cop approached.

  ‘Imagine that. The school catches fire, and not ten minutes later I find you creeping home like a dog with your tail between your legs. Pretty convenient, eh?’

  Butcher loomed out of the glare, directly in front of him. His bulk blocked out the direct beam, throwing Jamie into a darkness almost as blinding as the light. With the beam of the spotlight behind him, Butcher appeared as nothing more than a dark silhouette, framed by an intense corona. His expression was hidden by shadow, but Jamie knew that the now familiar, cold, emotionless little smile would be curling at the corners of Butcher’s mouth. The policeman was holding his nightstick in his right hand and slapping it into his left.

  ‘You got anything to say for yourself, son?’

  Butcher’s voice was low, confident, amused. It reminded Jamie of all the cops and judges and social workers that he’d ever had dealings with. His smug arrogance made Jamie angry and scared at the same time. He stared right at Butcher.

  ‘I didn’t burn the school.’

  He stepped sideways out of the beam, into the protection of the darkness.

  The sudden movement caught Butcher unawares. Thinking that Jamie was making a break for it, he lashed out with the steel truncheon, but the club whistled harmlessly through the air. For an instant, Jamie could make out the expression on Butcher’s face. It was not only one of anger but also confusion and something resembling fear. He mirrored Jamie’s movement, also stepping out of the light so that the two of them stood face to face in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Bullshit,’ said the cop. ‘Who did then?’

  ‘You. I saw everything.’

  The grin faded, but only briefly.

  ‘That’ll do you a lot of good in court. Your word against mine. You really think a judge is gonna believe a teenage piece of dirt like you over a sergeant in the police force?’

  ‘He might.’

  ‘You’re dreaming.’ Butcher attempted to sound amused, but Jamie thought he detected a note of fear behind the policeman’s words.

  ‘Depends on what I could tell him.’

  ‘You? Don’t make me laugh. You wouldn’t know your arse from a hole in the ground, son. What could you say to make a judge believe you over me?’

  ‘I could tell him about a girl on a boat.’

  The words were out before Jamie thought about what he was saying. Deathly, total silence followed the comme
nt. The night seemed to hold its breath while Butcher almost imperceptibly tightened his grip on the nightstick.

  ‘What was that?’

  Jamie knew he’d trapped himself. He kept speaking, trying to buy a chance to escape, to gain himself a little space.

  ‘I could tell him about the chat I had with McPherson in the pub the other night.’

  It was a shot in the dark. Butcher’s face grew huge as he leaned over to peer closely at Jamie.

  ‘You dumb little bastard.’

  The nightstick lashed out and there was an explosion of light behind Jamie’s eyes. He didn’t even feel himself hit the ground.

  White pain swept through his body, spasms jerked his muscles and his head pounded. Consciousness returned slowly. He was tied up – hands bound behind his back, his feet lashed firmly together at the ankles. It was dark. Not pitch black, but a strange, bluish, flickering darkness. Spots and streaks of imagined light danced across Jamie’s vision. From somewhere distant, voices crept into the edges of his awareness – someone yelling, someone else talking normally. He tried to call out. Nothing. His mouth worked against the wad of material that had been forced into it, but it was firmly held in place with a strong cloth that was tied around the back of his head. His stomach churned and Jamie felt the bile rising in his throat. If he vomited, he’d drown. Through fresh waves of nausea and panic, he concentrated on sucking in air through his nose – slowing his heartbeat and settling his stomach again.

  Beneath him, the floor was hard and uneven, the corrugated steel of the back of the police truck. His vision swam slowly into focus, and through a flapping corner of the tarpaulin the dying embers of the school cast a dull glow on a large group of people with Butcher in the middle of them.