by HMC
‘Mouse, my wife would answer her phone for you if the house was on fire.’
Carey was a wonderful mother, and now that I was older, I considered her a friend. I grinned at Rick. ‘I’ll call her.’
He gave me a knowing nod. ‘Thanks for the bread. Tell Reggie I said thanks again, too. He’s an absolute legend.’
‘No worries. See you Wednesday, Rick.’
‘Or before, if Carey has a say.’ He waved me off.
Mouse’s Journal
My third visita – 2nd April, 2008 at 9AM. Trent’s backyard, Burleigh Waters House.
An elderly woman walked up to me as I stood in Trent’s backyard. She took my hand and walked me into a hall that appeared.
Fifty old people crammed into a hall. The air-conditioning was on during a particularly hot autumn day. A gentlemen with a large moustache called out numbers at the front of the hall, and a bird-nosed woman looked over the scorecards of the fellow bingoers to make sure all was in order. He spidery fingers pulled strands of fine hair from her face.
I was scared. It was my first visita away from home – one where I was taken from the familiar and shoved into a foreign, future, dangerous place. I expected a puppy, like Roman. This wasn’t that kind of visita.
There was a creaking sound as the hall seemed to shift. The people in the room stopped and gasped, assessed the noise, decided it was nothing and went on playing. I knew it was far from nothing. My heart thumped.
The next thing I knew, there were beams falling from the ceiling. There was shrieking and panic. Dust flew and people scattered. They weren’t fast enough. Darkness fell upon me.
The next moment I was outside, looking at the wreckage of the hall.
There were no survivors.
The ‘Gold Coast Aged Care’ bus sat like a sleeping mastodon in the car park as if nothing had happened. Like it was waiting to take everyone home. When night fell, Trent and I snuck out and slashed the tires of the bus. The hall collapsed the next day, but there was no one inside it.
Bergamot burned beside us. Rain was hitting the windows as the nightly summer storm cooled the house. Mum and Anna held my hands as we sat at our dining table. Anna chanted. Whispers entered my head as if there were a few more people besides Anna chanting. I opened my eyes to check, but there were no extra bodies. The candles flickered, lighting the dim room, and I wondered, guiltily, how something like this could really protect us from a bruja like the one I saw in my vision this morning. Just us three sitting at our dining table with some incense, thinking that it was going to do anything … Woo, aren’t we scary.
Anna opened her eyes and looked at me. ‘Concentrate, Mouse. This isn’t going to work without you.’ I let my shoulders relax, closed my eyes, and focussed. She was right. What was with me lately? I loved the craft. Anna had a sixth-sense for non-believers and right now I was flailing. ‘Protect us with all your might, oh Goddess gracious day and night,’ Anna said.
Mum and I chanted with her. I felt myself loosen. I moved into the chant. A warm, soft feeling enveloped my body. This was what I loved. Magic wrapped up my soul. My mind wandered to a higher place. My arms and legs felt triple their size, and so heavy I couldn’t shift them. I didn’t want to. The meditative state I was in was the best I’d felt in weeks. I stopped chanting. It was too much work to move my mouth now. I let my breath be the centre, my body an instrument of magic, with white light pouring through to my bones and back again, and I imagined an egg surrounding us. It hardened. We were shielded. Purple for sleep, green for healing, and white for protection.
After a while Anna spoke, ‘We’re done.’ She smiled at us. ‘Good job, Mouse. You really helped the process.’
Mum studied me. ‘You okay, Modesta? You look tired now.’
I nodded. ‘I am a little. In a good way, though.’ I yawned.
‘You want tea?’
‘Yeah. Thanks,’ I said. Mum stood and went to the kitchen.
‘I meant it. You did really well, kiddo. When you focussed.’ Anna squeezed my hand.
‘Do you think this will be enough?’ I asked.
Anna nodded. ‘For now.’
‘I was thinking we could do a séance, or something. Talk to Cat properly, you know? She knows what’s going on, I’m sure, but I’ve heard nothing from her.’ I said.
‘You know that’s a terrible idea. Every horror story with a Ouija board is partly true, Modesta. And you remember that poltergeist we conjured.’
I did remember. How could I forget? Anna and Cat had once tried to contact Dad so Mum could speak to him. Something went wrong, as they sometimes do when messing with the other side, and we had a poltergeist on our hands for several days. I was eight. It had been terrifying, because poltergeist love children and teens, so I was the one it attached itself to. Luckily for me, all it had done was flush the toilet at random intervals, make the house smell like burnt toffee, and change the notes in my diary to gibberish. The worst part was when it breathed in my ear one night, but by that point I had Anna, Cat, and Mum all sleeping in the same room with me, so as soon as I had screamed, the thing took off faster than Cathy Freeman at the starter pistol.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s just … what about the kid?’ I finally asked the question that had been on my mind all day. ‘Bastos.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ Anna was packing her bergamot and candles into a velvet-lined bag where she stored all her magic paraphernalia. ‘I think if we’re entwined – which is likely – we’ll find out all we need to know.’
‘Right.’ I wasn’t totally convinced. I was never good at waiting. The kettle boiled in the kitchen and I could hear Mum shuffling about.
Anna reached into her bag. ‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t just leave it to fate.’ Anna swapped her incense and candles for a small, shear-white bag. She passed it to me and I smelled it.
‘Mugwort, cinnamon.’ I took another smell and fingered the bag. ‘Star anise,’ I said. ‘Mugwort for divination and dreaming.’ I thought back to my lessons with Anna. ‘Cinnamon for protection. Star anise for contacting other planes.’
‘Very good!’
Mum shuffled in with a tray of tea. It smelled delicious. ‘What you do with those things?’ she said.
‘She’ll put them in water,’ said Anna. ‘A bath should do the trick, Mouse.’ She looked at me. I nodded. At least she didn’t want me to have a shower in that bloody-awful en-suite.
‘She will see Catalina with these things?’ Mum asked.
Anna nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’
‘Why can’t I hear her right now?’ I said. ‘I mean, I could never really summon her up to speak, but she’s always come to me in times of need. Just … naturally.’ I studied Anna as she thought.
‘I don’t know. It’s strange. And I don’t like it. Not any of it. This is why we have to go to her, and I’m sorry, Mouse, but you’re the best medium between us. It has to be you.’
Mum took the bag from the table and sniffed them. ‘I never was interesting in the herb magic. I like the magic where you say the spells aloud. Like the chanting we do. I feel like they really work. Catalina, she was so very good at the chanting spells.’ Mum smiled, and placed the bag down before me. She poured us tea and sat to sip her own. We waited for her to go on. She didn’t disappoint. ‘Catalina once made a boy fall in love with me.’ Mum chuckled. ‘He was so very handsome with big brown eyes. You should’ve seen his eyelashes. Sabatino was his name. I was thirteen years old. At first, of course, he did not seeing me at all. Then, all of sudden, he was the love-struck! I knew it was Catalina because she told me years later.’ Mum shook her head. ‘It was the best summer of my life.’
Anna and I were smiling. Talking about Cat like this would bring me closer to her memory, making contact easier. ‘Keep going, Mum.’
‘Then there was time I wanted to go to France. Catalina had been all over the world. She knowing what France look like. She take me there, in my head.’ Mum pointed to her temple and sip
ped her tea.
‘Wow,’ I said. That was a skill I was still impressed with. Also one that, unfortunately, I never got to try with Cat.
‘It was like I was there, Modesta. I could smell the streets of Paris – not too lovely in some places, I telling you! I could feel the wind on my face. I hear peoples speaking in French. I could taste food and touching the water in the De La Concorde Fountain. All the time, I was lying on my beds.’ Mum giggled.
‘Cat took me in an aeroplane. A pretend one.’ Anna nodded.
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Yep. I was terrified to fly. I’d never done it and never wanted to,’ Anna said. ‘Anyway, I was wanted in Perth for a three-day professional development course, and I wasn’t gonna drive across Australia, so Cat helped me with my fear. She had me on the sofa at home, and had conned me into trying it. So I did. It was so real.’ Mum nodded in agreement as Anna spoke. ‘I could hear the engine, and feel it tremble under me as we rolled along the runway. I could see the people around me strapped into their seats. She took me through the whole experience. When I woke up, I wasn’t cured – but I knew what to expect. It hadn’t been that bad. On the contrary, lift-off was quite exhilarating.’
I was in awe. ‘She was amazing, wasn’t she?’
‘You remind me of her a lot, Mouse,’ said Anna. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if by the time you hit thirty, you’ll know just as much as Cat did.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ll never be that powerful.’ I had to wonder, were there things Cat could do that Mum and Anna never knew about? If she had been so similar to me, then wouldn’t she have been exploring to see how far she could actually go? ‘I’ve tried to push myself, but I don’t get far, do I, Anna?’
She frowned at me.
‘Sometime, things happen,’ said Mum. ‘And we become things we never think we can be.’
‘Cheers to that,’ said Anna. We clinked our teacups together. I felt warm and at peace, under the circumstances, and so it was the perfect time to take my bath and see if I could make contact with my aunty.
‘So, before I do this, is everyone cool if I leave the bathroom door open?’
Mum and Anna nodded in unison. They didn’t laugh at me. I loved them for that. The psycho witch-hag had me shaken. I’m sure her ugly face and feral, snake-tongue wouldn’t leave my mind’s eye for a long time. I could use the main bathroom, too. If there was a bath in my en-suite, I wouldn’t have used it anyway. That door was shut tight for now.
It wasn’t long before I was soaking in a mugwort, cinnamon, and star anise tub – with the bathroom door as open as it could get. When it came to Mum, Anna, and me, nudity had never been an issue.
I hopped into the tub, closed my eyes, and relaxed. I let the water take me in.
‘Cat? What do I need to know?’ I waited and breathed slowly and deeply. I took the air into my diaphragm as Anna had taught me, and each time I exhaled, I went deeper into a meditative state. Before long, I was gone.
My front steps groaned as I made my way over to the Samson’s old house. The Samson’s had two younger children, and it had been refreshing to hear them playing outside all the time, climbing trees, riding skateboards, occasionally calling out to me to chat from the balcony. I knocked on the door and waited, half expecting Jessie Samson to poke her head through with a toothless grin and her effervescent giggle, carting her toy Totoro around everywhere she went.
There was nothing.
I couldn’t quite recall what I was doing there. Maybe I had a babysitting job. I knocked again. Still nothing. I turned to leave, and the door creaked open. My breath caught in my throat. ‘Hi,’ I said.
A guy around my age stood there. His caramel eyes took me in. He leaned up against the door, chocolate locks pulled back into a ponytail, with a line of white hair, like Rouge from X-Men. He wore a Cradle of Filth T-shirt, revealing a naked nun hanging off his tall, lean body. He was the kind of guy I’d steer clear of in a dark alley.
‘I’m Hamish.’ It was a surfer’s name, or a red-headed Scotsman’s. Not this olive-skinned guy.
‘I’m Mouse. I live next door.’
He shook my hand firmly, and grinned. ‘Mouse?’
‘It’s short for Modesta.’ I realised I was still holding onto him and tried to pull my hand away, but Hamish held on for a moment longer. Our skin was almost the same colour. ‘Who are you?’ I said, backing away. ‘Where’s Jessie Sampson?’
‘Who are you?’ He frowned. ‘You knocked on my door.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘You’re wrong.’ We were standing in MY doorway. He’d knocked on MY door.
Hamish looked down, confused. ‘Jessie Sampson is gone,’ he said. ‘How did I get here?’ He looked scared.
Hamish’s face morphed.
I was looking at Trent, now. I was sitting on my board in the water. We waited for the set to come in. I fell into the cool ocean with a splash and it soothed my burning skin. When I came back up, Trent was still sitting on his board, looking out over the flat water.
‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. I surveyed the beach and it was all new to me. It wasn’t Burleigh, or Miami. It wasn’t Kirra Beach or any beach I knew.
‘Are we lost?’ I said.
Trent turned to me and his eyes were black pits. They were holes filled with darkness, and that darkness extended. A shadow the size of a fishing boat floated beneath me. The ocean turned grey and I could smell dead fish. There was blood on my tongue.
‘They need you,’ said Trent. ‘Under the water.’
I screamed.
‘Modesta!’ Mum shouted. She and Anna leaned over me with horror-stricken faces. ‘Wake up!’
‘What if this is bad as Catalina, Anna? What if…’ Mum whispered harshly.
‘Shhh, Connie, please. Not right now, we’ll talk about it later.’
It took a second for me to realise where I was. The water spilled over me as I pulled myself up. They grabbed my arms to help me out. Mum threw a towel around me.
‘What happened? You were screaming,’ Anna said.
‘Damn. I feel asleep. It was just a nightmare. How long was I out?’ I said.
‘About five minutes. We’ll let you get dressed.’ Anna touched Mum on the arm.
‘No, I’m okay,’ I said. ‘I’ve had worse nightmares than that before. Thanks, though.’
Anna rubbed my shoulder. ‘All right. She’s okay, Connie. Come on. We’ll have another tea.’
When I got out of the bath, and dressed, I made my way out the front of the house. Sure enough, the Sampson’s Jeep was still in their driveway. I’d have to keep an eye on Jessie.
I woke to the soft bells of my phone-alarm. I reached over and checked the time. 4:45AM. Surf with Trent. The day before came rushing back, and I wish I’d just woken up to realise it never happened.
But it had.
However, the worry was diminishing. I rolled over and pulled myself out of bed, careful not to wake Anna, who had taken the fold-out couch in the living room. I padded across the wooden floor toward the kitchen. I grabbed a banana, a bottle of water, and a beach towel and threw them into my bag. My journal sat in the bottom. I’d jotted down last night’s tub nightmare, and hoped there would be nothing more to write about today.
I slowly opened the back door, and closed it as gently as I could. I made my way downstairs to our giant laundry area where I found my spare toothbrush, towel, and bikini, and got myself ready for a surf. My wetsuit was dry as a bone. Things didn’t stay wet long in summer around here. You could dry your clothes on the line in half an hour. By 4:56AM I was on my Townie, bike helmet on, bag on back, and board under my arm, headed for the beach. It was hard to ride with a longboard at first, but I was a pro now. Well, for someone who was kind of uncoordinated. I could surf and I could dance, but that was as far as my physical capabilities went. Whenever there was a ball, it seemed repelled by me. I worried about it, since I was set to be a teacher. Trent joke
d that as long as I only taught up to grade two Phys. Ed., I’d be fine. I’d promptly punched him.
I smiled at the thought of Trent. It was a relief I would be able to tell him all about yesterday. He wouldn’t even flinch. Well, he would, but he knew about my visions.
‘Morning, sunshine.’ I parked my bike near Trent. He sat on the grass, looking out at the water. The same spot he’d occupied every surf-meet for the past five years.
‘Mornin’,’ he called back, as I put a chain on my bike tyre.
‘Looks good,’ I said as I surveyed the surf. Even if it was as flat as a pancake, we always went in for a swim, at least.
‘Indeed it does.’ He stood and gave me a hug. He held on tight, then pulled away to study me. ‘What’s up, chicken? You look like crap run over twice.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. A little tired, but I’ll tell you about my awesome weekend so far when we’re done.’
‘That good, huh?’
I nodded. ‘Worse.’ We picked up our boards and made our way straight to the water. It was one of the things I loved about Trent: he got on with it.
I was glad we were going in from the shore instead of the rocks. I could leave my stuff on the sand in full view. Plus my hands were still a little sore. I had a few water-proof band-aides on them now. I felt another pang of guilt for lying to Trent. He’d know the truth soon enough.
There was no one out except a small group of people doing Tai Chi on the sand. I watched them for a moment. Things felt peaceful. I saw Trent paddle out, and in that moment, I felt as if everything was going to be okay. I was surrounded by people in my life who loved me. I smiled as he caught a few shoreys waiting for me to come out. I nodded and carried my longboard down to water’s edge. The cool liquid splashed over my legs. When I was deep enough, I put my board down and went under to wet my hair.
The set was in and Trent was already attempting the waves. He pulled himself up and immediately fell. I laughed.
I went under one more time.
As I came up and took a breath, I froze. My board was washed away by a wave, and the cord pulled tight at my leg.
