The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution

by Lisa de Nikolits

  I was about to walk up the stairs when I saw someone familiar out of the corner of my eye. And, sitting there, in the red lounge, was my son, Adam.

  30. LYNDON

  WE DROVE INTO SYDNEY, and I felt strange, returning to the scene of my crime. The rest of the journey was uneventful—there were no floury, black-olive eyed white man sightings and no sparring with Martha. She looked happy and peaceful, and I had the somewhat bitchy thought that it was amazing what a good shag will do.

  I thought about the last time I had sex with Margaux. The funny thing was, it had felt like the end of something to me, although I had no idea I was going to leave her the following day. She hadn’t had a clue how I felt, and was impressed with my passion and my imagination—I did things to her I hadn’t done in years.

  “I guess this trip is starting to work out for you,” she had said. “I wasn’t sure you’d get into it and you worried me in Vancouver and Hong Kong, but you’re happier now?” I hadn’t replied.

  I had never been less happy in my life. I had wanted to go home, and to go back to my job and my house, neither of which existed anymore.

  I had hated Vancouver. I felt hemmed in by the mountains and the ethos of West Coast cool. It didn’t rain the entire time we were there, and I felt denied. I was tired and wired at the same time, and I spent a lot of time walking around while Margaux shopped.

  “Where are you going to put all the stuff you are buying?” I asked. “We don’t have a house, in case you had forgotten.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” she said. “I am going to post it to Helen, and she’s going to put things into her storage locker, and once we see where we’re going to live, we’ll take it from there.”

  I hated it when people said, “We’ll take it from there.” I didn’t reply. I poured another glass of wine and then another and I ended up drunk until I fell into bed, knowing I would snore like a bulldog with a sinus problem. When I woke at three a.m., Margaux was asleep on the sofa in the living room of our hotel suite. I leaned against the window and watched Vancouver wake up while my wife slept. I told myself there were thousands of reasons I should be happy. I had two grown, healthy kids who were forging successful careers. Both of them seemed fairly problem-free, although there was this new development of Adam being gay.

  I wondered about Helen. I hadn’t actually talked to her about her love life in years. Helen was an investment banker although Margaux always referred to her as an accountant, which drove Helen nuts. I loved Helen. Of all the members of my family, she was the one I understood the best and she understood me.

  I wondered, as I watched the West Coast sun rise, if there had been something about Margaux’s and my relationship that had warned Helen off long-term commitment. I had tried to talk to Margaux about this in the past, but she always shook me off.

  “Helen’s just finding her feet,” she had said. “She’s having fun. She’s young.”

  “She doesn’t seem to be having fun,” I’d said. “But it’s her life. We can’t change that.”

  I wanted Helen to be happy. I wanted her to have fun. I worried that she was too much like me but I wasn’t exactly sure what I meant by that.

  I knew I had let Helen down at the party by not meeting Adam’s boyfriend, and I resented that more than I regretted upsetting Adam. Adam would forgive me, just like he always had—that was the way our relationship worked.

  I wondered what Helen had made of my getaway, and if she had replied to the email that Jason had sent. I wanted to talk to Helen, but I didn’t know what to say. How would I explain myself? Would she see this as a run-of-the-mill mid-life crisis? I hated that expression, mid-life crisis, and I had always been so proud of myself for never having had one.

  In the car, on the way to Sydney, I had wanted to ask Jason if he thought that today’s world was populated by a generation of self-centred selfie people whose whole lives revolved around their mood charts and careful monitoring of what was going on with them at the expense of the bigger picture. Sure, no one wanted to feel irrelevant and now, with social media providing a reality TV platform for the intimacies of our daily lives, we were all celebrity stars in our docudramas. Everyone screamed at everyone else: “Look at me on Facebook! Look at me on Instagram! Look at me on Pinterest! Look at my career successes on LinkedIn! Me, me, me! Aren’t I so bloody marvellous?”

  But I hadn’t wanted to disturb the peace in the car just when we were all getting along. So, I thought about my son and daughter and how I had asked Margaux if we would leave Vancouver as soon as she woke up.

  She agreed we could. “Hong Kong?” she asked, and I nodded.

  But Hong Kong was a mistake. As we rode up to the sixteenth floor in a tiny elevator that crammed both of us in along with our two suitcases, I felt claustrophobic and panic-stricken. I was going to faint. When I later read The Dispossessed, there was a passage that perfectly described how I had felt. I kept rereading it: “He saw space shrink in upon him like the walls of a collapsing sphere driving in and in towards a central void, closing, closing, and he woke with a scream for help locked in his throat, struggling in silence to escape from the knowledge of his own eternal emptiness.”

  Margaux was delighted with the room into which we barely fit. A tiny washroom with a shower was crammed into the corner and suitcases that defied being opened at the same time—there simply wasn’t enough room.

  Margaux leaned out the tiny window and marvelled at the vast city below. We had landed at night and it was a surreal nightmare trying to get a cab. The drive from the airport disoriented me further—I felt like we were moving backwards while the world was spinning in a counter-clockwise direction at an increasing speed.

  I blamed the flight from Vancouver to Hong Kong for frying my synapses. Thirteen hours in the air, with self-flagellating thoughts whirling around my mind. I took some of Margaux’s sleeping pills, but they didn’t work. They towed me into a no- man’s land of madness. While Margaux napped next to me, my brain was on speed dial with every crazy thought and then some. I pulled a pen and paper from my carry-on and started scribbling wildly. I thought that if I could get my thoughts out of my brain and onto paper, that I would be able to find some peace, but I was wrong.

  I am flying around the world in the wrong direction like a deranged bird. It’s no wonder I am losing my mind. It’s no fun, losing your mind. It’s not like going to the Bahamas and drinking tequila. Not that I even like tequila, mind you. I hate that godforsaken syrup’s hallucinogenic stomach-turning, strobe light, finger-jabbing drumbeat. I am upset.

  I have failed by growing old. I never meant to. I swear I didn’t. I thought I was better than all the rest. Do I have a sensory processing disorder? Disorders everywhere we turn.

  Over seven million people live in Hong Kong. Fruit flies sleep too, you know. Who are the people who run backwards? There are sacrifices. Yes. A ghostwriter is for hire: “I don’t promise the world, just a well-written book.” Coconut is the new kale, don’t you know? Time to tip the hat and call it a night.

  I wrote and wrote until it was time to land and once we did, my condition, if one could call it that, worsened, and then, in that tiny room on the sixteenth floor, I fell onto the bed, huddling my body around my belly and groaning.

  Margaux spotted a night market below and wanted to go out. I wanted to wail, rub my balding head, and die.

  “You don’t look too good,” she told me. She pulled out her purse. “Here, take a Xanax. I’m going to go out. Don’t worry. Try to rest.”

  I dry-swallowed the pill, and she left me coiled in my fetal position, shoes and clothes still on. Thankfully, I fell asleep but the following day, I was unable to leave the room.

  “I just need to rest,” I told Margaux. “I must have caught a bug. I am sorry. Please, go and explore. Please don’t worry about me.”

  She brought me buns and water and Cokes and chocolate bars. She we
nt to find the Jade Market and various art galleries. She took a ferry to main Hong Kong—we were in Kowloon—and she came back to that tiny room with ropes of pearls and precious gems and tales of a wonderful city that she loved.

  And she went out at night while I slept. When I woke, I flipped through the channels of the tiny TV. We spent a week like that—Margaux exploring the city and me lying in bed.

  “Let’s move on to Australia,” Margaux suggested. “I don’t think Hong Kong’s right for you. Let’s leave and find some wide-open spaces and beaches. You can rest there. You’re exhausted. We need to find you a place to rest.”

  Which found us on the third stop of our famous Around-The-World-For-As Long-As-We-Want-Tour, a tour on which I seemed to be hurtling towards a nervous breakdown.

  So, thinking back, I guess it was not all that surprising that I left Margaux in the awkward and amputated way that I had.

  And, as the BMW pulled into Sydney, I felt my new sense of self start to disintegrate. Jason must sensed it because he turned to me. “How are you?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Not great.”

  To my surprise, Martha took my hand. “Things can improve,” she said, just like she’d said at the wall.

  My eyes filled with tears and I nodded. Sure they can.

  And then it was time to meet the anarchists.

  31. MARGAUX

  “ADAM!” I WAS OVERJOYED to see him. I buried myself in his bear hug. Adam wasn’t small like Lyndon or myself—he was a good six-foot-three and just as broad. He would have made a superb quarterback, were it not for the complete absence of any kind of sporting skills.

  “You’re not angry I came?” He pulled back and looked at me, unsure.

  “Of course not!” My eyes filled with tears. “I thought I was doing fine by myself, but now that you’re here, it makes all the difference in the world to me.”

  “Howdy Mizz Margaux,” a deep male voice said. Rick had come with Adam and I gave him a big hug.

  “How did you boys get time off work?” I asked.

  “Family emergency, which is true.” Adam said. “I just got your email, Mom. Listen, I’m fine. I go on rants that I know aren’t fair to you. I’m going to try to stop that, and I’m going to try to stop being so dramatic all the time.”

  “Don’t change a thing,” I said, and I realized I meant it with all my heart. “I love you completely, just the way you are, Adam. That email and my reaction, that was all me, coming from my pain and confusion. Where are you boys staying?”

  “Here. I got us a room. Not a dorm, a single room. Quite the place. We’ve been here since early this morning. I didn’t want to message you. We wanted this to be a surprise. We had a sleep because of the jet lag and now we we’ve been sitting here and waiting for you. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been to hell and back,” I said, “and I’m not joking. I’ll bring you up to speed. I’ve been in these clothes for two days, so I really need a shower.”

  Just then, Tim arrived. Both Adam and Rick were startled by his gothic largeness, but they recovered their manners, shook his hand, and made their introductions.

  “The package is in Sydney,” Tim said to me. “At the Black Rose Café in Newtown. It’s a regular anarchist hangout.”

  “Anarchist. It must have something to do with Mr. Ex-Punk Rocker. But Tim,” I said, “and Rick and Adam, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “I must get something to eat,” Tim said. “I’m starving. Then you can tell us what’s been going on, which judging from the expression on your face, is serious.”

  We settled around the kitchen table, which was conveniently free of other hostel residents. Tim made a fresh pot of coffee and a tray of sandwiches, and I inhaled a ham and swiss cheese on toasted sourdough bread before I realized how hungry I was. I ate the second sandwich more slowly while I told the story of Nancy. I started from the very beginning, with the Virgin of Coogee’s statue and I didn’t stop until the very end, with my walking into the hostel, craving sleep.

  “But seeing you,” I said, and squeezed Adam’s hand, “revived me.”

  “Dear Lord have mercy,” Rick drawled, and he launched into a story. Rick was from Kentucky, and he had the smoothest Southern voice. When he talked, I got lost in the melody of his words and forgot to listen to the lyrics.

  “We had a demon take over our house,” he said.

  “What?” Rick’s nonchalance at the statement caught me off guard. “What kind of demon?”

  “Perhaps demon is too strong a word,” he amended. “More of a spirit that didn’t want to leave. Kentucky is quite famous for its paranormal activity. We’ve got the Hillbilly Beast in the foothills of Kentucky just to mention one. He was around at the time of Daniel Boone and there are all kinds of other ghosts. People come to visit just for the ghosts!”

  Rick looked set to launch into a history lesson of the supernatural in southern America and I quickly interrupted him. “But what about your demon? Spirit, I mean.”

  “Shortly after my Nana died, we started having disturbances in the house. Pictures fell to the floor, cold winds swept through the house, knocking over vases and one time, a bath started running all by itself! I figured Nana was annoyed at having passed. She loved life, that woman! Horses! The race track in particular! Couldn’t keep her away. If you ask me, she was genuinely peeved that the rest of us were still able to enjoy the delights of the Derby and whatnot, while she was off, wherever she was, missing out on all the fun.”

  Rick took a gulp of his coffee and grinned at our expectant faces. “So I called in our local Reverend and I told him that Nana needed a good ole talking to and he obliged. We had more of an intervention than an exorcism. We had a big party for Nana, even though she’d had the biggest send-off reception the South had seen in a long time! We got caterers in, mint juleps, the works! Everybody had to wear their finest, with a fancy new hat just for the occasion and they all had to tell a story of how they missed Nana. I was direct when it came to my turn. I told her, ‘Look Nana, I love you and miss you but you’ve got to stop this nonsense. You broke a Wedgewood vase and that running bath could well have ruined the parquet flooring on the second floor.’ I told her she had to find peace with her lot and that we’d all join her as soon as we could but then again, not too soon. I told her to be patient. Not Nana’s strongest point.”

  “Did it work?” Adam asked.

  “Kind of. She stopped being as vehement. She still wanted us to know she was there, so she’d rearrange things and have some fun but she held off with hurting the antiquities and such.”

  “She listened to reason,” I mused. “I’m not so sure Nancy will.”

  I reached for the box of pictures and laid them out on the table like a deck of cards. Rick leaned in close to look at them, and he recoiled. I knew what he meant. A sense of evil ricocheted from them.

  “Do you think Trish knows what she is doing?” Adam asked.

  “I hope so. I have faith in her, but I have no idea what her plan is. We have to meet them at midnight.”

  “Here’s what we should all do…” Tim said, but just then my phone pinged and I picked it up, wondering if it was Helen, who I had been neglecting.

  But it was an email from the ex-punk rocker.

  “You want to meet me at three p.m. at Circular Quay?”

  “Yes,” I wrote back.

  “Good. I’ll be outside the Museum of Contemporary Art.”

  I looked at my watch. “I’m going to have a lie down after all,” I said. The others looked puzzled, but I couldn’t explain. “And a shower first. I have to be somewhere at three. But I’ll be back around seven at the latest, and we’ll regroup and go to Garry Owen House.”

  “I’ll drive you all there in the van,” Tim offered. “I’m coming with you. The more powerful energies we have to counteract this thing, the bette
r.”

  I messaged Graham and Trish to ask them if ten p.m. was a good time for us to meet. and Trish immediately replied that it was perfect.

  Main gate at ten p.m., she said. No wandering around the grounds on your own.

  I confirmed this and then I went and had a long shower before lying down on the bed. There was so much going on in my brain that I was certain I wouldn’t be able to sleep but before I knew it, my alarm was going off and I had half an hour to get to Circular Quay.

  32. LYNDON

  WE WERE AT THE Black Rose Café in Newtown, Sydney. Home of the anarchists. I paused outside the place while the others filed in. There was a bookcase outside, a rickety bamboo thing, and it held a strange selection of reading matter: The Drifters by James A. Michener, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg, and others. The books were all calcified with dust, and when I picked one up and tried to open it, it was a solid brittle brick. All the pages were stuck together.

  I put the book back and wiped my hands on my trousers, wishing I had some of that hand sanitizer Margaux was never without.

  The storefront window was smashed and broken, and there was a torpedo-sized hole in the centre with thick spider-web cracks radiating outwards. I peered through the hole and noticed that whatever had made it had penetrated a good three inches of glass. A face came up to mine and glared at me. Startled, I took a few steps back.