Authors: A.A. Bell
‘You’re like everyone here at the sanctuary,’ she assured him, ‘and you’ve never done anything like this before. So why Mira?’
He burst into tears and banged his head against the wall.
‘Because she begged me!’
In Sanchez’s pocket, her phone vibrated.
‘Never a dull moment,’ she muttered as her receptionist summoned her back to her office.
As the new matron, she was finding it difficult after six weeks to understand how so many phone calls and emails could be urgent. She’d also been finding it challenging to get to know all of the clients at Serenity personally. In her previous role as a psychologist at a special-care centre for juveniles on the mainland, it had taken less than a month to get to know everyone intimately. So she’d expected the island environment to make it easier, being such a relatively confined community of handicappedadults — almost a third of whom were too ill to make it far from their beds.
However, she had teams of staff to handle the day-to-day sessions now. They reported to her weekly with summary reports, so it was only through her daily rounds that her professional radar had detected two clients who’d been failing to thrive under existing strategies for their physical and mental health. Both Freddie and Mira were reclusive, and struggling even to cope.
Employing Ben to design specialist programs for them wasn’t intended to work miracles. But she could hope. Already, Ben’s suggestion to her that Freddie should try writing a play using the voices in his head as his muse, had resulted in Freddie cracking his first grin. Then for a fortnight, he’d barely shut up — sixty years of silence bursting out through at least seven distinctly different personas — until the incident with Mira. She’d barely arrived from the mainland before he’d taken a keen and desperate interest in her.
Now Sanchez needed time for her new tactics to work, but in the meantime, Freddie’s younger brother, an army colonel, had finally seen fit to return her calls. Colonel Kitching needed her cooperation for an upcoming health survey to validate the scope of new medical equipment, which had been organised by their respective state ministers under a cloak of secrecy. Odd, she thought, since the use of handicapped people for medical tests was outlawed, but then she’d learned that staff and clients from many government departments would be surveyed on a volunteer basis.
Even so, if Colonel Kitching expected her to cooperate happily with his medical team after neglecting Freddie for so long, then he was sorely mistaken. According to staff, the sour old mongrel hadn’t acknowledged Freddie with so much as a birthday card since he’d been committed to the isle.
No, she decided. If Colonel Kitching wanted his team’s project to run smoothly at Serenity, it would come at a price.
S
eagulls on Likiba Isle had grown accustomed to the screaming. Muffled by thick beach-stone walls hand-hewn by convicts centuries beforehand, the wails of caged humans had become as commonplace as the breeze and as surreal and mournful as the night hawks.
Perched in the highest mangrove trees along the shore, the hawks and seagulls were more often likely to have their feathers ruffled by the rush and bang of developers. Or by Freddie Leopard, pegging stones at them on his daily walks. On this occasion, however, with uncommonly heavy clouds closing in from the mainland, it was the roar of a motorbike and sidecar leaping off the end of the derelict tram bridge onto the timber-planked shore-line.
Freddie saw them from his own perch on the great wall of Likiba, restricted by the terms of his release following the incident with Mira. However, he’d known for almost a fortnight that he’d be here to witness the arrival of the two military doctors. Deaf as he may be to everything that moved around him, he’d heard the echoes of their coming a dozen times as he passed by this way on his morning walks. And now, as Time rippled over its own threshold between presentand future, he was reduced to watching their arrival in silence — and with dread, since he’d overheard far more than their initial arrival. He had followed their echoes throughout Serenity and heard every word and every conversation they would ever have on the island, including their eventual plans for Mira and the dreadful fate that awaited her and Ben, because of them.
Pointless, he’d learned, to try warning anyone. Staff had failed to take him seriously. After all, he’d heard of Mira’s initial arrival too, and that incident with her stitches and the subsequent traumas with Ben, and yet here he was, watching all of their lives still unravelling. Powerless to prevent it.
Yet there was still a chance he could save his sweet angel, the matron. Ben had suggested he should express himself by writing a play, and so he stole down from the wall and slinked away into the forgotten dungeons beneath Serenity, hoping to finish it in time — and in Braille, lest it fell into any hands that could bring disaster back to them.
The Harley Davidson nearly rolled, its sidecar teetering. The passenger gripped onto his map and seatbelt, leaning heavily in the opposite direction to remain upright. Behind them, fishermen shouted and shook fists at them before recasting their lines into the swift salty water.
‘Scenic route be damned, Mitch!’ shouted the sidecar passenger. ‘Next time we use the
new
bridge!’
‘Live a little, Zan. I did warn you to hang onto your helmet.’
‘Keep your extreme sports for the weekend! Plus, you’ve lost our bodyguards.’
‘Hardly; look again. These guys may not be the best the colonel could find, but they’re adequate.’
Zander Zhou turned his head and lifted his foggy visor to see a white four-wheel-drive zigzagging at speed around roadworks along the new bridge from the mainland. ‘They don’t look happy.’
‘Meatheads are never happy unless we’re not. Relax — enjoy the ride and the sunshine.’
‘It’s still overcast!’
‘Fresh air then.’
‘How can I, when you’re so lost? Look, this island isn’t even supposed to be here. It’s an unnamed mangrove swamp!’ Zhou waved the map at his hulkish companion, who snatched it and cast it over his leather-clad shoulder into the breeze.
‘That’s a tourist map. You won’t find this place on
any
tourist map.’
A horn blared and Mitch Van Danik accelerated to avoid a concrete truck exiting a construction site where the work on foundations for a new marina had turned the remnant vegetation, grey sand, mud and mangroves into a foul-smelling paste. Van Danik signalled two victorious fingers at the truck driver and accelerated his Harley in the opposite direction along the only sealed road on the island. Dodging potholes in the time-punished bitumen, he swerved onto the wrong side and raced past regular gaps in the kerb that promised a future grid of adjoining side streets.
The road wound around a small tidal marsh before rejoining and running parallel to the derelict tramway, both of which terminated in a clearing at the base of a low hill. There sat a gleaming bus shelter that guarded the crumbling beach-stone walls of a large colonial-style building like a fresh sentry at an old jail.
Rusted razor wire curled along the top of the wall, intertwining with flowering vines — and the peering face of an old man watching them. Spotted, he vanished; his hairy, bare-footed legs briefly visible to
Dr Zhou where a hole in the wall had been ‘patched’ by a scrawny brown hedge.
The hedge followed a cobbled driveway uphill to a modern security checkpoint, where a large sign welcomed visitors to the Serenity Centre and promised a sensual extravaganza at an upcoming festival. However, a red witch’s hat blocked the driveway, along with a makeshift sign apologising for renovations still in progress and asking all visitors to park outside and then follow a painted line of yellow happy faces to reception.
‘You’d think they’d at least rope off a decent car park,’ Van Danik complained. ‘Although I suppose that says a lot about the frequency of their need for visitor parking. Hang on, Zan. It’s time again to embrace your rally driver within.’
Dr Zhou gulped and gripped his seatbelt just as the sidecar bumped off the road onto the sandy grass verge and footpath.
‘This place is a mole on a porn star,’ Van Danik muttered as he avoided a light pole to park behind the bus shelter. He braked under the umbrella of a mature weeping fig, cut the engine and pocketed the key. ‘Why leave a blemish like this standing when there’s an expensive facelift going on down there along the waterfront?’
‘Everyone’s entitled to a sound roof and a decent view,’ Zhou defended. ‘Handicapped or not.’
‘They’re retards; the view is wasted.’
‘Intellectually
handicapped,’ Zhou argued, and glanced uphill to the security checkpoint in time to catch another glimpse of the strange little man as he scuttled past the boom gate towards a cluster of old limestone buildings. ‘The term “retard” is offensive.’
Feeling physically crippled himself after an hour in the black-and-gold sidecar, Zhou scrambled out awkwardly, teetering on his spindly legs as he disgorged his head and black, shoulder-length hair from the helmet.
‘You should be grateful Colonel Kitching was able to arrange so many survey participants in one place,’ he told Van Danik. ‘You’re the one who said you were sick of working with criminals and trained killers.’
‘Those trainee astronauts at Cape Kennedy were okay.’
‘So were the Queen’s Guards, but it’ll be a relief to work with volunteers who can’t think of a hundred ways to kill me with my own pencil.’ Zhou glanced around and noticed that they’d travelled high enough to see over the tops of the tallest mangrove trees to a flotilla of sailing boats that stretched north and south as far as the eye could see in the main channel of the bay. ‘I agree the view is manna, though.’
‘And the fishing must be orcan. Did you notice the size of the lures those guys were using?’
‘Orcan’s not a word. And whales are hardly likely around here, are they? They’ll be after barramundi, or maybe shark.’
‘What’s your problem today, Zan? Life too colourful already, or the poetry of allusion just eludes you?’
‘Too busy clinging to my life, among other things.’ Zhou leaned to inspect the luggage rack behind the sidecar. ‘Is my bag still back there?’
Van Danik took off his helmet and rolled his eyes as his gangly passenger grunted and strained at the rear luggage fasteners. ‘You know, if you can’t lighten up with a view like that, Zan, there’s no hope for you. I believe the violence of chaos — subatomic or not — naturally becomes me, as a physicist, but you’re a physician, and the absence of a calm bedside manner is a little unsettling. Now step back before you hurtyourself.’ He shouldered Zhou aside and pointed to the hedge of brown-flowering shrubs that lined both sides of the driveway. ‘Maybe you should stand over there with the other weeds.’
Zhou frowned but his expression softened with one glance at the hedge. ‘Actually, those aren’t weeds. They’re
Boronia megastigma,
and quite exquisite specimens too.’ He leaned closer, sniffing. ‘Not everyone can smell this particular variety. It’s supposed to be like citrus.’
‘That figures.’ Van Danik shook his head and unclipped the luggage fasteners with ease. ‘You must have missed your calling as a —’
‘Wait!’ Zhou said. A woman’s scream drifted softly on the breeze — muffled, but not entirely, by distance. ‘Did you hear that?’
He looked again for the odd little man, but saw neither him nor any other residents.
Van Danik turned his ear to the approaching rumble of a diesel engine. ‘Sure, I told you we hadn’t lost them.’
‘Not
them.
I heard a scream.’
‘It’s a nuthouse, Zan. It’s a wonder the walls haven’t been screamed down a hundred years ago.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ Zhou shivered. A scream from his past echoed inside his head, igniting pain and throbbing across the old scars where his ears had once been. ‘This was terror.’
C
onvulsing on her side, Mira stuttered on the floor in pain. Unable to scream again. The jolt of electricity reverberated down her spine, not yet dissipated out through her limbs. Her chest burned and her head throbbed, but she listened to the three voices, focusing as hard as she could manage in an effort to figure out what response she could give to make them leave her alone. Begging hadn’t helped.
‘You said you weren’t going to use it!’ Ben said, sounding angry.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Neville argued. ‘I said it’s not as bad as it sounds, and it’s not.’
‘It only looks that way. Give her a sec to catch her breath,’ Taser woman said. She crouched to stroke Mira’s hair. ‘Being blind, her senses are heightened so it takes a little while for her to figure out that she’s only copped a tingle.’
‘A tingle?’ Ben said, as if shocked himself. ‘Be serious. She’s convulsing!’
‘I am serious, kiddo. What you’re seeing right there is a momentary loss of muscle control. Sure it disorients her. It’s meant to. But all that thrashing about isn’t agony. It’s just spasms; involuntary. Loss of control is scary enough to make her yelp, obviously, and that’s just as good. It’s a warning of how bad it could get if she gives us cause to up the ampage.’
Mira shivered, still unable to unclench her jaw or uncurl her fists.
‘It’s rare to need it more than once per patient,’ Neville added. ‘But if she tries to attack, don’t hesitate. Switch it to max and grip hard. The charge isn’t high enough to cause any permanent damage, so long as you never use two gloves at once.’
‘I can’t do that!’ Ben protested.
‘Sure you can. It’s only a junior stinger, and look for yourself — it’s set to minimum. But even if it wasn’t, a hard sting is still plenty kinder than a traditional Taser. And cheaper than seds.’
‘No, I mean I couldn’t use that and still expect her to trust me.’
‘Trust?’ Neville laughed. ‘Benny, mate, trust is a luxury we can’t afford here.’
‘It can result in your injury as well as theirs,’ agreed the Taser woman. ‘The tantrums here can go nuclear. It’s not their fault or yours. You’ll just have to get used to it.’