The Ford Meteor speeds down Ipswich Road. Caitlyn Spies’ left hand drops the gear stick down as she yanks the steering wheel too hard and fast into the Darra turn-off.
‘And you think that was me standing on the beach?’ she asks.
‘Well . . . yeah,’ I say. ‘Then I opened my eyes and my family were there.’
It was August I saw first. He was looking over me just as he was looking over me in the clock tower engine room. I thought I was back there until I saw the drip sticking into my hand. Felt the hospital bed. Mum rushed to the bedside when she saw me awake. She told me to say something so she would know I really was alive.
‘Gr . . .’ I said, wetting my dry lips to talk.
‘Gr . . .’ I said.
‘What is it, Eli?’ Mum asked, anguished.
‘Group hug,’ I said.
Mum suffocated me in a hug and August threw his arm around us. Mum slobbered tears and spit on me and turned to Dad who was sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room.
‘He means you too, Robert,’ Mum said. And that was a kind invitation to many things for Dad, starting with a hug he tried to pretend he didn’t want.
‘And that’s when you walked into the hospital room,’ I say to Caitlyn.
‘And that’s why you think I brought you back?’ Caitlyn asks.
‘Well, it’s kinda obvious, isn’t it?’ I reply.
‘Sorry to spoil the magic, mate, but it was RBH Emergency who brought you back.’
The car hits a bump on Darra Station Road. The knife wound in my belly howls for attention. It’s only been a month since City Hall. I should be in bed watching Days of Our Lives. I shouldn’t be in this old car. I shouldn’t be working.
‘Sorry about that,’ Caitlyn says.
The RBH doctors say I’m a walking miracle. A freak of medical science. The blade hit the top of my pelvic bone as it went in. And that bone stopped the knife going deeper.
‘You must have strong bones!’ the doctor said.
August smiled at that. August said he’d told me I’d come back. August knows things because August is exactly one year older than me and the universe.
Caitlyn turns into Ebrington Street and we pass Ducie Street Park, with the cricket pitch and the playground I once followed Lyle across on his midnight walk to pick up drugs from ‘Back Off’ Bich Dang. A lifetime ago. Another dimension. Another me.
The car pulls up in front of my old house in Sandakan Street. Lyle’s house. Lyle’s mum and dad’s house.
We’re retracing the story. Brian Robertson wants it all. The rise and fall of Tytus Broz, the man every newspaper across Australia has had splashed across their front pages for the past month. Brian’s going to turn our story into a five-part crime series, with special first-person accounts from the boy who saw some of the story up close, through his own eyes, from his own perspective. Joint byline. Caitlyn Spies and Eli Bell. Caitlyn will handle nuts and bolts. I will handle colour and detail.
‘Details, Eli,’ Brian Robertson said. ‘I want every last detail. Everything you remember.’
I said nothing.
‘What do we call it?’ Brian asked at the editorial meeting. ‘What’s our headline for this whole insane saga? Give it to me in three words.’
I said nothing.
*
I knock on the door of the house. My old house. A man comes to the door. Mid-forties. Deep black skin of an African man. Two smiling girls around his legs.
I explain why I’ve come. I’m the boy who was stabbed by Iwan Krol. I once lived here. This is where Lyle Orlik was taken away. This is where the story began. I need to show my colleague something inside my old house.
We walk down the hall to Lena’s room. This room of true love. This room of blood. Sky-blue fibro walls. Off-colour paint patches where Lyle once puttied up holes. It’s a girl’s bedroom now. There are Cabbage Patch dolls on a single bed with a pink quilt. My Little Pony posters on the walls.
The African man’s name is Rana. He stands at the entry to Lena’s old bedroom. I ask him if he would mind me looking inside the room’s built-in wardrobe. Rana nods. I slide the wardrobe door along. I push against the back wall of the wardrobe and the wall pops out. Rana is puzzled by this secret door. I ask him if he would mind if Caitlyn and I slid down into the secret void built into his house. He shakes his head.
Our feet meet the cold damp earth. Caitlyn clicks on her small green flashlight. The little circle of white torchlight bounces off the underground brick walls of Lyle’s secret room. The circle stops on a red telephone resting on a cushioned stool.
I look at Caitlyn. She takes a deep breath, stands back from the telephone, like it might be a thing of witchcraft, a thing accursed by dark magic. I move closer to it because I feel compelled to. I stop on the spot. Stand in silence for a long moment. Then the phone rings. I turn back to Caitlyn, confused. She gives no reaction.
Ring, ring.
I move closer to the phone.
Ring, ring.
I turn back to Caitlyn.
‘Do you hear that?’ I ask.
I move closer.
‘Just leave it, Eli,’ Caitlyn says.
Closer.
‘But do you hear it?’
Ring, ring.
My hand reaches out to the phone and I grip the handset and I’m about to raise the handset to my ear when Caitlyn’s hand rests gently on mine.
‘Just let it ring out, Eli,’ she says softly. ‘What’s he going to tell you’ – she puts her other hand behind my head, her perfect and gentle hand sliding down to the back of my neck – ‘that you don’t already know?’
And the phone rings again as she moves into me and the phone rings again as she closes her eyes and presses her lips against mine and I will remember this moment through the stars I see on the ceiling of this secret room and the spinning planets those stars surround and the dust of a million galaxies scattered across her bottom lip. I will remember this kiss through the big bang. I will remember the end through the beginning.
And the phone stops ringing.