Diamond Eyes (19 page)

She showed him how to lock the door, but as she swung up to return the door key to the hook inside the gutter, she caught the sound of a heavy engine on the breeze.

‘Can you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’ he said from closer to the ladder.

‘I don’t know. It sounds like. something big, like maybe a truck or other heavy machinery.’

‘Which way?’

‘Past that hill.’ Mira pointed across the breeze. ‘Sounds like it’s near the old church ruins.’

‘No time to check now, sorry, Mira. But next visit, we’ll go there first, I promise.’

‘I can hardly wait!’

She waited until she heard him head for the ladder before rubbing her eyes. There was no shaking the pain now. It had already started to stretch out from her eye sockets and throb across her temples and forehead. She gripped the handrail, dreading three fears at once: having to leave, having to endure the pain as it grew worse, and having to face the return trip with her eyes unstitched.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ben asked, touching her shoulder.

‘Don’t!’ She slapped his hand in reflex. ‘Please don’t touch me without warning me first!’

‘Sorry, I just thought. Are you okay?’

She nodded, but now that the time was upon her to leave, she couldn’t move her feet.

‘Don’t let anything stop you now,’ he reassured her. ‘It only gets easier from here, Mira. I promise.’

A
horse and rider galloped obliviously into the path of their speeding car. Mira cringed and clapped both hands over her eyes before impact.

Ben turned on the windscreen wipers. ‘Damn bugs!’ he cursed. ‘I hate driving in the country at dusk.’

‘Me too.’ She glanced behind her and saw the ghostly rider veer off onto a country side road, unharmed. ‘Can’t we slow down?’

‘Sorry, but we’re running late as it is.’

The car crested a hill and Mira saw a ghostly family crossing a small footbridge directly ahead of them — two of them only small children. ‘I can’t look!’ She slapped both hands over her face again as the car ploughed through them.

‘More ghosts?’

She nodded. ‘You’re mowing them down, except they’re not falling like in a computer game.’

‘You’ve played computer games? When?’

‘At school, before my father stopped me.’

‘Okay, well. Try the sunglasses again. I know it’s getting dark anyway, but...’

She pulled them down over her eyes and the blue fog turned red. The trees vanished, replaced in the same instant by crimson grasslands where a cow-sized wombat waddled in front of her towards a grazing herd of horned kangaroos. A dark-furred bear leapt down from a tree beside her — a large mutated ninja koala with switchblade claws. It landed on the wombat and swung around to slash its throat, at the same time latching onto its startled victim’s snout with powerful scissor-blade jaws.

Mira squealed and flung the glasses away from her. ‘That’s worse!’

‘What did you see?’

‘You don’t want to know.’
Killer koalas?
‘I must be crazy.’

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, surprised to realise that her constant headache had stopped briefly while the blue fog was red. She kept her eyes closed, hoping the relief would last a little longer.

‘I wonder what the visiting doctors would think about your hallucinations,’ Ben said after a few more miles.

‘You promised you wouldn’t tell!’

Her eyes flickered open. She saw crowds of ghosts milling about in the dusty streets — all women, brandishing placards and silently yelling — and as she shielded her vision with her invisible hand, she ploughed right through the middle of them.

‘I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone else at Serenity,’ Ben replied. ‘But Doctors Zhou and Van Danik are visitors, aren’t they? Think about it, Mira. They can tell when you’re telling the truth. They can even tell the truth from an accidental fib. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if the things you can see are the same as what your subconscious is experiencing?’

She chewed on her lip for a long moment before nodding. ‘I guess so.’

The car crested a hill and she screamed.

‘Shut your eyes again. Try to think of the ghosts as figments of your imagination.’

‘There’s a river!’

‘You can see that?’

‘Dead ahead!’ She squirmed in her seat and pointed. ‘You’re heading straight for it!’

‘Sure, but I’m taking the bridge.’

‘There’s no bridge!’

‘Who’s blind and who’s driving?’ he asked playfully. ‘In fact, there are two bridges, Mira, one for each side of the freeway. If you can see the river, you should be able to see the bridges. They’re both five lanes wide.’

‘No! Stop!
Stop
!’ she shouted, flailing her arms at him. ‘There’s no bridge!’

‘Hey, watch it!’ He pushed her hands away from the steering wheel. ‘You’ll make us crash! Just close your eyes and trust me. We’ve driven over this river once already with your eyes stitched shut and you never noticed.’

‘My dad drowned! Stop! Please?
Please,
Ben, I don’t want to drown!’

‘All right, all right,’ he said soothingly. ‘Close your eyes and listen to the traffic around us. Are they slowing down?’

She listened, holding her breath.

Ben decelerated a little and she heard a deep-throated truck overtaking them.

‘It’s going to crash!’

‘He’s not suiciding, Mira. Trust me — nobody builds a freeway that dumps traffic into a river.’

She squeezed her eyes shut, then tucked both feet onto the seat, pushed her face onto her knees and started rocking.

‘Okay, okay,’ he conceded. ‘I’m slowing down.’ He backed off the speed a little more and a horn sounded in the traffic behind them. ‘If that truck splashes, I’ll hit the brakes. Okay?’

‘I couldn’t see the truck. I only heard it!’

‘Keep your eyes shut and just listen.’

She clamped her eyes shut, her hands clasped over them as well, hardly daring to breathe. No splash yet. She wondered if the truck had bogged in the long grass on the steep embankment.

‘You can open them now.’

She did, startled to see that she was on the far side of the river. ‘How did you do that?’

‘The same way you ran around the railings at home and performed a back flip. By trusting things we know are real.’

‘But I couldn’t see it!’

‘Our eyes are structured differently, Mira. That much is obvious.’

‘Uveitis.? One of the doctors at Serenity said I had uveitis.’

‘What’s that? I heard you mention it to Matron Sanchez this morning.’

‘Well, I can only tell you what I’ve overheard; that it’s a chronic inflammation in my irises that’s systemic with other inflammatory conditions, like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis or Fragile X syndrome. I don’t know what systemic means but I’ve been diagnosed with all of those, off and on, over the years. They can’t make up their minds. Eye drops were supposed to help, but plenty of other doctors have already prescribed those and they only make the fog scarier, like your sunglasses. The fog changes colour and the ghosts are different. The eye drops also burn and so I end up fighting with invisible people like you. Then it gets really frustrating, because the more I try to explain, the more medications they prescribe, and that makes me even angrier because some of them make me very sick.’

‘Is it the uveitis that makes your eyes mirrored?’

‘That depends on which doctor you listen to. The last one said yes, it was the uveitis, but others used to say I’d mutated to develop some kind of tapetum — a type of silvery lining behind the retina of nocturnal animals — which they said reflects light back through my eyes to give the photoreceptors a second chance to absorb photons.’

‘Whatever that means. You certainly do have a memory for details.’

‘That doesn’t mean I understand them. Like I said, I can only repeat to you what I overheard the doctors telling my handlers.’

‘Hang on,
handlers?
Is that how you think of us? Of me?’

Mira shrugged. ‘It’s sometimes hard to tell a doctor from a nurse or a nurse’s aide. They often smell like the same antiseptic. And there’s an endless stream of invisibles who say hello when they come into my room, but never say goodbye the last time they see me. They just handle me. So I never bother learning their names. If I have to distinguish one from another, I just give them nicknames — like Leather man and Taser woman.’

‘Neville Kenny and Steffi Nagle?’

‘See? You knew who I meant.’

‘But why “handler", Mira? Surely you don’t think we treat you like a zoo animal? Our whole purpose is to provide you with the best of care and teach you life skills.’

Mira sighed, wondering what the difference was. ‘Some handle me roughly, like a dog. Others handle me cautiously, like a snake. Then there’s you. You handle me like cotton wool.’

‘I prefer to think of you as a friend first and a client second. May I touch your hand?’

She nodded, and in one touch he explained himself better than he could with any words.

I’m beginning to think of you as a friend too,
she thought. Aloud, she said, ‘Hey! Keep both hands on the wheel.’

He chuckled, then sighed. ‘What nickname do you have for me?’

‘Don’t laugh. It was Mr Squeaky-shoes. Your aftershave is pretty distinctive too — like a beach — but you sound really sinister coming down the hall to my room. I can hear your shoes through the door.’

He chuckled again, a sound that she was growing to enjoy. ‘Evil Mr Squeaky-shoes. I’ll have to remember that. So, what about the uveitis? Is it curable?’

‘Not after it’s caused permanent damage. They can only take out the affected parts and throw them away. In sane people, they sometimes replace them. But it’s no longer spreading, so in my case they decided it’s safer not to operate because of the risks with my other medical conditions. Nobody ever mentioned having to wait for a suitable donor. I just wish it didn’t hurt so much.’

‘It hurts? You mean it’s hurting now?’

She nodded and rubbed her temples. ‘It started at the treehouse when I opened my eyes.’

‘What?
Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t want you to bring me back early. I needed to prove things to you first — and to myself. Besides, it wasn’t as bad then as it is now. And it’s certainly not as bad as it can get.’

‘Do you need to stop? I have painkillers in the first-aid kit.’

She shook her head.

‘Mira!
You have to tell me these things. What kind of pain is it? A broad ache or a stabbing pain?’

‘A bit of both. My eyes are so hot they feel like eggs boiling, but in the middle of them it feels like searing-hot needles.’

‘Is your head throbbing?’

She nodded. ‘So much I can hear my own pulse inside my ears.’

‘That sounds like a migraine.’ He shifted gears and decelerated. ‘I’m taking the next exit.’ After a brief down-slope, he turned sharply left and braked to a halt.

‘No, don’t! It’s only a headache. I can put up with it.’

‘You shouldn’t have to. Not when relief is at hand.’

‘But we’ll be late! What happens then? I’ll be in trouble and the matron won’t let me out again!’

‘Trust me. I know a few shortcuts.’ He pushed open his door and retrieved the first-aid kit from the boot, then slid behind the wheel and opened the kit to find a painkiller. ‘Sorry, there’s no drinking water. Hold out your hand.’

She did and felt two tablets drop into her palm.

‘Can you swallow them dry?’

‘I don’t want drugs.’

‘These don’t count as drugs. If anything, you’ll be more alert after they deal with the pain. Trust me.’

She nodded cautiously and put them into her mouth, but as soon as she heard him fossicking in the first-aid kit again, she spat the pills into her hand and pushed them under her seat.

‘There’s some bandages in here. No sense waiting until we get back. I’ll cut some now to fit over your eyes. Blurry vision used to give my mother migraines from eyestrain until she bought contact lenses, so it’s possible that blurry hallucinations might have done the same to you.’

Mira frowned while he snipped and fitted the eye patches. ‘Do you still think the things I see are hallucinations, even though I can use them to find my way around at home?’

‘To be honest, I can’t explain what you see. But until we figure out the proper terms, I think it’s wise to use the words that keep the other staff happy, just in case you are forced to explain. Is that okay with you?’

Mira shrugged. ‘Keeping them happy is my sole function there.’

‘Uh-oh.’ Ben pushed the first-aid kit onto Mira’s lap. ‘Time to go.’

‘What’s wrong?’ She brushed a strand of hair away from her ear and heard a motorbike turn in their direction. ‘That sounds familiar.’

‘Yeah... maybe. A police bike just pulled around the corner behind us.’ Ben shifted the Camaro into gear and accelerated swiftly into traffic.

‘It’s the same policeman who stopped you before.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘His muffler sounds like blowflies in an empty beer can.’

Ben chuckled nervously. ‘I suppose it does.’

Lights changed — Mira could tell by the sounds of traffic and the police bike accelerating to follow them.

‘I hope he didn’t spot me parked in that no-standing zone.’

‘He’s catching up,’ Mira warned.

A police siren wailed, ordering the other traffic to pull aside and let him through.

‘He’s still a few cars back,’ Ben said, sounding worried. ‘He could be after anybody.’

The Camaro swerved sharply left.

Mira gripped her seatbelt. ‘You’d drive slower if you really believed that.’

‘I don’t trust cops, Mira. They nabbed me for a crime I didn’t commit.’

The siren turned into the street behind them, still a good distance away. Ben veered to the left again and the car bumped twice roughly.

‘Are we crashing?’ She gripped tighter.

‘Just a detour through a car wash. We’ll soon learn if it’s us he wants — and how badly.’

Mira heard his window winding down, then five coins clinking into a slot. The car lurched forward again and Mira heard water jets pummelling the roof, doors and windscreen.