Authors: Neven Carr
Old souls
. In Annie’s
unconventional slant of the world, I could hear her saying just
that. Saul pulled me nearer and for a while, we were quiet,
luxuriating in our closeness.
Even with the knowledge that there was still
so much ahead.
December
28,
2010
1:15
am
“
WAS SIMON
THE
reason you needed to escape, today?”
Saul was studying my bare ring finger, wearing a heavy
frown.
I tucked my sand-coated legs to one side and
began rubbing the whitish skin where the ring once occupied. I
sensed my heart crack just a little. “It was time to put the poor
man to rest.”
“I get the feeling it’s more complicated
than that.”
I sighed deeply and nodded. I then went on
to explain everything from the whole, strange Simon episode to my
lost, painful hours battling my so-called demons. As before, I
found talking to Saul easy. And as before, he listened with the
upmost absorption.
“I’m sorry for being so angry,” he whispered
after I finished.
I pulled back immediately. “No, Saul. It’s
me who should be sorry. Not telling you today was wrong.”
“But….”
“
But
nothing. It may now seem understandable, but it doesn’t excuse it.
I caused so much trouble, not just for you and Ethan but also for
all those people searching for me. You were right, I need to grow
up.”
“I was being too harsh.”
“
You were
being correct.” I knew this now. “I love how you don’t treat me
like a child, overprotect me like so many others do. You’re always
honest. You don’t bullshit me or pretend that everything is okay
when it’s not. You encourage me to handle things on my own. You
treat me like an equal. And all I want to do now…
is
to grow up so
I
can
be your
equal. You were one of my biggest motivations to sort myself out
today. You and of course, Simon.”
Saul lightly stroked his thumb across my
bottom lip. My stomach flipped and I groaned quietly. “I’m really
proud of you, you know that.”
“I do.”
“What you did today, wouldn’t have been
easy.”
“It wasn’t.”
He drew me
back to him, began affectionately playing with my hair. It felt
nice, calming. “I was so worried. You never go anywhere without
that bloody green bag of yours or your bloody musk sticks. I
overreacted.”
“
Ethan
told
me why you did, how you
felt.”
“Sometimes Ethan talks too much.”
“He thinks you’ll be upset with him, for
being disloyal.”
Saul chuckled. “His loyalty to me is exactly
why he told you in the first place. Sometimes, I think he knows me
better than I do.”
I had never thought of that. I wondered if
Ethan had.
“This question that Simon wanted you to ask,
have you figured it out yet?”
I had. But
first, I needed to talk about Simon. I told Saul this.
Saul skimmed
my forehead with light kisses. “Then tell me about him, Claudia.
Tell me about that day.”
My chest
tightened at the thought
of that
day
… the day I found
Simon.
“I’ve never told anyone the whole
story before… ever.”
“Do you want to?”
“
I want to
tell
you
.”
Saul waited
with remarkable patience. I used it to draw upon my new strength.
“The break-in to our Sydney unit was my fault.”
My voice was
trembling. I think my body was too. I waited for Saul to respond
but he didn’t.
“
We had two
locks fo
r the door. A normal, everyday
‘knob lock’; not the most secure but still dependable. And a
Smartcode deadbolt that Simon had installed. Being an investigative
journalist, he had to travel a lot with his work and was concerned
about my safety.” The irony of it was plain ridiculous …
my safety
.
I remembered
how much Simon loved his job, in particular that
aha
moment
when his investigations would fall into that perfect, place of
answers.
“
You should’ve been a detective,” I would
often joke.
“
Nah,” he would joke back. “I could get
hurt… worse killed.”
I swallowed hard, watched my fidgety fingers
knot.
“
The day
after Simon had left for one of his longer trips, the Smartcode
began beeping and wouldn’t lock. I replaced the battery, did
everything the troubleshooting guide told me to do. But nothing
worked.”
I remembered
how annoyed I was. I would often come home exhausted from the high
demands of my teaching job, too exhausted to play with disobedient
locks.
“So what did you do then?” Saul asked.
“
I rang the
company. They said it sounded like the lock wasn’t aligned
properly, something to do with movement in the door. A common
problem but easily fixable. They gave me the name of their nearest
repairer but….”
I stopped,
lifted my face, sucked in the marvelous, coastal air. How I loved
it, its saltiness so incredibly sweet. And the stars; like
thousands of lit-up mobile phones at a packed rock
concert.
“But what?”
I closed my eyes and breathed in.
“Claudia?”
“
I didn’t
ring the repairer.”
Saul went quiet; his rigid muscles said
enough.
“I was so tired and cranky.”
The excuse sounded pathetic, even worse when
said aloud.
“
I was on a
deadline with report cards; it was that time of year. They were due
in three days and I was still marking major assessments. On top of
that, I was studying my part-time master’s degree. I had an
assignment due, a small one but still due. Time at home was
increasingly precious. The last thing I needed was someone banging
away inside my unit. It was another four days before I finally rang
the repairer.”
“
I don’t get
it,” Saul said, “fear has governed you most of your
life.”
Fear still did. But a lifetime of
inexplicable dreams, of nameless watchers that no one believed
existed, was what had generated it. Or so I had thought.
I shrugged
my shoulders. “I don’t know how to explain it. In Sydney, my dreams
and the watchers had lessened, quite a lot. After an entire,
blessed year of it, I had actually begun relaxing. Besides, we
lived in a pretty upmarket area. Break-ins were rare. Our block of
units, old as they were? Non-existent. And I still had a perfectly
functioning lock. I guess I never really believed anything would
happen.”
“
And when
you finally rang the repairer?”
I shook my
head and groaned. “He couldn’t come out for another week.
That if I had rung a few days
earlier
….”
“
What did
Simon say?”
That was the hard part.
“
I told him
about the lock the first night he rang me.”
“And?”
Simon’s voice is anxious. “When’s the
locksmith coming out?”
I am silent, wondering what to say.
“
Clauds?”
“
I haven’
t rung him
yet.”
He swears, asks me why.
“
I came home late. I’ll call him tomorrow
morning.”
“
First thing
?”
“
First thing.”
“
Promise me.”
I promise him but he is still not satisfied.
The unease I hear in his voice is peculiarly strong, making me
question why.
“
Clauds, this is important. Promise me and mean it, promise
me on my life.”
“
Simon….”
“
Promise me, damn it.”
And I do.
I recounted the conversation to Saul. He
cupped my chin, tilted my face up to him and stared solidly at me.
“Claudia, just because you promised on his life, doesn’t mean
that’s why….”
“
I know,” I
interrupted, staring right back at him. “But the way he sounded,
really edgy, almost scared.”
Saul’s eyes narrowed. “You think he knew
something, knew that your lives were in danger?”
Again, I
shrugged. “At the time, I brushed it off to my imagination but
afterwards?” I sighed, broke away, searched for the moonlit waters.
“Well… afterwards….”
“
You
don
’t know he’d been threatened for
certain.”
“What other explanation was there? I
should’ve trusted my first instincts.”
Hindsight,
what an amazing attribute, one that richly fertilized blame and
guilt like nothing else.
“The line between natural instincts and
imagination is a very fine one, Claudia. Sometimes barely
visible.”
I had
learned that, was still learning it. “Whatever, the fact remains
that I didn’t keep my promise. One thing, only one thing Simon
asked me to do. And I didn’t. Not right away as he wanted. But at
the time, the urgency didn’t seem as important to me as getting
everything else finished. I figured the lock would be fixed before
Simon got home and he wouldn’t have been any the wiser.”
“But he was early.”
Five days early.
I began
drawing haphazard shapes in the cool, moist sand, wanting to avoid
Saul’s gaze. “
That day” I continued, “I
had come home in high spirits. I had just gone food shopping. Simon
would be back on the weekend and I wanted to surprise him with his
favorite meal. Our wedding plans were in full swing, we both had
great jobs, and we absolutely loved Sydney. Life was just sweet.”
My heart began pounding a little too fast, too loud and my muscles
tightened. “As soon as I opened the door to our unit, I could smell
it, that stench.”
“Death,” Saul whispered.
I closed my
eyes and trembled. It all started flooding back to me, my automatic
reluctance to go in the unit, Shamus, Clinton, as brave as they
were. And my old fears returning in torrents.
The stars
suddenly dulled, the salty air soured. I gripped onto Saul’s hand,
suppressed the angry, biting tears and ordered myself to keep
going. I then painfully recounted the rest. “Shamus eventually
called the police.”
I pictured
the normally exuberant and
colorful
Shamus, pale and badly shaken. Many months later, I had contacted
him. He was polite but unexpectedly standoffish. Now, the only time
I heard from him was a generic
Happy New Year
text. It hurt,
naturally. But, in some ways, I understood.
“
The police
said the ‘knob lock’ had been tampered with; that and the freakish
positioning of the body, the rose petals, the obsessive
cleanliness, all spelt a ritualistic/gang-like killing and most
likely something Simon was involved in.”
“But no link was found.”
“None.”
“And you blamed yourself.”
“
Of course,
I blamed myself. If the Smartcode had been working, if I had it
repaired earlier as promised….” I sat up straight, cradled my
tired, throbbing head. “Can you imagine what Simon must’ve thought
when he came home and found the lock still broken? Worse still,
that I hadn’t taken my promise more seriously?”
“Claudia, guilt is….”
“
Very
destructive? Yeah, you’ve said that already. And you’re right, it
was.”
I was hissing but not at Saul, at
myself.
“
At first,
it was like I was floating in this other world or parts of me were,
the parts that responded to my family and friends. But without any
emotion, you know, like a pre-programmed robot. What I
didn
’t understand was everyone’s
compassion. Even Simon’s parents, they were so sympathetic. How
could they be?
I
was responsible
.”
I could
still, even now, recall my increasing repulsion for them. “I found
the more empathetic they were, the angrier I got. And this anger
just festered like the sick thing it was, until it ripened to a
very silent, very twisted rage.”
I stared
ahead and saw only black nothingness, felt myself partially
disengage from my body.
“Soon I didn’t
want to hear their annoying, reassuring words or see their
disturbing, kind faces. I just wanted them to go away. And they
did. And I retreated into my home, all alone. And, well… Simon….”
My voice was indistinct, scratchy. “
Simon wasn’t there.
”
The memories of my first night back in the
Sydney unit hit me with all the impact of a heavy-duty, industrial
sledgehammer, the stark, in-your-face emptiness, the vivid,
bloodstained bed, the sudden uninvited reality of what had
happened, the crippling mental shock that followed.
I labored for air, felt as if I was going to
be sick. But, again, I ordered myself to move on.
“
I would
call out to him, to Simon, a thousand times a day telling him how
sorry I was, telling him I would get that fricking lock fixed now
if he would just please come home. But he didn’t, Saul. He didn’t
come home.”
My chest was exploding and hot tears began
spilling uncontrollably. I tried to swipe them away, but I was too
shaky, too uncoordinated.