Mind My Brother

Through the window, he could see a thin fog creeping across the ground between the gums. He felt an increase in moisture where the sleeves of his polo shirt ended, and his breathing felt restricted. He had often felt like this since events had brought him from his city home to this sixty-year-old house on the northern side of a mountain. A mountain with bush, and bird songs of all types. They even haunted his dreams.

How could dreams mess up my life so much?

Last night he had heard in his dreams the carolling of Magpies which had awoken him in the days of innocence. He remembered the first time his father had taken he and his brother David camping. It was there on the first night he had heard the mournful cry of the Currawong and shivered as he asked his father what it was.

The piercing cry of a Currawong interrupted his thoughts. He shook his head.

Was it an auditory hallucination or real?

Its cry ended on a high-pitched miaow as if it were a baby kitten, baby kittens always reminded him of girls calling for their mothers. He could never shake that association. He shoved the small feminine accessory in his palm into a plastic bag and pushed the bag into the bottom draw of the large oak dresser by the bed. It was a three-stranded hair elastic of purple, silver and white, decorated with silver beads: the sort of thing which appealed to a young girl.

A young girl who’d been loved, before she was abruptly abandoned.

He quickly moved out of his darkening bedroom, down the hall to the study and seated himself by the window in his favourite chair. The room where he dreamed and tried to stay asleep was smaller than this study where the polished, Baltic pine boards were partly covered by three suitcases: two filled with shoe boxes and files of papers, the other with clothes, DVDs and magazines. A suit encased in plastic hung on the handle of the built-in cupboard doors.

He opened his laptop to the file marked David. He had once called him Dave in their childhood and youth. He shook his head and cast his mind back to the first scene in his dream from the previous night. Immediately he felt as if he was in the helpless state of sleep. The scene was before him; he stood on the edge of a sealed road looking down a gravel pathway that sloped away from him, into a hollow area filled with ferns and grasses, edged by tall gums.

About twenty metres in front of him he saw a head and shoulders bobbing above the ferns, a black shiny ponytail was visible above a neck and then, shoulders covered in white. Suddenly he was facing her, but he was not the person right in front of her. He was pressed against the man that was standing between him and the dream woman. His hands outstretched helplessly as the cry of the Black Currawong made his spine tingle. In the strange perspective of dreams, he could see the sweat on his own brow and the dead fern fronds in his hair.

She was kneeling on the ground with her left cheek marked with red from a hard slap. Tears ran down her cheeks. Her black hair dishevelled; the man’s hand raised with the purple plaited hair tie showing above his shoulder, strands of black hair attached.

Michael clamped his hands over his ears, but the sobs were inside his head.

‘Please don’t—— don’t.’ Pale-skinned and trembling she looked up.

‘I have a daughter——, please’. Her sobs seemed to grow louder, until a crescendo of other voices, joined her cries in his head.

He sat for a while feeling dazed. He had typed nothing. Rather he had re-lived the nightmare, one unlikely to be forgotten. Now, he assumed where the hair accessory had come from—borrowed from her daughter. He was attracted to the oak dresser in his new bedroom. He opened the drawer again and held the bag in his hand. The woman in distress was thinking of her daughter. Instantly he felt protective.

How could he feel what a mother would feel?

He could see the girl walking with her mother along the path between the ferns.

If only that woman had not gone alone that day.

He fingered the folder of newspaper clippings in the drawer. It had been her habit, the articles stated, to walk alone, early on Sunday mornings.

That was when she had disappeared—while her community was sleeping. A tear formed at the corner of his left eye and rolled down his cheek. He slammed the drawer and stood up.

He heard footsteps and then a knock from the direction of the front door. In a daze, he made his way down the hall. When he opened the door, there was no one there. He looked around. As he was shutting the door, he noticed a carton of eggs with a note on the step. Then, he remembered. Someone at work had told him that he could get eggs delivered, and he had agreed it was a good idea. But he didn’t remember actually agreeing to order any or adding his name to the list. The woman who asked must have done it.

He thought, it seems so hard to remember little details these days.

He rubbed his temples. The note said, “leave the money in the envelope please.” From the wallet in his pocket, he took $5 and placed it in the envelope, and positioned it under a stone at the side of the step. As he did so, he saw a version of the dream woman walking to the door with a carton of eggs. Her face was light, and her torso covered by a white shift that moved like a fog across her hips and around her knees. She seemed to move, but he could see no feet. The edges of the figure oozed blackness, while the centre moved like fog parting before headlights.

His heart raced. Hell! A Ghost? I'm losing it.

He slammed the door as he re-entered the house.

The following evening, he worked late, though his workmates urged him to leave early for drinks at the pub. He refused.

'Thanks guys. I've just got some work to catch up on.'

He waved to the exiting staff before shutting his office door. He prepared the month’s sale figures, even though he did not need to finish them until Monday. It took him longer than usual. His knees felt like insects were crawling over them.

Was someone watching him?

He tidied his desk, even filing papers he could have left for his assistant. He took the map he had purchased at lunchtime and stowed it in the side pocket of his briefcase. As he walked to the car, his breath came in gasps. His whole body ached. He contemplated the business of the dreams.

The dreams and visions. I wonder if I can make them happen. I must know where she disappeared.

Until these visions, which started after his brother’s death, Michael had never believed dreams were important. He had never thought the dead might try to communicate with him. Now it seemed a plausible explanation for what was happening in his life. When the nightmares began, he thought they were caused by his own guilt: the guilt of silence.

Once he knew his brother's dark secret, he could not feel the same way about him, though he ached for the loss of their bond. When David died last November, he was leasing three storage sheds. It had taken Michael a while to collect his brother's chattels from each of the tin rent-a-sheds, each in separate locations. While David had lived with the bare minimum in his house, he had never gotten rid of anything. As Michael sorted out his brother's things, he realised David had more than one skeleton in his closet. His mouth twisted as he thought God, that's black humour!

He swallowed.

He remembered how slowly he’d gone with the chore left to him as executor of his brother’s will. He reflected on the capacity of the human mind to ignore what it pleased: how it looked for patterns it wanted to live with. David had a girlfriend he’d broken up with five years before he died, and he had bequeathed her a set of rare books. She was moving out of state and hadn’t wanted to pay more to have the books shipped. She’d rung him one day two weeks before her moving date, in a moment that had shocked him into feeling his fear, she said, “Your brother’s been dead almost a year, and you’ve only half unpacked that bloody shed! What the hell are you afraid of?”

Defensively he said, “Now why did you two break-up again?”

She didn’t answer that question, but said, “Call me when you have those books, out, dusted and packed in a fresh box, or you can pay the $200 to have them shipped to me.” The mobile went silent.

Since coming here, he had slept better, though of course the dreams had not stopped completely. Everything felt like it was going in slow motion. On the 13th of March, two weeks after moving, he remembered typing in his journal file: "I woke with the definite feeling I've been sent here. It all fits a pattern. Every time I hold the hair tie, I know more about this woman."

He could enter the dream even when he was awake if he held the hair elastic. He wanted to find out what and where it had happened. Where it had happened. It was as if he were a grieving relative, reluctant to consider the reasons for her disappearance.

Driving up to the backdoor of the house, he imagined that all the ghosts were waiting for him. He entered the house and made himself a toasted sandwich. After eating for the first time in a day and a half, he entered each bedroom, the bathroom, the two toilets and, apologising for his presence, switched on each main light. He had a hunch it would make no difference to the ghosts.

Had she gathered her sympathetic friends from the netherworld to provoke him until he did … what?

He really did not know how many there were. As soon as he had begun to understand the purpose of the gruesome archive left by his brother, he had not kept reading, he had hidden it all.

Why didn't I burn it all?

He entered his study and turned on the lamp. He had with him the accessory worn by the woman in the dream, and all the newspaper clippings. Local woman missing. He sat in the chair after reading an article about the frustration of local police at the lack of evidence and held the souvenir. The desk clock ticked. A lone owl hooted. Sweat oozed from his palms.

Then, back in the dream of two nights before. He was amongst the ferns and grass. This time he was walking down the path right behind the woman with the black shiny hair. She turned to face him then was grabbed from behind. He saw the faceless man, and the knife. He awoke to the sound of his own voice, ‘Where did it happen?”

He took out the map and smoothed it on the desk. A local map showed the bush reserve where the woman was last seen. He wanted to place his feet on the last place she might have stood.

He reflected on his decision. Don’t suppose I could tell anybody now. I never imagined being crazy like this—not in a million years. How could I tell people that I literally feel and hear them pressing around my bed? Their whispers, sometimes their sobs.

One morning he had been so conscious of a crowd of unseen souls his hand had shook while shaving. As if their outrage could make me cut my own throat.

He sat at the window as night came, listening to the small sounds. At first, he had thought it eerily quiet here. Now he could hear the life behind that first impression. Especially the scuffling through leaf litter and the haunting hoot of the Great Owls. After a while, he lay down on his bed. He was surprised to wake with soft daylight on his face.

He dressed then packed the map and other items in a backpack and took a heavy parker from the wardrobe. As he gazed outside during his breakfast of toast, a thick frost glistened on the grass. At least the sky was clear, and the sun was shining. He would go to the entrance of the reserve and see what he could feel.

He placed his hand around the woman's hair accessory in his pocket. It felt cold.

Thoughts of how strange it was to call her "woman" prompted him to return to his bedroom and look up the newspaper articles with the intention of remembering their content rather than allowing the mystery to overwhelm him. Her name was Tania. One of her funeral notices said she had a daughter, Stephanie, aged eight years. The year of publication was 1993.

The daughter Stephanie would be twenty-seven years old.

He gasped as he took note of the date for the first time.

March 14, 1993

He struggled with the swollen back door. The boom it made when he forced it into the doorjamb made his headache. He jiggled the handle to check it was locked before he began his four-kilometre walk. Along damp-slickslicked winding tarmac, edged with grass, and grey barked gums, he trudged until he found the winding hard-packed track into the reserve where Tania’s life had ended.

When he reached the damp, green vale of the reserve, like a fringe around the base of the small volcanic mountain, the smell of damp eucalyptus seemed to trigger a lava flow of thoughts. He was captivated in his own private cinema, memories that had a life of their own played out in his mind in vivid colour. The first scene was from his youth. He was seventeen and in his final year at school. Arriving home one afternoon, after mid-year exams, he had found Dave already at home. Unusually, his mother and Dave were seated in the lounge room with an official-looking stranger in a suit, accompanied by a black briefcase. His own thoughts were so present, as if reading a story from his journal.

***

I knew something was up. They were using the formal front room, instead of relaxing in the kitchen with a cup of tea. I attempted to sit with them, but Mum told me to leave the room.

'Fine', I'd spat out, 'I'm going for a run.'

I changed and made sure I slammed the door on my way out. I changed my mind at the end of the driveway. Over the past two years, Dave had kept secrets. When he was home, he stayed in his room a lot, supposedly studying and practising music.

Bet he's gone and got himself a scholarship to the conservatory of music. I want to know before dad.

I snuck around the side of the house and through the double doors of the sunroom, across the room and stood in the hallway opposite the closed lounge room door. I feared that the creaking floorboards might give away my presence. I dried my palms on my tracksuit pants. The house was quiet, and I could hear the tap dripping through the open bathroom door.

I heard the stranger say, 'It's been necessary to meet with you for an important reason, Mrs McInerney, and so I best come to the point now.' His voice was soft but clear in the silence. 'I am here in my capacity as consultant psychologist to the school counsellor, who has asked me to call on you. We have already spoken to David about our concerns. and he agreed to my coming here. I need to point out, he agreed after the principal explained that a solution must be discussed or immediate expulsion from school would be required.'

'Expulsion! David?' My mother's tone was scornful. 'Why he is one of the best, if not the best student in that school.'

I took a deep breath and willed myself to remain silent and alert.

'I'm aware that David is highly intelligent and an excellent student.' I heard a click, and the shuffling of papers, and presumed the stranger had opened his briefcase. 'But you could say this matter concerns his social development.'

David's voice broke in.

'Don't show her. My father--'

'David, I feel it's necessary to show your mother. Otherwise, there's no accountability for you and she needs to understand.'

There was a graveyard silence.

'My God, how dare you come into my house and show me this disgusting filth!' My mum's voice seemed to bounce from the walls of the little room. 'David?'

The stranger's voice was warmer, more soothing now.

'Believe me, we know how unpleasant this is but we're here for your son's sake.'

'How do you know this is David's fault? Couldn't someone else—'

'I know this is hard to accept but similar material was found three times in David's possession over a six-month period.'

My mum's voice rose to a screech. 'Dr Cullen—'

'Enquiries have been made as to its origin. Recently David has admitted to obtaining it himself.'

'Mum, I'm sorry.' David's usually mellifluous voice was rough.

Cullen continued. 'This is only a sample of numerous images in David's possession. Their mixture of soft sex with graphic violence is most disturbing. Apart from the fact that their existence could be a legal matter, it is our professional opinion that David needs help.'

I didn't wait to hear more. I exited through the sunroom and ran to our local park. I wet my head under one of the taps near the picnic tables. Shaking my head, I took slow deep breaths.

I thought, Hell, my favourite person could be some kind of weirdo.

And then, Poor Mum.

***

He became aware of a soft rain; it was falling on the tall eucalypts and then dripping down on the back of his neck. He moved to a nearby rotunda of rustic construction. It contained a barbecue and a half empty rubbish bin. Leaning against one of the posts he looked toward the gravel road that led into the reserve. Another memory came to him. It was just before he and David had turned nineteen. They both had their car licences. His father often let David borrow his car on the weekends and one October weekend he had asked to go away overnight. He had been angry, he remembered, wondering why David had said nothing, wondering who he was going with. Itching to grab him by the collar and ask why his own brother was being excluded.

***

I was angry when I heard dad had said yes. Three times I had asked my father for the use of the car, and he had refused. Dad claimed he said no because I was "irresponsible,” but he could never tell me why. My mother looked sad as she stood by watching us.

I asked Dave, 'Where are you going? And with who?'

'I'm going out to Frankston to stay with a friend.'

'Which friend?'

'None of your business.'

'Come on Dave, I'm your brother. Tell all.'

There was silence and I left the room. I knew Dave didn't tell all: far from it. I remembered hearing Dave was having music lessons with a new mentor, a successful concert pianist, when he was really seeing Doctor Cullen every fortnight for a year. Dave turned away from me that Friday night and I didn't see his face until Sunday morning at four o'clock.

Tapping on my bedroom window woke me. The hair stood up on the back of my neck as I saw a blurry human face through half open eyes.

'Mick, open up. Mick...'

I swung my feet to the floor and staggered to the sash window, standing upright, and stretching as my eyes cleared. As I pushed up the bottom pane, I spoke.

'Hell, what are you doing? It's the middle of the night.' I looked down at my brother's hands on the windowsill, lit by the full moon—a cloth soaked in scarlet liquid was clutched in his left hand.

The next morning David was not at breakfast. Mum was anxious to see him. Everyone was surprised. Dad and I had a day off work. We'd made a cup of coffee and I was just about to say that he'd been around in the early hours of the morning when we heard the crunch of car wheels on the gravel drive. Mum went to the door.

'It's Dave.'

It turned out he had gone to get the car detailed as a surprise for Dad. I glared at him as he looked over Dad's shoulder. He leaned back from the embrace and spoke to Mum.

'Now Mick and I can celebrate our nineteenth birthday.'

Our Dave, always ahead of the game.

***

The sound of a Magpie's persistent carolling brought him back to the rotunda. He was leaning on a post by the old rusty barbecue. He took a bottle of water from his backpack and took a swig, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. It was hard to swallow, the muscles of his neck and shoulders ached. He stood upright and began to walk further into the reserve. A gravel path on his left looked familiar. Ferns and straggly bush grass fringed it. The path sloped down and curved away from where he was standing into the bush. He followed it, drawn forward, guided by thoughts he would not acknowledge. For five minutes he walked, until he came to a hollow between two fallen, rotten tree trunks. A dark-grey volcanic rock sat in a spot between the tree trunks and pungent humus filled the rest of the area. He took out a camping shovel and unfolded its handle. He remembered wondering why he had packed it.

He thought, this is the spot.

***

I thought it was strange when Dave asked me to go away for the weekend. We hadn't spent much time together since our nineteenth birthday. A camping trip would be fun Dave said, not too far from civilisation. I asked him why he didn't want to go on the Labour Day holiday.

'It'll be busy. You know with short notice we might not get a spot, so we'll go the weekend after.'

'We'll go to the pub on Saturday night,' he said. 'Check out the girls.'

'O.K. I'm in. Why don't we invite some mates?'

'No, not this time. Just you and me. '

We had a good time together that Saturday. I was secretly surprised. I hadn't had that much fun with him or seen him that relaxed in years. We went swimming in a pool just down the street from the town’s service station. We made giant sprays of water as we leapt carelessly from the edge of the pool and showed off from the diving board. For that hour, it was as if the clock had turned back four years.

On Saturday night, we went to the pub to check our girls as we had planned. He was interested in an attractive brunette. She had long, silky hair and a neat figure.

'Isn't she a little old for you?' I elbowed him as we sat at the bar.

'If it doesn't bother her, it's not a problem.'

We chatted with her and her friend for a while. Dave was all charm, but they still left early. We slunk back to our cold tent, piled on the blankets, and slept until first light.

The morning dawned bright and beautiful. Magpies carolled and Bellbirds called. We cooked bacon and baked beans. The warm food warded off the morning chill. David started pacing. He went into the tent and came out with his boots and parka on.

He looked at me and said 'you pack up bro. I'm going for a walk.'

'Hey, I'm not packing up on my own. I'll wait.'

He stalked off, and an hour later I was still waiting. I got dressed and doused the fire. Another fifteen minutes went by. In the distance on a road that bordered the camping area I thought I could see a lone dark-haired figure walking. I decided to look for Dave and set off in the direction I'd seen him go.

I found a path that wound across the reserve, at one point I took a turn and found myself on a loop that connected back to the main path. Here the path sloped down away from me, and I heard a female voice.

'...Please—' Her sobs ended in a shriek. My heart pounded in my chest.

A minute later, I was right behind her as she fell: dying from stab wounds inflicted by my brother. He stared at me.

“I told you to wait for me.”

His calm chilled me to the bone.

***

Michael dug for an hour, down and around, down, and around until he struck an object of different consistency. He lifted the shovel to look, falling onto his knees. Until now, he could not and would not believe it. A little over fifteen years ago he had followed David here.

He thought, I wanted to catch him, but instead I was caught, like a fly in a web.

On the shovel was a cracked thigh bone with patches of moss. He knew it was human, he knew it was hers. He had damaged the skeleton, disturbed her who was already restless. He shivered. Dark hummus was imbedded in the cracks on the bone, and in it the moss grew. When he glanced up a glimpse of the curve of what he guessed was a hip bone was there. The mossy bone had a protrusion at the top where it once kissed the hip. The scent of earth was up his nose, everything crawled with slaters, and no longer smelled like death. But the fact was life had once covered that bone, it had curved with muscles flowing with energy. He vomited, missing the skeleton mostly, leaving a wet flower-orange puddle on her grave.

Now he trembled, now he knew. Did a ghost looking for justice lead him? Or did his mind just crack under the strain of pretending it never happened?

I kept silent. I helped bury the body. An accessory.

He shook as if with fever. Everything went out of focus. He put his head between his knees. Time passed and then he heard voices in the distance. He smoothed over the bush grave, shook the shovel, and packed it away. He walked back to the house, trembling all the way.

He showered, shaved, and drank two straight whiskies from a bottle in the kitchen. He still felt dirty as he sat on the edge of the bed for a long, long time: until the dappled moonlight patterned the floor. Then, stiff all over, surprised sleep had visited; he woke at dawn.

An hour later dressed in a suit, with the car seat packed with shoe boxes, he drove through the town and out onto the freeway. He drove toward the city, not admitting even to himself the thing he had decided to do.

Michael felt Tania was alive when he saw her: Stephanie's mother with the black, shiny hair. He saw her clearly when he parked the car and stood beside it slowly reaching for his coat, and checking his wallet was inside his jacket. She beckoned to him as he stepped on to the bitumen. He gazed up at the edifice of concrete and glass. He paused for a moment watching the sun glinting on the shiny pieces in the high walls. He walked towards the tinted doors and Tania may have walked with him to them—the shiny glass doors and the tall desk.

The woman behind the desk looked surprised when she saw him in a long, heavy coat leaning against the desk. She wondered, is it that cold outside?

She nodded to him, and he said, 'I have information regarding a number of crimes. May I speak to someone from Homicide?'

As he spoke, he pushed his car licence across the desk. She looked at it and her hand closed into a fist over it.

'I'll see who might be able to help you.' Her fingers moved to read the licence,’ Mr McInerney.'

Then she turned away from him, the phone to her ear.

****

In the distance, he heard a siren, and down the corridor, a door slammed. He shuffled his feet and imagined a moment when he had to tell someone about the shed and the boxes. He saw himself there, hands shaking, having the keys snatched from him by a sergeant in blue. A drop of sweat oozed out of his hairline.

Would they blame it all on him? They had DNA tests, didn’t they?

He turned towards the door, and his hand was on the handle. The receptionist spoke “Mr McInerney, Sergeant Watts is here to take you through.”

They walked, the sergeant one step ahead, down a shiny floored corridor to a black painted door with a glass panel in it. The door was open, and a woman in a grey suit stepped out.

She stretched out her right hand to him, “I’m Stephanie Chandler. I’m a detective in the homicide investigations unit here. You have information about a murder?”

He nodded, and his head began to spin. The sergeant gripped his left arm against him and shoved him sideways into a chair. He put his head down, almost between his knees. Stephanie sat next to him, “You OK?” He raised his head a little and began to breathe a little slower. He nodded. “Where?”

For a split second he wondered why she asked where first. “State Forest area. Near Mt Warren.”

She stared at him, and the tension in her face hardened to shock, “When?”

In that moment she looked more like her than he ever had wanted to imagine.

“March, close to twenty years ago.”

She stood up and stage whispered to Watts, “Find Foster and Cane, I’ll be sitting this one out.”

Their eyes met and his hands began to shake.

--The End--