Head Spinners (13 page)

I brushed my teeth, pulled on my pyjama shorts and snuggled into bed. Then I pulled my pillow under my chin, shut my eyes and started to drift . . .

The next thing I knew, there I was.

Hovering in our front yard.

It wasn't like flying or floating or anything like that because my body wasn't there to feel. It stayed warm and snug, with the pillow tucked under its chin, while the rest of me got to go outside. A banksia bush in our front yard rustled slightly in the breeze. Its reds and brown-greens looked almost monochrome in the moonlight.

As far as banksia bushes go, that one was nothing special. But I'll never forget what it looked like because
seeing
it like that meant I'd been given a whole new life –
bonus
time. I didn't have to be scared of falling, or worry I'd get cold. I didn't have to tell Mum and Dad what I was doing.

At that moment, I felt like the luckiest kid ever.

The world was out there, just waiting for me to explore.

I used to think the whole world shut down at night, as if my parents turning out their lights made everything go black and silent. How wrong I was.

Even on my first night when I just hung out in our street, I saw more happening than I'd expected. It was fun to see a fat possum clambering along branches and telephone wires – Possum King of the night. The guy who lives at the end of our street came home late, with food stains down his front and sweat circles under his arms. He took his dog out into the yard. It took ages sniffing and scratching around in the cold, but the guy just stood there yawning and rubbing his forearms, talking softly to it.

The next night I explored a bit further and popped in to see my friend Heath. He was asleep with his head half off the bed and his arms outstretched as if he was flying.

The night after that I got really excited and decided to try for the moon. If my body wasn't coming with me, then it didn't matter that there wouldn't be any air to breathe. I was really disappointed when I always found myself in our backyard, no matter how many times I tried. I'd snuggle into bed picturing myself on the moon. My limbs would relax, my mind would drift . . .

The next thing I knew, I would be looking at those banksia flowers. Again.

In the end I decided that I had to stick to places that were familiar. I'd never been to the moon before, so maybe I had no link to project myself there.

In fact, I found it hard to control where I went even when I knew the place well. One night I tried to go exploring at school but ended up at Mr Eriksson's house. He was watching a movie with Miss Withers. Who would have guessed they were a couple? She had her hair out of a bun, and her legs resting on Mr Eriksson's lap. She looked way younger than normal.

I didn't tell anyone what I'd seen, not even Heath. It felt too private. Watching someone who doesn't know they're being watched is almost like seeing them, well, naked. You see all the secrets they try to hide.

The guy in the suit had me stumped for a while. He just looked like your average businessman, except he was searching through a rubbish bin when I first saw him. Maybe he'd had a fight with his girlfriend, I thought, and in a fit of fury she'd thrown an expensive necklace away. Or maybe he'd lost some important business documents and millions of dollars were at stake.

As I kept watching, though, he pulled out an old takeaway container. He lifted the lid and sniffed. The next thing I knew, he had torn off a bit of cardboard and was using that as a spoon.

Talk about an unusual business dinner.

If I'd had my stomach with me, it would have been churning. He was eating the way dogs do – swallowing without really chewing. From the way he kept checking up and down the street I could tell that he didn't want anyone to see him.

When he was finished, he dropped everything back in the bin, brushed off his hands, and headed down the street looking once again like an everyday businessman. Except I had a feeling he wasn't going home to a nice warm bed.

I went straight home to my own warm bed after that.

In fact, most nights I only explored for an hour or so before returning to my body, glad to have a warm doona to pull up and a family asleep just down the hall. It felt somehow lonely to be out there, exploring the night world.

And, I have to admit, some of the time it was worse than lonely. Sometimes it was scary.

It's hard to explain, but once or twice a feeling came over me as if someone else was with me. Not someone I could see, but something . . . else. A kind of presence. One minute I'd be drifting over a street or in someone's house and the next I'd have to turn around, expecting to see someone . . .

Or something.

Not that I believe in ghosts or anything like that, but that sense of
something else
still made me think about spirits and guardian angels . . .

I hoped it wasn't something worse.

Two weeks after my thirteenth birthday I saw something that I'd never seen before, something I came to wish I
hadn't
seen.

It was a dark night without much moonlight. I was exploring the streets past the paper mill. Even though it was just row after row of old houses, it was still fun to explore. I felt a bit like Superman, flying over it all.

I saw a rhododendron bush shake by the side of a house and drew closer to see if it was a dog or a possum. When I managed to get a clear view from above the bush, though, I realised that it wasn't an animal making the bush shake, it was a TV. If I could have giggled out loud, I would have, because the TV seemed to hover in the air as it moved past the bush.

Once the TV came out from behind the rhododendron, I realised it wasn't hovering. It was being carried by two men. I hadn't seen them at first because they were both wearing black jackets. Even their faces were dark because they both had beards.

I could hear them whispering as they manoeuvred the TV into the back of a truck.

There was a loud crash.

‘What are you doing, Bob?' snapped one of the men.

‘Spiders. I hate 'em,' said Bob.

The other guy snorted. ‘Well, be quiet about it, alright!'

Weird time of night to be moving house,
was my first thought. It wasn't until the two men went back into the house and came out with two speakers and a laptop that I started to think it through. Two guys, working
at night
, moving only electronic stuff . . . which was
easy to sell.

The next thing I knew I was in bed, shocked awake and gasping. Somewhere on the other side of town, those two guys were stealing from that house. I felt dirty to have seen them, as well as angry and scared.

I slid out of bed and down the hall. It was pretty dark. I ran my hand along the wall as I walked, to be sure of where I was. For all I knew, people could be asleep in that house. What if they woke up? What if the burglars had guns?

Mum had a list of emergency numbers in the kitchen – poisons information, fire brigade, police. I grabbed the phone, listened for a dial tone and punched in the number for our local police station. Even though it was an emergency, I thought our local police would be better than triple zero. They were closer and there wasn't much time.

‘There's a robbery happening, right now!' I cried as soon as someone answered the phone.

‘What's your location?' came a deep voice.

‘It's out past the paper mill . . .' I counted in my head. ‘Five, maybe six streets past it, I think. There are two guys loading stuff into a truck.'

The police officer cleared his throat. ‘And where are
you
calling from?'

‘I'm at home,' I said. ‘But that's not important—'

‘Can I speak to your parents, please?'

I got it then. He thought I was playing a prank. ‘No. They're asleep. But I'm not joking, sir. There really is a robbery going on.'

‘Okay,' said the police officer slowly. ‘Tell me exactly what you saw.'

‘Two guys carrying a big TV out of a house, and other stuff too. Just send out a car and you'll find them. It's a big white truck.'

‘And what's the address of the house being robbed?'

‘I . . . I'm not sure,' I said, thinking fast. ‘I'm a sleepwalker, see, and I was out sleepwalking . . . when I woke up I saw it all.'

‘Dangerous habit, son,' said the police officer. ‘Where
exactly
do you live?'

Inside I groaned, because my real address wouldn't make sense if I'd been sleepwalking. I live on the other side of town. It was the kind of hole in my story that the police officer was looking for.

For a second I thought about making up an address using one of the street names from out past the mill. But after some brain crunching – Andrew St? Anderson St? Amsterdam? – I realised there wasn't going to be any police sirens screaming out past the mill that night.

I sighed. ‘Never mind. Sorry,' I said, and hung up.

I didn't sleep much for the rest of that night. Even though I tried to astral project again, I kept waking up back in my bed.

Somewhere out there, two guys were sneaking away with other people's stuff. And no one was going to stop them.

The next day after school, I rode my bike out past the paper mill.

Two streets along, I was lost. I'd expected to find the house in a flash, but riding a bike was totally different from astral projecting. Everything looked so different from the ground. Everything
felt
so different during the day.

I could remember a wattle tree in the second street, then a couple of clean red roofs. For a while I felt as if I was chasing my own tail – looking for a tree that seemed to move whenever I came near it.

Eventually I found the wattle tree
four
streets along, not two. And I was eight streets along by the time I found the house that had been robbed. I wrote down the address of the house – 23 Andrews Ave – and headed back into town to the police station.

My legs were aching, but I was on a mission.

It was too late to stop the robbery, of course, but I still had information that might help catch the thieves. Maybe the police would recognise them from my description and would be able to bring them straight in for questioning.

A man and woman were standing at the reception bench of the station, talking really fast to a police officer. It would have been pretty awesome if they'd been the people who had been robbed. I'd just step up and cool-as-you-please give them the information that they needed. But after hearing a few sentences I realised they were talking about their next-door neighbour and a broken fence.

I stood and waited.

Past the reception desk, another police officer was typing at a computer. After a while she glanced up, sighed and typed a bit more. Then she stood up and came to the bench.

‘Can I help you?'

‘Yes, I have some information about a burglary.'

I'd barely got the words out when she pushed a clipboard over the counter at me.