Loop (9 page)

Rachael Conrad disappeared one night after leaving a party alone, and was never seen again.

For three days in January it was front-page news. Then, as interest in the search dwindled, it rated only a few lines on the inside pages, until finally the search was called off.

The End. Roll the credits.

And yet, the obsession remains. A life doesn't just end. A person, a feeling, thinking person doesn't just fade away on page five of the Herald through lack of interest.

The dress hangs there. A blue cotton accusation. And the obsession remains.

What happened at that party? What happened after it? And why would she leave alone? How many other questions did the police ask at the time? How many received answers? Not enough.

The dress still ‘works', but the incidents remain random. Fruitless and frustrating. And still the compulsion grows stronger …

That damned party. I have to know what happened or I know I will never break free.

It scares me, this need to know. I'm like an addict. But tell me to stop. Tell me to cut off my arm!

Only one way to beat it.

I have to know …

She leans her bike against the peeling gate-post and walks up the path to the beach-house.

It is closed up, of course. Ashmont is a summer town. In July the winds whip the sand up in rasping clouds and drive the thunderheads in from the ocean, and the tourists stay away in their hundreds – except for the fishermen, who are crazy anyway. So, houses like this one, which fetch a thousand or more a week from November to February, stand empty and closed up.

Nikki shivers. This is the house.

At home, it had seemed such a simple idea. If the dress was the connection, the link, why not strengthen it? Why not wear it in the one place which might provide the key?

And this
is
the house where the party took place.

But now she feels stupid. Standing here with the July wind hurling the sand into her face, she shakes her head. Why should the place have any effect? She has no reason to believe it will make any difference. Only an intuition …

Reaching into the bag that she carries, she draws out the dress, and moving around to the seaward side of the veranda, out of sight of the road, she quickly sheds her jeans and shirt and slips it on.

And she is back.

The party is in full swing but it washes around her like the sea. She is not a part of it. Rachael is not a part of it.

She barely hears the music, barely feels the crush of bodies. Cindy, whose parents have rented the house, must have invited every kid on the beach. She is like that. But Rachael isn't aware of them, or the noise, or the party.

She is watching
him.

Marc. Playing big-shot. He is sitting beside Cindy on the lounge and Rachael catches his eye just as he slips his arm around the city-girl's shoulder. She catches the flash of guilt, then the look of cold defiance. Then he turns away.

With more clarity than ever before, Nikki feels the other girl's emotions, senses her thoughts.

The pain is short. There's a swelling of emotion around the heart, like a bubble bursting. For a moment her vision clouds. But then she wipes her eyes, and in a moment of icy calm she falls out of love.

She watches him, and for the first time she understands him. The pain has receded to a dull ache somewhere deep inside her chest. It is the strangest sensation, just an empty feeling of relief, and perhaps a little surprise that it is, after all, so very easy; that she feels so controlled. And she realises, suddenly, that a part of her has always known.

Rachael turns and leaves the party without looking back, walking south along the beach, which stretches away in a gentle white curve, under the full moon.

As she walks, her thoughts drift slowly. It is over. Perhaps it never was, except in her own mind. She doesn't even hate him. More than anything she feels calm. Balanced. Already the sadness is beginning to fade.

She looks back. The beach-house is a dot of coloured noise in the distance.

The night is warm, the salt spray refreshing. Through Rachael's eyes, Nikki stares up the silver moon-path to the distant horizon, and she feels the idea form in Rachael's mind.

And suddenly she knows.

The horror strikes.

NO!

She screams the silent thought, but Rachael doesn't hear. Can't hear.

The moonlit waves hiss an invitation. And a promise. A promise to wash away the lingering memory of that cold, defiant look. A baptism, a cleansing celebration of her new-found freedom …

Slowly Rachael walks towards the water, until it washes across her toes. Then in a single movement she pulls the dress over her head and tosses it back onto the sand, as she steps forward into the foaming waves.

The connection is broken. Nikki watches the dress as it falls to the sand, and it is as if she suddenly drifts free. For a moment she is on the beach, under the full moon. Then, as Rachael dives beneath an incoming wave, the vision fades to black …

It's over.

I'm free. I finally know.

Rachael wasn't murdered. She drowned. She went for a night-swim, in a surf more treacherous than she realised, and the rip must have carried her out.

But the knowing almost killed me.

When the vision faded and I came to, I found myself up to my chest in the freezing water. I guess I'm lucky the sea was calm. Still, I could feel the undertow tugging at my legs and the weight of the dress dragging me down. Rachael's dress. I was still wearing it, but it felt different. I sensed that the magic was gone.

I dug my feet into the sand and turned for the shore. I knew what I had to do. I waded through the shallow water to where my bag lay, discarded on the sand, then I pulled the dress off over my head and stepped gratefully into my warm, familiar clothes.

I paused for just a moment with her dress in my hands.

Then I threw it as hard as I could into the sea.

I stood at the water's edge and watched it floating as the tide carried it slowly out there, far away from me. Then it disappeared.

Maybe it was just a trick of the light on the water, maybe it's just that I know how much Rachael loved that blue dress, but …

It didn't just sink. It disappeared. And I could swear that at the very last moment, just before the waves closed over where it had been, I caught a glimpse of grasping fingers. And a shape beneath the surface that looked for all the world like a tiny, white hand …

RUNNING THE MAJESTIC

No one remains quite what he was
when he recognises himself.

Thomas Mann

There are only two things in the world worse than someone crunching fistfuls of popcorn in your left ear when you're trying to watch a movie.

The first is the girl in the seat directly behind you who's seen the movie before and insists on telling her friend everything that's going to happen – about ten seconds before it does. Like: ‘Look behind the curtain – he's got a gun' or ‘It's okay, she doesn't die. The guy with the black hair saves her.'

You get the idea.

The second – and perhaps the worst – is the person who thinks he's so important that people will fall apart if they can't get in touch with him. Right now!

So he leaves his mobile phone on during the movie, even though there's an ad that comes on before every session asking you to switch your phone off.

Of course, it always rings just at the moment when the two lovers are kissing for the first time or when the hero's best friend – or his dog – is about to die and everyone wants to have a good cry. And the phone always has one of those incredibly annoying tunes that plays for what seems like forever, while he fumbles in the dark trying to find the right button to stop it playing.

Around about now, you might be thinking that I'm someone who gets annoyed pretty easily. Well, you'd be wrong. I'm probably the second most easy-going person I know.

The most easy-going person I know is my mother, who never lets anything worry her – even the fact that most of the time we don't have enough money to pay for the rent and the food in the same week.

But I really do love movies.

Mr Alston, who owns the Majestic, knows it, and he lets me watch as many as I like. For free.

And I help him clean the theatre after the movie, even though he says I don't have to. Mr Alston is getting old, and the Majestic doesn't make enough money for him to pay a cleaner, so I figure it's a fair deal.

My brother, Sean, says it's ‘slave labour', and that he ‘wouldn't be seen dead picking up after other people'. Sean isn't easy-going at all. He's someone who gets annoyed very easily – usually with me.

Mum says Sean wouldn't be seen dead even picking up after himself, and that I shouldn't worry about what he says, even if he is five years older than me and thinks that that unimportant fact makes it alright for him to tell me what to do.

Mum likes Mr Alston, and she knows I couldn't afford to go to the movies if he wasn't so kind to me. She also says that running the Majestic is the only thing that keeps him going.

I guess he loves movies even more than I do.

So there I was, sitting in the dark trying to ignore the woman in the seat next to me, who was crunching handfuls of popcorn and slurping a giant soft-drink through a straw.

Sophie Madsen was sitting right behind me. She hadn't actually seen the movie before, but she
was
talking – to Melinda Brodie, about why she hated Kevin Mulligan more than ever since he'd had his ear pierced.

I figured that if I could just survive until the human garbage bin ran out of food, and Sophie stopped talking long enough to realise that the movie had started, I'd be alright.

Which I would have been, except that just when things had settled down a mobile phone started ringing two seats to my right.

Not so unusual, you might think.

I guess not. Except that there was no one sitting two seats to my right. The whole row was empty.

The phone was sitting in the drink-holder on the arm of the seat, facing me, and the screen was glowing blue in the darkness.

I reached across and tried to find the button that stopped it ringing. It was vibrating as I picked it up, but then I pressed something and it stopped.

And the screen changed.

I was staring at a text message.

If u have found my
mobile plz return it 2 me.
U can call me at home on
6555 9222. ask for andy
I need it 4 my work & I
don't no where I lost it

I left the cinema to look for Mr Alston, but he wasn't anywhere around so I went outside and rang the number on the screen. There was no answer, not even a machine.

That was when Sean arrived, walking along the street outside the Majestic with Greg Blair.

Blair the Bear.

‘What's this?' Sean said, as he made a grab for the phone. Luckily, I've lived with him all my life so I managed to dodge out of the way.

‘What does it look like?' I asked, holding the phone out in front of me. ‘I found it inside. There's a text-message on the screen. I'm trying to call the owner.'

‘You're
what?'

He sounded like he couldn't believe his ears.

‘I'm trying to —' I began, but he cut me off.

‘I heard,' he said. ‘I just didn't think you were that dumb. Do you know how much that thing is worth?'

I didn't. So Greg told me.

I whistled.

‘Give it to me,' he said, holding out his hand. ‘I know a guy who'll buy it from us. We can split the money.'

I took a step back.

‘Come on, Mikey,' Sean said, trying to pretend that he called me by my name a lot, which he didn't. I was usually ‘runt' or ‘dweeb-face'.

I took another step back.

‘Look, kid …'

The Bear was moving around, cutting off my escape as he spoke.

‘Anyone who can afford to buy a phone like that can afford to buy another one,' he said.

But I wasn't convinced.

‘How do you know?' I slid sideways away from him. ‘The message says he needs it for work. Maybe it isn't even his.'

‘Then he should have been more careful with it.' Sean moved closer. Then he stopped, as if he'd suddenly had an idea. ‘How long have you been saving for that skateboard?'

He knew exactly how long. Since Easter, when I lost control of my old one and it ran into the middle of the highway and got run over by a truck.

I didn't answer.

‘With your share, you could get a new one,' he went on. ‘Give us the phone.'

They had me trapped. I knew I wasn't going to get away.

And besides, what did I care about some stranger who'd been careless with his phone? Everyone else I knew had a skateboard and a pair of in-lines. Why shouldn't I?

I looked at the phone one more time, then passed it to Sean, who passed it across to Greg.

Who put it in his pocket.

Then they turned and walked away down the street without saying another word.

When I turned to go back into the Majestic, I saw Mr Alston watching me, and I knew he'd heard everything. He didn't look disappointed, or angry. He just motioned for me to come.

But I couldn't. Suddenly I felt ashamed. I turned and ran down the street.

Until I got there I didn't know where I was going.

I was just running. But you can't run away from yourself. In the end you always know what you should have done.

And if you didn't do it … You know that too.

I was breathing heavily and the sweat was running into my eyes. I wiped them and looked at the house.

The Bear's Lair.

That was what Sean called it. Sometimes, when I was a bit younger and Mum was working overtime, he'd dragged me to Greg's house, so that I could watch them sitting down watching TV and not talking – which was about as exciting as a bad movie with the sound turned down and people on both sides of you crunching popcorn.

I stood in the street and looked at the house. The light was on in the bedroom and I could see the pair of them sitting on the bed laughing. Probably at me. The window was open slightly and the sound of their voices drifted out, but I was too far away to hear what they were saying.

Then a plan hit me.

One advantage of watching lots of movies is that any situation you're likely to find yourself in has probably happened in a movie at some time.

Problem
: The hero needs to get the bad guys out of the house.

Solution
: Get their attention.

In a movie the good guys would probably blow something up, but I didn't have any dynamite or a special-effects team with me. So I did the only thing I could. I stood on the bumper-bar of Greg's mother's car and bounced it up and down until the alarm went off.

Then, as they ran out the front door, I ran around the side and climbed in through the open window.

The phone was on the bed. I grabbed it and slid out through the window before they got back. By the time they found that it was gone, so was I.

Long gone.

I eventually raised the nerve to go back to the Majestic, by which time the film was finished and Mr Alston was cleaning the floor.

I walked down the aisle and he straightened up, watching me.

I held out the phone.

‘I found this on one of the seats,' I said. ‘There's a message on it with a phone number.'

His face was smiling, but there was something else behind his eyes that looked like pride.

He shook his head.

‘You finish what you started, Michael,' he said. ‘I can clean up tonight.'

I went outside and called the number again.

This time, a voice answered.

‘Andy?' I asked.

It was.

Sean left home last year to join the army, and he only comes home when he gets leave, so it's just Mum and me at home. This means I have a room to myself, which is good.

Mr Alston still lets me watch the movies for free, and I still help him clean up afterwards, but it's different somehow.

Now he shows me things, like how the projector works and what the films look like when they arrive in their tin boxes. And how to change the posters in the display frames.

He says you can never know too much, not about something you love as much as I love movies.

Besides, he says, he has no children, no one to teach the business to so that they can take over the Majestic when he decides to retire.

He didn't say that to me, of course. He was talking to my mother. He'd dropped me home one afternoon and she'd invited him to stay for tea.

I wasn't supposed to be listening, but the walls are pretty thin in our house, and the TV was broken again so I was reading a book. About movies.

I didn't catch everything he said, but Mum was very quiet during tea, and after he left she smiled and hugged me.

Movies look different from up in the projection room.

It's not the best place to watch from. The machine is noisy and you're a long way back, but at least there's no one sitting behind you telling you what's about to happen. And you can't hear the popcorn, no matter how loud they might crunch it.