Charlie tried to yell, to exclaim, as she realised the grey man was hanging from her ceiling. Its limbs twisted and its head cocked to the side, its white eyes glaring down at her. A puddle of water had pooled behind it, supernaturally, on the ceiling. Another drop fell, splashing near her eyes, which she now couldn’t even blink. She tried to yell again — to tell the grey man to fuck off like she had the day she’d cut her hand — but her voice had disappeared, leaving her helpless, unable to do anything but stare up at it.
Slowly it lowered itself towards her, the skin where its mouth should be once again hollowing out in a large O as it neared her. Noooo! Charlie screamed in her head as it came closer. Her chest now strained with deeply panting breaths. In moments the thing would be on top of her again, smothering her, pressing down on her. She recalled the sensation the first time, her fear of this moment coupling with her fear of the anaphylactic reaction that had hospitalised her. She couldn’t stand the thought of the grey man touching her again.
Its face hovered inches above hers. The guttural sound again emanated from its absent mouth, building in intensity just as the knocking at the door had done. In her head, she heard its voice taunting, Marie. Is. Mine. Marie. Is. Lam’s.
Trent rolled over in his sleep, his arm flinging through the air and over Charlie’s chest. As his arm arced towards it, the grey man disappeared. The panic building in Charlie’s chest released painfully, a sob escaping her lips as it did. Her fingers twitched as sensation slowly returned, a tear leaking from her eye as she could finally close them. She tried to sit up, to shake Trent awake, but her body still wouldn’t fully respond. She felt herself sink back, her eyes drooping, despite how hard she fought.
Charlie was back in the Dream. The fear that had sat on her chest like a crushing boulder was still there, but numbed, as if felt from a far distance. She could look behind her, through the archway, and see herself lying in bed next to Trent, her eyes open and vacant. At least this time, as she examined the archway, there was no sign of the grey man.
A sobbing drew her attention back to the dreamscape. It was distant and low, but even from so far away, she felt the pain behind the cries. Marie? she wondered, thinking how terrified the girl’s spirit had been to lock the front door and turn on every light in her house. She took a step and shifted to another archway. This one looked down on the master bedroom in her house too, also in the dark, but a much different scene. Instead of Charlie’s king-size bed, a large wooden bed stood in the middle of the room. In one corner was a dresser with mirror and chair; in another, a white metal crib.
Emma Evans lay in the bed, her body curled around the much smaller body of Jack, who lay completely still. Stiff and still, as though his limbs were made from wood. Little Jack gasped desperately as Emma sobbed into his chest. Bill paced in the corner, tears streaming down his face despite his obvious efforts to conceal them. His lips trembled as he chewed at his knuckles.
Emma looked over her shoulder at him, “Are they coming soon?” her words quivered as much as Bill’s lips.
“They said they would come as fast as they could, darling…” His pacing increased in speed. “I’ve a mind to take him to town myself.”
“Can we move him?”
“No, no, no…” Bill muttered. “They said not to… Damn it, I can’t just do nothing!”
Emma turned her head back to Jack’s chest, her sobbing continuing. Bill marched quickly out of the room, down the hallway and through the door to the veranda. Charlie followed him with almost as much anxiety as Bill himself. The First Nations man Charlie had seen in her last dream — seemingly not aged a day — was waiting on the veranda. He sprang to his feet as soon as he saw Bill.
“How is he, Bill?” he asked in a soft, deep voice, his hands wringing his hat as he spoke.
“Not good, Kapiri,” Bill answered, clasping the man by the shoulder. “I need you to ride as fast as you can towards Greenfields. Find out what’s taking that blooming Dr Archer so long. Tell him to hurry.” Kapiri nodded, then turned and ran towards the property’s front gate. Charlie fled back into the house as Bill stood there, gripping the veranda railing until his knuckles turned white.
After moving past the master bedroom, Charlie lingered in the doorway to what was her sewing room in the present but in this moment housed four single beds, a sitting chair, and two dressers. In the chair was a slim First Nations woman about the same age as Kapiri — though Charlie found it hard to determine exactly what age that was. White tinged the corners of her hair, so perhaps she was in her sixties. A toddler lay asleep in her lap — Florence, Charlie thought. Lying in one of the beds, obviously fast asleep, must have been little Alice.
Marie sat upright in a second bed, her face pale and clammy. “What’s happening to Jack, Aunty Alice?” she quietly asked the woman.
So, this is the Aunty Alice whom Marie was evading last time, Charlie thought, willing herself to sit on Marie’s bed, which she instantly did. Charlie wondered if the little Alice sleeping in the bed across from her was Aunty Alice’s namesake.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head,” Aunty Alice said gently, stroking Florence’s hair. “You need your rest, young miss. Dr Archer is on his way for your brother.”
“But the doctor said Jack and me are fine,” Marie persisted. “Just a flu. Am I going to get sick like Jack too?”
Aunty Alice stood carefully, carrying Florence to one of the empty beds and tucking her in gently. She came to sit on Marie’s bed, passing through Charlie as she did so. For a moment she felt both everywhere and nowhere. Aunty Alice shuddered, looking about her, startled. Charlie, who’d also found the experience unsettling, stood by the wall instead, watching Aunty Alice closely. “Yaree yarwoo,” Aunty Alice whispered before turning to Marie and hugging her. “Lie down, Marie,” she said kindly. Marie obliged, and Aunty Alice felt her forehead. “You’ll be fine, darling. You’ve been sick longer than Jack. If you were going to get worse, you would’ve already. See? Your fever is breaking.”
“But what about Jack?” Marie persisted. “Will he be better by my birthday?”
Aunty Alice sighed as she tucked Marie in and stroked her hair too. “Let’s pray he will be.” Marie nodded and squeezed her eyes tight. With Marie’s eyes closed, Aunty Alice examined her. Obviously satisfied, she opened her mouth and began to sing. The sound was deep and thrumming, the vowels held in beautiful harmony — much like the gorgeous music that flowed through Charlie’s hills. Her native language rushed from her like poetry, like a river to the sea.
While Charlie didn’t understand the language Alice was singing, its meaning swept through her without effort. Hail! Dawn is shining with glory. The sun blazing with warmth. Night moving… Men stirring… Children are restless. Women thinking by the fire. Birds singing. Animals awakening. Camp noises grow.
A gut-wrenching wail interrupted Aunty Alice’s song. The woman tensed on the bed, her hand holding Marie down. The wail rang out again, piercing Charlie’s stomach and heart with its agony. Little Alice stirred in her bed and sat up, rubbing her eyes. Aunty Alice walked to the bedroom door, shut it quietly, and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of it. Marie had swung her legs out of her bed, and Florence was also stirring now as the cries rang through the house. “Come here, my babies,” Aunty Alice said gently, opening her arms wide. “Come to Aunty Alice.” As the children tottered over to sit in her lap, or to lean against her on the floor, Charlie willed herself back to the master bedroom.
The source of the wailing, as Charlie had guessed, was Emma, who’d thrown herself on top of a now motionless and silent Jack. Bill knelt by the bed, one hand on his son’s head, the other on his wife’s shoulder. Though Bill was silent, the agony creasing his face hit Charlie just as hard as Emma’s bellows. As the pain and sadness washed over her, Charlie felt herself panic, her breaths coming ragged and hard. She urged herself back to the present, back to her bed — away from this devastation. She felt herself pull away in excruciatingly slow jerks. As she pulled herself away, another figure glistened into being in the room. One long arm reaching out towards Jack… He glittered in the dark, his full body gleaming white, a top hat perched perfectly on his head.
Charlie sat bolt upright in bed, tears rolling down her face. It was one thing to know Jack had died at two years old. It had been something else to sit at his grave. It was excruciating, though, to have witnessed the moment he passed away and the moment his family and those closest to him had lost him so unexpectedly. Trent snored loudly beside her, rolling over but otherwise undisturbed by Charlie’s sudden awakening and mourning. A small sob escaped her as she grabbed her phone from the nightstand and tottered out to the hallway. The light, which she had left on in the hallway, was now off. However, the light in the kitchen still glowed brightly, illuminating her way back to the living room.
As Charlie entered the kitchen, she rubbed the tears from her eyes, then checked her phone to see it had just gone 5:30 a.m. Working on automatic, she boiled the kettle, making herself a cup of Russian Caravan tea. She sat at the island bench, furiously tapping into the search bar on her phone, looking for as much information as she could on polio. How could this have happened? she wondered. How could he have died so quickly? Why didn’t the doctor help him?’
A plethora of information swamped her phone. Charlie clicked on the first link and skimmed the information.
Poliomyelitis… Highly infectious viral disease… Mostly affects children under five… Only one in four cases shows symptoms… Most who are symptomatic only have mild symptoms, including sore throat, fever, and other flu-like symptoms… In severe cases, the virus affects the nervous system. Paralysis and even death can occur in just hours.
She placed her phone on the counter, the tears finally starting to dry on her face. Poor Marie, she thought. She must have brought the virus home from school. And poor Jack. No wonder Emma kept the younger ones home, she thought, remembering Emma’s wails and the depths of pain that had hit the Evans’ house — her house — that night.