13 ALCHEMY IN THE BURBS

Brett had called on Jamie so often that he didn’t bother with the formalities of communicating with anyone in the house. He slid by the carport onto the little track that led down the back. There, at the bottom of the grassy slope, was a little thicket of native bush. This isolated the cabin from the house and from the neighbourhood. He wasn’t the only one who called on Jamie but he was by far the most regular. Since their chance encounter in a club a few years ago their friendship had grown in ways that neither of them could have imagined. They hadn’t seen each other since school but for Brett, running into Jamie was like stumbling on a box of money.

Brett moved down the slimy stepping stones without faltering; he had memorised all the tricky bits and could do it at midnight with equal facility. When he reached the corner of the sleepout he stood still, listening, alert to any possible observer. He reached into the dense creeper that clothed the cabin to ring the bell, then straightened up again and waited. After a full three minutes there was the soft scraping sound of bolts being slid on the inside and Jamie stood blinking in the open doorway. There was this faint cat piss smell outside the cabin but when the door opened, it hit him like a wave.

Brett entered without a word and waited while Jamie re-secured the door. He was still surprised at how rapidly Jamie seemed to have lost all his sense of order as he spiralled into the world of the undead.

In one end of the cabin there was the chem cupboard that he had built. Glass doors, extractor fan, lead drain plate. Jamie was clever with his hands. Brett had always thought it was just the theoretical stuff that he was good at, but it wasn’t. He could make anything.

Scattered around the room were other artefacts that went with the trade. Coffee filters, titration gear, pyrex beakers, rubber gloves and breathing mask. His cookbook, as he called it, was well gone. Left Uncle Fester behind in his dusty hole in cyberspace, long ago. Reckoned one day he would write his own. Then there was the stuff that gave off that smell, essence of tomcat: drain cleaner and paint thinner. Lithium strips ripped out of batteries, jars full of stuff that looked like match heads. A bottle of anhydrous ammonia with the top half off, that’s where this stink came from. Brett walked over and screwed it up tight.

In fact, looking around the room, the chem cupboard was the only place where anything seemed to have any sort of order. Jamie’s bed hadn’t been made in months. More like a nest than a bed. Clothes were everywhere, draped over chairs, hanging from nails on the wall and some, finally discarded, lay in composting mounds in the corner. There was no danger of anyone spying on him, as all the windows were covered with posters: Goth bands and the usual ‘graveyard in Carpathia’ stuff. Skinny chicks, with too much mascara, hanging about in castles. Silhouettes of wolves howling, picked out against a full moon. They sure did the trick though, not a chink of daylight entered. Lights burned continually at each end of the room. When he had to, Jamie used the basement toilet and shower under his parents’ lavish house. Long ago they seemed to have made this agreement to let him live his own life with the minimum of interference. Suited both parties, Jamie reckoned.

‘So how’s it been man? I rang a while back but I figured you were sleeping or cooking.’

They both sat on the bed: every other surface in the room was covered in stuff. Brett lit up, to kill off the old clothes smell, as much as anything. He noticed for the first time the little spent foil bombs, littering the cabin like bird droppings.

‘I figured it was you … and why you were ringing. I’m beginning to think I don’t need a phone any more, just a little buzz to prompt me.’

‘So you’re becoming telepathic?’ he looked at Jamie with an ironic grin. They both thought anything vaguely New Age was sad bullshit.

‘Telepathetic!’

Brett saw an almost-smile flicker around the bottom half of Jamie’s blank, pale face. ‘Nearly got ya then.’

‘It’s more like my life has got so simple that I know what’s going to happen well in advance.’

‘You don’t get out enough. You’re getting to be a hermit, man. You want to be with other people.’

‘I used to think that … but now it’s just that I’m … I’m too busy for them.’