Red Day Page 4

  “In a minute.” I continue to look at other photos.

  It’ll be the first time I’ve spoken to Kenichi this morning, although he doesn’t seem to notice. Too busy with Mum. I’m still mad about last night. Honestly, what did he think it was? The souls of the dead reaching out to poke me in the stomach and give us a fright? I’ve heard zombie and monster movies are big in Japan. Maybe number one on Mum’s list is wrong.

  I dawdle in front of the photos taken immediately after the breakout. Blankets and coats straddle the wire to cover razor-sharp snags. A body sprawls, arms and legs at grotesque angles. They had nothing to lose except their lives and they didn’t value them anymore.

  It’s all history now, like it should be, but some people think like they’re still at war. Mr Garrett, who owns the milk bar in town, wants Japan to be punished forever. I can’t take Kenichi to the milk bar, even my school said not to. Fortunately, most older people are like Mum, proud of our town’s post-war friendship with Japan.

  I’m standing in front of Shin’s photo now.

  It used to hang on our lounge-room wall. Mum was excited about our connection to the camp breakout. I’ve studied the photo hundreds of times. It’s my personal puzzle piece, marking the spot where history connects to me. Lucy thinks history is boring but that’s because she can’t see the interlocked coloured shapes, stretching forward and back through time, like a virtual reality jigsaw.

  I was surprised when Mum decided to donate it to the Historical Society. “I think this photo should be on public display,” Mum decided. “Everyone should know Himura Shin’s story.”

  For ages it languished in a box at the Historical Society. Mum wrote heaps of letters demanding it back if it wasn’t on display. When that didn’t work, she joined up. Within a month it had an expensive frame with Shin’s story typed on a plaque beside it. Mum’s the sort of person who gets things done.

  On the bottom of the plaque, in very small writing, it says “Donated by the Cartwright family”.

  Himura Shin was a baker from a small seaside fishing port. Cowra must have seemed like another planet to him. The only fish around here are the perch in the Wyangala Dam.

  Shin is thin and angular, standing to attention like a smiling stick insect, beside a young Japanese woman holding a child in her arms. He doesn’t look very dangerous. No wonder Great-nan Elsie felt sorry for him.

  His photo always makes me feel sad even though Lucy says it’s a happy family snap.

  The sadness is a small, blurry pale-grey thing that burrows into my skin, every time I look at the photo. Like an ink spot on blotting paper, it’s fibre deep and I know Lucy’s not right. Today the photo seems more miserable than ever.

  I look over at Mum, who is sending me reminder glares. Time to get this over and done with.

  “Come and have a look,” I call to Kenichi, pointing to the wall. “The Cartwright family’s claim to historical fame.”

  My best fake “let’s start over” smile works perfectly. Kenichi holds his camera in front of the picture to take a photo of a photo, but before I can point out the irony, pain strikes. I clutch my stomach, doubled over in pain.

  A strong, sweet smell clogs my nostrils. A wave of sadness swamps me with sweat. My stomach heaves. Inside my head, the taiko drum pounds. Much louder than yesterday. A storm of voices builds. Angry orange voices. I can’t understand the words but their sharp edges puncture enough holes to let the darkness spin through.

  Pain jack-knifes across my abdomen. I clutch my belly tight, trying to squash the hurt smaller as I stagger backwards, away from the photo, slamming into the wall behind me and knocking the breath from my lungs. My knees buckle.

  Why is this happening again?

  The room is spinning and roaring, thunder-clap loud and lightning fast.

  Why is it so much worse this time?

  I’m freezing cold.

  Someone. Please. Make it stop.

  This has to be Kenichi’s fault. It all started when he came to stay.

  “Are you okay, Charlotte?” Mum’s breath is hot and her voice scrapes like seashell grit in my ear.

  Seriously? Do I look okay?

  I manage to whisper. “I’ll be all right. I just need some fresh air.”

  “I’ll take her outside,” Kenichi offers.

  I don’t want to lean against him, but I can’t walk on my own. When his fingers touch my arm, the darkness lifts, the room slows and the pain fades. Too weird. He flinches as a cold wave of hopelessness surges through me. I have to admit it. This is definitely not a coincidence. The same thing happened in the car.

  “I’ll find you some water,” Mum says.

  My legs are custard-soft and wobbly. Every step feels like I’m sinking through marshmallow floorboards, to where something terrible waits. It takes forever to struggle towards the door and the comforting warmth of the sun. What is happening to me?

  An old weathered park bench, barely held together by rusted fittings, leans against a low rock wall. I pull away from Kenichi and collapse onto it, thread my shaking fingers between the wooden slats and inhale a deep steadying breath.

  “You can say I told you so if you like,” I tell Kenichi.

  Something strange is happening. Now I’ve admitted he was right, it’s his turn to apologise for being a jerk about it.

  Before he can say anything, Mum arrives waving a water bottle. “You look much better. The colour has returned to your cheeks.” She hands me the bottle.

  I take a sip, then get to my feet, a little shaky.

  Kenichi reaches out to steady me, but I pretend to stumble in the other direction. I don’t want him to touch me again until I work out what’s going on with that. And I’m still waiting for his apology.

  “We should go to the gardens and the cemetery another day, Coralie,” he says. “Shallot needs to rest.”

  “The cemetery won’t take long. Charlotte can rest in the car if she’s not up to walking around.”

  It’s as if they’ve forgotten I’m here.

  “I’m not waiting in the car. It was a dizzy spell and it’s over now.”

  I just wish I actually believed that.

  Mum’s phone rings as she parks the car at the cemetery. She checks the display and grimaces.

  “This one might take a while. You two go in and I’ll be with you as soon as I’m done.”

  Kenichi reaches the stone arch entrance before I do. He stops, his brow furrowed, listening hard. “Can you hear that?”

  “Of course I can. I’ve got two ears.”

  The voice is silver mercury. I know what they want. A cold shiver ripples down my spine. Someone is calling us inside. I don’t want to go in. I don’t know if I can after what just happened.

  “I’ll go first.” Kenichi takes charge.

  I don’t need him to look after me.

  “I’m okay to do this.” I push past, my stomach muscles clenching in readiness.

  When I walk through the arch, hushed whispering fills my head. I stride past the monument and along the rows of bronze plaques embedded in the ground, walking as fast as I can without running.

  But you can’t escape a voice inside your brain. It unravels into a feathery chorus, everyone whispering at once. Covering my ears doesn’t help. The words grow frenzied and demanding, rising like a hammer poised above me. Any moment now, my thoughts will smash into pieces.

  The voices still. I’m nervous. It’s like the calm before the storm, the moment before a tsunami wave will flatten me. My skin tingles. A million tiny insects bite hard. I’m like a mouse waiting for the cat to pounce.

  I keep walking. There’s something important here and I need to find it. It would help if I knew what I was searching for.

  “Shallot,” Kenichi yells. “Come and look at this.”

  I turn and walk towards where he’s pointing. I stop dead in my tracks. I’ve never paid much attention to the names on the plaques embedded in the grass before. The soldiers are long gone and none of these
lives touched mine. Until now. The plaque Kenichi is pointing at says Himura Shin.

  “That’s not right. Great-nan Elsie’s soldier was sent to Hay with all the other survivors.”

  “He can’t be dead and alive at the same time.”

  Genius deduction.

  Sometimes it helps to be synth. The sensory stuff is not only colours and sounds. Maybe I can find out more. I bend down, placing my hand flat on the bronze, its surface warmed by the sun. The whispering resurges, clearer this time, more patient with my struggle to understand.

  “I can hear words. They sound Japanese.”

  Kenichi touches the plaque too. He shakes his head.

  As I stand, I overbalance and bump against him. He grabs my hand and awkwardness holds it frozen. What’s he doing? I try to pull away but his grip is too tight.

  “The words are Japanese. I can hear what you hear.”

  That’s impossible.

  But Kenichi concentrates until his forehead can’t wrinkle anymore. “Someone needs our help. I think it’s Shin.”

  “How can we help a dead man?”

  The whispering intensifies, louder than before, more insistent. The voices don’t like my question.

  “We need to keep looking.” Kenichi lets go of my arm. “We might find more clues.”

  “Look what you did?” A bright red welt has formed above my wrist. It’s starting to throb.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I needed to hear the words.”

  He’s right, but I’m not ready to say it. I rub my wrist.

  The voices grow frantic again. I’m imprisoned inside a tornado of whirling whispers. I can’t speak. I lurch forward, into the wind that will tear me apart.

  Kenichi reaches out to stop me falling.

  The whispers arc between us, crackly with static. He wrenches me away from the plaque, my feet dragging with stiff, leaden steps. I overbalance again. As I fall, his arms lower me to the ground.

  The wind drops, and the words vanish. I look up into speckles of blue sky, splattered between the leaves of a giant golden tree, its foliage spread like a shield.

  I sit, tucking my knees against my chest. My words refuse to stand still. They race around panic-stricken inside my head making no sense at all. “I don’t like this. I want it to stop.”

  I look over my knees at Kenichi who sits down cross-legged, facing me.

  “My grandmother said the voices of the restless dead always whisper. My mother says the elm is a symbol of peaceful rest. Maybe they’re both right,” he says.

  “You think ghosts are trying to talk to us? And a tree is protecting us? There has to be a sensible explanation.”

  “Before science explains something odd or new, people always think it’s magic.”

  He’s right. That’s a scientific fact. Not so long ago, stuff like volcanoes erupting and frogs changing into tadpoles was thought to be supernatural.

  “But I’ve been to the Visitor Centre and the War Cemetery heaps of times and I’ve been going to Aunt Mandy’s every month since I was a little kid.” I swat at a fly buzzing under my nose. “Nothing weird ever happened before. The photo of Shin hung in our lounge room for years and I never had a stomach ache or heard voices. Not once.” I pause. “All the strange stuff only started after you got here.”

  I’ve said it now. It’s sitting in the air between us.

  He meets my eyes. “That doesn’t make it my fault. It makes it our problem.”

  I wouldn’t have a problem if he wasn’t here. “If it’s our problem, how come I’m the only one that feels pain?”

  “I don’t know, but I want to help. When was the pain strongest?”

  “When I stood in front of the photo.” I miss the fly again.

  Kenichi leans forward and catches it between two fingers. He flicks his hand with a theatrical gesture and the fly disappears. Typical. I’m solving a serious problem and he’s playing around.

  “Tell me everything about the photo,” he says.

  “There’s not much to tell. The second time Great-nan Elsie brought Shin food, he gave her the photo. He pointed to it and told her his name. I’ve already told you everything else I know.”

  If I can’t work out what’s going on, I’m sure he can’t either, but it does feel good to talk about it with someone.

  “What if Himura Shin wasn’t the soldier’s real name? What if that was the name being used by a soldier who did die in the breakout? And it might not have been his real name either.” Kenichi suggests. “Sometimes Japanese prisoners-of-war hid their real names to protect family honour and even our government didn’t admit there were any captives during the war. We need to talk to your grandmother to try and get more information. She might remember something her mother told her.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Don’t you remember what I said at Aunt Mandy’s?”

  “Maybe Coralie will let me interview your nan if I say it’s for a school project,” Kenichi suggests. “She likes me.”

  “She likes anyone from Japan. Even you couldn’t charm her into this one. I haven’t seen Nana Ruth for eight years.”

  The air was red. The floor was red. The words were red when I heard Nana Ruth say Eli’s name. They were still red when Mum shouted. I wish I knew what she yelled but my memory ends there.

  “We won’t know until we ask,” he persists.

  “Just forget about it.”

  The car horn honks and I can see Mum waving us back.

  Kenichi plucks two leaves from a low branch and gives one to me.

  “I don’t think that’s going to help,” I snap.

  “What have you got in your hand?” Mum asks as I climb in the car.

  “A magic leaf.”

  Mum shakes her head and smiles. “That imagination of yours. I don’t know where you get it from. Certainly not from me. Next stop, home.”

  While Kenichi is looking out his side window, I wind down the window and let the leaf flutter to the ground. I need real answers, not wishful thinking.

  “Did you know there’s a plaque with Himura Shin’s name on it in the cemetery? Kenichi found it.”

  “Someone must have made a mistake.” Mum sounds the horn again as a car overtakes us, going even faster than her. “I’ll get it sorted out at the next Historical Society meeting.”

  Everything is black and white in Mum’s world. For her, the problem is simple, easily solved. She has no idea what it’s like to be synth. Everything gets complicated then.

  Even mice are not as quiet as me this morning. I slide out of bed, treading softly with socked feet. I want to run fast enough to outpace the past that keeps reaching out to threaten me and I need to run alone. After yesterday, I’ve got a lot to think about. All night my thoughts churned in circles. I believe Kenichi but haven’t got a clue how to help the man who called himself Shin.

  It should be Kenichi’s problem, not mine. He started it all. What if we can’t work it out and it never ends? It’ll be okay for him. He’ll go home, away from it all and I’ll be stuck here with pain in my stomach and voices in my head.

  Today is an emerald green day. Mondays are always a shade of green. It’s just a colour, not a window into the way the day feels. The only colour that matters is red and there are no red days until a day changes. I’ve only ever known that one. One is enough to last a lifetime.

  At 5 am, the air always tastes rich and new like freshly picked tomatoes. It’s hours before I need to be at the bus stop. I sneak my way up the hall, relieved to see Eli’s bedroom door is still closed. I want to be alone.

  My luck runs out as I walk into the front yard. Kenichi is sitting cross-legged beside Mum’s embarrassing Australia-shaped rockery.

  Head bowed, eyes closed, his hands are linked in a circle above his head. He bends them from side to side, then does it all again. Like some form of tai chi without the leg movements. Maybe I can duck around the back of the house before he sees me.

  In the big eucalypt tree beside the fence, a magpie
warbles. Worst timing ever.

  Kenichi looks up.

  “Good morning, Shallot.”

  I’m a wallaby caught in a shooter’s spotlight. It’s not a good feeling. “What are you doing?”

  He does that odd thing with his hands again. “Yoga. It helps me think. I have much to think about this morning.”

  “Me too.” I sit on the garden bench, near Kenichi. It’s a weather-beaten relic Mum found on the side of the main road. It’s hard to concentrate with the sounds building in my head. I’ll have to run soon but I need to know what he’s been thinking. “Have you come up with anything?”

  He folds his hands in his lap. “For the last two days I had this feeling like something awful was going to happen. Like in the car going past the POW camp, and I heard whispers in the cemetery. If we touch, even accidentally, everything intensifies.”

  “That’s strange. It’s opposite for me. When you grabbed my arm the pain reduced and so did the voices in my head.”

  “I’m glad I can help with the pain. It’s definitely something to do with Shin. I think the photo is a critical clue.”

  “I agree. Everyone else says it’s a happy family pic, but it’s sad. Yesterday it seemed sadder.” I scratch at the red-brown paint peeling on the chair. It’s time to confess, just a little. “Something else happened to me. On the way back from Aunt Mandy’s, I saw the Camp as if it was still there. I saw details too small to show up in photos, like a heart carved into the wood on the guard tower.” I sigh. “Crazy things like this only happen in books and movies.”

  Kenichi stands and walks around the Australia garden, following the stone-marked coast until he’s circumnavigated the country to land back in front of me.

  “Here’s what we know.” He sits down. “Anything to do with Shin triggers a strong sensory response in you and a lesser one in me. Somehow, you increase my reaction and I reduce yours. None of it makes any sense.”

  It partially makes sense to me. I know why I’m the super-sensitive one but I don’t want to share that. I’ve never told anyone my secret, not even Lucy. There has to be a way I can sort this out without telling him.

  “We’ll talk more about it later.” I stand up. “Nothing personal. If I don’t run now, there won’t be enough time left before school.”