Phoenix Read online

  She grinned and stuffed her phone in her pocket.

  Through the bay windows, I could see the supermarket was busy and many more shoppers milled in the street. I decided against the long queues waiting at the checkouts and crossed between an old-fashioned metal lamp-post and a red phonebox to try the newsagent’s beside the bank for my batteries. As I did, the ambience washed over me and the thought of cleaning the stinking flat suddenly became quite repulsive.

  “Wanna go for a walk before we hit the shops?” Ally asked.

  “You a mind reader?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “As if.” She rolled her eyes. “I just can’t face that stinky flat.”

  We headed through a wide alley between a pub and tearooms. Tables and chairs were fenced off at the edge of the church path and the aroma of fresh coffee and bacon grew stronger as we approached. Pigeons and sparrows waited hopefully on the fence and empty tables for spilt crumbs. The clatter of plates and crockery and the low hum of voices were like a magnet from within the tearooms and my feet automatically turned towards the open door.

  “You really hungry?” Ally asked from the gate.

  I faltered halfway between the gate and café. “Well, no, but they’ve got bacon! When was the last time we had that!”

  “You are such a pig!”

  “It’ll get us out of cleaning for a bit longer,” I reasoned.

  “True.” Ally nodded and examined the menu displayed by the tearoom gate.

  “Wow, Ally, look at that!”

  A milkshake stood tall amongst the coffee cups the plump waitress bore on a tray. Clear swirls of blue gel circled pale blue milk and a fancy cellophane swirl on a cocktail stick laden with blueberries was balanced across the top of the glass.

  “That’s gotta be the Sapphire Shake,” Ally said. Her gaze alternated between the drink and the menu. “I’m so having one of those!”

  “Table for…” The waitress bustled towards me. “One?”

  “Two, thanks.” I glanced back at Ally but she was shaking her head and moving backwards. “Um, excuse me a minute,” I said to the waitress.

  “We can’t go in there,” Ally whispered when I joined her. “Look at the prices!”

  My cheeks were scarlet but the waitress had turned her back and was clearing plates from one of the outside tables.

  We sneaked away and headed down the path alongside the church. Goosebumps crept over my bare flesh in the distinctly cooler air of the path. The church may have blocked some sunlight, but there was more to this chill, I was sure of it; it was as if the rough stone walls repelled something bad while trying to keep its secrets inside.

  “Uh oh,” Ally said, pointing ahead. “Not sure we’ll get through up there.”

  The forecourt to the front of the church tower was virtually blocked by wedding guests, but as we squeezed behind the photographer to access a wooden bridge, the festive scene broke the draining force the church seemed to have over me.

  “Want some ’fetti?” A little girl in a frilly yellow dress jabbed her hand in a carton and launched a few pieces of paper at us.

  “Soorrry!” The mother’s voice vibrated with her footsteps as she chased after her daughter, her face filled with apology and stress.

  “No worries,” I said, picking a pink circle from my shorts.

  The woman nodded and tugged her daughter towards the photo group but the child kept her face towards me.

  “Mummy, why’s that girl got two shadows?”

  “What?” The woman’s voice was hushed in embarrassment and she glanced back to see if I’d heard. “They’re twins, darling, just like your cousins, so of course there are two shadows.”

  “But Mummy…”

  Her voice was lost amongst the group chatter but I’d heard enough anyway. I wasn’t imagining it.

  I grasped the bridge handrail and stamped heavily across the planks as if I needed to shake something bad from inside me, but that feeling of being followed stayed with me. I willed my double shadow to merge into one strong outline but my heavy heart told me that this was a sign that my future didn’t belong here.

  “You’re blocking the path!” Ally shoved me to get off the bridge and I apologised to the young boy waiting to pass on his bike. He cycled across a cobbled courtyard to an alleyway between the blocks of neat triple-storey, cream brick flats and disappeared.

  Ally and I wandered in the same direction, curious to see where the alley went.

  A red-rimmed plaque caught my attention at the alley entrance.

  CATTLEMARKET VILLAS

  BUILT 1998 ON THE SITE OF

  TRENTHAM WEALD CATTLE MARKET

  WHICH CEASED TRADING MAY 1948

  The alley opened up into an enclosed area housing bins and washing lines.

  “Euw.” I cringed. “Who’d want to live here?”

  “Way nicer than Freddie’s,” Ally said, stepping back to survey the facades. “Though there’s still a bit of a pong!”

  “Long time for a smell to hang around,” I said, sniffing the air. “Though, you’re right, there is something a bit off.”

  What’ll ya bid me for this un?

  I startled as the stink of dung brought with it the vision of penned cattle and the sound of the auctioneer’s call. It was so strong that the market could have been happening right now and I could only assume I’d been here in the forties, although if Ally was smelling it as well…

  “Oh yuck!” Ally’s voice broke my thoughts as she anxiously slid her foot back and forth over the pavers to wipe off the duck poo she’d stepped in. “That would explain the smell.”

  Any brief hope that she was experiencing flashbacks like I was vanished and I headed disconsolately back to the riverside. Small clouds of beige dust hugged our feet as we followed the sandy path and reminded me of the meandering trail alongside the creek near our house back home. I sensed Ally’s renewed desolation.

  “It will be alright, Ally,” I said. “You’ll make new friends really quickly.”

  Ally stopped beside me. “You make it sound like you won’t.”

  I gazed across at the left side of the church facing the river and although that draining energy didn’t reach across and I’d never been to a church in my life, I still felt some kind of connection to it. The four stained-glass windows shone in deep hues of reds, greens, blues and yellows, yet even they bothered me. Why were there only four windows this side when there were so many more on the path side? And why did a section of church jut from behind? There was some significance about the back of the church, the way it ended so abruptly. Was that why the guy in grey had come, so I could help resolve an abrupt ending? “I, well, I’m not sure I will.”

  “Katie!” Ally grabbed my arm. “I thought you didn’t give a rats if we came or not…”

  I jerked my arm free and started walking.

  “You’ll soon find someone else, someone even nicer than Zac…”

  If that was all she thought I worried about, that was cool. So much for twin telepathy.

  “You reckon they’ll put us in the same class at school?” Ally asked.

  I hadn’t even considered that and my steps slowed. For all her selfishness and hostility, I couldn’t do it, couldn’t leave her, yet my gut instinct told me I had to. Unless…

  “Ally?”

  She stooped to snatch a pebble from the path and attempted to skim it on the river. The brown duck that had been swimming nearby took flight as it splashed and plummeted to the bottom.

  “You know before we left you tried running away?”

  “Yeah, so?” She shrugged and tried another stone. It too failed to skim.

  I handed her a flat pebble, which she rubbed on her shorts and hurled at the water. It skimmed once then disappeared into the murky depths.

  “Not bad.” I grinned.

  She kicked the dirt and left a shoe scuff in the path.

  “D’ya wanna come with me?” I asked.

  “Bit late now,” she said, staring at the river.
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  “Just thought I’d ask.”

  “You’re serious!” She swivelled to face me. “Where, when!”

  “You mustn’t tell anyone,” I warned. “They’ll think I’m nuts.”

  I followed the path onto the next bridge spanned by an ancient archway. The stonework was even coarser than that on the church and so jagged that if centuries of weathering hadn’t smoothed the edges, it probably would have cut me when I ran my hand over it.

  Ally anxiously studied her map then glanced back at the riverside walk.

  “We should stick to what’s on here,” she said. “Don’t want to get lost.”

  “We won’t,” I said. “This crosses back to the church grounds. Up there,” I gestured beyond a high brick wall in the distance, “is a rose garden, beyond that a cemetery which loops back to the treed path and tearooms.”

  “Yeah, but if that’s what Grandad said it mightn’t be right.”

  I stopped halfway across the bridge, took the map and drew everything I knew on it.

  “Grandad didn’t tell me. I know because I used to live here, years ago.”

  Ally snatched the map and pencil back, scowling.

  “I know it sounds crazy…”

  “You think?” Ally said sarcastically.

  “Look, if you follow my map and it’s wrong then forget I ever said anything. But if it’s right…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Then let me prove it.” I rested my forearms on the bridge wall and glanced sideways at her.

  Ally rolled her eyes.

  “That’s where I need to go,” I said, picking tiny pieces of grit from the stonework and flicking them at the water. “Just now when you said I was in a time warp, you were right. I have something from a previous life that’s unresolved and I think, until I do, I’m gonna be stuck in it forever.”

  I straightened up and turned to face her but she had moved well away, creeping beyond the wall into the public gardens.

  “Ally!”

  She sped up but I caught her just as she entered the rose garden.

  “Believe me now?”

  A blaze of red, pink, yellow, white and orange roses, all in carefully placed groups, lined the mosaic pathways. The scent of the dark red ones brought back memories of when I was little and used to play in my nanna’s garden, and was so sweet that I closed my eyes and inhaled the powerful perfume.

  “What I believe,” she said, sniffing, “is that you have totally lost your mind.”

  She hurried away, squinting at my map. I sensed her discomfort when she faltered in the archway at the end of the rose garden – beyond it was a jumbled assortment of grey headstones and white plaques. Some had flowers in vases, the grass around them neat and clipped; others were the lopsided overgrown tangled mass of the forgotten dead.

  “You freak me out, you know that?” Ally said, hurrying between the rows of graves. “And you know what else?” She turned to face me. “You wanna run away then go ahead. You’ll be doing us all a favour.”

  But her words faded into the distance. Behind her, a vertical lump of concrete bore a simple inscription which despite the summer warmth, chilled me to the bone.

  It was most certainly a key to my past.

  – chapter four –

  JOHN (JACK) RICHARD STEWART

  BELOVED SON OF WILLIAM AND CAROL

  BORN 20TH JULY 1930

  LAST SEEN 22ND AUGUST 1944

  A TRAGEDY OF WAR

  I dropped to the tangled weeds and traced the spongy moss spreading from the base of the headstone and partially along the grave. It ended just below the inscription, the point where the sun spotlighted the name on the aging stone.

  “Oh, quit with the fainting act!” Ally said. She halfturned away from me but faltered when I didn’t get up and turned back to face the headstone. “Poor sod was even younger than us.”

  “Look at the surname though.” My voice was barely a whisper as I fingered the rough lettering.

  “A rellie?” Ally mused.

  An overwhelming heaviness seemed to drag me towards the ground and I lowered my hand to the overgrown grass to dispel the sense of grief. “If he was still alive,” I pondered, “he’d be as old as Grandad.”

  “His brother?”

  “Dunno, but I wonder if he’s got something to do with the haunting of Grandad’s flat.”

  “You really are insane!” Ally threw her hands up and stormed off down the path.

  “Denying the existence of ghosts doesn’t make them go away.” I struggled to my feet to catch up.

  “Ghosts do not exist,” she said, hurrying past the tearooms. “You live, you die, end of story.”

  “I know for a fact that’s not true.”

  “You know nothing,” she said, glaring at me. “You forget you’re NUTS!”

  I shrugged and fell in step beside her. We’d gone as far as Trentham Terrace when the distant strands of blue, red and white plastic dancing in the open doorway of the corner shop caught my eye.

  “Dammit!” I muttered. “Forgot the batteries.” I was so close to finding out about my past that I really didn’t want to waste time going back to the shops, but I could hardly use the corner shop after what Grandad had said.

  “They don’t have to know where we buy them from!” Ally shrugged, following my gaze.

  We hurried to the shop and stood for a moment, trying to adjust to the dim interior.

  “What d’ya want?”

  A gravelly voice startled me. A withered old man with hair as wispy and white as the cobwebs draped from the ceiling above him, leaned on the worn, grey counter. Cubed wooden shelves lined the wall behind him, most only holding a single item, which, judging by the dust, were as old as the shopkeeper. The baskets of chocolates and lollies in front of the counter were the only things that looked fresh and I ran my fingers across them, willing their sweetness to counteract the sour atmosphere.

  “What d’ya want?” he said again.

  I snatched my hand from the lollies, sensing his distrust.

  “Um, batteries, triple A.”

  “Where’s your manners?” He glared at me.

  “Same place as yours?” I said.

  Ally grinned but the old guy grabbed my top to pull me towards him. Thankfully the doddery old git was weak and his hands gnarled with arthritis. I stepped back, clasping my T-shirt where he’d touched it, as if shielding myself from his violation of my sanctuary.

  Meet me at the marsh at twilight.

  I flinched as the words flitted into my mind. Had he just said that? But the voice had been younger, hushed and yet filled with spite. Ally was writing her name in the dust on the counter and obviously hadn’t heard anything.

  I fixed my gaze on the man’s leathery face and his small black eyes squinted into narrow slits as he assessed me. I squirmed and studied Ally’s writing on the counter.

  “You’re not from these parts,” he said.

  “No,” Ally offered, “we’re Australian.”

  He sniffed, half-turned away and poked along the shelving.

  Yer all descendants of crooks.

  I took a step back in shock as I read the thought floating through his mind. I thought it was only Ally’s that I could read. And my grandad’s.

  He finally located a pack of batteries, slammed them on the counter and demanded twelve pounds. Now who was the crook!

  “For two batteries?” I snorted. “Get real!”

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  His black eyes fixed on mine and this time I held his gaze. He leaned forwards. So did I. He squinted. I copied. I knew those cold, heartless eyes; I’d seen them before, not in this old sour face but… A chill ran down my spine.

  “You’re Dougie Smith.”

  “What if I am?” he growled.

  “Stan and Millie’s boy.”

  His eyes widened in surprise.

  “Katie!” Ally grabbed my elbow and tugged me outside.

  I kept my glare on him until he shuffled f
rom behind the counter, slammed the door, opened it to release a trapped blue strand, slammed it again, and turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’.

  “What the hell is with you?” Ally gasped.

  “I-I’ve got a really bad feeling about him,” I said. “Didn’t you feel it?”

  “But you knew him?”

  Ally marched over the road, ran across the grass and vanished behind the washing that hid the view to the back door of the apartment block.

  Jack Stewart, Grandad, me; we were connected somehow, apart from the fact we shared the same last name, but I thought it was more than that. I could see images in Grandad’s mind. And words in Dougie Smith’s. So did that mean he was part of my past?

  The ground floor door clicked shut behind me, startling me, and I grasped the sticky banister to haul myself up the stairs. I was on the brink of discovering who I once was and now I was this close I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I kind of liked being Katie Stewart. I mightn’t have changed the world, been famous, kissed Zac…

  I cast the thought from my mind. I was just grasping at anything that would hold me to this life. Even though Zac and I were really close and he had the cutest smile, I doubted we’d ever be more than just friends. When I looked in his eyes, there was something there, a connection that bonded us in more ways than friendship alone ever could. Deep down, I wondered if he considered me the sister he never had.