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I'm
pretty ordinary, like my name.
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|
Melissa.
|
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| So
what's ordinary? |
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| Here's
the recipe. Get born in the Carrawidgee District hospital.
Grow up in Albion Bay with your mother until age six, when
the family breaks apart and you're forced to live with your
aunt. Go to school. Aspire to become an astronomer but settle
for a job in the hospitality industry, serving french fries
to ex-classmates. Marry some loser. Have kids. Grow old and
die there, in Nimjala, a few kilometres from the place where
you were born. |
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| That's
what ordinary is. And that's what I'd be, if it wasn't for
some of the people I know. Nathan. Shine. Cassandra. |
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| They're
not ordinary. |
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| Strictly
speaking, they're extraordinary. |
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|
::
::
|
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| When
the winds first hit - the savage, otherworld winds that carried
fragments of monstrous shadows right along the coast and into
the city - I'd been away, on holidays with my aunt and uncle.
Visiting relatives. |
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| I
hadn't wanted to go. But Nathan had disappeared from the area
after the business with his parents, brooding about himself
and his new ghostly nature, and the others were loners who
weren't showing a lot of interest in me. Shine would turn
up now and then, easing himself out of the shadows as though
he'd just stepped through a doorway that wasn't there. We'd
talk, then he'd go. I hadn't seen him for a couple of weeks.
|
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| Perhaps
it was lucky that my aunt and uncle and I weren't in Nimjala
during the Shadow storm. By all reports it was devastating.
Over a hundred people in Albion Bay were declared dead and
many more reported missing, never found. The incidence of
mental breakdown soared. Cost from property damage ran into
millions of dollars, according to the Herald. Nimjala
was declared a disaster area. |
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| As
well, there were stories of strange, supernatural occurrences,
and not all those stories were later talked out of existence.
As I sat in a hotel room in Brisbane, too far from the scene
to get back to my friends, I watched the reports and felt
a terrible dread that this was the end of everything. I'd
been anticipating such an end, ever since I found out that
a dark inhuman world called Tenebra lay just behind the skin
of this one, and that it wanted desperately and coldly to
break through and destroy us. That sort of knowledge doesn't
help you to sleep. It makes you think the worst. |
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| But
there's a human side to Tenebra, too. Sometimes, snatched
away on the eve of death, teenagers are taken to the Shadow
Realm, where their lives, their very natures are changed.
None of them know why. Some escape back - but they're never
the same. They become ghosts when exposed to light. They blend
with the darkness, travelling through shadows from place to
place in the blink of an eye. They're stronger than they used
to be. Sometimes they can see into your mind. |
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| They
call themselves Shades. |
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| I
count some of them as friends. |
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|
::
::
|
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| For
the first few weeks after the storm winds abated, we weren't
allowed to return to Nimjala. We stayed in a hotel in a small
tourist village a bit to the north, waiting for the all-clear
from the authorities. Every now and then, I'd try to ring
through. For a while the lines were down and all I got was
a message from the phone company informing me that 'the area
was experiencing service difficulties'. Then, when the lines
were cleared, no one answered, not Nathan's father, not anyone.
I finally got through to Jane, a human friend from school.
She hadn't seen any of our classmates for over a week, she
said, and I couldn't ask her about the Shades. Like most people,
she had no idea they existed. |
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| So
how do you contact Shades? Talk into dark patches hiding in
the corner of the room? Shout at the night? In the end I rang
Cassandra's mobile - reluctantly, because she made me uncomfortable
most of the time. She didn't answer and I was passed on to
her voicemail service, but she never replied to my message,
which was about what I'd expected of her. I didn't like her
much. She'd never been helpful and I think she resented Nathan's
interest in me. |
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| Not
that he had much. I hadn't heard from him since he left Nimjala
a few months before, except for a postcard with a message
so formal it might have been written as a class exercise.
I was positive he didn't care. Shine reckoned otherwise. But
Shine can hardly be considered reliable. |
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| So
what was the value in knowing about the Shades, of being part
of their life? Very little, it seemed. All the knowledge did
was make me feel even more ordinary. |
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|
::
::
|
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| Late
one day, as a gentle wind whispered around the edges of my
hotel room window, a face appeared on the other side of the
glass. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, dark and shifting,
and started violently, blinking to make it go away. But it
didn't disappear and as I focused on it, its familiarity increased. |
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| Cassandra? |
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| The
figure's hand rose and rapped on the glass. |
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| "Come
on, open up already. It's cold out here." Cassandra's voice
was muffled, yet I could hear in it the superiority that was
so characteristic of her. |
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| I
pulled up the window. |
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| She
was standing on a ledge that ran around the building, one
storey up. Her short skirt flapped around her legs. Neither
it nor the purple halter top she was wearing had any hope
of keeping her warm. Her hair was shorter than it had been
last time I saw her - and darker. A sort of deep reddish gold. |
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| "I
thought you Shades didn't feel the weather," I said. |
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| She
shrugged. "Looks like I should though, don't you think? Can
I come in?" |
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| I
stepped back, wondering why she was here. Oddly I felt no
elation that I'd finally made some sort of contact with the
Shades. It didn't even occur to me. My mind was purely fixated
on Cassandra herself. |
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| That
was always the way. For everyone. When Cassandra was around
you couldn't help thinking about her. I was envying her right
at that moment. If I'd been a boy, the envy might have been
desire. |
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|
How
could I compete with her? I know what I'm like. Dark brown
hair limply framing a round face. Average build, not very
shapely in my baggy sweatshirt and jeans. Ordinary. Nothing
to draw anyone's attention.
|
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| I
had no hope of capturing Nathan's interest, not when Cassandra
was available. |
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| "Wasn't
easy finding you, honey," Cassandra said. She stepped over
the sill into the room, her leg fading slightly as the dim
internal light covered it. I'd been reading, so the only light
was a fairly directional one at my desk. Cassandra walked
over to it and made to flick the switch. |
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| "Leave
it on," I ordered. "I can't see in the dark, even if you can." |
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| She
shrugged and turned the lampshade downward then sat at the
end of my bed. Silently staring. |
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| "What's
up?" I said. |
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| Her
eyes, hidden by sunglasses, might have been evaluating me,
or might have been staring back out the window. |
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| Was
she going to speak? Silence lengthened and deepened between
us. |
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| "Well?" |
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| "Have
you been back to Nimjala at all?" she said. |
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| I
shook my head. "We're waiting 'till they let us through the
barricades. Apparently our house is standing, but the safety
checks are still underway." |
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| "Safety
checks?" She laughed to herself. |
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| "Government
ones. There was a lot of damage." |
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| "I
know. I was there. But the place is crawling with psychic
investigators, not building engineers. You realise it was
a Shadow wind, I suppose!" |
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| "I
guessed as much. What was it all about?" |
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| "Just
an accident. Doesn't matter really. You wouldn't understand."
Before I could protest, she was on her feet and coming toward
me. "That's not the problem." |
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| I
stepped away. "What is the problem then?" |
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| "Isis.
The Storm did something to Isis. Have you seen her?" |
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| "Isis?"
I shrugged. "Who's Isis? We've never even met as far as I
know." |
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| "She's
a Shade, sort of. If you haven't met her, that's good." She
turned toward the open window. |
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| I
grabbed her arm. "What's going on, Cassandra?" |
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| She
knocked my hand away. |
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| "If
anything odd happens, let me know. Ring my mobile." She began
to disappear into the shadows. "And watch out for her." |
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| "For
Isis?" I asked. "What will she do?" |
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| But
Cassandra was gone, as though she'd never been. |
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