The Seven by Chris Hammer

Author:Chris Hammer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2023-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

chapter twenty-five

Ivan is dreaming. He knows he’s dreaming and doesn’t attempt to wake up. He likes it here, in that half-state between sleep and consciousness, when the images and scenes spill into his waking mind. Going with the flow. He is walking along a beach and there are seagulls and he knows this is a good dream because the sky is blue and the sea is calm. Bad dreams are set at night, his father stalking through the gloom. Those are the nightmares when he forces himself awake. This is different, calmer. But just as he’s thinking this, a breeze rises, and the sea becomes choppy. The seagulls are flapping and squawking. One of them is trying to tell him something, and he realises this is no ordinary seagull, but the embodiment of someone well-meaning, someone he knows. Who does he know who reminds him of a seagull? He can discern no identity in the bead-like eyes, just a radiating sense of concern. He wishes the other gulls would settle a little, stop squawking, give him a chance to hear.

There is movement on the horizon. A whale is waving. Waving or drowning? Surely a whale couldn’t be drowning; that makes no sense. Now the whale is holding aloft a giant mobile phone. The phone is ringing, the familiar tone.

Ivan is awake. His phone is ringing. It’s still night. He flips the cover: Nell. He answers, even as he checks the screen: twelve thirty in the morning.

‘Nell?’

‘Oh fuck. Alice,’ she says, and in her words he hears fear and urgency and desperation.

He’s fully awake now, consciousness surging as he leaps out of bed. ‘Where are you?’

A flash catches his eye, pulling his gaze to the window. The sound of an explosion, the crump of the detonation followed by the sound of shattering glass. And the same sounds a split second later, coming through the phone, an asymmetrical stereo.

‘Nell? Nell!’

There is no reply. The call has ended.

Through the window, Ivan can see birds rising above the darkened town, their harsh calls mixing with the shrill echo of car alarms.

Now he sees it, smoke, coming from up near Commonwealth Way. And there, a low orange aura. A fire. Jesus. Nell.

He gets his pants on, his boots, takes his phone, takes his gun. And runs. Out of his room, along the empty corridor, bounding down the stairs, through the empty lobby of the Progress Hotel and out the door. Running. Running up the ridge, running in desperation, running in denial, running as if it might turn back the clock, even by a few seconds.

He gets to Commonwealth Way, sprints along it, guided by the burgeoning glow. On the other side of the street he sees a group of people emerging from the Grandview, pointing. The fire is taking hold, and he’s starting to realise where it’s coming from.

He gets to McLean Street, turns right, and there it is. A solitary figure is standing, watching: Bert Kippax. But it’s the building that captures Ivan’s attention, the old shopfront, Athol Hasluck’s accountancy practice on fire on the second floor.

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