Tristan Bancks - The Fall

I noticed small, dark spatters on the grass – either mud or blood. I took a shot on my phone. It made a loud ch-kshhh sound as it snapped and I flicked it to mute. There was a shallow depression in the dirt where the man had landed, the weight of his life etched into the earth. I felt tears prick my eyelids. I swallowed hard, leaned down as far as my leg would allow and took a couple of shots of the hollow in the ground.

I touched the earth and wondered who the man was: if he’d had kids, if he left any mark on the world other than this one in the backyard of a shabby apartment building in a pretty bad part of the city.

I picked up a small piece of paper from the ground. A receipt, wet through from the rain and impossible to read. Magic yawned excitedly and looked as though she wanted to eat it.

Maybe it was evidence or just something that blew out of a bin. I took a photo and pocketed the receipt carefully, so as not to tear it. As I straightened up, there was a dull thud somewhere nearby.

I probably should have run but instead I froze, not breathing. I waited for a shadow or a voice. Seconds ticked by. No other sounds. I looked up at Harry’s apartment, the window still ajar. I half-expected to see someone looking down at me. I scanned the other windows and bal conies. All of them were closed against the cold and rain. I turned my attention to the ground once more.

I wondered if I had compromised the crime scene. Maybe the hoof-prints of my crutches had destroyed vital evidence.

Something glinted in the lamplight a couple of metres away. I moved closer, careful not to tread on the man’s indent. It was the arm from a pair of glasses. I picked the evidence up by the very tip, trying not to contaminate it with my fingerprints, and slipped it into my pocket.

There was a sound and I looked up to see one of the large gates at the side of the building begin to open. I panicked. ‘Magic, come,’ I whispered, pulling the dog to her feet by her lead. I crutched awkwardly towards the door to the apartment building.

What if it’s help? I wondered. What if it’s Harry? That’s what would happen in Harry Garner: Crime Reporter, my comic book series. I had been making the books for three years and I was up to issue seven. I wasn’t that good at drawing at first but I was getting better. In the books, Harry always saved the day. Or the night.

But I was not in a comic book and I wasn’t taking any chances. I imagined Death shadowing me as I lunged with my crutches, reaching ahead and swinging my legs forward. Magic waddled double-time to keep up. A couple of metres before I reached the door to the building I launched my crutches forward, smelling safety, and they slipped in the mud, sending me sliding onto the ground. I broke my fall with the palms of my hands and my bandaged right knee. Pain surged through me and I lost my grip on Magic’s lead but fear picked me up and sent me hopping to the door. I opened it and the plastic gun fell out onto the mud.

‘Come, girl!’ I pleaded with Magic. ‘Come!’

She ambled over, squeezed through the gap and I eased the door shut behind me, the bottom of it grating against concrete. I crutched down the narrow corridor to the foyer. I should have gone through the double doors and directly to the police station. But I didn’t want to be out on the streets of an unknown city, hobbling on crutches at 2.30 in the morning. What if the man had an accomplice who was waiting out front?

I eyeballed the lift that my father had strictly forbidden me to travel in. It was waiting there, calling me. My arms were tingly and numb, the top of my crutches cutting the blood flow, and I was wet and cold. I didn’t know if I could make it all the way upstairs and I was 94 per cent sure that Magic couldn’t.

I thought of the person coming through the gate in the backyard. I was pretty sure it was the creepy man with the umbrella, so I swung my leg forward and pulled the heavy old-fashioned lift door open. Magic shuffled in and I crutched after her into the tiny space, the smallest lift I had ever been in. I hit the ‘5’ button and prayed that I was doing the right thing.

The lift didn’t move so I tapped the button ten times in quick succession like it was my Xbox controller when the game wouldn’t load. Finally, it reeled upwards. I watched through the wire mesh window as the floors slowly, painfully drifted by. I wondered if I’d have been faster crutching up the stairs, if the man would walk up and be waiting for me at the top.

Why didn’t you go to the police? I thought over and over, the question rattling and squeaking through my brain like the lift through the shaft.

After what felt like an hour we arrived at level five and the lift made a soft, out-of-tune ding. I peered through the narrow window in the door, looking left and right. I couldn’t see anyone. Only the doors to 5A and 5B and, in between, the fire hose reel cupboard. I wondered if he had already called the lift from the foyer. Just in case, I pressed the button for every floor so that it would take forever to get down. I shoved open the door and Magic waddled out. I crutched across to Harry’s apartment, inserted the key and twisted. Magic pushed the door open with her nose, barrelled past me and slurped water noisily from her four-litre ice-cream container on the kitchenette floor.

I clicked the door quietly closed, my chest burning, feet freezing, listening for dear life. Magic collapsed to the floor. Her breathing sawed through the air, making it difficult to listen for the lift or for noises on the staircase.

‘Shhhh,’ I told her, but the chubby brown dog kept wheezing.

I called out ‘Harry?’ and checked the bedroom and bathroom again. Then I stood, watching the door for a couple of minutes, listening. I checked my phone.

Nothing.

Harry will be back soon , I thought.

I’ll just pop out and grab some milk. That’s what he’d said. I shouldn’t have asked him all those personal questions. I’d sent him away. It was my fault.

I heard the distant sound of a timber door grating on concrete five floors down.

I clicked the cupboard door closed and sank into the darkness. The space was narrow, deep and reeked of cleaning products. The mouldy smell of wet mop cut through the chemicals. My nose twitched. I squeezed it to stop myself from sneezing and felt the sting across my cheeks and forehead. Magic panted, her heaving breaths filling the cupboard. The building’s heating system moaned all around. It was the most obvious hiding spot in the world, I knew that – right opposite our apartment, beneath the stairs next to the lift.

The pain just above my knee was apocalyptic and my hands and armpits ached. I started to complain to myself about my broken body but I stopped. I had learnt to do that. It was easy to whinge all the time but it didn’t change anything. Kids don’t let you forget that you walk funny. My spine was bent and my left leg was 5.5 centimetres shorter than my right. That’s why Dr Cheung had inserted the staples into my right leg last week, to slow the growth of the thigh bone. He reckoned it would allow my left leg to catch up, correct the dogleg in my spine and make me normal. I was scared of the surgery but scared of what might happen to my body if I didn’t have the surgery. Knowing that I was coming to Harry’s for the week after the operation had helped me push through the fear.

I heard the lift clanking up through the shaft and soon it arrived on our floor. The door screeched open. There were fast footsteps and a thump. I pressed my ear to the thin cupboard door. Another thump, louder this time. And one more, then something clattering to the ground. It sounded like he had forced Harry’s apartment door.