The Stray Swans

The Stray Swans

01: NOW

02: AUGUST 1991

03: NOW

04: AUGUST 1991

05: NOW

06: AUGUST 1991

07: NOW

08: AUG–SEPT 1991

MEMORABILIA #1

09: NOW

10: SEPTEMBER 1991

11: NOW

12: NOVEMBER 1991

13: NOW

14: DEC 1991–JAN 1992

15: JANUARY 1992

16: NOW

17: FEBRUARY 1992

18: MARCH 1992

19: NOW

20: MARCH 1992

21: MAY 1992

22: NOW

MEMORABILIA #2

23: JUNE 1992

24: NOW

25: JULY 1992

26: AUGUST 1992

27: NOW

28: SEPTEMBER 1992

MEMORABILIA #3

29: OCTOBER 1992

30: NOW

31: OCTOBER 1992

MEMORABILIA #4

32: NOVEMBER 1992

33: NOW

34: NOVEMBER 1992

MEMORABILIA #5

35: NOW

36: NOV–DEC 1992

MEMORABILIA #6

37: DECEMBER 1992

38: NOW

39: DEC 1992–JAN 1993

MEMORABILIA #7

40: FEB–MAR 1993

41: NOW

42: AUGUST 1993

43: AUGUST 1993

44: NOW

45: AUGUST 1993

46: SEPTEMBER 1993

47: NOW

48: OCTOBER 1993

49: NOW

50: JANUARY 1994

MEMORABILIA #8

51: NOW

MEMORABILIA #9

52: FEBRUARY 1994

53: NOW

54: FEBRUARY 1994

55: NOW

56: FEBRUARY 1994

57: NOW

58: FEBRUARY 1994

59: NOW

60: MARCH 1994

61: NOW

62: APRIL 1994

63: NOW

64: APRIL 1994

65: NOW

MEMORABILIA #10

66: NOW

67: NOW

CODA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MEMORABILIA #11

For Angelica, my rebel girl

I still dream about Kurt.

—Dave Grohl

And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail.

—Robert Johnson, ‘Hellhound on My Trail’

01: NOW

Vee has been dead for twenty-five years when she calls me in the middle of the night.

My phone buzzes against the tiles of the bathroom floor. Even fully submerged, I recognise the ring tone: Joy Division, ‘Dead Souls’. Bernard Sumner’s abrasive guitar riffs sound distant and dreamlike through the bathwater, like broken glass smoothed by the sea.

And then the bathwater burns my throat.

And I wake up.

And I realise that I’m drowning.

I splutter to the surface. Retch. Cough. Gasp. Water dribbles from my lungs. I suck oxygen. Cough again. Lean back against the tub and try to stop my heart from hammering through my ribs.

The phone is still ringing.

I reach for it, rooting through the discarded clothes and spilled valiums and empty wine bottles until I find the hard metal rectangle. It vibrates against my fingers like a bird.

‘Hello?’

Static. Distortion. Then a girl whispers through the white noise.

‘Cat? It’s me. It’s Vee. I need your help, shortie…’

That voice. My spine runs cold despite the water’s heat. ‘Vee?’

‘It’s coming for me,’ she whispers. ‘The shadow. I can’t hold on much longer.’

A wave of static drowns her out, and the connection dies.

My heart is racing. Sweat trickles down my back. Is this real? Did that just happen?

Vee. My best friend. I haven’t heard her voice in so long. Not since the car crash, and the band broke up, and we laid her broken body in the grave.

Not since the shadow killed her.

Rolling Stone Australia ran her photo on the cover as a memorial. We were a one-hit grunge band, nowhere near successful enough to earn such an honour. But pretty girls sell magazines, even if they’re dead.

In the picture, Vee is tall and lanky, grinning at the camera. Her face is half-hidden by long, tangled hair the colour of orchids: blue and purple, red and green. You can see her nose ring, and the tattoo on the inside of her wrist as she tucks a strand of that magnificent hair behind her ear.

She was a pale blonde on the night I met her. The dyed hair, the nose ring, the tattoos all came later. Her smile was the same, though. Dreamy and excited, grey eyes shining with joy. It was the first thing I noticed about her, the first thing that made me like her. And then I heard her sing…

It’s my fault she died. The shadow was after me.

And it almost had me tonight. That wasn’t an accident, the drowning. I took the pills and wine on purpose.

The only thing that saved me was Vee’s call.

I stagger out of the bath. I collapse wet and naked on my bed.

I try to sleep.

I fail.

02: AUGUST 1991

Busking late at night outside the General Post Office on the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets. I had a cheap imitation Stratocaster and a battery-powered amp, and I was vamping around with an old Robert Johnson blues tune. The notes echoed off the concrete buildings. It was cold. It was wet. I had school tomorrow and I’d only made nine dollars. I was thinking about going home.

A group of metalheads walked by, all tight blue jeans and black leather jackets, skolling beer from VB longnecks.

‘Play Stairway to Heaven,’ one of them yelled.

His head was shaved, and a hairy chin patch dangled from his bottom lip like a giant brown centipede. His friends surrounded me, looming and smelly.

I shrunk back, intimidated. My hands went clammy and slipped on my fret board. I stopped playing. Wiped my palms. Fumbled with my glasses.

‘Zepp-lin,’ they chanted. ‘Zepp-lin.’

A girl was with them. She smiled apologetically, and tried to drag the guy with the chin-stripe away. The girl didn’t look a headbanger. She was tall and skinny. Her pale hair was knotted and waist-length. She wore a floral baby doll dress and a green army coat with band names written all over the back in black texta. Her feet were bare despite the cold. She tugged on her friend’s arm again.

‘Whatever,’ the guy muttered. ‘Chicks can’t play guitar anyway.’

The others laughed. I glared up at them.

Screw that.

I ran through Stairway’s opening riff: an A minor arpeggio, descending bass notes in counterpoint to the rising melody. A riff so famous it was banned from guitar shops worldwide.

The metalheads clapped sarcastically.

I kept playing. The intro was the easy part.

First verse. I played Robert Plant’s vocal melody on the top strings, and simultaneously wove chords and counter-melody underneath it on the bottom ones. My fingers danced up and down the fretboard.

I was seventeen, shy, a five foot two geek. I had acne and glasses and pear-shaped hips. I wasn’t pretty. I was nothing like the girls in magazines. But I could play guitar.

Goddamn could I play guitar.

The metalheads grunted in surprise. The blonde girl laughed, delighted, and started to sing along.

And her voice…

Warm. Hoarse. Eerie in its purity. Like an angel that smoked too many cigarettes. My spine tingled. Goosebumps prickled my arms.

We reached the hard rock section at the end. Her voice rose and she howled. Pedestrians jumped. The metalheads joined in, flat and drunken, headbanging and miming air guitars.

We finished. They all cheered. The girl smiled at me, cheeks flushed, and then hid behind her long hair, suddenly self-conscious.

‘Mate,’ the chin-stripe guy slurred. ‘That was awesome. You in a band?’

‘Not yet,’ I said.

‘You should join ours! I’m Dave. Here.’

He thrust a beer bottle at me. I reluctantly wiped the rim and drank.

‘Now you’re in our band,’ Dave said.

They cheered again. They were all outrageously drunk.

‘Gee,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

I hated metal. I was a total music snob. I firmly believed good music died in September 1970 along with Jimi Hendrix. Modern pop music was dull and commercialised in comparison. Heavy metal, though, was the ultimate insult. It took everything pure and beautiful about Hendrix’s music and turned it into caveman thuggery, tedious guitar solos, and pimply sexual frustration.

I loathed it. Except: that girl. That voice. I had to play with her again.

‘I’m Catherine,’ I told him. ‘Where do you practise?’

03: NOW

It’s not a real suicide attempt if it doesn’t leave a scar.

The thought loops through my head all night. I’m awake when my alarm goes off. I’ve been awake for hours. Heat leaks around the edges of my curtain. Last night’s bathwater has long since dried. I drag myself out of bed. Make coffee. Take my pills.

The bathtub is still full of water. I drain it. Shower. The water is too hot, then too cold. Afterwards, I stare at the stranger in the mirror. Bags under her eyes. Grey in her hair. Tattoos fading on her arms like battle wounds from a forgotten war.

Vee called me last night.

But that’s impossible. Vee is dead. I was drowning. I must have hallucinated.

I pull on my clothes. Blue shirt. Plaid skirt. Sensible black sandals. Work clothes. Schoolteacher clothes. I-was-a-rock-star-twenty-five-years-ago-but-now-I-have-a-real-job clothes.

I shove my lesson notes into my satchel. I close the door on my empty flat.

This is madness. I know that. Last night I tried to kill myself, and this morning I’m off to work. But what else can I do? It’s not a real suicide attempt if it doesn’t leave a scar.

The sunlight outside is like fire. A cruel summer, as Bananarama sang.

I hurry towards the train station.

*

My regular train is so packed I can’t get on. The next one doesn’t even stop. I wait on the platform, clammy from the heat.

The sunlight is too bright. Sweat stains my armpits. A raven picks garbage out of a rubbish bin, and I can make out every individual black feather, hyper-real, glossy as an oil slick.

I feel dizzy. Nauseous. The wine and the valiums are still worming their way through my blood. I need breakfast. Or another coffee. Even that horrific instant stuff from the staffroom at work. Anything to dilute the toxins in my gut.

The raven looks up. Fixes me with its liquid eye.

‘The dead,’ it croaks, ‘stay dead.’

I vomit.

04: AUGUST 1991

By the time I reached my train station, night had fallen outside.

I was late home. Which meant I was in trouble. I ran from the station, school bag thumping against my back, amp heavy in one hand, guitar case swinging in the other. The cold air froze in my lungs. The streets were black, the familiar houses eerie in the dark.

In my back pocket was a scrap of paper. On it was written an address, a phone number, and the name of Dave’s band: Indented Head.

I turned down my side street. My house was up ahead, the sixth on the left, at the top of a small hill. Light glowed out from behind the lounge room curtains. My parents were waiting for me.

A stitch bit into my side. I stopped running to massage it out.

My ragged breathing was deafening in the silence. The hairs on my arms rose. The thin line of sweat down my back froze and clung to my skin.

Out of the darkness circled a pair of flies.

I stared at them. A nameless fear grabbed me. Beneath the scent of the rosebushes and garbage bins and wet bitumen, I could smell rotten meat.

A fly landed on my face. My arms wouldn’t move. My lungs stopped breathing. The fly crawled up my cheek towards my eye.

I bit my tongue. The bright flash of pain cut through my fear, releasing me. I gripped my guitar and ran home.

*

‘Catherine? Is that you?’

I tried to sneak down the hallway, but Mum’s voice halted me. She came out from the lounge room, arms crossed, face angry. Like me, she was short and dark-haired and wore glasses. But that was all we had in common.

‘You’re late,’ she said.

My hands were still shaking from the nameless fear.

‘I was studying,’ I blurted out, ruder than I had planned. ‘At a friend’s.’

‘With your guitar?’ Mum cast a sceptical eye up and down me. ‘Don’t lie, Catherine. You were out busking again.’

I sighed. ‘Okay, yes. I was busking. So what?’

‘It’s dark outside. We had no idea where you were. And you have school tomorrow. That is what, young lady.’

‘Fine. Sorry. Can I go now?’

Mum shook her head in frustration. ‘Exams are coming up. You need to concentrate on your homework.’

‘If you’d let me study music, busking would be homework.’

‘We’ve discussed this, Catherine. Music is hardly a secure career.’

‘Maybe I don’t want a secure career!’ I turned and stomped down the hallway to my bedroom. Mum called after me, ordering me to stop. But I slammed my door shut on her voice.

*

There are things that live in the darkness. Shadows. Ghosts.

They prowl through the night, black claws scraping, long teeth glinting. They find their prey. And then they chase and they chase and they never let go.

There are ways to drive them off, for a while. They come back, though. They always come back.

I knew this. I’d known it my whole life. Something had been stalking me since the day I was born. I tried to tell my mother about it, when I was young. She told me to stop being foolish. I never bothered telling anyone else.

There are things that live in the darkness.

And I had to fight them on my own.

*

My bedroom. My sanctuary. One entire wall was covered in posters of my heroes: Eric Clapton, Roger McGuinn, and above them all, the immortal Jimi Hendrix. I rested my electric guitar beneath the posters, next to the Yamaha acoustic that used to belong to Dad. He gave it to me as a present for my thirteenth birthday, because I played it more than he did.

I picked the Yamaha up, sat on the edge of my bed, and ran through some scales to warm up. The old guitar’s action was too high, and its tone was boxy. But any music was better than no music. I added chord to the scales, shaping them into a melody, using the melody to smooth my anger away.

Mum and I fought constantly. She knew I wanted to be a musician. Not for the fame, or the fortune, or any of that rubbish. I wanted it for the music. I wanted to live music, and breathe music, to spend my life making beautiful noise. That desire burnt inside me like a nuclear reactor. It powered everything I did. I taught myself from Dad’s old Learn to Play Guitar books. I practised hours each day. After I finished them, I started busking so that I could pay for my own lessons.

The whole time, Mum criticised and complained.

My finger wove up and down the fretboard, improvising, exploring different chords and variations. I forgot about Mum. I forgot about our argument. The world faded away. All I cared about were the notes.

Song writing can be hard work. You might have a melody that you like, but the chords are wrong. Or the chorus is brilliant but the verses don’t work. It can take days or weeks of work to chisel the pieces into the right shape until they fit.

But sometimes songs just come to you, complete and perfect, like a gift from the universe.

A riff came to me. Bluesy. Driving. Dark and otherworldly. I played it over and over until I was hypnotised. The riff was good. Really good. I felt like I was floating on the music.

Someone knocked at my door, and I crashed back down to earth.

‘Go away,’ I yelled.

The door opened anyway. Dad stepped halfway into my room. He held up a hand in a gesture of peace. ‘There’s dinner in the kitchen,’ he said.

I kept playing. ‘I’m not hungry.’

Dad scratched his beard, and stepped inside completely. He listened to me improvise for a minute.

‘Your mum’s pretty upset,’ he said.

‘Good. She started it.’

‘Come on, love. You’re too old to play that game.’

He sat beside me on my bed. Up close, he smelt of whisky and wool jumpers, earthy and comforting.

‘I wish you two wouldn’t argue,’ he said. ‘I get enough of that at work.’

Dad was a high-school maths teacher. He got to practise his classroom management skills on Mum and me far too often.

‘It’s her fault,’ I replied. ‘She’s the one who freaks out every time I play guitar.’

‘She doesn’t freak out,’ Dad said. ‘She just thinks you need to focus on your schoolwork. And frankly, so do I. It’s your final year. Exams are coming up.’

‘Exams are months away.’

‘But you need to be studying for them now. It’s important, Cath. Which degree you get into, which uni you go to—these things have a big impact on your future.’

‘I don’t want to go to uni, Dad. I want to play music.’

‘I know, love, I know.’ He stared sadly up at the posters on my wall. ‘But your mum is right. It’s is a vicious business. For every big-shot rock star there’s ten thousand who never make it. You need something else to fall back on.’

‘So what—I have to waste another three years studying?’ I stopped playing to face him. ‘I’m not an idiot, Dad. I realise how hard it all is. The sooner I start, though, the more chance I have. And I’m good. I’m really, really good.’

‘Yeah. I know. We both know that.’

‘Mum sure acts like she doesn’t.’

‘She’s worried about you, that’s all. Your mum’s been through a lot in her life.’

He sighed. A sadness crept into his eyes that seemed to be deeper than just my argument with Mum. I wanted to ask him what he meant, what exactly Mum had been through that made her so anxious and mean.

Dad shook himself. His smile returned. The moment to ask was lost.

‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Play me something.’

I thought for a minute, then finger-picked my way through The Byrds’ old single, ‘Eight Miles High’. The droning psychedelic chords washed away his sadness and my anger. Dad nodded when I finished.

‘I’m glad I gave you that guitar,’ he said. ‘You’re much better than I ever was. Just do some homework too, hey? To keep your mum happy.’

He kissed my cheek and slipped out the door.

*

Sleep didn’t come that night. Too many thoughts crowded in my head.

Who was the blonde girl? Was she serious about those metalheads, or could I persuade her to start a new band with me? What if she didn’t like my songs?

The questions raced around like ferrets, keeping me awake. What if I didn’t make it? What if I wasn’t good enough? What if I was stuck here in the suburbs for the rest of my life?

I had to stop, I realised. My thoughts were going to bad places. And when that happened…

It was too late. I could hear a noise in the corridor outside my room.

First: the buzz of fly wings. One or two, to begin with. Then more. A cluster. A swarm. The buzz grew louder and louder. And then the scrape and scratch of huge claws on the hallway carpet. Prowling. Stalking. Coming closer. So close I could hear the creature’s thick, wet breathing, as if its lungs were full of mud.

My heart raced. I knew that sound. I had heard it my whole life.

The shadow was coming.

‘Go away,’ I tried to whisper. My mouth was dry. The words wouldn’t form. My nerves were full of static, buzzing in time with flies.

The heavy claws stopped outside my door. I could smell it now: rancid meat and stale blood.

‘Go away,’ I hissed.

A sound like knives gouging wood. It was scratching at my door. It was coming for me. My heart stammered in fear. I had to stop it getting in. I had to drive it off. And I knew the only way how.

I forced myself to roll over. Hidden under my bedside lamp was the blade from a pencil sharpener. I grabbed it. Held the blade against the soft flesh inside my left arm. Sliced.

Pain, ragged and hot. Drops of blood welled up.

I sliced a second time. The pain was like a torch. It burnt through the miasma, seared away the buzzing. Blood and pain, the most primal form of magic. I held the blade against my arm, ready to make a third cut.

The shadow snarled once and then loped away.

I waited until it was gone, until the last foul traces of its smell had faded. Then I snuck down to the bathroom to clean and bandage my arms. My parents were sound asleep. They had no idea a monster had been stalking their house just minutes before.

Good. Let them stay ignorant. The shadow was after me. There was nothing they could do to help.

On the way back, I checked my bedroom door. There were three fresh gouge marks in it, just above waist height. Whatever the shadow was, its claws were as big as my head.

I shut the door tightly and wrapped my blankets around me like a shield.

05: NOW

Late. Running.

Head still dizzy. Mouth burning from stomach bile. But I’m late. So I run. Through the wrought iron gates of Harrowfield Girls Grammar. Past the pines. Up the bluestone driveway. Into my Maths classroom.

My students cheer sarcastically.

‘Sorry,’ I puff. ‘Sorry. Trains. Okay… Where were we? Sine and cosine?’

The students grumble, the closest they come to saying yes.

I start the lesson. Diagramming. Explaining. Asking questions. Answering them. The geometry distracts me from my spinning head and cramping stomach.

But I can’t stop remembering. A suicide attempt. A phone call from a dead friend. A talking raven. Something is wrong. Something weird is happening. I need to go back to my doctor, get my medication adjusted.

The bell rings. The girls run out before I can assign them any homework.

Except for one.

A chubby Sri Lankan girl. She has a shaved undercut and wears battered Doc Martens with her school uniform. Her arms are wrapped around a cheap guitar bag.

Even twenty-five years later, the sight of it fills me with both yearning and with dread.

‘Miss?’

‘Yes…?’ God. What’s her name? Sharni? No: Shanti.

‘Fiona said you’re in a band? The Swans, or something?’

A stab of fear.

‘The Stray Swans. Yeah. I was. But that was a long time ago.’

‘We’re in a band. Fiona and me.’ She grins proudly. ‘We’re terrible.’

‘Oh.’ I jam my lesson notes into my satchel. I need coffee. I need to escape. I can’t talk about this. I’m a maths teacher now. The band is literally dead and buried. ‘Well, you know. Practice makes perfect.’

Shanti doesn’t give up. ‘We saw your video. On YouTube. Your band was amazing.’

She hugs her guitar tighter. Her pause lengthens into a request.

‘I… No, Shanti. Just no. I can’t help you. I haven’t played in years.’

‘But you guys were great!’

‘I said no, Shanti. Ask the music department.’

I run out of the classroom. Heart pounding. Afraid.

Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years since Vee died, and I still get the panic attacks. The sun outside is unforgiving. The girls look like flames in their yellow uniforms. The sports oval shimmers like a field of ash.

‘Oh Vee,’ I whisper.

I miss her so much my chest aches.

06: AUGUST 1991

The school week finally ended. Saturday finally came. I packed my electric guitar into its gig bag, checked I still had Indented Head’s address, and snuck out of the house while Mum was on the telephone. Dad was in the front garden, spreading fertiliser on his roses.

‘Busking?’ he asked.

‘Band rehearsal,’ I answered. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve done all my homework.’

He put the bag of fertiliser down, preparing to say something. But I was already walking away.

Indented Head rehearsed way out in Dandenong. I had to catch the train into the city, change, then catch the second train all the way out to the end of the line.

A couple of grizzled junkies were in my carriage, nodding off in the winter light. I sat down the other end from them. No-one else was in the carriage with us. Several stations rolled past. Bored, I unzipped my guitar and played around with the bluesy, otherworldly riff I wrote the night after I met Indented Head.

The riff was good. But something was missing. All the songs I had written were instrumentals. I’d tried writing lyrics, but they always felt clumsy and awkward. And I was far too self-conscious to actually sing. Without words, though, the riff just circled and circled, going nowhere. It needed lyrics to give it direction. It needed a singer.

One of the junkies half-opened an eye, glared reproachfully at me, and then fell back to sleep. I kept playing.

The sleeve of my jumper had ridden up while I was playing. I pulled it back down, hiding the row of scars along the inside of my forearm.

The suburbs slipped past. The train pulled into Dandenong Station. I checked the map I had copied out of my parent’s Melways, and I started walking. I walked for fifteen minutes, up a steep hill, heavy guitar strapped to my back, the handle of my amplifier cutting into the palm of my hand. Rain clouds rolled in from the west. The air smelt of ozone and eucalyptus trees. Magpies cawed at me as I passed.

The place was easy to find. I could hear the band tuning up a block away.

They were setting up in a garage with the door open and I could see all their equipment. Marshall stacks. Gibson guitars. A PA and mixing desk for the vocal mics. All I had was my cheap imitation Strat and a tiny practice amp.

And I was the only girl. The blonde wasn’t there.

I hesitated.

You could go home, I told myself. You’d lose nothing except the train fare. It’s a nice day. Just pretend you went out for a walk.

The band were messing around. One of the guitarists played the riff