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Gavin sat down heavily, his head in his hands.
“Say it is a warning. Say it’s not from the past but the future….” he murmured.
“Now you’re really losing the plot.”
“Can you add in environmental factors—like weather, pollution?”
“Of course.”
“Pull up a contemporary rain forest—one that would be appropriate for now, in this area.”
Thinking he’d gone crazy she followed his instructions, reverting to the computer modeling she used as a base program. A recognizable rain forest filled the screen, a canopy of Queensland vegetation with a thick undergrowth of ferns. She glanced across to check that the telephone was within reach, comforting herself with the thought that she could always ring the police if necessary. Gavin was beginning to look more and more maniacal.
“1.6ppm of carbon dioxide, that’s the eight-hour average for the Brisbane CBD. Times that by fifty.”
She punched in the equation: the forest sprouted more leaves, the trunks extended spinelike into the sky, which had darkened to a dirty gray.
“Take the greenhouse factors and treble them….”
The horizon darkened again and the evolution process sped up, tendrils winding like blind snakes up tree trunks, the undergrowth thickening to an impossible density.
Gavin froze. “Stop it there.”
The image on the screen stopped moving. Gavin held up the printout of the magnification of the tramp’s face. It was a perfect match.
“No.” Saturday swung around in her seat, her whole body quivering. “No, it’s not possible, Gavin. It’s just coincidence, an optical illusion. It just isn’t scientific—even you must know that.”
“But, Saturday, you’ve seen what’s been happening…. I would have thought you of all people—”
“—would have what? I’m a scientist not a mystic.”
She picked up the photo of the old man. “How do I know that you didn’t kill this guy, then have some strange mental breakdown where you concocted this whole scenario to justify the murder?”
Gavin looked at her in horror as her hand crept toward the phone.
“You have to believe me. There’s no one else, no other witness….”
“Witness? I’m not a witness. I’ve seen nothing to convince me of the reality of your haunting, except some reportage and now a photo of a corpse.” She lifted the phone. “You’ve got ten minutes to get out of the area, then I’m phoning the cops.”
He stared at her, barely comprehending her words. He couldn’t believe that she would do this to him after making love, that she hadn’t felt the overwhelming connection as he had.
“But we made love…. I thought you understood….”
“Just go. Go now!”
Gavin picked up his polyester suit and bolted for the door.
He waded through the thick undergrowth, driven by a dulled sense of purpose. He stank of piss and some unmentionable human filth, but had become so accustomed to it he could no longer smell himself. He’d been living in the vacant lot for as long as he could recall. His mind was a blank beyond the moment he had found himself lying on the rubbish heap, familiar faces now reduced to ghostly circles as his memory evaporated into fog.
In the distance he heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up, the thud of a car door. He wasn’t frightened. Other human beings were shadows that passed beyond the wall that separated his world from theirs. He lived in a forest, the forest of the future.
His toe hit something sharp; he bent down to find that he had cut himself on the edge of a rusty tin. A piece of newspaper lay nearby. The headline across the top of the article read: PROPERTY TYCOON DISAPPEARS. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED. WIFE GETS ESTATE BY DEFAULT. He tore the paper in half and wrapped it around his bleeding toe. The crash of footsteps interrupted him. Someone had broken into his world.
The old tramp smelled of urine and centuries of decay. His leathery face loomed at the young property developer from under the canopy of thick serpentine vines that still clung to the decaying wooden verandah.
“Forest come un twisty up your soul, you have nothing, boyo, seep into yer DNA then zap! Dead meat scum. You cursed. You no longer living. Flitter, flitter,” Gavin muttered, then spat at the developer’s feet. There was blood mixed in with the spittle.
The young man, meticulous in his dress and his business acumen, reared back, convinced that both insanity and poverty were contagious.
