Every object has a ghost.
There is a small yellow backpack – half unzipped, mouth yawning to the pavement, contents strewn around it (a banana, an exercise book, a pair of scissors) – abandoned on a suburban footpath.
Ten feet away the rubber stamps of tyres, resisting clamped brakes, mount the kerb and cut across the path. The tracks come to an end at a crippled stop sign.
The street, a tree- lined suburban road dappled in late- afternoon sunlight, is calm. But anyone walking past can feel the ghosts: the prickle on the back of their necks that tells them something happened here. The story of a vehicle careening to a halt. Of a child’s backpack left in a hurry.
That intuition comes before they take a closer look and see there is dark dry red on the scissor’s blade. The ghosts are screaming now; the scene’s memory turns violent. And as the passer- by raises their phone to answer the question what is your emergency? they see more red. Between the tyre tracks and the blood. Two words, hastily scrawled on the footpath. Written in blood.
FIND US…
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