Their Lost Sound

II. Changing Channel

The last word Kat said hung in the air, where my mind, wanting it to stay, stretched it until it broke and then blended with the steady hum of the car engine. And then I was back in her house, sitting quietly in her father's study, transfixed by the gentle swaying of the white mesh curtains that reminded me of a bride's veil. Beyond the thin glass of the window a bee hummed as it moved between the plants in the flowerbed.

"Tom?"

I blinked and turned to see Kat's father standing in the doorway.

"Mr Prior," I said.

"If you're ready?" He said in a quiet and sombre tone. I nodded and stood up, following him out into the hallway.

"Would you like a drink of anything?" He asked as we walked down the dark hall toward the kitchen. "Lemonade? Soda?"

I glanced at the framed photos that decorated the walls, but Kat's face did not look back from any of them. "A glass of water would be great, thank you."

Mr Prior said nothing as we entered the kitchen and I saw Mrs Prior sitting at the table with another man.

"Hello Tom," she said, in the same quiet tone her husband had used.

I smiled weakly. "Hi Mrs Prior."

"This is Officer Mansfield," she said glancing at the man to her left. The man nodded at me.

"Hello," I said.

"Have a seat son," Officer Mansfield said, holding out a large hand to one of the empty kitchen chairs. I pulled the heavy wooden chair out from beneath the table and sat down. Kat's father walked across from the kitchen sink and handed me a glass of cold water.

"There you go," he said. I thanked him and took the glass, but Mr Prior said nothing and walked back across the kitchen where he leaned against the countertop behind his wife.

"So, Tom," began Officer Mansfield, "I'm just going to ask you a few questions to help us get to the bottom of this. Is that ok?"

I sat in silence letting the words wash over me and through them all I still heard the steady hum of the bee outside the study window. The noise grew louder and soon it was as though the humming was coming from within me, the gentle vibrations massaging my back, legs, and palms of my hands.

The Bobcat continued to speed along the highway and I could feel the engine through the car's body.

"I never liked him," she said, and I smiled as I saw Kat out the corner of my eye leaning once again against the inside of passenger door. "He's one of dad's old army friends."

"I think I've seen him around town," I said, trying to resist looking away from the road at Kat.

"He's a creep," she said. "Why were you thinking about him?"

"I wasn't thinking about him," I said, and then swallowed. "I was thinking about the day after you left." I gave in and turned my head away from the road to look at Kat. She didn't tell me to look back at the road. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me with her brown eyes and a sad smile worn only by sufferers of nostalgia.

Her lips parted and she spoke softly, "Oh Tom."

"Tom?"

I was back in the Prior's kitchen, sitting opposite Mrs Prior and Officer Mansfield, whilst Mr Prior stood behind them both.

"Yes sir," I said.

"Good," said Officer Mansfield. "So you were at a party last night, is that right?" I nodded. "Down at," he looked down at the notepad on the table in front of him, "Piney Beach." I nodded. He then looked at Kat's parents. "And you went with Mr and Mrs Prior's daughter, Kat. Is that correct?" I nodded again. "Could you tell us what happened at the party?"

I looked at the officer, then at Mrs Prior, and her reddened eyes, and the slightly smudged makeup in their corners.

"It was just a party," I began.

Officer Mansfield sighed. "You aren't in trouble, Tom. We just want a better idea of what happened," he paused and then added, "so we can help Kat."

"Sure," I said and my mouth felt dry so I raised the glass of water to my lips.

"Start at the beginning," Mansfield said.

Mrs Prior sniffed and spoke. "He came over here at eight o'clock. Didn't you Tom?"

"Yes," I said, and my voice sounded as though it were coming from a different time or place. "I drove over here around eight and picked up Kat."

Mansfield was writing notes and slowly the night reached forward and pulled me backwards into itself, like an old videotape being rewound. I felt myself being lifted from the chair and dragged back out into the hallway, back past the blueish green walls where the photographs were hung and out of the front door which closed before me. I moved back across their well-kept front lawn where the sprinklers watered the grass with steady thwoop thwoops, and out into the cracked tarmac road. For a moment I was held there before the house, whilst overhead, the sun moved across the sky before coming to rest just above the horizon and bathing everything in warm golden hues. I moved back around to the driver's side of the car, where the door clicked open and I was placed inside, once again sitting outside Kat's house the night she disappeared.

The suburban street visible through the windscreen flickered like a television channel with bad signal, and changed to a dark highway. The car's headlights stretched out before it, reaching into the darkness and searching.

I felt Kat's hand rest on my right thigh. "You're not really running away are you?" She asked softly, and though it was phrased as a question, it felt more like a statement.

I could feel my eyes start to burn and lump form in my throat. "Why would you ask that?"

"Because you're not, Tom. When you do something, there's always a focus. If you're going somewhere, the focus is either on where you're going, or where you're coming from."

"Ok," I said, knowing where Kat was going with her thoughts.

"And you're not focused on where you're coming from," she paused. "Are you?" I sat in silence, squeezing the cool steering wheel and trying to blink away the tears that were forming in my eyes. "It's ok Tom," she said and squeezed my thigh gently. "That's why I like travelling. You can go where you want, and be who you want to be, and everything from your past stays there, behind you, in the place where you came from."

"What about me?" I asked, but there was no answer.

I continued to speed along the highway, and the car's lights illuminated a faded and peeling wooden sign that advertised a motel. I turned off the highway and the smooth tarmac soon gave way to a gravel track. Briefly my mind jumped back to the yellow dirt track that ran between the pines, but then I was jolted back as the car tyres hit a pothole.

The motel parking lot was small and a row of cabins lined its edge. The only sign of life came from the front office and a cabin at the far end of the lot where yellow light leaked from the edges of their windows. I twisted the key in the ignition, the engine cut out and I sat staring vacantly out the windscreen at the silhouettes of the trees behind the cabins. The small lights that illuminated the parking lot flickered, and the channel through the windscreen flipped back to the quiet suburban street outside Kat's house. Somewhere a dog barked and the memory hit the play button.