Kaitch

I made the call, as was the suggestion, and after playing twenty questions with an administrator, I spoke to my brother. Just writing that feels weird. Weirder than weird. My brother, Joshua Xavier Horsbrecht. Joshua Xavier Horsbrecht who officially went missing in 1985, Joshua Xavier Horsbrecht, who was officially declared dead in 1992, Joshua Xavier Horsbrecht, who I always believed was out there, somewhere.

Josh.

My brother.

Who appears to be very much alive. I confirmed my appointment

We cried, my brother and me. And then we laughed, then cried some more, all within the space of about four minutes. Neither of us can understand what’s happened so in the end it was just acceptance, knowing that it had and looking forward to seeing each other. As if one of us had just been away for a while. Which, in a way, was true.


*


I stood outside the Institute and smoked two cigarettes back to back, running my thoughts like a script through my head. Inside I was met with more bureaucracy, more form filling. This was, I guess, understandable. Things were complicated. If Josh was who he claimed to be, he was still technically a minor, having vanished at fifteen years of age and having turned up here apparently still the same over a year ago. Of course despite the checks no one really believed that. But they had nothing else to go on.

After the paperwork and some more questions, I was led down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs to another waiting area, a stark room furnished with a sofa, a small refrigerator and a low table. A large window made the room feel bigger than it actually was and outside the sky was developing a purplish shadow, like a bruise. The orderly who had led me here asked if I would like him to tell Josh I was ready to see him. I asked if he could just give me five minutes.

‘Of course,’ he said, and left the room. I stood staring out of the window. The sky seemed to be changing shade with increasing pace, as if someone was spilling new colour over an already wet painting. One second it looked as if there was a storm coming, then perhaps snow – those pinkish tints to the clouds – and then shafts of sunlight would break from behind the clouds and illuminate pathways from the sky.

As if there was a storm coming.

Something was happening, but I had no idea what. A flock of starlings gathered on the horizon, a myriad of birds, an avian cyclone that wove a swooping pattern across the sky. I fixed on the birds, concentrating on their synchronised symmetry, a poetic swarm, and then suddenly the swarm parted as if a meteor had fired through its centre and I felt sure that if a photograph had been taken at that moment, that precise moment, of the birds and the rent in their formation that it would have captured a comic book blast by an illustrator’s hand, made real by this bird-cloud’s display.

I thought I began to hear voices, indistinct, quiet voices. First one, then more. Mumbling, whispering, shouting, quietly screaming. It was like I could hear souls, a thousand souls, a million souls, travelling through the cosmos, seeking, swirling, searching for salvation, their cries echoing and bouncing off the walls of the little room inside my head where I had kept thoughts of this day shut away for over twenty years, daring only very occasionally to hold the door ajar and peek through in wonder.

‘Mr Horsbrecht? Mr Horsbrecht?’

I heard my name and turned, disoriented, blinking away a precursory tear that had formed at the corner of my eye.

‘Would you like to come with me, Mr Horsbrecht? If you’re ready. Josh is waiting for you.’