Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  Danyl was devastated. The filmstrip rolling in his head of a long, torrid evening of seduction and counterseduction dissolved into an empty table and chairs and a half-eaten plate of beetroot. Should he chase after her? How long ago did she leave? He looked about for the waiter, but the dining area was deserted. Only the red-headed man from the urinal sat alone in a far corner.

  ‘She paid the bill before she left,’ said a low, catty female voice behind Danyl. ‘She seems like your sort of girl.’

  He turned. A sinister apparition emerged from the shadows between the trees. It was Eleanor, the owner of the restaurant, Verity’s poisonous friend. She was tall and pale and broad with an oddly elongated neck, like an undead giraffe. Danyl regarded her with distaste. ‘Hello, Ellie.’

  ‘Hello, Danny.’

  Steady, he reminded himself. Don’t let her get to you. ‘She warned me she might have to leave,’ he said. ‘Medical emergency. She’s a physician.’

  ‘Physician?’ Eleanor snorted. ‘That’s a generous description. I went to her about a wart on my foot.’

  ‘Did she cure you?’

  ‘No. She’s a quack.’

  ‘Oh.’ Danyl thought about this. Why did Stasia heal Danyl’s ankle but not Eleanor’s wart? What did that mean? Was it good news or bad? It was good, he decided, in the sense that Eleanor was still inflicted with a painful viral infection. ‘Did she leave a message before she went?’

  Eleanor ignored his question. ‘I’m so glad you’re seeing someone new, Danyl. And I’m glad I can tell Verity you’ve moved on, and that she can forget about you and get on with her life. I can tell her that, right?’

  ‘I—’ This was a fine balancing act. He needed Eleanor to tell Verity that he was dating someone else and for Verity to be consumed with jealousy and try to win him back—but not to wash her hands of their relationship and start a new, empty Danyl-less life. ‘Stasia and I only just met,’ he said.

  ‘Really? The two of you looked very close.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. ’

  ‘No?’ Hateful smirk. ‘Then perhaps you don’t want the letter she left for you?’

  ‘Letter?’

  ‘It’s like this.’ Eleanor inspected her painted-black fingernails. ‘It’s nice you’re seeing someone, even if she does look like—’ Here she said something in French, too quickly for Danyl to translate. ‘But I’d hate to think it was just a casual thing and that you’re going to drop that poor girl and go back to Verity and ruin my poor friend’s life all over again.’

  ‘Which of your friends’ lives I ruin,’ Danyl replied coldly, ‘is none of your business.’

  ‘It is now.’ She produced an unmarked envelope from her apron. ‘If you want this letter you will agree to call Verity, first thing tomorrow, and tell her it’s over. That you’ve met someone new.’

  Danyl hesitated, because he knew that agreeing instantly would make him look false. Which he was. If Eleanor thought he’d honour this agreement she was stupider than he thought. He bit his lower lip and sighed and said, ‘All right. Agreed.’

  ‘And I’ll tell her too, just in case it slips your mind.’

  He shrugged indifferently. ‘Of course.’ He made a mental note to call Verity in the morning, early. He would apologise for the argument about the missing box and pre-emptively discredit Eleanor, somehow.

  She handed him the envelope and retreated into the shadows. Danyl tore the envelope open. There was no note, just a small, hard object wedged into the bottom corner. He tipped it out. Resting in his palm was an oddly shaped white key with two notched steel blades.

  19

  A foul and bewildering crime that

  happened to me once in real life

  Danyl lay on the bed, on his back with his arms outstretched. He stared up at the ceiling, Campbell’s key clutched in his fist.

  Campbell’s key! This meant that Stasia’s plan for him to recover her letter was no longer impossible. Danyl could steal in through the gate at the end of the secret path, catch the elevator from the basement to the ground floor, then climb the stairs to the top of the building and let himself into Campbell’s penthouse, find the letter and then flee again. Did he dare? Danyl closed his eyes, remembered Stasia leaning across the table, her ocean-coloured eyes shining. I will be so very grateful . He could do it. And for a brief shining moment he thought he would—but then reality crashed in. It was just too dangerous. And did he really want to climb eight flights of stairs? No. But that wasn’t to say Campbell’s key wouldn’t be useful. On the contrary.

  He lay in the dark, scheming and planning, then sat up, tossed the key into a drawer on his bedside table and went downstairs to forage for food. There was nothing in his cupboards or pantry. He checked the freezer compartment of the refrigerator and found a half-full bag of frozen corn. Excellent. He filled a saucepan with water and boiled a serving of corn kernels, which he ate sitting on his backdoor step, enjoying the warm night, the privacy of his garden, the warm breeze on his skin.

  He was naked except for his stolen shirt and a pair of slippers. A constellation of moths spun in orbit around the porch light, and he batted the occasional insect off his bare legs. His trusty old khaki trousers hung on the nearby washing line, clean but still damp from the afternoon sunshower. The trees at the end of the garden were patches of darkness oblique against the greater darkness of the night.

  He finished the corn and yawned. Time for bed. He left the empty bowl in the kitchen sink, walked towards the hallway and stopped when he saw Wolfgang Bludkraft’s biography sitting on the kitchen table, the photograph with the message on the back tucked into it like a bookmark.

  He really should hide that, Danyl thought. It was his only physical clue to the mystery of Wolfgang Bludkraft and Sutcliffe Parsons and the hidden location of the Priest’s Soul. The thief or thieves who stole the box and destroyed his spare room could return for the book at any time. He picked it up and shuffled around the house looking for a hiding place. Where to put it? Taped to the bottom of the bed? Too inconvenient. Inside the room-between-rooms? Not hidden enough. On a bookshelf in plain sight? Too obvious. In the end he wrapped the book in foil, walked back out to his garden and stashed it under the broken furniture piled at the far end of the yard.

  He returned indoors glowing with accomplishment. His last year had been so aimless and unproductive that performing simple tasks like boiling corn and hiding a book filled him with pride. He hummed happily and tunelessly and flicked off the lights as he passed through the house. He climbed the stairs, stopped and yawned on the landing, stretched and then froze.

  A window on the landing looked out over Devon Street and its old houses, unkempt gardens and badly parked cars. The nearest streetlight was dead. Beneath it stood a lone figure, a man, staring directly up at him.

  Danyl dropped to the floor and scurried into his bedroom. He unplugged the lamp then crawled over to the window, drew back the edge of the curtain and peeked out.

  Yes. There he was: a man in a shabby, old-fashioned suit with a hat low over his face. He leaned on a walking cane. His head moved slowly as he scanned Danyl’s house, then fixed his gaze when it fell upon the chink in the bedroom curtain.

  Danyl stared back, trying to identify him. There was something familiar—if only he could see his face. Then a light came on in a window down the street, illuminating the man, throwing his shadow against a nearby fence. Danyl strained to make out his features.

  The man turned and the light fell against his back. A tangle of long white curls spilled out from the brim of his black hat. He began to walk, very slowly, towards the bottom of Devon Street. The hand holding his cane shook. He did not look back.

  Danyl stood and ran for the stairs, ready to give chase. Then he hesitated. Was it wise to follow a stranger through the streets of Te Aro? Alone at night? After all, the wounds from his beating that morning were still raw. />
  But this man was old and Danyl was young, and what was youth but a mandate to hunt and prey upon the old? He picked up his house keys, ran down the stairs and threw open the front door but stopped when he realised he was half-naked. The naked half was his lower half, the half society frowned upon, even in Te Aro. He growled with frustration. The old man was getting away, rounded the corner onto Aro Street, disappearing from sight.

  Danyl cast about the hall and the lounge looking for something to wear. Anything. His stolen trousers? Too large. The rug? Too bulky. A cushion cover? No, that was crazy talk. Then he remembered the charity box tucked away under the stairs. It contained old unwanted clothes Verity had told him to deliver to a charitable organisation, something Danyl—sensibly, he realised now—had failed to do. Now he retrieved it and rummaged through it, tossing aside old sheets and bridesmaids’ dresses until, reaching the bottom, he gave a shout of triumph and held up Verity’s old, bleach-stained silk kimono. Perfect.

  He hurried down the front steps, trying the kimono sash tight around his waist. His slippers slapped on the warm concrete as he crossed the road and ran to the corner.

  Aro Street was a canyon drowned in shadows. He cast about, trying to see which way the old man went. To the east the road ran straight all the way to the edge of the park. It was deserted. To the west it followed a gentle, obscuring curve. He must have gone that way, deeper into the valley, towards Holloway Road.

  Danyl gave chase. He needed to find his quarry before the road branched. The silk hem of his robe fluttered behind him.

  He rounded the corner just before Aro Street intersected with Durham to find the old man waiting for him, standing beneath a dying tree. His face was still dark. The tree’s bare limbs struggled in the breeze.

  Danyl stopped. He looked at the old man. The old man looked back. And then, very deliberately, stepped towards him and croaked, ‘Daaanyl.’

  Danyl recoiled. He knew that voice. It was the same malign, alien whisper he’d heard on the phone two nights ago, the voice he spoke to about the stolen box, the voice who vowed to find him. It was the voice of the Satanist, Sutcliffe Parsons.

  He stepped backwards. ‘Show your face,’ he challenged the malevolent, backlit figure.

  The old man took another step forward. ‘Daaanyl.’

  ‘Actually, change of mind. Stay where you are. What do you want?’

  ‘I want what you took from me, thief.’

  ‘Your box? But you already took it back.’

  ‘Liar.’ Another step. A lone streetlight marked the halfway point between them. Parsons stood just outside its radiance. Danyl took another step backwards. His hand gripped something in the pocket of Verity’s kimono—a small, hard object. He clutched it tightly. The old man hissed, ‘I took nothing.’

  ‘OK, clarify. Are you saying you didn’t take your box back? Because someone stole it from me yesterday.’ A thought struck Danyl. ‘This means we have a common enemy,’ he exclaimed. ‘Maybe we should work together. Share information. Pool our strategic—’

  A dry clicking sound filled the air. Laughter, Danyl realised. He’s laughing at me. The old man stepped forward into the light. The shadows drained from his face. Danyl saw eyes glistening beneath the brim of the hat. ‘Daaanyl.’

  He turned and ran.

  The laughter followed Danyl down Aro Street and around the corner onto Devon. The echoes chased him to his gate, up his steps and through the front door. He slammed it shut behind him and ran into the kitchen where he fumbled in the sink for a weapon and then slumped down on the floor, his back to the pot cupboard, waving a steak knife before him.

  After a few minutes his heart-rate slowed and this no longer seemed necessary, so he crept to the top of his stairs and, kneeling on the dusty floorboards, slowly peered over the window sill. The street was empty.

  He waited. Cars rumbled past. Eventually a group of girls walked by, talking loudly. Danyl learned from their conversation that they had all taken LSD and were following the powerlines to see where they ended. Their shrieks of delight faded as they disappeared into the night.

  He waited. In the moments of quiet the valley’s abundant cat population appeared, strolling across the road or sitting on fences or cars, their tails switching; they vanished whenever a car drove by. The clouds rolled on overhead. Eventually the cats concluded whatever business they had together and melted away. The street was empty again.

  The old man did not return.

  Danyl sat back on his haunches, trying to make sense of the mysterious encounter. That had been Sutcliffe Parsons, obviously. But if he didn’t have his box, then who did? He tried to concentrate, but fatigue set in: his mind kept wandering. The smell of the kimono kept reminding him of Verity. He remembered accidentally spilling bleach on it a few weeks after they moved in together. He also remembered his wise decision to hide the ruined garment and Verity’s completely unreasonable and materialistic anxiety over its disappearance. He thought about his false promise to Eleanor earlier that evening, his fight with Verity over the missing box, their time together in this very house. The memories poured in, unbidden, and he tried to blink them away.

  It was a melancholy day in late winter. Sunlight struggled through the low clouds. Verity led Danyl up Devon Street, then stopped him and put her hands over his eyes and turned him around, then she uncovered his eyes and cried, ‘Ta-da!’

  They stood facing a run-down two-storey weatherboard house with three concrete steps leading to the front door, which was pale green and covered with odd, blotchy black spots. The house was white but needed painting and was fronted by a tiny overgrown garden. A dirt path disappeared around the side.

  ‘Well?’ Verity’s voice brimmed with excitement. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Not—’

  ‘Because we’re going to live here! Together!’ She took his hand and led him up the steps to the door. ‘Isn’t it perfect?’

  ‘Is that mould?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Verity unlocked the door and led him inside. The hall was gloomy; the rooms attached to it were dusty and unfurnished. She dropped her purse by the lounge door and twirled around. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s very— What are we doing here? What is this place?’

  ‘It belongs to Campbell. He’s going to sell it to us. Don’t you just love the character? Apparently it’s one of the oldest houses in the valley.’

  Danyl frowned in confusion. Campbell? Sell to us? Character? ‘What are you talking about?’

  Verity stood behind him and nuzzled her nose against the back of his neck and explained that Campbell owned various properties around the Aro Valley, and he was selling this one to finance the DoorWay Project. Verity found out about this when he made her take photos of it for the ad, and she offered to buy it. Campbell refused at first, saying, ‘I need my little artists with me in the tower, close to me, documenting every step of my project.’ So Verity lied to him and claimed she planned to turn the house into a photo gallery. ‘The, uh, Campbell Walker gallery. I could still do that.’ She wrapped her arms around Danyl. ‘But what I want to do is live here with you.’

  Danyl was still confused. ‘We already live somewhere. We have apartments in Campbell’s tower.’

  ‘But they’re horrible.’

  Yes, that was true. He looked around the lounge and considered Verity’s proposal. It was musty and small, but also quiet, unlike his current quarters in the tower. Here there were no screams, or sounds of walls collapsing in the distance. He could get used to it. ‘Let me have a look around.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He started down the hall and opened a cupboard, where he surprised a spider in the act of consuming a fly, and continued down into the kitchen which was old-fashioned and dark with a back door opening onto an unkempt garden. Verity followed him and he said, ‘It’s OK—’

  ‘I knew you’d like it.’


  ‘But how could we afford it? You know I don’t have any money. Campbell pays us next to nothing.’

  ‘Oh.’ Verity brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. ‘The goddess provides. I have a small nest-egg tucked away.’

  ‘But what would we live on? Campbell will fire us as soon as we move out. He’ll think we’ve betrayed him. He’s totally paranoid.’

  ‘We’ll get by. I’ll sell my photos, write for art magazines, go back to work at the Aro gallery. And you’ll finish your book and get published.’

  The book. Danyl frowned. After months of inspired progress, his work had faltered. Now the book was a maze of dead ends. He spent his days staring at the screen, typing out sentences then deleting them again. One day the ideas came, and then suddenly they stopped. Why? What changed in his life? Nothing. So maybe a new environment was just what he needed.

  Verity mistook his silent brooding for doubt about the house, and said, ‘Come upstairs. See the rest of it.’

  They inspected the landings and the bedrooms. The first overlooked the street; the second had views over the garden. This second room was furnished, barely: a single mattress lay in the centre of the floor, covered by a tangle of fraying grey sheets. Next to the wall was an unplugged electric heater and a steel wastebin filled with ashes and tufts of rust-coloured hair.

  ‘Who lived here?’

  ‘Some friend of Campbell’s.’

  Friend? That didn’t seem likely. Danyl stirred through the ashes with the tip of his shoe. Tiny pieces of charred paper; sculptures of melted plastic. ‘Why did he live here and not in the tower? And where did he go?’

  Verity didn’t answer. She crossed the landing to the other room and called back, ‘Let’s sleep in here. I love the light.’

  Danyl nodded in mute agreement. This could work. The house was a little rundown but Verity could fix it up. They went downstairs and she showed him the laundry, the backyard, and talked about dinner parties and planting a vegetable garden. Danyl tuned her out and thought about writing at the kitchen table; moving a hammock into the garden come summertime. When Verity finished talking he said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and she threw her arms around him.