Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  He squeezed her hand with requisite tenderness. ‘When can we move in?’

  ‘It’s not sold yet. I’m signing the papers tomorrow, and then settlement is in a week’s time. We need to keep this secret until then.’ She frowned. ‘I can’t wait to leave that horrible building,’ she said, a rare bitterness in her voice. ‘And I hope I never see the Campbell Walker ever again. What a mistake that turned out to be.’

  ‘Mistake? Campbell’s not my favourite guy, but he’s how we met. And he inspired my book.’

  ‘Of course. But sometimes . . .’ Verity trailed off.

  ‘What?’

  Her mouth made a thin, indecisive line across her face. Something troubled her, Danyl sensed. But what? Should he ask? No. What if it provoked a conversation about something tedious, like their relationship? Instead he said, ‘We’ll need furniture.’

  ‘Yes!’ Her eyes lit up, and she led him down the hall, talking about fittings, positioning, colour patterns and woodstains, and Danyl nodded seriously and tuned out again. Verity returned to the lounge, still talking, but he held back and stopped outside the hallway closet where he had interrupted that spider a moment ago.

  Now that he’d seen the whole house he felt there was something not quite right about it. The interior spaces didn’t quite match up: the kitchen and lounge were both smaller than they should be, and the closet was the only thing between them. He opened the door.

  His instincts were right. There in the rear wall was another door, easy to see when you were looking for it. Whatever it led to was a space that couldn’t be entered from the other rooms. He turned the handle and kicked the base of the door free as it scuffed across the floor, and stepped through it into a narrow, unlit area extending to the end of the house.

  He called out, ‘Verity?’

  She did not reply.

  The air in the room felt stale and dead. There was something at the end of the space: a large, bulky shape he could barely discern through the darkness.

  He walked towards it. Verity’s voice was audible through the wall, saying something about a china cabinet. Halfway to the end his eyes adjusted to the gloom and the unknown object resolved itself into a clothes-horse. It was white and made of plastic. A pair of pants hung from the top rung. He reached for them.

  ‘What’s this?’ Verity asked from the doorway. ‘It’s like a walk-in wardrobe. Where’s the light?’

  ‘There is no light.’ He picked up the pants. They were khaki-coloured cotton, looked new, and about his size. He took them to Verity for inspection.

  ‘The previous occupant must have left them.’ She held them up to the doorway and said, ‘They’re nice. But there’s an ink stain on the pocket.’

  Danyl looked where she pointed. The rear pockets were lined with white cotton; one had blue stains from, he guessed, the ink on a handwritten note running when it went through the wash. Imprinted on the creamy fabric were shapes, numbers. If you looked closely you could almost make out the words.

  Verity said, ‘They’re ruined. I’ll throw them out.’

  ‘They’re not ruined.’ Danyl held the pants against his waist. ‘They’re a perfect fit.’

  ‘Then I stepped forward and shouted, Show yourself!’

  It was morning. Steve and Danyl sat in the abundant natural light of Danyl’s recently demolished kitchen, where he told Steve a modified version of his encounter with the mysterious old man from the night before, finishing with, ‘And then he turned and fled into the darkness.’

  ‘So you never saw his face?’

  ‘He ran away before I had the chance. But I’m sure it was Parsons. I recognised his voice from the phone. And he said he wanted his box back. Which suggests to me that he doesn’t have it. But in that case, who does?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Steve leaned back in his chair. ‘I did some more research on Parsons.’ He laid a folder on the table marked ‘Dossier Violet Alpha’, and searched through it, flipping past pizza menus and threatening letters from credit-card companies. ‘And I came across something interesting.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All in good time.’ Steve tapped the dossier. ‘First tell me about the rest of your evening. What happened after you left me at Epuni Street?’

  Danyl said, ‘I went on my date.’

  ‘Describe it.’

  ‘Well, first I found some trousers to wear to the restaurant.’

  ‘Smart.’

  ‘Thanks. Then I got there. I ordered the baby vegetables.’

  ‘Also smart.’

  ‘They’re really good. Then we talked for a while. Stasia told me that one year ago, she saw Campbell Walker talking to a sinister old man on the path to the park. And that man looked exactly like Sutcliffe Parsons.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. And she also kissed me.’

  ‘Hey.’ Steve’s face broke into a smile. He held out his hand and Danyl shook it. ‘Nice work.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How was her tongue?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fibrous? Muscular? All right, play coy. Anything else you want to tell me about your evening?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  Steve produced a newspaper clipping and laid it upon the table. ‘Because this was on the front page of this morning’s Aro Valley Community Volunteers Newsletter.’

  Danyl inspected the clipping. The headline read, ‘Police seek clothes thief’. Beneath it was a blurry photograph, taken through a window, showing Danyl in his dressing gown tugging a shirt from a clothesline. He skimmed the poorly written story, learning that he had stolen his new clothes from an elderly, obese woman and was photographed by one of her civic-minded neighbours. It ended: ‘Community police are eager to question this man in relation to other recent criminal activity in the Te Aro area.’

  Danyl scowled. Damn the media. Why did they always have to lie and distort everything? Now he’d have to keep a low profile, stay off the streets. And what would Verity say when she saw this? He should call her after breakfast: invent an excuse for stealing an old woman’s clothes that painted him in a positive light.

  ‘This is regrettable,’ he admitted, turning the newspaper article face-down. ‘But it’s done. Now let’s move on to new business. Let’s talk about Sutcliffe Parsons.’ He tapped on a large hand-drawn diagram entitled ‘The Priest’s Soul’. It charted relationships between elements of the mystery. In the centre of the chart was a box labelled ‘Box’, signifying the box they accidentally stole from the house on Holloway Road. This was linked to other boxes labelled ‘Wolfgang Bludkraft, High Hierophant’, ‘Sutcliffe Parsons, Satanist’, and ‘Order of Thrice-Wise Hermes, Cult’.

  ‘We now know that Parsons contacted the Campbell Walker a year ago,’ he said. ‘Then Walker founded the SSS. Walker and his organisation are connected to Parsons somehow. It all comes back to Parsons. He’s the puppet master. So what have you got on him?’

  ‘Parsons. Yes. Here we are.’ Steve scanned the printouts in his folder. ‘Oh yeah. Turns out Sutcliffe Parsons is still in prison.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s right here.’ Steve passed over faxed copies of documents with a parole department letterhead at the top. ‘The officials at the Department of Corrections wouldn’t tell me anything. Even after I explained who I was. But the outcome of parole hearings is public information. They have a very nice website.’

  Danyl scanned the documents. Sutcliffe Aldous Parsons. Time served: five years. Last applied for parole three months ago. Declined. Next eligible: in eight months.

  ‘But this doesn’t make any sense.’ He gestured at the diagram again and ticked questions off on his fingers. ‘Who did Campbell meet on the path a year ago? Who lives in that house on Holloway Road? Whose box did we steal? Who put out those notices? Who did I talk to on the phone? Who was outside my house last nig
ht? How are they connected to the Priest’s Soul?’

  ‘All important questions.’ Steve considered them, staring into an empty corner of the room and stroking his chin. Then he looked up at Danyl and said, ‘Are you hungry? Want to go to get dim sum?’

  ‘Let’s not get distracted.’

  ‘I’m not distracted. I’m hungry.’

  Danyl took out his notepad and clicked his pen. ‘Whenever we’re close to a breakthrough something trivial always diverts our attention. Focus. The Priest’s Soul is what’s important.’

  ‘OK.’ Steve looked at the box and frowned in concentration. Then he clicked his fingers. ‘There is one explanation. One simple answer that explains everything.’

  Danyl said, with mild optimism, ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s so obvious. What if Wolfgang Bludkraft and Sutcliffe Parsons were the same person?’

  ‘But that doesn’t explain anything.’

  ‘Oh, doesn’t it?’ Steve leaned back, beaming.

  Danyl waited for more answers, and when they weren’t forthcoming, said, ‘No,’ and Steve’s face fell. ‘First, that would make Sutcliffe Parsons about a hundred and fifty years old.’

  ‘It’s not impossible.’

  ‘It is literally not possible.’

  ‘It is if the Priest’s Soul grants eternal life. Be practical.’

  ‘OK. I feel like we’re getting distracted again, but let’s say for the sake of argument that Parsons is actually an immortal Austrian occultist. How could he be outside my house at midnight when he’s still in prison?’

  Steve considered this, then said, ‘Someone is stealing your trousers.’

  ‘What?’

  He pointed over Danyl’s shoulder. ‘There’s a man in your backyard. See?’

  Danyl turned. Through the kitchen window he saw a tall man wearing a tweed jacket and blue shirt with a black wool balaclava over his head. This man was tugging Danyl’s freshly laundered trousers off the washing line.

  Danyl pushed open the window and shouted, ‘Hey!’ The man looked at him and then returned his attention to the pants. He pulled them free and held them up.

  Danyl ran through the door and marched towards the masked stranger. Trying to sound both calm and dangerous he yelled, ‘What are you doing?’

  The man stepped up to Danyl and shoved him in the chest. Danyl stumbled backwards and said, ‘But those are my pants.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  The man looked directly at Danyl. Hatred danced in his eyes. ‘Scum like you don’t deserve pants.’ He spat on the ground and walked away, Danyl’s trousers draped over his arm.

  Danyl followed him down the gravel path to the front of the house, bleating, ‘Hey. Excuse me! Excuse me!’ The man ignored him.

  Danyl’s gaze locked on his trousers, dangling in the thief’s grasp. His last pair of properly sized pants was disappearing before his eyes. Should he call the police? No! He couldn’t—Danyl himself was now a wanted criminal in an unrelated trouser-related crime. The man walked onto the road and climbed into the driver’s seat of a silver pick-up truck parked on the kerb, carefully wrapping the pants in a plastic sheet before placing them on the passenger seat. The engine roared into life while Danyl stood at his gate agonising. What to do?

  The truck pulled away and it occurred to Danyl to memorise the license plate and then have Steve call the police on his behalf, so he ran after it, breaking into a sprint as it reached the corner and turned left. He reached Aro Street to find the truck stopped at the pedestrian crossing outside the market, a confused looking hipster drifting back and forth in front of it. Danyl put on a burst of speed, halving the distance between them, and he reached reading distance of the plate, which he quickly memorised, but forgot again when his eyes fell upon the large cardboard box in the rear compartment of the pick-up. The writing on its side read, ‘Saltwater Sponge Gametes. Keep refrigerated.’

  Danyl stumbled, amazed. He roared, ‘That’s my archive!’ He regained his footing and ran faster, but then the hipster wandered off the road and the truck accelerated. Danyl ran after it, sprinting, his body lit with adrenalin, and for an instant he was level with it, could almost reach out and touch his box, but the truck sped up and pulled away, disappearing from sight around the curve in the road.

  20

  A little light reconnaissance

  Danyl crept along the secret path behind the EZ Wellness Heal U Centre, keeping low. He wore a black hooded jacket and the oversized pants he stole the previous evening which were, appallingly, now the only pants he owned. They were held up around his waist by a thin wire cable he’d found in his kitchen and ingeniously converted into a belt.

  It was dark. The sky was clear: a handful of stars shone through the light-pollution. He moved quickly and silently through the warm air as a bad reggae band droned somewhere in the far distance. He rounded the corner and Campbell’s tower loomed before him, eight storeys high and blazing with light.

  Danyl opened the gate—it moved silently on its hinges—and entered the vast, dark courtyard. He skirted the empty sponge pools and the rusted machinery scattered about them and he was halfway to the base of the building when a peal of laughter rang out from above. Cruel, mocking, subhuman; it was joined by a chorus. The SSS.

  He ducked behind a rusting pump and looked up.

  In a window on the fifth floor robed figures stood silhouetted against the light. Were they looking out? Could they see him, hunched down in the darkness? He squatted out of sight, peering over the rim of the pump engine, waiting for them to move away.

  His eyes travelled to the top floor of the tower. Campbell’s penthouse. It was dark, the only unlit floor. Was Campbell asleep? Elsewhere in the building? Or out in the valley somewhere, advancing his sinister and mysterious plans? Did they involve Stasia? Sutcliffe Parsons? The evil and now unidentified old man pretending to be Parsons?

  Danyl slipped his left hand into his jacket pocket. Inside was a torch, and Campbell’s key which he fingered reassuringly. The key would admit him into the penthouse—if he could navigate the cultist-guarded maze beneath it—and once inside he might find answers to all these questions.

  But not tonight. This was just a reconnaissance. His gaze fell to the yawning darkness at the foot of the building: the basement. One night, perhaps soon, he would risk another expedition and infiltrate the tower itself, but now he would limit his visit to the basement, and—he patted his torch again—the campervan.

  The campervan. He had not forgotten it. That was his target—the antique vehicle locked in the cage, which he could now open. Campbell must have bought it after he met the old man. It was his ‘secret weapon’. But for what battle? Against whom? Stasia knew, but refused to tell Danyl. Was it linked to her healing powers? Did the mystery of their origin lie in the hidden depths of Campbell’s basement? He remembered her words: Some secrets are best left secret.

  Not for long. He would unlock the cage, open the campervan and take whatever he found there, and then beat a retreat. Once home he would examine his findings, boil some corn and plot his next move.

  He raised his head above the pump. The figures at the window were gone; Danyl advanced across the courtyard and hurried down the ramp into the darkness.

  Danyl’s finger hovered over the delete key, paused and then withdrew.

  Not yet.

  He closed the lid of the laptop, picked the sheaf of papers up from the printer tray and put them in his satchel. It was the latest draft of his novel, ready to be proofed and revised. It wasn’t finished, not quite. There was something missing, some crucial ingredient yet eluded him, and he thumbed through the pages like an aging prizefighter eyeing up an old and worthy foe. Hopefully his new life with Verity would give him the inspiration he needed to finish it off.

  Speaking of whom . . . He checked the time: he was late t
o meet her. Today was settlement day on their new house. After the papers went through they could tell Campbell they were leaving him; him, his horrible concrete tower and his stupid, rat-killing Project DoorWay—but first Danyl needed to get his draft notes safely stashed away in the archive, which Verity kept hidden in the gallery where she worked part-time. Then he would return to his apartment, pack up his last few belongings and delete all traces of it from Campbell’s laptop.

  Campbell was the inspiration for the book and it mocked him mercilessly, but he wouldn’t even know it existed until after publication. Danyl planned to change the names and a few salient details to preclude any lawsuits. Campbell would know—oh, yes, he’d know—but he could prove nothing.

  Danyl left his apartment, locking the door behind him, and wound his way through the decaying hallways of the seventh floor, stepping over mounds of rubble and pools of stagnant water, until he reached the elevator and pressed the call button. The lift took a moment to arrive. He leaned forward and peered through the bars of the sliding door, down into the shaft. He could see it rising to meet him.

  The lift was empty. He shouldered his satchel and stepped inside, sliding the doors shut behind him. In his nervousness he pressed the button for the second level: it did not light up—entry to that floor was strictly forbidden to non-Doormen. Some as-yet-unrevealed element of Project DoorWay occupied the entire level.

  Danyl had stopped being curious about this mystery a long time ago. He hit the button for the ground and the lift groaned and began its descent.

  The entrance lobby to Campbell’s tower was a large, brightly lit concrete cavern. Campbell had decorated this space in his own unique way, with a mural covering one vast, unbroken wall, lit up by carbon arc lights. It was a copy of Raphael’s School of Athens, reproduced—badly—by a struggling artist friend of Verity’s. But once it was finished Campbell was outraged to discover that one of the central figures in the composition was Socrates, whom Campbell disliked, disagreeing with his philosophy, life-choices and tragic death, sneering, ‘He went out like a sucker.’ So he ordered the artist to erase Socrates and replace him with Campbell’s hero Winston Churchill. The artist refused and was promptly sacked without payment. Danyl knew all of this because Campbell had dictated a highly selective version of the story to him, and he had written it up as the latest entry in The Book of the Campbell Walker. The last entry he would ever write. He smiled and hummed a few bars of ‘The Danyl Song’ to himself.