Beyond Fear

by Jaye Ford

  ‘No,’ Jodie cries. Hands grab her. Pound her. She can’t breathe. ‘No. No!’

  ‘Jodie. Jodie, wake up.’

  It was Louise. Standing over her, shaking her awake.

  Jodie wiped her face with trembling hands. She was sitting up in bed, the quilt was on the floor, her pyjama top was wet with sweat.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Lou asked, looking worried.

  ‘God, yeah, sorry. Wow.’ She swung her legs over the bed and shook her head. ‘That hasn’t happened in a long time. Did I wake you up?’

  ‘No, I planned on having only five hours’ sleep.’ Lou grinned and yawned and sat on the bed beside her.

  ‘Sorry.’ Jodie tried to smile, checked the time on her mobile. Eight minutes past seven. ‘You should go back to bed.’ She felt bad about waking Lou but more than that, she needed some time to pull herself together.

  ‘Now that would be an idea if I thought there was any chance I’d get to sleep. Once I’m awake, I’m awake. It’s the by-product of four kids in two years.’ She shrugged. ‘Coffee sounds good, though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Fabulous.’ A hit of caffeine would be great and if she had to have company while she came down from one of those nightmares, she’d choose Louise any time – even though she didn’t know about Angela or that night. Jodie had never seen the point in retelling her hideous memories when they were all trying to create lovely ones for their kids.

  In the kitchen, Jodie left the coffee making to Lou and pulled up a stool at the bar. She put her elbows on the cold marble and her chin in still-trembling hands.

  As Lou poured boiling water over the coffee grounds, she said, ‘Who’s Angela?’

  Hearing Angie’s name made Jodie’s breath catch in her throat. ‘What?’ she feigned, not wanting to talk about her.

  Louise opened the cupboards under the bench, spoke as she rummaged around inside. ‘Angela. You called out “Angela” in your sleep.’

  ‘God, did I say that out loud?’

  ‘Yes, you called out “Angela”, then “Angie”, then you said, “No” a couple of times. It was really clear. Not like the kids when they’re dreaming. I can never understand anything they say.’ Lou kept talking as she found sugar, fetched milk from the fridge, placed a hand over the coffee plunger, then looked up at Jodie. Twice, actually. A fast double take. The first a casual glance, the second one a look of concern. ‘Jodie?’

  Jodie stood up, put her hands on her hips and took a gasp of breath. This flashback thing was wearing thin. This is not me, she thought. She didn’t do this anymore.

  ‘Jodie?’ Louise said again with more concern.

  Jodie held up a hand like a stop sign, sat back down again. ‘It’s okay. It’s just some weird thing that happens sometimes. Hasn’t happened for ages. Caught me by surprise, that’s all.’

  Louise passed her a mug of coffee then pulled it back again. ‘Should you be drinking coffee? You don’t look too good.’

  ‘Coffee is exactly what I need.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Corrine. She was leaning against the hall doorway, satin wrap around a matching nightdress, eyes puffy, face pale without make-up. ‘What’s with all the noise?’

  Hannah appeared from behind her in flannel PJs and fluffy slippers, took the stool at the end of the bench and yawned. ‘Yeah. What happened to sleeping in? Who was doing all the shouting?’

  Jodie raised a guilty hand as she sipped the strong, hot coffee and felt the caffeine start to smooth out some of the edginess.

  ‘She had a nightmare,’ Louise said, reaching back in the cupboard for two more mugs. ‘Very cool, actually. She sat up in bed and yelled. Frightened the life out of me. Then she wouldn’t wake up. I was about to get a jug of water to throw over her.’

  Hannah chuckled. ‘Really? What did she yell?’

  Louise shot a quick glance in Jodie’s direction then shrugged. ‘Something unintelligible.’

  Jodie smiled her thanks. At least the mood in the barn seemed more congenial than when she’d left them last night – tired, yes, but not tense. ‘Sorry to wake everyone. Why don’t you go and sleep in for a while?’

  Hannah used two fingers to rub a spot on the centre of her forehead. ‘I’ve got a drummer playing up a storm in my head. I don’t think I could sleep through that.’

  ‘Nothing a little hair of the dog won’t cure,’ Corrine said, pushing herself off the wall and taking up a spot at the bench. When she saw the look on their faces, she said, ‘What? I can’t go back to bed. I’m making breakfast.’

  Jodie watched her take a sip of coffee, wondering when Corrine started drinking so much champagne. Then Corrine pointed at her.

  ‘Hey, we’ll have none of that yawning from you, Jodie, the piker who went to bed hours before the rest of us.’

  Jodie covered her mouth, yawned again anyway. ‘Sorry. That car woke me up then I couldn’t sleep through the storm.’

  ‘What car?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘There was a car driving around outside. About three o’clock, before all the thunder.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t just the thunder?’ she said.

  ‘No, it was a car. I’m surprised no one else heard it. It drove right around the house. Twice.’

  ‘Thunder can sound like it’s moving around.’

  ‘It wasn’t thunder. I saw it.’

  ‘What did it look like?’

  Jodie stopped a second, tried to ignore the scepticism in Hannah’s voice. ‘I couldn’t see much in the dark but I saw it drive past the bedroom window.’

  A look passed between Hannah and Corrine. It was only a brief turn of the head for Hannah and a sideways flash of the eyes for Corrine but it was enough for Jodie to guess the rest. She’d been the subject of discussion in the other bedroom. Her and the events of last night. And the conclusion wasn’t too flattering for Jodie.

  ‘There was a car,’ Jodie said, annoyed at the defensiveness in her voice.

  Corrine raised her eyebrows as she stared into her coffee mug.

  Hannah shrugged doubtfully. ‘Well, it was pretty stressy last night and we all had a bit to drink. I heard the thunder rumbling around the house, too. I listened to it for ages and I didn’t hear any car.’

  Here we go again, Jodie thought. She put her mug down a little harder than she intended, heard it crack against the marble. ‘So what are you saying? You didn’t hear a car so it wasn’t there?’ She looked at Hannah then Corrine. Both looked back but neither answered. ‘I didn’t have as much to drink as you guys and I can tell the difference between a car and thunder.’

  ‘Okay, so what would a car be doing out here driving around the barn in a storm?’ Hannah said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It wasn’t during the storm. It was before the storm. And it doesn’t have to make sense. A car is a car. I know what I heard.’ Hannah and Corrine still said nothing. Jodie turned to Lou, who shrugged her shoulders.

  Christ, they didn’t believe her. Again. ‘Okay, fine, whatever.’ Jodie’s stool made a loud scraping sound as she pushed it back from the bench. She needed some fresh air, needed to blow off the frustration. And she needed to see the barn in the daylight, look around for herself without alcohol or darkness clouding her judgement.

  Jodie felt their silence behind her as she went down the hall to the bedroom. She was never organising the weekend again. She’d double up on all the other chores, buy all the food if she had to, just so long as she didn’t have to pick the venue. It was a disaster.

  She stripped off her pyjamas, pulled on trackpants and looked down. The puckered, raised scars on her stomach were as familiar to her as any other part of her body. She ran the tips of her fingers over the keloid lines and wondered. About the car. About the lights and the men. About the jerk in the pub and waiting with Corrine in the dark. About the dream and the flashback.

  It wasn’t unusual for the dream to follow a flashback. This morning’s was gut-wrenching but there was nothing new in that. The flashback was another
story. Last night’s was one of the more vivid she’d ever had and it was the first in years. Maybe that was how it went – the more time between them, the more intense they got. The question was whether it had distressed her enough to skew her perception. It had distressed her, that was for sure, but enough to make her believe thunder was a car? Making two circuits of the house?

  She pulled on a T-shirt and zip-up jacket, thought about how she’d stood in the spa bath. She walked to the bedroom window, peered behind the curtain and thought about what she’d seen last night. No, she was not imagining things. She may not have seen what kind of car it was but there had definitely been a chunky, dark vehicle with a deep-throated motor out there.

  The girls were still sitting around the island bench when Jodie sent them a token wave as she went out the front door, trying to ignore the thought she might be under discussion again. It was bitterly cold outside, the sun too low to do more than cast long shadows past everything it touched. The sky was a mottled grey with one small, pale patch of blue. She hoped it grew a whole lot bigger. She didn’t want to be trapped inside the barn for a wet weekend, fending off scepticism about what she had or hadn’t seen. Next they’d be questioning whether she had, in fact, put a log on the fire or brewed the coffee.

  She trotted down the steps to the gravel parking pad, skirted the loan car that was covered in watery dew, and started around the barn. It was a wide rectangle, the front and back making up the long sides, the short ones taken up by the fireplace end of the main room and the large bedroom at the bottom of the hall. The timber verandah wrapped around all four walls, its simple crossbar handrail interrupted only for a staircase at the front door, another one beyond the glass doors in the back and a third on the narrow end outside the bedroom. The owners obviously had comfort and leisure in mind when they’d decorated, thoughtfully leaving rustic coffee tables and padded recliner lounges at regular intervals along the decking.

  The land around the barn had been cleared to a rough, grassy moat that circled the building, considerably wider at the front than the back, where it sloped gently away before dropping into the valley. Jodie stopped for a second to admire the distant view of lush, green paddocks and untouched scrub. Her runners and the hem of her trackpants were soaked from the grass that was still wet from the storm – and too thick, she noted, to hold wheel tracks. Any other indication of a vehicle, if there was one, had probably been washed away.

  After completing the circuit, she stood beside the car with her hands on her hips and looked along the ridge of the hill towards the road they’d driven in on. The men last night said they were camping over the other side. Were they? she wondered.

  The area didn’t hold the same daunting sense of isolation she’d felt last night. In broad daylight, it looked open and cared for. The barn looked secure and well positioned for spotting approaching vehicles. It was quiet, except for the occasional chirp of a bird. And she wanted to see what was over the ridge.

  She jogged along the crest towards the long driveway. The single, unsealed road ran down the incline to the left, disappearing beyond the hump in the track. The other side dropped off steeply into the valley.

  Warmer now, she picked up her pace a little, ran past the road for a couple of hundred metres and peered down into the vale. A few gum trees grew in the scrub line and she stood for a minute trying to find signs of a camp. Maybe the two men left when it started to rain, she thought. Or maybe they were lying about the camping.

  She headed back the way she came, the exertion and her investigation taking the edge off the frustration and anxiety. It wasn’t as creepy as she thought out here. And if the men had been camping over the ridge, they weren’t there now. She stopped at the top of the drive, took out her mobile phone and slid the top up, smiling as she always did at the screensaver photo – nine-year-old Isabelle and her six-year-old brother Adam choking Jodie in a bear hug. She looked at the time on the display. Adam had an early soccer match today. He’d be warming up like he was Harry Kewell and Isabelle would be giving him last-minute instructions. Jodie grinned. She was meant to enjoy a little kid-free time but she always missed them.

  She checked the reception bars. Even up here, she was out of range. She raised a hand to her brow and squinted in the morning sun at the barn. The peak of the hill looked like a monk’s tonsure from where she stood – bare of anything but rough, native grass and ringed by a neat, dense line of scrub. She turned and cast her eyes along the ridge again, then down the driveway. She wasn’t ready to sit down to breakfast with the others yet. The running had felt good. It always did. It was what had got her on her feet when the flashbacks were a daily occurrence, made her feel strong and in control. And that was what she needed right now.

  She ran for three-quarters of an hour along the sealed road at the bottom of the hill – not as long as usual but still a good work-out – and thought about the last time she’d had a flashback. It was four years ago, after Isabelle had fallen off her bike and Jodie had driven her bleeding and crying to hospital. As she’d waited outside the X-ray room, the horrible, vivid pictures of that night with Angie had rushed through her head. By the time Isabelle was wheeled out, Jodie was sitting on the floor, a shaking mess. The dreams had woken her up every night for a week. After that, they just stopped.

  She turned onto the unsealed driveway and pulled out her phone once more. The reception meter was full but half-a-dozen steps up the hill and it was empty again. She started up the lower half of the incline, breathing hard, feeling her thighs burn. As she topped the hump in the track, she checked the phone again. No reception. It looked like they’d have to drive down to the road to ring their families tonight.

  She took a couple of long breaths and started on the final slope. Then heard a sound that made her skin crawl – the deep-throated rumble of a car engine.

  12

  Matt heard the gunshots and opened his eyes. The ceiling above him swam into focus and he ran a hand across his damp forehead. Christ, when was he going to stop hearing them? He let his hand drop onto the back of the lounge and readjusted himself awkwardly around the throw cushions. Behind him, little feet pattered down the hallway and a second later three-year-old Sophie jumped on him.

  ‘Uncle Matt, Uncle Matt.’

  ‘Morning, Matt.’ His sister-in-law Monica took one look at him and held her arms out to Sophie. ‘Easy, honey. I don’t think Uncle Matt’s ready to play trampolines just yet. Go tell Daddy his hangover has company.’

  Sophie frowned at her mother. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Tell Daddy to get his butt out of bed or I’ll force-feed him bacon and eggs.’

  Matt groaned and sat up gingerly.

  ‘Big night, hmm?’ Monica said, picking up his jeans from the floor. ‘I hope you and Tom didn’t let your dad drink too much.’

  ‘Dad went home after the darts so I felt it was only right that I drink his share.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she said and pulled the blanket off him.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘No time to sit around. I need wood for the fire. A fair exchange for breakfast, don’t you think?’ she grinned and tossed him his jeans. ‘How’s your knee?’

  Matt pushed his feet into the legs of his trousers and grimaced at the tightness in the joint. Surgery had patched up the torn ligaments almost five months ago. That was four weeks after the leap from the balcony that preceded the gunshots he heard every night. It still hurt – the knee and the memory. ‘The doctor says it’s doing great but he doesn’t have to walk on it.’ He limped as he followed her into the kitchen. Last week, the doc had said it’d be another three months before he’d be running regularly again. On cold mornings like this, it felt like it’d be a lot longer.

  He found his shoes at the back door and stepped into the frigid morning. A thin mist hung in the trees behind the shed and he could hear the distant lowing of cattle. As he walked around the side of the house, he pulled in deep, long breaths and watched the steam drift away as he blew out. His mouth ta
sted like stale beer, his head ached and the sound of gunfire still echoed in his mind. At the woodpile, he stacked pre-cut logs into a box and thought about Jodie Cramer. Again. There was something intense about her. Even her laugh – that confident roll of sound – hinted at something beneath the surface. He hefted the box and wondered what she was doing this morning. He shouldered open the back door, saw his brother, Tom, standing in the kitchen in a dressing-gown and grinned – partly because he looked worse than Matt felt and partly because he knew what Tom would say if he told him he’d been out by the wood stack fantasising about a customer. A truly desperate act, man. He’d be right, too.

  By the time he got the fire started, Sophie and her older sister, Bree, were shooting Uncle Matt questions. ‘Uncle Matt, do you like peanut butter and honey?’ ‘Uncle Matt, what’s your middle name?’ ‘Uncle Matt, can you spin me around?’ Being Uncle Matt was the best cure he knew for a hangover. He carried a niece under each arm and plonked them at the breakfast bar. ‘I’ve done my bit. How’s the coffee coming?’

  Monica shooed the girls off to watch Saturday morning cartoons and plied Matt and Tom with toast and coffee. She was perched on the other side of the kitchen bar when the phone rang. As she jumped up to answer it, Tom said, ‘You still okay to take The Beast into town, Matt?’

  ‘The Beast’ was the 1975 Holden Tom had bought when he was in high school. He’d done up the V8 engine under their father’s tutelage way back when he wanted to be a mechanic. Now, after six years on a cattle property, there was no time to play under the bonnet, but he couldn’t bring himself to part with it. Just dropped it into town for Dad to tinker with every now and then.

  Matt raised an eyebrow at his brother. ‘Wasn’t that why I slept on your couch last night?’

  ‘That and the fact you couldn’t get to your couch under your own steam.’ After fulfilling his job as designated driver, Tom had shared a few too many more drinks with him on the lounge, until Monica had told them to shut up and dragged her husband off to bed. ‘Just checking you can still handle all that V8 grunt.’