by John Larkin
I turn the corner into the kitchen. Just like my father all those years ago, Serena is lying in a pool of what looks like tomato sauce, only she isn’t doing the backstroke. She isn’t doing anything. Her eyes are wide open but her soul is long gone. There’s no light in them. Creepo is lying on top of her, blubbing like a baby.
My hands are shaking as I brandish the bat at him. ‘How could you kill your own wife?’
Creepo doesn’t even turn to face me. ‘I didn’t, she . . .’ He doesn’t seem surprised that I’m there. ‘It’s your fault. If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t . . .’ He trails off, trying to find further evidence that I was responsible for shooting Serena through her heart. There’s no sign of the gun, which is something.
‘She laughed at me. When I confronted her about it she told me I was pathetic and laughed in my face. She didn’t even care that I was hurt, she didn’t even seem to notice. She just said that she was glad that I’d found out, and she was going to go and be with him. With a real man. And then she laughed at me again and said that I was ugly. You did this, you little bitch! It’s all your fault.’
‘It’s always somebody else’s fault.’
‘She made me, don’t you understand? She asked for it. Just like you did when you kept having showers in front of me.’
‘Look at me, Uncle Tony.’
No response.
‘LOOK AT ME!’
He manages to drag himself up to a sitting position and leans back against the fridge.
I keep my distance.
Despite everything that’s happened, he still finds it in himself to smile at me. ‘You’re not going to kill me. You don’t have it in you.’
‘I don’t intend to kill you. But I am going to wait until the police get here. Make sure you don’t crawl away to some slimy rat hole.’
‘You’re not going to call the cops on me. I’ve got a cleanup crew on the way. They’ll be here any minute.’
‘No one’s coming. It’s over.’
‘You wouldn’t want to see you’re dear old dad in jail, would you, my darling daughter?’ He leers at me when he says this. He’s just shot his wife through her heart and yet he can still sit there smiling.
‘Don’t call me that. Or I might just kill you after all.’
‘You don’t get it, do you? And yet the clues have been staring you in the face from the start. You think you’re so smart, but really, you’re just like your mother. As I’ve always said, like mother like daughter.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
‘Do I need to spell it out?’
He pauses, trying to breathe through his almost non- existent nose. ‘Your father wasn’t some mall rat. I made that up. Your mother was having an affair when she met my brother, all right. She was having an affair with me.’
No. Not that. Anything but that.
‘She was pregnant with you when she hooked up with your father. He knew that you weren’t his; what he didn’t know was that you were mine. Well, you might be. I wasn’t the only one.’
I turn around and vomit into the kitchen sink.
‘There, there,’ he taunts. ‘Let it all out. Life’s complicated, isn’t it?’
I take a deep breath and try to pull myself together. ‘But you used to come in the bathroom when I was having a shower. You used to creep into my bedroom at night. And don’t say that I was teasing you. For God’s sake, you would have raped me if I hadn’t run away and yet all the time you knew that there was a chance that I was your . . . I might have been your . . .’ God! I can’t even say it.
He snorts out a laugh along with some blood. ‘I didn’t say I was a good father.’ Again he laughs and it’s cold, bitter, like he’s finally got the better of me. He’s won. Because he knew all along that he had an ace up his sleeve. But now that he’s played it he’s got nothing left.
‘She loved me, you know. Always had. Right up to the moment I put a bullet through her head.’
I feel like throwing up again, but I keep the bat raised at Creepo in case he tries anything.
He stares at the baseball bat. ‘You know something? I didn’t really think you were mine. Well, we’re nothing like each other, are we? But then tonight, I thought, you know what? Maybe she is and I kind of like how she’s turning out. There was a moment in that hotel room this evening when you were beating the living shit out of me that I was actually quite proud of you. It was like, “that’s my girl”.’
I turn to the sink again, unable to look at this bastard, this bastard maker, any longer. I’ve got nothing left to throw up so I spit bile.
When I turn back he’s pointing his gun at me.
He smiles. ‘Put down the bat.’
I gulp. He must have had it beside him. How could I have been so stupid?
He’s hardly got the strength to hold it up so he’s resting it on his leg. ‘C’mon. This is silly. We can work something out.’
Then I hear it in the distance. It’s very faint but getting closer.
‘What’s that?’ He’s heard the siren too. I start to back away.
‘It’s over, Creepo.’
‘What? You already called them? I thought you said . . .’
‘On my way here. Told them everything.’
‘You little bitch!’ He raises his gun and points it at me, but he doesn’t have the strength and his hand drops limply beside him, the gun clattering to the floor.
I move behind the breakfast bar to safety. If he goes for his gun again I can drop down out of sight.
‘Do you know what they do to paedos and wife murderers in jail, Creepo?’
But he doesn’t need me to remind him. He knows. With what little energy he’s got left he reaches down for his gun once more.
He glares at me. ‘Fuck you!’
‘No,’ I say. ‘You didn’t.’
I see his hand tremble as he stares down the barrel. The back of his head splatters against the fridge in an eruption of red. My ears are ringing and that smoky smell fills the room.
I wipe my fingerprints off everything I’ve touched and wash away the vomit from the sink, removing as much evidence of my being there as I can.
I hitch on my backpack and stare down at Creepo. The gun is lying on the floor with his hand limply beside it. His mouth is hanging open and his eyes are still glistening with the last electrical surges of life. His soul, if he has one, isn’t about to soar off to the heavens. It isn’t going anywhere. It’ll rot with the rest of him in a cold, dark grave.
I’ve just watched Creepo shoot himself through the head and I don’t feel a thing. No guilt. No sadness. No joy. No remorse. Nothing.
Like father, like daughter? I don’t think so.
It’s then I notice that I can no longer hear the siren. The ambulance or fire engine or whatever it was has obviously reached its destination.
I turn off the kitchen light with my elbow and leave that house for ever.
BY THE TIME I FINALLY GET TO THE CHURCH IT’S ALMOST FOUR IN THE morning. Miss Taylor wasn’t exactly thrilled about me turning up when I did and disappearing with my shoebox without so much as a word, but she’ll forgive me. She always does.
The outside foyer offers some shelter from the deluge. I know it’s just the weather cycle but it’s hammering down so hard it feels positively biblical. I put Cinderella’s shoebox on the ground near the door where it’s dry and unhitch my backpack. I feel my arm where Creepo kicked it. It’s probably broken again. I also notice some flecks of dried blood. I step out and let the torrent wash away the blood and the last remnants of my previous life. Even my arm doesn’t feel as sore as it did before. I stand there with my arms out to the side, letting the heavens cleanse me. I open my mouth and let the water surge through my body, giving me strength so that I can begin
again.
The door feels lighter than before as I push through and squelch my way over to the bathroom. I quickly pat myself down with a towel and change into some dry clothes. Even though my hair is still sopping wet I make my way through to the church proper.
I look at Jesus, hammered up there on the cross, a permanent reminder of all our human frailties, the guilt we’re supposed to feel just for being alive, the sins that must be atoned for. I don’t know if he was the son of God, a fraud, or just a delusional old hippy, but either way he was kind of cool. And I suppose if you’re going to attach your belief systems, your hopes, to something, then his wagon is as good as any.
When I went to school here one of the more righteous teachers showed us a DVD about this creationist guy who was banging on about how the banana was the atheists’ nightmare. His argument was that it fitted so perfectly in the human hand that it must have been created especially for us. It’s sort of like the hermit crab who believes that the shell that it’s taken over fits it so perfectly that it must have been created especially for it. Where the guy’s argument falls down is in his referring to the banana as ‘the atheists’ nightmare’ as if it’s the one thing that we can’t get past. The atheists’ nightmare isn’t a bit of bendy fruit, it’s being atheist. I don’t think there’s a single atheist who doesn’t want there to be something else beyond the night. Even the staunchest anti-creationist would surely be happy to spend eternity loafing around on a cloud plucking at a harp and praising the almighty rather than having to face the horrifying prospect of annihilation. All we’re asking for is some proof, and I don’t think the banana cuts it.
I start making the sign of the cross out of habit and respect but then I stop myself midway through. It’s stupid. Do we even think about what we’re doing when we cross ourselves? The cross is a barbaric execution device and I’m not going to acknowledge it any more. I prefer to remember how Jesus lived rather than the method of his murder.
I make the peace sign at JC and wander down the aisle to a pew near the front; the one where I spent my first night homeless. It was raining then too, I recall. Absolutely bucketing down. So I suppose in a way I have come full circle. And right now I feel the touch. The touch of being part of something greater. Something magnificent. That it’s not just me against the world. Was God testing me? Was it part of his grand plan? If it was then it was a pretty crap one. Surely five people didn’t have to die to make me see the light. Or maybe what I’m experiencing is simply a surge of chemicals through my brain released by the realisation that I don’t need to be afraid any more. That I can come in from the cold.
I pull out my sleeping bag and snuggle down deep inside, zipping it up around the two of us.
My arm feels fine now. I won’t even need to go and see Dr Chen, which is weird because I was positive that it was broken. Again.
I wiggle around trying to get myself as comfortable as possible, keeping Cinderella’s shoebox firmly against my chest. Keeping her warm.
The battery-operated perpetual candle flickering away in the corner gives off just enough light to illuminate Jesus. I flash him a smile, flash him the peace sign again and settle back in the warmth of my nylon cocoon.
When I sleep, I sleep like the dead. Meanwhile, somewhere out in the forest, the dead can now rest in peace.
THE BEGINNING
SYDNEY-BASED AUTHOR JOHN LARKIN HAS WRITTEN over twenty books for children, young adults and adults. He is currently the writer-in-residence at Knox Grammar School.
NO NOVEL IS WRITTEN COMPLETELY IN ISOLATION AND I WOULD LIKE to acknowledge the following people who have, in large ways or small, helped bring this one to life: Linsay Knight and the wonderful team at Random House. Also thanks to Peter Brandon, Ann Louise Cameron, Anne Felton, Katrina Gledhill, Jacquie Harvey, Denis Kelliher, Wendy Lim, Russel McCool, Christine Rothfield, Bob Thomas, Nathaniel Turnbull, Steve Zolezzi, the staff and students of Knox Grammar School and Abbotsleigh School for Girls. I am deeply indebted to Leonie Tyle and Kimberley Bennett whose editorial insight has been priceless. And to Robyn Ewing who started the whole thing off. With thanks and respect to all.
If you’re going through a tough situation that you don’t feel comfortable talking about with friends or family, you can find help elsewhere. Reach out to a counsellor on a free anonymous hotline or website.
www.kidshelp.com.au or 1800 551 800
www.lifeline.org.au or 13 11 14
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Version 1.0
The Shadow Girl
ePub ISBN 9781742744483
Published by Random House Australia 2011
Copyright © John Larkin
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Random House Australia book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices
First published by Woolshed Press in 2011
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Author: Larkin, John
Title: The shadow girl / John Larkin
ISBN: 978 1 86471 875 1
Dewey number: A823.4
The quoted poem is ‘A Dream of Death’, 1893, by W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
Cover photograph courtesy Getty Images
Cover design by Mathematics www.xy-1.com
Internal design by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Typeset and eBook production by Midland Typesetters, Australia