In the Clearing

by J. P. Pomare

  He takes the cloth away, loosens his grip on my throat. I fall heavily against him as if unconscious.

  He hauls me up over his shoulder effortlessly. Then he speaks.

  ‘Go sit down, Mum. I’ll take care of this mess.’

  ‘What happened?’ Adrienne says. ‘Put her down! Where are you taking her?’

  ‘We’re going for a little drive, Mum. I won’t be long. It’s for the best.’

  Fifty-nine hours missing

  There’s a fierce throbbing in my head and my throat is still sore but I’m awake. That’s the one advantage I have: he thinks I am unconscious. He carries me outside. A car boot opens, and I tumble into it. He folds my legs before thumping the boot closed. The air is thick in here, and there is almost no room to move. I’m trapped now, I realise. He could leave me in here until I starve to death, or he could drive the car into a lake. I might not be found for years – if at all. I dimly hear the sound of a car door opening and closing, and then the purr of the engine. Think, Freya. He’s too big, too strong for me to have a chance in a fair fight. I’ve got to catch him off guard. I feel around the boot, finding the flap of carpet covering the tyre-changing kit.

  It’s close and dark in the small space, and it feels a little like I’m trying to breathe underwater. Stay calm, Freya. The car bounces along the gravel track, and then we are turning, accelerating away on smooth bitumen. I can hear a faint murmuring now. Is Jonas talking to himself? Maybe he really has lost it.

  ‘… so we’re just going to have to cross our fingers and hope she’s not found any time soon. I’ve got the note with me; I’ll put it in her pocket. What’s that?’

  There’s a pause. He’s on the phone, I realise, but who is he talking to? Is it a Blackmarsher?

  ‘The moment it’s ruled a suicide we’re in the clear,’ he continues. ‘They’ll assume she’s got rid of the body. All the other pieces are in place: the phone records, the pyjama top, the tooth.’

  I can feel rage boiling inside. He’s planned it all. My own brother is planning to murder me and make it look like suicide.

  ‘There won’t be any marks on the body and you can help clean the boot when you get here. I’ll make sure she’s somewhere she could have climbed to herself.’

  They’re going to hang me from a tree. Billy will believe that I gave up, I left him behind. I think about Jonas’s farm up north. Is that where my son is now?

  ‘It’s perfect – they’ll think she killed Billy herself and then concocted this whole kidnapping story. Then, racked with guilt, knowing the police are closing in, she drives out to where it all started. And you’re certain the rain will wash away our tracks down there?’

  The call ends. So this is it. Jonas has Billy. They have my son. He’s in the clutches of Blackmarsh and will never escape. You never escape a cult. I was naive enough to think I could walk away but Adrienne always had me, a fly in a web. Now that the photos are out in the world, Adrienne and Blackmarsh have nothing over me so they’re disposing of me altogether. I feel no fear for myself, nothing but an implosion of sadness for my son. My brain whirls through the possibilities, the corridors and alleyways and they all lead to one inevitable truth: Billy will live the life I lived. Brainwashed into believing that Adrienne is divine and Blackmarshers will be the guardians of the planet when the new age dawns. But eventually Adrienne will die, and then what? Jonas will proclaim himself the reincarnation? Someone else will rise to the top?

  The car stops. A door opens. The creak of hinges as a gate swings. And then the car begins to move again. I’m thrown forwards as the wheels hit ruts in the track. Long grass swishes against the underside of the car and branches and leaves screech against the duco. My body senses it before my mind; the scar on my hip throbs, and I feel a phantom pain in the toe Jonas hacked off with pruning shears to punish me for taking extra food. I know it without any doubt; we are in the Clearing.

  When the car stops I reach into the hollow of the spare tyre and grasp the solid shape of a wrench. I breathe slowly and deeply, steadying my heart.

  The engine dies. A door thunks open and closed. I let my head fall back, my neck bent like a flower stalk. The wrench is concealed beneath me. I hear footsteps rounding the side of the car. There is a light patter of rain. Finally, rain. The boot opens. Brightness presses briefly against my eyelids, then it’s gone.

  ‘Wake up, Amy. You’re home.’ Jonas touches my shoulder, turning me towards him.

  I open my eyes, roll and swing my arm. The wrench connects with something too soft to be a skull. An arm?

  I quickly haul myself from the boot. Jonas has been momentarily knocked off balance, but he quickly steadies himself again.

  ‘Amy,’ he says. ‘You hit me.’ There’s laughter in his voice.

  ‘Why, Jonas?’ I say. ‘Why did you take him? Why now?’

  I can hear his breath becoming short. The sky is moonless; I can only just make out his dark shape. My fist trembles with adrenaline as I grip the wrench.

  ‘We gave you every chance to return,’ he replies. ‘Every chance to prove yourself loyal. We chose you to be the one to save us when they conspired against us.’ He steps closer. ‘You were supposed to lead us. Instead you turned your back while I’ve been busy rebuilding what they took from us. You called her deluded, a fraud. We must complete the twelve before it’s too late.’

  ‘She is deluded, Jonas. She’s demented. There is no end of the world, she’s not going to save us. The twelve was always just a way for her to surround herself with children.’

  He steps closer still. Before he can say another word I swing the wrench. He dodges it. This is a man not merely acquainted with violence; this is a man who grew up in violence, who became violence.

  I rush forwards, swinging again. The wrench connects this time, smashing into his forearm with a thud. He roars in pain, grabbing at his arm, then lowers his head and rushes at me like a bull. His left arm hangs limp but his shoulder hits me below the ribs. We tumble together to the hard earth.

  ‘This only ends one way,’ he says, his mouth close to my ear.

  I raise my knee and feel the breath leave him. I swing the wrench at the back of his head. I swing it again, feel the reverberation in my palm. I try to wriggle out from beneath his weight, but he pins me down with his forearm across my throat. With his good hand he grabs my wrist and holds it at my side, the wrench still in my grip.

  I try to breathe, but no air comes, just gurgling. I squeeze my jaw beneath his forearm, open my mouth and bite. I taste blood.

  He releases my wrist and brings his hand up to my throat, choking me. I swing at him as hard as I can. The wrench strikes again and again. There is little force behind the blows now, but I can feel his limbs softening, his fingers loosening around my throat. He’s dazed.

  Twisting, I squirm from beneath him and rise to my knees. My breath is loud and rough in the still night. I could run, take the car and escape. You never escape a cult. They will always come for me. I turn back to him.

  He moves as if to stand but before he can I bring the wrench down on his skull. This time the blow is wet, meaty. He falls face first, hitting the earth as heavy as a stone.

  Each breath I take rocks my entire body. I let the wrench slip from my hand. The rain is coming down steadily now. I stare at the slumped form hesitantly, half of me fearing he might suddenly fly up and grab me. But even in the dark I can see the blood. I know he won’t be waking any time soon.

  I heave him over and find his eyes are closed. His chest rises and falls, but blood is darkening the pale grass beneath his head.

  He had a light, I recall. I search his pockets for a torch but find nothing except a piece of paper. The note. He must have dropped the light near the car. Dropping to my hands and knees, I search around the boot until my hand touches something small and rectangular. My pulse pounds at my temples. It’s a phone.

  Clutching it in my hand, breathing heavily, I turn the phone’s torch on and take a moment to look about
the Clearing. It’s the same and yet so different. The place is overgrown, wild. The Great Tree is still there, the leaves shimmering in the breeze. I can see the outline of the Great Hall in the distance, all boarded up now and collapsing in parts. Reclaimed by the wild.

  The rain becomes heavier. It dampens me, cools me, clears my head.

  I use Jonas’s phone to dial triple zero.

  Billy must be up on Jonas’s farm, I surmise. It’s hours away from here, so I need to get moving. I feel the cord between us pulling taut. I need to see him, to know he is okay.

  ‘What’s your emergency?’

  ‘Police,’ I say. ‘Someone tried to kill me. I’m at the Clearing. The end of Blackmarsh Road.’

  I wait with her on the phone until she tells me that police are on their way. Then I climb into Jonas’s car and find the keys in the ignition.

  AMY

  FOR THE FIRST time I’m allowed in the minders’ quarters. I feel guilty. I fear that Adrienne might snap at any moment, and hurt me.

  She leads me in by the hand and gently guides me onto a couch, then takes a seat beside me.

  Through the window I can see the Burrow, the Great Hall, the Great Tree, our vegetable garden and the chicken coop beside it. I can see the whole of the Clearing spread out before me and it really is beautiful. It is our own Eden. I’m going to miss it, I just hope I can return soon.

  ‘Amy,’ Adrienne says, ‘you have to go tonight. The Blue Devils are planning to swoop in the next few days to take you all away. You know the plan; you know where you must walk to in the night.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘I have something to show you before you go.’

  Her blue eyes turn from me to the envelope beside her on the couch. She touches it lightly, seeming uncertain for a moment. Then she picks it up and removes three brown strips. She holds them up to the light, peering at them. Then she slips them back into the envelope.

  ‘I want you to remember this moment for the rest of your life, Amy,’ she says. ‘You are going out into the world. You will wear a mask for the rest of your life to hide who you really are. No one will love or accept you like me, because they hate us, they don’t want us to succeed. You will look and act like them but, in truth, you will never walk away from us. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ I say, though I’m not sure that I do understand.

  ‘Now remember this.’ From the envelope she pulls a small stack of photographs. One at a time, she holds them up in front of me, giving me enough time to study them.

  I turn my face away.

  ‘Look at them,’ she says, her voice a slap.

  I turn back, but I can’t focus on them; I can’t relive that day without remembering Asha, remembering how sick with excitement I was when she arrived, how quickly we snuffed her out.

  ‘No one other than you and I will ever see what you did to Asha. Because if they should see this out there, they would lock you up and throw away the key. They would always know what you are.’ She places the photos back in the envelope.

  My heart is racing now.

  ‘I’m leaving today, a few hours before you, and I am taking these photos with me. I will keep them safe, but if you should ever disobey me, the world will see that you murdered little Asha.’ She takes my hands in hers and warmth rushes through my body. I feel like I am home, that this is the last time I will ever be home.

  I would never disobey my mother. I can’t imagine doing such a thing. I would never do anything to disappoint her.

  ‘Mother, I will never disobey you,’ I say. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Good girl. Protect the Queen.’

  I say it back.

  ‘Now go on, get yourself ready. Brush your hair and your teeth. Make yourself beautiful for the world out there. Be brave, my child, as you step into the darkness. But know that blind bravery comes from ignorance of the real threat. If you are true to me, you will always be safe, but waiver and you will find what the real threat is. So now go out there, fit in, wear the mask, do what you need to, but think of me every day, find my voice in your head and I will guide you, I will give you the strength to keep going. We will be back together soon.’

  FREYA

  Sixty hours missing

  THE CAR STARTS. The rain is falling harder now, like bullets in the headlights. It rattles on the roof. Through the windscreen I see the shape of the Great Hall against the dark sky. For some reason I always thought they would have knocked it down. Burnt it like a funeral pyre to exorcise the demons contained within. Those walls have seen horrors. Even Adrienne seemed to forget the Clearing and left it behind. This place where I grew up was nothing in the end. Just a space to occupy like any other. Why then does it feel so heavy, like I’m sitting in a car at the bottom of the sea? I squint through the rain, leaning over the wheel. Listening to the zomb-zomb of the windscreen wipers. The door to the Great Hall is open. Could Billy be inside? I wonder suddenly. Tied to a chair in the kitchen where we used to eat? I need to leave, to get as far from Jonas and the Clearing as possible before the police arrive, but what if my son is here, scared for his life? What if, two little words that have me snared.

  I drive the car forwards, flattening the long grass before me, and pull up in front of the Great Hall, the headlights shining in through the open door. I can see only the grey of the faded wood panels. I kill the engine and open the car door.

  It’s dark and damp inside the Great Hall, like walking into an eye socket. I peer into the corners then remember Jonas’s phone in my pocket. With the torch there is just enough light to see a few feet into the room. There’s mould and mildew. Rain streams in where a section of the roof has collapsed. The floor is rotting in places and I step tentatively, testing the boards before putting my full weight on them. I move deeper into the building. It’s so much smaller than I remember. I’d thought of it as an enormous building, grand, but now I can see it’s just an ordinary hall, plain and functional. I reach the room that was once our classroom. My skin is tingling.

  When I shine the light into the corner I think I see something move and my heart leaps, only to find it was nothing but the shifting shadows of the desks and chairs still stacked there after all these years. The blackboard is in its usual place down one end of the room and the windows are unbroken, though battered now by the growing gusts of wind.

  The rain continues to drill down. I hear it trickling through the seams of the building. Dripping down onto the wooden boards. When I try to get to the kitchen I find I can’t; the floor has rotted through. By the weak light of the phone’s torch I make out the shape of the bench, the sink, the old pot-belly stove.

  This was my childhood. People think I was born into it, that I simply had bad luck, but they don’t think about their own luck. They don’t realise that everything is chance. The trajectories of their normal happy lives are solely determined by chance. They only seem to remember when they compare themselves to someone like me.

  The phone starts to vibrate in my hand and I am so startled that I drop it. The room goes dark.

  The phone continues to vibrate. I bend over and pick it up, stare at the number on the screen. I press accept and hold it to my ear.

  ‘Anton?’ a man’s voice says; calm, quiet. Anton, not Jonas. The voice must belong to someone who knows our past. I can hear the hum of a motor; the caller is in a car.

  I don’t speak. The pause drags out. The man on the other end of the line sighs and ends the call.

  Whose voice was it? I can’t be sure, but I know that I need to leave, and soon.

  I shine the light about the room, scanning one last time for any sign of Billy. I call his name gently into the darkness, as if to summon him like a ghost. But he’s not here.

  I step out into the rain and walk down the stairs at the front of the building, the wood soft and slippery under foot.

  A second later I see the flash of headlights through the bush. I duck down behind the car, holding my breath as a four-wheel drive emerges
from the track and crawls across the grass, coming to a stop nearby. A door opens, boots hit the ground. ‘Anton?’

  More footsteps. I raise my head just far enough to see through the windows of the car. I can make out the silhouette of a man. He’s looking up at the Great Tree.

  ‘Anton, where did you put her?’

  My eyes follow the shape as he steps closer to the tree, then I turn back to his vehicle, squinting at it through the rain and the dark. I feel a physical shock, a gut punch that almost folds me in half. My eyes have come to rest on something familiar. Something I have seen every day for years … A broken badge with the word Disco.

  ‘Anton?’ The voice is less certain now but I recognise it, though it doesn’t make any sense.

  Corazzo.

  Two months earlier

  ‘HE’S COMING OUT,’ I say. ‘On the twenty-ninth of February.’

  Corazzo picks up his coffee cup, sips. His eyes are fixed on something outside the cafe. ‘Henrik Masters?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I saw,’ he says. ‘You worried about him?’

  ‘A little, I guess.’

  He turns his gaze back to me, a smile playing at his lips.

  ‘What? You think that’s wrong?’

  His dark eyes bore into mine. ‘I think you’ve got nothing to worry about either way.’ His voice is warm, reassuring. ‘He’s probably no longer involved with Blackmarshers. People change in prison.’

  I shrug. I don’t care about Blackmarsh anymore. I want nothing to do with my old family.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. He’s still got reason to hate me though.’ I think about the journal, how it was manipulated.

  ‘Is he still in contact with your mum?’ he asks.

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Well, you are still visiting her if I recall correctly. Maybe …’ He pauses, flaps his hand as though waving the idea away.