The Darkening

by Stephen Irwin

  She stood and held out her hand. He rose and took it. Her skin was dry and smooth.

  ‘I know your faith mentions ghosts and magic, Pritam. But I’m afraid I just can’t believe in either of them. If you speak with Mr Close again, wish him luck. I think he needs it. Good night.’

  She collected her umbrella from the stand beside the door, and a moment later she was gone.

  The rain continued through the night. Storm-water drains in the inner suburbs choked with branches and rubbish and mud, and flooding waters rose. A low-lying commercial block in Stones Corner was inundated: a carpet wholesaler and a car yard both went underwater, and Persian rugs and Mitsubishi Colts bobbed in the rising brown tide.

  Birds in trees curled their heads under their wings and clung to branches for dear life. On the river, the last ferry services were cancelled. In expensive houses with private docks, owners old enough to remember the flood of ’74 lay in their beds biting their lips and resisting the urge to check their insurance policies.

  Pritam set his jaw and unlocked the internal door that led into the church proper. He flicked a switch and the long, vaulting room flickered unhappily into half-light. He fought the need to glance overhead and check that the Green Man wasn’t staring back at him through dark, unblinking eyes. Instead, he kept his gaze level and sat in the foremost pew in front of the image of Christ crucified before a strangely lush, tree-studded backdrop, bowed his head and prayed for the souls of lost children. Without knowing when, he slipped from prayer into fitful dreaming.

  He was on Calvary, but the hill was devoid of crosses and peppered instead with incongrous trees. One was cleaved through the trunk. He was caught in the crush of it, broken and dying. Eleanor Bretherton was directing a regretful John Hird to saw off Pritam’s feet, hands, head. ‘It’s for Mother Kali, you loafing black tit,’ said Hird cheerfully. No one heard Pritam cry out in his sleep, his whimpers echoing down the nave to be quashed by the dispassionate rumble of rain.

  Laine lay awake, staring at the ceiling, a pillow over her head to block the sound of Mrs Boye berating her dead husband. Although the screech-glass words filtered through, Laine found her mind drifting away from Airlie Crescent, flying on stiffly animated wings to the cold stone church and that dead bird on the coffee table. When she’d received the call from the police that her husband was dead and she was required to confirm it was his body, she’d refused to identify him by simply looking at the CCTV image of his wedding ring on his cheating fingers. No; she’d insisted on going into that cold room and seeing his face. They’d cleaned him up, removed the blood. But his face was broken and split. Bat-like. Horrible; all trace of his handsomeness sucked away by those bullets. It occurred to her now, as his mother ranted against the rain, that Gavin and the bird he’d muttered about had both lost their heads. Both looked pathetic and hideous in death. Both looked somehow used. She fought a surge of bile and rolled over.

  In his tiny flat, Nicholas sat on his bed staring out the rain-smeared window down Bymar Street at the yawning darkness at the end that was the woods, imagining a million spiders marching silently through the deluge.

  22

  Hannah Gerlic was dreaming of wings. In the dream, she was trapped in a cage — a strange, spherical cage made of hard twisted wood, or maybe of bone. She was screaming, but no human noise came out of her mouth. Instead, the sound from her throat was the panicked batting of wings, of terrified birds flapping madly to escape. But the wap-wap cry was drowned by the wretched scratchings of a hundred real birds scrambling around her, all squawking and beating, trying to escape the cage. Their claws scratched her neck and face and hands; their beaks drove into the soft flesh of her ears, her thighs, her eyelids; their wings beat her. She screamed and cowered and tugged fruitlessly at the wood-or-bone cage. Suddenly, the beating and scratching and spearing ceased. The birds fell still, electric and listening, claws hooked onto the cage or into Hannah’s flesh or hair. Another noise. A tick-tick. A crackling. What was it? It sounded like heating metal, or rain on tin, or. .

  Suddenly, she screamed and the birds took wild wing.

  Hannah’s eyes flew open.

  She was instantly wide awake, and the dream of wings and bones disappeared like a stone dropped in deep water. . all except the noise. The tick-tick sound. A gentle tapping. Testing.

  Hannah was in her bed, and her room was dark. Her Emily the Strange alarm clock said it was 2.13 a.m. (the letters stood for ante meridiem). It was raining outside; raining hard. And yet, over the rain, she heard the tick-tick noise. The scratching, tapping, testing sound. She rolled over and looked at the window.

  Her stomach did a roller-coaster lurch.

  There were spiders on the sill. Hundreds of spiders. Their stiff, black bristles glistening with rain. Each was at least the size of Hannah’s hand. They were piled on one another, five or six deep, and they were scratching at the glass and poking their legs into the thin gaps around the frame. Hundreds of bristled black legs were poking, prodding, scratching. . trying to get in.

  Hannah’s window was what Mum called double-hung sashes and what Dad called a pain in the arse to paint: two wooden-framed windows, one inside and below the other; the top was fixed, but the bottom one could lift vertically and be held open by hinged supports in the frame. The windows locked with a swivelling brass catch.

  The catch was almost undone.

  The swivel was barely caught on its stay plate. Just a tap would loosen it and the window would be free to rise. As Hannah watched, a spider pressed against the glass and slipped one long, spiny and graceful leg up between the window frames and patted the catch with its hooked foot.

  Without thinking, she leapt from the bed and slammed the catch hard shut, slicing off the spider’s leg. Her stomach threatened to gush itself empty over the carpet as she stumbled back to her bed. Get them! Get Mum and Dad!! She opened her mouth to shriek.

  But before she could, her eyes widened and the scream died in her dry throat.

  Something was crawling over the scuttling mass of spiders, shoving them out of its way. It was itself a spider, but a size Hannah thought impossible. It was large as a cat. It shuffled aside its tiny cousins to crouch on the sill. Its ugly nest of unblinking eyes — like enormous drops of glistening black oil sitting in a dense carpet of bristles — seemed to fix on Hannah. The creature’s legs were as thick as carrots.

  Hannah stared, shaking. It’s huge it’s huge it’s huge! It was big enough to simply smash the window in.

  As she watched, frozen solid, the huge spider brought one leg before its head and raised its horny foot vertically in front of its curved fangs. The breathing holes beneath its abdomen let out an audible hiss.

  Oh my God, thought Hannah. It’s shushing me to stay quiet.

  The large spider began scooping the smaller spiders away. The hundreds of legs withdrew from probing the gaps around her window and the spiders fell away. As they did, the giant, feline spider gracefully and silently stepped back and down and out of sight. In just a few seconds, all the spiders were gone. It was as if they’d never been there; as if they’d been a wakeful extension to her nightmare in the cage. Except she could see on the inside sill the hairy section of leg she’d sliced with the catch, lying like a bit of black pipe cleaner. Her bed was shaking. She realised it was her heart pounding.

  They were coming to get her. She knew it. Just as she knew that the horrible thing she’d picked up that afternoon — the dead bird that someone had cut up and changed — had been left for her and no one else. Her urge was to throw the covers over her head and crawl into a ball.

  That won’t help! she told herself. This was like those movies on the TV where the idiots did nothing instead of doing something, like locking the door or driving away or calling the cops.

  Where had the spiders gone? Hannah swung her legs over the bed and padded to the door. There was a brass latch under the handle. She turned it and tried the handle. Locked. Good. But there was a two-centimetre gap under
the door. More than enough for the smaller spiders to crawl through.

  Then she heard a sound that made the soles of her feet tingle.

  A long, low squeak.

  The back door was swinging open. They were coming.

  She had to wake Mum and Dad and Miriam! Hannah opened her mouth and drew back a deep breath -

  No! You yell, and the spiders will have to kill them. They’re here for you!

  Hannah’s eyes began to sting and her vision softened with tears. What should she do?! She looked around for something to shove under the door.

  There was a framed picture on the wall; it was a poster of Hermione Granger (whose real name was Emma) and she’d begged and begged her parents for it and agreed to pay it off with her pocket money. The frame was thick plasticky stuff cast and coloured to look like wood; it was as thick as her thumb. She ran to it and took its bottom edge. It was heavy. She strained and lifted. The picture came off its hook suddenly and its weight tipped her backwards. She threw back one foot and dropped her arms, gaining control just before she overbalanced. She turned and staggered to the door.

  Black spindly legs were probing through the gap. A row of spiders was hunched there, low on their bellies, starting to crawl under.

  Hannah dropped Hermione’s picture face down on the carpet, expecting the crash of breaking glass. But it just thudded. It’s Perspex, she realised gratefully. She slid the painting towards the door. It won’t fit! she thought wildly. It’s too big! It’ll jam on the frame and they’ll just crawl right over it and get me and bite me and drag me out the back door and through the rain and down. .

  . . to the woods.

  The thought of the Carmichael Road woods suddenly drenched her with more terror than the sight of the searching, testing, hairy legs. They were nearly in. She aimed the picture frame square at the door and shoved.

  It squashed the spiders back and slid neatly between the jambs with just a couple of millimetres to spare each side. A nearly perfect fit.

  Hannah knelt on the floor, eyes wide, breathing hard, suddenly wanting badly to go to the toilet. Rain rumbled on the roof.

  Then the picture frame moved.

  It slid back into the room a centimetre. Then another. The spiders were pushing it back.

  Hannah scampered forward and sat all her weight on the frame.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a scratching at the door, and the handle began to slowly twist. First one way. Then the other. Then it jiggled — click, click, click. She could imagine monstrous, thorny feet on the other side pressed hard against the door.

  She realised her lip was trembling. She was going to cry.

  Stop it. Stop it.

  The scratching stopped. The door knob ceased moving.

  Quiet, except the hushed hiss of rain.

  They’ve gone, she thought. Relief as sweet as cordial flooded through her. They’ve gone.

  Then she heard another slow, sly noise down the hall.

  The door to Miriam’s bedroom was creaking open.

  23

  Nicholas woke with a splitting headache. He blinked blearily and checked his watch. It was quarter to nine. How had he slept so late? Then he remembered how frustratingly last night had gone. What a fractured quorum he’d convened: an Indian Christian minister, a recent widow arcane as a sphinx, a white witch forced a thousand kilometres away. . and himself.

  Well, it was like the old saying: if you want something fucked up properly, form a committee. That’s what he’d done. Who knew how much later into the night Pritam Anand and Laine Boye had kept arguing about whether Quill was alive or dead, whether the murders were connected or coincidence. Nicholas felt a fool for telling them so much.

  Fuck them both.

  He believed more than ever what he’d said last night: Quill was smart. She knew no one in their right mind could believe a woman could live so long, could hide in the middle of a crowded suburb, could get away with so many murders.

  He showered swiftly, dressed, slipped on the elder-wood necklace. There was a pay phone outside the shops on Myrtle Street. He needed to see how Suzette was doing.

  The world outside felt waterlogged. The torrential rain last night had swelled the gutters to fast-running freshets. The footpaths were wet, and the grass strips flanking them leaked water onto contiguous driveways. Grey clouds massed overhead, pressing down like monstrous fists and threatening to finish work left undone.

  Nicholas jingled his pocket — a few coins, enough to phone Sydney and see if Nelson was improving. What if he wasn’t? What if he got worse? What if he died? He felt a slow wheel of fear tighten straps in his gut. Then it will be your fault.

  A car slowed behind him. Then another vehicle slowed and stopped a few steps ahead of him. Police cars. Four doors opened and four officers stepped around him.

  ‘Mr Close?’

  Nicholas recognised two of the officers: they’d visited his mother’s house the evening the Thomas boy went missing. He smiled without an ounce of fondness.

  ‘Silverback and Fossey. Don’t you guys miss Rwanda?’

  The officers were unamused.

  ‘Sir, we need to ask you some questions.’

  Pritam had been up since six.

  He’d awoken sore and cold on the pew, and the sight that greeted his eyes was of Christ suddenly sideways, as if God had decided crucifixion was, in fact, a poor fate for his only begotten son and so had uprooted the cross.

  Pritam stood, shambled to the presbytery, boiled the kettle. He felt as if he’d had no sleep at all. Sipping tea, he unplugged the telephone, plugged in the modem and switched on the church laptop.

  Laine Boye had been right. If one dismissed Nicholas Close’s theories, boiled away all the speculation and happenstance, all that was left was one simple coincidence: Eleanor Bretherton looked uncannily like Mrs L. Quill. Pritam wished he could dismiss that as a fluke, but he’d seen John staring at Bretherton’s photo and turning pale. That was enough to warrant a bit of effort. He opened Google and started typing.

  ‘Eleanor Bretherton 1880s’.

  The search revealed only one unhelpful curiosity: Macmillan had published a book by Mary Ward entitled Miss Bretherton in 1885.

  He dug deeper. He logged onto and searched the Anglican database. Then he rifled electronically through records at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. He emailed the Department of Immigration for information on how to secure lists of free settlers from the city’s founding in 1859. He searched the State Archives for shipping manifests, cargo allocations, passenger lists.

  By a quarter to nine, he had found absolutely nothing.

  More tea. A quick piss. Back to it.

  ‘L. Quill, Tallong’. Search. Several Quills in several different states. Back to Births, Deaths and Marriages. He guessed a birth year, around 1910, her death around 1995. Several L. Quills, but none the right age, the right gender, the right place. This, he told himself, was not unreasonable: Quill could have been born interstate and died far from home. To search every state’s and territory’s records could take days. Weeks. It was hopeless.

  Nicholas would say that she meant it to be hopeless, he thought.

  He made toast, chewed slowly, debated stealing a quick nap. Rain pattered again on the roof and tapped through the trees. English weather, he thought. He stopped chewing. An idea crystallised in his mind. English. If Quill was as old as Nicholas thought, surely she came from Britain, one way or another. Either freely or. .

  He typed: ‘Convict Ships to Moreton Bay’. Search.

  Three ships. One arrived twice; one three times; one just once. The Elphinstone, the Bangalore, the County Durham. All left Spithead, all docked Moreton Bay.

  Pritam clicked County Durham. Master: William Huxley. She arrived 2 October 1850, having sailed 144 days. Convicts embarked: male — 154, female — 34; disembarked: male — 147, female — 30.

  He clicked the hyperlink and the female convicts’ names appeared.

  Eighth on t
he list was ‘Quill, Rowena’. ‘Trial place: Trim, Meath County. Crime/s: Fraud. Prostitution. Term: Life. Comments: Pardoned 1859.’

  Pritam sat back in his chair. He was stunned. A quotation by Flavius Josephus crawled in his skull: ‘Now when Noah had lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood, and that all that time happily, he died, having lived the number of nine hundred and fifty years. .’

  Pritam.

  His eyes stung from staring at the screen, but his heart beat excitedly. The printer — he had to find the printer. Nicholas and Laine would need to see this -

  Pritam?

  He looked up. Was someone calling him? He listened. Only the steady tocking of the clock, the whisper of drizzle. No.

  Anyway, the printer. He’d seen it in the storeroom and -

  ‘Pritam?’

  He froze. There was someone calling him from outside. He went to the sidelights and peered out. He could see no one. However, the church was on a corner block, so the visitor could be round the front.

  ‘Pritam!’ came the voice again. A man’s voice, and his tone was urgent. Pritam fetched an umbrella from the hatstand.

  ‘Pritam Anand!’

  ‘Coming!’ he called. He struggled to free the umbrella, accidentally pressed its button and it popped open, one rib jabbed him in the shin. That’s bad luck, that.

  ‘Pritam!’

  Who is that? So familiar. .

  He opened the door and hurried outside. The rain spat on the umbrella. He walked carefully along the slick path beside tall hibiscus bushes. The voice had come from the road fronting the church. There! He could see a figure on the opposite footpath. The man held an umbrella and leaned on a cane; his shadowed face was unclear through the drizzle.

  ‘Pritam?’

  Pritam squinted. The man’s stoop was familiar. But it couldn’t be. .

  ‘John?’

  Reverend John Hird stood on the other side of the road. He waved the walking cane he held. Beside him was a small suitcase.