The Darkening

by Stephen Irwin

  Pritam felt the last of his strength drain from him. The room was still light, but there was no longer warmth in it. This is the room I die in, he realised. He looked at the crone. She smiled, showing two rotten grey stumps that looked like snapped-off sparrow bones.

  ‘Christ can forgive you,’ he whispered, though he didn’t believe it. There wasn’t a hint of compassion in those ice-blue eyes.

  ‘That’s grand,’ she said.

  Her features became again those of the pleasant, brown-haired nurse. She smiled, pulled out the pillow behind his head and covered his face.

  After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass towards a bed that would, come spring, be as brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colourful arctotis, impatiens and petunias. Katharine dug with hard, chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her. The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made.

  Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.

  He needed to ask Laine something. He went inside.

  The bed in Suzette’s room was empty. Laine was awake and up somewhere. He stepped back into the hall. Through the dimpled glass of the front door, he could make out the hunch of someone sitting on the front steps. He took a breath and went outside.

  Laine wore his tracksuit pants and a woollen jumper that swallowed her. She didn’t look up as he shut the door behind him. A westerly wind troubled the trees in the street. The sky was cloudless. The sun gave no warmth. He looked around, and spotted what he was looking for. Gavin was walking up the footpath towards them.

  ‘Will you sit?’ she asked.

  Nicholas watched Gavin reach the front gate.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  But he needed to talk to Laine, and so reluctantly sat beside her.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘You passed out in the car. I took you to hospital. Then I took you out of hospital.’

  She stared out at a blue, wind-streaked sky that seemed impossibly vast above the ruby and emerald tile and tin rooftops.

  ‘I dreamed,’ she said.

  He waited.

  ‘I was in a ship, a wooden ship. It was crammed full. A woman beside me had a baby. So much blood. It was stillborn. She cried and cried and held the dead baby and the crying seemed to last all night. The only way for it to stop was for me to bring her another baby. And I would have. I would have, only I was held down. Pinned down. By this weight, this warm weight on my chest. But I would have done anything to get her another child and stop that awful, awful crying.’

  Nicholas watched her profile. She raised her hand to the cut on her cheek. ‘It was my blood. She used it.’

  Nicholas nodded.

  ‘And you drew on me,’ she said.

  He looked at the ground and nodded again.

  As if remembering the rune on her chest, she closed her arms across her breasts.

  ‘How’s Mrs Boye?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a carer from St Luke’s with her. For the moment.’

  She shrugged, and finally looked at Nicholas.

  ‘Is he here?’ Her voice was steady and matter-of-fact until the last syllable, which trembled.

  Nicholas looked up. Gavin was on the stairs. He stepped through Laine to stand behind her.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  He could just see Gavin’s mouth moving. In his hand was the black plastic bag. He reached into it.

  ‘You know.’

  Laine curled her arms around her knees. ‘I didn’t feel him. I can’t feel him. You’d think. .’

  She stared up at the sky, perhaps to keep the tears in.

  ‘Laine, did Gavin have more than one gun?’

  She looked at him. And the instant she did, Gavin fell through her in a crumpled heap, his jaw flapping, his skull topped by a macabre, broken crown.

  Nicholas closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Gavin was once more halfway down the street, walking towards them.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Locked under the house. He was very firm about obeying those kinds of rules.’ She smiled coolly.

  Nicholas watched Gavin approach the front gate. The dead man’s face was tight and confused. God, don’t let him be stuck in there, thought Nicholas. Let this just be a picture. Don’t let him be stuck in that loop.

  ‘The locker key’s on my key ring,’ said Laine. ‘When do you want to do this?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I want to go back to the library this arvo.’

  And please let that be the last lie I have to tell her.

  Laine nodded. She was quiet a long moment. She watched the sky with those grey eyes.

  ‘We could leave, you know,’ she said.

  I can’t tell what she’s thinking. But he found that was a good thought. He’d had enough of life’s mysteries exposed for his eyes; the idea of kept secrets pleased him. What did she mean by ‘we’? Separately? Together? As friends? As fellow victims? Lovers? He didn’t know.

  ‘We could,’ he agreed. The wind picked up and sent a small wave of brown leaves hissing up the street. ‘I have a little money.’

  ‘I have a lot,’ she said.

  They sat, her hugging her chest, him his knees. He looked at her and smiled. To his surprise, she smiled back.

  ‘You should get some more sleep,’ he said, and stood. He went inside before Gavin could fall again.

  32

  Nicholas walked silently under the Airlie Crescent house. He and Tristram had run and ridden bikes under here like madmen, but now he had to stoop slightly to avoid the low bearers overhead. The fine dirt underfoot let out puffs of powder, and he was pleased that his footsteps were silent.

  He could hear a bath running overhead, and the muffled sounds of a nurse coaxing Mrs Boye.

  Near a trellis that separated the under house from the backyard was a workbench. The vice and hacksaw were covered with tiny mothwings of dragon’s blood powder: the police scientific team must have come for fingerprints after Gavin’s suicide.

  Beside the bench was a relatively new concrete slab with a solid-looking steel cabinet bolted to it. Nicholas softly placed down the duffel bag he carried, and carefully inserted the key Laine had given him. He listened: overhead, the bath stopped running. There was a shout: ‘Why should I?’ Then the soothing voice of the St Luke’s nurse.

  Nicholas twisted the cabinet handle. Inside was a shelf stacked with boxes of rounds and a hard plastic case for a telescopic sight. Below were vertical racks for four guns. Two rifles were there, both dappled with dusky fingerprint whorls. One was a Miroku under-over shotgun. The other was a Number 1 Ruger; Nicholas recognised it because Cate’s father had owned one exactly like it: a hunting rifle with a scope but no magazine because it took only one bullet at a time. He lifted out the Miroku, figuring that its two shots made it. . well, twice as appealing.

  He slipped the shotgun into the open throat of the duffel bag; its stock rattled against the four cans of insect spray and two bug bombs. Also in the bag were rubber dishwashing gloves and a cricket stump to clear web, a bottle of kerosene, and the purchase Nicholas was most proud of: imitation Zippo lighters, Fabrique en Chine. He dropped in a box of twelve-gauge shells and relocked the cabinet.

  He stepped carefully out from under the house and onto the drive. It was after two in the afternoon. He’d spent hours getting his bits and pieces together, and had rung Suzette and told her what had happened with Miriam Gerlic and Pritam and Laine, and how the rune painted on Laine’s chest seemed to have done some good. He looked up; the sun was just over its high hurdle and arcing down to the west. He hefted the duffel bag over one shoulder. It was as if he was again ten years old and he and Tristram were preparing to fight the Japs at Wewak or the Jerries at El Alamein. . only this time the gun was real.

  ‘Tommy guns?’ he asked the boy who�
�d been gone a long, long time. ‘Of course,’ he answered, and strode to his car.

  Nothing moved under the shadowed brow of the Myrtle Street shops.

  Nicholas walked towards Plough amp; Vine Health Foods with one wrist in the duffel bag and his hand on the shotgun grip. It occurred to him there was no good way for this to finish: at best, he’d go to gaol for the murder of an unidentified old woman; at worst. . well, there were thirty-one flavours of worst. One of the least unappealing was emulating Gavin before Garnock’s extended family had a chance to do a thorough job on him.

  The shop’s door was locked. A sign hung in the glass: ‘Closed due to sickness. Sorry!’

  He shielded his eyes and pressed against the window. The shop within was dark and still. He let out a slow breath, guiltily relieved. He could move to Plan B.

  There was hope now: he could take the fight into a remoter place where, perhaps, no one would hear the shotgun blasts. The downside was that it would be her place. The woods.

  Movement caught his eye.

  A house spider jumped from its hiding place atop a wooden rafter of the awning. It abseiled down on the silk it spun out behind, and landed soundlessly on the ground. It scurried around the corner and started down the footpath towards Carmichael Road.

  Nicholas was about to chase after it and squash it, but stopped himself. Let her know, he thought. Let her know something’s after her. Even if she gets me — and God forbid, Laine and Pritam and Suze — at least she’ll get a taste of being hunted. She’ll realise that things can turn. It doesn’t always go her way. Not any more.

  He got in the car and steered it towards Carmichael Road.

  Suzette watched her son carefully. Her heart was racing.

  Nicholas’s call that morning had made her feel sick; after he’d rung, she’d gone to the bathroom and lost all her breakfast. But then the excitement of his one piece of good news had carried her into Nelson’s bedroom on swift feet.

  Her fingers had been shaking when she drew the paring knife over the skin of his thumb — she didn’t want to hurt her boy. But he didn’t so much as wince as the steel bit in and red droplets rose around the blade. She quickly opened his pyjama top, dipped her index finger in the blood, and painted that ugly symbol above his heart.

  That had been two hours ago. Now, he was sitting in front of the television, hungrily chewing toast as he played Need for Speed.

  She and Bryan exchanged glances.

  ‘You know what I think,’ said Bryan. She could tell he was unhappy: his voice dropped an octave and his words were clipped.

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  She shrugged. ‘I can’t leave him up there.’

  ‘Then let’s all go-’

  ‘No!’ she said loudly. Nelson looked up from the Xbox game. Suzette waved him back — it’s fine. ‘No way in hell,’ she continued. ‘You keep them here.’

  ‘Suze. .’ began Bryan.

  But she was already on her feet and reaching for the phone book.

  33

  The trees seemed to hiss like harpies at his intrusion. The wind harassed their high tops, making the gum leaves and pine needles whisper harshly. But the wind seemed far away on the rainforest floor. Here the air was still and smelled strongly of sap and sweet decay and wet earth. It was gloomy; vines and trees wound around themselves like snakes carved of something at once frozen and moving, living and dead. Everything was green: green with growth or green with moss or green with rot; even the blackest shadow was a dark jade. Fallen trunks covered with dark vine lay like scuttled and rotting submarines at the bottom of a dim, glaucous sea.

  Nicholas gripped the shotgun with his right hand and cradled its lower barrel over his left forearm; the rope of the duffel bag dug painfully into his shoulder. He was a long way from the sporadic traffic of Carmichael Road, so the risk of being seen was minimal. Zero, in fact, he corrected himself.

  As he stepped over thick roots and under low, damp branches, he realised that, even as a child exploring in here with Tristram, he’d never seen other children playing here, nor teenagers smoking, nor retirees bird-watching. Other parks in other cities were havens for teenagers and derelicts, but Nicholas had never found a beer can or a milk carton in these woods. This was a haunted place. People knew it in their hearts, even if they never thought it in their heads, and stayed away.

  For a while, he followed the eerie, backwards-flying form of a dark-haired boy dressed in long shorts that were popular in the sixties. He’d recognised the child from the Tallong yearbook: Owen Liddy. But the sight of Liddy’s terror-split face was too horrible to watch, so he tacked right far enough to avoid the ghost.

  He groaned as he saw another.

  A small, raven-haired girl emerged from behind the wide, fluted trunk of a fig to slide herself over one tall, finlike root. Pale skin, thin limbs. Nicholas blinked. It was Miriam Gerlic.

  His eyes narrowed.

  The girl wasn’t being dragged away; she wasn’t wailing in silent dread. She was frowning and picking her way carefully over the obstructing root. And she was carrying her school bag. It wasn’t Miriam at all.

  ‘Hannah?’

  Hannah turned at the sound of his voice, then fell suddenly from sight.

  ‘Your Aunty Vee’s here, puffin.’

  Hannah’s father stood in the doorway of her bedroom. Grey bags like oysters sagged under his eyes and stubble roamed carelessly on his cheeks.

  ‘Okay, Dad.’

  He nodded and stepped away down the hallway. To Hannah, he had turned into an old man overnight: hunched and mumbling and pale.

  She listened. Her Aunt Vee’s usually loud and husky voice wrestled with her parents’ exhausted pleasantries. The screen door hissed and slammed shut. Hannah sat up on her bed and set aside her Elizabeth Honey paperback. Mum and Dad were going out. They weren’t telling where, but when Hannah was told she couldn’t come, she figured that they were going to: a) the police station; b) the morgue (which was where dead people were stored); or c) the gravestone shop. Aunty Vee would mind her during their absence.

  Aunty Vee was Mum’s younger sister. She was pleasantly round and smoked and swore and was Catholic and kept wondering aloud why Mum wasn’t Catholic any more. The subject of Mother Mary’s Undying Love would come up later; for now it would be hugs, tears and food.

  A short while later, Hannah was standing on the front patio with Vee’s hirsute sausage arms wrapped around her, waving as Mum and Dad backed out of the driveway, speaking low and unheard words to one another. When Hannah looked up at Vee, her aunty smiled but her eyes were red and wet. ‘Let’s eat!’ she said.

  While Vee busied herself preparing a lunch fit for a circus troupe, Hannah quietly went to the laundry to filch the items on the mental list she’d been compiling all night. Fly spray. Matches. The local newspaper. She looked for anything marked ‘Inflammable’ (which apparently meant the same as flammable, only more flammable) and found a half full plastic bottle of methylated spirits. Then she crept softly through the kitchen for two more items. Vee was near the sink, buttering bread and farting like a Clydesdale, and so didn’t see or hear Hannah float past.

  At lunch, Hannah ate sparingly. When Vee quizzed her about why she wasn’t eating, she tried her first gambit. ‘I’m a bit upset,’ she said softly. It worked like a charm. Vee bit her lip and hugged her. ‘Of course you are, of course,’ she said.

  Hannah pushed her luck. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night,’ she said. ‘Is it okay if I have a lie-down?’

  Vee looked relieved. ‘Absolutely, hon!’

  Hannah lay on her bed and read for exactly half an hour, then sneaked into the lounge room. Vee was asleep on the couch, thick ankles demurely crossed, snoring.

  Hannah hurried back to her bedroom, filled her school backpack with the purloined bits and pieces, then rolled up her dressing gown and her tracksuit and shoved them in the bed so it would appear to the casual glance that she was still in it.
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br />   She slipped out the back door.

  It took her less than five minutes to jog to Carmichael Road. She stopped on the footpath opposite the woods, more or less at the same spot where, two days ago, Nicholas Close had stood, reading the sign, watching her. That development sign was now covered in black plastic, and the shroud gave Hannah an odd, cold feeling.

  She checked left and right, then crossed Carmichael Road to the strip of tall sword grass. The tall tree line loomed in front of her, waving at her, the wind shaking the leaves in delighted applause at her arrival. Or hissing a warning.

  An adult would have hesitated. An adult would have wondered if she were about to undertake an errand of dangerous foolhardiness. She’d second-guess herself; after all, didn’t the police have a confessed killer in custody? She’d wonder how she could possibly have seen a black wave of spiders at her window, working the locks with intelligence that arachnid entomology had never witnessed. She’d curse herself as a coward for doing nothing while her sister was stolen. But Hannah was young and her doubts were not adult but of adults. She knew what she’d seen was true. She knew that she hadn’t imagined the crystal unicorn set to trap her. She was angry for being deceived. She knew things that no one else did, and there was no choice: she had to do something. She stepped between the trees, and light fell away.

  Walking into the woods gave Hannah the feeling she was sinking underwater; the fiery crackle of wind in high leaves became more and more distant, as if she were dropping into the depths. Shadows became thick and liquid. Spears of sunlight as thin as fishing rods probed down from the high canopy. The only sounds that were sharp were the wet crushing steps of her slip-on shoes on damp leaves and soggy twigs, and her panting breaths that were coming faster and faster. This was hard work, climbing over moss-furred logs and under looping vines. To go ten metres forward, she had to wend and wind another ten around twisted, scoliotic trunks, over hunched roots, under needy, thorny branches. This was going to take a while.