by Nicola West
I was also pleased to see that he still had his flair for the dramatic. He became somewhat of an enfant terrible in the art scene, stirring up controversy wherever he could. His most recent stunt, at the end of the previous year, could have potentially involved jail time, but he was able to twist the whole thing into a discussion about the true value of art in Australia. The crime itself was minor. He’d taken grant money he’d received from the government and – quite literally – turned it into art by painting thousands of banknotes and using them in a mosaic.
Technically, it was defacing legal tender, which carried a potential fine of five thousand dollars and up to two years in prison. But, once it had done the rounds on talkback radio, inspired countless opinion pieces, and prompted the minister for the arts to initiate a formal investigation into the accountability of grant recipients, Jarrah had turned up at the gallery with a laundry bucket, washboard and soap. He sat there for a week restoring each note to its former self. He pulled down the last note from the wall and scrubbed the last remnants of paint from it, then stood up and said two words: ‘Money laundering’.
I remembered watching the livestream and being so utterly floored by the moment that I went straight to Mark and begged to do a profile on Jarrah for the paper.
I’ll never forget the way my editor looked at me. The disbelief that graduated into that smarmy smirk.
‘Nobody in this town gives a shit about that f*ggot,’ Mark spat.
CHAPTER 19
‘Jarrah?’ I asked, shocked.
He came towards me, quickly bending down to pick up the Swiss Army knife, before gently grasping my uninjured hand and pulling me out of the blowhole’s splash zone. He grabbed his torch and shone it on my palm. Fortunately, the wound wasn’t deep.
‘I don’t think you’ll need stitches,’ he said, examining the cut.
I nodded. I was still in shock.
‘Was this for me?’ he asked, turning the Swiss Army knife over in his hand before carefully folding the blade away and holding it out to me. ‘Jesus, Lo, didn’t know you had it in you.’
‘You told me not to trust anyone,’ I managed to reply, taking it with my good hand.
He nodded. ‘No, it’s good, I suppose. Lily said you were tough; I should have believed her.’
‘I didn’t even know you two knew each other.’
‘We didn’t – not really – at least, not until recently. We both did a couple of art camps and workshops together back at school, but I tended to avoid her. She was such a fuckin’ goody-two-shoes back then.’
A small smile washed over his features, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.
‘She turned up at one of my exhibitions last year, completely out of the blue. She was the only person from Kiama who ever came to one. Not even my own family. But that was my call, obviously.’
I nodded, wrapping my arms around myself. I was so cold and wet it was becoming difficult to concentrate.
‘We started hanging out more and more. She hated this place,’ he said, gesturing all around him. ‘So, she’d crash with me up in Sydney when she wasn’t working.’
I tried to focus on what he was saying, but I couldn’t. My teeth were chattering violently.
‘I have some spare dry clothes in my bag if you want them,’ he said, concerned.
My head was nodding before I’d even had a chance to think of my response.
Jarrah unzipped his backpack before handing me a sloppy joe and a pair of tracksuit pants. They both looked like they could have come from Lowes but the tags were designer. It was only then that I finally noticed what he was wearing – a long black hooded trench coat, skin-tight black jeans and platform boots with dolls’ heads inside the heels. Columbine chic. At least the shoes explained his towering height.
I walked to the edge of the lookout and turned my back to him as I carefully peeled my sopping outfit off. My bra and undies were drenched, but they’d have to stay. Jarrah may have been gay, but that didn’t mean I was comfortable enough to strip in front of him.
As it turned out, my paranoia was apparently founded. I carefully laid my singlet and jacket on the rock shelf and heard the torch click on behind me. He was pointing the beam straight at my back.
‘What the fuck, dude?’ I shouted, turning to face him while shielding my eyes from the light.
‘Shit, sorry – couldn’t resist. Thought I could be subtle.’
‘I thought you were gay!’
That shrieking laughter was back. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. You’re definitely not my type. I was just double-checking you didn’t have the marks. Lily said you didn’t, but let’s not forget whose father was on that list.’
I defensively wrapped my arms around myself. I didn’t know what to say.
‘They brand their members,’ he said. ‘Lily had them. On the small of her back.’
‘I know,’ I replied, pulling the jumper over my head. ‘I saw them.’
‘What, how? When?’
I considered whether or not to tell him the truth. ‘When I found her.’
‘But –’
I interrupted him. If I was going to say what I was going to say I needed to do it quickly, like ripping off a bandaid.
‘Her back was exposed when I found her,’ I began. ‘My dad covered it up before anyone else saw, and then made me promise not to tell anyone. But he doesn’t know I took photos of them before I told him.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah.’ I sighed. ‘So, I’d really like to know what the fuck is going on here, and I figure you and those journals are my best bet.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know.’
All of this had started over a drink or – at least – the ability to have one. Free booze was a fixture at the parties and events Jarrah attended and Lily had apparently become embarrassed about her teetotal status. When I asked Jarrah why I’d never spotted her in the social pages alongside him, he’d said that she’d always refused as she didn’t want her parents to know she was there. It all seemed so out of character for Lily.
I’d never known or even questioned why Lily didn’t drink. It kind of just fit with her personality. The town’s golden child – sweet, innocent, chaste – was a good girl at heart and good girls didn’t drink. It was the same reason why I’d never found it odd that she didn’t date. Though, that may have also been because I knew there was no one in town good enough for her.
I was stunned to hear she was ashamed of those traits. But I was even more surprised when I found out the real reason why Lily didn’t drink. Apparently, she’d been on high doses of antipsychotics for practically her entire life. And the older Lily became, the more she began to question why. Jarrah said that she’d often spoken of her father’s controlling nature and the power he wielded over her and Sharon. So much so that, when Jarrah suggested that Michael may have been using the drugs as another way to assert his dominance, Lily had broken down and admitted it was something she’d always feared to be true.
I thought back to the heavily sedated Sharon I’d witnessed earlier that day. I remembered the way Michael was able to command her – like she’d been hypnotised by him. She was completely and utterly under his control. The thought made me uneasy.
Lily had apparently begged to come off the medication multiple times but her dad had always refused. She’d asked for a second and even third opinion from other psychiatrists. To his credit, Michael had happily obliged, but he was the head of psychiatry for the entire South Eastern Sydney and Illawarra Area Health Service, meaning that anyone she saw was technically his underling. They’d all told her horror stories of what would happen if she went off the medication – terrifying withdrawal symptoms far worse than the side effects of the drugs themselves – and they essentially frightened her into submission.
She admitted to Jarrah that she’d never been able to speak to anyone about it. I should have been there for her. We all should have. I began to wonder if I’d ever truly known the rea
l Lily or just the smokescreen version of her cultivated by the cocktail of drugs that had been altering her brain’s chemistry. What if she hadn’t been the golden child – pleasant, placid, pliable – that the town knew and loved? What if that person never truly existed?
I felt myself getting frustrated, and my frozen skin, sopping hair and stinging palm weren’t doing much to help. Sure, Michael’s behaviour sounded reprehensible but being a controlling prick didn’t automatically mean he was also a cult leader. Jarrah’s flair for the dramatic was overcomplicating things. I needed to get him back on track.
‘Stop burying the fucking lead,’ I suddenly snapped. ‘What does the cult have to do with all this?’
He visibly flinched at my words, before looking directly at me as though sizing me up. He smiled smugly. ‘Well, if you’d let me finish…’
‘I don’t have all night. If you’re supposed to be convincing me of something, then convince me.’
He rolled his eyes but continued. ‘Long story short, she went off the drugs because I agreed to support her through it. I’d helped a few friends get clean over the years, and I spoke to a med student mate of mine.’ He paused, looking suspicious. ‘Okay, technically he wasn’t a mate, he was my dealer, but –’
‘Get. To. The. Point.’
‘We slowly lowered her dosage so the withdrawal was negligible. She seemed to be responding really well, and I genuinely thought I was helping her, but…’ He stopped mid-sentence, staring out over the ocean.
The roar of the blowhole masked my sigh.
‘She started having these dreams,’ he continued. ‘Really bad ones. She was being chased through the rainforest up at Saddleback by these people in masks. They were dressed, like, weirdly formally. Red tailcoats with gold buttons. Long, black boots and gloves. They carried rifles…’
An image coalesced in my mind. I could picture the outfit so clearly. And the mask – black leather – with a sharp snout and pointy ears.
‘Fox hunting attire,’ I mumbled. ‘With a black leather fox mask.’
Jarrah’s eyes widened. ‘How do yo–’
I shook my head back and forth. ‘I – I don’t know.’
‘A memory?’
‘I don’t know!’ I spat, frustrated at my mind more than him.
We stood in silence for an impossibly long time.
‘Well, that’s what hers were,’ he finally continued. ‘They got more vivid until she was finally out of the forest and in a clearing. There was a fire and so many people. They wore floral wreaths on their heads. The men’s crowns had antlers from young stags, while the women’s featured gazelle horns. Their masks were different now – a flower shape made up of layered circles.’
‘The drawing from the diary?’ I interrupted.
He nodded. ‘The flower mask barely covered people’s features and she began recognising them. Her dad, her mum. People from the town…’
‘The people on the list?’
‘Not all of them. She didn’t have memories of everyone on that list participating in the rituals. But she thought at the very least they knew about what was happening and were potentially protecting the members.’
‘Did she have memories of my dad there? I’ve seen his back; I know he doesn’t have the markings.’
‘Yes.’
My heart sank.
‘But, for what it’s worth,’ he continued, ‘she didn’t think that he actively participated. She said he wasn’t an actual member of the cult – he was just protecting them.’
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’
He slowly shook his head, and I fought back tears.
‘It’s why she refused to involve the cops,’ he said, after a while. ‘She didn’t know how far it went.’
I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t know what to say or do. It was crazy. The whole thing was crazy. But why did it seem so familiar to me? No. I was tired. I was in shock. It was just some weird form of déjà vu.
‘They were just dreams,’ I told Jarrah. ‘I don’t doubt that they were super vivid but withdrawal dreams often are, aren’t they? It was all in her head.’
‘She thought that at first, too. Until that dream in the clearing. She was kneeling before the fire – her father standing over her – when she suddenly felt this horrible pain in the middle of her back. She woke up and rubbed her hands over the spot. For the first time, she felt them – those jagged scars on her back. The markings were real. They weren’t dreams; they were memories.’
‘You can’t really expect me to believe she never noticed that she had symbols carved into her back until that moment, right? That’s absurd.’
‘It’s the truth though. She jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There they were, plain as day. And at that moment, years’ worth of horrors came flooding back to her. You can’t deny it, Lo. You saw them yourself.’
He had me there.
CHAPTER 20
‘Look,’ Jarrah said, ‘I know this is a lot to take in, and I kind of feel like I’m not really doing it justice. Just, please, read the diaries. It’s all in there. As soon as she realised it was real, she started making detailed accounts of everything she remembered.’
He bent down and removed the journals from the bag before holding them out to me.
‘She said she wanted you to have them if something happened to her. That you were the only person in town she trusted to get to the bottom of things.’
I looked at his hands. ‘Why did you let her come back here if she thought she was going to be killed?’
He stared at me for a long time before slowly shaking his head. ‘Fuck, Marlowe.’
‘I’m sorry. But she knew she was going to die. I just feel like – I mean – maybe it could have been stopped?’
‘I tried,’ he said, his voice quavering. ‘Believe me.’
I nodded, but I mustn’t have been very convincing.
‘Seriously, Lo. I did everything I could. I said she could stay with me for as long as she wanted. I said I’d protect her – that I’d get her out of the fucking country if I needed to – but she refused. She kept saying, “We just have to wait until after the show.”’
He was choking up. Tears were pooling in his eyes and the dam was threatening to burst.
‘She said she didn’t want it to look suss – like she was fleeing. So, she was going to wait until she’d started her cadetship. Like, Jesus, she was supposed to move to Sydney next weekend. It was just one more week…’
I nodded, feeling horrible for questioning him.
‘She was so proud of that cadetship,’ he said, smiling to himself. ‘She felt like it was the only thing in her life she’d ever truly earned by herself. Y’know, without her dad pulling strings or interfering? She was amazed that her parents had agreed to let her take it. She thought that if she could get out of town that maybe things would be okay. Kinda like how they were for me.’
‘I’m really sorry, Jarrah.’
‘No, it’s okay. I know how it looks. And I don’t think I’ll ever live a day where I don’t regret not standing up to her and convincing her to stay in Sydney.’
After we both stood in silence, staring off the cliff’s edge, I finally took the journals from Jarrah and ran my fingers over the covers. The leather felt like it had aged decades since I’d given them to her. She’d clearly handled them often, the oil from her skin polishing the grain from rough to smooth. I hugged them tightly against my chest.
‘To be totally honest,’ Jarrah began, ‘I thought sharing this with you was a bad idea. Like, seriously, she thought your dad was involved – why pick you? But she was adamant that you’d do whatever it took to find out the truth. She said you were tenacious.’
I smiled, before realising Michael had said almost the exact same thing.
‘Lily’s lucky, but luck runs out eventually…’
‘She’s right though,’ I told Jarrah. ‘I am tenacious.’
‘Yeah, maybe. I mean, the
knife was a good start. But if you’re serious about protecting yourself, you’ll need an upgrade. Do you want me to try to get you something? I might know a guy.’
‘A knife guy?’
‘More like a “miscellaneous illegal accoutrement” kind of guy.’
I laughed. ‘Kiama’s a hunting and angling town. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get knives here. Also, my dad has a stash of confiscated weapons in our back shed. I found a grenade in there once. He’s adamant it’s decommissioned, but…’ I shrugged.
We both chuckled, but at almost the exact same time it petered out and became awkward. It didn’t feel right to be joking about my dad, not after what I’d learned that night.
‘Speaking of hunting,’ Jarrah began. ‘You’re going to have to prepare yourself for what’s in there.’
I looked down at the journals.
‘It’s really fucking bad, Lo. Like, PTSD-inducing, you-will-never-sleep-again, burn-the-world-to-the-ground bad. I mean, it sounds so innocuous when they refer to them as “fox hunts”, but then you find out that they don’t even hunt foxes, they hunt fucking –’
In the split second before he finished his sentence, an image popped into my head: a little girl in a forest, dressed in white, with a blood-red fox mask covering her face.
‘Kids,’ I blurted out, finishing his sentence but wishing that I hadn’t.
How did I know that? How could I possibly have known that? It was enough to make me want to bend over the lookout’s railing and vomit into the ocean below.
Jarrah was understandably suspicious, but I genuinely had no idea how I kept filling in the blanks. The details didn’t even feel like memories. Instead, it was like a static image had been implanted in my mind – fully formed, devoid of any context. There was nothing connecting it to anything else. No web of memories for me to get tangled in. I tried to explain that to Jarrah, but it just made him even more convinced that I was involved.
‘I’m not in a cult,’ I protested, dumbfounded that I even needed to say the words out loud. ‘I swear.’