The Silent Daughter

by Kirsty Ferguson

  Danni could hear the roaring wind, louder as she trudged closer to the back of the house. It seemed to be getting much louder, almost as if it was taking on a life of its own. She rounded the corner, and the wind seemed warm here somehow. Danni looked up at Mia’s window, and for a long moment, she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing.

  Suddenly she screamed her daughter’s name as she heard the great whoosh of the wind, felt its heat warming her frozen face.

  The house was on fire!

  Her mind screamed at her and, for a moment, she was too stunned to register what that actually meant.

  The greedy flames of fire had already engulfed the back of the house, the destructive golden-red tongue licking at the upstairs windows.

  ‘Joe! Joe, wake up!’ Danni screamed, arms clutched around her belly in fright as she repeatedly yelled Joe’s name again and again.

  Pooch, yapping loudly, ran around her legs in a tight circle, sensing her distress. He began barking in earnest, running into her as he completed his loops, adding his voice to the cacophony of sounds.

  The flames, burning into the night, ate the weather board house like it was made of paper, consuming it hungrily. The house didn’t stand a chance. Danni’s heart banged loudly in her chest as she ran towards the back door. Her left foot rolled painfully on the edge of garden bed, the sharp stab immediate in her ankle. Ignoring the intense feeling, Danni made it to the back door, hoping against hope that she had forgotten to lock the door this night.

  But of course she hadn’t. The door remained stubbornly closed and her small fists slammed on the unyielding wood as she screamed. So worried about safety and protecting what was theirs, Danni had insisted on bars on the ground floor windows. She reasoned that they lived far from town, and in the event of a break in the police would take a half hour to reach them, maybe longer. She regretted that decision now, berating herself as she ran from window to window, pulling futilely on the warming solid metal bars. She had to get inside, she had to warn her family, get them to safety.

  ‘No, no, no, no!’ she screamed into the night. Still screaming, Danni ran back to the rear of the house, the dog chasing her, thinking it was a game now. He yipped again, then lay down on his haunches, waiting for Danni to throw his ball. The flames were still eating away at the back of the house, the columns of black smoke weaving their way into the night sky, illuminated by the raging inferno. Golden embers sparked from inside the house, shooting upwards, lighting up the darkness for a brief moment like fireworks before they died in the sky. Danni ran back to the door, screaming and pounding on it, trying to get anyone’s attention, trying to get inside, trying to do anything but stand there helplessly and watch her house burn down with her husband and children in it.

  Danni’s breathing was ragged, her screams tearing from her throat, primal with pain and fear. Ash flew into the air to come to rest on her outstretched fingers as they reached toward her family. She looked up, watched as it floated down from the burning house, staining her fingers with its ashy existence. Tears fell from Danni’s eyes, soaking her cheeks, dripping off her chin. She was standing as close as she could to the house without getting burnt, screaming her family’s names, feeling the heat baking her skin, turning it a ruddy red colour. She would take their places in an instant and she begged to an uncaring God above to save them. Instead, she could only watch them burn.

  She couldn’t call for help, her phone was upstairs, she couldn’t flee to a neighbour’s house because her car keys were behind the locked front door, she couldn’t break in because of the barred windows that she’d insisted upon. Her neighbours were so far away, they probably wouldn’t even see the fire unless they happened to be awake and looking in the direction of their house. Danni sank to her knees, watching as the fire engulfed her house.

  Then she heard it. A single scream that cut through the roaring of the all-consuming fire. She looked wildly at the windows, trying to find where the scream was coming from. Danni ran to the other side of the house, screaming Noah and Alexandra’s names, expecting to see one of them banging on the window for her to help them. The scream rang out into the night again, but it wasn’t coming from her youngest children’s rooms. She raced around to the back of the house again and saw Mia standing in her bedroom, in front of the window.

  ‘Mia!’ she screamed, the sound disappearing into the night, overtaken by the roar of the fire.

  Mia looked around wildly until she saw her mother. Danni could see her lips moving but couldn’t make out what she was saying. Mia disappeared for a second then reappeared with her desk chair and threw it at her window, the shattering of the glass swallowed up by the whooshing flames. Once she cleared the glass she stood on the veranda for a few seconds before sliding over the burning hot tin roof, then dropping heavily to the dirt. The house groaned alarmingly as Danni ran to her eldest child and pulled her back from the burning house with all the strength that she could muster. Her clothes were hot to the touch. Danni was surprised they weren’t on fire, such was the heat that radiated from them. Once out of danger, Danni held her in her arms, crooning her name and rocking her back and forth as they both watched the veranda cave in, and the rest of the old two-storey house being swallowed up by the rising flames. Mia had got out just in time.

  Mia coughed in her arms, struggling to breathe. But Danni could only hold her and stare at the total destruction in front of her. Her babies! Gone. She hoped with all of her heart that they hadn’t known what was happening around them. That they hadn’t felt the terror that Mia had. In that moment, she wished them all a peaceful and painless death.

  Danni had no idea how long she sat with Mia in her arms. She was mesmerised by the raging fire that had claimed nearly all that she had. Tears made tracks through the ash on her face as she dropped a kiss onto Mia’s head, her hair smelling of smoke and something else. A strong smell clung to her. It wasn’t just soot and the smell of singed hair, there was something more sinister lurking beneath the fire and smoke smell.

  Petrol?

  A moment of clarity and pain hit Danni. Had someone deliberately set fire to her home? Had someone deliberately condemned her family to death? She was supposed to be in that house. It was only because Pooch had been barking that she was outside at all. Had Pooch been aware that all was not right? Did he sense something or someone that didn’t belong? She tried to recall if anything had been out of the ordinary, but she had lost time again while outside. Had she been supposed to die too?

  Danni held Mia in her arms, the young girl saying nothing. Finally, the house was razed to the ground. The flames of the fire were replaced by the flames of dawn. Gold streaks with a hint of rose blush crept across the sky, marred only by the oily smoke still venting into the changing sky. The family farmhouse, which had stood for over a hundred years, was no more.

  The sun carried on its creep over the horizon, casting light over the ruined house. Finally, Danni could see the extent of the total and absolute devastation that was her home. Most of her family, gone. Her house, gone. Her heart was crushed, annihilated, gone, like the people she loved. She had no more tears left to cry. She was spent, her face swollen from the tears she had shed throughout the night. Her arms were stiff from holding Mia for hours. Mia moved after being still for so long. She turned around on her knees and buried her head into Danni’s chest, her heart breaking, her sobs shattering Danni’s soul. Mia was all Danni had left. She wrapped her arms around her, stroking her dirty and singed hair, whispering to her over and over.

  ‘You’ll be okay, you’ll be okay,’ she said, not knowing if she ever would be okay again. If either of them would be. Mia nodded against her chest and hugged her mother tighter. She had just survived a horrific ordeal, one that would be etched on her memory for as long as she drew breath. She had lost her brother, sister and father. Just like that. Mia couldn’t even form words on her lips, let alone talk to her mother about what had happened.

  Danni put her head down and smelt her daughter’s
hair again. Definitely a strong petrol smell to it. She was now sure that the fire had been deliberately lit.

  Finally, someone came. Her neighbour Ryan Jamison found Danni sitting in the dirt near the smouldering ruins of their house.

  Danni raised her head at the sound of an engine, yet she didn’t have the energy to stand, let alone cry out for help.

  ‘Joe! Is anyone there?’ yelled a familiar voice as he ran around the side of the house, screaming out for Joe and Danni. ‘Oh God, Danni! What happened?’ he babbled, the shock stamped across his suntanned face. Eyes wide, his mouth hung open as he stared at the stricken woman and her daughter, and then at the burnt-out house.

  ‘What happened?’ he yelled again at the shocked and uncomprehending woman.

  She stood, brushing the dirt from her dressing gown. ‘I… I don’t know what happened. I was locked out of the house. They’re… they’re gone.’

  Ryan, hands in fists by his side, stared at the house. It still gave off burning heat, the pall of cloying smoke hung in the air, clinging to their clothes and hair, dirtying the pristine sky. Slowly, as if finally understanding that it didn’t matter how long he took, Ryan pulled his mobile phone from his stained and faded work trousers and dialled the emergency services.

  It didn’t take long. Well, so Ryan said. Danni seemed unaware of the passage of time. Mia sat quietly beside her, saying nothing. Danni stared at her, willing her to say something, anything, while staying quiet herself to allow Mia time to process what had happened. That she survived the fire would weigh heavily on her.

  ‘They’re coming Danni, hold on,’ Ryan said, putting his arms around her, his voice sounding strangled as he spoke. She pulled away from him and saw that he was crying.

  ‘Who’s coming?’ she asked quietly, her mind a vastness of flames and ash.

  ‘The fire brigade.’

  ‘There’s nothing they can do, is there? They’re gone, Ryan. I need… I need… something… I don’t know.’ Danni wanted to cry. She wanted to open the floodgates again and never ever close them, but she had to stay strong. For herself, for Mia, for the memory of her family. They would want her to be strong. She and Mia were all the other had in the world now. Survivors.

  Danni heard the piercing wail of the siren shattering the silence of the morning. She heard the crunch of tyres on the gravel patch in front of their house, the slamming of doors and the shouts of men calling out instructions to one another. Their voices intruded upon the almost sacred scene in front of her. This was her home. It was the resting place of her family. Danni looked at Mia again, sitting still as a rock, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. Danni longed to go to her, but Ryan was talking to her and, for a few moments, she had no idea what he was saying. All she could hear was a deafening roar in her ears, consuming her the way the fire had consumed the house. She watched as his lips moved, showing teeth that then disappeared behind his full lips. He stopped talking as the fire fighters, dressed in their slick and dirty yellow uniforms, started hosing down the ruined house. It was then that she realised the deafening sound she had heard was coming from the fire hose that shot a stream of water onto the burnt-out house.

  Her house. Their home.

  3

  She was what you’d call fragile. She was delicate, easily startled. She never had any friends at school, never had anyone to giggle with behind cupped hands, never had anyone to sit with at lunch. She always wondered why no one ever liked her. She was a nice person, well, so she thought. She had nice manners, was polite and kept to herself. Yet she still couldn’t make a friend to save her life.

  Sitting at the lunch table by herself, eating her sandwich, she played with the small green box of sultanas in her lunch box. She hated sultanas; her mother knew that, so why did she keep buying them? She upended the box, dividing the dried fruit into two equal piles. There was one left over. One lonely sultana sitting there in the middle of the two piles, surrounded by a sea of sultanas. That was how she felt. Alone, adrift in a sea of people who looked like her, but she could never seem to find a way in with them.

  She was busy deciding what to do with the odd sultana when a shadow fell over her. She looked up, face shining full of hope. Maybe someone did want to be friends with her after all.

  ‘Hi,’ she said sweetly, her voice pitched higher than usual. She closed her lunch box so they wouldn’t see the sultana sitting there, trying to decide which group to join.

  ‘Hi,’ said Julie, her honey-blonde hair catching the light, dazzling in its loveliness. No matter how much she feared her, she thought her beautiful. ‘How are you, baby?’ she said brightly, flicking back her long hair and turning to smile at the two girls behind her.

  The word posse came into mind. She was a well-read girl, on account of her not having any friends. Her mother had always ensured she had a book with her. But she refused to pull a book from her locker at school. She would not make herself an unnecessary target. What she wanted most of all was friends. So, when popular girl Julie had come up to where she was sitting and given her a nickname, she couldn’t believe it. You only gave nicknames to friends, right?

  She gave her a huge grin, hopefully not coming across as too desperate. She wanted to ask Julie what she wanted, why she was talking to her. Was she lost or had they finally decided that she was cool? She was sure she was, she just needed people to see it, and having Julie talk to her was a good start.

  The popular girl spoke, smiling down on her. ‘Want to come sit at our table? I see you alone every day. We want to be your friends.’

  ‘You do?’ she asked, surprised and overjoyed. Finally, she would have not one friend, but three! Could she really be so lucky? She followed the tittering girls back to their table. Bag on the floor, she sat down opposite Julie.

  ‘What do you have for lunch?’ Julie asked politely, a sidelong glance at her equally blonde friend on her left.

  ‘Oh, I’m finished,’ she said, not wanting them to see the mess of sultanas in her lunch box. ‘Nothing to see.’

  ‘Well perhaps you’d like to share my lunch,’ Julie said, smiling so her dimples came out to play in both cheeks. Julie pulled out a dirty brown paper bag and her heart began to pound. She hated germs and she just knew there was something in there that she didn’t want to see.

  ‘Put your hand inside this paper bag,’ Julie demanded, but sweetly so it sounded like she’d be rude if she said no.

  Alarm bells started clanging in her head. She felt the need to wash her hands just looking at the bag. Her heart started racing, clickety clack, clickety clack. Her blood rushed loudly through her ears with a swishing sound. She knew this was wrong. She was wrong to trust Julie, she knew this now, but Julie grabbed her hand and pulled it towards the brown paper bag forcefully. No one came to help her. They either watched, unable to look away, like a car accident, or they studiously ignored what was going on with the blonde, popular bully and her latest victim.

  In her terrified state, she looked around the lunchroom with wide eyes. Wasn’t anyone going to help her? She couldn’t handle mess. They all knew it. That’s half the reason they made fun of her. She washed her hands about fifty times a day, she didn’t like the dirty world around her with its filth trying to cling to her like a second skin.

  Julie pulled her hand, hard, toward the bag. ‘This is taking too long,’ she said, her smile turning to an angry scowl. She grabbed the bag and pushed it towards the squirming girl’s outstretched hand. She shoved the bag around her hand and cinched it closed around her wrist.

  The young slight girl who hated mess let out an ear-piercing scream that rocked around the room. If everyone wasn’t looking at her before, they were now.

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a fucking baby. It’s just some dirt and worms. Calm down.’

  But she was having none of it. Still she screamed until Julie let go of her and the bag of worms dropped to the ground, wriggling towards her Mary Jane shoes. She screamed again, rooted to the spot as one crawled ever closer. Then s
he looked at her hand, dirt under her nails, a worm still twirled around her finger. She shook her hand with a hysterical scream. The worm fell off and plopped to the ground.

  Julie laughed almost maniacally, looking back at her two friends, who laughed along with her, although one was looking a little sorry for her. Not enough to speak of up for her, of course, but sorry enough. ‘For fuck’s sake, get your shit together.’ Julie looked round at the room, laughing louder, trying to rile up the small crowd who stood around them watching, relief in their eyes that it wasn’t them she was bullying.

  Tears pouring down her face, snot leaking from her nose, she pushed through the crowd that had gathered to witness her humiliation and made her way to the toilet. She took off blindly, holding her arm up in the air. Pushing through the door, she ran to the sink as turned on the tap, running her hand under the cold water then lathering up her hands, rinsing them, then repeating the process so many times that she lost count.

  She heard the bell go but she couldn’t stop. Soon, her hands were red raw.

  4

  Danni watched as the house was doused in water that found its way from the pile of burnt rubble, rolling slightly downhill toward her. Anything not destroyed by the fire would certainly be ruined by the torrents of water gushing into the house. Looking down at her fluffy white slippers, stained with the grey ash water, she took a step backwards, but the water moved with her, as if hunting her down. Her toes were now cold and wet and soggy. The morning was chilly, the spray of water washed over her, driven into her body by the cold breeze. Ryan tried to comfort her, his hand upon her shoulder as one of the men in a dirty yellow uniform began walking towards them. Ryan stepped forward to greet him, putting out his hand to shake the man’s. Was Danni expected to shake his hand too? Ryan’s hand was dwarfed by the sheer size of the other man’s hand. Danni tried to read the name on his coat but couldn’t. It was as if her eyes were failing her, along with everything else. She heard them talking, but their words were mumbled, indistinct. She heard a squeal of laughter and looked around, her head snapping this way and that, looking for the source of such amusement at a time of mourning. Then she really listened.