I’m doing it now.
The anxiety is crashing over me in waves so powerful that it pins me down and makes my body twitch. I’m doing the breathing. I’m wishing that my father would come and rescue me. He never will. He can’t because he’s broken.
7
LONE
I don’t know how long the Red Man has been shaking me. It feels like hours. My body aches inside and out. My head fuzzes and throbs like a radio out of tune.
I’m Gretel. I’m Briar Rose and Little Red Cap. Why is it always the girls who suffer in those fairy tales? The boys find tricky ways out. The boys come home with a fortune in gold.
‘I’m not going to talk about Dad. I’m not doing this, any of this any more. I don’t have to.’
He puts his hands on the sides of my face and squeezes, mashing my cheeks into my teeth. His chest is heaving ‘It’s His turn to say sorry to me! Yes, he will! And you will too.’
He lets go. He scrambles out of the tent and I can hear him muttering and the sound of his feet scuffing through the grass as he walks away.
He could leave me here. I could be rid of him altogether. For ever. It’s too easy.
That was all I had to do. I should have done it years ago.
I start to laugh, and then there it is, the un-electrified half of my cage. I can see it, but I don’t move. It’s a portcullis opening up in my mind. It’s a yawning guillotine and I know that what is worse than being with the Red Man is being without him.
PART SIX
Going sane
Sinner, there is no such thing
Beginner, I have learned to sing
Forever I must walk this earth
Like some forgotten soldier.
‘SINNER’
NEIL FINN
1
CHOKED
Scott winks at me and for once he’s not just the runner at the chemist’s shop who shares the same dad as me. He’s Scott who is family. Then there are sirens, but not for long, and the woman with the baby starts screaming.
There are policemen outside. Nobody has said anything, but I know. There’s a dread deep in my belly.
Scott isn’t joking any more. He steps forward and he opens the ziplock bags. He tips the pills into his mouth. He’s chewing them. He opens bags and vials and he’s throwing them back. I can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he tries to swallow.
I think maybe they’re lollies after all.
There’s foam coming out of Scott’s mouth now. Dad is staring at him. His lips are turned down, but he doesn’t try to stop it. Dad should be trying to stop him. Nobody is saying anything. The only noise is the woman and the baby both screaming. It’s so high it goes right inside your head.
The door opens and the policemen are right there. The old man starts out of his chair and stumbles two steps and then sprawls on the floor.
One of the officers takes the baby out of the woman’s arms. She doesn’t resist. Her mouth is open wide so I can see her fillings. The snot gathers on her top lip and the tears slide down her throat and soak into her shirt.
Scott’s choking. He’s retching and retching, his chest heaves and his back arches. The foam is running over his chin and it hits the ground in little splatters. His face is going red. It’s so red it’s purple.
It’s all happening quickly, but none of the police officers is running. One of them kicks the back of Scott’s knees and he crumples to the ground. They turn him on his side. The policeman has Scott’s mouth open. He’s holding his tongue down with his fingers.
Scott’s staring at me. His eyes are so wide they look as though they’re going to pop out. He coughs again, a really big one, and suddenly the whites of his eyes go red, filled with blood. I scream and draw my knees up to my chest. He’s still staring at me, his face is red – all red, even his eyeballs – and purple and swollen.
Someone lifts me up by my underarms and carries me out of the room. The police officer carries me out into the street and it’s daylight. It’s an afternoon and the sun shines through the leaves, making dapples on the footpath. A pair of Indian myna birds squabble on a low branch.
An old lady down the road is wheeling out her rubbish bin. A car goes past and slows down. The driver is rubbernecking. Inside one of the police cars parked on the kerb I see an officer with the baby on his lap. The baby’s face is scrunched as it screams. Its little hands are waving and trembling with the strain of it.
A van turns into the laneway. It’s an ambulance. There are no lights and sirens. It’s come to take Scott away. Scott’s choked. He’s choked to death on Dad’s drugs.
2
DOBBERS WEAR NAPPIES
Itsy made me go to the court on the day my dad was going to be called to the stand. She dressed me in pink flounces and ribbons, as if I was a little kid. She was still tugging the tag off the skirt in the cab on the way there.
Itsy wore a black suit and not very much make-up. Her hair was neat and she looked competent and beautiful. After she’d paid for the taxi she walked quickly, as if she was going to a meeting and I was her heavy briefcase.
On the front steps of the courthouse there were reporters and a few television cameras. Some of the photographers took photos of us, but mostly they ignored us so I guessed they must have been waiting for someone else to arrive.
The courtroom was all wood. I remember that it smelled like a wet woolly jumper, but maybe I imagined that smell because of the wigs.
It was boring and mostly the people in the black capes spoke in slow, monotonous voices using words or combinations of words that I didn’t understand. I swung my feet under the chair, rolled my hair around my finger and wished that I’d brought a Big W catalogue so that I could daydream about all the toys I wanted.
After a while a witness was called. He swore his name was Inspector Michael Craig Winter. He sat down. He was wearing a suit and a serious face. I tugged on Mummy’s arm ready to tell her that I knew that man, but then they started the questions and everyone was so quiet and serious that I was too scared to talk. I twisted the hem of my skirt in my fingers and decided to tell her later.
Katie’s dad talked about the ‘incident on Farley Road’. He said he’d received a tip-off and his glance flickered around the courtroom, landed on my face, cold and flat, like a slap, and then continued on towards the jury.
I felt hot and itchy all of a sudden, and when I looked down I realised that I’d wet myself. I started to cry, as softly as could because I was embarrassed. Itsy carried me out of the courtroom, and I cried louder because I knew that everyone could see what I’d done.
3
CALVES AND CARS
The first thing that hits me is the air, so fresh, moist and earthy it feels like mineral water for my lungs.
The darkness has sucked the colour away and everything is shades of grey. I squint into the gloom and strain to make the shapes into forms that I recognise. After a dozen paces my eyes adjust and I can make out branches and shrubs around me. The sky is lighter on the horizon. Dawn.
The ground is spongy and damp. As I sink into it I can feel the mud sticking to the soles of my feet and squishing between my toes. Along the way I find a rusty star picket leaning against a tree. I pull it out of the ground and use it as a walking stick.
I’m not following a path, but every now and then I find an animal track and follow that until the thick scrub becomes impenetrable. I don’t understand why they just stop. Sometimes I stand still, listening, watching for some clue as to why this part of the bush is a destination for some animal.
As the morning warms and there is no sign of humans I’m getting the panicky fluttering feeling. I’m finding it hard to swallow.
Then there’s a road.
As soon as I step out from the trees, the sun sears my skin. I abandon my star picket, cross the gravel and stand in the middle of the black tar. It’s gummy with heat. My skin feels steeped in sunlight. Even my hair is hot.
I don’t know which way to go. One way
leads further into the mountains and the other to civilisation, but I don’t know which is which. There is a gentle slope up a hill.
I’ve got a Paul Simon song running through my head and I murmur along.
I can’t run, but I can walk much faster than this.
It sounds hopeful and I start to smile. I don’t know which way to go, because freedom isn’t a place. I head up the hill, because it looks like the wrong way, and it’s harder, and life is like that.
I walk and walk. Halfway up a winding hill I stop to roll up the legs of my pyjama pants. My shins are sweaty and I’m wishing for water.
I reach the crest of the hill and on the other side emerald paddocks peppered with black-and-white dairy cows take my breath away. There are fences of wood encrusted with lichen. Old gates tilted with age prop against chunky grey posts. It looks like an ad for butter, or fruit cordial.
The cows have yellow tags on their ears. They stare at me vacantly and warily. In the distance I can see a kelpie nose-down and trotting – patrolling its borders. A calf jogs towards me, pauses and then springs away with its tail in the air – its belly jouncing up and down. I don’t think I have ever seen any creature so civilised and domesticated. My eyes fill with tears.
Beyond the paddocks there is more scrub and the road snakes through it. I’m not ready for the bush yet and I’m tired from walking. Instead I carefully climb through the barbed-wire fence. It snags my clothes and hair. I stop to unpick myself from its grasp.
In a dense patch of cropped grass I lie down, eyes closed and arms flung out like a starfish. Blades of grass fold against the back of my neck and tickle my earlobes in the breeze. The inside of my eyelids are vermilion. I throw one forearm across my eyes, but I can still sense the change in the quality of light when a cloud passes overhead. Insects chirrup rhythmically, and every now and then the calves call and the cows groan in return.
I hear the whisper of feet moving through the grass towards me. The Red Man. The man shaped like scissors. My monster, not in the night-time, electric-cage of my mind, but outside, out here in the daylight. My heart thumps and adrenaline shoots through my limbs. I sit up suddenly, opening my eyes. For a second the world is overexposed and saturated with colour. I see my curious calf hurtling away across the field. Thirty metres away he skids to a stop and wheels around, snorting at me, and I laugh as I rock back onto my elbows.
It feels good and it will take some getting used to.
Then I stop and tilt my head.
I say the word aloud and it sounds stupid, like a birdcall.
Car.
There’s a car coming.
I scramble to my feet and sprint for the fence. I have my leg cocked, ready to climb through when it occurs to me that I don’t know who it is. I lie down in the grass on my stomach and think.
The car will be something small, sensible and white – the safety colour. It will be an elderly spinster. Her clothes will be starched. The car will smell of hot vinyl, lanolin and baking. She will be wearing sand-coloured Pollyanna shoes and beige stockings, but it won’t hide the dark purple veins climbing up her legs like twisted vines. The flesh before her toes will bulge above the leather. On the back seat there will be a Tupperware container of homemade scones wrapped in a teatowel. She’ll be going to town to see her daughter-in-law who has a new baby.
It will be a grey ute. The tarp over the back flaps and the passenger window doesn’t close properly and whistles. It will be a farmer with a daughter about my age. He will have just bought her a new pony for her birthday. He’s going into town to the produce store. He’s bought two boxes of bees. He’s never kept bees before.
The car is louder now and when I catch my breath I peek around the fence post to the road.
It’s a dark green four-wheel-drive with tinted windows – a Pajero. I squint at it but I can’t see inside.
It could be a businessman commuting from his hobby farm, talking on his mobile phone and cursing at the bad reception out here. It could be a mum with a two-year-old spilling Popper juice all over the back seats.
I’ve never been good at asking for help before. It’s always gone badly. Anxiety scratches at my neck. I’m doing my breathing. There’s no way of knowing until you try.
I wait till the car is nearly in front of me and then I stand up, waving my arms.
There are 20 543 840 people in this country. They can’t all be bad. Sometimes you’ve got to take a chance.
4
RUNNING
The brakelights flicker twice and I think it’s going to stop, but no, it’s slowing to go round the bend and then the Pajero is gone. I’m feeling disappointed, relieved and foolish. I walk across the paddock to where the cows have settled under a tree. They ogle me nervously, but only the calves scamper away. I lean my back against the tree.
I could sleep here. I would love to sleep. My throat is parched and I can imagine the tissue inside cracking into fissures like a dry riverbed.
I’ll get up and find the river soon. I’ll drink from it, even though the counsellors told us not to, unless we boiled it. I’ll rest my eyes first. Even through my eyelids I can sense the branches swaying, letting the sunlight dapple my face.
I don’t have any sense of time passing, but I’m jerked awake.
‘Poss!’ The voice whispers. I’m groggy, but I know only one person would call me that. Even before my eyes are open properly I’m scrambling backwards on the heels of my hands.
He’s leaning over me with a look in his eye that’s almost tenderness.
‘Get away from me!’ I yell in his face. The animals lumber to their feet in alarm. They thunder away and I can feel the weight of them through my hands.
I clamber to my feet and run. I can feel his hand reach for my ankle, graze the skin, but he misses. I run across the field, glad of the soft surface.
I look over my shoulder. Scott is standing under the tree with his hands on his hips. I’m drained. I knew escaping was too easy. I knew the whole time.
I’m running. I don’t know why I’m running because he will always find me. He’s my monster.
5
THROWING ROCKS AT CARS
I’ve found my star picket. I’m stumbling through the bush, leaning against it periodically to get my breath back.
Valderee, Valderah, Valderee, Valderah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
When Scott comes for me again I’m going to stab him – probably in the guts where it’s softer. I’m going to stuff him in a hole. Then I’m going to go back to my campsite, eat a can of baked beans and wait for my bus.
That’s what I came out here to do, because it’s all about what you can get away with. It’s not about justice, only stealth, speed and opportunity.
I’m practising my breathing. My legs are shaking and I can’t stop them. I lean against the trunk and the bark presses against my back. I can feel ants climbing up the inside of my shirt. I grip my star picket so tightly that my fingers have gone numb.
He’s coming. I can hear him wheezing and gurgling as he runs through the bush. I can hear his feet scuffing through the leaves and the crunch and snap of twigs under his feet. He’s getting closer.
I could let him pass. I could squat down and wait till he’s gone. I will find my way out. I could leave him here. Then what?
In two three, out two three.
I have to do this, or he’ll chase me for ever. Even if I lock the doors and bar the windows, in the night when I wake up I’ll wonder if he’s in the kitchen in the dark, waiting, or stealing down the hallway. Every time I close my eyes I’ll hear him. He’ll be around the corner of every street. He’ll be on the other side of every tinted window.
He’s close now. I can smell him. His footfalls are so close I can feel them through the soles of my feet. I take one more deep breath.
Then he’s there. Right by my side. He passes me. I whirl my stake around and crack him across the back. He stumbles and lets out a yelp. I thwack him in the calf. He falls and rolls away from me. I rush
forward and hold my stick to his chest. He looks up at me, frightened. The veins in his forehead are raised and I can see the pulse in his neck.
I jab him hard with the picket. I feel it connect with bone. I stab him again, hard in the sternum. He cries out in pain, and I grin. The muscles in my cheek twitch just below my eye.
I’ve never felt so strong. I have him. I’m standing over the Red Man with my stake hovering over his neck. I can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.
The sweat is dripping off my nose. I can see the drops bursting in little flowers on his shirt.
His lips are cracked and the skin is lifting like fish scales. He’s whispering something. I can’t hear it. His eyes are wide and he’s lying on his back like a dog.
I could stab him through the neck. The flesh is soft and the stake is heavy. Gravity would do half the job. I could leave him pinned to the ground, limbs flailing and gargling as he drowns in his own blood. I press down and I can see a circle of shadow in the depression where the stake digs into his flesh.
All I have to do is push. It would be easy. I’m surprised how easy. As easy as throwing rocks off a bridge. Push him into eternity.
The Red Man is waiting. I need to decide if I’m the sort of person who throws rocks at cars just because there’s no net.
6
TRUCE
I would like to kill him. It would give me the same kind of satisfaction as sinking my chompers into Paul Hiller’s arm in the canteen line, or shoving that loaf down Short-sleeves’ throat.
I tell Scott the joke about the serial killer.
‘. . . So then the serial killer says, “You’re scared? I have to walk back by myself !”’
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