She could confess. Tell them she was sorry. And, surely, they would then forgive her, and they would be able to rest.
She’d planned to stop it. She had. But she wanted to hear from her girls.
SIXTH DAY
SUNDAY
AFTERNOON/NIGHT
She watched the painter flick his hair out of his eyes over and over again. Then she said, “Would you like a haircut? I’m good at it. I can just do the floppy bit in the front if you like or give you a full on makeover.”
He laughed. “Moi? I haven’t had a haircut in years.”
“Oh, really?” she said, smiling at him. She wanted to cut hair. She wanted to cut his. This was a good thing, because cutting hair centered her, and she hadn’t touched a strand for months.
“I’ll grab my kit. Meet you in the back courtyard.”
They called it a courtyard, but really it was just a small tiled area with a few old chairs stacked in it.
She went to her car for her haircutting kit. She never traveled without it; kept it there rather than inside and she’d never been sure why. It’s not like she’d had a dangerous life that she’d need to escape from in a hurry, just a dull and very mean one.
Dora set the painter up and got to work. Others watched through their windows and then came down to join them bringing drinks and crap food. She did what she could for him; cleaned him up. Transformed how he appeared. But he still had the same facial tics. The same nervous gestures. Still. He looked younger, almost handsome.
She proceeded to Roy’s hair, cutting it into a modern style. He had good hair, quite thick and surprisingly healthy. She’d made him shower before she touched him and even given him her soap, so he smelled familiar and clean.
“Go put some good clothes on before I blow dry it. Then we’ll get the full effect.”
He stared at her. She hadn’t let him look at himself yet.
“Your funeral clothes,” Val said. She and Trevor were watching it all, Trevor with a dazed, empty look about him. “Or you could borrow one of Trevor’s suits. Lord knows that man has a lot of clothes.”
In one of Trevor’s suits, with his hair done, Roy looked good.
“Close your mouth Roy,” Dora said, and they actually gasped at how handsome he looked.
“Me next!” the doctor said.
Dora ran her fingers through his hair. “You do need a touch up. Someone needs to go to the supermarket to pick up some hair dye.”
“I’ll go,” Val said. “At least I’ll get the right one.” She wore the jewelry they’d found in the safe and seemed softer. Dora wasn’t sure they’d done the right thing in not showing her the photos, but she thought they had.
They all queued up, wanting a cut, and she said, “Pay me in food,” to Mrs. Reddy and “Pay me in kind,” to Luke.
For a moment, standing in the late afternoon sunshine, all of them neat and clean, transformed, they could have been anywhere. Dora felt almost at peace. Almost good.
“You’re smiling,” Luke said. “Good to see. We’ve all chosen the compromise here. We’re all thinking life will improve. We’re clinging on to the last hope, keeping a roof over our heads, as crappy and leaky as the roof might be.”
Val returned with bags of shopping: dye for everyone, snacks, drinks. Expensive treats none of them could afford. Dora saw tears in her eyes as the group descended and felt an affinity for her in that moment. It was nice to help. To be useful.
The doctor was next. His hair was an awful red and Dora told him she’d dye it a good dark brown. “It’s not common for a man to dye his hair,” she said. “Especially an older man. You have to be subtle about it.”
“I’ve always done it,” he said. “For years, anyway. I had a stepdaughter who wanted to dye her hair purple. Her mum wouldn’t let her, but she asked me. I said no, though. I never did help her dye her hair. Never did.”
“You didn’t?”
“No! They said I got agitated and killed her. I didn’t. I really didn’t.”
There was silence. This was past; they didn’t talk about the past.
Val said, “God, it’s stuffy in the rooms. The windows don’t open. It stinks in there.”
“That’s what I try to tell them,” Roy said, “when they stop me trying to make the rooms smell nice. Every occupant leaves a trace. Deliberate or accidental. Some you’d think would leave nothing at all. Not the vaguest of memories. But they all leave a stink of themselves.”
Freesia had joined them by now, and she collected all the hair. “You can’t let a witch get it,” she said. “That’s bad luck.”
“You honestly think we can have shittier lives than this?” the painter said.
Dora kept cutting. She didn’t want to think about that. While she cut hair she didn’t think about the words coming out of Trevor’s mouth, the number he spoke. Or about her children and all that she’d lost. Freesia collected all the hair up and burned it, filling the small courtyard with a nasty stink.
Freesia put her arm through Luke's possessively, but he barely acknowledged her existence. He looked tired, wiped out, as if he’d been running for hours. His defenses were down and he looked haunted and Dora thought: It’s not what he’s seen, it’s what he’s done. Never married, but always falling in love—always desperately, let’s-elope-in-love. With the girl in the supermarket who asked him to help her reach a jar on the top shelf, or was it the older lady who seemed nice and lively and smelled of cake and icing? The things he’s done; he’s beaten women, he’s got that violence in him. He’s only relaxed when he sleeps and he can hardly sleep.
His haircut was still very military. Very close to the head. She thought it made him feel like a member of the club. It was growing out a bit, though, so she said, “Trim?” and he gratefully sat for it.
She liked the feel of his head. It was firm, with a few bumps and dents. She liked the feel of his shoulders against her breasts, and she leaned forward into him, and he leaned back, and it was very, very sexy.
“Let me cut yours, Dora,” Freesia said. “I have a beauty diploma.”
“Same as Julia!” Dora said.
“Your hair looks like a mop!” Freesia said. “When was the last time you had it cut?”
Freesia had lied about having a diploma. She sheared one side of Dora’s hair down to stubble and laughed about it. Dora didn’t realize what she was doing until it was done, because it seemed impossible.
“You’re a fucking bitch, Freesia,” Luke said. “And she still looks a shitload better than you ever will.”
This ended the session.
Dora headed to her room, but only made it as far as Roy’s office. He caught her, calling out, “Don’t forget you’re doing Sunday dinner. You have to cook before you can eat, so unless you never want dinner, you have to cook.”
She had been warned about this but had forgotten.
“I don’t have any money for ingredients,” she said. “And I just cut everyone’s hair.”
“I’ll show you where everything is,” he said, ignoring her. He led her to the kitchen behind the breakfast room.
“Mr. Cox will pay, won’t you, Mr. Cox?” He was already sitting waiting in the breakfast room. Mr. Cox looked haunted, as if he was hearing voices. He’d slept with the ghosts so many times, ghost voices leaked through. He was tiny, his feet dangling from the chair, barely touching. “Dinner won’t be for hours, mate. But we need cash to get the stuff.”
Mr. Cox pulled out his wallet and handed over $40. “Receipt and change,” he said.
Dora was exhausted, but she understood about dutiful cooking, so she walked to the local supermarket and bought mince, lasagna sheets, tomato sauce, and onions to cook the lasagna recipe she’d found on the internet. It felt so strange to be out in the real world. Even stranger than it had a week ago. She felt even less a part of it. She bought napkins with sea shel
ls on them and it gave her a ridiculous amount of pleasure imagining what the others would think.
Julia came to help cook, or watch and keep company, at least. She could barely stand. “That last one was very hard,” she said.
“Yeah,” the doctor said. He, too, was in the kitchen. “Yeah, that ghost said, ‘Can I go, now? I’ve said my piece. I’ve got no more words left.’ But if he had no more words he’d be gone. That’s what’s happened to the others. And true enough, poor Julia jerked and started again.”
He mimicked her, jerking and shaking his arms.
Julia looked pale and drawn, as if part of her had been sucked away.
“We really shouldn’t let Roy do this.”
The doctor said, “No one is being hurt.”
But there was damage. You could see it. People less energetic. Losing some of their will, and most of them had little to begin with. Dora could see it even if they didn’t.
Julia said she loved the sleep it brought her. The peace. “There are no dreams in that sleep. You can’t get caught by surprise.”
Dora found this true, too. She wasn’t rested, but her mind had been still.
Julia said, “You need to be unconscious for it to work. My brother spoke in his coma sometimes. It didn’t sound like him. Roy says if my brother comes through he’ll let me hear it. He will come, one day. He’s making his way to me now. Coming for this.” She held up a tobacco tin. “Used to keep his wacky tobaccy in here.”
•••
The lasagna came out okay. She put it out to serve, but only Mr. Cox was there. He began eating noisily. The others would arrive later, in dribs and drabs.
“How is it?” she asked him. He had whisky that he shared with her.
“Tasty,” he said. “What’s the secret recipe?”
“Can’t share a secret!” she said.
“Some secrets are big, some secrets are small. I don’t know what I did anymore. What they did. Who took the children.”
“I was thinking I could talk to my children. I know them. I’ll understand what they’re saying. Do you think?”
“You can try. But be ready to hear the worst. And I’m not the one for it. Too many voices in this head.”
•••
The indent of Trevor’s head on her pillow. The smell of Val’s perfume.
It was late and she was exhausted. She lay in the dent Trevor had made on her mattress and closed her eyes. But soon, so soon, a ghost began to fill her room like a marshmallow expanding in the microwave. He was a big man, morbidly obese, walking over and back over her bed with great purpose. She was shaken to the core, freezing cold. She thought, is this Val’s dead husband? But he was slight, thin, not enormous like this.
She’d seen him naked in the photo; she knew what he looked like.
Dora slid out of bed and backed out of her room. She was sure she could smell him, feel him. He turned his head as she slid the door open, and his face creased with a look of fury.
She couldn’t run; she felt frozen. She backed up the hallway, watching for him to come after her, not wanting him to notice her.
She backed into Roy, hovering outside his office.
She pointed at her room. “He’s . . .”
“Ah, you’ve met the old inhabitant,” Roy said. “He died in your room. They had to knock the wall down to get him out. That’s why you’ve got a new door. Listen,” he said. “Listen, I want you do to something for me.”
He beckoned her into his office. Draped over the desk was an antique dress made of a dark, shiny cloth. Not silk. It looked like shiny, thick cotton, with embroidery almost covering it.
“I want you to wear it.” He was an old man and she’d never seen anything like interest in sex from him. “I’ll give you a month’s free board to wear it to bed,” he said. “You don’t want to be awake when they come through you. You hear a ghost talk from inside your own head, you’ll never be the same.”
“It is beautiful,” she said. It really was. She could see it was damaged by water in places, and there were rents that had been poorly mended.
“I call myself the receiver of the wreck,” Roy said. “Not official. But who is, these days? Used to be. Used to be. For me it’s receiving the people as well as the things, and who else can say they are willing to do that?”
He held the dress out.
“I want you to wear this dress. It came from the wreck and I think it was the captain’s wife’s dress. Or his girlfriend. Or he made the cabin boy wear it so he probably came all over it. Right? Like any man has done. Any girl has a dress like this.
“The captain is a big one. From all the things all the others have said we’ve pieced together his story.”
“You could just lay it over me while I’m asleep. Nice of you to ask, I guess.”
“It always works best if the person knows. Is willing. It can get ugly otherwise.”
“I’ll do it, but you need to do something in return. I want to go to the place my daughters . . . and see if we can bring back their ghosts. See if we can talk to them.”
Roy said, “Wear the dress. We’ll give you a good night’s sleep. And in return, we’ll see if we can drag your girls back home.”
She made him leave the room while she pulled the dress on. It seemed to settle on her like a curse; she could feel it clinging to her, seeping into her bones like oil.
“What if I get marshmallow man? He seems angry.”
“Most of them are. But I’m like a matchmaker. I try to put people together who’ll get along.”
He wasn’t very good at it, Dora thought. Then the doctor came, and Dora slept.
SEVENTH DAY
TUESDAY
BREAKFAST
Dora woke up hungry. This never happened, not since she was a kid, training for the hundred-meter race, going to bed early after hours at the pool.
She was hungry. She sat up quickly, keen to get to breakfast, but felt dizzy so sat still for a moment.
Her pajamas were limp with sweat. She stood to go to the bathroom, her stomach rumbling. It felt like her bladder was about to burst.
The sign said vacant. It usually did. On her floor there were two construction workers, men she hadn’t met, and they kept different hours. The shower was filthy today, the floor covered with grime. It made her dry retch to look at it.
The wee almost hurt and she hoped she didn’t have a yeast infection. Washing her hands, she glanced up in the mirror. She never liked looking at herself but you couldn’t help it here.
There was already a dark shadow on the side of her head. Her hair was growing back very quickly.
Her throat hurt.
It was baked beans and toast for breakfast. But it should have been spaghetti if it was Monday. It must be Tuesday, she thought.
“How’d you sleep?” Roy asked.
“Did he come?” she asked Roy. He shook his head. “You got someone else. It was good, all you got, but not the captain. You’ll try again. Won’t you?”
She didn’t answer. She said, “You still have to take me to my girls,” and he nodded.
“We’re going to see if we can get my girls today,” she told the room, and the rest of them clamored in, all saying get my loved one. The doctor wanted his sister. Julia wanted her brother. All of them clamoring at Roy, saying fuck you, I deserve this too.
“None of the rest of you were smart enough to think of it, were you?” Roy said.
•••
“Do you have something of theirs? Something to call them with?”
She showed him the hairbrushes, identical except one had a sticker of a unicorn, one a sticker of a panda.
She held the brushes close to her heart as they walked to her car.
Dora had not driven her car since she arrived at the rooming house. It felt strange but also familiar to be behind the wheel.
Not in any way comforting. The youngest one’s safety seat was still in place, and there were story tapes all over the floor. One in the player; she’d never take that out.
“It’s not too far?” Roy said. “I can’t go too far.”
It was four suburbs over, and he was okay with that.
The familiarity of all of it made her feel ill. She pulled into her driveway (one bump, a crack in the concrete) and stopped. “This is my place.”
“This is a shithole. I never pictured you living in a shithole.”
“Yeah, well. You marry a loser, you live in a shithole. The backyard is nice, though.”
“They died here?”
She’d turned the car off. “No . . . it was instinct, coming back.”
She took him to the place, the Safe House. The sign had been taken down, thank god, but there was nothing else to indicate what had happened.
“Yeah,” Roy said. “Now I feel it. It’s a fucken curse I have, I swear.”
They walked around the side of the house. It seemed empty but you could never be sure.
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s someone here,”
“Who is it?”
“Just one. Only one. Here.”
He lifted his hook and spun slowly, then edged forward like a dogcatcher after a stray dog. He shook, and sweat dripped off him although the day was cold.
“Someone,” he said. “Someone else who died here.”
She hadn’t said. Not even to herself, because that death was on her, too.
“My husband . . . when he found out. He came here. Before the police did. They found the man dead. You never know who’s capable of murder.”
Roy lifted his hook. “He’s coming with us whether you want him to or not. He’s got things to say. He must have used the brushes.”
“They always had them,” Dora said. “They’d take brushes and forget their lunches. Easily tangled hair. Like mine. They liked to brush.”
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