Wake

by Elizabeth Knox

  It was a mild spring night but eventually Sam got cold. She crawled under the covers. She could feel herself going, so sat up and opened a drawer in the bedside table. She took out a pen, and a pad of the spa’s stationery, and wrote a note. She ripped her note off the pad, folded it small, closed it in one fist, and lay down again.

  Theresa woke up. Jacob was shaking her. He said, in a whisper, ‘I need your help. Get Sam, and maybe Bub too.’ And then he was gone from her room.

  Theresa found Sam’s light still on. Sam was lying looking up at her bedroom ceiling as if listening to movements in a floor above. (There was no floor above.) ‘Jacob needs us,’ Theresa said. She left Sam to sort herself out, and knocked on Bub’s door. After a moment the door opposite—Belle’s—opened, and Bub poked his head out. He put his finger to his lips and said, ‘Belle’s fast asleep.’

  Theresa pointed down the hall, at the cracked door of Warren’s room.

  Bub came out, closed the door carefully and followed her.

  Jacob was kneeling by Warren’s bed. He’d rolled his friend to its edge so that Warren’s face was turned down to the floor. There was a small patch of vomit on the carpet, and more smeared on Warren’s face and in his hair. There was vomit filling his nose too, and the fluid in his nostrils bubbled with each breath he took. Jacob asked Theresa to get a wet towel, and she scrambled into the bathroom. She ran taps, soaked one towel and came out with two, one wet and one dry.

  Jacob thrust his fingers into Warren’s mouth and caught his tongue. Theresa passed him a towel. Jacob wiped his friend’s face then pinched Warren’s nose closed. He placed his mouth over Warren’s and sucked. He spat vomit into the towel and wiped his own mouth. Warren was now making rasping and gargling noises. ‘Help me roll him onto his face,’ Jacob said. Bub and Theresa rushed forward as eager as racehorses from a starting gate. Together they rolled Warren back across the bed. Some more fluid trickled out his mouth and nose, and his breathing eased a little.

  Theresa said, ‘His skin is clammy.’

  ‘I think he’s only aspirated a little bit of vomit,’ Jacob said. ‘But he isn’t gagging, which worries me. His reflexes are depressed. And don’t you think his fingers are a touch blue?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Bub said.

  Jacob fished in his collar and produced a key on a cord. He gave it to Bub. ‘Unlock the top drawer of the filing cabinet in the manager’s office. The drug I want is Revia.’ Jacob spelled its name, and Bub hurried out the door. He passed Sam, who was hovering there helplessly as if waiting for instructions.

  There were pill bottles on the bedside cabinet. Jacob picked one up and rattled it. ‘He hasn’t taken all of them,’ he said. ‘Only a dose—or his idea of one, since he’s self-medicating. But he was probably foggy, and has taken it twice.’

  ‘So you think it’s a mistake?’ Theresa gathered up the bottles and read their labels. ‘Temazepam, and codeine phosphate. And this is diazepam—which is a form of Valium, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a muscle relaxant. But it’s the codeine I’m worried about. I’ve sent Bub to find a drug that’s usually prescribed to wean people off heroin. It’s not the best thing for the job. It’s an oral medication and not very strong. There was some in the pharmacy. The best drug for this job is intravenous, but you’d only find it in hospitals.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we get him moving?’ Theresa said.

  Jacob nodded. ‘Let’s put him in the shower.’

  Theresa darted ahead of Jacob into the bathroom. ‘Run it cold,’ Jacob called out. He got into the shower with Warren.

  Theresa wanted to go after Bub and hurry him along, but when she went back into the bedroom to check the clock on the bedside cabinet, she saw that Bub wasn’t being tardy—time was dilating.

  Sam was still in the doorway. She must be able to smell the vomit. Changing Warren’s bedding would be something Sam would do almost by instinct. She was used to cleaning up after people and did it automatically, with thoroughness and dispatch. But she didn’t begin stripping the bed, only drifted closer to the bathroom, her eyes unfocused but her face tense. One of her hands was closed into a fist. ‘What is that?’ she whispered.

  Theresa could hear the shower, Warren moaning, and Jacob speaking in a strangled, tearful voice.

  Theresa felt faintly scandalised. She said, ‘Perhaps you should get a mop and bucket. Sponge the carpet then put fresh sheets on Warren’s bed.’

  Sam’s head came up. Her shoulders were twitching, as if she were bracing herself in a series of small adjustments. She dropped a hand onto Theresa’s wrist. ‘What is that?’ she said again.

  ‘Warren has taken too much of something,’ Theresa explained. ‘And it would be a great help if you could sort out his bedroom while he’s not in it.’

  The shower shut off, but Jacob went on, haranguing his friend. Theresa couldn’t hear the words, only the tone of reproach and distress. ‘Sam!’ Theresa said, exasperated. ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘No,’ Sam said, defiant and desperate. ‘You listen. What is that?’

  ‘Jacob is upset. He’s scolding Warren. Are you going to be of any use?’

  Sam’s eyes filled with tears—it looked more like rage than anguish. ‘For God’s sake!’ she yelled. ‘Can’t you feel that?’ Then, as though her anger had incited something else, something exterior to her, she jerked upright and threw her head back. Her jaw went loose, her mouth dropped open, and her face relaxed. It was then that Theresa noticed the bruise on her jaw, dark, definite, and in the shape of knuckles. ‘Jesus, Sam! Did William hit you again?’

  Sam came out of her trance. Her clenched hand opened and she dropped a small square of paper on the floor by the door.

  Jacob emerged from the bathroom, dripping and shivering. ‘We need a couple of clean robes,’ he said.

  Theresa hurried off to the treatment room where there was still a cupboard full of fluffy, folded white robes. On the way she passed Bub, taking the stairs three at a time and carrying a packet of pills.

  When Theresa got back, Jacob was walking his blanket-wrapped friend up and down. Warren’s ankles were turning at every second step. Bub had stripped the bed and was scrubbing the floor with a detergent-soaked cloth. Theresa took Warren’s weight while Jacob put a robe on, then they wrapped Warren in the other robe and continued to walk him.

  Theresa said, ‘Where’s Sam?’ She spotted the paper Sam had dropped and picked it up.

  ‘I threw her out,’ Bub said. ‘She was being useless and weird.’

  The paper was a sheet of spa stationery, folded palm-sized. Theresa opened it and read: Pleese pleese help me with William.

  Theresa decided that the matter of Sam, her fresh bruise, and her note—her cry for help—was probably best left for another day.

  Oscar waited a very long time for the hallway to be quiet and empty. He hadn’t wanted to know what the sounds of hushed alarm were about. He just wished everyone would go to bed and get out of his way.

  After another hour the noises had subsided. Oscar’s clock said that it was two-fifteen. He’d had no trouble staying awake. He was of an age when he’d naturally rather get up at noon and go to bed in the small hours.

  At two-thirty Oscar opened his door, checked the hall, and went out. He crept to the fire exit—pressed the latch, then jammed the door open with the ironing board he was carrying for that purpose. It was the fifth time he’d done it, and it was beginning to feel like an established procedure.

  He stood on the fire escape and listened to the night. A ruru had come down from the reserve and was up in the arboretum. Oscar heard the owl calling, then saw it, a small silent shadow that floated across a glade between a stand of birches and a black beech. He lost it in the dark and, a moment later, heard a scream—a rat or rabbit. Then, as if a sluice had opened in the sky, a wind came across the ridges landward and the tall brittle European trees began to
roar like surf.

  Oscar clambered quickly down the fire escape. The steel shivered and rang, but he couldn’t hear it over the wind.

  He made his way around the back of the kitchen and started across the lawn, navigating through a dark crease near to the shrubbery by the lights on the driveway. The grass was damp and squeaked under his trainers. From where he was, the driveway lights made a yellow gauze in the air, before which everything showed black. There was nothing to see, till suddenly he was under the jacaranda. Its top was visible: purple blossom blanched pink in the light. Oscar only just managed to stop before he blundered onto the pale patch of ground by the tree—Adele Haines’s grave, now covered with flowering petunias.

  Oscar caught his breath and listened. The wind had dropped again. It was coming around, one wind pushing against another somewhere up there, passing back and forth through the No-Go as if it wasn’t there, except that it was and would be sieving the wind of birds and beetles.

  Something brushed Oscar’s cheek and he jumped, but it was only falling jacaranda blossom.

  He went on, keeping away from the driveway, in case the man in black was standing somewhere down in the town looking up at that channel of light. He pushed through the feijoa hedge and came out on Bypass Road.

  All along that road were sodium street lamps, high on their concrete stems. Oscar hurried across and plunged into another hedge. He paused, held his breath, listened, and continued on his way. He skirted one house. In the fingers of orange radiance coming through the hedge, Oscar saw its windowsills were black with dead flies.

  He made his way through several properties, parallel to the road, scaling fences. But that was too noisy, so when the street dipped down, out of the long reach of the sodium lamps, he returned to the footpath. He stood still and strained his ears. Then he set out, heading for Haven Road and the supermarket. He made his way from gate to gate, drive to drive, ducking out onto the path then back into the shadows of front yard foliage.

  When Oscar reached the supermarket he traversed the carpark by darting from car to car. He reached the glass doors and peered through them. Holly had switched off the overhead fluorescents, but there was still light gleaming through the glass fronts of the cabinet fridges and in the freezers, shining out from under the rims of their fuming interiors. Oscar went inside. The place smelled of spice and plastic and dry goods, and a musty smell from the emptied fruit and deli trays. Holly had wiped everything down, but still, there it was, the smell of mildewed lemons and sour milk, and the dirty dog smell of old luncheon sausage.

  Oscar found the aisle with pet food, and left the supermarket, his jacket stuffed with cans and rattling faintly. He stuck to Haven Road where the streetlights were off for two-thirds of its length, put out by the crashed truck and subsequent fire. There was no light to see by, but it was easy going, the footpath wide and even, kerbs indented at each crossing. Oscar kept his eye on his reflection in the glass fronts of the shop—checking that it was his reflection. Then the plate glass came to an end and he was going by houses—a splash of red paint on the path before all those the burial teams had cleared. Now and then he looked back, and once, when he did, he thought he saw something move, a long shadow intruding onto Haven Road from one of the side streets. Someone with a streetlight behind them was walking towards the intersection—in the middle of the street, not bothering to hide themselves, to blend their shadow with other shadows.

  Oscar flung himself back into a bush, then poked his head out to take a closer look. The long shadow was motionless now, and featureless. It had seemed to have a distinct head and arms, but now it might as well be cast by a street sign. Oscar waited, watching till his eyes watered, but nothing moved. He was mistaken—he must have been. Still, it was some time before he was able to relinquish the shelter of the shrubbery. He continued on his way, running now.

  He had left the porch light burning, knowing he’d be back. He let himself in and didn’t turn on any of the indoor lights, only stood a while in the patch of radiance that came in through the pebbled glass of the front door. He waited till his cat came to find him, chirruping, eager. She ran at him and butted his legs, her back arched and long tail trembling. He picked her up. She wiped her jaw along his, talking the whole time, delirious and scolding.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said.

  The morning after the night the power went off, while Bub and William were rounding up the dogs, and Jacob was raiding the pharmacy, and Theresa was going slowly around the streets in her patrol car, hailing whoever might hear, Oscar went home to fetch his games, and to feed Lucy, his family’s svelte caramel-coloured Burmese. He’d been back almost every day since. Holly and Kate knew he took his bike out and rode around—getting some exercise, they supposed. But nobody knew that, of all Kahukura’s orphaned cats, summoned every day to the boat ramp feeding spot, only Lucy got personal service. Oscar fed his cat at home so she’d stay home, because, if she didn’t, he thought his heart would probably break.

  Lucy had always been a homebody; she stayed indoors or in the yard, though she liked to climb the trellis on the back porch, cross the spine of the roof, and clamber down onto the front fence. Sometimes now she’d be sitting on the fence waiting for him and would scramble down and trot along to meet him, making her way as he did, confidently in the centre of the road. It was amazing how quickly she had adapted to the lack of traffic.

  Oscar didn’t just feed Lucy and leave. He’d sit with her. He had carried his console and games off to the spa but, at home, he was rereading all his favourite books—Harry Potter and Ender’s Game and The Bartimaeus Trilogy—but not Sabriel because he couldn’t cope with the idea of walking corpses. He’d sit for an hour or two most days with Lucy curled in the crook of one arm and a book in his other hand. He’d put on one of his dad’s CDs. Nothing with vocals in English, because if he could understand the lyrics he’d listen to them instead of the phantom reader who always appeared somewhere at the back of his skull whenever a page of print was in front of his eyes. Oscar played his father’s music. He washed the duvet on his parents’ bed when the gritty hollow where Lucy slept each night got too oily and dark. He came home because it had to still be his home. He fed his cat so she’d stay put and hold a place for him, for his mum and dad, for when they’d all be home together.

  Lucy was acting normal, so the house was safe. Oscar left the lights off, went into the kitchen, gathered up the cat bowls, wiped the floor, and put down fresh water and food, canned and dry. He put the bowls in the dishwasher and turned it on to rinse—then immediately turned it off again. He needed to be able to hear. There would be no music tonight, and he didn’t dare turn on a light to read. Instead he pulled the duvet off his bed and settled on the couch where he could see the front door. Lucy sat in the middle of the living room and washed, all the time making her bubbling pot purr. Then she jumped up onto the couch, climbed on Oscar’s chest, tramped about in a circle kneading for a minute, and settled, her nose nearly touching his chin.

  Lucy purred as Oscar patted her sleek head and pulled her cool ears. Her purring seemed to spread a pool of sleep over him and, after a few minutes, his eyelids began to droop.

  Then someone knocked on the door.

  Lucy launched herself off his chest and ran under a chair. Oscar clutched his duvet and peered at the figure behind the pebbled glass. He held his breath. The knock came again. This time Oscar saw the hand, knuckles pale against the glass. Pale, not black.

  ‘Oscar?’ said the person, who was female.

  Oscar got off the couch and went to the door. ‘Who is that?’ he said, feeling stupid for not recognising the voice.

  ‘Sam,’ said Sam.

  Oscar let her in. She dropped into a crouch and extended her hand to coax Lucy out from under the chair. Lucy emerged, minced over and smooched Sam’s fingers.

  ‘You won’t tell Theresa?’ Oscar said.

  Sam looked up at him, a
nd Oscar noticed the darkening along her jaw. A fresh bruise, still showing distinct finger marks. Seeing it like that, out in the open, was, for Oscar, like being the recipient of some shocking intimacy. William had hit her again.

  ‘Why would I tell Theresa?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Because of the curfew.’

  She nodded. She picked Lucy up and switched on the living room light.

  Oscar quickly switched it off again. ‘I had them off for a reason,’ he said.

  ‘And what was that?’ Sam had her back to him now. She was carrying Lucy into the kitchen. Oscar found himself noticing her ankles, strong, lean, smooth-skinned. She looked back over her shoulder. Oscar knew she was really quite young—early twenties—but at that moment she didn’t look much older than he was. ‘Where would I find tea?’ she said.

  ‘In those dusty boxes by the kettle,’ Oscar told her.

  Sam put Lucy down and filled the kettle. ‘Do you want some?’

  ‘Sure. So—you followed me?’

  ‘I wondered where you were off to in the middle of the night. Also—’ Sam didn’t finish her sentence. The kettle began to bump and roar. It sounded as noisy as a car alarm to Oscar. ‘I’ve been trying to keep quiet,’ he said.

  She was looking for cups and a teapot. ‘In the cupboard above the fridge,’ Oscar told her. Then, ‘I’m sorry there’s no milk.’

  ‘I’m making green tea.’ Sam inspected the leaves in a patterned tin. ‘Or perhaps this is one of those fancy white teas—the leaves are whole and screwed up into little balls.’

  It was Oscar’s mum’s Iron Goddess of Mercy. His mum never let him try it, said he wouldn’t like it, though Oscar had guessed it was one of those things his parents wouldn’t be able to afford any more if he were to decide he liked it too.