In the kitchen Sam found two chickens thawing in the refrigerator. Someone had remembered Christmas—probably Jacob. He’d cleaned the kitchen too. Sam noticed this, and it only hardened her resolve. She didn’t really know Jacob, but here was everything she needed to know. Jacob was heart-struck, but deeply civilised. Sam thought about the smug misanthropists who like to claim that civilisation is a thin veneer. They didn’t know people.
Sam sliced a leg off the smaller of the two chickens, and carefully pared the icy meat from the bone. She cut the meat up, put it on a saucer, and filled the saucer with warm water to thaw the ice. Then she drained the water off again, and put it the plate down for Lucy.
Lucy gobbled her food, settling back onto her haunches only when the plate was nearly empty. She’d had personal service all these months, but still acted as though she might be in competition with another cat.
When Lucy was done, Sam carried her outside. She put the cat down, then stamped her foot. Lucy laid her ears back and streaked off under the oleanders beyond the graves. There she crouched and glowered at Sam.
The morning was a little cool, so Sam went back for the cashmere shawl she’d stolen. Then she set off in search of Myr.
It was another overcast day, and it had been blowing. The sea, in a haze of water vapour, and chilly, looked like an image on Sam’s computer’s default media player a second before it made its adjustments for more light—there was an even fog over the seascape, like a view through sheer blinds.
Sam made her way through the streets to the paved walkway by the beach. She watched a shag upturn itself and slip into a smooth swell. Foam was making a tattered lacework on the rocks of Matarau Point.
Sam walked along to her bach and let herself in. There were flies in the living room. Bub and Belle hadn’t done the dishes after their last meal. Sam filled the sink with hot water and a splash of detergent—then only washed one knife, an oyster knife with a strong blade. She used a fresh dish towel to dry it, and then slipped it, handle up, into the back pocket of her jeans.
She stood for a time and looked around. The living room had once been their bedroom—hers and her sister’s. Back then there were net curtains on the front windows. The kowhai at the window was smaller then, and its trunk wasn’t wrapped in tattered bandages of lichen. Sam thought about the kowhai’s age and stroked her own smooth cheek.
She left her bach and walked to the end of Matarau Point to look back at Kahukura. She checked for house lights. The house where Myr had kept her prisoner was dark, but beyond that, in a ten-year-old subdivision—a development of only four streets to the northeast of Stanislaw’s Reserve—one house was lit up like a beacon.
Sam walked back the way she’d come. She wished for the sun—even the smeared and melting star that showed through the No-Go. Just ten minutes of full sunlight—as Kahukura would sometimes get even on those days when the clouds sat like a loose lid along the coast and the sun would only show for a few minutes as it came up, and for half an hour as it went down.
The pohutukawa at the base of the point were coming into bloom, glossy and rain-washed. The biggest tree was in full flower, crimson, plush, sombre, and godlike. Sam stood for a time beneath it, taking in its sour fruit perfume.
The new subdivision was a place Sam usually avoided. It was bleak and orderly. Its houses had plastered walls and glass balconies, and loomed to the boundaries of their decisively fenced sections. Homeowners’ sovereignty had trumped privacy in those streets.
The garage of the lit house was open. Sam went in. There was an internal stairway. It came out facing a huge vase on a sideboard under a mirror. The vase was as big as the trunk of a small tree, and stood in a mulch of leathery, fallen petals.
Sam stumbled when she saw the vase. It was her sister who had gone through the houses, and so she wasn’t used to this very particular dissolution—ruin in the province of the house-proud. The flower arrangement was dead, and mummified. The water in the vase had long since evaporated, and there was no residual dankness. The house was dry and clean—was one of those places whose occupants had been off at work when the Wake came.
In the mirror Sam saw Myr, approaching from some distance off, traversing a slot-like room. It was a large room, but with a disproportionately low ceiling and painted too uniform a colour.
Sam went to meet him, but then walked right by him. She wanted to get out onto the deck—out in the open air. Her time was shrinking, and there was still no sun.
Myr followed her. ‘What do you want? Isn’t it a little late now for us to finish our talk?’
‘You mean to say that that ship has sailed?’
‘I did expect to see you before now. The people I do tell normally have many questions. They don’t believe me, and it takes a long time to satisfy them.’
‘Satisfaction isn’t a word I’d have used.’
‘And your situation is unique. There is much we might have explored.’
Sam looked away. ‘I know. You began to hope—and you hated that.’ Then, ‘This is what you do; squat in the more habitable houses.’
Myr waited, alert, to see what she’d say next.
‘Or if it’s winter and raining, and there’s no shelter, I suppose you just kill all the survivors to hasten the Wake on to somewhere where you’ll be more comfortable.’
Sam heard his sharp, indrawn breath. She wanted to look at the view, but felt uneasy about turning her back on him. Fearing for her safety rather than her sanity was a strange experience for Sam. But, then again, this was the first time she’d ever felt she really had something to live for. She said, ‘We know you removed the messages from the one balloon we managed to find.’
He didn’t respond.
The deck looked across Kahukura beach, past the headland of the shoreline reserve, and out to sea. The cove where the bottles collected was clearly visible, and Sam could make out a blur of yellow on the beach there, a bundle of nylon rope. Sam made a guess. ‘And I know you sabotaged our rope ladder.’
‘You watched me do it,’ he said.
‘Didn’t my friends tell you that there were two of me?’
‘They tried to explain something they called Dissociative Identity Disorder. There is one Sam under another, they said, neither Sam knowing what the other knows. I spoke to the other Sam when I was helping to care for your sick. The slow-witted Sam.’
So—that’s what he thought was happening. Still. Good. She said, ‘I left myself a note about the rope ladder. That’s what I do.’
‘Of course.’ Myr hesitated, then said, with some warmth, ‘With two distinct selves—two quite separate consciousnesses—you might survive for a long time. You could keep shaking the Wake off.’
‘And keep you company?’
‘I haven’t wanted company,’ Myr said.
Sam looked out again, across the bay. The dull day was brightening, not because the cloud was clearing, but because the sun was higher and lighting the cloud. She widened her eyes and felt the light fall into the back of her skull. It filled her head. She said, ‘You told me that we’re all going to die. That there’s no hope for any of us.’
‘And now I’m telling you that you could last, Sam. You survived the Wake’s first attack. No one does that. Your self-bewitchment must be very powerful.’
‘But—as I said—we’re all going to die.’
‘Ah,’ Myr said. ‘You are thinking of the others.’
‘Of course I am. But I might be thinking of you too. The Wake taxes you, Myr, even if it doesn’t know you’re there.’
Myr put a hand to his brow, a hand that trembled. The gesture was too habitually languid to activate his force field, but the tremors did. His fingers skittered on the nothing-visible centimetres above his skin. Sam watched this and thought how deliberate he must always have to be, and what vigilance and discipline that would require. And she thought that she couldn�
��t know how human he was, but at least she could appreciate the demands of a life beyond the range of instinct and common sense.
Myr said, ‘I’m tired. I admit it. And if I can’t have your company, I want to hurry to the next place. I hope the next place is almost empty. This settlement stinks of death.’
She said, ‘You’ve been a good soldier.’
Myr dropped his hand. He relaxed. He was giving things up.
She said, ‘You know how the Wake works. It’s your teacher. So—you’ve separated Bub from us by giving him a secret, a private sin.’
Myr was amazed. ‘How do you know?’
‘Warren wasn’t badly hurt. I saw that much. But he hasn’t come back, and Bub is slowly falling to pieces.’
‘No, you’re right, Warren wasn’t hurt.’ Myr spread his hands and looked at them. He said, ‘I killed him.’ Then, ‘You poisoned the cats.’
‘William did. It was deemed necessary. We want to protect the rare birds in the reserve. There are only one hundred and forty of them in the world.’
‘So you understand necessity.’
Yes, Sam thought, it was necessary for William to feel the way he felt now. It had been necessary to let the cats go. And now she had to get Myr to come with her. She said, ‘But Bub doesn’t deserve to suffer like this. I want you to come with me and explain that it was you who killed Warren. He has to be made to believe it. He won’t take my word for it.’
Myr watched her, wary. ‘Have you tried to tell him what you’ve guessed?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Sam lied. ‘I’m only here now because he won’t believe me. None of them see me as very reliable. Come on, Myr, do this for us. We’ll all be gone soon. At least let us go without imagined sins on our heads.’
Sam pulled the knife out of her back pocket, showed it to him, and told another lie. ‘This is the knife the spa’s chef used to cut off his own ears.’
Myr’s gaze moved between the blade and her eyes.
‘I’ve taken to carrying it to remind me of the extravagance of the Madness.’ She stretched out her hand, twisting the little blade slowly in the air between them. She said, ‘It’s not as if I can hurt you with it.’
‘No, you can’t.’
She turned the knife so that the handle pointed his way. ‘But now I want you to carry it.’
‘Why?’
‘In case something happens. In case you need it.’
He frowned. ‘Why would I need a knife? Am I now suddenly talking to the simpler Sam? ‘
Sam shook her head. She returned the knife to her pocket and swivelled her hips to show him where she’d put it. ‘Just remember, I have a knife in my back pocket.’ Then, ‘Come on. Follow me. You can’t save us, but you can honour us by telling the truth.’
Belle was sitting on the terrace, sipping from a box of chocolate-flavoured UHT milk. When she saw Theresa coming she got up to rearrange the cushions on the seat opposite. Theresa was making slow progress, sliding her feet rather than lifting them. She said, droll, ‘Having got myself up, I’m not going to immediately sit again, Belle.’
Bub was finishing Kate’s grave. He and Jacob had been taking turns to dig. Kate’s body was lying under the jacaranda on a flattened patch in the otherwise overgrown lawn, grass full of dandelions, daisies, and cow parsley. Jacob was sitting cross-legged by the body, sewing up Kate’s shroud.
Belle noticed that Theresa had strapped on her gun. She gestured at it.
Theresa stuck her thumbs under her belt and hitched it up. ‘I’m not going to be caught out again, like I was when Warren decided to tear down the fence.’
Belle produced her pad and pencil from her sling, and wrote, But you wouldn’t have shot him. She tilted the pad to the light.
‘No,’ Theresa said. ‘To shoot anyone I’d have had to decide it was absolutely necessary. And—you know—I’m not sure I have that kind of confidence anymore.’
Oscar tried to use reason. His reason told him that he should stop looking for Lucy this side of the spa. The dogs had been cooped up for days. They’d been fed and watered, but were lonely and restive. When Oscar came near their makeshift run, they erupted, barking, and threw themselves against its fence. They seemed to have forgotten who he was. They glared at the air above his head and snarled, their lips writhing over their bared teeth and black gums.
It stood to reason that, with all that barking, Lucy wouldn’t be anywhere near them.
Oscar walked down to the feijoa hedge. He crouched, peered into its grey interior, and called. ‘Lucy, Lucy, Lucy? Where are you?’ Then, ‘Come back.’ His voice cracked. He fought the tears that were threatening to come and drown him.
He didn’t even notice Sam walking through the gate, Myr behind her.
Sam looked very slight and pretty in her chiffon print blouse and ballet flats. Her instep showed when she lifted her feet. Myr had a graceful walk too, if odd. He never dropped his feet, but placed them carefully, with a minute hesitation before making contact with the ground—he’d learned to walk without activating his force field. Looking at him, Theresa thought, ‘How could we ever have imagined he was like us?’ And Sam too. She and the other Sam might be identical, though one was a little more worn, but this one had something joyful about her. She looked as if she thought she was bringing them all a splendid gift.
Theresa made her painful way to the terrace steps. Belle joined her, took her elbow and helped her down them. ‘What on earth is wrong with those dogs?’ Theresa said. ‘Could you see to them?’
Belle nodded and set off towards the dog-run.
Sam stopped, and looked around. Her smile faded. ‘Where’s William?’
‘I believe you have brought me here to talk to Bub,’ said the man in black. ‘Not William.’
‘Yes. But wait a minute.’
The short walk to where Sam and Myr stood was quite difficult for Theresa. It wasn’t that anything in particular hurt—only her tendons were tight, and her joints felt dry. She said, ‘Sam—William won’t have gone far. He’s helping Oscar look for his cat. She got out.’
Sam cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted William’s name.
Jacob said, ‘Don’t sound too urgent. Remember he’s not supposed to hurry.’
Sam looked momentarily stricken, then she spotted Theresa’s gun and settled into a calm—the kind of calm perhaps of someone who’s been enjoying the view from the summit of a very high mountain and is beginning to think of the journey down. She said, ‘Since you’re wearing that, I hope you’re prepared to use it.’
Theresa touched her gun. ‘Use it on whom?’ she said. Then, ‘You were supposed to ask this guy about the messages.’
‘He doesn’t have them.’
‘I’m afraid I destroyed them. But, yes, there were messages.’ Myr said.
Bub threw his spade down and strode over.
Myr met Bub’s eyes and said, ‘I killed that man—Warren—it wasn’t you. I killed him to further thin your ranks. And when I saw that you thought you had killed him, I let you think it.’
Bub’s face filled with fury.
Jacob moaned, ‘No.’ He sounded broken.
‘There,’ said Sam, her voice utterly calm.
In the short silence when everyone was digesting what Myr had said, and he was waiting respectfully for the anger he must expect and also know he was due, the silence of Bub’s long indrawn breath, a breath taken to fuel some kind of strenuous retaliatory act—in that hush Oscar could be heard, making his way along the boundary, weaving in and out of the oleanders, calling his cat. ‘Come back, come back, come back.’ He was in tears.
‘And there,’ said Sam.
Something strong, and something new: Bub’s righteous fury, and the tears of a staunch and patient boy.
There. Take that.
The Wake was present already, circling Oscar like a cloud
of carrion birds, and sometimes deviating to make a pass above Jacob as his needle went in and out of the seam that closed the cocoon of Kate’s shroud. The Wake passed through Jacob and his blistered hands. He had washed his hands that morning before he peeled potatoes, oiled and salted them, pricked two lemons and pushed them into the cavities of the chickens, and then put the chickens in well-floured roasting bags, and into the oven. Bub had come into the kitchen while Jacob was working, and made some mordant remark about what Dan’s kids’ might be having for their Christmas dinner.
The Wake was telling Sam all this—as if offering her reciprocal gifts. It was telling her that it loved her, because none of this would have as much savour if she hadn’t helped it to understand how these people’s raw feelings attached to feeling-things, to my sweetheart Belle, to Lucy, to Christmas, to how Kate had had to bury her own daughter, and the immensity of pity—for Kate, and for Warren—that Jacob could not get out of his head.
Belle returned from her futile mission to placate the dogs in time to see Bub in a rage, nose-to-nose with the man in black. Myr’s force field was pressing the blood out of the tip of Bub’s nose, and making strange flats lozenges on his cheeks.
Jacob was standing over Kate’s small shrouded form, watching Bub close on Myr. Jacob had both hands pressed to his head in the universal human gesture of distressed helplessness.
Belle saw that Sam’s hands were raised too, like a saint’s to bless, or a witch’s to perform an incantation. Tears were pouring down her face, and she was saying something over and over, so slowly and clearly that, after a couple of repetitions, Belle was able to read her lips.
Belle suddenly understood why the dogs were howling. She pulled her pad out of her sling, extracted the pencil from the spiral binding, and wrote, The Wake is here. Look at Sam. She showed the pad to Theresa, who didn’t look at it but only brushed Belle aside, impatiently knocking the pad out of her hands. It fell into a smoke bush by the terrace. Belle was too starkly scared to make any move to retrieve it.
The Wake was a hot whirlwind. First it smeared Sam with her own tears, then it sucked them away. It closed about her.
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