Wintering

by Krissy Kneen

  The light sliced a sudden white arc across the trees. For a moment she imagined this was her death arriving, the train-like roar of the end of her life. Then headlights swinging around a sharp bend of trees and a car was heading straight for her.

  She looked not towards the oncoming car, but sideways, to the tree line, to where the tiger would be lurking.

  Tiger, tiger in the headlights, eyes glinting, teeth bared. She felt a tightness in her chest, the sound of brakes engaging, squealing. She still did not look towards the car, too startled by what was before her: a hunch of muddied fur, red-reflected eyes, vicious teeth; but the jaw shorter than she expected and disfigured by a red lump.

  Not a tiger at all. A devil. Squat and mean and grunting as it lumbered back towards the thickest part of the forest with its odd lopsided gait.

  A devil is a dangerous creature but a devil didn’t take her husband.

  The car screeched to a stop so close to her legs that she could feel the cold rush of air it pushed ahead of its hulking body. A ute. Big metal roo bar that would have crushed her in another metre. She would have died, she had expected to die, no closer to knowing.

  Jessica could not see the figure behind the wheel of the car. She could feel him watching her, trapped in his headlights. Swearing under his breath, stupid woman, dumb bitch.

  She held her hand up, agreeing, with the kind of wave she might throw to a friend across a busy street. An idiot gesture from someone who had almost caused a fatal accident on a remote road out of phone range.

  She climbed back into her car, started the ignition with trembling fingers and eased the vehicle over to the side of the road, pulling up right where the Tasmanian devil had disappeared into the bush. The ute driver revved his engine and gave the horn a good blast as he sped away, heading towards Southport, towards her home.

  Jessica became aware of the beating of her heart in the silence that followed. She was alive. She had not been run over, or mauled by a diseased devil. She was here, safe in her car, unharmed. If only this had happened to Matthew: a close call with a devil, a near miss with a ute.

  She turned the wheel hard and eased her car back onto the road, following the ute towards home.

  ‘Cave life,’ she said, pointing her torch towards the cricket that clung to the damp cave wall.

  A little girl pushed to the front of the group and peered up with wide, dark eyes. ‘Oh, wow.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Jessica felt herself beginning to smile. Curiosity killed the cat, her mother always said, but she had never managed to dampen her daughter’s sense of wonder. Jessica had been a barrage of questions, slamming against the walls of her mother’s church, shaking the bars.

  ‘What does it eat?’

  ‘The cave cricket? Well, there are tiny little insects in here, like fleas. You can’t see them’—the kid was already beginning to scratch at her neck under the heavy woollen scarf—‘and they don’t live on blood like normal fleas, they live on little flecks of skin. When you scratch like that the flakes of skin fall to the ground and the little fleas hop onto them and eat them.’

  ‘And what eats the crickets?’

  Jessica trained her torch onto the darker corners of the cave. The lights were switched on but the spiders would be hiding from it.

  ‘I’ll show you if I find one, but there are cave spiders all around, hiding in the corners.’

  ‘Oh, cool!’ The little girl sidled towards the corner of the cave and peered up at the sharp arrow shafts of the speleothems.

  Waves of pointlessness came and went, washing over her like shadows on her skin as she moved the group from cavern to cavern. It was a work day like any of her work days before. But when she took them all to the largest cavern and turned the lights off, she waited in the dark wondering if there was any point in turning the lights back on at all. What if she just left them all here in the dark. What would happen? They would eventually find their way out, she supposed. She would be reprimanded, maybe fired. She thought through these consequences with a dull curiosity, then switched on the light.

  ‘Wow,’ said the kid, blinking, pointing at the wall high up above her head. ‘Cave spider. Wow.’

  William was waiting on the wooden platform. She shut and locked the door. The next group would not gather for another fifteen minutes. She found herself grinning at him, happy to see his giant body there. The weight of sadness lifted for just a moment before she felt it settle comfortably on her shoulders again.

  He held up a ticket. ‘I thought I’d take the tour.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I had a day off. You know I’ve lived here all my life? Haven’t taken a cave tour since Year 8.’

  ‘I was going to have a coffee between tours. Do you want some?’

  He nodded. She unlocked the storeroom and popped the top off her thermos. The coffee was pale and sweet. She let the steam warm her cheeks, holding the thermos lid close to her face.

  The room was filled with the smell of fish. It was in his fingers. It would infuse his skin. She remembered the taste of Matthew, like she was biting down on fresh sushi.

  ‘How’s the first day back?’

  She thought about it. ‘I have no idea. I keep almost feeling something, but then it’s gone, like when you remember something important and then you forget it again before you have a chance to say it aloud. Does that make sense?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You know, there’s a whole network of caves here. They lead down to the river. Some people even feel like Newdegate links up to Mystery and Exit caves somehow, and my cave, the one I found, Winter Cave. It seems stupid that they haven’t been explored properly; there might be other cave entrances all over the south. It’s like a giant honeycomb under the ground. Not a honeycomb—something else…a neural network.’

  ‘Like a brain?’

  She laughed. ‘Yes. A human brain. And we are nothing but tiny thoughts in someone’s dreams.’

  ‘Sounds like the science talking, Doctor Weir.’

  The walkie talkie hissed to life. ‘Jess?’

  She held the handset to her mouth. ‘I’m here, Donna.’

  ‘We’ve sold eleven tickets to the next tour.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How are you coping?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘’Cause if—’

  ‘Fine, Donna.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Jessica holstered the mouthpiece. She frowned into her coffee. ‘Everyone thinks I’m going to spontaneously combust or something.’ She squinted up at William. ‘Are you here to check up on me too?’

  ‘Honestly? I just wanted an excuse to see you again.’

  She felt the flush of blood flowing into her cheeks.

  ‘Which,’ he said, ‘makes me sound like an arsehole. But I had a really nice night the other…I’m making it worse, aren’t I?’

  ‘No. No, I’m glad. I’m not made out of china or something. All this checking in, tiptoeing.’

  ‘Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m not tiptoeing anywhere. Stalking, possibly…’

  She laughed. ‘Well, I suppose that could be flattering?’

  They could hear a heavy thudding of footsteps. The first of the next group gathering on the deck. She heard the little running steps of a toddler and then a thump as the child tripped and tumbled to the floor. A second’s pause before the wailing started, loud and constant.

  ‘Welcome to the glamorous world of tourism,’ she whispered. She tipped back the last of the coffee, raised an eyebrow, took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Jessica lowered herself into the car. Two hundred and fifty stairs in the cave, and she had trudged up and down them dozens of times today. She was bone tired and cold enough to be shivering. She had been aware of William for the entire length of his tour. He was easily head and shoulders above the next tallest man in the group, towering quietly in the background, never interrupting, always smiling when she glanced in his direction. He had worked with Matthew. When
he was close, she felt as if Matthew was in the cave.

  When she had taken Matthew to Winter Cave to see her glowworms, his laughter filled the cavern and the glowing larvae trembled on their fragile threads. He’d put his hand out to grab hold of a stalagmite, and she’d winced, knowing the damage the oils in his skin would cause. One touch and the whole future of that mineral formation would be changed, its growth arrested.

  William touched nothing, said nothing. He was a quiet, solid presence in the group, listening, staring up at the formations. She had a sudden urge to take him to see her glow-worm caves, to see if they approved of him. He might be too big to press his way down some of the narrow corridors that led to the more spectacular caves.

  At the end of the tour, when he shook her hand awkwardly and walked back along the forest path to his car, Jessica felt a pang of regret. A tiny version of the feeling of losing Matthew. She almost called out to him, surprised by her sudden wish for him to stay.

  Now she reversed out of the carpark, the wheels skidding in fresh mud. They were creeping towards the solstice, the shortest day of the year. It was dark already and it wasn’t even five o’clock. The shack would be freezing. There were the usual things to keep her busy—making a fire, trying to get the damp wood to burn, cooking a meal.

  She stalled the car in the middle of the forestry road.

  It wasn’t enough. Making a fire, playing house. Why was she even going home? She sat, feeling the heater kick in and finally beginning to warm up. The shivering stopped but it was replaced by a thick, dull thudding in her head.

  She put the car back in gear and inched slowly down the road.

  Jessica stood in the barren landscape of the carpark at the Southport pub. The campsite behind the pub had one tent in it now. Mid-winter, one single body shivering in a thick sleeping bag.

  There was a storm coming, she had seen it on the weather report. A storm, and the tent was pitched too close to the creek. If it was a big storm the tent would be washed away.

  She pulled open the pub door. A pop song battling with the blare from the television. Two tourists standing at the pool table, their goth-black hair and skinny jeans marking them clearly as outsiders. She was almost relieved to see the men at the bar glance at them suspiciously: perhaps she was less of an outsider with this couple in the room. When the man turned and she saw his face pale and powdered, his eyes lined in kohl, she almost cheered.

  She walked past them and waited as the bartender poured a beer for a man with a roll of belly peeking out between his jeans and his shirt. Not the same bartender as before; this one was younger, her reddish hair streaked with highlights.

  Jessica waited patiently. She smelled sweat and diesel and glanced over her shoulder at a tousled man, youngish, in a yellow down-filled vest. There were tobacco-coloured stains on the vest, oil or petrol, fish-gut fingerprints on the knees of his pants. Something glinted on the turned-up cuff of his trousers and she peered at it, wondering if he had been using glitter. A party, perhaps; helping a child with an art project. But it was a fish scale catching the light.

  ‘What you having?’

  Such a gruff, deep voice for a young blonde girl. Jessica was momentarily startled.

  ‘Beer.’ She didn’t really like beer but she imagined the locals to be beer drinkers. She needed to fit in.

  ‘What kind?’

  Jessica hadn’t thought that far ahead. She looked at the row of beer taps and chose the closest one. ‘Cascade.’ That was local, wasn’t it?

  ‘A ten or a schooner?’

  Another unexpected question. ‘Schooner,’ she said, and her heart sank when she saw the size of the glass the woman took off the drying rack. Would she be right to drive after that? She pushed a ten-dollar note across the counter.

  The beer was cold and mild. Not bitter like the stout that Matthew made. She sipped. She turned on her stool to face the man in the yellow vest. He was staring up at the television mounted above the bar. A game show with blank boxes, letters appearing one by one: e, n, o.

  ‘Envelope,’ she said, without meaning to.

  The man beside her smiled thinly. ‘You could have won a hundred bucks with that.’

  ‘That was an easy one.’

  ‘If you’ve got a PhD, I guess.’

  She flinched. Was that how they all saw her? A smartarse snob?

  ‘I’m Jessica,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’ He raised his glass to his lips and sipped noisily. ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘You knew Matthew?’

  ‘Ha,’ he said, although she couldn’t see why this would be at all funny. He gulped more beer and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Did you?’

  She was used to a lingering look of pity: a tiptoeing around her. Strained silences. She was glad of this brutal challenge. She shifted on the stool, straightening her back.

  ‘Good question,’ Jessica said, making lines in the fog on her glass. ‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Think you can help me with that?’

  ‘Can I help you?’ He lifted the glass to his lips and sculled a measure of the dark liquid. ‘That’s a pretty useless question. Will. Will I help you with that? Now that is a better way of putting it, isn’t it? Doctor Masterton.’

  He finished the beer and looked her up and down. She shifted uncomfortably, wondering if she should be pleased that he’d called her by Matthew’s name.

  ‘Your man,’ he went on, ‘he told us you still give head. My missus doesn’t do that anymore. Two years in and no more blow jobs. What do you reckon about that?’

  She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

  ‘So, you know, if you want to hear a bit more about your boyfriend? Maybe we could have this conversation more comfortably in my ute.’

  Jessica found her mouth open again. Could he be saying what she thought he was saying? It seemed impossible. She must have misunderstood him.

  He ran a hand down the thigh of his stained trousers.

  She looked at the dark crescents of his bitten-back fingernails. Closed her mouth. Slipped off her stool, half-turned towards the door, then turned back towards him. ‘You didn’t know him at all, did you? Matthew would never be friends with someone like you.’

  ‘Someone like me?’ He laughed. ‘Someone who went to primary school with Matty? Someone who helped with his dad’s roof when it caved in? Someone who didn’t go off and get over-educated at a city university? Someone that’s a real person? Have you even met a real person?’

  ‘Matthew’—she felt the fury rising in her stomach like gas; felt her teeth grit together—‘would never have associated with someone who would ask for a blow job in exchange for a conversation. You’re not a “real person”. You’re just an arsehole.’

  He shrugged. Finished his beer and licked the foam off his lips. ‘I just assumed you’d be up for it. Matty’s usual type…’

  Jessica took a step towards the door. ‘I don’t care about the kind of girl Matthew dated in primary school.’

  The man pulled her half-finished beer towards him. He licked the rim of the glass where there was a faint trace from her lips, and she shuddered.

  She was already striding off towards the carpark but she could hear his voice clear and sharp behind her.

  ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘you have no fucken idea.’

  The storm came in. The shack shivered and groaned. Something clanged, a metallic sound. The chimney? If the cap blew off, she’d have to get someone in to fix it. People died in the cold without a fire. She had heard of a man who froze to death in a converted shipping container just north of there. The wind sounded human: a woman keening. The wind howling for her as she could never howl. Then a crack and a thud and the floor shook. A tree down, too close. It sounded like it had just missed the roof.

  She hoped the man from the pub was out in this. She hoped he was on the road, drunk, cowering in his ute with trees coming down on either side. He hadn’t told her his name. She was sure he was lying about the roof. She could not i
magine Matthew so much as speaking to him. Matthew, with his sweet jokes and his good nature. He was a different species of man from that foul creature at the pub. Dogs, Glen had called them.

  Another crack; she waited for the thud but it didn’t come.

  The phone buzzed in her pocket. She fished it out with trembling fingers. William.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Are you copping this storm down there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You okay? Thin walls on that shack.’

  ‘I think a tree came down.’

  ‘Do you want me to drive over?’

  ‘No, no. There’ll be trees down all over that road.’

  ‘Nah, I’ve got a chainsaw in the back.’

  She narrowed her eyes, wondering where the hell he would fit a chainsaw in the tiny Hyundai.

  ‘No, I don’t want you out in the rain chopping up trees on my account.’

  ‘Okay, but if there’s damage, call me. Promise.’

  ‘All right, I promise.’

  She jumped. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Thunder. Lightning. Right outside.’

  ‘Just say the word and I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘William…Thanks for calling.’

  ‘I’ll call again. In the morning. I’ll call you on my break. Just to check. Is that all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

  She held the phone against her cheek. It was still warm. It felt like something living. And then the thump. A smaller one, a branch probably. The wind howled.

  She gave in to the thought. What if Matthew is out in this? What if he’s out there, in the storm, in the dark? She imagined him scared, panicked. She imagined him dressed in a wet shirt, shivering. Clothed in fur, his eyes peering out through the head of an animal. It was a night for panic and nightmare. It was a night to believe in ghosts.

  Jessica heaped another log into the hearth and set the candles and the matches close enough for her to reach in the dark. Pressed her hands against the glass of the sliding door and felt the surface shiver in the cold. She peered out into the solid darkness. Stared until her eyes hurt. There was nothing to see. The ocean was in darkness. The rain filled the outside world with a dull roar.