“Do you want me to help you take away all the boards?” I ask, as a feeling of sadness engulfs me like a giant spider web does a tiny fly. Sharyn giggles, while looking a tad confused. “Hey, it’s what best friends are for, right? Just promise me that you will ring me sometimes.” Something tells me that the big girl’s school is not going to be any fun without Sharyn by my side.
“I pinkie promise!” she says before hugging me tight. “And before I forget, I have a present for you.” She hands me a small paper bag. When I open it, I find her bicycle training wheels inside. “I don’t need them anymore, but maybe you can give them to your little brother when he is big enough,” Sharyn offers. The thought of giving anything to my mother’s new family makes my skin crawl. I secretly hope that my mother’s new child does not turn out to become anything like Eddie. Awkwardly, I thank her for the gift and put it into my pigeon hole with my other things.
When the final day of kindergarten arrives, we have a party with soda, cakes, fruit and potato chips. The teacher hands each of us our kindergarten diploma and hugs us as she does so, thanking us for being great students over the past year. Parents start showing up at lunch time to collect their children and all of their belongings so they can prepare them for the following year. We all say our goodbyes until I am the last student remaining.
Looking inside at all of the mess, I immediately offer Mrs Tucker my assistance in cleaning and tidying everything up. She shouldn’t have to clean up our mess on her own. “Isn’t your father coming to collect you?” she asks.
“No, not today,” I tell her. “Daddy has a lot of things to do and an important meeting to attend, so I decided to come here on my bicycle instead. There is not much for me to take home.” It is then that I realise I forgot to give my telephone number to Sharyn. We even pinkie promised to call each other! With tears starting to fill my eyes, I hope that Sharyn and I will meet again someday. Then she can show me all of the things that her school has taught her about boards.
With my very full backpack, I ride my bike home from the kindergarten. I am about half way home before a brown car approaches from behind. Just as it passes me, the car slows down and eventually comes to a halt. I continue riding, doing my very best to ignore the car. One of the passengers – a young man with black hair, black shirt and black denim jeans – opens the back door and gets out of the car. He staggers towards me, a smile on his face. Before he gets close, I can smell the stink of beer on him. The smell is so overpowering, it is almost like he took a bath in it. The man makes kissing noises and asks if I would like to go for a ride in his car.
“You smell like a drunk,” I say as I ride past.
Trying to overtake the car on my bike, I am taken by surprise as the other back door of the car opens. A man quickly steps out and grabs me, pulling me from my bike as I am riding past. His arms hold me and my backpack tightly and I kick and scream as loud as I can. “Shut the little bitch up!” the driver screams. The second man covers my mouth as I struggle. I bite his hand as hard as I can. He screams blue murder, obviously feeling the pain of my incisors before he drops me. Only bad men try to steal four year old girls off their bike! With the taste of his blood in my mouth, I spit out and run as fast as I can towards my bicycle.
“Get in the fucking car, now!” the driver shouts to the two drunks.
As I am running to my bike, the two men drunkenly stagger back to their car. I pull my bike up off the road and immediately start to ride as fast as my legs can pedal. Two car doors slam behind me and I can hear the car’s engine starting, revving loudly. Not daring to look backwards, I continue riding up the hill towards my street as the engine gets louder and louder, drawing too near. Although I am almost out of breath, I continue pumping the pedals with my feet, feeling a burn inside my legs as I kick as fast as I can with what little strength reserves I have left, wishing that I could force the bike to go faster with my mind. Just over the hill’s crest is the turn to my street. Regardless of the burning and pain in my legs, I start feeling indefatigable and continue riding as fast as possible, knowing that these drunks want to hurt me or worse, even though I didn’t do anything to them. Goddess, help me! I feel my legs start to weaken.
Finally, I get to the top of the hill and turn into Elmslie Street – the street which will take me to the safety of my own home. Within seconds, I hear a loud *CRASH* behind me. Since I can no longer hear the engine of the car, I stop pedalling, bringing my bike to a complete stop before I turn around to look, thinking the car had just hit a power pole. The sight before me almost makes me vomit. Not only is the car is no longer chasing me but it also no longer looks like a car. Instead, the vehicle is as flat as a pancake. Looking left and right, I see no other cars. Strangely enough, it brings back memories of when I had almost drowned at the beach. The hand that had reached into the water and pulled me from certain death… well, it had also belonged to nobody. Not a single soul was nearby. What did this? I look up into the sky to see if something had possibly fallen on the car. My jaw drops when I see the faint image of a beautiful face, smiling down at me. It then fades, leaving nothing but clouds and blue sky in its wake. Am I going crazy now? I recognise what I’d just seen from somewhere but no matter how hard I try, I am unable to remember where I had seen it before.
Looking once again at what is left of the car, I see on the road a severed hand with its fingers still wrapped around a now-empty can of beer. The top of the first drunk man’s head, sliced clean across at the jaw-line, rolls slowly into the ditch on the side of the road. Both of the head’s eyes are wide with shock, captured in a photographic-style freeze frame. Red and grey liquid slowly leak from the bottom of the half-head as soon as it stops rolling, leaving a few trails of blood seeping from its right ear and right eye. I stare, puzzled at how this had happened with not a single other person in sight. Just moments ago, I’d been their intended prey, yet here I stand, untouched. Regardless of the horrifying scene in front of me – a flat car surrounded by body parts – feelings of gratitude and relief envelop me when I realise that these three men can no longer hurt me… nor can they hurt anybody else, for that matter. As a thick river of red begins to flow from the car, down the hill which I had just struggled to ride up to avoid becoming a pancake under those car wheels myself, I decide that it is probably a good idea to get myself home. Daddy and Ralph will protect me.
When I walk through the front door, I notice that my dad is not yet home. Leena and Tania are both sitting in their bedrooms, silently doing homework and drawings as I take my backpack, filled with some leftover food and a bottle of drink, to the kitchen.
“Krystal?” Leena calls out when she hears the front door close.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I reply.
My sister comes and hugs me. She says that she wants to talk to Tania and me while Dad is still at work. We all pull up a chair at the table and get into ‘family discussion’ mode. It feels strange to be having a family talk without Dad. I look towards the front door, wondering where he is. My mind is still dancing around what had just happened at the end of our street and I know it is important to tell him about it.
“I have been thinking about what Daddy said to us,” Leena says, quickly drawing Tania and me into the topic at hand. “Mummy and Eddie will soon need some help with their new baby. I am thinking that I will go and live there for a little while in case they need me.” Her foudroyant statement hit me hard, like a slap across the face.
“She has already had three babies, Leena!” I yell angrily, hurting that she could even suggest such a thing. “She already knows how to be a mother and has three children right here who need her, but instead she left us and now she has Eddie. If you want to leave Daddy, just say it. Don’t make excuses!”
Leena bursts into tears and runs to her bedroom. I suddenly feel terrible at what I’d just said to her. The anger I am feeling inside is not directed at my sister and I know it. It is my mother and her boyfriend that are making me so angry, accompanied by residual ange
r of the afternoon’s events. Deep inside, I know that my mother is not a bad person. I just wish she had not left us. We’d been happy until she left. I run after Leena and sit next to her on the bed, taking her shaking hand in mine.
“I am sorry for yelling at you,” I say earnestly. She looks up at me, her cheeks soaking wet, with tears in her eyes.
“This is hard for all of us, Krystal. I am just trying to do what is right. I am the oldest. It is my job to help with things like this.” Leena’s tears make my heart sink.
“We will be okay,” I tell her. We hug but neither one of us smile. Both of us want so badly to believe that everything will eventually work out and that we will someday be happy again.
The front door opens with a loud bang and in walks our father. Frowning, eyes wide and looking as white as a ghost, he doesn’t look well at all and it scares me.
“Daddy!” I exclaim, wondering what is wrong. “Daddy, what is it? Are you okay?”
“Don’t go outside, girls. No playing outside,” he whispers, his voice shaking. It is then that I remember the flat car at the end of the street.
“Did you see it, Daddy? Did you see the flat car?” I ask calmly. His eyes widen even more and he stares at me oddly. Fear and worry are clearly written all over his face.
“Tell me what happened, Krystal.” My dad looks like he is about to pass out. I take his hand and lead him to the kitchen table so that he can sit down. His hands are trembling. Once seated, he asks Leena and Tania to go to their rooms and close the door while he talks to me. As soon as both doors are closed, Dad looks into my eyes and asks, almost in a whisper, “Did you do this?”
“Me? Why would you even ask me that?” He responds with a long silence, before his head tilts slightly to the side, as if asking me the question again. “I don’t think so, Daddy,” I reply, putting one of my hands on his leg in the hopes that he will stop shaking. I explain the entire events of that afternoon regarding my interaction with the car and the bad men who tried to pull me from my bike and into their car. In an instant, my dad’s emotions change from fear to anger. I also tell him that it almost looks like a steam roller did it, but I couldn’t see any nearby. “I was just trying my hardest to get away. Honestly, Daddy, I have no idea how the car went flat! I turned into our street and I heard a very loud noise. I thought that the bad men had hit a pole but when I looked around to see what happened, it was really gross!” When I mention seeing a familiar face looking down at me from the sky, my dad seems momentarily confused before his face contorts into that of pure fury. His realisation that the men in the car had tried to kidnap his daughter had finally sunk in. Scared by the amount of rage seeping from his skin, I immediately let go of his leg and take a step backwards, fearful that he might explode.
“Did they hurt you? Are you alright?” he asks. I feel all of Dad’s concern for the men in the car now completely gone as he starts to panic. Checking my arms and legs, he looks me in the eyes again. “Did they hurt you?” he repeats.
“They didn’t hurt me. They sure scared me though. I bit the one who grabbed me and then rode my bike as fast as I could up that big hill,” I tell him, remembering the adrenaline that went into overdrive when it happened. “I thought they were going to drive their car right over the top of me and my bike, but when I turned into our street and heard a crash, that’s when I saw the hand with the beer and the head and the blood and gooey…”
“Shhhh, it’s okay Krystal,” he says, pulling me into a hug. I hear his heart beating fast through his chest. “It’s over now. Those rotten mongrels cannot hurt you again. Anybody who tries to hurt my little girl doesn’t deserve to breathe. You are safe now.” He is still shaking as he hugs me. I am glad he understands how fearful I had been. I am also glad that they are dead. If their car did not go flat, I would most likely be the one who is dead right now. I knew it and my dad knew it. We decided not to mention it again.
One hour after our discussion ends, there is a knock at the front door. Two uniformed police officers are standing on the top step when Dad opens the door. One of the policemen looks rather queasy and I wonder why he is working when he should be at home in bed with some chicken soup. The healthy looking police officer asks my dad if he knows anything about the events that had occurred today at the end of the street.
“Oh, something has happened? Wow, I had no idea!” Dad says to them, feigning innocence. “I haven’t been home long. Was anybody hurt?” he asks. I silently wonder why he doesn’t tell the police what I had told him earlier. Maybe I should tell them? I then have second thoughts, remembering that I didn’t actually know what had happened to the car. I hadn’t seen what had done it, so I maintain silence.
The policemen ask if my sisters and I were home when the incident occurred. Dad tells them that he will go and ask Leena and Tania to come out and speak to them. He takes me by the hand and we go to Leena’s room. As soon as we get in there, Dad leans down to my ear and whispers two words: “Say nothing.”
The three of us emerge from Leena’s room with our father. After inviting both of the police officers into the house, we all sit at the kitchen table and the police question my sisters and me about the accident. Leena and Tania both look at the police officers blankly. They literally have no idea what the police are talking about and tell the officers that they had heard and seen nothing as they were inside the house doing homework since getting home from school. The policemen then wait for my answer. I look at my dad, who has a stern look on his face. I receive his silent message loud and clear, so offer an alternative.
“Nope, I was doing my homework too!” I say. “Do you want to see?”
Half smiling at my response, the police officers are satisfied that none of us know anything about the bloodied steel pancake at the end of our street. They stand and put their hands out to shake my father’s hand. “Thank you very much. If you hear anything or remember anything unusual about today, please give us a call.” Handing my dad a card, the officers then put on their hats, readying themselves to question our neighbours. Dad takes the card, smiles and nods before closing the door behind them.
“So that was weird,” Leena says. Tania nods her head in agreement. After my sisters both return to their bedrooms, Dad asks if he can have a quick word with me. I climb up on his lap and ask if he is okay.
“I think something strange is going on with you,” he says. “I don’t know what it is, but I know that it is not evil. I will do everything I can to protect you. Do you understand?”
“Not really, but thank you,” I respond. “I will do everything to protect you too, Daddy.”
“Krystal, bizarre things have been happening since you were little. I want you to promise me that you will never talk to anybody else about those things except for me, okay?” Dad looks at me seriously. “Promise me. You can tell me about anything, but only me. Nobody else. Do you promise?”
“I promise.” Hugging my father tight, I kiss his cheek. “I love you, Daddy, and I will always be your little girl.”
That night on the news, the reporter advises that there were no witnesses at all to the unusual events that had occurred that day and beckoned for people to call in to the station or to ring police if they had any information. A vague description of the men – or rather, what was left of them – was given, followed by, “As soon as the bodies are able to be removed from the wreckage, we will have more information to give.” When they show footage of the car, I recognise the two police officers who had come to our home earlier that day. One of them was leaning over the back of the car, puking up his lunch for the world to see.
* * *
Yule arrives and my sisters and I feel ourselves fast becoming bibliotaphs as we stare at the new books in our book case. I am unable to find any cookbooks among all of the children’s books and frown as I try to figure out how to make Egg Nog. While getting the table ready for dinner, Leena tells Tania and me that she’d decided to continue living with us after overhearing what had happened with the
flattened car. “I am so seriously glad that none of us were around when it happened. One of us could have been hurt!” Keeping my promise to my father, I hadn’t told anybody else, including my sisters, what had really happened that afternoon. Leena agrees that Mum can look after herself for a while with her new boyfriend.
With the wedding only a week away, my sisters’ excitement seem to notch up a gear as they start going all abuzz about the big event. I, however, am not at all interested in their nuptials. My father and I get into several arguments because I don’t want to go to the wedding, but Dad insists that I must go because it would hurt my mum very much if I didn’t attend her big day. I argue that I don’t like the man she is marrying. Eddie’s a pig and a jerk and he is NOT my father. Dad argues that I would not be going there to support him; I would be going to the wedding to support my mother. Reluctantly, I finally concede and agree to go. While it is true that I am angry at her, I would never hurt my mum. Regardless of her upcoming marriage to a potty-mouthed poo-head, I still love her very much. “Thank you for being so grown up about this, honey,” he says. I roll my eyes and decide to focus instead on the big night ahead in the Hunter residence.
Leena, Tania and I help our father with the cooking in the kitchen. Although this year is a vastly different for us all in our mother’s absence, Dad decides to make a big, fancy meal for Yule anyway. It is exciting to be a part of the dinner-making process for the very first time. The peas are my job. With my fingertips, I split each of the long green pods down their side crease and watch in amazement as the tiny fresh peas fall into the bowl underneath. They smell so good! I am almost tempted to stick one in my mouth, but decide against it, just in case it tastes gross.
Once Upon A Karma (Karmic Krystal Book 1) Page 8