The Wish Kin

by Joss Hedley

  ‘Son,’ continues Joe. ‘I want you to get your sister and put her in the truck. We’re gunna go down to Midgin or we’re gunna die.’

  Colm doesn’t look at Joe. ‘I can’t, Joe,’ he says. ‘She won’t come.’

  Joe exhales loudly then gets out of the truck and walks over to where Lydia is still standing staring at the town.

  ‘Come on, Miss Bell,’ he says kindly. ‘We’ve got a long way to go yet.’

  ‘I know, Joe,’ she replies. ‘But that’s not the way.’

  ‘Which is, then?’ asks Joe.

  Lydia looks about her for a moment, even turns around and looks back in the direction they came. She wrinkles her brow as though remembering.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. She does not seem at all distressed about this. Colm wonders why she isn’t embarrassed.

  ‘Come on, Lyd,’ he calls. ‘If we can’t go that way, which way can we go?’

  Lydia turns her face to him and he sees in her eyes the same fiery resolve that revealed itself when they were confronted by the brown snake. His own eyes weaken under her stare and he knows that arguing is useless. Joe, too, seems to have given way to a greater authority, and the three of them climb into the truck in silence. Joe spins the wheel in a circle and they head back the way they came, following the winding road down through the hills. When they reach again the cattle grid and the private road, Lydia commands Joe to turn into it. He baulks momentarily, then swings the truck off the public road and across the grid.

  The road is bad. Sheila hauls herself in and out of potholes, creaking and groaning with every turn of her wheels. Joe drives slowly, worried that if he goes into a hole too quickly one of the axles will break. Colm feels unbearable shame. What if something terrible should happen on this road? Joe would never forgive them. He tries to make himself as small as he can by pressing himself against the cabin door. Lydia, he notices, has no such compunction. She is sitting upright and staring straight ahead at the road. Her eyes hold still their fire of resolve.

  They pass signs, warning signs. Trespassers prosecuted. Beware of dogs. Property patrolled by AAA Security. The signs are old and rusted and fading. But they are threatening enough that a seed of anxiety takes root in Colm’s chest and begins to grow there.

  The night is folding in around them when they see ahead the dark shape of a farmhouse. Joe brings Sheila to a halt and they sit in the gloom, watching. They are quiet and still, waiting for some indication as to whether it is safe to go any further.

  A light comes on in the house. It illuminates what they take to be the kitchen. The figure of a woman, not young, Colm thinks, but not old either, moves about from table to stove, the hem of her clothes pawed at by two small children. The three of them watch the woman lift the children into chairs stacked high on blocks and place bowls of food in front of them. The little girl can feed herself but the boy, who is smaller, waits with his mouth open for his mother.

  Colm realises he is hungry, imagines the others must be too.

  ‘Any food left, Joe?’ he asks.

  ‘A bit,’ says Joe.

  ‘Maybe we could take it in to her,’ he says. ‘Maybe she’d let us cook it there. We can tell her we’ve got money.’

  Joe turns to Colm suddenly. ‘Look, son,’ he says, ‘you’re like you’re father in lotsa ways but one: you got no common sense. And it’s contagious. I don’t even know what I’m doin’ here watching some woman feed her kids when I could be eatin’ me own tucker in a pub in Midgin. And ya gotta stop talkin’ about ya money. Not everyone’s gunna be nice to ya, ya know. Sooner or later someone’s gunna take ya for a ride, and ya ain’t gunna have no money left. Dja understand?’

  Colm twists his face. ‘Sure, Joe,’ he says.

  ‘Right,’ says Joe. ‘Come on then, both of youse.’

  They get out of the car and walk quietly towards the house. Joe knocks and they wait. Almost at once they hear footsteps and the sound of a gun being cocked.

  ‘Who is it?’ demands a voice from the other side of the door.

  ‘M’name’s Joe Hammersmith. I’ve come from Nurrengar. Got these kids here with me an’ wouldn’t mind finding out where we can get hold of some petrol ’n’ some water. Make it worth ya while.’

  The door opens slightly, and an eye appears in the gap, underlined by a chain hanging between the door and the post. The eye moves over the three of them. Colm can think of no reason why the woman should open the door to them. The eye rests on Joe, follows his form up and down, then the chain is slid back and the door opens. The woman lowers her gun.

  ‘Don’t know if I can help you with the petrol,’ she says. ‘But I got a bit of water. And a bed if you want it.’

  They follow the woman, whose name is Marla, through the house and into the kitchen. Everything is faded, dilapidated, crumbling. But it is not unclean.

  ‘Sit here,’ she says, and they sit on a long bench under the window. The two small children stare at them, terrified. The little girl starts to whimper, the little boy, taking his sister’s lead, to bawl.

  ‘Hush Kiah, Ganan.’ Marla kisses the top of the little girl’s head and presses a spoonful of food into the little boy’s mouth. Their bottom lips protrude but they stop crying.

  ‘They haven’t seen no one for a long time,’ says Marla. ‘Their dad left a while back with the two older ones. Been makin’ do ever since.’

  She serves her visitors a brew which she tells them will take away their thirst. ‘You don’t need much of it,’ she says. ‘It lines the mouth and throat long after the last drop has been swallowed. That’s how we live out here, so far away from everything.’

  ‘You got no bore water?’ asks Joe.

  ‘A bit. Not much. Enough to get us by.’

  ‘But what about Midgin?’ Colm asks. ‘Don’t you ever go there?’

  ‘Used to,’ says Marla. ‘Not any more. Place had bad sewers, no water. Rats came in and bit everyone with their sick little teeth. Nobody lived. The rats took over. They own the town now. Go there and you die.’

  Joe snorts. ‘I’ve seen hundreds of rat plagues in my time,’ he says. ‘But never any that ya can’t get rid of in the end.’

  Marla shrugs and loads another spoonful of food for Ganan. ‘You try tellin’ that to the folk of Midgin if you can find any. Some of ’em were lucky enough to make it to the grave. Most were eaten by the rats where they died. Not pretty, I’ve heard.’

  ‘How could you hear if everyone died?’ asks Lydia. But Marla says no more.

  Later, she makes up beds for them all. The farmhouse was once large, but sections have been dismantled for firewood and tools. Still, Colm and Lydia are in a room of their own with a window that looks out into the blackness of the hills.

  ‘How did you know, Lyd?’ Colm asks his sister as they lie on their mattresses. ‘About Midgin and the rats.’

  ‘Just had a feeling,’ Lydia says quietly.

  ‘Do you believe that stuff?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The house softens around them. Lydia falls into sleep, blowing away the day as she breathes into the night air. The room heats and sweats. Colm rises to open a window and hears as he does so a distant whimpering, a crying. He imagines it is one of the children and walks softly to the door, listening. Nothing. He unfastens the window and is about to return to his mattress when the sound comes again. This time he opens the door and walks carefully down the corridor. As he moves through the house again he hears something. Is it the same sound? He’s not sure. It sounds slightly different. He stops outside the room it seems to be coming from. The door is slightly ajar. It is a bedroom, he can see, and Marla and Joe are standing together by the window with their mouths moving over one another’s face and neck. Joe has his hands around Marla’s waist. Marla is sighing and making little noises like an owl. Joe pinches the flesh on her ribs and Marla squeals and slaps at him. Colm backs away and hurries to his room. He pulls the covers over his head and s
tuffs his fingers into his ears, willing himself to sleep.

  • • •

  At breakfast, Marla serves them each a bowl of brown grainy mash and they drink some more of the greenish brew that they had the night before. Colm watches Joe playing peekaboo with Kiah from behind the chair back. The little girl laughs, high-pitched and joyous, and sends her bowl of food skating across the tabletop. Nobody seems to mind when it falls to the floor. Marla gathers the pieces smiling.

  ‘When are we leaving, Joe?’ asks Colm.

  Joe ducks his head down behind the chair and appears again suddenly. Kiah snatches and squeals.

  ‘Joe?’

  Joe thrusts his fat fingers into Kiah’s belly and starts to tickle her. Kiah grabs at Joe’s hand, laughing.

  ‘When are we leaving?’ Colm says again.

  ‘Eh?’ Joe looks up.

  ‘We’re all packed,’ says Lydia.

  ‘Right.’ Joe pats Kiah on the head and looks across to where Marla is feeding Ganan.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay for a while,’ she says. ‘Nice to have a bit of company for a change.’ She sweeps her hair away from her neck and Colm sees a dark bruise on her throat.

  Joe acts surprised and pleased at the offer, but Colm is certain this isn’t the first time he has heard it made.

  ‘Well, we could stay another night or two, just to catch our breath,’ says Joe. ‘Long trip ahead.’

  ‘You might want to catch your breath, Joe,’ says Colm, ‘but we have to get to Wonding.’

  ‘’Nuther day’s not gunna make a difference.’

  ‘I reckon it will.’

  Colm feels strangely strong. It’s not like him to challenge authority, but the urgency of their flight is well apparent and he wants to be on their way.

  ‘For the kids, son,’ says Joe. Kiah is sitting in Joe’s lap now. Ganan’s small brown fist is wrapped around his pinky. Joe’s eyes are pleading. Colm feels his momentary resolve fall away.

  ‘Lyd?’ he asks. His sister turns a blank face to him and shrugs.

  ‘One more night, then,’ he says.

  The day passes, burning and smouldering around them. Joe, it seems, can’t get enough of the children, or of Marla. The four of them sit in the kitchen, laughing together, playing and teasing. Colm and Lydia drift from room to room, opening this door and that. In a long-disused drawing room they find an old deck of playing cards and build card castles, stacking the paper palaces higher and higher until the cards collapse to a slippery sea of kings and queens and aces.

  They sleep. Colm dreams of giant rats descending on a town made entirely of cards. He sees the rats lunging forth with their yellow teeth and brutal gums. Joe is there, and Marla and Kiah and Ganan. The adults are afraid of the rats and prod ineffectually at them with spoons and little forks. The rats snap and snarl, and move closer. They stop, though, when they see the children. Their snarling ceases. Kiah and Ganan run forward as though seeing old friends. They jump on the rats and begin to tussle with them, laughing. The rats, in some strange ratty way, also begin to laugh, and Colm watches them pinch and tickle the children, tickle them so much that their laughter turns almost to tears. ‘Stop, stop!’ they cry. ‘Stop!’ Their voices shift; they sound less like themselves now and more like the rats. But the rats tickle on and on.

  Colm wakes. The room echoes around him as though someone has just called out. He listens into the blackness. The echo falls away, disappears into the stone of the walls, the wood of the floor. Colm is thirsty and walks through the house to the kitchen. He takes a swig of green brew and wipes his mouth. A small cry rings softly through the sleeping rooms and Colm turns his ear to the sound. The echo again sifts gently, this time through the cracks in the furniture, through Colm’s own skin and hair. He walks quickly along the corridor and looks in the open doorways. Marla and Joe lie sleeping, their arms and legs laced together. Kiah and Ganan are quiet in a mess of sheets. Colm crosses to the other side of the house where the deck of cards sits solemnly on a shelf. Beside the shelf is a small door – a cupboard, Colm assumes. He turns the handle and pulls the door gently towards him. It is surprisingly heavy and opens slowly. Before him, a flight of stairs descends into darkness. He follows, places his feet carefully on the narrow steps. The darkness folds around him. He runs his hands along the rough walls to feel his way. He wishes now that he had his torch. And that Lydia was with him. It is always better when she is there.

  His feet reach at last level ground and he hears again the cry. It is close now, within reach, it seems, so Colm pushes out from the safety of the wall into the dark unknown. His arms flail in front of him, his feet shuffle cautiously forward. He moves about like this, uncertain now of the way back, uncertain even of where the wall is. The cry comes again. This time it is behind him. How did he miss it? He turns, his anxiety overcome by curiosity: for the sound is high-pitched and pathetic, as though made by a tiny child. He reaches out again and his hand finds a large object, hard and solid. He traces its outline. A box, it seems, made of wood. He begins to explore the box’s interior. The wood is covered by a coarse fabric. There is much of this, and Colm feels carefully through, seeking the source of the cry which comes again, right here, right beside his hand. He just has to shift his fingers slightly and he will have found it.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He snatches his hand away, shocked by the sudden voice in the darkness. He sees Marla standing by the stairway, the flame of a small candle illuminating her face.

  ‘I heard a cry,’ says Colm. ‘Everybody else was asleep. So I came down.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’ asks Marla. ‘Have you seen who is in the box?’

  Colm shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s too dark.’

  ‘Then let me show you.’ Marla walks towards him, the flame sputtering now and sending ragged shadows across the room. She stands close beside Colm and lowers the candle slowly. Colm gasps, shocked. In the box is a child, very young and very small. His fingers are pink and curl into tiny fists. His little legs and arms beat into the air. His eyes are dark and thickly lashed. But his crinkled face is pointed, his ears opaque and webbed with tiny veins, and his skin is lightly covered with a pelt of stiff brown hair. The child looks like a rat. So much so that, in the darkness and confusion, Colm thinks he sees a scaly tail slide quickly beneath the covers.

  ‘My son,’ says Marla. ‘His name is Turi.’

  Colm does not know what to say.

  The baby, seeing his mother, reaches out to her and utters again the sad little cry, softer now but just as desolate. Marla sets down the candle and lifts the child lightly into her arms.

  ‘He is –’ Colm swallows, ‘– part rat?’

  Marla looks at him strangely and shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s ’cause of the toxins. We’re built on top of Midgin’s old rubbish tip. Cheap land when we got it. We’re payin’ for it now, though.’

  Colm has no breath. ‘That’s terrible,’ he mutters.

  Marla shrugs and kisses the child’s crinkled face. She says, ‘I heard years ago about a woman in the Middle Ages contracting some strange ailment and giving birth to a child who looked like a bear cub.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘So it could be something like that.’

  She sits down on a nearby stool and opens her nightgown. She moves Turi’s lipless mouth into its folds. The child suckles noisily.

  ‘Why does he live down here?’ asks Colm.

  ‘He’s sensitive to sunlight and heat,’ replies Marla. ‘He prefers the gloom and cool of the underground.’

  Colm nods slowly.

  ‘It’s strange,’ Marla continues. ‘Things have been different for us since he was born. Easier.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Maybe it’s coincidence but we were just about outta water, and I thought that was that, when I saw a trickle coming up through a crack in the floor at the end of Turi’s cot. Dug up the paving stones and found a stream, small, but enough for the four of us.
Other things too. I got vegetables to grow in a patch of dirt outside the kitchen. Nothin’s grown there since my mother’s time and then, outta the blue, about six small potatoes and some spring onions.’

  ‘Maybe things are getting better,’ says Colm, though he wonders that he might say this.

  ‘Or Turi’s my lucky charm.’

  She looks with all the love in the world at the small creature in her arms.

  ‘Does Joe know about him?’ Colm asks.

  ‘Not yet,’ says Marla. ‘But he will.’ She looks up, her tired face for a moment soft and happy. ‘He’s a good man, Joe.’

  ‘He is.’

  They say nothing. The child’s mouth unclamps from the teat and utters a small cry. Marla turns his face to her other breast.

  ‘You two,’ she says, ‘you’re Rafe Bell’s kids, aren’t ya?’

  ‘Did Joe tell you that?’

  ‘No. Figured it out meself. You’re the spittin’ image of ya father.’

  ‘Do you remember him?’

  ‘You bet! Rafe Bell was the most important figure in the country. Far more than any politician or movie star. Everybody loved him.’

  ‘And the rest of the Twelve? Do you remember them?’

  ‘Well, your dad was the face of the Twelve, so I remember him more. But, really, we all thought they were going to save the world. Their inventions were incredible.’ Marla pauses, looks down at her suckling child. ‘What happened with your father?’ she asks, her voice soft now, cautious. ‘He seemed such a good man.’

  ‘He is good,’ says Colm. ‘That’s why he had to leave the Twelve.’

  Marla’s mouth is a sorry line. ‘Where is he now, then?’ she asks.

  ‘Not sure,’ says Colm. ‘We’re meeting him soon.’

  ‘You be careful,’ she says, her eyes on Colm again. ‘You watch out for yourselves.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Colm shifts, anxious.

  ‘And if anyone I don’t like the look of comes this way after ya, I’ll tell ’em you’ve gone down to Midgin.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Colm.

  There is movement behind them and they both look around. It is Lydia. She glides down the stairs as though she has wings on her feet and stands before Marla and Turi. The child stops at once his suckling and turns to look at the girl. The two stare at each another. There is quiet. The child reaches out his tiny pink hand with its papery nails to grasp at a strand of Lydia’s hair. Lydia leans forward and kisses his forehead.