Mirror Me

by Rachel Sanderson

  Did she love him? Did she ever think she loved him?

  Why did he kill her?

  We were just incompatible.

  But what does that mean? Was it just that she wanted to leave him?

  I shake my head. That isn’t it. I feel certain if it was, he’d have said it. He’s said almost as much to me. It was something else, something else. And why kill her father, her mother?

  I need to know.

  I close my eyes, see the triangle with the figure of an eye inside it. I see Dave Hill. Tina and her scars. Becky’s artwork, a superhero made of trash.

  Why did Becky have to die?

  I want to know. I can’t not know.

  I wake to the sound of an engine. I don’t even remember falling asleep. I freshen the blood on my chest and throat, gritting my teeth as I do it. See an image from a horror movie: a bloodied ghost rising from the darkness to exact vengeance on its killer. I have been living as Becky’s ghost for long enough, pretending that I wasn’t. Now I get to play the role for real.

  I hear the car idling at the gate, the clank of metal as the gate is opened, closed, then the engine growling.

  Closer.

  Here.

  My heart begins to race like it’s been turbo-boosted. The sound of the engine stops. There is silence for what feels like an hour, then I hear the car door open and the heavy slam as it shuts. I hear his footsteps. Without meaning to, I find myself pressing back against the wall, wishing for an escape.

  Keys jangling, the lock easing, the door –

  The torchlight is blinding, a brilliant beam cutting the darkness. He shines it on the bed first, which gives my eyes a moment to adjust.

  ‘Abbie?’

  I close my eyes and let her in. Becky moans, a low, anguished sound.

  ‘Abbie?’

  ‘What have you done?’ The words pass through my lips, her words, not mine.

  ‘Abbie? Oh my god, Abbie? What happened?’

  I stand though my legs are quavering under me. ‘Why did you do this to me? Why?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to – I didn’t want to – Abbie? Becky? Becky –’

  I take a step towards him. ‘I had the most terrible dream, Andy. I dreamed you killed me. I didn’t understand. Please, help me, please don’t let me die…’ I’m sobbing, tears and blood mingling. I reach my hands out towards him. I can’t see his expression. The torchlight is shining on me and his face is only darkness. I see him take a step back, then another.

  ‘Please, help me Andy. Please, I know you love me…’

  ‘Becky? How did you…. How could you….’

  ‘I just need to know why. Why did you do this to me? And then I can rest and you and Abbie can be together. Was it my fault?’

  ‘Not you, Becky. Oh no sweet girl… you could never…. It was your father. Dr O’Reilley. It was all his fault.’ Andy is sobbing, the words coming out slurred as though he’s drunk. He’s reaching for me and I start to scream.

  ‘Why? Why?’

  ‘Dave Hill told me. I didn’t want to believe that it was true but Dave Hill told me…’

  Dave Hill? My mind starts to race. Suddenly a spasm hits me, like a hand reaching inside to grab a hold of my ovaries and squeezing. I groan with the pain, and feel the blood begin to flow again.

  ‘I didn’t mean to. Oh god, I didn’t mean to kill you I was just – the look on your face. I couldn’t handle it.’

  ‘Please… help me,’ I cry and stagger, then fall.

  ‘Oh god, don’t die. Becky, please, come back.’

  ‘You can save me,’ I say, in a voice so weak I can barely make it out. ‘Take me… to the hospital…’

  ‘No. No no no. I can’t do that, I can’t. They’ll take you away. I’ll never see you. You’ll be gone, really gone, gone for good. No no no. I’ve got a first aid kit. It’s in the car. I’ll get it. I’ll help you I promise. I’ll help you this time –’

  I slump to the ground and he turns and scrambles the door open and begins to run for the car. I take it all in with a single glance. He’s carrying the torch which is careening wildly, illuminating trees and ground and sky. It’s only ten metres or so from the bunker to the ute. I don’t have long.

  I stand, take a second to gain my balance – I’ve lost a lot of blood, and it always leaves me dizzy and weak. And then in an instant, before I have time to think, I start to run. I make it through the door veer left and sprint, leaping over rocks and dodging between trees, scrambling down the hill, half-falling, I know the skin on my knees is tearing, there are gashes being torn from my hands, but I barely feel it. I’m running in bare feet, the ground is sliding beneath me. I run and I don’t look back, not even for an instant. Somewhere behind me I hear swearing and I see the beam of the torch fingering over to the right of me. He hasn’t spotted me yet. I increase my pace, hurling myself down the hill.

  I change direction and cut directly to the left. For a second I think of Zeke. He’d be horrified at me thinking about left and right. He’d be totally on top of all directions of the compass. He’d know exactly where he was. At the memory of Zeke sitting in the front seat of Leah’s car consulting the map and the compass so carefully, something in me burns. I can’t even remember what had gone wrong between us. All I know is I love him, and I need to see him. I need to tell him that. I spot a huge fallen log that stretches for a good fifteen metres along the forest floor. My heart is pounding, my lungs are burning. I need to stop and listen. I scramble over at a low point and make my way down to the thickest part of the trunk, squat down and wait.

  I don’t hear anything except my own heartbeat.

  It must be a trap. There’s no way I’ve lost him. It’s just not possible. I wait, listen, every sense alert.

  Nothing.

  My eyes have adjusted to the darkness now. I can dimly make out the shapes of trees, the slope of the hill I’ve run down. I rise a little so I can just see over the top of the trunk. I feel certain he’s going to be standing just on the other side, waiting for me, ready to laugh at how easily I was fooled, but there’s nothing. Just the vertical bars of the tree trunks, solid patches of darkness. I’m free. A crazy joy fills me. I’m free. The wind rises, a breeze lifting through the trees, and I take a big, full breath. How long has it been since I’ve had pure sweet air to breathe, not sullied by my own stench? And then, with the wind, a sound. A car engine starting. A car driving away.

  And I know, right away, why he isn’t following me. Because he knows exactly where I will go. I told him myself. And he’s going to get there first.

  My family.

  Chapter sixty-three

  The instant of happiness is shattered and I hear a noise, something broken and harsh, echoing through the forest. I’m screaming, screaming, screaming tearing at the trunk in front of me with my bare hands. I’m tearing my fingers to ribbons of flesh, blood mixing with blood.

  What have I done?

  I rise and listen to where the sound of the engine is coming from and start to run again, following it, but I can only stagger. All those sensations that the adrenalin had dulled are returning to me now in full vibrant colour. Each step is a burning agony. My feet are killing me, my knees are scraped and bruised, I seem to have injured one ankle, it can barely take my weight. And I’m thirsty. So thirsty. It’s as though I haven’t drunk water for a week.

  ‘No,’ I yell aloud. ‘NO NO NO…’ I stagger faster. It’s no use. I’m hurt and weak and have too far to go and he’ll be there before I’ve even reached the edge of the reserve, even if I manage to find my way out of the forest in one go without getting lost. By the time I make it home, they’ll all be dead. He’ll kill them, and then he’ll kill me. And then it will be over.

  I focus on one step and then the next. Scramble through undergrowth, tumble down slopes. Don’t stop, don’t rest, although every step is pain and exhaustion so intense that I sense the blackness of unconsciousness throbbing just behind my eyes.

  I find the dirt trail that lea
ds out of the reserve and follow it, walk right in the middle. I’m not scared that he’ll find me anymore. My progress feels painfully slow, and the night seems to go on forever. Eventually, the trees thin out into open grassland scattered with spindly sharp shrubs and I know I’m almost there. I pass a Council sign noting that grassland is important habitat for endangered small marsupials. I want to lie down, right there, on that dry, prickly grass and not get up but I don’t, I can’t, I can’t afford to stop. Then I reach the road and start to sob. It’s been so long, it’s already taken so long. All the time I’ve been staggering around in the dark Andy has been with my family. Terrible images flash before my eyes, images I don’t want to see. The sobs shake my chest, tears wash out my vision. I wipe them away with my forearm and then remember that I’m covered in menstrual blood like some terrifying female pagan deity that Stacey might like to tell us about on the occasion of an otherwise dull Christian festival. And then I realise that the sun has risen. I can see. I let myself stop for a moment or two, taking a few deep breaths, looking away down the road to the right, which is the way home. And then I start to walk.

  I practise saying it, over and over. My name is Abbie Fray and I need your help. My mind is racing. What do I do? What do I do? I want to knock on the first door I see and call the police except – a part of me isn’t sure. I have to try to figure out what game Andy’s playing. Perhaps it’s a game in which I come back to him of my own free will and he lets my family live. I feel certain, with the kind of deep certainty that is only reserved for ten times tables and other very simple arithmetical sums, that if the police get there before me there will be blood. If my family are still alive and the police turn up, then my family are Andy’s hostages. If my family are still alive and I turn up, alone, it’s a different game. So as much as I am terrified and desperate for help and want someone to come and make this all better, make it all go away, I know that won’t happen now.

  It has to be me.

  I keep walking.

  In order to occupy my mind with rational thoughts, I think through what Andy said to me when he thought I was Becky. It wasn’t you it could never be you. It was your father. It was Dr O’Reilley’s fault. Dave Hill told me…

  What? What could Dave Hill have told him?

  There’s something I’m missing still, something I just don’t understand.

  Becky, help me. But the sense I had earlier of her presence has faded now with the daylight.

  Becky’s dead. Decaying flesh in a box under the ground. Not caring. Not coming back. Nothing to say. No further role to play.

  I brush away another tear. I glance down at myself. Leah would be proud, I think, and the thought makes me smile for a moment. She would understand what it took for me to do this, how much I hate blood, and she’d think I was a kick-ass heroine, the one who’s going to outwit the monster and survive. And then that burning in my chest grows stronger; hope and despair are tangling and knotting there.

  I keep walking.

  Eventually I reach an intersection. I haven’t seen or heard a single car or living person yet. It’s early, most people will still be asleep. For a second I get a flash of Andy sitting at the kitchen table in my house and my mother making him tea. Maybe he hasn’t touched them yet? Maybe he hasn’t even told them why he’s there? Maybe he made something up, some unexpected emergency that brought him to their door at an ungodly hour and he’s sitting, waiting, knowing that I will come? I shudder. I don’t even dare to hope. I don’t dare to think. I just keep walking.

  I remember talking to my dad once, on one of his last trips home. He was telling me about working in a warzone. The scream of fighter jets flying overhead. The night-time punctuated by exploding bombs in the nearby streets. The constant flow of wounded – women, children. It sounded like hell. Like something I could not willingly face in a million years, even if I knew that by being there I could save lives.

  ‘Don’t you ever get scared?’ I asked.

  And he turned and looked at me. ‘I’ve never stopped being scared. But it doesn’t matter anymore because I know what I have to do.’

  I didn’t understand until now.

  I reach the driveway entrance and see Andy’s car there. I don’t hear any noises – no screaming, no sirens, no yelling, no gun shots. I pause, stand behind one of the broad-trunked gum trees on the roadside near our house, lean back against the tree and feel my legs begin to give way. Birds are still singing above me like it’s just any old day. Like my entire world is not about to end.

  I want to cry. I want to fall to the ground and cry and wail and not take another step. I never want to see him again. But he’s here. He has my family. I know what I have to do.

  Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Fuck knows why, it doesn’t make any difference, but it gives me something to focus on for a few seconds. I don’t have a plan. I don’t have a weapon. The only thing I have is myself – and the fact that I am what Andy is after, or as near to it as is possible in the realm of reality we inhabit. I step into the driveway and begin to walk towards the house.

  And then it comes to me. Not as a certainty but as a question. I pause, feel the blood leave my head, feel the whole world shift. I think I know why Andy killed Rebecca O’Reilley. But could it be true? And how much am I willing to risk on the chance that I’m right?

  I reach the door. I raise a hand and knock.

  ‘It’s me,’ I call. ‘I’m home.’

  Chapter sixty-four

  The door swings open and my heart swells. My mum stands there in her pale blue pyjamas. Her eyes are red raw and she looks tired beyond anything I’ve ever seen.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.

  She shakes her head and tries to close the door on me. ‘No Abbie, no, you shouldn’t be here, no, no, no.’ Somebody jerks her back away from the door.

  ‘Well this is lovely. A reunion. You can give her a hug. Go on.’ Andy’s standing directly behind Mum. I don’t have to see it to know that he is holding a knife.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ Mum says, ‘Oh god, what did he do to you?’ And she pulls me to her and wraps her arms around me. I take a breath and let her hold me. Then I pull away.

  ‘I know why you killed them,’ I say to Andy. ‘I figured it out.’

  He looks at me for a moment, expressionless.

  ‘The police don’t know though, do they? Poor Damien confessed. He actually believes he caused their deaths. But if you do anything to us, who’ll take the blame for that? It will be you this time, you know.’

  Andy winces like I’ve hit him. ‘I was taking care of you Abbie. Wasn’t I taking care of you? Were you ever hungry or thirsty? Have I hurt you at all? Tell your Mum. She won’t believe it from me.’ His voice is whining and pleading.

  ‘He didn’t hurt me,’ I say in a low, level voice.

  ‘So why couldn’t you just have stayed with me? It would have been better, simpler. This is just so…’ he waves the knife at me, at Mum where she’s standing beside me holding my hand, ‘so messy.’

  I see, over his shoulder, Stacey and Tom sitting side by side on the couch, very close together. Then, as though the image was there waiting for me but my brain took an instant to process it, I see he’s bound their wrists and ankles with electrical tape. He has wrapped a few strips around their faces to stop them from screaming. At the sight of Tom sitting there, so upright, so brave, so much bigger than the teeny-tiny brother I used to have, so much smaller than a full-grown man, wearing his red spiderman pyjamas, something breaks inside me.

  I turn back to Andy. This is my only chance. ‘You loved her, didn’t you? And she loved you. And I bet the sex was amazing.’ Mum turns to me with a look of horror. I ignore it. ‘I mean you told me she was wild. Did it bother you that she never told anybody else about you? Did you think it was maybe because she was a little bit ashamed of you? It must have been fun for her, the spoiled rich doctor’s daughter screwing the tradie in secre
t. But where did it leave you?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Andy says, through gritted teeth.

  I edge backwards towards the laundry. I can hear a low growl and scratching sounds coming from behind the door.

  ‘Turned out to be pretty lucky for you though, didn’t it? Nobody suspected you because nobody even knew that you knew Becky O’Reilley. Oh, except for Dave. He knew, didn’t he? Funny that. He was the one person she told. I guess it was the only way she could figure to get rid of him. Because he was in love with her too, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Andy says again, louder this time, shaking his head. He looks pale, his eyes are wide and the whites are showing, like the eyes of a scared animal.

  ‘He’s the one who told you. That’s what you said to me. Dave Hill told you. He wanted her back. And he knew something about Becky O’Reilley that was absolutely guaranteed to sink your relationship beyond any recovery. And so, he used it.’

  ‘Stop it, please, don’t say anymore…’ Andy puts his hands over his ears and shakes his head from side to side. I wasn’t sure before but now I am. My heart is pounding so hard my chest hurts. I’m surprised I don’t break a rib.

  ‘Just when you thought things were going so well, Dave had to go and spoil it. You probably didn’t believe it at first, so you confronted Doctor O’Reilley first, in the living room downstairs.’

  ‘The fucking bastard, the fucking bastard—’

  ‘And he told you the truth. That he’d gotten a bit too close to one of his patients, who just happened to be your mother, and you were the result.’

  ‘I never knew… all those years and I had no fucking idea. He patched Mum up well enough every time my dad beat her. Patched me up too. He even gave me bits of work here and there, to help me out. His own fucking son. So fucking considerate. Living his perfect fucking life with his perfect fucking family.’