The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

  It was the only way to hide, to stay small, unnoticed.

  Draw no attention. Like fish in shoals, birds in flocks, insects in swarms, hide now! I’m one of eight, only eight, but precious eight. Quiet now. One chance in eight. Hide the only way you can.

  She calmed, actually calmed. With nowhere to run, no other way to be, to go but into terror, she calmed, watched, waited. All she could do.

  And she was rewarded unexpectedly. Her eyes adjusted enough to find scraps of light, barest traces through the mesh-covered filigree of the crypt’s ventilation grilles, especially the one in her broken line of sight she hadn’t noticed had been there all along, the ghost of a midnight blue square in the deepest black. It gave depth, distance to the world again, the tiniest sense of “over there” so it wasn’t just “only here.”

  She eased, waited, protected. Listened.

  Silence. Precious silence.

  Let it stay.

  Then, primed with cunning, wise with desperation, something else occurred to her, Anabella gesturing at their surroundings in response to Alana’s question about the fate of the tomb’s previous occupants. “They’re earning their keep,” Ana had said, and “building a better tomorrow.”

  Not in the walls, Jane realised, clearly, coldly, delirium on hold for the moment, panic at arms’ length. In the food!

  She couldn’t be sure. Thank God, she couldn’t. Her gorge began to rise at the thought of it. But the heavy sauces, the smoky aftertaste. All of them drinking generous top-ups of bubbly to cut through the taste. All drinking more than they might have. Not Poe, oh no. More like the ancient Greek legend of Atreus tricking Thyestes into eating his own sons.

  All the while Ana eating selectively, knowing the safe dishes, pretending to drink even as Jane had pretended.

  A sedative in the champagne too, just enough. That was why the others were silent, just herself left to keep this interminable vigil.

  Jane tried to put it from her mind, controlled her gorge, worked to calm herself as best she could, listened, distracted herself by listening.

  More seconds drip-fed into minutes, built slowest hours behind, dismantled those ahead.

  Another sound! More than one.

  Footsteps. She could hear footsteps. But soft, soft.

  Someone was out there.

  The synaesthesia was there too then, the slide and rasp of the brickwork, the scratch, scratch, scratch of walled-up kin, the smells of carrion and vanilla, old rose and cinnamon.

  She stayed still, stayed quiet, tried to let it flow about her.

  Play the game! Let it be what it is.

  Then it happened. Her hydraulic frame activated, began lowering!

  She hadn’t pressed the button. The remote was in its cradle against the lid, but she hadn’t pressed it.

  Someone else! Someone else was lowering her casket.

  Why? Why?

  A more conventional death position. How you stacked a tomb.

  She was finally horizontal, laid out on the floor.

  Something covered her mercy hole then, snatched away the last of any other world but terror.

  The air smelled of roses.

  Panic and roses. Braving the darkness had made her think she could win, but there were too many roses. Too many.

  * * *

  “Wakey wakey, sleepy-head!” the voice came, and sunlight, the other world.

  Marco was steadying her, helping her out of her casket, which was upright again. The door to the crypt was open. She could see part of a white limo parked out there.

  There were others in that wash of light: Alana and Claire, Tory, Maggie, and, yes, Anita, thank God, shaky, soiled and millionaires every one. They were being helped out into the best day that had ever been.

  Even now the piece of limo moved out of sight, and another pulled into view.

  Jane tried to speak but couldn’t manage it. She felt too leaden, too half-dead (but grinned at the thought of that) from nearly losing everything, everyone. They were safe, safe.

  She tasted coffee, briefly, fleetingly, then slept in the limo all the way back to her apartment in Drummoyne, where someone, Marco it might have been, used her key to help her inside, then waited, assisted dutifully and respectfully, while she put herself to bed.

  When she finally woke sixteen hours later, she found two envelopes on her bedside table. The first contained a cheque for one million dollars, the second a note from Anabella.

  Jane dear,

  Thank you for making the evening such a success. Should the pregnancy test prove positive, please contact me at once. There will be a further two million should you decide to carry the little one to term.

  Forgive a daughter for honouring her father’s final request. He really did love all his girls.

  Anabella

  Jane sat on the edge of her bed staring at the words until she no longer saw them, her mind filled with thoughts of anger in the walls and too many roses, of special meals and special needs and being a hostage to fortune yet again.

  It was going to be an interesting week.

  Black Swan Event

  Margo Lanagan

  The first thing Dawn heard every morning was her brother stretching his wing. The soft whooping travelled down the hall and woke her from whatever doze or dream she lay in. Through the first bird-calls, or the wind hissing or the rain rattling or the traffic whining and rumbling on the distant highway, came the whoop and settle, whoop and settle, as Neddy worked the itch out, worked the cramp out, oiled the joints of the thing, before binding it to himself for another day of pretending it wasn’t there.

  He made no other sound as he stretched it, no groan or yawn. And he kept that room as neat as a pin, with nothing loose to fall or fly about. Whoop and settle. Whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop and settle. She would watch the wall, or the lightening ceiling, or her own clutter, the knick-knacks from her children that would be swept off and smashed by such wing-beats here, the yarn-scraps that would whirl into flight all colours. She watched their stillness, and listened to the air being struck and stretched down the hall, and felt nothing in particular, not any more.

  * * *

  She had thought she must be sickening for something. She had not quite a headache, not quite an earache, not quite sinus pain. And maybe that last period eight months ago hadn’t been the last after all. Was that what this feeling meant?

  She got up early, troubled after a troubled night’s sleep. The kitchen was cold but tidy; last night’s casserole dish stood soaking on the stovetop. She got the jug boiling for tea, emptied the dish, turned on the hot water and put a fingertip into the first cold streaming.

  She felt it then, very strong and unpleasant, in her womb and her bowel, in her thighs, something being torn up by the roots. Her hand snatched itself out of the water, and the dish thunked to the sink-bottom. The feeling stopped, just like that.

  She stood breathing hard. The water twined down, warming. Slowly she brought her fingertip to just beside it. Yes, there was the ghost of what she’d felt, a dragging in her throat, a horrid anxiety in her guts. Her knees locked, ready should she put her finger in further.

  She washed the dish, careful not to touch the running water. She towelled it dry, and bent and put it away.

  Ned’s footsteps sounded in the hall, his work boots, though he’d had no work in how long? She straightened and backed up to the cupboard as he came in. She must not greet him, must not speak. She knew this for a hard rule, and with that knowledge things began to come clear.

  He saw the way she stood. “What’s up?”

  She put her fingertips to her mouth and shook her head. The water scrambled in the jug, coming to the boil.

  “Are you all right, Dawnie?” he said. “Do I need to get you to the doctor’s?”

  The jug clicked off and she rushed to it, poured their tea. She brought the mugs to the table, snatched the calendar from the wall and a pen from the bench-top, and returned to sit, kicking out a chair for him. By mark and hand-sign s
he managed to tell him that she would not be going to little Josie’s christening tomorrow, or the girlfriends’ book club Thursday evening, that Phillip and Martha could not come to stay next weekend as planned and the whole family gather for dinner on Saturday night—and that Neddy must break this news to everyone.

  “What’ll I say, though?” he said after all this busy silence.

  She shrugged and looked at him, made a motion of zipping her lips. The boys will understand, she wrote on the back of the calendar.

  “It’s not so much the boys I’m worried about,” he said. “Does Martha even know about that stuff? You’ll be really in the poo with her.”

  Phil might have to tell her, wrote Dawn. She sat back, looked at Ned levelly, sat forward again to write. You know how important this is. Her gaze fell from his eyes to the misshapen shoulder of his shirt.

  “Don’t muck me around, Dawnie,” he said, very low, very hard. “We’re both too old for that.”

  She put her hand on his, wishing he could feel her certainty. But he only looked terribly vulnerable, so sad and so old, her baby brother.

  Well, he’d see, wouldn’t he. She patted his hand, drank down her tea and got up from the table.

  * * *

  There’d been that one speaking glance. He’d cried out, as close to a human “No!” as a beak and swan-throat could shape; he had fallen back from her, and flung out his wings.

  But Dawn had been exultant. Look at what she’d already done, her five brothers standing there! And Neddy was youngest and smallest, after all—perhaps the unfinished shirt would be enough. So she’d thrown it over him.

  She had un-thrown it in her mind again and again over the years. It doesn’t matter, the dream-crowd said, between cheers. With those other five handsome and whole, what do you need to prove? Finish it properly, girl; cast it then. The boy won’t mind waiting, now that he sees you free. The boy can be a bird a while longer.

  * * *

  She knew exactly how much nettle to cut, for a sleeve. Ah, the smell of it! It was the smell of her youth, the smell of steadfast hope and solitude, out in the open, her urgency all the sharper for everything else idling, oblivious, around her—magpies gliding across the clear morning sky, rosellas flocking squeaking to a tree, Mason’s cows tearing up grass beyond the fence there, a breeze flurrying the nettle-tops.

  When she got back to the house, she found the old canvas wading-pool assembled, the hose lying in a couple of centimetres of water already, and Ned burrowing into the shed, bringing out boxes to make space to hunt deeper.

  She sat by the pool, stripping the leaves off the nettle-stalks. One by one, the brothers who lived nearest came by to confer with Ned, to speak to Dawn just to see for themselves that she wouldn’t answer. Neville even hugged her, as if she were sick somehow. She acknowledged them but did not pause in her work, and Ned saw them off as quickly as he could, to dig some more in the shed. Her own children visited, bringing her grandchildren, and it was very hard not to speak to the little ones. Dawn smiled and kissed and hugged them, but signed that they must leave, that she was busy.

  * * *

  Seven children can create a world of their own, and a populous one. You can lose one brother to a job at the mines, another to the city or the next big town, and there are still plenty left. And each must get himself a wife, mustn’t he? And breed up a storm of kids. Dawn had had her own four, two boys, two girls, so neat. What a whirl it had been, the babies, the schools, the sports, the get-togethers! This house had been the centre, of course; she, Dawn, had been the centre. If it hadn’t been for her, they would all have been in the reeds raising cygnets, Gus liked to joke at a certain point in the evening. Not if Ned was around, of course. He wasn’t totally heartless.

  Neddy had had a wife, too, stringy little Adriane who must have thought she could do no better. He’d had a son, too, for a few weeks, born early but it had looked hopeful for a while there. Well, Dawn hadn’t hoped; she’d known there was no point crossing her fingers for that one.

  When the boy died, Neddy took it all on himself; he’d always been quiet, but his silence went denser, more complete. And all the wind went out of Adriane, too, as you’d expect. She looked around at them all, their houses and vehicles, recipes and hairdos, their kids running around reaching developmental milestones and bringing home trophies and yapping and crying. And the contrast must have been too much for her, just her and her flattened husband with the wing everyone pretended not to see, pretended didn’t matter. All their unspoken pity finally got to her. She left, and Ned didn’t go after her. She sent papers, and he signed and returned them. He sold their house and moved back in with Dawn, as her brothers always did when they visited, or were down on their luck.

  * * *

  Dawn spread the nettle stalks in the water in the early afternoon. Ned came out of the shed as she was pressing them down, the heddle from the loom in his hand. “Set her up in the lounge-room, I’m thinking.”

  She shook her head; he might need the lounge for hard-to-fend-off visitors. She led him instead to the lean-to at the back of the house, indicated with a wave that the two grandkids’ beds could be stacked one on the other.

  “You serious? You’ll freeze out here!”

  She took the heddle from him and propped it against the wall.

  * * *

  She must not have worked fast enough, all those six silent years. She had thought she could go no faster—she’d hardly had time to eat! Thin as a rail, she’d been; she didn’t know how Jeff King had been able to see anything in that poor scrawny girl . . . But he had. Her mouth softened in a smile. Everyone smiled, memories of Jeff, but she most of all, of course. She’d had the best of him.

  Right after the bird-business and everything coming right, her first period had started. She’d been sitting in a room full of girlfriends, butterfly cakes and laughter, talking nineteen to the dozen as she ran up her wedding dress, of creamy satin woven by some wonderful machine.

  Your first? Cora had cried. You lucky thing! I’ve been getting them for years, a week out of every month flat out on the couch with a hottie.

  Well, this has come just in time for Dawn and her hottie. Sylvie had grinned, pouring Saxa Salt thickly on the stain on the sewing-stool cushion.

  Whip that skirt off, Dawn, said Jill. Soak it in cold water. You got a belt and pads?

  Dawn had stared at her, mortally embarrassed by the whole business.

  Of course she doesn’t. Cora had snatched up her handbag. I’ll run down the chemist, shall I?

  Cora had gone through the change early, too, middle of her forties. The rest of them had pitied her then, but now they were all envious that she was done with it, the uncertainty, the insomnia, the dressing in layers—and the fear of old-hagdom, spilling at them like fog over the rim of the ranges. They joked loudly about it all the time, but that didn’t make it go away.

  * * *

  In the night she went out, drained the pool and hosed down the stalks, filled the pool afresh. Even through the hose-plastic, even with gloves on, she felt the grab of the water. It took nothing from her, but oh, it wanted to. She paced around the filling pool, trailing clouds of white breath, and the blotched moon watched her, and she didn’t speak a word to it, either.

  * * *

  Everything had been fast, crowded and noisy after the boys came back. As soon as I have a minute, she’d said to Neddy, I’ll sew up that last sleeve.

  No worries, sis, he’d said. You’ve got a lot on your plate, haven’t you? He’d had a rare, slow smile that lit up the room. How long was it since she’d seen that smile? And most of me’s right, hey? I can manage one-armed for a bit.

  As soon as she and Jeff got back from Bateman’s Bay she’d gone out to the gully and cut nettles, brought them home, stripped and retted and pounded them and spun. Queasy, she was, with the beginnings of her eldest, Charmaine. She had ploughed on, knowing in her heart that something important had gone from her, that her life was no longer quiet
enough, or sad enough, to bring what was necessary to the weaving.

  How embarrassed they’d been, she and Neddy, trying to fit the finished sleeve over the wing, cramming the feathers in, and neither feathers nor cloth firming up into flesh.

  I don’t understand, she’d said. I never spoke a word to spoil it. I made it just the same as all the others.

  Neddy had put his hand on her shoulder. Maybe they had to be made all of a piece, those shirts. It makes sense, sort of. So anxious to ease her dismay, he’d been—and too young, then, to know how much he should mind for his own sake.

  And he’d hidden the wing away in shirts with the sleeve turned inside out. He wouldn’t let her sew up the armholes—he held out that much hope, at least. So just the shape of him reminded her, the shoulder too wide and too shallow, the back too rounded on one side, but no worse than that scoliosis that all Dennis’s kids were born with. The wing edge curved down his side and into the back of his pants. All that his nieces and nephews knew was that Uncle Ned didn’t go swimming. He’d lost his arm in a threshing machine, was the story the grown-ups spun them. Don’t ask him about it. And don’t stare.

  * * *

  All through the days of retting she maintained her silence, kept to it as if the old rule still applied, that Ned would die if she spoke. Cleaning and spinning the fibres, she never so much as hummed a tune to herself. The telephone rang, and if Ned was out she didn’t answer it; the doorknocker sounded, and she sat motionless until the person went away, or if they were one of her blustering family and came around the back, wanting her to chat, wanting her usual noise, she sent them packing with a note.

  Ned sometimes stood at the lean-to door, watching the sleeve creep into being. Everything he wasn’t saying pressed against the back of her neck, but she didn’t shoo him away. He had a right, didn’t he, to watch and worry and hope there? Besides, she was more than occupied with her work, with the thread that was being spun from her and laid down in the fabric with the back and forth of the shuttle. She didn’t remember this feeling from before, of being expended this way, from some deep store.