A Season In Carcosa

by Sr. (Editor) Joseph S. Pulver

  He throttled the steering wheel with both hands. His face crimsoned as he drew a ragged breath. Then he stamped on the accelerator and turned the wheel.

  With the power of a turbo-charged V8 elephant, the SUV’s wheels tore gravel, clipped a drainage ditch and flattened five metres of brush before it hit the tree. The shrieks of metal shear and crunch of glass shatter were smothered by the explosions of four airbags. They puffed out clouds of white powder.

  Without the airbag in front of her, Simone would have gone through the windscreen. Instead, her neck snapped. Her head tilted roofwards.

  Alex jerked in his seat. “Fuckin airbags!” He leaned toward his wife, but his bucket seat and . . . “Fuckin gear shift!”

  He raised his hand to adjust the rear-view mirror, and just then the over-arching bottom limb of the dry and brittle scribblybark tree cracked, tore and fell, punching through the roof above Alex like a fist through paper.

  The children’s screen hung at a crazy angle—its glass a knife.

  Somewhere near, small birds chittered. Maybe they’d been disturbed in their going-to-sleep arrangements. At another time, Wolf would have loved to explore and explain it all to anyone who might have been interested.

  “Guhghhhh,” went someone in the front. It was a gurgle, like at the dentist right before you spit. But when this gurgle ended, Wolf sniffed. Yup. Just as the books say. His belt already unbuckled, he knelt on his seat, looking forward.

  Lovie gasped, then started coughing. He stroked her head. “It’s okay,” he said. “Hang on a sec.” Her scalp was hot and sweaty, and a sweet smell of pee drifted up from her.

  He reached out and squeezed what he could of Safire and Emrald—a shoulder and a hunk of hair. Em was scrabbling at her eyes. “Everybody out! Poison.”

  “It’s only baking soda or something,” he said, feeling sure he’d read it somewhere.

  “Fuh ckin shit,” Safire mumbled. He unstrapped Lovie.

  She banged her face into his, sobbing convulsively. Her lips wet his ear. “You’re making noise. We’re not supposed to move.”

  “It’s okay,” said Wolf.

  She raised her head and stage-whispered, “They’re really gonna get mad now.”

  “I’ll tell them it wasn’t your fault,” Em said, pulling Lovie onto her lap.

  The doors were locked. They held their breath while Safire positioned himself to kick out the window with both feet.

  “No!” Wolf hissed. Behind them, gravel crunched. “Shut up and play dead. Someone’s coming!”

  Safire sat up. “You nuts?” Lovie squirmed in Em’s arms.

  “Get us help,” Em said through gritted teeth. Above, the heavy limb creaked against the roof. Outside, car doors opened.

  Safire carefully turned himself around and knelt on his seat. “Here!” he yelled, waving his arms.

  The seat jerked, and Wolf sprang up in front of Safire. From Wolf’s open mouth close enough to kiss, a sharp, hot, wordless shriek plunged through Safire, whose body reacted by shooting a blurp into his pants as all the terror that had been lurking in Lovie, emptied from her lungs.

  The two people, a nice young German couple touring Australia in the strange continent’s summer, took to their heels so fast that she stumbled and fell, and he tore her sundress pulling her up. They drove away as fast as the aging rental van let them get away with.

  Em and Safire looked daggers at Wolf.

  “Lovie,” he said, and pointed to Safire’s window. “That’s cracked. Bash it out, Saffa. Talk later.”

  There was something in Wolf’s calmness that made his brother drop back and kick the window with both heels. It didn’t come straight out. He leant over and opened the eskie on the floor, taking out a tinny of Mother that his dad had packed so that he wouldn’t need to be spelled on the thirteen-hour drive home. Safire scraped a circle on the window with the aluminium rim. Then he king-kicked, and heard the glass showering. Then he slithered out the window. Falling onto the broken glass wasn’t as bad as the broken brush. One torn twig whipped across his eyelid. He stood and looked to Wolf, who motioned him around to Em’s side. She scooted out holding Lovie with some difficulty, but Safire helped, so there were the three of them standing there beside her door. Wolf was nowhere—

  “Here!” he called, running out from some bushes a few metres away. “C’mon Em. Saffa. let’s get our stuff out of the car.”

  Safire let Wolf direct. They both carried, but Safire took the heavy stuff. Soon they’d cleaned out the car, including Lovie’s old blanket and their mum’s and dad’s laptops.

  Em had settled Lovie on the car blanket and sat beside her. At nine o’clock already, way past Lovie’s bedtime. Lovie curled up and stuck her thumb in her mouth. But she wasn’t going to go to dreamland yet. She sat up. “Where’s Pobblebonk? Pobblebonk is hungry.”

  “He just ate a grimple,” Safire laughed. “It’s his bedtime.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “Well, tell him a story. He’s hungry for a secret.” Behind him Wolf was making frantic Tell him to Shut Up signs to Emrald, who took the cue.

  “Here’s a Messenger from Pobblebonk.”

  “Thank you, fair Queen,” said Wolf, who bowed and unfolded a pretend scroll.

  “From the far-kingdom of Scrumply Gumps, I bring this letter, to be delivered to the fairest Lovie in the land.”

  “That’s me!” Lovie laughed. Her green eyes gleamed large as a nightbird’s.

  “We ask her gracious Lovieness if we may entertain Pobblebonk for a . . . it’s hard to read this . . . oh! A kwunth.”

  Lovie took her thumb from her mouth. “What’s a kwunth?”

  “A scrumble gumpsian month. And they say Pobblebonk loves their fly pies. So yes? Please yes?” Wolf stood on one leg, and fell over.

  “Yes!” Lovie shouted. “But only for a grumble gumpskwillion what ever you said month.”

  Beside her, Em gave Wolf a thumbs up with her right hand and wiped an eye with her left.

  “Mr Sleepy awaits you,” she said. Lovie curled up against her and within a minute, they could hear the snuffly snore of a child who’d cried without anyone having said, “Now blow your nose.”

  Wolf never told them, and they didn’t ask, but finding Pobblebonk had been one of his first priorities. He’d found a leg of the soft stuffed frog under the front passenger seat, but it was stuck. He pulled, and it squelched into his fingers.

  He bit his tongue then, stopping his scream, but not his vomit.

  ~*~

  First, without any discussion, Safire opened the suitbag, rifled through it and some other bags, and did some bushbashing till he was a ways away. He used a bottle of water from the eskie to wash off, and a splash of his dad’s aftershave to deodorise. He used a pair of his dad’s socks to dry off, slapping biting flies off his bum and his wet legs. His underpants hadn’t leaked, but he dumped his boardshorts anyway, and pulled on his black school / funeral pants. He didn’t have any other choice.

  The night was as mild as January on the south coast of Australia often is. A light smell of honey from the blossoming hakeas made them seem well disposed to visitors in their kingdom. Wolf and Em talked quietly while they waited, and when they caught the strongest whiff that confirmed their suspicions of why Safire had needed time to himself, Wolf explained that those evil bushes that smelled so good and that had left their marks should be dubbed Your Spininesses.

  Em nodded, then shook her head. “If they were human, we could dub them Your Fakeries.”

  When Safire came back, Em opened the eskie and took out a tinny of Mother. She opened it and they passed it around.

  “I won’t sleep anyway,” said Safire, after he had a gulp.

  “Neither will I,” Em added, passing it to Wolf.

  Wolf raised his lip. “I snuck some of Dad’s a year ago. Didn’t you know it tastes like shit?”

  Safire leaned over and grabbed the can.

  “What you want with it?” Wolf demanded.


  “I’m just gonna toss it.”

  “Not in the bush!”

  Safire stood to his full height, that of a full-grown man. And he threw with all the graceful force of a practiced athlete. They heard an audible clunk, surprisingly close.

  “Fuckin forest!” He knelt and punched his brother hard in the back. They rolled off the blanket, Wolf’s teeth in Safire’s shoulder.

  “You wanna wake her?” Em held up a heavy stick and wagged it. “Okay, Mr Know-it-all. You must have had a reason for screwing up our rescue. Out with it.”

  “That’s all I wanted,” mumbled Safire. “An explanation. And it better be good.”

  ~*~

  Safire ruffled Wolf’s hair. “If only she were some little bugger like you.”

  “He doesn’t really mean that,” Em said, smiling at Wolf and crooking her eyebrows at Safire.

  Wolf smoothed the carpet beside him. “Saffa’s right, Em. But even if that were true, we’d still have the problem of us being four.”

  “Four wards of the State,” Em said. “You know the kind of people Mum has bitched about, the foster-business pros.”

  Saffa sighed. “I tried to ignore her bitching.”

  “I don’t know which she hated more,” said Em. “The foster parents or the problem of the kids who need placement.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Saffa. “I felt bad for those kids. I think she kinda hated them.”

  “Not as much as she hated us.”

  Em said it. Safire had been looking down, but his head snapped up.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Em said. Her mouth hung open.

  “Dad too,” said Wolf. “We cramped his style.”

  They were silent long enough that Wolf finally said, “I didn’t hear an owl hoot.”

  Em broke into a short burst of laughter, or sobbing, that ended in hiccups. “On re . . . consid . . . eration,” she said. “Mum didn’t hate us.”

  “Not personally,” said Wolf.

  “She loved the idea of children,” laughed Safire.

  “Which gets us back to Lovie first”, said Wolf. “And keeping us four together. It’ll be daybreak before we know it.”

  Saffa punched Wolf lightly. “Friday the thirteenth evening by a spooky outback forest.” He whistled (poorly, but no one laughed). “You clinched it, but hell. I would have run from those screams at any time anywhere.”

  Wolf turned to Em. “You really think this Auntie Joan you talk about might take us?”

  “I don’t know. I only know that she’s his sister and that she married a cardiologist that Dad hated on principle.”

  “The principle being that the cardiologist helps people to get healthy hearts and Dad bled people dry as a corporate banker because he never had a heart and . . .”

  Em held up her hand. “We’ve already held our Mass for Dad. No sermonising.” She turned to Wolf. “They live in London or Manchester or something. And Dad and his sister never got along, so I think that’s a dead end. Sorry.”

  “Besides,” said Safire. “We can’t take the risk of turning ourselves in. And besides . . .”

  “Spit it out,” said Em.

  “No. Maybe I’m wrong. It happened here, in New South Wales, and that’s across the border from Victoria.”

  Em grabbed him in the back of the neck and squeezed. “Now you’re being stupid. Speak up.”

  “Okay! What if when they find the car, they find out that it’s Mum and Dad. So they crashed. But what if they find out that we were in the car too? Sure it’s school hols now, but in two weeks it won’t be, and even though we moved and we’ll all be in new schools, someone’s gonna twig sooner or later. And then they’ll be onto our parents for why we’re not in school, and then they’ll link it up with some crash far from home, in the middle of nowhere, on a dark and scary night. Then they find out that our parents were tomato sauced. And flickity flack. They’ll have a new motive to find us. Murder!”

  “Like, we murdered them?” Wolf rubbed the small of his back.

  “So forget I said it.”

  “No.”

  “I agree no,” said Emrald. “Dad was a bastard and Mum was a–”

  Safire held up his hands. “You endethed the sermons!”

  “Social worker.” Wolf said it straightfaced. They all broke into giggles so loud that Em shushed them and looked to Lovie, who didn’t move.

  “D’you know where we are?” Wolf asked Em. “Not exactly, but I remember the sign that said Fishermans Paradise. That was a ways back, but I think we might have just passed a dirt road before we . . .”

  Wolf lifted his head. “Listen.”

  Safire and Em closed their eyes. Wolf shivered and reached down the back of his shirt. “Not the bongers. Listen past the insects.” He waited while he admired the dull gold iridescence of the Christmas beetle in his hand. Its feet almost hurt, they were so prickly. It was just sitting there doing nothing when it decided to open its wings and fly.

  Safire whirled around and punched air. “Fuck off! God, they’re spastic. And fuck your quiz.”

  “I hear it, Wolf. The wind in the trees.”

  “There’s no wind, Em. It’s the sea.”

  Safire punched air. “Holiday houses! I get you.”

  “Saffa,” said Wolf. “I only meant the beach.”

  “But see, Wolf, if we’re lucky, Saffa’s right.”

  “We leave at dawn,” announced Safire.

  “I’ll scout first,” said Em.

  Safire swung an invisible bat. “Then I’ll break and enter. There must be a holiday house we can hole up in.”

  Em stretched her arms out to them, piling her hands together. “My dear criminal family.”

  They piled their hands on hers.

  “Wait,” Wolf whispered. “We’ve got to vow that we’ll never let anyone split us.”

  “Of course we vow that,” Em snapped. “D’you have anything new to add?”

  Wolf looked hurt. “Of course I do.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. It’s just that we can’t take chances. And Lovie is so friendly We can’t hide forever and we need to give ourselves new identities, new names. Something Lovie can’t stumble on, if she talks to someone.”

  “A no-brainer for the names,” Safire said. “And you’re brilliant, little brother. Lovie will love being permanently Lucy. And . . .” he crinkled his eyes. “You should love being Edmund.”

  “No!”

  “C’mon,” Safire teased. “Edmund the sleaze, for a good cause.”

  Em stood up and kicked Safire in the bum. “Enough of that. “It’ll be Ed. Okay? And by the way, when and if we all get out of this and land with someone good and kind, of our own choosing, to be family, I vow that we’ll rename you, Wolf, King Wolf the Cautious.”

  “I accept.” Wolf seemed partly mollified. “If Saffa is King Boofhead.”

  “Had you thought of a surname?” Safire asked Wolf.

  “As a matter of fact, I had, and Em reminded me. Cosa. It’ll be easy for you two to remember, and Lovie never learned more names for herself than Lovage, Lovie and Lucy. So she’ll learn this easily.”

  “Why Cosa?” asked Em.

  Safire looked at Wolf with a question in his eyes. “I think I know why. Because it’s cosy?”

  “Good try, and almost there but not all the way. I was thinking of the family. Our family I’d die before betraying. That’s the code of the cosa nostra. I saw it in some movie Dad had on one night. I’m willing to bet that cosa means family, from cosy, just as you said, Saff–er, King. And nostra is our.”

  Wolf was in full flow, his angular face flayed by tree-sieved moonlight. “I’d be willing to bet that when they hunt for us, we’ll be called the Car Kids on the news. Nobody’d guess.”

  Safire punched Wolf’s shoulder, in a friendly way.

  Em kissed the top of Wolf’s head. “You’re my favourite Italian crime boss. And by the way, Saffa. Fuckin’s dead.

  “What you mean, Miss
Fox? I know you—”

  “That’s not what I meant, Saffa. We’ve buried the fuckin shit with Dad. You’re not a younger him. Wolf, it’s way past your bedtime.”

  “Amen,” said Wolf.

  Em laughed. “It’s way past your bedtime, anyway, you little brown-noser.”

  “You’re both too smart for your own good,” said Safire. “Now both o’ youse. Sleep! I’ll take the first watch.”

  “Okay,” said Em. “But you need more sleep, so wake me in two hours.”

  She lay down, stuffed her backpack under her head, and closed her eyes. Some nearby tree must have been in blossom. Bats were squabbling in the leaves. She wasn’t any sleepier than they. “Saffa?”

  “Yoh?”

  “What you think this funeral thing was all about? And why’d you think Dad made us go when no one had anything to do with him in real life?”

  “I dunno, Em. But I met him.”

  Emrald vaulted herself upright. “When?”

  “When he was alive.”

  “I figured that, you idiot.”

  “When we still lived in Sydney. I must have been about Wolf’s age. No, a year younger. It was the day after my seventh birthday, the one when Dad gave me my first pro racquet.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, Dad said that now that I was growing up, he should introduce me to his grandfather. The place was some big stone mansion in a street of them.”

  “Cool.”

  “It was pretty weird. It was huge, you could see from the outside, but like, the front hall had a crack in the wall that you could put your hand in. The whole place stunk of tobacco and—”

  “What was he like?”

  Saffa closed his eyes. “You know our nose? Dad’s, mine, and yours? It’s his. He must have looked ace when he was our age. But he still was pretty amazing. Sitting there when we arrived, like an emperor. And his hair was grey but there was still lots of it. He had these incredibly bushy eyebrows.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Some chef guy answered the door and let us in, where he sat in the lounge with us while Dad and the old guy talked for a while. Then the chef picked him up and took him up the stairs to his bedroom—”

  “A male nurse.”