by Tina Smith
“Can you take me there?” I urged. This was the moment I needed and I was ready.
“Yes, but they won’t let us in.” Tisane looked shocked that either I didn’t know of this fact or that I would want to return to the place from which she thought I had run.
“I don’t plan on using the door.”
“What is your name?” Tisane persisted, inanely.
I thought a moment. “L,” I confirmed, walking across the floorboards with purpose.
The logical explanation that I had run from a maniacal religious group fitted better than any other. Perhaps she thought the Cult had branded me.
I saw now that Tisane had been such an obedient host only because she believed I was here to somehow help her sibling. It was a noble and selfish reason, to tolerate me, especially considering I now planned to kill her sister.
I went outside and found my hiding place in the trees behind the house and grasped my handgun and the car keys from a knotted tree branch. The rifle was tucked behind another set of bushes.
Salt water damaged. “Damn!” I barked at the jammed rifle. I turned my attention to the Colt and removed the magazine. Concentrating on testing the empty handgun, it clicked satisfactorily. I put five bullets in the magazine and clipped it back into the butt of the gun.
I re-entered the house, armed. “These are for protection,” I said with a hard gaze towards Tisane, thinking I now must look as insane as Cres did last year.
Tisane protested bravely. “Do you even have a licence for those?” Her voice wavered.
“Just take me there, and then you can leave,” I said, regretfully, as I pointed the gun at her head. She dropped the book she had been reading with a hollow thud. But our eyes remained locked, hers in horror, mine in steely defiance.
She was a taller and thicker build than me but I gripped her arm and impatiently pulled her along like a rag doll.
Outside, I asked, “Was your sister ever – aggressive?”
“No.” Her voice vibrated but her tone soured. “They weren’t doing anything illegal as far as the police knew…were you in there?” She questioned desperately as her misty eyes turned to mine glistening and her face contorted.
I lowered my head and gazed into Tisane’s face. I parted my lips “She’s a Werewolf,” I whispered clearly and coldly, so that Tisane wouldn’t mistake the word, or its sinister importance. “They’re not a clan of religious nuts, they’re a pack…and I’m a hunter,” I admitted low, putting the rifle in the back seat of her car.
“What do you expect from me?” Tisane wailed.
I pressed the safety and cocked the handgun, aiming at her head “For you to take me to them,” I replied steadily. I hoped I wouldn’t have to waste a bullet to scare her.
“I know you’re a good person, please. You’ve been brain washed. Let’s just talk about this,” she urged, her voice becoming more frantic.
I approached her and she winced as I clutched her again by the arm with too tight a grip, shoving her against the passenger side of the car. A wind blew up that rustled the trees.
“Get in!” I ran to the driver’s side - arm pointed out at her through the windshield as I rounded the vehicle.
She obeyed.
“Which way?” I asked jumping in. I pulled on my seat belt. “Which way! You know if you don’t help me you’re useless and I can dispose of you.” I pointed the gun at her forehead, vigorously winding down the window, to expel the stuffy air from the car with my other arm. Tisane, petrified, swallowed and met my eyes.
I turned my attention to the wheel and tensed my jaw, pushing in the clutch and starting the engine.
Her glare was forlorn, as the awful truth sank in. I was sure she regretted ever finding me now.
I looked at the road ahead. “Why were you there?”
“Where?” A tear ran down Tisane’s flushed cheek as the whites of her eyes became bloodshot.
“On the edge of the road, at the mangroves. What were you looking for?” I glanced at her and then, pretending not to see the terror in her grey face, I gazed at the road ahead, racked with thought.
“I was just sightseeing.”
I was sceptical. “So the story changes now? Why was my name in your strange little book?” Though I knew it wasn’t my name, she had mistakenly written ‘Elle’ instead of ‘L’ for Lila.
“I don’t know, coincidence?” She raised her thin brows above begging glassy eyes, which pathetically tried to convince me to let her go.
I wanted to ignore her pleas. Coincidence, I thought.
“There’s no such thing,” I rebuffed.
“Listen, I no longer want to be a part of this, Elle, please.” Her voice shuddered.
I changed gears with the gun in the same hand, impatient to find the Cult. Her hunched shoulders flinched every time I moved.
On the road traffic was sparse. I held my breath as a few cars sped past in the opposite direction.
My panicked hostage pierced the determined silence inside the car again and I winced a little.
“Just let me out…please?” she asked in a timid nasal tone. Her cheeks were now flushed red and shone wet with tears, a pitiful sight.
I looked away disgusted. I stared back and forth out the windows, cagily, as though I might agree, but instead I taunted her.
“I believe in you, Tisane.” The sinister lack of emotion in my voice unsettled even me. I covered any empathy with a deadpan expression and concentrated on my mission.
She was leaning back and gripping the edge of the door as though willing the car to halt. I wondered if she would vomit.
“I want you to listen to me.” I took a breath. “Tisane, I’m a werewolf hunter - and your sister, I have reason to believe - is a werewolf and I’m being hunted by one of my own kind who has been turned to their side.” I glanced at Tisane’s horrified expression in my periphery, to see if she was at least taking it in. I turned my worried eyes away from Tisane’s glimmering stare, lest they give me away. For the first time in a little while, I let myself think of him. I tightened my grip on the gun and my palm around the wheel, successively, in anticipation.
29. Epitaph
I sensed her torment in the palpable silence. “You see it now, don’t you? The signs were right - think about it, and the more you’ll see you were right.” I nodded. “Come on, it all fits doesn’t it?” I cruelly taunted Tisane. “Their eyes are different, you’ve noticed haven’t you?”
“No, it’s not possible.” Tisane gripped the door tighter.
“Why not? Look at you.” I was referring to her strangeness.
She had been in close proximity with the wolves all her life, her sister Narine was one, and I thought maybe the walls would crumble, to reveal the reality that I knew. Tisane was so close, my instincts urged me to push her, but maybe I just wanted her to believe something she could not, or would not. My muscles tightened in response to the thought of the wolves. I was ready.
Green farmland sped by, becoming more and more populated by trees. When she didn’t answer I glanced at her. I don’t know what I expected. What was I thinking? Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her.
In the silence that followed I spoke again. “Maybe I can stop them killing - biting anyone else, spreading the infection,” I offered with a sympathetic tone.
Tisane frowned.
“They’re not human – not like us anymore.” I breathed in. “Are we headed in the right direction?” I clenched my teeth, hoping she was going to cooperate.
Tisane nodded her head. “What are you going to do?” she murmured in a small voice.
“I’m finding someone I lost,” I admitted under my breath, following the road to the right.
“Wolves? Is that what they told you?”
“No,” I shook my head, scanning the green scenery. Tolerating her response.
“But you’re here to kill them?” she reasoned.
“I can’t help it.”
“They don’t hurt anyone,” she argued.
Tisane tensed her shoulders, hunching as though it would help to cower. I was beginning to regret confiding in her as I wrung the steering wheel, tensing my tattooed forearm. I realized it would have been better if I had worn a long sleeved shirt. The identifiable ink was hard to miss.
I slowed the car. “Is this it?” I urged. She nodded to indicate that it was. The tyres crackled over the dirt as I parked on the shoulder of the road and shut off the engine.
Sky, my heart beat. I felt the human part inside me flutter faster than the grass beating the air in the wind, lapping towards the wall. My eyes flowed along the stone and came to rest over the large two-storey house as my emotions swayed. From the car I could see the massive brick house, surrounded by white agapanthus and purple jacaranda in bloom.
I didn’t leave the car, and instead craned to see from the safety of the window.
Perplexed she asked, “Will you go in?” in a stuffy nasal voice.
I breathed in and out before answering. “Not today,” I uttered as I automatically sat back into the vinyl seat, unblinking. The urgency was suddenly gone. It had left me and now I found an unexpected quiet patience in its place.
“You need time?” Tisane cautiously offered.
I huffed under my breath, “Tell me what you know about the compound.” I gazed towards her sallow face.
“I’ve been in once,” Tisane replied stiff-lipped, her eyes taking in the view of the compound. “They let me see her a few months ago.”
I blinked, taking this into account. “Did they bite you, scratch you?”
She shook her head with that same fearful, steady concern for me.
I considered this. “Good. I want details. I’m not turning around, yet.” I whipped a wayward strand of hair from my forehead, which had been blown by the breeze. “You talk, I’ll tell you everything and then if you want to walk you can. Even go running to the police if you want.” I felt Tisane watch me stare into nothing as I started up the engine and turned the car back onto the tarmac.
“They won’t believe you, but you can. And you did drug me,” I threatened coolly.
Tisane breathed a quiet sigh of sheer relief. I drove steadily along the road rimmed with fences of devil’s rope. When I took a left towards the town of Tarah, I noticed Tisane tightened her fingers around the arm rest but she didn’t speak.
I found my way to the deserted graveyard behind the town, parking on the old side. When we pulled over by the rusted wrought iron cemetery gate, I asked Tisane for her jumper. She immediately pulled it off and handed it to me.
Wrapped in my borrowed attire I concealed the gun under the sleeve and trudged through the many forgotten markers, each indicating a scattered broken life that no one recalled amongst the weeds. I made my way beside the weather-beaten, tilted, fallen and broken headstones in the direction of the newest neatly rowed plots as Tisane followed. Reading every one, until I found his. A small grey stone, no taller than my ankles, read: ‘Sky Harton, Beloved - Taken from us too soon’ and a single date of death.
“No birth date?”
I looked up at Tisane who had come to stand behind me. I knelt down and touched the sepulchral grey stone and the soft grass below it, interspersed with yellow buttercups. I suddenly had the urge to dig. Dig and dig until I found him, but it was daylight and I only had my bare hands, my dirty finger nails feebly pressing the dark green grass.
“No,” I answered. “No birth date.” A cold shiver ran through my legs, spreading from the numbness in my chest. I wanted to believe if he was under me now, they would have written more, after fifteen years together. I glared at the engraving. I didn’t know whether to be saddened for them or take it as hope and evidence that this stone was a part of the farce, to convince me of his passing and not to commemorate it. I looked back at Tisane standing there still, hands by her sides.
“Do you have someone here?” I asked.
“Mum’s here.” She shrugged, limply.
I recalled Lily was here and I got up and ran along the row searching for her. As I lay eyes upon her headstone I saw how it was everything his wasn’t, a classic arch shape, white polished limestone – ‘Lily Page, Age 17’, complete with verse: ‘Sister and daughter, taken too soon. Beautiful immortal Lily who lived on the shore, you live in our hearts forever more.’
The headstone was placed after the funeral, I’d never seen it. A touching dedication to the creature who had savagely tried to end my life with her carnivorous teeth. Words so lovingly bestowed, when only six spaces away Sky lay hidden under a loveless piece of rock, in comparison.
I looked around expecting to see Tisane but she wasn’t behind me. I panicked for a moment, tightening my fingers over the gun. But she stood at a headstone only a few metres away, which I realized as I approached must be her mother’s. The large white, angel engraved stone stood out against the gunmetal grey sky.
Tormey Hunter. Tormey, so she was looking out for me still. It was the name of the woman who had saved me from drowning in the Artemis when I was a child.
“Is this your mother?” I asked, delicately.
“Yes.”
“How did she pass?”
“Murder,” Tisane uttered.
“Let me guess, they never caught who did it?” I stated unsympathetically.
We silently paid our respects for different reasons. Tisane would no doubt return one day with flowers whilst I planned to lay the strike of a shovel into Sky’s plot.
I couldn’t risk staying long.
“Come on,” I urged. A few cars had passed us already and I was anxious to remain hidden. I was placated to see Tisane came willingly to the car and we drove in silence to her house. I turned off the main road past the old wooden sign that read Hunters Road.
Elle’s electric eyes were pained. Tisane thought she saw the cold mask of beauty fade to reveal some vulnerability. She saw the spirit point at the mailbox and watched her intently through the car window as they approached the gate to the road home. The same white shape she had seen whispered in the distance at the graveyard.
Tisane didn’t dare take her blue eyes off the wispy apparition. She asked hurriedly through tear-stained cheeks if she could get the mail, because the box was visibly full.
“It will bring attention like that,” she said, obeying the invisible spirit that was as clear to her as a cloud and as invisible to Lila as air. Lila stopped the car suddenly just as they had passed it.
Tisane’s eyes blurred and spilled over with tears that rolled in heavy droplets one after the other down her cheeks as she attempted to get out.
“Stop…I’ll do it, don’t move,” Lila warned.
The apparition turned into mist, melting into an outline of threads evaporating into the grey-toned sky.
The mailbox was full because of the local paper. Lila glanced at the cover as she jogged back to the car. She almost stopped in her tracks when she saw the picture of herself occupying half of the front page. She threw it in the car with a slap and took off. The tyres hissed as they spun on the damp gravel road.
“Did you know about that?” Lila gestured to the pile of mail and shifted the folded paper with her hand so that it rolled open to reveal the front cover, between them.
Tisane glanced at it and it only occurred to her what she meant when she read the headline. At first glance the picture wasn’t instantly recognizable as Elle. Her shock was evident as she read the headline: ‘Lila Missing’. She realized that her kidnapper was on the front page.
When they arrived back at the wooden house at the end of the long dirt road, there was a note on the blue door. Lila got out and went ahead. She ripped the note off Artemis’ carved face.
“I've been meaning to tell you, I have clients,” Tisane said behind her, after opening her passenger door from the outside by sticking her arm through the window.
Lila turned and sat on the old verandah steps. Tisane, not knowing what to
do, followed her, coming to sit closely with her on the step.
After a moment Lila asked. “So we’ve missed a patient of yours?”
“Yes – Lila.” Tisane interjected with blood shot eyes. Her tears had dried on her shiny flushed cheeks, but her eyes now had grey hollows the size of thumb prints below them.
“What for?” Lila shifted her position.
“Massage,” Tisane admitted breathing deeply and looking at her with grey wide tired eyes. Knowing now for sure Lila was the missing girl on the cover of the paper.
“Did you make that necklace you wear?”
Tisane touched the silver pentagram encircling an amber stone.
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to cancel the rest. What is it that you do?”
Tisane was used to the fact that she bewildered people “I'm a spiritual guide, I have a certificate in Remedial Massage and I make silver jewellery.”
Lila huffed.
“I’ve got to make a living,” Tisane protested dully.
Lila got up and went into the house with the car keys jingling in her hand and returned a moment later. She placed a faded picture of Tisane with a red asymmetrical haircut, and two other women, down on Tisane’s lap. Something about the women in it was similar; the sister had an oval face and the older woman was shorter and had a tan. Tisane had a long moon-shaped chin, but the older woman shared her nose, thin lips and eyebrows. Tisane had different eyes.
“I want to know about the Cult.”
Tis sniffed. “I suppose you want information about her?”
Lila sat back on the verandah step.
“Anything I can get.” She sighed calmly cradling the gun.
“Is this revenge? Because I ca-“
“No!” Lila pressed her lips together and then exhaled, frustrated.
“Are they armed?” Tisane’s voice rasped. She knew the Cult had to be worse than was speculated in the media. No one who joined ever left or was even seen. She scanned Lila again. She looked like she had had it rough. Lila stared back at Tisane’s trickling tears like an expressionless animal.