Henry pulled down his hat and nodded. They walked on and after a while it began to rain. Pop pulled a lamp from his knapsack and a box of matches from his pocket and handed them to Henry.
“Better fire it up. Light’s going.”
Thunder echoed around the hills and away to the east lightning crawled across the clouds like spiders across a ceiling. Rain began to fall more heavily, full-bellied and cold, working up to torrential. The tin plate on the top of the lamp began to sizzle and spit.
“Looks like it’s settling in,” said Pop, adjusting his hat.
“How far do you think the house is?”
“Not far now. Not far at all.”
“Pop?”
“Yeah.”
“You know this feller Gibson?”
“Yep. What about him?”
“He reckoned Smith might have come back.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think he could be right?”
“No. Smith’s dead.”
“Oh.”
“Listen, Gibson’s mother just died. I had a talk to his boss when he rang about it. He’s chasing ghosts, Henry. His sister killed herself. He’s about as mixed up as Billy is about it. He told me as much, but what he didn’t tell me was his mother shot dead his father not long after they found the sister’s body. She spent six years in prison for it and Gibson grew up in a home. Erskine says he doesn’t remember anything about it, but he’s always reckoned it wasn’t—”
“What?”
“Wait—you hear that?”
“No.”
“Wait here a tick.”
Pop slipped into the bush at the side of the track and vanished. Henry heard him moving up the slope, but then there was just the sound of the wind stirring the branches, the rain falling. The shadows the lamp threw began to spook him. He walked on for another twenty or so yards and stopped. Up through the trees he could just see Pop.
“Turn off the light.”
Henry turned down the wick of the lamp and stood staring into the near-darkness. The sight of Pop, unmoving, the whites of his eyes glowing, chilled Henry’s blood. After a few minutes of silence Pop came back down.
“Come on,” he said, his voice grim.
They came to the fence that ran alongside the road and as they crawled under the wire Pop noticed something by the base of one of the posts. Some sort of bag. A piece of twine attached to it was caught in a barb of wire. He picked up the bag and pulled at the twine until it came free.
“What is it?” asked Henry, coming up behind him.
Pop upended the bag into his hand. There was a pipe, a new tin of tobacco, old coins: shillings, pennies, a sixpence, a piece of bone with a sailing ship carved into it, a curved yellow tooth about an inch long and a bent photograph of Darcy Steele.
“Billy’s,” said Pop. They looked at one another and then Pop put the objects back into the bag and they walked on.
30
As Gibson drove the clouds descended and by the time he reached the last steep and twisty section before the house the light had all but gone. He slowed down, the old ute creaking with relief, and then, through the silvery veils, the house appeared. It sat up behind the fence like a black limpet, full of bad graces, daring him to approach, to seek out its rotten heart, to steal its secrets. He stopped the car and stared at it for a moment and then he got out and continued on foot.
He knew it was Billy who’d taken Darcy. He thought he understood why too, but then he’d been wrong about Smith. Maybe he was wrong about Billy’s motives too. Who knew what was going on in his mind, especially now that he was in the house he’d grown up in, the house where Smith had loomed large.
When he was only a few dozen yards away he stopped again, remembering the rifle in Billy’s truck. He watched the house for a minute or two but he saw no movement and no light. He pulled out his revolver and searched around in his pocket for the bullets. He found a few and slipped them into the chambers and then stuck the revolver back into his pants and set off up the track towards the house. He held up his hand to shield his eyes from the rain and as he blinked water from his eyes he saw a faint light flare briefly behind a window, then snap out, as if a hand had snuffed it. The sight of it made Gibson’s heart hammer even harder inside him and he licked his lips and wiped them with the back of his hand and then he put one foot forward and then the other, feeling for the grip of the revolver as he went.
He knew Billy was just a man, and he remembered what Pop had said about the only monsters in the valley being the ones in his head— the ones he hadn’t fronted yet—yet he still couldn’t shake the feeling of cold dread that crept up and took tight hold of him. He was dry-mouthed and shaky, but he went on. He told himself that it had always been on the cards, this walk into the unknown. He remembered the night at the roadside, the storm overhead, the rain coursing down just like this, and how he’d accepted a commission, not knowing what it required of him. Maybe now it was time to find out.
He trod carefully up the rickety steps to the front door and paused there. He shook the water from his hair and wiped his face and then stood before the door and composed himself. He was suddenly more afraid than he could ever remember. He saw himself as a boy and the boy was asking him how he’d come to be standing before this door, dripping with water, scared out of his wits. He muttered one of the first prayers of his life and then he put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. He pushed open the door and peered inside. It was very dark and all he could hear was a steady thrumming from the rain on the roof. He went inside. He could see nothing in the utter blackness before him and he thought for a moment that he might be defeated by the darkness itself. He remembered that the hall opened out into the old living area and he crept forward until his hand touched the closed hall door. He listened for a moment and then he pushed open the door very slowly.
There was someone in the room. He knew there was, even before he breathed in the odorous animal reek it contained. He took a single step into the pitch-black.
“Billy?” he half whispered. No answer. He saw a darker shape in the darkness, then heard the boards creak under its weight, then a scrape, and then a flaring match lit up the room. A man knelt in the middle of the floor like a supplicant, his torso bare, his feet shoeless. There was nothing else in the room—no furniture—just the long boards running from one side of the room to the other. The man leant forward very slowly and lit the candle sitting before him. In the light, Gibson saw that his back was streaked with dried blood. The blood extended out all around him, over the floor and up the walls.
“Billy, where is she, mate? What have you done with her?”
The man looked round and then up at him and as Gibson saw his face for the first time a cold, electric shiver ran up and down his whole body. He began to tremble, and the revolver, when he lifted it, shook along with him. He stepped forward, expecting the figure to dissolve at any moment, expecting to wake from the nightmare, but when neither happened he found his voice and whispered a name like an invocation.
“Smith.”
The man Pop had pointed out in the picture had been tall and straight and young, but Gibson knew it was him. It was his eyes— black and burning with an unholy intensity. The will behind them seemed the only thing keeping alive his ravaged body. When he spoke his voice was guttural and almost inaudible.
“Get out,” he rasped.
“No, Smith. Not on your life. No way.”
Gibson licked his lips and circled round Smith’s kneeling form, a giddy feeling of elation beginning to displace the dread in his belly.
“You’re supposed to be dead. You’re supposed to have died in a fire. Even Horace Flood thinks you did.”
He knelt down beside Smith and put the revolver against his skull, just behind his ear. His hair was sparse there and his skull clammy with perspiration. Blue veins stood out in his frail, eggshell skin.
“So if I pulled the trigger it wouldn’t mean anything, you already being dead.”
&
nbsp; “I . . . escaped the flames . . .”
“Yes. So I see. Just so we could meet. Just so you could confess your sins.”
“I have nothing to confess. I remember nothing.”
“You don’t remember? I’ll tell you. Twenty years ago a girl named Annie Flood drowned. I think you were there. I think she was running from you. Isn’t that what happened?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t remember.”
He hung his head and Gibson began to imagine the wretched, loveless life he must have led. He almost began to feel a little pity for him, but then it evaporated.
“Then . . . then you came back and you wanted Darcy, like you wanted Annie, but you couldn’t get close to her, could you? You couldn’t get close enough because of her father, because of his damn dogs.”
“I was reborn. So was she.”
Gibson frowned, hesitated, grasped for understanding. He remembered Smith’s writings and the lines he had copied from the Bible and then he finally understood.
“No, Smith, Darcy wasn’t Annie come back. She wasn’t.”
Smith looked up at him again, the barrel of the revolver sliding against the dirty skin of his neck as he turned.
“Untrue. She is here. Outside. Can’t you hear?”
Gibson paused and listened, but then shook his head.
“Is that why you’re here? Is that who you’re waiting for? Annie’s dead, Smith, and so is Darcy. Neither of them is coming!”
Smith blinked up at him and Gibson saw the same look of horror and alarm in his eyes that he’d seen in Billy’s when he’d broken the same news to him. Smith, however, after a long moment, began to smile. It took shape very slowly on his thin-lipped mouth and then began to edge into his eyes. Another, altogether darker, side of the man surfaced from the depths like a body. Gibson could tell this side didn’t believe him. His fear returned—hollow and wet-handed—but then it began to alchemise into anger. Something’s watching me from the trees, Darcy had written in her Bible. Something’s watching me from the trees. He gritted his teeth.
“It’s true, Smith. They’re both dead. You can’t hurt either of them any more.”
Smith didn’t respond. His grin turned into a smirk and then just a look of sly resolve, as if he would yet prove Gibson wrong. Gibson kept the gun against his neck but moved his body back out of reach of his long arms.
“You can prove I’ve done these . . . wrongs?”
“I don’t need to.”
“Judge and jury? On whose authority?”
“My own damn authority.”
“Only the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, Mr. . . .”
“Gibson.”
“Only the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, Mr. Gibson,” Smith repeated, his voice almost a whisper. “More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”
Gibson blinked, licked his lips. Smith glared up at him.
“Pull the trigger then, Mr. Gibson. Please.”
Even though he knew the exhortation was some kind of ruse a polar cold washed over him as his eyes locked with Smith’s. Maybe it was his own fury, his own need for retribution—a whole unfathomed sea of it—but he knew it would be all too easy to give in. Slowly, he lifted the revolver.
“Not yet, Smith,” he said, his voice shaking. “Not yet. You tell me where she is.”
Smith shook his head. “I don’t know . . . what you are talking about.”
Gibson swore and then he stood up and looked around. He backed up slowly and glanced into the two front bedrooms. He could barely see inside them but he thought a body might make itself obvious. They were empty and he went back to Smith and then circled round him and went to the steps that led down into the kitchen.
“Get down in there,” he ordered, pointing. “Take that candle with you.”
Smith rose slowly to his feet and picked up the candle with his thin, bloodstreaked fingers. There was something deeply disturbing about the man and his almost still slowness. When he reached his full height Gibson took a step back. Down on the floor he could see the old razor Smith had used to inflict his wounds. He kicked it away against the wall and then ushered him down into the kitchen.
“Sit down on the floor again.”
Smith sat, but he didn’t take his eyes off Gibson for a moment. Gibson looked around the kitchen. Where before it had been empty it now looked like a hovel. A pile of rags lay along the wall and he guessed it was where Smith had been sleeping. In the sink sat empty tins of dog food and down in one corner of the kitchen was a dark pile of shit. He screwed up his nose and then noticed the closed laundry door. He paused, knowing in his bones that something was behind it, knowing in his heart. He went to the door and put his hand on the doorknob and momentarily took his eyes off Smith as he turned it. He saw him move out of the corner of his eye and when he snapped his head round he saw that he had pulled a rifle from somewhere beneath the pile of rags and had already drawn a bead on him. He spun round, dropping his shoulder, but he had no time. Smith fired, his eyes full of nothing. The first bullet thudded into his centre and knocked him off balance. The next slug hit him in the shoulder as he tried to lift his own gun. He stepped back against the doorjamb and slid down it onto the floor. His vision went cloudy for a moment or two, and then waves of heat ran up and down his body. There was no pain, just a ringing in his ears. Veils of blue smoke hung in the air. He could hear high-pitched laughter, but he couldn’t see Smith. The revolver was still in his hand and he lifted it, aimed for the laughter and pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. All he could see when the smoke cleared were pale marks in the wall where the bullets had splintered the wood. There was no sign of Smith. He set the warm gun down on the floor and flinched as he took a deeper breath. He touched his wet shirt and then looked around and wondered what he should do. The kitchen was very still. The candlelight flickered and, except for the peaceful sound of the rain on the roof, it was very quiet. He felt sad and helpless and about twelve years old again. He thought of his sister and mother and tried not to cry and then he squeezed his eyes shut and hoped the pain would not get too much worse.
He saw a number of things then, very clearly. He remembered a warm Sunday morning in Sydney. He saw himself coming home— only a boy—and walking up the stairs, then peering into his parents’ room and seeing the sweating neck of his father as he plunged himself into a woman who was not his mother. He remembered how the breeze had lifted the curtains in and out, ever so gently, and he remembered how the woman had looked up and seen him there at the door, and he remembered that it was his sister’s face, and he remembered the look in her eyes.
Even as the shock and the pain of the memory began to numb him his head swam and he saw himself again, but much later, as a nineteen-year-old vagabond, standing in the centre of Venice, dreaming of a grand romance, something to take away the pain of his childhood, and looking up at the winged lion of St. Mark, and his sister, his beloved sister, was standing there beside him, smiling. He knew then that she’d always been there, ever since she’d left him. She’d been with him at the side of the road on the night he’d driven to Angel Rock, and she was here even now. He knew too that it was a lion he’d seen in the rock above the town—not an angel at all—but a winged lion, a queen of her race, her brow heavy, her wings ready for flight, yet caught in the stone for eternity. She was a beast from some age long past and he knew then that some plan did exist, something far greater than him—than anyone—and unknowable into the bargain. He was glad he’d glimpsed it and was glad he’d been shown a world beyond fact, beyond evidence. Pop’s world, but maybe also his own.
Even as the life ebbed out of him, he knew. He finally knew. Life was to see, to touch, to smell, to taste, to hear—and to know—and even though knowing was painful it was also like diving into a wave on a hot summer’s day, then surfacing, floating, letting your body be lifted by the sparkling blue water. Lifted and lowere
d. Lifted and lowered. He could hear the rain on the roof and he listened to it as the warmth began to spread out from his centre like a tiny rising sun. He heard a faint sound then—a voice?—and just before his eyes fluttered and closed something else became utterly and entirely clear.
31
Billy surfaced from a dark, cold place and lifted up his head. There was a picture in his mind of the first day he had walked into Angel Rock and had seen Adam Carney, tall and lean and blue eyes blazing. He remembered him wading into the river to baptise his converts, the great sweep he’d made through the air with his arm, his finger pointing first to the heat-soaked sky, then the hills, blue-green and shimmering across the valley, then the river, slow and muddy, turning in eddies about his waist. Everything about the man had seemed to promise good things and the assembled followers had gaped, as if he’d been about to transmit Old Testament wonders across the great drift of centuries to where they stood, as if there might be more creation and new creatures to be named and the river itself might part and reveal marvels. He remembered his head reeling with Adam’s words, spinning with haloes of fire and visions of the debauched world of the sinner and only the Lord God like a rock to cling to in the midst of it, until he’d been light-headed with newborn faith, and the land itself had been a chorus of agreement around him.
He lifted his head and looked around. He couldn’t tell where he was, but Darcy Steele, wrapped up in her muddy cerecloth, was still by his side.
“I’ve brought her, dear Jesus, I’ve brought her to be raised up,” he whispered, but there was no one to hear him.
Before him was a single lit candle, a miracle of light. He couldn’t remember how it had come to be there. He looked around for other miracles, but there were none. There were bottles on a shelf instead, and a raging thirst inside him. He was in an old farm shed. He went and plucked a bottle off the shelf, sniffed at the lid, discarded it, then repeated the operation until he came to an old but nearly full bottle of wood spirit. He unscrewed the lid and the fumes, like the very genesis of flames, curled up unseen from its dark throat and into his nose. He threw back a belt and the liquid burnt down, cramped his gut, then came straight back up again. He tried again, and again, and when he finally succeeded and there was nothing left in the bottle he let it fall to the floor and soon after he followed.
Angel Rock Page 31