She collapsed to her knees. The sound of thumping and slithering came from the bedroom. Amy turned away from the light and withdrew a long-bladed carving knife from its wooden block. She crawled from the kitchen towards the hallway again, hardly able to support her own weight. Her eyes watered and her nostrils stung.
Something was burning.
She reached up to her hair and pulled away a handful of scorched fibres. Some of it had only melted: the rest had roasted away. With what strength she had left she stood and dived, more with her weight than her muscles, past the closed bedroom door.
It opened at the same moment and two tongues wormed out, grasping at her like tentacles. Claws appeared on the doorframe followed by a stretched, swollen head. The Gina creature winced when she sensed the light from the kitchen and Amy, her strength returning now that she was out of the glare, swung her knife at the lower of the two tongues as she staggered away down the hall. Turning back, she saw the tongue hanging by a flap of tissue. Gina was clutching its root, back near her groin and moaning in her unreal dialect.
Still backing away, Amy saw the damaged section of lingual flesh reattach itself to the rest of its length. The wound sealed over.
Amy had one place left to hide. She lunged for the other door that led off the hallway into the small storage room that should have been a second bedroom. She banged the door closed and locked it, wedging the back of a chair underneath the handle. She stared at the handle, panting.
In this room there was one small window. Not much light came through the curtains. Not satisfied, Amy placed a huge, ugly oil painting she’d bought in a garage sale against the curtains. Instead of finding it harder to see, her eyesight improved. She stuffed old clothes and blouses around the edges of the painting until the room was as almost dark. The iciness within her deepened and, though it frightened her at first, it was accompanied by such a vibrant pleasure that she felt something close to sexual arousal despite her fear.
She sat on the carpet with her back to the wall and faced the door. Outside, Gina was silent.
Amy waited for a long time. She found herself thinking of the forest. She thought of the shadowy trails and paths and the thickness of the trees bearing in against her and to begin with it was good. Then she remembered Jimmy and the wellspring he’d taken her to and she was filled with repulsion at the thought of that water and the memory of his touch. She never wanted to see him again. The bed-pissing baby was too much of a coward to know how to make her happy
After hours of drifting in silence, Amy returned suddenly to wakefulness. The doorknob was turning. She gripped the handle of the kitchen knife and stood up. Still naked and undisturbed by the fact, she waited for the creature to burst through the cheap wood of the door. The creature was all she could remember of the past day. How it had come to be in her house she no longer knew.
‘Miss Cantrell? Amy? You in there?’
She jumped at the voice and then relaxed when she realised who it was. She reached for an old bathrobe from the cupboard, one she hadn’t worn for years. It smelled dusty, as if it belonged to someone much older or someone who had passed away. She caught sight of herself in the mirrored door as she closed the cupboard and reached up to her head. Her hair was undamaged. She drew the robe tightly around herself as she answered.
‘Is that you, Mrs Fredericks?’
‘Why, yes. Are you okay in there? I can’t open the door. You’re not stuck are you?’
‘No, I’m not. Hold on a second.’
She removed the chair, unlocked the door and then stood with the knife behind her back as she twisted the handle and opened the door very slowly.
‘It’s okay, Amy, it’s only me.’
For the first time in her life Amy felt glad to see Maggie Fredericks, her curtain-twitching next-door neighbour. She peeked out into the hall to be sure, but they were alone.
‘I saw your door was open and you didn’t seem to be around. I’ve never seen you leave it that way before, so I thought I’d better check.’
‘You did right, Mrs Fredericks. I appreciate it.’
‘What happened to you, dear? You look kind of spacey.’
‘I wasn’t feeling well. After I called in sick today, I must have left a door open. Thought I heard someone in the house, that’s why I locked myself in here.’
Maggie turned pale at the suggestion.
‘An intruder? My stars, child, should we call the police?’
Amy looked down at the floor behind her neighbour’s feet and saw a scrawny old black tomcat that must have followed her in.
‘Oh no, don’t do that,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want to waste their time.’ She pointed at the cat. ‘There’s my intruder. I guess he must have knocked some stuff over in the kitchen. Sounded like a burglar.’
Maggie looked down and tutted in an embarrassed tone. She stamped her foot and the cat tore out of the house.
‘I owe you an apology, Amy. That’s a wild cat I’ve been hoping to tame. Probably the only reason he came in here is because I’ve been encouraging him. I’m a sucker for cats but that doesn’t hold true for everyone. You see him again, you just shake a broom at him.’
‘Well, I’ll remember to be more forceful next time,’ said Amy, suddenly feeling embarrassed. ‘I can’t imagine how dumb all this must look to you.’
‘Don’t you worry about it, dear.’ said Maggie, patting Amy’s arm, ‘I get scared every night when I turn those lights out. I imagine there are creatures out there in the dark waiting to come for me. I can’t stop myself. It’s my imagination and I just can’t control it. Us single ladies have got it rough with no man to cling to at night.’
Amy didn’t reply. She didn’t hold men in quite the regard that Maggie Fredericks obviously did and there was no point saying so.
‘You want me to stay with you a while?’ asked her elderly neighbour. ‘We could watch The Wheel together and eat some popcorn.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll be okay now. You’ve already done enough.’
‘It’d be no trouble at all.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
Amy smiled at the older woman and realised with a rush of satisfaction that something had changed for the better in her life. She was never going to be a lonely, overweight woman with nothing to do but snoop. She showed Maggie to the door and out into the twilight. Amy could sense that Gina was gone. She would be safe from now on. It was early dusk and a violet haze had settled over the street along with a pleasant chill.
As Maggie retreated reluctantly back to her own house, Amy felt drawn towards the woods. There was a hunger within her. She smiled into the strengthening gloom.
To her it felt like dawn.
Chapter 18
Maria watched José hack and slash through the wild overgrowth choking the path and wondered where his determination came from. It took less than half an hour but to her it seemed much longer.
‘Papa, I can see something on the other side,’ said Carla.
‘Yes, I see it too,’ he said.
‘Do you think it is more of the trail?’
‘No. I think we have found what we came here for. Stay out of the way until I finish this. I don’t want you to lose an ear.’
As José cleared the last few branches and vines obscuring the path, an unusual clearing came into view. He stepped forward into the space they’d discovered. Maria hesitated before walking in after him, followed by the children.
They stood at the edge of a grassless expanse of ground that was roughly circular and about the size of a cathedral. At the centre of the space was a huge tree, the largest tree Maria had ever seen. Its canopy formed the ‘ceiling’ of the cathedral. The edges of the clearing marked the distance to which its branches and leaves extended. The tree’s foliage kept the entire space in deep shadow. It looked like some sort of oak, but Maria was no expert.
‘Dios mio,’ José murmured.
He crossed himself and Maria followed his lead.
The ground beneath th
e enormous branches was covered in many layers of leaves; they must have fallen from this single tree for hundreds of years.
‘I have never seen anything like this. It’s miraculous,’ said José.
Maria shook her head.
‘It is monstrous.’
‘Mama,’ said Carla, mock scolding her, ‘it is beautiful. We have found the most magnificent tree in creation.’
‘We could make a rope swing,’ said Luis.
Carla nudged her brother in the ribs and they laughed.
‘Last one around the tree and back is a gimp,’ said Carla. She dropped her backpack and tore away before Luis could grab her. He slung his pack to the ground and sprinted after her.
‘Where do they learn such words?’ asked Maria.
‘I cannot say but I suspect it is this country. I will be glad when we are sitting in front of our fire eating your potage and drinking decent wine again.’
‘You will? Truly?’
‘Of course, why?’
Maria sighed.
‘I thought you might be thinking of moving here. You seem to like it so much.’
‘I could never live here, Maria. I have been excited to find my grandfather’s resting place, but it has not been an easy trip for any of us.’
‘Why couldn’t you at least have let me know your feelings?’
‘I’m telling you now. It is only now that I realise how ready I am to head for home. And I could not let any of you think that it was hard for me, otherwise there would have been no leadership, no head for the body to follow.’
‘I could kick you, José. But I am so glad to know you are still a human being that I will kiss you instead.’
The kids reached the tree’s trunk and disappeared behind it. Maria used the moment to give her husband the kind of kiss that had become a rarity during the course of the holiday. The kids reappeared and raced back towards them covering the distance very quickly. Carla won the race.
‘Gimp! You’re a gimp, Luis! How does it feel?’ she taunted, breathless and happy.
‘You cheated. No more head starts.’
Luis was flushed and panting.
‘Listen, everyone,’ said José, ‘we need to get this tent up and the dinner ready before it gets too dark. If we work together there may be time to take a closer look at this incredible tree and make a preliminary search for your great grandfather before bedtime. Otherwise we’ll have to leave our fun until tomorrow.’
The kids were still intrigued by the prospect of finding the bones of their ancestor — or even just a gravestone marking his last resting place. The tent was ready quickly, positioned right at the edge of the arbour, and Maria was able to prepare hot water and food on the camping stove.
‘Can we go look at the tree?’ asked Luis.
‘Five minutes only and don’t wander off,’ said José.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ asked Carla.
‘No, I want to see it in its full glory. I’ll wait until the morning. Be quick now.’
They ran to the tree and Maria stared after them. They remained just visible in the twilight as they inspected the enormous trunk. She watched with her arms folded.
‘I don’t like it when they go off alone like that.’
‘Don’t be silly, Maria. They’re right in front of us.’
‘Still. I’m not comfortable in this place.’
‘I thought it was Carla who had a problem.’ said José.
Maria silenced him with a look.
‘Keep your eye on them while I do this,’ she said.
José didn’t argue. Unsheathing the machete, he played a whetstone along its blade, honing it back to the razor edge it possessed before the trail breaking had begun.
Maria laid out the plastic plates for the meal and checked the temperature of the beans and hot dogs they would be eating. Each day the packs got lighter as they used up the supply of tinned, bagged and dried foods. She sniffed the steam from the meal she’d made with distaste.
‘If we walk quickly on the way back, maybe we could reach Hobson’s Valley the day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Then we can all eat some fresh fruit and vegetables. Segar’s Cabin looked better than a lot of the other places we’ve seen. We could spend the night there and try their restaurant before we drive back to Nampa.’
She doled out piles of food onto each of the plates, making sure the portions were perfectly equal.
‘You can call them back now.’
It was only as she poured the water for coffee that she realised the sound of José scraping the machete blade had stopped. She glanced up. He was no longer sitting there. Rising to her feet, she saw him racing across to the tree, the long knife still clutched in his hand. It gave off dull flashes and a whooshing sound with each sprinted step. The noise and flashing diminished as he ran. The darkness was descending swiftly by then but Maria could still see that only two members of her family were standing. The other was lying unmoving on the leaf-covered ground.
Then Maria was running too.
Kath had taken to sitting for hours at a time on her front porch overlooking the Terrace.
As she watched the kids play in the street in the afternoons she thought of her own childhood right there in the valley. Once she’d been just as full of energy and innocence as any of the children that lived there now. Some of them might die young but most would likely live to an age at which they’d sit on porches wondering where their lives had gone.
The sheer plainness and inevitability of it all weighed her down. Nothing anyone could do would change a single thing. There was a matter-of-factness about the rules of life that had always made her a little blue. Now that Burt was gone, it made her unhappier than ever.
At the hospital, a nurse had passed her some leaflets about bereavement and the grieving process. Kath had wanted to rip them up and throw them in the girl’s face. What could a nurse know about losing someone she’d spent most of her life with? And who had written those leaflets, some young pup with a crisp new degree? She’d held the rage back but had crushed the leaflets in her hand as Maggie had driven them home.
Without Burt around, Kath had taken to spending almost the entire day outside. Partly because being indoors reminded her of him. Every room she entered had his smell or his imprint upon it somewhere. She needed to be free of that. It was bad enough lying all night in the double bed without him wheezing away beside her. The silence stopped her sleeping.
So Kath watched The Terrace for hours at a time.
It was strange to watch the street drain of activity and become deserted but that was what happened each day when the sun dipped beyond the mountain. She’d never noticed it until these last few days. But then, when she thought harder about it, she realised that one way or another, people in the valley had always escaped the twilight by heading indoors. She’d spent so many of these last few years inside she’d forgotten how it was. Now she wanted to see the twilight again, to experience it the way she never had.
With her hands folded into her lap, she watched the day dying out of the valley. The silence of the Terrace deepened with the ebbing of the light but in the green spaces between the houses, other sounds were starting. Crickets rasped out coded communications and turtledoves called their simple love songs to each other. Far away she heard the skittering squall of a quail.
The only life in the town now was behind its doors. Outside, the valley haze stretched invasive fingers across the forest and into the town, giving Kath a sense of greater beings than humans, spirits that lived in stone or stood in trees, and the giant mind of the mist that laid itself like sleep across the land.
The temperature dropped making Kath shiver. They’d been lucky with the weather this year but it couldn’t last. Summer would turn to winter without pause for fall when the time came. Kath could feel the ice in the air. Perhaps it would snow soon. It seemed odd to think of snow when the valley had been so warm. Kath was aware she was readying herself for longer nights and the gloom that would grip the town
for so many months. She’d made this mental preparation all her life but this was the first time she’d caught herself and understood why.
On the other side of the street, in the half-light she thought she saw movement. The Terrace had become so deserted that the idea of a person being outdoors at this time of the day almost frightened her. It was a woman. She walked as if she had no intention of arriving anywhere. In the dimming light that was about all Kath could make out. She couldn’t see the woman’s face but she seemed to be wearing unusual clothes.
The woman came to one of the trees that lined the Terrace and stopped. Although Kath hadn’t moved, the woman seemed aware she was being watched. She scanned Kath’s side of the street. Had they been near enough to each other, Kath would have said their eyes locked but at this distance, she felt the connection more than she could see it. She thought about waving to dispel any suspicion and to break the moment but couldn’t quite bring herself to move. She was within her rights to watch the street, after all. If the woman didn’t like it, well, tough.
The woman stepped away from the tree, letting her hand linger as though she didn’t want to let go of anything while the rest of her body moved on. She walked out onto the street at that same meandering pace, like she’d never even heard of cars. As she came closer, Kath saw her blonde hair and realised she looked so strange because she was wearing a bathrobe. She wore nothing on her feet. She scuffed her feet over the rough surface of the road and looked like she might change her mind and go somewhere else. Everything she touched or saw distracted her.
When she reached the side of the Terrace on which Kath sat, the woman paused and looked back from where she’d come. She turned towards Kath before casting her gaze up and down the street. Kath became aware of just how deserted Hobson’s Valley was at this time of day. Then, when it seemed like they were the only two people in the world, she heard an engine coming their way from out of town. The woman heard it too and stared along the road. The car slowed, its revs decreasing as it entered the residential area and a few moments later it passed them. It was a red Ford Explorer. Kath didn’t recognise the driver. The engine sound faded further into town, turning off the main street somewhere in the distance. Then the silence returned.
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