by TJ Park
He quickened his pace. Open light was ahead.
The moist footing became more sand than soil, then the sand was laid with the crusted grain of timber planking. He was at the start of a long, narrow jetty, only negotiable in single file. Yet the leafy tunnel still did not open out; rather, it closed in more tightly around him. He had to walk stooped over, the thick dank odour of the forest and the insects’ shrill screaming pressing down on him, the gloom dragging at his steps. He began to hurry. The tremor of the timber underfoot gave the impression someone else was on it as well, pursuing him.
Then the mangroves parted and the clammy murk and insect din were left behind as he emerged onto the Gulf coast. He had to shield his eyes, although not from the sun. The blue sky alone bludgeoned his senses, and the blue bay. The opals he coveted were a poor second to its shimmering brilliance. Seabirds swooped and hovered. Their raucous cries were sweet to his ears.
At the end of the jetty a rusted bell and clapper hung from a leaning turret. There was a yacht moored out beyond it, the centrepiece of the dizzying vista. Its name, Tales of Blue Water, was a ballet of flowing script along the side. A fifty-footer that belonged to Nystrom, an old friend, an old accomplice, of Mick’s.
Braced with a grin that made his muscles ache, Doug crossed the salt-encrusted timbers to the bell, gripping its chain tightly. He refused to look down at his shadow. Maybe the alien crawling sensation on his skin wasn’t there any more. It was impossible to tell. Gooseflesh rose on any area he thought about, concentrated on.
He focused on the yacht instead. It was very still, only the calm waters of the bay lapping against it. No activity on it that he could see. But no-one had gone anywhere. A small runabout was still tied to it. He didn’t like the look of things. The place seemed too much at rest.
Against his will, his eyes began to be pulled down to his feet.
Before the water’s dazzle could liberate his gaze and let him see what lay there, he was clanging the bell, having at it brutally, his shoulder straining with the effort.
A head bobbed along the horizon of the Blue Water’s deck. Then the possessor of it climbed up in full near the stern. Doug tensed. It was a young bloke he’d never laid eyes on before.
The young bloke studied Doug for a while, before calling out to someone below deck. Another man came up into view and Doug relaxed.
It was Nystrom. He couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else, not with his prodigious belly always peeping out from under his shirt and the shock of white hair that looked more like a helmet than a comb-over. For Doug, there was no lovelier sight. The old man raised his hand in greeting. Doug rang the bell twice in return.
Nystrom said a few words to the young bloke, who promptly bounded over to the runabout, unhitched the line and hopped in. He started up the engine on the first go with an easy confidence that Doug envied.
He recalled Mick mentioning that Nystrom had three ex-wives and had produced a large brood, but only one young son (or was it grandson?) who wasn’t catastrophically seasick on open water. Mick claimed the kid worshipped the old man, followed him around like a shadow. Perhaps this was him.
As the runabout approached, cutting the still water with razor sharpness, Doug thought how very few influences could extend past dry land. Perhaps his own constant companion would be unable to cross an ocean.
The young man shut off the engine and the runabout glided up to the jetty smoothly, touching with a light bump. He was bare-chested, wearing a pair of tie-dyed stubbies and sandals that revealed the scabby, healing tops of red toes, the only part of him the sun hadn’t taken to. He was wiry with muscle, his skin so brown it was beginning to blacken. He was barely eighteen. Not even a pretend-adult like Warlock.
The boy squinted up at the jetty with a lopsided, yet legitimate grin.
“Doug?”
“Yeah.”
Despite his bone-weariness, he stepped into the runabout nimbly, as one should. Trying to go carefully only got you dunked. He surprised the boy, who was in the middle of jumping out to tie the line. He lost his native cheerfulness for a moment, almost becoming wary. Perhaps Nystrom had told him he would be dealing with hard men, said it for a laugh. The boy hovered uncertainly.
“The old man said there would be others with stuff to take.”
“That can wait. I need to see Nystrom first.”
The boy’s grin snapped back in place. “Yeah, sure.”
He started the motor again first go, turning them and heading for the yacht.
Doug expected a rush of questions but the boy let him be, so his gaze wandered over the crystal water rushing past. To anyone else it looked like he was enjoying the view, but he was calculating the best place to do what came next. When he judged them far enough from the shore Doug dropped his gaze to the bottom of the boat.
He didn’t even have to try. The water sloshing at the bottom of the runabout mixed his shadow in with reflected sun and the effect was a bit like a mirror ball. An uneasy blend of light and shade bounced up from the sloshing bottom, rippling over him and the boy. A fantastic profusion of mirrored sigils slid over them as well. Flaming skull, Nazi crosses, dripping dagger, supping panther, eight-ball, the names of the dead and departed, all flowed along the runabout and their limbs with bright avidity. The boy was unaware of it, his eyes turned to the front.
“Go back,” Doug croaked in a voice very unlike his own.
After a moment he realised the boy hadn’t heard over the noise of the motor. They were nearly at the yacht. He grabbed the boy’s arm.
“Go back! I left something behind! I need to go back! Now!”
“Alright!” the boy said with no bother. He turned them about so quickly Doug nearly went over the side. He got a last look at Nystrom, who had watched their approach with one foot set on a rail, more concern than pleasure showing on his face.
The old man was well aware he’d be carrying wanted men and stolen goods. He’d smuggled both in the past. For secrecy’s sake, he had no inside knowledge of the job, but as Mick had suggested, there was nothing stopping him from listening to the news on the radio and putting two and two together.
As the runabout turned back to shore, Nystrom’s frown went deeper. Were there potential stirrings of relief in there as well? He could only be wondering what Doug was doing. Doug could only wonder the same thing.
***
Doug told the boy to wait for him at the jetty, but he had no intention of returning.
He retraced his path through the mangroves, this time without fear, his despair so dark he could no longer be intimidated by the gloom of tree cover. He was imagining being far out to sea when night finally overcame the yacht. He thought of trying to warn Nystrom beforehand of what would come and the old man thinking he was mad and possibly dangerous and then wishing soon enough that Doug had been both those things. He thought of Nystrom’s helper, the young bloke whose name he never did discover, and imagined him losing that unaffected boy’s grin in the worst way possible.
The next Doug knew he was back sitting in the parked ute. He knew where he had to go. There was only one place left.
***
With a road map and reckless abandon, Doug took a direct route, travelling the major roads and highways, cutting through populated areas. Mick had undersold himself as a mechanic. The ute could be pushed up to a hundred and twenty most of the way.
Any moment he expected to be stopped at a checkpoint or hailed by sirens. His anxiety of that happening was a lovely distraction from what lay at his side. Yet he only saw the police once. It was on a flat stretch of highway when, without warning, flashing lights and wailing siren came up rapidly behind him.
He froze in place, continuing on with his steady over-speeding. Before his blasted, flustered brain could decide on what to do, the patrol car swept past into the oncoming lane and overtook him, the constable in the passenger seat angrily giving him the finger. Then the police car accelerated away, siren fading into the distance.
Wh
en there was no reappearance of the patrol car over the next rise or the one after that, Doug knew he was safe. The relief, like the appearance of the law, was fleeting.
“Now you have me all to yourself,” he muttered.
***
He almost made it. He was driving on a dirt road when he had to cross a dry creek bed. At the bottom of it, what he thought was solid earth was, in actuality, a thin crust hiding a deep sludge. The ute was mired easily, the churning wheels buried to the upper rims. So, as he got out he sank in deep. He had to pull each leg from the sludge with both hands to make every grudging step, and it was only once he got to the far bank that he remembered the crate. As he rested, he deliberated over what to do – hide it? – but the thought of going back through the mud defeated him. He was not even inspired to return and stuff his pockets with opals. They would just slow him down in the long run.
The sun was low in the sky, nearly brushing the treetops.
He knew by the road map acquired from the jeep that he should be close to his destination. It helped that the exact place was circled in pen. But closeness was relative to the means of transport. By car, one kilometre or twenty did not matter. By foot, it did. And he was exhausted to start with, from the events of the last few days, from the driving, from the adrenaline of his unceasing low-grade fear, even from his short hike through the creek bed. His boots and pants were encased in mud as heavy as cement.
The only possible advantage to being on foot was that he could leave the winding track and cut a more direct path across the countryside, but he knew he should stay on the road. He chanced losing his way in the bush.
What decided him was where his shadow lay. If he took the road it would keep ahead of him where he could observe it growing longer and larger as evening advanced. Cutting through country would put it mostly from his sight.
It was no contest. He risked the rugged bushland. He started hiking at first, then, despite his fatigue, he began to go faster, stepping it up to a jog, wanting to run, hastening to beat the coming dark.
Chapter Seventeen
The day was on the wane. For most of it, Janet had not given any thought to Doug’s promise to leave the message at the mailbox. But as evening drew near, she remembered it again and wondered if he’d gone back on his word. She didn’t dare speculate whether he had even made it as far as the front gate.
Occasionally the mail van was late, due to such things as breakdowns or flooded crossings. Those were rare events, though. She would have a better idea of their situation if she could physically check the mailbox. Tempted by the many uneventful hours gone by, she looked in on the remaining trail bike in the barn, debating if she could afford a short expedition away from her children.
In a way, it was a relief to find the decision taken out of her hands. She wasn’t surprised at what she found, nor did she think too long on who had done it. A man would have sliced the tyres and cut the leads. She found the trail bike crushed and folded in the middle, the seat chewed on.
To go to the mailbox on foot meant a four-hour trek. She wouldn’t leave her children alone that long.
Lauren could fend for herself, despite sinking into despondency between regular bouts of crying. Sometimes she would let her mother comfort her, other times she would not want to be touched, but at least she was responding. Janet could get little out of Scott. He would not take food. She could bring water to his lips, but found it impossible to determine whether he drank any or it or whether it was all spilling down his shirt. He wouldn’t stand or walk, but he would sit up for periods of time if he was lifted into position. Otherwise, he barely moved. She could only tell when he was awake by checking if his eyes were open.
Once during the day he had wet the bed. She did not ask Lauren to help her change him or the sheets, apprehensive that it would only set her daughter off into another crying jag. Whenever they were both together in the same room, Lauren was relentless in asking if her brother was dead or dying.
While both children were napping, Janet went to recover her husband. She shed some tears over him. Using a wheelbarrow she transported him to the walk-in refrigerator adjoining the remains of the house. The electricity was no longer working, but the interior of the insulated unit was still cool. She laid him out on a pallet on the floor, adjusting him until he was comfortable. She cleaned his face and hands gently with a cloth and straightened his hair with her fingers.
“Goodbye, Rob,” she said. “Sleep well.” She closed the sealed door gently, dreading to hear it make its usual sucking clump.
There was nothing she could do for Solomon, except drag the shattered lemon tree over him. She even picked up what she could find of Warlock, using her best bushel basket to contain his remains, and a clean cloth to cover them. A truly terrible, but necessary, chore.
The remainder of the day was spent caring for her children and doing the minimum required for herself. She went around the farm, mending or straightening what she could. It was hard work, but not as exhausting as the heartbreak she carried about with her constantly. She was looking forward to the arrival of evening and a deep, dreamless sleep.
***
The sun was no longer hanging above the trees, but tussled with them and the resultant flickers of light goaded Doug on, taunting him.
He’d made a terrible mistake straying off the road. It was disconcerting to find out that tall grass could be just as slow going as a winding track. The surrounding bushland was thicker than he remembered it. He could walk right past the house and not know, too tired to watch out for it.
As if to prove how insensible he’d become, he didn’t comprehend for a while that he was climbing a low rise. He only wondered why his legs were quickly becoming exhausted … then he was at the top, looking down.
At the witches’ house.
It was far away. He could barely make out the tin roof reflecting back silver in the lowering sun, but he knew it immediately.
His surprise at seeing it was so much like the first time that he turned around, half-expecting to see Mick, Warlock and Cutter there with him. He would have liked to see the same amazement revealed on their faces also. In that moment, he felt a great affection for them. Even Cutter. But there was no-one there on the rise with him. Not even ghosts.
Doug turned to face his destination again. When he swung around too fast, nearly falling down, he realised how tired he was, how dreadfully tired.
He pressed his legs to work up into a trot … they slowed to a jerking walk again. The process was repeated. It went this way for ages. He was so exhausted he’d almost forgotten why he was in such a hurry.
Walk, trot. Walk, trot.
Then the light went out of the landscape and he screamed, spinning round in terror. The reason for his urgency had come rushing back.
But the sun had not quit the sky. Not yet. It burned through a thin band of cloud pressed like sediment on the horizon.
His arms flopping by his sides, he stumbled into a new run, one that lasted mere moments. It was all his exhausted body would allow, the anxious rasp in his throat loud in his ears, the only noise in the world. He slowed into a rambling walk again, his eyes stuck to the ground before him, his head too heavy to lift, except to snatch loose glimpses of his intended destination. The house was visible, but a couple of kilometres away at least, perhaps further.
The shadows around him were muted by the veiled sun which burned like a slow fuse. His own shadow had become gossamer. Unlike his lumbering self, it travelled over the rough terrain with quick-fire ease. It stretched a long way from him, as if it wanted to be the one doing the escaping. In the soft light it was on the verge of fading and merging with the other shadows. The land was preparing to go dark.
Doug started to whimper.
Then the sun slipped into a crack between the band of cloud and horizon and the world flared golden, forcing the shadows into retreat. Every grass stem, every scrap of leaf was sculpted with light. The sight was dazzling, heartrending.
It
was only a last gasp. Fool’s gold.
The sun pressed below the horizon and was snuffed out.
Doug’s shambling tread slowed down. His eyes darted around, watching out for which way an attack would come. He was surrounded by the soft undercurrent of twilight, every shadow gone from the landscape, except for his own.
Except for his own shadow. Doug stopped walking.
His shadow was still there, a crooked line stretching away from him, in denial of the sun having set. It remained like a stain along the earth.
Doug panted like a dog. He backed away a few steps. He couldn’t evade it. The illogical shadow still stuck to his feet and shifted along with him.
The dusk was gradually giving way to dark, but his shadow was swifter. It plunged into an unnatural dark as deep and black as a crevasse.
The familiar began to emerge.
It climbed from deep within his shadow as if it was a crack in the earth, ascending step by step on an invisible stair masoned from black stone.
It emerged from the far end, head turned back over its shoulder, its sigils burgeoning, its pseudo-eyes gaily touching on him.
The shadow finally did what Doug dearly wished it had done all day. It parted from his feet, drawing up behind the familiar, closing with it like a faultline fitting back together, growing steadily shorter and narrower until it twitched off the ground and became the familiar’s tail.
There was no more dragging it in the dirt. The familiar was mended, standing on all four legs, its back unbroken. It shook vigorously from its shoulders to the tip of its tail before it sauntered around to meet Doug directly, the tilt of its head never varying from its set on him.
Doug fumbled the pistol out from under his shirt, pushing at the safety with clumsy fingers. The familiar watched him do this with cool patience, giving him all the time he needed to bring the weapon up to bear.
It was then that Doug suffered some confusion, for he suddenly had two targets to point at. Cutter was there, sitting high astride the familiar’s back. Or the both of them were joined as one, like one of those mythological creatures. Doug was too aghast to judge.