The Dead Path

by Stephen M Irwin

  It fell through the air and landed neatly-tick, tack, tacktacktack-in the vanity basin.

  Tony stared with wide eyes. Then something even more incredible happened. The spider threw itself into space and fell away. Just a moment later, another spider of the same size but of a different genus stepped delicately from the side of the building onto the middle pane. It, too, held a white pebble, and carried it to the center of the pane. Then it stopped, motionless and waiting.

  Waiting for me.

  Tony took a reluctant step forward, his eyes locked on the spider. And another, until he was standing at the vanity, staring up at it.

  The creature leaned forward and dropped its hard little parcel.

  Tony caught the stone, and watched the spider throw itself backward, slide down the glass, and fall away into darkness.

  No others came to take its place.

  He was about to call out to Dan, but glanced down at the pebble in his palm. There were two others like it in the basin. The stones were the size of large ball bearings, smooth and white and slightly ovoid, like tiny eyeballs. The one in his palm was translucent, like quartz, and cold. On its flattest part a mark was scratched. It was a line with two angled hooks, one at each end:

  The mark had been stained with something rusty red.

  Tony looked into the basin. The other two stones bore the same symbol. There was something about it. Something sad. Something depressing. Something familiar.

  Papa’s cheek. The mark looks just like the deep lines in my father’s cheek. The lines that grew deep as chasms as he got sicker and sicker…

  A wave of unhappy nostalgia flowed over Tony like a noxious wind. He recalled his father lying in the hospital bed, his cheeks bristled white and deeply furrowed, panting like a dog. And his eyes, Papa’s blue eyes. Papa’s body was thin and dying, lungs wasted by emphysema, but his eyes were blue as flames. His glands were swollen and his voice was reed thin, but not so thin as to hide the hate as he whispered to Tony in a voice dry as cane stubble, “ Finocchio.”

  Tony leaned on the vanity and looked into the mirror. That’s me, he thought. Look at you. Look hard. What do you see?

  He ran his fingers over his belly-the flesh was soft as custard and abhorrently pale, a swollen white mass under sweat slicked body hair. The feel of his own fat under stretched, hairy skin disgusted him.

  And your head is no better.

  His fingers traced the flaccid skin of his nearly double chin and ran over his scalp. There was nothing left on top, and the hair on the sides and back was thinning. When had it been thick? Before the divorce, before the string of court cases. Long before Dan.

  Yes, Dan, said the voice in his head. Do you think he’s here for your looks?

  Tony blinked. “Dan loves me,” he said to the empty room.

  Of course he does. The voice in his head had a nasty edge to it, like a hand held tucked behind a back that might just hold a knife. Why else would a tight young boy stay with a flaccid old man? You must have changed him.

  Tony’s heart started thumping. He remembered the party where he picked up Dan, who’d been flirting with a dyed-haired old bastard in a Kiton suit. When Tony quizzed Dan a few days later whether he would have gone home with him, Dan had shrugged and said he was glad he didn’t.

  Of course he was glad. He could smell money on you. That’s what he’s here for, Tonio. The money.

  Tony turned slowly and stared through the dark tunnel of the walk-in closet at the bed where Dan had sprawled so many times like the faggot whore he was. Leopards don’t change their spots and gold diggers like Dan don’t change their ways.

  The money.

  No wonder Dan had pushed and pushed with the court case. No wonder he’d egged Tony on and on about the Tallong development, treating the idea as if it was his own. The money. That was what the young slut loved.

  Not you, agreed the voice, sadly.

  Tony felt hot blood pound in his temples. But he forced his rage down into a small, tight ball as he stepped quietly through the huge living room, past the sleeping bitch-boy, to the kitchen. The cook’s knife clicked metallically as he removed it from the magnetic strip over the hob, but Dan didn’t wake. The boy’s eyes did fly open when Tony pushed the sharp blade up under his sternum, but Tony had selected the knife for its length, and it took only seconds for Dan’s pierced heart to stop.

  Pleased with his work (and pleased he no longer needed to tiptoe) Tony strolled back to the bedroom, picked up the phone and dialed. He regarded his bloody footsteps while the line rang.

  “Hello?” The woman’s voice on the other end was sleep-fuddled.

  “Ellen, it’s Tony.”

  “Mr. Barisi? It’s… is there something-”

  “Stop the Tallong development. First thing in the morning. Ring Koopers and tell them it’s off. I’m not ratifying.”

  “Mr. Barisi, are you-”

  “It’s off.”

  Tony disconnected. He slipped the phone back into its cradle. His sprinting heart slowed. A warm, satisfied weariness ran through him like good alcohol. There. Dan had gotten what he deserved, and his precious Tallong development was as dead as he was. Tony took a deep breath, and felt a satisfied smile appear on his cheeks. A good evening’s work. Now he could rest easy.

  Yes, agreed the voice in his head; it also sounded very pleased. Rest easy.

  Tony nodded and yawned softly as he walked back to the bathroom and climbed up onto the vanity. The bottom hopper swung wide. A chilly wind pushed in and flooded the room, cold and sharp and cleansing.

  “Easy,” he whispered. “Yes.”

  Tony slid his legs through the window, then pushed himself out. The thought in his smiling head just before his skull split open like a dropped melon was of kissing his father’s craggy dead cheek.

  J ust as passersby were running to the shattered body of Tony Barisi, Sergeant Peter Lam was returning to the station’s front desk, ripping the top off a sugar packet with his teeth and pouring it into his coffee mug that read “de’caf [dee-kaf], noun -preprocessed urine, slightly less flavor.” It was a quiet night. Two calls about some V8 thumping around the side streets doing doughnuts: he’d sent Erica and Mick to have a look. One call from Crazy Joan, who rang every night; this time she was complaining about an ad on TV she said was clearly made by the Mormons and must come off the air. Other than that, a lovely, quiet night. Then, movement in the CCTV monitor above the desk. A sedan was pulling into the front car park. It was commonplace for people to come in at all hours with queries about license renewals, barking dogs, cars broken into.

  Sergeant Lam sipped his coffee. A bit hot. He watched a man get out of the driver’s side. He moved slow and easy, no signs of drunkenness. Lam relaxed just a little. Then he stiffened, suddenly alert.

  The man went to the trunk of his car, opened it.

  Lam placed down his coffee. The guy could have anything in there: a cat he’d hit on the road, a box of God-knows-what that someone dumped on his footpath… The big worry was the folk who’d received speeding tickets that day and decided to try for some payback with a tire iron. Lam’s hand inched closer to the desk radio; Erica and Mick might need to come back in a hurry.

  Then the guy in the car park straightened his back and turned toward the surveillance camera. In his arms was the limp body of a naked child.

  “Oh, fuck,” whispered Lam. One hand grabbed the radio handset, the other slipped down to release the clip holding in his Glock.

  The man outside-who would later be identified as a Miles Kindste from the neighboring suburb of Tallong-placed the dead girl at his feet, reached into his pocket, and produced a Stanley knife. Without a pause, he flicked out the blade and drew it across his own throat. He sat himself down to die.

  T he phosphorescent hands of Nicholas’s watch glowed eldritch green. Nearly two thirty in the morning.

  He sat in an armchair that had seemed huge when he was a boy, but now was small and uncomfortable. After the first few ho
urs, he’d realized that moving didn’t help, and so stayed as still as he could, trying to will himself to numbness.

  Through the window over the bed where Laine slept, he’d watched the rain grow softer as hours passed, until it finally ceased an hour ago. The clouds were lit faintly from below by the orange tungsten glow of the sprawling city. Gradually, those clouds parted and dissipated like smoke. Stars winked faintly. Just ten minutes ago, the fingernail crescent of the moon had begun falling with aching slowness beyond the silhouetted leaves of the camphor laurel tree outside the window to light the figure on the bed ghostly silver.

  Laine shifted again. Around midnight, her finger had twitched. By one, she was moving her feet in her sleep. Now she was rolling over, pulling the blanket up around her chin. She opened her eyes. Nicholas was again struck by their color: a slate gray that was almost black in this half-light. He’d never seen eyes that color-smoky and somber as storm clouds.

  “We’re at my mother’s house,” he said. “You’re safe.”

  She nodded, closed her eyes, and fell instantly back to sleep.

  He watched her for a long while, then reluctantly turned his eyes back to the moon.

  He couldn’t remember the color of Cate’s eyes. He was sure they were blue. Or were they hazel? Now he imagined them gray.

  Chapter 30

  T he room was so bright that Swizzle’s eyes were matchstick slits. Hannah squinted.

  She sat at the breakfast table, chair pushed out, with Swizzle on her lap. Her mother made coffee. Her father poured juice into glasses. The room was as silent as a classroom after a student has been sent to the principal. Eerily still.

  The police had come late last night, and for hours afterward Hannah had lain awake listening to her mother sob and her father speak quietly, his voice a bowling ball rumble of words she couldn’t make out.

  She had slept on and off, with a can of Raid hidden under her pillow. She’d been awake to see the night turn from black to purple-blue to green and yellow. She’d heard her parents rise, voices low, reaching agreement that they “had to tell Hannah.”

  Like she didn’t know. How stupid did they think she was?

  They’d come in around seven and sat quietly on her bed, neither seeming to know what to say. So Hannah had said it for them.

  “Miriam’s dead.”

  Her mother had jerked back as if slapped.

  Her parents had looked at each other and nodded. A man, they explained, had stolen Miriam from her room. He’d killed her. But he was gone now. There was no need to be scared. They dragged the words reluctantly from deep within themselves, like heavy hauls from a dismal sea.

  Hannah watched while her father spoke. It was obvious he loved Miriam as much as Mum did, much more than Hannah had herself. She wondered if they’d be this upset if the spiders had got in here instead of Miriam’s room? It seemed doubtful. Her father finished by explaining that the next few days and weeks would be very, very hard. They both hugged Hannah tight and told her they loved her and made her promise that if she needed to talk about how she felt to come straight to them.

  That’s a joke, thought Hannah; she remembered all too well how much that slap on her buttocks had hurt. Maybe a man had killed Miriam; Hannah didn’t think her parents were lying. But they sure didn’t know everything.

  They didn’t believe her about the spiders? Fine. She’d watch the news stories about the guy who said he’d killed Miriam. She’d see if he said anything about spiders.

  If he didn’t, Hannah knew where she had to start looking.

  The woods weren’t far away.

  P ritam watched ephemeral diamonds crawl across the ceiling of his ward: scintillating colander holes of morning sunlight reflecting off the river and darting like fireflies above his head. The light winked between the wires and rods that held him in his web, peeking here and there between the chromium and the tubing, delighting him, making him smile. He felt sure the reluctant sparks were about to divulge the definitive answer to Thomas Aquinas’s dilemma about how many angels could dance on a pin head… but whenever the answer was on the tip of his tongue, a dazzling flicker would steal it from his mind.

  When he’d woken just before dawn, the pain had been extraordinary. His pelvis and the bones of his right leg felt filled with molten metal, and their white heat was pulsing from within, cooking his flesh. He was shaking so badly that he could hardly press the call button with his left hand-his right remained immobile, strapped across his chest. The nurse had arrived and shown him how to use the morphine demand button next to the call remote. Since that lesson, the morning had passed in a delightful fog, punctuated by occasional moments of brilliant clarity and modulated by a chorus of skittering ceiling fireworks.

  Best of all, Pritam now knew what to do with Rowena Quill.

  She was, most surely, a sinner, a murderer, a dancer with demons. But Pritam had felt the pain of martyrs now. He had tasted, at last, the physical agony of the saints who had died in the service of the Lord; perhaps even a sense of the pain that the Son Himself felt as His body was broken. And he had passed through. He was closer to the divine. And he was humbled. And what could be a greater display of his gratitude than to guide the most egregious of sinners to seek forgiveness?

  He would find Rowena Quill and, filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, convince her to admit her sins, to accept Christ and receive His mercy.

  Pritam smiled and pressed the morphine button again. Yes. This was so right.

  A pretty nurse entered the room, carrying something. She was young and lovely: a delightful work by the Father in this morning brightness.

  “Mr. Anand?”

  “Will you marry me?” He peered to read her name tag. “Joanna?”

  The nurse smiled. “No, Mr. Anand. But I will hold the phone up to your ear. You have a call.”

  She held the mobile handset against Pritam’s left ear.

  “God be with you this Heaven-sent morning!” said Pritam brightly, pleased that his words slurred hardly at all.

  “Cheers,” replied Nicholas.

  “Nicholas!”

  Nicholas was sitting on the back steps of his mother’s house, looking out over her vegetable garden. It was ludicrously green after the rains: an impossibly emerald world of vigorous growth. To counteract the salubrious sight, he lit the last of Gavin Boye’s cigarettes and inhaled deeply.

  “Hole in one. How are you?”

  “Blessed. How am I, Joanna?”

  “You’re doing well, Mr. Anand.”

  “Joanna’s going to marry me,” explained Pritam.

  “Are you… Are you high, Pritam?”

  “No! Well, I have a morphine button.”

  “Okay.” Nicholas got to his feet. “I’ll call you back-”

  “No! I have been thinking about Rowena Quill.”

  “So have we. Laine’s here with me.”

  “Good. Now, listen. Have you read Luke?” asked Pritam excitedly. “Read Luke!”

  Nicholas screwed the cigarette butt into the doorframe. “Pritam, you’re fucking high. I’m going to call back.”

  “Shh, listen! Luke fifteen something. Woman loses a coin. She has ten but loses one. And she finds it and she’s so happy!”

  “Goodbye, Pritam-”

  “Wait! That’s how the angels feel when a sinner repents!”

  Nicholas squinted against the sunlight. The cigarette had made him feel nauseated.

  “Like they just found twenty cents?”

  “No! You’re not listening!” Pritam rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. The nurse smiled and took the telephone with her other hand so she could check his catheter bag.

  “I don’t feel like repenting right now,” said Nicholas.

  “Not you; her! Quill! I’m going to help Quill!”

  Nicholas watched a butcher bird land on the Hills Hoist. It had a grasshopper in its beak, and the insect kicked, kicked, kicked. It occurred to him that he’d never seen the ghost of a bird or a dog o
r a grasshopper. Did they not have souls? Or did they never die before their time? Or did only haunted birds and dogs and insects see the ghosts of their own kind? Despite the nausea, he wished for another smoke.

  “Pritam? Hannah Gerlic’s sister was murdered. The guy who killed her-supposedly killed her-killed himself at the cop shop.”

  Pritam’s bright mood faded slightly. “Oh.”

  “And remember I told you a developer put a sign up at the Carmichael Road woods? Barisi Developments. Last night, a Tony Barisi murdered his lover, then jumped out the window of his penthouse apartment.”

  “Oh,” repeated Pritam. He pressed the morphine button, but nothing happened; he’d reached his limit for the moment. A last facet of sunlight on the ceiling flickered and vanished. Another nurse, older with short brown hair, appeared in the doorway. Joanna waved at her, can you do this? The brown-haired nurse shrugged and took hold of the phone. Joanna whispered in her ear, smiled at Pritam, and hurried from the room. Pritam glanced down at the new nurse’s badge: Helen Muir.

  “I think Quill killed my father,” said Nicholas simply. The words left his mouth without fanfare or footprints.

  Pritam felt the pain start twisting again in his broken hip, his shattered leg: some sharp-mawed worm stirring in its uneasy sleep.

  “Nothing’s changed, has it?”

  “No,” replied Nicholas. “But at least we know. We’re going to go into the woods.”

  “You and Laine?”

  “Yeah. Listen, just be careful, okay?”

  “I can’t run too fast right now.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Nicholas.

  “Watch out for white dogs?”

  “That kind of thing, yeah.”

  “Okay.” Pritam was feeling tired. Maybe a nap now. “Nicholas?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I did mean that, even though I didn’t know it was you. God be with you, this Heaven-sent morning.”

  Nicholas watched the butcher bird swallow the still-kicking grasshopper. “And also with you.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Pritam nodded at the brown-haired nurse. She pressed the end call button on the handset and reached behind him to adjust his pillow.