The Dead Path

by Stephen M Irwin

  She followed one root away from the tree until it had diminished enough in size for her to get her arms over it. She crooked one elbow over the root. It was as cold and damp as a fish. She hoisted one leg up till she’d straddled it like a hobby horse. She rocked her weight from one hip to the other, and began her slide down the other side when she realized just in time that the ground below fell away sharply. She balanced awkwardly, wondering what to do next.

  “Hannah?”

  Her head jerked up at the voice. She caught a glimpse of the man from Carmichael Road, the man who had been there when she woke up in the church, then she overbalanced and fell.

  One foot hit the steep, slick ground and slid instantly away. She tried to hold on to the root, but it was so slimy and broad that her fingers found no purchase; her shoulder wrenched sharply and she careened down the slope. Shrubs lashed at her as she tumbled, and her knees and elbows struck evil-edged schist hiding under the mulch. She turned twice before she hit a fallen beech trunk. Her head struck it with a thud. Were the log not decades fallen and soggy with rot, she’d have split her skull open. Even so, the pain was sharp and her elbows and knees were badly grazed.

  The throbbing in her head and the hurt in her limbs hit her all at once… and she started to cry. She tried not to, but the sobbing wouldn’t stop. She heard the man crunching through the leaves, and a moment later saw him through a fog of tears leaning over her.

  “Huh… huh,” she stuttered, snuffling wetly.

  “Let me have a look.” He placed the shotgun down beside him and gently took her head in his hands and examined her scalp. A gun! The sight of it arced across Hannah’s flash flood of tears and a thrill of excitement raced through her. He’s hunting, too!

  The man seemed hugely relieved that she was whole and largely unhurt. Then he sniffed the air. “What’s that smell? Is it…”

  Hannah realized that her knapsack was underneath her. Her back felt wet and cold and she smelled the antiseptic tang.

  “Oh no!”

  She wrenched around and shrugged off the pack, zipped it open. The bottle of rubbing alcohol had split. Her backpack smelled like the doctor’s surgery.

  “Bum!” she swore, and started pulling out the other items. The newspaper was soggy, which wasn’t a bad thing, but the matchbox fell apart in her fingers.

  “Yeah, bum,” muttered the man, frowning as he watched her produce the knife and the can of insect spray. She gave it a test squirt-it still worked.

  “Well, that’s something,” she said quietly. She looked up at the man. “Are you here for the spiders, too?”

  Nicholas’s first instinct was to lie. “What spiders?”

  Hannah pursed her lips, annoyed.

  “Okay, for whatever sends the spiders then?”

  Nicholas felt another gust of unreality. Of all the people he could use beside him, the fates had sent him a ten-year-old girl.

  “You should go home, Hannah. You don’t know-”

  She stared at him. He hadn’t seen much of her eyes two days ago: she’d been unconscious for most of the time in the car and at the church, and she’d been puking and sobbing for the rest. This was a different girl. Her tears over the fall had dried suddenly, and she was shaking her head, watching him through eyes that were a strange, dark blue as hard as sapphire.

  “I’m not going home,” she said flatly.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  “So, tell me. Spiders took my sister two nights ago and now she’s dead. Whatever got her wanted to kill me. They said the man on the TV news did it, but I don’t think it was him. Not really.” She seemed to remember something. “I know it tried to get me the other day on the path. And it would have, if you hadn’t…”

  Her voice trailed off. She looked at the ground and then stuck out her right hand.

  “I’m Hannah Gerlic. Thank you for saving me the other day.”

  For the third time in two minutes, Nicholas was amazed by this tiny person. He took her hand.

  “I’m Nicholas Close.”

  “Were you there by accident or on purpose?” Hannah asked. The civility that had been in her voice was gone. This was short, sharp interrogation. He no longer felt the need to lie.

  “You found a bird. A dead bird,” he said.

  “I found a unicorn,” she corrected. “But then it turned out to be a bird.”

  Nicholas stared away into the gloom of green and brown.

  Hannah watched him.

  “Mr. Close?”

  He nodded to himself. “What a fucking bitch,” he said.

  Hannah blushed. “You shouldn’t swear.”

  “People swear, Hannah, get over it.” He stood and brushed clean his knees. “I found a bird just like you did when I was a kid. And she nearly got me. She got my best friend instead. You said spiders?”

  She nodded. “They came for me, but I wouldn’t let them in the room. They got Miriam though.”

  Nicholas stared at the girl. What sort of a kid sees what she’s seen and then comes after it?

  “You’re some kind of a freak, are you?” he asked.

  She stared at him coolly with those dark eyes. “You’re rude. I don’t think I like you.”

  “Yeah, that’s going around.” Nicholas picked up the shotgun. “Go home, Hannah.”

  He began climbing back up the slope. Hannah quickly stuffed the pungent wet things back into her pack and hurried after him.

  Nicholas looked down at her. This kid was brave.

  Like Tristram.

  “This old woman. She kills children.”

  “I know. It got my sister, remember? ”

  “It’s a she. And she’s…” He shrugged. “She’s been around a long time. She’s dangerous, Hannah. You really gotta go home.”

  “I have to go home.”

  “Yep,” he agreed, relieved to be finally getting through to her.

  “Yes.”

  But she kept following him. Then the penny dropped.

  “Are you correcting me?” he asked.

  “Yes. You don’t speak well,” Hannah replied, shouldering her backpack. “I don’t want to go home. But since I don’t have anything to burn her with anymore-”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  She struggled to keep up with him. Trickles of blood ran down her thin legs from cuts on her knees and shins. He checked his watch. It was nearly three. If he took her back, it would be after four by the time he returned, leaving less than ninety minutes of light, if you could call this murky gloom light. He stopped and took her by the shoulders and knelt to look her straight in the eye.

  “She cuts their throats, Hannah. I don’t know if I can protect you. She’s probably expecting me. I have a shot, but I don’t honestly like my chances. I can’t be responsible for you, too. You should go home and put your energy into convincing your parents to move somewhere safe and dull. Suggest Canberra.”

  He rose, turned and started walking again.

  A moment later, he heard her footsteps behind him.

  A quarter of an hour later, the water pipe loomed above them like a glacial wave of rust the color of dried and crusted blood. Rainwater flowed out of the twin tunnels below the pipe; the forest floor was still weeping out the heavy rainfall. They had followed the creek up the gully to the pipe, but it had been Hannah who’d pointed at the water.

  “Look.”

  Small creatures floundered in the cold, tea-colored stream. Spiders. Spindly, fat-bodied orb weavers; squat jumpers; spiny, coal-black widows; platforms; broad huntsmen; chunky imperials-all scrambled to escape the cold, mumbling waters, clutching at twigs or knotted in groups to crawl over each other. Some floated with their crablike bellies in the air, curled like dead fists, drowned.

  “This could be bad,” said Nicholas.

  It was.

  The tunnels under the water pipe were so thick with web that there were no circles of light at their far ends. The mass of silk was so d
ense that it overflowed the pipe and the water carried it like an obscene caul some three meters downstream. Thousands of spiders made the silk shimmer darkly.

  Hannah turned away and vomited up her lunch.

  Nicholas watched, not sure whether to help her or leave her. He shifted awkwardly. “You all right?”

  She nodded and wiped her mouth.

  “I think she knows we’re coming,” he said.

  Hannah dragged her eyes to the tunnels. “You went through there?” she whispered.

  “It wasn’t as… bad as this.”

  She looked at him, as if appraising him afresh.

  Nicholas checked his watch and a fresh ripple of fear fluttered up his spine. The day was vanishing fast. He’d planned to repeat his trick, throwing another bug bomb into the pipe and this time lighting the gas. But the web plugged the tunnels so solidly that he wouldn’t be able to get the can more than an arm’s length in.

  “We need a ladder. We need two ladders,” he mumbled. He looked over at Hannah. She was frowning, deep in thought.

  “What?” he asked.

  “How does she get through?”

  Nicholas shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “How does she get through?” asked Hannah. “If her cottage is on the other side, she must come through somehow, right? Unless she can fly.” She looked at him, clearly worried. “Can she fly?”

  Nicholas shook his head. He felt a fool. Of course Quill would have another way through.

  “There must be a break in the pipe.”

  Hannah shrugged as if that was obvious.

  If there was a break in the pipe, it could be anywhere half a kilometer in either direction. It might take hours to find, and, knowing Quill, it would be disguised. Nicholas checked his watch again. It was three thirty. The temperature was already starting to fall.

  “I don’t know where to start,” he said hopelessly. “Hacking our way through this bush is going to take hours-”

  “Lift me up.”

  “What?”

  “Lift me up,” repeated Hannah. “I can walk along the top and look from up there. And I can go fast. My balance is good, see?” She stood on one foot.

  Any other time, Nicholas would have said they should turn back, that it wasn’t worth risking her neck. But he was sure that if he didn’t deal with Quill before nightfall, he would be the next to die. And if he didn’t kill Quill, she would kill again. And again, and again.

  “All right. I’ll get down, you stand on my shoulders, then I’ll grab your feet and push up. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He knelt. She put her hands on the flanks of the pipe and carefully stepped up onto one shoulder, then the other. When she was ready, he slowly stood, and realized for the thousandth time that he really should exercise more-his thighs burned.

  “Yeah?”

  “Go!”

  He grabbed both her feet and lifted. Hannah sprawled over the top of the pipe and swung her legs clear. She stood. “I’m up!” She grinned and looked around. “Which way?”

  Logic wasn’t going to help here. Nicholas tried to clear his mind, to forget the ticking clock, and found himself pointing.

  “That way.”

  Hannah nodded down at him, and started off, arms spread wide like a tightrope walker’s. In just a few seconds, the tightly packed trees had obscured her from view. Her light footsteps echoed faintly through the metal, then they, too, faded and were gone.

  Nicholas was alone.

  The minutes seemed to stretch into hours. He could almost feel the hidden sun falling faster and faster into the west. A light mist began to rise from the lush undergrowth like the earth’s own disturbed ghost. Nicholas had terrible imaginings of Hannah slipping on the damp pipe, scrabbling and falling, landing headfirst with the sickening bony crack that haunted his dreams of Cate. He shouldn’t have let the kid go. What was he thinking-?

  “Mr. Close?”

  Light footsteps grew louder, then Hannah’s pale face appeared high on the pipe.

  “Did you find it?”

  She was frowning. “I don’t know. It’s weird. This way.”

  She waved him on. He followed from below, straining through dense thickets of native holly and blackthorn.

  “Not far,” she urged.

  “Easy for you…”

  He struggled to lift aside a chaotic tangle of wait-a-while vine and the spiny stem grabbed at his sleeves and the duffel bag. Then he was through. He looked up.

  Hannah was pointing. “There.”

  He followed her finger.

  Had he not been looking for it, he’d never have seen it. But sure enough, a narrow track almost devoid of undergrowth struck out perpendicularly from the pipe. He bent to inspect it closer. It was only two hand spans wide, but the ferns and saplings were compacted by years of passage into a distinct but well-hidden path. Whoever walked it was careful to stick to the same route every time. The weird thing was, it terminated right at the pipe.

  “Does it go on the other side?”

  Hannah disappeared from view for a moment, then reappeared overhead. “No.”

  Nicholas suddenly realized what Quill had done.

  “Clever bitch,” he muttered.

  He stood close to the pipe and started running his fingers over its surface. They found the neatly disguised crack. He traced it-it made a rough rectangle a meter or so high in the side of the pipe.

  “It’s a door,” he said.

  “A door?”

  “A hatch.”

  He pressed against the curved rectangle. A slight give inward. He pressed harder and a loud clack echoed within the pipe. When he released his pressure, the steel hatchway opened outward on oiled hinges.

  “Wow,” she said. “Catch me.”

  Before Nicholas could argue, she’d slid down the side of the pipe into his arms. She wriggled to the ground and pulled the hatch wide, poking her head inside.

  “Wow,” she repeated, and the word echoed away into pitch darkness: wow-wow-wowwww… She climbed up inside the pipe. “Did you bring a torch-orch-orch?”

  “No. But…” He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out one of the Zippo knock-offs. “This will do.”

  “Here,” said Hannah, “you hold that and give me the gun.”

  Nicholas pulled her out of the hatch.

  “I’ll keep the lighter and the gun. You follow me.”

  I t was easy to decide which way to go inside the pipe. One direction was thick with dust and littered with insect carcasses. The other was almost spotlessly clean.

  By the flickering flame of the lighter, they walked through the darkness, saying nothing, listening to their footfalls dance to and fro like ripples in some subterranean lake. The barrel of the Miroku occasionally ticked off the curved metal walls, the sharp sound chased away by a long, lonely echo.

  “How will we know when to get out?” whispered Hannah.

  “We’ll know,” replied Nicholas.

  And they did.

  After what felt like hours, but was less than three minutes, two faint slits of light hovered in the darkness. As they got closer, it was clear they were the top and bottom cracks of another hatchway. When they reached it, light trickled in all four sides of the rectangle. Inside was welded a grab handle. Nicholas wondered what poor sucker Quill had seduced into doing this steelwork and what rotten fate had befallen him.

  He looked around at Hannah. “Not too late to go back.”

  She shook her head.

  He nodded, extinguished the lighter, hefted his gun, and pushed open the hatch.

  At their feet was a wider, clearer path through the trees. Nicholas recognized it as the track he’d found the day he ate those strawberries. Clearly, Quill wasn’t concerned about hiding her presence on this side of the pipe.

  He turned and helped Hannah out of the hatch.

  “Okay?”

  She nodded.

  He checked his watch. There was less than an hour and a half of day
light left.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Chapter 33

  A chill wind blew hard as the sun inched closer to the hills in the west. It sucked away moisture, leaving her skin dry and her eyes raw.

  Katharine Close’s arms were so tired that they burned, yet she kept hacking at the soil of her garden bed as if it were a beast that needed violent subduing. Her hands were blistered inside the gardening gloves. She had spent the last few hours digging, pulling weeds, clipping stems, trying not to think.

  But she did think.

  Maybe it was time to go. Maybe enough years had passed that she could admit she’d won. She’d laughed at Don, to his face and to his memory, waving a nasty blowtorch over the hidden things he’d believed. What room was there for bone-pointing and curses and witchery for children born in the time of rocket ships and global warming? How could lines on stone or wood have potency when real power lines crisscrossed the skies on poles, breathing useful life into computers and plasma screen televisions? What fear was there of spells when suicide bombers were killing dozens in Kandahar markets?

  At nights, though, Katharine shivered. She remembered how she’d marched, fair-faced, into Mrs. Quill’s store, handed the old woman her children’s clothes, and blessed her with kind words and smiles. She’d shouted down that impotent voice inside her that agreed with Don. What else was she to do? Curl away and make the sign of the evil eye each time the old crone passed?

  And yet that’s exactly what she did do. She remembered a cold winter’s night, as empty and still as the inside of a bell jar. Suzette and Nicholas tiny and asleep in their beds, and Don six years in the grave. She had been ready to go to bed herself when she heard a soft clip clip of footsteps on the street. She had crept in darkness to the front room and peered between the venetian blinds. Looking up at the house was the dot of the old woman, her face a black shadow. And yet Katharine had imagined her eyes, bright and sparkling, dancing and ravening, looking back. As if knowing there were two ripe young children within. In the pragmatic daylight of the next morning, Katharine had ridiculed herself for her fears-the old dressmaker was perhaps a little senile and lost, or just wanted some friendly company but hadn’t the courage to knock on the door.