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The Atlas Circus Royale only performed once on Sundays, at 11 a.m. Surely, Nate Rossi would be holed up inside his caravan, tying one on. John looked at his watch: 5.51 p.m. The bottle shop was open until eight. He had plenty of time to buy a conciliatory bottle of whisky before closing time.
The empty stubbies drew his eye.
You’re an alky if you drink and drive.
Shit…
But he didn’t feel especially pissed. On the other hand, his tolerance was high. And what if he encountered a booze bus? What then? He could lose his license.
Even so, he abandoned his dinner and hurried out to the car.
10
Nate opened the caravan door. John presented the whisky.
“Little Johnny Butt-rose, you beautiful old bastard,” Nate said, eyes gleaming as he turned the bottle around in his hands. “If you weren’t a bloke, I’d kiss ya.”
“Look, it’s nothing,” John said. “I wanted to say sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“For running off like I did.”
Nate, looking blank, swayed in the doorway for a moment, and stepped back with a laugh and a careless wave of his hand. “Aw, fuck it, bygones and all that. Come on in, will ya? It’s too cold to leave the bloody door open.”
John stepped inside. The caravan looked and smelled exactly the same apart from a discarded pizza box by the sink, its smattering of withered pineapple pieces stuck fast to the cardboard by oil and yellow cheese. Nate shut the door. A small portable heater sat on the unmade bed, its element bright red, humming as it puffed out hot air.
“Sit down,” Nate said. “I’ll pour drinks. Smokes are on the table. Help yourself.”
John sat. Nate’s hands shook as he unscrewed the bottle cap. Trying to fill two water glasses in one unsteady pass, he spilt whisky over the bench, and actually leaned down to slurp up the drops.
“Waste not, want not,” he said with a chuckle. “Am I right?”
John groped for a cigarette.
Nate put the drinks on the table. He was tanked, John realised, tanked to the gills. John felt depressed just looking at the poor alky bastard. Whenever he blinked, Nate’s eyelids were out of sync; the left eye stayed closed for longer than the right. John lit his smoke and exhaled in a long sigh. Why had he bothered to come here? What help could Nate possibly offer? Another wrong decision… The story of my life, he thought morosely, and drew hard on the cigarette.
“Get stuck in, you old cock,” Nate said. “For tomorrow we may die.”
Nate raised his drink. After a moment, John raised his, and they touched glasses. Nate skolled his whisky in one mouthful and refilled his glass.
“Listen,” John said. “Remember, we talked about Meredith Berg-Olsen.”
“Yeah?”
“About how she bit herself fifty-two times; thirteen bites to each limb.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. Fucken freaky, hey?”
John put on a smile. “You knew the psych nurse. What was her name?”
“Her name?” Nate looked puzzled.
“The nurse’s name.”
Nate put a forefinger to his temple and screwed up his face in a parody of deep thought. “Nup,” he said. “Dunno, mate.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, wait, it’s coming back…” He slammed his palm onto the table. “Felicity. We called her Flick. Hey, what kind of name is Flick? Sounds like a fucken horse.”
Fleetingly, Donna crossed John’s mind. “And Flick’s surname?”
“What do you take me for, a memory magician? I can’t remember.”
“Can you try?”
“Well, it was something Polish. Or Russian.”
John tried another tack. “Your brother knew her, didn’t he?”
“And rooted her a few times too, if I recall.”
“Your brother would know her full name? Know where to find her?”
Nate pouted his lips obscenely as his hand wove the glass through the air, and with closed eyes, he took a deep, grateful swallow of whisky. John felt cold and ill. Do I act like that when I’m pissed? Just in case, he must never get pissed in front of Donna. Not once, not ever. Okay, yes, technically she had already seen him tipsy, but not drunk drunk…not hammered like Nate. But why worry? John wasn’t an alky. Sure, he drank a lot but who doesn’t? Besides, he didn’t drink as much as he did in his younger days. Did he? No, probably not.
“This is important,” John said. “Can you ask your brother about Flick?”
“My brother? Mate, I don’t even know where the shithead lives.”
A dead end. John sat back and rubbed his brow. He should have known. Did his luck run any other way? “Oh Jesus,” he muttered, despite himself. “Oh, help me.”
Nate perked up and leaned closer. “What’s going on, Butt-rose?”
“Nothing.”
“Mate, you can tell me.”
John went to stand. “Thanks for the smoke. I’m off.”
“You wanna know about Meredith, don’t you? I’ve got some stories to tell, stories from Flick. That creepy stuff she told me, I’ll always remember.”
John sat down again.
Nate tapped the side of his nose and began to laugh, a wheezing gurgle that ended in a cough. “I told you about the bite marks.”
“Yeah.”
“All right, here’s a doozy you won’t forget.” He tipped whisky into both glasses, a dribble in John’s glass, and a lot more in his own. “Flick reckoned that Meredith changed after biting herself. Like chucking a u-ey; one minute she wanted to kill herself, the next she was different.”
“Different how?”
“Like a whole new person. But hang on to your hat for this next bit, okay?”
Goosebumps prickled up the nape of John’s neck. “Okay.”
“Call me a bullshit artist, call me whatever, but this is what Flick told me, God’s own truth. I swear it.”
“Whatever you say, I’ll believe you.”
“Sweet,” Nate said. “Well, this ward had pets: mice, birds, guinea pigs, hamsters, any animal that was easy to look after. It was therapy, right? Teaching the patients to care for something other than themselves, okay? Teaching those sad-sack motherfuckers how to love; how to feel again.” He widened his eyes and grinned with relish, as if telling a ghost story around a campfire. “And this one day, a guinea pig went missing. Shit, I even remember its name: Peaches. Poor little Peaches went missing. Since you could only open its cage from the top, the bugger didn’t climb out by itself. Somebody had to take it out. You follow?”
“Yeah, I follow. Get to the point.”
“Calm your tits, I’m getting there. Right away, as soon as everybody knew Peaches had gone missing, Flick reckoned the culprit was Meredith.”
“Was she right?”
“You betcha. Meredith’s room got searched first. And they found Peaches. Oh yeah, they found Peaches, all right.”
Stopping for effect, Nate leaned back in his chair, nodded once, and sucked on his whisky, his eyes never leaving John’s face. John decided not to crack, not to ask. The seconds ticked on. Outside, somebody was singing; a reedy, ancient voice, the lyrics too faint to discern. It was probably one of the circus workers leaving their caravan to visit a portable toilet. Sweat gathered in John’s hairline. His foot jittered against the floor. Nate kept smiling and sipping whisky, one eyelid starting to droop.
“Fine,” John said. “The staff found Peaches.”
“They sure did. You bet your arse they found that poor little bugger.”
“Dead?”
“Worse.”
“Hah.” John crushed the cigarette and lit another. “What’s worse than d
ead?”
Nate hunched forward. “Its bones were in the bathroom sink,” he whispered, “bloody and raw, all chewed up. You follow?”
After a while, John nodded.
“Shit, I thought that’d floor ya,” Nate said. “Maybe you don’t get me. Okay, no worries, I’ll be crystal clear: Meredith had eaten little Peaches.”
John clenched his jaw. “Did they find the rest of its body?”
“Yeah, in a drawer of Meredith’s dresser. But just the skin, right? Turned inside out; the fur on the inside. She’d ripped off the skin like a sock. Must have done it with her bare hands, too.”
John felt himself blanch.
“Aw, I know, right?” Nate said. “Chuck-worthy. The patients weren’t allowed any knives, razors, scissors, anything sharp. Flick reckoned the only way Meredith could have got started on skinning little Peaches was by using her teeth.” He laughed and slapped a hand to his cheek. “Can you believe that shit? Meredith used her teeth.”
Yes, John could believe it.
“But that’s not the worst part,” Nate said.
“There’s more?”
“Nobody ever found Peaches’ innards. Heart, lungs, liver, intestines: gone.”
For a time, John concentrated on his cigarette, on the hiss and crackle of the tobacco as it burned. Nobody ever found Peaches’ innards. He had to ask. He didn’t have a choice. “What was the theory?” he said. “About the guts?”
“Well, they gave Meredith’s room a shakedown, looked out the window at the garden beds below, in all the bins on the ward, and found nothing.”
“So? She could have flushed the guts down a dunny.”
Nate shook his head and chuckled. “Nah, mate. That’s not what happened.”
“What are you trying to say? That Meredith ate them?”
“Damn fucken straight. But did she eat ’em while little Peaches was dead or still alive? Now that’s the sixty-four-dollar question. An animal can live for a long while with its guts torn out. For hours, even days, if there’s not much blood loss. You know what Flick told me? That for weeks afterwards, she had bad dreams about Peaches, about the poor little bugger squealing and kicking as Meredith chowed down on its innards straight through its belly, like eating a fucken apple.”
John took a gulp of whisky. He felt lightheaded, detached, as if part of his conscious mind were floating outside of his body. Or perhaps he was just pissed.
“Did Flick question Meredith about it?”
“Course she did. They all did; the doctors and shrinks and whatnot. Meredith kept her trap shut, apparently. Never owned up to jack-shit.” Nate gazed into the bottom of his glass, and mumbled, “I always wondered about that.”
“About what?”
“Did Meredith kill the animals first? Or eat them alive?”
“Plural? You mean other animals in the hospital went missing?”
Nate slammed a fist onto the table. “All of ’em, mate! One after the fucken other, as fast as the staff could replace ’em, they’d go missing. Only Meredith was smarter about it after the Peaches episode and made sure not to leave any body parts behind. Still, everybody knew it was her.”
John’s throat felt tight and dry. He grabbed the bottle, poured himself a shot, and downed it, fast.
Nate said quietly, “Some people in this world like to eat animals while they’re still alive. Gross, right? Take new-born mice, for instance. Hairless, pink, blind little things, so tiny you could fit one on a five-cent piece with room to spare. Well, there are people who think it’s a fucken delicacy to take new-born mice and dip ’em in sauce, one at a time, and crunch-crunch-crunch ’em up in their mouths. It’s as if the wriggling and the squeaking and the bleeding and the dying are part of the pleasure.” He took a drink. “Makes me wonder if Meredith was that way inclined.”
“You mean a sadist?”
“Nah, mate. What I’m talking about is a person who doesn’t even register that other living things feel pain. In my mind, that’s a person who’s somehow less than human, somebody who’s lost their humanity.” Nate drained his glass. “Ah, listen to me, will ya? Tinpot philosopher. Shit, hey? But it’s a fucked-up world.”
“Oh God, it sure is.”
They drank in silence for a while. Outside, the singing had stopped. Perhaps the person had returned to their caravan. Now there was only the swish of tyres on the nearby road, the occasional honk of a horn, the steady hum of the electric heater.
Finally, John said, “Did Flick ever mention another patient, a bloke by the name of Sebastian? He would’ve been on the same ward as Meredith.”
“Sebastian? I dunno. Maybe.”
“He had the same pattern of bite marks on his arms and legs.”
Nate’s bloodshot eyes bulged. “Aw, hang about, Butt-rose. You know more about this shit than you’re letting on, don’t you?”
“No,” John lied. “Meredith’s parents happened to mention him.”
Nate screwed up his face. “Sebastian…it rings a bell. Sebastian…nah, I can’t remember.” He looked up and pointed a finger. “But I’ll tell you something else. From time to time, once every few years, maybe, Flick had other patients like Meredith, ones with the same bite marks: fifty-two bites all up, thirteen on each limb. You couldn’t let ’em near animals. If you did, they’d try to eat ’em. It gave Flick the willies. These people were like zombies, she reckoned.”
John felt angry, hot and dizzy. “Zombies?”
“I know, right? Fucken freaky. The living dead.”
“That’s stupid. Ridiculous. There’s no such thing.”
“You know what we thought? Me and my shithead brother?”
“What?”
“These weirdos were members of the same cult, but with bite-mark scars instead of tattoos, you get me? Like a sign. Some kind of pagan shit that other members could recognise on sight, like witchcraft.”
John gasped.
He recalled Cassie’s drawn face…
And I saw a witch…really pale, like she was dead… She bared her teeth and waggled her tongue like she wanted to eat me…
“That’s fucked,” John said. “Black magic? Bullshit. That stuff doesn’t exist. It must have been some kind of infection, something in the blood, passed along by an infected person’s saliva.”
“Like HIV?”
“Yeah, like that. It makes more sense than your dumb theories, doesn’t it? Zombies? Witches? In the twenty-first century? Give me a break.”
“Well, according to Flick, Meredith sure acted like a monster.”
John sobered. “Listen,” he said, gripping Nate by the wrist. “This is really fucking important. I need to talk to Flick. Understand? You have to contact your brother and find out where she is. Or if you don’t want to talk to him, get me his number and I won’t tell him who gave it to me. Okay, mate? This is urgent. Please.”
As if stunned and confused, Nate gaped at him. He withdrew from John’s grasp, crossed his arms, and narrowed his eyes. The look made John’s heart jangle about. Christ. John helped himself to another shot of whisky. You’re an alky if you drink and drive… Fuck off, he told himself. This is an emergency.
Nate began to nod, to smile.
John snapped, “What’s so funny?”
“Little Johnny Butt-rose.”
“Stop calling me that. I hated it in high school, and I hate it now.”
“Poor little Johnny Butt-rose.”
“Stop it. I’m warning you.”
Nate chortled. “You loved her, didn’t you?”
John didn’t answer.
With a dismissive wave, Nate added, “Aw, come on, everybody in school knew you had the hots for Meredith. Isn’t that why you’re here? To find her? Well, you’re too late. The world ground her up and spat her out. Didn’t anybody tell you what happened to her in the end? Sh
e got turfed from the hospital and went to live with her parents. Then she ran away. That was ten, fifteen years ago. She’s dead. A crazy bitch like that? Butt-rose, you know she’s dead. What are you hanging on for?”
I don’t know why. I don’t know any more.
Exhausted, John closed his eyes. Outside, the wind picked up. The caravan shook and shuddered. He could hear snatches of an argument somewhere out there amongst the circus trailers, words carried by the wind—cocksucker, you should have…I told you already…that’s it, I’ve had enough of your—and the banality took the strength from him.
Why not confide in Nate?
The drunkard wouldn’t remember anyway. Why not tell the truth for once? John put his elbows on the table; put his head in his hands. When he opened his mouth, no words came out. Telling the truth didn’t feel natural.
“Still hung up on her, huh?” Nate said.
“What?”
“Still hung up on Meredith?”
John shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t blame you, mate,” Nate said. “Meredith was sexy as all fuck back in the day, wasn’t she? Better looking than Rachel, but she had that super-posh attitude, like she was better than everyone else, right? That gave some of the boys the shits, me included. Yeah, I preferred Rachel. Not a stunner, but a bloody good woman.”
Dazed, John looked up. “Rachel?”
“Yeah, remember her? She was my bird for a while. We both ended up going to Melbourne Uni, me doing law, her doing some kind of writing crap. Wakey-wakey, Butt-rose. Rachel? Rachel Gilbert? The biggest Culture Club fan in high school? She idolised Boy George. The weirdo get-up she liked to wear back then, all the scarves and hair-ribbons, and whatnot. Remember?”
The girl with the black hat, the eyeliner… John offered a wan smile. “Rachel.”
“We were together for a few years, actually. Things got pretty serious.”
“What happened?”
“Aw, shit happened, that’s what.” Nate smirked as if he didn’t care, but there was a pinched look about his eyes, a tightness to his lips. “We got to Uni and I turned into a party animal. She got uppity about it, always giving me a hard time for drinking and toking. Whatever. She dumped me for one of her lecturers. Can you believe that? Some balding fucker with a ponytail. Her Australian literature professor. Apparently, his take on ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ changed her whole outlook on life.” Nate’s sleepy eyes narrowed. “He sounded like a total wanker.”
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