Contrition

by Sheldon, Deborah;

  Too late, too late…

  John had had a chance to confess his sins and had missed it.

  A great tiredness washed over him. He put his fingers though the cyclone fencing and hung his head. God, if only he’d never spotted Meredith sleeping rough in the park. If only he’d never hit Lyle. If only he’d never pulled over when Lyle had been walking to Aaron’s place to do that stupid assignment. If only John had never slept with Meredith and angered Lyle in the first place. Yet there was no way back.

  And only one way forward.

  Galvanised, John hurried to his car, started it, and fanged the stretch of service lane until it met the intersection. He turned, sped fast, watching the road closely, overtaking, weaving in and out of traffic.

  In less than six minutes, he reached the mall.

  He parked three rows back from the shops and found he couldn’t get out of the car. A suffocating dread had drained his strength. From this distance, he couldn’t get a line of sight to the park bench. Was Sebastian still there? John squeezed his hands into fists and hit at his thighs, once, twice, three times, psyching himself. Then he jumped out and ran through the car park.

  The bench was empty.

  Thank Christ.

  John shoved open the door to the real estate agency. The only person was the receptionist, typing at a computer. She paused to look him up and down.

  “Yes?” she said. “May I help you?”

  John gaped at her fingernails; long talons painted blood red. The first time he had seen those nails, he had wondered if she ever injured herself while masturbating. Now, he wondered if she used those nails like ten little scalpels to stab at animals, to peel off their skins and fur. If she had scars, John couldn’t see them. Her shirt had long sleeves cuffed at the wrists.

  The receptionist pushed back in her chair and frowned. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and pointed at a desk. “I need to see the young bloke who normally sits there.”

  “You mean Ryan?”

  “I dunno. The bloke with the goatee and the earrings.”

  “That’s Ryan. He’s getting coffee. Take a seat, he won’t be long.”

  She went back to her typing, using the very tips of her talons. Clack, clack, clack. Sweating, John sat in the sagging couch by the window. He glanced at the wall clock: 10.36 a.m. Almost beer o’clock. No wonder his hands were shaking. His foot began to jitter against the floorboards. The receptionist cut her eyes at him. He gave what he hoped was an apologetic smile and crossed his legs. The urge to bite his nails made him sit on his hands.

  “Where’s the alky?” he said.

  The receptionist turned with an irritated air. “I’m sorry?”

  “The old bloke who sits on the bench. Where’d he go?”

  “No idea.”

  “Does he sit there every day?”

  “I wouldn’t know. They don’t pay me to stare out the window.”

  “Okay. Sorry to bother you.”

  She sniffed and began typing again. Clack, clack, clack.

  The door opened. John leapt up. The little prick with the shiny suit, gelled hair and gauge earrings startled and took a step back.

  “Ryan,” the receptionist said, “this gentleman would like to see you.”

  The little prick recovered and waved John towards a desk. “Not a problem. Have a seat over here, would you?” He held a takeaway coffee cup and wore too much aftershave.

  They both sat down on opposite sides of the desk. Ryan smiled at him, eyebrows raised, expectant. He doesn’t recognise me, John thought.

  “I rented a property off you a couple of weeks ago,” John said. “The imitation miner’s cottage.”

  “Oh, that’s right. The three-bedroom place. You’re doing a uni­versity degree and use one room for your studies, the other for visiting family, correct?”

  “Correct. John Penrose.”

  “How can I help you, Mr Penrose?”

  “I need to break my lease.”

  The little prick hesitated, laughed, and took a sip of coffee. “Let me get your paperwork,” he said, tapping at the keyboard and rolling the mouse. “Give me a sec. Ah, here you are: John Penrose.” The little prick pursed his lips. “You signed the lease August twenty-ninth, two weeks ago yesterday.”

  “That’s right.”

  “A twelve-month lease.”

  “Yep,” John said.

  “And now you want to move out?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “Would you like to tell me why?”

  “Is there any law that says I have to?”

  The little prick’s smile turned brittle. “Well, no, not really, but out of common decency… I’m sure the landlord would appreciate knowing what the matter was. For future reference, you understand.”

  A plausible excuse? John had not thought that far ahead. He would have to wing it. Putting on an earnest face, he began, “Family emergency, I’m afraid.”

  The little prick raised his eyebrows again.

  John continued, “My daughter has…blown the discs in her lower back, and she needs help to look after the baby. She lives on the other side of the city, you see.”

  “I see. That’s terrible news. I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Thank you. So how do we go about breaking the lease?”

  “Well, first I need it in writing.”

  “Have you got a pen?”

  The little prick smiled. “Wait, Mr Penrose. Have you ever broken a lease before? It can be very expensive.”

  “I don’t care about the money.”

  “Okay, if you say so.” He started to count on his fingers. “One: you’ll be charged a re-letting fee, which is two weeks’ rent.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Hold on, I’m not finished yet. Two: you’ll have to bear the costs of advertising. Three: you must keep paying the rent until a new tenant takes possession of the house or until your twelve-month lease runs out, whichever comes first.”

  John sat back in his chair. “Shit.”

  “Exactly. Do you still want to break your lease?”

  I could do a runner, John thought. No, he couldn’t—they had all his personal details on file. He rubbed at his temple but stopped when he realised his hand was shaking. “Tell me something,” he said. “How long has that alky been hanging around the park bench out there?”

  “You mean Seb?”

  A chill ran down John’s back. “You know his name.”

  “Oh, everyone knows old Seb. He’s harmless enough. I don’t know how long he’s been here. He pre-dates me, and I’ve had this job for almost three years.”

  That meant Sebastian had told the truth. I’m not psychic. It’s coincid­ence. I happen to move around quite a bit to stay in contact with my associates. Perhaps John was panicking over nothing. And if the landlord didn’t find another tenant, asap, John would be up shit creek in a barbed wire canoe. He couldn’t afford to pay rent on two properties. He was being rash, acting paranoid. But no, no, he thought, Meredith is becoming unstable. She wrecked the vegie patch, even took a shit on it. And she’s stalking Cassie and Donna, might be planning to kill and eat Tiger—

  “Mr Penrose?”

  John glanced up. “Yeah,” he said, “I want to break the lease. Right now.”

  15

  Upon returning home, John went straight to the fridge. He downed a stubby within seconds, opened another, and shut the fridge door. There was no sign of Meredith. He walked to her bedroom. Instead of listening or knocking, he turned the handle and barged straight in. She was lying face down on the bed, arms by her sides, face buried in the pillow. John’s stomach felt a churn of revulsion.

  “Merry, we have to talk.”

  No response.

  “Stop playing dead and roll over.”
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  No response.

  John took a sip of beer. “Guess who I ran into today? Sebastian.”

  She turned her face to look at him.

  “Hah,” he said. “I figured that bit of news would wake you up.”

  She arranged herself to sit on the edge of the bed. If she had been sleeping, it didn’t show. She looked alert and wary; her eyes bright and opened wide, unblinking.

  “You met Sebastian?” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Where?” she said.

  “Up at the mall.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. He tried to bludge a smoke off me.”

  “That’d be right.” She picked at her nails. “Did he mention me?”

  “Not by name. He told me he moves around a lot so he can keep in touch with his ‘associates’, as he called them. I guess you’re one of his associates, right?”

  Reluctantly, she nodded.

  “You meet up with him at night? When you go wandering?”

  She gave a little shrug. “Sometimes.”

  John stared at her in the t-shirt and shorts, at her stick-thin arms and legs, at the half-moon scars. How on earth had he mistaken those bite marks for razor cuts? If you looked closely enough, you could almost distinguish the individual teeth—incisors, premolars, molars—despite each scar forming a near-solid line. Jesus, how hard had Sebastian bitten her? Hard enough to almost rip out a chunk of flesh, that’s how hard. And fifty-two times, no less. Jesus, how didn’t that hurt? How didn’t it hurt her until the fifty-second bite?

  “Talk,” he said. “Explain to me what’s going on.”

  In a defeated gesture, her shoulder raised and dropped again.

  “How many others are like you?” he said. “Tell me.”

  She didn’t react.

  Anger clamped John’s teeth and tightened his grip on the stubby. “You’d better answer me,” he said, “because I’ve had all I can take of your bullshit.”

  She leapt to her feet, startling him, her eyes flashing.

  “And I’ve had all I can take of yours,” she said, and shoved past him.

  He followed her into the kitchen. She took a cigarette from the packet on the counter and lit it. He watched her drag on the smoke, one breath after another without stopping, exhaling through her nostrils, until she had burned the cigarette down to the butt. Somehow, she didn’t seem to get dizzy. She threw the butt into the sink and raked both hands through the white tufts of her hair, over and over. Some of the tufts stayed upright, leaning at crazy angles. John kept watching her, carefully.

  “When you found me in the park,” she said, “why did you bring me home?”

  “Shit, I’d have thought that was obvious: to take care of you.”

  “And why did you want to take care of me?”

  He shifted uncomfortably, swallowed a sip of beer. “I felt sorry for you.”

  “Sorry?” She lit another cigarette. “You felt sorry for me?”

  “Well, yeah, but not just that.”

  “Then what else?”

  He chewed at his lip and mumbled, “We loved each other once.”

  “Ugh, how maudlin.” She gave a mocking laugh. “You took me in for old time’s sake? Is that it?”

  “I suppose, yeah.”

  “Are you sure there’s no other reason?”

  Spooked, he met her gaze. Her eyes were flinty.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “Oh, we’re always talking in circles. It drives me fucking mad.” She mashed the cigarette into the ashtray. “All right, I’m telling you straight. Keep away from Donna. Keep away or you’ll be sorry. I’ll make you both sorry. Do you understand?”

  Anger rose in him like a tide. Meredith’s eyes widened in surprise. Slowly, deliberately, he put the stubby on the counter and grabbed her by the shoulders. Squeezing hard, he felt her bones through her thin flesh, the creak of her joints as he lifted her onto her tiptoes. Impossibly, her chalk-white skin appeared to blanch.

  “Don’t go near that house ever again,” he said. “Got it?”

  For a moment, Meredith’s lips trembled. Then her eyes narrowed, her lips pulled back over long, yellow teeth, and she hissed like a cat. John threw her away from him. She fell against the counter and waggled her tongue.

  “What the hell are you?” he shouted.

  He bolted from the kitchen to the hobby room and flung open the door. She yowled in dismay and tottered after him, her bare feet shuffling over the tiles. He hauled out a cardboard box at random from the nearest bookshelf. When she reached the doorway, he hurled the lid at her and upended the box. A cascade of bones clattered to the floorboards, scattering and skittering like jumping jacks in every direction. They were vertebrae, small enough to come from cats or possums. My God, the first time he had peeked inside her hobby box—just the one box back then, eight years ago when she had started living in his apartment—he had recoiled in horror, put his hands to his mouth, feeling queasy, frightened. Now, he felt nothing but contempt.

  “No, stop,” Meredith said, and dropped to her knees. “They’re mine.”

  As she scrabbled for the vertebrae, trying to gather them up inside the scoop of her baggy t-shirt, John upended another box. A rain of tiny skulls, the beaked skulls of birds as delicate as china cups, spilled across the floor.

  “Stop it, stop it,” she said. “You’ll break them. Don’t break them.”

  “Or what?” he said. “What happens if they break?”

  He brought down his boot, savagely, and smashed some half-dozen skulls underfoot. Meredith screamed in anguish and ripped at her hair. He opened another box. Long bones this time. From what animal and whether from front legs or back legs, he couldn’t tell. He tipped them over her head and tossed the box aside.

  “How do you get them so clean?”

  “Stop, please stop,” she wailed.

  “There’s not a scrap of meat left on any of them. You eat the animals raw. Then you boil their bones, don’t you? You wait for me to go to work and you take the skeletons and boil them on the stove, right?”

  “Yes, yes, I boil them.”

  “In the big silver pot?”

  “Yes, in the big silver pot,” she said, whimpering, hands clenched in her hair as she surveyed the disarray. “Stop it, John, please.”

  He grabbed another box. “If I stop, will you talk?”

  She hesitated.

  He took off the lid.

  “Yes, yes,” she sobbed, “I’ll talk, I promise, just stop. Please stop.”

  She started crying in earnest. The red mist of anger left him. He put the box back on the shelf. Panting, his heart rate slowed, and his senses returned. Shame tasted bitter in his mouth. Weeping, Meredith groped blindly at the bones. He knelt down and arranged the three empty boxes in a row in front of her.

  “I’ll help you,” he said.

  She grabbed him by the wrist. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t touch them.”

  “Why? What happens if I touch them?”

  She shook her head, sobbing.

  Apart from the bookshelves, the room held no other furniture. John scooted backwards and leaned against a wall. Wiping at tears, sniffing back snot, Meredith began to refill the boxes. He watched. She would pick up a bone, inspect it for damage, polish it on the hem of her t-shirt, and place it with great care into a box.

  “All right, Merry,” he said. “I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to answer them. Let’s start from the top. Do you ever eat normal food?”

  “No.”

  “You only eat animals?”

  “Yes.”

  “Animals that you hunt and catch at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of animals?”

 
“Name it. Rats, mice, birds, foxes—”

  “Foxes? Wait a minute, don’t they attack you? Fight back?”

  She paused to rub a tiny skull, like that of a sparrow, against her cheek. “No,” she said. “They’re too afraid.”

  “Too afraid? Of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that because they somehow know you’re not… That you’re not…”

  “Human? Yes. They know. They can smell it.”

  A slow prickle of gooseflesh crawled along John’s neck and arms. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “If you’re not human, then what are you?”

  She shrugged indifferently.

  “A vampire?” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s pathetic, John, even for you. I don’t give two shits about garlic, crucifixes or sunshine, and I certainly don’t sleep in a fucking coffin.”

  “Hey, don’t crack the shits, just answer my questions.”

  “I’m answering them, aren’t I?” Scowling, she buffed at a long bone.

  “How often do you meet up with the others? With Sebastian?”

  “I don’t know. It depends. Sometimes I hunt by myself.”

  “When you’re in a group, do you ever travel by car?”

  She rolled her eyes again. “What for? Animals are everywhere.”

  “You always hunt on foot?”

  “Yes.”

  He waited. “Well, come on,” he said. “Tell me how you do it.”

  She sighed, put the bone inside a box, and sat back with her hands on her thighs. “I can see perfectly in the dark: movement, silhouettes and outlines, even when it’s pitch black. But more than that, at night, I sense living things like they’re on radar. There’s no point asking me to explain. I don’t know how it works.”

  “These…talents…allow you to creep up on an animal?”

  “And jump,” she said, and raised her clawed fingers so fast that John startled and banged his head against the wall. Laughing, she wriggled her fingers. “I sink my nails into them and they can’t get away.”

  “What next?”

  She held out the first two fingers on her right hand, curved into a hook. “I cut a hole in the neck like this,” she said, with a quick jab, “and suck out the blood.” She fluttered her eyelids closed. “It’s fucking ambrosia, John. Do you know what ambrosia means? The drink and food of the gods.”