Contrition

by Sheldon, Deborah;

  “So, you’re a god now? Is that it?”

  Her eyes opened. The blue irises glittered with a bright and preternatural shine. She sat between John and the doorway. The realisation clenched his stomach. Unless he broke through the window, there was no other way out of the room.

  “If you drink blood,” he said, “you must be a type of vampire.”

  “He calls us the Marked Ones,” Meredith said.

  “He? You mean Sebastian?”

  “After I suck the blood, I skin the animal and eat the meat.”

  “Guts too?”

  She gave a coy smile. “Oh, come on now. Can’t a girl keep any secrets?”

  “You bring the skeletons home.”

  “Yes.”

  “What for? Trophies?”

  Amused, she ran her palms lightly across the bones on the floor, rattling them against the hardwood boards. It was an awful sound. A shiver trembled down John’s back. How many dismembered skeletons did she have? There must be at least twenty boxes to a bookshelf, and four bookshelves in total. That didn’t include the boxes stacked up against one wall, which must number a few dozen. Christ, she must have the remains of hundreds of bodies stashed in here, maybe even thousands.

  “Hey,” he said. “Are the bones trophies or what?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “No, I don’t think I will. I don’t think I want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Answer my goddamned question.”

  Her smile vanished. The bones forgotten, she tensed and glared, lowering her head. John’s scalp prickled. This is what it must feel like to lock eyes with a panther, he thought, in the moment before it tears you to pieces. She stiffened her fingers against the floorboards. Her nails gouged long scratches through the varnish.

  Fuck this for a joke.

  He scrambled to his feet.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “Tired of playing?”

  He walked around her, keeping to the walls, giving her as wide a berth as possible within the tight confines of the room.

  She lunged, swiping her nails.

  The flesh of his ankles seemed to shrivel in anticipation of pain. Yelping, he jumped out of reach and stumbled to the doorway, unscathed, preparing to run. Her melodious, hearty laughter stopped him and brought a flush of humiliation to his cheeks. He’d packed himself, scampered like a frightened schoolgirl. He looked back. Mere­dith had spun around to face him.

  “That wasn’t funny, Merry.”

  “Not funny? I beg to differ. It was fucking hilarious.”

  “Don’t scare me like that again.”

  “Or what?” Leaning forward, she put her hands on the floor as if preparing to crawl—or spring. “What will you do, Captain Courageous? Shit your pants?”

  He walked the hallway towards his end of the house, mindful to take slow and unhurried steps to feign nonchalance, his ears straining for the slightest noise that might indicate she was following him, stalking him.

  “Sook,” she called. “Don’t ask questions if you’re afraid of the answers.”

  Once inside his room, he bolted the door. He desperately needed a drink, but too bad, a smoke would have to do. He took a fresh pack from the chest of drawers, sat on the edge of his bed and went through four cigarettes waiting for his pulse to slow down and his hands to stop shaking.

  Christ almighty.

  Meredith wasn’t human.

  By her own admission: inhuman, some kind of monster.

  If not a vampire, what was she? Zombie, werewolf, mummy, Frankenstein’s creation; he couldn’t think of any other monsters, but maybe she was a type you didn’t find in the movies, a type that was real. Jesus, her fingernails must be as hard as metal screws. How else could she scratch the floor? Punch holes through fur, skin and muscle and into the blood vessels beneath?

  He grabbed his phone and looked up ‘vampire’ on Wikipedia. The page titled List of vampires in folklore and mythology had scores and scores of entries in alphabetical order: Abchanchu of Bolivia, Abere of Melanesia, Adze of Ghana… With a groan, he rubbed at his eyelids. It would take him days to read through each entry. He didn’t have days to spare. Now what? Who could he ask for help? Nobody; not the police, not Nate Rossi, not Donna—

  Oh, shit.

  Donna.

  He had to get Merry away from her, away from Cassie and Tiger, far away.

  Using his mobile, he found a website for a big real estate firm. He would rent a place in Melbourne’s northwest, exactly opposite as the crow flies to his current address, a place some fifty kilometres from Donna’s clinker-brick shithole, too distant for Meredith who hunted on foot. Donna, Cassie and Tiger would be safe.

  He pressed the number for the agency. As he listened to the ring tone, a stray notion wended through his mind: if Meredith wasn’t human, would killing her be considered murder? Before he could follow this train of thought, the phone answered.

  “Yeah, hi,” he said. “I need to rent a three-bedroom place in the north-western suburbs, as soon as possible. Have you got anything to lease straight away?”

  He kept his voice low in case Meredith was listening at the door. Then again, it seemed her powers of extra-perception only switched on at night. Maybe she couldn’t hear him. Nevertheless, he whispered his way through five more phone calls to different real estate agencies. There were precious few properties available. Fuck Melbourne and its ridiculous immigration rate, he thought, as he lit another cigarette, hacking and coughing. A hundred thousand extra people a year, every year, wasn’t it? Something like that. Too many people anyway, and not enough houses.

  “I’ll take anything,” he said to the next agent. “Flat, unit, four-bedroom, one-bedroom, whatever, just get me something now.”

  After a couple of hours, he had lined up six potential properties. The earliest viewing was Thursday, two days away. Well, too bad about work. He dialled the office number. The receptionist picked up.

  “Gail?” he said. “John Penrose from the mounting department on B-shift. Look, I’ve caught some kind of stomach bug… Yeah, it’s coming out of me both ends… Yeah, something I ate, maybe. Could you tell the boss I won’t be in for the week? I don’t want to spread anything through the factory… Thanks. Catch you later.”

  He hung up. His phone battery had dropped to twenty-six per cent. He noticed a new text message and opened it. The text from Donna, sent about an hour ago, read: Hope you liked brekkie. See you tonight?

  He wiped his mouth, rubbed the back of his neck.

  Finally, he texted back: Sorry but im sick. Tomorrow?

  He plugged the phone into the charger, sat on his bed, and stared out the window at the ruins of his vegie patch. Shit. What lie would he tell Donna this time?

  He didn’t leave his room for the rest of the day. His stomach grumbled with hunger. Stone-cold sober, his head ached and throbbed, tender as a boil. None of that mattered. Lying on the bed, he passed the hours by chain-smoking, checking his watch, staring out the windows, and thinking, planning, plotting.

  Evening came. The sky lost its blue tint. A stripe of deep orange peeped over the fence as the sun went down. The bellies of tufted clouds turned dark navy. As the light faded, the yard became monochrome. The first few stars began to glitter. Crickets shirred and chirped. Birds called goodnight to one another from the trees.

  John checked his watch again. Inside the rucksack by the bedroom door was a water bottle filled from his bathroom tap, smokes, a lighter, and a pair of binoculars. He had changed into black jeans, black t-shirt and black sneakers. His only jacket, however, was blue. That couldn’t be helped. With the temperature dropping to ten degrees overnight, he had no intention of leaving home without a jacket. Next to him on the mattress lay his black woollen balaclava, a relic from his teenage years when he used to ride
a pushbike to school and didn’t want to freeze his face off in winter.

  Around midnight, the front door opened.

  A click—that must be Meredith pushing in the tongue of the deadlock—and the door closed. She had left to hunt. John leapt up, pulled the rolled-up balaclava over his scalp like a beanie, wrestled his arms into the straps of the rucksack, and exited his room. When his hand closed around the handle of the front door, his courage left him for a trembling moment. Then he was outside.

  He dragged the balaclava down to his chin. His sneakers trod soundlessly across the front yard. The half-moon bathed the street in grey shades. The windows over the road were dark. Donna and Cassie must be sound asleep by now.

  He looked up the street both ways.

  Shit, had he lost Meredith already?

  But no, there she was, heading towards the T-intersection, striding, poised and strong, her athletic gait so different to her usual crabbed and unsteady shuffle. If it weren’t for her hair, shining white and luminous in the moonlight, he would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that it wasn’t her. Fear tightened the flesh on his thighs and buttocks. Oh yes, Meredith was a creature of the night, make no mistake.

  He swallowed hard and began to follow her.

  She moved so swiftly he had to occasionally break into a jog. He craved a cigarette but feared giving himself away. What if she turned around and spotted the glowing orange ember? He trailed her, giving her a good fifty-metre lead, ducking behind parked cars, using the gum and wattle trees on the nature strip for cover. She never looked back. At the T-intersection, he figured she’d turn left—across the nearby highway was a reserve with plenty of bushes for possums and birds, and a pond to attract ducks—but instead, she turned right into the cul-de-sacs, crescents and squares of residential suburbia.

  Ten minutes passed, twenty minutes. He shadowed her doggedly.

  Where the hell was she going?

  She wended through a maze of back streets, ones which he didn’t know. At first, he tried to keep track of the unfamiliar surroundings, hold a mental map of the rights and lefts so he could find his way back, but her route was too circuitous. John sweated despite the cold air. Christ, the suspense was a killer. Is this how Meredith hunted every night, roaming some half an hour away from home before striking?

  Or had she spotted his tail?

  Was she leading him into a trap?

  Finally, she slowed her pace and disappeared from the footpath. John sprinted to catch up and stopped just in time. Meredith had entered a park built on a vacant lot between two houses. He peeked around the fence of the weatherboard property.

  Meredith was approaching a central playground. Two people, a man and a woman, stood up from the swing set. A third—Sebastian—rode down the slide. They all embraced Meredith. Forming a circle, the quartet crouched and howled like cats.

  The sound raised the hairs on the nape of John’s neck. The strange notes made by the male and female throats seesawed in a way that made him dizzy and queasy at the same time. A dog barked. The yowling stopped, but if by coincidence, John had no idea. The foursome jumped to their feet and scattered into the trees. They made no sound, even though the play equipment sat within a bed of tan bark, which should have crunched and crackled underfoot.

  John wrenched off the rucksack and grabbed his binoculars. He raised the lenses to his eyes and swept the park.

  The quartet was hunkered together already. John could hear ripping and rending sounds, the squawks and squeals of unseen victims. Shit, had these monsters caught their prey already? How could that be? John had taken less than half a minute to get his binoculars. Even the fastest hunters on earth—spiders, piranhas, snakes, Komodo dragons—need time to stalk.

  His hands shook. To steady the view through the binoculars, John leaned an elbow on the weatherboard’s letterbox. As soon as he did, his blood chilled.

  The monsters had paused, motionless, noses lifted to the air.

  He held his breath.

  Simultaneously, they looked in his direction and stood up.

  With a horrified gasp, John ducked back behind the fence. He stuffed the binoculars into the rucksack. His ears strained and heard only crickets, the distant sounds of traffic. He risked a glance. Meredith, Sebastian and the two others were hurrying towards him.

  John turned and ran.

  16

  He ran in a blind panic. His sneakers pounded the footpath in dull thuds. The rucksack bounced against him, the binoculars smacking his shoulder blade over and over. He risked a backwards glance. Jesus, the four monsters were in pursuit. He pushed himself to go faster, faster, faster, his arms and legs pumping, chest heaving, heart clamouring inside his ribcage like a wild animal fighting to get out.

  What would they do to him if they caught him?

  Kill him with teeth and nails.

  Bite him fifty-two times and convert him.

  Maybe something worse.

  Oh, fuck no. Oh, please.

  He should never have followed Meredith. What had he hoped to achieve? Too late now for regrets. My God, he thought in a kind of dazed surprise, I’m actually running for my life. He looked back. The monsters had broken up. Sebastian and Meredith were behind him; the man and woman sprinting along the footpath on the other side of the road. They’re planning ahead, he realised, getting ready to cut me off when I turn a corner. The street was deserted. If a car happened to pass by, he would run onto the road and flag the driver down, throw himself onto the goddamned bonnet if he must. But no vehicle came.

  The balaclava provoked a suffocating claustrophobia—the mask of a man on the gallows—and he ripped it off and threw it aside. He ought to dump the rucksack too, lighten the load. But that was the least of his troubles. His pack-a-day habit and lack of exercise were catching up with him, right here and now, in the heavy wheeze of his lungs, the stitch in his side. Christ almighty, was he slowing down already?

  That’s when he heard their laughter, soft and tinkling, sounding for all the world like the laughing of excited children enjoying a game of chasey. The laughter swirled around him, first beside him, then in front, as if thrown by ventriloquism. He felt a pain in his chest. I’m doomed, he thought. If they wanted, they could catch me in an instant, but they are the cats and I am the mouse. They’re playing with me.

  A fresh squirt of adrenaline lengthened his stride. He coughed and hacked, spat a glob of phlegm. His breath was ragged, his windpipe burning.

  “John,” Meredith called, “come and meet my friends.”

  She didn’t sound puffed in the slightest.

  “Don’t be daft,” shouted Sebastian. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”

  “Stop, John. Stop and say hello.”

  They were pretending to be friendly, trying to trick him. The laughter swirled around him again. How far behind were they? What if they were almost upon him? He didn’t want to look. The terrifying sight would make him lose hope and impetus, drop him to the ground in a defeated heap. The fact that he couldn’t hear their footfalls shredded his nerves. Yes, they were like cats, all right, padding on soft paws, ready to unsheathe their claws. Why couldn’t he hear them running? He considered shouting for help. When you want help from strangers, it’s important to shout FIRE to draw people’s attention and inspire them to action.

  “Fire,” he rasped, his breath no more than a whistle. “Fire.”

  “It’s no use,” Meredith called. “You may as well give up.”

  “We’re not going to hurt you, old chap,” Sebastian added. “You’re being a terrible bore.”

  The laughter again, that maddening laughter.

  A buckle in the footpath wobbled John’s foot and wrenched at his ankle, nearly tripping him. He half-expected to feel the slice of fingernails against his scalp, but a moment of clarity struck him instead. Jesus, how stupid to keep running in a straight li
ne, illuminated by the moon and street lights! A strategy came to mind. If the monsters expected to cut him off at a corner, he’d catch them off guard.

  John veered onto the nearest property, over the lawn and through the carport into the back yard. The laughter stopped. A good sign. The two-metre fence dividing this property from the next loomed ahead. He hadn’t jumped a fence since his teenage years, but the step-vault technique came to him in a flood of muscle memory: a running leap, both hands on the railing, a foot planted on the top of the fence, the launch of his whole body over the other side. He dropped to the ground running.

  This back yard had a pool. As he veered around it, he remembered falling into Darren Shaw’s pool the night of the bonfire party. He sped up as he approached the next fence and hopped over it. He ran through the front yard, dodging a magnolia tree, and dashed onto the road. Behind him, he heard the unmistakable splash of a body falling into the pool. Hah! Please God, let it be Sebastian taking an unscheduled swim, and please God, give him pneumonia for his troubles, the sick fucking freak.

  John ducked into the next-door property and scaled the fence. His footsteps woke a terrier that raised its head and yapped. John leapt another fence into the neighbouring yard, sprinted across the patio, vaulted over more wooden palings.

  “John!” Meredith shouted, her voice far away. “Where are you?”

  Almost home and hosed, he thought, and redoubled his efforts. The yards were fragrant with varied flowers in spring bloom—lavender, rose, gardenia, daphne, frangipani—which would help mask his own scents of fear and sweat. These monsters could sniff like bloodhounds, he felt sure of it. And if they couldn’t see him or smell him, they would have the devil’s own job of tracking him.

  He zigzagged through one yard after another, mindlessly at first, desperate to build on his head start. The plan seemed to be going well until he noticed the barking.