Contrition

by Sheldon, Deborah;

  Thunk. Thunk.

  Panting, sweating, John leaned the pickaxe against a trunk, took off his long-sleeved shirt, and slung it over a branch. He sat down and lit a cigarette.

  Maybe the dreams would go away now along with the guilt since he hadn’t killed Lyle. Buried him, yes, but not killed him.

  John pulled the cigarette smoke deep into his lungs and coughed.

  It would be amazing if the nightmare went away forever. He could hardly imagine it. After thirty-one years of Lyle screaming as dirt rained down, what might John dream about instead? He had no idea. He thought of long-term criminals, finally released after decades in prison and how bewildered they must feel, how lost and afraid, how ill-equipped to deal with a strange and unfamiliar world. He swallowed hard. Without the guilt, without the punishment, the contrition, what was left?

  He butted the cigarette, checked his watch. Getting late. He stared at the fresh grave, some two metres long, one metre wide, about a half-metre deep.

  “Mate, where are you?” he murmured. “I’m here to give your sister back.”

  He put his hand into the grave and brushed at the dirt. An electric sensation darted through his fingertips. Yes, this was the spot, he could feel it, he could sense it. He burrowed his fingers into the soil. Any second now, he would touch Lyle’s bones. Any second now… Any second…

  No, don’t be stupid.

  He still had some half-metre of soil to move before he could reach Lyle.

  A kookaburra whooped and cackled in the distance. John held his knees and rocked back and forth. Squinting up through the canopy, he watched raggedy clouds drift across a clear, ice-blue sky.

  “How could you root your own sister? No wonder she hated you.”

  He lit another smoke.

  “My whole life, I figured we were mates, but I didn’t know you at all, did I? You were the better liar.”

  Watch yourself, he thought. Don’t get soft.

  He threw the cigarette into the grave, stood up, grabbed the shovel, and kept digging. The muscles in his back, shoulders and arms burned, just like last time. One of Lyle’s eyes had been half-open, gazing at infinity, abuzz with flies. Their skittering black legs had roved back and forth over the dusty eyeball. John hacked through a fresh tangle of roots with the pickaxe and inspected his palms. A mess of angry red welts and blisters.

  Why hadn’t he brought gloves?

  He wiped at the sweat in his hairline and flinched at the sudden pain. Shit. He’d forgotten the staples. Gently, he ran his fingers over the repaired laceration. It seemed intact. He grabbed the shovel.

  How might Donna be getting along? Please God, don’t let her do anything stupid. Don’t let her call the cops, or worse, a girlfriend for moral support.

  Next to the grave, the pile of dirt grew bigger and bigger.

  “Jeez,” he said, “are you there, mate?”

  He attacked the compacted, root-riddled dirt with the pickaxe.

  Thunk. Thunk.

  Sweat dripped into his eyes, ran down his back and chest.

  “Show yourself.”

  Thunk. Thunk.

  In a frenzy, he brought down the pickaxe, again and again. Clods of soil flew in every direction.

  “Where are you?” he shouted. “Where the fuck did you go?”

  Thunk. Thunk.

  Exhausted, John dropped the pickaxe and allowed his legs to fold beneath him. The leaf litter provided a soft landing. Gasping, unable to catch his breath, sobbing, John turned his face into the earth and let out a long scream.

  The madness left him.

  Now he felt numb.

  Good, he thought. I’ve got the panic out of my system.

  Focus.

  He had to focus.

  Stumbling to his feet, he wiped away tears and picked up the shovel. Okay, he hadn’t found Lyle’s grave. Big deal. So, there wasn’t some kind of mystical connection that tied him to Lyle across the years, across the veil between life and death. Of course not. Only a fool would imagine otherwise. And yet, John had felt so sure. He worked the shovel, half-expecting to discover bones, despite himself…

  Focus.

  What was his plan?

  Once he got home, he would gather Meredith’s belongings, including her hobby boxes, and pack them in his trailer for the tip. They might have CCTV cameras at the gate, but surely not in the tip itself. Perhaps he ought to first pulverise her collection of animal bones with the sledgehammer, put the remains in a garbage bag before dumping them at the tip, dispose of the boxes a few pieces at a time in the recycle bin at home, week after week, until the boxes were gone. Burn her memorabilia, the Central Australia photos, her copy of Oliver Twist with Luke Skywalker taped to the cover. Yes, it would be wise to scatter the evidence.

  Next, the glazier for the broken window.

  After that, the appointments with real estate agents for somewhere to live.

  Everything would go to plan.

  Everything would work out if he kept a cool head.

  At last, the grave was deep enough. John dropped the shovel and lurched down the hillside. When he spotted the car, he hid behind a tree and scanned the riverbank. Nothing and no one. Thank Christ. He walked into the clearing, popped the boot, slammed down a couple of stubbies, and contemplated the doona.

  Should he bury Meredith cocooned inside the doona or not?

  Cops do forensic tests on things like bed linen, he knew, and can link results to the original crime scene. How they did it, John couldn’t remember, even though he had watched plenty of crime shows on TV. Perhaps he ought to strip the doona first and dispose of it down the tip. Or burn it, maybe. He gnawed on his lip. The duct tape wound about the head and feet drew his eye. Could he actually unwind that tape, unwind that doona? Look again at Merry? He imagined her eyes springing open.

  Relax, dickhead, she was dead. Really dead.

  But he didn’t want to see, ever again, that gaping wound in her throat.

  Or touch her to put her into the grave.

  Something worse came to mind. What if rigor mortis had taken hold? What if her mouth was pulled into the shape of a letterbox slot? The dreams, those awful dreams…how could he bear any more?

  “Oh, fuck,” he whispered, scrubbing at his temples, “I wish I’d never met you.”

  Was that true?

  “Fine,” he said. “I wish I’d never met you eight years ago in the park. I wish I’d never seen you sleeping under that banksia.” He put his hand on the doona and felt tears rise. “I loved you, Merry. I still do, in a dumb kind of way, even though you ruined my whole fucking life. You and your shithead brother.” He picked up the doona and slung it over his shoulder. “But Donna’s my future now.”

  On unsteady legs, he trudged up the hillside. When he reached the grave, he dropped the doona. It bounced lightly. He stared at the duct tape, flexing his hands, blowing his breath in and out. Screw it, maybe he should boot her into the grave as is, doona and all. As he swung back his foot, Crimestopper adverts came to mind. He paused. On TV, cops displaying dirty t-shirts on shop dummies, laying out eiderdowns, asking the public for help. Murders get solved that way. Someone always recognises the material—but who else but he and Merry had ever seen her doona cover? What difference would it make if the cops found it?

  Again, he went to kick the body into the grave. Again, he hesitated. He put his hands on his hips, walked around the grave a few times, shook his head, gazed at the canopy and at the shifting leaves as the breeze moved through the treetops.

  “Shit,” he said through his teeth.

  Dropping to his haunches, he tore the duct tape at both ends, and stuffed the tape in his pockets for later disposal. He took hold of the doona. In one motion, he stood up and unrolled it, making a flip-flip-fluttering sound.

  Something tumbled out onto the ground.

>   But it wasn’t Meredith Berg-Olsen.

  Not by a long shot.

  John gagged, staggered back, both hands at his mouth. For a second, he felt faint. That thing lying in the leaf litter didn’t move. He took a tentative step closer.

  “What the fuck?” he said. “What the actual fuck is this?”

  A skeleton shrink-wrapped in black, parched and leathery skin, that’s what the fuck it was. Like an unwrapped mummy, something buried in the desert for a thousand years or dug out of Himalayan snow, dragged from a peat bog. Even the teeth were black. The gums. The tongue, too, shrivelled and pitted like a barbecue briquette. Holy Christ. John’s hands shook. He dropped them to his sides, wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. He could have sworn on a stack of Bibles that this thing wasn’t Meredith, if not for the tufts of white hair, the familiar ice-blue eyes glaring up sightlessly at the sky. The doona nearby lay stained with dried black slime.

  “Oh, God,” he muttered, and groped for a cigarette. It took him six or seven attempts to light the damned thing. He smoked it down to the butt inside a minute, but still managed to drop it a few times from between his quaking fingers.

  “Merry, you’d better be dead. If you so much as wink, I’ll shit my pants.”

  He tried to laugh, but his larynx only croaked. The sound of his voice frightened him. Chilled, shivering, he tucked his hands under his perspiring armpits and gazed at the thing. It looked carved out of wood. How could this be Merry? How?

  Witch, zombie, vampire, demon, monster.

  In old and superstitious cultures, people used to perform rituals on a corpse to make sure it couldn’t rise again. He had read about such rituals on Wikipedia. A stake through the heart, a stone in the mouth, burial face-down, decapitation with the head placed at the feet. He kicked the thing into the grave and scraped the toe of his boot again and again in the soil, fearful of contamination.

  “All right, Merry,” he said. “This is it.”

  Picking up the shovel, he stood with one foot on either side of the grave. The thing’s ice-blue eyes glowered blindly. If he leaned over, just a bit, it was as if the eyes looked at him, which freaked him out. He straightened and raised the shovel.

  “Whatever you are,” he said, “I’m not going to lie awake at night, waiting for you to knock on my goddamned window. It ends here, Merry. It ends now.”

  With both hands tight around the handle, he brought down the shovel, fast, and with all his strength. The blade cut through the thing’s neck with a faint crack.

  John held his breath.

  Nothing happened. The withered corpse lay still. Carefully, he scooped the severed head onto the shovel blade and placed it at the end of the grave, making sure not to touch it against the blackened and bony feet.

  “There,” he said, and wiped his brow.

  Was it enough? He put the shovel against a trunk and searched the ground. After a while, he found a rock. The thing’s mouth was already open. Panting with fear, waiting for the skull to spring to life and come snap, snap, snapping at his fingers, at his face, he wedged the rock between the long and sharp teeth. Using the shovel, he tipped the skull onto its front. He inspected his handiwork.

  Nope, still not enough.

  He found a stout branch and rammed it between a couple of ribs where the heart ought to be, if there had been any internal organs left.

  “Goodbye,” he said. “I did my best, okay? Honest.”

  Working quickly, he filled the grave with soil, faster and faster. His lungs burned and his pulse thudded in his head. Once the thing was out of sight, he slowed down. It had taken hours to dig the grave, but only minutes to fill it, and he wondered if that realisation had any deeper meaning. If so, he couldn’t think of one.

  He stopped for a cigarette. After finishing it, he heaved his beers into the dirt in spasm after spasm, until he felt drained and empty, lightheaded. He lost his footing and sat down hard.

  Giving in to his fatigue, he lay back and stared at the canopy. A pair of crimson rosellas hung from high branches, chattering, nibbling at blossoms. Ants crawled over his fingers. He closed his eyes and smelled the eucalyptus, tuned in to the murmuring of the Yarra River, and wanted to sleep for a long, long time.

  He got up.

  After stamping down the soil, he scattered over the leaf litter, just as he had done with Lyle’s grave, until Merry’s grave looked the same as the rest of the forest.

  Weary, John rolled up the doona, careful not to touch the black stain, and picked up his tools and shirt. During the walk back to the car, he kept stopping to lean against trees and catch his breath. The river sounds gave him strength. When he came out into the clearing, he began to cry.

  Stop. He had to stop.

  Popping the boot, he threw in the items and opened a stubby. The beer was warm, but damn, tasted good. He dropped the empty bottle into the boot and tottered to the bank. The grey river stones reminded him of Donna, with her eyes the same colour, and of Lyle, as he had fallen back and smacked his head. John squatted, put his sore and bleeding hands into the water. The freezing temperature took the sting from his blisters. He wept some more. The river gurgled and rushed. He splashed water over his face and chest.

  Get a grip.

  It wasn’t finished yet.

  He stood up, put on his shirt, pulled the beanie over his head. Time to go home, to check on Donna, to smash the bones in the hobby boxes to powder, load up Meredith’s belongings in the trailer. He should also detail the car, inside and out. He would do that tomorrow at the local servo. As soon as possible, he should sell the car.

  The air felt fresh and invigorating. He leaned against the sedan with his eyes closed, breathing, inhaling and exhaling, the tension and terror ebbing from his body and mind. Then he got in the car and twisted the key in the ignition. The engine roared, the radio came on, and he could no longer hear the sounds of the river.

  John drove towards home, dazed. Everything looked brighter. The clarity of the sky, the bluish underbellies of clouds, the silhouette of Melbourne’s city skyline on the horizon with the windows of the Rialto reflecting sunshine in a shimmering sparkle of faraway gems. Beautiful, so fucking beautiful. Even the cars around him: the whites so vibrant, the reds so vivid, the silvers like shiny new coins. When stopped at every light, he glanced around, smiling and tearful. The other drivers seemed distracted, pensive or unhappy. Not John. He was laughing, wiping at his eyes, singing along to the radio, compulsively rubbing and scrubbing the raw blisters of his palms against the steering wheel, the pain a cleansing tonic, a blessing, a relief. A blessed relief.

  Too close, he passed a cyclist on the shoulder.

  Oh, Jesus, fuck, he almost hit the bastard, missing him by a bee’s dick.

  Come on, John told himself, get your shit together.

  Focus.

  The sun, swathed in pink and orange clouds, was setting. Too late to get to the tip before closing time, but he would dump Meredith’s belongings first thing tomorrow. Meredith. Soon, that name would mean nothing to him. Meredith’s name and Lyle’s too. John would bury those names and never think of them again. He remembered some of the last words Nate Rossi had said about Meredith: A crazy bitch like that? What the fuck are you hanging on for? No reason. Not anymore.

  Donna, he thought, I’m coming home. You and me, baby. We’re going to be a family. It’s not too late. Us and Cassie. Once I explain everything from the beginning, you’ll understand. You’ll forgive. I’ll be pleasant to Graeme during his access visits. And I’ll get you a cat, as good as Tiger, maybe even better—

  A car horn sounded.

  John wrestled the steering wheel. Fuck, he had drifted into another lane. He squeezed his bloodied hands on the wheel, the pain clearing his head. If he stacked now, and the cops attended, then what? How would he explain the shovel, pickaxe, sledgehammer, the doona dried to a crackle with Christ kn
ows what kind of corpse-juice? He drove the rest of the way carefully, slowly, the radio switched off, paying the utmost attention, sweating through his clothes.

  When he pulled into the driveway of the faux miner’s cottage, the sun was kissing the horizon. No visible lights in the windows. Good. He parked. Getting out of the car, however, felt too much to ask. Everything hurt. Exhausted, he leaned his head against the steering wheel. Somewhere in the neighbourhood, a dog barked.

  You’re so close to the finish line, he thought. One last push.

  Legs quivering, John stepped out of the car. He expected Donna would open the door once she heard his boots on the porch, but no, she didn’t. He fitted the key into the lock, turned it. The house was in darkness. He shut the door behind him and put the keys on the hook. His nerves jangled. Adrenaline pumped. It felt, he realised, like coming home to Meredith.

  “Donna?” he called. “It’s me. I’m back.”

  No answer.

  “Donna, are you here?”

  The house smelled of lemon and disinfectant. He started down the hallway. Donna wasn’t in the lounge. The doors to Merry’s bedroom and hobby room were shut and he left them that way. He couldn’t imagine Donna wanting to spend time in either room. The bathroom was empty too. As he approached the kitchen, he stopped.

  “Donna?” he said.

  Groping, he turned on the switch to the kitchen. The glare of yellow lights hurt his eyes. He stepped through the doorway.

  The kitchen was neat and gleaming, the smell of cleaning products overpowering despite the chill breezing through the smashed window. Donna sat at the table, hands in her lap, staring into the mid-distance at nothing in particular.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “It’s done. Everything went okay, no prob­lems.”

  Her grey eyes twitched, blinked. Slowly, her gaze roved over the table, climbed his body, and found his face. “You know what?” she said.