‘My parents just bought a new place,’ he said. ‘They arranged to meet the builder there this afternoon, but then my dad had to go back to work, so they asked for me to pick my mom up. Take her home.’
And just like that, yoi evaporated. He was picking up his mom. Exactly as you’d want a good, decent man to do. And then, like a domino knocking over its neighbour, the realisation tumbled into her brain.
His parents meant her grandparents. She hadn’t even got so far as to think about them until now. Her entire focus had been on him, but of course he had parents. Brothers and sisters too, maybe – she didn’t know. All of them connected to her. Family. A whole family she’d never known. And here she was.
‘Your parents …’ she said, and the words caught in her throat. ‘They’ll be there?’
He shrugged. ‘My mom will be. Not my dad.’
She’d been putting her 2020 #metoo mindset onto this once-in-a-thousand-years situation. But these weren’t normal circumstances. He’d picked her up because he knew, somehow, that they were connected. She was going to meet her grandma. This was a major reset.
And then another domino knocked into the shoulder of its neighbour.
Mrs Watanabe had been mid-prediction when Susie Sioux had interrupted her. Susie hadn’t let her finish. Ever since Mrs Watanabe had stood at the door, the beads gently clicking as she worried the rosary through her fingers, Holly had been thinking, Why Trinity? Why Trinity? But now she realised the rest of the prediction, the other half. It wasn’t just about Trinity. If Mrs Watanabe had been allowed to finish, she would have said it was about the both of them. Resetting both their lives.
A sense of quiet destiny fell over her.
She was exactly where she was supposed to be.
He turned the car into a quiet-looking street called Lowendover Avenue.
The two of them got out and walked side by side up to the second-last house before the avenue came to a dead end. The shadows cast by the trees wrapped around them. Holly looked through ornate wrought-iron gates that had seen better days, and up the driveway to the three storeys of a peeling Spanish-mission home that towered over them both. It was a beautiful old place. Like something a 1930s Hollywood movie star would have lived in. What was that movie? Sunset Boulevard. Like that.
‘Is she here?’ Holly asked, looking through the gate for his mom. Her grandma. She smiled to even think the word inside her head. Or maybe she’d prefer to be called Nana? It didn’t matter. What mattered was seeing her, meeting her, talking to her. Resetting Holly’s very own future. This was the key, she was sure of it.
‘Looks like the builder’s gone,’ he said, pushing the gate open. ‘She’ll be up the back. Looking at the garden, probably. You want to come have a look?’
Holly followed him up the driveway.
The keys of Brother Orange started reaching for a page that wasn’t there, words groaning to get out. A message in a bottle, but without the ocean and the cork and the actual bottle.
This was a once-in-no-one’s-lifetime-ever opportunity.
They walked up the driveway and around the side of the house. He led the way, climbing over a fallen-down side fence into the overgrown backyard and looking around for his mom. But she wasn’t there. He motioned towards the house, led Holly up onto the back verandah, where he pushed a door open. Holly followed him inside.
They were standing in a kitchen that would have been modernised sometime in the 1950s. A set of swinging kitchen doors led them into the loungeroom. It was the strangest thing. All the furniture was still there, as if the last owners had simply stood up and left without packing a single bag. Chairs were pushed back from the dining table; books lay haphazardly on shelves in the lounge room; a velvet sofa sat positioned to face a television cabinet with its glass-fronted doors hanging open. Everything looked decayed and aged and coated in a layer of dust. In front of a smashed floor-to-ceiling window were the skeletal remains of a Christmas tree tipped onto its side, dried-out pine needles carpeting the floor.
It was eerie. There was a sense of the Titanic to it.
‘What happened?’ she asked him. ‘Why’s everything been left like this?’
‘Got a bit of history, this house,’ he said. ‘Long story.’ He called out, ‘Mom?’ Listened a moment. ‘I think she’s upstairs. Come and have a look – I’ve got something to show you.’
Despite the lack of paper, the keys started hammering against the roller, typing words that would never be read, onto a page that hadn’t been inserted, possessed with the urgency of what they needed to convey.
Holly. THIS IS IMPORTANT. I found that box you were talking about. The photo from Morocco …
‘So what are your parents going to do with the place?’ Holly asked, her hand running up the wrought-iron balustrade as they climbed the stairs. ‘It needs a lot of work.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, leading her into a room where heavily brocaded curtains were falling drunkenly off the railing. A mattress had been tilted off the bed, and there were ugly stains on the faded carpet. A large chunk of the ceiling had fallen in and crashed to the ground. One of the bedside tables had an empty space where the top drawer used to be. The other bedside table was tipped onto its side.
… the guy in that photo, he stopped to pick me up the afternoon we swapped. I was hitchhiking, and he pulled over and offered me a lift. There was something about him. I knew I shouldn’t get in the car with him. Something was off about him. If he’s your dad, you need to stay away from him. He’s dangerous. Please write back straight away. I need to know you got this letter. I hope you get it. It’s important. Love Trinity
He reached over and stroked her face. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
Fear descended like snow, dusting Holly’s entire being.
In the neonatal intensive care unit at St Anne’s, a haze hung over the last humidicrib in the row. Under the plastic cover, the little limbs struggled, the tiny hands curled into fists. The preemie baby with the Rhnull blood type squawked feebly, her heart rate dropping, her breathing becoming erratic.
Holly ran towards the bedroom door, but he got there first. Put his palm against it, keeping it closed. She ran to the window and struggled to get it open. He wandered over and stood beside her, not at all concerned.
‘You want help with that?’ he asked, taking hold of her wrist as they both looked down to the concrete driveway two storeys below. ‘You’re more than welcome, if you want to give it a try. You’d take away some of my fun, and I’d have to go find someone else, but honestly, go for it. How’s your little sister, by the way?’ He shrugged. ‘One door closes, another one opens. Or, one window opens, another one opens too.’ He smiled at his joke.
Holly struggled to wrench her wrist out of his hold. His grasp slipped and she ran back towards the door, but again he was too quick for her. Too strong. He pushed her up against the door, his arm against her throat. She tried to push him off. Tried to breathe. Tried to think.
‘What are you doing?’ she managed to get out. She was struggling to make sense of it all. ‘What about your mom?’
He stopped for a moment. Frowned.
‘What are you talking about? You still don’t get it? My mom’s not here. They didn’t buy the house. There’s no builder. It’s just you and me, kid.’
But it couldn’t be. That couldn’t be right. She’d only got in his car because she trusted him.
‘You’re my dad,’ was all she could think of, all she could say.
He laughed, taken by surprise, and the pressure at her throat eased slightly. But there was no dimple. No reward for making him laugh.
‘What?’ he said. ‘Hardly. Old enough to be your older brother, maybe,’ and here he laughed again. ‘But dad? No. Impossible.’
The pressure on her throat started to increase again. She needed to explain to him. Make him understand. Make him stop.
‘The little baby. In St Anne’s. Frances’s baby. That’s me.’
He pulled his head ba
ck and looked at her, eyes narrowed. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said, shaking his head.
‘It’s true,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t know how it happened, but my name is Holly Fitzgerald. Frances is my mother. You’re my father. I’m that baby in the hospital.’
He scoffed. ‘Yeah? Well, here’s the thing, sweetheart – that baby in the hospital definitely ain’t mine.’
The monitor was beeping erratically. A nurse came running in, calling over her shoulder for others. She removed the cover, started pressing against the tiny chest, whispering urgently all the while. ‘Holly. Come on, Holly. Stay with us. Stay. Stay.’
Holly’s head snapped back as he slapped her, the strength behind his palm jolting her. She wasn’t sure why he’d done it. She seemed to be losing track of what was going on.
‘Wait, what?’ she said, putting up her hands to stop him hitting her again. Repeating the same line and hoping for a different answer, she said: ‘But you’re my dad.’
‘Even if you were that baby all grown up,’ he said, as if suddenly he had all the time in the world to amuse her, as if she was going to like this story, ‘which is, little lady, only happening in your imagination, I still wouldn’t be your father, because that baby ain’t mine.’
‘But I’ve seen you. In photos. In Morocco with Frances.’
‘Nathan’s the one who went to Morocco. Not me. You’re talking about my brother.’ The mention of Nathan seemed to fill him with strength and anger. He pressed his arm against her windpipe again. ‘I don’t want you talking about him,’ he said. ‘You didn’t know him. Leave the dead to rest in peace.’
Holly struggled to breathe, struggled to work out what he was saying. She looked into his eyes and saw evil, right there, in their cold depths. There was a strong family resemblance to the photo in Morocco, but now that she was looking with the clarity that near-death brought, she could see how wrong she’d been. She’d seen him that day out the front of the hospital with Frances and had joined the dots to form the picture she wanted to see. But all this time, she’d been wrong. Nathan had been dead all along.
‘Besides,’ he went on, loosening his chokehold on her slightly, ‘it’s doubtful that’s even Nathan’s baby. It could be anyone’s.’ His mouth turned down as if the thought of Frances made him taste something unpleasant. ‘Last week when I picked you up that first time, well …’
Holly blinked at him. This was the guy in the car from that first day. Lewis had heard a crack like thunder and come outside. Trinity had been propelled to safety, forty years into the future. This was the guy who’d driven off.
‘I’d just dropped her at the hospital to have the kid,’ he went on, ‘and there you were, standing with your thumb out, just asking me to pick you up, same as her, same as that piece of trash. Made me so angry.’
His arm was pushing hard on her windpipe again. Holly’s vision started closing in from the outside, a black vignette sucking in towards the centre. Everything sounded far away. Come on, Holly. Stay with us. Stay. Stay.
‘And then you turn up at the hospital on Tuesday, pointing your finger at me, going, “You’re here.” So yeah. Here I am. Looks like today’s your lucky day.’
She wasn’t going to get out of here alive. Trinity wasn’t going to get out of here alive. Holly had failed in her mission to protect her, to break the evil, to Reset.
Her instincts to protect herself kicked in.
Her and Evie, their feet bare, hands ready at ‘yoi’. Prepare yourself.
She took as deep a breath as she could manage, found her centre, and lifted her foot off the floor. She only managed a few centimetres, but she could work with that. She put the outer edge of her foot against his shin, then stomped down as fast and as hard as she could on the fine bones on the top of his foot. It was a standard, and highly effective, karate move.
Instinctively he stepped slightly back from her, flinching from the source of his pain, creating a gap between their bodies. Taking the opportunity, Holly jammed her fist into the unprotected area of his throat. The soft part. He stumbled away from her, coughing, gasping for air. She stepped towards him, put her hands around the back of his head and pulled it downwards, slamming her knee into his nose. He reeled back, hand up to his face, shoulder up as a shield. She hooked her foot around the back of his heel, same as she’d done with Lewis in the kitchen at home, and threw him off balance. He fell to the floor, slamming his head on the edge of the tipped-over bedside table on the way down, then lay still.
Holly nudged him with her toe. He was out cold.
As she stared down at him, the darkness that had been threatening rose up and swept over her. She collapsed unconscious on the floor beside him.
Day 8
FRIDAY, 7 MARCH 1980
Trinity
5.16 pm
Trinity Byrne woke up on the floor of a dark, unfamiliar room.
She coughed. Her throat was sandpaper-raw. Her bones felt bruised and her senses were prickling with strangeness. She sat up and looked down at her legs, at her Converse sneakers. She held up her hands in front of her face, then brought forward a hank of her long blonde hair, staring at the black home-dyed tips. She couldn’t explain why, but it felt so good to be in her body.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low light. The door to the room was closed, and she was slammed with a sense of suffocation and terror. She got to her feet unsteadily, then noticed a guy lying unconscious on the floor near the door. She squatted next to him, pushed his cap off his face. She knew this man, but she couldn’t think where from.
He groaned slightly, his body starting to stir.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
Who’d done this to them, knocked them both out cold? He was lagging behind her, but he’d be conscious in a minute or two. He could tell her what was going on. Trinity pushed at his shoulder.
‘Are you okay?’ she repeated.
He grimaced slightly, eyes still closed.
A car had pulled over. The driver had leant over and wound down the passenger-side window. He was wearing a cap and sunglasses, his face in shadow. She said she was going to the Greek – was he going that way? He replied that he was going right past it, so hop in. Something about him had felt off. Maybe she shouldn’t get in the car this time. But that would have been rude. She’d stuck her thumb out and he’d offered her a lift – she couldn’t very well turn him down now, could she? She opened the passenger door, went to hop in. And then nothing.
She stared down into the guy’s face. This was the same guy. Same cap. He hadn’t taken her to the Greek. He’d brought her here. Her instincts had been right – there was something off about him. But what had made her come with him into this place? She put her hand up to her throat and felt the rawness there. He’d hurt her. Choked her, maybe? And then she’d collapsed? But then what had happened to him? Who’d knocked him out? She looked around. There was no one else in the room. Just her and him, alone.
And he was starting to come to.
She needed to move, to get out of here, but his body blocked the door.
Trinity looked around her frantically. She didn’t want to be stuck in here with this guy, especially not when he woke up. But what was she supposed to do? He was putting his hand up to his face, feeling for the headache that must be swelling inside his skull. Any second now, he would open his eyes, and then she’d be done for.
There was a chunk of plaster from the ceiling lying close by. Trinity reached over and picked it up. It was solid and weighty. She didn’t want to do it, didn’t like the idea of hurting another human being, but it was either her or him. She held the plaster above his head, then simply let it drop, not watching to see the harm she’d caused. The ‘oof’ she heard, and then the silence that followed, told her enough.
She grabbed his ankle and dragged him a little way from the door. He was heavy – she couldn’t shift him far. Then she stood up and tried the door. It only opened a small way before it hit his body with a thud.
Terrified that at any moment he would reach out and grab her leg, she squeezed herself through the narrow opening and fled down the stairs.
Trinity tried to open the front door, but it wouldn’t budge. The carpet had buckled and was jamming it shut tight. Panic rose in her. She looked back, half-expecting to see him lunging down the stairs towards her. She had to get out. Now.
Running into the living room, she saw the skeletal remains of a Christmas tree lying in front of a smashed floor-to-ceiling window. Trinity scrambled to the window and pushed her way through it, barely aware of the shards of glass tearing at her skin and hair.
She ran down the driveway and out onto the street, where a woman and two young children were getting out of a car. ‘Help me,’ she called out, stumbling towards the woman. ‘Get me away from here. Please.’
8.17 pm
Trinity lay in her bed, exhausted, drained. She’d spent hours with the police, trying to answer questions she had no answers for, Mom clutching her bandaged hand, Dad’s arm protective around her shoulders.
The doctors had said she was lucky not to have torn any tendons when she’d pulled herself through the smashed window. But from the police’s perspective, torn tendons were the least of her problems. They thought the guy in the house might be the Mariposa Murderer. They were going to interview him as soon as the hospital said they could. They’d said she’d well and truly sorted him out, and they were impressed that she’d been able to get away from him – that she’d somehow managed to knock him out cold and get herself to safety.
Trinity shuddered. Mom and Loolah had both offered to sleep with her, but Trinity had wanted to be alone. She felt safe and warm wrapped up in her familiar yellow cocoon. Although everything was slightly off-kilter. All her stuff had been put away. Books were on shelves. The desk was tidy, with Brother Orange sitting there waiting for some poetry to make life better.
She pushed the blankets off and wandered over to the desk. Put her fingers on Brother Orange’s keys. Maybe when all the confusion in her head had settled into something she could explain in words, she would write about what had happened. If she could remember what had happened.
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