Felicity Young - Take Out

The family room and kitchen were cavernous. Stevie folded her arms and slowly pivoted on her heel. There wasn’t enough furniture to fill the room or muffle their footsteps. There were no curtains on the windows or ornaments on the jarrah fire surround other than a mute carriage clock, hands stopped at 10.15. Possessions tended to give off echoes to Stevie but the few objects in this room told her nothing. All was silent except for the faint humming of the fridge and the popping of blowflies against the windows.

She ran a finger across a windowsill. The paintwork looked fresh under the dust. ‘Have the Pavels lived here long?’

‘Long enough for Mrs Hardegan to get to know them. The house is obviously fairly new, not bad for a reproduction.’ Skye pointed out a row of brass light switches and the tracked ceiling lights. ‘Expensive, too.’

Stevie’s eyes were drawn to the adjacent kitchen area some metres away. The rancid smell of old food became sharper as she zeroed in on the kitchen table. Laid for two, it held the remains of an unfinished meal—TV dinners by the looks of the empty food packets on the granite bench top. Both plates contained thin slices of drying beef, crusty cauliflower and half nibbled cobs of corn. Flies skated on ponds of solidified gravy splashed across the tray of a baby’s highchair.

The knot in Stevie’s stomach tightened. ‘ Mary Celeste, ’ she whispered.

‘What?’

Stevie waved her hand. ‘Forget it.’ As she walked she kicked a scattering of shrivelled peas across the floor. A glass of pale liquid teetered on the table’s edge, too close for comfort. She lifted the glass to her nose and sniffed.

‘Stale wine,’ she said, sliding the glass into a less precarious position. ‘Looks like this food has been here for several days.’ She pointed to the table. ‘The meal’s only half finished, the chairs are skewiff, as if someone left in a hurry.’

Heat still radiated from the electric oven. In it she found a baking dish containing several charred spheres.

‘They never got their pies,’ Skye said, voice hushed as she pointed out the carton of ready-made apple pies next to the other empty food containers.

Stevie replaced the oven tray and chewed on her bottom lip, trying to make sense of it all. At once she became aware of a strange sensation at the back of her neck, a warm breeze, the feathering of a breath.

Her sudden turn towards its source caused Skye to clap herself on the chest. ‘Holy shit! Don’t do that!’

Stevie spotted the open gap in the sliding window behind the sink and let out her own pent-up breath. ‘Sorry, I thought for a minute someone else was in the room.’

‘Look, I don’t feel right about this—this place gives me the creeps,’ Skye said, drawing a breath and exhaling with an unmistakable wheeze. ‘I think we should leave and call the proper police. I reckon they’ll listen to you rather than me.’

The ‘proper’ police, jeez.

‘I’m not pulling out now,’ Stevie snapped back. ‘Wait outside if you like while I check out the rest of downstairs.’

Skye reached into her pocket for a Ventolin inhaler, took a couple of puffs and sidled a step closer to Stevie.

Two of the bedrooms in the west wing were empty and dusty with spider webs parachuting from the cornices. Another room served as a study. A computer on a fake antique desk stood next to a single bed with nothing on it but a bare mattress. A scraggly bottlebrush from the garden bed outside scratched against the window. Stevie cringed at the sound. Blood-red flowers pressed against the glass—as if anyone or anything would want to get into this desolate, inhospitable house.

There was still one room left to check at the end of the passageway, next to a bathroom. She sniffed at the odour leaking through the gaps of the closed door and felt nausea rise. Skye dug her bitten fingernails into Stevie’s arm. The door creaked as Stevie eased it open. She drew a sharp breath.

‘Oh my God,’ Skye said.

CHAPTER TWO

The room was as bare as a prison cell. The only item in it was an old safe cot of the style now deemed politically incorrect. Like an old-fashioned meat safe its walls were made of tough flyscreen topped by a heavy wooden lid.

The cot reeked, the bedding a jumble of urine-soaked sheets, flyscreen walls clogged with lumps of faeces. A soiled disposable nappy had been flung to the far end of the saturated mattress.

The naked baby inside lay still.

With trembling fingers, Stevie fumbled with the latch and flung back the door, making the wooden frame rattle.

Skye pushed her aside before Stevie could reach for the child. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. Leaning over the wall of the cot she gently inserted her finger into the baby’s mouth. ‘Airway’s clear but the inside of his mouth is dry—he’s very dehydrated.’ Her finger pressed the side of his neck. ‘Pulse rapid, but not too bad. We’re not too late.’

The baby stirred, whimpered and sucked his thumb with increasing vigour. Skye ran her fingers over his dark, matted hair and looked desperately around the room.

‘Here.’ Stevie grabbed a cot blanket from the floor and handed it to Skye who wrapped it around the baby and clasped him to her chest. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Stevie gasped, as the movement of the bedclothes disturbed the foul air.

In the kitchen they made the necessary phone calls. Stevie reported the incident to the local police, stressing the emergency and then took the baby from Skye so Skye could call for an ambulance. After consulting with the on-call medico Skye decided the baby could be given a small amount of water. She filled a cup from the kitchen tap and put it to his lips. He drank greedily, snatching at the cup with stained fingers, mewling like a kitten when she wouldn’t let him hold it himself. ‘Poor little bugger’s still thirsty,’ she said as she pulled the cup away and placed it on the kitchen table. ‘We’d better not let him have any more, he might vomit it up—this should get him by until he reaches hospital. They’ll need to know how much fluid we gave him, put an IV in.’

The baby didn’t have the strength to yell; his eyes were sunken, his skin hot and dry. He soon gave up his fight to reach the water and flopped his head against Stevie’s shoulder. ‘How could anyone leave a baby like this?’ Skye asked, rubbing soothing circles on his back, eyes glistening with unshed tears.

Don’t go sentimental on me now, Stevie thought. ‘Here take him.’ She passed the baby back to Skye. ‘Wait in the fresh air for the ambulance, I want to make sure no one’s upstairs.’

She had a quick look around the upstairs of the house, relieved to find just three deserted, almost empty rooms.

Back in the family room rays of light shone through the French doors, highlighting the dusty coating of the tiles, sticky patches and faint footprints. Stevie slowly examined the tracks on the floor from different angles, all the while conscious of the smell of the baby on her clothes. It was during one of these shifts of position that she noticed a clean area of tiles in front of a leather chesterfield, as if the tiles had recently been washed. She pushed the couch back, the sudden draft making the dust-bunnies underneath tumble. Earwigs hiding from the light scampered away across ominous brown splats. She dropped to her knees to examine the stains. Could be spilled Milo or tomato sauce; could be dried paint. Or blood.

It was tempting to search the floor for further evidence, but fear of contaminating a possible crime scene held her back. French doors led from the family room to the small back garden; she’d cause less damage out there, she decided, as she opened the doors up.