Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

During a year nine school excursion to the state art gallery, he and four classmates had been about to cross the street to the footpath opposite when Nicholas had the strongest feeling that walking on the other side would be a bad idea. He convinced his classmates to remain where they were by saying there was, he was sure, a milk bar on this side not far along where they could chip in and buy cigarettes. Not a minute later, a speeding taxi mounted the opposite kerb and came to a shatterglass stop against a power pole. The cab driver had suffered a mild stroke and lost control of the cab. Had Nicholas and his fellow students crossed the road, they’d all be in hospital — in a ward or in a steel drawer.

At seventeen, taking his driving test, he’d disobeyed the transport officer and refused to take a right turn down a Rosalie side street. He failed the test, but saw on the news that night that an unapproved LPG cylinder on a caravan parked in suburban Rosalie had freakishly exploded, destroying the caravan and sending shrapnel shards of metal into the street that was, mercifully, empty of traffic — the very road Nicholas had refused to turn down.

And he recalled one night in London when he sat curled on his couch, miserable with a heavy head cold, only half-hearing his flatmate Martin’s invitation to ‘get off your lardy white arse’ and come to a party off Portland Road. Nicholas felt lousy — it would have been a tight bet whether there was more mucus in his lungs or his stomach — but the moment Farty Marty mentioned the party he knew he had to go. Two hours later, sniffing like a coke addict but dressed in the best clothes he owned, he met Cate.

And, of course, there’d been his work around London. He’d always seemed to know which village house would yield the fading valises and old carved bookends he was hunting.

Yes, he’d had inklings. Notions. Gut feelings. Until now, he’d thought everyone had them.

‘What does it mean?’ he asked.

Suzette smiled. He could barely see it in the dusk. ‘It means I don’t think you’re crazy.’

The evening sky was gunmetal grey. Shadows were blue and amorphous. Headlights were diamonds. Her brother’s profile was all dark angles. Finally, he looked at her.

‘You’re a financial advisor, Suze. How do you know all this stuff?’

‘You see the dead. How do you not?’

‘Well, I do go to phone Psychic Hotline but always end up dialling Lesbian Nurses Chat-’

‘Do you have to make fun of everything? It’s bitter.’

Overhead, a carpet of flying foxes flew west from their mangrove riverbank havens, an armada of black cuneiforms against the cloudless evening heavens, their leather wings eerily silent. The air was crisp, faintly spiced with car fumes and potato vine.

She took a breath. ‘Well, of course it started with Dad’s books.’

Nicholas looked at her. ‘What books?’

She blinked, amazed. ‘His books? In the garage?’

He was still staring at her. Finally, he guessed, ‘In the suitcases?’

‘Yes, in the suitcases! Jesus! Are you saying you never looked in them?’

She remembered the way her mother would tell her to go fetch Nicholas for dinner. She’d find him, a thin boy with a shock of straw hair, standing in the middle of the tiny, dark garage, staring. She knew he felt their father’s death much more keenly than she did. Sometimes, he’d be staring overhead; stacked on planks strung through the trusses up there were three small cardboard suitcases. Their mother had never forbidden them touching the cases, nor had she ever encouraged it. They were just there, the only reminder at 68 Lambeth of a man that Suzette couldn’t remember.

But, clearly, Nicholas could.

‘I didn’t want to touch them.’ He spoke slowly, carefully. ‘I figured he left them because he was coming back. Then when he was dead, I didn’t want to touch them ’cause. .’ He shrugged. ‘That would have meant he definitely wasn’t coming back. But you. . you had a look?’

More than a look. On weekends, when Mum was busy cursing her new potter’s wheel and Nicholas was away at the library, she’d unfold the creaking wooden stepladder and pull down the suitcases. One was a pale olive green, the other two a beige and black herringbone. They weren’t heavy — there wasn’t much in them. One held a grey cardigan, patched trousers and half a dozen Dr Pat tobacco tins containing sinkers, spinners, hooks and fishing line. The other two cases contained what Suzette kept coming back for.

Books.

Some were cheap, flimsy things with titles like Master Book of Candle Burning and Coptic Grimoires . One book was thick with black and white plates showing turn-of-the-twentieth-century spiritualists pulling ectoplasm from their noses and ears. There was Beowulf, The Sixth Book of Moses, A Pocket Guide to the Supernatural . And the two books that Suzette had spirited into her own room to hide among her Susan Cooper novels: Roots, Herbs and Oils and Signs and Protections .

She explained all this to Nicholas. His face was shadowed, but she could see his eyes were bright; she wasn’t sure if he was smiling or furious.

‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Mum hates that shit. Any time there was a show with Doris Stokes or some spoon-bending freak, she’d turn it off.’

Suzette looked at him patiently. ‘You might have noticed that our parents didn’t have the jolliest marriage.’

‘What do you mean, though? Dad was. . what? A druid?’

‘I didn’t know him, Nicholas. All I know is what I found in his suitcases.’

Nicholas turned his sparkling gaze to her, as if finally realising a hidden truth. ‘And you. . Jesus! All those herbs and rubbish you grew in the garden when you were a kid. I thought you just liked gardening! That was. . what? Hemlock and mandrake and double-double-toil-and-trouble shit?’

Suzette pursed her lips. ‘You never asked.’

‘So, what do you do? Sacrifice piglets while baring your buttocks to the harvest moon? Christ, you’re a fucking economist. I thought you’d come up here to talk sense into me and tell me I need to see someone who can dope me up with Thorazine, and here you are telling me. . Fuck, what are you telling me?’

Suzette fought the urge to snap at him. ‘I’m just saying there’s more to the world than the periodic table.’

‘And what does Bryan think about you being into. .’ He fumbled for the word.

‘Witchcraft?’ she offered.

Nicholas laughed, but the sound blew away in the night wind.

‘Bryan’s fine with it. Weekends he helps me weed my herbs. He buys books that he thinks will interest me. And speaking of the moon, he loves it when my animal side comes out-’

‘Fine, whatever.’ Nicholas cut her short. ‘And the kids?’

‘Quincy, nothing. All she wants to do is look for Saturn’s rings and bring home every creature from the pound. Nelson, though, he’s. .’ She looked at Nicholas. ‘He’s like you. Gifted. But ignorant.’

Nicholas bristled. ‘I’m not ignorant.’

‘You are about magic.’

‘That’s because I don’t believe in magic.’

‘Christ, Nicholas.’ She stopped, hands on hips, waiting till he turned around. ‘You’re haunted. You see the dead. How can you not believe in magic?’

‘Magic is just stuff that scientists can’t make any money out of explaining.’ He turned and kept walking. ‘Though I’m happy you have a hobby. Are you a good witch?’

She caught up with him. ‘I own three Sydney houses outright and have five negatively geared investment properties. I’m good at everything I do.’

‘I meant “good versus evil” good.’

‘ People are good or evil. Magic is magic. Some is performed with good intentions. Some isn’t. Some is easy. Some is hard. It’s like physics. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing comes free. You need to put in effort. You need to make sacrifices.’