Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

She saw Nicholas stiffen at the last word.

Then she glanced up. They were at an intersection. To the right, beyond hopscotch puddles of streetlight and shadowed picket fences, was the squat, heavy-browed building. The shops. Suzette felt a familiar old worm of fear turn in her belly.

They’d reached Myrtle Street.

They stepped under the awning and their footsteps echoed on the tiles. This had turned out to be a very weird evening. Suzette — sensible, nose-buried-in-financial-theory-textbooks Suzette — into magic? And his dead father, too? Nicholas brushed hair from his face. It felt unpleasantly like spider web and he shivered.

The shops were all shuttered and dark.

He’d expected a wave of pleasant nostalgia to suddenly overtake them, and they’d laugh about the lollies they’d gourmandised and the ice creams they’d loved that were no longer made. Instead, the dumb fronts of the shops were oddly hostile. This was their home suburb; it shouldn’t feel so grim, so unsettling.

It’s because we’re being watched.

The thought shuddered through him like a shot of vodka. The streets were quiet. Nothing moved. They were alone.

‘Mrs Ferguson’s fruit shop,’ said Suzette.

He turned. Suzette was peering in the window of the failed Tibetan restaurant, angled light from a distant streetlamp weakly picking out the empty bains-marie and bare shelves. ‘She had an old set of imperial scales. Remember? She converted weights to metric and did all the maths in her head.’

Mrs Ferguson. A pleasantly plump lady with a gold tooth who wore a pencil perpetually tucked behind one ear. He remembered.

‘Yep. And that old Texas Instruments calculator the size of a brick next to them? Only to prove to customers that her totals were right. They always were. Hey, we should go.’

But Suzette was staring, deep in memory. ‘Did you know she tutored me?’

Nicholas was surprised. ‘Mrs Ferguson? When? Where?’

‘Nights you had soccer. At the back of her shop. I used to hate it.’

‘Hated maths? But you’re such a fucking nerd-’

‘Not the maths, not Mrs Ferguson. But being back there. . I hated that.’ She shuddered.

Here, now, with the world more shadow than substance and the wind making the power lines moan, he could understand. And again the feeling struck him: something’s watching us.

‘We should go,’ he repeated.

‘Okay,’ said Suzette. But instead, she nodded at the new shop: Plough amp; Vine Health Foods. All they could see in the glass was their own ghostly reflections; the shop within was as black as the waters of a deep well.

‘This was Jay Jay’s.’ Suzette leaned closer, trying to see in. Nicholas fought an insane urge to yell ‘Get back!’ Her eyes were fixed on the dark shop window. ‘Do you remember the old seamstress? Mrs Quill. She freaked me out. She was why I hated coming here at night.’

Nicholas had vague memories of a bent-backed old woman tucked behind a counter much too large for her, perched like some benevolent old parrot, nodding and sending a smile as he passed. Behind her hung ranks of shirts, pants, skirts and dresses that used to bring to mind a picture that, for a while during primary school, had haunted his dreams: from a book about the Second World War, a photograph of a dozen or so Russians — men, women, children — hanging dead and limp from a huge and leafless tree. A chill went through him and, as it did, another memory returned.

‘You used to hate walking past these shops,’ he said. ‘When you were small. You used to cry.’

Suzette frowned. The line between her brows was just like their mother’s. She nodded to herself. ‘I think if I knew then what I know now. . I’d say Mrs Quill was a witch, too.’

She shrugged her shoulders, as if to shuck off an ill thought, and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a tiny parcel wrapped in tissue paper. ‘Hey. I brought you something.’

Not here. Not while we’re being watched.

‘Lovely. Can it wait till we get home?’

‘Fucking hell, Nicholas,’ said Suzette, cranky. ‘I don’t want Mum to see, okay?’

‘Why not?’

‘Christ! Because she doesn’t understand that kind of stuff! We talked about this.’

Nicholas turned his back to the dark-eyed shop and removed the ribbon, unstuck the tape. Inside was a necklace. It was made of wooden beads and sported a polished brownish-white stone set in silver.

‘The stone is sardonyx,’ explained Suzette. ‘You said you had some headaches, so. .’

‘They stopped.’

‘Yeah. “Thank you” works, too. The wood is elder.’

Nicholas turned to face the streetlight. The stone was an inch across and cut in a square crystal, milky clear with tigerish bands of blood red. The beads were a dark timber, roughly spherical but each showing dozens of facets where they’d been cut by hand with a sharp knife. A woven silver cord held them together. It was, he had to admit, a piece both pretty and oddly masculine.

The feeling of being watched had gone.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

Suzette didn’t answer. She was staring at the front door to Plough amp; Vine Health Foods. She leaned closer and frowned.

‘Look.’

He followed her gaze and felt his stomach take a slow roll.

In the dim light it was just possible to make out an indentation in the wood doorframe. The mark had been painted over perhaps three or four times, and would be invisible in daylight. But in the angled light from the streetlamp, it was fairly clear. A vertical line, and halfway down it, attached to its right, a half-diamond. The mark that had been drawn in blood on the woven head of the dead bird.

Nicholas felt a cold wave of dread rise through him.

‘Let’s go home, Suzie,’ he said.

She was entranced, leaning closer. ‘This is a rune.’

‘Wonderful. Come on. It’s cold.’

‘Wait,’ she said, and reached into her purse. She pulled out a pencil and notepad and copied the figure.

Tell her! Tell her all about the bird and its twig head and the mark. . the mark, what does it mean? But another voice was stronger, calmer. No. Keep her out of it. She has children of her own to watch.

‘Mrs Quill,’ she whispered to herself.

Nicholas put the necklace in his pocket, took his sister’s arm and gently led her out to the street. ‘We’re going. I’m starved.’

The lie hurried him along.

Katharine turned the oven on low and started doling mashed potato onto three plates. How strange. She was out of practice being a mother. Nicholas had left home nearly twenty years ago. Suzette had lived in Sydney for ten. Katharine had grown used to the silence around her.

It wasn’t fair. They left you and you coped. Then they came home and you had to worry all over again. Not fair. Not fair.

And yet now they were under one roof again, the instant they stepped on the street, she was anxious.

Because of the street. Because of Tallong.

‘Nonsense,’ she whispered and reached for the saucepan of meatballs.

Because you opened the door to something evil.

The front door rattled open.

Katharine jumped at the noise, dropping the ladle with a clatter on the tiles. Tomato sauce spattered blood red across the floor.

‘We’re home!’ called Suzette.

‘Miss us?’ asked Nicholas.

Footsteps tromped down the hall.

Katharine quickly wiped up the sauce as her children stepped into the kitchen. Both of them blinked at the red flecks, and both seemed to sag a little with relief when they figured out what it was.