Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

He nodded.

‘Well? It’s a dangerous rune, Nicky. What do you think we should do?’

Nicholas looked at her, then he smiled. There wasn’t a hint of happiness in it. He reached across for her notepad, flipped to a new page and started writing. ‘I don’t think we should do anything.’ He stood, his chair scraping on the floor. ‘That’s the address of my flat. I’m going to get my stuff and go home. You should go home, too. Get home to Bryan and the kids.’ He kissed her on the forehead.

Suzette was so surprised that she said nothing, simply watched Nicholas as he walked to the hall doorway, where he shrugged. ‘So, it’s a rune. It’s old. Anyone could have put it there. But thank you for looking.’

He smiled again at her, and in a moment was just the sound of footsteps echoing in the hall.

Katharine could feel the stillness in the air of her house as Nicholas let himself out the squeaking front gate. She went to her bedroom window and watched him walking down the street carrying his suitcase. Afternoon sunlight cast a long, thin shadow behind him, and she watched it till he was around the corner and gone.

She cursed herself for her foolishness, locking herself in her room like some jilted debutante. But when Nicholas had handed her flowers and said he’d moved out, thirty-odd years cracked like some fragile ice bridge and fell away, and she found herself stranded back in time, staring at a man who looked so much like Don, hearing him say almost exactly what Don had said the night he finally listened to his wife and moved himself out. Katharine felt her eyes clouding with tears again, and angrily wiped them away. Christ, she’d told Don to move out. Screamed at him to go. He’d begun drinking and she had every reason to see him out of her and the kids’ lives. But when he actually did it. . And did she run out into the street and call him back? No. And now her son had gone, again, what did she do? Nothing. She dried her eyes and shoved the damp tissue in her pocket.

She went to the door and carefully opened it a crack. The kettle was starting to sing. Suzette was still in the kitchen. Katharine had heard Suzette’s voice as she spoke with Nicholas; although she couldn’t make out the words, she’d heard the urgent tone. What were they talking about? Why did the thought of having her children back here in Tallong knit her stomach into a tight ball of worry?

Because of her. Because of Quill.

Quill. A woman she hadn’t thought of in twenty years. But was that true? Weren’t there nights when she dreamed of that dark little shop where dresses and suits hung like the capes of villainous creatures in some bad old Christopher Lee film? Quill was long dead, long gone. Why had Suzette brought her name up the other night? Was it coincidence?

Katharine wiped under her nose, ran fingertips through her hair, straightened her dress. Yes. Of course it was coincidence. But to be sure, to be certain , a few questions might be asked about Quill.

She knew who to go to. She would go tomorrow.

She opened her bedroom door wide and went to sit with her daughter.

Ackland Street pastries. The sun-warmed timber of the wharf at St Kilda, daintily lifting its skirts as it stepped into summer waters. Good music. Great coffee. Life.

Nicholas lay on the couch in his flat, thinking of places to pack and leave for. Melbourne sounded inviting. So did Perth. And the Hunter Valley. And Launceston. In fact, anywhere sounded good. Anywhere but here.

He had no idea of the time, but it was long, long past midnight. He couldn’t sleep. Every time he shut his eyes, images appeared, haunting his skull as surely as ghosts haunted his life: Gavin’s scalp lifting, popping up like a magician’s trick bouquet; Mrs Boye spitting at an impassive Christ; Teale, arms like Frankenstein’s undead creation, chasing him through dense forest; a dead bird with a head of woven twigs; a strange arrowhead mark carved into the walnut stock of Gavin’s gun.

A dangerous rune, Suzette had called it. Too fucking right. So dangerous that he hoped he’d confused her enough, or pissed her off enough, that she’d book a flight home to Sydney tomorrow.

His tired eyes slid shut, and straightaway more dark images played like a silent newsreel: Tristram dropping to his knees and crawling into the spidery tunnel; Laine Boye’s eyes, inscrutable; Rowena’s eyes, shining with youth; Cate’s eyes, open and dusted with white powder; carved stone; the Green Man; dark woods dense with sentient trees; the oak grove at Walpole Park. .

Nicholas’s eyes flew open. He felt suddenly ill.

The face that he’d seen as he sped past overgrown Walpole Park at Ealing on his motorbike, the face that made him crash — a face glimpsed just for an instant, a half-memory, a ghostly dream from the other side of his life — had been shrouded in leaves, just as the ceiling boss at the church was.

The Green Man.

He shook his head. You see things that would send a person insane; ergo, you are probably insane.

But he wasn’t insane; close, perhaps, but not yet. And he was sure of one other thing: he couldn’t leave town. The Thomas child’s body had been found three suburbs away, but Nicholas had seen his ghost dragged by invisible hands into the woods. Tristram’s body had been found kilometres away, but Suzette had seen his ghost on the gravel path on Carmichael Road. The boys’ bodies may have been found elsewhere, and their supposed killers had confessed to murdering them a long way from Tallong, but their ghosts didn’t lie. The boys had died in the woods.

Something in there killed them , thought Nicholas. And you and Suzette are the only ones who know that.

As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t leave.

There would be no sleep tonight. He stood, yanked on a jumper, snatched his keys and strode out into the pre-dawn chill.

Fog had closed the early morning down to a smoky dream. Nicholas had walked for what felt like hours, hoping that his long strides and the cold air would empty his mind long enough for him to rush home, pack his suitcase and speed to the airport. Instead, his traitorous feet took him through the thick mist to the 7-Eleven near the railway station. He agonised outside long enough for his light sweat to turn icy, then stepped inside and purchased two items, cursing himself for a fool every moment of the transaction.

Then he walked to Carmichael Road.

The fog swallowed all sound. No dogs barked. No cars passed. He could only see a few feet in front of him. As he crossed Carmichael Road, his footsteps on the tarmac were jealously hushed by the moist air. He stepped into the knee-high grass and felt the chill of it eat through his jeans to his calves. He ploughed a wet path to what he guessed was roughly the middle of the gravel track, and stood silent, waiting.

For twenty minutes, nothing happened. The wet, frigid air seeped into his collar, up his sleeves, into his shoes. He had to bite his lip to convince himself he wasn’t still asleep on the couch, dreaming that he was here in this pearly grey world of cold. An elderly woman in a pink cardigan walked past on the other side of Carmichael Road with a tiny white dog — two faint spectres in the mist. She didn’t see Nicholas, and was dissolved again by the cloudy grey. He waited another five minutes. The cold burrowed into his skin, his eyes, his bones.

Then a flicker of movement ahead on the path.

Nicholas hurried. As he grew closer, the figure grew sharper through the fog like a diver rising from obscure depths. A young girl crouched on the path. She was shoeless and wore a plain sundress. His first thought was that she must be freezing. Then he saw that tall blades of damp grass speared painlessly through her legs and arms. She was as insubstantial as the mist.