Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

Best of all, Pritam now knew what to do with Rowena Quill.

She was, most surely, a sinner, a murderer, a dancer with demons. But Pritam had felt the pain of martyrs now. He had tasted, at last, the physical agony of the saints who had died in the service of the Lord; perhaps even a sense of the pain that the Son Himself felt as His body was broken. And he had passed through. He was closer to the divine. And he was humbled. And what could be a greater display of his gratitude than to guide the most egregious of sinners to seek forgiveness?

He would find Rowena Quill and, filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, convince her to admit her sins, to accept Christ and receive His mercy.

Pritam smiled and pressed the morphine button again. Yes. This was so right.

A pretty nurse entered the room, carrying something. She was young and lovely: a delightful work by the Father in this morning brightness.

‘Mr Anand?’

‘Will you marry me?’ He peered to read her name tag. ‘Joanna?’

The nurse smiled. ‘No, Mr Anand. But I will hold the phone up to your ear. You have a call.’

She held the mobile handset against Pritam’s left ear.

‘God be with you this Heaven-sent morning!’ said Pritam brightly, pleased that his words slurred hardly at all.

‘Cheers,’ replied Nicholas.

‘Nicholas!’

Nicholas was sitting on the back steps of his mother’s house, looking out over her vegetable garden. It was ludicrously green after the rains: an impossibly emerald world of vigorous growth. To counteract the salubrious sight, he lit the last of Gavin Boye’s cigarettes and inhaled deeply.

‘Hole in one. How are you?’

‘Blessed. How am I, Joanna?’

‘You’re doing well, Mr Anand.’

‘Joanna’s going to marry me,’ explained Pritam.

‘Are you. . Are you high, Pritam?’

‘No! Well, I have a morphine button.’

‘Okay.’ Nicholas got to his feet. ‘I’ll call you back-’

‘No! I have been thinking about Rowena Quill.’

‘So have we. Laine’s here with me.’

‘Good. Now, listen. Have you read Luke?’ asked Pritam excitedly. ‘Read Luke!’

Nicholas screwed the cigarette butt into the doorframe. ‘Pritam, you’re fucking high. I’m going to call back.’

‘Shh, listen! Luke fifteen something. Woman loses a coin. She has ten but loses one. And she finds it and she’s so happy!’

‘Goodbye, Pritam-’

‘Wait! That’s how the angels feel when a sinner repents!’

Nicholas squinted against the sunlight. The cigarette had made him feel nauseated.

‘Like they just found twenty cents?’

‘No! You’re not listening!’ Pritam rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. The nurse smiled and took the telephone with her other hand so she could check his catheter bag.

‘I don’t feel like repenting right now,’ said Nicholas.

‘Not you; her! Quill! I’m going to help Quill!’

Nicholas watched a butcher bird land on the Hills Hoist. It had a grasshopper in its beak, and the insect kicked, kicked, kicked. It occurred to him that he’d never seen the ghost of a bird or a dog or a grasshopper. Did they not have souls? Or did they never die before their time? Or did only haunted birds and dogs and insects see the ghosts of their own kind? Despite the nausea, he wished for another smoke.

‘Pritam? Hannah Gerlic’s sister was murdered. The guy who killed her — supposedly killed her — killed himself at the cop shop.’

Pritam’s bright mood faded slightly. ‘Oh.’

‘And remember I told you a developer put a sign up at the Carmichael Road woods? Barisi Developments. A Tony Barisi committed suicide last night.’

‘Oh,’ repeated Pritam. He pressed the morphine button, but nothing happened; he’d reached his limit for the moment. A last facet of sunlight on the ceiling flickered and vanished. Another nurse, older with short brown hair, appeared in the doorway. Joanna waved at her — can you do this? The brown-haired nurse shrugged and took hold of the phone. Joanna whispered in her ear, smiled at Pritam, and hurried from the room. Pritam glanced down at the new nurse’s badge: Helen Muir.

‘I think Quill killed my father,’ said Nicholas simply. The words left his mouth without fanfare or footprints.

Pritam felt the pain start twisting again in his broken hip, his shattered leg: some sharp-mawed worm stirring in its uneasy sleep.

‘Nothing’s changed, has it?’

‘No,’ replied Nicholas. ‘But at least we know. We’re going to go into the woods.’

‘You and Laine?’

‘Yeah. Listen, just be careful, okay?’

‘I can’t run too fast right now.’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Nicholas.

‘Watch out for white dogs?’

‘That kind of thing, yeah.’

‘Okay.’ Pritam was feeling tired. Maybe a nap now. ‘Nicholas?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I did mean that, even though I didn’t know it was you. God be with you, this Heaven-sent morning.’

Nicholas watched the butcher bird swallow the still-kicking grasshopper. ‘And also with you.’

They said their goodbyes, and Pritam nodded at the brown-haired nurse. She pressed the ‘end call’ button on the handset and reached behind him to adjust his pillow.

‘Thank you, Helen,’ Pritam said.

‘You’re welcome, Mr Anand. But it’s not Helen,’ she added, smiling at his mistake. She tapped her name badge.

Pritam blinked, and a wave of ice water rolled up through him. The badge read ‘Rowena Quill’.

He grabbed for the call button — but his fingers were as slow as old creek water. She easily pulled the button away, and smiled again. Pritam could see that she had Eleanor Bretherton’s eyes: hard and shining.

‘Are you going to call out?’ she asked pleasantly.

A lilt , he thought. Her accent. After all these years. .

‘No,’ he replied. His throat was tight. Fear.

She nodded, as if pleased with an obedient child.

‘You know who I am?’

‘Show me,’ he said.

She raised her eyebrows and smiled, and looked to the door. No one was there. She looked back at Pritam and winked. And suddenly, right in front of him was John Hird.

‘Will this make it easier, you useless black fucker?’ the older reverend asked brightly.

Pritam reeled. Here she was. Just a few minutes ago he’d been ablaze with the idea of bringing her to her knees with the Glory of the Host, penitent and humbled. But now he was cold inside, doused ash.

John’s friendly, wrinkled face vanished in a blink, replaced by the young nurse, Joanna. ‘Or her?’

Joanna’s face was gone, seamlessly replaced with Pritam’s mother’s. ‘Or her, my little chinnanna?’

‘Stop,’ he whispered. His mouth was as dry as cardboard.

‘Or me?’ His mother’s loving face vanished, replaced by a woman who looked older than time. Withered and wrinkled and hard as wood, with eyes that were bright blue sparks in folds of nut-brown flesh. ‘I heard you at the door,’ she whispered. Her breath was foul and smelled of decayed flesh and the mouldy misshapen things that grew in damp shadows. ‘You want to save my soul, boy?’

Pritam felt the last of his strength drain from him. The room was still light, but there was no longer warmth in it. This is the room I die in , he realised. He looked at the crone. She smiled, showing two rotten grey stumps that looked like snapped-off sparrow bones.

‘Christ can forgive you,’ he whispered, though he didn’t believe it. There wasn’t a hint of compassion in those ice-blue eyes.

‘That’s grand,’ she said.

Her features became again those of the pleasant, brown-haired nurse. She smiled, pulled out the pillow behind his head and covered his face.