Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

The shop’s door was locked. A sign hung in the glass: ‘Closed due to sickness. Sorry!’

He shielded his eyes and pressed against the window. The shop within was dark and still. He let out a slow breath, guiltily relieved. He could move to Plan B.

There was hope now: he could take the fight into a remoter place where, perhaps, no one would hear the shotgun blasts. The downside was that it would be her place. The woods.

Movement caught his eye.

A house spider jumped from its hiding place atop a wooden rafter of the awning. It abseiled down on the silk it spun out behind, and landed soundlessly on the ground. It scurried around the corner and started down the footpath towards Carmichael Road.

Nicholas was about to chase after it and squash it, but stopped himself. Let her know , he thought. Let her know something’s after her. Even if she gets me — and God forbid, Laine and Pritam and Suze — at least she’ll get a taste of being hunted. She’ll realise that things can turn. It doesn’t always go her way. Not any more.

He got in the car and steered it towards Carmichael Road.

Suzette watched her son carefully. Her heart was racing.

Nicholas’s call that morning had made her feel sick; after he’d rung, she’d gone to the bathroom and lost all her breakfast. But then the excitement of his one piece of good news had carried her into Nelson’s bedroom on swift feet.

Her fingers had been shaking when she drew the paring knife over the skin of his thumb — she didn’t want to hurt her boy. But he didn’t so much as wince as the steel bit in and red droplets rose around the blade. She quickly opened his pyjama top, dipped her index finger in the blood, and painted that ugly symbol above his heart.

That had been two hours ago. Now, he was sitting in front of the television, hungrily chewing toast as he played Need for Speed .

She and Bryan exchanged glances.

‘You know what I think,’ said Bryan. She could tell he was unhappy: his voice dropped an octave and his words were clipped.

‘I have to go.’

‘You don’t.’

She shrugged. ‘I can’t leave him up there.’

‘Then let’s all go-’

‘No!’ she said loudly. Nelson looked up from the Xbox game. Suzette waved him back — it’s fine. ‘No way in hell,’ she continued. ‘You keep them here.’

‘Suze. .’ began Bryan.

But she was already on her feet and reaching for the phone book.

The trees seemed to hiss like harpies at his intrusion. The wind harassed their high tops, making the gum leaves and pine needles whisper harshly. But the wind seemed far away on the rainforest floor. Here the air was still and smelled strongly of sap and sweet decay and wet earth. It was gloomy; vines and trees wound around themselves like snakes carved of something at once frozen and moving, living and dead. Everything was green: green with growth or green with moss or green with rot; even the blackest shadow was a dark jade. Fallen trunks covered with dark vine lay like scuttled and rotting submarines at the bottom of a dim, glaucous sea.

Nicholas gripped the shotgun with his right hand and cradled its lower barrel over his left forearm; the rope of the duffel bag dug painfully into his shoulder. He was a long way from the sporadic traffic of Carmichael Road, so the risk of being seen was minimal. Zero, in fact , he corrected himself.

As he stepped over thick roots and under low, damp branches, he realised that, even as a child exploring in here with Tristram, he’d never seen other children playing here, nor teenagers smoking, nor retirees bird-watching. Other parks in other cities were havens for teenagers and derelicts, but Nicholas had never found a beer can or a milk carton in these woods. This was a haunted place. People knew it in their hearts, even if they never thought it in their heads, and stayed away.

For a while, he followed the eerie, backwards-flying form of a dark-haired boy dressed in long shorts that were popular in the sixties. He’d recognised the child from the Tallong yearbook: Owen Liddy. But the sight of Liddy’s terror-split face was too horrible to watch, so he tacked right far enough to avoid the ghost.

He groaned as he saw another.

A small, raven-haired girl emerged from behind the wide, fluted trunk of a fig to slide herself over one tall, finlike root. Pale skin, thin limbs. Nicholas blinked. It was Miriam Gerlic.

His eyes narrowed.

The girl wasn’t being dragged away; she wasn’t wailing in silent dread. She was frowning and picking her way carefully over the obstructing root. And she was carrying her school bag. It wasn’t Miriam at all.

‘Hannah?’

Hannah turned at the sound of his voice, then fell suddenly from sight.

‘Your Aunty Vee’s here, puffin.’

Hannah’s father stood in the doorway of her bedroom. Grey bags like oysters sagged under his eyes and stubble roamed carelessly on his cheeks.

‘Okay, Dad.’

He nodded and stepped away down the hallway. To Hannah, he had turned into an old man overnight: hunched and mumbling and pale.

She listened. Her Aunt Vee’s usually loud and husky voice wrestled with her parents’ exhausted pleasantries. The screen door hissed and slammed shut. Hannah sat up on her bed and set aside her Elizabeth Honey paperback. Mum and Dad were going out. They weren’t telling where, but when Hannah was told she couldn’t come, she figured that they were going to: a) the police station; b) the morgue (which was where dead people were stored); or c) the gravestone shop. Aunty Vee would mind her during their absence.

Aunty Vee was Mum’s younger sister. She was pleasantly round and smoked and swore and was Catholic and kept wondering aloud why Mum wasn’t Catholic any more. The subject of Mother Mary’s Undying Love would come up later; for now it would be hugs, tears and food.

A short while later, Hannah was standing on the front patio with Vee’s hirsute sausage arms wrapped around her, waving as Mum and Dad backed out of the driveway, speaking low and unheard words to one another. When Hannah looked up at Vee, her aunty smiled but her eyes were red and wet. ‘Let’s eat!’ she said.

While Vee busied herself preparing a lunch fit for a circus troupe, Hannah quietly went to the laundry to filch the items on the mental list she’d been compiling all night. Fly spray. Matches. The local newspaper. She looked for anything marked ‘Inflammable’ (which apparently meant the same as flammable, only more flammable) and found a half full plastic bottle of methylated spirits. Then she crept softly through the kitchen for two more items. Vee was near the sink, buttering bread and farting like a Clydesdale, and so didn’t see or hear Hannah float past.

At lunch, Hannah ate sparingly. When Vee quizzed her about why she wasn’t eating, she tried her first gambit. ‘I’m a bit upset,’ she said softly. It worked like a charm. Vee bit her lip and hugged her. ‘Of course you are, of course,’ she said.

Hannah pushed her luck. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night,’ she said. ‘Is it okay if I have a lie-down?’

Vee looked relieved. ‘Absolutely, hon!’

Hannah lay on her bed and read for exactly half an hour, then sneaked into the lounge room. Vee was asleep on the couch, thick ankles demurely crossed, snoring.

Hannah hurried back to her bedroom, filled her school backpack with the purloined bits and pieces, then rolled up her dressing gown and her tracksuit and shoved them in the bed so it would appear to the casual glance that she was still in it.

She slipped out the back door.

It took her less than five minutes to jog to Carmichael Road. She stopped on the footpath opposite the woods, more or less at the same spot where, two days ago, Nicholas Close had stood, reading the sign, watching her. That development sign was now covered in black plastic, and the shroud gave Hannah an odd, cold feeling.