Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

“Those tunnels full of spiders,” she said.

Nicholas looked at her, shocked.

“What?” she asked. “Do you think I never went in the woods?”

He shook his head.

“More fool you then,” she said.

She stopped them outside a blue concrete barrier, where fading graffiti demanded “Free East Papua” and exclaimed that “Fellatio Sucks.” She pushed the back of his head. “Here. Let’s have a look.”

She stood behind him and lifted his hair, finding the scar on his scalp. He’d never seen it of course, but he’d felt it. The edge of the concrete step of the Ealing flat had left a lumpy scar a thumb’s length across.

“You think that’s why I’m seeing ghosts?” he asked. “A bump on the head?”

“Maybe it was the shock of losing Cate. Maybe that nasty bump just cleared the plumbing.” She rapped his head with her knuckle and grinned. “When’s my birthday?”

“My memory’s fine, bloody hell-”

“When?”

Nicholas rolled his eyes. “October thirty-first. Halloween girl.”

She sent him a dark smile. “Yes and no. Yes, correct date-and by the way you owe me a present from last year. But, no, not a Halloween girl. Halloween’s different down here. All Hallow’s Eve. The Celts called it Samhain.” She pronounced it sah-wen. “For us in the south, the end of October is Beltane, the return of summer. Our Halloween is six months opposite.”

She watched Nicholas do a quick calculation in his head. “April thirtieth.”

She nodded.

“My birthday,” he said quietly.

She nodded again, and bumped his shoulder with her own.

“You’re the Halloween child. And a child born on Samhain is said to have second sight.”

A s they walked, Nicholas felt a lightness in his chest. He wondered what this all meant-was his sister just telling him what he wanted to hear? That they both had some gift-or curse-of seeing the dead?

He felt her eyes on his face, as if she could sense his doubt.

“You used to have inklings,” she said. “I remember. Like the time you told me not to use the toaster. Mum ignored you and plugged it in, and it sparked and gave her a shock. You just knew, didn’t you?”

“I’d forgotten about that.”

That wasn’t the only time he’d had a notion, a gut feeling, scraps of information of things, places, people that really he couldn’t have known. Throughout his life he’d had uninvited, inexplicable feelings that something wasn’t quite right or that someone was ill or this thing was broken or that thing wasn’t lost but in a mislabeled cardboard box under the house.

During a high school field trip to the state art gallery, he and four classmates had been about to cross the street to the footpath opposite when Nicholas convinced his classmates to remain where they were. Not a minute later, a speeding taxi mounted the opposite curb and came to a shatter-glass stop against a power pole. The cab driver had suffered a mild stroke and lost control. Had Nicholas and his fellow students crossed the road, they’d all be in hospital-in a ward or in a steel drawer.

Then 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.

And, of course, the night in London when he’d 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.

Yes, he’d had inklings. Notions. Gut feelings. Until now, he’d given them no thought.

“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.”

T he evening sky was gunmetal gray. 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?”

“I do go to phone Psychic Hotline but always end up dialing 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. “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 shook her head. “Honestly, sometimes you can be so thick.”

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then broke the silence. “So? What kind of books?”

“Herbalism. Roots and oils. The supernatural. Signs and protections. I’ve left most of them, I borrowed a few.”

She looked at Nicholas. His face was shadowed, but she could see his frown.

“What do you mean, though? Dad was… what? A druid?”

“I didn’t know him, Nicholas.”

Nicholas turned his sparkling gaze to her, as if finally realizing 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.”

“Christ, Suze, I thought you’d come up here to tell me I need to see someone who can dope me up with Thorazine, and here you are saying… Fuck, what are you saying?”

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

“No shit,” snorted Nicholas. “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.”

“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?”

He turned and kept walking. “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.”

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. Suzette felt a familiar old worm of fear turn in her belly.

They’d reached the Myrtle Street shops.

T hey 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-was into magic. And his dead father, too. Nicholas brushed hair from his face. It felt unpleasantly like spiderweb and he shivered.