Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

Sedgely had her shop here. Quill had her shop here. But that didn’t automatically cast any tenant of the shop under suspicion, did it? Of course it did. Old Bretherton. Old Sedgely. Old Quill. The old woman walking in the woods with Garnock. Were they the same person? He’d come to think so. But was there any connection between them and the vital young woman hurrying ahead of him? Was there any similarity between friendly, clumsy Rowena who sold wheat germ and organic licorice with a lovely smile and the sinister, bent thing that had watched with glittering eyes from her nest between hanging dresses? No. But that didn’t mean they weren’t connected. Nicholas pursed his lips. He knew, foolishly, he wanted to exonerate Rowena because he found her attractive.

Ahead, her coltish long legs took her across Myrtle Street and up toward the corner of Madeglass. She was moving fast, so Nicholas picked up his pace. At the end of Madeglass Street was a busier road that led under the railway line. At the corner, a small huddle of people waited at a bus shelter. Rowena slowed her pace as she moved to the end of the queue.

Nicholas slowed and stopped behind a power pole fifty meters away. He leaned against the hard wood and the faint tang of creosote rose through the chill air. The sun was gone now, and the first sparkles of stars were appearing in the purple sky. He watched Rowena. She was chatting with a middle-aged woman in the queue ahead of her. Both women laughed. Rowena’s teeth were white in the gloom. The headlights of a bus appeared in the railway underpass, its windows glowing warm yellow. A moment later it let out an elephantine sigh and stopped to take on passengers. Rowena got on board. Nicholas watched her pick her way down the aisle to a seat halfway back. The bus rumbled and soon was gone.

Nicholas drove his hands further into his pockets. He was relieved. Had Rowena gone to the woods, he’d have had no doubt that she was party to the web of murders. But she’d gone home in a bus, nattering with the other passengers.

He felt the cold wind of night grab at his hair. He turned and walked slowly home to Bymar Street.

“… A nd then the princess realized he was the kindest, gentlest and best of the animals, and she loved him most of all…”

Bryan’s voice flowed down the hall like warm water, soothing and calm. Suzette could picture Quincy’s eyes rolling and straining to focus as she fought to stay awake and hear the rest of her favorite story. Bryan had been so good, keeping Quincy occupied all day and well away from her sick brother.

Suzette was in Nelson’s room. It was dark. He lay on the bed, his chest barely rising and falling. The doctor had suggested it was some kind of chest infection and, after conducting all manner of tests for meningitis, pneumonia, and bird flu, had let him go home. Bryan had argued that he needed to be in the hospital, and Suzette loved him for it. “Trust me,” she said. He did, and she loved him for that too.

She finished writing Nelson’s full name on a candle that was so purple it was almost black. Already waiting on a tray was a small puppet, a roughly human-shaped thing of white cotton and smelling strongly of sage, garlic, and lavender. She’d sewn the puppet closed with Nelson’s hair.

How dare she? thought Suzette. How dare she attack my child? But a part of her cautioned to be quiet, to be grateful. Quill’s done so much worse.

She listened. Silence from the far end of the house. Story time was done; Quincy was asleep.

Time to start.

She lit the candle.

H annah was so angry she could spew. Miriam, who was two years older and in seventh grade and supposed to be more adult about things, had thrown the most dangerous kind of fit when she caught Hannah using her lip gloss. Jeez, come on! Miriam knew Mum wouldn’t let Hannah buy her own lip gloss! But catching her, Miriam hadn’t yelled and spacked out; she’d gone silent. This meant one of two things: either she’d march straight to Mum and reveal some secret she’d crossed her heart not to tell, or she’d Get Even Later.

As Hannah shuffled along alone, she understood very clearly that Miriam had chosen the latter.

They’d walked off toward school together, Miriam all sweetness and light and miss-you-Mum. But out of sight of home, she had turned on Hannah, fast and harsh as those peregrine falcons you see on TV documentaries, diving like lightning on field mice and ripping their guts out. “Just wait, you little bitch,” she’d hissed, and then had given Hannah eighteen-carat, diamond-studded, first-class silent treatment the whole two kilometers to school.

Once there, Hannah quickly forgot her older sister’s fury and the day ambled along nicely to its final (and Hannah’s favorite) lesson: Arts and Crafts. Hannah loved spooning thick acrylic paint onto a brush and sliding it over pristine white paper, making something out of nothing. Mrs. Tho said Hannah’s paintings were magnificent and told her to keep in mind that the school fete was coming up, where she might be able to exhibit some of her work. The idea plucked pleasant shivers inside Hannah, and the thought of other people seeing-and maybe buying -her artwork was, well, just awesome.

Afire with the possiblities, she attacked this afternoon’s blank paper with excitement and came up with something vibrant and pretty and deliciously weird. It was a horse in a man suit in a supermarket aisle shopping for seahorses. It made her classmates laugh and Mrs. Tho smile. Hannah couldn’t wait to show Miriam, who was usually her biggest fan.

Not this afternoon, though.

A glacial freeze surrounded Miriam as they started to walk home. Hannah tried to engage her older sister by telling her about the fete. She started to unroll the new painting, but at the top of the hill past the school Miriam stopped in her tracks.

“I don’t want to talk to you, you thieving little dog. I’m going along Silky Oak Street. You walk the other way.”

Hannah felt a small thump of fear in her tummy. The “other way” was along Carmichael Road. Past the woods.

The little cuts on Hannah’s legs had almost healed, but her memory of the whispering grass, the cutting grass, the blood, the leaning trees with dark teeth trunks, the way the wind and the trees and grass had tasted her… that was still sharp.

And now Miriam was forcing Hannah to go past them.

“Miriam?”

Miriam walked a few steps and whirled again, eyes brightly ferocious. “I mean it, shithead!” she spat. “You follow me and I’ll kick you to death!”

Hannah stood frozen. She’d never seen her sister this angry. She remembered a half-heard warning from Mum: Miriam’s going through a phase right now. She’s growing up fast and lots of changes are happening to her. She’s liable to be a bit testy.

Wow, you reckon? thought Hannah.

She watched Miriam stalk off on her long, thin legs. She fought the sudden urge to bawl, slowly rolled up her painting, and walked to the terminus of the school’s avenue, which turned down Carmichael Road.

I’ll tell, Hannah thought hatefully. I’ll tell Mum that Miriam used the F-word. And I’ll make it stick worse because I’ll fess up to using her lip gloss first, and second I’ll cry.

The afternoon was warm and she opened up her school cardigan. The woods grew closer on her right, and as they did, Hannah realized she was being an idiot. The trees were just trees, pretty and green and normal. The grass was dry and sharp, but that’s why they call it blade grass, Einstein! She smiled at her own foolishness. She’d accused Addison of being gutless, and here she was, acting just as chicken. So, without a thought, she skipped over the road, stepped (carefully!) through the blade grass, and onto the gravel track that cut through the grass strip that fringed the tree line.