Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

Laine Boye had been right. If one dismissed Nicholas Close’s theories, boiled away the speculation and happenstance, all that was left was one simple coincidence: Eleanor Bretherton looked uncannily like Mrs. L. Quill. Pritam wished he could dismiss that as a fluke, but he’d seen John staring at Bretherton’s photo and turning pale. That was enough to warrant a bit of effort. He opened his search engine and started typing.

An hour later, Pritam sat back in his chair. He was stunned. His eyes stung from poor sleep and from staring at the screen, but his heart beat excitedly. His Internet searches had been an instinctive crawl, sniffing after suppositions, following flimsy hunches. He’d expected in his heart to find nothing. Instead, what he’d discovered shortened his breath. A quotation by Flavius Josephus crawled in his skull: “Now when Noah had lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood, and all that time happily, he died, having lived the number of nine hundred and fifty years…”

Pritam.

The printer-he had to find the printer. Nicholas and Laine would need to see this-

Pritam?

He looked up. Was someone calling him?

He listened. Only the steady tocking of the clock, the whisper of drizzle. No.

Anyway, the printer. He’d seen it in the storeroom and-

“Pritam?”

He froze. There was someone calling him from outside. He went to the side window and peered out. He could see no one. However, the visitor could be round the front.

“Pritam!” came the voice again. A man’s voice, and his tone was urgent. Pritam fetched an umbrella from the hatstand.

“Pritam Anand!”

“Coming!” he called. He struggled to free the umbrella, accidentally pressed its button and it popped open, one rib jabbing him in the thigh. That’s bad luck, that.

“Pritam!”

He opened the door and hurried outside. The rain spat on the umbrella. He walked carefully along the slick path beside tall hibiscus bushes. The voice had come from the road fronting the church. There! He could see a figure on the opposite footpath. The man held an umbrella and leaned on a cane; his shadowed face was unclear through the drizzle.

“Pritam?”

Pritam squinted. The man’s stoop was familiar. But it couldn’t be…

“John?”

Reverend John Hird stood on the other side of the road. He waved the walking cane he held. Beside him was a small suitcase.

“They released me from the hospital! I’ve been trying to phone, but it’s been engaged all morning. Have you been downloading porn, you dirty black reprobate?”

Pritam smiled and frowned simultaneously.

“But, John, you… I saw you…” Had he dreamed Hird’s death? He was suddenly so tired, he wasn’t sure of anything.

“Here!” John waved him over. “Give me a hand.”

“Okay,” said Pritam, stepping onto the road. “But I don’t-”

The car hit him with a dull and meaty thud, and hurled him up the road. The driver slammed the brakes too hard and the car slid. One locked wheel snagged Pritam’s leg and ground flesh and bone into the bitumen. Car and victim finally stopped. The rain fell blindly.

The old woman watching from across the road hobbled quickly away.

T he kitchen smelled sharply of herbs and oils. In small, clean bowls were blue borage flowers, dandelion flowers, plucked waxy ivy leaves. In a glass bowl was maidenhair. In a mortar was a handful of poplar bulbs. Suzette lifted the heavy pestle and started pounding them into a tart, scented paste.

“What are you making?”

Suzette looked up. Quincy was in the doorway.

“I thought you were playing with Daddy?”

Quincy shrugged. “He fell asleep.”

Suzette nodded. Both she and Bryan were exhausted. They took turns watching over Nelson; neither was game to fall asleep unless the other was awake and watching the rise and fall of his chest. Nelson’s color had improved, and his eyes flickered open from time to time, but he quickly slipped back into a hot, herky-jerky sleep. She and Bryan had made a quiet pact the day Nelson fell ill that they would not worry Quincy. Suzette knew the hex would pass and Nelson would revive, so there was no point making Quincy fearful.

“So, what are you making?” repeated Quincy.

“Elephant paint. To paint elephants with.”

Quincy rolled her eyes. “It’s not elephant paint. We don’t have an elephant.”

Suzette smiled. “Do you want an elephant?”

Quincy thought about it. “Yes.”

“It would have to sleep in your room,” said Suzette.

“Can’t it sleep in yours and Daddy’s room? It’s bigger.”

Quincy, thought Suzette, would make a fine business negotiator.

“No, Daddy’s allergic to elephants. It would have to be in your room and your bed.”

Quincy wrinkled her nose.

“No elephants,” she decided.

Suzette nodded-wise decision. She mixed the other ingredients in with the poplar paste. She had woken from her short sleep exhausted and furious with Nicholas, who still hadn’t called. Did he give a rat’s about his nephew? She’d decided to turn her bright indignation into action, and started this healing mix. Now, how was it applied? She seemed to think it was pasted over the heart and bandaged. Or was it on the temples?

“Pass me that book, sweetie?” She nodded at her kitchen dresser, its shelves loaded with books on herbs, spells, and charms; a book on healing herbs was open on the dresser top.

Quincy skipped over, delivered the book, and skipped back to the shelves. She’d never taken notice of her mother’s hobby, but today she was perusing the spines with interest.

“Want me to put on Dora the Explorer? ” asked Suzette.

Quincy pursed her lips and shook her head. She reached up and pulled out an old book. Suzette watched from the corner of one eye as Quincy opened it. She was a good reader for her age, but this book would be full of words she wouldn’t know; it was one of Suzette’s father’s aged volumes: Herbs of Old Europe. It wasn’t surprising that it attracted Quincy’s eye: its fading cover was dotted with stars and mystic symbols, a fantastical image that belied the utilitarian descriptions inside. It was so dull, in fact, that Suzette had never gotten more than a quarter way through it.

“Can we have a Pan?” asked Quincy.

“I beg your pardon, hon?”

Quincy turned and said, “I don’t want an elephant. But can we have a Pan?”

Suzette could see she was holding a scrap of paper in her hand. “Show me?”

Quincy brought the scrap over and handed it up to her mother. Suzette wiped her hand on her apron and took it.

It was half of a page torn from a book that looked like it had gone out of print eighty years ago. In the center of the page was an etching of a satyr under a night sky, rubbing his hands and capering beside nymphs in a water pond. Suzette blinked-he sported a raging erection. Beneath the picture, most of the caption had been torn away, leaving only “Pan: Greek god, son of Hermes…”

“Can we get one?” asked Quincy again.

Suzette didn’t answer. In a small patch of yellowing page between the etching and the torn edge was written in ballpoint pen: “???” She had no way of knowing, but she was sure the handwriting was her father’s.

“I don’t think so,” she said softly.

She folded the paper away and slipped it into her apron pocket. Pan? It must mean nothing, surely; just something that caught his eye and he kept it. But the etching felt so oddly discomfiting. Why did he keep it?

And why did he leave it for us?

“Why not?” asked Quincy. “They look funny. He’s got no pants!”

“I don’t think you’d want one, honey biscuit.” She put on a bright smile. “Come on. Let’s put this on your brother.”