Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

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 White Pages.

T he trees hissed at his intrusion, the gum leaves and pine needles whispering harshly in the wind up high. Below, the air was still and smelled strongly of sap and sweet decay and wet earth. Vines and trees wound around themselves like snakes carved of something at once frozen and moving, living and dead. Everything was 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 realized 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, backward-flying form of a dark-haired boy dressed in the long shorts that were popular in the sixties. He’d recognized 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 ghost. A pale, raven-haired young girl.

Y our Aunty Vee’s here, puffin.”

Hannah’s father stood in the doorway of her bedroom. Gray 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 Tamora Pierce 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 anymore. 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 each other. 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. Bug 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 rubbing alcohol. 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 living 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.

W alking into the woods gave Hannah the feeling she was sinking underwater; the fiery crackle of wind in high leaves became more and more distant, as if she were dropping into the depths. Shadows became thick and liquid. Spears of sunlight as thin as fishing rods probed down from the high canopy. The only sounds that were sharp were the wet crushing steps of her slip-on shoes on damp leaves and soggy twigs, and her panting breaths that were coming faster and faster. This was hard work, climbing over moss-furred logs and under looping vines. To go ten meters forward, she had to wend and wind another ten around twisted, scoliotic trunks, over hunched roots, under needy, thorny branches. But she didn’t slow or linger. She was angry with her father for not believing her. And she was angry for being deceived. She knew what she’d seen was true; she hadn’t imagined the crystal unicorn set to trap her. She knew things that no one else did. Something in these woods killed her sister. She struggled on.

After twenty minutes, she was slick with sweat and exhausted. She brushed wet leaves off a nearby log and sat. From her backpack she pulled a water bottle. As she sipped, she took inventory of her other goods: insect spray, a paring knife with its blade wrapped in aluminium foil (so it wouldn’t stab through the sides of the pack), the half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol, newspaper, matches. Satisfied, she capped her water and slid the pack over her shoulders and pressed on.

She’d lain awake most of the previous night wondering how to kill the giant spider that had taken Miriam. Clearly, it was smart-or at least knew enough about little girls to set a beautiful, sparkling unicorn as bait. It was magical: it had put some sort of charm on the dead bird, and it commanded the smaller spiders. But there was the possibility that the big spider at the window wasn’t in charge, that it was just another lieutenant in the spider army. There could be an even bigger spider-a giant spider like the one that Sam Gamgee fought in The Lord of the Rings -and that thought made her tummy tighten. Of course, whatever was in charge might be something else entirely; it might be a witch or a warlock or some sort of vampire that drank the blood of children. Considering these limitless possibilities, Hannah dismissed a dozen weapons, from arrows dipped in insect spray to crucifixes. The only weapon she knew of that killed everything was fire. A bomb would have been better, but she didn’t know how to make a bomb. Fire would have to do.