The Darkening

‘Stop,’ he whispered. His mouth was as dry as cardboard.

‘Or me?’ His mother’s loving face vanished, replaced by a woman who looked older than time. Withered and wrinkled and hard as wood, with eyes that were bright blue sparks in folds of nut-brown flesh. ‘I heard you at the door,’ she whispered. Her breath was foul and smelled of decayed flesh and the mouldy misshapen things that grew in damp shadows. ‘You want to save my soul, boy?’

Pritam felt the last of his strength drain from him. The room was still light, but there was no longer warmth in it. This is the room I die in, he realised. He looked at the crone. She smiled, showing two rotten grey stumps that looked like snapped-off sparrow bones.

‘Christ can forgive you,’ he whispered, though he didn’t believe it. There wasn’t a hint of compassion in those ice-blue eyes.

‘That’s grand,’ she said.

Her features became again those of the pleasant, brown-haired nurse. She smiled, pulled out the pillow behind his head and covered his face.

After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass towards a bed that would, come spring, be as brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colourful arctotis, impatiens and petunias. Katharine dug with hard, chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her. The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made.

Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.

He needed to ask Laine something. He went inside.

The bed in Suzette’s room was empty. Laine was awake and up somewhere. He stepped back into the hall. Through the dimpled glass of the front door, he could make out the hunch of someone sitting on the front steps. He took a breath and went outside.

Laine wore his tracksuit pants and a woollen jumper that swallowed her. She didn’t look up as he shut the door behind him. A westerly wind troubled the trees in the street. The sky was cloudless. The sun gave no warmth. He looked around, and spotted what he was looking for. Gavin was walking up the footpath towards them.

‘Will you sit?’ she asked.

Nicholas watched Gavin reach the front gate.

‘I don’t think so.’

But he needed to talk to Laine, and so reluctantly sat beside her.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘You passed out in the car. I took you to hospital. Then I took you out of hospital.’

She stared out at a blue, wind-streaked sky that seemed impossibly vast above the ruby and emerald tile and tin rooftops.

‘I dreamed,’ she said.

He waited.

‘I was in a ship, a wooden ship. It was crammed full. A woman beside me had a baby. So much blood. It was stillborn. She cried and cried and held the dead baby and the crying seemed to last all night. The only way for it to stop was for me to bring her another baby. And I would have. I would have, only I was held down. Pinned down. By this weight, this warm weight on my chest. But I would have done anything to get her another child and stop that awful, awful crying.’

Nicholas watched her profile. She raised her hand to the cut on her cheek. ‘It was my blood. She used it.’

Nicholas nodded.

‘And you drew on me,’ she said.

He looked at the ground and nodded again.

As if remembering the rune on her chest, she closed her arms across her breasts.

‘How’s Mrs Boye?’ he asked.

‘There’s a carer from St Luke’s with her. For the moment.’

She shrugged, and finally looked at Nicholas.

‘Is he here?’ Her voice was steady and matter-of-fact until the last syllable, which trembled.

Nicholas looked up. Gavin was on the stairs. He stepped through Laine to stand behind her.

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s he doing?’

He could just see Gavin’s mouth moving. In his hand was the black plastic bag. He reached into it.

‘You know.’

Laine curled her arms around her knees. ‘I didn’t feel him. I can’t feel him. You’d think. .’

She stared up at the sky, perhaps to keep the tears in.

‘Laine, did Gavin have more than one gun?’

She looked at him. And the instant she did, Gavin fell through her in a crumpled heap, his jaw flapping, his skull topped by a macabre, broken crown.

Nicholas closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Gavin was once more halfway down the street, walking towards them.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Locked under the house. He was very firm about obeying those kinds of rules.’ She smiled coolly.

Nicholas watched Gavin approach the front gate. The dead man’s face was tight and confused. God, don’t let him be stuck in there, thought Nicholas. Let this just be a picture. Don’t let him be stuck in that loop.

‘The locker key’s on my key ring,’ said Laine. ‘When do you want to do this?’

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I want to go back to the library this arvo.’

And please let that be the last lie I have to tell her.

Laine nodded. She was quiet a long moment. She watched the sky with those grey eyes.

‘We could leave, you know,’ she said.

I can’t tell what she’s thinking. But he found that was a good thought. He’d had enough of life’s mysteries exposed for his eyes; the idea of kept secrets pleased him. What did she mean by ‘we’? Separately? Together? As friends? As fellow victims? Lovers? He didn’t know.

‘We could,’ he agreed. The wind picked up and sent a small wave of brown leaves hissing up the street. ‘I have a little money.’

‘I have a lot,’ she said.

They sat, her hugging her chest, him his knees. He looked at her and smiled. To his surprise, she smiled back.

‘You should get some more sleep,’ he said, and stood. He went inside before Gavin could fall again.

32

Nicholas walked silently under the Airlie Crescent house. He and Tristram had run and ridden bikes under here like madmen, but now he had to stoop slightly to avoid the low bearers overhead. The fine dirt underfoot let out puffs of powder, and he was pleased that his footsteps were silent.

He could hear a bath running overhead, and the muffled sounds of a nurse coaxing Mrs Boye.

Near a trellis that separated the under house from the backyard was a workbench. The vice and hacksaw were covered with tiny mothwings of dragon’s blood powder: the police scientific team must have come for fingerprints after Gavin’s suicide.

Beside the bench was a relatively new concrete slab with a solid-looking steel cabinet bolted to it. Nicholas softly placed down the duffel bag he carried, and carefully inserted the key Laine had given him. He listened: overhead, the bath stopped running. There was a shout: ‘Why should I?’ Then the soothing voice of the St Luke’s nurse.