still refuses to run. She takes the pen from me wordlessly and dabs it on her studded tongue. When she hands it back it works, but the ink it dispenses is clotted and old.
I follow her upstairs, carrying my small leather bag over my shoulder. I make the mistake of touching the banister and my hand comes away feeling sticky. I try to discreetly rub it clean on the leg of my trousers, but instead stain them as well. When I ask after the woman I’d seen there years before, the young girl explains that she is that woman’s daughter, and hints that the
“This is your room,” she says, and hands me a key large enough for only a child’s hand. “The lock sticks sometimes and you need to pull it shut to move the bolt.” I smile and nod but she doesn’t return the courtesy. Instead, she tells me breakfast will be served downstairs at seven, and warns me not to be late.
I close the door and, after struggling with the lock, inspect the small room. It’s the same one in which Suzanne and I spent those past days together and for a moment my memories are superimposed over what is truly there. Instead of the stained wallpaper under an overcast day, I see sunlight and warmth; instead of a sagging bed and carpet that looks matted by a million little feet, I see Suzanne laughing as she jumps on the bed, the springs bouncing suggestively. I smile, and the act of smiling causes the mirage to dissipate, revealing the truth of the room, and the first thing I see is a crack that runs down the wall, starting a foot from the ceiling. At its base there is a dark wet mould that has grown into the carpet. I breathe out slowly and look in the mirror on top of the dresser. It too is covered in some greasy film, obscuring my features or twisting them into someone who looks far too old. I hear a noise and look towards the window but I see nothing there. Nothing at all.
I walk over a small bridge into the town of Port McCarthy. To my right, between the rooftops of the tiny stores, the dark grey clouds roll towards me, while beneath them dark waters churn. No one walks the streets but me, and it’s clear why as soon as I reach the grimy storefronts. They are closed; boarded for the coming winter. I wonder if it’s my timing that’s the issue. Had I arrived earlier, in June as before, would the town be bustling with the tourists that I remember Suzanne and I walking past, hand in hand, as we investigated the narrow streets? The two of us spent hours there, wandering through the tiny shops filled with trinkets and home-made crafts, each one comprising a tiny piece of a town that neither of us wanted to leave or ever forget. How different, I think, to now, when all I want is to somehow rid myself of the memories. I look just off the main street and the spectre of Suzanne is there waiting for me, wanting to evoke a memory I’d long ago suppressed.
Suzanne, standing in the sun, an ice-cream cone in one hand fresh from a cart by the edge of the water, pointing at a small sign affixed to a faux-antique lamppost.
“Look,” she said, “A new store’s just opened. Do you want to see inside?”
“I’m pretty tired,” I laughed. “And we’ve been on our feet for hours. Can’t we just rest for a bit?”
She handed me her cone.
“You sit on that bench. I’ll only be a minute.”
And she was off.
I laughed and waited, and as her treat melted I ate it with selfish glee. Yet, after twenty minutes she had not yet returned and I decided I’d had enough of sitting. I followed the direction she had taken until I came to an old house at the end of the small street. It looked much like any of the houses beside it, yet it had a hand-painted sign with the word ALICE’S written on it in children’s paint. The screen door was slightly ajar and I pulled it open to step into the dim room beyond.
It took a few moments to get my bearings, my eyes unable to cope with the change in light. A shadow moved before me and I tried unsuccessfully to blink away the spots that blinded me. In the faux darkness, small black blobs squirmed across my vision, making the world appear murky. As my sight cleared, the first thing I saw was Suzanne, inspecting a polyester dress that hung shapelessly from its hanger. Around me were the beginnings of a consignment shop, filled with crafts of all different kinds, each vying for the attention of tourists. But beyond the items displayed for sale it was clear that no other work had been done to transform the house into a proper store.
“This place fascinates me,” she said. “I could spend hours in here.”
From room to room we travelled while Suzanne inspected the clothes slowly, her fingers lingering on sizes that would forever be too large for her, and in every corner I saw the same traces of the store’s previous function. A single standing lamp in each room were the only sources of illumination, and those oversized ugly dresses were displayed from small hooks screwed into the rafters and walls. I shook my head. It was a terrible place, that converted former house. I thought I heard it scream for release, then realised it was not the house, but Suzanne, and I was immediately certain I had underestimated just how bad things would become.
In my memory, the events play out in slow motion, as though trapped in amber, or perhaps oily tar. I know these things occurred many years ago — so many they may not have happened at all. All I have left of those times are ghosts; dark shadowy ghosts that hover and remind me of what I’ve lost, of what I’ve given away without thinking. They are blemishes on my life, like the stains on the Port McCarthy beach that are still working their way into the ground a decade later, killing the seeds of any life they find.
“Look at this. Who
Suzanne whispered to me in that converted house, and though it must have been loud enough for anyone to hear, I was far too unnerved by spinning uncontrollable fear to check. There before us stood a doll the size of a small child, dressed in a small child’s clothes. It faced the wall as though it were being punished, its arms raised to cover its missing eyes. I shivered, and then saw a second doll. Then, another. They stood throughout the house in the same manner, faces turned to the wall, their little bodies impossibly real. Except their faces. I knew immediately that if I were to check the dolls’ faces they would be blank, lifeless, and part of me wished that would not be the case.
“They’re
“I don’t know who would buy one,” I said, looking away because I could no longer bear the sight. An older man across the room smiled at me from behind a counter, his teeth too large.
“The sign says they’re called ‘hide and seek dolls’,” Suzanne said. “Where do they get their clothes?”
“Maybe from their dead children,” I said, mesmerised by the man’s widening smile — so wide I doubted reality for a moment. Then my own words registered, and the sickness they filled me with snapped me back to attention. “I mean, they were probably donated. Some kid outgrew them.” I smiled at Suzanne in hopes she had forgotten what I had said. Instead, she grimaced.
I carry that image of her in my head still, and sometimes it amazes me it’s there at all when so many other things I wish I could recall have been forgotten. Memories are strange and elusive, yet they can return at a moment’s notice and from out of nowhere, appearing so vividly it feels as though time has not passed. But time
I can’t be sure if it’s going to rain, but the air feels wet and chilled and I decide I don’t want to take the chance. By the time I return to the Windhaven Inn, I know I was right, as the rain has started, but even so it is not a hard cleansing rain. Rather, it’s a drizzle, barely more than a mist, and all it succeeds in doing is making my shoes damp enough that each step feels as though I am wading through water.
Outside the Inn’s front door is a small garden in which an old cat squats. Its fur is grimy and matted as though it has spent an inordinate amount of time underground, and there is a glazed look in its dull ancient eyes. It chews grass slowly, and doesn’t seem to know I’m there, or if it does it cannot be bothered to acknowledge me. Perhaps one of us is a ghost, though neither of us is sure which.
“It has six toes, you know. Born like that. Six on every foot. You know what they say about
It is the young tattooed woman. She stands at the door smoking a cigarette, looking at me as though I have disturbed her with my thoughts. I smile weakly.
“No. What does it mean?”
