Aubrey studies his niece again and then he removes his black hat and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He breathes and sighs loudly, pulls a hip flask from his pocket, unscrews the cap and takes a long, hard swig. He pockets the flask and runs his dirty right hand across the stubble of his cheeks. And then he marches quickly to his niece, gritting his white wolf teeth, and he digs his wolf claws hard into Molly’s right shoulder and pulls her towards the milkwood tree. As he drags her across the cemetery ground, he reaches for the pan in her hands, pulls hard at it.
‘Gimme that feckin’ pan!’ he spits.
‘No,’ Molly screams. ‘No, Uncle Aubrey! It’s mine. It was given to me.’
The tall black shadow uncle’s hairy black wolf arm wrenches the pan violently from his niece’s hands and he tugs Molly Hook towards the milkwood tree and the black rock frog rock, and she digs her feet hard into the dirt to slow their movement but the tall black shadow uncle is too strong. He grips her body like he grips a shovel. Closer and closer to the milkwood tree he hauls her, until she can see the hole in the ground.
‘No!’ Molly screams. ‘Please, Uncle Aubrey. Noooooo.’
A rectangular grave with no headstone. A rectangular dirt prism of air sunk into the earth, with no name and no epitaph. No story of a life. No existence. No goodbye. No luck.
Her father stands at the foot of the grave. Her father can cry, and he’s weeping here. Aubrey yanks at the girl’s arm and swings her forward to the edge of the grave. ‘Say your goodbyes,’ he roars, furious and volatile.
The girl’s feet nearly slip into the grave but stop at the edge where she can’t help but look down inside the hole. She’s terrified of what she will see, but what she sees is nothing. What she finds is a dig with no end. The hole goes on forever. She could dive into that grave right now and she could fall through the earth for eternity and every muscle in her body wants to do just that. It’s a bottomless grave. It’s a black void, and this black void proves Molly Hook right and she shouts at her father across the grave. ‘I told him, Dad. She’s not down there.’ She points to the sky. ‘She’s up there, Dad!’
Her father offers no response to his daughter beyond weeping. Her father has gone away. Gone away like Mum. I will never be afraid, she tells herself. I will feel no pain. I will feel only rage. Then Molly makes fists with her hands and she clenches them so hard that her fingernails draw blood from her palms and she screams. ‘She. Is. Not. Down. There!’
Aubrey steps to the side of the grave and talks to his brother calmly. ‘Control your child, brother.’
But Horace is blank. Horace only weeps. Molly’s banshee screams echo across the cemetery. Loud enough to wake its eternal residents. A scream from the bottom of the endless black void inside her. High and sharp and piercing. ‘She. Is. Not. Down. Therrrrrrrrre!’
Aubrey shouts at his brother now. ‘Control your child, Horace!’
But Horace Hook has gone away. Horace only weeps. And with every tear her father sheds, the gravedigger girl grows more and more hysterical.
‘What are you crying for?’ she screams. ‘She’s not down there. She’s not down there. SHE’S NOT DOWN TH—’
And the gravedigger girl is silenced by the back of her uncle’s knuckle and bone hand landing flush across her face. Molly Hook falls back hard on the hard cemetery dirt. She wipes her nose and looks at her fingers covered in the same blood that’s spread across her face. This place is hard, she tells herself. Rock is hard. My heart is hard as rock, she tells herself. I will never be afraid. I will feel no pain.
Molly looks up at her uncle, who is still holding her grandfather’s pan when he turns his back on Molly and looks back down into the grave. Molly stands and wipes her face with her yard dress and she spits half a mouthful of blood on the dirt and then she runs fast at her uncle and she drives her shoulder hard into his back and she pushes against him with her legs. She will send him to hell where he belongs and the quickest route she can see is through that endless black void.
But her uncle doesn’t move. His bones are too hard from digging. His bones are too hard from living. ‘This is your grave!’ Molly screams, pushing with all her strength as her bare toes slip in the soil beneath them. ‘This is yoourrr grave!’
Then she gives up pushing against her uncle and reaches for the pan he holds in his right hand. ‘This is mine,’ she screams. ‘Give it back.’ She tugs on the pan and pulls back on it with all her strength and all that is left of her will. ‘Give it back.’
Aubrey Hook is still gripping the pan when he turns and smiles at his niece as though he’s going to enjoy the thing he’s about to do, and the gravedigger girl is still bulldog-clinging to the pan when her uncle swings his right arm with such fury and power that Molly’s feet are lifted from the earth and she is thrown through the air and the only thing that stops her wild forward motion is the impact of her left temple meeting the edge of the large black rock frog rock next to the grave. Then she might as well be the one who is falling through that endless void towards hell because everything in her world, even the day sky, has turned to black.
THE SEED OF A STORY
A black flying fox in the predawn pink of a
