‘What?’ Molly asks.
‘I’m so sorry, child,’ Marielle says mournfully.
‘Sorry for what?’
She rubs Molly’s wrist. ‘So much pain,’ she whispers.
Molly pulls her wrist from her touch. ‘What are you sorry for?’ she asks.
‘You will not find Longcoat Bob, child,’ Marielle says, gently. ‘Longcoat Bob has gone from us.’
Molly studies Marielle’s face for a moment. The white-haired woman with the skeleton body. Her cheekbones high and the flesh on her face drawn into her mouth.
‘That’s not true,’ Molly says, indignant. ‘That’s not true. Sam said he went for a walk. He’s just gone walkabout.’
Greta raises the mug in her right hand.
‘He’s dead, Molly,’ Marielle says. ‘You have come all this way for nothing.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Molly says. ‘You’re lying!’
Lars discreetly leaves the table, walks over to the piano, sits down at it and raises the fallboard.
‘But you have found us now,’ Marielle says, softly. ‘You can rest now.’
Lars begins to play. The Liebesträume. The love dream. Gentle keys. Soft notes falling into soft notes. And Greta drinks from the mug.
‘Don’t drink that, Greta!’ Molly calls. But Greta keeps drinking.
‘You can all stay here,’ Marielle says. ‘You can rest. You can sleep.’
‘I don’t want to sleep here,’ Molly says. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’
Molly turns to the pilot but he, too, is drinking from his mug. ‘Yukio,’ she says. ‘We need to keep going.’
‘Do not be afraid, Molly,’ Marielle says. ‘We will take the pain away. You carry too much. Too much pain for one little girl.’
Then a tear forms in Greta Maze’s right eye and it runs down her cheek. She turns to the sleeping baby she saved from the deep black water.
‘Have you come to ease the pain, Greta?’ Marielle asks.
Another tear falling down the actress’s face. ‘Ease the pain, Greta,’ Marielle urges. ‘Ease the pain.’
Greta rises gently from the dining table and she walks to the sleeping baby.
‘Greta, we have to go!’ Molly says.
‘I’m staying, Molly,’ Greta says. ‘I want to stop. I want to sleep.’ She lies down beside the infant and weeps openly now.
‘What’s wrong with you, Greta?’ Molly asks.
‘I’m staying Molly,’ Greta says. ‘I can’t walk with you no more.’
‘But we need to find Longcoat Bob!’ Molly says.
‘Stop, Molly,’ Greta says. ‘Stop it. I should never have come with you.’
Molly stands up. ‘But you got us this far!’ she barks. ‘It was you who got us here.’
Greta shakes her head, weeping. ‘I’m not what you think I am,’ Greta says. ‘You don’t need me, Molly. You’ve never needed anyone.’
‘I need you, Greta,’ Molly hollers. ‘I need you.’
‘You need to go home, Molly,’ Greta says. ‘We went too far in. You need to go home. You don’t belong here.’
Molly rushes towards the bed. ‘I’m getting you out of here,’ she says and she reaches for Greta, pulls hard at her arm.
‘Get away from me!’ Greta screams, snapping. And her anger makes her cry harder and Molly can only step backwards from her friend in confusion. Greta turns her face back to the sleeping baby. ‘I won’t leave you,’ she whispers.
Yukio rises from the table and he slowly walks over to Greta on the bed. He lies down on the other side of the boy, the child between them.
‘What are you doing, Yukio?’ Molly asks. ‘It’s that black stuff. They poisoned you, Yukio. They gave you poison. They’re gonna make you sleep here.’ Molly looks at the faces of all the skin-and-bone men and women, dazed and sleepy and half-dead and sinking into their stretchers and daybeds and worn and torn lounges. ‘They’re gonna make you sleep here forever!’
Greta won’t stop weeping. ‘They took my child,’ she whispers through her tears. ‘They took my child.’
Then tears fall from Yukio’s eyes. One tear, two tears, then a flood. He speaks in Japanese through his tears and he cries harder when he finishes his sentence. And Molly watches Greta reach an arm over to Yukio and Greta leaves that tender hand on his side and he reaches an arm over across the baby and he rests his trembling hand on her side and Molly watches these two strangers – her companions, her friends, her strange long-walk family – weeping together. Weeping without her because she is the girl who cannot cry. She is the girl who was born into the curse of Longcoat Bob. She is the girl whose heart will turn to stone. Then she hears more weeping from the dining table. It is Marielle. She is staring at Greta and Yukio, tears streaming down her face. Then she begins to wail loudly. Hysterically.
‘Stop it,’ Molly says.
But Marielle keeps wailing.
‘Stop it,’ Molly says.
Lars’s melancholy piano notes grow louder and then the pianist with hair like lightning begins to wail with his wife.
‘Ease the pain!’ Marielle howls. ‘Ease the pain!’
‘Eeeeeease the pain!’ Lars hollers.
Lars’s tears fall onto his piano keys and a crazed guttural wail echoes through the orange-glow cave chamber and this wailing seems to make the near dead rise. The patients in their stretchers sit up and weep and others roll and squirm in their beds, releasing their own stored-up tears, spreading infections of weeping through the room and triggering one crazed and primal bout of sobbing after another.
Molly screams, ‘Stop it. Stop! Stop!’
But the lunatic wailings only build and they swirl around her dizzy head and she closes her eyes and blocks her ears with her palms and all she sees is her Uncle Aubrey now and all she hears is his deranged howling laughter and all she sees is his smile beneath his black moustache, his deep satisfaction rising up from the cave of his cold stone heart.
She opens her eyes again and she finds Bert – the only friend she has in this upside-down world who is not crying. He’s guarding her duffel bag, which carries the rock that she pulled from the chest of her mother, where once a good and kind heart beat warmly.
She grips her shovel and grips her bag and she runs.
