The Rich Man’s House

by Andrew McGahan

  At which point Rita had to explain about the cocaine, at the same time wondering how she could have been so stupid. To snort coke on a plane? To expose herself to exactly the presences that were the most upsetting to her? Madness!

  But Anne was appalled for a different reason. ‘You brought coke with you? Are you fucking insane? Are you that fucking addicted?’

  ‘No, no … It was by acci—’

  Slam. A massive blow from beneath sent the 747 surging upwards, pressing Rita down so hard the wind went from her lungs. Then slam again, and the plane was corkscrewing downwards—Rita could see the ceiling contorting with the strain—and the last luggage lockers were spewing out their contents, and something heavy—food trolleys maybe—were smashing back and forth in the galley.

  Worse, this time the aircraft didn’t right itself. The plunge continued, and the four engines could be heard roaring now, though whether they were trying to raise the 747 back up again, or drive it down even more quickly, an emergency dive, Rita couldn’t tell. She couldn’t think, the hammer blows came too fast, throwing her head back and forth.

  And then slam, something seemed to snap behind her eyes, and she discovered that she could see right through the tube of the fuselage to the open air beyond. Fuck, had the plane split open, was it tearing apart, were they all about to die?

  But no, in a moment more she realised the truth. It was not actual sight she was experiencing; it was a virtual sight; it was her special senses reacting to the overwhelming presence that surrounded the aircraft. The entity out there was so potent that even through the solid walls of the 747’s body, it was imprinting itself on her retinas.

  She gazed in a transport of horror. There was no thundercloud, no storm, the upper airs were clear—and yet she could see it, a great river of force that was wrapped about the plane. It was vast, extending ahead of them endlessly, and for thousands of metres above and below, a monster of wind, an invisible hurricane, roaring in great bands both vertical and horizontal, with brutal updrafts matched side by side with downdrafts, and it held the 747 within its grasp like a toy.

  Later, back in Australia, Rita would learn about jet-stream winds, and about a phenomenon called Clear Air Turbulence, or CAT for short. In rare instances it could be extremely dangerous to aircraft, and once, over Japan in the 1960s, it had torn an airliner completely apart, killing all on board. Rita’s own flight, while not as bad as that, would be one of the worst recorded, with several serious injuries to passengers. An investigation into the incident would report that the cause was a freakishly strong offshoot of the Northwest Pacific Jet Stream that had pushed unusually far south, catching the Qantas flight unawares.

  But Rita knew none of that now. She saw only a titanic, howling monster in the sky, and knew that it was intent on destroying the plane. That it would destroy the plane, unless—

  ‘I have to stop this!’ she gasped.

  Anne was a rigid shape at her side, hands clutched to the armrests. ‘What?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Anne’s eyes, already wide with shock, blazed with disbelief. ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘No.’ Then Rita was fumbling at the release catch of her seat belt as the engines screamed in futility against the ceaseless buffeting.

  Anne’s fingers clutched at Rita’s, her shout over the noise both terrified and furious. ‘Are you crazy? It’s just turbulence, Rita! It’s bad, but it’s just fucking turbulence! It’s nothing to do with you! There’s nothing out there! You’re just drunk and off your head on the fucking coke!’

  Rita slapped her hands away. Anne was a fool. Anne couldn’t see through the solid walls of the plane like Rita could. Anne couldn’t see the invisible talons that were wrapped gleefully about the jet and which were slamming and slamming it, each time the wings flexing almost to the snapping point.

  She was free of the belt and up at last. Anne screamed, ‘For Christ’s sake, sit down!’ But Rita ignored her, went reeling down the aisle as the floor lurched and rolled underfoot. At any moment she might be thrown against the ceiling, she knew, but she felt better now that she was taking action. All she needed first was to find something sharp.

  She came to the galley. Two trolleys had broken free and many of the shelves had popped open, strewing all manner of food and cutlery across the floor, the mess shifting with every thud and heave of the plane. Two flight attendants, strapped into their jump seats, goggled at her.

  ‘Ma’am,’ cried one, ‘you have to return to your seat; you can’t be in here!’

  She ignored them too, searching through the chaos for what she needed. But none of the knives looked sharp enough. She needed … oh good lord, what a fool she was; she didn’t need a knife. And she bent to pluck up the broken stem of a wine glass.

  The attendant who had warned her had unbuckled and risen, approaching Rita sternly. ‘Ma’am,’ she said, ‘I really have to insist—’

  Rita sliced at her casually with the glass stem, cutting a line through the woman’s blouse and across the top of her shoulder. ‘I’m trying to help, you stupid cunt,’ she said. ‘Get away from me.’

  The woman went flailing back, just as the plane corkscrewed again, and Rita momentarily danced midair before landing amazingly upright. The second attendant, horror stricken, was rising now too, but Rita turned away. She needed a moment alone, and there was only the one place—she ducked into the bathroom once more, and locked the door.

  A lustration, that was their only hope, the only way to save the plane. The pilots would not be able to do it; that was evident. She could still see through the walls; she could still see the monster that gripped them, spanning the entire sky. The jet was diving again, engines shrieking over the human screams from the passengers, the pilots trying to get below the turbulence, but the monster was holding them aloft almost effortlessly, the winds howling upwards as the plane strove to go down.

  Rita tore off her waistcoat and top and hauled down her skirt, baring herself to the titan in the sky as she had bared herself to a hundred different presences at a hundred different lustrations. Wedging her legs between the toilet and the wall for stability, she thrust her awareness out, offering her mind, open and defenceless, to the thing out in the air.

  Hatred poured into her, unreasoning, boundless hatred, unlike any she had experienced before. This was nothing like communing with an ancient presence from the land. This beast would live and die within hours; its every passion was fierce and new, and though it knew nothing of humanity, still it hated this artificial thing that had trespassed in the sky, and hated too the pinprick annoyance of the human minds that rode within the device. It wanted only to crush the aircraft and extinguish the life within it.

  But there was something else it might accept. Something else presences always accepted.

  With practised ease, even despite the bucking of the bathroom about her, Rita slashed a cut across her left breast, parallel to a mass of other hairline scars drawn there. (They were hardly noticeable at a glance, she had always been careful to not cut too deep. And anyway, Anne had once found them erotic, had loved the feel of them under her tongue.)

  Then, knowing that one cut would not be enough (not this time) Rita shifted the glass to her left hand and sliced her right breast the same way, offering up twice the blood to the monster.

  The hatred faltered, roared back, faltered again, unsure—she had the thing’s attention now. Its inhuman thought had recognised that this human was different, that this human mind was different, that she understood the crime of their trespass here in the high air, and was ready to atone for it, to beg forgiveness, to pay a price in her own flesh …

  Slam. The plane wrenched savagely sideways, tipped, and seemed to Rita to roll completely over, for she felt she was bouncing across the bathroom ceiling. But that was surely impossible, a 747 couldn’t perform barrel rolls like a stunt plane. Then she was in a dishevelled heap on the floor, and the monster was roaring its malice outside, unsated.

 
; Not enough, she realised, she had not offered enough. Without further thought, she slashed two cuts at her bare thighs, and let more blood flow. There, she flung skywards, though not with actual words, there, I offer more than I’ve offered any presence ever before. I pay the price for this plane and all these people!

  Rita did not know, even now, after so many lustrations (and this in fact would be her last) why it was that presences so respected the shedding of blood. They were not organic themselves, did not bleed or suffer physical pain, and yet when her special mind made contact with them, and when she offered her own pain in exchange for their anger at humanity’s trespassing, they accepted the coin.

  Would this monster do the same? Rita waited, not daring to breathe. The 747 continued to lurch and heave, and there was a labouring, off-tune tone to the engines now, as if they had been damaged. But the massive hammer blows had ceased.

  Yes. The monster remained in the sky, but it was relenting, relenting, allowing the 747 to skim lower and lower, the vibrations smoothing out until … Until, thank god, it was dropping clear into the empty air beneath the great twisting stream of wind.

  They were free.

  Rita at last became aware of another hammering, so much softer than the din of the monster that it had been inaudible until now: the pounding of fists on the bathroom door.

  ‘Ma’am, ma’am!’

  Then came a scrabbling sound around the hinges. Wasn’t there some way that attendants could remove bathroom doors in emergencies? Laughing, Rita rose and threw the latch back, shoved the door open. The two attendants gave way. Why, they were scared of her! Rita waved the glass stem lightly. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay now. I stopped it.’ They backed away further still, aghast. Rita had no idea why. She walked out, turned to face the rest of the cabin. ‘It’s all right,’ she told everyone. ‘We’ll be just fine now.’

  Pale faces stared at her in horror, not least of all Anne’s, who had risen and was in the aisle, her hand to her mouth.

  Puzzled, Rita glanced down at herself. Oh, of course, she was naked, and there was blood everywhere. But silly people, that was the point; that was how she had done it. Anne knew. Rita lifted the bloody glass stem once more and pointed. ‘You don’t have to worry. She can expl—’

  Which was when a large athletic-looking man—Rita seemed to recognise him and thought he might be a famous sports star of some sort—rose from his seat and, with apparent satisfaction, drove his elbow into Rita’s temple, knocking her out cold.

  ▲

  She would wonder, ever after, if the little bag of coke had been spiked with something. After all, the delivery boy on the night of the party had mentioned something about it having an extra kick.

  Well, it had been a kick all right.

  By the time Rita woke, mildly concussed from the blow to her head, she was trussed up in her seat, with her ankles and wrists bound with plastic ties, and the 747, its engines still sounding wrong, the aisles still a mess, was descending for an emergency landing in LA. At the first stirring of consciousness she had actually felt a wave of relief, for my, what an awful dream she’d had. But of course, on waking properly, she found herself bound and bloody, and Anne silent at her side, face tear-stained, and oh god, it was real …

  Upon landing, everyone else—even the injured—was held in place until transit authorities could board the plane and escort Rita off under armed guard, Anne trailing behind. Then followed forty-eight hours of misery. She was questioned by various uniformed men, then sent to doctors who took samples of her blood and discovered high levels of alcohol and cocaine, then sent back to the uniforms who informed her of the denial of her visa, and who finally stashed her in a holding cell to await the first flight that could be found to take her back to Australia.

  It could have been worse, Rita knew. The attendant she had slashed with the wine glass could have pressed assault charges. Her acts of mayhem in the air could have been construed as terrorism. She could have been held indefinitely in LA to face the nightmare of the US justice system. Being sent home was the very best she could hope for, and she owed that to the turbulence. It had been pretty frightening, everyone agreed, and so her actions were mostly put down to a hysterical panic attack.

  In the end, the authorities even accepted that she could not possibly get on a plane again after what had happened, and so allowed her to book passage home on a ship instead. Not that the voyage home was any picnic, either. It was its own slow-moving nightmare. And not that anything was going to fix things now between Rita and Anne.

  ‘It’s over,’ Anne told her when they docked in Australia. ‘Unless you check into rehab. I think it’s over anyway, but I won’t even speak to you again until you’re off all this shit. Goodbye.’

  Rita checked herself into rehab, but Anne was quite right, it was over anyway.

  Everything was over.

  For one, after just a week of total sobriety in the facility, Rita realised that her special senses had vanished. She thought at first that maybe, after the horror flight and the terrible voyage, they were just burned out, that they would return in time. But nothing came. Of course, there were no presences to be found around a suburban rehab clinic anyway, but still, she had always been able to pick up at least an echo from the landscape, no matter where she was.

  Now, there was only dead air.

  That was frightening. What was more frightening was the realisation—as she went through her drug history with her counsellor—that of all her lustrations of the last three or four years, of all her communions with presences in the wild, not one of them, not one, had been performed without the influence of either LSD or coke.

  In truth, she could not even remember the last time she had sensed a presence at all without the aid of a hallucinogen or a stimulant. God, even back in her late teens she had been on pot most of the time. It wouldn’t be since she was sixteen maybe, since the very beginning, that she had sensed a presence while utterly sober and straight.

  But in that case …

  Was it possible? Had it all been because of the drugs? Had it all been just one long mind-fucked delusion? Those early experiences, no, she hadn’t taken any substances then—but Christ, she had been naturally screwed up in those days, a teenager in the midst of god knows what hormonal chaos, her mother dead in horrible circumstances, her emotions a train wreck. So had even her first experience been a delusion as well, a way of coping with the trauma?

  Was it all bullshit?

  Two months later, when she checked out of the clinic on a bright sunlit morning, clean and sane and subdued, she went to find out.

  She drove up to the Dandenong Ranges and to the town of Olinda. From there she walked a mile or so into the Ranges national park. At a certain place, unmarked by any sign, she left the graded track and its steady stream of hikers and struck up into a rainforest gully, daring the snakes and leeches.

  And there, where it had always been, she found the little rocky glen that she had discovered years ago, led there by her newly awakened senses. It was a secret corner of the hills, rarely troubled by humans, where a small stream trickled over a sheer ledge. Behind the trickle was a neatly shaped cave, moss-lined and as cosy as a small room. There was even a platform within that was perfect as a bench.

  Rita sat there now, listening as hard as she might with her mind. The presence that she had discovered here had never been a strong one. The glen was too modest a place, too minor its uniqueness, to be host to a greater awareness. But the little entity had always acknowledged her, every time she visited, and there was no reason it should have died away, so rarely did other minds ever intrude here.

  But she could not feel it now. The glen was lovely, the trickle of water calming, the solitude an aching pleasure after the clinic. But there was nothing more. No awareness, no presence. At which Rita could only conclude, there never had been.

  She let out a sigh.

  Time to start life over, then. Time to move on from this nonsense, this arrogance and self-r
ighteousness, this self-absorption. Time to move on from what tore her apart. Time to grow up.

  She walked back to her car.

  ▲

  It wasn’t that simple, of course. It was two very bumpy, lonely and difficult years before she sorted herself out enough even to enrol in her vet course.

  But that was the moment it started. And for the next decade, she was untroubled—at least, overtly—by any hint of the presences of her old life.

  Until, that was, Walter Richman summoned her to his awful house, and the Wheel fell.

  2

  TAKING STOCK

  The last of the avalanche cloud had dissipated and the setting sun had slipped behind a bank of cloud, dulling the great red face of the Wheel and dropping the temperature even further below freezing, by the time Rita and the other four, Richman, Kushal, Madelaine and Clara, finally left the Terrace and retreated to the warmth of the Conservatory.

  Inside, the silence rang hollow in Rita’s ears, her memory still overwhelmed by the thunder of the collapse and of the tsunami—and by the cries, real or imagined, of the dying down below.

  Richman stared appraisingly at the ceiling and walls. ‘The lights are on again, so I’m assuming Kennedy has got the generators running.’ In explanation to Rita, he added, ‘There’s an emergency back-up system here in the Observatory, enough to run the lights and the heating for weeks. So we don’t have to worry about freezing just yet.’

  Rita wasn’t worried about freezing, her only thought was to get down off this exposed mountaintop as soon as possible. ‘What about the lift?’

  The billionaire shook his head. ‘To run the main lift, or even the service elevator, you need the Power Station online. But anyway, until we know how things stand down at Base, we couldn’t use the lifts even if they were working. The shafts might be damaged by the quake, or even flooded down at the bottom. But I’m going to the Control Room right now to look into all that.’ He glanced to the others. ‘You can all come along, if you like. We’re in this together.’