Butcherbird

by Cassie Hart

  But why kill them? And why burn the evidence?

  Unless it wasn’t him who burned the barn. He’d tried to get her, called out for her, at least she thought he had.

  Which meant …

  Missing husband. Dead daughter and son-in-law. Daughter who’d left and barely spoke to her. Rose. Rose was at the centre of all of this.

  Jena sat up and reached for the bottle of rum, drinking it straight. It burned as it went down, but she had a feeling she was going to need a little Dutch courage for what she thought she might do next.

  It was still pouring outside, but she could grab a jacket from by the door.

  Jena took another sip and headed for the stairs.

  ***

  The earth was soggy and she kept slipping around in the mucky hole. She hadn’t wanted to return to the barn so she’d found a rusty old shovel in the garden shed. Jena could probably have found a better tool in the barn, but she just couldn’t bring herself to go there.

  She’d risk tetanus any day over that.

  It was taking forever, and it was only because she’d brought the bottle with her that she kept at it. If she’d been sober, she would have stopped ages ago, because who the hell dug up a garden in the dark when it was pouring with rain. With a rusty shovel.

  But this was the oak tree, and she knew there had been roses here, which meant it was the one Rose had written about.

  And Jena was going to find out why it was important enough to make a note about that in her journal.

  The shovel hit something a little firmer than gravel. Jena tossed it to the side and dropped to her knees, scraping away the dirt with her hands. The pile was high now – how did Rose do this all those years ago without anyone noticing? Maybe she’d done it in the dead of night as well, while her children lay dreaming sweet dreams in their beds no more than a hundred metres from this spot.

  It was so dark that she couldn’t quite tell what she’d uncovered, so she wiped her hands on her jeans and pulled her phone out. She fumbled with unlocking it, but eventually managed to find the torch function and shone it down into the dirt.

  It was white; kind of stained but still white. Jena gripped the phone with her left hand and reached out with her right, swiping more of the muck away to reveal a long, thin bone.

  It might have been from a cow or a sheep ….

  She dug further along and found a toe bone. But all mammals had toes, she thought.

  Jena took another swig of rum, shoved the phone back in her pocket, and tunnelled in the other direction, her fingers skimming other hard bits in the dark until she came to something that felt round, large.

  Her fingers trembled as she reached for her phone again. She’d left the torch app on by accident and she shone it into the dirt.

  It was a skull. Its large eye socket glared at her.

  A human skull.

  With a bullet hole right through the forehead.

  Jena fell back, losing her grip on the phone as she landed on her butt. She cried out, but the torch was obscured by the dirt and she was blind, blind in a hole in the ground with a skull.

  Her grandmother had killed Jena’s grandfather and buried him in a rose garden.

  Her grandmother had killed Jena’s father, the man who had killed Jena’s mother and siblings. Her family were a pack of murderous assholes and maybe this was the legacy?

  No. No. She couldn’t breathe, she was suffocating in these thoughts and she could taste dirt in her mouth and she couldn’t see. She was blind. Always so blind. To think she’d wanted to know the truth.

  It had been better when she believed it was her fault.

  She struggled to get enough air in, and all the while her fingers searched frantically for the hard, plastic shell of the phone. Then she felt it, something sleek and smooth beneath her fingers. She let out a sigh of relief, the pressure moving from her chest as she picked up the phone and wiped the dirt off the tiny light.

  She was going to be okay. She could see again. Even if all she could focus on were those eye sockets in that white skull, that hole in the forehead. She reached out, her fingers digging it out of the mud. All this rain. All this mess. She picked up the skull and held it in front of the torch, and then she stood and reached for her rum.

  ‘Want a drink, Ernest, old chap? Cause I sure as fuck need one.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WILL

  It had taken a long time to settle Rose. She’d rambled for two hours or more about how insolent Jena was, about how she should have kept her here on the farm and disciplined her properly, taught her right. Will had no illusions; he suspected it would have been a rough upbringing, considering the way Rose had probably been brought up herself, so he was kind of glad for Jena that she’d got out when she had.

  Even if she didn’t see that as a good thing right now.

  By the time Will had managed to calm Rose and had got her to take her medication, he thought he’d probably find Jena passed out somewhere with an empty glass in her hand. A trip around all the rooms in the house – even the ones no one ever used – and he still hadn’t found her.

  Maybe the barn? But as soon as he pushed open the barn door and saw the rain coming down through the hole in the roof, he knew she wasn’t going to be there. He didn’t want to be there, either. Slamming the door, he turned. Taking cover under the small veranda, he switched off his torch and looked for signs of light.

  Nothing. Not a single thing. Cade’s car was gone, but that was because Cade had taken off earlier – between that and whatever had happened in the barn, it was no wonder Jena had written herself off tonight. No matter how she spoke to Rose, he didn’t think he could hold it against her, that desperate need to know the truth, even if it was bitter and ugly. It drove him as well. It was a thing they shared, even if he couldn’t tell her that.

  He let out a sigh, his shoulders sagging. He was just about to turn for the house when he spotted a sliver of light coming from near the oak tree.

  ‘Jena!’ he called, setting off at a jog. His foot slipped out from underneath him and the rain hazed his view, but he kept that slice of light fixed in the darkness and headed for it. ‘Jena!’

  He skidded to a halt at the top of a hole in the ground and flicked his light on, shining it down. How the hell had she managed this in the rain? The light skimmed over her body and it took a moment for his eyes to make sense of what he saw.

  Jena. A bottle. A rusty shovel.

  A skull.

  Her eyes were closed but her chest rose and fell.

  ‘Jena? Jena, are you awake?’ He looked around, trying to decide on the best course of action. Hell, there was no one else to help; he moved towards her, sliding into the muck at the bottom of the hole. It was cramped in that space with the two of them, but he knelt beside her and shook her arm. ‘Jena, you’ve got to wake up. It’s raining hard and you’ve made a pretty big hole. If you stay here all night, who knows, you might drown.’

  ‘Drowning is better than burning, I think,’ she mumbled. ‘Rather drown. Think it’s for the best.’

  He pushed the hair back from her face and grabbed the bottle, but she pulled on it, not letting it go.

  ‘Come on, you’ve had enough of this, and we need to move. You’re going to get sick and then you won’t have any energy to find out the truth.’

  ‘Know the truth,’ she said. She opened her eyes and looked at him then, sorrow drowning them. ‘Was her. She did it. She killed everyone. Bitch.’

  Will rocked back on his heels. ‘She? You mean Rose? Jena ….’

  ‘Of course, you don’t believe me, I wouldn’t believe me either. Want to talk to my grandfather?’

  ‘He left, no one knows where he is.’

  ‘He never left.’ Jena grinned and held up the skull, making her voice deep. ‘Hey, Will, nice to meet you. My name’s Ernest.’ Jena lost it then, her words dissolving into laughter, mad and cracking like lightning from her mouth.

  ‘Snap out of it,’ Will said. ‘You d
on’t know that, and even if it is, you can’t just sit here in the bottom of a hole all night.’

  ‘You’re getting paid to take care of Rose, not me. Bugger off.’ She waved her hand at him dismissively. ‘I’m comfy.’

  Will sighed, letting his head sink back against his shoulders, looking at the sky. If it would just stop raining that would be great. She was so drunk, and he didn’t want to think about the skull. Wasn’t ready to accept that Rose had played a darker role in whatever tragedy this family had experienced. He tried to pry the skull free from Jena’s grasp, but she threw the bottle at him, cradling the skull to her chest.

  He contemplated her for another minute, but it felt like forever. He dealt with sick people, not drunk people, but maybe there was some crossover.

  ‘Hey, do you want something hot to drink? How about a cup of coffee?’ he suggested.

  She looked at him. ‘Coffee? Sounds like a good plan. Can you bring it here? I’m so tired.’ She snuggled down further into the dirt and closed her eyes again.

  ‘I’ve got this amazing recipe, cinnamon and cream. I bet you’d really like it.’

  ‘Cream? I do like cream.’ Jena opened her eyes and looked at him; they shone in the torchlight, full of pain and grief and drunkenness.

  ‘You’re gonna have to come inside, though, it’s too wet out here for coffee.’

  She sighed. ‘Fine,’ she said, but she didn’t move.

  ‘Jena, come on. Give me your hand.’ He tucked his torch into his pocket, ignoring the strange patches of shadow it created, and held his hands out to her. She looked at him, at his hands, and then reached out and grabbed one, not letting go of the skull with her other.

  ‘You don’t want to leave that here?’ he asked.

  Jena shook her head, her whole body, and snatched her hand back. ‘No. This is evidence and I need it.’

  Will grimaced, imagining her placing the skull in the middle of the breakfast table with all of her usual grace and suggesting they set a place for Ernest. Still, her fingers were white from the grip she had on it; he’d just have to try and mitigate the damage tomorrow.

  ‘Okay, that’s cool. Come on, you and Ernest need to get out of the rain. Me too, I’m totally drenched.’

  ‘Yeah, you look like a drowned rat.’ Jena grinned. ‘Doesn’t he, Ernest?’

  He had to get them out of there, now, before he started talking to the skull too. He wanted to know how on earth she’d found it, why she’d been digging here in the first place, but those questions could wait until they were inside and dry.

  Jena grabbed his hand again and he moved up, trying to pull her with him. ‘Up you come,’ he said.

  She took a step and then slid back, pulling him with her, laughing hard.

  ‘Come on, you’re going to get us both sick, Jena, snap out of it. We have to get inside.’ The water in the hole was up to their ankles now.

  ‘Fine, fine. I’m going.’ She grabbed his hand, and this time she led, pulling him up with more force than he thought she could. She slipped a couple of times, bumping back into him and almost knocking him off his feet again, but they made it to the lip of the hole and crawled out, panting on the more solid ground at the top.

  ‘Lucky she can’t walk around on her own, because I do not want to explain this hole in the morning,’ Jena muttered.

  ‘But no problem explaining the skull?’ Will asked. He stood, pulling Jena to her feet and leading them back towards the house. The torch wouldn’t work now, too wet, but the porch light was on, a beacon guiding them home, the rain making it seem like it cast a halo. He stopped at the door, kicking off his boots and stripping off his socks. He pulled off Jena’s as well, then shook his head. They were going to make an awful mess, but there was no helping it.

  ‘Come on. We’ll get you upstairs and you can have a shower while I clean up.’

  ‘And make coffee?’ she asked. She leaned against the doorframe, looking exhausted.

  ‘Yes, while I make coffee,’ he said. Muttering under his breath, he added, ‘Sure as heck can’t let you fall asleep in this state.’

  ‘What?’ She stood up straight, then slumped against him. She was no help getting upstairs, and he hoped she wouldn’t fall asleep in the shower, because he was not going to pull her out of that.

  They made it to the bathroom and he sat her fully clothed in the bottom of the bathtub before setting a fresh towel on the bench.

  ‘Phone?’ he asked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I know you had your phone out there; the light was how I found you. It’s probably dead already, but if it takes a shower it definitely will be. If you give it to me, I’ll put it in rice.’

  Jena fumbled in her pocket with one hand, and when she couldn’t manage it, she set the skull down at her feet and stretched her leg out. The phone finally came free and she handed it over with a frown. ‘I wasn’t very smart tonight.’

  ‘I think you were probably just very drunk. Smart doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘If I was smart, I wouldn’t be drunk.’ She pouted, but it wasn’t put on; she seemed genuinely upset with herself. ‘I got mad at Cade, and Rose and you. Did I get mad at you? I’m sure I did.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ll get over it. We all will. They don’t know what happened today—’

  ‘And they won’t. Not till I’m ready. Got it?’ She fixed her stare on him, the drunken haze completely gone.

  ‘Got it. Now, get clean, find some warm clothes. I’ll see you downstairs.’ He stood up. She closed her eyes again and he couldn’t help but feel like protecting her. ‘Are you going to be okay?’ he asked, his voice softer now.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, though she shrugged. ‘Just another day in the life of Jena. Go make me coffee.’

  ‘Got it.’ He turned the shower on, the water streaming out and splashing at her feet. Once the temperature felt about right, he left the room and shut the door behind him.

  Now it was his turn to try and get clean.

  ***

  He’d resorted to a bucket of water in the laundry. It wasn’t classy or easy, but it got the job done. He could get properly washed off after he’d given Jena coffee, water and pre-emptive painkillers. She was going to need them.

  He was making coffee when she entered the kitchen. Her head was bowed and she looked up at him with a sheepish smile.

  ‘Thanks for rescuing me from the hole. Ernest says thanks too.’ She held up the skull; it had been cleaned as well, and she set it on the bench between them.

  Inside, out of the rain, his immediate worries for Jena gone, he could fully address what this might mean.

  He slid a mug of coffee towards Jena. ‘You really think that’s your grandfather’s?’

  She placed a book on the counter and moved it towards him, before picking up the mug with both hands, lifting it to her nose and inhaling deeply.

  ‘Holy shit that smells amazing.’ She took a sip. ‘It tastes amazing too. You’ve got to share the recipe.’

  ‘Jena,’ Will said. ‘Do you really think that’s Ernest’s skull?’

  Her eyes flashed up at him, deep and brown, full of unspoken depths. ‘I know it is. Look in the journal. I bookmarked the page.’

  He reached for it, running his fingers over the cover before opening it to the mark.

  ‘Nineteen sixty-six. That was the year my grandfather walked out, allegedly,’ Jena said. She was watching him carefully over the lip of her mug.

  ‘Had to dig up the patch of garden under the oak tree. Have planted roses. They were always Ernest’s favourite,’ he read. ‘It looks like the other entries on the page.’

  ‘Except they all have more relevance than that. Why note that she planted roses? Why say that they were his favourites? It has nothing to do with farm life, the seasons, the vegetable crops, the animals, or other business transactions. It’s different. It’s when she killed him and buried him in the garden.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Will said. He shut the book and gripped the counter. ‘You�
�re saying that Ernest never left the property. That for some reason we have no idea about, Rose killed him and buried him in the garden?’

  She was saying that she thought her grandmother was a killer. But did it even matter now? She wasn’t long for this world; she couldn’t do anything to them. Could she?

  ‘That’s not all I’m saying. I think ….’ Jena let out a long sigh. ‘I’m pretty sure that she was the one who set the barn on fire.’

  ‘Whoa. Hang on. Hang on.’ He took a step back from the counter and paced the length of the kitchen, trying to realign all his theories about what had happened here with this suggestion, then spun back to face her. ‘That’s a huge leap. Massive. It’s one thing to say she killed her husband, but the others?’

  Jena took a sip of her coffee. And then another. She seemed still, calm, despite the things she was saying. ‘You remember when we were in the barn,’ she said, finally looking at him. ‘I don’t know what you saw, but I was taken back to that night. I could remember … more. I realised more. I’m convinced now that my father killed my family. He would have killed me too.’ She waited until he was looking at her before she said, ‘But it wasn’t him who burned the barn down.’

  She paused, taking another sip. Will walked back to his spot across from her and gripped his mug, needing the warmth of the coffee to stop the slight tremble in his body. He waited for her to continue, not wanting to interrupt.

  ‘I needed to pee,’ she said, as though it was a confession she’d never told anyone. ‘When he went to get Mandy, I snuck out of the barn to find a bush. I thought Mama was wearing a big red scarf, but I think … I think that was just easier than knowing ….’ Her voice hitched and she let out a sob. ‘He killed them.’

  ‘Jena,’ he said, but then stopped. He wanted to comfort her, say that she couldn’t know for sure, that memory was a strange thing, that time and distance shifted the texture and context of situations – that she was drunk – but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to brush this under the rug, didn’t want her to stop talking. Besides, it hadn’t been just a memory – something else had happened in the barn and he had the proof. ‘That’s a really big thing to have realised. I can’t imagine what it must be like to know that now.’