by Cassie Hart
‘Water. Get water.’ She coughed the words out.
Will scrambled away, returning with a hose, water pouring from it, and she shoved it in her mouth, almost drowning herself with it. She let water flow into her mouth and out, wanting to dilute the pool of filth in front of her as much as eradicate the taste.
When she finally felt cleaner, a little, because she didn’t think she’d ever feel clean again, she dropped the hose into the puddle of black and looked at Will.
‘Help me?’
Wordlessly, he stood and pulled her to her feet, and then he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the house.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
WILL
A few days had passed; they’d managed to arrange a small funeral and Rose had been cremated. They’d added her ashes to the hole where Ernest’s skull had been re-interred. Jena had remained stoic through the whole thing, only letting down her façade once they were back at the farmhouse, once Pat and David had left, and only when she thought Will wasn’t watching.
But he had been. It was hard not to. The place seemed ridiculously quiet without Rose and Cade here, and Jena was keeping her distance for the most part. Not ready to talk about what had happened, or what would happen now.
Will felt like a loose end that needed wrapping up.
He had no reason to be here now, and yet he couldn’t seem to make himself leave. Besides, if he left, she might not eat. Well, not anything of substance. It was like she’d been bingeing on sweet things to try and drown out the taste of the thick, black crap that had come out of her body, after Cade ….
The jug finished boiling, and Will made coffee with lots of sugar and got the sweetest biscuits he could find from the cupboard.
He took the tray into the lounge and put it down on the coffee table. Jena was lying on the couch with a blanket pulled all the way up to her chin. She looked awful, the bags under her eyes so dark that he didn’t know how she was awake. But he’d heard her in the night, so he knew sleep wasn’t easy.
He wasn’t going to ask if she was okay, because he knew she wasn’t. What had happened …. Well, he didn’t have words for it; he just knew that it had twisted something in his gut and he kind of wished he’d never come here.
It had been one thing to have his suspicions confirmed, but to see the fallout like this? To witness Jena become something more than human, and see what she was capable of …. Or the birds. Though the birds seemed to be part of her now, and he didn’t know how to make sense of that.
To know that Cade had become possessed by something supernatural ….
And cremating Rose had been the final straw. His client, dead. He would never work as a carer again; he didn’t need that ruse any more. He had the truth. And now he needed to figure out what came next.
‘Here, drink this,’ he said, handing Jena a mug.
She pulled herself into a sitting position and grasped it with both hands, leaning into the steam to inhale. ‘God, that smells good.’ She took a sip, her eyes closing in pleasure. ‘You have no idea how good this tastes, after ….’
He didn’t say anything, and she took another sip, then lowered her mug and turned to him.
‘After absorbing the soul of some evil thing and puking it back out.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘Can you believe that happened? I mean, I was there, and I can’t.’
‘It’s a bit out there, yeah. Not … not what I expected? Not that I really know what I expected, looking back. Because, how can you? How can you have any idea until you know—’
‘It’s okay. Will. Shut up.’
‘Sorry.’ He didn’t normally babble, but these thoughts had been festering in his brain for days and now that he’d started to talk …. What had happened here had changed everything. The whole world was different now and he wasn’t sure how to look at it any more. ‘What are we going to do with … the rest of him?’ He didn’t want to say Cade’s name, though he couldn’t help thinking it. Right there at the end when he’d died, he had been Cade again; the thing inside him had jumped ship when death became imminent.
‘Soon,’ Jena said. ‘Not yet, but when I’m ready, we’ll take his remains to the swamp. I think that’s the best plan. We can … dig up the dirt in the barn and take it there too? I don’t know.’ Jena shook her head, and then drank some more. She wiggled her fingers at the packet of biscuits, and it was the most normal thing in the world, breaking the tension of the past hours, days.
He passed them over, then took one himself, as though they were just two old friends hanging out.
‘Sounds like a plan,’ he said. Would he have occasion to dispose of more bodies? Would he need to make more plans like this? ‘Jena. Are you going to be okay?’ There, he’d said it now.
She finished her biscuit and took another sip of coffee before she finally looked him in the eye. ‘I’m only okay because you’re here. I couldn’t have done any of this alone.’
‘I didn’t do anything, though, not really.’ That pang of guilt hit him again. He’d been useless when Cade was trying to kill them.
‘You helped me make a plan, you helped me be strong, and dude, you made me coffee and brought me biscuits.’ She smiled. ‘Seriously though, if you weren’t here, I’d still be in the barn, or curled around a bottle of rum, drowning my sorrows and getting ready to commit myself to the mental hospital or subject myself to police interrogation. I’m not … I’m not the most stable person in the world, and this?’ She shrugged, waving one hand in the air. ‘I’ve thought I’m crazy a few times since I got here. I seriously considered it to be the truth, but you were there, you saw what I saw. I’m not crazy, am I?’
‘Not crazy.’ Though maybe it was group hysteria. He had to question his own sanity too. ‘And thanks for the kind words.’ He toasted her with his mug, feeling stupid, and a little lightheaded.
Jena laughed, one of those deep belly laughs. It wasn’t something he’d ever seen her do before, and it was infectious. He was caught up in her mirth and it felt good to laugh after the last few days. So good. Even if he had no idea why they were laughing.
When the mood calmed, she looked at him more seriously. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I honestly don’t know. I … don’t feel like I understand the world any more and—’
‘Will you stay? With me?’ She bit the inside of her cheek, which flushed, and then she said, ‘I don’t mean as a couple. I just mean that we’ve seen the same things and maybe we can help make sense of the world for each other. I have this whole house ….’
He was nodding as she spoke, relief almost making him cry. He didn’t have to face the real world yet. He had time to recuperate. Time to find a new sense of normal. ‘And then, when we’re ready ….’ He was thinking about his mother. About how Jena’s family mystery had been solved but his wasn’t. Not quite. But he couldn’t say the words.
‘Then we’ll find out what happened to your mother. We’ll make sure that whatever possessed her won’t do it to someone else.’
Goosebumps rose along the skin of his arms and the hairs on his neck stood on end. He nodded again, but with less certainty this time. Did he really want to know? After this?
But then, could he stomach knowing that the necklace might do to someone else what it had done to his mother?
Jena reached out and put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s okay. We’ll wait till you’re ready, but as crappy as this whole thing has been? I think … I think maybe it was worth it. And I know, now. I really know what happened. Even if I don’t quite understand what I am.’
They sat there, the silence companionable as they finished their drinks and consumed the rest of the biscuits. Real food could wait, but he would make real food starting from tomorrow. When they weren’t hurting quite so much, when this wasn’t all so fresh.
Jena broke the silence. ‘I know Rose was looking after me, even if she went about it in a weird way. But she changed me too, Will. I’m never going to be able to go back to the way things were
. I think … we’ll stay here. Figure out the next step.’ She looked him in the eye, then there was a flash of intensity, of – was that excitement? ‘I told her I’d fight back against the darkness, and I think I have to. I think that’s the only thing I can do now.’
He couldn’t deny the tiny thrill of excitement that shot through his core. He could be part of this, part of something worthwhile.
‘But first I want to get the internet on at the house and get rid of anything that reminds me of what happened.’ She handed him her mug and slid back down the couch, stretching out and pulling the blanket up. ‘And the rest can wait until I’m not bruised any more. I think he broke my rib. God that hurts, but how the hell am I meant to explain that without telling someone that he came back?’
‘You fell down the stairs in the barn, the bulb blew, and you couldn’t see. That’s why we had to remove some of the dirt, too. Worried about glass getting stuck in the ground.’
Her eyes shot open and she grinned. ‘You’re so clever. Yup, you can definitely stick around.’
‘And we’ll find out what happened to Mum?’ He swallowed the lump in his throat, but the tightness in his chest didn’t budge.
‘When you’re ready.’
‘When I’m ready.’
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the coffee. I really need to sleep now. Is that okay?’
Her eyes were closed, a few strands of black hair falling over her face as she nestled into the cushion. She looked a lot like that little girl from all those years ago, the one on the television screen. Battered and bruised, with feathers in her hair and bags under her eyes.
Only now there was no tension in her face. She was free.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not be what it is without the encouragement, support and love of all my family and friends – you all mean the world to me, and I am so grateful to have such excellent people in my life. Particular shout-out to my parents for giving me the magical childhood I had, and to my brother for being my co-conspirator in the many games and adventures we had on the farm.
A huge thanks to my various writing groups, which, over the years, have helped me keep writing. Thank you for your belief in me, and in this story in particular.
Of course, it would not be what it is without the help of my amazing mentor Whiti Hereaka. She saw something special in my book, and she helped me develop it in ways that were faithful to my original vision, while making it about ten times better. At least.
To my Te Papa Tupu crew, who are some of the most amazing, inspiring, creative people I know. I can’t wait to see where that creativity takes you all.
To the Māori Literature Trust and Te Papa Tupu programme for all the opportunities it gave me to work on my writing and on this book in particular.
And finally, to HUIA for all the support on the path to publication. Thank you.
Thank you all.
