The Shadow Girl

by John Larkin

  Back in my room, I grab a pair of tracksuit pants. I’ll wash my piss-soaked jeans later, when I get myself sorted. When I get away from this madhouse. I also grab another t-shirt. I remember it raining last night, absolutely bucketing down at one point, so my backpack and sleeping bag, sitting out there by the wheelie bins, will be soaked right through.

  Even though I’m here alone, I still tiptoe as I cross the landing into the bathroom. I’m too scared to take a shower. I wouldn’t be able to hear the garage door if Creepo came back unexpectedly. In the end I strip off my stinking clothes and give myself a good wash in the sink. My toothbrush has been symbolically removed from its place in their holder, so I use my fingers to give my teeth a good cleaning. It’s nice to have cool minty breath flowing in and out of my lungs again. Considering all the crap I’ve been through over the weekend, it’s nice to still be breathing.

  After I’ve finished in the bathroom, I toss my musty clothes behind the door to pick up later and then make my way across the landing and into Creepo and Serena’s room. The dragon’s lair. They have a full-length mirrored wardrobe running along one wall, and I know from previous explorations that Creepo’s safe is in the wardrobe. Before I get to that, however, I want to be able to protect myself against Creepo if he does suddenly turn up. I crawl across their unmade bed and slide open Creepo’s bedside drawer. There’s a bit of cash, which I help myself to, some watches and rings and a crucifix on a chain (ha!), a few car and 4WD magazines, and a gun with the silencer still attached. I’ve got no idea whether it’s loaded so I’m just going to assume it is. I lift it out of the drawer. It’s much heavier than I imagined a gun would be. I aim it at Creepo’s pillow and fantasise about shooting him in the head, though I could never shoot another living thing. Not even him.

  ‘Say your prayers, shower boy. Bang bang.’

  The next thing I know I’m lying on the bed and there’s a smoky smell all around the room and a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I sit up and reach over for the gun, which is also lying on the bed. I yelp as my fingers touch the barrel. I can’t believe what I’ve done. I hardly even squeezed the trigger. I examine Creepo’s pillow. There’s a perfectly round hole right through the middle of it. I turn it over, but the hole goes all the way through and into the mattress. Luckily Serena sleeps with two pillows so I grab her spare one and shove Creepo’s bullet-riddled one behind hers.

  I crawl back across the bed and open Serena’s drawer. Again there’s a bit of cash, which I leave alone. There are also some credit cards which I don’t. She has about five or six of them in a pile so I help myself to the one on the bottom. She’ll never miss it and I’ll only use it in an emergency. She also has a couple of dog-eared romance novels, which is kind of sad. Looking at the covers, I see she obviously fantasises about some swarthy Spanish dude with a ponytail galloping in on his stallion and sweeping her off her feet and carrying her back to his castle overlooking a vineyard. Instead she’s stuck with Creepo beginning each day by peeling off the sort of fart that would show up on the Richter Scale. Ah, the romance.

  I close Serena’s drawer and turn my attention to the wardrobe. I slide open Creepo’s side and am amazed by how orderly everything is. It’s actually a little disturbing. His shoes aren’t just placed neatly on their own rack, they’re in colour-coded order. His suits and immaculately ironed shirts (which he does himself because Serena and I didn’t do a good enough job) are all perfectly hung. And sitting in the corner is his safe. It’s not as big as the one you see in banks heist movies, but bigger than the ones that you get in hotel rooms. It has an electronic access pad on the front laid out like a huge calculator. I take a deep breath, say a silent prayer, and enter the Pizza Hut number[9][4][8][1][1][1][1][1]. Nothing but silence. Instead a bunch of dashes replace the numbers that I’ve entered – [-][-][-][-][-][-][-][-] – and I know that he’s changed the combination.

  I could scream. Does anything work out for me? One little break. That’s all I’m asking for. Then, while I’m busy mentally ranting, I notice that there are instructions just below the numeric pad. After you’ve entered the combination, you have to hit the # key. I enter the numbers again, more slowly this time, and then I press #. There’s an electronic tinkling noise, followed by the sound of sliding metal and this time[-][-][O][P][E][N][-][-][-] comes up. I pull the door towards me and peer inside.

  My jaw drops open when I see how much money Creepo’s got piled in there. It’s neat too. Just like his clothes. There are rubber bands around each bundle, just like you’d see in a bank robbery, and I wonder if perhaps that’s where he gets his cash from. Maybe Creepo’s an armed robber and his construction job is just a front. Although the cash bricks are neatly stacked, it’s not so neat that he wouldn’t miss a couple of them. I grab two, change my mind and decide that he wouldn’t miss three, then I opt instead for eight, nine, ten and twelve, before realising that I am leaving a bit of a hole and revise my total back down to four. I toss them behind me onto the bed and then turn my attention to the small drawer that’s in the safe. It contains a bunch of documents but also some passports: Creepo’s, Serena’s, mine and my parents’. So much for them going back to live in the old country. There are also some books tied up with an elastic band. I pull them out and examine them. They’re my mum’s diaries. I’m speechless. Flicking through to the beginning I discover that they go all the way back to high school. Maybe she didn’t have anyone to talk to so she confided in her diary. God knows why Creepo kept them. Maybe there’s something in here about him. Something incriminating. Well they’re mine now.

  I toy with the idea of cleaning out the safe entirely. Maybe giving some money to charity or sending some over to Médecins Sans Frontières or to a hospital with a note saying that it’s for them to use to invent a vaccine for the African eye-eating worm. But in the end I decide against it. If I clean out the safe Creepo will double his efforts to track me down. Maybe he’ll call in ‘the boys’ or hire a private detective or even a hit man. But he won’t miss a couple of bricks of money or my passport or Mum’s diaries, surely. Not for a while at least. Unfortunately I’ve left enough evidence that I’ve been in the house, though he kind of suspects that already. There’s no way he’ll believe that I’ve managed to crack open his safe, though. And he’ll only realise it if he looks for my passport or knows exactly how much money he’s got in here.

  I close the safe and hit the LOCK button. Inside, the steel bar slides across reassuringly. I’m in the clear.

  Or at least, I am until I hear the garage door clunk open.

  I climb out of the wardrobe and grab the money and Creepo’s gun. I’m just about to race into my room and crawl back under my bed when I hear the door between the kitchen and the garage opening and Serena’s inane laughter clattering up the stairs. I was so focused on what I was doing, I hadn’t heard the garage doors when they opened, just when they closed. And now there isn’t time to clamber back into my hidey-hole. Instead I crawl into the wardrobe and slide the door behind me. If Creepo is with her and he’s got some cash to stash in his safe, I’m dead. I look down at Creepo’s gun in my hands. Or he is.

  They’re coming up the stairs now. The eighth step almost shatters on impact with the two of them. What are they doing home? Creepo went to work and Serena went out for coffee with the girls.

  ‘See you soon,’ chirps Serena in a sing-song voice.

  Then I hear a slapping sound – a sort of hand smacking a bottom sound, there’s no other way of putting it – followed by more fits of giggling from Serena. She sounds like a cockatoo dangling upside down on powerlines.

  And then Serena’s in the bedroom. I can see through the small gap in the wardrobe doors that she’s undressing. She’s going back to bed. She quickly pulls off her tracksuit pants, jumper and t-shirt. I have to avert my eyes as she peels off her bra and undies. There are just certain sights that I do not wish to see, including Serena’s boobs flapping ab
out her like a couple of semi-deflated watermelons.

  She said that she’d see him soon. That must mean Creepo is going back to bed too. With her. Oh no! They must be going to . . . I hope the sound of my vomiting doesn’t give me away.

  ‘Hurry up,’ yells Serena. ‘Get your hairy butt in here.’ She practically explodes with laughter at this. Her sense of humour isn’t all that brilliant. She thinks Funniest Home Videos is the height of hilarity.

  It finally dawns on me that it’s not Creepo in the bathroom. It’s someone else. That this is her ‘coffee with the girls’.

  The guy, whoever he is, prowls into the bedroom like he’s hunting wabbits.

  ‘Where’s my little kitten?’

  I don’t know who he is but he could clearly benefit from a visit to the zoo. Of all the animals that Serena could be compared with, a kitten doesn’t exactly leap to mind.

  ‘Where’s my little kitten,’ he says again, just to avoid any confusion. ‘I’m going to make her purr.’

  This makes Serena shriek with excitement.

  Mercifully the guy is still fully dressed, though as he removes his shirt I have to do a double take. He’s so hairy it looks like he’s growing his own black singlet. His back has hair. His stomach has hair. His shoulders have hair. His neck has hair. His hair has hair. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t have hair is his head – well, not much. It’s as if he’s used up his entire allotment on the rest of his body. To disguise this, he’s gone for one of those comb-overs, which would only fool you if you were partially blind and irredeemably stupid.

  Serena yearns for a Spanish dude to come galloping in and scoop her off her feet. Instead she’s stuck with some sort of ape creature scampering across the room practically on all fours. I’m forced to avert my eyes again as the ape creature undoes his pants and slips them off.

  Fortunately, when I pluck up the courage to open my eyes again they’ve covered themselves with a sheet.

  They’ve only just started smooching when the sound of doof doof music comes blasting along the street.

  No. It can’t be. Not the beast. Not Creepo.

  But then it screeches to a stop in the driveway, the horn blaring.

  ‘Oh my God!’ yells Serena, leaping out of bed like a frog on a barbecue.

  ‘What?’ replies the ape creature, his mind clearly elsewhere.

  Serena pulls back the curtains and peers through the blinds. Unfortunately there’s a window beam in her line of sight, so she’s forced to bend over to see who it is, which exaggerates the size of her butt. And believe me, Serena has more than her fair share of butt. The ape creature reaches over and gives her a playful slap, sending out ripples of wobbling flesh. I don’t think he’s aware of how much trouble he’s in.

  Compared to those two, I feel rather safe in the wardrobe.

  ‘Oh my God, it is!’ screeches Serena. ‘It’s Tony.’

  ‘What?’ replies the ape creature, finally realising the gravity of the situation. He throws back the sheet. I quickly look away again. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Quick,’ gasps Serena. ‘Hide.’

  ‘Where?’ pleads the ape creature, gathering up his clothes. ‘In the wardrobe?’

  Oh no.

  ‘No,’ replies Serena and I could almost kiss her. ‘Next door. In the spare room. Her room.’

  ‘Serena!’ calls Creepo, bursting in downstairs.

  The ape creature has only just closed my bedroom door when I hear Creepo bounding and hobbling up the stairs two at a time.

  Meanwhile, Serena has crawled back into bed and gathered the bedclothes around her.

  ‘What are you still doing in bed, you lazy cow?’ gasps Creepo from the landing.

  Serena smacks her lips together, pretending to have just woken up. ‘What time is it?’ It’s not exactly an Academy Award-winning performance but it’s enough to fool Creepo.

  ‘Forget about the time, we have to go.’

  ‘Where?’

  Despite the fact she has a psycho in one room and her lover in the next, Serena is amazingly calm. I might have to rethink the whole Academy Award thing.

  ‘Up the coast. Quick, get ready.’

  ‘What? Why? Make me a coffee,’ orders Serena. ‘I’m not going anywhere without a coffee.’

  She doesn’t give a rat’s about the coffee. She’s just trying to get rid of Creepo so that he won’t see she’s in the nude and start asking questions, the answers to which he probably won’t like. And will doubtless involve lots of yelling, lots of things being thrown, lots of sharp objects, lots of trips to the forest.

  ‘And why are we going up the coast?’ asks Serena, throwing in a fake yawn and stretch and barely managing to keep her boobs covered.

  ‘Because she’s up there,’ replies Creepo. ‘One of the boys spotted her on Saturday. Sitting on the beach, eating fish and chips. He thought it was strange that we weren’t with her. Of course, I didn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘Why would she go up the coast?’

  ‘She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, obviously.’

  ‘Can’t we just leave her?’ Thank you, Saint Serena. ‘She hasn’t gone to the cops yet, or we would have heard something from your mate.’

  ‘We can’t risk it. If she does we could both be in jail for a long time, probably life, you know that.’

  ‘Okay. But if we find her, promise you’ll make it quick.’

  Saint Serena’s halo slips slightly.

  ‘Fine,’ says Creepo. ‘Come on. We’ve got to go.’

  ‘Coffee first.’

  ‘Okay, but it’s only going to be instant.’

  When Creepo heads back down the stairs to the kitchen, Serena clambers out of bed and throws on the same clothes that she went to collect the ape creature in. Then she goes into the bathroom and cleans her teeth. She is one cool cookie.

  ‘Serena!’ yells Creepo. ‘C’mon.’

  ‘Coming!’ snaps Serena, flinging open the bathroom door and clomping downstairs.

  And with that they’re gone. Creepo must have made her a coffee to go in a thermos, because two minutes after she emerges from the bathroom I hear the guttural growl of the beast backing out the driveway and heading up the coast. Up the coast looking for me. Leaving me alone in the house with a naked ape creature. It’s probably not my worst day on the streets so far, but it’s definitely the weirdest.

  A couple of minutes later I hear my bedroom door opening and the creak of the eighth step as the ape creature slinks back to his jungle.

  I decide to give him twenty minutes just to be on the safe side. When that’s up, I gather Creepo’s gun and my cash, my piss-soaked clothes and Bleak House from behind the bathroom door and head off down the stairs.

  I turn the corner into the kitchen, only to find the ape creature staring straight at me.

  ‘Ah. You must be the missing niece.’

  I’m so stunned that I almost drop the gun. I falter, then point it at him. The kettle is about to boil and he’s fiddling about with his mobile.

  ‘Oh, put that down,’ says the ape creature. ‘I’m no threat to you. Would you like a coffee?’ He’s very calm for someone who came within a whisker of dying.

  I lower the gun. It was getting heavy anyway. ‘Hot chocolate.’

  ‘This isn’t a café.’ Then he looks at me and smiles. ‘Then again, you have got a gun. A hot chocolate it is.’

  The ape creature takes the milk out of the fridge and scrounges around in the cupboard for a pan.

  ‘Do you speak?’ he asks as he pours the milk into the pan.

  ‘Probably too much.’

  ‘Serena told me you’d gone AWOL.’

  ‘Ay-wol?’

  ‘Absent without leave. It’s a military term. That’s pretty clever you run
ning away like that but hiding out in the house.’

  ‘I’m not. I only came back yesterday to get some money from my piggybank but they came home.’

  He nods at my four bundles of cash. ‘It must have been bursting at the seams. Your piggybank, I mean.’

  ‘I borrowed some from . . .’ I trail off. ‘From him. It’s probably my parents’ anyway.’

  ‘Ah. A tragic accident.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ I glare at him. ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘Let’s just say that I assisted with clearing up the financial side of things.’

  ‘You’re a crook.’ I try to think of a better word but come up short.

  ‘I operate within the grey areas of the law certainly.’

  ‘So you know that my parents didn’t go back to live in the old country?’

  ‘I know that’s the official line.’

  ‘I don’t understand how that’s possible. Someone else must have sussed that something was wrong. What about their friends or my mum’s parents? They must have . . .’

  I trail off because he has a weird look in his eyes.

  ‘Your grandparents, your mother’s parents, were killed in an accident.’

  Although I didn’t really know them that well, it’s still a bit of a shock. No wonder Serena only took me to visit them once, right after my parents ‘disappeared’.

  ‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.’

  ‘I didn’t really see them much. They were a bit weird, to be honest. How did they die?’

  ‘House fire, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You mean he killed them too?’

  ‘The official verdict is that it was an accident. Apparently your grandfather was smoking in bed.’

  ‘He didn’t smoke.’

  ‘Well, he certainly did that night.’

  Although I don’t think the ape creature meant it to be funny, I can’t help but snort out a laugh. It dawns on him what he’s just said and he laughs with me.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’