In the Clearing

by J. P. Pomare

  He smiles broadly. ‘I have been head of psychology at an Ivy League college and spent seven years travelling the world, studying anthropology. I revived some of the more contested debates regarding phrenology and the hereditability of intelligence. Then I began to shift my focus towards higher consciousness.’ He adjusts his hat and turns to fix an adoring gaze on Adrienne, standing at the edge of the stage. ‘I meditated for two years in a cave in the Himalayas and have met many spiritual leaders. Then I met Adrienne. We all have a story. For some she has cured your illness. Others she may have rescued from dark and damaging relationships. One thing we all know is this: Adrienne understands us better than we understand ourselves. She can tap into the wisdom of the divine. She will usher in the new age. We must always protect the Queen.’ The crowd murmurs. ‘We must be one and keep going, despite what comes our way. Despite the evil forces on this planet conspiring against her. She is the head and we are the body.’

  When Adrienne takes the stage, the crowd explodes with cheering and whistles. It goes on for so long I begin to think it won’t stop. Then Adrienne raises both her hands and all the sound drains from the room. That is our cue. We make our way to the edge of the stage and stand in two rows, girls and boys, shortest to tallest. She gazes out at the people gathered, her blue eyes intent. She is so beautiful, so perfect in every way.

  ‘My family,’ she begins, ‘tonight we celebrate, but we also plan. What is mine, this gift, it is yours too. I am simply God’s tool, a beacon for him to communicate his wisdom with you. We have no use for our worldly possessions when the new age comes about.’ She pauses, looking towards us children. ‘So we need to combine our resources. Give everything over to me and I will make sure that you can live without fear, that you can all walk tall and proud, knowing you are part of something bigger than this world. We have eleven of the twelve now. We are just one child away.’

  ‘My family.’ Her head tilts to one side, a smile spills across her lips. ‘And now: where is our newest child, the eleventh?’

  The door at the back of the room swings inwards and Asha steps into the hall. She seems different. Her hair is cut into a bob like ours but her eyes are faded, as if someone has sucked her personality out of her head. She stumbles forwards into the room.

  ‘Asha,’ Adrienne says.

  The crowd parts to clear a path for her.

  ‘Come here, sweetie.’ Adrienne crouches and beckons to the girl. ‘Come to Mother.’

  Asha walks towards her, ushered along by the hands of the crowd.

  ‘She’s a little shy,’ Adrienne says, as palms push Asha up the steps to the stage.

  The girl stumbles into Adrienne’s arms then begins to push away, but Adrienne holds tight. Her smile slips for just a moment. An awkward laugh rolls through the crowd.

  Standing at the back of the room, I see Adam. He is the only person who doesn’t smile. His arms are folded across his chest. Adrienne and Asha step down from the stage and I hold Asha against me.

  The next woman to take the stage describes how Adrienne contacted her out of the blue and warned her to abandon a holiday she had planned in Barcelona. She didn’t know why, but she listened; she cancelled her plans, and the plane she was scheduled to fly on disappeared somewhere in the Pacific. After a few more have shared their stories, Adrienne moves about the room, touching people gently on the forehead. Their bodies all tremble, they catch their breath, they feel her power.

  Adrienne ascends the stage once more. ‘Now, we have one last matter to deal with,’ she says. ‘It pains me to bring you this news, but we have a defector in our midst.’

  The room stills, grows tense, a mood of anger permeating.

  ‘Someone in this room has turned against us. One person in this room is a traitor and has defiled one of our children.’ I can sense movement towards the back of the hall. ‘He exposed himself to her in the vilest manner.’ Adrienne starts to chant now. ‘Protect the Queen, be one, keep going …’

  As the chant rises up, someone is dragged forwards. It is Jermaine Boethe.

  ‘Bring that man to me.’

  All the people gathered handle him, shoving him. A leaf on an irresistible current.

  PROTECT THE QUEEN, BE ONE, KEEP GOING …

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘No! What is this?’

  That’s when I notice Tamsin carrying the axe towards the stage and Indigo beside her carrying the chopping block.

  PROTECT THE QUEEN, BE ONE, KEEP GOING …

  They wrangle him to the stage and release him at Adrienne’s feet. She looks down upon him as a man wraps a rag around his mouth and pulls it back until it rips between his lips. He tries to rise again but he can’t as a boot presses his spine.

  Anton heaves the scarred chopping block on the stage beside Jermaine Boethe and Adrienne places my sketch on it.

  She turns to me. ‘Take the axe, Amy.’

  I hesitate.

  ‘NOW!’

  I step forwards and pick it up. My breathing is thick and fast. ‘Crush his fingers.’

  Jermaine Boethe begins to struggle. I can hear him whimpering through the gag.

  ‘I …’

  ‘You will do as you are told. Do it with the blunt side of the axe. If you refuse, your brother will do it and he will use the sharp side.’

  I look down at the fingers curling into a fist to protect themselves. A man is holding his arm in place by the wrist.

  PROTECT THE QUEEN, BE ONE, KEEP GOING …

  I think about the lustful look in the art teacher’s eyes as I sketched, the way his body bucked as he touched himself. I knew it was wrong at the time, I knew he was a bad man. The axe feels good now, I feel the power of it. I draw it back, raising it up over my shoulder. I look over the heads of the crowd as my mother urges me on. I meet Adam’s eyes where he stands near the door and for the first time I see fear, real fear. It feels good. The power. Energy surges. I smile. Then, with all my strength, I bring it down.

  PROTECT THE QUEEN, BE ONE, KEEP GOING …

  FREYA

  Twenty hours to go

  I CHOKE THE steering wheel in my fists. I saw the way Wayne looked at Billy; if he doesn’t know the entire truth, he at least suspects it.

  Despite being younger than me, when we met Wayne stood half a foot taller and already had thick stubble. We were at the gym. I was undergoing physiotherapy and when I was struggling to add iron plates to the leg press machine Wayne came over and helped me. From then on, whenever I was struggling with something at the gym, I asked Wayne for help. That’s how it started: he was my own personal trainer. I saw the spider web tattoo on the back of his hand, the muscles bulging beneath his t-shirt, and thought he was older than he was.

  ‘You’re different,’ he said on our first date.

  A few dates later, I realised that dating someone made me normal. Normal girls had boyfriends, normal girls felt attracted to other people. It was another way for me to fit in. I felt protective of him. I felt compelled to spend more time with him. He was my first – and, in truth, my only – boyfriend.

  I still lived in the flat Mum owned in Carlton near the city when Wayne began staying over, slowly moving himself in. I was working at one of Mum’s friend’s galleries near the university. I didn’t need the money, but I needed the normal. The routine. I spent my days meeting other artists and art enthusiasts, and I was painting more and more, up all night sitting before the canvas. Wayne only worked Friday and Saturday nights.

  Trust is a precious flower. Squeeze it a little and it wilts. Pick it and study it beneath a microscope and it will die. Or, like Wayne, you can just crush it beneath your boot. I would only break someone’s trust if it was completely necessary. You draw attention to yourself by being untrustworthy. People watch you with a critical eye and they talk about you.

  When my trust in Wayne died – after too many unexplained absences, too many marks and bruises on his body that he couldn’t account for convincingly – I decided to follow him. I sat in my car by the side of
the road near his house for several Friday nights in a row, until one night I saw him coming.

  The Datsun roared along in a yellow streak. I flicked my lights on and carefully merged into the traffic. I stayed a few car lengths back as we rolled down through Melbourne city. On the docks, cranes reached out over the water. Cutting through Footscray towards the western suburbs, the roads were quiet and empty except for the occasional car or truck.

  At times I almost lost him. It was a little after 10 pm when his car pulled in beside a McDonald’s half an hour outside of the city. I parked further along and watched him in the mirror. I wasn’t going to lose him.

  Wayne climbed out and waited as another man crossed the car park towards him. The second man wore a tight woollen cap and black leather gloves. He punched one hand into the palm of the other as he approached Wayne. When the two men met, they shook hands, slapped backs.

  My throat closed. It was clearly not another woman and yet somehow this was more of a betrayal.

  •

  At the house, I put the air-conditioning on low and settle on the couch in my dressing gown beside Billy. I sit there with my phone in my hand thinking about Corazzo. I wonder if he could help clear Wayne off. What if Wayne is telling the truth about my old email address? What if someone was impersonating me, luring Aspen away? I notice a drop of blood on the front of my dressing gown. I plug my nostrils with my thumb and finger and rush to the bathroom for tissues. When I remove my fingers, blood rushes from my nose as though I’ve struck oil.

  Back in the lounge room, nose plugged with tissues, I drop the roller shutters, blocking out the buzzing, squirming life in the yard. We are in our own controlled little terrarium. Rocky is on his side near the back door.

  When evening falls and Billy complains that he is hungry, I cook one of the emergency pizzas that I keep in the freezer. You won’t find Antioxidant-rich, FODMAP friendly or Superfood stamped on the box. In fact, frozen pizzas sit at absolute zero on the nutritional scale. But nothing placates Billy more than fast food and I just can’t muster the energy to cook something from scratch. I smear organic tamarillo relish on a slice and eat it standing at the kitchen bench, the previous morning’s newspaper open in front of me. I scan the words of the article again. Abducted less than one hundred metres from her front gate. In the photo accompanying the article I see a child. I know she has perfect blue eyes, and long blonde hair but the image is black and white.

  ‘Billy.’

  He looks up from the television, a string of cheese looping down from his mouth to his slice of pizza.

  ‘Come here a moment.’

  ‘Why?’ he asks, scooping up the cheese. His eyes are now fixed on the screen, where The Simpsons has been replaced by Family Guy.

  ‘I said so, that’s why.’

  When he opens his mouth to cram the cheese in I see the gap from his missing tooth, a tiny point of white already coming through to fill it. His eye is less swollen now, but the convex bruise is the colour of a plum. He has been wiggling another tooth; it’ll come out soon enough. A mini businessman, that’s what I’m raising. I still feel guilty about hurting him.

  ‘And for dessert, maybe we can have ice cream?’

  He looks up with a sudden smile, a struck match, and nods.

  •

  It is hot and claustrophobic in the Disco. I lower the windows as we pull out, dust rising in our wake. The van is still there … that’s three days now. O-U-P. Corazzo said the owner was harmless, but how does he know? He works at a gardening store, which seems innocuous but I know most serial killers have normal lives and jobs, they look normal from the outside. Jeffrey Dahmer worked at a chocolate factory, Ted Bundy worked at a suicide crisis hotline.

  We get ice creams, then on the way back at the lights in town, I stop, and check my phone. There are messages from Wayne and a couple of missed calls. I ignore them all. If Wayne took me to court, would he win custody of Billy? What view would the legal system take of me keeping Billy’s existence a secret from Wayne all these years?

  We are mostly silent on the twenty-minute drive back home. As I ease down the driveway, the headlights rake over the front door, and that’s when I see them. Flowers. A spray of yellow wattle, just like before.

  My breath catches. I sit up straight. I’m shaking.

  ‘Mama?’ Billy says. ‘What’s wrong?’

  People commonly talk about the ‘fight or flight’ response when a threat is perceived; few mention the third response: ‘freeze’. I can’t seem to think clearly. The flowers were not there when we left, I’m sure of it. That means someone has been here. Someone was watching us, waiting for us to go out.

  I study the house for movement. I take my phone and open the panic button app. My thumb hovers over the call button as I open the door and step out.

  ‘Stay in here,’ I say to Billy, locking the door behind me.

  My senses are electric, my eyes wide and heart thumping. I reach the door and look down. This time there is a note with the flowers.

  29/02/2020

  Matthew 19:14

  I’m still shaking. Are you watching me now? Are you here somewhere, hiding out in the bush? I rush back to the car, gather Billy in my arms and freight him back to the couch. I lock the door behind us and go from room to room, lowering the roller shutters.

  ‘Mama, I’m scared,’ Billy says.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s okay, son.’

  The twenty-ninth of February. I think of the flyers posted up on a noticeboard at the town hall beside the yoga studio advertising an apocalyptic party on the leap day.

  I type the Bible verse into Google.

  Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.

  Then I feel … oddly calm. This is all designed to scare me, whoever is doing this is trying to make me afraid, put me on the defence. If someone wanted to hurt me or my son they wouldn’t give this warning, they wouldn’t give me a chance at all. I draw a breath and force myself to smile down at Billy.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ Wayne, Henrik or the man at the river – someone is playing games. Someone wants to make me run away, so that’s the last thing I’m going to do.

  Twelve hours to go

  I would have preferred to hear it from some card-wielding mystic at a fair. That way I could disregard it completely, but the message with the flowers is much more … grim. It might as well have been a black crow crashing through my window, carrying a note written in blood. I know it’s designed to let me know someone is watching, the sender is near; they must have been to be able to drop the flowers off in the time we were out.

  Later that night, I’m sitting on the couch when my phone rings. It’s Wayne. I silence it before it can wake Billy, who is asleep in my arms. An old movie runs on TV. Our discarded ice cream sticks lay chewed up and abandoned by Rocky near his rug. It’s ten past eleven; why would Wayne be calling now?

  The phone rings again.

  ‘What?’ I stage whisper.

  ‘You answered.’

  ‘You’ve got ten seconds, Wayne.’

  ‘He looks like me,’ he says. ‘He looks like Aspen, too.’

  ‘Fuck off, Wayne. You’re delusional.’

  ‘I just want Aspen. That’s all. I think he’s in trouble, Freya. If it really wasn’t you contacting him, then someone else was pretending to be you. Someone has stolen him away.’

  I swallow hard. I try to calm myself. The phone has grown warm in my hand.

  ‘You took him away from me,’ I remind him. ‘You said you wanted to protect him, but now he has disappeared.’

  Wayne sighs down the line. ‘What if it happens again?’ he asks. ‘What if you hurt Billy like you hurt Aspen? Couldn’t help but notice the shiner.’

  Is he threatening me?

  ‘B-Billy is fine,’ I stutter down the line, struggling to speak. ‘I think we should just leave it at that.’

 
‘I’m sure he is. I’m sure you’ve got a big ole dog up there keeping him safe.’

  ‘How did you know that? How did you know I have a dog?’

  Billy shifts against me. He is waking.

  ‘I know what you’re like. I know how calculating you are, and how you always need to be in control.’

  ‘Have you been spying on me, Wayne?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You’ve been following me, haven’t you?’

  I imagine him smiling as he says, ‘You’re losing it.’

  ‘Look, Wayne.’ I’m speaking slowly now. ‘This stops tonight. I haven’t seen Aspen in almost fifteen years, I’ve never contacted him, and I don’t know where he is.’

  When the call ends I close my eyes. Every cell in my body is trembling, electric with pain.

  When I open my eyes again, Billy is watching me.

  ‘Who was it, Mama?’

  ‘No one, Billy. Go back to sleep.’ I drag my fingers through his hair, then wrap my arms tightly around him. Some snakes kill in this way, simply by squeezing; some snakes don’t bite at all.

  I think about the secret Wayne kept from me. I had a secret of my own swelling in my belly the night I followed him. Our first child. I had stopped my contraception and let it happen.

  After he got into the other man’s car that night in the McDonald’s car park, they headed back towards the city and I trailed them beneath the yellow glow of streetlights as they travelled out along the industrial stretch near the port, pulling to a halt outside a warehouse. Cars lined the street outside. I found a park between a beaten-up old ute and a slick black BMW and killed the headlights. Knots of people milled about in twos and threes, men with their coat collars turned up against the cold, gradually trickling through the lone door of the building. I waited, sitting in my car. An hour passed, maybe more, before I could bring myself to move.

  I stepped out into the night air and started along the footpath to the warehouse, my shoes crunching over broken glass. When I reached the door, it was closed. There was no doorhandle, so I knocked twice as hard as I could.