In the Clearing

by J. P. Pomare

  After a few minutes, the door opened to reveal a man with a shaved skull and the telling kink of a brawler’s nose. Beyond him I could make out a crowd of men – thirty or forty of them – arranged in a circle in a big open space. I couldn’t see what was in the centre of the crowd, but I could hear the meaty thump of flesh being struck.

  ‘Wrong door to knock on, sweetie.’

  I was surprised to hear an Australian accent. What had I been expecting?

  As the man began to push the door closed, I stepped up and put my shoulder into it.

  ‘I’m here for the fights,’ I said without thinking.

  ‘No you’re not. No women.’ The man looked annoyed now. He pushed the door so hard that I stumbled back. I pounded on it, but it wasn’t opened again.

  I returned to my car and sat there waiting, watching the exit for Wayne. But when people started to stream from the building at around 3 am, there was no sign of him. I must have missed him in the crowd, I realised. I stayed until the last car had gone before returning to the McDonald’s where he’d left his car. It was no longer there.

  We’d both kept secrets but this was big. Confronting Wayne wasn’t easy; I knew I needed to stay calm. As he began to deny it, I said, ‘Just let me watch. I want to watch you fight.’

  ‘You really are fucked up, aren’t you?’

  He was a criminal, there was no other way of putting it. He was part of a world I didn’t know or understand. Oh, I knew about crime – I had been dragged through the legal system when I was a kid – but Wayne’s crime was different. This was before professional fighting became a legal and popular sport. This wasn’t nearly as safe. If he’d started fighting a decade later, he could have made a lot more money than he did. I didn’t want the father of my child being routinely beaten to a pulp and excluding me from a large part of his life. I decided to give him an ultimatum.

  Leaning against the kitchen bench in our house, I stroked my belly, watching first the shock then the scepticism flit across his face.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You … you’re not …’ He was staring at my belly.

  At that point Aspen was only a collection of cells forming inside of me, but he would change everything.

  ‘I’m pregnant, Wayne. You’re going to be a dad.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know, I guess it just happened.’ Then I let my mask slip for the first time in front of Wayne. The sudden anger made my voice low and grating. My eyes grew wide, unblinking, fixed on his. ‘No more fighting. And If you ever lie to me again, it’s the last you’ll see of me or the baby.’

  AMY

  JERMAINE BOETHE IS in my head. His fingers bloody, swelling, black as burnt sausages. His body writhing in throes of pain. Anton and Tamsin dragging him off the stage, his screams muffled against the gag while everyone continued their chanting.

  It felt good, having that power. It felt good to please my mother.

  When I wake, I cannot remember falling asleep. One moment I was staring at Asha, her arms wrapped around her legs, rocking on her bunk with her jaw trembling, and the next the birds are chirping and a seam of daylight is passing beneath the door and Asha is asleep.

  Then the bell begins to ring. It’s too early for the bell, I think, but it doesn’t stop. I can hear something else over the sound of it. A distant thumping. A helicopter? The bell keeps ringing and I realise that this is not a drill.

  I leap up – we all do, except Asha, who Anton drags from her bed by the arm. We quickly pull on our tracksuits then hurry into the bathroom. I push through the false panel in the wall at the far end of the bathroom and lead the others along the low, dark corridor. When I reach the end, I lift a panel from the floor to reveal a ladder that disappears down into the Hole.

  I stand beside it and count off my brothers and sisters as they descend the ladder one by one into the oil-slick blackness. Tamsin comes through, bringing up the rear, and Anton stays above with her as I follow the rest into the Hole. Anton slides the panel back into place and darkness swallows us. I start down the ladder, the heat from the earth pressing against me, my hands and feet become my eyes, feeling for each rung until I reach the bottom. The Hole is thick and damp with breath.

  I wonder what has happened to make it necessary for us to hide. Perhaps rapists and murderers are even now descending on our sanctuary, just as Adrienne has described: those evil men in blue who would set us alight and send us all to hell. Are they out there now, desecrating our home?

  ‘It’s too hot,’ someone murmurs.

  ‘Shh,’ I hiss. ‘Silence.’

  For a while there is no sound but our breathing, then I hear a creak. It’s the ladder. Someone is climbing. I move quickly towards the sound, bumping between bodies, and reach out. My hand finds an ankle. Grabbing it, I pull back hard. A foot slams against my face, catching me right in the mouth. I feel the hot rush of blood from a split lip and my eyes water. I straighten, push through the pain, and begin to clamber up the ladder. ‘Stop,’ I hiss.

  I feel a foot on the rung above me, grab it and pull hard, but whoever it is holds fast. I move quickly, climbing over the child above until I’m able to reach up and peel the tiny hands away from the rung.

  We both fall, twisting in the air. There is no time to brace for the impact. The air thumps from me.

  ‘Stay here,’ I say, my voice hoarse and breathless. My mouth is bubbling with blood. I hold the small body against my own in the dirt, waiting.

  ‘HELP!’ A high voice shatters the silence. Asha. ‘HEL— ’

  I cover the child’s mouth and slam a fist into her body. Doesn’t she understand what will happen if they find us? She is putting us all at risk, and it’s my job to correct her behaviour. I thump her again. It feels good, punishing her, knowing I am doing it for my mother.

  ‘Stop it right now. Stop or I will hurt you. You cannot leave.’

  Others are moving in the darkness. I feel more hands reaching in, helping to hold her down.

  Seconds stretch into minutes; the minutes stretch on and on in silence. No one moves or speaks. I lie with my body pressed against the squirming child. The smell of piss fills the Hole.

  Eventually the bell tolls for us to leave and suddenly the darkness swarms with bodies desperately moving towards the ladder. The panel slides open and I gaze up into the light.

  Tamsin is visible at the entrance to the Hole, Anton behind her. ‘You can come up now,’ she says.

  She counts aloud as we ascend one by one. Tamsin’s forehead creases when I emerge. ‘What happened to you?’

  I recall the sickening crack when Asha’s foot struck my mouth.

  ‘I bumped my face climbing down,’ I lie. Another deceit to protect Asha.

  She frowns. Anton stares at me. Then Tamsin says, ‘You’re number nine. That means someone is still down there.’

  I climb back through the open panel; the light is limited to what passes down the hall from the bathroom and through the opening into the Hole. I take the ladder carefully, one rung at a time, my heart fluttering.

  My hands tremble with fatigue as I descend. In the trace of light seeping in, the Hole feels somehow both smaller and larger than I imagined. In the dim light I see the body on its side. One arm is flung over his face. The earth is soft and damp around him from where he pissed.

  ‘It’s Alex,’ I call up to Tamsin and Anton. ‘I think he’s fainted.’

  Anton descends, and together we manoeuvre the boy slowly up the ladder. We carry him by the arms and legs back to the bunkroom and place him on his bed.

  ‘I’ll sit with him,’ I say to Anton, who is preparing for school. His huge frame lumbers towards the door. I fetch a glass of water and hold it in my hand, waiting for the boy to wake. My eyes roam around the room, searching for distraction. I notice something silver glinting in the seam between the mattress and the frame of Asha’s bed. I put the glass of water down on the floor near him and rush across the room. Thrusting my hand in under her mattress, I pull out a k
nife.

  I stare at it. It’s one of the vegetable knives from the kitchen, small and sharp enough to break skin. Why would Asha have this? To hurt someone? I am stashing it beneath my own mattress when I hear Adam’s voice behind me.

  ‘He awake yet?’

  I spring up and turn to see him enter the room and stride towards the unconscious child.

  ‘Not yet.’

  Adam gives the boy a small slap. He takes the glass of water and splashes a little of it on Alex’s face. His eyes seem to move beneath their lids. A slight flutter. Then they slowly blink open.

  ‘You’re back with us,’ Adam says.

  Tamsin appears at the entrance of the Burrow, leaning in the doorway. They’ll probably want him out with the other children as soon as possible but he won’t be ready just yet. When you faint from dehydration or heat, you wake up dizzy and with a dusty mouth and sore throat. If you faint from pain, you wake as if from a nightmare. You’re still dizzy but your mind screams awake. I think about the knife beneath my bed, I think about the Cooler, the way it feels like your skull is compressing around your brain the longer they hold you under.

  ‘He’s going to be groggy for a while,’ Adam says, and I feel grateful for it. ‘Sit with him, feed him water while he recovers.’

  I do as I’m told, but after a short while instead of watching Alex I let my gaze travel through the window to the other side of the Clearing, where Adam gently swings in the hammock. He is picking a tune from his guitar with Asha nestled in beside him. The tune drifts across the Clearing towards me. The other children are in class.

  The sun slants down between the trees and Alex stirs behind me.

  Beat a dog with one hand, offer it a treat with the other. Keep it obedient and make it love you. But Asha is not broken. She stole the knife. She kicked me in the face. She is always awake in the evening, so maybe she is planning something. Maybe she is planning to hurt someone or herself?

  •

  In the early afternoon, Adam, Anton and Adrienne get in the van and leave the Clearing. It’s just us children, with Jonathan, Tamsin and Indigo. From the classroom, I can hear the boards squeak every time Indigo moves about in the kitchen.

  After our silent reading time, we head out to sit beneath the Great Tree for half an hour of silent meditation. But my mind wanders; I can’t seem to clear the thoughts from my head. I wonder about something Asha said about the outside world. How her friends miss her, how much she used to eat, how happy she was. I can’t escape the idea that maybe she was happier out there. It’s a deviant thought, but I can’t seem to push it out of my mind.

  Adrienne says that if you leave a light on inside first one moth will come, then another, then many will come, just as they swarm the lantern swinging from the entrance of the Great Hall at night. That’s how deviant thoughts work too. It’s best to simply turn the light off, forget everything, block all those distractions that worm their way into your brain. But I can’t. I open my eyes for a moment and that’s when I notice a gap in the circle of children. Someone is missing. I look around, and see something moving at the far side of the Clearing. It’s a child, I realise. It’s Asha, and she is scaling the fence.

  FREYA

  Six hours to go

  I WAKE EARLY. Early for a Saturday, anyway. No school or yoga, nothing to be up for. The flowers have failed to scare me away but I was awake most of the night thinking about them, and in the morning they’re the first thing I think of. The second thing is Billy. I leave Rocky dozing on my bed and go to Billy’s room, gently opening the door and peering in on him sleeping. Then I walk out into the yard. While the sun fingers its way through the trees, I sit down in the grass, watching the snake-like head of a blue-tongue lizard bob out from under a shrub. I lean back and rest my head against the grass, reassured. Blue-tongues are a good omen. I need a little luck to come my way. I’ve had a lot of bad luck and it’s making me think more and more about the past.

  Aspen was in the hot car.

  My baby boy had almost died. If he’d been in there any longer, he would have. The police wanted to charge me with attempted murder. They had a strong case and it cost a lot of money to fight it, but my lawyer managed to keep me out of prison. I had a breakdown, she explained, presenting a psychologist’s report which suggested that I had completely disassociated. The judge said no one could deny that it was a deliberate act to leave Aspen in the hot car. He said with all of the witness testimony of ongoing abuse he had no choice but to exclude me from Aspen’s life. Witness testimony. Wayne’s testimony. The things he said I had done. Statements from the neighbours. The cards were stacked.

  No serious conviction was recorded. The judge determined that with the help of a psychologist I could live a normal life. That’s why the story of the missing girl causes me to ache. I know it’s different, but I can appreciate what her parents must be going through. That gut-sinking feeling of loss; it feels like an illness. The newspaper article said the police are looking for a van in connection with the girl’s disappearance. Like the van on my street and the couple within. Could they be related to it? Would the police investigate them with all the strange things that have happened? The flowers, the gate being unlocked? Corazzo had already checked the van out, there wasn’t a mark against it.

  I return inside and do my push-ups then grab a nectarine from the fruit bowl and check on Billy. He’s still sleeping.

  I lock the house, leaving Rocky inside, and walk down to the river. I swim out into the brown water and turn to float on my back. I close my eyes and just drift for a moment. Then I suck in a breath, curl into a ball and sink like a flesh-coloured stone. I stay there at the bottom and count to ninety seconds.

  When I surface, I see stars shifting at the edges of my vision. I look across to the other side of the river. Something zips by. It is fleeting in the early sunlight. Through a gap in the trees I see the flash of skin. The skin of a child. Then the child is gone. A girl – it looked like a girl – should not be running around out here alone. Could it be the girl? The day is heating up, drawing the snakes out; one wrong step could be the end of her. Of course, it could have been a trick of the light, not a girl. Heat shimmering on the bank looking like movement. But it looked so real.

  I wade further down the river, searching the opposite bank for another glimpse of movement. There is no sign of anyone, no sound, nothing. It’s in your mind. You’re seeing things. Maybe it’s an echo of the news stories. A projection. Déjà vu.

  Back at the house, I put the TV on and gulp down a glass of kombucha. Distracted by Wayne’s voice at the grocer, I forgot to grab a new bottle. This one tastes a little sweeter than usual; maybe it’s still fermenting. I can feel it working on me like an elixir. Healing from the inside out. I pour Billy a small glass and take it into his room, setting it beside his bed. I rub his hair gently; he’s been up late the last couple of nights.

  I return to the lounge to lie with Rocky on the couch. Hyper vigilance is more fatiguing than any exercise I have ever done. The last few days of nervous strain are catching up with me; I feel like I could drop off to sleep. Instead I switch the channel and listen to the news. They are talking about the drought; there have been fires over on the other side of the city, out to the west. They’ve come close enough to the outer suburbs to warrant evacuations. No rain is forecast until next week. The fire risk remains severe, a deep authoritative voice intones, with other regional fire crews on standby should the situation worsen. My body is feeling slow and heavy now and I’m struggling to resist the fatigue. Deciding not to fight it – after all, I haven’t had a good sleep in over a week – I reach for my phone to set my alarm. Then sleep fells me like a bullet to the chest. I descend deep, deep, deep into the darkness of the earth.

  •

  I wake a few minutes later, my mouth is bone dry. I bring my phone before my eyes, blinking away the haze of sleep. 12.03. Shit. I fly from the couch as if it were suddenly alight and race towards Billy’s room.

  �
�Billy!’ I call. ‘Billy! ’

  The TV is still on, only now infomercials are running. Rocky rises slowly from his spot near the kitchen, his mouth stretching in a yawn. I throw the door to Billy’s bedroom open. He’s not there. I reach for the panic button, hold it down.

  Then I call them to make sure they are coming. ‘My son is missing,’ I say. ‘I think he has been taken.’ I give them the address, as I rush about the house. I feel sick with panic. ‘Please hurry,’ I say before I hang up.

  At my heels, Rocky is more alert now, his ears pricked. ‘Billy!’ I scream across my yard. I sprint down to the river and scan the surrounds. Where is he?

  I sprint along the path back to the road, my body electrified. Rocks and sticks sting my bare feet but I don’t stop. Rocky is by my side, growling as he runs.

  ‘Billy!’ I scream into the void of the bush. ‘Billy!’

  I get to the road and feel my heart stop. Cement sets in my stomach. The earth opens up and swallows me whole.

  The van is gone.

  — Amy’s journal —

  Which is worse?

  A – Keeping a secret from your mother.

  B – Looking away when someone does something wrong.

  C – Causing pain to another human and enjoying it.

  D – Doing something horrible because someone told you to.

  E – All of the above.

  No one noticed Asha missing at first. She was there when we started the meditation and gone when we finished, but it wasn’t until we were doing chores that Indigo realised that there were only ten children. Asha was supposed to collect the eggs and then help in the garden, but there was no sign of her.

  Indigo rang the bell and we formed two lines out the front of the Great Hall. Jonathan came over from the minders’ quarters. Indigo counted us off then asked Jonathan if he recalled Asha being in class. He did. I did too. We all remembered her at the beginning of the meditation. We were talking about it when we heard the sound of the van returning. Adam climbed out, all smiles at first, but when Tamsin approached him and told him what had happened he stormed over towards us.