Mercy

by Rebecca Lim

  Said he’d make her a star by any means at his disposal.

  I’d just moved here from the Framlingham School.’

  He beams, as if I should know the name, but it means nothing to me. It must be that fancy city school that Spencer was talking about.

  I try to keep my voice even and conversational.

  ‘And do you remember a student from Little Falls called Jennifer Appleton? Would she and Lauren have had any connection?’

  Paul’s expressive mouth turns down. ‘I hope they 225

  catch that monster,’ he murmurs. ‘ Of course I remember Jennifer Appleton. She was one of the remarkable singers I was telling you about. Lauren was the other one.’ His eyes grow slightly unfocused as he says softly:

  ‘Sous le dôme épais

  Où le blanc jasmin

  Ah! Descendons

  Ensemble!’

  His eyes snap back to mine when I continue to look blank.

  ‘It’s French,’ he says gently. ‘ Under the thick dome where the white jasmine … Ah! We descend, together! ’

  ‘Uh, okay,’ I say. Clearly, I was never a fluent French speaker in any past life.

  ‘From Léo Delibes’ Lakmé,’ Paul adds helpfully.

  ‘Jennifer and Lauren sang the most incredible duet. Both of them these tiny little things, one so dark, one so pale.

  They were a lot like you, actually — delicate-looking but with incredible power in their voices. That’s what I was trying to tell you the other day. It’s uncanny that I should stumble across three of you with such talent, with such similar … physicality, all here in “Paradise” of 226

  all places. Fitting, don’t you think?’ His light eyes hold a look of amused reverie.

  He smiles. ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. Lauren — she’d only just turned sixteen — sang the demanding part of Mallika and Jennifer the divine part of Lakmé. A kind of passing of the musical baton from one prodigy to the other, so to speak — it was Jennifer’s final year at Little Falls Academy that year. It’s a pity she got so tall and fat. Who would have thought? Anyway, what an incredible night. They blew the audience away, and people around here think music’s only for piping into elevators or shopping malls. You should have heard the silence after they finished singing! After everyone regained their senses, the applause didn’t stop for at least twenty minutes. They were forced to give two encores.

  No one had ever heard anything like it. Likely never will again. We all knew at least one of them was headed for immortality, if not both.’

  His eyes are shining with the memory, excitement in his beautiful voice, then his face clouds over. ‘Then all this happened. It’s a weird coincidence, don’t you think?

  The two of them taken? Somehow … collected?’

  Then he shoots me a shrewd look. ‘But you don’t think it’s a coincidence, do you? You think Laurence had 227

  something to do with it. Have you spoken to anyone else about this? It’s pretty explosive stuff. Laurence is up there with God around these parts, in more ways than one.

  Some people think he has a direct line …’ The corners of his mouth quirk up a little.

  I shake my head. ‘It’s just something I came up with on my own. Just a crazy thought. What would I know?

  I mean, who’d believe me?’

  For some reason, I keep Ryan’s name out of it. The guy’s got no one else looking out for his privacy.

  ‘Who indeed?’ Paul says sympathetically. ‘Well, the man clearly had opportunity,’ he muses. ‘He’s been tight with the Appleton family since Jennifer’s parents were each in their teens, and he was coaching both of the girls before the concert — Jennifer and Lauren. But it’s still a lot to process. No one’s ever fingered Laurence before.

  It makes a crazy kind of sense, but it won’t be popular.

  You might have stumbled onto something here. You know he’s an opera fanatic from way back?’ he adds.

  I shake my head. It’s all beginning to fit. Ryan checked out Lauren’s Paradise High musical connections, but I bet it never occurred to him to look at the choirmaster of Little Falls Academy.

  ‘It was Laurence’s idea that they take on “The 228

  Flower Duet” in the first place,’ Paul continues, looking down at his fine-boned hands. ‘I doubt Gerard, with his pedestrian tastes — popular musicals, oratory and the like,’ he practically shudders, ‘would have thought to give such challenging material to a couple of high-school kids from the sticks. Jennifer probably caught the opera bug off Laurence as a child — he’s been a friend of the family forever. If he’s somehow involved in this, it’s going to break their hearts all over again —’

  ‘Well, thanks for your help,’ I cut in, my mind leaping ahead to how much new stuff I have to tell Ryan.

  I wonder if he’ll be pleased. It’s disgusting how much I need his approval. I hardly recognise myself, and that’s saying a lot.

  ‘You’ve really clarified some things for me,’ I add, shouldering Carmen’s daypack. I shoot Paul a grateful smile, prepare to leave.

  ‘Hey, you sure about that coffee?’ he says with easy charm. ‘No time like the present. I can call the Daleys

  — Louisa knows me well — run you home afterwards.

  We have a lot to cover. I can start getting in touch with all the best schools, get the trustees talking about you.’

  I feel that strange discomfort again, as if Carmen’s trying to tell me something.

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  Paul’s face is open and there’s nothing sleazy about his body language. Unlike Gerard Masson and Laurence Barry, he doesn’t even try to touch me. Or hold me to a promise. In fact, he turns and tidies up his things while he waits for my answer.

  ‘You have a remarkable voice, Carmen,’ he says gently. ‘You’re very young. And Fiona Fellows seems to have a … blind spot where you’re concerned, doesn’t realise the treasure she’s been sitting on. Probably literally, the way she talks about you …’

  The stitch in my side flares more painfully still.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve been made aware of all your options,’ he continues, snapping his messenger bag shut before turning to face me. ‘I’ve got links to the best music faculties in the country. That’s all this is about. I’m not like Gerard Masson, with his stupid little crushes and extra practice sessions. I’ve been at the receiving end of that kind of thing myself, and it’s the last thing I’d do to you.

  This is purely about your future.’

  For a moment I feel dizzy. Should I go with him or go find Ryan? Lauren or Carmen? The disembodied pounding in my side intensifies, like something torn.

  When I still don’t say anything, Paul raises an enquiring eyebrow.

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  I shake my head, knowing any normal girl in my position would accept in a heartbeat. But that’s just it.

  I’m sorry, Carmen, but I’m batting for Lauren. And for me.

  ‘Uh, thanks, but I’m good,’ I reply. ‘Got things to do tonight.’

  ‘Raincheck?’ Paul says good-naturedly. He straightens up, stretches elegantly. ‘Though you seem like a smart girl — I’m sure you’ve figured it all out already.’

  ‘You bet,’ I say, giving him a stupid, girly wave over my shoulder as I leave, hoping it seems natural. Not believing he means any of it for a second.

  It’s dark by the time I make my way back from the lockers and head across the Paradise High car park, pulling Carmen’s hood up to hide my profile from the breeze, and from curious eyes. I notice Paul Stenborg herding the last of his charges onto the bus bound for Port Marie. He doesn’t give me a second glance as I pass under a nearby streetlight and head for the pedestrian gate next to the school’s main driveway.

  I wonder where Laurence Barry is, and what he’s doing. Tonight, I think, we’ll see what you’re hiding 231

  down there, old man.

  I pull the edges of Carmen’s hood forward even more, turn up the collar on her denim jacket, and start threading my way ac
ross town; peer into the windows of the family restaurants on main street, the town’s only video rental store. And I think about Ryan constantly, even look forward to eating his mother’s strangely tasteless but immaculately presented cooking in awkward silence, because he might be at the table, close enough to touch.

  If I can bring myself to do it.

  I walk slowly, enjoying the faint tang of salt in the air. Even the sounds of dogs going berserk in their front yards as I pass by just makes me smile. I don’t know how long I have, and, for once, I don’t want it to end. Though it isn’t the kind of boy-meets-girl scenario anyone in their right mind would wish for. You have to take it as it comes, I guess.

  And then, within sight of Ryan’s street, I feel a light pressure on the back of my neck, a small sting, and I go down.

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  Chapter 22

  When I wake, it’s dark. So dark at first that my eyes have trouble making out anything. I’m on my side, facing a wall. There’s a heavy weight around my neck, unaccustomed pressure.

  I think maybe I fainted on the footpath and I’m having difficulties focusing, but then I’m hit by a wave of smells so strong I gag out loud. Human waste, old food, rust, bleach, mould, blood. Layered over the top of each other, the air so foetid and soupy I can taste it on my tongue.

  And I’m lying on something coarse. It creaks when I shift my free arm experimentally, lift my head an inch or two. A camp bed?

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  There’s breathing in here, not mine. The sound of a clock ticking.

  ‘You okay?’ someone whispers. It’s a girl.

  For a minute, I wonder if I’ve fallen out of Carmen’s life into a new one. Where am I? What am I doing here?

  I try to sit up, and discover the weight around my neck is some kind of iron collar. I follow the chain with my hands to find it padlocked to a metal cleat in the wall behind me. There isn’t much room to move once I sit up. And I’ve caught sight of that faint, telltale luminosity coming off my skin, so I stay facing the wall. I don’t want to freak out whoever’s in here with me. They’ve probably got enough to deal with already.

  In my head, I am able to run, in order, through the full Latin verse that Mahler set to music over one hundred years ago, and backwards through every single thing that I have done since the bus from St Joseph’s first drew up in the car park of Paradise High, and I know that Carmen Zappacosta and I are not yet done. All the details are still there. Clear and sharp and immediately accessible.

  So where am I?

  Ryan! I think suddenly, my breathing quickening. I was supposed to meet him. What will he be thinking?

  It’s like I fell into a rabbit hole between the school and 234

  his place.

  I feel for my general shape in the dark and I recognise the same denim jacket I put on this morning over the same hooded sweatshirt, Carmen’s improbably narrow, little-boy jeans. The same dirty, canvas sneakers.

  Carmen’s bag is gone, along with her sparkly wallet, her mobile phone and her music, but I’ve already committed that to memory anyway and earthly possessions seem the least of my troubles. I glance quickly through the hair hanging down over my right shoulder. It, too, seems the same. Curly. Long. Dense. Almost too heavy for my head.

  Through my screen of wild curls I make out two shapes in the darkness on different sides of the room, both with long, straight hair, one big, one tiny, like a bird girl.

  The taller one is visibly trembling, as if she is dangerously close to hypothermia. The small one is so still she might be made of stone. Though it should be too dark for me to make out their features, I can see them as clearly as if the sun is shining overhead and I know who they are. And I can make out the dimensions of the room, too, which is bare save for a staircase in the far corner. Like the staircase in Ryan’s dream.

  Like their faces, I’ve seen this room before.

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  ‘You get used to it,’ says the bird girl quietly. Her voice is dry, like fallen leaves. It sounds almost rusty, like she hasn’t used it much lately. Except maybe to scream.

  I try to reconcile the outline of the smaller girl with the photos from her dresser. She looks beaten, emaciated, unlovely. Her ash blonde hair seems white to my eyes, even in this light.

  ‘Lauren?’ I ask, though I don’t need to, nausea in my words. The smell in here is so strong, it’s crowding my thoughts, the very oxygen out of the room.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ she replies. Her voice is thin and uninterested.

  ‘Ignore her,’ pleads the taller figure, Jennifer. ‘She doesn’t seem to care if we ever get out! Does anyone else know we’re here? Please say yes.’ She is speaking barely above a low whisper, but she might as well be screaming, fear crowds the spaces between her words.

  ‘Her brother does,’ I say, hoping my voice sounds reassuring. ‘We were supposed to come back here tonight, to try and get you both out. But something happened on my way back from Paradise High before I could meet up with him. Any idea what that was?’

  A chemical taste rises in my mouth and I have to stop to vomit over the side of the bed. So much for never 236

  getting sick. I face the wall again, gasping, waiting for the unfamiliar nausea to subside.

  Ryan, I think miserably. I found them. Now what do I do?

  Like an unconscious echo, Lauren gasps aloud,

  ‘Ryan?’ and she begins to cry.

  It is like a dam bursting, and a chill flash breaks out across my skin. Lauren sounds inhuman, like a wounded animal, and across the room Jennifer shifts uncomfortably on her metal cot.

  There’s a sudden loud banging on the door above us, at the top of the stairs, and Lauren’s crying cuts off abruptly like she’s been choked.

  ‘Don’t make me come down and hurt you, Lauren!’

  a man’s voice bellows. So distorted with anger I can’t tell whether I’ve heard it before. Lauren gives a tiny whimper and lies down. Her cot shifts and creaks.

  Jennifer and I are silent for a while and then we start talking again, as if the other girl isn’t lying there, facedown and rigid, listening to every word we say with every cell in her body.

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ I ask Jennifer fiercely. I dart a quick glance in her direction. She’s still shaking like a leaf in the dark.

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  ‘Apart from ripping some hair out of my scalp because I wouldn’t do what he wanted, and sticking a needle in my neck, no,’ she whispers. ‘I’m still in one piece. But I’m so scared.’

  ‘He hasn’t had the time to do anything yet,’ I say.

  ‘He’s been greedy with the two of us. Snatching us so close together.’

  ‘So far, all he wants me to do is sing,’ the girl continues, puzzlement in her voice. ‘But I think he’s a little … disappointed.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I reassure her. And it is. I’m relieved.

  He’s had her for almost a week and all he’s done is ask her to perform a few tunes? ‘That’s great. You’re okay.

  Hold onto that.’

  ‘There’s a room just up the stairs,’ Jennifer adds, her voice growing a little stronger. ‘With a piano in it. A baby grand. Candle holders. A gold music stand. Armchairs.

  Like a recital room. He keeps it real tidy. That’s where he takes me when I’m not here. Sometimes he takes her instead.’

  I look over quickly. Jennifer inclines her head in Lauren’s direction in the dark, forgetting I shouldn’t be able to see, though of course I can.

  I hear the other girl draw a sharp breath. Force 238

  myself to leave her alone a while longer, though I have so many questions. She’s not ready to talk. She may never be ready.

  ‘He just looks at you?’ I repeat in Jennifer’s direction.

  ‘When he makes you sing?’

  ‘He says that he was always obsessed with me, but I’ve changed. I’m not the girl he remembers. I’ve defiled his memories of me, even though my voice is better, stronger, than it ever was. Things can chan
ge a lot in two years.’ There’s a shudder in Jennifer’s rich, expressive voice. Her words tumble out so quickly I can barely make sense of them. ‘He said I left town before he could act on it, that he shouldn’t have hesitated before, but he’s been waiting for me to come back ever since.

  And the minute I did … I shouldn’t have opened the door. I just wasn’t expecting to see him there, so late.

  ‘Plus, I’d had a crush on him forever — it all came rushing back, and that didn’t help. I wasn’t to know he was some kind of … pervert. I wasn’t thinking. I was kind of … flattered he remembered me.’ She sounds disgusted with herself.

  I wrinkle my forehead in the dark. A crush?

  Flattered? Out of the corner of my eye I see Lauren sit up suddenly, pushing her long hair back from her face 239

  with shaking hands.

  ‘I only came back because my aunt insisted I sing at Julia’s wedding,’ Jennifer says. ‘So who else knows we’re here?’ The hope in her voice is painful to hear.

  ‘Just me and Ryan,’ I say, my back to them both, still facing the wall. ‘But he should be on his way right now.’

  I sound more confident than I feel. ‘He knows where we are. We’d planned to get you out of the basement tonight, anyway. He’ll just have to get started on his own. We just have to wait a while, and we’ll be free.

  Simple as that.’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ Jennifer murmurs, relief flooding her voice, though she cannot stop shaking. ‘So fantastic.

  I keep thinking I’ve stumbled into someone’s idea of a sick joke. Though he did say something strange before I passed out. Said it was a shame I’d gotten so big and so

  … fat.’ There’s indignation in her tone.

  That makes me frown. Something familiar in it.

  ‘Said he liked me much better when I was smaller,’

  Jennifer says incredulously. ‘Like her, I suppose.’ In the dark, I see her wave vaguely in Lauren’s direction.