Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  I felt myself merge with Aylish. My ragged sobbing became hers, the thunder of my pulse beat a twin rhythm in her veins. And her anguish became mine. Her ribs were loose, her wrists and fingers disjointed, her thoughts hazing in and out of awareness. Blood filled her mouth, she was choking out cries, knowing no one would hear yet still clinging to hope . . . and then the darkness coming into her vision and the slow dawning that this was the end, and all she could do now was wait, curl into the shadows and wait for death to find her . . .

  But I wasn’t Aylish.

  And I’d be damned if I was going to die like her.

  Clawing myself out of the past, I got to my knees and scrambled across the muddy ground. A gleam of moonlight touched the knife blade and I reached for it, curling my fingers around its grip, holding fast.

  Cleve approached and stood over me. His eyes were glassy, his lips flecked white with spit. Was he in the greyness now? Or was he fully aware, planning how best to finish me? I watched as if from a distance as his arm went back and the axe handle swung aloft.

  This time I was ready. Twisting from the path of the oncoming club, I slashed out with my knife and caught Cleve across the fingers. He bellowed, his grip loosening. I dropped the knife, grabbed the axe handle with both hands and wrenched with all my strength, tearing it from Cleve’s bleeding fingers. Then I flung it into the gully.

  Cleve watched it arc silently and vanish in the blackness.

  Turning to me, he slid his hand into his jacket pocket and drew out Samuel’s revolver. Taking aim with both hands, he lined me up in his sights.

  ‘Give me the letters, Audrey. Pass them over nice and slow.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Come on, now. I’d hate to get more blood on them.’

  Adrenaline surged. My hearing became acute. I heard, or at least imagined I heard, the loud snick as Cleve drew back the hammer; I heard the rasp of his palms as he adjusted his grip, the sandpapery slide of his finger as it eased past the guard and nestled against the curve of the trigger. I heard his intake of breath, and then the pause as he held the air in his lungs and prepared to fire.

  My heart rate slowed. My brain shifted down a gear and sharpened focus. Here it was, the end I’d been fearing . . . and yet I was no longer afraid. Reaching around to my back pocket, I took out Aylish’s letters and held them aloft.

  ‘You want them?’ I said, tearing the bundle free of its ribbon. ‘Then get them yourself.’ With a flick of my wrist, I threw the letters up and out over the gully. They didn’t glide in a smooth arc and quietly vanish, as the axe handle had done . . . rather they burst apart and went every which way, the dusty paper whispering and fluttering like a horde of dying white moths, some snatched by the wind and carried a short way, some snared by branches, most settling like a sigh into the wet darkness.

  Cleve cried out and took an involuntary step.

  Right onto the loose rock shelf.

  The ground shuddered, the unstable rock began to slide. He must have known what was coming because he reeled to face me, and fired. The shot went high, I felt it punch past me, but then somehow its dark force had me spinning, my legs going from under me, the ground rocketing up, and then I was lying at the gully edge, face-down, staring into the gaping cavity of raw exposed earth where a moment ago Cleve had been.

  Gone.

  He was gone.

  The roaring in my head nearly carried me off, but I fought to stay present. It was over. Cleve was gone, fallen to his death. I should have felt relief, but there was just an empty ache. Bronwyn was lost out there, somewhere in the night, and Cleve’s words haunted me: You still have time. How long ago had he said that? An hour? Forty minutes? What had he meant – time for what? Had that time now run out?

  Blinking the moisture from my eyes, I found myself staring at a black shadow inches from my face. Slowly it took form and, as the haze lifted, I realised I was looking at Samuel’s revolver. I reached out to take it –

  A hand shot up from the darkness below the verge and clamped vicelike around my wrist. I cried out in fright and tried to yank free, twisting my arm and rolling sideways. The motion set off shockwaves of pain and nausea. My shoulder. It was burning and throbbing, the pain dull one moment, then the next it was gathering up around the joint in bright, stabbing, liquid shards.

  Dimly I understood I’d been shot.

  The fingers around my wrist, Cleve’s fingers, tightened. I felt his weight dragging at me, pulling me towards the edge. I groped around but there was nothing to cling to, no anchor . . . just the crumbly soil and the loose stones, and the long descent into nothingness.

  Looking down, I saw him. His fall had landed him on the trunk of a dead tree that jutted downwards from the gully wall. Its weathered surface was ridged and studded with broken branches, and it swayed precariously beneath Cleve’s weight.

  Again he dragged on my arm. With nothing to cling to, I went easily, writhing as I skidded over the crumbly edge and down the embankment. As I crashed onto the tree trunk, I collided with Cleve and threw him off balance. His feet went from under him and he lurched off the trunk and over the side, somehow maintaining his grip on my wrist. My shoulder joint wrenched under the force of his fall, and I yelled in pain.

  Cleve dangled over the chasm, his free hand groping empty space. He found a toehold in a rock cleft, but the drop that yawned below was dizzying – the leafy treetops, the rocky creek bed invisible beyond. Soon, his weight would drag us both into the abyss, plunging us to the rocks that waited below. My body shook violently as I strained against his greater gravitational pull, but my strength was draining fast.

  If he fell, I’d fall too.

  ‘Tell me where she is,’ I said hoarsely. ‘I need to know she’ll be all right.’

  Cleve stared up at me, flecks of mud and sweat streaming into his hair, a bloody gash seeping near his ear. He was panting hard. Spit clung to the corners of his lips. His face was white with shock, the threadlike scars seeming to writhe over his clammy skin.

  ‘Too much time has passed,’ he said. ‘You’re too late.’

  ‘Where is she!’

  A solitary bellbird called. The bush around us was eerily tranquil. The only sounds were ragged gasps, and the groan of wood as the trunk strained under our collective burden.

  ‘It’s over,’ Cleve said, and there was relief in his voice.

  ‘For you maybe. Not for me.’

  It was surprisingly easy to loosen my stranglehold on the tree. Unlocking my legs, I let my body go limp. Gravity did the rest. Cleve’s weight dragged me along the trunk, and the short downward slither dislodged his toehold. He flailed and made a wild grab for me but I cringed away. My torso grazed along the trunk’s corrugated bark, I felt the skin tear over my ribs, felt something dig hard into my belly. Then, in a brief giddying lurch, we slid another foot along the trunk towards the canopy of trees below. An instant before my body tore from the tree, I swung up my free arm and hooked onto a branch stump. Our forward motion ceased.

  Cleve swung away from the gully wall. His face hollowed in shock, his fingers clawed the air. He looked up at me, menace shining from his eyes.

  ‘You’re coming with me, Audrey.’

  Twisting my upper body, I wrenched my arm upwards, gritting my teeth against the shocking pain. Cleve’s grasp slid over the junction of my thumb and I felt something in my wrist give, felt the nauseating crack of bone.

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘No, my dear,’ Cleve said shakily, an odd little smile trembling on his lips. ‘In yours . . .’

  Then he shut his eyes and let his fingers splay apart. A cry went up – I think it was mine – as I stared wildly at the gap where, just a heartbeat ago, a man had been, but now . . . now . . .

  Now I was alone.

  28

  The crunch of breaking branches, the tearing of leaves . . . the thud of falling rocks and earth, and the dizzying rush of a deadweight hurtling into the dark heart of the gully and onto the rocks
below.

  I tried to block it, tried to shut it out – feeling around for a memory, a dream, anything to escape into . . . but my senses only seemed to grow more keen. The air smelled of damp earth, crushed ferns, blood. The moist breeze left a sweaty slick on my skin. Leaves whispered, raindrops plopped on fleshy leaves, the distant babble of water drifted up from the creek bed.

  Light as a leaf, I floated.

  Then, something made me look up. On the far embankment, a figure stood in the shadows beneath an overhang of trees. A young woman. She wore a white dress and, though I couldn’t see her face clearly from where I lay along the tree, it drifted into my mind’s eye that she was uncommonly beautiful. I’d thought of her so often over the past months, I felt I knew her. And although the distance between us was a gulf of time and darkness, I thought for a moment that she knew me too. Lifting her hand in farewell, she turned and vanished into the trees.

  I dashed a hand against my face, not sure if the wetness I found there was blood or tears.

  When I regained myself, I tested my limbs one by one. I could move them all in a manner, apart from my left arm. I touched my shoulder, and the world overturned. When it righted itself, I gathered what remained of my strength, and – guided by the vision of my daughter’s face – I began to climb.

  Leaving the glade, I veered up the track that led to the settlers’ hut. Rain was misting down again, and black clouds rolled across the moon’s face. The night had seemed eternal, but I guessed that barely more than an hour had passed since I’d left Luella’s.

  I wore only bra and jeans. I’d ripped my T-shirt into a bandage and staunched the wound on my shoulder. Samuel’s handgun, which I’d retrieved from the lip of the gully, was tucked snug into my belt against my back. One live round remained, and I prayed I’d have no occasion to use it.

  Whenever I heard a noise – branches snapping in the rain, the eerie shriek of whip-birds startling from their nests – I found myself jerking around, examining the shadowy trees that now separated me from the gully, wondering. Had Cleve fallen, or had I only dreamt it? Was he somewhere out there, concealed by the stormy darkness . . . was he following?

  His words haunted me.

  You still have time.

  As I forced my battered body up the hill, fear frayed at my nerves. I hadn’t forgotten the gunshot that had shattered the night earlier. Again I worried that Bronwyn was crumpled on the hut floor, fatally wounded all this time, her life leaking out of her and vanishing between the cracks. The image was tearing me apart, doing my head in, sending a chemical spill of fear and adrenaline through my veins.

  I reached the larger clearing and ran across the expanse of grass towards the hut. Bursting inside, I searched the dusty gloom. My heart dived. The place was too still, too silent. The narrow bed with its sunken mattress, the empty shelving, the table and chairs beneath the window . . . it was clear that no one had been here since that day I’d trekked up the hill with Danny. Going outside, I looked around the clearing. It was empty. The trees dripped water and the air was charged after the storm, but there was no sign that Bronwyn had even been here.

  On the other side of the verandah garden I saw an oval shape, it looked like a mound of earth. I went over to it. The grass had been dug up, the soil smelled fresh and pungent, and it was muddy at the edges where rivulets of rainwater still trickled.

  Something was buried there.

  Again I thought of the gunshot we’d heard. Just one, punctuating the night with a single, violent report. And then I flashed on Bronwyn, riding along the dark road on her bike, her handlebar streamers whipping her thin hands, her hair flying behind.

  Dropping to my knees, I began to claw away the wet soil. Mud went up my arms, my knees sank into the waterlogged ground, and I could hear a panicked sound nearby, a breathless sobbing that went on and on and wouldn’t stop.

  My fingertips met flesh.

  Yielding. Soft. Still warm.

  Raking the length of the motionless little body, I knew I must be dreaming, had to be dreaming. I wished I could wake up, straighten out my thoughts and make sense of what I was seeing –

  Fur.

  I gulped at the air, filling my lungs, trying to clear my head. The panicked sobbing dwindled, stopped. A rush of hot, almost painful relief. After a while the shattered fragments of the world gathered back around me, began to reassemble.

  There in the moonlight lay Cleve’s dog. It had seemed so large and fearsome the day it attacked me among the tea-trees. Now I saw it was just a Jack Russell terrier, its small pudgy body limp and still, its white fur stained with mud.

  Cleve had shot his little companion, perhaps anticipating his own demise at the gully . . . or perhaps he’d done it as a warning for me. The rawness of my relief came back, but there was fear too . . . If he’d done this to his faithful canine friend, then what might he have done to Bronwyn?

  Pushing to my feet, I skirted the hut, calling her name. Windblown sheets of rain obscured the surrounding trees, veiling the distant hills behind a grey haze. The water tank at the rear of the hut was overflowing. Water babbled from its overflow pipe and onto the upended forty-four-gallon drum.

  Think. You have to think.

  Cleve had said she was his security, that he’d put her somewhere for safekeeping. Had he lied, was she even at the hut? God, she could be anywhere . . .

  ‘Audrey – !’

  A figure emerged from the trees and began to charge across the clearing towards me. In my dazed state, I felt an impossible glimmer of hope. Bronwyn? But of course it wasn’t her. Through the grey curtain of rain I could see the figure’s lofty height, the thickset shoulders. A man. And he was fast approaching. Who was it? Cleve? Had he survived his plunge into the gully?

  Fumbling the old handgun from my belt, I gripped it in both hands and shouted a warning.

  ‘Stop! Don’t come any closer.’

  He kept advancing.

  Clicking back the hammer, I took aim. I re-screamed my warning, but the man didn’t slow. The heavy thud of boots kept coming, splashing nearer, and my heart seemed to explode a little with every step.

  I yelled again, but on he came, a blur in the dim clearing. My finger reflexed on the trigger. There was a powerful crack as the gun discharged. A flash, of lightning or memory or imagination, I couldn’t tell which, and in it I saw a face. Broad features framed by wild unruly hair, a full mouth, and dark eyes fixed on me in shock.

  He pitched sideways, then went from view.

  I raced after him. Careening around the side of the hut, I scanned the open expanse then fixed my attention on the verandah. No one there. I was about to whirl around when steely arms grabbed me from behind. I threw back my head and bucked against my attacker, my body exploding with fresh pain, barely registering the man’s surprised grunt.

  He shoved me forward at arm’s length. A hand closed over my fingers and prised my weapon loose, tossed it onto the muddy ground out of reach. Then he swung me around to face him.

  It took forever for my brain to stop spinning. Another eternity to comprehend. Rain dripped from his hair and his green eyes were wild, his face haggard pale as he looked at me. I’d never seen him angry before. At first I thought his anger was directed at me. A bruise bloomed on his forehead, a streak of blood smeared his brow; dimly I acknowledged it was my doing.

  Danny took my face between his hands and searched it, then drew me close against him and held me firm in his arms. I hadn’t known how cold I was until his heat engulfed me. Heat like a jolt of brightness that broke the spell of my terror. My good arm slid around him and I pressed near, as near as I could get. It had been so long, and my need for comfort was so great that I clung like a little girl, feeling the brittle walls of my protective shell finally crumble away.

  We broke apart, but he stood near. Touching his fingertips to my swollen face, frowning at the blood-soaked wad tied to my shoulder, giving my cold fingers a squeeze.

  ‘I can’t find Bronwyn,’ I said throu
gh chattering teeth.

  Police are on their way.

  ‘How?’

  Luella walked to Hobe’s. They telephoned police, then me.

  ‘We might be too late.’

  No, he signed sharply. We’ll find her.

  He took my hand and started towards the hut. I had a flash of the last time we were here, of our botched kiss at the rocky plateau, and then Danny showing me the buried water catchment built by the settlers, where he and Tony used to . . .

  ‘Oh . . . God, no.’

  I started running, splashing across the muddy ground towards the rear of the hut, Danny close behind. The underground tank was barely visible in the rain. Its low timber sides were water-blackened and raindrops danced on the circular cover, making it look like a wooden backyard swimming pool half submerged.

  I grappled with the heavy plank lid, my wet fingers sliding uselessly across its splintered rim. Water was sloshing out from underneath the cover, had been for some time judging by the moat of water puddled at the base. This could only mean that the tank was full to the brim . . .

  And Bronwyn was in there.

  I was too late.

  Danny was beside me, sliding the heavy lid across the tank’s rim, wrenching it sideways until he was able to drag it off the top of the tank and heave it aside.

  I stared down. Black water lapped the tank’s circular inner wall. The smell of earth and sourness rose up, and my cry finally escaped.

  Pale and ghostly, my daughter’s upturned face floated on the surface. Water rippled against her cheeks and her milky hair spilled freely around her. She seemed to be clinging to the catchment wall – but she looked so ashen, so small and unmoving, that my heart stopped. The sight of her blurred before I had a chance to notice the vital signs: Was she breathing? Were her eyes open? Was she . . . was she even alive . . . ?