by Lily Malone
Her eyes met the monster’s.
His snake-lips twitched and curled, as if hunting for a cigarette that wasn’t there, and Jaydah got her hand high behind her back and hauled the kali stick up through her clothes.
‘Clever girl,’ her dad hissed. ‘But a stick ain’t gonna save ya.’
CHAPTER
35
It was damn hard to concentrate with all those sirens screaming, but they made his progress faster. He didn’t have to hide the noise of his shoes or the scuff of rope, clothes or skin. The wail covered the noise of rocks skittering down the cliff, flying out into the breach.
Brix clung to the rope for dear life, left foot jammed into any foothold he could find, edging to his left across the cliff.
The ledge where he’d first seen Keith Tully was just a metre or so below.
Jumping distance. Falling distance.
Brix braced himself, unjammed his left foot and half lowered, half let himself fall down the cliff face. He kicked out with his legs, and the rope twisted him back into the rock, banging his shoulder.
Abruptly, the sirens fell silent.
Brix hung on extended arms, twisting, toes pointed, praying to feel the rock below. Then his toes landed and he bent his knees and his weight transferred to the balls of his feet.
Looking up, he jigged the rope around a protruding rock before he turned to see where he was, peering carefully out and over. He towed the slack of rope through his gloves and made a new hitch in it, twining it through this new fixed abseiling point, hoping it would be long enough.
If he’d calculated right, Jaydah should be right down there.
* * *
‘The police are here, Dad. Please give this up before someone gets hurt. No one needs to get hurt.’
‘That’s not fair. I already got hurt,’ Jaz said.
‘Why don’t you climb down the cliff, Jaz? The policeman will give you a band-aid for your foot.’
‘Don’t you move, Jazzy,’ the monster spat. ‘Stay right there like a good girl while I talk to your big sister.’ His gaze roved over her, slowly up and down in a way that made her skin crawl. ‘I hear ya got a bun in the oven.’
‘Who’s got a bun?’ Jaz said quickly. ‘I like buns.’
Jaydah risked a quick check of the opposite side of the creek. There were two vehicles beside her father’s but only one was a police car. The second car was Brix’s ute, but it wasn’t Brix with the police, it was her mum. She recognised the short and stout teapot figure of the officer who’d served the restraining order on her father on Christmas morning, standing on the sand beside her mum, squinting up.
‘Jazzy? Mum’s down on the beach there. She’ll have a band-aid.’
‘Jesus, the whole gang’s back together. Where’s ya bloody yuppie husband then? Or is he sick of ya already?’
‘Mum drove herself.’
‘Bullshit. Ya mum doesn’t know how to drive. She’s useless. She was always useless.’ He shouted across at the police. ‘Ya hear that, Rosalie? You’re bloody useless. Ya good for nothing.’
‘Mum can so drive,’ Jaz said.
‘Please climb down to Mum, Jaz,’ Jaydah urged.
Jaz’s weight shifted—
‘You bloody well stay where you are,’ he roared, expertly flicking his belt out from his shorts and taking a stab-step at Jaz. Jaz shrank back on the rock and started to cry, big loud sobs as she rocked her shoulders forward and back. ‘And cover your damn mouth! How many times do I hafta tell ya!’
Jaz shoved both hands over her mouth, crying through them.
‘Don’t you dare hit her!’ Jaydah struck out at him with the stick, but she was over-extended immediately, too desperate to reach him, too scared for Jaz, and he side-stepped easily.
Jaydah struck again, aiming at his right hip and higher, trying to smash the stick across his right hand, then higher again, trying to blast his miserable ear from his head. He pulled the belt taut and defended each blow.
‘You’re outta practice,’ he teased. ‘You got slow and lazy now you’re all comfortable and married. He rich enough for you? He got nice furniture like his brother? A liq-ueur cabinet? A fancy car? Caviar to go with all his fine wii-ines?’
He was trying to flank her, trying to push her towards the drop that went nowhere except into the water. He was also forcing her nearer to Jaz, boxing her in.
Jaydah darted forward, feinting with her shoulder and this time the monster didn’t dodge as she fanned the stick over her head and struck from the right. She landed a satisfying crack into his ribs and leapt back, and the second she leapt back she knew she’d made a mistake.
The baby made her too careful. The baby made her slow.
Her dad sneered. ‘I told you, you better bloody well kill me if you raised that stick to me. I told you that, didn’t I? You remember?’
She breathed out. ‘I remember.’
A new voice rent the air: ‘This is First Class Senior Constable Scott Givens of Mount Barker Police. Keith Tully, you are under arrest, please place your hands on your head.’
Jaydah flicked her wrist, trying to signal to Jaz to go, run, but her sister wasn’t looking at her. Jaz’s attention was on something higher on the cliff.
‘Ya know what?’ her dad said, stepping closer as Jaydah circled away. ‘I won’t do so good in jail. All those guards telling me what to do? That’s not for me. I’d rather be dead.’
‘Then jump off the damn cliff, Dad. I’ll push you so you get a headstart,’ she snarled. ‘It will be my pleasure.’
‘That’s no way to talk to your old man.’ He took another step at her and Jaydah dodged away. The edge of the cliff was a fire at her back. She felt it like a burn.
She lunged at him: all her hate, all her fear, all those years of rage funnelled through muscle and sinew, through heart and hand. She lunged at him with all of that and he blocked her strike with his leather belt as if she’d lashed at him with butter.
Before she could blink he struck out. The heavy buckle slammed across her fingers.
It hurt too much to scream.
The kali stick clattered from her hand, teetered on the edge, then bounced, bounced before it hit the water with a faint splash.
She ran straight at him, arrowing across the rock and he snapped the buckle against the inside of her knee. The crippling sting hurt all the way to her teeth.
‘Give up?’ he said, as her leg buckled and she slipped.
The Jaydah of old would never have dropped her stick. She’d been fighting so hard and for so long, and those months being married to Brix—those beautiful months in the sun—had made her soft. The baby that was theirs, hers and Brix’s child that no one could ever take away, had made her soft.
Her hand stole across her abdomen, hovering over her tummy.
‘Least it’s not a Honeychurch bastard you got in there. Least he married ya, I guess. Hope he doesn’t hate ya for getting it killed.’
It was because of the baby and Jaz and her mum, and Brix. It was for them that even now she couldn’t give up. She wouldn’t.
‘Jazzy, please go, sweetheart. Please go find Mum.’ Jaydah tried to coax Jaz to safety, using her words to distract her father. Let the monster think her beaten.
Her other hand searched the rocks behind her. Searched. Groped. A stick. A stone. Something had to be there.
She’d save someone.
Her father’s balance shifted. His belt struck at her like a tan snake.
And her blundering fingers encountered something hard, a piece of granite she could fit in her fist.
‘Jaydah, look! Is that—’
She heard Jaz shout, but she had no chance to look anywhere except straight ahead because the monster dropped the belt and charged at her, arms spread wide, and she shoved up off her knees ready for one final throw.
CHAPTER
36
‘Jaydah, look!—’
Jaz had seen him. The game was up.
There wasn’t much point t
rying to surprise anyone anymore.
Keith Tully roared. He wasn’t a big sod but he was stripped, wired and so warped he was beyond dangerous. He didn’t care who he took out on the way over that cliff. He’d never cared.
He charged across the rock, and it was the girl Brix loved who stood in his way, arm flung back, ready to launch something at him. Fighting to the end.
She got him too. The missile hit Keith in the hip, knocking him off balance. Slowing him up.
Now!
Brix took a new grip on the rope and leapt for the space in front of JT—praying he had enough rope. He kicked his legs out at Keith and knew he’d hit him because he was softer than rock.
Then he swung wild, out over the ledge.
There was a split second where the man clung to Brix’s hip, thighs, calves; clawed at his ankle, toes—clawed at anything at all—then the rope caught and jerked Brix’s arc short.
Keith lost any grip he’d had, and his garbled cry ended in a splash and a broken-off yelp, and at the same time Brix came careening back into the cliff, smashing hard into the granite.
‘Brix?’ Jaydah’s face appeared above him, haloed by her hair. She reached for the rope and tried to pull his weight from where he hung. ‘Brix, you idiot, you could have been killed!’
‘Are you and Jaz okay?’
‘Yeah, we’re okay.’ She peered over the edge, on hands and knees. ‘We’re okay now.’
‘The baby?’
‘All okay. Don’t worry about us, just hang on. Can you climb? I can’t lift you!’
‘Don’t try. I’m too heavy.’ He braced his legs against the rock, scrabbling for a toe-hold, anything. His shoulders burned with the effort of taking his body weight.
‘Hang on there, we’ve got help on its way,’ a voice carried clearly across the water from the cops at the bank. ‘Can you make yourself safe?’
Above him, his beautiful wife was laughing, happy now. Safe.
A second head appeared, so similar to JT’s.
‘I saw you on the cliff. Why are you swinging down there?’ Jaz asked.
‘He jumped off the cliff to save us, Jazzy.’
‘That was silly. He could have got hurt.’
‘He could!’ JT agreed.
Brix found a resting place for one foot. It wasn’t much, but it gave his shoulder some much-needed relief. ‘I don’t think I have any skin left on my hands or my shins. Not a skerrick.’
‘What’s a skerrick?’ asked Jaz.
He thought about it. ‘I dunno.’
Then he remembered Keith and scanned the water below. ‘Did he come up?’
‘I don’t care,’ Jaydah said. ‘They say hitting water from a height is like hitting concrete. I hope it is.’
‘I need to find a better spot,’ Brix said. ‘My arms are killing.’
‘There’s a ledge to your left. Can you get there?’
He looked for it. ‘I think so.’
He edged to his right, using his feet to push against the cliff.
‘Your rope is stuck on a sharp bit, Brix. Just go steady there, okay? Maybe you should just stay where you are.’
Squinting up the length of rope he could see where it was stuck. The fibres twisted, strands white against the grey. A shiver ghosted through the rope and he glanced up, hoping he’d imagined it.
Then a second jolt struck the rope and he fell three feet before he knew it. Straight down. Like hitting a pocket of turbulence in a plane.
‘Brix? Stay still!’
‘I can’t stay—’
Another stomach-churning drop and jolt. For a nano-second he swung in space. Then the rope snapped and the cliff and Jaydah’s beautiful face took off skyward.
Brix crashed through water, cold and then freezing, and every shade of brown to black. Bubbles shot above him like stars. His eyes were open as he sank down, down, and the crazy thing was, the water above him looked green.
How weird was that?
The rope raced past his thigh, an unwinding, snake-like thing.
He thought about kicking his legs, but he couldn’t feel his feet?
And then he didn’t have the energy to care.
* * *
There was a horrible dry-twig crack as the rope snapped.
Brix dropped like a stone, white-faced, staring up. The rope raced him, neither gaining nor losing time and got lost in the splash.
Give him back!
‘Brix!’ she shouted, and her own echo laughed at her. Brix. Brix. Brix!
She scanned the water, trying to peer through its depths.
Keep the monster. Give Brix back!
‘Can you see him?’ Constable Givens shouted from the rocks on the opposite bank.
‘No!’
The other police officer dived into the water and began a powerful crawl towards the epicentre of Brix’s splash. The ripples were dying and Jaydah shivered on the sun-warmed ledge.
‘I’m hungry. Can we go down now?’ Jaz asked.
The police officer ducked below the surface and the water browned above him as he dove into the depths.
‘There are ants up here.’ Jaz slapped at her legs.
Give him back! Please? Give him back!
Then two figures burst up, up, out of the pool, gasping into the sunlight.
‘Got him, Scotty,’ the officer shouted, supporting Brix in the water, dragging an arm across his chest as he towed Brix into the bank.
‘Is he okay?’ Jaydah yelled.
Please say yes. Please say yes. God, please say yes.
‘I hate ants!’ Jaz stamped her feet. ‘I want to go home.’
Jaydah pushed to her feet. ‘Is he okay? Please tell me if he’s okay?’
The police officer swam and didn’t answer.
‘Come on, Jaz. Let’s go.’
They pulled Brix into the shore, laid him on his back, swarmed over him, and Jaydah lost sight of him as she climbed up and around boulders, working her way lower, forced to take the same slower path her father had climbed earlier with Jaz. She descended, bruising her backside, taking skin off her knees and palms.
The SES truck and the ambulance arrived before they reached the bottom of the cliff, doors opening, men piling out. She recognised Jake in the mix of men swarming towards Brix and her mother.
The two police officers who’d been performing CPR on Brix ceded his care to the paramedics and the policeman who’d pulled Brix out of the water returned to the pool.
If you’re looking for my dad, forget it.
Leave him there.
They loaded Brix into an ambulance and she watched it reverse and drive away.
No one asked if she wanted to ride in the ambulance with Brix like they always did in the movies. No one gave her the choice.
Her brain hit on Jaz’s favourite line: It’s not fair!
‘Come on, Jaz. Jump in and let’s go.’
‘I don’t want to swim. The water’s dirty.’
‘Well, you have to. It’s the only way we’ll get across.’ Jaydah slid into the water, all the welts from her grazes and the cut from her father’s belt stinging.
‘I don’t want to swim anymore. It was cold before.’ Jaz sat on the blackish rocks. ‘Did Brix die? Is he dead? If you don’t breathe, you die, right?’
Jaydah had been about to take her first stroke across the pool, but she caught herself and even though she ached to reach the other side, she stopped.
‘If you don’t breathe, sometimes someone can breathe for you. Like a doctor, or a policeman,’ Jaydah said.
‘Is that what they were doing?’
‘Yes.’
Jaz started to cry. ‘I don’t want Brix to die.’
‘Oh, honey.’ Jaydah swam back towards the cliff. Of course Jaz wouldn’t understand. How could she? ‘The ambulance is taking him to the hospital, Jazzy. They’ll help him.’ She crossed her fingers under the surface and prayed with everything she had. ‘He’ll be okay.’
‘I’m hungry. My foot hurts.’
‘How about we have a race?’ Jaydah said, as a second ambulance edged into the parking space and beside her, not far away, the policeman searching for her father came up for air. Jaydah caught his eye and he shook his head.
‘Anything?’ Constable Givens called from the shore.
‘Nope.’
The policeman sucked in a huge breath and dove again.
‘You’ve got so fast with your swimming. Do you think you can beat me? Maybe Mum has a biscuit and we can get a band-aid for your foot,’ Jaydah said. ‘Come on, Jaz.’
Jaz brightened. ‘I beat Dad before. I can beat you. Erik says I’m the fastest.’
‘Then go, Jazzy, on three. One. Two. Three!’
Jaz jumped, squealing at the cold, and Jaydah followed, keeping an eye on her twin.
There was a big part of her that didn’t want to reach the other side. Everyone there, including her mum, looked way too grim.
* * *
Jake helped them from the water and their mum wrapped Jaz in her towel. It was Jake who brought Jaydah a space blanket from the SES truck and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her mum pushed a cup of something hot and sweet into her hands.
‘How is he?’ she forced through chattering teeth, trying to stop the shock that made her limbs shake, steeling herself to face a truth she might not want to know.
Constable Givens answered her. ‘He’s got a badly bruised back and the ambos aren’t sure if he might of cracked a few ribs. He could have concussion but they got him breathing okay. He’s lucky. That’s a long way to fall.’
‘Thank God.’ She swayed on her feet. ‘I thought … I thought—’
‘How ’bout you come and sit down before you’re the one doing the falling?’
‘How did you find him? Thank you so much for finding him!’
‘The rope got stuck in a dead branch down there. I don’t know if he wrapped the rope around his leg or it got tangled there but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have got out if my partner hadn’t cut him loose. He was unconscious in the water.’ Givens gazed out across Cutters Creek to where divers continued to appear and disappear. ‘Your father won’t be so lucky.’
‘Good.’