Crow Shine

by Alan Baxter

  When the young man reached him, Mephisto laid an arm across bony shoulders. “What’s your name, lad?”

  “Matthew.”

  Mephisto turned back to the crowd. “Matthew, ladies and gentlemen!”

  Whoops and wild applause disgusted the magician, these easily entertained masses. To hide his grimace he made a theatrical turn, swept Matthew along to a tall black wooden box at centre stage. It had a double door, split top and bottom like a stable, with bright silver tape marking its edges that sparkled in the spotlight that struck it like a bullet. The crowd oohed. Mephisto pulled open the two half doors. The box was empty. The crowd ahhed.

  How he hated them.

  Matthew looked terrified, pinned by the beam of light from the gallery. Mephisto couldn’t blame him. “Please, step inside.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I told you, I’m going to make you famous!”

  The boy nervously moved forward and turned around, looked out over a sea of expectant faces partially obscured by the glowing coronas before them. Mephisto closed the bottom door. Only Matthew’s head and shoulders showed over it. “You’ve seen me perform all kinds of magic this evening, ladies and gentlemen,” the magician called out. “You’ve been impressed, yes?”

  The crowd whooped and hollered.

  Mephisto lowered his voice, forced the crowd to be silent to hear. “But do you believe I can make a young boy disappear?”

  The crowd assured him they could. Of course they did, they were in the palm of his hand.

  He winked at Matthew, closed the top half of the door. The boy’s frightened questions came through the wood but he ignored them.

  Mephisto addressed the crowd again. “Clap for me, folks, slow and steady, like this.” He set a measured, rhythmic applause going. As audience carried it he raised his hands high. The energy from this roomful of sheep was powerful, but that was ever the case. Never underestimate the malleable vigor of people in large numbers. Their desperate need for entertainment, to muffle, however briefly, mundane lives. He let that energy rush through him, absorbed it, mutated it. He spoke the words.

  A low roar, like distant water powering through a canyon, rose in the auditorium. It built up, rising with the frenzied clapping of the audience. They felt it more than heard it, clapped faster and faster, began to cheer and laugh and bay. Mephisto drew that power in and the roar rose to a deafening crescendo. Sparks and flames burst out around the box and quickly vanished. The box stood dark and still, the crowd gasped and faltered, the noise sank away like a tide until silence rang in the theatre.

  Mephisto slowly lowered his arms and a grin spread across his face. He turned and threw open the doors. Young Matthew was nowhere to be seen. The crowd erupted in applause and laughter. Mephisto strode to the front of the stage and bowed once, twice, thrice. With a sweep of cape he turned and walked swiftly into the darkened wings. The last thing he saw was the nervous smiles on the faces of Matthew’s parents, the empty chair between them.

  He packed quickly in his dressing room as the crowd’s approval sounded slightly muted through the walls. He stuffed his magician’s garb into his hard leather case and put on the shabby suit and scuffed shoes that disguised him with their normality. He pulled off the dark hairpiece and ran one hand over stubbly blond hair. It only took a moment to wipe away thick makeup, revealing pocked and pale skin. In just a couple of minutes he was done, grabbed his case and left by the stage door, into a grimy alley.

  A dark shadow, vaguely man-shaped, awaited him. Beside the shadow a smaller presence trembled, emanating terror.

  “Thank you, George,” the shadow said. “Mephisto, really?”

  George shrugged. “As good as any. I’m running out of names. It’s fitting, isn’t it?”

  The shadow laughed, a terrible sound. “Same time next year, George.”

  The magician scowled, pushed past the darkness, wincing at its icy presence. “Yes, yes.”

  “What’s it been now, two hundred and twelve years?” the shadow called after him.

  George turned, his face angry and pained. “Two hundred and thirteen. Don’t play games with me.”

  That deep, ominous chuckle again. “Any time you want it to end, just come to me. I’ll be happy to have you.”

  The shadow winked out with a burst of frost before George could reply. He ground his teeth, hating himself, hating people, hating everything, and scurried from the alley. As he turned down the street away from the theatre he heard a woman’s voice inside, high-pitched in anguish, screaming for someone to do something. He hunched into himself and made for the train station.

  The Darkness in Clara

  Michelle saw Clara’s feet first, absurdly suspended a metre above the ground, toes pointing to the carpet, ghostly pale and twisting in a lazy spiral. The rest of the scene burst into her mind in one electric shock a fraction of a second later; Clara’s wiry nakedness, limp arms, head tilted chaotically to one side. Her tattoos seemed faded against ashen skin. Her so familiar face grotesque and wrong, tongue swelling from her mouth like an escaping slug. And her bulging eyes, staring glassy and cold as Michelle began to scream. Light from the bedside lamp cast Clara’s shadow across the wall like a puppet play, glinted off the metal legs of the upturned chair beneath.

  I bought her that belt, Michelle thought, as she stared at the worn black leather biting deep into the blue-tinged flesh of Clara’s neck, and she drew breath to scream again.

  *

  The funeral was typical, a sombre affair overlain with the gentle patina of judgement that always accompanies suicide. Michelle put on her brave face, smiled at all the platitudes. Knowing she would never be able to make it through a eulogy, she stood stoically beside Paul as he gave the most beautiful speech. When he opened with, “People always ask what it was like growing up with two mums . . . ” she almost lost it. He gripped her hand behind the lectern and kept talking, voice strong, daring anyone to contradict his tale of twice the love.

  At the wake he stayed by her side, remained calm in the face of false sympathy offered with barely concealed disdain. So difficult without a father. So tough, such an unconventional upbringing. “My uncle Gary was a better father than most of my friends’ dads,” was his go-to line, and he always reminded people that two mums was way better than single parent families and those kids turned out great.

  “At her fucking wake, still the snide remarks,” Michelle said as they stood on the back lawn after the house had emptied.

  Paul put a strong arm around her shoulders. “People are idiots, you know that.”

  She laughed and quickly devolved into tears, the dam finally breaking through the shell of bravado she’d worn all day. Paul turned her to his chest and they sobbed together for what seemed like hours.

  *

  She rose early, the house so quiet, made strong coffee, scrambled eggs, toast. Paul stirred in bed as she entered his old room. She stood with the tray, smiling sadly, so pleased he’d stayed after the funeral. “Still yours,” she said.

  He dragged himself to a sitting position, rubbed his eyes. “You really should pull down these posters. Redecorate like a proper guest room.”

  “But it’s your . . . ”

  “It’s not, Mum. It’s really not any more.” He smiled warmly.

  She put the tray on his lap, sat on the bed beside him. “No. Honestly, we just never got around to it.”

  She stroked his leg through the covers while he forked up eggs, nodded appreciatively. Her little boy, now such a big, strong man. She could still see the child in there, but he was buried deep under layers of experience and life. A tear breached her lashes as she remembered the birth, holding Clara’s hand and telling her to breathe and push, Clara, you’re doing so well. Bringing the baby home, the two of them staring into the bassinet in stunned silence and absolute, total love.

  “Why did Mama do it?” Paul asked in a whisper.

  Michelle shivered at the memory of those gently spiralling to
es, ran a hand over Paul’s thick, black hair. “I don’t know, love. I really don’t.” The tears came faster.

  Paul sat and stared at his fork resting inert on toast. “She had problems, we know that. Her funks. But was she ever really so depressed?”

  “She must have been.”

  “She never talked to you about it?”

  “About suicide?”

  Paul shrugged, his eyes haunted with lack of understanding. “About being so down, anything like . . . ”

  Michelle stroked his hair again, luxuriating in the feel of it as much as soothing him. “We talked about everything. How she struggled with her mum dying young, about the abuse she got when she came out, all that stuff. She had tough times, like everyone. Some of her times were tougher than most. But I never once thought she was suicidal.”

  “Did she leave a note?”

  Michelle drew a ragged breath, tried to stem the tears. She knew this had been coming. “Yes.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Paul, I would never hide anything from you, but . . . It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Please, Mum?”

  Michelle nodded, went to her bedroom, their room, to retrieve the scrawled scrap. Paul was eating again when she returned, fork rising and falling robotically, purely because his young body needed the fuel. At twenty-two, his appetite was voracious. She held out the note, sat beside him again. She read over his shoulder as his eyes roved the lines.

  The darkness never stops and it’s eating its way through. How long until I draw it all the way to me and it takes us all? I can feel it coming. The connection is my blood. There’s one way I can stop this. You can only run from your past for so long. I’m so sorry. I love you M & P xxx

  Paul looked up, eyes red. “You weren’t going to show me this?”

  “I was. But I waited until you asked. I knew you would. When you were ready.”

  He nodded, read it again. “What does she mean?”

  Michelle shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “What past is she running from?”

  Michelle took the slip of paper back, folded it reverently. “No idea. I’m going to try to find out.”

  “How much past does she have?” Paul asked. “Before you, I mean?”

  Michelle smiled softly. “Some. We met in uni, when we were twenty. I thought I knew everything about her life up until then, thought we’d talked about it all. She certainly knew all about me.”

  “But something haunted her. Something she never told you.”

  Michelle pressed the note gently to her lips, nodded. “Yeah.”

  *

  Driving through the old hometown brought a kind of dislocated nostalgia. It was Clara’s birth place, after all, not hers. But all country towns shared that out of time personality. A sense they were always playing catch-up and always stuck in the past, yet actually happy to be left alone. She passed a service station with two lollipop-shaped petrol pumps, rusted and dinged, still used every day. A ute pulled up to one as she went by, the driver grizzled and dirty, the ute bed full of hay bales.

  The road sloped slightly up towards the intersection that marked the town centre. Big sandstone buildings that used to be the post office and bank stood on two corners. A pub on the third, its balcony a federation skirt around three sides. The fourth corner was a memorial park, a cenotaph to those fallen shining bright white in the midday sun. She turned left, pulled into the pub car park. What the hell was she doing here? Were there really answers to be found?

  The Clara-shaped hole in her pulsed with hurt again and she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles whitened. Answers or not, she had to look. She had two weeks compassionate leave to fill. The seeking more than the finding would be the salve her heart needed. She hoped.

  The interior of the pub was like that of every other country town in Australia. Paraphernalia adorned the walls, tin signs advertising Reschs and Tooheys, jokes clipped from magazines and photos of locals baring their arses at the camera. Several lunchtime drinkers sat around, all stopping to pay attention to Michelle as she walked in. She smiled crookedly, half-intimidated, half-impressed that her fifty-two year old body could still garner those kind of looks. She kept in shape, dyed her hair to hide the grey, but none of it was for the benefit of men like these. Not for any men. She remembered Clara’s stories, rural bigotry. All the abuse, verbal, emotional, even physical. How many of these bastards, leering at her, were responsible for the hell of Clara’s teenage years?

  Clara’s fuck-you attitude had powered her well through tertiary education. It’s what had made Michelle idolise her, fall in love with her. When Clara had fallen too, Michelle had thought it a dream. They shared stories of their so similar small town upbringing, but Clara had had it much worse.

  “Drink, love?”

  Michelle walked to the bar and the overweight man behind it. His head was shiny bald, nose swollen with liquor, eyes red and mean. “I’ve booked a room actually.”

  “Ah, you’re Michelle Braid? Welcome to town!”

  She berated herself for her own prejudice, the man’s eyes were only nervous. “Yes, that’s right.”

  He handed her a key on a battered wooden key ring, a 6 burned into it. “End of the row, furthest from the cars. You’ve got the place to yourself. Not many people stay here.” He grinned apologetically.

  “Thanks. I could use a shower. Will you still be serving lunch in half an hour?”

  “Kitchen’s open til two, then again at five. You’ve got plenty of time to settle in.” He paused, smile nervously hanging on his lips. “You, er . . . on holiday or something?”

  Michelle looked around the dingy pub, a couple of local eyes still watching sidelong. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  *

  “I remember her well. She turned me down when we were about fourteen. I was really pleased to learn she was a dyke!”

  Michelle bit her tongue, reminded herself to look past the words to the man’s genuine smile. “Made you feel it wasn’t personal, eh Bob?”

  Bob laughed, stared into his beer. “Yeah. Can’t believe she’s dead. Were you and her . . . ?”

  “Yes. Together more than thirty years.”

  Bob nodded without looking up. “Sounds like true love.”

  Michelle smiled. “It really was.”

  They were quiet for a moment before Bob looked into her eyes. “How did she die?”

  “Took her own life.”

  “Ah, fuck that. I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “You know why?”

  “Not really. That’s why I’m here. Looking for answers, I suppose.”

  Bob looked around the bar, a dozen or so locals in small groups or drinking alone. “We get a lot of that around here.”

  “A lot of what?”

  Bob mimed a rope tugging his neck crooked, unaware of the pulse of grief it caused in Michelle’s gut. “Blokes struggle to keep a farm going, struggle to pay bills. Bloody hard to be a farmer these days. And their wives leave ’em, kids grow up and fuck off to the city rather than stay and work the land. Lot of blokes reach the end of their tether, like.”

  Michelle watched the distance open in Bob’s eyes, wondered how many friends he’d lost that way. “You stayed,” she said. “You help your dad on his farm?”

  “Nah, we own the country store. Dad’s retired now and I run it. Still hard to make a living, but not as hard as farming.”

  “You never thought of going to the city?”

  Bob downed the rest of his beer. “Nah. Not interested. I like it here. Another? I should be getting back, but one more won’t hurt.”

  Michelle held out her beer glass. “Sure.” She’d had two already and was enjoying the buzz.

  Bob went to the bar and she scanned the pub again. The first two people she had spoken to hadn’t remembered Clara, and then she’d seen Bob drinking alone on his lunch break. They were of an age, so she thought it likely he might know. She wondered if he had ever reall
y got over the rejection he joked about. She caught the eye of a woman in the corner, overweight and scowling. Michelle raised an eyebrow and the woman continued to stare, hard and disdainful.

  Bob returned, put the beers down. “Here, get this into you.”

  Michelle laughed, without much humour. “Thanks.” She sipped the frosty brew, glanced sidelong to see the fat woman still staring. “Who’s that, by the pokie machine?”

  Bob looked up, laughed. “Wicked Wendy? Staring at you like she means murder?”

  Michelle shivered. “That’s the one.”

  Bob shrugged. “Wendy Matthews, twice divorced, runs the newsagents. Always closes for lunch and comes here, like I do, but she really makes the most of her lunch hour. Everyone knows to go in the afternoon when she’s so pissed she usually gives too much change.”

  “Why’s she giving me that look? Doesn’t like out-of-towners?”

  “Don’t think Wendy likes anyone.”

  They drank in silence for a moment. Wendy pulled a pack of cigarettes from a pocket and went to stand out the front of the pub and smoke. Michelle excused herself, strolled outside.

  “Wendy Matthews, is it?”

  Wendy stiffened, eyes widening. “Yeah.”

  Michelle had learned her boldness from Clara and it never failed. Matthews was happy to scowl and act tough until she was called on it. “Seems like you have an issue with me,” Michelle said. “Doesn’t seem fair. You don’t know me.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair that my dad died when I was fifteen,” Wendy said, venom dripping off her words.

  Michelle frowned. “That’s terrible, true. Why take it out on me?”

  “I heard you asking about that fucking lesbian.”

  Michelle swallowed anger, took a breath before speaking. “What does Clara have to do with it?”

  “Fucking bitch, this town’s well rid of her. I’m glad she’s dead.”

  Trembling began in Michelle’s knees, tremored through her stomach. She clenched her fists in an effort not to collapse. Or punch Wendy Matthews in her foul mouth. “You piece of shit,” she hissed. “Have some respect for the dead.”