Dark Fires Shall Burn

by Anna Westbrook

  Forty feet below him the high tide works the cliff-face like a boxer, sending relentless jets of spray upward on the wind, and his face is soon misted with salt. A liquid contentment disperses itself about his body. It is private here, it is his, and he does not have to fight for any patch of it.

  He has arranged a lot of wooden boxes, some dozen or so taken from laneway trash, in lines. Flicking a match, he carefully lifts a box from the cavern’s gritty floor. Underneath is a dead rat. Very dead, Dot or Annie might have quipped, for it is stiff as jerky, the straps of shrivelled meat the Yanks chewed on. Its little yellow overbite is almost comical.

  Templeton looks the rodent over, admiring how the flesh has retracted over the thin white needles of ribcage. It smells, but only faintly, of dried fruit. Not at all like death.

  It’s been a while since his last visit. Weeks must pass for the conditions to be right; he can’t abide the sight or the smell if he comes too soon. It is much better in wintertime and so he comes more often now, even though the wind is fierce and the ocean below knife-grey, as it is tonight.

  He smokes a cigarette as he checks on the rest of his collection. Mostly rats, as they were the easiest to get, but there is also a magpie, a ring-tailed possum, a rainbow lorikeet, a seagull and some other small birds, the names of which he does not know.

  He doesn’t much care for the possum, it being the only creature he had killed, rather than a true find. Some boys had hit it with a rock and near-brained it in one of the fig trees near the beach, and it was bleeding and panting with its tongue out when they left. He had tried to strangle it but the damned thing struggled and screeched and ripped a chunk out of his finger, so he had been forced to snap its neck. Quick, like his father had shown him on rabbits. He remembered their svelte velvet bodies dangling from the man’s fist.

  He replaces the box and sits for a while, smoking and watching the surf churn in the dark.

  ‘Go out and bathe in the dam. Wash your clothes too,’ Annie had said that day, after his father had left, and he had skinned himself of his puked-on shirt, of his putrid singlet and breeches, and left them on the rocky lip of the dam. He stood naked and alone but for the roos drinking and scratching nearby, untroubled.

  The dam had been low. No rain in months. He had to wade far from the edge into the brown water, barely even liquid, to get wet, and yet in the centre it still suddenly turned deep, and it sucked him under like he had a gut full of stones. When his head broke the surface, he gulped air but tasted mud. He crouched on the bank and a low moan quivered across the span of him.

  Almost mechanically, Templeton rinsed his clothes, pounding them with flat rocks and putting them back on wet, as though he was watching himself from some treetop eyrie. Mr O’Riordan held the next stead, an hour away on foot. He had walked there fast, dumb and snot-smeared. The fields stretched and the sun had scorched his arms and brow, baking his clothes stiff as paper. He let the flies land on his face. He could barely get words out when he staggered up and pounded on the screen door. Mr O’Riordan had had to thump him on the back and give him a dram.

  They returned to the house on Mr O’Riordan’s horse. The smell of the oiled saddle, tart and grassy, mixed with the ripeness of Mr O’Riordan underarms. ‘Hold on to me, fella. I don’t want you falling off,’ Mr O’Riordan said, and clicked his tongue to the mare.

  As they approached, they saw Annie in the rocker on the verandah with something in her arms. Her hair was wild and there was blood on her pinafore. She was singing to the baby in a high, thin voice, scarcely more than a murmur, and Templeton could just make it out. Something their mother used to hum. ‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s. You owe me five farthings, say the bells of St Martin’s.’

  Templeton released his grip on Mr O’Riordan and slid off the horse to run towards her, but hesitated at the steps of the verandah. Annie made no sign that she had seen them, her eyes fixed dead ahead. Mr O’Riordan dismounted slowly and stood at a respectful distance. He lifted his arms and dropped them again and looked across at Templeton. Templeton stared back, not knowing what to do. His chest hurt. Mr O’Riordan cleared his throat and stepped forward, the verandah planks squawking like an angry crow, but she did not look at him. He took his hat off and wedged it under his arm. He was sweating heavily and he ran a moist palm over his hair to flatten it. He flicked his tongue over his dried lips.

  ‘Come on now. There’s a girl.’ He spoke to her quietly, gently, as though she was one of his horses. He stared at the bundle she held and outstretched his arms to take it. She wouldn’t look at him. Realising she was not going to do as bidden, Mr O’Riordan gestured to Templeton. ‘Go on, son.’

  Templeton edged nearer. He reached down, slipping his fingers underneath the swaddled bundle.

  ‘When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey,’ Annie sang softly.

  He had stood there holding the cold body of the baby, looking in wonderment at its tiny, purpled face, until Mr O’Riordan took it away.

  It was just after that they’d left for Sydney.

  He replaces the covers on his treasures and straightens the boxes, ensuring their alignment. When the rat is ready, he will take the skull down to the feet of the cliffs, where the bluff tapers down to Bondi, and there he will scour and rinse it clean and add it to the ledge. He takes up the cat’s skull, his favourite, and admires the giant eyeholes and the curving front fangs, his own tiny Nosferatu. For a moment he permits his admiration to divert to waggishness and he holds the skull up to the slope of the moon so the silhouette falls onto the cave wall behind. He creeps it forward, in imitation of Max Schreck’s skeletal shadow mounting the staircase in the flickering old film. Enjoying himself, he stretches his hand out suspensefully towards the imagined doorknob so that the skull and his arm are, in shadow, one distorted creature. He lets out a peal of laughter, aiming for deep and blood-curdling, like the ones on the soundtracks to all his favourite monster movies. Then, feeling suddenly sheepish, he replaces the skull. He looks about him. No one can be seen near the track to his spot, and in front of him is only ocean. He runs his fingers through his lank blonde hair, sweeping it out from his eyes and tying it back under his hat.

  The brisk air has cleared his head, but he doesn’t want to go back yet. Instead he heads westwards, back to Newtown, to the empty house that waits for him, and the full bottle of Annie’s liquor under the loose floorboard.

  Pulling his key from his pocket and slipping it into the lock, he does not think to check the house before he enters. This is a mistake he feels in the cost of a hand, which barrels out from the darkness of the kitchen doorway and snatches a fistful of his hair.

  Templeton lets out a scream. He sees a face meet his in the moonlight. Jackie!

  Jackie twists his hand, securing Templeton’s skull in his grip, and wrenches him up on his toes. The kitchen erupts in light. Will and Frank loom in their shirtsleeves. Jackie throws Templeton to them and they hold him up by the armpits, secured as though in a steel clamp. ‘Let’s shear the little bastard,’ he snarls. Templeton does not see the razor but he hears the terrible flick and swish of it in the air beside his cheek.

  ‘You bent little queer,’ Frank says. ‘You girl.’ The last word is rotten with contempt.

  ‘No! Please, no.’ Templeton flails wildly. Jackie flourishes the razor, stopping it so close to his eyes he can see the tiny nicks in the blade. He lets out a yelp and is immediately ashamed. The men laugh.

  ‘Where’s your sister now, huh?’ Jackie says. ‘Who’s going to save you this time? Annie’s not going to stop me.’

  ‘What are you doing here anyway, sneaking around in the middle of the night?’ Will asks.

  ‘Nothin’! I wasn’t doing anything. Honest.’ Templeton squirms.

  ‘Pig’s arse,’ Will retorts.

  ‘Don’t you try and get over us, you hear?’ Frank warns. ‘Or we’ll roof your fac
e in.’

  Their beer spittle spatters his neck as they struggle to hold him, his twists turning more desperate. Frank’s stretched, bony hand pushes him to the table and then grips him by the jaw as if he’d snap it off. Will’s knee plants on his guts as Jackie readies the razor. ‘Shh. Shh,’ Jackie hushes him. ‘We’re just gonna give you a haircut. What’s a bloke meant to think? Can’t tell you apart from Annie and her tarts. You oughta thank us.’

  ‘Fair go, Jackie, come on now. I didn’t hear nothin’ and I won’t tell anyone where you are,’ Templeton bargains. ‘We’re all pals. Just lemme go, alright?’

  ‘Shut up,’ says Jackie.

  ‘Not your pal, pal,’ sneers Will.

  ‘Look at his pretty teeth, Jackie. Surely he doesn’t need all those, eh?’ Frank’s grip twists Templeton’s lip upwards in a savage fishhook.

  ‘Are ya here to spy on us?’ Jackie swipes the razor and a cloud of Templeton’s hair flutters to the floor. ‘Spying for the Jew bitch? Shot through to God knows where with Annie.’

  ‘No! I swear.’

  Jackie lifts his razor and begins to hack into Templeton’s hair; he can feel it slide down his face and onto the floor at his feet. Templeton struggles against him, but it is no use: Jackie’s razor just shaves closer to his scalp. From his position, Templeton can see the two half-moons of sweat staining Jackie’s shirt under his arms, and can smell his pungent odour — he stinks of cabbage soup.

  When Jackie is done, Templeton’s hair is cropped to bristles, bald in patches and bleeding in others. Frank shoves him aside roughly. He sinks to the floor and presses his cheek against the cool wood, watching as Jackie takes a bag and a spoon out of his pocket and honks up a giant dose.

  ‘Let the little bastard go.’ He kicks Templeton away towards the door, changing his mind, suddenly tired of him. Frank opens his mouth to speak but Jackie’s hand flashes up in the air. ‘I said let the fucker go.’

  Out on the street a few tears escape, not because of the pain but from what his hair had looked like trodden into the ground, his blond locks, pale as lambswool, shorn and scattered and stomped in the filth that he had stared at as they held his head still. His hair was his past, his disguise. His mother had loved to comb it. ‘Angel hair,’ she used to whisper into the soft nautilus of his ear. ‘Never cut it.’

  Templeton smears snot across his sleeve. His breath in the night is like a Bren gun unloading shells, five hundred rounds a minute. He runs until he meets a wall with his face. Making a wet, tearful sound, he sags against the side of a house. Grit and blood stick to his cheeks. Jackie, goddamn him, son of a bitch! Why could Templeton never stand up to him?

  Church Street is empty, the paling fence edging the cemetery a dark paper cut. He can see the tips of the headstones in the field like a mouthful of yellowed teeth. Why did he leave Palmer Street? He curses himself again. Stupid! He should have suspected that Jackie might still be hiding out from Bob Newham in the one place Bob was least likely to look again. Rat-cunning: Jackie had it in spades.

  Suddenly his stomach plunges at the sound of running footsteps. Had Jackie changed his mind? Is he coming up behind him to kick him to death? He hears a man shout in the darkness behind him and turns wildly. Was Frank about to clamp a thick-knuckled hand around his mouth and hold it there?

  He peers down Australia Street but can’t see anything. It was just possums on a roof, he tells himself — possums and three-legged cats, and maybe somewhere nearby a crusted tramp stinking of White Lady.

  He darts across the road and reaches the grass. Spots rise in his vision like the bubbles in penny ginger ale. The blood is still flowing from the nicks in his scalp. He has to lie down soon or he will collapse. The graves are submerged in their own dark bath, and no one will find him here.

  ‘This here’s my spot. Get your own,’ someone snarls at his feet.

  Templeton springs back, heart tympanic against his sternum. Peering into the pall, he realises it is Merv. Drunk old Merv. He was always hanging around these parts. The war had unseated part of his brain, Templeton knows; he had been in Kenmore, the mental hospital up in Goulburn, for the delirium tremens. Served in Europe and seen things, or so the talk was among the girls. Right now Merv probably had the tremors so bad he couldn’t throw a punch. ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammers. He sees Merv’s terrible face, filthy and scabbed, and his eyes, dark with no iris, like an animal, lit up by moonlight.

  ‘Keep goin’, ya little bastard, or I’ll drop you.’ Merv stands up with surprising energy, and Templeton ducks, weaving around him and his balled fists.

  The terrible growl pursues him as he keeps on through the graves, stumbling along the ragged paths. Through his tears he sees garbage everywhere: emptied beer bottles, browned newspapers, dying flowers left on graves. The air is stale, as if he has thrust his head into some cave or burrow and disturbed the private settling-in of rot. When he judges he is far enough away from the road — and far enough from Merv — he allows his legs to give out. He curls onto his side on a clean patch of ground and, finally, does not sleep as much as pass out cold.

  He dreams he has no hands and no tongue. He tries to cry out but he cannot, and when he attempts to feel his mouth, he finds his arms end at the wrists. He looks at the stumps in surprise. It is dark, until suddenly it is bright daylight and bees land on him, tickling his ears and his lips as if he were an open blossom. Bees swarm over him, buzzing like the filaments in electric bulbs, hot little wicks, before they turn slowly into black, morbid flies. He sees himself from above, as he might look at one of his animal collection, a carcass bloating and leaking and then hollowed, drying, finally turning into bones, sleeping in their boxes. Somewhere, through the thick fabric of unconsciousness, or perhaps within it, he hears a long, low wailing.

  The sun is bleaching out the long night when he begins to wake, and he shivers. Opening his eyes, he can see his hands in front of his face, trembling, knuckles raw and skinned. He touches his head, runs hands over the unfamiliar stubble.

  For a moment he thinks he hears footsteps — the snap of twigs against the dirt — but it’s so faint it’s impossible to tell if it’s real. He waits, but hears only the trams begin to rattle up and down Enmore Road.

  Feeling a little sick in the guts, he creeps out.

  He has scarcely taken twenty paces when he sees her fingers, brown and child-like but bent unnaturally, like a fork driven into a rock. Her arms are tied behind her back with something yellow, a dress or a coat. Her cardigan. He feels a spasm in his guts. It is Frances, partly naked and lying in the grass, and it was only days ago that they stood so near talking about National Velvet, the silly movie about a girl and her horse.

  Her neck is purple and black. Fine brown hair spills over her shoulders and into the dirt, covering her face. It will be getting dirty on the ground like that. Strange he should think of this: her dirty hair. As if it matters now.

  ‘Oh Jesus.’ Was she dead when he fell down and slept so close to her? Had the killer been there too, hidden in the darkness? The thought strikes him: if she had not been quite dead … He thinks of the wailing he heard in his dream and crosses himself as he had been taught to do in church, although he is not a believer.

  He looks around wildly — surely someone is nearby. He can see the spire of St Stephen and its sandstone shoulders, the fence at Australia Street, the spreading crown of trees at the road’s edge, but no one is within sight. Should he call for help? Yes. But he feels reluctant to leave her like this.

  The pale-bellied gums conspire around him. What to do? Think. He has to make a decision.

  If he reports it, perhaps they will think he has killed her, or at the very least they will want to know where he lives — Annie would skin him alive for bringing the coppers down on them. The smartest thing to do is leave. Someone else will find her.

  The huge fig near the church seems to shift and sigh tiredly as he wal
ks quickly beneath its branches. He drags the broken e shut behind him, paint flaking off in his hand and staining his skin rust.

  On the street outside, a van is delivering the milk, the man whistling as he unloads the bottles with their cheerful red tops. Templeton can hear a lone wattlebird calling chok-chok to the sunrise. Yac-a-yac.

  He walks away from the body in the grass and out into the perfect stillness of Church Street. He regrets not taking off his torn, dirty jacket to cover her lower half, exposed like that to the world. He almost turns to go back and catches himself. What if they found out it was his jacket? He thinks of all the ways he could have done something, helped her — even saved her. He moves like a dreamer, his breath shallow and quick. Could people see it on his face, smell it on him, the knowledge of her death?

  The bread cart passes him heedlessly and then the ragged bunch of little boys that follow behind, nearly bowling him over as they swoop to scrape the horse manure from the road and into their pails.

  Why aren’t people hollering already? Why aren’t women screaming, whistles being blown, men looming like rugby tacklers? Stop! You, boy. Catching him by his underarms and dragging him off? They could have him. He knew the inside of a courtroom. It’d be the boys’ home this time, like they’d threatened. The boys’ home: his stomach cramps and he needs to shit. His face feels raw, and still stings from his beating. He can imagine what a sight he looks, head caked in blood, but no one seems to see.

  A digger with a folded trouser cuff spits a wet brown wad near Templeton’s feet as he steps down into the gutter. Templeton makes a giddy left turn into the swell of King Street as though descending stairs into a tidal sea. Gusts from the St Peter’s brewery breach his nostrils, and the air feels spiked with yeast. The people around him move too slow, too fast — he can’t get the rhythm — and he is buffeted like a paper boat down a gutter. Suits jostle against one another, swarming for the city-bound tram, and girls on their way to school kick a tin can up the road.