And in that moment, hard and cold and bitter feelings coalesced into a fine, sharp point inside Bradley. But he’d just smiled, raised his hand and beckoned to the waiter, saying to Ned in the most affable tone he could manage, “I know what you need, Ned.
“More to drink.”
Now
And so here they are, on this strange glowing road that only exists at night. Except this time, Bradley’s not lost and instead of turning down an empty, mist-covered road leading into gray nothingness, he’s arrived at a place he must’ve known all along he was coming to. A place made for him. By him.
Bradley parks his car.
Kills the engine.
Wondering if, even before Ned started drinking, revealing the seedier aspects of his nature, he’d planned on looking for this road, tonight. Wondering if he’d planned on bringing Ned here all along, sometime during the full moon, onto a road he knew would be more than empty mist, now.
Ned had wanted to see his layout, after all.
So here’s his chance.
But as Bradley gets out of the car and stands before the Church of Luna—big as life, glowing with the same, eerie phosphorescence all the other buildings and the road and the trees and lawns and tracks emit—he knows, deep down, that he was meant to come here, Ned Simmons regardless.
For all this is his.
Wrought by his hands and heart, if not his mind and will.
And in this moment, he calls it “good.”
The passenger door slams shut. Ned mumbles, “Holy . . . shit. Too much booze. Everythin looks all glowin an shit.”
And then Ned gasps, squeals almost like a child at Christmas. He points, his face childlike in the moon’s glow. “Look! Tracks run behind that weird church! And . . . man! A Chessie! It’s a goddamn Chessie!”
And without another word, Ned stumbles across the church’s front lawn, slipping on night-slicked grass, and runs into the graveyard and up to the black, sleek engine and its one passenger car, sitting and thrumming on the tracks behind the church.
Bradley follows slowly. At ease, in no hurry. Of course, he half expected the train to be here, once he discovered what that symbol painted on the gravestones meant.
He’s not too long in joining Ned, who stands and stares at the midnight black Chessie, which thrums and growls lowly. “A Chessie,” Ned whispers. “But I’ve never seen one all black like this. Usually black and orange and yellow. And this . . .”
He reaches towards a white symbol like the ones painted on the tombstones. “What’s this mean?”
He touches it.
Stiffening, as if gripped by an immense cold.
Trembling, jaw hanging open, as if instinctively understanding a deep, horrible truth for the first time.
“It’s the mark of Charon,” Bradley whispers. “A moon of Pluto. Also, in Greek mythology, the ferryman of the dead, who transports people across the River Styx to Hades.”
Ned’s hand drops limply to his side. He turns and faces Bradley. Eyes distant, faraway, face slack, mouth gaping . . . the black mark of Charon glimmering on his forehead. “And, it looks like you just paid Charon’s toll. Or maybe I did, for you,” Bradley amends. “This is all new to me.”
A door to the engine’s only passenger car hisses open. A tall form leans out, dressed in a black rendition of a steam engine conductor . . . and the face beneath its cap is smooth and white and blank. Slightly bumpy protrusions suggest eyes and a nose and cheekbones and craters . . .
like on the moon
. . . but no actual face regards them. The voice, however, rings clear. “All aboard.”
Ned Simmons pauses, like a man in a dream. He glances at Bradley, swallows, blinks and says, “Not coming back, am I?”
Bradley shakes head. “I don’t think so. But maybe that’s for the best.”
For Emma.
And me.
Ned blinks again, nods sluggishly, lips moving, as if to say one last thing, but nothing comes out. So he turns, shambles away and boards the train, disappearing into the passenger car, past the faceless conductor.
Who leans out further. Even without eyes, Bradley feels its gaze upon him. “Will you be coming along also, sir?”
Bradley shakes his head. “Not tonight.”
The faceless conductor nods. Disappears into the train. And almost immediately, a mournful, low horn blows. Great, metal shifting sounds emanate from deep within the midnight black Chessie marked with the sign of Charon.
And it chugs away.
And as Bradley watches its departure, he sees not the wall of his basement—where this spur ends on his layout—but that same drifting wall of grayish mist.
He turns away.
Leaving the graveyard, knowing that for sure, Emma will be upset—perhaps even distraught—when Ned’s disappearance becomes news. But, based on what he’s learned tonight, coupled with the certain eyewitness reports of them dining together at the Inn, Bradley feels sure he can share Ned’s sordid past with Emma and convince her that more than likely, the young raker has simply moved on to other pastures.
There will be questions, of course.
Especially because he’ll be remembered as the last person seen with Ned. But he’s sure he can weather them. There’s no evidence left behind, after all. Bradley can say that because of Ned’s drinking, he drove him back to his apartment, and that was the last he saw of him.
And Emma?
She’ll get over Ned’s apparent abandonment. Because he’ll be there. That’s what friends are for, of course. And perhaps this will finally open Emma’s eyes to their potential.
And if not?
That would be unfortunate. Because despite his peaceful nature, Bradley has a feeling he won’t turn out to be a very forgiving god.
Not very forgiving at all.
FATHER FIGURE
—TRACIE MCBRIDE—
I met her during rush hour on a wintry Friday afternoon on the steps of Flinders Street Station. She stood slightly apart from her friends, an outcast amongst outcasts. Commuters migrating homeward bumped and jostled each other in the crush, yet the crowd instinctively parted to leave the little coven of Goths inviolate.
Untouchables. That’s what they appeared to be. That’s what I once was, before I grew up, got responsible, jumped on the corporate gravy train. Yet one look at Mia and all I wanted to do was touch her. Touch her in the most intimate and urgent ways, shake her, bruise her, drive her to her knees, wipe that sullen look off her face and replace it with one of flush-faced, open-mouthed, uncontrollable lust, run my hands through her long, black hair and pull real tight . . .
The impulse shook me; I considered myself a lover, not a fighter, and certainly not both at once. And right then I should have heeded my inner caution and walked on. But instead I stared at her, willing her to meet my gaze, and she did for a split second before turning away with a sneer. As well she should, for I was nearly twice her age and should have no business looking at her with the thoughts I was having. I was no stranger to sexual conquest, albeit with women closer to my own age and social milieu, but there was something . . . different about this girl. I dithered on the steps, pretending to fish around in my pockets for something and trying like a lovelorn teenager to pluck up the courage for a direct approach. Surreptitiously, I studied her more closely.
She wore the traditional Goth costume; head to toe in black. Despite the cold, her shirt was sleeveless, made of a flimsy lace material that allowed tantalising glimpses of pale skin. I smiled—no doubt she rebelled against everything, even the weather. She turned to talk to a friend, thus affording a clearer view of the black-inked pseudo-Celtic tattoo adorning one bicep, and my smile widened—there was my opportunity. As I closed the gap between us, I bolstered my confidence with a mental image that I couldn’t fully buy into; I was the Big Bad Wolf, and she my Little Black Riding Hood.
“I’m Andy,” I said, extending a hand. She looked at it as if I had just offered her a plate full of dog shit. Only sl
ightly deterred, I pushed on. “That’s an interesting tattoo. Do you know what it means?”
“Of course I do,” she spat, “but I’m not going to tell you.”
“You don’t need to,” I said. “I know what it means. It means that we’re destined to be together.” A battle waged in my head—Could you get any cheesier? Versus But what if it’s true? The latter won out, and I leaned closer and lowered my voice.
“I have an identical tattoo.”
“Bullshit,” she said. Her gaze flickered from my face to my suit-clad arms and back again. For an instant her aloof exterior cracked, and I saw something akin to hope in her eyes. Hope that I might be The One, that I might succeed where others had failed (or perhaps not even attempted) to save her from whatever misery her life contained. No longer the Big Bad Wolf, I became the Knight in Shining Armour. Now that was a role I could sincerely play.
“C’mon,” I said. “It’s cold out here. Let’s go somewhere to warm up and I can show you.” This time, she accepted my outstretched hand.
And so, over a couple of glasses of absinthe in a dimly lit corner of an impossible-to-find-unless-you’re-in-the-know back alley bar, I shrugged off my jacket and tie and slid my business shirt down over my shoulder to reveal her tattoo’s twin. It wasn’t really any great coincidence—no doubt she’d chosen the design the same way I had twenty years ago, by pointing at a picture on a tattoo parlour wall—but she was suitably impressed all the same. From the moment her fingertips caressed my inked skin, she was mine.
While a part of me still screamed Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! I slid quickly into love, in spite of—or perhaps, because of—her troubled background. Mia’s drug-addicted mother had died from an overdose when she was a toddler, and nobody knew who her father was. She’d been raised by a series of indifferent foster parents—so beautifully damaged, a wild, rudderless child. When she told me seven months later that she was pregnant, I was jubilant, and proposed to her on the spot. Everybody counselled us against getting married. Everyone, that is, who cared, which was precious few.
Was I drawn to her youth? Yes. Her fragility? Yes. Did I want to protect her, to save her, from herself and the world at large? Yes. Was I tired, bored and lonely, and looking to stave off the oncoming ravages of old age a little longer with a vital young wife? Yes. Did we rush into our marriage, with little thought for the consequences? Yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, yet all these tawdry truths did not come close to describing the profundity of our relationship. We were connected on some deep, indefinable level that transcended the clichés of our union.
The change in Mia became evident almost immediately after we got engaged. She put away the trappings of her misery—the thick black eyeliner, her exclusively black clothing, her extensive collection of drear, moody so-called music. The scars on her limbs from her self-harming episodes faded. Her eyes sparkled. She smiled. I was vindicated in my love and support. She carried and gave birth to our child with a joy and ease that other women envied. Bain, we named him, and he was perfection incarnate. Certain that nothing could spoil our happiness, we scheduled our wedding to coincide with Bain’s first birthday.
***
On the eve of our wedding she came to me bearing a battered shoe box.
“Burn it,” she commanded, a glimpse of her former, defiant self flashing across her face as she thrust it into my hands.
“What is it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Photos. Letters. Documents. Mostly old shit that belonged to my mother. None of it means anything to me anymore. You and Bain are my only family now.” She rested one hand on her belly, not yet swollen with our newly conceived second child.
I cradled the box in my lap as if it might contain a venomous snake. “Well, if you’re sure . . .”
“I’m sure.”
She did not say ‘don’t open it’, and even if she had, I would have disregarded her. When she left for the night to attend to whatever mysterious wedding rituals women observe, I removed the lid and examined the first item. It was Mia’s birth certificate; despite her instructions, I set it aside against some future need. There were a few blurry, poorly composed photos of a teenaged girl who I assumed was Mia’s mother Debbie. I studied them closely. The quality of the photos made it hard to learn anything from them; she looked familiar, and I was caught in an uncomfortable state of not-quite-recognition, unable to tell whether I knew her from a former time or was merely acknowledging the features she shared with her daughter.
I turned to the other items. Old concert ticket stubs, a lock of jet black hair barely held together with ancient, yellowing sticky tape, a cheap necklace bearing a small, blue stone pendant which I threw into the bin . . . they meant no more to me than they did to Mia.
At the bottom of the box sat a bundle of letters bound with a rubber band. I skimmed through the first few. They were almost laughable in their banality—badly written old love letters penned by adolescent admirers, and one angry missive from Debbie’s mother over some long forgotten grievance—and I was almost ready to toss the entire bundle back into the box, when something about the last letter caught my attention. It was from a young man, begging Debbie to abort, adopt out, pin the blame on someone else, say she was raped, do anything other than name him as the father of her unborn child. His life would be ruined otherwise, he claimed with staggering selfishness.
I knew the handwriting only too well, although I’d long since forgotten the circumstances that had prompted the letter, buried as they were beneath so many other careless close calls of my youth. I sat and stared at the pages for what seemed like hours. Big Bad Wolf indeed; I felt like I had been hollowed out and my stomach filled with stones that weighed me down until I could no longer move.
Then came the self-justifications. Perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps this was just some horrible coincidence, this Debbie not the same one that I had once known, but some other callous youth’s discard. Or perhaps it was my Debbie, but not my child. After all, she could have slept with any number of young men that summer, as free with her affections as I conveniently remembered her to be. Yes, that must be it; after all, wasn’t Bain’s robust good health and beauty living proof that Mia could not be my daughter?
I looked at the birth certificate again, at the “Father: Unknown.” With one word, Debbie had both saved and condemned me. Still, a DNA test would settle the question, and it wasn’t too late to postpone the wedding. And yet . . .
My favourite game as a child had been to ‘hide’ by covering my eyes with my hands; if I could not see my hunter, I reasoned, then he or she could not see me. It had always served me well as a problem-solving strategy and I saw no need to give it up now. I burned the box with its damning letter inside, and kept my mouth firmly shut about it. I was probably the only person alive who so much as suspected the truth of Mia’s parentage, and I buried that suspicion deep down until it became as ephemeral a thought in my consciousness as the smoke that rose from the embers in the fireplace.
***
After Bain came Layla, then Charlize, Sebastian, and finally Poppy. Five beautiful, healthy children under the age of seven and all of them with the same black hair, pale skin and delicate features. Like a household full of Snow Whites, our neighbours used to say. After Poppy, I booked myself in for a vasectomy, citing a long list of sensible reasons, but in truth I did it because I feared that we were pushing our luck. Every pregnancy brought with it a deep anxiety on my part that the child would be born malformed in some way; it felt like we were playing Gestational Russian Roulette. Mia was happy enough with my decision, as you would expect for the mother of five. Our lives were cheerfully chaotic, and we immersed ourselves in love and a deep contentment. My family kept me feeling young, but they could not stop the physical signs of aging, not that I cared much about that anymore. I grew round of belly and grey of hair, and the only time it bothered me was when strangers mistook me for the children’s grandfather. Too close to the bone by far, these innocent assumptions made me want
to prove my vitality by throttling the life out of them.
The cracks began to appear when Bain turned fourteen. Literally overnight, he changed from a happy, if slightly highly strung, child to a surly and uncommunicative teenager. I was unconcerned; my own adolescence had been much the same, and I had come out the other side of it relatively unscathed (not so for Debbie, my subconscious whispered, and I squashed down the thought).
But for Mia, the change in her first born child sparked off her own, cataclysmic shift in outlook.
“There must be something wrong with him,” she said, chewing on a thumb nail. She hadn’t chewed her nails in fifteen years, and I resisted the urge to slap her hand away from her face. “Some hormonal imbalance or something.”
I laughed. “Of course it’s a hormonal imbalance! It’s called puberty. He’ll settle down eventually—just give him time.”
“But still, it’s not normal . . . is it?”
She ignored my reassurances, and became convinced that, not only Bain, but our entire family was in the grip of some mysterious malady. Mia marched us all, one by one, to the family doctor, and when she pronounced us all in robust good health, Mia sought a second opinion. And a third. She took our temperatures twice a day, and seemed almost disappointed at the invariably normal results. Every blemish, every cough, every little twinge became the subject of intense scrutiny. She visited dermatologists, chiropractors, dieticians and acupuncturists, dragging with her whichever child she could coerce at the time. A visit to the naturopath had her imposing on the family an organic diet free of meat, soy, dairy, gluten, wheat and sugar. A task as simple as mopping the floor set off a paroxysm of indecision, as she was unable to choose between scouring away potentially deadly bacteria and exposing her family to toxic chemicals.
The children had always been closer to their mother than to me, but Mia’s obsession skewed the family dynamic in a different direction. I became their ally, their confidant and their accomplice as I snuck them out of the house on various pretexts to gorge ourselves on burgers and fries, slipped them extra cash to stock their school lunch boxes with more desirable items, invented alibis to get them out of medical appointments, or simply provided them with adult conversation that did not revolve around their health.
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