The Dead Path

by Stephen M Irwin

  “Pritam!” came the voice again. A man’s voice, and his tone was urgent. Pritam fetched an umbrella from the hatstand.

  “Pritam Anand!”

  “Coming!” he called. He struggled to free the umbrella, accidentally pressed its button and it popped open, one rib jabbing him in the thigh. That’s bad luck, that.

  “Pritam!”

  He opened the door and hurried outside. The rain spat on the umbrella. He walked carefully along the slick path beside tall hibiscus bushes. The voice had come from the road fronting the church. There! He could see a figure on the opposite footpath. The man held an umbrella and leaned on a cane; his shadowed face was unclear through the drizzle.

  “Pritam?”

  Pritam squinted. The man’s stoop was familiar. But it couldn’t be…

  “John?”

  Reverend John Hird stood on the other side of the road. He waved the walking cane he held. Beside him was a small suitcase.

  “They released me from the hospital! I’ve been trying to phone, but it’s been engaged all morning. Have you been downloading porn, you dirty black reprobate?”

  Pritam smiled and frowned simultaneously.

  “But, John, you… I saw you…” Had he dreamed Hird’s death? He was suddenly so tired, he wasn’t sure of anything.

  “Here!” John waved him over. “Give me a hand.”

  “Okay,” said Pritam, stepping onto the road. “But I don’t-”

  The car hit him with a dull and meaty thud, and hurled him up the road. The driver slammed the brakes too hard and the car slid. One locked wheel snagged Pritam’s leg and ground flesh and bone into the bitumen. Car and victim finally stopped. The rain fell blindly.

  The old woman watching from across the road hobbled quickly away.

  T he kitchen smelled sharply of herbs and oils. In small, clean bowls were blue borage flowers, dandelion flowers, plucked waxy ivy leaves. In a glass bowl was maidenhair. In a mortar was a handful of poplar bulbs. Suzette lifted the heavy pestle and started pounding them into a tart, scented paste.

  “What are you making?”

  Suzette looked up. Quincy was in the doorway.

  “I thought you were playing with Daddy?”

  Quincy shrugged. “He fell asleep.”

  Suzette nodded. Both she and Bryan were exhausted. They took turns watching over Nelson; neither was game to fall asleep unless the other was awake and watching the rise and fall of his chest. Nelson’s color had improved, and his eyes flickered open from time to time, but he quickly slipped back into a hot, herky-jerky sleep. She and Bryan had made a quiet pact the day Nelson fell ill that they would not worry Quincy. Suzette knew the hex would pass and Nelson would revive, so there was no point making Quincy fearful.

  “So, what are you making?” repeated Quincy.

  “Elephant paint. To paint elephants with.”

  Quincy rolled her eyes. “It’s not elephant paint. We don’t have an elephant.”

  Suzette smiled. “Do you want an elephant?”

  Quincy thought about it. “Yes.”

  “It would have to sleep in your room,” said Suzette.

  “Can’t it sleep in yours and Daddy’s room? It’s bigger.”

  Quincy, thought Suzette, would make a fine business negotiator.

  “No, Daddy’s allergic to elephants. It would have to be in your room and your bed.”

  Quincy wrinkled her nose.

  “No elephants,” she decided.

  Suzette nodded-wise decision. She mixed the other ingredients in with the poplar paste. She had woken from her short sleep exhausted and furious with Nicholas, who still hadn’t called. Did he give a rat’s about his nephew? She’d decided to turn her bright indignation into action, and started this healing mix. Now, how was it applied? She seemed to think it was pasted over the heart and bandaged. Or was it on the temples?

  “Pass me that book, sweetie?” She nodded at her kitchen dresser, its shelves loaded with books on herbs, spells, and charms; a book on healing herbs was open on the dresser top.

  Quincy skipped over, delivered the book, and skipped back to the shelves. She’d never taken notice of her mother’s hobby, but today she was perusing the spines with interest.

  “Want me to put on Dora the Explorer? ” asked Suzette.

  Quincy pursed her lips and shook her head. She reached up and pulled out an old book. Suzette watched from the corner of one eye as Quincy opened it. She was a good reader for her age, but this book would be full of words she wouldn’t know; it was one of Suzette’s father’s aged volumes: Herbs of Old Europe. It wasn’t surprising that it attracted Quincy’s eye: its fading cover was dotted with stars and mystic symbols, a fantastical image that belied the utilitarian descriptions inside. It was so dull, in fact, that Suzette had never gotten more than a quarter way through it.

  “Can we have a Pan?” asked Quincy.

  “I beg your pardon, hon?”

  Quincy turned and said, “I don’t want an elephant. But can we have a Pan?”

  Suzette could see she was holding a scrap of paper in her hand. “Show me?”

  Quincy brought the scrap over and handed it up to her mother. Suzette wiped her hand on her apron and took it.

  It was half of a page torn from a book that looked like it had gone out of print eighty years ago. In the center of the page was an etching of a satyr under a night sky, rubbing his hands and capering beside nymphs in a water pond. Suzette blinked-he sported a raging erection. Beneath the picture, most of the caption had been torn away, leaving only “Pan: Greek god, son of Hermes…”

  “Can we get one?” asked Quincy again.

  Suzette didn’t answer. In a small patch of yellowing page between the etching and the torn edge was written in ballpoint pen: “???” She had no way of knowing, but she was sure the handwriting was her father’s.

  “I don’t think so,” she said softly.

  She folded the paper away and slipped it into her apron pocket. Pan? It must mean nothing, surely; just something that caught his eye and he kept it. But the etching felt so oddly discomfiting. Why did he keep it?

  And why did he leave it for us?

  “Why not?” asked Quincy. “They look funny. He’s got no pants!”

  “I don’t think you’d want one, honey biscuit.” She put on a bright smile. “Come on. Let’s put this on your brother.”

  Chapter 23

  T ristram Hamilton Boye! Come in here this minute!”

  Laine’s eyes flew open.

  “Where is your brother?” shrieked the elder Mrs. Boye. She was in the kitchen, and slammed down a saucepan lid like a cymbal. “Your father will be home shortly and the carport has not been swept!”

  Laine rolled slowly out of bed. The queen-size was one of the few new things in the house-a concession to physical comfort she’d been intractable about when the prospect of moving in with Gavin’s mother moved from possible to probable some six months after Mr. Boye succumbed to cancer. But now, even the new bed felt tainted. It was an inner-sprung monument to lies, a petri dish of mendacity she had shared with her faithless husband, and shared now with creeping dreams that flew from light but left harsh scratches and diseased, black feathers. Laine promised herself that, as soon as she could, she would rid herself of this house, this bed, her clothes, her jewelry-everything but the flesh she lived in. She would scrub herself clean and flee to start a new life whose first and only commandment would be: Never let thyself be lied to again.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, wondering how much of yesterday-strange yesterday-she had dreamed. The almost ridiculously neat young minister Pritam Anand. The haunted, angry, oddly attractive Nicholas Close. The dead bird. The photographs. A shadowed haberdashery where an ageless woman once kept shop and watched and spun plans.

  And where now a pretty young woman sold health food, she reminded herself.

  My dead husband was one of her customers.

  That was exactly the kind of coincidence she’d poured sc
orn on last night. She pulled back her hair and went to face the crazed force that was her mother-in-law.

  Laine tended to Mrs. Boye, gently steering her away from unfocused rage to eat, to bathe, to sit while she picked up the telephone and sifted through the bones of a diminishing list of potential live-in caregivers. Two encouraging interviews were set for the afternoon, and Laine felt satisfied enough to shower, dress, and step into the misty drizzle and walk toward Myrtle Street. It was stupid, it was childish, but she needed to see for herself this young woman from whom Gavin-Gavin, of all people, for fuck’s sake-had started buying health food.

  The fine rain was cold and held the world closely in a gauzy veil. She tried to avoid the puddles on the footpaths, but her shoes soon squelched and her feet turned icy. A pair of crows huddled on the branches of a tall gum let out a half-hearted protest at her passing. The birds brought back the memory of the miserable dead thing Nicholas Close had placed on the young reverend’s coffee table, its limp wings flopping around that bizarre fist of a head.

  Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas Close had talked about ghosts and magic, and woven a bit of a spell himself. He’d sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she’d found herself wanting to believe him. But testing prods at his argument had made him angry, and long years with Gavin had taught her that angry, defensive people shared the lousy habit of being wrong.

  Ahead, she heard water dripping a monotonous tattoo in some downpipe and the jut-jaw awning of the shop appeared out of the misty drizzle. Closer, she could see the wire frames outside holding the banners for women’s magazines and newspapers. One headline read: Health Minister Under Fire. This was the real world. What room was there for magic when Palestinian rockets and Israeli smart bombs could snuff a hundred lives in a moment? An overflowing trash can, a nearby car with a flat tire, dog shit on the nature strip, a ludicrously yellow chip packet that seemed to leap out in the watery gloom. Even the shop front was frank and wonted: Plow amp; Vine Health Foods written in a hokey rustic font and flanking a logo of a rustic hand plow and a rustic trellis that combined to give an effect that was, let’s face it, hamfisted and artless. A less magical facade was hard to imagine.

  For two long minutes, Laine stood in the drizzle and debated turning around and sloshing home. But the prospect of returning to the twilit house where Mrs. Boye shouted at ghosts was a strong disincentive. So, she stepped under the awning to the door of the health food store and went inside.

  T he shop was pleasantly warm, and smelled delicious. Warm pools of light fell on jars of bush honey, open sacks of coffee beans, tantalizingly spiced joss sticks, wooden boxes of fragrant tea leaves. Every step brought an appetizing new aroma, a tempting and sapid morsel.

  “Are you looking for something in particular?”

  She turned to the voice.

  Two downlights over the counter flicked on. A slender young woman stepped out from the back room and flipped a switch on the side of the electric till; it beeped and its zeroes lit green.

  So this is her, thought Laine.

  The young woman was pretty, but naturally so. She carried herself more like a country girl, pleased with her looks, but they didn’t factor on her top ten issues of the day.

  “Just getting out of the rain, really,” answered Laine.

  The woman nodded and smiled warmly. “You’re welcome to browse as long as you like.”

  “Thanks,” said Laine. From the corner of her eye she saw the other woman open the till and stock its drawer with notes from a cash bag.

  Laine drifted along the shelves, sniffing the lotions, rolling small hessian sacks of beans in her hands, plucking a leaf of rosemary from a sheaf and lifting it to her nose and savoring its autumnal spice. Then she saw the pumpkin seeds.

  “They’re pretty popular. Have you tried them?” said the woman, shutting the till.

  Laine shook her head. “Just opening?”

  “Yeah, late start. I had to…” The woman wiped her hands on her jeans and wrinkled her nose. “Mammogram.” She smiled and shrugged-what can you do?

  Laine nodded. “All okay?”

  “Yes, thank God. It’s a stress. My mother, she had a double full mastectomy. I don’t know how she coped. I guess you just do.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know how I would…” She trailed off, then laughed. “I kind of like mine!”

  Laine found herself smiling. “I hear you.”

  This girl is no husband-stealer. And as for the old seamstress who Nicholas said had nested here, this place was so inviting, so pleasant, it was impossible to imagine.

  The woman opened a box of tea tree shampoos and began marking the bottles. “I mean, it’s not like I’m going to have kids, but you never-”

  She bit off her last words. Laine watched. Embarrassment bloomed in the other woman’s pale cheeks.

  “Pardon?” asked Laine. She could see the girl’s jaw was tight.

  “Nothing.”

  Christ, she had some other kind of sickness? Cervical cancer? That would be so cruel, a girl this attractive and young unable to have kids. She touched her shoulder.

  “Are you okay? Jesus, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. But is it serious?”

  “No, nothing like that. No.”

  She gently took Laine’s wrist and lifted her hand off her shoulder. Laine found her skin on the underside of her wrist tingling. How long has it been since anyone touched me there? The girl kept her eyes on the floor. “It’s a preference thing.”

  Laine’s eyes widened just a little as she understood. “Oh.”

  The girl nodded and smiled.

  Laine kicked herself. Gavin might have tried to crack on to this woman, but it certainly didn’t happen the other way round.

  “I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to pry,” she said.

  “That’s okay.”

  “Does your… your partner must have been relieved your tests were clear.”

  The girl put her hands in her pockets. Her blush deepened, then she frowned and laughed. “I’m… I’m not… I’m single right now.”

  Laine held up her hand-I understand. “The joys of being out there, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed and rolled her eyes in mock despair.

  Laine smiled. The girl’s eyes were dark brown, the beautiful color of polished rosewood. “But, hey,” said Laine, “this must work as a way to meet people.” She waved at the shop surrounds.

  “You’d be surprised how bad, actually.” She laughed again. “I mean, if I was into threesomes with very hairy vegan couples, this would be paradise. But I like… I prefer, you know, more sophisticated women.”

  She held her gaze on Laine. Her expression was frank. Women like you, it said. But the moment Laine thought she read that, the other woman looked away and got back to her work.

  Laine found her heart thudding harder. She’d never had a woman try to pick her up. Was she trying to pick me up? Is she just being nice? How do I say no?

  Do I say no?

  Laine blinked, shocked at her own thoughts, and knocked a packet of caraway seeds onto the floor.

  “Sorry!” she said, and stooped to pick it up.

  “Don’t be silly.” The girl knelt, too. As they stooped, their foreheads tunked together.

  “Ow!”

  “Oh!”

  The girl threw back her head and laughed. Laine smiled wider, rubbing her head. She’s attractive. She has beautiful skin. Beautiful lips. How long since you were kissed? How long since anyone traced their fingers over your belly? Looked at you like you were beautiful? Laine inhaled through her nostrils. The girl’s hair smelled like sandalwood. Exotic. Different. Clean and exciting. And her eyes. Dark brown and deep…

  “What’s your name?” the girl asked, watching her.

  “Laine.”

  “Laine.” She said the name slowly, her tongue flicking behind her white teeth, as if tasting it.

  Laine felt a small shudder below her navel
. “And yours?” Laine asked.

  “Rowena.” She stared at Laine’s face, her skin, her eyes. Appraising. Approving. “Here.” She reached up and gently swept aside the stray hairs over Laine’s eyes, pushed them back, and swooped them behind Laine’s ear. Laine sucked in a breath at the touch of another’s fingertips on her temple, her ear, her neck. Laine half-turned her head. I shouldn’t like this. Not from a girl.

  “How’s that bump?” Rowena whispered.

  She softly took Laine’s face in both hands. Her palms were dry and cool. She tilted Laine’s face to her own. Her mouth opened slightly and she leaned forward.

  “Looks just fine,” she whispered softly, and dropped her eyes to look right into Laine’s.

  Those eyes, thought Laine. Beautiful eyes.

  Rowena smiled. Lips apart. White teeth. Red lips.

  “Good,” whispered Laine. She leaned forward.

  The ringing of her mobile phone was as shrill and sudden as a steam whistle. Laine rocked back in surprise. Rowena’s fingers slid on her skin, and one nail caught on her jaw, slicing into the flesh, drawing blood.

  “Oh, God!” cried Rowena. “I’m so sorry.”

  Laine jerked back. She felt the burning of the deep scratch on her jaw.

  The phone trilled again, insistent. She fumbled into her bag.

  “It’s fine. Fine.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Laine blinked, and raised her fingers to her cheek. They came away lightly dotted with red. Rowena stood and hurried to reach under the counter.

  “I’m fine, it’s nothing.”

  Was I going to kiss her? What was I thinking?

  Rowena returned with a tissue. “Here…”

  She gently reached for Laine’s cheek. Laine fought the urge to shrink back from her. Rowena pressed the tissue onto Laine’s skin. The scratch pulsed in new pain.

  I’m sorry, she mouthed.

  Laine forced a smile-forget it-and finally grabbed her phone and hit the green button. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Laine Boye?”

  “Ms. Boye, yes.”

  “Ms. Boye. Okay. This is Detective Sergeant Anne Waller from Police Headquarters. I need to ask you a couple of questions. Is now a good time?”