“Lazy bastard,” said Nicholas. “Hell of a way to get out of Sunday service.”
Pritam smiled. His eyes stayed on Nicholas. They twinkled like night stars under the shifting layers of heaving, gasping, weightless dead.
“It was John,” he whispered. “But it wasn’t John.”
Nicholas shook his head slowly-I don’t understand.
“John called me over the road,” croaked Pritam. “But John’s dead. It was Quill.”
The name hit Nicholas like a wave of frosted air.
“Laine’s in here, too,” he whispered.
Pritam’s eyes closed and he took a rattling breath. “How?”
Nicholas shook his head again, and shrugged. “And Hannah Gerlic’s sister is missing.”
Pritam’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling. The reverend’s eyes slid back to Nicholas; Pritam was fighting to stay awake.
“Key under…”
“I can’t hear you, Pritam.”
“Key under the mat,” he whispered.
Nicholas understood. At the presbytery. “Oh, that’s clever.”
Pritam gave a weak smile.
“Computer. Last search.” He licked his dry lips. “ ’kay?”
Nicholas nodded.
Pritam’s eyes folded shut. He sank back under his shroud of writhing ghosts.
Nicholas departed as fast as he could.
I t took the taxi driver three-quarters of an hour to negotiate the rain-worried traffic and get to the Tallong Anglican Church. On the way, Nicholas dozed.
“We’re here,” said the cabbie.
Nicholas paid with a credit card. As the cab drove away, he looked at the road where Pritam had been hit that morning. There wasn’t the tiniest sign anything had happened. And that is how she works. Accidents and scapegoats. Even her murders are neatly explained and easily forgotten.
The presbytery key was, indeed, under the bristled rubber mat. Nicholas entered.
A half-cup of cold tea rested beside the computer; the screensaver scrolled shots of sunsets, mist over placid ponds, light streaming through trees, silhouettes of praiseful people on clifftops arching to the heavens. He touched the mouse. “Connection timed out” read a message box. He shut it and clicked the refresh arrow. The modem whistled.
He checked the search history. Registry pages: Births, Deaths, and Marriages. A library listing concerning a book entitled Miss Bretherton. Department of Immigration. Searches for Quill, Tallong. And a long collection of pages about convict ships from Britain. Nicholas opened the most recent.
It was titled “Convict Ships to Moreton Bay.” Three ships were listed on the page: the Elphinstone, the Bangalore, the County Durham. All had made the trip from Spithead to Moreton Bay, one three times, one twice, one just once. Nicholas scrolled down to the manifests, and slowed on the County Durham ’s.
Master: William Huxley. Arrived: 2 October, 1850, having sailed 144 days. Convicts embarked: male-154, female-34; disembarked: male-147, female-30.
The eighth name on the list of disembarked females was “Quill, Rowena.” “Trial place: Trim, Meath County. Crime/s: Fraud. Prostitution. Term: Life. Comments: Pardoned 1859.”
Nicholas sat heavily and for a long while did nothing.
What a fool. As much a fool as Gavin Boye. As Elliot Guyatt. Sucked in and played like a fiddle. A pretty smile and a laugh and he’d been chumped.
He unplugged the modem and rang Suzette.
S uzette made sure Quincy wasn’t in the room before she hissed, “Are you sure you don’t want to fucking wait a few more days and call back then?”
Her brother astonished her with an apology, then stunned her into silence with his news.
Afterward, neither said anything for a moment.
“How’s Nelson?” Nicholas asked.
“Okay. Still sick, still…” Her voice sounded as dry as paper. “I don’t know, Nicky. I think she’s keeping the pressure on.”
“Will he be okay?”
She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see that. “I think so. Hey, are you wearing your necklace?”
“Yes.”
“Then keep it on. Keep it on and catch a cab to the airport and fly down here. A strategic retreat. Fly down and we’ll make a plan. We’ll figure out a way to get Mum down, too.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Nicky-”
But she was left listening to electric space. He’d hung up.
Chapter 26
T he walk along the ordinary, suburban streets to the Myrtle Street shops was the most exhausting of Nicholas’s life. Every step felt nightmarishly slow, as if he were wading through tar. By the time he was near, all he wanted was to collapse and fold into a black sleep.
The thought that she was in there kept him moving.
The rain had slowed, but oyster-colored clouds still mumbled darkly and low, and the hills in the west were hidden by a grim curtain of heavier rain approaching.
Muddy ruts cut by the postman’s motorcycle ran through the grass of the footpath. As Nicholas’s eyes wandered over the hacked, intersecting tracks, his leaden feet slowed and stopped. At one point the wheel marks diverged from the deeper track and ran out in a V to a letterbox and back. A line flanked with an arrow. Thurisaz-he saw it everywhere.
Distant screams made him look to the sky.
A flock of birds turned overhead, their wings winking black topsides and gray undersides at him as they wheeled, so they were one moment a cloud of almost invisible gray flecks, the next a dark flash of black in the sky. There and gone. Visible, invisible. Dark, light.
Without thinking, Nicholas knelt and pushed his index and middle fingers into the mud. It was cold. With his left hand he lifted his heavy shirt, exposing his white chest to the chill. With his muddy fingers, he drew on his chest a vertical line and then a truncated diamond off its side.
He looked at the sky. The birds flew over the green and red tin rooftops and away. He lowered his shirt, washed his fingers in the gurgling gutter, and stepped under the heavy-lidded awning of the Myrtle Street shops.
H i,” he said.
Rowena looked up from a vitamins catalogue. She wore a plain shirt and jeans. She smiled. “Hi, yourself.”
Nicholas nodded, wiped his feet on the mat, shut the door, and slid the catch that locked the deadbolt. He turned back to Rowena.
She frowned, the smile still caught on her face like an afterglow. “What are you-”
“ County Durham, ” he said.
She watched him for a long moment. Then she lifted her shoulders in a curt shrug. The change was subtle and horrifyingly fast. The sunny innocence that lit her pretty face was suddenly switched off as if its power cable had been severed. An invisible mantle fell over her pretty features, making them somehow sharper, more feline. Sleeker and more womanly, more knowing. She stood up. Her brown eyes seemed to grow wider, darker. She smiled.
“That was a long time ago,” she said. An accent, now: an Irish lilt.
Nicholas looked around. “Where’s Garnock?”
Rowena smiled wider. She was pale and long and slender and beautiful.
“Away,” she replied. “Your friend was here this morning. She’s attractive. Less so now, but cuts heal.”
“Tell Tristram Boye that. Tell Dylan Thomas that.”
Rowena cocked her head and watched him.
Nicholas suddenly wondered what the hell he was going to do. He felt vulnerable and wondered if locking the door was a mistake.
“I’m surprised you’re here,” she said, and stepped around the counter to lean on it. “And pleased.” She uncrossed her ankles and placed her feet a hand width apart. Her legs were long and her jeans were tight. He looked into her eyes. They sparkled like polished chestnut.
“You’ve done some work on me,” he said. “On my nephew. On Pritam Anand.”
Rowena raised her eyebrows coyly, a compliment taken. She reached to the shelf behind the counter, her arms lifting her shirt high so it
revealed a section of tight belly and pressed the thin cotton against her breasts. He could see she wore no bra. She found what she wanted and straightened; in her hand was a small wooden box. She opened it, but its lid disguised its contents from his view. She smiled at him over the box and his breath caught. Earlier today he’d thought Laine’s profile was classical, but Rowena’s smile sent a jolt through him, starting behind his eyes and traveling like warm fire down to his groin. It was a smile that promised a knowledge of flesh, of deep shiftings. He understood now how Helen’s face had launched a thousand ships.
Rowena dipped her finger in the little casket and withdrew it-wet and sparkling.
“Did you think I didn’t know you’d be back?” she whispered.
She brought her glistening finger to her mouth. Eyes narrowing with pleasure, she watched Nicholas as her tongue slipped, pink and wet, from between her white teeth and slid up the length of her finger to its tip. There, it lingered, the fingertip nestled on the fold of her tongue…
“I was counting on it,” she murmured.
Then she pursed her red lips and blew toward Nicholas.
Instantly, the weariness left him. His muscles flooded with warmth. His heart thudded. His penis swelled hard as steel.
“I enjoyed you following me the other evening,” she crooned. “Walking, knowing you were behind me. Feeling your eyes on my neck, my back, my legs.”
She smiled around her finger, returned the box to its shelf. Her shirt rose to reveal the cream skin of her waist.
“I didn’t much like the charade of catching the bus.” She smiled, turning back. “But it was fun to play the part.”
She slid her feet just a little wider apart.
“Have you asked yourself, Nicholas,” she whispered, “why you’re not in hospital, too?”
Nicholas was shaking. His body was vibrating, fully alive. He wanted to stride over to her, rip down her jeans, rip off her shirt.
No.
“I needed your help with the little girl’s sister. Just a little help, for such a little thing. But you didn’t help me.” She smiled, mildly censuring. Her fingers reached for the buttons of her shirt. She undid the bottom one, the next, the next, exposing a triangle of perfect, pale flesh.
“Naughty, unhelpful man.”
She undid the second to the top, and then the last button.
Nicholas took a step forward. His legs were shuddering. His cock hurt, straining against his pants. Her fingers idled up to her lapels, then slid the shirt off. Her breasts were full and high, nipples brown and hard. Her mouth opened. Her neck was long.
“Take off your necklace,” she whispered.
“No.” But his hands went up behind his neck. “No,” he repeated more weakly.
His fingers undid the clasp. He watched his own trembling hand curl around the wood beads and the warm stone, then his arm straightened, and his quisling palm opened up to her. She smiled, as if this were a predicted part of a well-loved play, and gingerly lifted the necklace. His muscles jerked as the last protective bead left his flesh.
Get out! he shouted in his head. But his body was no longer his. One foot took another step toward Rowena. Yet another. He needed her. He needed to be inside her young, tight flesh.
Rowena smiled, and ran her hands across her shoulders, over her breasts, down her flat belly, down her jeans. She slipped off one boot, then the other. Her eyes were locked on his.
“You don’t see what the others see, Nicholas. When you were a little boy, you found the wee bauble I left for you. Not how I wanted you to see it, but as it was.” She shrugged, and he watched her breasts shift. “But you showed it to your friend, so…”
She licked her teeth and lifted her fingers slowly to undo the top button of her jeans.
“So, when your mother came in to have your school badges sewn on, I asked her about her boy. And found out your birthday. Your special birthday.”
She undid the second and last buttons of her jeans.
Every tendon in Nicholas’s body was taut and singing like bridge cables. He shuffled closer.
“That’s when I chose you,” she whispered.
She slid her jeans down. Her thighs were pale and slender, her skin tight and unblemished, a tightly cropped nest of blond on her pubic mound. She stepped out of the jeans and leaned back, placing her palms on the counter. She looked at Nicholas.
“Now,” she said.
He stepped to her.
Her hands flew like clever birds and unclasped his belt. Her chin raised and her eyes, wide and dark and hungry, ate his. Her lips were wet. She released him from his pants, hard and straight. She looked at his length: it pulsed in time with his racing heart.
“Aaah,” she hissed, and lifted her face to his.
Nicholas leaned in, to consume her, to fill her. His lips touched hers.
That instant, a torrent of revulsion tumbled through his veins-from his lips to his neck down his arm down his spine down his legs into his fingers into his penis. His eyes flew open.
She was hideous.
The skin of her face was gray and flecked with liver spots, heavily wrinkled and scarred. Her breasts were two flaccid sacks hanging over a puckered belly that looped on itself, pale and fishlike and splotched. Her legs were deeply creased twigs, bowed and knobby. Her skin hung off her shoulder bones like diseased hide hung over horns. Her eyes were shut in ecstasy, mouth wide and gums wet.
Nicholas gagged. And then saw the sly movement: she waved her gaunt fingers in a swift, dismissive gesture.
A spider as large as a saucer unfolded itself from its hiding place on her drooping mons veneris. It slunk around her slack waist to crouch patiently on the countertop. She spread her legs wider.
“God!” cried Nicholas, and hurled himself backward.
Rowena Quill jumped, her baggy eyes flying open. She grabbed for him, but only snatched his shirt. Buttons popped off, rattling on the floor like tiny teeth.
Nicholas retched and stumbled back again. His body shook. His erection fell like a dropped handkerchief.
“Nicholas?” she croaked, confused.
He groped for the deadbolt.
Understanding dawned in the old hag’s eyes. She looked down at his chest, through the half unbuttoned shirt-and glimpsed the shape he’d painted there.
“You fecker,” she hissed, and took a shambling step forward. Her clawed feet caught on her pooled jeans and she stumbled.
His fingers were wet with cold sweat and slipped on the chrome of the lock. Once. Twice. Come on!
Quill righted herself and walked toward him.
“You sneaky little feck,” she said, her accent thick and her voice as dry as ash. “You refuse me and you will rue it!”
His thumb slid over the nub of the latch. She stepped closer, and the spider eased down off the counter and stole up behind her, climbing the spotted skin of her spindly legs to perch on her shoulder. She paid it no mind; her eyes were dark with hate and fixed on Nicholas.
“I’ve had your mickey in me hand and I’ll have it where I please!” she croaked.
He could see every one of her hundred and eighty-odd years hanging off her like vapid curses.
“You get it in me, or your friendly widow will fess to the wee girl’s killin’!”
She moved fast, her hand whipping up like a snake. It grabbed his shirt and tore it open. She saw the mud rune there and let out a furious, animal gurgle.
“Garnock!” she shrieked.
Nicholas whipped his head up.
From around the corner of the storeroom, a long, unlikely leg thick with dark bristled hairs stepped. Then another. Garnock eased itself noiselessly into the room. Its eight round, black eyes, alien and rimmed with bristles, all seemed locked on Nicholas. The smaller spider leapt from Quill’s shoulder and jumped around Garnock like a puppy.
Nicholas looked down at the crone. Her eyes were dark and round and as inhuman as the spider’s.
“Open that door, boy, and there’ll be all
Christ to pay.”
Nicholas changed hands and undid the lock-he fell outside. He slammed the door shut.
“Auuugh!” Her cry of fury tore the air like plates breaking. “Garnock-lob!”
Nicholas stumbled and ran, cock shrinking in the cold air. He looked over his shoulder. The door flung open and the giant spider landed deftly on the tiles under the awning. It crouched, turned, and locked its orb eyes on Nicholas. Its fangs slid out and up, large as butter knives, as the chelicerae that bore them engorged: a horrifying, twin parody of Nicholas’s own recent erection. The horn-black fangs were moist. Garnock hunched to pounce.
A thin stream of piss slid out of Nicholas. The edges of his vision swirled silver.
Don’t faint. You only get one shot.
He steadied his left foot, and drew his right back…
The spider leapt. So fast!
Nicholas twisted and kicked.
His boot connected with the hard, hairy plate of Garnock’s underbelly. Pain rocketed through Nicholas’s leg as a muscle overstretched to tearing. But the hideous spider flew up and over the rail under the awning. With a meaty thack it landed on its back, and scraped its legs like a dropped goat, scrambling painfully to right itself.
Nicholas turned and bolted.
D usk settled like a darkening fog over Tallong. The pleasant, narrow streets emptied of playing children; the evening was too brisk for games. Streetlights winked on, happy baubles along avenues that huddled down in comfortable, lazy nests of old trees and old houses. A jogger in shorts and a hoodie pounded up the undulating streets, his breath pistoning in and out in small, steamy puffs that were tugged from his billowing cheeks by a stiffening breeze. Men and women in warm jackets walked smiling dogs.
The sight of the old woman walking along Ithaca Lane was unremarkable except for two things. She kept her chin high despite the chilly evening air, walking proudly, aware that she’d once been a lovely thing and perhaps willing that prettiness to linger through her poise. The other was that, where others walked their dogs on leashes, she carried her tiny white terrier in her arms.
“Excuse me?” the driver said loudly out the open window of his slowing car. His name was Miles Kindste.
The Dead Path Page 26
