The Dead Path

by Stephen M Irwin

  “Thank you, Helen,” Pritam said.

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Anand. But it’s not Helen,” she added, smiling at his mistake. She tapped her name badge.

  Pritam blinked, and a wave of ice water rolled up through him. The badge read “Rowena Quill.”

  He grabbed for the call button, but his fingers were as slow as old creek water. She easily pulled the button away, and smiled again. Pritam could see that she had Eleanor Bretherton’s eyes: hard and shining.

  “Are you going to call out?” she asked pleasantly.

  A lilt, he thought. Her accent. After all these years…

  “No,” he replied. His throat was tight. Fear.

  She nodded, as if pleased with an obedient child.

  “You know who I am?”

  “Show me,” he said.

  She raised her eyebrows and smiled, and looked to the door. No one was there. She looked back at Pritam and winked. And suddenly, right in front of him was John Hird.

  “Will this make it easier, you useless black fucker?” the older reverend asked brightly.

  Pritam reeled. Here she was. Just a few minutes ago he’d been ablaze with the idea of bringing her to her knees with the Glory of the Host, penitent and humbled. But now he was cold inside, doused ash.

  John’s friendly, wrinkled face vanished in a blink, replaced by the young nurse, Joanna. “Or her?”

  Joanna’s face was gone, seamlessly replaced with Pritam’s mother’s. “Or her, my little chinnanna? ”

  “Stop,” he whispered. His mouth was as dry as cardboard.

  “Or me?” His mother’s loving face vanished, replaced by a woman who looked older than time. Withered and wrinkled and hard as wood, with eyes that were bright blue sparks in folds of nut-brown flesh. “I heard you at the door,” she whispered. Her breath was foul and smelled of decayed flesh and the moldy misshapen things that grew in damp shadows. “You want to save my soul, boy?”

  Pritam felt the last of his strength drain from him. The room was still light, but there was no longer warmth in it. This is the room I die in, he realized. He looked at the crone. She smiled, showing two rotten gray stumps that looked like snapped-off sparrow bones.

  “Christ can forgive you,” he whispered, though he didn’t believe it. There wasn’t a hint of compassion in those ice-blue eyes.

  “That’s grand,” she said.

  Her features became again those of the pleasant, brown-haired nurse. She smiled, pulled out the pillow behind his head, and covered his face.

  A fter Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be as brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katharine dug with hard, chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her. The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made.

  Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.

  He needed to ask Laine something. He went inside.

  The bed in Suzette’s room was empty. Laine was awake and up somewhere. He stepped back into the hall. Through the dimpled glass of the front door, he could make out the hunch of someone sitting on the front steps. He took a breath and went outside.

  Laine wore his tracksuit pants and a woollen sweater that swallowed her. She didn’t look up as he shut the door behind him. A westerly wind troubled the trees in the street. The sky was cloudless. The sun gave no warmth. He looked around, and spotted what he was looking for. Gavin was walking up the footpath toward them.

  “Will you sit?” she asked.

  Nicholas watched Gavin reach the front gate.

  “I don’t think so.”

  But he needed to talk to Laine, and so reluctantly sat beside her.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You passed out in the car. I took you to hospital. Then I took you out of hospital.”

  She stared out at a blue, wind-streaked sky that seemed impossibly vast above the ruby and emerald tile and tin rooftops.

  “I dreamed,” she said. He waited.

  “I was in a ship, a wooden ship. It was crammed full. A woman beside me had a baby. So much blood. It was stillborn. She cried and cried and held the dead baby and the crying seemed to last all night. The only way for it to stop was for me to bring her another baby. And I would have. I would have, only I was held down. Pinned down. By this weight, this warm weight on my chest. But I would have done anything to get her another child and stop that awful, awful crying.”

  Nicholas watched her profile. She raised her hand to the cut on her cheek. “It was my blood. She used it.”

  Nicholas nodded.

  “And you drew on me,” she said.

  He looked at the ground and nodded again.

  As if remembering the rune on her chest, she closed her arms across her breasts.

  “How’s Mrs. Boye?” he asked.

  “There’s a caregiver from St. Luke’s with her. For the moment.”

  She shrugged, and finally looked at Nicholas.

  “Is he here?” Her voice was steady and matter-of-fact until the last syllable, which trembled.

  Nicholas looked up. Gavin was on the stairs. He stepped through Laine to stand behind her.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  He could just see Gavin’s mouth moving. In his hand was the black plastic bag. He reached into it.

  “You know.”

  Laine curled her arms around her knees. “I didn’t feel him. I can’t feel him. You’d think…”

  She stared up at the sky, perhaps to keep the tears in.

  “Laine, did Gavin have more than one gun?”

  She looked at him. And the instant she did, Gavin fell through her in a crumpled heap, his jaw flapping, his skull topped by a macabre, broken crown.

  Nicholas closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Gavin was once more halfway down the street, walking toward them.

  “Yes,” she said. “Locked under the house. He was very firm about obeying those kinds of rules.” She smiled coolly.

  Nicholas watched Gavin approach the front gate. The dead man’s face was tight and confused. God, don’t let him be stuck in there, thought Nicholas. Let this just be a picture. Don’t let him be stuck in that loop.

  “The locker key’s on my key ring,” said Laine. “When do you want to do this?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “I want to go back to the library this afternoon.”

  And please let that be the last lie I have to tell her.

  Laine nodded. She was quiet a long moment. She watched the sky with those gray eyes.

  “We could leave, you know,” she said.

  He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. But he found that was a good thought. He’d had enough of life’s mysteries exposed for his eyes; the idea of kept secrets pleased him. What did she mean by “we”? Separately? Together? As friends? As fellow victims? Lovers? He didn’t know.

  “We could,” he agreed. The wind picked up and sent a small wave of brown leaves hissing up the street. “I have a little money.”

  “I have a lot,” she said.

  They sat, her hugging her chest, him his knees. He looked at her and smiled. To his surprise, she smiled back.

  “You should get some more sleep,” he said, and stood. He went inside before Gavin could fall again.

  Chapter 31

  N othing moved under the shadowed brow of the Myrtle Street shops.

  Nicholas walked toward Plow amp; Vine Health Foods with one wrist in the duffel bag and his hand on the shotgun grip. The Miroku had been just where Laine had said it would be. As his finger found the trigger, it occurred to him there was no good way for this to finish: at best, he’d go to jail for the murder of an unidentified old woman; at worst… well, there were thirty-one flavors of worst. One of the least unappealing was emulating Gavin before G
arnock’s extended family had a chance to do a thorough job on him.

  The shop’s door was locked. A sign hung in the glass: Closed due to sickness. Sorry!

  He shielded his eyes and pressed against the window. The shop within was dark and still. He let out a slow breath, guiltily relieved. He could move to Plan B.

  There was hope now: he could take the fight into a remoter place where, perhaps, no one would hear the shotgun blasts. The downside was that it would be her place. The woods.

  Movement caught his eye.

  A house spider jumped from its hiding place atop a wooden rafter of the awning. It abseiled down on the silk it spun out behind and landed soundlessly on the ground. It scurried around the corner and started down the footpath toward Carmichael Road.

  Nicholas was about to chase after it and squash it, but stopped himself. Let her know, he thought. Let her know something’s after her. Even if she got me, he figured-and God forbid, Laine and Pritam and Suze-at least she’d get a taste of being hunted. She’ll realize that things can turn. Things don’t always go her way. Not anymore.

  He got in the car and steered it toward Carmichael Road.

  S uzette watched her son carefully. Her heart was racing.

  Nicholas’s call that morning had made her feel sick; after he’d rung, she’d gone to the bathroom and lost all her breakfast. But then the excitement of his one piece of good news had carried her into Nelson’s bedroom on swift feet.

  Her fingers had been shaking when she drew the paring knife over the skin of his thumb-she didn’t want to hurt her boy. But he didn’t so much as wince as the steel bit in and red droplets rose around the blade. She quickly opened his pajama top, dipped her index finger in the blood, and painted that ugly symbol above his heart.

  That had been two hours ago. Now, he was sitting in front of the television, hungrily chewing toast as he played Need for Speed.

  She and Bryan exchanged glances.

  “You know what I think,” said Bryan. She could tell he was unhappy: his voice dropped an octave and his words were clipped.

  “I have to go.”

  “You don’t.”

  She shrugged. “I can’t leave him up there.”

  “Then let’s all go-”

  “No!” she said loudly. Nelson looked up from the Xbox game. Suzette waved him back-it’s fine. “No way in hell,” she continued. “You keep them here.”

  “Suze…” began Bryan.

  But she was already on her feet and reaching for the White Pages.

  Chapter 32

  T he trees hissed at his intrusion, the gum leaves and pine needles whispering harshly in the wind up high. Below, the air was still and smelled strongly of sap and sweet decay and wet earth. Vines and trees wound around themselves like snakes carved of something at once frozen and moving, living and dead. Everything was green with growth or green with moss or green with rot; even the blackest shadow was a dark jade. Fallen trunks covered with dark vine lay like scuttled and rotting submarines at the bottom of a dim, glaucous sea.

  Nicholas gripped the shotgun with his right hand and cradled its lower barrel over his left forearm; the rope of the duffel bag dug painfully into his shoulder. He was a long way from the sporadic traffic of Carmichael Road, so the risk of being seen was minimal. Zero, in fact, he corrected himself.

  As he stepped over thick roots and under low, damp branches, he realized that, even as a child exploring in here with Tristram, he’d never seen other children playing here, nor teenagers smoking, nor retirees bird-watching. Other parks in other cities were havens for teenagers and derelicts, but Nicholas had never found a beer can or a milk carton in these woods. This was a haunted place. People knew it in their hearts, even if they never thought it in their heads, and stayed away.

  For a while, he followed the eerie, backward-flying form of a dark-haired boy dressed in the long shorts that were popular in the sixties. He’d recognized the child from the Tallong yearbook: Owen Liddy. But the sight of Liddy’s terror-split face was too horrible to watch, so he tacked right far enough to avoid the ghost.

  He groaned as he saw another ghost. A pale, raven-haired young girl.

  Y our Aunty Vee’s here, puffin.”

  Hannah’s father stood in the doorway of her bedroom. Gray bags like oysters sagged under his eyes and stubble roamed carelessly on his cheeks.

  “Okay, Dad.”

  He nodded and stepped away down the hallway. To Hannah, he had turned into an old man overnight: hunched and mumbling and pale.

  She listened. Her Aunt Vee’s usually loud and husky voice wrestled with her parents’ exhausted pleasantries. The screen door hissed and slammed shut. Hannah sat up on her bed and set aside her Tamora Pierce paperback. Mum and Dad were going out. They weren’t telling where, but when Hannah was told she couldn’t come, she figured that they were going to: a) the police station; b) the morgue (which was where dead people were stored); or c) the gravestone shop. Aunty Vee would mind her during their absence.

  Aunty Vee was Mum’s younger sister. She was pleasantly round and smoked and swore and was Catholic and kept wondering aloud why Mum wasn’t Catholic anymore. The subject of Mother Mary’s Undying Love would come up later; for now it would be hugs, tears, and food.

  A short while later, Hannah was standing on the front patio with Vee’s hirsute sausage arms wrapped around her, waving as Mum and Dad backed out of the driveway, speaking low and unheard words to each other. When Hannah looked up at Vee, her aunty smiled but her eyes were red and wet. “Let’s eat!” she said.

  While Vee busied herself preparing a lunch fit for a circus troupe, Hannah quietly went to the laundry to filch the items on the mental list she’d been compiling all night. Bug spray. Matches. The local newspaper. She looked for anything marked “inflammable” (which apparently meant the same as flammable, only more flammable) and found a half-full plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol. Then she crept softly through the kitchen for two more items. Vee was near the sink, buttering bread and farting like a Clydesdale, and so didn’t see or hear Hannah float past.

  At lunch, Hannah ate sparingly. When Vee quizzed her about why she wasn’t eating, she tried her first gambit. “I’m a bit upset,” she said softly. It worked like a charm. Vee bit her lip and hugged her. “Of course you are, of course,” she said.

  Hannah pushed her luck. “I didn’t sleep much last night,” she said. “Is it okay if I have a lie-down?”

  Vee looked relieved. “Absolutely, hon!”

  Hannah lay on her bed and read for exactly half an hour, then sneaked into the living room. Vee was asleep on the couch, thick ankles demurely crossed, snoring.

  Hannah hurried back to her bedroom, filled her school backpack with the purloined bits and pieces, then rolled up her dressing gown and her tracksuit and shoved them in the bed so it would appear to the casual glance that she was still in it.

  She slipped out the back door.

  W alking into the woods gave Hannah the feeling she was sinking underwater; the fiery crackle of wind in high leaves became more and more distant, as if she were dropping into the depths. Shadows became thick and liquid. Spears of sunlight as thin as fishing rods probed down from the high canopy. The only sounds that were sharp were the wet crushing steps of her slip-on shoes on damp leaves and soggy twigs, and her panting breaths that were coming faster and faster. This was hard work, climbing over moss-furred logs and under looping vines. To go ten meters forward, she had to wend and wind another ten around twisted, scoliotic trunks, over hunched roots, under needy, thorny branches. But she didn’t slow or linger. She was angry with her father for not believing her. And she was angry for being deceived. She knew what she’d seen was true; she hadn’t imagined the crystal unicorn set to trap her. She knew things that no one else did. Something in these woods killed her sister. She struggled on.

  After twenty minutes, she was slick with sweat and exhausted. She brushed wet leaves off a nearby log and sat. From her backpack she pulled a water
bottle. As she sipped, she took inventory of her other goods: insect spray, a paring knife with its blade wrapped in aluminium foil (so it wouldn’t stab through the sides of the pack), the half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol, newspaper, matches. Satisfied, she capped her water and slid the pack over her shoulders and pressed on.

  She’d lain awake most of the previous night wondering how to kill the giant spider that had taken Miriam. Clearly, it was smart-or at least knew enough about little girls to set a beautiful, sparkling unicorn as bait. It was magical: it had put some sort of charm on the dead bird, and it commanded the smaller spiders. But there was the possibility that the big spider at the window wasn’t in charge, that it was just another lieutenant in the spider army. There could be an even bigger spider-a giant spider like the one that Sam Gamgee fought in The Lord of the Rings -and that thought made her tummy tighten. Of course, whatever was in charge might be something else entirely; it might be a witch or a warlock or some sort of vampire that drank the blood of children. Considering these limitless possibilities, Hannah dismissed a dozen weapons, from arrows dipped in insect spray to crucifixes. The only weapon she knew of that killed everything was fire. A bomb would have been better, but she didn’t know how to make a bomb. Fire would have to do.

  S he was tired.

  From the outside, the woods appeared to gently roll toward the river, but within, the forest floor rose and fell sharply, and the going was hard. Small but sharply cut gullies wound between massive trunks. Rises were steep, made slippery by the dense carpet of wet leaves. Hannah’s footfalls disturbed beetles, uncovered swollen white grubs, and sent crawling things to scatter for new, damp dark.

  Her legs were too short to step easily over the big roots of old, old trees that hooked like enormous sly eyebrows on the spongy dark ground. Her eyes probed ahead of each step to avoid rocks that lurked under thick caps of sodden leaves. And so she was most of the way up a steepish slope before she realized that a huge Moreton Bay fig was directly in her path. It was easily four meters wide, and each of its buttressed roots spanned out another six or seven from the trunk and was half a meter thick. The nearest rose high above her head. To move forward, she had either to scramble over one of these tall roots or backtrack. She checked her watch and a sharp twinge of panic raced through her tummy. It was already well after two-she didn’t want to be caught in the woods after dark.