Will opened the front door, letting the sun shine through the entrance. Sometime in the night the rain had cleared, leaving the world washed clean – if only it could have done the same to his brain. It felt like he was walking through sludge, and he wasn’t sure when that would go away. Once again, he was struck by how it was one thing to hold a theory, and another to have it proven true in some way. The world he walked into today was different from the one he’d woken up in yesterday.
Jena stomped down the stairs looking sullen.
‘Phone not working?’ he asked. She shook her head and walked past him, back towards the kitchen. He closed the door and followed her, knowing that they should talk, feeling that itch under his skin to try and make her understand – while she was sober – that there was more going on here than was visible.
‘So, about last night,’ he said. ‘About the barn, too.’
Jena whirled to face him with a frown on her face. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Yeah, yeah I think we do. Jena, you dug up a skull. And before that you got drunk and had fights with both Cade and Rose.’
‘I don’t really see how it’s any of your business who I fight with, or whether I’m drunk,’ she spat out, but she pulled a chair out from the table and sat down on it.
Will sat across from her, resting his elbows on the wood of the table. ‘It is if you end up drowning in a flooded hole with a skull.’
She blew out an exasperated sigh. ‘We were doing so well before, being civil, and dancing around things. I don’t really want to go over it all.’
‘Well I think you need to. Jena.’ He said her name softly, kindly, hoping she could drop her attitude. ‘There’s more going on here than what we can see, I just know it. In the barn there was smoke. I saw it, smelled it, could taste it as well. It was a real thing, even if there was no fire to cause it.’ Will flattened his hands onto the table. ‘There are so many stories about this kind of thing, about entities and the events that surround them.’
‘Entities?’ Jena sat up straighter in her chair. ‘What do you mean by that? This is weird as hell ….’
‘Jena, something else is going on here; it’s more than just a family that bad things have happened to. I know you think your family are killers, but what if ….’ He sighed, trying to find the right words. ‘It could be a demon, or a spirit, I don’t know.’
She turned to look out the window at the barn. He could see in the reflection that she was chewing her lip, her eyes wide and vacant as if she was somewhere – some-when – else. ‘And the birds? Because they’ve always been here and I’ve always been terrified of them.’
He shrugged again, though she wasn’t looking at him. ‘I wish I could explain the way they were acting in the barn and what you said about when you were a kid, but I don’t know anything about birds. Magpies are territorial though, right? Protective of what’s theirs. Maybe …. Maybe they think you’re theirs.’
She didn’t speak for a minute, didn’t move. She was frozen. And then she stood up, brushing past him and around the counter to pace the length of the kitchen.
‘Birds don’t look out for people. Smoke doesn’t appear from nowhere.’ She flung her hands in the air and turned to face him. ‘It was all in my head, all in yours. You were seeing what you wanted to see. You get that, right?’
He wanted to tell her it wasn’t all in their heads, that there was a spiritual angle to this, something deep and powerful. He could feel it, even if he didn’t know what it was and had no idea how to explain it. And it was there, on the video. But before he had a chance to open his mouth, Jena spoke again.
‘I feel like I’ve stepped into some weird-ass movie. Like, I can’t even tell what’s real any more, because the things I know can’t be real feel like they have an edge of truth to them.’ She dragged her fingers through her hair and let out a little scream. ‘I think I’d prefer to believe it was all my fault, because at least that’d be the end of it. My fault. Dad’s fault. Rose’s fault. We’re all just fucked-up people who lose our shit and do awful things. Like I did last night.’ Her tone dropped, until it was almost like she was talking to herself. ‘Trust me to want to know the truth and then not be able to handle it, not that I even know the truth, and how the hell can I? I don’t think she’s going to talk to me. I don’t know that I can talk to her.’ Jena stopped her pacing, stopped her rant and spun to face him. ‘You. It has to be you. You’re good at listening, good at getting people to talk.’
‘Hang on,’ Will said, holding up a hand. He’d caught the harsh edge in her words, as if she was bitter that she’d talked to him at all. How was he going to regain her trust? ‘You want me to what … ask Rose to just tell me the truth?’
‘Take the skull. Tell her I found it. See how she reacts. I don’t know. Like I said, you’re better at this and I need to know what she’s hiding from me. We need to know. You want to know, don’t you? You said you’d been thinking about this house, these events, for almost as long as I have. I bet you never told Rose that though, did you? Maybe I should tell her.’ Jena shrugged nonchalantly. Then she levelled a firm stare at him. ‘Help me get to the bottom of it. I need to know.’
The look in her eyes wavered between furious and desperate, but he couldn’t quite tell whether it was a hint of the unwellness she had suggested ran in her family, or something else. It didn’t really matter. If he didn’t ask Rose, Jena would find a way to out him. He’d lose this job, and he’d had enough warnings about getting too personal with clients that he might not get another. He wouldn’t have anywhere to live, either, since his ex-girlfriend had kicked him out. No money, no home.
No. He couldn’t lose this job. And he couldn’t handle not knowing what had happened here, because things were happening now, and as much as they freaked him out, he needed to be part of it.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘Oh my god, thank you.’ Her shoulders sagged in relief. ‘I don’t want to have to tell her, but I will. You know that, right?’
Will nodded. ‘I’ve got to take her into town later today for a check-up and we’ll be staying overnight, so I’ll try and talk with her then.’
‘Not going to take the skull with you?’ Jena raised an eyebrow and then laughed. ‘Sorry, that image in my head is hilarious. Still, you have to find a way to bring it up.’
‘I know,’ Will said with a sigh. This was going to be a really long overnighter. But he would do it. He scrambled for the right words to part with, something that would break the tension between them. Something that would make it easier.
‘I better get organised,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an old lady to accost.’ He grinned at her, trying to put some humour into it, trying to feel like they were on the same team, and was rewarded with a genuine smile that only managed to make him feel worse. ‘Are you going to be okay here. Alone?’ he asked, glancing out the window at the barn. How much alcohol was there left in the house?
Her smile disappeared in an instant, and Jena shrugged. ‘I guess we’ll find out.’