KIRSTYN MCDERMOTT WAS BORN in Newcastle, Australia, on Halloween – an auspicious date which perhaps accounts for her life-long attraction to all things dark and mysterious.
She has published short fiction in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, including Aurealis, Scenes from the Second Storey, Macabre, Southerly, Island, GUD and Southern Blood.
Her debut novel, Madigan Mine, was published by Picador Australia in 2010. Her second, Perfections, is due for release in 2012. McDermott’s work has been nominated for Bram Stoker and Australian Shadows Awards, and has been the recent recipient of Aurealis, Ditmar and Chronos Awards.
She lives in Melbourne with her husband and fellow scribbler, Jason Nahrung.
“I carried the bones of this story around for quite a few years before I finally stumbled upon its beating heart,” explains the author. “In my head was the image of a doll house, huge and not quite right, and a woman searching desperately for something concealed inside. But I could never work a story around it that didn’t seem twee. Doll houses, you know?
“But then Emma and Holly appeared – trapped within their own fractured, futile relationship – and everything just, well, fell together. Beautifully. Awfully. And now I have a doll house story. Of a kind.”
“NO WAY, NOT AGAIN you’re not,” Holly snaps, leaning forward to switch off the radio before Wham even gets past their second jitterbug. “What’s that, the hundredth time they’ve played that piece of crap song today?”
Emma shrugs. “It’s been in the charts for weeks, I guess they have to play it.”
“Yeah, well I don’t have to listen to it.” Pissy little voice getting pissier by the minute, and Emma keeps her eyes on the road. Cyclone Holly brewing ever since the cassette player chewed up her mix tape an hour ago, but Emma doesn’t want to fight. Not this weekend. Not their weekend.
“Check the glove-box,” she suggests. “There should be a couple tapes in there. Velvet Underground maybe, and—”
Holly snorts. “Fuck Lou Reed.”
“Or we can just talk.” Another snort, served with extra derision, and Emma leaves it alone. Less than an hour and they’ll be at Buchan anyway, though with the sun already an hour past setting it’ll be too late to go up to the caves tonight. They hadn’t even left Melbourne until after four – Holly not being able to find first her boots, then her keys – and it’s ended up being a longer drive than either of them predicted while studying maps on the kitchen bench. Somehow, this is Emma’s fault, along with the Corolla’s dodgy cassette player and the fact that Holly has left her camera back at the flat. She only hopes the motel is as good as it looks in the tourist guide. Hell, clean sheets and high-pressure hot water will do. With Holly coaxed into the shower, few are the wonders a pair of soap-slicked hands cannot work.
“What are you grinning about?”
“Huh?” Emma shakes her head. “Nothing much, just thinking how good a hot shower’s gonna feel tonight.”
“If they even have hot water out here. Fricken Hicksville.”
“Hol, come on. Stop looking for problems.”
“Don’t have to look very far, do I?”
Emma sighs and sneaks a sideways glance at the girl in the passenger seat. Even in the post-twilight haze she can see the crease drawn deep at the corner of her mouth, the strand of long brown hair winding, unwinding and winding again round her index finger, tight enough to stop blood. Fair warnings for foul weather, and Emma feels the angry spark of tears behind her eyes. God damn it to hell, nothing ever seems to go right these days; the rift widening between them for weeks and every attempt to bridge it proving futile. Holly is falling away, faster than Emma can run to catch her, and she hasn’t the faintest idea why.
What has she done? What hasn’t she done?
And if the girl is planning to leave her, why doesn’t she just bloody well get it over and done with instead of scattering this daily minefield of eggshells for Emma to tiptoe over? Damn it, why doesn’t—
“Em! Fuck!”
She’s already seen the animal by the time Holly screams, but it’s still a fraction of a second too late and her stomach rolls as she wrenches the wheel to the left, riding the brakes as the car skids off the road and into the shoulder. Gravel crunches, sliding sharp beneath the wheels, and the kangaroo seems to almost turn in mid-air, a balletic turbo-charged leap to clear the bonnet and in its place a looming, shadow-thick shape that Emma barely registers as a telegraph pole before the car slams into it. Sickening metallic crunch louder than the blood beating in her ears, the seatbelt jerking tight against her collarbone, throwing her back against the seat with a sharp whiplash jolt, and throughout it all the flow of time slower than honey poured out on a cold winter morning.
Beside her, Holly starts to cry.
“Holly? Baby, are you okay?” The girl has her face in her hands, breathworn sobs hitching her shoulders in sharp, spastic rhythms, and when Emma touches her thigh she whimpers. Soft, kicked-puppy whimper and then she’s fumbling with the door handle, half-climbing, half-falling onto the road, with a wet-dark shadow on her cheek that makes Emma sick to see. Calling for the girl to wait, to please just wait, as her own seatbelt refuses to unbuckle and her masochistic brain flashes up every Hollywood post-crash explosion she’s ever witnessed. Damn it, Holly, help me. Then the belt slips loose at last and she clambers out, panting in the chill night air.
Fresh night air. No stink of leaking petrol, no greasy smell of smoke.
Holly is standing in front of the car, what’s left of the front of the car, skinny arms crossed over her chest. The headlights are still shining, albeit askew, and Emma can see the blood on the girl’s face. Dark red smear like the worst kind of raspberry birthmark, and she swallows the panic that threatens to rise. “Holly, are you hurt? How badly are you hurt?”
The girl shakes her head. “I’m fine.”
“But you’re . . .” Emma limps around the car, a dull pain throbbing in her right knee. “You’re bleeding, baby. A lot.”
Holly pushes Emma’s hand away. Sniffs and wipes at her face with the back of her wrist. “Just a bloody nose, I must have bashed it.”
“You sure, ’cause it looks—”
“What the fuck was that, Em?”
“A kangaroo, I think.”
“I know it was a kangaroo, I mean what the fuck were you doing? Why weren’t you paying attention to the road instead of . . . of . . . of whatever it was you were doing? You could have killed me, Em. Don’t you fucking realise that?”
Emma bites her lip, reaches out, but the girl pushes her away. Hard. Pushes her away and lands a series of savage kicks on the crumpled radiator grill, as though she could hope to outdo the telegraph pole in the damage stakes. “Look. At. This. Shit.”
“Holly, calm down.”
“You calm down.” Crying again, her voice hoarse and broken.
Emma says nothing, because nothing will help, just grabs the girl and pulls her close. Holly such a tiny thing, little more than skin and bone and sharp, furious elbows, and Emma holds her until she stops struggling, holds her tighter than she ever has, than she ever might again, and makes soft, soothing noises into her hair. It’s okay, she whispers when the girl finally gives up, burns out, and sags exhausted against her. It’s okay, we’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay. Over and over and over again, until she’s no longer talking about the accident.
Until it no longer feels like so much of a lie.
There isn’t a clear path up the hill, not one that is lighted at least, and Emma swears loudly as she trips for the third time. Her knee is really hurting now, little darts of pain marking every step, but she isn’t about to beg for a rest break.
“Em?” Holly’s voice falls down through the darkness. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” she grunts. “Just tripped on something.”
A sigh, short and sharp, edged with frustration. “Come on, almost there.”
Which seems about right, looking up. Close enough to the house to make out the striped curtains hanging on each side of the lighted window, the shapes of furniture within. No movement inside, though, and Emma lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. If no one is home after all, if they’ve walked up this damn hill for nothing . . .
“Em?”
“Coming.” One foot in front of the other, never mind the pain, never mind the fact that they probably would have been picked up by a passing motorist by now if they’d just waited by the car. Once Holly noticed the light on the hill – Come on, Em, we can use their phone – that was that. The girl refuses to wait for anything if she can help it, if there is something she can be doing instead. Even if the alternative ends up costing more in time and effort, for Holly anything is always better than standing still.
It’s one of the things Emma loves about her. Most of the time.
There’s a yellowish porch light shining by the time they reach the house, so maybe someone’s heard them coming and rolled out the welcome, or maybe she just didn’t notice it before. No bell or knocker, so Holly thumps three times on the front door with the flat of her fist. Loud enough to raise the dead but there’s no response from inside the house, no footsteps or floorboard creak, and Emma opens her mouth to say something she probably shouldn’t, how Holly better be prepared to carry her back down that fucking hill now but—
“Shhh,” Holly says, tilting her head. “Listen.”
So Emma does. Closes her eyes and even holds her breath for a couple seconds, trying to pluck a sound from beyond the ratchety, rhythmic buzz of the cicadas which seem to have colonised the surrounding trees in near plague proportions, but there’s nothing. Nothing whatsoever until she opens her eyes again to see Holly with her cheek pressed close against the front door, her lips slightly parted, and even then it’s not something that she hears exactly. More like feels, or senses.
Something standing motionless on the other side of that door, its lean-long face turned in precisely the same manner as Holly’s, with two slim inches of hardwood the only thing between them.
Emma doesn’t think, just grabs the girl’s arm and jerks her backwards. Away from the door, away from whatever it is that’s waiting on the other side – “Let’s go, Holly!” – and she’s still tugging on her when the door swings abruptly open, and both of them shriek in sudden fright.
All three of them, actually: Emma, Holly and the plump, middle-aged woman who stands before them with one hand on the doorjamb and the other fluttering at her throat like a pale, panic-struck bird.
Holly is the first to recover. “Sorry, we didn’t mean to scare you.”
“That’s all right.” The woman forces a dry, cracked chuckle which says otherwise. “Seems I scared the two of you just as badly.”
Emma doubts that as well. The woman has lowered her hand, but her fingers still tremble at her side, and her face is ashen. It’s the face of a woman who lives alone, who has no one to come running from the back of the house should she cry out again. A woman who is already regretting the decision to open her door that night, and who might just slam it shut again at any second.
“I’m Emma Vargus,” she says quickly. “This is my friend, Holly Davidson.” Nudging Holly with her elbow to ward off the scowl that’s already forming at her use of that word – that friend word – ’cause now is damn sure not the time for flag-waving, and for once the girl steps into line, switches gears and produces a smile that would put the sun to shame. When the woman makes no attempt to offer her own name, Emma presses on, rushing to explain about the accident and the long walk up the hill and how bloody glad, excuse her language, they are that someone was home and how much gladder they’ll be if they could just make a quick phone call to the RACV and get a tow-truck organised.
“Or you could call for us,” she finishes. “If that’s easier.”
“Are you hurt?” the woman asks.
“No, I don’t think so, not really. My knee’s a bit sore and Holly had a nosebleed for a while, but I think we’re okay.” Emma grins, hopes it looks less psychotic than it feels. “I mean, we managed to walk up your hill without keeling over.”
The woman nods – satisfied, decisive – and steps back from the doorway. “The mozzies will eat you alive if you stand out there all night.” A strange half-smile shadows her lips. “There’s no getting rid of them, once they have a taste.”
Holly is scowling as she stalks back into the living room where Emma has been studying an unframed painting of two little girls sitting on a merry-go-round. It’s the old-fashioned kind, with prancing horses and gold-spiralled posts, and one of the children seems to be half-climbing, half-falling from her saddle as she reaches for something off-camera. The other girl clutches the hem of her friend’s bright red sundress, her mouth a round splotch of paint the colour of maraschino cherries. The execution is clumsy, the expression on the young faces ambiguous, and the rolling white eye of the closest horse gives Emma the creeps.
“Useless!” Holly says.
Emma turns to face her. “What did they say?”
“Nothing, I was disconnected three times.”
“You didn’t get through at all?”
“Yeah, I think I just said that,” Holly snaps.
As though it’s Emma’s fault the damn RACV have a dodgy phone line. But then everything seems to be Emma’s fault these days.
Behind them, the woman who finally introduced herself as Mrs Jacoby clears her throat. “If I can make a suggestion?” She is less nervous now, obviously no longer afraid that her unexpected guests might be about to slit her throat and make off with the family silver. “Why don’t you both stay the night and try again in the morning? If you still can’t reach anyone then, I can drive you into town myself.”
Emma looks at Holly, who shrugs, noncommittal. Those two vertical frown-lines between her eyebrows have deepened, and her lips are drawn tight. It’s obvious she’s going to leave all the decision making to Emma from this point on – all the better for apportioning blame later – and anger flares hot and sudden in her guts. Fine, what-the-fuck-ever. “That’d be great, Mrs Jacoby,” she says, forcing a smile. “I mean, if it’s not putting you to too much trouble.”
“Not at all. I always keep the spare room made up.” The woman’s gaze flicks between them as she runs a hand through her short, silvery-grey hair. “It’s a double bed; I hope you girls won’t mind sharing?”
Emma, this time refusing Holly even the briefest of glances, barely skips a beat. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”
Mrs Jacoby smiles – that queer, slim twist of the lips – and Emma wonders if perhaps she isn’t in on the joke after all.
Rubbing her shower-damp hair with one of Mrs Jacoby’s fluffy green towels, Emma closes the bedroom door quietly behind her. “All yours,” she says, and then, “Jesus, Hol, you still mucking about with that thing?”
The doll house is huge. A massive Victorian, its base covering almost the entire surface of the table upon which it has been set up, easily a metre square and maybe more, and inside there are three separate storeys, plus some extra little rooms in the attic. Holly is poking about inside these now, standing on tip-toes to lift out and examine pieces of scale replica furniture from the very back corners.
“It’s amazing, Em. You need to come look at this.” She holds up what appears to be a tiny steamer trunk, then slips a fingernail beneath the lid and pops it open. Inside is a small square of tartan cloth, about the size of a matchbox, folded into quarters like an old woollen blanket packed away for the winter. “Fricken details, huh?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think you should be playing with it.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause it’s probably worth more than my car.” Emma pictures her Corolla’s intimate new friend, the telegraph pole, and grimaces. “Definitely, now.”
“She wouldn’t have it here if she didn’t want people to touch it.”
“Hol, this is her spare room. How many houseguests do you think that lady actually gets? Just be careful, okay?”
Holly’s eyes narrow, the frown lines returning to furrow her brow. “I’m not five years old, you know.”
Sometimes I fucking wonder. But Emma bites her tongue. She’s tired – more than tired, damn near exhausted, caught deep in a post-adrenaline crash – and she doesn’t want to fight. Not now, not here in this house with Mrs Jacoby right down the hall, blankets pulled up to her chin as she wonders just what it is that two young l-e-s-b-i-a-n-s get up to when the lights go out. Emma steps out of her jeans, modestly donned for the brief trip from bathroom to here, and slips an arm around Holly’s waist.
“Have a shower and come to bed, baby.” She squeezes the girl’s hip. “Please?”
“I don’t feel like doing anything.” Holly doesn’t look up from the little red chaise longue she’s turning over and over in her hands.
Emma sighs. “Neither do I.” Her arm drops to her side. “To be honest, I don’t think the bed does either. Creaky old thing sounds worse than the one at your gran’s. Remember when we stayed over that time?”
“Yeah,” Holly says with a smile. “She couldn’t even look at me at breakfast.”
“Baby, things we did, I couldn’t look at you at breakfast!”
Grinning now, Holly returns the little chaise to the doll house. “There’s a secret room or something under the staircase, I think. See those seams in the wall?”
“Come on, let’s just get some sleep.”
“Help me find the catch first. Don’t you want to know what’s in there?”
“Just leave the stupid house alone and come to bed!” Not meaning to raise her voice, but the sound of Holly’s fingernails scrabbling around in the stairwell sparked a tight, queasy feeling in her guts which needed to be quelled.
Holly isn’t smiling anymore, and that feels even worse.
“I’m sorry, Hol. It’s been a real shitty day and I’m tired.”
The girl says nothing, merely turns her shoulder and retrieves a small wooden cabinet from the doll house. It has a glass-fronted door that opens and closes on tiny brass hinges, and Holly spends a second or two doing just that.
“Okay, fine.” One pissy little straw too many and Emma stalks over to the bed, pulls back the musty, seldom-used sheets. “Do whatever you want, as always.”
“Fuck you, Em,” Holly hisses. “I wish I could!”
“Fuck you right back, baby.” Emma curls her bare legs to her chest and pulls a pillow over her head to block out the overhead light. Faintly, she thinks she hears Holly starting to cry. Soft, muffled sounds that tear at her heart, tear at her resolve, and fuck you, Holly, she says to herself, for herself. Fucking crybaby.
You know where to find me once you’re done.
It’s dark, new moon dark, and the grass is slippery-wet beneath her feet, even though she doesn’t think it has rained for a long time. Up ahead, Holly calls out again, calls out her name and something else that Emma can’t make out above the cicada song that rises and falls like slow-drawn breath. Holly? Hol, wait up, she shouts but her voice is lost to the night and to the insects, and so she just starts running again.
She doesn’t want to open the door, doesn’t want to even touch that tar-black wood, but her hand is already on the knob, fingers grasping, wrist turning, and she holds her breath as it swings away from her. Look at this, Holly is saying, you need to look at this. Kneeling by the doll house which seems bigger now, or maybe Holly is smaller, Holly in a pretty red sundress that Emma has never seen before – never? never ever? – Holly kneeling with her palm outstretched and on it, something small and yellow and crumpled. A toy car, matchbox size, and, That’s not right, Emma says, it’s doesn’t fit, it’s too small. See, Holly, it’s only as big as the steamer trunk. But the girl just smiles. You need to look harder.
Because it is the steamer trunk and Holly pops the lid again, pulls out that little scrap of tartan and unfolds it. Unfolds it again and again and again, that shonky old magician’s trick, the blanket growing bigger, heavier, and Emma has to grab one end to keep it off the floor. The wool so rough against her cheek, dry as old dust, as she pulls it up over her shoulders, tucks herself in like a good little girl sitting here in the corner beneath the sloping attic ceiling, and watches Holly play with the doll house on the other side of the room. Do you know where you are? Em, do you know?
Running, still running, breath painful as broken glass in her lungs, and all around her the damn cicadas continue fill the air with their manic, buzzing chorus. It can’t be more than a dozen steps away, that huge Victorian house with its porch light shining the way home, not more than half a dozen now and there’s Holly waiting for her at the front door, bare arms outstretched and waving. Waving her away, warding her off, and Leave me alone, the girl shrieks, tears streaming dark as blood down her face.
It’s not right, Holly says and turns her back. You don’t fit. She’s right, the doll house is too small, way too small for Emma to get more than an arm and a leg inside and only then if she starts smashing down walls. Holly is crying, and Emma reaches out to touch her, to pull her close, because that might quell the ache in her arms, the ache in her heart, only it’s not Holly she’s holding onto now. Let me go, Mrs Jacoby whispers, not even the ghost of a smile left on those thin, pale lips. And Emma begins to scream.
Light, the harsh light of early morning streaming through the curtainless window, and for a few dream-dazzled moments Emma has absolutely no idea where she is. Only when she reaches out a sleepy arm to find the bed empty beside her, empty and cold, does she remember.
“Holly? Baby?”
No answer, no indication that the other side of the bed has been slept in or even sat upon, no trace of Holly at all. Okay, fine, so the girl stayed pissed with her and crashed somewhere else. Downstairs maybe, sprawled on Mrs Jacoby’s red chaise longue like some absinthe-soaked poetess and—
No, that’s wrong. The red chaise isn’t downstairs, it’s in the doll house. But even that thought is wrong, because there is no downstairs. Not in this house, not in the real house.
Emma shakes her head, rubs at her eyes until stars begin to spark behind her lids. Too many damned dreams, too much time spent chasing her own frightened tail; no wonder she’s still exhausted. At least her jeans are where she left them. And, as she pulls them up over her hips, Emma finds herself staring at the doll house, wondering if it’s just the daylight that makes it look different this morning.
Because it really does seem smaller, more crowded somehow.
Then she sees the dolls and her breath catches hard in her throat.
There are two of them, about half the length of her hand in height, their tiny porcelain faces painted with such exquisite attention to detail that Emma can even see the familiar smatter of freckles across the nose of the one with the long, brown hair. The one dressed in purple shorts and a white peasant-style blouse far too similar to what Holly was wearing yesterday for coincidence to lay any claim. Definitely not if you count the second doll, the one wearing blue denim jeans and a T-shirt that might once have been black before too many rides round the washing machine rendered it a dirty, charcoal grey.
The doll with short-cropped hair grown back long enough to curl. Frizzy blonde ringlets like those Holly once begged her to leave alone, to let grow out, just to see what they would look like.
Lil’ Orphan Annie with a serious peroxide problem, Emma joked.
The dolls stare at her, their unblinking gaze the most frightening thing she has ever seen, and Emma has to force herself to snatch each one up in a trembling, white-knuckled fist before she flees the bedroom, expecting all the while to feel the frost-sharp bite of tiny porcelain teeth.
Calling Holly’s name as she runs down the hall, bare feet slapping on old floorboards, ridiculously thankful that there still is a hall – long and empty and leading straight to the front door – and not a winding Victorian staircase. But no answer, no sign of anyone in the house at all until she reaches the living room and there’s Mrs Jacoby standing by the window in a lilac terry-cloth robe, hands wrapped tightly around a steaming mug. Mrs Jacoby who turns now to regard her with a look that Emma doesn’t like one bit: disappointment blended with resignation, the look of a parent whose daughter has failed yet another important exam.
“I thought you might be gone,” the woman says, and sighs. “I thought, maybe, if I didn’t check the room, if I waited . . .”
“Where’s Holly?”
“Oh, she’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Emma crosses the room and holds out her fists, opens them without looking because if she sees those frozen little faces one more time she might start screaming. “What the fuck are these?”
Mrs Jacoby doesn’t flinch, merely takes a sip from her mug as she glances at Emma’s flattened palms. “Where did you get those things?”
“From the doll house.”
“Odd,” the woman says. “That one’s almost certainly a Greengrocer. The other might have been a Black Prince, perhaps a Black Friday. Hard to tell.”
Confused, Emma looks down to see not dolls in her hands but two smaller, stranger shapes, desiccated and almost weightless, their spike-stiff legs sickle-curved to scratch at her skin.
“I think a Prince,” says Mrs Jacoby. “We’re too far south for Fridays.”
Emma cries out, shakes the empty cicada husks to the floor and very nearly stomps them to pieces, has one foot already raised before she stops herself. No desire to feel the crack and split of those things against her bare sole, no desire to touch them again at all, and only realises that she’s actually backing away from them when her hip bumps against the open door. “What is this?” Raising her voice against the immanent threat of tears. “What the fuck is going on?”
But Mrs Jacoby only shakes her head. “You need to ask your friend.”
“Holly? Where is she?” Nails digging into her palms – deeper deeper deeper – because this has to be another of those whacked-out dreams, right? And she just needs to wake herself up, right? Right? “Where’s Holly?”
“She went to wait by the car.”
“Bullshit, why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
“Perhaps she’ll tell you now.” And with that Mrs Jacoby turns away from her, turns to stare out of the window once more, and when she speaks again her voice sounds weary and old. “Just go, Emma. For once, just go.”
Amazingly, Holly is there. Sitting in the dirt by the rear wheel of the wrecked Corolla, knees drawn up to her chest and head bowed, and Emma almost sobs to see her.
“Holly!”
At the sound of her name, the girl looks up. Shades her eyes with one hand to watch Emma crab-hobble the rest of the way down the dew-slick hill, but doesn’t smile or call back a greeting, just sits and waits as though she’s been doing it her whole life and doesn’t expect to have to stop anytime soon.
“What are you doing here?” Emma asks when she reaches the road. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
A shrug, and Holly looks away, looks back down the road from where they’d come the night before. Emma follows her gaze but there’s nothing, just empty black-top already starting to simmer in the morning heat, barren brown fields on either side, and above them the sky sprawling vast and cloudless as a faded sheet.
“Get up, Hol. We have to go.”
But the girl just shakes her head. “Where? Where are we going, Em?” A grim, razor-thin smile splits her mouth as she whacks the side of the car. “And how we gonna get there?”
She’s right, they’re pretty much stranded out here. No one and nothing within even the most ambitious of walking distances, just that crazy old woman with her crazy old house, and ten seasons in hell won’t get Emma to trek back up there. So they, what, just sit on their butts in the dirt until a car comes by and picks them up? Might as well get moving anyway then, two feet and a heartbeat all that’s needed to get them up and away and out of sight of that damn spooky house. Two feet that Emma now remembers are bare, her Docs still in the bedroom where she kicked them off last night before her shower, and she swears, punches the car roof, and swears again as pain shoots up her wrist.
Holly is muttering at her feet and for one blood-seared second Emma wants to kick her, takes a deep breath instead. “What did you say, Hol?”
“Look in the front seat,” the girl says flatly. “You need to see it.”
No, she really doesn’t need to see anything, certainly not anything that has Holly so cowed, but she’s already moving around to the front of the car, wincing because in this light she can see how bad – write-off bad – the damage is to the front end, and it’s a damn wonder that—
That—
It flickers, the thing that is – that isn’t – that is – in the front seat.
Impossible blacklight flicker that gives Emma a headache, turns her spit to dust, and she blinks, and she squints, and she tries to look at it from the corner of her eye, and still the damn thing isn’t there. And is there, still.
“You need to look harder,” Holly whispers in her ear and Emma yelps, tries to take a step backwards, several of them, but Holly is behind her, pushing her closer to the crumpled yellow car with its windscreen that isn’t shattered so much as caved in, the safety glass cracked and streaked with blood and shit and matted fur from the animal that lies half-in, half-out of the driver’s seat. The flickering over and done with now, but Emma would give anything to have it back, to have what is in front of her returned to the realm of what isn’t.
The young woman slumps in the passenger seat, bloodied face and bloodied throat and bloodied God knows what else beneath the tartan blanket someone has pulled up over her shoulders. Tucked in like a child on a long drive home, eyes closed and blonde hair smoothed back from her face, as much as unruly curls can be smoothed, but it’s wrong. It’s all wrong, and Emma wants to pull the blanket higher, up and over that waxy, bruise-blemished face because that’s what you do for dead people, that’s what would be right, because that woman is—
Is—
Then Holly is tugging at her sleeve, steering her away from the car and over to the side of the road, where Emma stumbles on something sharp and hidden in the long scraggly grass that grows there, and doesn’t even try to stop herself from falling.
“Are we?” she whispers. “Did we?”
Holly sinks down beside her. “No,” she says, squeezing Emma’s shoulder. “No, Em, we didn’t.” Intensely sweet, the feeling of relief, but it lasts for less than a second before Emma gets her meaning.
We didn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” Holly says. “I tried, I really tried, but there was so much blood and no one drove past, not one fricken car the whole time.” Weeping softly as she describes dragging Emma across to the passenger seat, admitting that maybe she shouldn’t have moved her at all but the kangaroo was impossible to shift, so heavy, and she couldn’t just leave Emma entangled like that. Thick and black, the claws which did all the damage, those powerful hind legs thrashing about in panic and pain after the animal came through the windscreen, and Emma’s throat right in their path. Emma’s face and arms and chest as well, more blood than Holly had ever seen in her life, and she couldn’t stop the spill of it.
She just couldn’t stop it.
“The blanket,” Emma whispers. “It’s from the doll house.”
Holly shakes her head. “It’s from the boot. My picnic blanket, remember, from when we went up to Mount Dandenong? I left it in your car.” She rubs at her bare arms. “You were cold, you kept saying how cold you were, so I went to find a jumper or something and the blanket was right there, too easy, but when I got back . . .”
Emma swallows.
“I didn’t know what to do, Em. I just covered you up and waited, and finally this truckie came by in a semi and called the cops on his CB.” Holly sniffs and wipes her nose. “He waited with me, too. Pretty nice guy, gave me half his sandwich and some coffee from his thermos. Didn’t have to do that, didn’t have to wait either, but he did. Nice guy, you know.”
“I don’t understand, Hol.”
Holly sighs. “What?”
“You didn’t die?”
“I didn’t die.”
“So what are you doing here? It doesn’t make sense, if you’re still alive.” Emma thinks about that, and frowns. “Are you still alive?”
“Oh, I’m still alive.” Holly rises to her feet, brushes dust and grass from her backside and shades her eyes again as she looks up towards the hill opposite them. “I bought that house almost ten years ago now. Ten years come October.”
Emma shakes her head. “Ten years ago you were fourteen.”
“Then,” Holly says. “Well, now I guess. Here.”
“Hol, please. Try making some sense.”
Holly swings around to face her. “What year is it, Em?”
“Stop fucking around.”
“1984, right? The year you died. But up there?” – waving her hand in the direction of the hill and the house that perches upon its crest like a weather-beaten vulture, a house Emma doesn’t even want to so much as glimpse again, so she keeps her eyes firmly locked on Holly’s and finds that vista only marginally less terrifying – “Up there, it’s years later. Decades. And it’s where I live.”
“What, with that Jacoby woman?”
Holly smiles, and that’s worse than what Emma saw in the front seat of the Corolla. Possibly worse than anything she has seen anywhere, ever.
“Every time I think you’ll realise,” the girl tells her. “Every time I think you’ll finally catch on, but you never do. Add a good twenty-five years to my age, Em – no, make it a bad twenty-five years – cut my hair and turn it grey, throw in some wrinkles, lots of wrinkles, plus an extra twenty kilos or so. What do you see then?”
Emma shakes her head. “You can’t be her. You can’t be her and you both. How is that even possible?”
Holly runs her hands through her hair, a gesture of exasperation Emma knows only too well, and she wants to grab those hands, squeeze them tight and never, ever let go. But Holly has already turned her back again, is kicking at the grass with one white-sneakered foot, and Emma is afraid to move because the world now feels so unstable, so insubstantial, that even a misdrawn breath might send it spinning off its axis and into the hungry dark.
“You won’t let me leave,” Holly says in a small, thin voice. “All these years, I’ve tried so many things but nothing works. I can be doing the dishes, or watching a movie, or trying to enjoy my honeymoon for godsake, and you just . . . call me back. And I’m here, in that car, and there’s nothing I can do. I’ve tried explaining things to you over and over, showing you, but you never listen. Or you listen, but mustn’t remember, because you . . .”
Her voice breaks on that last heavy syllable.
“Holly, baby I—”
“Shut up!” Turning on Emma with flashbright eyes, furious eyes, one skinny finger stabbing right in her face, and Emma obeys instantly. “I bought that damn house because of you. I thought if I was closer to this place, maybe I’d be stronger as well, stronger than you. But it didn’t work and now all I can do is set stupid little traps and tripwires and hope that maybe the truth will slip in sideways and wake you the fuck up, or send you on your way, wherever the hell that might be. But it never does, every time we end up back here . . .”
Traps and tripwires.
Emma closes her eyes. Mrs Jacoby, the carousel painting, the damn doll house she had refused to examine – did she always refuse? always? – and who knew what other subtle hints and whispers Holly kept hidden in plain view up in that house. Because she’s right, clever girl: truth wields a razor blade with more finesse than a sledgehammer, and now Emma knows (remembers? relives?) what happened
—glass and claws and pain and blood and cold—
what always happens. Every time. How every time she pushes it away, aside, asunder, because she doesn’t want to believe, doesn’t want
—blood and cold and dark and fear—
to die. Doesn’t want to die.
And doesn’t ever want to be alone.
“You know what the worst part is?” Holly is crouching in front of her now, gloss-damp eyes red round the edges. Emma shakes her head mutely, not sure she wants to know, but sure she always has. “We were over, Em. That stupid cave trip was my idea, you didn’t even want to go. You didn’t love me anymore, you’d told me that, but I thought if maybe we just went away, just the two of us . . . and now you’ve swapped it all around inside your head somehow. As if that will fix everything.”
Holly picks up Emma’s hand, presses it against her cheek. “You don’t love me, Em. You don’t love me, but you still won’t let me go.”
And Emma swallows hard, and nods, and feels the thin cold blade slide between her ribs. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“You always say that.”
“I know, I remember.” She studies Holly’s face, those gentle curves that she really did love once, those pale blue eyes that could break her heart a million times over and still be able to put it back together. “And I will remember, I promise. Next time, okay? Next time it’ll be different.”
Holly smiles, empty-sad twist of her lips that Emma can’t stand to look at.
“You always say that, as well.”
No answer she can make which won’t taste like a lie, salt and ashes and bitter-cold dirt, so she says nothing. Just sits there with Holly’s fingers entwined in her own, watching the slow roll of tears dampen the girl’s face as, behind them, the darkness seeps ever closer, ever colder.
“Please,” Holly whispers. “Just let go this time. Please, Em?”
And Emma nods, and squeezes Holly’s hand, and tries not to think about all the sweet and terrifying ways a person can fall.