Mother in Bloom

“We need to air this place out,” Maddy said, face scrunched in disgust under her strawberry blonde hair.

Zack turned from the bed to look back at her. “You gonna finally come in?”

“Nah.”

“She’s dead now. You can come in.”

“Fucking stinks, Zack.”

Her brother shrugged. “That’s death for you.”

“Just open the window at least.”

Zack sighed and moved around the bed, pulled open the curtains and unlatched the window, swung it wide. As daylight flooded in, the cadaver that was their mother took on super-real details.

“Doesn’t even look like her any more,” Maddy said. She leaned a little into the room, wincing against the stench. It was sickly and thick, sweet and harsh at the same time, laced with shit and antiseptic. She’d only been dead a few hours. It would get worse quickly.

“You’re a year older than me,” Zack said. “You’re supposed to be the responsible one.”

“Am I really?”

“You’re eighteen soon!”

“Another six months. Zack, I’m no more an adult than you are. Don’t try to pull that shit. I’m the one said we should shut the bedroom door and leave her to it. You insisted on caring for her. Just cos she died now, doesn’t make it suddenly my problem.”

“She cared for us–”

Maddy shot one hand up, palm out. “When did she ever fucking care for us? She kept us alive when we were babies, that’s it. I been taking care of myself and you since I was five. You looked after yourself enough too. Daddy helped until he disappeared, and I was only nine then. We been on our own our whole lives, Zack. Fuck her. I’m glad she’s finally dead.”

“You think he really left us?” Zack asked. “You always say disappeared and vanished and shit. Never left.”

“I’m not having this conversation again. Who knows? This town, anything is possible.”

Zack looked down at the skeletal woman in the foul, stained bed. Maddy couldn’t help looking too. Their mother’s skin was patched ochre and pale browns where it had once been creamy, her lips cracked, eyes and cheekbones bulging from a sallow face that was mostly skull. Her mouth hung slightly open, tips of yellowed teeth showing. Zack sniffed, wincing against the smell, then nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

“What?”

“I’m glad she’s dead.”

“Yeah.”

“But we owe her something.”

“Do we?”

Zack looked up, eyes flashing anger. “What do we do with her?”

“Harbour?”

Zack pursed his lips, shook his head. “I’m worried she’ll float or something. Be found.”

“We can’t risk the house, Zack.” Maddy looked around, glanced back over her shoulder. “I mean, shitty as it is, it’s finally ours. We get to relax and enjoy it at last.”

“I know. That’s all okay. I have the login details for Centrelink, all the benefits and pensions and shit. We’re well-prepared. We just need to make sure no one knows she’s dead. But every time I bring up what to do with her, you change the subject. Well, time’s up. Now we have to decide. So what do we do with her?”

“Dump her in the bush?”

“What if someone finds her? Or an animal drags her back or some shit?”

“Bury her in the bush?”

Zack stared at his mother, lips pursed. “Would take a bit of effort, and we’d have to park up somewhere on the road out of town, then carry her in. Might get seen at any point. We have to be absolutely safe, Maddy. No one can know.”

“Whatever we do with her is going to be risky.” Maddy took a step back. “I can’t stand this stench any more, Zack. Leave the window open but shut the door. Let’s talk about this somewhere else.”

They sat in the lounge room, Zack on the threadbare couch, Maddy in one of the armchairs. The other armchair, their mother’s spot, hadn’t been sat in since she’d gone to bed about three months prior and stayed put. She’d lay there, making demands of Zack, getting sicker and sicker, wasting away, wallowing in her own filth. How Zack stood to go in Maddy would never know. They should have let her die weeks ago, but Zack kept her going until last night.

For months before that, she’d shuffled around the house, getting sicker and sicker, refusing to accept help. She knew she was dying and welcomed it, was Maddy’s opinion. Happy to waste away right in front of her kids. On a good day, when Maddy was feeling charitable, she wondered if perhaps their mother recognised the benefit of her dying in secrecy so Zack and Maddy would have the best chance on their own. No interference from DoCS, or the Department of Communities and Justice, as the fuckers called themselves now. Busybodies is what they were. But with the welfare still coming in, Zack and Maddy had a chance at a peaceful life. It was their grandfather’s house, after all, bought and paid for, the only thing of any value the family had ever owned, now in their mother’s name. Of course, it was in The Gulp, so what was it really worth? But it was a home.

Most days, though, Maddy wasn’t charitable at all and knew their mother was too damned selfish to even consider the possibility. She made constant demands, probably too stupid to realise there might be consequences for anyone else. Maybe she was so selfish she imagined the whole world ending when she did, so no one else mattered. No one else ever mattered with her.

“How’s your mum?” friends and neighbours would ask.

“Oh, she’s okay,” Maddy would reply. “Just prefers to stay in. You know how she is. We take care of her.”

“You’re good kids.”

Yeah, Maddy thought. Real good. Agoraphobic was a word she’d learned, and it came in handy. Their mother had a lot of issues, they told everyone, including germaphobia, agoraphobia, diabetes and asthma. They’d been laying the groundwork for their reclusive mother for the last couple of years. The woman was only forty-six. Would only ever be forty-six now, but that gave them decades of living at home, ostensibly caring for the strange old lady who never went out while they collected her welfare. It was sort of perfect, really, if they could get away with this last bit. If they were caught disposing of the body, that would be a problem. A real problem.

“So what do we do?” Zack asked again.

The TV was on, but muted. Some game show where idiots grinned at each other and answered questions on their specialist subject. Maddy stared at it, thinking. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I’m scared, Zack.”

“Me too.”

They were quiet for a while. Maddy felt like a little kid, trembling and nervous. This was what they’d wanted, wasn’t it? What they whispered about while their mother wasted away in her bedroom. Now it had come about, there was a kind of finality to it that made Maddy feel hollow inside. The bitch was one of the most awful people Maddy had ever known – and in The Gulp, you met a lot of awful people – but she was their mother too. Some bullshit chemical or emotional power consistently worked on Maddy’s insides, made her care.

Only a few weeks ago she’d tried to score some of her mother’s approval. Working at Woollies full-time since she quit school at the end of year 10 some three or four months prior, had been thankless enough, but it was work and it was hers. She’d worked there part-time to supplement the welfare for a couple of years already. But scoring an Employee of the Month certificate had been one of the few things Maddy had been genuinely proud of in recent memory. She’d braved the sickly-sweet miasma of her mother’s room, squinted to blur the image of the woman emaciated and wheezing on the pile of pillows, and held up the certificate for her to see.

“What do you think of that, Mum?”

“I ’spect everyone gets one. Like a rota,” her mother had croaked, chest whispering with phlegm. “You’ll get another in a few months.”

“I fucking earned that!” Maddy had shouted, and stormed from the room. The stench had trailed with her, like a cloak lifting in the wind of her passage. She’d run to the bathroom and vomited, got puke on the certificate and screwed it up into a ball as tight as her rage. She threw it away and that was the last time she’d gone into her mother’s death chamber. The last words they’d spoken.

When Zack had called out earlier that day to say the woman’s breaths were stretching further and further apart, Maddy had said, “So what?”

“Last chance,” Zack had called from the gloomy, stinking room. “You want to say goodbye?”

“Fuck no. She’s not even conscious, hasn’t been for two days.”

“I know. I told you that. But maybe she can still hear us.”

“Then tell her to go to hell.”

Yet here she sat now, an empty ache in her gut. Her mother was dead. Her useless, selfish, mean mother was dead, and she cared. Regardless, now they were alone. Her and Zack against the world. They had the house, the welfare, she had her job, Zack would quit school at the end of the year and get a job of his own. He had an apprenticeship lined up. The future was bright, by the standards of any future in The Gulp. One last hurdle to leap, getting rid of the body.

“Bury her in the back yard?” Zack said.

Maddy jumped slightly, looked up, torn from her thoughts. “First place they’ll look if they suspect foul play.”

“I know how to lay cement. Been helping Brian out for a while now. How about I make us a new patio?”

Maddy shook her head. “They’ll smash it and pull it up. Anyway, a new cement deck is pretty fucking suspicious on its own, right?”

“I guess. So what do we do?”

Maddy looked at her phone. “It’s nearly four. I have to go out.”

“Where?”

“Just friends. Let’s think on this a bit, yeah? Another day or two won’t make any difference.”

Zack grimaced and shook his head. “I dunno. I mean, I know she’s foul in there already, but I was reading up on some of this stuff online. Dead bodies start to putrefy really quickly and... What?”

Maddy could feel how wide her eyes had gone. Ice trickled around her gut. “What the fuck have you been looking up online? What if someone searches your internet history?”

“I’ve been careful, Mads! Proxies and shit. I’m not an idiot. Besides, it’s nothing specific or incriminating.”

“Jesus, I hope not.”

“Trust me! Anyway, all I’m saying is we need to decide. We can’t leave it much longer.”

Maddy stood. She needed to be out of the house. Away from... all this. “Until morning, Zack, okay? Let’s decide in the morning.”

“We have to make a decision, Sis. We’ve been going around and around this subject for weeks now. It’s the one thing you’ll never make a choice about. Everything else is done, why is this the one thing?”

“I don’t know. It’s too big, too weird. The rest is fucking admin, you know? It’s stories and lies, and we’re good at that. This part, it’s physical. In the morning, I promise. Before you go to school we’ll decide. When you’re home from school, we’ll do whatever we decide. Yeah?”

Zack nodded. “Okay.”

“I might stay out. You okay for dinner?”

“Yeah. Probably go over to Josh’s anyway, play Xbox. Charm his mum into letting me stay for dinner.”

Maddy drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. “Okay, good. I’m working tomorrow, so I’ll wake you when I get up. We’ll decide over breakfast.”

Zack nodded, lips a flat line. His eyes were wet, red underneath. Maddy swallowed. He was just a kid. They were both just kids, no matter how grown up they’d had to become. They would take care of each other, but she resented the need. No wonder Zack hung out with Josh so much. Josh was everything Zack wished for – loved, cared for, he had a mum and dad who were around plenty, a nice clean house. She went over and leaned down, kissed the top of his head.

“Love you, Zackattack.”

He smiled up at her. “Love you too, Mad As Hell.”

They grinned at each other. “We’ll be okay,” she said at last.

He nodded. “We will now.”

“If I don’t see you later, I’ll wake you tomorrow.”

She left the house, the late summer air fresh and fragrant with the salt of the ocean only a few blocks over from their place. “We’ll be okay,” she said again, to herself.

“Let’s go to the Vic,” Dylan said. “Get pissed.”

Maddy pursed her lips, shook her head. “Can’t afford it. What about some takeaway grog from Clooney’s drive-through and come back here?”

They sat on a bench on the footpath, looking out over Carlton Beach, The Gulp’s only easily accessible beach, just south of the harbour, all blackened volcanic sand and gravel. The dilapidated surf lifesaving club off to their right, the playground quiet, devoid of activity, behind them. They had the whole park and beach to themselves. For the moment, at least. Maddy was enjoying the fresh air, salt spray, quiet of the night, though it was barely eight o’clock. She didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to go to the pub. They knew she was underage, but didn’t care. Dylan was twenty-two and he always went to the bar, whether it was to spend his own money or hers. But she just didn’t want the people.

“Come on,” Dylan said. “Just for a couple, game of pool, see who’s there? We can get takeout beers and come back here later.”

Mum’s dead. Really dead. It kept going around and around in her mind. It filled her thoughts, pushed against her brain like it needed to get out. The massive relief. The fear of what came next. The immediate concerns of what to do with the bitch’s carcass.

“Maddy?”

He’d been talking again, she realised. “Sorry, what?”

“You’re not yourself tonight. You okay?”

She looked up at Dylan’s kind eyes. He was a funny-looking fucker, everyone said so. Gangly and tall, wide apart eyes, a pointed chin. Far from classically handsome, but he had an intriguing look as far as Maddy was concerned. But more than that, he was kind, respectful. That went a long way beyond what someone looked like.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Bit distracted, sorry.”

“Home stuff? Your mum?”

“Yeah, the usual.” She forced a smile. Maybe distraction was what she needed after all. “Let’s go the Vic.”

He grinned and took her hand. They walked the few hundred metres down Tanning Street to the Victorian Hotel. It was bustling inside, busy for a weeknight. Maddy frowned as they went in and Dylan pointed to a sign by the door.

New Wednesday Special – Trivia Night!

How smart are you?

Register a team now.

Starts 7pm

Maddy groaned. “Sounds awful.”

“Right? They must be between rounds. Let’s get a beer and head out the back before they start again.”

One end of the main bar had a stage where bands sometimes played and a drop-down screen in front of it, where they often showed boxing matches, the UFC, some of the bigger footy games. A middle-aged woman Maddy didn’t recognise had a table set up there with a laptop, the big screen showing a PUB TRIVIA logo. The woman had a microphone in hand and stood grinning out at the busy room.

“Five minutes!” she said, as Maddy and Dylan reached the bar.

He bought the drinks, she took hers and followed him out the back into the bistro and pool area. Two big rooms, one with tables and chairs and the kitchen where food could be ordered and collected, the other with two tatty pool tables, surrounded by the usual motley array of patrons. A door behind the second table led out to the courtyard and several picnic bench and table combos dotted with smokers.

Dylan looked around the pool room, spotted a couple of mates. They headed over, raising their glasses in greeting. Three burley bearded guys with denim and leather, arms full of tattoos, long beards and hard eyes, had colonised the nearest pool table and their friends looked a bit pissed off about it.

Maddy glanced over, saw Desert Ghost MC patches on their backs. Arseholes, she thought, but didn’t say aloud. They always made trouble when they came into town. Their bikes would be parked around the side, big Harleys with ape-hanger bars and fancy airbrushed paintwork of flames and skulls.

“They’ll only play for money,” Dave said, nodding at the bikers. “And they’re bloody good, so always win.”

“Hustlers,” Dylan said, as if this were some pearl of wisdom.

“Exactly.” Dave reached out and clinked glasses with Dylan, then Maddy.

They fell to chatting and drinking, ignoring the bikers and their pool table dominion, not bothering to move around to the other table where people scowled and muttered about the interlopers. The bikers loved it, of course, half the reason they stuck around was to annoy the locals. The other reason was to fleece them, and they’d probably round out the night by picking a fight.

The distraction worked partially, but Maddy still couldn’t get the image of her mother’s wasted body from her mind, finally devoid of life. Dylan’s brother worked on one of the farms out on the Gulpepper Road leading to the highway. Did they have pigs? She’d seen shows where gangsters got rid of bodies by feeding them to pigs. Maybe she and Zack could cut up their mother, take her bit by bit to the farm and drop the bits in the pig pen.

She shuddered. What the hell was she thinking? Apart from trying to conceal body parts from the farmers, as if she would be able to chop up her mother. Maybe Zack’s idea of the harbour was a good one. But she had another thought. They could rent a dinghy for the day, say they were going out fishing. If they could somehow get the body into the dinghy, wrapped up and weighed down with rocks or something, they could dump it much further out than the harbour. But how would she get it there?

Her mum’s car sat in the garage at home. Maddy had been learning to drive, was still on her Ls, but could do all that was required. If they put the body in the back of the car, then backed it up to the harbour as if they were loading supplies for a day’s fishing... It could work. Especially if they started really early before many people were about. And there were never cops in The Gulp, so no one would pull her over if she only drove around town. Hell, if you needed cops and rang triple-0 it was always at least an hour before someone came from Enden or Monkton. If they came at all.

Their mother had been a small woman in life, barely over five feet tall, and she was wasted away to little more than bones now. They could surely wrap her up tight in something, maybe an old doona cover, rope it all together with weights inside. She wouldn’t make too big a parcel, they could flip her straight out of the boot of the little Toyota hatchback into the dinghy. If they picked their moment, no one would see a thing. They could take her from the bedroom to the car through the kitchen, so no one would see that. She’d only be out for a second while they dumped her in the boat, then they’d take her out as far as they dared and sink the bitch. Let the snails and worms of the seabed have her. If they wrapped her up enough, tied weights to her limbs tightly enough, she’d never surface again.

“What are you smiling about?” Dylan half-smiled himself in anticipation of her answer as he held out a fresh beer.

She didn’t realise she’d made any outward indication of her thoughts. “Nothing really,” she said quickly. “Just a little drunk, I guess. You want to get out of here?”

“Take outs back to the beach?”

“What about take outs back to your place?” She gave him a sultry look. Dylan had his own place, a rented flat that was barely more than a studio, but it was private. He kept trying to convince her to move in with him, but she wasn’t taking their relationship nearly as seriously as he was. One day she would have to let him down, she had no intention of staying with him long term, but for now it was fun.

He grinned. “Better skull these then.”

“Race ya!” She upended the schooner and downed the beer, Dylan grunting in surprise and trying to catch up, but she had him beat.

They both laughed, gasping as they caught their breath. Maddy’s head swam a little from the sudden impact of alcohol. She took his hand and they left the pub.

“More cordial, boys?”

“Muuu-uuum! I said before we’re fine, thanks!”

Josh’s mother made a roll-eyes face at Zack as Josh concentrated on the videogame, hunched forward over the controller. Zack grinned. A mother who cared enough to keep offering was one of the reasons he loved coming over here as much as he did. She was everything his mother wasn’t – kind, caring, well-fed. Alive. She had motherly curves and full curly hair, sparkling green eyes. He knew he loved her a little bit.

“We’re fine, thank you, Mrs Brady,” he said.

“Well, you holler if you need anything else. Want a snack?”

“Mum!”

“No, I’m so full from dinner. Your lasagne is...” Zack made a chef’s kiss gesture and grinned again.

“Oh, you!”

Mrs Brady ducked out, pulling Josh’s bedroom door almost but not quite closed. Zack stared at where she’d been for a moment, then turned his attention back to the game just as Josh died again.

“Dammit!” he snapped, and held the controller out to Zack.

“Why don’t we go two-player?”

“Nah, I want to get through these levels single-player. God, my mum is so annoying.”

Zack restarted the level. “She’s kinda cool, really.”

Josh looked at him with his eyebrows almost vanishing into his hair. “Cool? My mum? Earth to Zack, what have you been smoking?”

“I know she’s a dork, but you should appreciate all she does for you. And you’ve got a dad around who gives a shit. Don’t take that stuff for granted, man.”

Josh smiled. “Yeah, I guess it’s easy for me. You should have the same.”

“I do. I have it here. That’s why I’m always coming over.”

“For my parents?”

“Well, not just your parents. Your Xbox too.”

“Fuck you!” Josh slammed a good set of knuckles into Zack’s arm and Zack cried out, laughing through the pain as he desperately kept the character moving on screen.

“Also, your sister is hot! So it’s sweet when she’s home from uni.”

“You want me to hit you again?”

Zack laughed and shook his head. “No, don’t! I can barely feel my right hand as it is!”

“You know, your sister is pretty hot too,” Josh said, turning back to look at the screen. “If she wasn’t so... I dunno, angry all the time.”

“Angry all the time?”

“Always scowling.”

“I guess she does it tough, looking after Mum and all that.”

“I thought you said you did most of it,” Josh said.

“Yeah, well, we both do. Mum has a lot of problems. And Maddy works too.”

They fell into silence for a while, except a Whoop! when Zack completed the level, comfortable in each other’s company. Zack took his turns, doing his best not to think about his mum, finally expired in the fetid bed at home. Josh’s house was so clean and bright compared to his own. It smelled so fresh. Even the air at home seemed dirty, notwithstanding the stench. Once they got rid of Mum, he planned to make sure Maddy helped him clean the place from top to bottom and back again. He wanted to scrub and polish everything, maybe even repaint. The house was finally theirs and he wanted to make it more like Josh’s. This was what a family home was supposed to be like.

Get rid of Mum. That was the tricky bit. His stomach started to go watery again at the thought. If they were caught, it would destroy everything. DoCS would come in, they’d be carted off somewhere, lose the house. He didn’t even know if they had extended family. His mum had talked about useless cousins in Bega, but what did that even mean?

He felt panic welling up again at the thought. Please, Maddy, he silently begged. Please have a plan by the morning.

“School night,” came a gruff but kind voice from the door.

They turned to see Josh’s dad, short hair, neat beard, still wearing the slacks and white shirt from his suit and tie office work combo. He was an accountant in Enden, or something like that. Advisor of something or other. He was just as kind as Mrs Brady. He smiled and nodded at Zack. “How are ya, mate?”

“Good, thanks.”

“And your mum?”

Zack made a face, shrugged. “She’s doing okay.”

“You know, if you ever need any help...”

“I know, Mr Brady, thanks.”

“Another half hour, Dad?”

“School night, Josh. It’s already getting late.”

Zack got up from the floor, grabbed his hoodie. “It is getting on,” he said. “Mum’ll be worried. I’d better go.”

Josh nodded, turning back to his game. “Until next time then, loser.”

“Which will be school tomorrow, friend of losers.”

Mr Brady stepped back to let Zack out of the room, then followed him down the hallway towards the front door. The well-lit hallway, with family photos on the walls. All that was on the walls in Zack’s house were flower-shaped mould stains.

“Seeya, champ!”

“Seeya, Mr Brady. Thanks!”

“Any time.”

He jogged the five hundred metres or so home, up the hill from Josh’s place near the beach to his own where the houses got smaller and closer together. He let himself in and stood in the dark hallway as the door clicked shut behind him. He could replace that blown light bulb if nothing else, that had been out for weeks. Tomorrow, he decided. He wouldn’t start until they’d done whatever they were going to do with Mum. Let it mark the beginning of a new era for him and Maddy. A free era.

He walked along and stared at the closed door of his mother’s room. The cloying stink reached his nostrils even here, creeping under the door like a mist. He’d left the window open and had a moment of panic that the neighbours might notice. Her room was at the back of the house, her window overlooking the scrappy patch of lawn and flowerbeds gone to seed. It was a half-decent size for a back yard in town, maybe twenty metres to a side, two-metre high wooden fence all around. No one could see in, all the neighbours yards backing onto each other. Someone would have to climb up onto the fence to see, and even then they wouldn’t get much of a view into the house. The curtains were drawn again even though the window was open. He shook his head. No, no one would see her. But would they smell her? Maybe when she started to really rot, that kind of stink was epic. You could smell a dead roo on the roadside even as you drove past at eighty Ks an hour. But they’d be rid of her before that happened.

Come and help me, son.

Zack jumped. He must have imagined it, but the voice of his mother had been all too real. Stress maybe. She was dead. Really dead at last. He can’t have heard her.

Unable to help himself, he drew a deep breath in, held it, then opened her door for a look. The breath escaped him in a rush, his eyes going wide. He scrabbled his hand around for the light switch, not believing what he saw in the low light coming from the kitchen behind him.

The room burst into light as he flicked the switch, and he stared. What the hell was growing all over her?

Maddy crept in a little after 2 a.m., closing the front door and leaning against it for a moment. Physically satisfied – for a funny-looking fucker, Dylan knew what do with his gangly body – she was still mentally antsy. She was also pretty drunk.

A bead of light glowed from under the closed door to her mother’s room. She frowned. Zack must have turned it on, but she wondered why. Maybe he’d gone in again to look at her. This must be hard for him. He always kept some part of his heart open to some essential goodness he saw in their mother. Or believed in, even if he never saw it. It showed what a good person he was, but he suffered for it. Maddy had long-since locked away every part of her heart where their mother was concerned.

Well, she could lay there dead with the light on. Maddy wasn’t about to crack open that stench, even to flick the light off. She went and looked into Zack’s room and he was curled up under the doona, snoring softly.

She suppressed the urge to go in and kiss his forehead. Only thirteen months apart, it was ridiculous how much of an older sister she felt sometimes. Girls mature faster than boys and all that shit, maybe. With a sigh, she went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth and washed her face, then headed into her bedroom, stripped to her undies and pulled her current sleeping t-shirt on. It was a gift from Dylan, a Bullet For My Valentine tour shirt. She kind of loved it. Poor Dylan, he was a good person too, and she hated the thought of breaking his heart. She’d have to do it soon, it wasn’t fair on him to drag things out. She wasn’t the sort to settle down, certainly not now, and hopefully never.

She fell into bed and sleep swept over her.

The alarm woke her at seven and it didn’t feel like she’d moved a muscle since she hit the sheets. With a groan, lamenting the background pounding of her head from last night’s beer, she stumbled up and went into the bathroom to piss. On the way back she leaned into Zack’s room to call him awake, but frowned. The lump wasn’t under the doona any more.

“Zack?” Jesus, her voice sounded like a sixty-a-day smoker’s croak. Should have drunk some water in the bathroom.

She went into the kitchen, planning to drink a big old glass of water before calling for Zack again. He was already in there, dressed in his school uniform. His eyes were haunted.

“You have to look at Mum.”

Maddy swallowed, went to get water and it was nectar on her parched throat. She turned and leaned back against the sink. “What?”

“You have to look at Mum.”

“What do you mean. Are you okay?”

“Please. Just go and look at her.”

She stared at him a moment longer and his steady gaze discomforted her. With a frown, she downed the rest of the water, put the glass down and went back along the hall to their mother’s room. She stood a moment, gathering herself, took a few steadying breaths. Then she held the last breath and opened the door.

The held breath rushed out of her along with her voice. “The fuck?”

The light was on still, the thin curtain shifted in the breeze of the open window. Her mother was in the bed, propped on the pillows exactly like the day before, but she was covered in... something. Maddy leaned forward, trying to see better without going in. The bedclothes were rumpled, stained near her mother’s corpse with yellowing patches. Her mother had on a t-shirt that before had clung to her bony frame like a rag, but now stood taller, as if the woman had gained weight overnight. Her bare arms lay either side of her torso, her scrawny neck emerged from the shirt, her skull face staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, but all that exposed skin had pale lumps over it. Rounded and smooth, white as alabaster, like half-ping pong balls dotted all over her. There was barely a centimetre or two of skin between each of them. One covered her left eye, her right eye down in a hollow between two others. One pushed from the side of her nose, another forced her mouth open in a silent scream. Several made a range of rounded hills out of her neck, more on her shoulders under the shirt. Her forearms were covered in them, the back of her hands. Her fingers were splayed as the smooth white half-orbs grew between them. In some cases, the lumps seemed to encircle her fingers completely.

“What’s happening to her?”

Maddy startled at Zack’s voice right behind her as he looked in over her shoulder. When did he get so tall? “What is it?” she asked.

“They’re like mushrooms. They feel soft.”

“You touched her?” The horror was clear in her sharp tone.

“Not with my finger! I poked one with that straw from the water glass by her bed. It’s soft like a fresh mushroom.”

Maddy shook her head. “Is she going mouldy?”

“They were half that size when I got in last night.”

“What?”

“I looked in when I got back from Josh’s. She was covered in them like that, but they were further apart, smaller, sort of like marbles. You weren’t here, I didn’t know what to do. I shut the door and went to bed. Didn’t sleep well, couldn’t stop thinking about it. I got up about dawn, came to see again and they were bigger, like that.”

“Jesus, Zack, this isn’t normal. This isn’t what happens to dead bodies.”

“Is it because of her sickness. She said it was nothing, we knew it was cancer, but maybe it wasn’t.”

Maddy ran a hand over her head, tucked her hair behind her ears. “I don’t know any sickness that would result in... that!”

“Looks like it’s all over her body.”

“Have you checked?”

“No!”

Maddy nodded, chewed her lower lip. “We need to check.”

“Why?”

“We have to move her. We need to figure out if that’s safe. I don’t want to get that stuff on me!”

“It doesn’t smell so bad,” Zack said.

“What?”

“Sniff. It’s covering the stink.”

Maddy allowed herself a slow breath in through her nose and he was right. The sick, cloying aroma of sickness and death was still there, but vastly reduced. Unpleasant, but not appalling like it had been. “Get the big scissors from the kitchen,” she said.

Zack said nothing but she felt him move away from her. Reluctantly she went into the bedroom and took another steadying breath, then lifted the bedclothes away. The stick thin remains of her mother lay in a shallow hollow on the mattress. The sheets beneath her were dark and sticky, some foul combination of blood and shit that had leaked out of her. Zack had tried to keep her clean, but admitted he’d stopped in the last week or so before she died, unable to bear it any longer.

“She shits this black stuff that stinks so bad,” he’d said. “It just pours out of her.”

The mattress would be soaked with it. Maddy crouched, looked under the bed. Sure enough, the stains had gone right through, a patch on the floorboards where it had dripped and spattered.

“Fuck me.”

Her mother’s legs were barely more than bones, the skin browned like leather except where it was red with lesions and sores. But those things were only partially visible now under the numerous smooth white blobs growing out of her. They pushed her toes apart, grew out from the soles of her feet. Zack held out the scissors beside her. She took them.

The white stuff seemed fused with the sheets where her body lay against them, like it grew from the gross stains as well. Maddy lifted the bottom hem of the shirt and began cutting up towards the neck. She peeled the two halves apart and made a quiet noise of distress. Zack bolted from her side and vomited noisily somewhere down the hall. She heard the splatter of water and hoped that meant he’d made it to the toilet.

These... things... Maddy paused, dragged in a ragged breath. Mushrooms, she decided. For the sake of argument, let’s call them mushrooms. They were bigger on her mother’s torso, and the skin around them had split, stark red like fresh steak. One bulged from between her labia, streaked with a viscous fluid tinged with blood. The growths covered her, went around her sides to connect her to the bed where she met the mattress.

Maddy opened the scissors and pressed a point into one of the larger growths on her mother’s stomach. The surface was tough, but there was give in it. She pressed a little harder, the point of the scissor blade dimpling in. Then it punctured through and the mushroom hissed as it flattened slightly. Maddy cried out and jumped back.

The mushroom leaked a dark, red-brown fluid, that trickled over the half-deflated side and pooled at the base where it fused with her mother’s sallow skin.

“What the fuck, Mads?”

She turned, saw Zack standing in the doorway, eyes red and wet with tears. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

She went over and took him in a hug, then turned and pulled the bedroom door closed, guided him back into the kitchen.

“This is so fucked up,” Zack said quietly. “Not even just... that. Fucking everything. She was awful and now she’s dead and now this. What do we do, Mads?”

“I don’t know. I need to think. I don’t want to move her, you saw what happened when I... that stuff came out.”

“Is it eating her?”

Maddy swallowed. “I don’t know. Maybe. Perhaps that’s a good thing? Like, if that fungus or whatever it is eats her up there’s nothing for us to move. Maybe it’s a good thing?”

Zack burst out a bark of genuine mirth. “What luck! Mum died and now she’s getting eaten by mushrooms!”

Maddy grinned and for a moment they both devolved into uncontrollable laughter, a relief valve blowing through the insanity. “Jesus fuck, Zack,” Maddy said as the laughs reduced to giggles. “What the hell is happening?”

“I had lasagne at Josh’s last night. It was so normal!”

“Sounds amazing.” She hugged him again, then stepped back to look at him. “Go to school, yeah? I have to go to work. I’m only on a short shift though, eight till two, so I’ll be back when you get home. There’s no need to decide anything right now. Things have changed, hey. I have to get ready or I’ll be late.”

“I’m going to Josh’s, see if he wants to walk to school together. I don’t want to be here now.”

Maddy smiled. “Don’t blame you. We’ll sort this out. Not much longer, then the house is ours and we can be normal too.”

He looked at her, a little blankly.

“Okay?” she said.

He nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

The day at work crawled by even though it was a short shift. Maddy couldn’t get the image of that mushroom popping and leaking from her mind. Or the image of her mother’s body covered in the pure white growths, the ichor streaked white swelling out from between her legs. On several occasions bile would burn up into her throat and she’d brace, thinking she would need to rush for the bathroom to vomit, but managed to swallow it down each time.

She had a break at eleven and realised she had eaten nothing since before she’d started drinking the night before, and that was only a serve of hot chips shared with Dylan. She went to the bakery out the front of Woollies and bought a bread roll and a can of coke, ate the bread dry, drank the soda. It was all she could face, but she felt immeasurably better after it hit her stomach.

“You right?” Wendy Callow asked as Maddy went back into the supermarket. Wendy was just heading out, presumably on her break.

Wendy was a year older than Maddy, and a bit weird. Most people uncharitably suggested some kind of impairment, but Maddy had come to know the girl and decided Wendy was actually quite smart. She was also intentionally cruel. She made racist remarks frequently, joked about kicking her stepfather’s dog, stuff like that. People didn’t like Wendy Callow for a reason. “I’m fine,” Maddy said.

“Sure? You look like cold shit warmed up.”

“Gee, thanks. Just drank too much last night.”

“With Dylan?”

Maddy sighed. Wendy was hot for Dylan’s mate, James. Maddy wasn’t about to be a matchmaker though. “Yeah, with Dyl. I gotta get back.”

She pushed past, heard Wendy mutter “Stuck up bitch” under her breath but ignored it. Not worth the mental anguish. Strengthened by the food and sugar from the soda, she got back to work.

When she came out again just after two, Dylan was loitering against one of the columns near the entrance. He grinned stupidly when she emerged and she frowned.

“What are you doing here?”

His face fell. “Last night we arranged to meet up. You said you finished at two. We’re gonna drive to Enden and hit some shops, maybe eat there and catch up with...” He petered out, frown deepening at her expression. “You forgot? You weren’t that drunk were you?”

“Shit, Dylan, I’m really sorry. I did forget.” Maybe she’d been more drunk than she realised. She had some recollection of talking about heading to Enden, but didn’t remember planning it for this afternoon. “But something’s come up. Have to rain check?”

He nodded, eyes sad. “Sure, I guess. Everything okay?”

He was such a good guy. Some dudes would get angry, offended and offensive. Dylan was better than that, and she felt bad. “It’s just a thing with Mum. I’m sorry.”

“She’s hard work for you, huh? And Zack. Need help?”

“Thanks, but nah. We’ll be okay. We’ll do the Enden thing another time, yeah?”

“Sure. I’ll call you later?”

She stepped up and kissed him quickly. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“Blind Eye Moon are playing the Vic tomorrow. Wanna go?”

“Yeah, maybe. If... you know, if things are okay with Mum. Give me a call tomorrow arvo and we’ll see, yeah?”

“Okay.”

She gave his hand a squeeze and hurried away. She didn’t dare glance back, knowing he’d be watching her go, hangdog eyes and a slight rounded curve to his shoulders. He would have to fortify and deal with it, she had more pressing concerns.

When she got home the house seemed quieter than it had ever been, still and somehow extra empty. She went around and opened all the curtains, made sure light flooded every room, opened all the windows too and let the late summer breeze blow through. She’d get the vacuum-cleaner out and go over every floor before dinner.

Then she stood outside the only door in the house still closed.

Twice she reached for the door handle but chickened out. Her fingers shook.

“Come on, Madeleine,” she told herself.

She clenched her teeth, building up her courage. She didn’t want to know, wished she could just walk away from it all. No one should have to deal with any of this. But that wasn’t an option, this was her life right now, and she had to live it. She blew out a quick breath, then swung the door open before she could stop herself.

“Fuck me!”

The fungus covering her mother had grown exponentially. None of the woman’s body was visible any more, just a rolling, undulating mass of huge rounded mushrooms in a vaguely human shape filling more than half the old double bed. It was so white, such pure, unblemished paleness.

Maddy crept forward, sniffed tentatively. The stink of sickness and death was almost non-existent, but it had been replaced with an earthy, fungal scent. Not entirely unpleasant, but also not entirely natural. Or perhaps super-natural, like an artificially created facsimile of what a mushroom should smell like. Super-real.

On the old armchair in the corner of the room, a wire coat hanger lay atop a pile of clothes her mother would never wear again. Maddy took it and used one rounded end to prod at the nearest bulge of fungus, her mother’s right foot buried somewhere deep within. That same tough but pliant exterior, the same cushioned softness under pressure. She didn’t dare push hard enough to split the skin of it again.

“What is happening?” she whispered to herself.

The whole mass shivered.

Maddy squealed and ran backwards, bumped into the wall. It shivered again, a vibration rippling through, then it settled. Maddy’s body shook with horror, imagining the whole thing splitting open like one of those puffball mushrooms she’d seen on a nature doco, a dusty cloud of spores bursting from it.

She felt behind herself for the door as she sidled along the wall, not taking her eyes from the corpulent white mass. She slipped out of the room and closed the door.

When Zack got home a little while later, she was sitting on the sofa staring at some rubbish commercial television show. She genuinely had no idea what it was, what it was even about. She’d been in some kind of fugue state, just waiting.

Zack dropped his bag in the hallway by his bedroom door then came to join her, sitting on the edge of the armchair. “Haven’t stopped thinking about it all day.”

She laughed softly. “Me either. It’s worse.”

“Worse?”

“Or better, maybe. Depending how you look at it.”

They opened the door, shoulder to shoulder to see in. The mass had pushed the bedclothes aside as it grew, a parody of a cloud sat atop the mattress. It covered two-thirds of the bed, vaguely ovoid with an undulating surface. The light above reflected off it, so bright, so white.

“It looks so...” Zack frowned, searching for a word. “Clean,” he said eventually.

“What’s happening to her in there?” Maddy said. “That’s what I can’t stop thinking about. Like, is it consuming her flesh? Will there be nothing but polished bones inside eventually? Or will it take the bones too? And then what?” The memory of her previous thoughts came back to her. The idea had been haunting her since the thing shivered so suddenly. “Will it fucking spore?”

“Fungi are eukaryotic organisms,” Zack said, monotone like a newsreader.

“What?”

“I’ve spent all afternoon in the school library, reading, memorising. Fungi are eukaryotic organisms such as yeasts, moulds, and mushrooms. Some fungi are multicellular, while others, such as yeasts, are unicellular. Most fungi are microscopic, but many produce the visible fruitbodies we call mushrooms.”

“Fruitbodies?”

Zack pointed at the bed. “That’s what it is. Growing out of her, that’s the fruitbody of the fungus. And it’s what produces the spores.” His voice dropped into the reciting tone again. “Unlike plants, fungi can’t produce their own food and have to feed like animals, by sourcing their own nutrients.”

“Jesus, Zack, you’re not helping.” He’d always been able to read and recite like this. It was funny sometimes. Now it was decidedly creepy. “So some microscopic fungus found her and fruited while feeding on her? I guess we kinda figured that already. So what?”

Zack shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought learning about it might help, but you’re right. So what? It’ll spore by bursting or scattering in some way, some use animals to carry the spore, most use the wind. I guess what I’m thinking is that maybe it’ll feed on Mum until there’s nothing left and then it’ll wither and die or something, and it may or may not spore in the meantime. But I think we should just leave it alone. Shut the door. Maybe block the gap at the bottom with a towel or something and leave the window open.”

“And then what?”

“Just fucking forget about it, Mads. For, like, a week or something. We can always go around the back, I suppose, peek in at the window, but I don’t know if I dare. Maybe give it a month, then check? Perhaps everything will be over then, and she’ll be gone. Or just bones and we can think of a way to bag them up and get rid of them.”

Maddy thought of her fishing boat idea again. It would be even easier if it was just the woman’s bones. Stack them in an esky and carry it to the harbour. Easy. She reached in and turned out the bedroom light, dropping the room into gloom broken only by the wan glow through the thin curtain. The fungal mass on the bed was still bright, almost luminescent it was so pale.

She looked at Zack and he nodded, so she closed the door. Zack turned to the hallway cupboard, rummaged in the bottom for one of the old towels and rolled it up into a snake that he pressed against the bottom of the door.

“So that’s it?” Maddy asked.

“I reckon. Just forget about it now. For a while.”

Maddy glanced at the closed door. “Is there anything in there we need?”

“Nah. I took it all weeks ago. Got all the paperwork, her few bits of jewellery, all that stuff is in my room. All that’s in there are her clothes. And some books.”

Maddy nodded. “Okay then. So that’s that. For now.”

“For now,” he agreed.

“I want to clean the house,” Maddy said.

Zack smiled. “I was thinking the same thing. Three bedrooms, bathroom, lounge, kitchen, hall. It’s not much.” He went to his bag, reached inside and pulled out a large blue plastic bottle, held it up. “Sugar soap. Mix it with a bucket of water to clean the walls. Cuts through grease and grime, and it’s got a mould protection in it too.”

“That seems definitely worthwhile right now.” They laughed nervously, then Maddy said, “But two bedrooms. For now. We’re leaving hers alone, remember.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll vacuum and dust, wipe all the surfaces. There’s bleach under the sink. You do the walls.”

“Gonna do the ceilings too. With a mop.”

Maddy gave her brother a crooked smile. “Fucking look at us, eh?”

They busted their arses for hours, taking turns to crank music from their phones through Maddy’s Bluetooth JBL speaker. The focus seemed to be something they both needed, the physical labour of it taking up the nervous energy they’d been carrying. Maddy thought maybe the tensions and anxieties had been building for weeks, as their mother’s illness quickly deteriorated from ongoing sickness to terminal decline. Then the actual death and rapid-fire shocks since had left them both shaken. Working hard, taking control of something, was like medicine.

It was nearly 9 p.m. when they both collapsed onto the couch, sweaty and dishevelled, and absolutely spent. Zack ordered in pizza with their mother’s credit card, and they stared at the TV until it arrived. Starving, they devoured it in minutes, then watched more TV without talking. There was nothing to say, no need to plan or discuss. They were simply getting on with it. Maddy had some reservations, wondering if it was entirely wise to ignore the thing growing on their mother. She had occasional visions of it blooming to fill the room, bulge against the door until it burst, billowing in great rolls out the open window.

But she shook those thoughts away. It wouldn’t come to that. If it did need more attention, maybe in a week or two, they’d decide then. Not now. They’d done enough for the time being. Their mother had just died, after all. Let them enjoy that for a while first.

She noticed Zack nodding off, chin on his chest, and gave him a prod. “Let’s go to bed. School tomorrow. And I’m working eight till six.”

He nodded and dragged himself off. The house gleamed, it almost looked like they’d redecorated more than cleaned it. The mould stains and scuff marks were gone, the floor was free of lint and grit and all manner of small detritus that had gathered. It smelled fresh, slightly lemon-scented from the cleaner Maddy had used on all the benches and tables tops.

Zack hugged her and went into his room and she went into hers. It felt like a new start.

They got up the next morning and it was like a house transformed. Zack looked with pride at the clean walls and ceilings. They were still old, paint peeled in places, but the blooms of black, spotted mould were gone. The cobwebs and various unidentified marks were gone. Dust and dirt had been vacuumed from the corners and edges. With late summer sunlight coming in through all the windows, the place gleamed. The windows were grimy though.

“We got any Windex?” he asked Maddy as they ate breakfast.

“Under the sink.”

“Cool. After school, I’m going to clean all the windows too. And on the weekend, let’s tidy up the garden. Shall we make a couple of veggie beds?”

Maddy laughed. “Sure, why not!”

He did his best not to think about the closed room. He especially tried not to think about the sensation of a whispering voice that had seemed to drift from that room while he tried to sleep the night before. He’d been bone-tired from all the housework, his mind abuzz with missing his mother, so surely it was just his tired brain freaking out a bit. He was glad she was gone at last but couldn’t help grieving for the mother she could have been. Imagine if she’d been even ten percent the mother Mrs Brady was. Josh had no idea how lucky he had it.

But he still heard her voice.

Help me, Zacky.

And

I need something, Zacky-boy.

Like it was coming through the wall from her room to his. Cajoling, that familiar edge of demand to it as always. Perhaps he should tell Maddy he could hear her. But she’d think he was mad.

Zack left the house and headed down the hill, then left and right onto Tanning Street. Josh was waiting for him at the usual spot and they fell into step together heading up Tanning towards the servo, then right to the high school at the top of the hill.

“What’s new?” Josh said after a few minutes of companionable silence.

“Same old,” Zack said.

“Your mum any better?”

“Nah, she won’t get any better.” Zack paused, licked his lips. “I think me and Maddy’ll be looking after her forever.”

“Well, not forever,” Josh said. “Parents get old and die.”

“I guess. Seems like forever, that’s all.”

A few more minutes of silence passed as they scuffed along, then Josh said, “My dad asked me to ask you something.” He sounded uncomfortable.

“Yeah?”

“Said did you want him or mum to come over? Talk to your mum?”

Zack startled, but quickly gathered himself. “Nah, man. What for? Talk about what?”

Josh made patting motions with both hands. “It’s all good, dude. I told them it was a stupid idea, but they insisted I ask you.”

“But talk about what?”

“I think they wonder if your mum needs any help or anything. Like, grown-up help.”

Zack laughed, tried to make light of it. “We’re not kids any more, mate. Tell ’em it’s all fine, we’ll be good. She’s getting help anyway. Doctors and shit.” His mother had refused to ever see a doctor, but Josh didn’t know that. Or need to know.

“I’ll tell them.”

They walked on, got to school, went through the drudgery of high school bullshit. But Zack spent the whole time concerned about how much interference there might be from Mr and Mrs Brady. He decided they needed a contingency story. He’d talk to Maddy about it later. Those useless cousins in Bega his mum sometimes talked about might need to become a little more involved. Nobody else knew his mum hated them. Zack himself didn’t even know if they were real, but that didn’t matter. The concept was useful. If the Brady’s, or anyone else, came sniffing around, he and Maddy could say their mum had gone to see her cousins for a few days.

At lunch when he was allowed to take his phone out of his locker, he sent a garbled message about it to Maddy. She replied, What? He texted, Talk about it later

An hour after Maddy got the text from Zack she realised what he meant. Her brother was rubbish at expressing himself. But yes, having a ready-made story about their mum away visiting cousins in case people came around was a good idea. It was a little disturbing how easily they were slipping into the new role they’d made for themselves. Except for the white mass blooming in the bedroom. Try as she might, Maddy couldn’t get it out of her mind.

She was tired after work and though Dylan rang and asked her if she still wanted to go see Blind Eye Moon at the Vic, she blew him off. She apologised, and she meant it, but she needed to start distancing herself. And she genuinely wanted to spend time with Zack in the new clean house that was finally theirs. She went home and Zack wasn’t there. She texted and he said he’d gone to Josh’s after school but would come home for dinner. He hadn’t done the windows after all, but would do it on the weekend. She smiled. The great fervour to clean and take over the house had burned out as quickly as it had ignited, but that was okay. They’d done enough for now.

An hour later they made dinner together and talked about the visiting cousins in Bega story. It came together easily, really not much detail required. Then they watched movies on Netflix and drank from a bottle of Kraken rum Maddy had bought from the bottle shop behind Clooney’s on her way home. Zack even did the dishes before he went to bed, and they both crashed out about midnight, both more than a little drunk, both giggling.

Life, Maddy ruminated as she lay in her clean sheets, freshly laundered, was actually not so bad at last.

Don’t think about that pale thing in the bed...

The booze helped sleep along and she sank into blissful ignorance of the world.

The next day was Saturday and Maddy had one Saturday in four off. This was one of them. A rare alignment of planets where her two days off were actually the weekend and she could hang out with all her other working mates, and the few still in high school heading towards their HSC. Maybe even heading towards university and a ticket out of The Gulp.

Dylan rang and said two carloads were heading into Monkton, going to the Plaza to shop and goof off, probably stay for the evening and a movie. Did she want to tag along? She said she did and it was a good day. Fun was had, there were enough other mates around that she could keep Dylan a little bit at arm’s length without it seeming weird. The movie was rubbish, but that didn’t really matter. Late, after the film and a couple of drinks at the Monkton Tavern, where most of them got carded, but thankfully not Maddy, Dylan drove her, Pete and Jonathan home. Pete and Jonathan sat in the back canoodling, and Maddy sat in the front passenger seat, watching the trees flicker by in the moonlight. The other four had elected to stay longer, drink more. They’d probably drag themselves home in the shameful light of dawn and have ribald tales to tell. Maddy wasn’t in the mood.

Pete and Jonathan wanted to get back to Pete’s place for obvious reasons, and she thought Dylan was probably entertaining similar ideas. Once he’d dropped the two blokes off, he turned to Maddy and grinned, soppy and kinda goofy.

“My place?”

She smiled, but shook her head. “Not tonight. I’m really tired. Can you drop me home?”

He visibly deflated, but tried to put a brave face on it. “Sure.” He paused a moment, then said, “Is everything all right? With you... With us?”

Break up with him, her mind said firmly. Do the right thing. Look at him, poor fucker. Don’t be mean and drag it out. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, short term pain then it’s all over and everyone is okay. Though by the look in his eyes, he would not be okay.

“Maddy? Are we okay?”

She nodded. “Sure, of course. I’m just really tired and... well, Mum has been kinda hard work lately. It’ll ease off soon, I know it will, but I don’t want to leave it all for Zack, you know?” You chickenshit loser, she told herself.

He smiled, clearly relieved. “Well, of course. That makes sense.”

Poor bastard, she thought. So trusting.

“You want me to help?” he asked. “Anything I can do? I could come around and, I don’t know. Help. I’ve never been inside your place.”

And you never will, sweet Dylan. “No, really, it’s fine. Mum’s going to visit her cousins soon anyway, the break will do her good and it’ll be nice for me and Zack to have a break.”

Dylan frowned. “I thought she was aggro... something phobic... too scared to leave the house.”

“Agoraphobic. Yeah, she is. Which is why we’re not pushing but slowly convincing her to go on this trip. Her cousin will come to pick her up and everything. Hopefully. We’ll be okay. Just drop me home, yeah?”

“Okay.”

Zack was asleep in bed when she crept in about 1 a.m. and Maddy was soon pulling the covers over herself. She couldn’t have been asleep more than a few minutes it seemed, when something jerked her awake. Disoriented, in that place between states, brain circling looking for a landing spot, it took a moment to realise what had woken her.

She blinked when she saw light pouring in through her bedroom door. She normally closed it at night but had inadvertently left it half-open. Maybe a by-product of relaxing now her mother had died. The light came from across the hall. And she heard a soft voice, whispering.

Nerves rippled across Maddy’s skin and she moved silently along the bed. Kneeling on the end of it she leaned forward and looked through the small gap between door and frame, across the hallway to their mother’s room. She suppressed a gasp. The smooth white fungus had grown again, so bright, clean and rounded in the light from the bedroom fixture directly above the bed. It covered the whole mattress now and hung in pendulous bulges down either side. The bed had a wooden headboard and footboard, both of which stood a half metre or so above the mattress. Both were buried in rolls of pure white. The rounded centre of the thing bulged up more than a metre above the mattress.

She saw it all because her mother’s door was wide open and Zack stood at the foot of the bed, his head tipped to one side. Maddy had the impression he was listening.

“I don’t know, Mum,” he said softly. “But why?” He paused to listen again. “Are you sure?”

Maddy chewed her lower lip. This wasn’t good. Maybe he was sleepwalking, having some kind of weird lucid dream. Enough for him to get up, open their mother’s door, turn her light on, start a conversation? It seemed unlikely.

“I don’t want to, Mum!” He sounded more sad than defiant.

He took a step back and shook his head. “Let me think about it.”

He reached back for the light switch, starting to turn, and Maddy ducked back out of sight. The light clicked off as she pulled the covers over herself and heard Zack trudge back down the hallway, then his bedroom door thunked shut.

“What the fuck was that about?” she whispered to herself.

The next morning she woke a bit after nine and crawled from bed, but Zack had yet to emerge. It was more than an hour later when he slumped into the lounge, hair in disarray, carrying a bowl of cereal.

“Yo,” he said, and sat down, flicked on the TV.

Maddy looked up from her phone. “Yo yourself. Going all right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“No reason. Sleep okay?”

“Yeah.” He shovelled cereal.

Maddy sighed. She’d have to come right out with it. “You remember getting up in the night?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? You got up in the night, like 2 a.m. or something. You don’t remember?”

He looked at her over his bowl, eyebrows crunched together. He opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. He paused. Then, “No I didn’t.”

Was it worse if he didn’t remember or he was lying? Maybe he’d been sleepwalking after all. But he looked disturbed.

“Are you right?” he asked, sounding sarcastic. His eyes looked haunted, one squinted slightly like he was trying to remember something.

Maddy laughed it off, looked back at her phone. “Yeah, all good.”

Zack stared at the TV, partly enjoying the time alone, partly wanting to go to Josh’s house. Maddy was off with her mates again and it was a novelty to have the place to himself. No scratchy-throated mother calling out to him, or ringing that little fucking bell he’d given her when she got really weak. Calling him to give her water, to wipe where she’d shit herself, just to see him, her little man. He shuddered, thankful it was all over.

But it wasn’t over. She was still in there, under that stuff. He wanted to go to Josh’s, forget it all and play games, but was also cautious not to push his luck. He couldn’t spend every minute over there, even though he wanted to. Maybe sometime soon he could invite Josh over instead. If that fungus did get rid of the body he could call Josh, say his mum was at her cousins in Bega. Having a friend over to the house seemed both audacious and exotic. He’d never done it before.

Bring him to me.

Zack stiffened in the chair, refused to accept he’d heard her.

Bring him.

“No, Mum!”

The whispering voice was muffled by the closed bedroom door, but still clear enough. He didn’t want to admit he’d known what Maddy was talking about earlier. He’d thought it was a dream. He’d dreamed that he’d been woken in the night by sounds of water, rain and waves, and by distant screams. He’d got up, looked out his bedroom window, and seen creatures falling from thick and pendulous clouds, limbs writhing as they tumbled through the rain to land with distant splashes in the ocean. Some far out near the horizon, others closer to the beach. What should have been sand was slick and shiny with some dark ooze. Between his bedroom window and the sea was nothing but thick, verdant bush, battered by incessant rain.

But he knew it was a dream. He couldn’t see the ocean from his window. He only saw the street outside, other houses, cars, whatever. Maybe if there were no houses between theirs and the beach he might catch a glimpse, but not this clear a view, as if from high above, looking out over the vast expanse of roiling sea as the creatures fell.

Then he’d heard a voice, whispering, calling him. It was still the dream, it had to be, because it was his mother’s voice. He went to her room, turned on the light, and the bulbous white fungus that covered her, bigger than ever, had shivered and her voice drifted from it.

Bring people to see me, she had said.

He told her he didn’t want to, but she begged him. She cajoled and whined and said it was so important, that she’d finally be able to be a proper mother to him. He’d told her to let him think about it, everything hyper-real in that dream state super-clarity. And he’d gone back to bed.

In the morning, he remembered the dream. When Maddy asked if he remembered being up in the night he said no, because it was a dream. Wasn’t it? So how did she know? But he definitely wasn’t dreaming now. And his mother was talking to him again.

He got up, knees trembling, and opened her bedroom door. The swollen whiteness reached the floor on either side of the bed, bulged up almost to touch the light fitting above.

Bring Joshy to me!

“No, Mum! No way.” How could she be talking to him? He was going mad, that had to be it. Was it guilt? Fear of being caught in their lie? Surely they deserved their shot at living alone. Living free.

Bring someone. Zacky, I need someone.

“What for?”

To help me.

“To help you what?”

Come back.

“You’re dead!” he shouted and slammed the door shut. He ran back to the lounge, fell onto the couch, and turned the TV up loud.

He decided he’d hold out through the morning, then call Josh after lunch. But not go over to the house, he didn’t want to lie to Mr and Mrs Brady again, not yet. He’d invite Josh to the skate park.

It was almost noon when a knock at the door startled him.

Standing on the porch was a middle-aged woman in jeans and a red jumper. She had long hair tied back and sneakers on, but they looked brand new, completely free of dirt. Behind her, Zack saw a small Volkswagen parked at the kerb.

“Yeah?”

“You must be Zachary Taylor?”

“Who are you?”

The woman smiled and held up a small plastic wallet hanging on a lanyard from a belt loop of her jeans. She said aloud what was written on it. “I’m Stephanie Belcher, from the Department of Communities and Justice.”

Zack’s heart hammered and his skin went cold. “DoCS?”

She smiled again. “That’s what we used to be called, yes. Is your mother home?”

“Why?”

“I’d just like to have a chat, that’s all.” She looked over his shoulder into the house as she spoke. “Can I come in?”

Zack’s mind raced. Should he use the story about visiting her cousins now?

Bring her to me!

Zack jumped, looking quickly at the woman’s face. She gave no indication that she’d heard his mother’s voice.

“Are you okay?” Belcher asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Bring her to me!

His mother’s voice was insistent. Desperate. Something dragged hard at Zack’s chest, seemed to haul at his insides.

Bring her! Let me fix it!

He stepped back from the door. “Come in. Mum’s in bed. She’s not been well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She’s agoraphobic. Never goes out.”

Belcher smiled. “Yes, that’s in your file. Must be tough on you, huh? And your sister?”

“I guess. We’re okay. You really don’t need to see her, we’re all just fine.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but this is standard procedure.”

Zack noticed their neighbour, Jack Parsons, standing on the far side of his car where it was parked on the driveway. He looked over the roof at them, ducked away and got into the car when he caught Zack’s eye. The man had to be ninety years old, a real busybody. He’d always been old and grumpy Zack’s whole life.

“Which is your mum’s room?”

Zack jumped slightly, and quickly closed the front door.

Bring her! Bring her!

Zack’s whole body shook, his mouth was dry. He walked around Belcher and pointed to the bedroom door, then stood slightly aside. He knocked, hoped the woman couldn’t see his hand trembling. “Mum, someone to see you.” His voice wavered and he cursed it.

Belcher didn’t seem to notice. She smiled, raised her eyebrows.

Zack shrugged, gestured to the door. “After you?”

Belcher turned the handle and pushed open the door. “Mrs Taylor, I’m sorry to disturb you... What the hell?”

The social worker had taken one step into the room and stood staring in shock at the voluminous white fungus that obscured the entire bed. The light was pushed slightly to one side by its highest bulge.

Give her to me!

His mother’s voice was high, desperate, commanding. With a cry of fear and revulsion, Zack stepped forward, put both hands against Stephanie Belcher’s upper back, and shoved. She yelped in surprise and staggered forward, raising her hands to stop her fall. Her palms hit the front of the pure white curve and immediately hissed, smoke pouring up off them. Belcher screamed as her hands sank in, her arms swallowed into the stuff up to her elbows. More smoke roiled up, Belcher’s throat tearing with the pitch of her cries, her eyes wide in agony. Nothing could stop her forward motion as her arms went deeper and she managed a high, terrified, “NO!” which cut off instantly as her face slammed into the fungal mass. She twisted her head to the side and Zack caught for an instant her mouth stretched in horror, her eyes desperate and beseeching, as her skin bubbled and smoke obscured her.

The smoke reached him and it had a terrible smell, both earthy and like burning meat. Belcher’s entire upper body sank into the fungal mass, bending forward at the hip, until just her butt and legs showed, feet still flat on the floor. Where the front of her legs touched the stuff, the jeans seemed to fuse and sink slowly. Only where the fungus touched bare skin did the sizzling and melting occur. But Zack thought maybe the material protection wouldn’t last long.

He turned and ran for the bathroom where he vomited noisily. Again. It seemed not so long ago that he’d done the same thing, but then he could never have imagined things progressing to this.

He came back to close the bedroom door, saw the social worker sinking slowly into the mass covering his mother’s body. He saw something in her back pocket and gasped, a series of realisations flooding over him. He darted forward, holding his breath, and plucked the keyring from her pocket. A bunch with a variety of different keys on it, but one clearly for her car. The VW logo glittered silver.

He closed the bedroom door and stood in the hallway, taking deep breaths to compose himself. His mind raced, making plans. After a moment he nodded to himself, went to the front door. Peeking out he saw Jack Parsons’s car had gone. How the ancient old fart was still driving was a mystery, but it served his purposes now.

Zack unlocked Belcher’s car and got in, started it up. He saw her bag on the passenger seat, a phone in the front pocket. The edge of a wallet poked up too. Ignore it all, he told himself. He saw a pack of wet wipes in the centre console and smiled. Good, he could use those.

He pulled the hood of his sweater up and low over his eyes, started the car and drove away from his house. He wasn’t a great driver, but he knew the basics. All he lacked was experience, really. He’d driven enough to safely stick to the limits, obey the traffic signs, and thirty minutes later he pulled up on a quiet back street on the outskirts of Monkton. He grabbed the wipes and judiciously cleaned everything he’d touched – wheel, gear shift, handbrake, door handle. He wiped the keys and left them in the ignition, then got out and surreptitiously wiped the handle on the outside too. He pocketed the wipes, kept his head down and his hood up, and walked quickly away.

He was pretty certain there were no cameras anywhere around this part of Monkton, but he took no chances and stayed hidden inside his hood until he was all the way inside Monkton Plaza, a few kilometres from the abandoned car. He checked the time on his phone. Nearly 1 p.m. He was reluctant to go home. Who knew what might be happening in his mother’s bedroom.

He texted Maddy.

if docs call say yeah the woman saw mum then left again all good. explain later

Maddy messaged right back.

What?

docs came, saw mum, all good. you weren’t home i was. explain later

His phone started to ring immediately, Maddy calling...

The last thing he wanted to do was talk about it over the phone. He rejected the call then messaged.

TALK LATER! when you home?

I don’t know. Should I come now?

nah come later

About 6 then?

okay

He switched his phone off and went to watch a movie. It was rubbish, but took his mind off stuff. About four he started walking the main road out of Monkton, thumbing for a lift. He walked a good twenty minutes, then a truck picked him up and dropped him at the Gulpepper turnoff. He thought he’d end up walking all the way back from there, but about halfway along a car slowed. It was a local he’d seen around but had no idea who it was. They were kind enough, didn’t talk much, and that suited him. They dropped him by the harbour just after five and he walked home. He slumped onto the couch, turned on the TV and waited for Maddy. He didn’t dare even look at his mother’s bedroom door, let alone open it.

Maddy stared at a pair of pristine blue and white Nike sneakers sticking out of the massive, bulbous whiteness. The soles were barely even scuffed. Every other part of the woman was consumed. Vomit threatened to burst forth at any moment. “What the fuck, Zack?”

“Mum told me to.”

“What do you mean? Mum’s dead!”

“But she talks to me, I think maybe she’s in there, like, transforming or something?”

“Into what, Zack, Optimus fucking Prime? She’s dead, this is fucked up. You killed that woman!”

“No, I didn’t. Mum told me to give the woman to her, so I did. It’s okay, it’s all good now.”

Maddy took a deep breath, swallowed down bile. “All good? Are you insane? What about when she doesn’t report back? What about when they send someone else?”

Zack pushed gently against her, moved her out of the room and shut the door. “Come on, I’ll explain all that happened.”

By the time he’d finished his story, as they sat across from each other at the kitchen table, Maddy’s hands had mostly stopped shaking. “Did anyone see you leave the car in Monkton?”

“Nope. And if they did, they wouldn’t have seen my face. And that hoodie I had on was an old one, I’ve already thrown it away.”

Maddy nodded, thinking, chewing her lower lip. “So no one saw anything? If they call or send someone else around, we can tell them the woman never even came here?”

“Yeah, we could, actually. And when they find her car in Monkton, they’ll assume that’s as far as she went and the search will be focused all the way over there.”

“So we just need some plan for when the next one comes around.”

“By then, the fungus will hopefully be done,” Zack said.

“What do you mean, done?”

“I don’t know, finished its lifecycle kinda thing? And Mum’s body will be gone and we can use the story about visiting her cousins. It’s only another year, less than a year, until you’re a legal adult. Not much longer for me. Then we’re free. We claim the house, say Mum fucked off to Bega and we’ve lost touch, whatever. They can search all they like, but they’ll never prove anything, right?”

“Why did you push her in, Zack? Why didn’t you use the cousins story today?”

Zack looked down at the table, at his hands, picking at his nails. “Partly I panicked. But also, Mum said to give the woman to her.”

“It’s not really Mum, you know that, right? I can’t be.”

Zack nodded, picking at his thumbnail until a bead of blood sprang up.

Maddy reached over, put her hand over his. “Zack? It’s okay. We’ll be okay. But we have to be smarter.”

The next morning, Maddy got up early because sleep had been elusive since dawn. She made coffee, tried to eat breakfast, but had no appetite. At seven she opened Zack’s door and called in.

“Monday morning, school.”

He made muffled noises of annoyance and consent and turned over. Maddy stared at the lump of doona for a while, then left. She’d give him another ten minutes. Poor kid, all this was pretty tough. Kid! Why did she have to be the responsible one all the time? She remembered being five when Zack was four and her mother going out and saying, “Watch your brother. Any trouble when I get back and you’ll get the hiding of your life!”

“Fuck you,” she spat at her mother’s bedroom door as she went past.

A hissing came from the other side.

Maddy jumped and stopped, turned to look back at the closed door. Another hiss, like a snake under a rock disturbed by movement. She reached out, put a hand to the door handle, then shook her head and walked away.

She was surprised when Zack scuffed into the kitchen a few minutes later, eyes bleary. “It’s smaller.”

“What?”

“Come and look.”

Reluctantly she got up and followed her brother back to their mother’s room. The fungus was as smooth and white and rounded as ever, and there was no trace whatsoever of the social worker. But Zack was right. While the pale thing covering the bed was about the same shape, it was smaller. Shrunk back away from the light fitting, the bulbous edges a little off the floor.

“Maybe it’ll shrink away to nothing soon, yeah?”

“Maybe.” What was the hissing she’d heard? Was the thing deflating somehow?

The curtains shifted in the soft breeze, a little cooler today as autumn approached. Maddy watched the soft undulations for a moment, mesmerised by it, then shook herself and closed the door.

“I have to go to work. Don’t be late for school, Zack.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

When Maddy stepped out the front door, grumpy Jack Parsons was shuffling along his driveway towards the letter box, a grubby dressing gown hanging on his skeletal frame, tatty ugg boots on his feet.

He glanced up and Maddy forced a smile, and a nod.

“Social worker, was it?” Parsons said.

Maddy’s heart pulsed once extra hard. “What’s that?”

“Yesterday. Nice looking lady came by, hadn’t seen her before. Didn’t see her leave though.”

“You didn’t see her leave?”

“Went to see my sister across town. I still drive, you know.”

Maddy nodded. “Right. You went out.”

“That’s what I said, are you deaf? I’m the old one. She come to see about your mother, did she?” The old man gave a crooked half-smile as he asked, something glinted in his eye.

You fucker! Maddy thought. You called DoCS on us. “Just routine, I guess,” she said. “I wasn’t in, but she had a chat to Mum then left again.”

“Don’t see your mum much these days. Used to chat over the fence quite often, good to have a yarn, eh?”

“She’s sick. Doesn’t like to go outside any more, not even the garden.”

Parsons nodded, mouth hanging slightly open. Maddy heard his rasping breath as he stared at her. She quickly patted her pockets, then said, “Damn it, forgot my phone.”

“You young people and those things!” Parsons said.

She flashed him a forced smile and ran back inside. She hadn’t forgotten her phone at all, but it was the first excuse that came to mind. “Zack, for fuck’s sake!”

He looked up from his bowl of cereal, milk dripping off the spoon. “What?”

“Jack Parsons saw the social worker arrive!”

Zack’s eyebrows climbed into his hair. “Oh yeah! Nosey bastard was getting in his car.”

“You have to be more careful. If he saw her arrive, maybe others did. Are you sure no one saw you get into her car and drive it away?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Pretty sure?”

“I’m sure!” Zack’s eyebrows slammed back down, drawing together. “What are you, the fucking police?”

Maddy took a deep breath, decided to calm things down. “No, but they might come around. More importantly, we can’t say she never came here. We’ll have to say she came in, had a chat with Mum, then left again. That’s what I just told Parsons.”

“Okay. That’s what I was going to say in the first place. Easy as.”

She stared at him. Easy as. Was he really so blasé about the whole thing? Maybe it was a defence mechanism. The phone on the kitchen counter rang. Their mother’s phone. Maddy always left it plugged in there. She went over and looked at it, but didn’t recognise the number.

“Might be DoCS,” Zack said.

She glared at him.

He shrugged. “Might be. Answer it. You be Mum. Put them off.”

“Fuck!” She snatched up the phone and answered. “Hello?” She made her voice a little weak, a little croaky. This was far from the first time she’d impersonated her mother. But it was the first time she’d impersonated her dead mother.

“I’m after Mrs Claire Taylor.” The woman on the other end was kind-sounding, her voice soft with a slight accent Maddy couldn’t place.

“Speaking.”

“Ah, good morning, Mrs Taylor. I’m Hilary Wong from the Department of Communities and Justice.”

That’s right, Maddy thought. That’s what they’re calling the welfare these days. “We just saw you lot yesterday,” she said, in her mother’s snappy tone.

“That’s what I was ringing about, actually. You say you saw someone yesterday?”

Zack held up his phone, where he’d typed stefanee belcher into a text message.

“That’s right,” Maddy said. “Woman called Stephanie something-or-other. Beacher? Beacham?”

“Stephanie Belcher.”

“If you say so.”

“Yes, right. So she came to see you?”

“Yes. Unusual to come on a weekend, I thought.”

“Well, our staff tend to try to find times best suited to families,” Wong said. “So she came about what time?”

What time? Maddy mouthed at Zack.

“Lunchtime,” he whispered. “About twelve?”

“Sometime in the middle of the day,” Maddy croaked, then turned her head only slightly from the phone and coughed raucously. She imagined poor Hilary Wong wincing at the other end, but it was the kind of awful thing her mother did all the time. Zack grinned.

“And you all had a chat and then she left again?” Wong asked.

“Yes. I didn’t invite her to stay the night or anything. Honestly, why even send her when you can just email or call or something? It’s an invasion of privacy, you know!”

“What time did Ms Belcher leave, Mrs Taylor?”

“She was here half an hour or something before I was finally able to shoo her out.”

“Did she mention where she was going next?”

“No. Why would I care?”

There was a moment’s pause and then Wong said, “Okay, thank you, Mrs Taylor. Sorry to bother your morning.”

“Right-o.” Maddy hung up the call, then blew out a breath, leaning back against the counter.

“You do such a good Mum!” Zack said.

“Fuck, Zack, that was awful. I have to go to work. You know, it’s entirely possible they’ll report the woman missing now and then we’ll have the police around here too.”

“We’ll just tell them the same thing, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. And if anyone else does come asking about anything, Mum has gone to see her cousins in Bega and we don’t know when she’s coming back. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I have to go to work.”

The whole time Maddy was home, Zack had tried to ignore his mother’s wheedling voice. It drilled into his brain, but he managed to tune it out most of the time. When Maddy left again, finally going to work at last, he finished his breakfast, then went and got dressed. He put on his school uniform but had no intention of going to class yet. First he forged a note, signed by his mother, explaining he’d had a dental appointment. He’d use that at the office to get a late note when he finally went in. He tucked it into the side pocket of his backpack, then went around next door and rang Jack Parson’s bell.

His mother still cajoled in his ears, even from this far away, telling him what to do. It took a few minutes, but he finally saw movement behind the frosted glass panes in Parsons’s door. The door opened, then thunked against the chain. The old man scowled out at him.

“What?”

“Good morning, Mr Parsons.” Zack gave his warmest smile.

“Er... morning. What do you want?”

“Do you think you could come around? My mum wanted to have a chat with you. She said she knows you used to enjoy a chat over the fence, but she’s too scared to go out any more. Do you know what agoraphobia is?”

“Of course I do, I’m not an imbecile.” Parsons paused, brows creasing. “Is that it? Why I haven’t seen her for a while?”

“Yeah, she barely even leaves her room these days. But she was asking after you. I don’t know, I think she wants to give you something.”

“Give me something?”

“That’s what she said.”

Parsons stared a moment longer, then nodded once. “Wait a minute.”

He shuffled away and through the gap Zack saw him sit on chair by the door and grunt and wheeze as he pulled his shoes on. Then the door closed, the chain snicked free, and it opened again. Parsons gestured for Zack to lead the way.

They went into the house and Parsons looked around, eyes narrowed. He seemed to be assessing the place, maybe judging their cleanliness. Clearly he thought little enough of them that he’d called the welfare.

Bring him!

“Mum’s in her room,” Zack said, pointing. “This way.” He went along the hall and opened the door. “Hey, Mum. Mr Parsons from next door is here.” He stepped back and smiled at the old man.

Parsons nodded and turned into the room. “Good morn– What the hell is that?”

Zack stepped in behind and put one hand on the old man’s shoulder, the other on his opposite hip, and walked him hard into the bulging fungus. Parsons cried out as he staggered forward, then screamed as his hands and face planted into the soft white mass and began to immediately hiss and bubble. That acrid smoke rose up again and Parsons vibrated, his scuffed shoes rattling against the floor. His scream became a gargled, strangled sound, then a muffled coughing, then Zack had slammed the door and staggered back to lean against the opposite wall. He stood there, breathing hard, swallowing down bile, waiting for his hammering heart to calm.

Then he pushed himself up, grabbed his school bag, and went out, locking the front door behind himself.

“You did fucking WHAT?” Maddy screamed. Her heart seemed to almost block her throat and her hands shook in rage.

“He would have called again! He would have called welfare again, that’s what Mum said!”

“And what about when people report him missing?” Maddy asked, trying to swallow her anger enough to talk. “What about when the police start asking the neighbours what happened?”

“We tell them we have no idea, haven’t seen him for a few days.”

“Jesus, Zack.”

“I would have told you last night, but you didn’t come home.”

“I went to Dylan’s. I texted you.”

“I know, but I wanted to tell you in person.”

Maddy nodded, swallowed. “You were already in bed when I got back.”

“Come and see.”

Zack pulled at Maddy’s arm where she sat at the kitchen table. To think she’d been feeling a little better about things. She finished work, Dylan was waiting outside and she’d given in. Went to his place, smoked some weed, had a shag, it was all pretty good. She’d got home and Zack was sleeping, and it felt like they were moving forward. Then he gets up and tells her he fed the old neighbour to the mother-fungus whatever the fuck it was thing in there? “Come and see what?” she asked.

“Just come.”

She trailed him down the hall and looked in when he opened their mother’s bedroom door. The great swollen thing, pale in the bed, had shrunk again.

“It’s going down, see?”

Maddy nodded. “Thank fuck for that. Zack, this has to stop. We need to leave it, let it disappear, whatever. Can you do that?”

“No, you don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“She needs more. Just one or two, she says.”

“What?” Maddy stared at him, her stomach water.

“Just one or two more and that’ll be it, she’ll have finished her cycle.”

“Zack. Fuck, no. You’ve killed two people! You can’t kill any more!”

Zack licked his lips, looked at the white fungus, then back at Maddy. “We have to. I promised. This is how it works. Then she’ll be gone. It will be gone, all of it. And the house will be ours.”

Maddy ran shaking hands through her hair. “You’ll get caught. We’ll get caught!”

“I promised Mum.”

“It’s not Mum!” Maddy yelled. “Whatever the fuck is going on, whatever you think you’re hearing, it’s not Mum! How can it be? You saw her die. You saw her body.”

Zack stared at her, tears in his eyes. He looked lost, haunted.

“We got away with the Belcher woman, for now, at least. Parsons next door was just some shrivelled old cunt. His sister might miss him or something, but whatever. He was close to dead anyway, I expect. But who’s next, Zack? Hmm? Who are you planning to give to it?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we need to talk about.”

“There’s no we in this, bro! It’s you. It’s all you.”

Zack shook his head and his eyes hardened. “You’re in on it too. If something happens to me, you think anyone will believe you knew nothing about it? You may not have pushed them, but you’re part of this too.”

“Oh, Zack, what the hell is going on?”

“One or two more, that’s all. That what she said. Then it’s done. We have to figure out who.”

Maddy’s head spun, dizziness edging her vision. She pulled the bedroom door closed and pushed Zack back towards the kitchen. “Go to school. I have to go to work. We need to think about this.”

Zack picked up his school bag and headed for the front door. “What about Dylan?”

“Jesus, Zack! Go to school! We’ll talk when I get back from work. I’ll be home by six.”

After he left, Maddy went and sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee. She had to end this. By the time the mug was empty, she’d decided to kill the thing. She went out into the back garden and the small tin shed in the corner, and then came back with a square-bladed shovel.

She pushed open the bedroom door and stepped into the room, raised the shovel high overhead, planning to chop it to mincemeat. The fungus began vibrating violently, shaking the whole bed, making it skitter slightly against the floor.

“Fuck!” Maddy brought the shovel down hard into the nearest swollen curve of the thing.

It split open and hissed, and it screamed. Dark brown ichor leaked thickly from the slash she’d put in its tough skin, and the thing wailed in her mind. It seemed to bypass her ears completely, and drill deep into her brain. Maddy dropped the shovel and clapped both palms to either side of her head, crying out in pain. She felt as though her eyes were about to burst. The thing shook and screamed and Maddy’s knees weakened. She staggered back from the room and then half ran, half fell down the hallway. The noise from the bedroom slowly eased until the house had sunk back into a tense, eerie silence.

Don’t do that again, her mother’s voice said, directly into her mind. Feed me and it’ll be done.

“You’re not her!” Maddy shouted back down the hall.

Just feed me!

There was no way Maddy ever wanted to feel pain like that again. Her head throbbed, her muscles were weak, her eyes had sharp spikes of sensation through them, repeating every few seconds.

“Okay,” she said at last. “You’ll really go? Really leave us be?”

If you feed me.

“One more.”

Maybe two.

Maddy began to cry, despite herself. She hated being reduced to tears for any reason but couldn’t stop it. “Okay,” she said again. She grabbed her bag and left for work.

When Maddy got home, her nerves were frayed. She’d spent all day with her head buzzing about who they could give to the white thing in the bed. How could they make a choice like that? It was straight up murder. She’d considered a few options, like the homeless guy who always hung around near the beach. Or that weird guy without a nose she saw around town all the time. There was the old woman at the harbour everyone called the sea witch, but Maddy kind of liked her. Maybe someone from work, plenty of choices there. Wendy Callow, perhaps, no one liked her anyway. She even thought about Dylan or one of his stoner mates. But every time she considered anyone, the thought would progress to how she would entice the person around, and how she would give them to the fungus, and at that point her bile rose and panic gripped her chest. She derailed the thought again and again, tried to work, until the same process rose in her mind and repeated. Over and over, all day.

The house was still and quiet when she got in. Suspiciously so. Where was Zack? She badly needed a shower and decided if he wasn’t back by the time she got out, she’d call him. Ten minutes later she was towelling herself off when the front door clicked and she heard voices.

“Thanks so much for coming over, Mr Brady.”

That was Zack’s voice. Mr Brady? Josh’s dad? Why the hell had Zack brought him over?

“It’s no problem,” Brady said. “I can’t believe you forgot Josh was going to his grandparents for a couple of nights though.”

“Oh, I remembered, only I thought it was tomorrow, not today. And I promised Mum I’d help shift this furniture and figured Josh could help. But I really appreciate you stepping in.”

“I’m glad you feel you can ask us for help, Zack. This way, is it?”

Maddy had stood frozen in panic for a moment, then she lunged for the door. She had to stop him. Then she realised she was naked, holding a towel. She dragged on her work pants and shirt again and pulled open the bathroom door just as Mr Brady said, “What the hell is that?”

Then a metallic clang rang out. Maddy ran down the hall to see Zack in the doorway to their mother’s room, the shovel she’d dropped earlier in his hands. Mr Brady was face down on the floor, blood pooling from his ear and a gash on the back of his head.

“What the fuck, Zack!”

“Help me get him up. Onto Mum.”

“It’s not our mum!”

Zack flashed her an angry look. “Whatever it is, help me get him onto it.”

“That’s your best friend’s dad! There’s too much connection. Does his mum know he came around here?”

Mr Brady rolled a little on the floor, groaning.

“I’ll explain everything. Maddy, they come back!”

“What?”

“Just help me!”

“Fuck!”

Zack moved around and got his hands under Mr Brady’s armpits and Maddy had no choice but to grab his legs. They hoisted him up, swung him once, then hefted him onto the fungus. It was much smaller again, Maddy noticed.

Brady immediately thrashed and screamed, but was already stuck, his face and hands bubbling and smoking. The bulbous fungus vibrated, almost like it was shivering with pleasure.

“Jesus!” Maddy said, voice choked like wire in her throat.

“Come on.” Zack pulled her from the room and closed the door as Brady’s screams became gargles.

They went into the lounge and Maddy collapsed onto the sofa, trembling. They’d blown it. Zack had blown it, there was no coming back from this. Zack sat in the armchair opposite and all she could do was stare at him in shock.

Zack grinned. “So, I remembered Josh was going to his grandparents with his mum. That’s all the way up near Cooma. His grandma has to get some minor surgery, so his mum went to help out, took Josh out of school for a visit. They’re away until the weekend. I pretended I got the day wrong, but I didn’t. I knew Mr Brady would be there alone, and no one saw me go and talk to him. I was really careful. And I told him my mum needed some help. He jumped at the chance.”

“Zack...”

He held up a hand to stop her. “No one saw, no one knows he came here. But it doesn’t matter anyway. Come and see this.”

He jumped up again and headed for the back door from the kitchen. Reluctantly she followed, thinking perhaps her numbness was a kind of shock. Zack led her into the garden and over to the fence. An old milk crate sat there, one his mother used to stand on to see over the fence for a chat. Maddy and Zack crowded onto it and Zack pointed at Jack Parsons’s house next door. “Look.”

She looked into Parsons’s side window. He sat in there, in his lounge room, staring at something. The TV maybe? She couldn’t tell from her vantage. “What the hell?”

She climbed down and looked at Zack.

“I don’t know exactly,” Zack said. “But I saw him earlier, coming back home. Just walking up the street like normal. And that’s when I came up with the plan to get Brady over. If they come back, it doesn’t matter who, right?”

Maddy shook her head, mind spinning. She couldn’t catch hold of a single thought.

“Did you see the thing in there was smaller again?” Zack asked. “Mum said one more, maybe two. Brady is one more. And look here.”

He led her over to their mother’s bedroom window, still open as it had been all along. There were footprints in the scrubby, patchy flower bed right below the window, and pale white marks on the sill. Maddy leaned forward to look but didn’t dare touch.

“They’ll remember,” she said weakly. “I mean, being pushed in. They’ll remember what we did to them.”

“I talked to Parsons this afternoon when I saw him. He doesn’t remember a thing.”

“Was he... I mean, was he normal?”

Zack laughed. “I don’t know. What’s normal for Parsons?”

The breeze shifted the curtains slightly and Maddy caught a glimpse of Brady, still, sunk half into the fungus. She gasped and looked away. “I can’t process this, Zack. I can’t... I just can’t.”

Zack hugged her. “It’s okay. I’ve got this. Brady might be the last. If not, Mum said just one more. We have to decide who.”

“Zack...”

“We’ll worry about it tomorrow, yeah? For now, it’s all done.”

Maddy nodded and walked away. She didn’t want to think about any of it. A weight of fatigue dragged at her and she wanted only to shut everything out. She went into her room, closed the door, and collapsed onto the bed. She let sleep take her.

The next morning Maddy felt a little better, the shock reduced to a dull sensation of surreality. If they were going to suffer for this, so be it. What was done, was done. But maybe damage control was an option. How the hell was Parsons back? That was the thought that kept circling her mind like a vulture looking for prey.

Zack was still asleep. She opened her mother’s door and looked in. The fungus on the bed was reduced again. Down to a small set of undulating white lumps, not much bigger than her mother’s body had been before all this madness started. And in a vaguely humanoid shape on the mattress. Would they really be shot of it soon?

One more!

The voice was sudden and harsh, and triggered the spikes behind Maddy’s eyes. She shut the door and hurried out. She rang Parsons’s doorbell and gripped her hands into fists to hide their shaking. It took a few minutes, but the old man eventually shuffled into view and opened the door.

“Madeleine?”

“Hello.”

“What can I do you for?”

He was never this friendly. She’d expected grumpiness from the outset. “I, er... Well, I just wanted to see if you were okay, that’s all. My mum said I ought to check on you, living alone as you do.”

“Very kind, but no need. I’m fine.”

“Okay, that’s good to hear.”

Parsons’s skin looked unnaturally pale, almost alabaster. His eyes were pale grey. She remembered his eyes as being rheumy and bloodshot, but not any more. They were pale, but clear. “So you’re feeling okay?”

“Perfectly.” He rubbed a hand along the other forearm and his thumbnail snagged a curl of something white off his skin. Without looking he pressed it back down. “What’s your mother worried about exactly?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You know how mothers are.” What did that even mean? She was rambling.

Parsons shook his head. “Not really, no.” He frowned a moment, like he was trying to remember something. “We used to talk over the fence, your mother and I. She would stand on something to see over. So would I.”

“That’s right.”

“I haven’t seen her in a long while.” He raised his eyebrows, almost as if he were challenging her to deny the assertion.

“She doesn’t really go out any more.”

“Maybe I should come and visit sometime? I’ve never been inside your house, have I.” It wasn’t a question.

“You haven’t?”

“No. Never.”

Maddy nodded. “Okay then. Well, as long as you’re okay.”

“Perfect. You don’t need to check on me any more.”

“Okay, sure. Have a good day.”

“You too.” He shut the door and Maddy stood staring at it for a moment, then turned away and went back home.

Zack was up when she went in. “One more then?” he said. “You okay to help me get it organised?”

“Yep. But I have to work.” Maddy paused, remembering some of the thoughts she’d had the previous day. “You leave this one to me, yeah?”

“Sure. You got a plan?”

“I have. Make sure you’re home by six for when I get back.”

“Okay.”

She went to work, steeling herself all the way. It took about twenty minutes at a fast clip to get from her house on the hill down to Woollies. In the staff room she saw Wendy Callow sipping a coffee. Mean Wendy Callow, always a bitch to everyone. And so sweet on Dylan’s mate, James.

“Morning, Wendy.”

“Maddy?”

“Yeah. You okay.”

Wendy frowned. “Why do you care?”

Maddy swallowed the retort that came first to mind and said. “Dylan and some mates are coming over to mine tonight, have a few drinks. Mum’s away. James asked me if I’d invite you.”

Wendy instantly brightened. “James asked you that?”

“Yeah. Don’t know why he didn’t just invite you himself. I told him to. Chicken, I suppose. You want to come?”

“Sure, why not?” Wendy tried to play it cool, but her expression was an open book. The girl was gleeful.

Maddy nodded. “Cool. You can walk back with me after work. You’re finished at six too, yeah?”

“Yep.”

“Right.”

Conversation was awkward for the long walk home, but Maddy did her best to dissociate from it. Just doing a job, she kept telling herself. Securing our future. This is for me and Zack.

When they got to the house, Zack was watching YouTube on his phone. He looked up and nodded once, acting completely uninterested.

“Where is everyone then?” Wendy asked.

“They’ll be here soon. You want a drink?”

“Sure. You got gin?”

“Yeah. Have a seat.”

Wendy sat in the armchair, their mother’s armchair they never used any more, and that seemed strangely appropriate. As Maddy headed for the kitchen she caught Zack’s eye and he nodded, got up to follow.

“Let’s do it quick,” Maddy whispered as soon as they were out of the lounge. “Before I lose my nerve.”

“Okay. Who is that?”

“Doesn’t matter. How do we do it?”

“Get the drinks.”

Maddy stared at him for a moment, then turned to the counter. She made three strong gin and tonics, then went back towards the lounge.

“I’ll be there in a sec,” Zack said.

Maddy handed over the drink, then lifted hers. “Cheers.”

Wendy grinned crookedly. “Cheers.” She took a big gulp. “Damn, that’s strong!”

“Only way to drink ’em, right?”

“I suppose so.”

Maddy took another sip, and Wendy matched her, then put the glass down on the small table beside the chair. As Maddy stepped backwards to sit on the sofa, Zack walked back in. He strode directly to Wendy and punched her clean across the point of the jaw.

Maddy yelped in shock as Wendy slumped loosely in the chair. She groaned weakly.

“Let’s go,” Zack said, grabbing one arm and one leg.

Maddy hurried over, grabbing the other arm and leg, saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over again.

Zack had opened their mother’s bedroom door and they carried Wendy right in, one either side of the bed, straining under the girl’s weight as they had to reach out, dragging her over the remaining fungus. They manoeuvred her into position and then dropped her directly onto it. Wendy cried out in pain and writhed as the skin of her neck, arms and legs below her shorts hissed and smoked.

Zack put one knee on the bed and planted his hands against her shoulders. “Hold her down!” he shouted.

“Fuck!” Maddy said again, and grabbed Wendy’s legs, palms over her shins, and pressed them back into the whiteness. The smoke that rose was sharp and acrid, vaguely like a barbecue burning, but thick with something else as well, a cloying, earthy sweetness.

Wendy’s eyes opened and rolled, the whites showing all around. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Please, stop! It hurts!”

“Hold her down!” Zack yelled, leaning his weight harder.

Maddy gritted her teeth, clambered onto the bed and pressed as hard as she could, being careful her fingers got nowhere near the fungus. Wendy thrashed and screamed, the bed shook with her efforts. She bucked up, trying to arch her back, but her clothes and skin had already become stuck to the remaining fungus and it stretched as she rose, then she collapsed back down. She howled and sobbed, tipped her head up to look beseechingly at Maddy, and Maddy knew she would never forget the sight of that gaze as long as she lived. The back of Wendy’s head stretched like taffy, her hair and skin smoking, bubbling into blisters around the backs of her ears. She sobbed and wailed but her thrashing weakened. Her head fell back, her neck smoking. She gurgled, twitching but no longer fighting.

Zack climbed off the bed and staggered away, face twisted in horror. Maddy stumbled away too. They stood either side of the bed watching as Wendy slowly stilled. Maddy gasped as Wendy’s eyes popped open once more, staring crazily, her mouth worked silently, then she fell still.

There was no sound except Zack and Maddy’s ragged breathing and a soft hissing from the bed. Without a word, the siblings turned and left, Zack shutting the door. They went into the lounge and swallowed down their drinks, then to the kitchen, made more drinks, and silently swallowed them down too. Then another, and another.

They began to chat quietly about nothing in particular, the booze loosening their shock. By a little after nine they were both thoroughly drunk. Zack passed out on the sofa in the lounge and Maddy crawled to bed.

Sometime in the early hours, head pounding, mouth dry, she woke to sounds of scratching and scraping. Then a clunk. All from her mother’s room. She ignored it all.

In the morning, she and Zack stood looking at her mother’s bed. It was empty, no trace of anything having been there except the rumpled bedclothes. Even the stains of their mother’s illness were gone. They called in sick to work and school, then got busy.

They stripped the bed and rolled up the sheets and doona into garbage bags. Zack got a sledgehammer from the small tin shed and smashed the wooden bedframe to pieces. They dragged the pieces out into the back garden, doused the pile with petrol from the can kept for the mower, and lit it. When the wood was burning well, they dragged the mattress on top and watched that go up. They threw the bedclothes on too. Black, oily smoke from the artificial materials clouded up and they stood downwind and watched until they were sure it was all ignited and burning well.

Back inside, they washed and cleaned the floor, walls, ceiling, like they had the rest of the house before, only with twice the vigour. The stain under the bed took some extra elbow grease, but they scoured it eventually. They packed up half of their mum’s clothes and possessions, which was a sadly small collection, into two suitcases and put them in the boot of the car. Maddy knew there were big bins out the back of the industrial area on the south side of town. Mechanics and some kind of metal workshop, a few other businesses, all occupied large metal warehouses up there. The bins were never locked.

They backed the car up, making sure no one was paying much attention, and dumped the suitcases in, dragging cardboard and industrial waste over the top of it all. When they got back home, the bed was nothing more than a scorched mark on the grass with ash and blackened, twisted metal springs atop it. They decided to leave that as it was. Worry about it later. Maddy ordered a new double bed online, to be delivered. Their mother’s room would soon look like she’d gone away for a while, expecting to come back. It could stay like that indefinitely.

They went back inside and made more drinks.

“The house is ours now,” Zack said, lifting his glass in a toast.

“To the future,” Maddy said. Her hands still shook.

“Dad’s been acting really weird ever since we got back,” Josh said on Monday after school.

“Weird how?” Zack asked.

“Dunno. Just not his normal self, you know? He doesn’t look well, either. He’s so pale.”

“Maybe he’s sick?”

“He goes out a lot at night. Mum’s really upset about it.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine. You want to come over to mine instead? My mum’s gone to see her cousins in Bega.”

Maddy was high from some good weed Dylan had. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all. She might stay with him for a while yet. She was enjoying her walk home in the moonlight, the cool air of approaching autumn invigorating. The streets were quiet. After midnight, The Gulp seemed to slip into a coma. A poster on a telegraph pole caught her eye, photocopied black and white with a picture of a straggly-haired young man. Have you seen Daniel? in bold letters across the top. She turned up Tanning Street past the post office and made her way up the shallow hill, then down the other side. She paused as she came by the playground on the opposite side of the street behind the beach. A figure stood just past the park, staring out to sea. They were motionless. Uncannily so.

Maddy frowned, recognising Jack Parsons. As she watched, someone else came wandering up and stood beside him. Wendy Callow. They didn’t speak, didn’t even acknowledge each other. Just stood there. A moment later, Mr Brady joined them. Maddy walked on, slowly, watching from the corner of her eye, glad of the street and the park between them. The three just stood there, staring at the ocean.

When she reached a patch of deep shade under a fig tree, Maddy paused again. There should be one more. Sure enough, after a moment more, a woman walked slowly across the grass past the play equipment and joined the others. Stephanie Belcher, Maddy presumed. The social worker.

When Belcher reached the group, they all turned as one and walked back across the park and onto Tanning Street. Lurking in the shadows, Maddy watched them head towards the harbour. They walked out of sight, never having said a word to each other.

Part of Maddy wanted to follow, see what they did, but she didn’t dare. Her role in all this, whatever it was, had ended. She hoped the promise to leave her and Zack alone would be kept.

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