22

Every room I pass is lit up like a Christmas tree, the light stark against the unnatural early afternoon darkness outside the windows. I hear heavy feet on the stairs below and make for the female toilets signposted for the third floor, intending to lock myself in until Kingdom Come, or at least until Simon does.

As I’m about to crest the landing outside the chamber of photographs, the lift between me and the restrooms opens and Don Sturt steps out, his hands already extended, like he’s reaching for me. I let out a scream, so high and terrified you can barely hear it.

‘Don’t be afraid!’ he pleads, taking a tentative step forward. ‘Don’t run!’

On the turning below me, the Chinese woman from the front counter has come to a stop, her eyes wide and frightened. A look passes between us: that I’m not dangerous, that I’m not the problem; the tall white man, the man who stinks of booze, is the one to watch. Don hasn’t seen her, but I catch her beginning to back up quietly and head back down, her steps undetectable above the shudder and roar of the rain outside.

Help is coming, it is. I have to tell myself that.

I force myself to keep still, guts quivering as Don draws closer. I’m neither up nor down. I’m at a disadvantage, frozen here on the flight, looking up into his pockmarked face, the muscles of his seamed mouth, working.

‘She saw the darkness in me,’ Don pleads, his yellow-flecked eyes very wide, ‘and she wasn’t afraid.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, voice shaking. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I need you to know that when I left her,’ he tells me, hands still out in a gesture like supplication, ‘she was alive. We drove all day, and all of the next. I talked and talked and she listened and she was alive when I left her. She was fine.’

I shake my head, uncomprehending. But horror dawns when he says, ‘She said you were the smartest person she’d ever known. She said you’d figure she wasn’t dead, just gone, and she couldn’t tell you, because then the magic wouldn’t work. That’s what she called it: magic.’

I sink to the stair I was just standing on, unable to hold myself up.

They tell you the darndest things.

Even if I could speak, there are too many questions. So I fumble for my phone, right there under his nose, and start recording him, every word. I mean, I’m just holding my phone in my hand, but he doesn’t stop talking.

Swaying slightly, he says, ‘Not like them others. We gave it to them; every man took his turn. And when they wouldn’t, when they played up, tried to run away into the bush, we laid into them with sticks and bottles—after a while I had to drink myself stupid to block out the screaming. But not your mother. Didn’t touch her. She was good when I left her. She was fine.’

Fine, that stupid word that’s supposed to convey, what, fineness?

‘Who are you talking about?’ I whisper, this sick taste of iron in my mouth. ‘What “others”?’

‘Them girls from Armidale. Hitchhikers. Coming on for forty years. We showed ’em a good time then carried on the party. At Mount Warning.’

Something monumental has shifted in the man. It’s like he’s spewed forth some irritant that’s been buried deep, like a bullet, or a fishhook, for years. He’s actually hunched over, clutching at his stomach, purging his guts out. ‘We left ‘em tied up,’ he whimpers, ‘facedown choking, like, on their own blood. When they was found, they was bones. And all this time, I’ve kept it quiet, carried it in me, tried my best to make amends, do some good, make my peace, but your mum…’

Something, even in his speech, has broken down. The country boy he used to be is coming up through his pores, rising like a ghost.

‘So she wanted to go somewhere she could feel the presence of death, that’s what she said and did I know anywhere? Just asked me one day, out of the blue, on the way back from El’s place and, and…’ His eyes fill with tears as I watch. ‘And I said I knew; I knew a place all right.’

My mouth fills with an onrush of saliva, like I’m about to throw up. Don took Mum to that place, where some atrocity was committed. She must have been so scared. To think she got into a van with this well-dressed, unassuming man, this trusted acquaintance of an acquaintance. And that underneath his expensive clothes and well-kept shoes is this monster inside.

‘Never told, swore a pact, blood oath; no one ever caught, ever charged, everyone dead but me. Night sweats for years. Eleanor doesn’t know—if she did, she never would’ve took me on, leant on me the way she does. But I told her.’ His head swings back up, red-rimmed eyes focused on me. ‘And now I’ve told you.’

What is it about us, I think, shrinking back, sliding down a stair, that makes people hand us their darkness?

Don takes a step forward, his hands still out, grasping, and I fall down the stairs in earnest then, phone still clutched in my hand.

I break out into the front foyer and the Chinese woman is on the phone, still giving frantic instructions, calling out, ‘Wait! Wait, Miss!’ when she sees me. But I don’t wait, because Mum told me you don’t wait, you never wait when things go bad, you get. I burst out, into the obliterating rain.

In the tiny square outside the museum, I send the audio file to Wurbik’s phone. Rain runs down my screen, into my mouth, the hollow in my neck. No time to explain. How to explain? That bad things bring other bad things out into the light.

I spin, unsure and directionless upon the slick cobblestones, the rain raining down; knowing absolutely where I am, but feeling lost.

Simon hasn’t come. I wonder why I even expected him to—don’t I always save myself, in the end? I shove my phone into the front of my pack, cutting across the small ornamental square, hurrying under the celestial arch and past the stone lion on the right, towards home: when I see him.

It’s like he’s stepped out of the future.

A tall, strikingly handsome man in a long camel overcoat and dark pinstripe suit, narrow-toed business shoes, a Melbourne Football Club scarf draped elegantly around his neck. He’s coming up the hill towards me, unhurried in the rain beneath a black umbrella.

I see the same longish, dark-blond hair and one-in-a-million physique. He looks good, and he knows it, and he’ll always look good. He’s talking on the phone. I don’t think he’s even seen me yet.

But then he looks up, with his unreadably dark eyes under wicked brows, and I’m looking at the man of my dreams—Hugh de Crespigny—in thirty years’ time.

As he gets closer, I see there are streaks of grey in his hair, the beginnings of crepey chicken neck happening, but it could be the same man. I actually back up in horror, thinking: This can’t be happening. I just left you, and you were young.

It’s like magic.

Heart thumping like a driving bassline, I turn quickly on my heel, walking back uphill, up Little Bourke. I give pretty good poker face. But I’m certain the man recognised that I recognised him, because the hard heels of his fine shoes are ringing out behind me, steady and unhurried on the slick flagstones. And when I pick up my pace, he does too.

What had that snake Rosso said? If he finds out you’ve been airing very private dirty laundry with a cheap palm reader, he will kill you himself.

When I get to the theatre restaurant the front door is locked tight. I pull on the handle, sobbing low in my throat, but it doesn’t give. Future Hugh is standing on the corner now, a block away, still talking on the phone. He’s looking into the window of the noodle shop by the pedestrian crossing, checking out his own reflection in the electric streetlights, the beams of passing cars. Just his presence, menacing.

When the man’s back is half turned, I duck down the driveway of the commercial car park a couple of shopfronts away, praying that he hasn’t seen me and it’s all a terrible coincidence.

I’m standing in the stinking alley, the rain falling from the early evening sky through a narrow gap between all the buildings. The back door’s ajar, which means Newlands must be in.

Almost crying with relief, I pull the wire security door open and run through the deserted kitchen into the darkness of the backstage area, looking for a place to hide. Somewhere in here are stairs that take you to the upper floor. And there was that glow, coming from down below; some kind of basement or cellar, I remember. Across the stage, on the far side from the kitchen passageway.

My eyes adjust slowly today. There is no light left in the day and no gap in the curtains facing onto the dining area. Backstage is absolute blackness, except for that below-stairs glow that begins, tremulously, to coalesce in the corner of my eye.

I almost call out to Newlands, who must be around. But I’m glad I don’t when the unlocked screen door slams, then slams again seconds later. Two of them: their heels striking the distressed concrete of the kitchen floor as they poke around between the island benches, searching for me. And two options: straight out through the curtains at the front of the stage, screaming for Newlands! Help! Police! And hope that the front door will open from the inside. Or make for that faint glow.

I feel about with my hands out, like a blind person. A line of painted balsa wood cut-out trees runs either side of me. I abandon my pack and begin creeping towards the faint source of light, the glow abruptly vanishing as a new bit of backdrop crops up, set on a different plane from the first. I’m suddenly panicked, lost in the dark. But as I inch forward, the light returns. I must be midway across the stage by now.

My sneakered footfalls are absolutely soundless and I’m maybe ten feet from the opening, crouching low against a 3D polystyrene prop, when the sound of male voices emerges from the passageway. Then their footsteps are echoing on the same floorboards I’m standing on, and I know I’ve missed my chance to make it downstairs without being spotted. I’ll be silhouetted against the light if I move now.

‘You shouldn’t be seen here,’ says a hard voice I recognise as Stainer’s.

I wonder if they can smell my fear, or maybe feel it, rolling off me in hot waves.

‘You know how much I enjoy the thrill of the chase,’ replies a deep, cultured voice, laughter in it. It’s a beautiful voice; less a voice than an instrument. Authoritative, resonant. ‘It’s part of the fun,’ the man continues. ‘And I’m going to have fun with this one.’

‘I have to insist,’ Stainer says, his own words blunt with concern. ‘Whatever you intend to do later, right now? You should wait in the car, sir.’

I’m craning my neck, trying to work out where they are, but their voices are floating, disembodied, echoing in the high-ceilinged space. There’s a long pause, as if Future Hugh is weighing his risks. And then he says, briskly, not best pleased, ‘Perhaps you’re right, Stainer. My son, Ross, won’t breathe a word, of course, but my nephew is in… an unpredictable frame of mind. Take the front-of-house area. I’ll wait by the back door. Just in case.’

There’s another long pause and then Stainer says, voice colourless and unemotional, ‘Yes, sir. Just stay out of sight of the cars coming up and down the entryway, okay? She won’t be far. The geriatric’s probably out. And even if he isn’t…’

I hear one set of hard soles moving away, striking concrete. Then the other man steps lightly across floorboards until there is the sound of curtains being batted aside, an instance of weak, grey light, then the sound of heavy fabric falling back into place. I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath until it comes out of me in a quiet whoosh. I need to move. I’ve got one foot on the top of the basement stairs when my phone, my bloody phone, utters that loud, sparkly bling sound—to tell me someone has just played me a word.

I don’t wait to see what happens, throwing myself down the hard concrete steps, tripping badly off the last one and twisting my ankle. I land on my side, on the cold, dusty floor, with a dull thud.

As I breathe out hard in pain, overhead it sounds like wild animals stampeding in all directions. The basement is lit by a single dim pendant bulb and littered with junk: a bright-blue papier-mâché elephant with a hole punched in its side, giant fans, broken chairs, boxes and barrels and crates, a glittery game-show spinning wheel.

Right in the centre of the room, though, is a weird-looking rectangular wooden structure fixed into the concrete of the floor, yellow-and-black warning tape stuck all around its perimeter. It has three weighted pulleys set into the top, but like everything else it affords me no place to hide. It reaches from the floor to the underside of the stage above, like a rudimentary archway made out of four heavy wooden beams, each one wider and more solid than a person. Like a rectangular box, only standing upright, all the sides open, facing onto mounds of old theatre rubbish.

I register all of this—that there’s no cover, anywhere—as I’m pulling myself awkwardly up into a sitting position.

Rising with a cry of pain I can’t quite muffle, I’m just standing there at the bottom of the stairs, favouring my right foot, when a man appears at the top of them.

It feels like a dream as he slowly walks down, his dark eyes never leaving mine. I back up, limping and sucking in shallow, painful breaths. One heel hits the edge of the peeling yellow-and-black tape and I’m backing straight through the centre of the boxy wooden structure, because it’s the only clear path in the entire space, my sneakers snagging on the warped edge of a metal plate as I fall out the far side.

He keeps coming on: withered-beautiful, up close, and deadly; wearing every single one of his years and cruelties on his face and in his eyes.

Behind me is the vast, damaged bulk of the bright-blue elephant; on either side, broken chairs and heaped-up boxes. The room is a giant box—no, a box inside a box—with no way out except those stairs behind him.

The man who wears Hugh’s face keeps crossing the room, passing through the standing wooden beams himself, before coming to a stop in front of me. He places his hands on my shoulders, running long, leather-gloved fingers through the ends of my hair while I look up into his face like cornered prey.

If I closed my eyes, right now, and placed my head against this man’s rain-drenched lapel, it would feel like Hugh and smell like Hugh: expensive, well maintained, reeking of sex and power.

The resemblance is uncanny as he purrs, ‘How could anyone prefer him to me?’

Disorientated, I realise belatedly that the man must be speaking of Fleur Bawden and the mistake she made: of loving his brother better.

Above us, I hear Newlands roar: ‘What the devil is going on?’ and through the floorboards overhead there’s a metal clang, then light streams down through the cracks, refracted into strange lines and patterns.

The man before me puts a hand over my mouth and pulls me, hard, into the iron line of his body, breathing, ‘Hush now,’ into my hair.

I can hear someone above, walking in circles. Footsteps close, then dying away, roaming all over the stage.

Then the footsteps grow distant and the man with his hand over my mouth relaxes his grip only slightly and says, ‘You’re coming with me now, quietly, like a good girl. I’m glad I waited.’ He clutches at me with his free hand and I actually gasp into his palm as he twists hard at my soft, female flesh and says lazily, ‘You were worth waiting for.’

The lines overhead are dizzying, resolving and dissolving. I start fighting him then, really kicking out and biting, stamping and bucking, going wild because I know, I know there are some things you can’t come back from, as he’s pulling me around, smashing me in the side of the head, getting huge handfuls of my hair and wrenching until I’m seeing purple and stars and explosions.

‘Come with me, you little bitch, or I will kill you here,’ he hisses in this voice that’s all the more terrible for being so controlled, so quiet.

He has me facing down and he’s forcing me, really trying to push me to my knees, but I’m forcing my way back up, the two of us almost centrifugal, when I glimpse feet on the stairs: battered workboots, the brown leather so worn it’s got this sheen of grey all over the surface of it.

Then his fist connects with my face and I can’t see the boots anymore, I can’t see anything. When I sag to my knees the judge turns me like a baby, hugging me to his broad chest and dragging me backwards between the first pair of heavy wooden beams, my heels again snagging against the edge of a warped metal plate, set into the floor.

Then we’re under the archway and he’s got an arm under my jaw, right across my windpipe, pressing down on it so that I’ve got no air left, there’s nothing, I’m going to pass out. But as the edges of my sight start going black, I see the weight above us. It’s enormous: as wide across as the gap between the beams themselves; three pulleys it takes to lift it, heavy enough to crush a man.

And I understand, at last: about the lines overhead, how they all go one way, in parallel, except for this one star shape, right in the centre.

‘Simon,’ I gag, rasping, kicking out, my heels beating against metal as the man struggles to contain me. ‘The lever, push it!’ I’m barely audible. ‘Push it!’

It is a Death’s head rattle. As my eyes roll back, I actually look for him, the silver-haired giant with the eyes like sunlight on the sea. I can feel him in the room, walking amongst the boxes, watching over me.

Then I pull down on the man’s little finger, the way Mum taught me, until I feel it snap in my hands. Wrenching myself sideways, I dive and scramble to get clear of the box with no sides, uncaring that I’ve left my hair and my blood everywhere.

It takes forever and it takes no time at all.

There is a sound like a heavy bolt shooting home, an iron arrow leaving a crossbow, and then there’s a star-shaped hole in the sky, white light, the metal plate returning, sinking back down into the floor, empty. And screaming.

Nothing can block out the screaming. It goes on and on, the star shape remaining, jammed open by a man’s arcing, writhing body. As I turn over onto my back, whooping and heaving to get air into my lungs, I see the rain coming down, together with the light. The light and the rain are the colour of blood. A rain of blood, falling all over me. I close my eyes.