IN NECROSPECT

He always carried one in his wallet, just in case. It was one of those plastic imitation snakeskin jobs – the wallet, that is. I reckon he got it out of a show bag. He’d say, I’d do you if you’d let me. And I’d say, Not on your life, buddy. That’s how it was between us, and even then I felt that show-and-tell rubber would mean the end of our friendship. Get between us, so to speak, or not, as the case may be. Mouldering away in its metallic plastic wrap, the ring an eyehole from being pressed flat. Sort of emptily gloating. He showed me, like, every day, almost. A ritual, just to reassure himself.

I’ve got to say that he hadn’t laid a hand on me in a suspect way – in that way; he was a nice boy at heart, I’d tell myself. It was all tough-guy stuff on the surface. And I was a good girl … well, insofar as blokes didn’t turn me on, anyway. I had a crush on our teacher, though I wasn’t telling anyone that. I knew where I was and what I wanted, and it just wasn’t Tom Sinclair – or Stink, as we’d call him. We’d been knocking around after school with each other for years: kicking footies, smoking cigarettes, doing the odd joint, roaming the streets.

That afternoon we met at my place and headed off for the Squat. We’d only ever skirted the place before, but had it in our minds that the time had come to go all the way and check it out inside. It was the talk of the school. We weren’t sure if it was being used, but thought we’d take the risk. What the hell! They – the squatters – could only tell us to fuck off! And they might turn out to be okay, like the guys who hung out beneath Freo wharf, smoking joints and dangling lines without hooks in the water.

Stink was in a rush to get there, while the light was good. From then on things become super vivid and I’m right there, on the brink, all over again …

It’s the middle of winter, so it will get dark pretty early. There’s not much time. Stink is dragging on my arm, telling me to get a move on. I kind of fall around, and jelly-walk after him – it’s an attempt to be familiar and funny and reluctant all at once. I don’t know why I do things like this, just part of my make-up I guess. I tell Stink to watch my sleeve because it’s my favourite red checked shirt and I’ve already stitched it up twice. So he’s off, and I’m after him. The house used to belong to Mrs Pollard, whom my Mum apparently knew. Mrs Pollard died when I was small and the house has been left vacant since then. Don’t know why, never asked, but I’d heard Mum mention it disapprovingly over the years.

It’s not much now, with the windows boarded up and the doors locked. You see smoke coming out of the chimney sometimes and everyone knows that out-of-it dudes drink and take drugs in there, so there’s obviously a way in around back. It’s hard to work out why it’s been left, but Stink says because it’s owned by an absentee landlord, and that it’s an investment property. I don’t get it, or why the council or the cops don’t clear the dump out, but there you go. It’s there, and it has occasional occupants at least, it has a reputation, and schoolkids stay clear. Until now. Anyway, we’re darting around the back of the place, searching for an entry point, and lift a loose sheet of corrugated iron that’s been attached by ropes through holes near the top so it works like a flap. And we’re in.

There’s some weird shit over the walls and floor. Before we even call out we’re shut down by the stench and the fear that fills the place. It’s blood and shit – like, real shit. There’s a pentacle on the wall and shafts of light from the lowering sun are making their way in through holes we couldn’t see on the outside, giving the place a sickly feeling where even the dust motes come crashing down. Let’s get out of here … but Stink is at my damned sleeve again and I stick to the spot. What are those signs? Runes or something. There’s a lot of witchcraft in Freo. I yell it inside my head, worried someone might hear. One of my friends at school reckons the teacher I’ve got a crush on is a witch. She only ever wears black. And her hair falls over her eyes and she doesn’t flick it back, you know she’s watching you but can never pin her back with a look. Not that I could anyway, I’d die of shame …

This is Stink’s moment. He thinks he can have me with a display of bravado. Idiot. He is calling out, Hello, hello … anybody home? He is bolstering himself up with sarcasm. Hello, hello … The room, the house, remains silent. The light is patchy, but we can see well enough. Though the windows are boarded up near the bottom, they’re open at the top, with jagged bits of glass in the frames and shreds of curtain. They are too high up to see through from the outside, unless you had a ladder, and when you look out from inside you can just see sky through the tops of tall pines planted like a welcome to sailors coming into port.

There’s a lot of rubbish lying around. Be careful, says Stink, pointing to used needles. He picks one up by the plunger and swings it like a pendulum. This one’s got blood in it. I shriek at him to put it down. It’s diseased! I say. He edges on, making more of it, but thinks better, puts it down, and wipes his hands on his jeans like a show-off. We step around them and go into the next room. It seems all the inner doors have been removed – one is on bricks to form a hard bed, others are broken up, clearly to be used for wood in the lounge fire. There are bits of cooking gear lying around – pots, forks, broken cups and plates, bent spoons.

I say to Stink, It’s a wonder the house stays upright. Cracked brick walls, broken sheets of asbestos, the woodwork either burnt or termite-ridden. It’s the fireplace that keeps the whole thing up, he says. We pass through into the kitchen, which is a total write-off. The taps are lying on the floor and buckled, torn piping pokes out of the wall. Gee, it would have taken a bit of strength to rip those off, says Stink, almost admiringly. I’m feeling sick by now and have seen enough. Let’s go, Stink, it will be dark soon.

But Stink, being Stink, has to go through the whole place and when he comes across the stash in one of the bedrooms, he lets loose with a triumphant war whoop. Shoosh, you idiot! I whisper hard. But Stink is in there among the stuff. Piles of porno mags, DVDs, monstrous-looking ‘toys’ and packages of blow-up dollies. It’s stolen, I reckon, says Stink, salivating. Yeah, I reckon so, I say – we better get out of here. Stink grabs a couple of DVDs and within seconds we’re out of the place. Come round to mine and watch these, he says, as we push open the flap and dash out into the dusk. Get real! I say.

Later, I throw away my shoes. Running out of there I’ve gone straight through some fossilised shit. It takes some explaining to my mum.

*

Over the next few days my relationship with Stink changes dramatically. He’s weird and offhand and doesn’t want to talk about our experience. He doesn’t even show me his rotten old condom anymore. To try and get him going, I even offer to watch his stupid stolen DVDs but amazingly, he says Naahhh, they were boring so I ditched them. I can’t believe it. After a week he stops talking to me at all. I only see him at school and he won’t look me in the eye.

So that’s that. I think of the pentacle and the rumours of covens in Freo and think maybe he’s been possessed. That something in the house got him but not me. I think about the teacher I’ve got a crush on. Maybe she’d know what’s wrong with Stink, but I can’t bring myself to ask her and anyhow, I’ve lost interest in her. I mean, she’s so affected, with that hair and everything. My mind runs all over the place and I come up with lots of theories but because Stink won’t talk to me they don’t mean much.

*

When I hear that Stink hasn’t been seen for twenty-four hours and his parents have gone to the police, I know where to look. I don’t speak to anyone but go round to the house myself. At the back, I call out his name … softly at first, then a little louder. It’s a bright morning so I push up the flap, pin it up so it stays open, and step into the back room. I reel with the stench. I wonder what it will do to my lungs. After a second, like before, I adjust, and it almost seems like the air I usually breathe. The house seems exactly as we saw it when we were last there together. I step cautiously towards the bedroom where all the porn stuff is stashed. Stink, I call gently. Stink, it’s me, are you in there? I poke my head around the doorframe. I can’t see much in the room because of all the inflated dolls with gaping mouths and a strange nakedness I don’t understand. I push them aside, and feel them laughing at me: out of their mouths, out of the strange holes between their legs. Their skin is clammy and grips me, their hair makes me shiver. And eventually I find Stink, buried beneath them, his condom packet gripped so hard in his hand that it has torn, his mouth open as if it’s waiting to have something put in it, fossilised, set like plastic. His eyes are wide open and look as if they have never closed, never even blinked. And he is naked, and between his legs is nothing – nothing at all. It is sealed over like plastic. There are no signs of his genitals. No sign of anything down there at all. And it looks natural and comfortable like this. And for this I love him.

The house fills with serenity and a sweet perfume. But it is also strong and determined in character, like the sisters I have so carelessly pushed aside. I am not selfish by nature. I have always been willing to share. And I will share him with them. And he will share with us.