Nicholas sat on his sofa. His throat was raw and his stomach was sore from retching. The bites (spider bites, he reminded himself) throbbed, and for the hundredth time he dully considered a trip to the twenty-four-hour medical centre. And, for the hundredth time, reasoned that the resultant questions would not go well. Giant spider, you say? Oh, yes, we get those all the time. Excuse me just a moment while I phone security. Suggesting the wounds were a snake bite would only demand more tests, more questions. The punctures weren’t infected, and he was feeling incrementally better. He’d stay here.
So tired. As soon as he began drifting towards sleep, the nightmare image of the old woman stroking him while her pet sat on his chest returned with awful vividness. Shutting his mind’s door on the vision and leaning against it to keep it closed was draining. To let it open and relive those moments as a supine captive in the woods would send him crazy.
How do you know you’re not crazy?
He skipped to the next groove in the scratched record of his mind: Go to the police.
And say. . what? That the men who’d confessed to the murders of Tristram Boye and Dylan Thomas were lying? ‘Forget their confessions, their fingerprints, their car tyre tracks, Sergeant! The real killer is an old woman who lives in a strange little cottage in the woods. That’s right, just down the road from me. Her hobbies include spider farming and jerking off hostages.’
‘That’s amazing news, Mr Close! The very break we needed to re-open these already neatly closed cases. By the way, how did you find out?’
‘Oh, here’s the clever bit: a ghost led me there.’
The bitch knew.
The old woman knew there was no room in a sane world for stories about huge spiders and Brothers Grimm strawberries. Relating what happened would be the babblings of a madman. No, she knew there would be no police.
Go away. Move to Melbourne.
And when you read of another Tallong child going missing? How will you feel then?
Fuck off. I’m not the murderer.
Ah. But she has your sperm in a jar.
Nicholas was suddenly fully awake. An image appeared in his mind complete: an autopsy table, a small boy face down on the stainless steel, a lab-coated man with a syringe withdrawing milky white liquid from the dead boy’s anus and squirting it into a jar theatrically labelled ‘Evidence’.
Oh, Jesus. He definitely had to move! Create an alibi! Live a visible life and surround himself with people who could testify that he never came to this city again!
But Mum lives here.
Katharine was just a chasse away from thinking her son a killer already. Wipe her!
He paced.
No. He and his mother might not get along, but leaving her in this suburb — this haunted, killing place — would be wrong.
Move her down south, too!
You know she wouldn’t go.
He was running out of options.
You could kill yourself.
Suicide. He rolled the thought in his mind like an ice-cube on his tongue, tasting it, feeling its smooth chill. Death. He’d thought about it a lot immediately after Cate died. He’d been thinking about how he might do it (Pills? Stanley knife to the carotid artery? Sneaking up to the roof of the Leadenhall Building and taking a dive?) as he moved the last of his and Cate’s belongings the afternoon that he slipped on the front steps of their Ealing flat and rose to be stabbed by the ghost of wild-eyed Keith Yerwood. After that, his visions of the dead — in particular, his vision of Cate’s last few moments, slipping, falling, breaking, over and over — convinced him that nothing good waited after his own heart stopped. Certainly, suicide would bring a blissful end to the sightings of dead children, but would it stop live ones dying? No.
So, what then?
Kill the old lady. Kill the witch.
Nicholas stopped, stock-still.
Witch.
Suzette’s words came back to him: If I knew then what I know now, I’d say she was a witch.
Very good. He had something to label the old woman now. The witch.
The witch killed Tristram. But she wanted you. She found out you were back, and she taunted you with Gavin and drew you down there like the idiot you are.
But then the realisation clarified slowly, like steadily clearing liquids of a science experiment.
She can’t know I see the ghosts.
Nicholas set his jaw.
What does that mean? How does that help?
‘Why me?’ he asked aloud.
The room was silent.
Then, a small noise. The front door’s knob was turning.
With a start, Nicholas realised he hadn’t locked it.
Pritam reached with one shoe and switched off the vacuum cleaner. For a long moment, the baby-cry whine of the electric motor echoed down the nave and in the transepts, and seemed to keep the tall brass pipes of the organ humming disconsolately. The stained-glass windows were dark; it was night outside, and the occasional car headlights set the tiny panes sparkling like a handful of scattered diamonds. The candelabra overhead held electric bulbs, but their light wasn’t strong and the church seemed to Pritam yawningly huge, more dark than light. He would talk with John Hird about gradually increasing the wattage of the bulbs.
As he followed the electric lead to the wall socket, he stepped off the burgundy carpet onto marble and his footfalls rang emptily in the choir stalls and up to the high, dark rafters. He preferred to dress well when he was working in the church, even when doing everyday chores. He regarded dressing well as a sign of respect, for the institution and the office, and he wore his leather dress shoes and ironed trousers despite the countless occasions when Hird, sidling past in thongs and shorts, snorted amusement at his understudy’s formality. But now, alone in the church at night, the clack-clack of his heels on the cool stone floor sounded stiff and distant even to Pritam. He unplugged the cord, walked back to the vacuum and pressed the retractor — the cord reeled in so fast that the plug overshot the machine and whipped past, the tiny fist of a thing striking Pritam sharply on the shin and sending a flurry of pain scampering up his leg.
He let out a short hiss and bent to lift his trouser leg. One of the metal prongs had taken a scrape out of the tight skin on the front of his shinbone, and a ball of claret-coloured blood had already seeped to the surface and was running down to his dark sock.
The sight of the thick, descending droplet suddenly reminded him of that shocking moment during the funeral earlier this week, when the deceased’s elderly mother had risen to her feet and spat at the image of Our Lord. Pritam had been unable to stop himself watching her creamy-coloured spittle run down His wooden shin, down His pinned foot, to collect in an offensive egg-like sac before gravity drew it down to the carpet he’d only now just vacuumed. After the service, Hird had laughed, saying the ‘old bird was a bloody good shot’, but Pritam had been stunned by the action. Or was it the words that had preceded it? Something about the Lord only being pleased by the letting of blood.
He knelt and gingerly touched the flap of raw skin on his shin — it hurt like a bugger. He reached into his trouser pocket and removed a neatly ironed handkerchief, which he tied around his shin. Blood pleases the Lord. While he no longer laboured over it, the two faces of God had troubled him greatly in seminary. How could the God of the Old Testament be such a jealous, needy being, so demanding of fealty and, yes, blood, while the God of the New Testament was so much less proscriptive, so much more forgiving. An answer was carved not a metre from Pritam: He had a Son. But how could the Creator of the universe change so fundamentally simply by coming to earth in human form? Pritam had once described God’s behaviour in hypothetical terms to a psychologist friend, whose straightforward diagnosis was ‘bipolar disorder’. Pritam couldn’t accept that; there had to be more to this Holy mystery, The need to better understand his God became the reason he stayed in the clergy.
Pritam tied the handkerchief tight, rolled his trouser cuff down. Someone was behind him.
‘Is that you, John?’
He got to his feet and turned.
The church was empty. The windows were unrelieved black. The shadows in the apse behind the figure of Christ seemed as solid as the dark timber. Yet still Pritam had the feeling someone was watching him.
‘Hello?’ he called. His voice, carrying only the slightest hint of his Indian childhood, echoed among the polished pews and fell away to still silence.
He found his gaze settling on the spot where the strange man had sat during that same funeral service. Close, that was his name. Nicholas Close. That was the second unsettling thing about that day: the expression Pritam had seen on Close’s face as he looked up at the ceiling. Close looked as if he’d seen the hooded skull of the reaper staring back at him.
Pritam looked up through the chill air to the carved boss six metres overhead. Even in the dim, ineffective light cast by the fake candle globes, he could make out the carved timber face wreathed in oak leaves. Suddenly, a chill went through him.
He’s looking at me.
He blinked. The Green Man’s face was mostly shadow, its eyes dark sockets. What nonsense. It wasn’t alive. It couldn’t see. It was inanimate; a decoration made from a tree felled by human hands not much more than a century ago; nothing more than wood shaped by iron.
Like your image of Christ? Let’s not forget how offended you were when that old nari spat on Him.
Pritam reprimanded himself. That is different. He is my Lord and saviour, but him up there, he is. . what?
He remembered a similar cold thrill of recognition when he was taking his elderly mother on her last trip back to India before she died, and visiting one of the huge, amber-stoned Jain temples in Ranakpur. He’d felt the same sensation of being watched — which one always is in a country of a billion people — and turned to see carved into a column a face with long, slender leaves sprouting from the corners of its mouth, blank eyes regarding him dispassionately. Then, as now, he’d felt a frisson of apprehension and the sudden desire to be well away.
He’d assumed his discomfort with the alien visage was due to his own firm commitment to a Christian faith. However, when he’d received his appointment to this diocese and first walked into this church, he’d seen a strikingly similar carved face among foliage. He’d asked John Hird about why such an unchristian image was in such a holy place. ‘Christ knows,’ Hird had grumbled. ‘What am I? An architect?’ Then he’d lumbered into the presbytery to make tea.
And now, alone in the church, Pritam couldn’t shake the feeling that the Green Man was watching him from his headdress of hewn leaves. Suddenly, the words of the old Boye woman came back with sharp clarity. Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.
He can smell my blood, thought Pritam.
The thought was irrational, childish, stupid. His heart was racing. His feet in his leather dress shoes were tingling and ready for flight. But he bent with deliberate slowness to pick up the vacuum cleaner. This was his church. He would not run from it.
‘This is a house of God,’ he said, loudly. The words rang against the cold, shadowed stone and among the dark old timbers.
He turned and walked to the apse door, all the while feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickling like live wires.
When Suzette swung open the door of Nicholas’s flat, the first thing she saw was her brother’s pallid face, eyes wide in fright. The expression, quite frankly, scared the shit out of her. ‘Who did you expect?’ she’d asked. He’d simply shaken his head, and replied, ‘I don’t know if you’d believe me.’
And now she’d heard it, she wasn’t sure she did.
Nicholas had made them both coffee, sat her down, and told her about his day in the Carmichael Road woods. Following the Thomas boy’s ghost. Going under the water pipe through the cobweb-choked drain. Wandering lost. Finding a boat, of all things! Seeing an old lady and her dog; a dog whose bite marks he showed Suzette. They were two small red circles that looked days old. ‘They were much bigger earlier,’ he’d explained sheepishly. Falling unconscious. Waking to find himself unable to move, lying outside the old woman’s cottage. Bitten again by the dog — and the way he said ‘dog’ made Suzette feel there was a lot her brother wasn’t telling her. Waking wet, clean and nauseated in the tall grass on Carmichael Road, and staggering home.
‘Didn’t you get my note?’ she asked.
Nicholas’s blank stare was answer enough. Suzette turned and saw the folded paper still lying on the floor. Typical.
‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘You think I’ve gone bonkers?’
‘I think you’re a fucking idiot eating berries without knowing what they were.’
‘I told you. They were strawberries.’
‘Oh, you’re the Bush Tucker Man now?’
Her expression must have been cynical; she saw her brother’s face harden.
‘Look at it from my point of view, Nicky. You were starving. You ate some berries-’
‘Strawberries.’
‘Would you bet your life on that?’ she snapped, suddenly angry. ‘Would you bet your sanity on that? ’Cause that’s what you’re doing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Everything weird you saw, everything weird that happened to you, happened after you ate those berries.’
She watched him as this sank in. She could see the wheels in his mind turning behind his eyes, see him realise that everything could have been a hallucination brought on by the berries. A seed of doubt had germinated. She pressed the opportunity.
‘Trust me, I know how potent some herbs and berries can be. Datura, peyote, morning glory seeds. .’
She watched Nicholas frown, and his eyes turned to the wound on his hand.
‘And that isn’t a dog bite.’
‘No,’ he agreed, but he didn’t say anything else.
Suzette changed tack. ‘The old woman. .’ She waited until Nicholas was looking at her. ‘Was she Mrs Quill?’
He seemed to take his time thinking about this. Then he shook his head slowly. ‘She didn’t look like Quill. Like I remember Quill.’
Suzette nodded. For some reason, that answer was a relief.
Brother and sister drank their coffees in silence for a long while. Nicholas shifted on his seat, as if uncomfortable and wanting to speak. But he kept his silence.
‘I don’t think you’re crazy,’ said Suzette quietly.
‘I think you might,’ whispered Nicholas. He looked up at her. His eyes were grave. ‘You were the one who said the rune was dangerous. You were the one who wanted to know more. And now I tell you more, you think. .’ He shook his head. ‘You think I was tripping on shrooms.’
Suzette met his gaze. She couldn’t lie. Her next words she spoke carefully.
‘I believe you ate something. Maybe they were strawberries. Maybe they just looked like them. Maybe it doesn’t matter. ’Cause these things you say you saw, well. . it’s only a couple of days since a man shot himself to death in front of you.’
She watched these last sentences sink into Nicholas’s mind. He sat rock still in his chair for a long moment, staring at the mud-coloured, threadbare carpet. Finally, he took a long breath.
‘You’re probably right,’ he said. He nodded, stood and collected their coffee mugs, and repeated, ‘You’re probably right. Yep. How do you think I got these bites?’
Suzette felt a warm glow of relief in her stomach. Her brother was odd, sometimes lazy, a fucking idiot for eating any old shit he found on the forest floor. . but she loved him. The idea of his gift sending him mad was scary.
‘I dunno. Maybe a tree snake bit you in the woods? They’re not venomous, you wouldn’t even realise it till later.’ She shrugged.
He nodded again as he dried the mugs — that sounded reasonable. He checked his watch, and Suzette looked at her own. It was nearly nine o’clock.
‘I’d better get home. Mum will think we’ve both bailed on her.’ Nicholas smiled. ‘Thanks for coming over. Sorry I. . you know. Worried you. Et cetera, et cetera. .’
Suzette gave him a quick hug. ‘Fine. Glad you’re feeling better.’
He saw her to the door.
‘Just the same,’ she said as she stepped into the cold night, ‘I don’t think you should go into the woods.’
He nodded again. ‘Good advice.’
He closed the door on her.
Nicholas carefully pulled aside the limp, once-white curtains and watched his sister walking up Bymar Street, until the darkness between the tiny footprints of streetlight consumed her. Then he sagged.
She thinks I’ve lost it. Well, when ninety-nine people say the sky is blue and one guy with bad hair says it’s green, who do you side with?
Suzette thought he had a wee touch of Gulf War syndrome after seeing Gavin off himself; that was fine. But she was still here — she hadn’t flown home to Sydney. That wasn’t so good. He wondered if he’d told her too much; she’d scared him coming through the front door, he couldn’t help himself. When that knob had turned, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see the old woman with her blue, unsmiling eyes opening the door wide to let some eight-legged thing step silently in. When he saw it was Suzette, his relief was so great he just. . blabbed. Thank God he’d had the good sense not to tell her about what the small terrier Garnock really was. Or about the raping hand job.
He hadn’t imagined it. Certainly, the old witch’s strawberries had made him see things — the beautiful vale, the glistening pond, the pretty boat, Cate’s Surprise, that was the most sadistic of them. But he’d also seen things as they truly were: that the boat was a collapsed hull, the witch’s secretive cottage, the nightmarish, fox-sized spider Garnock. .
Overhead, in the winter sky, the moon was high and small, just a slivered narrow eye.
Was that the last thing Dylan Thomas saw? The moon? An old woman? A knife? Eight unblinking eyes?
He’d told Suzette a lot, but not too much. If he could keep his new, horrible knowledge inside for a few more days, he was sure he could get her to leave and go back to her family. Then there was only Mum to worry about.
The old woman doesn’t want your mother. She wants you.
Nicholas felt his eyes drawn to the end of Bymar Street, where it intersected with Carmichael Road. He could feel the wall of dark trees there, as solid and hostile as an army camped outside a city under siege.
He was about to let the greasy curtain fall when something closer to his flat caught his eye.
Across the road, under a moth-flickering cone of light cast by a streetlamp, a small white terrier sat on the footpath. As soon as Nicholas’s eyes fell on the creature, its tail wagged slowly. It was looking directly at his window. It was watching him.
Now that Nicholas had recognised it, Garnock lazily got to its haunches and trotted down Bymar Street in the direction of Carmichael Road.
Nicholas watched it go, and realised he was shaking.
I’m terrified.