Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley (3 page)

‘I'm not sure,' Danyl admitted.

‘But you can find out. You can look for Sophus where I can't. I've contacted some of the local sects. None of their cult leaders will talk to me because of my position at the community council. I represent authority. Bureaucracy. But you were arrested in a bizarre scandal, taken into custody by the police and diagnosed with an acute mental illness. That makes you a hero to these people. They'll talk to you. And while you're searching for Sophus, you can stay in the Scholar's Cottage. Sleep in a warm dry bed instead of a damp concrete stairway. And I'll feed you.' She opened her satchel, took out a muffin and handed it to Danyl while fixing him with her gaze. ‘Say yes.'

Danyl took the muffin. He sat back in his chair and considered Ann's offer. It sounded appealing. A roof. A bed. More muffins. He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking.

His doctors had stressed the importance of stability and relaxation in managing his illness. A regular routine. Regular meals. Regular sleep, ideally indoors on a bed and not in a concrete entranceway. If they were here they'd advise him to take the deal.

But his doctors were not infallible. After all, they had warned Danyl that if he stopped taking his antidepressants the consequences could be dire. Yet a week after discontinuing his medication there had been no consequences; on the contrary, he felt fantastic. Alive! So his doctors didn't know everything.

Danyl took a bite of muffin and smiled, and Ann smiled back. But there was something hidden behind her eyes. Something calculating. Remember where you are, a voice in Danyl's head cautioned him. Te Aro, where nothing was as it seemed. Beneath the valley's superficial quirky charm lurked depths of madness. Danyl had forgotten this in his time away, but he remembered it now. His goal was to find Verity. Help her. Maybe she would take him back, and if so he would stay. Otherwise he should leave the valley again.

And what about the treasurer and her missing student? Should he get involved? Maybe Verity's disappearance was related to this mathematician's and in seeking one he would find both? But probably not. People vanished mysteriously all the time around here. And he didn't trust this attractive and generous treasurer. She was trying to draw him into something sinister.

Danyl swallowed the last of the muffin and decided he would not be drawn. ‘I'm sorry,' he said to Ann. ‘I can't accept. I don't need a place to stay. I'm going to find my girlfriend today. I hope you find your …' He gestured at the horrible teenager in the photograph. ‘Thing. And thanks for breakfast.' He brushed the muffin crumbs from his beard and stood and walked to the door. He was almost there when the treasurer spoke.

‘Danyl?' Her voice was low. Ominous. He turned. Ann steepled her fingers. ‘You'll never find Verity by yourself. But I know where you can start looking.' She nodded at the photo. ‘Find Sophus. Then I'll tell you. Otherwise you could look forever and ever and find … nothing.'

Danyl had thought about Verity a lot in the days since he had released himself from the hospital. What happened? Where did it all go wrong?

One afternoon stood out in his memory. About a month after Danyl moved into her house, Verity came home early from work and suggested they go to the market together. ‘It's in Aro Park,' she explained, pulling open the curtains while Danyl sat up in bed blinking in the flood of late-afternoon sunlight. ‘It's called the Free Market. It's subsidised by the council. They wanted to give the residents of the valley an alternative to global capitalism so they set up stalls where people can barter for goods and services as equals in a trusting, loving environment.'

‘Do they sell food?'

‘Yes, but you don't want to eat anything from there. And stay away from the organic beetroot juice. I've heard stories.'

Danyl sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, watching Verity as she moved around the room. She was in her late twenties, average height but small-framed so she seemed shorter than she was. She was pretty but not as pretty as she could be, Danyl felt, if she grew her hair longer and dyed it blond, and wore makeup and short skirts and tight tops instead of jeans and T-shirts. Her shoulder-length black hair fell over her face, which was pale even in summer. Her eyes were green. Or maybe brown; it was hard to tell in the bright sunlight. He reminded himself to look at Verity's eyes more.

‘Get up,' she ordered, moving to the window overlooking the street. ‘I want to get photos of the fair before everyone goes home.' She pulled up the blind and then hissed and stepped backwards.

‘What's wrong?' Danyl sensed danger; he started to climb back beneath the bedclothes. Verity stared, a shocked expression on her face. Her eyes flashed—they were actually kind of grey —and she scanned the road, her hands on her hips.

Danyl asked, ‘Did you see something?'

‘I don't know. There was someone standing on the corner of Aro Street looking at our house.' She shook her head. ‘They're gone now.' She smiled at him. ‘Probably just a ghost.'

There were dozens of stalls. Hundreds of people browsed them, or danced in the middle of the park to the band who played ‘Three Little Birds' over and over again. The smells of cinnamon and cannabis and burnt halloumi hung heavily in the air.

Verity and Danyl walked through the crowd. Danyl looked for a book stall. Verity took photos. She had another exhibition coming up but she didn't know what it would be about. Her last photography exhibition consisted of gloomy monochromatic photos of the Aro Valley, and it won an award for Most Troubled Young Artist. ‘I don't know what to shoot,' she complained. ‘It can't just be Te Aro again.'

They passed a stall selling handicrafts: children's toys, drug paraphernalia, woollen hats. Then a stall selling organic beetroot juice. A sign above it read:
The Rumours are TRUE!
A long queue of silent, expectant men stood waiting. Verity put her hand around Danyl's arm and hurried him on.

The next stall sold more toys, bongs and woollen hats. So did the stall after that. But at the end of the row was a drab canvas tent with a blackboard in front of it reading:
Fortunes Told! Secrets Unveiled! Beware! Dr Zuzanna's Cards Predict a 20% Chance of Rain!

‘A fortune teller!' Verity turned to Danyl. ‘Do you want to go first?'

‘I'm not going in there. Don't tell me you believe in this nonsense?' Danyl and Verity hadn't been a couple for very long and they were still learning things about each other, not all of which were pleasant. Verity was unhappy to learn that Danyl couldn't cook or clean while Danyl was appalled to discover that Jane Austen was Verity's favourite author. And now this. She believed in psychics and he didn't.

She said, ‘It'll be fun.'

‘Fun? These people are frauds. Is it fun to give your money away to someone who tells you lies?'

‘Yes,' Verity replied. ‘It's fun. It's a fantasy. And how do you know they're frauds? I've seen some strange things in my life. Things that defy rational explanation.'

‘Ha! So you do believe in them! You're like a child, Verity. What if—' He held up a cautioning finger. ‘What if the fortune teller tells you something that you'll do in the future and you decide to do the opposite? Boom. Paradox.'

Verity did not acknowledge the metaphysical consequences of this question. Instead she said, ‘I'm going in. Here's your spending money.' She took five dollars from her wallet and handed it to him; Danyl accepted it with dignity. ‘I'll meet you by the feminist cake stall in twenty minutes.' Then she disappeared inside the tent. Danyl glimpsed a candle-lit interior and a framed degree from the Royal Oxford University of Astrology in Lagos hanging on a coat stand. The flap closed.

The second-hand book stall was at the far end of the market. It consisted of a dozen tables with books laid out in packed rows. More books spilled out of cardboard boxes nested beneath the tables. A sad, tired-looking man with white hair sat under an umbrella at the back of the stall. A handwritten sign beside him read
Books $5
. The only other customers were a man and a woman huddled together by the self-help section. They wore wrinkled clothes and looked pale and unhealthy. Danyl turned his back to them and inspected the fiction shelves.

Danyl had once worked in a second-hand bookshop; he'd found it very calming to browse around stacks of old, forgotten books—flipping through manuals for obsolete technology, the vanity-published memoirs of businessmen and the forgotten bestsellers of the 1950s. He did so now, and a clever idea came to him: Verity was getting her fortune told by a psychic. Well, Danyl would tell her fortune too, via bibliomancy. He would buy a book at random and whenever Verity cited her fortune teller, claiming that some random event in her life was foretold by the cards, Danyl would flourish his randomly chosen book, read a passage from it and improvise an equally plausible forecast. He cackled to himself. His five dollars would buy him hours of joy.

He stood between two tables, closed his eyes and, smiling, spun about in a circle then reached out, groping for a book. His fingers danced along the spines, waiting for an impulse to pick one. In his mind he was already anticipating the way in which he'd torment Verity if the book was a dictionary. Or a poetry collection. Or, best of all, a romance novel. He grinned, blindly extended his fingers and reached out.

A hand gripped his wrist. Danyl gasped and opened his eyes. The unhealthy couple now stood on the opposite side of the table glaring at him. The woman held Danyl's hand; she shook it and croaked in a flat, oddly accented voice, ‘These books are not for sale.'

He snatched his hand free and puffed up his chest. ‘Of course they are,' he replied. ‘Ask the shopkeeper.' He pointed at the sad, white-haired man, but he was gone. Vanished, along with his chair and his umbrella. In his place were three more pale, wrinkly clothed figures. They were moving books from the tables into cardboard boxes then loading the boxes on a trailer.

‘These books are not for sale,' the woman said again. ‘These books are ours now.'

‘Who are you? What's going on here?'

‘We are the Cart—' the man began, but the woman raised her finger to his lips, silencing him. ‘We are nobody,' she intoned. ‘Just some friends out for a walk who decided to purchase this entire stock of used books. Is that so suspicious?'

‘I guess not.' Danyl smiled at the woman. ‘I just need one book,' he explained. ‘To play a joke on my girlfriend. Any book. I'll pay.' He flourished his five-dollar note.

‘We don't want your worthless money,' the man replied. He had a triangular face, four very large front teeth and a truncated nose. He looked like a goat, and now he reached across the table and shoved Danyl's shoulder. ‘Spend it on something else,' he sneered. ‘While you still can.'

All his life Danyl had been a coward. And, like all cowards, he could sense greater cowardice in others. The goat-faced man was afraid, putting on a show of bravado to impress the woman he was with. So Danyl stepped back to the table, picked up a book and jutted out his chin.

‘I'll go. And I'll take this with me,' he said. ‘Unless you think you can stop me.'

‘Careful,' the woman said, laying a hand on the Goatman's shoulder. ‘We can't cause any trouble. It's not time.' She looked Danyl up and down, bathing him with her hatred. ‘Yet.'

‘That's right. It's not time.' He smirked at the Goatman then glanced down at the cover of his new book. It was a guide to beautiful French Kampuchea.

Then someone poked him in the back and he dropped it. He turned, ready to fight or run, probably run, but the person behind him was Verity. She looked serious. She said, ‘We have to go.'

‘I'm just arguing with these cave fish,' Danyl replied. He gestured at the Goatman and his associate, who stood watching him, hostile and silent. ‘They won't let me buy this obsolete guidebook, but I say—'

Verity cut him off, poking him in the belly this time, making him squeal.

‘We need to go home. Now. There's someone waiting for me there.'

‘How do you know? Did the fortune teller tell you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oho! Well, I have a fortune for you!' Danyl fumbled for his book but the Goatman snatched it away. Danyl lunged for it. The Goatman stepped out of reach, then Verity grabbed Danyl's arm and dragged him away from the stall. She pulled him into the crowd; the last thing he saw was the Goatman grinning in triumph, his huge square teeth gleaming in the sunlight.

‘The fortune teller said that an old friend was looking for me.'

‘So?' Danyl and Verity walked along the old road leading to their backyard, shading their eyes from the glare of the sunlight. Verity hurried; Danyl trotted behind her putting on little bursts of speed to keep up. ‘I thought you said it was just a bit of fun?'

‘You remember earlier when I looked out the window? I thought I saw an old friend. Someone I thought I'd lost forever. That can't be coincidence.'

‘Who is this friend?'

Verity didn't reply. She stepped through the hole in the fence leading to their backyard, and stopped.

The yard was a field of midday summer sunlight. The shrubs and trees glowed. The back of their house was a white plane with the sun reflecting in the windows. At the base of the plane was a black rectangle: the door leading into their kitchen. It was open.

‘Didn't we lock that door?'

Verity didn't answer. Instead, she said, ‘She's here,' and moved towards the open doorway as if in a trance.

‘She?' Danyl followed, nervous but curious.

‘Someone I grew up with,' Verity replied. ‘We were close when we were teenagers.'

‘Very close?'

‘Not like that, idiot. We ran away from home together. We were looking for something, but we fought about the best way to find it. When she left I thought she'd gone forever.'

They were close to the kitchen now. The darkness unknit itself: through the door they saw a suitcase, the dim outline of the table, a chair facing the doorway and a pair of bare, tanned legs extending from the shadows into the light.

‘What were you looking for?' Danyl said.

‘We were looking for a great man,' said a voice that came from the shadows about the chair. It was confident and amused, but at the same time hostile and cold: like a receptionist in a doctor's office. The legs uncrossed. Danyl noticed tattoos around each of the ankles. Complex spiral patterns.

‘We were looking for a great man,' the voice repeated. ‘One of the greatest who ever lived. And you found him, Verity. You found him, then you abandoned him for the sad little creature beside you.'