Authors: Stephen M. Irwin

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #General

The Dead Path (10 page)

She watched him nod slowly. He let out a long breath. He was working up to telling her something.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe I just had a … a flash. Either that, or maybe Tristram had reached his proper time.”

“Proper time? To what?”

“Die.” She could see her brother’s face tense as he digested this. “That’s what ghosts are, I think,” she continued. “Spirits of people who are killed, or take their own lives, before their time.”

Nicholas’s eyes were shadowed shells beneath a grim frown.

“Ghosts,” he said so softly it was barely a whisper. “Can I tell you about ghosts, Suze?”

A trickle like ice went up her arms and back. But she nodded.

He told her about the motorcycle crash, and borrowing the phone from the horse-faced couple he had collided with. About hurrying home to find Cate crooked like a broken exclamation mark, head bent too far backward over the tub, her open eyes unable to blink out the dust that coated them. About the Yerwood boy with the corduroy jacket and screwdriver. About all the ghosts that silently conspired to send him home. He told her that there were ghosts here, too, including the suicide in the yellow anorak. The sun had sunk below the hills, and lights glowed orange in the houses they passed. The air was faintly spiced with scents of frying meat and onions. He finished by telling her how he’d chased the Thomas boy into the woods two days ago, and lost him at the same place he’d lost Tristram—the shotgun tunnels under the tall, rusted water pipe.

“Those tunnels full of spiders,” she said.

Nicholas looked at her, shocked.

“What?” she asked. “Do you think I never went in the woods?”

He shook his head.

“More fool you then,” she said.

She stopped them outside a blue concrete barrier, where fading graffiti demanded “Free East Papua” and exclaimed that “Fellatio Sucks.” She pushed the back of his head. “Here. Let’s have a look.”

She stood behind him and lifted his hair, finding the scar on his scalp. He’d never seen it of course, but he’d felt it. The edge of the concrete step of the Ealing flat had left a lumpy scar a thumb’s length across.

“You think that’s why I’m seeing ghosts?” he asked. “A bump on the head?”

“Maybe it was the shock of losing Cate. Maybe that nasty bump just cleared the plumbing.” She rapped his head with her knuckle and grinned. “When’s my birthday?”

“My memory’s fine, bloody hell—”

“When?”

Nicholas rolled his eyes. “October thirty-first. Halloween girl.”

She sent him a dark smile. “Yes and no. Yes, correct date—and by the way you owe me a present from last year. But, no, not a Halloween girl. Halloween’s different down here. All Hallow’s Eve. The Celts called it Samhain.” She pronounced it
sah-wen
. “For us in the south, the end of October is Beltane, the return of summer. Our Halloween is six months opposite.”

She watched Nicholas do a quick calculation in his head. “April thirtieth.”

She nodded.

“My birthday,” he said quietly.

She nodded again, and bumped his shoulder with her own.

“You’re the Halloween child. And a child born on Samhain is said to have second sight.”

A
s they walked, Nicholas felt a lightness in his chest. He wondered what this all meant—was his sister just telling him what he wanted to hear? That they both had some gift—or curse—of seeing the dead?

He felt her eyes on his face, as if she could sense his doubt.

“You used to have inklings,” she said. “I remember. Like the time you told me not to use the toaster. Mum ignored you and plugged it in, and it sparked and gave her a shock. You just knew, didn’t you?”

“I’d forgotten about that.”

That wasn’t the only time he’d had a notion, a gut feeling, scraps of information of things, places, people that really he couldn’t have known. Throughout his life he’d had uninvited, inexplicable feelings that something wasn’t quite right or that someone was ill or this thing was broken or that thing wasn’t lost but in a mislabeled cardboard box under the house.

During a high school field trip to the state art gallery, he and four classmates had been about to cross the street to the footpath opposite when Nicholas convinced his classmates to remain where they were. Not a minute later, a speeding taxi mounted the opposite curb and came to a shatter-glass stop against a power pole. The cab driver had suffered a mild stroke and lost control. Had Nicholas and his fellow students crossed the road, they’d all be in hospital—in a ward or in a steel drawer.

Then there’d been his work around London. He’d always seemed to know which village house would yield the fading valises and old carved bookends he was hunting.

And, of course, the night in London when he’d sat curled on his couch, miserable with a heavy head cold, only half-hearing his flatmate Martin’s invitation to “get off your lardy white arse” and come to a party off Portland Road. Nicholas felt lousy—it would have been a tight bet whether there was more mucus in his lungs or his stomach—but the moment Farty Marty mentioned the party he knew he had to go. Two hours later, sniffing like a coke addict but dressed in the best clothes he owned, he met Cate.

Yes, he’d had inklings. Notions. Gut feelings. Until now, he’d given them no thought.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

Suzette smiled. He could barely see it in the dusk. “It means I don’t think you’re crazy.”

T
he evening sky was gunmetal gray. Shadows were blue and amorphous. Headlights were diamonds. Her brother’s profile was all dark angles. Finally, he looked at her.

“You’re a financial advisor, Suze. How do you know all this stuff?”

“You see the dead. How do you not?”

“I do go to phone Psychic Hotline but always end up dialing Lesbian Nurses Chat—”

“Do you have to make fun of everything? It’s bitter.”

Overhead, a carpet of flying foxes flew west from their mangrove riverbank havens, an armada of black cuneiforms against the cloudless evening heavens, their leather wings eerily silent. The air was crisp, faintly spiced with car fumes and potato vine.

She took a breath. “It started with Dad’s books.”

Nicholas looked at her. “What books?”

She blinked, amazed. “His books? In the garage?”

He was still staring at her. Finally, he guessed, “In the suitcases?”

“Yes, in the suitcases! Jesus! Are you saying you never looked in them?” She shook her head. “Honestly, sometimes you can be so thick.”

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then broke the silence. “So? What kind of books?”

“Herbalism. Roots and oils. The supernatural. Signs and protections. I’ve left most of them, I borrowed a few.”

She looked at Nicholas. His face was shadowed, but she could see his frown.

“What do you mean, though? Dad was … what? A druid?”

“I didn’t know him, Nicholas.”

Nicholas turned his sparkling gaze to her, as if finally realizing a hidden truth. “And you … Jesus! All those herbs and rubbish you grew in the garden when you were a kid. I thought you just liked gardening! That was … what? Hemlock and mandrake and double-double-toil-and-trouble shit?”

Suzette pursed her lips. “You never asked.”

“Christ, Suze, I thought you’d come up here to tell me I need to see someone who can dope me up with Thorazine, and here you are saying … Fuck, what are you saying?”

Suzette fought the urge to snap at him. “I’m just saying there’s more to the world than the periodic table.”

“No shit,” snorted Nicholas. “And the kids?”

“Quincy, nothing. All she wants to do is look for Saturn’s rings and bring home every creature from the pound. Nelson, though, he’s …” She looked at Nicholas. “He’s like you. Gifted. But ignorant.”

Nicholas bristled. “I’m not ignorant.”

“You are about magic.”

“That’s because I don’t believe in magic.”

“Nicholas.” She stopped, hands on hips, waiting till he turned around. “You’re haunted. You see the dead. How can you not believe in magic?”

He turned and kept walking. “I’m happy you have a hobby. Are you a good witch?”

She caught up with him. “I own three Sydney houses outright and have five negatively geared investment properties. I’m good at everything I do.”

“I meant ‘good versus evil’ good.”

“
People
are good or evil. Magic is magic. Some is performed with
good
intentions. Some isn’t. Some is easy. Some is hard. It’s like physics. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing comes free. You need to put in effort. You need to make sacrifices.”

She saw Nicholas stiffen at the last word.

Then she glanced up. They were at an intersection. To the right, beyond hopscotch puddles of streetlight and shadowed picket fences, was the squat, heavy-browed building. Suzette felt a familiar old worm of fear turn in her belly.

They’d reached the Myrtle Street shops.

T
hey stepped under the awning and their footsteps echoed on the tiles. This had turned out to be a very weird evening. Suzette—sensible, nose-buried-in-financial-theory-textbooks Suzette—was into magic. And his dead father, too. Nicholas brushed hair from his face. It felt unpleasantly like spiderweb and he shivered.

The shops were all shuttered and dark.

He expected a wave of pleasant nostalgia to suddenly overtake them, and they’d laugh about the lollies they’d gourmandized and the ice creams they’d loved that were no longer made. Instead, the dumb fronts of the shops were oddly hostile.

It’s because we’re being watched.

The thought shuddered through him like a shot of vodka. The streets were quiet. Nothing moved. The world was more shadow than substance and the wind made the power lines moan. They were alone. And yet, he had the unpleasant, light feeling in the pit of his gut that they were being watched.

“We should go,” he said.

“Okay,” said Suzette. But instead, she nodded at the new shop: Plow & Vine Health Foods. All they could see in the glass was their own ghostly reflections; the shop within was as black as the waters of a deep well.

“This was the haberdashery.” Suzette leaned closer, trying to see in. Nicholas fought an insane urge to yell “Get back!” Her eyes were fixed on the dark shop window. “Do you remember the old seamstress? Mrs. Quill. She freaked me out.”

Quill. The bent-backed old woman tucked behind a counter much too large for her, perched like some benevolent old parrot, nodding and sending a smile as he passed. Behind her had hung ranks of shirts, pants, skirts, and dresses that used to bring to mind a picture that, for a while during primary school, had haunted his dreams: from a book about the Second World War, a photograph of a dozen or so Russians—men, women, children—hanging dead and limp from a huge and leafless tree. A chill went through him and, as it did, another memory returned.

“You used to hate walking past these shops,” he said. “When you were small. You used to cry.”

She shrugged her shoulders, as if to shuck off an unpleasant memory—then she seemed to brighten. “Hey. I brought you something.” She reached into her pocket and produced a tiny parcel wrapped in tissue paper.

Not here. Not while we’re being watched.

He shook away the illogical thought. “Lovely. Can it wait till we get home?”

“Fucking hell, Nicholas,” said Suzette, cranky. “I don’t want Mum to see, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Christ! Because she doesn’t understand that kind of stuff! Jeez.”

Nicholas turned his back to the dark-eyed shop and removed the ribbon, unstuck the tape. Inside was a necklace. It was made of wooden beads and sported a polished brownish-white stone set in silver.

“The stone is sardonyx,” explained Suzette. “You said you had some headaches, so …”

“They stopped.”

“Yeah. ‘Thank you’ works, too. The wood is elder.”

Nicholas turned to face the streetlight. The stone was an inch across and cut in a square crystal, milky clear with tigerish bands of blood red. The beads were a dark timber, roughly spherical but each showing dozens of facets where they’d been cut by hand with a sharp knife. A woven silver cord held them together. It was, he had to admit, a piece both pretty and oddly masculine.

“Thank you,” he said.

Suzette didn’t answer. She was staring at the front door to Plow & Vine Health Foods. She leaned closer and frowned.

“Look.”

He followed her gaze and felt his stomach take a slow roll.

In the dim light it was just possible to make out an indentation in the wood doorframe. The mark had been painted over perhaps three or four times and would be invisible in daylight. But in the angled light from the streetlamp, it was fairly clear. A vertical line, and halfway down it, attached to its right, a half-diamond. The mark that had been drawn in blood on the woven head of the dead bird.