Ballad for a Mad Girl Page 22

  I grab hold of the photo and jam it between my thighs. Turn the key, pump the accelerator, listen to the starter motor whine. The engine turns over, clicking.

  ‘Come on, baby.’ I check the rear-vision mirror but there’s no one behind. ‘Seriously? Come on.’

  There’s movement across the intersection, near the shrine.

  I look up. It’s the same man in the raincoat, the one I passed at the cemetery. He’s frozen to the spot, staring at the car, holding a single white rose in one hand and a drooping clump of grass in the other. Our eyes meet.

  In that millisecond, I know who left the white rose on Mum’s grave—I know who tends the shrine.

  A sick wave rises in my throat. Does he think that bringing flowers and pulling weeds and painting the cross makes him free? Knowing that I rubbed shoulders with Dominic Aloisi as I passed through the cemetery gates—and somehow not knowing it was him—is too much. It’s a betrayal of my own intuition.

  I’m willing the car to start. It’s like I’m holding a gun with an empty chamber—I can point, but I can’t shoot. And he’s coming; he’s crossing the road. Halfway across he drops the white rose and it’s crushed under his boot. I’m shaking the steering wheel, turning the key, listening to the engine cough and choke in the silence between CD tracks.

  It’s no use.

  I get out of Mum’s car and slam the door. My legs are shaking. As he gets closer, I hold up her photo like a shield. ‘Don’t touch me.’

  He cocks his head to one side. ‘I know you,’ he says.

  I lift the photo higher.

  He seems dazed, white around the gills, like Rex when he’s out of water. His face is haggard, and he has a vibrant red rash along one side of his neck.

  ‘I’ve seen you before.’

  I’m trembling so violently my body aches. ‘You’ve never seen me. You don’t know me.’

  His eyes flick back to the photo, narrowing, and his whole body slumps to one side. ‘You look like her,’ he says, and his voice cracks.

  I stamp out a surge of pity. ‘Like my mother.’ I push the photo closer. ‘You killed her—you ran her down. I know it and one day everyone else will, too. And you know what else? Hannah Holt is alive, so you can’t cover your tracks anymore. You killed William Dean for nothing, and you killed my mother for nothing. That makes you nothing.’

  A misty rain starts to fall. We face off, both of us crying, until I can’t tell the difference between rain and tears.

  ‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘No.’ He runs his hands over his face, as if he’s trying to blink me away.

  He can blink all he wants. I’m not going anywhere. I won’t move away first.

  He steps back, clutching his raincoat around his wasted body. ‘I know you,’ he repeats. ‘You were there. You’re the girl in the dust. I saw you.’

  I shiver.

  I think of the way he stared into my eyes the night he killed William. It’s not possible—I wasn’t born—and yet Dominic Aloisi is the only living person who might believe me about the dreams, the visions, the Swanston ghosts. He knows. He feels them, too. I want to scream at the injustice—stuck forever, sharing a mad dream with my mother’s killer. But, as the rain stops, I realise something elemental—Dr Nichols would be proud. He can’t hurt me. He’s dying, rotting from the inside. I can see that. There’s nothing I can do or say that could be worse than what’s already happening to him.

  ‘They’re haunting you,’ I say. ‘They’ll never leave you alone. You know that, don’t you?’

  He takes another step back, and it’s enough for me. The mad dream is his now.

  I get into my mother’s car and she starts, first time.

  Tuesday nights are quiet. Pete’s got the CLOSED sign up on Lumpy’s door.

  I stand outside in the shadows for a while, watching my friends through the steamed-up windows. They’re crammed into our booth at the back, a candle on the table, a single dim light on in the kitchen. Mitchell and Pete are leaning across the table, deep in conversation. Gummer’s behind the counter, spinning a pizza base like a vinyl record, his finger poking through the centre. Amber is here, too. It’s time we talked. Kenzie’s resting on the back of the booth, chin on her hands, staring out at the street. I’m drawing out the moment—making sure I remember the details so I can file this memory away with the good ones.

  I should be busting to share what happened tonight on the corner of Waites and Blaine, but something is warning me to hold it close. It’s not a story I’m ready to tell, and I’m not sure they’re ready to hear it. The next few months will be busy for them—they’ll be getting ready for exams and making plans for the future.

  I’ll be on hold, and it might take me a while to catch up. But I’ll keep going, even if I’m not in the lead.

  Tonight feels like it’s the final episode of a long-running sit-com: we’ll kiss cheeks and fade out, leaving Pete to wipe the tables and turn out the light. I guess I thought the day we met was the way we’d always be—we were pieces that didn’t fit anywhere else. There was no warning that we wouldn’t always be together.

  Or maybe there was—I just wasn’t listening.

  Kenzie brings me homework from school. She thinks I should try to keep up; she says if I fail (I say when I fail) it’ll make next year easier. She’s probably right. The problem is everything is so much harder than I remember—my focus, my memory, my commitment.

  I try to focus on the equation in front of me, but the numbers make no sense. They’re drunken ants, marching across the page. I pick up my phone—as usual it has no messages.

  Everyone is moving on.

  And we’re going back.

  The Johnsons are relocating in February and Dad has been offered the position of property manager at the farm. The lease stands—we’ll basically be caretaking our own property until it runs out—but when Dad told me the news it felt as if I’d just been drained of poison. Like I had reached the endgame with full life and a freaking arsenal of weapons.

  Dominic Aloisi’s confession didn’t come easily. On my own, my claims were discounted as ramblings, but one of Mum’s friends—the blonde girl, Anna Foster—was interviewed and she admitted they were there the night William Dean fell. She said that she and my mother had wanted to tell the story, many times, but Aloisi had convinced them to keep their conspiracy of silence, and for a long time they’d agreed—telling wouldn’t change anything. But they didn’t know what Aloisi had done.

  Anna Foster’s statement established motive in my mother’s ‘accident’; detectives began to look more closely, and Aloisi’s pack of lies fell in on itself.

  Susannah Holt was advised that her daughter was alive and well, but Hannah had no plans to return to Swanston—neither to see her mother, nor to acknowledge the terrible price William Dean paid for keeping her secrets. And just a few months after they’d left this town behind, the Deans were told their son had not taken his own life twenty-two years before. I feel a sense of responsibility for that. I wonder if there was a moment of peace for them before their nightmare returned in a different form, if Mrs Dean still carries her son’s ashes like a child. I wonder if we’ll see each other again when Dominic Aloisi one day faces trial for the murder of their son.

  I visit Mum’s memorial every week, and one day I hope to have the courage to pull down the shrine. Showing grief is normal behaviour. But, like sick birds pretend to eat, I try to fit in, to not cause pain, but I feel as if I’m stuck in a halfway place. Sometimes I still think there are voices on the other side, but the voices of reason shout down the quieter ones I strain to hear.

  Every Tuesday at four, Dr Nichols talks with me, crossing things from her list. Every morning, Dad lays out my pills with exaggerated care. Cody navigates around me like I’m broken glass, and Kenzie wears a resolute expression as if she’s being forced to visit a sick relative. Gummer still thinks things through from every angle, but I suspect he’s rapidly running out of theories about me. His visits are brief now—he n
ever sleeps on our couch, and he leaves too much silence for me to fill.

  Diesel is lying under my feet. He has finally beaten his stair demons; he made it all the way to the top. I sometimes believe he understands more than any of us about fear.

  I lay down my pen and close my laptop, sighing. It’s no good. I have a headache coming, and it’s time for dinner.

  I go downstairs, Diesel close behind. Cody is dozing on the couch with his bare feet hanging over the back, an open car magazine on his stomach. It’s dark outside and starting to rain. So much for Mum’s canary-in-the-coal-mine theory—it’s been the wettest Swanston winter I can remember.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’

  Cody shrugs. He doesn’t open his eyes. ‘Work.’

  I pick up a pack of cards from the kitchen table and shuffle them absentmindedly. It’s a trick deck: hidden in the intricate illustrations on the face of each card, there are tiny indicators telling you the card’s number and suit.

  Pick a card, any card. Let me read your mind.

  ‘Where was he working today?’

  ‘Fixing fences at the Morgan place.’

  I try to snap and split the deck the way I used to, so fast people would think it was magic, but my hands aren’t my own. They’re shaking, the veins bulging like they did once before. The cards flutter across the kitchen floor. I bend down to pick them up and my vision goes dark, pixelated, like it does when you stand up too quickly.

  An awful sense of déjà vu rises like a black wave. My brother is asleep on the couch. I’m shuffling a deck of cards. Dad hasn’t come home.

  ‘He should be here by now.’ I’m trying not to let the panic show, and failing. Maybe I am seeing signs and portents everywhere, falling into that trap of catastrophic thinking, like Dr Nichols said.

  Cody sits up and glances outside. Sleet hits the windows, turning them muddy. He puts his magazine down on the table. ‘I’ll call him. It’s okay.’

  I know he’s just humouring me. I’m broken glass. ‘Yes. Call him.’ I wring my hands, squeezing the blood until my fingers turn white. ‘Tell him he has to come home right now.’

  My brother picks up his phone. He’s moving too slowly. I watch him press the buttons, frame by agonising frame.

  ‘He’s not answering. Wait here. Don’t wig out on me, Grace.’ He goes to his room.

  Wait. Wait?

  The air ripples. I’m feverish all over. Diesel starts barking at the ceiling.

  William is here. He doesn’t show himself, but he’s here—he’s the darting smudge at the edge of my vision, the stabbing needle behind my eye, the worms under my skin. I brace myself against the kitchen table, digging my nails into the wood, taking great gulps of air.

  The alternative is to pretend, and do nothing. And it’s different this time, I realise. The panic is manifesting itself in a new way: a clear-headed, unshakeable belief. It’s like I’ve been stuck in a dark room for years, moving around the indistinct, shadowy shapes of covered furniture—now, I’m racing around, stirring the dust, dragging the covers from the furniture and throwing up the windows to let the light in.

  And I’m furious.

  I did what you wanted. Why are you still here? You’ve taken everything from me! You have to leave me with something!

  Cody’s back. Shoes on and carrying a coat. ‘No answer at the Morgan place, either. What do you think we should do?’

  I hand him his keys.

  *

  Cody has the heat turned up so high our combined sweat and fear fog the glass. It’s like it’s raining inside the car. He uses his sleeve to wipe the windscreen and opens the window. A blast of freezing air takes my breath away.

  ‘Did you call before…?’

  ‘I called again, twice. No answer,’ Cody says.

  ‘He always picks up.’

  ‘I know.’ His mouth is set in a hard line. He keeps adjusting his grip on the steering wheel.

  ‘Can’t you go faster?’

  ‘I’m doing a hundred and twenty.’ He glances over. ‘Are you okay?’

  I nod, staring straight ahead, but I’m reliving the night I froze on the pipe, the terrifying ride home in Pete’s car, the thing in the ditch on the side of the road. The seatbelt’s getting tighter and tighter. It’s choking me, bruising my shoulder. I loosen it, holding it away from my chest with my thumb. I don’t know how long we’ve been in the car or how far away we are from the Morgans. I have no concept of time. The shapes and shadows streaking past—trees, fences, sheds—all look the same, as if we’re living the same ten seconds, over and over.

  There’s ice on the road ahead. Cody sees it, too. He eases off the accelerator. Before I can scream at him not to brake, he does, too hard; we hit the patch, the tyre noise disappears and we’re aquaplaning. Everything slows down. The tail end slides left and the car begins to spin. In the space of a heartbeat, I see a future where Cody wrenches the steering wheel in the opposite direction and the car flips and rolls like a tumbleweed; instinctively, I throw myself across to grab the wheel. The slack seatbelt lets me go. Using both hands and all my weight, I yank the wheel hard right, turning into the spin. Cody fights it, but I have the element of surprise and he can’t stop it from happening. It’s a carnival ride—a sick spinning, the starry sky a blur, the wind moaning through the open window, our necks snapped sideways—but eventually the ride comes to a stop.

  The car is in the middle of the road, facing the wrong way. Nothing but the sound of our breathing and a humming in my ears. I peel my stiff fingers from the steering wheel, sit back in my seat, and close my eyes.

  ‘Are you in one piece?’ Cody says.

  ‘I’m okay. You?’ I look across at him.

  He pulls over to the side of the road. ‘I was thinking about Dad. I can’t believe I did that…I know better. That was almost it for us.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You and I should never be in the same car at the same time.’

  Cody has said exactly what I was thinking; it shocks me that he feels a similar responsibility to stay alive—for Dad.

  ‘I think he’s probably just as scared we’ll lose him,’ I say quietly.

  He looks away, but not before I see tears.

  The rest of the trip is made in white-knuckled silence. Cody concentrates hard on navigating the slippery road. I’m repeatedly dialling Dad’s number as if the sound of his recorded voice is a beacon, calling me home.

  Ten minutes later, we pass the turn-off to the Morgan farm. Cody stands on the brake, turns around and pulls up at the entrance to the access road, the windscreen wipers still flapping madly, though the rain has stopped. From here, we can see a huddled mass of cattle, steam rising from their backs, and rectangles of warm light spilling from the windows of the house. Fifty metres ahead, the road splits three ways.

  ‘We should go up to the house first. He might be there.’ His voice cracks with indecision. ‘But I can’t see the truck. He’s probably already at home wondering where we are.’

  I squint into the dark. On the left side, the paddocks are a sea of tall, rippling feed grass; on the right, the grass is chewed down and trampled by cattle. I open the window and tip my face up to the sky. I close one eye—the good eye, not the one with the stabbing pain—and everything looks different.

  ‘Take the left.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There’s a light.’

  ‘I don’t see anything.’

  I open the door and get out. The car can’t take us where we need to go.

  ‘Grace, what are you…’

  I squeeze between the fence wires, ankle-deep in sucking mud, running, heading for the blackest part of the landscape. Through one paddock and into the next, and the one after that. Cody’s somewhere behind me, lumbering and yelling, but I can’t wait for him to catch up.

  I’m following a star—a single, flickering star that doesn’t look like the rest.

  But a moment later the star falls from the sky and disappears. I’m lost. I
stop, blinking. My breath forms a curling mist. Gradually, my eye adjusts and the dark isn’t dark anymore—it’s layers of green. I turn around. Behind me, the grass parts, bending to a form—shoulders, hips and slender arms—and the stalks ripple like the plucked strings of a harp. The grass flings back as she passes, moving fast; she turns her head to make sure I’m following, but she has no face. She leaves no footprints, makes no sound.

  I reach out a cold hand to find it suddenly infused with heat.

  I run after her, sobbing, never quite able to catch her, like chasing the end of a rainbow. I ache with love; it’s tearing my heart from my chest. Part of me wants to stop running—where we’re going, when we get there, I’ll lose her. I know this.

  She leads me to the edge of the paddock. It’s open here; nothing to hold her shape. She shifts through another fence, losing form, just quicksilver mist.

  Cody’s getting close. His voice is not far away, calling. I stop at the fence, holding out my hand, begging her to stay. ‘Cody, here!’

  He comes crashing through the grass, wet through, almost tackling me to the ground. ‘Jesus, Grace.’ He’s gripping my shoulders, searching my face.

  ‘Look,’ I point. ‘She’s right there. Do you see her?’ I’m smiling, my heart so full it might explode.

  Cody turns around and his face lights up in an expression of sublime wonder. ‘I see her!’

  He lets me go so suddenly I fall backwards and land in the wet grass. He’s off, hurdling the fence, sprinting, and I’m laughing and clapping my hands, trying to get to my feet. Cody’s still running, up an embankment, skidding on his hands and knees in the mud. I swear he passes right through her—and keeps going.

  He hasn’t seen her. He’s seen Gina, Dad’s truck.

  And she’s gone.

  I finally stand up, set my shoulders, put one foot in front of the other. My world is utterly normal again: black, cold, real. Frightening.

  The twin beams of Gina’s headlights cut through the dark and I can hear two voices: Cody’s, pitched with panic, and Dad’s, slow and deep.