Unbidden Read online

  Then, in a nauseatingly-sincere voice, speaking very loudly, Mick said: “How’re you going, little fella? You’re a handsome devil, aren’t you? Can you help me?”

  Doug flashed onto what the older man had surmised – that the girl must be observing him from directly behind the door or a chink in the curtains. After Mick finished digging into a spot under its neck, the satisfied tom sauntered away through a catflap in the door, hindquarters raised high and tail swept over its back. Doug knew by the way Mick’s boot rocked back and forth that the old man was sorely tempted to kick the cat’s exposed, puckered sphincter before it went from sight.

  There was nothing else for it; Mick knocked on the door a third time. It was only interrupted by his bending over with a hoarse, phlegm-filled cough. He swayed at the end of it. Doug was familiar with Mick’s range of coughs. They rarely deviated from hard, hacking barks. He really should have tried out as an actor in the movies.

  But the ruse of sudden infirmity didn’t work. Mick repeated his agonising wait. He finally took notice of the folding chair beside the door and sank down into it.

  Doug watched him glance around, as if naturally curious about his surroundings, his gaze lingering over the thicket where the others were hiding. What for? A signal? Help? The old man gave an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders.

  Then the door opened partway. Doug tensed before relaxing a fraction. It was the girl – just her – standing cautiously behind the door. If she had sensed any real danger, she wouldn’t have opened it at all. Mick put on his most ingratiating face.

  “Hello, I wasn’t sure anyone was home. I was settling in for a wait.”

  He looked like he was trying to stand up, always the gentleman, but his weary bones resisted. He settled for leaning round from his seat, but Doug knew he could leap up in an instant if he had to.

  “Can you help us out, luv?” Mick asked, the epitome of helplessness.

  You would have been a star, Mick. A star!

  The girl didn’t answer. Mick had to make up for the lull.

  “Thank goodness someone’s here,” he said. “I was worried for a minute you might have been away on holidays.”

  “I wasn’t sure I heard you knock,” the girl explained tonelessly. “I was out the back.”

  She made a lousy liar. Mick could read her easily. Only the visible strain around her eyes put up any form of barrier. They appeared to be lined with tension from recent stress. She didn’t introduce herself. She didn’t move from the door. Mick wondered about her state of mind. Couldn’t she see for herself that he was completely harmless?

  “I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said. “Me and my daughter and the grandkids have got ourselves into a bit of bother. We were trying to turn around in the road and the van got stuck in a ditch.” He gave a slight shrug of the shoulders, clearly embarrassed. “I wanted to drive, but the van belongs to my daughter’s husband and she’s afraid to let anyone else take the wheel.”

  He got ready to give a vague, but plausible, answer when the girl asked where they’d come from and where they were going to, but she did neither.

  She did not respond at all, still staring at him, making him feel awkward.

  He persisted. “Would you have a phone I could use?”

  She shook her head, answered: “No.”

  Not “sorry”. Just “no”.

  He guessed she was hoping that he would somehow furnish the solution himself without having to bring her into it. She kept her body halfway inside, looking like she was ready to jump back in the house and slam the door.

  Mick decided that if he couldn’t put her at ease, then he’d make her feel obligated. “Could I trouble you for a drink of water? I’ve walked a fair way and I left the water bottle with the kids.” His last words were seized by a hacking cough that threatened to blow out into a full-scale fit.

  “Oh,” the girl said contritely, and rushed off, leaving the door partly open. It was nowhere near an invitation to enter, but he hadn’t been told to wait outside either. He rose from his chair and crossed the threshold, still playing the old dodderer, just in case someone else was out of sight round the corner. He looked over the living room. Except for the girl’s presence … and his own … the house had a decidedly empty feel to it.

  The girl hurried back with a glass of water. More used to him now, she was not startled to see him inside the door. Appearing pathetically thankful, he drank the flat, tepid water she gave him. He sipped it slowly, letting the silence spin out and putting the onus on her to speak.

  “The van. How far away are you?” she finally asked.

  He finished swallowing. “I’m not sure. Six or seven kilometres at a guess.”

  “Well, that’s not too far. We can take the tractor and pull you out.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, luv. The back wheels are almost sunk down to the rims. Is there anyone else who can help out? Your husband?”

  The girl offered a thin, forced smile. “Ah, well, my husband’s gone into town. I don’t know when he’ll be back. It mightn’t be until after dark.”

  Mick saw she was hedging again. The poor thing simply did not possess a poker face.

  She continued. “Is your family still with the van? There’s a trailer we can hitch up to the tractor. If we can’t pull your van out, we can bring everyone back here.”

  Mick looked doubtful. “I don’t know … are you sure there’s no-one else around who can help? You know … many hands make light work.”

  “The nearest neighbour is fifty kilometres away. I’m all you’ve got, I’m afraid.”

  “You’ve been a great help already.” He indicated the empty glass.

  “How about your grandchildren,” she asked. “Are they old enough to help out?”

  Mick smiled ruefully. “Two beautiful little girls – Jennifer and Tegan – cute as buttons. They look just like their mother.” He added sheepishly: “I keep forgetting their exact ages. Both less than ten though.”

  This seemed to ease her mind more than anything else he’d said and she opened up for the first time, smiling shyly. Mick could see she was too used to being open, living without guile. He suspected that was why she was living all the way out here, to stay away from the sort of people who would take advantage of her. “Would you like to call someone?” she asked. “We don’t have a phone, but we have a radio you can use.”

  “Mobile phones don’t work out here?”

  “Hardly,” the girl laughed.

  “No,” Mick agreed, his eyes suddenly cold, and shedding his meekness like a snakeskin. He stood straighter, his frailty gone. “No, we’re quite alone, aren’t we?”

  He moved to the open door, whistled and gave a curt wave.

  The girl was thrown by the abrupt change in his behaviour. She didn’t know what to think, wheels spinning in place.

  Before it got too complicated for her, Mick lifted his shirt and tapped the pistol tucked in his pants. Her face went ashen, eyes widening.

  Doug entered first, out of breath, his eyes doing a quick sweep of the room.

  “Just her?”

  “Yes.”

  The girl suddenly trembled like a slapped fibro wall, her feet trying to coordinate into pedalling her backward.

  “Don’t move, darling,’” Mick said. “We don’t want to chase you and you don’t want to get our blood up.”

  Warlock stumbled in through the front door next. Cutter stomped in last, lugging the crate, the front end of which Warlock couldn’t even manage to lift up on the porch.

  He noted the low, sturdily-built coffee table before him, and swept its surface clear with a boot before putting the crate down. A small potted plant, a bowl of Brazil nuts and a lantern went flying. Their crashing made a racket, but that was nothing compared to the girl. She collapsed at first sight of Cutter, screaming uncontrollably.

  She thrashed on the floor, her screams only broken when she heaved in breath to produce more of them. It was as if she was suffering some catastrophic
seizure, yet she retained some small measure of control, her eyes always fixed on Cutter. It was horrible to witness.

  “Loony,” Mick said quietly, badly shaken, his comment heard only because it came in a gap between screams. The girl was a mindless blaze of terror. Hardly human.

  Doug ran forward, his mind a whirl of what to do: slap her, stick his fingers down her throat so she did not swallow her tongue, hold her down until she became still and quiet. He was set to do all three if need be. But none was required. Simply moving to touch her did the trick, halting her screams and spastic movements. She cowered into a heap, her head down, her hands held up blindly to ward him off.

  Keeping her face to the floor, she made harsh, moaning sounds eerily imitative of her screaming, as if she was still trying but her voice box was too cracked and raw.

  Doug looked over toward Mick. “Jesus, what have we got here?”

  In short order, Mick told them the salient facts, including his thinking there was something wrong with the girl … as if everybody else couldn’t see for themselves. He finished with: “What’s she saying?”

  The girl hadn’t moved from where she had dropped, trembling terribly, looking like she was waiting for the sky to fall. She seemed to have got her voice back, but she didn’t resume her screams. Instead, she was mumbling into the floor … long, low ramblings that never ceased. Doug edged closer to listen in, doing it stealthily so she wouldn’t know he was near and go off again. He shook his head.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he said softly.

  At the close proximity of his voice, she shuddered violently, leaving off her rant. After a moment, it started up again. Doug interpreted it for the others. “It’s just rubbish. Something about a storm, a red rain, and a black panther lapping from pools of blood.” He repeated the more coherent parts of the babbling as it continued: “… gravestones made of skin … a woman wrapped in a snake … burning skulls … spiders eating babies … Nazis with broken arms.” He looked up at them, deadpan. “Oh, and she’s into AC/DC in a big way, but just their early stuff.”

  “Stark raving,” Mick said.

  “She’s mental,” Warlock said, interested. “I wonder if she’s got pills for it?”

  Doug expected the others to be just as confounded as he was, and they were –except Cutter. He was looking at the girl speculatively, as if he recognised something in what she said. Flexing his bandaged hand, he flicked it absently, spattering a long line of heavy red drops across the floor.

  “Watch where you’re aiming that thing,” Mick grumbled.

  The girl moaned at the patter of blood. Although Doug was closest to her, her eyes shifted constantly to Cutter’s feet. That was as far as they would go, not daring to gaze any higher. Doug bent, so he was in her field of vision. He pointed at Cutter.

  “Do you know him?”

  Cutter snorted. “I’ve never laid eyes on the clapped-out hippy.”

  The girl pressed closer to the floor at his words. She might have been trying to pull it over her head like a blanket. She certainly acted as if she knew Cutter, and knew him well. She appeared to know in advance he was the worst of them. She kept Doug, who she wouldn’t have known from a mass murderer, firmly between her and Cutter.

  Doug didn’t know if he received an answer from her or not, since she had begun shaking her head before he asked and kept shaking it long after Cutter had answered.

  He snapped his fingers in front of her face and though she flinched from it her focus remained solely on Cutter. Doug slammed his open hand down on the floor in front of her. That got her attention, her terrified eyes darting to him.

  “Have you seen his picture somewhere? Heard about him in the news?”

  The girl shook her head. Again, it wouldn’t stop. A repeat of the first senseless bout of head shaking.

  Doug was getting irritated. Things just weren’t going his way today.

  “Well, what is it, then? Is he green? Is his dick showing?”

  “I’ll show her my dick.”

  “Shut up!” Doug’s shout got everyone’s attention. Mick, who had gone away to start checking out the other rooms, came back for a look.

  The girl started crying. It was a low, hopeless keening that declared it was too late; nothing could be done to repair or bring back what was lost. It wasn’t crying for fear of what might happen to her. As far as she was concerned, the catastrophe had already taken place.

  “Okay, okay. Calm down. So you’ve never seen him before. He’s not that pretty to look at, is that it? I understand the feeling. But right now, I need some answers. The sooner you give them to me, the sooner you’ll see the back of us, alright? Hear me?”

  She nodded. It was a more sensible nod this time.

  “So you do understand me?”

  She nodded again.

  “You haven’t lost your tongue? You can speak?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. First thing … where the hell are we?”

  ***

  While Doug was questioning the girl, Warlock decided to give the place a once-over. Of course, if he found anything of value he would hand it over. Fortunately, their ideas of value did not coincide with his own. What he did was literally follow his nose. A faint scent permeated the pores of the house, one that joss sticks could not quite mask.

  It was a cheery little dwelling. Though laying it on a bit thick with the new age paraphernalia, such as hanging scarves and crystals, it meant well. Yet, something about the place also seemed a little off to Warlock. He had opened the drawer of a side table to find a whole bunch of dream catchers: wire and twig loops, beads and feathers, along with the spiderwebbing that was designed to capture bad dreams and keep them at bay. Strangely, all the dream catchers were wrecked in the same fashion – busted in the middle, as if someone had put a fist through each and every one.

  Maybe what made him uncomfortable was the idea of Persian rugs being put anywhere other than on the floor: several were hung up on the walls in place of pictures. It reminded him of drug-induced deliriums where the floors became walls and the ceilings slippery ramps. There was a lot of wall for those rugs to fill. No television. No radio. No stereo. No phone. No computer. No fridge. He supposed there was no point in having them since there wasn’t any electricity in the place. It was all gas lanterns and fat, greasy candles. The only nod to technology was an ancient CB radio nestled inside an old roll-top desk with the lid missing, powered by a row of battery cases sitting on bricks along the foot of the wall. You could smell the stale acid when you got too close.

  Perhaps it was this back-to-basics that bothered him. Though Warlock had done his own share of druidic spellcasting and swinging free-for-alls out in the woods, this house’s set-up was a little too primitive for his liking. He didn’t believe in having to walk through a backyard in order to take a shit.

  Setting his qualms aside, he sniffed out every corner. It was in the kitchen that his nostrils flared most. He got a good idea of how puritanical the home owners were about their diet when he went through their pantry cupboard, so, despite the presence of homemade beer, he doubted the sugar jar on the high shelf actually held sugar.

  Bingo. He had to squeeze the bulge out of the middle of the waxed-paper packet before he could free it from the sugar jar. What he got was a voluptuous, crackling stash of hash. He snapped the rubber band off and sniffed the contents. Glorious. His head swam just going near it. Hell, he didn’t even think he had to smoke it; he could simply clamp the open end over his nose and mouth and start hyperventilating, working the paper bag like a lung.

  He was tempted to do just that, but hearing someone approach, stuffed the hash into his bumbag, catching the zipper on the bulging packet in a hurry to get it shut.

  “Why are you grinning like an idiot?” Mick asked him, suspicious.

  Warlock began to stutter a response, but Mick kept going, not interested.

  ***

  These were the things the girl told Doug: two of them lived in the hou
se; they were a couple; her name was Selena, Mitch was her partner. Mitch was away in their only means of transportation, a covered jeep with a radio, gone to get supplies. Mitch would be home any minute now and surely would be bringing a lot of friends.

  Doug believed all but the last part.

  He reached out to help her up from the floor, but before he could touch her she shot to full height again as if catapulted. When he went to guide her by the arm, she jumped away from him, like opposing magnetic poles.

  Trying not to appear amused, he weaved from side to side like a cattle dog, driving her toward the CB radio nestled in the roll-top desk. Once there, he politely pulled out the chair for her. She eyed it as if it was equally treacherous. A little sadly – though still done in a somewhat mocking manner – he started to hook his arm around her to sit her down, but she swept down into the chair first.

  If only he’d had the same knack with his ex-wife.

  Now the girl was settled, he saw he was mistaken in thinking she was just pretty. She was not attractive in an average way. Instead, she possessed a rare and appealing quality hard to find in most people, especially the types Doug hung around with – she had a kind face.

  Thinking she was a mere girl was a mistake, too. Up close, she was revealed as past thirty. It was her slight frame and long, full hair that suggested more tender years. Brown curls tumbled down, tied off low in a scrunchy. Ordinarily, women gave up trying to tame that amount of hair in their late teens.

  Only fine lines marred her otherwise smooth face. Mick would have recognised they weren’t worry lines. He’d gotten to see them used briefly. They were smile lines, though Doug would never know that.

  He squatted down so he was eye-to-eye with her, but kept his distance.

  “Selena, listen to me. We need your wheels. And that’s all we want. Now, I know that some of what you’ve told me is the truth, but you’re also trying to feed me some bullshit as well. That tells me you’re reluctant to help me. So I’ll put it to you this way … either you do what I say, or you can do what he says.”

  He hooked a thumb at Cutter, who was in the process of unwinding the sodden bandage from his hand and letting it plop onto the breakfast table. Though Doug kept his voice down, Cutter knew they were talking about him. He smiled at the woman, using a lot of teeth. Doug had no need to ask if she understood. The chair creaked as a violent shudder went through her.