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House of Sighs Seventy-Nine
SEVENTY-NINEJulia’s head pressed against the seat. Skin clung to the leather. Its grip drew her face into a deformed jester’s smile.“See!” Jack pointed at her.She closed her eyes again. Something dark and primal pounded in her, a second heartbeat that couldn’t be ignored. “Who knows when there will be police?” she said. “You’re right, Di. This is James Bridge, and there’s never any cops at the station. If they come, they’ll come from half an hour away in any given direction. God only knows where we are. Any idea?”“Trees and more trees,” Jack said. “I can’t see a thing.”At the front of the bus, Michael tried to imagine what the others were talking about. He longed to be with them—safety in numbers, as they say—and not here at the mouth of the lion’s den. Or lioness. Either way, if the driver moved, he and the prayer-happy teenager would be the first to know. The first to die. Michael’s urge to join the others grew and pulsed.If you join them, you will be seen, he told himsel
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Seventy-Eight
SEVENTY-EIGHT“This isn’t the road that takes us into town and it isn’t the one taking us to Maitland or Cessnock, either,” Sarah said. “We’re in a hollow. The road is narrow. If we were on the main stretch out of town, we’d be seeing fields, right? She’s driving us further and further into scrub.”Julia sat up. “We have pens, keys.” She balled her shaking hands into fists. “Together we can take her down. One of us just has to grab the wheel. All or nothing, though.”“And there’s a big old gun right there in front of her just waiting to tear through us,” Sarah said. “You’re brave—” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “But you’re a bub. This lady won’t do anything to us unless we make her—”Jack moved forward, a sudden realization upon him. “We’re fucking hostages here.”Julia spun on them. “I don’t want to die.”Diana flinched.The bus filled with crashing; it drowned out their screams. Windows rattled in their frames.Liz Frost snapped back into reality, her pupils dilat
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Seventy-Seven
SEVENTY-SEVENReggie Frost climbed out of her well-loved recliner and decided to make herself useful, something she’d long ago thought she ever could be. Yet she kept trying, kept on climbing. There were things that needed to be done after all, and hate it though she did, nothing ever found its way back to its rightful place unless Reggie did it herself.The Christmas cutouts for example. She’d forgotten how many times she’d asked any one of her family members to take them down. The seasons had rolled on by and it was somehow November again; almost time to put the damn things back out again.She knew she was invisible, an extension of the furniture in some ways. I’m being worn away, eroded. Reggie daydreamed of meeting someone who made her feel young, someone who maybe—just maybe—knew how to love her. Where there was no love there was no life, and this nothingness left her with two simple conclusions: she was over being a mother and wife.Tired of trying.On those few and far betw
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Seventy-Six
SEVENTY-SIXThe crashing sounds of metal on metal.Jack launched himself onto the seat behind Sarah. Julia and Diana screamed. Sarah, however, fell. Her hands shot into the air and grabbed at nothing, only to land on the floor, limbs peddling like a beetle on its back.The sound continued. An intense rattle and pound.It consumed all.Peter knew that at some point he must have fallen asleep. Yes, the nightmare was vivid, but it was a nightmare nonetheless. Things like this didn’t happen to people like him—simple, really. His life had intertwined with his fiction. The notebook flew out of his hand and clapped onto the floor; a corner soaking up the dead man’s blood. Peter couldn’t help it; he wept. Jagged vibrations bulleted through him. His already busted lip cracked again.The bus shook.To Michael it felt like they were driving into the sky. The strobe of sun through the passing trees disappeared. He squinted against this blinding light, slammed his eyes shut and saw red.The
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Seventy-Five:
SEVENTY-FIVE:Radio“Report back, two-four.”The handset sat on its hook, DC cable swinging in an arc, ticking the dash.Static crunched. “You there, Liz?”The voice on the radio belonged to Bridget Sargent. Bridget was overweight and loving, her messy hair tamed by bands and pencils. She greeted Liz every morning by tapping her garish fingernails against the window of her cubicle. Bridget was their Lead Fleet Correspondent. She alerted employees to changed traffic conditions and radioed drivers concerning route punctuality. Liz knew this was why Bridget was calling. A commuter must have tired of waiting for the bus to arrive and called the transit hotline to file a complaint. It was Bridget’s duty to find out the reason for the delay.Liz imagined her co-worker’s plump face washed in the lights from her switchboard, could almost hear fingernails drumming against the desk. Brow furrowed, the first twinge of concern.A wasp slammed against the windshield and splattered.The bus
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Seventy-Four
SEVENTY-FOURArthritis throbbed as Wes Frost sifted feed among the chickens. The birds looked up at him between their frantic pecking with absent, dispassionate eyes.Food, those black peepers said. Nothing else. Food.He rounded up their eggs, placed them in a basket and whisked them inside. He returned with a butcher’s knife.The Rottweiler growled and barked at the end of its chain, furthered its arc in the dirt as it skidded back and forth. “Shut up, dog,” he said.Wes set his eye on one of the fatter hens and upended her. A single brown feather lodged under the collar of his shirt. He stretched her neck against the cinderblock and envied the bird its simple thoughts, its lack of fear.Severed the head. Set the bird to run blind. Watched it fall.Wes plucked it bare.He cleaned his hands in the upstairs bathroom, whilst listening to the record playing down the hall. Wes looked at himself in the mirror, drew a single feather from his collar and set it beside his razor.Down
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Seventy-Three
SEVENTY-THREEIt wasn’t a well-traveled road they pummeled down; the stretch grew more treacherous with each proceeding turn. As though to spite danger, their speed didn’t decrease—if anything, the odometer climbed. Yes, the 243 to town had strayed far from its route and wound deep into the valley.Within the bus, Jack bit his thumb, a habit he’d had since school, biting his nails down to the quick as he waited for a teacher to ask him questions he didn’t know the answers to. Not much had changed since then; there were few solutions within reach now, either.Peter saw the oncoming car. Perhaps his prayers had been answered. He swore to himself that he would get out of this alive and trusted his God to shield him. Sitting there in the heat, he knew that when the time came to run, there would be a fleet of angels protecting him. Their strong, white wings would be his armor.His mother’s voice in his ear. I’m proud of you, she said, breath thick with the stench of liquor. This is a te
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Seventy-Two
SEVENTY-TWOThe bus came to a stop.Jack pulled himself up off the floor. This is it, the voice in his head told him. He poised himself to run.Sarah wanted to grab this hot-headed young man and hold him. She pitied him for his machismo. They weren’t going to survive if one of them made a martyr of themselves. With every death, the group would come more unhinged. They were welded together now by tragedy, and a risk by one was a risk to all. Why can’t he see that? she wondered. Oh, Bill, please make him stop.The bus shifted into reverse. “What the fuck?” Jack said.Michael glanced up at the ceiling escape hatch, which was open a crack to allow airflow into the bus. He imagined himself getting up and forcing it open the rest of the way, but he was frozen in place. Terrified. The driver was alert now. Were he to attempt escape there would be the eventual bang! And in a flash his entire history would be wiped clean, all the problems, hopes and dreams that stitched him together—ripped
Last Updated : 2021-09-09
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House of Sighs Two & One
TWOEat the part that hurts, said the voice of the flies.Eat the part that hurts.ONEOutside, fog yielded to the winter wind and moonlight beamed through. That same rush of air swept over the James Bridge Motor Motel to rattle its eaves, blowing dirt against its windows. The night’s breath, so very much like a sigh, eased the door on the second floor shut. Ungreased hinges creaked, creaked, and trapped the new fathers within.Somewhere out there, time moved on. But not here. Not inside room eleven.
House of Sighs Three
THREEAiden came around to face his partner head on, Danny’s silhouette outlined in blue and pink. He could see every hair on his head, the fine peach fuzz along his arms, all of it highlighted in vibrant detail. Seeing him, Aiden thought, was to observe a painting, an oil on canvas titled ‘Man on Bed Holding Baby’.The itsy-bitsy-spider within Aiden’s throat bit down. Muscles tensed. Terror filled him and froze, painful cracks appearing in the ice as he brought his hands to his face. Things like this didn’t happen to people like him. This was something from a horror movie, or maybe, tomorrow’s headlines.I’m a good person, Aiden wanted to scream. I—we—don’t deserve this. It’s gone too far. Take it back.Take it back!Too late for that now. Aiden Bonner was in room eleven of the James Bridge Motor Motel, with the carpet beneath his feet and the stink of copper tainting the air. He was in room eleven with Danny as he brought the child to his face to plant a kiss on its cheek. Reali
House of Sighs Four
FOURThe woman who’d made the emergency call had collapsed at the entrance to another room on Kaaron Brennan’s right. Long, red hand streaks also palmed the door there. Blood lathered the handle, grew fat at the bottom of the knob, dropped to the puddle by the woman’s severed ear.Ploink.Ploink.Ploink.Brennan wanted to cry. She didn’t, and kept her pain inside.Stenciled across the ajar door were two words. It must have taken a caring, steady hand to inscribe that lavender printing so well, even going to the effort to put a little heart above the ‘I’. A mother’s touch, if there ever was one.“Timmy’s room,” Kaaron, who had two kids of her own, read aloud.Later, there would be time for weeping. That time was not now.
House of Sighs Five
FIVESneakers wisped over carpet. Aiden was tempted to reach into the dark, but he held off for the time being, letting his eyes adjust instead. The room sketched into form one shade of blue and pink at a time.Aiden found his partner sitting on the bed with his back to him, lit in neon glow.The quiet hotel room. Quiet, except for a curious suckling sound.“Danny?” Aiden said and took another step. His chest seized when he saw a shape on the far wall near the kitchenette, where the drawers had been opened.Just his shadow.You bloody fool, he could almost hear his mother say, leaning over to scold him as she did when he was a kid, bringing with her a wave of scented lady sweat and bush smoke. Pull your shit together.Aiden longed to have her here with him now, even if only to condemn him. That, at least, would be something. He felt so disconnected from his people, from his land. He couldn’t wait, one way or another, for this Hell to be over. Besides, he did need to pull his shi
House of Sighs Six
SIXNull relented and nodded, stepping up to his partner’s side as they inched to that doorway. Brennan smelled blood in there, in the pit of nothingness.They forced themselves through the arch, the quaking beam of Null’s flashlight revealing an upended phone on the floor, and farther ahead, the soles of two pale bare feet.Brennan didn’t want to see. Yet it was her job to see.It wasn’t that the woman’s clothes had been torn away. The comfy looking Sunday garments had bloomed off the slippery corpse, shed like the scrim of a cocoon. There was no beautiful butterfly here, not here in this dark house on Queen Street. Only cuts on top of cuts.For all Brennan knew, she stared at eighty stab wounds. Or more.“Good God in Heaven,” whispered Null. These were the quivering tones of that boy in the third grade, the one who feared his teacher’s yells because he hadn’t done his homework again.If only there was a way to wind back the clock and erase this sight from her mind, to go back
House of Sighs Seven
SEVENBlue and pink neon light illuminated Aiden’s way.He listened to the buzz of electricity from the MOTEL sign at the carpark’s entrance; it sounded like a hive, bee stingers rasping together. Another gust of wind blew through town to rustle his fringe, to stir the foggy cauldron obscuring the sky, stretching it thin in places to reveal the quarter moon beneath. He sweated. And he was scared.Aiden stopped.He thought of his flight from Brisbane to Bangkok and the black-and-white movie he’d watched on the way. It’s A Wonderful Life, it had been called, and while it featured numerous set-pieces, one particular scene returned to him now. In it, Jimmy Stewart’s character said he would lasso the moon and gift it to his gal to win her affection.And earn her love.The fog rolled in. Everything turned blue and pink once more.To think that he—or any man—had ever set their sights on the moon and thought it a three-dimensional thing worth dragging to Earth for the sake of someone sp
House of Sighs Eight
EIGHTAn ambulance pulled up as Kaaron Brennan entered the house. Never once in her six years on the force had she ever drawn her gun with the intent to shoot; she was more terrified now than she’d ever been. Null was by her side, covering blind corners. Every door she kicked open revealed empty rooms, rooms of unfinished business. The paperback on the bedside table with the bookmark tucked within, the mobile phone blinking messages received, a scented candle that had never been lit.Death in the details.Blood caked thick where the hallway branched into a T intersection, kitchen on her left and living room on her right. There was no mistaking which way the action had progressed; gore led to weeping MasterChef contestants.The door hung off its hinges on the other side of the room. Darkness beyond. Null shone his flashlight to reveal handprints on the architraves, swipes of blood resembling red, drooling smiles.Footsteps and flashing beams outside the window, past the television.
House of Sighs Nine
NINEAiden thought he’d dreamed the coming and going of sirens. He lifted his head from the pillow, muscles giving a kick. The musty motel air made his eyes itch.The television was on, evening soap operas playing out their inevitable dramas.Those sirens sounded so real.He fumbled for the remote and switched the old unit off. Beautiful faces shrunk down to a dot, bleeping into oblivion.Aiden propped himself up with one arm and looked to the window across from him, brow furrowed with concerned tension lines. He strained his ears, blinked his quiet shock away, and registered the fading screech of police cars. Or maybe an ambulance.Legs swung around to touch the carpet.He licked his lips. Dry.Aiden was at the point of crawling off the mattress and taking himself over to the kitchenette to drink water straight from the tap like he used to when he was a kid, but he stopped in his tracks. And he stopped because of a fresh sound, one that couldn’t be confused with another.The
House of Sighs Ten
TENIt took sixteen minutes for the police to arrive, and considering how long it took for the authorities to respond the day of the James Bridge massacre, this wasn’t too bad a turnaround. Some things had improved in this part of the world after all.Units dispatched from Maitland, further up the valley, their journey quickened by the expressway killing the town, skidding off the exit, kicking dust, their red and blue blinders like fireworks in the fog. They sped down the main drag and took a sharp turn, not bothering to stop at the traffic lights. Cockatoos feasting in the tree above the bus bench were startled into flight, feathers twirling and the branches tumbling into the gutter as they took to the air, screeching as though they were the chased ones.Units mounted the curb out the front of 15 Queen Street. One by one, lights bloomed within the surrounding houses. Rubberneckers took to their windows, clutching nightgowns, cupping faces to the glass.Officer Kaaron Brennan hit
