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PART THREE - Eighty-Five
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2021-09-09 17:26:35“PART THREE:
On the Road
“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson”
EIGHTY-FIVE
Peter prayed on the floor, notebook in hand. I’ll never fight with Mum again if I get out of this alive. This had changed him, made him see the value in her spite. All he wanted to do was write, but he would give it up to see her face again. He smiled, knowing that when the police found the dead girl rescue wouldn’t be far away.What Peter didn’t know was that Suzie Marten’s body wouldn’t be found by police for almost two hours. A haystack-toting pickup will stumble upon mother and daughter on the road. It will take another hour and a half for the police to arrive, the farmer constructing a makeshift barricade around the body from his cargo. He would spend his time comforting the woman, throwing rocks to keep the crows away, and at one point chasing a guinea fowl with a torn-off fingRelated chapters
House of Sighs Eighty-Four
EIGHTY-FOURThe empty Frost family kitchen.Water dripped from a faucet. The refrigerator hummed. Danish figurines lined the top of the kitchen door architrave, collecting dust. A pair of long-bladed scissors hung from a hook by the sink.Wes was upstairs in the bathroom. The Kinks and Waterloo Sunset lilted down the hallway from the record player. His wife loitered in the living room watching television, a magazine across her lap. Daytime soap operas mingled with the music.There was a filing cabinet in the study full of tax reports, and Liz’s and Jed’s old school papers—Reggie held on to it all. Every drawing, every Easter card, all kept and forgotten in that tiny room.Outside, last year’s Christmas cutouts flanked the house. Dead fairy lights in the trees swung low over Santa and his reindeer, a shepherd leading his donkey. It embarrassed Reggie that they were still up, though she couldn’t find the energy to take them down now.The shed: thirty feet from the front door on the
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Eighty-Three
EIGHTY-THREEJulia awoke with a start, relieved to be in her own bed. Her face tattooed with pillowcase creases. The room bathed in blue light. Her lips were chaffed and bleeding.A nightmare.In it, she’d been hovering on the ceiling of her room, looking down at her sleeping form on the bed. She enjoyed the sensation of weightlessness as she hung in the air. But when she tried to move, her arms remained in place. She floated crucified, damned to scrutinize her own body forever. She started to panic, tried to talk.Nothing.The bedroom door opened. A sliver of light across her sleeping face. A man with long, gray hair tiptoed into the room like a Punch and Judy doll on jerking strings. She wanted to scream a warning at her other self. No luck. The man had come for her. He stopped at the head of the bed and bent over. She heard him sniffing, the sound of his pebbled tongue running over her skin. Then, with a robotic slowness reserved for nightmares, the intruder lifted his head to
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Eighty-Two:
EIGHTY-TWO:ScissorsTen year old Jack stood in the backyard. His parents were gone. The smell of evening barbecue: oily and rich. Next to him was the apple tree. Beetles flew in its shadows.Sunset. An orange sky raked with purples, and high above, an airplane. It left a long silk thread in the ozone, like a spider web when it catches the light. Jack could just make out the Boeing’s drone.Another sound. Closer.Screaming.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Eighty-One:
EIGHTY-ONE:NoiseThe memory rose from somewhere deep inside, a bubble from the bottom of a lake. Pop. It made Jack dizzy. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Crunching thirst.A fly buzzed by his head, its whine like the roar of chainsaws at dawn. He tried to ignore it and focus on the scene in front of him, on the shape and texture of that one word, on the word.Scissors.If someone wanted or had scissors, it meant that someone was willing to fight, willing to bring those twin blades down in a shimmering arc—over and over—into the driver’s face until she was dead and someone else took control of the bus. That person would be him. Jack always knew he was hero material. It silently thrilled him.He stared through the Perspex hub at the back of the driver’s head—little life there. She reminded him of a toy whose batteries were winding down.If only the emergency escape window was closer, he thought, then I could just make a run at it. Or if we all decided to take her down together, the
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Eighty
EIGHTYJulia dipped low in her seat again, drawing a ragged breath. The driver hadn’t moved after all. It struck her as almost impossible that the woman could be both there and not there at the same time. Though then again, possibly not. Because when Julia closed her eyes, she could see the posters in her bedroom far away, could hear music crooning from the cassette player on her dresser.Pulling something close to her chest, assuming it was one of her teddy bears. Only it wasn’t. The baby in her arms was a viscera-coated, half-dead creature clambering for breath.She clenched her fists as hard as she could, refusing to resign to the worlds of hurt on either side of her blink. Two places at once, and neither of them safe.“Look,” Jack started again, his voice like a shake in the dark. Julia didn’t know why she feared him so, yet fear him she did. She watched the way he held up his large strong hands, both as big as trashcan lids, and shivered. “I’ve got these. I can—” he mimed a ki
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House 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 : 2021-09-09
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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
