The Shadow House
Anna Downes
For Grandad Ken
PROLOGUE
The bones come first. A gift, but nothing wanted. Next, a doll: a likeness, a promise. And the blood marks the choice. It finds a face, and then you know.
Help. I need help. That’s what he said; I remember it clearly.
Voices in the night, and footsteps, soft and slow on a carpet of green, on the grassy path that goes up to the blue sky and the diamond moon and the place where the birds fly north. That’s where it happened.
A noise … No, two noises, one after the other. First quiet, then loud. Oh, there was so much blood. I didn’t know what to do; I didn’t know how to help.
I remember all of it – only then I forget.
The rules, though; I won’t forget those. Listen to me carefully, repeat after me: bones, doll, blood. That’s how it goes. Things arrive, and then … a magic trick. Here one minute, gone the next. No one knows where he went. No one except the birds. They know. They saw everything.
It wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t be stopped.
Things arrive, and then they take you.
ALEX
1
‘Okay, kids.’ I brought the car to a stop and peered out the windscreen. ‘I think this is it. We’re here.’
Neither child replied. Glancing at each of their sleeping faces in turn – Ollie beside me in the front, Kara in the back – I felt a pang of anticlimax. The first time I’d seen Pine Ridge it had taken my breath away, and I’d been looking forward to seeing their expressions as we drove in. Well, Ollie’s expression anyway. At eight months old, Kara couldn’t yet tell animal from vegetable so I wasn’t likely to get a reaction from her, but I’d been certain my fourteen-year-old son would be impressed. Instead, he was snoring. Headphones on, head lolling awkwardly to one side, drool glistening in the corner of his mouth.
‘Kids,’ I said again, a little louder. As if in response, Ollie’s phone lit up in his lap, buzzing softly with a notification. I glared at it, tempted to pick it up and hurl it straight into the nearest bin.
Instead, I checked the house number and street name again. Definitely the right address, and the description matched. A split-level at the far end of the village, the last in a row of four. White walls, blue roof, two balconies and a timber staircase at the side. No one was waiting to greet us, though – which seemed strange until I remembered that I hadn’t given an arrival time when I’d emailed a few days earlier. I’d had no idea when or even if we’d be able to get away, so I’d told them I’d have to play it by ear. No problem! had been the cheerful reply. Just pop into the office when you get here, and we’ll show you around. But the office had been empty when I’d passed, so I’d carried on driving along the narrow main road to our allocated unit, following the directions I’d been given. There was no rush; eventually either someone would find us or we would find them.
I took a breath. The car was cramped and had that family-road-trip smell: feet and Happy Meals. Our belongings were packed around us so tightly I’d half-expected the windows to burst. Storage cartons, loose shoes and books, jumbo flexi tubs bought in a hurry from Kmart and stuffed with our dirty laundry: I’d crammed them Tetris-style into every inch of available space. An expert job, if I did say so myself. But if there was anything I did well, it was packing up and moving on.
I rolled my window down and a fresh breeze pushed its way into the car, mussing my hair like a drunk uncle and bringing with it the sweet, earthy scent of resin. A tingle of excitement skipped across my skin: I live here now.
I looked over at Ollie again, ducking my head a little to see under the peak of his cap. It was one of those gorgeous Australian November days – not too hot or sticky, just perfectly pleasant – but my son was bundled up in his usual sloppy green hoodie. It needed a wash; the orange circle on the front bore a tomato sauce stain the size of a fifty-cent piece.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said, suddenly opening one eye. ‘Why do you keep staring at me?’
‘Oh. Sorry. You’re awake.’
‘What?’ My son held one of his headphones away from his ear and tinny music escaped from the padded speakers: a thrum of bass overlaid by a single screeching note like an air raid siren.
‘I said, you’re awake.’
‘Um, obviously.’ He pushed his cap back and tugged his headphones down around his neck. ‘Why are we stopped?’
‘Because we’re here. We’ve arrived.’
Ollie shrugged and picked up his phone. Checking the notifications, he moved his thumbs rapidly over the screen. Tap-scroll-tap-tap-scroll.
‘Don’t you want to get out and take a look around?’
With his eyes still glued to the screen, Ollie opened the car door and got out. Quickly checking on Kara – still asleep – I did the same. I could smell orange jasmine, lilly pilly, lemon myrtle and just a touch of sea salt. No car fumes, no bitumen, no overflowing wheelie bins. I inhaled and my lungs felt fresh and clean.
Ollie turned in a slow circle, surveying his new surroundings. Although it was just two hours from the guts of Sydney and only fifty kilometres north-east of the Central Coast’s suburban sprawl, Pine Ridge ecovillage could not have felt more remote. Nestled high up in the hills and built on former farmland, it seemed completely cut off from the chaos of the city. No skull-shatteringly loud roadworks, reckless P-platers screeching their tyres or the constant ECG blip-blip-blip of pedestrian crossings. From the middle of the two-hundred-acre site, all you could hear were birds, bees and the hush of the wind.