The Shadow House(79)

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be right outside,’ said Renee. She left the room, closed the door and slid the bolt into place.





ALEX





37


At the edge of the forest, I hesitated, listening to the distant thump of music still coming from the party. Behind me, the lights of the hall shone warm; in front, the trees huddled together, black and uninviting. On the hill, the farmhouse waited.

I pulled out my phone, tried Ollie again. No joy.

Searching for a different number, I typed a text and pressed send.

Then I rolled back my shoulders and set off.

If I’d thought the forest was creepy during the day, it was even more so at night. Every vine looked like a python, every branch a gnarled human limb. I used the torch on my phone to illuminate my path, but the vegetation closed in, obliterating the well-worn track with violent sprays of spiky leaves, lumps of rock and partially submerged roots. The ground seemed somehow animate, the surface warm and palpitant like the armoured back of a sleeping dragon.

Every step felt like a risk, but once I found the narrower track that led uphill I knew I wasn’t far. The climb passed in a blur of pounding heartbeat, snatched breath and lactic acid burn. Unseen things whipped at my calves, scratching my skin and drawing blood, and my imagination ran wild, conjuring the cries and screams from my nightmares, making them seem real and loud and very close. And then, finally, I’d made it, I was in the paddock, surrounded by nothing but warm air.

I ran straight for the farmhouse, stumbling over ruts, stepping down hard into invisible holes, until I was there, under the jacaranda, on the driveway, up the steps to the veranda, at the door …

I stopped, my fingers on the handle. Just beneath the steam-train huff of my own breath, I could hear something inside. Voices, and a faint banging.

Ollie.

Staring at the grain of the door, I pictured the hallway behind it. The doors, the rooms, the layout. Go slow, I reminded myself. Take it easy.

Carefully, I pushed the door open.

‘Jenny?’ I said. ‘It’s just me. It’s Alex.’

She was standing outside the second bedroom on the left. Her face was flushed, her eyes were wild. Her headscarf had slipped backwards on her head to reveal thin, patchy hair.

‘Come in,’ she said, turning to face me. ‘Shut the door.’

It was only then that I noticed she was holding an axe.





RENEE





38


It took Renee a few attempts to remove the brush axe; it’d been hanging up there for so many years that the handle had somehow adhered to the display hooks. But after a few good tugs, it came loose. The handle was smooth in her hands, the bill-shaped blade heavy at one end. She stroked the blade while she waited for Alex to show up.

She took her sweet time. Renee had to listen to Oliver banging around inside Gabriel’s bedroom, trying to get out, for what felt like hours before she recognised her tenant’s steps on the driveway outside: dainty and hasty, always in a rush. And then she was at the door, pushing it open and peering through the gap.

‘Jenny? It’s just me. It’s Alex.’

‘Come in,’ Renee said. ‘Shut the door.’

Alex looked like she’d been dragged through a series of hedges – which, if she’d come up through the forest, she more or less had. There were leaves in her mousy hair and a swipe of dirt across the front of her T-shirt. Her feet were filthy, her ankles spotted with grass rash. ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

Renee said nothing. Wasn’t it obvious?

From behind the bedroom door, Oliver called out. ‘Mum?’ he said. ‘Is that you?’ The handle rattled once, twice.

‘It’s me, Ollie,’ Alex called. ‘I’m here, everything’s okay.’

‘Mum, what’s going on? I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone. I was scared, and Jenny said she could help, she said Violet would meet us here, but then she locked me in here and it’s dark and horrible and I just want to go home.’ He banged on the door.

‘Oh, Oliver.’ Renee’s heart went out to the poor boy. ‘It’s okay, really. This has all happened before. But it’ll be different this time. This time, I know what to do.’

‘No, Jenny,’ said Alex, inching along the wall towards her. ‘There’s nothing coming. You know that, right?’

There was a long moan from outside, like the lowing of a cow.

Alex jumped.

Renee supressed a sigh. She wanted to shake her neighbour by the shoulders; how could she say that after everything that had happened, with everything that was happening right now? Wasn’t Alex smarter than that? But, then again, how smart had Renee herself been? In a way, this was all her fault. She should’ve listened in the first place – to her son, to her parents. But she hadn’t. Not even after Gabriel had gone.

She’d known that her son hadn’t run away, but even after she’d heard the children’s whispers, after she’d seen the markings in the woods, she still hadn’t believed it, not really. She’d clung too tightly to the notion that it was all nonsense because it had meant that Gabriel might one day come back. But then Alex had arrived at Pine Ridge with her kids and history had begun – so clearly and so palpably – to repeat itself.