The Shadow House(84)

‘What’s going on?’ he said into my hair, and a tiny, hysterical part of me wanted to laugh.

‘What?’ I said, squeezing him even tighter. ‘You too big for hugs now?’

‘No,’ he said, pulling away from me with a frown. ‘I mean, what’s going on down there?’

I looked up at him, then turned to follow his gaze.

Down at the bottom of the hill, right in the middle of the village, was a cluster of flashing lights. The distinctive red, white and blue of an ambulance.





ALEX





41


Kara.

Letting go of Ollie, I started running towards the forest, but he caught up and pulled me in the opposite direction. ‘This way’s quicker,’ he said, pointing somewhere to our left.

Hurrying over the grass, we stumbled downhill, tripping over roots and fallen leaves and clumps of mud, barrelling through a break in the trees I hadn’t known existed. As I sprinted past the greenhouses and onto the cycle path by the dam with my lungs screaming, a deluge of horrible images flooded my head: she fell, choked, ingested cleaning products, stopped breathing in her sleep, Kit tried everything but couldn’t revive her, I’ll find her motionless, lifeless, her beautiful face covered by a blanket …

Reaching the community hall, we found that the party had ground to a halt; the music was off, and the crowd had dispersed. Residents had gathered in small whispering groups, their faces distorted by the strobe-like lights. I spotted Kit immediately, talking to a paramedic, his expression grave. There was no sign of my daughter.

‘Kara!’ I called, skidding to a stop in front of Kit and grasping his arm. ‘Where is she? What happened? Is she okay?’ Ollie, who’d been following close behind, crashed into the back of me.

‘It’s alright,’ said Kit calmly, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘Kara’s fine, everything’s fine.’

‘Where is she? Oh my god, I should never have left her.’ I pushed past him to the back of the ambulance, peering through the open doors, fearing the worst.

Under the flat fluorescent lights, Maggie lay on a gurney with her eyes closed, an IV tube snaking from her arm.

I spun back to Kit. ‘What’s going on? Where’s Kara?’

‘Perfectly safe,’ he said. ‘She’s up the front, in the driver’s seat.’

Running around to the cab of the ambulance, I found my daughter sitting on a female paramedic’s lap, playing happily with the steering wheel.

‘Oh, thank god,’ I sighed, my body flushing hot with relief. ‘There you are! Hello, baby!’ I reached for her, expecting her to burst into tears and fall into my arms: Oh, mama, never leave me again! But she just batted me away, smacking her lips and pounding her fists on the steering wheel.

‘Got yourself the next Ayrton Senna right here, I reckon,’ said the paramedic with a smile. ‘Look at her go. Does she want a job?’

Smiling weakly, I watched my daughter squeal with delight until I felt Kit’s hand on my back. ‘What happened?’ I said, turning to face him.

‘Maggie collapsed,’ he said. ‘It seems that she and a few others have been holding secret parties of their own in one of the old farm sheds. Taking ayahuasca at night and tripping their balls off.’

‘Aya-what?’

‘Ayahuasca. It’s a hallucinogen. DMT, but made from plants. They brew it like a tea in the Amazon and use it for healing. It’s illegal here, but somehow Maggie and her mates got hold of it. They reckon it’s perfectly safe; she just overdid it this time.’

‘What do you mean, overdid it?’

Kit gave a slight roll of his eyes. ‘It’s like a kind of therapy. Self-enlightenment, facing your demons, primal screaming, that kind of stuff. It’s supposed to open up past trauma so you can work through it.’

‘Sounds intense.’

‘It has a purging effect too. Makes you vomit and sometimes, you know, the other thing. All very loud and messy. At some point during her trip, Maggie left the shed, wandered down to the party babbling all kinds of crazy stuff, then blacked out on the grass. Someone called triple-O.’

I pressed my hand to my mouth. I thought of the mattresses I’d seen in the shed near the farmhouse, the buckets and the plastic bottles. That strange earthy odour; the same smell in the dry goods store a couple of days later. The night noises, the bellowing. The screams we’d heard earlier. Not demons or monsters; just Maggie. I thought of her eyes, shiny and black as molasses. Open your mind, Little Red Riding Hood.

‘Is she alright?’

Kit nodded. ‘Just dehydrated. And embarrassed, probably – or she will be when she wakes up. It was quite the drama. Anyway, what happened to you? Is Ollie alright? Or should I not ask?’

‘Maybe don’t ask. But don’t worry, he’s fine. I’ll tell you about it later.’

I glanced over my shoulder to where my son was still standing by the back of the ambulance, wan-faced and weary, with his hands in his pockets, scanning the crowd. Following his gaze, I took in the sight of the villagers, all craning their necks for the best view of Maggie. The Greatest Show on Earth. I wanted to smile – it seemed like fitting retribution for someone so self-righteous – but I couldn’t. I just felt sad.

Maggie had looked so small on that gurney. Stripped of all her bluster, she was just as vulnerable as anyone else: just one more terrified human being trying to frighten other people into thinking and acting the way she did. She was no different to Jenny, writing her note and leaving it for me to find. Or Michael Kellerman, hissing vile words in his son’s ear. Bess Hassop and her splintered story, her jumbled warnings. Stuart and his harmful attempts to control the world and everyone in it. Even me. I acted on my fear all the time, and most often the result was even more fear, paid forward and passed around like a sickness. I thought about how it affected the kids: Ollie and his mystery boxes, Violet’s stricken face. Gabriel Kellerman and how afraid he must’ve been. And little Amy, whose brutal experience at the hands of those boys had—