CHAPTER TWELVE
The House on North Lane haunted my dreams, summoning me to wander down its dark halls once more.
My mother’s face, the Devil’s voice, the flames—every night was the same. When I woke, my mother’s journal called to me from under the bed, like a monster waiting to drag me down to Hell. I already had one Devil on my shoulder; I didn't need another.
School was an escape and a prison. My studies forced the Devil to the back of my mind, but there was little I could do to avoid trouble when Alexander hunted me down like I was a deer grazing in the woods.
Sanctuary was found in an unlocked classroom inside the art block. There, amongst the smell of wet paint and wooden easels, I could melt into my artwork, safely hidden from those who tormented me.
I pushed open the door, gaze landing on a familiar figure standing in front of an easel.
It was the chewing gum girl from my form room, the girl who competed with Alexander to answer every question leaving Mr Singh’s mouth.
Her twin braids were pulled back into a single ponytail, a golden stud on each ear.
White earphones silenced my entry, the tangled cord disappearing into the pocket of her dark green blazer as she appraised the black canvas in front of her.
A paintbrush dangled between her teeth; her eyebrows furrowed with dissatisfaction.
I hovered in the doorway, unsure whether to find another empty art room or reclaim my territory.
She lifted her head before I could decide, her expression shifting from disapproval to confusion as her gaze darted between my bruised cheek and my swollen lip—a result of another scuffle with Alexander.
“Can I help you?” she asked, slowly removing her earphones.
I shook my head.
“You’re the new kid, right? Augustus…Saint?”
I nodded.
She set down the paint brush and scoffed. “You don’t look very saintly.”
“What does a saint look like?” I asked.
Her hands connected in prayer as she made a sound I assume was meant to resemble an angelic choir.
“I’ll consider being saintlier, then,” I mused.
She grinned. “I’m Ava.”
“Nice to meet you,” I nodded, gaze drifting toward the canvas. “What are you painting?”
“A nightmare I had last night.”
I squinted at the artwork. All I could see was black. “What’s the nightmare?”
“I am in a room. It’s dark…I can’t even see my own hand in front of my face,” she recounted. “I’m walking around for a while, trying to find a way out, but the room doesn’t seem to end. I am trapped. And there are…voices. Some are quiet, some are loud. They say such…cruel things.”
That doesn’t sound too bad.
“I can’t seem to paint just how terrifying it was to be trapped in the darkness,” she added with a sigh. “I’m painting what I saw but…it’s just this vast nothingness.”
Clearly a terrible artist, then.
My gaze remained locked on the canvas. “I see your problem.”
“And?”
“You’re painting what you’re seeing, not what you’re hearing. Or what you’re feeling.”
“No shit. I can’t exactly paint sound or feelings.”
“Art shouldn’t always be literal,” I explained, reaching out for her paintbrush. “May I?”
“Sure, but don’t mansplain,” she mumbled, “it’s not very saintly.”
Rolling my eyes, I dipped the brush in white, and added some light to the black vastness that stared back at me, the colour hauntingly similar to the black eyes of my reflection smiling in the mirror.
I outlined faces, ones you might mistake for a whiff of smoke or a distortion of light if you weren’t paying attention. They wore smiles of razor-sharp teeth, their laughter flowing through the darkness as they danced along the artwork. A once empty canvas, now a nightmare.
Look at you, little monster.
Ava followed my every movement, stepping closer as her nightmare slowly came to life.
Wicked laughter waltzed all around us, darkness seeping in through the windows, pouring over us like cans of black paint. When I finished, she asked, “You’re an artist?”
I stepped back, admiring the hideous creation like Frankenstein did his monster.
You are an artist, the Devil confirmed, the black ink bleeding red, and you paint with blood.
***
Ava was there the next day, a blood red apple in one hand and a thin paint brush in the other as she bent over her workbook. Her tangled earphones lay abandoned beside her pencil case, crumpled papers littering the desk.
I walked toward her slowly, sneaking a glance at the water colour paint she applied to a sketched dragon. She flinched when I dumped myself into the seat across from her, my school bag crashing to the floor.
“You know, this is usually where I spend my time alone,” she said as a greeting.
“I didn’t see a sign on the door saying no entry,” I said.
“I’m not complaining,” she shrugged, “but…why are you here?”
I pulled out a cheese and bacon roll freshly baked by Mrs Brighton, still warm thanks to my insulated lunch box. “I don’t really have anywhere else to go,” I admitted.
“Huh, so you haven’t made any friends yet?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“We can be friends, if you want.”
That is suspicious. Why would she want to be our friend? She barely knows us.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why would you want to be my friend?”
Ava arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know. You helped me with my art yesterday. Seems like we got that in common. Art, I mean.”
You can’t afford to have friends. If you let them get too close, they’ll know.
“I…don’t really have much experience…being a friend,” I admitted.
“Well, you’re in luck, because no experience is required for this role. We can just chill.”
You’re a monster, Augustus. Monsters don’t deserve friends.
“Okay," I breathed out. "Cool.”
“Got any art you can show me?” she asked before taking another bite of her apple.
I glanced down at my school bag and pulled out my visual arts book. It was already filled with unfinished work, most of it completed on the bus ride to and from school. “Yeah…some.”
“Can I see?”
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I slid the book across the desk and watched as she flicked through, expression unreadable. She lingered on some pages longer than others, bottom lip between her teeth as her eyes took in every inch.
Feeling vulnerable?
I bit back a retort and busied myself with my lunch. It didn’t matter what Ava, or the Devil, or anyone thought. If she hated it, that meant nothing.
Liar. You long for approval like a dog longs for a bone.
“Who’s this?” Ava’s question broke through my thoughts, holding up an artwork I had completely forgotten about. I tried to snatch it back, but she pulled it close to her chest at the last second.
“Why is she on fire? And what’s in her hand?”
It was a crucifix, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I made one last attempt to retrieve my book and when I succeeded, I shoved it into my bag.
“Looked like something out of a horror movie,” she commented after a brief, tense pause.
“It was,” I lied. “Just something I…I saw.”
Ava nodded, though the way her eyes drifted toward my school bag told me she didn’t quite believe me.
She knows.
No, she doesn’t.
She knows. She knows. She knows.
The bell summoned us to our next class where Ava, to my astonishment, sat next to me. We didn’t discuss the artwork. We didn’t discuss anything at all. The silence was comfortable. And for the first time in my twelve years, I thought someone might actually be my friend.
***
A year had passed and October painted Aunt Vera’s garden an array of red, orange and yellow as leaves scattered across the yard, some swimming in the bird bath and the fishpond.
In a maroon knitted sweater and plain black trousers, I sat with Auden on a red and white picnic rug, a basket of biscuits, cheese, and fruit prepared by Mrs Brighton shared between us.
Auden was in a matching maroon sweater, though whilst mine was plain, his was stitched with Winnie the Pooh and Piglet catching autumn leaves with a net.
We had spent the morning feeding the fish, playing board games and counting how many leaves fell from the tree above us.
Auden wanted to explore Aunt Vera’s maze, but I was weary.
Years ago, I would have jumped at the chance.
I would have made a quest out of it. But at this moment…
the thought of getting lost in the hedges condemned my stomach to sickening nausea.
Who knew what trick the Devil would play in there?
How long before the tall hedges began closing in?
“Please, Guses!” Auden pouted. He crawled toward me and threw himself onto my stomach, trusting that I would catch him in my arms.
“But why?” I laughed to hide the anxiety soaring through my veins. “What do you think is in there?”
“Treasure!” Auden answered without hesitation.
“Treasure?” I raised an eyebrow. “What kind of treasure?”
Auden sat up and adjusted his new black-framed glasses before beaming, “Mumma!”
Everything inside of me shut down at those words. All traces of joy fled, leaving an emotionless ghost in its wake. Auden and I didn’t speak of our mother. We simply didn’t. I thought we had put her behind us.
“Why would…why would she be in the maze?” I asked.
“The witch put her there!” Auden answered, jumping up and down now as he glanced down the path leading to the dark green botanical nightmare.
“The witch?” I repeated.
It hit me, rather late, that Auden was playing a game. Just like the ones we used to play in the woods behind North Lane. The memory brought with it a harsh ache.
“Come on, Guses! We’ve got to find her!” he called out as he raced down the path.
I followed reluctantly, confining my trembling hands to my pockets. “Auden, wait!”
He paused by the entry, the hedges so tall they blocked out the light of the cloudless sky, all traces of warmth absent.
“Are you sure you want to go in there?” I whispered.
He nodded, unbothered by the dark gloom.
A quiet sigh escaped my throat and as I reached for his hand, I said, “You stick right by me, alright?”
We started forward, the soil beneath our feet a dark black void of fallen leaves and discarded twigs. It was soft, damp, as if it had recently been watered. But Mr Lenton had not been here this week, nor had it rained.
The hedges on either side of us were dark green, cut evenly to avoid stray vines.
Not a single flower grew, though I heard Aunt Vera say that just weeks prior to Auden and I moving in, the hedges had been scattered with colourful flora.
Mr Lenton was working hard to regrow them, but it seemed not one single flower was ready to blossom.
We turned left when the path forward came to an end, Auden squealing with excitement. He kept repeating ‘find mumma, find mumma, find mumma,’ and I was starting to question how much of this really was just a game for him.
He’d been very young when our mother abandoned us. And although things did seem to improve for him once she was gone, perhaps our father and I did a disservice to him by not talking about her, by not explaining what had happened. But the truth was, not even I was certain what happened.
“Okay, which way now?” I asked once we reached a crossroads in the maze.
“Let’s go this way!” Auden declared confidently as he darted to the left, his fingers releasing from mine.
“Auden,” I said warningly. “Don’t get too far from me!”
He skipped ahead, but he remained in my line of sight, humming cheerfully as though we were on a fun adventure. Meanwhile, I was fighting off a panic attack.
You know that feeling, when you’re walking and you think you hear footsteps behind you, but when you turn around, there’s no one there? That was how I felt in this maze. Every time I turned, I was met with dark hedges and nothing more. But it didn’t feel as though we were alone.
By the fourth time I turned around to find nothing there, I rationalised that it was all in my head. But when I turned to resume my way forward, my heart stopped.
“Auden!”
The only path forward was to turn right, but there was no sign of Auden’s brown hair or maroon sweater. It was like he had been swallowed by the hedges. A fresh wave of nausea crashed over me, but I refused to stop searching. I had to find him.
I ran until I collided with his back, his body a statue staring into the darkness. Panting, I opened my mouth to scold him when my gaze landed on a figure half-submerged in an unfinished grave.
Shielding him from the grotesque sight, I pushed him behind me and squinted through the darkness to make sense of what I was seeing.
The moment I did, horror consumed me.
My mother’s body lay buried in the dirt, her white dress covered with blood, soil and earthworms feasting on the thin material.
Cockroaches poured from her parted lips, her lifeless eyes staring right at us as brown rats feasted on her exposed scalp. Mushrooms grew out of her nose, spreading along the grass and soil beneath her. Maggots and grave flies crawled along her pale flesh, the scent of rot poisoning the air.
“What….the hell…?” I breathed out, backing up a step only for my back to slam into a hedge. I looked around, searching for a way out, but the entry we had ventured through had disappeared, and we were trapped inside this green prison.
Vines slithered out from beneath the hedges, entangling themselves around my limbs as I fought to get away. I’d lost sight of Auden again, and my panic grew. Before I had a chance to scream his name, a vine lodged itself down my throat, vision blurring as I choked.
I watched, breathlessly, as my mother’s corpse crawled towards me, her black hole of a mouth opening wide in a blood curdling scream as she–
“Augustus!”
Mrs Brighton was in front of me, her hand flushed against my forehead as she worried at her lip. Auden hovered behind her, his eyes darting in between me and the housekeeper who was reaching for a bottle of water to splash over my face.
“You got yourself a fever,” she said, shaking her head. “Why didn’t you tell me you were unwell? Let’s get you inside, sweet boy.”
Confused, weak, and shivering, I leaned on Mrs Brighton as she guided me inside the house, gently lowering me onto a sofa with blankets and a cup of warm tea.
It took me several minutes to realise what had happened in the maze hadn’t happened at all. I had hallucinated it, from the very beginning.
Auden sat beside me under the blanket, his head resting on my upper arm. He was fine. He must have had a fright, though, when he saw me shivering and calling his name.
“Get some sleep, Guses,” he whispered gently.
When I looked at him to give him a small smile, I could have sworn I saw a mushroom in his hair.