Chapter 10 Riley #2
The drapes are open and the inside of the house is as neat as a pin.
A window is cracked open, it’s a warm night, and bugs slam themselves against the bug screen.
Cute things are everywhere inside. On the counter sits a mug saying insert coffee here and an upward-pointing arrow.
A kitten calendar hangs on the wall. Everything is pink or baby blue – pink rug, pink tablecloth, baby-blue apron hanging on the hook by the pale-pink tiles.
After a few minutes of watching the empty room, Noon whispers, ‘Are you sure—’
‘She does it the same time every night,’ Midnight says. ‘I found her last year. I watched. I knew we’d need her.’
Riley crushes a mosquito against her neck. Its full sac of blood bursts on her skin.
A woman comes into the kitchen. She’s blonde and delicate. She looks right among the pastels and prettiness. ‘Come on, kids,’ she calls.
Two children come into the kitchen. The girl wears a pretty, very clean dress with flowers on it.
The boy wears shorts and a collared shirt.
They’re around six and eight years old, maybe.
Their hair is perfect. The girl’s looks like it has been styled with curlers.
The boy’s is smooth, parted to one side, shining.
The woman pulls a kitchen chair out into the middle of the floor. She takes a bottle out from under the sink. ‘Alicia, you first.’
The girl sits on the chair. Her mother soaks a pad of paper towel in whatever is in the bottle, and then puts it in front of the girl’s nose.
‘This will make you better,’ she says, and puts a plastic bag over the girl’s head.
She struggles, inhaling fumes. The bag concertinas in and out with her breath.
Her mother holds her firmly down on the chair.
When Alicia starts to sag, she takes the bag off her head and kisses her.
‘Good girl. Go lie down, now. We’ll go to the doctor in the morning.
’ She beckons to her son, ‘Come on, Benjy. Your turn for medicine.’
He holds back, mouth pursed with fear.
‘Daddy will be home tomorrow,’ the woman says. ‘You want to be all better for when Daddy gets back, don’t you?’
The little boy nods.
‘What are we doing here?’ Riley whispers at Noon. Her body convulses with disgust. Noon strokes her back, puts a finger to her lips. Wait.
Riley can’t watch it again, so she stares at the flower beds, the cutely dressed gnome fishing from the ornamental pond.
Bedtime is early, 7 for the kids, 9 p.m. for the mother. At last, through the window, the warm glow of the bedside lamp goes out, but they wait an hour longer to give everyone time to fall asleep.
Noon lifts Riley up from where she’s crouched. ‘This is the time to go,’ she says quietly. ‘If you don’t want to be part of this – it’s now.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Riley feels sick, like it was her who breathed in the fumes, her head inside the plastic bag. She takes a deep breath. ‘Actually it doesn’t matter. Let’s go.’
‘Are you sure?’ Noon holds her at arm’s length. Riley feels her measuring look.
Riley nods and pushes Noon gently away. She follows Midnight through the dark.
Midnight picks the lock on the kitchen door easily.
There’s no deadbolt, it’s a simple mechanism.
This neighbourhood is like one of those places you see on TV, Riley thinks, where everybody says nothing bad ever happens and nobody locks their doors.
They’re wrong of course: bad things happen everywhere all the time and always have.
They go through the dark kitchen along the hall to the bedroom. The woman sleeps peacefully, one arm thrown over her head. Her hair is in curlers.
Midnight goes softly to her. For a moment she looks down at the woman’s sleeping face. In one swift movement she clamps a cloth pad over the woman’s nose and mouth. The woman wakes for a moment, struggles and then sinks back down.
‘Horse chloroform,’ Midnight murmurs, quiet as a wind in the trees. ‘Quicker.’
Cal and Midnight bind the woman’s hands and feet and roll her up in a blanket, tight as a swaddled baby. Cal bares his teeth as he does it, not a smile but a fixed grin of distress.
‘We’re going to be fast,’ Noon says. ‘Out the front gate and right down the road, through the strip mall to the Denny’s. Ready?’
‘Hold up,’ Midnight says. She moves quickly from the room and is back within a minute. ‘I locked the back door,’ she says. ‘Don’t want people walking in here with those kids all alone, sleeping.’
Noon nods. ‘Let’s go.’
Midnight takes the head, and Cal her feet. Midnight is careful to make sure the front door locks behind them.
In the road Cal and Midnight walk fast, perfectly in step. Riley hurries behind, heart pounding. She turns back once to look at the dark house. Later, she is never sure if it was her imagination, the sight of two small heads at the window watching their mother being carried away.
The run back up the mountain passes in a blur. Riley isn’t conscious of feeling tired or sore. They are like one animal, all of them together, travelling through the night. The air has colours, she breathes them in.
The woman lies like a cocooned caterpillar on the grass on the Nowhere valley floor.
They are all panting, bent. It was a hard rush.
Riley hardly remembers the journey back, they were all so high.
Spying, breaking in, taking the woman – it was like electricity running right through her.
As she looks around, Riley sees in the others’ eyes the same unearthly light that fills her.
‘What are you going to do with her?’ Riley’s not sure what answer she’s hoping for.
‘Take her to the house,’ Noon says. ‘Blood in the land.’
‘To kill her?’ Part of Riley does want to kill the woman. Maybe it’s this easy – getting used to killing.
‘No,’ says Noon. She presses a pointed finger on Riley’s shoulder. ‘Why, do you want to?’
‘Stop it,’ Riley says. The finger is making her feel weird, like Noon is reaching inside of her.
‘No one is going to die,’ Noon says, removing her finger. ‘Well, not today. Everyone is going to die in the end. Nowhere needs something from her, that’s all.’
Noon flicks a finger and Cal and Midnight pick the woman up. They all jog together through the meadow, the orchard, past the barn, into the deep forest that surrounds Nowhere House. Lightning pierces the dark to the east.
They follow narrow deer paths, winding through the thickening trees.
The forest changes around them as they go, fruit trees giving way to older pines, oaks, some hung with grey ribbons of moss, brown bark covered by soft vivid green lichen.
Something large flies past Riley’s face, beating the air with powdered wings.
It’s too big to be a butterfly, surely? But everything’s wrong here, it doesn’t seem like a place where people belong.
At times the house crawls into view between the trees and then retreats, its blackened gaps like toothy holes. Even though they’re heading straight towards it Cal, Noon and Midnight keep their faces averted, don’t look at the house directly.
The house seems to know. It plays with them. Again and again Nowhere House slides in and out of view, getting closer through the dark branches. It’s hard to throw off the impression that it’s coming to them, rather than the other way around.
The going gets more uneven underfoot, Riley stumbles. Lightning forks across the air. Through the leaves Riley sees the broken white crosses, the green hill cast grey in the stormlight.
Nowhere House rears up dark and sudden before them. It’s blackened, roof missing in some parts. Ivy and creeper winds all around it, bright green moss growing in some places on the burnt-out shell.
Noon goes to the vast front door and takes up a crowbar that lies there. She levers the boards up with a crack.
‘In.’
The door swings closed behind them. The outside world blinks out.
They are in a big high hall where a fireplace yawns large at the end. There are deer antlers mounted above it.
Riley takes take a deep breath and gathers herself. She can’t lose it now. If you panic, use all three senses. Look at something, listen to something, touch.
There’s old yellow tape strewn on the floor in dirty coils and arcs. She knows what this is, the TV shows have all taught her that. POLICE POLICE POLICE POLICE POLICE POL … it says in shouting letters. Nothing stirs.
She follows Cal and Noon across the high hall. She tries to listen, to focus on sound. There’s the faint hushing of the wind in the trees outside. Water drips somewhere. Dry leaves blow across the floor. Through the ruined roof of the high hall, the stars are out.
Riley shivers. The air is dank and chilly.
There’s a rotting leather couch to her left.
As she glances at it, the surface writhes and Riley stifles a scream.
A whiskered snout peeps out and disappears.
Rat, she thinks, though it could just about be a possum.
The dripping sound goes on, plink, plink, plink, in uneven plosive sounds.
Something white and broad sails through the high roof and out into the storm-lit sky.
The owl glides out into the dark on silent wings.
They go behind the vast stone chimney that houses the great fireplace and turn down a long hallway. The remains of blackened shattered mirrors gleam from the walls.
Plink, plink, the drops keep falling. She shakes her head, irritable. It’s both hypnotic and unsettling.
As they go, she feels the house take them all in its arms. When Riley looks up she sees that the fireflies are out.
They dance green overhead, darting in and out of the shell roof of Nowhere House.
Riley follows Cal’s straight back through dark passages.
She can imagine hands reaching for her from the shadows.