The Darkening (9 page)

He and Tristram had eased into the day’s play with a hunt through the Boyes’ games cupboard. While Nicholas and Suzette had an incomplete chess set and a deck of cards, the Boyes had an Aladdin’s cave of entertainment: Bermuda Triangle, Payday, Microdot (complete with cool plastic Lugers, stiletto knives and wirecutters), Mastermind, Grand Mastermind, Squatter, The Game of Life, Mouse Trap, Cluedo, Chinese Checkers, Monopoly (British
and
American versions), several decks of cards, and a roulette wheel that Tristram said came from a P&O steamer. But this was too bright a day for the lethargy of board games. The sunlight had a tart sting, the jacarandas were dropping sweet blizzards of lavender flowers, nasturtiums blazed between roses . . . no, today called for violence. So they set up the killer jumps for their Matchbox cars.

‘We’re going to Fraser at Christmas,’ said Tristram, slotting an orange plastic tongue into the end of a section of track. The boys had appropriated the whole front veranda and had nearly finished the two ramps, each facing the other. At the farthest ends were kitchen chairs for height. The tracks swooped down to the floorboards, ran two metres, then swept up ramp stays of phone books and atlases. If they timed their releases right, two cars should collide spectacularly in midair.

‘Oh?’

‘You don’t know where Fraser Island is, do you?’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘Up your fat arse?’

Tristram chuckled. The boys had just discovered the joy of insults, and Nicholas was the acknowledged master. Not knowing what or where Fraser was didn’t upset him, but news of the Boyes’ trip did: if Tristram went away, the Christmas break would be really boring.

Tristram pulled out his ace. ‘Dad’s going to hire a Land Rover.’

‘A Land Rover? Really?’ Nicholas couldn’t disguise his excitement. Land Rovers were what the SAS sped to battle in. They had aluminium bodies and wouldn’t rust. ‘Wow. Will your dad let you drive it?’

Tristram shook his head and grinned. That was one thing Nicholas liked about him: he might be rich, but he was honest. ‘I reckon he’ll let Gavin drive it, though. He’s thirteen now. Dad learned to drive on Pop’s tractor when he was thirteen, so . . .’ His ramp finished, Tristram squatted back on his heels and looked at Nicholas. ‘What were you going to tell me?’

‘About what?’

Tristram came to Nicholas’s ramp to help him finish.

‘You said you found something on the way home from school on Wednesday, then you went all funny and shut up.’

Nicholas felt some warmth go out of the morning. The dead bird outside the woods. The bird with no head . . . or with a strange head of woven sticks and its own scrawny legs. He had wanted to tell Tristram about it on the way home from school Thursday and Friday, but Suzette had been with them and he didn’t want to freak her out with gory talk about birds with legs cut off and the weirdos who did such things. She was really easy to upset right now; for instance, she hated walking home past the shops, but wouldn’t explain why. And, to be honest, he didn’t know how to phrase the story about the bird. He wanted to sound cool about it, matter-of-fact. But he also wanted his best friend to know how creepy it was, how the sight of it - not just limp and dead, but so helpless and mutilated - had made his stomach grip tight with unexplainable fear.

‘I found a dead bird down near the woods.’

Tristram tore the sticky tape off with his teeth and secured track to the telephone books. ‘So?’

‘It had its head and legs cut off.’

He watched for Tristram’s reaction. This would be the decider: if Tris’s expression was serious, Nicholas could finish the tale with its bizarre ending. But if he wore his ‘what bullshit’ look, he would shrug the story off and change the subject to a cool book about Tiger tanks he’d found in the library. Tristram looked up, and Nicholas felt a wave of warmth for his friend: his expression was both serious and inquisitive.

‘Yeah? Cut off like by a mower cut off? They mow that grass out front.’

Nicholas shook his head. ‘Cut off, cut off. On purpose.’

He described how the bird’s head was gone and replaced with a handmade sphere of woven twigs, the poor creature’s legs as horns and the strange symbol painted there in what
had
to be blood. By the time he’d finished, Nicholas’s voice had dropped to a whisper and his heart was thudding in his chest.

‘And?’ asked Tristram. They knew each other well enough to know when things were still unsaid.

‘And I think . . .’ Nicholas bit his lip and frowned. ‘I think something came up behind me.’
From the woods.
He shook his head. ‘But I don’t remember. I remember smelling something bad, and then I ran home.’

‘Was it . . . was it a grown-up?’

Nicholas thought about that. ‘I don’t know. I think so. Whatever it was, it felt . . . it felt big. And old.’

Tristram nodded, chewed his lip. ‘Did I tell you I found a cat down there? When we first moved in, before we were friends. A dead cat on the gravel path.’

Nicholas shook his head.

‘It was just bones really,’ said Tristram. His voice dropped steadily to a whisper. ‘Dead for ages. Orange fur, all dried up like a mummy. But it was a mess. Its paws were cut off.’

Nicholas stared. He didn’t mind being trumped - cat beat bird hands down. Besides, Tristram wasn’t showing off, not this time. In fact, this was the first time he could ever remember Tristram looking . . . well, so worried.

‘Did you tell your parents?’

‘Tell your parents what?’ asked Mrs Boye, emerging from the shadows of the hallway carrying two fruit cordials and a plate of TeeVee Snacks. She was what Nicholas would describe in later years as a stately woman: well-dressed, well-spoken, well-educated. Utterly humourless.

‘That we’re going to make some noise,’ said Tristram without missing a beat.

He turned to Nicholas and shot him a wink that Mrs Boye couldn’t see. Nicholas smiled to himself - Tris was one smooth bastard.

‘Well, we’d rather you didn’t,’ said Mrs Boye, surveying the ramps. ‘Your father’s had a big week and we’re going to have a rest.’

Mr Boye was a Businessman who worked for an Investment Company and often had to Extend Himself on Behalf of the Firm on evenings and at weekends, so if he and Mrs Boye wanted a rest, then total silence was expected of the Boye boys.

‘Why don’t you go to Nicholas’s house?’ she asked Tristram.

Never mind asking me
, thought Nicholas. But Tristram looked over at him and winked again, slyly.

‘Sure,’ said Nicholas.

‘Have some morning tea then,’ said Mrs Boye, and left for the darkened master bedroom.

The boys drank and surveyed their handiwork. ‘It would have been good,’ said Nicholas. He looked over at Tristram. His fair-haired friend was grinning. ‘What?’

‘Let’s check it out.’

Nicholas knew what he meant. The bird. A sudden fear galloped through his stomach, but he swallowed it down and grinned back. ‘Tommy guns?’

‘Of course.’

They sculled their drinks and flew.

They moved like shadows, quiet and slow, hunched to stay below the grass line. The dry fronds chattered around them in the warm air, hissing a constant warning to
beware
. They gripped the stocks of their submachine guns. Tristram led; there was never a question about that - he was bigger and tougher, and if he had to go down to a Jap bullet, goddammit, he would. Nicholas saw him raise his left hand and they both dropped like stones. Nicholas crawled up.

‘What is it?’

‘Got any grenades?’ hissed Tristram.

Nicholas looked around him. His fingers fell on a lumpy rock peppered with pink quartz. ‘Only one.’

‘Well, hell,’ whispered Tristram, and he looked at Nicholas with narrowed eyes. He cocked his head and grinned crookedly. ‘You better make it count then.’ He pointed.

Nicholas carefully raised his eyes above the grass line. About four metres ahead was the pillbox (disguised cleverly as a council garbage bin). He lowered again and pulled an imaginary pin from the gibber.

‘Cover me,’ he said, then counted silently: three, two, one . . .

They both leapt to their feet. Tristram aimed his tommy gun (a wooden chair leg with a nail for a trigger and a crosspiece screwed below for a magazine) and fired: ‘Ach-ach-ach-ach-ach!!’, while Nicholas drew back the rock and hurled it in an overarm cricket bowl. Then they both hit the ground.

CLANG-rattle-rattle-clunk. The sound of rock falling inside the metal drum.

Tristram grinned. ‘Good throw!’

Nicholas beamed. The sun was high and hot, they were dusty and dirty and totally happy. Life was grand. ‘We got ’em that time,’ he agreed.

‘That, my friend, calls for a Lucky,’ said Tristram, and he pulled out a packet of white lolly cigarettes. He shucked the box at Nicholas, who drew one and put it in the corner of his mouth. Tristram drew another. Nicholas thumbed an invisible Zippo and lit them. They puffed and sucked, stood and walked.

They were on the gravel path, wood guns slung around their thin shoulders. To their right, Carmichael Road ran like a lazy, tarmac canal. To their left was the crowding mass of the woods.
You can just
feel
them
, thought Nicholas.
Even with your eyes shut, you’d know they were there. Alive. Shadowed and watching. Waiting to breathe you in and in, to draw you deep inside, warm and moist and dark and smelling of secrets, where strange hands would lift you and take you . . .

‘. . . around here?’ asked Tristram.

Nicholas shook his head, clearing it. ‘What?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Tristram.

‘Fuck off,’ said Nicholas.

Tristram looked at him, shocked for a moment - then he burst out laughing at the bold use of the King of Swear Words. ‘You fuck off!’

Nicholas joined in giggling, and Tristram’s laughter redoubled.

Tears rolled down their faces, an innocent baptismal to mark the last time the F-word would offend either of them. Nicholas stood and wiped his face. He saw a car pull up on the far side of Carmichael Road: an unremarkable olive green sedan.

‘So, guttersnipe,’ said Tristram, pointing, ‘here’s about where I found the dead cat.’ The last two words vanished the humour from the air. ‘Where’d you find the bird?’

Nicholas looked around, getting his bearings, and pointed. They moved up the path twenty paces or so.

‘Here somewhere . . .’ He stopped on the track. ‘Jeez.’

It was still there. Tucked into the grass, invisible to a casual glance, the bird’s little body had swollen in the heat, its feathered skin now a round balloon. Legs snipped off clean exposed matchstick sections of bone. It would be many years later when Nicholas found the right word to describe it: talismanic. The death-tightened claws for horns. The sharply dangerous lines painted in rust-brown blood. The dumb, alien head. There was nothing accidental or joking about it. The bird was murdered, and its corpse twisted and changed into a thing that felt . . .
evil
.

Yes. Evil.

Nicholas looked at Tristram.

Tristram was staring at the dead bird. His jaw was slack and his eyes were wide. A smile curled his lips. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he whispered. Without hesitation, he knelt and gingerly took hold of the woven head. It was still securely spiked to the body and he lifted the tiny carcass out. As he did, white fluid began to drip from the bird. No, not fluid, but pale, wriggling pupae. Maggots.

‘Wow . . .’ The delighted smile grew wider on Tristram’s face.

Nicholas felt his stomach roll sickly, the way it did when he had the runs, weak and afraid. ‘You shouldn’t touch it, Tris. Tris!’

He bumped Tristram’s arm and Tristram dropped the desecrated creature on the path. The swollen body popped open with a bright whiff of rot and maggots started worming out from their nest.

Tristram stared at the infested thing, suddenly horrified. ‘Oh, yuck.’

Despite the drop, the round woven head was still attached to the tiny corpse, as if determined to see a job through.

‘I can’t believe you picked it up,’ said Nicholas.

As he rocked back on his feet, movement across Carmichael Road caught his eye. The driver’s door of the green car opened. A man was alighting: a large man in a dark suit. In the harsh overhead sun, his face was cast into binary tones of sharp light and dense shadow, yet it seemed he was looking at the boys.

He
is
looking at us
, thought Nicholas.
I can feel it.

‘Tris. We should go home.’

Tristram was wiping his hands on his shorts, staring at the dead bird. ‘I thought it was—’

‘Let’s go,’ hissed Nicholas. Tristram looked up.

The man strode across the road towards them, straight at them through the grass. He was even bigger than Nicholas had thought: solid as a rugby player, but older, in his forties. Somehow, middle age made him even scarier. The man turned his head left then right with deliberate slowness, calibrating the surrounds. He wasn’t looking for other adults to join him in chastising these boys for throwing stones and carrying toy guns.

He’s checking for witnesses
.