Thornwood House (7 page)

One sleepless night in early January I lingered in the doorway of the back bedroom, swallowing a yawn.

Despite my careful cleaning, the room had the atmosphere of a time capsule. I’d swept the floor, replaced the bed sheets
and washed the old quilt, and carefully wiped away the gritty detritus of neglect from all the furniture – but otherwise the room was just as Tony’s grandfather had left it.

The yawn finally got me and I stepped blearily into the room. The sleigh bed looked inviting, despite the sunken mattress and faded old patchwork quilt. A full moon shone through the windows, throwing gauzy curtains of light over the walls. The old homestead creaked and groaned in its sleep, and outside in the garden an owl hooted a love-song to its mate.

Going over to the elegant old rosewood dressing table, I ran my fingers across its arrangement of objects – the brush and comb set, the little Bible still flocked with ancient dust, the silver tray containing cufflinks, and a gold signet ring inscribed with the initials S.R.

Tony’s grandfather, Samuel Riordan. I’d seen his name on the deed of the house and until now it had been just that, a name. But now, as I stood in his room in the moonlight, I felt his presence brush against me, every bit as tangible as that of a flesh and blood man. A shiver sped across my skin, but it wasn’t from fear; more, a sense of expectancy – though for what exactly, I had no idea.

The dressing table had only one drawer. I tugged on the knob but the drawer refused to budge. Thinking it jammed, I gave it a sharp jiggle but only succeeded in making the cufflinks rattle in their silver dish, and the mirror lurch wildly, throwing demented shards of moonlight over the walls.

Then I saw the keyhole. For a while I searched, running my fingers under the mirror, examining the floor around the dresser’s legs – but failed to turn up a key. I pondered grabbing a screwdriver and forcing the drawer open, but that seemed too destructive . . . Besides, it was probably just full of moth-eaten old socks and undies. They could wait.

When I could put it off no longer, I went to the bedside and switched on the lamp, then stood in front of the photo.
On another sleepless night I’d spent an hour obsessively polishing the tarnished frame, buffing the glass. The better to see him, I suppose.

Samuel would have been in his mid-twenties when the snap was taken. His close-cropped dark hair accentuated a high forehead and winged brows that swooped over intense eyes. His shirt strained across a broad chest, the sleeves snug around muscular arms. He was gazing intently at the camera, a smouldering half-smile touching his lips, his eyes curiously alight. Again, I had the niggling sense that I knew him.

I searched his features for echoes of Tony – but Tony’s face had been bony and angular, open and amiable – vastly different to the brooding dark-eyed man staring out of the photo.

I went over to the window.

The sky had lightened. Dawn was less than an hour away. Once again I’d spent a sleepless night, and the cobwebby mechanisms of my brain had wound down to a sluggish torpor. My eyelids kept drifting shut, I felt drugged. I pondered the sunken mattress with its lovely old quilt. Surely a quick snooze wouldn’t hurt? Five minutes, just until I mustered enough energy to go back to my own room.

Flicking off the lamp, I settled on the bed. My limbs grew heavy. Tension melted away. After a while, the room around me receded into the gloom and my thoughts began to unravel.

Samuel. I rolled the name around my mind. As though responding to my summons, he appeared in the darkness behind my eyes, an apparition of such lifelike detail – his rumpled white shirt, his spectacular face with those brooding green eyes, that seductive smile – so vibrant it took my breath away. Nearer he came, so close now I could reach out and touch him. His skin was warm from standing in the sunny arbour, lightly freckled and velvety soft, the muscles firm beneath. If I stretched out on the bed, he might hold me while I slept, and I would dream of sunshine and newly planted rose trees, and a lilting voice
whispering close to my ear, a single word, over and over, a word that sounded like . . .

Eyelash
–

I snapped awake and shot to my feet. Swayed there as my pulse tripped erratically, my head reeling as if I’d just stepped off a rollercoaster. Sleep was way overdue, I realised. When my imagination went haywire like that, tripping out, scaring me, I knew it was time to stop dallying around in the dark and go back to bed.

But my own room seemed very far. I sat down again. Wriggling back, I leaned my shoulders against the headboard, then somehow sank down onto the pillow.

My eyes drifted half-mast.

The rafters creaked. A family of bats twittered in the trees outside. Leaves scratched the windowpane. Somewhere in the distance, a lonely dog was barking. The night settled like a heavy blanket and the darkness tucked me in.

Then somehow, I found sleep.

I woke a while later. At least, it felt like waking. Tangy sweetness drifted in the air: eucalyptus leaves, stringybark blossoms. From somewhere overhead came the cry of a tawny frogmouth, then the soft flurry of wings as it took flight. The outside world seemed very close. I tried to recall if I’d fallen asleep directly beneath the window – but as my vision adjusted, lofty treelike shadows emerged around me and I understood that I was lying on damp ground out in the open.

Something was wrong.

Stones dug into my spine, my bones screamed in pain; my head was thrown back at an unnatural angle and my lungs felt unyielding, the air solidified in them. I tried to call out, but my mouth was full of warm wetness.

A heavy feeling of foreboding throbbed in me. Had I fallen, hurt myself? I couldn’t quite remember –

Dim shapes and jumbled sensations flitted through my mind. There’d been shouting. An arm had raised up, then came down again and again. Something hard struck my shoulder, my upthrust hands, my head. There was the ugly sound of cracking bone.

Blinking, I tried to struggle awake. The darkness shifted. Far above me, between the leaves, the sky was growing lighter. I wanted to move, but my arms and legs refused to obey; they were skewed under me, useless. A funny smell lifted off my skin, a repulsive coppery odour that frightened me . . . and somehow I knew I had good cause to be afraid.

I pricked my ears. There was the trickling murmur of a creek, the chirp of frogs, the soft groan of wind in the branches.

And then, footsteps.

A voice began to cry through the gloom.

Eyelash . . . Eyelash.

I tried to cringe away, fearing that my attacker had returned to finish me, but no more able to move than I had been before; all I could do was lie helpless on the damp gravel and wait . . . wait for death or oblivion – whichever came first – to find me.

I woke again, this time for real. The acid glow of moonlight filtered into the room, and as I sat up and gazed about, formless shapes became apparent, materialising slowly from the dimness. The rosewood dressing table, the bulging armoire, the dark doorway, and the faintly luminous window.

It was not yet dawn, the sky outside still mostly black. The only trees I could see now were those in the garden – fig and mango, avocado and poinciana, all of them muted in the setting moonlight, hazy as ghosts.

I’d been dreaming, but couldn’t remember why my dream had made me feel so heartsick. I only recalled shadows swaying and bowing above me – a windblown tree one moment, a murderous apparition the next.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and toed my feet into my slippers. Shuffling to the door, I hovered a moment, trying to rationalise.
The fear you feel right now is nothing more than the residue of a nightmare . . . For heaven’s sake, forget it and go back to sleep.

But old habits die hard. Tiptoeing down the hall to my daughter’s room, I pushed open the door and went in. Her cheeks were overly flushed in sleep from the stifling heat, and her eyes twitched beneath their diaphanous lids – but she was breathing, alive. Safe. Unable to help myself, I smoothed an invisible lock of hair off her brow and stooped to plant a kiss on her damp scalp. Then, satisfied, I wandered half-unconsciously back to my own bed.

‘I
don’t want to wait in the car,’ Bronwyn grumbled.

She was slouched against the kitchen sink, mopping raspberry jam off her plate with a corner of toast, washing down mouthfuls with chocolate milk from a carton. She wore her regular uniform of cut-off jeans and tank top, and her hair hung over her shoulders in twin braids.

‘The flight won’t last long,’ I reassured her. ‘Thirty minutes at most. We can do something fun afterwards if you like . . . Go into town for ice-cream?’

Placing the coffeepot on the stove, I raced around collecting my camera bag and spare lenses. A few days ago I’d secured some freelance photographic work with a local real estate agent – my first assignment was to take aerial shots of newly listed farm holdings. The flight was scheduled for ten-thirty that morning.

Cramming my telephoto lens into its case, I zipped up – then noticed the silence. I looked at Bronwyn. She was frowning down at her unfinished crusts of toast, a pink smear of jam on her chin. The countdown to school had reached the four-day mark, and I knew she was getting edgy.

‘Aren’t you scared of going up?’ she asked.

‘I’ve done dozens of flyovers. I might get little queasy sometimes, but never scared.’

The coffeepot began to gurgle. I filled my cup, dumped in two sugars and a squirt of milk, winced as it scalded my tongue on the way down.

‘But Mum, it’s different this time.’ Bronwyn abandoned her plate on the sink and tossed her carton in the recycle bin. Then she went to the window and peered worriedly out at the sky. ‘We’re in a new place, you don’t know the pilot. He might be careless. He might not check his equipment properly. Something might go wrong.’

‘Nothing’ll go wrong. I’ve been up so many times I reckon I could fly a Cessna myself.’

‘I want to come with you,’ she blurted. ‘Up in the plane, I mean.’

‘It’ll be boring.’

‘You always say that.’

‘Bronny, you can’t come up – the insurance doesn’t cover passengers. Besides, I feel happier knowing you’re safe on the ground.’

Her head whipped around. Suddenly she was all eyes. ‘It’s
not
safe, then, is it?’

‘I didn’t mean – ’

‘Mum, what if something happens? What if the plane crashes? What if the pilot flies into a mountain? What if he turns out to be a crackpot, like those ones in America?’

‘The plane won’t crash. Flying in a small aircraft is safer than travelling by car, even safer than crossing a city street.’

I had wanted to sound reassuring, but there was a catch in my voice. Dream images flashed through my mind. Dim shapes and tree-shadows, someone shouting. A hazy figure with its arm raised up. Darkness and fear, pain. And a sense that unseen danger lurked just ahead . . .

I shook off the irrational feelings. ‘Nothing’s going to happen, Bron. I promise.’

Bronwyn fixed me with a worried look. ‘If you died,’ she said at last, her voice high and quivery, ‘what would happen to me? There’s just the two of us now, Mum. If one of us died, the other
one would be alone. I don’t have an Aunty Morag to fall back on, like you did. I’d have no one.’