The Darkening Read online

  Because of her. Because of Quill.

  Quill. A woman she hadn’t thought of in twenty years. But was that true? Weren’t there nights when she dreamed of that dark little shop where dresses and suits hung like the capes of villainous creatures in some bad old Christopher Lee film? Quill was long dead, long gone. Why had Suzette brought her name up the other night? Was it coincidence?

  Katharine wiped under her nose, ran fingertips through her hair, straightened her dress. Yes. Of course it was coincidence. But to be sure, to be certain, a few questions might be asked about Quill.

  She knew who to go to. She would go tomorrow.

  She opened her bedroom door wide and went to sit with her daughter.

  Ackland Street pastries. The sun-warmed timber of the wharf at St Kilda, daintily lifting its skirts as it stepped into summer waters. Good music. Great coffee. Life.

  Nicholas lay on the couch in his flat, thinking of places to pack and leave for. Melbourne sounded inviting. So did Perth. And the Hunter Valley. And Launceston. In fact, anywhere sounded good. Anywhere but here.

  He had no idea of the time, but it was long, long past midnight. He couldn’t sleep. Every time he shut his eyes, images appeared, haunting his skull as surely as ghosts haunted his life: Gavin’s scalp lifting, popping up like a magician’s trick bouquet; Mrs Boye spitting at an impassive Christ; Teale, arms like Frankenstein’s undead creation, chasing him through dense forest; a dead bird with a head of woven twigs; a strange arrowhead mark carved into the walnut stock of Gavin’s gun.

  A dangerous rune, Suzette had called it. Too fucking right. So dangerous that he hoped he’d confused her enough, or pissed her off enough, that she’d book a flight home to Sydney tomorrow.

  His tired eyes slid shut, and straightaway more dark images played like a silent newsreel: Tristram dropping to his knees and crawling into the spidery tunnel; Laine Boye’s eyes, inscrutable; Rowena’s eyes, shining with youth; Cate’s eyes, open and dusted with white powder; carved stone; the Green Man; dark woods dense with sentient trees; the oak grove at Walpole Park. .

  Nicholas’s eyes flew open. He felt suddenly ill.

  The face that he’d seen as he sped past overgrown Walpole Park at Ealing on his motorbike, the face that made him crash — a face glimpsed just for an instant, a half-memory, a ghostly dream from the other side of his life — had been shrouded in leaves, just as the ceiling boss at the church was.

  The Green Man.

  He shook his head. You see things that would send a person insane; ergo, you are probably insane.

  But he wasn’t insane; close, perhaps, but not yet. And he was sure of one other thing: he couldn’t leave town. The Thomas child’s body had been found three suburbs away, but Nicholas had seen his ghost dragged by invisible hands into the woods. Tristram’s body had been found kilometres away, but Suzette had seen his ghost on the gravel path on Carmichael Road. The boys’ bodies may have been found elsewhere, and their supposed killers had confessed to murdering them a long way from Tallong, but their ghosts didn’t lie. The boys had died in the woods.

  Something in there killed them, thought Nicholas. And you and Suzette are the only ones who know that.

  As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t leave.

  There would be no sleep tonight. He stood, yanked on a jumper, snatched his keys and strode out into the pre-dawn chill.

  Fog had closed the early morning down to a smoky dream. Nicholas had walked for what felt like hours, hoping that his long strides and the cold air would empty his mind long enough for him to rush home, pack his suitcase and speed to the airport. Instead, his traitorous feet took him through the thick mist to the 7-Eleven near the railway station. He agonised outside long enough for his light sweat to turn icy, then stepped inside and purchased two items, cursing himself for a fool every moment of the transaction.

  Then he walked to Carmichael Road.

  The fog swallowed all sound. No dogs barked. No cars passed. He could only see a few feet in front of him. As he crossed Carmichael Road, his footsteps on the tarmac were jealously hushed by the moist air. He stepped into the knee-high grass and felt the chill of it eat through his jeans to his calves. He ploughed a wet path to what he guessed was roughly the middle of the gravel track, and stood silent, waiting.

  For twenty minutes, nothing happened. The wet, frigid air seeped into his collar, up his sleeves, into his shoes. He had to bite his lip to convince himself he wasn’t still asleep on the couch, dreaming that he was here in this pearly grey world of cold. An elderly woman in a pink cardigan walked past on the other side of Carmichael Road with a tiny white dog — two faint spectres in the mist. She didn’t see Nicholas, and was dissolved again by the cloudy grey. He waited another five minutes. The cold burrowed into his skin, his eyes, his bones.

  Then a flicker of movement ahead on the path.

  Nicholas hurried. As he grew closer, the figure grew sharper through the fog like a diver rising from obscure depths. A young girl crouched on the path. She was shoeless and wore a plain sundress. His first thought was that she must be freezing. Then he saw that tall blades of damp grass speared painlessly through her legs and arms. She was as insubstantial as the mist.

  My God. Tristram. The Thomas Boy. This young girl. Maybe Owen Liddy. How many children have died in those woods?

  Nearer, he could see the shift the girl wore was a pattern from the 1940s. Her face beamed in delight: she’d found something wonderful on the path. She looked around cautiously, hopefully, checking that its rightful owner wasn’t around and she could claim the treasure for herself.

  The girl bent again to pick up the invisible object she’d found. The moment she did, her translucent eyes widened in sudden disgust and she jerked away from the vile thing. Nicholas felt his stomach tighten; he knew what would come next. The ghost girl’s head whipped up toward the woods and white terror slammed across her face. She jittered back to run, but got not a step before her arm shot out like a signal post’s and she jetted away through the mist towards the invisible woods, mouth wide in terror, dragged by something unseen, powerful and fast.

  A cold worm of fear shifted in Nicholas’s stomach. But he didn’t follow.

  Instead, he started searching the path. It took less than a minute for him to find what he was looking for. He bent and parted the wet sword grass. There. A butcher bird. Grey wings, white belly, loose feathers over a swollen body. Legs snipped neatly off. Head gone, replaced with a sphere of woven twigs that was greening with mould encouraged by the recent rains. Hints of rust red peeked from under the ill green. The small bird’s death-curled claws were stuck in like horns.

  He knew without doubt that just a few days ago, Dylan Thomas had seen this same bird on the path.

  Nicholas picked up the talisman. He plucked out the feet, pulled off the woven head, and angrily tossed the legs, false head and body in three directions.

  There. Now I’ve touched the bird.

  He turned and strode through the sword grass towards the woods he knew were waiting.

  As he pushed through the tightly packed scrub, tendrils of fog curled in his wake. With mist obscuring everything but the few steps in front of him, there was less of an overwhelming palette of green to assault his eyes and he was drawn to details he would otherwise have overlooked: how close the trunks were to one another; how one tree was armoured in bark as dark and thick as a crocodile’s hide, while its neighbour was pale grey and smooth as a girl’s calf; how the carpet of leaves underfoot bled tea-coloured water as he squashed it, and how it sucked lightly when he stepped off; how the exposed rocks in gully walls bore spots of pale green moss rounded like spray can spatters on their tops and black shadows like beards below; how vines curled up trunks like possessive serpents, rose straight like jade zippers, or clung with their own green claws like headless jade dragons. Some trunks were metres wide — striated tendons in the wrists of straining giants. Some massive beeches had tumbled with time and lay prone like beached whales,
barnacled with funguses that reminded him of human ears. Some had fallen and exposed clumps of roots twice a man’s height — colossal, arthritic fingers probing the mist.

  As he moved deeper, the fog drew even closer about him and moisture beaded on the fabric of his jumper and jeans. The half-light of misty dawn dimmed further as the dark canopy overhead closed tighter. He walked cocooned in a silent dusk, and had to stretch out his arms so he wouldn’t collide with tree trunks that loomed suddenly, their limbs so madly twisted that they reminded him of Mexican catacombs where the dried dead were stacked standing, their leather-and-bone limbs crooked at angry angles.

  He lost track of time. When he reached the low cliff that led down to the gully and the water pipe, he was unsure if he’d been walking ten minutes or fifty. The gully was thick with fog, and the dark green tops of shrubs poked through it like the mouldering heads of drowned people. He checked his watch and a shudder ran through him. It was nearly eight. He’d been in these cheerless woods an hour and a half.

  He slung the plastic 7-Eleven bag over one shoulder and carefully descended the gully face. At the bottom, he walked cautious steps away from the steep bank until his feet clacked on the stones of the wash bed. Then he turned and followed the dry creek until a dark shape coalesced from the thick fog. The pipe. Its flanks loomed like the hull of some ghost ship. Below the red metal, the twin skull eyes of the tunnels watched him.

  Okay, he thought. Let’s go.

  He felt his body vibrate with the hard thudding of his heart. He took a breath, feeling the biting harshness of cold air lick his throat, and knelt. From the plastic bag he pulled out a new torch and a squat spray can with a plastic lid.

  You could just go back, he thought. Just go back, never come down here again, never see another terrified ghost, just go back and leave town and get a job in a new office and buy a new flat and ignore the dead and-

  ‘Shh,’ he told himself. He couldn’t go back. Something was in there, beyond the pipe. Something that took children. Something that had taken Tristram.

  He touched the bird. It should have been you.

  Something that wanted him to come in.

  Fine, he thought grimly. I touched the bird. Here I come.

  He flicked on the torch. In the crepuscular gloom of the fog-bound woods, the white-yellow beam was cheery and bright. He clenched his jaws and shone the light into the nearest of the twin pipes. What he saw made him reel.

  The tunnel’s length, all four or so metres of it, was thick with spider webs: some were fresh and shining like silver wire; some were loose and dusky as old shrouds. Among the webs, dotted like black stars in a diseased firmament, were spiders. Thousands of spiders. The shaking torchlight scanned them: some had round, shining bodies with black osseous legs that stroked the air; others had abdomens orange as spoiled juice, swollen thick and looking full enough to pop; some were small and busy, tending webs with legs that moved as delicately as human fingers; others were as big as tea saucers, hairy and fleshy. Some fussed with spindle limbs over the silk-wrapped corpses of their prey or silk-wrapped bundles of their eggs. The torchlight winked off thousands of black, unblinking eyes.

  Nicholas felt gorge rise from his stomach. How did Tristram force himself through there? How did he not go instantly mad being dragged through that?

  Then another thought struck him: Maybe he did go mad. Maybe he was lucky to, considering his bloody, lamb-like fate.

  Nicholas swallowed back the peppery bile and took the plastic lid off the can. It was a bug bomb. The illustration on its side showed a variety of cartoon insects clasping their hearts in theatrical death. The can rattled as he shook it. Satisfied, he aimed its nozzle at the pipe mouth, put his thumb on the tab and pressed it down with a plasticky click. Insecticide hissed out as the tab locked on, and he threw the erupting spray can hard into the curtains of web in the pipe. He guessed it travelled nearly halfway into the pipe until the webs snagged it.

  He backed away till he could barely see the pipe’s black mouth through the fog. The echoing hiss of the spray in the tunnel sounded low and mean, like the sighing exhalation of some entombed dark god, unhappily woken. The hissing slowed and thinned and died down to a stop.

  For a few moments, nothing happened. Then spiders came crawling from the pipe — first in ones and twos, then by the dozen. They rushed out on panicked legs, or staggered out to perform mad pirouettes, or crawled out weakly, stunned. Some curled and perished on the spot. Some scuttered left and right into the woods. Some scrabbled weakly towards Nicholas; he crushed them with his shoe, nauseated by the dark liquids and small, glossy organs that shot from them.

  It took fifteen minutes for the exodus of dying spiders to cease. Nicholas checked his watch. It was just after nine thirty. He waited a few more minutes for the poison to finish its killing work, then looked around for a stick with which to clear the cobwebs. He found one as thick as a pool cue, and returned to the pipe’s mouth. They’ll all be lying on the bottom of the pipe. Oh, Jesus. He hadn’t thought of that. If he’d planned this at all, he’d have bought a disposable pair of plastic overalls, thick gloves, goggles and a mask. Moreover, he realised he couldn’t hold the torch, crawl and clear cobwebs at the same time. He’d have to go in the dark.

  He tucked the torch in the back of his jeans, slipped the one plastic bag he had over his left hand, gripped the stick with his right, sucked in a mighty breath and crept in.

  As his body blocked the already thin light, the tunnel ahead fell into instant, sepulchral dark. He whisked the stick in front of him, left and right like a blind man’s cane. It tick-ticked off the sides, echoing like chattering teeth. Move fast. Don’t breathe. The first few feet weren’t so bad, but he felt the give of spiny things crushing under his hand and under his knees. But as he went deeper, so became the bed of fallen spiders. His flicking stick grew heavy with web, coated thickly as if with hellish spun sugar from some demented circus sideshow. His knees grew sodden with the juices of squashed arachnids. But what was underhand was worst. The thin bag felt woefully insubstantial as he placed it again and again on the ragged, sometimes shifting bed of spider bodies. He felt the twiggy legs and rounded bulges of the large ones. As his weight shifted onto his arm, it pushed his hand down through a centimetre, then two, then three of inhuman flesh. He vomited. Tears welled and flowed. He sucked in lungfuls of acrid air and filaments of web invaded his mouth. The fumes made him retch again. He scurried forward. The stick, heavier and heavier, failed to clear the curtains of web and they shrouded his face and hair. Dead spiders knocked against his cheeks and eyelids. Those not quite dead clambered up his arms and in his ears. His bagged hand slipped forward and he fell like a horse on ice, his face burying in the hard-soft, dead-alive carpet of spider flesh. He screamed and let go of the stick, propelling himself forward as fast as he could. The circle of light at the other end grew larger and larger. His wet shoes slipped as he scrabbled for purchase, his hands squelched and his sleeves grew soaked. He hurled himself out of the tunnel.

  He leapt to his feet and jumped in circles like a mad dog, wiping his hands furiously on his jean legs and clawing at the grey caul over his face and head. His lungs roared and his head swam. His stomach heaved again, vomiting nothing but salty spit. His heart raced and tears poured from his eyes.

  ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’

  He pulled spiders from his hair and wiped them from his jacket. Some had gone down the front of his jumper and T-shirt, so he jerked his shirt out violently, shaking the spiny cadavers onto the ground. He stopped his rabid dance. His panicked panting slowed to shuddering breaths.

  He was through.

  Clear of the pipe, Nicholas realised he had no plan beyond getting through the spidery tunnels. Without any other clear choice, he began following the rock wash bed of the gully floor.

  The woods here were even denser than on the other side of the pipe. Ancient trees conspired together, dark limbs intertwining so closely that it was almost impossible to tell wh
ere one ended and another began. Vines with ribbed stalks thick as shins curled up trunks and over one another. The forest floor was an unsteady sea with tall waves of damp roots and deep troughs filled with decaying leaves that smelled as cloying and vital as human sweat. The fog was lifting, yet here it remained as dark as evening, and Nicholas couldn’t see more than five metres ahead before the trunks and curling vines merged to become a thick curtain. No breeze stirred the dark ceiling of leaves overhead.

  How could he possibly explore the entire area? What would he find? And if he did find something, what could he do once he had? Did you bring a camera? A compass? A weapon? No, no and no. What an idiot. And then a thought bloomed brightly, trampling his foolish feeling and chilling him: Nobody knows you’re here.

  He noticed the stream bed underfoot was narrowing. He sensed that he was heading slightly uphill, but the hunched trunks, the fallen trees leaning against each other like drunken titans, and the clutching undergrowth made it impossible to judge. Roots arched over the rolling ground like stealthy fingers. He knew from the street map that if he could travel straight, he would eventually meet the river. He couldn’t be sure whether the dry watercourse was running straight, twisting left or right or meandering wildly — it hunted under dark schist and round knobbed elbows of roots. So was the river half a kilometre distant, or would he cross the next ridge and slide down into brown, frigid water?

  He was lost.

  Worse, he was thirsty and, now his empty stomach had recovered from the crawl through the tunnel, hungry as hell. As he climbed, the rocks grew sparser and the undergrowth wilder. Leaning trees had been covered in thick curtains of vines so they took the form of elephantine beasts, hulking antediluvian monsters with shimmering hides of shadowy jade. Soon, Nicholas was scrambling, climbing hand and foot over saplings and fallen, rotting trunks hoary with moss. He seemed to reach a low crest, and stopped.