Mirrorland, page 26
‘She’s here,’ I say again. Because I know it’s true. The house has helped me, Mirrorland has helped me; it seems like the most natural thing in the world that El should help me too. Not the El that has festered and grown inside my heart and my dreams. But my sister. My friend. The smell of her, the smile of her, the thoughts of her, running parallel to mine. It’s as if my whole world has changed from mono to stereo, 2D to 3. And it’s the first time I’ve felt it in so long – that I’ve even realised it was as missing as she was – I want to sob, I want to say sorry, I want to plead for her forgiveness.
‘Stop saying that!’ In the dim light, Ross’s expression is furious, but his eyes flicker up and around as if trying to find her.
I step back down onto the stony slabs of Mirrorland, let go of the bannister. I’m already stronger, braver. ‘Just tell the fucking truth.’ Because the truth is the only way out of this place for either of us.
He stays silent for a very long time. Comes out from the shadow of the staircase. His jaw is no longer tight, and his eyes are warm, full of the love I always longed for. His hair is too long, his shaved skin looks pink and vulnerable; I want to rub the back of my fingers against it. This is Ross.
‘You were going to leave. You were going to leave and never come back.’ He moves towards me. Reaches out his hands in supplication. ‘I would never have seen you again. I would have lost you. Just like Dad lost me.’
My breath stops at the moment the rain does. The silence is suddenly absolute.
‘He killed himself. Five years after Mum took me away. Hung himself from the ceiling light in my old bedroom.’ Ross’s smile is terrible. His hands shake. There is less than three feet of space remaining between us. ‘And I loved you so much. What would have happened to you? No one would look after you like I could. No one.’
I swallow. I don’t know who the you is in his mind. Maybe there, El and I were always fused together like sand and limestone. When he comes one last step closer, El’s musky perfume waters my eyes, and her whisper is loud in my ear.
RUN.
I do.
We ran east into the washhouse, Grandpa thundering behind us. The stone gave way to wood as we ran across the deck of the Satisfaction, the shriek of its boards spiking my terror. He was too close, too close. Ye’re goin’ naewhere, ye wee bitches.
I run towards the stern and the barely faded spectre of Blackbeard’s ship. Towards the small red-framed window. I frantically search for something, anything, I can use to break it, until I realise that its glass panels are even smaller than those inside the house.
‘You can’t leave.’
‘Ross, please.’
‘I’ve never told anyone about my dad before, Cat. Not even El.’
‘Ross. You’re scaring me. I won’t leave. I promise. Just let’s—’ When he keeps on coming, stepping back is as automatic as breathing. ‘Please don’t—’
‘I won’t hurt you.’ He looks affronted, wounded, but still he keeps coming, still the passion in his eyes is wild and dark. But I don’t think it’s love any more. Here, after all, is where we first sailed away from him. Left him on his knees in the Caribbean Sea. Left him bloody and sobbing and calling out to us, while we pretended not to hear him.
Grandpa slammed El against the wall above the stern. I howled, launched myself at him, but his elbow thrust backwards into the softness of my belly, winding me enough that I couldn’t get up. He grinned until all I could see was teeth. And the blood around his neck like a scarf, soaking into his shirt. Dinnae worry, lassie. He laughed. Ah’m feelin’ nae pain. And then he punched me in the side of my head so hard that my legs collapsed.
‘Ross, no. Stop.’ I cringe from him, batting his hands away, and I’ve time enough to wonder if this was what it was like for El. If this is what happened when she tried to leave him too. Until I remember what happened to her instead.
‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ He reaches out again, catches my hands and squeezes them tight inside his, tight enough that my bones crack. ‘I won’t ever hurt you.’ I wonder if he knows he’s nodding his head.
I can’t stop struggling, but he’s too strong and I’m too weak. He holds both of my wrists one-handed; the other he moves up along my shoulder, my collarbone, softly enough to make me shudder. There’s another kind of shining madness in his eyes now. A war between taking what he really wants and settling for what he’s always had instead. His hand slides up the side of my neck, his fingers tracing the skin under my ear, tighter, then tighter still, his thumb suddenly pressing down hard enough against my windpipe that I let out too much air in a gasp. And that madness shines brighter.
When I came to, Grandpa was choking El again. Her eyes were rolled back, her face was purple, her fingers blindly grasped at the air. I staggered towards them, but it was too hard. I couldn’t save her. I wasn’t enough. That was it. That was all.
‘I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you,’ Ross mutters in a horrifyingly reassuring voice, the veins in his neck getting fat with the exertion of choking me tighter. I slide down the wall, rough and cold against my back.
‘I didn’t kill her,’ he says. In that same calm voice, sweat dripping off his nose. ‘I didn’t.’
But he did. Just like he’s going to kill me.
My head feels heavy, full. El’s liquid gasps are mine. My sight begins to shrink and curl black around its edges.
And then El grips hold of my hand. Hard enough to hurt, to punish. Deadlight, she says. Screams. Deadlight.
I lurched across the deck, scrabbling for purchase as if we really were pitching and rolling against a Caribbean storm. I ignored Grandpa’s desperate grunts of exertion, made myself look only at the stern. The lantern. Hanging on a rusty hook over the hull. Grandpa turned to see me lift it high up over my head. His frown was startled, then almost tender. A wink. A grin. Put it doon, lassie.
I almost did. And so automatically I hardly registered I was doing it, until I saw Mum crawling along the deck towards us, blood running into her eyes. Her hoarse, rasping cries as Grandpa turned dismissively back to the job in hand: Leave them alone! They’re just children!
I open my eyes. No. Tell the fucking truth.
Leave them alone! They’re your children!
Ross makes a sound like a sob in the back of his throat, and I feel his fingers loosen around my neck, feel the air rushing back into my lungs. But it doesn’t matter. I know he won’t stop. One way or another. He won’t ever ever stop.
As I scramble backwards, grab on to the lantern hook to pull myself back to my feet, I hear all of the bells at once. High and discordant, low and long – loud enough to tremble eardrums and shake stone.
Your children. That horrifying truth of what we were. Not cowboys or Indians or Clowns or pirates. Or prisoners. Our grandfather’s children.
My fingers shook against the lantern; its hinges squeaked. I looked down at El’s lifeless body. The back of Grandpa’s head, his hunched and working shoulders.
And I bring the lantern – my deadlight – down on top of Ross’s skull. Just as hard as I brought it down on Grandpa’s. With the same black fury and icy horror. Again and again, until all the strength left in me has run out through my fingers. Until the sound is no longer hard and short and white, but soft and long and copper-dark.
*
It takes me a long time to climb the stairs out of Mirrorland, but once I have, I find that I can’t leave. Instead, I sit down on the top step, lean against the door. I think about phoning Rafiq, but don’t. I look down into the shadows of the Shank, the turn of the corner east towards the Satisfaction.
Mum didn’t speak again for a long while. She was angry. Then, I imagined, at us; now, I imagine, at herself. At how badly her plan had gone awry. She looked at Grandpa for a long while too before dropping down to her knees. At first, I thought to touch him, to wail, to mourn, but instead, she pushed him onto his side like he was a sack of potatoes. When she let him go, a gasp of air pushed out of him, and either I or El shrieked.
‘He’s dead,’ Mum said. And then she stood, knees cracking. Looked around at our painted walls and the long cells of the Shank with a pained kind of anger. ‘We can’t leave him here. Help me get him up the stairs.’
It took at least half an hour. By the time we managed to drag him into the kitchen, exhaustion had burned away our shock.
‘Go upstairs,’ Mum said. ‘Get together what’s left of your clothes, your books. And then go back down to Mirrorland, lock it all in the armoire with everything else.’
She’d already had us pack and store most of our meagre belongings in the armoire weeks before she first told us about THE PLAN. Just another game. Another drill we never questioned.
When we went back down to Mirrorland, numb and silent, our arms full, Mum was pulling apart the Shank, stacking the old boardwalk planks against the boundary wall. Our claw hammer was at her feet.
‘I need to cover up the door in the cupboard,’ she said. She frowned, looked at us both in turn. ‘No one can ever know you were here. Do you understand?’
We nodded, even though we didn’t. Even though we’d barely thought of anything that might happen beyond escaping through a hole in a wall, a door with no lock, and a front garden with no gate.
When Mum had dragged the last of the wood up into the pantry, she put her hands on her hips, nodded back towards the cupboard.
‘Close the door to Mirrorland.’ The look she gave both of us was fierce in her bruised and bloodied face. ‘And bolt it shut.’
We did. And then followed her back into the kitchen. She sat down at the table. There was a key in the centre of it. Grandpa’s key.
‘It’s for the front door. I want you to do what we planned. Go as quickly as you can.’
‘But now you can come too,’ El whispered.
‘I told you. I have to sort this out, that’s my job. It was always going to be my job.’
She sighed, stood up, took hold of the tea-towel sling that now hung only around her neck, and began scrubbing hard at the cuts on our faces and the blood under our nails with her usual brutal efficiency. We knew better than to complain, never mind cry, even though the pain soon swallowed up our fear. My head throbbed in the places where Grandpa had punched it or slammed it against the ground; it ached inside as if my brain had grown too big for my skull. El was struggling to swallow now; her eyes were full of tears. Both of us couldn’t stop staring at Grandpa’s body slumped next to the Kitchener; his blood running fast and dark across two tiles, pooling inside the grout between them.
‘El. There’s a tartan scarf on the coat stand. Wind it round your neck and don’t take it off. And there’s a powder compact in the drawer of the telephone table. Take that with you and cover the worst of each other’s bruises and cuts.’
We stood, stock still and silent, throbbing with pain, the remnants of horror, the beginnings of regret.
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Is Grandpa …’ I looked at his face, the dark red blood still coughing out of his ruined skull. ‘Is Grandpa our dad?’
Her lips thinned, eyes narrowed. ‘Only follow the route on the treasure map. Go nowhere else. Only the harbour, only the warehouse. There’s always someone there, so you’ll be all right.’
‘Mum,’ El whispered. ‘Was Grandpa—’
I winced when Mum grabbed for my right hand and El’s left.
‘You must always hold onto each other’s hand. Because?’
‘We will not leave each other,’ I said.
‘Never so long as we live,’ El whispered, pushing her cold hand into mine.
‘Rely on no one else. Trust no one else. All you will ever have is each other.’
We nodded, tried not to swallow, to blink, to cry.
‘Remember, you’re the eldest, Ellice, the poison taster. Be brave, be bold, look after your sister.’ Mum’s hands were trembling; the blood at her temple had begun to run freely again. ‘Remember, Catriona, don’t be like me. Be brave. Always see the good instead of only the bad.’
And I nodded, thought of the shrieking, squawking Kakadu Jungle, all the nights El and I had run through the darkness and the lightning, the roaring wind and towering water, the shadows crouching, bristling with rage and sharp teeth. This would be no different, I thought, even as I knew it would be.
Mum stayed on her knees, and though nothing about her softened, tears ran down her lopsided face, soaked into the bloodied collar of her blouse. ‘Never forget how special you are. How special you have been.’
And then she let go of our hands, closed her eyes. ‘Go now.’
When I opened my mouth to object, El squeezed my hand tighter.
‘Go.’
When we didn’t, Mum’s eyes snapped open black, her hands uncurled to show their nails, her mouth flattened into a thin, cruel line. ‘Run!’
It wasn’t how she’d wanted – planned – to do any of it, I suppose. No long goodbye, no I love you – nothing beyond the awful, practical now. She knew we would obey because, in many ways, we were more afraid of her than of anyone else. El and I had been numbed by a lifetime of her anger, her disapproval and disappointment, but perhaps she had been too. That was how she’d protected us, safeguarded us against even the smallest part of what she’d had a longer lifetime to suffer. Her love was cruel; she built us mercilessly piecemeal.
El and I only discovered a week later that she’d killed herself, in a news headline on the TV in the Rosemount’s common room. A murder–suicide, probable history of domestic violence, a screen-crawling helpline number. She’d swallowed all of Grandpa’s heart pills and then lain down right next to him on the kitchen floor.
The last picture I have in my head of Mum is her kneeling on those tiles, blocking our view of Grandpa’s body. The fierceness of her jaw, the raw pink nakedness of that fist-sized bald spot close to her crown. And the last thing I remember that she said – shouted in echoes that shook against the thick walls and high ceilings as we ran towards the blood-red entrance hall – was no less terrible or kind.
Don’t ever come back.
But we did. Both of us. Because we didn’t keep our promises. We relied on someone else. We trusted someone else. We left each other. We forgot.
I open my eyes. They sting, my head aches, my throat throbs. I run my fingers across the smooth wood of the door, and though they leave trails of Ross’s blood in their wake, they’re steadier than they’ve been in weeks. I can remember Mum’s treasure map of black roads and green spaces now. Long blue water and a volcano. Its X drawn in the space between breakwater walls, alongside a huge wooden warehouse and a vast rusty crane. Where we believed we’d find a pirate ship to take us to The Island. Where Mum believed we’d find a second life worthy enough that we could forget our first.
I lean back against the wall, look up at the ceiling. The rain sounds like hail, hard and echoless. El has gone. Everyone has gone. And that’s when I finally start to cry. I curl up small enough that I can wrap my arms around myself as I sob. As all my grief, my regret, my horror, and my shame spills out of me and into the heavy dark corners of Mirrorland, leaving me nothing but empty.
CHAPTER 29
Logan finds me first. Though his shake is gentle, I come awake with a scream. Just as well then that I have no voice. He’s inside the cupboard, crouched down over the threshold into Mirrorland. His hair is soaking wet, plastered to his skull. He doesn’t touch me again, for which I’m grateful, but his expression is not one of a detective sergeant. I’m even more grateful for that.
‘Cat. Are you all right? Can you get up?’
The answer is probably yes, but I don’t really want to. I feel bone-weary. Maybe now that the adrenaline has worn off, whatever was in the Shiraz is kicking in again.
Light floods the cupboard as Rafiq pulls back the door, elbows Logan aside. I wonder if they had to break down the big red front door to get in. I hope so.
‘Catriona?’ She gives me a long assessing stare, head to toe. Never once stops looking like a detective inspector. And I find that I’m most grateful of all for that. ‘Where’s Ross?’
I swallow. It hurts even more than I expect it to. ‘Are you here to arrest him?’
She points at my neck. ‘He do that to you?’
I nod.
‘Where is he?’
I look down into the darkness of the staircase.
‘All right, we need to get you out of here, and then we can go take care of Ross. Logan, take her to the front room, get a uniform to sit with her.’
But I’ve no intention at all of limping quietly away. When I manage to stand, I don’t take Logan’s arm; instead I start stepping back down into Mirrorland.
‘Shit, stop her, Logan!’
He tries to. It’s too awkward in the confined space, and he’s too focused on not hurting me. Evading him is easy, until he stops trying to manhandle me and takes my hand instead.
‘Okay. You can come down with us. But we go first. All right?’
I hear Rafiq’s tut, but she doesn’t object.
I press myself up against the wall, let them both shuffle down past me. It’s something of a relief. I don’t know what we’re going to find at the bottom.
‘What the hell is this place?’ Rafiq mutters, as we go down through the gloom towards the gold circle of Ross’s hurricane lantern. She momentarily stops, turns to me. ‘Is this where—’
I nod once, quickly, and her expression sharpens.
At the bottom, Logan picks up the lantern.
‘Left.’ My voice is whisper-thin.
We pass the armoire, the Silver Cross pram. Our feet sink down into the floorboards of the washhouse. My heart is beating faster, but only a little. I don’t know what I want to find. I don’t know whether I want Ross to be alive or dead.
The lanternlight swings left, finds him. He’s crawled from the stern – as far as the gun deck and El’s chalk scrawls of Rum and Water Stores HERE!! – but he isn’t moving now. And then he flinches against the light, moans loud enough to kick-start my heart again. He looks up, tries to rise. His left eye is completely shut, the wound above it scabbed over with blood.
