Fall (24 page)

Tara remembered those frantic moments before boarding, when her excitement and terror were so tangible, so real, it felt as if a cloak of electricity was brushing against her arms, searing at her neck, twisting down her legs. She went to the bathroom six or seven times in the hour she waited at the crowded airport gate, drawing stares every time she moved, a lumbering force of nature. She'd never been on an airplane before. She had almost flown once for a Year Ten science trip to Cairns – ninety students on the Barrier Reef locating, cataloguing and photographing marine life for their end-of-year portfolios.

Photographing marine life?
Joanie snorted.

Tara would need two seats, and something like that was just too much for Joanie to take. Tara had looked at the skies through the trees outside the attic windows, hoping she would spot the plane trailing across the depthless blue. She imagined it suddenly combusting, a bright white spark breaking into shimmering speckles like glitter spilt across blue icing. The screams and gasps from below.

It had been around this time that Tara encountered the boy in the park. She was on one of her hunting trips with Joanie. Tara running in the dark. Gasping. Crying. Joanie coming after her, a shadow floating between the huge Moreton Bay figs. Tara
swerved at the sight of the long black pole in the trees, suppressed a scream, thinking perhaps that her fantasies about Joanie the stick-insect woman had come true, that the tall black pole moving through the trees was one of Joanie's arms about to come around and spear her. She stumbled to a stop, mouth open, gasping. The pole swayed, dipped and ducked behind a tree. A boy emerged, carrying it over his shoulder. A boy and a man. They crossed the wide path in front of Tara and walked into the trees.

She looked back along the road. Joanie was nowhere to be seen. She sometimes stopped and tightened her shoelaces. Tighter and tighter as the night wore on, until the cotton laces groaned.

The man and the boy were looking up at the trees. Tara followed at a distance, her heart still hammering, sweat rolling down her chin. She swallowed the sobs that had punctuated her running breaths, stuck close to a tree to observe them.

In the darkness, they spoke softly to each other, the old man setting down his equipment, the small plastic animal cages, the cloth bags. They stood and looked into the tree canopy, pointed, murmured. The boy fiddled with the end of the pole, then turned it, aimed it carefully in the mess of leaves above. In one swift, upward thrust he jabbed at something. There was a squeal. A black bundle fell into the old man's gloved palms.

Tara gasped. The pair turned towards her.

‘It's alright,' the boy said. Tara emerged from the shadows, chanced a step closer. The boy had Peter Anderson's litheness and solidity about him, the sturdiness of good genes and proud parenting, a spattering of boy-next-door freckles on his nose. He took the black bundle from the old man and came over to her. Tara fought the urge to flee.

‘We're tagging them,' the boy said. ‘You wanna see?'

The old man smiled and waited as the teenagers drew closer. Tara's heart hammered in her neck and cheeks as the boy opened his gloves. A small flying fox lay curved in his hands, the huge fingers of the glove gripping the creature by the back of its furry neck, its leathery, bony wings crumpled and folded in the fabric. The thing was swimming somewhere between sleep and wake, glossy black eyes blinking. A single bead of ruby red blood emerged from the orange fur of its chest and smeared on the boy's glove. He pulled a tiny dart from the creature's side and held it for her to see. She took it and looked at it. A tiny plastic vial, the silver spike.

‘We have to knock them out or they panic. Get tangled in the nets. Sometimes they can hurt themselves,' he said.

She could smell his sweet breath. Tara wondered if she had ever stood as close to a boy as she stood now, his arm almost touching hers. Centimetres from contact. From contracting her germs. Did he know how close he was to being infected by her, the darkness and terror that rippled through her every waking moment? She glanced towards the road, slipping the vial into her pocket as she turned. Joanie was nowhere.

‘Their hearts are really fragile. So we have to be careful with them,' the boy smiled.

My heart is really fragile
, Tara thought.
Be careful with me
.

She followed him back to the old man, tried to give the boy space, but he seemed insistent on being near her, standing in the infectious cloud of her very being. She watched as they clipped the brass ring around the animal's tiny clawed feet. The thing was awake now, the fanged mouth opening, stretching, the pointed ears twitching madly, trying to get a sense of up and down.

‘Whoa,' the boy said, as the black beast began to wriggle in his hands. It gave a squeal and thrashed its tiny head. Tara caught the boy looking at her and she felt the bile rise in her throat.

‘Here, grab on,' the boy said, thrusting his hands at her. Tara put her trembling fingers around the outside of his warm gloves. She was, for the first time, separated from the touch of a boy by mere fabric. By choice. By strange and inexplicable choice. Her knees shook.

‘One, two –' the boy said. Together they lifted and opened their hands, and a great flapping darkness was unleashed. The motion drew the two teenagers together. Their arms touched.

‘Tara,' Joanie yelled. Tara looked back towards the road, saw shadows moving. She turned and ran.

 

Tara looked around the boarding-gate lounge and saw no one who reminded her of the boy in the park. There were only hollow eyes and sneering lips. She imagined her fellow passengers burning and writhing in their plane seats, blackening fingers struggling at seatbelts, holes tearing down the side of the fuselage, whipping and stirring the fire. All of them shuddering in unison as the plane plummeted down levels of the atmosphere like a wayward skateboard diving and bumping down stairs. She smiled. A little girl standing by a pram thought Tara was smiling at her and smiled back. Tara imagined the child sliding down the tipped aisle towards the pilot's cabin, fingernails gripping at the carpet.

On the plane, she boarded economy, thinking she might be less conspicuous here. But the usual sighs erupted as she manoeuvred herself slowly towards 23B, which she discovered
was in the middle of a group of three only when she sat in it, the seat handles jutting into her hips as she wiggled down onto the cushion. A young man approached from the front of the plane, looked at Tara, looked at the seat numbers and hitched his bag up onto his shoulder, kept walking. Tara heard arguing at the back of the plane. She didn't pay much attention to it. The seats filled around her, the occasional glance coming her way as people shoved bags into overhead lockers and squeezed into their seats, paperbacks resting against chests, inches from reading eyes. A baby began wailing and preflight checks made things buzz and wheeze and bleep outside the window beside her. It was raining, and droplets slid down the small oval window into the curved rim. She felt her bladder ache again, looked towards the back of the plane. The man she'd seen and a woman were both speaking animatedly to the flight attendant. Eventually they were seated by the bathrooms.

Tara took the folded piece of paper from inside her bra and smoothed it out, warm and curved, against her thigh. On it, she found her own name and traced the letters with her fingernail, something she had done a number of times now, so that the letters were almost faded. ‘Tara Harper: Surgical itinerary'. Because, yes, the document was hers completely, had been arranged and paid for by her alone. Daddy's inheritance, finally setting her free. She followed the points and the dates on the paper with her finger, whispered the procedures to herself.

It would be a surgical marathon. Over six days, she would have 60 per cent of her body fat removed. Tara had not been able to find another organisation that would approve the procedures, but Dr Raji Benmal's ‘fast-track' surgical overhaul had been explained in detail on his website. Tara would be in a coma for the entire ordeal, and for a week afterwards, and therefore her body would not go into shock between the surgery rounds – the four-to six-week recovery between procedures wasn't necessary because she wouldn't be putting her body through the trauma of waking between lipectomy rounds. Dr Benmal was going to remove the weight, carve her away to the glorious muscle and sinew she knew was beneath the ragged fat, and stitch her back together like a broken doll.

With unique world-first binding procedures, laser skin therapy, and all the care and consideration throughout her recovery that a mother would give a child, Tara was going to heal into a new being, a new soul. Tara had laughed at that part: the mother offering the care to the child as her body reeled in its new form. Tara was going to return to Australia knowing what a mother's love was really like, and then she was going to bring all the agony she had known in her former body down upon Joanie, who waited, unsuspecting, in the Lang Road house. Tara closed her eyes and imagined Joanie's face as she walked in the door, the confusion as she tried to fit the identity of this beautiful woman to the slightly familiar
face before her, the cheekbones and jawbones she had never seen before. Tara considered changing her name once Joanie was dead, drawing a name up from the blood of her fallen mother as she smoothed the warm red life liquid over her fingers, tasted it on her tongue. A name would come to her as she kneeled over Joanie, finally triumphant. Something powerful. Something borne of pain.

Tara realised, as she opened her eyes, that she was laughing in that awful, evil, snarling way she laughed, clutching the itinerary against her breasts, her tongue washing over her bottom lip as though she was with Joanie already, watching the life drain from her. People around her on the plane were staring. Tara smiled a devil's smile.

The dog had some strange behaviours. Hades didn't know much about dogs and their night-time activities, but when he got up around midnight to piss, a regular nocturnal journey, he spotted the thing in its basket, dreaming. Paws twitching in sequence, running in the land of fantasy, now and then the lips slipping upwards over the shining white teeth, exposing the fleshy pink beneath. The lips came forward again and narrowed, and the thing gave a low and drawn-out howl, barely audible, almost singing. Hades watched the dog until it fluttered out of the dream and raised its head, peered at him from beneath a hood of blanket, waiting like an old robed monk for his command. In the morning he caught the creature standing at the doorway, staring out at the workers at the bottom of the hill with the sharp, lethal stillness of a pointer, nose inches from the wire. Its bony silhouette against the white dawn was like a streak of ink. When he filled its bowl, it ate so fast it regularly choked and coughed up cubes of meat, so that before it was finished the meal had been chewed and regurgitated and re-chewed a number of times.

The dog wasn't sure of Eden at all when she arrived at the door, worn jeans, black cap pulling a long ponytail up behind
her head. She was dressed as she did when she hunted – androgynously, lithely, as though prepared to run at any time. The flighty Eden. She'd always been like that in times of stress, prepared to disappear, bags packed and affairs in order. Even as a teenager, the old man had half-expected one day that she might run off on him, like a cat brought in from the wild, half-listening all the time to the call of the horizon, to the seductive darkness of the road. She opened the screen door and the dog trotted to the hall entrance, looked back at Hades, ears points, eyes wide and lips twitching.

‘It's alright,' he said. The animal's face changed immediately, spread into that sheepish grin, narrow eyes. The thing gave a little grateful groan and slunk to the floor beside the old man's chair.

‘Someone's put the boot into that thing,' Eden said as she sat across from him. Hades gave the dog a little scratch on its hard skull.

‘I wouldn't be surprised.'

‘Watch it doesn't turn on you. They can get confused, rescued things.'

‘You never did.'

‘No.' She smiled a little. She looked at the dog. ‘Did you name it?'

‘Yes. Jim.'

Eden stared at Hades.

‘Slim Jim.'

‘Of course.' She slapped a notepad on the table. Sighed. ‘Well, it's all over now. You've named it. It's a done deal.'

‘It's a dog. Not a marriage.'

‘Still.' Eden looked at her notepad.

‘So.' The old man nodded at the notepad. ‘Where do I begin?'

‘Height?'

‘She was short,' Hades said. He glanced at the shattered mug on the countertop, the white lips of triangle shards in lime green. Tried to imagine the woman who had attacked him sitting where Eden sat now, her nimble frame and big eyes behind the glasses. ‘She was petite. Looked like she might work out.'

‘How was she dressed?'

‘Classy. I don't remember specifically. Heels. Glasses. Big tinted glasses that hid her eyes. It was very fast. We got right down to business. She must have been here less than three minutes.'

‘She smell like anything?'

‘A woman.'

‘Car?'

‘Didn't see it. I fell. Sounded small.'

Eden nodded, kept writing. She tapped the pen on the paper and gazed at the windows. Hades pulled a folded piece of paper towards him from where it lay on top of an old newspaper to his left. Slid it across the table to Eden.

‘She left this,' he said. Eden unfolded the piece of paper and took the hair she found in the crease between her thumb and forefinger. She lifted the hair to her nose, smelt it, held it up against the light and examined the frayed end where the follicle should have been. She hooked the hair around both her index fingers and pulled, snapped it, squinted at the curled cross-section.

‘Human hair wig. Expensive.'

‘How can you tell?'

‘It's a Caucasian hair. Cheap human hair wigs are usually made from the hair of Indian women. You can tell they've been bleached. This hasn't been bleached.'

‘Why is a white woman's hair more expensive than an Indian woman's hair?' Hades gave a little quizzical frown.

‘Racism.'

‘You women with your racist wigs,' the old man laughed.

‘What was the style? Was it long?'

Hades put a finger up against his tricep.

‘Okay, long, dark burgundy hair. So we can assume if she's going to all the trouble of wearing a wig she's wearing one that's as different from her normal style as possible. What's the opposite of long, dark hair?'

‘Short blonde hair,' Hades said. ‘You know any tricky blondes who might want to dig into your past?'

Eden sighed and wiped her eyes. It wasn't often that Hades saw her looking this tired. Her cheeks had hollowed, shadowed beneath the cap.

‘None that I can think of,' Eden said, squeezing the bridge of her nose. ‘None this cunning. It's possible Eric knew someone with a grudge. Someone he never told me about. I mean, we don't even know if it's this woman who's after us. She could easily have been someone's agent.'

‘I've turned the cameras on. But I don't think she'll be back.'

‘I don't think so either.' Eden shifted, lifted her phone out of her pocket and answered it. ‘Yes?'

‘That's how you answer the phone to me now?' Frank said. Eden heard a television. The insistent whining of a cat. ‘Yes?'

‘Darling of my heart. Sunshine of my day. How may I serve you, Vice-President of the National Arseholes' Association?'

‘There's a problem.'

‘What is it?'

‘Turn on the TV. Channel Ten news.'

Eden crossed the floor in front of the dog and settled on the old green couch, flipped the television on. Hades leaned
over the back of the chair, the grey hairs on his thick, scarred forearm catching all the kitchen light from wrist to elbow. Eden wiped dust off the television remote, found the channel she was looking for. A banner at the bottom of the screen read ‘Take Back the Parks launched'.

‘What is this bullshit?'

‘Just watch,' Frank said.

Caroline Eckhart was standing before a crowd of gym junkies, nylon in every colour of the rainbow above a sea of uniform black tights. Ponytails and greasy quiffs, an army of the healthy, aluminium water bottles glimmering like guns. She raised a hand to them and they cheered. A middle-aged mother with a pram ignored her wailing child, clapped and hooted. Caroline was yelling over gym music. There were mirrors in the background. Just stepped out of a pump class to address the masses. The glossy, sweat-sheened Joan of Arc, still miked, dabbing at her impossibly flat brow with a gym chamois.

‘Look, Sandra, we're working on the fly here, but that's the kind of people we are at Eckhart Energy. We're pulling in favours from all sorts of wonderful organisations – Woolworths, Kellogg's, plus the Pink Ribbon campaign and a whole host of other charities are on board. We need to demonstrate that violence against women just isn't on, and we're going to do that with a dramatic show of human strength. Take Back the Parks is going to show the people of Australia that we can change the face of this horrific social trend.'

The gym class cheered. Eden felt her stomach sinking. ‘What exactly is Take Back the Parks?'

‘It's a running festival. A night running festival,' Frank said. ‘She's putting the whole thing together over the space of
four days and she's got the Minister for Women behind her. They run on Sunday. The marathoners start at 5 pm. There are five K, nine K, twenty-one K and forty-five K distances. Each one ends up in a different Sydney park. Did I mention the marathoners start at 5-fucking-pm? Four Sydney parks are going to be absolutely flooded with people Sunday night and there's no finish time mentioned. They could be there all night, wandering around like dumb fucking chickens just begging for the killer to come out and play.'

‘Jesus Christ's fucking beard.' Eden covered her eyes.

‘What is it?' Hades asked.

‘Registration has been open for an hour. Seven thousand people have signed up for this thing already. The site's crashed twice. This is going to be huge,' Frank said. ‘If the killer doesn't take the bait at one of the four parks mentioned, I'll eat my hat. I don't own a hat. I don't even like hats. I'll buy one specially, and I'll fucking eat it.'

‘Not me,' Eden said. ‘If it was me, I'd take advantage of every police officer in Sydney being tied up in the four parks mentioned to hit one of the unattended ones.'

‘Well, I've been trying to get through to the bitch for an hour but her people won't let me speak to her. She refuses to see this as a brazen act of public endangerment. She's painting it as a defiance thing. Like we're all going to get together and scare the killer off with our mighty show of fucking … communal spirit.'

‘Urgh,' Eden sighed.

‘I hate communal spirit,' Frank snarled. ‘Communal spirit is my worst nightmare.'

‘I'll see you at the station,' Eden said. ‘We'll see if we can bring this thing down.'