The Bellwether Revivals (48 page)

The drawing room was empty. On the marble floor, there was a long, meandering streak—he saw it right away—a wavy black line, like a child’s crayon doodle, or a scuff mark left by chair casters. It was a solid, thin trail that weaved across the room, from the far end of the hallway to right where he was standing.

‘I don’t get this,’ Jane said. ‘Where is everybody?’

Yin crouched to inspect the black mark. He rubbed at part of
the streak with his fingers. On his haunches, he followed the trail back to the lip of the French doors, back outside, everyone walking behind him. The trail continued across the patio, stopping at the steps, where the path turned into gravel—the stones were disturbed there, bunched together in little heaps—and it carried on as far as the rectory. Yin stood up. ‘I guess they’ve been moving the furniture around.’

Jane turned to Oscar. ‘This is so weird. Where is she?’

‘We should check upstairs,’ Yin said.

Marcus huffed. He swung his car keys around on his finger. ‘Well, I’m going back to the car before I sweat right through this jacket. If she comes out the front, I’ll toot the horn.’ And off he went, back the way they’d come. But before he could even get down the patio step, a jarring noise rang through the garden. Marcus stopped the instant he heard it, turning back to them. ‘What was that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Yin said.

The noise came again. It was like the sound of a shipyard, of metal striking metal—short atonal notes resounding through the air. The four of them stood waiting, listening, as the noises got louder, more frequent. ‘Where’s it coming from?’ Jane said.

The sound came again.
Kuh-langg
.
Kuh-langg
.

Oscar knew exactly where it was coming from. He had a perfect line of sight now from the patio. Across the sun-bright lawns, the door of the organ house was hanging ajar. He heard the noise again—
kuh-langg, kuh-langg
—and started to run towards the building. He ran with his arms flailing, and the carnations shed their petals behind him, until his fingers loosened around the bouquet and it fell to the ground. He heard Yin trampling over it as he came bounding after him.
Kuh-lanng
.
Kuh-lanng
. The metallic noises kept on coming and he could feel that fist around his heart getting tighter.
Kuh-langg
. He was breathless and panicked by the time he reached the organ house. He struggled to push back the door.

Another black drag-mark ran like a train track along the aisle. It ended at the rubber heel of Iris’s leg-brace. She was crumpled on the floor in a nightdress, her body as limp as bundled laundry. The frame around her leg had snapped, bent up like a hairpin. One side of her face was lying square against the hard floor and her skin was silvery pale. Her eyes were closed. She wasn’t moving. She didn’t seem to be breathing.

There were no more noises.

A few yards from his sister’s body, Eden was sitting on the battered keys of the organ console, barefoot and shirtless. He was breathing hard. Sweat was teeming from his face. His hand was curled loosely around a pickaxe. Behind him, the metal pipes of the organ were punctured and twisted, hammered flat and mangled.

Oscar felt his whole body seizing. He could hardly move his fingers, let alone his feet. But then he heard Yin’s voice behind him—‘Fuck, man, what the hell have you done?’—and he saw Eden raising his head, slowly, slowly, so that the sheen of his eyes was like a cat’s glare.

‘I made a mistake,’ Eden said, ‘I made a mistake.’

The words seemed to unlock Oscar’s body. He couldn’t have run any faster down that aisle to reach her. He couldn’t have made it to her side any quicker than he did. He dropped to his knees, searching her neck for a pulse, but he couldn’t feel one. ‘Call an ambulance!’ he called out. ‘Somebody! Hurry!’ Marcus backed out of the organ house, heel after heel, so startled and frightened that he nearly tripped over himself. He rushed off to find the telephone.

Oscar stared down at Iris. He felt for her pulse again, but there wasn’t even the weakest beat. Her skin was dry and cold. He listened for her exhalations. None came. Her lips were pinched and blue. He tried to resuscitate her, desperately pushing his mouth against hers, but she didn’t stir, she didn’t gasp, and there was no pressure coming back upon him. He broke down, then. He wasn’t
ashamed to cry, to scream out in pain, to fall apart. The tears came rolling down his face onto her mouth and he wiped them away, kissing her cheek. He held her head against his chest and smelled the shampoo in her hair. And he did all this with Eden sitting there on the organ console, watching him, making no sound.

‘Is she—?’ Yin couldn’t even get the words out. His fists were balled at his sides. ‘Is she dead?’

Oscar could only just bring himself to nod.

Yin turned away. ‘Oh fuck … Oh my fucking God …’

Jane was still standing by the doorway. She had to lower herself into a chair, two hands cupped over her mouth, as if she were praying. Her eyes were wet and round. ‘Did you do this?’ she said.

Eden let her voice fall away. ‘I made a mistake,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bring her back.’

She stepped along the aisle towards him. ‘What did you do?’

‘I couldn’t revive her.’

‘What did you do, Eden?’

‘I—I just—it all happened so fast.’

‘Where’s Ruth?’

Eden stared at the floor.

‘Where is she? Where’s your mother?’

He didn’t respond. As Jane moved closer, his fingers tightened around the pickaxe handle.

Yin was heading towards Eden now, too, his fists still balled up at his sides. Eden stood up, clutching the pickaxe across his chest, spinning it as if it were a tennis racket and this were all just a backyard game. ‘Don’t come any closer!’ he said. Yin and Jane slowed, holding their hands in the air. ‘I mean it, stay back!’

Eden began to swing the pickaxe. He was standing high up now on the organ console, towering over them. They stopped in their tracks. ‘Edie,’ Jane pleaded, ‘you’re not going to hurt me. You love me. Come on, put that thing down and let’s try to sort this out, together, you and me.’ But Eden just swung the pickaxe again
and again, in wide, slow arcs, until they stepped backwards. He jumped down from the ruined keys of the organ and his feet slapped against the floor. Swinging the axe, he made Jane and Yin retreat further, turning them around, backing them against the wall to give him a clear path along the aisle. ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me hit you!’ With the momentum of one last swing, he started to run for the door.

Oscar was only a few yards away, still holding Iris’s limp body in his arms, and he wasn’t close enough to reach out and stop Eden escaping. But the axe was heavy, and Eden had to let go of it halfway along the aisle—
kuh-langg
—and when he got to the door, he found Marcus standing in his way. If Marcus expected that sheer resolve would bring Eden to a halt, he was wrong. Eden kept on going. Like a rugby forward, he dipped his shoulder and barged straight into Marcus’s ribs, throwing his weight right into him, and Marcus fell back against the door, hitting his head against the wood. After a moment, he sat up, clutching his skull, bewildered. Eden slipped out into the bright evening.

Oscar was sprinting after him now, and Yin was coming up behind, shouting: ‘Stop him, Oscar, stop him!’

‘Left,’ Marcus said, pointing, ‘he went left.’

Eden was running for the river. Oscar went after him, spearing through the warm air, running so hard his muscles pounded and his lungs burned. As Eden dived into the water, he was only ten or twenty yards behind him. Flinging off his jacket, he got to the riverbank and dived in, too. He didn’t care that Eden was a better swimmer. He didn’t care that the water was deep and briny and green with algae and that it flooded his ears as he broke the surface. All he cared about was catching up with Eden. He could see his shining back a few yards downstream.

Eden battled to haul himself onto the high bank—the marram grass was tall there, and he clawed at it, trying to find something to grip so he could escape to the meadow on the other side—and while he struggled, Oscar got closer and closer. With every passing
second, Eden grew larger in his sights. He was nothing but a target to him now. He would bring him down like an animal.

Eden heaved his body onto the bank, mauling the bulrushes. He’d only just made it out of the water when Oscar reached out and grabbed his ankle, pulling him back. With his other hand, Oscar gripped the marram grass to keep his head above the waterline. Eden kicked and jostled, but he didn’t have the strength or the will to shake himself free, and he slipped and fell to his knees, sliding back into the river with a great splash.

Oscar watched the water settling. For a few moments, the river was strangely peaceful. The swallows gossiped in the reeds. Then there was a rush of pressure beside his waist, and Eden popped up, gasping, his hair drenched and slick as seal hide. Before he could even blink the river from his eyes, Oscar threw his arm around Eden’s neck and tightened it. He held him in the crook of his elbow and squeezed. Eden began to choke. He squeezed harder. Eden’s face turned beet red and his arms flailed and clawed. But Oscar didn’t release him. He pushed Eden’s head below the water, until it bubbled with his desperate breaths, until he could see his eyes bulging white and swollen. He wasn’t going to let him go until he drowned. He was sure of it. Thoughts entered his mind—sirens, policemen, hospitals—but they weren’t enough to stop him. In that moment, he thought revenge was all he had left. Drowning Eden right there in the placid green water was the only way he could help Iris now, the only way he could stay close to her.

As Eden writhed under his arm, he tried to picture her face. He wanted to see it the way it had looked on the day they met—bright and hopeful, looking back at him with that guarded curiosity she had for everything—but he could only see it now the way it was: still and pale on the organ house floor. He could only see blue lips, and dead eyes, and tight white skin. And the cruellest memories came visiting him before the sweetest ones: he remembered the things he’d said wrong, the times he’d annoyed
her, the moments he’d let her down, occasions she’d shaken her head at him or sighed. He heard her voice saying, ‘You should do whatever makes you happy,’ and he knew, looking down at Eden’s harried, popping eyeballs, that happiness was a long, long way from here and he would never get to reach it.

He tightened the clench of his elbow around Eden’s throat and pushed him down lower, waiting for him to give up. Clinging to the riverbank, he steeled himself. Eden went on thrashing beneath him, his flailing arms getting slower, losing their energy. He was going to kill him. He was resigned to it. He understood now that he was capable of it, the way Eden was capable of it, the way his cousin Terry was capable of it, the way his father was probably capable of it, too. He remembered how his cousin would hold his head below the water when they were kids at the local pool—just like he was holding Eden’s head now—to train him to hold his breath, Terry would say, to teach him how to survive. He could almost hear his father’s voice now from the poolside, husky and thrilled, goading him the way the voices of The Fates had once spurred on Jennifer Doe. And that’s when he found himself thinking of the helpless little boy she had killed. Her own brother. Pink and wheezing. Desperate and confused.

He stopped.

He loosened his hold.

Eden gulped in a stream of air and the colour came flooding back into his face. But Oscar didn’t let go of him. He swam cross-river, with Eden passed out under his arm, to where the others were standing solemnly at the foot of the Bellwethers’ garden, ready to bring them both in. They’d been watching the whole thing. They must have been shouting, but he hadn’t heard them.

Yin reached down to heave Eden onto the bank first. He laid him flat on his back in the reeds and Jane crouched down to tend to him. ‘He’s alive,’ she said, feeling his heart.

They all helped to pull Oscar out of the water. He sat on the bank, getting his breath back, saying nothing. Eden lay unconscious
in the bulrushes and canary grass; there were bruises on his chest and scratches on his shoulders.

Oscar felt a warm hand on his neck. ‘You alright, man?’ Yin was standing over him, tears in his eyes. ‘You okay?’ And from somewhere, he found the strength to nod.

His drenched clothes were heavy and tight, and he peeled off his shirt and twisted the river out of it, then just let it fall onto the grass. He sat silently, the world hazy and foreign. They let him settle there for a while. The sun shimmered in the water and the crickets called out for each other. A steady breeze had gathered, shaking the willows. It was cooler now, and everything seemed almost like it used to be—like one of the nice spring evenings they’d spent together back in March, when they’d piled out of the punt and walked wearily to the house for dinner before Herbert Crest came. But it wasn’t one of those evenings, and no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that everything was going to be alright from here, he could only manage to feel a raft of nothing. He was beyond sadness, beyond rage, beyond despair. There was only blankness and vagueness and torpor.

‘Come on, let’s get you inside and get you dry,’ Jane said softly, touching his shoulder. ‘They can stay out here with
him
until the ambulance arrives. The police are on their way.’ Oscar got up. His legs were shaking, buckling.

Jane took him to the back of the rectory, not up to the main house. He sat in one of the deck chairs while she went inside to fetch a towel, and he studied the garden in a kind of stupor. It was the exact same garden he’d stared at many times before. They were the same trees, the same flowers; it was the same grass, the same soil, the same decking under his feet. But it was not the same sky above him. The clouds were different; they were sharper, angrier. And the grey bricks of the organ house were different now too, because he could no longer look at them. He felt sick to be so close to that building. The breeze was gathering strength and every time it swept across the garden he could hear
it blowing through the broken organ pipes—a weak and tuneless drone that sounded on and off, on and off, with the steadiest of rhythms, like some machine that had found a way to breathe.