Laying Ghosts Page 2

  “Let’s show everyone what you like, Rina. It’s been my little secret, but I’m a generous guy.”

  *

  Over the years, I’ve tried to push the scene that was about to unfold from my mind, but the horror of it – and my powerlessness to prevent it – never fades. But a few days later Rina was texting to say she was following Frank to London and getting married. It still doesn’t make sense. I might be trapped with Andrew, but he’s my husband – he keeps me safe. Rina had choices. Has she finally realised that and come back to the scene of the crime – to lay a few ghosts with the help of her best friend?

  I knock. No answer. I call her name through the door. Silence. There are no cars in the driveway. How did she get here?

  I try the door handle. It’s locked. This is Crystal Cottage, so where’s Rina? The light inside could be on a timer and this could be a wild goose chase. But when I turn back to my car, my phone beeps.

  Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

  Why keep repeating the same message like a broken record? The sense of something odd is back, now overlaid with urgency. The breeze off the water makes me shiver. I try to phone her number, but it doesn’t ring.

  I’m at the front door, my text says. Are you running late?

  As I wait for a reply, I consider the possibilities. Rina is trapped in some way. She might have been kidnapped and she’s only able to send the same message. Perhaps she finally ran away from Frank and he’s caught up with her. This would be a great place to hide someone.

  I swallow the lump in my throat and consider my chances of finding her. None, if I drive towards Woy Woy like a coward and find a motel. Better, if I sleep in the car with one eye open. Best, if I break in and search.

  It’s a holiday cottage, so there’ll be a hidden key. I once read a Wyatt story by Garry Disher, where the anti-hero systematically inspected the perimeter of a house until he found the secret key. Easy when you know how. But it’s dark, and I’ve only got my phone for illumination. As I sneak up the side path and around the back, an automatic spotlight blinds me. When my eyes adjust, eerie shadows reveal glimpses of Frank’s masterpiece: the garden. Beside the back door there’s a lock box high on the wall, but I need the code. Shit. Wyatt didn’t have to deal with this. Then a sudden inspiration makes me stand on my toes and feel along the top of the box. Bingo. The code confounded someone, so they left the key on top.

  The next step involves only a few seconds of soul-searching. Rina is here somewhere, trapped and disabled, or she’s going to join me and tell me what’s happened. Four years ago I was powerless to help her. Not this time. As my tension mounts, I slip the key in the lock and open the back door.

  The living space is just as I remember: an open plan kitchen and sunroom stretching across the whole back of the house, with the TV area forming an L-shape. Modern coastal white-on-white décor with touches of blue – casual and expensive. But as I step inside, I’m aware of the shell of the old house – invisible, but I can sense it breathing. It must be because I’m spooked. Where the hell is Rina?

  Desperate for the loo, I lock the door behind me and cross the room to the toilet in the laundry. Then minutes later I’m checking every room on the lower floor. The mirrors on the built-in robes startle me with my reflection – crumpled clothes, furtive eyes. The cupboards contain what you’d expect.

  As I climb to the upstairs addition, visions of what I might find make me hold my breath, but all the doors are open, except one. I approach it with caution. Locked. It’s the perfect place to imprison someone – a storeroom where the owners stash personal items when they’re letting the house – but I’m sure it was locked last time.

  I whisper through the door, “Rina?” Then louder, “Rina, it’s Selkie.” No answer.

  I sense she isn’t in there, but she might be gagged.

  If you can hear me, I text, send the message.

  Nothing.

  What else can I do? Then I remember the backyard – and the outline of a shed.

  On my way outside again I check the fridge. It’s well-stocked, which could mean someone’s staying here and has just popped out for the evening. Could it be Frank? For the first time I wonder if the text was designed by someone else to lure me here. If so, it’s worked.

  *

  When Frank dragged Rina into the centre of the room, no one moved. It was that terrible impotence that comes from fear. And a misguided notion that what goes on between two people is their business, even in public.

  “I won’t have sex in front of everyone, Frank,” she said, getting to her feet. Her voice was thin and shaking. “Don’t ask me to.”

  “Who said anything about asking?”

  “Let’s take the video upstairs later, and have some fun in private.”

  “Rina, I’ve told you what I want – a woman who wants what I want, when I want it.”

  Behind them on the wall the porn continued in sickening close-up.

  “Don’t do this, Frank,” Lute said. “Nobody else wants it.”

  “Speak for yourself,” came Stork’s slurred comment. He’d had too many cookies and his limbs had collapsed like a broken umbrella into an armchair opposite the screen.

  “Leave Rina alone,” a voice squeaked. Mine.

  Beside me Andrew shifted, about to shut me up, but Frank beat him to it. “You,” he said, jabbing the air with his finger, “can shut your fucking face, you frigid bitch.”

  Lute tried to grab the remote from the coffee table, but Frank snatched it.

  “This is between me and Rina,” he said, contradicting his expressed desire for a group grope. “Stay or leave, whatever, but Rina’s my girl and she’s going to show it.”

  “I’m in,” Stork added. “Sharing is caring.” I doubted his prowess, but his eyes were dancing.

  What happened next unfolded in slow motion. Frank had let go of Rina’s wrists to grab the remote, sliding it across the floor and under a bookcase. Then he dropped his shorts, revealing his readiness for action, before lunging for her again. But she’d slipped her hand into the back pocket of her jeans and was waving something shiny. A knife from the block in the kitchen.

  “Don’t make me cut you,” she said.

  The nightmare that plagues me still is how I froze, watching my best friend ward off a brute she thought she loved, in front of six passive observers. No one was going to intervene now and risk getting stabbed. I couldn’t breathe.

  Frank laughed. “That’s more like my Pollyanna. Danger makes me hornier. But I’ll be the one with the knife.”

  *

  The houses on either side are in darkness, so I risk turning on the outdoor lights. Tiny path lamps peep from the edging beds and around the pool, and the ornamental pagoda is lit up like a wedding cake. In the far corner, hidden by the shadows of the palms, is the shed.

  Terrified now, I lock the back door behind me before stumbling across the yard and hissing through the padlocked door, “Rina, it’s Selkie. If you’re in there, make a noise.”

  Silence.

  There’s a small window at the side. Even in the half-dark, shelves of garden tools are visible. She’s not here. I turn back towards the house and whimper, “Where are you, Rina?”

  My phone beeps.

  Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

  On an impulse I say it again. Louder. “Where are you, Rina?”

  That’s when I hear it. The softest strains of music. And words I can’t quite understand. Someone is singing. A song of deep sadness. It’s seeping between the surrounding houses and swirling around me like a fog.

  “Where are you, Rina?” I’m almost shouting now and running along the paths, trying to warm my sudden chill and ward off a sense of dread.

  The music is filling my ears, but its source is elusive. Although I can’t make out the words, it’s speaking right to my soul. Emotions of loss and regret spin around me in waves. Where’s it coming from? I’ve heard that in a valley distant sounds can seem close. Could it be blowing acro
ss the lagoon?

  Then I’m drawn to the pagoda, set into a corner where it’s playing the role of a folly – the word pops into my head – a classical-style building designed to catch the eye with its extravagance and give pleasure in its beauty. Is the music coming from there?

  There’s a circular seat inside it and the window spaces offer vistas of the garden. I sit down and try to hear the words. Is someone singing about the folly? It doesn’t make sense. I stay for a while crying, the music is so poignant and so sweet in its sorrow, but I’m not learning what I need to learn. Where’s Rina?

  Eventually I hear approaching thunder. And there’s more thunder as I run for the house. It’s a relief to lock myself inside and escape the music, it’s so surreal. I pour myself a glass of wine to numb my mounting fear. As heavy drops start to fall and lightning cracks the sky, the temperature drops. I wrap myself in a throw and huddle on the sofa, but the sight of the TV only brings everything back.

  *

  As Frank reached for the knife, confident that she’d give it up, the champagne in the freezer exploded – and Rina overbalanced.

  “She cut me,” Frank screamed as he dropped to the floor.

  “Rina stabbed him,” Jules shrieked.

  To this day I’ll swear she didn’t.

  All the bravado drained from Frank. Blood poured onto his shrivelling penis and spread across the white tiled floor. He howled.

  Rina was holding the knife in freeze-frame until her face crumpled and she started to sob. The cacophony from the TV hadn’t let up, Redhead was screaming about blood, and now two more people were wailing.

  Lute was the first to move, rushing to Frank’s side, while I raced over and took the knife from Rina before helping her into an armchair. Her face was so white I put her head between her knees. Frank had assumed the foetal position, and Lute was wrapping a handkerchief – nerds are great in a crisis – tightly around what turned out to be Frank’s only injury: a bloody finger. The porn sounds were intolerable, so Andrew crossed to the bookcase, retrieved the remote and turned off the TV. Redhead fell silent with it, so now the only moaning and shrieking was coming from Frank.

  “I’ll have to take him to Gosford,” Lute told everyone. The nearest big town. He was the only one who was sober enough. “If you want to play guitar again,” he said to the sobbing baby who used to be Frank, “you need stitches or something. What else did you use that knife for, Rina?”

  Lute’s commanding manner brought Rina to her senses. She lifted her head. “Chicken.”

  “So maybe a tetanus shot,” Lute added.

  He ordered us around. Stork managed to get an uncooperative Frank into his clothes. Redhead recovered and got busy wiping the floor while Jules went in search of a first aid kit.

  “He’s lost the tip of his finger,” Lute informed her. “See if you can find a dressing that won’t stick to it.”

  She came back carrying a plastic box with a red cross on the side and a bowl of warm water. As Frank lay prostrate on the floor, whimpering now – Redhead had put a cushion under his head – Lute washed and dressed the wound. Then Andrew and Stork helped him to his feet and he staggered between them through the front door to Lute’s car.

  “We may be all night,” Lute said on his way out.

  Frank would have to wait his turn with the other Friday night casualties.

  But when Andrew and Stork returned to the house, Lute turned back and made an announcement, looking directly at Jules: “What happened here was an accident. Frank was cutting chicken and the knife slipped.”

  *

  This is a serious storm. Unusual this early in the season. Normally they don’t bother me, but I’m already spooked and the thought of wild waves just across the road is making my heart race. What if the house goes underwater? I remind myself that these houses have been here for a long time, that storms are normal, that I can go upstairs if there’s a flood. For a distraction I look at the DVD collection. I never thought I’d be choosing to watch this TV again, but I’m grateful to see an episode of House of Cards.

  Even though I turn up the volume and try to concentrate, my eyes won’t stay open. It must be exhaustion acting as an antidote to my fear. The voices on the screen create a layer of numbness between me and the cacophony outside, but when I hear the music again I wake and remember where I am. The character Frank Underwood is singing to his wife. His voice is faint, but he seems to be singing the song from the garden. I try to tune into the words.

  “Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, you’ve stolen my heart,

  My mind is to marry and never to part.

  Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, you must come with me,

  Before we are wedded, there’s something to see.”

  He led her through valleys and forests so deep.

  At length Pretty Polly started to weep.

  “Oh Willy, you’re angry, it makes me afraid.

  I fear you are planning my life to betray.”

  I’m just rewinding it to listen again when a wild wind starts whipping the tree branches towards the sky. The last thing I see before the power goes off is debris flying. If the roof might go, I’ll have to stay downstairs, so there’s nothing to do except pull the throw around me. But I can’t stop thinking about Rina.

  *

  After Lute took Frank away, Jules didn’t stop glaring at Rina. And Stork kept saying over and over, “Good one, Pollyanna.”

  They had work to do, cleaning up their exploded champagne.

  “I want to put the video back on,” Stork complained. “It was just getting wicked.”

  “Shut up,” Jules said.

  I took Rina upstairs and put her in the bath. That’s when I noticed the bruises, in places hidden by her clothes.

  “You can’t stay here with Frank,” I said. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning. Come with us.”

  She didn’t answer. Since the knife incident she’d been completely mute. She let me dry her like a child and tuck her into bed in one of the single rooms upstairs.

  After Lute brought Frank back in the early hours, he locked himself in a downstairs bedroom. Then in the morning when the rest of us, except Rina, were breakfasting in silence, Frank didn’t emerge.

  Rina let me in when I knocked on her door.

  “We’ll go when you’ve packed your things,” I said. “Frank’s hiding downstairs, so you’re safe.”

  “It’s OK, Selkie. I’m staying.”

  “What? If you’re worried about him hanging around your flat, stay with us till you get a new place. I’ll help you.”

  But Rina was shaking her head. “Last night was a stupid accident. He was drunk. I was drunk. I can’t believe I hurt him.”

  “That’s not the point,” I said. “Of course it was an accident, and the whole thing was stupid, but why did you get a knife? That’s the part you’re ignoring.”

  “I got confused.” Her voice was dreamy. “He just wanted to show everyone how beautiful I am. Sexy and beautiful.”

  “You didn’t think that when he got the videos.”

  “It’s just porn. Porn can’t hurt anyone.”

  I couldn’t believe the spin she was putting on it. Had the accident pushed her over the edge?

  “It was going to hurt you,” I said. “Frank was using it to abuse you. That’s why you got the knife.”

  “Frank will forgive me. He always does.”

  “But he’s the one who forced you to protect yourself.”

  “And he’ll be sorry. He’s always sorry.”

  I’d been raising my voice, so I lowered it again. “Rina, look at me. I’m your best friend. I can’t let you bullshit yourself like this.”

  “And Andrew’s perfect, I suppose.” The dreamy look was gone, replaced by a steely gleam.

  “You know he isn’t. This isn’t about Andrew.”

  She’d folded her arms. “If I break up with Frank, you have to leave Andrew.”

  Bloody hell. “Rina, look at the facts. Frank was offering you u
p last night. Stork was licking his lips for his turn. There’s a word for that. Rape.”

  But Rina wasn’t listening. “You’ve always tried to come between us, and I’m sick of it. It’s OK for you – you’ve got your husband and your house. But you’ve never wanted me to have the same things.”

  “That’s not true.” To keep her image of Frank intact, she was flipping the blame to me. “Ask yourself if you want to be with a man who’d rape you in front of his friends. Who’ll probably try it again.”

  “I know what I want.” Her voice was as steely as her eyes. “See you ... Elkie.”

  She couldn’t have stung me more. With that one word I was demolished and dismissed. As I went to the door, I was fighting back tears. “Call me if you need a bolt hole. Or a friend.”

  “I won’t.”

  I haven’t seen her since.

  *

  The memory of that conversation is the nightmare I’ve relived over and over since that night. Frank’s finger was wounded along with his pride – he’d recover – but the real victims were Rina and me. Our friendship was over. That’s why I rushed here when I thought she needed me – to fill the hole she left in my life.

  The wildness outside seems to be escalating in response to my spiralling emotions. I’m sobbing my heart out when an almighty roaring makes me leap off the sofa and run for cover to the laundry. Just as I shut the door there’s a thunderous crash behind me. Something has hit the house.

  I huddle on the doormat waiting for the ordeal to end. As the heavens do their worst, I can’t stop thinking that Rina called me here to help her, but the storm has turned my quest upside down.

  When I wake on the laundry floor, stunned that I finally fell asleep in the early hours, daylight is peeping through the window. I stretch my aching limbs. When I try the light switch there’s still no power, so I don’t dare move from this refuge. Powerlines could be dangling. Luckily my phone has still got some charge. There are several texts from Andrew, which I ignore, but none from Rina. Now I’m the one who needs to call for help.

  Eventually two guys wearing fluoro stripes run up the side path. I call out and let them in. They warn me that the back of the house has been demolished by a falling palm. When they open the door to the sunroom to show me, I gasp. The sofa I’d been dozing on is totally flattened by the tree, the TV area covered in shards of glass.