Skeletal (19 page)

***

Mr Fa'amoe didn’t say a lot in the car on the way home. He expressed some initial concern over my state, but I had a bundle of tissues the store manager had given me that now contained most of the obvious damage. They were screwed up in the front pocket of my bag where I hoped they wouldn’t leave a stain.

I could’ve thrown them into the nearest rubbish bin, but I felt a bit weird doing that considering they were covered in my blood. Were there rules on human waste? I didn’t want to just chuck them in with the lolly packets and general mall detritus.

Vila gave me an occasional nudge of solidarity, but her enjoyment of our situation seemed to have passed. She stared out of the window at the queues of traffic.

Her father had picked us up when he left work. Why he was working on a Sunday I didn’t know, but Vila didn’t seem all that surprised. We’d withstood supervision until he arrived, but the timing meant we were now in a snarl of traffic as everyone’s weekend drew to an end.

‘Come into the house,’ Mr Fa'amoe ordered when I got out of the car, and turned towards the street to walk home.

I hesitated. ‘That’s okay, I’ll just walk home. Mum’ll be wondering where I am.’

‘We’ll phone her. Come into the house.’

He turned and walked inside, and I looked at Vila. She gave a shrug but followed quick on his heels, so I did the same.

I felt nervous walking inside. Even more so than I had the day before. I’d never been caught doing anything bad before, and I didn’t know what to expect. If it was just me then I don’t think it would’ve mattered half as much. But I’d dragged Vila into trouble as well.

Vila’s dad crossed through into the kitchen calling his wife’s name. She popped her head out, frowned and started toward me, but he caught her by the upper arm and pulled her back through.

I shuffled closer to Vila, and she did the same. I could hear muffled voices, which suddenly raised in tone. I rubbed my hands together, and picked at a fleck of dried blood on my hand.

‘I’ll just blame you, if that’s okay,’ said Vila suddenly. After craning to make out what was being said in the kitchen, her voice seemed unnaturally loud. ‘They’ll be perfectly happy to think that you’ve led me astray, and it’s not like your mother’s going to care one way or the other, is it?’

I stared at her. My face forgot how to work properly, and my chest squeezed a tighter grip on my lungs. I shook my head, and she burst into laughter.

‘Oh, your face. Classic!’

A laugh bubbled up in my own chest, but it was overcome with another wave of dizziness, and I stumbled.

‘Sit down,’ Vila said as she gripped my elbows tight. The pinch brought me back into myself fully, and as I took a seat the world went back to its usual vibrant colours.

‘You’re too skinny. You need to eat something.’

‘I need some aspirin. My head’s pounding.’

‘Wait there,’ she said and left for upstairs. I listened to her thump about overhead. I wasn’t about to attempt to go anywhere else. The day felt used up.

I pinched at the worn cotton of my jeans. There was a fray at the side seam by my knee. Not the casually wrought tears that were specially commissioned in your designer jeans, no. This was from normal wear and tear. Not just from my use, but the person before me. Maybe even a person before that. It just didn’t look the same.

My stomach turned over. Then turned over again. I stood up, even though the motion jolted my head.

My stomach rolled once more, then just kept on going. Saliva flooded into my mouth. I turned and ran into the side corridor. There was a bathroom to the left-hand side. I popped the door open and fell to my knees in front of the bowl just in time. Bile and stomach acid regurgitated through my mouth. I retched once, twice. The world greyed out and I clung to the porcelain. Slowly it came back into focus.

I flushed the toilet without rising from my knees. I didn’t feel safe to stand. My stomach gave another twist, but then settled. I put my forehead on the cool smooth surface of the bowl and closed my eyes. My backpack felt twenty kilos heavier, and I pulled off one shoulder strap so it lay half on the floor.

The voices in the kitchen had quieted, not just through my new distance. I heard Vila’s light steps come back downstairs, and then the pause as she stopped in the lounge. 

‘Daina?’ she whispered. I opened my mouth to reply, but the wave of nausea recurred and I closed my lips tight and fought the urge to retch again.

A door slammed open further inside the house, and I heard Vila’s parents voices again.

‘Where’s your friend?’

‘I think she’s gone home. She wasn’t feeling very well.’

A pause, and then, ‘Come through into the kitchen. We need to have a talk with you.’

I smiled at the cliché, and then gripped the bowl again as another cramp of nausea gripped me. It let go a minute later.
Should I go through and tell them I was still here?
From the tone of voice I thought it may be a better idea to lay quiet for the moment, and sneak out. If they caught me I could explain.

The walk home seemed like a very long trek. I got to my feet and had to steady myself against the wall. Maybe I should just stay here, and then at least get a ride home. To be driven rather than have to walk seemed an impossible luxury.

But to be lectured, then driven home, seemed like a bit too much to bear at the moment. I wondered what impulse had taken over me that made stealing seem like a good idea. If I’d ever seriously considered shoplifting, doing it secretly seemed like a better bet. Rather than a full-fledged sprint from the checkout counter. I smiled at the memory. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I walked out into the hallway, my hand trailing the wall for guidance. When I glanced into the lounge I could see the kitchen door was shut, and the murmurs from behind sounded low and intense. Probably a stern warning about the company that Vila was keeping.

The door to Mr Fa'amoe’s office was shut. I swept the palm of my hand over the fake wood surface. It was made up to look like oak, but was more likely MVP and cardboard. I knew about the strength of doors from many parties that ended with firm kicks at the wrong target.

I turned the handle and slipped through the gap. I left the door ajar so that I could hear if footsteps approached and crossed to the desk. My heart started to pound. When I looked down I could see it shaking my chest and collarbone.

Just do it quickly and get out and then it will be over.

The thought did little to calm my nerves. My hands shook with more violence, so when I reached out to try the latch on Mr Fa'amoe’s briefcase my fingers slid off to one side and I had to move them back.

I pulled the latch, but it didn’t pop open.

The combination lock had been set. Catching me in here once may have made him more cautious.

I tried 0000, then 1111. They didn’t work and I sat down in the office chair to take a look at the blotter pad. There was nothing written there.

I looked around the office for any clues. Four digits – I’d never be able to stumble upon the code. I was not a lucky person.

There was a small picture of Vila’s Mum in an ornate frame hung on the wall behind me. On the cabinets were pictures of the family at the beach, at a park, around the dinner table. A picture of Vila as a child, grabbing a pink balloon in her arms, with a smile so wide it almost used up her whole face.

Vila’s birthday party. I entered in 1/9/89 into the lock and the latches popped open. That easy. She’d joked back in September that her birthdate was her birth year. Maybe I was a lucky person after all.

I skimmed quickly through the documents located in a manila folder in the top. There was the same sketch that I’d seen previously; tables of data, graphs, patient records. I’d never be able to recall all of this.

I pulled open the top desk drawer: pens, pencils, an evil sharp letter opener. I pushed it shut and pulled open the second. Drop-files stuffed full of manila folders. I pulled one out, then another. Some sort of report. I couldn’t fathom what would or wouldn’t be a good disguise. I shoved the first one into the briefcase and pulled the backpack fully off my back.

At first the manila folder caught on the edges, and the leading edge pushed back threatening to spill the sheaf of pages inside all over the floor. My heartbeat shut off my hearing and my throat tightened, tightened.

I pulled it back out, adjusted the angle. Tried again. This time it slid in. I fumbled with the front zipper and pulled out a test tube. One more thing. One more thing.

My vision was strobing along with my pulse. My hands felt like I was operating them from a metre further away. I clenched my fists. Hard. The long fingernails on my right hand split the skin of my palm. My nerves relocated themselves.

I pulled the fabric folder at the top of the briefcase, and a small bottle of liquid fell into the briefcase. For a second the sun reflected off the glass and I thought for sure I’d broken it. But it didn’t spill. It wasn’t even cracked.

I unscrewed the lid, and poured some of the liquid inside into the test tube. I banged the rubber stopper back in place, and pushed it into my bag. The zipper stuck halfway across and I fumbled it back and forth, making a small cry – uh, uh – through clenched teeth. It unzipped all at once, and I was able to pull it back across in one smooth motion. Done.

My elbow knocked against the open bottle in the briefcase, and liquid spilled over the folder inside. Shit! I grabbed and got it upright while there was still some left. I started to screw the top on and paused.

There was a bottle of water on the windowsill, warming in the sun. I stood up and undid the top and spilled a capful, then two, inside the case as well. I left the top half-unscrewed. Put the bottle back in the fabric folder. Snapped the briefcase shut.

I pulled my backpack onto both shoulders. There was hardly any extra weight in it. Certainly not enough substance to cause the adrenalin still rushing through my veins.

As I placed the water bottle back on the windowsill I heard the tread of footsteps in the corridor outside.

Caught.

Caught red-handed.

My heartbeat stopped altogether. My vision clouded and wavered. I was fainting. For real this time. Not just dizziness.

I crunched the heel of my shoe into the top of my foot. The pain made me stagger, but my eyesight cleared and my heart started to thump again.

The footsteps stopped. I’d left the door ajar. They could look straight in and see me. If it was Mrs Fa'amoe then I might be able to talk my way out of it. If it was Vila’s Dad I was in trouble.

The door closed. The footsteps sounded again, and then another door closed. Someone had come through to use the bathroom. That was all.

I crossed the room in two strides. There wasn’t time to pause at the doorway to listen. I pulled the door open, stepped into the corridor, and pulled it shut behind me, trying to cushion the snick of the tongue with my forefinger.

There was the sounds of footsteps heading upstairs; I could recognise Vila’s tread no problem. The toilet next to me flushed, and I jumped with fright and moved quickly through the lounge.

Empty.

I reached the front door, turned the handle as gently as I could, and then pulled the door wide open. I lunged outside to freedom, closed the door with less care than before, and ran down the drive to freedom.

Coroner’s Court 2014

When Vila returns after lunch she’s more subdued. I can tell why: The stuff this morning was just about her and my behaviour. The stuff this afternoon is going to cut deep.

She pulls her long black hair out of the tie holding it back, scrapes it from her forehead, and re-secures it. The end of her ponytail still falls well below her shoulder blades. Definitely in the find-a-hairstyle-and-stick-to-it club.

My mother has new company, a welcome addition to Mr Anderson. A woman in her fifties, her face bright and alert, takes the seat beside her. She reaches across and gives my mother’s hand a squeeze and then turns back to face Vila in the stand.

Her name is Christine Emmet. She works as a victim support officer. She’s helping my mother, as the police are now determining that I committed suicide. Because that’s normal, isn’t it? A fifteen year-old girl traps herself in the foundations of a house and starves to death while clawing to get out.

Yeah, suicide.

Forget that I had papers in with my body that the police have now lost. Oh, did you not see that happen? Yeah, they bypassed that one pretty damn slick, didn’t they? Forensic pathologist saw them, knows they were there, but then they disappeared on the way to the evidence room. Along with the test tubes.

Still, at least my bones made it through. I wonder if someone else would’ve found them first if they’d have gone AWOL as well. I owe the first-attending some gratitude for that at least.

Vila’s eyes have teared up. She’s not gonna cope at all well with the next hour or so. All those painful memories, and ten years isn’t really that long a time to come to grips with them. Not even her version of them, and lord knows that nowhere near the whole truth.

I do wonder if she truly knew what happened with her dad, if she’d be better off or worse? Is anger an easier emotion than grief? Probably. But it wouldn’t just be anger, it’d be a mixture of them both.

Having someone to blame though. Knowing someone ripped the person you cared about from your life and handed you an empty space in return; maybe that would offer fulfilment.

Watch her now. Clearing her throat and trying to keep control. Imagine that she was fuelled with righteous fury. Her eyes wouldn’t tear up, they would burn. Her throat wouldn’t thicken, it would climb the registers.

But who amongst this lot is going to tell her the truth?

I couldn’t even convince her father, and he knew more about it than most.

I couldn’t even convince her father, and Vila – I’m so sorry – I tried.

***

Daina 2004

Aspirin, damp flannels, a long drink of cold water, and I started to feel human again. There was even a packet of rice crackers on the living room floor – half-full – that I made into my tea. They settled my stomach, tasteless but substantial. No wonder women in the throes of morning sickness kept crackers handy.

I couldn’t bring myself to look through the file I’d stolen from Vila’s Dad. I checked that the vial of fluid wasn’t about to leak out, but then left everything in the corner of my room. I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to acknowledge that I’d just broken a bond of trust.

No matter that Vila had broken mine. I still had my own moral compass to live up to, and it was pointing in the other direction on this one.

I wondered how hard it would be to see her in school tomorrow. Bad enough that I’d got her in trouble and then abandoned her to her fate. Worse that I’d stolen from her father. For some reason the theft from his briefcase registered far higher on my internal scale than the attempted theft from the mall. Not just because I’d gotten away with one, either.

I wanted the Grey Man to come by and pick all this stuff up and then just leave me alone for ever. Not only that, I wanted to tear a strip off him for giving me a gift card that wasn’t. Nice trick to play on a teenage girl. Indignation riled me, and prevented the long evening slumber that my body cried out for.

So I was already awake when the pebble hit the window.

The sound jerked me off the bed and I pressed myself flat against the outside wall. For a moment, a long moment, I was convinced that Vila’s Dad had discovered my theft, and had come around to seek retribution.

Why he would alert me to the fact by tossing a stone at my window was a second thought that was a long time coming. When it did, I peered around the edge of the curtain to try to make out who or what was outside.

The dim shapes of the evening all melded together. Trees, the half-collapsed wooden shed/playhut/death trap, the ivy-laden fenceline. Then I saw one shadow move and separate out.

Even from this distance and this time of night, the Grey Man managed to look grey. The thin moon reflected enough light to shine off his suit jacket, and illuminate the planes of his face.

He made some sort of hand gesture, but I couldn’t see what. Presumably to indicate I should come down to him. I waved and stayed where I was. No way was I running downstairs to his command after the shit he’d put me through today. Gift card indeed.

The gestures grew more frantic, and then he whispered, ‘Can you come down?’

I smiled in the shadows and leant out the window slightly. ‘No. You’ll have to come up.’

He shook his head, and I shrugged my shoulders in response. The hand gestures again, but I just turned my back on the window and laid down in bed.

Stuff him. If he wanted me to do his bidding he should pay me like an employee.

There was a series of pops as another pebble hit the side of my window, and bounced down the wall back to earth. I stayed where I was. Then there was a sharp crack as something larger hit the window followed by a thud on the floor near me.

What the hell?

A note wrapped around a stone.

I looked at the window and saw a line spreading out from a chink in the glass. The arsehole must have tossed it up on the inside of the open window. Its size had caused it to actually crack the pane.

I unwrapped the message.
Come down. I need to see you.

I wrapped it back around the stone and threw it straight down out of the window. Not aimed at his head exactly, but not aimed away from him either.

‘I’m not coming down. You come up.’

‘Your door’s locked,’ he replied simply. When I didn’t respond he moved a step closer to the side of the house, ‘This isn’t a game, Daina. You need to come down here now.’

No it wasn’t a sodding game. A game was fun. A game had excitement and laughter, not fear and nausea. A game gave you a feeling of achievement at the end, or a try harder next time mentality. Not a feeling like you just wanted everything to go away.

I pulled on a sweatshirt to counter the chill of the evening air, and walked carefully downstairs. Timing each step to avoid all possible creaks and squeaks was a difficult job, I had to move slowly, slowly, but he could wait.

I turned the key, twisted the knob on the deadbolt, and let myself out the back door. I turned towards the back of the house, then gave a gasp as a hand gripped me on the upper arm. He must’ve snuck around the side. I pulled my arm back.

‘What?’ I asked. I didn’t bother to whisper any longer.

‘Do you have the stuff?’ he asked. And when I didn’t immediately reply he moved to grasp my upper arm again. I danced back out of his reach.

‘I have it,’ I said and shoved my backpack at him. ‘Help yourself.’

He shook his head and wouldn’t take the bag. ‘You need to hide that away. You’re in danger if you keep it with you.’

His voice had so little inflection in it that it took a moment for the meaning to register.

‘What danger? From Vila’s Dad you mean?’

He moved towards the street. After a second I followed, and he answered when we got to the footpath, his face lit by the streetlamp overhead. Strained. Wary.

‘Not from Mr Fa'amoe, no. In fact he’s in danger too. There are other people about who may have twigged to what he’s working on. They may have found out he’s been digging around into things he shouldn’t.’

He stopped and looked up and down the street, then set off in the direction of the Main North Road. When I caught up with him he was turning his head, scanning in all directions. That made me more nervous than what he’d said.

‘Where are we going?’

‘You need to hide that away. There’s a new subdivision near the old people’s home. We’ll be able to store it somewhere safely there for the meantime.’

‘Wait,’ I said and stopped walking. ‘Don’t you want to have a look at what I got before we
hide
it?’

‘I know what you’ve got. So do some other people.’ He turned back to me and for the first time I saw real fear on another person’s face. An adult person. A chill ran down my backbone and lodged in my kidneys like a cold stone. A cold ache.

‘What other people?’ I whispered. It felt like all my blood was pooling at my feet. A whine started in my ear, so like a siren that I jerked my head to the side before I realised it was a sound for me only.

He shook his head and started to walk again. His long stride ate up the distance with ease and I had to skip a little to keep pace. The backpack rubbed against my shoulder-blades, its weight more noticeable now that it had attracted danger.

We walked in silence for twenty minutes. The Grey Man led me down some backstreets, and then the crowded suburban roads started to be dotted with empty sections, and then fields. There was a house with its frame finished, but everything else wide open. A tarpaulin flapped where it had been tied to protect the wood. The frame looked skeletal in the wispy moonlight.

‘Through there,’ he said and pointed at the floor inside.

‘Where?’ I said as I followed his finger, and found nothing but plywood floorboards on top of cold concrete foundations.

‘There’s a manhole through to underneath,’ he said. He pulled himself up onto the floor as well and scuffed his foot back and forth in a semicircle. I did the same and felt the edge of a wooden slat that didn’t quite fit level.

I knelt and located a small recess in the wood where my fingers could get purchase, and lifted. There was a half-metre square hole that dropped through to the ground beneath. My fingers slipped, but I stuck my foot in the gap, then got my hands underneath to tip it over.

The sound echoed off the trees at the far edges of the fields. I looked around, but there was no one anywhere around. Sound travelled, and we would be able to hear anyone out there who was moving around. There was no one.

‘Do you have a torch?’ I asked with faint hope. He shook his head. I tried to peer into the hole, but I couldn’t make out a thing. Just darkness. Possibly with spiders.

‘Move it into another room. Into a corner. We don’t want anyone accidentally stumbling across it.’

I snorted in derision. The house may be half-finished, but it had been that way for a long time. The tarp may keep the worst of the moisture out of the house, but there were still wide waterstains spread across the flooring. Christchurch didn’t produce that much rain in a year. This had been abandoned for a while.

I turned so my back was to the hole, and then dropped my feet down in the blackness. My skin crawled at the thought of what could be lurking down there, but I forced myself to take off my backpack and kneel down on the cold ground.

I stretched a hand out in front of me and swept it back and forth. As I crawled forward I kept doing it until I felt the beam of a wall join in front of me. I pushed the backpack through a gap, and then felt out the outline and squeezed myself through. My head scraped on the rough wood, a splinter lodged just above my hairline. Shit.

The hand supporting my weight on the ground found the edges of something sharp. I tried to sit back on my knees, but my head banged on the floor above me.

I swore as I picked up the backpack and pulled out its contents. They weren’t protected in any way, I didn’t even have so much as a supermarket bag with me, but the area was so dry I figured they’d probably be okay.

With the test tube inserted into the manila folder, I pushed it as far along as my fingertips could reach. I started to move backwards, trying not to hit the sharp object with my knee again, then worried that the papers would blow away. I felt around me, and located a piece of stone or brick, and moved back in the direction of the folder. When I could brush against its outside edge I tossed the stone.

There was a soft tinkle, and I remembered the glass tube inside. Too late. If it was broken then it was already gone.

Reversing myself I strained in the darkness to see where the manhole had gone. For a moment I thought that it had been closed. That the Grey Man had played another trick on me and I was trapped. The squeeze of claustrophobia pushed the air out of my chest.

Then I made out the slight glow that differentiated the hole. I moved toward it, more quickly now that I was on my way out. When I got to the edge I popped up and levered myself up onto the floor, gasping.

I lay on my stomach for a moment, then rolled over onto my back. I tilted my head back, the world appearing upside down, but I couldn’t see the Grey Man. I flipped the cover back into place and stood up, wiping my hands on the front of my jeans. Frayed and now filthy. He wasn’t there.