There Will Be Lies (12 page)

I turn, as we walk along the walkway to the room. You can see mountains in the distance, forest, across the blurred brightness of the highway. The parking lot is only half full and as I look, a cop car turns in, headlights on but blues off. For a moment I have that feeling, you know the one? Where you’re convinced they’re here for you, though there’s no rational reason to think so.

Or here for Mom? I mean …

But then they pull a little closer and are under a light and I see
that the two cops inside are just eating something – burgers, maybe – from cardboard boxes, chatting as they have their meal. Something they bought from a drive-through, I guess. One of them lights a cigarette and rolls down his window, blows smoke out of it.

Not here for us, then.

I turn away and follow Mom and Luke, who are gesticulating at me impatiently from the doorway with 213 on it in peeling white paint.

We go in and it’s fine – I mean, it’s not charming, because what motel is? But it’s clean and serviceable. There’s a smell of some kind of pine-based air freshener, tingly and fresh and ever-so-slightly reminiscent of the Dreaming, but too chemical in its undertones to be more than a hint.

Mom takes my bag into this annexe bedroom and her own stuff to the main bedroom she’s going to … share … with … Luke.

Ugh. Even
saying
that disgusts me.

What do you want to do?
says Luke afterwards.

How about we order room service and watch a movie?
says Mom.
They have HBO
.

Sounds good
, says Luke.
Shelby?

I just shrug at him and go to turn on the TV. But Mom gets up from where she’s been sitting on the bed and stops me.
Why don’t you take a bath
,
Shelby?
she says, with her hands.
We could all use a freshen-up
.

I look at her.
Uh, OK
, I say.

I left some stuff in the car
, says Luke.
I’ll go grab it, get some takeout menus from reception. You two girls do your thing
.

He leaves and I bring my make-up bag into the bathroom and Mom runs me a bath.
Don’t look at me
, I say.

It’s nothing I haven’t seen before
, she says.

It’s not the same
, I say.

Oh come on, I changed your diaper ten times a day when you were a baby
.

I just glare at her until she sighs and closes her eyes as I undress. Then I take off the CAM Walker, and she kind of awkwardly helps me to cover my stitched-up foot in plastic bags while averting her eyes; I notice that one of them is the Flagstaff Wines and Spirits bag. She wraps elastic bands around them to make them watertight and then eases me into the water, her hands under my armpits.

I feel pissed off with her for making my entire life so weird and for bossing me around so much but I kind of forget that as I sink into the warm water because it’s kind of amazing.

I soak in the tub for the longest time, before my foot starts to twinge again and I shout for Mom to come and help me out.

Don’t look
, I say.

She crosses her heart and then mimes shooting herself, before closing her eyes and supporting my arm as I get out. I put on a nearly white robe hanging on the back of the door and hobble over to the sink, where my make-up bag is. I look inside and reach for –

Huh.

I could have sworn both bottles of codeine were still in there when I took some pills in the car. I try to picture the scene – the sun setting, the lights of the highway, the panel in front of me saying AIRBAG as I reached into the bag, leaning into the seat belt and –

And I can’t fix the image in my mind. Maybe there was only one bottle then, and the other fell out somewhere. Fell out in the forest maybe? I hope I have enough left in this one bottle.

I count the pills in the bottle. Thirty-six – six days’ worth if I
follow the pharmacist’s instructions. OK, fine. I toss back two of the pills and bend over to wash them down with cold water from the tap.

Then I go into the room, cinching my robe tight around me – I don’t want it slipping off in front of Luke. He isn’t there though; just Mom sitting on the bed reading some kind of tourist pamphlet.

I think the water’s still pretty hot
.

Thanks
, she says.

I pick up the remote from the bedside table and point it at the TV; press the on button.

It’s not working
, says Mom, redundantly, as the TV fails to come on. There isn’t even a red light on it, you know the standby light thing? The set is completely dead and again I could swear I saw that little red light before, blinking.

I shake my head. I’m losing it.

I glance at the table in the seating area – there’s an open bottle of red wine and two coffee cups taken from the sidebar where the kettle is. The bottle is half empty – the rest of the wine is in the cups. So that’s what Mom got in Flagstaff – wine for her and Luke.

I point the remote at the TV again and try to turn it on, even though I’m not expecting it to work.

Just then Mom turns to the door and I figure there’s been a knock because then Luke comes in. He sees me holding the remote.

TV not working?
he says.

I shake my head.

I’ll call down, get someone to fix it
, he says.

Oh no
, says Mom.
We can just talk, don’t you think? Get to know each other a little better
.

Ugh.

’
Course
, says Luke.
Shelby might want to watch
–

But Mom does this eyebrow thing at me and I sigh inside and shake my head, putting down the remote. Mom doesn’t want the TV on, that’s for sure. I am like 99 per cent sure she has unplugged it or cut the cable or something, and for the 156th time I reflect on how screwed up my life has become, so quickly.

As soon as we get some proper time alone me and Mom are having a SERIOUS talk. If I can think of how to ask the questions, anyway.

You get menus?
says Mom.

Yep
, says Luke. He holds up two folded sheets of glossy paper.
Mexican or Chinese
.

Mexican sounds good. Shelby?

I shrug. This is basically my signature move at the moment.

Mexican it is
, says Luke.

Mom swings herself up from the bed and walks over to the little table.
I got us a little surprise
, she says.
Grand cru Bordeaux from Chateau [        ]. I thought once Shelby had gone to bed we could share it. It needs to breathe anyway, to ox[        ] the [        ]
.

Luke looks pained; embarrassed.
I’m … I’m sorry
, he says.
I don’t drink
.

Something flashes across Mom’s face. Embarrassment too? No. It looks more like … anger? Or frustration? It’s weird, anyway. But it’s gone quickly and she smoothes her sweater and smiles.
Oh well
, she says.
More for me
.

Luke passes around the menu and we each choose what we want, then he calls up and orders the food.

When it comes, we eat our burritos and chips in silence, and then
Mom does this really theatrical yawn.
I’m so tired
, she says.
Shelby, you must be exhausted too
.

I look at her, and Luke is not in my sightline so I raise my eyebrows sardonically.

She narrows her eyes back at me.

Fine, I think. Fine, I’ll leave the two of you to whatever sick game you’re playing.

Sighing, I get up and CAM Walk over to the door to my little annexe room. I wave goodnight to Luke and go in and shut the door behind me, drop another couple of codeine tabs, then lie down on my bed, knowing that I will NEVER be able to sleep with the knowledge of what is going down in the room next to me.

There is only one source of solace.

This is an AMAZING time to be deaf.

I lie there and I can’t hear a thing, can’t hear Mom and Luke making out which I’m 1,000,000 per cent certain they’re doing, and I’m so grateful for it I have no words. I’m also surprised to find that I AM tired, even though I have so many questions, have so much to ask my mom, so much to try to understand.

Like: why would my dad even want us dead?

What kind of psycho is he?

And what the hell is the Dreaming? Am I just going crazy?

I am thinking about that, my eyes closed, random fragments of the day spooling behind my eyelids – the streetlights, the cowboy hats, the rows of boots, the pizza from lunch, the way Mom smiles at Luke, when all these images fall away and there are only –

– and I’m standing in the forest, Mark beside me.

Keep running, he says. Then takes off, the howling of the wolves loud behind us. Even though it’s a scary sound, I’m glad to hear it, I’m glad to hear, period.

The leaves and twigs crunch beneath my feet, every rustle an explosion of pleasure in me. My feet free and swift without the CAM Walker. And if the wolves chew on my flesh at least I will hear them do it.

Another howl, even closer.

Hmm.

Maybe hearing them eating me wouldn’t be such fun after all. I start running faster, my breath heaving in my chest. The smell of sap and decaying vegetation is in my nostrils.

Eventually the forest runs out, just like that, suddenly. In front of us is a vast prairie, spreading to the horizon. Mark holds his hand up for us to stop and we stand for a moment, still in the shadow of the forest. The prairie is dry, I see now – all the grass is dead.

Mark isn’t even breathing hard, and I’m gasping for breath. Then he steps out on to the prairie, leaving the forest behind.

Come, he says. The wolves don’t like to leave the trees.

I follow him, out on to the brown, dry grass. The landscape reminds me of the place we went to with Luke, the reserve – a vast landscape of grassland, stretching out to the horizon, creased with thin gullies and canyons. Above us, a dark mirror to the lightness of the grass, is an enormous bowl of night, studded with millions and millions of stars.

I look up, stunned, forgetting about the wolves behind us. I have never seen a night sky like this. The scale of it is just … I can’t describe it. It’s like it’s the first time I have ever seen stars, really seen them, I mean. There are so many of them, it seems impossible.

I start to walk further out on to the prairie, wanting to look at the stars, and to get away from those hungry, hungry wolves I can still hear behind us, wanting to put as much space as –

but Mark reaches out a hand and closes it over my arm and I stop, stunned by his strength; it’s like being held by a concrete pillar.

No, says Mark. They don’t like to leave the forest, but they will if they have to. And we should not be on open ground when they come.

He turns and nods towards the forest. I look where he wants me to and see the glinting eyes again, the hard eyes of the wolves lurking there at the edge of the forest.

We stand here or not at all, he says.

Then he adopts a stance somewhat like the one I use in the batting cage. Hawks, he says, and his voice has gone strange again, has that echo in it. Foxes. Badgers. Will you stand?

His voice is urgent too. The words coming out fast, but with a strange kind of authority and shimmer. Like a tuning fork after the first bright shine of the note.

Nothing happens, but there’s another feeling around us, like
when Mark spoke those words when I first entered the Dreaming, like the whole air is asking a question.

Mark nods.

And … and, well, movement happens.

It’s not dramatic – it’s more like there’s a sense of feathers in the air, in there among the leaves, and the undergrowth is suddenly alive, and suddenly those gleaming eyes of the wolves are flicking around in panic, and it’s as if the forest is eating them alive.

Then everything is still.

The wolf eyes are gone.

Mark waits for a moment, tilts his head, and nods again. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, he says, but who he’s saying it to, I don’t know. I don’t see anything moving any more.

What the hell? I say. Who
are
you? How come you can talk to badgers and hawks and foxes and whatever?

This is the Dreaming, he says.

I can only shrug in response to that. I mean, yeah. OK. It’s the Dreaming. It figures. And anyway I’m weirdly glad to be here with him, with Mark – to be talking to someone who isn’t my mother, even if it’s someone who might not actually totally technically 100 per cent exist.

At least tell me what I’m doing here, I say.

I was trying to, he says. When the wolves came. You see the grass? The trees?

I look at the brown grass, desperate for water. At the trees, with their shrivelled leaves. I crouch down and touch the grass. It’s dry as straw, colourless. There’s a drought? I ask Mark.

It never rains, he says. Not any more.

Really, never?

Not any more. It used to be said, the Dreaming has a face of sunshine and fingers of rain, and it holds us all in its arms, and we will never want, for everything will grow. But now –

Wait, I say. What did you say?

But now –

No, about the rain.

He blinks. A face of sunshine and fingers of rain …

That, yes. Where did you hear that?

It is said.

Yes, but when?

Forever. Since the beginning of time. Since the Dreaming began.

I turn away from him. Whatever, I think. But I’m feeling pretty majorly unsettled by this whole fingers of rain thing. By the fact that this is almost exactly what my mom said about leaving Alaska.

Why doesn’t it rain? I say.

Because of the Crone, he says. And it’s getting worse. She will not allow it to rain. This is why we need you, in the Dreaming. She has stopped the rain and she has also captured –

Just then Mark whirls around, and I’m about to say, oh come on, you have to be kidding me, but then I follow his acute gaze, and I see a movement in the forest. Then there’s a rustle of sound, the sound of leaves being parted by bodies, of twigs cracking underfoot.