Thornwood House (40 page)

It was dark, so dark.

No longer morning. Something was wrong. My limbs were skewed beneath me. My skin burned, but my bones were made of ice. If I cracked open my lids I could just make out, through a haze of red, the tracery of moonlight in the treetops. Bats chirped and insects droned, the wind murmured in the branches. From below me in the gully came the pounding of the creek, a liquid heartbeat that drew the other sounds into itself and slowed them down until nothing remained but the sound of someone sobbing –

I snapped to my senses. My pulse raced as I got to my feet. These recurring half-dreams were becoming more intense, feeling more real. I knew the dreams were related to Aylish – I could feel her presence rubbing against my mind like a hungry cat, pressing me to take notice – and yet I was unable to pinpoint any order or meaning. Just that the tone of the visions was fearful, maybe cautionary, as though Aylish was – from whatever realm she now inhabited – trying to warn me.

Stowing my flask back in my bag, I moved away from the stone. The darkness of a moment before was gone; the clearing had returned to daylight. The eerie throbbing of the creek had subsided – yet still, all was not right.

The gully was almost otherworldly in its beauty . . . and yet I couldn’t wait to be away from it. Two young women had died here, forty years apart; one brutally bashed, the other with similar injuries attributed to a fatal fall. That the two women were related to one another by family ties – grandmother and granddaughter – hadn’t escaped me. Was it an unfortunate coincidence, or had more sinister forces been at work?

The bellbirds had fallen silent. The clearing seemed to be holding its breath. Even the sunlight dappling the leaves appeared frozen. I was no longer a part of the whole. Rather, I was aware of my isolation. Shut in by trees, miles from home. No one knew I was here. No one. Worry started to twist and
churn in me. What if something happened to me here? What if I died? Bronwyn would be alone, an orphan; abandoned the way my own mother had abandoned me.

I’d been wrong to come here. The gully offered no answers, no revelations about the past, just shadows and dampness and mystery, and the mesmerising babble of a creek, trickling from its underground source, lapping into shallows that had once run red with blood.

Retracing my steps, I hurried back the way I’d come, leaving the clearing and reconnecting with the meandering dirt trail that led uphill and back to Thornwood . . . or so I thought. A few minutes passed before I realised my mistake. The gully had sunk from view behind me, hidden by an awning of tall eucalypt crowns draped in parasitic vines. Through a gap in the trees further down, I glimpsed the rounded peak of the fin-shaped stone. The lichen freckling its smooth surface glowed green and black and lavender-grey in the blotchy sunlight. It was a breathtaking sight, but I couldn’t recall seeing it on my way in.

Which meant that I’d entered the clearing via a different track.

I looked down the slope in dismay. There was no way I was going to retrace my steps, go back through the gully clearing. I flashed on the creepy feeling I’d experienced near the stone, the dark dreamlike glimpses that had so unnerved me.

Better to keep going, I decided. Sooner or later I’d stumble upon the right trail; for now, all that mattered was putting distance between myself and the haunted shadows of the gully.

I continued uphill.

The stillness grew until it was dizzying – at one point I imagined I heard the muffled barking of a dog – but otherwise there was just the soft crack of leaf debris beneath my trail boots, the raspy tempo of my breath, and the eerie ever-present chiming of the bellbirds.

Twenty minutes later I stood at the edge of another, larger clearing surrounded by groves of lanky ironbark trees. Sunlight cascaded across the open expanse, turning the carpet of native grasses to silver.

At the far side of the clearing, sheltered beneath a stand of red gums, sat a little shack. It looked very old, its weathered walls and shingled roof all cut from the black ironbark that grew nearby. Along the front of the rickety verandah grew pink hippeastrums, gnarled lavender bushes, even a rambling rose bush with huge crimson blooms – a forgotten cottage garden in the midst of wild and lonely bushland. I guessed it was the hut Corey had told me about, the one built by the original settlers in the 1870s.

Despite its age and remoteness, the hut looked to be in sound condition. The narrow verandah appeared to teeter, but the palings were intact and the steps leading up to it looked sound. There was even a battered old cane chair propped at one end. The roof shingles were age-blackened, though some looked lighter in colour, more roughly hewn – as though they’d been recently replaced.

Approaching, I saw the door was ajar.

Standing at the foot of the steps, I was able to look up through the door and into the hut’s interior. It was cool and dark and inviting, crammed with furniture and belongings.

As if someone was living there.

‘Hello . . . ?’ I called. My voice echoed in the stillness, and I felt silly. Of course no one lived here. The place was too remote, too isolated. There was no road, no electricity, no running water, nothing that even resembled a telephone line. Why would anyone bother? Besides, I reminded myself, it was on Thornwood land. If anyone was living here, I’d have known about it . . . wouldn’t I?

The door creaked as I pushed it open. ‘Anyone home?’

I half-expected to see Corey’s ghostly woman standing at the window, but there was no one there. The place was small
and shabbily furnished, darker than a tomb. A single bed jutted from the opposite wall, its ragged army blanket moth-eaten but clean, its stained pillow plumped just so. At the bedside was an upended wood crate, topped with a thick candle in a jar and a new-looking box of matches. I went to the bedside, pinched the candlewick. Brittle, freshly burnt.

The other furniture was dilapidated and old, but tidily arrayed. A deep shelf was stacked with ammunition tins – each one labelled in small white block lettering: powdered milk, matches, pencils, tea, flour, candles, rope. A camp table and chair were crowded under a small glassless window. Next to the table was an ancient meat safe with mesh sidings. I peered inside. Enamel dishes and cups, a jar of jam that looked older than I was, and a lump of mouldy bread.

Crossing to the window, I peered through and saw a corrugated iron water tank tucked against the house. Nearby sat a forty-four-gallon drum with an iron grate fitted over the top as a makeshift cooker. Next to it, another drum full of kindling. Someone’s idea of a bush kitchen, I supposed.

A noise behind me.

I turned, but it was just a leaf scraping through the door. The breeze that carried it in smelled of sunlight and wildflowers – a fresh contrast to the musty, unwashed atmosphere of the hut.

As my pulse recalibrated, I took stock. The matches, the tins of provisions, the neatly made bed; the repairs to the roof and water tank, the fusty odour that was – the more I breathed it – clearly not the smell of nesting possums.

The hut was inhabited.

I tried to remember if Tony’s lawyer had said anything about the settlers’ hut being tenanted, but felt certain she hadn’t. Which meant I had a squatter. I had no way of knowing how long they’d been here, but it looked like a long time. I turned to leave, my mind already mapping out the procedure for having them served with an eviction notice. First step, notify the cops. Then write
to local council to apply for an unlawful tenant eviction form. When I’d lived my nomadic life with Aunt Morag, we’d had our fair share of eviction notices served us; it felt weird to have the shoe on the other foot for a change. But there was no other option; Bronwyn and I were living less than a mile away . . . it was too creepy to have an unknown element in our backyard.

I was halfway to the door when I saw, in a shadowy corner, the antique tallboy. Its carved detailing was chipped and flaking away, one of its fretwork panels hung loose. I turned the key, rattled open the door.

On the top shelf was what appeared to be a crude shrine. A collection of tiny porcelain doll heads was arranged in a semicircle; they were old, their prim Victorian faces chipped and discoloured as if they’d been dug from the ground. In the centre of the circle was a carved wooden box, and on the box sat a tarnished picture frame displaying a black and white photograph.

I picked up the frame and tilted it into the light. It was an informal portrait of a young woman leaning against a tree. Sunlight cascaded around her, and she was smiling, the joy clear in her lovely features. The photo was dim and patchy with silver marks where the developer had succumbed to age – but the uncommon beauty of its subject was clear. Her windswept hair was long and thick, her face a perfect oval, her eyes dark almonds. A 1940s-style dress hugged her willowy figure.

I wondered who she was, and why her image had been trapped here, in this gloomy cupboard in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to rescue her. To slip her picture in my satchel and take her back out into the sun. The hut was on my land, I reasoned. The squatter had no right to be here without my consent. Which surely meant the dwelling and all its contents rightly belonged to me.

I ran a possessive finger along the side of the picture frame. What was it about these old portraits, why was I so drawn to them? Not
all
of them, I amended. Just this one. And the one of Samuel at home . . .

And then I knew. Not by deduction or any process of elimination; but in my heart I knew. I took the photo over to the window.

Please agree to meet me
, she’d written.
Tonight at our secret place . . . I’ll be the one wearing a big happy smile for you
.

‘Aylish,’ I said, disquieted by the realisation. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

I came very close to taking her. But in the end I listened to my conscience. Lies were all very well when you saw good reason for telling them . . . but stealing was just not my thing. The squatter might be residing unlawfully on my land, but I didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to tell me I was trespassing, invading a personal space . . . and that whoever lived here might not be all that pleased to arrive home and find a stranger making off with a treasured keepsake.

I replaced the photo and was about to shut the tallboy, when my attention was drawn to the hanging compartment. Propped against the back panel was a shaft of wood that might have been the handle from an old tool, possibly an axe. One blunt end was stained black, while its weatherworn grip was split and splintered. I wondered why someone would bother to keep an axe handle indoors – especially one that looked ready for the scrapheap. I reached in and ran my fingers along its blackened length –

Smooth as skin. Almost warm.

I pulled away, repulsed.

But as I was closing the tallboy door, I paused again. The wooden box under the photo had grabbed my attention. I’d dismissed it at first as a plinth for the little picture frame, but I saw now that it was carved with leaves and cherry blossoms and obviously had once been valuable. It was so feminine, so pretty and so out of place, that I found myself moving the frame and pulling the box into the light.

Taking it over to the bed, I sat and balanced it on my knees as I lifted the lid. It was full of letters. A bundle of letters, tied with
threadbare ribbon. I thought of Glenda Jarman, and wondered if these were the same letters she’d discovered that unlucky afternoon in her father’s shed – the letters I had assumed revealed Luella’s affair with Hobe Miller. But as I picked an envelope off the top of the pile, all thoughts of Glenda went from my mind. The stamps were old.
Really
old, threepenny stamps mostly, I guessed from the 1940s.

And the handwriting . . . I recognised it immediately.

There might have been thirty or forty envelopes, the majority made of diaphanous airmail paper, brittle with age and wear. I rifled through them and saw that most were from Aylish, addressed to Samuel via the Second A.I.F. Headquarters.

The remaining envelopes bore Aylish’s name and her street, Stump Hill Road. The stamps were Malayan, obliterated beneath heavy black cancellation marks. Other envelopes bore no stamps, just the caption:
On Active Service
. Each envelope was well-thumbed, the paper soft and crumbly as though they’d been handled frequently and often read.

I ached to start reading, but I knew it was too risky; the squatter might return at any time, and I didn’t want to be caught red-handed – especially since I intended to have him evicted.

A quick peek, then?

Outside, a windy gust blew something across the roof, startling me: a scrape of leaves, twigs? I held my breath, listening . . . but there was just the warbling of currawongs, the drone of cicadas, and the soft hush-hush of a breeze in the dry grass.

Heart thumping, I slid one of Samuel’s envelopes randomly from the pile.

30 November, 1941

Hope you’re well, Dream Girl?

No letters have arrived yet. I’ve spent a ridiculous measure of hours chasing the possibility of lost mail. The handling officer assures me that we are at war (really, mate?) and therefore
missing mail is of least concern in the larger picture. But then after I let loose a few choice suggestions as to what he could do with his larger picture, he rushed on to say that such occurrences were rare.