Wake (27 page)

‘This
rights
business is always a balancing act,' William said. ‘Sometimes people need to be looked after, even when it isn't what they want.'

‘Your opinions on that subject are strongly biased,' Curtis said. ‘You forget that I know a few salient facts about you.'

‘Huh?' said Bub. ‘What have you got on William?'

They ignored him, and William said to Curtis, ‘Well, what
I
know is that there are miserable people—children for example—clustered under every freedom-loving fanatic's carnival float of privacy.'

Bub looked nervously at William. He was used to these occasional rhetorical flourishes—but there were times when it seemed to be more than just William saying something flashy to silence whoever he was arguing with. These glimpses of something passionate and personal in William's rhetoric were like spotting a Minotaur making its way through the maze of a formal garden. Bub put his hand on William's arm. He said to Curtis, ‘We've got to get going. Enjoy the sunshine.'

Jacob walked to Matarau Point in the late afternoon, carrying his small bag of basic medicines. He found Curtis in bed. Curtis had beads of sweat on his forehead, and was shivering violently. Jacob was alarmed, but he didn't want to worry Curtis. He fetched another blanket and spread it on the bed, then sat down beside Curtis and took his hand. ‘How long have you been like this?'

‘I don't know. For longer than I've minded being like this.' Curtis looked aged and stricken.

‘Did you have a fever when William and Bub stopped by?'

‘Maybe a mild one. I think I was surly with them. Was I making sense?'

‘Not entirely.'

‘I haven't been myself for some time.'

‘What do you think the problem is?'

Curtis shuddered. ‘A long slide.'

‘A decline? Because of Adele?'

Curtis shook his head.

‘I think you're dehydrated,' Jacob said. ‘For a start I'm going to make you a sweet drink.'

But Curtis would not release his hand. ‘Something's here. I hoped it was my wife. That Adele was sustaining me, telling me that she was all I would ever need. But it's something else.'

‘What?'

Curtis glared into the dim corners of the room. ‘Something at the foot of the slide. Something with its mouth open. I thought I could fix myself. But look what I've done.' Curtis gestured weakly at his body, finally releasing Jacob's hand.

Jacob got up. ‘I'll make you that drink. But I need to ask—did you take something?'

‘No. I haven't been in my right mind. I wish I'd stayed that way. It would be better than lying here thinking what a fool I am, and what a trouble to you.' Tears filled Curtis's eyes and spilled onto his faintly yellow cheeks.

Jacob got up and turned on the overhead light. He took Curtis's pulse, which was fast and thready. He found his thermometer and slipped it under Curtis's tongue. The man's teeth were chattering. Jacob said, ‘Please be careful, you don't want to break that.'

The thermometer gave a beep. Curtis had a temperature of thirty-nine. Jacob told Curtis that, for a start, he'd get some Panadol and water into him. Then he'd find some sweet soda. He popped the pills out of their blisters and pressed them into Curtis's palm. He lifted Curtis's head and shoulders and arranged another pillow beneath him, then went into the bathroom to get water.

The shower stall was splashed and puddled with blood. Jacob opened its doors and looked down at what he first supposed were crumpled masses of bloodied bandages. But then he noticed the dropped knife, and he realised that what he was looking at were three conical plugs of flesh—skin, fat, muscle—each around five centimetres in length.

Jacob hurried to the bed and flung back the duvet. He moved too hastily. There was a sticky ripping noise, and Curtis cried out.

Curtis's blood-soaked pyjama bottoms had adhered to his legs, and the bedclothes.

For a moment all Jacob was able to do was stare. It was like watching the sea retreat. There was only blankness before him, and anticipation, of the thing gathering itself at the horizon, the thing that would soon surge back in and drown him.

He found his voice—and a firm kindness, which failing all else had always stood him in stead. ‘Right,' he said. ‘I'll see to this. You just lie still.' Jacob let the covers settle again. He left the room to get busy, to find swabs, disinfectant, and dressings—and to hide his face.

Sam had gone to see Belle's kakapo because the birds were an Elect—
they
were going to be saved.

She fetched the kakapo's feed and filled the hopper, then sat at the edge of the clearing to watch the birds gather and eat.

When she heard the quad bike she went down to the gate and saw Theresa let Belle off and go on herself, the bike rocking away along the overgrown grass of the firebreak.

Belle saw her and called out, and, for a moment, Sam stood her ground. There was nothing threatening or frightening in Belle's open face, but Sam didn't really know Belle, and she didn't know what to say to her, or to any of them.

She hadn't planned to run; she just did, swivelling on her heel and taking off. She plunged into the forest and jumped up onto a fallen log, her foot hitting the slimy spot where the bark was coming away from the wood. She slipped, and tumbled into a patch of bush-lawyer. She lay still in its clinging tangles, listening as Belle went by calling her name.

Her
name—Sam—the name she had first learned to answer to. But not
just
her, for when Uncle would say ‘Sam', they had both raised their faces from whatever had their attention, for instance their bath toys—the duck, the frog, the spouting fish—floating between their chubby legs. Uncle would say ‘Sam' and they'd both look up at him—Samantha and Samara. Uncle would call them Samantha and Samara too, and they had distinguished each other with what they could manage with their soft infant palates, of ‘Samantha' and ‘Samara'. So—‘Fa' and ‘Wa'. They distinguished each other whenever they looked up and saw that the other one was doing something different. For instance, there were nights when Wa would wake up to see Fa across the room, standing in her crib, crying. Wa would get to her feet and cry too. Uncle would come in and he'd be annoyed because, of course, it was difficult for him to pick them both up at the same time.

Then, one day, there was another adult in the house—a woman with skin so dark that light scarcely bounced off it, so that her facial expressions were impossible to interpret. This mysterious stranger and Uncle had a conversation in the twins' bedroom. While they talked, the woman plucked Wa up out of her cot, and Uncle picked up Fa. The girls gazed at each other and shared a laugh, because this being held at the same time was delightfully different. And they'd never had visitors! Here, suddenly, was a visitor, and, for a little while, two adults to comfort two crying children.

And then—

—then Sam couldn't remember what. All she remembered was waking up knowing that something had happened. Something terrible. She was in her crib in their bedroom, and the air was white. There were new net curtains on the windows—white nets filtering the yellow blaze of the blossoming kowhai. Uncle was by himself once more. He was sitting on the floor. He had a screwdriver in his hand and was winding the screws out of Fa's crib. He was taking it apart. Its mattress and bedding were on the floor. Uncle drew out the last screw, and got up to press on the sides of the crib. Its floor swung down and it collapsed with a loud
clack!
The crib's bars came together to make a grill with such narrow gaps that a child would be unable to put its hand out, were there still space in which a child could lie, as Fa would lie, blinking sleepily at her sister.

Sam watched as Belle went past her hiding place a second time, on her way back down the hill. Belle was still calling now and then, but she sounded spooked and uncertain.

Sam heard Belle greet Theresa. She listened to their consultation—their words indistinguishable except when they called out to her.

Theresa, urgent: ‘
Sam!
'

Belle, tearful: ‘
Please
, Sam!'

Then the gate clanged, and the chain rattled, and they went away.

When the sound of the quad bike's engine had receded, Sam went back down the hill and through the gate, locking it after her. She walked away from Stanislaw's Reserve and skirted around the edge of the town until she came to Cotley's Orchard.

There were leaves on the apple trees, and vestigial fruit bubbling from the hard red-brown casings left over from the buds of blossoms. Sam walked through the orchard to the cutting and followed the long white stain of the tanker's spilled milk. She left the road and clambered through the scrub till she hit the shore track. She walked back along it till she reached the beach, where she took off her shoes and went to stand at the water's edge.

The tide was coming in and the sand was wet. The sky was reflected in it. Sam's feet pressed the water out of the sand, and each foot had a dry halo, flaws in the refection, so that it seemed Sam stood on stepping stones in the air above the clouds. The wind was pushing the waves. They broke diagonally along the shore, their percussion not a beat but a long drawing sound.

Sam had discovered why the man in black had kept away from them all. She was thinking of doing the same, and for the same reason.

She didn't want to share what she knew.

Sam could stay away. It wasn't as if she'd be lonely. She was accustomed to loneliness, had been lonely most of her life, ever since that first wound had left her so bereft that she didn't know who she was, or even
that
she was.

Uncle collapsed Fa's crib and carried it out of the bedroom. Where was Fa? The day came to an end and another day arrived. Where was Fa? Wa was hungry and thirsty, so she ate and drank. But where was Fa? The days succeeded one another and Wa forgot that she was a big girl and knew how to put the special seat on to the toilet then use the step to get up there herself and do what she needed to. She wouldn't do it. She wouldn't do anything Uncle asked her to till he gave Fa back. Wa's stomach became very sore and Uncle put her on the toilet and begged her to be good. Then he shouted at her. But she wouldn't. Where was Fa? Wa went out in the garden and ran around with the pain pushing her. Then the poo was coming out and it had knives.

Wa stopped that particular protest and would go, but in her pants, or in the bath. Uncle was angry and told her she was dirty, but he still wouldn't answer
where was Fa?
He wouldn't say, so she stopped answering him. She kept her mouth shut and stared at him to see whether he'd understand that she was being bad so that he'd want a good girl. Fa was always a good girl—and so was
she
when Fa was there.

Uncle packed up the house into their van, the VW with chalky paint. They left Kahukura, and drove to the ferry at Picton. They went to live on the other island, in a different house. Uncle unpacked the boxes from Sam's bedroom and slit the plastic wrapping of the mattress on Sam's new big girl's bed. He glued yellow-spotted red fimo caterpillars to the outside of the bedroom door. The caterpillars were twisted to make letters that Uncle said read
Sam's Room.
All the toys were hers now. Though she and her sister had never bothered to keep track of which was whose.

But then, after a while, funny things began to happen with the toys. Sam would dress the dolls in the morning and find them undressed in the afternoon. Or she'd wake up and there would be a doll's tea party. She was very angry at Uncle for playing with her toys. She hid her favourites, but he kept finding her hiding places. She'd come in from the sandpit and the toys would be out again.

Then Sam noticed that the weather was funny. It got cold too quickly. The grass grew too fast. This was so remarkable that she had to ask Uncle about it. It was the first thing she'd said to him for a long time. ‘How fast does grass grow?' she asked. Uncle explained seasons. He showed her a calendar: Waimate at strawberry time; Nelson Cathedral with Christmas decorations; cherries on the trees at Roxburgh; Arrowtown with its leaves turning. Sam hadn't any other experience to measure things by, but would still stand in the garden, or the kindergarten playground, and think, ‘This can't be right.' It couldn't be right that flowers flashed into life like fireworks—but never when she was looking. It couldn't be right that the ducklings in the culvert under the road—tiny compact masses of gilded brown fluff —would, overnight, become sleek, sturdy, and bold. And there were fewer of them. ‘The cats get them,' Uncle explained. ‘Sam,' he said. ‘It's that cat from number 10.' ‘Sam,' he said—and she answered to ‘Sam'.

Then, one day, Sam found a picture clumsily taped to the wall above her bed. A picture drawn with crayons. It showed Fa and Wa, holding hands. And on either side of the girls were their toys—two teddies, in different hats, though there had only ever been one teddy; there was the black-haired doll and the fair-haired doll as well, but two of each, beside either girl. Everything was doubled. It was as if there were a mirror standing on edge halfway across the sheet of paper. Of every single toy there were two. And the girls; there were two of them. But that was
real
, and though years had passed, Sam hadn't forgotten that she'd had a sister, and that her sister was taken away. Sam knew that the picture had been drawn by her sister—and that Fa meant her to look at it and understand what had happened to them. The picture didn't say, ‘I'm still here and where are you?' It said, ‘I'm still here and you are too.'

Sam—Samara Waite—stood on the beach till the waves came up over her feet and her feet went numb with cold. She tried to think what she could do—how she could get through this next bit. If she didn't rejoin the other survivors then she wouldn't have to keep another secret. She was good at keeping secrets, but this one wasn't hers alone—or, rather, it wasn't hers and her sister's. It was a secret that concerned them all. And she couldn't join the man in black, who had only released her because he thought she was damaged. For, as soon as she had understood what he was telling her, the monster had come—and it had shown Sam her loneliness, all of it, a loneliness as vast and unquenchable as its own greed. It had drilled down into her, its revolutions ripping every feeling from the experiences to which they were anchored—the damp flats, and dull jobs, and night buses; the moments where she had stood stupidly before a cash machine with the wrong card for her PIN number; the coming home to an empty house and to someone else's unwashed clothes and dirty dishes; the terror of surfacing straight into arguments, or into some cop at the driver's window shining a light into her eyes, and the hailstone smear of safety glass on the road. That was her life—fragments scattered along the broken path, the crazy paving, of someone else's life.