Afterlight Read online

  So I’d avoided going near him, or up to my bedroom, for hours. Instead, I’d surrounded myself with kitchen hands, noises, things. But every third Tuesday it was The Star’s infamous $10 Scotch Fillet and Pub Bingo Night, which brought out every tight-arse punter in the galaxy. When the bingo was on and the steaks were chargrilling, an entire hostile intergalactic force could land on the roof and come through shooting, and no one would be the wiser. While The Star heaved beneath me to its usual bingo night rhythms, I convinced myself that it was safe to go back upstairs and that Eve wouldn’t be back; Monday night had to be a one-off. If I slept with all the lights on, I reasoned with myself, I’d be okay.

  But you don’t really have a hope of blocking out someone who can walk through a deadlocked door. I smelt the perfume first, and then I knew. Turned to face her, drenched in an icy sweat, nearly screaming the house down, until I remembered that at our place no one can hear you scream—and even if they did, they’d just put their head down and keep drinking, so there was no point.

  11.18pm. That’s what the clock radio said. I had the edge of my doona gripped tight in my hand, about to climb in and get cosy.

  But I froze instead—with her staring at me staring at her. It was a Mexican freaking stand-off between me and a walking dream, with only the length of the bed between us.

  This time, she had a message for me.

  In pictures, not words, because Eve doesn’t talk, exactly. She doesn’t have a voice like we do. It’s more that she just looked at you and you’d know what she wanted because she’d put it straight into your head.

  But on that day—the Tuesday—I didn’t understand and refused to look at her while she showed me:

  A school.

  A school kid.

  A car.

  In reply, I simply fumbled my clock radio on and turned it up to maximum volume. Followed that by jumping into bed and pulling the covers right over my head to block out her, the light, the smell. So scared that I said nothing and did nothing and eventually, hours later, eons later, one endless silent scream later, she left, taking the smell of flowers with her.

  The third night—the Wednesday—Gran even came in while Eve was actually standing there giving me her unblinking, death-ray stare. All the lights were on, the music, even the fan because it’d been right by my bed and I’d run out of ideas. Everything was full-blast. I dunno, I think I was trying to blow Eve away. Obviously, it wasn’t working. Nothing about her moved. Nothing about me moved. Stalemate.

  But then Gran burst through the door and practically stood on top of Eve, demanding to know why I’d quit helping Cook early when we’re already two down tonight and really struggling, Soph, how selfish are you? She was too cross to see how terrified I was, that I hadn’t moved out of the position I’d been lying in for so long there was almost no blood left in my brain.

  I unfroze long enough to ask Gran in a funny little voice if she could smell anything.

  All I could smell was that old-fashioned, talcum-powdery smell that Eve always brought with her like a choking cloud. I hated perfume anyway, and I was coming to hate this one like the toughest bitches at Ivy Street hated some poor kid called Linda Jelly.

  If it was possible, Gran looked even madder after I said that and waved her arms right through Eve. Who, to my eyes, looked as solid as the next person. It was only the way the light hit her that was the faintest bit wrong.

  ‘All I can smell,’ Gran shouted, ‘is bloody lemongrass-infused pot roast! Told Cook we wouldn’t be able to shift the stuff, but never mind me. I just own the place! Now stop listening to that headbanging shit, Soph! We can hear it through the goddamn floor. Either you get your backside downstairs to help out or you go to sleep.’

  She stormed off before I could begin to croak: Help me, please.

  So Gran couldn’t see Eve or smell her. Meanwhile, Eve hadn’t once taken her eyes off me, not through any of it. She just continued to stand at the foot of my bed, hands lightly curled at her sides, dark gaze unwavering. She didn’t bother to tell me again what she wanted, so while I lay there, feeling fainter and fainter, I finally forced my sluggish brain to really think about what she’d, uh, told me so far.

  A school. Somewhere.

  On a main road. Lots of kids. Little kids.

  Something to do with a little blond boy in a navy cap, a light-blue sweatshirt, navy shorts, white runners and socks.

  A red car.

  Great.

  Having Gran go off in my face like a firecracker actually helped, in a weird kind of way, because for the first time I actually spoke to Eve. Both of my hands had fallen asleep and I knew I had to do something. This couldn’t go on. I would probably die here before I understood what she wanted.

  ‘Um, I don’t understand,’ I said. Well, more like barely whispered. ‘And I’d really like to go to bed now, if that’s all right with you. But thanks for, uh, visiting.’

  I waited tensely, only breathing again when Eve didn’t turn into a shrieking gorgon with a rotating head. Her expression didn’t even change. She didn’t cause my walls to weep blood or the curtains to catch on fire or the souls of ten thousand dead people to rise up through the floorboards and surround me. She just kept on looking. And waiting.

  I flexed a knee experimentally and the sky didn’t fall in, so I rolled over slowly and sat up, facing her.

  ‘I’m. Sorry. I. Don’t. Understand,’ I said. A little louder and slower this time, as if Eve were deaf and stupid. I guess I was getting braver.

  Then she suddenly pushed the same handful of images at me again. It was like I was seeing something that was streaming at the wrong speed. And you can’t tell someone like Eve to slow down or rewind or zoom out. It just doesn’t work like that.

  School, kid, red car. Over and over, until other details began to fly out at me that I hadn’t seen because I’d been too freaked-out to concentrate properly.

  What school? A primary school. Wattle Valley Primary. See that sign behind the little kid’s head? That’s what it said.

  What time of day was it? Home time. See how everyone was leaving and getting into cars and driving away?

  The kid? Piece of piss. He was walking home. Somebody give me a medal.

  The car had me stumped, though. It was an early-model red Ford, with rusting paintwork. More of a bomb really, with a dog in the back, a kelpie. Couldn’t see who was driving. Couldn’t see the number plate. Could’ve meant anything. Someone’s dad, someone’s mum, more info please.

  Finally, I shook my head at Eve and told her to stop.

  Stop.

  And it did, like she’d opened a window in my head to let the breeze in and the pictures out.

  I shrugged apologetically, hoping she’d take the hint and take a hike. ‘Still don’t get it,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to find someone else to tell your little story to, sorry. See ya.’

  It was pretty weird, but I was almost comfortable with Eve by this stage. I mean, we were practically conversing. So I wasn’t expecting what happened next.

  Now, the whole time she hadn’t moved a muscle. Not a hair. But when I told her to go, when she thought I wasn’
t going to try any more, that comfortable feeling vanished like an arctic gale descending because she just pushed the whole show reel—school, kid, red car—at me with the force and speed of a sonic boom and I blacked out.

  When I came to, with a feeling like somebody was dancing on my grave, she was gone. But I’d finally got it. Those things she’d tried to burn into my brain? She wanted me to go there. She wanted me to figure it out. She wanted me to see what she’d shown me with my own eyes.

  That night, I don’t think I slept. I kept thinking about Dad and Mum and how they always believed in stupid, hokey sayings like Third time’s a charm.

  In my case, it wasn’t a charm. It was a sign. The one I’d been begging for; that said that maybe they were all right—wherever they were—and they wanted me to know that.

  Eve was the message. She had to be.

  Because this nameless creature—the spit of my mum—shows up in my bedroom, right? Three times. Two weeks, roughly, after I’d first caught her face on the telly and four months, almost, to the day Mum and Dad vanished into the great hereafter on the spirit of Dad’s Harley.

  Maybe they sent Eve because they couldn’t come themselves and she needed help. Dad had helped plenty of people over the years. Mates who’d lost everything would often drop in for a night that turned into weeks. Old men without money or family would often get a free shout, to Gran’s great annoyance.

  Something bad had happened to Eve; that much was plain. The fact Eve had found me—me, and not someone else—had to mean something. If I’d been in her position I would’ve wanted me to help. I was a soft touch; Mum always said so. Strangers came up and talked to me all the time; I had that kind of face. I couldn’t count how many fallen little old ladies I’d had to help up at my local shopping centre over the years. Mum used to shake her head when I told her about the two homeless kids who always took money off me at the bus stop near the pub. ‘You’re as bad as your father,’ she’d say. ‘Both of you, marshmallows. But’—and her eyes would get this suspicious shine whenever she told me this —‘any creature comes to you for help, you bloody help them because I was that creature, once…’

  She never usually finished that sentence.

  If Eve knew I was a soft touch, well, someone who knew me on the other side had to have primed her with the info, I reasoned.

  For them, I would do it for them. Find the school, the kid, the car.

  The next day, I almost had a false start. Thinking about it now makes my blood run cold because anything could’ve happened. There were two Wattle Valley Primary Schools in the directory and I just picked the closest one because I was lazy and half convinced I’d dreamt the whole thing up.

  Anyway, it being very much apparent that no hot guy in his right mind was going to ask me out that Thursday afternoon, or any afternoon for that matter, I stopped in at the pub and begged a couple of hours off after my double spare. Gran grudgingly agreed. Dirty Neil was disappointed when I mooched back out the door at 2.06pm, but I was sick of trying to dodge him as I did the general mop up and heartily sick of providing eye candy for perverts at no extra charge. And did I tell you that The Star Hotel specialises in male patrons who can’t aim straight? Doing Eve’s dirty work had to be a step up from all of that.

  I caught a tram that ran through the city, then hopped on another that ran out to the bayside suburb that hosted the Wattle Valley Primary I’d decided to stake out.

  It felt like it was about ten degrees outside, so you can imagine my gratitude when I got there. It was 3.17 by the time I took up my position under an extensively shat-upon tree, and at precisely 3.23 the front doors exploded outwards as little kids of every size and description flooded onto the pavement in front of me, all in identical navy caps, navy shorts and powder-blue sweatshirts. Finding a little kid who looked like the blond kid in Eve’s—and I say that loosely—instructions would be a big ask, I thought, as I started scanning every face that came through the gates. Figuring out what to do with him once I found him, though, would be even harder. What was I even doing here?

  In the end, it wasn’t me that found him; it was the driver of the red car. I’d totally forgotten about it. Some detective I’d make. By 3.32, I was angry with myself, furious at Eve, and ready to throw in the towel and head home when I saw a red car do a slow U-turn through a sea of double-parked cars and start wobbling up the street away from me. It stood out a mile among the shiny 4WDs and late-model family wagons. In case it was important, I wrote the number plate down on the back of my hand with a felt tip I had in my pocket. Scared enough of pissing Eve off that I wanted to get it right first go, so that I could report back properly later. Not that I was sure she’d be listening. Or that she’d even be there to tell.

  So the car wasn’t hard to spot, was it? And about five minutes later, I saw this boy up ahead, getting smaller all the time. He was tiny anyway, and he had his head down, and he was walking, and it made my skin come out in goosebumps because it was the kid, the one Eve had burned into the back of my eyes. Not sure if I should approach him directly, I followed him and the car for two more blocks, at a distance, until they both turned into a side street and I lost sight of them. I began to run, skidding as I rounded the corner and saw the boy leaning against the front passenger door of the red car, talking to the men inside. He was smiling and nodding, the dog hanging out the back window, all friendly. Suddenly, there was his little hand on the door, his school bag already inside. And my first thought was: What does Eve want me to do now?

  Now, I’ve never claimed to possess any sixth sense, or second sight. But, oh boy, did I know a pervert when I saw one. They came into our place all the time—hey, we even had one of our own practically living-in—so I knew, without having to examine the feeling very closely, that it was really important to keep the little kid out of the car. He just couldn’t get in.

  So I shouted, ‘Oi! Oi, you, kid!’

  And the kid turned, his leg already halfway through the open back door, the dog pushing its snout back out at the noise, baring its teeth, ready to give it to me. I frantically fished for something to say next, the two men in front simultaneously shooting me murderous greasies and urging the boy to get in, get in quickly, shut the door, there’s no time to waste. The boy turned back, his head already in, then his shoulders. He didn’t know me and he trusted them. What did they say to him? They had a dog. I had to get his attention.

  ‘Kid! Kid! You dropped something back there!’ I screamed, pointing over my shoulder. ‘If you lose it, your mum’s going to kill you!’

  That made the boy hesitate. She-who-must-be-obeyed loomed large in everyone’s life, especially a little kid’s. He was so small he’d probably only just stopped wetting his bed and still had his dinner cut up for him at night.

  The boy stepped back and turned towards me again, and that’s when I yelled out, ‘You’re gone! You’re history! We’re onto you!’ to the two pervs in the red car, and they gunned it out of there, the kid’s bag still inside, the door swinging open, the dog doing 360s in the back seat, as they turned the corner on two wheels, practically. The boy flew backwards on his bum onto the road and burst into tears.

  It had all happened so fast.

  The little guy cried all the way home and wouldn’t hold my hand properly the entire time, because I’d lied and the nice m
en still had his schoolbag and his mum really was going to kill him now. Only she didn’t, because once she got home and I explained why I was sitting on her front doorstep with her weeping, angry child, she cried too, and gripped my fingers so hard in gratitude they almost fell off.

  While the kid watched afternoon TV with a plate of chocolate biscuits piled high in front of him, we even rang Crime Stoppers together with the details I’d written on the back of my hand. Then she made me a cup of tea I couldn’t drink because my pounding heart was still lodged somewhere in my throat.

  As I jumped back on the tram afterwards, I found myself thinking I couldn’t wait to tell Eve what had happened, which is as twisted as it sounds.

  3

  When Eve didn’t return that night, I thought she was gone for good and chalked it down to a restless spirit with one more good deed to do before she departed for the ever after. The thing, I reasoned, was done and dusted. And it felt good, that I’d been able to help.

  How wrong was I?

  Two nights later, when the pub was finally quiet (if you ignored the jukebox machine on the landing doing its flashy, sorting, winky winky thing every half hour, and the occasional noises the building made that sometimes sounded like random gunshot), Eve came again.

  I was a heavy sleeper once I got going—you’d need to drive a prime mover through my bedroom to wake me once I was sound asleep—but, suddenly, I was completely and totally in the present and she was bending over me again, in the pitch dark of my upstairs bedroom, outlined faintly in silver. Her long hair hanging loose and smooth. All in black as usual, bare arms, bare feet. Eerie-beautiful.