Читать книгу Only Daughter: A gripping thriller of deadly deceit - Anna Snoekstra, Anna Snoekstra - Страница 10

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Bec, 11 January 2003

It was almost one in the morning when Bec finally closed her bedroom door, slipped between her bedsheets and switched off the light. She’d been too tired to move quickly. Standing in the shower for almost twenty minutes, she scrubbed the grease off her arms and tried to get the smell of burnt meat out of her nostrils. She groaned with relief at finally being horizontal. The cotton sheets felt clean and soft against her skin. She considered telling Ellen she didn’t want to do closes anymore. One hour of extra pay wasn’t worth this aching, overtired feeling.

Her mind was moving too slowly to think about it now. Tomorrow was her day off anyway; she’d decide then. A whole day to do whatever she wanted. It would be great. Lying down in her own quiet room felt too exquisite to ruin it by worrying. The hot weight of the cat, Hector, pressed against her leg as he stretched, his bell jingling softly.

Something shifted. That’s what woke her. The creaking sound of shifting weight. There was someone in her room.

Bec was too afraid to open her eyes. She didn’t want to see what was there. It was enough just to feel its presence, that heaviness of the air that meant another person was breathing it. Underneath the warmth of her sheets, her skin prickled cold. It couldn’t be happening again.

She listened. Seconds flicked by. Not a sound. Maybe it was a nightmare.

Bec knew she should open her eyes. Just to check. Just to be sure. A sound rose from beneath the silence, so soft it was barely audible. The gravelly hum of the cat’s purr. Very slowly, she opened her eyes.

The first thing she noticed was that Hector wasn’t on her bed anymore. She could see the small pear shape of his furry back. He was sitting in the corner, looking at something, purring. Bec knew she should laugh at herself; it was just the cat. But her limbs were still frozen. Something wasn’t right.

As her eyes adjusted she had to hold in a gasp. There was a shadow in the corner that shouldn’t be there. She could only just see it, onyx against charcoal, a splodge that didn’t belong. Her heart slammed against her ribs as it began to move.

Very slowly, it twisted. Limbs stretching. Growing bigger in a way that wasn’t human. She clamped her eyes shut, a scream trapped in her throat. Bec didn’t want to see what it looked like when it stepped out of the corner. She didn’t want to see its face.

Ice-cold fear soaked through her as she waited for the shadow to touch her. To feel that cold hand on her cheek again. She held her breath, just waiting.

The door squeaked.

Had it gone? Bec wanted to let out her breath, but she felt like fear had paralyzed her. Then something heavy slammed against her knees. She scrambled out away from it, the sheet wrapping around her ankle so that she fell onto the carpet with a thud. Pain spread down from her shoulder but she tried to ignore it, reaching up to turn on her bedside light.

For a moment the light blinded her. And then she saw him. The cat, Hector. Sitting in the middle of her mattress, blinking at her. She picked him up, swearing, and he howled at her. The noise seemed piercing in the silence. She held him against her, the feeling of his tiny heartbeat against her chest calming her enough that she could get up and close her bedroom door again. She wedged her chair under the handle.

Something had been in here; it wasn’t just the cat. She was sure of it. Her hands were still sweating and shaking and adrenaline raced through her veins.

Bec picked up her phone; she needed to talk to someone. To tell someone what had just happened so she didn’t feel like she was mad. The last time was probably just a nightmare, but this time was real. It was past three in the morning, though. Lizzie would be pissed off if she woke her up.

She looked at herself from the outside for a moment. Lizzie would probably laugh at her, like she was a little kid afraid of ghosts. How lame. She wrote a text instead: There was something in my room. I think my house is haunted. She put the phone back on her bedside table.

Just before she turned the light off she noticed the little silver bell was gone from Hector’s collar. A ghost couldn’t do that.

Perhaps he hadn’t been wearing it before, she told herself, and wrapped herself in a ball under the blanket.

It had taken her a long time to get back to sleep. When she had, her dreams were feverish and violent. She woke up with a start, slick with sweat. Checking her phone, she saw it was quarter past eleven. There were three missed calls from Lizzie and two messages. The first: Ha-ha scary. Then after the missed calls: You okay? Bec texted back: Yep. Still on for the city? I’ll tell you all about it.

Her room looked different in the morning light. Peaceful and entirely her own. Johnny Depp’s and Gwen Stefani’s faces, photographs of her and her friends, Destiny’s Child posing together perfectly. The slats of her closet doors, the shelf of books above her bed; everything was so warmly familiar. Last night’s nightmare seemed exactly that: a nightmare. Not something that could have really happened in her own bedroom. But when she closed her eyes, Bec could see the dark shape again, bending in that unnatural way in the corner. That was a real memory, as clear as mopping the floors at work and walking home from the bus stop.

Her phone buzzed, Lizzie: One hour, Silver Cushion. She pushed herself out of bed and had a look at her shoulder in the mirror. There was a pale grey bruise from where she’d fallen out of bed last night. That bloody cat.

She’d thought the house might look different, somehow. As though some kind of trace would be left behind by the extra presence that had been there last night. But no, everything felt exactly the same as she opened her bedroom door. The cream carpet had the same velvety feel between her toes as she padded down the hallway.

Peering into Paul and Andy’s room, she wanted to laugh. That was definitely the same: clothes and Legos strewn all over the floor, sheets on the two single beds twisted into heaps. She remembered how much of a scene they’d made when her mom suggested it was time one of them move into the spare room. She pulled their door shut. The sweaty old socks were starting to reek. You could smell puberty approaching.

The white wooden banister felt as smooth and warm under her palm as it always did. Her bare feet made squeaking sounds as she walked across the polished floorboards of the bottom level. The sound of giggling came from the kitchen; the boys must be home. She checked her parents’ room; their precisely made double bed alone in the middle of the spotlessly empty space. The spare room next door was filled with plastic tubs of winter clothes. Her mother’s writing desk propped in the corner, still unused. She looked into the laundry. Behind the washing baskets was a door that continued on to their garage. It was slightly open. The garage was the creepiest part of Bec’s house and none of them went in there if they could avoid it. Dark and dank smelling, crammed with piled-up cardboard boxes and a dirty concrete floor. They didn’t even park their car in there anymore. She was sure the place was infested with spiders. The blackness of the room seemed to spill out from the crack in the doorway, the dark of nighttime trying to recapture her and pull her back into the nightmare. She pulled the door shut.

Nothing had changed in the lounge room either. Couches remained an awkward distance apart and the wooden doors closed over the television so her parents could pretend they didn’t have one. Satisfied, she went into the kitchen. Whatever it had been, it was definitely gone now.

Paul and Andrew sat next to each other on the round kitchen table, a box of Coco Pops between them and their bowls filled with brown milk. They were laughing like mad, still in their shorty pyjamas with their dark red hair sticking up at weird angles. Bec felt a sudden stab of love for them. She longed to ruff le up their hair, but she knew they would find it patronizing.

“Ready?” Paul asked.

“Yep,” said Andrew.

They picked up the bowls of chocolate milk.

“One…two…three!”

They both began chugging down the milk from their bowls; throats working, brown drops falling onto the table.

“Done!” screamed Andrew, dropping his bowl down and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Oh, shit!” Paul yelled, the word sounding forced from his mouth. They looked at Bec for a moment to see if she’d get him in trouble for using it, then couldn’t hold in their laughter.

“You guys are disgusting!” she said, but she was smiling, too. The horror of last night was starting to wear off.

“You look like Hitler!” she said to Paul, who still had a brown milk moustache on his top lip.

“Goot a morgan!” he said, making Andrew burst into giggles again. She shook her head and poured out her own sugar-free Muesli.

“What are you doing today, Becky?” asked Andrew.

“I’m going to go meet Lizzie in the city.”

“Can we come?” asked Paul straightaway. Two sets of identical pale blue eyes fixed on her. She knew they must be really bored. They’d been on summer holidays for two months now and they weren’t allowed to go any farther than the local shops by themselves. Her mom was so overprotective, she thought, as though their suburb was the only safe place in the world. It was Canberra, for God’s sake. She didn’t know why they just didn’t go out anyway. She wouldn’t tell on them, that was for sure, but she didn’t want to suggest it. Somehow that felt wrong.

“Please?” Paul said.

She felt bad, but she really needed to talk to Lizzie about what had happened last night, and she couldn’t do that with her little brothers running around everywhere. Plus, there was another thing she had to do with Lizzie that would be impossible with them around.

“Sorry, guys,” she said. “Next time.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, I’m at work tomorrow but how about Sunday?”

“Okay,” said Andrew. But she could tell they were both upset; the smiles were gone. Bec hated upsetting her brothers. It did something to her heart that nothing else could.

“We can go to the pool if you want?”

“And you won’t tell us off if we bomb?”

“Nope. Cross my heart,” she said, miming a cross over her chest. They looked at each other and then turned to her, beaming.

“Awesome,” said Paul. She patted them both on the head, which made them groan but she couldn’t help it, and went upstairs to get dressed.

Lizzie was waiting for her on a bench in Garema Place, a few feet away from the Silver Cushion. Canberra was filled with weird sculptures, but this one was Bec’s favourite for some reason. It looked like a giant half-full wine bag propped on some black steps. In summer the sun ref lected off its metallic silver surface so it hurt to look at it and definitely hurt to touch it. Bec plopped down on the bench next to Liz.

“Why are you all the way over here?” she asked.

“Emos,” she said, and Bec looked over. Four teenagers with striped black-and-red socks, bad eyeliner and floppy hair sat around the Silver Cushion.

“I worry it’s contagious,” Lizzie said, shuddering. Bec could tell she meant it, too; there was nothing Lizzie hated more than bad clothes. That’s why they worked so well as best friends; they were like each other’s perfect accessory. Today they both had on summer dresses and brown sandals; they didn’t need to call each other. They were just effortlessly coordinated. Not just in clothes, but everything. It was as if they were made of the same stuff, as if they had the same heart.

If she hadn’t already sent the message, she wouldn’t have told Lizzie about last night. The image of them sitting there was perfect: two carefree, pretty teenagers ready for anything the endless summer threw at them. The shadow in her room didn’t fit with that.

“So what happened?” asked Lizzie, and the perfect image flickered and died.

“Talk and walk?”

“Could it have been your brothers just trying to freak you out?” asked Lizzie, after Bec had briefly explained what had happened.

“No, no way. They would have been wetting themselves laughing if they managed to scare me that much. Plus, it didn’t feel, you know, human.”

“So you think it’s, what, like a poltergeist?”

“I think, like a specter. Not a ghost or spirit, but something evil and solid that’s not meant to be there.”

“Wow,” said Lizzie, not quite looking at her, “how horrible.”

She was worried Lizzie might laugh and call her crazy, but she seemed just as genuinely shocked as Bec.

“It was horrible.”

“Do you think it will happen again? Maybe you should stay at mine tonight, dude?”

“Maybe. Ugh, I don’t even want to think about it anymore.”

“I know something that would take your mind off it.” Bec recognized the glint in Lizzie’s eye.

“I thought you’d never ask!”

They were mucking around as they ran up the last few steps of the escalator. The white facade of the department store shone in front of them. They stopped laughing abruptly as they walked into the store.

The most important thing when shoplifting is to be as quietly confident as possible. Bec had learned that in the early days. The moment you start looking shifty or laughing too loudly, a security guard is shadowing you and that’s your chance blown for the day.

The second most important thing is to pick something with a lining. Bec had a look through the racks in the teenager section. Trying to find a label her mother would know was worth a lot of money. Scanlan & Theodore, perfect. She was getting so good at this it was almost unconscious. She looped the straps from the dress behind onto the hanger in front. It now looked as though there was one dress on the hanger, where in fact there were two. The maximum for a change room was six. So she quickly picked five other bulky dresses. The thin silky fabric was barely visible amongst the thick knits and ruff les of the other dresses. The harassed-looking girl at the changing rooms counted her hangers without really looking, gave her a red piece of plastic with the number six on it and ushered her through.

Bec pulled the silky fabric over her head and looked at herself in the mirror. She would have taken it either way, but it was nice when it actually suited her. This one was a teal colour, which looked pretty against her pale skin, and the soft folds hung nicely from her figure. She’d have to find some excuse to wear it in front of Luke. She slipped it off again and took the little pair of scissors out of her handbag, cutting the lining neatly around the plastic antitheft tag attached. When it came off cleanly, she slipped it into the pocket of one of the other skirts and rolled up the dress and put it in her handbag. She’d come in with six hangers and she came out with the same.

“Sorry, they just didn’t look right,” she said to the shop assistant, who obviously couldn’t care less.

“Did you find anything?” she asked Lizzie, who was waiting for her.

“Nah. Let’s go.”

* * *

The air outside felt even hotter after the air conditioning inside the department store. It was windy, too, rubbish and dead leaves slapping against their bare ankles as they walked. The adrenaline abruptly left Bec’s body and exhaustion took its place.

“What did you get?” she asked Lizzie.

“Two Marc’s dresses. I’ll show you later. I was just going to get one, but I knew that girl wouldn’t even notice if I came out with nothing but hangers. What about you?”

“Scanlan & Theodore. Just one, but it was meant to be like three hundred.”

“Nice!”

Bec was beginning to sweat. She could taste the salt collecting on her top lip. She rubbed her hand over the back of her neck; it was slick with oily perspiration, disgusting.

“Should we go to Gus’s?” asked Lizzie.

Gus’s was always cool and dark inside, with an all-day breakfast menu.

“Sounds good.”

Even if she had to spend a bit of money on food, it was worth it not to have to go home.

She stopped walking. The money. How could she not have thought of it before? She’d been sure that whatever it was that had been in her room wasn’t human. But what if it had been? What if it was the most obvious explanation: a burglar?

“I think I might just go home, actually. I feel really tired suddenly.”

Lizzie stopped and looked at her with genuine worry.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Bec said, although she didn’t really feel it.

Lizzie pulled her into a quick, tight hug. It was too hot for anything longer.

“Call me if you change your mind about stayin’ at mine, okay?”

“All right, thanks,” she said.

Bec sat on the bus, her panic growing. It was taking forever, stopping every few blocks to let someone on. They might as well not have bothered with air conditioning; every time the doors swung open the hot wind blew in. Riding the wind was the faint but sharp smell of something burning; the bushfires. Bec wrinkled her nose. She’d been worried when she first saw an article about it in The Canberra Times. A black-and-white photograph of a raging fire on page four. She usually didn’t read the paper, but she’d read this article. No one seemed to think it was a big deal, or maybe they were just distracted by everything else that was going on. Right next to the article was a full-page advertisement: “If You See Something, Say Something,” run in large bold letters. She knew all about that. If she’d called the number underneath she’d have a one-in-ten chance of talking to her mom. It was the new anti-terrorist campaign that seemed to be everywhere right now. Not just in the paper but on billboards and on television. To make it worse, her mom would come home from work with endless dumb long-winded stories of people spying on their neighbours. Bec had no idea about politics and stuff like that. Still, it seemed strange to her that people were more worried about their neighbour’s new car than a fire so close you could actually smell it.

Bec didn’t even thank the driver as she got off the bus. She charged up the street to her house. When she was halfway she started to run, not caring about ruining her hair and sweating through her makeup. The scorching-hot air blew hard against her face, stinging her eyes, but she didn’t care. Nothing was more important than knowing if the money was still there. She kept running until she was on her doorstep, pulling out her keys, slamming the door behind her.

“It was just a joke!” she heard Andrew whine from the kitchen.

“It’s not funny.” She hesitated on the foot of the stairs. Her dad sounded really angry.

“Don’t be too hard on them.” Her mother’s voice was quiet. “They’re just kids. They don’t understand.”

“You’re so weak,” he said quietly.

She didn’t want to hear this; she ran up the stairs two at a time.

“Bec?” she heard her mom call from downstairs. She ignored her, flinging open the door to her room and grabbing her talking Cabbage Patch doll from on top of the chest of drawers. Hiking up the dress, she pulled open the Velcro patch at the back, where the battery pack was meant to fit inside. Instead there was the yellow and orange of twenty- and fifty-dollar notes. Thank God. It was her pay for the whole of last year. Almost six thousand dollars pressed tightly inside the belly of her toy. She heard the slow, steady steps of her mom on the stairs. She carefully put the doll back into place and pulled the dress out of her handbag, holding it up in front of herself and looking in the mirror.

“Are you all right? Why are you running around for?” her mom asked, eyeing the dress.

“I wanted to try it on again,” she said, smiling. “What’s going on, anyway?”

Her mother looked at her hands.

“Paul and Andrew have been sneaking into the neighbours’ house, apparently. Max said that he caught them under his bed whispering.”

“Whispering?”

“They were pretending to be the voices in his head.” Her mother sighed. “They’re just too young to understand. They think it’s a joke. They say it’s okay because he’s crazy.”

“Well, Max is crazy, isn’t he?” Bec asked, still looking at the reflected dress. She wanted to point out that if her mom let the boys out a bit more, then they probably wouldn’t have done it.

“No, he’s sick. He’s schizophrenic.”

Bec was pretty sure that schizophrenic meant crazy but she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Her mom’s eyes focused on the dress.

“Oh, Bec, that looks really expensive.”

“It’s Scanlan & Theodore and you don’t want to know how much it cost,” Bec said, raising her eyebrows.

Her mother folded her arms.

“You work so much and then blow your paychecks as soon as they come in. You could save up for something really nice.”

“This is really nice!” Bec said, feigning offense, but inside she felt smug. This was getting too easy.

“Well, I guess it’s your money. But don’t go running around the place. You’ll get heatstroke,” her mom said, walking out of the room and closing the door behind her with a soft click.

Bec felt guilty for a second as she looked at herself in the mirror, the stolen dress hanging down in front of her, her hair frizzy and her face shiny. But then she caught sight of the reflection of the Cabbage Patch doll and all she could feel was triumph.