Black Dog Summer (16 page)

Then all of a sudden, in the middle of a move that involves standing on one leg with the other stuck up in the air behind her, Gigi slumps down onto the carpet. Her straight spine droops, and she holds her hanging head with fingers that grip her scalp like claws.

“Why am I bothering?” It is a furious whisper. Bryony holds her breath.

“Everything is bullshit.” Gigi's fingers tighten into fists, and she bangs them on her temples, again and again. It looks like Gigi is trying to smash her head open like an egg. Bryony squirms beneath her bedding, wondering how to make it stop without letting on that she's been watching. The fists keep pounding.

Bryony lets out an enormous fake sleep-sigh and makes a noisy performance of turning over in her bed. She stares at the wall and listens hard; all she can hear from the room behind her now are gasping, shuddering breaths. There are no more head-smashing sounds. It must've worked.

Bryony closes her eyes, but the image of her cousin banging her hands into her skull keeps repeating on the insides of her eyelids.

The entire car ride back from Dr. Rowe's office, Gigi jiggles and shifts in her seat until Adele feels mildly bilious. She is relieved when they pull into the garage and Gigi shoots like a cannonball out of the passenger seat and into the house. Adele stays in the car with her seat belt still on and closes her eyes.

She tightens her hold on the ignition key, feeling its sharp ridges and smooth plastic pressing into her flesh. She doesn't need to open her eyes to slide the key back into the ignition because the action is so automatic and familiar. It slots into place with a click.

She turns the key, and the engine hums back to life.

Adele opens her eyes and stares at her fingers curving over the steering wheel. She gives the accelerator pedal a tiny little push with her right foot, and the car whines eagerly in response. She bites the side of her lip until it stings and swells, and then, very quickly, she turns off the engine once more, undoes her seat belt, and lurches out of the car on unsteady legs. She closes the car door with great care, and leans on it for a moment before heading into the house.

She walks with her back very straight.

When the phone finally rings, Gigi, who has been sitting beside it for the past half hour, nearly jumps out of her skin. She lifts the receiver with both hands as if scared of dropping it.

“Hello?”

“Is that Gigi?” At the sound of Simone's voice, Gigi clutches the phone tighter and rocks back and forth. Tears gallop down her cheeks and plop onto her T-shirt.

“It's me,” she finally answers. “Hi, Simone.” Gigi hears Simone blow her nose loudly with a Scottish tissue.

“So you're staying with Liam's family, Gi?” Simone asks in a voice that doesn't sound quite right. Maybe it's the long-distance line.

“Ja. In Joburg. I miss home, though, Mones.”

“Me too. Scotland is freezing. You just wouldn't believe how cold. I've been doing my morning yoga in my winter pajamas with
a tracksuit over them, a beanie, and a scarf. Can you picture it?”

“Ja.” But Gigi can't; she's suddenly not sure what Simone looks like at all. She forces the fractured bits from her memories together: smooth brown hair, dark blue eyes that are sometimes green, a scattering of dark freckles on thin, tanned shoulders from being in the sun too much, and the smell of geranium oil. Gigi doesn't think she's ever seen Simone in anything resembling a beanie and a scarf.

“Oh, and I thought you might like to know that the animals are all doing really well in their new homes.”

“New homes?” Gigi draws her feet up onto the couch. “They're not at the farm anymore?” She'd been imagining that all their charges at the sanctuary have been looked after all this time by Phineas and Lettie, possibly with help from various conservationists from the surrounding reserves who'd always been popping round for some reason or other.

“No,” Simone says. She blows her nose again. “Luckily, I managed to sort out various different relocation arrangements for them. The folks in the area have really rallied. They've been so kind.” Simone's voice wavers a little. “Polonius is still with Phineas, though.”

Gigi is silent. She cannot picture the farm without the animals on it. Just about every moment of every day up until
that one
had revolved around their care.
Did someone take the mice?
Without Jemima and the other predators to keep their numbers down, they could be breeding ferociously. She winces at the mental image of the mice becoming a furry, writhing mass pressed up against the wire mesh of their cage.

“Gigi?”

“Ja.”

“Was it . . . Are you . . .” Simone takes a big, shuddering breath. “They told me you weren't hurt, that you weren't there when they . . . I'm so glad, sweetie.”

“Ja.” Gigi forces a dry swallow.

“And you're getting some help, which is good. Dr. Rowe, is it?”

“How do you know?”

“I spoke to your aunt Adele yesterday when I called.”

“Yes, well, I've just come back from him, now,” Gigi says, not
mentioning that, once again, she'd refused to speak to the psychiatrist, even when he'd said:
Sometimes, refusing to open up in any way can cause an unmanageable buildup of pain inside, Gigi. Think of it like a poison. A wound that if not cleaned out will turn septic.

“That's good, Gi. I'm a great believer in therapy.”

“So you talked to Adele?”

“Ja. We knew each other as kids, you know, when I was friends with your mom. She was so little the first time I met her. She used to call me Sea-Moan, like I was some kind of sea monster.” Simone lets out a tinny giggle, but Gigi is silent on the other end of the line. Simone tries a change of tack: “I guess that after all the horrible drama that happened between her and your mom, I wasn't sure what to expect, but Adele still seems really lovely. Your mom would be so happy to know that she's taken you in. She was always hoping for a reconciliation.”

“Was she?” Gigi is thinking about the way her mother had looked at Liam when she hadn't thought anyone was watching.

“And you get to be with dear old Liam, someone familiar. It's such a comfort to me to know he's there for you.”

“Uh-huh.”

And then suddenly, Simone's voice goes all high and breathless, and her next word is a sharp wail: “Seb!” Without meaning to, Gigi pulls away from the receiver as Simone begins to weep. Her own eyes are dry now, and she sits very still.

“When are you coming back?” Gigi finally whispers, and then has to repeat herself to be heard over the crying.

“Oh, sweetie, I miss you like mad. I'll be there soon.” She listens to Simone doing some more nose blowing. “I just couldn't pull myself together in time to sort out arrangements to be back for the funerals. I have to build up a little more strength to face it all. There's so much I need to sort out.”

“When's soon?”

“Soon, Gi, that's all I can tell you at this stage. I have to book another ticket, and I just haven't gotten my act together yet. I will be back, don't you worry about that.” Simone tries to make her voice sound eager, but it's shrill with fear. Gigi doesn't notice; the tension
that has been holding her body rigid all morning vanishes, and she slumps backwards against the sofa cushions.
Simone, coming home.

“I can't wait to see you, Mones.”

“Me too, sweetie. Listen, I've got to go, this call is costing me a fortune with my shabby little rands, but I'll call you again next week, OK?”

“OK.”

“I must say, I can't wait to escape from this endless cold. It's not even proper winter here yet, and my fingers are already blue.”

“You need to come back, Mones.”

“I will. I am. Soon.”

Lesedi shuts her eyes. Across from her, Mrs. Radebe sits with her hands on her knees, staring at the scattered bones that lie on the mat between them. Lesedi has noted where the different pieces have fallen, but the message is muddy, and she's not satisfied that they will give her anything concrete to tell her client. She will need to go deeper. She listens to the sound of Mrs. Radebe's breath. The soft huffing of air becomes a breeze that she can feel blowing right through her, tickling each cell as it passes. Lesedi sinks into the familiar sensation. Her eyelids flutter as fragmented images begin to form behind them.

Instead of sensing Mrs. Radebe's hidden self, as she usually would when her spirit guide comes through her during a consulting session, Lesedi sees a house.

A small frown appears between her brows. She shakes her head. It is a house in Cortona Villas as it would be seen from a front gate. The house is an echo of Lesedi's own, also painted a sun-baked cream with dark tan trim in the standard Cortona Villas style, but there are pots of lavender at the front door. Adele Wilding is very fond of lavender; Lesedi can smell it heavy on the air every time they cross paths.
Yes. The house is the Wilding house next door.

“Aye,” whispers Lesedi. Mrs. Radebe sucks in a breath and waits.

Lesedi takes a mental step backwards and stares at the house. The blond girl child looks out from the window of a room on the first floor.

“Bryony,” mutters Lesedi.

“Eh?” Mrs. Radebe says. This isn't how the sessions with her sangoma normally go.

Then Lesedi glances up above the red-tiled roof of number 35 Cortona Villas and sees the dog-cloud.

“Hau!” Lesedi cries, and Mrs. Radebe shuffles backwards on her knees, terrified.

The dog-cloud is black and boiling, as if overfull of unshed anger, and it squats low above the roof as if waiting to rip through the clay tiles with its vaporous claws. The wisps of darkness that give the cloud its unmistakable canine shape shift and part and resolve into a wide, snarling mouth filled with pointed fog-teeth that drift together on the wind.

“What is it? What do you see?” Mrs. Radebe whispers.

For Lesedi, a vision of a black dog is a warning sign. It always has been, since her very first days of working with Ma Retabile, the sangoma she was guided to apprentice with when she began following her calling, ten years ago. A black dog symbol can warn of many things, from a coming argument with a family member to an international crisis.

But seeing the black dog in the clouds? That forecasts murder.

Lesedi knows that this dog-cloud vision has nothing to do with Mrs. Radebe, who is having trouble with a wayward daughter who wants to drop out of school. So what darkness awaits the little white girl next door?

She opens her eyes.

“I am sorry, sister,” she says to the quivering Mrs. Radebe. “There has been some interference with this reading. I saw something, but it was not for you. Are you OK with it if we start again?”

“Yebo,” Mrs. Radebe says with relief. “What was it?”

“A warning for someone else came through. Sometimes things like this can happen. We will now continue with the problem of your daughter, OK?”

“Yes, please.” Mrs. Radebe moves back to her spot on the edge of the mat. “Thank you, sangoma.”

When Bryony comes home from school and darts into her bedroom, the little fizzles of excitement about having her room to herself again like yesterday dissolve. Gigi is back in her spot on the racing-car duvet cover, but instead of sitting slumped and staring at nothing, she is cross-legged with a bizarrely straight back, hands curled into strange shapes on her knees. Her closed eyes flick open when Bryony bangs her way into the room.

“What are you doing?”

“I
was
meditating.”

“Oh.” Bryony is startled to get a response; she has stopped expecting answers from the silent Gigi.

Maybe it's the small spots of pink that now color her cousin's cheekbones or a relaxing of the muscles around the eye sockets, but Gigi looks different. Softer. There are fewer shadows.

“What's meditating?”

“Never mind. It's too complicated to explain.”

“It doesn't look complicated. It looks like you were just sitting around with your eyes closed.”

Gigi laughs.

Bryony, en route to her cupboard to begin the obligatory hunt for something other than her horrible school uniform to wear, stops in her tracks. She's never heard Gigi laugh before. It's just a girl's laugh, the sound that someone in her class might make, but quite alien coming out of the zombie.

“I spoke to Simone,” Gigi says. “She's going to be coming back home.” Bryony stares at her, astonished. “She's kind of like my real family, you know. And even though the animals are gone, we'll get more. There's always going to be creatures that need looking after.”

“So you're going to go back and live with Simone?”

“Of course. When she comes back from Scotland, that is,” Gigi says, grinning. “Awesome, hey?”

“Cool,” Bryony agrees. “I'll get my room back.”

“And I'll get my life back. It's a win-win situation.”

“But the farm . . . after what happened . . . won't it be creepy going back there?”

Gigi shakes her head, but her new smile is receding, and Bryony
can already see some of the shadows returning to their regular places beneath her skin.

“It won't be easy,” Gigi says in a small voice, “but Simone always says you have to get back on the horse straight after you fall off.” She gives her head a little shake. “Simone will be there. She's good at healing things. She will heal the energy of the place somehow.”

“How can a
place
have energy?” Bryony snorts but then immediately remembers Lesedi's mask room next door and the way just looking in at it had made her feel.

“Can't you go outside or something?” Gigi says, shutting her eyes once more and resettling herself into her meditation pose. “I really need to be alone to clear my mind.”