Black Dog Summer (27 page)

“Don't we all,” sneers Gigi, her face suddenly twisted and ugly. “Now shut up and lie still or they'll find us.”

“Didn't you hear anything?” Adele asks Dora for the third time, panic rising in her voice.

“No, madam. They were quiet. The bathwater ran, I heard it in the pipes, but then for a long time there was nothing. I thought they were both sleeping.”

“Shit.” Adele works her fingers over the crumples in her brow and then touches the blunt ends of her new haircut. “Where the hell did they go? Bryony has a serious case of tonsillitis, she could barely move when I left this morning, and Gigi . . .” She trails off, uncertain.

She's been in and out of the girls' bedroom twice, called and
called, been up and down the stairs and all around the garden, but nothing. Gigi and Bryony are nowhere to be found.

“They wouldn't just go, would they?” she mutters as she leaves the kitchen and heads up the stairs again for one more check.

“Go where?” Dora echoes, trotting at Adele's heels. Up the stairs they go. Into Bryony's bedroom.

“The dressing gown is gone.” Dora points to the empty hook behind the door. “That big one that the girl is always wearing.”

“Yes,” Adele says. There's a dull thumping sensation in her temples, and her whole body feels light and peculiar, as if someone has pumped her veins full of air. “And Bryony's medicine. I left it by the bed.”

They leave the room and cross the hallway to the bathroom. Adele had peered in briefly on one of her earlier rounds, but this time, she steps inside. The tub has a strange little trail of pink in the bottom of it. The medicine cabinet mirror is smeared with fluff as if someone has wiped it with a towel.

“Where's the bath mat?” Dora asks, pointing to the blank spot on the floor by the tub. There are some faint, rusty smears on the tile. She marches over to the laundry bin, lifts the lid, and gives a little scream. “Madam!”

“What?”

“This.” Dora slowly lifts a blood-smeared towel out of the basket. And then another one with big, red blotches on it.

“What in the name of Christ—” Adele's shocked whisper is cut off when Dora then lifts out the bloody bath mat.

“That's a lot of blood,” Dora says. The hand holding the bath mat begins to tremble.

“Oh my God.” Adele clutches the edge of the basin with icy, pale fingers. “What happened in here? Whose blood is it?”

“You'd better call the master,” Dora breathes. Adele nods, then rushes from the room.

Bryony's throat is in agony and the floor is very hard. “Can we go home now?”

“Are you crazy? They could come any minute.”

“Who? Who could come?” There are tears in Bryony's voice now, and she can feel big, heaving sobs waiting in her belly.

“I
told
you. The black men.”

Bryony tries to sit up, but the excess folds of the old dressing gown slip on the dusty floor, and she slides back down with a thump. “Ow!”

“Shshsh.” Gigi's eyes are open very wide. “It's like you
want
to die or something.”

“I don't want to die!” Bryony wails, and she begins to cry in earnest.

“Shut up shut up shut up,” Gigi hisses through gritted teeth and clamps a hand over Bryony's mouth. Bryony's eyes bulge and she fights the hand away, gulping and gasping for breath. She howls.

Gigi leans back, tugs off her T-shirt, and jams the bunched fabric into Bryony's mouth. “I told you, you have to be quiet.” Bryony gags and tries to pull the fabric from between her teeth, but Gigi presses her back down into the floor and holds the fabric in place. “Please,” she whimpers. “Please be quiet, for God's sake.”

Bryony tries, but the crying won't stop, and the sound of her breath snorting through her nostrils is horribly loud. For long minutes, she lies on her back with tears and spit soaking into the crumpled T-shirt, and Gigi in her 32A bra leans over her with one hand gripping Bryony's wrist and the other holding the gag in place. The fresh wounds on Gigi's arm have reopened in all the activity, and a trail of blood snakes down over her fingers and soaks into the T-shirt.

At long last, the intensity of Bryony's crying subsides, and the desperate snorts soften into sniffles. Slowly, with one hand, the other still on the gag, Gigi undoes the knot on the dressing gown cord and tugs it free from around Bryony's waist.

“You have to be quiet,” she whispers. “I can't take any chances or we'll end up sliced to pieces.” She tenderly places the cord around the back of Bryony's sweat-damp head and ties it tight to hold the gag in place. “That OK? You comfy?”

Bryony is not. Her jaw aches from being jammed open, and her nose is running, but she is no longer crying. She stares at her cousin with huge, frightened eyes and concentrates on breathing.

“You wanna know something?” Gigi asks. The skin of her face
looks like pale cheese left out of the fridge too long with little beads of wetness slicking the too-smooth surface. There is almost no color in it at all. “I didn't come home to find my mother and Seb and Johan dead.” She bares her teeth in what is possibly supposed to be a smile. “That's a secret I haven't told anybody.” She reaches over to test the knot in the dressing gown cord, and Bryony flinches. Gigi doesn't notice; she is seeing something else entirely.

As Gigi made the long walk back from the dam with her rolled yoga mat, sticky with sweat, tucked beneath one arm, she was hoping that the lump of gray cloud hovering over the horizon would get it together to produce a storm. It was too hot and too still, and she longed for the furious relief of whipping winds and lashing rain.

Her stomach was rumbling, and she was dying for breakfast and a nice, cool shower, but when she reached the knot of stinkwood trees at the top of the drive, just before the clearing of the yard, she paused. She wiped the back of her arm across her face and huffed out a breath. If Johan was still sitting in the kitchen drinking his morning coffee, she would have to walk past him to get to her room, and that was just not an option. She didn't want to see him or smell him or be anywhere near him, especially if her stupid mother was there too.

Two days ago she'd overheard the two of them by the fence near the gate: Johan, big, strong, lovely Johan, had been
begging
her mother to love him. Her mother. It was unthinkable. But what was even worse was the way he'd dismissed her own advances as if they were nothing but the mindless actions of a small child:
She's got a crush, that's all. Perhaps it's time she hung out with some kids her own age.

And then last night. She can hardly bear to think of it. Last night she'd watched through her bedroom window as her mother crept out of the house and across the yard to Johan's cabin. Gigi had watched her knock on the door, had seen Johan open it and pull her inside. It was disgusting. The thought of either of them made her feel sick.

Scowling at the memory, she skirted the edge of the clearing, approaching the house like a spy on a secret mission as she darted between the animal enclosures and the trunks of trees.

Gigi wrinkled her nose at the strange, burnt-bitter smell that hung over the yard and finally slipped onto the front stoop from the very far
end, planning to peek in the window to check that her path was Johan-free before going through the kitchen door.

Then, a strange animal-howl sound stopped her in her tracks. It had come from inside the house. She pressed her body against the cool plaster of the wall and listened hard. Blood drained from her head when she heard the sound of her mother sobbing, a strange male voice barking out an order of some kind, and then the crash of something heavy falling to the floor. Gigi put down her yoga mat very carefully and crept forward on suddenly trembly legs. When she reached the old veranda sofa that sat beneath one of the kitchen windows, she clutched at the faded fabric on the armrest for support before peering in.

Her mother was standing in the middle of the kitchen, rigid, her face red and distorted by gushing tears. It took Gigi a moment to register that she was being held from behind by someone else. Her mother's arms were trapped behind her back, and one of the man's arms was locked across her chest like the coil of a constrictor, dark shiny brown against her faded T-shirt and pale neck.

“Mom,” Gigi gasped, and although it was just a breath, her mother seemed to hear her, for she turned her head a fraction and swiveled her eyes until they locked on to Gigi's. Even across the kitchen and through the grimy glass, Gigi could see how very blue her mother's irises looked.

Go
, they begged.
Run
.

And once Gigi had crept back across the stoop and into the relative safety of the long grass, she did.

“I ran to Phineas and Lettie's place but they weren't there.” Gigi's voice is very sudden and loud in the empty room and it makes Bryony jump. She had been very slowly moving her hands up towards the gag in her mouth, but now she freezes, staring at her cousin, who has been pacing up and down on the far side of the room in silence. Now that Gigi has spoken, Bryony battles to get a grip on the meaning of the words. She can taste the metallic hint of Gigi's blood on the T-shirt fabric of her gag. She fights down a wave of panic, scared that she will cry again and make Gigi even madder.

“They were at church, of course. As soon as I got to their empty house I remembered.” Gigi turns to look at Bryony with fevered eyes. “It was Sunday. What was I supposed to do?”

A response seems to be expected; Bryony makes a muffled humming sound and shrugs her shoulders, taking the opportunity to work her hands a little further towards her face.

“The Muckleneuks were the closest, I figured, but as soon as I started running I realized that they were miles away. It would take me hours to get to their farm on foot, and by then, who knows what would've happened inside the kitchen. So I stopped. I stopped running and I turned back. My mind was going crazy trying to think what to do. There was never any cell reception out there, so no one had a cell phone. There was one phone in the whole place, but where do you think it was?”

Bryony gives another grunt. She has no idea what Gigi is talking about. Her cousin seems to be right in the middle of a conversation that she never started.

“Correct. In the kitchen.” Gigi marches back to Bryony and crouches down on the floor beside her. Her face is no longer cheese-pale; now it is a dark, angry pink. “What was I supposed to do?” she pleads.

Bryony shakes her head as new tears leak out of the corners of her eyes.

“I went back, didn't I?” Gigi hisses, her breath hot and acid-smelling on Bryony's face. “I went back to the window, hid behind the back of the old sofa, and I watched.”

I remember now. The feel of the man's arms, like hot iron bands, around my shoulders, holding me upright, holding me still; his old sweat and burnt-smoke stink made bile lurch up the back of my throat. I remember the way the other two men used brown, shiny duct tape to bind the unconscious Seb's and Johan's hands and feet and cover their mouths. I remember the way the veins in Johan's neck bulged beneath his skin when he came to and realized what was happening and he struggled to break free but couldn't.

I remember when the skinny man with the yellow eyes made the very first cut with his machete. The large, flat blade had looked dull, but it wasn't. Seb's T-shirt parted as if by magic, and, for a moment, a smooth line of red could be seen in the gap as if someone had drawn a marker across the skin of his chest. And then the red line burst open and darkness gushed out.

I remember hearing this high-pitched horrible screaming and a hand clamping over my mouth. I remember tasting soil and salt. I remember shutting my eyes and hearing the sound of metal hitting bone. I remember the way the man who held me shuddered against my back.

He was laughing.

Gigi crouched down and slithered into the gap between the old sofa and the wall beneath the kitchen window. Very slowly, she pushed herself upwards on her haunches and looked through the smeared glass.

The man holding her mother must've pulled her backwards, closer to the sink, because all Gigi could see of her now was the bright patterned fabric of the edge of her skirt. Yellow and pink flowers against blue. If the window had been open and Gigi had reached in as far as her arm could go, she would probably have been able to touch it.

After the brilliant outside daylight, it was harder to focus on the far end of the room, but gradually shapes began to emerge from the murk. The shapes were not human. There was a creature with bared, luminous teeth and a huge blade for an arm. There was a lump of red and ripped fabric on the floor that had dark curly hair just like Seb's. There was a twisted monster with kicking feet . . .

There was Johan.

Gigi moved closer to the glass to make sure.

Johan was in nothing but his boxer shorts. His ankles were taped together and his hands bound behind him. There was something stuck over his mouth. His hair was glued to his scalp with sweat, and his eyes, wide open and frantic, were clearly fixated on her mother and her captor. When the blade swung down and sliced open his shin, he made a muffled bellowing sound like a furious, wounded wildebeest.

Gigi opened her mouth, but no scream came out. She could not turn her head away, couldn't even swivel her eyeballs; she was no longer in charge of the distant, heavy thing that her body had become.

The blade swung down again. And again. After what felt like hours, Johan had disappeared so deep behind a shroud of blood that Gigi did not know what bits of him were what anymore. She had no idea when he stopped being alive.

“Finally, the blade-armed man stopped,” Gigi said. She is staring out of the window, keeping watch on the still garden below to make sure that no one is approaching. Behind her back, Bryony struggles with the knot in the dressing gown cord, her fingers digging into the toweling to try to loosen it.