Razorhurst (45 page)

In Razorhurst when you died you were buried. Cremations were for heathens. Christians buried their dead. Even the indigent poor were buried.

In the Hills almost everyone was Irish and Catholic, and that meant a wake. Plenty of grog and not all of it drunk by the priest. Enough food to sink an ocean liner. Even if you were poor as church mice.

Funerals were days when everyone ate and drank and cried and didn’t think about how much that coffin and the flowers and all that grog and food cost until the morning. The father might have drunk all your whisky, but he gave you a chunk of the collection to go towards your expenses. If you were really poor, the church would even give you clothes to bury your loved one in. Especially if it was your child.

Those funerals were the worst.

Hard to come back from burying your own child. Your children should not die before you. Parents die first, then children. That’s the natural order of things. Not in the Hills, though. Not always. Sometimes it felt like not ever.

Flowers and a coffin and a nice little burial suit did not do a thing to ease the ache in your heart. That’s what the alcohol was for.

That and to put you a few steps closer to your own grave. Why live once your children were gone?

Thank God for the music. The few fiddles that weren’t in hock were brought out. Everyone sang. Everyone cried.

It was beautiful.

But your loved one?

They were still dead.

KELPIE

The knife was in Kelpie’s hand, and then it was in Mr. Davidson’s belly.

She pulled it out and stabbed him again. He swatted at her, but she ducked and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, wiped the blood from her eyes, and kept on stabbing.

He grabbed at her shoulders. She didn’t care. She didn’t care if he shot her. She didn’t care what he did. Kelpie wanted him to die. She kept stabbing at his belly. Even though the knife was slippery now and hard to hold on to. Even though the smells from Mr. Davidson’s insides made her gag.

Mr. Davidson slid away from her sideways on the couch. Kelpie kept stabbing, but it was as if she was stabbing the couch. There was no resistance. She stepped back. The knife dropped from her hands.

“Cait’s knife,” Snowy said.

Mr. Davidson’s throat gaped open like Palmer’s had. Snowy stood behind the couch, a razor in one hand, a clump of Mr. Davidson’s hair in the other.

“Fucking good riddance,” Terry said.

Or it could have been Palmer. Kelpie wasn’t sure. Her ears were filled with a roaring sound.

There was blood everywhere.

She turned to Dymphna, who’d slid to the floor. She was opening and closing her mouth. Her hands were shaking, blood all over her.

Kelpie had never seen so much blood. She could taste it.

“Are you shot?” Snowy asked.

Kelpie didn’t know who he was asking. She shook her head, though she wasn’t sure. There was too much blood in her mouth to speak.

“No,” Dymphna said. “No, no, no, no.”

Snowy moved around the couch and put his hands on Kelpie’s shoulders. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

Kelpie didn’t know.

Snowy patted her arms, her stomach, her legs.

“You’re not hit.”

He turned to Dymphna. “Can you stand?”

Dymphna nodded, but didn’t move. She was shaking. “It was like watching myself,” she said softly. “I used a knife …”

“You’re stunned,” Snowy said. “It’s like that the first time you see someone killed. You’ll be better in a while. I’ll get us something to drink. That helps.”

Dymphna shook her head.

“It’s not the first time,” Palmer said. “She saw me like this.”

Kelpie knew that wasn’t right. Dymphna hadn’t been there when Palmer was killed. She hadn’t been like this.

Outside the motor-car started up. Snowy grabbed the gun and dashed out of the room.

“It was my sisters,” Dymphna said. “My mother.”

Kelpie wasn’t sure who she was talking to. Then Dymphna looked straight at Jimmy Palmer. “My dad did for them … It was like this.”

“You can see me?” Jimmy said.

“I can see all the ghosts. Every single one.”

“But,” Palmer said. He was fading. “You never said—”

Then he was gone.

Dymphna turned to look at Darcy. Reached out her hand to touch his arm. “I killed another one, didn’t I? Angel of Death.”

Kelpie spat to get some of the blood out. “Mr. Davidson killed him.”

Dymphna laughed. “Too right, he did.”

She leaned across and closed Darcy’s eyes. Her hand lingered on his face for a moment. Then she turned to Kelpie, holding out her hand, and Kelpie took it.

“What should we do, Kelpie? Run or stay? March into Surry Hills, take over Razorhurst?”

“Sorrow Hills,” Kelpie whispered, because she was thinking that Old Ma had been right to call them that.

“I could be Glory’s right-hand man. Snowy’s proved himself killing Mr. Davidson. I’m good at numbers, at people. I’m smart. I’ve got polish. I could run it better than she could. I could take over Davidson’s side too. I could say we were married. But then I’d have to deal with Glory. I don’t want to deal with Glory. I like Glory.”

She put her hands to her throat. Faint bruises had appeared where Glory had squeezed.

“Perhaps best we go. Buy our passage. See the world. Plan nothing.”

“Somewhere like this? Without ghosts?” As Kelpie said it, she
looked first at Mr. Davidson and then at Darcy, half expecting their ghosts to appear.

“Not everyone becomes a ghost. Mostly people just die.”

“He
could
be a ghost. Maybe back at the Darcys’ place. We could go there, find him. He could tell me his stories, and I could write them down.” Kelpie could feel it wasn’t true even as she said it. Darcy hadn’t loved his home, hadn’t loved Surry Hills. He hadn’t been born there, and he hadn’t died there. If he haunted anywhere, it would be somewhere out bush.

Or maybe it would be Dymphna, but he wasn’t here.

Darcy would never write another story.

Kelpie’s throat burned. She blinked. It was a weakness to cry. Dymphna wasn’t crying. Kelpie wouldn’t cry. She kept blinking. Her face was wet. Probably blood.

There was so much blood.

Razorhurst

Nineteen thirty-two was a banner year for blood. Worse, even, than 1928.

The year didn’t start that way. In January, the heat and humidity hung like a miasma over the streets of Razorhurst, and the king and queen were Mr. Davidson and Miss Gloriana Nelson. Coppers and judges in their pockets. Houses built out of sly grog, drugs, women, and, yes, blood, but not the way it had once been.

But in the winter of 1932, everything changed.

Throughout the east of the city—Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross, Paddington—blood flowed. Razors cut up faces, sliced off ears, opened up chests and bowels, went in through the eye, the ribs, the throat. They maimed, crippled, and killed.

Blood artists they considered themselves; but butchers is what they were.

Chaos is what they unleashed.

KELPIE

If Mr. Davidson had become a ghost, he wasn’t anywhere Kelpie could see him. A small mercy. Terry and Sam the driver helped them drag Mr. Davidson’s body deeper out into the property. They buried him near an ants’ nest and didn’t mark the spot.

Turned out Terry and Sam’d never liked the man either.

“No one did,” Snowy said.

“Amen to that,” Dymphna said.

“May he rot in hell,” Terry said and spat on his grave.

“For all eternity,” Sam added.

Kelpie felt the same anger rise up in her. She wanted to dig Mr. Davidson up and start stabbing him again. He had killed Darcy for no reason. Except that he could. Kelpie was glad he was dead. She hoped his ghost had ended up in the tangle at Glory’s house. He would hate that.

They walked back through the long brown grass that was almost as tall as Kelpie. Even though it was cold, the sun beat down, and Kelpie wished she had a hat like the others.

Darcy would have loved it here. So many of his stories were about being out bush, looking for miles and seeing nothing but land, no buildings, no people.