The Bellwether Revivals (42 page)

‘Yeah, but still—a brain tumour. Nobody comes out the other side of that.’

He could tell Yin was drunk because he was talking too much, swigging his cider with big, slack movements of his arms. A sober Yin would’ve known when to shut up and keep his opinions to himself, but the drink always brought out the conversationalist in him. ‘Where is everybody?’ Oscar asked.

Yin shrugged and sniffed. ‘There’s only the three of us here. Eden took off and Marcus went after him. That was—shit—’ He looked at his watch. ‘That was a couple hours ago. You sure you didn’t pass by Marcus on your way over?’

‘No. What do you mean, he took off?’

‘He
took off
, man. Drove away. I don’t know how else to say it.’ Yin pointed towards the light at the end of the hallway. ‘Rest of us have been sitting around, wondering what to do. I figured, hey, we got free time on our hands, right? Might as well get wasted.’ He took another swig of cider.

They were in the drawing room with the lights dimmed and the television flickering in the walnut cabinet. Jane was watching some wildlife documentary showing animals in slow motion. She’d been crying; her eyes were puffy and she was blowing her nose into a damp, frayed tissue. Iris was fidgeting with her leg-brace, scratching the underside of her thigh with a chopstick. It was not the most graceful vision of her that Oscar had witnessed, but it brought him some comfort. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she said, holding out her arms.

‘You’ve really got to do something about your phone reception out here.’

She held him for a while, whispering how sorry she was. ‘I know how fond of him you were,’ she said, her warm breath upon his ear. ‘I really liked him too. We should never have got him involved in all this.’

‘It was what he wanted.’

‘I know, but I can’t help feeling guilty.’

‘He went peacefully. I suppose that’s something.’

He looked at Jane. She was hunched forwards with her hands in her lap, clenching her tissue, and the television screen was reflecting in her pupils, two little squares of blue. He lowered his voice to ask Iris what had happened with Eden.

‘I tried to let him down gently,’ she said. ‘We all went out to the O. H. and knocked for him. By then he was all wound up about Herbert’s no-show.’ She said that Eden had demanded to listen to the message himself. ‘I gave him my phone and he stood there and listened to it a few times but didn’t say much.’ Eden had gone back into the organ house, and the next thing she knew he was locking the door behind him. Jane had tried for an hour to coax him back out, talking to him through the door, but he wouldn’t respond. ‘I thought, okay, he’s just doing what he usually does, hiding himself away when reality bites,’ Iris went on, ‘so I told everyone to leave him alone. We went back into the house.’ Some time later, they’d heard the sound of wheels spinning in the gravel outside, and they’d looked through the window to see Jane’s Land Rover missing from the driveway, and two rear lights speeding through the trees. ‘He must have been going about a hundred and twenty,’ Iris said, then nodded at Jane: ‘She’s been like that ever since. Hardly said a word.’

Yin took a seat on the sofa next to Jane and put his arm around her. On the TV, two large green creatures were slinking across a patch of grass. ‘Are they Komodo dragons?’ Yin asked her.

She shrugged. Then, ever so softly, she said: ‘They’re trying to mate.’

‘They seem angry.’

‘That’s just how they do it.’ She pulled Yin’s arm tighter around her like a blanket. They all watched the screen for a while, as the Komodo dragons engaged each other, writhing violently in the dirt. And somehow, just this—just watching the television quietly in the middle of the night, four of them together—took away that awful tiredness that had come over Oscar in the Crowne Plaza.

But Jane still seemed dejected. By the time the credits of the wildlife programme were rolling, she was staring out towards the dim hallway expectantly, as if Eden might come bounding in from the atrium to apologise to everybody. The longer she waited for movement out there, the more defeated she looked. She began raking the hair away from her face, and, finally, her eyebrows furrowed and tears started to skim along her freckly cheeks. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling,’ she said, rubbing at her forehead. ‘After everything that’s happened lately … I’ve just got a horrible feeling.’ There was a sudden scrape of footsteps in the garden, and she sprang to her feet. The world behind the drawn curtains brightened.

Marcus came in through the back entrance, lingering in the kitchen doorway. He set his car keys down on the cabinet.

‘Well?’ Jane asked. ‘Did you find him? Where is he?’

Marcus shook his head. He began rolling up his sleeves like he was preparing to deliver a baby. ‘I lost him at a level-crossing,’ he said. ‘He shot right through before the barrier came down. Tried to get him to pull over, was flashing my lights at him, honking the horn, but—
argh
. Will somebody pour me a drink? I don’t understand
any
of this. My heart’s going like a rabbit.’

Jane collapsed onto the couch. ‘We have to go to Harvey Road.’

‘Already checked there,’ Marcus said. ‘I drove past the house and the lights were all off. Didn’t see your car either.’

‘We have to go anyway.’

‘Why?’

Jane didn’t answer. She had a faraway expression, biting down on her lip. The string of pearls around her neck was rising and falling with her short, worried breaths.

‘What is it, Jane?’ Oscar said. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’

The sun had not yet risen when they arrived at Harvey Road. Oscar parked the Alfa Romeo and waited with his hands still sweating on the steering wheel, watching as Marcus reversed his car into a space further along the street.

‘I’m going to need some help,’ Iris said from the back seat, her leg stretched out on the leather upholstery. He took her weight as she hauled herself out of the car, and helped her up the steps. They stood at the front of the house, breathing hard. ‘I’m afraid,’ she said, taking her crutches from his hand. ‘Are you?’

‘Yeah.’

The others came traipsing along the pavement, shoes clapping the concrete. Jane bounded up the steps and took out her keys. She unlocked the front door and went inside. ‘Before you see the mess in there,’ she said, turning at the threshold, ‘I want to say it again—’

‘You already explained,’ Iris said. ‘Let us in.’

‘Okay, but just remember that I found it like this, like you’re all finding it now. There wasn’t anything I could do.’

They walked in through the porch, single file, and Jane flicked on the light.

Oscar couldn’t see anything different about the hallway. It was as plain and narrow as it had always been, with the same old pile of shoes near the door and barely a scuff on the hardwood or a fingermark on the dado rail. But he thought he could smell something strange in the air, like clothes left to fester in the washing machine.

Jane led them towards the living room. They all seemed to hold their breath as she pushed back the door.

‘What the hell—?’ Yin said.

The antique clavichord was a mess of pieces on the floor. Its ivory keys were smashed and spread across the floorboards like punched-out teeth; hunks of varnished teak lay splintered and held together with frayed piano wires. When Jane described the damage to them back at the Bellwether house, she’d made it seem almost cosmetic—fixable, at least. But Oscar could hardly believe the wreckage that was before him now. The instrument was a junkpile of parts, as if Eden had razed it with a bulldozer.

Yin walked over to survey the ruins, crouching to pick up an ivory and tossing it back onto the pile. ‘Guys,’ he said. ‘This is seriously fucked up.’

Iris was just standing there with her soft little mouth hanging open. ‘Jane, I can’t believe you didn’t say anything about this.’

‘I wanted to tell you. Honest, I did. I was just so upset when I saw what he’d done to it and—’ Jane stopped. She rested her head against the doorframe. ‘I thought maybe it was just one of those things, like he’d needed to let off some steam.’

Marcus went over and began prodding the clutter with his toes. ‘This is more than letting off steam,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen him do anything as violent as this.’

‘It’s like he went at it with a sledgehammer,’ Yin said. ‘You didn’t see what happened?’

‘No, I told you. This is how I found it.’

‘But … it doesn’t make any sense. He paid a fortune for this thing.’

‘I know.’

‘Was he even upset about it?’

‘Not remotely,’ Jane said. ‘He wouldn’t even let me clean it up. He said he wanted to keep the mess there forever, as a reminder.’

‘A reminder of what?’

Jane shrugged. ‘I asked the same thing.’ She looked glumly at Iris then, as if apologising. ‘I should’ve said something to your parents the other night—I nearly did. But everybody seemed like they had enough to worry about. And Eden said—’ She trailed off. ‘Never mind.’

Iris stood upright. ‘Eden said
what
, Jane? Did he threaten you?’

Jane could hardly bring herself to glance in her direction. ‘No—well, not exactly. It wasn’t really a threat.’ She turned her head, examining the rug. ‘He said he’d break up with me if I told anyone, that’s all. I don’t know if he was serious or not, but it seemed like it at the time, and I didn’t want to test him. It was weeks ago, before they moved you to the other hospital. He was so mad.’

Yin stood up, dusting off his hands. ‘We need to find him. I’ve been saying it all year: he’s been acting weird. We better find him before he does any more damage.’

‘We should probably take a look around before we go,’ Oscar said.

‘He’s not here,’ Marcus replied. ‘He wouldn’t come back here. Why race off at a hundred miles an hour just to go back where you started?’

‘We should check anyway,’ Yin said. ‘He’s probably not thinking straight. I’ll start looking upstairs. Who’s coming with me?’

Oscar volunteered. He followed Yin up the narrow staircase, hearing Marcus’s heavy steps over his shoulder. An acid began to bite at his stomach. His palms were sweating again. Jane and Iris peered up from the hallway, whispering to each other.

He checked the bathroom. It was empty and undisturbed but for a tiny spider-web crack in the shaving mirror and a shallow
pool of dirty water in the bathtub. He came out to find Yin up on the landing, feeling along the wall for the switch. A mild yellow light stammered on. Marcus went straight to Eden’s room, taking bold, purposeful strides, as if to say
What’s everyone so afraid of?
The handle turned in his fingers but the door wouldn’t move. ‘Huh,’ he said, arms dropping to his sides. ‘It’s locked.’

‘It can’t be,’ Yin said. ‘Let me try.’ When it didn’t open at the first attempt, he threw his weight at the bare wood—three short punches of his shoulder—but the lock held firm. ‘Edie! You in there? Eden!’

Nobody answered.

Yin pointed across the landing. ‘Try Iggy’s.’

Oscar went to Iris’s room and twisted the handle. As he pushed back the door, there was a sudden flutter of birds’ wings, loud as applause. He stopped in the threshold, unable to move. A flock of mangy-looking blackbirds flew up from around the feet of the bed, scrambling against the ceiling, rebounding against the walls, shedding their feathers with every frantic burst of their wings. There were at least ten of them, maybe more, and they’d left their mark all over the room: everything was spattered with gobbets of silvery-white bird shit. A single bedside lamp was on, casting a frenzy of shadows against the curtains. The dank, fungal smell of caged animals was everywhere.

‘Shut it, man,’ Yin called. ‘Shut it.’

Oscar pulled the door closed. A wordless shock came over him. He was shaken, repulsed, and when he looked at Marcus and Yin, he saw the full whites of their eyeballs; they were both holding their hands to their mouths as if they might throw up.

Yin was the first to move. He leaned over the balustrade, shouting down: ‘Iggy! Jane! You better come up here!’

They had already heard the commotion. Iris was crutch-stepping up the stairs as fast as she could, with Jane holding on to her back, saying: ‘What? What is it?’

‘Take a look,’ Yin said.

‘It’s not pretty in there,’ Oscar warned them. ‘I don’t think you should go in.’

‘Let me through,’ Iris said, stepping forwards. ‘I need to see.’

When Jane opened the door, the noise of the panicked birds came at them with a jolt, and there was that smell again—that awful, mouldering stench. Iris gasped and staggered backwards, and Oscar had to catch her by the shoulders to stop her falling. Jane gave out a shriek and slammed the door. She stayed there with her fingers on the handle, recovering her breath. ‘I swear I didn’t know about this, Iggy,’ she said. ‘I swear on my life I didn’t.’

Oscar held onto Iris tightly, kissing the side of her head. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll clean it up. If we open the windows, they should fly right out.’ She didn’t seem able to talk. Her crutches creaked in her grip.

‘We can’t get into Eden’s room,’ Marcus said. ‘Where’s the key?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jane said. ‘He keeps it with him.’

‘You don’t have a copy?’

Jane shook her head.

‘Maybe we should bust it open,’ Yin said. ‘He could be in there.’

‘Are you sure it’s locked? Sometimes it sticks.’

Yin stood back. ‘Go ahead.’

Jane went over and jimmied the handle. After a moment of struggle, the door released, and she stepped inside tentatively, clicking on the light.

‘Be careful,’ Iris said.

Oscar had never seen the fullness of Eden’s room before. A few times, he’d peeked in as he went sleepily to the shower, but he’d only ever glimpsed things—a sliver of a bedpost, the corner of a duvet. It wasn’t so different from how he’d pictured it. The floor was a landfill of assembled junk: faded hardbacks, notepads, newspapers and sheet music were stacked in towers around the bed, like some great city of books rising up from the carpet; shirts
hung from the windows on wire hangers and dried-out socks were draped over the radiator. Eden was nowhere to be seen. ‘Looks like it always does,’ Jane said, coming out. ‘A total mess.’