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Twenty-One
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House of Sighs Twenty
TWENTYJuly 22, 2018Michael parked the car by the side of the road and walked the rest of the way. It hadn’t even gone six in the morning and the fog was thick and bright.He traced footsteps through the memory of a dream. Fingers curled around tufts of grass as he slid down the slope leading off the main road and onto Crown land. The scents of wet, earthy loam and animal shit. At the bottom of the decline he sat, rocking. This was where he once killed a man to save himself.The bush woke around him. Birds sang. Crickets droned. Wind churned the fog and made the trees hiss the truths they had witnessed and kept secret.Until today.Michael walked across the clearing. Soon the cuffs of his jeans were wet with dew. He passed through a net of trees, wearing a mask of cobwebs. The further he went, the darker it got, as though normal timelines didn’t exist anymore. Continued. Ducking under branches, turning sideways to shimmy between lightning struck trees that were collapsed togethe
House of Sighs Nineteen
NINETEENThe lot where the Frost house once stood was on the outskirts of town, and it didn’t appear that the surrounding landscape had increased in population very much in the years since Michael’s last visit. This may have been for the best. It didn’t take a genius to realize the town had been bleached raw by tragedy, with this area suffering the worst. Some marks never went away.Scars.He passed over Flagman’s Bridge, wooden boards clattering under the tires. It was only a matter of time before the whole thing fell apart and tumbled into the Hunter River. Liz Frost had taken them across this exact same bridge in 1995—going the opposite way, of course. Towards her home. Her’s was a one-way ticket. She’d wanted to make a new family to call her own, one pieced together from them, her passengers.Hostages.Memories stirred as he drove into the dense hollow on the other side of the bridge, into the dark. He didn’t let them stop him. Flies crawled around the inside of the windows. T
House of Sighs Eighteen
EIGHTEENAiden touched down in Sydney at four in the afternoon. Busting, he took a painful piss in the terminal toilets and then downed his meds with a cup of coffee from the Gloria Jean’s stand. He switched the sim card in his phone, a task that should have been simple but proved otherwise due to the trembling of his hands. He fiddled with the chip, noticing he’d bitten his nails down to the quick on the long, overpriced flight.“Get in there you—”Snap.The sim clicked into place. Waited for the reception bars to bloom. Pounded Danny’s Australian number. Aiden killed the call before it had a chance to connect and sat on one of the airport benches whilst waiting for his rental car to be brought around.Maybe I shouldn’t tell him I’m coming just yet.What if he runs?Per Google Earth’s not always accurate calculations, James Bridge was a two-hour drive north, assuming Sydney’s traffic proved merciful. If everything were to go to plan—if a plan this even was—Aiden should get to t
House of Sighs Seventeen
SEVENTEENThere was no way to tell if the fog had dissipated throughout the day because, by the time Michael woke, the town beyond his window hazed again. Blue light from the halogen lamp in the carpark dueled with the neon pink MOTEL sign, dousing everything in slicks of color that refused to merge. Their glows seeped into the room, reflecting off his phone, burning in the dusty television screen.It itched to look at, all that arcade lighting. Dreams were easier.Flies crawled the walls and across the bathroom mirror. Every time he scrubbed the webs from his face they came back twice as thick. Michael gave up, breath pressing against the caul. In. Out. In. Out.Readied himself in the kitchenette opposite the bed. Slipped on his shoes. Didn’t bother to take his phone with him. Key slid into the pocket of his jeans.A closing door. Click.His room was on the second floor of the wraparound balcony and he inched down the stairs at a deliberate pace. The last thing he wanted to do w
House of Sighs Sixteen
SIXTEENAiden caught his warped reflection in the surface of the Hyundai Elantra, the only other vehicle in the James Bridge Motor Motel carpark. The AVIS hire sticker was right there in its rear window.“Jesus.” It was real now.All of it.He walked to an office tucked into the corner of the building on the first floor facing the street. Aiden pushed the door and heard an old-fashioned bell cry. A man with bushy white eyebrows slept behind the desk, mouth open—‘catching flies’, as his father used to say in those days before becoming a big cliché, one of history’s many bastards who went out for a slab of beer and never came back—and a tattered Louis Lamour western cracked across his chest.Aiden approached the counter, noticed the antiquated hook board on the wall where keys were hung. Like everything else in this sleepy town, nothing about the motel interior had been dragged into the twenty-first century. Even the computer was old. Aiden remembered using a similar such type at sc
House of Sighs Fifteen
FIFTEENAiden’s shoes clunked the metal staircase. He stepped onto a veranda overlooking the carpark where the two rentals sat near one another. Strange bedfellows, he thought.Or maybe not so strange after all.He gripped his bag in one hand, steeled himself before progressing, heart pounding, mouth parched. If this had been a mistake it was a mistake he was about to own. Aiden wasn’t going to stand there all night, deliberating as to whether this was the right thing to do; he’d crossed the Pacific Ocean to get to this spot, damn it.No backing out now.Aiden stopped before room eleven.The big windows were closed but at least the curtains had been drawn back. However, he couldn’t see into the dark interior on account of the blue and pink lights outside. The glass reflected his neon-coated reflection like a mirror. And as it turned out, yes, the old manager had been correct. His fatigue was obvious, cheekbones gaunt from not having been able to keep meals down, hair fanned up on
House of Sighs Fourteen
FOURTEEN“Can I help you?”The man in the doorway to the one-story house glared at Michael with cautious curiosity, head tilted in an almost puppyish manner. This parallel extended to the man’s eyes, which were big and brown and hadn’t changed over the years. They still clung to the vulnerability that attracted Michael to him in the first place. Clive had always elicited an air of melancholy.However, the rest of him had aged. Like the hawthorn trees on the street, the man with whom Michael spent the evening and following morning prior to boarding Liz Frost’s bus to town, had also filled out. Young pudge turned an older gent’s fat; the cute moustache now a full-blown beard.“I said, can I help you?”Michael recalled looking back at the house before striding off into the day. No, not strode. Ran. He’d wanted to stay longer. Clive had looked at him from the shadowy window, too. The curtain had shifted. Michael was sure of it.You know it did, said the voice of the flies.“Clive.”
House of Sighs Thirteen
THIRTEENRowena Webb sat upright at the sound of the three knocks against their door.She was in the living room after yet another draining day, watching MasterChef, her favorite program. A glass of Shiraz clamped tight in her hand. It wasn’t often she cracked a bottle to have on her own. Clive never drank on a work night, but the idea had been percolating in her head since about ten-thirty that morning.Pfft. Who cares?Some of the toughest women she knew needed an occasional carrot on a stick to see them through—her mother on the opposite side of town sprang to mind. Now that everything was settled, now that the contestants were prepping for a surprise elimination, now that her socks were off and her feet up on the couch, things at long last felt in their place. Yes. This was where all busy weeks should end: with cooking shows paired with a well-earned red.A dollop of wine leapt from the glass as she righted herself. Splotched a cushion.“Damn it.”Rowena placed her drink on
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