A Lovely and Terrible Thing: Part Three

The third and final installment of Chris Womersley’s story.

Photo by joiseyshowaa.

The shed was really a stable about one hundred metres from the house. A wind buffeted us as we made our way across the yard with a torch. I was anxious. Many years ago I met a woman who claimed to have a portion of Hitler’s jawbone – complete with some piece of paperwork or other that verified it – but from the moment I stepped into her stinking, ramshackle entrance hall I knew she was just a lonely madwoman with a house full of junk. That I fell for it has long been a source of embarrassment for me, but in my business one needed to check all reasonable leads. Would this perhaps be the same? Or even worse?

Angola unbolted the massive door and swung it open. The stable was dimly lit. Pausing on the threshold, I could smell wet hay and the sweat of animals. I knew the rest of the family were standing at the kitchen window, watching to see what I, a stranger, would make of their daughter. After the other daughter Chloe had spoken up at the dinner table, there had been a heated discussion of money, of fame and reality TV that I did my best to dampen while still allowing them enough enthusiasm to show me their curious prize.

I stepped inside. Angola followed and closed the door behind me. Something stirred in a far corner, I heard a clank of chain. Angola brushed past me and went to another door on the other side of the stable. He paused with his hand on the wooden knob. ‘You ready?’

I nodded. By this time my heart was hammering. The miraculous has a smell, and this Godforsaken place was ripe with it. Angola opened the door and went in. Another rustle of chain, the swish of straw. Murmured words, kindly words. He beckoned me over. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, then to his daughter, ‘This is Mr Shaw, love.’

I said hello and drifted into the room, which was spacious, decorated like any 14-year-old girl’s room: posters of pop stars, family photographs, drawings of horses. The girl, Emily was sitting on a low bed placed along one wall. She was slight, pretty, with long brown hair and large eyes.Something stirred in a far corner, I heard a clank of chain. She looked momentarily startled, but quickly recovered, said good evening and smiled. It was clear we had interrupted her reading a book; it was placed face-down on the bed next to her. Then I saw the iron hoop around her ankle and the short chain attached at the other end to the bed frame. Emily noticed me staring at it and shrugged. Angola seemed nervous and asked her if she might show me her trick.

‘It’s not a trick, Pa,’ she admonished.

Angola unlocked the iron hoop. ‘Well. You know what I mean, love.’

Emily rolled her eyes.

Angola dropped the key to her bolt into his coat pocket and stepped back. He offered me an apologetic smile. ‘Teenagers, eh?’

Emily swung around until both legs hung over the edge of her bed. Angola and I waited by the door. Horses moved around nervously in their stalls nearby.

‘Are you sure, Pa?’

Angola nodded.

‘But you said that –’

‘Emily. This man might be able to help us.’

‘OK’

And after a few minutes, it happened, as Angola had said it would. Almost imperceptibly, Emily began to levitate from the bed with no apparent exertion. The space between the hem of her dress and the rumpled bed expanded. Her face wore the beatific expression of one rapt in an interior activity like, say, listening to a favourite piece of music or contemplating a scene of sublime beauty. The entire thing happened in silence. When at last I could speak, I asked Angola how long she had been doing this.

‘Oh, only two months or so. Not long.’ It was clear that, behind his anxiety over what was happening to his daughter, he was very proud.

Meanwhile, Emily rose higher and higher. After several minutes, she put out a hand to prevent her head bumping against the high ceiling. Gently she shoved herself off, whereupon she drifted down and across the room before again floating to the ceiling. Finally, Angola took a length of rope, flung up it to his daughter and hauled her down to the floor, as one might a boat to a pier.

He secured Emily to her bed with the iron bolt. They exchanged tender words. He thanked her, kissed her on the forehead. We left the barn. Then he turned to me with an avaricious gleam in his eye, and I knew instantly what I had to do.

In the middle of the night, when I was certain the family was asleep, I eased the ring of keys from the hook by the kitchen door and crept out of the house.

Emily didn’t seem surprised to see me standing in her room. I sensed her looking at me as soon as I unlocked her door, but she said nothing, uttered not a sound. It was so quiet out there in the Angola dropped the key to her bolt into his coat pocket and stepped back. He offered me an apologetic smile. country I could hear her breathing in the gloom. I crouched by her bed and told her not to be afraid and she nodded as if she had known all along – known even before I did – what I intended to do. Some girls were like that. I unlocked the iron clasp from her bony ankle, gave her a moment to put a robe over her pyjamas, then lifted her from the bed and carried her outside.

My shoes crunched on the gravel driveway. I registered the familiar pleasing sensation of a girl’s warm and trusting breath on my neck, a cheek bumping against my shoulder. I had intended to carry her far beyond the edge of the property, but she was heavier than I anticipated – or I older and wearier – and I was compelled to put her down in the driveway seventy or so metres from the house. The girl uttered a startled laugh, wobbled, then grabbed my sleeve as if momentarily unbalanced on a beam.

I held her by her wrist and we stood there for several seconds staring at each other in silence.

‘I’m scared,’ she whispered.

‘I know. But there is no need to be.’

The moon was high and full. By its light I saw the silvery outline of her jaw, tendrils of her hair waving in the breeze. Experimentally, I loosened my grip on her wrist and we stood there in the driveway, the girl and I, for a few seconds longer until she, too, let go of my sleeve.

I sensed animals moving around us in the darkness, the soft and furry blink of their eyes. Emily smoothed her knotty hair and looked around. For a second I feared she would run or cry out for help but, instead, she looked at me and smiled. ‘Good-bye,’ she said.

Gradually, she rose into the air as she had done several hours earlier and the sight of it thrilled me anew. Her knobbly knees I sensed animals moving around us in the darkness, the soft and furry blink of their eyes. floated past my face and I realised I was weeping. She stifled a giggle with a hand across her mouth, then relaxed and held out her arms and it seemed to me that she was not rising so much as the earth on which I stood was falling away beneath her feet. She waved. By the time lights came on in the house and I heard angry voices, the girl was already out of reach, floating above a nearby stand of gum trees.

Angola and his family ran up behind me with mouths full of oaths, but instead of escaping, as I should have done, I closed my eyes to better imagine the world from the girl’s new height. I wondered if she saw trees in the distance, the yellow gravel of a driveway. Did she hear her father crying out and sense the stars close at hand, the vast and ancient universe into which she was being drawn? Far below, did she make out a man beating another man over and over with his fists, and hear a dog yapping at the commotion? People clawing at each other, throwing up their hands, shrieking?

Finally, when her family below fell silent and looked skyward, each of their faces glowed strangely and were so small they might have been coins on a road as, free at last, she disappeared from sight. ■