Cassandra

4 - Curse

~ 4 ~

CurseHer family is screaming. Poppy is telling her to lie down. He doesn’t have to shout at her like that. She is only just here. She did not know his voice could be so loud. It has never been so loud. Aunty Ida yells into the phone. She is calling an ambulance—is the line so bad? She is screeching and the noisy miners too. They are in her head echoing from ear to ear. Everyone is screaming. The walls shake with the noise. The house will fall down if they do not stop. They must be quiet. She is missing something important. Someone is trying to tell her something—someone is whispering in her ear. A whisper … and a smell. The smell is everywhere. What is it? It is sweet—sticky sweet, but not like sugar or toffee. It makes her feel sick. It is like the time she vomited all day and night. The time Mum and Aunt Ida brought her an ice-cream bucket in case she didn’t make it to the toilet. They wiped her face with a damp washer and it smelled like vomit and she’s hated washers ever since. They remind her of the sick feeling in her stomach and how it comes up her throat and out of her mouth. But this is not that smell. It is a different smell. A flower could smell like this, but you wouldn’t plant it in your garden because it would be bad luck. Worse than the lily plant.

It is a boy whispering in her ear. A boy who lives in their house. There is no boy living in her house. It is a boy who is going to live in her house. Soon? Yes, soon. The boy is living in her mother’s tummy now, but one day he will live in the house. He will sleep in a bed in the spare room. It won’t be spare anymore. What is he saying to her? They need to be quiet so she can hear him. Now it is too late. He has stopped whispering. He ignores her. He stands on the veranda holding Poppy’s hand. They both look at the clouds. Where is she? Why isn’t she standing with them? Is she dead? Is she a ghost, living in the house, watching her Poppy and her new brother?

One, two, three, four, five, nine, twenty-two, twenty-one hundred … when did she learn to count so well? The numbers sprout like weeds, she can’t stop them. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty twenty … what is she counting? The rain drops. See them falling, dripping in slow motion, letting her count them. She has to count them. She has to know the number of raindrops. Her brother said how many raindrops there would be and she has to find out if he is right. He is always right, but she wants him to be wrong. If he is wrong, if there are more raindrops or less raindrops then she will be alive again. If he is right she will have to stay dead. When she is dead, Poppy will not talk to her anymore.

The lady tells her to count too. The lady wears a dress made of gold threads. When she is finished counting the rain drops, she will count the threads in her dress. A gown, Aunty Ida would call it a gown, like the ones the grown-up ladies wear to the dances. Aunty Ida wants to help her count the threads, but her hands shake so much she can’t hold the gown still. The lady lives in a house made of books. Cassie wants to live with her. The lady has read all the books. She read each book and then used them as bricks to build her house. A man lives there too. Fire spurts from his fingers and sparks from his hair. He might set all the books on fire. The lady wants Cassie to read all the books too. But Cassie is too scared. There are terrible things in those books. Things that come alive. Worse than any of the things in the books her mum reads her at night.

She can’t read. She hasn’t learnt to read yet. She will never learn to read because she can’t count all the raindrops. They are coming too fast. She will never know if her brother was right. She can’t count because it hurts. Her chest hurts. The tyre is crushing her chest. Dad wasn’t looking hard enough. He has driven over her. It is crushing her bones, crushing her, crushing her heart, she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe, she can’t count, she can’t read.

The monster in the book is alive. Its face is close to hers. It breathes heavily, panting like he has been running. The air from his mouth blows on her face, it is hot. It smells hot like coal from a fire. A person can’t have hot coals in his mouth. She needs to tell her mother. Don’t read that book. She doesn’t want that book. She can’t find her anywhere. The monster has stolen her, squashed her into the pages of the book so he can have her for always. He has orange spots. Orange spots, her snake has orange spots. Why did he bite her? She would never hurt him. She didn’t mean to tell anyone he was under the house. She wished and wished for Dad never to find him. She wished and wished … and the lily … her grandma Lily … her face was white and … that smell … sickly sweet smell … like blood … the smell that is the smell … of how death would smell.