Demons by Wayne Macauley

Author:Wayne Macauley [Macauley, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2014-07-23T04:00:00+00:00

It was all quiet down there; Megan knocked and waited.

Honey? Can I come in?

Tilly pulled the door back. She was wearing blue pyjamas with a grey hoodie over the top. She had a pale face, half-obscured, and long, straight, dyed-black hair. Is it okay if we have a little chat? asked Megan, aware that she’d already pushed her voice up too high. She lowered it again. Your dad and the boys have gone down the shops—why don’t you let me in so we can have a little talk? Tilly seemed to be looking at the floor behind; she let the door go and gestured for Megan to come in.

It was the kids’ room, where the various broods had come and gone over the years while the adults went about their business upstairs. There were three bunk beds, one on each wall, a cupboard next to the window and a dresser beneath it. On top of the dresser was a stack of picture books and teenage novels and a tennis racquet with a single ball resting on the strings. The window was closed, the blind drawn—it would otherwise have looked out onto the bush.

The first thing Megan noticed once her eyes had adjusted was Tilly’s travel bag open on the floor near the cupboard with all the clothes spilling out. (And yet, she thought, she still hasn’t got out of her pyjamas.) Next, the blue bucket on the floor near the furthest bunk with a small quantity of dirty water in it. Then the drip gathering on the ceiling above. Last, aside from the slight swampy smell coming off the bucket, was that fusty teenage odour, familiar from her own kids, close and cloying.

Tilly was sitting cross-legged on the bottom bunk near the window, a stack of pillows between her and the wall. Her phone was on the bedcover, screen down. You could hear the rainwater churning in the pipes.

I only want to see if you’re okay, said Megan. You did that before, said Tilly. They held each other’s gaze; Tilly looked away. She picked up her phone with a languid hand and slid her thumb across the screen. Megan took a chair from the corner and placed it in the centre of the room.

It was not a kids’ room any more but a teenage room which already in the short time they’d been there looked like any other teenage room you’d find anywhere in the world: the half-eaten plate of breakfast, the pair of knickers hanging off the cupboard door, the strewn clothes, the unmade bed. The smell. You people have no idea, Tilly was saying; I don’t care if Uncle Rylan jumped from a rooftop café and killed himself. What do I care about that? Who’s ever going to miss Uncle Rylan? There was an electric charge coming off her. What did he ever do? What did any of you ever?

But your father’s trying, said Megan.

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