The Gulp Page 6

  Most days, though, Maddy wasn’t charitable at all and knew their mother was too damned selfish to even consider the possibility. She made constant demands, probably too stupid to realise there might be consequences for anyone else. Maybe she was so selfish she imagined the whole world ending when she did, so no one else mattered. No one else ever mattered with her.

  “How’s your mum?” friends and neighbours would ask.

  “Oh, she’s okay,” Maddy would reply. “Just prefers to stay in. You know how she is. We take care of her.”

  “You’re good kids.”

  Yeah, Maddy thought. Real good. Agoraphobic was a word she’d learned, and it came in handy. Their mother had a lot of issues, they told everyone, including germaphobia, agoraphobia, diabetes and asthma. They’d been laying the groundwork for their reclusive mother for the last couple of years. The woman was only forty-six. Would only ever be forty-six now, but that gave them decades of living at home, ostensibly caring for the strange old lady who never went out while they collected her welfare. It was sort of perfect, really, if they could get away with this last bit. If they were caught disposing of the body, that would be a problem. A real problem.

  “So what do we do?” Zack asked again.

  The TV was on, but muted. Some game show where idiots grinned at each other and answered questions on their specialist subject. Maddy stared at it, thinking. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I’m scared, Zack.”

  “Me too.”

  They were quiet for a while. Maddy felt like a little kid, trembling and nervous. This was what they’d wanted, wasn’t it? What they whispered about while their mother wasted away in her bedroom. Now it had come about, there was a kind of finality to it that made Maddy feel hollow inside. The bitch was one of the most awful people Maddy had ever known – and in The Gulp, you met a lot of awful people – but she was their mother too. Some bullshit chemical or emotional power consistently worked on Maddy’s insides, made her care.

  Only a few weeks ago she’d tried to score some of her mother’s approval. Working at Woollies full-time since she quit school at the end of year 10 some three or four months prior, had been thankless enough, but it was work and it was hers. She’d worked there part-time to supplement the welfare for a couple of years already. But scoring an Employee of the Month certificate had been one of the few things Maddy had been genuinely proud of in recent memory. She’d braved the sickly-sweet miasma of her mother’s room, squinted to blur the image of the woman emaciated and wheezing on the pile of pillows, and held up the certificate for her to see.

  “What do you think of that, Mum?”

  “I ’spect everyone gets one. Like a rota,” her mother had croaked, chest whispering with phlegm. “You’ll get another in a few months.”

  “I fucking earned that!” Maddy had shouted, and stormed from the room. The stench had trailed with her, like a cloak lifting in the wind of her passage. She’d run to the bathroom and vomited, got puke on the certificate and screwed it up into a ball as tight as her rage. She threw it away and that was the last time she’d gone into her mother’s death chamber. The last words they’d spoken.

  When Zack had called out earlier that day to say the woman’s breaths were stretching further and further apart, Maddy had said, “So what?”

  “Last chance,” Zack had called from the gloomy, stinking room. “You want to say goodbye?”

  “Fuck no. She’s not even conscious, hasn’t been for two days.”

  “I know. I told you that. But maybe she can still hear us.”

  “Then tell her to go to hell.”

  Yet here she sat now, an empty ache in her gut. Her mother was dead. Her useless, selfish, mean mother was dead, and she cared. Regardless, now they were alone. Her and Zack against the world. They had the house, the welfare, she had her job, Zack would quit school at the end of the year and get a job of his own. He had an apprenticeship lined up. The future was bright, by the standards of any future in The Gulp. One last hurdle to leap, getting rid of the body.

  “Bury her in the back yard?” Zack said.

  Maddy jumped slightly, looked up, torn from her thoughts. “First place they’ll look if they suspect foul play.”

  “I know how to lay cement. Been helping Brian out for a while now. How about I make us a new patio?”

  Maddy shook her head. “They’ll smash it and pull it up. Anyway, a new cement deck is pretty fucking suspicious on its own, right?”

  “I guess. So what do we do?”

  Maddy looked at her phone. “It’s nearly four. I have to go out.”

  “Where?”

  “Just friends. Let’s think on this a bit, yeah? Another day or two won’t make any difference.”

  Zack grimaced and shook his head. “I dunno. I mean, I know she’s foul in there already, but I was reading up on some of this stuff online. Dead bodies start to putrefy really quickly and... What?”

  Maddy could feel how wide her eyes had gone. Ice trickled around her gut. “What the fuck have you been looking up online? What if someone searches your internet history?”

  “I’ve been careful, Mads! Proxies and shit. I’m not an idiot. Besides, it’s nothing specific or incriminating.”

  “Jesus, I hope not.”

  “Trust me! Anyway, all I’m saying is we need to decide. We can’t leave it much longer.”

  Maddy stood. She needed to be out of the house. Away from... all this. “Until morning, Zack, okay? Let’s decide in the morning.”

  “We have to make a decision, Sis. We’ve been going around and around this subject for weeks now. It’s the one thing you’ll never make a choice about. Everything else is done, why is this the one thing?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too big, too weird. The rest is fucking admin, you know? It’s stories and lies, and we’re good at that. This part, it’s physical. In the morning, I promise. Before you go to school we’ll decide. When you’re home from school, we’ll do whatever we decide. Yeah?”

  Zack nodded. “Okay.”

  “I might stay out. You okay for dinner?”

  “Yeah. Probably go over to Josh’s anyway, play Xbox. Charm his mum into letting me stay for dinner.”

  Maddy drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. “Okay, good. I’m working tomorrow, so I’ll wake you when I get up. We’ll decide over breakfast.”

  Zack nodded, lips a flat line. His eyes were wet, red underneath. Maddy swallowed. He was just a kid. They were both just kids, no matter how grown up they’d had to become. They would take care of each other, but she resented the need. No wonder Zack hung out with Josh so much. Josh was everything Zack wished for – loved, cared for, he had a mum and dad who were around plenty, a nice clean house. She went over and leaned down, kissed the top of his head.

  “Love you, Zackattack.”

  He smiled up at her. “Love you too, Mad As Hell.”

  They grinned at each other. “We’ll be okay,” she said at last.

  He nodded. “We will now.”

  “If I don’t see you later, I’ll wake you tomorrow.”

  She left the house, the late summer air fresh and fragrant with the salt of the ocean only a few blocks over from their place. “We’ll be okay,” she said again, to herself.

  “Let’s go to the Vic,” Dylan said. “Get pissed.”

  Maddy pursed her lips, shook her head. “Can’t afford it. What about some takeaway grog from Clooney’s drive-through and come back here?”

  They sat on a bench on the footpath, looking out over Carlton Beach, The Gulp’s only easily accessible beach, just south of the harbour, all blackened volcanic sand and gravel. The dilapidated surf lifesaving club off to their right, the playground quiet, devoid of activity, behind them. They had the whole park and beach to themselves. For the moment, at least. Maddy was enjoying the fresh air, salt spray, quiet of the night, though it was barely eight o’clock. She didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to go to the pub. They knew she was underage, but didn’t care
. Dylan was twenty-two and he always went to the bar, whether it was to spend his own money or hers. But she just didn’t want the people.

  “Come on,” Dylan said. “Just for a couple, game of pool, see who’s there? We can get takeout beers and come back here later.”

  Mum’s dead. Really dead. It kept going around and around in her mind. It filled her thoughts, pushed against her brain like it needed to get out. The massive relief. The fear of what came next. The immediate concerns of what to do with the bitch’s carcass.

  “Maddy?”

  He’d been talking again, she realised. “Sorry, what?”

  “You’re not yourself tonight. You okay?”

  She looked up at Dylan’s kind eyes. He was a funny-looking fucker, everyone said so. Gangly and tall, wide apart eyes, a pointed chin. Far from classically handsome, but he had an intriguing look as far as Maddy was concerned. But more than that, he was kind, respectful. That went a long way beyond what someone looked like.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Bit distracted, sorry.”

  “Home stuff? Your mum?”

  “Yeah, the usual.” She forced a smile. Maybe distraction was what she needed after all. “Let’s go the Vic.”

  He grinned and took her hand. They walked the few hundred metres down Tanning Street to the Victorian Hotel. It was bustling inside, busy for a weeknight. Maddy frowned as they went in and Dylan pointed to a sign by the door.

  New Wednesday Special – Trivia Night!

  How smart are you?

  Register a team now.

  Starts 7pm

  Maddy groaned. “Sounds awful.”

  “Right? They must be between rounds. Let’s get a beer and head out the back before they start again.”

  One end of the main bar had a stage where bands sometimes played and a drop-down screen in front of it, where they often showed boxing matches, the UFC, some of the bigger footy games. A middle-aged woman Maddy didn’t recognise had a table set up there with a laptop, the big screen showing a PUB TRIVIA logo. The woman had a microphone in hand and stood grinning out at the busy room.

  “Five minutes!” she said, as Maddy and Dylan reached the bar.

  He bought the drinks, she took hers and followed him out the back into the bistro and pool area. Two big rooms, one with tables and chairs and the kitchen where food could be ordered and collected, the other with two tatty pool tables, surrounded by the usual motley array of patrons. A door behind the second table led out to the courtyard and several picnic bench and table combos dotted with smokers.

  Dylan looked around the pool room, spotted a couple of mates. They headed over, raising their glasses in greeting. Three burley bearded guys with denim and leather, arms full of tattoos, long beards and hard eyes, had colonised the nearest pool table and their friends looked a bit pissed off about it.

  Maddy glanced over, saw Desert Ghost MC patches on their backs. Arseholes, she thought, but didn’t say aloud. They always made trouble when they came into town. Their bikes would be parked around the side, big Harleys with ape-hanger bars and fancy airbrushed paintwork of flames and skulls.

  “They’ll only play for money,” Dave said, nodding at the bikers. “And they’re bloody good, so always win.”

  “Hustlers,” Dylan said, as if this were some pearl of wisdom.

  “Exactly.” Dave reached out and clinked glasses with Dylan, then Maddy.

  They fell to chatting and drinking, ignoring the bikers and their pool table dominion, not bothering to move around to the other table where people scowled and muttered about the interlopers. The bikers loved it, of course, half the reason they stuck around was to annoy the locals. The other reason was to fleece them, and they’d probably round out the night by picking a fight.

  The distraction worked partially, but Maddy still couldn’t get the image of her mother’s wasted body from her mind, finally devoid of life. Dylan’s brother worked on one of the farms out on the Gulpepper Road leading to the highway. Did they have pigs? She’d seen shows where gangsters got rid of bodies by feeding them to pigs. Maybe she and Zack could cut up their mother, take her bit by bit to the farm and drop the bits in the pig pen.

  She shuddered. What the hell was she thinking? Apart from trying to conceal body parts from the farmers, as if she would be able to chop up her mother. Maybe Zack’s idea of the harbour was a good one. But she had another thought. They could rent a dinghy for the day, say they were going out fishing. If they could somehow get the body into the dinghy, wrapped up and weighed down with rocks or something, they could dump it much further out than the harbour. But how would she get it there?

  Her mum’s car sat in the garage at home. Maddy had been learning to drive, was still on her Ls, but could do all that was required. If they put the body in the back of the car, then backed it up to the harbour as if they were loading supplies for a day’s fishing... It could work. Especially if they started really early before many people were about. And there were never cops in The Gulp, so no one would pull her over if she only drove around town. Hell, if you needed cops and rang triple-0 it was always at least an hour before someone came from Enden or Monkton. If they came at all.

  Their mother had been a small woman in life, barely over five feet tall, and she was wasted away to little more than bones now. They could surely wrap her up tight in something, maybe an old doona cover, rope it all together with weights inside. She wouldn’t make too big a parcel, they could flip her straight out of the boot of the little Toyota hatchback into the dinghy. If they picked their moment, no one would see a thing. They could take her from the bedroom to the car through the kitchen, so no one would see that. She’d only be out for a second while they dumped her in the boat, then they’d take her out as far as they dared and sink the bitch. Let the snails and worms of the seabed have her. If they wrapped her up enough, tied weights to her limbs tightly enough, she’d never surface again.

  “What are you smiling about?” Dylan half-smiled himself in anticipation of her answer as he held out a fresh beer.

  She didn’t realise she’d made any outward indication of her thoughts. “Nothing really,” she said quickly. “Just a little drunk, I guess. You want to get out of here?”

  “Take outs back to the beach?”

  “What about take outs back to your place?” She gave him a sultry look. Dylan had his own place, a rented flat that was barely more than a studio, but it was private. He kept trying to convince her to move in with him, but she wasn’t taking their relationship nearly as seriously as he was. One day she would have to let him down, she had no intention of staying with him long term, but for now it was fun.

  He grinned. “Better skull these then.”

  “Race ya!” She upended the schooner and downed the beer, Dylan grunting in surprise and trying to catch up, but she had him beat.

  They both laughed, gasping as they caught their breath. Maddy’s head swam a little from the sudden impact of alcohol. She took his hand and they left the pub.

  “More cordial, boys?”

  “Muuu-uuum! I said before we’re fine, thanks!”

  Josh’s mother made a roll-eyes face at Zack as Josh concentrated on the videogame, hunched forward over the controller. Zack grinned. A mother who cared enough to keep offering was one of the reasons he loved coming over here as much as he did. She was everything his mother wasn’t – kind, caring, well-fed. Alive. She had motherly curves and full curly hair, sparkling green eyes. He knew he loved her a little bit.

  “We’re fine, thank you, Mrs Brady,” he said.

  “Well, you holler if you need anything else. Want a snack?”

  “Mum!”

  “No, I’m so full from dinner. Your lasagne is...” Zack made a chef’s kiss gesture and grinned again.

  “Oh, you!”

  Mrs Brady ducked out, pulling Josh’s bedroom door almost but not quite closed. Zack stared at where she’d been for a moment, then turned his attention back to the game just as Josh died again.

&nbs
p; “Dammit!” he snapped, and held the controller out to Zack.

  “Why don’t we go two-player?”

  “Nah, I want to get through these levels single-player. God, my mum is so annoying.”

  Zack restarted the level. “She’s kinda cool, really.”

  Josh looked at him with his eyebrows almost vanishing into his hair. “Cool? My mum? Earth to Zack, what have you been smoking?”

  “I know she’s a dork, but you should appreciate all she does for you. And you’ve got a dad around who gives a shit. Don’t take that stuff for granted, man.”

  Josh smiled. “Yeah, I guess it’s easy for me. You should have the same.”

  “I do. I have it here. That’s why I’m always coming over.”

  “For my parents?”

  “Well, not just your parents. Your Xbox too.”

  “Fuck you!” Josh slammed a good set of knuckles into Zack’s arm and Zack cried out, laughing through the pain as he desperately kept the character moving on screen.

  “Also, your sister is hot! So it’s sweet when she’s home from uni.”

  “You want me to hit you again?”

  Zack laughed and shook his head. “No, don’t! I can barely feel my right hand as it is!”

  “You know, your sister is pretty hot too,” Josh said, turning back to look at the screen. “If she wasn’t so... I dunno, angry all the time.”

  “Angry all the time?”

  “Always scowling.”