The monstrous, p.28
The Monstrous, page 28
But Julie was locked onto Peter’s earlier question. “Papa said it was what many collectors did. Became teratophiles. There were codes, passwords, that let them into the secret rooms all over Europe. They all had them—the travelling shows and respectable homes. There were special fairs. There still are. It isn’t new. The practice has been going on for centuries.”
Dan composed himself. “But Carlo tried to help.”
“He tried. But Papa caught him. Made him into a fine pair of wings.”
There it was again, but Dan didn’t bring it up then. “So how were you separated? If Carlo didn’t do it?”
“One of Papa’s guests in Frankfurt was a surgeon. Papa let him visit us alone. He felt very guilty after he had been with us. He took pity on us, told Jenny and me it was just a lot of muscle joining us. No arteries, nothing vital. There’d be blood, he said, quite a lot, but he told us what he’d have to do, said he’d bring the necessary instruments and drugs.”
Despite the bizarre experiences of Dan’s own life, it all sounded like so much fabrication again, a tall tale growing larger and more improbable by the minute: first Carlo, now this Frankfurt surgeon, Carlo becoming a nice pair of wings.
But then, like a spectre at the feast, or more a mind-reader in a high-class nightclub act, Peter was there.
“Julie, this is very important. Doctor Dan and I are finding this hard to accept. You must help us. Your Papa let this surgeon bring a bag of things into the secret room?”
“A lot of them brought bags and cases. Teratophiles are like paraphiles everywhere. Some brought masks and hoods, special costumes and things to use on us. Their cameras. Papa trusted and liked this man. Xavier Pangborn was as great an admirer of Frederik Ruysch as Papa was. Only when the pain became too much and we were crying out, did Papa break in. He and Dr. Pangborn had a terrible fight.” Julie winced at the memory. Her cheek spasmed. “Jenny was in so much pain. She passed out. I had to finish the job before I passed out too.”
Finish the job!
Dan made himself stay calm, focused. Things did happen violently, strangely, in life; people were capable of the most extraordinary things, acts of courage and strength, incredible perversion too, a mix of the courageous and the outrageous that did make it seem that orthodoxy and consensus were always somewhere else in human affairs.
“What happened to Xavier Pangborn?” Dan asked, warning Peter with a look.
“We awoke in a house with Dr. Pangborn and women we didn’t know tending to us. Alonzo was downstairs, furious, so very angry, but also very afraid that Pangborn would tell the authorities and so was trying to be civil. The same shame and guilt that had made Pangborn help us had also led him to destroy all incriminating papers and exhibits of his own. Now he was a pillar of belated virtue. He said he’d have contacts keep an eye on us. Alonzo would never be sure who he meant and so actually made the best of the situation. He eventually sold off his own collection and brought us down to Australia.”
“So you were reunited with Jackie.”
Julie frowned. “It was more like meeting her for the first time really. Jenny and I were too young to remember her with the show.”
“She became very taken with Jenny. Why is that, Julie?”
“Jenny has always been shy and fragile. The trauma of what those men did, the results of the separation—she took it all so much harder than I did. One of us had to cope. One of us had to be stronger.”
“But Jackie came looking for you, too, Julie. Jackie cares enough for you to have searched for you.”
Julie’s mouth was a grim line. Her frown crushed her brow with the intensity of suffering, not merely concentration.
They should stop soon. But there was still so much to learn and Julie was so responsive, so lucid like this. He’d never have expected it. Dan decided to avoid further mention of Jackie; that was the harming stressor here.
“How did Alonzo earn his living in Melbourne, Julie?”
The frown went away; her mouth softened. “He had contacts there—keepers of Wunderkammern like himself. One of them gave him a job as assistant curator in a local museum.”
“With a secret room no doubt.” Dan couldn’t help himself.
Julie took it as a question. “I suppose. It was a large public museum. There are always parts the public doesn’t see.”
That the brotherhood of cabinet keepers kept secret, Dan decided.
“How did he treat you?”
“Well from then on. We were with family. He found his interests elsewhere. And Xavier Pangborn came to see us.”
“Pangborn did?”
“He was in Australia lecturing at ANU and Monash. One evening he stopped by. That was before he went missing.”
“Went missing?” It was going wild again.
“It was a terrible thing. His wife was with him. There was a big search. It was in all the papers.”
Did Alonzo kill him? Dan wanted to ask, but somehow knew Julie would have no idea. If her story were true, this terrible, elaborate, improbable tale, she had every reason to want to put it out of mind. He was probably going too far now. But Jackie had disturbed him; the case of this mysterious young woman sitting before him had opened out, blossomed amazingly. There were too many facts but not enough certainties.
It didn’t stop Peter.
“Julie, what did you mean Alonzo made Carlo into a nice pair of wings?”
“Peter!”
“She isn’t under, Doctor Dan. She’s pretending to be in a trance!”
Dan was affronted, amazed yet convinced all at once. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but of course she was pretending; it had let her deal with experiences too difficult to face otherwise. But the illusion had to be preserved. He had to try and save it.
“Peter, listen very carefully. Trust my professional judgement here. I know for a fact Julie is under, and she’s going to answer your question right now to prove it. Julie, please answer Peter’s question.”
Dan again leant forward slightly, urging the young woman with his body language to continue with the vital pretence.
And the words came in the same calm tone she had been using at the outset.
“Alonzo made monsters in the old way. Many keepers of Wunderkammern did. You know, fitting bat wings to the bodies of lizards, then carefully drying them to give dragons. Adding a human foetus’s arms to the body of a skate. Sticking horns onto monkey skulls. The first platypus taken to Europe was regarded as such a fake. They tried to pull the beak off. Carlo was killed and dried, flayed and ‘leathered.’ His skin was used for wings.”
Wilder and wilder, Dan thought. This can’t go on. Julie improvising; Peter playing the role of a conspirator in some charade. Though Jackie had been real. She had been.
“Ask her about her surname,” Peter prompted, leaning forward as well, playing his part, though he looked more concerned than ever. “Haniver.”
“Haniver?” Dan echoed, but the phone rang. He crossed to his desk, grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”
“Dan, it’s Jay. Stephanie’s not answering her mobile. She was going to do a lost motorist routine. Knocking at the door, asking for directions, so she may have switched it off.”
Dan kept him voice low and matter-of-fact. “Is there a problem?”
“Not necessarily. But it wasn’t our arrangement. Whenever there’s risk, what we call a ‘nasty,’ we leave our mobiles on.”
“What about your back-up from Parramatta?”
“Dan, there was enough traffic going into Horsley Park for Stephanie not to stand out. I called Rick and let him go. Oh, and incidentally, the Laser is registered to a Laura Barraclough in Melbourne and hasn’t been reported stolen. I’d say it’s on loan.”
“Okay. Jay, I’m probably overreacting badly but there’s an edge to this I don’t like at all. If Stephanie’s run up against Jackie she may be in trouble.”
“But Jackie isn’t the patient.”
“Correct. Like I said, she’s a patient’s sister and seems pretty unstable. Let me know the moment Stephanie calls in.”
“Done. What do we do in the meantime?”
“You’ve got the number in Dalloway Road?”
“Yes.”
“Call in favors, Jay. See if you can get a local squad car round there.”
“You really do suspect foul play?”
“They won’t find anything,” Julie said from her chair by the windows.
“Hold it a moment, Jay,” Dan said, turning to face her. “What do you mean?”
Julie’s face was like a golden mask in the last of the sunlight. “The house at 72 is a trap. It’s what’s called a ‘false door’ in Egyptology, what the teratophile cabinet owners call a blind to throw off undesirables. But it’s a trap house. Jackie will have taken Stephanie to meet Alonzo and Xavier.”
“But they’re dead!”
“Yes. But she knows it’ll bring me back.”
More and more the briars were coiling up.
“Julie, you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to explain clearly what’s going on!”
“Jackie’s changed the rules. She’s always been concerned with connection, bringing things together, but now she's harming Jenny.”
That was Alonzo with the connection thing, not Jackie! Julie was changing her story again.
“We’re going to bring the police in on this,” Dan said. “Listen, Jay—”
But Julie’s words brought him up short. “You’ll never find the house if you do.”
“What?”
“If you or your friend there call the police, Doctor Dan, I swear I’ll go catatonic and you’ll get nothing. Jackie will never call again. Jenny will die. Stephanie may already be dead.”
“What then?”
“You get this Jay friend of yours to drive us down to Sydney. I’ll take you to the house. Then you can call your police friends.”
“I can’t do that, Julie.”
“But you know you will anyway. I’ve got to save Jenny, Doctor Dan. It has to be this way. I know Jackie.”
Stephanie never called in; her phone remained switched off. The Fairfield police found her car outside 72, found the house deserted, its lights operated by timers, found the shed locked but empty inside when they forced the lock.
This came to them in Jay’s Nissan Patrol as they plunged down the Putty Road, Jay driving, Julie next to him, Dan in the back waiting for Harry Badman to return his calls.
Neither Dan nor Jay was surprised when, at 6.20, they turned into Walgrove Road and headed for Horsley Park. Of course the trap house and the real one would be close enough for convenience.
“Tell us about Alonzo and Xavier Pangborn, Julie,” Dan said. “How they can be involved.”
“You’ll see.”
Dan refused to give up. “I think I might be a better friend to Jenny than you are right now.”
Julie turned in her seat to look at him. “What do you mean?”
“You’re doing this because you want to help Jenny.”
“Yes! Save Jenny!” Still she faced him, half-turned, eyes glittering in the dim interior.
“Why am I doing it?”
“Because you want to know what’s going on. Because of his friend.” She indicated Jay. “Stephanie.”
“More than that. You know it’s more than that.”
“What then?”
“You want to help Jenny. But I want to help Jenny and Julie. Because Jenny needs to have Julie safe too, doesn’t she? It can’t be all right unless you’re both safe.”
“Yes.” It was a ghostly, feeling-charged affirmation, said with a new and different emotion. She believed him, was accepting what he said. Perhaps he was earning the truth from her.
“Tell me how Alonzo and Xavier are involved!”
And Julie told them as they did 110 ks along Walgrove Road.
“Both men were interested in joining opposites, in bringing things together, the old alchemical quest. Alonzo left us joined. Xavier used us because we were. The prize of Xavier’s collection, probably genuine, were two joined bodies.”
“Congenitally joined?”
“Oh no, Doctor Dan. An ancient Roman punishment was to tie the condemned to a corpse, back to back, face to face, then leave you. If you weren’t lucky enough to die from shock, your body was poisoned by the rotting cadaver. Necrosis took over. Xavier had acquired the preserved remains of such a wretch left like this in a cell in ancient Syria long ago. Preserved by desert heat and aridity. The bodies were unearthed in the 1700s, reached Amsterdam in the 1830s, finally made it into Xavier’s collection just before we were born. The same year.”
Dan thought he understood. “Xavier acquired the double corpses. Alonzo then fathered conjoined daughters not long after. He couldn’t resist. He left you like that as a gesture, a living symbol of Xavier’s exhibit.”
“Yes.” It was breathed rather than said. “That was partly the reason. He also enjoyed the notion for itself.”
“Then the separation—”
“Was motivated by genuine compassion from Xavier, we believe, by outrage at something they’d done as competitive, obsessive, heartless, younger men, not just to spite a rival.”
“Then—” And again Dan understood. “When Xavier went missing—”
“Yes. Alonzo avenged himself in the appropriate way. Xavier ended his days in a cellar face to face with a corpse.”
“How do you know this?”
“Jackie told me.”
“Jackie! How does she know?”
“She became Alonzo’s favorite when he came to Australia. He needed to gloat. He showed her what he’d done.”
“Showed her! My God!” They turned off Walgrove Road onto Horsley Drive, then Julie directed them right into Walworth and along the crests of the low hills, the road winding its way past isolated houses with cheerily lit windows, past long intervening outlooks and swales where the land rolled away in darkened vistas, marked only by occasional, far-off, twinkling points of light, touches of civilization and sanity.
Enough touches. For other things were out there as well. The residues of madness and obsession.
“Lots of room out here, Doctor Dan,” Julie said, as if answering him. “Lots of houses and sheds few people ever get to see inside of.”
Lots of opportunities for secret lives, Dan thought. “What will Jackie do, Julie?”
“I don’t know, Doctor Dan. But I think she wants to harm me and Jenny.”
“She said she cared for Jenny. For you too.”
“Sometimes she does. But she scared me. I had to leave.”
You left Jenny! Dan couldn’t accept that. “Julie, was Jenny already dead when you ran away?”
And is Jackie waiting to, Xavier-like, join the two of you back together? Face to face? To reunite you at last?
“Not when I left. But Jackie loves Jenny. She wouldn’t harm her.”
“She might to get at you. People do it all the time. Harm what they love.”
“Not Jenny!” Julie said as if desperately needing to believe it. “Turn here!”
There was a street sign Dan didn’t have time to read or even ask about because, almost immediately, Julie was telling Jay to pull over in front of a large open field. No, not a field—a drab fibro house sat at the end of a driveway, a single light showing dimly from what seemed to be the living room. To the right of the house was a large corrugated iron shed, just like the one Stephanie had described for the place on Dalloway Road, about thirty metres by fifteen, four metres or so high, with no visible windows and none of the double doors you’d expect for housing large vehicles in such a structure.
“There.” Julie pointed, indicating the shed and the solitary door they could see on its northwestern corner.
Jay reached for his car-phone.
“Don’t!” Julie said, in a voice that actually startled Dan, so different it was to anything he’d ever heard from her. “Please! She will harm Jenny! And Stephanie! She probably doesn’t know we’re here yet!”
Jay switched off the engine. “Lives are at risk, Julie.”
“They certainly will be if we don’t follow her system.”
“System?” Jay asked before Dan could.
“That’s a Wunderkammer there,” Julie answered. “She will have prepared it for us.”
Again Jay reached for the phone. “Someone has to know. No one’s going in there.”
Dan gripped his shoulder. “Jay, it probably does have to be this way. What’s the layout, Julie?”
“She will have changed it. It’s the House of Iitoi most likely. From the Hopi legend. The maze pattern you see all over the Southwestern USA. The Arizonan labyrinth with Death at the centre. Your journey through the maze to Death at the centre is the journey through life.”
“Julie!” Dan said, still gripping Jay’s shoulder, knowing how carefully this had to be played. “Tell us what to expect.”
“There’s usually an entry corridor going round the perimeter, leading inwards. There’ll be photographs, exhibits to arouse interest, vanitas mundi tableaux.”
“Vanitas what?” Jay asked.
“Displays,” Dan said. “Vitrines containing exhibits. Go on, Julie.”
“Definitely a maze.”
“With traps? Shortcuts? You’ve been in there. You’ve seen it.”
“I can’t say. She will have changed it, Doctor Dan. But she wants me in there with Jenny. She won’t risk harming me.”
“Give us the address here, Julie,” Dan said. “As we go in, Jay phones the police. No one goes anywhere till that’s done.”
“But as we go in,” Julie said. “I have to be in there. Promise. Both of you.”
Dan did at once. Jay hesitated, furious, then grudgingly did so, as if such oaths could hold true just by being given. There was danger here, and madness, though fortunately Jay, like Dan, recognised an essential process at work, saw that any show of force could not guarantee the safety of lives within. But a trail of crumbs had to be left for the cavalry, even if it was to be after the event. Everything on Jackie’s terms, if they decided to go in.
Dan composed himself. “But Carlo tried to help.”
“He tried. But Papa caught him. Made him into a fine pair of wings.”
There it was again, but Dan didn’t bring it up then. “So how were you separated? If Carlo didn’t do it?”
“One of Papa’s guests in Frankfurt was a surgeon. Papa let him visit us alone. He felt very guilty after he had been with us. He took pity on us, told Jenny and me it was just a lot of muscle joining us. No arteries, nothing vital. There’d be blood, he said, quite a lot, but he told us what he’d have to do, said he’d bring the necessary instruments and drugs.”
Despite the bizarre experiences of Dan’s own life, it all sounded like so much fabrication again, a tall tale growing larger and more improbable by the minute: first Carlo, now this Frankfurt surgeon, Carlo becoming a nice pair of wings.
But then, like a spectre at the feast, or more a mind-reader in a high-class nightclub act, Peter was there.
“Julie, this is very important. Doctor Dan and I are finding this hard to accept. You must help us. Your Papa let this surgeon bring a bag of things into the secret room?”
“A lot of them brought bags and cases. Teratophiles are like paraphiles everywhere. Some brought masks and hoods, special costumes and things to use on us. Their cameras. Papa trusted and liked this man. Xavier Pangborn was as great an admirer of Frederik Ruysch as Papa was. Only when the pain became too much and we were crying out, did Papa break in. He and Dr. Pangborn had a terrible fight.” Julie winced at the memory. Her cheek spasmed. “Jenny was in so much pain. She passed out. I had to finish the job before I passed out too.”
Finish the job!
Dan made himself stay calm, focused. Things did happen violently, strangely, in life; people were capable of the most extraordinary things, acts of courage and strength, incredible perversion too, a mix of the courageous and the outrageous that did make it seem that orthodoxy and consensus were always somewhere else in human affairs.
“What happened to Xavier Pangborn?” Dan asked, warning Peter with a look.
“We awoke in a house with Dr. Pangborn and women we didn’t know tending to us. Alonzo was downstairs, furious, so very angry, but also very afraid that Pangborn would tell the authorities and so was trying to be civil. The same shame and guilt that had made Pangborn help us had also led him to destroy all incriminating papers and exhibits of his own. Now he was a pillar of belated virtue. He said he’d have contacts keep an eye on us. Alonzo would never be sure who he meant and so actually made the best of the situation. He eventually sold off his own collection and brought us down to Australia.”
“So you were reunited with Jackie.”
Julie frowned. “It was more like meeting her for the first time really. Jenny and I were too young to remember her with the show.”
“She became very taken with Jenny. Why is that, Julie?”
“Jenny has always been shy and fragile. The trauma of what those men did, the results of the separation—she took it all so much harder than I did. One of us had to cope. One of us had to be stronger.”
“But Jackie came looking for you, too, Julie. Jackie cares enough for you to have searched for you.”
Julie’s mouth was a grim line. Her frown crushed her brow with the intensity of suffering, not merely concentration.
They should stop soon. But there was still so much to learn and Julie was so responsive, so lucid like this. He’d never have expected it. Dan decided to avoid further mention of Jackie; that was the harming stressor here.
“How did Alonzo earn his living in Melbourne, Julie?”
The frown went away; her mouth softened. “He had contacts there—keepers of Wunderkammern like himself. One of them gave him a job as assistant curator in a local museum.”
“With a secret room no doubt.” Dan couldn’t help himself.
Julie took it as a question. “I suppose. It was a large public museum. There are always parts the public doesn’t see.”
That the brotherhood of cabinet keepers kept secret, Dan decided.
“How did he treat you?”
“Well from then on. We were with family. He found his interests elsewhere. And Xavier Pangborn came to see us.”
“Pangborn did?”
“He was in Australia lecturing at ANU and Monash. One evening he stopped by. That was before he went missing.”
“Went missing?” It was going wild again.
“It was a terrible thing. His wife was with him. There was a big search. It was in all the papers.”
Did Alonzo kill him? Dan wanted to ask, but somehow knew Julie would have no idea. If her story were true, this terrible, elaborate, improbable tale, she had every reason to want to put it out of mind. He was probably going too far now. But Jackie had disturbed him; the case of this mysterious young woman sitting before him had opened out, blossomed amazingly. There were too many facts but not enough certainties.
It didn’t stop Peter.
“Julie, what did you mean Alonzo made Carlo into a nice pair of wings?”
“Peter!”
“She isn’t under, Doctor Dan. She’s pretending to be in a trance!”
Dan was affronted, amazed yet convinced all at once. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but of course she was pretending; it had let her deal with experiences too difficult to face otherwise. But the illusion had to be preserved. He had to try and save it.
“Peter, listen very carefully. Trust my professional judgement here. I know for a fact Julie is under, and she’s going to answer your question right now to prove it. Julie, please answer Peter’s question.”
Dan again leant forward slightly, urging the young woman with his body language to continue with the vital pretence.
And the words came in the same calm tone she had been using at the outset.
“Alonzo made monsters in the old way. Many keepers of Wunderkammern did. You know, fitting bat wings to the bodies of lizards, then carefully drying them to give dragons. Adding a human foetus’s arms to the body of a skate. Sticking horns onto monkey skulls. The first platypus taken to Europe was regarded as such a fake. They tried to pull the beak off. Carlo was killed and dried, flayed and ‘leathered.’ His skin was used for wings.”
Wilder and wilder, Dan thought. This can’t go on. Julie improvising; Peter playing the role of a conspirator in some charade. Though Jackie had been real. She had been.
“Ask her about her surname,” Peter prompted, leaning forward as well, playing his part, though he looked more concerned than ever. “Haniver.”
“Haniver?” Dan echoed, but the phone rang. He crossed to his desk, grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”
“Dan, it’s Jay. Stephanie’s not answering her mobile. She was going to do a lost motorist routine. Knocking at the door, asking for directions, so she may have switched it off.”
Dan kept him voice low and matter-of-fact. “Is there a problem?”
“Not necessarily. But it wasn’t our arrangement. Whenever there’s risk, what we call a ‘nasty,’ we leave our mobiles on.”
“What about your back-up from Parramatta?”
“Dan, there was enough traffic going into Horsley Park for Stephanie not to stand out. I called Rick and let him go. Oh, and incidentally, the Laser is registered to a Laura Barraclough in Melbourne and hasn’t been reported stolen. I’d say it’s on loan.”
“Okay. Jay, I’m probably overreacting badly but there’s an edge to this I don’t like at all. If Stephanie’s run up against Jackie she may be in trouble.”
“But Jackie isn’t the patient.”
“Correct. Like I said, she’s a patient’s sister and seems pretty unstable. Let me know the moment Stephanie calls in.”
“Done. What do we do in the meantime?”
“You’ve got the number in Dalloway Road?”
“Yes.”
“Call in favors, Jay. See if you can get a local squad car round there.”
“You really do suspect foul play?”
“They won’t find anything,” Julie said from her chair by the windows.
“Hold it a moment, Jay,” Dan said, turning to face her. “What do you mean?”
Julie’s face was like a golden mask in the last of the sunlight. “The house at 72 is a trap. It’s what’s called a ‘false door’ in Egyptology, what the teratophile cabinet owners call a blind to throw off undesirables. But it’s a trap house. Jackie will have taken Stephanie to meet Alonzo and Xavier.”
“But they’re dead!”
“Yes. But she knows it’ll bring me back.”
More and more the briars were coiling up.
“Julie, you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to explain clearly what’s going on!”
“Jackie’s changed the rules. She’s always been concerned with connection, bringing things together, but now she's harming Jenny.”
That was Alonzo with the connection thing, not Jackie! Julie was changing her story again.
“We’re going to bring the police in on this,” Dan said. “Listen, Jay—”
But Julie’s words brought him up short. “You’ll never find the house if you do.”
“What?”
“If you or your friend there call the police, Doctor Dan, I swear I’ll go catatonic and you’ll get nothing. Jackie will never call again. Jenny will die. Stephanie may already be dead.”
“What then?”
“You get this Jay friend of yours to drive us down to Sydney. I’ll take you to the house. Then you can call your police friends.”
“I can’t do that, Julie.”
“But you know you will anyway. I’ve got to save Jenny, Doctor Dan. It has to be this way. I know Jackie.”
Stephanie never called in; her phone remained switched off. The Fairfield police found her car outside 72, found the house deserted, its lights operated by timers, found the shed locked but empty inside when they forced the lock.
This came to them in Jay’s Nissan Patrol as they plunged down the Putty Road, Jay driving, Julie next to him, Dan in the back waiting for Harry Badman to return his calls.
Neither Dan nor Jay was surprised when, at 6.20, they turned into Walgrove Road and headed for Horsley Park. Of course the trap house and the real one would be close enough for convenience.
“Tell us about Alonzo and Xavier Pangborn, Julie,” Dan said. “How they can be involved.”
“You’ll see.”
Dan refused to give up. “I think I might be a better friend to Jenny than you are right now.”
Julie turned in her seat to look at him. “What do you mean?”
“You’re doing this because you want to help Jenny.”
“Yes! Save Jenny!” Still she faced him, half-turned, eyes glittering in the dim interior.
“Why am I doing it?”
“Because you want to know what’s going on. Because of his friend.” She indicated Jay. “Stephanie.”
“More than that. You know it’s more than that.”
“What then?”
“You want to help Jenny. But I want to help Jenny and Julie. Because Jenny needs to have Julie safe too, doesn’t she? It can’t be all right unless you’re both safe.”
“Yes.” It was a ghostly, feeling-charged affirmation, said with a new and different emotion. She believed him, was accepting what he said. Perhaps he was earning the truth from her.
“Tell me how Alonzo and Xavier are involved!”
And Julie told them as they did 110 ks along Walgrove Road.
“Both men were interested in joining opposites, in bringing things together, the old alchemical quest. Alonzo left us joined. Xavier used us because we were. The prize of Xavier’s collection, probably genuine, were two joined bodies.”
“Congenitally joined?”
“Oh no, Doctor Dan. An ancient Roman punishment was to tie the condemned to a corpse, back to back, face to face, then leave you. If you weren’t lucky enough to die from shock, your body was poisoned by the rotting cadaver. Necrosis took over. Xavier had acquired the preserved remains of such a wretch left like this in a cell in ancient Syria long ago. Preserved by desert heat and aridity. The bodies were unearthed in the 1700s, reached Amsterdam in the 1830s, finally made it into Xavier’s collection just before we were born. The same year.”
Dan thought he understood. “Xavier acquired the double corpses. Alonzo then fathered conjoined daughters not long after. He couldn’t resist. He left you like that as a gesture, a living symbol of Xavier’s exhibit.”
“Yes.” It was breathed rather than said. “That was partly the reason. He also enjoyed the notion for itself.”
“Then the separation—”
“Was motivated by genuine compassion from Xavier, we believe, by outrage at something they’d done as competitive, obsessive, heartless, younger men, not just to spite a rival.”
“Then—” And again Dan understood. “When Xavier went missing—”
“Yes. Alonzo avenged himself in the appropriate way. Xavier ended his days in a cellar face to face with a corpse.”
“How do you know this?”
“Jackie told me.”
“Jackie! How does she know?”
“She became Alonzo’s favorite when he came to Australia. He needed to gloat. He showed her what he’d done.”
“Showed her! My God!” They turned off Walgrove Road onto Horsley Drive, then Julie directed them right into Walworth and along the crests of the low hills, the road winding its way past isolated houses with cheerily lit windows, past long intervening outlooks and swales where the land rolled away in darkened vistas, marked only by occasional, far-off, twinkling points of light, touches of civilization and sanity.
Enough touches. For other things were out there as well. The residues of madness and obsession.
“Lots of room out here, Doctor Dan,” Julie said, as if answering him. “Lots of houses and sheds few people ever get to see inside of.”
Lots of opportunities for secret lives, Dan thought. “What will Jackie do, Julie?”
“I don’t know, Doctor Dan. But I think she wants to harm me and Jenny.”
“She said she cared for Jenny. For you too.”
“Sometimes she does. But she scared me. I had to leave.”
You left Jenny! Dan couldn’t accept that. “Julie, was Jenny already dead when you ran away?”
And is Jackie waiting to, Xavier-like, join the two of you back together? Face to face? To reunite you at last?
“Not when I left. But Jackie loves Jenny. She wouldn’t harm her.”
“She might to get at you. People do it all the time. Harm what they love.”
“Not Jenny!” Julie said as if desperately needing to believe it. “Turn here!”
There was a street sign Dan didn’t have time to read or even ask about because, almost immediately, Julie was telling Jay to pull over in front of a large open field. No, not a field—a drab fibro house sat at the end of a driveway, a single light showing dimly from what seemed to be the living room. To the right of the house was a large corrugated iron shed, just like the one Stephanie had described for the place on Dalloway Road, about thirty metres by fifteen, four metres or so high, with no visible windows and none of the double doors you’d expect for housing large vehicles in such a structure.
“There.” Julie pointed, indicating the shed and the solitary door they could see on its northwestern corner.
Jay reached for his car-phone.
“Don’t!” Julie said, in a voice that actually startled Dan, so different it was to anything he’d ever heard from her. “Please! She will harm Jenny! And Stephanie! She probably doesn’t know we’re here yet!”
Jay switched off the engine. “Lives are at risk, Julie.”
“They certainly will be if we don’t follow her system.”
“System?” Jay asked before Dan could.
“That’s a Wunderkammer there,” Julie answered. “She will have prepared it for us.”
Again Jay reached for the phone. “Someone has to know. No one’s going in there.”
Dan gripped his shoulder. “Jay, it probably does have to be this way. What’s the layout, Julie?”
“She will have changed it. It’s the House of Iitoi most likely. From the Hopi legend. The maze pattern you see all over the Southwestern USA. The Arizonan labyrinth with Death at the centre. Your journey through the maze to Death at the centre is the journey through life.”
“Julie!” Dan said, still gripping Jay’s shoulder, knowing how carefully this had to be played. “Tell us what to expect.”
“There’s usually an entry corridor going round the perimeter, leading inwards. There’ll be photographs, exhibits to arouse interest, vanitas mundi tableaux.”
“Vanitas what?” Jay asked.
“Displays,” Dan said. “Vitrines containing exhibits. Go on, Julie.”
“Definitely a maze.”
“With traps? Shortcuts? You’ve been in there. You’ve seen it.”
“I can’t say. She will have changed it, Doctor Dan. But she wants me in there with Jenny. She won’t risk harming me.”
“Give us the address here, Julie,” Dan said. “As we go in, Jay phones the police. No one goes anywhere till that’s done.”
“But as we go in,” Julie said. “I have to be in there. Promise. Both of you.”
Dan did at once. Jay hesitated, furious, then grudgingly did so, as if such oaths could hold true just by being given. There was danger here, and madness, though fortunately Jay, like Dan, recognised an essential process at work, saw that any show of force could not guarantee the safety of lives within. But a trail of crumbs had to be left for the cavalry, even if it was to be after the event. Everything on Jackie’s terms, if they decided to go in.
