Magic or Madness Read online

  There were lots of traffic lights and we caught every red one. There hadn’t been nearly so many in Dubbo when we’d driven in from Nevertire in the ambulance with Sarafina unconscious in the back. I wanted to ride with her, but they wouldn’t let me. The ambos had driven through every light whether it was green or not.

  That had been Friday, two days ago. I hadn’t given anyone our real names, but Esmeralda still found us, still had me sent to her.

  I blinked, not wanting to cry. I started the Fibs again, not letting them slip away so easily this time.

  3

  In the Witch’s House

  The house was huge, as big as a pub, looming over its tiny front yard and the narrow street, making the rest of the houses look puny and insignificant. I stared up at the wrought-iron balcony, clutching my backpack to my chest, not wanting to go in. It was even bigger than Sarafina had said. I tried not to think about the cellar underneath.

  Fibs, I told myself. What was the next one? Fib (47): 2,971,215,073 (a prime factor). Add it to Fib (46) to get Fib (48): 4,807,526,976.

  I followed Esmeralda’s shiny shoes, dazzling in the sunlight, through the low wrought-iron gate, along a short tiled path, between squat rosebushes and a tangle of tiny native violets. The tiles on the porch were maroon, black and cream, arranged in a pattern of hexagons and seven-pointed stars. The doormat said Welcome.

  As she opened the heavy wooden door, it let out a loud groan. I almost jumped.

  “I keep meaning to oil it,” Esmeralda said.

  I squinted. The house was almost as light inside as out. I’d always imagined it dark and dank, smelling of blood and bones. Instead I smelled fresh flowers, books, and timber.

  I was standing in a long, wide corridor of reddish brown polished wooden floorboards that shone almost as brightly as Esmeralda’s shoes. I looked down at a blurry reflection of myself.

  The ceilings were ridiculously high. I wondered how she managed to change the light bulbs. At the end of the corridor I saw the bright shining surfaces of what was obviously the kitchen. Everything was so bright and shiny, so clean.

  Esmeralda turned. I lowered my gaze just in time.

  “Do you want something to eat now? Or should I show you your room? There’s an en suite.”

  Fib (49) is 7,778,742,049.

  Esmeralda let out a sound that could have been a sigh. “Your bedroom, then.”

  As soon as Esmeralda left the room, I jammed a chair under the door handle. I felt shaky but pleased with myself. I’d managed to get through the whole ordeal without looking at Esmeralda or saying one word.

  I sat down on the bed. It was hard to believe. I was in Esmeralda’s house and Sarafina was in the loony bin. I was in the house my mother had run away from at the age of twelve. I’d heard about this place my whole life. It wasn’t what I had expected. A clean, airy witch’s house?

  And a clean, airy bedroom. I looked around carefully. This was to be my room. Bare and unornamented, no pictures on the wall, no rugs on the floor, and plain white curtains at the windows. The floorboards shone like the ones downstairs. There was a side table beside the bed as well as a desk, bookshelves filled with books, a couch, and a stand with a television resting on it.

  I was half tempted to turn it on. I’d seen so little television in my life—only horse racing, cricket, and footie in pubs, and only five minutes at a time. Sarafina always said I wasn’t missing much, though she hadn’t seen much more than me.

  The room was large, with two glass doors that led out onto a balcony, a big one that ran along the front of the house. I leaned out over the lacework iron railing, looking up and down the street. None of the other houses were as big as this one, but each had a balcony, however small.

  It would be pretty easy to climb down to the street from here. A couple walked by below, wheeling a baby in a pram. One of them looked up at me and waved. Hmmm, I thought, waving back, and pretty easy to be spotted doing it. I needed a different escape route.

  I walked the length of the balcony, came to another set of glass doors. The room I glimpsed through them was a mirror version of my own, though more sparsely furnished. The bed had a mattress but no covers. Another guest room. For a moment I wondered if it was waiting for another prisoner like me. Someone else trapped in Esmeralda’s web.

  I went back to my bedroom, continued my recce. There were two more doors to open. The first led into an enormous walk-in wardrobe. I stepped inside, stretched my arms out, and spun around. I didn’t come close to touching the shelves. It was bigger than any of the rooms I’d ever stayed in. How could one person need this much space?

  When I opened the second door, I was dazzled by gleaming white tiles.

  “Bugger.”

  It was the biggest bathroom in the world. It had a bath, a huge bath that you could practically do laps in, and a separate shower. A skylight in the ceiling flooded the white tiles with sunshine. I had never seen anything like it. There were no windows, though. It was a dead end.

  I’d never lived in a house before. I’d never had my own room before, let alone one with a balcony and a bathroom. And here, in my evil grandmother’s house, I had all those things. I would have swapped it all in a nanosecond to be with Sarafina.

  There was fresh lavender on the dressing table and in the bathroom. The smell was very soothing. Too soothing. Sarafina had taught me lots of chemistry, including the properties of herbs and flowers. Lavender could confuse and induce forgetfulness. I shredded it, stem, flowers, leaves, flushed them down the toilet, then washed my hands.

  Neatly folded on the bed was a pair of blue-and-white cotton PJs with matching dressing gown and slippers. They were grown-up looking, no little-girl ribbons or flowers or bows. I liked them.

  I sniffed at the pyjamas and gown carefully. I couldn’t quite identify the scent. It was lovely and didn’t make my eyes water. Better to be safe than sorry, though. I threw them into the bathtub and turned on the hot water. Piping hot. Good. Heat would soon dissolve any oils or perfumes. It was summer; they’d dry quick enough.

  Next I pulled the sheets off the bed and shoved the mattress up against the wall. I was sweating by the time I was done. I didn’t find any ritual objects: no bones, teeth, amulets, or small figures.

  None of those things would really work, of course, but my grandmother believed they did and would have been disconcerted to find them gone. Sarafina had taught me how to keep the upper hand. Besides, things like that are creepy.

  I let the mattress fall back onto the bed and remade it.

  There were lots of books. More books than in some of the country libraries I’d seen. I grew tired just thinking about flicking through each one to check for dried herbs and flowers. It was so long since I’d had a proper night’s sleep.

  I sat down on the bed, staring at the bookcase. The titles I recognised were books I’d always wanted to read: The Magic Pudding, The Wizard of Oz, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Nargun and the Stars, The Hobbit, brightly coloured books of fairy tales, all of them about magic. Sarafina would have hated those books.

  I knew my mother was not like other mothers, and not just because she’d gone mad and tried to kill herself. But it was worth giving up a few stupid books: other mothers weren’t as interesting or fun as Sarafina. They didn’t teach you number secrets or go walkabout with you. I missed her.

  I lay back on the bed and looked up at the white ceiling. It was so hard to keep it in my head that I was really here. My brain kept running through everything Sarafina had ever told me about this place, about her mother.

  Esmeralda believed magic was real, truly thought she was a witch, and did terrible things in her cellar because of this belief. Growing up with Esmeralda had made Sarafina hate the very idea of magic. She hated fairy tales, bunyips, hobbits, the Harry Potter books (which I’d also been longing to read), all of it.

  Most of all she hated Esmeralda.

  Esmeralda had kept Sarafina locked in her bedroom for years. She wasn’t allowed out until
she admitted magic was real. But instead of giving in, Sarafina had run away.

  In Esmeralda’s house you had to move counterclockwise. It kept the magical energy running in the right direction: widdershins.

  There was no electricity in the house because it interfered with magic. There was no cooling in summer, no heating in winter. No telephones, no television, no radio. No nothing.

  Esmeralda had sex with every man she met in order to steal their vital energies. Some of them died.

  She sacrificed rats, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, and goats. She ate human babies that she bought from their impoverished mothers.

  I felt sick thinking about it. I closed my eyes to stop from crying. I missed Sarafina so much it made me ache all over. Looking at the books, wanting to read them made me feel that I was betraying her. I wouldn’t touch the books. Even the fact that the house did have electricity (probably added since Sarafina had run away), that I had already turned light switches on and off, made me feel guilty.

  The books, the pretty room, the balcony, the bathroom, the television, the blue-and-white robe and slippers, the electricity—I knew they were all bribes, tricks. Esmeralda wanted to turn me against my mother, make me believe in magic.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Reason?”

  For a second I thought it was Sarafina. Every time I heard Esmeralda’s voice, I was shocked again by how much she sounded like my mother.

  “I’m going to the shops. Is there anything you want? You should eat something.”

  I didn’t answer. I knew not to touch my grandmother’s food. Firstly, it was disgusting: Esmeralda liked to eat snails, frogs, livers, brains. Secondly, in the old days she’d drugged Sarafina’s food to make her compliant.

  I’d stocked up. At the hospital I’d bought three Violet Crumbles, two Mars bars, and four sausage rolls. Even cold, sossi rolls were my favourites. I figured I could make the food last at least a couple of days. I wasn’t going to stay any longer than that.

  I listened to Esmeralda’s footsteps going down the wooden stairs, creaking loudly, then I crept out onto the balcony to wait for the sound of her leaving. The heavy wooden door gave its almost human groan. I ducked my head behind the railing, watching as my grandmother walked down the street.

  I looked at my watch: 4:35 PM. I’d give myself twenty minutes to check out the house as carefully and quietly as I could. Everything I did from now on was practice for my escape.

  4

  In the Witch’s Bedroom

  I tiptoed to the top of the stairs. I told myself I was searching for escape routes, but the plan of this house was etched in my brain. I knew there were two ways out the back: from the balcony outside Esmeralda’s room and from the kitchen. All I needed to do was check them, see if I could climb down from Esmeralda’s balcony onto the fig tree, and run away, as Sarafina had eighteen years ago.

  Figuring out how best to escape was my priority, but I also wanted to search this house, find all its secrets. My mother had taught me to be curious, to ask questions, to explore. I had to compare the reality of Esmeralda’s house with the plan, to compare the stories Sarafina had told me with the places where they happened.

  I had to see Esmeralda’s room, see what she wore, what she kept on her bedside table, what secrets lay hidden in her dressing table.

  And, well, I wanted to hassle Esmeralda. She truly believed in her bones and amulets. That’s the problem with believing in magic: it backfires. Even though I knew it was bulldust and that her witchy stuff had no power, I could still muck Esmeralda around because she believed in it absolutely. Sarafina had taught me well. I knew just what to do.

  Most of all, even though the very idea terrified me, I had to see the cellar I had heard so many terrible stories about. Magic couldn’t kill anything or anyone, but knives could.

  Sarafina had also made it clear that there were times when curiosity had to be put on hold, times when curiosity could get you into trouble. The cellar most likely fell into that category, but, well, how could I resist? How could I not explore every room in the house that I had been warned about my entire life?

  But not known. Plans, no matter how accurate—and Sarafina’s were accurate—gave no sense of what a house is like. The corridors, the rooms, the stairs were all where they were supposed to be, which was definitely reassuring. But they were so vast!

  Somehow Sarafina had never made that clear. Or maybe I just couldn’t imagine a house this big. Unless it was a pub divided into lots of cramped little hotel rooms upstairs—none of which was ever quite clean—and a big, smoky bar smelling of stale beer below. I always preferred camping or staying in caravan parks. Though you could meet amazing people in pubs.

  I crept along the corridor, trying not to make the floorboards squeak, then opened the door to Esmeralda’s room. It was double the size of the one she had given me but much, much more cluttered. It was a mess. I felt claustrophobic standing in it, as though something were about to fall on me. Paintings and photographs filled every available centimetre of wall space, so crowded they looked likely to drop from the wall if I trod too heavily.

  Three hundred and sixty-five of them. The number popped into my head as it always does. Counting for me is like breathing. Though it’s not really counting: I see numbers first, then the thing. Twelve, my brain will chime, then I’ll see that there are twelve bananas in a bowl, snails on a wall, or ants on my foot.

  The floor was as cluttered as the walls, strewn with shoes and piles of newspapers, magazines, books, disposable coffee cups, and other things I couldn’t quite identify. It was impossible to put my whole foot down without disturbing things, so I tiptoed. Too many layers for an accurate count. Sarafina would have estimated, but unless the things have all the same dimensions, like lollies in ajar, I need to see what I’m counting.

  I stared at all the photos and paintings until my eyes stopped at what looked like a photo of my mother as a baby. Curly black hair, big brown eyes, fair skin, clutching a rattle and sucking her thumb. I turned the photo over and opened the frame. Lying against the back of the photo was a pale yellow dried flower I didn’t recognise. Smaller than my thumbnail, with five petals.

  I tried to pick it up using thumb and forefinger, but the tiny, faded thing crumbled to dust in my fingers. For a few moments the air smelled faintly sweet where it had disintegrated, almost like jasmine. Whatever Esmeralda thought her little flower had been doing, I’d stopped it. When I wiped my fingers on my shorts, there was no trace of dust at all.

  In the only other photo I could be sure was Sarafina, she was six or seven, wearing blue corduroy overalls, climbing on a metal jungle gym. There were eight other kids swarming all over it. I wondered if they’d been her friends. I’d never known Sarafina to have friends. I’d never seen a photo of her when she was a kid before.

  When I opened the back, there was another flower, just like the first. I didn’t touch the pale yellow, just tipped it out, watching the tiny flower disintegrate as soon as it touched the air. A gentle fragrance was in my nostrils, then gone.

  In a way, Esmeralda’s chaos was a relief. It showed how completely different she and Sarafina were. The eerie similarity of their voices had shaken me, but looking at her room proved that was all they had in common. My mother was the neatest, most organised, tidiest person alive, and Esmeralda, judging by this room, had to be about the messiest.

  The bed was covered with twenty-seven books, thirtyfour newspapers, and eighteen magazines. I couldn’t see how Esmeralda could read that many things at the same time. Nor how she managed to get into the bed, let alone sleep in it.

  The bedside table had three drawers: the first two were crowded with fifty-one newspaper and magazine cuttings, eighteen pens, 332 paper clips, nine rubbers, five sharpeners (though no actual pencils), a letter opener, and a box of twelve ink cartridges. No order there for me to disturb. No flowers either.

  The third was locked. I tugged, but it wouldn’t give. Jemmy it? Old-fashioned l
ocks were usually simple to get past. I pulled the bobby pin from my hair and twisted it straight, inserted it into the lock, and pushed at the catch—it clicked.

  The drawer held an old-fashioned key as big as my hand. Nothing else. It looked sinister, all alone in there. Here lies the key to the gates of hell. I smiled to myself, imagining what Sarafina would say to that. The key’s teeth were big and simple, but the other end was a mess of metal curves that wound round and round each other. When I traced them with my finger, I tingled. There was no beginning, no end. Infinity.

  I just bet this was the key to the cellar or to something I wasn’t supposed to see. I pulled it out, put it in my pocket, where it dug into my thigh, and shut the drawer, using the bobby pin to relock it.

  Every chair, the end of the bed, the half-open doors to the walk-in wardrobe and to the balcony were all draped with clothes. The wardrobe itself was bursting with them. I couldn’t understand how anyone could need, want, or for that matter wear that many clothes. Most of the clothes looked almost identical. I examined thirty-eight—thirty-eight—black jackets, finding no difference except in the number of buttons. I felt the linings carefully. One had a single black feather in the inside pocket. I put the feather back upside down, as Sarafina had taught me, imagining how freaked out Esmeralda would be when she discovered it. I wondered what Esmeralda thought the feather would do.

  Unlike the rest of the room, there were patterns here. The wardrobe was stuffed with clothes, but it was ordered. All the white shirts together, the black jackets, the brown skirts. It didn’t look like the wardrobe of a person who would leave empty coffee cups all over the floor. It also occurred to me that while Esmeralda’s room was a disaster, it wasn’t actually dirty. There was little dust. The sheets on the bed seemed clean. The whole house was clean.

  The bathroom was crowded with bottles of gunk, make-up, and I had no idea what else. Strangely, many of the bottles looked like the kind of no-name brand that my mother always bought. I took the lids off some and sniffed at them. They smelled a lot better, though.