Magic or Madness Read online

  There were seven towels hanging to dry from the various hooks and railings and two scales. The large, metal one with sliding weights was clearly for weighing yourself, but what was the small electronic one on the countertop for? I turned it on and dropped a tissue on it: 1.1882 grams. Talk about precision. To weigh tiny dried flowers, maybe? It had never occurred to me before that magic might need scientific precision, since it was all make-believe anyway.

  In a neat row in front of the mirror were five hairbrushes. How could anyone possibly need more than one? I picked up the biggest. The handle and back of the brush were made of a yellowy white stuff. It was smooth but definitely not plastic. Ivory? There was kind of a dip in the middle. I pushed it, and the back of the brush popped open.

  It was full of teeth. Thirty-three of them.

  “Bugger.”

  Five of the teeth had fillings in them. Definitely human.

  Eight had scattered across the counter, making a sound like restless fingernails. I gathered them up, feeling queasy, and shoved them back into the brush. It snapped shut with a click. The teeth felt exactly the same as the brush itself. Is something still ivory if it’s made from human teeth?

  This really was my evil grandmother’s house.

  Suddenly I felt like I was going to chunder. With careful steps, I retreated into the bedroom and out onto the balcony, inhaling fresh air and grasping the reassuringly cold and solid iron of the railing. After a few moments, the chunderous feeling in my stomach began to fade.

  The backyard was dominated by one of the biggest Moreton Bay fig trees I’d ever seen. Sarafina had described it as a big tree, but big didn’t cover it. It was taller than the house. Much taller. Its enormous canopy spread out to cover the entire yard and beyond. Some of its branches had been lopped to prevent them growing through the railing and into the bedroom. But it still seemed to threaten the house.

  I’d seen what happened when trees were allowed to grow unchecked. In the country there are lots of old broken-down houses with trees growing right through them unstoppably, until all that’s left is a sad, rusted, corrugated-iron skeleton, overrun by the tree that has eaten it.

  The cut-back branches were really close. They’d been lopped off recently, giving off that new-cut-wood smell. Above me some of the branches still touched the house, as if plotting its downfall.

  Instinctively I liked the tree. For one thing, Sarafina had escaped from this very balcony on its branches. You could be the worst climber in the world (which neither I nor Sarafina was) and still get from balcony to fig tree to back lane and then . . . away.

  I wished I could leave right then. I wanted to, badly. But I wasn’t ready. I had no supplies, not enough food, not enough money. I’d taken all the cash Sarafina had hidden in the lining of our suitcase—$250. It had seemed like a lot, but today, having seen how much the taxi ride from the airport cost, it seemed like nothing. I had her bank card, in the name of Suzanne Alexander, but it was new and I didn’t know the pin number. I’d tried the usual ones and they hadn’t worked. I’d have to ask Sarafina when I saw her.

  I knew where I was and how to get from here to Central, where buses and trains would take me out of Sydney. I also knew the name of Sarafina’s hospital—Kalder Park—but not where it was. I couldn’t possibly run away until I’d seen her, told her what I was doing—I’m going to run away just like you did, Sarafina, make my own way in the world—and promised to come back for her when I was eighteen and no one could stop me.

  But not yet. Any fool can walk out a door, climb out a window. Running away is not about simply getting out of the house. It’s about not getting caught two days later.

  I checked my watch. Esmeralda had been gone twelve minutes. Did I have enough time to check through more drawers? Or to go downstairs to the cellar?

  It wasn’t really a question. After finding those teeth, I had to see the cellar. But what was I going to find there?

  5

  into the Cellar

  The cellar door lock was small and modern, with a dead bolt. No way would the infinity key fit. Part of me was relieved. I didn’t know how far the shops were; Esmeralda could be back any second now. I did not want to be caught down here.

  I asked myself why I needed to see the cellar. What was I hoping for? Proof that my mother’s stories were real? Sarafina Was Here written in blood on the cellar wall?

  I’d seen enough in Esmeralda’s room to know that she was exactly what my mother claimed. Human teeth. And yet . . .

  Was this really the house Sarafina had escaped from all those years ago? There was electricity, hot running water, and it was beautiful—even Esmeralda’s chaotic room. Except that it was laid out exactly as Sarafina had taught me. The cellar door was where it was supposed to be, right here, behind the stairs.

  I reached for the handle. It turned easily. I let go fast, stung. My heart beat faster. The door was unlocked. Bugger.

  How much time before my grandmother returned? I looked at my watch again: eighteen minutes had passed.

  Why not check out the backyard? My escape route. If Esmeralda came back too soon, I could climb the tree, sneak back into my room through hers.

  I reached for the door handle again, my hand shaking. Stop it. What could possibly happen if I was caught down here? Okay, lots of things. Bad things.

  But would they really? The authorities knew I was here. A social worker was supposed to come by to see me once a fortnight, check on how I was “adjusting.” It was perfectly safe, I told myself, only half believing it, to explore the house . . . even if I was caught.

  A tremor went through me. I tried not to think about the thirty-three teeth, the flowers that had dissolved into nothing. What if Esmeralda made me do the things she’d made my mother do? She couldn’t, I told myself. Sarafina had been a little kid. By the time she ran away, Sarafina was still only twelve. I was fifteen.

  Esmeralda couldn’t do anything vile to me too soon, and I’d be gone before long.

  They weren’t the most comforting thoughts, but they were enough to make me open the door. I groped for a light switch. Nothing but a cold stone wall. The light from the hallway didn’t reach very far down the stairs. I could see only the first ten steps, nothing of the cellar below. It was very dark and cold: the first stone step chilled my bare feet. This was how I’d imagined the whole house. Dark and bone-penetratingly cold, even in summer.

  I descended until the light ended in front of me. The darkness had a sharp edge, like a curtain. Here be dragons. I edged my left foot forward, let my toes curl around the stone. What if I took another step forward and there was nothing there? Would I fall all the way to the cellar floor? Or keep falling and falling forever?

  Stop it. These were the kinds of fears that Sarafina always chided me about. There were enough real things to be scared of.

  I took a deep breath, kept my left hand firmly on the stone wall, and edged forward. My foot found another cold stair. I felt for the stone in my pocket, my lucky ammonite. Sarafina had given it to me when she first taught me about the Fibonacci series. Each segment spiralling out from the centre, equalling the area of the two previous ones, infinity in a fossilised shell, a golden spiral. It was beautiful. I carried it with me wherever I went. Normally it comforted me, yet this time I didn’t feel any less nervous.

  I went down the rest of the way slowly, a step at a time. There were so many, I started to think the stairs would never end. When my soles finally slapped the uneven stone of the cellar floor, I yelped, “Bloody hell.”

  For a moment I couldn’t move. I was in the cellar.

  My mother’s stories flooded into me. All those things Sarafina had seen—they had happened down here. She’d been tied to a chair here, been made to watch Esmeralda slit the throat of Le Roi, Sarafina’s fat ginger cat. Now I was in that same cellar. I half expected to feel the squish of cat’s blood and innards under my toes.

  I tentatively felt for a light switch, half hoping I wouldn’t find one. Did I rea
lly want to see this place? Of course I did. I had to. Anything was better than standing here in the dark, imagining what was in front of me. Especially now that my eyes—finally—had started to adjust to the darkness. The cellar was crowded with dark shapes.

  A loud groan came from upstairs and then a boom. The front door opening and closing.

  I froze. Esmeralda. Bugger, I thought. I’d left the cellar door ajar. What if she came down here? I had to hide. But all those dark shapes. What if they still had their teeth?

  What were they, anyway? Not anything living. (Which immediately made me think of something dead.) Whatever they were, they didn’t move. There was no sound of breathing other than my own. Dead things, I reminded myself, can’t hurt you.

  The floorboards overhead creaked loudly. Quickly I threaded my way between the shapes, stumbling on the uneven stones under my feet, afraid that I would bump into the strange shapes. I scraped my knee on concrete, lost my footing, and steadied myself against something that felt like smooth, rounded glass. My heart beat in my fingertips.

  Above me, the door creaked open wide. I ducked down, not sure if I was actually hidden.

  There was a click, and the cellar was instantly bathed in dazzling light. My eyes watered, but I forced them open.

  Wine racks everywhere, holding hundreds and hundreds of bottles of wine. Enough to hide me, unless she was searching for me.

  Footsteps down the stairs. I crouched even lower, holding my breath, praying Esmeralda wouldn’t see me. I heard the scraping of wine bottle against brick. Then steps back up the stairs. The lights went out. The door closed.

  I breathed again.

  My night vision was gone, but I was more sure of my footing now that I’d actually seen the cellar. All I had to do was get back to my room without being busted. No worries. No harder than crossing the Nullarbor Plain naked with only a teaspoon of water.

  In my haste I banged my shin on the bottom step. Stupid. After a second it began to throb.

  I climbed the cellar stairs fast. At the top I saw a light switch glowing faintly. How had I missed it the first time? I knew exactly what Sarafina would have said about letting my fears make me miss the obvious.

  I stood close to the door, listening. Noises coming from the kitchen. Now or never. I grasped the door handle, afraid she’d locked me down here, but it turned.

  I slipped out, tiptoeing along the hall, then up the stairs and into my room, shutting the door and pushing the chair back into place under the door handle. I threw myself on the bed, out of breath and sweaty, my right shin throbbing. But the witch hadn’t caught me.

  Something sharp dug into my hip. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the infinity key. What was it the key to? I put it away in my backpack. Whatever it opened was important. Why else would Esmeralda keep it in a locked drawer?

  My head was filled with a hundred confusing thoughts. The legendary cellar had turned out to be an exceptionally well-lit wine cellar, crowded with endless bottles. Sacrificing animals down there would be pretty difficult. There’d barely been room to move. It didn’t smell of blood. Nor of antiseptic for getting rid of the scent of blood. It smelled only of dust.

  The house had electricity. There were telephones and radios and televisions.

  I couldn’t believe Sarafina had lied. I knew she hadn’t. Sarafina didn’t lie, though it was true that sometimes she could be, well, confused. Besides, there were those teeth, the dried flowers, the key. Maybe Esmeralda was doing her “magic” somewhere else. But she still kept a few things here. Carefully hidden or locked in drawers.

  The welfare people must’ve looked around before they’d allowed me to stay here. Esmeralda had to hide what she was. So she’d cleared the magic out and scrubbed the house cleaner than it had ever been.

  I looked around “my” room one more time. It was gorgeous. It was a shame this was Esmeralda’s house. It was a shame I couldn’t live here with Sarafina. It was a shame I couldn’t stay.

  6

  Through the Window

  My bed was moving, a giant hand shaking it hard. I tried to wake up. My whole body was heavy, thick with sleep.

  A rattling sound, like chains. A giant’s chains?

  No. It was the windows and doors. Oh, bugger, I thought, Esmeralda’s coming for me. Then I was awake and sitting up, my eyes wide.

  It stopped. Esmeralda wasn’t there. Hadn’t burst through the door wielding an axe.

  I jumped up and ran out onto the balcony. Maybe it had just been a semi-trailer passing by? But there was no truck disappearing from view. And I couldn’t see how any truck big enough to shake the whole house could fit down the narrow street. An earth tremor, maybe?

  It was 7 AM. The adrenaline leaving me, I smiled. I’d had hardly any sleep, but it didn’t matter—I’d survived my first night in the wicked witch’s house (and possibly an earthquake).

  Alive, but also hungry and lonely. At least I could do something about the first. I dug the last sossi roll and half a Violet Crumble out of my backpack, all that remained from my dinner last night. So much for my supplies lasting. I ate it all in seconds, still feeling hungry afterwards.

  Was Esmeralda up yet? I couldn’t imagine how she could have slept through that rattling. I pressed my ear to the door. The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs made me jump back. Had Esmeralda been waiting for that exact moment?

  She stopped outside my door. I held my breath. The floorboards creaked. I looked at the gap under the door. A white envelope appeared.

  I heard her going back down the stairs. I breathed again, pulled the letter out. It was thick. My name was on the front in big, slanting, even handwriting. I placed it on the desk unopened.

  Then I washed my hands.

  As soon as I was sure she wouldn’t hear, I crept out to the top of the stairs, listening to the sounds coming from the kitchen. The back door opened and closed, creaking loudly on its hinges. The whole house shook again. What on earth?

  I tiptoed down the hall, picked my way carefully across Esmeralda’s messy floor and out onto her balcony. Peeking down through the lacework railing, I couldn’t see her anywhere. The fig tree blocked a lot, but not the path she’d take from back door to garage door. She couldn’t have gotten to the garage that quickly. Besides, it was a roller door—I’d’ve heard it. Maybe she hadn’t gone out back at all? I crept to the top of the stairs and listened intently. Nothing. The house was quiet.

  I checked every room: library, lounge and dining rooms, even the laundry and downstairs bathroom, ready to run back upstairs at the slightest noise. They were all, including the cellar, empty. Esmeralda wasn’t anywhere.

  Was there a hidden passage? Could she be watching me right now? Sarafina had warned me that the house was strange, that her mother had a habit of appearing from nowhere. Esmeralda has many ways, Sarafina had said, of convincing you that magic is real. You have to remember that it’s just tricks. Mirrors and light. Nothing supernatural.

  I wondered, as I had many times before, if it was possible that Esmeralda simply used the word magic for all those things that science hadn’t yet explained. Even for some that had been explained. Lots of things my mother’d taught me didn’t entirely make sense. She explained them in terms of patterns and numbers, but I could imagine someone with less knowledge of mathematics would think them magical. It isn’t magic that on so many flowers—from buttercups to orchids to passionflowers—the number of petals is a Fib, just science.

  To make sure the house was empty, I did one of Sarafina’s tricks, one of the ones that didn’t entirely make sense to me: I stood still, closed my eyes, just as she’d taught me. Squeezed the ammonite in my pocket and thought of the stars at night. Hundreds and hundreds of stars as far as I could see, too many to count at a glance. I let my fear and anxiety slip away. When I was relaxed, or as close as I’d managed since Sarafina had gone to the hospital, my head was filled with Fibs and a spiral grew inside me, radiating out, making me its centre as it moved through the
house. It touched no living thing bigger than a skink.

  I opened my eyes again. There wasn’t anyone in the house but me.

  Sarafina called this process meditation. When you meditate, your brain chemistry changes. You become more sensitive to the patterns of other people, of animals. Not just their brain, but the energy they expel just by living. In a meditative state you can feel entropy, the process of decay, and know whether anything living is nearby. Rocks, bricks, wood don’t have brains, so they expel energy at a much slower rate. Their patterns are more static. Not magic, science.

  It never failed.

  A house empty of people. I could feel it. The only buzz came from the electrical appliances, the plants, cockroaches, spiders, ants, lizards, and skinks. Nothing human but me.

  With Esmeralda gone, I could check out the downstairs escape route, through the backyard. I walked into the kitchen. Seeing the reality was a lot different from looking at the plan. It was bigger than a kitchen had any right to be, and it was all escape routes: a back door and lots of large open windows.

  And a note from Esmeralda stuck to the fridge:

  Gone to work (speed dial 1). Might be able to duck back for afternoon tea. Otherwise I won’t be home till late. Rita will be by at 11 AM to clean. She’s a love. She can tell you anything you need to know about the house. She’ll make you lunch and dinner, but if you get hungry before that, help yourself to anything in the kitchen.

  She’d signed it with love. I tried not to gag. I wondered if Rita was another freak who liked to hurt animals and people and used magic as her excuse. On the counter were two wooden blocks full of knives.

  I turned the handle on the back door, but it resisted stubbornly. I tried to rattle it, but it wouldn’t budge. Turned it the other way. Nothing. But I’d just heard Esmeralda open it. It didn’t feel like it was sticking—it was locked.