Chapter 1
April 26
Welcome to Black Wood House.
This is the front door Janet Campbell burst out of. This is the barren yard she ran across, fleeing for her life. Those are her cries echoing down the lonely street for forty years now.
Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.
Upstairs is a bedroom with bloodstained floorboards. This is where Susan Campbell bled to death, and this is where I’ll sleep. Some people think that’s messed up.
I am not some people.
I carry a stack of moving boxes up the long stretch of dirt driveway snaking through the yard like a scar. It’s silent except for the musical warble of a lone magpie and the half-hearted squabble of the cockatoos in the blackwood tree.
My eyes drift past it to the house. Not for the first time I wonder, Why the hell did someone build a Victorian Gothic in a stuffy country town like Beacon?
Black Wood House is sharp and strange and utterly silent. Its flakingpaint reminds me of peeling skin, and the steeply pitched spire looks like a towering black sword. There’s only one window on the front of the house: a pointed arch overlooking the lounge room and matchingthe front door. Whoever built Black Wood clearly did not want anybody peeking in.
A private, sprawling estate.That’s how the probate realtor described it. It sounds beautiful, and it would have been. Back then. I can imagine it—pea-green lawns large enough for a dozen families to picnic on.
But after forty years of neglect, all that’s left are stark, flat grounds ravaged by kangaroo shit and echidna burrows and choked with knee-high weeds. The property has a barren feel to it, like the very ground is grieving. Like it’s stuck in the memory of that day.
And yet the house itself seems detached from the misery. Like it doesn’t give a shit what happened here all those years ago. Like it wouldn’t care if it happened again.
I haul the boxes inside, up the stairs, to my new bedroom. Themurderroom.
I don’t know what’s more sinister about this room, the faded bloodstain by my bed or the concrete-gray wallpaper. Corpse skin—that’s what it reminds me of. And worse.
Etched into the wallpaper is a massive forest. The black trunks are taller than me, and high above the canopy is a sky dotted with stars. Back in the day, I bet it was a peaceful scene. I imagine Susan propped up in her bed, sipping a hot cup of tea and staring at the forest after a long day of cooking, cleaning, and whatever the hell women did back in the seventies.
Maybe she even felt like she wasinsideit, breathing in the clean air, far away from the pressures of motherhood and her soon-to-be homicidal husband. It would have been dove gray then. Pretty.
I dump the boxes on the floor and reach up on tiptoe to trace my index finger over a diamond-shaped leaf. It instantly flakes off and death spirals to the floor.
Nestled in the crook of a low branch is a family of blackbirds, staring at me with dead eyes. The baby birds look underfed and frightened; their rib cages seem to poke through their papery skin. The mother birdhovers over her children, her eyes sad and desperate. But she can’t help them, because both her wings are missing.
My husband heaves our marriage bed against the back wall, then straightens up and wipes his hands like he’s touched something filthy. He stopped sleeping with me months ago, and our queen-sized velvet bed stares at him reproachfully. Instead, he sleeps quite happily on our couch, though I never once asked him to. He plays the Xbox until the early hours, while I lie awake at 3a.m., reflecting anxiously on all the things I need to fix. Like my marriage.
I don’t like sleeping alone, but God, it’s better than the crushing loneliness of sleeping next to someone who doesn’t want you night after night.
“Thank you,” I tell him awkwardly. “For bringing it up here.”
My husband’s eyes drift to the pillow-sized bloodstain on the floor. It’s impossible not to stare at it. I wonder if he’s imagining it—the morning after the murder, the blood all glossy red like lipstick.
Maybe it’s Maybelline.
Or maybe it’s murder.
“We’ll need to replace these floorboards.” He steps back, grimacing. “For now, just buy a rug to cover it with.”
I nearly snort my laughter. That’s him. Let’s throw a rug over the issue. If you can’t see it, then maybe all that ugliness isn’t even there.
Maybe it’s why he can’t stand looking at me.
I follow him toward the door, thinking of the moving truck waiting outside, jammed full of our five-year life together. We’ve spent nearly everything buying this house, and the renovations will have to be spread out over the next year. And even though we’ve lived in Melbourne for two years, we don’t exactly have any close friends we can stay with while we renovate…. Well, maybe Joe does, but I certainly don’t. The fact that he was willing to make this move with me meant a lot. He’s still here. Still willing to invest in this house and, more importantly,us.I haven’t lost him yet.
I pass by the only window in the room, about the size of my laptopscreen. It’s a fixed window, so there’s no way to open it unless I smash my fist through it. And I’m sure I’ll be tempted after breathing in this stale air every night.
