Chris and I exchange looks. “What?”
“Follow me.”
Chapter 15
When the garage door thuds closed, I think to myself,We’ve made a huge mistake.My eyes adjust to the shadowy dark, and the first thing I see is the nautical ship wheel hanging on the back of the door. A clock is nestled inside the circle, showing the wrong time. A blowfly bumps against a soiled window, buzzing weakly. A white-tailed spider lazes above it, sucking on a wasp corpse.
She’s trapped us in the heart of Nothingland. She is going to leave us whining and begging in the dark.
I reach for a light switch, flicking it up with my palm. Fluorescent light beams overhead, so bright it burns. But, God, it’s cold in here, a low, lingering chill that makes me pull my sleeves down further. The concrete floor is cold and hard, seeping up through my soles and not letting go.
And something else. It stinks in here. A thick sour smell that’s settled into the walls, the floor. Chris wrinkles his nose, and I try not to breathe too deeply. The room is too small for a smell like this. There are no open windows, just stagnant air and that lingering funk. Whatever’s causing the smell, it’s been here awhile.
I step forward as the smell of decay transports me back to Kangaroo Bay. A metallic, fishy smell that makes the tourists cover their noses. But this is even worse. It’s a meaty smell, rancid and oily. Rotting.
“It wasn’t delivered by post,” Kat says, digging around under a workbench. “It was dropped off on the doorstep at night. I don’t know by who.”
Chris inspects the brick wall before gingerly leaning against it. Kat straightens up, puts her hands on her hips, huffing. “Where the hell is it?”
“We can help you look?” Chris offers but makes no attempt to move. “Just let us know what we’re looking for.”
I stare at the white-tailed spider still munching away on a wasp husk. “That’s why you asked if there’d been an update. You want to know who sent it.”
“I called the police,” she confesses, peeking into a cardboard box. “Local copper showed up, took a few photos, wrote a report. I never heard anything after that.”
“How long did it arrive before her attack? And did Hannah see it?”
“Few weeks, I think, and yeah, she saw it.” She crouches in front of a plastic tub. “She kept it hidden in her bedroom closet. Stunk the whole house out. That’s how I found them…after.” She wrinkles her nose, staring grimly inside the tub. “I’ve preserved them best as I could.”
Chris straightens up like he’s been shot, blurts out, “Holy shit…”
I’m so stunned to hear him swear that my attention is pulled to him. My head snaps in his direction, but out of the corner of my eye, I see it. I see her straining to lift something from the box, something massive. She staggers under its weight, and when I realize what it is, I forget everything else.
We don’t move to help her. We can’t.
She’s holding the jaws of a great white shark. The tips of the front row of teeth poke the top of her head; the bottom teeth scrape her belly button. Even in their lifeless state, they carry an unnerving presence. You’re not meant to see this. Thishunter.This brutal masterpiece, evidence of the evil deep. It’s awe inspiring,horrifying.
God,I think.Hannah. She saw this for real.She saw the top jaw, the color of sour milk, curved in a terrifying arc of teeth. She saw them coming for her, felt their serrated blades saw into her flesh. Saw that lower jaw jut forward, opening and snapping shut on her legs, arms…head.
I lift the jaws from Kat’s hands, holding the cartilage tight in my palms, staring inside the gaping mouth, thinking of Hannah. Of the woman I saw on the first night back in Kangaroo Bay.
Not women anymore.
Just scraps.
“Why would she keep these?”
“Knowing Han, she probably thought they were cool. For a long time, I wondered if she’d bought them through her dodgy mates or something. She was into things like that. But after her attack, when I found them…” She shakes her head. “I called the police, but they were useless.”
“I covered the Tommy Cortney case,” Chris says. “Four-year-old kid. Went missing from his backyard in Tassie. The public thinks the mum’s hiding something, and some asshole threw a pig’s head on her porch. They found the boy three days later in the woods, alive. He’d wandered off. Maybe some sicko heard about Hannah, thought it’d be funny to leave a fake set of jaws on her doorstep,” Chris finishes.
I press the pad of my index finger into the tip of a back tooth, feel the sting. They don’t feel fake.
Kat shakes her head. “These were sentbeforeher attack.”
He hesitates. “Are you certain?”
“I am,” she says. “And they were in her room. She put them there herself.”
