Demons by Wayne Macauley Read Free Book Online Page A

grass and mounded up another five, moulding the furrows between
them.
    At around four o’clock that afternoon she stopped, stood back to admire her handiwork,
then washed herself at the garden tap. She took off her top and bra, unafraid, splashed
water under her arms and breasts, turned the tap up full and let the water hammer
at the nape of her neck. She dried off, pulled on one of her uncle’s old collared
shirts from the cupboard—pure cotton, lemon yellow, green buttons and green stitching
on the cuffs—and set off around the point into town.
    Can I ask you something? said Lauren, quietly. Sure, said Hannah. How old is she
now? She’s just turned eighteen, said Hannah. Everyone waited. Hannah went on.
    The town was small, she said, a main street with a parking island, a pub, a shopfront
supermarket, a little restaurant-café, a real estate agent, a takeaway, a gift shop,
a tackle shop, and that was about it. It was after five o’clock now, and the town
was actually pretty lively, with the sound of voices and horse-racing coming out
of the open door of the pub and people walking in and out of the supermarket. A few
others were sitting at the tables outside the café; a tanned man in a suit outside
the real estate office gave Elena a smile as she passed.
    She had enough money to stock up on basic supplies, after that ran out she wasn’t
sure what she’d do. Already, as she approached the supermarket, she could smell the
exhaust fumes and that vague smell—what was it?—of towns and cities: concrete, asphalt,
steel, plastic. It sat right up the back behind her temples and she could already
feel the headache coming on. She turned into the supermarket, intent on getting what
she needed as quickly as she could. She bought bread, milk, butter, unbleached toilet
paper, a cigarette lighter (she couldn’t use matches because of the sulphur), more
candles, vegetables from the little organic section in the fridge at the back and
a dozen organic eggs. At the counter a young man served her, he must have been about
her age, and Elena couldn’t help being conscious of her wet, uncombed hair, her uncle’s
shirt and the red rash she could already feel coming up around her neck. As he packed
Elena’s things into the box he kept his eyes down but when he looked up to give it
to her she could see he was blushing. Maybe he had allergies too? Thanks, come again,
he said, stupidly. Elena nodded and smiled.
    The box was heavy and it was a long way back to the house but with the sun setting
over the lake and the sky full of seabirds squawking and the air so clean and clear
that you could actually feel it pushing the bad air out, Elena didn’t feel the weight;
or rather, felt it as a good thing, and the walk home through that alive and raucous
twilight as the start of something good. Back at the house she prepared to settle
in; she lit the beeswax candles, then the stove, and cooked herself an omelette with
some vegetables cut into it. She couldn’t sleep on the bed with its nylon mattress
so she took a candle out to the shed and found the rope hammock she and her brother
used to lie in under the tree and strung it across the lounge room, anchored at either
end by tying a knot and closing the window on it. She put the cotton and duck-down
sleeping-bag on it for a mattress, and a cotton sheet and woollen blanket from the
linen cupboard over that. She blew out the candles about nine.
    In that small house in that faraway town Elena settled into a new routine that took
its cue from nature. She woke early, ate a bowl of yoghurt or oats with warm milk,
sitting on a kitchen chair in the sun, then she tidied the house and dug the garden.
At around three each afternoon she would take a nap in the hammock in the lounge
room, letting herself drift through mostly innocuous dreams until a bit after four
when she would start thinking about dinner. The meal was always simple, made from
the stuff she picked from the garden or had bought at the