Part One – Revealed
“A past shadowed by crimes will take revenge on future times.”
Chapter One: A murderer's stare
Satara Cunningham ran home from school, feet heavy, thoughts a colourful mess, and knew she was in big trouble.
The flight had been booked months ago. Everyone else would have arrived already. Today was the one day she couldn't afford to be late and the first day she had ever deliberately deviated from her daily schedule. Mum was going to be upset with her in front of everyone.
Maybe they'll leave me behind, she thought. Her insides writhed.
Her footsteps tapped against the evening air like the ticking of a clock in an empty room. Past the gelato shop that always played upbeat pop music. The kind her favourite cousin, Janie, hated. Past the disembowelled-looking lamp post that hadn't worked for a long as she could remember, walking far away from the wires that spilled from its base. She turned into a dark alley, the shortcut to her house, and her hair stood on end as though ice water had flooded the basement of her skin. An odd buzzing briefly filled her ears until they popped. She shook her head as she ran to dislodge the strange sensation.
And almost tripped over someone lying on the ground.
“Uncle Joe?” She righted herself before leaning over her mum's brother. Her fingertips caught on the shoulder of his well-worn, woollen coat. Had he been heading for his car? It was, oddly enough, the only one in sight. Had he fallen asleep waiting for her outside? She wasn't that late, was she? “What are you-?”
A fist of copper and iron slammed into her face, rushing up her nose. She jolted backwards, pressing her sleeve over her mouth and nostrils. As her eyes adjusted to the limited light, a red lake appeared beneath her uncle's body, congealed as it flowed down the small slope towards her home. Footprints trailed from its distal end, distorted, almost animal-like in appearance, marking a path down to her house.
Where someone else with long hair was slung over the low gate.
“M-Mum?” Her calves were heavier than before. Each step rattled her nerves like the clamour of a giant gong. Drowning out the evidence before her eyes and the moonlit tornado of images passing behind them, both as viciously surreal as the other.
Danger and fear. A suffocating cloud of smoke pressed over her eyes. Binding her limbs. Running through her veins and leaving a gut wrenching drowsiness in its wake.
The pointed top of the gate picket disappeared into Aunt Stephie's large stomach, her painted blue nails nearly touching the ground next to several dark red puddles. The same liquid glistened on the whitewashed wood, spattered across the red and blue balloons tied to the fence and backdoor with metallic black streamers. Maybe it's not what I think it is. Satara faltered by the open gate. Uncle Dave was slumped against the backdoor, arm outstretched as if he'd fallen asleep in the middle of turning the doorknob. The frame of his glasses were too close to his eyes, embraced by puffy pink skin, the lenses shattered to opaqueness. They – They were probably drinking and – and they probably got into a fight. They're drunk so I should get Dad to – to bring them inside.
A gritty crimson handprint wound around the handle, inviting her inside with all the warmth of an inconvenienced host. The pigeons that usually cooed from the the roof were silent and in the limited light she couldn't be sure if any of them were there. Brand new coins filled her throat …
… along with dust. She needed to brush her teeth but she couldn't move. The air was hot and then cold. Stuffy. Sparse.
“Daaaad?” She called out to him weakly, edging past her uncle's body. It was unnaturally silent and awfully still, just like the interior of the house.
She stiffened at the threshold, becoming one with the atmosphere. It settled on the nape of her neck like an icy hand, turning into a snake and coiling around her throat. She swallowed against the threat of its scales. It was big. Too much for someone who hadn't even set foot in high school. But the main road felt miles away and she didn't have a mobile phone. She had to find her parents. They would know what to do. Or at least explain the situation to her the way they always did.
“You're so grown up, Satara,” her mother had said just that morning. “I know you definitely won't be late for your special day.”
And she had nodded, quickly, politely, before leaving the house to get to school on time for the last day of term. Maybe everyone's playing a trick on me. The thought poked at a dwindling flame in her chest. To get back at me because I held them up here. With a suspicious and wan smile fighting to claim her face, she left her aunt and uncles sprawled on the ground and stepped into the house.
It was darker inside the house, the air leaden in her lungs under the scent of charred butter and ham sandwiches they were supposed to have for their late lunch on the plane. The light switches didn't respond to her touch, as if all the bulbs had blown simultaneously. Static electricity crackled at her fingertips and raised her hair. She paused beneath the light shades, catching her breath, squinting to check if the bulbs were still in place.
This is all just one big jok – Her toes bumped into something. Someone. Janie. Satara paused and promptly ran out of breath again. Her cousin lay face down at the foot of the stairs as if she had fallen whilst sticking the white and blue bunting to the ceiling. Her head rested at a painful angle to her lithe, runner's body. Satara hurried past her, ignoring the state of Janie's limbs in favour of her fading courage.
It had to be an act.
An elaborate, weirdly timed one. But they were all acting. Any minute they'd all jump up to scare her, laughing at her startled expression.
They'd laugh at her but she wouldn't mind because everything would be all right. They would hurry to leave the house and she wouldn't complain if Mum told her off in the car because they would all be safe soon enough. As soon as –
She stopped two steps into the dining room. It was colder, the patio doors wide open. A stream of moonlight uncovered two more bodies.
Her parents.
“What –” The question turned to stone in her mouth, blocking her windpipe.
Her mum was flat on her back, the white cardigan she had been wearing that morning now crimson and slashed open in multiple places. Her eyes and mouth frozen into a mask of unmistakable agony. Her dad was lying prone, black hair unnaturally frizzy, with one hand inches away from her mum's ankle around which the puddle of red seemed thickest. The burnt ham scent was stronger now, only it didn't smell like ham any more.
“M-mum?” Satara forced the words out past the rock in her throat, covering her mouth as she gagged. “Dad?”
She couldn't move. She couldn't check to see if they were alive or not even though she knew they weren't. Just like Janie and Aunt Stephie. Like Uncle Dave and Uncle Joe. She knew but it was impossible. They'd been fine that morning. That whole week. Why are they –?
Something stirred in the darkness beyond their bodies. Quivering, she could only watch as someone stepped forward, half illuminated by the moon. Half of her face, young with old, slanted eyes highlighted by strands of chin-length, partially tied back, black hair. Half of her body, tall and lean with wide shoulders, swathed in a cloak-like coat. A monster wearing the golden sand skin of a teenager. The katana in her hand glinted in patches within a layer of dried blood.
This isn't real. It can't be. It's – It's just another nightmare. She shuddered in the embrace of a crime scene she could no longer deny. Why would she – why would anyone do this to us?
“Who – who are you?” she whimpered past her sweaty palms, feet locked to the ground.
“Someone who knows you.” The stranger's voice was a winter breeze at midnight.
I don't know her. I've never seen her before in my life – Memories cut off her line of thought, sharper than the images that had blown through her thoughts earlier. Her father asking her to choose their destination. How he'd looked uneasy when she suggested somewhere in Eastern Asia and gently persuaded her to choose somewhere else. Her mother explaining that they had problems with family on that side of the world and asking to be informed if Satara ever saw a stranger who looked like their family. She remembered an older girl standing outside her school like an older version of herself. She whimpered again. Why? Why didn't I tell mum I saw her?
“Why did you hurt them?” The truth hid behind her teeth.
“Because they deserved it.” The stranger's blue eyes, partially shadowed and at odds with her features, held her own like a pair of icy hands. Unrepentant. Desolate.
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“Why?” Satara pawed at the emptiness growing larger in her chest. “That's – They're my family.”
“They weren't who you think they were.” The words pierced her reality which twisted like a dying animal. Like the humanity inside her slowly falling apart as if it had been composed of snowflakes.
“What're you talking about?” Tears abruptly blurred the other girl. She dashed them away, struggling to stay coherent. “They're my family, my parents, and you – you –”
“I killed them.” The stranger took a step towards her. She stumbled backwards into the nearest wall.
She's going to kill me too. It's not a dream. Nightmares never feel this real. The room pulsed around them. Her breathing wavered as though the blade were already pressed to her throat, a keen and silent threat. She's going to kill me and I can't stop her.
The murderer didn't move any closer. Not that she needed to. Her stare alone was enough to keep Satara pinned to the wall as she spoke again.
“There is something I must do.” Grasping the sword lightly, the other girl drew her hand down the blade as if wiping it with a damp cloth. Impossibly, the blood along its length disappeared. The nauseating scent of scorched blood nearly distracted Satara from her next words. “But I will come back for you.”
The promise cut far deeper than the blade could have, melting through her confidence to encase her heart in steel, restricting its every beat. She wasn't safe. Not now. Not yet. If she let the murderer walk away now, she was sure she'd never be safe ever again. For a moment the stranger looked down at her, re-sheathing her sword expressionlessly. No. She wasn't completely expressionless. One corner of her mouth flickered. Behind the blue veil of her stare, a creature crawled up out of its grave. The room pulsated again, black and white fringing the edges of Satara's vision. Her family's blood coated the inside of her nostrils and lungs
“Why?” she whispered, tasting salt, hardly able to hear herself. “Why are you – why -?”
“If you want the truth –” The older girl headed for the patio doors. “– then live long enough to find it.”
“How -?” The tears in Satara's voice began to boil.
How am I supposed to live without my family? How can you say that when my parents are lying there? When you did this to them? It didn't make sense to say something like that when she was about to leave Satara in a house littered with the bodies of her relatives. When all of them had been ready to go on a family trip and now they never would. You're only a few years older than me, aren't you? How can you kill people like this and walk away like it's nothing? It doesn't make sense.
“Wait.” Satara stepped forward and blinked. Somehow her hands latched onto the back and sleeve of the other's long coat. Her skin prickled as if it were about to go up in flames. Her throat ached around words that didn't belong to her. Spoken in a low tone. Bordering on violent. “Wait, damn you!”
It isn't fair. She pulled at the material, at the killer's attention, again and again. Why? Growling and sobbing with each tug. Why do you get to take everything away from me without losing anything? Tell me why.
The stranger paused before turning to her. This close, she smelt like heated metal. Like a pot left unattended on the cooker for too long. Like a steel bridge struck by lightning. Her grip loosened on the fabric but she couldn't let her family's murderer walk away. Not while every sight and scent conjured a new hell at the back of her mind and within her bones. She swung her fist at the killer's inexplicably familiar face as it disappeared behind a curtain of tears.
Fingers clamped around the base of her hand, pressurising her bones until they ached. Something sharp pressed into the junction of her neck and shoulder. A threat she could understand regardless of whether or not she could see it. The inferno lighting up the cavern of her thoughts gave way to mounds of ash. Her knees faltered. She tried to pull back before the weight of the stranger's touch could undo her completely.
“Do not run from the truth, sister,” murmured the girl who had killed her family, tightening her grip until Satara whimpered. “And do not fight it.”
“Sist – what?” She didn't want to look at the weapon digging into her neck. But the dangerous story beyond the shadowed storm of the murderer's eyes was splitting her in two from the inside out. “W - wait …”
She didn't have a sister. She didn't …
… want to go. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know who she was with. But only one face stood out in her thoughts. Only one name stayed on her parched lips and she tried to hold onto it with everything she had because otherwise –
The stranger – no, her sister – pressed a thumb into the palm of Satara's captured hand like someone performing acupressure. Her expression shifted properly for the first time that night, mouth twisting into a smirk that was more like a snarl.
“Lies will only destroy you,” she said softly, driving the sharp weapon deep into her little sister's neck.
Though not before the name Satara had managed to hold onto crept out from the shadows of her memory and fell gracelessly from her lips.
“Saytarnia …”
<><><><><>
“Satara, page thirteen, if that's okay?” Mr Lanfield's tight voice shoved the idea of choice aside. “Last paragraph.”
The fifteen year old rubbed the left side of her neck, shifting her attention to the non traditionally published book on her desk. Away from the reflection with baleful, flashback-inducing eyes. She picked it up and flipped the pages until she landed on the right one.
“She should have looked into his eyes before. That way, she might have seen past the beautiful soul that everyone else could see.” She read aloud, holding her breath for a moment. It vibrated irritably in her chest and she released it only when her gaze relaxed across the final sentence. “She might have seen the void that existed beyond it.”
“Well done. I was starting to think you found your own face more interesting than this story,” said their teacher with a weak laugh, shaking the slim book above his head as if it were a leaflet filled with propaganda.
“No comment, sir.” Some of us can do more than one thing at a time. And you can keep your passive aggressive obsession with indie publishing away from me.
“Ooooh yah, gotta love that confidence.” The red-haired boy sitting next to her hissed and waved a hand as though appreciating a particularly evocative piece of music. He grinned at their teacher. “Right, Charlie?”
“We don't have to love anything, Jason. Especially not our students.” Mr Lanfield smiled back as if his lips had been sealed by a thin wire.
“Damn right. That kind of talk could get an awesome teacher like you into a lot of trouble, you know?” Jason's brows raised in time with the emphasis he placed on the word.
Barely muffled laughter rolled throughout the classroom, three rows in front and two behind. Satara closed the book, tapping its washed out grey cover with a clammy finger.
“This stuff is going to be included in the exams tomorrow so I recommend you all take notes.” Mr Lanfield coughed when she made no move to take his advice, clapping his hands and picking up another book as though it were a newborn. “Moving on. Traditionally published and awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction in –”
“You zoned out, didn't you?” Jason's elbows were on his side of the desk, his hands balled in front of his face. Allowing the movement of his mouth to go undetected.
“Kind of,” she replied, tightening the strings of her hoodie until the fabric pressed against her throat. The patter of her fingernail against the book cover echoed the footsteps in her memories and overrode the enthusiastic but boring lesson delivered by their teacher.
“Of course you did. You avoid mirrors as if they're people.” Incredulous laughter melded with Jason's observations. “Starting to see what everyone else sees, hmm?”
“Who's everyone else?” The window pane beckoned to her but she'd learned her lesson, focusing instead on the clock above Mr Lanfield's head. Matching the descent of her finger with the movement of its fastest hand.
“Me.” Jason smiled as if he could feel her stare before he turned to meet it. “What? Were you expecting someone else? Traitor.”
“What do you see, Jayce?” she asked. The exam dates on the white board ahead could have been written in another language for all they meant to her.
“Nothing.” He poked the book beneath her hand, their fingertips almost colliding. “Or maybe everything.”
“Ah, really?” She pressed both fists to her mouth.
“Hey, did you just laugh?” he demanded. A prompt look from Mr Lanfield silenced him.
As he offered the teacher an earnest puppy-eyed face in place of an apology, Satara closed her eyes against the snail race of the clock and the thin ice of her reflection, smiling behind the shield of her thumbs.
You don't see anything, Jayce.
<><><><><>
“Happy birthday, Tara!”
Jason held out a ruler-length gift box, ebony with silver and red star-like patterns, and the nauseating scent of burned ham combined with white tiles doused in Milton fluid rushed up her nose so suddenly her stomach lurched. Gravestones speckled with rain and free of flowers. Unfamiliar, scratchy bedding. The rustle of paperwork passing between hands and the black ink of ballpoint pens.
He doesn't know anything. And it's been six years. Satara accepted the present with both hands as they left the school reception. Her hood didn't block out the incessant bustle of the other Starbright High students completely but it was better than nothing.
“I wanted to give it earlier and watch all the girls go green but –” He shrugged, patting her shoulder and wincing almost imperceptibly. “– I can't be mean to you on your birthday.”
“You're so grown up, Satara … I know you definitely won't be late for your special day.”
“It's not like you're mean to me anyway,” she said, slowing as she eased its lid off.
“That's because I want to get out of Year Eleven alive. You know what they say. Beware the quiet ones or something.” The pause between his words was unnecessarily long. “Though your quiet is … different.”
“Is it a headband?” she murmured, tilting the box.
In the weak sunlight, the length of fabric held in place by two thin straps was a vibrant red like the tongue of a Chinese dragon. The quality of the material and design alike was apparent even before she ran her fingers across the word 'Strength'. It had been sewn directly onto the headband in an impressive and stylish Oriental font.
“Your hair always gets in your face so –” Jason nodded, rubbing the back of a hand across his smile, green eyes averted. “– I thought it'd be a good idea.”
“It was.” Satara untucked the soft yet dense accessory from the straps and pushed the gift box into her backpack.
Maria and Effie from their class walked past, all flowery perfume and curious glances. They immediately started speaking to each other in lowered voices drowned out by the buzz of a motorbike on the road ahead.
“You don't have to wear it now.” He waved a hand, quickly dismissing his gift in the face of her hesitance. “Might be a big much, 'specially when it's this grey out.”
“Thanks.” She folded it into her fist, pushing both carefully into her pocket. Her abrupt gratitude never seemed adequate compared to the obvious thought he had always invested in her presents over the past four years. Somehow she had never been able to work out quite what to say, despite having twelve months in between each occasion.
“Good thing we always train inside, huh?” he mused aloud. “Imagine if we had to spar outside in this weather. Half the class wouldn't show up.”
“Maybe Carl could do with some suggestions.” The sky was darker than normal despite it being that time of the year, blotched with angry clouds. “He looks like he needs them these days.”
“He's probably stressed about the exam tomorrow. Dunno why though.” Jason's hand appeared in her peripheral vision, most likely raised to wave at a passing friend. “We're the ones having our first test of the year right before Christmas. Did you pass your nerves onto him?”
“What do you mean?” His hand dropped from view and she followed its descent until her eyes settled on his, which flitted away from her but only for a second. “You said my quiet was different.”
“Delayed reaction much.” He laughed, tightly, shortly, as if he didn't actually want to. “Anyone can see you're one of the quiet kids. Not like me.”
She waited, blinking slowly and trying not to crease the headband in her pocket.
“But you're not shy. You know how to speak your mind. Sometimes you don't know how to hold back.” He patted the space between them, presumably in response to a change in her stare. “I know, I know. That's just you. You have stuff to say.”
“Everyone has stuff to say.” The car park and student walkways grew busier by the second. Satara start to walk faster. “They just don't always say it.”
“Everyone wants to be heard but not everyone has a lot to say.” Jason kept up with her easily, sliding away from careless shoulders as though they were incoming punches. He'd always been better than her at dodging. “So when they're quiet, they're like – like an empty room or something. But you – Your silence is loud, Tara.”
“That doesn't make sen –” They stepped onto the main road, heading for the bus stop.
The air in her ears vibrated. A shiver rubbed her vellus hair the wrong way.
Satara stopped.
The other teenagers pouring out from the building behind her all looked like they belonged to the school. Laughing, wearing tight frowns, and trying not to walk into each other. A wave of noise and movement. There were also teachers heading for their cars, some speaking louder than necessary into their mobile phones, carrying bright red and blue folders and sandy filing boxes, as well as other members of staff. Cleaners with mops, brooms, and other sanitising equipment piled onto collapsible carts, class assistants massaging prematurely wrinkled brows, and disabled students being instructed by carers with clear, patient voices.
No one looked out of place on either side of her. It was the same multicoloured flood she saw everyday in an otherwise grey world. Which only left –
Someone tall and dark haired stood on the other side of the road, directly opposite her.
Deja vu. A new gravestone appeared in her thoughts. Two thoughts blazed like bullets on fire through the mist that had settled on her mind six years ago, cutting through the scaffolding she had constructed around her life. Simultaneous. Merciless. Each as vivid as the other.
She found me.
At last.