Chapter Thirteen

Havermouth High School, Five Years Before

Aislen boarded the bus with a sinking feeling. Already, she could hear laughter from the back of the bus. It wasn’t about her, she tried to convince herself, but she recognized Cameron and Heath’s voices, along with Lillian’s, and it FELT like they were laughing at her.

She picked a seat towards the front of the bus – as far from the Triquetra as she could be.

She thought that she had gotten away with it until the bus began moving, and suddenly Rhett sat beside her, having made his way up from the rear, where Cameron and Heath were. He didn’t say anything, or even look at her, but he threw himself into the seat next to her with a huff of breath, and then organized his sketch book and supplies into his bag between his legs until she couldn’t protest his presence because they were well underway.

She sighed and leaned against the windows, looking out.

His fingers curled around hers on her thigh, and her mind filled with his anxiety and concern, images of her face as she ran from the gazebo into the night. She felt her heart ache as every cell within her seemed to align and point his way. She swallowed hard and straightened away from the window, not quite leaning towards him, but leaning less away.

“Aislen,” he breathed her name, his fingers stroking hers. She flicked her eyes towards him and then away. “Aislen,” he murmured her name leaning towards her. “Kiss me.”

Her fingers found their way into the heavy silk of his hair, and she kissed him as if he held the elixir of life in his lips. She was vaguely aware that there was a lewd applause from the back of the bus, but it was less important than his hand sliding under the hem of her skirt as his other hand dug into her curls and cupped her skull, holding her to him as he kissed her.

“Mr. Salem,” supervising the school trip, Mr. Graynor slammed his hand down on the seat, shuddering the impact through them so that they broke apart, startled by the interruption. “We save such behaviour for the mating moon, hmm?” He reproved. “And not for the school bus.”

“Yes, Mr. Graynor,” Rhett mumbled under his breath, although he didn’t lift his hand from her thigh, stubbornly in defiance of the teacher’s disapproval.

Mr. Graynor did not press the matter, moving on, and Aislen and Rhett exchanged sideways glances and blushes.

Aislen was so confused. At times it was as if Rhett saw her as… something special. And then he would somehow involve Cameron and Heath, who made it… filthy. It wouldn’t be, she thought, if they treated her with even the modicum of respect, but they seemed almost determined to drag what there was between the four of them through the muck, to make it dirty, to make it distasteful.

She was caught in limbo between the promise of what could be, and the humiliation of what actually existed, and she couldn’t balance how she felt when their hands were on her, against how she felt when their ugly, humiliating laughter was ringing in her ears, shaming her for feeling as she did about the three of them, for wanting them.

And so, she was angry, resentful, and confused, wanting Rhett’s hand to drift up and under the elastic of her underwear and discover that she had been to a beauty parlour and waxed - as they had teased she should do so many times - and also not wanting him to do so.

The bus pulled up out front of the aged care home before she could explore her tolerances further, and the students began to dismount.

They were greeted at the doors and treated to a lecture about aged care and respect, before being led in and into the “recreational room.” There, students were told to “buddy up” and they scattered.

Cameron sat down at the mini-grand piano and began to play with a proficiency that astonished and aroused her. She had no idea, she thought, that he was a musician, and yet, seeing him practicing his skill, it fit so perfectly that she marvelled at the fact that she had not known.

Aislen was drawn towards a round table where four old men played cards.

“Want to play?” One looked up at her.

“Sure, why not?” She took a seat with them.

“Five card draw,” an old man announced and began to deal. Over his shoulder, she saw Rhett laugh as he pulled his hair back into a bun, caught between two flirtatious old women. Heath sat in a circle of oldies and was reading from the Bible, and although his smile was brilliant and charming, she could tell that he hated every moment and every word that he spoke.

“Do you know how to play, sweet thing?” The man to her left asked her. She turned to smile and tell him that she did, but her memory superimposed him over another image, of an old man in a singlet and blue striped boxer shorts, grunting as he orgasmed, and she hissed out her breath as she recoiled, fumbling her cards clumsily. “Are you okay?” He was bemused by her response.

“Sorry, indigestion,” she muttered, flicking looks up at him from under her eyelashes. It was the same man as in Diana Boyston’s mind, she thought, but older. Not much older, but old enough… Where was Diana? Her eyes scanned the room and did not find her. Odd, she thought, unless… Unless… The name of the aged care home had been on the excursion notice. Reason enough for Diana to avoid attending school that day and coming face to face with her abuser.

“I feel,” she said to the man. “As if I know you. Boyston…?”

“Alfred Boyston,” he was pleased by the recognition. “And you are?” He reached out and clasped his hand over hers, she inhaled and reeled under the onslaught of images. She was too old for him, too mature, too much breast, too much hip, too much arse, and too much lip. He liked them younger, meeker, milder. Easier to silence, to threaten, to intimidate. He liked the smell of their sweat on young skin, of their salty tears as they pleaded for him to stop hurting them…

She gagged, loudly, clapping her hand over her mouth, fighting down the urge to vomit.

“Don’t fucking throw up here,” Alfred Boyston was repulsed by her. "Girls these days," he said to the other players. "There is no elegance or grace left to them."

She swallowed down the bile, and twisted her hand under his, holding his hand tight in her own, feeling the fragile, papery skin beneath her fingertips. He inhaled, sensing the shift in power between them with the change in their hands’ grasp.

“Like to hold them too tight, don’t you,” she leaned forward and whispered the words into his ear so that the other three card players who watched in bemusement would not hear. “Like to feel them writhe beneath you whilst you rape them. Boys or girls, doesn’t matter, you’re not that selective. As long as they’re young, and fresh, their flesh and sweat sweet. Their flesh without hair. Like to feel them bleed, and if they don’t, you’ll bite them to make it happen. And when you’re done, you tighten…” She clenched her hand on his feeling the grind of ancient bone within the paper-fine skin. “Tighten your grip until they fall silent and still…”

“What demon are you?” His breath heaved out as if her accusation made a victim of him. “What forsaken spirit birthed you?”

The street sign to Oakridge Road, the graceful trees with their smooth skin, a shovel, and a hole, flashed into her mind.

“I know where your filthy secrets lie buried,” she snarled through her teeth. "Oakridge Road."

His gasp was strangled, as he had strangled his victims, and his heels drummed the floor as his eyes rolled and his neck corded, his mouth straining, his lips peeling back from his teeth. The colour blanched from his lips and face, the skin becoming waxy, unlifelike. The other card players recoiled, horror robbing them of their voices.

She pulled back, stepping away from the table, as he thrashed his head from side to side, his hands clenching on the arms of his chair, his back arching.

For a long moment, his distress passed unnoticed, and then the scent of urine and shit rose sharply into the air, and suddenly nurses converged upon him. The teachers herded the students back, out of the room, and into the hallway. Her classmates’ whispered speculations washed over her, standing her hair on end, and sending shudders of horror across her skin.

Aislen leaned back against the wall, her arms wrapped around herself, sucking in air through her nose, fighting back the tears.

“Come with me,” Heath tugged her abruptly off the wall, his arm falling over her shoulders, his body shielding her from curious glances. He led her outside and to the side of the main door, as the ambulance pulled up out front and the ambulance officers offloaded the trundle bed.

He caged her against the wall, wrapping his arms tightly around her, giving her no room to escape him, but his hold was not to seduce, not to harm. He held her tight against him in comfort, and as she came to realize it, her body released and her arms crept around him, holding him tightly as she sobbed her grief.

She grieved her grandmother, her only connection to her power that she possessed, her home and her friends that she had left behind in the move to Havermouth, and she grieved the wicked, horrible old man who had died before her, because of her, but mostly, she grieved those innocents that he had taken throughout his life that she could not reveal without exposing herself.

She clung to Heath as she sobbed in ugly, bitter, soul dredging drags of breath, and he held her, his face pressed into her hair, offering nothing in return other than what she needed – unjudgmental support.