Page 27

27

Opal

In Opal’s dreams, it was Sunday morning, and she was in one of the village halls where her father held his services. Roof of corrugated iron, walls the color of cigarette smoke, cobwebs drifting like guilty thoughts from the ceiling. Her father was in front of the room on a stage made of milk crates and boards.

“Down on your knees!” he thundered at her.

She did not want to. The floor was hard and strewn with sawdust, and her knees were bare beneath her scratchy skirt, her Sunday best.

“Sinner!” her father roared. “The sky will fall upon you! Repent, or you shall be damned!”

“I didn’t mean to,” said Opal, kneeling down so the boards dug into her skin. She was a little girl of course, but she was speaking of things that were yet to happen, sins that she had not yet committed but she would, she would.

“Useless,” said her father. But he had stopped shouting. His voice rolled over her like honey. This was how he reeled them in: with the forgiveness and the love, the promises of heaven that he snatched away when you were not worthy. And no one was ever worthy. “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction.”

His voice had changed again. She twisted her neck, looked up, and the figure towering above her was Zander. He was grinning, but the glint in his eyes was dangerous as he drew back one booted foot and aimed at her ribs.

“You think you’ll win,” he said, “but you’re going to lo—”

And then the roof fell on them with an almighty bang.

* * *

Opal bolted upright in bed, the noise reverberating in her ears. It took a moment before she recognized where she was: the white-painted guest room at Marina’s house. Her tongue was stuck to the dry roof of her mouth and her head felt as if it had a spike through it.

Marina appeared in the doorway in her underwear, hair wild. “What was that?” she gasped.

“You heard it too?” Opal glanced upwards, but the ceiling was intact.

“Where’s Lilah?”

They rushed downstairs. The plates, glasses and cutlery had all been cleared from the kitchen table. In their place sat the box of dueling pistols, open. One pistol was missing.

“Oh shit,” said Opal.

The scent of burning and gunpowder were quite clear, even on the stairs going down to the cellar. And another scent: sticky, cloying. Burned flesh.

Lilah was sitting on the floor in front of the shelter, dueling pistol in her hand. She looked shell-shocked.

“What did you do?” cried Marina. “Are you okay? Why are your hands all black? Did the gun explode? How did it explode?”

She knelt by Lilah while Opal looked through the hatch. She hoped that she would find Zander staring back at her, complaining about carbohydrates, but somehow she doubted it.

Instead, it was a scene from a horror film. Prone body lying on the floor. Blood. Skull. Hair.

She didn’t want to look too closely. But she couldn’t look away, either.

Lilah had shot him in the head.

The articulated skeleton was lying on its back next to Zander, grinning at the ceiling, its white bones covered in his blood. Ironically, it looked more human than he did, because its face was still intact.

“What is it?” Marina said. “What happened?”

“Fuck,” said Opal. It was the only thing she could think of. She closed the hatch. She thought she might be sick. She could smell the blood. And scorched hair. And the brains. Were those brains she could smell?

She had seen dead bodies before. She had dealt with them. But this wasn’t a body. This...was carnage.

She swallowed down bile. She saw Zander’s body behind her lids when she blinked.

Marina stood up. “I need to see.”

“Maybe steel yourself first,” said Opal, shakily.

“I’ve given birth vaginally three times and had an episiotomy all three times, I’ve seen plenty of blood.”

Still, she took a deep breath before she opened the hatch and looked in. She screamed, staggered back and sat down hard on the floor next to Lilah.

“Oh my god oh my god what did you do ? What have we done? ”