Murder in Underdown Road
Sharon Kernot
continued...
My name is Damien. I live with my mum, my older brother, Blake, and my two little sisters, Skye and Kelly. We had a baby brother too, his name was Jamie but he died. Mum is still very sad from Jamie’s death, we all are but Mum is the saddest. She stopped crying a few weeks ago but she doesn’t say anything much now, she sits in the lounge and stares ahead at the turnedoff TV. Mostly we have to get our own dinner and get ourselves off to school. Jamie’s coffin was so small; it didn’t seem big enough for his little body. It didn’t seem real. When I watched the shiny, white coffin sink into the ground, I thought of cellars and bone and screaming, and I went to the toilet to be sick.
Our house is like the murder house. It’s the same design; a small, grey half-house with three little bedrooms, a lounge, kitchen, laundry and toilet. Blake and I sleep in one bedroom, my sisters sleep in another and Mum and Marcus sleep in the biggest bedroom. Except Marcus doesn’t live with us any more. Marcus left when Jamie died. Jamie used to sleep in Mum’s room in a white bassinet. I miss Jamie but I don’t miss Marcus and I hope he never comes back.
Jamie was loud like Marcus except he cried and screamed while Marcus shouted and slammed things down. Marcus was so strong he punched a hole in my door. He was mad at me because I couldn’t stop crying and I woke up Jamie who’d only just gone off to sleep. Jamie didn’t like to sleep very much. I didn’t mean to cry but I fell off my bunk bed and hurt my arm. It still hurts a little now but I won’t tell Mum because if Marcus comes back, she might tell him and he’d be mad at me again.
I went to the murderer’s house one day with Blake. The murderer’s name was Mr Hobby. I didn’t like him. He was tall and thin with black hair sprouting from his nose. I didn’t like the way he smiled at me with his broken brown teeth. I went into his house because I wanted to get a present from him. Blake told me that Mr Hobby gave presents if he liked you; he gave Blake a slim silver pocket knife.
Inside, the house was dark because all the blinds were pulled down. The lounge room and kitchen were lit up with yellow bulbs that hung on wire from the ceilings. Long, stringy cobwebs dangled from the corners of the rooms. The house smelt like the kitty litter box needed emptying but I didn’t see a cat or a litter tray. I didn’t like the smell or the dark or the cobwebs, so I left even though I would have liked a pocket knife of my own.
Blake loves knives and guns. He has Marcus’s rifle and he knows how to use it. He and Marcus went spotlighting a few times to shoot kangaroos and rabbits. Once, they brought home three dead rabbits and Marcus showed us how to skin them. Kelly screamed when she saw the bloody bodies on the concrete step out the back. She hid her guinea pig, Roxie, in her room because she thought Marcus might shoot and skin it. I thought he might too when he slipped on little round balls of guinea pig pooh in her bedroom. It made him so angry that he crawled under the bed and tried to pull Roxie out from a dark corner.
Kelly screamed, “Leave her. I’ll get her! She’ll come to me. I’ll get her!”
Marcus ignored Kelly and inched further under the bed. When the guinea pig squealed, Kelly dropped to the floor and sunk her teeth into Marcus’s calf muscle.
I heard his head crack on the metal base of the bed before he clambered out from under it. Kelly checked to see if he had the guinea pig in his hands before she darted from the room. Marcus caught Kelly by her bright red hair, threw her to the floor and slapped her across the face. Three red finger prints shone on her freckled cheek for the rest of the day and a purple bruise grew where her forehead hit the lino. I don’t know what happened to the guinea pig. Kelly didn’t talk for a long time after that.
Whenever Marcus got his cheque, he would go out for a big drinking session. Sometimes he wouldn’t come home for days. I always felt better when Marcus wasn’t home. It was one less person to worry about. Blake was still a problem though because when Marcus wasn’t home, Blake would take the rifle from the top of Mum’s wardrobe and smuggle it into his room. He would sit on his bed and polish it or take out all the bullets then reload.
One day he aimed it at me.
“Don’t, Blake!”
“It’s not loaded, stupid.”
I thought of the murderer and wondered how a murderer began. Is it something that starts early? Can a gun make a murderer? Blake always looked excited when he held it in his hands.
“Right between the eyes,” he said and steadied the rifle.
Click!
My heart cracked like a gun and made by chest ache. I must have looked scared because Blake said, “I told you it’s not loaded, idiot.”
“Marcus’ll kill you.”
“He’ll never know.” I raised my eyebrows to him, to suggest that I might tell him myself.
“If you say anything, I’ll fucking shoot you.” A deep crease appeared between his eyes. “I mean it.”
I looked away. “I never would. I never said I would.”
Blake snapped open the rifle, loaded it, snapped it shut then pointed it back at me. “Right between the fucking eyes.”
I felt sick. I felt as if I was going to throw up. Blake called me a sook and laughed.
I wanted to hit him, to pull him to the ground, to kick him, punch him, and whack the rifle butt onto his head. I wanted to hear the sound of his skull crack. But I didn’t. I felt as if my limbs were full of concrete. I sat like a statue, with nothing but fear running through my veins and wished he were read. Right at that moment, I wished with all my heart that Mr Hobby had killed Blake like he killed the other children.
After Jamie died, Marcus sat in the grey recliner chair in the lounge and drank from a flagon for a long time. Whenever he and Mum were in the same room, they argued. On that day that Marcus left, they had a big fight and Mum screamed and screamed. Skye and Kelly hid under the bed. I don’t like small, dark spaces so I crouched in the corner of my room with my hands over my ears and hummed “How much is that Doggy in the Window?”
Blake wasn’t home to listen to it; he was out with his friend Zac. When he came back in the morning, Mum’s lips were puffy and there were blue marks on her neck. That’s when Blake stole Marcus’s gun and hid it under the old brick stand that holds up the rusty rainwater tank. Marcus didn’t come home for three days and when he did, he and Mum had another fight. When he packed his stuff and left, he didn’t seem to notice the gun was missing. Maybe he thought Mum had hidden it somewhere.
I miss Jamie. I liked coming home from school and seeing him. Mum would ask me to hold him while she cooked dinner and he would squeeze my fingers tightly in his tiny fist. He used to smile at me too and watch me very carefully. I like the way his blue eyes crossed when he stared at me.
Blake liked Jamie too but he didn’t like him when he cried and sometimes he would scream at him to shut up. Just like Marcus did. Mum never shouted at Jamie but she used to go very quiet when he would cry and she would cry with him sometimes. The whole house felt dark when he cried. If Marcus was home, he would start to mutter under his breath and then start to pace and run his fingers through his hair or blow cigarette smoke out through his teeth in a long, low whistle. He’d shout, “For Christ’s sake shut that bloody child up!”
In the beginning, Mum tried harder and rocked Jamie faster or jiggled him up and down and shushed him but he only ever seemed to cry louder. Then Mum would start crying and Marcus would shout more. We would all go and sit in our rooms with the doors closed and our hands or pillows over our ears.
If Marcus wasn’t home and Jamie started to cry, Mum would sometimes leave him to cry alone. On the day that Jamie died, she made herself a cup of tea, lit a cigarette and went outside without him. She sat at the bottom of the garden on the broken swing and stared into nowhere. I felt bad for Mum. She never laughed or even smiled any more. She didn’t talk to any of us, just shouted if something needed doing. I wanted to see her smile again. Since Marcus and Jamie, there was nothing but arguing and shouting and guns.
As I watched her from the kitchen window, it felt like I was watching a sad movie. Mum sat quietly outside and the baby screamed in the background. The noise was too much it felt like a dark blanket that cut out the light. I walked into my room, shut the door and leaned against it. I closed my ears with my hands and hummed “How Much is that Doggy in the Window?” I could still hear Jamie and through my thin white t-shirt, I could feel the hole in the door that Marcus made. I turned and traced a finger around the hole and stared into the dark hollow. I put my fist in; there was plenty of room. Both my fists fit into Marcus’s hole and I wondered if my hands would ever be as big as his. Jamie continued to scream.
I opened the door and walked into Mum’s room to help Jamie settle down. I walked in to stop Jamie from crying. I wanted to help Mum. If Jamie were quiet then Mum would feel better. She might even start to laugh again. I thought of Mr Hobby as I bent down and looked at the screaming red-faced Jamie. I thought of Marcus’s large hands, of Marcus’s gun, of Blake’s knife. I continued to hum “How Much is that Doggy?” and gently, very gently, I covered Jamie’s little head with the pillow and gradually, very gradually he became quiet.
