Like Clockwork

8

Clare sat in her car. She lifted her hands to her temples and pressed, trying to contain the horror that pulsed there. She turned the key and the car purred in response. The street was empty, desolate, as she paused, looking for running children before turning right. Someone had flanked a concrete garden path with petunias but the tender pink petals had been mutilated by the south-easter. Clare turned away from their defeat. She did not pay much attention to the white car ahead of her that indicated left towards the majestic solidity of Table Mountain.

She turned right, accelerating across the oncoming lanes when there was a lull in the traffic. She headed north, where the mountains petered out into hills and wheatfields. She was looking out for the sign to Serenity Farm, so she did not notice the white car pull over into a lay-by. Even if she had, she’d have been too far away to notice the fury that her sudden disappearance provoked in the driver.

As always, the faded lettering on weathered wood came too soon after the bend. Clare turned left sharply, a driver hooting in her wake. And then the sound of traffic was gone. Overhead, the ancient, ghostly gums reached their branches upwards and over. Their embrace created a dappled arch that extended like the nave of a cathedral towards the house in the distance. Clare drove down the rutted drive, avoiding the corrugations that had become worse over the years she had been taking this road. This suspended moment was the bridge between her world and the cloistered place that sheltered her twin.

Clare parked her car at the reception area and got out. She always remembered not to lock here. To do so would bring the fear of the world that surged back and forth on the freeway into this haven, but it took her some effort to override the instinct to both lock and double check.

Father Jones was waiting for her on the polished red steps. ‘Hello, Isaiah,’ she said, lifting her face to be kissed. He leaned towards her, breathing her in. His hand smoothed the familiar curve in the small of her back, and her body softened in response.

‘Welcome, Clare,’ he said. Twenty years had not diminished her feelings for him. When he hooked his arm at her elbow, as a brother would, they were aware of the loss – but it was one they had both accepted…

‘I am glad you came.’ There was no reproach. He understood her long absences. ‘Constance has been so anxious since your call.’

Clare looked at him. ‘More anxious than usual,’ Isaiah amended. ‘She’s waiting for you.’

They walked down the narrow path, the plants they brushed against wafting sharp autumn scents up to them. Isaiah stopped at the edge of the clearing. On the other side of it stood the cottage, white, symmetrical, perfect, where her beautiful twin had purdahed herself. Isaiah pressed her arm.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

Clare stepped past the sundial to knock on the front door. Constance would not answer before she had allowed Isaiah to return up the narrow path. Clare listened for the susurration of her sister’s skirts, her body alert as she waited for the door to open to reveal Constance. Her other self.

‘Hello, Clare. I’m glad you came. Come in, you must be so tired.’ A white hand reached from the dim interior and took hold of Clare’s brown arm, drawing her inside. Constance closed the door. The sisters embraced, blonde hair mingling with black.

‘Why did you send me this?’ asked Clare, pulling away to show the enigmatic card to her twin.

Constance took it. ‘The first card is the key to the present. This is the High Priestess.’ She turned the card over in her hand. ‘It’s the Female Pope, the emblem of the law.’

Clare looked blank.

‘This is you, Clare. Always thinking, never understanding.’

Clare followed Constance into the sitting room. She sat down, her arms tight around her legs, her body rocking now.

‘Please keep it, Clare. You will need it.’ Clare capitulated, putting the card back in her bag. Then she knelt beside Constance and held her. Her sister quietened in her arms.

‘He’s out there again. I feel him. He’s moving.’ She turned her face into the hollow below Clare’s shoulder.

‘No, he’s not.’ Clare did not believe her own lie.

‘Who killed that girl, then? Who carved her up like that?’ whispered Constance, her breath hot on Clare’s face. ‘Who?’

‘The police will find him. I’m working with them. I’ll find him.’ Clare pushed her sister’s hair away from her face. ‘Try to rest now. You’ve not been sleeping, have you?’

Constance shook her head and leaned against Clare. There was nothing for it now but to hold her sister until she exhausted herself and fell asleep. Clare settled in to wait. It was dark before Constance fell asleep. Clare covered her and let herself out. The moonlight was cold as she crunched back up the path to her car.

As soon as she got home, Clare stripped and stepped under a scalding shower, trying to erase the ghost scars imprinted on her body when the real scars had in fact been carved onto Constance. She stepped out of the shower for her shampoo and stopped in front of her mirror. She had small, neat feet. Her legs were well proportioned with the muscular leanness to the hips and thighs that comes with running. Her waist curved inwards then flared towards small, curved breasts that had only recently started to soften. That could be disguised when necessary with a quick splash of cold water or a strategic run of a finger down her ribs. Her belly was taut, the unmarked skin stretched tight across her pelvis. She twisted her long hair on top of her head, revealing her elegant neck and the curve of her shoulders. It was a good body. One that had captured the attention of several men and one or two women.

But this body was not the body that Clare saw. The body she saw when she was naked was the body of her sister, Constance. They were the same height. But where Clare’s body was muscular, Constance’s was soft. Criss-crossed with scars, her thighs and breasts carried the knife emblems of the gang that had used her to initiate two new members. On her back, illegible now, were brutal signatures where they had carved their initials. Her left cheekbone was curved as sharply as a starling’s wing, the other had been reconstructed out of the shattered mess left by a hammer blow that had glanced off her skull and spared her life. For some reason the men, how many or whom Constance could never say, had not struck a final blow. They were distracted perhaps, or bored with the messy pulp that she had become. And so she had lived, her hip-length hair hiding a shattered face and the cold snake of fear coiled inside her thin body.

This was the ghost-body Clare saw in her mirror. Clare let her hair go, and its curtain fall ended the familiar hallucination. She returned to the shower and scrubbed. The water was so hot that she did not notice the tears coursing down her perfectly matched cheekbones.