Bunny, p.1
Bunny, page 1
About Bunny
For fans of Stephen King and Stranger Things.
Two eyes bore into him from across the room. They’re not her eyes. They’re the same colour and shape, but they’re not her eyes.
‘I see you.’
Silas didn’t have a happy childhood. Aunt Bunny made sure of that. But out of money and almost out of time, Silas and his girlfriend Rose are forced to return to his childhood home.
Back to the darkness, back to the woods, where addiction and hedonism are disguising something much more sinister . . .
Plagued by strange, unnerving events, Silas is drawn back into the family by an ancient presence deep in the woods. It will not let him go, and neither will Bunny.
A haunting psychological-supernatural thriller that delves into the role that addiction plays in family dysfunction, and how it inevitably changes everyone around it. A chilling, page-turning tale about love conquering most . . . but not all.
Contents
About Bunny
Title page
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
1994
PROLOGUE
2018
JERRY LEAVES A VOICEMAIL
THE ROAD HOME
WELCOME HOME, SILAS
1994
THE VISITOR
2018
SPINACH
1994
MISSING TIME
2018
FATHER AND SON AND GHOSTS
1995
THE ROOTS IN THE ROCK
2018
PURE MORNING
COLD COFFEE
ROSE IS RIGHT
1995
THE SEAT OF THE OTHER
2018
AND PUPPY DOGS’ TALES
ARTISAN BAKERIES & PRETTIER TOWNS
WORK DAYS
THE LAKE
NOT YET
1995
THE JOINING
2018
PLASTIC HEARTS & FRAGILE CENTRES
2017
NOT YET
2018
A MEETING IN THE DARK – PART I
HAMNER – BY DAY
A MEETING IN THE DARK – PART II
VISIT ME
STRAIGHT TO VOICEMAIL
I LOVE MOMDAD
HAIR OF THE DOG
AFTERNOON
EVENING
NIGHT
CHAMPAGNE BREAKFAST
SHE’S FIXING IT
IT’S TIME
EPILOGUE
GLADIATOR, YOU’RE HOME
TAP, TAP, TAP
I WILL WALK WITH YOU
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About S. E. Tolsen
Imprint page
Newsletter
In memory of Dr Vernon Naidu, Leon Hampson-Tindale and Lucy Olsen. Thank you for everything.
To a drinker the sensation is real and pure and akin to something spiritual: you seek; in the bottle, you find.
– Caroline Knapp
1994
PROLOGUE
A doorbell rings. Silas scampers to the front door. Lou Lou inhales deeply. She is all too aware of his incessant pacing from the master bedroom, but she’s at her vanity mirror and eyeliner doesn’t apply itself. Polished floorboards creak as small feet thump over them. Lou Lou flicks her wrist upwards – the perfect cat eye again. It may not bring in any income, but if Lou Lou knows anything, it’s how to look fuckable. She stares at herself in the mirror and exhales. If she’d been more ambitious, she could have been a movie star. She takes a moment to enjoy herself, to enjoy how beautiful she feels. Let him wait.
Adjusting an oversized melamine bangle and holding on to a gin and soda that’s already taking effect, Lou Lou strides down the hallway like a woman who knows how to walk in six-inch heels, knowing that it’s going to be the same shit with Silas again. Being a single mother in her late twenties is a fate Lou Lou can almost not bear to endure – if it hadn’t been for Bunny, she’s sure she would have strangled Silas with the cord of her beloved Conair hairdryer by now.
As she approaches the front door, a spindly child’s body covered in happy dinosaur–print pyjamas tries in vain to block her departure. His six-year-old arms reach out towards the walls on either side of him as if to brace himself, but they’re too short to touch both sides.
Lou Lou is momentarily struck by the endearing, almost amusing quality of a child assuming such a dramatic pose.
And it is endearing.
Except for the child’s eyes, clearer and more piercing than normal. Anger and guilt twist in Lou Lou’s gin-filled gut.
‘Mom, please don’t go tonight,’ he says with quiet urgency. ‘Please.’
Silas looks at his mother, dressed again for a night out with men. Lou Lou drains her highball glass and deposits it on a side table as she sashays towards him. She sighs heavily and purses her lips. For her, this whole motherhood game has already had too many innings.
‘Sweetheart, Mommy deserves her playtime too sometimes, and tonight is Mommy’s playtime. Okay?’ Her tone is warm, but there’s a brittle quality to it.
‘But Mom . . .’ Silas’s eyes dart towards the hallway behind Lou Lou, checking for her. ‘I’ll be alone.’
‘Silas, darling, you’re not alone. Your Aunt Bunny is here. Okay?’ Lou Lou ends the conversation with syrupy finality. He’s a child with an imagination that finds monsters in the most serene of surroundings. She knows that life will knock her sensitive boy sideways more than a few times and because of that she wants to provide comfort when he needs it. She also wants to get to the fucking door. Her jaw tightens as she watches his eyes slip to the wooden floorboards between her feet.
‘But Momma, she’s sad tonight, and she acts different when she’s sad and nobody’s looking.’
‘Enough, Silas!’ Lou Lou’s voice flashes like a cold white thunderclap.
Silas drops his arms to his sides. His fingers squeeze his thumbs into his fists as his shoulders hike up protectively. His gaze is frozen on a knot of wood in the floorboards. He’s stared at this same knot many times before when Lou Lou has left for one of her ‘dates’ (sometimes she’d come back in the middle of the night, sometimes she’d come back two days later). If he stares at the knot long enough and softens his gaze, its swirling imperfections morph into a rosebud.
‘Jesus, Silas, you wanna pull this shit every time I go out?’ Lou Lou doesn’t wait for an answer from him. ‘Go to your room. Go to bed. Get!’
Silas stays put, gauging the right time to move; too early or late and there might be consequences, especially after Lou Lou puts down a few too many empty glasses.
A softly slurred voice from down the hall caresses the tension. ‘Relax, Lou. It’s fine.’ Out of a doorway drifts the owner of the soft voice – Farrah Fawcett’s doppelgänger cradles her own gin and tonic in a coffee mug while her fingers lightly rub a delicate gold crucifix around her neck.
The voice soothes Lou Lou like a magic incantation.
‘Let me take him,’ she says as she steps forward to end Lou Lou’s frustration.
Silas, defeated, allows his mother to steer him towards the woman, who stops toying with the crucifix and rests her hand on Silas’s left shoulder. Lou Lou ruffles his brown locks before gently resting her hand on his right shoulder.
Dwarfed by two women who resemble models that have just stepped off a Vogue cover shoot, Silas looks like he’s being blessed in a revivalist church, where the only nice clothes in the congregation belong to the pastor.
‘You see how much your Aunt Bunny loves you, Silas?’
Bunny’s hand feels feather soft. Lou Lou’s fingers slowly press harder into his shoulder blade until he replies, ‘Yes, Mom.’
Bunny smiles down at him. ‘Come on, we’ll watch TV.’
The doorbell rings again, causing both women to release their grip on his tiny frame.
‘Coming!’ Lou Lou calls, sounding just as sweet as pudding. She whirls around and opens the door as if she’s winning an award. Outside stands a man chewing gum and smelling like Old Spice and three one-night stands spaced over a month. He ignores Silas and raises his eyebrows in greeting to Lou Lou and Bunny. ‘Things okay? Heard yelling.’
‘Don’t ask. Let’s go, hon,’ Lou Lou says as she leaves, slamming the door shut behind her.
Bunny looks down at him and smiles as Silas’s eyes crawl up to meet hers. Her face falls into a grin that reveals the gap in her front teeth. He fixes his gaze on the gap as it exposes a sliver of her increasingly pickled tongue, and feels overwhelmed by vertigo. His peripheral vision picks up her lacquered red nails impatiently dancing along the rim of the mug.
Silas knew that when Mom and Bunny had their ‘drinks’ at night-time, this meant that he had to be quiet because they were ‘very tired’. Their drinks were different to his – sometimes he sneaked a sip when they left their glasses to answer the phone.
In it was what looked like water, but with tons of ice and a piece of lemon with fizzing bubbles that floated to the top. It reminded him of the NYC snow globe his father had bought him before he left. In the centre of the globe was a girl with a red jacket forever skating; if you shook the globe in an angry way, her face disappeared behind the trapped snow.
But Aunt Bunny got so sad sometimes after her drinks . It was a different kind of sad and happened only when Mom wasn’t at home to be with her. One time he followed her, and she kept checking rooms as if she had lost something important. She stopped in the hallway like a compass that couldn’t find north and when he looked up at her face, her eyes looked straight through him and seemed to gaze through the floor behind him – down into the earth and out the other side of the world.
‘What are you looking for?’
She jumped in fright like she didn’t know he was there, even though he was right in front of her. That’s when she dropped her glass and started crying. Then laughing in a way that sounded sick in his ears. Then screaming. Silas cried and tried not to move.
And that’s what he’s afraid of happening tonight.
She looks okay at the moment though, standing in the doorway, smiling down at him.
She caresses his hair as she shepherds him into the lounge. These moments are the ones that confuse him and make his stomach feel twisted, because right now, he feels safe. Loved, even . . . But then there’s that other feeling there too.
Silas wants to go back to his room, but he’s too nervous to ask permission, so he sits on the couch and watches TV – a rerun of an old Baywatch episode that Silas has seen before. One of the lifeguards is possessed by a ghost so the other lifeguards try and help her. The possessed lifeguard is a pretty blonde woman named Summer.
Bunny drains her mug, hops onto the couch next to him and twirls one of Silas’s brown curls around her finger. He fixes his eyes on the TV and pulls his knees up under his chin, clasping his arms around them. She reaches out and gently tickles his ribs with her finger. He can’t help but squirm. The phantom of a smile floats over his face, but he’s still artificially engrossed in the TV.
Summer is about to jump off a balcony with a man who loves her, but he’s actually a ghoul.
Bunny tickles Silas again. His eyes flick towards her for a moment but he wills them back to the TV. He’s practised in this now.
Summer hasn’t jumped, but the man has. He’s falling.
Bunny’s finger finds a new spot on his ribs. He lets out a little peep as he squirms again. A shy smile breaks through. Maybe she’s okay tonight.
‘Finger wiggles, Silas giggles,’ she says in a sing-song fashion.
‘Stop!’ He chuckles as he squirms.
‘Finger wiggles, Silas giggles.’
‘Bu-nny!’ He squeals in delight as he rocks away from her tickles.
Silas closes his eyes and laughs as he tries to stop Bunny tickling him. Her finger freezes for a moment: he feels it become stiff and straight. Then Bunny’s finger drives into his ribcage with such force that he slides sideways along the couch cushions. A sharp, searing pain tears across his ribs. He can feel Bunny’s nail dig into the soft flesh between two ribs like a Roman spearhead. He howls and scuttles backwards into the opposite corner of the couch, clutching at his side. Hot tears of pain and surprise blur his eyes.
Bunny is frozen, finger still outstretched like a lance. She’s looking at him dumbly, almost empty. A muddy mixture of fright and malice tumbles over her face; two flashing sides of a spinning coin. She examines her finger as if realising for the first time that it’s part of her body. She looks back at him confused – sheepish, even. Silas clamps a hand over his ribs and holds his breath in terror. They regard each other like two statues in the flickering light of the television.
Bunny’s gaze drifts in thought; he watches her mind slowly turn inwards and shut out the world as she gradually rises and floats out of the room. Her near-silent footfall sounds like a solitary dry leaf rustling away down the hall.
Silas holds his breath for as long as he can, but his galloping heart demands air and his mouth springs open. Ragged, heaving breaths burn down his throat as he tries to remain quiet and stifle a sob.
She’s walked into the kitchen this time. He hears her opening drawers then banging them shut – jangling metal objects collide in her search. He lifts his pyjama shirt to discover a fresh bruise surrounding an angry red crescent between his ribs. A tear of blood crawls down the gentle dunes of his ribcage and into the waistband of his pyjama pants. From the kitchen comes the crisp sound of a cork popping out of a bottle. Soft footsteps approach; he drops the shirt over his ribs and presses the cloth to soak up the blood.
Bunny rounds the corner of the doorway, carrying a freshly opened bottle of wine. She fills her mug to the brim before nestling herself back into the corner of the couch. She hikes her knees up to her chest to mirror Silas before turning her face to watch him.
Silas’s young mind can’t read the expression on her face. She seems to be warily examining him, as if he is now some foreign thing. Bunny empties her mug in one long drink. Silas huddles his back into the couch and tries to focus on the TV screen. He can’t follow what he’s watching. The only visual he can discern is multiple children dancing and their elation: Rice Krispies! Snap! Crackle! Pop!
Silas glances back at Bunny; she returns the favour. Her eyes are foggy, like the bathroom mirror when Silas has finished with his bath – lingering condensation needing to be wiped clean. The only part of her that moves is her thumb and forefinger as they twirl the crucifix around her neck. She twirls it until the gold chain looks like a glistening rope, a rope that is slowly creeping from her décolletage to her throat like a tiny noose. He thinks he hears her whisper. But when he turns to her, her mouth is shut.
The waning adrenaline in his body slowly turns him into lead. His ribcage aches as his eyelids droop, lulled by the soft shapes of the television dancing before them, and without him realising, they close . . .
A staccato rhythm of noise and silence gently nudges Silas out of sleep. He turns over, returning his gaze to the TV, and the small movement re-ignites the pain in his ribs. It’s changed from a raw, sharp pinpoint to a wide, dull glow. His eyes float open, sensing a change in the lighting. The rhythm of noise and silence is also one of light and darkness. His brain pieces it all together. His eyes focus as his head scans the room.
The lights are off. Not just in the lounge, but in the entire house.
Darkness except for the TV switching ON, OFF, ON, OFF; Kramer is yelling and Jerry is calming him down . . . they disappear . . . Jerry is confused and Elaine is yelling . . . they disappear again.
A finger of glowing moonlight shines in through a crack in the floral drapes, breaking up the darkness with timid illumination.
Silas turns to the opposite end of the couch. Aunt Bunny isn’t there, but her mug is, and so is the bottle. Both are empty now. A tiny movement draws his attention to the hallway entrance. His eyes are unable to see what it is in the near-dark.
He squints from the corner of the couch. What is it? It’s almost ceiling height. It moves. The TV switches on again, bathing the room in pale light, just enough for him to see the start of the hallway. In the top corner, near the ceiling, a hand holds the TV remote. Something behind the hand catches a glint of reflected light from the television screen. It’s the top half of Aunt Bunny’s face.
‘Playtime,’ she whispers.
The TV turns to black as her hand releases the remote, sending it tumbling to the wooden floor. It erupts in a fountain of batteries, but before the batteries have time to clatter onto the floor, manic giggling erupts as bare feet thump down the hall. Silas hears her swinging open another door and pounding through it.
A thought creeps through his mind. She was almost up to the ceiling. How did she get so high up? His body is moving without him needing to drive it. Some deep part of him with the voice of a man speaks in his head. You need to hide now, hide now, Silas. He listens to the grown-up voice.
He edges towards the doorway and peeps down the hall. There’s no crack in a curtain to let any moonlight in here. The light switch is further down the hall on the opposite wall. He creeps into the black hallway and is overwhelmed by powerlessness. He had the same feeling once when Lou Lou took him to New Jersey one summer and he got caught in a rip current. He had swum too far from the shallows and as the water pulled at his legs and turned him away from the shore, he realised he might not be alone in the inky blue abyss below him . . .
He reaches the light switch and flicks it on; his happy dinosaur–print pyjamas appear almost fluorescent under the brightened light. At the end of the hallway passage is a flight of stairs leading up to the second floor, and at the other end is the kitchen, bedrooms, an unused sewing room and the front door. The door to the kitchen, where Bunny ran into, is open. It’s the heart of the house and has adjoining doors to other rooms. Listen for her. You’re safer if you know where she is, the grown-up voice says inside his head. Silas stands still and listens.
