The Birthmark by Beth Montgomery

That night Decima called outside Lily’s lounge room window. ‘Are you coming, Lil?’
    Lily, her younger brother, Cyrus, and their father were on the floor eating dinner. ‘Yeah, wait,’ Lily yelled back. She dusted sticky grains of rice from her fingers, crushed her soft drink can and bundled it up in the take-away paper in front of her.
    â€˜I’m staying at Decima’s,’ she said to her father.
    Amos was motionless in front of the DVD player. He grunted but didn’t look at her.
    She got up from the floor and took her rubbish. Amos pushed his papers towards her in a feeble effort to help. He lay on his belly under the fan, his head pointed directly at the screen. Lily knew he wouldn’t move for the rest of the night. Cyrus sat beside him, his mouth hanging open. He was only eight years old but he was already imitating everything their father and Rongo did. She’d seen him smoking a few times. She wouldn’t be surprised to see him rolling around drunk any day from now.
    She threw the rubbish in a cardboard box and met Decima and Christina at the back door. Lily could tell Christina was as nervous as a cornered rat. She was chewing her fingernails again. Thankfully, she’d found a T-shirt that was big enough to cover her midriff. Decima had told her to wear dark clothes so she would be hard to spot, but her white arms and legs were so obvious. Lily swore under her breath and hoped Christina wouldn’t give them away. The only consolation was Christina’s short hair. People would probably think she was a boy.
    â€˜Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here before Mum gets home.’
    The girls scurried down the overgrown path towards the beach. Lily had it worked out well. All she had to do was get out of the house when her mum was away. Lorelei had left for bingo earlier in the evening—good riddance, piss off and don’t come back. She would never have let Lily wander about at night, but Amos thought she’d be sitting around at Decima’s. He was easy to fool.
    Out on the beach the girls headed east in silence. They passed the pillbox they’d visited on the weekend. Lily shivered when she saw the pale dome in the moonlight.
    â€˜I hate this pillbox. It feels as though someone’s looking at me through it,’ she whispered.
    â€˜But no one’s in it,’ Christina said.
    â€˜I think Hector’s grandfather’s right though, don’t you? I can feel someone in it, the air is different,’ Lily said.
    â€˜Creepy,’ Decima whispered.
    The girls headed towards the waves, giving the pillbox a wide berth.
    â€˜You know how you think your ghost’s a Jap,’ Decima said. ‘Well, how do you know he is? He might be just a Chinaman who worked in one of the restaurants or something.’
    â€˜He wears a uniform.’
    â€˜What sort of uniform?’ Christina asked.
    â€˜He’s got a coat…long sleeves and buttons…and badges. And he’s got a belt…a plain brown belt. It’s like he’s all faded yellow...and he wears a little hat with an anchor on the front. I don’t know, maybe you’re right, but he seems like a soldier to me.’
    He was small too, Lily remembered: bony and half-starved looking. She didn’t like his face either. It was sallow and squashed, and his lips stuck out as if they were glued on as an afterthought. The bottom one seemed to hang. It was weird how those details were clear in her mind; but she didn’t want to tell her friends everything. She knew Christina didn’t believe her and it made her edgy. She took a deep breath and tried to put the ghost out of her mind.
    â€˜If we stayed here one night we might see him,’ Decima said.
    â€˜Are you crazy?’ Lily said. She stopped walking and glared at her cousin. She wanted to shake her and scream. Instead her voice came out all cold and low. ‘I don’t want