by Anna Romer
Lil clamped her fingers over her mouth. ‘Oh, Abby. You’re too late. The shadows . . .’
‘Too late? Lil, what do you mean, too late?’
‘Oh, dear. My pills.’ She patted her hips then twisted around and looked at the house. She took a step towards it, but faltered, and then just stood there. She began to blink rapidly, her chest rising and falling as if she were struggling to breathe. ‘I’m afraid I’m unwell. My pills, would you get them for me?’
‘Of course, Lil. Where are they?’
The colour had drained from her face, leaving her skin doughy and pale. She squinted, as though against a bright glare, her eyes small and dark. ‘In the kitchen. The little dresser behind the door. Hurry, please.’
I ran up the stairs into the kitchen and found the white cabinet. I rummaged in the drawers, and then tugged open one of the glass-fronted doors. On the top shelf was a large array of packets and pill bottles. I leaned closer to scan the labels. Many had Joe’s name on them. I chose two, then went to the door, but Lil was no longer in the yard. Had she come inside after all? I hurried along the hall to where the bedrooms were.
‘Lil?’
A car motor roared outside. In the lounge room, I crossed to the window. Out on the road, a glimmer of metallic green flashed past, barely visible between the trees. For almost a full minute, I stood in the stillness, listening to my heart thundering in my ears as I fought to stay calm. No, please no. Not her. It couldn’t be her. I took a step towards the door, then stopped again, both hands clasped over my mouth. Not her. There must be another explanation. But my gut was in a knot and I kept seeing her face just now, under the trees outside, the hollow emptiness in her eyes. And I knew. Somehow, I knew. Rushing through the back door, I went down the steps and along the path. The driveway was empty. Lil’s Forester was gone.
• • •
Twenty minutes later, I pulled onto the roadside near the turnoff where we’d found Lil’s car the night she disappeared into the forest. Getting out, I called to her, and walked a little way into the bush, but there was no one around, and no sign of her car. Back in the driver’s seat, I took out my map and spread it out across the wheel.
Roy Horton said he and his father drove north out of town along the reserve road, where I now sat, otherwise known as the New Forest Road. From there they turned onto a narrow track and travelled west. Roy said the track was bumpy and went on for a long time, but that could describe any of the old logging tracks that crisscrossed the gorge reserve.
I trailed my finger over the map, north along the reserve road, until the dense terrain opened into farmland. At the furthest point of the kidney-shaped forested area, tucked into a bend in the river, was Ravensong. I found a pen in the glovebox and marked its location with a small blue cross. Then I examined the area surrounding it.
I ran and ran, Lil had said. And when I couldn’t run any more I crumpled and slept where I’d fallen. How far had Lilly Wigmore travelled? For days she had trekked through dense bushland, over hostile and unfamiliar territory. Lilly was a city girl, and had spent the last five years trapped in an attic. She would have been disoriented, frightened, not used to the sort of physical exertion needed to navigate the harsh terrain. She couldn’t have travelled far. Ten kilometres a day, fifteen at most? So in two days, she might have travelled thirty. I drew a thirty kilometre radius around Ravensong, but it still left a large gap between the possible position of the loggers’ hut, and where the hikers had found me.
On a whim, I drew a straight line between Ravensong and Pilliga’s Lookout.
At the midpoint, a vehicle track crossed the line at right angles. The track curved westwards, but not from the reserve road. There was another road, perhaps part of the now-defunct travelling stock route. This secondary road ran southwest off the New Forest Road but then seemed to peter out at a creek, reappearing a few kilometres later, where it intersected with the west-running trail. It looked promising, but it was a long way from Ravensong. It would have taken Lilly more than a couple of days to walk it.
Back on the road I sped north. Bushland crowded both sides of the roadway, but to my left was the Deepwater Gorge Reserve. For weeks I had been driving between Ravensong and town, and had passed several narrow dirt trails leading off this road, which I’d thought were old forestry trails or little-used driveways. The country roads around here were full of bushy lanes that led only to abandoned farms or quarries, or one-time fossicking areas. But I recalled one track that I’d passed, that seemed in more frequent use than the others.
Was that where Lil was heading? Did it lead to the place where Harry Horton had found her all those years ago as a lost and frightened young girl? Covered in dirt and badly bruised, crying beside the grave she had dug for her sister? And where now, a few short kilometres away, an old logging cabin held a caged nightingale of its own.
32
She could hear a mewling sound. At first she thought it was Mrs Bilby and that she’d somehow rolled on the rabbit in her sleep. Once, about a year ago, when Mrs Bilby was still small, she’d done that. Snuck the rabbit under the covers, cuddled her to sleep, only to wake in the night when Mrs Bilby clawed her and started making a horrible squeaking noise, squashed beneath Shayla’s arm.
This time it wasn’t Mrs Bilby making the mewling noise.
It was her.
She was crying from the icy ache in her bones. She’d never minded the dark before, had never been a cry-baby. Now that there was nothing else but dark, she hated it.
She lay rolled in a ball, knees jammed into her chest. As far away from the door as she could get. At first she couldn’t remember why she was here, so far from the door. She had started sleeping up against the door, her back pressed to the cold steel. It seemed somehow comforting to know that life went on out there on the other side.
But then she’d heard the whisper. A sort of rasping murmur that was different from the other voices she’d been hearing lately – her mum, or Jesse her best friend, or sometimes even Mrs Cartwright, her favourite teacher. No, this voice was none of them. It was outside her head. But when she screwed her eyes shut and listened hard to what the voice was saying, all she could hear was the rapid thump-thump of blood in her ears.
She couldn’t remember what the voice was saying. Something about the night, or the moon. The words rolled in her mind like marbles in an empty jar, around and around, making her dizzy. She wanted them to stop, wanted her head to stop spinning so that she could get to her feet and be prepared. That was the plan. Be prepared.
Only, she couldn’t quite remember what it was she needed to be prepared for.
She crossed her arms and buried her face in the sleeves of the denim jacket she wore. It wasn’t her jacket. And it wasn’t the glittery one of Mum’s, it had no scratchy sequins. Where had it come from, this jacket? She liked the way it smelled. Sharp, like lemons. Faintly of honey. Or at least, it had smelled that way in the beginning. Now it was like the rest of her, rank and grubby and sour.
Her stomach gurgled. She’d gone beyond hungry. Now she was just numb. Dipping in and out of her thoughts. Not sleeping but not awake either. And the marbles kept rolling, the shadows kept slipping and sliding, the voice kept rasping somewhere in the dark.
A loud rattle came from the door. Shayla jerked in fright, her limbs shooting out, her head jolting back, bumping the wall. The air turned solid in her lungs. She brought her knees up under her chin, and hot tears – the tears she thought she’d run out of – spilled over and scalded her face.
The door cracked open with a shriek. Light erupted so bright it hurt her eyes. Squinting through her lashes, Shayla glimpsed someone standing in the doorway. They spoke to her, the words jabbing sharp and urgent. But Shayla didn’t want to hear. She clamped her hands over her ears and closed her eyes.
33
The Fiesta bumped along the rocky track, rattling over potholes and diving into washouts so deep that the car’s underbelly squealed as it struck half-buried boulders an
d stones. I was about to give up and turn back, when I saw a familiar car parked up ahead. Lil’s green Forester. I pulled over beside it and leapt out. The engine was still warm, but there was no sign of Lil.
Calling out to her, I went further down the track until it ended abruptly at a bank of blackthorn. And there, cutting through the bushes, was a narrow trail. I ran along the trail, searching the trees around me. There was evidence that this area had been logged a long time ago. Huge stumps pushed out of the ground, and nearby were the fallen crowns, remnants of once-magnificent trees felled for timber. This narrow track may once have been another vehicle road, that allowed logging trucks deeper into the forest. Now it was barely wide enough for a person. The trees became denser and more tangled, and soon I was ducking under limbs and shoving aside leafy boughs. Then the track widened suddenly and I burst out into a clearing.
To my right was a cluster of tall granite boulders like oversized, lopsided marbles. Undergrowth crowded the base of the rocks, forming a chaotic tangle of blackthorn and tea-tree and fallen branches. One area of growth around the base of the boulders seemed too concentrated, too tangled. Too painstaking in its wild arrangement.
As I walked over, the blood began to roar in my ears. Was that netting? Blackish-green camouflage netting snarled up in the undergrowth, like flotsam washed up on a riverbank after a flood, with leaves and branches snared in the mesh. I stopped, sensing eyes boring into my back from the surrounding woodland.
‘Lil?’
The only answer was the moan of a breeze through the casuarinas and the creak of branches. I glanced over my shoulder. Why hadn’t I told anyone where I was going? Sliding my hand into my pocket, I closed my fingers around the stone Duncan had given me. Best Day Ever. The four of us were now fragmented, but once we’d been strong, and an echo of that strength seemed to flow from the stone, through my skin and along the racing passageways that led to my heart.
Feeling somehow braver, I picked my way closer to the boulders along another, narrower trail, trying to make sense of the shapes behind the netting. Was it a dwelling of some kind? Then I saw it. Half-hidden beneath the mess of branches and leaves, was a narrow door. As I went closer, other elements emerged from the tangled mess of netting and branches – heavy plank walls beneath the low curve of a roof line – and then it all shapeshifted into what appeared to be a small cabin.
The door was latched, but an open padlock lay on the ground beside it. I knelt down and touched it – unlike the rusted iron door, it was shiny new. Lil must have been here and unlocked the cabin. Had she taken Shayla somewhere else, knowing I would follow her? With a sinking heart, I unlatched the door and gave it a shove. Metal shrieked against metal as it lurched all the way open. The black cavity breathed out a bellyful of rank moist air, and it folded around me, filling my lungs and dragging me backwards in time. My body went rigid. I was twelve again, shivering in the dark, my teeth clattering as I curled into a ball on the smelly mattress, my ears alert for the sound of footfalls outside.
Breathe, Abby. Just try to breathe.
I stepped into the blackness. ‘Lil? Shayla?’
My voice echoed off the walls. Slowly, my eyes adjusted. The single-room dwelling was the size of a smallish caravan. Unfurnished but for a bucket by the door and a grimy mattress. The walls and ceiling and floor were lined with sheets of galvanised tin, rivetted along the joins. Black streaks coursed down the walls from years of water seepage, but otherwise the metallic lining had stood up to the ravages of time; it had remained a hard and unyielding surface that no amount of scratching or scraping by small fingers could penetrate.
A muffled sob broke the stillness. I whirled to face the far corner. At first she was just a denser patch of shadow huddled against the wall. Legs drawn tight against her chest, her face buried in her arms. I let out a ragged breath, and went over.
‘Shayla?’ Reaching down, I touched her shoulder. ‘Sweetie, are you hurt?’
A skinny arm came out and slapped me away. ‘Get off!’
‘I’m here to take you home. Can you walk?’
She shrank closer to the wall. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Abby. Your mum sent me to find you.’
Another whimper. ‘Mum sent you?’
‘Yeah, she thought you went to your dad’s but when you didn’t turn up, she got worried. She said Mrs Bilby’s worried too. Don’t you want to see her?’
The girl looked up. ‘Mrs Bilby?’
‘She’s your rabbit, right?’
She peered up at me with huge eyes. For a heartbeat I was staring at a younger version of myself – the shoulder-length brown hair, the round, pale face. She even wore my old denim jacket with roses embroidered down the front, the one I had tucked around her in the campground all those weeks ago.
Shayla glanced to the door. ‘Is Mum out there?’
‘No, but you’ll see her soon.’
‘I was so mad at her. I wanted to go to my dad’s. I got in the car with this lady. I was thirsty and she gave me some cordial to drink. It tasted funny. And then . . .’
‘You woke up in here?’
She nodded.
‘Come on. We’d better go.’ I held out my hand and she grasped it and got to her feet. Her legs wobbled, and nearly went from under her, so I put my arm around her shoulders and guided her across the hut and through the doorway. As she stepped through into the late afternoon light, she cringed away from the brightness and her eyes began to stream. I fished out my sunnies and let her slide them on. She peered at me.
‘RayBans,’ she remarked. ‘Can I keep ’em?’
‘Sure.’
‘Got any food?’
‘A Mars Bar in the car.’ I grabbed a roll of mints from my pocket. ‘This’ll have to do until then. They’re sugar free.’
‘Shit,’ she murmured huskily, grabbing the roll and shoving the mints in her mouth. ‘What’s the point of sugar free? Are you some kinda health freak?’
‘Not really.’ I tried to smile, but we weren’t out of the woods yet. Despite the girl’s bravado, she looked terrible. The cut over her ear was inflamed and a pink stain discoloured her cheek. Purple hollows ringed her eyes, and her skin was an unhealthy, pasty grey. ‘Let’s get going. You need to see a doctor.’
But she hovered, shuffling her bare feet in the dirt. She squashed the empty mint wrapper in her fist, then jammed it in her jacket pocket. She looked down at herself. Muck and grime covered her from head to toe, but she observed her state with no apparent reaction. Sticking out her foot, she examined it. Her feet were scratched and filthy, the nail of her big toe black with dried blood. She stared at it for a long time. Then she twisted around to gaze into the murky hole of the hut doorway. Her lips trembled. Then she softly moaned, and her shoulders began to shake. She seemed so young then, biting her lip, trying to be brave and not break down, not cry. As if she hadn’t just been to hell and back.
‘It’s okay.’ I grasped her arm. ‘You’re gonna be okay.’
It was a lie. A long time would pass before anything in Shayla’s life would be okay again. She would jump at noises, avoid the back seat of cars, sweat in cramped spaces and sleep with the light on. She would start crying for no apparent reason, and the smallest things would set her off. Worst of all, no one would understand why her behaviour was so erratic. I groped around in my mind, wishing I knew how to reassure her. To help her grasp that she was safe, and that she could stop being scared. At least until the nightmares began.
But then she barrelled into me and flung her arms around my neck, her skinny body convulsing with sobs. I held on tight and then we were both crying, her tears scalding my neck and mine soaking into her matted hair. We clung together for a long time, shivering in the dying sunlight, holding each other so tightly I didn’t think we’d ever be able to let go.
• • •
‘That’s the car . . .’ Shayla stopped dead on the deserted track, eyeing Lil’s Forester. ‘The one I got into.’ She took a step back
and started gulping sharp little breaths.
‘This one’s mine,’ I said quickly, pulling out my keys and unlocking the Fiesta. The hazard lights blinked in friendly greeting, but Shayla stared around wide-eyed at the trees.
‘We’re not alone, are we?’
I searched the surrounding bushland. Was Lil out there now, watching us? I thought of the woman with cold eyes and downturned mouth; the woman I had encountered in the bush the night Lil had disappeared. Again my skin prickled with the awareness of eyes following my movements, and a shiver ran over me. ‘Hop in, kiddo. Let’s get out of here.’
She climbed into the passenger seat and a heartbeat later I was reversing away from the Forester and bumping along the potholed track. When Lil’s car vanished behind us, the tension finally wilted out of me in a long sigh. Shayla drained my water bottle and practically inhaled the Mars Bar. Then she hung her head forward over her knees.
‘Feeling better?’
‘Like a pig’s arse.’
‘You wanna lie on the back seat and try to sleep?’
She glanced at me with panicked eyes. ‘I’m fine here. With you.’
‘You sure? It’s over an hour back to town.’
She crossed her arms and glared through the windscreen. ‘You’re just like Mum, always trying to get rid of me.’
‘Is that why you ran away?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You don’t get along?’
‘Nah. We’re at each other all the time, you know?’
We were quiet for a while. The Fiesta rattled back along the potholed track, scraping its belly over stones, its wheels skidding on the loose gravel. We turned onto the weedy stock route road, and then nearly forty minutes after leaving the cabin, we were back on the New Forest Road. Shayla slumped forward and started sobbing into her hands. Nothing I said seemed to bring her any comfort. But then when we reached the turnoff back to town she perked up and started singing to herself, her forehead resting on the passenger window as she watched the passing scenery fade into twilight with wide, tear-bright eyes.