At the Edge

by Lee Murray

  Jan is so pale her eyelids and lips are almost blue. ‘Charles?’ she says, to camera of course. ‘Charles?’ She still wears her head microphone, carefully raising and lowering the pickup arm every time she speaks. ‘Charles, where is he?’

  Michelle grabs Jan’s bare arm and squeezes until a halo of red skin surrounds her hand. ‘He went to get help,’ she says, flat and merciless. ‘He went because you told him to. You selfish—’

  Jan slaps her hand away. ‘Me? We wouldn’t be here if not for your stupid club. Think about that.’

  Michelle drops to her knees and starts unscrewing the boom stand into its component metal rods. ‘Sounds like your problem to me. I don’t remember inviting you.’

  She shakes her head. Her hair has grown out since the first episode. I didn’t remember that at the time, but now the contrast is striking. Her flat curls have stretched and dangle, reaching for her shoulders. Her skin is too dark to show signs of shock. But then, she shows no other signs of shock either. She looks to the camera. ‘We can’t broadcast this footage, you know. It’d mess up the court case.’

  ‘What court case?’ says Jan. ‘He’s going to kill us. He’ll kill us and he’ll get away with it because he always has.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ says Michelle. She hands one of the dense metal tubes toward the camera; my hand extends forward to claim it. ‘This is just to keep the dogs off, okay?’

  We can hear the baying in the distance, getting closer. I think Greg might have managed to kill one of the dogs, or at least hurt it badly. There are at least six others, not to mention Ponsford himself.

  The camera pans around the interior of the feed shed. Hay bales are stacked ceiling-high against the corrugated aluminium interior walls.

  The Other Girl is not with us, which must mean she’s outside with Nathan. I think that’s where she’s been for a long time.

  ‘Why did we come back here?’ I reframe on Greg, who has raised his hand to ask the question. I freeze the frame to get a better look at what I saw a second later. The floor’s discolouration is obscured by leg movements and patterns of dirt and hay. Did I really see it on my own or did I have help? I still can’t tell.

  ‘Get up. Get him up.’ My own voice sounds tinny and hollow. Michelle half lifts, half drags Greg out of the way. I set the camera at floor level. My feet appear, kicking a clearing in the straw, stomping to sound out which parts are concrete and which parts are a grey vinyl sheet camouflaging an iron manhole cover.

  The Other Girl brought us here. Nathan claimed it was all his own idea. Maybe he was just trying to protect her.

  ‘Help me with this.’ Michelle takes one side of the metal ring handle and together we lift the manhole cover. The lid flops open with a crash and the two of us look inside.

  I drop to my knees and vomit on the straw. Michelle’s legs buckle a little but she keeps her feet. Jan can’t resist. She comes over to look. Her cry is cut off with a thick sound as Michelle’s hand claps over her mouth.

  There is a crash at the shed door. ‘Let me in,’ calls Nathan. More shakes. The footage of Michelle reaching out to lift away her improvised door bar is unwatchable as I unsteadily retrieve the camera.

  Nathan falls through the door, holding Greg’s mobile telephone. The Other Girl steps through behind him, looking like she is queued up for a Duran Duran concert.

  ‘Did you—?’ Jan’s voice is guarded to the point of despair. She lost hope quicker than you would expect.

  Nathan nods, catching his breath. He is not a good runner. Another reason Greg would have been preferable. ‘I got a signal near the ridge. I called the police. Greg’s father, too.’ He bites his bottom lip and shrugs when Greg does not respond.

  Michelle gets it first. ‘Where’s the goat farmer?’

  ‘He’s busy with his dogs. But he’s nearly done.’ The dogs’ barks have reached a primal ferocity. Their chorus is getting closer, but contains fewer voices.

  Jan starts turning to each of us. ‘He’s coming. He’s coming. Why did we come back here?’

  The Other Girl kneels by the open manhole, looking down with an apologetic expression. I didn’t take the shot until much later, but it’s no mystery what held her gaze. One of the ruined gelatinous faces staring back from empty sockets wore braces over shrunken gums and a green scrunchie in its matted thicket of hair.

  Greg’s mouth moves but his expression does not change. ‘You killed his goats. That’s why he’s angry at us. You killed his goats.’

  Nathan shrugs. He did and didn’t. He wasn’t in the driver’s seat then, any more than he was when he threw himself into a creek to wash the blood and gore away.

  I’m the first to notice what he’s missing. ‘Where’s the knife?’

  ‘I gave it to him,’ Nathan replies.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I had to, otherwise he wouldn’t have murdered his dogs.’

  There’s a final helpless yelp from somewhere nearby and then the noise steadies into a ceaseless monotone mutter of swearing and violent threats. The sound comes closer. The shed door thumps once, shaking the whole structure.

  Michelle takes up a spot beside the door. She has a short metal pole in each hand. She gives the Other Girl a hard look and I think it’s the first time she’s ever seen her. ‘You got us into this, chicky-babe. You got what you wanted, now you do right by us, hey?’

  Nathan and the Other Girl reach out together for the door handle and pull it open.

  The goat farmer is there, eyes wide and mouth dripping red, holding Nathan’s knife like a short sword. In person Bryan Ponsford was just in his blood-soaked working clothes. On film, he’s wearing a grey suit with an emerald tie.

  He sees the Other Girl and he takes a half-step back. Michelle slams his wrist with her improvised club, hard enough to break skin and bone. She put her weight into it.

  The knife drops in front of Nathan and the Other Girl. They kick it across the floor into the manhole.

  Ponsford howls unintelligibly and grabs at Nathan. The Other Girl grabs his arm and stops it from reaching Nathan’s throat.

  Michelle hits him again, this time on the back of his head. Ponsford’s hat spins off into the straw. Ponsford takes one more step and collapses forward. His face bounces off the rim of the manhole. He stops moving, his face hanging into the hole like he’s vomiting into a toilet.

  Michelle says, ‘Let’s go now.’

  For some reason Jan picked that moment to start screaming so I stopped recording then.

  Excerpt from Episode Nine: ‘Final Report’ (episode not broadcast)

  When we filmed the final episode two nights ago, Jan wanted everyone to sit in the same places. She gave up when Greg pointedly refused to give up his crutches and sit down.

  Her webcast-host face is gone, replaced by serious-student face. It is no less insincere. In comparison to the footage I was looking at a minute ago, her transformation is unsettling.

  ‘We’ve had an amazing semester,’ she says. The frame tightens on her face; I wanted to get through this in one take and I didn’t want anyone else’s expression to distract attention from her. ‘The Wattle Creek Spook Hunters have looked Ashburnham’s darkness right in the eye and brought it into the light. We’re so proud that you’ve been able to join us on this journey. Your emails of support and encouragement have kept us going in the past few weeks. I wish I could thank every one of you in person.

  ‘This series started as an extracurricular project for credit towards our final Year 10 certificate. But it’s become more than that. And I’m not just saying that because Ms Lautner abandoned her teaching responsibilities and convinced the principal to cancel our bonus marks. That doesn’t matter anymore because the great news is that our last episode had over seventy-five thousand downloads. You banded together to create a real community. You’ve all rallied behind us and I know that this
is just the start of something big and important. I just know that when the legal injunctions on our latest episode come down and you finally get to see it, you’re going to lose it. You guys can’t get enough of Spook Hunters and I love you for that.’

  The camera pulls back as she speaks. Nobody is looking at anybody. Nobody says anything with their eyes. When Jan finishes, she leads an infectious round of applause that nobody catches.

  Greg nods once and settles his crutches into place. He turns his back on Jan and makes a painstaking, lumbering circuit towards the front door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Jan seems too surprised to be angry.

  ‘Coach says I have to keep up physical therapy if I want to start training.’ With a little shuffling manoeuvre to get the crutches out of the way, he opens the door.

  Jan tries to save the moment. ‘Don’t you want to tell the viewers about what’s coming up in Season Two?’

  ‘I can get graduation credit from footy. Can’t get anything I want here.’ Greg closes the door behind him and for once Jan’s media presence doesn’t rush to fill the vacuum.

  ‘I’m gone too,’ says Michelle, picking up her bag.

  That snaps Jan out of it. ‘Fine, you bugger off on walkabout or whatever. We can do this without you.’

  Michelle stands, breathing quietly and holding herself very still, for a long time. She says, ‘I’ll see most of you at school on Monday. Good night.’

  I pause the shot just as the camera pans past Jan’s face. Her flaring nostrils look out of place at the centre of a cracked mask of bland good cheer.

  I admit it. I enjoyed the moment. Maybe I’m not as good a person as I tell myself.

  I restart the footage.

  The pan resumes to the floor, where Nathan sits cross-legged. To his left, the Other Girl wears a sweet smile and, for the first time in our acquaintance, she has changed out of her old clothes into stonewash jeans and a Spin Doctors t-shirt.

  Nathan puts an arm around the Other Girl and says, ‘This is Sally. Well, that’s what we’re calling her right now and I’m sure she’d let us know if she minded. I don’t know if you see Sally. Not everybody does. But she’s been with us for a while and she’s planning to stick around from now on, helping us to help other people.’

  Jan looks at Nathan like he’s on fire and ignoring it. ‘Who are you talking—?’

  Nathan goes on. ‘We have a debt to repay to Sally. The first thing we’re going to do is find out her real name. Who she was.’

  Nathan looks to camera. His replacement glasses are so fine they almost vanish from his face. ‘We’re going to make another change next season. Together. All right? Together or not at all.’

  The picture wobbles just a little bit. I don’t intend to fix it.

  I walk around and take my place next to Nathan and Sally.

  See you next season.

  The Island at the End of the World

  Paul Mannering

  In the evening, the village gathers on the beach at sun-fall to watch the sky burn. Mother brings lumps of coconut meal and rice to eat. It’s padded together to make the sticky balls that leave grain-crumbs like tiny maggots on my fingers.

  Sarny toasts fish on the embers of the fire while we sit with our backs to the glow, so as not to miss anything on the horizon. We eat, drink kava, and talk until the sun vanishes into the abyss and the sky lights up in rippling curtains of bright green, purple, and red. Amongst the shimmering waves of fire are streaks of white light. Mother says the streamers are the souls of the dead, passing through the veil and going to the beyond. I wonder if it hurts to burn like that once you are dead. Most nights you can see as if the sun was still shining and in the flickering fire of the dark sky everyone’s skin glows with the colours of a polished pāua shell.

  I sit next to my friend Gilly and Mother approves. She talks about how Gilly and I will marry when we are old enough. I asked her once what marriage meant and she said it is having one special friend. I guess that means Gilly and I are married now, cos we’ve always been friends.

  After a time, the sky-fire fades and Sarny scoops white sand onto the dying embers and snuffs them out. We go home, under the smear of the moon. Sarny says that the moon used to be like a coconut; round, white, and full of milk. Now it’s spread across the dark like a bird splat on a rock.

  Our village is small, like the world, which is big, but not as big as it was. Sarny says you can go to the horizon, but then you will die because there is nothing beyond that. I didn’t understand what he meant, so I asked Mother. She said no one knows where the world went, but that the ocean around us is all there is.

  They say my father went to the horizon. He paddled his canoe out through the lagoon and raised the sail and waved to the people watching on the beach. He took coconuts for food and drink. He took fishing hooks and lines. He took hope, and he took Mother’s heart. He never came back and now Mother is like copra, the dried coconut. Sarny doesn’t mind. He loves her even though she can’t love him back.

  In the morning the sun comes back. Sometimes it rises up behind the village, other times it comes up in front. Some days are over quickly, others drag on forever. The sun doesn’t care. It doesn’t have anything important to do. It just wanders around.

  The pigs wake me with their grunting. I give them left-over fish and coconut-rice balls. They squeal and push to get the best bits, though I try and share them out.

  Bara, the sow, wriggles to get up from her litter. They are pumping her pig-udders for milk and she is hungry. I feed her a special mix of banana, coconut chunks and fish-meat, then I scratch her ears and she grunts and sniffs me for more food.

  We are going to eat the piglets, but first they have to grow up enough. Sarny says we have to feed the pigs like we have to plant the fields. All these things keep us in food, for one day the sky might burn the sea and all the fish will die.

  He says that happened before, when the moon died and the world was lost. The people of the village picked up so much fish they couldn’t eat it all. Lots of it went on to the fields and made the taro, the coconuts, and the bananas grow. Everything grows good in our fields because Sarny made people feed the ground with all the extra fish.

  The canoes go out each morning to set nets and drag the fish from the water beyond the reef at the end of the lagoon. Sometimes they find things that aren’t fish. Sometimes the things that aren’t fish drag a fisherman out of his canoe and I guess he becomes a streak of light in the fire-sky at night.

  When the pigs are fed, I walk down to the beach, past the coconut palms and the other huts. Gilly comes out of his hut and we burst into a race. He’s taller than me, even though we’re the same age, both born under the same fire-sky.

  Gilly’s father got swallowed by a whale. He was in his canoe, going fishing, when a big wave came. He paddled through it and then the whale in the wave opened its mouth and the canoe went inside like it was a cave in a cliff at high tide. Swallowed him and his canoe whole. Whales scare me with their tentacles and the stink of their breath when they blow. I wonder if a whale ate Father, or if he really sailed off the end of the world.

  I reach the water’s edge, the border between worlds, half a step behind Gilly. I push him in. By the time he’s come up, I’m swimming across the lagoon. There are little fish in the water, turtles sometimes, too. Looking down, we see crabs, snails, sponges, and things that should not be.

  On the other side of the lagoon is the reef. Inside the reef, there is the village, the lagoon, the fields, the streams, and waterfalls. Inland, past the fields, there are the jungle trees and the high mountain where the carved stones move in their slow dance.

  Rolling onto my back, I look towards shore and the mist shrouded mountain top. Raising my head higher, I see Gilly as he dives for something on the bottom of the lagoon.

  I float, my head sinking back, feeling the cool water
stroke my skin. The nudge of waves tells me that Gilly is coming closer. I try not to grin or squirm. Instead, I wait until I am sure he is close and then I flip over and splash him. Except it’s not Gilly coming up from underneath, it’s something with a pale face and dead eyes.

  Its lips peel back and bubbles rise out of its mouth as long arms reach for me. I scream into the water and thrash, getting my arms and legs in order to swim. The easiest thing to do is dive down, past the thing coming up at me with bared teeth and slack grey skin.

  I twist aside, feeling the graze of its clawed hands as I plunge. The surface water is warm but a body-length down, the cold grips like dread.

  I’m fast in water, born in the shallows of the lagoon under the burning night sky while Mother wailed and the women sang waiata to call me forth from her body. Swimming hard, I pretend I’m a fish, faster than a whale, faster than a spear, faster than a wraith, zipping through the burning sky. No fish can catch me. Not even a dead one with white lips and teeth of polished grey stone.

  I can’t see Gilly. I hope the white-faced thing didn’t get him. Grabbing a coral ledge, I pull myself under it, hiding like an eel. The seeweed swirls, dark fronds of brown and green reaching out to taste my skin, the pods along the stalks opening and the eyes inside turning to look at me.

  The white-faced thing floats down, its head turning this way and that, while I lie still under the cover of the weeds, so scared I forget to breathe. The seeweed eye-pods look at the intruder, ever watchful, but unable to do anything.

  After a bit, the strange fish swims towards the beach. It looks rotten, with ragged strips of grey skin waving in the current. I hope one of the older boys hunting along the shoreline sees it and stabs it with his fishing spear. When the coast is clear, I slip out from under the ledge and slowly rise to the surface.