Clancy of the Undertow

by Christopher Currie

  ‘Whose brother saved whose life?’

  ‘Get your hand off it. I was fine.’

  ‘You can keep my hanky, by the way. But don’t think I don’t know you took my sunnies.’

  I shake my head. Our relationship has regained its usual rhythms. Which is excellent. ‘Lead on, Dr Phil,’ I say.

  39

  We don’t say much as we drive up to the hideout. We’ve both got questions, probably, but silence is fine by me. I watch the scenery go past the passenger window with my head propped up on my hand. I’m trying to convince myself that this past week has been all a dream, that I’ll wake up back to my boring life, which I will now obviously value as I should and treasure forever. It’s not a dream, of course. The trees are real trees. The grass moves too convincingly in the wind. It’s not a fairy tale, or at least not the good kind. At some point soon I’ll have to face a crowd of Barwenites holding pitchforks and flaming torches.

  ‘Sure you’re okay to head up?’ says Angus. ‘You still look a little pale.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, sounding far from it.

  ‘Just checking.’ There’s a tiny trace of concern in my brother’s voice, a rare inflection.

  And when Angus stops the car, he doesn’t throw bags at me or shout. He just grabs one backpack and jerks his thumb over his shoulder like come on, then. He doesn’t run off ahead. Instead, he walks beside me, staring up into the canopy of trees. The first spits of rain.

  I’m just wondering how much longer we’ve got to walk when Angus stops. He peers through the tall grass like a hunter. The clearing is just ahead of us.

  ‘Oh, shit.’ He turns back and gestures me forward. ‘Clancy, check it out!’

  I look where he’s pointing, but only see the same patch of grass, the same weird hideout, the same glint of metal tent pegs. ‘What?’

  ‘Look!’ He creeps forward into the clearing and I follow him. He puts down the packs and crouches down near a divot in the grass. He puts his hand to his cheek. ‘The pig’s head,’ he says. ‘I tied it down right here.’ He points to the ground, at some upturned dirt where a bunch of pegs are lying on their sides. ‘Holy shit.’ Then, suddenly: ‘The camera!’ He gets up and strides towards the hideout.

  I stare at the tent pegs for a moment. No, I tell myself. Something’s just taken the pig’s head. Something normal. I don’t want to follow Angus into the hideout, that would just be admitting I’m interested. But of course I follow him.

  We go in together, and the first thing I notice is that the tripod’s been knocked over and the camera’s fallen off it.

  ‘No, no, no, no,’ goes Angus. ‘What are you doing to me?’ He picks up the camera like it’s a newborn kitten and swivels out the viewfinder. After a moment, the screen lights up. ‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘Thank you baby Jesus.’ He hugs it to his chest. ‘Wait. Clancy, hold this.’

  He gives me the camera and goes over to the digital recorder, which doesn’t seem to have moved. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes yes yes. This is great.’

  Even I have to admit to myself I’m a little excited. As much as every rational part of my brain knows there’s no way the Beast of Barwen could possibly exist, some tiny part of me suddenly and desperately wants it to.

  We huddle around the little screen as Angus plays back the tape. He scrubs it forward and we see the clearing, basically unchanged from, I guess, yesterday morning. It’s like a time lapse on a nature doco: quick rustles of leaves and grass the only real movement. The shadows lengthen and the camera flicks over to night-vision. Jesus, I think, how much did this set-up cost? All the while the dark shape of the pig’s head remains in the bottom left corner. It’s daylight again: this morning. Angus chants under his breath: ‘Come on, come on, come on.’

  And then the screen goes blurry, just for an instant, and then back to the clearing. Angus slows the tape down. The pig’s head is gone. I get a chill. ‘Holy shit,’ he says. ‘Ho. Lee. Shit.’

  He rewinds the tape, back past the dark flash, and pauses it. He gets me to read out the time-code and he fiddles with the audio recorder until it’s ready. He’s not saying anything, just breathing really fast.

  He presses play and we’re watching the clearing again, this time with sound synched up, just the rustle of wind, the occasional bird cry. I hardly want to watch. A few minutes pass and I go to ask how long but he shushes me with his hand.

  It’s the sound we hear first. A huffing noise: deep, quick nostril breaths.

  I put my hand over my mouth.

  A loud grunt.

  Then a scratching noise like a sudden gust of wind and the image shakes and a bunch of leaves falls over the camera. Then the breaths again, getting softer.

  ‘The fuck?’ Angus pulls the viewfinder up to his face but I wrench it back down so I can see it too. The leaves fall away and we can see the clearing again, but tilted on a slight angle. The pig’s head is definitely gone. The image starts to teeter and then it falls and it’s a closeup of Angus’s sleeping bag.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘What happened?’

  Angus rewinds the tape and watches it again, slowing down the part where the leaves obscure the view. He squints at the viewfinder. ‘Shit. You can’t see anything. But it was definitely the beast, right? You heard it, right?’

  ‘I heard something.’ The weird sound of its breath. Whatever it was must have knocked the camera over.

  ‘Okay,’ says Angus. ‘Okay.’ He’s making hand movements, like he can’t decide what to do next. ‘Okay, we’ve gotta go.’ He scrambles out of the hideout. I’m not sure what to do but he sticks his head back and shouts ‘Come on!’

  I follow him out and he’s crouched over the place where the pig’s head was. A misty rain traces my face. ‘It wasn’t here that long ago,’ he says. ‘We’ve got to track it.’ He picks up his backpack.

  ‘Track it?’

  Angus squints at me. ‘You can’t chicken out.’

  ‘I’m not chickening out,’ I say, even though I totally am.

  ‘This could be huge. Right? Right?’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ Part of me does want to know what’s going on, even though the whole situation is super creepy.

  ‘Just stay close to me,’ Angus says. ‘Watch your feet and follow me.’ He leaps off into the bush and I jog after him, not wanting to be left behind.

  The rain starts falling more heavily, slapping the leaves and the grass. I have to call out to Angus, who’s bounding ahead. ‘What are we going to do if we find it?’

  ‘Get a photograph.’ He slaps his backpack. ‘Camera in here. Been wanting to use it forever. A great scientist is always prepared. I’ve got it preset for action shots, so even if it’s moving…’ He stops and crouches down.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look.’ He points at the ground where there’s an indentation in the grass, a hollow the size of a dinner plate. Angus makes a movement with his hand like pawprint. I stare at the ground, trying to imagine a creature leaving its mark. It could’ve just been a natural depression. But then Angus points up ahead, grinning. I follow his finger and there’s a broken branch hanging off a nearby tree.

  ‘It could’ve just snapped off by itself,’ I say, hardly even convincing myself.

  ‘Look at the way it’s snapped though.’ Angus goes over to the tree. ‘See how it’s twisted like that? I’ve seen this sort of thing online.’ He thrusts his hands into his pockets. ‘It’s a tell-tale sign.’ The rain’s plastered his hair down so it’s gone darker and he looks so much like Dad in those photos, just missing the motorbike.

  I shrug. The rain’s getting really heavy now. ‘Can we come back?’ I say. ‘Can we get jackets and torches or whatever and come back?’

  ‘No way,’ he says. ‘We’re tracking it. Time is of the essence. We can buy hundreds of jackets with the money I’ll get from this photo.’

  ‘The money we’ll get.’ I feel water seeping into my left shoe. I look down and the tips of my boots are black and soft. ‘And you’re buyi
ng me new shoes.’

  ‘Okay, whatever,’ he says. ‘But we gotta keep going.’ He moves away, keeping his body close to the ground so he’s waddling, even though there’s no real reason to do so.

  I follow him for maybe five minutes and we’re heading down a slope with the rain hammering and my hair’s hanging down over my eyes and I keep slipping on wet leaves. Angus stays in front, every so often bending down to analyse some invisible clue on the ground or stopping to examine leaves on a tree. But he doesn’t stop. He seems to keep knowing where to go. Through the pouring rain he’s a ghost, shifting in and out of my vision.

  I trip on a rock and look down to regain my footing and when I look up I can’t see him. There are blurry shapes everywhere but none of them look like my brother. ‘Angus!’ I shout. ‘Angus?’ The sound of water hammering down through all the leaves nearly swallows my voice whole.

  ‘I’m here!’ A shout to my left. ‘Over here!’ An Angus-sized shape waves at me.

  He’s huddling underneath a big fallen tree and I squeeze in next to him. It’s dry underneath the log, but we’re both soaked through. ‘This is ridiculous,’ I say. ‘My shoes are buggered.’ I wiggle my toes and water squelches out from the seams.

  ‘It’s going to be so amazing,’ says Angus. ‘We’re close. I know we’re close.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘This is insane. We should go back. Do you even know where we are?’

  He’s not listening. He says, ‘I can’t wait to see their faces. I’m gonna be like, read it and weep. They’re go—’

  There’s a flash of lightning and for an instant the whole world lights up and my eye lands on a dark shape on the ridge below us, moving slightly but noticeably, like a muscle tensing. I blink and the world turns back to grey sheets of rain.

  ‘What was—’ I start talking but Angus cuts me off.

  ‘That was it!’ he shouts. He grabs my arm. ‘Clancy, that was it! You saw it too! Right?’

  ‘I saw—’

  ‘The motherfucking beast!’ Angus scrambles to his feet. ‘We gotta go.’ He charges off into the rain, disappearing as if slipping through the gap in a curtain. Then there’s a crash of leaves and a branch tearing and he yells out.

  I run towards the sound but immediately slip on the ground and hit a rock, landing right on my backbone and the pain jars me all the way up to my skull. I roll over and a sharp rock gets me in the ribs and it hurts like hell but I shout out, ‘Angus!’ and there’s his yell again and it sounds ages away. I get up and move forward even though it’s like someone’s stabbing me right beside my kidneys and my vision’s doubling up. I’m about to take another step when there’s another lightning flash and I see I’m standing at the edge of a cliff and the strap of Angus’s backpack is caught on a shrub beside it.

  I crouch down and shuffle to the precipice, the rain pounding buckets into my back. I see Angus on a ledge way down below and his leg’s twisted up behind him and his face is twisted up too.

  40

  There’s no way down. This is what I keep thinking. There’s no way down. I hang one foot off the edge, searching vainly for a foothold. ‘Angus!’ I shout. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ he shouts back, but his face tells me he’s in pain.

  ‘I can’t get down there!’

  ‘Where’s the bag?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s the bag?’

  I grab the backpack from beside me and hold it over the edge. ‘It’s here, I’ve got it!’

  Thunder cracks above us and Angus yells out ‘Photo! Get the photo!’ He’s lying there with a broken leg and he still won’t give up on the beast.

  ‘You’ve got to get a shot of it!’ he shouts again. ‘We’ve got—AGHFUCK!’ He tries to get up and crumples back down.

  ‘I’ll get help!’ I shout. ‘Stay there and I’ll get help!’ I pull the bag towards me and God bless my ridiculous brother because he’s clipped the car keys onto a metal ring that hangs off one of the zips. I search the bag for anything helpful but there’s only the camera and a wrinkly apple and another battery and an old porno. A scientist is always prepared, my arse. This was Angus’s survival kit. But underneath there’s something. A fricking raincoat. You’ve got to be kidding me.

  I crawl back to the edge and shout, ‘Care package!’ and drop the bag down and it lands next to him and he scrambles for it. I waggle the keys like I’ve got this! and shout, ‘I’ll be right back! I’m getting help and I’m coming right back.’

  Angus shouts something like, ‘Okay!’ but I can’t hear it because of the thunder and I see him waving to me but he can only move one arm and I shout, ‘I’ll be right back!’ and I’m thinking, don’t die. You absolute dickhead, don’t die.

  I scramble back up and find the fallen tree. All right, I think. Up the slope. Start with that. I walk slowly but purposefully back up the hill, watching nothing but my feet. My back’s caning. I try to remember which way we came from the clearing but my brain scrambles up directions like it always does and I wish to hell that I had a phone. Mum and Dad, so concerned about their family doing things together but they can’t even buy their teenage daughter a mobile for emergencies.

  In my head the dark shape looms again, lit by the lightning flash. It has to have been a rock or another fallen tree or a trick of our eyes. It has to be. I push the vision from my head and focus on my hopeless boots, full of water, sinking over and over into the leaves and dirt. I reach the top of the slope and plunge on ahead, trying to imagine the path our feet took on the way in. I grab trees and clumps of grass for purchase and everything’s tearing and breaking but I manage to move forward. It all looks the same, like I’m stuck in a cartoon and the background’s on a loop. But I struggle on and I’m absolutely sopping, feeling twice my weight.

  It’s then I see the broken tree, the branch twisted over. I’m leaning against it and my breath’s all shallow because my back’s absolutely killing me and the pain in my ribs has turned weird and fluttery. I walk on and then—thank God—I’m at the clearing. There are huge puddles forming all over the ground, and I think of all Angus’s equipment in the hideout. All that bloody money.

  The way out is clear enough and somehow I find my way back to the road. The cracking thunder sounds like it’s right above me. I get to the ute and fumble around with the keys, dropping them twice in the mud until at last they go in the lock and I can open the door, jump into the driver’s seat and finally shut the world out.

  The rain hammers on the roof. I take a deep breath and put the keys into the ignition. Not quite how I’d imagined my maiden voyage behind the wheel of a car.

  Keep calm, I tell myself. Dozens of diagrams flash in front of me: scores of road rules, correct distances and give way progressions, all thoroughly useless in a thunderstorm in the middle of nowhere with your brother lying at the bottom of a cliff.

  Come on, faggot, says my brain.

  I hit the steering wheel to cut off my thoughts. I put the key into the ignition, turn the key so the engine starts up. A blast of cold air hits me and the radio comes on. I put the car in first gear and go to move forward but it stalls immediately.

  Useless lezzo queer.

  I turn on the lights, and the car’s slipped forward off the road so I put it in reverse and try again. The car jerks back, the engine cuts and it rolls further forward. I wrench up the handbrake and the car’s sitting there, about to sink into the mud.

  All the Underhills are fucking psycho.

  Okay. I think. One thing at a time. I think back to all the driving questions I pestered Mum and Dad and Angus with. There’s no other traffic anywhere on the road. I can do everything one step at a time. Slowly, finally, I get the clutch to bite and I reverse back. I switch the wipers on and am about to drive off when the sight of a nearby tree makes me stop. I get out of the car, stripping off my jumper. I tie it to the tree, pulling the arms as tight as I can to seal the knot.

  I get back in the car and drive forward slowly,
following the faint grooves Angus’s tyres have made in the fire track. Water washes across the track diagonally, shimmering under the headlights. Somehow I don’t get bogged and I get to the sealed road and my head’s going left or right? because somehow I can’t even remember which way we came in. I slow the car to a halt and my head’s hurting so much and it’s only one of two decisions but apparently this is still too much for me.

  Left, I decide. Left, and I power up the high-beams and swing the wheel and gun the engine. I peer over the dashboard like an old lady as I drive and all the while I’m thinking of Angus lying on the ledge in the rain with his broken leg and I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to get help because I can hardly see anything in front of me let alone either side so I just keep going.

  It feels like forever and my legs start to cramp up from staying tense on the pedals. My eyes are so tired. I have to squint at the tiny stretch of road in front of me and I keep losing focus. I rub my eyes and it feels so good to keep them closed but I know I can’t. I force them open and go to yawn but it kills my ribs when I do. And then I can’t even breathe in without it hurting so I lose my breath and start coughing and this makes it worse and I actually shiver with pain and something keeps stabbing me in the side and my head’s stretching and the road’s going blurry and then this light—this whole, all-encompassing light—comes out of nowhere and there’s suddenly two legs up ahead and I wrench the wheel left and the car’s swerving everywhere and the lights hit swishing grass and my stomach turns over and something cuts me in half and I shout in pain and then it’s like hands hitting all up the doors and then something shears through my chest. I keep screaming, not because it helps, but because everything sounds bloated and deep, and I want to cut through it. Everything’s going dark and all I can think is my shoes are so wet, how am I supposed to get around in wet shoes?

  41

  My mouth’s sort of gummy when I wake up but when I try to turn over to where I usually have a glass of water the entire side of my body stings and when I open my eyes it doesn’t seem to be my bedroom. My hand’s warm, and I think Titch has put it in a bowl of water so I’ll pee myself while I’m sleeping but when I move it I realise it’s warm because someone’s holding it.