by Chris Hammer
They’re all breathing hard, muscles distraught. They’re silent for a moment, each one captive to his own thoughts. But the adrenaline is still pumping and first one then the others succumb to laughter; it breaks over them like a wave, sweeping the mood upwards. Martin lies back in the canoe, ribs hurting, hysterical and short of breath, tears running from his eyes, overcome by the euphoria of salvation.
Eventually they drag the canoe up the beach, much further than necessary, right up above the high-tide mark to the bottom of the cliff. They sink to the sand, sitting in a row, looking out across the still bay to the bar and the open sea. The surf is surging and wild, snow white and churning, growling like a thousand hungry mouths. None of them say anything, but they’re all thinking the same: their flimsy craft would never have survived the passage.
‘We’ll need to wait for the tide to turn,’ says Scotty.
‘Three or four hours, at least,’ says Martin.
‘Longer,’ says Scotty. ‘The tide will still be running out for three or four hours. We’ll need it coming in strong just to give us a chance against the flow of the river. It’s been raining, there’s heaps of water coming down.’
Jasper and Martin exchange glances. Scotty is right. But it’s already five o’clock. It might be midnight before the conditions on the river are ideal. And until then they’re marooned, with the river and the surf in front and, behind the beach, a precipice covered in rainforest.
Martin points to the surf, kept back from the beach by the bar and the river’s flow. ‘If the swell gets any bigger, the waves will be over the bar. If it’s too dark, we won’t see them coming.’
‘Should we brave the bar?’ asks Jasper. He sees the incredulity on his friends’ faces. ‘Just asking,’ he says.
‘Maybe we can wave down a fishing boat?’ suggests Scotty.
‘Too late for that—the fleet’s in by lunchtime,’ says Martin. His uncle Vern is a fisherman; he knows their routine. ‘Maybe someone else will see us, coming back from a day’s fishing.’ They consider the ferocity of the bar; no recreational fisher would be crazy enough to brave the churn, not with the tide running against them.
‘My old man is going to kill me,’ says Scotty. ‘It’s his canoe.’
‘I’m hot,’ Jasper declares. ‘I’m going for a swim.’
‘Careful of the current,’ says Scotty. ‘Don’t go too far.’
‘Yeah. Whatever.’ Jasper strips off his t-shirt, steps out of his thongs and plunges into the water. ‘Come on, you soft cocks!’ he yells, treading water just off the beach.
‘We should build a fire,’ says Scotty. ‘Ration our water.’ Martin smiles; his two friends can be so different sometimes.
Martin collects their bags from the canoe. Scotty has a plastic canteen half full of water and a small packet of biscuits. Jasper has half a bottle of Coke. Martin has three smokes, stolen from his father. Scotty surveys the collection. ‘That won’t last long. We could be getting pretty thirsty.’
‘Beats drowning,’ says Martin, finally able to enunciate the boys’ fear.
Martin and Scotty collect firewood: driftwood from the beach and kindling from the dense bush behind it. They pile it next to a rock circle left by previous visitors, an old campfire above the tideline. Jasper finishes his swim, sunbakes on the beach for a while, then joins them. ‘How you going to get it started? Got any matches?’
Martin smiles, revealing his disposable lighter.
They get the fire going, more for something to do than to stay warm. It’s summer; it won’t be dark for a couple more hours. They smoke the cigarettes, each of them trying not to cough, each of them trying to look tougher than they feel. Jasper tries making smoke signals, holding his shirt above the fire, but soon succumbs to coughing and boredom.
‘If they’re looking for us, someone might see the smoke,’ says Martin.
‘No one will start looking until we’re not home for dinner,’ says Scotty.
‘Oh shit,’ says Jasper. ‘Look.’ He’s pointing south. There are thunderheads on the horizon, still distant but full of menace. ‘They weren’t there half an hour ago.’
‘That’s all we need,’ says Scotty.
‘What do we do?’ asks Jasper.
‘Build the fire up big as we can,’ says Martin.
‘No, find shelter,’ says Scotty. ‘Maybe there’s an overhang somewhere. Shift the fire there before it rains.’
Scotty heads towards the far end of the beach, looking for shelter under the headland, while Jasper does the same at the river end, down by the rocky outcrop. So it’s Martin, searching for shelter at the edge of the rainforest, who finds the stairs cut into the rock, overgrown and splotched with moss, but unmistakable. He calls the others.
‘Where do they go?’ asks Jasper.
‘Up to the headland proper,’ says Martin. ‘If we can climb them, there’s tracks up there. We can walk out. Get to the road before it’s dark.’
‘The Hartigan house,’ says Scotty. ‘That’s what’s up there. On the headland.’
Martin and Jasper look at each other, momentarily hesitant. ‘Let’s go then,’ says Jasper. ‘Before the rain. Before it gets dark.’ Before we get trapped up there, thinks Martin.
Martin’s tale is interrupted by Mandy braking sharply to avoid an elderly woman blithely crossing The Boulevarde on her motorised scooter, orange flag oscillating merrily above her. They’re driving through town, heading to collect Liam from child care. Mandy has declared the townhouse bad karma and wants to pick her son up early so the three of them can search for somewhere else to stay. Martin can’t say he blames her.
‘We only need something for a week or two,’ declares Mandy, ‘and then we can move into the house.’
‘Is it habitable?’
‘It will be.’
Mandy gets them through the traffic, driving past the entrance to the harbour, then negotiating a couple of roundabouts. They turn onto the Longton Road and head south past a nest of fast-food outlets. The childcare centre is attached to the high school, a recent development. When Martin was at high school, it required a daily bus trip, slow and precarious, up the escarpment to Longton High; another reason why so few local students finished year twelve.
‘I like your story about the old house,’ says Mandy. ‘I assume you got up the stairs and sheltered there from the storm. Good karma.’ ‘Yes,’ mumbles Martin. ‘Good karma.’
Their progress is slowed almost to walking pace by a tractor towing some sort of oversized farm machinery. To his right, through the intermittent palm trees, Martin can see the fibro shells of the Settlement, the baking streets of his youth, separated from the town proper by the main road and a buffer of cane fields, part of Port Silver and yet quarantined, as if poverty and bad luck are contagious. Who knows? Maybe they are. Surrounding the houses lie the fields and, on the horizon, the long green rise of the escarpment. Straight ahead, to the south, the clouds are still building, the billowing folds of an electrical storm, topped by a telltale anvil.
‘Hey, Martin,’ says Mandy, frowning, ‘how come Nick Poulos knew about the house? I thought he was a recent arrival.’
Martin sighs. ‘Well, there’s a bit more to the story.’
Climbing the stairs is easier said than done. From the beach to the top of the headland, it’s maybe sixty metres, straight up. When the stairs were well maintained, half a century ago, the ascent would have taken a few minutes. But now the path has fallen into disrepair. The first few metres up from the back of the beach are relatively easy, the steps carved into the sandstone. The years have covered them with moss and the boys struggle to push through branches from overhanging trees and shrubs, but the steps themselves have weathered well. Not so the path above them. The once-clear trail switching back and forth across the slope is overgrown and ill-defined. For a few metres it is deceptively easy to follow, both sides lined with rocks, but then it vanishes, consumed by the bush, only to reappear as little more than a suggestion. The friends scram
ble through ferns and undergrowth, losing and regaining the trail, unable to distinguish it from myriad wallaby paths. The sky is lost to them, consumed by the canopy. They have no idea how close the storm has come. Anywhere else they might grow confused, even become lost, but here the sheer fall of the land and the constant sound of the surf keep them orientated. Slowly, ever so slowly, they make progress. A few metres more, where the incline turns close to vertical, more boulders than bush, they discover the remnants of wooden stairs, with handrails and risers, bolted to the rock face. But rust has eaten at the bolts and rot at the wood, so that what remains of the structure is peeling away and threatening to collapse.
‘We’re on the right path, then,’ says Jasper optimistically.
‘Let’s go around,’ says Martin. ‘Keep zigzagging. As long as we’re going up, we’ll get there. We’re sure to find the trail again.’
‘Righto,’ says Jasper. ‘Lead the way.’
‘Me?’ says Martin.
‘Yeah. You’re the one with shoes.’
Martin looks at his friends’ feet. Like him, Scotty is wearing sandshoes, but Jasper has bare feet, muddy and flashed with red. He’s carrying his thongs, useless in the steep and slippery terrain. ‘You okay?’ Martin asks.
‘Sure,’ says Jasper. ‘Shoes are overrated.’
Martin pushes on, thrusting aside ferns, stepping over fallen logs, exploring hesitantly, unable to see the ground, extending one foot at a time before entrusting his weight to his new foothold. Once he almost falls, heart in his mouth, and is only just getting his breath when his feet do slide out from under him. Desperately he grabs at plants, claws at a tree trunk, anything to stop him plummeting. He scrapes both knees, cuts one of his hands, but comes to a halt, a termite mound arresting his fall. Tiny white ants, blind and translucent, swarm. In the silence that crowds out the sound of the surf, a roo goes crashing through the undergrowth, close but unseen. Martin wraps a hand round the exposed root of a Pandanus tree and pulls himself upright before moving back up the incline on all fours, warning his mates to take care.
Now a fresh urgency overtakes them. As they climb higher and the sound of the waves recedes, a new sound imposes itself: approaching thunder. The sun vanishes, and the bush loses its dappled clarity to an ominous shade. The air grows still, the gentle breeze dies, the day holds its breath. Martin’s ears pop; he’s about to say something when a lightning strike creases white across the sky, penetrating the canopy like an X-ray, followed almost immediately by a rolling peal of thunder, moving around and past them, so that they feel its resonance in their guts and the very ground seems to tremble at its power. As if shaken loose by the force of the lightning strike, large raindrops start to fall, spattering here and there noisily. The storm is almost upon them.
‘Let’s go,’ says Martin. ‘Hurry.’ And he forgets about looking for stairs and seeking out the old trail; instead he heads straight up, pushing with his feet, grabbing with his hands, careless of scratches and loose footholds. Up he goes, as best he can, hearing the others following. Five metres up, then ten, a few more and he bursts out onto a better-defined path, even as the incline becomes shallower. ‘This way!’ he urges. ‘The track! The track!’ He waits as first Scotty then Jasper emerge from the bush to join him. Jasper’s left foot is coated with blood. ‘You okay?’
‘Never better.’
And the wind hits, roaring up through the bush, swinging the trees wildly, shaking through the undergrowth. And with it comes the rain, no longer individual drops, no longer constrained by the canopy, but a sheet of water, slicing in sideways, cold and stinging and malicious. Another lightning strike, blinding in its intensity, arcs across the sky, leaving an afterglow inside Martin’s eyelids, the thunder closing in immediately, booming like the voice of God. The boys no longer need to speak; they run as if the devil himself is chasing them. They burst out of the bush and there it is, the old house: Hartigan’s.
Do they hesitate? Perhaps for a moment they do. And as if sensing their hesitation, the storm increases its fury. Another shrieking bolt of lightning, another bowel-shaking peal of thunder. The rain turns to hail, hurting as it comes cutting through the air, painful as it strikes thin shirts and bare arms and grazed legs. They run, hesitation banished, up to the house and onto the verandah. But the weather is coming in almost horizontally, the awning provides no shelter, the old house seeming to sway and voice its own complaint. They follow the verandah around to the leeward side, the northern side, and only there do they find shelter from the wind and rain and hail, only there do they find a place still dry, a place quiet enough for them to speak. Around them the old house is moaning, as if protesting at the storm’s violence, or their presence, as the hail shrieks and hammers at its steel roof.
‘This is good,’ says Jasper. ‘We’re safe.’
‘This is bad,’ says Scotty. ‘My mum and dad, our families, they’re going to think we’re out in this. They’ll think we’ve drowned.’
‘And when they find out we haven’t, they’ll be too relieved to worry about anything else, like the canoe or going too far downstream, or sheltering here,’ says Jasper.
They sit for a moment then, just looking out into the grey wall of the storm. Even the closest of the trees, just twenty metres away, are hard to discern through the tempest. Martin shivers; they’re safe, but they’re cold and soaked through.
‘Jeez, I wish we hadn’t smoked those durries,’ says Jasper.
Martin turns to speak, but his words are halted by the sight of Jasper’s foot, still oozing blood from a deep gash. ‘Shit. Give us a look.’
‘It’s nothing,’ says Jasper, his defiance undermined by an involuntary tremor. Martin takes his friend’s foot, sees the blood coming through the mud between his toes. Water is teeming off the verandah’s awning. ‘C’mon,’ says Martin, ‘let’s get it clean.’ Jasper stands, hobbles to the edge of the verandah, holds his foot out under the flow, wincing as the water strikes his wound. Martin rubs at it, cleans away the dirt, revealing a cut, deep and jagged, sliced into the sole of the foot, still pumping blood.
‘Shit,’ says Martin again.
Jasper pivots, twisting his foot around so he can examine the injury. ‘Seen worse.’
Scotty has joined them. ‘Might need stitches.’
‘You reckon?’ asks Jasper.
‘Maybe. But we need to put some pressure on it, hold it up, see if we can stop the bleeding.’
‘Where’d you learn that?’
‘Scouts.’
‘Of course.’
Jasper shivers again; the storm is unrelenting. They all know where this is leading. They need to get into the house. Staying out in the storm is ridiculous. Even without Jasper’s cut, they’re all soaked to the skin, all freezing. And night is coming.
They try the French doors at the end of the verandah, where it wraps around the eastern end of the house, but they’re locked. Martin braves the rain, circumnavigates the house, but the other doors, the two facing the access road and the forest, are also locked. He returns, dripping and colder still.
‘Here,’ says Scotty. He’s found a broken window, a piece of plywood nailed to the frame. It’s rattling in the wind; the nails are loose. ‘Let’s get this off.’ He slips his fingers behind it, starts working it free. Moments later he pries it off, revealing a sash window, its upper pane broken. ‘Bingo.’ He reaches through, careful not to cut himself, and releases the catch. He and Martin place their hands under the frame, working the window loose, until they can raise the lower pane. ‘Well done,’ says Scotty.
Inside, it’s dry and dark and somehow still, even as the house moves and groans about them. They’re in a large room, a lounge, windows curving on three sides. Martin and Scotty pull at the curtains, fragile with age and heavy with dust, one drape ripping as Scotty tugs it along its rail. The light inside the room increases marginally, as does the noise of the storm. Martin tries a light switch; there’s no surprise when it doesn’t work.
; Scotty wrestles a two-seater couch over into the light of the window. ‘Here, Jasper. Sit here. Foot up.’ Jasper hops over to the couch, does what he’s told, lying sideways, propping his red-streaked foot up on an armrest. Martin and Scotty look at each other. The foot is still bleeding. They need bandages. Around them, the house is talking, murmurs and pops, squeals and shrieks beneath the drumming of the rain. A squall hits, and more lightning, flaring through windows, shutters and curtains, filling the room with light. They brace for the thunder, and it comes pounding through, shaking the house, rattling windows and picture frames. There are two doors, one at each end of the windowless wall, leading back into the main part of the house. Between them is a large fireplace.
Martin tries the left door, Scotty behind him. It opens into a long corridor running along the south side of the house, windows shuttered. Martin peers through the gloom, inches forward. There is one door off to the right, then another, then stairs ascending to the second floor. The passage ends at the front door. ‘Let’s go back,’ he whispers.
Returning to the lounge, they give Jasper the thumbs-up, then try the other door. It leads into a dining room, windows on the right. But it’s the dining table that demands their attention, solid wood, covered with dust, dead flies and mouse shit, plates and cutlery and empty bottles, discarded napkins and bones, the remains of a feast. At some time, weeks or months or years ago, someone has come in here and hosted a banquet, leaving the remains of their meal behind. ‘Someone left in a hurry,’ gulps Scotty, eyes wide.
There are two doors, both shut: one to the left, which must connect with the corridor; one straight ahead. They creep forward past the table with trepidation, making for the far door, not the one to the corridor. On one side the storm is raging, on the other side the abandoned feast. Martin shivers, telling himself it’s the cold. They reach the door, but something is wrong; something is thumping in the room beyond, audible above the storm. Martin and Scotty exchange a fear-laden glance. Scotty signals silently: he wants to do rock, papers, scissors. For fuck’s sake. Martin reluctantly nods. One, two, three. Martin has paper, Scotty has scissors. Martin grips the doorhandle as Scotty edges back towards the lounge.