by Jack Heath
For Toby Holm, who loves a preposterous plot.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
THE MAN BETWEEN THE TREES
THE HAUNTED ROOM
THE SECRET PASSAGE
THE BOOK
Part One: Dissecting Slugs
MYSTERY
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
BAD IDEAS
CHOKED UP
INTO THE MIST
SEEING GHOSTS
BLACK WATER
DEATH AT SORROW LAKE
FALLING
JUICY
Part Two: Mr Sop
MESSAGES FROM BEYOND
ALONE
ALONE
Part Three: Credence B
OUT INTO THE NIGHT
Part Four: The Diary
NAMELESS TERROR
RETURNED
IN CONTROL
LOCKED-OUT SYNDROME
CLOSE QUARTERS
IMPOSTOR
SHOWDOWN
TRIAL AND ERROR
PRIDE
Copyright
THE MAN BETWEEN THE TREES
The screen fuzzed and blurred. Black streaks appeared on the sides.
Dale frowned. ‘What the . .?’
His cousin looked up from her novel and leaned over in the back of the car. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘My e-reader’s gone weird.’ Dale pushed the OFF button. Nothing happened.
‘Give it here.’ She took it from him and pushed the OFF button.
‘I just tried that, Sarah.’
Sarah shook the e-reader. She tucked her curly hair behind her ear, held the e-reader up next to her head and shook it again. Bangles rattled around her wrists.
Dale’s father glanced at them in the rear-view mirror. His grey eyes were partly concealed by the grille which separated the front of the police car from the back. Dale loathed riding in Dad’s work car—it always made him feel like he was under arrest. At least his father wasn’t in uniform, and they were far enough from Axe Falls that no-one he knew was likely to see him.
‘What’s going on back there?’ Dad asked.
‘There’s something wrong with my e-reader,’ Dale said.
‘What have you done to it?’
‘Nothing.’
Why did people always assume it was his fault when things went wrong?
Dad shrugged and turned his eyes back to the road. ‘Well, then. That’s what happens when you buy the cheapest, shonkiest—’
‘You bought it!’
Dale’s mum snuffled awake in the passenger seat. ‘What? What’s happening?’
‘Nothing, love,’ Dad said. ‘Go back to sleep.’
Sarah handed the e-reader back to Dale. ‘Yep, that’s cactus.’
‘Thanks for your help,’ Dale said sarcastically.
Sarah examined her paperback novel, flicking through the pages and touching the words. ‘Funny,’ she said. ‘My book is working just fine.’
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘Are you two going to bicker the whole way?’ Mum mumbled, without opening her eyes.
Dad’s sister was Sarah’s mother. Sarah’s father died when she was young. Since his death, Sarah had spent a lot of time with Dale and his parents. Usually that was a good thing—Dale liked her stories and her jokes. But a long car ride could bring out the worst in anyone.
‘Well, what else am I supposed to do for the next two hours?’ Dale said.
‘One hundred green bottles hanging on the wall,’ Sarah sang. ‘One hundred green—’
‘Play with your phone,’ Mum said.
The bright screen in the bouncing car would give him a headache. ‘Can’t we stop at a bookshop?’ Dale asked.
‘We’re already running late,’ Dad said.
‘We could make up the time if you turned on the siren,’ Sarah suggested.
‘If I see someone committing a crime, you bet I will. But until then, we’re going to drive at a normal pace and you two are going to sit quietly. Dale, we’re passing some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country. Why not look out the window?’
It didn’t look beautiful to Dale. The trees were stunted and grey, stretching out of the ghostly mist like giant hands. Black swirling clouds blotted out the sun and decapitated the mountains in the distance. Dale’s view was smudged by the raindrops spattering the window.
‘Can we please at least pull over so I can get my guitar out of the boot?’ he asked.
‘Ooh, that’d be nice,’ Mum said.
‘At the next town,’ Dad said. ‘OK?’
‘OK,’ Dale grumbled.
Then he saw something outside in the mist. Something moving.
He wiped the condensation off the glass and peered into the trees. An old man was marching through the forest, his scruffy hair slicked back by the rain. His face was gaunt and pale. Mud stained his thin white jumpsuit up to the waist, like he had waded through a river. He was very tall. Dale thought most people shrank as they got old, but it was as if this man hadn’t stopped growing when he was a teenager, and had just kept getting taller for the last eight or nine decades.
He carried a can of petrol under his arm.
‘Dad,’ Dale said. ‘There’s someone in the forest.’
‘Not good weather for hiking,’ Dad observed.
‘He doesn’t look like a hiker.’
As though he could hear them, the old man turned his head and stared at Dale. His wild eyes—devoid of colour, like an old photograph—narrowed.
Dale flinched. ‘He looks like he’s going to start a fire.’
As he spoke, the man turned away and sprinted deeper into the forest. Soon he was invisible in the thick fog.
‘What? Why?’ Dad asked.
‘He was carrying a petrol can.’
Dad slammed on the brakes. Dale lurched forward in his seat. The book flew out of Sarah’s hands and hit the internal grille with a mighty clang as the car skidded to a halt on the side of the road.
Dad jumped out of the car, his sneakers crunching on the gravel. ‘Where is he?’
Dale rolled down the window and pointed. ‘He was over there.’
Dad stared into the gloom of the forest. Nothing moved in the mist.
‘I don’t see anything,’ he said finally.
‘Crazy time of year to try starting a fire,’ Mum said. ‘It’s done nothing but rain for two weeks.’
‘Maybe his car broke down,’ Sarah suggested.
‘If it had, he would have been walking along the road,’ Dad said. ‘You’re sure it was a petrol can he was holding?’
‘Pretty sure,’ Dale said.
‘OK.’ Dad got back into the car and plucked the two-way radio handset from under the dashboard.
‘Tell me we’re not going after him,’ Mum said.
‘Of course not. We’re on holiday.’ Dad switched on the radio. ‘Dispatch, this is Detective Sergeant Claude Sharpe. Come in. Over.’
‘Read you, Sarge,’ the radio crackled. ‘Over.’
‘I’m reporting a sighting of someone walking through the forest with a petrol can. Possible arson. Over.’
‘At this time of year?’
‘Thank you,’ Mum said.
‘You got a description?’ the radio said. ‘Over.’
Dad turned to Dale and held out the radio. Dale cleared his throat.
‘Uh, really tall,’ he said. ‘And wet. A white male.’
There was a pause.
‘Over,’ he added.
‘What was he wearing? Over,’ the radio said.
‘A muddy white jumpsuit,’ Dale said. ‘Like a mechanic might wear. Over.’
‘Which direction was he headed? Over.’
‘Um …’ D
ale looked at Dad. ‘Same direction as us,’ he whispered.
Dad spoke into the radio. ‘North-east. You got our twenty? Over.’
‘That means location,’ Sarah whispered. Dale shushed her.
‘We got you, Sarge. Hey, aren’t you off-duty? Over.’
‘That’s correct, over,’ Dad said.
‘Well, you keep moving. Unit four-zero-two is in the area—she’ll do a sweep for your suspect, over.’
‘Ten-four, dispatch,’ Dad said. ‘I was going to do that anyway. Over.’
‘Enjoy your holiday,’ the radio said. ‘Over and out.’
Dad buckled his seatbelt.
‘Hey,’ Dale said. ‘Since we’re stopped, can I get my guitar out of the boot?’
Dad glanced at Mum. She bit her lip.
Dale didn’t understand what was going on. Dad turned around in his seat and glared at him.
‘Dale,’ he began. ‘I just sent a police car to search the highway for this man.’
‘I know,’ Dale said. ‘I was listening.’
‘This is really important. Was he actually there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, if you just wanted to stop the car and get your guitar out—’
‘What?’ Dale’s stomach lurched.
‘I won’t be angry,’ Dad said, ‘if you tell me the truth.’
Dad said that a lot. In Dale’s experience, it was rarely true.
‘I saw him,’ Dale said. ‘I swear.’
Dad watched him for a long time. Guilt stabbed at Dale’s heart, even though he had done nothing wrong. Just being accused made him feel ashamed.
‘He was there,’ he insisted.
Dad put the car in gear, flicked on the indicator and pulled back out onto the highway without saying anything.
Some holiday this is turning out to be, Dale thought.
He had the feeling something was watching them from within the forest. But when he looked, nothing was there except mist and gently waving branches.
THE HAUNTED ROOM
Mum called the house a ski lodge, although there was rarely any snow up in the mountains. She meant it was cold and basic. Dale struggled to imagine how people might once have lived up there all the time.
It wasn’t that the house was small. There were three dim bedrooms with high ceilings and cracked light fittings. Two bathrooms with rattling showers and grimy mirrors. A very long dining table, the sort a cruel medieval king might have eaten at—Dale could never work out how it had been moved into the room. And a lounge room with a low couch, an old-fashioned flickering television and a case full of faded books.
Without his e-reader, Dale would need something to keep him amused in this freezing wasteland. Most of the books on the shelves were romance paperbacks with broken spines, and crime novels with blurbs that had all but worn away.
An odd one out caught Dale’s eye. It was a reddish-brown hardcover with no dust jacket. There was no title on the spine.
He picked it up. The front and back covers were completely blank. No indication of what it was about or who had written it.
A strange chill swept through him. He had the sudden urge to put the book down, right away. The inexplicable sense that if he didn’t, something very bad would happen.
So he dropped the book onto the coffee table and wiped his tingling hands on his jeans.
This was the fourth year that Dale’s parents had rented this house. He didn’t understand what they liked about it. Their home in Axe Falls had heating that worked and floorboards that didn’t creak. Plus, it was only a short walk to the beach, so Dale could go surfing whenever he wanted. What was there to do up in the mountains?
Mum had once told him that the house itself wasn’t the point. The important thing was getting away from the pressures of Axe Falls—work, school, social obligations.
‘Why not just tell everyone you’re going away?’ he had asked. ‘Then you could spend the week relaxing at home in your pyjamas.’
‘It’s not that easy,’ Mum said. ‘You’ll understand when you’re older.’
She was always saying that.
‘I love it!’ Sarah proclaimed, spinning around in the living room with her arms spread wide. This was the first time Mum and Dad had invited her instead of Dale’s friend Josh, who was visiting his grandparents this week.
‘You would,’ Dale muttered. ‘You live on a houseboat.’ It came out sounding meaner than he had intended. He had only meant she was used to living with minimal power, plumbing and space. Fortunately, Sarah didn’t seem to hear him.
‘What was that?’ Mum asked.
‘Nothing,’ Dale said. ‘I’ll help unload the car.’
He walked back out into the frosty air, climbed down the rotting wooden steps and grabbed two suitcases out of the boot. He pointedly didn’t pick up his guitar.
Dad was getting the supermarket bags out of the back seat. There were no shops for kilometres around, so they had needed to stop at the last town on the highway and buy all their food. They would have fresh vegetables for the first few days, and canned or frozen meals for the rest of the week.
He couldn’t think of anything to say which wouldn’t sound defensive. So he carried the suitcases up the steps without speaking to his father.
Sarah must have picked the larger bedroom—he could see her shadow shifting under the door.
Dale knocked. The shadow stopped moving.
‘I have your bags,’ he called.
There was no reply.
He knocked again. ‘Sarah?’
Silence. The shadow remained still.
Maybe Sarah had her headphones on. Dale shrugged, dropped the bags outside the door and took Mum’s suitcase towards the master bedroom.
On the way, he bumped into Sarah.
‘What … how . .?’
‘Did you really see someone in the forest?’ Sarah asked, ignoring him.
‘Were you in your room a minute ago?’ Dale demanded.
‘I don’t even know which room is mine yet.’
Normally Dale would assume she was playing a trick on him. But she couldn’t possibly have gotten there so quickly without him seeing her.
So who was in the bedroom?
Dale raced back to the other end of the hallway. He could hear Sarah behind him, unsure what was going on but excited nonetheless.
He reached the door. Shadows flitted back and forth beneath it.
‘Look!’ Dale pointed. But by the time Sarah glanced down, the dark shapes had evaporated.
‘Look at what?’ Sarah asked.
Dale shoved the door open.
The room was deserted.
The grimy window was closed and locked. The closet was open and empty but for the spider webs. Dale crouched and peered under the bed. Nothing but dust bunnies.
‘So … this is my room?’ Sarah said.
‘You swear you weren’t in here a minute ago?’
‘How could I possibly have been?’
Dale had once read that a liar will usually attack the evidence rather than directly denying something. But Sarah raised a good point.
‘Really,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t here.’
A denial and it was impossible. She was probably telling the truth.
‘OK,’ Dale said. ‘Sorry. I thought I saw something moving in the light under the door.’
Sarah’s eyes widened. ‘Maybe the room is haunted. Or the whole house!’
Dale had seen some strange things in Axe Falls—carnivorous plants and intelligent spiders. But he knew there was no such thing as restless spirits. The house might be a dump, but it wasn’t haunted.
‘It was probably just my imagination,’ Dale grumbled, although the shadows had looked very real to him.
‘You’re sure it’s not ghosts?’ Sarah said.
‘Yes.’
‘Positive?’
‘A hundred per cent.’
‘Great.’ Sarah picked up her suitcase. ‘Then you can have this room.’<
br />
‘What? I’m not taking it!’ Dale said.
‘Why not? You just said you’re sure there are no ghosts.’
‘Yeah, but …’ Dale hesitated. He couldn’t think of a good excuse.
‘Gotta run,’ Sarah said. She disappeared before Dale could stop her.
Dale took one last look around the room. It had been a trick of the light. It must have been. And this bedroom was better than the one he usually stayed in anyway—it was right next to the bathroom. Sarah had done him a favour.
He took a deep, shaky breath, closed the door, and went to get his suitcase.
THE SECRET PASSAGE
Dinner was something Dad called ‘dal murgh’—a thick, creamy soup made of lentils and spices. Dale prodded it with his toast, watching the bread soak up the fluid.
He didn’t feel like talking, but fortunately Sarah was carrying the conversation.
‘Dale’s dad’s dal,’ she said. ‘Fun to eat and fun to say. How did you find this great house, Aunt Michelle?’
‘Through Claude’s work,’ Mum said. ‘Would you like some more soda water, Sarah?’
‘No, thank you.’ Sarah was not to be distracted. ‘Did one of your cases take you up here, Uncle Claude?’
Dad sat down at the table and slurped some lentils out of his spoon. ‘There was … an incident.’
Mum sighed. ‘But we don’t have to discuss that right now.’
‘The owners woke up in the middle of the night,’ Dad continued, his eyes gleaming. ‘They could hear someone banging on the front door. When the husband got up to check who it was, he found the front porch deserted. He thought that it must have been kids playing knock-and-run—but then he heard the banging again. It was coming from inside the house.’
Sarah leaned across the table. Her necklace plopped into her bowl. She didn’t seem to notice.
‘What was it?’ she asked.
‘The husband sneaked back into the bedroom, told his wife what was going on and grabbed his phone. They both tiptoed out of the house and called the police. When I arrived, I found the husband and wife on the driveway, shivering. They were so scared, they could hardly explain what had happened.’
Dad cleared his throat. ‘I told them to stay put,’ he continued. ‘When I approached the house, I saw a ladder propped up against the wall. Some broken tiles were lying on the ground around it—it looked like someone had climbed up onto the roof and pulled off the tiles to get inside.’