The Haunted Book

by Jack Heath

  He glanced over at the bedside table—and jumped.

  The table was clear.

  The book had vanished.

  BAD IDEAS

  Breakfast was pancakes. They made the mixture by pouring water into the powder in a plastic jug. Dale shook it until his arms were sore and then passed it to Sarah, who jiggled it until the remaining lumps were mixed in.

  Mum said it would taste better with real eggs and milk, but Dad pointed out that then they would need self-raising flour, white vinegar and at least two mixing bowls. Plus, he was saving the eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast.

  ‘Did you say vinegar?’ Sarah asked, not looking up from her tablet. On the screen, highlighted lines of code vanished and then reappeared elsewhere.

  ‘Just a little bit—the secret to a perfect pancake.’ Dad’s hair was scruffy and he was still in his red flannel pyjamas. He always said blue felt too much like a uniform. ‘Having said that, an imperfect pancake is pretty darn good too.’

  Dale was hardly listening. The echoes of the nightmare still lingered in his brain, and he couldn’t figure out what had happened to the—

  ‘… book you were reading?’ Mum was saying.

  Dale blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘What was that book you were reading?’ Mum said again. ‘I left it in your room, but I couldn’t work out what it was.’

  A flood of relief washed over Dale. ‘Oh. I’m not even sure. I found it here in the bookcase. An old sci-fi novel, I think.’

  ‘Well, read it quick.’ Mum poured some creamy pancake mixture into the sizzling pan. The air filled with the smell of hot sugar. ‘Remember, we can’t take it home with us—it belongs to the owners of the house.’

  ‘Sure,’ Dale said. ‘Where did you put it?’

  ‘On your bedside table.’

  ‘No, I mean after that.’

  ‘After what?’ Mum asked.

  ‘You didn’t take it away again and put it somewhere else?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  Yeah, why? Dale thought.

  But if Mum didn’t take it, then where has it gone?

  Mum flipped a pancake with one hand while pouring pineapple juice into a glass with the other. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what are you going to do today?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘I want to explore the forest!’ Sarah put in.

  ‘Good idea,’ Mum said. ‘Dale will go with you.’

  ‘What?’ Dale demanded. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a lovely day,’ Mum said. ‘You can’t just sit around here reading all morning.’

  Actually, Dale had been hoping to take a nap, having slept so badly the night before. And his mother’s definition of ‘lovely’ was very loose. There was less fog than yesterday—sort of—and no rain, but dark clouds were swirling overhead.

  ‘If you don’t leave the house, what’s the point of coming to the mountains?’ Mum peeled a pancake off the frying pan and added it to the stack keeping warm in the oven.

  ‘“To get away from the pressures of Axe Falls”,’ Dale quoted.

  ‘Don’t be cheeky. Anyway, Sarah shouldn’t go on her own. It’s not safe.’

  Sarah gasped. ‘Is the forest haunted too?’

  ‘I meant that you could fall over and break your leg,’ Mum said bluntly.

  ‘Oh. That’s not very scary,’ Sarah said.

  ‘No,’ Dale replied. ‘The scary part is when no-one hears you screaming, so you’re trapped until it gets dark, and then the wolves come out because they’ve smelled the blood, and—’

  ‘Dale!’ Mum said. ‘Don’t scare your cousin.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ Sarah said. ‘Are there really wolves in the woods, Aunt Michelle?’

  ‘No.’ Mum pulled the pancakes out of the oven and turned it off. She added the newest pancake to the top of the stack and carried the plate over to the kitchen table. ‘And if you see any, you have my permission to feed Dale to them.’

  ‘Very funny, Mum.’

  Dale pulled out his chair and sat down—but there was something hard underneath the cushion.

  He lifted it up.

  It was the book.

  ‘What the—’ He whirled around. ‘Sarah, did you do this?’

  Sarah’s mouth was full. ‘Duh I do wha?’ she mumbled.

  ‘The book! You put it on my chair.’

  Sarah blinked and swallowed. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Dale glared at her for a long time, but she looked honestly confused. She must have done it—no-one else would have—but the more of a fuss he made, the more fun she would have.

  He sighed. ‘Fine. Be that way.’

  He tossed the book aside, sat down and shovelled a mouthful of pancake into his mouth.

  It tasted funny. The golden syrup was much colder than he had expected, and felt slimy rather than sticky against the roof of his mouth. It wasn’t even that sweet—it was bitter, like that strange black lettuce his parents liked.

  The food was halfway down his throat when he looked back down at his plate—

  And choked, his eyes bulging in horror.

  His pancakes were covered in slugs.

  CHOKED UP

  Dale would have screamed in terror, but his windpipe was blocked. He retched and gagged, torn between trying to cough up the slug and trying to swallow it.

  Were slugs poisonous? He didn’t know.

  The bitter, slippery lump wriggled in his throat. He had bitten the slug in half, but it was still alive.

  He leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair. His spine curled as his stomach tried to crawl up his throat and out of his mouth.

  ‘Dale!’ Mum yelped. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘He’s choking!’ Sarah yelled. She slapped Dale on the back. It didn’t help.

  The other slugs watched Dale coldly from atop his pancakes, their black eyes unreadable on glistening stalks. There were at least ten of them—they looked like a jury who had just sentenced him to death.

  It was as though they had done this deliberately. The slugs had tried to choke him. But that was insane, wasn’t it?

  He couldn’t breathe. More and more blood was rushing to his face. It felt like his head was a balloon, and his neck was the knot.

  I’m going to die! he thought wildly. Murdered by slugs!

  A deeply bizarre idea popped into his head. Luke Greenway had written about dissecting a slug. Were these slugs here to take revenge on the owner of the house, not realising that their target was long dead?

  Dale couldn’t shake off the thought. Not enough oxygen was getting to his brain to sort the crazy thoughts from the sane ones.

  Mum got behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest and squeezed.

  The sudden pain was incredible. His ribs felt like they were about to snap.

  But it worked. The air exploded out of his lungs, taking the chewed up slug with it. He coughed up a glob of something unspeakable onto the floor and collapsed, wheezing.

  ‘Oh my gosh,’ Mum panted. ‘Sweetie, are you all right?’

  ‘Slugs,’ Dale gasped. ‘I …’

  ‘What was that? What happened?’ Dad asked.

  The blob on the floor caught Dale’s eye. It wasn’t a slug—it was just a chewed-up hunk of pancake.

  ‘I …’ He staggered to his feet. ‘It …’

  There were no slugs on his plate, either. His pancakes looked normal and delicious.

  But he hadn’t imagined it. They had really been there, he was sure of it. And yet now, somehow, they were gone.

  Mum hugged him, almost as hard as she had when she was trying to clear his airway.

  ‘You have to eat slowly,’ she said. ‘What am I always telling you? Chew your food.’

  He hugged her back. ‘Yes, Mum.’ Tears filled his eyes. She had saved his life.

  But from what? Where had the slugs come from, and where had they gone?

  The red book lay at his feet. As he stared at it, he got that feeling again—the feeling of being
watched by something evil.

  Sarah had finished her pancakes and started on his. ‘So,’ she said, ‘are we going into this haunted forest or what?’

  INTO THE MIST

  The forest had looked still from a distance. But up close, the trees were teeming with life. Spiders threaded webs between the branches and gobbled up cocooned flies. Worms writhed in the dirt, diving and surfacing and searching with their eyeless faces. Rats whispered beneath the carpet of rotting leaves. A crow pecked at the bloody, shattered bones of who knew what—a dead cat perhaps.

  ‘Creepy,’ Sarah said, but she sounded like she was relishing it.

  Dale kicked a rock which turned out to be a mushroom. Its grey-brown flesh split open, filling the air with an oddly familiar but repulsive stink.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Can we go home yet?’

  ‘We’ve only been out here for a couple of hours. Are you that desperate to get back to your magical disappearing book?’ Sarah touched the trunk of an ancient tree and rubbed her fingers together. ‘What’s it about anyway?’

  ‘A guy who wants to live forever,’ Dale said.

  ‘Oh. That’d suck.’

  ‘What would?’

  ‘Living forever,’ Sarah said. ‘You’d get so bored, especially after they buried you. Lying there in the dark.’

  ‘I think the idea is that they wouldn’t bury you,’ Dale said.

  ‘Maybe so. But there are so many landslides, avalanches—you remember that earthquake in Axe Falls recently?’

  Dale looked confused. ‘Huh?’

  Sarah ignored him. ‘If you live forever, you’re bound to get stuck in one of those eventually. Then you’d be trapped underground for all eternity.’

  ‘Huh. I never thought of that.’ Dale wondered if that was how the book would end. Maybe, if it was fiction—but not if it was really a diary.

  Something scurried in the trees above their heads. Dale looked up, but too slow to see it. A bird? A lizard?

  ‘If it’s inevitable that you’ll get buried alive forever,’ he said, ‘isn’t it also inevitable that someone will dig you up someday? Just by chance?’

  Sarah thought about it. ‘I guess so. But it might take ages. After a hundred years or so, you’d be as crazy as a bandicoot. Hey, do you think that’s why you never see any vampires around? They all got trapped in landslides?’

  ‘Or maybe it’s because they’re made up,’ Dale said.

  Sarah sighed. ‘You’re no fun. If—hey! A river!’

  Dale peered through the trees. There was indeed a glint of murky water in the distance.

  How could a river have been there all these years without him knowing? If his parents had heard of it, they would have dragged him down here …

  Unless it was dangerous. Then they wouldn’t have told him, just in case he wanted to go.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Sarah yelled, and before he had time to object, she had bolted.

  ‘Wait!’ Dale shouted. But the only sound was her receding footsteps, thumping away across the muddy dirt.

  He gave chase, but the path was lathered in fallen vines and hidden stones. He had to keep his eyes on the ground to avoid tripping up. When he eventually reached a clear stretch of the trail and looked up, Sarah was nowhere to be seen.

  Dale rubbed his eyes. He didn’t know where his cousin was, but he knew where she was going. The river. If he kept walking towards the river, sooner or later he would find her.

  But the forest was more menacing now that he was alone. The animals all seemed to be watching him. The plants, too. Dale knew better than most people that plants could be more dangerous than they looked.

  Dale’s family had moved to Axe Falls mid-year, half a decade ago. On his first day at the primary school, he had walked into class and every student had fallen silent. Right now, as he breathed in the forest all around him, he was reminded of that feeling—the suspicious, threatening eyes of all the other kids. The sense that he didn’t belong, and was about to be cast out.

  Every few steps he saw a fragmented footprint. Sarah’s sneaker, the gridded sole scuffed from hundreds of basketball games. At least he knew she was taking the same path as him. If she fell over and broke her leg, as Mum had warned, he would find her before he reached the river.

  In fact, there she was.

  There were too many trees to get a good look, but he could see movement every now and again—a shaken branch, a flash of white cloth. He could hear her footsteps, and her heavy breathing.

  Dale sighed with relief. It seemed strange that he had caught up to her, given that he was walking and she had been running. She must have gotten puffed. ‘Sarah!’ he called.

  The figure in front of him stopped suddenly. Turned around.

  It wasn’t Sarah.

  It was the old man he’d seen with the petrol can.

  SEEING GHOSTS

  Dale and the old man stared at one another for a second. Up close he was even more wild-looking—his hands, his knotted hair and his tattered shoes were encrusted with grime. Everything was muddy except his bright, mad eyes, set in deeply wrinkled skin. Dale could smell congealed sweat and something else, like rotting fruit.

  The old man wasn’t carrying the petrol can now. His massive liver-spotted hands clenched and unclenched in front of him, as though he were milking an invisible cow.

  Do I run? Dale thought. Or talk? What if he attacks me? He may be a million years old, but he’s huge! Way bigger than he looked from a distance.

  ‘Uh, hi,’ he heard himself say.

  The man turned around and bolted into the forest.

  Dale was so surprised he took a step backwards, bumping into a tree. The man was amazingly fast for his age—in seconds he was gone.

  Who was he? What was he doing in the forest, and why did he look so afraid?

  ‘Boo!’

  ‘Argh!’ Dale whirled around and saw Sarah crouched in the bushes. She giggled.

  ‘Tell me you saw that,’ Dale hissed.

  ‘Saw what? You, screaming like a baby?’

  Dale ignored the jibe. ‘The old man I saw with the petrol can. He was here.’

  Sarah’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’ She scanned the forest. ‘I don’t see anyone.’

  ‘He was right there!’

  Sarah looked doubtful.

  ‘That’s it,’ Dale said. ‘I’m sick of this. Vanishing men and reappearing books and slugs on my pancakes. I’m not crazy, and I can prove it.’

  ‘Did you say “slugs on your pancakes”?’

  Dale strode over to the spot where the man had stood, and searched the ground.

  There!

  He pointed. ‘Is that your footprint?’

  Sarah approached. ‘Obviously not. It’s huge.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s way bigger than mine, too.’ Dale stamped the ground next to the footprint, and compared the two patterns. ‘See?’

  Sarah nodded slowly. ‘So there was someone else here,’ she said. ‘Are you sure it was the same guy you saw before?’

  ‘I’m absolutely positive. And I think he walked this whole way.’

  ‘But you last saw him, like, a hundred kilometres from here.’

  ‘I know,’ Dale said. ‘He was covered in mud, even more now than before. He must have been walking all night.’

  ‘Why? Where could he be going? There’s nothing for miles around.’

  ‘Except our house.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ Sarah asked uneasily.

  ‘Nothing,’ Dale said. Because it was ridiculous. Impossible.

  He looked up at the surrounding trees. The birds stared down secretively at him from the creaking branches.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said again.

  The book was science fiction. It couldn’t be a real diary. And even if it was, the author must have been crazy.

  Dale rubbed his temples. It certainly wasn’t possible that Luke Greenway had discovered immortality and was headed back to reclaim his old home, more tha
n a hundred and sixty years after his birth …

  Was it?

  BLACK WATER

  Dale wanted to go back to the house after that. But Sarah said there wasn’t any point. There was plenty of daylight left—his mum would just kick them out again. Unless they told her about the old man, which could have very bad consequences.

  Dale’s mum might assume they were lying. Or worse, she could believe them, and keep them cooped up in the house for the rest of the week.

  That didn’t sound too bad to Dale, but eventually he agreed to follow Sarah further along the river. He had only one condition: no more running. He really didn’t want to be left behind again.

  So Sarah scarfed her packed lunch—and Dale’s too. He couldn’t even think about food without remembering the slugs in his mouth. Then they resumed their trek through the forest, listening to the chittering of the birds and watching the clouds roll across the sky. Occasionally there was a gap and the sunlight made the forest glow—but a few seconds later it would be dark again.

  Soon the trees thinned out, revealing water again. But it wasn’t a river—it was a tremendous lake. The black water was completely still, like an enormous pool of spilled ink. A wooden sign was hammered into the muddy shore, but so much of it had rotted away that Dale couldn’t make out what it said. A rickety jetty stretched out into the water. It didn’t look safe to walk on—the boards were spotted with holes.

  ‘How come it doesn’t drain away?’ he wondered.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re so high up. Shouldn’t the water all flow down towards the sea?’

  Sarah peered over at the misty horizon. ‘I guess the mountain ranges trap all the rainwater here. I read about that in geography—some of the deepest lakes in the world are in mountains. They start out as valleys and then the land shifts, funnelling rainwater into them. If the water accumulates faster than it evaporates, then over hundreds of millions of years it can get to be kilometres deep.’

  Dale stared into the water. ‘It sure is dark,’ he said.

  ‘Probably cold too,’ Sarah said. ‘Let’s go in.’

  ‘Yeah. Wait—what?’