Collingwood – it’s a paradise.
I’m already in a mood. I’ve drowned the chipmunk in vodka but he’s left behind a dead rat kind of smell. And there’s no more Cara to distract me.
So many questions, no freaking answers.
But what really pisses me off is that there are people who know things. People who are hiding important information from me.
Nate people, for instance.
Friends always know, and that punk poser definitely knows more than he’s letting on. I should get all Guantanamo Bay on his arse.
As I’m skirting around two guys punching on, a light bulb pings in my head. I stop dead – a glass smashes on the pavement behind me.
I’m a freaking genius. I’m Sherlock Holmes meets that physics dude in the wheelchair.
Best. Idea. Ever.
I pirouette 180 degrees, skip over the glass, duck under the flailing dude arms and head back the way I came. I take the same path as the first night. And when I find the creepy house, it’s as dark and as crumbling and as cane-toad-like as I remember.
This is such a good idea that I laugh maniacally to myself for a whole minute.
Things I know: Vodka is good for you, and Nate won’t want to help. But I’m fairly certain he knows the truth about Xavier.
Things I don’t know: If Nate even lives here. How I’m going to find him. Why I’m not in bed dreaming of Ian Curtis. How I’m going to explain the missing vodka to Vinnie.
I stand on the opposite side of the street and watch. The house watches me back.
A shitload of bats screech overhead. Bats aren’t always prophets of doom, right?
Screw that.
I cross the road and pretty soon the gravel driveway is crunching underfoot as I approach the rotting bungalow. I ignore the slight tilt to my gait and the fact that there could be someone inside waiting to kill me with a chainsaw.
I take deep breaths before knocking on the front door.
Nothing happens. And I mean nothing. Even a chainsaw revving would have been something.
I knock harder. Then I bash the stupid thing.
‘Ouch.’
Door: 1, Frankie: 0.
There’s no movement inside, no lights and no sign that anyone lives here. Maybe Nate was telling the truth when he said this wasn’t his house. Maybe it’s just a revolting crack den. My options are: bash the door again, stand here shouting Nate’s name until he shows up, create some kind of bat-signal with my torch app and hand puppets or . . .
Genius.
I’ll break into the creepy house.
I walk round the side where there’s a path heading to the back garden. I say ‘walk’ but ‘stumble’ is a better word. ‘Hike’, maybe. ‘Climb’, definitely. Nate obviously applies the same standards to gardening as he does to his hair – a strictly ‘no coiffing’ policy.
A little bit of moonlight kindly lights the way as I walk/hike/climb the side path. This is such a good idea.
I wade through thickets of grass, straddle fallen posts and stub my toe on piles of unexplained bricks. I make a fair bit of noise and swear a lot too.
Which I guess explains why I’m so damn easy for the guy to find.
Out of the shadows comes an unexpected voice. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
I bash against the wall as I jump back, holding a hand over my heart so it can’t break out of my rib cage. I see the shape of him approaching from the back end of the house. When he gets closer I see he’s got a shock of white hair and blemished, scarred skin. He’s wearing a large puffer jacket, one that goes all the way to the knees, and it swooshes as he moves.
‘Holy crap, you scared me.’ My heart beats frantically to the tune of bad idea, bad idea, bad idea . . .
He taps his knuckles against his bottom lip. ‘You shouldn’t be here. Who sent you?’
‘I sent myself.’
‘Was it Lethal?’
I shake my head. Think I’m going to throw up.
He bangs his fist against the weatherboards. ‘I told him I’d sort it!’
I back away but he presses his hand against the house. His arm is beside my head like a boom gate locking me in. I get a face full of his sewage-stench breath. ‘Give me your money, phone, rings, whatever.’ He presses in closer, eye darting. ‘It’s not personal, yeah? I just need the cash.’
Holy shit. How do I tell this guy that I have zero money? The subtle vodka haze clouding my decision-making skills is clearing and I’m freaking out.
When I don’t immediately pull thousands of dollars out of my pockets, he reaches into his jacket. Now there’s a knife at my throat. I go very, very still.
Oh god, I don’t want to die.
I hold out my phone. ‘Please let me go.’
I’m weighing up my options – cry, scream or faint – when a set of heavy boots thump toward us, coming in fast from the left.
I can’t turn my head because of the knife, but the guy turns, eyes bulging. He presses in tight against me. ‘Back off!’
‘Take it easy, Dave,’ says the voice of a burglarising, arrogant arsehat. An arsehat who might be about to save my life.
I’m too scared to breathe.
‘I don’t have a choice,’ says Dave. ‘Point that thing someplace else.’
Oh god. Has Nate got a gun?
‘Either you step away or I start swinging.’
Swinging?
Dave curses but he lowers the knife and there’s air – glorious, fresh, open air – between us. I jump as far from him as I can, bashing into the side of the house as I do. I suck in a stream of swearwords, grabbing at my not-remotely-funny funny bone as it throbs.
Dave backs away, puffer jacket swooshing. He’s still got the knife. ‘Shit, Nate. Why’d you stop me, man?’
Nate is holding a cricket bat. I don’t know anything about cricket but I’m pretty sure you don’t step up to bat holding it like that.
Nate points to his face, to his black eye. ‘Why’d you punch me? Man.’
‘You kicked me out!’
‘Yeah. And I remember telling you to stay the hell away.’
‘Do you know what they’re going to do to me?’ There’s anguish in Dave’s voice. Honest to god anguish. If he keeps tugging at his hair, he’s going to rip out a whole chunk. ‘It’s not my fault!’
Nate looks at me then back at Dave. He lowers the bat. ‘Just get out of here, okay? Split.’
I turn an open-mouthed stare Nate’s way. I believe in aliens, Big Foot and Lindsay Lohan’s acting talents fifty gazillion times more than I believe what Nate just said.
Dave is clearly smarter than he looks because he doesn’t wait to be told twice. He bolts.
Seeing him run is a slap to my face. My shock vaporises leaving nothing but heat, rage, red . . .
This guy was going to rob me. This guy just held a knife to my throat. This guy pressed his filthy, grimy body against mine. This guy is going to get it.
I lunge after him, red spots blurring my vision, but Nate grabs my arm.
‘Let me go!’
‘No.’
‘Arsehole!’
‘Likewise.’
There’s a loud crash. Dave’s taken a tumble over a pile of bricks. He scrambles to his feet. I yank hard but Nate’s not letting go. I yank again and overbalance, falling on my arse with a serious thud. Nate falls on top of me, our limbs tangling and heads butting.
I try twisting round to see where Dave runs off to but I’ve got a six-foot-something burglar on top of me and my head is spinning. I hear Dave’s boots clomping against the earth as he bolts, listen to them fade to nothing.
I dig the heels of my palms into Nate’s chest and push. ‘Look what you did! He got away.’
‘What I just did was save you, Vega. What do you think you were going to do? He had a knife.’
‘I would have figured something out.’
He struggles onto his knees and I scoot out from under him, pain shooting up through my back. Shit! I’ve broken my coc
cyx.
He offers me a hand up but I knock it away. He scowls. ‘Whatever. You realise you stink of booze, right?’
‘I’m inferring hostility from you, Nate.’
‘Maybe because Druggie Dave was implying he was going to fuck you up. What the hell are you doing here?’
I get to my feet. Okay, so maybe I haven’t broken my coccyx but I’m sore as hell. ‘You owe me.’
‘Are you serious?’ He tucks the cricket bat under his arm. ‘Even if I did owe you, I’ve got news for you: you just called in that favour. Do you even get what a creep like Druggie Dave could have done to you?’
I can practically taste Dave’s filth. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I get it. What the hell is that guy’s problem?’
‘He samples more than he sells. I guess he owes shitloads to some scary people. He’s an addict. He’s . . . messed up.’
My body is starting to shiver; it’s the adrenaline, I guess. The almost-got-robbed/raped/killed shakes. It’s one hell of a way to sober up.
The only noise comes from the bats flapping overhead as Nate and I stare daggers at each other. Now there’s a superpower you don’t see enough: someone who can shoot actual daggers out of their eyes. I could have used that power about a minute ago.
We try and outstare each other. There’s a crease between his brows as he looks at me. I figure I’ve got dirt all over my face or maybe I’m actually asleep and this is one of those late for an exam/walking down the street naked kind of dreams. I look down to check.
‘Are you waiting for another psycho to come along and kill me?’ I fold my arms across my chest.
He leans against the side of the house. ‘Would it get you off my case or would you just come back and haunt me?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, ‘will stop me from annoying you until I get what I want. When I was ten I really wanted a My Little Pony. I followed Vinnie everywhere: “Can I have a My Little Pony? Can I have a My Little Pony? Can I have a My Little Pony?” I sang Horses by Daryl Braithwaite two hours straight. And I only know one line of the chorus.’
‘You wanted a My Little Pony?’
‘I was ten.’
He laughs. It only pisses me off more – which is probably the point.
‘I know you have information about Xavier.’
He groans. ‘How drunk are you?’
‘Not drunk enough.’
I can’t stop looking over my shoulder, half expecting Dave to come running at me out of the shadows. Why can’t I stop shaking?
Nate sighs. ‘If I answer your stupid questions what’s in it for me?’
Ha! I win.
‘They won’t be stupid and I promise never to bother you again. How does that sound?’
‘Perfect.’ He frowns, dusting some paint flakes off his jacket. ‘Follow me.’
Nate leads me into an overgrown back garden – the ideal place to bury a dead body.
Shit. Why’d I have to think that?
Jogging up the back steps of the house, he approaches a door that is actually just a bit of plywood half-nailed to the frame.
He pulls back the board and lights the way with the torch app on his phone.
As soon as I squeeze through, I’m hit by the stench of dust, grime, smoke and rotting food. Eau de Filth. I think about saying something, but one look at Nate’s scowl and I think better of it. Nate pushes a hand in the centre of my back to keep me moving. I shiver from the cold.
We’re in the laundry. It’s slowly being reclaimed by nature through the cracks in the floorboards. The walls are mouldy, covered with cracks and holes (probably filled with rats) and tagged by someone called ‘Killer Bob’. Deeper inside the house, some guy starts singing the blues. He actually has a nice voice, but I want to know why the hell he didn’t answer the front door when I knocked. I’ve got the Left-Outside-in-the-Cold-with-Druggie-Dave Blues.
Nate leads us up a corridor that could have come from a post-apocalyptic film. One where major landmarks like the Opera House or Federation Square are totally overgrown, with monkeys hanging off the chandeliers and sharks in swimming pools.
‘Watch for holes,’ says Nate. ‘I don’t want to have to deal with you when you’re injured.’
‘And rats.’
‘Huh?’
‘I’m pretty sure I should be watching for rats. And spiders and snakes and Killer Bobs and, in the long term, some serious lung complaints – have you noticed the mould?’
‘You were expecting the Ritz? No such luck. Welcome to the Shitz.’
The corridor opens into a wide space; all the windows boarded up. It might have been a lounge room when the house was functioning as a house but right now it looks like a squat. Which it is. There are sleeping bags, clothes, shoes and junk scattered all over the floor. Most of the sleeping bags are full.
I can’t hear the blues anymore.
‘You live here?’ My voice echoes through the crumbling space, returning to my ears with more disgust than I’d intended. I look apologetically at Nate but he’s got his eyes on his boots. ‘I didn’t mean –’
The sleeping bag next to my foot rustles and a groggy voice tells me to shut the fuck up.
Nate yanks me to him before I can kick Mr Rude in the sleeping bag.
He leans close and I realise that, weirdly, he smells like chlorine. Same as Mark. Is there some male cologne – Eau de Swimming Pool – that I don’t know about? More importantly, why do I find it so appealing?
‘Your housemates are arseholes,’ I say, but I’m not sure if ‘housemate’ is the right word.
‘Just whisper, okay? People are trying to sleep.’
‘Then what are we doing here?’
‘You practically begged me to invite you in and now you’re complaining?’
We get shushed again.
‘No,’ I say with as much anger as a whisper will allow. ‘I mean, how are we going to have a conversation with all the shushing and the rude people?’ My voice gets a little loud on the ‘rude people’ part so something small, white and pillow-shaped flies past me, just clipping my shoulder.
‘That’s it.’ I go to leave, but Nate grabs my arm and yanks me in the opposite direction.
‘This way,’ he says.
We pick through the tangle of sleeping bodies and junk. Nate grips my arm; his hands are calloused and rough, strong too, which I guess they’d need to be to do all that breaking and entering.
We head into another corridor, holes in the floor and a giant mural on the right. I don’t even need to find the little red ‘x’ to know it’s my brother’s work.
This time, she’s a zombie. She looks a lot like the angel but an angel on ice, with teeth decaying and dull brown eyes, her pale skin rotting, covered in weeping sores. She holds both arms out in front of her body. ‘Brains’ is written in large, melting green letters above her. She looks how I currently feel.
Which is ironic considering I’m pretty sure it is me.
‘The little prick.’ After all the whispering, my normal voice is a shock. I can’t decide whether I’m flattered or furious. I fling a hand at zombie-me. ‘What’s this supposed to be?’
Nate is leaning in an open doorway. Whatever’s in the room behind him glows amber. He looks over my shoulder. ‘You mean the frighteningly realistic portrait of you? I like it. Anyway. Talk.’
‘So we’re going to talk in the corridor? With the zombie?’
He glances at his feet. Combat boots. Like mine. ‘Sure,’ he says.
I try peeking over his shoulder into the room behind him, but he’s too tall.
‘What’s in there? That looks cosy.’
‘No one goes in there.’
I stand on tiptoes. ‘Are those candles?’
‘No.’
‘They look like candles.’
‘They’re not.’
‘Have you brought me to a day spa?’
He groans, rubbing his face with his hands.
‘I’m just asking.’
‘Fine.’ He moves aside
, all of five centimetres. The amber glow intensifies. ‘But I’m not happy about this.’
‘Gee, really? I couldn’t tell.’
He doesn’t budge. I try squeezing past, but he’s still in the way. ‘You say anything smart-arsed,’ he says, ‘and I kick you out.’
The amber flickers across his face, lighting up his eyes. The bruise around his right eye is turning yellow or maybe that’s just the candlelight. There’s a small cut on his bottom lip I didn’t notice before. Guess I don’t spend a whole lot of time staring at his lips. Why am I staring at his lips?
‘I promise I won’t be a cow,’ I say, gripping the doorframe behind me.
He leans back. ‘We’ll see.’
I scramble the rest of the way in, almost falling face first into an acoustic guitar.
There are candles everywhere, flickering and smoking, some propped up in empty coffee cups, some in what I’m assuming are stolen vases – the spoils of Nate’s day job. They’re all shapes and colours, casting a warm glow over the room.
I’m guessing there’s no electricity.
I look over my shoulder and Nate’s watching me, eyes dark, arms folded across his chest.
‘It’s nice,’ I tell him. ‘Very . . . dystopian chic.’
I quickly look away again as his eyes narrow. I’ll give him a moment to process that.
He doesn’t have much stuff but there’s a single-bed mattress on the floor, a doona flung halfway across it and a pillow, a decorative one meant for a couch. A milk crate/seat, which doesn’t have my name on it, and there’s even a lamp. No light bulb in it and it’s not plugged into anything but it does make a handy clotheshorse.
There’s a dictionary on the floor next to the bed.
He shoves past me and sits on the crate, shifting the guitar that had been leaning against it. ‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘Just somewhere to crash.’ He points to the bed. ‘Sit.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m not going anywhere near your bed – I’m not that drunk.’
I look around, imagining zombie rats swarming up through the holes in the floor.
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