by Tim Pegler
The wind flares again and a musty pong, like a mouldy dog’s blanket, invades my nostrils. ‘Ugh! What’s the stink?’
Dad grins. ‘Must be the seal colony. Strong, isn’t it? Can’t wait to get down there and check it out. That’s one of the reasons people first came to the island, for the seals. Except they were hunting them. They’re protected now, of course.’
I can see why a lighthouse was needed here. Beyond the foam-fringed cape there are jagged chunks of black rock jutting through the dark ocean. Without the lantern beam, ships approaching would have had little warning of the hidden canines waiting to chomp into their hulls.
Metres from the foot of the lighthouse, below the paved path, there’s a stone with a plaque on it. ‘What’s the sign for, Dad? Have you been down there yet?’
He shakes his head. ‘No. It could be a survey marker. I’ll have a look later. We’d better be getting back.’
Night is overpowering the sunset as we trundle downhill. I peer beyond the cottages to the dark scrub. ‘I don’t know how the lighthouse keepers did it, Dad. It’s way too remote for me.’
The path levels out and we stop for a moment. Dad leans over my shoulder and I can feel his breath on my cheek. ‘I like the quiet here. But yes, some of the keepers did go…a bit odd. On the warmer days there would be toxic fumes from the mercury in the lantern room and, over time, they could suffer brain damage. You know the old expression “as mad as a hatter”? That’s based on the mercury poisoning that milliners used to get. It was the same for the lighthouse keepers…but they had the isolation to contend with, too.’
It’s family Monopoly after dinner and I’m fired up to win. I should know better. In the blink of an eye, Mel has Park Lane and Mayfair and everything orange all hotelled up. Pip proposes ‘a merger against the corporates’ but her railway stations and my public housing estate along Old Kent Road are no match for Mel. Mum and Dad bow out and head off to their room to get their walking gear sorted. They’re off early tomorrow to visit a bird sanctuary.
Mel and Pip do the dishes and then giggle their way to the lounge, me clomping behind. There’s a faded floral armchair for each of the girls and a couch for me. No TV, so we get the gas log-fire going and stare at that instead. Mel slides a guest book off the mantelpiece, heaves it onto her lap and reads for a few minutes. ‘This is fantastic,’ she squeals. ‘This place is supposed to be haunted. Listen to this:
There’s definitely a presence in this house. The lights flicker on and off. Doors slam and I swear things were shifted around the kitchen last night…
‘Here’s another one:
During our night walk I kept looking over my shoulder, as if someone was watching. No sign of ghosts or anyone else…but I did dream that someone tapped on my forehead while I was sleeping.
‘Classic! I hope we see the ghost!’ Mel is leaning forward in the armchair, beaming, her arms wrapped around the guest book.
‘I don’t think it’s something to joke about, Mel,’ Pip says. ‘This place is one hundred and fifty years old. There could be spirits here. I mean…not like on TV. Not chain-rattling cartoon ghosts. More like memories sort of lingering from the past.’
Mel scoffs. ‘Yeah, right. Listen to this one:
I heard noises so I stuck my head into the hallway to see if someone was there. An old man with a beard and a black coat lurched into the kitchen. In the morning I found the last bottle of red was gone and one of the glasses was smashed on the floor…
‘Thundering typhoons—sounds like Captain Haddock from Tintin,’ I smirk.
‘Sounds like someone wanted to cover up for drinking too much, more like it,’ says Mel. ‘They just want to scare other guests.’
‘I’m going to bed,’ I say. ‘I’ll leave you two with the captain. Good night.’
As I trudge down the hallway, the wind smashes against the house. Windows tremble and there’s a whimper somewhere, perhaps from the kitchen chimney. Then silence. I’ve never experienced such stop-start wind. It’s as if a giant fist grabs the cottage every few minutes and gives it a shake.
The back screen-door clunks. It’ll drive me crazy if it bangs all night. I plod down the two steps to the laundry. The stone floor is cold on my bare foot and I shiver. Through the flywire I can see a fattening moon. Almost full. The stars sizzle. Shreds of cloud skate in front of them.
For a moment, the shrubs in front of me shrug off the darkness. Are there headlights? Are other guests arriving at the other cottages? No, idiot, it’s the lighthouse. There it is again. Flash, pause, flash, long pause. I shudder. Flash, pause, flash…
There’s something about the Cape. Something eerie. A sadness. An intense loneliness. Flash, pause, flash, long pause. Is it this place…or is it me? Something’s not right. My skin is clammy, despite the chilled evening air. My foot throbs. I feel unsettled. Angry. Absolutely alone. I could burst into tears right here, right now. Flash, pause, flash…
I click the screen-door shut, close the timber door behind it and limp to the bathroom. The lighthouse stares straight through a head-high window. Flash, pause, flash. I lift the lid of the toilet. Flash, pause, flash. Shiver. Flush, pause, wash. I forage among my toiletries for some painkillers, gulp them down with a mouthful of water and limp to bed.
Going to sleep is like falling into an empty swimming pool…
A bright day, Year 9 ski camp. Boris lumbers, bear-like, towards me. Wipes a paw across his satisfied grin: ‘Problem solved, Danno. Delicious!’
I unclip my skis and crunch across to a glinting teardrop puddle. The sun, mirrored by the crisp snow, bakes us from above and below—perfect for skiing but we’re parched. When Boris saw the icy font, he just about dived in.
I’m not so gung-ho. I never am. But hey, we’re at least half an hour from the chalet and, bugger it, if the ice can handle big Boris, it’ll hold a bloody cement mixer.
I drag my gloves off, clip them to my ski suit, kneel, scoop a handful of the chilled water towards my mouth… and feel the ground give way. Everything sliding. Collapsing towards my knees. And down.
Down into wild, secret water. The current snatches, pummels, buffets me sideways. I’m diagonal, losing the battle. Being dragged by some blue-tressed river demon into her loveless lair. No!
Kicking out. Legs thrashing in leaden ski boots. Scenes flashing through my mind. Faces, places, family. A life, short and unspectacular. Cancelled during a school ski trip. A life over before it really got underway. No!
Total. Eclipse. Panic.
Legs spinning like the Roadrunner’s. Arms bursting from an ice straitjacket, clutching, grabbing. Please! Anything solid!
Reaching. Hands grasping. Ice crumbling. Hole widening. Boris’s booming laugh.
Arms outstretched. Hands slapping, clawing. Ice finally holding.
Swinging one leg over the lip. Dragging the other after it. Commando crawling, away from the hole, across the ice. Heart thumping a frenzied beat as I lie sodden on the snow beside the hidden river.
Alive.
II
ZL: YOUR SIGNAL HAS BEEN RECEIVED
BUT NOT UNDERSTOOD
I wake. Sit bolt upright, senses in overdrive.
The air is freezing, as though I’ve just crawled from the ice in my dream. I rub my eyes, uncertain I’m actually awake. And I see her, see someone, standing at the foot of the bed.
Her skin is grey, her hair long, black and tangled into the darkness. Her eyes…her eyes are wells, deeper than the night. They overflow tears, down her pale cheeks onto a shapeless white smock. One hand rubs her belly. The other reaches towards me.
I spring back, hard against the wall, knees to my chest. Fear plummets from my ribcage to my ankles like a busted elevator. I scan the room, searching for an explanation, reasons not to look at her. Outside, the lighthouse blinks. I look to the foot of the bed again. She, it, whatever, is gone.
The giant shakes the cottage. Chills stampede down my spine. Did I dream it? Was it Mel playing funny buggers after
reading those stupid stories in the guest book?
‘Mel?’ No response. ‘This isn’t funny, Mel.’ Still nothing. ‘Come on, Mel. I think about that baby every day. It’s nothing to joke about. Go on. Get the hell out of my room!’
Nothing.
Must have been a nightmare. Again. I’ve had several since the accident, at least one a week where I wake up soaked in sweat and shaking. It’s got to be my subconscious sorting shit out, maybe. Or the pills, taking me on some monstrous mind-trip.
I never met the woman and her husband from the crash. I don’t want to either. I’m not sure I could face them if we ever have to go to court.
I read in the paper that she was pregnant. When we hit them, the impact set off the airbags in their car. That saved them but killed the baby she was carrying. The papers said they’d spent years trying to have a kid.
I don’t know if the baby counted in the road toll. I mean, it hadn’t been born yet. The TV and newspapers said the accident was a triple fatality. That’s Aaron, Boris and Carlo. Maybe the journalists didn’t know about the baby. Maybe it didn’t die until later.
Carlo didn’t die straightaway. He screamed and screamed. He didn’t say any famous last words like in films, just screamed then mumbled, gurgled and stopped. Just before the ambulance arrived.
Boris was…gone. Big bloody Boris, nicknamed after the Frankenstein actor, seventeen-year-old monster fullback for the senior footy team and all-round legend. One minute he’s there in the front passenger seat, the next he’s nowhere. Vanished somewhere between a concrete power pole and the scrumpled metal that swallowed most of the dashboard.
Aaron. He died in an instant, shot by a big glass bullet. A stubby hammered through his skull when his face hit the steering wheel. His last beer—the whole reason we were in his brother’s crappy car. He had it raised to his mouth when everything went to shit.
You know it’s not good when an ambulance man pukes. If I hadn’t been there I might have made a crack about Aaron dying happy with a drink in his hand. But I was there. And the beer wasn’t in his hand; it was in his head. The bottle didn’t even break. The mouth of the stubby poked through the back of Aaron’s neck, dribbling beer and blood as they carted his body from the wreckage.
They had to shift him to get to Phan and me. Phan was next out after Aaron. His corner, behind Aaron, was the only bit that still looked like a car. Phan lived. Most of him, anyway. His spine snapped. Poor bastard’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
I remember the waiting. The smell of beer, petrol, stale takeaway food and shit. Phan must’ve shat himself. I can’t blame him. Then again, maybe it was me.
I waited while the rescue guys cut and tore the body of the Falcon. Waited while the hydraulic jaws prised at its carcass, forcing open a jagged cave-mouth wide enough to drag us through. I watched a strobe slideshow as the shears carved into the metal around Carlo and firemen yelled for a bystander to stop smoking because there was petrol everywhere.
Inside me, it was already alight. Pain flamed through my veins, scorching its way up my brain stem. An inferno that cancelled every thought, every bodily function.
The rest of my memories from the crash aren’t really mine. Bits and pieces from TV and the papers; statements to police; conversations overheard through a haze of fluorescent lights and painkillers; eulogies; endless questions from shocked teachers and broken parents.
The TV stations replayed the video of the crash-scene the day of the first funeral. It showed a tow truck pulling the wreck down from the power pole. Cwump! It hit the ground like a dead swan. Watching it, I winced. Aaron, Phan and I were out by then. They knew about Carlo and were looking for Boris. God knows what went into Boris’s coffin.
The police interviewed me while I was still in hospital. They knew I wasn’t the driver but I may as well have been. Five of us were in the car and the five of us were equally guilty as far as the media were concerned. One seventeen-year-old learner driver and four of his dickhead mates. Five ‘youths’ who should’ve known better. Five reckless hoons who got into a vehicle ‘borrowed’ from Aaron’s brother. Only two got out. Two to carry the can.
Phan and I weren’t charged with anything, as we were only passengers. Talkback radio hosts called us every name under the sun. They said we were accessories to car theft and reckless driving. The attorney-general told the newspapers the law didn’t allow for such charges.
The law might not have nailed us but public opinion did. Talk about trial by media. Our principal put out a press release sending condolences to all the bereaved families and offering counselling to all students at school. Everyone except Phan and me, clearly.
And there at the bottom of his media release was the damage control. The tosser said he would have expected better of the boys concerned and that we had let our school and ourselves down (in that order, apparently). What’s more, all senior students would be given compulsory instruction in responsible alcohol consumption during first term next year.
Man, that made me angry. They’re always teaching us there’s no safe level of alcohol for teenagers. Yet the teachers get liquored up at school camps, once we’re supposed to be asleep. And the Year 12 formal after-party is a legendary piss-up. No one put out a press release when the principal’s daughter got legless and threw up in her limo, did they? Hypocrites.
At Carlo’s funeral, his mother spat at my feet. I guess she blamed me…for surviving in place of her son. I’ll never forget the service. The way she wailed ‘Fifteen! Fifteen years old!’ while the priest was speaking. The way they spoke about my best mate like he was some kind of saint. The way her family had to hold her and drag her off the casket as it was carried out of the church.
The way no one would look me in the eye.
Aaron’s family rang my parents and said they didn’t want me at his funeral because of the media. Bullshit. The media were always going to turn up. Aaron’s folks just didn’t want to see me.
Phan didn’t have to make a statement to the police. He couldn’t. He’s not the same, poor bastard. It takes him ages to get a sentence out now. So much for the guy who was one of the best singers at school. I wonder how many of our classmates visit him? Probably none. Pricks. It’s not his fault the only place they found to take him is an old people’s home.
On Facebook, Carlo, Boris and Aaron were treated like heroes. Kids left miss-you messages, poems and YouTube tributes. They bonded over bullshit eulogies, even if they had hardly known the guys. Some idiot even put up an online shrine for the Falcon.
Nothing on Facebook for Phan. Imagine his status update: Rooted and friendless. Nothing for me, either. We were incidental. Collateral damage. Only the good die young…so what does that make us?
During my interview, the cops warned me I had to tell the whole truth and nothing but, as their investigations would uncover any lies. I told them I couldn’t remember a thing, that I arrived at the party and the rest was a blank. I wish that was true.
Weeks beforehand, Mel was begging Mum and Dad for permission to go to the party. She’s in the school swim team and some of her older team-mates were graduating. Mum was totally against us attending a Year 12 break-up but Mel kept working on her, asking again every day.
Mum ended up ringing around to check we wouldn’t be the youngest there. No worries on that score. Aaron and Boris played footy with the seniors so they were assured an invite. Carlo worshipped them and went wherever they did. Phan’s sister was in Year 12, so he was going too. Once Mum knew Mrs Nguyen had given the okay for Phan to turn up, she was less freaked about the whole thing.
And, as always, the twin thing came into play. Is there some contract that says if you come out of one womb at almost the same time as someone else you have to look after each other for life? When Mum rolled over, it was on the condition that I would go along to keep an eye on Mel. Awesome. Mel protested—Mum, I don’t need Dan to babysit me—but it was a half-hearted effort. On the inside, she was doing cartwheels. I know
her. Better than anyone.
Outside the cottage there’s a mandarine dawn. I stretch and yawn. Since I saw the girl—or whatever it was at the end of my bed—there’s been bugger-all chance of catching any more sleep. I’m tempted to grab some painkillers and wipe myself out, but I don’t. I just lie here. Waiting. Wishing for something to distract me from myself.
Then I hear footsteps in the hallway and slip-slapping across the cold laundry floor to the bathroom. Pip must be up. As she passes my door, I call out to her.
Her freckled, smiling face leans into my room.
‘Hey Dan. Did I wake you?’
‘Nah. Didn’t sleep much. How about you?’
‘Not too bad. Once Mel shut up.’
‘Yeah, she goes on a bit. Umm, you going back to bed?’
‘I was going to read for a bit. Why?’
‘I, err, you didn’t see any…anything odd last night did you?’
Pip steps into the tiny room and dives onto the spare bed. ‘Odd? What do you mean by odd?’
Suddenly I’m unsure about this. If I dreamed the whole thing I’m going to look like a total idiot. And I don’t want to tell anyone I’m having nightmares. They’ll make me see a shrink or something. I’m not ready for that. I don’t want to talk about the accident again, ever, if I can help it.
‘Dan? What did you see? Come on, tell me.’
‘You’re not going to laugh, are you? And promise me you’re not going to tell Mel? I’m not up for being the punchline of her party jokes all summer.’
Pip hesitates. ‘Mel wouldn’t…Maybe you’re right. You’ve lived with her longer than I have.’
‘Only like every minute of my life. Believe me, if she’s got any ammo on me, she’ll use it. So can I trust you?’
‘Dan, Mel is my best mate. But that doesn’t mean I tell her everything, okay? Besides, Mel and I have different approaches to…to all sorts of stuff. So spill.’
A movement outside catches my eye. I put an index finger to my mouth, signalling Pip to be quiet. Then I stand, take an unsteady step and ease myself onto the spare bed beside her. Reaching forward, I curl a finger around the curtain and edge it open further.