by Paul Collins
Of course nobody was prepared to admit guilt. And Doris was still in sick bay. By the time Rooster released us from detention, ten minutes before the end of the lunch period, everyone was fuming. Most of them blamed Judith and me for the note.
‘One of youse had better tell pretty soon, or there'll be trouble,' Marshall threatened.
After school I went around to Doris's place to tell her the grim news. When she met me at the door, I could tell straight away that she knew.
‘My father,' she said. ‘He heard Mr Rostrum talking about it in the staff room. Mr Rostrum thinks the note was about him and Mrs Green.'
‘But Mrs Green is married. I don't get it,' I said.
‘You remember the rumour Judith put around about Mr Watson and Ms Baldwin?'
I nodded.
‘Well, Mr Rostrum thought you or Judith was starting another rumour. About him and Mrs Green. Mrs Delvene Green … DG.'
‘Oh no! He thinks DG is Delvene Green, and really it's you.' I sat down. ‘What are you going to do?'
Doris was white. ‘I think I'd better go and tell him the truth before it goes any further,' she said.
Poor Doris. Everyone was really mad at her for losing their lunch hour. There was a big meeting with her dad, Deputy Principal Ms Baldwin, and Rooster. Ms Baldwin wasn't very understanding. Especially after all the trouble the other rumour about her and Mr Watson caused. In fact, it was Ms Baldwin who suggested the lunchtime detention. A whole month. Supervised by herself and the Rooster.
By the end of the month Doris couldn't stand the sight of Rooster. And she detested Ms Baldwin.
‘Those two are monsters!' she often said, showing us pages and pages of new French vocabulary they forced on her. But the good thing was that her French improved incredibly, so much so that she topped the subject in the mid-year exams. In fact, when a postcard arrived from France addressed to her, Doris translated for the class.
We all crowded around her as she read, ‘Sarah (nee Baldwin) and I are having a brilliant honeymoon. So glad you and your mates in Year Seven are NOT here!'
It was signed, Yours sincerely, Mr A Rostrum.
The freezer lid isn't shut tight so I lift it up to see what's blocking it, and scream. There are two left sneakers covered in blood sitting on top. Rusty laces have stiffened on both sides of the upturned soles.
I let go of the lid. How long since it's been defrosted? I grasp the handle. What's behind the sneaker soles? What secret is hidden in the freezer?
Death freaks me out. I've never seen a corpse. And it can't be frozen meat: Susie's household are all vegetarians.
Susie is out babysitting. At 11:50 pm on Friday the 13th, neither of her housemates are home. Pete is an art student and Liam's an apprentice chef. Susie told me I could crash at her place anytime I have an early start for my weekend job. Her car wasn't here when I arrived. That's when I remembered about her babysitting job and looked for the spare key.
In the darkness, I'd tripped over the cat which had taken off. I'd fumbled under the porch gnome for the front door key. Stepping back, I'd trodden on the cat's saucer. Crack! If anyone had been home, they would have heard me for sure. But there had been no sounds when I'd entered the house. And no lights.
Number forty-three is an inner-suburban terrace. The mysterious landlord appears every Friday demanding cash. Susie doesn't like him, but she likes the house.
I'm trying to think of anything but those sneakers and what's behind them. The freezer is big enough to hold … a body.
Taking a deep breath, I open the freezer lid again.
Sneakers must belong to feet. I wear size nine, but these soles are bigger. I examine the pattern. I don't want to get too close. It's stupid to feel so spooked. Liam the triathlete would just pull the sneakers out – and whatever they're attached to.
The overhead kitchen light suddenly goes off. The big industrial freezer shudders and stops. I remain still, thinking.
Susie's a competition addict. Trouble is, she wins multiple prizes. Forty-three can openers, for example. This giant freezer must be one of her biggest prizes, and the most recent.
Everything is quiet. A torch? Matches? I feel my way to the junk drawer and scrabble around. Matches fall to the floor. In the dark, I find a handful. Then I feel around for the box. The matches won't strike.
There's something damp on the floor. Is the freezer leaking? Or something else? I dip my finger in the liquid and smell it. I think it's red. But it can't be blood. Not sticky enough. No reason to think the dampness is blood and the victim is in the freezer. Is there?
I feel my way to the bathroom. I sniff. Susie's bath candle is pyramid-shaped and smells of rosemary. Alongside is a box of matches. As my hand knocks her bath crystals, the jar crashes into the bath. Another herbal aroma – lavender? Isn't lavender supposed to have a calming effect?
If so, it isn't working. I'm freaking out. Seriously scared, worse than a horror movie.
First match doesn't light, but the second one does. A thin flame reveals the bath outline with a stain of crystals inside, a broken jar and a shadowy figure looming!
‘Ahhhh!'
Just my reflection! The flame burns my finger.
‘Ow!' I drop the match.
Luckily the next one lights straight away. I return to the kitchen holding the aromatic pyramid in front of me. The light dances, creating spooky shadows. At first, the shape is comforting. Then I think of Egypt, mummies, bodies being preserved, and I freak again.
I hold the candle higher. Menacing shadows move across the walls.
As I snap open the freezer lid, an open packet of frozen peas – stuck to the lid – scatter all over the floor. Pea pellets hit me like shot from a shotgun.
‘No!' I sweep them backwards with my feet. The flame flickers. I hold the candle lower so I can look into the freezer. The light catches a faint gleam in the depth of the freezer. Not an eye! Please!
Fingers tingling, I nudge the first icy sneaker. Behind it is a perfect human hand! The shapely fingernails are tinted with pink nail polish. Palm down, the hand is wearing a gold band. That had been the gleam reflecting the candlelight.
Susie's house mates aren't expecting me. They'd recognise me, but I'm not sure if I would recognise bits of them! Wedding rings are worn on left hands, aren't they? Two left sneakers and a left hand. Is this important?
I slam the freezer shut. I could leave – just close the front door and pretend I hadn't been here! I know the hand doesn't belong to Susie. She's a nail biter.
The candle smell is strong as I stumble down the eerily lit corridor. Someone is standing in the corner, just inside the bedroom door. ‘Aaahhh!' I scream.
Something crashes to the floor.
I find myself flat on the cold floorboards next to a very bony foot, with a leg attached. The candle splutters and dies.
‘Hi,' I say weakly to the skeleton which Pete keeps in his bedroom.
Pete is studying life drawing. He uses the skeleton to get his shapes right. I'd forgotten that. Temporarily, relief floods me. Maybe this is normal stuff. If the lights had been on, I wouldn't have freaked.
Then the front door opens, and a thin light from a tiny, powerful torch pierces the darkness.
‘Who are you?' Strong hands grab me and the torchlight dances as we struggle.
‘Let me go. It's me, Kyle. Susie's friend. Your power went off,' I say breathlessly, trying to sound cool.
‘Again? Our landlord is always getting his sons to do bodgie jobs on the cheap. Let's fix the fuse first. Look in the cupboard,' suggests Pete. ‘Here's the fuse wire.'
Pete rewires as I hold the torch. ‘Thought you were a burglar. Susie heard some guy sneaking around the other night. We told the landlord.' He hits the switch. The freezer starts to hum again. It hasn't been off long enough for the contents to thaw. Pete yawns. ‘I'm going to bed. Not sure if there's any milk, but help yourself to whatever.'
Junk mail and donation requests clutter the bench. On the kitchen
calendar, Saturday the 14th has a big ‘L' marked alongside it. Pete notices me looking at it. ‘My project's due tomorrow. I've been working on it all week.'
‘Are you left-handed?' I blurt.
Pete nods.
‘When you play footy, do you kick left-footed?'
Pete shakes his head. ‘Don't play. Goodnight.'
I hear him picking up the skeleton. He mutters something about clumsy visitors.
Then the front door bangs and I swing around, fast.
‘Hi, Kyle,' Susie says, shrugging off her coat. ‘Did the power go off again?' She sniffs. ‘Rosemary?' She looks at the dead matches near the damp redness. ‘When?'
I edge away from the freezer. ‘Half an hour ago?' I guess. Being scared seems to slow down time. ‘What about your babysitting?'
‘They came home early. Mix-up with their tickets. Did the freezer go off?'
‘Yes. I mean, how would I know?'
Susie frowns. ‘If it melts, it'll be so embarrassing.'
‘I saw the sneakers,' I blurt.
The front door bangs again.
‘Liam.' Susie glances at her watch. ‘Twelve-thirty. Great!'
Then I realise. Friday the 13th is now Saturday the 14th.
‘Light these sparklers.' Susie rummages in the cupboard.
I now see a shoe-shaped container by the sink. Suddenly I'm feeling really foolish. ‘Is this a cake mould?'
‘Yes,' says Susie.
Could the mould be for ice-cream? Of course. If a mould were used twice, both sneakers would be left-shaped.
‘D'you have a hand-shaped cake too?'
‘Are you feeling all right?' Susie's eyebrows knit.
‘No, I don't think so. See this hand?' I point inside the freezer as she pulls out the sneaker ice-cream cakes.
‘Is that where Pete stored his model? His project is due tomorrow.'
‘Today,' I correct her. ‘Saturday the 14th. Liam's birthday too?'
‘Give me a hand, would you?' Susie says. ‘If Pete's gone to bed, nothing will wake him up.'
Liam's frozen foot is very heavy. Later, Susie explains everything. Liam is such an ace chef, no one will dare make him a birthday cake in case it falls short of his high standards. So, at art school, Pete made a mould of Liam's left sneaker. Susie poured bulk ice-cream into the mould. There was some left over. So she decided to make two sneaker cakes.
‘Were the bloodstains real?' I ask.
‘As if,' Susie says, making a face. ‘Food dye, of course. Why, did you think I'd murdered someone?'
I look at the fridge. ‘We-e-ll –'
‘Oh, I get it. Joke, right? Hey, d'you know anyone who'd like to buy a second-hand freezer?' Susie asks me. ‘It's too big for us.'
‘Second hand?' I repeat. ‘No thanks.' No way is that freezer, full or empty, coming into my life.
‘Want some of the ice-cream cake, Kyle?' asks Susie.
‘Thanks.' I'm cool with that.
I was fishing in the deep water and still smelling the ancient woman's cauldron on the slope when the fog arrived. The ancient woman pickled strange things in her cauldron and I was wondering how those pickled pieces would taste. The fog rolled across the still water, drifted over bobbing seagulls, the grey beach, the old woman's hut and the ruin on the hill. It slid slowly, as silent as the tide. It muffled the seagulls to the squeaks of mice and the water lapping on the beach. But that was quite normal for fog and mist on this water. I ignored it, dived and got on with my fishing.
But when I surfaced with my catch, a trout, I could not see anything. The ruin, the ancient woman's hut, the beach, the seagulls – all had gone into grey mist, and when I lifted my fish above the water to inspect it, I couldn't see it wither. I couldn't even hear the drops from the fish splash into the water. And then I realised that I didn't know the way to go. The beach could be ahead or behind or to the left or anywhere …
I have to admit I was a bit frightened.
But that was stupid. All I had to do was float in the water until the sun burned away this nuisance. And even that was a bit stupid. I have been hunting fish for a long time in this water. All I had to do was taste the current down below and I'd know where I was – roughly. I could nudge the current and tell that the beach was on my left, about a hundred metres away.
So I dived. Almost immediately I found a current but it didn't feel right. The water was warm and very clear, so clear I could see the bottom. Now I was a little bit confused. I could see sand and swaying green seaweed.
Suddenly a great white-grey fish slid toward me and showed its teeth, an arc of pointed fangs with blood still trailing. I had never seen anything like this hideous fish and I was terrified. My head recoiled in alarm, but I knew that any sign of fear would bring on those teeth. I hopelessly tried to grin at the fish, baring my own teeth. And incredibly the mighty fish looked at me, saw my quivering lip, flicked its tail and scooted away. I watched the cowardly fish go, then I shivered and swam to the surface.
Then I knew that I was in terrible trouble.
The fog had completely gone, as if it had never been. But now I was looking at a simmering sea reaching a horizon that I had not seen before. There was a sun near the horizon but I didn't know it. It was a bigger sun, burning deep red, and it shimmered in the air. I was totally lost in a hostile sea with a different sun. I think I shrieked in panic, then I heard the seagulls and I turned in the water.
I calmed down a little. The seagulls were flapping away from the water, probably driven off by my scream, but I could see land and that was better. Although I had not seen this land before. The grey beach, the old woman's hut, the brown hill and the ruin had been replaced by a grim island and a curling river. The island had only scrub and a few straggly saplings clinging onto its sandstone and it looked like some crouching beast. I felt that the island was watching me.
I thought of swimming into the empty sea to get away from the island, but I knew I had to go into the river to survive. So slowly I slid toward the island and the water changed from blue to grey. Three eagles scudded in the sky above and circled me until I was deep in the river. The eagles went off to hunt fish in the sea and I cruised the bottom. Bushy hills crowded the area as I moved along and the water became muddy with less salt. I didn't like the river much but I started to relax and began to think of food.
I'd intended to save the trout I had caught on the other side of the fog, but I ate it suddenly. I wondered if there were fish in the river and if I would be able to eat them. I dived down, saw a fat grey fish and lunged for it. But this fish was fast. The fish flicked around and scorched away, but I raced after it. I was not used to the water's warmth and cloudiness, but I was accelerating in the chase. Soon I caught up with the fish and I could almost imagine its taste in my mouth –
Then there was a bolt through the water and my fish was whipped away. I couldn't work it out, and I was frowning as I thrashed to the surface.
There, floating on the water, was a very small boat made of bark. A blackened man stood in it as if he had been stoking the sun. He had a long pointed stick and he was pulling my fish from it when he saw me. He pointed his stick at me.
‘Oh …' he said.
For a moment he stared at me and I wondered what the blackened man would taste like. But then he lowered his stick and with an odd smile he offered me the fish. I gently took the offering from his hand and nodded. He nodded back, picked up a branch of leaves from the bottom of his boat and paddled away furiously.
After that I saw quite a few other blackened people. When the tide was low some of the women and children came over to the bank and I watched them pulling black shells from the rocks. I tried a few and they were delicious – better than any of the fish – once I had mastered cracking the black shells with my teeth. The children waved at me until their mothers told them to stop. I guess I looked dangerous. But I had decided not to eat them anyway, despite the children calling me a funny name.
I caught fish in the river and a few duc
ks in the little inlets – two of the ducks I caught in mid-flight. I even crept past that menacing island to chase seals, but I almost ran into an immense fish that made the toothy-fish look like a shrimp. This great fish blew a thunder of water from its back at me and sailed past. That was enough; I slithered back into the river, buried myself in the mud at the bottom and slept.
When I woke up things had changed again. The blackened people had moved to a small stream and there were red-faced people everywhere. There were huts on the hills and bigger boats of wood floated over the river. It was noisy, with a few explosions on the banks and trees kept crashing down. I didn't like it at all and I wanted to see if the fog had returned to the sea. I slipped past the island, keeping a nervous eye open for any of the big fish.
The fog was not there, but there were two creatures that were worse than the squirting fish and the fish with the bloody teeth. In the distance these creatures looked like seagulls but they were far bigger than the squirting fish. They had opened their white wings and were running from the wind, but they could not quite take off. Then I realised that when they finally did fly they could pluck me from the sea like an eagle snatching a trout. I scuttled back to the river and hid in the mud once again.
I oozed out of the mud at night, figuring that the giant seagulls couldn't see me. There was a little light wandering through the bushes at the edge of a cliff and it was singing. The singing sounded like a wail from a dying bird, but I was curious and I swam closer to the light, lifted my head and …
‘Bunyip!'
The light crashed over some rocks and splashed over the water. A red-faced man was carrying the light and he was staggering away. His breath was heavy with something noxious. I knew that smell but I couldn't remember from where.
‘Bunyip, bunyip!' he howled as he accelerated.
At least I could remember that. That's what the blackened children had called me.
The red-faced man thundered along the cliff top, hit a big tree, spun away and bolted over the edge. He was running in the air until he splashed into the water.