Little Gods

by Jenny Ackland

  These were faces caught in the moment of unimaginable agony, reflections of more terrible acts than Olive could even imagine. Things that were beyond the realm of childhood, that even grownups would struggle to name. Wretched and frozen in the middle of their pain-suffering, laid out in a line along the wall. And on the other side, more of the same.

  ‘Does a person’s soul leave the body when someone dies or does it stay there?’ Olive asked.

  ‘Don’t talk about that stuff,’ said Peter. ‘Just don’t.’

  As they looked at the pictures on the walls there came a sound, a booming that built to a pounding that reverberated in waves down the tunnel. Olive stepped back and put her hands over her ears and the torch moved in her hand, shattering the darkness all around them, illuminating the bricks of the roof above. She and Peter screamed a symphonic roar until the sound receded. It had been a truck, she guessed, passing overhead. They were in the middle, right under the road.

  ‘We have to go to the end and see,’ she said, swinging the torch to Peter’s face. He blinked. ‘Come on.’

  They walked, Peter in front. Soon they had to clamber over small mounds of broken rock and at one stage the gap above their heads narrowed as the rough ceiling lowered to meet the tips of their fingers if they reached up. The thinning space was cold and Olive was about to say so when another truck started to approach, the same eerie boom accumulated until it was a giddy roar above their heads. They yelled in unison again, and even though this time she was ready for the whole-body invasion of noise, and told herself she wouldn’t scream, the caterwauling barrelled out against her will. She shook with adrenaline and knew Peter would want to turn back.

  ‘Let’s keep going,’ she said.

  They shuffled on and in a little while Peter said, ‘Look,’ and she could see a light glowing faintly that marked the end of the tunnel. After a few more slow minutes they got there. There was a fence at this end too but, unlike the other, no gaps were visible around it and it was bolted flush against the cement edge with just a thin lip of light marking the joins.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We can’t get out at this end so we have to go back.’ She shone the torch into his face again and he told her to stop it and she did, but she’d already seen how scared he was.

  They started walking back, her in front this time. The torch crawled over the walls, the roof and the rocky way ahead. They were back at the middle and had gone over the two humps of rocks when again she heard the slow approach of the booming noise.

  ‘I’m not going to scream this time,’ she said. ‘It just makes it worse.’

  ‘Makes what worse?’

  ‘Everything.’ As they’d passed along she’d started to feel more and more uncomfortable. She told herself it was her imagination but as the sound built, a cold breeze gathered around her legs. Maybe there was a vent somewhere, a funnel for cool air from outside.

  The noise started once more in the tunnel but grew into a crescendo of such intensity. It was much louder than the previous times and Olive realised that the other times had been cars and this was a truck. She was about to say something when Pete’s hand moved to hers and knocked the torch from her fingers. It fell with a crack and went out. The truck passed overhead and all went quiet once more.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Scratch me.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  The torch was broken.

  ‘This is why you should of remembered. I really hate it when you forget things.’

  ‘I want to go out now,’ Peter said.

  ‘Olive?’ he said, when she didn’t say anything.

  ‘Okay.’

  They felt with their feet, shuffling forwards, and only let go of each other once they got close enough to the growing white circle of light and, behind it, the scout hall. Once outside, Olive shook the torch and it rattled. She looked at the head. It looked alright but had to be busted inside.

  ‘It’s too noisy,’ she said. ‘We won’t be able to do a séance in there. If there was a time when there were no cars or trucks, maybe in the middle of the night, it might be okay.’ She stopped and Peter’s eyes were on her face. ‘I need to think about it, if there’s somewhere better.’

  ‘What?’ Peter said. ‘Ol?’

  ‘We’re still going to do it, just not there.’

  He didn’t call out things to her as they rode home, or pull faces or point out dog poo. Once they got to the turn, when she called out goodbye, he rode on to his place without replying. She watched him go then walked her bike up the driveway. He’d be alright and she was sure the séance would work. It had to. She went to her room and lay on her bed to think. They needed somewhere quiet, somewhere adults wouldn’t interfere. A place they could camp so they could talk to the spirits at midnight.

  This must have been how Lenore felt, setting out from her home all those years before, to travel to a place so far away where not only was everything different, nothing was even close to being the same. She had to be brave like Lenore and push ahead. She had to find out what happened to her sister. It had to be her, she had to do it because no one else would. No one else had. Life was not like detective books, where the writer made everything fit in together, maybe even worked backwards from the end to the beginning. She was working forwards and it was hard but she would solve it in in the end. They would put the newspapers in the grille outside the newsagency and the headlines would read: GIRL CRACKS CASE AFTER POLICE BAFFLED and: TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL DETECTIVE MEETS QUEEN.

  She turned off the light and just as she was about to fall asleep it came to her: Of course. Ganger’s. They would have the séance at Ganger’s.

  THE SCHOOL YEAR was ending. It was the last week of grade six and they were making Christmas cards and red-and-green paper decorations to take home. Olive was sitting at her desk holding a coloured paper lantern in her hands. It was really bad and she wished she could make things better. Snooky’s was perfect and even John Sands had done one better than hers. At the back row of desks, Luke and Mark were trying to glue paper to each other’s heads.

  Olive sat with her glue and paper. She’d made the cuts, she’d tried to twist it how the teacher had shown them but it wasn’t working. She didn’t care so much because she was going to find out what happened to her sister and that was more important. She, Olive Lovelock, child sleuth, smart kid, adventuress, reader. Imaginer, cryptologist and conqueror of high places. Keeper of bones, rocks and feathers. She would show everybody how clever she was and they’d say to each other: ‘Here comes Olive Lovelock. Did you know she solved the case of her sister who drowned? She’s going to meet the Queen.’

  For the next few nights, as she tried to sleep, she forgot about wishing for her usual things—the pony, the baby owl and to be magic. They were the fancies of a child. In her mind, as she dropped away from the realities of the day, she had a picture of herself in clothes like a girl guide outfit, it would be her detective outfit. She focused on that picture and pushed away the memories of the real at school.

  The final days of school had been the worst. People signing each other’s autograph books, hugging and giving Christmas presents and cards. Talking about how they would have sleepovers in the holidays.

  She pushed away the moment when she’d gone into the girls’ toilets on the last day and seen Snooky in the middle of a circle of her friends talking excitedly about something and how they’d gone quiet and watched Olive go into a cubicle. Later, when Mrs Barton had got out her guitar so they could all sing together for the last time, the song was the Beatles’ blackbird one, and even though it was her favourite it had made her eyes start to hurt. And then at home time, when Megan Vickers was handing out invitations to a picnic in her back garden to celebrate the end of school, Olive had lingered at the bag hooks outside the classroom pretending she was still getting ready to leave so that it would give Megan enough time to give her an invitation but she hadn’t.

  •

 
That Friday night Olive sat in the hallway on the phone to Peter. The small lamp was on and it was still light outside. She could hear the fan whirring in the other room where her mother sat on the couch. There was a game show on television.

  ‘Yeah, smee. “Uh-oh! Razzamatazz.”

  ‘So, do you think you can come? Tomorrow?’

  ‘What? What is it again?’ She heard him bounce his ball on the wooden floorboards of the hallway where his phone was. Another couple of bounces and his mother would say something from the kitchen.

  ‘The séance. Remember?’

  The ball bounced.

  ‘I thought we said no. Dead Girl’s was too noisy.’

  ‘What are you chewing? Is it bubble gum?’

  Bounce. Then, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Save me some, bring it tomorrow.’

  Peter chewed and bounced the ball once more. Olive could hear his mother’s voice in the background. The ball stopped. ‘I’m talking about Ganger’s. For the séance. You say you’re with me at the farm, that we’re camping there, testing out a new tent or something, just make something up, and I’ll say I’m with you, that we’re in your backyard. Testing out your new tent. And instead we meet at Ganger’s and stay the night there.’

  ‘I don’t get it. Whose tent is it—yours or Seb’s?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a tent, just work out something so you can stay out.’

  ‘I don’t think my mum will believe me. She knows when I lie, even about the littlest thing.’

  Olive remembered the story of the time Peter had tried to lie to his mother. He’d eaten all his Easter eggs before his parents were even awake but tried to tell his mother he hadn’t. He’d been little, too little to know that he should have got rid of the wrappers better, that she would see all the foil scrunched up into little balls in the drawer beside his bed.

  ‘Don’t worry, you were younger then. You didn’t have me to help you. Now you know better.’

  ‘I don’t, not really.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the adults. They don’t notice stuff, they don’t really even think about us,’ she said.

  Peter breathed out a long, low whistle.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good. I’ll tell the others to bring the ouija board. You need a sleeping bag and maybe a lilo, we can use them to sit on and sleep on. It’ll be fun. We take sandwiches and things to drink. Maybe make a fire. Have some tins of food, I don’t know. Do you think you can bring some tins?’

  ‘Where are we going to go to the dunny?’

  ‘In the bushes of course.’

  ‘Sebastian’s definitely coming?’

  ‘I reckon.’ She still wasn’t sure about Sebastian but they needed one other person at least for the séance.

  ‘Alright.’ He didn’t sound alright.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘If you really don’t want to—’

  ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’

  ‘Bring your torch tomorrow, mine’s busted. Meet you there at seven o’clock.’

  They hung up. She needed to make the connections. And the only way that could happen was to talk to people. No one alive would tell her anything more so it had to be dead people. She had to ask the ghosts—see if she could find out anything. She was ready.

  THE NEXT NIGHT she waited at the turn-off to Ganger’s. She wasn’t sure if both her cousins would come. Sebastian had been reluctant on the phone and she wasn’t sure if he would care enough. She hadn’t told them the reason for the séance, just that they were going to try. Archie had been very enthusiastic, saying he’d bring his pocket knife and two cans of baked beans. She kicked at stones while she waited. It was about seven-thirty she guessed because it took about an hour to ride. After a few minutes she heard the far-off sounds of Archie’s voice coming down the road and she straightened. There they were, on their bikes, Sebastian too. He was in a bad mood, though, she could see that by his mouth. He never laughed anymore.

  Behind the two boys came Grace, flying down the road to the marker where Olive sat. There were a few blurred grasshoppers in the air, so fast that she couldn’t track them with her eyes, where they came from or where they went.

  As they rode on to Ganger’s, her eyes rested on the dry country, the faded green and nut-brown scenery. She stood and shouted to the boys that now it was a race and they all sped down the road.

  Peter was waiting for them at the silo. They got off their bikes and Olive gathered the others into a circle. Peter gave them all a piece of bubble gum and Olive spat out her chewie and it lay pink and wet and slug-like on the ground. She wiped her hands on her shorts and told Sebastian and Archie what Thistle had said, that she had a baby sister who had died from drowning.

  ‘So my plan is I’m going to find out who did it. Then I can let my mum know what happened to her.’

  Archie said he didn’t think it was a very interesting secret and asked when were they going to do the séance. He wandered over to the rail lines and lay down with his ear on a track. Sebastian picked up a stick and went and sat under a tree in the shade. Grace was nearby on the silo railing and as Olive started to cross the clearing to go to the hut, the bird flew over and hopped onto her foot and pecked at the lace of her runner. Olive walked a step and Grace hung on and it was a new game. She shook her off.

  ‘No, Grace. We’re busy.’

  Archie was visible through the trees, standing near Soldier’s, looking over the fence into the paddock. Sebastian was peeling the bark off the stick and Peter was at the window of the ganger’s hut. She called to the others, saying that they needed to get ready. Archie ran into the clearing and started stamping on a drink can, trying to crush it flat. Olive asked him for his windcheater to put over the broken glass along the bottom frame of the hut’s windowsill.

  ‘Why does it have to be mine?’

  ‘’Cause you’re the youngest.’

  When she hoisted him up and pushed him through the opening he fell to the floor.

  ‘Ow, my arm.’

  He pulled at the jammed door with his left hand while Olive karate kicked it from the outside. Archie started to carry the empty beer bottles out of the hut.

  ‘We can put these around the outside in a line, like an alarm for if any animals come while we’re sleeping.’

  ‘Okay,’ Olive said. It was a good idea.

  They found magazines which showed not just the hair but everything. Olive said they were disgusting. She left the boys’ tight circle and went outside to find something she could use as a broom. Back in the hut, the magazines had disappeared and Peter was picking up cigarette butts and putting them into one of the beer bottles. There was a spring-bottomed bed with no mattress and she planned to put her lilo on it. She reckoned it would work well but Archie was lying down with his arm across his middle. He was staring at the ceiling in a rare moment of stillness.

  ‘That’s mine,’ Olive said. ‘I bagsed it, and ’cause I’m a lady.’

  ‘You’re not, you’re just a kid like us.’

  ‘Well, I’m the boss then.’

  Archie got off the bed. ‘I’m going to start blowing up my lilo because it’s gonna take forever.’

  Sebastian had cleared a space and was squatting, working at his own lilo. He had gone red in the face.

  ‘What about the window?’ Archie said. ‘I saw some stuff, we could stretch it across—it’s like material. It could be a sort of curtain.’ He went running outside and came back with a piece of gauzy fabric. To Olive, it looked like it was from a summer frock.

  ‘Let’s try,’ she said. ‘It might be too see-through.’

  It was starting to get dark. Grace was gone. They did all sorts of tests with the material over the window. When Olive was outside, shining Peter’s torch on it and the others shut off their torches in the hut, it was an opaque screen and all she could see were the printed designs on the front. But when she turned off her torch and Sebastian shone his on the window from inside, she could see their
faces.

  ‘Can you see out?’ she shouted.

  They couldn’t.

  ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘I can see in. We have to find something else.’ They found a bit of cardboard and it worked better. Then she said it was time to make a fire.

  ‘A low one,’ said Sebastian. ‘In case it gets out of control. Our dad will kill us but I’ll get in the most trouble.’

  ‘And people might see it from the road,’ said Olive.

  They agreed to make only a small fire, on the other side of the hut.

  They got rocks and made a circle. They brought broken branches which they piled against the wall of the hut. Sitting on their lilos, they compared torches. Peter’s was the biggest and the strongest.

  ‘We can share,’ Olive told him.

  Next best was Archie’s, then Seb’s. Archie said his was like the one on Columbo but Sebastian said it looked like the one from their shed. Sebastian’s was one he had from his cubs days. It was small and weak but he’d brought a kerosene lantern as well. He lit it and they all admired the power of the light. When he set it by his feet, Olive said it should go more in the middle.

  ‘I brought it,’ he said. ‘I want it near me.’ Olive decided not to fight, but he was really starting to annoy her.

  ‘When will we eat? And when should we have the séance—before or after the ghost stories? Johnny, JOOOOHHHNNYY, I’ve come to get my livvverrrr baaaack.’ She held the torch under her chin so that it pin-spotted her nose.

  ‘It’s not even that late yet,’ said Peter.

  ‘Ol,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I forgot to tell you, we didn’t bring it. I couldn’t find it.’

  ‘It’s on top of the cupboard in Mandy’s room. I told you. You have to stand on my bed to reach it.’

  ‘I did, it wasn’t there. Mandy’s been playing with it. I keep catching her. I take it, put it on top of the cupboard where she can’t reach it, but it was gone again today, I swear.’