by Paul Collins
Enter at your own risk - Trust Me Too is addictive reading!
Welcome to a feast of fiction, where thrills, spills, frills and chills await you. Visit other worlds - known and unknown, past and present - and inhabit other people’s minds.
Fifty-seven Australian authors, poets and illustrators present a selection of their latest work for your reading pleasure.
Trust me - you won’t be disappointed!
First published by Ford Street Publishing, an imprint of Hybrid Publishers, PO Box 52, Ormond VIC 3204
Melbourne Victoria Australia
© this collection Paul Collins 2012
© in individual illustrations/text remains with each contributor
24681097531
This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction should be addressed to Ford Street Publishing Pty Ltd , 2 Ford Street, Clifton Hill VIC 3068.
www.fordstreetpublishing.com
First published 2012
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Title: Trust me too / editor, Paul Collins
Publisher: Ormond, Vic.: Hybrid Publishers, 2012.
ISBN : 9781921665585 (pbk.) Target Audience: For young adults.
Subjects: Australian poetry.
Short stories- Australian. Australian literature.
Other Authors/Contributors: Collins, Paul, 1954-Dewey Number: A820.80994
In-house editor: Saralinda Turner
Cover design by Grant Gittus
Printing and quality control in China by Tingleman Pty Ltd
Contents
Judith Ridge
Introduction
Adventure
Kerry Greenwood
The Calabar Crystal
Corinne Fenton
Tin Horse Plain
Archimede Fusillo
The Yard
Sandy Fussell
Dingo Boy
Crime
Jack Heath
Rats
Lucy Sussex
The Thieftaker’s Apprentice
Contemporary
Oliver Phommavanh
The Reunion
Deborah Abela
Don’t Let Go
Phillip Gwynne
Led Zep
Susanne Gervay
Boo
Jen Storer
My Pop
Hazel Edwards
Tag
Mojohnson
Red Rhino
Susan Halliday & Phil Kettle
Why Me?
David Miller
The Mysteries of Letterboxes
Fantasy
Ian Irvine
The Harrows
Gary Crew
Amanita Im
Simon Higgins
The Woodcutter’s Secret
Wendy Orr
The Snake Singer
Sean Williams
The Mirror in the Middle of the Maze
Paul Collins
The Spell of Oblivion
Science Fiction
Isabelle Carmody
The Journey
George Ivanoff
Gamers’ Inferno
Michael Gerard Bauer
Oh Brother, What Art Thou?
Romance
Kim Kane
Scaffolding
JE Fison
The Bridge
Ghost
Kirsty Murray
The Night Swimmer
Janeen Brian
What Goes Around...
Bill Condon
The Girl in the Library
Horror
Justin D’ Ath
Stilled Lifes x 11
Michael Pryor
Shop Till You Drop
Twilight Zone
Jenny Mounfield
Space Junk
Margaret Clark
A State of Rejection
Sean McMullen
Running Invisible
Historical
Sue Bursztynski
Call Him Ringo
Sally Odgers
George and the Boat
Dianne Bates
Child-slave Crusader
Humour
Doug MacLeod and Mitch Vane
I am an Author
Sport
James Roy
Free Billy
Pat Flynn
King of the Playground
Graphics
Shaun Tan Frontispiece, Introduction
Poetry
Leigh Hobbs
Strange-headed Harry
Meredith Costain and Grant Gittus
Shoefiti
Michael Wagner
Various
Christine Bongers and Peter Viska
Killer Stories
Sofie Laguna and Marc McBride
My Boy
Steven Herrick
There Are Worse Things Than Poetry
Lorraine Marwood and Judith Rossell
Tour de Cycling
Gabrielle Wang
Calling Me
About the Contributors
Introduction
‘I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.’
So wrote the French writer Blaise Pascal in the 17th Century - although if you go searching for this quote on the Internet you will find it attributed to many other writers, writers who were alive and working centuries before Pascal and centuries after. It seems that a good idea finds many owners, and if there’s one thing that many writers agree upon, it’s that ‘writing short’ is often much more difficult - and takes more time - than writing long.
In this collection, you will find a wonderful diversity of short works - mosdy examples of the art of the short story, but also a readers’ theatre-style piece with the kind of twist in the tale we often see in short stories, and some beautiful and witty examples of verse, both rhyming and blank. And while the col lection doesn’t have a specific theme, nor is limited to a particular genre, it’s fascinating to see that a sort of loose theme has emerged nevertheless. Many of the pieces within these pages offer us glimpses into worlds - worlds known and unknown, worlds past and present and several that are a tantalising mix of the prosaic and the arcane.
In the stories set in a world that is entirely familiar to us, we meet people who might be just like us-if not on the outside, then in the heart, where it counts - experiencing things that many of us deal with every day. There’s the unexpected hero of James Roy’s
‘Free Billy’; there’sJE Fison’s ‘The Bridge’, where the girl gets the boy not because of how she looks, but because of what she does. Jen Storer’s ‘My Pop’ is a moving but unsentimental eulogy for a grandfather, while Phillip Gwynne’s ‘Led Zep’ explores the gener ation gap with the kind of good-natured humour we are used to from his novels. Meanwhile, Mo Johnson and Susanne Gervay take us deep into the heart of the quest to find one’s place in one’s family in their stories ‘Red Rhino’ and ‘Boo’.
Taking us completely out of our own world and into the world of the imagination are some of Australia’s best and most highly regard
ed writers of science fiction and fantasy. The potentially short and brutish lives of young people forced into servitude to gods and dragons, and even the elders meant to protect them, is explored in Wendy Orr’s powerful and visceral ‘The Snake Singer’, Sean Williams’ gripping ‘The Mirror in the Middle of the Maze’ and Ian Irvine’s, well, harrowing, ‘The Harrows’. And the great Isabelle Carmody offers us a tantalising taste of a world known to many of her fans.
Yet other stories prove the maxim created by the writer LP Hartley in the opening line to his novel The Go-Between: ‘The past is a foreign country- they do things differently there’. And not just the distant past of Lucy Sussex’s ‘The Thieftaker’s Apprentice’ and Simon Higgins’ ‘The Woodcutter’s Secret’ - tales set in distant times (times that, perhaps, never were) but also a past that is in living memory for your par ents (well, your grandparents, certainly!) and many of your teachers. Sue Bursztynski takes us back to Melbourne in 1964 when there were five, not four, Beatles, and it seemed as if the entire city - the entire world - had gone Beatle-mad.
Some of the stories that most raise the hairs on the back of the neck are those where our known, ‘safe’, world collides with the ‘other’. There are spme chilling ghost stories and various tales of alien visita tion - I dare you to read Michael Gerard Bauer’s
‘Oh Brother, What Art Thou?’ and NOT wonder about your siblings as a result. Kerry Greenwood’s
‘The Calabar Crystal’ warns us of the dangers of messing about with things we don’t fully understand, while Janeen Brian’s ‘What Goes Around’ tells us not to muck around with the wishes of the deceased. And I promise you will never again go for a jog, or contemplate getting a tattoo, or do the supermarket shopping without looking over your shoulder after you’ve read stories by Michael Pryor, Hazel Edwards and Sean McMullen.
If that all sounds rather dark and twisty, there are also plenty of laughs inside these pages as well, and not just in the short stories, but in some of the verse - check out Leigh Hobbs’ hilarious and down-right weird ‘Strange-headed Harry’ and its accompany ing illustrations. In fact, be sure not to overlook the illustrations accompanying some of the stories and poetry inside. Not only are they often strange and wonderful accompaniments to the writing, but some of them - the extraordinary Shaun Tan’s illustra tions in particular - are amazing short narratives in their own right.
A final word about the poetry - some of you may notice that a small sub-theme has emerged here as well. Several of the poems in the collection are meditations on the creative process of writing and of being a writer, while others simply enjoy exploring and stretching - the boundaries of language.
There are many more stories and poems, and many more writers within the pages of this collec tion - too many to name all in this introduction, but all of which offer something to enthral and to entertain, to challenge and to inspire.
In short - if you’ll pardon the pun! - if reading is something you do to find your way into the lives of other people, whatever kind of world they live in, you will find something to enjoy and ponder on within. Welcome. Have fun getting lost in these other worlds - but remember to come back again!
Judith Ridge
Liam is a nerd. Fortunately, I like him most of the time. We are in the same year at school. Girls have to fight tooth and nail to get any computer time- the hoons all crowd it, wanting to play Doom. You can see them sitting there, slavering as they kill things. It’s revolting. Liam books two hours, and then splits it with me, which is nice of him and saves me having to enter into arguments with a lot of people who are bigger and stronger than me, even if they are dumber. I’ve got a small advantage. I’ve got red hair and everyone knows that redheaded women have fierce tempers. They don’t call me by my name, which is Lydia. They call me Red. Fine with me.
Liam’s fourteen and so am I. We hang around together because he’s a historian and I’m fascinated with history, but even there we always disagree. I want to know what it was like to live in another time - what I would eat, where I would sleep, what I would wear. Liam wants to know about kings and emperors and politics, and I couldn’t care less about them. They were all men, anyway.
He’s the same height as me, but his hair is longish and black, straight as a drink of water. He’s short sighted, wears glasses and hates sport, but he can run like the wind and dance like an angel. Running is a useful skill at our school and it gets the jocks off his back. And mine, because they assume I’m his girl friend, though I’m not. I’ve never even kissed him.
His family are weird, not like mine, who are bor ing. His father is a physicist, his mother is a doctor and he has a collection of really strange relatives. So when he asked me to come and help him sort out his great-aunt Anne’s goods and pack them for disposal, I agreed. We were getting paid for it, and I am always broke. I’ve got an mp3 habit. I calculated that I’d be able to buy at least ten new albums with the cleaning money.
We arrived at a seriously dilapidated house in Kew and Liam opened the door. A fog of dust and a strange, closed-in smell greeted us and we retreated, sneezmg.
‘She’d been in Mrica for years and the house was shut up,’ Liam explained, darting inside and hauling open a window. ‘All her anthropological papers and specimens have been willed to the university, and they’ve collected them. We just have to pack up the clothes and things and give the house a clean. This might take longer than I thought,’ he mused, drag ging a handful of spider web from his hair.
‘Courage,’ I said. ‘Think of all that money. Let’s get the stuff packed. It’s easier to clean an empty house.’
The house was completely silent. Most houses have some noises - creaking boards, nesting birds, that sort of thing. But this place was dark and quieter than the grave. I wished I’d brought my mp3 player and speakers. The house was small, only five rooms, and two of the front ones were empty. The back bed room was crammed with suitcases and trunks and all of them needed to be hauled out into the living room, dusted, and emptied into the tea chests that Liam’s father had provided. Liam took the cases and I fought my way to the wardrobe and opened it. As I laid my hand on the door, I was suddenly afraid.
No reason for it. I struggled for a moment, bit my lip, told myself to not be a girlie, and flung it open.
Instead of the mummified corpse I had expected, there were lots of clothes. I pulled out an armload. Daggy. Tweed skirts and jackets, all baggy and dusty. Cotton shirts with beetroot stains. A pile of low heeled shoes that had never been polished.
‘Your aunt wasn’t into clothes,’ I commented, just to break the silence.
‘My great-aunt. No, she wasn’t. But she was a very eminent forensic anthropologist,’ said Liam, annoyed. He brushed a cobweb from his glasses.
I heaved the load of dreck garments into a tea chest and asked, ‘What’s a forensic anthropologist?’
‘She was an expert in the examination of bones. Working out how people died, that sort of thing. She took me to a leper’s graveyard in Essex, once. The disease deforms the bones and she was interested in whether King Robert the Bruce was a leper. We col lected skulls and upper thigh bones.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’ I asked, shuddering slightly and piling up old shoes.
‘Why would I be scared?’ asked Liam seriously.
‘They were only bones, and you can’t catch leprosy from bones that old. In fact it’s very hard to catch leprosy at all. It’s a slow virus.’
‘Never mind,’ I muttered. Now I came to think of it, it was a silly question to ask someone like Liam. I had cleared the wardrobe of clothes. I dusted the empty wardrobe vigorously. Sneezing, I picked up a small, flat leather case marked ‘specimens’ and sat down on a trunk marked ‘Not Wanted On Voyage’ to open it.
‘Liam, didn’t you say the university had all of your aunt’s specimens?’ I asked. He didn’t hear me. There was a crash as he tripped over
a pile of empty boxes. I unclicked the latch and the case opened. There was a sheaf of scribbled notes and, hidden in crumbling tissue paper, something hard and cold.
I poked it and I must have gasped aloud because
Liam looked over my shoulder.
In front of my eyes, I saw a forest. There was a great castle there, built of wood. I smelled smoke and a strange, spicy scent, hot and steamy. I heard a scream and there were eyes, I swear, eyes in the castle, and they were looking straight through me. I dropped the case and Liam caught it.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, concerned.
I couldn’t tell him. He took my hand and we went into the kitchen, where there was a working stove and two unmatched chairs at the wonky wooden table.
‘Sit down and tell me what happened,’ he said.
‘There’s something in there,’ I said.
He took up my hand that he had been holding and turned it over. ‘Where did it bite you, what was it? A spider?’
‘Nothing bit me.’ The picture was fading. ‘I’m all right.’
He gave me a puzzled look and tipped the case’s contents onto the table. Papers scattered, and the heavy thing clunked onto the surface. It was a round glassy pebble with two pinholes in it. Quartz, per haps. Liam stretched out a hand to it.
‘Liam, don’t . . .’ He looked at me again, and I realised I could not explain.
Liam picked up the crystal and held it in his hand.
‘Pretty,’ he said. I sagged with relief Obviously I had been reading too much history and I was imagining things. ‘I wonder where it came from?’ he said, hold ing it as he ordered the pages. They were written in a spidery hand in pale ink and I couldn’t read them.
‘Part of a diary. Here’s a heading. Africa. That’s not a lot of help.’
‘Let’s get the house cleaned, then we can look at it properly,’ I suggested cravenly. To my relief, Liam agreed, wrapped the quartz pebble in its mouldering tissue and closed it in its case. For some reason that made me feel much better.
It took us the rest of the day to sort the belongings and then to sweep the walls and finally the floors, clean the stove and the windows, but at six o’clock it was finished and we were filthy and exhausted. We each showered in the clean bathroom and dressed in the clothes we had brought, and phoned for a pizza. I decided that I had been overtired earlier when Liam sat down at the clean table and took out the diary pages.