Begin End Begin: A #LoveOzYa Anthology

by Amie Kaufman, Melissa Keil, Will Kostakis, Ellie Marney, Jaclyn Moriarty, Michael Pryor, Alice Pung, Gabrielle Tozer, Lili Wilkinson, Danielle Binks

  Above the clock, a beautifully calligraphic sign reads PARK LANE. Oona consults her map, and we continue, up a slimy flight of stone steps and into a large square tunnel. For the first time since entering the drains, the ground underfoot is dry.

  ‘I guess this must be a disused section of the system,’ says Oona. ‘Overflow or something.’

  There are signs of humans here. A shopping trolley laden with bags and bundles. A filthy mattress. A rusted kid’s bicycle.

  ‘Wait.’ Oona grabs my sleeve and points.

  A narrow tunnel leads off to our left.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  In response, Oona switches off the torch. And I see there’s light coming from the tunnel. Not daylight, it’s too late for that. This light is weak and warm and close.

  ‘Come on,’ Oona whispers, and switches her torch back on.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ I hiss. ‘There could be someone in there.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I want to see.’

  She trots off down the tunnel, and I drag myself after her.

  The narrow passage widens at its end into a kind of room. Old pallets have been fashioned into shelves that hold pots and pans, spices, and sealed canisters of rice and pasta. I stare. We appear to have stepped into someone’s home.

  A camping stove sits on another pallet, and beside it, a narrow bed, neatly made with a faded Care Bears doona cover. There’s a man lying on the bed, reading a book in the glow of one of those clip-on book lights. He squints as the torch sweeps over him, and sits up.

  He’s small and bald, wearing a business suit that was probably once very expensive but is now ragged and worn through at the knees and elbows. His fingernails are long and dirty.

  ‘Visitors!’ he says, looking pleased.

  ‘Um, hi,’ says Oona. ‘We’re sorry we disturbed you.’

  ‘Not at all!’ says the man. ‘Have a seat.’ He indicates two milk crates. Gingerly, we sit. The man perches on the corner of his bed and beams at us. His eyes seem too large for his face.

  ‘Looking for the Witch Queen?’ he asks. ‘Or are you just going down for the ball?’

  ‘What ball?’ I reply.

  ‘The Witch’s Ball. Didn’t you get an invitation?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘We’re just here to see the Witch Queen,’ Oona explains.

  The man nods. ‘It’s hard to find her without an invitation to the ball,’ he says. ‘But I can tell you which way to go. Once you go on from here, it’s very hard to come back. You have to be sure.’

  ‘We’re sure,’ says Oona firmly.

  The man springs to his feet again, and I notice he has a tremor in his right hand. ‘Want a Milo?’

  I open my mouth to decline, but Oona says yes please before I get the chance. Of course she does. The man goes over to his makeshift kitchen and produces three chipped mugs and a tin of Milo. He lights the camping stove.

  ‘Have to be careful with the gas,’ he says, looking nervously at the ceiling. ‘Can’t leave it on too long or it eats up all the oxygen. But a few minutes to make Milo is okay.’

  He places a small saucepan of water on the stove, and grabs a few of those individual cups of long-life milk that you find in crappy buffets. He dumps two into each mug, along with a few spoonfuls of Milo.

  ‘What do you do all day?’ asks Oona.

  ‘Sometimes I go up to the park, or the library,’ the man says. ‘Or if I can’t be bothered I just stay down here and read.’

  He waves his hand towards another milk crate, which serves as a bedside table. It’s piled high with battered paperbacks.

  I spy Stephen King’s On Writing in the pile.

  ‘Have you read Cujo?’ I ask. ‘It’s my favourite.’

  The man shakes his head. ‘I don’t like horror,’ he says. ‘Gives me the creeps.’

  He turns off the stove and pours hot water from the saucepan into each of the mugs. He stirs the Milo with a plastic spoon before handing a mug to each of us. I notice he has no arm hair — no hair anywhere, as far as I can tell. I take a sip of the Milo, and even though a part of me is worried about poison or drugs, I immediately feel better. Warmth spreads right through me, into my cold fingers and numb toes.

  ‘So you two,’ says the man. ‘You’re friends, or …’

  ‘Friends,’ I say, and the bitterness of the word overwhelms the sweetness of the Milo.

  ‘Best friends,’ says Oona, and I immediately feel guilty for wanting more.

  The man looks wistful. ‘It’s good to have a best friend.’

  ‘We’ve always been friends,’ Oona explains. ‘Meg is the kindest and best person I know. She’s patched up my heart more times than I can count.’

  She looks at me sideways and there is an intensity in her eyes that is unfamiliar. I remember when we were little and her parents split up, how small and broken she was. How tightly she’d clung to me as she’d sobbed. How I knew I would do anything if it would make her smile again.

  ‘How long have you lived down here?’ Oona asks the man.

  ‘Oh, nearly forever,’ says the man. ‘At least a hundred years. I came down here looking for something I’d lost. Something precious. I’m still looking.’

  ‘Why don’t you go see the Witch Queen?’ Oona asks. ‘Maybe she can help you find what you’re looking for?’

  The man looks at her, and I see something in his eyes. A warning. ‘The Witch Queen doesn’t work that way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘Have you met her? Is she real?’

  The man chuckles. ‘Depends on what you mean by real.’

  I tip the mug up to get the last sweet dregs of Milo.

  ‘Are there others?’ Oona asks. ‘Living in the drains?’

  ‘Sure. Old Snake lives just around the corner. He’s been here for longer than me. Longer than there’ve been drains. He lived here when it was just caves and underground rivers. There are others. Not everyone is social. There are more people now because it’s summer. It’s nice down here. Cool. But it can get real ugly in winter.’

  ‘Does it flood?’

  ‘Not often. This part of the system is overflow — only floods if there’s a real bad storm. It’s happened two or three times since I’ve been here.’

  ‘What happens to all your stuff?’

  The man shrugs. ‘Washes away. It’s only junk, it doesn’t matter.’

  I’m still thinking over what he said about the Witch Queen. I still don’t believe in her, but I have a feeling there’s something the man isn’t telling us.

  ‘Is it far?’ I ask. ‘To the Witch Queen?’

  ‘Yes.’ His tone is frank. ‘Very far. You have to really want to find her.’

  ‘I do.’ Oona’s voice throbs with conviction, and I look at her sharply. She is staring at the man, and he is staring back at her, and I feel like they are sharing some unspoken communication that I’m not a part of. Jealousy stabs at me.

  ‘Well, then,’ says the man. ‘If it’s like that, you’ll find her. But be careful. Look out for spiders. The eels should stay away from you, as long as you don’t step on one. And don’t worry about the green glow. I used to think it was radiation, nuclear waste or such like. But it’s just plankton. Noctiluca scintillans, they’re called. I looked it up in the library. “Noctiluca scintillans exhibits bioluminescence when disturbed”. That means they glow when you mess around in their water.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Oona. ‘Is there anything else we should know?’

  The man doesn’t answer, just stares down into his Milo, as if he’s hypnotised by it. After a few minutes, Oona and I glance at each other, wondering if we should just leave. I put down my mug and start to rise from my milk crate. The man flinches, looking at us blankly with his giant eyes, like he had forgotten we were ever there. His expression is lost, confused.

  ‘Do you ever wonder if you’re already dead?’ he asks. ‘And you just haven’t realised?’

  Oona reaches out and pats him gently on the sh
oulder. ‘Thank you for the Milo,’ she says.

  The next tunnel is tall and thin and hexagonal, shaped exactly like a coffin. Oona tells me it’s called Mummy’s Walk on her map. I shudder as I feel something brush my ankle, and think about eels and spiders and ghosts. Narrow pipes emerge from the wall and ceiling like the roots of great metal trees. Some of them trickle with icy water that runs down the back of my neck and under my collar. We trudge on for what feels like hours, around snaking bends and sharp corners. Oona stops regularly to consult the map — this section of the drains, she says, is called The Maze. We eat all our chocolate and drink all our water. The air grows cold and stale, and I wonder how far below the ground we are. It’s hard to believe the outside still exists at all.

  Every now and then I think I hear something. Snatches of music or bursts of laughter. I’m not sure if it’s real, or if my mind is playing tricks on me. There are strange smells, too. Wafts of warm incense, or candlewax, or roses, suddenly overpowering but gone in an instant.

  Without warning, the torch winks out. Oona, who is carrying it, lets out a little scream. I’ve never experienced such darkness. My eyes start playing tricks on me — things reach from the walls, grasping Oona’s hair in front of me. Shadows dart across my vision, running around the tunnel and up the wall.

  ‘The bag,’ says Oona, and her voice is close and distant and strange in the darkness. ‘There are batteries in the front pocket.’

  I swing it from my shoulder and grope for the zipper. Oona has sensibly stored the batteries in a ziplock bag to protect them from getting wet. I pull out two, and reach for her in the darkness. I find her fingers, cold and clammy, and hear her fumbling with the torch as she clicks open the battery compartment and removes the spent batteries.

  It seems to take forever. I can hear Oona’s breathing grow shallow and fast, and I know she’s starting to panic. I don’t know how we’ll ever find our way out of here if we don’t have a light.

  I reach out to steady myself on the stone wall, and adjust my stance. The water moves around my ankles, and just like the ragged man said, a green glow ripples out around my feet. The water shines with a thousand tiny lights, each one a tiny body, a tiny life. I hear Oona move her own legs, and see her dark outline against the glowing green water. I feel like a giant planet, floating in the glittering endlessness of space.

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ Oona says softly.

  I hear a click and the torch comes on. The lights in the water fade, and I see Oona’s face. She’s closer to me than I’d thought. Close enough that I can feel her skin humming next to mine, and hear the rise and fall of her breath. We stare at each other and it feels like she’s waiting for something. But then Oona turns away and pulls out the map again. Pinpricks of white light glint above us. For a moment I think we are outside and that I can see the stars. But it’s just little balls of white polystyrene stuck to the ceiling. Oona looks up at it, too.

  ‘How did they get up there?’ she wonders out loud, and I feel a shiver of unease.

  The tunnel curves around, and we climb down a series of terraced steps that form a kind of shallow waterfall. It’s quite tranquil, the tinkling of water as it spills over the steps in a gentle slope.

  But the tranquillity evaporates when the tunnel ends abruptly, a slimy rail preventing us from going any further. On the other side of the rail, a deep, dark shaft plunges down into nothingness. I shine the torch up to the sign above the shaft. THE PIT OF DEATH. A long metal ladder is attached to the railing with a chain. It looks strong and cold. I glance at Oona, who is very pale.

  ‘Is there another way?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head. Then she takes a deep breath, tucks the torch into the pocket of her overalls, and swings a leg over the railing.

  This is seriously dumb. We could die down here. And for what? A stupid ten-dollar note? Oona steps onto the ladder. The slack-hanging chain pulls taut, swinging the ladder backwards with a jerk. Oona screams, clinging to the rungs. But the ladder holds. Oona’s eyes turn to me and I see panic and relief and desperation. And I realise it can’t just be about the note. There has to be another reason why she’s here. There’s something else she needs to know. Slowly, carefully, she climbs down the ladder, and I watch her get swallowed up in blackness.

  Eventually, I hear her call up to me, and I want to run away so badly. I want to climb back up to the real world, where everything is bright and alive and full of air.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  It’s the tremble in her voice that is my undoing. The wavering uncertainty. There’s a part of her that really thinks I might leave her down there, abandon her to The Pit of Death. And I can’t bear that she doubts me. So I climb down after her, following her deeper into the underworld.

  When I reach the bottom, Oona wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me close. I can feel her trembling. ‘For a moment I thought you weren’t coming,’ she whispers.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say, trying to sound confident and indifferent. ‘Come on, it can’t be too much further.’

  We hear the Witch’s Ball long before we see it. Strains of music bounce off the curved tunnel walls, creating ripples of echoes. It’s impossible to tell which direction it comes from. But it gets louder as we trudge through the silt, until eventually we stumble out into an enormous chamber, our mouths hanging open and our eyes wide.

  This part of the drains feels old, older than should be possible in this city. Red brick walls curve gently up into darkness, so high it’s hard to make out the ceiling. Stone pillars support the ceiling. There are maybe a hundred people down here, ankle-deep in muddy brown water. They look like fairytale characters, elaborately dressed and decorated in feathers, sequins, lace and leather. Women wear jewel-encrusted bodices and hooped skirts. A man in a skin-tight knitted jumpsuit in bold-coloured stripes is dancing in front of me. His hair is spiked into a neon-green mohawk, but as he whirls past I see that the mohawk is woollen, too. He’s dancing with a woman with a tall woven hairpiece that seems to be made from brightly coloured drinking straws.

  The walls are crowded with hundreds of tiny candles — they’d be unsafe anywhere else in the drains, but here the ceilings are high and a row of ancient rusted grates lets in fresh air. Yet more candles swing in glass lanterns hung overhead, casting roaming shadows on the brick walls.

  A band is playing up on a ledge — a violinist wearing a gown of gauzy greys and blacks that make her look as if she is wreathed in smoke. Another woman in a black leather corset with a diamond-studded eyepatch is wrapped around the curves of a double bass, and a man covered in black feathers with a beaked, pointy nose clutches a trumpet in black fingernails shaped like claws.

  Oona’s hand creeps into mine, and I feel a little more complete.

  ‘How did they get down here?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  Another woman twirls past, wearing a dress of origami, paper angles and points crisp and white at her shoulders, but slowly disintegrating around the knees, as the muddy water wicks up from the ground. She spots us and holds out her hand. Her face is painted chalk-white, her eyes and lips rimmed with gold. Oona takes a half-step forward, but the paper woman whisks away, drawn back into the press of bodies.

  Oona looks at me, her eyes shining. ‘Come on.’

  She draws me into the crowd, and we are caught up in the music. I see a face spattered with metallic paint, like gold freckles. Long eyelashes with articulated bends, like spider legs. A man wearing a moulded breastplate, shining iridescent black-green, like beetle wings.

  Despite our exhaustion, it is impossible not to dance to the wild, skittering rhythms. We give ourselves in to it, and almost instantly it swallows us whole. My feet splash in the dark water, and my protective shell breaks open. Oona’s cheeks are flushed and I feel bold and reckless. I pull her to me and she laughs, delighted, her hands curving up my back and shoulders. We dance breathless, chest-to-chest, our hearts beating together.

  We danc
e our way to the opposite edge of the crowd. There are maybe twenty tunnels leading off this chamber, with no signs to indicate which is which. Oona touches a man on the arm. His skin is so dark he almost melts into the dark of the tunnel behind him. He is painted with glinting stars and colourful whorls of galaxy. Oona leans up on tiptoe to shout a question into his ear, and he nods and points to one tunnel, the smallest one, little more than a narrow opening in the wall.

  Oona pushes through the crowd, heading in the direction the galaxy man indicated. She doesn’t look back to see if I’m following, but I do anyway.

  The tunnel is red brick, too, and oval in shape, like a skinny egg. It isn’t large enough for an adult to stand up in, and my shoulders brush the sides as I follow her. I hear her breathing tighten — this is the smallest space we’ve been in. Water trickles at our feet, and the walls seem to pulse with the sound of the music from the ballroom. Spiders scuttle overhead, and I turn my torch onto the wall, letting out a strangled sound when I see the bright-red splashes on their backs. There must be thousands of them, popping in and out of the cracks between the bricks. Easily enough to kill us both.

  ‘Maybe we should go back,’ I say.

  She pauses and for a moment I think she’s going to say yes. The surface tugs at us, promising fresh air and safety. We don’t belong down here.

  ‘No,’ she says at last, her voice unsteady. ‘Keep going.’

  The tunnel shrinks. We hunch over until we are bent double, then drop to our hands and knees. It squeezes us, like wet cloth being wrung dry.

  ‘Oona,’ I say, my voice high and strained. ‘I can’t breathe.’

  Ahead of me Oona stops crawling. The tunnel is too narrow for her to turn around, but she reaches back between her legs and grabs my hand.