“Can you hear me Jake?”
Everything is out of focus. The man is short and balding. He pushes up thick rimmed glasses with a fat index finger. My wrists hurt. I rub them. The skin is swollen and tender.
“Do you know where you are Jake?”
The room is small and bare. The walls are a monotone beige and there is a large mirror on one side. We sit at a wooden table painted white. A single naked bulb hangs directly above. It buzzes incessantly.
“Tell me what you saw. Start from the beginning.”
Images flash through my mind. I run them backwards like a movie on rewind. I grab onto the moment in time that marks the beginning. Everything before it is distant and unimportant.
“Christmas night,” I said.
“Christmas night, good. Tell me what you see.”
*****
The doorbell rang at 9p.m. We had cleared the table and were setting up the Monopoly board. It is a family tradition and as competitive as a cage fight to the death. The winner secures bragging rights until next Christmas.
Mum threw up her arms and went to the door cursing whoever it was that would dare bother us on Christmas night.
It was Kylie. Of anyone it could be I hadn’t imagined it would be her. Not after how we’d left it.
“I need ten minutes,” she said.
She dragged me to the kitchen and pulled a laptop out of her bag. The flurry of her limbs fanned a hint of perfume to my nose.
Stacked beside the sink were plates smeared with gravy and smatterings of stray peas. Kylie lifted a cherry from a half-eaten piece of cake and popped it in her mouth. She flicked open the laptop.
“I found it,” she said.
“You do realise it’s Christmas?”
“Yes. Look at this.”
On the screen was a satellite image, red soil and the brown-green of trees that don’t see much rain.
“What am I looking at?”
“Look closer.”
She zoomed in and turned the cursor in a small circle. I squinted at the screen. It was a bare patch of dirt with a cluster of green trees to the left.
“I don’t see anything. I have to get back to Monopoly.”
“See that shadow? Right there.”
I leaned closer to the screen. She was right. A single rectangular shadow disrupted the monotone the red dirt of the desert.
“I see it. So what?”
“It’s what the Redding brothers found.”
“Remind me who the Redding brothers are.”
“Jake, you disappoint me. Two brothers, they came back from the war and leased land from the government and tried their hand at cattle ranching, or something. Then one night a prospector shows up at their door.”
“And he has a lump of gold with him and a map and they head off to find it.”
“You do remember.”
“Connect that story and this shadow.”
“The one brother who returned said they found a structure out in the desert. Some sort of lighthouse. This is that lighthouse.”
“A lighthouse in the desert. That’s ridiculous. How do you know this is what he found?”
“It is in the right area.”
“No one knows where it is. Redding never went back, and he never told anyone the exact location.”
“We know roughly where it is and this could be it.”
“Could be? It’s a shadow. It’s too small to be a lighthouse. It could be anything.”
“Something is casting that shadow. It isn’t a tree.”
“Why are you telling me this on Christmas night?”
“What are you doing over the holidays?”
“Nothing until New Year.”
“I’m going out there. Want to come?”
“No.”
She slapped her hands on the table. My mother’s voice called out from the living room.
“I want to film it,” she said. “If we find something we can cut it into a movie, make some money. Use it as a launchpad for the next project. Like we always talked about. And if you say yes I’ll leave right now and you can go play Monopoly.”
“You could have done this over the phone.”
“If I had would you have agreed to come?”
She had me. If she had called I would have let it go to message bank. If she had texted I would have ignored it and left my reply until it was too late to join. She had to come and entreat me with those blue eyes of hers.
“How far away is it?”
“A day’s drive. We’ll need to camp. A few days.”
“You need my camera.”
“I need you. And your camera. It will be fun.”
“It will be hot and dry and we’ll get out there and there will be nothing.”
“Then we’ll have an interesting story for future parties.”
My mother’s voice sounded again, this time louder and shriller.
“Fine. I’ll come and you leave right now.”
*****
I parked the car on the street in front of Kylie’s house. Her younger brother Zach lifted bags into the back of their father’s truck.
“You’re up early,” I said.
“Kylie will make a good dictator one day.”
“I’ll give you a hand. You lose a bet to her or something?”
“She said if I want to come I have to pull my weight.”
“You’re coming too?”
“If I stay here Dad will put me to work.”
The screen door flung open. Kylie hustled to the truck and dumped two bags of food and drink into the back. I waited for some explanation as to why Zach was coming, and then realised Kylie didn’t owe me one. I had assumed it would be the two of us. It was what I had imagined. I never asked if anyone else was coming.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I’m on holiday. How did you convince your Dad to let you use the truck?”
“Couldn’t fit everything in the car. And he doesn’t need it.”
“Not with three of us I suppose. Did you tell Zach that there’s probably nothing out there?”
“Don’t be such a downer. And we’re a team of four.”
“Four?”
“When has an extra set of hands not come in useful?”
“That one time when there were too many chefs in the kitchen. People still talk about it.”
“Get your gear in the truck.”
“Wait, who is the fourth?”
It is an understatement to say Ben Elliott and I do not get along. Kylie, Ben and I went through film school together. After our first collaboration we became inseparable. We spent countless nights watching retro European cinema in the small rectangular living room of Ben’s flat. Squished together on the tattered sofa, we would talk big about the projects we would pursue after we graduated. All empty words now.
They told me I was being unreasonable. Part of me agreed. The other part won out and I cut them both from my life. It was the end of our little group. And beyond a certain point it gets easier to not give in. Seeing Kylie again had rekindled something.
I convinced Zach to let me ride up front so I could at least avoid sharing the back seat with him. When we pulled out of Kylie’s driveway, I wished I had said no and gone back to the Monopoly game. My sister Bonnie had won. This was going to be a fun year.
Kylie made a left turn at Harvey Street. Ben must still be living in the same small apartment. We had driven and walked this street hundreds of times. Though familiar, the street felt somehow strange and distant, as if it had changed but in subtle ways I could not identify.
We stopped at number 57 and Kylie sounded the horn twice. She checked the time.
“We’re half an hour late. He should be ready.”
She gave the horn another burst and then sighed and killed the engine.
“I’ll be back,” she said and almost jumped out of the truck.
Zach leaned forward and put his elbow on the shoulder of my seat. “You don’t think we’ll find anything out there?”
“It’s unlikely.”
“Then why did you agree to come?”
“I don’t know. Your sister and I don’t spend much time together anymore. Thought it might be a chance to catch up.”
“We will find something.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I read about it on the internet. About Jack Redding, the one who returned. And after a bit of digging I found the spot.”
“You found it?”
“Did Kylie take credit?”
“No. I guess I assumed.”
“It’s going to be there. Something is out there.”
“You’re quite the little investigative journalist.”
I chewed on my nails waiting for Kylie and Ben to appear. I dreaded seeing him again and what was more, being stuck with him for a few days. I willed for him to be sick or even dead to spare me the trouble.
Ben’s bobbing head appeared over the low-height hedge that acted as a fence between the apartment block and the road. He smoothed down his hair as he walked. Kylie had woken him up.
The truck rocked as Kylie and Ben took their seats. I kept my eyes on the road ahead.
Ben muttered an apology.
Kylie waved the apology away. “We’re all running late. We better get a move on. First stop is the old Redding homestead, and I want to get there by midday.”
*****
We left Adelaide and drove north. The sprawling outer suburbs gave way to wide fields of farmland, the stubble left from the harvest browning under the summer sun. The land grew drier the further north we drove, and the distance between the farm houses and occasional small towns spread out. We were on the cusp of the desert – the Outback.
There is a narrow band that forms a border between the region with reliable rainfall to the south and the desert to the north. In this band farming is a gamble. The good years come often enough to give you hope, but the odds are stacked against the player and eventually a run of bad years pile together. It was here that the Redding brothers built their homestead.
Kylie slowed and read the signs to the dirt tracks intersecting the main road. The tracks are named after the farmers whose properties lay somewhere along the track. Abbott Road. Smart Road. Kylie read them aloud as we passed. McDonald Road.
“It’s the next one,” she said.
Kylie indicated and turned. This road had no name. No one had lived there long enough for it to have one.
The tyres kicked up gravel and it crackled against the underside of the truck. The rear end fishtailed and Kylie touched the brake.
“How far?” Kylie said.
Zach worked his thumbs on his phone screen. “About a hundred metres more.”
“I think I see something.”
Ahead on the right a partially-collapsed structure of rotted timber and twisted corrugated metal sheets rose up above the wild grass and weeds. Beyond stood a steel water tank and an old metal plow. Rust had turned both a shade of red.
Kylie mounted the truck on the shoulder of the road. “This is it. Everyone get your gear.”
Beside the tank was a bare concrete slab, charred black by fire. Ben hooked up the microphone and I mounted the camera on my shoulder and framed the collapsed structure over Kylie’s left shoulder.
She cleared her throat.
“It was on this site that brothers Jack and Angus Redding built their homestead after returning from World War I. The year was 1920. Two years of steady rain gave the brothers hope. Four years of drought would follow. Unable to pay back their mortgage, the brothers were forced to face the inevitable. Until one night a stranger appeared on their doorstep.
“The man was dehydrated and delirious. His clothes were stained with blood. He smelled strangely of sulphur. Jack and Angus took in the stranger and gave him food and water. When they asked him where he had come from, the man refused to answer. The brothers suspected the man was on the run and had come from the north, where local rumours placed a lost cave bearing gold and precious stones.
“Angus searched the leather sack the man had with him. Inside he found a nugget of gold the size of a golf ball and a crudely drawn map. Angus pressed the stranger to tell him where he had come from and if it was there he had found the gold.
“The man grew agitated. He told the brothers he would never set foot in that place again. And that there was no gold. Angus, seeing a solution to their money problems, demanded the man show them where he found the gold. Shaking his head and crying, the man pulled out a revolver and put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
“Jack and Angus Redding, fearing both the authorities and the bank, set fire to their home with the body of the stranger still inside. Taking the map and the gold, they set out to find the source. Along for the ride was the Redding’s neighbour, Victor Simpson. Only Jack would return.
“The identity of the man who knocked on the door that night remains unknown. September 10, 1926.”
Kylie paused for a beat and raised her eyebrows.
“It was good,” I said.
“You think so?”
“Perfect.”
“Should we do another take?”
“No, we got it. Let me get some footage of this foundation. Is there anything else around?”
Zach kicked at the charred slab. “Strange to think someone died here. Do you think there really was gold?”
I shrugged. “There must have been. Why else would you burn the house down and set off into the desert?”
Ben wandered alone out by the rusted equipment. His mind was already on other things. It had surprised me that Kylie asked him to come along, it surprised me more that he agreed. Commitment was never his strong suit. Whenever the three of us did a group project he always needed the most oversight to make sure he completed what was assigned to him. That he did good work stopped mattering for me after a while. I shook my head.
“You don’t like him much do you?” Zach said.
Before I could answer Kylie motioned with her arms to the truck like a police officer directing traffic. “Let’s go team.”
*****
The next stop was a tiny dot on the map named Razorback Hill. At the foot of the Flinders Ranges, the town is little more than a pit stop for truck drivers and folk travelling on to the National Park. The service station is set up to accommodate the big road trains hauling goods to the isolated communities in the interior. The only other business stands on the other side of what would be Main Street, if only it had a name. The Razorback Inn.
We framed the shot beside the oversized white sign at the edge of town. The sign recorded the town name and the population, announced in faded lettering as 25.
Kylie said, “Do you have the pub in the background?”
I gave her a thumbs up.
“When Jack Redding emerged from the desert one week after setting out, delirious and dehydrated and alone, he came here, to the Razorback Inn. Having no money to his name, he earned his keep clearing glasses and washing dishes.
“As the years rolled by, Jack became a local legend. He would hold conversations with people who were not there. He would burst into tears for no apparent reason and only a moment later would burst out laughing. Anyone stopping in town would go to see Crazy Jack at the Razorback.
“The residents of the town paid Jack no mind. To them he was harmless. Until one fateful day in 1966. The then 70 year old Jack Redding abducted an infant named Isabell from her home located barely a minute’s walk from the Inn. Jack brought the infant back to his room on the second floor of the Razorback Inn and slit her throat with such ferocity that she was almost decapitated.
“The police were called, but before they could arrive Isabell’s father tied a rope around Jack’s neck and hanged him from the balcony of the inn. None of the townspeople intervened. The date was September 10, 1966. 40 years to the day after fire at the Redding farm.”
I put down the camera. “Shall we go inside?”
The two-storey Razorback Inn is the classic rural Australian pub. Age and the red desert sand have stained the once white quarry-stone walls. The second-story balcony is supported by thin timber posts and gives shade to the ground floor windows. The name is hand-painted on the corner parapet, positioned to catch the eye of passers-by.
Inside met expectation as much as the exterior. An aging carpet full of reds and blues retains the smell of immeasurable spilled beer. A juke box straight out of the 80s stands in the far corner, dusty and unplugged. The background noise comes from the television, turned, perhaps permanently, to greyhound and horse racing. The long wooden bar forms an ‘L’ shape with tall wooden stools lined up neatly around the edge.
Before we opened the door Zach elbowed me and said, “I bet you anything there is one old codger at the bar nursing a schooner of beer.”
The prophecy fulfilled, I waved at the old man sat at the bar. He raised an eyebrow and nodded and turned back to the television.
At the sounding of the bell above the door, the publican emerged and held court behind the bar taps.
Kylie stepped forward. “Curtis Phillips right? I’m the one that called this morning.”
“The movie maker?”
“That’s right. Can we have your permission to appear on camera?”
“Sure. Any publicity is good publicity. But first thing is first, you all look thirsty.”
We ordered and I set the camera up at one of the small tables in the corner. Curtis fixed his collar and sat opposite Kylie.
“How long have you owned the Razorback?”
“Five years in January. Bought it off Ron Young after he slowed down and it got a bit too much.”
“What made you want to buy it?”
“I wanted to run my own business, and I like the area. The wide open spaces, new people coming through all the time. And it was something I could afford.”
“Were you aware of the stories, of what happened here?”
“You mean Crazy Jack Redding? I knew of them, most people around here do. Ron could have told you more. His Dad owned the place in 66.”
“Has anything strange ever happened?”
“You mean ghosts? No. I was warned this place was haunted, but nothing has ever happened.”
The old man sat at the bar chimed in, “Stopped when you took over.”
Kylie clicked her fingers at Ben. “Get him a microphone.”
The old man cleared his throat after Ben hooked him up. “I remember old Jack Redding. I was a boy when they hanged him by the rafters outside there. He was lucky it went so quick after what he done.”
“What do you remember?”
“Of that night? I remember the sound he made when he swung from the rope. It was a wet, gurgling noise. You don’t forget a thing like that.”
“And what about after? You said it stopped. What stopped?”
“Used to be you spend a day here drinking with old Ron and things would all go a bit funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hard to describe. Like there was something slightly off with the world. Like the colours were all wrong. We figured Ron was putting something in the beer.”
“But Jack was gone by this point?”
“Crazy Jack was long gone. There was something about this place even when he was gone. Might have found somewhere else to drink, but old Ron treated you like royalty, like this place was the damn Shangri-la and we were all sitting here in tuxedos sipping champagne. It was something else. Curtis does a good job though.”
Curtis nodded from across the room.
Kylie turned her attention back to Curtis. “Did you perform an exorcism on this place or something?”
“No. Cleaned the beer lines, painted and fumigated. None of that ever scared away a ghost as far as I know.”
“Can we see his room?”
Curtis led us upstairs.
“My room is at the far end, but this here is where Jack lived.”
He pulled a set of keys from a hook on his belt and snapped open the lock.
“I don’t go in here much. Ron locked it up after Jack killed that baby. From what I was told the police took most of Jack’s things.”
Heavy curtains blocked the single window on the far side. Curtis flicked the light switch, but there was no globe in the socket. He strode over to the window and let in the light. A bare mattress topped a small metal-framed bed. Against the wall stood a wooden chest of drawers. The room smelled of dust and a hint of something else I couldn’t put my finger on.
Curtis snapped his head around at the faint sound of the bell from downstairs. “Excuse me.”
We stepped inside. The lighting was terrible.
“I’m not sure we’ll use much of this footage,” I said.
“It sure is a bit creepy.” Zach opened the top drawer and peered inside. He sighed and put the drawer back. He took a half-step away, but went back. He leaned down and grabbed at the bottom drawer.
“Need to be sure.”
The drawer wouldn’t move so he shook it. It jerked open far enough to fit in his fist. He pushed his head towards the gap.
“Nothing.”
Zach tried to push the drawer back, but it did not budge.
“It’s stuck.”
Kylie shifted her hands to her hips, “Stop messing around and put it back.”
“It’s stuck I said.”
“Why must you wreck everything?”
Zach jiggled the draw trying to get it moving. He fed his hand under the drawer and lifted from the underside.
“What’s this?”
He yanked out his hand. In it he held a tattered old book with black binding.
We all turned at the sound of footsteps coming up from below.
Ben leaned down and grabbed the book from Zach and shoved it down the back of his trousers and smoothed his shirt to hide bulge. He pushed Zach aside and used his foot to push shut the drawer. It snapped back with a thud.
Curtis appeared in the doorway. “What was that?”
Ben said, “Nothing. I bumped against the drawers.”
Curtis looked at us all in turn before responding. “Do you have what you need?”
Ben nodded and pushed past Curtis and descended the stairs. We followed.
We bid a hasty farewell and retreated to the car. When we were all inside Ben pulled out the book.
“Why did you take it?” I said.
Ben didn’t look up. He flicked through the pages. “This is his diary.”
Kylie turned to see. “What? Jack Redding’s diary? Are you sure?”
“And there’s a map. Look.”
Kylie snatched the book from Ben and ran her finger across the open page. “Holy shit, it is. He drew a map.”
Zach said, “Does it lead to the spot we found on Google maps?”
Kylie paused and squinted. “Looks pretty close. We’ll soon find out.”
I said, “We should tell Curtis we took it.”
Ben scoffed from the back seat. “Why, so he can take it back? We need it.”
I turned to face him. “It belongs to him, not us.”
“It belonged to Jack Redding, who is dead.”
Kylie shushed us. “He’s right. If this movie we are making is going to be anything, we need this book. It gives us information no one else has. We might actually find something out there. Zach, are you on board?”
Zach nodded.
Kylie shrugged, “That’s three. We’ll show it to Curtis when we come back through. We have to get going or we won’t make it by dark.”
“I think it’s the wrong thing to do.” I pouted and watched the Razorback Inn recede in the rear vision mirror.
*****
We left the bitumen road twenty minutes outside Razorback Hill. The dirt track took us west and was lined with sugar gums, their branches leaning out over the road. The big tyres of the truck thrummed over the cattle grids set into the track.
As the sun began to sink in the sky, we fell into an apprehensive silence. Each of us stared out into the bush, searching for any signs of the fabled settlement Jack Redding and his companions allegedly stumbled across.
The dirt track devolved into something little more than parallel red strips snaking between the grey tree trunks and tufts of saltbush. The truck jumped and rolled on the uneven surface.
Kylie found her brother in the rear vision mirror. “How are we looking Zach?”
Zach thumbed at the screen on his phone. “It should be close.”
“Any clues on the map?”
“There is a note, but I can’t read it.”
Ben clicked his fingers and Zach handed him the diary.
Ben pushed the pages close to his eyes. “It says ghost gum, I think.”
Zach said, “What the hell is a ghost gum?”
I wound down the window. “What is that smell?”
Zach took back the book and re-examined it. “By ghost tree, does he mean a dead tree?”
Ben scoffed. “It is a tree with white bark.”
Zach pointed ahead, “Like that?”
Kylie skidded the truck to a stop. We followed Zach’s outstretched hand. An enormous tree towered over the landscape. In the light of the setting sun the thick trunk and branches almost glowed white. The ghost gum.
“That has to be it.” Kylie opened the door and jumped out. We followed.
We crept towards the tree, its otherworldly appearance making us wary, as if we feared it would suddenly jump up and lumber towards us on legs made of roots.
Kylie whispered, “What else does the diary say?”
Zach read aloud, “The lighthouse is located not more than fifty paces north of the tree. A strange sight and out of place and amazingly in pristine condition.”
“A lighthouse? Out here?”
I measured west from the setting sun and aligned myself north. There through the trees, precisely as described, rose a white lighthouse. It was the strangest thing. There was no ocean in any direction for hundreds of kilometres.
I turned back to the truck. “How did we not see it?”
Zach skipped ahead like an excited schoolboy. “Who cares? We found it. Get the camera.”
I held up my palms. It made no sense. “We should have seen it.”
Kylie almost yelled at me. “Jake get the camera. Before the sun sets.”
I kept Kylie in the frame as we approached. She lowered her head and bent a little at the waist, instinctively making herself smaller. When in sight of the small front door she called out a nervous hello and we received no response. She called out a second time, louder this time. Still nothing.
When she reached the lighthouse she placed her palm on the stone wall. She paused and turned and smiled into the camera.
“It’s real.”
On the far side a wooden door and a single window cut into the wall. I zoomed in on the window frame. It was in pristine condition like the rest of the structure. No dirt. No dust. No splinters in the wood. The whole thing was so out of place it was unsettling.
Kylie paused at the door.
Zach turned to me and asked, “What do you think is inside?”
“A big empty room.”
Kylie knocked and waited a beat. She tried the handle and it turned and the door gave. She inched open the door and called out a final hello before swinging the door the rest of the way. I could barely contain myself and hurried up behind her.
Inside was a single open space. Timber floorboards and white washed walls. On the far side a metal staircase spiralled up following the curve of the structure.
Kylie ran her hand on the inside of the wall. “Why are there no lights?”
Ben stepped in behind. “Look at the floors. They are all single planks. No joints.”
I kicked at the floor. He was right. It was strange, and stranger still I could have sworn I had seen joints in the planks when I first walked in.
Zach said, “I’ll check upstairs.”
We said nothing. It was all so surreal.
Zach came back down panting. “It’s empty. There’s a light up there but no lamp. I don’t think it works. At least we don’t have to camp outside.”
I struggled to process what I was seeing. “We don’t know why this is here. It might belong to somebody. It must belong to somebody. Look how clean everything is. There should be dust and spiderwebs and dead flies. This doesn’t happen by accident. Someone takes care of this.”
Zach considered this. “Or it’s magic.”
I half-laughed. “It isn’t magic.”
“Explain it then.”
I couldn’t.
Kylie was the first to think about the next step. “I’ll get the truck closer. We’re about to lose light.”
With headlights to supplement the twilight, we dumped our gear in the lighthouse. Zach and Ben gathered firewood and we started a small campfire in the clearing by the front door.
Kylie set up her father’s portable gas grill. The smell of barbecue and the warm glow of the fire provided a backdrop of normalcy from the otherwise strange end to the day. Darkness fell and shrouded the lighthouse in shadow. I watched the top waiting for the light to flick on, but it remained dark.
Zach pulled a bottle of champagne from the cooler. Kylie handed out glasses.
Zach raised his. “To our success.”
Kylie broke into a broad smile. “Enjoy the final throes of anonymity. This movie we’re making is going to make us all famous.”
Ben accepted a glass. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“Scout around. Get as much footage as we can.”
Zach drained his glass in a single gulp. “When we get back we should keep this under wraps. Until we can get the movie out.”
Kylie nodded. “No one call home in the meantime. We don’t need a Johnny-come-lately scooping us. ”
Zach lifted his phone in the air. “Can’t anyway. No service.”
Ben checked his phone and put it swiftly back into his pocket.
I cleared my throat. “Am I the only one with a bad feeling about this?”
Zach smirked. “Yes.”
Ben let out an exaggerated sigh. “You’re always so negative. Why can’t you for once not assume the worst?”
I shot him a dirty look he may not have seen by the firelight. “What do we know about this place? Anyone?”
“Why don’t you enlighten us.”
I bristled at Ben’s sarcastic tone.
“Of the four people we know that have come to this place, two were never seen again, one shot himself rather than come back and the fourth went insane and decapitated a baby and then was hanged. Maybe we shouldn’t celebrate yet. I have half a mind to jump in the truck and drive back to Razorback Hill.”
Everyone fell silent. Zach toed a small hole in the dirt. He put down his plate of food. In the firelight his face grew gaunt and pale.
“Kylie, can you help me with something?” Zach stood and using his phone as a torch made his way to the building.
Kylie followed and they disappeared into the darkness of the lighthouse.
Ben cleared his throat. “You’ve still got a problem with me?”
“Some things don’t have a statute of limitations.”
“You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. You’ve turned an anthill into damn Mount Everest and no one can convince you otherwise.”
I scoffed. “You and I are going to get through this trip and then go back to our separate lives. I can’t believe Kylie brought us both out here.”
“Maybe she was trying to get back something we all lost.”
Muffled shouting came from the lighthouse. It was Kylie’s raised voice first and then Zach’s. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The door flung open and Kylie emerged. It was a full ten seconds before Zach followed, his face stony, like he had been dealt some bad news but was determined to not let it show.
The mood around camp was as cold as the night desert air. There was little further conversation before Kylie announced she was turning in. We all followed. We rolled sleeping mats out on the floor. Zach flicked off his shoes and slid into his sleeping bag, not bothering to undress.
I watched the inside wall of the lighthouse, the remnants of the fire casting a flickering soft light through the window. My shirt smelled of the smoke from the fire. I zipped up my sleeping bag to trap the smell and turned up my nose. A new smell replaced the smell of the smoke, the same scent I had first smelled in the car before we saw the ghost gum. What was it?
My head swimming a little from the champagne, I soon fell asleep.
The whistling of the wind woke me. I turned in my sleeping bag and groaned to let everyone know I was awake. When I opened my eyes, I discovered an empty room. I blinked at the orange light filtering through the window. I had to piss.
I walked around the back of the lighthouse. The sun was fully above the horizon to the east. I turned back to the ground and then my head flicked back up. The ghost gum should be out there, towering over the rest of the trees. And there it was. But it hadn’t been there when I first looked. I was sure of it.
Kylie and Ben were sat at the deckchairs circling the remnants of the fire.
“Where is Zach?” I asked.
Kylie shrugged. “I haven’t seen him yet.”
“Did he go for a walk or something? Would he wander off like that without telling anyone?”
Kylie said, “I’m sure he’s fine.”
Ben shivered. “I heard stuff last night. The wind. Voices. Someone crying.”
He had my attention. “Someone crying?”
“I don’t know. That’s what it sounded like. A baby crying.”
I had heard sounds too, in that mystical, fuzzy place between sleep and consciousness. I told myself it was the wind, but could it have been?
“A baby? Out here?”
Ben lowered his voice as if to reduce the ridiculousness of the notion. “That’s what it sounded like.”
Kylie threw the dregs of her mug on the coals. They hissed. “You were dreaming.”
“I wasn’t dreaming. And I got up in the night to have a look, and I’m pretty sure Zach was gone.”
A ripple of uneasiness turned into a tidal wave. “He was gone?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think so.”
“What time was it?”
“I didn’t check. It was dark still. I figured he’d gone for a piss or something.”
“So he could have been gone for hours?”
Kylie sat passively, her hands folded between her knees. “I’m sure it’s nothing. He got up early and went for a walk.”
Ben shook his head at the explanation. “Without telling anyone? That doesn’t make sense. I want to drive back to Razorback Hill and call the police or something. Give me the keys.”
This was the wrong move and I knew it. As much as I had wanted to be gone from this place, we couldn’t leave Zach out here. “That’s a bad idea.”
“You’re the one who said we should be worried out here. Everyone who has come here has ended up dead or missing one way or another. Give me the keys.”
Kylie stood and wiped her hands on her knees. “We’ll go and look for him. We can’t drive back to Razorback Hill. What if he comes back here, which he will.”
Ben threw up his hands and stormed back into the lighthouse. It was strange how upset he was, and Kylie’s calm in comparison.
She said, “Did you hear anything last night?”
For some reason I didn’t want to admit that I had heard something like crying. I had woken from what I thought was a dream. But even with my eyes open I had heard it. Something was out there. Something that shouldn’t be out there.
I shook my head.
The door to the lighthouse flew back open and Ben stomped back to the fire. His eyes were wide and streaked with red from lack of sleep. He looked like he might break down and cry.
“Give me the car keys please.”
Kylie turned up her palms, “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Zach had them.”
We followed Ben back inside. He dropped to the ground and rummaged through Zach’s sleeping bag. He unzipped Zach’s backpack and threw clothes on the floor.
Part of me wanted to join Ben. I wanted out of this situation. A lot wasn’t adding up and I didn’t want to mess with it. But we couldn’t leave without Zach. Today would be hot and dry and it was no place to be abandoned.
Kylie leaned down and touched Ben on the shoulder. “Ben, stop.”
Ben paused rifling through Zach’s things and looked up at us, eyes pleading. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
Kylie pointed her finger to the door. “Then we have to find Zach.”
From somewhere out in the trees came the faint sound of a baby crying.