Dollhouse (6 page)

"Look. Just...  no. This is supposed to be us and our own investigation, right? So why bring the police into it?"

"Well, you saw it wasn't looking good for Ethan's gramps. Shouldn't we be trying to help clear his name?"

My breath caught in my chest. "We can't have the police going back up on the mountains... because that's where Ethan is."

She eyed me with alarm. "He's there?"

I nodded stiffly. "He's looking for Aisha himself."

"God. I thought he was up North somewhere. Why did he go back? Did he find out something?"

"No, he doesn't know anything. He's just desperate. I saw him, for a minute, on the afternoon he left."

I didn't want to tell Lacey Ethan had stayed in my room overnight. It would sound wrong in the retelling. And I'd already told too much.

A thought began unfolding in my mind, a cold, dread thought that I couldn't force back down, couldn't pack back in its box. "Maybe we should go ourselves...."

"Go where?"

"To the mountains."

Her eyes grew large. "Hang on. Us?"

"Well, like, someone has to check out the goldmine idea. Right?"

"No way Hosea. My mother wouldn't let me back up there."

"Mine either. But maybe we could sneak off and take a couple of daytrips up there. We go on winter break next week don't we?"

"Well yeah, but how much could we really do? We'd spend most of each day just walking up the mountains and off them off again." Lacey folded her arms in close around her chest. "If we went, we'd have to stay there a while." A quiet terror stole into her eyes.

I gazed at her numbly. "Stay there?"

"In tents. But it's almost July...."

I did a mental flip. July had always meant heat, gearing up the hottest month of the year—August.
Here
it meant cold. "How cold does it get?"

"Sub-zero. And some years, cold enough to snow even on the roads leading in."

We stared at each other, each of us probably hoping the other would shoot the idea down. But neither of us did.

We plunged into silence. The idea was crazy. How could I even consider going into the depths of the forest with a killer on the loose? And how would I even survive whole nights of pitch darkness out there? Maybe mom was right. I was just like the crowd I'd been hanging around with back in Miami. Jumping into things without thinking them through.

But this was different. One of my friends was dead and another one was being framed as either the murderer or the murderer's accomplice. Ethan needed help, and we were the only people who could do anything.

"So... we're going to do this?" I said.

"Guess we are."

"We'd need a heap of gear, right? I have a couple of hundred in the bank. But it's linked to my mother's bank account. She'd probably notice if I took it out."

"We've got all-season camping gear here. My dad's big on camping." Lacey wriggled herself into a cross-legged sitting position. “But, the question is, how do we take camping gear without everyone guessing where we're going?”

“I guess we can tell our parents we’re going away on winter camp for the break. My mom's going to be pretty hard to convince, but I think she'll go for it if I go hard on the needing-time-away angle.”

“That might work pretty well with my mum. She already says I’m too highly-strung. We can go for a week or so, and be back in time for Caitlin and Brianna's birthday party—where we'll spend the night trying to avoid having Ben and Dominic pushed onto us. What do you think?”

I gave a snicker at the Ben and Dominic reference. “Sounds good to me.”

I looked up Google Maps for the nearest and biggest body of water—one that was far enough away—but not so far our parents would freak. And it had to be close to the coast, where towns were heavily populated—I knew my mother wouldn’t go for me camping at another wilderness area.”

I pointed to two big blobs of blue that were next to each other on the map. “Myall Lake and Wallis Lake. Are either of these any good?”

“Excellent. Those are big camping destinations. They're sure to have winter camp programs. And going camping will explain all the gear we’ll be taking with us.”

She wrote out a list of things we’d need. It was long. I’d never been camping before and wouldn’t have guessed you’d need so much stuff.

Within the next hour, the plan was solid. I rang my mother from Lacey’s house and went hard on the
needing time away
theme, especially playing on the guilt aspect—hinting that I felt that I’d missed out when Lance left us and didn’t take us to see all the places he’d promised. It was true—I hadn’t been anywhere in this country except here and Sydney.

Mom chatted with Mrs. Dougherty, and they seemed to nut out their hesitations together.

We’d spend the weekend at home—then Mrs. Dougherty would drive us to Myall Lake on Monday. Only we’d convince her to let us take the bus when the time came—she was so much more blasé about things like that than my mother.

In my mind’s eye I saw Aisha stopping to carefully frame a photo, wisps of dark hair blowing around her face. It was the exact spot a large paradise bird had picked its way out from between the ferns, speckles of light dancing upon its shimmering aqua feathers.

There was no photographing and recording on this trip—just a relentless walking pace. We reached Devils Hole two hours earlier than we had last time.

Gazing up and down at the woods, I jumped from foot to foot, trying to warm myself. We'd found the general spot where Ethan had taken us all off the track last time, but not the exact spot. And if you didn't find the exact spot, then you could easily end up hours away from where you wanted to be.

Lacey pointed a small, ripped piece of police barrier tape still attached a tree. We stepped over to the tape. If you looked closely here, you could see snapped twigs on trees—a sign that many people had recently passed through. There had been many dozens of search and rescue teams looking for Aisha.

“This has to be it,” Lacey said.

I followed her into the bush.

It seemed even colder in the midst of the trees, with barely any sun touching us.

I exhaled slowly when the sound of running water announced itself below the bird calls. Lacey and I practically ran towards it. We followed the river to the point where it intersected the other river. She jumped nimbly from one rock to the other as we trailed along the edges of the second river.

“I keep expecting to run into Ethan any minute.” I recalled watching the wiry slope of his back as he negotiated the river.

“He could be anywhere. It’s a big place. We may not even see him at all up here.”

I realized then that I really, really wanted to see Ethan. Even just to see his face and know he was okay.

The stunted, big-eared wallabies were drinking at the water’s edge ahead. I wondered if they were the same ones we’d seen last time. A miniature joey leapt into its mother’s pouch, bundling itself in against the cold.

“I need to pee,” Lacey announced.

A shadow that could have been a human shape flitted between two trees ahead. I reached to grab Lacey’s arm. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Someone. Up further.”

“Okay, maybe we found Ethan after all.”

“No, smaller than Ethan I think.”

We stared at each other.

Aisha?

“Could have been a wallaby up on his hind legs,” she said quickly, but she stepped behind a tree and gestured for me to do the same.

We crept from tree to tree like thieves, until we daren’t go closer. First came a sound of something heavy dragging across the ground, and then a voice, a deep voice.

Not Aisha
.

Not Ethan
.

We pressed our backs in the tree. The voice came closer, clearer. Lacey pushed record on her phone:

By the sacred radiance of the sun

The mysteries of Hecate and the night

By all the operation of the orbs

From whom we do exist and cease to be

Swallowed its children and all destiny

“What the?” Lacey whispered.

I twisted myself around. There was the tiniest space between two branches, no bigger than my little finger. On the tips of my toes, I rose to take a look. Lacey looked up at me, her face warning me not to make myself seen.

A thin man of about thirty set down a large hessian sack. He bent to take a shovel from the ground. With more force than I imagined a man his size could muster, he struck the ground with the shovel. He dug deep into the earth, sweat running from his temples.

 Stopping to wipe his face with a handkerchief, he stared around the forest. I closed my eyes, praying that he didn’t see me. But he’d have to have the eyes of a hawk to notice me through the tiny space.

I slid down the tree trunk to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Lacey. “He’s burying a large sack.”

“A sack? How big?’

“Big enough.” I knew Lacey would know what I meant.

He crouched to heave the sack into the hole he’d dug, and then he shoveled dirt on top of the sack.  Kicking leaves on top of the dirt, he seemed satisfied with his work. He traipsed away with the shovel and sack over his shoulder.

I stared down at Lacey. She nodded. “We’ll just give it a few seconds more.”

Hard taps hit Lacey and me in the middle of our backs. I froze—then whipped around, ready to fight or run.

Ethan’s face was in front of mine, hard and incensed. “What are you two doing here?”

“A man just buried a sack. We're digging it up,” Lacey told him.

Ethan’s eyes widened as he mouthed the word,
buried
.

He raced after us to the freshly-turned dirt and mud. Throwing himself to his knees, he began digging with his hands—dirt flying in the air. Lacey and I dug from the other end.

My fingers touched the rough hessian.  Whatever was beneath the sack felt both hard and soft in places.

Ethan hauled the sack up by himself, grunting with the effort. Lacey tried to undo the ties, but they held fast. Ethan reached into his back pocket and produced a Stanley knife. Pulling the hessian up, he cut into the fabric.

The smell was the first thing that hit my nose. I didn’t know what a dead body should smell like, but that wasn’t it. The insides of the sack smelled more like rotting food.

Ethan let out a sound that sounded both of anger and anguish. Tin cans, empty packets of oatmeal and moldy bread spilled from the sack. All of it was compressed tightly and the cans had been flattened.

Lacey rocked back on her heels, exhausted. 

“It looked like Henry Fiveash himself," I said. "The guy from the photograph. So he was just burying his trash. I guess there's no services out this way."

Ethan was already walking away, cursing to himself. Lacey and I did our best to cover the hessian sack over again, and then we trailed after Ethan. He didn’t speak or turn around for the twenty minutes it took to return to his campsite. He’d positioned the camp in the midst of high crops of rocks—a good place if you wanted to hide out.

He seated himself on a fallen log next to his tent. “You girls shouldn’t be here.” He raised an eyebrow at me.

Guiltily, I knelt to take the cumbersome backpack from my shoulders. "I just...  thought we could help."

"Yep and any minute now, Lacey's dad, and the whole frigging police force will be charging up the mountains."

"Here we go again." Lacey shook her head. "I am not my father. I don't represent the police. I hate my father, if you must know."

Ethan snorted scornfully. "So you're here just to spite him?"

"No. I'm here because of Aisha. She was my friend a long time before she was your girlfriend you know."

"Ethan," I said quietly, "no one knows we're here. We made sure of that."

“Just go home, both of you.”

Lacey folded her arms, skinny elbows sticking out. “We don’t have to camp next to you, if you don’t want us to—but we’re staying.”

Scowling, Ethan turned his head back to the campsite. “Well, you're here now. Nothing I can do about that. You can set up there.”

Lacey was quick about unrolling the tent and laying it out. Ethan watched for a moment, then pulled himself to his feet and helped her hammer the pegs in with a small rock.

I undid the tie from my sleeping bag and placed the bag next to Lacey’s in the tent. She wasn’t kidding when she said there was only just enough room for two people and our stuff. It seemed so claustrophobic in there but I guessed you didn’t notice the confined space when you were asleep.

Lacey and I opened up our sandwiches and ate in silence. Ethan refused any of our food, although he didn’t seem to have much of his own.

“Well, we’re heading off now, Ethan,” said Lacey.

Ethan didn’t look up. “I spent yesterday and this morning around Thunderbolt’s Way. So don’t bother going there.”

“We didn’t plan to. We were going to be close to the house,” I told him.

His shoulders tensed. “I'm not going to let you do that. The way you girls blunder through the forest, that guy will spot you and maybe even follow you back to the campsite."

“Okay, well we'll go someplace else and search.”

Ethan snickered. “Search for what? You girls looking for more buried garbage?”

“C’mon,” I said. “If you’d seen a guy buying a sack, you’d have dug it up too.”

“Maybe. So what
are
you looking for?”

“Never mind. You’d think it stupid,” Lacey told him.

She guided me from the campsite by the elbow, until we were well away from Ethan.

We walked on towards the river.

“I’d rather Ethan didn’t know what we were doing,” she said in a quiet tone.

 “Why? He might even help.”