Eye Lake (17 page)

And it was then I heard it.

It was hardly anything. It was a tiny scratching, scrabbling noise, the same as a squirrel makes when it runs across a roof. If it hadn't been so quiet in the clearing I would never have heard it. I listened for it again.

It was coming from behind me. Turning around, I began walking back towards the mound and could hear it clearer. Scratch, scratch, scrape, scrape. It was getting louder and more frantic. I followed it. It was coming from under the big rock.

‘George,' I shouted.

It got louder and louder.

It took all my strength to move the rock. I wrapped my arms around it and pulled and pulled until the sweat was dripping into my eyes and I'd finally moved it clear of the wooden door beneath.

At first, after I'd opened the door, I could hardly see nothing on account of the sweat in my eyes, just a blurry dark square beneath my feet. A draft of damp, musty air rose up and crept into my nostrils; it smelt stale and stinky like the inside of an old outhouse. And then a white, watery circle appeared in the dark square. I rubbed my sleeve over my eyes. There was George's face, staring up at me. His eyes were wide, pink discs.

‘I heard you shouting,' he whimpered. ‘But I thought you were dead. I thought everyone was dead. He left me here. He said everyone was dead and he left me down here. I couldn't get out. I couldn't get out.'

When he reached up to me from the steps I could see the blood on his fingernails from where he'd been scratching at the door.

Outside in the clearing George leaned against a tree for a while, blinking and taking quick, short gulps of breath, like he was tasting the air, like he didn't trust it enough to take a long deep breath. He kept saying, ‘I couldn't get out. I … couldn't g … g … get
out
.'

But after a bit he managed to get enough air inside him and told me what'd happened.

He said his dad and him had set out early in the morning, when it was still dark, and almost as soon as they'd arrived his dad had said he had to go back to fetch the final batch of supplies. As he was leaving he told George that the end of the world might happen any moment now – it was imminent – and he was going to tell Gracie everything, including about how they'd prepared a safe place. He said he was going to bring her back with him so they could all live together again. He said she'd understand everything then, and why things had got difficult like they did. She'd be real pleased that George and him had been smart enough to have made preparations. But it was very important that George didn't leave the bunker, not even for a second. He said there might be poison in the air. Fallout. He had a special mask to protect himself, but only the one, and if George breathed the poison then he'd probably get sick, so sick there'd be nothing they could do.

George said to begin with it was okay. He thought it'd only be a few hours. He waited and waited, reading some magazines and comics he'd brought with him, using the light of the flashlight. He'd wished he'd brought a watch then, because there wasn't a clock in the bunker and after a while he didn't know how much time had gone by. It felt like a lot but he didn't know. He waited and waited. He fell asleep and when he woke up he didn't know whether he'd been sleeping for hours or minutes or seconds. He tried counting the seconds, to keep track of how much time was going by, but that just made him fall asleep again and when he
woke up it was worse. He didn't even know if it was daytime or nighttime. It felt like he could have been waiting for an hour or ten hours or a hundred hours – he didn't know anymore, he didn't know what an hour felt like anymore.

And then his dad had come back. When the door opened he could see it was dark so he thought it was the next night or something. His dad never said how long he'd been gone for. Gracie wasn't with him.

When George asked where she was Mr. McKenzie told him things were terrible out there. Everything had happened just like he'd said it would. The poison was falling from the sky and everybody in town had got sick with it. They wouldn't make it, he said. From now on it was just them. ‘We have to concentrate on our own survival now,' he told George.

‘But what about Mom?' George asked.

‘Oh … she's fine,' Mr. McKenzie told him. ‘She's just packing a few last things.'

‘But what about the poison?'

‘That's not a problem. She's got my mask.'

‘What about you?'

‘I found another one.'

‘Where is it?'

‘It's outside. Look George, it's vital we concentrate on the important things right now.'

Mr. McKenzie told George that the most important thing was that he didn't go outside, not even for a second. The poison was falling everywhere. The only reason he'd come now was to check George hadn't and warn him. He said he had to go straight back to town to collect Gracie. She'd probably be finished her packing any moment. And then he was gone.

The waiting started again, except it was much worse this time because the batteries in the flashlight died and he couldn't find new ones because it was too dark – it was pitch black. He didn't bother trying to count or nothing this time. When he was tired he
slept and when he was hungry he fumbled around in the darkness until he found a can. He never knew what was inside the cans till he tasted it. His dad had left a bucket in the corner for him to do his business in and it started to smell real bad. Then he knocked it over in the darkness and it smelt even worse.

Inside the bunker it was damp and cold and once he started shivering he couldn't stop. And he'd begun hearing things.

At first he thought they were voices calling for him. He thought he heard his dad. He thought he heard his mom. He called back and waited. And waited. Nothing happened. The voices went away. When they came back he listened more carefully. It was only sometimes they sounded like voices – other times they just sounded like owls or ravens or animals. He stopped calling back then and even when they did sound like voices he didn't believe in them anymore.

It was around then that George decided he was going to go out, just for a second, just to peek, just to see. The poison didn't seem as bad as the darkness and the shivering and the smell. He said the underground place felt like it was getting smaller and smaller around him, like it was shrinking – he felt like he could hardly move, he felt like he could hardly breathe. He'd wrap one of his T-shirts over his mouth just in case.

The door wouldn't open. He pushed it again. It wouldn't budge. George took a deep breath and sat down on the steps to think. What was wrong? Why wouldn't the door open? What would an explorer do about a door that wouldn't open? But the only thing he could think was,
I must get it open. I must get it open. I can't breathe. I can't move. I can't get out
. He pushed and pushed until he didn't have any strength left and then he started scraping and scratching at the door like an animal. He was scraping and scratching and outside he could hear the voices again and this time they sounded like me. But he knew it couldn't be me. Because of the poison. Because of the fallout. And then the door had started opening and he'd taken a few
steps back down. Then he saw me but for a second or two he didn't believe it.

I told George that nothing had happened: it wasn't the end of the world and there was no poison falling. Gracie and everyone was fine. The only thing that'd happened was him going missing and everyone looking for him.

‘How long?' he asked. I looked at him. His eyes were still blinking in the light. They were pinker then I'd ever seen them. His skin and hair were as white as snow.

‘How many days?' he said. ‘How many days have I been down there?'

‘This is the fourth,' I said. ‘It's Sunday.'

‘Where's my dad?'

‘He's at your house.'

George started looking around him then – at the trees and the ground and the sky – as if he'd only just noticed they were still there. He took a long, deep gulp of air.

‘He was lying,' he said. ‘He lied to me.'

George and me were about halfway back to the boat when we spotted the canoe coming down the river. We ducked behind the outcrop of rock and watched it. I thought maybe it was one of the search parties. Or Buddy come to find his boat: Billy had seen me take it; he'd probably told everybody already.

‘It's him,' George whispered.

I looked again. It was Mr. McKenzie.

George crept slowly back from the outcrop, staying on his hands and knees.

‘Come on,' he hissed.

‘Where you going?' I asked.

‘We've got to get out of here,' he said. His face was set hard in fright. ‘He'll make me go back in there, Eli. He lied to me. He'll make me go back and I won't go. I won't.'

He'd made it to the edge of the trees and I followed him, staying low and keeping behind the outcrop.

‘Where should we go?' I whispered.

‘I don't care,' George said. ‘Anywhere.'

When we were both in the cover of the trees we started running. We ran and we ran. We tripped over blowdown and rocks and roots. Branches hit our faces. But we never stopped. We ran and we ran until at last our breath ran out.

We were by the side of a creek that ran into a wide swamp. Following the creek, we came to a bunch of high cattails and pushed our way into them. It was like being in a cocoon or something. We waited there for a long time, getting our breath back, listening, not saying a word.

‘I don't think he's following us,' George said at last.

‘He'd never find us in here,' I said.

We waited some more, though, just to make sure.

‘Where do you think we are, then?' I asked.

‘I don't know,' George said.

‘I reckon we're lost.'

‘I think you're right,' George said.

And I could've sworn then I saw the ghost of a smile beginning to shape his lips. He peeked out of the reeds.

‘I've never been here before,' he said. ‘Not ever.'

X Marks the Spot

‘T
here's no need for that, you know,' Buddy said from over the fence.

I was pulling up the rotten boards from the porch and piling them in the garden. I'd already taken out the old screens and bought some new ones.

‘There's really no need. I never said anything about you not staying on at the Poplars. I never said anything about that, Eli. You're welcome to stay on there. I don't like this business any more than you do.'

‘I'm just fixing it up,' I said. ‘It's not so bad. It just needs some work.'

‘It needs a lot of work, Eli. A hell of a lot. It's not fit to live in.'

‘I can fix it,' I said. I didn't want to tell Buddy, but I'd had an idea I hadn't told anyone about yet. I'd had it after talking to Sarah the day before and I'd come right into town to get started.

‘Look,' said Buddy. ‘I'm just on my way to check something out. Why don't you come along with me?'

Buddy and me drove out through town, bumping along Main until we passed the museum, and then towards the Red Rock road. Buddy was looking out his side window at the houses. There was a big frown on his face.

‘Will you look at this place now?' he said. ‘I remember clear as day when every house round here was brand new. We had them built for the mine workers. Every one of them new. And look at them now – half of them empty and falling down and the other half
as good as. They might as well pull the whole bunch down and be done with it. It's a real eyesore.'

Buddy's one of those wiry old guys who reach a certain age and then you don't know how old they are – they sort of stay put, not changing. He looks pretty much the same as always, even though he must be well into his eighties. But as he peered out the truck window he seemed older suddenly, as if looking at the rundown houses made him seem like them. I noticed how hunched he was over the steering wheel and the brown spots covering his hands.

We parked up alongside the southern edge of the pit and while Buddy was getting out I walked towards the old beach. Straight away I could see the water there below me – shining and glistening, a small lake in the bottom of the pit. Across to my right the trickle of water had become a waterfall, cascading down over the edge.

‘Well, I'll be damned,' said Buddy from behind me. ‘I'll be goddamned.' When I turned around his face had gone kind of slow and wizened and blinking, like a turtle's.

We walked a little further, until we came to the sand of the old beach. Buddy asked me to give him a hand to sit.

His legs were weak and wobbly as I lowered him onto the sand. I sat down beside him and together we watched the waterfall tumbling into the pit, throwing up foam and mist where it fell into the water beneath.

‘They said what'd happened,' he said quietly. ‘I suppose I just didn't expect it to happen this quick.'

Neither of us said anything for a while then.

‘Do you know what a legacy is, Eli?' Buddy asked me. ‘Well, I guess this is what I thought mine would be. Hundreds of people used to work down there. I thought I'd made something that would last, that people would always remember. Forget all that junk at the museum and the Poplars. Forget the bait store and the outfitters and all that. Forget all of that stuff.
This
was it.
This
was the thing.'

‘They used to have picnics here,' I said.

‘What?'

‘Before you came here,' I said. ‘When it was still a lake. And afterwards my grandfather used to play the fiddle in the hotel.'

‘I never saw him play,' Buddy said. ‘You know, me and your grandfather had a lot in common, Eli. We both came here with nothing. We came here to make something of ourselves. And we both married late … maybe too late. We were busy men. We had a lot to prove and this was a tough place to prove it.'

Beneath us you could see the water lapping against the red stone and earth of the pit. Soon it'd reach the dark seams of granite.

‘Look, Eli, I'm sorry about all this business with Billy. He's a hothead and he doesn't listen to me anymore. I guess some of that's my own fault – I always gave him whatever he wanted and I suppose he got to expecting it. He never had to work at things like I did. But I don't want you thinking you have to move out of the Poplars – you're welcome to stay there as long as you want, as long as it's still standing. I mean, Jesus, your family's been unlucky enough as it is.'

He meant what with Clarence, and then Mom and Dad, and then Virgil getting sick. People weren't meant to get sick that young. That's what everyone said at the time. It wasn't meant to happen to a man in his prime like that. It was just bad stupid luck. And people couldn't even look at me and Nana properly then, as if the bad stupid luck had been sprinkled on me and my family like germs, like it was contagious somehow. I remember Virgil thin and frail and hurting, saying for me to look after my nana, saying not to remember him like this, saying don't look back. And I always tried not to, just like he said. And I did look after Nana too, for those last years, just like he said. And afterwards when I thought about them it was like following Clarence's footsteps down to the river: when I reached a certain point they'd disappear and I wouldn't be able to follow them any further. But I wouldn't be able to follow them back either, and the river would flow around and around in a loop, in a circle.

‘… I'm not asking you for anything, Eli,' Buddy said. ‘I'm only saying maybe you should give Billy a bit of a wide berth for a while. Until he's off the warpath.'

I helped Buddy up from the sand and we walked back together towards the truck. Before we got there Buddy took one last look behind him.

‘Christ,' he said. ‘The whole place will be a lake again in a couple of days.'

‘I reckon most water is like a dog … ' I started saying. But he wasn't listening.

On the way back to town I got Buddy to drop me off at the road to the Poplars. I couldn't wait to tell Sarah and Bobby about my idea and I was running down the road so I could find them when I reached the entrance to the Poplars and nearly slammed straight into Billy's truck. It was coming at me so quick I hardly had time to jump to the side. Billy veered at the last moment and went into the ditch. Bobby was sitting beside him in the front seat. His seatbelt was pulled tight across his chest and his face was pale with fright.

‘For fuck's sake,' Billy said, climbing out the door and stepping into the ditch. ‘Eli! I should've known. I should've just carried straight on.' He was shaking his head and looking down at the bumper.

‘If you've damaged this truck … ' he was saying.

‘Where's Sarah?' I asked.

‘Oh, what … ? So you're worried about your
girlfriend
now, are you? Isn't that fucking sweet? Well, no need to wet yourself, Eli. She's back there in the Pine dorm. Packing up her things, I hope. She's all fucking yours.'

‘Where you taking Bobby?'

‘That's none of your frigging business.'

‘Where you taking him?'

‘Do you really want to know, Eli? Do you? Let me fill you in, then. I'll spell it out nice and slow for you so you can understand it. I'm not too keen on my kid living out here in the boonies with a slut and a retard. Do you get that? Is that simple enough for you? I'm taking him back to a decent home.'

‘He doesn't want to go with you,' I said. ‘Sarah says you can't take him.'

‘Oh, really? Well, this really is one for the books. Eli O'Callaghan telling me what I can and can't do with my kid. Eli O'Callaghan giving me advice on family matters. Let me just see. Let me just have a little flick through the old O'Callaghan family tree. What a success story
that
was. Grandfather goes
AWOL
, dad tops himself, son an idiot, uncle … '

‘Don't talk about them.'

‘Talk about happy fucking families … '

‘I
said
don't talk about them.'

‘What an almighty train wreck. Good thing your mom … '

I couldn't feel my fist when it hit Billy in the face. It was like it was someone else's fist. And I was someone else watching it happen. And then we were down in the water of the ditch. Sometimes I was under the water and sometimes Billy was. And then just Billy was and I was pressing his head into the mud until finally he stopped moving and I could feel my hands pressing down on his head. That's when I stopped. For a while Billy just lay there as if he was asleep in the water.

I went to turn him over and when I did his chest suddenly started heaving up and down. A big spout of muddy water came rushing up from his mouth, like out of a whale's back, and then he started coughing up more of it, brown at first and then kind of green. When he'd finished, he sat up and looked around him for a long time. His eyes seemed like they couldn't focus properly, but when they could again he pointed them right at me.

‘You tried to kill me,' he said. ‘You tried to fucking kill me. You're going to pay for this, Eli. They're going to lock you up.'

I looked over at the truck and Billy's eyes followed mine. The cab was empty. Bobby was gone.

‘You tried to kill me, you fucking lunatic. I'm going to the police,' Billy said.

I went to find Bobby.

The door to the Pine dorm was locked. I knocked on it a few times but nobody answered. When I went around to the back I found Sarah climbing out a window.

‘Eli,' she said. ‘Is that you, Eli?' She sounded all frantic. Her head and shoulders were out of the window but the rest of her was stuck in the frame. ‘Get me out of here,' she said. ‘
PLEASE
. GET ME OUT OF HERE!' Her eyes were black and mad again, like the owl's.

‘That fucking prick,' she said when I got her out. ‘He locked me in there, that fucking prick. Where is he? Where is he, Eli? Don't tell me he's taken him.'

I said how I'd almost bumped into them in the truck, how the truck had gone into the ditch, how Billy had gone back into town on foot.

‘So where is he then, Eli? Where's Bobby?'

‘I don't know,' I said.

‘What do you mean, you don't know?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I don't know where he is.'

Sarah and me checked all the dorms and the office and everywhere. She shouted his name into the woods but there wasn't any answer. I went through them a couple of hundred yards to look for signs but I couldn't find any. The sun was beginning to fall when she phoned the police. We waited for them outside the office. Sarah sat on the steps beside Buddy's sculpture. Her head was in her hands.

‘Oh God,' she said. ‘Oh God, oh God,' she kept saying.

It didn't take long for Officer Red to arrive in his car. He spoke to Sarah for a while and wrote down what she said in his book. He asked me what'd happened with Billy and the truck and I told him. Then he went to speak on his radio and when he came back he said there wasn't much they could do right now because it was so late and there wasn't enough light left. But don't worry, he told Sarah, they'd have search parties ready first thing in the morning. They'd have a helicopter too and they'd be out there at first light. And maybe Bobby would be back by then anyway. That was what he hoped. That's what often happened in these circumstances – in his experience. Stay put here, he said. And if anything happened, contact him immediately. He'd be in touch as soon as it was light tomorrow.

As he was walking back to his car he beckoned me over. ‘Can I have a quick word, Eli?' he asked.

Over by the car he whispered, ‘Look, Eli, I know this is a bad time but there's something I wanted to tell you.'

‘About Billy?' I said.

‘No, not about Billy. We've already had him down at the station blabbing about how he was almost murdered. But I know the situation. It sounded like a fair fight to me. You didn't do anything wrong, Eli. This isn't your fault. We'll find him … Bobby, I mean. It's important you tell her that. We'll find him. No, this isn't about that. It's about your grandfather.'

‘The remains,' I said.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘It's about the remains.'

I didn't say nothing.

‘We've had the tests back.'

I still didn't say nothing.

‘I don't know quite how to say this … but they didn't match. It's not him, Eli. I'm sorry.'

He got into the car then, but as he started the engine he opened the window.

‘Tell her not to worry,' he said again. ‘We're going to do everything we can. In my experience ninety-nine times out of a hundred … '

But I didn't hear the rest. All I could hear was a sound like water rushing around and around in my head.

As soon as he'd gone, with the sun dipping towards the top of the second island, I set out along the eastern shore of Eye Lake to find Bobby. I had no plan. I had no map. I couldn't see any signs. I was just going to walk and walk until I found him.