The Leaves Forget, page 6
But the thing that keeps circling my mind, like vultures over a dying animal, is the thing she said in that last letter.
I think they tried to kill me too. I think they wanted to sacrifice me at the full moon ritual thing.
There’s been a couple more full moons since then, and another one any day now. I can’t help thinking maybe they saw it through the next time around. Does Dad think the same? Has Liv been dead since the April full moon? And why? What possible reason could these psychos have for sacrificing people on full moons? Perhaps that’s just the weirdly natural progression of a twisted cult. Maybe they all end up murderous in the end, in one way or another. I don’t need to understand it. I just need to find Liv, and I can’t give up hope of finding her alive.
Dad pulls up on the side of the main street in Deverin and I see the post office right there, the post box a bright red sentinel outside.
Andrew has his phone out and points ahead at a left turn. “There’s an IGA there, the entrance just around the corner, so that’s probably where Jonathan went which gave Liv time to write her letters somewhere near here.”
“Doesn’t really help us now,” Dad says. He looks at me. “So where to?”
I turn my phone to show him. Andrew scoots forward to see. I’ve got Google Earth open and I’ve zoomed in on a grainy satellite image. “I tried to guess from Liv’s descriptions how far from town this conclave place might be,” I say. “Then while we were driving I started scanning around the satellite images. See there, a large roof and a slightly smaller roof not far from it, then a few very small ones. The house, the communal area, and the cabins, maybe. You think?”
Dad’s nodding and Andrew says, “I can only see six cabins and Liv’s letters said eight. But the trees could be obscuring the other two.”
“Exactly. She said the two back-most cabins were under the edge of the trees. This has to be it, right? I mean, there’s very few properties out that way, most of them small buildings and big land. It didn’t take too much searching to find a layout that matches her description. And it’s the only one that does.”
“Thank you, modern technology,” Andrew says.
Dad hits the gas and we lurch forward. “This way?”
“Yep, keep going straight out of town. I’ll tell you when to slow down and look for the driveway.”
It’s not far at all and I have a strange combination of feelings. Extreme excitement that we’re finally doing something tangible, that we’re finally close, coupled with terror at what we might find. The Germans probably have a great word for this sensation. I point ahead on the left. “There.”
Dad slows, frowns. “It’s nothing but trees and— Oh, there you go. A gate.”
Set well back, easily obscured and easy to drive right by if you weren’t looking for it, the gate is old and rusty, just a regular three-metre farm gate hung on wooden posts. No signs, no street number, the bush hanging over it.
“Look at the grass underneath,” Andrew says. “I don’t think anything’s been this way for a while.”
He’s right. It’s overgrown, the rough track worn down by traffic, but no sign of recent tyre marks. Grass and weeds grow tall in the parallel channels. It’s more than two months since Liv’s last letter. Did they ship out right then, anticipating our arrival? Or at least, someone’s arrival? Did Jonathan worry about what Liv might have said and decide not to take any chances? If so, this might be a dead end. No more clues. Abandoned since March. They could have gone anywhere.
“Get the gate,” Dad says, nudging my leg.
I startle, realise I’d been wool-gathering. “Sure.”
It’s cold as hell up here, winter just about to get properly underway, but already unseasonably icy. And this is high country Tasmania. They might even get snow now and then, but perhaps it’s a little too low for that. Or too early. Either way, the chill air, the damp gloom under the overhanging bush, the sigh of wind in the trees, it’s all unsettling. Sets my nerves jangling. The gate is padlocked closed with a chain.
I lift the padlock, the metal freezing on my fingertips, and shift my body so Dad can see. He makes an annoyed face, shakes his head. His door opens and he hops out.
“Hang on, son.”
He opens the tailgate of the Landcruiser and I hear rummaging about, then he returns with a large pair of bolt-cutters.
“The hell you have those for?” I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.
Dad grins. “Remember Nate Brown, the mechanic on the corner?”
“Yeah, I remember him. Grumpy son of a bitch.”
“You got that right. Well. His wife finally agreed with you and left him, and he sold up and went . . . well, I don’t know. Somewhere. Called in early retirement, I guess. He sold off loads of tools cheap before he went, probably to spite his wife before she could seize his assets or something. I don’t know. Other people’s business.”
I remember the Uber driver from last night. Family, the cause of all our joys and all our dismays.
“Anyway, he offered me a job lot of random tools for a hundred bucks and I grabbed it. These were in the box. I put it all in the car this morning, just in case.”
“Handy.”
Dad pins me with an index finger and a grin. “Make sure you tell your mum. She read me the third degree, ‘What a waste of a hundred dollars, as if you’ll ever use any of that old junk!’” Dad seems more pleased with himself than he really has any right to be, and I get a pang of heart pain. This is the kind of banter we always used to have, before Liv disappeared. I’ve missed it. Ironic that it surfaces now.
But Dad’s expression is infectious. I grin back. “I’ll be sure to tell her.”
“Damn straight.” He turns to examine the chained gate.
Andrew’s voice comes from the car behind us. “Hey, before you go vandalising property there, Clive, are we sure this is the place?”
“Nothing else for miles either side,” I tell him. “You saw the satellite image.”
“Okay then. If you’re sure.”
“It’s just a chain,” Dad says. “If we’re wrong, I’ll pay for a replacement. What is it? About ten bucks at Bunnings?”
Andrew smiles, shrugs, ducks back into the car and rolls up the window against the cold.
Dad looks at me, gives a crooked smile, and lines up the jaws of the bolt-cutters on the chain right where the padlock goes through. He strains, lets out a constricted grunt, then there’s a sharp clunk and the chain and padlock rattle loudly through the gate and fall to the mud.
Dad nods once, pushes it aside with the toe of his boot, and gets back in the car. I open the gate and he drives through, waits while I push the gate to again and climb back up into the passenger seat.
“All right,” Dad says, and all the lightness of moments before has evaporated. “Let’s see what’s up here.”
20
WE DRIVE UP THE LONG dirt track and eventually it opens out into a wide, cleared area. Liv’s letters flood back to me when I see the main house, the communal eating area, all the cabins. Beside the main house is a large chicken coop, but no chickens I can see, and several veggie beds that have gone to seed. It’s just like she described. I feel a strange déjà vu, like I’ve been here before, but I know it’s only my imagination. I picture Liv here, loving it on her arrival, then slowly becoming more concerned as the shine wore off, as the community dissolved into something else. Something dangerous, deadly.
The place is cold and dark and deserted. There’s an old Ford station wagon parked off to one side, as much rust as paint and the tyres are all flat. Looks like it’s been there for years. No other vehicles are in sight.
Dad pulls up beside the old Ford and squints out through the windscreen glass. “What now?”
“Start at the main house?” Andrew asks.
I point over towards the cabins. We can see the last two now, tucked under the overhanging bush, leaves and bird shit coating the roofs. “They’re all small, single room things. Let’s check them first, it’ll only take a few moments.”
Dry leaves and twigs crackle and snap underfoot as we climb out of the car and make our way over. There’s muted bird noises and a soft wind in the dry foliage, but the place is otherwise still. The communal area is full of dead leaves, twigs and bark, cobwebs in every corner. It doesn’t take long for nature to start reclaiming a place the moment people stop pushing themselves into it.
“It feels . . .” Andrew pauses, searching for the right word.
“Dead?” I offer.
He glances at me, tight-lipped. Nods.
None of the cabins are locked. They don’t even have locks. But I’m relieved to notice they do have sliding bolts on the inside, so people staying here could have privacy if they wanted it. To some degree anyway, the flimsy doors wouldn’t take much kicking in.
All the cabins are empty. A simple cot bed, side table, and a small wardrobe in each. A couple of the wardrobes have clothes in them, men’s and women’s, but nothing else. We check the single drawer in each bedside cabinet and they’re all empty.
When we get to the second row of cabins my heart rate goes up. Liv said she had one of these. The first one we open has a green cardigan hooked up on the end of the bed and Dad makes a small noise, looks at me.
I nod. “That’s Liv’s.”
Dad picks it up, balls it and presses it to his face, breathes deep. It’s a strangely vulnerable move and Andrew takes my hand as I suck in a breath. I imagine Dad thinking of Liv as a baby, a little girl, a surly teenager. All the stages of her life, he’s been there. And now she’s gone.
“Just smells like dust and damp now,” he says in a tight voice.
Dad moves to the bedside, then the wardrobe. There’s nothing else. His white-knuckled grip on the cardigan doesn’t loosen and in minutes we’ve checked all the cabins and the two toilet/shower blocks and the covered eating area and found nothing at all.
“Remember Liv talked about the oubliette?” Dad says.
How could I forget?
Andrew and I turn to look at him. Dad’s face is pale and drawn. “I want to find it before we look in the main house.”
“Why?” I ask, but I think maybe I know.
Dad looks towards the house, dark and still and somehow waiting. Its gloomy windows seem to look right back at us, but I know it’s empty in there. No one’s here, we’ve got all the time we want to take.
“I just need to see it,” Dad says.
I nod. “Okay. Liv’s letter said it’s about a hundred metres back in the bush, so I guess somewhere behind those two furthest cabins?”
“With a wooden cover and padlock,” Andrew says. “If it hasn’t grown over too much, we should find it easily enough.”
Dad goes to the car and rummages in the back, pulls out a crowbar. “Let’s go.” I notice on his return that he’s tucked Liv’s cardigan somewhere in the car. I hope that’s not the only thing we’re left with, to remember her by.
We track back and forth through tangled undergrowth and low-hanging trees for nearly fifteen minutes before Andrew calls out. “Over here.”
Something in the tone of his voice makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
We join him in an area that’s a little clearer than the surrounding bush and his distraught face is no surprise when we’re close enough to recognise what he obviously smells.
“Something died down there,” Dad says tightly.
“Something?” I ask.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I’ve never heard Dad say that word before. His hands tighten and loosen on the crowbar, the cold making his fingers red, the grip making his knuckles white. Our breath plumes in the air, all of us a little ragged, breathing hard through our mouths, trying not to smell the rot and corruption rising up.
Dad crouches, wedges the crowbar into the hasp of the padlock and levers the whole thing off the wood. It splinters and tears free.
“Cover your faces,” Dad says, pulling his jumper up over his nose and mouth.
We do the same and Dad steels himself, then flings back the one metre square wooden slab. The stench wells up even through the barriers we’ve raised and Dad barks a noise of grief as Andrew and I make constricted noises of our own.
In the bottom of the hole a twisted body lays, mostly stained clothing stuck across little more than bones. A sob escapes Dad and my own eyes are blurring with tears, then Andrew says, “Blonde hair.”
His voice is tight, on the verge of sickness maybe, but he points, says it again. “Blonde hair. Liv is brunette.”
He’s right. And the long blonde hair, ragged and dirty, lies across two emaciated shoulders where it emerges from under a black ballcap. The cap is dirty too, but a pale circle on the front triggers a memory.
“It’s Chloe,” I manage to choke out.
Dad staggers forward and grabs the wooden cover again, then makes another strangled noise when he notices the gouges in the wood, blood-stained and ragged. A broken fingernail sticking out of one. Small scallops of earth have been clawed out of the side of the hole, making ragged steps, someone desperate to reach the wooden trapdoor. Dad slams the lid back over and we all stumble away. Andrew turns aside and pukes. Dad and I gasp deep breaths.
“Chloe?” Dad manages. “You’re sure?”
“Blonde hair,” I say breathlessly between gasps. “And a Blind Eye Moon cap. Liv’s letters described her.”
“His own daughter?” Dad says.
His eyes are haunted and I can hardly bear to meet his gaze. I just shake my head, incomprehension robbing me of my voice. Andrew steps up to us, puts an arm across my shoulders. “Sorry about that.”
I pat his hand. Who can blame him?
As one, we turn to face the main house, just visible through the trees.
“Can’t put it off,” Andrew says.
“Last chance,” Dad says. “We have to find something. We have to.”
21
THE FRONT DOOR of the main house is locked. WE go around the back and that’s locked too. The place is single-storey, weatherboard, old ’70s style with a veranda all around, wooden sash windows. Dad glances at Andrew and me, then lifts one leg and kicks hard at the back door. It bows, a cracking sound from the frame, and he kicks again. It bursts open.
“Anyone home?” Dad yells.
We’ve been pretty convinced no one is here, so Dad’s shout is strident and unexpected. My heart rate peaks once more.
“Fucking hell,” Andrew mutters.
“Might have been better to call out and then kick, Dad.”
A nervous laugh ripples around us, but fades rapidly. Chloe’s corpse still fills my mind, pushes aside almost all other thoughts.
After a few seconds’ pause, Dad sucks in a breath and then strides in. We follow.
The house is sparsely furnished, but well looked-after. Couches, tables and chairs like you’d expect in any country home. Pots and pans in the kitchen, bookshelves in the lounge. The shelves all hold esoterica, and new age, pagan and self-help books, like the shelves of a crystal shop in any tourist town across the country. There are three bedrooms, all with nice beds and linens, but the interior smells dusty and musty, like it’s been closed up and unheated for a long time. Weeks at least.
Dad flicks a switch and makes a noise of surprise when a ceiling light comes on, flooding the room with an orange glow.
“Power’s still connected then,” he says.
“I saw a private pole in the driveway,” Andrew says. “Seems Jonathan enjoyed the modern lifestyle while his acolytes lived like serfs.”
The anger in Andrew’s tone surprises me. He’s clearly furious with the whole situation but this is the first real indication we’ve had of it. I imagine the discovery of Chloe has pushed aside all reservations in him. Good. I need his energy.
Having done one quick walkthrough, confirmed we are as alone as we’d suspected, we stand in a tight group in the chill, dusty lounge room.
“So,” I say, glancing from Dad to Andrew and back.
Dad nods. “Leave no corner unexplored.” He turns and starts rifling through the drawers in an old writing desk in the corner of the room.
“I’ll check the bedrooms,” Andrew says.
That leaves me the kitchen. The tile floor makes this room seem colder than the rest of the house. Watery winter light filters in through grimy windows over a heavy, ceramic sink. I start rooting through everything. It’s mostly all the utensils you’d expect to find, nothing out of the ordinary in any other way. There are two big fridges and I figure Jonathan probably looked after perishables for the rest of the conclave in here. Then I notice a corner of paper in the gap between the two fridges. Something’s dropped down there and, presumably, not been noticed. My hand won’t fit in the narrow space and I dig a spatula out of a drawer and manage to hook the paper with that.
It’s an envelope with a name and address on it. My hands shake.
It’s addressed to Jonathan Drake, and the location is a place on Meredith Street in Strahan.
Got you, you fucker!
“Dad! Andrew!” I yell, and they come running. I hold up my treasure. “We have an address to visit.”
“You think that’s his house?” Andrew asks. “I thought this was his house.”
“Maybe he has more than one? Or this is somewhere he visits. Maybe an address he gives for mail so no one knows about this place? Either way, it’s a lead, right?” There’s a tone of desperation in my voice, but I can’t help it. We were so close to the end of the trail only moments ago.
“Strahan is pretty isolated,” Dad says.
“Wet, wild and west coast,” Andrew says.
He’s right. There’s very little north and south of Strahan but wild, mountainous bush, and only scattered localities on the way there. Queenstown is the nearest populated area and I think there are only a couple of thousand people in that town. Strahan probably has less than that. But it’s popular with tourists, partly because it’s so isolated, and partly for the history. I remember school lessons on the place. It has a huge natural harbour but with only a very narrow access, a notoriously shallow and dangerous channel entrance they call Hell’s Gates. And deep in the harbour is Sarah Island, a former British colonial penal settlement. It was only in operation for a little over a decade, if I remember my schooling, but got a reputation as one of the harshest penal settlements in the Australian colonies. Those lessons gave me nightmares, and now there seems to be some strange synchronicity that we’re being led to Strahan in this living nightmare.
