Chapter 9
The red-gold dirt snakes through the woods and the pale trunks of the ghost gums look like they’re drowning in a river of gold-red blood. The woods have a thin, muddy smell like wet bark and something else. Something animal.
We called them the Wicked Woods because they’re shadowy and endless, and everything in this town was wicked anyway. Including us.
Especially us.
The worst thing that ever happened to me, happened right here.
The second worst thing, too.
I kill the engine, and the hum of the road disappears, replaced by a heavy silence. There’s no other car in the parking lot, no noise at all, just a deep hush coming from the tree line.
The Wicked Woods stretch out in front of me, dark, still, silent. They feel like they’re waiting for something.
I open the car door before I can change my mind, stumbling out into the quiet dark. I shut it behind me with a dull thud and stand there for a moment, keys still in hand. I shift my weight, suddenly aware of how loud my breathing sounds out here.
Uneasy, I glance toward the woods. They’re too close. The trees huddle together like they’re whispering secrets. My secrets. I wonder if they remember what happened here. Wonder if they carry the weight of it like I do.
Wonder if they wake in the night, chest heaving, breath ragged, a dead man’s name on their lips.
My stomach turns, the heaviness in my chest suffocating. I want to turn and run. I can feel the past pressing in on me, whispering things I tried to bury.
I stagger back, vomiting so hard I see stars.
I crouch on the ground, palms on my knees, panting hard enough to blow about the dead leaves at my ankles.
I remain there, bent over and shaking as the sweat gathers into a single spot at the tip of my nose and drips heavily onto the red dirt.
Out of the corner of my eyes, a man walks foward.
Dark-blue jeans, brown belt, white tennis shoes.
I can’t see his face. I try to stand up, but my vision swims.
A tidal wave rises from my stomach, rushes up my throat, pours out my mouth. I vomit again and up it comes, secrets and water and guilt. I close my eyes, sweat trickling down my nose and chin.
“God,” Chris groans. “You all right?”
My legs shake. I don’t know how much longer they’ll keep me up.
“Melanie?”
He pushes something into my left hand. I close a clumsy fist around it and open my eyes. Water bottle. He crouches beside me, his right knee nudging mine. He unscrews the lid. “Drink this.”
The bottle shakes as I hold it to my lips.
I rinse my mouth out and spit heavily on the dirt while he quietly surveys the empty car park.
No one really knows the woods are here. Or cares.
Sometimes tourists stray down here, clambering noisily out of their little cars, while their sweaty kids trail behind them, whining the whole time.
They only last a few minutes before heading back to the surf beaches.
“Thank you.” I pass the bottle back to him, wipe my mouth with the back of my fist, and stand up shakily.
“Big night?” he asks sarcastically.
I give him a look. He knows where I was last night. Knows I was on the phone to him but doesn’t know about the nightmares that followed.
“Come on.” I swipe at my mouth. “Let’s go.”
I step forward, hoping my legs will carry me all the way down this dark path.
Chris doesn’t move. “No,” he says shortly. “I’m not taking another step until you tell me what the hell’s going on.”
Donny Granger.
The bile in my stomach rises. “You saw the…the profile I sent you last night, yeah?”
“Donny?”
My blood rings in my ears. I manage to nod.
“Yeah, I saw,” he says, inspecting me. “What about him?”
“I know where he is.”
He raises an eyebrow, silent for once. My eyes flick behind him to that narrow pathway in the darkness.
“I’ll take you to him.”
He hesitates, narrowing his eyes like he’s waiting for the punch line.
“Do you want to find him or not?”
“I don’t get it,” he finally says, throwing up his hands. “Is he waiting around the corner or something?”
“Yeah, he is.”
He stares at me.
I trudge back to my car, reaching into the boot. And I watch his face fall in shock when he sees what I’m holding.
A shovel.
—
Minutes later, he’s a few steps behind, feet crunching on the dirt.
“Quiet,” I hiss softly, “you need to be quieter.”
He gives me a suspicious look. “Are your mates waiting for me up ahead or something?” He pretends to scan the tree line, like he’s waiting for the townsmen to come charging out. “Hope you’re not thinking of doing me in, Melanie.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve thought about that.”
He snorts, treading quieter now, eyes wide with anticipation. If he does find this guy, it will make his career. I know he’s thinking of the story he’ll write, the breaking news, the pats on the back, Donny’s grateful, heartbroken family.
“When we find the body, we’ll call the police,” he says, serious now. “They’ll come and declare it a crime scene. They’ll want to know how you knew the body was here,” he adds nervously, as if afraid to scare me off.
I don’t answer, and he finally stops talking.
We walk in total silence. It’s a clear morning, no wind.
To our right is a lily pond, looking like something out of a children’s book.
The giant lily pads are the size of dinner plates and home to two softly croaking green frogs.
It’s beautiful but odd, completely out of place.
Makes you wonder what else there is to find here.
My chest feels too tight; I keep rubbing the soft place over my heart again and again.
Finally, we come to the fork, and a Bell Miner bird calls out in clear warning. Chris brushes past me, and I grasp a fistful of his shirt, slinging him back. “No!”
I must have snapped it, because he gives me a wounded look.
“Sorry,” I mutter. I don’t add that there’s a place just ahead that I don’t want him to see. A creek.
Two evil things happened in these woods. One, to Donny Granger. The other, to my grade-five classmate Amy Anderson. I’ll only tell Chris about Donny. He can write up the story, take the credit, and get me a job. I don’t want him finding out about Amy.
“Well.” Chris raises an eyebrow, waits. “Which track?”
“Neither.”
I veer off the track until I’m parallel to it. I face a sign, knee-high and faded.
It Is Prohibited to Cross the Fire Access Track
I step onto the fire track, and Chris shuffles into step behind me. I can hear the change in his breathing, the anticipation. He’s stepping carefully, lost in dreams.
And I creep forward, lost in nightmares.
—
The fire track has been swallowed by the bush.
A tunnel of tea trees closes in around us, their flaking limbs arching overhead to form a scraggly steeple.
It’s impossible to walk without tripping over a mass of roots or fallen branches.
I feel like I’d have to suck in my stomach or inch sideways like a crab just to move around.
And that’s just the beginning. The deeper you get, the more the woods begin to close in.
Vines twist around my ankles, and the undergrowth scratches at my legs like grasping fingers.
Branches rake across my face, clawing at my clothes as if trying to hold me back.
As if they’re saying, Don’t go farther. You won’t like what you find here.
Behind me, Chris falters, crying out softly in alarm. I whirl around, afraid. Chris flattens his back against a tea tree as a wallaby bounces past, half hidden among all the gray-brown bark. I watch it rush by, snorting at his fear.
“You’re all right,” I tell him, wiping the sweat from my upper lip. “Skippy won’t kill you.”
He gives me a look. “Feels like something will, though.” He frowns, looking up at the bony branches of the tea trees. “This place is creepy.”
“It gets worse,” I say cheerfully.
He rolls his eyes and for the next ten minutes, we weave around fallen tea trees, clambering over and under, swearing under our breath.
At some points, I hold the shovel in front of my face to break the silvery lines of cobwebs, bashing at the low-hanging branches.
All along, I’m fighting hard not to remember, but it comes back hard.
I’m walking in my father’s footsteps, taking the track he did. And like me, he wasn’t alone…
God, I shouldn’t have followed him. Why did I do that?
The Bell Miner’s call echoes through the woods, high-pitched, metallic: tink, tink, tink. When I was a child, I loved their background hum. Each call like a tiny bell being struck. Now I just hear:
Go back.
Go back.
A moment later, I swear I hear my father’s voice in their calls.
You fuckin’ dog.
A fallen she-oak blocks the path. My legs shake so badly, it takes me three tries to scramble over it. I reach the other side, landing hard enough that pain shoots up both ankles.
I rest my back against the tree, lowering my head because it’s spinning. Chris lands at my side with a thud, pushing the bottle into my hands again. “Drink,” he insists, annoyed. “Staying hydrated will help…”
He rambles on about lactic acid and body temperature until I rip the bottle from his hand and drink.
Get through this.
Get through this.
Make it right.
I spit on the ground, and he grimaces but at least he finally shuts up. And for the first time I wonder if he, too, is uneasy as hell.
I pass the bottle back to him, and he screws the lid back on.
“Thanks,” I say gruffly before stepping forward. “Come on, let’s go.”
Each step is a battle as the underbrush claws at my legs and branches tug at my sleeves.
Every noise we make feels amplified: our breathing, our footsteps.
A root sneaks out of the earth and I trip over it, steadying myself with a hand on a tree trunk.
I catch my breath and continue. The deeper we walk, the more it feels like the woods are watching, whispering.
And then I see it.
The crudely made cross is just two black twigs entwined with blue string, long faded.
I come to an abrupt stop. I remember setting that cross down so gently. Hoping it would dull my guilt, but knowing all along it wouldn’t.
I’m sorry.
At the time, I didn’t know his name. But a few days later, a man’s face flashed on the TV screen.
Donny left his home in Warrnambool in a white Mitsubishi Sigma in mid-July. He was believed to be traveling to South Australia to stay with a friend, but he never arrived…
That wasn’t true, though. I saw him in these woods. My father walked him through this path, the tip of his black fishing knife pressed hard into the man’s back.
Donny Granger.
He was the first, I think.
I doubt he was the last.
For years after, I found myself returning to his grave.
I’d be walking home from school, my bag slung heavily over my shoulder, and instead of walking home, I’d end up right here.
For hours and hours, I would sit beside this man’s grave.
Mostly I was silent, still. Sometimes I’d look up, shocked that I was sitting in total darkness.
Then I’d stumble home, ignoring Heath’s questions about where I’d been.
Why didn’t I call out? Why did I just freeze like a coward? And why did he even do it?
The yearly appeals were the hardest. Donny’s mum would face the camera, voice shaking, as she begged for information about her missing son.
As the years went by, her voice became steadier, her eyes more direct and focused.
Like she was resigned to the truth that he would never come home.
Then she simply started asking for closure.
“I cannot fully grieve until I know what happened to Donny. Give me that, at least.”
Dad saw the appeal, once. I was sitting in the lounge room while he sharpened his knife behind my shoulder. He sat still, eyes fixed on the screen, face unreadable, blank like a mask. I know he saw Donny’s face, but it washed over him without leaving a ripple.
The moment I sink the shovel deep into the ground, a voice taunts, You can’t do this. Your dad will be so angry. How do you even know he’s truly gone? What if he’s not? There’ll be hell to pay for this. He’ll be so angry, so angry…
My head spins. Chris calls out something I can’t hear.
You can’t do this…
To be honest, I thought this would be easier. But the longer I remain, the more I feel like I’m retraumatizing myself.
I cannot fully grieve until I know what happened to Donny. Give me that, at least.
I lift my head.
Yes, I can.
Because I must.
And if I do it vomiting, I do it vomiting.
“Here,” Chris says, reaching for the handle. “I’ll do it.”
“No.” I angle it away from him. “I have to do this myself.”
I grip the shovel and start digging.