Scar Town

PROLOGUE

My eyes flick open to a blood-red sky, water lapping at my face, head split-aching, my mouth a cave of pain. I hear footsteps move away, sloshing through the shallows. I don’t know if I’ve been out for a second or a year. I cough up a throatful of water and try to move but my neck screams in protest.

Broken? I wonder, too dazed to feel real panic.

My head throbs and I push up but the explo-sion in my neck is nuclear. My brain feels squishy, like a sponge full of water. I feel a hard, heavy throb at the front of my mouth. I touch my teeth. Fresh, warm blood. I rub it between my fingers, sniff it to check, as though I know what blood smells like. And, somehow, I do. Animal and mineral at the same time. Like meat and metal.

There’s a scream nearby, sending a thrill of fear through me. Without thinking, I turn fast, pain slicing me in half, and I see the house.

The house is where all this began.

ONE DAY EARLIER . . .

ONE
House

‘You coming in?’ J asks.

‘No way,’ I say.

‘It looks terrifying,’ Dar says with a crooked smile.

The three of us lean on our handlebars, breath-ing and sweating hard, late afternoon sun pinkening our skin and the sky. We stare out at the house that’s poking from the water about fifty metres from shore – weatherboards caked in mud and water weed, a ragged monster rising from the deep. Only the attic and half a storey below are visible above the waterline.

‘You guys are such babies,’ J says.

This is one of her favourite sayings. Ever since she and Dar turned thirteen and most kids in our year are still only twelve, she calls everyone a baby.

‘Do you think there’ll ever be a time,’ Dar asks, ‘when it’s not okay to call someone a baby?’

We stare at him.

‘Like, with anyone else, you can’t say, “Don’t be a blank.” But you can still say, “Don’t be a baby,” and no one ever sticks up for baby rights. Like, babies can’t speak, so maybe we shouldn’t be –’

‘Shut up,’ J croaks.

‘Okay,’ Dar says. He talks a lot when he’s scared.

I grab a muesli bar from my backpack, tear it into thirds and hand them a piece each. A low moan blows through the house, like it’s alive. As we chew, two smashed windows stare back at us, like eyes. And, way up top, at the peak of the roof, sits a crow, watching.

‘We’re not going in,’ I say.

‘Why not?’ J asks.

‘Because we don’t have a death wish,’ Dar says.

‘We didn’t ride out here for nothing,’ J counters.

‘It looks like it’s about to fall down,’ I say. ‘And, if we go in, it’ll be break and enter.’

‘It’s been underwater for seven years!’ J says.

It’s true. It’s been that long, almost. Old  Scarborough was drowned when I was five. Now, between the worst drought in history and the hole in the dam wall getting bigger by the day, the old town’s coming back. And no one wants that.

‘Anyhow, it’s already broken,’ J continues. ‘And no one owns it. So, technically, it’ll just be enter, not break and enter. And you’re the one who suggested we ride all the way out here.’

It seemed like a good idea when I thought of it. We’d all been watching from the far side of the lake as the water level dropped and the house revealed itself over the past few days. But now that I’m staring it in the face, I don’t want to go in. J throws her bike down on the lake edge, sits and takes off her shoes.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say. ‘You don’t even know how deep it gets.’

‘I can swim,’ she says, peeling off her socks, ‘so it doesn’t really matter how deep it gets, does it?’

I look at Dar and we shake our heads. This is classic J. (J is short for Juno, but she punches anyone who calls her that.)

The crow caws loudly from the top of the house as J starts into the water.

‘C’mon, it’s late,’ Dar says. ‘I’m going.’

He turns around and pedals across the dry, crackly mud to the trees and the trail. He stops a little way into the bush and turns to see if anyone’s following. I know I should. J is waist-deep now and doesn’t even look back. I, like always, am stuck in the middle.

Am I brave and reckless like J or a scaredy-cat like Dar?

It’s nearly six o’clock. Even if we leave now it’ll be dark by the time we get back. Mum will already be freaking out. I’ll have to tell her I’ve been hanging out with the Carpenter twins and breaking into a house. It’s hard to know which will upset her more.

I wipe the sweat from my eyes with the neck of my T-shirt. ‘The hottest summer and autumn on record.’ That’s what every adult in Scar Town says every time they open their mouth. I look out across the lake towards the safety of town, the crooked finger of Mt Scarborough towering over it, calling me home. The house leans and creaks, water sloshing around its waist.

What if she finds something cool inside? She’ll tell us she did even if she didn’t, and she’ll give me hell about it forever. The house is probably not as scary as it looks. It can’t be.

A frog grunts like a low bass drum. Birds whip and twitter and raark.

I lay my bike in the mud, next to J’s, zip my phone into my backpack and tuck the bag under my front wheel.

‘Will!’ Dar calls. I look back at him. ‘I’ll just have a quick look!’

I figure I’ll show J that I’m not a baby (not that there’s anything wrong with babies) then I’ll ride home and never come out here again.

I kick off my thongs and step into the water.

TWO
Within

The cold pierces my skin.

‘Will!’ Dar calls again. ‘Don’t!’

Even during a heatwave like this, the lake is always freezing. Mum says it’s just our bad-luck town, but my Geography teacher reckons it’s because the lake is so deep in the middle and holds so much water: six-hundred gigalitres.

I’ve lost feeling in my feet and the cold is quickly devouring my calves.

‘Wait up!’ I call to J as I wade, knee-deep, through a crowd of lily pads with thin blue dragonflies hovering over them. J has swum almost all the way out to the house. I can only see the roundness of her head and the chaos of her kicks and paddles. J and Dar both had floppy blonde hair till about a month ago when J hacked most of hers off without telling anyone. Dar says it’s to do with their mum, but J hasn’t spoken a word about her hair or her mum.

‘You guys suck!’ Dar shouts from shore.

It’s always like this. J acts without thinking. Dar would never leave the house if he didn’t have to. I’m somewhere in between. I want to be brave, so I usually side with J. Maybe I’m a follower. Or maybe I just can’t stand being beaten. Mum says my dad was competitive, too. Maybe he still is.

Dar calls, ‘I’m really going now, you guys!’

J reaches for the windowsill and hoists herself up. The water is around my chest now, weed stretch-ing from the deep dark all around, bright green on top, brown and mucky beneath. The slimy tendrils curl around my legs. I’ve always hated the lake. I believe all the stories people tell about the old town.

I push off with my toes from the muddy bottom and start to swim. The weeds slither around me, like eels. It’s hard to kick or paddle in the thick of it, but I swim as fast as my skinny arms and body will carry me.

By the time I make it to the house, Dar is wading into the shallows behind me, yelling, ‘Wait up!’ and J is already inside, out of sight.

‘What’s it like?’ I call, treading water, breathing hard, chest clamped by cold.

‘Wet!’ J calls back. ‘And dark.’

‘Are we gonna die?’

‘Prob’ly.’

I want to get out of the water but getting out means going inside. Across the lake I see the distant outline of shops on the main street and wonder if anyone can see me. Only with binoculars, I know. I’ve been watching the house through my dad’s old police pair, one of his few belongings Mum keeps in the house. His stuff just seems to make her sad. Sadder.

There’s a loud splash from inside and I look up.

‘You okay?’

No answer.

I reach up to the windowsill, try to get a grip, but all I do is rip down a handful of rotten timber, shower-ing my eyes. I splash my face to wash the shards away, blink hard, then reach and try again. Here’s hoping the foundations are stronger than the window frames.

I heave up and swing my leg over, scratching my thigh on rough timber, pulling myself onto the sill. In front of me is a long, dark corridor that seems to run from this side of the house right through to the other. A rectangle of pink sunset light splits the darkness through a doorway on the left about halfway down.

‘J!’ I call, finding it hard to believe that anyone would want to go in there.

She doesn’t respond.

I squint into the dark, struck by a dull, mouldy stench. The remains of a chandelier hang twisted and tangled from the hallway ceiling. Bits of furniture bob on the surface of the murky water – a chair, a once-gold picture frame, a candleholder.

‘J?’ I call again.

Nothing.

I ease myself down into the pitchy-black water till I’m waist-deep. The water’s even colder in here and the floor is squidgy. Mud smooshes between my toes and I wish I hadn’t kicked my thongs off back on the shore. I hear a noise and whip around to see Dar pulling himself up onto the windowsill, his lips and skin blue from cold.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ he pants.

He’s telling the wrong person.

‘Juno!’ I shout.

‘Call me that again and I’ll end you!’ says a voice.

I narrow my eyes, adjusting to the gloom. She moves and now I can make out her top half above the waterline at the end of the hall, in front of a narrow flight of stairs leading up to the next level.

Bannister rails for another set disappear down into the water.

‘Come see this,’ she says.

The house groans, timber-on-timber, cautioning me as I wade carefully onward. Sharp objects poke from the mud, nipping the soles of my feet.

Dar’s voice startles me, suddenly closer. ‘I wonder why they didn’t clear out the furniture when they sank the house.’

‘Dunno,’ I say.

‘There could be brown snakes in here. People found nests of them in their houses in the Falcon Ridge floods.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, eyes skittering around now, seeing every floating object as a snake. Nests. Do snakes even have nests? The dark timber ceiling and walls make it hard to see beneath the surface.

I make it to the open door on the left and I’m bathed in pink light. Three big, broken floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the water, back to town. Dark cloud shadows scud over Mt  Scarborough, rushing onto the lake, heading our way. The sun is low in the sky.

The ceiling of the room is vaulted, like a cathedral. Tall bookshelves hold piles of mush that might once have been books. There are gold light fittings on the wall and another huge chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Whoever owned the house had money.

‘I hate this place,’ Dar whispers from close behind me. ‘We should shoot your movie here,’ I say.

Dar’s been watching horror movies since he was eight. Kind of ironic that he’s so scared now. I remember the look on Mrs Devas’s face in year four when he shared the plot of When a Stranger Calls for show-and-tell. We’re always talking about making our own full-length horror movie. Dar’s working on a script about six kids trapped in an abandoned house, being hunted down and chopped up, one by one. He got the idea from every horror movie ever made.

‘We’re already in my movie right now,’ Dar says.

‘How does it end?’ I ask.

‘Not well.’

We continue along the hall, past a dining room with an upturned table and a piano lying twisted and broken, black and white teeth spilling onto the floor.

‘Look at this,’ J says.

I squeeze in beside her and gaze through the gloom. The thin, dark staircase is enclosed by walls on both sides and leads up to a closed door. The air here seems thick, somehow, like it’s still underwater, and a dark feeling rushes over me. It’s hard to put into words, the sudden sense of dread I feel.

‘What are we waiting for?’ J says and starts up the stairs.