A child’s bones, a lost girl, a mind adrift – sometimes what is lost comes back to haunt you…from an award-winning author comes a contemporary gothic tale of guilt, grief and redemption.
In the village of Kiln Creek in the Victorian Highlands, a ghost gum falls in a storm. Tangled in its roots are the bones of a small child and the tattered remains of her clothing, including a pair of bright-red sneakers.
Single mum Jude Mees is in her early forties and struggling to get her business off the ground while raising her ten-year-old daughter, Katie, and managing a fractious relationship with her controlling ex-husband. But when Jude learns that her mother, Nance, who still lives alone on the family property at Kiln Creek, is showing troubling signs of dementia, she has no option other than to return and check on her.
And indeed, all is not well at the farm. Nance is slowly drifting off into her own world, and there are other disturbing occurrences. Strange smells, inexplicably wet footprints, a voice in the night. As her daughter starts to sleepwalk and Jude’s nightmares take over her days, she begins to wonder whether her imagination is out of control or if something more sinister is happening …
A taut, claustrophobic exploration of what it means to be haunted – by our past, by fractured relationships, by a place we thought we knew and by our own unreliable memories.
The young Black Angus bull is flagging. Already full from the late spring rain, the creek is dangerously swollen now with floodwater, its muddy bank eaten away in places like this where the animal has been struggling to gain purchase and clamber to higher, drier ground. Good thing it fetched up right next to one of the snow gums; the tree’s roots are probably the only thing holding the bank together at all. There’s no time for Gordon to ride back and get the four-wheel drive. Its winch would be of little use once the bull is swept away – a leg snapped by the debris-strewn currents perhaps, lungs breath-starved and sodden – other than to pull out the carcass for burning.
Whatever Gordon’s going to do, it needs to be done now.
He taps his heels against Bill’s flanks, urging the chestnut gelding forward. Bill tosses his head as they approach the creek; he’s not happy about the rain that’s starting to fall in earnest and he’s even less happy about getting too close to the bull. A couple of metres away, Gordon pulls up, slips from the saddle with a coil of rope in hand. Reins hanging loose, Bill stands and waits. He’s a good horse, come a long away from the skittish, suspicious beast Gordon bought as a racetrack reject a few years back. Took a while to bring him round, to get him to trust that his new humans weren’t going to whip him, or yell at him, or ride him into the ground on a sore leg, but it was time well spent. He holds firm, watchful eyes on Gordon, awaiting the next move. A damn good horse.
The bull has eyes on Gordon as well. Those black, rain-soaked ribs heave as the man approaches, slowly, murmuring in low tones, ‘Easy, fella. Gonna get you out of there, I promise, but you gotta work with us, okay?’ Lucky this bull is a gentle one, given to regularly pressing his big head into Gordon’s chest for a scratch around the ears, but terror will trump gentleness any day of the week and Gordon is careful. He works his way down the bank, finding footholds on the exposed roots of the snow gum and steadying himself against the bull’s side. ‘Easy, easy now.’
It takes some back and forth in the mud but he finally gets the rope underneath the animal, tucked behind front legs that are starting to tremble from the effort of holding their ground, and ties it square at the shoulder. Not the most comfortable harness but it should hold. It’d better hold. Gordon gives the bull a reassuring rub then starts to climb back up. A root snaps beneath his boot and he slips, swearing as his right knee catches on the blunt edge of a rock jutting from the bank. He falls against the bull, who panics a little. Black legs churn the mud. The animal slides a few inches further down.
‘Hey, hey.’ Gordon wraps his arms around the bull’s neck, presses his face to its cheek. ‘Hey now, fella, don’t fuss. We got you. We got you.’
Once the bull is calmer, Gordon tries again. This time his steps are sure and soon he’s back on the high ground with Bill, tying the free end of the rope around the saddle horn. His knee smarts something shocking, that niggling old footie injury aggravated anew, and he’s looking forward to getting home, stripping out of his wet gear and sitting down with an icepack and a glass of whiskey.
But first things first.
Gordon tugs on the rope, satisfying himself that it’s secure and the saddle as well, then moves to Bill’s head. ‘Come on, mate, let’s get this done.’
It’s not the gelding’s usual line of work, pulling tired, half-tonne cattle out of rushing creek beds, and he baulks when Gordon leads him off. The resistance, the drag on the saddle, is unexpected and confusing. Bill swings around, eyes rolling. Stuck in the muddy bank, the bull grunts and tries again to pull himself up. Fails. Slides down some more. Gordon has a knife in his boot; if the animal starts to get swept away, he’ll have the rope cut quick as blinking. He’s not going to lose a horse to the floodwater as well.
He strokes Bill’s neck, lets him get a look at what’s going on. The rope tied to his saddle, tied to the bull, drawn taut. ‘See, mate, no big deal.’ Gordon pulls on the reins again, slow and strong – no point jerking a horse around if he’s already close to spooking – and Bill steps forward. Feels the drag but takes another step, then another, those powerful haunches bunching beneath him, rear hooves digging into the grass. The wind has picked up, blowing a gale into their faces, whipping the horse’s mane wild.
The bull, rope tightening behind his front legs, starts to move again. He half pushes, half pulls himself up the bank, able to gain a little traction now that some of his weight is supported. Still he falters, jerking the rope so hard that Bill is dragged back a pace. The startled horse wheels and slides and for a long and terrible moment Gordon sees them all dragged flailing into the creek. But Bill manages to square his feet and stand in place, and the bull is good as well, front legs sunk in now at the top of the bank. The animal bellows, a plaintive, exhausted plea, then snatches at a tuft of grass.
‘Steady there.’ Gordon scratches the side of Bill’s face, allows a few precious seconds for the horse to regain equilibrium before urging him on again. ‘We can do this, mate. Walk in the bloody park.’
Bill snorts and rubs his head against Gordon’s shoulder, then moves forward. The rope draws tight and the bull gets his legs beneath him, scrabbles up through the mud, and Gordon grins because it’s working this time, it’s bloody well working. He slaps Bill’s shoulder in encouragement as the horse marches on, hooves scraping out small divots of turf as he goes. The bull is almost out of the creek now, muscular hind legs at last finding the necessary leverage to heave that huge bulk through the mud.
It’s only then Gordon notices the new and dangerous lean on the snow gum.
With much of the supporting bank already chewed away by rushing floodwater, the bull’s struggles to free itself are destabilising what’s left, and the wind likely isn’t helping matters. The tree creaks and shudders. If it comes down, it’ll come down at an angle across the creek – right across the bull’s lower back.
‘Christ, Bill, move your arse!’ Gordon steps back and slaps the horse again, a hard whack across the rump this time. Just as he makes contact there comes an almighty cracking sound loud as a thunderclap, sharp as a gunshot, and Bill lurches sideways in fright.
Gordon stares open-mouthed as the tree crashes down, snapped roots flinging clods of earth into the air, while the mud-slathered bull gallops clear of the falling trunk that a second or two later would have shattered its spine. Too late he realises that Bill’s taking off as well, the rope once again tightening between the two animals, and there’s just enough time to clock that he’s about to be bloody well clotheslined by his own horse and a bull too witless to steer clear of a flood-swollen creek, before Gordon’s thrown onto his back. Tucking his head into his forearms, he curls himself away from the hoofbeats that pound inches from his ear.
After what feels an age, he lets loose a shaky breath and rolls over.
Bill has slowed to a lazy trot with the bull, surprisingly unbothered to find himself tethered to his rescuer, keeping pace. The gelding will stop soon, what with so much lush pasture to take advantage of, and Gordon will be able to catch them both up. He’ll make sure the bull isn’t hurt too bad, then get himself into the saddle and hustle them all back to the homestead before the storm breaks in earnest. Chair. Ice. Whiskey. Maybe not in that particular order. Still, he lies there a moment longer, eyes closed against the rain that falls onto his face and slides chill fingers along his scalp. It could have gone so bad. The floodwater and sucking mud. The crash of the snow gum, its torn and broken roots clawing at the air. The heavy cloven hooves thundering close to his head. So very bad, in any number of ways.
‘You’re breathing, aren’t ya?’ Gordon mutters.
He gets to his feet, mindful of his knee that’s throbbing like there’s a second heart tucked in behind the patella. Runs a hand through rain-soaked hair and scouts around for his hat. There, blown against the fallen tree, its broad brim caught between the craggy, come-hither fingers of its newly exposed roots. After all this, Gordon is damned if he’s going home without his hat. Limping, he makes his way back down the bank.
It’s not clear what it is at first, the small sphere suspended on one of the roots that hangs low over the cavity, its rounded surface mud-streaked and stained the colour of long-curdled coffee. Not until Gordon gets closer and sees the rest of the pieces, all that same sickly brown, a marked contrast to the blue fabric they’re tangled up in. Where the rain is washing off the dirt, the colour looks near to new but the condition is far from it, shredded by the insistent, invasive growth of the tree above. A person might be forgiven for thinking them merely sticks, pieces of snapped-off root maybe, even though they’re too straight for that. But there’s no mistaking the little toffee apple–red sneaker, its rubber sole patterned with a scattering of five-pointed stars.
Gordon grabs hold of one of the larger roots, using it to brace himself as he reaches down. He lifts the rounded object free, all the while telling himself that it’s not a good idea, no way, no how, yet doing it anyway.
Because how can he not?
Sinking his arse down on the muddy ground, Gordon turns the thing around in his hands. He wipes mud from the eye sockets, runs an unsteady finger across a row of teeth, so small, so very small. His sister keeps her son’s baby teeth in a tissue-lined box, all except the one that Danny swallowed with a mouthful of cake when he was six, just in case he wants them later. It gives Gordon the creeps but his sister once said she wished their mum had kept theirs.
Don’t you want to know where all your pieces are, Gordo?
Gordon swallows hard. The skull is too damn small and so are the bones strewn within and beneath the tree roots. He’s holding nothing but tragedy in his hands right now. Tragedy and, for someone out there, a whole mess of trouble.
