Night Lights, page 13
Owen: God, I seriously hope we’re not all cooped up in the cabin when he does.
NOW
We gather around the reception desk in the Bridgewater Guesthouse while Mum places a call to police. It involves several transfers and being placed on hold before she’s able to speak to a Sergeant Chapman at Hadley Police Station. Perhaps it’s because Zoey and Paul Hitchens are within earshot, or maybe because Mum is still unwell and genuinely confused, but she provides a patchy explanation of our situation, omitting several details about the nature of why we fled the cabin and the events leading up to it. Zoey slides me a look that confirms my own concerns: my mother is rambling. Her vagueness might come across as non-urgent.
I quickly ascertain that Sergeant Chapman doesn’t have anybody currently available. He promises to send a police officer out to the cabin first thing in the morning to look around, and suggests we find somewhere else to stay tonight until they’ve had a chance to visit the scene.
“He didn’t sound worried,” Mum says, placing the phone’s handset into the cradle.
Paul subtly removes the phone from the counter and places it back behind his reception desk. He’s pretending not to listen but has clearly heard every word.
“He suggested that if Marty was injured,” Mum adds, “he’s probably made his way somewhere for medical treatment. They’re going to call around and check all of the hospitals in the area.”
“What about Scout?” I say. “We can’t leave her out there for another night. She’ll be freezing.”
Mum’s forehead creases. “Do you think she might have found her way back to the cabin by now?”
“Can I please go and check?”
Mum slips an arm around my shoulders. “Of course, sweetie. We’ll all go.”
“I don’t want to,” Nika says, stroking Bunny’s fur in a self-soothing gesture. “I like it here.”
We glance around at the dingy old-fashioned foyer of the guesthouse. Compared to the cabin, it’s a palace. And can I really blame Nika? The last night that we spent at the cabin, she and I were scared out of our wits.
Paul makes a clucking sound of approval.
“I have a big toy box full of kids’ books and games in the conservatory out the back,” he says to Mum. “I can watch her if you like.”
Mum hesitates. Paul may have come to her rescue, but he is still a stranger. And with all that we’ve experienced in the last few days, I don’t blame Mum for being wary.
“I’m going to stay here with Nika,” she tells me. “Will you be okay going by yourself?”
“I’ll go with you,” Zoey says. She shrugs, giving me a hint of a smile. “I’m invested now.”
“You’re more than welcome to stay here tonight,” Paul says. “I only have the one room available, I’m afraid. We’ve had an influx of bookings since the latest sightings.”
Zoey rolls her eyes. It’s clear she doesn’t indulge the UFO hype the way the rest of the town does. Regardless of whether or not the residents believe in it all, it’s obviously good for business.
“It’s fine,” I say. “My mum and sister can share the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“I’m sure Paul’s got a fold-out bed around here somewhere,” Zoey says in a way that sounds like an order rather than an enquiry.
“Of course,” he replies tersely. “I was about to suggest it.”
Zoey offers to loan us the money to pay for the room since Mum doesn’t have her purse or any credit cards. Instead, Paul suggests that Mum logs into her internet banking on his computer and pay by direct deposit at the end of our stay.
“Our room service is only basic,” he says. “Soups, snacks, and sandwiches. But at least that way you can have dinner and breakfast. We’ll simply add it to your bill.”
Mum’s grateful. She’s still not quite with it, seemingly relieved to follow everybody else’s direction. It’s like yesterday when Dad ordered her into the car and she complied without putting up much of a fight.
Then again, so did I. Mum’s not the only one whose decisions have been haywire – whatever’s been screwing with her rational thinking has been affecting me also.
“Have another look for our phones,” Mum says as I’m leaving, sounding a little more like herself. “And see if you can grab a change of clothes for Nika.”
“Don’t forget my night-light, Owee,” my sister says.
“Good thinking,” I tell her. It’s amazing that she managed to fall asleep in the motel room last night without it. I don’t like our chances tonight in this old mansion with its creaks and groans.
Zoey and I don’t talk much in the short drive from the guesthouse to Cooee Cabin. I keep my eyes peeled for Scout while Zoey scrolls through radio stations on the car stereo. She’s unable to settle on anything and seems to have as much nervous energy as I do.
A feeling of dread resurfaces when we pull up outside the cabin. I try not to look at the place where the wheelbarrow used to be.
“No car,” Zoey says as we climb out of her hatchback. “No lights on inside.”
The full dog bowls I left outside the cabin’s door confirm that Scout hasn’t been back either. I look for her anyway, walking the length of the verandah and calling her name. My voice echoes across the rolling mountains. There’s no telltale bark or scampering through the undergrowth.
Inside the cabin, I grab a plastic bag off the floor and cherrypick through the mess for essentials only – Nika’s drink bottle, the children’s Panadol, my asthma inhaler, Mum’s reading glasses – and try not to disturb anything else.
“Don’t forget clothes for your sister,” Zoey reminds me. “And maybe grab your toothbrushes?”
I watch her from the corner of my eye, the way she’s peering into rooms like she’s hunting for clues. Clues about what happened to my family? Or some kind of evidence that her brother had been here on the day he disappeared?
In the front bedroom, I grab Nika’s pyjamas and some fresh clothes from a bag beside the bed. I reach for the night-light plugged into the power socket near the floor. In my haste, I yank the small star-shaped light at an angle and the power point cover starts to come with it. Kneeling to take a closer look, I discover the whole unit is loose. I pocket the night-light and try to make the power point sit flush with the wall again.
“What have you broken?” Zoey says from the doorway.
“This thing’s falling off. It’s barely holding on by one screw.”
She hurries over. “Be careful with that! You’ll zap yourself!”
“I can’t leave it half hanging out like this. Nika could be back in here again tomorrow.”
“Hang on a sec.” Zoey holds up one hand. “Let me turn the power off first.” She disappears to look for the meter box and is gone for a minute before I hear her call out, “Okay! It’s safe now!”
She returns just as I’m easing the power point out of the hole in the timber panelling. I let it dangle by its wires. They look old and damaged; Zoey was wise to turn off the main power switch.
“Something’s behind here,” I say, “blocking it from going back in properly. I might have knocked something loose in the wall cavity.”
Zoey screws up her face. “I hope it’s not a dead rat.”
“We’d probably know that already by the smell. But this whole cabin stinks, so who can say?”
I examine the hole. Zoey kneels beside me and shines her phone’s torch light to help me see. A plastic-wrapped object is wedged in among the wires, attached with duct tape. It’s the size of a cake of soap. Sticking my fingers through the small opening to pull it loose, I take care not to drop it into the wall cavity.
Once I have it, I hold it out to Zoey. “What is it?”
Her lips part as she studies it, almost like she recognises it. Has she seen something like this before?
She deftly tears off the tape and plastic wrapping, and I spy a flash of green. It takes me a second to comprehend what it is.
A folded wad of hundred dollar notes.
“Whoa,” I say. “What the hell is that?”
Zoey swallows and says nothing.
“How much is there, do you reckon?”
“Five thousand dollars,” Zoey replies without skipping a beat.
I blink at her. “How can you tell?”
Zoey hands the money to me and stands up. “That’s how much there was in the wad I found hidden under a loose floorboard in my brother’s bedroom.”
“Wait, what?”
Zoey’s already walking out. I catch up to her in the living room, the cash still gripped in my hand. She’s chewing her fingernail and staring at the patch of blood on the rug.
“We should leave now,” she says. “Have you got everything you need?”
“What’s going on?” I ask her. “Whose money is this? Does it belong to your brother?”
Zoey shakes her head. “I think it belongs to a guy called Wilko.”
“And the money you found in Damian’s bedroom? Does that belong to Wilko too?”
She gives me an anxious look. “I think so.”
We both take in the ransacked kitchen, the cupboard doors hanging open.
Did somebody come here searching for this money? Will they come back and try again?
“Did Damian steal it?” I say.
Zoey’s brown eyes flash like she’s about to jump to her brother’s defence. Then her shoulders slump and she releases a weary sigh. “I hope not. I wish I could say he’d never do something like that, but I’m just not certain.”
It’s a conversation to be continued later. Right now, I need to grab my stuff and leave. I shove the money into my pocket for safekeeping. Zoey agrees that we’ll mention both amounts to the police in case it’s relevant to Marty’s disappearance and also Damian’s.
Why hasn’t she mentioned what she found in Damian’s bedroom to the police before now? Is she trying to protect him?
It’s growing dark by the time we return to Wooralla’s main street. Zoey parks outside The Flying Saucer just as the diner is closing. She asks me to wait because she wants to run inside and grab something for me. She returns with a paper bag full of blueberry muffins.
“They’ll only get thrown out anyway,” she says, handing me the bag. “Take them back to the guesthouse for your mum and sister.”
I feel guilty about taking them, but I sheepishly accept. As we part ways, I avoid making arrangements to see Zoey in the morning. Meeting with police tomorrow is a family matter, and I have to remind myself that Zoey and I are virtual strangers. The cash in my pocket is weighing heavily on my mind, and I suddenly feel like I might not be able to trust her. As helpful as Zoey’s been, there seems to be a lot she’s not telling me.
There are no lampposts in the historic township, something I’m only now noticing as murky evening descends along Wooralla’s main street. Most of the shopfronts are now closed, their window displays partially illuminated with warm golden light. An orange spotlight highlights the old timber rotunda in the park, with two more trained on the wooden bridge arching up over the creek. A green light bulb above the entrance to the UFO Museum creates a suitably eerie atmosphere.
I pick up my pace on my way to the guesthouse, careful not to trip each time the concrete footpath intersects with a bluestone laneway. The cold night air is already tightening my lungs, my breath swirling around my face in visible puffs. A car rolls by slowly, then another. A few people cross the road up ahead on their way to the two-storey pub on the corner. Somewhere beneath my layers of anxiety, the distant clink of glasses and whiff of chimney smoke are comforting and familiar.
Opposite the pub, the wrought-iron fence of the Bridgewater Guesthouse is illuminated by garden lights. As I hurry towards it, there’s a scrape on the footpath behind me. I half-turn, sensing somebody approaching. Heavy footfalls close in fast.
Instinct kicks in. My own pace quickens, but it’s too little too late.
A hand clamps over my mouth at the same time an arm locks across my chest. I feel my feet leave the ground as I’m dragged backwards into the nearest laneway.
DAY SEVEN
Three days ago
Damian Kostas was on my mind as we drove out to the Picnic Point Lookout. I felt horrible about how I’d left things with Zoey in the diner yesterday when I’d suggested her brother might have skipped town voluntarily. Even if it was true, it was insensitive of me to be so presumptuous about a person I’d never met.
Zoey was right: I didn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t know the Kostas family at all. In a few days, my own family, damaged as it was, would head back to Melbourne and move on with our lives, and everything that happened here in Wooralla would become a passing memory.
Yet Zoey would remain here in this reality where her brother was missing, occasionally sharing that information with temporary visitors who could do absolutely nothing to help. Or worse – insult her by having opinions about things they knew nothing about.
And now I couldn’t stop thinking about the Kostas siblings, like a knot of nervous energy that I didn’t know how to untangle.
When Uncle Marty had joked about alien abduction this morning over breakfast, my mind jumped straight to Damian even though I knew the idea was ridiculous. It was what the guy in the lumberjack coat had said that was sitting weirdly with me: Damian’s disappearance was “mysterious” and he didn’t “want to think about it too hard”.
“How does somebody vanish without a trace?” I mumbled now, not really meaning to mull it over out loud.
“What’s that, bud?” Marty asked.
We were shoulder to shoulder in the back of the car. The visit to the lookout had become a whole-family outing, and you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. Marty and I had already made plans to do the self-guided walking tour of the UFO landing site after our visit to the museum, and as soon as Nika heard us planning it she wanted to tag along. Mum seemed low on energy this morning, but claimed she’d get stir-crazy from another day inside the cabin. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to be left alone with her husband.
Then, in a surprise twist, Dad said he would join us.
It may not have been his intention to cast a gloom over the outing, but that’s what happened anyway. At least Scout seemed happy about the prospect of a new place to explore.
“Damian Kostas,” I said to Marty. “Where do you think he went?”
Marty tilted his head, pondering. “What did that guy say? Damian was ‘here one minute, gone the next’?”
Dad shifted in the passenger seat. “What guy?”
He’d been quiet and morose for the entire car ride, except for mumbling occasional directives in regards to Mum’s driving.
“This dude we saw hanging around outside the cabin,” I replied.
Dad jerked in his seat to look at us. “What? When was this?”
“It’s okay,” Marty said. “He was looking for somebody who used to live there. We sent him on his way.”
“When was this?” Dad said again. “How close did he get to the cabin?”
Marty and I exchanged a look. Mum’s attention was drawn away from the road for a second. How had Dad’s mood gone from zero to a hundred so fast?
“It was yesterday,” I said. “In the morning.”
“He was out on the road,” Marty added. “Nowhere near the cabin.”
Although, now that I thought about it, that couldn’t really be true. The guy had mentioned seeing a woman and kid on the verandah, which meant he must have come onto the property and walked a decent distance up the driveway. Cooee Cabin couldn’t be seen from the road.
“What did he look like?” Dad asked. “Was anybody with him?”
“Why?” Marty said. “He was just some skinny young dude with neck tatts and a beat-up ute. What does it matter?”
Dad turned to face the windscreen again and didn’t say anything else. I could hear his fingers drumming a nervous beat against the armrest. Marty arched an eyebrow at me and I shrugged in response. Mum turned up the radio, claiming she wanted to hear the news, but it was an obvious attempt to fill the awkward silence.
The winding road up to the lookout had a few tight bends to accommodate such a steep incline. Mum took it slowly since the roads were still damp from overnight rain. The bushland here was dense and harsh, trees towering up and over the road to create a canopy. It blocked the weak winter light and cast a pall over the already-strained vibe inside the car.
There were a few driveways here and there, glimpses of houses nestled in among the trees, and long fences dividing properties. The higher we climbed, I kept trying to picture that bus full of schoolkids and teachers from Hadley making their way up here in the seventies. It was a miracle their bus made it. The corners and steep sections were a challenge even for our station wagon.
It was only when we approached the turn-off for the lookout that the trees thinned out. At some stage they’d been felled to create a large gravel parking area. Behind this was a grassy clearing which, according to my pamphlet, was the UFO landing site.
The car park was empty. Mum still took her time parking, as if it was as crowded as a shopping mall at Christmastime. A couple of hikers were standing in front of an information board, and they soon wandered off down a trail that was marked as the route to the lookout.
Nika excitedly pointed out a steel sculpture in the shape of a UFO.
“Look!” she squealed. “Spaceship!”
The two-metre-tall steel skeleton of a flying saucer was positioned on an angle, like it was about to shoot off into the sky. Even from the car, I spotted the weeds tangled around the sculpture’s base, along with very obvious signs of rust. There were a few wooden tourist signs leading to the grassy clearing, mostly faded and rotting from years of exposure to the elements. Considering how many tourists apparently flocked to this place every year, it really could have used a spruce up.
We visited the lookout first, the beginning of the walking tour according to my map. It was a fenced-off slab of rock jutting from the side of the mountain with majestic views across the nearby hills and valleys. Dad insisted on holding Nika’s hand the entire time, not wanting her out of his sight. He watched the hikers suspiciously while Mum and Marty made friendly small talk with them. Even after they’d left, Dad kept half an eye on the trail leading back to the car park.
