Night Lights, page 4
“No junk food,” Marty said. “Pinky swear.” He crossed his heart with his pinky finger, then kissed the fingertip. It always made Mum laugh because it was from some movie she watched obsessively as a teen.
Dad, on the other hand, released an impatient huff about their private joke.
“Let’s go,” he muttered.
As we made our way over to The Flying Saucer, it occurred to me how out of place it looked compared to the rest of the town. It was the wrong era. More than that, it wasn’t even from the same century. The shopfront doors were heavy chrome with diagonal push bars leading through to a floor covered in black and white diamond linoleum. Framed posters lined the walls from old movies, things like The Day the Earth Stood Still and It Came from Outer Space. The only one I recognised was the I Want to Believe poster from The X-Files. Uncle Marty had it on a T-shirt.
The diner was mostly empty. A couple of guys were sitting up at the counter on bar stools, one older than my dad with shaggy hair and a grizzled beard, the other white-blond and thickset, not much older than me. They were positioned a few stools apart, chatting like they knew each other. The waitress behind the counter reached for some menus when she saw us come in. She was dressed head to toe in black, apart from a yellow-and-white frilly apron bearing the diner’s screen-printed logo.
“Anywhere you like, kiddo,” Uncle Marty said to Nika. There were half a dozen square tables with butter-yellow dining chairs, but my sister skipped over to a more sedate booth in front of the window. I slid onto the vinyl seat beside her, and Marty sat opposite. He couldn’t resist taking photos of everything from the light fittings to the napkin dispensers.
“This place is, like, sooo Instagrammable,” he drawled in a fake American accent, bugging his eyes at Nika before snapping her picture as she giggled.
At this, the two guys at the counter exchanged a look. The young guy murmured something to the older one. He nodded, watching us.
“They’re waiting for the punchline,” Marty said quietly, noticing them too. “A gay dude, a ginger, and a Thai kid walk into a bar …”
I sniggered just as the waitress arrived at our table. She had thick dark hair cut into a blunt fringe at the front, and wore severe eyeliner that curled cat-like at the corners.
“Welcome to The Flying Saucer,” she said, handing around menus and giving Nika a kids’ placemat to colour in. She then reached into her apron pocket and pulled out three green paper tickets. Her fingernails, painted in chipped black polish, were chewed painfully short. “Each meal purchased gives you complimentary entry into the UFO Museum.”
“The what now?” Marty said with a light laugh.
The waitress ducked her head and motioned at something through the window. Across the road was a large cream timber shed with a peaked roof. Above the barn door entry was a sign with the words UFO MUSEUM painted in green letters. One barn door was decorated with a crude mural of an alien, the other with a glowing spaceship.
“You have a whole museum dedicated to UFOs?” Marty asked.
The waitress tilted her head. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s why most people visit Wooralla,” she said. “Hoping to glimpse strange lights in the sky. We have the highest incidence of unidentified flying object sightings in Victoria.”
This fact seemed to bore her; she sounded like she was reciting it from a script. Meanwhile, Marty was so surprised at this new information that his eyebrows almost flew right off his face.
“Are you serious?”
He was like a kid who’d been informed Santa Claus would be joining us for breakfast.
“Yep,” the waitress replied with little enthusiasm. She pointed her finger skyward. “Keep your camera handy and your eyes on the skies.”
It seemed like a line she’d said a hundred times before. She glanced over at the two guys sitting by the counter as the younger guy slid off his stool and headed towards the restrooms. The bearded guy flipped the page of his newspaper, no longer interested in us.
While my uncle seemed awestruck, Nika was far more interested in acquiring pencils to colour her placemat. The waitress grabbed a small pot of crayons from a nearby table.
“What’s your name, munchkin?” she said, placing the pot down.
“Kannika.”
“Wow, that’s a pretty name.”
It was the name my sister’s birth mother gave her on the paperwork while the adoption was being processed. Mum’s idea was that she’d name the new baby when she met her for the first time and saw her face – then Mum would know what her name should be. My dad wanted to call her Doris, after his late mother. Thank god Mum negotiated her way out of that one. By the time she held Nika in her arms, Mum had grown so used to referring to her by her birth name that there didn’t seem to be a good reason to change it.
“My name’s Zoey,” the waitress said.
Nika grinned. “I like your name too.”
“It’s Greek,” she said, pulling a pen and notepad from her apron. “It means Life.”
Nika turned to me. “What does my name mean again, Owee?”
The waitress noticed me for the first time, giving me the once over. She had thick dark brows and deep shadows under her eyes, intensifying the colour of her brown irises.
“Beautiful Flower,” I said, averting my gaze.
My neck flushed the colour of my hair. Uncle Marty was trying not to grin.
The waitress shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “And what does your name mean, Owee?”
“Owen,” I murmured, looking everywhere but her face. “I don’t know what it means.”
Marty reached across the table and squeezed my forearm. “Sure you do, bud!” He addressed the waitress. “It means Young Warrior.”
“Wow,” she said. “You sound pretty damned courageous, Owen.”
I knew she was teasing; heat spread all the way to my face anyway. I slid a death stare at my uncle, who looked utterly delighted.
“I’ll come back in a few minutes,” Zoey said, giving us a faint smile before moving to the door to greet new customers.
Marty picked up a laminated menu and pretended to peruse the offerings. “Owee and Zoey,” he mused to himself in a singsong voice.
I kicked him under the table. “Shut it, old man.”
He scoffed and clutched at his heart like I’d mortally wounded him, then broke into a grin so large I couldn’t help but return it. After the rough few weeks he’d had following his breakup, I was pleased I could make him smile, even if it was courtesy of my awkwardness around girls.
The place had filled up more by the time we received our meals, a mixture of families and selfie-obsessed twenty-somethings. At one stage I caught Zoey watching a group of loud young women posing for photos around the jukebox. I couldn’t tell whether she wished they’d leave or if she wanted to ditch her apron and join them. Zoey looked about their age, maybe a little on the younger side, but something about the way she carried herself seemed older than her years. The dark circles around her eyes made her appear worn down, and she drifted around tables like she was invisible, an obvious hang to her head.
We took our time eating, happy and warm in our booth as a wintery wind scattered crinkled leaves across the road outside. We’d almost finished when a text came through on Marty’s phone.
“Your mum says they’re on their way back.” He held the phone up to show me. “Looks like we’ll have to save the UFO Museum for another day.”
“I’m sure Dad wouldn’t want to miss it,” I said dryly.
Marty snorted, draining his coffee. He’d decided it was ‘out of this world’ enough to order a second cup.
As we moved to the register to pay, I noticed the bearded guy still sitting at the counter with his newspaper. He jutted his woolly chin in my direction.
“Enjoying our little town?” His voice matched his beard, thick and scratchy. Long crow’s feet curved down around his cheekbones, and his eyes had a glint of humour about them. “Where are you folks from?”
Zoey held out the EFTPOS machine for Marty to tap his card. He was momentarily distracted, so I answered, “Melbourne.”
“You over at the Bridgewater Guesthouse, then?” he asked. “Or the campground?”
“We’re staying in a cabin up the mountain,” Marty said, slipping his card back into his wallet. He looked at me for confirmation. “What’s the road called? Prospect Way?”
Zoey’s gaze darted towards the bearded man. I noticed the subtle lift of his bushy brows. He held Zoey’s eye contact until she turned to hand Marty his receipt.
“Think I know the place,” the old guy said. “Good view of Wooralla Ridge from up there.”
Zoey shoved her copy of the receipt into the cash drawer and slammed it shut.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty spot,” Marty said, taking Nika’s hand. “A little way out of town, but it’s lovely and quiet.”
The old guy was about to say something else. Zoey cut him off.
“Hope we see you in here again soon,” she said, smiling at us. It would have been beautiful if it wasn’t so forced.
As we were leaving, I glanced over my shoulder to see Zoey leaning close to the man, her face locked in a frown. Their mouths moved quickly in an angry exchange before she flicked his newspaper onto the floor and stormed off into the kitchen.
Low clouds had slunk in by midday, bringing steady rain against the cabin’s tin roof. Our earlier plan of exploring one of the nearby walking tracks soon trickled away along with muddy water down the mountainside. Mum dragged in a stack of board games from the car and plonked them on the plastic dining table. Nobody showed any interest. Board games were basically bored games, a last resort when there was absolutely nothing else to do.
Dampness drew out the house’s odours again, not helped by the windows and doors being shut against the chill. Scout lingered near the front door, but no one wanted to go out and play with her in the weather. Dad watched a fishing show on TV while Mum and Nika curled up with books in the main bedroom. Uncle Marty had a novel of his own; he’d parked himself in an armchair beside the wood heater.
I attempted to google more about Wooralla’s history of UFO sightings, the connection dropping out every time I tried. It was frustrating being so cut off from technology and the outside world.
“Phones don’t work. No internet,” I mumbled to myself. “What would we do if there was an emergency?”
Dad’s eyes didn’t leave the TV. “Drive into town for help.”
“What if the car wouldn’t start?” I said. “Or you weren’t here? I can’t drive …”
“God forbid you have to rely on your feet to get you to safety.”
“What if I couldn’t walk?” I countered. “Like I’d broken my leg. What then?”
Dad shook his head in disgust. “You’d probably stay here and die, all because you couldn’t book a bloody Uber.”
Marty glanced up from his novel. “Shit, Tugger. That’s a bit dark.”
Dad shifted his weight on the couch and didn’t respond.
“So you’re saying,” I pressed, “if it was you, you’d drag yourself all the way down the mountain and into town with a broken leg?”
“What other choice would I have?” Dad said. “I’d suck it up and do what needs to be done.”
“What if you passed out from the pain? And you were stuck outside all night, exposed to the elements. You’d be much worse off than if you’d stayed put.”
“Good point,” Marty chimed in.
“Staying put would just delay the inevitable,” Dad said. “If no one knows you’re here, you’ll eventually succumb to your injuries or starve.”
“The human body can survive for weeks without food. I could ration what’s here and wait it out until help arrives.”
“See, that’s the problem with you, Owen,” Dad concluded, still focused on the TV. “Instead of being a man about it, you’d sit around and wait to be rescued.”
“Hey,” Marty said, “come on, Mick. It’s only a hypothetical. There’s no problem with Owen.”
He flashed me a sympathetic smile. Dad said nothing. I wished I’d never brought it up.
Abandoning my phone, I played on my Switch for a while. Mum eventually wandered into the living room and sat beside Dad on the couch.
“Nika’s nodded off,” she said, picking up her Sudoku book. “I was tempted to join her. Can’t seem to shake this headache.”
I was feeling woozy myself with the house so closed up and stuffy.
It was almost an hour later, while Marty and I were hunting for snacks in the kitchen, that Nika emerged from the bedroom, dragging Bunny limply in one hand.
“Mum-mum,” she said. “I don’t feel good.”
“Uh-oh.” Mum jumped off the couch and padded across the floorboards in her socks. She slid a hand onto Nika’s forehead. “Like a headache? Or a tummy ache?”
“Tummy,” Nika said, wincing. She pressed a hand to her stomach. Her face was pale compared to the rest of us. We were all flushed from our proximity to the wood heater.
Mum turned to me and Uncle Marty. “What did she eat at the diner?”
Marty shrugged, tipping potato chips into a bowl. “Nothing unusual.”
“We told you not to feed her rubbish,” Dad said, levelling a dark look at the two of us.
“We didn’t,” I replied at the same time Marty said, “She just had pancakes.”
Dad hauled himself off the couch, holding one hand up in a stop talking gesture at Uncle Marty. “Look, I know you live a child-free lifestyle, but if you’re watching our kids, you need to respect our rules.”
Marty gave an incredulous laugh. “Thank you, Mick. I’m well aware of your rules. I’ve been babysitting your kids since they were infants, in case you’d forgotten.”
“Okay,” Mum said. “Can we—”
Dad moved across the room towards us. “So why’d you let Nika gorge herself stupid on god knows what?”
“I didn’t,” Marty said, his voice rising. “She had two pancakes and half a glass of orange juice. Amazingly, I didn’t let her smoke crack or lick the bloody toilet bowl either!”
“Martin,” Mum scolded.
Dad moved a step closer, folding his arms. “What’s your problem?”
“I’m not the one with the problem, mate,” Marty replied.
“Mummy?” Nika’s face was ashen. “What’s that noise?”
Mum had temporarily forgotten about Nika while her brother and husband faced off against one another.
“You’ve been in a foul mood all day,” Marty said. “Ever since we left Melbourne, in fact.”
“Is that right?”
“All I did was take your kids for some breakfast,” Marty said, “and you’re tearing strips off me.”
“Oh, I get it,” Dad said. “I’m supposed to be grateful because you shouted my kids a meal.”
“Huh?”
“Here.” Dad snatched his wallet off the kitchen counter. He removed two twenty-dollar notes and flicked them towards Marty’s chest. They brushed against his checkered shirt and fluttered to the floor. “I’m perfectly capable of feeding my own kids. I don’t need your charity.”
Marty looked helplessly at Mum. “What the hell is happening?”
My mother pinched the top of her nose. Scout snuffled and scratched at the base of the front door.
“This isn’t about Nika feeling sick, is it?” Marty said to Dad. “You’re just looking for a reason to complain about me being here. You’ve made it pretty obvious you didn’t want me to come.”
“Why did you come?” Dad asked.
Was this what people called cabin fever? We’d only been cooped up together for twenty-four hours and already everyone was completely irritated.
Nika moaned and swayed on the spot. “Make it stop, Mum.”
“What, sweetie?”
“That noise!” Nika cupped her hands over her ears, letting Bunny drop to the floor. Scout paced back and forth.
“Enough now,” Mum hissed at Dad and Marty. “This is ridiculous.” She moved to Nika’s side and tried to take hold of her hands. Nika clutched both of her ears even tighter, screwing her face into a knot.
“I don’t like it!” she said. “Make it stop!”
Mum crouched in front of her, scowling in my father’s direction. His mouth tightened and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Marty’s forehead wrinkled like he felt guilty.
“They’ve stopped, sweetie,” Mum said. “It’s okay.”
Scout lowered her head and growled at the gap beneath the door.
Nika shook her head. “Can you hear it?” She looked from Mum to me. “It hurts.”
We all looked at one another, straining to hear what Nika was talking about. For a second we achieved complete silence.
Then—
BANG.
The front door rattled on its hinges.
Scout yelped, ducking away with her tail between her legs. I flinched at the same time that Marty swore under his breath. We all gaped at the door, waiting for another knock that didn’t come.
After a beat, Dad marched over and wrenched the door open. Scout, who would normally take this opportunity to bolt outside, cowered beneath the dining table.
There was nobody on the doorstep. The verandah was empty.
Dad turned back to face us with a quizzical expression. His attention fell on Nika, who now had her eyelids squeezed shut.
She opened her mouth and released a piercing squeal.
“Jesus!” I gasped. “What the hell?”
Mum toppled onto her backside in surprise. Marty’s jaw dropped. Dad approached Nika with his arms out as if to scoop her up. She stopped squealing as suddenly as she’d started and Dad paused, waiting for what she’d do next.
The quiet that followed was unsettling.
Outside, the rain stopped.
“Mummy…” Nika said, her voice weak and shaky.
Her expression was glazed, staring off at some faraway thing none of us could see. She staggered a few steps towards the open door and stopped, clutching both arms around her belly.
“Sweetheart,” Mum said. “Are you—”
