Eye Lake (20 page)

‘Suit yourself.'

But instead of eating his roots and twigs George just stood there, shifting from foot to foot, with his hands in his pockets and a sideways smile on his face. I knew he'd found something else then, besides the leaves.

‘What you find?' I asked.

‘Come and see,' he said. ‘Before it gets too dark.'

Near the end of the road, about five hundred yards or so into the bush, was the remains of a wide clearing. On one side of it was a stagnant-looking pool surrounded by piles of gravel and stones, on the other was a long building made of sheets of corrugated iron, and in between you could see the shapes of rusting pieces of machinery half-hidden beneath bushes and saplings. At the very back of the clearing were the collapsed timbers of a head frame and the big iron drum of a hoist.

‘It's the gold mine,' George announced, as if it were probably still filled with gold.

We walked a little ways around the edge of the clearing, with George pointing out all the old pieces of machinery and guessing what they'd been for. It was like he was already writing up the cards for them for his collection. When we got to the pool you
could see how its waters were streaked a puke-coloured green and orange, like they were sick.

‘There's loads of stuff left behind in the building too,' George said. ‘The door's open. I tried it.'

When we got up close to it the head frame looked like a tower made of huge matchsticks that someone had pushed over. The hoist lay just beside it like a giant iron log. And right at the base of the frame you could see the black circle of the mineshaft through the tufts of grass and fireweed that surrounded its edges.

‘There's even more stuff further back in the woods,' George said.

Under the trees the shadows had thickened and it was hard to see anything properly. Here and there you could make out other piles of old timber and dark lumps that might have been more pieces of machinery or drums – but you couldn't really tell what anything was in there. Further on there were patches of weak light that could have been other clearings, but the light was fading so fast by then it would have gone by the time you'd have reached them.

‘Let's have a look,' George said.

‘It's too late,' I said.

‘There's still some light.'

‘Not enough,' I said, starting to walk back.

George lingered for a few more seconds, and then followed slowly after me as though he didn't really want to.

‘You can't keep one eye on the ground in the dark,' I told him.

I didn't get much sleep that night. George went out like a light almost the moment we got into the building and I could hear him breathing peacefully in the corner of the room. But I was cold and the floorboards under me were hard and uncomfortable, and I could hear the squirrels scrabbling around in the other rooms. Lying there awake, I got to thinking about the clearing. There'd been something not quite right about it but I couldn't work out exactly what it was. And then one of the squirrels ran past my feet and I heard an owl hooting outside the window. I knew what it was then. I knew what hadn't seemed quite right.

I hadn't heard a single sound when we walked through it – no crickets, no birds, no frogs, no nothing. Only a weird, still quiet that seemed to hang over it. I thought about the sick little pool of water lying out there, in the quiet and the dark, and suddenly felt just about as lonely as could be. I rolled over the floor until I was next to George and snuggled up beside him. Then I listened to his breathing until I fell asleep.

I was woken up by the sound of George pacing noisily about the room. The first light of day was coming in through the windows and when I stretched my arm out I could feel where the floorboards were still warm from where he'd slept on them.

‘You ready?' he said. He must have been waiting for me to open my eyes.

‘Ready for what?'

‘For some exploring. There's loads of stuff past where we stopped yesterday.'

‘But we've got to get home,' I said. I was thinking of everyone in the kitchen at number one O'Callaghan Street, looking at maps and worrying. I wished I could be walking in there already.

‘There's lots of time for getting home,' George said impatiently. ‘We've got this far already – it'd be stupid not to look around and see what's here. We won't be long.'

My whole body was stiff and sore from sleeping on the boards. My stomach was rumbling. I'd had enough of exploring. ‘I don't want to be here no more, George. I don't like it. I want to go back.'

‘George McKenzie could see they'd reached a difficult juncture in their journey and impressed on Mr. O'Callaghan the importance of pushing forward with their expedition. To have come this far … '

‘I mean it, George. I don't care about that
National Geographic
shit. It's dumb. It's got shit-all to do with us being stuck out here. I want to go back.'

For a second George looked at me like I'd just punched him in the stomach and I was sorry I'd said all that.

‘They'll all be worrying. They've been searching for you for days, George – Virgil and Dad and everybody.'

‘Everybody?'

And then he didn't say nothing. His face had gone all loose and scared and blank, the same as when he'd first come out of the underground place. His eyelids blinked fast. And then his expression settled back to normal again and turned hard and determined. His lips were pushed together. When they opened he said, ‘George McKenzie decided to pursue his course north – alone if need be. There was much to be discovered. The terrain ahead of him had hardly been touched by human feet before, not for many years. It was an almost new land. Nobody knew what was out there.'

I walked with George as far as the edge of the clearing. When we got there it was the same as the day before, just as still and quiet and forsaken. The sun was coming up over the tops of the trees and lit up the lonely pool with its sick waters and the rusty shapes of the old machines and the timbers of the fallen tower. You couldn't hear nothing, not a single bird or insect or frog. It was like the world at the very beginning, I thought. Before anything had been made to live in it. Before any creature had tried making it its home.

We stopped and stood there for a bit.

‘I don't want to go no further,' I told George. ‘I'll wait for you on the road.'

‘That's okay, Eli,' George said.

‘You won't be long?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I'll just have a look and then I'll come right back.'

And then he was walking around the edge of the clearing. I watched him go past the pool and the machines, his head moving from side to side, still looking, still curious, still trying to find things, his skin paler than the pale morning light, his lips turned up on one side, smiling his sideways smile. When he reached the
other side of the clearing he stopped for a moment by the edge of the treeline. He turned around and looked back at me and his face was like a moth's wing against the green shadows of the woods. And then he was off again, flitting between the trunks and branches. Sometimes I could see him and sometimes I couldn't.

And then I couldn't anymore. He was gone.

I couldn't tell how much time went by before I finally went back to the clearing. I sat on a fallen tree trunk by the road for what felt like hours and hours but there was no way of telling how many. I waited until I couldn't any longer and then walked back to look. The sun was high above the clearing but apart from that nothing had changed.

‘George,' I shouted. My voice seemed to get swallowed up the moment it came out of my mouth. It was like a drip of water falling onto dry dirt. It barely carried to the other side. There was no answer.

‘George.'

It was no use. I'd have to look for him.

When I reached the other side and came to the treeline I began looking for signs. At first there was nothing, but after walking through the trees for a bit I picked up a few footprints in some muddy ground. They led off to the left, towards where I'd thought I'd seen those other clearings the day before.

Sure enough, after a few hundred yards I came to a second clearing. It was smaller than the first and more overgrown. The bushes and saplings were higher. Some were close to being full trees. I reckoned it must've been abandoned before the other one. It was hard work making my way across it – I had to inch my way bit by bit, pushing through the bushes and saplings and trying to keep my eye on the ground. Here and there I'd manage to pick up signs of George's trail, like footprints and snapped twigs – in one place I even found a little piece of his shirt he'd torn off and tied to
a branch as a marker, to help him find his way back – but about halfway across they ran out. I stopped and went back a ways and made a wide circle through the clearing, trying to pick it up again, but all I found were the remains of some old timber and machinery. And it was a good thing I was watching the ground because just beyond them, tucked away behind a fringe of grass and fireweed, was an old mineshaft. When I'd pushed through the grass and fireweed I'd found it right there below my feet, staring back up at me like a big black eye. I started making my way round it real slow and careful and it was then I picked up George's trail again. There was a set of his footprints near the edge. And then there was nothing.

I can't tell you how many times I walked around the clearing after that. I must've circled it a hundred times, until there wasn't a piece of it I hadn't walked over. And every time it was the same. The trail went one way and then stopped. There was nothing past it, nothing leading out of the clearing. I couldn't find nothing. I went back to the mineshaft and stood at its edge. I stared down at it and it just kept staring back at me. You couldn't see nothing down there.

‘George,' I shouted.

Nothing.

I picked up a rock and threw it. I heard it clatter against the sides and fall into water. It was a long way down. The sides were steep and sheer.

‘George,' I shouted.

I sat down and kept staring into the eye of the shaft, but it never blinked. When I looked up I saw everywhere else had gone dark too.

It was night.

The road seemed to last forever. I was running and running but every time I stopped for breath it was like I'd not gotten anywhere. The branches crowded over my head and reached out to
touch my arms and legs. There was no moon or stars and sometimes I'd lose the track and find myself in the woods and spin around crazily till eventually I wound up on it again. But then I must've lost the track one last time and couldn't find my way back onto it. I spun around and around and then just started running as fast as I could through the woods.

The blowdown and the rocks kept tripping me up and the branches scraped my face and arms all over. There was a wet feeling on my skin and I couldn't tell whether it was just sweat or if it was blood from the scrapes – it was too dark to see a thing. And the woods were loud. It was okay when I was running – I couldn't hear nothing but the twigs snapping under my feet and the branches whooshing past my ears and slapping into my face – but the moment I stopped, even for a second, I could hear it: the howling and the hooting and the screeching; the lumbering, crashing noises of invisible animals moving through the bush; and worst of all, the low whispering sounds that seemed to come from all around me – sounds of things I couldn't see and didn't know. I kept running and running to stop myself hearing them, but then my legs wouldn't run no more, so I lay down in a bed of damp moss and curled myself up in a ball and put my hands on my ears to keep them out.

But it wasn't no use.

I couldn't tell where I was or what was around me. There were things beside me, but it was so dark I could only sense they were there – trees and boulders whose shapes I couldn't see but only feel, somehow. It didn't matter whether I closed my eyes. Sometimes I couldn't tell if they were closed or not. And all the time, coming through my fingers into my ears were the whispering sounds.

Sometimes the shapes felt like people and the whispering became their voices. At one point I thought I heard Mr. McKenzie and he was saying, ‘See. See. This is the end of the world. Didn't you notice, Eli? Didn't you believe me?' And then he was gone and the Earl was there instead. ‘This is my Bermuda Triangle,' he was
saying. ‘This is it. This is it. This is it.' Then he was gone too and George was there.

‘Where are you, Eli?' he asked. ‘Why aren't you coming with me?'

‘George,' I croaked, and my own voice had become as small and weak as a no-see-um. ‘I waited, George. I tried following but I lost your trail. I couldn't find it anywhere. Where'd you go?'

‘I'm heading north, Eli, to where the icebergs and stuff are. There's a lot to explore there. But I can't see it yet. I've not reached there yet.'

‘Where are you, George? I can't see you.'

‘I don't know where I am, Eli. It's too dark to see here. I can't see anything here.'