Goldenscale

Monday 27 February

5

She awoke dry mouthed and stupid with fatigue.

Beth had tried sleeping on her side or on her back, but it made no difference.

She trudged off to the bathroom and stayed in there leaning on the edge of the bath until someone knocked.

Her father ruffled her hair as she emerged. She grimaced threateningly at him.

‘Early start today,’ he said. ‘Powerlines damaged on the Jugamai plateau. Buggered if I know how that happened — weather was perfect last night.’

Beth sighed. ‘Take me with you, Dad. I’m sick.’

‘Schoolitis?’ He grinned. ‘I used to get that.’

Freddy wagged his tail and wet the tablecloth with his nose, tormented by breakfast smells. Beth took pity and passed him a crisped strip of fat.

‘He’ll get bladder stones,’ said Sam. ‘Salt’s bad for him.’

‘So is starvation.’

‘I can’t see any of his ribs.’

Beth scratched behind Freddy’s ears.

‘You think you own that dog,’ said Sam.

‘I do. I feed him, shovel you-know-what—’

‘He owns you. Two big meals every day, sleeps all the time.’

‘But he’s stuck here.’

Sam shook his head. ‘Security beats freedom. Dogs have bred humans to feed and protect them.’

‘You and your sad little theories.’

They ate in silence for a few minutes, Beth pretending to read emails on her phone, Sam scribbling pictures in a tattered notebook. She wanted to look, but he shielded the pad with his free hand.

‘You know,’ she said after a while, ‘All of the tremors have happened at night. Every one of them.’

‘But we’re not here during the day,’ said Sam, still drawing. ‘Maybe there are tremors during the day.’

‘Nope. We’d know,’ said Beth. ‘Something would move or fall over while we’re out. But nothing does. Why do you think that is?’

Sam didn’t reply, but his pencil slowed. Beth raised an eyebrow, amazed at getting a point across.

‘Bye,’ said Abbie, pausing at the doorway to the hall, toast in one hand, attempting to shrug herself into a coat. ‘Be careful today. Put the milk away.’ She paused. ‘Don’t go down into the cellar. Your father says the tremor damaged something down there. I don’t even want to know. Maybe he’ll do something about it. Let me know if you see any flying pigs.’

6

Cold air rushed past as Beth navigated her long driveway. She flew down from Hemming Heights towards Goolgoorook on her mountain bike. Mount Jugamai reared to the north, its stony peak already sunlit.

‘Beth! Beth Ormonde! Wait!’ panted a plump girl, pedalling hard. ‘Oh, can’t you slow down!’

‘Irene.’ Beth reluctantly moderated her descent.

‘Did you watch Soul Suckers last night?’

‘Downer. You know, I tried. Dad destroyed our TV. With a cricket bat. He was so out of control, but he’s been like that since joining the cult. He’s completely against anything with the Devil in it.’

Irene almost careered from the road. ‘That’s mental.’ Her breath puffed in white punctuation marks. ‘What cult?’

Beth sighed. ‘Who have we got today?’ she asked.

Irene giggled. ‘Mr Flack first-up.’

‘Oh. Outstanding.’

Students plunged through the gates of Ooralloo Secondary College like vegetable scraps spiralling towards a drain.

The College was made up of three parallel red brick buildings. Designated A, B and C, the two storey structures were linked by covered walkways and surrounded by cracked concrete and tatty sports fields. A dirt access road circled the school, dusty in summer and muddy in winter. Ten old Atlas oaks were spaced along the entry avenue, creating a misleading impression of grandeur. A Moreton Bay fig spread its branches behind C Block. Its deep shade belonged to the Year 12 students.

The school hall was the only modern building, a confection of glass and corrugated iron hastily built with money thrown at the school by the Federal Government.

Beth saw Sam cutting through the high school grounds with his usual pack, Pete Biscoff and the Dankovitz twins.

‘Man, he is a cutie, ain’t he?’ said Jo Aarons, falling into step alongside her. ‘Chicks will dig him later on.’

‘So I hear,’ Beth said. ‘It’s just camouflage.’

Jo was tall and slender, with long black hair. Her mother Indian and father Anglo, her skin copper and face a meeting of high cheekbones, hazel eyes and a white-toothed smile. She was the only beautiful girl Beth had met who was indifferent to her own appeal. Other pretty girls sometimes made a show of modesty but Jo was completely sincere.

They made tracks across the frosty lawn.

‘It’s Irene day,’ Jo reminded her. ‘Every week I blank it out, then …’

‘I know. You’re so lucky she lives up your way. Hey, Mrs Neville wants me to try athletics. Again. Dark skin means faster runner. Proven fact.’

Beth tried to imagine Josie engaging in a sport, any sport. ‘No bloody way. Fight the power.’

‘I said I had a heart murmur. And flat feet.’

‘I’ll write your certificate. Hey, did you feel the tremor last night?’

‘What tremor?’

‘At about ten past seven. Like last week, only worse. Smashed a plate and split some bricks in the cellar. Mum cracked it because Dad wasn’t doing anything.’

’I went to bed at six, said Jo. ‘Headache. Out of it all night. Sorry. No broken plates, though.’

The first bell sounded and students began to mope their way to class. Beth related her penguin dream to Jo.

‘Sounds like a case for Freud.’

Beth laughed. ‘I’m just an innocent girl.’

‘You say. In some places we’d be married off already.’

‘Yeah, to some dirty old peasant.’

‘Speaking of olds, my dad is going overseas,’ Jo said, watching the running, jumping, texting and teasing energies of the emptying schoolyard, ‘to Indonesia for a few months. Some lecturing gig.’

‘He only got back the other day. What about your mum?’

‘Sort of unhappy. But Dad’s old fashioned. When he’s gone … she’s like a bird out of a cage. Does all this stuff she puts on hold when he gets back.’

‘But you miss him, right? You’re sad?’

Jo shook her head, shrugged. ‘Not really. I dunno.’ She never spoke for long about her family. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I’ve got a treat,’ said Mr Flack. He was a large man who moved with surprising speed. Prone to mercurial changes of mood, he was nevertheless popular. ‘Indeed, a very interesting surprise for you all.’

‘I’m an elephant seal,’ whispered Simon Dodds.

‘Who said that?’ demanded Flack. ‘No wait, who cares?’

He shuffled through a pile of papers on his desk, finally pulled one free.

‘An excursion!’

‘To Sea World,’ Simon added.

‘That’s it, Dodds!’ Flack boomed. ‘I have your coordinates. Right now they place you far up a certain creek in a certain canoe.’

Simon stared at his desk.

‘Sans Mr Dodds, the rest of us will be travelling up to the Ooralloo Plateau next Tuesday. We’ll be visiting the Aboriginal cultural centre up there.’

Someone sniggered.

Flack’s face froze. ‘If it’s not one idiot,’ he said, ‘then it’s Len Crabbit.’

Beth loathed Crabbit with rare enthusiasm.

Crabbit met Flack’s stare squarely. The expression on his narrow, thin-lipped face was pure insolence.

‘Change of plans. Simon, who is just a clown, will be going, and Mr Crabbit will be staying here. With his friends. Fit in with your plans, Len?’

Crabbit’s chair scraped back and he walked from the room without a backward glance.

‘Right,’ said Flack. ‘He’ll return — unfortunately. Isn’t another school in the whole region that’d take him. You didn’t hear that from me.’

‘What are we supposed to do up there?’ Dodds asked. ‘I don’t even like witchetty grubs.’

Flack sighed above general tittering. ‘Broadening your horizons, Simon. A group of elders have invited us. They will talk to us. We will study ecosystems up on the plateau. I encourage all of you to keep an open mind. There’s an outside chance you might learn something.’

After that, Flack spent an hour talking about the Ooralloo Plateau, its heathlands, snow gums, and fields of granite boulders — a subject which Beth secretly found interesting. Jo ignored it in favour of drawing an elaborate picture of an elephant. ‘Picasso’s grade four teacher told him to stop doodling,’ she whispered to Beth. ‘Lucky he didn’t.’

The recess bell rang, and twenty-seven chairs scraped back. Flack passed them permission forms as they left.

‘I was expecting Crabbit to say something really off,’ Beth said as they dawdled on their way to Phys Ed.

‘He was thinking it. Flack didn’t let him get started.’

In Crabbit-world, black people were subhuman, Jews ruled the world through secret councils, Asians were better in Asia and white people in danger of racial pollution. All picked up from his bong-hitting, heavy-drinking father and friends.

‘Shut up,’ said Jo, ‘there he is.’

Crabbit watched Beth and Jo walk past the end of B Block, and hissed at them.

‘Aarons, she visiting her relatives up at Ooralloo. Dey make big corroboree and sniff all the unleaded.’

Jo stopped. ‘I’d be proud to be Aboriginal,’ she said. ‘but thank God I’m not you.’

A chorus of curses and insults spewed forth.

Beth felt the familiar sense of vertigo she experienced when really angry. She knew she had to get away before she did something radically stupid. She clenched her fists, vibrating with rage.

Taking Beth’s arm, Jo hustled her away. ‘Forget it. Zero percentage,’ she said.

Beth seethed. ‘Zero — that’s my level of respect for that scum. Good comeback, though.’

‘He loves shitting people,’ Jo said. She looked back. ‘Every day,’ she said, ‘people look at me like Len does. Makes me crazy. But other times, screw you. Why would I care what you think?’

‘Is that a Richard Feynman reference?’

‘He’s da man.’

By some cosmic stroke of good luck, the soccer match organised for Phys Ed was overmanned and they were allowed to sit on the sidelines.

At recess they found a seat next to the tennis courts and sat in a lozenge of sunlight. ‘We’re marked, now,’ said Beth, picking at her lunch. Crabbit’s posse of thugs clustered under a weeping willow, snapping branches and carving misshapen swastikas into the trunk. As usual, the teacher on duty was nowhere to be seen.

Jo made a rude gesture towards Crabbit’s homeys. ‘I’m the chocolate girl.’

Beth felt uncomfortable. What was an Anglo girl supposed to say that didn’t sound patronising?

A tennis ball rolled along the ground near Beth and smacked into the chain-link fence. A shiny-haired boy ran for it, tripped and rebounded from the fence. He smiled through the mesh at the watching girls, then flung the ball to his opponent. He looked back. ‘Hello Jo. Beth.’

‘Hi Thor,’ they chorused, and he waved and ran back to his game.

‘What do you think of him?’ Beth asked Jo. They had covered this topic many times before. Jo always avoided committing herself.

‘He’s got an idiotic name.’

Beth grinned. ‘They used to call him Thunderpants at primary school. Never seemed to bother him. Do you think he’s fit?’

‘What does fit even mean? Nice smile.’

‘You like him?’

‘A bit. I like my dog, too.’

‘Bet he’s well liked online. You’ll have lots of competition.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Jo.

‘He’s older than he is,’ said Beth, ‘if you know what I mean. Seems fairly intelligent. Good natured. And his wrists are nice.’

‘Wrists. Right. And?’

Beth shrugged. ‘He’s pretty clumsy. The others laugh at him. He’s a natural outsider.’

‘Dunno why you’re promoting him to me. Sounds like you should buy the product.’

‘Shut up,’ said Beth, blushing. ‘You never take this sort of stuff seriously.’

‘If lerve happens to me, I will. I promise. But I’ll leave the god of thunder to you.’

7

During Geography, they did whatever they felt like, which wasn’t the work in front of them. Ms Honeycutt despised electronic devices, so tablets and laptops yielded temporarily to paper and pen.

Beth drew imaginary buildings with domes and spires. Jo kept her head down and wrote in her diary. Beth imagined her style would be fairly intense and heavy on psychological insight. The implications of a trip to the 7-Eleven would probably take several pages. She smothered a smile.

Sarah Crabbit sat at Beth’s elbow.

‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘I’d rather be training.’

‘Your brother,’ said Beth, still thinking of the morning’s events, ‘is a—’

‘Waste of space,’ Sarah agreed. ‘I’d apologise for him,’ she said to Jo, ‘but what’s the point?’ Even in Year Nine, she was the tallest girl in school, hair kept very short and dyed red, a striking sight on a dim winter’s day. Sarah played several sports, all of them well. ‘I’m going to hook up with the darkest-skinned African guy I can find just to piss him off.’

Ms Honeycutt finally joined the land of the semi-living and shuffled over to their corner of the room.

‘What is this now, girls?’

Heads turned to watch their possible disgrace.

‘We’re discussing the oppression of the poor by the West,’ Jo said. ‘And the role of protest in subverting the system.’

‘We’re thinking of organising an Occupy Goolgoorook protest,’ Beth added.

Honeycutt smiled. ‘Good for you!’ She strode to the front and chalked ‘inequality of income’ on the board.

‘Too easy,’ said Sarah.

Jo smiled. ‘She was a protester in the 1970s or something. Glory days.’

Eighth period was set aside for study, but Beth decided to leave early.

‘Going to check on that tremor,’ she told Sarah and Jo. ‘I’m off to that Geophysics Institute. They handed out their card in Flack’s class, remember.’

‘It hit the bin a second later,’ said Jo. ‘I’ll hang around here.’

‘Sorry about your dad.’

‘Hey, he’s not. Come to dinner soon. Just you and Sarah.’

8

Beth ducked out of the school yards before someone could spot her and cycled across to the University Laboratories near Ha’penny Street — a newly subdivided area packed with industrial parks and corporate glass-box offices. The geophysics department of Western University was a little hard to locate — eventually she found it up a flight of stairs in a building shared with an insurance company.

She knocked and waited for half a minute before turning the handle and entering. She found herself in a large room filled with rows of desks topped with large flatscreen monitors. She could hear the low mechanical hum of many computers operating in the same space.

‘Wait,’ someone called. A hand emerged above one of the monitors, followed by a head. A young man with untidy black hair and a nose ring.

‘Are you delivering something?’

‘I’m from the school,’ Beth said. ‘Doctor Graydon came and spoke to us. He said we could drop in if we liked.’

‘Uh. We don’t get many visits. Not from kids.’

‘I’m at high school,’ Beth said, offended.

‘I’m Niall,’ he said, loping over. ‘I’m doing my postdoc here. Did you need info for an assignment?’

‘I’m interested in earthquakes,’ she said. ‘Not for class.’

‘We do a bit of that,’ allowed Niall. ‘Mostly modelling stuff for the big miners, but some straight seismology.’ He smiled at her. ‘Pretty dry stuff.’

‘There was an earthquake at my place last night,’ said Beth. She felt like an idiot as soon as the sentence left her mouth.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Up the hill,’ said Beth. ‘Hemming Heights.’

‘Oh. I haven’t heard anything in the news.’

The door opened behind her and she turned to see Doctor Graydon at the threshold. He frowned at her.

Niall made introductions and Beth repeated her news of the earthquake.

‘Huh,’ said Dr Graydon. ‘Earthquake.’ He smirked at Niall.

‘Dr Graydon …’

‘Call me Paul.’

‘It really did happen.’

Graydon took a step back. ‘Hey, no foul. You’re the first student to visit, you know. People seem more interested in social media.’

He offered her a can of some caffeine-rich soft drink. She politely declined.

Graydon was short and stocky and well into middle age. His hair was suspiciously dark. He leaned over a monitor and rattled through a series of screens. Presently he stopped and pointed.

‘Read through the records yourself. The higher the line, the bigger the shake.’

Beth peered at the skittering line.

‘That data set covers July 17. He pointed to the time stamps running along the bottom of the screen. From midnight to midnight.’ Graydon rolled his eyes a little. ‘Go for it.’

5.25pm: a tiny spike in the graph, probably caused by an large vehicle crossing the nearby Ooralloo River bridge, explained the doctor.

5.45pm: another spike. Another vehicle.

6.12pm: a long procession of peaks and troughs, like the sharp Jugamai hills. This sample was more variable, including strong after-shocks. Deep, and very far away — somewhere out on the Pacific Rim.

6.47pm: all quiet.

Beth’s stomach tightened as she approached the crucial hour. She peered at the line. Nothing. But then a little outburst of seismic noise, perhaps building to something bigger … 

7.10pm: a tiny bump in the track. She pointed to it, and looked at Graydon, who shook his head decisively.

‘Two point , if you’re lucky. Hundreds of them around nationally every day. Very shallow, epicentre probably close. Maybe a big rock fell from Mount Acute last night. Happens sometimes, especially if it’s windy.’

Beth shook her head. ‘Wasn’t a rock. It’s been kind of regular, anyway.’

‘Well. Our network is accurate — we can pick up a moose farting in Alaska. When the Japanese tsunami hit, it was our measurements that helped set the magnitude.’ He shrugged, as if losing all interest. ‘Anyway, you’ve seen the line. You’re lucky you had somewhere to check.’

Graydon crossed his arms. Case closed.

No big quake, not even a half-decent tremor to explain the mess in her cellar. But there was a tiny little bump on the line.

Graydon wandered off to his office.

Niall turned to Beth. ‘Don’t worry about the doc,’ he said. ‘He’s an abrupt kind of guy.’

‘Look, I believe what he says. I guess that means that whatever is happening is real local.’

Niall nodded and scratched his jaw. ‘You need a surveyor to come up and have a closer look, really. Or a geologist. Like Doc Graydon. I’ll have a word to him later, if you like.’

Beth raised an eyebrow. ‘Thanks.’

9

Beth’s home stood near the highest point of the Hemming Heights Estate. Newly built housing tracts sloped away on all sides. In the middle distance, Goolgoorook township, and beyond that, the red gum-dotted Bul Bul plains. The paddocks of her early childhood were mostly gone. She was used to the sight of families moving in, piles of bricks and builders scrap, muddy driveways, new lawns, real estate signs and giant houses on tiny blocks of land.

According to a note on the fridge door, Sam was out shopping with Abbie. There was no way Beth was going to visit the cellar alone.

A sour smell had spread throughout the house, strong one moment, gone the next.

‘What is that?’ she murmured, halting. The odour was complicated, vaguely familiar. The scent of the earth under the house, perhaps stirred up by the tremors? After a long pause, she went into the lounge. As usual. Horatio audibly bumped the glass wall of his home.

‘Blub blub,’ said Beth. She took a pinch of fish flakes and scattered them through a hatch at the top of the tank. A large silver perch, Horatio was fast and cunning. His tank extended four metres, taking up the entire length of one wall.

‘Do you feel the earthquakes?’ she asked Horatio. ‘I’d rescue you if it got really bad.’ She looked out through the lounge windows. A wide timber-floored verandah ran along the front of the house. In summer, mosquitoes permitting, her family sat on cane chairs and watched the light and the mountains.

Beth couldn’t stop thinking about the cellar. Her parents had planned to build up a wine collection down there, but they drank it as fast as they bought it. Hence, the cellar’s real purpose as a dumping ground for things unwanted. And now those cracks, and that smell.

She watched the news, and then the weather. She didn’t like forecasts. The beauty of weather was its unpredictability.

The phone rang. Thor? Beth wondered, as if he would bother calling a nerdy Year 9 girl. He wouldn’t even know her surname. And if he searched for her … he wouldn’t find a single interesting thing anyway. She had tried that. Just a sparsely populated social media presence. Checking out new services, abandoning them just as quickly.

The caller was Sarah, relaying school news. Miss Shurrock was off on maternity leave, with Ms Speck called on as her substitute.

‘Noooo!’ said Beth. ‘She hates everything I do. It can’t happen.’

Sarah’s laughter rang over the phone. ‘It has.’

Edith ‘Fly’ Speck taught basic maths and advanced boredom. Short and spherical, she frequently wore what looked like a pink nightgown, matched with blue velvet shoes. Her voice oscillated between a whisper and a horror-movie shriek.

Sam blew in the front entrance. He slammed the door, pitched his bag across the corridor and headed for the kitchen.

‘Gotta go, Sar,’ said Beth hastily. ‘The incubus is here, so Mum is too.’

She hung up and flung herself onto the sofa just as Abbie stepped in and glanced her way.

‘Hi Beth. Nice to see you so relaxed. Phone still warm?’

10

The Ormonde home was unlike most other houses in Goolgoorook. Beth’s parents had a dream when they chose their vacant block, and no tardy builder or dodgy tradesman was going to ruin it. Mud brick by mud brick, one red gum timber at a time, from floorboard to ceiling joists to windows and wall coverings, they advanced. Finally they had the hand-made work of art they had always wanted. The process of building the house almost ruined them.

Beth often caught her father staring at some architectural detail with an air of satisfaction and her mother wasn’t much better. Beth was proud to live in something that fell outside the usual conformity of the town, but she sometimes wondered whether her parents lacked balance.

The house had two wings that met at right angles near the front door. Painted with a white limewash, the house was pierced by full-length windows every couple of metres. A broad verandah ran around the entire house, roofed with corrugated iron and floored with salvaged red gum timbers. Several large gum trees dominated the garden, shading areas of lawn and native grass and carefully placed granite boulders.

The southern wing was essentially one large room supported by thin black cast iron pillars and timber beams. Floors were jarrah. The lounge area overlooked the back gardens, widening into a dining area and, further along, without an intervening wall, a kitchen. Bathrooms, the laundry, studies and bedrooms were in the northern wing, arrayed along a long corridor.

‘I don’t want to go down there,’ said Beth. I really don’t. There’s no point in going.’

Sam smiled. ‘It’s OK if you’re afraid. Courage is fear walking.’

‘You’re living proof of that,’ she said.

Moments later they were down inside the cellar. What they saw shocked Beth. The far wall had partially collapsed, spilling bricks across the room. The smell Beth had noticed earlier was even stronger. Sawdust? Rotting pumpkins? Perhaps licorice, or grass clippings. Or crushed ants.

Sam leaned down to pick at the rubble. ‘I think it’s OK. What’s behind the bricks?’

They picked their way through the rubble. They came face to face with a rough, dark vertical wall of earth. Beth made Sam point his torch at a dark patch halfway up the wall.

‘A hole!’ they said in unison. The torch did no more than illuminate the edges.

‘Out of here,’ Beth said urgently, and darted for the stairs. Sam followed at her heels.

Beth topped the stairs and ran straight into her father. She screamed. ‘Jesus …’ she gasped after taking a deep breath.

‘Flattering,’ said Nick, ‘but I’m an engineer, not a carpenter.’ He placed a large hand on Beth’s shoulder.

‘Going underground?’

‘Been,’ said Sam. ‘We heard something fall down.’

Beth saw a tiny shift in her father’s expression.

‘I’m not mad,’ he said. ‘Dramatic isn’t it? Don’t tell your mother.’

God. He’s weak about this.

‘Beth?’

‘No. I won’t tell her. Scout’s honour.’

Sam tried to squirm away but his father’s hand held him firmly in place.

‘I’m thinking of filling the cellar in. We hardly ever use it.’

‘That won’t work,’ said Beth, hearing her own words as if they had come from some other source. ‘I mean, the tremors won’t stop.’

Nick sighed. ‘Things will calm down.’ He released the two of them. ‘Never thought I’d see you two collaborating on anything.’

Sam bolted for the front door. Nick raised his voice to reach the escapee. ‘No-go zone. I mean it.’

‘Why warn him and not me?’ Beth asked.

‘Because you’re fourteen and sensible. I know Sam got you into this. I’m proud of you for going down there to look after him.’

‘I am not sensible,’ Beth said quietly, sitting on her bed. ‘I’m unpredictable!’ Yet admittedly there was very little recent evidence for that.

‘Well,’ she said sullenly. ‘I’m going to be.’

Why not now? The cellar. Let curiosity win out over caution.

‘Damn.’ She wished her inner voices were not so pushy. ‘Look, there’s no way I can go down there on my own …’

What, you’re a complete coward? A cliché of a girl? You really need Sam?

11

Beth crept past the darkened lounge. Nick and Abbie had long retired to bed. Beth’s LED torch was small, its light surprisingly bright. She was wearing a thin jumper.

I’m going back. No, I’m not. She hesitated at the top of the cellar stairs. Eventually go forward won out over go back.

In the dark, the walls were much closer, crowding in until they seemed about to touch her shoulders. Her fears had no specific shape, just a diffuse cloud of dread.

Yet this locus of terror was only a small dark room. If she listened hard enough, she could hear an occasional car pass on the street outside. She was shaking so hard she found it difficult to keep the beam of the torch fixed on any one point. The irregular hole was visible in the earth beyond the broken wall. It looked much larger now.

An object glittered at the edge of the aperture. A bit of broken glass?

She leaned close. Embedded in a clod of soil, the thing was hard to make out. She hunted around for a stick, found a broken length of dowel and started poking away. Gradually she was able to free the object. She was no longer thinking, just doing whatever came next.

As she grabbed at her prize, a hot gust of wind came from the hole. She cried out, the air slapping at her hair and face. A scent came, thick as oil. It was the smell of everything alive and dead mashed together, the sea, bread, skin, cut wood, oranges, dung, dust and compost.

Then she was at the cellar door without any memory of having climbed the stairs. She had just the presence of mind to close the door quickly behind her, and then to remove her shoes.

‘What?’ she whispered to herself. She couldn’t stop shaking, her teeth chattering. ‘Nothing.’ Hot gusts of wind did not come out of holes in the ground. But they did.

Sam found her in front of the television, volume turned down, her face set and mouth half open. His hair was in disarray.

‘Mum will do her nut. Saw your shoeprints in the dust down in the cellar. Impressed, actually, I didn’t think you’d have the guts to go down there alone.’

She grunted, shrugged. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘What’s that in your hand?’ he asked.

A dirty lump, half-forgotten, held tight and unglimpsed for the past hour. ‘Just clay,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m going to make something.’

‘OK. Abnormal behaviour. Possible alien abduction, brain swapping.’

‘You should be in bed,’ said Beth, coming to her feet and brushing past him.

Once in her room, Beth stood motionless, her hand still clenched around her find. Eventually, her mind began to work again. She spread a sheet of paper on her desk and placed the lump of dirt on the paper. The clod was soft and came apart easily. Inside, she saw a flat, roughly diamond-shaped object with rounded corners. A succession of tissues removed most of the mud.

A rich golden thing half the size of her palm lay before her, edges curled up into a delicate series of frills. It was covered with concentric engraved lines, like the whorls of a fingerprint. A ghost of the cellar’s aroma rose from it. It was about the thickness of a credit card. When rotated, it glittered. Heavy, she noted.

She scratched at it with her fingernail, but left no mark. Could it be plastic? Or some kind of artwork — a fragment of a carving?

I should get on the phone and tell Sarah or Jo about this. Tomorrow.

Beth clasped the object. It was warm in her hand.

Needs a name, she thought. Oh God, I’m so gone.

She yawned hugely.

She wrapped the object in crepe paper, sliding it under her pillow. She expected to dream, and was not disappointed.

Ms Speck led her to the front of the class.

‘Beth has something to show everyone,’ she said.

Beth raised her arm, but her fingers would not open.

Students jostled her, wrenching her fingers free. From within, a darkness erupted and spread, spangled with gold flakes.

Speck pounced, grabbing at the flakes like a contestant in a booth full of money.

‘They speak!’ Speck shrieked.

She showed Beth a diary, but the pages were all blank.

Speck blurred into a penguin.

‘The author is dead!’ said the bird before vanishing.