Goldenscale

Sunday 26 February

1

Beth picked up a lamb bone and surreptitiously dropped it into Freddy’s mouth.

‘Mum, Sam’s feeding Freddy,’ she said. ‘Bones. At the table.’

‘Again? Stupid. He’ll hide it under the cushion again. Get it back, now!’

‘But Mum—’ Sam protested. ‘It wasn’t me. You can’t see from in there. She’s lying—’

‘Now!’

A battle ensued beneath the table for possession of the bone. The dog growled in triumph and ran from the room.

Sam returned to his seat. His mother stared at him for a moment and then went after Freddy.

‘You are stuffed, Beth,’ said Sam. ‘You won’t know where it’s coming from, but it’ll come.’

‘Stop, I can’t take it,’ said Beth. ‘The fear.’

Her father finally looked up from his New Yorker app.

‘The tribulations of pet ownership,’ he said.

‘He’s your pet, Dad,’ Beth pointed out.

‘On paper only. Let me finish my article.’

Sam rebelled. ‘Dad! Not again! I could have stayed at Damian’s place. Watching you read stuff on a tablet is dead boring. It’s anti-social.’

‘That’s hilarious,’ said their mother, bone in hand, ‘coming from you. Same genes, kiddo. You’d starve to death online if I didn’t call you to dinner.’

‘I have to go study, Mum,’ said Beth. So much of family life was repetition.

‘Study!’ Sam exclaimed. ‘Right. She’s writing in her diary.’

Beth sighed. ‘I. Do. Not. Have. A. Diary, full stop, the end.’ All true — she preferred to call it a journal. ‘If you’ve been into my room, you little …’

‘Why?’ Sam asked. ‘Worried I was reading the non-existent diary?’

‘No, because it’s my room. You might have touched something. Hygiene issues.’

‘One more word,’ said their mother. She glanced at Beth. ‘You’re fourteen. Can’t you pretend you’re growing up? And Sam. How are stupid practical jokes funny?’

Neither of her children bothered to respond.

Beth pushed her chair back.

‘I’ve finished,’ she lied. ‘I’ll come back down later.’

Her mother held out her hands to bar exit. ‘No. We are going to fight and eat as a family,’ she said. ‘Put the reading thingy aside, Dear.’

Beth thought of herself as an only child with one brother. For four years she had been free to entertain herself and her parents; then along came number two. Now approaching ten, Sam had long ago mastered the art of getting way under her skin.

His eyes were pale blue, his face smooth and well-formed, fringed by waves of dark, untidy hair. Nature had thrown in a snub nose, deep-red lips and an athletic, compact frame. Adults found few faults:

‘He’s so clever for a ten year old.’

‘What an amazing vocabulary.’

‘Such a sweet, sensitive little boy.’

Beth could understand the clever part. Sam was intelligent, so much so that he paid barely any attention at school and still aced every test he ever took. But sweet? Sensitive?

She frowned, watching the light fitting above the dinner table swinging at the end of its cord.

‘Look at the light!’ The others stopped eating.

Cutlery clattered. A cup rolled off the table and shattered. The house groaned. Beth felt an urge to run outside, but the violence of the tremors suddenly diminished.

They all sat in silence for a moment.

‘Cool! Another earthquake,’ said Sam, starting to his feet. ‘I’m going to look for cracks.’

‘Stand under a doorframe,’ said their mother.

2

Beth swept fragments of porcelain into a dustpan.

Her father put his iPad to sleep. ‘Great article,’ he said. ‘Anyone fancy a cup of tea?’

‘Nick,’ said their mother, ‘you are an alien.’ She walked off. She returned a moment later. ‘And I don’t want tea.’

‘What’s up with your mother?’ Nick asked, as she went out again.

‘Really, Dad?’ said Beth.

‘But it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. Nothing to worry about. The valley has never had anything above five on the Kanamori scale. Not since settlement.’

‘Mum was pretty frightened.’

‘The house is well-built,’ he said. ‘We should do the dishes.’

Beth helped her father clear the table.

‘What’s wrong with the place, Dad? No-one else is getting these tremors.’

Nick ruffled her hair.

‘Ground’s settling a little. Nothing serious.’

Why doesn’t he want to talk honestly about the tremors? Does he think he’d frighten me?

Nick let the water drain from the sink and dried his hands. He kissed her on her forehead. ‘Ask me again tomorrow. Mission of diplomacy to your mother. Wish me luck.’

She bit back another rejoinder. He should be arranging for building experts and calling in the local council, but instead he offered only a weird air of distraction.

3

Beth treated her bedroom as a nation state. No entry without permission, intruders deported.

She kicked a wedge under her door. Shelves loaded with books lined two of the white-painted walls and her bed lay against the third. The fourth wall was mostly glass, and overlooked the tree-filled backyard. The wooden shutters were always closed at night. She tended to picture some freak standing in the yard and staring up. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, just creatures that might take advantage of it.

Her books were a bit of a mess; science fiction, zines, thrillers, horror, short stories, travel books and graphic novels, all mixed up. She loved paper books, even how much space they took up.

Beth spent a few moments picking up books toppled by the tremors and straightening pictures. Out of habit, she assessed herself in the dresser mirror. She was ungraceful, gangly, her nose too flat and dark brown hair disorderly. She was uncoordinated … hands and feet too big … she grimaced.

A sensible distance short of beautiful — her uncle said. You should be happy — beauty is a curse in the guise of a gift.

She ached to be a little more perfect. Self-criticism was an impossible habit to kick. Fourteen was supposed to be just a beginning, but too often it felt like the end.

‘School tomorrow,’ said her mother through the door.

‘News I can use,’ Beth muttered.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Beth sat at her desk and looked at her closed laptop. In some other universe she was backpacking through Mongolia or navigating New York City, but here she was stuck in Goolgoorook. Formerly a small country town, Goolgoorook was rapidly being digested by the nearest mega city: Sydney. Each year new housing tracts, more kids at school, big box retailers and fast food outlets in the main street and traffic all day. Someday people would forget Goolie had ever been anything but a suburb.

Their house lay on a gently sloping one hectare block. The far end was wooded, the portion closer to the road had been cleared for dressage by a former owner. If Beth opened her window she would hear a) Mrs Schmidt’s cats killing birds, b) the Danner boys at war/playing cricket, c) Mr Economides shouting about soccer or d) the buzz-cut Leung kids riding their screaming motorbikes in the local reserve. It was getting hard to pretend she lived in the country.

And yet: Goolgoorook was still different. Beth knew the place as few others did, from a small platypus colony upstream from Collyers Brewery to high rock outcrops in the Jugamai hills. Most of her friends were absorbed with messaging and social media updates, worried about their status and hanging at the local skate park, so Beth had the local outdoors almost to herself.

Goolgoorook lay halfway along the flat-floored Jugamai valley and had once been the centre of a dairy-farming community. Now, real estate prices and rates soared. The dairy properties were broken down into hobby farms and small suburban allotments.

Beth had a good view of the northern portion of the valley, lights scattered along the main roads and up to the edge of the hills. There the lights stopped, replaced by a dark void, the southern portion of Ooralloo National Park. A place of mystery, hopefully never to be subdivided, paved or sewered.

Remembering Sam, Beth knelt to retrieve her diary. It was hidden within the carved-out shell of an old maths textbook.

A sharp rap at the door startled her and she slotted the diary back into its hiding place.

‘I’m already in bed,’ she snapped.

‘What a good little girl. Hope you’ve hidden your diary.’

‘Bugger off, Sam.’

‘They’ve gone to sleep,’ Sam said. ‘Old people need their zeds.’

‘So do I, Sam.’

‘Cool cracks in the cellar! Big cracks.’ Silence for a few seconds. ‘Come on.’

Beth picked up her steel ruler, ready to defend herself. Cautiously she leaned down and removed the wedge. The door swung open. Sam stood in the hallway.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m not going after you. Though you deserve it.’

She went along, downstairs into the frigid cellar.

‘Mum won’t like us being here.’

‘Mummy won’t like it. Awwww,’ he taunted.

4

The cellar was long and dark, with red brick walls and a concrete floor. ‘The lights are out,’ Sam told her, switching on his torch. ‘Be careful you don’t electrocute yourself.’

Toys were strewn across the far corner of the cellar. Two electric drills lay on the floor, cords entwined. Sam laughed. He swung the torch beam in great arcs.

‘Stop that,’ said Beth sharply. ‘You’re making me dizzy.’

‘Is this cool or what?’

‘Dad will be pissed.’

‘I’m the only one who uses this stuff to make anything,’ Sam said. ‘I should be in charge down here.’

‘Making what?’ asked Beth. The idea of Sam with power tools alarmed her.

‘Whatever I like.’ He held up a hand. The torch beam settled over the back wall. ‘There’s the real damage.’

Beth swallowed. Cracks? They were chasms. Three of them, each stretching right across the wall. Each ran vertically, splitting bricks. The widest was broad enough to take her arm. ‘The house could collapse,’ she said, alarmed.

‘No chance,’ Sam scoffed. ‘Cellar walls don’t hold up the house.’

‘You’re a builder?’

‘No, I listen to Dad sometimes. When it suits me.’

The earth beyond the wall had spilled through the cracks. Beth wrinkled her nose at the smell, a mixture of damp soil and compost.

‘Graveyard dirt,’ Sam said. ‘Hemming Heights was once a cemetery. The developers forgot to move some of the bodies.’

She glared at him. ‘Seen it. Crap movie.’

Beth shivered, sniffed at the air. Something smelled wrong down here, something that made her flesh creep. She felt a strong urge to get out. ‘I’ve seen enough. Torch on the stairs.’ Surprisingly, he complied.

‘You won’t say anything to Mum?’ asked Sam. ‘Or Dad? I’ll be stuffed if he finds out I’ve been into the underworld.’

‘We have to say something. But I’ll say it was me.’

Beth climbed the stairs so quickly that she hit her head.

Beth found it difficult to sleep. She visualised the cellar and tried to recapture the strange way she had felt down there, and finally unconsciousness came.

She floated through dreams. The last of them, and the only one she could remember clearly, saw her alone on a snowy mountain top. A cold wind cut her clothes, stinging her hands and face. Without warning, an elegant black shape fell from a tree and stood before her. A huge penguin, with a needle-sharp orange beak and clawed feet, sleek with well-groomed black and red feathers.

‘Ah!’ it hissed. ‘You are the traveller.’

‘No,’ cried Beth. ‘A writer.’

‘Write about me, then,’ it commanded.

The bird began to squawk. Beth could not understand a word. Finally, it toppled into a crevasse.