At the Edge

by Lee Murray

  ‘Bingham,’ Justin countered. ‘Machu Picchu.’

  They grinned at each other, and yes, if they’d been going under that pyramid of concrete benches, then they really could be Bingham or Carter avatars. Still creepy, though.

  The boys walked forward into the darkness, the flashlights on their solar phones sketching the arrangement of walls and doorways.

  ‘We gotta keep an eye on the time,’ Colin said.

  ‘We got more than two hours,’ Justin, slightly older and also slightly more foolhardy, scoffed. ‘Hey – we find the tunnels, we’ve saved ourselves time.’

  That put a patina of motivation over their unease. Being the first to find the tunnels would give them kudos to last their entire lifetimes.

  Mounds of dust and cobwebs glittered in patches as their lights tangled in it, shapeless things morphed out of shadows. Deeper in, detritus became scarcer; soon there was only dust, thick and sparkling every now and then in their flashlights. Walls closed around them, the ceiling pressed darkness over their heads, like an Incan or Egyptian tomb.

  It was when all sense of the stage had faded that they heard noises apart from their own. They paused, playing their flashlights ahead, behind, all around. Shadows jumped and danced in the wavering light.

  They couldn’t identify the sound. Were they steps? Not quite. But it wasn’t a slipping, sliding, or slithering sound either, which ruled out snakes or insects or rats. In unspoken agreement, the boys took a slight step backwards.

  Maybe whatever it was heard them because sudden silence made the darkness a sentient thing.

  What was worse? Hearing the sound, or nothing where there’d been something? Did that mean something was watching them?

  They took another step back.

  The silence grew more intent. They could imagine it cocking its ears, tilting its head to one side.

  Colin couldn’t decide whether the sound had been ahead of them or not. Justin slipped another step backwards.

  ‘Justin,’ Colin whispered and jerked his thumb to indicate ahead and behind and exaggerated a shrug. Justin edged closer to Colin, their shoulders brushing.

  The sounds continued and both boys realised they were ahead – and behind!

  Unthinkingly, they reached for each other. They didn’t go as far as holding hands, they were too old for that, but did grab each other’s nearest shoulder. Neither wanted to admit that maybe they shouldn’t have come. All those stories – animals’ bodies, people’s bodies, people never seen again. They’d all paid their pounds of flesh which, in the boys’ minds, became rotting flesh dripping from the bodies of the recently dead. Poison. That’s what the teachers said. It was a place that took away pounds of your flesh.

  Colin shook Justin’s shoulder and indicated retracing their steps. Colin’s back prickled as they turned, as though something watched them from the stage. Their lights picked up their own prints in the dust and prints of something that might’ve been insect, rat or snake, maybe cane toad (and large!), sometimes overlapping theirs, mostly running alongside. Whether they’d been there on the way in, Colin and Justin didn’t know. They’d been looking at walls, not the floor. That they mightn’t have been alone all that time was too terrible to even think.

  It seemed to take too long to get out of the corridors and back to the stage. Surely it had only taken them minutes to get this far?

  Both boys were almost running, breathing in old dust through open mouths, sweat trickling down their backs and ribs. The air was uncomfortably close and stale and stank, something else they hadn’t noticed before.

  When they burst onto the open stage, they let out a whoop of triumph, their sneaking terror dissipating into the wider open air. Somehow, with that gaping roof, it wasn’t as dark, though it was darker. Early evening colours filled the gaping doorway, individual pieces of masonry stuck out, touched with gold. They walked to the edge of the stage and sat, legs dangling.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind coming back when we got a whole day,’ Justin said.

  ‘There’s toads in there,’ Colin said.

  ‘I saw.’ Justin’s tone was sober. ‘But you can’t get poisoned by the footprints.’

  Revulsion was gaining the upper hand.

  Colin nodded. He sensibly turned off his flashlight to conserve the battery. Justin did the same, then switched it back on. The boys looked at each other, pale and frightened as whispers died around them. Silence returned. They got to their feet and clattered down the stage stairs, ran across the now darkened space in front of the stage and just as they began clambering up the Mayan pyramid of benches, Justin stopped. Colin, a step above him, stopped, echoes dissipating towards the stage. ‘What?’

  ‘I heard … thought I heard—’

  Colin looked along the beam of light towards the stage. ‘Keep it still,’ he hissed.

  But Justin was too jittery and shadows shifted, slid, shivered, shouldered each other out of the way. ‘I heard a name,’ he whispered.

  ‘That’s just a story,’ Colin hissed. ‘Let’s get outta here.’ He turned on his own light and started up the steps, relieved as Justin’s steps grated in the dust behind him, his panted breath sounding in time with his own. Colin almost ran up the last few and, reaching the top, sucking in dusty air, he turned to express triumph to Justin.

  Justin wasn’t there.

  For a couple of seconds, Colin held his breath in horror, then just as he was about to shout, saw a wavering weak line describing Justin’s path over the stage.

  ‘Justin!’ Colin’s shout bounced and echoed and shivered the dust. The light continued moving towards the backstage.

  ‘Oh – fuck!’ he muttered, very low, cos if anyone heard him saying that there’d be hell to pay. He ran back down the tiers, light jerking in his hand, startled shadows leaping away or up in front causing him to stumble, slow down, and all the time Justin’s light was getting farther away, then vanished into the corridors behind the stage.

  Colin reached the bottom. He sped across the flat space and pelted up the stairs to the stage, backpack slamming his ribs. He stumbled over the last step, fell, knocking his solarphone from his hand. It skittered across the stage, churning dust and particles into a sparkling frenzy.

  With a whispered wail, he scrambled on all fours, ignoring the sting from skinned elbows and scraped palms, almost running on feet and hands to scoop up his phone, but his backpack unbalanced him – his other hand slid out from under him and he fell forward, slamming his chin into the floor, almost biting his tongue. He picked himself up then reached for the phone and aimed it towards the backstage area, light jumping and snatching at shadows that slid around and parted to reveal a scuffed area.

  Prints. Lots of them. Things like insects, and those cane toad prints.

  He scrambled to his feet and moved quietly to where the dust was so disturbed. There were their own prints from before, but had they moved around so much just here? He stepped into the corridor, darkness enfolding him. ‘Justin!’

  His sharp whisper fell flat in the dust. Playing his light all over the walls, ceiling and floor in continuous, methodical sweeps, Colin proceeded up the corridor. At each black doorway he listened and moved on, and finally reached the spot where he and Justin had stopped. In the wavering light, the confusion of their footprints raised ridges and steep valleys in the thick grey dust, amidst the thin tracks of maybe an insect or snake. But there were too many cane toad-looking ones (and they were so big!). Beyond, shoe prints. Justin was ahead.

  ‘Justin?’ he called and his voice sprang back and bounced around him, jagged and torn. The walls were stone, not plasterboard. Was this actually one of the tunnels? The back of his neck prickled.

  He heard nothing. ‘Fuck you, Justin.’ He tried to be angry, because he was really, really scared that maybe Justin had heard his name. But that wasn’t right – it was a story, made up to keep people ou
t. Toads didn’t call anyone’s name. Except – and he stopped a moment, guilt and horror enveloping him, deeper and heavier than the dark – he’d said Justin’s name when they were here. He’d said it. What if something had heard them?

  Swallowing down what felt like a huge lump of knowing, he followed Justin’s footprints on and on, deeper and deeper into the dark. One foot slipped and he struggled to regain his balance. The light from his phone was getting weaker, but still strong enough to slip over the edge of a dark, stone step before vanishing into blackness.

  Colin bent forward, shining the light down.

  Justin’s footprints were plain on the stairs, and handprints smeared the dust coating the walls as though he had been caught by surprise and had staggered down the steps. The smudges in the dust were big, confused, probably Justin’s butt-prints.

  That was almost too much. Butt-prints. He stifled laughter as he started down the steps, but his laughter faded when he saw only handprints on both walls and butt-prints on the stairs. No footprints. That meant—

  A glint caught his light about two steps down. Justin’s solarphone. Colin stepped down and picked it up. It was really dusty; there was even dust behind the cracked glass, as though it had been there for years. It wouldn’t turn on.

  Colin shone his light down the stairs. There was no laughter in him now. Justin must’ve slipped and kept falling. What if Justin was lying hurt at the foot of these stairs, unable to move or call out for help? Colin moved faster – still cautious, but faster, down, going down into the dark, following Justin’s butt and finger prints, handprints on the walls and the steps, smeared and unclear as though he was slipping, sliding.

  How would he get him up the stairs? How would he get him up all those old tiers and out past the rubble? No way could he—? Colin remembered he had more than a flashlight in his hand. He quickly pressed in his father’s number, but there was no signal. Of all the times he could’ve used it.

  He needed to see Justin before going for help. Panting with urgency and concentration, Colin continued down the stairs, concentrating because they were so rough and uneven, as though recently hacked out of bedrock. This strangeness didn’t occur to him for a few minutes, and when it did, he stopped, leaning on the cold, old wall. It wasn’t as if the Dome was part of the ancient world. For all their jokes about Incan and Egyptian tombs and tunnels, the Dome was – well, he wasn’t sure how old it was, but his neighbour’s house was older, old even before The End, they said, and its old brick stairs were still smooth. But these were … Maybe they were unfinished. Maybe they’d been going to build a tunnel under the river, before The End.

  He stumbled as he reached the end of the stairs, his left foot slamming hard against the level ground. The air smelled old. Rotten. He shone the light around. On the far wall, it slid across a smooth space interrupting the rougher dark. He walked towards it, the dust in front pitted and ridged.

  The rotten odour thickened around him. And was that a sound? Whispering or something? It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He shone the light towards the smooth space and saw a handprint clear in the dust on the ground. Justin’s? But there was only the one print, everything else was too mussed. He stared at it, throat tight. He wanted there to be more than that one handprint. Where was the other? That frightened him, though he wasn’t sure why.

  He stepped to where he could see more clearly and leapt back with a yell of shock.

  It was an opening in the wall and, beyond, something like a river tumbled past the doorway: foul green and veined in red, stinking with a terrible acidic reek overlain with rotten eggs. There were things caught in the lazy current, turning slow circles before vanishing beyond the doorway.

  Were they screaming? There was a sound, distant, as though it was miles away.

  It couldn’t be the river. Not a drop came out. Not a wavelet encroached past the threshold. But it was liquid. Those things in it.

  He edged towards the stairs, keeping the light aimed at that greeny-flaring, stinking stuff, hearing those whispered sounds, though he wasn’t so sure he wasn’t hearing the smell, or smelling the sounds (whispers, whispers names and places secrets and promises). And heard something. A word? Was – had it been his name?

  Reflected green light glanced up from his solar phone to sting his eyes.

  Colin let out a yell. He was so close to that poisonous green.

  He skipped, tripped, scrambled back, light dancing, catching a shape against the far wall. He shone the light on it.

  A toad. Huge. Its oddly pallid skin was marred with monstrous shadows, its eyes voids of darkness.

  Colin shuffled backwards. His foot hit the stairs and he spun, running up them, not knowing he was sobbing.

  He and Justin were the world’s best friends. Had been since – well, since the beginning of all things. Daycare, kindergarten, primary. High school next winter. Same class. They’d done everything together. They spent as much time in each other’s houses, with each other’s families as their own. If Justin was gone into that … that … whatever it was, then…

  His sobs and panted breath sounded the same, breath coming harder because his nose was running like his tears were and he didn’t care.

  He reached the top of the stairs and pelted, careless of the dark, of whispers and screams, of snaking tracks or anything else, out onto the open stage beneath the gaping roof of the Dome. He walked across the stage, wiping his face with the back of his hand. Above him, sunset swirls flared across the sky.

  How would he explain to his father about Justin? About that door? Was it the river he had seen? That moving green with those things turning round and over in slow-mo somersaults? Was Justin one of those things?

  He had to get out. The solarphone was dying and the thought of clambering through the jumble of masonry outside in the dark, and crossing the complex to the Causeway? His breath hitched his eyes stung. He really wanted to be home and—

  The hair on the back of his neck suddenly prickled. He held his breath. Something scraped behind him. Rat? There it was again. Something moving, in plops, scrapes and slithers. That wasn’t a rat.

  It was the toad-thing hopping up the stairs, following his tracks through the corridors. It had been following them since they came in, he was sure of it. Everyone knew they spread poison, killed anyone who touched them. A contaminant from before The End.

  He turned his light off. Moving as quietly as he could, listening as hard as he could, Colin felt his way to the edge of the stage, sat so his legs dangled and inched his way on his butt towards the stairs on the other side.

  He felt his way down the stairs, going as fast as he dared. He paused when he reached the bottom, but the thumping of his heart occluded all other sounds.

  He moved to his right, testing the floor for obstructions before placing his feet, and kept going till he felt the wall. He inched along it, again testing the floor, conscious of that blank space to his left.

  He reached the pyramid of benches and was about to start climbing when he heard something sliding slick across the space before the stage. The air belched around him, a stench as thick as the toxic river at king tide. It was something from the river, the dead poisoned river, flowing out to take him.

  He sprinted up the stairs.

  The sounds grew more frantic, that something trying to climb the stairs. Colin kept running, the tiers going on forever. He knew there were a lot of them, but shit! His chest burned, his ribs flamed with a stitch. He couldn’t find enough breath.

  The sounds continued to grow louder, till they filled the auditorium with whispered stinks and stinky whispers. He refused to hear his name though it was there, clicking and murmuring in the rising dust.

  He was scrambling on all fours now, crying with the pain of the stitch. His backpack felt full of bricks like his big brother used for weights. He reached the top on hands and knees and, head hanging between h
is arms, gulped air in rasping sobs.

  Finally, able to stand, he swallowed and listened hard.

  Silence. He risked the light and shone it down towards the stage. The light had grown much weaker now, but it reached far enough to show nothing close behind him.

  Dust hung in slowly settling clouds, sparkling and whispering. Whispering. He wasn’t imagining it.

  The sob that came out of him wasn’t just for breathing. It was for Justin.

  Colin shouldered the backpack and stepped towards the darkness waiting within the huge doorways.

  Something clattered behind him.

  He spun. In the auditorium, the dark had become a wall. His heart pounded in time with his whispered ‘shit-shit-shit,’ a fierce whisper, as though it would protect him. Couldn’t be Justin. He heard steps sliding, slipping across the stage.

  His light wouldn’t reach that far. Colin speed-dialled his dad but the battery was almost flat. Signal, but no power.

  The footsteps were slithering down the stage stairs.

  Oh whaddo I do now?

  Footsteps grated across the space between the seating tiers and the stage. Colin turned and ran into the night, the fading light from his phone barely enough to get him over the tumbled wreckage. To hell with snakes and scorpions.

  It couldn’t be Justin. Couldn’t be.

  He tripped over things they’d skipped over before. He fell, got up, fell, got up, skidded – he was bruised and bloodied, confused and exhausted.

  Scrapes whispered behind him.

  He stopped. The Causeway was within sight, the slight glow from VicPark’s security globes spilling out the sunlight they’d stored during the day. Then he heard definite footsteps and something else:

  ‘Colin.’

  Colin had never known terror before. This wasn’t being frightened. Being frightened was fun, and there was nothing fun about this. All those horror stories were paper compared to the reality.

  He pictured bursting in through the front door at home, his parents looking up shocked, and him all dirty and stinking, blurting out everything, and his dad calling the militia and his mum taking his backpack and saying about a doctor and him saying it was just bruises but Justin was back there and—