‘Come on, everyone, let’s go and see our new home.’
Max pushes past all of us and rushes inside. Mum and Dad follow, but Ruby and I hang back. As we finally step into the hallway, a dank smell wraps round us, like no one has been here for a very long time.
Behind us the door shuts quietly and the house kind of seals us in. I can’t help myself. I step back and check that the door will still open, before I can relax enough to explore any of the rooms.
Ruby notices. ‘Lil, there’s no such thing as ghosts.’
‘Yep. I know that.’
‘So what’s wrong with you?’
‘Other than the fact that I don’t want to move to Gideon?’
‘Yeah, other than that.’
‘There’s something strange here. Something creepy,’ I say.
‘Well, in Chinese culture the number 4 is pretty unlucky,’ she says.
‘It’s more than unlucky.’ I raise my eyebrows. ‘It’s spooky; that’s what it is.’
Ruby almost smiles at me then. There’s definitely something she’s not telling me, but I guess there are things I’m not telling her either. Like I’ve already looked at the house online, I know it’s got an attic and I know the attic is a place I’m scared of, but also somewhere I really want to see.
So I hurry to the stairs, and as I take one step, my heart starts to race and my skin gets clammy, like whatever’s up there is waiting for me. ‘Rubes? You coming?’
‘Yeah, in a sec. I’m going to find the toilet.’
I should wait for her. I don’t want to go up alone, but I also don’t want to be in this house any longer without seeing the attic. It’s like knowing you shouldn’t look at something horrible, but you actually can’t look at anything else.
The stairs creak as I tread on them. They feel like they might snap under my feet and let me dangle. If I die on the staircase today, at least I’ll be spared the joys of Gideon. As I reach for the banister, an electric shock zaps me. Like when you touch a slide after someone else has slid down it. I jerk my hand away. I pass the landing to the second floor of rooms, and keep going up.
There’s a red door at the top of the stairs. It’s a glossy, bright red and I wonder who would paint a door such an intense colour. It’s like a warning and I’m not sure why, but my heart’s beating crazy fast as I turn the metal handle and push the door open. Then it’s like something jumps me, kicks me from behind. I feel myself going down, crashing through the doorway and hitting the floor.
And that’s all I know.
I come to, gasping for breath as the dirt on the floor fills my nose and mouth and makes me cough. The smell is old and strong, like an op shop filled with junk. I want to pull myself up, but I hurt and I can’t move my legs. Everything feels glued to the floorboards. Slowly I can roll over a bit, so at least I can see around the room. There’s a tall antique-looking mirror standing on a frame in the corner. I want to go to it, but I can’t move. I’m pinned to the floor, trapped.
The ceiling’s slanted sharply on both sides, so you can only stand up properly in the middle.
‘Lil –’
Banging on the door. Ruby’s outside somehow. She must be wondering what’s going on.
‘Lil! The door won’t open.’
‘The door’s jammed.’
This is possibly the first time I’ve ever lied to my best friend. I try to make myself feel better by pretending that it’s not really a lie, because the door might be jammed on this side too. But I haven’t actually tried it. I’m just stalling her. It feels like I’ve been in this room before and I want to stay in that feeling for as long as I can, because when she comes in, it will disappear. Rooms can have that effect. But this is not like any feeling I’ve ever experienced. It’s like the room knows who I am.
Before I can stand up and investigate a bit more, a draught blows, chilling me as its icy fingers touch my bare skin. I can feel my heart tearing away, and I tell myself it’s just an old house, and old houses are cold, because no one’s been in here for a long time, so the temperature of the air means nothing. But still the feel of it, the incredibly cold pull of it up and down my legs, makes me shiver. My teeth are chattering and I’m freezing.
Ruby knocks again. ‘Lil, are you okay?’
‘Yeah. I think I can open the door. Just a second.’ But before I try, I walk through the cold air towards the mirror. And as I walk to it, I can see the top of my head come into frame, because the mirror’s tilted on its axis. Then my shoulders appear. My middle. And as I step right up, I move the mirror down, so my whole body is present, but something moves behind me. There’s another shape in the mirror. I whip around to find it, but the room’s empty. I realise the cold has gone and I’m not shivering anymore.
For the first time since we drove into this stupid town, I’m almost excited. This will be my new bedroom. In this room I can cope with Gideon and all its trees and swampy beach and no shops and a one-building school. Because this room holds secrets, and even if they are of the dark-frightening type, I love secrets more than anything else.
Ruby’s knocking brings me back to what now seems like any other room. Has it all been in my head?
As soon as I touch the door handle, it springs open and Ruby crashes in. ‘You okay, Lil?’
‘Yeah, I am. I’m good. Let’s go downstairs. I want to see the rest of the place. This is a boring old room.’
‘Really? You sure?’
‘No, I’m not, but I don’t know what to say about it, so let’s just go and explore.’
She looks at me closely before she lets me turn her around. She can tell something’s up, but I’m not ready to talk about it. I want to understand what’s going on first.
As Ruby and I wander through the town, we pass a creaking old sign that says Gideon’s population is 1,489. Like it’s proud or maybe just totally amazed that this many people would actually choose to live here. My high school’s got more than 1,489 students, so I’m stunned to know we’re moving to a place with fewer occupants than my school has students.
The 1,489 unlucky people live scattered around Gideon in a grid of streets off the main square, where there are a few shops, the local school, police station, and football/cricket/netball/basketball clubs. It’s not hard to find your way around. You just walk out of number 4, (I’m still refusing to call it our house), down the street to the right and you hit the corner where the milk bar, the Chinese restaurant and the fish and chip shop are. If you turn left, you reach the pub and the school and that’s pretty much it. It’s taken Ruby and me about nine minutes to walk right round the edge of town, and now we’re doing a lap round the school. Well, they call it a school. I call it a dump.
‘At least you won’t get lost.’
‘That’s a bonus.’
‘No more Mr Parks barking maths at you.’ She’s trying to make me laugh. But just the thought of having to do maths without Ruby to feed me answers makes me burst into tears.
‘Oh, Lil. I’m sorry. I was joking. Maybe I can text you the answers.’
She hugs me and I realise I have three more weeks of her hugs and then I’ll only get to hug her on the occasional weekend. This just makes me cry more.
‘It’s okay. I promise. You’ll make friends.’
We look at each other, knowing there’s no way I’ll make friends. It’s not something I can do, especially without her helping me. Usually it’s Ruby who makes a friend and they get me sort of by default. The buy-one-get-one-free deal. I can’t see my popularity increasing in a town this size.
‘I don’t want to make friends. I hate making friends.’ More tears. This could go on forever, crying hysterically outside my new school, except while I’m wailing, someone rides past on a bike. If I was at home, in the city, I wouldn’t look up, but given that I haven’t actually seen anyone on the streets since we’ve been here, I can’t help my
self. Because I’m sobbing and I’m clearly a stranger, he looks at me too. He has no helmet on and his hair’s long and blond: a bit rock-star-crossed-with-surfer, although he’s obviously a loser if he lives in this town.
He’s zigzagging back and forth across the street, confirming the tragic fact that there’s hardly any traffic in this town and that it’s perfectly safe to ride without a helmet down the middle of the road. And then out of nowhere bounds the Alsatian and I realise the boy on the bike is the one who whistled before. The dog runs after the bike like it’s perfectly used to following it, but as the boy rides up closer, he looks over and stares at me in that way a parent does when they’re sizing you up. I’d look away, but he’s really cute. He’s got tanned skin from spending too much time in the sun, and amazing green eyes that bore right into me like he can read my mind. He’s the sort of boy you hope will notice you but never does, because the hottest girls in school, who make sure you never crack an introduction, always surround them.
He’s still not as cute as Jackson Hooper, though. Okay, I know I have to forget about Jackson, because pretty soon I’ll probably never see him again, or if I do it’ll be at Ruby’s graduation dinner and he’ll be surrounded by a bunch of girls. Still, it hurts thinking about him. It’s just another thing Mum and Dad have wrecked by dragging me to Gideon. If I’d stayed in the city, who knows, maybe he would finally have noticed me.
Ruby suddenly stops hugging me and looks up to see what’s caught my attention. She isn’t stunned into silence by his cuteness, so she grins and calls out, ‘Hi, are you the welcoming committee?’
He turns his bike round so quickly that he almost falls, and rides away so fast, it’s like he needs to escape. The dog barks and runs off after him.
Ruby laughs at the getaway, but I just groan. It’s started happening already. ‘Great, Rubes. The locals are avoiding me.’
‘At least he’s cute.’
‘Yeah. He was.’
‘Maybe he’ll be in your class.’ She’s always trying to be upbeat.
‘For sure. There’s probably only one class. I might even end up in with Max. Little town, everyone in together.’ I groan.
‘And the work will be really easy –’
‘So I’ll blitz it.’
‘Everyone’ll be amazed at how smart you are.’
‘Totally.’
Neither of us bothers to laugh. I can’t even pretend to be okay with this place.
‘Where should we go now?’ Ruby says.
‘I don’t know. There’s nowhere to go.’
‘Must be something to do here.’ There she goes again, always positive.
‘We could whittle sticks.’
‘Oh, Lil, you’d be good at that.’
I manage half a smile, but that’s only because she’s my best friend and she’s trying. ‘I don’t want to go back to the house,’ I say, more because I want to avoid the fact we’re moving than because I’m scared.
But Ruby must misunderstand because she says, ‘I don’t blame you. It’s creepy, isn’t it?’
At least it’s not just me. ‘But why, Rubes? Why do you think it’s creepy?’
‘You know what Mum’s like about omens,’ she says.
I nod because we all know. ‘I know she won’t say number 13.’
‘Well, that’s what I meant before. When we went to China years ago—’
‘Yeah, when your dad was still alive.’
‘Mum really got into the culture,’ she says.
‘As she does.’
‘And she freaked out one day because we were supposed to stay in a room that was number 4. I remember it, because Dad thought it was hilarious that she stormed downstairs and demanded a different room on a different floor.’
‘So number 4’s bad luck?’ I’m still not quite sure what she’s saying.
‘For Chinese people it is.’
‘But why?’
‘I can’t remember.’ Ruby’s the worst liar. Whenever she makes an excuse, she looks away at her hands or her feet, or anywhere other than the person she’s lying to.
‘Ruby Harada. Tell me.’
She sighs. ‘Because the word for 4 in Chinese sounds the same as their word for death.’
‘Great.’
‘But we’re not in China so it’s just a number, isn’t it?’
‘So that’s why you went weird when we pulled up outside.’
‘Mum’s so intense about these things, I can’t get them out of my head. And that house is pretty –’
‘Haunted looking?’
‘No. You sound like Max. It’s just big and old and weird.’
‘So you won’t come and stay?’
‘Course I will. Just don’t tell Mum the address or she’ll never let me.’
The thought that Ruby might not be allowed to visit is enough to get me sniffling again. ‘How am I going to live here without you?’
She hugs me harder, but even she can’t answer that.
‘Let’s try and find the good bits of the town. There must be some,’ she says.
My grandmother had an old saying, “If you’re not willing to find something you don’t want to find, then don’t go looking for it.” She used to say it to us when we slept overnight and would rummage through her cupboards looking for something to do or play with. We never found much. Jars of old buttons, different versions of the Bible, toffees that would break your teeth if you chewed on them. I was always sure we were missing the good stuff. She had to have stashed her treasures somewhere. But we never found them – even after she died. So whatever hiding place she had for her treasures, it must have been amazing.
I think she would have told me not to explore Gideon.
I’m not sure what takes us through the town, neither of us talking, each of us with thoughts we’re not ready to share. I’m seeing myself here in this place, totally alone. I don’t know what’s in Ruby’s head. She’s just following me as I walk, leaving it all behind us.
We see a few people. Little kids learning to ride bikes. An old man, who gives me a weird look as I walk past. But mostly it’s quiet. Where is everyone? There are no garage sales, or Sunday afternoon parties. No picnics in the park. Even as we slide down the back of the grassy football oval and into what looks like a picnic ground, there’s no noise. That’s the creepiest thing.
‘River track.’ Ruby reads a little sign pointing into the bush. ‘That might be fun.’
‘Seems like we’re really lowering our expectation of fun, but sure, it beats doing another lap of the town.’
It’s not a cold day, but as we walk onto the dusty dirt track the air temperature drops. Ruby and I don’t even talk about where we’re going. We just walk, like zombies. I have to stop once, to pull a stick from my sandals, but Ruby keeps going. And we follow the track further into the bush.
We’re suddenly right in the middle of a forest of huge, epic-looking gum trees. With white trunks, they stretch as high as the sky, like giant ghosts standing over us. Something about it makes me shiver.
Usually I’d be scared of snakes on a track like this. I’d be bashing a long stick on the ground as I walked, singing or talking loudly to scare away any threats. But here I’m not worried about nature. There’s something else pulling me in.
‘Lil, maybe we should go back. Your mum’s probably wondering where we are.’
‘Yeah. Probably,’ I say.
But we both keep trudging along. Ruby’s now following me, rather than leading. I know she’s scared, but I don’t care.
‘I’m pretty hungry,’ she says.
‘Yeah, me too. But let’s just go a bit further.’
We pass a bend and there’s an enormous gum fallen across the track. It looks like a giant’s arm.
Ruby stops, grabs my shoulder and pulls me back. ‘Lil, maybe it’s a sign
–’
‘Of what?’
‘That we should stop. That we shouldn’t go any further.’
‘But it’s just a tree.’ I know I don’t sound very convincing and Ruby doesn’t answer, so I give her a hug. ‘Just ten more minutes and then we’ll go back. I promise, Rubes.’
She looks at me and nods, her eyes flicking from side to side. She looks like she might cry.
‘Come on, help me up.’ I make her cup her hands together so I can get a leg-up and scramble onto the wide smooth trunk. I bend down to pull her after me, but she hesitates.
‘I’ll stay here.’
‘No. Please, Ruby.’
Reluctantly she stretches her hand up and I pull her onto the bottom branch so she can climb the rest of the way herself.
‘Aren’t you scared too?’ she says.
‘Yeah, I am, but there’s something about this place that makes me want to keep going.’
‘Great. That’s what you said when you made me go to Macca’s party – and look how that turned out!’
I laugh and jump down the other side of the trunk. Big mistake. It’s a bit too high and sharp pains stab my heels. Sensibly, Ruby slides down, her jeans protecting her from the rougher sections of bark.
‘Is that water?’
I nod, and my heart starts racing.
‘Probably just a creek or something,’ I say.
‘You’ll be able to come down here all the time.’
‘Great.’ And it is, except, I can’t really see myself hanging here. Not without Ruby.
‘Well it’s beautiful,’ she says.
I can feel the cold creeping up my back, reaching into my hair and tugging me backwards. I stumble, tripping over the ground and fall onto my bottom. Ruby bends down and laughs.
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Sort of is.’
And just then something flashes past. I turn and try to see what it is, but it’s gone. ‘Did you see that?’ I say.
‘What?’
‘That flash. Like something, or someone, ran past.’
‘Someone?’
‘I guess.’
Haunting of Lily Frost Page 3
