by Toni Pike
I committed the murders, without help or encouragement from anyone else. From the moment the idea came to me, it was less then a minute before the deed was done. The thought may have been swirling around in the breeze looking for a home and it jumped into my brain. Or perhaps it was always in my head, waiting for the right moment.
That night there was murder in my heart.
Perhaps that makes me evil like my parents, a chip off the old block. I thought that killing them would make them go away. But they’re always there, whispering in my ear, telling me that I’m very bad. Every day I think about that rock covered in blood and their bodies on the sand.
Chapter 3
Twenty-six years ago
Western Australia
Clouds roll in to cut the moonlight and hide the stars from view. Joshua squeezed his own forehead as if that would help to clear his thoughts. “You should never hurt people, Tyler,” he said. “That’s the worst thing you can ever do.”
I looked down at the rock near my feet. “What will happen to me?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
Then the shock hit me like a freight train. My parents were on their way to Heaven or Hell and I’d committed the worst crime in the world. My mouth went dry and it felt like the world would end or that a tidal wave might roll in and sweep us away.
My body heaved with giant sobs. “Can you help me, please? We can run away.”
“I have to think.” Joshua sat down where the water reached the sand and put his head in his hands. “Why has this happened to me?” he asked, and then he wept for several minutes.
Finally, he calmed down and my heart thumped as he stood up. Tears flooded my eyes and I looked down to see if there was blood on my clothes. My father always said that I’d be a loser all my life, not a real man, only a pathetic wimp.
Joshua spoke slowly. “Will you promise to do everything I say?” he asked.
Those words brought me to my senses and for the first time I felt a spark of hope. “Yes of course, I promise, everything you say,” I replied, trying hard to stop my tears.
“That rock is the murder weapon so we have to get rid of it. Bring it over here.”
I picked it up and walked down to the beach. Joshua took hold of it, but my hands seemed to be frozen and wouldn’t let go.
“I’ll take it now,” he said gently. His words brought me out of my trance. My hands relaxed, he took hold of it and waded out up to his waist.
I breathed a sigh of relief as he hurled it far out into the ocean. There was a splash as it disappeared.
“I have no idea what to do now,” he said as he returned to the beach. If he was planning to tell the police, I decided that I should run into the sea and disappear like the murder weapon.
But he suddenly became calm and methodical. For the rest of the night we worked like slaves, the hardest physical work that I’ve ever done. “Listen to me, Tyler, do you have a jug or any other containers?” he asked.
“I think so, I’ll see what I can find,” I replied.
We both walked over to the van and returned with a dented plastic jug, a rusted metal flask and a couple of saucepans.
Joshua explained what he wanted. Together, we ran down to the surf, filled all the containers with water and then raced back to drown the campfire. At first it sizzled and spat but soon, with more water, the fire turned to a pile of cold ash. Then we went back and forth to throw every last bit of ash and burnt wood far out to sea, just like the rock.
“The campfire’s vanished without a trace,” I said, panting for breath.
Joshua scratched his chin. “You’d think no one had ever been here.”
He had a trowel in his backpack and I found my father’s small shovel in the van. That was all we had to try and dig a grave. There was a photo of my parents that was stuck to the wall above the kitchen sink with tape. I grabbed it and stuffed it in my pocket.
Joshua pointed across the road to the flat red expanse of desert covered in patchy scrub and dotted with spinifex. “Tyler, I have no idea if this will work,” he said. “But I want to carry the bodies way over there and bury them, well away from the campsite.”
It looked lonely and inhospitable, the perfect place to dispose of something that you never want to find again. “That sounds like a good idea,” I said.
“Then I want to drive the van well away from here, into the desert. Drive however long it takes until the fuel tank is empty. We can pretend that your parents ran out of petrol, went looking for help and never returned.”
I had heard stories like that. “Do we have to tell anyone? Nobody knows we’re here and I don’t have any relatives.”
“But your father said he gave your travel plans to the police.”
“That was a lie. He never goes near the police.”
Joshua squatted down and looked me straight in the eye. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, sure. He hates the police.”
“Then we might have a bit more time, we can wait a while before we tell anyone. But right now we have to bury your parents and drive away so that no one finds out that any of us were here.”
“Thank you, Joshua,” I said, bursting into tears of relief that he was helping me and seemed to be in control of the situation.
“Tyler, you have to help me carry them over there. I can’t do it by myself.
“Can’t we put them in the van and drive over there?”
“If we do that, the police will find evidence that their bodies were inside the van. They do all these clever forensic tests, and even if we clean the car until it’s spotless, they can still find traces of blood.”
“What are forensic tests?”
“Tests they do to investigate crimes.”
It hit me then that I’d committed a crime, that the police would throw me in jail if they ever found out. We needed to bury the bodies so they could turn to dust and become a part of the desert.
“I’ll do whatever it takes - thank you for helping me,” I said.
The night sky darkened as the cloud cover deepened. We were almost invisible, blending into the dark landscape. Joshua put the trowel in his backpack and tied the shovel to his back so that his arms were free. Even in the middle of the night, the heat was intense and sweat poured down our faces.
First, we lifted my mother’s body, and her thin limbs were already stiffening.
“They call that rigor mortis,” explained Joshua, “it happens to every dead person after a few hours.” That made me want to throw up.
My mother seemed to weigh twice as much as she did when she was alive – not that I had ever tried to carry her before. We moved slowly, weaving our way in the darkness around the tufts of spinifex, both of us grunting and moaning as if that would give us strength. There was no one to hear us. We stopped several hundred metres from the beach and were so exhausted that we let the body fall to the ground like a toddler dropping a toy.
“We need to bring your father over here before we start to dig,” said Joshua, wiping his brow.
“Can’t we rest first?” I asked, my muscles aching.
“There’s no time to rest. There might be someone out there who could stumble on the body.”
That thought was all I needed to spur me on. My strength returned and every sense was on high alert like a soldier ready for battle.
We went back to collect my father’s body, but even Joshua could barely cope with his dead weight. “It feels like ten tons,” he said. We made our way slowly, stopping to rest and then moving on, until we reached the burial site. When we let him go he landed with a thud.
We both crumpled to the ground and lay there for a moment, too exhausted to move and trying to steady our breathing. That was despite being only metres from the two bodies.
“We need to bury them deep,” said Joshua, “and replace the earth so it looks as if nothing happened here. But I’m not only concerned about the way it looks. I also don’t want a dingo or some other animal to catch the scent a
nd try to dig them up.”
“How do you know all that?” I asked.
“I don’t, but I’ve been out here a long time. I know all about the bush.”
A single bolt of lightning illuminated the four of us on the ground. As the thunder boomed, Joshua stumbled to his feet and started to dig. The lightning flashed on the outline of our bodies like a strobe light, but at three o’clock in the morning we finished.
Joshua inspected our work. “We can stop now,” he said.
***
Without any ceremony, we dumped my father and mother into the hole. Without him noticing, I took out their photo, tore it in half and threw it in the grave. I never wanted to see their faces again.
There was a final bolt of lightning and they stared back at me with open eyes. It looked as if they were about to be speak and I thought my parents were still alive.
But I knew that was impossible.
Joshua tossed in a clod of dirt and that was the last time I saw them. We kept shovelling until their faces were covered and from that moment I tried to obliterate them from my mind.
We worked side by side to fill the hole and pat down the earth on top. Joshua wanted it to blend in perfectly with the surrounding area so that no one would notice it was there.
It was hard for me to comprehend that my parents were beneath our feet. Their grave was in the Great Sandy Desert and they would soon be forgotten. I wiped away tears but they weren’t tears of grief.
“Let’s go back to the van,” said Joshua. “I think it’s time to leave.”
It was only two hours until daybreak. We made our way in the dark, both stumbling and with muscles aching, completely drained of energy. Just as we reached the van the rain started to bucket down. We climbed in and Joshua switched on the ignition. He fumbled to find the windscreen wipers and turned them to maximum.
He drove away, slowly at first because it had been a while since Joshua had driven a vehicle. In fact, he said, his licence had expired years ago. He was a good driver, much better than my father. After an hour, we headed off road and into the desert as the rain continued to pour down. That washed away our footprints and the tyre tracks, and settled the earth on the grave so that it blended in with the desert.
“This rain is a blessing,” said Joshua, “All the evidence will disappear.”
We drove for hours, and before long I was unable to keep my eyes open any longer and fell asleep. The van bumped along the rough desert floor and the scrub brushed against the sides. The rain continued for several hours but I woke up when it stopped. A few minutes later, the engine spluttered and died. We come to a halt near a termite mound that was over a metre high.
Fear suddenly gripped me. “What’s happening?” I asked, wondering what would happen to us now.
“We’ve run out of petrol and that was my plan,” said Joshua. “Now we have to walk away and leave the keys in the ignition. The story will be that your parents got lost and ran out of petrol – and then walked off trying to find help.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“They left you behind and told you to stay with the van, but they never came back. Finally, you went in search of them.”
I thought his plan sounded brilliant. “How far will we walk now?”
Joshua retrieved a creased map from his backpack. “We’ll walk until we find a road, which I’d say is probably about fifty kilometres away. But while you were asleep I’ve been thinking. Your feet are sore but we’ll just take it steadily. It might take us a couple of days. We’ll walk at night and find some shelter to rest during the day. But you can’t walk in thongs in the desert. Do you have proper shoes?”
“One pair.”
“I’ll put some more ointment on your feet before you put them on.” After applying the balm, Joshua helped me put on my shoes and did up the laces as if I was a little kid. We gathered all the food and water that we had, and finally we were ready. “Now we walk away and leave the key in the ignition,” he said.
I had complete faith in him as we began that journey. We walked through the desert as far as we could before collapsing from exhaustion soon after daybreak. Then we both slept for so many hours that it was almost dark by the time we woke up.
Feeling famished, we ate and continued walking. That was when Joshua told me the story about his parents. “My father killed my mother and he should have gone to jail,” he said. I understood then why he didn’t want to hurt anyone and why he had chosen to wander alone in the outback.
Joshua was a great teacher. He went over his plan multiple times and explained to me what I should say. I had to recite my story over and over until it become as familiar to me as my real life.
“Now, what will you say when we reach the road?” he asked.
“My parents got lost and we ran out of petrol. They went to look for help and never came back. They told me to stay with the van but after several days we gave up and went to look for them.”
“No, Tyler – don’t say we. You’re all alone and went looking for them by yourself. I don’t exist – forget all about me.”
“Can’t I just stay with you and we can wander around together?”
“This is no way for a boy to live,” he said. “You need to get an education.”
“Please, Joshua, please let me stay with you.” I had never wanted anything so much.
“I’m no good for you. You need normal people to look after you, and I’m definitely not normal.”
“Yes you are, and you’re the nicest man I ever met.”
“You haven’t met many people, but it’s time you did.”
“Have you ever wanted to stay somewhere and settle down?” I asked.
“I stayed in Broome for a few months. There was a woman who meant a lot to me. That was about seven years ago, but things didn’t work out so I left.”
“Did you ever go back?”
“I returned a few months later but I left the same day.”
***
After two days we stopped at midnight to sleep. Joshua said the next day we’d start walking in the morning and would soon reach our destination. He wanted to get there in daylight so that I would be easily seen by anyone passing by.
The thought of talking to a stranger made my head spin.
At about ten o’clock in the morning, we looked down from the top of a sand dune and saw a two-lane bitumen road, but there was no sign of any cars. At that moment, I couldn’t imagine life without Joshua. “Don’t make me do it, don’t make me leave you,” I said, bursting into tears.
“Believe me, it’s for the best,” he replied, giving me a pat on the back. “I’m going to run off as soon as we see a vehicle and return to my normal life. Promise me you’ll do exactly as I’ve told you.”
I nodded, wanting him to think that I was obedient and grateful. We sat down and waited for over an hour, until finally we saw a semi-trailer far in the distance. The road was so long and straight that it took twenty minutes to reach us.
Joshua stood up. “Go on, Tyler, and grow up to be a good man.”
I took one final look at him, then raced down the sand dune. Standing to the side of the road, I furiously waved my hands. Joshua had coached me a thousand times in what to do and say and even how to flag down a vehicle.
The truck slowed down and then stopped only a few metres away from me. The door opened and the driver jumped out – a middle-aged man with grey hair. His face was wide in astonishment at the sight of a child all alone in the desert. “What’s wrong, mate?” he asked.
“My parents are missing. Our van ran out of petrol and they went to look for help, more than a week ago.”
“Oh my God – you poor kid. It’s a wonder you survived out here. I’ll take you to the police station in Quarry, as fast as I can.”
He helped me climb aboard, and the cushioned seat felt so comfortable after the rigours of the previous few days. As we drove away, I stared up at the sand dune but there was no sign of Joshua.
Chapter 4
Gazing at the side mirror, I watched as the scenery retreated and the distance between us grew. It was easy to imagine Joshua Byrnes behind that sand dune, thrilled to be rid of me at last and able to return to a quieter life. As soon as I ran towards the truck, he probably gave a cheer, turned his back on me and moved away as quickly as he could. He would travel to a different part of the country and try to forget the boy who killed his parents – and the dreadful deeds of that night.
I imagined that he thought the day he met me was one of the worst days of his life. Almost twenty-five years later I found out what really happened. Ridiculous as it seems, Joshua didn’t flee straight away or shout with joy to be rid of me. He hid and watched for over thirty minutes until the truck was out of sight and then he stared at the deserted road for over an hour just in case, for some unimaginable reason, it came back and left me by the side of the road.
After that, he turned and headed north towards Port Hedland. There were tears in his eyes because, once again, he was all alone and missed me.
I was sitting in the cabin of a semi-trailer next to a stranger and the straight road dissected the treeless red desert dotted with scrub and spinifex. “My name’s Dave Vidovich,” said the driver, baring his yellow teeth in a grin. He looked to be about fifty years old with a massive stomach, tanned face dotted with large sunspots, and leathery arms covered in thick black hairs. There was a tattoo from wrist to shoulder on his left arm, a finely detailed snake that was coiled and ready to strike. The scales glistened in the sunshine so I leaned against the door to avoid it. “So what’s your name?” he asked.
“Tyler Thompson. Thank you for picking me up.”
“No need to thank me, anyone around here would do the same.” He leaned over and retrieved a plastic bottle from the glove box. “Here’s some water for you, mate, you must be thirsty.”
I gulped the liquid down and it was definitely the best drink of my life. Turning slightly to the left, I saw a rifle resting on the parcel shelf. Dave glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. I smiled and looked ahead, trying to pretend that I hadn’t seen the weapon.
