‘Where were you?’ said Dad when I got back to the table.
‘Major dump,’ I said.
‘Do you have to?’ said Toby, his mouth full of bocconcini.
‘This is a family dinner,’ said Dad, his voice tense.
‘And I think we’d all appreciate your company.’
‘Really?’ said Toby.
Mom put a calming hand on Dad’s hand. ‘It’s okay, dear. Dom’s here now.’
‘Are you going to eat that, or what?’ said Toby, his eyes on my calamari.
After dinner we walked back home, through streets that seemed brighter, more illuminated, more neon-infested than before.
SATURDAY
SERIOUS GOOGLING
The next morning I did some serious googling.
First I typed in Rocco Taverniti.
As I’d expected, there was a lot of stuff about the Tritons. Article after article, photo after photo. A beaming Rocco Taverniti at the opening of the new Tritons stadium at Carrara. A beaming Rocco Taverniti with his arm around star Brazilian recruit Gonzaga. And a beaming Rocco Taverniti as part of the Australian bid to hold the 2022 FIFA World Cup. A couple of things soon became clear: Rocco Taverniti wasn’t averse to publicity, and he really liked to beam.
But there was other stuff as well, because Rocco Taverniti seemed to be on every board of every organisation in the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast Development Board, the Gold Coast Small Business Association, the Gold Coast Italo–Australian Club. You name it, he was on it.
But what surprised me was that he also seemed to be involved in the Save Ibbotson Reserve campaign.
Could Rocco Taverniti possibly be a greenie?
It didn’t take long for me to get sick of Rocco Taverniti and his beaming, so I typed Graham Havilland, Imogen’s father’s name, into Google.
Again, there were a lot of hits. I brought up the first website and began reading an old newspaper article. Local politician and anti-drugs campaigner, Graham Havilland, disappeared from a Gold Coast restaurant in mysterious circumstances today...
When I’d finished reading, I was just about to start on the next article when I had another idea.
I found Dad on the treadmill – he sure was putting is some serious kays lately.
‘Can I ask you a question about Mr Havilland?’ I asked him after he’d finished, after the treadmill offered him its usual puerile encouragement: ‘Great workout! Champ! Hope to see you again soon!’
Immediately a concerned look appeared on his sweat-shiny face.
‘Look, Dom, you might have to let go of the Graham thing,’ he said.
‘Let go of it?’ I replied. ‘I thought he was, like, your best friend.’
Dad paused, as if he was getting his thoughts in order. Even then he made a couple of false starts, opening his mouth as if to say something, then closing it again.
Eventually, sick of impersonating a guppie, he said, ‘Graham made a lot of enemies in his time.’
‘Because he was against drugs?’ I said.
Again it seemed to take Dad forever to answer.
‘You have to remember that the Gold Coast has had, how should I put it, a colourful history. In fact, it used to be a bit of a Wild West sort of place,’ he said.
Dad had gathered himself some momentum now.
‘Thankfully, that’s all changed and I can pretty confidently say we’ve got the best lifestyle of anybody in this country, bar none.’
‘But what –’ I started, before Dad cut me off, saying, ‘Let’s not discuss this any further.’
He went to put his arm around my shoulder, something he had done a million times before. But an image appeared in my head: Dad holding the branding iron, its tip glowing red. Then the pain. Then that smell, somehow, returned to my nostrils.
I couldn’t help myself, I recoiled.
As I did, anger contorted my father’s face, turning him into somebody no lifestyle program would ever want as its host.
But then it was gone, and he clamped his hand on my shoulder.
‘You know I’m always here for you, Dom,’ he said, squeezing hard.
‘I know,’ I said.
Now I wanted his hand to stay like this, but I knew it wouldn’t because Dad was a very busy man, because Dad was always on the move.
Sure enough, with a glance at his Patek Philippe he said, ‘Better get a move on, got a conference call to the States happening,’ and he and his hand were gone.
‘Great workout! Champ! Hope to see you again soon!’ said the treadmill again.
‘You’re a moron,’ I told it.
Lights flashed.
‘You wouldn’t know what a great workout is,’ I told it.
More lights flashed.
Some of my fellow runners didn’t mind running on a treadmill. Gabby, for one. And Bevan Milne could sit, turd-like, on a treadmill for hour after hour. I hated treadmills. Hated the fact that no matter how fast you ran, no matter how much effort you put in, you didn’t go anywhere. Just stayed there looking at the TV, or some spot on the wall, or some meaningless figure on the console.
But when more lights flashed it seemed like some sort of challenge, so I stepped onto the treadmill and hit the start button.
‘I’ll show you a workout!’ I said.
I pressed the pace button until it was at its maximum. Did the same with the incline button.
I started running. And I have to admit, I did have to put in some effort to keep up, to stop the machine spitting me out the back. But it wasn’t long before I was bored. All that effort and where do you go? The same old place. I was just about to step off when the machine sped up.
How could that be? I looked at the figures on the console. I’d already bumped it up to its maximum.
Now it was quite a challenge and I had to really put in some effort to stay on.
‘Great run!’ said the treadmill. ‘But you haven’t reached your second programmed goal! Champ!’
It was the same annoying American voice, but it seemed to me that there was a slight change in its tone, that somehow the treadmill was mocking me.
‘You really are a moron,’ I said, between breaths.
The machine sped up even more.
Now I was pretty much sprinting. And freaking out: was the machine actually racing me?
It sped up even more.
Now I was running as fast as I could, maybe even faster than I could. And yes, I could’ve just jumped off, but that didn’t really seem like an option.
But when it sped up even more, I thought enough was enough, and I hit the stop button.
It didn’t stop.
I pulled out the emergency stop lever. It still didn’t stop.
In fact, it sped up even more.
Time to get off, I thought.
But again, for some reason, I couldn’t.
It was me who had challenged the machine.
So I kept pounding away, sheets of sweat dropping off me now, my heart thumping in my chest.
And then the machine stopped.
‘Great workout! Champ!’ it said.
And I couldn’t help smiling at it. ‘Great workout!’ I agreed.
But as I went to step off the machine it said something else, something that sounded like, ‘Turn off all the lights during Earth Hour!’
I told myself I was hearing things. Treadmills didn’t say things like, ‘Turn off all the lights during Earth Hour.’ They said things like, ‘Well done’ or ‘Great workout!’ or ‘Champ!’
But there again, this was no ordinary treadmill.
And when it said it again – ‘Turn off all the lights during Earth Hour!’ – I knew that I really had heard correctly.
The Debt had spoken again. This was my next instalment.
‘But where?’ I said to the treadmill.
‘The Gold Coast,’ it replied. ‘For one hour only!’
‘That’s not possible!’ I said, but that, apparently, was the end of our conversation.
Because de
spite asking it several more questions I received no answers.
I went back to my room, onto my balcony.
There were no clouds in the sky. The pool’s surface was unbroken. I could just make out the remnants of our old fort, high in the fig tree. And the only sound, that of a distant lawnmower, ceased.
It was quiet, and it was still, and the anger was building inside me. Anger fuelling anger.
The Zolt had escaped, hadn’t he?
Gus had lost his leg to cancer.
ClamTop was a gimmick.
Like Alice I’d fallen into a topsy-turvy world where normal rules did not apply. A world that Dad and Gus, for some strange, perverse reason, had invented.
I picked at the edge of the scab on the inside of my thigh.
Don’t! I told myself, but I kept picking until I’d raised the scab a bit and a smear of blood appeared.
Don’t! I told myself again, but this time I listened to what I had to say and stopped picking.
‘Hey you,’ I yelled at ClamTop. ‘You’re not so talkative today, are you?’
Nothing happened.
‘Are you?’
Moving back into the room, I brought my mouth so close it was almost touching the cool burnished metal.
‘Are you?’ I yelled.
There was no response. I took the ClamTop downstairs. I took it outside. And I put it in our rubbish bin. Just to make sure, I piled some rubbish on top of it so that it was buried deep.
SUNDAY
PREACHER’S
The next day was unusually gloomy, the sky a patchwork of grey, a hint of rain in the air.
‘Loose as moose on the juice,’ said Seb by way of a greeting.
He was wearing a Bart Simpson T-shirt, and shorts that were even baggier than usual.
‘What happened to the goose?’ I said.
‘Goose is on holidays,’ he said.
‘Where do gooses, I mean geese, go on holidays?’
‘Venice,’ replied Seb. ‘Gooses dig gondolas.’
We both smiled at the silliness of it.
As we neared the bottom of the Gut Buster Seb’s phone went off, playing a tune that sounded very heavy and very metal. I knew he always carried a mobile – I’d seen it jiggling around in his pocket – but this was the first time it’d rung while we were running and I was intrigued.
Maybe now I’d learn something about his family.
He answered in English, well, sort of English: ‘Yo, wassup!’ but soon switched to another language. At first I thought it was Italian, but as his conversation progressed I changed my mind.
Calabrian? But it didn’t sound like the language old man Taverniti and his son had been speaking.
Was it another dialect?
When Seb hung up, I asked him, ‘What language was that?’
‘It’s from the old country,’ he said.
‘I realise that,’ I said. ‘But what language was it?’
By then we’d reached the Gut Buster and Seb said, ‘I’ll tell you at the top.’
He took off, and I mean really took off.
Let him go, one part of me said, you’re in a taper, you’ve got the state titles soon.
But another part of me, a less obedient part, wasn’t going to let that happen.
I took off after Seb.
Accelerating up a hill is one of the hardest things you can do in running, guaranteed to get your heart pumping, to get your heart thumping. And Seb was really putting in hard. It was only right at the end that I managed to catch him.
‘Got ya!’ I said.
As we cruised back down the hill, both of us sucking in the big ones, Seb said, ‘Hey, what say we mix it up today, have a run through Preacher’s?’
Through Preacher’s?
The Preacher himself is a pretty scary old dude. And then there are the bodies, the murdered, mutilated, mouldering bodies they talk about at school. Supposedly, Preacher’s Forest is littered with them. And the last time I’d been there it’d been in an aeroplane, with the Zolt. And that experience had made Preacher’s even less attractive as a place to run, especially on a gloomy, golf-unfriendly day like this.
Seb must’ve seen the doubt on my face, because he said, ‘Come on, I’ll show you a thing or two about cross-country running.’
Show me a thing or two? I’d been on the cross-country team for two years before I’d switched to track running.
‘If there’s any showing to be done,’ I said, ‘I’ll be the one doing it!’
Despite my boast, it was soon obvious that Seb knew Preacher’s much better than I did. So I let him take the lead, following him as he made his way down one of the many narrow tracks that crisscrossed the scrubby bushland. I could smell the wood smoke well before we got there, before the track opened out and we were in a clearing, before we were at the Preacher’s camp.
The Preacher, dressed in an overcoat, was hunkered over the fire. He looked up as we ran past, his eyes blazing from a face black with grime.
I’d never been this close to the Preacher before, never really seen his face before. And when I did I was surprised, because there was something about it that was familiar.
‘The black riders of the Apocalypse are upon you!’ he said, his strident voice shattering the morning stillness.
‘Morning to you, too, sir!’ Seb said to him, before looking at me, smiling.
I didn’t find the Preacher as amusing as Seb did, however, and I was glad when we left him and his apocalyptic utterings behind.
We were now in a part of Preacher’s that was wilder, more heavily wooded, where the track was rougher. As I ran, concentrating on the terrain, I started to wonder about the wisdom of what I was doing. Why was I risking spraining an ankle before such an important race?
‘Bikes!’ yelled Seb as he stepped off the track.
Preacher’s Forest was very popular with mountain bikers. Invariably they thought they had the right of way. And us runners weren’t going to argue: they were bigger than us, more metallic than us. Three of them passed, on black bikes, in black leathers, with black full-face helmets.
‘Wow!’ said Seb. ‘Who were they?’
The Debt, I thought, remembering the motorbike riders who had picked the Zolt and me up after he’d landed the plane.
Seb increased the pace. I’d never run off-road with him before, but it soon became obvious that he was a natural. He literally never put a foot wrong, negotiating the rocky track as if it were a smooth hi-tech race surface. Despite my cross-country experience, I found it hard-going, and a couple of times I stumbled before managing to regain my footing.
‘Bikes,’ said Seb.
Again, he stepped off the track.
I did the same. This time there were no bikes, however.
‘That’s strange,’ said Seb. ‘I’m sure I saw one up ahead.’
As he said this, there was the sound of a gun going off, and something – a dart? a bullet? – flew between Seb and me at about chest height. Another report, but Seb and I had both hit the ground and the projectile whizzed harmlessly over our heads. We got to our feet and took off, running back down the track, sprinting until we reached the Preacher’s camp again. The Preacher was still there, still in his overcoat, still hunkered over the fire.
‘Help!’ I yelled. ‘You have to help us!’
The Preacher stood up, and now I could see that it wasn’t the Preacher. Whoever it was, he was wearing black leathers. And there was a gun in his hands. He took aim, and shot. There was a needle-sharp pain in my thigh. A burning sensation that rapidly spread through my body. Before everything went black.
SUNDAY
ESCAPE FROM WARD C
I snapped into consciousness and a woman I didn’t know was leaning over me, smiling at me. Her blue uniform came into focus, the stethoscope dangling around her neck.
She must be a nurse. I must be in a hospital. And then another, more sinister, realisation: it must have been The Debt who put me here!
‘Why am I here?’
I said, or attempted to say, because my mouth was dry, my tongue a caterpillar, thick and furry.
‘Here, drink this,’ said the nurse, handing me a glass of water.
I took a sip but it had a strange metallic taste.
Suddenly I thought of Gus’s story: how one minute he was swimming in the ocean, the next minute he was waking up in a hospital bed, with his right leg gone.
I wriggled my toes; they were there.
But I knew this meant nothing, because Gus could still wriggle the toes on his right leg, the toes that hadn’t been there for more than fifty years.
My leg! Panic mounting, I tore back the sheet. ‘My leg!’
I was naked. But both my legs were there. The right one with the scab on the inside of the thigh.
‘What’s happening?’ I said.
‘You’re going to have a little procedure,’ she said, putting the sheet back.
‘A procedure?’
‘An operation.’
‘What sort of operation?’ I said.
I noticed now that the nurse had a syringe in her hand and I had a drip connected to my arm.
‘The specialist will be able to explain all that to you,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, you need to get some rest.’
When she started to press the plunger on the syringe I grabbed the drip and yanked hard – it came out.
‘Now, young man,’ said the nurse.
But I was already out of my bed. The nurse hit the alarm button.
I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around my waist, pushed open the door and ran. Straight into the beefy arms of an enormous security guard. He squeezed me tight, but I managed to bring my knee up hard into his groin. He released his grasp a bit. I gave him the other knee in the same general area. He released his grasp a bit more, enough so that I could slip out of it and start running. Down one corridor, then another, then another. Not knowing where I was going. Not knowing if I was running from The Debt or into The Debt. I was just running.
Turn off the Lights Page 5
