Lucas (15 page)

But then I saw him smile, and he raised his hand and beckoned me over.

As I made my way across the Point I could hear a tiny voice whispering in the back of my mind.
Is this what it's supposed to be like? Is this how it's supposed to feel? Like a rollercoaster? Like a lifetime's emotions squeezed into a single minute? Like heaven and hell, sweet and sour, light and dark …? Like losing your mind?

I was having a bit of trouble walking. My feet seemed to have doubled in size and I kept stumbling in the shingle. Deefer, though, was prancing about like a puppy. He ran
up to Lucas and stopped in front of him, then shook himself so hard he almost fell over.

‘Hey, dog,' Lucas said.

Deefer rolled his eyes like a love-struck sap, then shook himself again and sat down. Lucas rested a hand on his head and the two of them watched me as I blundered up the beach.

‘That's a nice cape,' Lucas said as I stopped in front of him.

‘It's not a cape,' I panted. ‘It's an all-weather poncho.'

He smiled. ‘It's very yellow.'

‘There's nothing wrong with yellow.'

‘That's true,' he agreed.

Water dripped from his rain-darkened hair and his clothes were heavy with moisture. The sodden cloth clung to the shape of his body. As he gazed quietly at me, I rubbed some non-existent sand from my eyes and looked around. The rain was splattering down on the mud flats behind him, making a dull popping sound in the soft black ooze and filling the air with a faint whiff of decay. Beyond the mud flats, the woods were shrouded in a gloom of mist.

It ought to have felt odd, I suppose. Standing on a deserted beach in the rain, dressed in a rain hat and a ridiculous yellow cape, talking casually to a strange young boy who was soaked to the skin – but it didn't. It didn't feel odd, at all. In fact, it felt pretty good. I didn't understand any of it, and I wasn't sure why it felt good, but that didn't seem to matter.

But then, just as I was starting to enjoy the feeling, the rollercoaster roared and I remembered what I was supposed to be doing here – the little girl, her mad mother, the crowd – and the good feeling died.

‘I saw what happened at the cliffs,' I started to explain. ‘I was there with my dad. We saw the whole thing. It was terrible … I don't mean what you did, that was fantastic, but what happened afterwards with that woman—'

‘Come on,' Lucas said. ‘Let's get out of this rain.'

‘My dad said he's going to sort it out—'

‘We can talk about it later. Right now I need to get into some dry clothes.'

‘Oh … yes, of course.' I looked around. ‘Where—'

‘Follow me,' he said.

He turned towards the mud flats.

Maybe it's because I don't have a mother, or maybe it's just because I'm a bit of wimp, but I don't like doing things that I know would upset Dad. It's not that I'm afraid of him finding out and punishing me, because I know he wouldn't punish me. He never has. He doesn't need to. His disappointment is punishment enough. And if that sounds too good to be true, well that's tough. That's just the way it is.

When I'm doing something I know I shouldn't be doing, I feel sick inside.

And that's how I felt as I followed Lucas to the mud flats. My stomach was fluttering, my heart was beating like a drum, and Dad's voice was echoing in my head.
You're not going there … don't let me down, Cait. I'm putting more faith in you than I can afford to lose … don't let me down …

I didn't want to let him down, he didn't deserve to be let down. But sometimes a higher power takes control, something that lies deep within you, beyond your conscious self, and you find yourself doing things you'd never normally do. You can make all the excuses you want – I didn't say I
wouldn't
go to the woods, I didn't
promise
anything,
did I? – but you know in your heart you're just kidding yourself. It's wrong, but you're doing it anyway.

So just do it.

We stopped at the edge of the mud flats. I'd never been so close to them before and my senses were stirred by their morbid beauty. The smell of decay was stronger now. It was the odour of stagnant ponds, the sour smell of age-old blackened mud. The rain had stopped and a pale sun was fighting through the clouds. The shifting ooze of the flats lay stretched out before us, all the way across to the woods, a slimy brown plateau glistening dully in the tired light. Faint bubbling noises drifted from the surface. Drips, clicks, and watery pops, the sound of worms and molluscs going about their muddy business, just as they had for millions of years. This is how it must have been, I thought. Nothing to remember or want. Light. Darkness. No words to think. No tomorrow. No names, no history …

‘You'll need to take your shoes and socks off,' Lucas said.

I started untying my laces.

‘I'll go first,' he explained, taking off his boots. ‘You follow in my footsteps.' He looked at me. ‘You follow them precisely, OK? Not an inch either side.'

I nodded, glancing doubtfully across the mud.

‘Don't look so worried,' he said. ‘It's a piece of cake.'

‘But how do you know where you're going?'

He cocked his head to one side. ‘It's easy, you can see the solid ground. Look.' He waved his hand, indicating a non-existent trail. ‘See how it colours the air?'

All I could see was mud. I angled my head to one side like Lucas, but I still couldn't see anything. I thought of the invisible tunnel on the beach, trying to recall how I'd
managed to see it, but I couldn't remember what it looked like any more. I couldn't remember it at all.

‘What about Deefer?' I asked.

Lucas hung his boots around his neck. ‘He's a dog,' he shrugged. ‘Dogs see what they need to see. Are you ready?'

I stuffed my shoes and socks in my pockets, took a final look at the mud, then nodded.

And off we went.

It felt like stepping off the edge of a cliff.

After the first few tentative steps I started breathing again. It wasn't so bad. The surface mud was slick and oily, and I didn't like the way it oozed between my toes and sucked at my feet, but the ground underneath felt safe enough. It still didn't
look
very safe. It looked like I was walking across the surface of a thick brown soup. But the further I went without sinking, the easier it was to ignore what my eyes were telling me and listen instead to my feet. My feet were saying – this is OK. It's not the greatest feeling in the world … but it's OK.

Lucas walked slowly, carefully planting one foot in front of the other, leaving nice clear footprints for me to follow. As soon as he lifted his feet, the prints filled with grainy black water. The water was cold, like cold grease.

‘Are you all right?' he asked.

‘Fine,' I said, trying to sound relaxed.

‘Tell me if I'm going too fast.'

‘Yeah, no problem …'

Every now and then he'd stop, study the ground, then veer off to the left or the right. Each time we changed direction he glanced over his shoulder and spoke a few words.

‘Turning left, now.'

‘Right here for about ten paces.'

‘Sharp left in a minute …'

Deefer trotted along beside him. Once in a while Lucas would touch him lightly on the head or whisper a quiet word and Deefer would drop back and follow in single file for a few metres. Then, as the hidden trail widened again, he'd catch up and resume his position at Lucas's side.

By the time we were halfway across I felt confident enough to keep moving without staring at the ground. As long as I followed Lucas I knew I'd be all right. I raised my head and looked around. To the right, the open sea was calming itself after the storm. Murky brown waves lapped wearily against the shore, while further out the ocean rolled drunkenly against the sky, and rain shadows slanted down from dark clouds on the horizon. The shallow bay to our left had flooded its banks. I could see water filling the muddy trails through the gorse. The water would drain into the tide pools and soon the paths would be clear again, but not soon enough for me. I wouldn't be going home that way today.

Ahead of us the woods were becoming clearer. Clearer, but darker. The tangled thickets were black with rain and the trees were twisted into brooding shapes that seemed to defy the laws of nature. Loops and bowls fringed with hanging roots, jutting limbs, buckled trunks, strange spirals where branches had joined together like coiled snakes …

‘Have you seen this?'

Lucas had stopped by the remains of an old wooden boat. There wasn't much left of it – half a dozen blackened joists sticking up through the mud, thin slivers of rotted planking, one or two curls of rusted metal.

‘It's an oyster boat,' I told him. ‘They used to fish for
oysters all around here, across the bay, round the Point—'

‘Oysters?'

I nodded. ‘They're all gone now.'

‘What happened to them?'

‘Fished out, I suppose. Like everything else. One or two of the old boys still go out now and then, but these days there's barely enough to fill a basket. It's sad, really.'

‘Why?'

I looked at him. ‘Well … it's not right, is it?'

‘We've got to eat.'

‘But we don't have to strip every single oyster from the sea, do we? If people hadn't been so greedy there'd still be some left.'

He picked a shard of damp wood from the wrecked boat and crumbled it in his fingers. ‘Left for who?'

‘What?'

‘Who would they be left
for?'

‘Well … for others, for us, for themselves … I don't know. You know what I mean.'

He wiped his hands on his shirt. ‘What do you think happened to the men in this boat?'

‘Drowned, I suppose.'

He nodded thoughtfully, gazing past the wreck into the depths of mud. ‘They'll all be down there, won't they?' he said quietly. ‘The fishermen, the oysters … they'll all be the same now …' His words trailed off as he stared blindly into the mud, and just for a moment everything was silent. The air was still. Nothing moved. No birds, no wind, no waves. I looked at Lucas. I saw his skin, his clothes, his hair, his body, his pale blue eyes, his sad smile, his fleeting presence … and then the air started moving again. A quiet wind whistled across the flats, feathering the pools of surface water, revealing countless tiny seashells dotted in the mud.
Pink and white, like tiny painted fingernails, they glimmered in the afternoon light.

I shivered.

It was suddenly getting cold.

Lucas snapped out of his trance. ‘Come on, let's get out of here.'

‘You first,' I said.

‘You're all right, it's safe all the way from here. Look.' He pointed at Deefer who was running around in the mud shaking a clump of seaweed in his mouth. ‘It's solid ground all the way.'

I looked towards the woods. We were closer than I thought. Twenty metres away the mud merged into a narrow beach of dark scrubby sand, and beyond that lay a line of stunted trees, waving us on with their misformed fingers.

‘Don't worry,' Lucas grinned. ‘It's nicer than it looks.'

It'd better be, I thought, as we slopped across the mud. I was beginning to get a bit fed up with the cold and the wet and the confusion of it all. I could do with a bit of nice.

I realise it was a foolish thing to do. Following someone I hardly knew into the midst of an isolated wood, on my own, with no way out, and with no one knowing where I was … God, it was unbelievably stupid. It was just asking for trouble. I can see that now. But at the time it seemed fine. And it was fine. No, it was more than fine, it was wonderful. Apart from that odd little incident at the boat when Lucas seemed to go into a trance for a while, I'd never felt more relaxed in my life. And this was after a day of being spat at, humiliated, terrified, angered, soaked, frozen, and rollercoastered.

Yes, it was a foolish thing to do. But we all have to be fools every so often, don't we?

*  *  *

Rain dripped softly from the trees as I followed Lucas along a sun-dappled path through the woods. Although the air and the surrounding vegetation was steeped in moisture, the ground was remarkably dry. It was soft and springy, covered with a carpet of waxy leaves, and it gave off a sweet smell of rich, dark earth. The air was humid and still. Close up, the trees weren't as weird as they'd first seemed – but they were still fairly odd. I'm pretty good with trees, I know most of the familiar species, but these were new to me. Some were short and squat, with stunted branches growing directly from the trunk, while others were whip-like and twisted, or pale and bare, as if their bark had been stripped by some ravenous beast.

We walked in single file along the narrow path. Lucas led the way, walking with the quiet confidence of someone who knows exactly where they're going. Deefer ran around sniffing everything in sight, and I just plodded along behind in awed silence. I'd never been in such a strangely beautiful place. It was so quiet, so still. It felt like the loneliest place in the world.

Through the tangled undergrowth I caught occasional glimpses of the inlet on the other side of the woods. Against the darkness of the dense vegetation, the blue of the estuary shone like sapphire. I remembered Bill telling me how she'd spied on Lucas from a boat out there …
we were drifting along with the engine off when Lee spots this naked guy in a pool at the edge of the woods … it was him, the gyppo. Having a bath
… I put the memory from my mind. I was here now. I was
here
. I didn't want to think about Bill and the others, that was out
there
. I didn't want to think about out there.

Ahead of me, Lucas stopped beside a slender tree with a fringe of hanging branches. It looked a bit like a weeping
willow, only darker, and heavier, with broad leaves and odd little woody nodules spaced along the length of each limb. Lucas pulled aside the curtain of branches to reveal a small crescent-shaped clearing bathed in pale sunlight.