© Jonty Cornford 2018
The Cave
by Jonty Cornford
Yesterday I
decided to go with them. Normally I come up with some excuse, like that I have
homework to do, and I can tell that
they know I’m bullshitting them. But I couldn’t think of anything to say,
standing idly there in the 7-Eleven car park; either that or I was just
exhausted from constantly saying no. James and Cam aren’t exactly the kind of
guys you can get used to saying no to. Cam wasn’t always like that, though (but
he’s always been chubby). And
besides, they’re my mates. I suppose there was a little bit of jealousy
involved on my part once they had started talking to the year elevens, but I
was always gonna do it anyway. Who was I kidding? It was almost unbearably hot,
and I could feel the asphalt burning through the soles of my school shoes.
So, you comin today or what?
Yeah man, let’s do it, I say,
mustering as much masculine confidence as I can. I wipe my hand, wet from the condensation
on my frozen drink, across the front of my pants.
James snorts as he lights a
cigarette, then roughs his dirty red hair. You’re a fucken laugh, mate. Don’t
you have homework to do or something? He blows smoke in my face. I hate it when
he does that. It makes me feel tiny and stupid. I’m sure he doesn’t intend it,
but it still makes me feel like shit. I knew this would happen, anyway, that James
would talk shit even when I agree. Too late to back out now though.
Let’s do it.
Oright. Come on then.
We climb onto our pushbikes and ride
around the back of the servo, James leading with confidence, Cam and I in tow.
He has mastered the ability of smoking while riding, but Cam still has to put
out his smoke, even if he’s only just lit it. Last summer he stacked it real
bad down at the stormwater drain when he dropped a durrie into his lap and
freaked – broke his wrist and shredded his palms to ribbons. Mum said he
deserved it too, but Mum doesn’t like my friends anyway. She says we have no
business being down there, that we’ll be caught in the stormwater and drown, or
get sick from the water.
We swing out onto the main road.
There is a missing person’s poster plastered on the side of the corner store,
asking for information about a girl that I recognise from school. She’s been
missing three days now, and she’s fourteen, like us.
School finished almost an hour ago,
and so there are people out and about (lots, by this town’s standards). There
are still plenty of kids in uniform in the chicken shop buying greasy paper
bags filled with hot chips or potato scallops. There’s a cop car lazily pulling
out of the police station, the lack of blaring siren suggesting something
benign like a coffee run. The car park outside the indoor sports centre is
almost full, and the coffee shop across the road is almost at capacity. Despite
all of this activity it still feels relatively empty, quiet, like someone’s
fading memory of a town. Not in a bad way, mind you. This is how it is in this
town, even at peak hour; nothing happens too quickly. We’re able to ride down
the middle of the road relatively unchallenged, each lane to either side
stretching well beyond the necessary width for an occasional car to pass
through. This is part of what causes the town to feel so empty all the time –
the unnecessary space. The sun is overbearing and uncomfortable, and I’m
relieved when James turns off onto the fire trail that leads into the bush.
I quickly realise that James might
be taking us down to the stormwater drain. I haven’t been down there in ages,
but I used to be there all the time with Cam when we were younger, playing in
the concrete pipe that was big enough to fit both of us and our pushbikes in
its gaping mouth with ease. James has never been down here – at least not with
me. He and his older brother Sean only moved here with their dad about a year
ago.
It’s immediately cooler once we’re
under the cover of the eucalypts, and I briefly close my eyes and breathe the
soily air as deep as I can. It hasn’t rained in almost a month, so I’m not
worried about following them off the main road and down the fire trail into the
bush. I can’t believe this is where
they’ve been going on Tuesday afternoons without telling me. I almost feel smug,
knowing that James’ ‘secret’ was more mine than it ever was his. It doesn’t
seem right that Cam hasn’t told me before, though. Even with the possibility of
guys two or three years older than me being there the idea of the runoff area
is much more pleasant than the other hypothetical worst-case-scenarios I’d
concocted.
We ride on, wordless, through what
was my second home growing up. Cam’s, too. The two of us had done so much
together as kids in this pocket of bushland, and even though it’s small enough
to ride across and reach the next town before lunch, it had felt like our own
world that nobody else knew about.
Now it’s just the bush, and most of
that magic is gone. But more than that, none of the ownership I felt growing up
is there anymore. It’s not mine anymore. It’s just the bush, with a dead,
decaying possum in the middle of the dirt track for us to swerve around.
James and Cam ride past the
sandstone boulder to the left of the track that marks the hidden trail down to
the drain without even a passing glance.
Where are you going? I stop and put
my weight on my left foot. They don’t even stop to reply, James yelling
something as they continue riding on down the track and around the bend to the
right. He flicks a cigarette butt behind him as they disappear.
My heart sinks. They’d better not be
going where I think they are.
I remember when Jack Dennings died in
the caves. He was in our year at school, and my kindergarten class. We must
have been about eight or nine at the time and my mum sat me down in the living
room and told me how a boy in my grade at school had had an accident. How he stayed in there too long and
tried to find his way out in the dark when his torch wasn’t working. Started to
panic, walking straight into a low-hanging outlet of rock and cracked his
temple, then again on the way down. He hadn’t told anyone where he was going so
by the time anyone found him he had bled out in the dark. That has always been
enough to keep me away, even though I almost never come down here these days
anyway.
I pump hard on the pedals to catch
up with them. They’ve slowed down around the bend because the track becomes
rocky and uneven, and soon all three of us have hopped off and are walking our
bikes beside us. James is still striding on with confidence, Cam still
following, content to drop in behind James. The trees are thinning, and I can
hear the sounds of chatting and coughing echoing off the rock walls of the
caves – we must be close.
We emerge from the treeline into a
small clearing; at the other side of which I can only assume is the entrance to
the caves. It’s a tall, smooth wall of greywhite rock, blocking out the
lowering sun, the face of which is dimpled with an almost perfectly circular
entry point. It looks about the same size as the storm water drain, and voices
are floating out, loud and happy. Unchallenged. We let our bikes crash onto the
sandstone ground.
Hey, shouldn’t someone know that
we’re here? I ask, thinking about Jack Dennings.
They do. They’re in there, James
points at the cave. He lights another cigarette.
Yeah, but what if something happens?
Carn mate, don’t be a pussy.
I hate it when he calls me that.
Something about that word just gives me the shits. I look at Cam for support
but he is looking intently at the entrance to the cave with an odd look on his
face.
Is Sean in there? Cam asks, his eyes
not leaving the entrance.
Yeah mate.
This seems to steel Cam’s resolve,
apprehension dissolving into a cool apathy. A look that I’ve been seeing more
and more since James and his brother Sean arrived, a look I never used to see
before we met James. It makes me think about the first week of school last year
when he arrived, in English class. Cam and I had always sat in the back corner
of the classroom together, joking around just enough to have fun without
falling out of favour with Ms Wagner. On the first day James was there, not
only did our seating arrangement change but the dynamic permanently changed too
– Cam didn’t care about English because James didn’t care about English.
Before I know it James has
disappeared into the cave, a tattered school shoe all I see before he is gone.
Cam follows. For a few moments I’m alone in the clearing, the sweaty heat of
the day replaced with a deepening chill, fingery shadows slowly flexing. I
clamber up the small step of sandstone and enter.
The voices are amplified as soon as
I’m surrounded by the cone of rock almost tall enough for me to stand in. The
words are blurred together by the echo, but I can hear plenty of swearing. I
realise that James and Cam obviously know where they’re going, but haven’t
thought to show me the way leaving me in darkness. I suppress the tugging urge
to turn around and wait for them back in the clearing, but I’ve come this far
and I’m compelled by a need to win back Cam. Straight away I dismiss the
thought as stupid, but it lingers for longer than I’d like and I realise that
maybe this is what this is all about – some idea I had of what growing up was
going to be like being tarnished by one scruffy, freckly redhead and his older
brother stealing a part of it from me.
The voices start to sharpen as I
move forwards with my hands in front of me in a sort of walking crawl, as well
as a distant sort of animal call, like a wallaby crying out, echoing eerily
through the passage. They become quiet, and I recognise James’ voice, then
another, deeper voice that has the same contour and intonation. That must be
Sean. He has the kind of voice that demands attention, much like James.
Took you long enough.
Yeah, well, we had to wait around
for Cam’s mate.
He’s not your mate?
Of course he’s my mate.
Where is he then?
Shit. Forgot he doesn’t know the
way.
Echoed footsteps as someone
approaches through the dark. A hand grabs my shoulder, and I get a face full of
cigarette smoke.
Carn mate, we’re waiting for you.
James guides me without a whole lot
of care through the darkness and around what is evidently a corner, flickering
candlelight washing across my surroundings. There are four guys including Cam
sitting on camping chairs in a circle, a fifth chair empty, obviously belonging
to James. I recognise Sean when he stands because he is a bigger, hairier and
smellier version of James. The freckles on his pale face are hidden behind a
surprising amount of facial hair, and a tight white tank top hugs his muscular
figure, lean arms hanging lazily by his side.
This him? Who was always put’n us
off? he asks James, not even glancing at me.
Fucken aye. Thought about leaving,
too, didn’t ya?
Suddenly it all makes sense, where
James gets his need to assert himself as the leader.
I decide to take the initiative and
shake off James’ hand and push past Sean towards what is clearly James’ chair.
I sit down next to Cam and a tall, lanky dude with acne and a buzz cut who
introduces himself as Jack with a nod. Across from me a guy who looks almost
exactly how I imagine Cam to look in ten years introduces himself as Marty with
a sly grin. Sean drops back into his seat with a grunt, and I can tell that
James is pissed at me because I have taken his seat. The older guys seem to
find it funny that he resigns himself to sitting on the sandstone ground
between Sean and Marty.
Let’s get started, hey? Sean
suggests. I realise he hasn’t asked for my name. He reaches into his backpack
and pulls out a glass pipe, and immediately my insides turn to ash. I know that
I’m in way over my head. I don’t know exactly what they’re doing while they
hold a zippo under the end of it and hold it to their mouths, but I know it
isn’t good, I know that I shouldn’t be here. The animal noise floats in, closer
this time.
Shut
the fuck up! yells Marty, smoke pluming from his cracked and yellowed lips.
The noises – moans – continue, louder.
Sean stands wordlessly but with
clear intent, and the others stand with him. As Cam puts the glass pipe down
they move towards the back of the lit cave, where I realise there is another
passage. I follow them through, dark enveloping us again briefly, before it
opens up into another cave, smaller and less well lit.
My breath catches in my chest, and I
panic. Shaved, raw, naked and shivering in the shadows is a girl, tied down and
spreadeagled. Before any of the others have noticed I’ve turned and left back
the way I came, back through the first cave and back through the entrance
passage with a torch on the floor next to one of the camp chairs, pulled my
pushbike up off the ground and I’m pumping my legs as fast as I can. I have to
get home as quickly as possible, but to do what? To call the cops? To tell my
parents? To tell Cam’s parents? Already I know that I can’t tell anyone what
I’ve seen – not just out of fear that I’ll be guilty by association, but
because they’re my friends. Well, they were my friends.
I can hear movement up ahead as I
race along the bush track, and I take the sharp right down towards the storm
water drain. Halfway down the hill I’ve fallen off my pushbike and I’m running,
and I’ve fallen into the runoff area as the ground levels out again. Cold and
wet I clamber into the dark stormwater drain, hugging my knees against my chest
as I try and become still. There’s a distant roaring that I can’t attribute to
either the drain or the inside of my head.
Neither Cam nor James were at school
today, and both my parents cried when they saw the news this evening. The
police had found the missing girl in the caves late yesterday afternoon, having
been tipped off by a local who was suspicious of the same group of high school
boys going off into the bush most afternoons. They were caught in the
possession of ice, and the girl was almost dead when they found the cave. She
hadn’t had food or hardly any water in three days, and that was all they decided
to disclose out of respect for her family. James killed himself overnight in
the police station, and all of their photos, including Cam’s, were on the telly.
My name wasn’t mentioned.
© Jonty Cornford 2018
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