Everyone this Christmas has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson

Author:Benjamin Stevenson [Stevenson, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

I crashed into the bush at a sprint. Clawed fingertips of branches reached for my arms, and the uneven, rocky ground treated my ankles like a totem tennis game, slapping them back and forth.

It’s well known that you shouldn’t walk into the bush without a plan. It only takes a few steps for the arching branches to close off the sky above, and the thickness of trees to seem like they pull up roots and shuffle in, making a labyrinth that rotates the walls every time you turn around. Direction has its suitcases packed by the door, Hope has the engine on in the car outside. Search parties have found bodies, dead from dehydration, metres from highways. Imagine dying, thinking no one will ever find you, when you’re a thicket of branches away from a McDonald’s car park and a cheeseburger.

All this to say that if getting lost in the day is terrifying, it is doubly so at night.

My phone flashlight bounced off the gum trees as I moved in what I hoped was the direction of the scream. Not only is physical direction compromised in the bush, but sound plays tricks on your ears too. The lookout is called Echo Point for a reason. Noise bounces off the rocks and gullies. Someone can say something to your face and you’d think they were behind you.

I moved as fast as I trusted myself to. My light would occasionally flick over something animal that would shoot away into the scrub with a rustle of leaves. Dozens of glinting bright spots – marsupial eyes – shone from above. The whole place was alive.

A gleam in my torchlight caught my eye. Something metal, man-made.

‘Dinesh?’ I called, edging forward. I had to be careful; I could break a leg or split my head open if I took a spill. Worse still, I could saunter straight off a cliff. The drops off the Katoomba plateau were up to 300 metres. You’d never even know you were dead until the wind whistled past your ears.

The ground transformed from dirt to rock, and I moved more slowly, thinking I was nearing an edge. Nature and night might hide clifftops and snakes, but it could also hide men. Dinesh could have left something on a precipice and be waiting for me to bend to pick it up. Two hands in the back was all it would take. Depending on the cliff, it could be years until my body was found.

A flutter in the trees behind, leaves and nuts falling, defibrillated me. I spun. My torch showed nothing but trees and eyes.

I turned back and inched closer. The glinting object was a pair of glasses. They were propped up on a pair of neatly laced shoes. This bizarre assembly was perched on the rock, just before the ground fell away into an abyss so deep my flashlight dissolved into blackness.

I pulled back from the ledge, legs jellied from the height, but no longer scared of being rushed from the bushes.

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