Dark Horse (4 page)

T
he dark had deepened into real night. A battery-powered lamp Sarah had found was on the table, illuminating the little spread of Christmas food from her backpack. One mince pie was missing from the packet. The fire was throwing good heat. Her clothes were drying, her boots were warming on their own chair, the kettle was boiling, the pot of canned stew was heating. She’d discovered that the van’s gas bottle had been disconnected and taken from the site. There were signs a generator had been packed up and moved too. Sarah took out her ponytail and towel dried her hair.

She moved her phone closer to the heat to speed up the drying process. She’d organised a bucket of water for Tansy and draped a dry blanket over the mare’s back.

Sarah went inside the van and re-emerged carrying two cups, a tea bag, a spoon and the bottle of Jack Daniels. She poured herself a decent measure and swallowed the shot in one go. She poured herself another. Her limbs were tingling already, having been so cold and now being warm. The burning measure of alcohol increased the feeling.

Sarah made herself a cup of tea and sat the pot of stew on the dirt floor to cool. She settled into a chair, pulled a blanket up over her back and shoulders, and leaned down between her knees to eat a couple of mouthfuls of the stew.

Sarah held her tea in both hands and blew the steam, sipped and thought. She reached for her phone and checked again to see if it was working. Maybe the blank screen did contain a message:
take this time and use it
. The climb had put distance between her and the chaos of the last few months. She had a bird’s-eye view over it, and from above it was easier to see the best ways to get through it. Sarah returned the phone to the block of wood. She thought, too, about those harnesses they use to airlift big animals, worried about what impact that experience would have on Tansy. Was flying such an unnatural act that an animal didn’t properly comprehend it? Or did it terrify them? It was not as though Tansy would understand she was being saved.

Tansy pulled on her tether. The weather had eased into normal stormy conditions. All the sounds were time-honoured ones: wet bracken fern and grass slapping against the shed walls, the rattle of steel corrugation, gusts of wind, the bush swaying and branches creaking, slanting rain hitting the roof. Tansy had heard something out of place within all that. Sarah listened for it too. Her horse pulled hard. Sarah put down her hot drink. If it was more extreme weather coming, all Sarah could think was
there is nowhere left to go
. They couldn’t climb any higher. Then she heard the whistle. It was human. It came again, low then high, a friendly proclamation. It was timed between the wind gusts. It seemed to be coming from the edge of the clearing, behind the shed.

Sarah didn’t automatically jump to her feet, race to identify the source. Her mind turned to other things. Slowly, she pushed her chair away from the fire and pulled on her half-dry coat. The rifle ammunition was still in the pocket of her wet jeans. Sarah took it out and buttoned the magazine into the pocket of her shorts. She picked up her torch, put on her damp riding boots. Her thoughts went to the cut chain on the gate, the tyre tracks, the boggy wheel marks before Spinners Creek Bridge and those same tracks turning toward the plateau. She doubted that a mild-mannered family man, or woman, would be out Christmas morning cutting locks and four-wheel-driving up into the mountains. If it was the person connected to the vehicle, she already didn’t trust them.

Before plunging back into the weather she took the rifle from where it was resting against the van step. She walked around to the far side of the van, away from Tansy, and shone the torch on a timber pallet in the corner of the shed.

Piled on top of the pallet were bags of cement and mortar. Sarah went across and slid the rifle in the space between the bottom boards of the pallet and the top boards carrying the bags. She situated the rifle well back, out of sight, unless you got down on all fours and shone a torch, as she did now to see how the weapon looked in its hiding spot. It looked dangerous and threatening, the very reason she thought to take it from the equation. She put up the hood of her coat and went out in search of the owner of the whistle.

He wasn’t hard to find. He was wearing a flashing headlamp. As Sarah walked closer he switched it to a steady beam, then lowered his head so that the light was shining on the ground in front of him and not into her eyes. He was sitting on a log, his head bowed.

‘Careful,’ he said without looking up, ‘it’s boggy.’

His tone was deep and steady. She took from this that he wasn’t in any great pain or suffering from exposure. If anything he sounded relaxed. Sarah stopped a couple of metres back from him. The ground around the log he was sitting on had turned to mush. Sarah tested it with the toe of her boot. The grass sank and dirty water rushed in to fill the indentation she had made. This marshy section encircled him. It was a jumpable distance though. Sarah shone the torch. He was dressed in green cargo pants, but not the outdoor type, dressy, fashionable ones, and a black, tight-fitting, short-sleeve shirt. The guy was fit. He had to be, to be dressed so lightly out in the weather and seemingly impervious to the cold. His boots and the bottom half of his pants were covered in mud. He was on a bit of an island, surrounded by swamp. Sarah wondered why he didn’t just attempt to jump across.

He switched his headlamp to yet another setting – a softer, diffused light, and he lifted his head. ‘G’day.’

The headlamp’s greyish light shone down, warping his features, creating dark pockets and long shadows in his face.

‘I saw the smoke and thought I’d try whistling for help before crawling. I’ve done something to my knee.’ He tapped his knuckles on his thigh above his left knee. ‘Popped something. I can’t put any weight on it. But . . .’ he smiled, it was a macabre leering grin because of the headlamp, ‘hi.’

‘Hi.’

‘How about this?’ He motioned to the weather.

‘Your knee bad? It’s pretty solid here.’ She stamped her foot. ‘You can’t jump?’

To prove his dilemma, he pushed himself up into a standing position, demonstrating how hard it was for him to put weight on his left leg. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to it. It buckled under me.’

None too subtly, Sarah shone her torch up and down his body. She wanted to know what she was about to spend a night on the mountain with. The guy was built. He wasn’t muscular in a beefy, hulking way, but lean and solid. Something made Sarah sweep her flashlight over the bush behind him. It was a mass of glistening blackwood leaves. The trees branches grew all the way down to the forest floor, creating a hedge along this secluded edge of the clearing. Much further around was the walking track entrance into the camping grounds. Sarah couldn’t work out from which area of the bush this man had come and how he’d got to be where he was. If he’d come up the walking track he would have had a relatively short and direct route to the shed, and if he’d come up the vehicle track, as she had, he would have been in a position to see into the shed, and walk straight on to it.

He rested a hand on the log and looked back at the bush, curious as to what she was looking at.

‘There’s no one with you?’

He turned to face her. ‘I’m alone.’

She began taking off her boots. ‘I don’t want them to fill with mud.’

‘Don’t you come across. Aren’t you with people?’

‘I’m by myself too.’

‘Don’t get dirty. I thought there might be men with you to haul me out. Stay there.’

Before Sarah had a chance to insist on being useful, he’d launched himself off his good leg, throwing himself over the worst of the mud and landing on his right side partway across the bog. Dirty water splashed up around him. He groped his knee.

‘Well . . . that hurt.’

He lay still a moment. Dirty water covered his face and was smeared on the lens of the head torch. He would have been better trying to crawl on his belly the whole way across. He began dragging himself, and then stopped, breathing fast, in pain.

‘Damn,’ he muttered.

Sarah removed her boots and socks and stepped into the quagmire. She immediately sank up to her knees. Icy, soupy ground sucked in around her legs. A surge of self-preservation made her retreat out of the bog as matter-of-factly as she’d stepped into it.

‘It’s more dangerous than it looks.’

‘It is.’

Sarah shone the torch on the ground around her, looking for sticks and logs. All she could see were thin branches or big, dead limbs too big to drag. She took off her coat, undid the buttons on the top shirt and took it off as well. The weave of the flannelette was stronger than that of the coat. She wrapped one sleeve around her wrist and tossed the other sleeve out for him to take a hold of.

He wound the sleeve around his hand.

‘Move as much as you can, to help me.’ Sarah squatted and pulled back.

He wriggled and pushed forward with his good leg. Because he wasn’t a dead weight, Sarah was able to drag him to safety a few inches at a time.

Free of the bog he sat up with his sore leg outstretched and wriggled further onto firmer land. Sarah helped him to his feet. Mud covered him. Balanced on one leg, he took the lamp off to wipe clean. Sarah offered her shoulder as a prop. When he swayed, she put her arm around his waist. The band of his trousers sat low on his hips. His shirt had ridden up and her fingers rested against his mud-covered flesh. In her other hand Sarah was holding her riding boots. He was a head taller than her.

‘I can put a bit of weight on it. Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought . . .’ His knee gave way suddenly. He gripped her shoulder. ‘Or maybe it is.’

‘It’ll be cartilage damage.’

Rain had slowed. The wind had died down. With the light gone from his forehead and shining from a different angle, the shadows on his face changed and his age was more apparent. He was in his late twenties. He had a youthful gleam in his eyes, liveliness even though he was cold and battered. From all accounts, you’d think he was revelling in the intensity, exactly like a young man would, everything an adventure. The smile he gave her emerged white from within the mud mask. ‘I promise I’m not Ted Bundy.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The killer.’

‘Huh?’

‘The murderer who pretended to have a broken leg to lure women.’

Sarah frowned.

‘Bad joke,’ he said.

I
n the time it took them to get to the shed he began shivering. He had no body fat to regulate his heat loss. By stopping and sitting on the log he’d started the drop in his core temperature, and the cold mud accelerated it. His movements became uncoordinated. The final limps into the shed were unsteady. Sarah heard, from within a pocket on his cargo pants, the jangle of a set of keys. On his other leg there was a second heavy pocket, a phone, or maybe a wallet. Both pockets were zipped.

‘Jeez . . .’ he said, shocked that his body had limits, ‘starting to feel it now.’

‘There are better ways than this to lure women.’

‘Desperate times call for desperate measures.’

This flirting at all costs confirmed for Sarah that he was in his twenties. Only those young enough to be unashamed of their single status behaved in such a way.

Beneath the mud his face had grown deathly white and his lips were blue. His eyes were a watery, light-olive colour and his gaze wandered and didn’t focus. She helped him into the chair closest to the fire.

‘I’ll get some dry clothes for you and things to get you clean. You okay?’

‘Yep.’ He sat forward and closed his eyes, basking his face and hands in the heat from the fire. ‘Thank you,’ he said through barely moving lips.

Sarah draped a blanket on the chair beside him and went to get the large saucepan she’d seen earlier inside the van.

When she returned with it, he hadn’t moved.

‘You’ll get warmer quicker if you get out of your wet clothes.’

She poured hot water from the kettle into the saucepan and added some cold. She submerged a tea towel and then began wringing it out. He still didn’t move.

‘Here.’ Sarah pointed at the collar of his shirt. He leaned back and Sarah unbuttoned it for him.

‘Thanks.’ His gaze focussed on her mouth and lower face.

Sarah remembered her injuries and pressed her fingers to her swollen lips. ‘This isn’t from anything on the mountain.’

‘Looks bad.’

While she crouched to take off his boots he became distracted by the sound of Tansy. He peered into the gloom of the next shed bay. ‘What
is
that?’

‘It’s my horse.’

He kept staring. Tansy was a shifting shadow in the gloom, accompanied by snorting breaths and scuffing sounds. He continued to watch her.

‘We only made it here a little while ago. She’s still unsettled.’ Sarah removed his boots for him. She discovered he wasn’t wearing any socks. At first she thought she must have pulled them off as she’d shucked off the muddy shoes, but sticking her hand in to fish out any socks – nothing but mud. Questions began to stack up in her mind. With all things considered though, she was careful of how she put them to him. ‘I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Sarah.’

The young man was still looking in Tansy’s direction. His gaze moved to the ground, and then out into the night. He paused before telling Sarah his name.

‘I’m . . . Heath.’

His hesitation made Sarah’s eyebrows involuntarily rise.

He laughed breathlessly and trembled. ‘I’ll try that again – I’m Heath. Nice to meet you.’

‘I’d shake your hand, but mine are cold and yours are freezing. Don’t mind Tansy.’ Sarah got to her feet. She moved so that she was no longer blocking the fire. ‘She’s had a big day. We almost got cleaned up in the flash flood – you saw it? You know we’re cut off?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you caught up in it? We barely made it.’

‘No, I saw it from a bit higher up.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘The plateau.’

‘I think I saw your tracks. You drove up, over Spinners Bridge.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Did you leave your car to walk up here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Looking for reception?’

‘Yep.’

‘I’ll stop bombarding you with questions and let you get undressed.’

Sarah went into the van. The light from the lamp on the table didn’t reach as far as the dark interior. She’d taken the torch, but didn’t turn it on. She stepped back into the shadows and looked out at the young man. He wrapped the blanket around himself and wriggled out of his pants. She noted the careful way he removed his cargos and the way he put them beneath his chair, the way his hands lingered on the pockets. She saw him glancing over at her phone on the block of wood. He took off his shirt then pulled the saucepan of water to him and washed his face, his arms and neck. It was a rushed job. Smears of dirt remained. His bare torso revealed a large tattoo on his side, intertwined geometrical shapes that started below his armpit and stretched down to his hip. He settled back into the chair, the blanket around his shoulders and covering him to his knees. His hair was short and black, cut high and boyish on his forehead, shaved at the sides, exposing his small ears. His eyebrows were thick and dark. The strong lines to his face were accentuated by his leanness – deep eye sockets, drawn-in jowls and a bony jaw, slanting cheekbones. His looks were striking, more than standard handsomeness – so eye-catching it was impossible not to feel a little disarmed by it.

Sarah switched on the torch and got him a pair of King Gee shorts, socks and a shirt.

‘I don’t suppose you saw if the water took out the suspension bridge?’ she asked as she handed him the clothes. ‘I know it took out the main bridge.’ Sarah sought his gaze, but he was looking at the van and glancing at the Christmas food on the table. She continued, ‘I know because my horse and I were
on
the main bridge when it got destroyed.’

He didn’t take in what she’d said, or he didn’t appreciate the gravity of it. ‘I didn’t go back down to see if the suspension bridge was gone. I guessed it would have been swept away.’

‘Did you hear the sound the water made?’

‘Yeah, it was massive.’

Sarah busied herself putting wood on the fire while he dressed. ‘I’ve never seen, or heard, anything like it.’ She refilled the kettle, using the rainwater she’d collected in a bucket. When she turned around he’d finished dressing. They were now in identical clothes – King Gee shorts, twin layers of blue-check flannelette shirts. He pulled the blanket back around him and returned to his chair. He smiled at her through thin white lips.

‘Did you know about the storm before heading up the mountain?’

‘Didn’t have a clue. Didn’t hear any reports.’

She watched him. He wouldn’t hold eye contact. He was sitting straighter in the chair, his neck extended higher and his shoulders lowered. He seemed to be fighting the effects of the cold more than he had been a few moments before; he was braced and determined not to shiver.

‘You’ve been able to contact your family? They know you’re here and sending some help?’ As she spoke she began washing the mud from the bottom of her legs.

He warmed his hands. ‘I haven’t been able to contact anyone. Ran out of battery halfway up. It was low to start with.’

‘It’s Christmas Day, I’m sure your family will work out pretty quick that you’re missing. They’ll be worried.’

‘Yeah, they will be.’

She dried her legs and put her socks back on. ‘My phone doesn’t work or I’d give you that to use.’ She pointed to it on the block of wood. ‘Rain got into it. Usually you can get a couple of bars of reception up here. In this weather though, maybe not. I don’t think we’ll be stuck for too long though. They’ll fly a chopper over in the morning. They’d know that anyone trapped would come to the hut. They’ll see our smoke. And we’ve got it pretty good in the meantime. There’s food in the van. The power is probably off in Lauriston, so we’re possibly warmer than everyone in town is.’ She qualified her statement with, ‘When you’re dry, I mean, you’ll be more comfortable.’

Sarah pulled up a chair next to his. They sat side by side, a similar distance from the fire, facing it. Her hair was dark and wet like his.

‘At least they’ll see your car from the air and swing into action.’

‘Classic idiot, left my vehicle, unprepared dickhead, checked nothing, took the bush for granted. I could have been in some serious trouble without you.’

‘You would have made it to the shed.’

‘I’m not sure I would have. You read about cases like that, people dying only metres from safety.’

He glanced around the shed, taking in his surroundings with a keener eye. He moved in his chair and looked at Tansy. She had turned her rump towards them. The oils in her coat reflected the firelight. Sarah could sense her mare’s nervous energy, and her exhaustion. A similar clash of tension and fatigue mixed within Sarah too.

‘Exposure does get on top of you quicker than you think.’

‘You’re still wet,’ Heath said looking down her body.

Her top shirt was damp and her shorts were wet and muddy in places. Her feet were bare. ‘We’re out of dry gear.’

‘You should have these clothes.’

‘I’m bone dry compared to what I was when I got here.’

‘Aren’t there any more socks?’

‘I couldn’t see any. The clothes aren’t mine. I broke into the van. This is all the workmen’s gear.’ Sarah reached for the Jack Daniels and poured Heath some, passed it over. ‘That’ll warm you up.’

He drank the shot of whiskey. After letting it settle, he nodded. ‘That does hit the spot.’

‘You’re not a local then?’

He shook his head. ‘Not Lauriston.’

‘But nearby?’

‘Royden.’

‘I grew up in Royden.’

‘I’ve only just moved back there.’

‘You come from there?’

‘For it being my hometown, I haven’t spent that much time there. My parents live out of town a bit.’

‘Oh, okay. What are their names? I probably know them.’

‘They keep pretty much to themselves.’

‘What school did you go to?’

‘I didn’t go local.’

‘My parents teach at St Andrews. That’s where I went to school.’

‘Yep, I know it.’

‘My family name is Lehman.’

‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

Sarah quietly clucked her tongue. She tossed up for a moment whether or not to plough on trying for information.

‘Are you hungry?’ she said instead, sticking with the casual tack. ‘I was heating some stew.’ She moved forward to sit on the edge of her chair and returned the pot of food to the hotplate. ‘The kettle might take a little while. This’ll heat up quicker. More whiskey?’

‘Better eat first. Don’t wanna get hammered.’

‘I was thinking I might.’

After reheating the stew, they shared it, two spoons dipped in the pot, not bothering with plates. Camping swept normal customs under the carpet at the best of times let alone in these extremes. He kept glancing over at her mare. Tansy was gnawing the railing, her head low, ears back, neck stretched out, body long and indefinite in the dark, her menacing shape accompanied with biting, grinding sounds. She seemed to be hell bent on doing all she could to freak the guy out.

‘What’s your horse’s name?’

‘Tansy.’

Colour was returning to his cheeks. His lips were turning from blue to pinkish-red. Dirty smears on his face looked as though they’d been carefully applied to make him appear battle weary and war-torn. There was a smudge on his forehead and a splash of mud on his temple. The creases either side of his nostrils were dark with grime. His eye colour remained bleached green. Now that he was warmer, fed, Sarah waited for his questions. Surely he’d have to ask if she had found a way to raise the alarm? And whether or not people would report her missing. He’d have to want to know her Where’s and Why’s and How’s and When’s?

Sarah poured a few decent fingers of alcohol into her own cup. Like a chaser to the liquor, a fresh surge of tiredness spread through her limbs once she’d downed the drink.

‘Officially the first Christmas I’ve not received a gift,’ he said lifting his drink to Sarah’s before taking his second shot.

Sarah lifted her cup, even though it was empty. ‘That’s something to celebrate. No crappy photo frames, no ugly ties.’

Perhaps their avoidance of real topics spoke more of the day than other conversation would have. Sarah put aside her cup and leaned back in her chair. She closed her eyes. He didn’t seem dangerous. There was no sense of treachery, or lechery, about him. And that would have to do. Parts of her brain must have been on high alert forming these conclusions though, working overtime sussing him out: she could picture his face clearly in her mind’s eye. He had thin lips. The majority of his expressiveness was in his eyes. She could see his hands – calluses on his fingers, old nicks and cuts, short thick nails, strong labourer’s hands – and sinewy muscles in his forearms, not the type of muscle that came from a gym membership. She could picture his tattoo, his hairless chest, flat pecs, and those abs that
did
come from a gym membership.

She heard him move in his chair.

He must have been checking the time. ‘It’s almost over too. Nearly midnight.’

Sarah didn’t remember seeing a watch on his wrist. Her eyes opened. He’d relaxed back into his chair. The cargos were still bunched protectively under his chair. Sarah realised it was her wristwatch he’d leaned over and read. Taking the time from her like that struck her as both a friendly and an over-friendly thing to do.

‘We should work out the beds. You can take the van, I’ve got a bedroll, I’ll sleep here in front of the fire.’

‘There’s no way I’m taking the van.’ He levelled a tired gaze across at her. ‘You have it. I’ll stay here.’

‘I want to be near Tansy, in case she gets a fright.’

‘It doesn’t seem right me getting the bed.’

‘I’m not going to sleep. I’m just going to lie down.’

‘You can have both the blankets. That’s my compromise.’

‘There are two more blankets in the van anyway.’

‘All right,’ he conceded and started getting to his feet. ‘I’ll keep this, you have yours plus the other two.’ He stood with his blanket around him. Collecting up his wet pants and shirt, he said, ‘I’ll wash these tomorrow, so no need to dry them tonight. Thanks again, Sarah.’

‘Take the lamp on the table. I’ve got my torch.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yep.’

‘I’ll bring the blankets out.’

He took the lamp and his wet clothes and climbed the steps into the van. He didn’t limp. Not even so much as a slight favouring of his left side. Sarah swung her gaze away, confronted by his balanced gait, confused by it.