Surface Tension (11 page)

We took turns. We dived. We kept an eye out for Finkle – for anyone.

We brought up pieces of wood and pieces of wood and … more pieces of wood.

“It’s a shed,” Liam said finally, surfacing for what felt like the hundredth time.

“A shed?” Of course. That would be it. An old wooden shed, left to rot out on someone’s property.

On the one hand, I felt a bit let down.

A shed wouldn’t have any rooms to explore. It wouldn’t have passages to lead you down, nooks and crannies to uncover. A shed wouldn’t have much of anything. It would just be a space, a present you open to find an empty box.

But on the other hand, I couldn’t help feeling a bit excited. When someone gives you a present, you can’t help unwrapping it, can you? You can’t help opening it up, just in case.

“The door’s on the other side,” Liam said. “It’s got a padlock.”

“Locked?”

“I think so. Or rusted shut.”

When I went down, I realised that he was right. It was definitely locked, the padlock snapped tight through the links of a thick chain. I tried rattling the door but although it was loose, the hinges were still bonded to the metal frame.

“We need a hammer,” I said.

Liam laughed. “A special
underwater
hammer? You could strap it to your head.”

“Ha, ha.” I thought about the door, the hinges. “Or not a hammer. A screwdriver.”

Liam shook his head. “The screws would be rusted.”

“Well, what then? We want to get the door open, don’t we? It’s stuck. So we need something to open it with.”

I picked up a piece of wood and held it in the palm of my hand.
The solid weight of history and all that
. It was surprisingly light. And crumbly.

Something flashed across Liam’s face.

“What?”

He raised a hand and smacked himself across the forehead. “We’re such idiots.” He stared at me. “Actually, a hammer would be kind of helpful. Here …” He reached out a hand. “Give me the torch.”

“Oh, now you want–”

I didn’t get the chance to finish. He grabbed the torch, strap and all, and said, “Wish me luck!” Then he sucked in a big breath of air, and was gone.

Gone. Under. He was gone and he was under and he had been both things before but this time was different. This time he wanted a hammer but took a torch and I didn’t know what he was going to do, only that he was gone too long.

That he was under too long.

Probably. Not that I was counting or anything.

I leaned over the edge of the raft, scanning the surface for signs. For bubbles, a rush of something, anything.

Nothing.

Even though I wasn’t counting, it had to be more than thirty, definitely. More than forty. Fifty, maybe. Was that even possible? There were people who did that, who held their breath for ages. I had seen them on documentaries, hauling themselves down long cables that led them, like ladders, deep into the ocean. Maybe they had torches strapped to their heads? Or maybe I was mixing them up with the cavers. But the torches didn’t matter, probably. It was the breath that mattered. Wasn’t it always the breath? And they trained for it, didn’t they, for days and weeks and months and years? They didn’t just grin and grab a torch and take off for … how long now? A minute?

I should have counted properly. It was so easy to speed up without realising, to tell yourself it was a minute when really it was only thirty or maybe forty.

I should have done
one-cat-and-dog
,
two-cat-and-dog, three …

That way I would have known how long it was.

Too long.

There were no bubbles, no churn.

Panic stabbed at my chest.

I had to go down, but could I make it – without flippers to kick myself down, to get to the shed?

To get to Liam.

I took a deep breath.

Wish me luck.

Something slammed up from underneath me, tumbling me off the raft and into the water.

A head, hands, a boy. Coughing and spluttering and grabbing at the air.

“Cassie! Ow!”

“Ow yourself!”

We hung there, treading water. I listened to his breathing, rattled and rough.

“Are you okay?”

He nodded, then pulled himself slowly over to the raft. “Yeah. I … hang on.” He held on to the side for a minute until his breathing slowed.

“Where were you?” I said.

He grinned. “I got in.”

“You got it open?”

“Not exactly. I mean, yeah, but … not the way you think.”

He explained.

How we were idiots. Because as soon as we found a door that was all we could think about. Because doors were the way into a place. Even though we’d already broken off a big chunk of roof, making it weak, making a hole. Which Liam could hammer through, with an otherwise-useless torch, and then pull himself through, and past, and down into the shed.

Where there was a big space of nothing he could swim down and into and feel his way around, running slowly out of air and then, just before he gave up and kicked his way back through the hole, finding it.

“What?”

Liam grinned. He held up his other hand, which had been sculling underwater, and I saw that he was holding something.

Something fat and roundish, made of plastic and glass.

A side-view mirror?

Or at least part of one. The housing had broken down and it was cracked and split.

But you could still see what it was, what it had once been – the cloudy glass panel, the faded splinters of red plastic.

I stared at him. “There’s a
car
down there?”

“Yep.”

My mind raced with possibilities. A car? Drowned in the flood?

I thought about Dad in the Valiant, panicking about petrol. Thinking for a brief, crazy moment about racing back into Old Lower Grange.

And then I shivered.

What if someone did get caught in the flood?

What if there was someone in there – a body?

A skeleton, by now.

Liam laughed. “Nah, it’ll just be some old bomb someone left behind. Pretty cool, still … hey?” He broke off.

“What?” I began. Then I felt it. The water moving beneath us – only slightly, but it was there. Bubbles coming up.

“Is that you?” I said.

He shook his head. “I’m here. I’m–”

Then it popped up with a sickening bounce – something grey and sort of round and sort of …

I screamed.

It was a head, bobbing between us, a skull, slimy with lake weed.

“Oh my god,” I said. “Get it away, get it …”

We both scrambled backwards at once. We were a mess of arms and legs and flippers and the thing was sitting on the water’s surface, grinning at us with its broken mouth and its lopsided eyes and …

Oh.

“It’s okay,” I said, because it was, suddenly.

It was still weird – very weird in fact – but it was okay.

I swam over and scooped it in to my chest, then kicked back and sat it up on the raft.

“Geez,” said Liam. “I thought it was a … you know.”

“Yeah.” I ran one finger along the ridge of an eye socket. “It kind of is.”

He peered closer. “What is it, anyway?”

“A head,” I said. “Clearly.”

I told him about Dad’s artistic vision.

He nodded slowly. “Right.” Then he peered at the head. “It’s pretty weird looking. I guess it’s been under there for a while.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But that’s not the reason.”

Then I grinned and climbed up onto the raft and we headed back for shore.

“Where on earth did you get this?”

I almost didn’t tell Dad about the head. I knew it would lead to questions I’d find hard to answer.

But I also knew it might lead to answers I wouldn’t get any other way.

And I had to know. We had opened the box and this had come out. This and a mirror, attached to a panel, attached to a car.

“The lake?” Dad said. “Did Elijah take you?”

“Not exactly,” I began. “I … go there sometimes. It washed up.”

It was kind of true.

Dad frowned. “Cass, you’re not to swim up there on your own, all right?”

I nodded.

That was also true, these days.

“Washed up, did it? I guess I can’t say I’m surprised. I had some firing problems back then … air bubbles, that sort of thing.”

Dad peered at the head. I had let it dry in the sun, then wrapped it in my towel and carried it down in my backpack. The hair was a bit smudged and there was a large crack at the base of the skull from when I’d jolted over a big rock, but otherwise it looked the same as when it emerged from the depths.

Completely unrecognisable.

Except to Dad, of course.

He snapped his fingers. “But that’s … but it can’t be!” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “How bizarre.”

“What?”

“I did leave some of these behind, when we moved.” Dad smiled, remembering. “I was learning back then, so they weren’t very good, but mostly I just liked the idea of it – of them staying behind, ‘living’ in the town for us.”

“That’s … um, kind of creepy.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Dad said. “As you know, I have a different vision. What’s strange is that this wasn’t one of them.”

“One of what?”

“The heads I left behind.” Dad went to the shelf where he kept his books and ran his finger along the spines. “Yes, here it is.” He pulled an old album out and leafed through it. “See?”

There was a page of notes and sketches and a small, faded photo taped down the bottom, partly obscured by Dad’s thumb.

Across the top, in thick black texta, was a single word:

FINKLE.

“Finkle?” I craned forward. “I didn’t know you’d done him before. But that doesn’t …”

Look much like him
, I was going to say.

Even taking into account twelve years of water and the uniqueness of Dad’s artistic vision, the head we’d found had nothing in common with Finkle. It was too small, for one thing, and the hair was all wrong, and the nose was–

“Not
that
Finkle,” Dad said. “His wife.”

“Finkle’s wife let you do her head?”

“Of course! Well, I’m sure she would have if she’d known about it.” Dad tapped the photo with one clay-brown finger. “I took this in the supermarket, from behind the bread display. Not hiding, exactly, just … anyway, it was a gift for Finkle. He was going over to the Lenton Festival and said he’d drop some pots off at the Craft Market for me. This was my way of saying thanks.”

I stared at the mangled head. “Right.”

Dad looked thoughtful. “She left him not long after that, actually. Moved up to the city. I always wondered if the head had something to do with it.” He grinned. “Not seriously, but–”

I cut him off. “So how did it end up in the lake?”

“That’s what I can’t work out. If I remember, it was a few months before they dammed the town. We were getting ready to move, packing everything up.”

“But what about the head?”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying. That’s when I gave it to him.” Dad stroked the smooth curve of the skull absently. “I packed it into a box and put it in the boot of his car myself.”

“And now it’s in the lake,” I said. “At least it was in the lake and now it’s here.”

Dad brightened. “Yes, it’s quite fitting, isn’t it – like it’s returned to the place of its birth. The circle of life and all that.”

“Yeah, except that this isn’t the place of its birth,” I said. “In fact, it was closer to your old studio when it was up in the lake.”

“Good point. Well, maybe that’s why it was there. Maybe it was trying to get back home again.”

“This isn’t really helping,” I said through clenched teeth.

“No, I suppose not. But it’s interesting, isn’t it?” Dad smiled. “I could ask Finkle if you like, when I see him next. Which reminds me …” He gestured towards a low table in the centre of the room. There was something perched on it, something vaguely head-shaped, swathed in bubble wrap.

“Is that–?”

Dad nodded. “Just in time.”

He was right about that. The centenary was only a few days away. “Shouldn’t it be on, like, a stand or something?” I said.

“
Plinth
is the word you’re after.” Dad sighed. “And yes, it should. But Finkle insists I don’t attach it until just before the ceremony. I think he’s worried about bird poo or something.”

Tyres crunched outside and I looked out to see Elijah’s ute pulling up.

“Perfect timing!” Dad said. “I’ll pack this thing properly and give it to him to take in tomorrow.”

He slid Finkle’s head into the box and closed the flaps over the top, then reached for the sticky tape to seal them down tight.

When Dad told Mum about the head, she frowned.

That was probably because it was her usual response to anything to do with his heads.

Then she dropped her fork onto her plate with a clatter, sending flecks of spaghetti sauce flying.

That was probably because he had suddenly produced the head from under his chair and set it in the middle of the table, like a zombie centrepiece.

“Andrew! Get that thing out of here!”

“Don’t talk about Mrs Finkle like that,” Dad teased. “She’s a lovely lady. Was, anyway. It’s been a long time. Anything could have happened, I suppose.”

“Twelve years. Has it really been that long?” Mum sighed. “Where did you get this?”

“It … washed up, apparently. At the lake.”

Dad told Mum about the day Finkle came over. How he’d put the head in his boot. How he could see him now, clear as if it was yesterday, waving from his little red car as he sped off in a cloud of dust.

But he didn’t tell Mum about me swimming.

Maybe that was because I’d been keeping his head-related secrets for years, telling Mum he was busy glazing pots when he was really obsessing over how to make someone’s ear look slightly less like a deformed cabbage.

Maybe it was because it was hard for anyone who wasn’t Hannah to say much of anything at dinner, and afterwards, and on into the rest of the evening, because she was so busy telling us all about the centenary preparations. About how the book was finished and the ceremony was all planned and the band was going to be significantly less lame this time and she was feeling a bit nervous about everything but she was sure it would be fine in the end, an
occasion to remember
and no matter what anyone said she was proud of herself and so was Howard because she had worked really hard and done an excellent job.