The Other Side of Nowhere (17 page)

Even as we stood in front of the small hut, Nick was still shaking his head in disbelief. He kept saying he’d never heard of any buildings being on Lion Island. And he’d definitely never seen one. But there it was.

It had taken a while to get to the hut, with the sun beating down on us the whole way there. Standing in the hut’s overgrown garden, I took a sip of water and surveyed the building. It was the kind of place that was probably ramshackle the day it was built. Now it was decrepit.

It wasn’t much bigger than a caravan, with grey walls stained all over by blotches of green moss and black mould. The roof was rusty, and paint flaked from the window sills. At the front of the hut, on its small timber verandah, were piles of lobster pots and coils of rope. Fishing rods and netting hanged from nails by the front door. There was even an old snorkel and mask.

Nick stepped lightly onto the verandah, and the boards groaned under his weight. The front door opened with a slow creak when he gave it a gentle shove.

‘Anyone home?’ he called softly. When there was no answer, I was unsurprised but relieved.

George and I followed Nick onto the verandah and through the door. A cross-hatch of light filtered through the holes in the roof, easing the darkness in the single-roomed hut.

At the back of the room was a single stretcher bed, and next to it a wooden crate with a couple of things on it – a kerosene lamp and a small clock which had stopped forever at half-past ten. In another corner was a small cane sofa with faded floral patterned cushions covered in dust. There was a tiny kitchenette and a saucepan sat on a camp stove. On the tiny fold-away card table was a knife and fork.

‘This place is creepy as,’ Nick said, staring at the cutlery on the table.

‘I think it’s kind of cute,’ said George, running a finger along the table and leaving a long smear in the dust.

Nick and George seemed relaxed, but my head was buzzing. Something about this place didn’t add up. Next to the stove were three empty beer bottles lined up in a row. There was a dark green sleeping bag spread out on the bed. Something flashed through my mind, a fragment of a memory. But it was gone before I could make sense of it. Then I noticed the dog-eared pages of a newspaper half tucked under the bed. I went over and picked it up.

My heart skipped a beat. The paper was only three days old. It was dated the same day we had left Shell Harbour.

‘Someone’s been here,’ I said in a hoarse whisper.

George snatched the paper and she and Nick stared at the front page.

‘Those guys on the beach?’

Nick scratched at his neck. ‘Maybe one of them.’ He nodded towards the bed. ‘I doubt the fat one would fit in there.’

‘Or maybe it’s someone who can help us,’ George said, sounding excited. ‘Maybe we should wait here a bit?’

‘No way,’ I said quickly. ‘We’ve gotta find Matt.’ It wasn’t just Matt that was making me want to move on, though. This place was giving me goosebumps.

Nick nodded. ‘Okay. You’re right. Let’s keep moving. I’m just gonna take a quick squiz around outside first.’

I really just wanted to get the hell out of there and find Matt, but Nick was out the front door before I could protest. I sat down on the bed. As I toyed with the zip on the sleeping bag, it came back to me. The flash of memory. The two men on the pier at Shell Harbour. The one with the rucksack on the little runabout.

I remembered thinking he’d been stowing a sleeping bag. I strained hard, trying to visualise him, but couldn’t get a clear picture. I was certain it wasn’t Zaffar, though, and there was no way it could have been Baldy. I would have remembered someone that size for sure.

I told George about the guys on the pier, and she sat down next to me, chewing a fingernail.

‘Something weird is going on,’ I said. ‘I think those guys on the pier have got something to do with Baldy and Zaffar.’

‘But Nick doesn’t think Baldy and Zaffar are from Shell Harbour. He’d know if they were. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that they’re here at the same time.’

‘That’s some coincidence,’ I said, gruffly. ‘C’mon George. Look at this place – it’s a total dump. Why would anyone come here?’

George just shrugged, unconvinced. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’

I had to admit that I was good at jumping to conclusions. Especially sinister conclusions. But I did feel like I had some strong evidence this time. Whoever that guy on the runabout was, I felt sure he was mixed up in all this somehow. And I was almost a hundred per cent sure he had something to do with Baldy and Zaffar.

Nick appeared in the doorway. ‘Check this out,’ he said, grinning. He was holding up what looked like an oversized starter’s pistol.

‘What’s that?’ George asked, running over to him.

‘I
think
it’s a Very pistol,’ Nick said, examining it closely.

‘A what?’ I asked.

‘Like a flare gun … You know, for sending up a distress flare. They used them in the navy, I think. This thing must be thirty years old at least.’

Nick turned the pistol over in his hands, admiring it but cautious at the same time. ‘Looks all right,’ he said, nodding. ‘Anyway, those numb nuts wouldn’t know the difference. We can just –’

But George interrupted him. ‘No. If anyone starts waving guns around, someone will get hurt.’ Folding her arms across her chest, she tried to stare down Nick with her fiercest George glare. But Nick looked equally defiant. They started to argue in heated voices.

As I stood watching their argument, anger sparked up inside of me. What the hell were they playing at? The day was half over and we were no closer to Matt.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ I yelled over them. ‘Just shut the hell up!’

They both spun around to me, looking startled.

‘None of this is helping Matt. We’re just wasting time.’ I ran my hands through my hair, feeling like I wanted to yank it out in frustration. I looked from one face to the other. ‘I mean what are we doing here anyway? We don’t even know how we’re going to rescue him. Or even where he is … And, Nick, I don’t care what you think, that stupid thing is not going to help one bit.’

‘Johnno, listen –’

‘
No
, Nick,’ I barked, backing away from him. ‘You listen! He’s my brother … we’ve gotta find him,’ I pushed past Nick and strode off outside.

Scooping down to collect a handful of small rocks, I stood there pitching them as far and as hard as I could into the dense undergrowth, trying to figure out our next move.

Nick appeared beside me but didn’t speak. I just kept throwing stones.

‘Bet you can’t hit the skinny one,’ he said, nodding to a spindly trunk about twenty metres away. He bent down and grabbed some stones too.

Without acknowledging him, I eyed the stones in my hand, picking out a smooth flat one. I took aim and hurled the stone at the tree. It flew straight and true and slapped into the middle of the trunk about halfway up.

‘Nice one.’ Nick stepped forward and let fly. His stone arced perfectly through the air before veering at the last moment and plummeting into the scrub. ‘
Argh!
Robbed,’ he groaned.

We’d been doing this forever. There wasn’t a tree, lamppost or fence in our street that didn’t bear the scars of our target practice. Picking out another stone, Nick took aim again and this time hit the tree.

He gave a satisfied smile. ‘Now, do you think we can talk without getting pissed at each other?’

‘Doubt it,’ I replied.

‘Well, okay. Then I’ll talk and you listen,’ he said, pinging another stone into the undergrowth. ‘I have a hunch about where Matt might be.’

Nick paused as George came walking up. Even though I was making out I wasn’t paying attention, I was busting to hear what he said next.

‘I’d bet that there’s some kind of cave down there, at the bottom of the cliff,’ Nick said, excitedly. ‘That’s where Fat and Skinny kept disappearing when George was watching them. They were going into a cave inside the cliff.’

I glanced sideways at Nick. ‘So what if Matt’s in a cave? How do we get him out?’

‘Remember how George said she could hear water at the top of the cliff, but couldn’t see it? Well, tell me, where was that water?’

George and I looked at each other.

Nick raised his eyebrows. ‘I think it flows under the ground – inside the cliff. It must run from the top to the bottom, where it comes out as that stream on the beach.’

I bought what Nick was saying. He knew the island pretty well. But I still didn’t understand what he was getting at. ‘What’s that got to do with getting Matt out of the cave?’ I asked.

George piped up before Nick could reply. ‘You think there might be a way to get down to the beach inside the cliff? That there are caves inside the cliff?’

‘Exactly,’ Nick said. ‘A back way. So we can get to Matt without Zaffar and Baldy seeing us.’

I shook my head. ‘Nick, no offence, but that idea is insane,’ I told him. ‘I mean, it’s at least a hundred metres from the top of that cliff to the bottom. So what? We trek underground in the dark through caves inside the cliff?’

‘If there’s water in the cliff, there are caves in the cliff,’ Nick said stubbornly. ‘The stream on the beach comes from somewhere in the direction of the cliff. And if Matt is being held in a cave on the beach, there’s a good chance we should be able to get through to him from inside,’ he said, clearly thinking out loud. ‘And besides, it’s more like eighty metres than a hundred. We’ve definitely got enough rope for that. And we’ve got a torch … Come on, Johnno. It’s worth a shot.’

I laughed out loud. ‘No, it’s not. It’s insane! We can’t just pull off something like that. I mean what if we can’t get through? What if we get stuck halfway down?’ I couldn’t believe Nick couldn’t see the gaping holes in his mad plan.

Nick tossed the rest of his stones onto the ground. He looked like he was about to walk off, but then he turned back and spoke softly. ‘Johnno, sometimes you’ve just gotta stop finding reasons not to do stuff.’

I shot a desperate look at George, hoping for her support.

‘I was sure there was water close by,’ she said. ‘And it was like I was sitting on it. Maybe I really was?’

Nick nodded.

George looked thoughtful. ‘If there’s a cave then maybe they’re using it for storing stuff, too. Like, if they’ve robbed a bank or whatever then that’s where they’re hiding the money. Whatever they are hiding, you can bet they won’t want us to see it.’

‘We’ve already seen too much,’ I said. ‘I mean, just seeing them. You know, like we can recognise them.’

All of a sudden our situation seemed even more hopeless to me than it had ten minutes earlier. Our mission to get Matt without Baldy and Zaffar spotting us, whether we went through the cliff or another way, was hard enough. But the idea that those men were hiding something in a cave – something that they would protect at all costs – just made our job seem more risky, more dangerous, more impossible.

‘Look,’ Nick said. ‘Let’s forget about what they might be up to. It won’t help us find Matt. We’ve got to stay focused.’

I nodded. I had to agree with him on that.

‘The way I see it,’ Nick continued, ‘there’s no way we can get to him if we go along the beach. Zaffar and the other dude camp on the beach. We know they’ll be there at least most of the time, even if they do have a cave … And if they do and if they have Matt in that cave, they’ll be guarding the entrance to make sure he can’t escape.’

I was almost surprised that I was agreeing with everything Nick was saying.

‘Look, how about this?’ Nick said suddenly. ‘We’ll head to the top of the cliff where George heard the water. We might see something that gives us a better idea. If not, we try to find where the water goes underground. Then we can decide if it’s worth a shot trying to get through the cliff. Sound like a plan?’

It sounded like Nick was trying to be reasonable – that he didn’t want to do anything that would have the two of us at each other’s throats again. But nothing in my life had prepared me for climbing inside of a cliff. It was like everything that was happening to us had been thrown into a blender and flicked to high speed. We were just spinning around and had lost control of everything … to the point that we were considering doing something so crazy and dangerous it didn’t even warrant talking about.

‘No, it doesn’t sound like a plan,’ I said sullenly. ‘But I guess we don’t have much choice, do we?’