Cherry Pie (37 page)

‘Chloe.’

‘Come on, mate, I can’t. My feet don’t reach the ground. You wanna find Andi or not?’

Shit. Trip was probably seconds away from getting arrested and she was already revving the engine so I whacked the stand with my heel and we took off down the freeway.

I didn’t look back to see Trip’s reaction.

A little further along Chloe turned off at the Burwood exit. I had to hand it to her, she knew how to ride the thing and was smart enough to follow the speed limit to avoid attention.

I just had to remember to put my feet down and balance the bike whenever we stopped at the lights.

We sped through the suburbs and gradually the houses were fewer and the road became lined with ghostly gums, wooden fences and tangled vines. The air was freezing and held the sharp eucalypt scent of the bush. We had to stop a couple of times and pull a torch out of the saddlebags to study the map but eventually we were trundling down a winding dirt road, checking out mailboxes made from chopped off forty-four gallon drums.

Finally we found the lot number we were looking for and rode up a gravel driveway, winding around a hillside, traversing steep hills and sharp declines, and although the bike wasn’t designed for off road riding and skidded a bit on the pebbly surface, Chloe maintained control. I’d been so wrong that night outside Jouissance—she really was one hell of a sidekick.

We roared up a near vertical hill and rocketed down the slope on the other side, picking up speed. Too late the headlight picked up a metal gate at the bottom, on the far side of a concrete ford. She laid off the accelerator and hit the brake but the bike was too heavy and had built up too much momentum to stop. Just before we slammed into the gate she chucked a hard right and the back wheel spun out. I tried to hold on but couldn’t and flew through the air toward the bushes, eyes squeezed tight.

I came to a few seconds later in a clump of bracken, a couple of metres from the Ducati. A rock gouged my shoulder and my ankle throbbed, but my fluffy white jacket must have protected me because I could move my limbs and nothing seemed to be broken. I sat up and ripped the helmet off. In the glow of the headlight I saw Chloe trapped under the fallen bike and I limped over.

‘Ow,’ she moaned, ‘it hurts.’

I don’t know where the strength came from but I lifted the Ducati, grunting, and flipped it off her, the bike crunching when it hit the gravel. I found the torch, pointed the light and saw that her leg was twisted underneath her.

‘It’s broken.’

‘Fuck.’ I felt in her pockets and found her phone, checked the screen. No signal.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she cried, ‘I’ve fucked everything up.’

‘No you didn’t, babe. You got us here. Hold on, okay? I’ll get to higher ground, call for help.’

I climbed over the padlocked gate and hobbled up the hill on the other side, the torch beam wobbling over the stony track and illuminating creeping vines and snarled scrub. I constantly checked the phone for the bars that would indicate I had a signal, but there was nothing. The night was freezing, arctic almost, and my ragged breath came out in cloudy puffs as I laboured to the top of the hill and climbed over another gate, the skin of my palms almost adhering to the icy metal.

The full moon behind the cloud cover dispersed an eerie light and ahead I made out a clearing, the hulking shape of an old two storey house and a large shed or barn off to the left.

No sign of life, no burgundy four wheel drive. Looked like Holly hadn’t come after all. Most likely she’d fled the state—I would’ve—but I turned the torch off anyway, just in case.

As I crossed the clearing a night bird let out a witchy screech and I stopped dead, my skin prickling with a stupid childhood fear of dead people risen from the grave, zombie creatures lurking and watching from behind the trees. Get a grip, I told myself, get to the second storey of the house, call for help, then look for Andi. You’re not a frightened kid, you’re a twenty-eight year old, hard-arse PI. I didn’t really convince myself but when I heard no more screeching, only the chirrup of a cricket or a frog, I exhaled a shaky breath and took off again toward the house. I’d just put one foot onto the creaky, tilting veranda when I heard a low moan.

At first I thought it might have been a cow but when it happened again I realised it was human and coming from the bush beyond the house. Andi? Had she heard the bike or seen the torch light before I’d switched it off? I didn’t want to go into the zombie filled scrub, but I had to, she might be dying, and Chloe would surely be okay for another couple of minutes.

I switched the torch back on, stumbled around the side of the house and plunged in, tripping over tree roots, vines and branches slapping my face.

Every few metres I stopped and listened, making sure I was heading in the direction of the noise. I was. The moans were getting louder, more frantic, but just when I was sure I was right on top of her, they stopped. What the hell? I shone the torch all around. The gum trees were bigger here, with peeling bark hanging down in sheets, and right in front of me I saw a pile of huge boulders, speckled with lichen and fuzzy green moss. At the base of the rocks, branches and twigs lay heaped on top of each other, as though someone had stacked them there. Was Andi somewhere under the pile? I shivered and couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.

‘Andi?’ I whispered, picking my way toward the boulders.

No response. I tried again, a little louder. ‘Andi?’

A twig snapped behind me and all the fear I’d choked down returned, tenfold. I didn’t want to see what was back there, anticipating the Blair Witch, or some fucked-up demon from
Evil Dead
, but I whirled around anyhow. I had no other choice.

All my horror film nightmares came true on the spot. It was Holly, a skitzed out look in her eye, holding an axe.

Holly lifted the axe above her head, yelled and charged, and I instinctively blundered back, hit the twigs and plunged straight through. Half a second later I hit hard packed earth, jolting my already sprained ankle and landing hard on my shoulder and ribs. The torch bounced from my hand and the light snuffed out.

I looked up. Holly had switched on a torch of her own and in the ambient light from the beam hovering above I could just make out where I was. The hole I’d stumbled into was narrow, about three metres straight up, and the chamber a couple of metres across. At first I thought I’d fallen into an ancient pit toilet but it was too deep, too far from the house and the floor was hard and rocky—not that I had a clue what hundred year old feces might feel like. There was a musty smell though, mingling with the dank scent of earth, and as my eyes adjusted I made out a shape across the cave and drew a breath, thinking it was Andi’s body. I stretched my leg and nudged it with my foot and to my relief felt something hard and brittle. Probably just twigs fallen down from the pile.

Above me, Holly swore and I heard her throwing sticks aside before the torch light came dancing into the hollow, bobbing along the walls and tracing the floor. I lay still and closed my eyes, thinking playing possum might give me an advantage. The torch light rested on my eyelids, making them glow red inside.

‘I know you’re not dead.’ Her voice echoed slightly as she called down the hole. ‘I can see your chest moving and I am not falling for that one again. Could have sworn the other slut was a goner when I took her to meet her little friend, but the bitch must have climbed straight out. With a broken leg, if you can believe that!’

Little friend? Holly sounded like she’d totally lost it. I kept my eyes closed, hoping she’d think I was knocked out.

‘Anyway, you’re not escaping. I won’t make the same mistake twice.’

The light left my face but I stayed still, just in case. I heard her clomp around, then a scraping sound, and even with my eyes shut I could tell the cave had gone pitch black. I opened them. She’d placed something over the entrance to the hole and was throwing stuff on top. It sounded like rocks hitting metal and each clang was more chilling than the last. Then the banging stopped, her footsteps receded and the silence was infinitely more terrifying than the noise had been. It wasn’t quite as bad as being buried alive but it wasn’t far off and I had to use all the mental strength I had to stop myself collapsing into a quivering heap. Think of Chloe, I told myself. If you don’t get your shit together and get out of here Holly will find her and chop off her head with that goddamn axe. The thought was enough to make me sit up and feel for the torch until my fingers curled around the hard plastic handle.

Working by touch I tightened the components, jiggled it and the light flickered then steadied. Yes!

I directed the beam upwards. A sheet of rusted corrugated iron lay over the top of the hole. My chances of scrambling up there were virtually nil, even without the metal to contend with, so how the hell had Andi managed, and with a broken leg? I brought the beam down and swept it slowly around the walls of the cave and when I got to what I thought was the pile of twigs, I screamed.

It was a body, slumped against the wall, and the grinning skull stared straight at me, eye sockets hollow and dark. For a split second I thought it was Andi before I realised the corpse was long dead, bone mostly, with only a few shreds of desiccated flesh holding the skeleton together. Clothing remnants hung in rotting ribbons and the cranium was peppered with tufts of curly blonde hair. A plastic bag seemed to be stuck to its chest and another had fallen into its pelvis. I forced my trembling hand to steady the torch and I inched closer. My god, they weren’t plastic bags, they were silicone breast implants, perfectly preserved while the rest of the body had decayed.

I suddenly realised what Holly had been talking about when she referred to Andi’s ‘little friend’. It was Melody, had to be, but I didn’t have time to wonder how she’d got there, I had to find a way out of the cave.

I swept the light around the rough hewn walls and found another hole behind me, a lot smaller than the one I’d fallen in. What was the place? An old mine? Andi couldn’t have climbed up the shaft and must have dragged herself out the back way. I crawled over, shone the torch down the opening and swallowed. Maybe not. The tunnel angled down until it dropped out of sight and, worse than that, it narrowed the further it went along. Could a person actually squeeze through? Surely you’d become trapped and at that steep angle there was no way of inching back up. The thought made my heart trill. No way was I getting stuck down there, I was leaving the same way I came in.

I rested the torch on Melody’s brittle femur so the beam angled up, positioned myself under the entrance and for the next ten minutes tried my damnedest to scale the steep walls, hoping to use thin tree roots and minute corrugations to gain purchase. It didn’t work. My boots slid off and the roots snapped in my hands. In desperation I attempted to claw my way up but a couple of fingernails ripped off and I crumpled into a heap on the ground, sobbing in pain, frustration and fear.

The only other way out was the tunnel. Just thinking about going in there made my head spin and bile rise to my throat.

I couldn’t, but if I didn’t then Chloe was going to die. Who knew how long the cops would take? It could be morning before they arrived. I was just thinking that things couldn’t get any worse when they did. The torch light flickered and died.

I’d never known such total blackness. It was so dark that I started seeing things, shooting stars and colours dancing in front of my eyes. I tightened the torch again and slapped the casing and when that didn’t work I carefully removed the back, twiddled the batteries, screwed it together and … nothing. The thing was kaput. Fear rushed back and I started hyperventilating, thinking that any second I’d hear a rattle and scrape and feel Melody’s gnarled finger bones dig into my shin.

Terror actually overcame me and I curled up on the ground with my knees tucked under my chin, covered my face with my coat and cried. It wasn’t just the skeleton, it was the tunnel, because I knew if I was going to have any chance of saving Chloe I’d have to go down there, and if I went down there I would probably get stuck and die. Sure, I’d wanted to kill myself earlier that night, but drowning was one thing. Being stuck underground, wedged fast and unable to move forward or back … but if Chloe died because of me …

I pulled myself to my knees and crawled through the darkness, sobbing and choking, to where I thought the tunnel should be, felt around the opening with my hands and inserted my head and shoulders. My bulky coat brushed against the narrow walls so I sat back, ripped it off, threw it behind me and forced myself in.

I wasn’t sure if my eyes were open or closed, the darkness was so absolute. I managed to move forward by stretching out my arms, wiggling my hips and digging my elbows in when my body caught up to my hands. The further along I went the more terrified I became, and though I tried to control my breathing it was coming out in fast, panicky gasps. After about a minute the tunnel sloped down so sharply that I actually slid for a metre or so and knew there was no way in hell I could inch back. I’d reached the point of no return.

Panic spiralled and it was all I could do to get air into my lungs and keep pushing myself forward. The tunnel narrowed until there was no room to dig my elbows in and I had to squirm forward with my arms out in front of me. I inched along like some blind, burrowing worm until my searching fingers hit wet dirt. There had been some sort of collapse. The passage was blocked.

I wanted to scream but there wasn’t enough air and my throat constricted. I heard my heartbeat throbbing in my ears.

I thrust my hands into the loamy earth as far as I could but all I could feel was more dirt, going on forever. Thrashing against the compressing walls I suddenly realised that hell wasn’t a place of flames and pitchforks, it was dark and claustrophobic and icy cold, and I was there. I knew I was going to die and I’d just started to give up and go limp when a tiny spark fired in my panicked brain. I had to plunge straight into the dirt.