The White Earth (37 page)

William stopped short, shook his head wildly. He saw that he had actually wandered ten yards or so off the road. He had to be careful, he had to concentrate. Ahead of him, the track rose towards a high stony ridge. He studied the slope wearily. It looked cruelly steep, but then at the crest he saw a single tree, bent into a familiar shape. William searched his memory. Was this the hill he had come to with his uncle, on that first tour of the station, where they had stopped and looked at the view? If it was, then from the top he would see the mountains directly before him, and below would be the creek, the border between the station and the national park. There would be no water in the creek, of course, but from there it was no more than a few miles south to the water hole.

Energy came from somewhere, and William bent his back to the climb. But when he broached the rise there was no valley waiting on the other side, no creek, there was only a wide saddle between this hill and the next, and beyond that, more hills. The mountains looked no closer. His legs buckled and he sat down, rocking back and forth in frustration. He would sit here until his mother came, no matter how long she took. And it would be her fault if the heat and thirst killed him. But eventually his rocking slowed, and reason took hold. He couldn’t stay here. The track did not extend forever, even if it seemed that it did. He rubbed his eyes, felt how raw they were. He looked eastwards again, saw the sinister way shimmers of heat rose in the distance. But it was no use sulking. He had made the decision to grow up months ago. Tottering, he climbed back to his feet.

At some later stage it was noon. The planet, rolling with its vast slowness in space, had exposed its brown hide directly to the full fury of the sun, and William felt that he was a tiny figure crawling naked across its surface. He could see himself from far above. And he had been wrong about the track — it really was endless. This wasn’t even his uncle’s property any more. He must have strayed into some other place, a maze of blank hills and dead grass and scrub. He walked, but nothing got closer, and nothing fell further behind. He was pinned to the spot in a hot void. The mountains had vanished again, and on far-off ridges trees danced mockingly in heat waves of distortion. Time and time again his legs stopped, and he would gaze back along the road, waiting for the car that
had
to be coming for him. But there was never any car, and he would turn and stumble on into a world of shimmering mirages.

And out of those mirages, his second vision came.

It appeared on a ridge ahead — a misshapen thing, a tangle of arms and legs, like some giant, gangling insect. William gazed with mute disbelief as it descended towards him. It was the evil spirit-shape of the drought itself, he decided. Its limbs were knobbed sticks, its elongated head leered and glared, and its touch would surely be poison. But as the figure approached, he saw it sway and stumble, and he realised that it was really two beings, not one. There was a man, and he was leading a horse — a lean, ragged beast, laden with gear. The man was limping, head down, but he tugged obstinately at the horse, and metal clanked with each step.

Don’t speak to him, William thought. The vision would continue on its way, pass him by and disappear again into the heat waves. He shut his eyes, as he had the night before. But the clank of metal came close, and then stopped.

Ahoy there
, rasped something awful.

William moaned, opened his eyes. The man loomed tall before him, a figure of bone and rags. His face was ravaged by starvation, a leathery skull with terribly protruding eyes.

Found you at last
, the figure whispered. He was peering eagerly at the cap on William’s head. Then his blackened lips curled open to show white teeth from which the gums had peeled, and he lifted a gaunt hand to his brow, in salute.
My inland sea.

‘Go away,’ William croaked.

The man shook his head, his stare unblinking. The horse waited behind him, a skeletal thing, its head bent, abject, to the ground.

‘You’re not here,’ William insisted, convinced that he was standing alone under the noon sun, and talking to empty air. ‘You’re not real.’

A hollow laugh came. Then, still grinning, the man began to grope through his clothes. He was bedecked with thin straps that seemed to hold a multitude of items — water bottles, satchels, watches, tin cups, notebooks, an impossible array. But everything was frayed and rusted, as if from a century of wind and rain. The objects clinked and clanked together, and a dark, unpleasant memory stirred in William. He thought of walls painted red. And then he saw, with despair, that while the man’s right foot was encased in a worn boot, his left was bare, the toenails blackened, the heel bloodied and bruised.

‘You’re dead,’ William said.

The man paid him no heed. He pulled out a battered compass and peered across its face to take a bearing from a horizon that pulsated with heat. Then he lifted a bony arm and pointed, away to the southwest, his head inclined in silent invitation.

‘No,’ William said, ‘that’s the wrong way. I have to get to the water hole.’

The man rolled a swollen tongue over his lips, as if the mention of water had awoken a forgotten desire. His horse shuddered. It was stooped under the weight of its saddle, which was piled high with tripods and wooden frames and rifles and rolls of canvas. The beast’s ribs stuck out from its sides, and gaping sores yawned on its legs, thick with dust and flies.

William knew that he must not follow, not at any cost.

‘I can’t leave the track. I have to wait for my mother.’

The spectre’s lips curled again.
Your mother’s not coming.

‘She has to.’

She won’t ever come.

William turned away, looking for the road. But some blindness was upon him. He could see nothing, only waves of mirage. Where had the track gone? He smelled dust and leather and oil, felt his resistance crumbling away, and the voice was in his ear.

It’s not far now.
The sound was hissing sand.
It’s been waiting
for you.

William choked on dry tears. ‘What has?’

The rains have failed, boy. The rivers have run dry.

‘I don’t understand.’

You will.

William surrendered. He was too weak, he had fought madness as hard as he could, it was so much easier now to let go. He stumbled forward, he didn’t know to where, the road and all suggestion of direction were gone. But the explorer was at his side, dragging the horse along by its rope. Metal clanged discordantly, the sound of water tins long since empty.

‘You died,’ William said, desolate.‘They killed you with spears.’

There was no response, and William said no more. His legs moved automatically, and his sanity retreated to some inner place. For what seemed like hours, they crept forward through a land demented by heat. Hills streamed into the sky. Oceans of water beckoned and then melted into nothing. Trees broke apart and floated away. William would close his eyes at times, and know that there was no explorer and no horse, that he was crazed with thirst and sickness, a little boy wandering in circles in the hills. But then he would open his eyes again, and the ragged figure would be there beside him.

What were they searching for anyway? There had been something important, it seemed to William, that he had been sent out here by his uncle to find. But it was at the water hole, he would never get there now, and he could not remember what it was anyway. His mind crept back from its refuge, and he stared through grainy eyes. Somehow the explorer had got far ahead of him, and was looking back. Bizarrely, the sky was aglow behind him, and his face was in shadow.

‘Wait…’ William complained. It wasn’t fair. He had surrendered, hadn’t he? He had let the apparition take him where it would. So how could it leave him behind?

Walk south, boy.

‘You tricked me,’ William declared hotly.‘You said you’d show me the way.’

You’ll find it there.

A slow, orange blaze filled the entire horizon. An immense burning. The explorer had hold of the rope, and was leading his horse into the flames. Fear woke William from his long stupor at last.

‘Wait!’ he cried again.

Then he realised he was staring directly at the sun. It hung low upon the horizon, swollen and crimson in the haze. He blinked at it, appalled. He had walked the entire afternoon in his delirium. Walked in the wrong direction completely. And he had left the road. The track was nowhere to be seen, there were only hills and scrub, already dark with long shadows, and there was no landmark that he recognised, nothing that could tell him where he was. The water hole could be miles away, in any direction at all. And even if his mother was searching, she would never find him now.

Bits of metal clinked somewhere, then fell silent.

And William’s second evening alone drew on.

Chapter Thirty-nine

T
HERE HAD BEEN A MOON, WILLIAM REMEMBERED.

He was stumbling through dead grass, gazing upwards, his head lolling back and forth as he studied the night sky. On the previous evening, he was certain, there had been a moon. So where was it now? The hills were pitch black without it, and he tripped constantly over invisible tree stumps or holes. Sometimes he fell, and it was hard climbing to his feet again. He was walking south, just as instructed. At least, he hoped he was. He’d started out with the setting sun on his right, but in the darkness he had probably veered off in some other direction entirely.

He was so thirsty. He thought feverishly of the water hole, the goal he had failed to reach, relishing memories of a stream trickling over stone. He was hungry too. There were biscuits and bread in his backpack, but the backpack was gone. At some stage during his march with the explorer he must have shrugged it from his shoulders and simply thrown it away. So he reeled on and at last the blunted moon rose in the sky. He paused then, gazing up, sensing the great weight of it from infinitely far below, his blood responding like a tide. And beneath the moon floated the pale line of the mountains, seemingly detached from the earth, and yet achingly close. They were on his left, so he had kept his bearings after all. He lurched forward again.

But the ground still tricked his feet. Inky blots of darkness warned of trees, or a shadow would loom sharply and he would flinch away, only to look again and find nothing there. His pace slowed to fitful bursts of a few steps, after which he would stop and gaze at the moon. It was almost over, he decided. Sooner or later he would have to lie down and sleep. Two days of walking and pain and thirst — and what had he discovered? Nothing. There was no great secret out here, waiting to be told. The station had an empty heart. What would his uncle think of that?

William blinked, suddenly fully awake.

A sound had penetrated his daze. He stared about at the night, listening. And then he heard it again, a noise that diminished, and then returned. It was the distant growl of an engine — a car, somewhere in the hills. His mother! It had to be. She was on the road, searching for him. William’s exhaustion vanished. He had to attract her attention, he had to get to the road somehow. But which way? He kept turning as the sound rose and fell. It echoed in the hills, deceptive, impossible to pinpoint. He strained his eyes to see the headlights, or even the faintest reflected glow of them in the sky. But there was nothing, and the sound seemed to be fading.

‘Mum!’he called,the effort tearing at his parched throat.‘Mum!’

The car was moving further away, the echo of its engine dwindling.

He ran, a dozen yards, twenty, calling all the while. The shadow world leapt and jagged about him, but there was no light, no road, and his cries were swallowed by the night. He stopped finally, gasping, and when the heaving of his lungs was still again, the sound was gone.

‘Mum,’ he whispered.

For a moment William thought he might drop to the ground in despair. Instead, he remained upright, and went very still. Some inner sense was coming alive in him — a warning of imminent danger. He listened. Without the car, there were just the normal night noises to hear — the flitting of insects, the shrill of cicadas. And yet he stared about, his alertness growing for no reason he could name. It was as if in his haste he had blundered too close to the edge of a cliff, and was now only a step from plummeting over the precipice. But in fact he stood at the foot of a low hill, and the moonlight showed him only grass and bushes and a few very weary trees. It was a patch of scrub as unremarkable as any other on the station. And yet there was a weight upon him, a deep vibration in the air of this spot that rang with foreboding.

The heaviness increased, until William found it was hard to breathe. What was it? What was here? Every second it only became more unendurable. He began backing away, he didn’t know from what. Every pale tree trunk, every half-guessed clump of grass, even the chorus of cicadas — they were nothing, and yet they were something unspeakable. He was trembling now, his teeth clenched. Another step backward, and another. How far did he need to go? More steps, slow. And still there was no visible sign, no marker to show the boundary he had crossed, only the sense that he was withdrawing from somewhere he was not supposed to be. He turned, ready to flee.

The shape was waiting for him there, dark against the sky.

It seemed to William that he had an hour of thought in which to consider what it was, and his first certainty was that it was not remotely human. The thing half stood and half crouched, its hulking body towering above him. Moonlight gleamed on a shaggy, slimy hide, and William smelled mud and rotting leaves. An enormous head was tilted to the night sky. It might have been the head of a horse, or of a lizard, or of some giant predatory bird, depending on the way the shadows took it. When the creature shifted on its slow haunches, it became a multitude of shapes, and no shape at all. Tendrils of lank hair dripped from it like a mane, and from its skull two huge eyes bulged, white and terrible.

William shrank away. He knew this thing. His uncle had told him about it on the night of shooting stars. It was a beast that lived in caves or bottomless pools, it stalked hills and mountain ranges, and left broken trails through the forests.