Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

cloud like a magic trick. He turned to instruct Dylan to help him with the well but his son was lying in the shade at the front of the shack swooping his Matchbox cars through the sand, flicking them off a ramp. Lorcan left him to it and returned to the well.

After thirty minutes, his sweaty shirt abandoned, he adjudged his progress. He was now four feet down, his hands choked further up the handle as the space became tighter, bucket after bucket of sand and dirt dumped over the side.

Another hour and he was seven feet down and unable to see over the rim. It should have provided him some solace from the heat but noon had brought the sun nearly directly overhead, peering in at him. Looking up, the entrance seemed to narrow, the walls tightening as if closing in. A flick of panic sent his heart rate sky-rocketing. Suddenly it occurred to him that he was standing in a hole, on top of a cap that was over a hundred years old, in the desert with only his six-year-old son around to help. This wasn’t smart. ‘About as smart as trying to lose weight by chopping off your arm’, a phrase he had used many times to caution investors in his previous job. It was time to get out.

He clambered out of the well into the sun. He felt like a mole, squinting in the bright light. Dylan was standing by the well looking agitated. As if he had sensed his father’s panic.

‘Given up on stunt racing?’ asked Lorcan, with a smile, riding the curious wave of joy at making it out alive. As if he had escaped death somehow.

‘I seen someone,’ said Dylan, his gaze fixed down the street in the direction of their house.

‘Mum?’

‘No.’

‘Where?’ asked Lorcan.

At this Dylan grabbed his hand and pulled. Urgent. Insistent. Lorcan let him lead, his son’s short legs churning the sand.

‘Dylan, this isn’t one of your special friends, is it?’ Lorcan recalled Bennie and Ixsell, the pair of characters that his son had invented previously. Apparently a lot of only children did the same. For company. They had disappeared a year ago and Lorcan had to admit he was glad when they had left. He didn’t need his kid to be a fantasist. Not out here.

‘No,’ said Dylan, adamant.

Lorcan let his son lead them behind the shack that he had been poking his head into earlier. There lay a mound of dirt that had been excavated when levelling the ground. From the top, most of the town could be seen.

‘Over there,’ said Dylan, pointing.

Lorcan followed the finger. He looked for the ute and for Nee but neither seemed to be there. The town was empty.

‘I don’t see anything, Dyl.’

‘It was there.’

‘What was?’

‘A person.’

Lorcan studied his son’s face. He looked stressed, his eyes drawn and strained. The lack of sleep might have been somewhat at fault but there was nothing that indicated that he was lying. Or joking. There was no laughter in Dylan’s expression. Besides, for a kid, a joke was only fun if there was an immediate pay-off.

‘We can find them!’ Dylan grabbed his wrist and tugged it.

Down the back of the hill they passed through the back of another property, parts of an ancient Hudson Eight rusting in the backyard, through to the main street. Lorcan was beginning to worry. As far as he knew Dylan had never been in this part of town. Not with him anyway. Maybe with Nee, but it was unlikely. She had shown no propensity as yet to explore town, happy to confine herself indoors.

They crossed the empty street and passed along the side of a house, the slatted wood of a collapsed fence underneath his feet.

Then he saw it.

And laughed.

In the distance and leaning up against an outhouse was an old coat-rack, some trapped tumbleweed wrapped around the top resembling a head. In the distant heat haze he could see how it would have fooled a six-year-old, looking like a man passing time, leaning against his shack. The ‘hairy panic’ had been quite literal.

‘It’s just a coat-rack, Dyl.’

Dylan shook his head. ‘That’s not him.’

But Lorcan had had enough. He didn’t need a wild-goose chase. He had a well to dig out, plus a roof and generator to fix. And he was falling behind.

‘No one’s here.’

‘But there was, Daddy.’

The tables turned and Lorcan began to drag his son. The argument continued as they reached the main street again. A rumble filled the air, this time accompanied by a swell of dust. Naiyana stopped, the bags of groceries balanced on the passenger’s seat beside her.

‘What are you both doing here?’ she asked. ‘I hope you aren’t getting into any trouble.’

Lorcan shook his head wearily. ‘Dyl thought he saw someone.’

‘I did see someone,’ he protested.

‘Dylan, we’ve been over this.’

‘But I did.’

Lorcan turned to his wife. ‘Have you seen anyone around, Mummy?’

Naiyana looked at him and then her son. She looked sad to disappoint him. ‘No, I haven’t.’

‘I did!’

Dylan broke free of his grasp and ran off towards their house.

‘We don’t need Bennie and Ixsell coming back,’ said Naiyana.

‘No, we don’t,’ agreed Lorcan. ‘It was just heat haze. I haven’t seen anyone.’

‘No one else is stupid enough to be out here,’ said Naiyana, the words as biting as the heat.

14

Lorcan

There was no doubting the rumble any longer. Dylan might have been imagining people in town but he wasn’t imagining the noise. It growled like an angry dog buried deep in the earth. A warning, according to Nee, but she would have taken anything as a cue to leave. Lorcan wanted more than anything to believe that the noises were psychosomatic. But if they could all hear it, that was impossible.

Dylan shuffled noisily. He was awake again. Which meant they all were awake again.

‘We need to consider moving back.’

There it was. Nee’s thoughts made public. Fuelled by lack of sleep and exasperation.

‘We talked about—’

‘Can we move back, Daddy?’ interjected Dylan. The hope in