Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

And that, for a town that had been dead for forty years, a lot of blood had been recently spilled.

12

Lorcan

Dylan didn’t sleep the next night either, again complaining about rumbling. He had wanted to persuade Dylan that it was his imagination but even he felt it. Naiyana too. A rumble that seemed to come and go without rhyme or reason. He had even gone to check the generator a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t automatically switching on at night. Even though it lacked capacity to do so. Nee pushed him to find a reason for the unnerving phenomenon. There was only one explanation he could think of. A water source or aquifer beneath the town. Untapped for decades.

The sleep Dylan failed to get at night was recovered during the day when the rumbles seemed to disappear, which was comforting for the child but less so for him and Nee, slaving all day to try and get the house in order.

With continued dry weather he abandoned mending the roof to drive out to the uncapped well near Orange Lake. This would give him a good idea of the state of the water table. Plus, if he could draw water there it would save having to dig through a century of dirt and uncap the original well.

Orange Lake was about five kilometres south of town, a faded wooden signpost signalling the way. Standing all on its own was a small tin shack. There was no lake. Just dry, scorched land stretching into the distance. Dragging open the door, light filtered through the rusted tin. Inside, a stone wall surrounded the well but it had cracked and partly collapsed down the hole it protected. Above it, the metal bucket attached to the pulley was cracked too, virtually useless for collecting liquid, but Lorcan dropped it anyway.

He fed the rope slowly through his hands waiting for a distant, welcome splash. He wasn’t confident. The whole shack smelled bone dry, no hint of moisture in the air.

After twenty torturous seconds there was a sound. The solid, dry clang of metal hitting rock. Raising the bucket slightly, he lowered it again, faster this time to allow for the bucket to bounce off the offending rock in case it was merely an obstruction. Still no splash. Just the clang of metal on rock. A third time confirmed the insult. The well was dry. Which meant they were currently stuck in the desert without water.

NAIYANA

With Lorcan gone and Dylan fast asleep, she continued to tidy and organize, sweeping each room twice using the small hand-held vacuum that they had packed to get into the corners, having to stop regularly to empty the container. It was frustrating in two ways. In having to vacuum, something she had never enjoyed and which she usually farmed out to Dylan for pocket-money, or Lorcan on the promise of sex, and in the feeling that she was fighting a losing battle.

She was pleased with one thing. The mirror that her mother had passed down to her and which had been passed down from her own mother had survived the journey, wrapped in five layers of bubble wrap and tucked between her knees in the cab. She had never lived anywhere without it hung up. Her family watching over her. A giant eye to keep them safe. The nail on the kitchen wall held firm. Immediately the room felt brighter, more like home. More subconscious than physical. But Naiyana didn’t care. Any sliver of joy was something to cling to at the moment.

13

Lorcan

He pulled the horizontal shutters back and let the well breathe. Not that it had been exactly starved of oxygen given the multiple holes in the wood. Sand and dust had practically filled the old well. The cap would be somewhere underneath. How far underneath he didn’t know.

The winch that would have perched on top like a metal sawhorse was long gone, so he reached down and stabbed a spade into the sand. It was loose, not compacted like he had feared. At the top at least. He started to dig, the sand collapsing in and around each spadeful. He continued his Sisyphean battle, his feet settling into the sand, swamping his trainers.

Footsteps approached from behind him. In the shimmering haze, his wife and son approached.

‘If it isn’t the Irish Mario,’ she laughed.

Lorcan looked down. He smiled too. From her perspective it would look like he was stuck halfway down a pipe trying to exit the level. If only disappearing was that easy.

‘Any water?’ she asked, glancing down the well.

‘I hope so. Orange Lake was a bust.’

‘How far down do you have to go?’

He checked his progress. He had only removed a few inches of material.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

The look on her face suggested that she wasn’t keen on her survival relying on guesswork.

‘I’m taking the ute to town,’ she said. ‘See what they have, food-wise.’

The nearest town, Hurton, was ten kilometres as the crow flew. But a crow didn’t have to deal with the treacherous dips, gullies, rises and scrubland of the outback. By road it was a thirty-kilometre round trip. And given the state of the tarmac, speed limits were unlikely to be broken.

Lorcan nodded. ‘You taking Dylan?’

‘Wasn’t planning to. He can help you.’

‘I’ll let him wander around.’

She gave him a hard look. ‘Don’t let him wander too much.’

On cue, he watched his son poke his head into a half-collapsed shack across the road.

‘Dylan, stay out of there!’ he shouted, his voice carrying across the empty street.

The boy turned, guilt smeared across his face, shuffling closer to them but gazing back at the shack. The childish temptation to explore was hard to resist. And it never truly left. Lorcan could attest to that. Moving out here was a chance for them all to explore. And renew.

Naiyana took the ute and left in a cloud of dust. He watched it fade into the