The Haunted Book Read online

  But Sarah was already pulling off her shoes and her jacket. Soon she was prancing down the jetty towards the water in just her jeans and T-shirt, her bare toes squelching in the mud.

  ‘Come on!’ she yelled.

  ‘You’re crazy!’ Dale said. ‘You’ll freeze to death!’

  ‘Chicken!’ Sarah said and dove into the inky water.

  Dale rolled his eyes, walked closer to the water and waited for her to surface.

  From this angle, he could just make out the words on the rotting wooden sign: SORROW LAKE.

  That name was familiar. It took Dale a moment to realise where he had seen it before—in Luke Greenway’s diary.

  My mother drowned in Sorrow Lake when I was nine years old. I watched from the shore as she dove into the icy water, never to resurface.

  Dale waited for Sarah to come up for air, his heart beating faster.

  But the ripples disappeared and the lake water became as still as a black mirror.

  DEATH AT SORROW LAKE

  Dale sprinted towards the jetty. Could the water be so cold that Sarah had gone into shock? Or what if she had hit her head on a rock? She could be drowning!

  Soon he was standing right over the spot where she had disappeared, but he couldn’t see through the oily water.

  ‘Sarah!’ he shouted.

  There was no movement beneath the surface.

  He would have to go in after her.

  Dale kicked off his shoes. If he dived in like she had, he risked hitting his head on the same thing that might have hit her. Instead he hung his feet over the edge and …

  Splash.

  Sarah burst out of the water, gasping. ‘I was right,’ she panted. ‘It’s deep! Like, really deep. I couldn’t find the bottom.’

  Dale ran his hands through his hair. ‘Jeez, Sarah,’ he said. ‘You scared me.’

  ‘Why? You know I can hold my breath longer than anyone at school.’ Sarah floated on her back, teeth chattering. ‘I proved it at the swimming carnival, remember?’

  ‘What swimming carnival?’

  ‘You remember. In the butterfly race, I—hey! Where are you going?’

  Dale was walking back along the jetty towards the shore. He had no idea what Sarah was talking about, and he was sick of this whole stupid holiday already.

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ Sarah called.

  ‘No way! You’re bright blue.’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’

  Dale stepped off the jetty, found a log on the shore and sat down. He checked his phone. Still no reception. Josh was probably sending him heaps of texts that he couldn’t get. It was infuriating.

  He looked back at the sign. Sorrow Lake was real—did that mean the diary was real too?

  Not necessarily. Lots of fiction books used real landmarks. But either way, being so near the lake made him nervous.

  ‘Sarah,’ Dale shouted. ‘I think you should get out now.’

  ‘Why?’ Sarah called back.

  ‘The sign says it’s not safe,’ Dale said, which was stretching the truth a bit.

  ‘I’m a really good swimmer,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Please, just come out, OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ Sarah grumbled. She started paddling towards the shore.

  Dale sighed with relief. But then something caught his eye.

  The ripples behind Sarah. They weren’t quite right.

  At first it looked like a trick of the light. But then the disturbances got bigger. It was as though something else was coming up behind Sarah—fast. Could there be crocodiles in the lake?

  ‘Hurry!’ Dale yelled.

  Sarah seemed to take this as a challenge. She didn’t ask for clarification—she just paddled as hard as she could.

  But she wasn’t quick enough. Something was gaining on her. Dale stared in horror as an object surfaced behind Sarah …

  It was a woman’s head.

  The woman was gaunt, with bone-white skin and hair thick with seaweed. Her milky eyeballs stared without seeing. Her bloodless lips drew back to expose black, rotting teeth.

  A terrible certainty washed over Dale—he was looking at Luke Greenway’s mother.

  ‘Sarah! Faster!’ Dale screamed.

  More and more of Shirley Greenway emerged from the water. The sleeves of her grey dress clung to her stick-like arms. She reached out for Sarah with skeletal hands—it was as though her flesh had been nibbled away by fish.

  Sarah was close enough to the shore to walk on the bottom of the lake. She ran up towards Dale with the dead woman right behind her, chest-deep, then waist-deep, then knee-deep.

  But she stopped when she saw the terror in Dale’s eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  A moment of hesitation was all Shirley Greenway needed. She reached out and wrapped her claws around Sarah’s throat.

  FALLING

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Wha … you … it …’ Dale babbled.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Dale pointed a quivering finger at the ghoul looming behind Sarah’s shoulder—

  Except that it wasn’t there. In the blink of an eye, it had vanished, leaving behind only a fading wisp of fog. The last of the ripples from its feet rolled away before Dale’s eyes.

  Sarah followed his gaze. After a few moments staring at the empty lake, she turned back to Dale. The red claw-marks were fading from her neck.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked, not unkindly.

  It was a good question. Dale’s legs had gone rubbery. This wasn’t like a mysterious book or a vanishing slug. This was a real-life ghost. The undead spirit of Luke Greenway’s mother.

  He tried to speak, but couldn’t. The world was spinning. His chest hurt. It was like being in a lift with snapped cables, falling down and down into the darkness.

  ‘Dale?’ Sarah said. And suddenly she tilted sideways as Dale pitched over, his face slapping against the mud. The noise of the forest got quieter and quieter. Soon Dale was deaf, blind, mute and then, finally, unconscious.

  It wasn’t quite like sleep, and as such, it wasn’t quite like dreaming. But he had the sense that he was wandering through the forest in a soupy fog, so thick he could barely see his outstretched hands. He called out for Sarah, for Mum and Dad, for anyone, and got no response. The mist seemed to muffle his words.

  He walked for a thousand years, and then hit a wall. Something smooth and opaque. As he rubbed his palm against it, it became clear. A window. No, a mirror. He wasn’t in the forest at all. He was in the bathroom at the house. The mist in the air was actually steam.

  When Dale looked at his reflection, he saw that the man in the mirror was not him. It was the old man from the forest, round-eyed and bare-toothed.

  ‘I’m coming for you, Dale,’ he snarled. Then he lifted the can of petrol and hurled it through the mirror. A cold spray covered Dale’s face—

  But it was just water. Dale opened his eyes to see Sarah staring down at him. Her hands were dripping. She had splashed him with lake water.

  He looked around. He was still lying on his back on the shore of Sorrow Lake.

  ‘Dale?’ Sarah said. ‘Can you hear me?’

  She sounded scared. Dale cleared his throat.

  ‘Yeah, I can hear you,’ he said.

  ‘You just keeled over. I’ve never seen anything like that.’

  Dale sat up, rubbing his pounding head. ‘I don’t know what happened. One minute I was watching you—’

  And then a ghost attacked you, he thought.

  ‘And then I got dizzy and I don’t remember anything after that.’

  ‘Low blood sugar,’ Sarah guessed. ‘You didn’t eat much of your pancakes this morning.’

  Because they were covered in slugs.

  Dale stood on shaky legs. ‘Can we go back to the house now?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure thing, big guy.’ Sarah pulled Dale’s arm over her shoulder, taking some of his weight. She had never called him ‘big guy’ bef
ore. They started walking back into the forest.

  ‘You must be freezing,’ Dale said.

  Sarah laughed. ‘Yeah. I tried shaking like a dog to dry off, but it made my brain hurt.’

  Dale stopped, peeled off his jacket and draped it over her.

  ‘Thanks,’ Sarah said. ‘Won’t you get cold?’

  ‘I’m not soaking wet. I’ll be fine.’ He looked around. The mist had cleared up and the clouds were thinning out. Mum had been right. It had turned into a lovely day.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum and Dad I passed out, OK?’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’ll just freak out. They’ll want to send me off to hospital or whatever. And if there’s one place worse than the mountains …’

  Sarah nodded. She remembered the last time Dale was in hospital. He had nearly died.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But don’t black out anymore, OK? Because if you do it again, I’ll have to tell them. For your own good.’

  ‘Deal,’ Dale said. He had no intention of ever doing anything like that again.

  JUICY

  With Dale still unsteady on his feet and Sarah half-frozen, it took a long time to walk back to the house. Dale kept his eyes out for the old man. That was what he called him in his head, ‘the old man’—he refused to think of him as Luke Greenway.

  But he didn’t see anything. Just creaking trees and dripping leaves.

  When they eventually reached the house, Dad was reading a book on the porch. It looked like a historical romance novel, which was fairly typical. Dad refused to read crime novels or thrillers. He said most of them weren’t realistic enough, and the ones that were felt like being at work.

  ‘You’re wet,’ he said looking at Sarah, before turning to Dale. ‘And you’re all muddy. What happened?’

  ‘Mum made us play outside.’ Dale rolled his eyes. ‘How come you get to stay here and read?’

  ‘I’m an adult.’ Dad grinned. ‘That means I can do whatever I like and you have to do whatever I say.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Well, when you get old enough to vote, you can help change the law,’ Dad said. ‘You could make all kids completely independent. But something tells me you won’t care as much then.’

  ‘If adults are allowed to do whatever they want, then how come you’re always arresting them?’ Dale asked.

  ‘Don’t be cheeky.’ Dad turned back to his book. ‘Take off your shoes before you go inside, please. I don’t want to have to shampoo the carpet before we leave.’

  Dale and Sarah kicked off their shoes and shuffled in out of the cold wind.

  ‘You take first shower,’ Dale said.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m going to get something to eat.’

  Sarah raced away to the bathroom and Dale walked into the kitchen. He was starving, having eaten hardly anything. But the ache in his guts was half hunger, half terror. What if he put something in his mouth and it became another slug, or a bundle of worms, or a tarantula?

  ‘Get a grip,’ he muttered. He opened the fridge door.

  Some bread, eggs and fruit rested on the shelves. Dale picked up a swollen pear and closed the door.

  He opened his mouth.

  Lifted the pear.

  Relax, he told himself. It’s just fruit.

  But he couldn’t quite bring himself to bite down on it. What if it was full of leeches or something?

  Dale pulled a chopping board out of the cupboard, grabbed a knife off the rack and sliced the pear into four neat chunks.

  ‘See?’ he whispered. ‘No leeches. No worms, no slugs, no spiders. Just eat it!’

  He grabbed a slice of pear and shovelled it into his mouth.

  The flesh was sweet, firm and juicy, still cold from the fridge. Dale chewed, swallowed and took another bite. It was equally delicious.

  He checked each slice before he put it in his mouth, but nothing unusual happened. Soon all four slices were gone and Dale realised he had been holding his breath. He exhaled and felt some of the tension melt away.

  Was he crazy? Maybe. But he wasn’t going to starve to death any time soon.

  A cold hand fell on his shoulder.

  Dale whirled around, looking for the zombie from the lake—

  But it was just Sarah, her hair wrapped in a towel.

  ‘Shower’s free,’ she said.

  It took Dale half an hour to scrub all the mud off his skin and rinse it out of his hair. Afterwards, he had never felt so clean. Perhaps this was why Mum paid people to smear mud on her face at the Axe Falls Day Spa.

  He got out his guitar and strummed for a while. But his fingers felt smaller and slower than usual. It was hard to find the chords, and the melodies came out fuzzy. After a while he gave up, put the guitar back in its nylon case and changed from his jeans into his pyjamas. He hadn’t had dinner yet, but it was getting dark outside, so he figured he could get away with it.

  But dinner probably wouldn’t be for another hour or so. Dale padded back into the kitchen. He found the book on the floor, just where he had left it at breakfast.

  He knew it was crazy to think that the old man hanging around the forest was Luke Greenway, somehow still alive after all these years. But he couldn’t convince himself that it wasn’t true.

  If he read more of the diary, maybe he would find something that proved it to be fiction.

  He felt the same weird tingling when he picked up the book. But he gritted his teeth and ignored it. He sank down into the couch, found the right page, and started reading.

  Part Two: Mr Sop

  ‘This suit,’ the engineer told me, ‘will make you immortal.’

  I told him I doubted it.

  It was 1911. My research had given me thousands of methods which wouldn’t work. In the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese Emperor Jiajing tried to achieve immortality by drinking mercury, which killed him. Others tried cinnabar, gold, haematite and jade, which ranged from poisonous to merely inedible.

  The indigenous peoples of the Caribbean believed that the water in Bimini could provide eternal youth. Unfortunately, nothing in my reading suggested that Bimini was a real place.

  I found references to an unnamed European King who sought immortality by eating thousands of salamanders, starfish and other creatures which can regrow limbs. This appears to have done him no harm, but he nevertheless died of old age.

  The field of biology was more promising than history. Planarian flatworms don’t age. Nor do various water-dwelling creatures, such as hydras and some species of jellyfish. But my colleagues are years, if not decades, away from understanding why this is the case, and I have no interest in turning myself into a worm or a jellyfish.

  ‘This mask filters toxins out of the air,’ the engineer said, undeterred. ‘And these interlocking titanium plates can disperse an amazing amount of force. Those, coupled with the leather lining, mean I could ram a sledgehammer into your abdomen and you’d barely feel it.’

  ‘Immunity to sledgehammers could hardly be considered immortality,’ I said.

  ‘Not just hammers! Knives, fire, bullets. I’d wager that even a cannonball would—’

  ‘I’ll give you twenty pounds for it,’ I said.

  The engineer was aghast. ‘Why, that’s scarcely more than a dinner suit. ‘

  I haggled over the price for a while, eventually parting with thirty-four pounds. My new company, Quirin, had already turned a decent profit.

  The suit would protect me from all outside forces except time itself. I employed some field scientists, mostly botanists and zoologists, and sent them looking for chemical compounds which could prolong life. My main fear was that I would be struck down by some sickness or accident before they found it. Each passing day made such an event more likely. I was already sixty, and despite a strict exercise and diet regime, my limbs were no longer as flexible and strong as they had once been.

  In 1929 my scientists brought back a fungus which secreted a sticky jel
ly through its skin. When ingested this jelly boosted muscle strength and bone density. It also increased the efficiency of the heart and lungs. It would be a wonderful chemical if it weren’t for the side effects.

  Ironically, it was these side effects that interested me most.

  I spent twelve years refining the jelly and then started hiring university graduates. I put them to work in the Quirin filing room, or cleaning the offices; the job itself scarcely mattered. But the interview process helped me find the perfect specimen.

  ‘How’s your health?’ I asked one applicant, a burly youth of eighteen.

  He puffed out his chest proudly. ‘I’m strong as an ox,’ he boomed.

  His name was Mr Henry Sop. I had found him studying architecture, and had been struck by his height—probably a head taller than me. He was ruddy-cheeked in the cold of my office, but had a cheery grin. I had told him I was looking for someone to redesign the south-east wing of my house.

  ‘And your parents,’ I said, ‘are they well?’

  ‘So they tell me, in their letters,’ Mr Sop said.

  ‘They live with my grandparents in Dunedin.’

  Living grandparents was a good sign. A distant family even better.

  ‘Are you from Dunedin yourself?’ I enquired.

  ‘Indeed. I moved here last March.’

  ‘It must be hard, living here with neither family nor friends.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘It can be, sir.’

  ‘Well, not to worry. A few weeks here and you’ll have a full social calendar.’

  ‘You mean I have the job?’

  ‘You most certainly do,’ I said, and shook his hand. ‘Let me get you a cup of tea with which to celebrate.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not necessary.’

  ‘I insist.’ I filled two cups with tea from the china teapot on my desk, handed one over and raised my own. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers!’ He sipped the drink and suppressed a grimace. ‘When do I start?’

  ‘Immediately,’ I said.

  His eyes rolled back into his head and his jaw slackened, as though he were looking at an angel. Then he slumped forward over the table.