The horizon only continued to flatten the further they travelled. The colours of sunset faded from a dense red cloud in front of them to a serene purple shadow, glistening with stars behind. Aside from the engine, the only sound was Katie, kicking the seat in front of her. They still hadn’t found her mother’s handkerchief, and she was lying half asleep on her side, quiet, her leg still giving the upholstery an occasional half-hearted thump. The road had been straight and long, and Sam would catch Dettie yawning every few minutes, letting the car roll off to one side of the lane before shaking her head and jerking the wheel back to the centre.
When the sun had sunk completely, the air cooled, and Dettie drove for a while with the air vents switched off. For a while the absence of their hissing seemed alien to Sam and he considered how strange it was to hear the crackling of their tyres over the bitumen.
Finally, they pulled into an old rest stop, little more than a beaten-up wooden table, a tap, two garbage bins and a pile of metal someone had discarded beneath a tree. There were no toilets, so Dettie left the car lights on while they used the bushes. This was where they would spend the night, she said.
An unfamiliar cold wind gnawed at their clothing, so Jon decided to build a fire in an old ten-gallon drum he found by the scrap heap. Dettie reminded him of the fire ban, but he promised to keep watch the whole time and not let things get out of hand. Nonetheless, Dettie made them fill up every water bottle they had at the tap and lined them up on top of the picnic table, just in case.
Jon found branches and wooden scraps lying around, and after snapping them in two with his boot and stacking them up, they soon had a small blaze to light their faces and warm their hands. Dettie tried to wrap a blanket over Katie and Sam’s shoulders, but Katie threw it off. As the children sat on the edge of the concrete table, Dettie and Jon turned two bins over and used them as seats.
The fire crackled and popped. Something inside the drum settled, sending lit ash up through the smoke. Sam’s toes were cold in his shoes, but his nose glowed and the smell of burning wood watered his eyes. Between the heat of the fire and the cool of the air, his neck, which had been getting increasingly irritated, was a peculiar wash of tenderness.
‘Who wants to hear a story?’ Jon inched closer to the fire.
Katie said that she did, and Sam nodded.
‘All right then, what do you want to hear?’
His sister hummed thoughtfully to herself, but Sam waved his arms in the light, trying to remember the sign Jon had shown him. He held his fingers like bear claws and tapped them to his chest. Was that right?
Jon nodded. ‘Okay. Good. What kind of—’ he signed back.
‘What’s that?’ Dettie said, leaning forward. ‘What are you doing? What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing, love. It means scary. A scary story.’
‘No.’ Dettie shook her head.
‘Yes!’ Katie snapped. ‘Scary. I want to hear scary.’
Jon waited, surveying their faces. When Dettie didn’t object further, he took a breath. ‘What kind of scary story?’ he said.
Sam held his arms out in front of himself, rolling his eyes back. He tried to groan—couldn’t—and stuck his tongue out instead.
‘A sick story?’ Jon said.
Sam shook his head. He pretended to bite.
Jon still couldn’t get it, so he held out his hand. ‘Here, my old mate. Scratch it out on this then.’ He pointed at his palm.
Sam took Jon’s palm, and by drawing each letter slowly inside it with his fingertip, he spelt out a word.
‘Zombies.’ Jon grinned.
Sam nodded.
‘Of course. Zombies,’ Jon said, scratching his eyebrow. ‘Oh, I can tell you zombie stories.’
‘No, you can’t,’ Dettie snapped. ‘He doesn’t need any more of that terrifying the life out of him right before bed.’
Jon smiled. ‘It’s just a story, love. Make-believe.’
‘Does it have to scare them silly, then? I don’t want them up all night, petrified.’
‘I want to hear it!’ Katie yelled.
Dettie leant back, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Fine. Your decision,’ she said. ‘You all do whatever you want.’ She lit a cigarette and sucked at it dramatically. ‘Never mind me.’
Jon waited, smiling. ‘Come on, love. It’s just for fun.’
She waved him away, so after a moment more, he nudged closer to the fire, his face lit gold by the flames, and with wide eyes, started to tell them the story.
It was a true story, he said, of a young couple he’d known in England. One night, they had driven out to a secluded lookout in the wilderness. On a date, he said. And while they were sitting, watching the stars, they heard a news report come on the radio. A deranged killer—a zombie by all accounts, he said—had been seen roaming the exact area where the couple had parked their car. The zombie, the report informed them, could be identified by its missing hand. It had been chopped off, Jon said, acting it out by pulling down his sleeve and leaving only a pinched stub. Instead, he said, there was just a long metal hook stuck in its place.
From out of his sleeve, two fingers appeared, curled together like a question mark.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Dettie muttered.
‘So when the couple heard the news, the girl got scared. She told her boyfriend she wanted to go home. Pleaded with him. But the boyfriend didn’t want to. It was a nice night, he said. There was no such thing as zombies, he said. Eventually, they had a big argument. They yelled at one another. She demanded that he take her home. And the boyfriend was so mad that when he started the car he sped off. Fast-like.’ Jon slapped his hands together. ‘He tore off down the road, and drove all the way home like that.
‘And all the way home, both heard a clinking sound. Coming from the car. A ting, ting, ting noise. On the outside of the door.
‘When they pulled into her driveway,’ he said, ‘when her boyfriend walked around to open the girlfriend’s door…’
‘He found—’
He stretched towards them.
‘Hanging from the girlfriend’s doorhandle—’ Jon raised his arm, his fingers still curled, ‘was a bloodstained…metal…hook.’
Katie gasped, holding on to her ankles. Sam was smiling.
‘The zombie had been just about to open their car door before they drove off, you see.’
It was a silly story, but Jon told it so well that for a moment the old thrill of the undead surged through Sam’s belly again.
‘Is that true?’ Katie was rocking herself against Sam’s side. ‘That’s not true!’
‘Of course it’s not true,’ Dettie snorted. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
‘Oh, no. It’s true.’ Jon’s eyes widened in the flickering light. ‘They still have the hook. Hanging over their fireplace. They showed it to me.’
Katie squealed into her hands.
‘Congratulations. Now they’ll never get to sleep.’ Dettie flicked the ash from her cigarette.
‘Another one,’ Katie giggled. ‘Tell us another one.’
‘Okay, darling,’ he said. ‘You pick this time. What’s the story going to be about?’
‘Um…’ She twisted a finger through her hair. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How about a lost kitten that finds its way home?’ Dettie offered.
‘Come on, love,’ he said. ‘Let her choose.’
‘We haven’t got forever, and she obviously can’t think of anything.’
‘A crazy old lady,’ Katie said hurriedly. She kept her eyes directed at the tips of her shoes.
Dettie was staring over the flames at her. She closed her mouth. Her chin jutted out slightly. She flicked her cigarette again and fussed with the neck of her blouse.
‘Crazy ladies?’ Jon snapped a stick and fed it into the fire. ‘Crazy ladies…Not sure if I know any stories about—oh, wait,’ he said, dusting off his hands. ‘I do have one. But it’s a bit gross.’
He looked over at Dettie for approval, but she had turned away to look at the stars, still fiddling absently with her collar. He began.
There was once this young woman, he said. He’d read about it in the newspaper. Famous story from a few years ago, he said. She had a spoilt little poodle that needed lots of attention. It was fed treats all the time. It had expensive haircuts and toys. So whenever the woman had to go out anywhere, she would leave someone to watch it. Like a babysitter. But for a dog.
‘Anyway, one night,’ Jon said, ‘she was going out to a dinner party, but her regular dog-sitter was busy. So she asked the old lady next door if she could do it for her. Just for the night. But what the young lass didn’t know was that the old woman needed pills. Medicine, to stop her being crazy. And in all the excitement that day, she’d forgotten to take them.’
Dettie’s lips were pursed tightly. She wasn’t facing them, but she was listening. She sat still. Exhaling into the dark. Unaware that the cigarette seized in her fingers had turned to a column of ash.
‘After a couple of hours of watching the dog, the old lady was feeling strange,’ Jon said. ‘But she was so happy—so grateful—to be out of the house, that she wanted to do something nice for the young woman when she got home. I’ll make a roast chicken, she thought, and got out all the pans and spices she needed, and set the oven. And so, she prepared the meal and popped it in the oven.’
Jon’s voice got slow again, stretching the moment out. ‘Eventually,’ he said, ‘when the young woman got home that night, she could smell something burning. As she walked into the house she found the old woman in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, covering her face. Crying.
‘Slowly,’ Jon said, ‘the young woman opened the door of the stove—’ He mimed the action for them, leaning in, peering into the campfire. ‘And then she saw what the crazy old woman had done.’ He recoiled in horror. ‘She had plucked, and stuffed, and roasted, the woman’s pet poodle.’
‘Good heavens!’ Dettie snapped, leaping up. ‘That is the most hideous thing I have ever heard in my life!’ She was clutching her arms, shaking.
‘Eww!’ Katie had her knees hugged to her chest.
It was gross, but Sam was smiling.
Jon hid a huge grin behind his wrist.
‘No more stories!’ Dettie spat. ‘No more! That is it!’ She flicked her dead cigarette into the dirt.
‘What did it look like?’ Katie whispered.
‘You are not answering that!’ Dettie pointed at Jon. She dusted off the back of her legs. ‘Disgusting, terrible story,’ she murmured. ‘That poor woman.’
‘Tell another one!’ Katie pleaded.
Dettie spluttered and shook her head. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘That was ghastly.’
‘Maybe your aunt’s right, darling.’ Jon winked.
Whining, Katie rolled back against Sam’s arm, clomping her heels. ‘Never get to have fun.’
‘I think somebody’s getting grouchy,’ Dettie sang, and began rolling up their blanket over her arm. ‘I think it must be time for bed.’
Sam’s legs were sore from sitting on the table, but he didn’t want to leave the warmth of the fire. He liked watching the different colours of the coal, whiter the deeper they were, throbbing in the heat. Dettie had to prod the children back to the car to settle them down, and she sat with them until Katie could barely keep her eyes open and Sam pretended to be asleep. When she finally left, pushing the door closed softly behind her, he heard Jon call out, ‘See you in the morning, kids!’ and then Dettie hushing him quiet.