‘Tell you what?’ Cassie asked.
I paused, looked over at Ian. ‘It’s private,’ I said.
‘Later, Cub.’
‘No. Now.’
Ian smiled. His eyes went squinty. ‘This about Les?’
‘No,’ Cassie said, before I could get a word in. ‘It’s not about anything. Just rack off, Cub.’
‘So he knows as well?’ I said. I felt my adult voice slipping away. ‘Why does everyone know except me?’ I knew I sounded whiny but I couldn’t help it.
‘Leave it, Cub,’ said Cassie. ‘I’m not telling you.’
‘I can’t believe you don’t know,’ Ian said. ‘Don’t you communicate in this family?’
I turned to Ian. ‘You tell me then,’ I said.
‘Sure you want to know?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’
Ian looked at Cassie, then back at me. ‘Your granddad was a monster,’ he said.
Cassie pressed his palms to his eyes. ‘Don’t, Ian.’
‘When he was a truckie he took women off the highway, locked them in the trailer and then brought them out to the knackery,’ Ian said.
‘What for?’ I asked. ‘Why did he take them there?’
‘To kill them.’
I paused for a moment, felt something swirl in my head. I didn’t want to believe him, but couldn’t understand why he’d make up something so awful. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘Why does anyone do anything?’
I looked at Cassie. ‘Is that true?’ I said.
Cassie shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I guess.’
‘Well, who were they then?’ I asked. ‘Wouldn’t their families notice they were gone?’
Ian smiled, stared at me too hard. ‘Hitchers. Whores. Sluts. Anyone really. He wasn’t picky.’
I took a step back, down onto the grass. My legs had moved without my brain telling them to. ‘How’d he kill them then?’
‘Go inside, Cub,’ Cassie said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Stop bossing me around. I’m not a little kid.’
Ian looked at Cassie, turned back to me. He was smiling, as though he was unwrapping a present. ‘He put them in the digesters. Boiled them right down and buried what was left in the paddock.’
In my mind I pictured corned beef. Cooked meat. I tried to shake it out of my brain. ‘He did not,’ I said. ‘That’s disgusting.’
‘Why would I lie?’ Ian said. He turned back to Cassie. ‘How many chicks did he get? Officially.’
Cassie looked as though he’d given up. ‘You probably know more than I do,’ he said.
‘If you were to guess.’
Cassie rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. ‘The cops said five. Could be more.’
‘And they were all buried out here?’ Ian nodded towards the paddock.
‘You know all of this already, Ian,’ Cassie said.
I stared at him but he wouldn’t look at me.
‘I told my mum that he used to live in our house before he moved out here but she didn’t believe me,’ Ian said. ‘She would’ve lost her shit if she did.’
‘That was before he did anything, though,’ Cassie said.
‘How do you know?’ Ian said. ‘There could be heaps of others. No way of knowing, really. The cops don’t even know the names of some of the ones they found.’
‘I just don’t reckon.’
‘I still can’t believe you actually knew him,’ Ian said to Cassie. ‘That you, like, talked to him and shit.’
‘I hardly even remember him.’
‘Yeah, but still,’ Ian said. ‘It’s pretty sick.’
Cassie leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. ‘I saw this thing on TV the other day,’ he said, ‘about this man in America who shot all these people out of the blue, like in a church or something, and when they did the autopsy they found this tumour in his brain, pushing against his brain cells, and that’s what made him do it. That’s what turned him mental.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ Ian said, not really listening.
My stomach made a noise. They were talking like I wasn’t even there. Talking about awful things in a normal way. My skin felt very warm, and I could feel my snow cone churning with the eggs I’d had for breakfast. I chewed on my tongue. It felt like a rag that had been stuffed into my mouth.
‘You right, Cub?’ Cassie said.
‘Yeah,’ I said, trying to make my face normal. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Don’t tell Mum and Dad about this,’ he said. ‘Mum doesn’t like to talk about it. She’ll get upset. Remember what I told you, about how it’ll make her sick again?’
‘You didn’t tell me.’ I pointed at Ian. ‘He did.’
‘Just try and forget about it, alright?’ Cassie said. ‘It was a long time ago.’ He looked down, snapped the rubber band around his wrist. ‘Nothing to do with any of us.’
I looked out into the paddock. The grass had turned to seed. Another awful thought came to me. ‘Does that mean Wally does see ghosts?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Cassie replied. ‘That’s just Wally being stupid.’ Cassie turned back to Ian. ‘You shouldn’t have told her,’ he said in a low voice.
Ian shrugged. ‘She would’ve found out eventually.’
‘How do you even know all this?’ I asked.
Ian smiled, shook his head at me like I was stupid. ‘Everyone knows.’
I could feel a funny taste in my mouth, like I’d licked the ground. I scratched an itch on my eyebrow. There was a hair sticking out funny, so I yanked it out with my fingernails. It felt good, that prick of hurt. Cassie and Ian started talking again, but I couldn’t make sense of it, didn’t want to hear any more.
When Wally got home from the fete he came into our room. I’d closed the curtain and the room was stuffy. I was sweating through my shirt. He looked at me on the bed and gave me a poke on the knee, and when I didn’t say hello he pulled out his toffees and gave me one.
‘Someone nicked the spokes off my bike,’ he said.
‘Good,’ I said. I tried to ignore him, but after a minute I couldn’t hold it in any longer and turned to face him, propping myself up on my elbows. ‘Ian told me why Brendan’s been saying those things,’ I whispered, though no one could hear us anyway. ‘He said that Les used to take girls to the knackery where he boiled them up. He said he buried them in the paddock and no one knew they were there for years and years. No one even bothered to look for them, probably.’
Wally stared at me, didn’t speak.
‘Do you think it’s true?’ I said.
Wally shrugged, kicked his shoes off. ‘Cassie said it’s a secret. He said we’re not allowed to talk about it.’
I was sure Wally had been fibbing about knowing anything, felt a rush of something flame over me. ‘I can’t believe Cassie told you and not me,’ I said, lying back down.
‘He didn’t tell me,’ Wally said. ‘Dad told me.’
‘What? Why didn’t he tell me?’ I asked, even though I wish no one had told me anything. I wished I could go back to before Ian started hanging around, before Helena and Tilly showed up. I wished I could take this out of my brain and bury it in the dirt.
‘You’re a girl,’ Wally said. ‘You’re not supposed to know this stuff. Boys only.’ He kicked his foot towards me, stuck his stinky sock in my face. ‘At least Brendan won’t dob on me anymore,’ he said. ‘Can’t believe he pissed himself.’
I rolled over, turned my back to him. I grabbed my pillow and hugged it to my chest. Ian said those girls were left out there for ages, that the cops didn’t even know who some of them were. I hoped that if I disappeared, Mum and Dad, Cassie and Wally would want to know where I’d gone. I hoped they wouldn’t just leave me out there to melt away in the ground until I’d disappeared for good.