Darkwater Read Online Free Page A

he sank the lounge room, and then I leapt out, almost hitting my knees against the sharp edges of the built-in seats. I couldn’t keep still.
    Shutting the front door behind me, I went out again, riding my bike through the gate and into the empty midday heat.
    We live in the middle of a narrow street that leads down to the top of the waterfront reserve. Jacarandas line either side, the tips of their branches almost touching overhead. Behind sandstone walls you can see glimpses of the houses. The Scotts are directly opposite. They’re both in their seventies and occasionally ask me to ride up to the chemist to pick up a prescription. Dee insists that I help them out, but I don’t really mind. Mrs Scott always makes me a warm milky tea and gives me a biscuit she’s baked when I return. I sit in her kitchen and talk to her about my favourite authors. She was an editor in a publishing house, and sometimes lends me books, hardbacks with yellowed paper – stories that are old-fashioned, and I pretend to have enjoyed them when I give them back. I thought for a moment about going there now, wanting company and perhaps even to talk to her about what had happened.
    I eventually decided to ride to the waterfront. Normally I would have assumed Joe would be there, but today I wasn’t so sure. I was nervous about going there. He would have felt the same. Yet I made myself head down the hill, partly to find him but also because I wanted to see where it had happened, perhaps in the hope that this would make it what it had always been – a place where we hung.
    At the bottom of our street is the Parsons’ house, right next to the steep stone stairs cutting through the reserve. Thick ivy grows over the wall that borders their garden. Behind it you can see the shutters askew on their hinges, the iron roof of the verandah leaning down at one end, the guttering hanging loose.
    Bradley Parsons is sixteen years old and must weigh about sixteen stone. His eyes squint and he always comes in too close when he tries to talk. ‘What you up to?’ he asks, and we back away. Sometimes he just leans over the top of the wall, calling out to anyone who passes by and occasionally picking his nose.
    Lyndon, who could be a cruel bastard, called Bradley a disgusting freak of nature. Once he blew a long green stream of snot out of his nose and into his hand, holding it out for Bradley to eat. When Bradley shook his head, Lyndon gripped him in a headlock and smeared the snot across his cheek. I didn’t see this, but Joe did. He told Dee, trying to explain that Lyndon had days like this, days when he was so angry that none of them could talk to him.
    She said it was no excuse. ‘No matter how hard he’s had it, he shouldn’t do something as shameful as that.’
    As I stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the waterfront, I could hear the slap of the current against the sandstone boulders. The river was swelling as the tide turned in the heat of the afternoon, lapping over the rocky outcrops cutting jagged lines into the curve of the banks. There was a sound like a stone being thrown into the deep grey of the water, the splash cutting through the stillness. Someone was down there. I hoped it was Joe.
    I dropped my bike at the top of the path. Each step was uneven, but I knew them so well I had no need to hold onto the railing – besides, the flaking paint always left at least one needle-sharp splinter in the soft flesh of your palm.
    At the bottom of the steps the grass grows long and thick down to the muddy edge of the water. At low tide, small crabs scurry down into the ooze trying to find some shelter from the fierce sun. I stood still for a moment, listening. To my right, the river bent slightly, the bank narrowing to a strip of sandstone and the crusted shells that cut through the soles of your feet. If you picked your way along the edge and around the slight bend, there was a cave, just high