Page 3 of The Sirens

2

LUCY

MONDAY, 11 FEbrUARY 2019

Lucy’s phone rings a few hours into the drive. She pulls over into a layby, relief thudding through her. For a moment, she’s sure it’ll be Jess, calling her back.

But the caller is her friend Em. Em, with her haywire curls and salon-sharp nails, who’d been expecting her in their 9 a.m. class. Em, who has already texted her five times.

Lol did you sleep in

Can’t believe you’ve left me to face a Monday morning lecture on my own. Harsh

Seriously though are you OK

Hey – I just saw Nick. He said you attacked Ben?! Lucy, what’s going on?

Call me.

Lucy wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, takes a long, shuddering breath to compose herself.

But it’s no use. Already, her face burns with the memory: of how trusting she’d been, how foolish.

She and Ben had slept together just before the beginning of the summer holidays – the night before everyone left campus last December. Right away, it was clear that it meant more to her than it did to him: she read it in the practised way he removed her bra, the ease with which he slid inside her. She can still remember every sensation, every whispered sigh. As if she’d known, even then, that it would never happen again. After all, how could someone like Ben – Ben with his beautifully muscled shoulders and dark glossy hair – be interested in someone like Lucy?

But then, he’d surprised her. He’d texted her over the break, sending links to cat videos and Twitter memes. Once, they’d even spoken on the phone, comparing notes on the books they were reading (he bought In Cold Blood on her recommendation; she read Joe Cinque’s Consolation on his). It had felt so easy, so natural, that she was worried they were falling into friendship territory. That she would never again feel his fingertips on her thighs, his lips against her ear.

And so, just days before the start of their final year, she’d plucked up her courage and asked him if he wanted a picture. She’d never done anything like that before. For a start, no one had ever asked for one; and why would they? Who would want to see Lucy without her clothes on?

But she thought of Ben’s sigh as he sank himself inside of her, the way that he kissed the tender flesh above her collarbone. Like he didn’t see the rivulets of cracked skin between her breasts, across her ribcage. He was different, she could feel it. He was safe.

It felt like her heart ceased to beat as she waited for his reply, the minutes stretching on and on. First the blue ticks, then those thrilling words: Ben is typing .

That depends , he’d replied. On whether it’s a picture of you.

Again and again, she’d adjusted the lighting, hoping the soft glow of her bedside lamp would hide the worst of her skin. She must have taken dozens, in the end. How badly she’d wanted to be beautiful for him.

She’d been happy with the picture she’d chosen: the dark glimmer of her eyes, the wet shine of her lips. The way the lamplight gilded the curve of her breast; the rest of her robed in silky shadow.

Wow , he’d told her. You’re gorgeous.

And she’d stared at the photo through new eyes and thought that maybe, just maybe, he was right.

She’d been so excited to get back to uni, to see him again, to pick up where they’d left off. But he avoided her eye in their Tuesday afternoon lecture, and rushed to his next class before she could say hello. The strange thing was, other people seemed to be avoiding her, too: her classmates fell back when she passed, murmuring to each other; a Red Sea of gossip.

She’d thought it was because people knew about her and Ben, that they were an item, or becoming one. She’d let herself feel a twinge of pride.

How wrong she’d been.

It was Em who saw the TikTok video first, who sent her the link.

I’m so sorry , she said. But if it were me, I’d want to know.

The shock of her own body in the video was magnified by the sick horror of its soundtrack: ‘Monster Mash’ . It was all there, visible, even beneath the cruel distortion of the filter. The crusted white flesh on her torso, the silver streaks across her breasts, the insides of her wrist.

But the worst thing was the look on her face – the soft melt of trust.

Lucy flicks the indicator on before she pulls back onto the road, even though there’s no traffic – just a lone truck creaking up ahead. Her palms feel clammy on the steering wheel.

This is why she has to get away. Why no one will believe that she didn’t mean to hurt Ben – that she’d been sleepwalking, in the midst of a nightmare. That she hadn’t known what she was doing.

He hadn’t meant for it to happen, Ben said when she confronted him. Yes, he’d shared the picture with some friends on WhatsApp, but that was just something they always did. He’d never expected – he couldn’t believe! – someone would be so cruel as to put it on TikTok.

He was sorry.

Lucy swallows, remembering the caption, the comments.

Tfw your friend’s girl is a literal gorgon

Hideous

Talk about a graveyard smash

Perhaps na?vely, she’d been surprised how little the university was willing to do, how dismissive they’d been.

‘Isn’t it a crime?’ she’d asked the student welfare officer, a fortyish woman with multiple rings in each ear. ‘Sharing an intimate image without consent – I looked it up. I want to make a report to the police.’

The woman had winced, sliding a box of tissues towards Lucy, even though she wasn’t crying.

‘I’d ask that you think long and hard about taking such a step,’ she’d said. ‘I understand that you’re upset – truly, I do – but everyone makes mistakes. Something like this could really derail Ben’s life. As a mother of a son myself—’

Furious, Lucy had risen from her chair and walked out.

Hadn’t Ben derailed her life? Since the discovery of the video, she’d spent most of the week in her room. In lectures, she’d sat as close to the exit as possible, leaving before the others rose from their chairs, before a hundred heads could swivel to stare at her. The post had been removed for violating TikTok’s policy, but she had no doubt that people had taken screenshots; that it circulated still, via Facebook and WhatsApp and Snapchat. The previous day, she’d ordered a coffee from the campus café, and the boy serving her squinted with recognition before blushing a deep red.

It felt like the whole world had seen it. Like it would follow her forever.

At the welcome assembly two years before, the university chancellor had told them to look around at the students sitting on either side of them. ‘This is the best journalism course in the country,’ he’d said. ‘We have alumni working everywhere, from Sky News to the New York Times. The majority of journalists working at the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age studied at Hamilton Hume. Remember that, during your time here. The young man or woman sitting next to you isn’t just your course mate, but your future colleague.’

It was a phrase Lucy couldn’t get out of her head. All of her future colleagues had seen her disgraced. How could she possibly have a career after this?

But despite her fury, the meeting with the student welfare officer had got under her skin, planted seeds of doubt. What if the police dismissed her, too? Then she’d be out of options. Besides, Ben’s father was an employment lawyer, at a fancy firm in Melbourne. ‘The kind who represents the employers instead of the employees,’ he’d told her, with a sneer in his voice. He hated his father, he said, for ‘greasing the capitalist machine’. But Lucy doubted that hatred would prevent him from asking for help if he needed it. That’s who she’d be up against, if she made the report.

For three days, she’d faltered, unsure of what to do. And then this morning she’d found herself with her hands wrapped around Ben’s throat, like her body had made the decision for her.

Well. She can hardly tell the police about the video now, not after what she’s done.

She needs to focus on getting to Jess. On staying awake: another twelve hours to go. Her sister recently moved to Comber Bay on the south coast. Lucy’s never been there, and she only has the address because Jess sent her a postcard for her birthday in September; the same postcard that now rests on the dashboard. A cliff looming over the sea, sunset etching shadows in the rockface. Garish font announces the location as Devil’s Lookout, Comber Bay. It’s touristy, tacky – which is strange, not like Jess at all. She normally makes her own cards – if she remembers to send them, that is.

Happy birthday, Lucy, it reads. I know I’ve been distant the last few months, and I’m sorry. I’d love to see you, though, and catch up properly. Let me know if you ever want to come and stay – it’s lovely here. Anyway, hope you have a great birthday. Love always, Jess x

But for Lucy, it was too little too late. She was still hurt by how cold Jess had been the last time she’d seen her – over a year earlier, the Christmas before last, in 2017.

She had just begun to think that it might be in reach, the bond they’d shared when Lucy was younger, now frayed by years of distance. She had gone to stay with Jess in Sydney for a weekend over the previous school holidays. It had been Jess’s idea, and Lucy was nervous: she felt like such a child in the passenger seat of her sister’s car, hugging her backpack tight as Jess asked hesitant questions. Was school OK? Did she still go to choir practice? Did she still want to be a journalist?

Was she happy?

By the time they’d arrived at Jess’s poky flat in Marrickville, exhaustion thudded behind Lucy’s eyes and homesickness swelled under her ribs. But her sister had obviously worked hard to make the place presentable – fresh linens were folded on the sofa, and the zig-zag patterns in the threadbare carpet suggested recent vacuuming. She’d even made Lucy’s favourite meal: vegetarian chilli, which tasted strongly of burnt garlic.

The awkwardness remained until after dinner, when Jess had thumbed through her collection of records and produced Nick Cave’s The Good Son.

‘Dad loves this one,’ said Lucy, as the melancholic piano of ‘The Ship Song’ filled the room.

‘I know,’ Jess said, grinning. ‘So do I.’

In an imitation of their father’s dramatic singing, they’d ended up standing on the sofa, arms flung wide as they bellowed the words. But soon they were singing in earnest – they both had good voices, deep and rich for their small frames – and half waltzing, half spinning around Jess’s cramped living room, sending piles of books and art materials everywhere. Lucy had felt the years melt away: she might have been five years old again, balancing on her older sister’s feet as they danced to The Wiggles.

By the time the song had ended, a neighbour was knocking angrily on the wall and Lucy was winded. Her sister’s eyes glittered and for an embarrassed moment Lucy wondered if Jess might be crying. Perhaps the reminder of their dad was painful for her – over the years, Lucy had sensed a tension between her father and her sister that she didn’t quite understand.

But when Lucy asked if Jess was OK, she’d just smiled and said she was going to make them each a hot chocolate, ‘with a bit of Baileys, but don’t tell Mum’.

They spent the rest of the weekend exploring her sister’s favourite markets and galleries. They laughed over a drunk tourist in Circular Quay and joked about getting matching tattoos when Lucy was older. The special language they’d had when Lucy was small – how she treasured the memories of her big sister singing and drawing with her – seemed to be returning.

Jess even began to call Lucy after the visit – weekly on her mobile, rather than saying a quick hello after her irregular conversations with their mother. But just as suddenly the phone calls stopped, and then that Christmas Jess had spoken to Lucy so little that she had spent the festive meal swallowing down tears.

And so when the postcard with its paltry apology had arrived on her birthday, Lucy had kept her response brief and cold.

Thanks for the card , was all she’d texted. Birthday was good.

She’d ignored the invitation to visit. She couldn’t face another rejection.

But now she has to put all of that aside. Jess is the only person she knows who sleepwalks, who might have some insight into why this is happening to her, how she can deal with it.

Lucy had even seen it once, when she was about five or six and Jess was home, making one of her rare visits from art college. She’d been woken by a roaring sound, which she’d first taken for a monster before she realised it was the thundering of the kitchen tap.

Gripping the banister with two hands, she’d made her tentative way down the stairs, across the corridor and into the kitchen, her stubby arms too short to reach the light switch.

Jess stood rigid in front of the kitchen sink as water poured from the faucet. Fear had bloomed in Lucy’s chest at the open, unseeing eyes, but still she’d crept to her sister’s side, tugged on the unresponsive hand. Her sister’s eyes were so vacant that Lucy had run back to bed and hidden under the covers.

Later, when Jess had returned to Sydney, Lucy asked her father about what she’d seen. She remembers the new tightness to his face, sudden as a curtain-fall. His hands trembling as he poured cereal into her bowl. He’d covered it with a laugh, a tousle of her hair.

‘Not bewitched, Goose,’ he said. ‘Some people – like Jess – walk around when they’re asleep. It’s nothing to be frightened of, I promise.’

* * *

When she’s halfway to Comber Bay, Lucy lets herself stop at a motel off the motorway. The neon ‘Vacancy’ sign blinking overhead makes her think of Psycho. The woman on reception lifts her eyebrows in surprise, no doubt expecting a long-distance truck driver rather than a 5 foot 2 girl with a buzz cut. But she takes Lucy’s cash and clanks a brass key on the countertop. Judging from the forest of others hanging behind the desk, Lucy is one of the only guests.

Inside, the corridors smell of ancient carpet and cigarettes, and the walls are lined with vintage advertisements for Bushells tea and Victoria Bitter beer. There’s a vending machine from which she buys a bag of chips and two KitKats, deciding not to check the sell-by dates. Next to the vending machine is one of those mounted singing fish, all rubbery fins and greenish scales. Lucy shudders at the memory of the dream that accompanied her sleepwalking the previous night. There are only fragments, but they are enough. Brine in her nostrils, sharp hands on her skin; sharp rock against her skull. She doesn’t want to remember more.

The room smells stale. The curtains are drawn, the floral pattern – a match to the bedspread – furred with cobwebs. She opens them, revealing the highway, the horizon pink with dust. A truck rumbles past, its tyres whining. She feels a lick of fear at the hours of driving that face her tomorrow, imagines her eyelids drooping, her hands faltering on the wheel. Imagines the crumple of metal, the music of breaking glass.

She cannot be tired in the morning. She must sleep.

But she can’t escape the memory of Ben’s vulnerable throat in her hands, the knowledge of what she might do – who she might hurt – when she’s unconscious.

She must stay awake.

She sinks onto the bed, wincing at the bite of the springs through the thin mattress. She needs to listen to something, a distraction. A podcast. True crime is her preference, but anything of an investigative bent will do. The soothing drone of a familiar voice, a puzzle for her brain to solve until her thoughts become slow and dulled, exhaustion winning out.

Lucy had been fourteen when she’d listened to a podcast for the first time, Serial. Sarah Koenig’s voice had woken something in her, had shaped the plastic of her young brain. Enthralled by the question of innocence or guilt, she’d raced through the episodes, the need for an answer burning inside. It was intoxicating, like the first sip of an alcopop. Chemicalsweet and dangerous.

She’d known, then, that she wanted to be a journalist. She wanted to be the one speaking into the microphone, unravelling a story like a spool of knotted thread. She wanted to be the one to fight injustice with the only weapon that matters: the truth.

That had been the plan, anyway.

Will they even let her finish her degree now, after what she’s done?

Even if, by some miracle, they do – does she want to go back?

She’s not sure she can face it, the humiliation. It was bad enough, knowing that everyone in the lecture hall or the cafeteria or the uni bar had seen her like that, exposed and wanting. What will people say, once they know she’s attacked Ben? Even if she told the truth – that she was sleepwalking – they’d still think she was insane. Unhinged.

There’s something else, too. Something that goes to the heart of who she thought she was, the plan she’d laid out for her life. The reason she pursued a degree in journalism in the first place.

It’s the doubt that has simmered inside her since the meeting with the student welfare officer, the way she discouraged Lucy from contacting the police. From telling the truth. She’s felt like a religious zealot having a crisis of faith. What use is a weapon people are too afraid to touch?

Now, she scrolls through her podcast app, unsure whether she wants something new and distracting, or familiar and comforting. And then she remembers.

She’d downloaded the episode a few months ago, after her parents told her where Jess was moving to. Comber Bay . There’d been an instant spark of recognition at the name. Every Australian with a passing interest in true crime or mystery has heard of it. Comber Bay is infamous, uttered in the same breath as the discovery of the Somerton Man and the disappearance of the Beaumont Children. The sleepy town on the South Coast is like a real-life Hanging Rock.

It’s funny, the way some cases are forgotten, yet others live on in the public consciousness, the victims somehow immortal. Of course, the mystery itself – an unsolved puzzle, luring hacks and sleuths – is part of it. But with Comber Bay, Lucy suspects the appeal is deeper. It’s one of the handful of cases she can think of where the missing (or the victims, if the serial killer theories are true) are men.

The series is a multi-episode special of a podcast she likes, hosted by an anonymous Australian man with a soothing monotone and a meticulousness she admires. Comber Bay: Australia’s Bermuda Triangle. Clever name. No wonder it’s amassed so many listeners.

She presses play on ‘Part 1 – Devil’s Lookout’. As the ominous theme music plays through her earphones, Lucy wonders again why Jess has moved somewhere so infamous. Although she doubts her sister is interested in true crime – Jess is an artist: she cares about feelings, sensation, beauty. She barely reads the news.

In a picturesque seaside town 200 kilometres from Sydney, a dis-turbing mystery remains unsolved … between 1960 and 1997, eight men disappeared from its sandy shores. Samuel Hall, Pete Lawson, Bob Ruddock, William Goldhill, Daniel Smith, Alex Thorgood, David Watts and Malcolm Biddy. Though the victims differ in age, profession and social class, they all have one thing in common: no trace of any of them has ever been found.

As she listens, Lucy takes her tub of medicated cream from her backpack and opens it, grimacing at the hated chemical smell. She rubs it into the silver cracks and whorls that cover her shins.

Did the men drown, like the twenty swimmers who have so far perished at Queensland’s notorious Babinda Creek? Or were they murdered by a killer who has evaded detection – and justice – for over thirty years?

She locks the window – the panes are thin enough that she can still hear the rhythmic whoosh of the highway – and the door.

Could some natural phenomenon be responsible for the disappearances? And what of the strange case of Baby Hope, found abandoned at Devil’s Lookout in 1982?

We’ll explore all of that and more in in this two-part series, Comber Bay: Australia’s Bermuda Triangle.

Before she gets into bed, she moves the chair out from under the scratched desk and wedges it under the door handle. She hopes it will be enough.