Page 119 of The Vanishing Place
Bending her arms, Effie tried to lift her head, but the pain sloshed like vomit behind her eyes, and she blinked away specks of white. Then she lay back, her head lolling on her neck, and the dark spun around her. Around and around, making her want to throw up.
She covered her mouth with her palm, swallowing back bile, and sucked in air through her nose. Mercifully, the sharp pain had eased.But it had been replaced by a constant pulsing, a hot throbbing in her skull and at the roots of her hair.
Effie reached her arm above her head, trailing her fingers through the endless black. There was nothing. No edges. No shapes. Just the far-off noise of the bush. As she listened, the minutes slipped by and the fog in her head thinned. Eventually, she pressed her hands into the hard surface and pushed herself up. The insides of her head swirled, leaking dots into her vision, but slowly the swell settled.
“Small movements,” whispered Effie. “Just one step at a time.”
She went to stand, but something pulled on her leg. Something hard and cold bit into the skin around her ankle. Effie frowned as she slid her hand down her legs, trying to locate the new pain. Then her fingers brushed against the links of metal.
“Oh god.”
Effie tugged at the length of steel, violently and desperately, but it was futile. She was chained up.
She slumped back, her tongue suddenly too large and too dry for her mouth, and nausea washed through her. A sob escaped her, the contents of her stomach threatening to follow, and she tasted salt on her lips. But she didn’t scream out.
Screaming was pointless.
Instead, she curled up in the dark, unable to make out the shape of her fingers or the links of the cold chain, and a wave of fear washed down her back like ice.
1989
Dinah jumped upand down in the sea, waving her arms.
“Come on, Adam.”
Big sister splashed in the little waves, her clothes getting wet. Dad would be mad. Cameron was there too. Dinah’s best friend.
“Come on, mate,” Cameron shouted.
Adam giggled and ran down the beach. “You have to find me,” he squealed.
His legs zoomed beneath him, flying him away as Dinah and Cameron turned into tiny dots. Adam hurried behind a grassy sand dune, where Dinah and Cameron would never look. Then he scrunched his eyes shut, waiting and invisible, as a hundred million hours passed. Eventually, he poked his head up to take a quick peek and spotted Cameron. Cameron was a teenager. Fourteen. Even bigger than Dinah.
“We’re coming,” Cameron yelled.
An excited squeal slipped from Adam’s lips, and he pushed it back with his hand.
“Come out,” sang Dinah. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Adam closed his eyes, doing his best hiding ever, and flattened himself against the sand.
One, two, three…He squeezed his fists tight…eight, nine, ten, twelve…
Adam popped his head up, getting bored. Dinah was running across the sand with her arms out like an airplane.
“Dinah!” Adam crawled over the grass, his knees and hands sinking into the sand. “Dinah, wait for me.”
Big sister stopped in the water, the bottom of her skirt dark and wet, then she scooped up a handful of sea and splashed it toward the beach.
“Come get me!”
Then, from nowhere, two hands picked him up, and fingers tickled his tummy.
“Stop!” Adam giggled. “Stop it.”
He squirmed and laughed and snorted until Cameron put him down.
“Come on,” he said, taking Adam’s hand. “Let’s get her.”
