Page 61 of The Vanishing Place
Effie stiffened as she read the words that were scribbled underneath.
He’s taken her. Mum is with God now.
Now she will be properly punished.
Effie swallowed and looked out at the bush.
“What happened, Anya?” Her voice caught. “What happened to you here?”
She bit into the flesh of her cheeks. Blinking the sting from her eyes, Effie turned the paper over and silently mouthed the words on the back.
Leave. Or you will end up like Mum.
“What did he do to you?”
Effie folded the picture and slipped it into her pocket. She didn’t run at the trees. She didn’t scream Anya’s name. The bush had her now. He had her. And, in the maze of trees, they were as good as gone.
Vanished.
Even with dogs and drones and a team of officers, the bush might never give them up. But she would try. Effie lifted her bag onto her back. She would get Lewis and do it right. Then she would strip the bush bare.
“I’ll help her, Tia. I promise.”
February 2005
Effie slammed thedoor shut on the outside toilet and stood, staring down at her legs. The blood had seeped through her trousers, and the damp cotton was sticking to her thighs. It was disgusting and filthy and embarrassing.
She was gross.
She was a horrible gross thing.
Effie blinked, her eyes red and swollen from refusing to cry, and she tore off a handful of toilet paper. June said it wouldn’t hurt. She said that the first time there would only be a little bit of blood. Effie tried to dab it away, the white paper turning a vibrant red, and her arm started to shake. Something was wrong. Her body didn’t know how to do it right. She was bleeding too much, not the little amount that June had said. Effie stuffed the paper into her underwear, sickened by herself. She was going to bleed out in a shitty toilet in the middle of the shitty bush.
Effie ground her hands into her eye sockets. She wouldn’t cry. She pushed her hands in harder, bruising her eyeballs, as she pictured the box of pads hidden under the floorboards, far away, in Dad’s room.
“You okay?”
Asher’s voice drifted through the door, only a few inches away, and Effie wanted the ground to swallow her up.
“Go away,” she shouted.
“Are you sure…”
A fiery anger pulsed through her. Her thoughts and words and underwear, all of it red.
“Just fuck off.”
Effie’s heart thumped in her chest as she listened to the softening of Asher’s footsteps as he hurried away.
For ten minutes, maybe ten years, Effie didn’t move. Then Asher’s voice rang out, calling the kids, getting them to chase him.
“You can’t catch me,” he sang. “I’m the big bad wolf.”
“Pow. Pow.” Four’s voice.
Then Aiden. “You can’t run from us, Mr.Wolf. We’re coming.”
Effie sniffed back tears. Asher was leading them away. Away from the house.
