Gus and the Burning Stones

PROLOGUE

We’re all standing in the middle of the lounge, reeling from what we’ve just discovered. The murder, the stone circle, my mother … it’s all connected.

We don’t have time to process any of this though, because the cabin is on fire around us. The side wall is warping and buckling in the heat, and the room is filling with smoke.

Through the window, I can just make out a figure standing outside. They’re wearing a black jacket and hoodie that hides their face, like a character in a horror film.

They’re watching, waiting.

We rush to the front door, but it’s stuck. My eyes and throat are burning from the smoke. Kane picks up a chair from the kitchen and throws it through the glass of the front door. The sudden rush of cool air from outside is a relief, but it makes the flames whoosh with intensity. Picking up one of the broken legs, Kane smashes the remaining glass away from the frame.

Before I have time to react, Shell grabs some towels and runs them under the cold tap.

‘Take these!’ she yells, flinging a towel to me and Kane. I wrap it around my head and shoulders, like she is doing. ‘Now run!’ she gasps, pushing me and Kane toward the door.

We stumble out of the cabin and start sprinting. Taking a backwards glance at the flames, I spot Hoodie coming toward us.

‘They’re coming!’ I yell. We’re all panting with the effort as we push faster.

‘Help! Fire!’ Shell yells as she runs. Where is everyone?

I’m looking around wildly in desperation when a glow further up the hill catches my eye. The stone circle is on fire too! What the hell is going on? Can stones even burn?

Shell and Kane are leaving me behind. Hoodie is gaining on me. I’m too fat and slow to outrun them. I feel faint, like the world is swirling around me, taking me away. The ground disappears and I fall. When I scramble back up it’s too late. I’m caught.

Hoodie leans over me and pulls back their hood. ‘Gus.’

‘You?’ I say in shock.

THURSDAY, A WEEK EARLIER

I’m walking along the main corridor at school, idly running my library card in my hand along the locker doors, enjoying the clacking noise on the metal, as I head toward my detective agency. It sounds good to say that … my detective agency.

Hazleton High is a bland, white series of buildings set among the old Victorian houses and small apartments of Hazleton, a suburb in Melbourne. It’s not the best or the worst school, just another underfunded public school. Still, it has a good library, which is where I spend half my time anyway.

The detective agency started as an assignment for Business Studies last year. Miss Wright the school principal actually indulged us and let us set it up for real after we managed to solve a cold crime case with our friend Kane.

The agency is a tiny old stationery storage room. Literally. All that fits inside is a tiny desk, some shelves, and two chairs. But it has a cool split door so that the top opens while the bottom stays shut, like a tuckshop. Shell and I keep the top open when we’re in there. We’re both fat, so it’s a miracle we both fit at the same time.

Shell Oliver, my best mate and co-detective, is already here, eating a toastie with her headphones on. She’s probably listening to a true crime podcast, as always.

Her dark hair is clipped back so short that it’s virtually shaved now. She’s wearing no make-up but still her big, vivid dark eyes twinkle brightly with a combination of brains and kindness. She’s dressed in all black as usual, wearing a round badge that says, ‘Fight climate change – there’s no place like home’.

‘Any cases come in today?’ I saw a detective in an old noir film ask his secretary this once, but it doesn’t sound as cool in real life.

‘No,’ she sighs. ‘We may need to steal something ourselves just to drum up business.’

‘What’s wrong? You look like crap,’ I say.

‘Wow, rude,’ she snorts.

‘It’s not just the no make-up thing. Which, by the way, I think is a misstep for you.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Your opinion is noted and filed under “piss off”.’

‘Seriously though, are you okay?’ I ask.

‘Things have been weird with Mum and Dad. They want to up my sessions with my psych and they keep asking me cringe questions.’

‘About being non-binary?’

‘Yeah. It’s like I’ve told them I’m vegetarian, but they think I could change my mind at any moment and start inhaling bacon.’

‘Yikes.’

‘I brought up pronouns the other day, saying that mine were she/they, and they got very confused…’

‘They’ll get used to it in time I’m sure.’ As usual, I don’t know what to say to Shell. I try to put on a sympathetic face, but I feel so useless. I open my laptop as a distraction.

Shell knows me well and quickly changes the subject. ‘Did Kane get that job?’

I shake my head. ‘He didn’t even get an interview.’ Kane is my other best friend. We live next door to each other and he’s 19 and basically like an older brother to me. He left high school two years ago without finishing, and hasn’t been able to find a job.

Shell’s eyebrows climb high. ‘If a meathead like him can’t get a basic job in a gym, then what hope is there?’

Shell and Kane have a … tenuous relationship. She’s right though. Working in a gym seemed like the ideal gig for him. They told him he has no experience and no qualifications, despite the fact that he lives for lifting weights and footy, so he’s actually perfect for the job.

I’ve been talking while checking my emails and messages. There’s a new message from the website that kicked off the cold case investigation last year.

‘What is it?’ asks Shell.

I look up at her, unable to speak. I spin the laptop toward her and point.

IF YOU WANT TO FIND YOUR BIRTH MOTHER, COME TO THE CIRCLE.

Shell peers at the screen, her eyes widening as she reads.

‘What the hell! What is “The Circle”?’

‘No clue. Whoever sent this added a link to Google Maps, so it must be a place.’

‘Any idea who it from?’

I shake my head, clicking my mouse around the message. ‘It doesn’t say. Just one of those anonymous sender emails.’

‘“The Circle” sounds like a cult.’ says Shell.

‘I know, right?’ I shudder. This is so weird.

‘Here goes nothing.’ I say, typing a message before I change my mind: Is this Jane?

Shell and I hold our breaths.

There’s no response. We are both staring intensely at the screen for like a minute, waiting for something to happen. The school period buzzer goes off for the next and we both jump out of our skins.

So many questions. There are too many tabs open in my brain right now.

SATURDAY

As Kane’s boxy, shit-brown 1970s Kingswood turns another corner too quickly on the winding, hilly road toward Lake Walliss, my stomach lurch again.

Kane is in his happy place, hooning around in the car, wearing his wraparound sunnies despite the grey sky. Despite the cold, he is wearing his uniform of a t-shirt and shorts. I’m rugged up with a denim jacket and jeans next to him, feeling a bit anxious about what’s going to happen when we get to this circle place.

Shell is in the back seat, eating chips and listening to true crime podcasts, her big red headphones matching the red woollen beanie covering her head. Am I the only one who feels queasy?

It’s been nearly three hours since we left Melbourne, so we must be almost there. Even though it’s only 4.15 pm, it’s already starting to get dark. Ominous clouds are rolling in above us, fat with rain. The weather report warned that a major storm front was coming up this way. Mum wanted me to wait till next weekend, but I told her I didn’t care about some storm and just wanted answers. I’m glad she’s supporting me doing this.

We turn a corner and suddenly Lake Walliss comes into view. It’s vast, over 12,000 hectares, with more water than Sydney Harbour, according to Google.

The lake is almost monocoloured, all white and grey, reflecting the dark sky. The surface is churning with waves, whipped up by the strong winds. It looks relentless, like a real force of nature. In the far distance I can see a few jetties stretching out from the other edge of the lake, toward the mountains. But on our side is only one jetty, with a solitary houseboat moored there.

Trails snake outward from the lake. One to the right of the water leads to the jetty with the houseboat, another to the left to a caravan park. A third trail winds up into the hills beyond the lake, which is where we’re headed, according to what Google Maps showed us before we lost signal.

After about five minutes of careful off-road driving, going up and up, we arrive at a round sign that looks like a rubbish bin lid, with ‘The Circle’ spray-painted on it. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never find it, jammed next to a hedge.

Past the sign there are six ramshackle cabins about twenty metres apart from each other in a rough kind of circle on a big block of land. The left and rear of the area are surrounded by dense bushland. To the right of the cabins, there is a side trail leading down to the lakeside, maybe five minutes’ walk away.

There’s a massive garden with veggies and some flowers along the left-hand side of the block, next to a compost mound. Beyond that there’s a small shed which I think houses a generator, judging by the cables running from the shed to each of the cabins.

Of much more interest, further up on the hill, is a formation of stones in a circle that must give The Circle its name. The stones are tall and ancient, like Stonehenge, but not as big from what I can tell. They are probably only five minutes’ walk further up the hill behind the cabins. From a distance, they almost look like a group of people standing or crouched in a strange, twisted circular formation.

Maybe it’s the dark, stormy sky, but I think they are spooky and mysterious and kinda mesmerising. What’s their story, I wonder?

Out the front of the cabin closest to the road, several people are arranging sandbags in front and around the doorway and the edge of the verandah. A wheelbarrow positioned next to them is piled high with sand.

As we pull up, Kane bashes the car horn. A loud AC-DC riff plays, to Shell’s and my total embarrassment.

‘What did you do that for?’ Shell snaps.

‘Just getting their attention,’ Kane snickers.

As the horn goes off, the group look up at us, scowling like a nineties album cover. I count four of them, a teenage girl and guy, and two older women.

The three of us look at each other. Shell’s eyebrows are high. Kane’s mouth is open goofily. And I’m just thinking none of these people look like the pictures of Jane I’d seen in the media from twelve years ago. Even accounting for aging or weight gain, none of these women even remotely look like they could be her.

At the centre of this crew is a short but imposing woman in her late forties or early fifties, with pale, freckled skin and long, vivid red hair in a rough ponytail, framing a strong face and intelligent-looking eyes. She’s wearing a green jumper and old jeans, with a shovel in her hands, which she must have been using to move sand from the wheelbarrow into the sandbags. Everyone seems to be looking at us and then to her and us again. She’s clearly the one in charge.

She looks us up and down and I swear she’s holding the shovel like it’s a weapon.

‘What do you want?’ says a young guy nearby, who looks my age. He has red hair, tight and curly, with pale skin and freckles like the boss woman. Her son? He’s glaring at us for some reason. The guy is scary, but also kind of hot in his death metal long-sleeve T-shirt, ripped jeans and black biker boots. I realise I have been staring at him too long.

Next to him is a strange looking girl, maybe nineteen or twenty, like a millennial owl, with shortly cropped brown hair and super thick glasses that make her eyes look huge. She seems to blink really slowly. She’s wearing ripped orange overalls, a pink ‘Little Miss Happy’ T-shirt that might have been ironic on someone else, but isn’t on her, and a bulky blue woollen cardigan.

‘Who are you?’ says another woman coming forward from behind the cabin. She’s in her late thirties with dyed, dirty blonde hair and a full face of makeup, despite being in the middle of nowhere. Her dark roots make her look like a skunk in reverse. Her leopard-skin patterned top strains against her large chest, which is transfixing Kane. I’m more distracted by her hoop earrings, which a small budgie could easily use as a swing.

Suddenly a flash of lightning cracks the sky. We all jump. Even though I’m on edge and feeling nervy, I step forward a little. ‘Hi, my name is Angus Green. These are my friends Shell and Kane. I’m looking for a woman called Jane Winter. Someone told me I could find her here.’

‘Who told you she was here?’ It’s the boss woman, staring directly at me, still holding the shovel like she might hit something with it.

I gulp. ‘I don’t actually know. I was sent an anonymous message saying she was here. She’s my birth mother.’

I get the screenshot I took of the message up on my phone and walk up to the scary shovel-woman to show her. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she holds it very close to her eyes before shaking her head and handing it back.

‘Okay, well maybe you recognise her?’ I pass her my phone again, showing a photo of Jane from one of the old media articles.

The woman holds up the phone to the others. They all shake their heads, saying they don’t recognise her. I can’t explain why, but I don’t believe them. One of them knows something. It’s like I can sense exchanged glances taking place just out of my eyeline. Like the silence is somehow curated.

‘What do we do now?’ asks Kane softly. ‘We should probably get going.’ He points upwards at the ever-darkening sky. As if on cue, it starts raining.

From out of the shadow of one of the cabins set further back in the clearing, a short, thin man emerges in late forties. ‘There is an enormous storm about to hit. Where are you staying?’ His voice is deep and quiet, and vaguely sinister.

The three of us look at each other, and Kane shrugs. Suddenly the rain intensifies, pelting our faces.

‘You may not make it back to town. There is a spare cabin here if you want to sit out the storm for the night.’ He points toward another cabin at the back of the block, marked ‘six’. He speaks in a posh, proper kind of way.

The boss woman doesn’t look thrilled at this offer.

I don’t want to spend time with this strange mob, but that message about Jane brought me here, so I don’t want to leave either. I’m not sure what to do.

‘If you’re going, you better go now, before the road by the boom gate floods,’ adds the boss woman, eyeing us up and down. The young guy near her sneers his agreement.

‘Get out of the rain,’ says the girl with the big glasses, waving us to join them under the large verandah. We gratefully move to shelter.

Shell steps forward and holds out her hand to the boss woman. ‘I’m Shell, and the muscle tragic is Kane,’ she says with a smirk, pointing at Kane.

The woman shakes Shell’s hand. ‘Cath,’ she says, then points to everyone in turn. ‘This is my son Nash, that’s Maxine in the leopard top, Greta in the overalls, and Tobias in the cap.’

‘Oh shit,’ Maxine mutters, now looking past Kane behind us. ‘Walker’s coming back.’

She points a blood-red fingernail back toward the road, where an ostentatiously large and shiny four-wheel drive is coming around the bend.

Kane whistles, impressed. ‘A Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 V8! Wow.’

‘Eh?’ I say. It’s certainly mint, but who cares?

The four-wheel drive pulls up near the sign, behind the Kingswood. Out steps a tall handsome, slick-looking man. He looks like he should be a TV newsreader or gameshow host with his perfect hair, tanned skin and expensive suit perfectly tailored to his lean body. As he opens up a large, fancy umbrella with the seamless flick of a button, there’s a flash at his wrist, where I can see that he is wearing a huge, fancy metal wristwatch.

There is an air about him. He is someone.

We all stare at him.

Shell says, ‘I want his eyebrows.’

Kane says, ‘I want his car.’

I say, ‘I want his watch.’

He grins wolfishly at Cath and the others. ‘Getting ready for the end of the world?’

Ironic, given he will be dead by the end of the day.