Skymaze Read online

  GILLIAN RUBINSTEIN

  SKYMAZE

  About Untapped

  Most Australian books ever written have fallen out of print and become unavailable for purchase or loan from libraries. This includes important local and national histories, biographies and memoirs, beloved children’s titles, and even winners of glittering literary prizes such as the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

  Supported by funding from state and territory libraries, philanthropists and the Australian Research Council, Untapped is identifying Australia’s culturally important lost books, digitising them, and promoting them to new generations of readers. As well as providing access to lost books and a new source of revenue for their writers, the Untapped collaboration is supporting new research into the economic value of authors’ reversion rights and book promotion by libraries, and the relationship between library lending and digital book sales. The results will feed into public policy discussions about how we can better support Australian authors, readers and culture.

  See untapped.org.au for more information, including a full list of project partners and rediscovered books.

  Readers are reminded that these books are products of their time. Some may contain language or reflect views that might now be found offensive or inappropriate.

  We has found the enemy and they is us.

  This book is for everyone who asked for a sequel.

  1

  When Ben Challis walked into the deli over the road from Fernleigh High School one afternoon in August, Mario Ferrone was already in there playing a coin-op game, watched admiringly by his brother John and, less admiringly, by Elaine Taylor.

  Ben bought himself a Mars bar and went over to join them. ‘How come you never wear school uniform?’ he said to Mario, who was in his usual black jeans and black jacket.

  Mario did not reply, but John answered for him. ‘He doesn’t like school uniform,’ he explained.

  ‘I don’t like it either,’ Ben grumbled, his eyes on the screen, where the score was reaching undreamed-of heights. ‘But if I don’t wear it I get into trouble. What I want to know is, how come he gets away with it?’

  ‘Shut up!’ Mario said. He swore as he lost his last life and the game came to an end. ‘You’re always gabbling on about something, Challis,’ he said in disgust. ‘Look what you made me do.’ He entered his name as champion player. It was already there in second, third and fourth place. ‘Give us another forty cents,’ he ordered John.

  John obediently handed over two twenty-cent coins. Elaine said, rather scornfully, ‘Well, I’m not hanging around here any longer. I’ll see you all later.’

  Mario pocketed the coins. ‘I’ll walk along with you.’ He gave the machine a kick. ‘This is a dumb game anyway. It’s too easy. Has anyone got any money? I’m starving.’

  Ben found he couldn’t help saying, ‘I’ve got a couple of dollars.’

  ‘Get us a Mars bar, then. Oh, and a Coke!’

  Wondering why he should, but still doing it, Ben bought them for him and then followed the others up the street. Elaine had walked away swiftly, and he had to run to catch up. She watched in disgust as Mario gave his bike to John to wheel and took the bar and the drink.

  ‘You are such a bully,’ she accused him, and then she said witheringly to Ben and John, ‘Why the heck do you let him boss you around like that?’

  ‘I don’t boss them around,’ Mario replied carelessly. ‘I look after them. I don’t let anyone else boss them around. So they’re grateful to me, aren’t you, guys?’ He dropped the empty Coke can on the ground and gave it a vigorous kick that sent it flying across the road. Then he took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. Blowing out the smoke, he said to Ben, ‘This isn’t the way to your place.’

  ‘He can walk this way if he wants to,’ Elaine said, exas­perated.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ Mario said pointedly to Ben.

  ‘Yeah, well, I have to get home anyway,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve got some things to do.’ He couldn’t immediately think of any, but he didn’t feel like tagging along with the others if he wasn’t wanted. Elaine made an angry noise with her tongue and shook her head at him. Mario ignored him. Only John, struggling behind them trying to push two bikes at once, gave him a friendly grin and said, ‘See you!’

  Ben walked home feeling vaguely irritated with himself because he knew he had been taken advantage of yet again. He hoped his parents were home, but as usual the garage was empty and the house was quiet. He walked up the driveway and round to the back. Both his parents were teachers. His mother was deputy principal of a primary school in a disadvantaged area, and his father was a maths and physics teacher at a high school in the southern suburbs. They were both heavily involved in school affairs and extra-mural activities, with the result that for weeks on end Ben only saw them in passing. His older brother, Darren, was meant to keep an eye on him, but with Darren, that was more like being under surveillance.

  He was standing outside the back door, feeling in his pocket for his key, when he heard a sudden rustle that made him jump. Before he could move, a hand reached through the ivy-covered trellis along the side of the house and grabbed him.

  ‘Hunter!’ Darren hissed at him through the foliage.

  ‘Get lost, Darren!’ Ben cried angrily. ‘I’ve been hassled all day. I’m not in the mood for your dumb games!’

  Once, it seemed like a long time ago, the game of Hunter had been fun, something he had been happy to play with an older brother he liked and admired. He had even been flattered that Darren wanted to play with him, and he would have agreed to anything that included him in Darren’s life. Now he wasn’t sure he wanted to be included any more. The once innocent game had turned into something much more sinister and unpleasant. Ben didn’t like it, and he didn’t like what Darren was turning into, either. Their relationship had got stuck in a pattern that neither of them seemed able to break out of. Darren was always the pursuer and the victor. Ben was the quarry and the victim.

  Darren made up the rules to the game, and sometimes it went on for days. Ben never knew when Darren was going to make the final ‘kill’, but it was usually when there was no one else around to see, and it involved various sophisticated forms of torture such as can only be dreamed up by the seventeen-year-old male mind.

  ‘Come on,’ Darren ordered. ‘I’ve been studying hard all day and I need some relaxation. You’ve got to get back to the house, otherwise you’re dead.’

  ‘Aww, Darren!’ Ben pleaded. He tried to wriggle out of Darren’s grasp and succeeded only in scratching his hand on the trellis.

  ‘Would you rather just stay here?’ Darren enquired conversationally, looking as if he would be quite happy to stay in that position for some hours.

  ‘I need to go to the dunny!’ Ben exclaimed.

  ‘I’ll let you go if you promise to play, you little wimp!’

  Ben gave in, as he had known he would all along. ‘There must be something wrong with me,’ he castigated himself, as he went to the toilet. ‘Why don’t I just say no!’ He washed his hands quickly and then stood listening at the bathroom door, wondering where Darren was. If he was still outside the back door, Ben could let himself out the front and get away. He was tiptoeing down the passageway when he heard a creak from the kitchen. He sped down to the front door, opened it, and dashed down the steps as quietly as he could.

  Darren was crouching behind the brush fence, having run around the side of the house as Ben was coming through it. He loomed up beside Ben like a zombie and hissed in his ear, ‘I’ll give you five minutes’ start!’

  ‘Okay!’ Ben shouted rather desperately at him. Reluctantly, he began to run down Forsyth Avenue. He had a sta
ck of homework to do, and he wanted to watch television too, and instead he was running round the streets, pursued by the maniac who called himself his brother! ‘You are a moron,’ he told himself. But he didn’t stop running.

  As always, the game began to exert its hold over him. His heart began to thump, not only from the running, and his breath was rasping in his throat. It was so easy for him to imagine that he really was being pursued, that it really was a matter of life and death. He sometimes felt that he had inside him a reservoir of fears that didn’t usually bother him, but that came oozing out from time to time, especially when he was playing Hunter. Nightmares that he would have preferred to forget, of being chased, cornered and devoured by monsters with human faces, surfaced to haunt him. The quiet suburban streets and tidy gardens looked faintly distorted, as though he was in a dream, and even the stobie poles loomed in a peculiar and threatening way.

  He came to a corner and slowed down to peer cautiously round it. The streets were empty, and the fading light was starting to drain the colour from the leafless trees and the winter gardens. The sky was grey and overcast, slightly dappled towards the west. It was not particularly cold, but there was something bleak and cheerless about the afternoon that made Ben shiver. He wished he was indoors in the light and the warmth.

  Across the road he could see the lighted windows of Andrew Hayford’s house. The brilliant idea came to him that he could duck in there and hide out for an hour or so. With any luck Darren would get fed up with looking for him out in the streets and Ben could get home safe. By then his parents might be home too. It wouldn’t put an end to this game of Hunter, but it would certainly postpone it for a bit.

  He took a swift look round the street but couldn’t spot Darren anywhere. He ran quickly up to the Hayfords’ front door and rang the bell.

  There was an air of chaos about the usually impeccable house, and when Andrew’s mother opened the door, Ben thought she looked quite different, younger and more animated.

  ‘Hi, Benny!’ she greeted him warmly, and she even laid her arm across his shoulder in a sort of hug. He had grown a few centimetres since he had last seen her, he realised, and now he was nearly as tall as she was. He wasn’t sure whether he was expected to hug back or not, so he stood there rather awkwardly until she let him go. She gave him a radiantly happy smile. ‘We haven’t seen you for ages,’ she exclaimed. ‘Excuse the mess, won’t you? The removalists are coming tomorrow!’ Then she skipped on to the first step and called up the stairs, ‘Andrew! Ben’s here!’

  Andrew appeared on the top landing. ‘Hi! You can come and help me pack!’

  Ben took the stairs two at a time, still thinking about the Benny and the sort of hug. He knew Andrew’s mother had recently married again. It seemed to be suiting her, but he wondered how much the new situation was suiting Andrew. ‘I didn’t realise you were moving so soon,’ he said. ‘How’s it all going?’

  Andrew pushed the door of his bedroom shut behind them and made an awesomely revolting face at it. ‘Dreadful! This has to be the low point of my life.’ He picked up a pile of clothes and slung them into a half-full packing case. Then he slid a row of books off the bookshelf and threw them in on top. ‘At least things can only get better from now on,’ he said, forcing a grin. ‘Can’t they?’

  ‘Live in hope!’ Ben said.

  ‘Oh, you know me. Mr Optimism himself.’ But Andrew did not look like Mr Optimism as he gloomily surveyed the wreck of his room. Ben followed his gaze. The once beautifully decorated and furnished room looked as if a bomb had hit it. There were three half-filled packing cases under the window and two empty ones by the door. Every available surface, including the floor, had something piled on it.

  ‘I wish I could just chuck it all away,’ Andrew remarked. ‘It’d be better than packing it all up.’

  ‘You can give it to me,’ Ben suggested. ‘I’ll look after the cars and the Lego for you, and the Mad magazines.’

  ‘Done!’ Andrew replied. ‘Start packing them up!’

  ‘When are you moving?’

  ‘The van’s coming tomorrow morning. Tonight’s our last night here.’

  ‘Cheer up. We can still see each other,’ Ben said. He was feeling a little bit guilty for not having seen more of Andrew lately now that the family was moving to a new house in North Adelaide, where Andrew’s stepfather, Dr Keith Freeman, would have his rooms. The two boys had been best friends since kindergarten, but now that they were at different secondary schools they were beginning to drift apart. Ben went to Fernleigh, the local high school, but Andrew’s parents had wanted to send him to a private college on the other side of the city. Ben and Andrew had been such exclusive friends that without Andrew Ben had found quite a gap in his life, which hanging round with Mario and John Ferrone at school did not really fill. But sometimes it seemed to him that he was turning into a different sort of person from what he and everyone else had thought he was, and it was hard to make friends when you didn’t know what you were going to turn out like.

  ‘Thanks for those comforting words,’ Andrew said. ‘I suppose it’s not the other end of the earth. Actually, I’m going to need all the friends I can get. I shall probably be camping on your doorstep five nights a week, begging you to give me political asylum.’

  ‘It won’t be that bad,’ Ben said, trying to sound reassuring.

  Andrew gave him a dark and totally unconvinced look. ‘Oh, won’t it! I keep thinking that I could handle bits of it at a time. It’s just trying to handle the whole lot at once that worries me. Like, I could handle Mum getting married to Keith if we didn’t have to move. And I could handle moving if it didn’t mean moving into the same house as Paul Freeman. And I could handle Paul Freeman if I didn’t have to see him at school every day. And so on. Et cetera.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Paul or Keith?’

  ‘Well, Paul mainly. But Keith too.’

  ‘Keith’s okay, really, though I couldn’t stand him when I first met him, and I still find some things about him hard to take. Like he’s always asking me what I’m really feeling, and what exactly I mean by that remark. Half the time I don’t know anyway. And when I tell him I don’t know, he tells me what I really feel and what exactly I meant.’ Andrew took off an imaginary pair of glasses and waved them in the air. ‘You’re feeling insecure, Andy. You need to be reassured that we all still care for you.’

  ‘Do you?’ Ben asked with interest.

  ‘How the hell would I know?’ Andrew replied with a deep sigh that was only partly assumed. ‘It’s all too confusing for me.’ He was silent for a few moments as he emptied the contents of the top drawer of his chest out on to the floor and sifted through them. ‘I guess I feel isolated mainly,’ he said finally. ‘The way things used to be, it was as if I was in the centre of everything, and now it’s like the centre has moved away. It’s gone somewhere else and I can’t find it. And I’m definitely not in it any more.’

  ‘What about Paul?’

  ‘I just don’t like him,’ Andrew replied shortly. ‘He’s one of those people you’d have absolutely nothing to do with normally, and then you find yourself living in the same family. And everyone says idiotic things like, “Oh, how nice for you to have an older brother.”’

  ‘As if anyone in their right mind would choose to have an older brother,’ Ben said with feeling. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Just old enough to be a nuisance. It’d be okay if he was heaps older and in the Senior School, but he’s in Second Year, and you know what they’re like!’

  ‘No Second Year dares hassle us!’ Ben said rather smugly. ‘They’d have to answer to Mars if they did.’ He preferred not to think about the price Mario exacted for his protection.

  ‘Yeah, it’s all very well for you. Sometimes I wish I was at Fernleigh too. I wouldn’t mind having a Mario Ferrone looking out for me. I think Mario would make a very useful
bodyguard.’ Andrew sighed again. He finished emptying one drawer of the chest and started on another. Everything looked old and messy, and he was sure there was nothing there he really wanted to keep. He tipped the contents into a green garbage bag that was already almost overflowing. It wobbled sideways, and most of the things Andrew had just tipped in fell out again on to the floor.

  ‘Gee, I’m never going to get this done,’ he said hopelessly, trying to pick everything up at once.

  It was so unlike Andrew to sound hopeless that Ben looked across at him in concern. ‘Do you want me to help?’

  ‘You can help with the packing. I’m not sure anyone can help with Paul!’

  ‘Well, what exactly does he do?’ Ben put down the magazine he had been skimming through, and started to arrange all the magazines in a neat pile.

  ‘Oh, you know, just your usual sort of all-purpose hassling.’ Andrew sounded rather distant, as though he had started thinking about something else. Ben glanced up from the magazines and saw he was looking at a scrappy old piece of paper. In his other hand was an empty case with purple and black writing on it. He felt Ben’s gaze upon him and looked up. The boys’ eyes met. Andrew laughed and waved the case.

  ‘Do you remember this, my man?’

  There was a moment’s silence, a beat, and then Ben said casually, ‘Yeah, that was quite a good game. What happened to it? Did you erase it by mistake?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Andrew demanded incredulously. ‘You know perfectly well what happened. You were there. You played it.’

  ‘Yes, I know I played it. Like I said, it was quite a good game.’

  ‘That’s not quite how I’d describe it,’ Andrew said with feeling. ‘Don’t you remember what actually happened? Don’t you remember Space Demons?’

  To him the whole game was still vividly alive. He could recall the exact details of its colours and sounds. They made him shiver with excitement and terror. He realised that just thinking about it made him feel less hopeless. On reflection, the terror of the game seemed nothing beside the excitement. He could remember exactly how it had felt to be a demon hunter, when you got into the game and actually played it from the inside. It felt a lot better than being a First Year student at a new school he didn’t much like, being hassled by a new stepbrother he didn’t like at all.