Weren’t there stories about sinkholes, and caves? He shifted his foot. Something light sifted between the planks: splinters, perhaps, or leaves. He didn’t hear it hit anything.

Even if the ground was only half a metre beneath him, he wouldn’t hear a leaf hit it. But the possibility that the ground was—just maybe—far, far more than a metre away kept him motionless until his uncle tramped back and rolled a torch across the porch and through the door. It drummed on the floor, loud as the beating of Jack’s heart in his ears.

“I want to come out,” Jack said.

“Get the bottles first,” said his uncle.

Jack turned, but his uncle had stepped onto the porch. He pushed the door shut, and Jack couldn’t find a handle. He hammered on the timber.

“I should have known Marilyn’s son would be a coward,” said his uncle. “Shut that racket or you’ll bring the whole place down.” Something slid off the roof and crashed into the grass. Jack found the torch and switched it on.

He was in a small, square room crowded with discarded boxes. The closest were cardboard; their corners had swollen and split, spilling toys onto the floor—faded plastic trucks and bald baby dolls with naked cotton bodies. They smelled bad and shivered in the torchlight.

Jack edged his way between them into the centre of the hut. Why was this stuff so important, anyway? It wasn’t antiques. Just trash someone hadn’t bothered taking to the tip. With the knife, he levered open a lid. Only paper gnawed to lace. Silverfish scattered, grey in the light. VISIT THE SUNSHINE read part of a yellowed newspaper on a flattish parcel. Jack prodded it. A plate.

A sagging narrow mattress, badly stained. Boxes labelled in marker that had run in brownish-purple streaks. TAX + RAIN GAUGE said one, but only had empty photo albums in it. Another read DRESS UPS. Masking tape peeled off the cardboard like bark. Three hollow-sided vinyl suitcases. Tools: fence strainers and old saws, which he understood, and others he didn’t. The saw was still sharp: he touched it and brought away a bead of blood on his hand. “What about tetanus?” his mother would say. “Did you even think about tetanus?” He sucked at the cut.

“Jack!”

“I’m looking!”

But there, on the far side of the room, on a rickety rocking chair, its legs held together with twisted cord, was a box of bottles.

They were not beer bottles or Coke bottles or even wine flagons. They were all much smaller and much older. Their edges were blurred and their sides were milky. Green and amber and deep midnight blue, with INK or POISON or names pressing up out of the glass itself.

“I’ve found it!” said Jack.