“We aren’t necessarily going to find … them,” said Trish. “Mitch and Chris, I mean. It’s been three years since they took off.” Monsters. “They won’t still be in Inglewell. Anyone could live here. What if it’s those men you saw? I mean, if Gwenda Sage thinks people are odd, I don’t want to meet them.”

It could be my dad, I thought, rustily—I’d so carefully not thought that. If all those stories mean anything, they mean sometimes people do just disappear. And maybe they can be found.

“If it even is them,” continued Trish. “They could have changed.” Gary patted her knee, and she jumped. “People do,” she added, fiercely.

We drove out of the saplings, over a grid woven through by green blades and into a house paddock tumbled with unkempt plants—I recognised the pale yellow of rosella flowers among the green panic grass, the vast abrasive hearts of pumpkin leaves between castor-oil shrubs. Gary stopped and cut the engine. Trish passed the plastic canteen—the water tasted stale—and we looked at the house.

It slanted, grey, vacant windows gaping. Where I wanted there to be banksia roses, there was a clawing skeleton of bare branches. At the top of the open flight of steps, a screen door banged in the breeze. One of the lower steps was missing and had been replaced by a drum. There was a smell of oil and of dogs, and the low afternoon murmuring of birds and, beyond, the distant thump of a generator.

“Hello?” called Gary, but no one answered. He jumped down and went up the steps. I followed at his heels. Trish stayed at the truck. Just in case, she said.

Gary caught the screen door as it swung open on the wind.

“No!” I said, anxious for him. Everything I knew was stretched over a dark pit, and I didn’t want Gary to disappear into it, too. “You don’t really want to go in, do you, Gary?”

He frowned back. “Don’t pull that on me, Tina. I’ll make my own mind up. All right? I don’t know if I’m talking to you or your mum, half the time. If you don’t want me to go in, tell me why, and let me decide.”

“All right,” I said, startled. Gary shrugged as if brushing something off and went inside.

A little hot anger pooled at the base of my throat. I wanted to make him listen to me, for his own good. Please tasted bitter.

I said nothing, and followed him into the kitchen.

Ropes of soot-blackened cobwebs hung from the ceiling. The floor was layered with rotting newspaper. Green scum sat in the sink, and unwashed dishes were piled in it and across the table. Cans of food—full and empty and open but half-finished—were stacked by the wall.