He picked it up. It was insect-bitten paper, wrinkled from moisture, but it was covered in handwriting in blue pen.

The damage was such that most was illegible, but a few lines were not:

and it won’t matter anyway if he doesn’t. She said that if we don’t last the whole time, we can still

Butch let it fall. It was a letter of some sort, not just your average rubbish. He suspected someone had camped around here.

Disappointed, but curiosity piqued, he continued.

Another piece of paper. This one was entirely damaged – water had turned it to flaky pulp. It was under a mountain needlebush.

The next piece he found, a few metres further, was in better condition:

I hate that stupid bitch so much. She told him what I said. Now he won’t even look at me in Homegroup. I swear I’m gonna get her back. I don’t care how I do it

He stopped reading and let it fall. A fragment from a diary entry. A schoolgirl’s diary.

His heart beat faster.

The next piece of paper he found was only five metres away from the base of the crag of rock – the rock which, he realised now, was much bigger than he’d first thought.

The paper had been torn in half:

keep it with me so I could keep a record of the time, maybe they’ll turn it into a book, or a movie, or something. Imagine if it was a movie. Holy shit. Who would they cast to play me?

This one had a stain in the corner. A round drop. Dark brown.

And then he saw the dirty blue wig, kicked around to the other side of the same bush.

White noise buzzed through his head.

He looked back the way he’d come.

The thought came to him from a distance, like it was someone else’s: She was leaving a trail . . .

He walked slowly now, approaching the base of the rock. It was as though his ears were ringing, the pressure against his eardrums growing the closer he got. But the rock wasn’t even like the local dolomite. It was no rock he’d ever seen, massive and out of place, dropped out of the sky.

At its base was a dark hollow of stones.

The entrance to a cave.

Beside the cave were a pair of hiking shoes, laces neatly tied.

In the entrance of the cave, something else. He picked it up, feeling sick.

It was a rough stick figure, made from a twisting branch snapped into shape. Shards of rock were driven into where the eyes would be. Around its neck was a cord like a noose. It was made of deep red hair.

Butch dropped it like a hot iron.