Out of Time by John Marsden Read Free Book Online Page B

not even noticed. They were too busy recovering from their own fits of laughter. Max was ruefully holding the cricket ball between thumb and middle finger while he explained and apologised to the owners of the coleslaw. The bin lay on its side on the ground. The bat had been retrieved from the fire: it was propped against a picnic chair, apparently undamaged. Sybil was on the ground, chewing on a piece of grass and still laughing, watching Max.
    Relieved, James squatted on his haunches and found his own piece of grass to chew. For some reason he began thinking of a story he had once heard about sneezing. The story explained why people say ‘Bless you’ when somebody sneezes. It had originated in the old days, when people believed that during the split second of the sneeze, the sneezer was off-guard, and the Devil could enter and take possession of the body. Saying ‘Bless you’ was a defence against Satan; he would be driven out when he heard those words.
    Squatting there in the grass under the cloudy sky, chewing on a dry stalk, James whispered, so quietly that he heard himself in his mind rather than through his ears, two words: ‘Bless me’. Then he got up and walked towards the others.
    *
    THE TOWN WAS called Ravenswood. A few dozen people still lived there. Their houses lurked behind patches of scrub or squatted at the end of confusing tracks. The thousands who had lived there in the days of mining madness were represented now by the cadavers of their buildings. Most of these were fenced off, with signs threatening trespassers. In the distance the dust moved like silk, but the town itself was still. Somehow it had taken on the hot dullness of the surrounding bush: the only movement was the susurration of decay.
    James climbed through a ragged wire fence into a house that was leaning sloppily to one side and had completely collapsed in the farthest corner. He went timidly up the back steps, testing one to be sure it would not crumble under his feet. There was no door, so he was able to walk into what had been the kitchen. The floor was littered with rubbish and animal droppings. On a wall hung half a cheap calendar and a torn tea towel. A pipe running down the wall led to a broken sink, with one tap still poised at an odd angle above it. In the sink was a smashed beer bottle and a few fragments of soap. James ran his finger along the ledge above the sink. Someone had made that ledge, had carved it out of wood and screwed supports for it. It had taken a few hours perhaps, and made the owner of the kitchen pleased and happy.
    James went back into the sunlight and began exploring the garden. Although it was now a sprawling mass of overgrowth it was evident that there had once been order beneath the weeds and wild plants. Theskeletons of a few sheds still stood at the end of the long garden but they were covered with creepers.
    Later, James walked up the hill to the Ravenswood Cemetery. This was well fenced and in one corner was a group of new graves, topped with red dirt, flowers, and freshly erected headstones. But the rest of the cemetery was old. James avoided the new section and walked through the old. Less than half the headstones were still standing but even on those many of the inscriptions were illegible. Some had headstones that were now a pile of rubble. And many had no markings at all. A rectangle of half-bricks, glimpsed among the undergrowth; a rusting wrought-iron fence enclosing a mess of weeds; plots where there may or may not have once been a burial. James walked among them slowly, sick at heart. He read all of the texts that could be read. A lot were for children; a lot for men and women in their thirties. Some recorded the awful details of accidental deaths: a drowning; collapsed mine shafts; falls from horses. A woman had been killed in a hotel fire. Some of the inscriptions started with the words, ‘Pray for the soul of. . .’, and James did. He didn’t know