Five Parts Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

searching for something I could have changed.
    What I don’t get is why I survived and the others didn’t. Why me? I’ve had plenty of close calls and near misses already. Any one of them could have claimed me. At last count I’ve used up five chances and I’m only sixteen. Barney has started calling me ‘the cat’ because he reckons I must have nine lives. I wish he wouldn’t. It’s no joke. I’m still here and guys like Carlo are gone, never to joke or fart or muck around ever again. How many chances did Carlo get? Or Boris? It doesn’t seem right.
    I halt, leaning on my crutches. It feels like roofing nails are being belted into the top of my busted foot and I’ve barely travelled a hundred metres. Part of me wants to go back to the cottage, chug painkillers and zone out for a while. Another part doesn’t want to risk sleep. I don’t want to see that girl again.
    Transferring my weight to my good leg, I swing the crutches forward and get moving. Only two hundred metres or so to the lighthouse and then I’ll be able to have a rest.
    By the time I get to the tower, I’m sweaty and lightheaded. My armpits ache from the crutches and my foot is hosting a pyrotechnics convention. A crow glares at me from the step as if it’s the official doorman. I swing my cast at it and it scuttles away, cursing me.
    With a bit of forceful persuasion I get the crusty lock open and hang it on the bolt. As I open the door, the wind gives it a kick. It smacks into my shoulder and I overbalance, tumbling inside. Kwammm ! The door slams behind me, the impact reverberating up the tower.
    Awesome. One crutch on the floor, another on the ground outside. I crawl to the stairs, dragging my lone crutch with me, and sit on a step to wait for the throbbing to ease. The door rattles, as if someone’s trying to get inside. There’s a low howl in the tower. Goosebumps erupt on my arms.
    For God’s sake, take a chill pill, Dan. Repeat after me, it-is-just-the-wind. I exhale like the air-brakes on a semi-trailer and take my bearings.
    I’m in a circular room with white-washed walls. A chart of nautical flags hangs on one wall beside a cabinet of lighthouse memorabilia and a dusty roll-top desk. Over the door, a freckled brass plaque carries the words Lucem Spero Clariorem . It looks like Latin but I’ve no idea what it might mean. Clariorem looks vaguely like clarion, which is a trumpet, isn’t it? Could it mean ‘Loosen up your trumpet’…Nah. Maybe Mum or Dad might know.
    Grabbing the stair handrail, I heave myself upright and hop across to the desk. It’s a monster of a thing; I need both hands just to lift the lid.
    I don’t know what I was expecting. There’s bugger-all inside it apart from a couple of ink bottles, a compass and a dusty, leather-bound logbook.
    A Logbook Kept at the Cape Nicolas
Light House by
KM Wilton Head Keeper
June 1858 to January 1865
    Dad told us about this guy during the drive from Melbourne. Loves a captive audience, my old man. Wilton was the retired sea captain chosen to oversee the building of the lighthouse. He quit seafaring when his wife and one of his twin daughters drowned in a shipwreck, leaving him to raise the surviving girl alone. Grief-stricken, he swore to save others from a similar fate.
    The logbook is pretty dull to begin with: detailed reports on the weather and how tough it was getting building materials here because boats couldn’t dock safely anywhere nearby. A jetty had to be built about five kilometres away at the base of steep cliffs. Then everything had to be hauled up the cliffs by rope and carted in wheelbarrows as horses weren’t supplied until later. There were three families: Captain Wilton and his teenage daughter; the second keeper, Mr Bellows, and his wife; and the third keeper, Mr Sutton, his wife and four young children.
    They arrived in winter and pitched their tents at a