Bags And Goodbye

“The road didn’t begin with the engine starting—it began when nobody said the truth out loud.”

Mum rubbed her hands together like she didn’t quite know what else to do with them, the dry skin making a faint, papery sound in the hush that had followed our reunion. Red dust had already begun to settle into the creases of her knuckles, staining the half-moons beneath her nails the colour of the land—as if even she couldn’t touch this place without being claimed by it.

Then, without warning, she turned on her heel and started striding back toward the car. Her boots—old trainers, laces loose—kicked up tiny clouds of powder that hung in the still air before dropping back down like they were too tired to stay aloft.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” she called, voice suddenly high and falsely bright—like someone changing masks mid-play. The kind of voice she used when trying to distract us during dentist appointments or thunderstorms. “We’ve got a long drive ahead.”

The cheerfulness was too sudden. Too sharp. It clashed with the silence and with everything we’d been through, jarring in my ears like the wrong note played in a lullaby. Even the flies buzzing lazily around us seemed to hesitate, their loops faltering mid-air.

I looked at Mack.

He hadn’t moved.

His face was tilted upward, squinting against the pale winter sun that poured down like cold fire from a cloudless sky. The light hit the dust on his cheeks, revealing streaks of sweat that had carved paths through the grime like tears. The back of his T-shirt was soaked through, sticking to the line of his spine in a dark stripe that looked almost painful.

I took the first step, my shoes crunching on the gravel. He followed a beat later, his gait slow, uncertain. There was something resistant in the way he moved, as if every step was being measured—not against distance, but against what it meant to leave that place behind.

The building creaked behind us, its weathered walls groaning in the morning breeze like it was protesting our departure.

High above, a wedge-tailed eagle circled, dark wings stretched wide against the blue. Its shadow drifted over us in slow sweeps, passing across the saltbush and spinifex that clung stubbornly to the winter-hardened ground. The sunlight caught the dust hanging in the air, turning the space around us into a slow-motion snowfall of gold, each mote glinting like it had a secret.

Mum’s car looked different now.

Not just because it had come to rescue us, but because it looked ready. Like it had been packed for something more than just a retrieval. The silver paint had turned matte with red dust, especially around the wheels and lower panels, where it clung in thick smears, darkening to the colour of dried blood.

It sat low, heavier than I remembered—weighted down not just by luggage, but by something else. A plan. A departure. A decision.

The back seat was filled with duffel bags and backpacks. My pink suitcase sat on top, the unicorn sticker still there, but scratched and faded, its horn half peeled off. It looked ridiculous now—small and soft in a landscape that didn’t care about stickers or children or bedtime stories. A plastic shopping bag bulged with food wrappers and crumpled maps, the edges curling in the dry air.

I stopped walking.

Something fluttered inside my chest—half-hope, half-warning.

“Does that mean we’re going home?” I asked, pointing at the bags.

Mum had one hand on the boot. The metal must’ve been cold from the overnight chill, but she didn’t flinch.

She paused. Her shadow stretched long behind her, reaching back toward us across the red dirt.

Then she turned.

Smiling.

But not all the way.

The corners of her mouth lifted, but her eyes stayed sharp. Alert. They scanned the space behind us—the building, the scrub, the sky. Watching for… what? Someone? Something?

“Not exactly, sweetheart.”

She crouched in front of me, brushing my fringe back with her fingers. They felt rough—cracked from wind and worry. Her thumb left a dusty streak across my temple, painting me with the same ochre that coated the world.

“We’re going on a little trip instead. Just us. To Brisbane.”

“Brisbane?” I repeated, blinking against the dust. The word felt out of place. Too green. Too far. Like trying to say ocean in the middle of a drought.

She nodded. “You remember your cousins? Aunty Amelia’s kids? We’re going to see them for a while.”

A breeze stirred then, low and dry. It carried the scent of eucalyptus—clean and sharp—from a stand of ghost gums huddled along a shallow creek bed. Their white bark shimmered faintly in the light, bone-pale against the red.

“Oh,” I said. I looked at Mack.

Something had changed in him.

His posture shifted—not just rigid now, but tense. His shoulders hunched in, his arms stiff at his sides. His hands curled slightly, not quite fists but close. A drop of sweat slid down his face, cutting a line through the dust and disappearing into the dry ground beneath him, leaving no trace.

“What?” he said. “Now? Why?”

A small lizard skittered from a rock nearby, freezing when it sensed our presence. Its tiny chest pulsed with shallow breaths before it darted away, slipping into a crack in the parched earth.

I felt like doing the same.

Mum stood again, brushing dust from her jeans. The movement sent a small cloud of red powder drifting from the fabric, catching briefly in the light before falling soundlessly back to the earth. It clung to her at the edges—her cuffs, her hems—as if the land itself wasn’t quite ready to let her go.

“It’s just for a bit, Mack,” she said, her voice light in a way that didn’t match her face. “Things are… complicated right now. I thought it would be good for you both to have a change of scene. Some fresh air. Aunty Amelia has space, and Leif and Astrid will be happy to see you.”

Mack’s eyes narrowed.

He didn’t blink. The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly against the glare, but not enough to soften his expression. He looked carved—jaw set, shoulders tense, mouth pressed into a hard line.

“We’re just leaving?” he said. “Just like that?”

His tone was flat, but careful. Deliberate. It made something inside me twist. It was the voice he used when he was trying not to shout. The voice Dad used when he was holding something in too tight. Like every word had been measured, weighed, placed exactly where it needed to go so it wouldn’t spill over and break something.

“Yes,” Mum said quickly.

Then she softened it, her fingers brushing instinctively at her collarbone, where a pendant used to hang. Her hand hovered there a moment too long—a nervous habit I remembered from late-night arguments in the kitchen, when she thought we were asleep and couldn’t hear the way voices changed when they stopped pretending.

“You’ve had a rough couple of days,” she went on. “I think a break will do us all good.”

Above us, the sky stretched wide and empty. An endless, brittle blue. Winter-clear. It looked cold, but the sun still stung our skin, pressing down with a dry intensity that felt like it came from within the earth itself. Heat shimmered off the dirt road, blurring the edges of the world, so it was impossible to tell where the ground ended and the sky began.

I was still trying to catch up.

“But what about Charlie?” I asked, my mind suddenly filled with the image of our black Kelpie—muddy paws, happy eyes, always underfoot. “She’s not coming?”

From somewhere nearby, the high whine of insects rose—faint, persistent. A winter buzz beneath the silence. In a twisted mulga tree not far from the car, two galahs sat side by side on a branch, grooming each other in slow, deliberate movements. Their rose-coloured chests flashed like something alive in the middle of all this dry brown.

Mum bent slightly to meet my eyes.

“Your dad’s going to bring Charlie,” she said, her voice soft and matter-of-fact. “He’ll meet us there soon. Probably in a few days.”

The way she said it didn’t change.

But her eyes did.

Just a flicker. Like a curtain twitching in the breeze. Like a light dimming for half a second, then returning too quickly.

Mack saw it. I felt him see it.

He hadn’t moved, but something about his stance shifted—harder now. Arms folded across his chest, not casually but like armour. His jaw clenched once, twice. The muscle beneath his cheek pulsed rhythmically, as if something was trying to get out.

He didn’t ask another question.

He didn’t call her out.

He just looked at her—long and slow. Like he could read everything she hadn’t said. Like he could see the shape of the truth hiding in the negative space between her words.

I turned toward the car.

The silver gleam of it hurt my eyes. It looked too bright. Too ready.

It should have looked like safety. Like homecoming.

But it didn’t.

Something inside fluttered—hope trying to rise, and something else weighing it down. Something heavier. A whisper of warning with no shape or name.

I wanted to believe her.

That this was just a trip. That Dad would bring Charlie. That a few days from now, I’d wake up somewhere green, with cousins and cereal and warm showers. That things could go back.

Back to before.

Before the testers. Before the building. Before the man with empty eyes.

But when I looked back at the old building—rusted, worn, scabbed with time—I felt something cold under my ribs.

It sat on the land like an old wound. Not bleeding, but not healed.

Its walls sighed like they were trying to disappear into the dirt. The metal roof caught the sun and flared with a light so sharp it made my eyes water—a halo around a forgotten ghost.

It didn’t want to be remembered. And somehow, I knew we’d never really leave it behind.

Mum smiled.

But the smile was wrong. Too small. Too bright. Like something you put on when the truth is too much.

And I knew, deep in the quiet part of myself, that home wasn’t a place anymore.

It was a moving target. And none of us were aiming in the same direction.

Even if no one said it out loud.

The car door creaked when I opened it. That long, dragging kind of creak that always sounded louder when everything else was quiet. Like the metal didn’t want to be moved—like it was complaining about being disturbed after baking in the sun all morning.

It echoed across the flat stillness, startling the pair of galahs from the mulga tree. Their rose-pink bodies burst into the sky with indignant squawks, flashes of colour against the hard winter blue. They circled once, then disappeared beyond the ghost gums.

I climbed in first.

The seatbelt was stiff, the webbing dry and scratchy as I yanked it across my chest with both hands. It clicked into place, but not smoothly—I had to tug and wriggle a bit, the buckle catching, like it hadn’t been used in a long time.

The seat beneath me was warm, not hot like in summer, but warm in that sneaky, low-burn kind of way—the vinyl having soaked up hours of sunlight through the glass. It radiated heat through the back of my jumper and made the backs of my legs prickle. I shifted, tucking my feet up to sit sideways for a moment, waiting for the heat to soften into something bearable.

The air inside was stale. Closed-up. Thick with dust and something sweet-sour—like old fruit juice spilt months ago and never properly wiped up. The kind of smell that catches in your throat when you’re already tired, already hungry.

A tissue, yellowed from sun, curled on the dashboard like a shrivelled leaf. It fluttered faintly in the breeze from a cracked window. Somewhere behind my seat, a plastic bag rustled as I leaned back—probably emergency supplies thrown together in panic. Bottles of water. Snacks. Wet wipes. Things that belonged in glove boxes and backpacks, not in the middle of nowhere.

Through the windscreen, the outback stretched out ahead of us—vast and unchanging. Rust-coloured dirt, scrappy clumps of spinifex and saltbush, and the line where the land met the sky always just out of reach. The horizon shimmered with heat haze, even in winter, turning everything beyond into wobbly ghosts of themselves.

Far in the distance, a wedge-tailed eagle circled on silent wings, riding the high currents without a single flap, watching the earth with its sharp, ancient eyes.

Mack got in beside me.

He didn’t say anything. Not even a sigh.

But the space between us felt huge. Even though our shoulders almost touched, it felt like we were each on our own planet.

He pulled the door shut with a firm thump that seemed to echo through my chest. Then folded his arms across his chest and stared straight ahead. His profile was sharp against the glass—jaw clenched, lips a tight line. He looked older in that moment. Not like a boy anymore. Not even like my brother. Just… like someone who had already seen too much.

The sun hit his face through the window, casting lines across his skin and making the shadows beneath his eyes deeper, like bruises that wouldn’t fade.

Outside, the breeze picked up again. Not warm, not cold. Just dry. It swept across the ground in brief bursts, lifting loose dust into tiny whirlwinds that spun and vanished in seconds, like they’d never been there at all.

Mum climbed in last.

She paused with the door half open, one hand on the roof, as if gathering herself. Then she slid in, pulled the door shut behind her, and just… sat there.

Her hands hovered over the steering wheel for a moment—uncertain, like they didn’t trust themselves—before finally gripping it. Tight. So tight her knuckles turned white. Her shoulders rose and stayed there, like she was bracing for something that hadn’t arrived yet.

A single bead of sweat rolled down the side of her face, catching the light like a jewel. It slipped into her hairline without being noticed.

The keys were already in the ignition. She turned them sharply.

The engine coughed. Once. Then again. Then finally caught, shuddering to life like something reluctantly waking from too-long sleep. It rumbled low, like it wasn’t entirely convinced it wanted to go anywhere.

She reached up to adjust the mirror.

Then froze.

Just for a second.

Her eyes caught the reflection of the building before us—and something passed across her face. Quick, but unmistakable.

A flicker of recognition. Or fear. Or memory.

Maybe all three.

Her lips moved. I don’t think she meant to speak out loud, but the words came anyway. So quiet I might have imagined them. But I didn’t.

“We just need to get out of here.”

Not to us. To herself.

A whisper. A vow. A promise. Or maybe a warning.

She shifted into reverse. The gearstick ground in protest, as if the car itself wanted to stay put.

Outside, the dust swirled lazily around the tyres. The building grew smaller in the mirror. But it didn’t disappear.

Not really.

The car bumped over the uneven ground, jolting us like loose pieces inside a shaken box. Pebbles pinged against the undercarriage—a sharp, irregular percussion that made me think of brittle bones snapping under pressure. The tyres slipped in the loose earth, sending up plumes of red dust that curled and swirled around us like smoke from an invisible fire.

Mum tapped the brake too quickly.

We jerked forward, the seatbelt tightening across my chest as the car shuddered, then resumed its slow crawl—rolling forward now, down the track, away from the old mine building. The gravel beneath the tyres crackled like teeth grinding together in a locked jaw.

I looked back.

Through the rear window, the building grew smaller with every metre, retreating into the empty stillness of the land. It didn’t look like something dangerous anymore. From this distance, it looked like something that had been dead a long time—like a carcass left in the sun, picked clean by time and wind.

Dust trailed behind us, catching the early light in soft spirals, delicate and slow, like the last exhale of something too tired to breathe anymore. The roof was partly shadowed, and the place where the dark-eyed man had stepped through the metal… it was nothing now. Just rust and wind. A blank, broken wall. A forgotten corner of the outback.

The building didn’t look magic. Or haunted. Or dangerous.

It just looked tired.

Like a giant hunched down in the scrub, too old to chase anything, too weary to remember what it was supposed to guard. A relic of human effort, long ago swallowed by a landscape that didn’t care who built what, or why.

And yet… we had seen it. What happened there. What shouldn’t have happened there.

A man stepping through metal like it was mist. A girl with scared eyes being dragged into something that wasn't a place at all.

It didn’t fit—not with school lunchboxes and seatbelt clicks and bedtime stories. Not with cereal bowls and Sunday laundry and Dad’s muddy boots by the door. But it had happened. Whether the world agreed with us or not.

I kept watching until I couldn’t anymore.

Until the red dirt gave way to gravel, and the gravel became road. Until the heat shimmer took hold of the horizon, bending it like liquid, hiding everything beyond in a wavy, flickering veil. Like memory trying to protect itself by blurring the edges.

Now the mulga trees lined the road like mourners—bent and twisted by years of wind and frost, their branches reaching upward in slow agony. Winter didn’t bring snow out here, just silence and dry breath and cold nights that crept in fast and hard.

A mob of kangaroos stood half-hidden in the scrub, shaded by rock. They didn’t move. Just watched us pass. Their ears twitched, eyes wide and unblinking. Alert. As if they knew we didn’t belong here. Not really.

I leaned against the window. The glass was warm from the sun, almost too warm, like skin with a fever. It hummed faintly against my cheek as the car rolled on, and I felt the low vibration in my skull, steady and monotonous. My teeth chattered slightly—not from cold, but from the motion.

I exhaled. A faint fog mark formed and vanished almost immediately, erased by the winter sunlight streaming through the glass, stronger now, unfiltered, relentless. The heater whispered from the vents, blowing tepid breath that smelled of dust and plastic. It barely warmed anything. The winter had settled into the car’s bones and refused to leave.

Outside, the world moved slowly.

Like it didn’t trust the future. Like it wasn’t entirely convinced we should be heading into it.

Red earth. Grey-green scrub. Termite mounds standing like ancient sentinels. A lizard darting into shade, gone before my eye could track it.

Time worked differently out here. It didn’t tick or chime. It drifted.

Measured in light and shadow. In the way the sun moved across stones older than any of us. In the slow disappearance of bootprints and tyre tracks into dust.

I didn’t know where we were going.

But I knew one thing. I didn’t want to go back.

Not to the abandoned building. Not to the wall. Not to that moment where something behind the world reached through and reminded us that nothing—nothing—was as safe as we liked to pretend.

That some stories were real. And some nightmares couldn’t be unseen.

Ahead, the road shimmered with false water—those ghost puddles that always disappeared the closer you got. The blue dome of the sky pressed down, vast and brilliant and terrifying, like it could swallow us if it decided to.

One small cloud drifted low on the horizon, thin and frayed and far too distant to offer shade. It looked lonely.

The car hummed forward, a single fragile vessel in a landscape that had watched generations come and go without blinking. A place where stories soaked into the dirt, where secrets stayed buried, not because no one remembered them, but because the land kept them.

And ours—mine, Mack’s, the girl, the man—was in there now, too.

Part of it.

One more secret for the outback to keep.