The Forgotten Place

“Some buildings don’t fall down—they just give up slowly, like they’re waiting for someone to notice they were never meant to last.”

The road felt longer when we were walking it.

It twisted through the scrub like it was trying to lose us, snaking between clumps of spinifex and saltbush that reached for our ankles with spiny fingers. The red dirt stuck to our shoes, soft in some places, cracked and hard in others. Each step released tiny puffs of crimson dust that settled on our socks and legs like a fine mist. Tiny stones rolled under my soles, and I had to stop every few steps to pull burrs from my socks. The sharp little seed pods clung to the fabric with fierce determination, as if they'd found their chance to travel and weren't letting go.

Mack didn’t say anything, just kept walking, his shadow stretched out behind him like it didn’t want to be left in the cold. His shoulders were hunched slightly. The phone she'd given him was tucked securely in his front pocket; I could see its outline against the fabric.

The sun was still climbing, casting that pale winter light that made everything look too sharp—too clear. It was the kind of brightness that didn’t warm your skin, just made your eyes squint. The air hadn’t softened. It clung to the back of my throat, thin and dry, and slipped icy fingers down the gap at my collar.

I hugged Ribbons closer. I didn't ask how much further. I didn't ask anything. I just followed, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other. Left, right, left, right. The rhythm of walking became a kind of comfort, a task I could focus on instead of thinking about Grandma driving away or the bang we'd heard back at the house or what it meant that Grandpa hadn't come with us.

My throat felt tight and dry, not just from thirst but from holding back all the questions that were too big, too scary to let out. I swallowed them down like medicine—bitter but necessary.

The trees here weren't like the ones near town. They were thinner, more twisted, with long white trunks that looked like they'd peeled too many times and couldn't remember how to stand up properly. Ghost gums, Dad had called them once. Trees that had forgotten they were trees. Dead branches reached out across the sky like claws, black against the deepening blue. A few cockatoos screeched somewhere far off, but we didn't see them. We didn't see anything but bush and dust and occasional lizards skittering away from our approaching footsteps.

The track narrowed as we walked, becoming little more than a suggestion of a path. In places, it vanished entirely beneath drifts of dead leaves or patches of loose stone, forcing us to guess where it might pick up again. Each time, Mack would pause, survey the land ahead, then choose a direction with a certainty I didn't understand but desperately wanted to believe in.

“How do you know where to go?” I finally asked, my voice sounding small and strange after so much silence.

He glanced back at me, his face half in shadow. “I don't, really. Just... following what looks most like a track.”

It wasn't the confident answer I'd hoped for, but at least it was honest. That was Mack—no false comfort, just the truth as he saw it.

The wind picked up, sending eddies of dust dancing across our path. It carried the scent of eucalyptus and something else—a mineral tang, like old coins or the taste of blood when you bite your tongue. The breeze played with my hair, tugging strands free from my ponytail to whip against my cheeks. I tucked them back, again and again, until I gave up and let them fly.

Then we came around a bend — and there it was.

At first, I thought it was a rock formation or maybe an old water tank tipped on its side. But then Mack stopped and pointed, and I looked closer.

The building sat low against the horizon, half-swallowed by the land around it. It squatted in a small depression, as if it had been slowly sinking into the earth over decades. Its roof sloped in a strange way, like it had once been flat but had started to sag in the middle from too many years of heat and storm. Corrugated metal sheets, once silver but now dulled to the colour of tarnished coins, were peeling away at the edges like scabs lifting from an old wound. One of the corners had crumbled inward, and rust streaked the walls like dried blood, revealing the skeleton of metal beams beneath.

Broken windows gaped open like missing teeth, and thorny weeds had grown up around the base, clawing at the walls like they were trying to drag the place back underground. Bindis and caltrop burrs formed a defensive perimeter around the structure, nature's warning to keep away.

It didn't look like a building, really.

It looked like a giant crouching animal, half asleep, half waiting. Something ancient and wounded that had crawled here to die in private, only to be frozen in its final moments.

We didn’t speak. We just stood there, letting the silence press against our ears. The only sound was the soft whistle of wind through the broken windows and the distant creak of something metal shifting in the cold.

Above it, the sky was pale and sharp, streaked with winter light—thin whites and soft yellows that made the building look darker, like a shadow with its own intent. I could just make out the faint remains of painted lettering above what must have been the main entrance. Most of it was gone, but the letters “…ING CO.” remained, peeling but stubborn.

“Mining company,” Mack said quietly, following my gaze. “It's an old mine office or storage building or something.”

I thought of Dad, who had a contract with the mines. He knew places like this—half-forgotten, fenced off, stamped with danger signs and dust. He might have known where we were, if only he were here. The thought stung, and I pushed it away.

Mack adjusted the strap on his bag and started forward, picking his way carefully through the carpet of burrs and debris. I followed in his footsteps, placing my feet exactly where he had to minimise the chance of stepping on something sharp.

The ground near the building was uneven. Bits of metal poked up from the dirt — old bolts, twisted piping, something that might've been a fence once. Rusted machinery parts lay half-buried in the soil, their purpose long forgotten. There was a concrete slab out front, cracked straight through the middle, with weeds growing from the fracture like green veins. Nature slowly reclaiming what had once been stolen from it.

We circled around to what must've once been the entrance. The frame still held a door, or part of one — it had rusted off its hinges and lay bent inside, half-buried in the dirt. The metal was warped and pitted, like something had been gnawing at it for years.

Mack stepped over it first, then turned and helped me across. His hand was warm and steady, the only familiar thing in this alien place. The inside smelled of metal, dust, and something else I couldn't name — old paper, maybe. Something dry and sour.

As we stepped further inside, tiny creatures scurried away from our footfalls—beetles and spiders retreating to safer shadows. A lizard darted across the floor and disappeared into a crack in the wall.

The floor was mostly concrete, cold underfoot and scattered with leaves and dry twigs that must've blown in through the broken windows. Years of dust had settled in drifts against the walls, undisturbed until our arrival sent tiny particles dancing in the shafts of filtered sunlight. I saw pieces of broken furniture — a chair missing one leg, a table with a crack running through the top, a filing cabinet tipped sideways with its drawers half open and rusted shut. Someone's workspace, abandoned mid-task decades ago.

The walls had once been painted a dull grey, but most of the paint had peeled away, revealing splotches of something pinkish beneath. One wall still had a safety poster, its corners curled and stained by water damage from some long-ago rain that had found its way inside. It showed a cartoon man wearing a hardhat and holding up his hand like he was about to give someone a high five. The words underneath had faded, but I could still make out part of the sentence: “…Accidents start when safety stops.”

It gave me a weird feeling. Like someone had once been very sure this place was important — and now it was just bones. Just the forgotten skeleton of human purpose, abandoned to the elements. How could something go from being so necessary that people made posters about it to being so forgotten?

Mack walked ahead, his torch flicking across the room in a slow sweep. The beam caught on something shiny, then moved on. He'd taken it from his bag as soon as we'd entered—the little metal torch from Grandpa's shed that we weren't supposed to touch. Its light seemed feeble against the darkness, casting more shadows than illumination.

The ceiling was high, disappearing into gloom above us. Somewhere up there, something rustled. Bats, maybe, or birds that had made nests in the rafters. I tried not to think about what else might be watching us from the darkness.

Against the back wall, half-covered in cobwebs and dust, was a big map tacked to a board. Most of the ink had faded, but I could still see lines and numbers — grids, maybe, or tunnels. The paper was yellowed and curling at the edges, held in place by rusty drawing pins. Someone had written something across the bottom in thick black pen, long ago: "SOUTH SHAFT RESEALED – AUG 1987."

Almost forty years ago. Before I was born. Before Mack was born. Maybe even before Mum was born. The thought made my skin prickle. This place had been standing here, alone and forgotten, for longer than I'd been alive.

Mack didn't seem to notice the map. He was moving toward a line of metal lockers along one side of the room. Most of them were open or dented, their doors hanging at odd angles. A few still had numbers stuck to the front, the paint chipped but legible. One near the end had something scratched into the metal. I squinted, stepping closer as Mack's torch beam passed across it.

It said: S. Harlow

Just those two words. A name, maybe. A person. It didn't mean anything to me, but the letters looked old — not scratched by a child, but by someone who'd done it on purpose, long ago. Someone who wanted to leave a mark, to say “I was here” in a place where nothing else remained of them.

I wondered who S. Harlow was. If they were still alive somewhere, or if they'd died, never knowing their scratched name would outlast them in this forgotten place. I reached out and touched the letters, feeling the grooves beneath my fingertips. The metal was cold.

The torchlight flicked away, and the name disappeared into shadow.

Mack was opening locker doors, peering inside each one before moving to the next. Most were empty, but occasionally, he'd find something—a crumpled paper, a rusted tool, once a hardhat so brittle with age that it crumbled when he touched it.

“What are you looking for?” I asked, my voice sounding too loud in the quiet building.

He shrugged. “Dunno. Something useful, maybe.”

I wasn't sure what “useful” meant in a place like this, but I started looking too. A thorough inspection of the toppled filing cabinet yielded nothing but empty folders and a nest of long-dead insects. The desk drawers were either stuck or empty, save for paperclips gone orange with rust.

In one corner, partially hidden by fallen ceiling tiles, I found what might have been a break room. A sink with taps that no longer turned. Cupboards with doors hanging open, revealing empty spaces where food or dishes might once have been. A table bolted to the floor, its surface covered in years of dust. And strangest of all, a calendar still hanging on the wall, frozen forever on August 1987, the same month mentioned on the map. The picture showed a beach somewhere tropical, a jarring splash of blue and green in this world of red and grey.

I walked over to one of the windows. The glass had been shattered so long ago that even the shards on the ground had gone cloudy with age and exposure. I could see out across the dry field we'd just come from. The breeze had died down, leaving an eerie stillness.

We were alone.

Really alone.

And this place wasn't just empty. It was forgotten. Abandoned. A place where time had stopped and the world had moved on without noticing.

It was still colder inside than it was outside — and that hadn’t changed since we’d arrived. You’d think the metal walls would’ve soaked up some of the afternoon sun, but they didn’t. The air inside the building didn’t move. It just sat there, thick and strange, like it didn’t know what to do with us. Like we were guests in a place that had long since stopped making room for people.

Even after what had already felt like hours in the space, it hadn’t stopped feeling wrong.

The temperature seemed to drop with each minute, like the building was leaking cold from some place unseen — as if time itself was pouring frost through the cracks in the rusted roof. I pulled my cardigan tighter around me, wishing again that I’d brought the thicker jumper. Mack had offered me his hoodie earlier, but I knew he needed it more.

The smell was worse now, not because it had changed — but because I’d grown used to it enough to notice more of it.

Metal. Dust. And that sourness that had crept into our noses the first time we’d opened the door.

It wasn’t food-gone-wrong sour or the kind you find in your shoes after camp. It was heavier. Older. Like the scent of something that had been forgotten too long and then disturbed. The way the shed at home had smelt that time I found a dead bird under the flowerpots — like time had stopped for it in there.

I tried breathing through my mouth again, even though it didn’t help. The air clung to my tongue — dusty, metallic, stale — like licking a coin that had been dropped in dirt and left in a drawer for years.

The floor still crunched when we walked, every step a tiny betrayal. A reminder that we didn’t belong here. That the building didn’t want us. The snapped chair legs, the curling posters, the collapsed shelving — it all seemed like part of something that had been abandoned on purpose. Left behind, and quickly forgotten.

But we had nowhere else to go.

Mack moved slowly across the room, each step echoing just slightly on the bare concrete. He had turned the torch back off — for now. Enough light crept through the broken windows to cast long, slanted beams across the floor, hazy with dust that floated like ash in the still air.

The corners of the building were dark, but not fully. Just shadowed in that way old buildings get when they’ve been closed up too long — light and dark wrestling quietly for the edges.

When Mack passed the old mining map pinned to the wall, the faint daylight caught it at an angle. For a moment, the faded lines seemed to shift — not really moving, but softening at the edges. Like they were trying to blur themselves into something else. Like they didn’t quite remember what they used to mean.

He paused, just for a breath, and stared at it.

Then he moved on.

Outside, a single bird gave a low cry, somewhere far off — thin, reedy, like a question nobody wanted to answer. Then silence returned. Heavier than before.

Mack returned to the back of the room where we’d first seen the old mattress — half-collapsed against a low wall beneath a boarded-up window. It had slouched there like a creature that had given up trying to stand, its sides bowed and its stuffing lumpy and uneven. The cover had probably been striped once, but now it was a tired grey-brown, stiff with time and dust.

He dragged it slowly toward the far corner, where two solid walls met. It was a place in the building where the wind didn’t whisper straight through the cracks. As he pulled it, the mattress made a long, scratchy sound against the concrete — like something protesting, like it had settled into its abandonment and resented being moved.

I didn’t blame it.

Little puffs of dust rose as the mattress shifted, catching the pale light streaming through the cracked windows. The motes hung there for a moment, swirling like tiny ghosts before sinking back to the floor. I wondered how many years it had been since someone had last slept on it — whether they’d known, when they walked out, that they were leaving for good.

Mack didn't speak while he worked.

The silence wasn't uncomfortable exactly, but it felt like it was filling up the room, pressing against the walls. Like if one of us spoke too loudly, the whole building might remember it was supposed to have fallen down ages ago.

He moved the broken chair legs out of the way, gathered a few loose rags and old tarp scraps from nearby, and stacked them in a pile like sandbags around the mattress. The blue tarp was stiff with age, crackling as he folded it into place. A small spider skittered out from one fold, disappearing into a crack in the floor.

“Fort,” he said finally, looking at me. “Sort of.” His voice sounded different in here—flatter, with no echo. As if the dust absorbed the sound, muffling it before it could bounce back.

I nodded, hugging Ribbons to my chest. Her familiar softness was the only comforting thing in this strange, hard place. I didn't move. I was sitting on an overturned crate that wobbled every time I breathed. The wood was splintered at the edges, and something was written on the side in faded black letters—“PROPERTY OF BH MINING CO.” Whatever that was.

He rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a wrapped sandwich — the last one from the fridge at Grandma's, I guessed — and walked over.

He crouched in front of me and handed it over.

“Here,” he said. “But try not to eat it all now, alright? We don't know when we'll get more.” There was a new gravity to his voice, a seriousness I wasn't used to hearing. Big brother had become something else in the space of a day—provider, protector, the only familiar thing in a world turned strange.

The clingwrap crinkled in my hands. I peeled it back slowly, like that might make it last longer. The bread was a bit soggy around the edges, and the ham had stuck to the wrap, but I didn't care. My stomach growled as soon as I smelt it, a loud complaint that made me realise I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I took a bite and chewed slowly, trying to make it last. The taste was ordinary—just ham and butter on white bread—but somehow it tasted like the most important sandwich in the world. Like home in edible form.

Mack sat beside me and pulled his knees up to his chest. The light through the broken windows caught only part of his face, leaving the rest in muted shadow. In that half-light, he looked older. The soft roundness that usually marked him as my big brother — but still a kid — seemed gone. In its place were sharper lines, a jaw set tight with something I couldn’t name. Not anger. Not fear. Just… knowing.

“We'll be okay,” he said quietly, though I hadn't asked. “Grandma wouldn't have left us if she didn't think we'd be safe here.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice to remain steady if I spoke.

The room got colder.

The metal walls seemed to draw the heat from the air, storing it away somewhere unreachable. I could feel the chill rising from the concrete floor, seeping through my shoes and into my bones. My breath made small clouds in front of my face, wispy phantoms that disappeared as quickly as they formed.

We didn't say much after that.

What was there to say? Questions neither of us could answer? Fears better left unspoken? The silence felt safer somehow, as if putting words to our situation would make it more real, more frightening.

The wind started whispering through the broken windows, tugging at the bits of torn paper still clinging to the walls. One poster flapped slowly — the cartoon safety man with the missing fingers — until it gave up and tore loose, drifting to the floor with a scratchy sigh. Like the last employee finally clocking out for the night, decades late.

The building creaked above us. Not in a way that said it was falling, but in a way that said it was remembering. Old beams settling. Roof joints flexing. Like bones being asked to move after years of stillness. Each sound made me tense slightly, wondering if this would be the day the structure finally decided to collapse completely.

But it held. As it had held for all the years since it was abandoned. As it would probably hold long after we were gone.

I finished half my sandwich and tucked the rest back in my bag, carefully folding the wrapper to save for later. In this place, even rubbish seemed precious—a link to the normal world we'd left behind. I laid down beside Mack and curled into a ball with Ribbons squashed against my chest, her worn fur pressed against my cheek.

The mattress smelled musty but wasn't as uncomfortable as it looked. Years of dust had settled into a strange, yielding softness beneath our tired bodies. I tried not to think about what else might be living in its depths.

I tried to imagine that we were camping. That this was just one of those pretend nights we used to have in the backyard with bedsheets strung between the trees and torches for firelight. That Mum would come in the morning with pancakes and hot chocolate, or Daddy would peek through the flap and tell us it was time for breakfast. That this was all just an elaborate game of make-believe that would end when the sun came up.

But the cold came up through the floor.

And the eeriness was real.

And there were no fairy lights strung above us, no glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to a familiar ceiling. No comforting sounds of a house settling around us—the hum of a refrigerator, the distant murmur of a television, the reassuring creak of adult footsteps checking on sleeping children.

No giggles.

No one watching over us.

Just us watching the shadows, and the building watching us back.

As if reading my thoughts, Mack reached over and squeezed my hand once, quickly. It wasn't much—just the briefest pressure of fingers against mine—but in that moment, it felt like everything. A promise. A reassurance. A reminder that whatever happened next, at least we weren't alone.