The Road That Isn’t on the Map

“You know something’s wrong when even the road feels like it’s trying to get away from you.”

The road changed without telling us.

One minute we were gliding across bitumen—smooth, orderly, familiar—the faded white lines stretching ahead like the lines in my school exercise book, keeping everything neat and expected. The tyres made a soft hum against the surface, a comforting sort of background noise that sounded like things working the way they were meant to. Predictable. Civilised.

Then, suddenly—without a word, without warning—the road was gone.

There was a sharp tug at my side as the car veered left, hard and fast, and my whole body slid across the seat. Ribbons slipped from my lap and vanished into the gap between the seat and the door with a soft thud, one fabric arm sticking up like she was reaching back for me. My shoulder knocked the door. My teeth clicked together. Everything that had felt gentle a moment ago was now rough and juddering, the tyres crunching over gravel with a noise like gravel in a blender—angry, unpredictable, loud.

It wasn’t just the road that changed.

The car changed with it.

No longer gliding, it lurched and bounced like a boat in rough water, the suspension groaning under each uneven patch. I gripped the edge of the seat with one hand and the door handle with the other, bracing myself against the constant jostling. My spine was a tuning fork for every bump, every hollow beneath the wheels. The steering wheel twitched in Mum’s hands like it wanted to pull away from her altogether.

But she didn’t say a word.

Not a “hold on,” not a “this might be rough,” not even a grunt of acknowledgement. Just that sharp turn and the slight flicker in her eyes—seen only for a second in the rear-view mirror, before they locked forward again like twin searchlights on some distant target only she could see.

There hadn’t been an indicator.

There hadn’t been a sign.

It felt less like she’d chosen to turn and more like the car had simply decided to take a different route, and she’d let it.

Mack’s eyes scanned back and forth.

“I don’t think this is the right road,” he said.

His voice was calm, but not casual. It had that edge it got when he was trying very hard not to panic—low, deliberate, the kind of tone you use around wild animals or Mum when she was in one of her brittle moods. Like he already knew the answer but wanted to give her a chance to correct him. To explain. To say something that made sense.

Mum didn’t even glance at him.

“It’s a shortcut,” she said. Too fast. Too exact. “North-east. Cuts off the bends. Too many towns down that way.”

She said it like that was the worst possible thing: too many towns. As if civilisation itself had become dangerous. As if people were what we needed to avoid.

Her hands betrayed her again.

Fingers twitching on the wheel.

Knuckles white.

That tight tension in her shoulders returning like a habit she couldn’t break, the kind of strain that made her neck disappear into her coat collar, made her jaw clench and her eyes blink less.

Mack turned in his seat, leaning himself closer to the driver’s seat.

“But this doesn’t look like it goes towards Dubbo. Look, it’s curving—”

“We’re not going to Dubbo,” Mum snapped, the words slicing the air with a force that shocked me.

It was the kind of voice that made people step back. Not a shout, exactly—worse than that. A whip-crack of sound that left a sting in its silence. It made my stomach go tight and cold, like I’d just heard a plate smash on the kitchen tiles.

I froze.

My pencil hovered, mid-cloud, its tip trembling just above the page. The fluffy outlines I’d been shading suddenly felt ridiculous—useless distractions in a world that had just tilted sideways again. The page beneath my hand was warm from the sun streaming through the glass, but it no longer felt comforting. The corners had started to curl upwards, like even the paper was trying to get away from the atmosphere inside the car.

Mum sucked in a breath. I could hear it—tight and wheezy, like it was dragging its feet through her chest. As if every inhalation now required negotiation with something inside her—panic, maybe, or grief, or some other emotion she refused to name.

“We’re not supposed to be going anywhere,” she said, and her voice was lower now, but every word had edges. “We’re doing what’s safe.”

She spat the word safe like it tasted off. Like it was something she’d bitten into expecting sweetness and instead got rot.

The silence that followed wasn’t really silent.

It was full of that word, hanging in the space between us like a question none of us dared ask: safe from what?

Mack didn’t argue.

But he didn’t accept it, either.

He folded his arms across his chest—not gently, not with the quiet respect he usually showed for things like instructions or explanations. He shoved them with a heavy huff.

The car rattled on, the road beneath us kicking up dust and loose stones. It felt personal now, the way it jostled us—like the earth itself was annoyed we were here, resenting our passage over its unpaved scars. The tyres thudded and scraped, every dip and rut sending a fresh shiver up through the chassis and into our bones.

No one spoke.

The car bounced sharply over a sudden pothole, throwing us against our seatbelts. Mum swore under her breath—just one word, half-muttered, half-hissed through clenched teeth. A short, sharp sound that felt like it was meant for herself. Then another jolt, and this time she overcorrected, the wheel twitching beneath her hands as if it was trying to escape her grip. She grabbed tighter, muttering again—prayer or curse, I couldn’t tell. Maybe both.

I curled my fingers tighter around my pencil. It had left a faint indent on the paper where it had hovered too long, pressing without marking. I didn’t move it. I just stared at the gap it had made, that fragile contact point between what I was doing and what I couldn’t control.

The world outside blurred with motion, but it no longer felt like we were going anywhere.

It felt like we were fleeing.

The landscape opened up around us as we left behind even the pretence of civilisation that came with maintained roads. There was no edge now, no boundary to anything—just the road scarring its way forward through paddocks that stretched out in all directions, flat and sun-bleached and endless. They were the colour of old bones and dried blood, yellow and brown and red in faded, tired layers. The grass wasn’t golden. It wasn’t hopeful. It looked dead, like it might turn to ash if you touched it, as though it had stopped trying to be alive and had simply chosen to remain, out of habit.

Sheep dotted the fields—if you could call them that—scattered like dropped laundry, grey and heavy-looking. From a distance they seemed like boulders someone had tried to herd. They moved slowly, or not at all, their coats matted with dust and something darker that might’ve been mud, might’ve been something else. A few of them lifted their heads as we passed, eyes dull and glassy, the kind of look that said they'd stopped expecting much from the world a long time ago.

It felt like the land was holding its breath. Like even the wind had chosen not to stir it.

Old corrugated sheds rose from the plains like ancient relics. They looked less like buildings now and more like husks—skeletal remains of someone’s big ideas. One had a roof slumped in the middle, caving like it had finally let go. Another stood at a crooked angle, door swinging half-off its hinges. The worst one, or maybe the best, had a tree growing straight through the centre, its bark dark and cracked, the trunk having burst through the roof like it was escaping something underground. The iron walls had split to let it through. The whole thing looked both triumphant and ruined.

I stared at it as we passed, heart tight. Something about it stayed with me, like a whisper you couldn’t quite make out. Like it was trying to say something important, but too slowly for the human ear to catch.

Then the sign came.

It emerged out of the haze like a dream turning into a nightmare. Rusted legs, twisted frame, paint peeling in long strips like sunburnt skin. The name on it still clung on, black letters wobbling against a background the colour of smokers’ teeth.

GUNDOWNEE – 47 km

Mack leaned forward, his face close to the windscreen as though that might make it clearer, more real. Then he said it aloud, slowly, like testing the word for splinters.

“I don’t think that’s where we’re supposed to be going.”

Gundownee. I'd never heard of it. It didn’t sound like a town so much as a warning. A place not meant for people like us. A secret kept by the dust.

Mum didn’t flinch, but something in her shifted. Her jaw moved, a subtle grinding motion like she was trying not to bite through something invisible. She didn’t glance at Mack, didn’t acknowledge the sign, didn’t answer the question that hovered behind his words.

Her hands curled tighter around the steering wheel, the skin over her knuckles stretched thin, translucent. “We’re not supposed to be going anywhere,” she said again, and it sounded like a spell this time, like the phrase might hold back whatever it was she thought might find us. “We’re avoiding trouble. That’s all.”

But the word trouble landed differently now. It didn’t mean a flat tyre or a broken radiator or a detour too long for the petrol gauge. It meant something with shape and shadow. Something that could follow you. Something with breath and eyes.

Mack inhaled like he was going to argue. His mouth opened—just enough for me to see the line of resistance behind it—but then he caught himself. Something about the way Mum was sitting—rigid, too still—made him swallow whatever he’d been about to say.

He turned back to the window, his reflection in the glass almost ghost-like. His mouth was a flat line. His hands clenched once, twice, then rested in his lap like he didn’t trust them to stay still without supervision.

Outside, the paddocks stretched on, silent and watchful. And somewhere ahead, Gundownee waited.