Contents

Introduction — What is Dimension6?

Dark History — Jen White

Author Loci

Time Pump — Chris McMahon

Author Loci

Tooth — Bren MacDibble

Author Loci

Going Home Sideways — S. G. Larner

Author Loci

Red in Tooth and Claw — David McDonald

Author Loci

The Pass — Jessica May Lin

Author Loci

Everything is a Graveyard — Jason Fischer

Author Loci

Lodloc and The Bear — Steve Cameron

Author Loci

Why Dimension6?

Dimension6 Magazine

Copyright

Introduction — What is Dimension6?

Keith Stevenson

Dimension6 is all about featuring and promoting talented authors – mainly from Australia, because that’s where we’re based but we’re open to all nationalities.

We do this by creating a high quality, professional electronic magazine which we then give away for free, without any Digital Rights Management entanglements. We actively encourage you to copy and share the magazine as long as you abide by the requirements of our Creative Commons Licence. That’s how we demonstrate our commitment to supporting speculative fiction.

The Annual Collection continues our mission, by charging for the same content you can get free throughout the year. Why do we do that? Because some websites ilke Amazon’s Kindle platform don’t carry ‘free’ books except under special – and some producers might say onerous – requirements.

So we’re charging you a buck to spread the word further about our talented authors, in the hopes you will think the contents worth at least that. We think they are.

Sit back and prepare to journey into Dimension6.

Dark History — Jen White

In the whole of this small town not a thing stirs but us, all its people having either left or died decades ago. The weeds and the climbers and the blackberries have been taking over ever since, clumps of unexpected green emerging from underneath eaves and between slats like tufts of unruly hair. In the main street five small shops still stand, their front windows roughly boarded up. The size of them, it makes me wonder how people had managed in such small spaces. Perhaps people were littler then, or more circumscribed in their movements and so less likely to elbow each other in confined areas. Behind the shops, eleven houses sit in various stages of collapse and, further out still, a shed here and there, and the butcher’s store, and the cemetery all hung about with vines. And this is the whole of the town. In a month it will all be gone.

The air is still and quiet. I am a child of the suburbs, used to the constant background hum of civilization, of a dozen different plugged-in appliances, the sound of a hundred car engines surrounding me for kilometres. Here there is nothing, an absence. I don’t know whether to celebrate it or fear it.

We are in the kitchen of the largest house, to the left of the door that opens out into the backyard. We hunch down on our haunches over the filthy linoleum. I swing the hammer into the wall again and another chunk of plaster gives way, creating a large enough space for me to push my head and right arm through and have a feel around.

I would normally never be so destructive. I love old things; I am, after all, majoring in archaeology. I spent my childhood in a series of housing estates and in a parade of foster homes, where the history was one centimetre deep. I barely know about my grandparents, let alone anyone further back. Old objects ground me. They make me feel tethered, as if I am part of something solid. I need that feeling.

And now this little town will very soon make way for another housing estate. In the meantime, Duncan and I are here to reclaim what we can. We are only students, and we have neither the time nor the money for niceties. Besides, the company doesn’t give a damn about the houses or what we do to them. Nothing matters to them except how much they will make from the sale of the land. So we are bashing down the walls.

‘Be careful, Ange,’ I hear Duncan say.

Duncan is good at redundant statements. He says them superstitiously, as if his warnings actually spin a protective field around me. Of course I’ll be careful. There is not a lot I can do about it, though, if there really is something nasty in there.

‘See anything?’ he asks.

I can see dust, a lot of it. And there is a rotten stink as if something died in there once. There are ants, there is rat poo and dirt, cold and damp, and there is air that has been shut in for a hundred years. It smells like time.

We are searching for concealments, objects placed within the sealed spaces of buildings for the purpose of either protecting its inhabitants or harming its attackers. Wherever there is passage between outside and inside, concealments might be found. Doors, chimneys, vents, even corners, these had been regarded as perilous places, allowing entry and therefore needing protection, and where might be discovered boots, shoes, toys, garments, cats, hearts, letters, dolls, bottles of urine, sharp objects and all other manner of magic and bewitchment. I It is evidence of an alternative history running parallel to our own, a history hidden in dark voids, in liminal spaces, weaving around and around our own, a history with its own power and agency, its own DNA, influencing our lives in ways we are only dimly aware of. The practice has been widely known across Europe for centuries and yet, in all my research to date, I have found no mention anywhere of concealments in Australia. Perhaps it is a hidden history, undocumented, as if to speak or write of it would have destroyed its power. But I am sure they exist, the practice brought with them by settlers and convicts. And why not? After all, ritual is as essential to survival as food, as water. That is what I intend to prove.

Think of this wide land one hundred and fifty years ago, a continent on the far side of the planet from where those who built this house were born, a country both beautiful and strange to them, host to ungodly sights and sounds, of howlings and screechings, with every element of existence unknown and unpredictable, the very sun and stars alien in their placement, and at a time when the majority of children will die before adulthood. I would have used magic too.

And concealments, well, it is instinctive. It is the first thing we do after making our house; we place our protections around it. Even as a wild, ignorant child running through half-built houses abandoned before completion, and after adopting one of my own to play in, to pretend, I would busy myself by finding my imaginary bedroom and placing objects at each of its corners: flowers, sticks, stones. Ownership or protection or both, I don’t know, but I did it without thinking. I did it automatically.

I hunt around in the dark space with a small torch. It is nearly impossible to see anything amongst the ropey grime. Runnels of sweat trickle down from my armpits, tickling my sides. I persevere, eventually discovering a small ovoid object. After much manoeuvring I manage to grasp it, pull it out.

‘You’re full of dust,’ Duncan says.

I shake my head, spreading a halo of muck around me.

Duncan sneezes. ‘What have you got?’ he asks.

I shrug. The thing is so caked in filth it is impossible to understand its form.

I place it carefully on the plastic sheet Duncan has spread on the floor, and together we begin to brush the dirt from the object with small, careful movements. Mouse, I think. Baby rat. But gradually a recognisable shape does begin to emerge, and I see that it is a shoe, tiny and slightly pointed, and made of the softest of leather which may have once been dyed red. There are two small pearl–shaped buttons on the left to fasten the shoe on snugly. It is the footwear of a toddler or an elf.

‘What do you think?’ Duncan asks.

‘It could be,’ I say.

‘And almost as if it was waiting all these years just for us to find it,’ Duncan marvels.

It is a beautiful little object and had probably been bought or made for an adored child. It would have been a sacrifice to give this shoe up, to hide it away in the dark all those years rather than storing it in a drawer ready to take out at any time and wonder at how tiny it was and how big its wearer had grown. Or had not. The shoe is a costly thing to have concealed. What had they feared so in this household, I wonder, to hide such an item away? Why had they needed such powerful protection?

Later than night, at home, back in the city and in my apartment, I place the shoe safely in, of all places, an old shoe box, and make my notes on the find. I have bought a fine, little notebook specifically for the purpose, bound in brown leather. It’s a bit old-fashioned, I know, and normally I would just slap my notes onto the laptop, but I’m excited about the thesis and our research, and writing each day in this small leather book makes it seem more special somehow. I like the ritualistic aspect of it. I put on some Robert Johnson while I write. Crossroad Blues. What else might we find in that house? I wonder.

The house Duncan and I have chosen in which to begin our search is the largest in the town, and is built of brick where most of the others are of wood. It had been made to last, and whomever had built it had probably imagined generations of their family living there. It has five bedrooms, a good number in its day, a dining room, a lounge room, and a vast kitchen designed to feed families of ten or more. It feels solid, luxurious even, with its carpet and stained glass and ornate ceiling roses. Behind the house there is a small orchard of apricot trees, nectarines and plums, still fruiting. I imagine being young and climbing high up into one of those trees, hidden and protected. It must have been heaven for a child.

Note to self, check the official records this weekend. Find out who lived there.

It is after eleven when the phone rings. I have chosen the most ethereal, inoffensive ring tone I have been able to find, so innocuous I can barely hear it, but I still jump at the sound. I don’t have to wonder who is calling.

It’s Mum. She is in crisis again. She is always in crisis. She wants me to come.

‘I can’t, Claire,’ I tell her. ‘I’m way over on the other side of town. You know that.’

My presence wouldn’t change anything anyway, wouldn’t help.

‘You’ll have to call Dani,’ I say. ‘She’s close. Or the hospital.’

I can hear her panting into the phone, panicking about God knows what. It won’t be long before she starts telling me what a bad daughter I am.

‘I tell you what,’ I say, ‘I’ll call Dani.’ Dani is my aunt, my mother’s sister.

I hang up before she can argue. A pause, then I tap in Dani’s number.

Dani listens to what I have to say.

‘I can’t do this anymore, Angela,’ she says finally. ‘All this attention, it just feeds into it.’

‘I know, Auntie,’ I tell her, thank her anyway, and call Mum’s local mental health team, let them know about the call. I should have done that to begin with, but it is always hard for me to think clearly when I am talking to my mother. I am caught between two competing and equally powerful instincts: needing to jump whenever she calls and wanting to run as far away from her as possible, and whichever choice I make is the wrong choice. Always.

After the call I turn up the music, try to focus again on my own world. Doors, walls, bookshelf, chair. Predictable, safe, grounding. On a student’s budget I have tried to make my home as comfortable as I can. Built in the 1930s, the apartment block I live in is not far from the beach. It had probably served as holiday flats at one time. Small though it is, it has multiple entry points: doors, fireplaces, vents in every room. I wonder what objects were been placed behind these walls during its construction. What keeps me safe? Does anything?

My phone rings again. I don’t answer it.

‘You look like shit,’ Duncan says when he picks me up the following morning.

More redundancy.

I give him a look and he shuts up.

Duncan and I have been classmates all the way through university, and now we share the same thesis supervisor. We know each other well enough by now to be fairly relaxed in each other’s company. He has even invited me to his family beach house a few times, but with his family there I had felt jittery and unsure, as if I had forgotten who I was. He knows those kinds of situations don’t suit me and so he has stopped inviting me.

Duncan has brought Zed along. Zed is another of our classmates. At the moment he is asleep on the back seat, curled into a travelling blanket. All I can see of him is a thick brush of brown dreadlocks.

‘Just don’t let him take the credit,’ I tell Duncan. Zed is a bit too sharp for me to be entirely comfortable with him. He has never done me a disservice, but I am always on the alert. Not just with him, with everyone.

‘Shush,’ Duncan says. ‘He might hear you.’

‘I hope he does,’ I reply.

We stop off for our coffees, drive the rest of the way in silence. By the time we arrive the sun is only just up. Pearls of dew still shiver on blades of grass, a million tiny chandeliers. It is early spring and the world has only just begun to lose its chill. We park in front of the house. It is a classic of its kind, red brick, with a wide verandah completely encircling it, making an already large house seem enormous.

With its long front windows I feel like the house is looking at me.

I tell Duncan this.

‘You always feel like everything’s looking at you,’ he snorts.

‘Maybe everything is,’ I reply.

We have to wake Zed up when we arrive. He rolls himself slowly out of his cocoon, his face all red and sleep-lined.

‘Must have been quite a night,’ I say.

‘Every night’s quite a night with me, baby,’ he replies.

‘You are so full of shit,’ I tell him.

He laughs, knowing he has gotten to me.

‘Is it going to be like this all day?’ Duncan complains.

I head for the house.

Goddamnit. Why do I get so shaken up by the slightest change in plans? I hate that about me.

The moment I enter the house all sound fades, muffled by the thick walls and the wide verandah. It is as if the house has been constructed to provide protection against everything that exists outside its walls, even light and heat, even noise. I feel like I have cotton wool in my ears.

It takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light. The way the house is structured means that its interior will always be dark. I feel a world away from everything. I like the feeling. It’s peaceful. Most of the rooms are empty, with only a few sticks of broken down furniture here and there. I like that too. The space, the simplicity of it appeals to me. I don’t like the dust and the dirt so much, but you can’t have everything.

Duncan follows me in.

‘Zed’s taking a look round the town,’ he says. ‘He’s taking photos.’

That’s fine with me.

‘Where do we start today?’ Duncan asks.

I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking about it.

‘Let’s keep on with the kitchen,’ I suggest. Kitchens always have more entries than any other room. But any room that was used a lot would be fine.

‘I reckon the bedrooms,’ Duncan replies. ‘Those are the room where people are at their most vulnerable. They’re helpless when they’re asleep. We could try the kids’ bedrooms. What parent wouldn’t want to do everything to protect their kids?’

Duncan kind of makes sense. He gets things I don’t. We wander down the hall. The place has a musty, animal-like smell. I think it’s the carpet, decades of skin flaking into it. There are two small bedrooms side by side. Duncan and I choose one at random.

I pace the room, trying to get a feel for where the bed may have been placed. Concealments can sometimes be found in the wall spaces behind beds. The door is on the right. There is a small window on the far wall facing the backyard and the orchard. I choose the far left corner.

‘Here,’ I say. ‘Let’s start between here and the window.’

We take out our tools: a small axe, a crowbar and a hammer as well as our usual brushes and trowels and torches, dustpans and tape measures. Duncan prepares a sheet of plastic and some soft fabric, and small containers for any finds. I pick up the hammer.

Somehow it usually reverts to me to breach the walls even though I hate small spaces, always have even from when I was tiny. I hate them so much I freed the family cockatoo when I was six. The family I was living with at the time, that is. I remember shooing it out of the cage, and watching it, after a brief moment of what seemed like avian disbelief, soaring up and away without a look back. I got shut in a wardrobe for my troubles. I don’t know how long I was in there for, a day maybe. It seemed longer. I was too young to have much of an idea of time, and an hour seemed like a week. And even by that age I did not trust that I would be let out in time. In time for what, I’m not sure: to eat, to drink, to survive. The door was finally opened during the night and I was told to get to bed, so I did. I only ever use clothes racks now.

A few tentative knocks and I am almost through, the wall having become crumbly and soft with the years. I busy myself widening the hole, noting that even the sound of the hammer seems dulled in the house’s interior. I grab a torch and began peering into the space between the plaster and brick trying not to gag at the stink.

‘Why does it smell so bad?’ Duncan asks. ‘It smells like death.’

I don’t hold out much hope at discovering anything today. I figure we have been more than lucky to find the shoe. That could very well be the only concealment in the entire house. But archaeology is a profession in which perseverance is everything. You have to keep moving forward despite being without hope. Perhaps archaeology is the opposite of depression.

My arm is getting tired. ‘You try,’ I say after a bit.

Duncan takes the torch and moves forward while I sit back on my haunches.

‘This is impossible,’ he says.

‘Tell me about it,’ I reply.

‘The dust looks like it’s alive. It’s so thick it could be full of blood and sinews.’

He works in silence for a while.

‘Oh, oof.’ Duncan pushes himself forward, then eases himself out of the space, falling backwards. He has an object in his hands, places it on the plastic and just as before we try to brush that thick-as-living dust off it. It slowly turns into a purse. It is made of some silky fabric, and it has a gold coloured clasp which might very well be gold, judging by its brightness.

I open it carefully. There is a scrap of something inside, tissue-like, grey, unbearably delicate. I spread it out gently on the plastic, doing my best not to tear it.

‘It looks kind of organic,’ Duncan says. ‘Like a cobweb.’

‘I think it’s a caul,’ I reply.

‘You’re kidding me. Jesus, they really meant business.’

A caul is a thin membrane covering a newborn’s face. It is rare and considered very lucky.

‘I’ll bet it belongs to the owner of the shoe,’ I say.

‘No-one, and I mean no-one,’ Duncan says, ‘has ever found a caul in Australia. Not a concealment anyway.’

‘I know,’ I tell him. ‘This is special.’

I’m going to get the camera, Duncan says, heading out to find Zed. I can hear the excitement in his voice.

I wonder about the little owner of these exquisite objects. How loved she must have been to have been given such things, so valued that when she grew out of shoes or grew past purses the objects were still considered so precious that they had been used to forge a protective field around the family home.

I stand up, easing my legs, gazing out the window.

I think about how the house and everything in it will be gone within weeks, just a memory in the minds of a few of us who have only had time to know it superficially, another small piece of history lost forever.

I can hear Duncan’s footsteps as he returns.

‘It’s so sad,’ I say as he comes back into the room. ‘I wish I was rich and I could buy this house.’

He doesn’t reply, probably thinks I’m an idiot for wasting my time on stupid dreams.

That is when I see, through the window, Zed walking through the orchard toward to the house. Duncan is beside him.

I turn around.

The room is empty.

I have the momentary thought that something stands between me and safety, and then I don’t think, just run. Out of the room and through the house to the front door, across the verandah, only stopping at the front step. I sit down, waiting for the boys to appear. I can hear their voices in the distance, as well as the sound of my breath coming in jagged rasps.

A memory, unbidden, comes to me. I am very young, four or five at the most, and dressed in a crisp white dress. I am sitting on a similar front step, holding a toy bear for dear life. Mum is gone and I am surrounded by strangers. Perhaps the bear will keep me safe, I remember thinking.

I shake my head, trying to loosen the connection between myself and the past. I am used to sudden overwhelming waves of memory tumbling over me. Or rather, I am not used to it but it happens every now and then. This is nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary, I tell myself.

I stand up quickly, launch myself away from the house, the step, the image, the feeling. I am all right, I tell myself. Everything is all right. I am safe now. I am not back there. I am grown. I can protect myself, bear or no bear.

By the end of the day I’ve calmed down again.

‘I’m not sure what happened,’ I tell them on the way back to Melbourne. ‘Sure it was creepy, but it was probably just the ticking of an old house protesting its walls being knocked down.’

I know how easily a person can slip into fantasy, how badly the mind can betray us. I have seen it happen often enough. After all, the brain is merely an interface between its owner and the world. It can easily misinterpret input. A few random sounds can resemble anything, even human footsteps, I reason. We are hardwired to see ourselves in everything. But despite all my efforts at logic, when we are only minutes from my apartment I realise how little the idea of spending the evening on my own appeals. The incident has shaken things loose in me, things I prefer stay in the dark. I ask Zed and Duncan if they feel like stopping by, but they are tired and can’t wait to get home themselves.

After they drop me off I walk down to the corner bottlo and buy myself some oblivion and, somewhere in my head I agree that it is all right to drink nearly a whole cask by myself. At least I’m not a meth head or a skag zombie like so many of the people I grew up with, I tell myself. Or dead. And yes, I know that this is the self-deluded bleat of an addict. Not that I am an addict. But I have learned over the years that it is sometimes okay to give in. It is so hard being strong all the time. It wears you out. And the alcohol does help. It nicely blocks out a whole chunk of stuff. Until it doesn’t.

At about 2pm I blearily unpack the shoe box, unwrap the tissue paper, place the tiny shoe on my kitchen table. It is exquisite. My own shoe size hadn’t been much bigger than this the first time I was smacked around hard enough to pass out.

The next day is Saturday and I visit Mum. She is okay again, at least for the moment. She is looking good. She has lost some weight and she has dyed her hair recently, signs that she has been able to take care of herself. Good signs. I have been putting this visit off for ages. I’m sure Mum picks up on my reluctance. She has a finely tuned antenna for the emotions of others. Let me qualify that. She always picks up on the emotions of others, but only when those emotions are about her. We are in the kitchen having a cuppa. I open the window wide, wanting to let some fresh air in, and shift some of the junk off the table — plates, brochures, television guides — to make room for my cup.

She has some photos out. God knows what she has been doing with them, maybe some half-arsed attempt at cleaning the place up that she’d aborted five minutes after she’d begun. I fan the photos out, sort through them. There is one of me at about eleven, a lean, nut-brown girl with long, dark hair worn in a ponytail, serious, watchful. I look severe, even then. Claire picks up another of me. I am dressed only in a nappy. I might be about eighteen months old.

‘You were always crying,’ she says. ‘Nothing I ever did helped. On and on. In the end I did nothing. You cried and I watched television. We spent years like that. Maybe you’re getting your revenge now.’

‘Why would I want to do that?’ I say. ‘Besides, I don’t remember any of that. We don’t lay down proper memories until we’re about two or three.’

‘Don’t believe everything you read in those university books, Ange,’ Mum continues. ‘I know you want life to be all tidy and sorted, but it’s not. It’s big and hurtful and mysterious. If I’ve taught you anything I hope I’ve taught you that.’

It is no use trying to defend my eighteen month old self, I know. It won’t make the slightest bit of difference.

I finish my cuppa and say goodbye.

‘I’ve decided I don’t like the feel of this house anymore,’ I tell Duncan when we are back. ‘It reminds me too much of that dreamy dissociation you get when bad things are happening.’

He stares at me blankly.

‘It’s just the strangeness of it that’s getting to us,’ Duncan reassures me. ‘The practice of using concealments is from another time. It makes no sense to us. We can’t process it properly. We have no context, none we can really understand from the inside out. We aren’t part of it. We can’t be.’

I understand what Duncan is trying to say about the bizarre nature of the subject matter of what we are researching, and how it might affect us, but I don’t entirely agree with him. I know the importance of concealment in my bones. I know how powerful a hidden thing can be — feelings, thoughts, emotions — and that to reveal it can sap it of all potency, destroying it. Weapons are always more useful if your enemy doesn’t know about them.

I had not been able to sleep the evening before so I had used the time to do some research on the house. I learned it had been owned by a large, wealthy family named Talbot. After building the house they had lived there for only two generations. From all accounts they had been an amazingly long lived family, often surviving past one hundred, but after moving into the area and into this house their luck had turned. After the flu epidemic of 1918 few of them had remained. They had sold up and left and the house had remained empty, the town also emptying out gradually over following decades. There is nothing remarkable there, just a long, slow decline.

Talbot is a fairly common name but I locate a woman with the same surname born in 1912 who was still alive in the last census. She’s even in the phone book. How does someone manage to live so long, I think with wonder? I call the following morning. It’s a nursing home. They take a message.

I hope she is lucid.

We try one of the other bedrooms today, the one right next to the room where I heard the footsteps. Thought I heard the footsteps. I look around the room. The carpet seems brighter today, as if it’s somehow been steam cleaned during the night.

Zed has insisted on coming up with us again.

‘The town’s weird as,’ he told us. ‘I need to take another look.’

‘Where’s that reaction coming from?’ I ask him. He is an archaeology student too, and I expect him to be able to explain his responses. ‘Is it some unusual conjunction of buildings? Is it colour, is it shape?’

Zed shrugged. ‘That’s what I mean. I’m not sure. I have to think about it.’

We have a crowbar and a hammer, and together we begin to bash at the wall around the window. We work silently. I can hear Duncan breathing heavily, and me.

‘Need any help?’ Zed offers.

I shake my head no. It’s not going to take much effort, I can tell.

When the hole is large enough I move in, begin fossicking around. For some reason I almost hope we don’t find anything.

‘Boo,’ Zed shouts. I feel myself flinch slightly. Later, when this is all over, I’ll get back at him somehow. I’ll work out some way to scare the hell out of him.

And there, a little to the right, I see something inside a bundle of dirty rags. I lift it out, unwrap it. It is a glass globe. Inside the globe is a collection of tiny bones.

‘Jesus,’ Duncan says, staring at it.

I shake it gently, thinking snow globe.

‘What kind of bones are they?’

‘There’s rice in there, too,’ I say.

‘What’s that for?’ Zed asks.

‘Vampires, maybe,’ I reply. ‘Some demons, and vampires in particular, are forced by their nature to count each grain before entering.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘A lifetime of reading disreputable fiction,’ I say. ‘And now it’s paying off.’

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ Zed says.

It is past lunchtime but we don’t stop working. We need to eat, though, so I volunteer to go for the esky. As I leave Duncan is trying some other spot in the bedroom. I have been starting to feel claustrophobic, as if I am caught in some mad, suffocating pattern that I am powerless to break away from. It is an old nightmare, an old feeling. When I reach the car I do my grounding exercises, focusing only on externals. That helps and I feel more settled. It will be okay, I tell myself. That’s when I hear it, a cry, sharp and high, a gulping, hiccoughing sound, the mewling of a baby. It is coming from the house. I grab the esky, run back inside. The crying stops.

‘Okay, this time I’m sure,’ I tell them when I’ve returned. ‘I wasn’t sure last time, but this time I know I heard something.’

‘More footsteps?’ Duncan asks. I can see he wants to pounce with an explanation.

‘Not footsteps,’ I say. ‘Crying.’

Could have been an animal, Duncan says.

‘A baby or a child crying,’ I insist. ‘Look, I’m not saying there’s anything spooky behind it, but I definitely heard something.’

‘How come we don’t hear anything?’ Duncan asks.

‘Maybe the house is making claim to you,’ Zed says as he opens up the esky, searching for a sandwich.

‘In what way?’ I ask.

‘It’s recognising you. After all, you’ve made yourself known to it in a pretty forceful way.’

‘Is that a good thing or a not so good thing?’ I ask.

Somewhere in my head a fleeting, appealing thought begins. Perhaps the house is giving me its seal of approval and I should be flattered. I pull myself up immediately. The last thing I want is to be thought of as special. By anyone, including old houses. When someone thinks you’re special you become their target.

‘Besides, has it occurred to either of you,’ Zed says, ‘that what you’re doing is progressively dismantling all the protective objects in the house? You are leaving the house — and yourselves — vulnerable.’

‘Now, come on,’ Duncan interrupts, ‘isn’t all this a bit fanciful. We’re scientists, not mediums. Concealments don’t do anything. They’re just interesting archaeological artefacts.’

‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘We’re all kind of attracted to this weird shit, but hey, there’s no real magic behind it. We need to remember that.’

Despite that, for the rest of the day Zed’s words keep coming back to me. Were we, in our blithe ignorance, playing with things we had no hope of understanding? Were we in over our heads? Hell, I told myself, so what. That described most of my life.

Zed is driving today. Duncan is in the passenger seat. I sit in the back and catch up on my notes. I thought I might want to sleep on the way but I find I can’t. I feel too vulnerable lying down. I just stare out the window most of the way, trying to lose myself in the landscape. The house is no good for me. In an unreliable world I have always been able to rely on myself. But I feel I am unravelling. Perhaps, I think grimly, I am finally returning to family type. But I am determined to keep on with it. I have to, at least for another few weeks. I must get enough material to be able to write my thesis. My future, my ability to make my way in the world, my need to never have to rely on anyone else ever again depends on it. It is my way out. I refused to be trapped in the past. I refuse to allow my past to define me.

We decide on the sitting room today. It is a fine, large space with a marble fireplace and shelving around the walls. The west wall boasts French doors opening out onto the verandah. If I concentrate I can picture the family in here of an evening, some of them reading, some sitting at small tables playing cards or writing. I can hear the crackle of the fire, feel its warmth.

There is a vase on the floor of the room, a delicate thing of green glass. Oddly there are flowers in the vase, almost fresh. I don’t remember seeing it before. I can’t help feeling uneasy. I wonder how it got there. Is the house renewing itself one small vase at a time?

Duncan and Zed make a start around the fireplace. It is hard going and they quickly work up a sweat. I hang back, just observing for a bit. Very quickly the room becomes just another worksite, all dust and clang. We should be wearing hard hats, I think to myself. The noise goes on and on. I’m glad. The coarse unambiguity of it helps drown out my doubts. They eventually get through the wall. Of course they do. All that muscle, all that effort. They bash and bash and the hole becomes human size, big enough for one of them to walk through. They stop then, breathless, and covered in what I hope is not asbestos. Yes, we are amateurish enough to be putting ourselves in danger. Or desperate enough for grades, for stories. Zed’s dreadlocks are grey with dust, the thick clumps absorbing the stuff.

‘That was fun,’ Zed laughs.

Duncan glances back at me, a strange expression on his face as if to say, ‘Are you all right?’

I make a face back at him.

‘So who’s going in?’ Zed asks.

‘Duncan can,’ I say.

‘Here.’ I hand him the torch and he crouches into the hole.

We can still see him, his back, his bum. He is hunched over, reaching forward and around.

‘What’s happening?’ I called.

Duncan backs out after a bit. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Can’t find anything.’

Some of the tension in me falls away.

‘We’ll try the other side of the fireplace,’ he says.

‘Worth a try, I s’pose,’ I say, trying for nonchalance.’ Just be careful about structural points.’

‘We know what we’re doing, Ange,’ Duncan says.

Zed and I give each other a look. ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I say. ‘We all know we’re just making it up as we go along.’

Duncan gives me his grumpy look.

The boys begin their bashing again and pretty soon they make another hole nearly as big as the first.

Duncan says to me, ‘Your turn.’

‘Okay, okay,’ I say. I don’t really want to be here, but since I am I need to pull my weight.

I ease into the space and began to search around. That smell again. Is that what the olden days smelled like?

Please god, don’t let anything be there, I pray. We have enough, more than enough, to write a thesis. God, we could write a book with the stuff we have already. I’d be happy enough just to walk away now, but I don’t think I could explain this to Duncan. Or myself.

I’m just doing a cursory search, feeling here and there, moving the dust around. But my fingers land on something. Again it’s small and light, easy to miss. How come I haven’t? I grasp it tightly, pull back out of the space, hold my hand out. Like the others it’s covered in thick dust but it’s easy to see it’s a locket of some kind. We clear the dust away and find an oval gold amulet. There is a clasp at the side. I press it carefully and the locket opens to reveal a curl of brown hair, so soft and fine, a child’s lock. I lift it to my face, sniff. Tears come.

‘So beautiful,’ I whisper.

I’ve been stupid. Of course I want this. It is vitally important that someone finds these objects, knows about them, records their presence. They must not be lost. Perhaps my history has made me vulnerable, but I’m determined and that makes me strong. I won’t be intimidated by the past or by others or by houses.

We all have a turn at touching the amulet, holding it. It feels heavy. It is a rich, dark honey colour.

After a bit Duncan goes out for a wee. I bag the amulet, tuck it safely in a container. Behind me I can hear Zed chewing on one of the sandwiches he’s bought. I turn just in time to see a flurry of white and yellow flying across the room and through the door. A cockatoo, seeking escape.

‘Zed,’ I shout. ‘Did you see that?’

He looks up, frowning. It’s obvious he hasn’t.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘It’s nothing.’

A second later Duncan’s back.

‘What?’ he says as soon as he sees my face.

I shake my head.

‘What have you heard this time?’

‘What do you mean by that?’ I say tightly.

‘Well, something’s happened.’

No-one knows about my cockatoo, I have never told anyone. But the house knows. It is speaking to me, reaching out to me. I have been trying to ignore it, but Zed is right. There is so much we don’t know. In this house my own past is leaking into the present. I wish I knew why.

Or am I taking coincidences and making meaning where there is none?

Am I seeing what isn’t even there?

I don’t know what to think anymore, but whichever way it goes I know one thing. I’m not safe. If the past does not stay the past I may never be safe again.

‘I didn’t see anything,’ Zed tells Duncan.

‘And you were here all the time?’ Duncan checks.

‘Yeah, I was here all the time,’ Zed says. ‘But just because I didn’t see anything, man, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.’

‘Makes it less likely though,’ Duncan says.

‘What you’re saying,’ I tell him, ‘is that I’m hallucinating.’

‘Strictly speaking, I don’t think you were hallucinating,’ Duncan replies. ‘But a person can get stressed.’

‘How the fuck would you know,’ I whisper. ‘You weren’t even there. Maybe you just know me too well to be objective. And maybe that’s my fault for trusting you.’

‘That’s rich,’ he says. ‘After four years I barely know anything about you, and that’s the way you like it. Anyway, this has nothing to do with what I think about you. It’s more about what you think about yourself.’

‘How’s that?’ I ask.

‘You always think everyone’s having a go at you.’

‘Usually I’m right.’

‘See.’

‘C’mon, c’mon,’ Zed interrupts. ‘For god’s sake, Duncan. Ange saw something that unnerved her. All the debate in the world isn’t going to change that.’

‘Thanks Zed,’ I say. I can’t believe he’s defending me. Just goes to show you should be careful about the judgments you make.

‘No,’ Duncan replies. ‘But talking about things can sometimes clarify a situation.’

‘If that’s even possible,’ Zed says.

‘Enough,’ I shout. ‘I don’t want to talk about it or think about it anymore. Let’s just get on with it. So I’m uncomfortable here in this place. Well, I’ll handle it. And if anything else happens remind me not to say anything.’

When Duncan drops me off that afternoon Zed offers to come in with me.

My first instinct, always, is to knock someone back. But this time I don’t. If ever I’ve needed company, it’s now.

I haven’t had anyone in my flat for at least six months. It feels weird. I don’t know where to put him. Finally we settle at the kitchen table. I open some beers. I’d forgotten how small my flat was. Two people in the kitchen and there’s barely room to turn around. I can smell Zed, his sweat, his hair.

‘Thanks for today,’ I say.

‘It just annoyed me, the way Duncan was trying to tell you what you did or didn’t experience. That’s for you to say.’

‘Cheers,’ I say, clink my can against his. ‘Duncan’s a nice guy, but he always does that. Usually I just put up with it.’

‘I reckon you’re finding some great stuff,’ Zed says. ‘But things affect us sometimes in ways we don’t understand.’

‘So you think I’m mad too,’ I say, getting my back up.

‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘No need to be defensive. Just be careful. Why do you think ritual works, Ange? Why do we use magic or religion or blessings or curses? It’s because they’re ways for the outside world to combine with the internal world to create god knows what. There’s still a lot of mystery out there, Ange.’

‘That doesn’t comfort me,’ I tell him.

‘No, it’s not a comfortable thought,’ he agrees. ‘And I can see there’s stuff going on with you. You vague out every now and then like there’s a whole world in your head that’s taking all your attention and energy. Do you want me to stay over?’

I laugh at the suddenness of his offer.

‘I didn’t expect that response,’ he says.

‘No offence,’ I say, ‘but I reckon I’ll be okay.’

‘I’ll sleep on the couch. I just meant could you do with some company?’

‘Thanks but I’m not very good with trust.’

‘I noticed.’

He leaves me his number just in case.

Like I said, you just can’t tell about people.

The following morning I find an email.

Dear Angela,

I am sending this email on behalf of Ethel Talbot, one of our residents. Ethel feels she may be able to help you with your enquiries. If you would like to visit Ethel, please let me know and we can arrange something.

I call Duncan and tell him I’m taking the day off, hopefully to visit Ethel Talbot.

‘That’s a good idea,’ he tells me. ‘I didn’t think you should come today anyway.’

My immediate reaction is to oppose him, say I’ve changed my mind, that I’ll come.

‘Oh, for god’s sake,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not a child. I can make my own decisions. And I can cope with stress.’

‘Coping sometimes means pulling back,’ he says.

‘For you maybe, but not for me,’ I tell him. ‘Besides, this is my gig.’

All I’ve got is myself. He has to trust in who I am. If I don’t have that, what do I have?

‘Stop yelling,’ he tells me.

‘I’m not yelling,’ I say, lowering my voice.

‘Even Zed’s noticed how stressed you are,’ Duncan says.

‘Well, if you’re going, I’m going,’ I say.

That bastard, Zed. So much for thinking someone’s okay.

‘Then I’m not going,’ Duncan tells me. ‘I think we all need a break.’

I end the phone conversation and only just stop myself from throwing the phone at the wall.

I reply to the email, saying I’d like to come as soon as possible. I can’t keep a woman this old waiting too long and, besides, I don’t want to wait either. Halfway through the morning I receive another email inviting me for afternoon tea at 3pm.

I dress in something vaguely civilized and comb my hair. I want to take her something. What does such an old woman want? I wonder. Probably nothing, I decided, but she might like something to remind her of times past, of her young days I take her a necklet of beads dating from the 1930s or 40s. I found it in a second hand shop several months ago. I drive for about an hour, rehearsing what I’ll say over and over until finally I have to play some mental word games before I drive myself mad.

The residence, Paspaily House, used to be lovely, I decide when I arrive. Ethel Talbot’s final home was once a fine house in a wealthy area of Melbourne. Inside, however, it is horrendous, all tiny partitioned rooms and a thick stench of sausages, toast and mashed up vegies. I feel slightly sick. I don’t want to breathe through my nose, but I can’t bear the thought of the smell coating my mouth either.

‘I’m here to see Miss Talbot,’ I tell the woman at reception. She might be a nurse. She’s dressed in a pale blue trousers and shirt. I’m not really sure what passes for nursing uniforms.

I’m shown into what might be called the lounge area or the games room or the sitting room, containing several tables and couches and a bookshelf and a television. There is a woman sitting in an armchair looking through the window. This is Ethel. She is the oldest woman I have ever seen. She is nearly bald. The white hair that is left on her head is as wispy and fine as a baby’s, but the hair on her chin and neck is steely grey and thick as a beard. I feel a little sick looking at her. This is what age does, I tell myself. This is time. It is nothing. It is a noble thing. But age on Ethel looks like moss and rot and putrescence. Perhaps she had been beautiful when she was younger. Or not. I hope that when I am this age young people will be more tolerant than I. I wish I was a bigger person than I am.

I reach to shake her hand but she doesn’t respond.

‘Please sit down,’ she says. She has a shrill, harsh voice.

‘I got your email,’ I tell her.

She has a big chuckle at that, her false teeth moving loosely inside her mouth.

‘I don’t send emails, dear. The staff do that for me. It’s as good as having servants.’

‘Well, thank you for seeing me, anyway,’ I tell her. ‘I really appreciate it. I’m aware that I’m just being nosy. I brought you this.’

I show her the necklet.

She peers at it, takes her time. She is as slow as a tortoise.

‘It’s handmade,’ she says, looking up. ‘See these beads, they’re made of paper and glue. We all used to make them in our younger days, but these are very fine. Thank you, dear.’ She picks them up with her shaky hands and manoeuvres them into a pocket. It takes a while.

‘Do you want any tea or coffee before we start?’ I ask her.

‘They’ll bring some soon,’ she says. ‘I don’t have to lift a finger. Not like the old days.’

‘Can you tell me a bit about your family?’ I ask her. ‘What do you remember?’

‘Oh no, dear,’ she replies. ‘I wasn’t one of the family. I was an orphan. I had no family. And, as was often the case then, they took me in as a servant and I took their name. Who knows, I may be related in some unsavoury way, but I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’m sorry, you’ve come all this way. But ask anyway. Perhaps I can tell you something.’

This is a blow. I had hoped to meet with one of the family.

‘What do you remember of them?’ I ask her. ‘We’re researching the house in Mintonville.’

She pauses. It takes all I have not to jump in to fill up the silence. Is this old age, I wonder, or is she merely accustomed to a more sedate time?

‘They lived in the district for many years, here and there, and finally in the house you have found,’ she says eventually. ‘But there was ill will between them and the town. In fact, a more cold-hearted family I never did know. Some called them demons. There was a little girl. Elspeth Price was her name. She was the sweetest little thing, the blessed centre of her family. Well, Elspeth came down with typhoid. The Talbots were the only ones in town with a car to take her into hospital. There were carriages and wagons and such, but it needed to be quick. But the Talbots refused and Elspeth died on the way as she lay flat in a wagon, shivering and shaking over the rough road. She was still two hours away from the nearest hospital.’

‘Did you know her?’ I asked.

‘No, I did not,’ she replied. ‘She was before my time. But I knew of her. Elspeth’s dying was one of many cruelties I learned of. I might be named Talbot, but I am glad I am not one of them. There were rumours, you know. About how they came by their wealth.’

‘Violence?’ I ask.

‘No dear,’ she replies. ‘Not violence. Evil.’

I wait for her to enlarge.

‘They seemed to enjoy the ill fortune of others,’ she continues. Oh, I never saw anything but it was common knowledge. And I was so young that none of it made sense to me anyway.’

‘There are objects in the walls,’ I tell her. ‘Beautiful little things like shoes and lockets. Protective things. Do you know anything about them?’

‘I wouldn’t know what was placed there, dear,’ she replies. ‘After all I was only a young one myself. But I’ll wager I know why.’

I give her a questioning look.

‘Don’t you see? It was the builders put those in. They weren’t to protect the family. They were to protect against the family. And the family never did thrive in that house. The family are buried all around there, even in the orchard.’

Ethel begins coughing. I’m not sure if this is a problem so I just wait. Eventually she settles, the corners of her mouth moist with spit.

‘But how do you know what’s behind the walls, dear?’ she asks me.

‘We’ve found some of them,’ I tell her.

‘Oh no,’ she replies. ‘What have you done? What have you let loose?’

The phone means something different for my mother than for other people. For her it is not a tool of communication. It is a weapon. She uses it to hurt. It seems that, over time, the only way she has come to be able to feel a semblance of connection with others is through either the inflicting or receiving of pain. It hasn’t always been like that, or not totally. I have some bright memories. There is one especially precious memory of myself and my mother. We are in a park. We spend the whole day there, playing, pretending. My mother creates worlds for us with her imagination, castles and knights and princesses and dragons. We have the best time. I go to bed that night totally exhausted and totally content. I return to my foster family the next day and my mother is in trouble because she had been meant to return me the evening before.

My mother has kept me on the phone for a good hour or so tonight. I think she might be drunk although it is hard to tell. She has had so many knocks around the head and has used so many drugs, both legal and not, that her voice slurs at the slightest distress. The phone call ends, as they always do, with me hanging up feeling useless and groundless. Afterwards, I pace my small apartment, unable to stay still, not knowing what to do with what I am feeling. I put on some music but it doesn’t help. I eat some chocolate after which I feel worse. So I call Zed. He offers to come over and I take him up on his offer. What the hell am I doing? I think to myself. He arrives with two bottles of wine, which we finish and he ends up in my bed. I’m surprised at how gentle he is, and a little disconcerted, offended almost. Does he think he’ll break me? He enfolds me in his long arms all night. At first it feels claustrophobic, but then it feels safe. For the first time in ages I sleep well. In the morning he makes breakfast. I can see he is on his best behaviour. Me, I’m doing the opposite, slouching and frowning as if to say, Hey this is no big deal and nor are you.

‘Why are you so patient with me?’ I ask him.

‘I dunno,’ he tells me. ‘Maybe I’m just trying to figure you out.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Maybe I like you.’

I don’t have a smart reply for that.

As I’m dressing I hear him phone Duncan, tell him he’ll be at my place. ‘I know what I’m doing,’ I hear Zed say.

It’s funny, but when Duncan arrives and Zed goes to get his coat Duncan says to me, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing?’

Since when have I ever?

I feel like driving today. Zed sits beside me with Duncan in the back. Zed insists on us stopping for a box of muffins. Pretty soon the car is full of crumbs. We sing crap pop songs on the way.

Daylight saving has started. We are an hour earlier than normal. The morning is darker and yet summer feels near. All about are the reds and yellows and oranges of wild daisies. I can feel myself thawing, easing, after months of cold. It will be all right, I tell myself. The past weeks have been rocky, but I have survived.

We have decided that today will be our last day in the big house. From tomorrow we will move on to the shops and the other houses to see what we might find. I will be glad not to have to engage with this house any longer. Even the thought of being in the town, near the house, makes me edgy. I imagine that I will be continuously looking over my shoulder, fixing the house in place with my gaze. And yet something in me needs to keep going. I know I could write my thesis already with only the objects we have, but finds in some of the other buildings might give a broader picture, a more comprehensive overview of the habits and beliefs of the district. Why stop now?

On the way I fill the boys in on my meeting with Ethel Talbot.

‘I’ve heard about that,’ Duncan says slowly. ‘Builders placing concealments. Something to do with Freemasonry. It could be a rich research area.’

He’s missing the point. He’s thinking about the builders, not the family.

‘How could a family be that bad?’ Zed wonders.

‘Believe me,’ I say. ‘It’s possible.’

‘There must have been a lot of tension in the town,’ Zed say. ‘All that built up energy, it’s got to go somewhere. One vast feedback loop of ill will.’

‘Let’s not get carried away,’ Duncan replies. ‘Science remember, not séances.’

‘They’re not mutually exclusive,’ Zed says.

‘Oh, I believe they are,’ Duncan returns.

Our morning is workmanlike. We toil wordlessly, finding nothing. I keep having this feeling that something is behind me. You know, that creeping itch along the top half of your spine, the itch you can’t ignore. I whirl around, but of course there is nothing. I keep thinking I can smell fresh paint.

We finish off the last of the muffins by about 11.30am. Zed and I are sitting on some left over packing boxes, sneaking smiles at each other. Duncan is pacing up and down the hallway.

Where are we going, I wonder, me and Zed? I’ve never noticed before how elegant he seems, with his long limbs, his wide shoulders, his wry grin. It excites me, the thought of getting to know this person. It scares me. I hope I don’t lose courage.

‘I might be going mad,’ Duncan said, pacing as he talks,’ but these two doors’ — he means the doors of the two bedrooms next to each other — ‘are they further apart than they should be?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.

‘Look, if I start here at this door on the one side of the bedroom and walk down to the door of the next bedroom, that’s twenty-five paces. But look.’ And here he went into one of the bedrooms. ‘This room is only ten paces.’

And, here he ran out of the room and into the other one and began pacing again.

‘And this is only ten paces too.’

I thought about it for a bit.

‘I reckon it’s just because the walls are really thick.’

‘But that would mean the wall is almost as thick as half a room. That just doesn’t make sense.’

‘Or there’s another small room in there,’ I say.

‘Or there’s another small room in there,’ Duncan repeats.

He grabs one of the crowbars, enters the nearest bedroom and starts bashing at the wall. We follow him in. Within about a minute he’s made a decent size hole. He pokes his head through.

‘I’m right,’ I hear him say.

He pulls his head out. ‘It’s about a metre and a half wide. That’s a lot of room to waste in a house. They must have meant it for something.’

‘Probably just a built in robe that never got built,’ I say.

‘Probably somewhere to keep the mad grannie,’ Zed laughs.

I give him a dirty look. He is a child of privilege and love, and he speaks lightly of horrors.

We crowd around the hole. Duncan ducks in and has a look around, wades through the ankle high dust, trips.

‘There’s something here,’ he calls. ‘A small thing.’

He bends down.

‘It’s a book,’ he says. ‘A book. Have a look.’

He ducks his head out again and shows us what he’s found. It’s small, about ten centimetres by eighteen, and it looks as if it is bound in leather, cracked and crumbling now. Duncan opens it up carefully. The pages are filthy with age but we can make out some writing.

‘It’s a diary,’ Zed says.

I stare at it. It’s exactly the size of my own notebook.

‘Does it seem a bit smoky in here?’ Duncan says.

‘Yeah,’ I agree, noticing suddenly that the air seems cloudy.

‘Shit,’ yells Zed. ‘It’s a fire.’ He grabs the esky with the last of our ice and runs. Duncan follows. I start packing up our stuff. We can’t afford to lose any of it. I begin to hear a crackling. There really is a fire. The others are shouting at each other and for me and the air quickly becomes much smokier.

Underneath their shouts I can hear something else, faint but growing, a mumbling, a crowd of whisperings. It is coming from outside the room, from the hallway, moving closer, becoming clearer. I back away from the door until I have reached the hole in the wall.

Clearer and clearer. I make out a sentence. If you tell anyone I’ll kill your family.

A terrifying promise rushing back to me from down the years, triggering uncontrollable panic.

Without thought I back into the hidden space, back away from the sound, the fear, further and further in until I am as far away from the words as I can get. The smoke is getting thicker and thicker but now I am here I can’t move, can’t leave my safe place. I’m frozen. I don’t know how long I’m there for. It seems endless. I close my eyes and close my ears and try to disappear the world.

‘Ange, Ange,’ I hear Zed calling faintly.

I scrunch further back. There’s something behind me, soft and small. I grab it. I clutch it to me. Two arms, two legs, ears, hard glassy eyes. Someone knew I would need it. Someone left it for me.

‘Ange,’ I hear again, only it’s not Zed calling me this time.

The fire had started in the kitchen somehow, and by the time Duncan and I reached it the flames were already licking the walls of the dining room. It must have been going for quite a while before we had smelled the smoke. We had no chance. We didn’t make the decision to clear out in time, and we lost all our equipment. When we finally found Ange, she was curled up inside the gap between the bedrooms. There wasn’t a mark on her and we thought she was okay but, with all the smoke she’d inhaled, she had suffocated in that tiny space. She was holding a little toy bear. She must have found it in there.

We didn’t find the notebook she always had with her, the one she was using every day. We looked everywhere.

The words you’ve read here were transcribed from the old diary we found.

No, I don’t understand it either.

I think about Ange often, where she is now, and I worry. I had only just started to really know her, but I have a terrible fear that part of her is still there in that smoked out space between the bedrooms, that she’s stuck in there, stuck in horror, right back at her beginnings, all those times, all those patterns she tried so hard to erase, and that something that sensed her vulnerability — and her determination and her bravery — is feeding on her terror.

I just wanted to get to know her.

I should never have left her alone.

I wonder what will happen when the house is finally, completely dismantled. Will she still be there? Maybe she has always been there.

She was a fighter. I think she is still fighting.

Author Loci

Jen White

I have been a reader of speculative fiction for as long as I can remember. As soon as I was able to hold a book, I gravitated to fantasy and science fiction: fairies, robots, spaceships, selkies, ghosts and hauntings. I always wanted the stories that filled me with awe and wonder and, often, bafflement too. I don’t mind bafflement. To me it means complexity, and that’s exciting. I read Anne McCaffrey and Gary Crew, Margaret Mahy and Paul Collins; and older writers too: E. Nesbit, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Lucy M. Boston, Madeleine L’Engle, sharing my discoveries with friends. As I grew older there were Michael Moorcock, J.G. Ballard, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, James Tiptree Jnr, Shirley Jackson, Brian Aldiss, and Clifford Simak. I loved the Atlan series, written by Jane Gaskell. And, more recently, I’ve loved the writing of Margo Lanagan, Neil Gaiman, Jeff Vandemeer, Lisa Hannett and more, oh so many more. My life’s busy. I don’t have enough time to keep up with it all, but I read what I can. There is still awe. There is still wonder. And yes, there is still sometimes bafflement.

As for my own writing, and as with many of the Australian writers I enjoy reading, I’m inspired by the Australian environment, and what this means for us as humans and as a culture. I am interested in exploring the Australian stories and themes that may be morphing into myth. The visions, the narratives and the memories that haunt our continent: like lost kids, extinct animals, intelligent marsupials, old mining towns. I want to hear and to tell the stories that resonate with us for reasons we don’t fully understand. We crave myth, I think, for it allows us to approach our anxieties and fears, and to move closer towards a grasping, and an acceptance, of the incomprehensible.

More recently I’ve become interested in the structures that we humans build, the spaces meant to keep us safe but that are also sites of horror and haunt, that echo and resonate with the unknown and with our own selves, to create, at times, something terrifying. What is it about internal space that can hold horror so well? Are human-made structures a magnifier of the weird? My story, Dark History, was born from these wonderings. The story is also strongly informed by summers spent when I was a kid running around the ruins of an old town and through the Victorian bush. Thinking back now to those long, hot days full of March flies and houses suddenly appearing through the gums and the landscape itself, I can’t believe how lucky I was to experience all of it.

One of my other literary interests is the concept of a book of linked stories. There is something about this structure, the fractured pieces of a whole that works well with approaching mystery and wonder — think Ray Bradbury and The Martian Chronicles — and I’ve been attempting lately to keep such a structure in mind when I’m working on stories. I’ve written a couple of stories, one published (‘A Cool, Private Place’ is included in the anthology Future Lovecraft) and one not yet, with the concept of time wells at their centre. Time wells? The Victorian hills are filled with abandoned towns. I began thinking about what that must do to a place, once so full of such life and noise, then so still and silent. Perhaps, the air pooling and clumping from such change, creates rips in time and space, or Anomalous Temporal Warps, also known as time wells. No, it’s not strictly science fiction. It’s more about our psychological response to such a possibility…

The nearest well, fenced off for safety, was down the end of Welcome Lane, a short street of ancient shops that had been boarded up decades ago, it was a smallish well on the right side of the road, right in the middle of the footpath, the air around it puckered and torn, as if it were grieving the loss of all those smart, busy ladies dressed in their fineries, marching up and down with their packages. The deepest well lay down near the creek, hidden amongst some giant ferns. Tamsin and I decided that this must have been where sweethearts went to find privacy, and when the town died, this powerful space had yearned so much for blood and warmth and movement that a time well was born. Sometimes, when I walked down that way, which I did often for I liked solitude and quiet, I would glimpse things in this well, old things, ancient creatures, staring out at me, and I would wonder how far back this well went for we had no history, no conception, of animals with six legs or four heads or a hundred writhing tentacles.

(from ‘A Cool, Private Place’, Future Lovecraft, Innsmouth Free Press, 2011)

I’m working on another time wells story at the moment. I’m not sure whether I’ll write more, but right now I’m really enjoying playing with the concept. What I do know is that sense of place is central to my writing. A strong connection with your own backyard can, after all, be the starting point for exploring the entire universe.

*

Jen’s greatest desire growing up was to become an astronaut, eventually owning her own spaceship. However, as she is slightly technologically challenged, she became a writer instead. Jen’s short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Future Lovecraft, Bewere the Night, Dead Red Heart, Mythic Resonance and The Tangled Bank. One of her stories, ‘An Ordinary Boy’ (published in the anthology The Tangled Bank) was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award in 2010 in the Young Adult Short Story category.

Time Pump — Chris McMahon

MacPherson sat on the hull of his ruined survey ship, his tears turning to ice. He squinted into the endless snowfall, but there was nothing to see. The terrain was featureless, the horizon lost in white. If not for the dull grey metal of the ship his sense of disorientation would have been total. It was minus fifty-eight degrees centigrade and falling. There was no way he could survive outside in X31’s night, even in his thermal suit. Soon the hatchway would be blocked with snow, leaving him alone to wait for darkness and death.

He still had a choice. He could climb back into the ship to be buried alive with his dead crew.

Their small short-range probe had been conducting a surface scan when the storm hit. It had swept them hundreds of kilometres from the target area, slamming them into the tundra. He had been strapped into the pilot’s chair and survived the impact unhurt. His six crew, busily moving between instruments in the cramped cabin, had not been so lucky. That was what he had awoken to — the sight of them, smashed, dead and hideous, already frozen in their blood.

The fuel tanks had ruptured, and the precious hydrogen was gone, the main batteries depleted. There was no way he could signal the spidery, rotating bulk of the Kepler orbiting far above them. The deep space exploration vessel had only three planetary descent craft. He knew their standing orders — he had helped to draft them — they would not risk another craft until the nature of the danger was established.

Heat. Goddamn it. He needed heat.

MacPherson turned to look at the hatch. Only a few more feet and the mounting snow would seal it . . .

Around him the storm intensified.

He slid down to the open hatchway and swung his legs in. He reached for the first rung of the ladder, but his fingers, clumsy in the thermal gloves, missed their grip and he tumbled down.

‘Argh!’ He fell hard. His head cracked against a bulkhead.

MacPherson woke up in a pile of snow. His right knee throbbed and his head was a mass of pain. Above him was the white circle of the open hatch. His fogged brain tuned into faint voices.

‘. . . understand it either.’

‘Can we trust them?’

‘Who’s there!’ he yelled.

The wind whistled across the hatch above him. He was alone. He ran to the console and checked the radio. Nothing. The console was completely dead — but he knew that already.

With grim resolution he dragged himself back up the ladder and pulled the hatch closed. Immediately he was in darkness, his breathing harsh and loud. There was no power. No way out.

The ship groaned around him as it tilted under the weight of snow. He could hear the soft whisper of it as it covered the hatch.

He felt his way across the slippery floor to the emergency locker. He flipped it open, fumbling in the dark amid canisters and rubberised, unknowable shapes for a torch.

Click. At first the light was a blessed relief. But no matter where he directed the torch, he would see one them — or what was left of them. Twisted. Mangled.

MacPherson turned off the torch and sat in the darkness.

The ship would be buried by now. Lost beneath the vast carpet of white that was X31. He had perhaps twelve hours of air. He could hope for a miracle, but he knew it would be hours before the storm blew itself out. The survey ship had been so far off course. Even if the Kepler got a ship down to the surface, it could takes days to survey that area. Without some way to signal the ship . . .

‘ . . . burning.’ A whisper.

He yelped in surprise, then flipped on the torch and swept it feverishly around the cabin. He had heard it again. A voice just at the edge of his hearing. But the torch beam found nothing but carnage. A severed arm. Fingers frozen against a bulkhead.

Blood pounded in his temples, and a knife edge of pain worked into his right eye. He staggered to his feet and swept back the hood of his thermal jacket.

‘Leave me the fuck alone!’ he yelled, his voice startlingly loud in the confined space.

The frigid air stung his cheeks and nose. He felt cold and pain on the top of his head and carefully probed his scalp. His hand came away bloody.

The fall. Of course.

‘OK. OK.’ A mild concussion then. Just hearing things.

He pulled the hood back up over his head and tried to slow his breathing. He tried to will himself to turn off the torch to conserve its power, but could not.

Then his nose wrinkled at the smell of burnt plastic. The beam of his torch caught a faint trail of smoke and he followed it back to the scanning console. His heart skipped a beat. Nothing could burn without power!

The scanner’s dedicated batteries — which were isolated from all the other systems — must still have charge.

He wrenched a crossbar loose from a shattered bulkhead and shoved aside the frozen corpse that lay there. Underneath the body, the twin needles on the projector manifold twittered with power.

MacPherson chipped away the ice that covered the panel. Three screws came away easily, two he had to snap with a makeshift chisel. The last was fused to the housing.

‘It’s always the last one,’ he muttered.

Carefully he used the strut to lever the housing open. The frigid metal fractured and the panel clattered open. The scanner control circuits had fused — that was the smoke he had seen.

Because of the tilt of the ship, the two scanner antenna were now parallel to the surface. In normal operation the scanners bombarded the surface with everything from gamma rays and X-rays to infrared radiation and neutrons, mapping the distribution of scores of heavy metals and elements. Now that the control circuits were gone, if he powered the arrays he would release an unknowable cocktail of EM radiation. Yet it would be a signal. The question was, would the Kepler even be listening? The whole thing was likely to explode, showering him in lethal radiation.

He examined the circuits critically. A tiny river of red ice glittered in the light. He followed the trail upwards, his heart thudding.

Up on top of the flight monitor was Valerie’s frozen head. Her eyes were wide in shock, her lips drawn back in a snarl.

That was it. Just her head.

He fell to his knees, dumping hot, bitter bile onto the frozen metal.

‘Oh, Shit. Val.’

She was just a kid, taken on like so many of the station-rats and trained on the job. Bubbly, laughing; her eyes full of life and promise.

He dry-retched, his stomach in agony. Suddenly he was too hot in his thermals. His vision blurred and he fell sideways.

‘Fight it Mac.’ It was Val’s voice. A feather-touch in his ears.

He looked up at her. What was left of her. The torch beam wavered in his weakening grip. In the shadows, her eyes seemed to turn toward him.

MacPherson tried to get up, but slipped. Darkness closed in.

The sun blazed down.

He was on a vast savannah, the sky a wide blue above. The landscape was dotted with knots of rounded boulders that rose above the open forest and grassland, perhaps left by glaciers in the distant past. In the far distance he saw dark-skinned animals cropping the grass, and strange tall-necked beasts grazing the treetops. Movement caught his eye.

Off to his right, high amid a small hill of tumbled stones, he saw figures moving. There were seven of them walking in single file, led by a tall, winged figure vaguely insectoid in nature, his skin mottled orange and yellow.

‘Wait!’

They stopped and turned toward him, watching him silently. One took a step toward him then stopped. Val. He was sure it was her.

Then they turned away from him.

‘No, wait! Wait!

One by one they slipped away through the rocks.

And he was left alone.

MacPherson woke gasping, deathly cold.

He looked at his chrono. He had been out for hours.

‘No!’

Outside it would just past dawn, the ship long buried.

He crawled across the cabin to the scanning console. His hand hovered over the switch. There was nothing to lose. He slammed his hand down and powered the arrays.

The console exploded in a shower of sparks, the cabin bright with blue-white electrical fires. His thick gloves were on fire and he cursed as he hit at the flames, then grabbed an extinguisher. He lost his footing as the ship tilted and he skidded to the floor.

The scanner had melted the ice.

He braced himself against a cabinet and sprayed the retardant at the fires, holding his breath against the sharp odour. There was a groan and the ship righted itself, slamming him into the deck’s hard, cold metal.

He scrambled up the ladder and worked frantically at the manual hatch-release.

‘Yes!’

Ice and water poured into the cabin. He was too stunned to even cry out. Above he saw daylight. Not ice. Not snow. Daylight. Sky.

He crawled out into the new day of X31, squinting against the ferocious glare.

A clear dawn rose above the defile. What had once been a solid wall of snow at the peak of a ridge was now wide open space — an oasis in the ice.

MacPherson slid down onto the surface, wet stone smoothed by millennia of moving ice.

He looked up, searching for X31’s single G class sun, but the narrow valley, a saddle at the top of a basalt ridge, was lit by two suns. The first was a small, cold disk high in the blue-white sky, right where the sun should be. The second was a warm, glowing orb, shining from a wide fissure like a cat’s eye rising from the hard rock of the ridge. A rent in the air.

He staggered forward, shielding his eyes against the glare of the hot sun.

The intense burst of energy from the sensors.

‘My, God. I’ve opened a rift in Spacetime.’

Above the rift the sky rippled.

‘Bent light,’ muttered MacPherson. Gravity effect.

The rift hovered above a spur of solid magnetite that rose from the centre of the basalt ridge. MacPherson hardly dared to move, as though the whole improbable thing would flit away like a butterfly if he as much as breathed.

Rifts in space-time were rare. There were legends about them appearing inexplicably in space, but the only one he had studied appeared after the obliteration of the Formial, with its experimental anti-matter drive. The explosion had been devastating, destroying the nearby space station and killing almost two thousand people, but others had survived long enough to record the aftermath. A rift in Spacetime had formed, rapidly collapsing as the small black hole that formed it shrank, emitting a continuous stream of Hawking radiation from its hot core.

He knew the theory. Rifts were unstable, a region of multiply connected Spacetime outside the ring singularity that could transport you elsewhere . . . or elsewhen. They formed — somehow — from the minute black holes continuously appearing at the distance of a Plank Length. No theory satisfactorily explained their formation.

The edges of the rift quivered, rippling with energy as they slowly contracted.

It drew him toward it.

Closer, the air was charged and smelt of ozone. His head swam, his vision growing syncopated. He passed his hand in front of his face. He saw his hand move, followed by an series of echo images.

His mouth was dry, and he tried — unsuccessfully — to swallow the lump in his throat.

‘Holy, shit.’ Strange echoes of his voice trailed away into a murmur.

A hot wind blew through the rift and caressed his face. He smelled the warm, resinous scent of grasses, and beneath it a faint, almost animal odour.

Layer by layer he pulled off his thermal gear.

He was startled by a mournful bellow, coming from nearby. He did not have to look far to find the source. It was some sort of wildebeest, hairless, evolved for the heat of the savannah. It had pushed its way out past the oasis into the ice and snow, perhaps running in panic. It was stuck up to its shoulders, shivering uncontrollably. Beside it a calf was already lying still in the ice.

MacPherson flinched as flock of birds shot past overhead. They screamed out to each other in weird gibbering calls. He watched them circle then shoot back through the rift. One of the bird’s wings clipped the side of the fissure. It gave a brief, high screech then plummeted to the ground on the other side of the rift. It hit hard — and did not move again.

He looked back at the survey vessel. It glittered in the light of the two suns. The array antennas pointed straight at the rift, like a rifle at the target.

There was another exhalation of warm air from the iris and it contracted again. It was losing integrity. From the rate, he estimated that within an hour it would be gone.

He went closer to it. The hair on his bare arms stood on end. His teeth on edge from the power of it. Again his head began to swim, and the effects on his vision returned with the proximity. His breathing came faster. His heart raced.

He had to. Had to see it.

Step by step, he drew closer. Until he stood on the very threshold. Stretching to the horizon beyond the rift were vast, hot grasslands, dotted with trees. It was real. A doorway into another time. He could see the flock of birds circling in the distance, its fallen member a sprawl of feathers on the grass not twenty paces from him. Another bird — a raptor — swooped down and lifted its carrion meal back into the air in one smooth motion.

He heard low trumpeting calls in the distance, and the back of his scalp lifted with the strange reality of it all.

Beyond the rift was a world where he could survive. He would always be alone. He might survive another twenty years — X31’s carbon-based life was compatible enough with human physiology to supply him with food — but could he face that terrible isolation? The prospect both attracted and terrified him.

He looked back at the survey ship.

The twin turbines that powered it through the atmosphere had been shattered by the impact. It was these that charged the instruments, arrays and other electrics of the craft. Without them, the craft was dead. But each had a secondary turbine on a closed cycle, designed to harvest low grade heat from the primary. He could tell from here that the first was ruined, its designer thermodynamic fluids long evaporated under the heat of the ancient wind — but the other. The other was still intact.

Heat.

Ice.

Power!

It hit him like a bolt of lightning, filling his head with the roar of adrenalin. That heat differential would drive his turbine, the power derived from the temperature difference between two epochs. Not a heat pump, but a time pump.

The iris contacted again.

There was little time.

‘But I can do it, goddamn it!’ With power the radio would function. He could bring the survey craft back to life.

He turned back to the rift. Once more it filled his vision. No. He had to shut out the reality of its . . . strangeness.

First he drained the fluids into a storage tank used when the loop had to be emptied for maintenance and repair. Thankfully the fluid was not frozen, but he had not expected it to be. It was designed to pick up ambient heat.

He stripped down, his back glistening with sweat as he worked to cut free the masses of insulated, secondary turbine piping. He joined them with a fast-acting polymer glue and gradually extended the pipe toward the rift. The pipes were lightweight and tough, designed to take pressure, but the joins had to be perfect. If he lost the fluid — there was no way the cycle would work.

His tension rose as his line of piping approached the rift. The heat of the wind was incredible. His stomach clenched with sudden nausea as a wave of power — like a low electrical current — rippled through him.

He could not get that image of the bird out of his mind, and the sound of its truncated call of pain as it struck the side of the rift.

Testing the weight of a section of piping, he tossed it through the opening. The glue and tools came next.

Now his turn.

At the threshold, the power of the rift surged into him. His body shook and his vision began to double. God only knew what it was doing to his physiology.

Steeling himself, he took a running step and leapt through. As he landed, his right foot clipped the side of the rift. A searing agony flared through him. He landed hard, his body convulsed into a mass of tensed muscle. Then his mind uncurled, like an orange peel, and he spun away into brightness.

The plain was different. The tumbled rocks were gone, and in the distance he saw a tall city of silver spires. Sleek craft flitted between the towers, while other huge craft — dwarfed by the distance — dropped toward the city from the sky.

‘You can stay, Mac.’

He spun around.

Valerie was standing less than two feet away. She was strangely shadowed, despite the fact that they both stood under a noonday sun. He could smell her subtle perfume.

He took a step toward her, but she backed away and held up her hand to stop him.

‘The others are all here,’ she said, her shadowed head turning slightly toward the city in the distance and back.

‘But you need to decide.’

‘Val . . . ’ His voice was thick, hardly more than a croak.

MacPherson woke gasping.

The air was humid — almost too thick to breathe — the sun above him merciless. He pushed up into a sitting position and checked his right foot. He expected to see it burnt, or singed, but it looked normal. He moved it experimentally, and discovering no ill-effects, got to his feet.

The rift seemed smaller on this side. Through it he could see the white snowfields, and the clearing where the ship lay. It seemed like such a small, pathetic thing. Behind the rift the ground rose, climbing to a series of high-topped plateaus in the distance that were thick with forest.

He was here. He really was here.

MacPherson walked out across the wide rolling grasslands. With a better sense for the terrain, he now saw that he was in a long plain, with alternating savannah and open grassland. The trees were strange — more like giant cactus than Terran varieties. Vast herds of quadrupeds grazed in the far distance. It had been millennia since anything remotely like this had existed on Earth.

The heat beat down on him.

He walked back through the long, dry grass toward the rift and picked up a section of pipe. A heavy lethargy settled on him. Was there really a chance that his improvised heat cycle would work? One split seam and it would be over. Was there even enough fluid to close the circuit? And even it he could get one started, would the small waste-heat recovery turbines produce enough power to bring the radio to life? Would Kepler wait long enough to hear his message?

Through the rift he could already see snow falling again, slowly covering the clearing and his haphazard pile of thermal gear.

All he had to do was stay here.

The rift shivered, then contracted.

In the distance he heard a low roar followed by a chorus of others that shook the air. The big herd, which had been grazing slowly, surged into a gallop. They were being chased by a group of seven huge animals with bright yellow hides and raised shoulders. As he watched one of the yellow predators leapt onto the back of a grazing animal at the margin of the pack and bore it to the ground. They wrestled furiously for a moment, then the predator fixed its huge jaws to the grazer’s neck.

‘Argh!’ MacPherson’s stomach clenched as blood splashed across the grass in a wild pattern.

The predators roared again. Abruptly the herd turned, angling up the slope toward him.

Adrenalin raced through him in a white flood.

He dropped down into the long grass, holding his breath as the herd raced past. He was conscious of the stale smell of his own sweat. The image of those huge jaws replayed itself in his mind. He closed his eyes and pushed himself down into the grass. Something like a beetle scuttled over his arm. Then a long, hairy caterpillar crawled onto his face, but he did not dare to move. One of the big predators came so close he could hear the grunt of its heavy breathing.

As soon as they were past he pushed himself to his feet and dusted off the insects in a frenzy. The skin of his face burned where the caterpillar had crawled across it. He ran to the rift. It was closing fast.

‘What the hell have I been doing!’

MacPherson gathered up the pipes, glue and tools and set to work. He laid out the pipe, estimating by rough mental calculation how much length he would need to pick up enough heat to drive the turbine, compensating for the heat lost through the delivery pipe on the other side of the rift. Given X31’s ambient temperature, outlet cooling would not be a problem. He tried to focus on the joins in the pipe, but his hands were shaking too much to apply the glue.

‘Come on!’

The rift contracted. Through the narrowing fissure the shattered survey craft no longer looked pathetic. It was a beacon, a last link to a life that was rapidly slipping away.

He looked up at the hot sun above him and the open sky, scattered with clouds. He let out a long, slow breath.

He could do this.

MacPherson’s hands steadied and he finished the pipe joins.

Head thumping, he faced the rift. He tossed anything useable through, then backed up, giving himself plenty of room.

‘Yaaah!’ He sprinted, then jumped, diving head-first.

He fell on powdered snow. The shock of the cold was unbelievable, but there was no time to hunt out his thermal gear. He had to finish the job. For a moment he was brought up short by the sight of the proto-wildebeest. It was dead, already frozen into its last twisted shape.

Finally he had the whole circuit completed. He made a quick estimate of how much fluid the circuit would need and forced the fluid through the circuit by working the turbine manually. His arms ached with fatigue, his joints starting to seize in the cold. He could feel himself moving slower and slower.

The iris was now only a few metres across.

He just needed to keep the fluid moving. Suddenly the manual crank was thrown out of his hands and a high-pitched whine filled the air. The hot fluid had hit the turbine chamber!

‘Yes!’

He clambered up the upturned hull and lowered himself into the cabin. It was still dark and he switched on a torch.

His stomach recoiled at the smell of blood, his eyes wide to the grizzly sight of the melted bodies. How could he have forgotten?

Keep moving.

He sat at the console, watching the dead panels. He could hear the high-pitched whine of the turbine driving harder as the components heated. Yet there was nothing.

MacPherson heard a sound above him, and his eyes were drawn inexorably to the flight monitor.

Val’s head had thawed. Her expression had softened, and she looked down at him, almost sad as her head slipped slowly across the surface, turning toward him . . .

He squeezed his eyes shut. The temperature was plummeting, his bare skin already numb. He began to shiver. This was it. His last chance.

There was a soft tone from the console. His eyes snapped open. One by one, the ship’s undamaged systems came back on line. The turbine must have had to restore a certain amount of power to the depleted main batteries before it delivered power to the systems.

Illumination flared through the cabin as the overhead lights came on, and he froze at the sight of the carnage, revealed now in stunning clarity. He shook his head and focussed on the console, blocking out everything else.

He adjusted the radio and poured all the power into the transmitter.

‘Kepler, this is Warrant Officer MacPherson, Survey Vessel JV3. Come in.’

He kept repeating the message.

Then like a miracle, he got his answer.

‘We have you JV3. A rescue team is on the way.’

He slumped forward, weak and shivering, relieved beyond belief.

‘We have you. A rescue team is en-route. Acknowledge.’

‘Acknowledged,’ he said.

Goodbye, Mac. Val’s voice whispered in his head.

The light coming in through the hatch suddenly dimmed. The rift had closed. The little turbine sputtered and whirred to a stop. The warm sun had been sealed into the past. With some battery power remaining, he set the beacon to continuous transmission. Then he took some rations and climbed out of the craft, sealing the hatch. Carefully he dug his gear out of the snow and put on the many layers of his thermal clothing.

He sat on the hull, waiting for the rescue craft, while inside the shattered survey vessel Val and the rest of his crew slowly refroze inside their metal tomb.

His eyes were fixed on the spot, just above the ridge, where the rift had been, while inside him, something tore away.

Author Loci

Chris McMahon

‘Time Pump’ has always been one of my favourite stories. The idea of being able to generate power by using the difference in temperature between two different epochs — it just tickles my chemical engineering bones. Given the fact that it is ‘money for nothing’ — i.e. energy from nowhere — the whole idea probably serves as a proof against the reality of time travel (unless you can credit the idea of transfers of energy across Time). Anyway it was great fun to write. The SF idea aside, ‘Time Pump’ is a classic survival story. Originally it had a lot more backstory about MacPherson and why he ended up on the planet like that (and who betrayed him), but various critique partners encouraged me to focus and shorten the story. So if you’re wondering about that deeper mystery . . . blame them for never finding out :-)

I’m excited to be able to say that my three-book fantasy series, The Jakirian Cycle, has just hit the shelves! This is Heroic Fantasy in a world of ceramic weapons, where all metal is magical. It’s had some great reviews and is available through my website in either print versions or in a variety of electronic formats and platforms. My favourite review tag line is ‘Think Kill Bill meets Dune!’ — I mean, how cool is that?

I’ve always loved the heroic journey, and this drives a lot of my fiction. The Jakirian Cycle is Heroic Fantasy set on the world of Yos, with unique ecology and twin suns, where all metal is magical and control of magic is the basis for power.

The series comprises three books — The Calvanni, Scytheman and Sorcerer. They follow Cedrin and Ellen as they face deeper and more hidden threats. Pursuing them is Raziin, a vicious renegade who seeks to claim the ultimate power of the Spear of Carris for himself. Eventually they must face a final challenge as the most ancient secrets that bind their three bloodlines are revealed.

In The Calvanni, first of the epic Jakirian Cycle, the cavern-dwelling Eathal have emerged to wreak their vengeance on mankind. The fate of innocent thousands rests on finding the Scion — lost heir to the fallen Empire. The Temple has outlawed the ancient practice of Sorcery. Its Druids dominate religious and secular power, but are ill-equipped to resist an unknown evil once contained by the Emperors.

All of the Jakirian books have stunning covers by Brisbane artist Daryl Lindquist.

The prequel novella to the Jakirian Cycle, Flight of the Phoenix, is available as a free download from my website (www.chrismcmahon.net). Haunted by terrible visions, and battling his own fear of Sorcery, the aging weaponmaster Belin must face the magical assassins that stalk the capital Raynor and bring the newborn son of the fallen Emperor — the last of the Cinanac line — to safety. Check it out — it’s a great way to get a taste for the series.

My favourite writer is David Gemmell — a British Heroic Fantasy author that unfortunately died way too young in 2007. I love Gemmell’s books, and continue to return to them again and again. The only one I have never read is the crime novel he published under the name of Ross Harding — getting hold of that is like finding hen’s teeth. If you have copy — make me an offer (you can contact me through my website www.chrismcmahon.net)!

If I was launched into space alone at short notice I’d take an iPod with all my music, my David Gemmell novels and a packet of Atomic Tomato potato chips.

Being able to make the journey from print into film would be awesome. I have always loved film, but there are limited opportunities for ‘genre’ series and movies locally (Brisbane, Australia), and very little in the way of Writer’s Rooms. If I lived in L.A. maybe it would be different . . .

My next novel — a hard SF novel called The Tau Ceti Diversion — will hit the shelves this year. It’s a collision of corporate-driven space exploration and alien first contact. A survival story told against the backdrop of a unique alien world in crisis and a decimated human crew trying to survive in a starship crippled by radiation. Stay tuned to my website for the launch date (you can find more info on TCD there as well in ‘Coming Soon’ — www.chrismcmahon.net).

Bio

Being able to escape into the realm of the imagination was handy growing up as the youngest in a family of eleven. Chris continues his fantasy and SF writing habit from his home town of Brisbane, where he lives with his lovely wife Sandra and three young children, Aedan, Declan and Brigit. He has a third-dan black belt in Moon Lee Tae Kwon Do and also enjoys movies and exploring narrow alleyways. Chris is very passionate about music, if a little inconsistent, and loves singing and playing classical guitar.

Chris is also a chemical engineer, and applies this specialist knowledge and mindset to his writing. When it comes to technology and the mechanics of world building, he can bring an obsessive thoroughness that pays dividends for readers in the depth and texture of the worlds he creates, a unique edge of inventiveness, and in the scientific credibility of the concepts integral to his science fiction.

Chris’s SF story ‘Eyes of Erebus’ (Daikaiju2) and SF short ‘Within Twilight’ were both short-listed for the Aurealis Awards (2007 & 2002). He has won the ‘One Book, Many Brisbanes’ competition twice (2005 & 2009). He was the winner of the Silver Lake Publishing Quest contest (2003) with Fantasy novella ‘Flight of the Phoenix’, which was published in the EPPIE award nominated Fantasy Readers Wanted — Apply Within anthology. He also won third place in the Orb Speculative Fiction short-story competition with the SF short ‘Buggy Plague’ (2002).

Chris’s work has appeared in various anthologies as well as Aurealis magazine, Orb Speculative Fiction and Redsine magazine (refer to www.chrismcmahon.net for a full list of publications).

Tooth — Bren MacDibble

HARD ROCK CAFE

BALI

Joe shoves his face into mine, white powder stipples his nostrils. ‘Come on, Lainey, try it. It makes your senses come alive.’ He wipes his nose on the back of his hand and licks the streak.

Over Joe’s shoulder, two offset sheets of plain paper sit framed on the wall covered in a messy looping scrawl which, according to the label, are, ‘Hand-written rules for The Temptations while on the road. If the boys were caught indulging in reefer, they were fined $300.’

‘We should’ve made some rules for this trip,’ I say.

My brother smiles. ‘The rules, young Elaine,’ he dots a blob of pina colada on my nose, ‘are have some goddamned fun.’

My hands are cool, wrapped around my syrupy pina colada, but once they burned raw clinging to a thick coir rope. My big brother, yelled ‘Come on, Lainey, try it!’ back then too. He also said, ‘I’ll catch you when you come back.’

I wipe the cold blob off my nose with my index finger. ‘I can have plenty of fun,’ I flick the blob at his eye, ‘without drugs.’

Nine year old Lainey had agreed to try the rope swing and young Joe had wrapped his hands around my waist pulled me back and pushed me out across the creek, clinging to that rough chunky rope. The thrill of the drop sent my spine into quivers. The wind shrieked past my ears. The damp air chilled my face. My brother was sharing a glorious thing!

But when the arc of the rope swung back over the swollen winter creek, Joe’s hands didn’t close back around my waist. He didn’t pull me in. He didn’t even push me to have another swing. He just let me drop away again. Joe’s friend Simon leapt from behind a tree, much like he stumbled out of Poppies Lane earlier today.

Tracing the Hard Rock logo in the condensation on my glass, and dropping my voice so Joe has to lean in, I say, ‘This was meant to be hiking and volcano climbing. You’re an arse when you’re with your mates.’

Simon wails from across the bar, ‘This is shit-faced Sunday, and you, little Lainey, are not!’

‘Don’t be a drag. It’s just a bit of fun,’ Joe says and slides a little baggy of white powder onto the bar beside me.

I point at Simon, now halfway out a window at the back of the bar sniffing the air and giggling. One ear sticks from the spout hole of the tea-cosy he wears on his head. ‘Like how Super-Tea-Cosy-Man is having fun? What’s he on?’

Joe laughs like I made a joke. ‘Simon calls it ‘Tooth’.’

I shake my head. ‘Straight up your nose to your brain and you don’t even know what’s in it.’ I rest my chin on one hand, and with the other I swipe the baggy to the floor.

Joe scrambles after it, retrieves it, and scowls. ‘This is Bali. They cut everything here to buggery. Nothing’s strong.’

Chairs scrape from across the room, as a family moves away from Simon’s thrashing legs. He’s half way out the window now, teetering on the sill. I use the edge of the greasy wooden bar to pull myself up, unsticking my bare legs from the vinyl barstool. ‘This place is too expensive and too high off the ground for idiots. You better grab him,’ I say, then turn back and slurp up the rest of my pina colada. It’s strangely gritty on my tongue and I put it down to some undissolved cheap powder mix.

Joe giggles. ‘Drinking it probably works just as well.’

White powder residue clings to the inside of my glass. ‘You shit! You put it in my drink?’

Joe slugs back his cocktail and smiles.

I punch him in the arm. ‘If my bowels get stoned and shit on you, it’s your own fault!’

‘Works like hash cookies, ay.’ He stands up rubbing his upper arm.

‘They only work in movies.’ I push him towards Simon. ‘Get him before he falls and breaks that teapot he uses for a head.’

Joe drags Simon over while I pay the bill. Simon stands behind me, buries his face in my hair and sniffs. Long happy sniffs.

I ram my elbow into his ribs. ‘Freak!’

‘But Laine, you smell awesome,’ he whines.

I grab his arm and steer him out the door and down the steps. Last thing I want is a trip in a Bluebird taxi to a Denpasaar hospital with two doped-up drongos.

Simon grabs my hand and licks it. ‘You taste awesome!’

I pull my hand back and shove him away. ‘Yeah, everything’s awesome.’

Simon skips off the footpath into the middle of the road and sniffs a large dirty-white dog. The dog stiffens its twice-curled tail, growls and trots off.

We squeeze between the lines of parked scooters and follow Simon up the middle of the road. None of the traffic that plagues the other Kuta streets is allowed up the Beach Road these days. Sand scuffs up into my sandals and sticks to the sweat on my feet.

Another walk comes to mind: the long, cold, shameful walk home in heavy jeans, trembling except for my palms, pressed on thighs of my wet jeans to ease the burn of hands shredded from clinging terrified to that thick rope over the icy creek. I’d pleaded for Joe to come back, but the only answer was their stupid laughs fading in the distance.

Joe sniffs the air. ‘I smell meeeeaaat,’ he growls and jogs over to a lunch cart frying up a wok full of something for a group of labourers working on a section of the sea wall.

NASI GORENG

MIE KUAH GORENG

I run after him, grab him and pull him away. ‘It’s afternoon,’ I whisper, You don’t know if that guy’s been back to a fridge to restock since this morning.’

‘You work for OH and S or something?’ Joe says and stares at the wok as I drag him on.

‘Let’s get food-poisoning from someone not on wheels and just go back to our hotel.’ I turn and look for Simon. He’s licking a scooter seat and a girl with keys in her hand is backing away, looking like she might cry.

I run and grab him. ‘Sorry!’ I call. ‘He has no brain. Just a teapot.’ I tow the pair of them down a side street. ‘This sucks,’ I tell them.

Joe wraps an arm around me. ‘Lainey, Lainey, you won’t care when the Tooth kicks in.’

I shrug him off and drag them into a plain open-fronted restaurant. The kind with plastic tablecloths and quick cheap service. Feed them, take them back to the hotel. That’s all I have to do.

- SATE KAMBING

- SATE AYAM

- GULAI KAMBING

DRAUGHT BEER

BINTANG PILSNER

A girl runs out of the kitchen. ‘Six large Bintang and three nasi goreng, please,’ I say before she reaches us. She spins around and runs back to the kitchen.

‘And steak!’ Simon yells.

The girl hovers in the doorway for a second staring at us.

‘They don’t have steak here,’ I say and shove Joe towards a bench seat.

‘I want steak too,’ Joe says.

The girl goes into the kitchen.

An older woman comes out. ‘You want three nasi goreng and how many steak?’

‘Two steak,’ Simon says.

‘I want two steak too,’ Joe says and holds up two fingers.

‘Four steak?’ the woman asks and looks at me.

‘Just four,’ I say and roll my eyes to convey my burden with these two.

The girl comes out with three Bintang on a tray with three cold glasses, and the older woman slips out into the street.

I point at her hurrying away and nudge Joe. ‘See, I told you they don’t have steak.’

‘She get some steak. Just be two minutes,’ the girl says as she unloads the Bintang from her tray.

I nod. Two minutes in Bali is flexible. We could be waiting forever. I pour my beer into a glass and inhale. My beer smells funky. The yeast is overpowering.

‘Does your beer smell okay?’ I ask the guys. They should still be capable of feedback on beer.

Simon breaks into a stupid grin. ‘Smells awesome.’

The restaurant has brightened to the point where the faded plastic tablecloths are now garish. A fly crawls on the sweet chilli sauce bottle and the movement of it pulls my vision so I can barely focus on anything else. Smells rush at me, clamouring to be named: Simon’s sweat, Joe’s greasy hair, beer, motorbike fumes, ocean salt, dried chilli sauce, a dog taking a whizz out in the street, it all wafts in, bombarding me with images. I suck it up, eager and repulsed.

Joe grins. ‘I told you it would work.’

‘Drink-spiked by my own brother. You’re a shit,’ I say. A scooter roars past loud as a truck and I cringe. Plates rattle in the kitchen. A pan sizzles, crackling like distortion. A radio thumps out an annoying beat. The smell of frying onion wafts out of the kitchen and that damn fly keeps crawling, and crawling, round as a black jelly bean. I put my hand out to Joe. ‘Gimme the key. I’m going back to our room until this passes.’

‘No. This is great.’ Joe spreads his arms theatrically. ‘The world is supersized.’

I stand up and pat his pockets. ‘Bali was kind of upsized anyway, and now it’s getting a bit too large for me. Key!’ I hold out my hand.

Simon pulls me down. ‘Stay with us, Laines. We won’t let anything happen to you.’

Simon got me drunk when I was fourteen and left me lying in puddle of vomit on the back of his ute while he went to find Joe, only he didn’t tell Joe and they partied all night at his friend’s house while I sat in the dark shivering and crying. Simon’s brain’s permanently dialled into party mode.

Drool runs from the corner of Simon’s mouth and his tongue shoots out and licks it back. I lean away.

Joe lurches across me, grabs the front of Simon’s T. ‘Dude! Bro’s sisters are off limits.’ He lets Simon’s shirt go and chucks his chin so hard Simon’s head snaps back.

I push them apart. Joe is a big guy, but normally he’s a lamb. He’s never physical with anyone.

‘Just have a beer and give it a chance, Lainey,’ Joe says shoving a glass of beer at me.

I glare at him, grab my beer and drink the whole large Bintang in two goes. I slam the glass down on the table top, it clanks like an anvil. ‘There. The world is still too upsized, I’m off!’

I stand to go again but the nasi goreng arrives. I grab a fork and have it loaded and in my mouth before my arse hits the seat again. Simon slurps his fried egg off the top of his in one go and sticky yolk dribbles down his chin.

I shovel that fork through the enormous mound of fried rice and egg and crunch through the prawn tails. No time to pick them out. Joe already has his plate up to his face licking up the remains of his rice. His plate clatters to the table. We must look like prize hogs.

The waitress girl ducks away into the kitchen, giggling.

An aroma punches in off the street, tangy, raw. I swing my head around. Its lure drags me out of my seat. Simon and Joe are already lunging towards the street. The older woman is back with a tray of red flesh balanced on one hand, she ducks around them, ‘Two minutes!’ she calls heading for the kitchen.

Joe’s reaching for it. ‘We’ll take it raw.’

‘Rare, yes? Two minutes,’ she says over her shoulder.

‘Don’t cook it,’ Joe says.

‘Have to cook. That’s the law. You have another Bintang.’ She makes it through the kitchen door. Joe and Simon are still following, but they’re stopped by the waitress coming the other way with three more large Bintang. They follow her back to the table sniffing at her like she’s on heat. She puts the beer down and levers the tops off, eyes darting between Simon and Joe, then dashes back to the kitchen.

‘Perverts,’ I mutter.

The guys guzzle their beers and I finish my nasi goreng. How am I still ravenous?

‘Meat! Meat!’ Joe yells.

The woman ducks her head out of the kitchen. ‘You want still red?’

‘Yes!’ Joe and Simon yell together.

‘Okay, crazy guys,’ she says and a minute later she reappears with two plates on which four steaks like steaming and bleeding. She plops them down on the table in front of the guys. They grab one each with their hands, bite into them and tear chunks away. Blood drips from their chins and runs down their arms, bright, pungent.

‘Can I have one?’ I ask.

Simon snarls, flesh between his teeth, and drags his plate with the other steak away from me.

I swig on my Bintang but it can’t drown the aroma of blood and steaming meat.

‘Tooth isn’t making me high, it’s making me miserable,’ I grumble. I can’t believe these two are getting me into trouble again.

I crouch on the bench seat, snatch Joe’s spare steak, leap over the railing to the street and run.

SPECIAL OFFER

WATCHES

GENUINE FAKES

‘Hey lady, you wanna watch? Pandora? Silver?’

I lift one hand to shield my eyes from the glare, the other to tear a chunk from the steak. I push past the man waving shiny things at my face.

EPY’S

TOURIST INFORMATION

RENT CARS

SIM CARD & RECHARGE

LAUNDRY

‘You wanna ride? Bike? Taxi? Yes?’

Smells punch in past the blood and meat, body odour, petrol fumes, dog fur, dog pee, cloves, cumin, prawn, fried food.

WARUNG RIBS

&

TEPPANYAKI

50 Mtr -->

My eyes flick from one garish vision to the next, overwhelmed, barely comprehending. Flower offerings, shrines, gaudy clothes, white tiled steps, a chequered tree skirt, bright signs jostling for attention. Hand written, printed, battered and old, brand new, bright paint, neon on black, black on white, sign upon sign. Layers of signs.

KURUBALI

LEATHER FASHION

MADE TO ORDER

------

DANAMON

ATM

24JAM

There’s a wail behind me. I look back, Joe is stumbling after me, emptying his wallet into the hands of the older woman. ‘Don’t come back! You crazy!’ she yells.

I tear another hunk from the steak and exit the alley, back onto the beach road.

BALI-BALI

LEARN

TO

SURF

A group of Bali cowboys sitting on the sea wall part, as I hurdle the wall and hit the beach.

‘Hey, baby, where you going?’ one calls. Some with shirts off. Some with blue Bali-Bali singlets. Body odour, greasy hair, salt, seaweed. The sand fills my sandals, gritty, warm.

I lumber through the soft sand heading for the water and the harder sand. I swallow great lumps of steak whole. Blood, tangy and warm pools in my mouth. I’m gulping at it like a starving dog.

A whoop rings out behind me as Joe hits the beach too. I shove more steak in my mouth. I can’t breathe and run and eat. Joe’s heavy panting bears down on me. He thumps into the back of my legs. My knees buckle and I go down under the full force of his tackle. He scrambles over me and rips the remaining steak from my hand. I scream but he shoves my head into the sand. I twist my head. Blood from the steak drips onto the side of my face.

Simon arrives and flops on top too. He leans across Joe and licks my cheek.

Something prods me in the thigh. ‘Fuck off, Simon!’ I yell. ‘Get off me!’

Joe rolls away licking his fingers, crunching sand, drags Simon off enough so I can sit up and kick at the tent in his pants. Simon rolls away, groaning.

The young Balinese guys giggle hysterically.

‘You okay?’ one asks and extends a hand.

I take his hand and let him pull me up. His body odour is musky and heavy. I lean in and breathe it up. His pectorals gleam with sweat above his singlet and my tongue shoots out, licks it up. ‘Oh!’ I push myself away from him. Where the hell did that come from?

Joe sits in the sand slurping the steak juice up his arm. I lean down to his ear. ‘Get up, you bastard. Tooth is making me as horny as Simon!’

Joe looks at the Bali boys, hovering, giving me looks too dirty for words. He leaps to his feet, spreads his arms like a bear and roars.

What the hell?

Joe swaggers forwards and the guys back off, confused. Then Joe grabs my T-shirt and drags me into the sea and pushes me into the water.

‘Stop it!’ I yell and he dunks me. Salt water forces up my nostrils and burns the back of my throat. Joe lets go, wades out and latches onto Simon, still whimpering in the sand and drags him down the beach into the waves and dunks him too.

I stagger out of the waves. ‘When will this shit wear off?’ I scream at Joe.

Joe turns on me. His face is buckled and hostile. I back off. This is not my brother. I don’t know who this is. I wade out and sit on the wet sand.

Simon crawls out and sits next to me.

He grunts and we watch the waves pull at the sand.

Joe flops down beside us.

I sit and smell every dead crab and scrap of seagull shit on the beach. Every male that passes. The steak blood on Joe’s shirt, the scent of his anger. Simon stewing in his pheromones beside me. Gulls cry, food carts sizzle, scooters putter, massage women call in sing song passive-aggressive chants. I sit still, silent, trying not to be overwhelmed as the world brightens in the lowering light and the sun plummets in that way it does close to the equator.

A girl comes down to the shoreline. She’s tied a traditional sash around her middle but she’s still in her work clothes of black stretch pants and T-shirt. The sweat and pheromones in her polyester fibres wafts from her as she bends down and places a tiny grass basket containing frangipani and two custard creams on the sand. Simon lunges for her but I manage to get my hand into his waistband and yank him so he plops back on the sand beside me.

He turns and I open my mouth to say something about him getting arrested for molestation, then his tongue’s in my mouth. And it tastes like steak, and the idea of Simon isn’t repulsive. He pushes me over and clambers onto me with an animal urgency.

Joe grabs him and drags him back into the sea. He pushes Simon’s head down under the water into the sand like he’s trying to crush it.

I run and pull Joe’s arm. ‘Let him up!’ Joe shoves me away.

The girl hurries off and Joe looks after her. He lets Simon go and starts towards her.

I throw myself in front of him. ‘Stop!’ I yell.

Joe’s caveman look softens a little. He turns back to Simon, who’s coughing and hacking up water. It runs in blasts from his nose and down his chin.

‘Jerk off in the water or something,’ Joe grunts at Simon. Then he looks up and stares. I look where he’s looking. Low on the horizon sits the large white orb of the rising moon. He turns back to me. ‘It’s a bloody full moon!’

‘We’re not werewolves!’ I yell. But I can’t say for sure. I slug him in the stomach. ‘You’re such a shit for doing this to me!’

‘Fuck!’ Joe yells. He drops to his hands and knees and repeats ‘Fuck! Fuck!’ as he beats the wet sand with his fist. He punches so hard his knuckles bleed and bloody streaks are sucked back down into the sea where Simon sits fumbling in the shallows.

I sit down on the wet sand and scrunch my arse into its cool folds. ‘We’ll go back to the room and lock ourselves in.’

Joe stands up. ‘Yeah!’ he says. ‘Yeah.’

‘Let’s stay together,’ I say.

‘I couldn’t lose you if I tried,’ Simon groans and snorts at me.

WE

KUTA

CLEAN

A squirrel hops across the sand in front of us, its profile clear in the moonlight, a custard cream in its mouth. My throat rumbles and my nostrils snort at fur, then fear as it drops its custard cream and streaks, low to the sand, up the beach. I’m running, snorting, salivating. Behind me Joe howls. I dive, lunge, feel fur, but it slips away. I spit out sand and scramble up again. Simon’s tackling me, but I kick him off as Joe passes us. The squirrel bounds over the sea wall and up the beach road. Joe clears the sea wall in one leap. I jump on the wall and fly at him. I drop my shoulder, hit him in the back as I land. He staggers sideways and again I have the lead. But the squirrel’s already scrambling up the wall of a resort. It leaps into the trees beyond.

BUNGALOW & RESTORAN

BALI MOON

BEAUTIFUL OCEAN VIEW

I dodge through the gate and lunge at the first tree. I’m too eager, too clumsy, and fall back into the garden. These trees reek of squirrels. I slap at the drool on my chin and try again. Scramble, pulling on the branches up and up through the tree, biting and snapping at leaves and twigs. But the squirrels leap to other trees in long flying bounds.

Joe’s here too, running under the trees. Security guards in grey uniforms yell and jog towards us. I jump down. Guards lunge for me and I get an elbow to the nose of the guy holding me, escape back out the gate and run for the cover of darkness back down the beach. Running feels good. The sand is still warm and grates up between my toes. When did I lose my sandals?

‘Hello?’ comes a voice from the darkness. ‘You wanna buy something? Beer, Pepsi, ganga.’

I run at the voice, see the whites of his eyes flash before I hit him and push him over. I land on him in the sand.

‘Hey!’ he yells and squirms but he’s the same size as me and I can hold him down easily.

‘You got Tooth?’ I ask.

‘Get off me!’

I wrestle his flailing arm back to the sand. ‘Do you have Tooth!’

‘Yeah, but you have to pay!’ his breath smells of peanuts and his skin of cabbage and chilli.

‘What’s in Tooth?’ I ask.

‘I dunno. It just makes you feel wild.’ He shoves at me.

‘I’m fucken wild. Now tell me what’s in it before I tear your face off!’ Will his blood stink of cabbage and chilli?

He stops struggling. ‘You already took it?’

‘What’s in it!’ I scream in his face.

‘It’s not really drug. It’s powder from family shrines. It makes drug go further. My drugs not strong!’ Peppery wafts of fear ooze out of him with every excuse. He struggles to get his arms free.

‘Why am I like this, then? When will it wear off?’

‘I dunno. I’m from Java.’ He gets a hand loose and shoves my shoulder up.

I slap his hand away. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘I don’t know about Bali things,’ he whines. ‘I just sell it.’

His insulated bag sits beside us. I launch off him and flip the lid open. Bintang and Pepsi. I need to slow myself down. Alcohol might do it. I grab a couple of Bintang.

The dealer gets up and grabs my arm.

I wrench it away. ‘If I’m still alive tomorrow, find me and maybe I’ll pay for these,’ I say and head off up the beach.

‘Come back, hey. I know what else you want. You want to do it doggy?’

I run. He’s right. I did want it doggy. I wanted it any way I could. Even with Simon.

Shit! Where are Simon and Joe?

AJ HACKETT

CLUB 66

BALI BUNGEE

Up the beach the stench of exhilaration and fear coming from the bungee tower sucks at me. I find a seat on the wall of the bungee cafe, behind a few spectators and open my beers. I guzzle as the people jump from the tower. Drawing in the smell of fear. Enjoying the screams. Then they run out of jumpers and the cowboy operators jump themselves and try to make it look fun. They don’t smell of anything much except sweat.

I head back down the beach road to find my hotel. It’s dark this far up. Men call from the shadows, oozing clove cigarettes and comments in dirty baritones.

CRUSOE’S ISLAND

OPEN 24 HOURS

A tiny bar in one corner of a hotel’s grounds pumps out old Aussie rock. Pheromones waft over the wall, delicious and sexy and mixed with alcohol and squirrel.

STORM

BEER

BALI

THE WAY

BEER

SHOULD BE

I find the gate. The bamboo and thatch, half-walled bar pulses with warmth and sweat and people. Young, funky, dancing people. Girls in short skirts, shirtless guys in beach shorts, abs shiny with sweat glinting in the party lights. A few Europeans, a lot of Aussies, Balinese cowboys and their female equivalents. I pull a note from my shorts, slap it on the bar and get two more beers. I’m an idiot slave to my whims but if I can distract them with beer, dull my senses, maybe I can get back to my room. I down half a bottle and the barman slides a bowl of peanuts at me.

The music pulses to a more modern beat and a group of Aussie girls go for it, sexy dancing with each other. Girl love. I join in. They laugh and make room. One shouts introductions. I don’t catch any of it. They’re sweaty and musky and gorgeous. I rub against a tight skirted bum cheek in front of me. Round and tight and pulsing. The last little bit of me holding out against the Tooth dwindles.

A Bali cowboy cuts in, grabs me and thrusts his hips into mine. Tingles shoot up my spine. We grind through the rest of the song, but he breaks away laughing at the end. I follow him to the bar and offer him one of my beers. He says his name is Dean.

‘Wayan Dean or Made Dean?’ I ask.

He laughs and winks. ‘James Dean.’ So cute. High cheekbones, sensual lips, muscular shoulders. I down the rest of my beer and reach around him to get peanuts, rub against him again. A squirrel runs down a tree on the edge of the bar. I put a nut on the bar for it.

Dean points at the sign that says DO NOT FEED SQUIRREL, and tut tuts me with a waggling finger and sexy dark eyes.

He grabs me around the waist and pulls me close. I burrow into his neck. He tastes of salt and sex and cheap cologne. Blood rushes to all the parts of me that might be useful very soon. I lift my head, find his lips, push my tongue deep into his mouth. But the squirrel is at the nut bowl. I lunge over Dean’s shoulder. Grab the squirrel by the tail and belt out into the hotel garden with it.

Dean yells and follows. Branches slap at my face and I crawl through the dirt trying to get a decent hold on the squirrel as it alternately snatches at the branches and scratches and bites at me.

I get one hand wrapped around its throat and get to my feet. Dean catches up to me. I shove the squirrel behind my back and push up against the wall of a building as Dean checks behind him. He seems oblivious to the squirrel as he pushes me up against the wall, breathing heavily, lust, beer, promise. I wrap a leg and one arm around him and pull him close. I can have them both. The squirrel, crushed by us both, goes limp.

Dean fumbles with his shorts, then mine and as they drop into the garden, I push him down and straddle him in the wet dirt. My senses burn, demand to feast on everything at once.

Dean tastes of sweat and sex, the squirrel of fear and blood, warm and thick. It rains down onto Dean’s face and I bite and suck at his face, sucking up his fear along with the squirrel’s. He struggles and spits, eyes wide, gagging. Warm clods of meat and fur slide down my throat. Orgasms hit me in roiling furious waves.

I grab Dean by the hair and hold him there, as I get my breath back. A moment of clarity. And with it, disgust, and horror and overwhelming rage.

‘What is the white powder in the family shrines?’ I yell.

Dean struggles and tugs at my fingers. He yelps. I pull his face up to mine. ‘The white powder in the family shrines called Tooth. What is it?’

‘What? Tooth-grindings?’ He stops struggling for a moment. Maybe he senses a chance to talk himself out from under me. He spreads his lips and shows his teeth. They’re nice and even. Very even. No canine shapes. All the Balinese have nice even teeth.

‘You file your teeth?’ I ask.

‘Yes, we file. Then put it in the shrines.’ Dean tries to slide out from under me.

I hang on. ‘Why?’

He grunts. ‘A ceremony when we’re old enough. Takes away the six bad animal things. I don’t know all the words. Greedy, angry, drink too much, too much sexy with the ladies. Ahh . . . stupid in the head. And, like, keeping things for only yourself?’

‘Shit! That’s me. That’s what I’m doing! I drank those tooth-grindings!’

Dean pulls away, his blood-soaked hair slips through my fingers. I let him go. This is some kind of curse!

Dean stands up and bends to grab his shorts. ‘You’re animal now,’ he says.

I grab his ankle. ‘You have to help me. I have to do the tooth-filing ceremony.’

He kicks my hand off. ‘You’re not Balinese. You don’t have a family shrine to take care of the tooth-grindings.’

‘You can put them in yours! Please!’ I crawl after him.

‘My ancestors won’t look after you. You all drink and eat and sex it up too much. It doesn’t matter to you.’

‘I ate a squirrel! I wasn’t like this before! I never would’ve rooted you without the Tooth!’

Dean backs off. ‘Make a shrine at your own home, crazy bitch,’ he says, then runs.

I swear and fling the squirrel carcass at him. ‘I don’t have a family home, shithead. My parents live in different cities. I’ve lived in ten different houses!’

BAKSO KRAMA BALI

I wave a note at the old man trundling his food cart up the footpath as I sit huddled against the cool morning air on the steps of the dentist’s shop. My clothes are still damp in the creases.

The old man stops his cart, fires it up, and soon enough swaps the note for meatball soup, in a paper bowl.

I washed in a resort pool last night. Swirls of squirrel blood backlit by pool lights, streamed from my clothes, and I splashed it at the sign beside the pool:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN!!

TO ALL LADIES BEING PERIOD

ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SWIM IN THIS POOL

THANK YOU

I wandered after that, until I found this place. This is my only hope.

NUVODENT

REPAIRED AND REHABILITATED YOUR TEETH

WHEN YOU HAVE VERY VERY SEVERE TOOTHACHE

1 NEED TWO HOURS – 1 VISIT TO CLEAR

JUST WALK INTO HAVE THE TREATMENT

I gulp the soup down, and it trails warmth down my throat and into my belly as the food cart man packs up and moves on.

The dentist arrives on his scooter, his white clinic shirt flapping.

‘Hello,’ he calls cheerfully. ‘You have toothache emergency?’

I nod. ‘Can you see me right now?’ I ask.

‘Sure, sure.’ He pulls the key out of the scooter and unlocks the door and rolls it upwards. ‘Come in, I’ll get everything set up.’

I go in, stand in the waiting room, until the dentist waves me in and points me at the chair. ‘What tooth is hurting?’ he asks.

I sit in the chair. ‘I want you to do the tooth-grinding ceremony on me,’ I say as he reclines the chair with his foot.

The dentist shakes his head. ‘The ceremony is a big family day. Many things happen.’

‘I only have a brother here, and I don’t know where he is,’ I say. ‘Can you just file my teeth and give me the grindings?’

The dentist nods. ‘You want the Bali-look?’

‘Yeah,’ I say, fighting the urge to get mad with him. It’s an urge I have a lot of trouble with as he sets about filing my teeth, with no pain killers at all. He only does the first six on my upper jaw, but I swear at him repeatedly and at one point I bite down on his finger. But eventually I sit holding a little bag with white tooth-grindings in it.

I find my credit card in my pocket and he runs up 1.5 million rupiah on it. I don’t even care how much that is.

The dentist has a small garden and shrine to one side of the front door so that is where I put my baggy. His ancestors would want his dentistry business to have successful outcomes, I figure.

I wait in the street outside. I wait trying to imagine the world duller, less smelly, less noisy, me more in control. A bluebird taxi stops and honks at me. ‘Taksi?’

‘Piss off!’ I yell and wave it away.

It kicks up dust as it takes off. Leaving me standing there unreasonably furious. I turn on the shrine. ‘Fuck you, you ancestor bastards!’ I yell. ‘All you had to do was take over a few vices. They weren’t even mine to begin with! They were some other Balinese bastard’s!’ I kick the base of the shrine, snatch my baggy back and stomp away.

So that’s not going to work, just like Dean said it wouldn’t. Eventually, I find myself back on the beach.

‘Hey, pretty lady, morning massage, yes?’

BODY MASSAGE

BEST PRICE

WE CAN DO

HAIR BRAIDING

I ignore the massage ladies calling from their folding chairs set up under the trees at the top of the beach. But a guy in a polyester shirt with a cooler bag leaves them and follows me down to the water. ‘You owe me two beer,’ he says.

I stare at him, calming my anger. ‘You’re the guy from Java?’ I ask.

‘Yeah.’

‘Sorry about last night,’ I say. I sit down and pat the sand beside me. ‘I’ve got your money. Wanna share a beer?’ I pull a couple of notes out of my pocket.

‘I don’t drink,’ he says but he sits beside me and opens his cooler bag.

‘Well, I’ll buy you a Pepsi then, to make up for running off without paying last night.’

He grins and takes out a Bintang and a Pepsi and levers the tops off.

I take the beer and chink the bottles. ‘Cheers.’ I guzzle my beer, then wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. ‘I was pretty wild, last night,’ I say as I count out the money into his hand.

He laughs.

‘You offered me something else last night,’ I say.

The guy from Java looks around, as if making sure no one else can hear.

I shuffle closer to him. ‘I’m still pretty wild,’ I whisper. I lean in and find his neck, and his ear and nibble at his lobe. He still tastes of chilli and salt. Then I find his lips and push him down on the sand and climb on top of him. ‘You’re really sexy,’ I tell him. I take the baggy from my pocket and, keeping his head turned to one side, I bite off the corner and shake the contents onto my tongue. Quickly, I find his lips again and thrust my tongue into his mouth, scraping its payload off on his teeth. His tongue tries to force it back, he tries to turn his head away, but I hold him down by the jaw with one hand and keep his mouth covered by mine. He tries to yell. I let go of his jaw and push my hand down on his mouth, take a swig of beer, and with both hands holding his hair now, I force the beer into his mouth to wash down the grindings. He gurgles, he tries to spit, but my mouth is still over his and I spit back. I grab his nose as he shoves at me with his hands. I only have to keep his head pinned. Then he swallows and I let him push me off.

‘What was that?’ he yells.

I shrug. ‘I dunno. I don’t know about Bali things.’ The world dulls, it gets quieter, smells stop their unwelcome assault, and an intense feeling of calm comes over me. I laugh and push myself to my feet. ‘Thank you.’ I say. I trudge up the beach. I’m so tired. I just want to go to bed for a week. I have to find Joe and Simon though. I have to tell them I’ve found the cure.

The guy from Java leaps up, and a torrent of swears follow me up the beach. The massage ladies stare as I pass them.

JL. POPPIES II

Up in Poppies Gang, the dealer from Java catches up to me. I step back. Already his eyes are narrow with rage and his fists are clenched. ‘What did you do to me?’ he yells.

I hold up my hands, back away. ‘It’s Tooth. I just gave you Tooth.’

He shoves me up against a rack of fabrics. The shop keeper runs out, yelling, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’

‘It’s Tooth,’ I say to the dealer. ‘You just need to do the tooth-filing ceremony.’

‘I’m not from Bali!’ he screams and backhands me across the face. The rack collapses and I fall onto the heap of broken rack and fabrics.

My face burns. My cheekbone aches. I blink tears away. He reaches down and latches onto my shirt, drags me along the road. I claw at the ground, whimpering as my nails tear on the paving.

Someone roars and bare feet slap down the alleyway. I look up as Joe flies overhead into the dealer from Java.

‘Get away from her!’ he yells. Joe and the dealer from Java tumble up the alley, legs, arms, and fists flailing.

‘No, Joe!’ I yell but his growling and roaring drowns me out. The shop-keeper’s over me, wailing, and pointing. I scramble up and race up the alley after Joe.

‘Joe, I’ve found a way to stop it!’ I yell.

The guy from Java has shaken Joe loose and is throwing things from a shop table. He picks up a metalwork sign. A cheap imitation Bali sign made for tourists. It makes fun of Bali’s early days, its surfer and drug culture, with pressed out images of mushrooms and the words:

WE HAVE

BLOODY FRESH

MAGIC MUSHROOM

HERE!

The dealer has grabbed it by the top of its stake. The spike a tourist would shove into their lawn at home so they could make jokes about magic mushrooms at their next barbecue.

The dealer’s knuckles are white as he lifts it above his head, stake pointing down.

These images unfold so slowly. But I can’t move fast enough to stop them.

Joe, his face twisted with rage, dried blood on his shirt, blood on his fists and up his arms. A frayed and bloodied tea-cosy falls from the pocket of his shorts as he steps towards the dealer. Joe pulls his fist back, his body turns side on to the dealer.

‘Joe!’ I scream as Joe launches his bloodied fist. His body twists after it, his chest turns, faces the dealer. The stake plunges into Joe’s chest. The fist connects. The dealer’s head snaps sideways. The dealer’s body flies back.

Joe crumples and hits the road, landing directly onto the side of his head, as if all life has already gone. The dealer pushes off a shop stand and runs.

My heart stalls. I drop to my knees beside Joe. Blood spurts from around the stake, covers my legs. I roll him onto his back, spread my fingers around the spike and cover the wound with both hands trying to hold back the blood. It’s warm, so warm and sticky. It pulses and squirts. So much. Too much.

I want to pull the stake out. But that’s not first aid. Pad the wound around the item to add pressure. My hands slip and the blood oozes between my fingers until my hands are submerged in a concave pool on his chest. His chest shouldn’t be this shape. There’s no way anyone survives this. Too much blood. A wet patch spreads over his shorts. The tang of urine joins the stench of blood. A puddle forms at my knees, blood swirling, spreading in urine, running into the cracks in the dirty grey cobblestones.

This is it. This is death. Dirty. Undignified. ‘Joe!’ The skin on his face is slack, his eyes are fixed. My Joe. My brother. This can’t be happening.

My voice cracks and breaks when I try to call for help. My throat aches. My tongue is too thick. The Balinese stall holder screams so loud anyway. I lean down and whisper in my brother’s ear. ‘Why did you have to come back for me this time?’

PARTY DRUGS CLAIM TWO YOUNG MEN IN BALI TRAGEDY

Author Loci

Bren MacDibble

It’s funny how easy it is to write a very Aussie story set in Bali. Since the 1960s Bali has shared her beaches with Australian surfers and holiday makers and, since the 2002 bombing, also shared some pain. The Balinese people with their open friendliness, and desire never to show anger, also share an attitude with the easy-going Australian on holiday. Our ‘No, worries, mate,’ is reflected in their phrase ‘Sing ken ken,’ and we are right at home with that.

Bali is so much more than an exotic playground on our doorstep, her culture is extraordinarily complex, and it’s easy to find the thousands of stories that weave that culture together.

‘Tooth’ is based on a coming of age ceremony that has been performed for perhaps 2,000 years, so it has survived all the influences that subsequently came to the island, including Hinduism.

In the early hours of morning through July and August in Bali, teenagers may have their teeth filed by Brahmin to rid the youngsters of the invisible forces of evil and make them more physically and spiritually beautiful. After that, the teenager is considered a mature adult, and generally the grindings remain undisturbed and non-volatile.

I think many of us feel a cultural void by comparison to the rich Balinese culture when we visit. With ancestors from four different countries, you’d think I’d have had a good chance of growing up in one ancestral home, but no; and now I don’t even live in the country of my birth. If lust, jealousy, rage etc., were contained in those tooth-grindings and able to move into someone else, how would a cultureless, godless, nomadic, disconnected person like myself, ever be free of that kind of thing? This isn’t a story about drugs. No actual drugs were used in the making of this story. If you thought it was about drugs . . . then I’ve failed to tell a proper story.

If you know Bali, I hope you’ve enjoyed revisiting Kuta and all her colourful quirks. I hope you liked the nods to Bali standing strong against terrorism. Something that puts the Balinese in the position of distrusting their countrymen.

If you’ve never been to Bali, go. I’ll promise you no tooth-crazed people, if you promise me you’ll get off the beaten track, talk to the locals, ask the street-sellers their names, ask about their families and how Bali has changed since the bombs (they enjoy chatting way more than selling), try the street food, go to the old museums and temples, listen to the stories.

Another story of mine, based on a lost Balinese deity, a deity that didn’t survive the coming of Hinduism, was published in SHiny Magazine. In that one, the deity used young Aussies, who’ve turned their backs on consumerism by joining a starvation cult, to regain power, sucking young fat and gaining believers. I’m more confident approaching Balinese traditions and myths in a modern or futuristic Australian context. I think that is the part of Balinese culture we can own, given our ties to the island: the culture of visiting Bali and trying to make sense of the complexities.

This is probably the closest I get to writing fantasy. You’ll more often find me writing science fiction for young adults. I’ve been writing seriously for fifteen years, and I still have a lot to learn. Not so much about how write but how to tell my own kinds of stories, how to connect my characters with readers, how to be exceptional. I learn so much each year that sometimes I think I’m too green to send stories out because I haven’t understood that next idea yet.

Of course, this doesn’t make me a fast writer, and clinging to the idea that story is everything is hardly a modern approach. However, I’m proud of the twelve children’s books I have published in the educational fiction market and all the short stories that I’ve had picked up in magazines and eMags as well. I think they each offer something fresh and a bit different and clearly some pretty good editors think so too.

My three brothers and I spent our childhoods working various farms and high country stations around North Island, New Zealand, and it’s fair to say money was not a thing we knew well. When smarter kids were at university, I was already working and when they were starting their jobs, I quit mine, cashed in my superannuation and backpacked around the world. I never quite made it back to New Zealand because Australia was so full of promises. I think all the people I’ve met, all the lives I’ve seen, all the jobs, gives me a more unusual perspective with which to parse the world. When I discovered Russian science fiction and that hard, dry, impoverished, blackmarket edge, I finally understood that any voice can tell amazing stories, and stories from all perspectives are valid, and that means that I’m just as capable of telling a decent story as anyone.

I live in Melbourne now, work with gifted kids for a private organisation and teach a couple of units at Vic Uni. I like dogs, motorbikes and young people. I think young people are our great hope for the future . . . and I’m absolutely terrified of what they will face.

Website: www.macdibble.com

Going Home Sideways — S. G. Larner

Jason answered the phone and his past reached out to slap him down. Rebecca’s voice was subdued as she said, ‘Your mum called me. I. . . know about it.’

His mother, destroyer of dreams.

‘I was three,’ he said. ‘It was an accident.’

‘She told me. . . that you laughed.’

Jason clenched the phone in his fist, wanting to hurl it at the wall and watch it splinter. ‘I was three,’ he repeated.

‘I just need some time to, you know, get my head around it. I’m sorry.’

He pressed the handset into his ear, willing her to stay on the line but feeling only the emptiness of the disconnection. She was gone. It had happened too many times, they never got past it.

‘How did the bitch find me again?’ Jason stared at his washed-out reflection in the sliding glass door. The fluoro light flickered. He slammed the phone down and crossed to the fridge. Bottles rattled as he pulled a Corona from the door. ‘Here’s to lonely,’ he said and popped the cap.

After the fourth beer his pain was gone.

At quarter to ten he locked the house and wobbled on his bike to the administration building for his shift. The gutter almost claimed him at the last turn but he managed to stay on the bike and chain it to the railing in front of the steps. Lights from the giant Christmas tree that stood in the forecourt winked at him, and glittering tinsel adorned the façade. He fumbled for his smartphone as he walked up the stairs; it slipped out of his clumsy fingers and landed heavily, facedown, on the concrete.

Everything was strangely quiet as he stared at the phone. He was almost scared to pick it up.

Well, what else can go wrong? He sighed and bent down.

‘Ah fuck it.’ A large single crack split the screen neatly from top to bottom. He tested it and it seemed to work, so he stuffed it back in a pocket and tried to calm the buzzing in his head.

The squeal of his boots against the polished concrete echoed in the empty building. A dim safety-light illuminated the stairwell near the information desk, and when he reached the top he walked down the hallway to the door marked SECURITY and unlocked it.

Amal had headphones on, his feet up against the desk and his nose buried in a book. Someone had hung mistletoe over the chair as a joke. The monitors that covered the wall showed a patchwork of scenes: empty street corners, the front doors of the banks, the Golden Fleece Hotel, the sculpture at the entrance to Elizabeth Park. Amal glanced up, saw Jason’s reflection and spun around, dropping the book on the desk and wrenching the headphones off.

‘Christ, you gave me a heart attack.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Wow, that shift went fast.’

‘You’re supposed to actually look at the monitors, not read.’

‘Scone is not exactly a high-crime area.’

‘That’s beside the point. Any incidents I should know about?’

‘Nah. The usual. Drunks and hookers. If you ask me this is all a pointless waste of time.’ Amal waved at the wall of screens.

‘Well if the higher-ups ever agree with you, we’re out of a job, so don’t go shooting your mouth off.’

Amal laughed, snorting. Jason curled his upper lip.

‘Don’t have too much fun,’ Amal said, and yawned as he left.

‘I never do.’ Jason turned and surveyed the screens.

‘Rebecca, don’t hang up. Look, I’d like to see you. Talk about it in person. My mum. . . she hates me.’

The connection was full of static. ‘Who is this?’ Rebecca’s voice sounded tinny.

He frowned. ‘It’s me, Jason.’

‘Sorry, I think you have the wrong number.’ She disconnected and the phone went silent.

‘What the hell?’ He stared at the cracked screen. What sort of game was she playing? His shoulder twinged as he wrenched the curtain across the window, blocking out the morning sun so he could sleep.

In his dreams he was followed by his little sister. Her hair was dark and plaited, and her face bloated and bruised. Silently she followed him through crumbling underground parking lots, up winding mountain roads, and sitting on empty buses. When the alarm screeched he woke with a pounding heart and a metallic taste in his mouth.

Damn her.

Night shift passed in a blur of boredom and schadenfreude, of classic Funniest Home Videos slapstick. Tonight’s security footage winner was Drunk Man Falls Out Of Car. The man got up, wobbling, and shut the car door on his tie before dropping his keys. Jason’s laughter filled the empty room as the man flapped like a fish on the line until a passerby picked up his keys and unlocked the car for him.

What an idiot.

After his shift ended he left the administration building and walked across the road and down to Kerv Espresso Bar for breakfast. Alexis, the woman who took the morning shift, had asked him to cover a few more hours so it was later than usual, 7.30 am. He felt unusually exposed in the morning light.

Rebecca sat at a table against the window. The anger that simmered beneath the surface rose up, but he smothered it in bubble-wrap, numbing himself from the destructive feelings. He stalked over the wooden floorboards.

She glanced up, saw his face and her eyes widened. The red-painted mouth opened but he got in first.

‘If you didn’t want to talk to me, you just should have said. Don’t pretend you don’t know who I am.’

Her brown eyes clouded over as she frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jason.’

‘Bullshit,’ he said in a low voice and leaned in close to her face. She inched away from him. ‘I called you. You said I had the wrong number.’

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. ‘I haven’t spoken to you since. . . your mother called me.’

He stared at a stain beside her coffee mug. His brain fixated on it while the wheels turned in his mind. ‘Show me your phone.’

She frowned and shifted away from him. ‘Why?’

‘I want to check your call log.’

Rebecca stared at him. ‘No, I’m not giving you my phone.’

His jaw clenched, shoulders tensed. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and pulled the phone out of her bag. ‘Look, I’ll show you, but I’m not giving you my phone.’ She swiped through to the call log. ‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’

She held the phone up so he could see the screen. No record of a call received from his number.

‘You could have deleted it,’ he said.

‘Why the hell would I do that?’ Her nose wrinkled and she met his gaze straight on.

Bubble wrap popped inside him. Jason’s vision dimmed. He left before his rage got the better of him.

In the darkness of his bedroom Jason scrolled through his contacts, looking for Rebecca’s number to delete it. His mother’s number flashed past in the list. He should have deleted it years ago. His thumbs pressed buttons and swiped the screen and she was consigned to the ether. He pulled off his shoes, climbed into bed and fell asleep.

When he woke, a vague sense of unease lingered from his dreams. He rolled over and picked up his phone. He thumbed through his contacts and re-added his mother’s number.

His mother’s voice reverberated down the connection, a tiny thread surrounded by vastness. ‘Jason, is that you?’

He breathed shallowly. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh, dear. Are you coming for Christmas? We miss you terribly.’

Jason disconnected. The corners of the room loomed as his mind squeezed with panic. His mother hated him. The world didn’t make sense if his mother missed him.

He crossed the floor and hesitated in front of the fridge. The fluoro light flickered and a moth batted itself against the plastic cover, a dancing shadow of futility. His aloneness crushed him.

He called his mother’s number again.

‘The line dropped out,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Sorry.’

‘Never mind, dear. I was just telling Melissa that you called. You’ll come down and visit?’

‘Mum. . . Melissa. . . ’ Maybe the old bat was senile?

‘She’s looking forward to seeing you.’ Her voice grew querulous. ‘You don’t visit enough.’

Jason’s head spun. ‘No. I’m sorry.’

‘Christmas dinner. If you drive down, you could be here by four? I’ll be doing turkey and ham.’

‘I don’t know.’ He squinted up at the bedraggled moth. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Say you will, dear. It’s been too long.’

The humming in his mind grew louder. ‘Ok. I have to go, now.’

‘See you then, dear.’

He hung up, and shook his head to clear his mind.

Beer. In the fridge.

He drank until every bottle was empty.

The monitors stared blankly at him. He leaned back and put his booted feet up on the desk. His foot nudged something: Amal’s book. He kicked it further back.

Movement in the top right hand screen caught his attention. Elizabeth Park was normally quiet at this time of night, but the two figures locked in passionate embrace in front of the horse sculpture clearly had other things on their minds. Jason grinned and scooted his chair closer. He rubbed at himself through his trousers.

And then he saw the woman’s face and lunged for the phone.

‘Scone Police, Officer Fredericks speaking.’

‘Hey, Matty? There’s an assault in progress down in Elizabeth Park. You’d better hurry.’

He disconnected the line and watched. Minutes ticked by, then he breathed a sigh of relief as uniformed police officers invaded the screen and hauled the man off the shaking woman.

Matty stood beside Jason, watching a replay of the attack, his face set to Police Officer Impassive. ‘Send the file over, and you can come give a statement tomorrow at midday.’

‘Yeah, sure, okay.’

Matty shifted his body weight. ‘I can smell the beer from here, Jase. You need to stop drinking on the job.’

Jason bristled. ‘I had a few at home before work. I’m not drunk.’

Matty turned and gazed at Jason. ‘I heard you and Rebecca broke up.’

‘No. Who told you that?’

‘It’s not important. Just, you know, man, it doesn’t look good.’ He paused at the door, glanced at the mistletoe hanging above Jason’s head. ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’

Jason blinked. Dammit, why not? ‘Going to my mum’s.’

Matty’s eyebrows arched. ‘Oh? Good to hear.’ He turned and tramped down the hall to the stairs. Jason watched as his large, blue-uniformed back descended, and brooded.

On Christmas day the steering wheel burned his hands and the bitumen melted. The car desperately needed a service, but he rarely used it and he didn’t want to part with the money.

His mum’s house looked a little smaller and shabbier than when he’d fled all those years ago. The rose garden trailed thorns across the path, a trial by blood for the unwary doorknocker. The grass was burnt to a crisp, his mother choosing to save her beloved flowers instead of the lawn that only his father had cared about.

The sun seared his neck as he climbed from the car. His footsteps crunched in the gravel of the driveway, and he opened the back door to retrieve the wilted flowers and softened chocolates. As he straightened, the screen door squeaked and banged.

He looked up at the verandah. She was small and hunched, bent with age and bitterness, twisted like a tree root and just as tough. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of him, and her wrinkled mouth opened in a snarl.

He thought it had been too good to be true.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she said, her words whipping him with their astringency.

‘You invited me. I called?’

She hobbled forward, clutching a black walking stick. ‘The heat has baked your fucked-up brain, Jason. Get out. I don’t want you here.’

He winced at the jarring effect of the swearing, at odds with her little old woman appearance. ‘It’s Christmas, mum.’ He held up the bouquet of scented lilies.

‘I don’t celebrate Christmas with murderers. Now go, before I call the cops.’ She glared at him, her withered hands tight white claws, shaking with fury. Cicadas shrilled, filling his ears with a high-pitched monotone.

‘You’re a sick bitch, you know that?’ He threw the flowers in the dirt and dropped the chocolates onto the back seat before slamming the door. She yelled incoherently and started down the stairs, wobbling and waving her stick. He jumped into the car and reversed out of the driveway, leaving her screeching at him as she trampled the abandoned flowers.

Amal had left his book on the desk again. Jason picked it up. The Disunited States of America by Harry Turtledove. The blurb on the back was typical science fiction nonsense, something about time travel. . . no, travelling sideways in time, into a world where history had turned out differently.

His curiosity piqued, he flicked a glance at the screens to make sure all was well, then started reading.

After some time he leaned back to stare at the ceiling. What if? he wondered. What if. . .

The idea niggled at him. The strange phone calls, followed by behaviour that seemed to suggest the phone call had never happened. The missing received call on Rebecca’s phone.

‘Ridiculous,’ he muttered. He picked up his smartphone and inspected it. The call log showed a call made to Rebecca, and a call to his mother’s phone. Not just imagining it, then.

‘So why did it work when I called the police?’ he mused. He glanced at the work phone, an old-fashioned landline wired into the telecommunications cables, and back to his smartphone, connected to the cables only by signal and towers. Some kind of electromagnetic connection he trusted would work, but maybe the signal wasn’t connecting where it should anymore? He ran his fingers down the crack in the screen. Two sides, two halves, two timelines.

He looked up Matty’s phone number on his phone and called it. ‘Hey mate, you want to meet up for a beer on New Year’s Day?’

The scratchy voice on the other end said, ‘Nah, mate, off to visit the missus’s family.’

He hung up, then called the same number on the landline phone. Matty picked up.

‘What’s up,’ he said.

‘Did I just call you?’

There was a brief silence, then a slow, ‘No, you didn’t. Are you drunk?’

‘Are you free tomorrow? I need to talk to someone.’

‘I’m on duty until eleven. I can meet up after that,’ Matty said.

Jason placed the handset on the receiver and turned to the computer screen. He opened up a new tab and started researching, imagining possibilities he’d never dreamed could exist.

‘Have you heard about the multiverse?’

Matty glanced at him from over a beer. ‘Nah, can’t say I have.’

‘It’s a theory that our universe isn’t the only one, that there are other universes and possibilities existing simultaneously to ours. Like you could be in another universe right now drinking beer with a hot chick instead of me.’

Matty laughed. ‘How do I get there?’

‘That’s it. That’s just it. You can’t. I Googled it. There are a bunch of different theories to explain how it could work, but the only one that suggests that these universes can collide says they might actually slam into each other, and that’s what caused the Big Bang. But that would mean we would be obliterated.’

‘Sounds messy.’

‘Yeah. But. . . Matty, I think I called one.’

In the street a car backfired. A woman shrieked before giggling in relief. Jason sweated, even in the air-conditioned cafe. ‘I’m not crazy,’ he said into the gap left by Matty’s silence.

The police officer, the only ‘friend’ Jason had and that was pushing it, tipped his head back and studied the ceiling. ‘Why do you think that?’

Jason tapped on the table. ‘Because I’ve been calling people, and they say one thing, but when I see them they say they never spoke to me. And my mum. . . she hates me, Matty, and I called her and she told me she missed me and invited me for Christmas. Then when I drove there, she abused me and chased me off. How do you explain that?’

‘I’m sure she doesn’t hate you.’

‘She does. She blames me for what happened to my sister.’

‘You never told me the full story,’ Matty said, watching him. Jason stared into the amber liquid in his glass. He didn’t really remember that day, except for his mother screaming and him sitting alone in the backyard while people swarmed in and out of the house. Over the years his mind had constructed a film-reel of imaginings.

His sister getting in the washing machine, thinking it would be a good place to hide.

Him shutting the door and pressing the buttons.

Him laughing because it looked funny to a three-year-old.

‘There was an accident,’ he said. ‘I did something that was bad, but I was three. I didn’t know it was bad. And my sister died. And my mother blamed me for it.’

‘Harsh.’ Matty drained his beer. ‘So, ah, Jason? This multiverse thing? I’d forget it, if I were you. Phones screw up all the time. Texts that disappear, or arrive days after they were sent, calls that are answered but you can’t hear anything. . . don’t dwell on this shit, it will send you mad.’

Jason picked up his phone and turned it over and over again. On impulse, he dialled Matty’s mobile. He could hear the ring tone through his phone, but Matty’s phone on the table was silent. When the voicemail message kicked in he held the phone to his friend’s ear. Matty frowned and checked his phone. Nothing.

‘Phones screw up all the time,’ he repeated, his voice less certain.

‘Yeah, maybe you’re right,’ Jason said, and ordered another beer.

Can’t cross over. Impossible. Like a fly stuck to fly-paper.

Jason called his mother.

‘Oh, we were so disappointed you didn’t come, dear. Did something come up? Work keeps you dreadfully busy.’

The hollow space inside him expanded. ‘I’m sorry, mum. I tried, I really did. Didn’t you get my message?’ A thin sliver of resentment settled in his gut, that this other Jason was such a prick he ignored the mother who actually cared about him. The mother he wanted.

‘No, I didn’t, dear. It’s okay. I hope we see you soon, though.’

‘Me too. I’ll try to get some time off work.’

When he disconnected a vague idea germinated. If he managed to connect to this other universe via phone, was there some way he could cross through by keeping a line open to that place? What if he kept the line open and drove there? It would take him almost three hours to get to his mother’s house.

While he ate lunch he charged his phone to full, then got back in the car and called his mother. ‘Hi, it’s me. This is a strange request, but don’t hang up. I’m coming to see you, but I need you to leave the phone connected.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she replied, sounding flustered. ‘What if someone calls? Or I need to call someone?’

‘Mum, it’s important. I’ll explain when I get there. You don’t have to stay on the line, just don’t hang up. Okay?’

‘Well, okay.’ He heard the doubt in her voice.

‘Thanks. Tell Melissa too. Put the handset down somewhere but do not hang up.’

He placed the phone on the seat beside him and started the car, then pulled out of the driveway and headed for the house he’d never called home.

Several times the bars on the phone dropped down to the point he thought it would drop out, but each time he checked the connection was still active. As he pulled into his mother’s driveway the afternoon sun blazed down and his nerves were tightly wound.

As he got out the screen door banged. ‘You made it!’ a frail voice exclaimed.

He looked up and she was smiling at him. Smiling. It must have worked.

‘Can I hang up now?’ she asked, a worried frown creasing her face. ‘June might call me and she’ll be dreadfully worried if she can’t get hold of me.’

‘You can hang up,’ he said, anxiety knotting in his chest. He leaned across and picked up the phone on the passenger seat. He closed his eyes and pressed ‘end call’.

His mother returned and said, ‘Well, come in. Melissa is out the back painting.’

The tension leaked out of his body. He opened his eyes and sighed before getting out of the car.

His sister sat beneath the mango tree he’d sheltered under as a child on the day of her death, all those years ago. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her brow, smeared with blue paint, creased as she concentrated on her brush strokes. At the sound of his steps she looked up and grinned.

‘Wow, someone’s been working out! I thought you’d pike again,’ she said, then got up and hugged him. ‘You kill her, you know. I’m glad you could make it. Family is more important than work.’

He winced at her choice of words. ‘I’m a slack shit, I know. I’m sorry.’ Jason searched her face for traces of an old injury. Had they played hide and seek, here? Why was she living with their mother, at this age? Was she sick?

She looked perfectly healthy.

‘I want to finish this before the sun goes down,’ she said. ‘Mum made some scones.’

Jason stepped back from his sister and went inside.

While they slept he crept into the sunroom and searched through the cabinet his mother used to store paperwork. Melissa’s name on medical records, talking about her multiple sclerosis, outlining her current condition and how she might expect to deteriorate in time.

There was also a letter, signed by him. He wanted nothing to do with the medical expenses. His sister’s illness wasn’t his responsibility. It was dated two years ago.

On top of the cabinet an address book sat by the phone. He flicked through to find his name.

Port Macquarie. A two hour drive. He glanced at the clock. Eleven. He could get there and back before sunrise.

A vague thought formed in his mind. The Jason that was in this world was a loose end. He swallowed. Could he kill himself, if it came to that?

He clenched his jaw and dialled his mother’s number again, then grabbed the old phone after the first ring, heart pounding as he waited until he was sure no one had woken. ‘Hello,’ he said into his smartphone and his voice echoed back at him through the crackling line of the old phone. Good.

It wasn’t worth losing this place, losing his chance of redemption. He left the phone off the hook and ran to his car.

His doppelganger lived in a big house with a double garage on the outskirts of Port Macquarie. Jason parked the car down the road and sat staring at the dark building. He got out of the car and walked down the footpath, then ducked in through the open gate. The back door proved easy to jimmy, and he made his way slowly through the laundry using the light on his phone to see.

When he crossed over, did his doppelganger cease to exist? Would he walk into an empty room?

At the top of the stairs he listened for sounds. Faint snores drifted from a room to his left. He tasted sourness on his tongue. He’d seen no evidence of family, no photos of a wife or children.

He pushed the door open and stared at himself sleeping in bed. This-Jason was clean-shaven and slightly fatter. He lay on his back, his mouth slack. The room smelled of starch.

Jason picked up a pillow and hesitated. Maybe he could talk to him, convince him to stay away.

Just fucking do it.

With a burst of adrenaline he pushed the pillow down over the doppelganger’s face. This-Jason jerked and thrashed beneath it, but he had known a softer upbringing, and Jason had never wanted anything more than the life his doppelganger took for granted. A sudden thought struck him.

He could take the doppelganger back to his universe.

This-Jason stopped struggling, and Jason lifted the pillow. He checked for a pulse: strong and steady. His shoulders relaxed. Shifting his doppelganger’s bulk was difficult, but he managed to haul him downstairs and dump him at the laundry door. He dashed down the quiet street, pulse thudding in his ears, started the car and reversed it into the yard before manhandling the body into the boot.

After he drove out of Port Macquarie he disconnected the call he’d made to his mother’s and headed for Scone. It was a long drive and the sky was paling to grey by the time he reversed into the garage. Loud thumps and yells came from the boot. Jason picked up a wrench and unlocked it.

The doppelganger sat up and lunged for him, white-faced, the scissor jack handle clutched in his hand. Jason swore and tried to jam the boot back down, but the other Jason braced against it.

‘Calm the fuck down,’ Jason said, panting. ‘Get out and I’ll drive off and leave you alone!’ The doppelganger bucked and heaved. Jason stepped back and let the other man fall out of the boot, then grabbed the jack handle and pulled it away. Confronted with the wrench and the jack handle the slightly overweight doppelganger paused. Then he noticed Jason’s face, and his jaw sagged.

Jason threw the house keys at him. ‘This is your home now.’

‘How. . .?’

Jason slammed the boot shut and backed toward the car door, breathing rapidly. He cast a quick glance to the street; none of the neighbours had reacted to the commotion.

‘You didn’t deserve them,’ he said, and slid in behind the wheel. The doppelganger shouted something, but Jason locked the door and started the car. The other-Jason hammered on the window, his face contorted. Jason put the car into gear and drove away, not looking in the rear-view mirror as he abandoned the doppelganger to his old life.

Just outside Scone he called his mother’s number. It was engaged. The sun peeped over the horizon.

‘Shit.’ He’d left the phone off the hook. ‘Shit!’ He pressed ‘end’ and pulled over, left the engine idling as he tried to figure out what to do. He called again: still engaged. Tears pricked his eyes, and he punched the car door. ‘Idiot!’

He’d just have to keep trying.

With a deep breath he accelerated away from the road’s shoulder. As the kilometres flew by he tried calling again, and again. The sun rose higher, hot and bright in a cloudless sky. Each time the phone beeped a busy signal back at him. By the time he passed the sign that said ‘Welcome to Gloucester’ his hands shook and his phone battery showed ten percent. The heat baked the road to a shimmering haze, as though the car was driving him to hell.

Jason had never been religious, but he made the call with a silent plea to any deity that might heed him. He held his breath, and this time the phone rang.

And rang.

And rang.

He spotted his mother’s house down the road just as Melissa picked up.

‘Hello?’

The sky darkened on cue, clouds erasing the blue and sucking the heat away in an instant. It had been raining. The windows fogged as the cooler air met hot glass.

‘Melissa,’ he said, his voice rough, ‘don’t hang up. I’m coming home.’

He pulled into the driveway, splashing mud, and glanced up at the house. Wind shook the trees, and light rain spattered the windscreen. Melissa opened the screen door, her eyebrows raised.

‘Where on earth have you been?’

Jason got out, trembling. He looked at the smartphone, clenched tight in his hand, the screen split in two. With a savage movement he flung it to the wet gravel and brought the heel of his boot down hard upon it. It shattered.

‘Jason!’

He looked at his sister, and through tears he smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter where I’ve been,’ he said. ‘It only matters that I’m home.’

Author Loci

S.G.Larner

I have a phone phobia. Like other people I know (we’re always so relieved when we find each other!), I really don’t like making phone calls, or receiving them. One day I got a call on my mobile, and the sound quality was terrible. I went to Facebook and remarked that we just *think* we’re talking to the person we know on the other end, but who’s to say we really are? It was a throwaway comment but I was commanded to write that story, and so I did.

‘Going Home Sideways’ was born from the idea that maybe we could make phone calls across the multiverse. Maybe the person who picks up the phone isn’t actually in the same universe as us (originally the story was going to be much darker, maybe with demons or something personifying humans, but thankfully I didn’t run with that idea). When I was creating my protagonist, I wanted someone with an awful past. I remembered reading about a young child, a boy who shut his sister in the washing machine while they played hide and seek, and turned it on. I was horrified by the news story because my children were similar ages at the time and ever since I’ve been quite paranoid about turning my washing machine off at the wall (it’s a front loader).

My character, Jason, strikes me as a very flawed human being, someone with rather questionable ethics, because his mother rejected him after a tragic mistake he made as a child. He could never make amends for what he did in his life, but he so desperately wants to. And when he’s given that chance he seizes it with both hands, even though it means dooming the other version of his self to the life he hated. So while he’s an unsympathetic character, I have empathy for him, because everyone should have the chance for redemption (I’m not saying Jason’s way is necessarily the best way to go about it, though!).

I don’t tend to write a lot of science fiction, as I’m always worried about getting the science wrong. I did read Michio Kaku’s Physics of the Impossible (the section pertaining to the multiverse) to try to understand the theories of quantum physics a little better for this story. There is a point, though, where you just have to make a leap and hope that the story you’ve written carries the ‘science’ and vice versa.

Speaking of making a leap, a fantastic project I’ve been involved in is the Lane of Unusual Traders. My story ‘Caesura’ was one of the flash fiction stories chosen for this world-building project. It’s a strange and wondrous place, the Lane, and a project to follow, and I hope to have more to do with it in the future.

If you would like a taste of speculative poetry, Apex recently published ‘He Dreams of Salt and Sea’, a poem I wrote inspired by a scene from Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts.

Twelfth Planet Press has announced the Table of Contents for their Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction 2014 and my story ‘Kneaded’ has been included. ‘Kneaded’ was originally published in Phantazein, which has garnered great reviews and awards nominations.

I haven’t been able to write much this year, as I’m studying a Masters of Information Science full time. I have written a science fiction story about Google, inspired by the Information Retrieval subject I did last semester, and I’m meant to be editing my weird/fantastical novella ‘The Forgotten Children of Zurat’, which I do hope to submit by the end of the year. If you’d like to keep up with my latest news (including the occasional rant or ramble) I blog at Forego Reality and I very sporadically tweet as @StaceySarasvati.

And because this has been a wall of text with no pretty pictures, here is a whimsical mashup for your viewing pleasure. I’m hoping to make more of these, using public domain historical photos and my own artwork, so you may see more in future! This one is shared under a creative commons licence.

S.G. Larner is a denizen of Brisbane, Australia, where she complains about the heat, wrangles three children, and explores the dark underbelly of the world in her writing. Her work has appeared in Apex, Aurealis, SQ Mag and Phantazein, among others, and been selected for Year’s Best anthologies. She’s currently studying a Masters of Information Science. She has no respect for authority and uses her art to express her malcontent. You can find her at http://foregoreality.wordpress.com and on twitter @StaceySarasvati.

Red in Tooth and Claw — David McDonald

Garret rounded the largest moon of Hope only to gaze upon what he had dreamed of his entire life. No matter how many times he blinked, or rubbed his eyes, it was still there, filling his port screens with a subdued purple and blue glow. His instruments told him it was roughly.93 the mass of Earth, with commensurate gravity, but that was not what caught his eye — it was the almost breathable atmosphere. After three decades in the Survey Corps he had finally gotten lucky and now had the chance to fulfil the deepest desire of every Corps member — to plant the blue and gold flag on a planet where one day settlers could follow.

Sure, the ozone levels were strangely high, and would have meant the use of filters even had the air not contained an alarming amount of organic particulates. There were oceans, glittering under wispy cloud cover, and mottled areas that might be mountains. Garret frowned, trying to make sense of the swathes of black carved into the purple. They looked like the destruction forest fires might leave behind, but they were too regular. Garrett frowned; surely they couldn’t be the mark of intelligent life? Then he found the answer, or the answer found him.

There was a blinding flash of light that sent black shadows flickering across the walls of the cabin, and then a noise like nothing he had heard before, so loud that he staggered away from the console with hands clasped to his ears trying to block it out. His stagger turned into a fall as the ship lurched, sparks and smoke pouring from the console. By the time Garret regained his feet the instrument banks were flickering into darkness, the only illumination coming from the planet beneath him.

The ship was completely dead.

He stumbled to the port window just in time to catch another flash of light as a vast thread of electricity arced between the moon and the planet’s surface, writhing like a living thing. For a moment he simply stood and marvelled at its terrible beauty, realising he was seeing a true marvel of nature, forgetting in the moment that it had killed his ship. His gaze followed the lightning towards Hope, picking out kilometre wide swathes of flame as the surface grew closer.

It took a moment for the import of the sight to register, and then Garret’s jaw dropped. The ship was falling towards the surface, its dying brain no longer compensating for the pull of gravity. He rushed over to the controls, but everything electronic was melted to useless slag. He turned and made his way to one of the lockers, and hurriedly began to pull on one of the environmental protection suits. As soon as it was on, he ran back to the centre of the cabin and opened the hatch set into the floor. The cavity beneath tilted down on an angle, allowing him to slide in on his belly. The hatch shut behind him, leaving him in complete darkness. There was a brief moment of panic as he wondered whether the more hardened emergency circuits had been fried here as well, and then a soft red glow appeared in front of his eyes.

‘Emergency evacuation protocol activated. Please confirm by saying yes or no?’

The voice was smooth, soft and genderless, designed to calm the listener. It didn’t seem to be working, Garret was far from calm.

‘Yes!’

‘Please confirm.’

‘Yes! Yes!’ Garret screamed.

He felt the walls of the cavity clamp around him, hugging him as tight as his own skin.

‘Evacuation in five. Four. Three. Two. One.’

There was a slight jolt and then a feeling of weightlessness. The complete lack of sensory data caused a moment of disorientation, and then the evacuation pod patched into his neural net, creating a screen that gave the impression of hovering directly before him. Diagrams and grids outlined the planet and its moon, and a small dot that represented the ship. And there, an even smaller dot heading towards the planet. Figures flickered showing speed and angle of descent, and at a mental command an external view came to life. Garret felt sick watching the planet hurtle towards him, the pod shuddering as he entered the atmosphere. Flames licked around the edges of the screen, the illusion so complete that Garret could feel the heat. It was at that point that he fainted.

When Garret awoke, it was to complete darkness. There was a moment of panic as he wondered whether he had been blinded, and then sheepish realisation that he was simply buried headfirst in a pile of ash. He stood, shaking off the ash that still clung to his body, the force shield that acted as his helmet’s face plate automatically cleaning itself even as it filtered the air he breathed. From his training, Garret knew that the suit would also keep him at an ideal temperature and that the smartmesh fibres would excrete any wastes that his body produced. Of course, it wouldn’t stop him from dying of thirst or starvation unless he did something about it.

Garret looked around, trying to locate the remains of his escape pod. He could see smoke rising from a pile of debris a few hundred metres away, and as he approached he realised how lucky he had been. The pod was now no more than a pile of twisted metal, whatever supplies he had hoped to salvage consumed by the flames. Despite the gravity of the situation, Garret was completely calm for the first time since the lightning strike. His training had prepared him for this moment and he knew exactly what to do. If he could find a source of water the suit’s filtration capabilities could render it safe to drink, and even now his neural implants would be analysing the organic matter in the air and whatever else he might come across, instructing the suit’s medipak on how to alter his body to handle the local biosystem.

Garret had landed in the middle of one of the stretches of destruction left by a lightning strike, but even as he watched the ash was shifting and stirring as something pushed its way to the surface. The first delicate bud appeared, shades of purple and blue glimmering in the afternoon sunlight, and soon saplings stood swaying in the gentle breeze. Watching them grow was comforting, almost hypnotic, and Garret didn’t notice the vine wrapping around his calf until it squeezed tight, painful even through the reinforced material of his suit. He was glad no one was around to hear his unmanly shriek as he fell, trying to yank himself free. The vine was surprisingly strong, and it took a few blasts of the laser at his wrist to leave it smoking on the ground.

By now a score of vines were snaking towards him, and more saplings were springing up all around. Pausing only to snatch up a hunk of metal from the wreckage, Garret sprinted away from the aggressive vegetation. Fresh buds were appearing in all directions, but ahead he could see a copse of established trees, spread much further apart and separated by patches of short grass that showed no signs of movement. He ran towards the trees, staggering slightly when a vine managed to wrap around his foot but pulling free. His suit helped, the thousands of tiny bands of electro-contractive filaments at each of his joints enhancing his strength and speed. Despite these enhancements he was still panting when he reached the shelter of the trees, and he stopped a moment to catch his breath.

Garret could almost have been on Earth, if Earth trees were various shades of purple and blue. The trees had completely smooth trunks and wide spreading branches with thick foliage. He stared up into one of the bigger trees, noticing strange growths suspended from the bottom of the thickest branches. They looked somewhat like chrysalides, joined to the branch by a thick stem. They were about the size of a large man, and their surface was unpleasantly flesh-like, glistening and veined, and throbbing slightly. Translucent skin allowed the sunlight to shine through, and revealed a shadowy mass suspended inside. Looking at them for too long made Garret feel slightly sick, like staring at an open wound.

His neural implants had finished scanning the trees and the results were what he had expected. Like every other habitable planet humanity had discovered the life here seemed built on the same basic template, a state of affairs that had delighted proponents of intelligent design and panspermia alike. The trees were carbon based and built on a foundation of the same amino acids as Garret, which was good news as it would not take too many changes to his body to render them edible. And, with this much of what passed for Hope’s plant life around him, Garret knew that there must be plenty of water available somewhere, and if he could find it he could survive here indefinitely. It might be months or years, but he had to believe that another survey team would follow his beacon at some point. And when they did, he would be waiting.

A stirring of the ground at his feet told Garret it was time to get moving. Up ahead he could see a vast uprising of bare rock, and he decided that would be as good a place as any to get away from the aggressive vegetation, with the added benefit of giving him a view above the tree line. From there he might be able to see a river or lake, and he might be able to find some shelter. At the very least, a sense of purpose might take his mind of his circumstances. Grabbing the piece of metal he had salvaged from the wreck of his pod, Garret set off for the distant landmark.

Garret sat with his back against the rocky wall, his arms wrapped around himself and feeling miserable. It wasn’t that he needed a fire, the suit kept him warm and would continue to function far beyond a human’s life span, recharging itself on solar energy during the day and repairing itself as required. But it was so dark, and he felt so alone, that a fire would have been a comfort. It hadn’t helped that during the course of his walk to the hills he had stumbled across the wreckage of two other spacecraft. One had been unfamiliar, even his databanks unable to identify it, but the other had the unmistakable polyhedron design of an Antaren scout ship. A jagged gash had run the entire length of the vessel, and a hexapodal skeleton had hung half and half out.

Garret had tried to salvage something from the wreck, but the inside had been gutted by fire. He assumed that the blaze had been started by the energy weapon that had left deep scars in the walls, and was now only a melted ruin clutched in the skeleton’s hand. Garret didn’t want to think about what the Antaren had been shooting at; he only hoped it had perished in the blaze as well. The laser on his suit’s wrist was not really designed for combat; his extensive arsenal had no doubt broken up with his ship when it hit the atmosphere.

Now, as he huddled in the cave he had found halfway up one of the cliff faces, Garret tried not let his imagination fill the darkness around him with wild beasts or vicious killers. He was safe enough where he was, he had barricaded the narrow pass that led to his refuge with enough rocks to keep out an army and he doubted anything could reach the cave’s entrance without waking him. But this fear was not one that could simply be reasoned away. Sleep was a long time coming, and when it did it was full of dark dreams.

The next morning, Garret felt as if he hadn’t slept at all, but he knew that he needed to continue to explore his new home. He had seen a few signs that pointed to water, and that seemed as good a place to start as any. But first, Garret wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to be defenceless in case he found more than fresh water and trees. The hunk of metal he had taken from the wreckage was almost a metre and a half long and it didn’t take too much work with his suit laser to trim and shape it into a serviceable weapon. He had carved the last thirty centimetres into a blade and, while it wasn’t razor sharp, it looked capable of dealing significant damage.

It had come in handy when he had decided to collect some branches to build a fire against the coming night. The weapon had functioned more than adequately as an axe and he had managed to gather several armfuls of branches as long and twice as thick as his arm. Still, despite the ease of chopping them free, it had been a disconcerting experience. With every stroke of the axe, not only had the tree he was hacking the wood from shivered, but it had emitted a low moaning sound that was echoed by nearby trees in an eerie chorus. Garret could have collected much more, but he reached the limit of what his mind could bear long before the limits of muscle and sinew. More would have to wait until the need was a little more desperate.

Leaving the wood in his cave, he set out. By the time he reached the stream the sun was high overhead, and Garret was grateful for a chance to have a drink. Now that the analysis of the atmosphere was complete he knew it would be safe to deactivate the mask long enough to eat or drink without any permanent lung damage from the ozone rich air. Garret felt fortunate. He could have crashed on a planet where he would have needed to stay sealed tight at all times. Perhaps his sojourn here would not be so bad after all.

Caught up in the simple pleasure of slaking his thirst, a low growl was his first warning that he was no longer alone. Slowly, Garret turned from the stream and faced the creatures that had emerged from the trees. There were three of them, and his neural implants identified them immediately as Antaren rockwolves, laying out their strengths and weaknesses and a disturbingly short list of potential vulnerabilities. The makeshift weapon in his hands didn’t seem quite as formidable as it had back in the cave.

Garret wondered where the wolf part of their name had come from, unless it was their habit of hunting in packs or their broad dog-like muzzles. With their segmented bodies and six long legs, extending to joints well above their bodies, they reminded him more of ants. The middle one was larger than the others, and a brighter shade of white. It took a step towards him, its muzzle splitting into a snarl filled with a forest of jagged, razor sharp teeth. The other two creatures started to move to either side, attempting to flank him. As formidable as they looked, though, the aliens were simply beasts and Garret possessed an insurmountable advantage.

The state of the art implants that Garret had been fitted with when he joined the Survey Corps may have been out of range of, and disconnected from, the hypernet that linked the civilised planets, but he didn’t really care about the fifteen thousand channels of infotainment he could no longer view. He could never find anything worth watching, anyway. The important thing was that the tactical sub-routines still ran in offline mode, just like the survey database, and Garret was more than happy to let them do their job. He willed himself to relax and let them take over.

The laser on his wrist flashed, raking a beam of coherent light across the multifaceted eyes of the creature on his left, sending it to the ground in a jittery mess of flailing limbs. Garret hadn’t stopped to look; he was already charging to the left, bringing his weapon down in a whistling arc. The edge of the blade turned out to be more than sufficient, the force behind his swing carving through alien gristle and bone and sending a still snarling head flying. Garret spun to face the largest of the rockwolves, only to find it already upon him. It was fast, and he barely had time to bring his weapon up as it leapt, managing to impale it on the point and hold it away from himself. For a moment it pressed down on him, snarling and snapping its teeth mere centimetres from his face. With a last convulsive heave it stiffened and collapsed, its full weight pinning him down as the light faded from its eyes.

He lay there, feeling the adrenalin drain away, before levering the dead weight of meat off himself. Slowly, aching from the impact, he walked over to where the alien he had blinded lay whimpering and put it out of its misery with one swift stroke. Methodically, and with little pleasure, he carved out several thick steaks, taking as much meat as he could carry against the possibility of being able to smoke it, or somehow preserve it. With a last look back at the sight of the battle, Garret draped the meat over his shoulders and started walking back to his cave. He barely noticed the discarded sacs of skin laying at the base of one of the larger trees, not even giving them a second thought.

Garret had assumed the rockwolves had been on board the Antaren vessel, somehow surviving the crash. That explanation didn’t account for the other predators he had encountered in the days since, and Garret had started to feel a deep sense of foreboding every time he left his cave for more water or fuel for his fire. He could believe that one or two ships carrying live animals might have crashed on Hope over the years, but so far he had counted five separate species, as dissimilar to each other as they were out of place.

And every one had been a deadly predator, the sort of creatures Corps veterans would tell stories about to scare the greener recruits. In the last week, Garret had almost been dragged into the water by a Vegan swamp octopus and just avoided being ensnared by the trailing webs of a giant Barnardian tree spider. He knew that without the protection of his suit and the enhancements he had received in the Corps biolabs he would have been dead a dozen times over. The only explanation that he could come up with was that a freighter bearing combatants to one of the fighting pits that were fashionable on the frontier worlds had crashed, freeing its cargo. Even to the increasingly paranoid Garret, that seemed a little farfetched but it was unimportant. He knew it was only a matter of time before his luck ran out.

Even his cave was no longer the refuge it had been. While nothing could attack him from the ground, he had awoken one night to a scrabbling noise at the cave mouth. He had grabbed a burning brand from the fire and rushed to the entrance, only to come face to upside down face with a viciously beaked creature. Its eyes glowed red in the reflected torchlight, while leathery wings flapped in agitation as it hung down across the cave mouth. It had been easily despatched, a single blow of his axe cleaving through its thin skull and sending it crashing to the ground metres below, but Garret had found it hard to sleep since, wondering what else might come visiting in the dark. It had been this fear that had sent him exploring further and further, hoping to find a wreck to turn into a more secure refuge.

On the fifth day after his nocturnal visitor, Garret decided to head away from his usual source of water. As he moved deeper into the forest the trees grew larger, and the strange chrysalides more common. Most were high in the branches, but at the foot of the biggest tree he had seen so far was an enormous chrysalis, almost the size of the Antaren ship. It was leaning back against the trunk, attached to the tree by a mass of thick tubes that pulsed with organic purpose. As Garret watched, the distended skin began to split, revealing the dark mass inside. With a gush of disgusting fluids the chrysalis opened fully and a massive figure stepped uncertainly into the light.

A dull, mottled green, it was built in threes. The thick body stood on three massive trunks giving it immense stability, and about half way up the body were three long tentacles that trailed all the way to the ground. Each of them ended in a spiky ball of bone the size of a small barrel, heavy enough to shake the ground beneath Garret’s feet when the beast brought one crashing down. A dull eye blinked above the base of each of the appendages, and beak-like mouths snapped below.

The closest eye fixed on Garret and the beast roared, chilling him to the bone. It moved faster than a creature that size and shape should have been allowed to, and Garret barely avoided being trampled. He was forced to dive desperately as a hunk of bone hurtled through the air but he was not quite quick enough. One of the spikes caught his shoulder, merely brushing him but still having enough power to send him hurtling into one of the trees.

Yet again the tactical subroutines saved him. He ran for his axe, throwing himself forward in a desperate roll that took him just under one of the tentacles, the wind of its passage ruffling his hair. He slapped his hand down, sobbing with relief as cold metal filled his grip. Whirling, he slashed at the base of one of the legs, opening a deep gash that squirted a thick, green ichor. Not pausing to strike again, he bolted through the trees, trying to outdistance the roaring behemoth behind him. For a hundred metres he expected to feel another terrible blow, but soon the beast’s bulk began to tell against it. Garret picked paths that took him through narrow gaps between the trees, hoping to slow the creature’s progress and soon its roars began to fade into the distance.

Shaking, Garret began the journey back to his cave, wanting nothing more than to curl up and let the suit tend to his injuries. In his relief he gave little thought to the trail of blood he had left behind or the way the leaves quivered as they absorbed every last trace.

Aside from a nasty gash and impressive bruising, Garret had emerged relatively unscathed, and the suit had patched him up almost as quickly as it had repaired itself. As he recovered, his thoughts kept returning to the mystery of how a native of the Gilesian system had ended up cocooned in a chrysalis on Hope, grown from the trees like a deadly crop of fruit. The mystery nagged at him, and he ran through a dozen theories in his mind, searching the databanks and cross referencing accounts of defensive mimicry and morphological DNA. But, he was grasping at straws — his education had not extended to advanced xenobiology.

Garret was jerked out of his thoughts by a disturbingly human scream that echoed from the cliffs. Garret froze, wondering if he had imagined it. The scream came again, sounding for all the world like a human female, and a young one at that. A desperate hope filled him, mixed with trepidation, perhaps rescuers had arrived after all and had been caught unawares by some terrible predator. He grabbed his axe and began the climb down the cliff, trying to find the right mix of caution and urgency. It would not do anyone any good if he was too late to help, but nor would it serve anyone if he fell victim to an ambush. Another scream cut through the air, and he followed it around a large outcropping of rocks. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him, and he stopped dead in his tracks, trying to process what he was seeing.

Crouched at the foot of a boulder was a young woman. It was plain to even as poor a judge of age as Garret that she couldn’t have been older than her early twenties, but it was not that which had shocked him. She was completely naked, her only covering the dark, tangled mass of hair that hung below her shoulders and streaks of what looked like clotted blood. She must have heard his approach, and looking up she reached out an imploring hand. Snapping out of his paralysis he hurried over.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked her. ‘Are there any others with you?’

She didn’t answer, only continued to hold out her hand. Beneath the blood that smeared her face she seemed vaguely familiar, though he knew that was hardly likely. Frowning he reached down and pulled her to her feet. Before he could say a word she wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.

‘There, there,’ he said, patting her clumsily. ‘It will be okay. We will get out of this mess, I promise.’

He felt her twitch in his grasp, and for a moment he thought she had punched him just below his ribs. His knees suddenly felt weak and he staggered backwards, clutching at his side, unable to understand why there was a length of sharpened bone sprouting from his flesh. Blinking away tears, he watched more figures emerge from behind the rocks, some clutching other pieces of bone and others holding thick lengths of wood. As they swarmed towards him, his last coherent thought was to wonder why they all had his face.

Simmons turned away from the controls with a smug smile of satisfaction.

‘There you are, Captain. We are now in geosynchronous orbit.’

‘Well done, Simmons,’ Captain Hussain said. She didn’t particularly like Simmons, but he was a damn fine pilot and she would put up with more than a little smugness if it meant she could be confident her ship was in safe hands. ‘Now, Doctor Swann, tell me something about this planet.’

Swann pointed at the screens that were filled with the purplish globe.

‘Well, Captain, we may be the first people to see it. There are some records of a Survey Corps ship in this sector around sixty years ago but it was reported missing and it may not have gotten this far. One thing to be mindful of, as I reported earlier we want to keep on this side, away from the moon. My readings suggest that there is a great deal of electromagnetic activity that might be dangerous,’ he said. ‘The planet itself seems worth exploring though, the atmosphere is close to Earth normal as is the gravity. Lots of possibility for colonisation.’

‘Any native life forms we need to worry about?’ the captain asked.

Swann frowned. ‘Well, Captain, that’s the odd thing. Our instruments are showing that it is a life form, singular, that we need to find out more about.’

‘What do you mean?’ Hussain asked.

‘See all that purple?’ The captain nodded, and Swann went on. ‘That is all one connected biomass, the surface of the planet is almost completely covered in a single life form.’

‘So what’s that brown, then?’ Hussain pointed at a continent sized blotch in the middle of the purple, its ragged edges giving it an unhealthy look.

‘I’m not sure, Captain. As far as I can tell that’s where the biomass has died off. I can’t get a decent reading because of the sheer mass we are talking about — it’s causing interference — but there is something in that area that is slowly driving the biomass back.’

‘An infection of some sort?’ the Captain asked. She was worried at the thought; even in this day and age an unknown disease could threaten her crew, and that she would not allow.

‘Perhaps, Captain. Or something like a cancer. Let me switch to drone cameras.’

The screens in front of them flicked to a grid of images, all of them giving a bird’s eye view of the landscape, purple biomass flashing past as the UAVs screamed along close to the surface.

The captain leaned forward, and swore softly.

‘Seems you were closer than you imagined,’ she said. ‘Some people might say that is the only cancer a planet can get.’

Swann touched a control and the image the captain had pointed to expanded to fill the screen. They watched silently as a million identical faces looked up to watch the drone pass overhead, tracking it with empty eyes.

Author Loci

David McDonald

There’s a lot to be said for growing up on a property just outside a very small country town. For a playground I had acres of paddocks, bushland and scrub. Our house perched up on top of a hill that ran down into a rocky valley with its own stream, and my parents pretty much let me roam where I pleased. It may not surprise you to hear that I had a very vivid imagination, and I populated the countryside with scenes from my books. One day I might be slaying orcs with a wooden sword my Dad had made me, another I would try and make it to the valley without leaving the cover of trees, crawling through culverts under the road for fear of being captured by Tripods and ‘capped’.

But, there was one big downside. The closest thing we had to a library was a single room of books tacked on to the town hall. While to me that room was an Aladdin’s cave of wonders, there was not a huge selection to choose from, and the speculative fiction choices were even more limited. But, being a voracious reader, I would read anything I could get my hands on. At home, my parents had a few bookshelves, lots of Reader’s Digest condensed books and a big stack of Westerns and Alistair MacLean books. These were those dark days before the internet and Amazon!

A lot of what I read had similar themes. It was usually one man (very occasionally one woman), who was alone in a hostile environment, generally surrounded by enemies who wanted him dead, with only his wits and — more importantly — his will between him and death. They were usually the rugged, self-reliant loner type. Even the fantasy and sci fi that I was exposed to followed similar themes, simply substituting spec-fic tropes for Western or adventure ones. Whether it was Conan alone in the Pictish wilderness surrounded by natives, or a space explorer stranded on a hostile planet being chased by bug-eyed monsters, or a world weary and heart sick pilot infiltrating an oil rig taken over by international criminals, they followed similar conventions.

Looking back, a lot of what I read was perhaps a bit simplistic, some was downright bad — though there was a lot of good stuff in there — writers like André Norton and Robert Howard and Alistair MacLean are still familiar friends. But the most important thing with all those stories is that they were fun. They moved along at a cracking pace, they had plenty of action and you wanted to see how the writer was going to get the hero out of increasingly fraught and dangerous situations — without destroying your suspension of disbelief. Sometimes they managed, sometimes they didn’t, but it was always entertaining.

Later, when I had access to a wider range of reading, my tastes developed and changed, but I still retained a fondness for these first loves of mine. And, there is no doubt that traces still turn up in my own writing. Two examples that stand out are the characters of Vanja in ‘Cold Comfort’ (Cold Comfort and Other Tales from Clan Destine Press), and Jenn in my novelisation of the Canadian movie, Backcountry (Backcountry from HarperCollins Canada). While Vanja finds herself alone against a frozen post-apocalyptic landscape, and Jenn finds herself lost in the Canadian wilderness, they both have something in common — that they have to rely on their own strength and wits and will to survive in a world where everything seems turned against them. Oh, and they both have to deal with killer bears . . .

When I sat down to write ‘Red in Tooth and Claw’ I deliberately tried to emulate the style of some of the sci fi adventures I read as a young teen, and I wanted to try and recapture some of that sense of wonder I felt as I imagined exploring strange planets and encountering alien creatures. I will leave you to judge how well I have succeeded, but I had a great time trying.

This story also serves to reinforce the lesson that you shouldn’t let rejection discourage you as a writer — after all, it is more common than acceptance. The first market I subbed this to put it on their shortlist but ended up rejecting it, the second asked to hold it but in the end also passed. I was tempted both times to trunk it, but instead (with the help of a great crit from my AHWA mentor, Jason Fischer) I gave it a polish and sent it off into the wild once more.

To say I was delighted when Keith emailed me to say he had accepted it would be an understatement. Coeur de lion was one of the first two markets I subbed to when I initially started sending out stories. When I look at the writers who have appeared in Keith’s books (and in Dimension6 itself), it is a roll call of some of Australia’s finest, and it is a huge honour to see my name associated with them—and with the publisher who bought us anthologies like X6 and Anywhere But Earth. From the time I started looking at Australia’s publishers and making a list of the ones I would target, publication has been a long and not always smooth journey, but it is wonderful to have made it here. Of course, it is hopefully another stop on the way rather than the end of the road!

There is no doubt that spec-fic has matured since those Boy’s Own type adventures, and I like to think that my writing has changed and grown as I have been exposed to a wider range of books, too. But, sometimes you just want to take your protagonist, give him no more than a ray-gun and dump him on a planet that wants to kill him just to see what happens. I had a lot of fun writing this story, and it brought back some great memories — and I hope it brings you the same pleasure as it did me.

David McDonald is a mild-mannered reporter and editor by day, and a wild-eyed writer by night. Based in Melbourne, Australia, he is the editor of a fortnightly magazine for an international welfare organisation, and divides his spare time between helping run a local cricket club and writing.

In 2013 he won the Ditmar Award for Best New Talent, and in 2014 won the William J. Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review and was shortlisted for the WSFA Small Press Award. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies from publishers such as Moonstone Books, Satalyte Publishing, Crazy 8 Press and Fablecroft Publishing. In 2015, his first movie novelisation, Backcountry, was released by HarperCollins.

David is a member of the Horror Writers Association, The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and the Melbourne based writers group, SuperNOVA.

The Pass — Jessica May Lin

There used to be a train that ran around the world. It has not come for many years, but its tracks still lie in the copse, dividing the strawberry fields in half.

Most of us boarded the last train and departed with it to whatever future lay ahead, but there are some of us left.

Children, whom I have taken it upon myself to protect. They never age.

We are waiting for the next train.

There are monsters. They travel along the tracks, appear from time to time out of the air and hunt us. Some of us think they are things of the past, trapped in an endless time-space continuum, bound by the untold history of the tracks.

The children play in the strawberry fields, and I kill the monsters. It has been like that for many years.

I am old now.

With every red sunset that dips lower under the horizon, the edge of my sword grows duller, my back stiffer with age.

We are waiting for the next train, but it never comes. I begin to think it may never come.

Until the day I find her body.

A breeze runs through the field, bending the strawberries in ripples. The children suck juice from their fingers while playing hide-and-seek in the runners.

‘Grandfather, Grandfather!’ they shout, but I throw my arm out to hold them back.

The tracks are not safe. We do not know their secret, although our lives and our hopes depend on them.

She is lying across the left rail, her head resting on her arm. I know she is not from the village because she is older than the children here. She wears a red ribbon in her hair, the same colour as the stains on her white t-shirt.

I lift her gently in my arms. The bones in her body do not hold right when I cradle her head on my arm. A throng of black marks runs across her torso, breaking through the skin of her chest. Wounds that can only be made by a swift, hard impact.

I raise my head, squint past the sunset to as far as the strawberry fields will go.

Sometime in the night, a train passed by.

Caught in the dappled shadows of the copse, the Girl shivers.

She struggles to fit between the lichen-covered trees, her jeans catching on uncut bramble. She can feel them — the faces and warmth of children’s bodies she cannot see, pressing up against her through a wall of space and time. They are in another world, divided from her by layers of an invisible wall.

She tries to touch their faces, but her hands fall through their warmth.

Around her, the strawberry fields shiver.

When the Girl left this place, many years ago, she never thought she would ever come back. It’s the type of place that is meant to be left behind. It is a haven, but one whose walls cannot keep you safe forever.

She is looking for something she lost long ago, when she was a child. But she does not know where or how she will find it.

The village is gone. Her bare feet leave footprints in the rust as she crosses from one track to the next. Something sweet and melancholy hangs in the air, a familiar awareness left over from better times, when the world was a better place.

A wisp of black flickers in the corner of her eye.

The Girl tenses. An odd chill runs across the surface of her skin, but she can’t bring herself to move.

The creature bursts out of the air — skeletal face and bloated body, skin gray and blistery. The upper half of its jaw is a black, curved beak, the bottom lined with snapping teeth.

She had forgotten what the monsters were like.

The monster bounds down the tracks, and the girl reaches down for the first thing she can get her hands on: gravel and a handful of pebbles.

The monster springs and she hurls the pebbles, which the monster dodges easily. Its claws latch into her shirt, and they fall in a pile on the tracks. The Girl pushes her hands against the monster’s neck, trying to hold it at bay as it snaps its teeth in her face.

When the monster’s jaws gape wide open, she sees down its throat to the horrific pulp of things that give it life: a crumpled beach ball and old yellow sneakers, paper cranes folded from coloured construction paper. Behind its roar, she hears the muffled sound of children’s laughter and the clap of hands together in a game of Down by the Banks.

It is a monster she once shared with someone else.

Its teeth slip past her fighting hands into her shoulder, and she is reminded that no matter how hard she fights, she can never be free from it. She screams. Its slobber is hot against her neck as it drags her into the air and throws her against a tree. She crumples on her side, a sharp pain in her hip.

Before she can get up, the monster charges her a second time, its claws hooking deep into her collarbone.

A hole appears through the centre of its chest.

Droplets of blood spray on the Girl’s face, and she cries out. But the monster falls away, twitching with its front legs splayed.

It roars in agony, and for a second she can hear the voices it has swallowed — clearer than ever. The refrain of a girl and a boy laughing together, playing in the leaves under a maple tree.

The Girl rolls over. For a long time, she hugs her knees into her chest and breathes, sometimes squeezing her eyes shut against the throbbing pain in her shoulder. It pains her to remember.

Slowly, she finds the courage to push the monster over on its back.

It lays unmoving, bleeding with a wound struck through from another world.

I leave the girl’s body lying across the tracks where I found her. Something about her is not ready to die — the way her eyes are closed as if she is shutting something out, the way her lips almost press together like a sigh. Her expression is one of consequential sadness, as if her purpose in the world is unfinished.

I think I can feel her. She is trapped between the reality of this world and another, watching us. Her body does not decay, the wounds still fresh under her white t-shirt.

At night, I guard her from the monsters.

She seems to draw them. The tracks are teaming with rows of glowing red eyes, patched fur, and long, spidery legs covered in fine hairs that scuttle in the copse.

I am extra attentive to the tracks that night.

Every night for near a hundred years, I have stood by these tracks, watching. I have never seen a train. And yet the marks of a train are obvious on the girl’s body.

The soft murmurs of children sleeping in the strawberries carry on the midnight breeze. The fields are quiet, but if I stay still enough, I can hear the ghost purr of cicadas in the soil. They are imprints on my memory from the past, when I used to run through these fields hand-in-hand with a girl. We were both young.

I try sometimes, but I cannot see her face.

Another monster bursts out of the air, this one all tentacles and a teeth-lined hole for a mouth. I drag my sword through the air and hack its head off with a single swing. One tentacle manages to wrap around my sword arm, but I pry it off.

My skins burns where the tentacle touched it. I remember the many-armed beast that I knew lived under my bed, although I’d never seen it — somewhere in the wasted abyss of my childhood, half-defeated and half-lost but still struggling to consume me.

The monster’s carcass dissolves slowly into ash, and a dull, pounding pain begins deep in the left side of my chest. It has nothing to do with the monster, but I am equally afraid.

I am dying.

The tip of my sword trails on the ground, and I have to lean on it. This is not the first time I have experienced such a pain, but I can hardly stand it. I clench my jaw and focus on the still forms of the children dozing in the strawberries.

They need me.

I am too tired to lift the sword to its sheath. Drops of blood run down the blade and trickle back into the earth.

There is not much time to rest. More monsters flash out of the darkness, webbed talons and scales reaching out of the night.

I dodge their teeth and thrust the sword through their bellies, blocking out the nightmares they bring. My body may be failing me, but I have slain thousands of monsters in my lifetime. Not a single one has ever touched the children. They will not as long as my heart is still beating.

I wait for the train, but it does not come.

At dawn, I sit down on the rail by the girl’s body, exhausted. The monsters have laid back on their assault, although I do not know how much time we have. Feeble shafts of light leak behind the horizon, warming the children’s skin and creating pink circles on their cheeks. Their chests rise and fall amidst the morning dew on the strawberries.

An odd peace is at work in the fields. At times like this, with the low sun heralding the safe passing of another night and my blood still racing with the steam of battle, I am almost in love with the fallen paradise we live in. I wish that it would go on forever — the children laughing in the strawberries, a lonely pair of train tracks that have lost their meaning, the fearless protector watching over them.

I shrug my jacket from my shoulders and drape it over the girl’s thin, broken body. A light breeze cools the sweat on my forehead, and I lay my sword against the earth.

The village used to have a name. Perdita Ridge.

It has been decaying for so many years that I can hardly remember where the farmhouse stood. But I remember there was a farmhouse.

A sweet, gentle huff of breath touches the back of my neck, and I turn around.

It is Tommy-Who-Thought-the-Stars-Were-Alive.

He isn’t like Tommy-Who-Climbed-the-Maple-Tree-With-Juliet, who is proud and breathless, or Tommy-Who-Tasted-His-First-Strawberry-Tart, who is always looking under the fields for something he has never experienced before.

Tommy-Who-Thought-the-Stars-Were-Alive is quiet and prefers to watch the other children instead of playing, his blue eyes wide and curious. He believes the stars are guardian angels that have been sent to watch over the strawberry fields, and they will never let anything go wrong for the children or their Grandfather. He has always been different from the other children, because he can sense hope. Even when Tommy-Who-Stole-the-Stuffed-Dinosaur took the biggest strawberry in the field from him, Tommy-Who-Thought-the-Stars-Were-Alive did not cry.

I do not know what he measures hope by, but he knows it is there.

‘Grandfather,’ he asks me. ‘What lies beyond the strawberry fields?’

‘Nothing. There is nothing beyond the strawberry fields.’

His forehead creases, and I know that he remembers the day he and I stood together, alone at the end of the platform, and watched the last train depart. ‘Where did all the older sisters and brothers go?’

‘A better place, where they will grow up and forget about this place.’

‘Will we go there?’

‘Yes. Someday.’

‘Do you want to go there?’

A pause. ‘Yes.’

‘When will the train come?’

‘It is coming.’

One by one, the children all boarded the train, until the boy was the last one standing on the wooden platform, holding his sword loosely at his side. The train was a rusted, arthritic thing that sagged under the burden it carried, its paint peeling away in uneven patches.

Slowly, the boy lifted the sword and stared at it, as if he didn’t know what it was for anymore.

The girl with the red ribbon in her hair ran along the train corridor, fighting the crowds of children who were laughing and clutching each others’ hands, talking about the lives they were about to begin once they had left the strawberry fields. There was an odd spark in the air that seemed to glisten with a new life, devoid of the simplistic innocence that had dictated their childhoods.

‘Thomas!’ the girl cried, elbowing the others out of her way. She leaned out of an open door, her hands braced on the frame. ‘Thomas, come on! The train’s going to leave soon.’

The boy dropped his sword arm back to his side.

He looked up at the girl, and the train’s engines roared to life around them with a sound like thunder.

‘Juliet?’

He felt a rush of warmth in his middle when he saw her face. The sight of her conjured up sweet things. First kisses, things he’d never felt before, promises he said he’d keep forever.

‘Thomas, what are you waiting for?’

But Thomas was afraid.

The world was bigger than he was, and he didn’t know what was waiting out there, beyond the strawberry fields. A sword was enough to fight the monsters of his boyhood, but it wasn’t enough to protect him from whatever lay out there.

He thought about his cold, new future, somewhere far away that he could not imagine. He didn’t want to leave his childhood behind — the sweet taste of his first strawberry tart, nights spent walking hand-in-hand with Juliet, the electrifying anticipation of a train that wasn’t supposed to come.

As excited as the others were now about the vast unknown that lay before them, he knew that in the future, ultimately, there would only be pain.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t go.’

‘Thomas, we have to get on the train.’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t. Not yet. I’ll come on the next train.’

‘There will be no next train!’

The train had started to move, slowly, rolling away from the platform. The girl turned her head, a stray curl of her hair fluttering with the ribbon in the wind.

‘Yes there will be. There will always be a next train, as long as I want it to come.’

She reached out for him. ‘But you don’t want the train to come, and so it will not. Thomas, don’t leave me. I can’t think about you in the strawberry fields all alone.’

‘I won’t be alone,’ he told her. ‘I have my memories.’

And the train rushed along to its full speed, carrying the children away, erasing the strawberry fields to a blur — tearing them apart.

The girl with the red ribbon in her hair ran down the corridor to the last window in the last car and pressed her face and her hands against it, watching the boy fade.

His wide blue eyes were the last thing she saw, staring through her. Strangely lost and sad at the end of the platform.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, he had left her.

The other children were exploring the train with a babble of excited voices.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The Future, where we will grow up.’

‘Why did we have to leave?’

‘We can’t stay children forever.’

The further they got from the place they left, the faster the train went.

All around her, the girl with the red ribbon in her hair watched her friends age, growing taller and holding their chins higher. They laughed less and watched more, their breasts fuller and their waists narrower.

They had let go.

‘Tommy!’ she cried out.

The Girl follows the tracks as far as they will take her. Dried blood cakes her skin. She knows some of the scars will never go away. The fresh ones still bleed.

Finally, the Girl reaches the train station, although it is not a station anymore. The walls are eaten by salt lichens, the painted sign faded to grains of colour.

Although the station has moved, the letters remain the same.

Perdita Ridge.

Where everything began and ended.

When she walks through a gap in the wall, the wood is damp beneath her feet. The strawberries have grown through the station and taken it over, although a number of the plants are overripe and weighed down by their decaying fruit.

Past the station where the platform should’ve been, the fields open onto an abandoned ferry dock, a few last curls of wild strawberry pushing through the loosened planks.

She does not remember the water.

The Girl’s fingers trail against wooden walls, which are splintered and peeling. As each wave crashes against the crumpled dock, water floods the station and washes over her feet. A clammy, salty taste hangs in the air.

The train tracks run into an ocean, broken rails and rusted bolts crumbling to pieces together with the decayed pier. Water glistens for miles, as far as she can see. Ceaseless ocean and slabs of the broken dock floating on the surface.

Something beyond her control has drowned the landmark of her childhood. Destroyed it. Perhaps it is the fact that she has come back, after leaving it behind.

In the heart of the station, where the grand foyer used to be, a large tree grows out of the middle, its leaves the shape of stars. Gnarled roots have cracked the floor, strangling the walls.

The Eternity Tree.

The Girl met the tree once, when it grew in the yard by her house. She often lay under it on summer evenings as a child, playing in its leaves and sunning herself in its shade.

At the centre of its twisted boughs — once her favourite roost as a child — a monster waits. This one is bigger than the others, covered in snakelike eyes and coarse hairs. The armoured sting of a scorpion curves around its body, gleaming with a thin membrane of mucus.

The tree has changed.

When the monster comes for her, it opens all its yellow eyes, and she sees what it sees.

A boy and a girl, torn apart, falling through an abyss as their promises shatter between them — both reaching for the other. But their hands fall through each other’s. They are lost.

It is a nightmare; one she shared with someone else that had slowly become real.

The Girl picks up a broken slab of rail from the ground and draws herself straight, her fists tight around her simple weapon.

The girl with the red ribbon in her hair didn’t move from the seat by the window, watching a blur of cities fall away beside the train, with her chin in her hand. Nights and days flashed by her. Cities. Skies. Years.

Her sisters were playing ball in the corridor, bouncing the red sphere back and forth at a hollow, incessant rhythm.

The train had been moving for some time now, although she could not tell for how long. There was a clock hanging on the opposite wall, lonely and faded against pink-striped wallpaper. The hour hand spun around the centre in a smooth compass, each turn faster and faster.

‘Juliet, come look at the sheep!’ one of the children called from the booth across the train.

But she didn’t want to.

‘The sheep! Juliet.’

The girl closed her eyes.

After some time, the children stopped asking her to play. Her sisters got tired of bouncing the red ball and let it go. It rolled through the half-open door and thumped against the wall.

She watched it, and she watched the clock spinning against pink-striped wallpaper.

When she walked in the corridor, she saw that the others weren’t children anymore. She stood behind them and saw their faces reflected against a backdrop of moving woodland — angled cheekbones and disinterested content in their expressions. Behind them, a heron flew through the trees, white against a blue sky. And she saw her own face, small and lost behind the transparent crowds.

She hadn’t grown up yet.

Slowly, she retreated back into the corridor and retied the ribbon in her hair. As she realised what she had to do, she felt more alive than she’d felt for a long time, but at the same time, broken.

She walked to the end of the train and threw open the door at the back.

The train raced through a sprawl of abandoned gas stations. A desert.

No-one had ever gone back.

Life was a one-way journey, and it didn’t stop for anyone. She couldn’t run forever, but she already knew that.

And she jumped, falling through time and space and the riddled pockets of existence between them. Around her, the world crashed in the waves of a nameless ocean, splintering into the fragments of the future she’d thrown away and the past she’d left behind, all of which plunged underwater.

In the copse, I sense the monster crawling out of an abyss, somewhere close. It drags itself across the tracks with a silent menace, slow and gluttonous in its movements.

It is bigger than the rest, and more ugly. The million eyes covering its body glow like sparks of fire as it slithers towards the girl’s body, a scorpion’s greasy sting curved over its back.

The monster hisses and looks into my gaze with all its eyes. Inside its yellow stare, I see the nightmare I once shared with someone else — screams and the small delicate fingers of a girl I knew when we were young, being pulled out of my hands.

My grip tightens around the sword.

The children gather in a fearful circle amid the strawberries, watching. Normally they would run, but this time, they sense that something is deeply wrong.

At their head is Tommy-Who-Thought-the-Stars-Were-Alive, who follows my every move. I cannot bear to feel the weight of his hope. For I know it is hope that will someday drive him mad, pushing him closer and closer to the edge of his innocence.

My hand is steady around the sword, although I wish the children would not watch. I do not want them to see my progressing weakness. Not when I have been their only strength for so long.

The monster lowers its tail and lashes its sting at me.

I dodge under and hack with my sword, striking for the unarmoured flesh of its body. The monster uses its sting to parry my attack, and we circle each other on the tracks. The pain rises in my chest again, so excruciating that I forget it’s not the only feeling I know.

I stumble, and the monster’s tail catches me in the stomach. The sting misses my neck by a narrow inch.

The children run up to me when the monster flings me into the field, but I shout at them to stay back. I am ashamed that they must see me so weak. This is not the future I want them to imagine for themselves.

The monster advances on me slowly, bringing with it the nightmares. They are the worst nightmares, ones I thought I’d forgotten.

A small hand presses a strawberry into mine.

‘Grandfather, it’ll give you strength,’ Tommy-Who-Thought-the-Stars-Were-Alive tells me, his face too serious for his seven years of age. ‘Remember, the stars are guarding you.’

I push him back towards the others. ‘It’s not safe, child,’ I tell him.

But I swallow the strawberry. If there’s one thing he and I both cannot lose, it is hope, although it is harder for me to remember the feeling now. My chest aches as if it will burst, but I haul my sword around me to face the monster.

If it is the last thing I can do for this village, this monster — this nightmare — will die.

The scorpion creature whips its tail around, and I run under the sting. The layered armour plates prevent the monster from reaching underneath its own body with the sting.

It can only watch with its million eyes as I break its only defence.

With both hands, I drive the sword deep into the monster’s heart — so deep the blade goes through to the other side, and my hand buries deep inside the monster’s chest.

The Girl stands in the midst of overripe strawberries and ocean foam. She will not go to the monster.

Instead, she raises the stake she has made for herself, and waits for the monster to come to her. It drags its belly through the rotting fruit.

She tries not to feel afraid, although she relives the terror of the childhood nightmares she thought she’d left behind.

The monster whips its tail toward her. Its sting is almost the size of her body. She scrambles out of the way, and the sting smashes into the wall. Her own screams echo through the field.

Images spin through her mind.

Falling.

Fighting.

Boy.

Girl.

Apart.

The monster yanks its tail out of the wall and strikes a second time at the Girl.

She may not be the most able fighter, but her body is small. This time when the monster’s tail comes around, she jumps onto it, just below the sting. She can feel her opponent’s eyes boring into her and thinks it might drive her crazy.

The monster thrashes its tail against the walls in an attempt to throw the Girl off, as she stabs the stake into the end of the sting. It won’t pierce through the armoured shell.

The back of her head slams against a root, and she slides off the monster’s tail, her vision slipping out of focus. She dodges its next attack, and its tail smashes into the Eternity Tree, where it catches in the trunk. The monster jerks, but its sting remains embedded.

The Eternity Tree is poisoned, black tendrils spreading up its trunk and consuming its gnarled back.

The Girl picks up the stake and drives it into the monster’s heart, as far as it will go. The iron bar sinks through flesh and ribs, snakelike eyes and the darkness that has haunted her since the moment she jumped from the train.

She buries her hand in the monster’s heart, but her fingers brush against the solid warmth of another human hand.

The world falls away, and with it the illusions of time and reality.

Through the twisted destiny that divides them, the Grandfather and the Girl press their hands together through the heart of their worst nightmare.

The Grandfather looks into the girl’s eyes, and he remembers what he had forgotten long ago.

For an instance, they are young again. Two children who had fallen together out of paradise, but could not run from time.

A shadow passes over the Boy’s face, when he realises how wrinkled and rough his hands feel against the youth of the Girl’s skin. They have changed too much. She had stayed young in a world where everyone else had aged, while the Boy had grown old in the world of their youth, wasted and alone, surrounded by the bittersweet ache of his memories.

But they could not be together. Not in the same way. The Girl had already left her childhood and could never go back — not to the same place she had left. She could search for it, but it would never be the way she remembered it. You could only leave that place once.

The world has put too much time between them.

The Boy cannot hold onto the Girl for much longer.

The Girl has a million things to say, but she finds that she cannot speak. The Boy tries to call her name, but all he can think of is the promise he couldn’t keep.

They cannot be in the same world anymore.

A tear slips from the Girl’s eyes and falls into the soil.

It creates a ripple that spreads in transparent rings and engulfs the universe, carrying the consequences of the time they tried to cheat. Around them, the world falls back together, fragments of history spinning through loss and what could have been.

They couldn’t run forever.

At the centre of the train station, the Eternity Tree withers and dies, its boughs bending and twisting until it is no more than a scattering of ashes.

The broken tracks, strewn through the waves, mend in a gust of flying metal and wood.

For all these years, the Boy had been waiting for the next train, but he secretly did not want it to come, and so it didn’t. When he finally understands the life he has thrown away, it summons all the time he had been hiding from.

The last train bounds out of the ocean and hits the Girl.

The Girl with the red ribbon in her hair curled on her side beneath the tree with the star-shaped leaves, nested in an autumn blanket. The grass in the yard was soft against her cheek.

A fresh yellow leaf drifted from the lowest bough, and she held out her open palm to catch it.

‘Do you think we’ll ever get lost one day?’ she asked.

The Boy was sitting with his back against the tree, his legs stretched before him. The shoelaces of his Converse were untied, trailing in the damp earth. The sword was strapped to his back. He’d begun wearing it ever since his fourteenth birthday.

‘What do you mean?’

She rolled over onto her stomach. ‘I don’t know. If something happens to the village. Like a war.’

The Boy’s eyes were quiet and certain, and she liked that. They made her feel safe. ‘I’d go and fight.’

The Girl blew the leaf out of her hand and watched it flutter in the breeze. ‘Would you come back though?’

He reached down and tucked her hair behind her left ear. ‘Yes. We’ll get married, and be happy forever. We’ll run through the strawberry fields together every day, and fall asleep in them every night.’

The Girl closed her eyes and allowed herself for a minute to imagine what such a life would be like.

‘Do you think we’ll ever have to leave the village?’ she asked. ‘And grow up?’

‘No,’ the Boy answered.

‘But if we did, you’ll stay with me? No matter the cost?’

He smiled. ‘Yes.’

She pressed both her hands over his, and held him close.

‘Do you promise?’

‘For Eternity.’

He stretched out on his side, and she relaxed against the softness of his embrace, the tree’s sturdy trunk pressing against her back. Past his ear, under the fence, she could see the faint imprint of train tracks passing through the strawberry fields.

She let her breath go. Because in that moment, for the first time in her life, she was convinced she would be happy forever.

A train has come.

It arrives in a blur. Railway tires and rusted metal. The scent of an ocean, carried back from a long and tiring journey.

The children gather around it, laughing and dancing around each other with their hands linked together.

Their wait is over.

‘Grandfather! Grandfather!’ they cry, tugging at my sleeve. ‘Come on the train with us.’

They are what once was and what once could be, reduced to a bittersweet ache.

I only smile as I watch them pile into the train cars, their eager faces peering out the window at me. It is time to send them away. They have stayed young because they still think they have a future, and their dreams are not shattered yet.

Perhaps they do have a future.

I cannot protect them forever. I wonder how many of them will lose their blissful innocence and waste away, although I hope the answer is none of them. But I also know that once upon a time, I thought I was invincible too.

As the train leaves, I watch the children’s faces disappear toward the horizon. The last one to go is Tommy-Who-Thought-the-Stars-Were-Alive, whose expression is a mixture of fear and hope for the future he has yet to discover. He does not look toward me anymore. His hope lies someplace else now, where the rest of the world has gone and I will never see. I cannot keep the children, because I have failed them too.

With them goes the last purpose I had, the last thing in my life that gave me joy.

I carry the girl’s body in my arms and walk away from the direction the train is going. I am taking us far away, to a place where we can rest without the burden of the past, although I do not know if such a place exists in the world.

At night, I still fight the monsters.

The tracks are my guide, leading me through strange lands I could have never imagined existed. I am growing weaker, but it does not matter to me any longer.

I am surrounded by a strange peace.

The sun shines through the dappled leaves in the copse, creating patterns in the wild grass. The strawberries tremble in the breeze, and I walk alone.

Author Loci

Jessica May Lin

Train tracks have always had an extraordinary significance in my life. I grew up playing along a pair of train tracks where my friends and I would pretend we were wild animals or warrior goddesses, and stage wars. My mother always warned me about the train coming. However, for the many years we played along the tracks, the train never came. My grandmother said the train always came in the night, when we couldn’t see, so we’d always look for signs that it had come.

You find the most extraordinary things along train tracks — tiny animal skulls, broken glass, fruit rinds. Along the tracks by home, I stumbled across deer with long, beautiful antlers, power stations, drug dealers, and the most beautiful stretch of graffiti I’d ever seen. My best friend and I used to add our own graffiti with lipstick and markers, and check every time to see when the rain had washed it off.

When I was seventeen, I spent a summer in Singapore, where I walked alone along a pair of soon-to-be-demolished train tracks for two days, or thirty kilometres. Hidden from the glistening all-glass high-rises of the city, these train tracks were the green-carpeted heart of Singapore, littered with signs of a rich history modernisation had tried so hard to erase. I found Hindu temples, jungle farms with caged peacocks, rundown way-stations with posters still on their walls and blankets on the bunks, graffiti (which is illegal and highly punishable in Singapore), and long stretches of silence and sun. To this day, that journey holds a special place in my heart; I can’t concretely explain what about it makes it so raw and powerful — it was almost as if walking under the palm fronds, with my backpack bouncing on my shoulders, I could feel the ghosts of Singapore’s past, invisible marks left by the hundreds of trains that had passed through that corridor. The very next day, the government closed the tracks off for demolition. (Certain stretches of the tracks were spared after protests. You can read about them here: http://www.thegreencorridor.org/)

Then, shortly after I returned to my home of Silicon Valley, California, teenagers started committing suicide on train tracks. Friends of friends, my parents’ friends’ kids — I read about death after death in the newspaper. There was a suicide at my own high school (although not on train tracks). I fought my own battle with anorexia and depression. I avoided the train tracks for many months after that, partially afraid of what they’d come to represent, partially afraid of the weight of everything that was changing.

Railroads came to represent the world of my childhood — the magic, the adventure, the disenchantment, and the sorrow. And of course, that isn’t a world you can stay in forever. These days when I visit the tracks with my friends, on the few days out of the year I return home, we no longer play pretend. We walk in silence, and argue about whether the graffiti has changed, or if it’s only our imagination. Somehow, there’s a magic of being a child hopping between rusted, broken rails that changes when you’re older.

All these elements combined, but especially that last loss, formed the inspiration behind ‘The Pass’. Stylistically, ‘The Pass’ was also inspired by the films of Hayao Miyazaki and, conceptually, a little bit by The Catcher in the Rye.

Jessica May Lin’s fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming in Nature, Daily Science Fiction, Chiral Mad 3, and Flytrap. She lives in Beijing, China, where she writes for two newspapers and works as a pole-dancer in a nightclub.

Her website is jessicamaylin.com.

Everything is a Graveyard — Jason Fischer

Everything stopped in 1976.

The Festival Centre hunched on the banks of the Torrens like a cement barnacle, silent of arias. Now, it was a place best avoided. The Apollo Stadium no longer rocked out to bands like Status Quo, Queen and AC/DC. Anzac Highway was broad and empty, and it led to a pristine beach at Glenelg, long untouched by thongs.

Rundle Mall only ever opened to eager shoppers for a few months. Now, it was a mess of broken glass and rubble, burnt buildings interrupting the façade like rotten teeth.

Across the Adelaide Plains, tiled roofs baked in the sun, gutters long since clogged with leaves and muck. Hills Hoists sagged and span in backyards, still wearing the rags of cricket whites and pinafores. Above, the TV antennae lay dormant, coathangers scratching at the sky with futility. There was no more Number 96, no more Dick Jane Show, no more Channel Niners. Nothing but silence on the airwaves.

The Holden factory at Elizabeth was a lonely place. Shells of cars still sat on the production line, quietly rusting in the dark. Once, great machines used to roll out into the lot, roaring monsters of metal and glass. The Kingswood for dad, the Monaro if you were a petrolhead. A Statesman if you had money in the bank.

Everything stopped in 1976. So when a cherry-red LJ Torana blasted across the corpse of Adelaide, it was like a loud fart in a church.

Gretel was squeezed in behind the steering wheel, foot to the floor. She was a big girl, and had to have the driver’s seat all the way back. Working through the gears, she wove the muscle-car through the ancient wreckage littering South Road. Abandoned cars, burnt cars, cars wrapped around cement stobie poles.

The Torana danced through the wreckage like a dressage horse, and Gretel rarely had to slow down, navigating the forest of dead cars by memory alone. Sometimes she thought of herself like an ancient sailor, and pictured the wrecked cars as a dangerous reef she knew off by heart.

When she’d restored the LJ from three different wrecks, Gretel dropped in a big 3300 engine. It chewed through the fuel like a pig, but the power and speed of this machine was unrivalled. It was the same basic set-up that Peter Brock once used at Bathurst, and nothing had a hope of touching her.

In the beginning, some of the other rovers got around on motorbikes. Anyone with a brain in their head put as much metal around them as they possibly could. No-one bothered with the bikes anymore – and these days, anyone with a death-wish never had to wait too long anyway.

Gretel was headed north, through the city and on to the trading post at Port Wakefield. No cargo today, just a passenger run. A very important man was waiting for her there, and she had to bring him back to Stanvac in one piece. As per usual, Gretel was running early, so she decided to organise some trade for herself.

‘What do you think, Mog?’ Gretel asked the cat. Draped across the dashboard, the tomcat of questionable parentage opened one eye, closing it again with disgust. He continued to soak up the sun from the hot dash, sliding across the vinyl when Gretel turned from the main road. Mog didn’t even stir.

The Torana growled through the side-streets of some broken suburb, and Gretel looked for a likely place. The new supermarkets like the Bi-Lo were too big, long picked over. Dangerous to enter now.

Houses were too depressing to enter, and just as unsafe. If you were gonna get out of your car, it might as well be worth your while.

She pulled over, smiling. It was a corner store, and yellowed signs offered everything from milk to mixed lollies. While someone had kicked the door in, none of the windows had been smashed.

‘That’s usually good,’ she told Mog, who ignored her. Fighting her way out of the driver’s seat, she left the motor running, just to be safe. The Torana rumbled like a beast at bay. Looking into the back seat, Gretel considered the big.303 she took on roving trips, but left it behind. She wanted a hand free to snatch up anything the looters had overlooked.

Gretel fished out the service revolver from her pocket. Her dad’s.38, well-worn. At close range, it could kill the damn things, but she’d need to be quick.

Never longer than thirty seconds. Booting the door all the way open, she swept the shadows with the gun, heart pounding till she thought she might be sick. No movement, no sound. Good. Gretel picked through the leftovers, stuffing her pockets with the dregs the previous looters didn’t think worth taking.

Canned dog food. A jar of Vegemite with the seal intact. Cigarettes. A dirty magazine. Gretel smiled some more, and stepped out into the street.

That’s when the hairs stood up on the back of her neck, and she froze. She’d just seen a movement out of the corner of her eye. Everything was still now, but she knew what was about to come.

Shooing Mog away from the dash, Gretel lay down the pistol where she could reach it. She quietly slid into the car with as much grace as she could muster. Making sure the windows were up, she kept her eyes straight ahead.

There. Behind the billboard advertising Chiko Rolls. She saw the barest shadow where it clutched to the back of the sign. A twitching ear. The sliver of a questing nose.

Gretel contemplated reverse, but then she dropped it into first gear. Slowly she brought up the revs, felt the torque rock the car from side to side. The wheels fought the hand-brake, and a cloud of smoking rubber began to fill the street.

‘How do you like that!’ Gretel shouted, punching the steering wheel. Mog hissed from the passenger seat. ‘Let’s play a game of fucking chicken.’

Then she dropped the handbrake.

The Torana roared defiance, and shot forward like a red blur. At the last moment Gretel yanked the steering wheel left, then right. She passed underneath the billboard, glanced back as a dark shape fell from above.

Then they were drifting, sliding sideways, and then she fought the car back under control, fishtailing all over the street. Mog settled down, back to sunning and licking himself.

In the rear-vision mirror, she saw a monster pace the street, howling and frustrated. Bigger than a big dog, all claws, teeth, and bad attitude. It gnashed its enormous jaws, and Gretel knew that it could peel apart the steel skin of a car quicker than anyone ever managed with the jaws of life.

‘Fucking drop-bears,’ Gretel said.

On the highway to Port Wakefield she could often get the Torana up to 120 km/hr or more, but here and there she had to slow down to get over the cracked tarmac in one piece. Just past Two Wells, there was a one kilometre stretch where the road had been washed away by a flood. Many years since the councils had rumbled out with their yellow machines, keeping the roads in good nick.

It was safe out here, more honest. No cars blocking the way, nothing but shitty land and open road. Either side of the highway was a salty marsh, barely interrupted by anything bigger than a box-thorn. The drop-bears had nothing to hide behind, nothing to pounce from.

The folks at Port Wakefield took no chances. Packs of drop-bears still made it out this far, ribs showing and hungry for any meat they could get. At first the traders made do with a barricade of tyres and junk, but now their camp was surrounded by a big wall. Besser bricks, filled with cement and steel rods, rendered over with more cement to give the bears nothing to grip.

Times were good out here.

Gretel guided her car through the steel gates, nodding to the boys tending the fire. The smoke from burning tyres was rumoured to keep drop-bears away, but Gretel had shredded through enough tyres while roving to know that this was wishful thinking.

‘Can I go for a ride?’ one of the boys asked. He stared at the car in awe, only heaving another retread into the fire-barrel when one of the guards yelled at him. The boys had scarves around their mouths, and sweated from their labour. She put their age as perhaps eight or nine years old.

‘Maybe later, kid,’ Gretel said. She tooted the air-horn as she passed by and the strains of La Cucaracha announced her arrival. Soon a small crowd of kids kept pace with her, watching as the red muscle-car purred into the trading camp of old Port Wakefield.

A row of petrol stations flanked the road: ruins now. There wasn’t a drop of fuel left in the place. Around here, they’d gone back to old ways. Horses, buggies, whatever livestock had been saved from the drop-bears. By the jetty, tin dinghies and sailing boats lay at dock. Survivors from the Yorke Peninsula enclaves and even as far as Port Lincoln, come east and south for the good trade.

Gretel parked the car under shade, next to some cob-webbed fuel pumps. She took care to lock up, and left the window down a crack for Mog. Even now when people would kill each other over a litre of fuel, working cars were worth stealing. She almost pitied the poor sod who interrupted Mog’s sleep.

The trading camp was the fullest she’d ever seen it. Buggies refitted with car tyres were lined up by the dam, horses hobbled within drinking distance. Fishermen hawked their catch under canvas stands, and another group had just arrived through the north gate, people pushing wheelbarrows from God knew where.

They haggled furiously, survivors trading for food, for old world forage. These days, entertainment traded well, and Gretel found a man missing several fingers, hawking records out of a milk crate. She took a moment to swap her forage for a bottle of scotch, and talked the scarred man out of a Johnny O’Keefe album.

This might break me even for this trip, she thought, and knew she was kidding herself. They kept her debt in a neat ledger back at Stanvac, and the trades never quite matched the fuel she went through. She looked back to her car, admired the bright red paint, the authentic shark gills and rims.

Totally worth it.

Gretel saw the contingent from Alice Springs over by the livestock pens. Dozens of feral camels were fighting over a water trough, honking and jostling in the sun. After their long journey south, the cameleers were relaxing in their rough camp, a tarp keeping off the worst of the sun.

The outback men were tanned almost to leather, filthy from months of travel. They had a game of cards going, and a jug of flat beer passed from calloused hand to cracked lip and so on around their muttering circle.

When they noticed Gretel approaching, the men talked in low voices, and someone chuckled darkly like a crow. She knew the words they were saying to each other, even if she couldn’t hear them yet. Fat. Ugly. Broken nose. Comments about what she’d be like in bed, and then they’d rib the lowest man in their pecking order to have a go at the big girl.

She stood in front of the desert men, eyes narrowed, lip curled. Someone gave a low whistle, and she felt her bull neck tense up, felt her hands clench into meaty fists.

‘I’m looking for Purdie,’ Gretel said.

‘Well, fuck me,’ one man said. ‘You look like a fridge wearing clothes.’

Even as the cameleers fell about with laughter, one of them got to his feet, smiling broadly. Gavin Purdie, Deputy Prime Minister of Alice Springs. He touched his battered Akubra with his index finger.

Gretel nodded curtly, fighting down the urge to wade into the group, breaking noses and bones. It must have shown in her eyes, and Purdie’s broad smile fell.

‘Show some fucking respect,’ he snapped at the others, and the laughter fell back into a low crow murmur, the quiet whisk and slap of cards at play. Purdie offered Gretel a smoke, and she pushed the pack away.

‘Let’s get to business.’

Purdie shrugged, poking the crumpled pack back into his shirt pocket. He led her over to the brace of camels.

‘Take a good look. You’ll need to vouch for these in Stanvac,’ he said. ‘Good stock, plenty of meat on ’em.’

Gretel had no idea about anything outside of a car’s engine bay. She nodded, pretending to understand as Purdie talked about their operations, the number of beasts they could bring south.

‘Once your lot get us the fuel to run our trucks, meat from Alice will feed the entire country,’ Purdie said. ‘Mostly camel, but we’ve got pigs, sheep, some cows.’

‘Bears ever get into them?’

‘We watch our stock day and night,’ Purdie said flatly. ‘Anyway, the drop-bears are carking it left and right. Stupid things are starving out, girlie.’

‘Still thousands in the city,’ Gretel said. ‘Only takes one to rip off a man’s head.’

‘The bears are finished,’ Purdie scoffed. ‘Time we took everything back.’

‘I used to have one of these when I was a lad,’ Purdie said for perhaps the tenth time. He was eyeing off the steering wheel, the eight-ball gear-stick, everything polished and kept as new. ‘Six cylinder LC, and it ran like a horse. Toffee apple coat, fat rims. Dropped knickers every-time I revved the old girl.’

Gretel said nothing. When the man wasn’t drooling over her car, he was keeping a careful track of the twists and turns she took, which roads were cleared of wrecks and which were deliberate logjams of trucks and buses. Adelaide was a maze now, and the closer they got to Stanvac, the more convoluted the safe passage got.

There were between three and six safe ways for cars and bikes to get through the southern suburbs. But only one way for the fuel truck to get through, a safe road cleared of ambush points and anywhere a bear could drop.

Bastards like Purdie had tried to nick the fuel before, whether en route to Port Wakefield or south to Victor Harbor and further.

‘I haven’t even seen a working car in almost ten years,’ Purdie said. ‘Every lick of fuel up north, gone. We’re down to riding horses, push-bikes, walking around like a miserable pack of mongrels.’

Gretel said nothing.

‘Big engine like this, must take a fortune to keep it running. You making enough scratch to pay your bills, girly?’

Gretel narrowed her eyes, and Purdie laughed.

‘You must be greasing a rich cock just to fill the tank. Or you owe more to that mob than you can ever repay. Don’t look at me like that, I can’t see how else you do it.’

‘Purdie,’ Gretel said in a measured voice. ‘I swear to God I will throw you out and let the bears have you.’

That shut him up for almost a minute.

‘Now girly, I want to know something, and I want the truth out of that fat gob.’

She gripped the steering wheel hard, knuckles tight.

You play nice, thunderthighs, the Foreman had told her that morning. You represent us today. If this trade goes wrong, don’t bother coming back.

Tight-lipped, she looked over at the man from Alice. Waited for him to say his piece.

‘We’ve heard stories. That the fuel in Stanvac’s running out. Your mob aren’t just eking out the supply, they’re almost tapped out.’

Gretel shrugged, downshifted as she slalomed through a precisely fashioned ‘car-crash’. She didn’t even have to tap the brakes to get through the intersection. Purdie held onto the ceiling, face white as they came within inches of a burnt out ambulance. The speedo read 80km/hr.

‘Jesus, love,’ he gasped. ‘Don’t fucking kill me.’

Gretel said nothing. Mog slid around on the dashboard, glaring murder at the stranger who dared to sit in his car. Soon the chimneys of the oil-refinery came into sight: Port Stanvac, dominating the cliff-face like a cluster of medieval turrets.

It was still fifteen kilometres to the facility, made into twenty by the crafted approach. If Port Stanvac was the castle, the approaches were well-designed curtain walls, capped by ‘barbicans’ of overturned vans. Here were carefully hidden ambush points, caches of weapons in case the mob up north decided to make trouble.

‘Would it kill you to make some conversation?’ Purdie said. ‘Can we at least play some music?’

He pointed to the 8-track player, a notion that Gretel had quickly disabused him of early in the trip. The tapes sometimes jammed, and she didn’t want to waste any of them on this sleazy cowboy king.

You play nice, thunderthighs.

A heavy sigh fell out of her, and she pointed to the glove box. Purdie popped it open, and his eyes nearly fell out of his leathery old face.

Almost fifty 8-track cartridges lay neatly stacked. AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith. Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa. This collection alone was worth more than she’d made in the last three months of roving.

Eventually Purdie selected ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles. The lonely strains of the song’s protagonist echoed through the pristine sound system, and it suited Gretel’s mood as they wound through the final approach to the Fuel Council’s stronghold.

‘Goddamnit,’ Purdie said when the tape snapped halfway through. ‘I ain’t heard that song in almost twenty years.’

‘Now you’re never gonna hear it,’ Gretel said. Yanking out the broken cartridge, she threw it out of the window and into the ruins of the old world.

Even as the Torana negotiated the turns of that metal maze, the cartridge bounced onto the cracked asphalt once, twice. Quick as a flash, a drop-bear broke from hiding, pouncing on the broken tape in the hope that it had snared a mouse.

It spat out the plastic in disgust, and stared at the disappearing car. Several of its fellows emerged from the wreckage, all mange and pronounced ribs. Even the smallest of these was the size of a big dog, with eyes that spoke more of hunger than common sense.

They followed the car, a huge pack of drop-bears that didn’t even bother lurking in the shadows now. There was the stink of Man up ahead, all soot and engines, meat and sweat. It was time to eat.

‘Hope your mob has got something cold to drink in there,’ Purdie said. ‘I’m as dry as a nun’s nasty.’

They were at the gates of Port Stanvac, waiting for the guard to turn off the power and open the gate. The facility was surrounded by so many chain-link fences that it looked like a prison – and of course these were all electrified at night to keep out the bears.

For fifty feet beyond the outer fences, the earth was scorched, fused with fire. Only the scars of surrounding houses and factories remained, every brick long since carted away. Nothing left for a hungry bear to hide behind.

Guards paced a scaffolding walkway behind the inner fence, rifles and crossbows at the ready. At fixed points the defenders had raised flame-throwers, jerry-rigged from hoses and pipes that led back to the fuel-tanks. Others paced the courtyard with home-made Owen guns. Teams with Alsatians checked the fences, watching for any drop-bears attempting to tunnel underneath.

In the middle of this considerable defence sat the refinery itself: a mass of tank farms and cement silos, pipework and gantries, with rusting catwalks connecting everything. Looming over the site, the old brick chimney, now fashioned into a guard tower.

On top of the catwalks and gantries, a small town had grown like a rusty tumour. The survivors of Stanvac had made their rude home of tin shanties a safe distance from the ground. Below, thick tangles of barbed-wire, caltrops forged from sharpened rebar, and more dogs.

You had to be rich to live up there. Gretel wasn’t and didn’t.

They swung the gate open and waved her through. It was close to dusk now, and the entire compound would be on a high alert for bears. Even as the sun slid down towards the ocean, teams were lighting the first of the fires. Whumping generators lit a chain of spot-lights, and the beams crept from shadow to shadow, daring a drop-bear to make a run.

Gretel saw how Purdie took in the town defences, the thicket of guns that weren’t just there to keep the drop-bears out. She hadn’t fully appreciated the need to make this trade in Port Stanvac, but as she saw the bravado evaporate from the desert man’s face, she understood.

Fuel was power, and power was coveted. This was all a show for the hick from the bush, a little theatre to keep him in his place.

She pulled over in front of the refinery, and tooted a defiant La Cucaracha to let the boss know she was back. They sent an elevator down from those lofty heights, three men working the big winch that lowered the cage.

‘Come on,’ Gretel said. ‘The Foreman’s waiting.’

They entered the lift, an old shark-cage refitted for this purpose. Gretel heard the winchmen curse her from above as they wrestled with the big ratchet. Of course she wasn’t a ballerina, but they’d moved heavier loads than her. They paused twice during the ascent, as if to make a point. Beside her, Purdie had broken out into a sweat, and clenched the rails for dear life.

‘What is it?’ Gretel grunted at him. ‘Heights, confined spaces, or me?’

‘All of the fucking above.’

This was the home of the Fuel Council, and all whom they favoured. As they entered the maze of catwalks, Council guards relieved Gretel of her pistol, and the enormous bowie knife hanging from Purdie’s belt. She was little better than a contractor in the Foreman’s eyes, and hardly to be trusted.

Here, the Fuel Council lived in what passed for luxury now. Pinball machines rattled away in one room, and a record player blared Sherbet’s ‘Howzat!’ from somewhere deeper in the complex. Fans fought the heat, and did little but blow an everlasting cloud of marijuana and tobacco smoke from one room to another.

Girls with ganja-blank faces lay on pillows, half-naked and numb to everything. Others were on the go-powder, and whizzed about on roller-skates. Everyone was drunk, stoned, or both. Every night a brawl broke out in the Council’s sky-town, and barely a week passed without some idiot falling over the railings and breaking his neck.

Gretel and Purdie were ushered up another set of stairs, towards the highest point of the complex. They’d reached the fat tube of the chimney, rooms bolted into its sides with enormous brackets that just held on. It was just shy of thirty metres high, and up here, you could see Adelaide laid out from north to south. Huffing up the spiral staircase, Gretel appreciated the view of the bay, saw the oil tanker still rotting in dock far below the cliffs.

Last delivery from a dead world, she mused and wondered how long the Fuel Council could milk that for.

It was the highest room, with only the crow’s nest above it. The Foreman held court here and rarely ventured down even to the lower levels of the sky-town. The other rovers said that he’d been nipped by a drop-bear once, and was deathly terrified of the things.

Rumour had it that he’d been a spanner-jockey once, back in the old days. Now, the Foreman ran Port Stanvac like a feudal warlord. More than one person had died at a word from his lips, plummeting from the towers or doused in fuel and torched in the courtyard.

Purdie climbed the stairs, exuding patience and a stockman’s calm. Part of Gretel hoped the deal would go sour, just to see what would happen to the man.

A set of plastic shop-strips kept out the flies, and Gretel pushed past these to enter the Foreman’s house. The master of Port Stanvac sat in a folding chair, his feet in a plastic wading pool full of water. He wore a kimono over grimy footy shorts, and a shark-tooth necklace was almost lost in his thatch of chest hair. From throat to crotch, his torso was hashed with old scars. Deep, and roughly Y-shaped, as if an animal had attempted an autopsy on him. His eyes were bugged out, glassy. Needles and spoons littered his tiny throne room.

‘Gretel, Gretel,’ he shouted suddenly, flinging out his arms. ‘Light as a fucking petal.’

‘Boss,’ she said. ‘I brought Purdie.’

‘Mister Purdie, do come in. I trust my Rubenesque rover delivered you in comfort?’

‘That she did, Mister Foreman sir, I –’

‘Derwent.’

‘Derwent, I want to get down to brass tacks. We’ve got a lot of livestock to move. Prime Minister says to offer meat for fuel. Ongoing trade. For as long as your supplies can hold out.’

‘Heh. I’ve heard those rumours too. We’re bone dry, running on fumes. This place,’ the Foreman gestured wildly, kimono sleeves flapping, ‘will be a ghost town inside of six months.’

Purdie stood in front of the drug-addled boss, hands hitched in his belt. He stared down the Foreman with the contempt of the country man for his soft-handed urban cousin, until the latter broke into laughter.

‘We’ve got years’ worth of fuel, Mister Purdie. Years. It’s simple mathematics. Once there were over a million of us in this fine state. Living, working, driving our cars to and fro. A fuel stoppage would grind the place to a halt within the month. Rationing, the whole box and dice, right?’

Purdie nodded.

‘And now that the drop-bears have chewed the place down to the stubble, how many cars do you see driving around now? A few thousand? No? Less than a few hundred?’

There were fewer than a hundred working vehicles within a day’s travel, and everyone in Port Stanvac knew this. Because this was the only fuel to be had between the Nullarbor and the eastern seaboard.

‘We are still processing crude oil from that tanker. Production is at a fraction of what we can do, because we don’t need to make much fuel. Even getting your cattle trucks on the road won’t make a dent in our reserves.’

His one tactic gone, Purdie simply nodded. Alice Springs wasn’t going to roll over Port Stanvac that easily.

‘You, tell me what you saw,’ the Foreman said to Gretel. ‘Do they have what they say they have? Camels and some such? In good nick?’

‘Yes,’ Gretel said.

‘Good. You, fuck off,’ and he pointed to the door. ‘And you, pull up a chair.’

Gretel left the two important men to their trade deal, and prayed that the creaking shed would shear free of the chimney, plummeting straight to the ground. The image made her smile, even as she huffed and sweated and made her way back downstairs.

‘What will you give me?’

‘Hmm.’

The Bursar poked around in her trade goods. He considered the bottle of booze, examined the record for scratches. Gretel had even broken her own rule, and a half-dozen of her precious eight-track tapes lay on the counter.

‘Fifty Stanbucks for the lot.’

‘Don’t insult me, Don.’

‘Fine. Go somewhere else then.’

She got him up to fifty-five, and he wrote the figure down in his ledger. She saw that her page was still well into the red, and that it hadn’t even covered the fuel she’d used for that trip.

‘I was driving on Council business. You can do better than that.’

‘Deal was, you could forage on that tank. You need to start bringing in some trade, girl. Or we are going to have to get nasty about this debt.’

‘I can pay my bills,’ she said, leaning on the counter. The wood groaned underneath her weight.

‘So pay them.’

She left the Bursar’s warehouse before the Council heavies could throw her out. Behind the wire-mesh barrier lay a fortune in loot, which grew with every squirt of petrol and mouldered in the dark.

Gretel panicked — wondered what she would do next. There was no other option but Port Stanvac, not if she wanted to keep her beast of a car on the road. She owed more money than she could hope to repay, and they’d let her hang herself, one tank of petrol at a time.

If the Bursar told the Foreman just how the books were looking, he’d probably stake her out for the drop-bears to munch on. Or cut her hamstrings, and put her in the fuck-shack to pay off her debt.

I just need to talk them out of one last tank of petrol, she decided. And then I will get the fuck out of here.

Gretel drove away from the Bursary, rumbling across the courtyard. She made her way through the outbuildings, the poor part of town. These people paid away a fortune in loot for a spot on a cement floor, for days of back breaking labour in the plant.

Flush against the inner fence was the rover’s shed. A workshop from the old days, this was home for the dozen or so scavengers who ran the roads in Stanvac’s name.

Gretel guided the Torana into the bay she’d claimed as her own, settled the car square over the pit. She saw that everyone was in from the road, and the shed rang with spanners, arc-welders, and colourful language. She climbed out of the car, and Mog disappeared into the shadows on his own errands.

‘Look out, here comes ten tonnes of fun,’ someone shouted, and she responded with her middle finger. Someone laughed, but in a good natured way. She’d earned her place here.

There was Percy, an old poof with a FJ panel-van and more miles on his face than anyone. ‘Wog’ Carlotto had his HQ Monaro halfway through a service, blower out and oil everywhere. Louis and Mick were Ford men, with a Mark II Escort and XB Falcon respectively.

Others she was less friendly with, but no-one was stupid enough to fight her anymore. It was easier just to work on your machine, tell bullshit stories about what you’d seen on the road, and leave the ‘psycho butch’ alone.

At the thought of leaving this place forever, Gretel felt despondent. This was the only world she knew, but it was time to start over. Maybe she’d make it up to Coober Pedy or even Alice Springs, work in an enclave. Dream of some place where the siphoning was good and the drop-bears all starved out.

Gretel moved through the dank corner that passed for her bedroom, quietly scooping up belongings and stuffing them into a bag. The sum total of her life came to some tools, a handful of dirty clothes, toys from when Mog was a kitten, and a dog-eared copy of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Last month, she’d traded in her mum’s jewellery box on a full tank, and the promise of enough trade to get the heirloom out of hock.

They tore up her slip when she couldn’t pay, moved a number over to the bad side of the ledger. Her debt was growing, eating up everything she was, nibbling at her future.

‘Thinking of leaving us, love?’ someone muttered at her elbow, and she was ready to come out swinging when she realised it was only Percy. The world had given him little more than wrinkled skin, a twinkle in his eye and a thick white beard. But still, he had moments of kindness. He’d done a turn as Father Christmas a few years ago, when this place still bothered with such things.

‘Just doing some washing,’ she said, slinging the bag in through the driver’s window. He nodded in understanding, and nudged a tin forward with his foot.

‘All I can spare you,’ he said, and was gone before Gretel realised he’d left her five litres of super. She smiled, and her heart broke just a little more.

The rovers lived much like a commune, and boosted the nightly stew delivery from the ‘commons’ cart with their own collection of scavenged tins and condiments. Wog broke out a backgammon set – this was the game of choice in rover circles.

Gretel staked a cartridge of Richard Clapton, and lost it to Mick on her second game. When the moonshine jug passed around their circle, she passed it on without touching the potent muck.

Tonight, she needed her wits about her.

Gretel helped Wog put the head and everything else back into the Monaro. When he turned the key it roared like a dragon, and the big Italian smiled.

‘Got a run tomorrow to Victor Harbor,’ he said. ‘You want to come with?’

She’d ridden shotgun – literally – for Wog before. Plenty of drop-bears on the southern run. He paid well, and it was fun to ride in the big HQ. Even if he listened exclusively to disco.

She looked over at the Torana, the way the red paint gleamed in the flickering lamplight. She’d started off as a spanner monkey, then gone on runs. Got a taste for the life, the feel of thousands of horses under her right foot. She shook her head.

‘Suit yourself,’ Wog said.

‘Got another job on.’

He nodded. She’d only gotten that Port Wakefield run because everyone else was out on the road. Everyone knew Gretel was on the outer, but none of the rovers realised just how badly.

‘Take my advice. You’re not a driver who forages. You’re a forager who drives.’

Gretel nodded. It was far too late for advice.

Mick played some Slim Dusty on the record player. The fences were quiet that night, apart from one rifle-shot, and the whoof of burning fuel as the guards cooked a drop-bear that got too close. Over at the sky-town, a party was in full swing, complete with the sounds of laughter, breaking glass, and vomit raining onto the cement far below. Soon, a Council runner came to the rover’s shed, already the worse for wear with grog.

‘Foreman’s invited you all upstairs,’ he slurred. ‘Big trade deal just went down. Drinks and ganja on the house, fuck-shack for free.’

That got the rovers moving. It wasn’t often the Fuel Council opened the liquor cabinet to the ground dwellers. In moments the shed emptied, laughter and horseplay following the men towards the elevators.

Percy paused in the doorway, nodding at Gretel. There was nothing left to say. Soon she was the only one left in the workshop, and she couldn’t believe her good luck.

First, fuel up, she thought. Then I nick enough food to see me well away from this place, and talk my way past the gate while the party is in full swing.

Easy.

She took a quick stroll across the courtyard, enough to see that the plant bowsers were still under heavy guard. Over at the Bursary, the lights still blazed and shadows could be seen moving inside.

Taking turns to attend the party, the guard seemed to be running at about two-thirds full strength tonight. But the search-lights still swept relentlessly and the gates were buttoned up tight.

Heart sinking, she returned to the workshop. Her plan B was less than honourable, but she was desperate now.

She moved from bay to bay with her siphoning hose and jerry-can. If she was caught doing this, all bets were off. Rover justice was just as fast and brutal as anything the Foreman could mete out.

Cracking open the Wog’s petrol tank, she drew out a little over two litres down the garden hose. Percy added another litre to his recent donation. Mick and Louis added two litres each, and she moved down the line, taking just enough that the others wouldn’t notice.

Even as Gretel crouched behind the last car, shaking a few more drops into her jerry-can, she heard footsteps; someone entering the shed. She froze. If they found her back here . . .

The steps echoed closer, but then stopped. The visitor turned, paced along the row of vehicles. As if looking for someone.

‘Gretel. Gretel!’ a man shouted. It was Purdie. He sounded three-sheets-to-the-wind drunk, and she risked a glance around the car, saw him swaying on his feet. He’d lost his hat somewhere and was barely able to see, let alone walk.

She pushed the jerry-can underneath the car, made sure to hide the siphoning hose. Standing up slowly, she walked out of the other rover’s bay, as if she had all the reason in the world to be poking around another man’s machine.

‘There you are, sweetheart,’ Purdie slurred. ‘You’re missing the party.’

‘I don’t go up there if I don’t have to,’ Gretel said, nodding in the direction of the sky-town. ‘So, what is it?’

‘You. You’ve got something that I want,’ the man crowed. He stared at her with glassy eyes, and grinned, as if sharing a confidence.

‘Not interested,’ Gretel said. ‘Go to the fuck-shack.’

‘No. Oh, no no no. I’m talking about that.’

He pointed to her car. The cherry-red LJ Torana with the 3300 engine, the car of her dreams. The beast she’d restored with her own two hands, had gone into a mountain of debt over. She had a rapport with this car, and just as she’d saved its life, it had often saved hers.

‘You have got to be fucking kidding,’ she said. ‘That’s my car. It’s not for sale, dickhead.’

‘Well, that’s not up to you,’ Purdie said. He spent a long moment looking at the Torana, admiring the polish, the shark-gill cut-outs, the rims that Gretel buffed to a shine whenever she came back from a run.

‘What are you talking about?’ Gretel said. A cold fury rose from her core, threatening to take over everything. The big man from Alice was looking at her car with the same fuck-eyes a man gave a beautiful girl, and Gretel didn’t like it one bit.

‘They’ve called in your tab,’ Purdie said. ‘Your bossman said he’s done with you. Should have heard the things he was planning to do to you, girlie.’ He shivered for effect, smiling broadly.

‘But don’t worry, Gretel. I talked the man around. He wants to keep me happy, see, and now I’ve fixed everyone’s problem. You’re debt-free, Gretel.’

Her chest squeezed tight at the words, and the fury bubbled over, sending a cold fire tickling through her body. Her hands were fists, and just like that she was in a place beyond common sense.

‘When I leave tomorrow, I’m leaving in this. This is my car now.’

Purdie leaned in through the driver’s window, popped the hood open.

‘This whole machine is a credit to your skill,’ he said, leaning on the edge of the engine bay. ‘Bloody immaculate.’

The sight of the man leering over the car, her car, was more than Gretel could bear. She sobbed, and staggered away, shaking her head. She’d been so close. He continued to enthuse over the car, oblivious to her heartbreak.

‘There’s a place for you in Alice,’ Purdie said, fiddling with the distributor cap. ‘Come with me, and I’ll put you to work on fixing our trucks.’

Brushing against a trolley, Gretel was blinded with tears, and her hands fumbled through the detritus of oil cans, a socket set, needle-nose pliers. Finally, her hands closed around what she was after.

‘What do you say, girlie? You’ll have a better future up there with our mob. You might even find a fella. Miners get pretty lonely, heh.’

She sidled up to the engine bay, weeping openly. He ignored her, more interested in his new toy, and she stood behind him snuffling, said his name quietly.

‘What?’ he said, annoyed, and turned around just in time to catch a 24-inch spanner across the face. He crumpled backwards in a mess of blood and teeth, and grabbed at the car blindly, moaning, fumbling for something to defend himself with.

Gretel hit him again with the spanner, and this time she knocked all the fight out of the man. He sagged across the front of the car, coughing and sobbing and dripping blood and spit all over everything.

‘You want the fucking car?’ Gretel shouted. ‘It’s yours!’

She slammed the hood down on his head, once, twice. By the third time, Gavin Purdie wasn’t moving anymore.

A thousand eyes watched the refinery that night. They stayed just out of reach of the bright lights, wise to the tricks of Man. Hunger bred canny, and only one of the runts broke cover, dead and charred before he could reach that first fence.

The moon was full tonight, and so the beasts moved slowly, bellies flat to the grass. They got as close to the fence as the weak eyesight of Man allowed them to, and looked for a way in.

They’d hunted in packs before, but never to this scale. They possessed the rudiments of tactics, as all predators do, but their slow advance wasn’t the action of a regiment. It was a body of ants, of locusts, rolling forward, following the path of least resistance. They had reached a critical mass, and had to operate to new rules.

Back in the old, familiar world, they’d been at the top of the food chain. Apex predators, fierce and unopposed. One of them alone could take out a Diprotodon, a creature half again the size of the cows of this world.

At their lead was a scarred old beast, one of the last to be drawn through the veil of time. The younger ones, pups who had only known this soft world, feared and respected this one. He followed the mesh fence patiently, sniffing at the watching guards, heeding the stink of their guns. There were others behind these shepherds, hundreds of soft throats, braying and playing stupidly in the night.

The Thylacoleo Carnifex was an ambush predator, designed for maximum damage. It had a bite comparable to any of the big cats, with teeth that could shear through bone. The marsupial lions had operated well in the Pleistocene era, and did even better in this one.

A favoured tactic was to drop on their prey from above – they just weren’t built for speed, for chasing anything over a great distance. The Men clutched at their tools, dubbed the invaders ‘drop-bears’, and told jokes to salve the cosmic joke of this invasion. For all their godlike skills, the bald creatures of this time had died by the millions.

The scarred beast ignored the three main fences of the refinery. They were too well kept, and Men were in place, watching for their approach. The drop-bears were wary of the guns now, scared of the whistling arrows and crossbow bolts. These days, they had to earn their meat the smart way.

Finally, they’d circled the whole fence line, and the battered old veteran looked out on the bay, animal eyes considering the moonlight on the water. All of this had been covered in a glacier in his time, and in the depths of his hind-brain, this barely-realised anachronism made him angry.

The old drop-bear slipped over the cliff’s edge, clutching at the chalky clay with his sharp claws. It was a long way down to the sharp rocks, and the rusting hulk tied to the pier looked like a leaf on a pond.

He fought for purchase, slipped and scrabbled across the cliff-face. The fences ended in a cluster of tiger wire and barbed strands, and it was necessary to climb down for several metres to get around the sparking, dangerous tangle. Behind him, another drop-bear attempted the crossing, and another. One slipped and scratched at the air for purchase, mewling the whole way down.

The cliff-face was sheer, and the current lodgers of the refinery had designed their fortification like a Tintagel. Only a token fence stood here to keep out anything stupid enough to scale the cliff. The wire-mesh was patchy, long worn to rust by the salt in the air.

The old drop-bear made it down and around the edge of the fence. He climbed up over the lip of the cliff, eyes narrowed as he took in the lights, the sounds of so many Men.

He ran for a gap in the fence, the thrill of the chase rising in his heart. For one brief instant, the scarred old beast felt no hunger, felt nothing but the most primitive urge. Slay, eat, repeat.

He was halfway through the wire before the electricity killed him. Others bounced from the barrier, charred and plummeting into the black ocean below, but the old bear shuddered and shook, joined by others who tried to claw through similar gaps.

Under the weight of such a sustained assault, the electric fence finally failed. Soon the bears were pouring in through gaps in the fence, and whole sections of rusted mesh crumpled under their weight.

The few guards watching in that direction were drunk, the rest absent. Above, the party continued, oblivious to the horde of drop-bears swarming into their midst.

The stereo thumped out Skyhooks’ ‘Ego is Not a Dirty Word’, the fuel barons fought and fucked, and the pinball machines rang out into the night like a chorus of dinner bells.

Gretel stood by the front of her car, numb with shock. She staggered past the remains of Gavin Purdie, slipping in the blood. She fell heavily to one knee, even as a spray of vomit fought its way past her lips.

She got to her feet to see Wog Carlotto standing behind her, mouth open, the backgammon set forgotten in his hands.

‘Wog . . . I–’

‘What the fuck,’ he whispered. ‘What the fuck did you do?’

‘He was gonna take it,’ she cried. ‘He was gonna take my car.’

Wog stared at the mess, gagged when he saw the caved-in head, the mess of brain and skull splattered all over the front of the Torana. Even as Gretel fussed around, trying to wrap the body in a tarp, Wog stood back, arms folded.

‘This is on you,’ he said. ‘We can’t protect you.’

She wiped away a rope of snot from her face, nodded.

‘You know I’m going to have to tell the Foreman. You killed the big man in our shed. In our fucking shed! You fat fucking idiot!’ Wog threw the backgammon set across the workshop, kicked over buckets and toolboxes and anything that got in his way.

‘It was an accident,’ Gretel said, numb to Wog’s abuse. She began to mop up the blood and gore, and quickly gave it up as a waste of effort. It would take her hours to clean the murder scene, time she didn’t have. Dragging Purdie’s body to one side, she used the mop-water to sluice his life-fluids from the front of her car.

There was a scream from near the sky-town, long and loud. They both flinched at the sound. The party was still in full swing and there was laughter, the sound of smashing glass.

‘You fucked up, Gretel,’ Wog finally said. ‘I’ll give you five minutes to pack up your shit and go. No more.’

‘Thanks,’ Gretel said. Wog merely shook his head, leaving the shed without saying another word. In moments, Gretel had the fuel-can in the boot, stuffed her bedding into the back seat, and walked around the shed with a beating heart, jingling her keys and whistling for Mog.

‘Come on, you stupid bloody cat,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve gotta go. Quickly!’

Finally the battered tom appeared, dragging a dead rat into the shed. He dropped it at her feet, rubbing at her legs and proud.

‘Sadly, that’s not the most disgusting thing I’ve seen tonight,’ Gretel said. She hurled the cat into the car by the scruff of his neck, and got behind the wheel.

When Wog Carlotto finished telling his story to the Bursar, the man pressed his lips together, picked up the phone. A dedicated line to the sky-town, cobbled together from spit and copper wire.

‘Derwent,’ the unsmiling man said into the handpiece. ‘The fat rover killed Purdie. In their shed. Of course his mob will find out. Forget the trade. Trade’s fucked now.’

‘Yes boss,’ he said finally, and hung up the phone. He clicked his fingers, and the Council goons instantly sprung from their slouching game of cards, all leather and spikes.

‘You boys, grab your gear. Rover,’ and here he looked to Wog, ‘you’re coming too. Boss wants her alive, but not too much.’

Thus commandeered, Wog accepted the cricket-bat that the Bursar pushed into his hands. He was philosophical about this turn of events. Friends became scum at the drop of a hat, and the bossman filled up the cars and kept them in food.

The hard men crossed the compound, only to see the Torana blast out of the shed, wheels chewing up the dirt. Gretel was headed straight for them.

The thugs scattered, but the Bursar stood calmly in the glow of her headlights, a crossbow raised. He contemplated the difficult shot, but at the last moment he smiled, stepping aside.

The Torana roared past the jumped-up pawnbroker, missing him by inches. The muscle-car punched through the first set of gates, shearing through the set of gates as if it was made of tissue-paper.

‘Looks like you rovers are about to earn your keep,’ the Bursar said to Wog. ‘Party’s over.’

Gretel had reached the outer gates now, and made no sign of slowing. The guards sprayed her car with twinkling rifle fire, only jumping away at the last moment. The LJ Torana ploughed through the electrified fence, leaving a tangle of wire and steel in its wake.

Wog smiled. Clear as a bell he could hear the strains of AC/DC’s ‘Jailbreak’, blasting out of Gretel’s Torana, echoing out into the still night.

‘I want her in chains,’ the Foreman screamed into the phone. ‘I’ll feed that fat slut to the bears, one toe at a time.’

He slammed the phone into the cradle, breaking the Bakelite handset. Storming over to the squawking record player, he threw it out of the nearest window. The sound of the Bay City Rollers continued for one long second, until the portable player exploded on the cement far below.

He was greeted with a chorus of complaints from the party, and came out swinging. He sent the girls back to the fuck-shack, one with a bloody nose. A ground dweller protested about being sent back downstairs, and the Foreman tossed him over the railing to make a point.

He herded a posse of drunk gunmen to the armoury, press-ganging the rovers and anyone else too slow to hide from his fury. He handed out all of the good gear, scavenged from police stations and the RAAF base. Assault rifles, mortars, a light machine gun, a bazooka, sniper rifles that could hit a shadow on the moon. Weighed down with this arsenal, the Council shooters staggered towards the elevators.

Only half of the winch-men could be found, the others drunk or comatose. The lifts descended with maddening slowness, and with bug-eyed junkie fury the Foreman screamed his frustration out into the night.

‘Wind quicker, you fuckers!’ he shouted. ‘She’s getting away!’

Scanning the horizon for signs of Gretel’s escaping Torana, the Foreman didn’t notice the silence below. Guard-posts unmanned, outbuildings on fire. Big shapes darting through the shadows.

‘You lot, we’re going in your cars,’ he told Percy and the other rovers. ‘You know all the squirrely ways she might run. If that bitch of yours gets away, you’ll share her punishment.’

‘Gretel?’ Percy said. ‘What’s she done?’

‘Speak again, and I’ll nail your tongue to your forehead,’ the Foreman said, and that was as democratic as he got.

The cage cars reached the ground. The Foreman herded his army towards the rover shed, pistol whipping anyone too slow to move.

‘Don? What are you doing, you grizzled old knacker-guts?’ he said, squinting through a heroin haze as the Bursar ran across the compound, waving his arms frantically.

He heard the first scream. A growl, interrupted by a gunshot and turning into a yelp. When he heard the yip of drop-bears on the hunt, the Foreman turned around slowly, and his heart sank into the depths of his greasy shorts.

Drop-bears in their hundreds, running loose in his refinery. The livestock screamed and pressed against their fences, bleating and helpless as they were slaughtered in their pens. The ground-dwellers were being hunted from building to building, and he saw a drop-bear snatch a young boy out of a shattered window by the neck.

The Foreman felt his balls contract, dry-retching as his worst fears were realised. They were everywhere, foxes in the hen-house. The guards on the outer fences were only just now realising the danger within, training their guns and flamers inward.

Then those around him were yelling, shooting in every direction. A wave of drop-bears was leaping from a nearby roof, snapping and growling. At least a hundred of the beasts, and they’d crept to within thirty feet of him before anyone noticed.

The Foreman moaned with terror, emptying clip after clip of bullets into that horde. Someone’s gun jammed, and in moments the unfortunate man was covered in bears. They dragged him beneath the refinery, and the man screamed as he was eaten alive.

In the chaos, someone loaded a rocket into the bazooka tube. It skimmed above the drop-bears’ heads, and almost instantly punched into a fuel silo.

Man and beast alike were knocked prone by the explosion. For one moment, night became day, and the Foreman saw the sheer number of monsters who’d crept through his fences.

Then a second fuel tank erupted, and another. A pipe leading towards the tank farm cracked under the heat, and if that went up . . .

‘Run. Run, you idiots!’ he shouted. Perhaps half of the people who’d stepped out the elevators moments ago were still breathing. The Foreman made a bee-line for the Bursar, who was waving and shouting from just outside the rover’s shed.

Behind them, some of the drop-bears began to scale the elevator ropes, drawn to the smell of those hidden in the sky-town. The winch-men were too late to draw the elevators back up, and ran for their lives.

The fire was in the pipes now, and in one sickening moment the fuel bowsers and generators all went up. Some of the guards on the fence became flaming marionettes, their flame-throwers erupting in their hands.

‘Get inside,’ the Bursar was shouting, and rover and gunmen alike ran into the shed, piling into the motley collection of hotrods and muscle-cars.

‘She did this,’ the Foreman said, shaken and sweaty. He needed his gear badly, but the best drugs were under lock and key in his room, high above the burning compound. He slid into the passenger’s seat of Wog Carlotto’s HQ Monaro, a thousand horses under the hood now rumbling and ready to gallop.

‘She let those bears in, Wog. I’m gonna catch that bitch, and I’m going to fuck her up.’

‘Sure thing boss,’ Wog Carlotto said quietly.

A dozen cars rolled out of the shattered front gates. Big guns chattered out of the open windows, driving off the handful of drop-bears that ran to investigate the noise.

As the convoy drove towards Adelaide, the tank-farm caught a spark. Port Stanvac erupted into a furious blaze of flame, the explosion visible for miles. A moment later, the flames danced down through the pipes and reached the oil in the tanker. The sides of the ship erupted into fire and smoke, and it flipped over like a toy boat, destroying the pier. It shuddered and sank in seconds.

‘We’re finished, boss,’ the Bursar said from the back seat, as dry as a man who’d lost nothing. The Foreman was silent, reloading his pistol with shaking fingers.

Gretel ran the car hard up the Lonsdale Highway, and the AC/DC blaring out of the stereo matched her mood. She got as far as Seacliff before the engine shuddered, coughed, and finally rattled into silence.

The Torana rolled to a stop, just near the ANZAC monument. Lugging out the fuel-can one-handed, Gretel trained her revolver on the shadows, listened for a rustle in the overgrown hedges.

What she heard was the fat thunderclap from the south, a ball of flame and smoke marking where Port Stanvac had once stood. She watched, gob-smacked as her former home went up in a series of brilliant explosions.

‘Holy shit,’ she said. Gretel felt a flood of relief, followed quickly by shame and guilt. She was safe now, and not a moment too soon. Place had always been a death-trap, run by incompetent junkies. She’d escaped the clutches of the Foreman, all evidence of her crime burnt to ash – but her friends were most likely all dead.

Aiming the jerry-can at the funnel, she cursed herself when she spilled half a cup of fuel onto the road. The sweet liquid poured into the Torana’s belly, and by the light of the burning oil refinery, Gretel wondered if she would ever fuel up again.

Definitely going north, she decided. Up to Port Wakefield, and sell the car before they hear about this disaster. Buy passage on a boat to Port Lincoln, and keep running.

Still, I get to drive the old girl one last time.

A stick snapped behind her. Gretel dropped the jerry-can to the ground, more precious fuel sloshing out over the sides, gun up and tracking for a drop-bear. She watched the hedges by the memorial statue, big heart hammering. By the time you heard one, you usually had about two seconds before it tore your head off.

The bushes parted, and Gretel zeroed in on the threat, applying pressure to the trigger. When Mog emerged with a twitching pigeon clamped in his mouth, she almost considered shooting him anyway.

‘Stupid bloody cat. You scared the shit out of me! Well go on. You can take your revolting dinner into the car.’

Smiling, she lifted the jerry-can to finish fuelling up, and that’s when she heard the engines, saw the glow of headlights. Someone flicked on a bank of spotlights, and she blinked at the sudden glare on the pitch-dark road.

Snapping the lid shut, she heaved the jerry-can into the back seat. It was still half full. Gretel threw herself behind the driver’s wheel, swearing. Booting the car into life, she saw that she’d only filled up one-third of the tank.

Gretel looked over to Mog, who was steadily ignoring her as he tore feathers out of the dead bird. Throwing the stick into second gear, she punched the accelerator pedal to the floor, and when she dropped the clutch the Torana leapt forward like a greyhound from the starting box.

Bare seconds later, she had the big LJ up in fourth, pushing 90km/hr. She took the last bend onto Brighton Road at speed, drifting almost sideways with a squeal of rubber echoed by the horrified Mog, who almost slid out of the open window, pigeon and all.

Weaving through the artfully placed wrecks, Gretel glanced at the rear-view mirror. At least ten cars were following her through the reef of dead vehicles, all making for her with great speed. She realised then that she wasn’t the greyhound. She was the rabbit.

She reached for the CB radio under the dash, flicked it into life. The American radios had still been unauthorised for use when the bears came, and found mainly in trucks and the homes of ham enthusiasts. The rovers had found a few, treated them like gold.

The rovers had a standing arrangement to talk on Channel 3 when on the road, and when Gretel flicked over she heard familiar voices, speculating on where she was going. Three cars were heading over to South Road, in case she tried to slip through the side-streets.

They’d shared a meal only a couple of hours ago. Now, her former comrades were rounding her up, doing their best to cut her off from a clear escape. Worst of all, she heard the nasal strine of the Foreman, dominating the airwaves as he directed the fleet of cars, urged the rovers to run her off the road.

‘Get her!’ he shouted. ‘Make her pay for what she did.’

‘You’re all idiots,’ she said, thumbing the mic. ‘I can hear everything you’re saying.’

‘You’re gonna die, Gretel,’ the Foreman shouted. ‘I’m gonna break you apart, I’m-’

‘What a dickhead,’ Gretel said to Mog, switching off the squawking radio. She put a Foghat cartridge into the 8-track, and focussed on the dangerous road.

The first strains of ‘Drivin’ Wheel’ blasted out of the speakers. Gretel saw the flicker of headlights closing in fast in her mirror, someone driving with suicidal abandon. It was Mick in his XB Falcon, and the battered old tank bounced from wreck to wreck. He clipped a wing mirror, and wiped out a stop-sign without missing a beat.

Soon he was nipping at her heels, tapping at her rear bumper almost playfully. Gretel veered left, putting an overturned cement mixer between them. Her car was faster on the straight, but Mick was ploughing through debris, heedless of the damage to his own machine.

Something struck her side panels like a sledgehammer. Again, and then she saw the man leaning out of the passenger window, working the slide action on a shotgun. A council thug, face wild with speed and howling for her blood. He unleashed another round of buckshot into the side of the Torana, and she winced at the sound.

The other cars were closer now. She could make out Wog’s HQ, Percy’s panel-van, the whole pack of Cadillacs and muscle-cars. Mick was tying her up with evasive manoeuvres, robbing her of speed. Another flash of the shotgun, and her rear window shattered in a spray of glass. A few of the glass slivers sliced at her neck, wasp stings that made her swear and grit her teeth.

‘Hang on, Mog,’ she gasped, yanking up the handbrake. The Torana shuddered, swung away from the main road. Downshifting, she punched through an overgrown front yard, obliterating two picket fences and bypassing the truck parked across the mouth of the side-street.

She flicked off her headlights, took care to never touch her brakes. Gretel stole through the backstreets, navigating by moonlight alone. From time to time she saw headlights pass by. They were hunting her on the side-streets, roaring down the old alleyways the shit-carts used to take, knocking over bins gone long rotten for want of a garbo. Their rolling lights painted the dead houses, cast the shadows of wild trees across iron fences.

It was Mick who kept the closest. Something in his drunkard’s logic kept him close to her heels, and blind luck would have him onto her if she didn’t slip away soon. Gretel looked for a shed to pull into, but even as she cast around, she saw shapes moving against the moonlight, a quick silhouette on a rooftop and then gone. Drop-bears, stirred up by all the noise. She couldn’t stop.

Then she rolled past the corner store, saw the familiar billboard advertising Chiko Rolls. She saw the shapes crouching there, waiting for her to pass underneath, and she smiled. She stopped just shy of the ambush point, could feel dozens of hungry eyes on her. Once she left the middle of the street, the moment she was close to an eave or fence, they’d make their move.

Gretel revved the shit out of the 3300 engine, and leaned on the airhorn for all she was worth. La Cucaracha blared across the dead suburb, over and over again.

They came around the corner like over-eager dogs. Two cars. Mick in his XB almost colliding with one of the Cadillac boys and at the last moment punching through a mail-box like it was made of tissue paper.

Gretel had the car in a slow reverse, now flicking her headlights in time with the garish mariachi tune. Then the two cars passed beneath the billboard, and she saw the dark shapes tumble from above, drop-bears by the dozen. Fat muscled shapes that smashed at glass, buckling roofs and shearing through the tin in seconds.

The Cadillac was covered with wriggling drop-bears, and in his panic to shake them loose the driver ploughed straight into the corner-store. The American car went up in a fireball, roasting bear and man alike.

Mick got closer, keeping his car aimed straight at her. Ford raced towards Holden, and not even a coat of monsters could persuade the drunken Irishman away from his final assault.

Gretel punched it then, reversing in a panic. The XB nudged her bumper, and even as she fought to stay on the road, she looked forward, straight into Mick’s eyes.

He was already dead. A bear had his head almost free of his neck, and the hands that clenched the steering wheel were no longer attached to the rest of him. The drop-bears were efficiently stripping the carcases of all meat, before the car had even stopped rolling.

The camber of the road took the XB over the curb, and into someone’s front yard. Gretel took no pleasure from that final sight, and long after she left the scene she could still see the car rocking back and forth, the headlights painting an abandoned swing-set, the shadows of the drop-bears as they ate their fill.

They got her on the way through Adelaide.

Each road she tried the other rovers had already been to, hauling wrecks with winches to block off the main roads. She heard them on the CB radio, goading her, barking misdirections and threats. They’d blocked all the roads north, all the sneaky ways she might take to get to Port Wakefield. She could see bright headlights in the parklands to the south. Cars watching the ways out of Colonel Light’s square mile, daring her to double-back, to make a run for Victor Harbor after all.

Teeth gritted, she played their game. All through the little side streets and alleys she raced them, but there were just too many cars to shake. One bloke with a rusty old Charger stuck to her like glue, nipping at her bumper. He was joined by a souped-up T-Bucket, which belched flames and herded her as sure as a kelpie drove the sheep to the knacker-truck.

Rundle Mall.

Fishtailing through the rubbish and rubble, Gretel could barely spare the ruins a glance. The Foreman’s men were leaning out of the windows, spraying her car with gun-fire. They were aiming low, and it sounded like a symphony of hammers on the boot and bumper. They were trying to wreck the tires and force her to a halt.

There was no way to get out of the shopping strip, and she knew what was waiting for her a moment before the lights came on, blinding her. Four cars, spotlights on, and a rank of outlines in silhouette, guns out and blazing.

The volley of bullets made a mess of her radiator, shattered her headlights. Two bullets starred her windshield, but the glass held. Gretel felt the front-right tyre burst, and fought the slide, the rim sending up a shower of sparks as it ground against the flagstones.

A long-dry water fountain loomed in front of her. Even as Gretel jumped on the brake she knew she’d hit it at speed. The Torana met the masonry. Gretel flew forward, steering wheel breaking at least one rib, and her head flipped forward and down, slamming her face against the dashboard.

Groggy, nose leaking blood, Gretel had no fight in her as they levered her door open. The Torana was absolutely fucked. Everything was buckled, and it took three men to get her out of the car. She looked up through one half-closed eye to see the Foreman reach into her car, pulling out the mangled corpse of Mog.

‘Look! It’s a broken pussy!’ he shouted, shaking the dead cat in his hand. Gretel screamed at the sight, swearing and trying to fight her way out of the huddle of men it took to hold her down.

The Foreman turned and punted Mog’s body into the darkness. The men cheered, and a few moments later came the snarls of the drop-bears, the ripping sounds as they made short work of the cat. Her cat.

Next they dragged her across the pavement, whooping, spitting on her, kicking her in the ribs and gut like she was a big slab of wriggling pork. As her broken bones grated against each other she cried out, and this just drove them on even more.

Soon they had her on top of a car bonnet, heavy men leaning on her arms and legs, pinning her down like a big butterfly on a board. Gretel fought them, fought like a mongrel, but it didn’t matter. They had her.

She noticed that she was on top of Wog’s beautiful HQ. Wog Carlotto and Percy were at the edges of this slavering pack, but they were in the pack nonetheless. They didn’t say a word, didn’t raise a hand to help her.

‘You burned down our town, ya fucking mole,’ the Foreman grunted in her ear.

‘Let those fucking bears in, too,’ someone else said.

‘I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, and a moment later she was sucking for air, winded as the Bursar drove the butt of a rifle into her guts. Hard.

‘We had a good thing going. A real home,’ the Foreman said, dripping sweat and spit down into her face. ‘We were rich! Good looking birds, anything we wanted. Now we got nothing.’

Someone started tugging on her boots, trying to pull them off her big feet. The Foreman grinned down at her, and all at once several hands were yanking at her shirt buttons, trying to undo her belt and zip.

Even as Gretel went someplace else in her mind, determined to blank out what was about to happen, she heard the first scream, the stutter of a semi-automatic. The noise broke the group-lust like a bucket of cold water, and in seconds they were snatching up their guns. One bloke already had his pants down to his knees, and tried to hitch them up and load his shotgun all at the same time.

Coughing up blood and snot, Gretel sat up, and in numb horror she saw them coming. Dozens, hundreds of drop-bears, spilling out of the ruined store-fronts and swarming towards them like flies to a meat-tray. The men did a messy approximation of a fighting withdrawal, guns barking out into that hungry mass as they backed towards the cars.

Rifle cracking, Louis wandered too close to the eaves out the front of John Martins. More drop-bears fell on him from above, a waterfall of fur and claws that came pouring out of the windows, dropping from the roof. Louis screamed for one long terrible moment, and then there was nothing but the ripping of meat, the grunting and squabbling of animals over a carcase.

In the face of that starved advance, the rovers tossed down their guns and ran for their muscle-cars and hot-rods. The motors roared defiance, chewing through the last of the petrol they were likely to ever see. In seconds, they’d laid down rubber, abandoning what was left of the Fuel Council.

‘You pack of fucking cunts!’ the Foreman screamed at their tail lights. He was almost surrounded by drop-bears, and in a mad panic he sprayed an M16 in all directions, emptying the clip to little effect. He shot one of his own men by mistake, and peeled a shotgun out of the dying man’s hands.

Gretel leaned into the wreck of her Torana, wincing at the pain in her side. She emerged with the big .303 rifle. Climbing onto the roof of the LJ, she picked off drop-bears with a calmness that she didn’t feel. There were so many it was almost impossible to miss.

Then the tide of flesh and fur had reached her car, and she was cut off from escape. Two men climbed up on the roof to join her. The Foreman, blood-spattered, working the empty slide of the pump action. The Bursar, his pinch-faced little lackey to the bitter end.

‘Gimme your gun,’ the Foreman demanded, waving his hand at her. He was so preoccupied with the advancing bears that he barely noticed when Gretel levelled the big rifle in his direction.

‘It’s all yours,’ she said, and with one pull of the trigger the Foreman gained a fist-sized hole in his guts. White-faced with shock, he clutched at the wound, and slid down from the roof in a mess of guts and blood.

The bears went berserk with this latest offering, and Gretel jumped down from the roof, pushing through the feeding frenzy with her boots and her rifle butt. Those that weren’t feasting on the dead man tried to nip at her, and she let the revolver blaze a path to freedom. Six roaring bullets and she was clear and running.

She looked back only once, to see the Bursar still standing on the roof of her car. He could have run too, Gretel thought. Very calmly, the man put his pistol against the roof of his mouth and he blew his own brains out.

Gretel took the opportunity to run like fucking Phar Lap.

Drop-bears weren’t very fast on the ground; they were ambush predators, built for surprise attacks, the quick pounce. Their limb proportions and muscle mass slowed them down. It was possible to outrun them, but the squat little killers had stamina. People had to stop running sooner or later, and on land the drop-bears relied on tiring out their prey.

Gretel barrelled through the night streets of Adelaide like a fridge on skates, pausing only once to jam another bullet into the .303 and get her bearings. It seemed like the noise of the gunfight had brought all of the starving critters out of hiding.

They lumbered awkwardly out of the storefronts, out of the pubs and even Parliament House. Hang-faced killers watched her from balconies and broken windows, willing her to come just that little bit closer.

There.

She headed for the horse statue commemorating the Boer War, with a wary eye to the overgrown gardens of Government House. She was within stone’s throw of the River Torrens, and once she had the water between her and Adelaide, the horde should find it harder to get to her. Wearily she considered her options. Without a car or a horse, it would take her days to trudge up the highway to Port Wakefield.

Her ribs gave a painful twinge then, and Gretel stopped by the base of the statue, leaning against the plinth and trying to catch her breath. By that point she was huffing like a horse herself – she didn’t get to that size by running around a lot.

Past the barrier of wrecks, King William Street was broad and empty. Gretel considered the hulk of the Festival Centre, the rotunda long rotten and crumbling. Behind that, a gentle slope of overgrown grass and boats drawn up to a dock.

Even as she smiled and shuffled towards the river, a shadow fell across her. Gretel had the barest moment to realise that a bear was dropping from the top of the horse statue, and cried out in terror.

It fell on her like a stone with teeth, clawing at her, biting. As they rolled around on the road, she had the presence of mind to jam her rifle stock into the drop-bear’s snapping jaws. She held it at bay, crying out as the creature tore her arms to ribbons with its claws.

In one horrifying moment, the drop-bear crunched down on her big .303 with relish, shearing through stock, iron barrel and all. Spitting out all that metal and wood, the monster lunged at the woman, only to find itself spitted on a sharp blade. It looked at Gretel with its piggie eyes, bleeding and gurgling and confused to its last breath.

She rolled the creature to one side, pulling Purdie’s big bowie knife out of its throat. Slowly rising to her feet, she shuffled forward, bloody knife held limp and dripping in one hand.

Everything was pain. The riverbank seemed an impossible distance. Even as Gretel leaked blood from a dozen deep wounds, she staggered forward, unable to even muster a fast walk. Behind her she could hear them, a pack of starved killers hooting in delight, about to run her down in the middle of the road.

Then she saw it. Behind the Rotunda, parked neatly along the banks, she could now see the strangest machine. Something like a cross between a tractor and a steam-train, a big-bellied machine with a fat smoke-stack. It was draped with carnival lights, and behind it was a string of cars and trailers.

‘Hey,’ she called out, waving her arms above her head. ‘Hey! Help me!’

The motion of her arms sent a wave of dizziness through her, and she wondered how much blood she’d lost. She shouted again, a wordless cry, and continued with the left foot, right foot, repeat, gasp.

She heard the machine cough into life, the hiss and roar of a big steam-engine. She was close enough now to see two figures hauling water pipes out of the river, and then they doused all the lights. Groggily she saw the road-train rolling forward, the reflection as it passed alongside the moonlit Torrens. They were leaving.

Gretel was on her knees now, and didn’t even notice the transition. She stared at nothing in particular, and went somewhere beyond fear, past the pack of monsters that crept towards her. This was where she’d fallen, and she knew she wouldn’t be getting up.

I die now, she thought, and that was when the machine crested the grassy banks, spot-lights suddenly ablaze, steam-whistle shrill and defiant. It was a juggernaut of metal, complete with iron cow-catcher. She saw the shape of a man in the cabin, and a boy scrambling onto the roof.

A seat up there. A turret, and above it the biggest crossbow she’d ever seen. The lad worked it with a set of levers, and it fired enormous spears just over her head. Ka-chunk, and the next big bolt was loaded into the crossbow, the string already drawn back and ready to fire.

‘That’s a steam-powered bow,’ she mumbled. She watched numbly as the machine slipped past her, didn’t turn when she heard the crunching sounds, the squeals of pain. When the steam-engine returned and pulled up alongside her, she was still kneeling in the road, surrounded by a growing puddle of her own blood.

‘Get up love,’ she heard a gruff voice say. ‘Please. I don’t think I can lift you.’

She felt a hand slide into hers, a rough calloused grip. Bleary-eyed, she rose to her feet, and in a weak daze she found herself remembering her father, remembered being scooped up on Christmas Eve, carried past a street of lit-up houses. Being safe, and warm, and on her way home.

‘No room in the cab for you,’ the voice said. ‘You’ll have to ride in back with my dad.’

More movement, and somehow she hauled herself up a set of steps. Then there was a flat surface under her back. Gretel let go, let the darkness come in.

‘Hold still. Stop wriggling around!’

Gretel woke up fighting, thrashing around and yelling. It took her a long moment to realise that she was safe, and that a strange man was trying to stitch up her wounds.

She lay back down, blinking as the man fed a needle through her skin, sewing her up with something that looked suspiciously like fishing line. The man was aboriginal, his lined face buried in an enormous white beard. He wore an outfit of worn denim, and a greasy old Akubra on his head.

He whistled cheerfully as he worked, and in minutes he’d sealed up the worst of the damage. Her shirt was in shreds now, and Gretel felt a little embarrassed as the man poked around her ribs, pulling the wounds together.

She was in a type of trailer, stacked with crates and hessian sacks. Around her was a mess of bloody cloth, and the floor was damp beneath her. Sitting up made her feel woozy, and she wondered just how much blood she’d lost during the night.

It was dawn. Somewhere a pair of magpies were trading insults, and she could see trees, a crest of hill. They’d made it out of the city.

‘Got an old shirt you can have,’ the man said, wiping his bloody hands on a rag. ‘Not much left of that one.’

Gretel nodded. She saw a tousled head appear at the top of the steps, and under the mop of hair a pair of gentle brown eyes watched her warily.

‘Boy,’ the man barked without turning. ‘Get water.’

The lad disappeared like a skink.

‘He doesn’t talk,’ the man said. ‘Not to me, anyways.’

Gretel finally managed to sit up, and rested her back against the wall of the trailer. That was when she saw the dead body. It was neatly packed up, like everything else back there. Canvas wrapped from head to toe, a coil of rope holding everything in place. But there was no mistaking that shape for anything but a corpse.

‘That’s my dad,’ the man offered. ‘Sorry. Don’t have anywhere else for you to ride.’

‘That’s okay,’ Gretel croaked. The quiet boy reappeared with water, and she sucked greedily from the canteen. The man gave her a shirt, a tent of flannel made for a big man. They gave her the privacy to change, and she gingerly removed the ruined shirt, let the bloody rag fall to the floor. It was all she could do to button up the new shirt, and then she was drifting back into sleep.

She woke to the movement of the steam-car. It was jolting around. Gripping the side of the trailer, Gretel peered over the side. She recognised the Princes Highway, and knew they were well into the Adelaide Hills. Her rescuer had taken the peculiar vehicle onto the shoulder of the Highway and was passing a snarl of abandoned cars and trucks.

Up front, the road locomotive coughed and chugged. It looked like an old showman’s machine, all decked out in lights and trim. PELICAN AND SON TRAVELLING SHOW – PERTH’S BEST! the bunting declared. She could see the man in the cab, working the mass of levers and switches. Next to him the boy worked at shovelling, flicking coals from the tender and down into the furnace.

An enormous water tanker was attached behind the trailer she was in, and it was clear that the pair were equipped to travel an extremely long distance in the old-fashioned machine.

Gretel was dozing off again, lulled by the motion of the road train. She woke with a start to find the boy sitting across from her, cross-legged from where he’d been watching her sleep.

‘Got any food?’ she asked, and the boy nodded shyly. He rummaged through the stack of supplies, emerging with a can of beans and finally a tin opener. When she smiled her thanks, the boy renewed his efforts. From a sack he pulled out a tile of oat biscuit, almost rock solid.

‘Someone cooked this to last,’ she said, breaking the biscuit up with a dribble of water from her canteen. The boy kept his vigil, watching as she cracked open the baked beans.

‘He your dad?’ she said around a mouthful of food, indicating the man in the cab. The boy shook his head, and drew his knees up around his chin. He was months away from his last hair-cut, and it was impossible to tell if he was pink or black underneath all the coal-dust on his face and hands.

His shoes were a couple of sizes too big for him, ancient workboots held together with duct-tape and string. He wore an old school blazer over a t-shirt, and grimy slacks that needed taking up.

She did her best to scrape the cold beans out of the tin with the biscuit, and in the end she resorted to scooping them out with her fingers. She licked her fingers clean and, tossing the can onto the roadside, she wondered if the boy would give her something else to eat. Even though her stomach rumbled and twinged, she did her best to keep to her manners, ignoring the big stockpiles of food around her.

‘You got a name?’ she ventured. ‘I’m Gretel.’

He didn’t offer a name in return, but leaned forward when she offered her hand, giving her a quick hand shake before returning to his side of the trailer. Gretel smiled, and they spent many miles in a companionable silence.

Soon they were looking down over the broad sweep of the Murray River, a brown ribbon winding to the horizon and beyond. The road led downwards, to a long bridge and a township on the far side. Either side, the trees grew thick, many sprouting from the water itself.

The man eased the road locomotive to a stop, climbed back over the tender to join his passengers. He sat next to the boy, tousling his hair affectionately.

‘We’re not stopping in Murray Bridge, but I can let you off there if you want,’ the man said. ‘Safer than Adelaide.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Lake Alexandrina,’ he said. ‘Gotta bury my dad there.’

‘Long drive just to bury a man,’ Gretel said. ‘Look around you. Everything is a graveyard.’

‘My dad was Ngarrindjeri,’ the man said, eyes suddenly bright and passionate. ‘He was born here, told me he wanted to come home before he died. Said he was strong enough to make the trip, but he died on the Nullarbor.’

She looked at the body, now noticing the care with which the man had wrapped it. She mumbled her apologies, and the man waved them away.

‘Don’t expect you to understand. Used to be our land, all around here. Then you white fellas took it, then the bears took it. Now it’s no-one’s.’

When the road-train left Murray Bridge, Gretel rode with it.

Gretel and the boy kept the fire going for three days, while the man kept vigil at the edge of the great lake. He buried his father by the water’s edge, scooping out the sand and grit with his own hands. He didn’t bother with a marker, and Gretel thought she understood.

She gave the boy a haircut, washed months of filth from his skin. His body was covered with scars, old jagged marks from a bear attack, silvered lines from a whip or belt. Someone had put a lit cigarette to his tiny little chest, over and over. Whatever horrors had brought him to this man had robbed him of all of his words.

Gretel did her best to care for the boy. She told him stories, sang silly songs her mother had taught her. Once, the boy laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound she could remember hearing.

When the man had finished mourning, he came back to their camp and slept like he was dead himself. By some sort of unspoken agreement the boy unpacked the trailer, erecting canvas shades and setting up a camp. After their journey of almost three thousand kilometres, she supposed the pair were entitled to a little break.

She learned the man’s name was William Pelican, and he was the ‘Son’ spoken of on the bunting on the steam-engine. Pelican Senior had been a boiler-maker over in Western Australia, and built the steam-tractor himself shortly after the Depression.

‘We ran rides in the country fairs. Hurdy-gurdies, powered by the engine. Quiet times, he’d get the out-of-work circus folk, do little shows in towns. Cost us nothing to move from town to town. Just water, a little wood. Caught what food we needed.’

They had fishing lines in the lake, and as the sun set they cooked a big mulloway over the coals of their fire. Pelican senior had told stories of bad fishing, of a river in decline. It was rare to land such a big fish so far from the river mouth.

‘Fish are coming back to the lakes,’ William said. ‘People gone away long enough, everything else starts to come back. Once the bears die out, the land will recover.’

‘What are you going to do now, William?’ Gretel asked. She juggled hot fish meat in her hands, gobbling it down when it was cool enough to bear. The boy was wrapped up in a nest of blankets by the fire, watching them with dark eyes.

‘I’m the first one to come back from the west,’ he said. ‘Figured I might stay now. Put in a claim.’

‘Claim?’

‘Might not be tomorrow, might not even be next year, but they’ll be coming over from Perth soon enough. When I left, they were getting a steam-train up and running. Once they’ve got the tracks fixed and the supply depots set up, people will come. Water here, good land.’

‘How many people?’

‘There must be ten thousand now,’ William said, and Gretel nearly choked on her fish. Since the bears came, at most she’d seen two or three hundred people in one place.

‘And I got here first,’ he said with some satisfaction. ‘They’ll see the wreckage of Adelaide and keep on going. It’ll be water drives the new world, not oil. Steam. And when they get to the Murray River, I’ll be waiting for them. With a town. My town.’

‘An old bloke and a mute boy. You won’t last five minutes out here. If the enclaves don’t roll over you, a band of rovers will. There’s some bad folks out on the road.’

‘Heh. They’re all finished, just like the bears. Them out west have got a government now, and a train soon. Next comes the laws, and the money.’

‘Laws are just words,’ Gretel said. ‘And government didn’t stop the bears here. Sabretooths in America, dinosaurs in Europe. All of our laws and money didn’t do a damn thing. Humanity is on its knees, and we deserve to be here.’

‘Are you one of those believe we got punished? By God, or a mad scientist at Woomera?’ William Pelican said, looking at her in mock seriousness.

‘Yes. You give a better reason. Millions of monsters don’t just happen.’

‘Here a reason – it doesn’t matter why it happened.’ He spat a fish bone into the flames. ‘That’s done. What matters is what we do now.’

The lad watched him closely, and Gretel realised that the troubled boy worshipped William Pelican. He’d followed him across a dead continent, and would follow him in this new ambition. So would others.

‘We live within our means. We let the land heal. The world has given us a second chance, and we’d best not fuck it up.’

Two men trudged up the dusty road, bothered by flies and the sheer distance of their walk. They’d passed skeletons on the way, folks who died within a day of water. They passed by cars long gone to rust, and didn’t even bother to tap at the petrol tanks these days.

A rumour drove their trudging feet onward. A prosperous new place, a town that had succeeded in opening up the Murray River to trade and settlement. Towns were springing up, right through into Victoria and New South Wales. Government was spreading from west to east, squashing out the looting enclaves wherever they resisted the rule of law.

Good manners were back in fashion.

When they heard the hissing and whomping of a steam-engine, the men stood their ground. Nowhere to hide here. One of the men held a revolver by his side, but his companion snatched it away, kicked it into the ditch for all the good it could do them.

A dust cloud approached, and the men waited patiently, only using their energy to flag the driver down when the vehicle got close. When the dust cleared, it revealed a refurbished LJ Torana, cherry-red.

The engine bay had been gutted to fit a bespoke steam engine, and water lines fed from a water tank in the boot to the boiler up front. From the depths of the car, a stereo was playing ‘Jump in My Car’ by the Ted Mulry Gang.

‘Well look at you two idiots,’ someone said, and the door opened to reveal a big woman, kitted out in animal hides. Dumbfounded, a man named Wog and a man named Percy watched as a dead woman stepped onto the road, as large as life.

‘Gretel,’ Percy said. ‘We thought the bears got you.’

‘There were too many for us,’ Wog ventured after an awkward moment. ‘We had to run. You understand, right?’

‘Well, as long as you boys can sleep at night,’ Gretel said. ‘So, where’s your car?’

‘No fuel left,’ Wog said. Percy said nothing, choosing to look down at his shoes.

‘Oh hell, Gretel. You know what it was like. You’d have done the same if you were us. Bossman says you get someone, you get them.’

‘Hmm. So how’s that world working out for you both?’

The men stood in the road, unable to frame anything worth saying. Gretel reached into the car, pulling out a loaded crossbow.

‘Now Gretel, wait a minute –’ Wog Carlotto said. She raised the weapon in their direction, and Percy gave a strangled cry as she pulled the trigger.

From a tree just behind them, an emaciated drop-bear fell to the ground, a fat crossbow bolt piercing it through the skull. The two men looked at each other, realising how close they’d been to death.

‘Stupid things,’ Gretel said. ‘I’ve dropped shits scarier than that.’

‘Gretel, are you – are you going to the new town?’ Percy ventured. ‘Pomberuk, or Murray Bridge or whatever they call it now?’

‘Yep,’ she said. ‘I’m Deputy Mayor. It’s about thirty kilometres that way.’

The two men made to move forward, to get into her new car, but the big woman shook her head.

‘Have a nice walk boys.’

She climbed back into the car, and booted the home-made engine into hissing life. Throwing a lever, the steam-car lurched forward at a terrifying speed, the spinning tyres showering the men in sheep-shit and small stones.

Gretel left them in the dust, her music blaring, and gave a solid middle-finger salute out of the car window.

Author Loci

Jason Fischer

When I originally wrote the novella ‘Everything is a Graveyard’ for Russell B Farr, it was inspired by a few things. Ticonderoga Publications were publishing my first short story collection, which I’d pitched to Russ as a collection of my post-apocalyptic short works. I had enough material for two or three books, and tried to distil this down to the stories that best fit the brief.

The end selection was heavy with zombie stories, lots of Australiana, and some of my more inventive end–of–the–world scenarios. Most of these stories aligned with my usual dislike of apocalypse fiction; for my dollar, the interesting stories aren’t told when people are running around scared, trying to survive the initial destructive event. Take me way down the road, to a point where we are in the true ‘post’ of a post-apocalypse. Forget Mad Max 1, take me to Mad Max 2 or Mad Max: Fury Road (More on Mad Max in a moment).

When we were brainstorming ideas for the title of the collection, Russ and I both liked Everything is a Graveyard. It summed up that these weren’t just zombie stories, these were pieces driven by the ruin of everything. My characters are all navigating the remains of a once-abundant world, and everything that’s left is a marker for the past. Skyscrapers serving as headstones for an age that is done with, that sort of thing.

Russell commissioned legendary comic artist Jason Paulos to provide the cover-art. Russ kindly allowed me to offer input into the finished artwork, and I wanted something crazy, outstanding. We ended up with the following image: a bogan woman in leathers, built like a brick shit-house, wielding a shotgun. An LJ Torana, cherry-red, the worse for wear. Ruins. In the distance, a slavering drop-bear, because: Australian apocalypse. The end result was a power-chord of a cover, and oh boy did I love it.

We ended up with the following image — this is the original wrap-around of the cover without the floating text:

(artwork courtesy of the transcendently talented Jason Paulos)

So of course Russell asked me to write this up as a story, the title piece for the collection. A novella fell out of my head in record time, the end product being what you have just read. It was an interesting challenge, with both the story title and concept art existing before the story did, but I’d like to think I pulled it off!

Fast forward a couple of years. George Miller releases a new instalment in the Mad Max series. Long-time fans of the movie are of course excited, but nobody expected what Fury Road was going to do. It is hyper-realist, and nasty, and all things Mad Max of course, but it has an amazing story for what is essentially a two-hour car chase. It has depth. It deals with feminist issues in the most misogynist of settings, and does this well. When Mad Max: Fury Road hit the big screen, everybody lost their minds.

For a movie that was essentially unscripted and shot straight from the storyboards, Fury Road achieved a lot of things. It was vital, spare but at the same time ridiculously over the top (picture the Doof Wagon, an enormous citadel in a mesa spewing out water, and an army of pasty white Warboys with chromed teeth!).

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that Mad Max is one of my biggest influences as a writer. It pleases me that Fury Road is more nuanced than MM1, that the story is told confidently, that it works on several levels. It’s no longer cheap Ozploitation, and has become an epic myth told with the fervour of a bard. It’s an Australian retelling of ‘The Odyssey,’ with flavours of ‘Beowulf’ and of course Max filling in as an admirable Gilgamesh, a quasi-immortal figure who belongs nowhere. One of the actors from Fury Road lives in Adelaide and assures me that sequels will be forthcoming in the franchise. This pleases me greatly!

‘Everything is a Graveyard’ is unashamedly my homage to Mad Max, indeed to all Ozploitation. I wanted to tell the story of a woman operating in a misogynist setting, living life by her own terms. Here, as in Fury Road, the uber-macho survivalist enclaves are stagnant and failing. There’s some unnamed disaster in the past that has reduced humanity to its knees (in Mad Max, it’s fuel shortages and perhaps a nuclear war, in mine it’s an unexplained drop-bear invasion). In both stories, the only viable solution for the future is the rule of law, of compassion and cooperation.

In short, I was very pleased by my efforts to tell this story, and then a couple of years later I saw George Miller’s Imperator Furiosa on the big screen. In one fell swoop, he made me want to hang up my pen!  Long story short, I think I accidentally wrote a half-arsed Fury Road before George Miller knocked it out of the park. If the next Mad Max contains drop-bears, I shall wail and gnash my teeth…

Anyway, now is the time to don my pimp hat and to shill for my collection. The wonderful folks at Ticonderoga Publications have just re-released most of their backlist as e-books, so for the first time Everything is a Graveyard (the full collection, also containing the novella you have just read) is available to purchase for your favourite reading device. Try these links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Graveyard-Jason-Fischer-ebook/dp/B01522HNMI/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

And also via Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/575321

If you groove on hard-copy books, here’s how to order a physical copy:

Amazon bookstore link

More stuff about me and my writing can be found at this spiffy website here: http://jasonfischer.com.au/

Cheerio, and whenever you pass beneath a tree, LOOK UP.

Jason Fischer

Adelaide

September 2015

Lodloc and The Bear — Steve Cameron

When I opened the door in response to the gentle tap, tap, tap, I was somewhat surprised to see a drawing standing there. He was pencil grey and white, with a shaggy mop of hair and overly-large eyes. His short nose and smiling mouth were defined by single lines. He wore slightly flared jeans and a t-shirt, pencil shaded down one side. He wasn’t exactly as I’d drawn him, after all I was never a particularly talented artist as a kid. He was more like I’d imagined him to be.

He smelled of paper and grey lead.

‘Hello, Mark,’ he said. ‘Do you remember me?’ His voice was soft and low.

‘Lodloc? It can’t be. I mean, you’re just . . . I drew you when I was a kid. You’re not even real!’

He smiled, a sad smile I knew so well. After all, I’d tried to draw it many times. ‘I’m real,’ he said. ‘As real as you, only I’m made from paper and pencil rather than flesh and bones.’ He turned then, revealing his body was three dimensional. The shading moved as he did, much like an animation.

‘Maybe I’m dreaming,’ I said, but I knew I wasn’t. ‘Maybe I need a drink.’

Lodloc laughed, and looked past me, hopefully. ‘Well, are you going to invite me in?’

‘Of course. Please,’ I stepped back to give him room to enter. ‘Where’s the Bear?’ I asked.

‘He’s on his way.’

And with that a drawn bear, paper and pencil and about half as tall as either Lodloc or me, scampered past us and into my apartment. I glanced up and down the hallway before closing the door.

‘Um, why are you here?’ I asked. ‘What do you want?’

His expression drew tight, worry lines appeared across his forehead.

‘We’ve been stuck in your world for thirty years,’ he said. ‘We want to go home. We need you to help us.’

When I was a kid I wanted to be an artist. I drew every day, on every scrap of paper I could find. My mother threw most of it out years ago. I managed to keep the notebooks I filled with my art when I was in high school.

I was an avid reader. I read and re-read Tintin and Asterix books, and had dreams of writing and drawing my own comics for a living. And so I had created Lodloc and the Bear, two melancholy characters who were lost in our world. They roamed from town to town, searching for the portal that would take them back into Happyland, their own world. As they travelled they had adventures helping others, always without being recognised for their efforts.

And now Lodloc was seated opposite me in my living room, and the Bear was rummaging in my kitchen.

‘So,’ I started, ‘how have you been?’

‘Not too bad, considering we can’t get home and we’re melancholy most of the time.’

I shook my head. ‘Look, this is impossible. Completely ridiculous. You don’t exist. You were a creation of my imagination thirty years ago.’

‘We were real enough to you then.’ He shrugged, the pencil shading shifting with his movements, always consistent with the light and shadows from the lamp in the room. ‘You believed in us when you drew us,’

‘You were very real to me, but only in my imagination. I could picture you, exactly as you appear now.’ I leaned towards him, expecting him to melt into nothing at any moment: the illusion I knew him to be. ‘But I also knew the difference between reality and imagination, and I knew you weren’t real real.’

‘Yet here we are. And you’re holding a conversation with me while the Bear is in your kitchen.’ With that there was a crash, the sound of a baking tray hitting the tiles.

‘What’s he doing anyway?’ I asked, leaping to my feet.

Lodloc laughed. ‘Don’t worry, he hasn’t broken anything. You of all people should know what he’s doing. He’s searching for leftover pizza in your fridge. He always does that. It’s how you wrote him.’

‘He’ll be disappointed,’ I said, and sat slowly. ‘I don’t have any pizza. I haven’t had any for ages.’ The Bear then marched into the living room, a pizza box held high, drawn, of course, in pencil on white paper. He sat on the floor under the lamp, opened the box and retrieved a slice of paper pizza. Wavy lines emanated from the top of it, indicating it was hot. Munching silently, he watched us with curious eyes.

‘See?’ said Lodloc.

‘Pepperoni,’ I said. I could smell it, the spicy scent reaching across the room. ‘Look, I don’t believe any of this. I can’t believe any of this. It’s not real.’ I had raised my voice. I rubbed my eyes, and calmed myself. ‘What is it you’re after? What do you want from me?’

‘What happened to you? When did you change?’ asked Lodloc, his voice calm and cool. ‘You wanted to be an artist. You wanted to write and draw comic books. Why did you stop?’

‘I grew up. I left high school, went to university and got a job. Now I’m a software trainer.’ I shrugged. ‘Job. Life. It’s real.’

‘But you stopped drawing completely? Why?’

‘I simply wasn’t very good at it.’ I glanced at the Bear who’d started on another grey and white slice of pizza.

‘You were good enough to bring us to life. Your stories were great, better than you remember them. Sure, you’re artwork wasn’t brilliant, but it was improving. You should have kept on drawing. You never even finished the last storyline.’

‘That was thirty years ago. I was in university, studying. I didn’t have time for comics.’

Over by the lamp, the Bear chuckled.

‘What’s he laughing at?’ I asked.

‘You studying,’ he snorted, and started laughing as well. ‘The Bear and I both know in high school you didn’t study until just before your exams. Why would university be any different? You were probably too busy with girls, partying and drinking.’

I felt myself blush, the red creeping up from my chest onto my face.

‘So why now? Why wait thirty years to come for help? What have you been doing all this time?’

‘We didn’t know where you were. It’s taken this long to find you. As for what we’ve been doing, we’ve been wandering, not doing much at all.’ Lodloc’s brow furrowed. ‘You didn’t finish writing our last adventure. We’ve kind of been in limbo.’

I spread my hands wide. ‘So what do you want me to do? Finish the story I started all those years ago when I was a teenager?’

Lodloc nodded. ‘Pretty much. And then let us find the portal so we can go home.’

‘To Happyland?’

Lodloc nodded. The Bear simply burped.

I asked whether Lodloc wanted a drink. He nodded, but told me he’d have to get it himself. After all, he was a cartoon. In my kitchen, I watched him as he opened a cupboard and retrieved a drawn glass I knew wasn’t in there. Then he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a paper and pencil bottle of soda. He unscrewed the lid and poured some into his glass. Little drawn bubbles appeared above it. He returned the bottle to the refrigerator. A moment later, when I opened the door to grab a beer, his bottle had gone.

We stayed up late talking; me drinking beer and Lodloc sipping soda. He told me of his adventures, most of which I remembered. He asked me whether I’d given any thought on how to finish the last story. I shrugged. I had no idea. None at all. Those books were all in a box in my mother’s basement. I’d have to go and retrieve them, then read them and think about it.

I asked Lodloc if I could touch him. When I did, he felt like paper. I checked my hand, expecting a pencil smudge, but there was nothing. With my phone I took their picture. They didn’t show up. The photo showed an empty living room.

Eventually we called it a night. Lodloc and the Bear were happy to sleep on the couch. I went to my room, and although I was tired, I couldn’t fall asleep. My mind was racing, unable to take all this in. I was still confused, this made no sense, and yet I couldn’t deny Lodloc and the Bear, my creations, my drawings from when I was a kid, were sleeping in my apartment.

Later, when I went to the bathroom, I glanced in to see them both curled up on the couch. A string of Zs floated from their mouths and disappeared into the ceiling.

I half expected to wake and find them gone, to realise that this had all been some kind of dream. Instead they were there, watching TV and eating their breakfasts. Drawn breakfasts, of course. I called in sick, told my boss I wasn’t feeling too good. He was fine with that. I’m generally considered reliable. I made myself some toast and coffee and joined them on the couch.

‘I’ve got to go out for a bit,’ I said. ‘Got to go to my mum’s and pick up your stories. Will you be okay here while I’m gone?’

The Bear whispered in Lodloc’s ear. He never spoke directly to anyone else. That’s how I wrote him.

‘We’re coming with you,’ said Lodloc. ‘We’d like to see where we were created.’

‘But, umm . . . Wouldn’t it be best for you stay here? I mean, what would my mother say? She’ll be able to see you, right?’

Lodloc shook his head. ‘No, she won’t be able to see us. She doesn’t have the imagination.’

It’s always nice revisiting my childhood home. The décor has barely changed since I was a kid, and it still has that warm, ‘roast dinner is almost ready’ smell. We sat in the living room; Mum poured coffee for us both, then cut and served slices of lemon cake. It tasted just as moist and rich as her cakes always have. Lodloc sat nearby, watching me intently. I could hear the Bear in the kitchen rummaging through the refrigerator for pizza, which I knew wouldn’t be there and yet he would find. My mother appeared not to hear or see anything of her extra visitors.

She talked for a while, about her friends, about the doctor and about her aches and pains, then asked me about what was happening in my life. Was everything alright? How was my job? Did I have a girlfriend? Why wasn’t I at work?

Yes. Good. No. Mental Health day, Mum.

And then there was more talk about a girlfriend, and why I didn’t have one.

‘Mum,’ I finally said. I’d waited until there was a lull in the conversation. After all, I didn’t want it to appear as though I was only here to collect some stuff. ‘Do you remember all those drawings I did when I was a kid?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You always had a crayon or pencil in your hand, scribbling away. And if we tried to tear you away from your art, you’d cry and cry and cry.’

I smiled. I’d heard this many times. It was one of her stories. ‘Later, Mum. I mean when I was in High School and I drew comic books.’

‘Yes,’ she said fondly. ‘I remember them. You were always working on them, even when you should have been doing your homework. You must have written about ten of them.’

‘Eight,’ said Lodloc. I didn’t say anything.

‘I really enjoyed the one with the Bear, He was so cute,’ said Mum.

I glanced over to where the Bear sat against the wall, eating. He held a half-eaten slice before him, but was staring right at me with beaming eyes, a grin as wide as his face.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘What’s the interest? You haven’t mentioned them in years.’

‘I’ve been wondering about them this week. I’d like to have a look at them.’

‘Well they’re down in the basement, in a box somewhere,’ she said, patting my hand. ‘I’ll show you before you leave.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘I always thought you were going to be an artist, but you gave up.’

I shrugged. ‘Dad wanted me to be an accountant like him. He encouraged me to get a career, not a hobby as he put it. A hobby’s fine son, but it won’t pay the bills.’ I laughed. ‘I’m not blaming him,’ I said, noticing concern cross my mother’s face. ‘Times were different and the advice was sound from his experience. It’s difficult to be financially successful in any creative field. Anyway,’ I shrugged. ‘Truth is I could have kept drawing if I’d chosen to.’

We chatted a while more, before Mum led me downstairs to the basement. She flicked on the lights at the top of the stairs. The stairs creaked as we descended, and for a moment I was in the past. I could almost imagine Dad working at his bench.

Lodloc sauntered down behind us, not saying anything. Mum pointed at a box on a shelf. ‘They’re in that one,’ she said.

I pulled the box down onto the concrete floor, then crouched to open it. Inside was an assortment of my things. A model airplane, my football cards bound with an elastic band, and my books and papers. I sorted through the notebooks, looking for the Lodloc stories. The Bear had followed us down. I tried to ignore him as he opened boxes at random, pulling out objects and throwing them behind him; paper and pencil plates, which sounded much more like china when they smashed on the far wall, pencilled sports trophies which clanged as they bounced, and board games, their pieces spilling across the concrete floor. When I glanced over my shoulder, they were all fading, melting, like mists in the sun.

‘Is it okay if I take the whole box, Mum?’ I asked, and dropped everything back in.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Everything in there is yours, after all.’

I managed to find an empty parking spot just outside Office Needs, a store that sold everything from pencils and paperclips to desks and chairs. Lodloc followed me up and down aisles as I shopped. I could hear the Bear somewhere else in the store. With the first few crashing noises, I winced slightly, glancing over my shoulder with each new thud. Eventually I managed to ignore them. I had to. Other customers had already noticed me twitching and looking around.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Lodloc. ‘He’s just looking for pizza again. Even I would be surprised if he could find any in here.’

I nodded in reply, unable to say anything. I didn’t wish to be seen speaking to myself.

‘We’re the only ones who can hear him,’ said Lodloc.

I smiled in his direction, to let him know I’d heard, then grabbed a packet of pencils. We moved further along the aisle to where bins overflowed with erasers. The crashes seemed further away, as though he’d moved to the front of the store. A stand spilled somewhere, small items clattering and rolling across the floor. I waited for staff to call out, for someone to go running, but it never happened. I selected an eraser, grabbed another one for good measure, and walked around to the notebook section. Lodloc watched over my shoulder as I flipped through different notebooks until I found a size and style I liked. In the distance, the Bear’s noises had now devolved into a series of scrapes and spills.

No one else was close by.

‘I think I have everything I need,’ I muttered.

Lodloc nodded. ‘Yeah, I can’t think of anything else.’

I paused, tilted my head. ‘Something’s wrong,’ I said. ‘The Bear’s fallen silent.’

Lodloc laughed. ‘He must have found pizza, or something else to eat. He’ll be sprawled at the bottom of a display cabinet munching away.’

Together we strolled back towards the registers, looking up and down every aisle. The Bear could not be seen.

‘You check that way,’ said Lodloc, indicating one side of the store. ‘I’ll go this way. Meet you at the back.’

I nodded and went, checking each aisle methodically, looking into every corner, moving quickly without running or looking panicked. Lodloc was waiting for me at the back of the store. I shook my head.

‘He’s gone,’ he said. ‘And that’s not like him. He just doesn’t leave me.’

‘I’ll pay for these, meet you outside. You go look for him. He’s probably waiting at the car.’

He sprinted to the front door. I paid for my supplies, threw them in a bag, and ran. When I got outside, Lodloc was leaning on my car.

‘The Bear has gone,’ he said. ‘I’ve checked the whole block and he’s nowhere to be seen. What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, feeling helpless. ‘I’ve never lost a cartoon before.’

I drove home slowly, in ever-widening circles radiating from where we’d last seen the Bear. We searched intently, Lodloc and me, leaning out the car windows and calling for him. To everyone else on the street it would have seemed as though I was alone in the car, shouting for the Bear and only scanning one side of the street. Indeed when I pulled up at a stop light, alongside a couple of bored looking cops sitting in their car, one of them asked who I was looking for. When I told him I was looking for my cat, he merely wished me good luck and continued his lack of interest.

Finally, Lodloc and I conceded defeat and I drove home. I felt it was unlikely he would have managed to make his way there, outrunning the car in the process, but Lodloc reminded me exactly how he scampered, his little legs pumping fast.

The Bear wasn’t waiting for us at my apartment building.

‘Don’t worry,’ offered Lodloc. ‘He’s never gone far from me before. He’ll show up.’

But he didn’t. Not that night, nor the next day.

Lodloc liked to watch TV, which made it difficult for me to concentrate as I read through my comic books. I needed to remember their history, their behaviours and, most importantly, how to draw them.

I was well into reading my fourth story when I realised Lodloc had changed channels, using his own paper and pencil remote that he had retrieved from goodness knows where. I hadn’t even noticed. It occurred to me that my writing was indeed better than I recalled, that I had lost myself in the worlds of my own creative past. And so I settled back to enjoy the rest of the stories I had written so long ago.

An hour or so later, I finished reading everything I’d written, which meant I was about halfway through the last story. It was the tale of Lodloc and the Bear searching for an old woman’s necklace, which had been stolen by a tough street gang. The story finished abruptly, with Lodloc and The Bear finally released after spending the night trapped in a public toilet block. The Bear had entered, followed by Lodloc. The custodian had then arrived and locked up without realising they were inside. The following morning the custodian was full of apologies, mortified he had inadvertently imprisoned them. I was unable to recall writing that particular predicament, and so had no memory of my plans for the rest of the story.

I put the books down to one side, impressed with what I had just read. Sure, they were clichéd and contrived, but they had been written by a teenage me.

‘So, what do you think?’ Lodloc interrupted my train of thought.

‘Not bad,’ I admitted. ‘Much better than I remember.’

‘So the Bear and I are in the park, having just been released. That was one cold night,’ he said, shivering at the memory.

‘I’m sorry,’ I smiled. ‘I had no idea I was actually putting you through that stuff. That you were real people . . . I mean, real cartoons.’

‘It’s fine,’ he said, waving the apology away. ‘We were onto the gang, and you needed to write something that would slow us down, frustrate us. You couldn’t make it too easy for us.’ He chuckled. ‘You certainly did that, didn’t you? You slowed us down for thirty years.’

I felt myself blush. I mumbled, ‘I’m sorry,’ once more. ‘So what do I do now?’

‘You finish the story,’ said Lodloc. ‘You pick up where you left off, have us recover the necklace, then after we return it to the old lady, we discover the portal that will take us back to Happyland.’

‘What if I simply draw the portal outside the toilet block? Then you could just jump straight in.’

Lodloc shook his head. ‘It won’t work,’ he said. ‘That’s not how stories work. We have to earn our reward. We have to find the necklace and achieve justice before we finish. Then we can go home.’ He sighed. His eyes softened, and he turned to look out the window at the dark night sky. ‘It’s been so long.’

‘Let me get this straight. I continue writing the story, from just outside the toilets. And you then disappear from here?’

Lodloc shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Everything you wrote is based on your experience, what you saw. That particular block is in Reynold’s park, the park you played in when you were young, wasn’t it?’

I nodded.

‘So you write the story from there, and we go down to the park to continue our adventure from where you left us.’

I thought for a moment, trying to plan the rest of the story. ‘Hey,’ I said, realising. ‘So we don’t have to worry about finding the Bear? I just start drawing again and he will just appear in Reynold’s Park ready to go.’

‘No, that won’t happen either. The story has been interrupted. We must find the Bear and then go to the park before we can go further.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t get this,’ I said.

I’d never been a particularly good artist, but years of neglect had caused my limited skills to atrophy. Several of the sketchpads I had retrieved from my mother’s basement were dedicated solely to drawings of both characters from all angles, in a wide variety of poses, performing a number of different actions. I may not have been particularly talented, but I had read and reread a book I’d bought on how to draw cartoons, and I’d learned those lessons well.

My first attempts to recreate those earlier drawings were awful. Even Lodloc, standing behind me and watching over my shoulder, tutted and shook his head. ‘Hmmm. Maybe the Bear and I better get used to being stuck here.’ When I glanced up to say something, I saw he was grinning broadly.

I couldn’t help but smile back.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll get better, Not only have you done this before, but you’re older now. You’ll recover your skills sooner than you think.’

Several hours later, and frustrated with pages and pages filled with drawings that were pale imitations of my youthful offerings, I gave up and went to bed.

I was sure I heard Lodloc sigh as I left.

The next day I had to get back to work. One day off sick would be fine, two would require a visit to the doctor. Not only that, but I was due to give a presentation on Friday and I still had a lot to prepare. I would, however, be able to leave a little earlier than usual.

Lodloc assured me he’d be fine. He’d spend the day wandering the town, searching for the Bear.

‘He’ll turn up,’ he said. ‘The Bear will find me, if I don’t find him first.

I was pretty busy at work, running through the new software, becoming familiar with it so I could anticipate any questions my clients might have. I even had lunch at my desk. All day Lodloc and the Bear occupied the back of my mind. I called home a few times, in the hope Lodloc had found the Bear and returned to my apartment, but I simply got my voice mail. Of course he might be standing out in the hall, unable to get the door open. And if he could, would he even be able to answer my phone? I figured he’d find a way, and I imagined him retrieving a paper key that magically materialised under my doormat, and answering a paper phone that would work only for him.

I worked through the afternoon, watching the clock, waiting for it to tick over to four which was the very earliest I could leave without too many questions being asked. I grabbed my jacket and raced for the door as soon as it did so, mumbling something about an appointment.

When I got home, my cartoon housemates were nowhere to be seen.

I made myself some dinner, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and settled in to draw for the evening. The old lines were starting to return, the eyes were just about right, the hair needed practice, but the stances seemed wooden and stiff even compared to my older art. With every little noise in the hallway outside, I’d look up, staring at the door and expecting Lodloc’s timid knock.

By nine o’clock I could barely stand the waiting any longer. The Bear’s disappearance I could understand. But Lodloc? I was growing more concerned by the minute. I quickly scribbled a note, which I taped to the TV, and left. For the next hour I drove the streets, looking for any sign of either Lodloc or the Bear.

I called my office early the next morning, well before anyone would have arrived, and left a message that I was sick and wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. Someone else would just have to take over my sessions on Friday. As for the medical certificate, I’d have to worry about that later.

Once again I grabbed my jacket and headed out to drive around the town. For the next three hours that’s exactly what I did. I covered all the major roads several times, up avenues and side streets and down lanes and alleys.

Nothing. There was no sign of either Lodloc or the Bear.

I stopped for lunch at a diner out on the highway, a place where they serve big juicy hamburgers straight off the grill. The air was thick with the smell of fried onions, and the sound of sizzling meat patties. I slipped into a booth and started on a coke while I waited for my order to arrive.

Maybe I was worried about nothing. Maybe they’d found a portal and taken the opportunity to return to Happyland. Of course I couldn’t imagine Lodloc doing that, it wasn’t in his nature. But then again I only knew him from what I’d created many years ago. Perhaps in the past thirty years, as they’d wandered in their wilderness, he had changed.

I shook my head. This was all too ridiculous. What if I was imagining it all? What if all this was some weird dream, or hallucination? Lodloc and the Bear didn’t exist, couldn’t exist. They were cartoon characters I’d drawn when I was a teenager. I chuckled. A couple of women behind me turned and looked, then resumed their meal. I ignored them. If I was to visit my doctor and tell him my story, the rest of the week off wouldn’t be an issue. In fact he’d probably give me more time off, with someone watching over me in a hospital ward to make sure I didn’t harm myself. No, they couldn’t exist. I was sick, fevered perhaps. I had almost convinced myself of this when Lodloc slid into the booth and sat opposite me.

I was stunned, and I was about to ask him where he’d been when the waitress arrived and dropped a plate with my burger and fried in front of me.

‘Will that be all?’ she asked as she tucked my bill between the salt and pepper shakers.

I glanced up at her and muttered a response. But already Lodloc was sliding himself along the vinyl bench and leaving. I wanted to ask him where he was going, but there was no way I could phrase that without the waitress thinking it was some weird kind of come on for her. Instead I simply had to thank her and feign interest in my food. I tried a couple of fries, crisp and salty, and watched Lodloc slowly walk away from me towards the counter. At some point he turned, walking back towards me, only now he held a paper tray with drawn food and drinks on it. He pushed the tray along the table and sat opposite me.

I quickly glanced over my shoulder. Those two women were still seated directly behind me, and so I grabbed my mobile phone and held it up to my ear.

‘Hi, where have you been?’ I spoke softly but stared at Lodloc.

‘Out looking,’ he said. ‘I spent all night wandering the streets searching for the Bear.’

‘I was worried. You should have called.’ The women looked over at me once, but paid little attention. It’s okay to talk to yourself as long as you’re holding a phone.

‘No need to worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine.’ He picked up his drink, and slurped noisily through the straw.

‘Like the Bear?’ I said. ‘You thought he was fine too.’

‘He is. I found him.’

‘Great! So where is he?’ I looked around, half expecting him to scamper in, pizza tray in hand, knocking things over as he went.

‘There’s a problem. He’s trapped and we need to rescue him. Finish your burger first,’ he said, biting into his own. ‘There’s no hurry. He isn’t going anywhere.’

Lodloc directed me as I drove.

We headed back towards the suburbs, passing parked cars on leafy streets. A left here, a right there, until finally he called for me to stop. I parked, in front of a red brick house, and turned off the engine.

‘So,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’

‘That house there.’ Lodloc pointed at a two storey house about a hundred metres away. It sat on a corner block, just up from a school crossing.

‘Well let’s go get him.’ I said.

‘How?’ asked Lodloc. ‘You knock on the door, a lady answers and you ask her if you could have your invisible bear friend back? I suspect I’d be sitting here watching as the men in white coats drag you away.’

‘You,’ I smiled. ‘You’re invisible to them as well. You could just walk in there and bring him back out.’

‘You don’t think I haven’t tried that? He’s in there. I saw him.’ He stared at me, his brow furrowed. ‘He tried, but he can’t leave. He doesn’t know why.’

I sighed. ‘So what do we do?’

‘We wait,’ said Lodloc. ‘See if he comes out.’

I went for a walk past the house, of course. Slowing down and walking tall, hoping I could see over the fence. The house was well kept, clipped lawn and flowers in the garden. I noticed a swing set in the backyard and a bicycle on the front lawn. I learned nothing from my reconnaissance, and soon returned to the car.

For the next hour or so I sat and watched, chatting with Lodloc and hoping the Bear would venture out of the house. Of course he didn’t, but I did get a visit from a couple of police officers.

They pulled up behind me. I didn’t notice them until one of them tapped on my window. The other sat in the car, presumably running number plates.

‘Afternoon,’ he said as I wound down my window. ‘Your licence, please.’

I slipped it from my wallet and passed it to him. I recited my name and address to him when he asked me.

‘What are you doing, sitting in your car on a quiet little street?’ he asked.

‘This is going to be good,’ grinned Lodloc.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just sitting, waiting.’

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Someone,’ I said. I could hardly tell him I was waiting for a cartoon bear.

‘Who?’ he asked.

‘A friend,’ I managed. ‘And I know my rights. I don’t have to tell you anything more.’

‘Waiting, while talking to yourself.’

‘Talking to myself? No, I was singing along with the radio.’

‘Right,’ he said.’ You just happen to be sitting, alone, singing to a radio that wasn’t on when I approached the car, waiting for a nameless friend, in a suburban side street, only 200 metres from a primary school.’

‘What?’ I exclaimed. ‘You think I’m some sort of pervert?’ I’d been so focussed on looking for the Bear I hadn’t connected the school crossing further along the street with an actual school. ‘I didn’t even realise there was a school up there.’

He nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘See that crossing up there?’ He pointed along the street. ‘With the signs that say “School Crossing?” You didn’t realise there was a school there, exactly where you’re watching.’ He pulled himself upright. ‘I think you better step out of the car, sir.’

He searched the car. I knew my rights, but at some point, when the cop has probable cause, they have more rights. And even I have to admit I looked pretty suspicious. Too much resistance and flag-waving would only make me look guiltier. Of course they found nothing, nothing at all. I keep a pretty clean car. But he wasn’t going to let it go at that, and I suppose I should be pleased these cops were conscientious enough not to let something like this go. But right now I was cursing my luck and wishing I had a slack cop talking to me instead.

‘This friend you’re waiting on,’ he said. ‘I think maybe it’s about time you told me who it is.’

‘Umm, that’s going to be difficult,’ I admitted.

‘Difficult,’ he repeated. His grin widened. ‘Let’s try anyway.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I was driving down here a few days ago, and I saw a woman walking past. It didn’t register at first, but she looked familiar. A bit further up the road and I realised who it was. It was an old friend from university, my old girlfriend in fact. I did a u-turn, came back and looked for her, but she had gone. I drove around a bit looking for her, but didn’t find her.’ I shrugged. ‘When I got home I checked the internet and the white pages, but she’s not listed; not under the name I knew anyway. Maybe she’s married now. But since I have today off, I figured I’d sit here and see if she came past again. It would be great to catch up with her.’

‘I see,’ he said nodding. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Leonie Wilkins.’

‘I think you better come with us down to the station to clear up this matter.’

‘I don’t really have a choice, do I?’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not really.’

I glanced at Lodloc who remained seated in my car. ‘I didn’t think so,’ I sighed, and accompanied them.

They led me to a small interview room and asked me questions trying to catch me out. I have no record, and there was nothing to suggest I was doing other than I’d told them. They disappeared for a while, leaving me alone.

I thought of Leonie, who had actually been my girlfriend in university. We’d lost touch, but I had heard through the grapevine recently that she had died. The news was recent enough that it didn’t take much effort to appear shocked when they returned to tell me that Leonie Wilkins had died in a motorcycle accident five years earlier.

I acted shocked.

‘It must have been someone else, someone who looked like her,’ I said. ‘It can’t have been her.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It can’t have been. I’m sorry.’ But his eyes were clear and sharp and I knew he didn’t believe me. ‘You may go now, sir. We’ll run you back to your car.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and stood.

‘You have no reason to be hanging around that school any more. And I’ll be keeping my eyes open.’

The police sat in their car and watched as I got into my own, started it, and drove off. Then they followed me until I was out on the highway and heading for home.

Lodloc wanted to know everything that had happened to me. I told him in great detail. He seemed to find it rather amusing, until I pointed out that I would no longer be able to search this area for the Bear.

‘You have to go back,’ he said. ‘We have to get him.’

‘I can’t. Not while those cops think I’m a pervert.’ I thumped the steering wheel in frustration. ‘We’ll have to think up some other way to free him.’ I shot a quick look at Lodloc. ‘Do you have any idea why he’s trapped and unable to leave?’

‘Maybe,’ he nodded. ‘I saw the Bear this afternoon, while you were assisting those cops with their enquiries.’

‘You saw him?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘He was out in the front garden, playing with a little girl. They were dancing together, and then she had him lying on his back while she pretended to be his doctor.’

‘The girl could see him?’ I stared at Lodloc, then had to brake suddenly when I realised the traffic in front of me had stopped.

‘Yeah,’ said Lodloc. ‘She could see him.’

‘How is that possible?’

He shrugged. ‘The only thing I can think of is she has a spectacular imagination. One that sees through the reality of your world and can perceive the Bear. She was probably in the store with her mother and when she left she somehow compelled the Bear to go with her. The power of youthful innocence. He’s unable to leave, like he’s orbiting her or something. Which made it dangerous for me. I couldn’t talk to him without her seeing me as well, and then she may have forced me to remain there too.’

I laughed. ‘I can’t imagine anyone compelling the Bear to do anything. I created you. You came from my imagination. Why don’t I have any power over him?’

‘You do. You have the power to send us home.’ Lodloc smiled sadly. ‘Or not.’

It took a day or so to come up with a plan. Lodloc and I talked it through until we were sure it was worth a try. The direct approach wouldn’t work. I mean, how do you convince a kid to give up their imaginary friend? More than that, how do you convince a parent to allow you to speak to their kid about giving up their imaginary friend? I did some research, on a public computer of course, and ascertained their name was Finney. With the cops keeping an eye on me I had to be cautious.

I drove over to the house, all the way checking I wasn’t being followed by a couple of zealous cops. We were in luck. The Bear was playing with the girl out front. I didn’t look too long in that direction, nothing that would make me look suspicious, and I certainly didn’t look anywhere near the school when we passed. A few streets away I dropped Lodloc off. He would walk over to the school, while I headed over to a shopping mall where I knew there was a public telephone that still worked. Once there I called the house.

‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice, the mother.

‘Mrs. Finney?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘This is John Walker. I work for Office Needs. How are you this afternoon?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I believe you were in our store a couple of days ago with your daughter.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s right.’

‘Your daughter entered a competition in store, and she’s a winner. All she has to do is answer a couple of simple questions and she will receive a gift pack of art supplies.’ I crossed my fingers. I had to trust that Mrs Finney had been busy with her own purchases and hadn’t kept tabs on her daughter.

‘That’s fantastic, Mr. Walker. I’ll get her for you.’

I heard her put the phone down, then her voice calling her daughter. ‘Keira, there’s a phone call for you.’ A short time later I heard a little girl’s voice.

‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Keira, this is Mr. Walker from Office Needs. You won our competition. Congratulations.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘All you have to do is answer some questions for me.’

‘Okay.’

‘We’ve lost our bear, and his mummy misses him. Do you know where he is?’

‘Outside.’ she said. ‘He’s my friend.’

‘I’m sure he loves playing with you, but his mummy needs him to come home for dinner. Can you send him home?’

There was a long pause. ‘Will he still be able to visit me?’

‘Of course,’ I lied. ‘But right now he needs to come home. You don’t want him to be hungry, do you?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Can you send him home then? Just tell him to walk home past the school.’

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Keira. His mummy will be very happy.’

‘I’ll do it now.’

‘Good girl. Can I talk to your mum again?’

Keira called her mum, who had obviously been standing behind her.

‘Hello?’

‘Congratulations, again,’ I said. ‘A gift-pack of art supplies will be in the mail tomorrow.’

I read out her address, confirming it.

‘Can I ask you something, Mr Walker?’ I could almost imagine her furrowed brow.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘I was listening to her answers. They seemed strange. May I ask what the questions were?’

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘It was a series of questions based on a scenario involving a lost bear. They were for our marketing department.’

Thirty minutes later I picked up Lodloc where I’d dropped him earlier. The Bear was with him, eating pizza once more.

The following morning I posted a pack of art supplies to Keira.

The more I practised the better my drawings became. Two days later and I still didn’t think they were good enough. Lodloc disagreed and finally nodded his approval.

‘They’ll do,’ was all he said. ‘You’ve still got a long way to go, but there’s enough there to get started.’

I’d wanted to get to the story immediately after rescuing the Bear, but Lodloc had insisted I practice for a day or two first.

‘That’s not how it works,’ he said. ‘It’s not only the narrative that has to flow on from where you left off, but the style and art is important as well. Anyway, have you spent any time considering where the story goes from here? It’s not just something you can make up as you go.’

And so I’d resisted continuing the book and simply practiced drawing both my characters in a variety of situations and poses. I’d re-read the original story several times now, trying to remember where I’d planned to run with it and came up with ideas that may not have been what my teenage self had intended, but which my older self considered creative.

‘Lodloc, I’ve worked out what’s going to happen to you in the story!’ I was drawing at the table. He was watching TV as usual, while the Bear dozed on an armchair nearby. I never tired of seeing those paper and pencil Zs float towards the ceiling, and in fact had to work at not allowing them to distract me.

‘That’s great,’ he called, and turned his attention back to some daytime drama.

‘Come over and I’ll show you,’ I said, disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm.

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We mustn’t know. You have to draw it and we have to live it, don’t you see?’

I shook my head and sighed. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Mind you I’m still not completely convinced you’re actually here and I’m not just going mad.’

Lodloc laughed, the Bear continued his gentle snoring.

‘Just don’t go too easy on us. It has to challenge us otherwise it’s not a real story.’

I returned to my drawing, and tentatively started a new page of panels. After a thirty year hiatus, the story was underway once more.

I drew for hours, breaking only to get a drink or to rest my aching hand. It was almost 4 am by the time I stopped. I was so tired I was falling asleep where I sat at my dining table, my eyelids heavy and my jaw aching from continual yawning.

I felt satisfied with my work. The story was almost complete with just a couple of pages left to draw, including the big finale. Lodloc and the Bear had located the street gang, but had been captured by them. Tied up in a disused warehouse the gang used as their headquarters, they only manage to escape when a bird, which the Bear had made friends with in a previous comic, pecks the ropes to release them. The bird then accidentally starts a fire which threatens to engulf the entire building. As the gang members rush to escape the inferno, Lodloc is able to grab the stolen necklace on his way out. The police arrive and arrest the gangsters.

That was as far as I’d drawn. From here I planned for Lodloc and the Bear to sneak out past the police and make their way to the old woman’s home. They would return the necklace to her, and she would reveal she is a witch. The necklace has power and so, as a reward, she takes them through to a room where she opens the portal to Happyland for them.

I knew it wasn’t very sophisticated, and it was not what I would have chosen to write if I was commencing the comic anew. But Lodloc had expressed to me the importance of flow, the story needed to continue on stylistically from the old. Not only did it satisfy this, but it also allowed Lodloc and the Bear to face the challenges they required.

I was usually awoken by the Bear rummaging for breakfast in the kitchen, but when I woke the next morning the apartment was strangely quiet. I rolled over and glanced at the clock only to realise it was quite late. The Bear would already have found what he was looking for, and left quite a mess. Fortunately for me, it was a paper and pencil mess that dissipated as soon as it hit the floor. I wondered for a moment whether the Bear even went through the motions if I wasn’t there to perceive it, the old tree in the forest thing. But then I remembered Lodloc had told me of their past thirty years and that they had seemingly existed and lived without me as an observer.

I showered, shaved, and dressed before wandering through to the living room. The apartment was filled with the smell of fried bacon. Although I had none in the house that didn’t prevent them finding some in my refrigerator and having a cooked breakfast. My pencils and notebooks were sprawled across the table exactly as I’d left them. Lodloc obviously hadn’t touched them, although he had indicated he didn’t want to know what was going to happen to him. I was surprised the TV wasn’t on and that neither Lodloc nor the Bear could be seen. There was, however, a sheet of paper taped to the TV. I walked over, pulled it off and read it.

The message was written in pencil, a neat large handwriting. Lodloc’s, I presumed. Gone to continue our adventures. Thanks, was all it said. It suddenly occurred to me that finally I had some proof, an artefact that Lodloc and the Bear existed outside my own imagination. It wasn’t enough evidence to persuade anyone else, but it was enough for me to know this was all real. I smiled, and read it once more, only to have the paper fade and disappear between my fingers.

I sighed. I still couldn’t make sense of how this whole thing worked.

Lodloc and the Bear were off on their final adventure. I presumed they’d gone to the toilet block in Reynold’s park, there to commence the story from where the custodian had just released them. I had no idea how much time I had left to draw the last few pages. Since I imagined the second half of this comic book taking place over a few hours, I figured I’d better get on with it.

I made myself a pot of coffee and sat down to finish the drawings.

My stomach was grumbling by the time I reached the last page. They had completed their tasks and had arrived at the woman’s house. I had only to draw the witch waving goodbye as they stepped into the portal and I’d be done. I put the pencil down, stood up and stretched. First my back and shoulders, and then my hand and arms. They were aching, simply because I hadn’t done this much drawing or writing in many years. In the kitchen I grabbed a pasta meal from the freezer, and put it into the microwave. I made another coffee while I waited. The seconds counted down, and it was just about to ding when I heard the sound of sirens in the street below. Quite a few sirens, from what I could gather.

Curious, I stepped out onto my balcony to see what was happening. I looked down, expecting to see a firetruck or an ambulance and a couple of police cars. Instead I saw nothing. A few pedestrians were strolling casually, seemingly unaware of the cacophony that was all around them. I looked up then, scanning the city that sprawled around me. In the distance I could see a pillar of smoke on the skyline. Whatever was burning was big. I stared, trying to determine where it was, only to realise it was all pencil. It was the smoke from the fire at the warehouse I’d drawn the night before.

It suddenly struck me that if only I’d been quicker, I’d have seen paper police cars racing along the street below me.

I stood for a moment, gazing at the smoke. My smoke. My art.

My hand smacked against my forehead as I realised what I’d done. I ran inside, grabbed the comic I was working on, and tore the last two pages into tiny pieces.

I started drawing them again, my hands shaking with excitement and fear. Excitement that my story was coming true in the city outside, and that Lodloc and the Bear would soon return to Happyland.

Fear that I might never see either of them again.

Reynold’s Park sits out in the suburbs near where I grew up. It’s large, has lots of trees and large expanses of grass. It’s a pleasant place to be, even for adults, and I found myself smiling as I parked my car and ran through the gates. Over near the toilet block I found an empty bench and sat down to watch.

Couples strolled easily, mothers pushed prams, children played on the grass under the watchful eyes of their parents; their voices happy and filled with laughter.

I’d been there a few minutes when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

‘Hi,’ said Lodloc.

I turned and saw the Bear was with him. I sighed heavily. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I was worried I’d be too late.’

‘You changed the ending,’ said Lodloc. ‘We were almost at the old lady’s house when we felt the urge to come here, clear across town. We’ve been walking for ages.’

I nodded. ‘I couldn’t let you go without saying goodbye. I suddenly realised you’d be gone and I’d have missed it.’

Lodloc smiled as the Bear danced. ‘I’m glad you did.’ He then came and sat next to me. ‘I’m thrilled to be going back to Happyland, but I’ll miss here. And I’ll miss you.’ With that he reached over and hugged me. Which felt odd, hugging a six foot paper man. I hugged him back. I didn’t care whether anyone saw me sitting on a bench hugging empty air.

‘What happens now?’ I asked as we let each other go.

Lodloc shrugged. ‘I don’t know, he said. ‘That’s up to you. I haven’t seen the rest of the story, but I presume the old lady will arrive here and she’ll show us to the portal.’ He grinned. ‘I’m only guessing, of course. After all these adventures I have some idea of how your mind works.’

‘I’m not going to tell you what I’ve written. You’ll have to live it,’ I said. ‘Hey, where’s he going? I didn’t write this.’ The Bear had stopped dancing, and was running away.

‘It’s okay,’ said Lodloc. ‘Just watch.’

The Bear’s legs were a blur as he scampered across the grass. He slowed as he reached a young girl who was playing, her mother standing talking to another woman. The girl grinned when she saw the Bear. They fell to the grass, rolling and playing.

‘Keira?’ I guessed.

Lodloc nodded.

‘I never wrote that either. What’s she doing here?’

‘These things have a way of happening,’ he said. ‘You wrote the main story, but there are other things afoot.’

‘Like what?’

He shrugged, and shook his head. ‘Like this,’ he said, and handed me a book. ‘Read it, don’t talk to me and whatever you do, don’t look in Keira’s direction.’

‘I’m sorry? Why?’

‘Read the book,’ Lodloc commanded.

I opened the book, Lodloc and The Bear, and started to read. It was drawn in pencil, but that was okay. It just looked like a budget, black and white book. It was also a novelisation of my comic book. I was about to ask Lodloc where this came from, when a shadow crossed me. I looked up to see a police officer standing in front of me, the same officer who’d spoken to me outside Keira’s house.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘What brings you down here to the park where all the children are playing?’

I now understood why Lodloc had told me not to look in Keira’s direction.

‘Hello. Nice to see you again.’ I mustered as much irony as I could manage. ‘I happen to be on my way to visit my mother. I grew up around here and since it’s a nice afternoon, I decided to sit in the park and read.’

He stared at me. ‘I’ll be watching you,’ he said curtly, and strode away.

‘Have a pleasant afternoon,’ I called after him.

Lodloc laughed. ‘Be careful,’ he said.

‘Thanks for saving my skin. But what’s this book.’ I held it up, only to see it fade into nothing.

Lodloc smiled. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘The old lady’s just arrived.’ He pointed towards the toilet block, where I saw an old woman looking around. She was pencilled just as I’d drawn her. ‘Goodbye, and thanks,’ he said as he stood.

I stood with him. ‘Will I see either of you again?’

‘Not like this. Not here. But you have your comics. Any more is up to you now.’

I looked down to see the Bear had returned. Keira was leaving. Her mother was pulling her along, but she was waving to the Bear who was waving back.

‘What happens if I draw more cartoons? Do you come back?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not a child anymore.’

‘But you’re more real to me now than you ever were?’

He laughed. ‘It’s a different kind of real.’

‘I’m going to become an artist,’ I declared. ‘I’m going to draw Lodloc and the Bear comics seriously and publish them. I’ll start right from the beginning, tell your whole story and give you the greatest adventures ever.’

Lodloc clasped my shoulder. ‘That’s fantastic. I look forward to them. But can I make one small suggestion?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Take some art classes first, and don’t quit your day job just yet.’

We made our farewells, hugging each other tightly and saying goodbye. The Bear ran up and hugged my legs. I was crying harder than I had in thirty years, but I couldn’t help myself and laughed uncontrollably when he suddenly burped. The Bear whispered something in Lodloc’s ear, and he smiled and grinned in response.

‘What was that?’ I asked. ‘What did he say?’

‘Come back to the park tomorrow,’ he said. ‘The Bear says Keira and her mother will be here. He’s told Keira to come and speak to you. That should give her mother the chance to talk to you as well. You’d like her. She’s lovely.’

I blushed. ‘The Bear is matchmaking?’

‘It’s about time we did something for you.’

‘You already have. More than you could know.’

They wandered down the hill to meet with the old lady, turning once to wave. I watched as they returned her necklace. She was so happy I could see her beaming even from this distance. Then she walked them to one side, squatted on the grass and closed her eyes. Her mouth moved as she cast the spell I’d written earlier, and a swirling, grey portal opened behind her.

The next time I wrote this, which would be some time in the future once they finished their series of adventures, the portal would be bright green. This time I would learn to draw, and do it properly in ink and colour.

Lodloc and the Bear faced me, smiling, arms raised and waving. I brushed the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand and waved goodbye. Then they turned and stepped through the portal and were gone. A moment later the witch and the portal faded to nothing.

‘Mark?’

It was my mum.

‘Mum,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘It was such a lovely day and I had a sudden urge to come to the park. I haven’t been here in years,’ she said. ‘It really is a beautiful park.’

‘Isn’t it?’ I agreed.

‘What about you? What are you doing here?’

‘I was on my way to see you, and I decided to explore my past.’

She laughed. ‘Did you find anything?’

‘More than you could ever imagine, Mum.’

Author Loci

Steve Cameron

Several years ago, I woke one morning with the remnants of a dream still in my mind.

All I could remember from this dream was a pair of cartoon characters standing at the front door, and the title ‘Lodloc and the Bear’. These details went into my writing notebook, along with a couple of notes on where the dream may have continued if I had my way. And there it stayed until late last year when I had to write a story to submit to Dimension6.

The birth of this story was painless. I wrote it in twenty four hours, and it remains virtually unchanged from the first draft. As I wrote, I had no real idea of where it was heading. I wasn’t sure of an ending, or even a middle. This was, in writer’s terms, a pantser, as opposed to a fully planned story. All I knew was that I didn’t want this to be an imaginary-friend-is-actually-real kind of story, like the movie Drop Dead Fred. I wanted Lodloc to be real to the artist because he’d created him and imagined him so vividly.

I loved reading Tintin and Asterix stories as a teen. My school library had most of the comic books in these series, and I would sit and read them during lunch. I even fancied myself as a bit of an artist. I drew, although I could never actually transfer the exact image in my head onto paper, and I even had some success with painting abstracts. But then I entered senior school, where art was an elective and serious students who needed careers were advised to undertake maths and science classes. Painting is a great hobby, I was told, but it won’t get you a career. Which was probably right. But then science and maths never got me a career either.

From time to time I would return to art, dreaming of becoming a cartoonist. I picked up a couple of books on drawing, tried to create my own characters, and even mapped out and drew a series of comic strips.

Into my thirties, and I picked up a pen once more. This time I was inspired by Gary Larson’s The Far Side and drew my own series of single panel cartoons. I even submitted these to a cartooning competition that was held by a Japanese newspaper when I was living in Tokyo. I never heard back from them.

Then one day I realised I liked drawing, but I didn’t love it. I realised I wanted to be an artist but wasn’t bothered enough to take classes, to practice, to draw all the time because I felt I had no other choice. I realised I wasn’t really an artist, I was someone who doodled from time to time. It took me many more years before I realised I was actually a writer.

And so I suspect there is more than a part of me in this story, not that I see drawings coming to life around me. But I believe one’s imagination can be as powerful as anything in our so-called reality. And just like Peter Blegvad sang, ‘imagination, like a muscle, will increase with exercise.’

I’ve had a few ideas for a sequel to this story, which may or may not happen. I guess I’ll just wait and go wherever my imagination leads me.

Steve Cameron is a Scottish/Australian writer who currently resides in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. When not writing, he teaches English at a local secondary college. Steve maintains a website at www.stevecameron.com.au

Why Dimension6?

PD Ouspensy, the Russian esotericist, first formulated a way to think about the multiverse in six dimensions: three spatial dimensions and three space-time dimensions.

Picture a solid object, a cube with length, depth and height, tipping over the edge of a table.

Imagine that instant frozen in time — the fourth dimension.

Imagine that frozen instant occurring in an infinite number of parallel universes — the fifth dimension.

Now picture time unfreezing and the cube falling in all those universes with subtle and gross differences depending on the local conditions — the sixth dimension.

The six dimensions encapsulate the sum of all possible occurrences in the multiverse.

That’s where Dimension6 lives.

Dimension6 Magazine

Dimension6 Magazine is available free and DRM-free for download three times a year.

You can download Dimension6 by visiting the Dimension6 webpage.

We’d like to thank our affiliates for helping spread the Dimension6 word.

AntiSF

Canberra SF Guild

Cheryl Morgan

Sharon Johnstone

Tracie McBride

Mark Webb

Jonathan Strahan

Pulp Fiction Books

Bookonaut

Undead Backbrain

Robert Hood

Cat Sparks

Jack Dann

Satalyte Publishing

If you’d like to join our affiliate program, email me at keith@coeurdelion.com.au

You can also sign up for our MailChimp List to get instant notification of the next issue.

Copyright

First published in Australia in 2015 by coeur de lion publishing

www.coeurdelion.com.au

please direct all enquires to the publisher at keith@coeurdelion.com.au

ISBN ebook: 978-0-9871587-8-9

Compilation copyright © Keith Stevenson 2015

Copyright in each story and article remains with the individual authors © 2015

The right of the individual authors to be identified as the authors of their respective stories and articles has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

---------------------------------------------------------------

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry (ebook)

Title: Dimension6 : annual collection 2015 / Keith Stevenson,

editor ; Jason Fischer (and seven

others).

ISBN: 9780987158789 (ebook)

Notes: Authors: Jason Fischer, Bren MacDibble, Chris McMahon,

Steve Cameron, Jen White, SG Larner,

David McDonald, Jessica May Lin.

Subjects: Short stories.

Speculative fiction.

Other Creators/Contributors:

Stevenson, Keith, editor.

Fischer, Jason, author.

Dimension6 Magazine.

Dewey Number: A823.01