A Single Light E-Book

Patricia Leslie

• Herausgeber: Odyssey Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 367

Beschreibung

When Rick Hendry is contacted by a federal agent to help investigate a growing number of mysterious vanishings across Australia, he finds himself immersed in a world where normal is a very narrow view of reality. The two men are joined by a doctor, an archeologist, a journalist, and an Afflür Hunter.
They soon discover that in the bush, south of Sydney, among the beach goers, walkers and picnickers, a menace grows. The mysterious Bledray monsters are preparing for a Gathering; a feast of epic proportions. Only the Afflür Hunter and Guardians can stop them, but their strength is failing and humans are needed to help prevent a second holocaust.
A Single Light is an urban fantasy tale of ghoulish monsters and non-human protectors battling to save humanity amid the spectacular and rugged landscapes of the Royal National Park south of Sydney.

Leseprobe

Published by Odyssey Books in 2016

www.odysseybooks.com.au

Copyright © Patricia Leslie 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of theAustralian Copyright Act1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

ISBN:978-1-922200-46-4

A Single Light is dedicated to Craig, Cheyne, Kalin and Toni,

who travel alongside me on this journey;

exploring this world with adventurous spirits, stories and song.

I love you dearly.

From the Journal of Malaik

Blasted rock and charcoaled tree trunks covered the earth. Dazed people, nearly as grey as the desiccated forest that surrounded them, stood in scattered clumps, the only signs of life in any direction. Some swayed, pain hunching their backs with its weight, crevassing their faces into unrecognisable masks. Others remained motionless, too traumatised from the cataclysmic event to respond to the destruction that had ripped away their beautiful world and replaced it with … this.

I stood amid the ruin of our village. Despair curdled my stomach and my heart clenched with grief. Heat seared my eyes. I forced them to stay open, to witness the disaster this handful of people had survived. Half-bodies and parts lay scattered as if some ravenous monster had made a mess of his meal.

A stray breeze swept a thin layer of white dust into the air and I had to fight back the urge to vomit. A few short leagues away, pristine columns of energy shot from earth to a churning sky. Clouds seemed to sizzle as lightning flashed. At their base, ash-streaked dirt formed twisting clouds.

The breeze turned into wind and whipped the twisters higher, fanning it out into a great storm of sand and death.

I closed my eyes and waited for the storm to pass. The sting of sand flayed my body until I thought I could stand no more; that surely I had no more skin left to lose. A whimpering moan reached me and I knew I had no choice. It had been ripped from us all as surely as the life had been rent from our brothers and sisters. The whimpering was joined by another until the cries harmonised with the roar of the storm and gave it a horrible lucidity like no other storm before it.

Some voices faltered and faded; others sang on in misery and grew in strength. The wind dropped. Debris settled. The remains of the dead were blown away or covered and the land was clean again. Almost. I forced my head to turn with a grinding wrench of muscles and joints.

Dunes had started to form; their surface reflected the torture of the clouds overhead. An entire jungle had vanished in one day, a new desert formed. A river, deep and clear, had become a cracked and pitted gash in the earth.

Nothing would grow here for a long time; nothing would walk or hunt, play or dance in this arid expanse. I thought I might cry at the loss of what was and could have been, but tears evaporated as soon as they formed and I was left with nothing but the fist around my heart.

I breathed deeply and turned again, to face the columns. Many had died—Alffür, Ryrdri, animals and birds, plants—yet I stood on the banks of a once great river with the swell of hard fought victory prickling my soul, transforming my grief into the heavy realisation that the Alffür would go on, that nothing lasted forever, not even death.

Shuffling in the sand, the barest touch in my thoughts, I knew I no longer stood alone.

‘We cannot survive such a holocaust again.’ Uday, one of the artisans, stood beside me. I hoped that she was not the only one left. We would need all the Makers we had left to stand any chance of rebuilding. Tears tracked macabre lines across her cheeks.

‘No,’ I answered. ‘We cannot.’

Others grouped behind us, reaching out for physical and mental comfort.

‘Why must they destroy?’ someone asked.

‘It is their nature,’ I answered. ‘As it is ours to deny them.’

‘And what of hope?’

I stared straight ahead. One by one, the columns flickered and extinguished. The sky too settled, steel-blue roiling clouds softened to grey and started to break apart. A gentler, cooler breeze washed over them. I could feel the healing start. My mouth relaxed from tight grimace into the beginnings of a smile. Cracked lips stung anew and then they too healed.

‘Hope comes,’ I told them and pointed across the carcass of the river.

Figures walked toward the opposite bank, their numbers growing as each column died. A paltry number. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Paltry, but strong. I could sense that much.

‘A buffer between those who would destroy and those who would not.’ My voice was losing its raspiness of a few moments earlier.

‘Who are they?’ Uday asked.

‘Harbingers of future hope.’

The last of our people crowded closer, a mix of curiosity, fear, blind faith … and yes, hope.

The first figure to reach the far bank halted and looked around, the hint of a question in the set of her naked shoulders. She looked at me cautiously. I nodded and opened my hand to welcome her to my side.

The air around her appeared to shimmer, reflecting light as ripples in water. She vanished behind it.

I felt her surge toward me, sensed the exact moment a tiny spark of energy lit in the palm of my hand, and met her dark gaze as it reappeared in front of me. Our hands clasped together to signify a new, eternal bond.

‘Who are they?’ Whispers slid around the small group.

Others joined us.

‘They are the Hunters,’ I answered. ‘And they are here to protect us all.’

Alffür and Bledray are the

Children of Miaheyyu:

Twins born of the same Mother

divided like the fork in a tree.

Different yet from the same roots

dug deep into Earth.

One branch strives toward the knowledge and  understanding of Miaheyyu;

that all life is precious.

The other branch has forgotten their roots

and foregone salvation in the quest for

physical satisfaction.

— Journal of Malaik

1

Bellbird, a town partway between Sydney and Wollongong, separated from the cliffs and white sand beaches of the Australian coast by a ridge, a valley, and a thick belt of rainforest.

Jacarandas dropped petals and leaves with each swish of their long branches. Blue, green and rotting brown litter carpeted cracked footpaths and choked gutters. A week had strolled by since the last broom-wielding resident had attempted the task of clearing the seasonal debris. In 1988, Bellbird had reached the finals of the Bicentennial Tidy Town Challenge. A gleaming brass plaque hung behind the counter of the local post office-newsagent-general store commemorating the fact. Things had gone downhill from there.

Flo Winthorpe was the first to notice something was not quite right, sitting in the front parlour, windows open to catch any trace of breeze that might happen past. She dozed in her rocker with her walking stick resting on her lap and her floral-print dress unbuttoned to catch the humid air circulated by the fan beside her. Flo had drifted off to the creak of the fan as it rotated back and forth, not quite easing the heat but enough that she could pretend she was somewhere far cooler than another dripping summer in Bellbird. Dreams of younger days filled her head: splashing around at the beach, a winter honeymoon in Katoomba, a family trek down to the snow … aged lips smiled and she opened her eyes.

The curtains billowed around her, their edges gliding over her face, coming dangerously close to the old fan. She started up, panicked and not quite awake, to turn the switch on the fan.

Her hand didn’t make it anywhere near the little side table or the fan; trapped like a frail bird in the grip of a hungry cat’s mouth, it flexed, fingers clawing, then stilled to hang over the rocker’s armrest. The stench of urine and blood and flesh whirled around her body, vanishing in a greedy groan of hunger and satisfaction. The chair rocked forward and the walking stick slid to the floor, fell back and Flo’s head rolled to the side, her face pale and peaceful.

A shift in the light; shadows moving across the room, horrendous and distorted, and then settling into a more recognisable form as they reached the windows. The curtains dropped as the window closed. The back door opened with a creak and the shadows left. Only the fan kept moving, blowing warm air and a trail of dust around the room, back and forth, back and forth …

‘Sweets for my sweet?’ The man’s cheeks were as rosy as the woman’s. ‘I’ve saved the last for you.’

‘My darling, you are too good to me,’ the woman purred. ‘And such a pretty little thing.’ She stroked the hair of the teenager between them, who was trembling in the grip that held her prisoner.

A whimper of fear gurgled in the girl’s throat. ‘Please let me go. I won’t tell, I promise.’

‘Hear that, Moriah? She won’t tell.’

‘Oh, honey-child.’ Moriah’s hand cupped the girl’s face, long fingers caressing the tear-stained cheeks. ‘You’d do that for us?’

The girl nodded. ‘P … promise.’

Moriah smiled and the girl started to relax. Hope lit her eyes, the last of the day’s sunshine reflecting gold in their sparkling depths.

The woman leaned down close, ruby lips brushing the girl’s ear as she spoke. ‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘But we don’t care if you tell or not. Your promise holds no value.’

Wet sniffling sobs blubbered from the girl’s mouth. ‘Pleeeease.’

‘What does hold value, my love,’ Moriah continued, ‘is the fact that you actually mean it. So honest, so true. I like that. Close your eyes, love, and sleep. Think happy thoughts. Everything will turn out just fine.’

Moriah straightened and fixed a hard glare on her partner. ‘Hold her.’

He nodded, still grinning, and adjusted his grip under the girl’s arms. Her head bobbed down as sleep took her. Her body sagged in the man’s tight embrace. ‘Are you considering her plea?’

The look he received in reply was enough to make his smile widen in terrible pleasure. ‘I didn’t think so.’ He changed his stance and lowered himself to the ground, the dreaming girl on top of him. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

Red hair glowed in the fading light, Moriah’s face cast into shadows by its perfect frame. Jedidiah’s body responded to her beauty and the hunger that leaked from every pore of her being. He was hungry too, famished, but Moriah would feed and then share, and Jedidiah needed the Sharing more than the limp body in his arms. Every nerve tingled with longing as he watched Moriah descend to lay, full-bodied, the girl sandwiched between them. Her mouth, so passionate and fiery, opened wide until it gaped, hovering over the girl’s face, breathing in the scent of fear and happiness, revelling in the taste of what was to come. He felt her desire as if it were his own and strained to watch both their faces.

The girl twitched and an innocent smile turned her lips up, a soft sigh of satisfaction escaping to invade Moriah’s senses, taunting the ever-present hunger that had led the couple to this isolated town. Moriah caressed the soft lips, teasing them open, then dropped to cover slack lips and nose with yawing mouth and pull in the human essence she needed to survive.

The girl bucked, her dreams suddenly not so pleasant, as her soul fought the attack. But there was no recompense, no way to stop the consummation. Moriah ran a hand over the girl’s brow and the struggle was over; pale wisps of mist curled from mouth and nose as she was released, face peaceful in the end when most were not. Perfect in death.

Jedidiah moaned, hunger filling him as the last traces of the girl’s soul left her body. He let go his grip and reached for Moriah.

‘Time to Share,’ he said, voice husky. The dried-out form of the girl between them began to crumble, powder into fine white dust, no essence remained to sustain her shape.

The couple writhed in ecstasy. Moriah opened her mouth for Jedidiah to plunder, wrapping her dusty legs around him, mounting him, back arched, hands clinging. Their bodies entwined, shimmered, lost their human shape, vanishing into shadow as they reached the pinnacle of their Sharing. They rode their union into the dark of night, lust fuelled by the souls of Bellbird, all gone now, all theirs. Then they parted, took human shape once more and stood to dust themselves off.

‘And now to finish the Alffürian Guardian?’

Taking an Alffürian by surprise was not easy, yet they had done it. He and Moriah, together, seeping into the landscape, had contained their hunger though starvation riddled their every thought, and laid the trap that enabled free reign over the human population in this one small town.

‘Yes, my love, and now the Guardian. But we must hurry. I feel the ghost of another. She will be here soon.’

‘We are strong …’

Moriah put her fingers to Jedidiah ‘s lips. ‘This one is stronger. She is not yet near, but I can feel her presence.’

Jedidiah acquiesced, as he always did and opened his mouth to suck on the tips of the fingers that sought to still his words. He couldn’t bear to lose Moriah.

The couple walked through the dead town, arms embraced. Past the blank storefronts with their useless notices and into an alley as dark as the night itself. Only a single light left on to guide their way.

Hunters travel through the worlds of shadow and light.

They know intimately the grey spaces that lay between.

They perceive the Way and

the Path through

sight, sound, touch,

and the shared wisdom

of the Alffür.

— Journal of Malaik

2

‘Whole town packs up and hides come sunset, lass. You won’t find anything open this time of night. That’s for sure.’

‘I’m expected.’

The truck driver scratched his balding head and sniffed. ‘Yeah. So you said. Still, ain’t the friendliest of places to be visiting, especially at night. Reckon you’re better off going on through to the Gong and backtracking in the morning.’

‘Thanks for the lift.’ The passenger door creaked as it opened. Cabin temperature went from a cool twenty-two to an uncomfortable thirty-five degrees and rising before the hitchhiker could get one foot out the door. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Yeah, right. Famous last words.’ The driver shrugged. ‘Your funeral. Hurry up and shut the bloody door. Hot as the devil’s fucking boudoir out there. Good luck. You’ll be needing it.’

The hitchhiker hooked her hand through the strap of her army surplus duffel bag and jumped to the ground. She closed the cab door without another word and waved as the air horn sounded and the truck took off in a cloud of dust and spitting gravel. Headlights washed over dark houses and deserted footpaths. Jacarandas loomed briefly, their blue flowers greyed by the night; feathery leaves, ghosts of their daytime fragility.

Branches twisted and bent as the truck passed, litter twirling in mad eddies in the wake of rushing air. The rumble of the diesel engine echoed around the town, softening with the hiss of airbrakes as it paused at the T-intersection that ended the main drag, indicated a left turn and revved back into urgent life. It left behind a quiet town, baking in the hot summer night.

Midnight in Bellbird and not a creature stirred. Except the hitchhiker. She pulled the strap over her shoulder and looked to the right. A side street, narrow and cobbled, gaped between two storefronts; tattered posters from sales long sold out and community meetings long adjourned hung from the walls; forgotten litter nestled along the narrow gutters. Further down, a pinpoint in the pitch that was night in Bellbird, a light shone.

Scuffed boots made barely a sound as they crossed the black strip of bitumen road, silenced by the truck’s echo and the oppressive heat. The hitchhiker walked across the road and down the centre of the lane. Shadows pulled at her jeans and stroked the dull cotton of her T-shirt. Hidden dust streaked her bare arms and billowed around her with each step. Ramshackle fences, a mess of rusted wire, chipped paint and petrified gates lined the worn cobbles. Homes were blinded and blank. She ignored them and walked on toward the wedge of light, stopping at the line it formed between the known and unknown. She took a deep breath and let it out slow, easing herself into the waiting radiance. At once her whole form relaxed, hair—neat and pulled back in the cab of the truck—escaped its bonds to caress her shoulders, bright eyes became tired and lined, tight lips softened into a tanned face well-used to travelling at the whim of a hooked thumb and a driver’s caprice.

The figure drooped, slumped in her boots, but smiling.

A single light was on.

And Lael was expected.

One foot into the alley and Lael knew she was too late. She widened her senses and found no trace of human life. Nothing. She held back from probing ahead, not wanting to know too soon that she was too late also for the friend who expected her. Stones crunched underfoot, each step she made a lonely echo of the one before, until she reached the open front gate and stopped. Accusing light spilled from the window, backlit the open door, creased the night shadows in the empty hall. Lael forced herself forward, kept her Knowing to herself and confronted the guilt and blame leeching from every house brick.

‘Malaik?’ The call went unannounced, kept inside her head by the jangling warnings that assailed her. She took a step through the doorway and the warnings faded. Whoever had been here was gone now. Danger had gone with them. Only horror and grief remained. She kept moving, boots quiet on the thick runner lining the hall, and turned into the only lit room.

Malaik was dead. Caught like a strangled rat in a trap, barbed-wire wrapped around his body, circling his head, digging into his throat, twisted around his wrists and waist, between his legs—tight against his groin—and down his legs. Lael sniffed the air, blood and pain and the faint scent of morning glory flowers, and … Lael sniffed again, belladonna. A lethal combination.

Lael stepped closer. Blood, black and thick, oozed from the cuts on Malaik’s head. Still fresh. Lael clenched her fist. She’d been so close. Not more than an hour from finding her friend alive instead of dead. ‘Your timing stinks, Lael.’

Malaik’s face was dusted with the herbal concoction that would have made him vulnerable to attack, easy prey for the Bledray Ghouls that haunted the earth and eased their hunger on the essence of humanity. With the Guardian so weakened, the town had no chance—a veritable feast just waiting to be eaten.

Lael turned away from her friend’s tortured face and wondered how the Ghouls could get so close as to kill a Guardian in his own home. It was unheard of. Out in the open, yes, definitely possible depending on the strength and hunger of the Ghoul. But not here, the very centre of his strength.

The light came from a desk lamp, its halogen globe sending streaks of whiteness across the room. Papers, disturbed and spread across desk, chair and floor, waited like tombstones for someone to read them. Lael moved the few steps to the desk, her boot treading on something hard that cracked under her weight. She shifted her foot and bent down.

Malaik’s pen. Lael picked it up and gathered the papers, keen now to see what he had been writing when he was attacked. In some sort of reasonable order, some of the pages were numbered. Lael sat down and read. One page was a letter to someone in town, personal, not relevant. Another was the start of a journal.

Lael and the others, siblings born of fire and light, are our saviours. The First Huntersan extension of the Alffür born to fight our foe so that we can protect the fledgling race of Ryrdri …

He had sensed trouble was coming. Nothing tangible, an inkling, enough to be worried and that was all. The last page was addressed to Lael, though only the letter L at the top indicated to whom it was intended. Short and to the point, opposite to the florid turn of phrase he used in his journal. Lael read and re-read the words and frowned.

‘Oh Malaik,’ she said. She screwed the page into a ball and held it to her chest. Her friend’s final words etched into memory.

The Bledray are gathering.

The Alffür and Bledray were decimated by the last full gathering.

The Rydri came close to extinction.

In the devastation of old civilisations, new arise.

The culture of Alffür

cannot be rebuilt,

but it can live on

in hidden ways within the culture of the Rydri.

We cannot,

we will not,

let them fall to our enemy.

— Journal of Malaik

3

Rick Hendry stared at himself in the mirror. He had a serious case of bedhead and frothy toothpaste dripping down his chin. Add the sleep-stained bloodshot eyes and the sallow skin and Rick reckoned he’d fit right in with the extras on Fright Night. He leaned over, spat into the sink and washed his hands and face. He grabbed the comb he kept next to the sink and by the time he was standing straight again he had managed to partially tame his matted hair. His eyes remained the same.

‘I need sleep,’ he told his reflection. ‘Lots of it.’ He threw the comb back down and walked out of the small bathroom. The corridor was still dark. Outside, daylight had been waiting for action a good two hours. Insomnia followed by hours of restless half-sleep and finally deep sleep, only minutes before his alarm clock rang, made him late. Bare feet padded on the polished wood floor, ankles cracked; in the kitchen the sound of the electric kettle boiling reached a crescendo then clicked into silence.

Rick walked in and, without bothering with any more light than the window provided, made coffee. A heaped spoonful of instant, a generous slurp of milk, mix together, pour in water, have a mouthful, go to the living room, get dressed—underwear, pants, socks, shoes and shirt—coffee, out the front door, tour of front yard—pick up the paper if it’s there—finish coffee, back inside, dump the mug and paper on the table, and then back to the bathroom.

He was so bored with the whole routine he called his life, the stupid predictability, the numbness of his current existence. But he couldn’t change, even though his doctor said he should. Couldn’t even break the old habit of dressing in the living room so he didn’t disturb anyone else. Anyone else had long since departed. He could dress and undress anywhere he damn well pleased, but every night it was the same. The next day’s clothes laid out on the lounge, a ball of socks tucked into shoes, kettle left full and waiting to be switched on, clean mug sitting beside it. Predictable. Numb.

A car horn sounded and Rick hustled back out into the living room, grabbed his briefcase and coat, and rushed out the front door.

There was a time when he’d have had lunch made for him, fresh sandwiches or leftover lamb roast and some cake. But that was gone. Lunch would be whatever the nearest café was offering on special.

The door slammed as the horn blared again and Rick frowned at the driver. A headache was already starting in the crease between his eyes and for a moment he contemplated staying home, lounging in front of the television, going back to bed. The moment passed before he reached the car. The door opened and Gabriela Salek, sitting straight-backed in her seat, grinned at him. Her long hair was pulled back in its usual spiky bun and her smile gleamed with her everyday enthusiasm. Rick threw his briefcase and coat into the back of the beat-up sedan, and folded himself into the passenger seat already sweating in the heat of the morning.

‘Morning, Rick. There’s coffee and a muffin there for you. Don’t knock it over.’ Gabriela nodded at the cardboard tray perched on the console between the bucket seats.

Rick grunted and pulled the door shut. ‘Hot enough to roast a dinner for fifty in here. Mind if I open a window?’

‘Still not sleeping, huh?’

‘Told you why,’ Rick replied. He reached for the foam cup. The coffee smelled bitter and strong. Probably no milk … Rick peeled off the plastic lid and sighed. No milk. ‘You got something against cows, Salek?’

Gabriela laughed, put the car into gear and pulled out into the dead street. Rick’s house was one of few that shared the last road between the town and the bush, a narrow, gravelly track that had once been tamed with bitumen, now slowly succumbing to neglect. Each bump, each pothole was a reminder to Rick that it was probably time to let go and move on. Just like his neighbours and their falling down houses, the creviced footpaths, the dammed gutters. Nearly the whole street had packed up and moved on. Yet Rick stayed, alone with his memories and habits, and the other diehards of Everlene Street.

The car dropped into the biggest pothole in the road with a bang and screech of rubber and metal. Coffee sloshed over Rick’s fingers and he swore. His headache started to pound. Soon as his own car was back on the road, he was driving himself and not picking anyone up. Gabriela leaned forward to adjust the radio volume from plain loud to blaring. And no fucking radio either!

Rick took the muffin out of its greasy paper bag and bit into it. Sugar stuck to his lips, hot and sweet. He licked his lips and washed the sticky flakes caught in his teeth down with coffee. ‘That was good,’ he said, looking around the car for the rest. Gabriela never bought just one. ‘Any more?’

Gabriela reached behind the passenger seat and pulled out a family-size bag of baked goods. Their aroma filled the car. ‘You know, breakfast’s the most important meal of the day. Save some for me.’

Rick grunted in acquiescence as he shoved another muffin in his mouth and slurped the coffee. Another day, another artery-hardening breakfast. Rick could hardly wait to get to work.

Rick hung up on his wife with pleasure. He didn’t know why she persisted on ringing him at the office, but once a month, regular as his morning routine, she rang to say hallo, remind him of his shortcomings, tell him she missed him and would he please ring her parents. They still liked him even though she did not and she was getting tired of answering their questions as to his wellbeing. Just as regular, he promised he would. Both knew he wouldn’t, though really he should get it over with and then maybe she’d stop ringing. After all, who divorced whom here?

He pushed away from his desk with the horrible premonition she was going to ring back, and went to the kitchen for coffee. Bad coffee, but enough caffeine to get him over this hate thing he had going with his computer, and more than enough bitterness to take his mind off his ex-wife.

Rick perched his mug on the corner of his desk, sat down and stared at the computer. A print message beeped its failure at him.

Rick picked up his desk phone on the first ring, ex-wife forgotten and still swearing at the computer screen in front of him that now insisted his latest story was corrupted, could not be recovered, and the machine would need to reboot. What the fuck?

‘What?’

‘Is this Richard Hendry?’

‘Who’s this?’

‘No names, please, Mr Hendry.’

‘Yes, fuck you …’ Hendry moved his mouse and clicked ‘Yes’. The screen wavered as if in thought and went blue.

‘I assure you this is a serious matter, sir. My career would be in considerable danger if it was known I was even making this call.’

‘I was talking to my computer, not you. So why are you?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Making this call. Why are you making this call?’ Rick hit the side of the monitor. The screen was still blue. He really didn’t have time for this. No time at all.

‘It’s in relation to a missing person …’

‘I don’t do missing persons. Ring the police.’ Rick was about to hang up. The computer blinked at him, considering whether to reboot or crash altogether. He’d have to call IT and get them to go through the back-up tapes for him. It would take hours. His deadline was 3pm. He glanced at his watch. Shit! 2:45. No time. There was a frustrated sigh on the other end of the phone line and Rick paused. He didn’t have to be a complete shit every minute of the day, did he?

‘Look,’ he said, tucking the receiver back under his chin. ‘I can give you the phone number. But I really can’t help you more than that. I’m a reporter, not …’

‘I know that, Mr Hendry.’ The sigh again and then silence.

‘You still there?’ Rick looked at his watch. 2:46. Fuck!

‘Yes, Mr Hendry. I’m still here. I can’t call the police … I am the police. And there’s not just one missing person, there’s at least eight.’

Rick froze mid-action, his hand a centimetre from slapping the monitor one more time. He diverted it to his top drawer and his mobile phone. ‘Give me a number. I’ll call you back.’ Rick pressed the numbers on his mobile as they were spoken. ‘Give me ten.’ He hung up, pushed his chair back and left the office. On his desk, the computer screen came back to life, the document file had automatically recovered after all and awaited his attention. Click on ‘Yes’ to recover or ‘Cancel’ to open a new file. It stayed that way well past 3pm.

‘So, what’s going on?’ Gabriela popped open a bottle of beer and walked from the drab kitchen into the drab living room. ‘Rick? First you miss the deadline and then you disappear without telling anyone where you’re going. Harry nearly had a fit. I swear I’ve never seen so many shades of purple on one man’s face.’ She sank into the typist’s chair by Rick’s vintage computer, sipped her beer and started going through the papers and old floppy disks that littered the table.

‘This is a hunka junk, Hendry,’ she called, picking up a 5-inch floppy and waving it in the air. ‘These old things aren’t good for anything but coasters. Rick?’

Gabriela lifted the beer bottle to her lips and spun around in the chair. What was the silly bastard up to? Far as Gabriela knew, Rick never used his wife’s old computer, hated all computers with a passion. But here it was, all set up, connected to the Internet and printer spitting out pages faster than was healthy for a dot matrix machine that should have been retired at least ten years ago. She stopped spinning to lean over the printer and lift the paper. ‘What the hell?’

‘Gabriela?’

Beer sloshed from the bottle as Gabriela jumped in surprise.

‘I didn’t hear you come in. Help yourself to a beer …’

Gabriela gave the bottle a little shake and laughed. ‘Yeah, already did. I … ah, knocked. What are you up to? I wouldn’t have thought this computer would hook up to a modem.’

Rick shrugged. ‘It does, though barely. I’ve got a lead on a new story. Nothing much.’

‘Enough to blow off your deadline on the Fitzgerald story? Harry fired your arse … again. So are you going to let me in on this …’ Gabriela turned back to the ream of paper folding in on itself behind the printer and scanned the top page, ‘… fairy story?’

‘No.’

She flicked an incredulous expression at Rick and sat down on the chair to inspect the browser windows Rick had left open. ‘Legends from the Crypt? The Undead in Georgia? X-files and the Real Truth? What are you into? Share with your partner.’

‘Not ready to share yet, Gabi. I’ll let you know when I am.’ Rick stepped forward and closed the windows down. ‘Staying for dinner? I usually get Chinese on Thursdays.’

Gabriela leaned back in the seat, swinging from side to side, eyes narrowed. Her lips thinned for a moment as she contemplated Rick’s most recent abnormal behaviour. ‘You’re the original sceptic, Rick. What is it about ghosts and ghouls that’s got you all worked up?’

‘And you’re the original sticky beak.’

‘What can I say? I’m a reporter too. Comes with the job.’

‘Dinner, or do you have to get home?’

‘How could I resist?’ Gabriela sighed and gave in. Rick could be tight as a clam when he wanted to be and pumping him for information wasn’t the only reason she had decided to visit. Her old friend and mentor looked like shit. His job at the paper was on thinner ice than usual and, as far as Gabriela could tell, he had no life. The time had come to offer Rick Hendry a little guidance, even if she had to force-feed it to him.

Rick walked across to the telephone, flicked through the various letters, bills and other bits of paper tucked between it and the wall, and pulled out the home delivery menu for his favourite Chinese restaurant. ‘Laksa sound good to you? And some beef chow mein?’

‘Throw in some fried rice and I’m yours for life.’

‘Bestill my beating heart,’ Rick replied, picking up the receiver, and dialled the restaurant number. He placed the order, nodding and giving monosyllabic answers as it was read back to him. ‘How long? Right, thanks.’ And hung up.

‘Forty minutes,’ he told Gabriela. ‘Another beer?’

‘You bet. I’ll get them.’ Gabriela finished off what was left in her bottle as she walked into the kitchen to restock. She could hear Rick in the next room as he sat down on the wheelie chair and started typing. The printer had stopped while Rick had been placing the take-out order. Ghosts and ghouls! Gabriela shook her head. ‘Who would have thought it?’ She took two more beers from the refrigerator and turned to deposit her empty in the sink.

The bottle of sleeping pills sat in the same place they’d been last time she’d dropped in. Gabriela put down the beers and picked up the small jar to read the prescription. She remembered when Rick had finally gone to the doctor a month ago after putting up with stomach cramps and heartburn for most of the past year. Stress, the doctor had diagnosed. No big surprise there. Rick and stress had been bed partners for years. More than she could say for Rick and that wife of his. For a while there, the two had deserved each other. Rick’s only saving grace in the union was that he didn’t find solace in someone else’s bed, whereas ex-wife, Meg, had done the rounds as fast as she could. Gabriela shuddered. What a bitch! She rattled the jar and read the label. The doctor had prescribed pills and several relaxation techniques, all of which Rick ignored. Typical …

‘Take two with food.’ She ran her thumb around the sealed cap. ‘Better not risk it.’ The computer pinged, chair wheels scraped on the wooden floor. Gabriela put the pills back in their spot as the kitchen door swung open.

‘You get lost?’ Rick asked, walking in to open cupboard doors and pull out plates, drawers for knives and forks. ‘Man could die of thirst waiting for those beers.’

Gabriela chuffed with laughter and removed the caps from both bottles. ‘Just admiring the stunning view from the window.’ She pointed a bottle toward the backyard. Leaves, dead twigs and lumps of rotting mulch covered the patchy lawn. A branch had fallen from one of the trees onto the tin roof of the garden shed in the back corner. The panel had dented, collected rain at some point, and now sported a thick coating of dried out lichen. Strings of the dead plant hung from the roof like a trail of tears. ‘What do you call that? Rustic dereliction?’

Rick moved to stand beside Gabriela at the sink. ‘More like the “winter of my discontent”. You like it?’

‘Yeah, it’s got a kind of abandoned appeal. Bet it will look great underneath a few more layers of fungus.’

‘Looks even better from the living room with the blinds drawn. You going to give me one of those?’ Rick nudged a bottle.

‘Sure. Sorry.’ Gabriela turned away from the window. ‘Did I tell you Annie’s got a new job?’

‘Didn’t know she’d left the old one.’

‘Well she has now. Onward and upward, you know. Managing some big fancy event in Canberra.’

Gabriela regaled Rick with the details while they waited for dinner, and then in between mouthfuls of the best Chinese food this side of Sydney. He started nodding off after the third beer and fell asleep after the fourth, head; fighting all the way to dreamland. She pulled off his shoes and covered him over with a blanket. The big talk would have to wait. Rick needed sleep more than lectures.

‘Sweet dreams, Rick,’ she said, turning off the lights. ‘You need them.’

I do recall our villages;

homes of wood and thatch that burned as easily as

everything else.

We had artisans who created all that we needed,

but no books and no technology.

Our history was in

our song and our crafts.

— Journal of Malaik

4

Orange blobs of light spluttered in a dotted circle, tendrils of smoke lifted from the forest floor to mix together in a blueish haze of eucalyptus-scented dawn mist. Embers burst upward in mini explosions of heat and light dancing with the night before dropping down to extinguish on the dusty ground. Occasionally one landed on a stray piece of summer-dried grass and sizzle into life. Tiny spot fires were stomped out, their remains ground into the cleared earth even as a low voice beckoned the flames skyward in spirit if not in all their deadly glory.

Lael had released Malaik’s body from its crude prison and dragged it through the house, out the back door, and deep into the forest that encroached on the unfenced backyard.

She’d climbed as high as she could in the hilly bushland, bent over nearly double to balance the weight of her friend with the slope of the hill, until the rainforest thinned and the cloudless sky was visible through the canopy of half-stripped eucalypts, tree ferns and giant flame lilies. Lael thought it a strange mix, like a twisted memory of what rainforests were meant to be like. At the top of the hill was a broad stand of Christmas bush, their bright red flowers black without the sun to light their flames. She found Malaik’s circle here, in the middle, marked out with bushrock in the centre one flat, fire-darkened rock. She dropped to one knee and carefully laid out the body beside it, shifting it a little so Malaik took up the centre place then lifting it to rest on his chest.

Lael paused to catch her breath. Her friend was not heavy, even in death, but the walk had been long and grief-ridden. Long life did not make death any easier. A well of black despair stirred deep inside her and she choked back a broken sob. Long life made death harder, grief more painful. Lael pulled away from the body and walked back into the trees. She needed to fashion a broom to clear the ground of the highly flammable debris that covered it and collect leaves to light Malaik’s way from this existence to the next. Lael was sweating hard by the time the circle had been prepared and dawn wasn’t too far off. She had to hurry before the sun arrived and the secret pathways vanished with the night.

Squatting to light each bunch of leaves with a match, Lael started a verse that hadn’t passed her lips in many years; an Alffür chant to the dead. ‘Fire of the heart, water of life, air of the senses, earth of the bone …’

With the last pile lit, she gathered the bushrocks and used them to build a cairn around the fire rock on Malaik’s chest.

‘You have been called from the place of your dwelling …’

A final handful of leaves were left on the firerock, a last match lit.

‘May blessed soul-friends guide you …’

The match flared to life, dropped from Lael’s hand and set the cairn afire.

‘May the Gatherer of Souls call you …’

Lael sat down, face smeared with dirt and tears, hair ragged, shirt stained with sweat, and she crossed her legs at Malaik’s head. His white face, eyes open to see the Way, was blotched with black flakes of blood and torn in places where the barbed-wire had scored deep gouges in the dead flesh. The iron of the wire had finished off what the poison had started and prevented any hope of rebirth.

Malaik was lost to her forever and the pain that loss caused scalded every muscle and fibre, every molecule of Lael’s being. She closed her eyes as the heat from the cairn reached her. Flames burst into the sky, burning brighter as they fed on first leaves, then rock. Lael spread her hands out, palms down. White light radiated downward, cleaned the blood and gore from Malaik’s face, and spread along neck to shoulders, down arms, over chest and on to feet. His whole body glowed.

‘May the homeward path rise under your feet …’

Lael leaned forward to press her lips on Malaik’s forehead in final farewell.

‘And lead you gladly home.’

Lael raised her hands skyward and released the power she held into the night. The fire snapped and stretched, a sliver of moonlight reaching to the heavens and beyond. Thunder boomed, a shower of leaves rained over the circle as rushing wind roared its way through the forest and up the hill, catching the light and the fire, twisting and twirling until both were gone, carried on their way to eternity in the Land of the Living. The last tail of wind swished around the clearing, cold and sharp, swept away the leaves and doused the last struggling flame.