by Alan Baxter
Clara had told Michelle all about her “goth” phase, before there was anything actually known as goth. Some teens turned to the dark regardless of the times. It never really left her, she always favoured the darkness, still liked heavy music. Did like heavy music. She always complained the scene was too late for her, there was never anything heavy enough when she really needed it as a kid. Grief flooded up again and Michelle swallowed it down with more squash. “Being a goth doesn’t make her a witch, though.”
Jenkins nodded, expression sad. “’Course not. But it didn’t help what people thought of her. And she did . . . other stuff, to spite people.”
“What about her parents?”
“Her dad was friends with me and Stan. We were mates from way back. But her mum was never right in the head. She died about the time Clara started her, what did you call it? Goth thing?”
“That’s right.”
“Yeah. Well, her dad was the local vet, always busy. Her mum got sick and some people say she died of sadness, but no one can say why. She wasted away and it wasn’t talked about much, but John, Clara’s dad, told me it was a horrible cancer. Ate her up in no time.”
Michelle nodded. “Clara told me her mum died young from cancer.”
“There you go. But it was more than that.” Jenkins pursed his lips, thoughtful for a moment. “Cancer might have finished her, but there was more wrong with that poor lass. How’s old John?”
“Clara’s dad? He died about eight years ago. Cancer ate him up too.” She remembered Clara’s sadness, the way they got through it together. A flash of memory came back with startling promptness as she recalled the man’s last days. Clara crying softly, holding his hand. Her dad telling her to be strong, he’d had a good innings. And then he’d said, Let it go, Clarabelle, you hear me? You let that thing go, it can’t follow you all the way out here.
Michelle had asked what he meant by that and Clara had laughed it off, said she had no idea, the ramblings of a dying man. But that had been a lie.
“He left town a long time ago,” Jenkins said wistfully.
Michelle felt sorry for the old man. Maybe Clara’s dad had been his last friend. “He moved into a flat near us when Paul was born,” she said. “Retired early.”
Jenkins nodded. “We talked on the phone for a while after he left, but eventually got out of the habit. You know how it is.”
“Sure.” She didn’t, but could imagine.
“Did all the townsfolk here think he was mad too?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“’Course they did.”
They sat in silence. There was history here, dark history Clara had never shared. Part of Michelle resented that; she thought they had shared everything. And another part of her ached for her lost love and the story she couldn’t tell, not even with her partner of so many years. Did it hurt that much? Or was there more to it? Was Clara trying to protect her family? The confusing note that made no sense now seemed to be saying so much.
“You said she did other stuff,” Michelle said. “What stuff?”
“Well, there lies the heart of it. At about seventeen she woke something up.” Jenkins raised an eyebrow at Michelle’s scornful expression. “You think I’m mad too?”
“No, sorry.”
“She killed herself for a reason.”
Michelle swallowed, nerves trickling through her again. “Please, tell me.”
“Clara started reading all kinds of occult stuff, according to John. He didn’t like it, but the more he tried to stop her, the more she hid it and did it anyway. He was smart enough to stop pushing. She used to go off to these quiet places of her own and do strange rituals. Her dad followed her one time and saw her raise up something, from a chasm in the ground.”
“Raise up?”
Jenkins stared into his glass. “Some monster. She tried to set it against the townsfolk, told it to get them, fuelled it with all her hate, which was their hate really, reflected right back at them.”
“And it . . . ” Michelle had trouble believing a word, but the man’s face was deadly serious. “It did what she asked?”
“Yep. People started getting sick and dying. Those most mean to her. Her dad couldn’t stand it, asked me and my brother to go with him one day, see for ourselves. Prove he wasn’t crazy, you know?”
“And you did?”
“Yeah. And John had these charges with him. Explosives, like they use for quarrying. We went to the place and hid, watched Clara cut herself, drip her blood and say these things and this . . . this fucking creature emerged and shot off across the paddocks. Clara sat like she was meditating for an hour or more, until it came back. When it did, it kind of wrapped around her, lifted her and, I don’t know, molested her. She was in some kind of ecstasy. Then it went back into the ground.
“John looked at us and me and Stan nodded, yes we’d seen it all. We was scared fit to shit our pants, I won’t lie. It was one thing seeing it burst free and rush off, but to see it there, with Clara. It’s still burned in my mind, that unholy thing.”
Michelle tried to picture the scene, but her mind wouldn’t fill in the blanks. A seventeen-year-old Clara, doing these things. The existence of a monster like Jenkins described . . . But he hadn’t described it. “What was it like, the creature?” she asked.
Jenkins shuddered, a ripple of timeworn terror through his body. “Hard to explain. Like it was there and not there. Like it was black and purple and green and none of those colours, but all those colours at the same time. It was icy cold and oily, kind of sinewy and huge. And it was evil, it stank of absolute harm.” He sank into silence, staring back into the past with wide, terrified eyes.
Michelle found it hard to believe, but was in no doubt this old man meant every word he said. “What happened?”
“John burst out of the trees, Clara was shocked, started shouting and screaming. John was furious, threw her aside and told her to go home right away. She ran off, sobbing, and he handed me and Stan those charges and said we had to seal the place up with that thing inside. The three of us went about five yards into the chasm as it sloped down into the ground. We started putting the charges in, running the fuses back. It was cold in there, unnatural cold. We were nearly ready when we realised Clara was still there, she’d only run a little way. She started screaming and hollering again, telling her dad not to mess with it.
“Stan was still back in the hole, John was yelling with Clara, I was standing by the detonator. Stan was tying the last of the charges. And that thing came back up. Stan’s scream, my god, it’s something I’ll never forget. We heard a kind of hiss, felt a wave of icy air flood out and we spun around just as Stan screamed and was pulled back into the shadows. I started forward, honestly, I don’t know what I was going to do. Then, for just a second, Stan reappeared in the light. His skin was tight to his bones, like he’d lost all his weight in an instant. His eyes were yellow, so wide and staring, his mouth was open. Then blood shot up from his mouth like he was puking the stuff and he was yanked back out of sight again.”
Michelle put down her glass before her shaking caused her to drop it. “My god . . . ”
Jenkins nodded, tears on his eyelids. “And John, he pushed past me and slammed that detonator down. By Christ, the noise of that explosion. It threw us all back, showered us in rock and earth. When our ears stopped ringing and the dust settled, that whole chasm had fallen in as though it was never there. Closed up tight, just a pile of rocks.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Tears gently followed the deep creases of the man’s face and Michelle realised she was crying with him. Eventually she asked, “What did you tell people?”
“John asked Clara if that was the end of it and she promised it was. The thing could only get in and out that way, she said, but it would eventually escape. Old John, he said no one or no thing would be able to move all that rock and she just shrugged. So we agreed to tell people Clara was up to no good in caves, we went to get her out and the caves collapsed, to
ok Stan down. It was sort of the truth.
“Everyone knew there was more to the story, but most chose not to ask. Clara moved away soon after that, only a few months until she finished high school and went off to uni. As the years passed we tried to talk about it now and then, John and I, but people were happier telling us we were mad. And it all seemed like it was over. I’d hoped to die before I ever needed to think about it again, but I guess I didn’t quite make it.”
Michelle thought about Clara’s last words. “She could feel it coming,” she whispered. “That’s what her suicide note said.”
Jenkins nodded. “Right after we blew up that place, she kept telling her dad it wouldn’t stop. She would stop, she said, but it wouldn’t. He said it was dealt with. I guess as the months passed she started to believe him. She had enough else to deal with anyway, everyone blaming her for Stan’s death even if they didn’t know the half of it. Then she moved away.”
Michelle swallowed the new grief that came with the knowledge. The burden Clara had carried through all those years. The guilt and the shame that must have gone along with it. She was only a child, really, how had she even managed to wake something so terrible? How could anyone? Stuff like that shouldn’t be real. And a man’s death on her conscience. Not to mention she had used the thing to cause the deaths of others in town, if Jenkins was to be believed. Surely, that was unfeasible. Folklore, coincidence. “Her note said there was one way to stop it. That’s why she killed herself, I guess. Do you think she was right? Is it stopped?”
Jenkins shrugged. “I hope so. Who knows? Something like that, I wonder if it can ever be stopped.”
“Can you tell me where this place was, the chasm?”
“I can, but I wouldn’t recommend you go there.”
“Please?”
Jenkins sighed, hauled himself out of the armchair. He found a tatty notepad and pencil by the phone and drew her a rough map. “You can only drive this far, then you have to walk this bit.”
Michelle took the note, put it in her shorts pocket. “Thank you.”
“Now, I’ll have to ask you to leave. I don’t feel well, bringing up all this stuff, I’m too bloody old. I’m sorry for your loss, Clara was a good girl really.”
She could see he was holding back tears and felt her own grief rising once more. She hugged him, thanked him again. She let herself out, drove her car a couple of hundred yards away from his property, pulled over and collapsed in howls and sobs of grief, fear and disbelief.
*
Michelle parked by a worn wooden fence and looked out across paddocks turned yellow and dry by the summer sun. The day was hotter than ever, the sky huge and cobalt blue. The chasm was about a kilometre following the ridgeline, according to Jenkins’ map. With a shrug, she left the air-conditioned comfort of the car, hopped the fence and began to walk. She needed to see. Needed closure.
It was relatively easy going despite the heat, the rising gradient shallow. She wondered how Clara had found the place, how she learned the rituals Jenkins spoke of, how the fuck it all even worked. Was the man mad? Was he covering something else? Clara’s suicide and note, if anything, backed up the poor old bastard’s story. What reason would he have to make up something like that?
Sloping paddock turned to rock and she followed the map to the site of the explosion. The spot was obvious from Jenkin’s description, a scar in the landscape. Except he had described it as full of broken rock their charges had put there, but it was no longer blocked. She looked into a black, yawning gap and the trembling began again. Nervously she moved closer, crouching as she went, to look over the edge. The darkness was absolute after just a few metres where the ground sloped down into blackness. Piles of cracked stone stood either side, made the hole like some grotesque parody of a stony-lipped mouth. The sun beat hard on her back, but goosebumps rose on her flesh from the frosty draught travelling up into the hot day.
Had something escaped from here, after all these years? Was such a thing really possible? Maybe it was Jenkins spinning folklore to scare her. Regardless, even if it were all true, Clara had taken the final course of action, paid the ultimate price to end any threat that may have existed. Hadn’t she? She had felt it coming, and it was all over now. But the chill subterranean air still breathed gently from below.
Michelle leapt to her feet with a cry, ran back to her car, gasping and pouring with sweat by the time she got there. She fell into the driver’s seat, cranked the AC to maximum and drove back to town with no regard for speed limits or personal safety.
*
She was tired, scared and in no shape to travel far by the time she got back to the pub and her motel room behind. She stood under a cold shower for an age, crying so hard she had to fight for breath. She needed to go home.
She had come looking for answers and what she learned had left her terrified and with no idea what she could do about any of it. It was dealt with and nothing would bring Clara back. Go home and try to forget it all, move on with life and savour the memory of her brave, tortured Clara. Her love, who had taken the most drastic action. It had ever been Clara’s burden, a darkness she had released and carried inside for all those years.
An image of the open ground flashed in Michelle’s mind. The cold air coming up from beneath. Had something really spent thirty-five years digging itself out? Only to be thwarted by Clara’s suicide before it could come for her? So be it. Among everything else so hard to understand, that’s what Michelle chose to believe as she stood under the water and slowly her tears stopped. Tomorrow she would go home.
She dried herself, collapsed onto the bed and fell into a troubled sleep.
*
She slept through the evening and night, occasionally starting awake from nightmares only to fall back into restless slumber. At around seven in the morning, she finally dragged herself out. She noted a long, deep scratch along one side of her car and walked heavily down the street to the café. A few early risers shared the place while she broke her fast and drank coffee after coffee. She could feel their eyes on her, the weight of their suspicions and accusations, but she refused to meet a single gaze.
After breakfast she returned to the pub, paid for her room and thanked the landlord for his hospitality.
“Not much of a holiday,” he said. “You’ve only been here a couple of days.”
“I’ve had enough,” she said, shocked at the weak whisper of her voice. “Time to move on.”
“Fair enough. Safe trip.”
As she walked around to the car park, a ute slowed as it passed on the main street. “You off?” Friendly Bob from the country store.
She forced a smile for him. “Yeah, hitting the road.”
He nodded, his eyes heavy and sad. “Probably for the best, eh?”
“Yep. There’s nothing here for me.”
He gave her a lazy salute. “In truth, love, there’s not really much here for anyone. Travel safe.” Before she could reply, he pulled away.
She headed out of town and at the last minute made a direction change. She wanted to say goodbye to Jenkins. She realised she didn’t even know his first name. And after upsetting him with her questions, she wanted to apologise, wish him well, maybe see if there was anything she could do for him before she left. Try to make some amends for the things she might have stirred up in the sleepy town.
She pulled along the driveway of The Pines and parked. His front door stood half open. She looked left and right, wondering if he was out and about somewhere on the rambling property as a subtle fear wormed into her gut. She entered the house, paused in the hallway. “Mr Jenkins? You here?”
No answer.
Shaking her head, she walked on wobbly legs towards the lounge. Jenkins sat in his chair, knuckles white on the arms, his skin stretched grey and tight across his thin bones. His face was rigid, wide-mouthed in a silent scream, his eyes bulging from their sockets. He was frozen motionless in terror and quite dead.
Michelle staggered from the house, h
er breakfast threatening to come back up. It wasn’t over, of course it wasn’t over. Whatever this thing was, it had unfinished business.
A line from Clara’s note flashed through her mind.
The connection is my blood.
The bottom fell out of her stomach and she puked, legs folding beneath her. With a cry of grief and fear combined, she drove herself to her feet and ran for the car screaming, “Paul!”
She powered to the highway and turned east, put her phone on hands free and hit speed dial for her son. It rang out, went to his voicemail. “It’s Paul, leave a message.”
“Darling, it’s Mum. Please call me, okay? This is really important. As soon as you get this message!”
Wiping tears from her eyes, she put her foot down.
*
The three hour journey to the city was excruciating, pushing the speed limit as much as she dared without risking a police stop. She dialled Paul again and again, every time getting his voicemail. She left several messages, eventually gave up, just redialled every ten minutes with no result.
He lived in a share house on the other side of the city from the suburban home she shared with Clara. Used to share with Clara. They had tried to convince him to stay with them, save money, reluctant to give up their little boy, but he wouldn’t have it. An adult, finding his own way in the world. But he wasn’t far away, a thirty minute drive, and he visited once a week for dinner, every week without fail. He was a good boy.
She parked in front of his house, ran up the path, hammered on the front door. A gangly young Chinese man answered, pushing long hair from his eyes. Sammy, or Sonny or something, she couldn’t remember. “Hey, hello,” he said. “You looking for Paul?”
“Is he home?”
“Nah, got lectures probably. And his girl, of course. You tried calling?”
Michelle clenched her jaw, it wasn’t this boy’s fault. “Yes, I’ve been calling for hours. He’s not answering.”
