No sooner than they hit the halfway mark in the journey up that godforsaken path, the dark skies opened. Rain and hail pelted the car, thumping its body with hellish fury. The percussion was constant and driving. Suddenly the car felt quite claustrophobic. The torrential nature of the downpour was such that the driveway was swamped in an instant. A flash flood immersed them, crashing down the incline of the driveway, down the mountainside. Lescott’s car was quite a thing, a real modern marvel of engineering, but it wasn’t amphibious. The flooded engine packed in.
Lescott dropped his head onto the wheel in sheer frustration, “We’re going to have to walk it from here.”
“Let me guess?” Charlie sucked at his teeth. “You want me to wait with the car?”
Harris and Lescott looked at each other, there was a silent understanding there. “No. I think it’s best you come with us.”
“We’ll go up to the house and wait the storm out.” Lescott’s words were lies. He didn’t believe that to be a possibility for what lay ahead, but as long as he could mask the panic inside him with calm, he would.
His sombre mood wasn’t helped when Harris placed his face in a wrap of heroin and snorted loudly and longly. A snort that sounded like he was trying to purge the fear rising in him. “Is that a good idea?” Lescott asked, looking back in the rear-view mirror.
Harris, a shivering nervous wreck, responded with a resigned shrug of his shoulders that said: “I’m not walking up to this god-awful place without some fucking help. I know what’s waiting for me up there.”
And Lescott nodded. He understood. He too pulled a wrap from his pocket and took a short sharp bump of cocaine for chemical courage. “Charlie?”
“No. I’m good. This place is creeping me out. Is that just me?” It wasn’t.
They left the car and waded up what remained of the driveway. It went unspoken that each of the three men carried their respective weapons. Lescott, a snub-nosed revolver, Harris, a pump-action shotgun, and Charlie, a long-handled brick hammer; he hated guns with a passion. They dragged themselves through that black sludge of water, dirt, and tree litter. Each feeling a strange sense of place, a terrain you’d find nowhere else in the world. Beautiful, wild, and secluded, that place consumed their senses; leaving them cold, alone and quite terrified. They all felt it.
When they cleared the driveway, they came to the edge of a large courtyard. Like the lawns, it was clearly a shadow of its former glory. The gravel that stood in a large circle was old and grimy. It had been placed around a formerly impressive fountain which had overrun with mould, moss, and fungi.
The house itself was something to venerate. It was more akin to a castle or a fortress, than a mere house. The only building back in Sydney that could match it was the Town Hall. Like the Town Hall, it was a yellow-block sandstone structure, accented with touches of wrought iron. To Harris’ imaginative eye, it looked gothic in architectural style. It ought to have been located in medieval Bavaria or Romania, surrounded by pine trees and packs of wolves. It was the old world, in the new world.
It had wings for God’s sake; wings. Long, imposing structures of vast sandstone blocks that ran as far back as they could see, situated on both sides of a hauntingly imposing main section. Like the wall that ran along the edge of the property, the building was covered in slimy moss and an expansive network of vines. The vines had clearly taken over years before, thriving for a time, only to die; leaving the visage of the manor quite lifeless.
The three men stood there in awe of the place until Harris broke the silence, “I met a traveller from an antique land, who said, ‘two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert…’”
“Really? You’re doing that here?” Lescott asked, he’d forgotten quite how obnoxiously well-read Harris could be.
“Near them, on the sand, half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor those passions read which yet to survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: and on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ Nothing besides remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away’.”
The three men looked at each other. Charlie and Lescott were clearly impacted by the words, but they were stubbornly hiding it.
“It’s about the ever-changing nature of power and where it lies. How fleeting something so permanent as tyranny can be.” Harris couldn’t take his eyes off the building. “Sorry, it felt fitting.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“It’s Shelley.”
“No. That…” Charlie was pointing to where a grand old oak tree lay alone surrounded by the rampaging wilderness of weeds and grasses. A rope swing, made of a tyre, was suspended from the lower branches. Sitting upon it was a small child, it swung and twisted as the strong winds blew.
Beyond the tree, they could see into the valley. Smoke was rising from several homesteads grouped together amongst the sea of gumtrees and rock formations. It was the town of Dismal Hill, it lay just a few short miles away.
Lescott wiped the rain from his forehead and eye sockets. It was senseless, immediately he was drenched once more. “Let me speak to the child. You two…” His companions look too out of the ordinary, even for this strange part of the world. He didn’t want to scare the child. “Just let me handle it. You two can go knock on the door.
Harris looked up at the tenebrosity rolling above them in the heavens. As he turned his eyes towards the sky, the rail and hail pelted his face. He pulled the cap out of his pocket, placing it over his head as he stared over at the tree. “It’s not really rope swing weather is it?”
“We’re a long way from Darlinghurst… These people. They’re weird… Fucking hill people.” Lescott slowly began trudging through the rain.
“I’ve been meaning to ask… What was the name of that town? The one you used to visit as a kid?” Harris called over the pounding rain.
“Tocumwal…” Lescott was caught off guard by the question.
“I’m thinking maybe we do some fishing when all this is done. Clean ourselves up.” There was no mistaking the meaning behind Harris’ words. It was a nice thought. One he felt they needed at that moment. Something that might help them push through.
Lescott smiled sadly and nodded. He understood.
Chapter 70
Harris was right. It wasn’t exactly weather fit for a gay old time on the rope swing. It didn’t matter just how hardy they bred them out there in those mountains. This girl’s behaviour was strange.
As he entered the shadowy space beneath the tree’s gangly limbs browning leaves, he noted the smell. It stopped him in his tracks. He knew what it was. He knew where it was coming from. But for some reason, something wasn’t quite clicking in his brain. It was a simple equation, but as he approached her from behind, he hadn’t yet grasped the danger he was in.
The motion of her swinging was languid. Like the wind and gravity were doing all the work, and she was having no part in it. As he got closer, he could hear the bough of the tree creaking under her weight. The lowest branch of that ancient tree was at least ten metres in the air. The ropes were longer than you would expect to see on a child’s rope swing. It looked dangerous. “Excuse me Miss…”
She remained there, swinging idly, as he approached. She was quite unmoved by his presence. She didn’t turn to look at him. She just hung there as the rain crashed down around her and thunder roared in the skies above her. The thunder was crashing so frequently, it felt constant. Lightning was close.
And then it struck. The earth shuddered beneath his feet as the surge of electricity made contact with the oak somewhere over his head. For a split second he was blinded by a light so pure and white, he half wondered if it was heaven. Sparks flew, showering him in glowing remnants. Where the lightning had struck, a spot fire had broken out in
the canopy overhead. The tree was old, there wasn’t much life in it. That fire would engulf that pyre in moments.
Still the girl swung. The lightning had frightened the living daylights out of Lescott, a grown man. Yet this child remained calm, and still unmoved? That smell had intensified. Lescott tried to remember the books he’d read about natural geography and the weather as a child. Did lightning bring with it the smell of sulphur?
Then it clicked. Where he was, what he was doing there, the man he was looking for, and the sight before him. It all came together to make gruesome sense. He edged slowly towards the rope swing, and when he was close enough, he gave it a nudge with his foot to spin it around.
Slowly it spun. As it did, he noted how filthy her dress was. He noted what looked like bird shit running through her mass of black hair. The girl was dead. She’d been dead for some time. She wasn’t playing on a rope swing. Her corpse had been left there to swing, like some sadistic Christmas decoration. As the tyre she was sitting on continued its slow rotation, he saw her skin. She’d been there some time and the elements had ravaged her body. The flesh of her exposed arm was rotting and melting from the bone. Her long black hair was patchy, clumps had fallen from her head. Lescott bent double and heaved vomit all over the grass when his eyes fell upon her face. It was half face, half exposed skull. Squirming maggots were writhing within the girl’s decaying head, within her empty eye sockets. Her eyeballs were lying on the floor at her feet, no doubt pecked out by birds, only to be discarded. One of her legs was severely mauled, like something feral had given a good chew, only to give up, not enjoying the taste of half putrefied flesh pumped full of preservatives.
Lescott sprinted. He ran as fast as he could, stumbling and slipping over grass and mulch underfoot. As he ran, he double-checked his revolver for bullets. He had six at his disposal. It would only take one. In his rush, he slipped and fell as his feet caught on a stray paving stone. The fall knocked the air clean out of his lungs and sent the bullets from his open revolver flying.
Inside the doors into the stately home was a foyer as ostentatious as it was imposing. The floor was tiled with dark gold tiles. A surface that had gathered a thick layer of dust. Dust that had been displaced by countless trails of footprints. The ceiling of the room was forty feet high and covered in once majestic, not mouldering wooden beams. Golden chandeliers hung there, heralding the majesty of the place and the people who’d lived there in times gone by. They predated electricity, and were filled with vanquished candlesticks. On either side of the foyer was a pair of twin staircases that wound up to a landing above, and God knows what depravity laid up there.
Lescott, as he burst through the door, noted Harris standing at the opposite end of the room, quite still. He was standing in front of a vast wall of mahogany and thick velvet curtains. Though Lescott moved as quietly as he could, his footsteps made a gritty scratching sound on those dusty tiles.
Harris kept staring straight ahead, even when Lescott stood by his side and announced, “We’re here.”
“Oh, I know.” Harris fastened his grip on his shotgun as he stared ahead.
Lescott turned and saw, against the mahogany section of wall, an ornate grandfather clock. In front of the grandfather clock, there stood a man, or rather a corpse. This corpse, in Lescott’s hazy recollection, seemed to be wearing the exact same outfit as the Old Man with the Bible, down to his waistcoat and tie. “Is that…?”
“Yes. He came back for him too.” Harris took a look at Lescott, “Why is it that every time we go anywhere, you get covered in filth? You’re like a fucking child.”
Lescott paid little attention to the jibe as he inspected the man at the clock. This corpse, presumably the old man he had seen that day on the bench, had been posed using an exoskeleton of wiring and metal strips. He was reaching inside the grandfather clock’s casing, playing with the mechanism.
“Where’s Charlie?” Lescott asked.
“Fucker ran off as soon as he saw this fella.”
“He left the house?”
Harris shook his head.
“You didn’t follow him?
“He’s fucking fast…”
Lescott looked around “We need to find a phone. We need back-up from Dismal Hill.”
Harris shook his head dismissively, “As a kid, back in Salford… I lived on the canal. There was an abattoir a few miles out of town. It was two or three miles away from my house. When the wind was right, you could smell it. There was no getting away from it. People would close their doors, shut their windows. But it seeped in regardless. The smell of blood, flesh, and the burning or rotting of waste. Everyone on my street smelled it. Everyone knew where it came from.” Lescott looked at Harris questioningly. “This place is a death factory… And that town down there. They can smell it. If they turn up with pitchforks and torches, well that won’t work out well for us.”
“So… We’re on our own?” Lescott took a moment to compose himself as he looked around. Once he’d surveyed the room and his memory of the footprint of the house, he silently pointed at himself and gestured upwards. He softly pressed Harris’ chest and pointed at the ground. Harris nodded in agreement, it was a tired nod. He’d been snorting heroin and cocaine for days straight. He hadn’t slept. “Maybe try to be discreet, yeah? Leave those two left feet and that pair of ham-fists at the door.”
Lescott smiled an encouraging smile as he crept towards the staircase. He placed his leading foot on the first step of the aging staircase and winced in anticipation. But it was ok. The expected groan of the rotting wood did not come. But when his trailing leg lifted, shifting his weight onto the staircase, it was a different matter. The sodden wood let out an almighty creak that ran all through the wooden structure, over to the wall where it morphed into an unmissable rattling of pipes reverberating through the house. Lescott cringed, looking over to where Harris had been standing not a moment before, waiting for a judgemental look, but Harris was gone.
The landing above the stairs was just as ostentatious as the foyer. The floor, the walls, the banister, and the windows’ trimmings were all a brassy gold which, if polished, would have looked magnificent, but as they were they looked quite grubby. A house like this needed an army of “the help” to keep it clean. No one had worked here in years.
Lescott looked over to his left, and then to his right. Long corridors ran down to the wings of the house with doors littered throughout. There was a lot of darkness to cover. It would take hours. A situation made dire when Lescott’s eyes began playing tricks upon him. Shadows crept to either side.
Downstairs, Harris found himself in a great hall. Or rather, a formerly great hall. This room was lit by candles in antique fixings. The floor was covered in dark wood parquet panelling. For the most part, the walls were blood red, but for bursts of gold provided by picture frames, vases, and other valuable oddities. Harris was surefooted as he walked towards the centre of the room, brushing past cobwebs, and through the columns of dust dancing in narrow shafts of light. It was the stuff of fairy tales, a Grimm Brothers fairy-tale made reality. A place where Prince and Princess might dance the night away, revelling in the defeat of an old crone.
But any thoughts of Bavarian folklore were pushed to one side as the Englishman walked towards the pair of figures in the centre of the room. These two, it seemed, had frozen in time during a passionate waltz. Head to toe in finery they were, or rather, skull to metatarsal. These two looked further along in the decaying process than the others Harris had witnessed. They were bare skeletons.
In the centre of the vast interior wall, a portrait took pride of place. It must have been twelve feet by eight. It would have taken the most productive of painters six months to fill the shadowy background alone. Gold paint was peeling from the masterfully crafted ornate frame, revealing termite and damp riddled wood beneath. Below the portrait there was a small brassy plaque. Harris rubbed it clean of a layer of dust and cobwebs to read:
Charles, Elizabeth, and Richard
Beaumont, 1915.
Harris took a step back and looked up at the painting. It was a traditional turn-of-the-century affair. A family portrait of father, mother, and child. The boy in the middle of the thing, his parents standing on either side with a hand on the young man’s shoulder. The child looked sickly. His skin was pale, his eyes dark, and his frame lean to the point of emaciated. This boy, presumably a young Richard Beaumont, had been captured by the painter during an unhappy childhood. Even those hands on his shoulders, they could have so easily expressed affection or pride, instead they looked controlling.
The couple were holding props, as you would commonly find in portraits at that time. Her, a lump of coal, him a brick of gold. This was no mark of gender hierarchy. The Beaumonts had made their money in the grubbier materials they pulled from the ravaged land. The pair were dressed in their very finest attire. Him in a tuxedo and top hat, an outfit complete with a red cummerbund, and matching bowtie. Her in a powder-blue ball gown, with white silk gloves up to her elbows, covered in more diamonds than a Sierra Leonean warlord’s bank vault.
Harris recognised the clothes. He recognised the jewellery. It was now being worn by the pair of waltzing skeletons behind him. He looked from the portrait to the pair, and back again. It seemed to him, this entire harrowing tale began with the death, or murder of the boy’s parents.
A theory encouraged by the vandalism of the painting. Some poor artist had slaved away at that magnificent piece of art, that manifestation of social standing and ego. Beaumont, no doubt, had seen the artist’s work as unfinished. He had put his own finishing touches on it. Over his parent’s faces, he had painted crudely composed skulls. This room was a shrine to where it had all begun.
THE DEVIL IN THE RED DIRT: DIVIDED IN LIFE. UNIFIED IN MURDER Page 51
