Shaking with fear, Jen decided she had had enough. Determinedly, she locked and bolted the front door, did a double check of all windows and with the kero-lamp in her hand, she headed off to bed to try to sleep away the fury of the storm.
*
She woke to her electric alarm clock blinking away. The numerals read 3.25 am, yet there was a half-light peeping through her curtains, which indicated that it was still daylight. She heard a light patter of rain on the roof, which faded away as she listened. It seemed that the storm had not yet passed. However, its full fury had finally abated.
Jen switched on her bedroom light switch. When the light did come on, it was dimmed, and only a fraction of its normal strength. She assumed the power lines were down somewhere, so she turned the switch back off. For the moment candles, kero-lamp and gas stove would have to suffice.
Nothing seemed amiss as she moved through the house. No water had penetrated for which she was thankful. She decided to check outside and opened the front door. Outside a shroud of leaves and light twigs covered the hire car. In the near distance, Jen could see several trees on the property boundary that the force of the storm had struck down. One of the trees showed a muted finger of smoke caused by lightning striking it. Otherwise, the house and land seemed fine, despite the damage elsewhere.
Standing on the verandah, she breathed deeply. The air was fresh with an underlying earthy aroma of crushed leaves, mud, floodwater and something else...unidentifiable. Jen inhaled and closed her eyes; there was something magical about the world after rain. The scents and the light seemed amplified. A shiver went up her spine and goose bumps dimpled her skin.
The sound of a tractor pulling up outside her front gate interrupted her reverie. Pulling on a rain jacket that hung from the hook at the back of the front door, she walked out into the lightly spitting rain to see what was going on.
“Miss MacDonald?” a voice called out from over the rumpf, rumpf sound of the idling machine.
“I’m here,” Jen called back, whilst squelching her way up the muddy driveway.
She peered through the light rain and saw Brett sitting atop his tractor.
“Alice sent me out to check on you,” he explained. “That was a rough storm. The bureau hasn’t called it a cyclone yet, but I reckon it was near Category One.”
“Indeed it was,” she agreed.” Did it cross the coast?”
“Yup, it was a fast moving bugger. The news services reckon it will break the record books. In fact, the eye went through a bit further north of here, up round Noosa they say. Seems that most of the beaches have been washed away and Coolum caught a fair bit of damage.”
He looked past her up to the house, “Any damage?”
She shook her head, “Not really, just some trees down on the boundary fence.” My guttering developed a few more holes,” she grinned ruefully. “Also electricity is doing odd things, like I’m on partial power.”
“You are, in fact, we all are,” he told her. “All the power lines are down in the area. The power companies have brought in generators, but it will be awhile before full power is restored.”
Jen nodded, “I’ve got supplies.”
“Good!” His expression became troubled, “One more thing. Can you keep an eye out for little Lachlan Bryce. He vanished during the height of the storm and his parents are frantic.”
Jen put a hand to her mouth in shock, “He’s only a wee child of three!”
“Yup, it’s a terrible thing. The police are out combing the area now.”
Jen shook her head in worry, “I’ll check my land, in case he’s hiding somewhere.” She looked around at the undulating hills and flooded creeks, “He could be anywhere. I hope they find him.”
“As do we all” he said. Then he tipped his old felt hat at her and slowly drove the tractor away.
*
Chapter 6
“Well, I don’t know how you managed it, but you got your storm,” said Jeremy as he shook the raindrops off his oilskin jacket and hung it up on the wooden pegs on Carma’s front porch.
Brandon laughed, “None of my doing, I can assure you, but the timing seemed... providential. How is the moth situation at the bookstore?”
“A bust,” Jeremy complained. “I think the storm blew them away. I went to check on them on the way here and not one to be seen.”
A voice could be heard from the kitchen, “Green or herbal tea Jeremy?”
“Ginseng, thanks Carma,” Jeremy called back.
‘We’re the first,” Brandon said to Jeremy. “The others are still arriving. It was damn decent of Carma to offer to host the meeting here. Especially with Sonja still trying to deal with the gum tree that flattened her house. Good thing she was at Steve’s place today.” Brandon winked knowingly at him.
“So she’s staying with Steve then?” Jeremy asked.
“I assume so.”
“Will we have a quorum?” asked Jeremy. “Given tonight we’re voting on the two issues, moth or underground power lines.”
“I would think so,” replied Brandon. “Carma told me that the local councillor is coming tonight, as well as a representative of the power company, since they’re in the area doing repairs.”
“Fortuitous indeed,” said Jeremy. “Pity about the moth, but we can’t mount a proper campaign without it being present.
Brandon’s eyebrow lifted, “That’s not stopped us in the past...”
Jeremy giggled, “The Spotted Crake? Well, it’s amazing what you can achieve with a recording of its call being played on and off when that local birdwatcher group was present.” He was airily dismissive, “Just a bunch of dotty old ladies, so very easy to pull the wool over their eyes.”
“Well that rainforest needed preserving,” Brandon agreed. “A necessary means to an end.”
“Rainforest?” Carma questioned, emerging from the kitchen and laughed at the two men. “Come now, if that scrubby gully was a rainforest, well then you can call me a fool. However, it was a necessary means to an end, we needed to flex our muscles against the council and I’m glad that I initiated that action.” She indicated the three mugs of tea balanced on a tray, “Ginseng for Jeremy, latte for Brandon, and green tea for myself.” She handed out the beverages. “Still only us three?”
“I’m here,” called out a voice from the front door.
“Maryanne! Good to see you here,” said Brandon as the young student came in through the doorway, her dark hair plastered to her head.
Carma took one look at the dripping figure and went straight to the linen closet to fetch towels.
Maryanne shook the drips off, “Thought it was all over when I left, but it just started bucketing down again.”
Two more figures materialised at the front door, shrugging off coats and closing umbrellas.
“Rod, Adam, any trouble on the road?” Carma enquired as she handed a towel to a grateful Maryanne.
“Few trees down, but the emergency workers are clearing,” Rod replied. “I picked up Adam as his driveway is washed out.”
“A cloudburst,” agreed Adam, “I’ve been living here all my life, and I’ve never seen the like, this was far worse than ’74 and ’11. I had no idea the clouds could hold so much water. No wonder so many trees went down. I heard this area copped the worst of the rain.”
“Adam, Rod, Maryanne. Tea or coffee?” Carma asked.
The others nodded and called out their orders, and Carma went back into her kitchen to boil some more water. She moved five more mugs from the cupboard onto the bench top and going to her pantry, pulled out different canisters of herbal teas. As she waited for the water to boil, she took from a small black bowl a pinch of a silvery grey powder. She then sprinkled a few grains of the mixture into each mug. It had taken most of the afternoon to combine the ingredients correctly and Moira had been most specific about its preparation.
Ah, Moira, now she was a strange one. Jen had answered the knock on her door three days ago to find at her feet a small wooden box
placed on her front doorstep. She had taken the box inside to find within a dozen or more small glass (or were they crystal) vials containing a number of strange substances that she could not identify. A handwritten note lay amongst the flasks. The words were in a strangely archaic flowing hand and written on parchment. With some difficulty, Carma had deciphered the words, “A concoction to bind others to your will. Mix with care, Moira.” Below the note were detailed instructions.
It had taken Carma several attempts and scorched fingers before she had a finished powder that resembled the description on the note. Carefully, she had put the bowl away, covered as requested with a linen cloth. The note had warned that the powder would only have a onetime use, and its potency would decline rapidly, so she would need to make it on the day of use.
Adam appeared at the kitchen door, “You done yet, Carma? The councillor and energy chap are here now.” Before she could ask he said, “Coffee for both of them.”
Carma nodded and started to pour into the mugs the now boiling water.
An hour or two later, Carma looked around at her guests. All were sitting forward on their chairs and seemed to be avidly following every word she said. She had spoken passionately and at length about the need for the power to go underground, citing tourism potential, the overhead wire danger to the town’s possum and bat population, as well as a more reliable method of energy distribution. Everyone had nodded at her words, even the stodgy councillor became animated when the tourism angle had been mentioned. The power company representative had initially sat back and listened, and then after he drank his coffee, he too leant forward and nodded. He interjected once to agree with her observation that the town would still have power if the lines had been transferred under the ground. Finally, once the councillor and energy representative had left, the remaining members of EHGAG had voted on the moth and the power lines. Carma wasn’t at all surprised that the moth hadn’t attracted a single vote. Even Jeremy (its most avid promoter) had gone wholly across to support her action instead. Now, it was time to move into top gear and lobby the council, the power supplier and the residents of the town.
*
Chapter 7
After forty-eight hours of patchy power supply, electricity to the town was finally reconnected. Jen celebrated by turning on her laptop and devoting the rest of the day to proof reading the last few chapters of her client’s manuscript. She had been busy the last two days, clearing away the mess of leaves and twigs from her garden and mopping away the water that had pooled on her verandah. Going by the reports on the radio, the search for the little boy had proved fruitless. Now police from Brisbane had moved into the area and had set up an incident room in the local council chambers. The press had also sensed blood and sent reporters into the town, attempting to interview anyone who might supply them with a new angle. Local opinion was that the child had wandered away and fallen into one of the many small creeks, several of which had broken banks during the cloudburst. Most agreed that they might not find his body for weeks until after the water levels had returned to normal. Already, police divers were combing the river, with no result other than finding a few bloated corpses of livestock and native animals caught by the swiftly rising floodwaters and washed away.
As she typed, she listened to the radio perched precariously on top of a stack of books on her desk. Still no word on the missing child, and now another tragedy seemed to be unfolding. A skilled police diver, somehow dragged down by floodwaters in the local dam and reported missing as the timer on his oxygen, had long since expired. Now police were warning all residents away from fast flowing creeks, alarmed that more casualties could result.
The phone interrupted her, its shrill ringing drowning out even the radio itself. She saved her work on the computer and answered it. For a moment, she heard nothing, and then distantly she heard a quiet whispery voice speaking in a language she could neither understand nor identify. She identified herself again, this time a little more abruptly as her patience began to wear thin, yet still the voice whispered on. Fed up, she slammed the receiver down, cutting off the voice mid-whisper. The phone rang again and she answered it. This time there was an echoing silence as if whoever had been whispering on the first call was now waiting on her response. She identified herself again and still silence, then suddenly she heard a high pitched giggle on the other end – not childish, not even human, her blood chilled at the sound of it. As she held the receiver aloft, staring at it in horror, the phone inexplicably rang again. The receiver dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers to clatter on the desk. Faintly, she heard the laugh again. Alarmed, she bent down and pulled the phone cable from the wall, the ringing and the giggle immediately silenced.
She had to get out of here. She had to talk to someone. Suddenly, she remembered her meeting with the elderly gentleman at the shopping centre. Jen went to her bag and retrieved the phone number. Not wanting to trust the landline, she quickly dialled the number on her mobile and waited for a reply.
A young woman’s voice answered the phone, “Delany residence.”
Jen was nonplussed, “Hello, I want to speak with Tom.”
Jen heard a voice calling out, “Grandpa! There’s a lady on the phone for you.”
There was a bit of distant talking, then Jen heard the phone being passed over, and then the quiet voice she remembered, “Tom Delany here. Who may I ask is calling?”
Jen cleared her throat, “Jen McDonald. We met at the shopping centre last week.”
“Ah, Jen, so glad you called” Jen could hear the smile in his voice. “I’d hoped you’d ring.”
“Uhm...” Jen was tongue-tied. She did not know how to explain to Tom what was going on.
“Thing have been happening then, luv?” he asked gently.
“Um...yes, it’s hard to explain,” she stammered. “Really, I hate to burden you, but I don’t know of anyone else to turn to.”
“Best that you come over here then,” he said. “My granddaughter is cooking dinner tonight and I’m sure her pasta can stretch to five.”
“Five?”
“My son and his wife are helping me clean up after the storm,” he explained. “Come on over.”
“Oh, I don’t want...to be an imposition,” she struggled.
“Nonsense” he said crisply, “Here is the address. Got it?”
She murmured her assent.
“Then we’ll expect you within the hour.”
Jen heard Tom hang up. There had been no opportunity to refuse the invitation. Resignedly, she showered and changed, and then grabbing her bag, she secured the house and drove off in the direction of Cromhart.
Jen was a little overawed when she drove up to Tom Delany’s place. She had turned off the main road, and in the slanting rays of the setting sun, drove up along a still muddy dirt road through seemingly endless rows of fruit and nut trees. If Tom considered his farm small, Jen wondered exactly what he would consider a large farm to be like. Finally, she glimpsed the house through the last rows of trees. It was a sprawling old Queenslander with tin roof, central stairs, cast-iron lacework trim and a bullnose verandah surrounding three sides of the house. It looked like one of the original settler homes of the region.
Jen parked her hire car off to one side, next to some farm machinery and some other cars. Mechanically, she got out and stood uncertainly by the driver’s door, unsure of what to expect.
A young woman who seemed to be about twenty years of age walked around the corner of the house. Her hair was blonde, her eyes a bright blue and her skin tanned. An aura of self-possession and innate strength hung about her. She looked very fit and healthy.
“Miss Jen?” the young woman asked, noting how the older woman seemed so small, slight, with glasses askew on a round and pale face. Nervous hazel eyes regarded her approach.
“Yes,” Jen replied, self-consciously holding out her hand. To her surprise, the young woman leant over and kissed her gently on the cheek.
“I’m Fiona,” she introdu
ced herself. “Tom’s grand-daughter, Grandpa is inside. Come on in.”
Taken a little aback by the easy familiarity, Jen allowed herself to be led inside the house.
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