The creatures of the bush and the earth elementals watched as the crowd of people gathered around the body. They had claimed their own back, and a silent protest of fury rippled through the scrub. A note of protest was played out on a panpipe, unnoticed by the humans who were totally preoccupied with the dead girl. A cry, taken up and translated by the wind. The bush creatures understood the sound, and the earth elementals made the bushes and the shrubs dance in a wild frenzied move. Let the humans reclaim her, load her into their vans with expressions sombre and faces pale. There would be more, the wind promised. There would always be more.
The news of the body found at the bottom of Elizabeth Gorge soon spread through the mountain towns, the story distorting as it travelled. Her head had been torn clear from her body. They had to collect so many pieces she would never be identified. There had been a note. She had been some waitress from Sydney, a pregnant junkie craving for smack, who thought she could fly. She was a television presenter for Australia Tonight who had come up to the mountains to interview locals about the wild dog attacks in the area. The truth was disguised among the Chinese whispers. In the streets, the locals clustered to discuss the death. An uneasy cancer had begun to sprout and flower in the towns. It was so cold that their breaths hung in the air. Winter had never seemed so achingly long. It was not natural, everyone agreed, it was not normal.
An old man in Katoomba, Max Browne, insisted he had seen some sort of large bear in the backyard of his house. He was mocked for his statement, but he was far from alone. Several people, all of them reliable witnesses, claimed to have seen strange beings around the town. Not the wild dogs threatening the mountains, but beings impossible to believe. There were other, even stranger, tales of walkers on lonely bush tracks, who for no logical reason became suddenly overwhelmed with terror and had run screaming from the area. Now this latest death sparked off a tremor of unease in the towns. Talk shifted to other murders that had occurred in the mountains, most of them unsolved. Johanna Develle, the bohemian artist who had been found with no blood in her body on a bush track, the Sydney businessman found bashed to death with fear frozen on his face, the young schoolchildren over the last few years who had mysteriously vanished.
What are the police doing, people grumbled. Some discussed selling up and moving back to Sydney, blaming the cold. Others said little, but hurried home to lock windows and doors securely against the coming night. Mothers gathered in anxious groups at the local school to collect their children, and shepherded them home together, ignoring their bleating for sweets or soft drinks. They too were obeying the urge to lock themselves away against the darkness, to sit closely with loved ones nearby with the television or radio on loudly to drown out any sounds from outside. Although they could not have explained it in words, the locals knew. Something was coming. Something was near. Something stinking and ancient. It was better if they were oblivious of its presence when it walked. For then, hopefully, that something would be oblivious of them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Adieu, mes amis. Je vais la gloire.
(Farewell my friends! I go to glory!)
— LAST WORDS OF ISADORA DUNCAN, DANCER, DIED 1927
There were times Dea believed that things would turn out all right. Life would return to normal, and her prayers would be answered. Oh God, her constant prayers — tears would roll down her face and her feet and knees would go to sleep, making her hobble around for ten minutes afterwards trying to coax the blood back into her legs. But it would be worth it if the coven saw she meant what she said. She had changed. Phillip might be strong, but he was no match for her newly found faith. Other times, however, she doubted herself, doubted her faith, and then she knew Phillip hadn’t changed and he was never going to give up. It seemed easier to agree to his demands, return to the mountains and join with them in closing the portal. But then she would be practising witchcraft, and she couldn’t risk that.
She knew only too well the consequences of performing magical arts. Unimagined energies were out there, eager to be invited over the threshold, which was exactly what Phillip had already done. Now he regretted his actions and believed he could change it all with yet more dabbling in the black arts. Dea Dreamer wasn’t so sure the universal energies operated like that. There was one spiritual law, that of Jesus. It was all she had to hold onto now. How she had hated the expression in Faline’s eyes when she looked upon her. All of them so smug, so superior, believing their way was the only way.
They’ mocked Dea for her faith, and yet they were just as rigid and judgmental in their witchcraft as any Christian Dea had ever met. Oh yes, Phillip would be back. Dea was convinced of his return. She attempted to occupy herself by cleaning her small flat. Dusting, waxing, vacuuming, did nothing to hold the fear at bay. Too afraid to sleep, she would sit on her sofa, a mug of chocolate in her hand as she half watched the shopping channel, desperate to block the memories. She did not want to remember Johanna with her short dark hair, her wild gypsy beauty. The sly knowing in her eyes. Johanna’s channelling was mostly responsible for unearthing the ritual that had opened the doorway between worlds. Phillip and Johanna, both so convinced they were correct in their actions.
Dea often wondered if Johanna had known more than she had ever let on to the coven. Would they have been so eager to cast the ritual if they had seen the consequences? Cael dead. Johanna dead. There were others . . . Dea had tried to avoid thinking of it over the years, but she had seen several newspaper stories about fatalities in the area. Johanna’s own niece had died in the cottage she had inherited, Dea couldn’t help wondering how much she had inherited from her aunt, how much she had known. She had prayed for her protection over the years. For godsake, the child had been living in that house with the doorway open,
Dea’s guilt at not attempting to give Johanna’s niece more help was so thick, she could almost taste it. Paralysing fear had prevented her from contacting the girl. Perhaps the child had been lucky. Dea tried, but failed to remember her name. Ruth? Or perhaps Elizabeth, something old-fashioned. Then again, she may not have inherited her aunt’s gift. She may have remained oblivious of the dark shadows that slipped noiselessly through her walls, through the silences.
She was dead now, of course, but it had been a natural death. Heart attack, Dea recalled. Not like Johanna, found drained of blood in the bush. Nor Cael, who had been so young and yet so old at the same time. Cael, with his eyes of pale blue, his golden hair that had hung in curls. They had feasted on him, drained him when he had gone back to attempt to close the doorway. Over the years there had been other deaths. Young children missing from the area, bodies found at the bottom of cliffs. Strange sightings had briefly made the news; tales of winged beasts being spotted, creatures with a woman’s face and the body of a large bird, even bears, but these were quickly dismissed as the work of mischief makers or locals desperate to attract more tourists to the area in the wake of the bushfires. Recently, a young English woman had jumped to her death in front of her family and a coachload of tourists.
No, Dea Dreamer did not wish to return to the Blue Mountains. The more she continued to pray for protection, however, the more confused she became. If it was wrong to return to the mountains with the coven to close the portal, then wasn’t it also wrong to do nothing? To allow the doorway to remain open, for these things to come through and for innocent people to die? No, she no longer knew what to do.
She kept seeing Cael as a young boy when Phillip had first picked him up from the street alley where he had run from another kind of monster, a man who had forced him to perform sexual acts on animals as he filmed him. Cael, the crying, terrified child, who had withstood the advances of his father late at night, then the fumblings of the local priest to whom he had been altar boy. Cael, who had given his tiny child’s body to countless strangers who had picked him up from the Darlinghurst wall, entranced by his angelic looks, his purity. Phillip had found him broken and lost, approached him as he had done many times before, and finally
taken him home. Cael’s life had begun with Phillip, whom he worshipped, and yet it was because of his saviour he had died so young. Still breathtakingly beautiful, still pure.
Cael had gone alone to close the portal in the middle of night, in the middle of a Blue Mountains winter. He had taken a small room in Katoomba, and kept to himself while he gathered the courage to break into the deserted cottage.
Dea broke off her thoughts, she didn’t like to speculate on what had happened next. She could imagine, for she had seen once what had slipped through the portal when they had first opened it. Eyes older than sunlight, claws, feathers and a huge body pulsing in triumph. Nothing that was natural in this world. The stench of the nightmare was unbearable, she would gag even to this day remembering it, and yet, the thing had known Johanna, it had acknowledged her. Dea could never forget the look on Johanna’s face when she met the creature’s gaze. Even Phillip had been afraid, backing away, his brain frantically trying to cope, but Johanna had displayed no fear. She had welcomed the thing, holding out her hands and smiling that creepy smile of hers in greeting. And it was only the first horror of many to cross from the hell opened in the mural.
Too afraid to go out, Dea sat in her flat, drinking endless cups of tea and eating canned food. She would have to venture out into the city streets eventually, the cats required new litter and she was nearly out of milk. But she was so tired, so unbelievably tired of the fear and the guilt, that it was almost with relief she heard the doorbell ring again.
God it was so cold, it would freeze the balls from a brass monkey! Aiden shivered as he walked along the frost-covered path leading from his home in Leura to the train station that would take him to Sydney, Not for the first time he cursed his parents’ move to the Blue Mountains when he had just begun the first year of his demanding arts degree. It was okay for them. The old man could just get up halfway through the day and paint in his heated studio while his mother dusted and waited for customers in the antique business they had taken over, but Aiden was forced to commute from the Blue Mountains to get to his city art college five times a week. It made his life fucking miserable. He was always too tired to fully appreciate the sociable life at college.
When his fellow students were all heading to the pub to get drunk after classes and discuss the day’s work, he had to make his excuses because his mother got freaked out if he started taking the night trains back to the mountains. He could live in Sydney, get a bed-sitter somewhere, but the rental prices were unbearable. His father had promised him that if his next show went well, he would think about buying a little place for Aiden in the western suburbs, closer to the city. His parents were always against paying rent money. They’d rather I dropped dead of exhaustion from these 4 am starts every day, Aiden thought. Not to mention his non-existent sex life.
His portfolio seemed heavier with every step he took, his life drawings securely encased in plastic folders. Last night had taken him ages to get the wax just right to produce the effect he was after. He had been up until 1 am working on them. It was one of the negative aspects of his old man being a well-known landscape painter; people had certain expectations of Aiden. The wild, abstract paintings he liked to do in no way resembled the textured, subtle landscapes his father was famous for. Aiden had considered not going to art school for that reason alone. It had been hard enough at high school, with the art master continually comparing him to his old man, but he had been unable to ignore the inner pull. There was no denying he loved it. Even with the bloody early starts in the freezing cold and the boring train journey down the mountain, with commuters dozing, mouths open in gentle snores. He had taken a sculpture elective for the first time and was surprised by how much he had embraced the class. He wasn’t a great fan of life drawing, but life sculpture — now, that was something else. The majority of life models were a disappointment, with their flat chests and their tiny waists. He wanted curves, he wanted the sweep of the woman when he squeezed life into his clay. Fuck the horrible models of today with their little girl, starved bodies. No red-blooded Australian male wanted that. He wanted a woman.
His line of thought ceased as he approached the dark, isolated laneway leading to Light Vision. He never felt totally comfortable walking here. He couldn’t explain it rationally, but the hairs on the back of his neck seemed to rise and he felt spooked. He had seen the people who lived in the commune shopping in Katoomba and Leura, and they gave him the same sensation. A couple of the girls weren’t bad-looking, but they were still pretty freaky. They had reminded him of Charles Manson’s witches, with their long vintage skirts with shawls and flowers in their hair. They would dance in the street of Katoomba, giggling at the attention they drew.
Something moved in the shadows of the laneway and he stopped. An impulse to run came to him, but he shook it off. Christ Aiden, he thought, you’re behaving like an old woman! Still he moved faster, trying to get past so he could continue on to the train station. There was another movement and ice broke out on the back of his neck. What the hell was it? Something was watching him. He was too afraid to stay there, but too afraid also to turn his back on the thing.
There was a crunch of leases, of twigs snapping. Those sounds, seemingly so ordinary, now took on an ominous connotation. For a shocking moment, he saw something standing there. A thing from a nightmare, from a myth. It was something that could not possibly be there. Taller than Aiden with yellow eyes and hair, its skin looked like brown leather. The clothing it wore was a sinister-looking leather outfit. Weapons were slung around its waist. The teeth of the thing — Aiden was convinced it was female — were jagged like a shark’s and red with blood and gore. She was feeding on a large dog, the size of a German shepherd. She held the dog effortlessly, its neck appeared to be broken. Looking up from feeding on the dog’s blood, she smiled at Aiden before resuming her noisy feast.
Aiden moved instinctively, walking past her quickly. He had seen her only for a second, but he told himself she couldn’t have been real. He had imagined her, or he had seen something perfectly ordinary and his mind had created this vision. But the thing, whatever she was, had seen him. Christ, she had smiled at him.
Aiden walked on, worrying about what her smile might have meant, when a bee flew near, and he swatted at it. All he needed now was to be stung by a bee. He had inherited his mother’s fear of them due to her allergy. His heart was pumping harder as his mind dwelt on the thing he thought he’d seen. He couldn’t accept he had seen some sort of monster feeding on a dog in the early dawn light. He had imagined the whole ghastly vision. The train was only a few short minutes away, and he quickened his pace, terrified he would miss it. The farther he put himself away from that ominous laneway, the happier he would be. He longed for the tomb-like warmth of the train, the gentle snores of the commuters.
Another bee. Now there were a few darting around him. Christ, was his deodorant attracting the bastards? He swatted at them again. Perhaps he had disturbed a hive. The bees appeared to be agitated. Then there were more bees flying around his face. The train station was so near. He tried to run through the bees now swarming in front of him. Then a sting so sharp, so painful it didn’t seem possible it could be made by a bee. In his mind again he saw the sharp fangs of the creature he had just passed. She saw me. She smiled at me. He screamed aloud in pain as he was stung again. The air seemed thick with bees. Where had they all come from? They all began to attack, darting in with burning hot stings. He dropped his portfolio as he tried to protect his eyes. Jesus Christ, the pain! It was impossible, As impossible as the thing he had just seen, it sounded as though the bees were singing to each other. He had to get to the train station, get help.
There was only a handful of early morning commuters at the small Leura railway station. They had been travelling together for years and an unspoken agreement existed between them where they acknowledged each other’s privacy at this early hour and greeted each other by nods, rather than by spirited conversation. Today, however, their normal compani
onable distance was interrupted by the sounds of someone screaming. They looked around and at each other, alarm and shock registering on their faces. Nobody could agree exactly on the next sequence of events that occurred, but the majority of commuters thought a large owl had swept across the railway track with a cry, nearly knocking a young woman over. Then a black thing had burst into view, screaming. It took a few moments for their minds to compute that this was a human being covered entirely in bees. The person seemed to jump into mid-air before landing on the ground. They began to shout and try to warn the person to get off the tracks, but the black bee-being writhed on the tracks, still screaming. Then, with its warning whistle, the train arrived.
The day was depressing, grey and overcast. A light shower of rain in the morning created a soporific rhythm on the roof as Theresa slept. She had been half dozing, half dreaming a jumble of images which had somehow made perfect sense. An old schoolfriend was helping her to fly a kite. They were running together, laughing as their small yellow kite tried to lift into the air. Then came a woman covered in bees, standing in the middle of the field with her arms upraised as bees swarmed around her. Ishran was also standing in the field watching the kite, and he was crying. The dream-Theresa was aware she had to be very careful how she spoke to him, that certain words contained a power and if she selected the right words, then she would control him. She could taste honey in the dream, and the taste was sweet.
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