by L J McIntyre
Maria: Yes, I was going to mention that.
Libby: The thing is, it’s difficult not to. Nesgrovians, as they like to call themselves, have suffered a lot over the years. And now they’re a forgotten population, a burden on the state. But make no mistake, what Nathan Lithglow did to those poor girls was appalling. The actions were his and the punishment was fitting, but sometimes the real evil is the invisible force holding all the strings.
Maria: And by that you mean?
Libby: Money. Government support. Support from the company who sucked the region dry and left the town to fester. The lack of these three things helped to contribute to the conditions that fed into the demon that lived inside Nathan Lithglow. As the town went through hardship after hardship, the mayor sank lower and lower, became less and less sociable, and before Lucy and Saga had arrived in Nesgrove, Nathan had already called a town meeting and had apologised to everyone. He said his time in charge had contributed to the town curse, not alleviated it.
Maria: A curse? Is this a metaphorical thing or do the Nesgrovians believe it?
Libby: You know, that’s a hard thing to figure out. They’ve been attributing any hardship or tragedy to the curse for over a century, so much so that the word is basically used daily for anything now. They say things like, “Damn that curse” when they can’t find their keys or purse. It’s like this idea of a curse is intrinsically linked to their identity, to the town’s identity. You can’t have Nesgrove without the curse. The two go hand in hand. But, having said that, some genuinely do believe in something supernatural, something evil which keeps the town from any sort of good fortune.
Maria: So what about the build up to the murders? You said the mayor called a town meeting.
Libby: Yes, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. He was the only butcher in town, but more and more frequently, his shop was closed and he couldn’t be found anywhere. This was going on for months. When asked about it, he apparently ignored the question or gave a gibberish response.
At one point, his shop was closed for days and he just vanished. This coincided with Your Coal’s announcement they’d be cutting half the workforce. I think it all became too much for the mayor. You see, the problem wasn’t that he was a cold-hearted psychopath. He simply cared too much, shouldered too much of the responsibility, and eventually it all became too much.
One day, some locals who were fishing found him by the lake. There’s an old cabin out there, really old, no one knows who built it—probably a prospector before the town was established—and Nathan was sitting in the middle of the room on a broken rocking chair, singing loudly. They could see him through the window, wailing a song the lyrics of which they couldn’t understand. The fishermen coaxed him out of there, virtually carried him back to their truck.
This was around the time the two girls met. Lucy and Saga were both backpacking around, both nineteen years old. Lucy was an English girl with an eye for design. She had a habit of doodling in a sketchbook she took everywhere. Saga was Swedish and didn’t really know what to do with her life. They met in Sydney by chance and decided to travel together.
After a few weeks they hitchhiked to Nesgrove. No one knows why they went there, but it’s thought they wanted to see more of rural New Zealand. At midday, they checked in at Your Motel, room 218. They left the room shortly after with a few belongings and made the long trek out of town to the nearby lake.
Around this time, Nathan Lithglow had been relieved of all of his duties as both the mayor and the town butcher. No one had made the official decision to relieve him. He just spent much of his time sitting on the steps of Tragedy House, repeating the sentence, “Where are you now?”
Maria: Can I interrupt a second? What is Tragedy House?
Libby: That’s a terrible story of murder all in itself.
Maria: Jesus, in a town so small. How is that possible?
Libby: Now you can see why some people believe in the curse. In the sixties, a man named Joseph Craven shot his wife and children after being made redundant by Your Coal. The phrase the mayor was saying is the same phrase Joseph repeated in the days up to his death. I personally believe it was a question aimed at Your Coal. Their slogan is “We’re here for you no matter what.”
Maria: So you think Joseph Craven after losing his job, and Nathan Lithglow after the latest round of lay-offs, were asking Your Coal, “Where are you now?”
Libby: Exactly.
Maria: What happened with the girls next?
Libby: Well, basically, the mayor was kind of ignored, left to sit at Tragedy House, or walk around mumbling to himself. Then he disappeared again but this time no one noticed. His wife was too drunk to care and the town was too worried about the new job losses.
No one knows exactly how long the mayor disappeared for. Maybe a few days. Maybe a week. But we’re fairly sure he sat in the cabin in the woods the entire time. There was a week’s worth of excrement on the floor around where he sat. We have no idea what he subsisted on.
Then one day he heard the angels. That’s what he said in one of his rare moments of lucidity. He was in the darkness for a long time, he said, with the demon and the curse, and he was sitting so still that his entire body burned and shook violently. If he moved, the demon would kill the entire town.
Maria: That’s what he told the police?
Libby: That’s what he told everyone, including the police. He was later diagnosed as schizophrenic, which probably doesn’t come as a surprise. When he heard the angels laughing and talking, he said he knew he was now free, that they had liberated him from the darkness, somehow. The demon told him that if he wanted the town to thrive again, for his family and friends to be healthy and happy, he’d have to keep the angels here. He was told by the demon that sacrificing these angels would placate the demon’s thirst for destruction.
The girls had stumbled upon the cabin by chance, we’re assuming. What happens next is not entirely certain. Nathan never spoke of how he killed those girls, although we now know they died from blunt force trauma to the head. We’re assuming he used a rock, but no murder weapon was found. We know, because of the amount of blood outside, they were killed in the garden, rather than inside the cabin. He buried them in shallow graves by the side of the lake.
Maria: How did everyone learn of the murders?
It was Nathan Lithglow who alerted the town to what he’d done. No one noticed that the girls had not returned to town that night, but Nathan, to the surprise of everyone, called a town meeting the next day. Packed into the school hall, much of the town listened to a rambling sermon by the mayor in which he claimed to have saved the town, lifted the curse. He told everyone quite clearly that he was not alone in defeating the curse, that two angels by the lake had surrendered their souls for the good of Nesgrove. Most took it as another delusion. But my husband and the now current mayor, Ben Pearson, went to the lake.
They knew Nathan had previously been found by the cabin so that’s where they went first. They became concerned at the sight of blood in the garden and followed the trail of blood and flattened plants to the two shallow graves. They dug up the bodies of those poor girls, of Lucy Stelton and Saga Andersson, and alerted the police.
Maria: Did Nathan Lithglow take anything from the girls?
Libby: Just one thing. They found it in the cabin. It was Lucy’s blood soaked sketchbook. It was open to a page with a beautifully detailed drawing of a triangle, in the middle of which was an open hand. Lucy had scribbled a note saying that the open hand symbolised forgiveness, a way of saying I have nothing more to hide. She’d drawn it for her brother who she’d fallen out with before she went travelling. At the bottom of the page it simply said, “Forgive me.”
Maria: Wow, okay, give me a second…those poor girls, and their families.
Libby: It’s truly awful. And deep down, Nathan knew it was awful, too. He killed himself while in custody. The town struggled to recover from the murders, and many would say it never did. In fact, Your Coa
l, just a year or so later, ceased all operations in Nesgrove, up and left the factory, left everything.
It wasn’t long before the drug dealers from Christchurch were fighting each other for the territory, and supplying the youth of Nesgrove with drugs that were hard to say no to.
Maria: And today, with all that’s happened in the town, do you think we’ll see something similar? Another murder?
Libby: It’s not really my place to say, but the town is pretty much in a state of learned helplessness. We go there every now and then so my husband can visit family. People seem to have given up. They’ve let the curse win, as they say. But what else can they do?
Maria: What about leaving the town, like your husband did?
Libby: I’ve asked myself that same question. But these people only know life in their little town. They don’t have the skills or experience to thrive elsewhere. And one thing I notice every time I’m there is that, although they no longer believe help from the government—or from whoever else—is coming, they still have a lot of faith in their sense of community and will do almost anything to support their neighbours. They’d give you the shirt off their backs if they could. I think, as long as they have that attitude toward each other, then they’ll continue to survive.
Chapter Forty Seven
“Jesus wept, that was depressing. I mean, you have to admit: this town has had it rough, rough as a badger’s backside,” says Annie as she stretches her arms out in front of her.
I stand up, walk to the window, spy the empty town before turning to Annie. “At least we know where that symbol came from. I wonder if it’s the town’s way of asking for forgiveness for what they’ve done. Or worse, for what they’re going to do.”
“Yeah, case closed,” she says sarcastically. “It was kind of spooky listening to that, knowing Libby’s dead, and probably killed by a Nesgrovian.”
I walk over to the desk, sink into the hard chair. “There’s just one thing that bugs me most about all of this. Why me? Why are they convinced that I have something that can help them?”
“Maybe it isn’t what you have but what they can use against you.”
“Exactly. Gerald said they attacked me online for leverage. You couldn’t do something like that as easily to a typical office worker, or whatever. Ruining someone’s reputation online is piss easy. Stealing my car is also easy. And they had the comfort of knowing that I was foreign here so probably didn’t know anyone nearby who would come pick me up when my car was stolen.
“All of these things lead to greater leverage. But why do they need leverage anyway? Why do I have to go to the cabin of my own free will? Or is that what happens at midnight if I choose not to play their game? They drag me there kicking and screaming. You know what, forget those questions. Going back to the point of why they chose me. There’s something missing from my theory.”
While I was talking, Annie had gotten to her feet and taken a bar of chocolate from the plastic bag. She peels it open and starts munching. “What do you mean?” she asks with a full mouth.
“We’re not the first two people to have been taken by the town, remember. Apart from the backpacker girls, there were two missing guys from Christchurch recently. Why were they chosen?”
“Maybe there’s something else you three have in common.”
“Right. And I’m going find out what that is.”
“How?” she chokes and half spits out some chocolate in a coughing fit. “Sorry.” she wipes her chin, brushes her hair from her face, and looks as lovely and endearing as she has at any point since we met.
I watch her as she wipes off the last of the chocolate. I try to listen to myself, my gut instinct. Is she a Negrovian? My gut says no.
“I found one of the missing guys on Facebook,” I say. “I looked up the numbers of some of his friends. I only found one, but it might be enough.”
I pull my phone out and bring up Leanne Panucci’s phone number, press dial. The phone starts ringing and I realise I have no idea what to say.
A woman with a rattling voice answers, “This better not be a sales call.”
“Hi, is this Leanne Panucci?”
“Are you fucking deaf? I’m not interested.”
“This isn’t a sales call.”
“What is it, then?”
“I’m a journalist, and I’m calling about the disappearance of Reece Morton. I understand you knew him.”
“Which fucker gave you my number?”
“No one. I got it from the phonebook.”
“Whatever, mate. Just piss off. I’m not interested.”
The phone goes dead.
“Any luck?” asks Annie.
“She was an absolute delight. I couldn’t find the other girl’s number, Lotte Tomlinson.”
“Charlotte.”
“What?”
“Lotte: it’s short for Charlotte.”
“Annie, you’re a genius.”
I pull up the online phone directory and search for ‘Charlotte Tomlinson’. One match. I dial the number and the phone rings.
“Hello?” comes a softer voice than before.
“Hi, is this Lotte Tomlinson?”
“This is she. Who’s calling?”
“My name is Jack Coulson. I’m a journalist calling in connection with the disappearance of Reece Morton.”
“Yeah?”
“I was under the impression you knew him.”
“You could say that. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know who he was.”
“I know you’re not supposed to badmouth the dead, but he was a piece of shit.”
“In what way was he a piece of shit?”
“Listen, I don’t have too much time, and I shouldn’t really be talking to you.”
“Why not?”
“Reece isn’t someone you talk to the press about, or the police.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“Is any of this going to be published?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, can you make me anonymous?”
“Of course I can.”
“Okay, in that case, he was a drug dealer. A piece of shit drug dealer. And a thug. The stuff they were saying in the media about him being a loving guy—It was bollocks. He was a nasty piece of work.”
“What about the other guy, Jonathan Leyton?”
“I didn’t know him but he was a dealer, too.”
“A friend of Reece?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know much about Leyton. My neighbourhood wasn’t exactly his territory.”
“But it was Reece’s?”
“Yeah, it was. I’ve really got to go now. Which newspaper are you working for?”
I hang the phone up.
“Sounded better than the first call,” Annie says as she sits on the desk next to me.
“They were both drug dealers, the missing guys.”
“Pricks. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise us, though. Someone’s got to be supplying the town with drugs.”
“Yeah, but I’m no further forward. I still don’t understand what I’ve got in common with Morton and Leyton.”
I stand up from the chair, walk over to the bed and flop face down onto the mattress.
“You should eat something,” Annie says.
I roll over onto my back. “I know I should but I’m not hungry.”
Annie lies next to me on the bed, on her side, leaning on her elbow. “How long have we got before we need to leave?”
“A few hours.”
She kisses my cheek.
“What was that for?”
“I don’t know.” She smiles. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Kind of sceptical.”
“This is the face I always pull when a girl kisses me.”
She laughs and kisses my cheek again, puts her arm across my chest.
“I can’t believe we can laugh and joke in a sit
uation like this,” I say. “With me being a stress head, I’m surprised I haven’t had a two-day long panic attack.”
The truth of that sentence, just as I say it, resonates. Why aren’t I stressing out? Why am I not chewing my fingernails down to the bone, staring out the window?
I mean, years ago when I was expecting my university results to arrive at my mother’s house, I sat at the window of the living room for two days, waiting for the mailman, imagining worst case scenarios, stress oozing out of my eyeballs.
Surely, then, as the clock counts down and we near the final escape—or the Rebirthing—I should be terrified. But the truth is, I’m not anymore. I feel grounded. I feel ready. Maybe this is what happens when something worth worrying about is actually taking place. Something real and genuinely dangerous, rather than the fictional scenarios my mind usually churns out.
You often hear that drivers involved in accidents experience time slowing down and a kind of mental clarity. Is that what is happening here? Am I having a near-death experience?
I look at Annie. She smiles at me again, nuzzles her nose into my neck, tucks her leg over mine as if we were an established couple.
“I don’t want this to end,” She whispers. “I just want to lie here forever.”
“Me too.”
I think back to a couple of years ago when I was drenched in almost absolute darkness while shooting in the Atacama desert in Chile. It was 2:00 am and cold, but I wasn’t remotely tired and the temperature was a distant thought.
The night sky was infinite, the flickering stars mesmerising, and a physicist was speaking to a group of us about black holes and event horizons. Beyond the event horizon, he explained, is the point at which nothing can escape from the clutches of a black hole. And since nothing can escape, not even light, it is impossible to see inside the black hole from the event horizon, or from anywhere else outside the black hole.
Thousands of miles from Chile, on a motel bed in New Zealand, entwined in a stranger, the words of that physicist seem clearer now than back then. Nesgrove isn’t a pitcher plant. It’s a black hole, at the centre of which is a cabin built by a prospector who saw something, probably hidden wealth, in this mountainous region well over a century ago. And right now, not because of proximity, but because of time, I’m at the event horizon. I can feel the pull of Nesgrove, the forces dragging me to it, but I can’t see inside, its intentions, it’s workings and motivations.
