by Jack Dann
It would do. She felt a pang of guilt as she strode toward the exit, but pushed it aside. The umbrella was going to waste here in the dusty, hidden rooms of the station. She was giving it a new home. A good home.
To her surprise, when she stepped outside the building, it was raining. With a smile of happy satisfaction, she opened the umbrella and let the last of the dust wash away.
On the television screen, images came and went as relentlessly as the rain outside. Trinity sighed. Why was drought always followed by flood? Why did too much have to come on the heels of too little?
It had been raining so long now it seemed that it had always been raining. But she knew that wasn’t true. Thinking back, she sought her last memory of the sun shining, then laughed at the irony. It had been the day she’d replaced her umbrella.
Trinity looked out at her garden and frowned. Where it had once been dry and withering, now her rejuvenated plants sagged in soft, unsupportive soil and the grass had turned to mud. She hadn’t had to carry buckets of water out from the house for weeks. Instead, she’d had to pot up a few of her more fragile plants and place them in sheltered positions.
Unfortunately the rain was not filling the dams or reservoirs. It was strangely local, falling mainly on her side of the city. The only time it had fallen elsewhere had been the day she had visited her mother. Of course, it had rained not just on that day, and not just at her mother’s house, but all the way to her mother’s house, making the drive unpleasant and a little hair-raising. Her mother had accused Trinity of bringing the rain with her.
A map now appeared on the television as the weather report continued. She sighed again as she saw the single patch of blue over her suburb.
‘These are freak weather conditions,’ the charming young weatherman said. ‘The cloud cover remained in place all night, despite a change of wind direction. In the last few days it moved toward the city during the day, then back to the east. All this time it has been growing smaller, but conditions within the rain storm are increasing in strength rather than weakening. The Bureau of Meteorology has never recorded a phenomenon like this before. They have issued a warning of a possible mini-tornado and advise residents to secure all loose items and to remain inside …’
A chill ran down Trinity’s spine. Into the city and back again. Like it was following her. ‘You’ve brought the rain with you.’
Shaking her head, she turned the television off and picked up her car keys. She pictured herself trying to explain to her boss why she hadn’t come to work. ‘The Bureau of Meteorology said I should stay home and secure all loose items.’ At least it was better than ‘There’s a freak storm following me around.’ She took a step toward the door then, hearing a squelching noise, looked down.
A slowly growing dark patch was spreading over the carpet.
‘No!’ she gasped. The flood of water was coming in under the front door. Rushing to the entrance, she opened the door and stared down at a large pool of water lapping at her front step. It spread from her door out to cover half her front garden and driveway. As more water spilled into the house she snapped out of her shock.
She needed something to block it. Sandbags. They always use sandbags during floods. Grabbing a coat from her hat rack, and some plastic garbage bags, she hurried out the back door to the gardening shed, soaking her shoes and stockings as she discovered more puddles. The sands she used for potting mixes would have to do. She filled the bases of the bags, rushed back to the house and patted them into place around the door.
It was hard to tell if it was working. And the sodden patch of carpet had grown much larger. Not large enough, she decided, to justify calling the State Emergency Service. They were, no doubt, occupied with fallen trees and power lines — much more important hazards than a little wet carpet. Sighing, she picked up the phone book and found the number for her insurance company.
After twenty minutes on hold, she took out her mobile phone and called the office to warn them she was going to be late. Then she returned to listening to the recorded message of the insurance company’s line, slowly grinding her teeth in frustration.
‘Hellohowcanlhelpyou?’ a voice finally said.
‘My house is flooding,’ she began. ‘The rain won’t stop and —’
‘Oooh! Do you live in that street where the freak storm is?’
Trinity opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out. Her whole body was suddenly cold. Her heart raced with a superstitious fear. To her horror and surprise, she realised she was about to burst into tears.
‘Hello?’
She hung up. Taking deep, calming breaths, she looked around. Somehow rain was pounding against the windows on both sides of the house, despite the shelter of the eaves. The woman’s words ‘… that street where the freak storm is?’ repeated in her mind. That street. Her street. Was the storm that small and concentrated now? Why was it concentrated on her house?
Suddenly she badly wanted to get out of the house. She fought back panic and made herself look at the patch of wet carpet realistically. It didn’t appear to be growing. And it wouldn’t, if she left the house and the storm followed. She needed to call the insurance company back, but she could do that from work or from her mobile phone.
Let’s test this theory that the storm is following me.
As she stepped outside, the rain began to pound with fresh intensity. Opening her umbrella, she splashed to the car, unlocked it as quickly as she could and ducked inside. The umbrella did her little good. The rain seemed to be falling sideways. Looking down at the bloated splodges of water on her good jacket, she groaned. Once she got to work she would have to delay starting on her duties even longer drying her clothes under the hand-dryer in the women’s toilet.
Starting her car, she turned on the wipers. Rain pounded the windscreen so hard, there was only a blink of time in which to see the world beyond. Carefully, she backed out into the street.
She turned onto the main road. Between the snap of the wipers she was relieved to see the road was empty of cars. The gutters were overflowing, so she stuck to the centre lane. Ahead she sensed as much as saw the curve of the rail bridge.
Then her car abruptly slowed, suddenly straining as if something grabbed at the wheels. She yelped as water sprayed up around both sides of her car and surged over the bonnet. Then she cursed as she remembered that the road dipped as it went under the bridge. A puddle always formed when it rained. Between sweeps of the wiper blades she could see that the puddle was more the size of a large pond.
The car began to bob like a boat as it half-floated in the water. Cold enveloped her toes. She looked down and cursed again as she saw that water was pooling around her feet. As it deepened she felt the car sink, its tyres scraping the bottom of the pond. Peering through the side window, her heart skipped a beat. The surface of the pond lapped at the car just below the windows.
This puddle was also a lot deeper than the usual one.
As the water inside the car rose toward her knees she grabbed the door handle, then paused. Opening the door would only let in water faster. The level outside was still below the window. She took hold of the winder and began to turn it. When it would no longer wind any further, she grasped the edges of the window and pushed herself up and out.
It was not easy, and at the last moment she lost her grip and tumbled out into the pond. Yet as water closed over her head she felt panic subsiding. She was not afraid of drowning, only of being trapped in her car. Getting her feet under herself, she stood up.
The pond came to her waist. She was soaked from head to toe. But, looking around, she saw that nobody was nearby to see.
The water in her car was brimming over the seats. She reached inside and grabbed her belongings. Wading out of the water, she turned to look back at her car. Rain stung her face. She turned away, but it continued to drive into her eyes.
Slowly she turned around. Felt her stomach turn over. The rain was driving toward her from every direction.
She was in the centre of the storm.
She was the centre of the storm.
The world seemed to shift. Suddenly it was a place where the impossible — the ridiculous — could happen.
But if it’s true, and the storm is following me … what caused it to? When did this start.
She looked down at the umbrella in her hand.
‘No,’ she heard herself say. ‘It can’t be. That’s crazy!’
A white flash dazzled her eyes, then a second later the air, water and ground vibrated with the deafening boom of thunder.
Abandoning her car, Trinity ran for the train station.
Her shoes left wet footprints on the grey linoleum floor of the corridor. The soles squeaked as she walked, the noise humiliating, but not as much as she imagined the next few minutes would be.
The Lost Property Room door opened at her knock. The tall old man looked her up and down, taking in her still-dripping clothes and matted hair, then smiled.
‘Come in.’
She followed him to the desk. Placed the umbrella on a clear section of the glass top.
‘I’m giving this back,’ she told him. ‘It isn’t mine.’
His smile disappeared, but it appeared to take an effort. ‘No?’
‘No. I … ignored your warning. Mine wasn’t here and this was all dusty. It… well… it seemed like it, er, needed a new home.’
The old man nodded. ‘And it proved to be an ungrateful house guest.’
She stared at him, reluctant to give voice to the crazy conclusion she had come to. But nobody else was ever going to believe her. Nobody except, perhaps, this old man. She was never going to mention it to anyone … but it was a secret that might just drive her crazy if nobody else ever acknowledged it.
‘Am I mad?’ she asked, ‘or did this create the storm that seemed to … that followed me around for the last few weeks?’
He smiled. ‘You’re not crazy.’
She looked down at the umbrella, drew in a deep breath, and sighed. ‘Rain. We needed the rain. But not where it fell.’
‘Would you be willing to take it where it would do some good?’
She looked up at him. Fear warred with something else. Something that tugged at her, promising glory and satisfaction. Could she end the drought?
Thunder boomed outside. The glass in the windows rattled. A warning.
Slowly she shook her head. ‘Yes, but I think it’s gone too far for that. I don’t think I’d make it to anywhere the rain would do good.’ Picking up the umbrella, she turned away and walked to the wooden door. The old man said nothing as she twisted the handle, opened the door and stepped into the room beyond.
It was pitch black inside. She groped her way forward, wondering how she would tell when she had reached the aisle the umbrellas were stored in. After passing several shelves, she paused to reach up and feel for the letters.
The room flickered into existence around her. Looking back, she saw the old man standing by the door, one hand over a light switch. He smiled crookedly, then disappeared back into his office.
Striding down the room, Trinity found the right shelves and moved to where the umbrellas were stacked. Taking out a few tissues, she wiped the duck-handled umbrella dry, buttoned it closed and placed it among the other collapsible models.
Turning away, she made her way back to the door
Back on the train, she took out her knitting and began work on the cuff of a sock.
If only she’d grasped the magical qualities of the umbrella sooner, she could have taken a trip out to a dam or two, or toured the places where crops were failing and livestock starving.
But then it wouldn’t have been a punishment for her theft. And then she realised something else: her ruined carpet and car were not the penalty. Knowing she’d missed such a great opportunity was.
As the carriage turned to cross a bridge she looked out of the window. A bank of clouds stretched over the city, spreading as far as she could see. Sheets of rain fell like lazy grey curtains. Despite herself, she felt her heart lift with hope.
‘Now that,’ she whispered to herself, ‘is more like it.’
AFTERWORD
‘The Lost Property Room’ was inspired by the experience of a friend, years ago, who lost an umbrella on a train and discovered there was a lost property room at Flinders Street Station, full of an amazing range of mislaid items. She didn’t find her umbrella, but the person in charge said she could just take any umbrella she wanted, so she took one with a carved handle in the shape of a duck’s head. I loved the idea of this room, full of lost treasures, and of people seeking something they’d lost but coming away with something different. I wonder if it still exists.
— Trudi Canavan
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HEERE BE MONSTERS
JOHN BIRMINGHAM
Bestselling author JOHN BIRMINGHAM is extremely versatile, as adept at writing speculative fiction, fantasy, and bestselling thrillers as he is at writing mainstream history, sport, crime, gonzo journalism, and humour. His first book — He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, which he calls ‘the Chernobyl of share house literature’ — became a comedy bestseller and a youth cult classic, and was later turned into a play (the longest running stage play in Australian history), a film, and a graphic novel. He won the National Award for Nonfiction in 2002 for Leviathan, his biography of Sydney. His other books include The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco (the bestseller sequel to He Died with a Felafel in His Hand], A Felafel Guide to Sex and The Felafel Guide to Getting Wasted, How to be a Man, Dopeland: Taking the High Road Through Australia’s Marijuana Culture, and Off One’s Tits: Ill-considered Rants and Raves from a Graceless Oaf Named John Birmingham. He is also the author of the crime novel The Search for Savage Henry end the Axis of Time trilogy, which includes the novels Weapons of Choice, Designated Targets, and Final Impact.
Birmingham writes that he was distracted by the first incarnation of Dreaming Down-Under, inhaling it in one big gulp when he should have been earning his keep elsewhere. That distraction was a left-handed gift, though, encouraging him to switch genres to alternative history/technothriller with Weapons of Choice.
He says that his story in this collection, ‘Heere Be Monsters’, pays off that karmic debt.
(Extracted from the address of Lieutenant-General Sir Watkin Tench to members of the Royal Society, in London, on 25 January 1808, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the discovery of the Scourge.)
You will forgive me, gentlemen, if I do not dwell on the preliminaries of the matter which has these recent years inflamed the fearful wondering of every soul extant upon God’s earth, be they monarch, basest commoner, republican or Bantu savage. My colleagues Surgeon White and Admiral Hunter have both enjoyed considerable success with their journals of the voyage from the Mother Bank to the forbidden seas. The publication of our late Governor’s notes as an addendum to their work provides an immoderate weight of material preceding the events at Port Jackson for those inclined to so immerse themselves.
If I might begin with the ordinary, as a solid footing for the extraordinary which quickly follows it, we had famously anchored for a number of days at Botany Bay and found it unacceptable as home for the new colony. The waters were very open and greatly exposed to the fury of the southeast winds, which when they blew, caused a heavy and dangerous swell. At a distance of a league from the mouth of the bay was a bar, on which at low water not more than fifteen feet were to be found. Within this bar, and proceeding for many miles along the southwest arm of the bay, was a haven in which any number of ships of the line might permanently shelter, were it not for lack of fresh water, a thirst unrelieved by any source within the bay as we first found it.
I emphasise that point. As we first found it.
The Governor, having despatched a small party north to examine the inlet noted by Mr Cook, and having had reports of a commodious and well-watered anchorage, resolved to remove the camp from its original situation to one more calculated to inspire conf
idence in our survival. A grim irony, that, you’ll warrant now.
Our passage took up a mere few hours, but in that time we did not simply move from the rather exposed and unsuitable anchorage at Botany Bay into the deeper harbour of Port Jackson. We rather travelled from a position of pleasant anticipation and general relief at the termination of our long voyage, into a hell of unimaginable contour and unfathomable depth.
As best all who lived can tell, it was the white squall which marked the crossing of the line from an ordered world, where God’s design is apparent to all who look, into the darker Inexplicable where we now dwell. The Fleet was proceeding in fair order, as we had done for nigh on two hundred and fifty days. HMS Supply had the vanguard, and in her sailed Governor Phillip. The fastest of the convict transports — Scarborough, Friendship and Alexander — were not embarrassed in their efforts to keep station, a claim my own tub, the Charlotte, could not dare make without gross outrage to truth and modesty. We wallowed some distance behind the leaders, penned in on all sides by the remaining hulks and store ships, shepherded on our way by brave little Sirius.
There was no warning of the tempest. You will have heard seafarers make claim of wild storms blown up without caution, when what they truly mean is that whatever warnings they did enjoy were rather short and the transition from tranquillity to the devil’s own maelstrom was effected without delay, a matter of some minutes, perhaps.
As an officer of His Majesty’s Royal Marines, I too have had my fill of storms at sea and would not confute any mariner a small measure of exaggeration in such things. They have earned the right. In doing so, however, such tales rob my own of the immediacy and hazard I must now impress upon you.
At one heartbeat I stood on deck, adjacent to the barricado, our final defence against any uprising from below. The waters were gentle, and slipped by our flanks with a slight hiss and the occasional plop of wavelet against wood. The moon’s reflection was a silver sword upon the deep and I was chatting pleasantly with my friend Surgeon White, enjoying the hard brilliance of the increasingly familiar southern stars in the night sky, as we recalled our damnable luck in the affairs and intrigues of Iamour with the ladies of St Sebastian. We had both arrived in that port aflame with the reports of Dr Solander, who had written of Portuguese beauties throwing nosegays at strangers for the purpose of bringing on an assignation. White and myself, not an entirely unhandsome pair I’m sure you’ll agree, were so deplorably unfortunate as to walk every evening before their windows and balconies without once being honoured by a single bouquet, even though nymphs and flowers were in equal and great abundance.