The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 (volume 1)

by Paul Haines

  Angela Rega

  So Nonna Elba gets the shits big time and cracks a silent but deadly one at the kitchen table. She says that’s it—if my sister Lilli and I are going to insist on eating all this rubbish and nothing else—then she’s going to rip out the old slow cooking combustion stove in our kitchen and buy a new electric cooker.

  “What do I need a stove that you need to still bloody chop wood for when you can just turn a switch on?” She says blowing minty smoke into our faces. “I spend hours preparing something good to eat and you come home and tell me you’ve eaten pizza that looks like it has been deep fried in fat that’s three days old.”

  I eye the table and notice that she’s been reading the White Goods junk mail. It’s so thick; there’s ten new cigarette stubs in the ashtray. She’s on the page that says that all installations come with a free scratch lottery ticket. I suppose this is what happens when your Grandma trades in reading grimoires for junk mail catalogues. She’s become quite hooked on the stuff. Nonna Elba reckons that reading junk mail makes her feel less guilty about smoking. She’s reading so much junk mail, she’s chaining a pack and a half of Alpines each day.

  “Eden,” she says to me. “What do we need this old slow cooking stove when you don’t eat my home made pizza dough anymore? Eh? I might as well buy an electric cooker. No chopping wood, just turn on a switch and hey, presto!”

  I suppose Nonna Elba has a point. I look over at the old combustion stove. It has sat in the right hand corner of Nonna’s kitchen from the first day she arrived here from Sicily in 1966. She carted the thing all the way over on one of the last ships to sail through the Suez Canal: they wanted to buy it off me, she always says to us when she’s had too much to drink. Could have swapped it for a camel and two sheep and some apple tobacco. But I said no. I love this thing.

  The slow cooker sits in that corner of the kitchen, a heap of dirty beige enamel with all the green knobs worn from use. It has a temperamental water boiler, crumbling fire bricks and a plate warming section that Nonna swears works better than any microwave the neighbours have.

  How could she be ready to part with it?

  “And another thing, you two,” she says taking a slurp of her cold espresso. “I’m getting old, you know, how are you going to live when I’m gone? You’ve got the gifts and you’re not developing them. This is your heritage! Don’t cry to me if you don’t pass your Clairvoyant test in two weeks time. Donna Lola is coming all the way from my Solichiatta near Etna to conduct your exams and she’ll be jet lagged and very cranky if it is obvious you haven’t prepared properly!”

  I roll my eyes and pour a packet of pop rocks into my mouth.

  Nonna Elba slams her coffee cup down on the table, spilling espresso on the glossy white goods brochure. “You eat that shit all the time; it’s going to make you sick. Don’t tell me if you get sick, okay? I can predict the future, remember? You keep eating that shit and not practicing your magic you’re both going to end up married to guys like those two fat slobs down the street and working at McDonalds for the rest of your life.”

  There’s a knock at the door.

  “Who is it, Nonna?” I ask her. I hate it when she tells me my future.

  “How the hell should I know?” She says exhaling a smoke ring.

  Nonna points to the door and I point at Lilli. My sister goes to answer the door and returns with a parcel wrapped in an Ezy Buy Catalogue.

  “Ah hah! Just what I’ve been waiting for!” Nonna Elba puts out the cigarette stub in the ashtray, pulls a cigarette out of the nearly empty packet and lights up. Cigarette in mouth, she rips open the parcel. “A toilet paper holder and magazine stand in one! Perfect for bathroom reading! And a toilet brush holder in the shape of a toilet!”

  Lilli and I laugh, and I regurgitate some of the Pop Rocks onto the plastic tablecloth. Nonna Elba eyeballs her and Lilli grabs me a napkin to clean it up.

  “We’ll buy the stove this afternoon.” Nonna Elba coughs up a half her breakfast and swallows it down again. “I really have to give up smoking. And you, Eden, you’re growing a donut ring around your waist!”

  * * *

  The White Goods Warehouse is a sparse factory outlet with exposed pink bats hanging from the ceiling. Nonna’s managed to get a $150 discount on the electric stove we’ve chosen because she made a scratch with a paper clip on one of the hotplates when no one was looking.

  She grabs an acne ridden teenage guy with a name badge that states, ‘Customer Service is my Specialty’ and says, “So, with this free installation and scratchie, what time will you come?”

  The guy clears his throat. “Well . . . we can’t give you an exact time, Madam. It will be anytime on Friday between 7 am and 5 pm. Would you like your free scratchie you get with your free installation now?”

  Nonna turns her back to him, bends over and lets out a huge fart. Lilli and I try to stifle our giggles. Nonna always tells us that sometimes the best magic is the magic you blow out of your arse.

  “I’ll take the booklet of ten you’ve got there, young man,” Nonna says pulling the tickets out of his pocket. “Give me something to do while I’m waiting around at home instead of scratching my arse.”

  The stove arrives wrapped in really cool bubble wrap. Lilli and I spend an entire afternoon popping the bubbles. Nonna screams twice that we are supposed to be practising our summoning and banishing spells as that’s 55 percent of the exam and twice we tell that we’ll do it later. Popping plastic bubble wrap has to be the most satisfying way to procrastinate.

  “Eden! Lilli! If I hear another plastic bubble pop—I’ll pop your heads! Now try and move the slow cooker to make way for the new electric.” Nonna means business.

  It’s really weird but when I look over at our old stove, it’s like the poor thing knows its days are numbered and it seems sad. Maxi, our cat, has been sleeping wrapped around one of the legs all afternoon.

  We squat on either side of the old cooker and give it a heave but it does not budge. Maxi hisses at us and skulks away, pissed off that we have disturbed him.

  “It’s too heavy! You’ll have to wait for the installation guys to come!” We both scream out to Nonna.

  “I won’t hold my bloody breath!” She yells back at us. The toilet flushes and her footsteps get closer to the kitchen; we run away from the bubble wrap.

  “And, what did I say to you?” She says biting the side of her hand at us.

  “Summoning Practice?” I say.

  “Don’t forget to do it or else you are going to lose your skills! I’ve ruined you two!” She shoots the Medusa look at us and we both cross our hearts. She stays staring at us until I walk over to the drawer where the Summoning and Banishing Spells book is, pull it out it and drop it onto the kitchen table. We open it to Nonna’s notes on page one and I read aloud to Lilli.

  The first rule is: Practice Every Day.

  Avoiding Practice in the developing years can be detrimental to the teenage witch’s progress. From the ages of thirteen to sixteen, girls are prone to summon demons instead of elementals and elementals instead of the dead. This can prove disastrous for those working in the area of séance and channelling. Add the fact that due to migration, dissociated from their lands and beliefs, the arts of clairvoyancy are a part of our Sicilian culture that is rapidly disappearing. Practice must be maintained as must be the ability to banish the unwanted summoned—

  “I’m hungry,” Lilli interrupts.

  I smile. Sometimes being a twin means you don’t have to explain to the other what you are thinking. We hear Days of Our Lives on the television, Nonna’s favourite soap and sneak out the back door, creeping down the drive until we reach the footpath and walk down to Pizza Hut on the Princess Highway. The vouchers we use are for a free soft serve ice cream with every Cabanossi Lovers Pizza.

  When we get back home, Nonna hasn’t bothered to cook anything for dinner and sits with a hunk of cheese, some green olives and a glass of wine for her dinner. She doesn’t say a
nything about our little escapade either. We put the left over pizza in the fridge.

  Reprieve.

  * * *

  The noise starts at 2.23 a.m. Lilli and I both almost jump out of our bunk beds at the clanging in the kitchen. Someone was banging a fry pan in the kitchen with a wooden spoon to a 4/4 rhythm.

  “What the hell is that?” Lilli whispers to me.

  “How the hell should I know? Ask Nonna, she’s the psychic!”

  “Maybe Maxi is chasing a mouse in the kitchen.”

  “Yeah to a marching beat! I left him outside tonight.”

  We link arms and I grab the hairspray from the dresser—it would make a good weapon if it is a burglar in the house. We tiptoe in the dark, down the corridor, until we reach the kitchen and switch on the light. Fry pans, saucepans, baking dishes, all of them lie strewn on the floor. On the kitchen table, written in salt are the words: SLOW COOKIN.

  “Lilli!” I whisper and pinch my sister hard on the arm. “Have you been practising summoning without using the book? You know that is really, really stupid.”

  “I haven’t been doing any summoning practice!”

  “Me neither. I’ve been so slack that Nonna told me she’s going to give up on me soon and I can go and work at McDonald’s instead of the clairvoyant arts when I leave school!” She pinches my arm right back and I let go of hers.

  “Well, there is definitely something that’s been summoned here—something that doesn’t like the idea of our new stove!”

  I turn my head to look at the electric cooker, wrapped in half popped bubble wrap, it now lay on the floor, horizontal and smeared in the left over Cabanossi Lovers pizzas we had left in the fridge. “Well, let’s clean this mess up and try not to wake Nonna. She’s going to go off at us about our summoning practice again. She’s going to say we’ve brought this on.”

  Nonna Elba’s snoring could be heard from the kitchen.

  “I can’t believe she has managed to sleep through that racket,” Lilli says.

  “I can,” I say, waving an empty bottle of Jameson’s whiskey in her face.

  We both jump at the sound of scratching at the back door. Lilli and I creep over towards the sound. Me, with the empty whiskey bottle in hand and Lilli with the can of hairspray, maybe whatever it was, was out near the laundry. We both exhale in relief. It’s Maxi, wanting to be let in. The poor cat meows in surprise at all the loving attention, flicks his tail at us and runs down the corridor straight to Nonna Elba’s room.

  “Well, I think we both better get back to our books and work out what the hell was in our kitchen tonight before Nonna finds out!” I say to Lilli, licking the rim of the whiskey bottle.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Lilli answers.

  “Okay, let’s just have a bit more of that leftover KFC in the fridge, all we had was that Pizza Hut for dinner.”

  “That KFC is three days old,” Lilli grimaces but she’s already opening the fridge. “Whatever or whoever it is has covered our KFC with chook feathers and chicken feet.”

  I snatch the plate from Lilli’s hands and throw the chicken bits, feathers, feet and plate into the bin. “Eehhew! That’s gross! We should clean this up now, Nonna Elba’s going to lose it if she sees all this mess in the kitchen tomorrow morning.”

  Lilli nods her head and walks towards the sink to grab the sponge. Nonna was going to have something to say about the fact that we had been avoiding Summoning and Banishing for the last three days. We would have a better chance to escape her wrath if we at least cleared the evidence of kitchen poltergeist activity before the morning.

  It was too late. We could hear her already shuffling down the corridor in her fluffy slippers.

  “Right! What’s going on?” She says, hands on hips. She walks over the table, looks at the words SLOW COOKIN written in salt, dips her finger in it, tastes it and smacks her lips.

  “You’ve bloody summoned a Mumacca! What did I say to you girls about summoning the elementals without consulting the right books—eh? I told you, you need to practice every day, you need to say the exact words in the book or else the wrong creatures can come. Ones you don’t want around!”

  “We were in bed! We didn’t do any summoning—” I said.

  “Exactly my point!” Nonna Elba banged on the table for maximum effect. “You haven’t been doing any summoning or banishing spells lately. All the certified documents from the Etna Inherited Magic Board I had to organise in order for your school to approve your study leave and you have both done nothing!”

  “But we’ve still got a week and half,” I answered.

  “I don’t want to hear it! You and your sister—no summoning and banishing, no practice and no proper home cooking. You’re going to lose our old magic and I’m not getting any younger and you both are making me lose it! What will you do when I’m gone? I think I’ve over-compensated for you two losing your mother. I’ve ruined you!”

  “Well, Nonna. What about you reading all the junk mail? You’re the one that got us hooked on the junk mail with the fast food in it.”

  “I’m an old lady and can do what I bloody well like! Why should I read the grimoires when I know them by heart?”

  Something clanged inside the wall behind the cupboards.

  “Well girls, he or she or it is not gone.” Nonna Elba walked over to the drawer and pulled out the Summoning and Banishing Spells book; it was as thick as a telephone directory. She threw it at us. Lilli ducked just in time and it landed with a thud on the table.

  “It’s just like the yellow pages,” Nonna says lighting up a cigarette. “I could have bashed you with it and have left no bruises. Now clean this kitchen up and get studying on how to get rid of whatever it is! You’ll find Mumacca under “M’.”

  We clean up the kitchen and take the book with us to bed. We last five minutes before Lilli starts to drool a little and it drips onto the page. I turn out the light and decide to get some sleep. Banishing and how the heck this thing was summoned in the first place can wait until the morning.

  * * *

  So procrastinating has finally kicked us back in the butt. And we don’t have anymore plastic bubbles to pop, either. Lilli’s gone to do a tarot reading to earn money to support her Pizza Hut habit and I’ve just found the entry under “B’ for “Brownies’ in a book on folklore I borrowed from our local Library. After reading the first paragraph, I realise we don’t have the friendly British variety. Those brownies like to clean things up. No. We’ve really got the Sicilian version—just like our Grandma.

  It seems that Nonna Elba knew I would seek information from anything but the book she carted on the boat back in 1966 with the old slow cooker because at the end of the entry she’s written in Sicilian, in very small print: now that you’ve read through the fairy tale version please go back to THE BOOK and see “M” for Mumacca.

  Mumaccas are supposed to be Southern Italian brownies that wear cute red hats and like to hang out around wine cellars all day. This doesn’t fit because we don’t have a wine cellar but Nonna has plenty of grog around the house to drink. We know that he doesn’t like KFC chicken and prefers slow cooking to fast food. But none of this makes sense.

  Lilli walks in with a box of donuts. She’s made enough to start her own franchise in a donut shop by reading Mrs Simoncetta’s tarot cards every second day. The woman is as addicted to readings as we are to junk food. Lilli knows exactly what to say to women like her wanting answers about love and prospects. There’s an ending and a new beginning coming your way. And you’re at a crossroads in your life, and you may not know it but you’re very loved, and Mrs Simoncetta thinks my sister is Madame Blavatsky or something. Me, I can’t be bothered but then again, I’m not as hooked on Pizza Hut and Pop Rocks are much cheaper than pizza. But I am just a bit jealous. Nonna has never threatened Lilli with working at McDonald’s until the end of her days as much as she does with me. I have found how to placate the little bastard but I’m not telling her. I just might win my own brownie points
with Nonna if I keep this titbit of information to myself.

  “Eden, have you found out how to send the Mumacca back?”

  I shake my head.

  “Holy Shit! Eden!” She screams as she opens the box and a putrid smell of rotten eggs fills the kitchen. “He’s left a little turd in the hole of each donut!” Lilli throws the box onto the floor. “Did you find the banishing chapter? How do we banish him?” Lilli is frantic.

  I shrug my shoulders. “Mumaccas are from Southern Italy, they’re not from Australia. I thought we’re supposed to have the friendly British variety here.” I can’t help but like him a bit for ruining Lilli’s donuts.

  “You mean he’s probably like, from Sicily like Nonna?”

  “Yep! And sorry to change the subject but we really have to get this old slow cooker out of the way. Council clean up is Saturday morning and the new electric stove is installed on Friday. It’s Thursday today so we’d better get a move on. And the exam is next Friday!”

  “Great!” Lilli yells. “Right! We so have to start studying. Let’s start with this Banishing and then move onto the channelling of the dead. I heard there’s no multiple choice in the exams—it’s all viva voce. Let’s have a chocolate reward two hours from now.”

  I pull out two Mars Bars from my pocket. “Let’s have a motivating chocolate now!”

  We sit at the kitchen table and open up the exercise books that Nonna has left out for us to take notes.

  “It says here that Mumaccas are notoriously bad at arithmetic and can’t count past twelve!” Lilli says.

  I nod my head and keep the other bit of information to myself. Maybe Nonna has made the book that way so she can see who’s done the study. If Lilli shines at the tarot readings at least I can earn some brownie points with banishing him.

  We fall into a rare silence as we start taking notes when I feel a pulling on my left plait.

  “Lilli, stop it!” I slap my sister on the arm.

  “Stop what?”

  “You just pulled my hair.”