by TJ Park
“Shit! I thought you were poisoned,” Warlock said.
“I wouldn’t put it past you, either,” Mick snarled. Rob’s expression had put him off. “C’mon, let’s go inside the house so I can have a proper break. Rob probably wants to make sure we haven’t chopped up his family or molested his cows.”
Rod nodded. There was no need to think the grazier would try something. He looked as helpless as the drowned man he resembled. Mick guessed he looked the same, as if a bucket of water had been dumped on him. The midday shed was like a sauna. He picked fussily at his clothes; they were stuck to him like wrinkled veneer. Funny how priorities get narrowed down. The last thing on his mind were the opals. All he wanted right there and then was a fresh towel to wipe his armpits. He almost walked straight into Warlock, who was staring, distracted, into the shed.
“Hey, watch it! Bloody hell! Can’t you even hold a tray straight?”
“Those knots,” asked Warlock. “Who tied all those knots?”
“Some joker who likes to practise, hey, Rob?”
Rob didn’t answer, just watched, the calculation still flickering in his face. Mick had a sudden urge to knock him down.
“Are they all the same number? Nine knots each?” Warlock asked.
“I wouldn’t know. Stay and count them if you like. Now get out of the way.”
Mick tried to walk around him, but Warlock wouldn’t let him.
“Wait. Wait! Wait a minute.”
“Wally, is your arse on straight or what? You’re going to lose the lot if you keep on walking backward like an idiot. And if any of that tray lands on me I swear you really will look like the devil’s after you!”
***
Doug’s stomach woke with loud growls as he watched Mick prepare a sandwich in the kitchen. While he waited for his turn at the bench he saw Warlock sitting at the dining table playing with a knife; he should have been keeping an eye on the Clarksons. The knife was ornate, like you’d find in a tobacconist’s window. Warlock would no doubt refer to it as a “dagger”, handy for guiding disciples and white lines on mirrors.
Warlock had hiked the tablecloth to lay bare the smooth table surface. He spun the dagger on it repeatedly, watching to see where it would stop and point.
Doug was about to tell him off when Warlock sat up straight, a queer look on his face. He suddenly shoved back from the table, stumbling against Mick who was passing by with a plate of food.
“Wake up to yourself!” Mick snapped.
Doug realised Warlock was more superstitious than he had thought. Why else the sudden reaction when the dagger came to a stop pointing directly at him?
“That dagger …” Warlock said.
Doug congratulated himself.
“It’s very pretty,” Mick said, hardly giving it a glance.
“No,” Warlock said, putting his hand out and stopping Mick before he could go any further.
Mick looked down at his grasped arm with frank disbelief, but before he could thump him Warlock darted back to the table. He must have bumped the table edge, because the dagger quivered as he reached for it.
He spun the dagger again, and stood well back.
“I’m not in the mood for a game of spin-the-bottle,” Mick snarled.
“Wait.”
Doug thought it must’ve been serious for Warlock to behave so recklessly.
Grudgingly, Mick came to the same conclusion. He waited out the spin.
“Look,” Warlock said.
The spinning dagger slowed, poised by its momentum to sweep past Warlock but instead pulled up short, jittering to a halt … pointing directly at him.
Warlock looked beseechingly at the other men.
Mick grunted.
“Good trick. What’s next? Something fancy with a deck of cards?”
Doug didn’t think it was so neat. To some degree, he had seen it coming; seen it in the little signs and portents of the past twenty-four hours. Mick could pretend otherwise, but he too was affected, Doug knew, because of the way the old man stayed where he was, showing a patience not normally reserved for Warlock.
“Watch. Watch it again,” Warlock insisted. He was clumsy with fear, bumping the table again, the knife quivering the same as the last time he reached for it.
He gave it a harder twist. In his agitation, he nearly sent it spinning off the table. The dagger travelled across the tabletop, settling into a bar of sunlight, where it went into a dazzling spin.
The sight held all three rapt.
The spin slowed, going from a blur to a sweep of blade over handle over blade. Nasty looking thing. Threatening like a pointed finger. Gradually coming to an end, it went to make a slow sweep past Warlock. Everyone tensed, expecting it to stop and point at him again.
It didn’t. It drifted past, pointing away, easing to a complete halt.
“Well, it appears to be pointing in the direction of the shitter,” Mick said. “Any significance in that? Maybe it …”
He never finished.
The knife suddenly swivelled backward of its own accord. Moving in a smooth arc, it came to rest with its point fixed precisely on Warlock.
Warlock pointed back.
“See? See? It always does that! Every time I spin it – and I must have done it twenty times – it always points my way when it stops.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Mick said, his face strangely expressionless.
“Why do you think it’s pointing at you?” Doug asked. The words felt spongy and wrong in his mouth.
“No, no,” Warlock said adamantly. “Not at me. Just in my direction.”
“What difference does that make?” Mick said impatiently.
Warlock’s voice rose. “Why would it be pointing at me?”
He moved to one side so the knife’s blade was not resting on him any more. What happened next was impossible, but somehow not unexpected. Shocking, and horrible to see. The blade followed him, as if tugged by an invisible string. The point fell on him once more.
Losing his composure, Warlock sidestepped in the opposite direction. The knife swivelled again, pointed. Warlock rushed back to his starting position. The knife adjusted. Then Warlock was dodging manically from side to side while the knife chased him. Who knew why he did it? Perhaps he thought if he moved fast enough he could shake it off, break its hold on him. His actions were madcap and revolting, like a cat trying to escape a leash.
“Warlock! Stop it!”
But he took no notice, running back and forth in more frenetic passes.
Mick reached out and snatched him by the shirt collar, jerking him to a halt.
“Get a hold on, you goose,” he said. “You’re making me dizzy.”
Warlock pulled free and retreated to a far corner.
The knife swung to follow. The point wobbled to get a fix, but then seemed to lose interest in him. The jostling momentum put it in a final swing, letting Warlock go.
“Fucking thank god for that!” Warlock yelled, the tension working its way out of him in a bout of the shakes. Then he realised who the dagger was marking now.
It was pointed at Mick.
The old man went brick-red. The ugly colour creeping down below the open collar of his shirt, up into the prickling of his scalp. He turned on Warlock.
“You quit this bullshit right now or I’ll pound you into paste, you shit-arse!”
Warlock cowered. “It’s not me!”
Mick briefly trembled as if to go after either Warlock or the dagger, but he stayed rooted to the spot. Perhaps he didn’t want it confirmed that the dagger was now trained on him.
“What’s this about, Warlock?” Doug asked.
“That’s a ceremonial dagger,” Warlock replied. “It’s called an ‘athame’. It’s used in Wicca ceremonies … or spells.”
“It’s a trick, right?” Doug cajoled. “You made it do that.”
“It’s not mine! I found it in the back of the jeep. They hid it there.” His voice dropped. “You know, back at the other h
ouse. That couple. Doug, I think they’ve tied the points on us.”
“Shut up!” Mick thundered. He was going to give Warlock a thrashing, no doubt about it, but he stopped moving before he started.
On the table, the dagger quivered, then settled down again.
But not at rest. Poised.
Mick wasn’t moving, and Warlock was staying well away from the table, so it was up to Doug to have a closer look. He found it easier to commit with the blade not facing his way, leaning in to take the handle. But before he could grasp it the dagger jerked and spun so swiftly his hand almost closed over the blade.
He leapt back as the dagger quivered, pointing at him like a compass needle.
Doug waited until both the dagger and his nerves were again steady, then began to move around the table, taking his time, keeping a tight perimeter. The dagger’s blade revolved slowly, tracking him. Doug came close to Mick, who was about to move out of the way when Doug held up his hand, indicating for him to hold still.
Without a pause, Doug passed behind Mick. The dagger came to a halt, left pointing at the old man.
“I thought so,” Doug said. “It points to whoever’s closest.”
There was silence for a long while. Then Mick pondered a ridiculous hope out loud. “Maybe it’s not just us. Maybe it points at anybody near it.”
“Maybe,” Doug said.
“Why don’t we bring one of the hayseeds over and see?”
Warlock jumped at the chance to get away. “I’ll do it!”
“No, wait.” That was going about it the long way, simply because no-one wanted to touch the dagger, fearful perhaps that it would turn on them.
Doug marched over to the table. Clenching his jaw, he reached over the blade to grasp the hilt. The point wobbled, seeking to find his exact centre. Though Doug nearly pulled away, he snatched up the dagger. He grasped it tightly, almost expecting it to twist in his grip. Then he relaxed. In his hand, it was only a fancy knife again.
On closer inspection, it was not the flimsy store prop he first reckoned. It looked meant for more than sitting pretty on a desk and opening envelopes. The inlaid stones weren’t nearly as precious as the contents of the crate, but they were real. But the narrow blade was the real show-stopper. The metal looked hand forged, the sheen almost three-dimensional. Doug felt he could see deep into it when he turned the blade back and forth, like metallic shards locked in ice.
He turned the corner into the living room, Mick and Warlock following at a respectful distance. The Clarksons would have overheard their bizarre exchange. God knew what they had made of it.
Mick had done Rob a favour and let him join his family for a short while, so now they were all bound together on the couch. Refusing to look at them directly, Doug bent down and dragged the coffee table closer to where they sat. Sweeping away magazines to clear a space, he set down the dagger dead centre on the tabletop.
He spun it.
Doug stepped back and Mick and Warlock stepped back with him. They kept fading back, retreating as far as they could go while the dagger revolved slower and slower on the coffee table.
“What is this?” Janet cried. “What are you weak bastards doing now?”
Scott and Lauren stayed silent like their father, but shared their parents’ fearfulness. Doug wondered if it meant they had some idea what the dagger was for. Then it dawned on him. The Clarksons suspected it was some kind of demented parlour game, selecting a victim at random.
“Shut up,” he told Janet and the other anxious faces. “This has nothing to do with you or your family. You’re safe enough.”
Yet the weakling in him prayed he was wrong. Otherwise this had everything to do with him and Mick and Warlock.
The revolving dagger slowed just as Doug was startled by something bumping against his back. He had reached the far wall. Perhaps Janet wasn’t wrong about how craven they were.
The dagger stopped, then fluctuated, like it was trying to decide. It was pointed away from the Clarksons, who were practically on top of it. Its target was the three men standing along the far wall. The dagger pointed to Doug standing in the middle, the closest. He shoved Warlock forward. The dagger swivelled toward him. Warlock scuttled back. The dagger swivelled back to Doug again.
“It only wants us,” Doug said.
“Yeah,” replied Mick, licking his lips, “I figured that.”
Without warning, Doug marched over to the coffee table. He took up the quivering dagger and raised it high, eliciting a sharp intake of breath from one of the Clarkson women. He slammed the dagger down into the tabletop. It sank almost to the hilt, before he pulled the handle hard over and snapped it off in a loud teeth-rattling clink. He threw the handle away into a far corner. It bounced off the wall and spun across the polished floorboards, clattering into a corner.
Doug watched with intense, fearful attention.
When the handle stopped, it faced no particular place. It did not move again.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Mick said. “There’s an explanation.”
Doug looked at him, waiting for it.
Mick swallowed and obliged. “We got a lot of mineral dust on us from the drive. Maybe some of it’s magnetised.”
We’ve all had showers, Mick, and I’m wearing a clean shirt.
He didn’t say it. For the moment he preferred to have Mick clutching at straws.
Mick continued. “Or maybe it’s ordinary mineral dust on us and that trick knife of Wally’s is the thing that’s magnetised.”
“It’s not mine! I told you that!”
“Do you have any idea why it’s doing that?” Doug asked.
“No!”
Mick’s theory was sound. More sane than anything Doug could come up with, or what they might drag out of Warlock. The dagger was a magnet, or magnetised, or …
He turned his attention to Janet. She was leaning forward, watching them intently. “Do you have a pair of binoculars around here?” he asked her.
Her gaze was as pointed as the dagger itself.
“Would it make you go sooner if I told you?”
Yes, he was afraid it would. He and the others should go as soon as humanly possible if what he suspected was true.
Mick answered. “There’re binoculars in the mustering chopper.”
“What’s the highest point around here?” Doug asked Janet.
“Near here? That’d be Mount Stern. It’s about twelve kilometres north-west.”
“No, here. Right here. What’s the highest point on your property?”
She frowned. “The windmill, I suppose.”
But Doug had already come to the same conclusion. He headed for the door.
Mick tried to catch up. “Doug, what are you after?”
“Me, Mick? It’s not me that’s after anything.”
***
Doug stayed close to the ladder as he climbed. The heavy binoculars hanging around his neck clanged against each and every rung. In the breathless air, the large windmill blades above could have been welded in place. Their steadfastness up close bothered him in a way it wouldn’t have on the ground. It somehow made him think of a trap.
Though he had intended to go as high as possible, he gave up well before the top. He didn’t want to be in the way if a gust of wind awakened the monstrous wheeling blades and sent them creaking round at him. He’d had enough of sharp things that spun.
He hooked a leg through the ladder, straddling a rung, before raising the binoculars. It was an awkward business. He really needed two hands to keep the horizon steady. Heatwaves lapping at the world’s fringe also distorted what he could make out.
He swapped legs on the ladder to survey the land in the opposite direction. He got a fright when the binoculars swung against the rungs with a loud clang.
There was nothing to see in either direction. The sky was a cheerless, scraped blue, the land beneath droning and unresponsive. Languid cattle moved or didn’t in the distance, most of them collected under shady trees
like dropped fruit.
Except for a blurred, up-close flock of cockatoos passing through the binocular sights, there was little movement. Tree groves and low hills blocked a full inspection of the surrounding landscape, but he was almost certain there was nothing approaching, nothing out there on the move. Not yet.
He wished the relief he felt was greater.
The ladder was easier to handle going down, but his fears still weighed heavily on him. He’d turned the binoculars so they now hung against his back. No more clanging, but the cord pressing against his throat felt like a tightening noose all the way down.
***
Doug returned to the house. Mick was waiting for him on the veranda, having watched him climb the windmill. He had his gun out. With a tight feeling in his chest, Doug wondered if something had happened. But he saw by the look on Mick’s face that the gun was only drawn in readiness.
“What were you looking for?” Mick asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Doug replied as he tramped up the steps, hoping Mick wouldn’t press him.
The “magnetised” theory Mick had offered was the most sensible explanation. And Doug knew it could be tested with Scott’s old compass, but he had no urge to try. Because what if he was wrong?
Returning inside, Doug found Warlock jitterbugging by the door, biting his nails and eager to spill his guts.
“We shouldn’t have broken the dagger, Doug. You’re not supposed to use it to cut or stab anything for real, nothing solid. It’s only for waving in the air and stuff.”
“Well, it’s too late now, so don’t worry about it.”
Shaking his head, Warlock nervously followed him. “Doug? Doug? There’s something wrong here. The dagger, the blood in the milk, the animals going crazy, the knots in the shed! And what about that shit with the Land Cruiser? Some bozo just decides to torch it today? Today of all days?”
Doug paused.
“Tell me about the knots.”
“It’s called ‘tying the points’. It’s like having your balls cut off, except it’s done with magic.”
Framed in the front door, Mick muttered something about cutting a tongue off.
Warlock clamped his eyes tight and screwed a straight forefinger into his temple. When he spoke again it was like something rote-learned from a textbook.