by TJ Park
With a well-practised flick of the fingers, Doug sent the smouldering cigarette whirling toward the ceiling. Thank God the bitch had left his good arm alone.
The butt bounced off the ceiling close to where the witch was stuck, brief red sparks flying out from point of impact.
At first, it seemed there would be nothing more – Doug kept holding his breath – until a soft sheet of flame unfurled, spreading out over the ceiling in a neon-blue ripple. The drips coming down were transformed into little dollops of fire, shooting down in straight, sizzling lines.
The fire became more serious when the yellow curling flames appeared, climbing over Mitch’s clothes, smoke puffing from the material’s weave before it started shrivelling black, the fire feeding on her proper.
Doug wished Mitch wouldn’t scream. It made him think too much of how Janet might sound when the familiar caught up with her.
The bitch immediately let go of Doug. He almost fainted from the shock of the teeth prying loose from his shoulder. She reared up on her hind legs, dancing on them, front paws trying to reach the burning witch above. Doug heard her agitated whining in the gaps between Mitch’s screams.
He hoped she would pass out or die soon. But the screams went on and on.
***
The familiar began to climb from the quaking roller, seemingly having no trouble at all, only pausing to see what Janet was doing. She had clambered round the corner of the cab above, jumping down clear of the reel and header. She ran past the familiar, stamping down the tangled loops of wire to get to her children. From being prepared to kill them to trying to help them, both actions meant the same: denying the monster.
Janet unhooked wire from Scott and pulled on him brutally. The wire came with him. It wouldn’t let go. Her feet slid on the ground as the wire yanked him back into the monster’s reach.
“Lauren,” she cried, “help me!”
Lauren was behind, struggling free, unable come to her mother’s aid.
“Lauren, please!”
The bars of the blocked reel continued to pound uselessly against its black hide as the monster’s sigils flared with excitement. The familiar reached out a massive paw for Scott, perhaps to engage Janet in a tug-of-war, anticipating the delicious moment when the party favour parted with a distinctive snap.
But it halted in mid-reach.
The familiar froze in place, looking oddly pained.
The face in its head flew apart. Other sigils that drifted in its body scattered into the black – a dagger, the snake-entwined girl, the panther, the rock singer, burning skull, ravenous spider, swastikas, crosses, headstone, RIPs, eight-ball and more – all flung whirling away to make room for another image: a large dog dancing on its hind feet, a crown of flames on its head, while a man lay penitent beneath.
Before Janet could focus on the depiction and possibly learn what it might mean, both it and its canvas vanished.
The familiar was gone. A hunched caveman stood in its stead.
He was naked, hairy and heavily tattooed where he wasn’t matted down and scaly with dried blood. His outstretched hand, the one that reached for Scott, had a hole.
Janet recognised him: the man in the phantom horror show the night before. The only one who took any pleasure from it.
He didn’t look so amused now.
There was a moment of almost comic surprise on his face before the freed-up reel went to work. The man was briefly bounced from side to side before he was transformed methodically by the churning reel and auger into bone shards and offal. This in turn swiftly bloomed into a fuming pink cloud of shredded vapour.
Janet could taste the tang of blood in the air.
No matter how horrible it was to watch, she couldn’t look away until she was sure there was nothing left. Somehow she understood his manifestation to be as terrible as the familiar’s.
Then she was out of time.
Free to spin again, the reel was quickly collecting up the barbed wire and Scott along with it. Janet tried to dig her heels in, but it was no use, her son would be pulled in as surely as the tattooed man. She dived to shield him with her own body, but Lauren beat her to it, doing the same. The three would perish together.
The roller suddenly seized, choking on its glut of barbed wire. Somewhere beyond them gears noisily slipped, were stripped clean or snapped to bits. The hooked rasps shook and shuddered to a standstill. The harvester’s engine uttered one last drilling shriek before it died, releasing a final pungent stink of scraped metal.
Lying on the ground alongside her son and daughter in the sudden silence, Janet extended a hand and touched one of the wire-trussed rasps.
The image of the dog dancing in flames with the man below settled on her mind. She did not know how, but she knew the familiar was gone for good, and that Doug had something to do with it.
Surprised into sudden tears, she held her children close, Lauren returning the hug fiercely, Scott caught snugly in the middle.
***
Doug estimated he was torn and bleeding in over a hundred places, probably disfigured, and suspected his left arm was permanently crippled. He’d lost the opals, and Mick. Probably any chance at escaping prison. But despite all this, he was nowhere near feeling sorry enough for himself yet.
He tried to roll over so he could stand, but couldn’t manage it. He had to settle for lying on his back and nudging from the conflagration overhead with short shoves of his feet. He didn’t like it much, but had to keep going, and pick up the pace. A fiery substance other than alcohol had begun to rain down on him.
Boiling human fat.
Payback, Mitch. Wonder what mine’s going to be?
Burning to death was something that happened to witches in fairy tales and history books. So perhaps he hadn’t been so far off the mark. The witch on the ceiling was fully engulfed. He couldn’t imagine how she was able to keep on screaming.
There were spot fires. The bitch kept dancing on her hind legs on the floor below, spinning about in mid-leap, jaws snapping at the flaming drops that rained down.
At the edge of the room Doug rolled on his side, then rocked upright, getting his feet under him. It was slow work. He stumbled toward the front door, kicking away smouldering bird carcasses.
He was on fire again. He patted the flames from his pants, wishing there was someone around to check his back. He held onto the door, taking a last look behind him. The noise of crackling flames was paramount. No more screams to compete with. There was only a blazing centrepiece left on the ceiling, vaguely human-shaped.
The witch was dead, but he didn’t imagine it solved anything. He certainly didn’t feel like a curse had been lifted. The weight of his sins felt heavier than ever.
The bitch stayed in the room, dancing in the thickening smoke, snapping at the flames overwhelming the ceiling as the flames built up around her.
Near Doug, smoke puffed from a couch’s upholstery before it burst into flame. The walls blackened, expunging the crossed-out pictograms. Then came the stink of cooking bird, some of the carcasses popping loudly from expanding gases in the gut.
A heavy black cloud pressed low into the room, fluttering apart as the bitch leapt up into it endlessly, endlessly – whining, barking, growling.
Doug knew she would only stop once the roof caved in on her.
He staggered outside, beset by hard hacking coughs. He wanted another cigarette. He needed it to chase the evil smoke from his lungs.
His front was drenched in sweat, his back baked bone-dry. He knew he should get some distance between himself and the house in case it gave way, but the swing chair on the porch looked more inviting than the cold darkness in the yard beyond.
He sat down and set it swinging. It creaked pleasantly. For once the hanging chimes were silent. He watched the front yard steadily brighten. It was getting uncomfortably hot. Still, he preferred the flashing dry heat. It dried up his wounds and made them sting less, so he stayed awhile.
He knew a house on fire wo
uld eventually attract attention so he didn’t think anything much, at first, of the car headlights spearing over a hill in the distance. A lot of them. Then it occurred to him … this was anticipated. The law, then. Or someone else coming who would fetch the police soon enough.
The chimes pinged softly from the inrush of air through the front door to feed the burgeoning flames. He didn’t think about trying to get away. And it was a little late for him to contemplate going back in the house and holing up there.
Vehicle after vehicle tore into the yard and halted in a loose ring around the porch. Five or six of them to begin with, but he soon stopped counting. Even over the strengthening roar of the fire, he could hear the clunk of doors opening and closing with ominous finality as shapes fanned out behind the bright headlights.
Other than that, it was a little quieter than he liked.
There was no flashing lights, no screaming sirens, no shouted commands to raise his hands, no threats or gun waving.
He lifted his good arm to block out the glare of the headlights.
The visitors varied in ages, body shapes, class, race. Perhaps sex as well. He was sure there were blokes among them, or maybe the intensity of their rage just made them seem bigger. They were united only by their manner of dress, which indicated they lived in the country or small towns. And of course, they all carried daggers.
A coven.
The daggers weren’t the same as Warlock had found, the “athame” or whatever. Doug remembered how those were only supposed to be used symbolically. These things looked like working tools. They were curved like scythes and had white handles instead of black, though he imagined they would not remain white for much longer.
He dropped the hand shielding his eyes. He favoured the glare of headlights over the looks on the faces of those wielding the daggers.
The porch chair had stopped swinging. He did a little push-off with his feet and got it going again.
“Can any of you stop it?” he asked. “The monster she made?”
No-one answered. He hadn’t supposed they would.
He could always return inside. Fire was a horrible way to go – he had seen so for himself – but no worse than the death they promised. He would have to make up his mind soon one way or the other. The heat at his back was becoming unbearable.
He stood up. He had many regrets, but his biggest was not being able to save Janet and the kids. He wished he could tell her that he hadn’t run … that he’d tried his best. But he knew she would not have been impressed by words. She was a woman who judged by results.
At least he’d cheated Cutter out of killing him personally. Prick.
Leaving the burning house behind, he walked with as straight a back as he could manage to meet those in the yard.
EPILOGUE
The policeman following, Janet headed for the chook pen to collect the day’s eggs.
Detective Sergeant Croft – that was how he introduced himself – was forced to take two steps to match her one but was still lagging. A paramedic was huffing and puffing after them both, but the detective frowned and waved him away. The medic remonstrated using hand gestures. The detective returned a hand gesture of his own.
The chook pen was barred by police tape. Never slowing in the slightest, Janet ducked under it with her basket and entered the gate. A representative from some animal or veterinarian or nuclear biohazard department came running.
“That’s a quarantine area. You can’t –”
Croft shooed him off, too.
“Thank you. I’m sure Mrs Clarkson will boil her eggs first.”
He found he had to be firmer with this one, pegging a stone at the man’s feet.
To Janet’s surprise, no more chooks had died during the night. She found them huddled on the top rung of the coop, blinking in tandem at her entry and showing absolutely no interest in going outside. She had to hustle them off their perches, and found their fluttering wings and outraged clucks encouraging.
Croft arrived in time to have them bump against his legs. One hen, thinking to soar out the open door, bounced off his chest.
Janet squatted and checked the hutches, feeling for eggs that in all likelihood would not be there, the same as the day before. For the second time, her assumptions were wrong. The hens were laying again. They were ignoring the eggs once they laid them, but still, it was a small sign things were beginning to return to normal.
She didn’t have to break open an egg to know they were healthy. A couple had shattered against the hutches – plain yolks and runny whites.
As she worked, Croft talked to fill the silence.
“My nephew’s a blue helmet in the UN. A couple of Christmases back, he showed me photos of a village. I couldn’t tell you the name of it. I’m not even sure of the country. It was just a quiet place where another bunch of blokes with guns stopped off for a few hours.” He shrugged. “Shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, seeing what they did back at the airport. Never seen anything like that in my twenty years.”
He spoke in a way he never would to most people so soon after they suffered such misfortune. But there was something about Janet Clarkson that demanded frankness.
She rummaged inside a hutch for too long, her brow furrowed. Croft noticed the delay and peered over her shoulder to see what she’d withdrawn: a crusty egg, bits of feather stuck to it.
“Everything alright?”
“Yes. I put my hand in something.”
“Oh … right.”
She reached back into the nest and took out the remaining egg: in actuality, a large black opal she kept hidden in her hand. Her first instinct was to tuck it inside the egg basket and she did just that, but kept her hand around it, reluctant to let it go.
Seeing her go quiet for a second time had Croft concerned. Perhaps she was about to collapse in a delayed reaction of some sort. But Janet was recalling the farewell at the chopper sent to evacuate them. She had nearly collapsed, at least at that point. The gust from the spinning rotors had almost knocked her down, but she remained hardy, or at least gave a good impression of it. She did not want a ride to the hospital just yet. She was never one to leave others to clean up a mess.
In the chopper, her children had been strapped down on stretchers, what little bare skin showing outside of their bandages heavily marked by bruises and gravel rash. She remembered their faces were so pale, with a haggard grey etched like dirt in the creases of their eyes and lips. Nevertheless, it was a vast improvement over the previous night, their skin mostly cleaned and covered in fresh gauze.
Lauren seemed to have come out okay, but Scott had fallen again into his absent condition, his attention only drawn when something wandered into his line of sight. The events of the last few days weighed on them all, but most heavily on him.
Janet had leaned into the side of the thrumming chopper, promising she would be with them soon. She wanted to put right what she could first. Their father would have wanted that. She did not tell Lauren to look after her brother. She knew she would.
She had held their hands tightly, reluctant to let go.
A medic waved her off, though not unkindly, but when she had turned to leave, a hand caught her wrist, giving it a brief squeeze. It let go before she could see who had taken hold of her. The closest was Scott, though his expression did not stir. Yet as the door rolled shut, Janet thought his eyes did not look as dull any more.
Because they were lying down inside the chopper, they would miss the terrible panorama she herself could easily visualise: the rubble that was once their home, the damaged workers’ cottage, the burned remains of the whirlybird, the wreck of the harvester and silo, and the black smoking pit where the dilapidated shearing shed once stood. She had set fire to it in the early hours. The spectacular blaze that resulted from it attracted all the help they needed.
Earlier that morning, she had given Detective Sergeant Croft an edited version of events – before the appearance of the familiar. The rest of it she simply didn’t know, beca
use she was tied up, along with her children, when the gang of criminals turned on each other, with Rob, her husband, caught in the crossfire trying to save his family. One of the gang had escaped with the opals.
In the aftermath, Janet had managed to untie their bonds and get them to safety.
Croft enquired about the “monster” Janet’s daughter had told him about. Janet pointed out the dead bull in the yard. It had run amok before being struck and killed, probably by the jeep the criminals arrived in. She told Croft that Lauren had suffered vivid nightmares during the night, the real events and her imagination very mixed up.
The detective accepted that. He’d already come to the same conclusion. There was too much crazy shit in the daughter’s story to believe otherwise.
Janet did not tell him about the cat.
It had happened during the expulsion of the familiar and the appearance of the man cut down in its place. An insignificant moment, overlooked in the drama. She was lucky to have seen it at all – a large grey tom darting from between the harvester’s reel and auger before the reel started spinning. A fleeting panicky shape, there and gone before it could be swallowed up by the dark. She might have missed it, except the cat’s getaway was slowed by its hind legs dragging in the dirt.
She spied the tom again this morning, hiding near the ruins of the shearing shed, the only place the police and forensic investigators hadn’t turned over. None of them saw the cat, black as sin from all the soot. They didn’t take notice either when she left a bowl of milk there. The milking cows were coming back to normal, too.
She would try to coax the tom from its hiding place. And if it was hurt as she suspected, she would look after it until it came right. She imagined it was a survivor, like her.
Now she was crouched in a stifling chook pen where she was holding onto a rough stone that could ease her family’s road to recovery, at least financially. At this point a few more lies or omissions wouldn’t hurt. The discovery of the raw opal – probably consigned to the nest because it roughly resembled an egg in shape – led her to notice what she might have otherwise missed. There was a section of dirt patted down at the foot of the hutch, chaff scattered over it to disguise recent digging.