Dark Confluence (8 page)

Carma nodded and started to pour into the mugs the now boiling water.

An hour or two later, Carma looked around at her guests. All were sitting forward on their chairs and seemed to be avidly following every word she said. She had spoken passionately and at length about the need for the power to go underground, citing tourism potential, the overhead wire danger to the town’s possum and bat population, as well as a more reliable method of energy distribution. Everyone had nodded at her words, even the stodgy councillor became animated when the tourism angle had been mentioned. The power company representative had initially sat back and listened, and then after he drank his coffee, he too leant forward and nodded. He interjected once to agree with her observation that the town would still have power if the lines had been transferred under the ground. Finally, once the councillor and energy representative had left, the remaining members of EHGAG had voted on the moth and the power lines. Carma wasn’t at all surprised that the moth hadn’t attracted a single vote. Even Jeremy (its most avid promoter) had gone wholly across to support her action instead. Now, it was time to move into top gear and lobby the council, the power supplier and the residents of the town.

*

Chapter 7

After forty-eight hours of patchy power supply, electricity to the town was finally reconnected. Jen celebrated by turning on her laptop and devoting the rest of the day to proof reading the last few chapters of her client’s manuscript. She had been busy the last two days, clearing away the mess of leaves and twigs from her garden and mopping away the water that had pooled on her verandah. Going by the reports on the radio, the search for the little boy had proved fruitless. Now police from Brisbane had moved into the area and had set up an incident room in the local council chambers. The press had also sensed blood and sent reporters into the town, attempting to interview anyone who might supply them with a new angle. Local opinion was that the child had wandered away and fallen into one of the many small creeks, several of which had broken banks during the cloudburst. Most agreed that they might not find his body for weeks until after the water levels had returned to normal. Already, police divers were combing the river, with no result other than finding a few bloated corpses of livestock and native animals caught by the swiftly rising floodwaters and washed away.

As she typed, she listened to the radio perched precariously on top of a stack of books on her desk. Still no word on the missing child, and now another tragedy seemed to be unfolding. A skilled police diver, somehow dragged down by floodwaters in the local dam and reported missing as the timer on his oxygen, had long since expired. Now police were warning all residents away from fast flowing creeks, alarmed that more casualties could result.

The phone interrupted her, its shrill ringing drowning out even the radio itself. She saved her work on the computer and answered it. For a moment, she heard nothing, and then distantly she heard a quiet whispery voice speaking in a language she could neither understand nor identify. She identified herself again, this time a little more abruptly as her patience began to wear thin, yet still the voice whispered on. Fed up, she slammed the receiver down, cutting off the voice mid-whisper. The phone rang again and she answered it. This time there was an echoing silence as if whoever had been whispering on the first call was now waiting on her response. She identified herself again and still silence, then suddenly she heard a high pitched giggle on the other end – not childish, not even human, her blood chilled at the sound of it. As she held the receiver aloft, staring at it in horror, the phone inexplicably rang again. The receiver dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers to clatter on the desk. Faintly, she heard the laugh again. Alarmed, she bent down and pulled the phone cable from the wall, the ringing and the giggle immediately silenced.

She had to get out of here. She had to talk to someone. Suddenly, she remembered her meeting with the elderly gentleman at the shopping centre. Jen went to her bag and retrieved the phone number. Not wanting to trust the landline, she quickly dialled the number on her mobile and waited for a reply.

A young woman’s voice answered the phone, “Delany residence.”

Jen was nonplussed, “Hello, I want to speak with Tom.”

Jen heard a voice calling out, “Grandpa! There’s a lady on the phone for you.”

There was a bit of distant talking, then Jen heard the phone being passed over, and then the quiet voice she remembered, “Tom Delany here. Who may I ask is calling?”

Jen cleared her throat, “Jen McDonald. We met at the shopping centre last week.”

“Ah, Jen, so glad you called” Jen could hear the smile in his voice. “I’d hoped you’d ring.”

“Uhm...” Jen was tongue-tied. She did not know how to explain to Tom what was going on.

“Thing have been happening then, luv?” he asked gently.

“Um...yes, it’s hard to explain,” she stammered. “Really, I hate to burden you, but I don’t know of anyone else to turn to.”

“Best that you come over here then,” he said. “My granddaughter is cooking dinner tonight and I’m sure her pasta can stretch to five.”

“Five?”

“My son and his wife are helping me clean up after the storm,” he explained. “Come on over.”

“Oh, I don’t want...to be an imposition,” she struggled.

“Nonsense” he said crisply, “Here is the address. Got it?”

She murmured her assent.

“Then we’ll expect you within the hour.”

Jen heard Tom hang up. There had been no opportunity to refuse the invitation. Resignedly, she showered and changed, and then grabbing her bag, she secured the house and drove off in the direction of Cromhart.

Jen was a little overawed when she drove up to Tom Delany’s place. She had turned off the main road, and in the slanting rays of the setting sun, drove up along a still muddy dirt road through seemingly endless rows of fruit and nut trees. If Tom considered his farm small, Jen wondered exactly what he would consider a large farm to be like. Finally, she glimpsed the house through the last rows of trees. It was a sprawling old Queenslander with tin roof, central stairs, cast-iron lacework trim and a bullnose verandah surrounding three sides of the house. It looked like one of the original settler homes of the region.

Jen parked her hire car off to one side, next to some farm machinery and some other cars. Mechanically, she got out and stood uncertainly by the driver’s door, unsure of what to expect.

A young woman who seemed to be about twenty years of age walked around the corner of the house. Her hair was blonde, her eyes a bright blue and her skin tanned. An aura of self-possession and innate strength hung about her. She looked very fit and healthy.

“Miss Jen?” the young woman asked, noting how the older woman seemed so small, slight, with glasses askew on a round and pale face. Nervous hazel eyes regarded her approach.

“Yes,” Jen replied, self-consciously holding out her hand. To her surprise, the young woman leant over and kissed her gently on the cheek.

“I’m Fiona,” she introduced herself. “Tom’s grand-daughter, Grandpa is inside. Come on in.”

Taken a little aback by the easy familiarity, Jen allowed herself to be led inside the house.

“Jen, so nice to see you again,” the old man stiffly lifted himself from the overstuffed sofa and reached to shake her hand.

Jen smiled and nodded, “Likewise, Tom. I trust you have been well?”

“Fair to middling, Jen,” he replied. “My old joints dislike the rain we’ve had. Do you mind if I sit?”

“Of course not,” she said, perching herself on the edge of an old bentwood chair.

“Fiona’s back in the kitchen. Pasta night tonight and her speciality is homemade spaghetti,” he explained. Matt and Catherine are still out with the contractors. We’ve started to bring in the macadamias and trying to salvage as much of the avocado crop that was damaged by the storm.”

“Did you lose much?” she asked politely.

He grinned unexpectedly, “Enough to be annoying and sufficient to affect this year’s bottom line. Such is the life of a farmer, even one long in the tooth and afflicted with rheumatism. Good thing Matt and his family live close by and help out.”

Jen nodded.

“Now, tell me about what has been happening, Jen. You sounded quite odd on the phone.”

Jen stared at her feet, her innate shyness overpowering her.

“You’ve been seeing and hearing things, haven’t you?”

Jen looked up to meet his faded blue eyes, “Yes, how on earth did you know?”

He sat back in his chair with a sigh, Jen could see that he was gathering his thoughts about how and what he was about to say.

“My family has been living up here on the Hinterland for over a hundred years,” he said after a long pause. “This place.” He indicated the house with his hand. “Was built around the time of Federation. So you could say we’ve seen most everything the region could throw at us, including the odd cyclone, bushfire, hippy invasion and the coming and going of various families and industries.” He stared at her, “Fifty years ago, I had just married my young wife Anna. You see, her family had just moved out from Scotland two years before, and I met her at the Brisbane Show.”

Jen nodded, “I’ve been to it a few times myself.”

“Hmmm, I’ve been told it’s changed quite a lot since my last trip...but I digress. I met Anna and we moved into the family house up here at Cromhart. At that time, the farm was mainly dairy and some mixed crops, we didn’t diversify into macadamias and avocados until the eighties. Anyway, Jen’s family was Scottish Highlanders, a tough breed with a lot of history behind them. Anna herself was as courageous a woman as I’d ever met, ready to do the hard work of farming with me. Not a shrinking violet type.”

“She sounds like quite a remarkable woman,” Jen mused.

“She was, and in more ways than one” Tom added. “You see fifty years ago Anna, my strong, tough, prosaic, practical Anna started seeing and hearing things.”

Jen fidgeted a little at hearing that.

He noticed her discomfort and asked her directly, “What do you know about fairies, Jen?”

Blushing with embarrassment, Jen tried to answer the question. “Fairies? Do you mean the Hans Christian Anderson, Grimm Brothers fairy stories?”

He nodded.

“Only from what I remember reading as a child,” she replied.

“Have you ever considered that fairies might actually exist?”

She stared at him, wondering if he was addled in the head, and then almost immediately dismissing the thought when she remembered the hardheaded practicalities of being a farmer.

“No, I’ve always thought fairy tales as being written to amuse or frighten young children, or perhaps teach them certain behaviour.”

He smiled, “Admittedly, some were yes. However, many myths originated as tales handed down from generation to generation, some stretching back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years and from all around the world.”