Dark Confluence (23 page)

The phone rang and he picked it up, “Senior Sergeant Maxwell, Emerald Hills Police.”

He listened, the accent of the caller was difficult to understand, and he almost groaned aloud. It was yet another media enquiry, this time from Berlin. The world’s media had heard about the multiple abductions from the Australian news, and he was daily fielding calls from far-flung places. He thankfully gave the caller the mobile number for the feds. Let the federal agency deal with them. Already the town was cursed with intermittent media crews from interstate and New Zealand, and last he heard, journalists were coming in from the US and Europe to cover the unfolding story of Emerald Hills.

The Senior Sergeant put the receiver down with a clatter, and cradled his head in his hands. The circus had indeed come to town. In fact, visitors and media seemed to outnumber residents, and some of the more recent arrivals had been...odd, to say the least. Emerald Hills had always attracted more than its fair share of New Agers and hippies, and as if sensing something, more were arriving every day, putting a strain on the hotels and motels in the region. Some were even trying to camp out in council parks, putting up tents and teepees, without heed for rules or regulations. He and Sanderson were able to move some out yesterday. However, this morning they were back, with more arriving every day.

It was a circus, perhaps more like a freak show. One of the farmers from one of the outlying properties had rung in this morning with a story about strangers coming on the property and lighting fires at night. He had immediately driven up to the property, and the farmer had taken him to a remote grove of trees where he had seen the lights the previous night. Both he and the farmer had discovered that a campfire had been lit and then extinguished. As well as that, they found burnt remains of something that looked suspiciously like a goat. He had also found stubs of candles and other...what seemed to be, offerings. The farmer had been understandably angry, trespassing was one thing, but the lighting of a fire was another, more serious matter. It was a good thing that everything was so damp. Otherwise, the fire might have gotten out of control. The Senior Sergeant promised that he would do what he could, but with so many strangers in town, it would be impossible to identify the intruders.

The farmer had nodded at that, and stumped away in irritation and frustration. No doubt, a shotgun would be readied for the coming night, and frankly and secretly, Senior Sergeant Maxwell did not care that the farmer might decide to take the law into his own hands.

For a moment, his own fatigue and indifference troubled the officer, and then the waves of apathy that seemed to plague him, swept over him again. He looked at the files, the reports sitting in front of him again, and then shaking his head, he reached down to unlock the bottom drawer of his desk to withdraw from it an unopened bottle of whiskey. It had been a long time since he had felt the need to drink hard liquor. He had thought he had put those days behind him since moving up from Melbourne. Over the last few years, he had indulged only in beer, and only socially at the local pub. He had thought himself reformed.

With shaking hands, he unscrewed the top off the bottle and poured a good measure into his empty coffee mug. He stared for a moment into the depths of the golden liquid, and then downed it in one swallow.

*

Bill stared at the footage captured on Deven’s full spectrum camera and shook his head in amazement. “I don’t know what we are going to do with this. It’s either the greatest scoop of all time or a fast-track into the loony bin for all three of us.”

“What
are
they?” Trent asked, scratching his head in bemusement. “Do you reckon they are aliens?”

Deven shook his head, “I’ve no idea. I’m guessing paranormal, so we could be dealing with anything from aliens, to demons, to ghosts and spirits.”

Bill pointed to the laptop screen where the footage had been uploaded, “Don’t forget fairies, I mean that one looks like something out of the St Paddy’s Day march, except check out the teeth on it. Try asking it for a pot of gold and you’d get your arm gnawed off.”

“Don’t forget the one at three hours, thirty-seven minutes in,” Trent whispered. “That one was like something out of nightmare. A demonic amalgamation of teeth, scales, fur and claws. It was like the end-result of a mating between a hyena and an armadillo, and the size of it! I reckon it would rival a Great Dane. Did you see it go up the side of the bank? Whffft, seconds only and then it was gone!”

“And then there are the ghosts,” Deven stated. “Not only those dratted trees that have sprung up everywhere, but the dead as well. We have footage that would blow the socks off those ghost programs on cable. I have seen researchers go into paroxysms of delight over single orbs and indistinct shadows. What we have here, are full bodied, floating phantasms going through walls, and through cars. It’s like opening a window into the last one hundred years of settlement here.”

“I’d like to think we could win awards with this, but really, look at it. It is unbelievable; most people will think that we faked it ourselves. You guys have seen the stuff that’s up on the net, most of it is computer generated and we’d just be a laughing stock.” Bill mused, “I know Mac has given us the go-ahead, but this stuff is hot and it could either make or break our careers.”

“I’m thinking, break it,” Trent replied. “No-one would be believe us, even with you...geezus, did you just see that!”

The three men stared at the computer screen that showed, faintly and in the distance, a tall spindly, tree-like creature walking slowly and deliberately across a road and into the scrubby bush.

“It’s like something out of Grimm’s fairytales.” Bill breathed, “Deven, did you see it when you were filming?”

Deven shook his head, “I just left the camera running at one stage...call of nature,” he explained with a rueful grin.

“Looks like nature called whilst you were away,” Trent grinned. “Do you know what gets me about all of this weird stuff?”

Bill shook his head, “No, tell me.”

Trent pointed to the townsfolk who occasionally would walk into camera range, “They’re totally oblivious to it. All this stuff happening in and around them and it’s like they are sleepwalkers, are they even aware of it?”

“We weren’t even aware of it,” Bill reminded him. “We would have been unaware of it too, until we saw what was really happening, then our minds cleared, but you were right in how you described the people as sleepwalking. Really, when you think about it, has anyone here been properly awake, since we arrived. It is as if the entire town is apathetic, unconcerned. It’s as if they don’t care about what is going on or that it simply doesn’t bother them.”

“Keep in mind that the mist is obscuring most of what is happening,” Deven replied. “We’ve taken identical footage with two cameras running. The regular camera shows just the mist, and the other, everything else. The mist simply vanishes. I doubt that the regular camera even picked up that tree-thing.”

“The only ones that seem purposeful are the contractors doing the digging for the power company. I heard them talking. Seems like the entire town will be hooked up to the new underground power network mid next week,” Bill added. “It’s hard to rationalise everything. All this effort going in for what effectively is a town full of sleepwalkers, mindlessly going about their daily lives with their town falling apart around them.”

“So what are we going to do with this footage?” Trent asked Bill’s question.

“Sit on it,” Bill advised. “We’ll keep on with the story about the structural breakdown of the town, and the new power network going in, but the paranormal angle; it’s just too out there.”

Deven stared at the footage on the laptop and reluctantly nodded, shutting down the laptop and closing it, “You’re right, no one would believe it.”

*

Chapter 20

As Jen drove slowly through town, she was aghast at what she was seeing. It had been five days since the funeral, and she had deliberately stayed away from Emerald Hills, choosing instead to do her shopping at Cromhart, despite the longer drive. However, curiosity had won out, and she had decided to investigate and see exactly what had transpired in the town over the last few days.

Pulling in next to the bank, she saw many shops and businesses closed and the few that remained open, seemed almost devoid of customers. Apparitions openly walked the streets, and most of the footpaths looked ruined and ravaged. The roots of the Fae trees had broken the concrete and paving apart, leaving behind an uneven, fractured mess that was proving hazardous to most pedestrians. The traffic lights now shone a steady red, illuminating the ever-present mist with a sickly scarlet haze, and most walls and structures showed significant cracking. Every surface seemed covered with a dark greenish-black mould, and vines and creepers worked their way across the sides of buildings; even across and onto tin or tile roofs. Jen had noticed that the council or police had put warning barriers and tape across the entrances to many buildings, so evidently someone in authority was aware that civilization was breaking down in Emerald Hills. Jen just could not figure out why nothing else was being done to stop it or fix things – there seemed to be a strange disconnect or dissonance present in the town.

The very few people that she recognised seemed unaware of their surroundings. When first driving into town, she had to brake hard in order to avoid a mother and child heedlessly wandering across the road, seemingly caught in a daydream. She had honked the horn at them, but they just ignored her, so she had to wait until their aimless walk took them to the relative safety of the opposite footpath. As she watched, all the townsfolk seemed caught in a daze, drifting singly or in small groups, conversation almost non-existent. For a town that seemed packed with people, she saw little sign of busyness or occupation – just a zombie-type of haphazard drifting here and there.

As for the others, well, there were crowds of people who seemed to her so utterly foreign to the regulars that she normally observed. Hard faced individuals in business suits brushed shoulders with hippies in cheesecloth. Then there were the others, dressed all in black with pale skin, dyed black hair, and possessing an unnerving dead-eyed gaze. Once before in Brisbane, Jen had seen one or two hanging about the Valley near the nightclubs, but she had never dreamt of seeing them in country Emerald Hills.

Evidently, there was no accommodation left, because she noticed that tents had been erected on almost every bit of green space and parkland, and cars with interstate plates were parked everywhere, even in no standing zones and across driveways. Jen couldn’t remember the last time she had seen the local bus on its regular route.

The town was crowded, but Jen felt it was a bad sort of crowd. She could feel the wrongness oozing, even from where she sat in the locked car. She did not know why or how these people knew to come, but she knew that Emerald Hills was no longer safe for her. It wasn’t just the Fae that she had to fear now, others had come that might see her as a threat. Jen was thankful that she was immune from the haze and apathy that was afflicting the townsfolk. Although she did not properly understand why she was spared. She guessed it might have to do with her Sight.

Jen innately knew that the mist must be responsible for the mental haze, but to see the whole town so affected was not only frightening, but depressing as well. The town was falling down about everyone’s ears and no one cared. The ones who did care, and did have purpose, seemed to be like vultures or parasites feeding upon a dying host.

Not wanting to look out on the corrupted town, Jen instead turned her attention to the local paper that she had bought in Cromhart. She had read it cover to cover, and although the mist, the abductions and the unexplained deaths featured prominently, there was not a single word of explanation to be found. Jen put the newspaper down on the passenger seat and forced herself to look out of the car window again. Going by the news reports, the electrical work was almost complete, only a day or two more and then the town would be wholly reliant on underground power. Jen knew that she had to act soon, but did not know how to undo all the changes and bring the town back to life.