Dark Confluence

To Richard - love of my life.

Copyright © Fay Parkyn 2012
Brisbane, Queensland
Australia

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any print or electronic form without permission.
Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Purchase only authorised editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo courtesy of
© Lilkar | Dreamstime.com

Editing and proofreading courtesy of
Frankie Sutton
http://frankiesfreelanceediting.blogspot.com.au/

Chapter 1

Jennifer gasped in sudden, heart-stopping panic. Braking desperately she attempted to avoid the shrouded woman who appeared directly in front of her car. However, her attempt was unsuccessful and the mini ploughed straight into the figure.

The sudden stop flung her forward against the seatbelt. Her glasses flew off her face and the bags of groceries on the back seat scattered everywhere, rolling and bouncing about, spilling contents across the inside of her car. Dimly, she heard a second screech of tyres and felt a hard jolt as whoever had been tailgating her, smashed into the back of her car, propelling it forward. That last impact was too much for the frayed safety belt and it tore. She lurched backwards, catching her head painfully on the side window. For a moment, she saw stars and then blacked out.

After regaining consciousness, she turned the door handle and she half fell from the car to encounter the wrathful expression of Dave the local plumber.

“Geezus Jen! Stop in the middle of the road, why don’t ya?” he yelled, whilst pointing back at his four-wheel drive. “Good thing my bull bar took the impact. Do ya know how much it costs to replace a radiator? Do ya? Do ya?”

Jen shook her head and dazed, staggered to her feet. She sagged against the side of her elderly mini, her head thumping painfully.

“Where is she?” Jen demanded through the pain.

“Eh, you’re hurt then?” Dave, his anger dissipating, forgot his own troubles for a moment as he regarded the small and slight older woman propping herself against the now misshapen mini.

“My head hurts,” Jen said, her fingers gingerly exploring the tender lump which was rapidly forming. She looked around again, “Where is she?”

“Who.”

“The woman, I think...I hit a woman”

Dave looked around, “What woman? He checked the front of her car, “There’s no woman here.”

Dave shook his head and motioned her to move away from the car. “Come on sit ya ‘self on the footpath while I move our cars out of the way. We’re holding up traffic in town.”

Looking back, Jen saw a small line-up of cars; the drivers either peering curiously at her and Dave, or impatiently leaning on their horns. Sighing, she allowed herself to be steered to the curb and she abruptly sat on the cracked concrete slabs of the footpath.

“Wait here....” Dave told her, “I’ll be back in a tick.”

Jen watched him get into her car and manoeuvre it to the side of the road. Within a few minutes, his big four-wheel drive pulled up next to her.

Dave leaned out of his car window and called to her, “Look, ya car is over there. I’ve locked it and here are the keys.” He tossed her car keys out the window and they landed in her lap. “I’ve rung emergency and they‘re on their way. I’d wait for the police, but I have a client with a flooded kitchen and I’m already late. I’ll get in touch with the police after my appointment.”

He stared at her quizzically, “Are you sure there was a woman?”

She shrugged and shook her head. Strangely, the memory of the woman was rapidly fading from her mind. Jen tried hard to remember, but every time she tried to recollect what she saw, the memory seemed to slide away. To make it worse she could not think past the crippling headache.

“Well, I didn’t see anything, and there was nothing under your car.”

Jen nodded, with her eyes half closed against the painful thump, thump inside her head.

“See ya!” he called, “I’ll ring ya later about the insurance and stuff.” He glanced back down the road, “I reckon ya car’s a write-off, those nose to tails always bugger up the smaller cars, doubt you’ll be allowed to drive it. Oh, I can hear a siren.” He grinned ruefully, “She’ll be right, just wait where you are. They know where to find ya,” and then in a cloud of noxious diesel fumes, he was off and speeding down the road.

“Are you sure you are alright, dear?” enquired a voice above her.

Jen looked up squinting and could only make out a pink and purple haze. Eventually, the haze resolved itself into the ferret-like features of Miss Amelia Crane, the Chairwoman of the Country Ladies Society. The local town gossip had descended upon her as soon as Dave had departed the scene.

“Headache,” Jen explained, touching the now impressively large red swelling on her head for emphasis.

“Then you best be off to the clinic, dear. Oh, and the ambulance is here” she added quite unnecessarily, as the big white vehicle with the painfully bright flashing lights pulled up where Dave’s four wheel drive had been only moments before. Jen found further conversation impossible as two burly blue uniformed paramedics shooed the now growing crowd of onlookers back to a reasonable distance and started firing a barrage of questions at her.

“Was it a car accident, love?”

“Where does it hurt?”

“Can you move your hands and feet?”

“Are you dizzy?”

“Do you have a headache?”

Jen answered their questions as best as she was able, whilst the medics fussed over her. Moments later, she heard another siren, a police car pulled up, and two uniformed officers got out. Their eyes noted the crowd, the paramedics, and Jen seated on the footpath. One officer went back to the car and started talking on the two-way radio, whilst the other walked over to where she was.

“Hit and run?”

“Jennifer McDonald’s car was hit from behind,” Miss Amelia Crane, piped up helpfully.

“Oh, did you see the accident?” the police Senior Constable enquired.

“Indeed I did,” the old lady said, happy to be the centre of attention. “You see that lady there on the ground,” and she pointed at Jen, “Well, she stopped suddenly, and Dave O’Donnell’s 4WD utility ran straight up the back of her car.

“Ah,” the police Senior Constable continued writing in his notebook, then knelt and turned to Jen.

“Did you hit something, Miss?” he asked.

Jen shrugged, “I thought I did, but Dave looked and couldn’t find anything.”

“Where is your car now...and Dave?”

“He...he moved them,” she explained unsteadily, her headache boring into her skull. “He had to go to a job, he was late,” she said apologetically.

“Was he now?” the Senior Constable was unimpressed. “Cars involved in an accident should not be moved. That will cause problems, and he should never have left the accident scene. I’ll have words with Dave later.” He looked across the road at the mangled end of the elderly mini, “Your car?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’ll take a look.”

The other officer finished speaking on the two-way radio and walked over to where she was.

“I’ve called a tow-truck. Your car will be taken to the police yard. We’ll need to properly inspect it there.”

Jen nodded and suddenly remembered, “My purse, my glasses!”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get them to you.”

The paramedic stood and straightened, addressing the officer, “Have you finished here? We need to get her to the hospital.”

The Senior Constable glanced across to his partner who nodded, “Go ahead. We’ll finish up.”

Jen felt herself being deftly moved onto a stretcher and then loaded into the back of the ambulance. As the vehicle slowly pulled out into traffic, the paramedic continued to fuss over her, hooking her up to a myriad of monitoring devices.

“Really, I’m fine,” she assured him, “Just a bump on the head and a bad headache.”

However, he shook his head and muttered darkly about possible brain injury, whiplash, and having to be careful in case of spinal injuries. Therefore, Jen accepted his ministrations and closed her eyes, trying to recollect what she had seen before the crash. After a few minutes, she gave up. Whatever she saw had faded from her memory, no doubt aided in part by whatever it was the medics had injected into her arm.