Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

“Sounds good.” She coughed slightly, grinned sheepishly, but took another toke. “What’s in the box?”

Dace waved a hand. “It’s just work stuff.”

“On a Friday night?”

“Yep.”

He wasn’t about to tell her any more than that and she seemed happy to let it go. Preferable all around, really. At least until he knew her better. He thought about leaning in for a kiss but didn’t want to push things too fast. The boat moved slightly with the current and they were turned to face the cliffs. Tumbled sandstone, striped like cake, led up to thick bush on top. As the weed kicked in, they both leaned back in their seats, mellowed with it. The myriad stars above the silhouetted gum trees made for a stunning outlook, the wide sweep of the Milky Way a river of distant diamonds.

Dace took the joint back from Sasha. Something in the bush high above them moved. He paused, halfway through inhaling, and watched as a dark shadow rose briefly higher than the treetops. It was curved, lumpy. It reminded him of a whale breaching the surface of the ocean, that slick curve of massive beast briefly rising then sinking away. Except this was on a cliff top. And the trees had to be at least ten metres high up there, maybe more.

“You see that?”

Sasha looked at him. “See what?”

He pointed with the spliff. “Watch, up there. Dead ahead of us. Something huge moved in the bush.”

Sasha frowned. “You’re stoned, man.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But I definitely saw something.”

They both stared at the high vegetation, passing the joint back and forth. But saw nothing more.

“I definitely saw something,” Dace said at last, annoyed.

Sasha laughed softly. “I believe it. There is weird shit in the bush around here. Wouldn’t get me in there for quids. I stay on the road every time, and never stop the car.”

“I hear that.”

“Better yet, we do this. Going by boat to Enden is way smarter.”

“No chance of some kingshit cop in town trying to RBT you either.”

“You heard the McFarland story?” Sasha asked.

Dace laughed. “Everyone knows the McFarlands. Weird fuckers.”

“Weird even by Gulp standards, yeah. But you know the story about their land?”

“I guess not. What about it?”

“They have over a hundred acres out on the Gulp Road, yeah? South side. Theirs is the last property before it’s thick bush all the way to the Enden-Monkton Road.”

Dace took the joint. It was getting short, hot. “Yeah.”

“One of the earliest farms, cleared and settled by John McFarland’s great-great-grandad. It’s been there over a hundred years, ticking along. So back before the McFarland kids were born, John McFarland inherited the farm from his dad. He’d always said they should expand, but his dad said no way. My dad and John McFarland are mates, right, which is how I know all this. Now apparently, McFarland wanted to clear more land, but his dad always said they should never disturb what was out there, beyond the creek.” Sasha smacked her lips. “My mouth is dry as Gandhi’s sandal. Got a drink?”

Dace handed her a plastic water bottle he had in a cup holder by the steering wheel. He always came prepared. He was enjoying her stoned rambling. “What’s out beyond the creek?” he asked.

Sasha gulped some water down. “That’s better. I’m getting to that. Now, John McFarland would have been about twenty-five or so, his dad died young and he inherited the farm young. Gung ho, is what my dad called him. He decided fuck what the old man said, he was going to strip out a few more acres past the creek.

“So this creek runs right along the far side of the McFarland back paddock, marking the boundary of their land on that side. John McFarland decided to take down the fencing on his side of the creek, drop a couple of cement culverts in to make bridges, and then start clearing bush the other side.

“He had some help with him, a local teenage pair, brothers from one of the families in town. They were fifteen or sixteen, something like that, earning pittance bucks for back-breaking work on the farm. He still does that to this day, hires teenagers, pays them next to fuck all. Anyway, they get out there and start stripping down the fencing and one of these teenagers goes over to the creek and says, ‘The water is black.’”

“The water is black?” Dace echoed.

“That’s what he said. ‘What do you mean, black?’ John McFarland asked him, and the kid says, ‘The water is black, like oil.’ All this my dad told me. Apparently, McFarland got drunk one night at Clooney’s and told him the story.

“So this kid puts his hands in the creek and cups them together to get some water. Sure enough, it’s black. Not like oil, McFarland said, but dark like a glass of stout. ‘Probably just peat or coal or something in the ground hereabouts,’ McFarland says to the boy. ‘Stop fucking about, there’s work to do.’ Apparently the kid shrugged and said, ‘Well, I’m thirsty,’ and drank what was cupped in his hands.”

“So this won’t end well,” Dace said with a grin.

“Does anything in this fucked up town? The kid screamed in agony and collapsed to the ground. Began gibbering and rolling his eyes. They all freaked out, and McFarland rushed him home. He settled down a bit on the way, but the kid has never been the same. All his teeth fell out and his skin went white, like fucking chalk. You’ll have seen him around town, right? Everything about him is long and weird and floppy, he always wears overalls with that massive baggy jumper underneath, even in the height of summer.”

Dace frowned, nodded. “Yeah, I know who you mean. That’s how he got that way?”

“Fucked up his mind too, he’s not all there, so they say. I wouldn’t know, I won’t go near the freak.”

“This is a wind up, right?” Dace said, grinning.

Sasha shook her head. “Nah. Unless my dad was winding me up. He told me it was all true, John McFarland got drunk that night and spilled it. Says he still feels guilty for how that kid got fucked up. I mean, he’s a grown man now, must be around forty or something, but he is fucked up.”

“Did he ever extend the land?”

Sasha laughed. “Nope. Said he went back the next day and put all the fence back up. Said no way he wanted that creek on his land, it could stay in the bush. And that’s not even counting for whatever his dad said was out there beyond the creek.”

They nodded along to Blind Eye Moon for a moment. Dace thought maybe he didn’t want to consider too deeply what lay beyond the McFarland’s creek. Or what he might have seen up on the cliff top.

“No sudden moves, you two!” snapped a gruff voice somewhere behind them.

Dace spun his chair around to see another boat not five metres from theirs. Two men were in it, one at the wheel, the other standing on the prow pointing a shotgun at him. Both wore balaclavas concealing their whole face except the eyes. They must have cut their engine and coasted in under cover of the music.

“What the fuck?” Dace said.

“Who are they?” Sasha asked, eyes wide.

“Turn that shit off,” said the man with the gun. “Slow and easy as, yeah?”

Dace nodded, reaching cautiously for his phone. Blind Eye Moon stopped mid-riff and the night was heavy with silence but for the slap of low waves against the hulls of the boats.

“Give it to us then,” the man with the gun said.

Dace swallowed, stomach cold, legs shaking. He was glad he was sitting down. He felt as though his bladder would let go any moment. This was bad. Really bad. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t fuck with me, son!” the gunman said.

Son? Dace was thirty-four next year and the guy pointing a shotgun at him didn’t look old. What did that matter? His mind was rambling.