Strange About the River

By Adrian Callaghan

A beautiful young woman goes missing and a corpse is pulled from a creek after becoming entangled in fishing net, only to disappear from the riverbank shortly afterwards. Mysterious lights are reported in the sky upriver from the small town of Koorah.

Down-on-his-luck cop, Rebb Caldwell, is suspended from duty but continues his investigation into the case of the missing woman ... with possibly more than professional interest. Why does he feel so strong a link between a barely recognisable skull found in a murky creek and the discovery of a vast, illegal marijuana plantation?

Modern technology is disrupting an ageless culture in an inexplicable clash of paranormal boundary dissolution. Proud Elder, Goori, must find a way to stop the steady disintegration so the walls of the ethereal prison can re-build and evil kept contained.

These events and many more combine to lead Rebb and Goori, along with an unlikely entourage, to a final showdown with their fiercest rivals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Dec 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781925959895

Adrian Callaghan

Adrian Callaghan’s career as a builder has taken him from the towns of the Central West to many of the cities and towns along the east coast of Australia. He has also worked as a musician, playing in bands, duos and as a solo artist. A keen outdoorsman and fisherman, he spends time camping or swagging it in the shearing sheds of the west, the New England ranges, and at the beaches and lakes along the eastern seaboard. He has developed a strong admiration for the uniqueness, resilience and humour of the Australian ‘character’, and a love of the land and its amazing waterways.Adrian lives with his wife of 28 years, their two children and two dogs. He believes that handshake deals are meant to be kept, good values are good for the soul and beer should be cold.A long-time dabbler in bush poetry, this is Adrian’s first foray into the world of novel writing.

Book preview

Strange About the River

By

Adrian Callaghan

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO BOX 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

https://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2019 © Adrian Callaghan

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

This story is entirely a work of fiction.

No character in this story is taken from real life. Any resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is accidental and unintentional.

The author, their agents and publishers cannot be held responsible for any claim otherwise and take no responsibility for any such coincidence.

A book is the door into someone else’s imagination.

Cal

The end

At first all she saw was a blurry panorama of amoeba-like blobs swimming across her vision. The pungent aroma of garlic breath assaulted her nostrils, jolting her into consciousness. As her vision cleared, she was able to make out the leering face of a man kneeling over her. Something hard was pressing on her pubic bone. Her legs relaxed involuntarily at the insistent pressure, her thighs parting a few centimetres before reali­sation struck her like a fist.

Her shrill scream was a red-hot needle, threatening to pierce the man’s eardrums. She thrashed about wildly, as if a poisonous creature was crawling on her. Summoning all her strength, she lifted her right knee sharply and caught the ugly, dark-eyed man hard in the testicles. His face distorted into a grotesque mask of pain, drops of warm spittle spraying from between his clenched teeth onto her forehead and right cheek.

The hand pinning down her left arm relaxed momentarily. She pulled it free and struck out savagely, aiming for the desperate, flushed face above her. A painful groan from her attacker spurred her on as one of her blows caught him on the nose.

She felt an abrupt, powerful thwack on her temple as an electric-white light flashed before her eyes. For a millisecond, utter serenity enveloped her.

Then, she felt nothing …

City of Larrakin

15 October 1981, five pm

Rebb Caldwell felt another mutinous bead of sweat tickle his spine as it trickled between his shoulder blades and down the small of his back, to where a patch of moisture was soaking into the base of his shirt. His attention wavered during the 15-minute speech, which had started to feel like hours in the unseasonal mid-September humidity. Rebb caught odd words like ‘celestial’ and ‘endomorphic’ during Mayor Griddle’s monotonous rhetoric proclaiming the opening of the new, state-of-the-art council chambers. Rebb seethed. What a load of bullshit! Up there like an eclectic parrot, full of hot wind. Corrupt arsehole. He guessed that the mayor, whose voice echoed annoyingly from the public address system, didn’t even know the meaning of half the adjectives he was spouting.

Rebb mused that this new building was another example of an architect given a brief to design something ‘cutting-edge’; unique. But in his opinion, the result was ugly – ‘chaotic’, even. A bullnose roof abutted each side of the conventional flat awning roof covering the entrance. The awning was supported by huge, rock-faced sandstone pillars. Rebb thought the different styles of architecture they had incorporated didn’t really gel. Australiana–Gothic–Colonial. All it needed was a few gargoyles perched on the sandstone parapets to really top it off.

The superstructure itself was similar to other multi-storeyed buildings in Larrakin’s CBD, but this had been a pet project of Mayor Griddle’s and no expense had been spared on the façade. Rebb had discovered that by coincidence, the lucrative contract for the project had been awarded to a construction firm of which Mayor Griddle was a major, albeit silent, shareholder. In Larrakin, though, nothing stayed ‘silent’ for long.

While Rebb mulled over these issues subconsciously, something a short distance westward along the mall caught his eye that piqued his interest; his spider senses suggested it may warrant investigation.

He elbowed his partner, Lester Mayo – or ‘Beater’ as his mates called him – softly in the ribs to get his attention, motioning to him that he was going for a reconnoitre along the mall. Beater barely acknowledged him. Rebb knew Beater wouldn’t care; more than likely he’d join him after the ceremony. It was protocol to patrol the streets in pairs, but Beater appeared so taken with the mayor’s speech that Rebb figured he’d have more chance convincing him to arrest twenty local Ferret Head bikie gang members single-handedly – something Beater would probably enjoy attempting – than to get him to leave the ceremony. Rebb grinned as he watched Beater’s face, jaw hanging slackly, eyes as round as dinner plates and a transfixed expression. He looked like he might burst into tears. What could happen on a quick stroll anyway? Rebb thought as he turned his back on the ceremony and started down the mall.

The challenge

The same afternoon, one hundred kilometres north-east of Larrakin, Swamp Donkey and his offsider, Pulva, were preparing for a night of fishing. Swamp Donkey – or Swampy, or ‘Donk’, as most of the locals called him – had been tagged with his nickname as a boy by the local Koorah fishermen. He was never really sure of the origins of the Donkey part of his nickname. He thought maybe it was because he could be frustratingly stubborn; he remembered an uncle once saying he was as stubborn as mule. Donk was pretty sure a mule was kind of like a donkey. And he’d overheard people say, ‘That boy Swampy, he’s built like a donkey!’

Donk’s favourite pastime had always been wandering the many swamps of the area, poking about the creeks that ran off the Kooramahk River, which ran through his home town of Koorah. He liked nothing more than hunting the big, angry mangrove crabs that made their home in these murky places, hooking them out of their muddy holes with a bent-ended length of number eight fencing wire, for which he had devel­oped an uncanny skill.

As a boy he hadn’t really understood his nickname; as a man of twenty-six he didn’t really care. He didn’t care what they called him, as long as he was paid for his haul of fish or crabs. Come to think of it, he kind of liked it when his plump little wife called him Donkey! But when she’d been drinking rum and she started calling him other names, it was time to go fishing!

Pulva, Donk’s partner of sorts, was named after his father, Ol’ Pulva. It wasn’t his father’s real name; he had been given the name by Goori, an old Indigenous friend of the family. Nobody really gave it much thought or bothered to ask Goori what Pulva meant; it seemed to suit him so it stuck, until eventually only a very few could even remember Ol’ Pulva’s real name.

Some of the townsfolk believed that Goori had strange powers and could foretell the future, but he refused be drawn on the subject, shutting up as tight as a clam if it was ever mentioned. Goori was already very old when young Pulva was born, claiming he didn’t know how old he was in whitefella years. The ceremonial scars of initiation were still visible on his chest, part of an ancient ritual lost in the annals of time. On the back of each hand, small circular tattoos were etched into his dark skin, curious markings each approximately the size of a five-cent piece. From each mark, six short, curved lightning-bolt-shaped lines emanated at equidistant intervals.

Ol’ Pulva had been fascinated by Goori’s strange markings since he had first noticed them. Goori had played holy hell the first time Ol’ Pulva had tried to photograph what he mistakenly thought were merely interesting tattoos with his Box Brownie. Goori went walk-about for six months immediately after that argument. Only when the angry spirits had settled did Goori return.

What happened next is legendary in the small town of Koorah. The story goes that a short time after Goori’s reappear­ance, Ol’ Pulva set about plying him with plonk in a drinking session that ran late into a hot summer’s afternoon, waiting patiently for Goori to pass out before cautiously taking a series of photographs. When he learned of his friend’s treachery, Goori was furious.

When next they met, the two men argued fiercely and Goori challenged Ol’ Pulva to a fight on the banks of the Kooramahk. Even though he had to be in his late sixties, Goori showed not the slightest hint of fear as he confronted the much younger man.

‘Tomorrow morning when the tide reaches the bank, I challenge you. There must be a lesson … I will give you tonight to think about what you have done. Afterwards, you will burn the pictures!’

Word spread like wildfire regarding the impending duel and at dusk, a small crowd of nosey spectators gathered along the grassy banks of the river, eager for entertainment.

Goori spent the entire night sitting cross-legged on a grassy rise above the riverbank, clutching two six-foot lengths of char-ended, barkless tea-tree that lay across his lap. Not so long ago they would have been hunting spears. Apart from his clothes, they were the only material possessions Goori owned. His eyes were closed and he chanted quietly for long periods, sometimes lapsing into a short hiatus of silence before continuing his nasal chanting.

Ol’ Pulva approached Goori on three occasions during the night to apologise for his foolishness, trying to negotiate a way out of the fight. Goori either ignored him or was oblivious to his presence, which only enraged Ol’ Pulva more. As if being ignored wasn’t enough, the cheap whisky he was drinking between peace-seeking missions only fuelled Ol’ Pulva’s anger. On his last attempt, he raised his hand to slap Goori with an open-handed cuff to the side of the head, but before he could deliver the blow, an icy shiver ran down his spine and his knees felt like they were about to buckle. A deep, primal fear stayed his hand.

The sadistic part of him was starting to kick in as he strode away, white-hot anger flooded through him. As the distance between the two men lengthened, his bravado strengthened.

‘Let’s see what tomorrow brings, old man,’ he mumbled to no-one in particular. A few short, hard rips to the ribs – everyone knew you didn’t punch a blackfella in the head – and a quick choking of the windpipe. Ol’ Pulva’s fingers were like bands of steel; it would all be over in a few ugly moments. ‘What a load of fucking horse shit,’ he confided to his whisky bottle. ‘All over some fucking pictures that cost an arm and a leg to have developed. I’ll shove them down his throat – or somewhere else!’

He smiled inwardly as his imagination played out the scene of his magnificent pugilistic victory.

Let’s fight

The majority of last night’s spectators returned at sun-up, again taking up their preferred vantage points. The die-hards from last night had left shortly after Ol’ Pulva’s third peacemaking attempt had failed, dispersing begrudgingly after he’d told them in no uncertain terms to ‘Fuck off or I’ll fill your nosey arses full of fucking rat-shot!’

Everyone knew when the tide would reach the bank, give or take a few minutes. Most of them relied on the Kooramahk River for their livelihood in one way or another, so the tide was as much a time gauge as any clock, only the tide was much more reliable.

The clear incoming saltwater of the Kooramahk flooded steadily across the thirsty mudflat. Small scavenging crabs scurried to their dark subterranean homes to avoid falling victim to the hunting toadfish that rode the warm leading edge of the tide. Some holes bubbled for a while, spewing trapped oxygen as the unstoppable tidal water marched towards shore. Further out, a stingray wing broke the calm surface as it also pushed into the shallows to prey on any flat’s creatures lingering moments too long from the sanctuary of their murky homes.

The first lap of water, barely a quarter of an inch deep, touched the base of the vertical clay bank directly in front of where Goori had spent the night. His eyes opened. Goori took his fighting sticks in his right hand and placed them softly on the ground beside him. He gazed fixedly out across the mirror-calm waters of the Kooramahk for a while, before standing lithely and walking at an easy pace down towards the small clearing in the grass on the riverbank, where to his credit, Ol’ Pulva still waited patiently.

As Goori made his way towards the makeshift arena, long blades of native grass appeared to be drawn towards him, as if his aura was magnetic. His feet seemed to barely touch the ground and the mysterious marks on the backs of his hands glowed softly with a weird, illuminated light. The two men faced one another about a body length apart; nothing about the scene looked combative. Goori stood bare chested, wearing only an old pair of denim jeans, faded and holey. Stringy sinews and veins in his arms stood out like long, thin snakes, accentuated by wiry muscles. The muscles in his chest were spare but firm for his age and his head was balanced on a swanlike neck.

He seemed taller than Ol’ Pulva remembered. The younger man was half a head shorter but hard and strong; he was in his prime. It was Ol’ Pulva who broke the uncomfortable silence. ‘You don’t want to do this, Goori. I might kill you … by mistake!’ That’s pretty good, he thought. A bit of conviction followed by a not-so-veiled threat.

He’s scaring the fuck out of me, though. What’s wrong with him? Ol’ Pulva had never seen Goori acting like this before.

Goori spoke quietly but firmly. ‘This must be a lesson, old friend. You have been a fool. Afterwards, do not fear me. As I have said, you must burn your whitefella pictures and that is all I will say!’ While he spoke, his body started to sway in a strangely hypnotic fashion.

Ol’ Pulva had stopped listening to what Goori was saying when he heard the word ‘fool’. The sun was burning his face, his head ached from the whisky he’d consumed the previous night, his mouth tasted like a cow had shat in it, and to top things off a skinny old blackfella had just called him a fucking fool! His temper boiled over and he growled angrily. His first and last memory of the fight was taking a step forward while swinging a clumsy but powerful punch.

Goori watched Ol’ Pulva’s amateurish attempt at a punch as if it were in slow motion.

That first punch should have knocked Goori senseless; it was a savage right cross thrown with all of Ol’ Pulva’s weight behind it – and he was a known and respected pug. Instead, Goori swayed like a hooded cobra and without effort he was on the unprotected right of his now off-balance opponent. Goori’s right fist lashed like a stock whip, cracking cleanly into the base of Ol’ Pulva’s right ear. The half-stunned man staggered but used his momentum, swivelling quickly to rush Goori in a hunched rugby tackling motion, arms spread like an angry mud crab’s splayed nippers.

The restless audience, who minutes ago were making witless comments in anticipation of some action, fell into silent awe. Never had they witnessed anyone fight like this! Was he fighting? Was he dancing? Goori’s strange, swaying move­ments transfixed the crowd.

Once again, Goori swayed out of his opponent’s path, easily leaping four feet clear of the ground to clear Ol’ Pulva as he stumbled clumsily below him. Goori landed on his left, quickly delivering two whiplash blows to the base of Ol’ Pulva’s ear, the second blow open-handed, for Goori already knew the fight was over. Ol’ Pulva didn’t feel the ground that rushed up to meet his face. The strange glowing marks on the backs of Goori’s hands faded to a soft, pulsing iridescent glow. Goori sat down beside the beaten man, cradled Ol’ Pulva’s head in his lap and began to cry.

Ol’ Pulva regained consciousness twenty minutes later. Groggy, he lay in the same position until his head cleared enough for him to get to his feet unsteadily. The few straggling onlookers who had lingered had been far too fearful to go anywhere near the two men, a supernatural dread hanging heavily over the scene. Ol’ Pulva’s wife whimpered softly, afraid to look directly at the old Aboriginal man as she waited on the grey, rough-sawn timbers of their small veranda. Their blue cattle dog, who had been absent for most of the night, returned from places unknown and whined mournfully from the darkness beneath the house, adding to the eeriness of the scene.

Goori disappeared into the bush later that day. Ol’ Pulva steadily recovered over the next few days, but never fully regained the hearing in his right ear. He burned all the pictures except two, which he kept buried under his lemon tree in a dented Arnott’s biscuit tin, but their mere existence caused him many sleepless nights.

Sweat Shurly

Donk backed his battered, trailer-bound, five-metre Quintrex down the concrete boat ramp, the same as he had a thousand times before. He cursed the steady nor’easter that blew across the Kooramahk, which threatened to push his boat, once launched, onto the weedy, oyster-covered rocks of the shoreline. As usual he muttered silent curses at the local council for the poor positioning and disrepair of the ramp.

From the end of the wharf not two hundred metres away, Pulva watched inattentively. This was ritual. He wasn’t required to assist with the launch, as Donk would take this as an affront to his seamanship.

Pulva watched as Donk reversed the trailer down the ramp and killed the motor of his old ute, chocked one of the rear wheels with a chunk of timber he kept stowed in the tray solely for this purpose – the handbrake had never been trustworthy – then climbed lithely aboard the battered tinny. He watched Donk release the tattered cord he had hooked to a quick hitch of dubious design, and slide the Quintrex smoothly out into the clear waters of the Kooramahk. Donk started the outboard and idled back to shore, where he let the wind hold the ‘Quinny’ against the rocks while he hopped out to park the ute and trailer.

Pulva smiled to himself as he read the name that Donk had scrawled untidily in red paint on the port bow of the silvery grey hull of the boat in a moment of drunken courtship a few years back. Sweat Shurly it stated proudly, even though the relationship had lasted a mere forty-eight hours, give or take an hour …

Donk had arrived home from a long day’s fishing, showered and dressed in his best tracksuit pants, a clean flannelette shirt and nearly new rubber thongs before setting off to visit his new flame, the one and only ‘Sweet Shirley’. When he arrived at Sweet Shirley’s caravan, he found two interstate truck drivers inside, extolling their virtues – among other things – to her. A brief but ferocious scuffle ensued between the two lovers and it had taken almost all Shirley’s strength to turf the agitated Donk out of her caravan. The truck drivers enjoyed the show immensely.

Pulva wasn’t sure if Donk had left her name on the boat on purpose, or was simply too lazy to cover it with more paint. Anyway, it made for a good conversation starter.

Donk returned to Sweat Shurly and motored over to where Pulva was waiting on the wharf. Pulva passed down a dolphin torch and an old denim jacket, along with two flagons of port – one brown and one white; October nights could get awfully cold on the Kooramahk. He also passed Donk a bottle of diluted Captain Redbeard rum, which Donk promptly hid under the fishing net bundled on the floor in the stern of the boat. Pulva climbed in, pushing the boat away from the wharf in the same motion, made himself comfortable on the bundle of net and waited for Donk’s inevitable complaints about the boat ramp to start, soon to be drowned out by the burble and growl of the motor as they set off. Donk would continue to grumble animatedly for quite a distance, while Pulva nodded slowly in unhearing, uncaring agreement.

Two-Bit

Donk steered Sweat Shurly into Riddle Creek – known by the locals as The Riddle – and on towards The Crook. The Crook was an invert created by the two channels of the creek they had just entered, its southern channel entering the river around two kilometres north of the boat ramp at approximately a one hundred and thirty-five-degree angle, hence the name.

The Riddle cut its way almost gunbarrel straight, eight hundred metres through the muddy earth of Dingo Swamp to where it met a deep pool. The Pool had a diameter of approximately three hundred metres, its western bank forming part of the boundary of Pool Town. Viewed from the air, the three connecting channels formed an equilateral triangle. This unusual geographical formation had long been a mystery, hence its name. The mangrove-covered mud island at the centre of The Pool was imaginatively called Triangle Island, long since abbreviated to ‘The Angle’.

Donk idled towards the short wharf that connected directly to the veranda of the shack in which Johnny Two-Bit lived. Two-Bit’s recycled hardwood and corrugated iron shack was built on timber poles, in various states of rotting disrepair, above the swampy ground of The Angle, directly adjacent to The Pool. Pulva admired Donk’s piloting skills as he navigated between sunken fishing boats, scattered fish and crab traps, ropes and miscellaneous river clutter that Two-Bit had gathered over the years, edging Sweat Shurly alongside the wharf, where he promptly killed the motor.

Two-Bit sold pieces of clutter, along with driftwood or any other flotsam or jetsam that he collected, to supplement the modest income he earned working odd jobs around the waterfront. It never ceased to amaze him how much some city slickers or wannabe hippies would pay for rubbish! One bespectacled, ruddy-faced gent had paid him two hundred dollars for a small, rusty reef anchor. Two-Bit listened with fake enthusiasm as the sweaty, sunburnt, mosquito-bitten man explained how he could see layer upon layer of history in the flaking rust … Two-Bit was thinking there’d be a bit of history all right, if Ol’ Pulva found out he’d knocked it off from his boat that very morning! He had smiled broadly at the thought, the buyer interpreting this as a compliment about the depth of his knowledge.

The important thing was that these passers-by gave him the perfect opportunity to offer a friendly drink, a toast to the beautiful Kooramahk, a toast to life. It also gave him the perfect opportunity to slip in The Stuff supplied by The Suit.

Not everyone would take up Two-Bit’s offer of a drink. Some were stuffy, usually the older women, pressing their husbands to make a hasty departure. Some professed to be non-drinkers – Ha! Some wanted more than one glass. Two-Bit moved those ones on quickly because he had to supply the plonk himself, paying for it out of his own pocket. Something he felt he should bring up with The Suit next time they met. Tawny port was the only thing that really masked the taste of The Suit’s mysterious additive. As luck would have it, tawny port was Two-Bit’s second-favourite drink!

There were rules to be complied with; only give it to singles or couples; pairs of men were fine as were pairs of women. Never give it to anyone who had a child with them. Never give it to anyone who seemed like they had taken drugs. Never give it to anyone who looked to be in ill health. Make conversation; be sure to mention that the best area for their particular interest, be it fishing, birdwatching, driftwood collecting or whatever, was in the five-kilometre radius that The Suit had spoken about.

It suited Two-Bit to ply visitors with The Stuff. He didn’t like the thought of giving it to the locals, although he’d been assured there were no side effects, nor would they have any memory of what happened after Two-Bit pushed the button, thereby setting things in motion. When things were slow, however, he had no choice than to target a local or two … and things were slow!!

‘Hit a turtle on the way up, Swampy? Ya two-bit fisho! Told you a hundred times not to run too close to the shore on these tides.’

They heard him before they saw him. How he knew they’d hit a turtle, which Donk had thought at the time had been submerged log about halfway up to The Riddle, was a mystery. They’d long given up trying to work out how Two-Bit knew these things. It seemed that anything that happened, or was about to happen, on or around the Kooramahk River, Two-Bit already knew.

Two-Bit got up from the old lounge chair he’d been relaxing in under the shade on his veranda. Grinning, he made his way along the wharf towards the two men, easily catching the bow rope that Pulva threw to him in one of his dark, giant hands, quickly hitching it to a wharf post in a well-practised, fluid motion.

Donk riffled around at the back of the boat while Pulva chatted with Two-Bit. Pulva noticed that Two-Bit’s skin had a certain pallidness about it, even though his skin was dark, being an Aboriginal man. He didn’t seem as spritely as usual either, but his long mop of grey, unkempt hair was the same and his smile was as infectious as ever. Pulva saw the small tattoos on the back of Two-Bit’s hands and wondered why he hadn’t noticed them previously. Something about them stirred a dim memory in the recesses of his brain.

Pulva was torn from his thoughts by a sudden lurching of the boat. Donk had gone to climb out of the boat and one of his impressive toenails had caught in the nylon strands of fishing net lying on the floor of the boat, causing him to trip and fall heavily on the gunnel. The twenty-litre drum he had just corralled some mud crabs into fell onto its side. The angry crustaceans needed no more of an invitation of escape, spilling out, claws splayed aggressively, very close to Donk’s unprotected feet. This brought on what could only be described as a frantic, ungainly highland jig, plus a barrage of invectives Donk usually reserved