Caught in Willaburra

By Margaret Pearce

Fourteen-year-old Kate isn't clear who she is or how she had ended up as an assistant teacher in a stuffy old bush school. Why is she suddenly living in a world that resembles one huge antique shop? How can she escape this unpleasant world she finds herself in and return home?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writers Exchange E-Publishing
• Release date: Mar 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922233585

Margaret Pearce

Margaret Pearce was born when the population of Australia was seven million – now it is some twenty-two million. Like many Australians, her forebears immigrated in the 1850's to find a better life for their children, part of the largest diaspora of the times.At seven when she found a lurid science fiction magazine, her unsupervised reading started. The cover had an almost naked female in a large wine glass and an interesting alien drinking her blood from a tap below. She has since been hooked on science fiction and fantasy. She completed a commercial course before being launched on an unsuspecting business world as a typist, stenographer and secretary before falling into copywriting. When she married, she commenced writing and even while raising children, found time to publish. When children grew, she decided to study for a arts degree as a mature age student and become a teacher, but writing continued to dominate her life.The Author lives in an underground house in the Australian bush, where she maintains her love of writing.

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By Margaret Pearce

http://www.writers-exchange.com

Caught in Willaburra

Copyright 2014 Margaret Pearce

Writers Exchange E-Publishing

PO Box 372

ATHERTON  QLD  4883

Cover Art by: Odile Stamanne

Published by Writers Exchange E-Publishing

http://www.writers-exchange.com

ISBN: 978-1-922233-58-5 

Published Millennium Books 1992

An imprint of E. J. Dwyer (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

3/32 Alice Street,

Newtown NSW 2042

Australia

Rights reverted 22nd November, 1995

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

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

Chapter 1

I opened my eyes to dull spaciousness, and a silence as muffling as cotton wool. I was in a hospital bed. Had I been ill?  I didn't feel pain or weakness. Come to think of it, I didn't feel anything!  I pushed back the grey-white covers and slid off the high bed. Although I only wore a skimpy hospital gown, I was neither warm nor cold, and the floor under my bare feet was just slippery.

Why did I have a hospital room to myself?  I searched my memory. A fleeting touch of disbelief and horror as something hid from me; a kaleidoscope of spinning faces, but none of them slowed down enough to be identified.

Was I so important that I had been granted the privilege of a private room?  Was I carrying some contagious disease that required isolation?  I searched my body for a tell-tale ache or fever. There was nothing. My body seemed suspended in space, functioning on its own.

Was this sterile room a milder version of a psychiatric padded cell?  That thought caused my breathing to quicken. A door set into one wall, polished as bare as the wall, and almost as unnoticeable, swung open at my touch.

My sense of unease grew. Where were the nurses, the doctors doing their rounds, the cleaners fighting the effects of dirty feet and sticky fingers and scurrying around for flower vases?  Where were the visitors tiptoeing in and out of wards?  Where was everybody--anybody?  Was I alone in a deserted hospital?

As I went past I opened the doors lining the passage. All of them were identical: an empty bed, grey linoleum floor polished threadbare, and the square of threatening grey sky through the undressed window.

It was then I started running, desperately searching for the reassuring normality of the nurses' desk. I was breathing noisily, more from panic than from running, when I finally stumbled to a halt.

The hairs at the back of my neck lifted as my eyes followed the perfectly proportioned lines of the endless corridor. Some basic instinct was repelled by the pull of that shabby grey corridor vanishing in the grey haze.

I wasn't cold but couldn't stop shivering. The fear grew and grew until my throat hurt and my stomach tightened into a knot. The world around me wasn't real, but what was reality?

The word lost echoed around my mind. I knew I was lost, but in what nightmare world had I become lost?  I edged back along the passage, aware that the silence had somehow become expectant and waiting.

I sensed I was being watched and spun around. Standing right behind me, as if she had just materialized out of nowhere, stood a girl.

You scared me, I accused.

I didn't mean to, she apologized. I've been searching for you for ages. I was frightened I wouldn't find you in time.

We stood in the corridor face to face. She looked normal enough despite the shapeless nightie. She was the same height as myself and looked about the same age. I relaxed.

Why me, and where are we?

Perhaps this was a psychiatric hospital! I was alone in the echoing empty greyness with a mentally ill person!  My panic returned.

And I'm not mentally ill, just anxious and so sorry for my stupidity, she said indignantly.

Where are we? I repeated pushing away from the fear that she had read my mind.

This is the place outside.

Outside where?

Outside when, she corrected. She sighed at my blank expression. Outside time!  That's why you have sloughed off your memories.

I leaned against the wall. My knees felt wobbly. I knew she was telling the truth. I was a me without name or memories. Maybe this was death?

Not death, just limbo.  She answered my thoughts again.

Why have you been searching for me?

Because you've been raised differently from me, and it's your one chance.

I shrugged. I didn't know what she was talking about. I didn't have any memories, so how would I know how I had been raised?

One chance at what?

To escape from here.

Escape, I repeated

For a second the kaleidoscope of faces whirled around me again, and despite the anguish flooding over me I almost knew where I belonged, and then it faded back into the greyness of my non-memory.

How?

It's my fault you're here, the girl facing me confessed. I made a mistake and it has endangered your life.

What mistake?

I've made so many, the girl said. She twisted her hands together with despair. You'll have to go back and discover which one it was before you can escape from here.

That's okay, I agreed. I felt happier. This was at last something positive to do. Except I can't find the way out of here.

This door leads back, she said, gesturing to the door beside us. Remember people have to fulfil their potential and don't be as stupid and cowardly as I was and...

I shoved at the door even before she finished speaking. It wouldn't open. Strengthened by some hope I couldn't analyse, I pushed harder.

Was it my imagination, or did it give a little?  I slammed into it with all my weight. The door burst open. I fell headlong into the room, only then remembering I had forgotten to ask the mysterious girl exactly where I was going back to.

The sense of being muffled in silence was gone. The vivid colours closed around me, too bright and painful after the greyness. I put my hands over my eyes to protect them. A humming noise vibrated through my head and I lost consciousness.

Chapter 2

"Kate, the voice called. It was a harsh bullying voice, and sounded vaguely familiar. Move, will you, girl."

I opened my eyes. It was the patch of sunlight that was so bright. The sun glared through the window in a solid square. The drapes each side of the window were a wine red, with a glare all of their own against the faded yellow roses of the wallpaper.

I scrambled to my feet from an iron bed, rumpled patchwork quilt another gaudy note, and the brass knobs an improbable gleaming gold.

The door behind me opened. Make your bed, girl, and get dressed, ordered the harsh voice.

I turned and stared. The woman had sleeves rolled up to show muscled and freckled forearms. Her white apron was all-enveloping. It was a funny uniform for a nurse. Her streaked grey-black hair was dragged back into a tight knot. She inspected me with cold blue eyes.

Have I been sick? What sort of place is this?

The answer was a stinging slap across my face. I blinked and tears came to my eyes. It wasn't so much that the slap hurt. It did! The force jolted my head back and I felt the blood return to the area of the slap in a slow reddening burn.

I glared back at the woman. This I just didn't have to take! It was unjust and unnecessary!  The words slid out before I even knew where they came from.

Stuff you, I said. I'm signing out of this madhouse. You wait till my parents hear about this!

I wasn't prepared for the next slap. It knocked me off my feet and sprawling into the golden square of sunlight. I blinked at the dust mote, and the bare clean boards of the floor. My heart thudded as loudly as the ringing in my ears and the whole side of my face hurt. For a few seconds everything went a shadowy grey. A cool hand touched my burning face. I blinked again and the image of the two strangers by my bed vanished.

Get those clothes on, and the bed made, the harsh voice ordered.

The door shut quietly. She was gone!  I stood up. Outside the window was an expanse of paddocks, a cluster of sheds and an outhouse. I turned to study the bed. Over the brass rails at the end were neatly piled clothes.

My hands shook. I think the thudding pain in my head was affecting them. There was a peculiar pair of cotton bloomers with lace around the legs. They hung right down to my knees. I pulled off the skimpy nightie and pulled on the greyish flannel tee-shirt. The heavy flannel petticoat tied at the waistline and the swinging dark wool skirt that came nearly to my ankles had a set of buttons at the waistband. Then I put on and tucked in the long-sleeved scratchy white cotton blouse that buttoned high to the neck.

I looked under the bed for something to put on my feet. There were boots, not modern trendy light boots, but what looked like boys' proper lace-up heavy boots. Rolled inside them were dark hand-knitted socks, neatly darned at the toes.

I pulled them on. They were so long they reached up to the long bloomers I wore. Once they were laced up, the heavy boots fitted as comfortably as if they had been made for me. I moved towards the door, and then remembered I had to make the bed.

After a while this started to be a problem. The bottom sheet wasn't fitted and there was no doona to fling over a smooth mattress. This mattress was lumpy and uneven with a deep hollow down the centre. I straightened the coarse sheets and the two blankets and tucked everything in. The bed still looked messy. I covered the dips and humps of the bed with the patchwork quilt, straightened the two linen covered pillows and left it.

I opened the door by its brass handle. I tried to remember whether it had been there when I shouldered my way into the room. I had a fading memory of promising to undo a mistake of some sort, but this entire place was a mistake. I shrugged. My head was still ringing from the blow and it wasn't important.

Outside the passageway was different. The door had a brass handle on the outside, as did the other doors facing on to the long wide passage with its bare boards. Down one end the sun pushed a jewel pattern through the lead light windows each side of the outside door.

Past a red draped velvet curtain, the passage ended at a door with diamond-shaped panes. It opened into a big kitchen. The square table taking up most of the room had a white tablecloth spread across one end, set up with knife and fork, and a plate with buttered toast waiting beside it.

The woman stooped over a black wood burning stove. My mouth watered at the aroma of frying bacon and the sharper scent of frying tomatoes.

Aunt Em, I remembered from somewhere, the name sliding easily off my tongue.

It was going to be easy to hate, fear and resent her, but other