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The moon was a murky white disc, high in the sky resting on an eiderdown of clouds. She yanked her friend’s front door closed and wrapped her knitted scarf around her neck once more.
Rain had fallen while they dissected their lives at the kitchen table, talking poetry, unrequited love and the sweet promises of tomorrow. At one a.m. on a wintry Wednesday, the town was abandoned to the whims of the night. Every curtain and every eyelid closed, everyone asleep but her.
Bolstered by a belly full of shiraz, capricciosa and Tim Tams, she surveyed the deserted street. With her keys clutched in her fist – her makeshift knuckle-duster – she set off home.
Her footsteps squelched over the glistening bitumen, and above her head, electricity crackled through moist pylon wires. She hunched her shoulders and walked with her legs wide apart, a deliberate macho gait designed to hopefully obfuscate.
Tyres sloshed on the wet road up ahead and she darted into a shop doorway. Out of the light, out of sight. She crammed herself into the deepest corner of the alcove as a blue sedan cruised past slowly. She waited and waited with breath held and burning lungs, until the faraway ping of the pedestrian crossing was the only sound.
Leaving the doorway with a grumble, she picked up her pace over the soggy leaf-scattered footpath. The straight strip of shops stretched down the Elizabeth Street hill into the dark and desolate heart of town. Overhead, raindrops thrummed on the iron awnings, dribbling out of downpipes into roadside gutters and through the clenched-teeth grates into the drains. Yellow streetlights dotted the road, like small ponds of safety, while in every other direction, tides of shadows encroached.
Behind grey-mirrored shop windows, blank-faced mannequin families watched her walk by, and empty cash drawers sat like hungry mouths. Neon signs flashed in vain, crying out to invisible midnight shoppers.
Already halfway home, she crossed a small bridge where the built-up town opened to a steep sided drain. With banks of stone fashioned by convict toil this was where the dark waters of the hidden river trickled. The subterranean rivulet where black rats the size of small dogs lived, oiled like brilliantine.
Swelled by the night rains, the Hobart rivulet murmured. Its song, gurgling over the stones, bristled and teased her skin. It drew her closer, enticing her to peer into the depths, into the land that was. The country now forgotten, covered over by concrete, mobile phone shops and bus stops.
A splash of puddles interrupted the song and she darted back from the railing. A rumbling engine approached and headlights blossomed into the darkness. On the bridge she was exposed, no shop doorways to hide in. She hurried and huddled behind a bin, squeezing between the metal and the wall.
The same blue car ambled by.
Again she waited, biting on her knuckles, ignoring the stench of rubbish while her thighs whined with cramp. When all was dead quiet again, just the raindrops and the faraway crossing’s comforting ping, she unwound herself and stamped the pins and needles from her feet.
She set off again. There were three more blocks to the flat she called home, above the Italian restaurant. A miserable drizzle settled in and she trudged on umbrella-less, droplets pearling on her fringe and chest. Three blocks was still too far to run.
A burglar alarm cried out in the distance as she crossed over the tiny river a second time. Again, the rivulet called to her, drawing her towards the water with its silvery, slippery song. The song deepened into chant of anguish, of estrangement, thick with a mother’s disappointment. Her heart ballooned in her chest and she inched closer. A drain was not a place to play, even in the brightest daylight. Still she peered, nearer, deeper, into the blackness of the pipe under the road. Into the emptiness, the past, the land lost, maimed and enfeebled. What was once a river is now a trickle under the town, man-made scars built over blood-soaked soil.
Yet water stops for no one. Here, now, forever, water always finds a way. She stepped over the iron railing and down onto the worn cobbles.
A hand yanked at her elbow. She jerked and gasped, swivelling left and right. No one was there, only the night all around her. The unseen hand pulled at her foot and she skidded on the mossy stones. Again it pushed her, shunting her into the tunnel until the dark enveloped her. With her voice smothered in her throat, she lashed out with her house-key weapon, her blows striking nothing but air. Her back was shoved against the cold slimy tunnel wall, the breath pushed from her lungs.
A car pulled up beside the bridge. The same blue sedan. Her eyes bulged, breath rough and rapid in her nostrils. The man got out. He marched up and down beside the railing. A hooded raincoat hid his face as he retraced her footsteps from only seconds earlier. Her pulse thumped in her neck, his jerky strides chilling her blood.
When he finally gave up and disappeared from view, she exhaled and rested her head against the cold stone.
Then she glanced back into the dark tunnel and whispered into the gloom. “Thank you”.
About the Author:
Madeleine D'Este is a Naarm-based (Melbourne) writer, podcaster and reviewer who spent her formative years wandering the streets of Nipaluna (Hobart) late at night. Inspired by folklore and forteana, D'Este writes dark mysteries, including steampunk, historical fantasy and vampire tales. Her novel The Flower and The Serpent was nominated for an Australian Shadow for Best Novel in 2019.
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The magnificent wilderness in Tasmania’s Huon Valley is a great spot to go camping. Just don’t go alone.
