Demons by Wayne Macauley Read Free Book Online Page B

supermarket. While the
evenings were still warm and the days long she ate outside at the little fold-up
table on the veranda that looked down the grassy slope towards the lake. She always
brought a couple of candles out there, stuck into her uncle’s old empty beer bottles,
and would often stay until the sky darkened and the birds went crazy and the clumps
of tea-tree and the grassy slope and the mountain range beyond turned ink black and
all that was left was the glow from the lake. Then she would sit out there by candlelight,
looking and listening for mosquitoes, slapping her skin and holding her hand up to
see what she’d got (she couldn’t use repellent and had thrown the can out when she
cleaned the shed), doing little else except occasionally looking out across the lake
where on the nights when there were no clouds and a decent moon a silver sheen spread
like sheet metal, broken only by the occasional fish breaching the surface or a bird
paddling past or by a ripple from the breeze.
    She wasn’t happy, that would be a strange thing to say, but she’d found a way to
be content. She didn’t know how long this contentment would last, though compared
to her moodiness, anger and confusion back in the city this might be as close to
happiness as she’d get. She knew they’d come looking for her eventually, all those
people who wouldn’t have missed her before, who wouldn’t have even known she existed.
But she was a whole day’s travel away, had got almost to the border; if she kept
her head down she’d be okay for a while. Maybe, she thought, she could take some
of this good health back to the city with her? Maybe tell others what she’d found?
You can’t preach for one life over another but you could always show by example.
    So that was it, those were her days. Most mornings early she would take the old rod
and reel from the shed and the bucket of sandworms she’d pumped at low tide and fish
off the jetty below the house until she caught something for dinner. (At first the
reel didn’t work; she took it apart, piece by piece, then cleaned and lubricated
it with oil.) There were mussels, too, out on the rocks, and crabs in the estuary
shallows. On moonless nights the prawns would run from the lake to the sea on the
tide and all you had to do was stand near the entrance, look out for their frightened
phosphorescent eyes and scoop them up in your net.
    One morning when she was sitting outside drinking tea at the table a figure appeared
at the bottom of the grassy slope where the track wound its way around the lake.
She’d sometimes see fishermen walking that way, their rods glinting in the early
light, but this figure didn’t have a rod and had now started to walk up the slope
towards her. He pushed his way through the tea-tree and stopped at the fence.
    Hello there! he said. Beautiful morning! I’m Lyall from around the corner. It was
awkward. Elena sort of half smiled and waved. There was an excruciating pause before
Lyall returned the wave and said: Well, have a nice day! Then he headed off back
around the track.
    The next morning at the same time he was there again, waving, calling out, and this
time crawling through the wire and walking a few metres up the slope. You’re new,
aren’t you? he said. Did you buy Peter’s place off him? Elena told him Peter was
her uncle, he wasn’t well; then she left a long pause so Lyall might get the hint
to go. Instead he walked a few more metres up. If you ever need a hand with anything,
he said, just give us a yell, I’m only around the corner. For the first time Elena
got a good look at him: a small-town bogan, early thirties, maybe older, with wiry
hair cut into a mullet and a salt and pepper goatee beard. Even from that distance
Elena could see the missing teeth.
    One day Lyall didn’t come from the track but appeared suddenly from around the corner
of the house. Elena was just finishing her breakfast, staring at the lake which on
that morning held a soft