Smithy's Cupboard by Ray Clift Read Free Book Online Page A

about the movie he had seen with Rex Harrison and Margaret Rutherford, The Ghost and Mrs Muir , and other older ones and smirked to himself when he saw the crystals on the wall and the giant ball on the purple-edged tablecloth. Her face was ringed with black curls and she would have been a smasher in her youth. Emerald eyes peered over the top of Dame Edna glasses. Her long fingers were adorned with a variety of gemstones and her fingernails were so long they could have plucked a hair from a turkey’s tonsils.
    Her fingers fluttered and waved about casting shadows on the now circling crystal ball, like a phantom harp player plucking at strings. The atmosphere was surreal, and if ever a ghost would appear, he thought, it would be here, tonight. Her beads rattled when they were caught in a sudden cold draft which blew her humungous shawl across her face. She thrust it back. He was sure she muttered in the process, in an irritable fashion, ‘Fuck.’
    He guessed he looked stressed and thought she might add some wisdom before the reading. He was right in his assumptions.
    â€˜Do you know, there is always someone who would gladly change places with you. If you were fifty years old you would gladly accept ten years of being forty again. If you were seventy, an eighty-year-old would look at you as a kid. Bad things happen to good people and it would be Utopia if only the bad died. Lookaround. Many messages come from spiritual teachers. Sometimes when we are low, I have had people come to me who I knew were so crooked that if they swallowed a nail they would probably shit a corkscrew.’
    Smithy laughed out loud. ‘My dead wife Joan would have loved you.’
    She smiled. However, it was time to get down to business and she rubbed her hands together for a short time, took a few deep breaths and looked at her client. She reached over the small table and clutched his hands. He felt a surge of heat passing along his arms into his middle.
    She spoke with her eyes closed. ‘Take more care of yourself.’ The voice, which came from somewhere in the room, sounded like Joan. His hair stood on end when the booming laughter came out and he knew it was Joan.
    â€˜Maud’s lip is not hairy any more.’ The medium opened her eyes and rubbed them. Her face went pale and she started to sob. The shawl fluttered again yet the windows were closed. She stood up and said in a shaky voice, ‘I can’t speak to you again…too much blood.’ She put her head in her hands and waved her long fingers. ‘Please go. Now.’
    He walked out, guessing she had seen some of his kills. He looked down at his unwashed clothes and the stains and knew it was an accurate reading. She saw, through the eyes of Joan, his slip into decadence. A sudden gust of wind blew off his baseball cap. He chased it as it tumbled, propelled by something, though the wind had abated. The cap kept on and on, crossing the major road, missing traffic, hitting shopping trolleys, and his breath was running out. ‘Gotta get back in shape,’ he muttered.
    The cap had stopped, edged into a doorway, and was held down by the foot of a tall thin man who he knew, though the face looked mottled and drawn.
    â€˜Smithy. How are you?’ the man said. He coughed.
    And recognition came to Smithy in an instant when the man wiped specks of blood from his lips.
    â€˜OK, Bill. How long have you been out of the slammer?’
    â€˜Some time, mate,’ he said between wheezes. ‘The big C finally got me – engine rooms and everything else since I left the army.’
    â€˜The vets looking after you, Bill?’
    Bill nodded. His attention, however, was focused on another matter. ‘Those mongrels that raped you. They’re both dead. One got knifed in gaol. The other was killed, down in the Nelson/Glenelg River area, in a shack, so it’s said.’
    â€˜I heard about the Nelson thing.’
    Bill looked at his former