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Nobody heard him so he tried again.

”knock knock”

”Who’s there?” called out Elizabeth

”Norbert”

”Norbert who?”

”Nor, bert ya shudn’t cull out uf ya don’t wont mey tu carm knuckin”.

”Friggin kiwi accents,” muttered Finnley. “I can’t understand a word they say.”

Aunt Idle:

Bert came with me. Usually one of us always stayed home to keep an eye on Mater and the kids, but now we had that capable girl, Finly, to keep an eye on things.

It was good to get away from the place for a few hours, and head off on a different route to the usual shopping and errand trips. The nearest sizable town was in the opposite direction; it was years since I’d been to Ninetown. I asked Bert about the place on the other side of the river, what was it that intrigued him so. I’ll be honest, I wondered if he was losing his marbles when he said it was the medieval ruins over there.

“Don’t be daft, Bert, how can there be medieval ruins over there?” I asked.

“I didn’t say they were medieval, Idle, I said that’s what they looked like,” he replied.

“But …but history, Bert! There’s no history here of medieval towns! Who could have built it?”

“That’s why I found it so fucking interesting, but if it doesn’t fit the picture, nobody wants to hear anything about it!”

“Well I’m interested Bert. Yes, yes, I know I wasn’t interested before, but I am now.”

Bert grunted and lit a cigarette.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant just outside Ninetown for lunch. The midday heat was enervating, but inside the restaurant was a pleasant few degrees cooler. Bert wasn’t one for small talk, so I picked up a local paper to peruse while I ate my sandwich and Bert tucked into a greasy heap of chips and meat. I flicked through it without much interest in the mundane goings on of the town, that is, until I saw those names: Tattler, Trout and Trueman.

It was an article about a ghost town on the other side of Ninetown that had been bought up by a consortium of doctors. Apparently they’d acquired it for pennies as it had been completely deserted for decades, with the intention of developing it into an exclusive clinic.

“There’s something fishy about that!” I exclaimed, a bit too loudly. Several of the locals turned to look at me. I lowered my voice, not wanting to attract any more attention while I tried to make sense of it.

“Read this!” I passed the paper over the Bert.

“So what?” he asked. “Who cares?”

“Look!” I said, jabbing my finger on the names Tattler, Trout and Trueman. Bert looked puzzled, understandably enough. “Allow me to explain” I said, and I told him about the business card that Flora had left on the porch table.

“What does Flora have to do with this consortium of doctors? And what the hell is the point in setting up a clinic there, in the middle of nowhere?”

“That,” I replied, “Is the question!”

“Finnley, I do hope you realize the extent of my kindness and patience with you. I hope you appreciate it. Not only should you be cleaning, which I have generously turned a blind eye to while you read cheap tuppeny scandals, but you badger me to keep busy while you are relaxing on full pay!”

But Finnley was engrossed in her tawdry novel again, and didn’t hear her.

Finnley got a book out of her bag and started reading, rather rudely, Elizabeth thought.

Liz leaned over so that she could read over Finnley’s shoulder, in the absence of anyone to talk to as all the characters had been written out of the script.

“…full of misinformation and wrong opinions.” she read.

“Then sir, you may say so. The ruder you are, the more the editors will be delighted.”

(A point worth bearing in mind, Liz thought)

“But it is my own opinions which I wish to make better known, not other people’s.”

“Ah, but, sir, it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people’s work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one’s own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one’s theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.”

“Hmm, you may be right. But, no. It would seem as if I were lending support to what ought never to have been published in the first place.”

When Elizabeth had had enough of reading, she wrote Godfrey back into the script.

The blast ricocheted throughout the town. It set the dogs barking, chickens squalking and babies crying. Folks dropped what they were doing, in many cases literally: dishes and beer bottles crashed to the floor, as the towns people ran outside to find out what was going on, or ran for cover.

Bert, sitting on top of Plater’s Rock watching it all, slapped his thigh, whooped and then laughed until the tears ran like rain season creeks through the desert dry creases of his face. The unaccustomed unbridled mirth provoked a coughing fit: Bert balled up the phlegm that rose in his throat and catapulted gobs of it towards the creek below.

Well, that’s finally got that off my chest, he said to himself with another choking cackle.

The creek itself after the explosion was obscured from his sight by a thick pall of smoke, but the sputum projectiles were aimed with deadly accuracy at the bridge ~ or where the bridge had been.

There was no bridge there now though, not that anyone would have noticed its disappearance if he hadn’t made sure they did. Years he’d spent making that bridge, a bit at a time, with what he could find or chance upon, working on it as often as he had time for. He’d found what he could only describe as a “special place” over on the other side of the creek, it spoke to him and seemed to call on him to bring others. The only way to it from the town was to swim the creek, or drive almost 200 miles by road, via the closest bridge at Ninetown. So Bert decided to build a bridge across, so people could go back and forth with ease and enjoy the place on the other side.

Bert had finished the bridge three years ago during the dry season, and invited everyone over upon it’s completion. Four people turned up, even though he’d set up a picnic and brought coolboxes of champagne and beer, and a big bag of weed. Less than a dozen people used Bert’s bridge in the first two years, and he was the only one to cross over since the last dry season.

Finding the dynamite in the old mine shaft a few months back had given him the idea. An impulse had seized him after the unexpected encounter with Elizabeth. He blew the bridge up. It was over. He could breathe again.

Deep in thought, Devan didn’t notice Finly watching him from the end of the porch. As he clumped down the steps and made his way towards the clapped out banger that served as transport to work, she weighed him up, pausing for a moment with the window cleaning cloth poised in mid air.

He was young, but then, she liked them young. Virile, energetic, easily controlled. The rebellious ones were not so rebellious towards an older woman of experience in their bed. Not that she was all that much older than he was, but the difference in age was enough to create an air of experience. Finly liked to keep on top of things ~ both her cleaning duties, and her young men.

Nice ass, she said to herself, with a warm tingle of anticipation, rubbing the windows with renewed vigour. She licked her lips, smirking at her reflection in the glass, and then blew herself a kiss. A slight movement caught her eye. Prune bobbed her tongue out, and then disappeared from view.

When I left the Inn this morning, Mater seemed upset. I regularly kisses her on her forehead before going to the gas station, as I know it pisses her off, but today she seemed lost in her thoughts and she called me Fred. I don’t like it when she does that, it gives me the impression she’s losing it. I wonder who’s going to hold that crumbling place when she’s gone. Certainly not Dido, she can’t focus her mind on a project for more than a few minutes, and it usually does not pass the stage of smokey ideas. I see clearly her game, she’s messing around with Mater for God knows what twisted reasons. They never seemed to appreciate each others much, and I’ve only known them for eighteen years. Looking at how it didn’t evolve much during that time, I bet it had been like that for quite some time. Family relationships are boring, and usually quite messy.

Take Joe for example, he’s crazy. His father is crazy, and his grand-father well he spent so much time in the mines that his family didn’t really miss him when one of the tunnels collapsed while he was inside. They never found the body. The Mining company gave the family a ridiculously small amount of money as an indemnification. Joe’s father lost it in some fracking wallaby race. Bad luck had stuck to him his whole life. Jasper once told me to avoid him. I would have, even if it was not for my dead brother’s warning.

Joe’s working at the gas station with me. He had been working there since he was sixteen when the school told his parents it was a waste of time [for them] to try and teach him anything valuable. His father beat him to keep up the appearances, but they were glad they could put him to work to bring in some more money.

Joe is nuts, but he’s not dumb. He just likes to experiment. He must have a good star watching upon him, unlike his father, because each time he manages to make something explode or break in a real bad way, but he always gets out without a scratch. He’s excited, he’s finished working on his last project. He wants us to borrow a gas tank and go to his place after work. I’ve rarely seen him so excited. We’ll have to put off the hockey with Callum.

Corrie:

I woke up this morning with an idea in my head, and I don’t know if I was dreaming about it or if it just popped in, in the brief moments between sleep and waking. I made a connection with the topic I was doing an anthropology report on, and something I’d forgotten. No, not forgotten, it wouldn’t be true to say I’d forgotten it as it was always there at the back of my mind niggling at me that there was more to it somehow, but I hadn’t made the connection so obviously with the current project.

My research was about disconnection, and the separation agenda of the American channeling dream. At first I felt driven to explore particular areas and then piece by piece the puzzle that had nagged at me for years ~ I say years, it felt like years, but maybe it wasn’t so long ~ started to fall into place.

At first when I woke up the idea of censorship was in my head and the idea to start a petition and public awareness campaign about certain channeled texts that were withheld from public viewing, despite repeated requests for them to be public along with all the other texts. But then it occurred to me that censorship and omission wasn’t always deliberate. I mean, not a conscious choice to keep information secret, but something else. Almost like a case of some information not being seen clearly through the filters, yet for some reason dismissed as not fitting, and pushed away, almost unconsciously, and suppressed.

The text was about disconnect mainly, and there was some stuff about Nazi’s although the part about animals was the part that had stuck in my head, probably because I felt more connected to animals than Nazi’s. There were more animals growing up here than Nazi’s after all, Nazi’s was only something I’d heard about. But then it occurred to me that I’d been hearing more and more about Neo Nazi’s, in Europe mainly, forming groups and having protests. So that got me wondering about that too.

Anyway, the disconnect part: it was the reaction on the American channeling forums to the Ferguson riots that started me on this project, and Aunt Idle was full of encouragement when I started to explain to her what I was noticing. She said she had noticed similar things in her remote viewing circle online. Everyone seems to think Aunt Idle is losing her marbles, but don’t you believe it. She seems vacant and scattered but that’s only because her mind is occupied elsewhere.

The gist of this suppressed text was extreme separation, but it was the part about using words to seem enlightened to hide extreme disconnect that seemed to fit my project.

I did have to chuckle though, I wondered if I was being a racist by calling Americans disconnected as if it was a racial characteristic. More of a cultural thing, I suppose, can one be called a culturalist as if it’s a bad thing? I don’t see how you can study anthropology without a certain degree of separating into cultural groups though, even if it is shift anthropology. I’ll think about that a bit more later.

Prune’s journal

The quarantine wasn’t as long as expected, we’ll be on Mars tomorrow. The Indian guy didn’t explain much of what happened. Maybe it was just a drill.
Anyhow, Hans has kept his promise, and the guinea pig is fine. Somehow, it seems to have grown stronger in space. Maybe the lesser gravity?
Mater would have liked it.
Speaking of Mater, I got that strange feeling she’s with me somehow. Funny, come to think of it, she was always the one talking about the spirit world. Was never really sure if she was well in her head when she finally opened to me about it (everything else showed that yes, she was nowhere near senility, even before death struck).
If someone should chose to play poltergeist after all, who else than Mater. Way to go Ma!

Mater:

I showed Finly to her room. I have put her in room 10 — opposite Mr What’s-his-name, the guest — which is the nicest guest room in the house and one of the few which Fred got round to doing up before he left.

On the spur of the moment I asked her if she believed in ghosts. She looked at me intently and said “There’s a lot we don’t understand. I can’t say I believe or disbelieve.” And that was it. I didn’t press it further. She is a serious girl but her references were excellent and I think she will be a hard worker. Not one to take nonsense from anyone.

I asked her if she would like the day off tomorrow to settle in and suggested she could start her duties on Wednesday.

“I can see I have my work cut out here,” she said. “The sooner I get started the better.”

And dear God we need some help around here, I thought.

The other day I caught Dido throwing gin all over herself and laughing. I am concerned I will need to call mental health services soon. I didn’t say anything at the time — I don’t think she saw me. I have been annoyed with her in the past for her lackadaisical attitude towards caring for the kids, but when I saw the poor demented thing throwing gin at herself, well, for the first time I felt really sorry for her.

“God damn it, my headpiece! I forgot my headpiece!” croaked Mother Shirley when she heard the command to assemble in Area 12. She looked around desperately for the final piece of her attire but it was nowhere to be seen.

Mother Shirley hated to be seen without her headpiece. Other than a few wiry grey hairs, she was bald—a fact which under normal circumstances her veil and wimple disguised admirably. It was a devil of a thing to get on though.

As the alarms sounded for a second time, she grabbed a pyramid shaped receptacle from the small desk in her capsule, and placed it on her head, where it perched precariously.

“God help us,” she grumbled, as she stiffly creaked her way to Area 12.

It was Mater who decided they needed to get some cleaning help. She commandeered Clove to do some research on the internet and eventually found a woman from New Zealand, Finly, who was offering her cleaning services in exchange for room and board.

“Bloody kiwis,” said Bert when he heard. “The place is riddled with them. Bloody come and take our jobs. Haven’t we got more than enough of them here already? I am having a hard enough time avoiding that Flora, going on about her spiritual bloody awakening.”

“If you can find anyone local who would be willing to do the cleaning in exchange for a place to stay, I will be glad to consider them,” retorted Mater sternly. “But in the meantime this place is fast becoming a pig-sty and Dido is too busy smoking and drinking to see it.”

Naturally Mater got her way and a few days later Bert, still grumbling, agreed to go and pick Finly up from the airport. Mater assembled the family in the main living room.

“Now remember, the main thing is to be courteous. God only knows why she agreed to come to this backwater of a place, but we don’t want to put her off.”

”Don’t we indeed?” smirked Aunt Idle.

“Yeah exactly, it is friggin’ weird I reckon. Why would she come here?” asked Clove, privately deciding she had better run a more thorough background check on Finly.

“I thought Finly was a boy’s name,” said Coriander. “That would be cool. A boy cleaner. I hope he’s hot. He can clean topless”

Aunt Idle, who had already been into the gin even though it wasn’t yet 10am, put her hand over her mouth and started to giggle.

“It can be a girl or a boy’s name and someone called Coriander is in no position to throw stones. And mind your language, Clove.” responded Mater tartly.

Clove rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Well as long as she doesn’t try and boss me around, it might be quite fun to have a slave to clean up after me.”

Prune had been keeping an eye on the window. “Shush, she’s here!” she shouted excitedly.

Bert raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth’s obvious sarcasm, which unfortunately caught her eye and put him in the spotlight of her penetrating gaze.

“How about you Bert? Were you listening?” she asked, raising an eyebrow of her own to match Berts.

Finnly, always on the lookout for an opportunity to out do Liz, raised both of her eyebrows simultaneously; then looked quickly down, pretending to examine her nails.

Bert decided that in this case honestly was the best policy and replied “No. I was wondering if Prune had cleaned up the blood spattered corridor.”

While Liz was momentarily speechless, Finnley quickly interjected another line from the book she had hidden under the table.

“Then why did none of us hear the blood crazed howl?”

“Ah! Aha! I’ll tell you why nobody heard the blood crazed howl!” Elizabeth had become alarmingly animated, leaning forward and rapping sharply on the table with her cigarette lighter. “The walls of isolation that surround you, the windows you keep closed and shuttered for fear of a draft of passion, the fences of barbed trotted out dogma you use as protection ~ but I ask you, protection from what?”

“Buggered if I know, Liz. Can I go now?” said Bert.

“One moment I was on my way to get coffee; the next I was up there on the ceiling. I looked down and saw a lady lying on the ground with blood oozing from her head and I was thinking ‘someone should help her!’ and then I realised with some surprise it was me laying down there on the ground. ‘How could that be?’ I asked myself. I realised that I must have died. And, do you know what? I didn’t care. I felt amazing. For the first time in my life I felt truly free. I felt no more attachment to the body on the ground than I do to this … “

Flora paused to look around and her gaze finally settled on one of the sofa cushions — a dirty looking thing which was decorated with an embroidered kangaroo.

“… this cushion here.”

She hit it to emphasise her point and a cascade of dust rose in the air. She looked at Mater sadly and continued softly:

“Then I heard a voice telling me it was not my time and next thing I knew I was back in my body with this pounding great headache.”

Flora paused reflectively for a moment while she sipped on the cup of tea Prune had bought her.

“Mater, this experience has changed me. I thought I had it all before: good looks, a fantastic figure—especially my butt—a successful career, but now I realise I was in penury. Trapped by my own brilliance into a shallow empty existence.”

“What’s that you say?” asked Mater, struggling to follow Flora’s very thick New Zealand accent. “And who the devil is Penny?”

She wondered where Bert had got to. One moment he was there and the next he just seemed to disappear.