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”And that’s another thing,” she continued. ”Why do all your characters have to be in some form of servitude to you?”

She looked accusingly at Elizabeth.

“I’m a lowly cleaner and Godfrey’s sole purpose in life seems to be to agree with everything you say and now poor old Norbert is a gardener! From New Zealand! Of all the godforsaken places you could have chosen.”

“Steady on, Finnley …” began Godfrey

Finnley ignored him.

“You could have made the poor man anything and yet you made him another slave to carry out your every warped whim. Granted, that was rather an obscure comment I made about him liking smelly old fish. Perhaps that did narrow your options somewhat.”

Exhausted, Finnley lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

Elizabeth gazed at her in awed admiration. ”Finnley, your perceptiveness has rendered me speechless.”

Aunt Idle:

I noticed a change in Bert after the explosion. He seemed more reckless and carefree, more jovial, unlike his usual terse martyred demeanor. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked him about it, one day while we were in the garden picking tomatoes.

I had a sudden pang of guilt when he told me all about it because it rang a bell, a dim and distant bell, that I’d known about the bridge that he built but had forgotten all about it. Always so many other things to think about every day, and yet now, I wish I’d found the time to cross that bridge and explore the other side, or just sit there and think of nothing, and relax. But I didn’t, and now the bridge was gone.

After the explosion, people said it must have been an accident, some buried mining explosives set off by a wandering animal. I don’t know how many people knew about Bert’s bridge, but none seemed to recall it after the explosion. It was as if it had never existed.

It was a funny thing though, now that the bridge was gone, now I knew the story, I wanted to see what was on the other side. If I had to drive all the way up to the bridge in Ninetown to cross the river, then so be it.

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 law is an ass, Godfrey,” Elizabeth said, extricating a bit of sag paneer from between her teeth that he had drawn her attention to. “I have no intention of wasting my time in court. As a matter of fact, I’ve written the critic out of the story. And the court. Waste of fecking time, fecking gobshites, the fecking lot of them.”

“You seem to be developing an Irish accent, Liz,” he replied, signalling the waiter for the bill.

“What did you do that for? There was no bill to pay until you introduced the fecking waiter into the script!”

“If you don’t pay the bill or turn up in court, the police will come and arrest you, Liz, have you considered that?”

“What fecking police?” she replied.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Finnley. “I wrote Godfrey out of the story this morning.”

“Whatever for?” Liz asked in surprise.

“He kept talking. I hate talking.”

Wisely, Elizabeth said nothing.

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.

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!

“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.

Corrie:

I wasn’t snooping, I swear, and I wasn’t looking for anything either, it just popped up on my side bar on Spacenook and caught my eye. I mean, the title was so peculiar it kind of stood out ~ “Martian Pig Pruning” ~ so I clicked on the link, thinking it might be a diverting Pythonesque parody of all the aliens and other dimensional vibrations bollocks that seemed to be the latest #trendingtrash to swamp the newsfeeds, because sometimes you just have to laugh and find the funny side.

Mater:

I am picking some grass for the guinea pigs. Delicate wee things; they don’t handle the heat well and I have moved them to the shelter of the shed. The wind has come up strong and I am enjoying the cooling it brings with it. The long grass bends away from me as though seeking safety from the scissors I hold in my hand. For a moment the wind subsides and I can feel how the sun is burning my neck so I take refuge in the shade of a tree.

Thinking time.

I heard Prune crying out last night in her sleep. She had already fallen back asleep when I went to check on her. It crossed my mind when she cried out that she may have seen the ghost too. I asked her about it in the morning but she did not seem to recall her nightmare.

“I slept liketh a log but I thanketh thou for thy kindness in asking dearest Mater,” she said to me.

”Enough of that cheek!” I told her, but was privately relieved she was okay.

Anyway, It has been twice now. I wake and there he is, over by the antique oak chest in the corner of my room. At first I can’t move or call out. And by the time I can he has gone. When I say “gone”, I don’t mean he walks out the door. He just sort of fades away. He has his back to me so I can’t tell you what his face is like. All I can tell you is that he is tall and he has on a blue robe, in a silky fabric, almost like a dressing gown with a tie in the middle.

There, I have told you now. You may be thinking it is just a silly old woman’s dream. But you don’t get to my age without having plenty of dreams, and this was nothing like any dream I have ever had.

Mater:

I am concerned about Dido. The silly trollop has taken up drinking again—in front of the kids too. Mark my words, she will end up back in rehab if it goes on. Like last time. And then where will we all be? Those poor little mites without a father or mother and their Aunt fast turning into a crazy slush. There’s no telling her though. God knows I have tried in the past.

I can only hope she will settle down when that kiwi friend arrives—Flora someone. Though I don’t hold out much hope really. I have not met a kiwi with a half a brain in their head yet. And that awful accent! I don’t need this aggravation at my age.

Calm down, remember what Jiemba told you.

I have not told you yet about my visit to Jiemba, have I? There has been so much going on here, what with the fish going missing and that odd guest staying in Room 8 and Dido’s antics, it nearly slipped my mind.

It was Prune who hid the fish, of course. Sensitive wee thing — she has always had a particularly strong dislike of the awful old relic and I can’t say I blame her. Dido went ape when Prune eventually confessed, but secretly I found it rather amusing.

I digress, yet again.

In the end it was Bert who helped me more than Jiemba. The dear man waited out in the truck for me while I kept my appointment with Jiemba. And he held my secret safe from the others. I am grateful to him for that. It felt nice to have someone who would do that for me. On the trip back home he opened up and told me stories about the town. Apparently in its heyday it even had an ice-cream factory; I hadn’t heard that before. Nor some of the other stories he told me. There are not many left around here with the knowledge Bert has. I feel I may even pluck up courage to tell him what I have seen at the Inn. Perhaps he may have some thoughts on it.

But not just yet.

Jiemba gave me some salve made from native bush bark for my aches and pains. It seems he is more modern than his father—things change I guess. I wanted to ask him about the ghost, but what with the dogs and kids running around outside and the heat and the baby screaming in the house somewhere, I could not bring myself to do it. But one thing he said to me has stuck.

“Live from your heart”.

It was the way he said it. Very intense. He went quiet and stared at the floor for a long time while I tried not to fidget. As though he was communing with some spirit world I could not see. Though I would dearly love to. I have thought about those words since then, trying to figure out what they mean.

I’m not sure I can even find my heart, let alone live from it.

Corrie:

“Why have you locked your door, Aunt Idle?” I asked, after waiting rather a long time for her to open it. She looked a bit flushed, so I looked around to see if she had another feller in there but she didn’t, not unless he was hiding in the closet. She didn’t usually hide her lovers from us though, and anyway, I had more important things on my mind.

“Mater’s still missing and it’s been dark for an hour already, what should we do?”

Aunt Idle just stared at me with her mouth open and didn’t say anything.

“We can’t just go to bed, what if something’s happened to her? Nobody even knows where she went!”

“Mater’s missing, is that what you’re telling me?” she asked, just as if it was the first she’d heard about it. “Have you checked her room? Did she leave a note or a clue or anything? For heaven’s sake, Corrie, why on earth didn’t you tell me sooner! Go and fetch Prune, well wake her up then!” she added as I protested that she’d gone to bed ages ago. “Prune always seems to know things. And where’s Bert? Has he seen her?”

“I’m trying to tell you, Auntie, that nobody knows!”

Mater:

The stranger arrived as I was setting off, but I didn’t have time to stop. By the looks of him he had been on the road for a while. I called out to him that if he was after a room he had better go and bang on the front door, but he might have to knock loudly because they were all asleep.

I shrugged off a vague feeling of guilt.

Not my problem; let someone else deal with it. Early to be calling though.

It wasn’t long before I was wondering dismally whether my mission would need to be aborted. It was only 7:00am, but already the heat was stifling. I was considering my various options, none of which seemed that attractive, when Bert pulled up next to me in his van.

“Where are you off to, Mater? You want a lift somewhere. Hop in.”

I hopped in. I liked Bert, although he wasn’t one for conversation. He was about my age, maybe a few years younger. Hard to tell with the men around here, they all looked like aged leather. He raised an eyebrow when I told him where I was going, but otherwise didn’t comment. We drove in comfortable silence.

“Not far now, Mater. You want to stop for a coffee? It’s still early.”

“Are you asking me on a date, Bert?”

There was an awkward moment while he worked out I was teasing him, then his face cracked into an amused smile.

“Can you cook?”

“Burnt toast is my speciality. If you are lucky I would open a can of spaghetti.”

“You’ll do then I guess, even if you are a crazy old coot out walking in this heat.”