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Hobbyards
Hobbyards
Hobbyards
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Hobbyards

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‘In the centre lay a pool, filled with a foul brackish sludge. Half-a-dozen pipes emerged from the wall on the right side of the chamber. The pipes connected to big, rusted pumps—like the bilge pumps on a ship. More pipes emerged from the pumps and plunged into the brackish water ... On several hooks hung rubber suits with hoods; others held black masks with glass visors and hoses attached to small metal canisters. A pair of rubber gauntlets hung on one of the hooks. He touched them, but they fell to pieces and flopped onto the tiles.’

Jim is a police sergeant in the small bush town of Barnstaple in North Western Victoria. Jim has issues: his ex-partner has custody of their son, Grant; he shot a bank robber and can’t use a gun; he has a drinking problem ... but that’s all set to change when Cocky Foster goes to investigate the old military facility he’s just bought at the back of his land...

LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 12, 2017
ISBN9781787102200
Hobbyards
Author

Duane Ratswander

Duane Ratswander was born in Regional Victoria. He studied Australian Literature and History at Macquarie University, and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Leeds. He has travelled extensively, working as an English teacher in Hong Kong, Japan, China (Beijing), Poland and Kuwait. His greatest passion is writing horror stories, and his favourite book is Steven King’s Salem’s Lot. Hobbyards is his first novel. He lives with his wife and their two children in Leeds, UK.

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    Hobbyards - Duane Ratswander

    Duane Ratswander was born in Regional Victoria. He studied Australian Literature and History at Macquarie University, and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Leeds. He has travelled extensively, working as an English teacher in Hong Kong, Japan, China (Beijing), Poland and Kuwait.

    His greatest passion is writing horror stories, and his favourite book is Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Hobbyards is his first novel. He lives with his wife and their two children in Leeds, UK.

    Dedication

    This book is dedicated to my wife

    and

    for Dad

    Duane Ratswander

    Hobbyards

    Somewhere in the bush a dark secret awaits…

    Copyright © Duane Ratswander (2017)

    The right of Duane Ratswander to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

    Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

    A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

    ISBN 9781787102194 (Paperback)

    ISBN 9781787102200 (E-Book)

    www.austinmacauley.com

    First Published (2017)

    Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

    25 Canada Square

    Canary Wharf

    London

    E14 5LQ

    Acknowledgements

    I wish to thank my wife and children for all their loving support over the years.

    Jim stood on the road beside his patrol car a couple of kilometres from Barnstaple. In the west, a swollen red eye hovered above the hills. The gnarled gums lining the road twisted together like clawed, grey hands. Here and there, hot pink and red flames slashed the blacktop. Everything wavered and shimmered, like the landscape itself was slowly melting from the summer heat.

    He turned his head to see the white Ford parked on the opposite side of the road. Saw the Ford’s door crack, and the bloke with the blond hair and moustache get out. The bloke wore dark sunglasses, and he grinned as he looked across the road at him. Then Jim looked down as the blood-drenched mic squawked in his hand, ‘Jim, where are ya, mate? What the bloody hell’s goin’ on? Why won’t you answer me? Jim, if you’re in trouble, please tell—’

    Cra-aacccKKKK!

    His head whipped up. The bloke across the road pointed a rifle straight at him. Cra-aaacccKKKK! Every time the rifle went off, the bush echoed and crashed—it was like standing inside a bowling alley and everybody gets a strike all at once. He dropped the bloody mic.

    Cra-aaacccKKKK!-Pop!

    A round hole appeared on the patrol car’s front panel. The white paint, chipped around the edges where the .303 slug had penetrated—the glint of metal around the hole flashing like a silver wedding band. Then his training kicked in: he drew a breath and reached for the butt of his .38 calibre Smith & Wesson… But his hand found an empty holster. He looked up; he stood in the open, unarmed, while the crazed gunman took pot-shots at his head. The bloke across the road grinned from behind dark sunglasses, and took aim again

    ****

    Jim sat up in bed, his body covered in cold tendrils of sweat. Gripping hold of the bedsheets, which lay twisted around his legs, he peered through the darkness. Across the room the curtains blew in the soft, night breeze. Outside the steady rhythm of crickets filled the air.

    Somewhere a dog barked.

    He looked at the clock radio on the nightstand. The little digital numbers glowed red, like the countdown to Armageddon: 3:20 a.m. He unwound the sheets from his ankles and sat forward in bed, dressed only in his underpants. It was the middle of February, and the nights were hot and sticky at best. Despite this, he shivered as he sat and stared out the window where the faint, pre-dawn light was starting to turn everything dirty grey.

    At thirty-nine years of age, he had been in the police force since leaving high school. It had taken him thirteen years to make sergeant, and he could have risen higher in the ranks if he’d had a mind to. But seven years ago—just after he’d made sergeant—his life had started to become unravelled.

    He had struggled to hold himself together after his wife and son left. If it wasn’t for his mate, Reggie Heinz, who was also on the force here in town, he would have been history. Reggie had been his best man, and he’d helped him get off the grog and get his life back in order. But he and Sally had been divorced for four years, and it finally seemed he had found some kind of balance in his life. Were it not for his constant nightmares, he would have said he was almost normal.

    Realising there was no way he’d be able to get back to sleep, he switched the clock radio to OFF: he always set the alarm for five o’clock when he was on dayshift. That way he had time to shave and get dressed—and finish his breakfast while he read the newspaper—before he started work.

    He switched on the lamp on the nightstand and stood up. The nightstand was clotted with books and novels—they were even piled underneath it on the floor. Mainly he read Westerns, and Louis L’Armour was his favourite. But there were also history books scattered around—mostly to do with the local region around Barnstaple. Besides that, there were plenty of books that belonged to his thirteen-year old son. These consisted mainly of Stephen King and Clive Barker horror novels, but there were also a few Fantasy books there as well.

    He stared down at the empty bed opposite.

    A giant poster displaying the current line-up of the Richmond Football Club hung above the bed. The poster proclaimed GO TIGERS 2017. Whenever Grant came up to stop with him, they loved to sit in bed and read of a night. That was only two or three times a year, when Grant had school holidays. Otherwise, his busy schedule made it almost impossible for him to get down to Colonnades to visit Grant at his mother’s house.

    I wonder how Grant’s doing down there in the big smoke?’ he thought. He hoped Grant was keeping his mind on school like he’d told him, and not letting Sally’s boyfriend bother him.

    Hermann the German, he called him, and Grant loved it when he did. He always got a giggle out of him when he said that on the phone, Say hi to Hermann the German for me, mate.

    Right-o, Dad, Grant would say.

    Ah,’ he thought, ‘what I wouldn’t give to have him up here with me now.’ But it was only a couple of months before the next holidays. After all, Grant had just been up here for Christmas, and they’d had themselves a great time. Yeah, him and his little mate got along just fine.

    One more look at Grant’s bed and the Tigers poster on the wall, and he walked over to the wardrobe. Before he opened it, he stopped and looked at himself in the narrow mirror on the wardrobe door. He stood at five-foot-eleven, and had a lean, well-toned physique. His high forehead was topped by greying-brown hair, with a receding hairline on the sides that Grant said made him look like Dracula.

    Despite his relative health, his faded-blue eyes betrayed more pain than he cared for; whenever he saw himself in the mirror, it was like he saw straight back to that afternoon seven years ago. And he could see, he could really see that poor bastard lying on the roadside outside of town, a neat, round bullet hole in the centre of his forehead.

    His arms trembled as he opened the wardrobe door. Taking out his uniform, he got dressed.

    Grant knew he had made a big mistake when he agreed to run away with Kevin Darcy.

    Not only was Kevin one of the biggest losers at Castle Park Secondary School, but he was also trouble. Kevin was the kind of kid his dad warned him about. And his dad knew what he was talking about. He was a cop. Mate, ya don’t wanna hang round with those naughty buggers, his dad had once said. All they want is to get ya into trouble. If ya hang round with ’em, you’ll never hear the end of it from your mother.

    He agreed with his dad that having his mum on his back about anything was enough reason not to hang around with kids like Kevin. That was until he got back home from the Christmas holidays up at Barnstaple. When he got back to Colonnades and school got underway again, that’s when he always started hanging round with kids like Kevin. They made him feel better, with their Who gives a fuck? view of the world. Yeah, they made him feel that, through them at least, he could finally get back at his mum and dad.

    He was born in Barnstaple, and it was all he ever talked about at school with his mates. "I got to go shooting with me old man on the holidays. Yeah, it was cool! Nah, he still won’t fire a gun… he won’t even hold one. Yeah, I reckon he’s strange, too, being a copper ’n all. But he’s me dad, y’know".

    Since him and his mum had moved down to Colonnades, he only saw his dad on the holidays. And ever since the divorce, his dad never came down to Colonnades.

    He said he was too busy at work.

    But what really annoyed Grant was his mum’s steady string of boyfriends. He had once heard the term Root-rag on TV, and during a fight with his mum last year, he’d called her a root-rag. His mum had been surprised at first, and then she’d called him a Foul-mouthed brat, and then she’d cried. He really loved his mum, but ever since she’d started seeing Hermann the German, he couldn’t stand her or Hermann.

    Hermann drove a nice car, and he had a lot of money—he was an architect or something like that—but he spoke with a funny accent, and he smelt like garlic. Grant sometimes joked to his mum that Dad could no longer visit because he was scared of Hermann’s garlic breath, after he’d nicknamed his dad Dracula, because his hair was receding on the sides. But these days he hardly even spoke to his mother, let alone joking with her.

    And that was why he had decided to run away.

    If she’s gonna keep on inviting that smelly, ugly, dirty, funny sounding Hermann the German to stay the night, when she knows Dad hates his guts, then I’m out of here,’ he thought. ‘I mean, like, gone. As in yesterday!’

    When Grant turned his head and peered across the aisle at the seats opposite, he saw Kevin Darcy and Jerry Woods setting the coach on fire. Here they were, on their way to Melbourne on a Monday morning when they should have been at school, and Kevin and Jerry were smoking cigarettes and setting the back of the seat in front of them on fire with their lighters. He could just imagine his dad: Ruddy thirteen years old and you wanna be tried for arson, hey Grant. Can’t you aim a little higher next time, mate?

    He was still sitting there trying to work out what was wrong with Kevin and Jerry’s brains for them to be setting the coach on fire—which by the way, was meant to be taking them to Melbourne—when a gruff voice barked from the front of the coach, ‘Hey, youse kids. Yeah you, up the back! What the hell do ya reckon you’re doing?’

    ‘Shit, Kevin,’ he said, as he twisted in his seat as if he was looking for an escape hatch.

    ‘Whatcha worried about, Grant?’ asked Kevin. ‘Don’t be such a wimp.’ Kevin scowled at him: Kevin scowled at everyone. Just last week, he had been scowling at a teacher when the teacher said something to him. So Kevin had punched him!

    Grant had been there when it happened, and he’d seen the teacher staggering round the classroom clutching his bloodied nose. Kevin had sat down and waited patiently for the Vice Principal to come and haul him off to her office. And then he’d been suspended. All in all, it had been a pretty fair day as far as Kevin was concerned. He came from a family where, if he didn’t come home from school having punched out his teacher, he got into big trouble.

    Kevin’s older brothers were all career criminals—he and his brothers lived with their divorced mother. Grant at least felt he had something in common with Kevin. But aside from the fact they both lived with their mothers, there wasn’t much else between the two boys: he was a bit mixed-up because of his parents’ messy divorce, while Kevin was mixed-up because he wanted to be. Kevin often told anybody who’d listen that he wanted to kill someone so he would be sent to an adolescent jail before he turned eighteen. His mantra:

    At least I got a goal in life.

    The next thing Grant knew, the coach’s hydraulic breaks kicked into action, and the coach began to slow down. Then Kevin wasn’t scowling down the aisle at the driver, so much as glowering. Grant had seen that look before on the other boy’s face—no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t think of Kevin as a friend—and from what he saw, it didn’t look good. Not for the driver. Not for anyone.

    ‘What the fuck’s that fat faggot’s problem?’ said Kevin, as thick plumes of smoke drifted up from the back of the seat. A couple of passengers further down the aisle started to cough and splutter. Then the coach turned on to the side of the road, and lurched to a halt. The coach driver jumped out of his seat and started down the aisle. He was a middle-aged man with a beer gut and bald head, and he puffed as he waddled towards the back of the coach.

    Kevin leaned back in his seat, and stuck his dirty sneakers on the armrest of the seat in front of him. Lighting another cigarette, he took a drag, before blowing a thick plume of smoke at the driver. All the while, thick tendrils of smoke continued to rise from the seat in front of him.

    ‘Did you do that?’ said the driver, his red cheeks quivering.

    ‘Get fucked, ya fat cunt,’ Kevin said.

    ‘What did you just say, you little smartarse?’

    ‘Why don’t ya get back behind the wheel, ya fat faggot? I bought me ticket, so take us to Melb’n.’

    Jerry snickered behind his hand as he watched on from beside Kevin. Then Kevin used his hand to fan the smouldering material on the back of the seat. This produced a large plume which drifted up into the air, causing the driver to cough and wheeze. ‘You little shit,’ spluttered the driver. ‘I’m gonna kick your arse for that!’

    ‘Oh yeah?’

    Kevin jumped up from his seat, and stood in front of the driver so that their noses touched. Kevin had been kept back so many times during primary school, not even he knew what year he was supposed to be in anymore. He could look the driver directly in the eye, while his shoulders were at least as wide as the driver’s.

    ‘You little bastard…’ The driver turned and started running back down the aisle. But Kevin stuck out his leg, and the driver went sprawling. Leaping on the driver’s back, he started punching him in the back of the head. The driver’s face mashed into the floor as he lay on his fat stomach in the aisle.

    ‘Here, I got it! C’mon, let’s get the fuck outta here,’ yelled Kevin, smiling as he brandished the driver’s wallet. Turning, he fled down the aisle towards the front of the bus. Jerry followed.

    Grant watched them go for a moment, while the driver’s moans drifted up from the floor. Finally, he swore, and ran down the aisle after them.

    ****

    After fleeing the bus, they made their way through the quiet, suburban streets somewhere in Melbourne’s west. Coming from Colonnades as they did, none of them were at all familiar with the city. The exception being when Grant would sometimes visit Melbourne with his dad to watch Richmond play at the MCG. But the start of the footy season was still a couple months away.

    They walked through the streets, so different and yet so familiar to those they knew back home. Although it was still morning, the sun was fearsome in its intensity, and soon all three of them were trying to find some shade.

    They arrived at a small suburban train station, and stopped to look at all the people standing on the platform. Most of them were dressed in suits and skirts, while carrying briefcases in their hands. Jerry squinted through the chain-link fence at the sign on the platform where all the commuters stood. ‘It says Footscray.

    ‘Where’s that?’ Grant asked.

    ‘It’s where all the fuckin’ wogs live,’ replied Kevin, spitting a thick wad of phlegm through the fence, onto the train tracks. Moments later, a silver carriage rattled to a stop, and all the commuters got on. They waited until the train took off and then kept walking down the street. At the end of the street they came to a small nature reserve, and they took a detour through it.

    ‘I’m hungry,’ said Jerry.

    ‘Yeah, and I’m horny,’ said Kevin—his hand reaching out and catching Grant on the bum.

    ‘Fuck off, man,’ Grant said.

    ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Kevin.

    ‘You guys are fuck’n gay,’ laughed Jerry, while smiling at Kevin. But Kevin just scowled back at him.

    As they continued through the reserve, Grant became more and more conscious of Kevin’s size. Kevin wasn’t just big for his age, he was massive. He looked as though he could’ve easily passed for an eighteen-year old. By comparison, both Grant and Jerry were small for their ages. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Grant knew that he looked far too much like a girl, what with his strawberry blond hair, and all those freckles. ‘What if Kevin tries something now we’re

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