wazjunz

[wazjunz]

Cult of the Mongoose  (Chapter 1)

“Dude… is he talking to his sandwich!?”

Raymond stole a glance at the boy beside him. Sam was small, even for a Year Eight. He had pale, sandy, nothing-coloured hair, mousey features, bony shoulders and tiny arms. And yes. As the older kid across the walkway has just pointed out, it did look a lot like he was whispering to his lunch. The older boy and his friend were only a few metres away, sitting on a bench on the other side of the concrete walkway connecting the Art department from English, but Sam seemed not to hear the comment. The small boy continued chewing; his cheese sandwich held close to his face. He chewed with his lips slightly open, and kept his eyes locked firmly on the sandwich, his eyebrows would raise and fall as he chewed.

“Oh my God, I think he is,” the older boy continued.

His friend shook his head and laughed. Raymond felt very vulnerable, dreading that the older boys would turn their attention to him next. Raymond put a lot of effort into being invisible, and he suddenly felt more exposed than usual. After waiting long enough that it wouldn’t seem like he had been scared off by the older boys’ comments, Raymond mumbled a goodbye to Sam and walked quickly away. Sam didn’t look up from his sandwich.

Raymond checked his watch. Damn it. He’d planned on spending longer with Sam before moving on. Sam sat alone in a quieter area, and was happy with almost no conversation, so Raymond could kill almost 20 minutes with Sam sometimes before he got too nervous and moved on. There was still forty minutes before Lunch ended. Most days Raymond could secure his favourite spot in the library before anyone else got there. There was a small corner with a low armchair, hidden between shelves, where he could hide out completely alone for an entire recess or lunch if he got there first, but today was a Wednesday. On Wednesdays before lunch he had Drama. Drama was in a demountable way out the back of the school and as far from the library as you could get. Today, by the time he got to his safe chair a couple of Year Tens were crammed into it, giggling and poking one-another while their Group slumped on the floor in the surrounding aisles, smirking knowingly, rolling their eyes at one another.

As he passed the Library doors Raymond considered checking his spot again, but he couldn’t risk it. If the Group hadn’t moved on they might spot him lurking again and call him a stalker, or worse, a Nigel. As in ‘Nigel-no friends’. Raymond put his head down and walked quickly through the crowd in the main quadrangle, past the snaking canteen lines, and out a side gate towards the basketball courts. Raymond didn’t like going near the basketball courts. That was where the second most intimidating group of Year Nines hung out. It was their Area. All the Groups had an Area. The basketball court was the sporty/ tough Year Nine’s Area. They were the biggest Group in Year Nine. The group consisted of two Sub-Groups. The sporty kids (identified more by their running shoes and Adidas track pants than actual sporting ability) and the tough kids, who liked to cultivate an air of delinquency, without ever actually getting into much trouble. The more affluent sporty kids enjoyed the danger and protection of the tougher sub-group, while the tougher sub-group used the prestige of the sporty kids to keep them from being identified with the socially undesirable ‘Dero’ group- who got in actual trouble.

Raymond was equally terrified by both basketball court Sub-Groups, so before he got too close to the courts he jogged down a slight hill to two demountables on the edge of the oval. The eroded, grassless patch of dirt between the demountables was one of his emergency, temporary back up havens when his spot in the library got taken. This was Gumbum’s Area.

Gumbum’s real name wasn’t Gumbum, but it was what everyone called him. Gumbum was bigger and louder than the most confident Year 12, but not for any reason that anyone could figure out. He was shaped like a giant bowling pin, and moved like a T-rex. He had a meaty butt and legs, but stood with a slouch that made his shoulders look disproportionately small. The entire Year thought he was an idiot, and not without justification. Gumbum found himself very funny, and cracked jokes and laughed loudly at himself during class. Often the jokes were references to some wierd Japanese animation series that no one else had seen. Every single one fell flat. Gumbum was permanently unfazed though, and either didn’t mind or didn’t notice that his company was seen as social suicide by his entire year group. Without friends his own age, Gumbum simply found like-minded weirdos from younger Years, and cavorted with them joyously in this strange Area between the demountables. Gumbum was a semi-safe ally for Raymond for two reasons. Firstly, because most other Year Nines gave him a wide berth, Raymond was usualy safe from bumping into anyone scary while in Gumbum’s proximity. Secondly, Gumbum was so big and loud, and unashamedly dorky, that Raymond felt that if he was spotted with him he might look vaguely normal in comparison.

Raymond heard Gumbum laughing like an excitable fog horn before he rounded the corner of the first demountable. The man-sized 14-year-old had two Year Seven boys clinging onto each of his legs, and one on each arm, while a weasly-looking Year 8 threw popcorn into his open, guffawing mouth. It was unclear what exactly the game was or how it hard started, but it was exactly the sort of thing Gumbum and his tiny friends seemed to be doing all the time. Raymond leaned awkwardly against the side of the demountable out of the way of the action. He tried not to smile, but the sight was pretty great. Gumbum had stumbled under the weight of the tiny Year Sevens and had one smooshed up agianst the demoutnable wall squealing, while the rest still clung on giddily. The Year Eight continued hocking handfuls of popcorn into Gumbum’s snapping jaws. Suddenly Gumbum threw his head back, spraying popcorn kernels into the air. “THIS. ENDS. NOOOOOOW!”, he yelled to the sky. Year sevens were suddenly flying off his thrashing limbs, crashing to the rocky ground, gasping with pain and laughter. Gumbum turned and saw Raymond standing awkwardly near the corner of the demountable.

“Oh, Hello Raymond,” he said.

Gumbum made a point of knowing the name of every Year Nine, and a good smattering of the older and younger students’ names. He would use everyone’s names like they were close friends, much to the discomfort of his peers, who didn’t like the implication that they were on speaking terms with the most obvious weirdo in the year. Another reason Raymond sometimes sought out Gumbum in a pinch was that, just like Sam, hanging out with Gumbum meant Raymond barely had to say a word, although (very much unlike Sam) this was because Gumbum never shut up. Gumbum had figured out at some point that Raymond watched Dragon Ball Z, so whenever they crossed paths he would launch quickly into long monologues about hypothetical fights between characters and intricate plot points he had important thoughts about. Having a loud conversation outing him as a Dragon Ball Z watching type was not something that appealed to Raymond at all in the hallways and classrooms generally, but in the near-panic of a library-less lunch time, and in the relative safety between the demountables next to the oval it was a trusty way to eat up some time. Today even that fallback was ruined though. Gumbum had barely started ramping up when a basketball slammed into the wall above their heads and flumped to the dirt near his feet. Gumbum jumped to pick it up and walked out from between the buildings to hand it to an exercise flushed Year nine girl chasing it down the hill.

“Here you go Kellie!,” he said.

Raymond looked at his feet and slid his back along the wall, trying to blend in to the shadows as the girl approached, but he saw her see him, her eyes flicking momentarily between him and Gumbum. She took the ball quickly, forcing a polite smile from the corners of her mouth, before sprinting back up the hill to her friends.

“See you Kellie!” Gumbum called after her.

Spooked, Raymond half raised his hand to Gumbum in a tiny wave, and mumbled “OK, seeya man,” before striding quickly back toward the main school buildings.

Raymond checked his watch again. Only ten minutes had passed since he left Sam. He still had 30 minutes to kill. There was nowhere to sit and hide on his own without it being obvious he was alone, but he could only do so many laps of the school without that looking weird. He had one more option, but it wasn’t one he liked. He took the longest path he could to stairwell near the Art block, walking as slowly as possible without it looking like he was walking slower than a non-weird person would walk.

The entire school, (with the exception a couple of newer buildings) was carpeted in old frayed astroturf coloured carpet. The strairway leading up to the Art classrooms had the added affect of being speckled with droplets of old paint and stomped bits of clay that couldn’t be cleaned out, making it look like a slime clogged waterfall. The stairway changed directions half-way up, where a wobbly old table lived in the corner next to a window peeling with year’s old red and black paint. The table was Ryan’s spot. The corridor at the top of the stairwell was claimed by another large group of Year Nines, somewhere around the middle of the social ladder, running a distant third behind the Populars and the Sport/Tough Groups. Ryan was probably technically part of that group, but his arrogance and moodiness meant that as often as not he put himself in self-imposed, attention seeking exile on the wobbly desk in the stairwell, rather than deigning to hang out with lower life forms. This set up worked well enough for Raymond as Ryan’s volatile moods kept others away, and made him ill-disposed to making jokes and small talk, which Raymond’s panic stricken brain struggled to keep up with.

The other good thing about Ryan was his MP3 player. He had the only one in school. It was white with a greenish backlight and circular touch dial that let you scroll through songs, and the songs were good. Sometimes, rarely, Ryan would let Raymond take an ear bud and listen to half a song. Once he let him have both headphones and scroll through the tracks himself. Ryan was smart and he had cool and interesting taste in music. Unfortunately he was also pretty much one hundred percent not a nice person. Ryan had something mean to say about everyone and everything. He wore a permanent scowl and was always picking at his fingernails like he was punishing them for something. He was also incredibly moody, and could switch from having an interesting conversation to insulting your mum without warning or reason. Raymond found the fact that Ryan already acted like he hated him oddly comforting, but spending more than a few minutes with Ryan always felt odd and uncomfortable. Raymond approached Ryan and leaned on the window with his shoulder. Ryan looked up and pulled out one of his earbuds.

“What.” He said.

“Nah, nothing,” Raymond mumbled. “What you listening to?” Ryan sighed dramatically.

“The Swerves” he said.

“Oh cool. I haven’t heard of them.” Raymond replied.

“Why did you say they’re cool then?”

“Oh, I dunno. The name sounds cool…”

“Uh-huh.”

Ryan stared at Raymond with his ice blue eyes, eyebrows raised.

“How many songs can you get on there?,” Raymond asked.

Ryan rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling.

“Maybe like 50. I dunno, depends on the songs.”

“Cool. That’s pretty cool. That’s like three or four full albums.”

“Yep. I guess.”

Another awkward silence ensued.

“Is that all?” Ryan said abruptlky. “Like, did you want something or did you just come up here to stand there like a weirdo and tell me you like my MP3 player?”

“Oh, yeah. No. Anyway. Seeya.” Raymond replied, starting to move away back down the stairs.

“Ok. bye. Die in fire,” Ryan said in pretend cheerfulness to Raymonds back.

Ryan said that to everyone. It was like his stand in for any normal phrase he didn’t feel like saying, and he seemed to drop it almost without realizing. Once he said it to a teacher, almost certainly by accident, but he got in big trouble. By Ryan standards the conversation had been a mild success, but it hadn’t taken much time. Raymond checked his watch again. With 15 long minutes still to kill and no other loner allies to visit Raymond did the only thing he could think of and headed back towards the library.

Recently Raymond had started to feel as though he could sense when his Spot was taken and when it was free. As he neared the library he got a hopeful feeling in his stomach and tentatively started to believe that he might get 15 minutes of safe time in his spot with a pile of books before the bell rang for fifth period. He dodged a screaming group of Year Sevens and slipped through the heavy swinging door into the relative quiet. The library was split into three levels. The ground floor was shaped like a big square with the middle cut out. To Raymond’s right and behind him was the borrowing counter, and staff area. The rest of the square was ringed with clumps of desks with four or five chairs grouped around them, and the walls were covered with laminated posters that looked like they’d gone up when she school was built 30 years before. A few groups of students sat at some of the tables. This area was brightly lit by fluorescent lights. In the centre of this square the floor dropped downa couple of metres, making a sort of sunken area ringed by large steps that could double as a sort of in door ampitheatre for classes or presentations. Technically book-wise this was the Young Adult section. One low shelf in the sunken square had a jumble of crappy graphic novels and busted up surfing magazines thrown in it. Most of them were terrible old Asterix comics, and similar things, so Raymond rarely ventured down to look.  In two corners those round stand-up spinning book stands held piles of thin paperback novels in bright colours. No one really seemed to ever read or borrow any of them, but Raymond had learned from the giggles and not-very-covert whispers of groups of students that two or three has nudity or sex scenes in them. It was easy to tell which ones they were because they were very beat up. Especially a yellow one, that apparently had a part about two guys doing something in it, and bore the scars of being dropped into the laps of unsuspecting young male victims, and subsequently hurled across the room while their friends cackled.

Raymond’s spot was in the ‘mezzanine’, which was the same shape as the ground floor, but up a flight of stairs in front of the borrowing desk, and with a balcony looking down over the Young Adult section. The mezzanine was where most of the books were. Dirty skylights gave the whole area an otherworldly, hazy, gloaming glow. Two rows of massive beige metal shelves ran down each side of the square. Raymond had the sections highlighted in his brain. Right at the top of the stairs was Sport (gross), which morphed into science (meh), and turned into religion (shrug) in the back right corner. Turning down the back side of the square took you through Art and Design (cool), then history (rad), and finally, Raymond’s favourite, the weird stuff.

Raymond’s spot was a low, cushioned armchair with heavy black metal legs covered in squeaky off-white vinyl, tucked in an alcove, and nearly completely out of view until you walked right past it. The chair faced directly onto Raymond’s favourite shelf. Althought he would often grab a couple of massive art and history books (he especially liked the gigantic Encycolpedia of Modern Military Uniforms), the vast majority of his attention always went to the metre-and-a-half bottom shelf across from his Spot. An old yellow sticker on the shelf at this section read “Paranormal/ unexplained/ horror.” It was a treasure trove of off-putting descrioptions, heart-pounding eyewitness accounts and creepy illustrations.  Fifty minutes outside of the library was an age, but a lunchtime spent in his Spot seemed to Raymond like a fleeting moment. He always pulled out way more books that he had time to look through in one sitting. He’d stack the big ones near his feet, balance the smallest on the arms of the chair, and pack the hefty medium sixed hard covers next to his thighs. He loved the books for their stories and ideas and pictures, and their ability to transport him to another world, and raise the hairs on the back of his neck, but he also loved the feel of them. The weight in his hand. The way the thick plastic p[rotecting the covers gave a moved under his fingers as he swung the tomes in his hand down the aisle. The books were his real allies.

About half way up the steps to the mezzanine, a glimpsed view under the shelves showed Raymond that his feeling was correct. The entire floor seemed deserted now. He jogged the last few steps and set off towards his spot. With 15 minutes left he could still flick through a couple of his favourite books. He was rounding the Religion corner, and mentally shortlisting which books he would pull down, when he nearly walked into a Year Ten coming the other way. The boy was tall, a little pudgy, and smiling over his shoulder as he joked with a Year ten girl walking just behind him. Both he and Raymond stopped abruptly to avoid a collision. Raymond froze, and the tall boy did a short double take as he recognised that he recongised Raymond.

“Oh, hey Ray,” the Year Ten said.

“Hey man,” Raymond replied, not knowing where to look.

“How you been dude? You sort of disappeared on us hey.”

Raymond knew he needed to reply quickly but his brain was doing what it always did in this kind of situation. He felt like his mind had turned into spaghetti, and his thoughts were going too slow and too fast at once.

The tall boy was Cameron. He and Raymond were best friends from the start of primary school until the middle of Year 6, when Raymond moved away for a few years. When he came back to his home town, Raymonds mum had decided that it was time to make up for a mistake she felt she had made in sending him to school too early, when he was just a little kid. Raymond was smart, but he had alwaus been a little immature and social stilted compared to others in his year, so when his family moved back to town after being away, Raymonds mum told him he would be doing Year 9 again. Raymond didn’t kick up a stink. Raymond never did that. He did worry that people who remembered him from primary school would be at this high school though. There were only two big public high schools in town, and he felt sick about having to explain to people who recognized him from primary school why he was now in the shameful category of people who had to repeat a year. Cameron’s family lived just around the corner from Raymond’s family home, which they’d moved back to when they came back to town. He’d caught up with Cameron once before school went back (Raymond’s mum had called Cameron’s and set it up without telling Raymond). It was a little awkward at first, but Raymond had always liked Cameron, and even found his mum and his older brother Kim easier to talk to than most people. That day they ate Cameron’s mum’s ‘Specialty’ pizza (plain wraps with melted cheese and tomato paste) in front of the TV and pretty soon things seemed more or less like they’d been years ago. Raymond didn’t tell Cameron he was repeating. On the first day of school Cameron and his brother came out of their house as Raymond was walking past. It was about a half hour walk to school. Raymond was nervous but Cameron and Kim were both super funny and smart. The brothers talked about big ideas and local urban legends and people they knew. Cameron almost never stopped talking, Kim chimed in when he could with a dark joke or a witty comment, and Raymond followed along not saying much, but grinning and laughing along.

When they got to the school gates (massive spiked things swung open from a tall barbed-wire-topped fence) Raymond hesitiated. Cameron grabbed the handle of Raymond’s school bag and playfully tugged it as he strode towards his group’s Area.

“Come on man, you can sit with us,” he said.

The cracks started to show even on that first day though. Cameron’s group were really nice, and interesting. They were basically six boys who sat on the big steps outside Food Tech, but they had a sort of mirror group across from them which was mostly girls, and the two sort of orbited one another, coming together and drifting apart like a tidal inlet. Cameron introduced Raymond around. One of the other boys remembered Raymond from primary school, and for a while Raymond was able to blend happily into the background of the conversation. Predictably the talk soon went to subjects and timetables and who had which teachers this year. Someone asked Raymond what class he was in for Maths and his brain went to mush. Cameron noticed Raymond struggling to explain and intervned.

“Nah Ray’s actually Year 9, so he’s going to have his own hell to figure out haha.”

Raymond noticed a confused look brush over the face of the guy who he’s gone to school with previously. And them moments later a look of shrewd understanding. Raymond was outed as a repeater. No one said anything, and Raymond kept hanging out with Cameron’s group, in that Area for the first two weeks of school, but he was constantly worried that someone would say something about him being a Year 9 hanging out with Year 10s. Inter-year hanging out wasn’t really done. People mostly stuck with their own year group, and Raymond felt like other Year Nines were starting to notice that he sat with Year Tens as well, which made him worried that he would have to explain to more people that he had to repeat. He wasn’t connecting with anyone in his classes either (except for weird, co-loner interactions with Sam, Gumbum and Ryan). He wondered whether the other Year Nine’s thought he was weird- and that hanging out with Cameron’s group was adding to it. Slowly, Raymond started to spend some lunch times in the library. In the fourth week of term he found his Spot, and the shelf of awesome books. He started sneaking to the library right after class, every other lunch time and recess. The more time he spent way from the group the more awkward he felt when he did show up, so by the sixth week of term he started going to the library whenever he could, and avoiding Cameron’s group all together. He never spoke to Cameron about it, and started leaving for school as late as possible, to avoid being on the same schedule as Cameron and Kim. He just didn’t know how to explain, and was worried about offending Cameron, so he pulled his usual move and avoided anything scary or hard.

Now, about three months after he’d weirdly dropped out of Cameron’s fold, they’d come face to face, mere metres from Raymond’s hiding place. Raymond realised with horror that he hadn’t replied to Cameron’s question yet. He laughed nervously and looked at his feet.

Cameron gave him a slightly confused look. His friend walked around the pair.

“You coming Cam?” she said.

“Yep,” Cam replied, still looking at Raymond. “Come hang out again some time man. If you want. I’ve got some books you’d like. Crazy shit. You can borrow them… OK, seeya man.”

Cameron caught up with his friend and disappeared down the stairs. Raymond dragged the pads of his fingers on his right hand down the right side of his face, in a hard repetitive motion. It was a sort of tick he had when he really felt like he’d stuffed up, which was a lot of the time.

He walked to his spot, grabbed as big a handful of books as he could from his favourite shelf and dumped them on his lap as he sunk into the squawking vinyl. Suddenly he found he couldn’t muster the energy to open any of them. He sat, staring at nothing for the remaining ten minutes until the bell.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the windows in the library doors as he left and noticed that the right hand side of his face was all red.  

[wazjunz]

Panic. Attack.

Sophie googled the reporter’s name before he arrived. The first hit was the article he’d written about her the day before. The headline read, ‘Commuter Foils Terror Attack’. Sophie threw her phone down and rubbed her face in her hands. The reporter arrived early. Sophie made tea. “Can you tell me what happened yesterday?” he asked. Sophie stared into her mug, shoulders slumped.“I have to be honest,” she said.

“It’s really embarrassing.”

The reporter raised his eyebrows. Sophie took a deep breath. “So, I got my period when I was in Year Six, and basically in the space of ten months I went from looking like a little kid to being almost six feet tall with big shoulders and massive boobs.”

She kept staring into her cup.“The girls in my year turned on me, really visicoulsy. Adult men catcalled me on the street. I was good at sport before, but I suddenly felt gross in my own skin. I stopped playing footy. I got diagnosed with anxiety. I still have bad panic attacks. I get claustrophobia in crowded places. I barely get through the train rides to work each day by telling myself to stay calm over and over, and counting the stops.

“Yesterday, when the train stopped between stations, I freaked. I didn’t really hear the emergency announcement, or the commotion in the carriage ahead. I ran towards the exit doors to try and get off. I’d lost control completely. All I could think was that I needed to get off the train no matter what. I barely noticed the guy coming through the door. If a little old lady stepped out I would have knocked her over too. It was a stupid accident.”

The reporter flicked back through his notepad. “I talked to a lady who was on your carriage yesterday, with her three-year-old daughter,” he said.

“Quote. This huge guy with his face covered and black army gear on burst through the door into our carriage holding a giant knife. Everybody froze. Then that lady, the tall lady, she just stood up and strode down the aisle right at him. The look on her face was just fierce. When she was a few metres away she just sprinted at him. She slapped the knife away like he was a toddler and slammed him back into the doors. Knocked him out cold. Unquote.”

Sophie dragged her hands through her hair, pleading with him now.

“It was an accident though. I was having a panic attack. Can you please just tell everyone the truth?”

The next day Sophie checked the news as soon as she got up. There was a photo of her under the headline “Train Hero Credits Natural Athleticism, Positive Thinking with Terror Takedown”. The article made her sound amazing. Sophie  burst into tears. She messaged the journalist, “What the hell?!?! I said TRUTH. That’s not me!”

He messaged back immediately.

“Read again. Where’s the lie?”

[wazjunz]

Baby owls look like tiny little aliens

[wazjunz]

Owlboys

Raelene touched Gordon gently on the shoulder.

“Gordon, you’re hyperventilating,” she said quietly.

Gordon’s hands wrung at the steering wheel like he was squeezing water out of a soaked towel. Raelene could see beads of sweat forming at his temples.

“Is this the place?” she asked. Her voice was calm, steady; like a psychologist’s should be. Gordon nodded, staring past her down into the field. Raelene followed her patient’s gaze.

“Can you see the owlboys now?” she asked. Gordon’s eyes flicked to hers, irritated.

“Do you think I’m experiencing psychosis Raelene?” he snapped. “Have I had a schism? Am I detached from reality?”

Raelene was shocked, though years of practice allowed her not to show it. She’d been a mental health practitioner in a metropolitan hospital for twenty years. She’d certainly handled more extreme behaviours than a snippy comeback, but for gentle, intelligent, thoughtful Gordon, this was a sign of extreme stress.

Gordon took a deep breath and dragged his fingers though his grey-brown hair. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine,” she replied. “You’re really scared aren’t you?”

Gordon laughed nervously.

“I’m so scared,” he replied.

Raelene believed him. She’d made a career out of believing people. She joked that it was her one real marketable skill. She’d figured out pretty quickly that being a good psychologist wasn’t rocket science. People just want to know they’re not crazy. They want someone to say, “I believe you." Raelene had spent two decades of her life doing everything she could to deliver those three words to patients before someone else (usually a Doctor or a Nurse or even another psychologist) messed up royally by saying anything else. A lot of the people who came through emergency as mental health admissions had been sexually assaulted. Raelene saw first hand that for people who had just been through a major trauma a misplaced ‘are you sure?’ in the place of ‘I believe you’ could break someone’s spirit almost as badly as the assault itself.  

She never even thought about going into private practice until after her divorce. Her ex-husband was an arse, but he shared her work ethic, so they owned their own home and had savings. Starting again was relatively easy. Raelene told her colleagues that she had every intention of staying on at the hospital, but at the same time she bought a small house in a misty little rural valley an hour out of the city. She resigned a few weeks later. Her little house had an artists studio out the back that would be a perfect home office. Raelene was only in her 50s, and had spent most of her divorce money on her new home, so she still had to work. Her adult son reluctantly build her a website, rolling his eyes the entire time. He’d inherited his father’s belief that everything Raelene did was annoying and slightly stupid.

Her first private clients were painfully boring. After twenty years of dealing with crisis day-in-day-out, three ladies her own age with long term, but highly functional depression didn’t do much for her in terms of mental stimulation. Business didn’t really pick up until she got a call from a farmer on a neighbouring property. He was a tough looking 40-year-old family man who probably hadn’t been to a GP for twenty years. He seemed out of place in her little studio, surrounded by indoor plants and comfy cushions, wound up tighter that a rubber band.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t really believe in counselling or whatever, but you aren’t allowed to tell anyone what I say to you right?”

Raelene assured the farmer that the only reason she would break confidentiality was if someone’s safety was at risk. That seemed to satisfy him.

“I saw a big hairy man in the bush on my property,” he blurted.

“He must have been eight feet tall and built like a brick shithouse. He just stood in the tree line about forty metres away from me, watching while I filled a horse trough with a hose.”

His voice was shaking. Raelene looked him in the eye.

“I believe you,” she said.

He came back twice more. She asked him how he felt about what he’d seen, how he coped when he woke up dreaming about it, and then about his life more generally. At the end of his third session he told her he felt a bit better just telling someone, and that he didn’t think he’d need to come back again.

Word must have spread somehow from there. Raelene started getting calls from otherwise normal people who claimed to have seen or experienced something they knew no one would believe. She saw a high school science teacher who was convinced aliens had put a microchip in her arm. She met with a family who claimed an angry poltergeist was noisily opening and closing their kitchen cupboards at 3am every night. Two distraught parents came to her with their little girl who claimed her imaginary friend bit her on the arm. The parents said she’d screamed so loud and long that they rushed her to the hospital. Raelene seemed to have accidentally cornered the market on healthy, average people who needed to tell someone about an unexplainable, socially unacceptable trauma. She told them all the same thing.

“I believe you.”

Just like at the hospital, that alone seemed to help the most. Some people she saw regularly, their visits morphing from ghosts and monsters into the usual concerns about their life and relationships. Others dropped their strange experience on her lap and never returned.

Gordon came to her about a year after the farmer. She liked him immediately. He was exactly ten years older than her, slender, with thick wavy hair and smart, smiley, dark brown eyes. He used to be an academic, and now worked for a publishing company, proofreading textbooks. He spoke quietly but clearly, laughed easily and often, and always insisted on showing Raelene videos of his grandchildren on his smartphone. He also believed that mysterious, sinister beings called ‘owlboys’ were stalking three generations of his family. 

Gordon was visibly nervous the first time he came in. He had a little leather satchel with him, and he held it on his lap like a shield, but it didn’t take much to get him talking.

“I’m a somewhat disturbed,” he told her. “Not mentally. I mean...not clinically. But I’m worried about something, and I don’t want to tell anyone because I know it sounds mad.”

Raelene nodded, for him to continue.

“I guess I didn’t think much of it until I found my grandfather’s diary,” Gordon continued.

“I’ve always been a little bit jumpy, and I tend to have bad dreams a lot, especially when I’m stressed. One dream has been recurring since I was a child. I see these odd, um, creatures or beings. They just show up in whatever regular dream I’m having, standing at a distance, or leaning out from behind a tree or a door frame. They never attack me or anything but there’s a feeling about them that gets to me. A sense of…doom I guess.”

“What sort of beings?” Raelene asked. Gordon rubbed his chin.

“To me they always looked like fuzzy rectangles with big black eyes,” he said. “But there’s something really wrong about them that I can’t describe. Something about the way they move. I’ll see them in a dream, and then for the next few days I have that experience where you think you see something out of the corner of you eye, but you look again and it’s not there. I just put it down to an overactive imagination…until I found the diary.”

Raymond reached into his satchel and pulled out an antique leather book.

“This was my grandfather’s,” he said.

“It’s mostly really dull farming stuff, but there are three entries that made me think I’m either going crazy, or there’s something weird going on.”

Gordon explained that his grandfather was one of the first landowners in this valley, and ran a large cattle farm in the early 1900s. Gordon’s own father, Roland, had grown up on the farm, and Gordon had spent the first few years of his life there too, before his family moved to another part of the valley. There were three yellow post-it notes poking neatly out of the diary. Gordon turned the pages to the first note and looked at Raelene. She gave a little nod, and he began to read.

“This one’s dated August 1, 1929,” he said.

“Saw something in the far paddock today. The largest owls I had ever seen, gathered in the centre of the far paddock, in the gully. I estimated them at four feet tall, with black eyes the size of saucers. There was something very peculiar about the way they moved.”

He flicked to the second post-it.

“August 1, 1937. Roland saw the strange owls in the far paddock today. Said he was too frightened to get a closer look. Could not tell if they were people or animals. Called them ‘owlboys’ because they looked like little boys but with owl faces.”

He jumped to the final post-it, speaking more quickly now.

“This one is the first of August, 1940 and it’s mostly about a fence falling down and chasing stray cows around the property,” he explained. “But then he writes, ‘Owlboys in the far paddock. Came back in early.’ The diary goes on for another decade, but he never mentions them again.”

Gordon snapped the diary shut and looked at Raelene expectantly.

“I think the fuzzy white rectangles I’ve been seeing my whole life might be owlboys,” he said. Raelene didn’t reply.

“Did you notice the thing that the entries had in common?”

Raelene wasn’t really a detail person. She had no idea what Gordon meant.

“August first,” he explained. “Every time they saw the owlboys it was August first. I think the owlboys, whatever they are, visit that spot every year on the same day. I only got the diary in November last year, after dad died, so couldn’t do it last year, but this year on August first I’m going to that spot to see if they’re there. I want you to come with me as a witness.”

Raelene had agreed to go with Gordon on the condition that he come and see her once a fortnight for the six months to August. He’d agreed, and had quickly become her favourite patient. They talked about his grandfather and his father, his career, his wife, his own children and grandkids. Of course, they also talked about the owlboys. Gordon was convinced they were real. Maybe not flesh and blood creatures, but real, intelligent beings nonetheless. He burned through a number of theories as the weeks went by. At first he thought they might be native spirits of the valley, angry at his forefathers for clearing a sacred spot to graze cattle. Then he decided the whole ‘owl’ thing might be an alien cover-up, citing the big black eyes, and a number of obscure books he’d dredged up that talked about alien abductees having weird memories of giant owls, supposedly revealed (under hypnosis) as ‘screen’ memories’ intended to cover up an abduction. As the date drew nearer he began to err towards the owlboys having something to do with his family specifically, but he wasn’t sure what.

He’d seemed oddly calm when he rolled up to her house in his neat Volvo station wagon on the first of August, but as he drove her up into the hills on the North side of the valley towards the area where his grandfather’s farm used to be he’d become increasingly agitated. By the time he pulled the car to a stop on the little ridge with a view down into the gully on their left he was breathing fast and strangling the poor steering wheel to death. Raelene put her hand on the door handle. Being in the car with Gordon’s huffing and puffing was starting to stress her out too, and she needed some air. Gordon’s hand shot out and grabbed her firmly on the shoulder.

“Don’t get out,” he whispered. “I’m getting that feeling. The doom-y feeling.”

Raelene turned to look at him. She was about to tell him he might be making himself lightheaded, and to try and slow his breathing, when something white in the trees behind him caught her attention. She leaned to look past him for a better view of whatever was there. Time slowed down. She could hear her heart pumping in her ears, but all other sound seemed to have stopped. Her brain was trying to desperately to explain the input from her eyes. She almost thought it was a child because of the size, but the body shape was wrong. It could have been a person in a costume, but no, the eyes were too real. They were huge, and black and so deep. Whatever it was kept swaying side to side, partially behind a tree about 30 metres into the bush. There was something completely unsettling about how it moved.

“Gordon, what is this,” she whispered.

Gordon had swung around to follow her gaze into the bush.

“Where, I can’t see,” he asked shakily.

“There! Right there!” she shrieked. “Can’t you see it?” Gordon scanned the bush frantically.

“I can’t see a thing,” he said. “What is it?” Raelene ignored his question and grabbed his arm hard.

“Get us out of here, now!” 

Gordon threw the car into drive and made a quick u-turn. For a terrifying moment, this swung Raelene closer to the being in the trees. She shrank down in her seat. The thing had stopped moving but it’s eyes followed her as the car picked up speed down the hill. Now it was her turn to hyperventilate. Gordon barely slowed down through the curves towards the main road.

“Did you really not see it?” Raelene was frantic now. “Gordon tell me you saw it too.”

Gordon glanced across at her and shook his head.

“I couldn’t see anything,” he said.

Raelene put her face her hands and let out a little moan. She felt Gordon’s left hand rest gently on her shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s OK… I believe you.”