Peacehaven

CHAPTER ONE

I AWOKE TO a light burning my eyes. Quick short breaths are working my chest hard and the hands around my neck are relentless. I press down on the asthma inhaler and breathe deeply as I suck the cool spray deep into my lungs. The hands let go. My breathing slows. The light above my head is intense. I brush the lamp aside with the back of my hand and place my hand to my chest. It’s there, as it always had been, I roll it in my fingers. Just knowing it’s there comforts me. My breathing becomes normal. It’s there, this is the day and to me that is all that matters.

In my hand is an old brass key, that has long ago lost its shine, tarnished a deep brown and green. The inscription on the shaft of the key is still legible, ‘Remember Sarah.’ I read it every day, to remember. The key is attached to a thin strap of leather that hangs from my neck. I rarely remove it, except for this special day of the year which is so important.

The first rays of sunlight are creeping over the Highfields mountains in the eastern distance, displaying a beautiful deep orange, I admire it momentarily, then step off my veranda. I’m carrying a torch, but the sunlight coming is still enough to give me some confidence. A heavy fog is beginning to drift over the small town of Peacehaven.

I take a deep breath and I taste the cool, moist, morning air. It tastes good. I leave my home behind me, making my way along Mocatta Street with streetlights barely visible in the thickening gloom. Shop fronts that would soon come to life for the day stare out like dark empty eyes sockets in the mist.

I like to walk; it always clears my head and helps me to think. More than any other day I choose this day for my path to remembrance. The only day of the year I visit Green Acre Cemetery. I’ve made the trek for these past forty five years. I often spend the day there, just talking and remembering, what once was and what could have been. Head lights drift out onto Main Street, the first of the mine workers that mostly populated the town now, driving to the New Acland coal mine.

Soon the road will fill with them, so I pick up my pace. I pass R and K Accountants to my right. I can see the dark shape of the Pioneer Hotel looming in the distance. I leave the road and walk along the streetscape among the jacaranda trees. The leaves hang heavily with dew; the large drops rain down on me as I pass beneath. Their flowers mat the ground beneath my feet giving off a pungent decaying odor that hangs heavily on the moist air.

I reach the town limit as the darkness surrenders to the morning sun. The mist hangs low and thick across the nearby paddocks as I make my way along the bitumen surface. I follow the road as it takes me on a wide sweep to the right. The rays of sunlight that are breaking through the mist gently caress my face and I feel good, better than I’ve felt for some time, but a nagging thought crept into my head.

I knew it was him. He wanted to get inside me. He was trying to close the curtain forever. To stop something I should remember. The thought hung deeply, just a whisper. I pushed it down, tried to ignore it and pushed on.

A crow broke the stillness with a piecing cry to my right. I watch it sitting in a dead iron bark tree, watching me, those dark penetrating eyes, judging me. I try hard not to look but those eyes won’t leave me alone. Ahead the road dipped across a creek. The sign reads Little Comoran Creek. I hurry across, stepping through a trickle of water from the previous night’s downpour still running off from the surrounding hills.

I gaze back at where the crow is perched, it sits there still, its eyes fixed firmly on me, it grins. Of course, I know it didn’t, but still it mocks me, laughing at something only a crow could understand.

I leave the creek. I continue following the road. I pass Coleman’s and James Roads then the road opens out onto a straight stretch that I know so well. I push on through the morning which was promising a warm summers day but still something gnawed at my mind.

My head feels as if full of rats, hurriedly devouring my mind, before they could be discovered, like a rat chewing on a nut. I round the cemetery turn off; my legs are beginning to tire. I reach the large green gates of the cemetery by eight o’clock that Wednesday morning.

The rusty iron gates stand across the path in a defiant gesture. The green paint is flaking off the iron in large pieces from corrosion. Nature slowly rotting away what once stood proud. From around my neck I retrieve the brass key, given to me by Sergeant George Hillman, the only key left in Peacehaven that would ever fit that lock again.

I slide the key into the keyhole, the inner mechanism moves with the force of the key, emitting a dull clunking sound. I push the two gates apart with a defiant screech. No one has been interned in the cemetery since George closed the cemetery gates forever. Closed for a reason no one in Peacehaven could tell you or remember, even if you could find someone who could.

I return the key to my neck and step through the gates. The fog hits me hard. Like ghostly fingers reaching for me. I hear the screams in my head, I stumble. It screams my name as it did on that night. Deafening as if my head would explode, my head aches. For the first time since that night I was certain it had found where we buried it. A blackness, deeper than I had ever seen it. It wanted to engulf me, swallowing me whole into its own world. I feel as if I’m falling. Blackness comes.

I awake, the headache is gone, but the curtain is closed. The sun had been replaced by the shine of the moon and surrounded by a billion stars, making a night as beautiful as I could ever wish for. The evening is warm. I struggle to my feet, discarding the coat I’m wearing.

A backpack lay beside me, inside I find a torch and something cold touches my chest. Have I laid there all day? My headache was gone, replaced with the fog that feels as if it is swirling inside me. I feel the coldness on my chest again, I touch it, something hard. I pull it from around my neck.

By the moonlight I can see it is a key. I shine the torch on it. On the shaft of the key is engraved, ‘Remember Sarah,’ was this something I was supposed to remember? Why I was here? My head feels clear but lost, I make my way through the head stones.

With the help of the torch I read each head stone as I stumble through them. A statue of Jesus is sitting high on a concrete block, carved into the marbled surface was ‘John Kruger Died 1913,’ I’m in the old section of the cemetery.

A crow suddenly called in the distance, it startles me, I stumble backwards, falling onto a grave surrounded by a steel spiked fence. The spikes dig into my chest driving out my breath. My chest burns. I groan heavily pushing myself back to my feet. I feel under my shirt, the heat and swelling has already begun.

I scan the graveyard with the torch until two small faces emerge in the light. On a grave before me sits two small angels with expressions that fill me with dread. Their little arms outreaching, staring towards the heavens as if begging for God to take them home now their earthly task is done.

The crow called again. I follow the sound. I use the torch, but the distance proves too far to see without a more powerful light. I pass the older graves and find recently interned plots. One freshly dug grave was surround by a makeshift fence that held teddy bears and toys of every kind. My torch settles on a framed picture of a young boy resting on the head stone.

I can hear beating wings high above me. Something swoops past my head. I raise the torch searching the night sky, it’s gone. The crow calls again; I swing the torch around to see it on the boys’ head stone. There it is, I don’t know how, but I’m sure it is the same. But logic tells me crows don’t call or fly at night, but there it sits, it’s eyes blacker than night reflecting the torch light.

“Jack?” the word escapes my lips before I realize I’ve even spoken it.

With a sudden flap of its wings it takes to flight again. I try to follow with only the sound of its wings beating in the night to guide me. I follow it until the headstones end, opening up to a clear area at the rear of the cemetery. Here, even without the torch, I can see four white head stones, on the first from the western end of the cemetery, sits the crow.

I approach, until the light makes visible the owner of the grave. ‘Here rests a reminder that Henry Thompson will always be loved and missed until he finds his way home to us.’ Then the crow takes to flight again, once more disappearing into the night. I follow to where there were no graves. The end of the cemetery. Where the bushland begins.

In the far corner of the cemetery is a large circle of cleared earth. I find the crow waiting for me there. It dances around the edge of the circle without stepping on the raw earth. I step to the edge. Not a blade of grass or weed grows within the circle, no leaves or twigs rest on the earth. Is there something buried here? Something I should remember or is it something better left forgotten.

The crow lets off another loud caw and takes flight. I follow to the western corner of the cemetery. The wires of the fence are rusted and broken. A path barely visible by the torch light leads me through a short distance of bushland. I follow it. Large wattle trees are casting their ghostly arms over the path, forming a tunnel around the path itself. The yellow flowers fill the air with a sweet perfume. I follow until the path ends at a small cleared area were the trees had been removed and the area well-tended.

In the center is a small concrete block. The torch beam hits it; the light reflects back. The crow makes its presence known with a loud caw then lands in the clearing. It hops towards the block. With a tap of its beak it pecks at the block. I approach. I stand over the concrete block, studying it. Set into it is a small plaque, inscribed ‘Remember Sarah,’ The crow leaps into the air and is gone, I guess its task is complete for whoever or whatever sent it here.

The curtain opened a crack, but it was enough. I’d forgotten Sarah and Henry and the others. ‘Remember Sarah,’ no, I haven’t forgotten, it tried to make me forget. It closed the curtain, but it couldn’t keep it shut.

I lock the cemetery gates and slip the key back over my head, I hurry as fast as I can, with a new determination burning within me. My legs ache, but I push on, I feel a new purpose, more alive than I’ve felt in years. I turn off Main street onto William Street just around midnight and see the familiar lights guiding my way home.

I stumble up the stairs, my body shaking with excitement rather than weariness. I rush into my old room, on a small desk beneath a dust cover, under my old bedroom window sits a typewriter and not just any typewriter. It is an Olivetti Lettera 32 Typewriter. When the Heritage Bank on Main Street closed down and the branch moved to Toowoomba in the year of 65, they held a clearing sale. ‘‘They were practically giving them away,’’ father had said when I first set eyes upon it.

I wrote a lot, mostly short horror stories and mostly just for father and myself. He would often sit in his chair and read them over and over, never was he judgmental, always giving “constructive criticism” as he called it. Mother never read them, “Tap, tap, tap… that’s all I hear in this house anymore,” she would often remark even though she never intentionally tried to put a stop to it.

I pull the dust cover off; it looks as good now as it did all those year ago. I carry it out to my kitchen table. I put a fresh ink ribbon in then set about brewing a fresh pot of coffee, stronger than I would normally like. That done I seat myself; I feel scared but motivated, maybe even angry that I have waited so long for this.

I begin.

The good people of Peacehaven have forgotten, except for those like me, if there are any, who it touched the deepest, but the curtain is slowly but surely closing. Today, being the twenty ninth day of January, I walked out to Green Acre Cemetery, to visit ‘Gods waiting room,’ not the cemetery itself but behind the cemetery were the empty coffins were buried. I even heard it once called ‘The valley of the lost’. I always preferred the latter.

I covered over this typewriter once, just to let it die, out of fear of course. I’ve seen what fear can do, I’ve seen what it did to this town and the people in it. It took everything. I’m sitting here now and here I will stay until everything is remembered, so it will never make me or anyone else forget and if I ever do, I can read it and remind myself that it really did.