Dark Confluence (27 page)

“You have been granted a great gift, my Jenny,” he said, brushing his fingers to her face. “You have become one of us, as you would say...of the Sidhe, of the Fae, as thanks for services rendered.” He smiled brilliantly at her, “The great Courts do not forget when humanity aids them by self-sacrifice.”

Jen lifted her hands and her fingers spun cobwebs of light. She looked around and her vision seemed oddly enhanced – seeing colours brilliant and vibrant even during the encroaching night. She began to perceive the presence of creatures beyond human imagination and ken, and overall, the presence of the natural power that infused every rock, every tree, every life form, and even eventually permeating human-created things. Her breath caught at the world’s beauty, fragility, strength and wonder.

Reluctantly, drawing herself back to her present situation, she turned to Fionn.

“So what now?” she questioned, “Is the town safe, and are the children to be returned?”

“The town is safe,” he assured her, “Although greatly damaged, and the stolen children are already returned to their beds.”

“And the rebel Fae?”

“We are tracking them down,” he replied. “Some have already answered for their crimes. There will be more retribution in the future.”

“What of the humans that aided them?”

Fionn’s face grew grave, “Just as we reward, so also do we punish. One already has been punished by the elementals he sought to tame.”

Jen nodded; already, she was feeling distant and removed from the troubles of men.

“Where to now?” she asked finally.

He took her hand, “We travel with the Courts. Now that the way is clear, they already begin to process through this place.”

Jen smiled and squeezed his hand. Together they wove a brilliant and luminescent path before them. Together they faded from mortal sight.

*

Bill Anders, who with his crew was covering the official ceremony of the turning on of the underground power to Emerald Hills, turned in surprise at the distant rumble and flare of light, and then the immediate darkening of the town about them.

“What was that?” he demanded.

Trent shrugged, perplexed, “Sounded like an explosion somewhere. It has knocked out the power. I wonder if there are there any generators in town.”

“Look at the mist,” yelled Deven, turning his camera away from the podium and the array of microphones. “It’s rising! I can see stars!”

All the townsfolk and visitors who had gathered at the ceremony turned too, staring as the heavy, insistent fog of the last few weeks started to break and rise, revealing for the first time to all, a town shattered and torn, with buildings cracked, listing and falling into ruin.

“How...” someone muttered nearby. “What on earth has happened?”

Others were shaking their heads, trying to clear the mist from their minds, as if trying to wake after a long dream.

Bill stared in amazement, not only at the waking residents, but also at the devastation in town. “I don’t believe it,” he kept muttering, “I knew it was bad, but
this
bad...”

“Check out the street,” cried Trent, pointing up to the nearby main road.

Everyone who heard him, turned as one, following his pointing finger with his or her eyes. In the deepening darkness could be seen a long, silent, floating procession of lights, orbs, and shadows, and then distantly, as if in dream, a very faint suggestion of music and song.

Deven was the first to react, grabbing his full spectrum camera from the ground at his feet and filming the strange paranormal event occurring on the road beyond.

Bill stared in wonderment, he suspected what it was he saw, but until he could see Deven’s footage, he could only guess. Then he heard low voices behind him, voices speaking in a guttural language. Bill had knowledge of many languages, but this one defied him, it sounded Eastern European, perhaps Romanian. The speakers moved out of the darkness and Bill saw a group of elegantly dressed men and women. They sounded to him awed and frustrated, angry even, as if their plans had gone awry. Nervously, Bill stepped back away from their thunderous faces and watched them as they walked away, getting into expensive European cars parked nearby. He did not know who they were, but on a notepad, he quickly jotted down car registration numbers. Perhaps, one day he would follow up on this new development.

Bill stared at the darkened, ruined town. He stared at the rapidly dissipating mist. He looked at the stars, now visible for the first time in weeks. He watched the orbs and lights continue to process along the main road, until eventually, the last few lights vanished into the far distance. He wondered about all that, and just what EHGAG had to do with it, and why the mist had vanished at the same time power was taken from the town. He wondered why here and why now. He wondered at the paranormal aspect of it all.

He shook his head, all of this would make a hell of an exposé, and their story might even win awards. Would anyone believe them, or would their story simply be mocked as pure fantasy and their footage dismissed simply as the art of CGI.

Bill had no answers to his questions. As a journalist, he had chased down many important stories over the years, many that embarrassed individuals, governments, countries even, so what was so different about this one?

‘Ah, Hell!’ he muttered to himself. He’d never soul-searched so much about a story before, bugger the consequences, they’d go for it.

Bill looked up and gestured Trent and Deven over.

“Guys, we need to talk!”

*

Epilogue – Three months later

The Federal Government department in Canberra possessed a title that was immediately recognisable. However, the branch that Mark Davies worked in had no name. At least, no name that the public was aware of, or familiar with, for that matter.

This branch had been created decades before. Their main directive was to clean up unsightly messes and mistakes. Sometimes Government, sometimes individuals or organisations, and sometimes media, had made those messes. It involved a certain whitewashing of events, even a modicum of creative re-writing of the truth, so that ordinary people could be lulled, even at the worst of times, into a sense of security. The last thing this branch needed was the truth to leak out. The truth oftentimes meant the fall of Governments or the fall of nations. The truth meant a scared population, and an unnerved population meant serious times for the economy, and for the share market. So, it was considered expedient of the branch to keep life on an even keel, and to quietly, unobtrusively, and efficiently, clean up the messes that arose from time to time.

Mark Davies looked at the pile of police reports and other documentation from the
Emerald Hills Incident
and he shook his head. The branch had already put out preliminary findings to a compliant media. Their findings were that experts within Government had surmised that an unusual and extreme weather event had developed on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, which had caused the rapid and exponential growth of moulds and fungus across crops, gardens and even buildings. It was well known that certain plant moulds could cause hallucinations, so the actions of townsfolk, and the general malaise of Emerald Hills itself was written off as a mass hallucinatory event.

Everything that had gone wrong with the town and the region was linked back to it. The branch had been able to link temporary insanity to the deaths and disappearances, and even to the terrorist-like act of blowing up the local sub-station. The town had for a short time been possessed of lunacy, with even the most stable citizens becoming terribly afflicted. His branch hadn’t quite worked out how to thread the returned children into the hallucination tapestry. However, given the general and overwhelming sense of relief when the five missing children had been found alive and well – perhaps, it was best not to start disturbing an issue that seemed to be naturally and conveniently dying down.

Sometimes the manufactured lie fit like a glove, other times it did not, and had to be forced, kicking and screaming into line. He and his compatriots hadn’t quite worked out where the murders of the EHGAG group fit into the general narrative, other than to ascribe the four deaths to either misadventure or unknown causes.

He sifted through the paperwork and picked out one file in particular. The police report on the death of local activist Rayleen (aka Carma) Bright. He opened the file and shook out the report, plus the photos that the feds stationed there had taken. Mark Davies had a strong stomach; he had to possess one in his job. However even he blanched when he saw what had happened to the woman. Feeling nauseous, he turned away, his hand covering his mouth. He turned back, only when his stomach had ceased its churning.

A local media team had discovered her two days after the explosion at the sub-station. They had arrived at her place to interview her, and finding the front door open, investigated further. What they found was beyond description. Her body, if it could be so described, had been literally torn apart, and what remained of her torso eviscerated. Whoever, whatever had done it, had been entirely thorough, because no fingerprints and no DNA evidence had been left behind for analysis. It was almost as if the perpetuators had stepped out of thin air, and then returned to thin air when their grisly deed had been done. The only positive to emerge was that the woman had died while she slept in her bed.

In Mark Davies experience, such an act came out of revenge, out of malicious hatred. This was punishment, not some random sick killing by a psycho. Oddly enough, the rest of the house had not been touched. Even the brand new and very expensive hybrid car was still parked in the garage, the keys lying obviously and tantalisingly in a wooden bowl on the living room dresser. Odd things had also been found in the woman’s house – objects connected with Wicca and New Age beliefs. The branch concluded that she had fell afoul of some of her malign compatriots. Unfortunately, that didn’t explain the lack of physical evidence at the scene of the crime. It was just another mystery, on top of an even greater mystery.

Therefore, his branch had created the great lie for public consumption, whilst quietly and behind closed doors, the real mystery of Emerald Hills continued to be discussed. Eventually, when the truth was determined, it would be revealed to those in power, those who made things happen, or who made things disappear. However, Mark Davies did not think that it would happen in his lifetime.

*

It had taken Bill Anders and his team six months to piece together all the information on what the rest of the media, and the Government, was now calling the ‘Emerald Hills Incident’.

He didn’t believe for a moment the misinformation the Government was putting out, especially not since Deven had spliced together into video format, all the footage from his multi-spectrum camera. He especially did not believe it after receiving in the mail, a lengthy and signed letter from a Miss Jennifer McDonald detailing everything she had observed and personally experienced. So much of what she wrote collaborated with what Deven had filmed and with what he had seen with his own eyes. Her belief was so strong that it had extended to blowing up the local sub-station and sacrificing her life for what she said was ‘the greater good, for the saving of the town and humanity, and the return of the abducted children.’

So now the proverbial was about to hit the fan. They had for weeks, months even, agonised over every second, every minute or their documentary. At times, they just wanted to give it all away, but Bill persevered, believing strongly that an entire town, or for that matter, a middle-aged spinster shouldn’t be written off by history as a nut, deluded into violent hallucinations by the effect of fungal spores.