Strange Times - Part 3: Deep Down

[1986]

I poured another glass of Victoria Bitter from the tap, tilting it to keep the froth at acceptable levels while I stared at a chipped painted nail. To pour a beer properly, you have to do it slowly, letting the stream hit the corner of the glass bottom and the glass wall, making sure the tap nozzle only slips in during the last few centimetres. The golden liquid billowed and rolled into the glass, climbing high and higher with a garter belt of froth to cap it all off. I’ve gotten good at this.

‘Here you go’ I sat it down on the mat and as I took the bank note from the drunk guy, he was doing the thing a lot of guys do to a female bartender; stare. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like they think that because they hand you money, you’re just going to go home with them. He was licking his lips.

‘Hey darling, are you wearing moon pants?’ He slurred at me as I passed the change back, I knew what the answer was before he said in. My mind and his mouth went in sync for a brief second as he said ‘B-because your ass is out of this world’

I laughed ‘Oh my god, did you come up with that? You should be a comedian!’ and he smiled and stumbled off, sloshing my perfectly poured beer onto the carpet.

As he walked away, I leant over to the notebook that was propped open and drew a line through a group of four lines. That made it ten times today I’d heard that pick-up line, an even forty for the week so far. Julie and I had a competition to see who would hear the same stupid pickup line more.

‘Hey love! Get us another will you?!’ someone cried out from the end of the bar.

It was stifling hot inside the bar on this Friday afternoon, the fans spinning slowly, the TV’s grainy picture playing out a VFL match from somewhere far away. Everything sounded distant; thuds, yells, the air tinged with the sounds of Hunters and Collectors and Jeremy, my boss, sat perched at the end of the looking at the clock as Happy Hour inched closer.

‘Debbie, he’s here again’ Julie whispered over my shoulder as I poured the beer slowly, precisely, not a drop wasted. I glanced up from the handle to see him staring in the tiled semicircle entryway. Drain Guy.

‘Son of a bitch’ I muttered.

Drain Guy had walked into the bar again, sopping wet and was doing the usual thing of pulling open the bins for scraps. I glanced at Jeremy at the end of the bar and he looked at him, then at me and then nodded back at Drain Guy. Julie took over and I stepped around the bar to go confront Drain Guy.

Haverbrook had one hobo, someone all of us at high school had called Drain Guy for lack of a proper name. Drain Guy had come back after Vietnam and gone completely nuts, like a lot of the people who had come back, all up in the asylum now. Wife left him, she moved to Melbourne, took the kids, his farm burnt down; how much of this is true is up for debate.

Now Drain Guy walked around town taking bits of scrap fabric, plastic, wood. Said he was making a new family that was better, said he’d found a place to live in the drains under the town. Nobody paid him much attention, not even when he took all those old shop mannequins. He was just weird and that meant he couldn’t be in the pub, despite how sorry I felt for him.

‘Excuse me sir.’ I said quietly as he rummaged through the bin

‘Abighappyfamily.Nuclear.Wifekidandme.’

‘Sir?’ and he wheeled around to face me, flinging dirty brown water drips across my face.

‘Kids. Do kids play with dolls?’

‘I don’t know sir, you should ask the toystore in town’

‘Do you want to meet my new wife?’

I felt sort of sad for him. I mean, we all just ignored him like a piece of rubbish and here he was, dragging around a child’s handcart to collect that same rubbish. But at the same time, I was creeped out; his voice was totally monotone and devoid of any inflection or emotion.

‘Um, one day…sure. Now I need you to leave’ I gestured to the door and glanced at the puddle of brown muck on the tiled entranceway. I felt guilt twist a little knot inside me; having to kick out a homeless man was real low.

Drain Guy spat a globule of brown dirty spit at me, landing right on my cheek before turning and leaving. I walked past Julie on my way to the staff bathrooms as hails of laughter from the drunks pelted me from behind.

‘I need a cigarette, cover for me’

‘Jeremy isn’t going to like that’ Julie said as I grabbed the crumpled blue packet of Alpine cigarettes.

‘I don’t give a shit what he likes’ I muttered and Julie sighed as she stared at the notebook. I glanced over at the notebook ‘You’re going to win this competition girl’

‘Yeah, I’m real excited to win this thing’ she said, deadpan.

I took smoke break at the back of the Starling Hotel, past the clang of the kitchens, the smell of grease and burning meat. The smoke area looked out onto the scrubland that surrounded Swallow’s Creek, the riverbed cracked and bone dry at the moment. The creek had been empty all summer, all year in fact but the dark clouds on the horizon brought a promise of a drought break.

I was standing there sucking down the minty smoke when I saw something walking along the dried creek bed. It was Drain Guy and someone was following him. I heard a child laugh and I froze up for a second. Drain Guy with a kid? That don’t add up.

I walked through the knee high scrub – eyes peeled for snakes – and hid behind a ghost gum perched on the steep bank. Drain Guy was standing in the entrance of a storm water drain, the big black hole leading away into nothing. I recognised the girl as Elsa, this girl who…wasn’t really all there. I think there was something a bit wrong with her, maybe down’s, but I never found out. Drain Guy was holding a doll and he leaned down to Elsa and said, in his monotone voice:

‘Elsa, do you want to come inside and meet my new wife?’ and he gestured to the pipe. She nodded and they headed in together. I was frozen there, cigarette burning the skin around my thumb and forefinger.

Had Drain Guy just abducted Elsa? His wife was long gone and something about the way he had said the final part...my new wife.

I ran back to the smoke area and began to feel a constriction in my chest. What was I supposed to do? Call the police…tell someone? I went back inside.

‘Jeremy, I just saw that crazy guy take a girl into the drain’ I had poked my head into his office to see him smoking his disgusting herbal cigarettes and sorting bills

‘Not my problem. Not yours either. Get back to work alright…and get us one while you’re there, will you darling?’

I stood back in the hallway, thinking furiously. Elsa could be killed…but why would Drain Guy kill her? Just because he was homeless didn’t mean he was crazy, that sort of thinking was…my new wife…

‘Julie, cover for me’

‘But Happy Hour’s about to start’ and I took the emergency fire axe from its cradle near the smoking area, the torch from the first aid cabinet and dashed towards the storm drain.

The drain entrance was before me, the shadows merging with the darkness to make a new type of blackness. I stepped inside, feeling shivers of fear work their way up to my already panicking brain.

I never realised that Haverbrook had a drain system, and I never questioned why a town with a population of barely three thousand needed a fully functioning catacomb system beneath the town. The drains were cramped, hot and they smelt of rotting meat. As I walked, head just barely scraping the concrete top of the tube, I realised that wild animals had come into the sewers to seek shelter from the drought. The smell of dried rainwater and runoff was pungent in my nose.

I took a left, a right, a right. The pipes bent around, created junctions, formed pools and even made large rooms. Some were covered in graffiti and I pointed the torch at a big red piece of graffiti

‘R.I.P Bruce 1967-1984…’

I heard screeching off in the distance and a child laughing again. I grasped the heavy red fireaxe in my right hand and walked forward, pointing the torch with my left. I realised now, trapped in this dark maze that if I needed to fight I would need both hands free to swing the axe…that meant dropping my only light - and the only way to see – on the ground. I felt something furry move past my leg; a rat. Then another. And another. A whole brown carpet of rats was scurrying past me, in a thick carpet of filthy brown.

‘Running from?’ I muttered to myself.

Something moved. A smell of burning plastic and rotting meat. There was a sound like wood being dragged and bending metal, like screeching. I pulled the torch up and just out of the shadows was something I couldn’t quite stand to see.

It was human shaped – woman shaped at a glance – with skin made out of bits of wet fabric, bits of wood and metal as the legs and the body of a mannequin. It didn’t have a face, just mirror for a face. It thought it was a bit of rubbish left down there by high schoolers.

And then it moved; it moved jerkily, like it was a puppet on strings. Moving towards me. I backed away as it made its way jerkily toward me, half lit by my torch and half in shadow.

‘Holy fucking shit’ I hissed under my breath as it got closer.

How did it move? Didn’t matter. I swung at it with my axe but it blocked the blow with a metal arm and the torch fell out of my left hand. I heard Elsa laughing off in the distance.

I threw myself to the ground and rolled past the mannequin in the narrow pipe, just managing to grab the axe and barely getting past. I was covered in grit and dirt and I felt the mannequins sharp plastic shards of fingers scratch a gouge in my leg.

It really was moving. A distant rumble off in the distance. I ran down the pipe in the direction of Elsa’s laugh.

‘ELSA?’ I yelled in the pipe, my voice echoing. I heard her laughter up ahead. Another distant rumble, this time accompanied with distant dripping. I could hear that thing clawing its way up the pipes, plastic dragging and the smell getting stronger. Pain pulsed in my rapidly bleeding leg. My eyes blurred.

‘ELSA! COME ON NOW, WHERE ARE YOU?’ I saw light at the end of the tunnel. I ran towards a lit up room, hearing the metal grinding and tearing of the mannequin behind me. I burst into the light.

It was a large square room with a metal grate for a ceiling. The area was lit with a yellow work light, hooked up to a powerboard. A wooden chair sat in the middle of the room, next to it was Drain Guy, a pool of blood formed around a slashed throat. I stared for a second, piecing together that the thing roaming the sewers had done it and that whatever IT was could potentially be the new wife he had spoken of. Elsa was sitting happily on a mouldy rug, laughing at a TV playing a VHS of Gumby, doll in her lap. I heard the mannequin moving up the pipe behind me.

‘Elsa, sweetie, we have to go home now’

‘I want to watch Gumby’

I didn’t know how to act with a kid like this. I tugged on her arm and she refused to the move. The grinding metal and burning smell got closer. Distant rumbling getting louder. I panicked.

‘Gumby’s coming to your house, he’s at your house waiting for you, a party, we're having a party and you’re not there’ I said, throwing anything that could work.

She smiled and leapt to her feet.

We turned and I then realised the only entrance and exit into this room was the pipe…which the mannequin wife was blocking. I held the axe tight as the mannequin moved closer. The mirror reflected my face back at me.

‘Stay the fuck away from me you crazy bitch’ I muttered, Elsa nodding and smiling weirdly as I tried to push her behind me.

Gumby was still playing on the TV as the rumbling was getting louder and louder. The mannequin turned its mirror towards me and reached out with its sharp hands. I swung the axe hard and managed to sever an arm which fell to the ground only for the axe to get stuck in the thick quagmire of wet fabric that made up the mannequin. It pushed me to the ground and Elsa patted my head.

‘It’s okay lady, she’s going to make us feel homey’

The rumbling was intense, shaking and the mannequin stopped. There was a sound in the distance…I used the opportunity to give one last attack, pulling the axe free from the mannequin. It stumbled back and it was then I heard it. I grabbed Elsa and pushed the mannequin as hard as I could. The sound was rushing water. Rain...raining, the drought was breaking. The powerboard…electricity...

I grabbed Elsa and quickly stood on the chair, as the water burst through the ceiling like rain. The electricity and water mixing together to deliver a fatal shock to the mannequin, smoke rising from the burning fabric and singed plastics. The TV shorted out with sparks and small bursts of noise. The water level was rising quickly; we were being pushed by the current through the tubes.

‘Elsa, hold on tight okay?’ I yelled over the rushing storm and she nodded, clearly scared. Still holding the axe, we waded through the waters at ankle height…knee high…waist high…I was totally lost in the maze of pipes.

Pitch black. Rushing water.

‘Uh…just hold on Elsa…?’ and I turned frantically, a hot bubbling panic taking over me.

The sewer water burst out of cross pipers, junctions, mixing in months of caked grime, off-run from farms and oily substances I shuddered to think about. Some gooey brown liquid got in my eyes, my arms were caked in blood and I knew now that my cuts had a good chance of getting infected. The rushing water behind us got louder and I realised what was about to happen to us: we were going to drown in here.

‘HOLD ON’ and I grabbed Elsa tight, using the fire axe as a type of guard.

The water came up and grabbed us like a wave, pushing us through the sewers and out into Swallow’s Creek. My head hit something rough, rocky. I barely managed to get a hold of the bank as I saw the river, full of water in the flash flood, my eyes stinging. Elsa was clinging to my chest like a baby. It was the middle of thunderstorm outside, absolutely feral with wind and rain in the black of night-time and I wondered how long I’d been inside the sewers.

As Elsa and I dragged ourselves onto the bank of the river, I swore that I saw the mannequin wife bobbing along in the current, still living and moving.

We returned to the Starling Hotel to call the police; something I should have done in the first place. Kicking open the doors to the storm outside, I stood in the tiled entrance way. It was Happy Hour and the place was packed yet as soon as I walked in, everyone fell dead silent staring at me.

Jeremy was open mouth, Julie had shocked and disgusted look on her face. The only sounds were Hunters and Collectors, singing about rivers running dry and crimes, life can be stranger than fiction. I stood there stinking, covered in dirty sewer water, shit, piss and oily grime. In my left hand was Elsa’s pale one and in my right hand was the fire axe which fell with a clank to the tiled entrance way. Panting for breath, I let a short laugh escape me and said

‘…get us one while you’re there, will you darling?’

- Deborah, Age 48

#mystery #suspense #StrangeTimes #Haverbrook #australia #writing #fictions