THE MONSTER a.k.a. The Ghoul (2025 Edit)

In 1944, Leonard Moffett died; in 1985, Moffett was back running for Premier of Victoria!

Mid March 1985

Ernie Singleton stood near the kerb in front of the Glen Hartwell City Library, on the corner of Dirk Hartog Place and Boothy Street, watching the cavalcade driving slowly along. It seemed as though the entire populations of the Glen, Merridale, Daley, LePage, and the other surrounding towns had turned out to witness the return of the prodigal son. Leonard J. Moffett was a tall, distinguished-looking man in his late fifties. He had left the Glen forty years earlier as a teenager and was now returning, hailed as the saviour of the farming man. Newly elected as leader of the Victorian branch of the National Country Party, with a state election due in less than a month, the press were unanimous in declaring that Moffett would sweep to power to become Victoria’s first Country Party Premier since December 1952, deposing Australian Labor Party Premier, John Cain, elected in March 1982.

Ernie looked away from the cavalcade for a moment to inspect the crowd. He could see his mother, Vikkie, standing by the corner of Howard Street, along with Gloria and Holly Ulverstone, and Samantha and Rowena Frankland. As their eyes met, Ernie could see the hurt look on Rowena’s face and felt a pang of guilt at the way that he had treated her over the last few months. Their on-again-off-again romance had been very much off-again since late the previous year, although Ernie could tell from the sorrow in Rowena’s eyes that she still loved him and could not understand the reason for his recent coldness toward her.

Forcing himself to look away from her, Ernie scanned the crowd on both sides of the street, looking for Tony Frankland, surprised that he was not with Samantha and Rowena. ‘Surely he isn’t the only Glen Hartwellian who couldn’t be bothered welcoming the prodigal son home?’ wondered Ernie, spotting Sam and Georgina Hart, and Des and Elizabeth Hutchinson standing together on the opposite side of the street.

Returning his gaze to the slow-moving cavalcade, which crawled its way along Boothy Street, Ernie saw his best friend, Sergeant Danny ‘Bear’ Ross of the Glen Hartwell Police Force. Bear (so nicknamed because of his great height and muscular build) was trying without success not to look put-out by the great influx of big city cops who had swooped down from Melbourne like seagulls swooping on a crust of bread, to protect the Country Party Leader while he was pressing the flesh. Although the Glen’s two-man police force of Bear and his constable, Terry Blewett, could never have provided adequate protection for the politician without help, Ernie knew that Bear took it as a personal affront that he was only third-in-charge of the police operation.

Ernie gave Bear a broad smile and received a quick wave in return.

He started to look away when a flicker of movement from behind the policeman attracted his attention.

To his amazement, Ernie saw his friend (and possible future father-in-law), Tony Frankland, climb the crowd-control rope onto the opposite side of the road. Striding straight past Bear, Tony headed across toward the open limousine where Leonard Moffett sat waving and smiling at the crowd.

‘Now what the Hell is he playing at?’ wondered Ernie, watching in horror as Tony pulled a large handgun from under his overcoat, placed the barrel only centimetres from Moffett’s head and pulled the trigger.

The instant before the trigger was pulled, Ernie was surprised to see not a look of fear on Moffett’s face, but a sneer of intense hatred. Then the handgun fired with a sound like a canon-shot and Leonard Moffett’s head burst open like an exploding water balloon, spraying blood and brains across Tony Frankland and the other passengers in the limousine.

At the sound of the gunfire, the big city cops quickly drew their own handguns and began to converge on Tony Frankland. Sensing that they were more intent on avenging Leonard Moffett’s murder than on making an arrest, Bear signalled to Terry Blewett and Mel Forbes (sergeant of the Merridale Police Force), and the three policemen hurried to surround Tony as best they could in a protective circle.

Tony handed his revolver over to Mel and offered no resistance as Terry cuffed his hands behind his back.

“All right, Ross, we’ll take charge of the prisoner now!” said Detective Inspector Mike Mannas, head of the Melbourne police contingency.

“No way, he’s my prisoner!” insisted Bear.

“And this was my operation!” protested Mannas.

“Which you botched!” chipped in Mel Forbes.

“It might have been your operation,” agreed Bear, “but I’m in charge of Glen Hartwell, so he’s my prisoner!”

“Like hell he is!” protested Mannas.

The argument might have gone on indefinitely, except for the arrival of Mel’s constable, Andrew Braidwood, in Mel’s apple-green 186-Holden Monaro. While Mannas and Bear continued to argue, Mel and Terry bundled Tony into the back of the Monaro, which sped off to the Mitchell Street Police Station, leaving Bear to follow in his Fairlane.

Finally recovering from his shock at the goings on, Ernie pushed his way through the thick crowd, heading toward Howard Street, where Rowena and the others were.

“Oh, my God, my God, what could have made him do it?” cried Samantha Frankland before fainting against Victoria and Rowena, who struggled to support her until Ernie arrived to help out.

Lifting the redhead into his arms, he carried Samantha around the corner to where Gloria Ulverstone’s yellow Morris Minor was parked. He placed her into the back of the Morris with Victoria and Rowena sitting on either side of her, while Holly and Gloria climbed into the front. Since there was no room for Ernie, he said, “I’ll follow behind in the Range-Rover.”

As he straightened to leave, Rowena, on the brink of tears, called out to him, “What happened, Ernie? Why did he do it?”

Sighing deeply, Ernie shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know Rowie, I just don’t know.”


Half an hour later, they were all standing, or seated in a semi-circle around the metal bed in the private ward of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, where Samantha Frankland was sleeping, heavily sedated.

“What could have made him do it?” asked Rowena for the umpteenth time to no one in particular.

“We might never know, honey,” said Gina Foley, a tall, thin raven-haired woman, coordinator of the hospital.


At the small holding cell at the back of the Mitchell Street Police Station, Sergeant Bear Ross and Inspector Mike Mannas both tried without success to get Tony Frankland to explain what had driven him to assassinate Leonard Moffett.

While Bear sat tentatively on the edge of the small wooden bunk beside Tony, Mike Mannas stood with his back to the barred front wall of the cell. Not really approving of Bear using his past friendship with Tony to get information out of him, Mannas kept his distance from the other two men in the cell.

“Would you like to have a lawyer present during the questioning?” asked Bear, drawing a sharp look from Mannas. By Victorian law, they could interview him for up to six hours before having to give him the choice of calling a lawyer. However, Bear realised that they were getting nowhere with Tony and hoped that he might be more forthcoming with a lawyer present.

“I don’t need a lawyer,” insisted Tony Frankland.

Mannas raised his eyes to the ceiling and then gave Bear a look as if to say, ‘Who does he think he’s kidding?’

Bear sighed in exasperation. “Frankly, Tony, I’ve never seen anyone who needed a lawyer more than you do right now!”

They continued to interrogate him for another three hours without getting anywhere before the two policemen decided to take a break.

“Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer?” asked Bear as he stood to leave.

Tony shook his head by way of answer. But then, as the policemen headed toward the door of the tiny cell, he suddenly said, “I had to do it Bear. I couldn’t let that monster become the next premier of Victoria.”

Startled by this sudden comment, after four hours of silence, Bear and Mannas almost collided with each other as they hurriedly reversed direction to return to where Tony Frankland was seated on the small bunk.

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Mike Mannas.

“I couldn’t let that monster become the next premier of Victoria!” repeated Tony.

“That’s a strange comment coming from a farming man,” said Bear, deciding to try a more subtle approach than Mannas. “Most rural people regarded Leonard Moffett as the saviour of the Victorian farming man.”

“The saviour!” said Tony, almost at a shriek. “That’s a laugh! John Cain might not care much for the needs of the farmer ... But at least John Cain is human!”

Mannas and Bear exchanged a look of astonishment.

“What do you mean by that?” demanded the Detective Inspector from Melbourne.

Shaking his head, refusing to explain further, Tony Frankland buried his face in his hands and began to sob lightly.

Sneering in disgust at this display of weakness, Mike Mannas stormed from the holding cell. Bear Ross watched his friend sob for a moment, wanting to go across to comfort him, torn between his friendship with Tony and his duty as a policeman.

After a moment, Bear sighed heavily and then turned and headed out into the small office at the front of the police station.

“What do you think he meant by that?” Bear asked Mannas as he walked across to sit at his desk. “Does he mean that Moffett was a monstrous politician who would have ruined the state with his policies? Or has he gone completely off his head and fantasised that Moffett was some kind of non-human monster?”

Mannas considered the question for a moment before answering. “Most likely neither. I guess that he’s trying to build up an insanity plea so that he can be found unfit to stand trial.”

“Bullshit!” hissed Mel Forbes, who was sitting at one side of Bear’s huge blackwood desk. “If you think that, then you don’t know Tony Frankland!”

“You’re right, I don’t know him!” agreed Mannas, almost at a shout, having decided that he had had about as much as he could take of these local yokel cops. “All I know is that that freaked-out maniac blew the head off a man whom it was my job to protect!”

“And that’s all you’re really worried about, isn’t it?” demanded Mel. “You don’t give a bugger that Leonard Moffett was killed ... Only that it happened while you were responsible for his safety!”

Glowing red-faced from anger, Mike Mannas turned and stormed toward the front of the police station. Stopping with one hand on the doorknob, he looked back toward Bear and said, “First thing tomorrow morning, I’m taking the prisoner to Melbourne to be charged with the murder of Leonard Moffett!”

“Like Hell you are!” protested Bear. “He’s my prisoner!”

After Mannas stormed out, slamming the door behind him, Bear turned toward Mel and said, “We’d better see if we can get some help from Jim Kane in Harpertown and Con Rodriguez in LePage, so that we can organise a twenty-four-hour watch on Tony.”

“Right,” agreed Mel. “If we hand Tony over to that bastard, he’ll never reach Melbourne alive -- he’ll end up shot while trying to escape for sure!”

The two policemen spent most of the night ringing round the neighbouring towns to organise a dozen or so men from the local constabulary to protect Tony Frankland around the clock. By morning, Bear was confident that they had a large enough ‘posse’ assembled to prevent Tony from being snatched away by Mike Mannas.

The new day brought with it a nasty shock in the form of the morning newspapers. The previous evening’s relatively sensible headlines about the political assassination had been replaced by sensational headlines about Tony Frankland’s brief explanation of why he had killed Moffett:

LOCAL LOONY KILLS MONSTER TO KEEP IT FROM BECOMING STATE PREMIER! blared the front page of the Glen Hartwell Herald Daily Mail.

“My God, the Mail’s really gone downhill in recent years,” said Jim Kane, Sergeant of police from Harpertown. “It’s hardly any better now than the Melbourne Truth or the Picture!”

Ignoring Jim, Mel Forbes asked, “How the Hell did it find out anyway?”

“From Mannas, of course,” replied Bear Ross. “Obviously, the bastard has decided that if he can’t have custody of Tony, he’ll stir up as much trouble for me as he can.”

“That prick!” said Mel with feeling.

That morning also saw the arrival of Ernie Singleton, wanting to speak to Tony Frankland, having promised Rowena that he would do everything in his power to help her father during his current predicament.

“No way!” protested Mike Mannas. Having found himself unable to take charge of Tony that morning, he still insisted on being part of the murder investigation team. “He hasn’t even been formally charged yet!”

“By Victorian law, we have twenty-four hours to formally charge a suspect after taking him into custody,” pointed out Bear, seeing Ernie’s look of surprise. “Since he was arrested around four yesterday afternoon, we have till 4:00 PM today before we have to charge him.”

“But what’s the bloody point in delaying any longer!” demanded Mannas.

“I’m in charge of these investigations,” Bear reminded him. “So the point is that we don’t officially charge him till I say so!” Having sufficiently asserted his authority over Mannas, Bear turned back to Ernie to say, “I suppose it’s all right for you to talk to him for a while....”

“Alone?” asked Ernie.

“No bloody way!” shouted Mannas before Bear had a chance to speak.

“Look, I’ve had a gut full of your bloody high-handedness!” shouted Bear Ross, silencing Mannas. Having himself been about to tell Ernie that he would have to have Mel or himself in the cell with him, just to spite Mannas, he said, “I guess it’s okay for you to speak to him alone for a short while ... But only on the condition that if he says anything that could have any bearing on why he killed Moffett, you let us know.”

“All right,” agreed Ernie.

Like Mannas and Bear earlier, Ernie found it difficult at first to get Tony Frankland to talk about his motives for the killing.

“You know what you’ve done to Sam and Rowie, don’t you?” asked Ernie, immediately hating himself when he saw the hurt look on Tony’s face.

“Oh, God, yes! I didn’t want to hurt Samantha or Rowena, Ernie, but I had no choice ... I couldn’t let that monster become the next premier of Victoria.”

“Monster?” asked Ernie, like the two policemen earlier, not knowing whether Tony was speaking figuratively or literally.

“Oh, God, yes!” cried Tony. “That creature that masqueraded as Leonard Moffett was literally a monster....”

“Masqueraded ...?” asked Ernie, staring down at where Tony sat on the small bunk in the tiny holding cell.

Tony looked up, startled, having not intended to articulate his thoughts aloud. After a moment, he heaved a sigh, then said, “Yes, masquerading as Leonard Moffett ... I don’t know if you know it or not, Ern, but as a child Leonard Moffett lived on a sheep station less than a kilometre from where I was raised....”

Ernie raised an eyebrow in surprise at this, but kept silent as Tony continued, “Leonard and I were the best of mates, we used to do everything together: hunting rabbits and foxes with .22 calibre rifles; swimming and fishing in the Yannan River, or occasionally in Lake Cooper out near Harpertown, and, of course, climbing the local mountains. Of course, we never got very far -- since most of them were far too steep for us to scale more than the first few hundred metres. But one that we could climb without too much fuss was Mount Abergowrie, a kilometre or so outside of Glen Hartwell.

“We used to spend most of our evenings on the mount -- except for the coldest three months each year. And we virtually lived there on weekends and school holidays. Usually, we settled for just climbing the mountain or playing big game hunters, shooting foxes, rabbits, and sundry small birds and opossums. Then one day, when we were both fourteen, over the Christmas break from December 1944 to January 1945, we discovered a new game: skydiving. During our explorations around the mountain, we had discovered a sheer ‘cliff face’ that fell four metres straight down. Since the mount was well grassed (and we were careful to remove any dangerous rocks from the bottom of the ‘cliff’), we were able to leap off the sheer face in relative safety, landing on our sides and rolling to a halt. (Though what our mothers must have thought of the green chlorophyll stains on our clothing afterwards is anybody’s guess.) Anyway, skydiving was our number one game over the summer of 1944-45, till the 31st of January, one week before we were due to return to school, when disaster struck:

“Leonard jumped off the top of the cliff as he had done a hundred or more times over the last six weeks ... But this time something went wrong ... Maybe his foot slipped as he jumped ... Or the earth at the top of the cliff gave way beneath him ... Or ... Well, who knows? The point is that instead of landing on his side as he was supposed to do, this time he came down headfirst!”

Tony stopped and buried his face in his hands again. “Oh, God, it was awful, I’m telling you, Ernie, I saw his head burst wide open like a smashed watermelon ... Blood and brains were sprayed everywhere. Of course, I ran down from the top of the cliff to see if he was still alive, but even from a distance I could tell that he was dead ... No one could be alive with their head smashed to pulp like that.”

“What ... what did you do?” asked Ernie, astonished by the claim that Leonard Moffett had really died forty years earlier.

“What I should have done, of course, was go to see Bruce Cox, who was sergeant of police in Glen Hartwell in those days ... But Christ’s sake Ern, I was only a kid ... I was too damn terrified to think rationally, so all I did was turn tail and run like Hell straight down the mount, back toward my parents’ sheep station. I spent the last week before school was due to start, moping around the farmhouse, afraid to tell my parents what had happened, but expecting any minute to hear from the Moffetts that Leonard was missing, or worse, to hear that his corpse had been discovered on the west side of Mount Abergowrie. But we heard nothing at all from the Moffetts until the day before school was due to start back. Then that fateful Monday, Leonard’s parents, Arthur and Doreen Moffett, came visiting, saying that they had something of the utmost importance to tell us.

“So my parents ushered us all into the lounge room where we stood round waiting, dying to know what the big announcement could be -- all except for me, of course, I already knew. The secret was that Leonard had had his head smashed open on the side of Mount Abergowrie ... However, to my astonishment, Arthur Moffett said, ‘We’ve decided to pack up and move up to Queensland.’

“‘What?’ asked my father.

“‘Things haven’t been so good on the station due to the war ... And I’ve been offered a good job up North....”

“‘So we’ve come round to say goodbye,’ explained Doreen Moffett.

“‘And to give you first refusal to buy our farm,’ explained Arthur.

“The Moffetts talked for half an hour or so with my parents, before arriving at a price that the Moffetts would accept and my father could afford. So it was agreed: We would take over the Moffett station, whose boundary adjoined ours, so there was no problem converting them to one big station ... But finally, the waiting got too much for me:

“‘But what about Leonard?’ I said before I could stop myself, having spent the last nervous half hour wondering when they were going to mention what had happened to their teenage son.

“‘He’s outside in the car,’ replied Arthur, thumbing back over his left shoulder.

“‘Out ... outside?’ I asked, not understanding, wondering whether they had his mouldering corpse in the back of their HR station wagon.

“‘That’s right, outside in the car,’ said Doreen Moffett, making me think for a moment that she had read my thought. ‘Go on, I know he’ll be pleased to see you....’

“So, reluctantly, I went out into the corridor, heading toward the back of the farmhouse. However, I only got as far as the kitchen before meeting Leonard coming in through the back doorway.

“‘Hello ... To ... Tony,’ he said, slightly hesitantly, as though having to think for a moment to recall my name. ‘I suppose you didn’t expect to see me again ...?’

“‘No ... no I ...” I stammered.

“The creature in front of me didn’t reply; it merely smiled demonically at my obvious horror. I found myself almost being hypnotised by the Cheshire cat-grin on the creature’s face. Without realising what I was doing, I began to walk trance-like across the kitchen floor toward the creature, only stopping when I was close enough to peer into its hellish eyes. Where I saw the image of a hideous, grey-haired old hag glaring back at me, as though peering out at me through two tiny windows ... By 1945, the old legend that the eyes of a corpse held an image of the last person seen before dying had already been exploded. But even if it hadn’t been, I knew that there had been no bespectacled, grey-haired old woman on the side of the mountain with us a week earlier, and there had been nowhere on the mountain for her to have been hiding....

“‘Who ... who are you?’ I said stupidly, receiving by way of answer a hellish cackle from the creature masquerading as Leonard Moffett.

“‘You’ll never know who ...’ it replied in a shrill female voice, slowly advancing toward me, while I began to back across the kitchen in terror. I wanted to turn and run up the corridor behind me to the safety of the lounge room, but was unable to make my legs move at more than a shuffle. ‘Leonard’ had almost cornered me by the corridor door when the door suddenly opened and in walked my mother and Doreen Moffett.

“‘Just a quick cuppa,’ said Doreen. ‘Then we have to be on our way ... It’s a three-day drive to Queensland, so we can’t afford to muck about.’

“I almost jumped out of my skin when a large hand suddenly descended onto my left shoulder. But then Arthur Moffett said, ‘Well, how are you two getting along, Tony my lad ... Said all your goodbyes?’

“I said my goodbyes a week ago! I thought. Aloud, I said to Leonard, ‘You’re dead! I saw your head split wide open!’

“There were gasps of astonishment from all the adults, and then Doreen Moffett asked, ‘Dead? What is he talking about?’

“‘I fell off the side of a small cliff partway up Mount Abergowrie a week back and knocked myself out cold,’ explained Leonard. ‘When I came round, Tony was long gone ... He must have thought I’d killed myself....’

“That brought riotous laughter at my expense from the adults; however, I persisted: ‘But your head was smashed wide open like a squashed watermelon!’

“‘No, it was only a scratch,’ said Leonard, indicating a long, ugly red welt on the left side of his head -- a welt which I swear wasn’t there before he had spoken.

“‘Oh my God!’ cried Doreen Moffett, shocked by the sight of the long, red welt, yet like her husband, obviously not wondering why she hadn’t noticed it before.

“‘Oh mum!’ protested Leonard, just like any normal teenage boy embarrassed by his mother fussing over him.

“Leonard was so offhand about his ‘accident’ that he convinced everyone that he had only been scratched in the fall ... And despite what I had seen a week earlier, in truth he almost had me fooled as well ... Almost but not quite. I bided my time till the Moffetts left, and we’d had our dinner, and then immediately set out for Mount Abergowrie. After a week in the summer sun, the corpse at the bottom of the small cliff face was well and truly fly-blown and gave off such a noxious odour that I could hardly bear to approach it. But by taking off my shirt and holding it over my nose as a home-made gas mask, I was able to get close enough to see -- despite the shattered head -- that whatever had driven away with Arthur and Doreen Moffett, the real Leonard Moffett lay dead on the side of Mount Abergowrie.

“My first thought was to drag my father to the mount to show him Leonard’s corpse. But it was such a mess that he would never have believed who it was. Not after having seen Leonard alive only a few hours earlier. I could just imagine him accusing me of having an overactive imagination. (But the truth was that I’ve never had much of an imagination at all. Whenever we were playing white hunter, or skydiver, or whatever, it was always Leonard who had made up the game and laid down the rules. While I just tagged along, doing whatever he said.) And, of course, if they didn’t believe that it was the real Leonard Moffett, then I would have had me a lot of explaining to do to my father, and then to Sergeant Cox ... So I did the only thing that I could under the circumstances: I returned to my parents’ sheep station, and then the next day I went back to the mount with a shovel and buried the remains of the real Leonard on the west side of Mount Abergowrie.

“After that, I tried for forty years to just forget what had happened. I hoped against hope that whatever had taken the place of Leonard Moffett would simply live out the rest of his life without doing any harm -- like a doppelganger that does not harm anyone after taking over the life and image of its victim. And in time, I forgot all about him, almost, until ten years ago when ‘Leonard’ returned to Victoria and entered state politics. Ever since, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the creature through the newspapers ... Until it took over leadership of the National-Country Party and people started predicting that Leonard Moffett could become the first Country Party premier in more than thirty years.

“At first I tried not to believe it ... John Cain had done a pretty good job in his first term from March 1982, so I saw no reason why he would be voted out of power. But over the last six months, it had gradually become increasingly certain that the monster masquerading as Leonard Moffett would indeed become premier on April 7th. So I made plans six weeks ago to take a short ‘holiday’ in Melbourne....”

Ernie nodded without speaking, remembering that Tony had surprised them all by suddenly announcing that he was taking a short trip to the Big Smoke, and then had just as suddenly cancelled the trip.

“My intention, of course, had been to join a political rally and kill or expose the monster once and for all. I didn’t know whether shooting it would have any effect on it. Even in human form, it might have been impervious to bullets. But no matter, since it would have been exposed as non-human if bullets had bounced off its head without so much as wounding it. On the other hand, for all I knew, it might have had some kind of supernatural powers that would have allowed it to kill me before I could even pull the trigger. But again I would have succeeded, since people would have known that if it could kill with a glance, then it couldn’t be human....”

He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts before continuing: “As it was, the trip was unnecessary since the monster suddenly announced that it was going to return to its place of ‘birth’ -- Ha! -- in the last week before the election. Obviously, it knew enough about the ways of the human race after forty years to know that that kind of homey touch always goes down well with the voters, particularly with the farming people it most needed to win over to have any hope of winning power.

“And I guess you know the rest ... When I suggested to Sam and Rowena that we go to the Glen to cheer the return of the prodigal son, they were all for the idea ... Sam knew that Leonard and I had been mates as teenagers, so she thought it was only natural that I’d want to welcome him home ... The only trick then was to get as far away from Rowie and Sam as possible before doing it ... So that if the cops opened fire on me, they wouldn’t be gunned down by accident in the crossfire ...”

Ernie sat on the small wooden bunk beside Tony, thinking, ‘How much, if any, of this weird story can I believe?’ His first thought was to write the whole story off as the ravings of a madman: a little over four years earlier, Mark David Chapman had murdered John Lennon after fantasising that he was the real Lennon and that the John Lennon whom he had killed had been an impostor who had usurped him and stolen his life. ‘Is Tony’s story just a similar kind of weird fantasy, conceived after years of jealousy over Leonard Moffett’s growing fame?’ wondered Ernie.

The only trouble with accepting this logical explanation was that, unlike most people, Ernie Singleton knew that the supernatural was possible. He had already had two personal encounters with supernatural monsters. In February 1983, when he had met the beast that he had christened the ‘flame beast’, a fire elemental whose job it had been to start forest fires, then over November and December 1984, he had encountered the physical existence of the Great Rainbow Snake of Aboriginal Dream-Time legend. But most importantly, Ernie had only been able to help defeat both monsters due to his own supernatural ability.

For just over two years now, since the time of the Ash Wednesday bushfires that had ravaged Victoria and South Australia during the summer of 1983, Ernie had been afflicted with the werewolf curse! Two or three (and on rare occasions four) nights each month, usually starting around the 23rd to 25th of the month, Ernie prowled the forest around Merridale, LePage, and Glen Hartwell as the black wolf.

So now, when faced with Tony’s tale of a supernatural monster that had taken over the life of Leonard Moffett, Ernie knew that he had no right to be sceptical. Turning back toward Tony, he asked, “Who was she? Do you know?”

“Who was whom?” asked Tony.

“The old hag who glared back at you from behind Leonard Moffett’s eyes forty years ago,” explained Ernie.

Shaking his head, Tony replied, “The Lord alone knows; I never found out. Not that I had much chance anyway, after all, I was only a kid at the time. And, of course, with the Moffetts interstate, I had no chance to study or question the creature itself ... Not that I would have been game to ... However, I did spend a lot of time at the Glen Hartwell City Library (or Lending Library as it was known in those days). As well as spending nearly a month poring through the Melbourne State Library during a visit to the Capital City, nearly thirty years ago ... Both libraries had their fill of occult novels and even a few occult reference books ... But I couldn’t find anything that seemed to fit what I had seen.”

“So you don’t have a clue who or what she is?”

Tony shook his head by way of answer.

They talked for a few minutes more, and then Ernie departed, after promising to do whatever he could to help Tony.


“Well?” demanded Detective Inspector Mike Mannas as Ernie stepped through into the small office at the front of the police station.

“Nothing,” said Ernie, shaking his head.

“He must have said something?” protested Mannas. “You were in there over an hour!”

“That’s right,” agreed Bear Ross, siding with Mannas for the first time. “After all, you did promise to tell us everything he said that could have any possible bearing on why he assassinated Leonard Moffett!”

“The trouble is that nothing he said could have any bearing on your investigations,” insisted Ernie. “All he did was tell me a load of gobbledegook about Moffett being a supernatural monster in disguise, after the real Leonard Moffett was killed forty-odd years ago.”

“What?” demanded Bear, unsure whether Ernie was being truthful or sarcastic.

“Hell, that’s hardly any more than he told us yesterday!” pointed out Mannas.

“Yeah, even the newspapers know that much,” said Mel Forbes, receiving a glare from Mike Mannas.

Stepping out into Mitchell Street, Ernie headed toward his brown Range-Rover to drive to the hospital to see Samantha and Rowena. Despite his desire to see Rowena (having fallen in love with her virtually at first sight two years ago, before coming down with his werewolf taint shortly afterwards, forcing him to try to break off their relationship, only to find that he was too smitten with her to be able to stay away for long), Ernie dreaded the meeting. He had promised to tell her everything that he heard from Tony. ‘But how can I?’ he thought as he drove along Wentworth Street. ‘Even if I believe his story myself, I can’t expect Rowie to believe it ... All it’ll do is make her think he’s gone right off the deep end!’


Over the next week, Ernie tried without success to discover who the old hag could have been. Having only four months earlier helped to defeat the monstrous flying serpent, Mamaragan, thanks to information that he had discovered in the Glen Hartwell City Library, the library was his first point of call this time.

As he entered the library, Ernie almost collided with the sparrow-like figure of the Head Librarian, Glenda Pettyjohn.

“Where are we off to in such a hurry, young Master Ernest?” demanded the tiny, grey-haired old lady, making Ernie blush for a moment under her scrutiny, for a second thinking that he was still a teenager at high school in Miss Pettyjohn’s library class.

“To ... to do some research,” answered Ernie sheepishly.

“Another local legend?” asked the old lady with a twinkle in her eyes, having previously helped him to track down the legend of the Dark Stone that had been instrumental in trapping the Great Rainbow Snake in his underground tunnel.

“Er ... yes ...” stammered Ernie. Then, although he had intended to research the legend himself, he ended up relating as much of Tony Frankland’s tale as he dared to the old lady.

“Well, there’s nothing unique about that,” insisted Old Glenda, sounding disappointed. “That’s the doppelganger, surely?”

“Er, yes ... of course,” said Ernie, having heard the term before but unable to recall what the doppelganger legend entailed.

“Very well, follow me,” said the old lady as though addressing one of her library students. She started down the centre aisle toward the non-fiction section at the back of the library, realising that Ernie did not know what she was talking about.

She leafed through numerous reference books for a few minutes before extracting a large tome titled The Encyclopaedia of the Occult. She flipped through the book until coming to a heading, The Doppelganger, and then read aloud, “The German name for the misplaced spirit, either of a dead person, or of someone in a deep coma, that masquerades as another person with the intention of killing him and taking over his earthly existence. In some versions of the legend, the intended victim is at his most vulnerable while sleeping.”

“But in the legend that I’m researching, the spirit didn’t actually kill the person,” pointed out Ernie. “It merely took on his form to take over his life, after he fell off the cliff and died accidentally.”

“That’s right,” agreed Old Glenda, her brow wrinkling up in consternation at this divergence from the legend. “I suppose there is no possibility that the spirit could have somehow caused him to fall from the cliff?”

“No, there’s no chance of that,” insisted Ernie.

Glenda Pettyjohn spent another three hours helping Ernie hunt through the encyclopaedias and reference books (occasionally having to scurry down to the front counter to attend to someone returning or checking out books) without success. Other references to the doppelganger legend all insisted that the doppelganger must first kill, or drive its victim to suicide, before it could take over his existence.

Finally, to her dismay, Old Glenda was forced to concede that she could not help him, so Ernie left the library.


Over the next week, Mike Mannas continued to haunt Glen Hartwell, trying without success to get Bear to hand Tony Frankland over to him. And Ernie continued to visit Samantha, who was released from the hospital after a couple of days. Ernie’s mother, Victoria, moved in with the Franklands to help Rowena nurse her mother until she started to get over the shock of what she had seen her husband do.

On the 23rd of the month, Ernie was fidgety all day, knowing from some inner voice that today would be the first day of his transformation to the black wolf this month. After tinkering around the sheep station all day (having been unable to settle down to any serious work), he visited Tony and Rowena in the afternoon, and then settled down at home to wait for his transformation to take place.

The shape shifting sometimes did not occur until one or two in the morning. However, possibly because he had been thinking about it all day, it occurred a few minutes after 11:00 PM this time.

Having previously undressed so that he would not be trapped in wolf form in his clothes, he set out across the farmhouse yard, easily leapt the metre-high, chain-link fence at a bound, then started toward the thick forest of wattles, pines, and eerie grey-white ghost gums a quarter of a kilometre away.

He loped along through the forest for hours without consciously heading in any particular direction. Until, to his surprise, he found himself on the outskirts of Glen Hartwell Township. Circling round the town (afraid to enter for fear of being shot) he continued to lope along.

The black wolf had reached the border between Glen Hartwell and Westmoreland before realising that he was outside the grounds of the Shady Rest Cemetery. Although not normally nervous around cemeteries, the wolf started to shiver from fright and quickly reversed direction to head back toward the Glen. But then he stopped again, suddenly aware of what had sent icy shivers along his spine. Leonard Moffett, or at least the creature that had masqueraded as him for forty years, had been buried at the Shady Rest two days earlier. Originally, Doreen Moffett (who was now a widow in her eighties) had wanted the body to be returned to Queensland. However, Leonard’s will specified that his body should be buried in Glen Hartwell, where he had been born and insisted that under no circumstances should the body be cremated. And his mother had reluctantly ceded to his wishes, despite being too ill to come down from Queensland for the burial.

The black wolf’s first instinct upon realising this had been to turn tail and run back to the safety of Ernie Singleton’s sheep station on the outskirts of Merridale. However, after a moment, he managed to get a grip on his fear and set out to investigate the gravesite, wondering whether it was his werewolf powers that had somehow called him to the Shady Rest, or whether it was a mere coincidence.

He started slowly along the grass verge beside the two-metre-high, steel-spiked fence that ran along the perimeter of the cemetery. In wolf form, he effortlessly leapt the metre-high, wire-mesh fence around the farmhouse yard at his sheep station, and so, after travelling round the fence for nearly a kilometre without locating an entrance, he considered attempting to leap the spike fence. However, another look at the spear-points atop the spikes was enough to make him hesitate.

Finally arriving at an arched gateway, the black wolf decided to try his luck here. The gates were free of spikes on top, so at least he wouldn’t be impaled if he failed to clear them. Also, the lower corners of the arches were only a metre and a half in height; higher than he had ever leapt before, but half a metre lower than the lethal-looking spikes.

Taking a fifty-metre run up, the wolf thundered toward the steel gates, his heart pounding in his ears, and effortlessly leapt the gate with many centimetres to spare.

Coming to earth again, he found that his momentum carried him deep into the cemetery grounds. He continued up Linlithrow Street (the main drive of the Shady Rest), carefully reading the ‘street’ signs as he went.

The cemetery was laid out firstly into the various religious denominations (with the Catholic section taking up nearly 60% of the cemetery), and then secondly alphabetically within each denomination. The black wolf quickly located the large Catholic section and then started forward from the S’s where he had entered the section, heading toward the M’s. The Catholic area was broken up by a network of narrow gravel roads, each lined with wattles or pine trees, giving the impression of a large park -- until you walked past the lines of trees to reach the tombs.

He loped along Linlithrow Street until it diverged into Mason Road and A’Beckett Drive. A small wooden arrow pointed down each road. Reading ‘Lit to Nay’, the black wolf turned left onto Mason Road and, for the first time, stepped off the gravel path onto the lush green lawn. He journeyed along the grass verge for a while before venturing through the line of shady trees to find himself looking at a tombstone marked John Montague, 31 August 1888 to 15 May 1984.

The black wolf continued around the graves for a few more minutes until it located the tomb of Leonard Moffett. As befitting a famous politician, the grave was covered with an enormous slab of black marble, upon which stood a large plaster monument. However, either through bad workmanship, vandalism, or God’s refusal to allow such an honour over the remains of such a hellish creature, a small plaster angel had broken free from its pedestal on the monument and lay in the grass a few centimetres from the grave.

Seeing the fallen angel, the black wolf thought, ‘Well, Leonard Moffett, just what kind of a fiend were you that even the plaster angel has refused ...?’

His thoughts were cut off abruptly, however, as the earth began to shake violently, pitching him to the grass. ‘Earthquake!’ he thought, and then his thoughts quickly turned to events four months earlier, when rumblings beneath the earth outside Pettiwood had announced the imminent arrival of the Great Rainbow Snake. ‘But the rainbow serpent was laid to rest with the Dark Stone,’ thought Ernie. ‘How could the fiend be on the move again?’

Then, as he scrambled to his feet again, the wolf noticed that the centre of the earthquake was directly beneath the tomb of Leonard Moffett. Gradually, the vibrations built up in intensity like a volcano about to erupt, until the half-metre thick marble lid shattered, making the black wolf back away hurriedly as large chips of marble went flying in all directions, then bulged upward like a developing volcano until the large chunks fell away from the tomb, exposing the dirt beneath. Slowly, the brown earth began to push up from underneath, until at last a long, thin, jaundice-yellow coloured snake-like object pushed up from the soil.

It was only as the fingers began to move that the wolf realised that it was a shrivelled human arm, seemingly dried crisp like the withered hand of a badly preserved Egyptian mummy.

As more and more of the dried, fleshless arm began to appear, the black wolf bolted for cover behind a large tomb a half a dozen metres away.

Gradually, a second hand began to push its way up from the earth, followed by a skull-like head, to which only a few threads of mouldy, yellowing flesh still loosely adhered. For a moment, it seemed as though the creature was stuck. The black wolf watched spellbound with horror as it wriggled around as though unable to pull itself up any further. But finally the neck and shoulders appeared, followed by the chest: hardly more than dry bones, covered by hanging strips of yellow flesh and one remaining withered breast, allowing the wolf to know that whatever else the monster was (or had been) it was female.

‘The old hag!’ thought the black wolf. He realised that this was what was left of the old woman who had gazed back at Tony Frankland forty years earlier through the eyes of Leonard Moffett and wondered who or what the old woman had been in life.

As the wolf was considering its origins, the monster finished pulling itself up from the shattered grave and began looking all around itself, as though aware that it was being observed. Tiny -- less than 150 centimetres in height -- the creature was barely more than a skeleton, yet seemed to possess tremendous strength.

The black wolf began to whimper from fear at the thought of what the creature’s long, talon-like fingers could do to his neck. Hearing the whimpering, the monstrous creature let out a loud, inhuman screech and began to shamble across toward the black marble tomb behind which the wolf crouched.

The monster was almost upon him when, finally, the black wolf managed to make his legs move. Pivoting, he raced back along the trail between the tombstones and thundered down to Mason Road.

Too terrified by the scampering-shambling sound of the ghoul behind him to think rationally, instead of heading up Mason Road toward Linlithrow Street, which would have given him a straight run back to the front gate, the black wolf panicked and headed up Glenrowen Drive. At the next corner, realising that he was lost, the wolf stopped for a moment and hastily looked back to see if his pursuer was still following. To his alarm, he saw that the ghoul was only a dozen or so metres behind him. Despite its shambling gait, the monster raced along at a rapid pace.

Thinking that it was finally going to catch up with him, the monster began to cackle insanely, stretching out its long, talon-like hands before it. However, the black wolf sprang forward at the last instant and raced up Eucalypt Way (so named because of the array of blue, grey, red, and ghost gums that lined both sides of the narrow road).

The wolf thundered along in the cool night air until reaching the two-metre spike fence that trapped him inside the cemetery grounds with the ghoul of Leonard Moffett. He hesitated for a second, looking left and right for another exit. He realised that in a cemetery the size of the Shady Rest, there had to be several different exits and entrances around the four perimeter walls. However, the unbroken spiked fence seemed to extend to the horizon in both directions.

Hearing the cackle of his pursuer, the black wolf decided that he had no choice. He reversed direction and raced back along Eucalypt Way, heading straight toward the monster, which cackled even louder with glee at his approach. Then, when he was less than a metre from the ghoul’s outstretched arms, the wolf pivoted and raced back toward the spiked fence as fast as he could, using as long a run-up as possible in a bid to clear the two-metre fence.

As he soared into the air, the black wolf felt a slashing pain in his left flank as one of the razor-sharp spikes gouged his side. However, despite the agony that this caused, he managed to clear the fence without any serious injury and landed ungracefully in a heap in the lush grass outside the boundary fence.

Picking himself up again, the black wolf licked his torn flank to alleviate the stinging and then turned to look back toward the cemetery. And was terrified to see the ghoul perched atop the steel fence, balancing upon the lethal spikes, its bony carcase obviously impervious to the razor-sharp edges of the spikes.

Cackling with glee, the monster stood up to its full height and sprang off the top of the fence, straight at the wolf ... Which immediately bounded forward and started down Theodora Drive at a gallop.

The black wolf raced down the drive until it branched out into Boothy Street and Baltimore Drive. Then, afraid to stop even for an instant, not knowing how close behind the ghoul was, the black wolf headed up Baltimore Drive until it crossed over Blackland Street. Then, instinctively, he headed up Blackland and, after a split second’s hesitation, into the outskirts of Glen Hartwell Township.

As he entered the Glen, the black wolf held a faint hope that the monster would not be able (or willing) to enter the town. However, the sound of its cackling laughter and shambling footsteps behind him told the black wolf that the creature was less concerned at the thought of being spotted by the locals than the wolf itself was.

The black wolf raced up Blackland Street, past Mitchell Street, Dirk Hartog Place, Matthew Flinders Road, and Gallipoli Parade, almost the entire length of the Glen, until his heart was pounding from a mixture of exertion and terror. He was aware that if he did not find a hiding place soon, he would not be able to keep ahead of the ghoul much longer and began to whimper from terror at the thought of what those long, skeletal hands would do to his flesh if -- when! -- it finally caught up with him.

Passing Lawson Street, heading toward Jedasa Road, the black wolf almost raced straight past the sanctuary without noticing it, but was distracted when a flash of red light hit his right eye, temporarily blinding him. Screeching to a halt, he looked around and saw that the light radiated from a stained-glass window of St. Margaret’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, where Ernie Singleton went in human form every Sunday to pray.

He hesitated for a moment, and then, realising that he could not run any longer, the black wolf started to trot up the stairs of the church. ‘Witches, vampires, and other monsters aren’t supposed to be able to pass over the threshold of a Christian church!’ thought the wolf, realising that this might be his sanctuary. But then he stopped at the doorway, thinking, ‘But doesn’t that go for werewolves as well? Here’s hoping it only means that evil creatures can’t enter!’

Looking into the church from the doorway, the black wolf saw row upon row of empty pews and thought, ‘It must be too late for the worshippers.’ He wondered whether that was good news or bad. Then, hearing the sound of cackling approaching as the ghoul of Leonard Moffett started to shamble up the cathedral steps, the wolf shut his eyes tight from fear and leapt through the open doorway, half expecting to be unable to pass through, or possibly even killed in the effort to enter the church.

To his pleasant surprise, the black wolf landed unharmed on the hardwood floor a metre or so within the church. Not knowing for certain whether or not his pursuer would also be able to enter, the black wolf scampered toward the front of the church with a loud click-click-clicking of his claws upon the varnished floorboards as he ran.


Father Benjamin strolled through the corridors of his beloved cathedral, a small bible in his left hand. Since he never needed more than five hours of sleep a night, the kindly old priest liked to spend as much of the night as possible inside the church, in case any of his parishioners decided that they needed late-night guidance. Unlike the big cities like Melbourne and Sydney, where churches were securely locked up after late mass for fear of vandals stealing the Stations of the Cross or silver candle holders, in the country, the crime rate was low enough so that the priest could safely leave the church doors open all night. His fellow priests sometimes teased him for being naive; however, Father Benjamin would reply, “In this Godless time, we should not be encouraging people to lose their faith by locking them out of God’s House.”

Hearing the sound of footsteps near the front of the church, the priest hurried forward to give whatever guidance he could to this late-night caller.

Entering the cathedral, he was surprised to see that it appeared to be empty. He looked around the pews and called out, “Hello? Is there anyone there?” Only to be greeted with silence.

Shrugging, he thought, ‘It must have been my imagination?’ and started toward the door to the vestry ... And saw the black wolf standing near one side of the pulpit.

“Hello, boy,” said the priest, mistaking the wolf for a large, black dog. He started toward the black wolf, but stopped a metre short, recognising his mistake.

The Reverend Father started to back away from the wolf, until seeing the friendly look in its almost-human, blue eyes, and hearing the whump-whump-whump of its tail wagging against the varnished hardwood floor.

After his initial alarm, the priest stepped forward again and reached across the last few paces to tentatively stroke the black wolf’s long fur and ask, “Well, boy, what brings you into God’s House at this ungodly hour?”

The black wolf whined his terror and glanced toward the rear of the church, where the ghoul was attempting, without success, to enter through the doorway.

“What is it, boy?” asked Father Benjamin, staring gape-eyed at the mummy-like creature that leapt at the narrow doorway, trying to gain access.

There was a blinding flash of white light, and the monster was flung forcefully back out onto the concrete steps. Screeching its rage and indignation at this unexpected treatment, the ghoul picked itself up and leapt forward again, its bony limbs making it look like a monstrous white spider as it jumped.

Again, there was a blinding flash, and the creature was hurled backwards violently.

Again and again the monster leapt at the doorway, vainly attempting to pass through into the church; each time repelled as though the doorway were protected by some kind of invisible electric field.

‘A force field against evil!’ thought the black wolf.

Each time it was repulsed, the ghoul screeched its annoyance at being treated in such a manner. But still it refused to give up and threw itself at the doorway for more than ten minutes as they watched on.

“Holy Mother of God, is that what chased you into the Lord’s House, my furry friend?” asked the grey-haired old priest. Holding up his bible, Father Benjamin slowly began to move forward, down the aisle toward the back of the church, chanting the Lord’s Prayer as he went.

As the priest started toward the monster, the black wolf tried to scream out, No, come back! You’ll be killed! But as the black wolf, his vocal cords were not designed for human speech, so the warning came out as a frantic barking.

Recognising the fear in the wolf’s bark, the priest glanced back at him and said, “Calm yourself, my friend; it cannot harm us in here. This is the Lord’s House, and it will not admit vile abominations like that.” Then he returned to his prayers, still advancing toward the open doorway.

To the black wolf’s astonishment, the monster recoiled in terror from the chanting priest and slowly backed away from the doorway. At the edge of the small concrete landing, it let out a screech of fear and tumbled over backwards to roll heavily down the concrete steps. A living person would have been badly hurt, even killed by the fall; however, the monster quickly clawed its way back to its feet and screeched loudly again. Covering its ears with its bony hands to block out the sounds of the priest’s prayers, it began to lope down Blackland Street up toward Lawson Street.

As the ghoul lumbered away from the church in terror, the Reverend Father exited the cathedral and slowly descended the concrete steps, still clutching his bible as he went. After a moment’s indecision, the black wolf followed. He hesitated for an instant at the doorway, half expecting to be ‘zapped’ as the ghoul had been. However, he passed out through the doorway as easily as he had passed in.

Standing in the street, the priest and the wolf watched the white spider bobbing away in the distance as the monster loped away toward the end of Glen Hartwell. Only when it was completely out of sight did Father Benjamin turn away to look toward the black wolf and ask rhetorically, “Well, my furry friend, why was that demon from Hell chasing you?”

The black wolf barked, unable to answer, and then, to the priest’s dismay, took off down Blackland Street toward Jedasa Road.

“No wait!” called out Father Benjamin. However, grateful though he was for the priest’s help, the black wolf knew that he had to return to the Singleton sheep station before daybreak or risk shape shifting back to human form, naked, in the middle of the Glen.


Back in human form the next day, Ernie considered approaching the kindly old priest to ask for his help in destroying the demon that had masqueraded as Leonard Moffett for so long. However, not wanting to reveal himself as the black wolf, he did not know how to approach Father Benjamin.

He kept investigating the origins of the monster during the day without success, visiting Tony Frankland in gaol each night. Ernie gave Tony a complete account of his encounter with the monster, only omitting the fact that he had been exploring the cemetery as the black wolf. As he finished his tale, Ernie was concerned that Tony might query the fact that he had been exploring the Shady Rest after midnight; however, he was too riveted by the mention of the fact that the one remaining withered breast proved that the ghoul had been female.

“The old hag that looked back at me through the eyes of Leonard all those years ago, it has to be!” exclaimed Tony, articulating Ernie’s own thoughts.

“Yes, but we still don’t know who she was when alive, or how to stop her!”

“Maybe Father Benjamin can help us there?” suggested Tony, moving along the narrow bunk bed a little to allow Ernie to sit beside him. “If the church doors had the power to exclude it and the prayers physically hurt its ears, maybe it could be exorcised or something like that?”

“Perhaps,” agreed Ernie, doubtful, still uncertain about approaching the Reverend Father in human form.


A few nights later, Tony was sitting up on the bunk bed reading when he heard loud hammering upon one of the brick walls of his cell. ‘Sounds like I’m being broken out,’ he thought with a smile, since the thump-thump-thump sounded like a sledgehammer on the red bricks. He went over to the small barred window of his cell to investigate. Grabbing onto the bars, he pulled himself up and looked out....

And saw the skeletal figure of the ghoul of Leonard Moffett hammering upon the brick walls with its bare fists. Wincing from the thought of how it should hurt, to his horror, Tony could see that the monster’s fists were actually starting to chip away small chunks of the hard bricks. ‘Oh my God, it’s coming to get revenge on me for foiling its bid to become premier of Victoria!’ he thought, watching the rotting corpse pounding at the outside wall for a moment longer before recovering enough from his shock to start screaming for help.

“For God’s sake, what is it?” demanded Constable Tom Jennet, one of the cops brought down from Melbourne by Mike Mannas, looking into the cell.

“That!” shouted Tony, pointing to where the wall of his cell was starting to crumble beneath the pounding fists of the ghoul.

“Jesus!” said the constable, rushing back out into the office at the front of the small holding cell.

“For the love of God, don’t leave me here!” screamed Tony, thinking that the constable was deserting him. However, a few seconds later, he heard the sound of running feet outside, behind the cell, followed by shouting, and then gunfire.

At the sound of gunfire, Tony scrambled under his bunk, too frightened even to look out the cell window. It was only later that he learnt that Jennet and another Melbourne cop had been brutally killed, torn limb from limb by what a third constable had described as looking like a super strong corpse.

“A super strong corpse yet!” scoffed Inspector Mike Mannas.

“Well, just how do you explain it then?” asked Bear Ross, pointing to where one brick wall of the holding cell had been all but torn down.

“A bulldozer!” insisted Mannas. He refused to be swayed by eyewitness accounts of a single naked figure tearing at the walls with its bare hands, or the fact that there were no dozer tracks left behind on the lush grass in the empty lot behind the lock-up.


Although Tony had been unharmed in the attack, Ernie realised that it had to be the monster seeking revenge for the death of its Leonard Moffett persona and knew that he could delay speaking to the old priest no longer. However, when he picked up that morning’s copy of the Merridale Morning Mirror, the front-page headlines blared: LOCAL PRIEST BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERED! And to Ernie’s horror, he saw a picture of the kindly face of Father Benjamin printed below the caption. He read the lengthy article without discovering how the priest had been killed.

That night, after visiting Tony in the lock-up, Ernie stopped at the front of the police station to question Bear Ross about the priest’s death.

At first reluctant to speak of the killing, Bear finally said (slumping forward in his chair at his desk), “Christ Ernie, it was the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen ... He wasn’t so much killed as splattered ... It’s as though someone put him into a giant blender ...” He stopped for a moment, gulped hard then added, “The body was so destroyed that blood, bone and tissue were spread across the footpath almost as fine as strawberry jam!”

The next day, Ernie returned to St. Margaret’s in Blackland Street, where he hesitantly explained to the young, athletic-looking priest in attendance that he was a friend of Father Benjamin and had just learnt the shocking news of his gruesome death.

Father Dominique confirmed the way that his mentor had died. Shaking his head in distress, he added, “There wasn’t even a body to be given a proper Christian burial ... Just ‘mush’ as one of the attending policemen so crudely put it....”

Ernie looked startled, unable to believe that Bear Ross, Mel Forbes, or any of the other local cops could have been so callous. But then, remembering the coarse cop from Melbourne, Inspector Mike Mannas, who still hovered around the Glen hoping for an opportunity to snatch Tony Frankland and transport him to Melbourne, Ernie knew instinctively that only Mannas could have been so cold-blooded about the death of the kind-hearted old priest.

“You know it’s funny,” said Father Dominique, “Well, no ... I suppose funny is the wrong word. It’s strange, but this is the second time that a priest at St. Margaret’s has been killed this way....”

“What?” demanded Ernie, almost falling onto the pew that he was standing near in front of the pulpit, not sure if he could believe it. ‘Surely I would have heard if this kind of slaughter had happened to another priest?’ thought Ernie.

Aware of what Ernie must be thinking, the priest hastened to explain, “Oh no, not recently. It happened to a priest named Father Francis, almost a hundred years ago, in 1887.”

“Was the murder ever solved?” asked Ernie, stepping back a pace to sit on the pew.

“No. No, it was all rather confused. It was related to another murder ... That of an old woman, named Agnetha Chambers.”

“Was she killed in the same way?”

“No ... no officially she slipped and fell down the stairs at her two-storey manor house a few kilometres outside Glen Hartwell. It’s only the diaries that reveal that she was murdered.”

“Diaries?”

“Yes, two diaries ... We have them here. One is that of her nephew, Benjamin Charlton -- no relation to Father Benjamin -- the second diary belonged to Father Francis ... If you’d care to see them ...?”

So saying, the priest turned and headed toward the back of the church, and Ernie almost fell to the hardwood floor in his eagerness to follow him.

Father Dominique led Ernie through the church to a small library at the rear. They walked across to a small, locked, glass-fronted bookcase. Whereas the other eleven or twelve bookcases were all crowded to overflowing with books, pamphlets, and bundles of papers tied together, the glass-fronted case held only a handful of books plus a large, blackwood box.

Taking a large key ring from his robes, Father Dominique unlocked the bookcase and took out the black box. Unlocking the box, he took out four books and some faded newspaper clippings.

The first book was a large, leather-bound volume titled, ‘The Malleus Maleficarum. “The Witches’ Hammer,” translated Father Dominique. “Penned by Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Spenger in Germany in 1486. This edition was revised in the USA in 1697 by Cotton Mather.” Seeing that Ernie did not recognise the name, the priest explained, “Mather was a famous, or if you prefer infamous, witch-hunter from Salem.”

Handing over the other three books, a book of charms titled Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks!, plus two diaries, the priest explained, “The correct order to read them is the first half of Benjamin Charlton’s diary, and then Father Francis’ diary, and then the second half of Benjamin Charlton’s. Indicating a faded brown paper bookmark, “The point to switch diaries is marked for you....”

“And the other two?”

“The Witches’ Hammer contains the exorcism ritual referred to by Father Francis and Benjamin Charlton in their diaries. The other is the book that Charlton carried away with him from his Aunt’s bedroom.”

“I see,” said Ernie, not understanding.

Smiling, Father Dominique took him by one arm to lead him across to a small reading table in one corner of the library. “You’ll understand after you’ve read the two diaries,” he explained, turning to leave Ernie in peace.

DIARY OF BENJAMIN CHARLTON

January 7th, 1887

The events that I am outlining herein all took place over the last month -- although at times it seems like a distant memory from many years ago.

It all started, I suppose, with my decision to kill Aunt Aggie, to hasten my imminent inheritance.

It was in the early afternoon, and Aunt Aggie stood at the top of the narrow staircase, staring down toward her feet. She wrinkled up her nose and squinted in a vain bid to force her near blind eyes to focus, while at the bottom of the stairs, I stood in silence, waiting, watching, wondering when she would step forward toward me. ‘Fall damn you, fall!’ I thought, trying to will the old bag forward to her death. But try as I might, I could not propel her forward by force of will alone.

Finally, however, she started forward ... Only to stop again on the second-top step to stare long and hard down the staircase, seemingly straight at me.

‘She can’t possibly see me from this distance!’ I thought, terrified in case the old battle-axe knew that I was standing there waiting for my trap to spring. After all, she’s as blind as a bat!

Yet for a long while, it did seem as though Aunt Aggie could see me standing in the shadows on the lower landing, waiting for her death.

Finally, the old bat started forward again; however, she had only gone a step or two when she let out a piercing shriek and fell headlong down the stairs. How can I describe my delight at watching the plump old bag land headfirst halfway down the staircase, then roll like a beach ball down the red-carpeted stairs, head and legs smashing again and again into the railings as she went, until at last she came to rest almost at my very feet.

Although the strange angle that her neck formed indicated that the old bag was dead, nonetheless, I knelt to examine her, just to be certain ... And nearly fell across her in my fright as she suddenly opened her green eyes wide and called, “Benjamin? Is that you, Benjamin?”

‘She can’t possibly be still alive! Her neck is broken!’ I thought, backing away from the old woman, close to panic.

‘She has to be dead!’ I tried to reassure myself; after all, she had hit her head more than a dozen times rolling down the stairs. ‘Any one of those crashes should have been hard enough to finish the old goat off!

‘But what if she isn’t dead?’ I wondered. ‘What if she somehow survived and knows that I tried to kill her? She’ll cut me off without a penny!’ Of course, I was the old witch’s only living relative, ‘But she is just spiteful enough to will everything to the stray cats’ home, if she ever suspected that I had tried to murder her!’

Then it occurred to me that I could pretend that I had just come home and had found her lying at the bottom of the steps.

“Oh my God, Aunt Aggie,” I cried, trying my best to sound shocked at finding her lying there. But as soon as I said it, I knew that I had spoken too soon. I should have waited till I was between the old woman and the stairs, so that it would look as though I had just come down from my bedroom on the second floor. Hurrying around the prone figure of my aunt, I said, “My God, Auntie, are you all right?”

I bent down to touch her limp figure, which was sprawled on one side. However, just before my fingers made contact, Aunt Aggie suddenly rolled over onto her back.

I jumped away in terror and almost fell on top of the old battle-axe, whom I saw to my relief was most definitely dead. Clutching my pounding heart, I said, “You always were a teasing old bitch, even in death!”

Hurrying up the staircase, I located the thin cord halfway up the stairs, where it had been dragged away from the wall by the great weight of my aunt. Three steps down from the top, I found one of the two brads that I had used to nail the twine at ankle height. However, there was no sign of the second tack anywhere.

“It’s only a tiny nail,” I said aloud. “Even if someone were to find it and saw the two tiny holes near the top of the railings, they would never put two and two together and figure out that I had killed the old bat.”

Nevertheless, I hurried to the attic to get a can of putty, a small can of off-white paint and a brush to cover over the tiny tack holes.

“There, no one will ever notice the difference,” I said with satisfaction as I finished painting and turned to start back up to the attic ... But then out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of movement at the bottom of the stairs and quickly turned round, thinking that I was being spied upon.

“Who is there?” I demanded, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice as I slowly started down the staircase.

Halfway down the stairs, I found the missing tack: “Oh Hell!” I shouted as I stood on the tack, which went through the sole of my shoe into the bottom of my foot. Staggering, I started to fall down the stairs and had to desperately clutch at the bannister, with both hands, whimpering from fear, as I almost rolled down the stairs.

In a bid to save myself, I dropped the small can of paint, which hit the stairs with a thud, sending a spray of paint up to cover me from head to toe. Then, clinging to the railing for dear life, I could only watch in frustration as the can fell over onto its side and rolled down the stairs, leaving a thick, off-white line down the centre of the lush red carpet.

On the brink of screaming from frustration, I sat on the stairs to remove the tack from my shoe, before I started up the stairs again, when something caught my eye. For almost a full minute, I stood staring down toward the corpse of my aunt, before realising what was wrong, “The old bag has moved!” I said aloud in terror.

Aunt Aggie had been lying on her back, parallel to the bottom step, but now she lay on one side, her head resting on the bottom step, as though using it for a pillow.

‘I must have moved her when I was checking to see if she was dead!’ I thought. But try as I might, I could not recall having touched her. “But dead bodies don’t move of their own accord!” I said in a vain effort to reassure myself.

I stood halfway down the stairs, staring toward my aunt’s corpse for another minute or so, before managing to summon up the courage to go down to collect the small paint can. Then I went upstairs and quickly showered and changed, before spending nearly half an hour scrubbing at the paint stain on the carpet with turpentine. When I finally gave up, I was uncertain whether I had made things better or worse: I had removed most of the paint; however, the remainder had diluted and spread over a much larger area, so that the lush red carpet now had a large pink smudge in the centre, running halfway up the staircase.

“Well, that will have to do,” I said, straightening. Then, turning toward my aunt, “What do you think, you old battle ...?”

Stopping in mid-sentence, I said, “My God, she’s moved again! The old bag has moved again!” Now the corpse was up to the second-bottom step, lying on her belly, one arm outstretched over her head, as though pleading for help. Her green eyes were open wide and seemed to almost shine with hatred as she glared toward me.

I waited, crouching on the stairs for a couple of minutes, before finally my heart stopped pounding in my ears, and I thought, ‘Maybe the old bag wasn’t quite dead before, and she started to crawl up the stairs before finally dying?’

Feeling convinced that this was the answer, I walked upstairs to put away the turpentine and rags before setting out to ransack my aunt’s room. Of course, I knew that I was the only beneficiary of her will, since she had shown it to me before leaving the will with her lawyer in Glen Hartwell, so eventually I would inherit everything. However, I had pressing debts and needed money urgently.

I knew that my aunt kept a lot of money in the house since she did not trust banks. ‘It might be a cliché about old bags keeping money under their mattresses,’ I thought, ‘but there is a lot of truth in many clichés!’

I hurriedly stripped the bedclothes off the bed and then turned over the mattress. “Nothing!” I said in dismay, before starting to feel about the mattress in case my aunt had padded the mattress itself with money. However, I was finally forced to concede that if there was any money hidden in the room, it was not inside the mattress.

“Well, then where ...?” I asked myself, looking around the large bedroom. The only other furniture in the room was a small dressing table, a single-door wardrobe, and four floor-to-ceiling length bookcases completely covering two bedroom walls.

I started toward the wardrobe, and then thought, ‘My God, I bet the old hag hid all her money in the books!’ and ran across to the nearest bookcase to begin frantically pulling books off the shelves. After shaking each book vigorously, in the hope of dislodging any hidden bank notes, I threw it to the floor and went on to the next book.

For more than three hours, I searched through the books without locating a single ten-shilling note before finally starting to return the books to the shelves. ‘I can’t let the police see this mess,’ I thought.

Picking up a thick, leather-bound tome, mouldy with age, I read Malleus Maleficarum, by Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Spenger, revised by Cotton Mather.

Opening the book at random, I read: “Although most of the people who were executed as witches in Salem in the 1690s were the victims of hysteria, there were a few genuine witches in Salem. The most notorious being Rebecca Farris, Beverly Goodwin, Christina Corey, and Agnetha Chambers....”

Almost dropping the book as I read my aunt’s name, I thought, ‘But it can’t be the same Agnetha Chambers, no one lives more than 200 years! It was probably a distant relative of the old hag.’

Returning the book to the shelf, I picked up a handful of tomes from the floor and began returning them to the bookcases. I had almost finished restocking them when I found myself looking at a small volume titled Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks! I started to open the book, but stopped as I heard a loud shuffling sound outside the bedroom.

“Who is there?” I called from the top of the stairs, having gone to investigate.

“Benjamin? Oh, Benjamin?” called a soft, crooning voice from halfway down the staircase.

Looking down, I cried out in horror, seeing that Aunt Aggie’s corpse was now halfway up the stairs. But even more terrifying, the corpse had half risen from the carpet: her arms supported her upper body, holding her chest away from the stairs, while her legs, which had been shattered in her tumble down the staircase, lay useless against the stairs.

“Benjamin? Oh, Benjamin?” repeated the corpse of Aunt Aggie, as she began to claw her way up the staircase, arm over arm, dragging her broken, useless legs behind her.

Whimpering from terror, I stood frozen to the spot, as the dead thing that had been Agnetha Chambers clawed its way up the staircase toward me. She was only a few steps away when at last I recovered my senses and started to back up the stairs.

Looking past Aunt Aggie, I half wondered whether I could avoid her withered, claw-like hands long enough to leap over her and run – ‘Roll!’ a little voice at the back of my head seemed to warn -- down the stairs to escape from this hellish house. I started to step forward; however, seeing my intention, Aunt Aggie reared up like a cobra and began clawing at the air with her long, talon-like fingers.

Stopping in mid-spring, I almost fell forward into her clutching hands and had to overbalance and fall onto my backside to save myself. Then, as the corpse dragged itself up the staircase toward me, I began furiously propelling myself up the stairs backwards, in a sitting position.

Fleeing to the nearest room at the top of the stairs, I had already slammed and locked the door behind me before realising that it was my aunt’s bedroom that I had fled to. ‘Oh well, it’s probably as good a haven as any other,’ I thought.

But then, to my astonishment, the key began to turn in the lock of the door. Shrieking from terror, I clutched at the key and desperately fought to keep it locked. “I’m stronger than she is!” I cried. “I have to be stronger than she is!”

And for a while, it seemed as though I would be able to keep the door locked. But then there came a loud metallic snap, and the long stalk came away in my hands, allowing the head of the key to turn unchecked in the lock. Then, as I cringed in horror, the brass knob slowly turned and the door sprang open.

“Benjamin? Oh, Benjamin?” crooned the corpse of Aunt Aggie as it dragged itself into the bedroom.

“Get away from me!” I shouted, slowly backing up toward the bedroom window.

Looking down at the large flower garden below the window, I wondered whether it would be safe to jump onto it. ‘It’s only the second floor,’ I thought. ‘It can’t be more than seventeen or eighteen feet at most, onto the soft soil below...?’

Behind me, the corpse began to cackle as I unlatched the window and attempted to raise it. As the window fought me, I instinctively put the small book that I was still holding into my coat pocket so that I could use both hands. However, the window refused to budge -- to the pleasure of my pursuer, who cackled from glee at my failure to raise the window even a tiny fraction of an inch.

“There is no escape for you there, Benjamin!” cried Aunt Aggie.

However, she was wrong. Realising that I had only one chance of survival, I hurriedly reversed direction and ran toward her, making her rear up like a snake again to prevent me from passing, obviously thinking that I was heading toward the open door behind her. Instead, only inches from her grasp, I reversed direction again and ran headfirst at the plate-glass window, which shattered upon impact, allowing me to fall out toward the flower bed two storeys below.

Aunt Aggie’s latest cackle turned to a shriek of dismay at this sudden, unexpected turn of events.

After coming to earth with a bone-jarring crash, I rolled over and over again across her prize-winning flowerbed before finally coming to a halt.

I lay on the ground, thoroughly winded for a moment, before clawing my way to my feet, only to shriek from agony, collapsing to the ground again as a bolt of agony surged through my right ankle.

“Now you know what it feels like, Benjamin!” shrieked Aunt Aggie. Looking up, I saw her glaring down at me through the shattered bedroom window, but then, as I watched, she turned and crawled away from the window.

‘She’s coming after me!’ I thought in a panic, beginning to hobble away from the crushed flowerbed. My first thought had been to head toward the stable to harness Black Thunderbolt to Aunt Aggie’s buggy to ride into Glen Hartwell. However, as I moved, the bolts of pain shooting through my ankle made me aware that I could never catch and harness the high-spirited stallion with only one good foot. So, although it was two and a half miles to the Glen, I had no choice but to set out on foot, hoping to keep ahead of the corpse of Aunt Aggie.

Cursing my dead aunt for living so far from civilisation, I hobbled toward Glen Hartwell, continually checking back over my shoulder for fear that she might be overtaking me. However, seeing that even with my badly twisted ankle, I could easily outdistance Aunt Aggie, who had to pull herself along the dirt track with her hands, dragging her lower body behind her, I gradually began to calm down.

‘I will soon be in the Glen!’ I thought. And sure enough, by concentrating upon keeping my weight mainly upon my good left foot, I was able to stay well ahead of my pursuer, and was astonished at how soon I reached the outskirts of Glen Hartwell.

Hobbling down Boothy Street, the main street of the Glen, I thought, ‘I’m safe at last! That old witch can’t follow me through the crowded streets in daylight!’ But to my dismay, I soon found that I was wrong, although people stopped to glance at my hobbling gait, no one seemed to even notice the dead thing that crawled along the pavement. Although one old man peered down in surprise and for a moment looked as though he had caught a glimpse of something unspeakably foul.

As my right ankle began to throb unbearably, I knew that I could not go on much further. I had turned into Caminole Way, heading up toward Blackland Street, when I heard the sound of organ music. Desperate to escape my pursuer, I almost hurried on before realising that the music emanated from St. Margaret’s cathedral two blocks away, up Blackland Street. Although not the expert on witchcraft that Aunt Aggie obviously had been, I knew enough about the occult to know that demons are not supposed to be able to set foot upon hallowed ground.

‘I’m almost safe now!’ I thought as I hurried past Jedasa Road toward the concrete steps of the cathedral where I had last gone to pray twenty-odd years earlier.

Almost collapsing from exhaustion, I stumbled through the doorway and sat at a pew half a dozen rows in from the door. Gasping to recover my breath, I realised that I still had one of my aunt’s books of spells in my coat pocket and took out the book, Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks!

Opening the book at random I read: “Whenever a witch is killed by anyone except a priest or a duly appointed legal executioner, unless the corpse is buried on pure soil, where blood of no man or woman has ever been spilt, she can revive herself, either in her own form, or in the guise of whoever’s blood has been spilt on the site, to avenge her murder. If she returns in her own form, her animated corpse will be invisible to all but her intended victim. If she returns in the guise of someone who died on the spot, she will be visible to all and may take on that person’s ‘life’, if she so chooses to.”

Hearing a noise at the front of the church, I dropped the book with a loud crash on the hardwood floor, half expecting to see Aunt Aggie. Instead, I saw a tall, grey-haired old man vacating the confession booth. Although I had not been a believer in twenty years, I picked up the book of spells and placed it on the pew, then hobbled across to enter the booth. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” I began, going on to describe in detail how I had murdered my aunt for her inheritance. Through the thin screen separating us, I heard the priest gasp from horror at my tale, going oddly quiet when I began to relate how Aunt Aggie had returned from the dead to seek her revenge against me.

“Please, please my son,” I heard the priest say, and, realising that he was trying to cut me off, I hastened on with my tale, hurriedly taking it up to the point when I had entered the confessional.

My tale told I waited patiently for some word of absolution from the old priest.


Coming to the faded bookmark that indicated where he should transfer to Father Francis’ diary, Ernie sighed deeply and looked around the rows of books in the small library at the back of the cathedral. ‘How much, if any, of this madman’s ravings can I believe?’ he wondered. ‘At the very least, he was totally morally bankrupt, and a cold-blooded killer who murdered his own aunt, at worst, a total raving lunatic!’

After a moment, he looked down at the two slim diaries on the table before him. He started to reach for the second diary, and then stopped, deciding to speak to young Father Dominique first.

By chance, as Ernie was walking out into the green-carpeted hallway outside the library, he met Father Dominique, who had been returning to check on him.

“How are things going?” asked the young priest, who looked more like a wrestler or boxer than a man of the Cloth, with his great height and muscular physique.

After a few moments’ small talk, Ernie finally asked, “How much of Ben Charlton’s diary am I supposed to be able to take seriously?”

“It depends upon your faith in Heaven and Hell whether or not you can believe in such a tale of witchcraft and evil returned from the grave. I suppose you might say your preparedness to believe in the supernatural.”

‘Your preparedness to believe in the supernatural?’ thought Ernie, thinking of his own supernatural powers as the black wolf. He hesitated for a moment, and then, in a rush, hardly even stopping for breath, he related to the young priest Tony Frankland’s tale of the death of Leonard Moffett forty years earlier and of the vision of an old hag looking out through the eyes of the resurrected Leonard. Then he went on to tell of his own encounter with the ghoul a few nights back, and of how Father Benjamin used prayers to send the monster howling away into the night. He left out nothing except the fact that it was as the black wolf that he had been terrorised by the monster.

To Ernie’s astonishment, instead of treating him like a lunatic, the priest accepted his story without reservation.

Seeing Ernie’s amazement, Father Dominique laughed out loud, and then explained, “I know it has become fashionable for priests of my generation not to believe in the supernatural, Heaven and Hell ... In some cases, to not even believe in God ... But in my case, I have always had an unshakeable belief in the Lord Above and the Devil Below. So I have no trouble believing in either the tale that Benjamin Charlton and Father Francis tell in their diaries, or the ones that you have just told me.”

They talked for a moment longer, and then the priest asked, “Has it occurred to you that the old hag that Tony Frankland saw in the eyes of Leonard Moffett could well have been Agnetha Chambers risen from the grave?”

“Yes, it has occurred to me,” admitted Ernie. “But if it is Aunt Aggie, how could she have returned from the grave as Leonard Moffett? And why did it take her sixty years to return in the first place?”

“The answer is right here,” said Father Dominique. Striding across to the reading table, he picked up the book Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks! and read out part of the passage that Ernie had already read in Benjamin Charlton’s diary: “Whenever a witch is killed by anyone other than a priest ... unless her corpse is buried in pure soil, where blood of no man or woman has ever been spilt, she can revive herself ... in the form of whoever’s blood has been spilt on the site....”

“So after she was buried on the side of Mount Abergowrie in 1887,” interrupted Ernie, “she could not return for sixty years until the blood of Leonard Moffett was spilt on the mountainside?”

“Exactly, then she was able to return as Leonard Moffett to take over his life where it had left off,” explained the priest.

“But one thing I don’t understand is, in Ben Charlton’s diary, he talks of Aunt Aggie having to drag herself along the footpath because of her shattered legs, yet when ‘she’ chased me through the streets of Glen Hartwell, she could clearly run without having to drag her shattered legs?”

The priest thought for a t before admitting, “That is a bit of a mystery, but I suppose that her ghoul was somehow able to restore itself over the last century.”

They talked for a little longer, and then the priest departed again, and Ernie returned to the reading table to read Father Francis’ diary.

DIARY OF FATHER FRANCIS January 8th 1887, 1:32 AM

Oh, sweet Jesus, how can I describe what I have just been through? I had finished midnight mass and had started to hear confessions. The first few were the normal run-of-the-mill kind of trivia. But then when I thought I had heard the last of them, a young man whose voice sounded vaguely familiar entered and told me a monstrous tale of having murdered his Aunt Aggie (whom I can only assume to be Agnetha Chambers from Briarwood House, since we have no other Aggie in the area), and then how she had been a witch and had used her supernatural powers to return from the grave.

Obviously, the man was violently insane, so I did my best not to offend him. As a last resort, I even allowed him to stay in the church all night, since he was too terrified to leave, clearly afraid that his aunt was still waiting outside for him, unable to cross through the doorway into a hallowed place. I only hope that he will be gone in the morning and that I will never see him again.

January 9th, 8:37 AM

I dread to relate what has occurred since my last entry in this diary. When I arose from my slumbers on the eighth, the ‘lunatic’ whom I saw was young Benjamin Charlton (which explained why his voice sounded familiar yet only vaguely so, since he had not attended mass for nigh on twenty years since the age of seventeen or so), confirming my suspicions that the murdered Aunt Aggie was Agnetha Chambers.

He repeated his tale of being chased through the streets by his dead aunt, and pleaded for my help. However, I tried my best not to listen, refusing to believe in the diabolical witchcraft that he spoke of ... Oh, what a fool I was!

After late mass last night, I found out just how mistaken I was. Charlton had stayed in the cathedral all day, refusing to leave for fear of the vengeance of his aunt. Finally, by the end of confessions, during which he dared to enter the booth again to plead for my help, I had had enough and literally took him by the collar and half-dragged, half-carried him down the aisle, impervious to his pleas and screams for help, intent upon physically throwing him out of the church. In all my forty years at St. Margaret’s, the church doors have never been locked, day or night, yet I fully intended to lock them that night to keep the lunatic out.

Such was my intention until opening the cathedral doors ... To find the hellish fiend that had been Agnetha Chambers on its hands and knees waiting for her nephew. Seeing my intention to toss the weeping, pleading man out onto the concrete steps, the creature began to cackle insanely from glee, crying, “Benjamin! Oh Benjamin! At last vengeance will be mine!”

Although the creature could easily have passed for a living, breathing woman on her knees, something about the evil look in the dark green eyes told me that I was gazing upon evil incarnate. To the dismay of the cackling creature, I backed away, releasing Benjamin Charlton, who immediately ran whimpering from terror back down the aisle toward the pulpit.

“Benjamin!” shrieked the creature from rage, throwing itself at the doorway ... Only to be repelled by a great explosion, which flung it back across the concrete walk outside the door. Clawing itself back to its knees, the creature pulled itself forward by its hands, dragging its broken legs behind it as Benjamin Charlton had described in the confessional, and this time attempted to crawl through the doorway.

Again, there was a loud explosion, and the creature was tossed many feet through the air, only to crawl forward for a third attempt. Again and again, the creature tried to cross the threshold without success. Leaving the monster at the doorway, I raced to the front of the cathedral as fast as my old legs would carry me to collect a small chalice full of Holy Water from the font at the front of the cathedral. Collecting a small portion in a silver chalice, I raced back to the doorway where the hellish creature was still furiously trying to break through into the church.

Seeing my return, the creature stopped and glared evilly at me until I held up the silver chalice. Then, obviously guessing my intention, the witch shrieked and started to crawl away from the doorway. Careful not to step outside the cathedral for fear that I would no longer be immune from the reach of the ghoul, I began to chant the Lord’s Prayer and sprinkle the Gregorian Water in the direction of the creature.

Upon touching the monster, the Holy Water exploded in a puff of smoke and began to burn furiously into the corpse like some sort of powerful acid. Each time I sprinkled the Holy Water onto it, the corpse of Agnetha Chambers let out an unholy shriek and great plumes of grey smoke gushed off the creature as the water burnt great weeping sores into the flesh of the monster, which began furiously clawing its way down the concrete steps, dragging its useless, shattered legs behind it.

Hearing the creature’s screams of agony and terror, despite his own terror, Benjamin Charlton somehow summoned the nerve to advance from the pulpit to where I stood. He reached the doorway just in time to see the corpse of Agnetha Chambers crawling out of sight up Blackland Street, great plumes of smoke still gushing from her hide where the Gregorian Water still burnt her like acid.

“Oh my God, my God, you did it!” cried Benjamin Charlton with childlike glee. “You’ve driven her away!”

“Yes,” I said, less enthusiastically, “but we have only won one small battle. We still have the task of sending that monster back to Hell where it belongs.”

“But how come you could even see her?” he asked. “When she followed me through the Glen, no one else could even see her.”

“Because of some witch’s glamour she placed on herself, no doubt,” I explained. “But here in the Lord’s House, her evil magic has no power. So anyone standing inside the cathedral while she was outside could see her.”

Charlton and I talked for hours after that. I felt no real sympathy for the man since he had brought his troubles down upon himself by a calculated act of cold-blooded murder. Still, I knew that it was my duty as a Man of God to help put that creature from Hell into the ground where it belonged. Obviously, no hallowed ground would accept it, and the book of charms that Charlton had taken from Briarwood House made it plain that we had to find land where no human blood had ever been spilt....

[Ernie skipped forward a few pages in the priest’s diary.]

We had both started to despair of ever thinking of the perfect place when, at last, Benjamin Charlton suggested the side of Mount Abergowrie, just out of town on the northern side of Glen Hartwell.

As soon as he made the suggestion, I realised that it was perfect ... The mountain was not too steep for climbing, but steep enough to keep away bush walkers and too heavily wooded for picnickers. So it was decided, we would use Benjamin Charlton as bait to lure his aunt to the mount, then use the rituals laid down in the Malleus Maleficarum to exorcise the hellish creature and send it into the grave.


To Ernie’s puzzlement, the diary abruptly ended at that point. He flicked through the remaining pages of the book, which were all blank.

Again, he went in search of Father Dominique, who explained, “That’s where the diary ends. Poor Father Francis never had a chance to make another entry ... He and Charlton went to the mountainside that night to perform the ritual of exorcism. Partway through the ritual, the corpse of Agnetha Chambers appeared and clawed its way across the mount toward them. Despite the obvious agony that the ritual was causing her, Aunt Aggie continued forward and literally dragged the Reverend Father to the ground and tore him to pieces with her bare hands. Poor Ben Charlton (who was protected within a circle of Holy Water that Agnetha Chambers could not cross) watched the priest’s mutilation in horror, and then was forced to complete the ritual of exorcism himself. After which he dug a shallow grave and, despite his terror, dropped in the corpse of his aunt and piled the dirt in on top of her ... Charlton survived the exorcism but was prematurely aged by it.” He held up one of the newspaper clippings that showed a snowy-haired man who looked in his seventies. “This is Charlton when he was thirty-eight, when he was being questioned by the police over the disappearance of his aunt. Despite suspicions, however, the police were unable to prove anything. Seven years later, she was officially declared dead, and Charlton inherited Briarwood House. The grossly mangled corpse of Father Francis was eventually discovered, but too late for the police to think of linking it to the disappearance of Agnetha Chambers.”

They talked for another half hour, and then Ernie departed, having convinced the young priest to lend him the diaries and other books to show to Tony Frankland.

When Ernie left the church, he was surprised to find that it was already twilight; he had spent the whole day in the church reading and talking. Overwhelmed by ravenous hunger, he stopped at a milk bar in Boothy Street to gorge himself on meat pies and coffee before continuing on to Mitchell Street to take his find to Tony Frankland.

He found Tony sitting on the hardwood bunk in the small cell, looking depressed. However, Tony’s mood quickly changed as Ernie related all that he had uncovered.

“That explains who the old hag was,” said Tony, elated to have the forty-year mystery at last solved, “and also why she returned from the grave in the disguise of Leonard Moffett....”

“Because she was revived by the spilling of Leonard’s blood,” Ernie finished.

“But that’s only half the problem solved. We still have to know how to send Agnetha Chambers back into the ground?”

Holding up the Malleus Maleficarum, Ernie said, “This gives the ritual to exorcise the ghoul, but it’s a very dangerous procedure and isn’t safe for only one person to perform. Benjamin Charlton managed it alone, but he had no choice after Agnetha Chambers slaughtered Father Francis. And even then, Charlton himself was almost killed in the effort; he died in 1907 aged fifty-five, but the photograph of his corpse lying in state looks more like the body of a ninety-year-old man.”

“Then you’ll need the help of someone else.”

“How about Bear?” asked Ernie, remembering how the police sergeant had helped him a few months earlier to defeat the Great Rainbow Snake. ‘He’s more likely to believe our story than anyone else would,’ thought Ernie.

However, Tony was opposed to the idea of involving Bear Ross: “Bear is already in trouble with the big city cops from Melbourne because he wouldn’t let them play Dirty Harry after I killed the creature masquerading as Leonard Moffett. If you asked for his help, knowing how big-hearted he is, he’d undoubtedly help, but we can’t risk letting him flush his career down the drain.”

“Then who?” demanded Ernie.

“The priest, it has to be the priest, Father Dominique.”

“Do you think he’ll help us?”

“I don’t know, but it’s worth a try. Besides, from what you’ve told me, you’ll need some kind of religious paraphernalia to survive the exorcism ritual, wafers or Holy Water to form a protective circle around you. That’s the only reason Benjamin Charlton survived the ritual. Father Francis was either too vain or careless to realise that he needed the same sort of protection, so Agnetha Chambers was able to get to him to tear him limb from limb. If Father Dominique won’t agree to perform the ritual, at the very least, he must lend you the implements you need.”

“And if he won’t lend them to us?”

“Then you’ll have to break into the church at night and steal them. That shouldn’t be any big problem since the church is never locked.”

“You want me to break into a church? That’s sacrilege!”

“Look, this is no time to have scruples, Ernie. Putting that monster back into the ground is the only important consideration at the moment....” Tony sighed heavily, and then gazed down at his hands in his lap and said, “At the time when I pulled the trigger and blew that creature’s head off, I thought that I was doing Victoria a big favour by keeping that ghoul from becoming premier. But in the time that I’ve been locked up I’ve had a chance to think things over and it has occurred to me that maybe it was the worst thing I could have done....”

“How come?” asked Ernie, puzzled by the idea.

“Because if it had run for office, despite what the opinion polls said, it might have been defeated by John Cain....”

“Or it might have won power!” countered Ernie.

“In which case, in office its actions would have been restrained, to some extent at least, by its desire to maintain the illusion of being human ... But even more so by the power of the State Senate to block legislation that was too outrageous. But by ‘killing’ the creature, I’ve taken away those restraints. Now it cannot maintain the illusion of humanity, so there’s nothing to stop it from going on the rampage, slaughtering hundreds, perhaps even thousands of innocent people in Victoria, and even perhaps right around Australia....”

“Oh my God,” cried Ernie, realising that Tony was right. “We’ve got to stop this monster as quickly as possible ... At any cost!”

“Even if it means robbing a church!” added Tony.


When Ernie returned to St. Margaret’s, though, he found that the young priest was only too glad to help out. “As I said yesterday, I’ve always wanted to try my hand at an authentic exorcism.”

“You realise that you’ll be putting your life in great danger?” said Ernie, wondering why he was now trying to talk the priest out of helping. “Remember what happened to Father Benjamin and Father Francis a century earlier!”

“All the more reason why I must help put this hellish creature into the ground, to help avenge the murders of my two fellow priests.”

Remembering what Tony had said earlier about religious paraphernalia, Ernie asked about the implements they would need to protect themselves during the exorcism.

Father Dominique produced a large box of ceremonial wafers, filled a litre bottle with Holy Water from the font, and then disappeared into the rear of the church. He returned a moment later, holding a small black box. Taking a gilt key from his robes, he unlocked the black box and produced what looked like an icy pole stick to Ernie.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Every Catholic church must have some true religious relic to be consecrated. This is ours: a sliver of the True Cross, upon which our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified in the year A.D. 37.” Seeing Ernie’s look of scepticism, the priest said, “I know what you’re thinking. If every sliver of wood ever claimed to be from the True Cross were somehow gathered together, we’d have a cross the size of the Sydney Opera House ... That may well be true, Ernie, but if we are going to have any hope at all of living through the exorcism ritual, we must both have complete faith that this particular piece of True Cross is authentic ... Obviously I can’t prove it to you scientifically ... but I do know for certain that this relic has been at St. Margaret’s since the church’s founding in 1838, only one year after the town of Glen Hartwell itself was founded ... Before that it was the property of a church in England for nearly seven hundred years and a catholic cathedral in Rome itself for nine hundred years before that....”

“All right, all right, you’ve got me convinced,” said Ernie, raising a laugh from the priest. “Now the only problem is to locate an unhallowed spot where no human blood has ever been spilt, to bury Agnetha Chambers after the exorcism.”

That was where their whole plan almost faltered; they spent weeks trying to locate a suitable site without success. [During which time the Victorian state election was held, returning John Cain to power with an increased majority.] After the first few days, Father Dominique took to joining Ernie on his nightly visits to Tony Frankland (to the surprise of Bear Ross and the other police), and the three men would sit together on the wooden bunk in the small cell, throwing around suggestions for a possible exorcism site.

“There must be somewhere locally that hasn’t had human blood spilt on it?” said Tony Frankland after they had been tossing ideas around for nearly three weeks.

“I’m starting to think that there isn’t,” said Ernie glumly.

“Yes,” agreed Father Dominique. “It reminds me of the Hindu fable where a married couple go to Gautama Buddha and ask him to bring back to life their baby son who has just died. The Buddha agrees to do so, but only if they can bring him six mustard seeds that have been given to them by the occupants of a house that has never known the death of a husband, wife, son, daughter, mother, father, grandparent, grandchild, or friend or workmate. The couple went away, overjoyed that their son would soon be returned to them. They visit the house of a friend of the husband and ask for six mustard seeds, which are provided to them. But when they ask, ‘Has anyone ever died in this house?’ they are told that the owner’s grandfather died there five years ago. So they hand back the seeds and go to see a friend of the wife. This time, the friend’s husband died there, eight years ago. At another house, a son had died, at another a daughter ... And so on, until they have asked at every house in their village and in every house some loved one has died. Finally, they are forced to concede that they will never find a house in which no one has ever died, and so their son will never be returned to them.”

“And no ground on which no human blood has ever been spilt around Glen Hartwell!” added Ernie. He sighed heavily and then said, “It’s a pity we can’t return the witch to the side of Mount Abergowrie. I’ve done a little mountain climbing in my time, helping Morrie Blewett look for Angora goats that escaped from his farm.”

“Yes, so have I,” agreed Father Dominique. “I was taught by a friend -- another priest -- when I lived in New South Wales some years back. But with Leonard Moffett’s blood spilt, we can’t bury her there a second time, in case she can return a second time in the guise of Leonard Moffett.”

Looking up sharply, Tony asked, “But can she? Maybe she can only return once in each persona?”

“Maybe,” agreed the priest, “but we can’t afford to assume that, and the book of spells doesn’t say one way or the other.”

“Still it’s a pity,” said Tony. “To my knowledge, apart from Leonard Moffett, no one has ever died on the mount. It’s too steep for the Aborigines to bother with before the coming of the white man, and likewise for farming. And for one reason or another, the logging industry has never got round to touching this area.” He sighed then added, “It’s a pity there isn’t some other local mountain that might do.”

Ernie and Father Dominique stared at each other as they both thought the same thing, but it was the priest who said, “Of course, that’s it, another mountain!”

“What about Mount Peterson?” suggested Ernie.

“No good, a firefighter died there during the Ash Wednesday bushfires in Feb 1983,” said Tony.

“What about Mount Daniels?”

“Old Man Thompson died there seven years ago,” said Father Dominique.

“Mount Wanderei then?”

“A group of Aborigines were massacred there by white settlers in the 1830s.”

“Then Mount Hargreaves?” suggested Ernie.

“Mount Hargreaves?” repeated Tony, trying to think if anyone had ever died there.

“Mount Hargreaves!” shouted the young priest in excitement. “No one has ever climbed it, because the first two hundred metres are a sheer climb.”

“Then how are you two going to climb it?” pointed out Tony.

“Well, Ernie and I both have a little mountain climbing experience....”

“A little is right,” agreed Ernie, “but nowhere near enough to climb Mount Hargreaves without some very expert assistance. Mount Hargreaves is 3000 metres tall, the third tallest mountain in Victoria, the fifth or sixth in Australia. Even if no one has ever died on the mountain, five or six people have died falling off it!”

“But we won’t be climbing all the way to the top; we only have to climb the first two hundred metres to the first level section,” pointed out Father Dominique.

“Even so, without some professional help, there’s just no way ...!”

“All right,” said the priest determinedly, “then we’ll have to get some professional help!”

“But where could we ...?” began Ernie.

“My friend in New South Wales,” said Father Dominique. “He has a parish in Strathfield, but regularly takes trips overseas to climb Everest, the Matterhorn and other peaks that make Mount Hargreaves look like a molehill.”

“He’s climbed Everest?” asked Tony Frankland in awe.

“Twice, and lived to boast about it.”

So it was all settled, Ernie, Father Dominique, and Father Benedict (as the New South Welshman was known) would climb Mt. Hargreaves, perform the exorcism ritual and bury the corpse of Agnetha Chambers safely upon the mountainside.

Their plans were nearly spoilt; however, by Father Benedict’s initial refusal to help out. After a week of frantic telephone calls from Glen Hartwell to Strathfield, the New South Welshman finally agreed to help them. However, he made it plain from the start, “I’m only going to help with the mountain climbing. I don’t believe in any of that hocus-pocus exorcism stuff.”

Father Dominique sighed his agreement, and Ernie could not help recalling what the priest had told him on their first encounter about many young priests not even believing in God any more. Ernie knew that many modern priests preferred to wear black slacks and black shirts, rather than the traditional smock; however, Father Benedict would not go even that far when outside his own church, preferring to dress in brightly coloured slacks and short-sleeved business shirts.

“Well, just so long as you understand that?” insisted the New South Welshman.

“Yes, yes,” agreed Father Dominique, trying his best not to offend the other priest, yet being offended himself by the older man’s sacrilegious attitude.

Deciding that it would be best to change the subject, Ernie said, “One thing that has just occurred to me, how do we get Agnetha Chambers to follow us up Mount Hargreaves? Surely you can’t perform the ritual without her being there with us?”

“That’s true,” agreed Father Dominique, “but I don’t think that will be any problem. I think our greatest worry will be staying out of her clutches while climbing the mount ... I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but the old girl has been hovering around the Glen the last few weeks as though she were aware that we’re cooking up something.”

“Yes, yes, I have noticed,” agreed Ernie. He had twice seen the cadaverous ghoul from a distance -- once while on his way to visit Tony Frankland; once while on his way home from St. Margaret’s. “Do you think she knows what we’re up to?”

“Possibly, but even so, I don’t think she’ll be able to resist the opportunity to kill us while we’re helpless upon the sheer face of the mount.”

So saying, he looked toward the New South Welshman, afraid he might be concerned by their talk; however, Father Benedict shrugged and said, “If you’re trying to scare me with all this hocus-pocus, forget it. I don’t believe all that demonic monster stuff ... Demonic visitations are straight out of the Middle Ages ... Where they belong!”

Sighing his frustration that a Man of the Cloth could be so cynical about Heaven and Hell, Father Dominique started to gather together the religious objects that they would need: the Malleus Maleficarum with its exorcism ritual, large crosses, silver candlesticks, wafers, two-litre bottles of Holy Water, and the black box containing the holy relic.

As they were packing the religious items, along with their mountaineering equipment, Father Benedict saw the black box and asked, “What’s in there?”

“Our relic,” explained Father Dominique, “a small sliver of the True Cross.”

“The True Cross?” asked Father Benedict in obvious contempt. “You know that when I was a trainee priest, we were told that if you could put together all the known pieces of the True Cross....”

“You’d end up with a cross the size of the Sydney Opera House!” Father Dominique finished for him.

“No,” corrected Father Benedict, completely unfazed, “we were told the Empire State Building in New York ... But I suppose it’s the same difference!”

That night, they paid one final visit to Tony Frankland in the small lock-up behind the police station in Mitchell Street. They left him the two diaries (a fact possible since the police did not question Father Dominique’s word when he told them that the books and papers were religious texts to help raise the prisoner’s spirits), along with photocopies of the exorcism ritual from the Malleus Maleficarum (in case they were all killed and someone else had to attempt the ritual), and a sealed letter from Ernie to Tony’s daughter Rowena. “To be given to her only if I don’t come back alive from the mount,” stressed Ernie -- for the first time since he had been chased through the streets of Glen Hartwell as the black wolf by Agnetha Chambers, really appreciating the danger of what they were about to attempt.


When they started the climb, Father Benedict led the way, climbing a good five metres ahead of Ernie (who as the least experienced climber among them was placed in the safest spot where if he was to fall, harnessed to the other two they had a chance to rescue him), who was another five metres ahead of Father Dominique, who brought up the rear. All three were dressed in hobnailed climbing boots, thick jeans, heavy sweaters and thick, leather gloves. On their backs they carried bulging rucksacks.

They had barely started the climb when Ernie heard the rattle of loose stones falling a few metres away to his left. Looking around, he was terrified to see the skull-like face of Agnetha Chambers glaring at him from five metres away. Unlike Ernie and the two priests who were using a plethora of ropes and spigots to laboriously climb the sheer cliff face, the century-dead monster managed to stand at a right angle to the cliff, in total defiance of the law of gravity.

Seeing Ernie looking across at her, the cadaverous old hag glared menacingly toward him, making Ernie fear that she intended to leap across the cliff face to attack him. He remembered Father Dominique saying that their greatest problem would be how to stay out of her clutches while climbing Mount Hargreaves. Almost letting go of the rope from terror, he thought, ‘My God, if she attacks us now, we’re all done for!’ However, despite glaring balefully at Ernie through the empty eye sockets of her yellowing, skull-like face, the dead witch kept her distance, content to follow the mountaineers, easily walking up the mountainside while the three men strained with all their might to stay alive while scaling the sheer mountain face.

Although he kept his eyes riveted to the ghoul that was keeping pace with them, Ernie did his best to keep moving up the mountain face. However, as the others began to lag and drag on the safety rope, their leader looked back and called out, “What’s the delay? I thought you’d both done this kind of thing before?”

“We’ve got a visitor,” called up Father Dominique from only a metre behind Ernie now.

“A what?” asked Father Benedict, looking back and almost losing his footing from alarm as he saw the ghoul of Agnetha Chambers a few metres below him on the rock face. “Oh my God, what is that?” he asked, unable to believe his own eyes.

“A demonic visitation straight out of the Middle Ages,” replied Father Dominique caustically, throwing the other priest’s words from earlier back up into his face.

“But she ... It is walking straight up the side of the mountain in defiance of gravity!” cried the New South Welshman.

“Gravity is within the realm of science, and science is just another name for God’s Laws,” explained Father Dominique. “Where this creature comes from, they don’t obey the laws of our God.” So saying he reached back carefully toward his knapsack for one of the two-litre bottles of Holy Water to splash the ghoul with, however, seeing the movement and realising his intention and remembering the agony that she had suffered a hundred years earlier when Father Francis had splashed Gregorian Water on her, Aunt Aggie let out a piercing shriek of rage and indignation and took off at high speed. Literally running straight up the sheer mountainside to wait for the three men somewhere on the level ground still more than a hundred and fifty metres above their heads.

The three men continued up the mountain, although they all would have preferred to descend back to earth -- fearful of what trap might await them when they finally reached the level ground above.


They had climbed nearly two hundred and fifty metres before reaching the first plateau and tentatively stepped up onto the level ground. ‘This is when it will happen!’ thought Ernie, expecting Agnetha Chambers to race across from one of the many leafy shrubs that ringed the perimeter of the small clearing and coated much of the remainder of the mountain. However, despite his instinct of danger, they managed to step out onto the small grassy plateau without any trouble from the monster.

The level patch (actually at an incline of five or eight degrees toward the cliff edge) was no more than fifty square metres in size.

“What do you think?” asked Father Benedict, looking up toward the next sheer section. Which, unlike the part that they had just climbed, was covered with large bushes, which would easily conceal the passage of their adversary, making it possible for her to follow or even attack without them being aware of her presence. All three men looked around, all three wondering what would be worse: staying where they were to perform the exorcism, or being attacked while trying to climb higher.

Finally, Father Dominique said, “This is as good a place as any.”

Removing his rucksack from his back, he started to unpack the contents: the two-litre bottles of Holy Water, four boxes of holy wafers, the Malleus Maleficarum, some ceremonial white candles, incense, and a special shiny black satin priest’s robe. Seeing Ernie’s raised eyebrows, he explained, “A special exorcism robe. It probably isn’t really necessary -- it’s the words of the ritual that really matter. Still, it can’t hurt to be on the safe side.”

While Ernie and Father Benedict watched on, Father Dominique changed into the flowing black robes and then carefully laid out a protective circle around half the clearing by crumbling holy wafers onto the ground while reciting a special prayer. After he had finished, he instructed the other two men to step into the circle, warning them to be extremely careful not to scatter the broken wafers. Then he proceeded to sprinkle Gregorian Water over the wafers, chanting the Prayer to St. Michael as he went:

“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our defence against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen....”

After he had covered the circle of wafers with Holy Water, Father Dominique lit an even dozen long, thin white candles and carefully placed them around the circle, still chanting the Prayer to St. Michael.

He continued with the Prayer to St. Michael even after the Holy Circle had been sealed, and then nervously he picked up the Malleus Maleficarum and turned to a page that he had previously marked.

Turning to look sheepishly toward Ernie and Father Benedict, he said, “Before I start the exorcism proper, I must impress upon you both the importance of not stepping outside the protective circle until the ritual is completed.” He looked hard at his fellow priest, worried that his scepticism could endanger (or even kill) them all. However, Father Benedict’s lack of faith had received a painful jolt from the sight of Agnetha Chambers’ mouldering corpse running effortlessly up the mountainside. He nodded his head in agreement, and Father Dominique took a deep breath before beginning to recite the exorcism ritual.

As the ritual was commenced, the night seemed almost preternaturally silent. No sound broke the stillness of the night save for the chanting of the young priest. ‘Surely even on the side of the mount there should be some kind of night sounds?’ thought Ernie, aware of the din that the crickets and cicadas usually set up in the countryside each night. However, the mount was silent as death. Not a cricket chirped, not an owl hooted.

At first, Ernie feared that the exorcism was failing, or had had the wrong effect, driving Agnetha Chambers from the mountainside, instead of attracting her. ‘Where is she?’ he thought as the ritual continued without any sign of the monster that they were trying to send back to the grave. ‘Surely she couldn’t have descended (raced!) down the mount again, leaving us up here performing the ritual without hope of success?’

As though sensing Ernie’s thoughts, Father Dominique suddenly stopped chanting and looked up at him. “Don’t lose your faith in God, Ernie,” he warned, “to have any chance of living through this night, let alone succeeding in our task, we must all have complete faith in what I am trying to do.”

Ernie looked around, startled as the priest returned to the ritual. Almost immediately, there came a loud rustling from the lush bushes at the opposite edge of the clearing. Then, as though in answer to Father Dominique’s words to Ernie, the gaunt, fleshless ghoul of Agnetha Chambers shambled out from where she had been hiding, watching all along.

Slowly, the monster began to move toward them in a strange, jerky, puppet-like motion, and Ernie realised that she was resisting with all her might, but was being forced forward by the words of the exorcism ritual. As the skeletal creature approached, once more she reminded Ernie of a giant white spider creeping along.

Unable to fight the power of God in the words that the priest read out, the hellish creature shambled zombie-like across the clearing until she was only metres from the Holy Circle.

Enraged by this treatment, the monster let out a bloodcurdling shriek of fear and rage, startling the three men. As they all instinctively stepped back a pace to escape the shrilling noise, Father Dominique broke his own advice, unwittingly backing out of the protective circle.

Seeing the danger the young priest had put himself into, Ernie shouted, “For God’s sake, come back into ...!”

But too late!

Seizing her chance, the ghoul of Agnetha Chambers raced round the circle at an incredible speed and grabbed the young priest, who cried out in terror, dropping the Malleus Maleficarum ahead of him, back into the circle.

Ernie and Father Benedict both raced forward to grab one of Father Dominique’s arms each in a bid to pull the screaming priest out of the monster’s grip. However, the ghoul had all the strength of Hell behind her and easily dragged the priest out of their grip, almost pulling all three men out of the circle.

As they watched on in horror, Agnetha Chambers raced across the clearing toward the edge of the mountain, still carrying the screaming priest, and leapt into space.

The priest’s shrieks turned to one long, continuous scream as he plummeted two hundred and fifty metres to his death.

“They’ve ... they’ve both gone over the edge!” said Father Benedict dumbly. However, even as he spoke, they heard the hellish cackling of Agnetha Chambers and saw the cadaverous creature climb back over the edge of the cliff and knew that after jumping over the edge, she had dropped the priest to his death, then had grabbed onto the mountainside, which she had easily scaled again.

Cackling like a loon, the monster crept across the clearing toward the circle like a cat stalking a pair of mice. As she approached, the two men quivered from terror together in the middle of the Holy Circle.

“Oh my God, my God, we’re done for!” shrieked Father Benedict.

“We’re ... we’re safe as long as we stay inside the circle,” said Ernie, only hoping that it was true.

“Safe, safe, what about Father Dominique? He was inside the circle and that ... That monster just reached in and plucked him out!”

“He was careless enough to step out of the circle,” pointed out Ernie, tempted to slap the cowering priest to calm him down. “As long as we’re careful to stay in the Holy Circle, we should be safe.”

“But for how long? How long? We can’t stay in here forever! Eventually, we’ll have to leave the circle or we’ll starve to death in here!”

Hearing the priest’s words and detecting the hysteria in his voice, Agnetha Chambers began to cackle from delight, rubbing her bony, fleshless fingers together from expectation.

Knowing that the priest was right, Ernie began looking around for a way out and saw the Malleus Maleficarum just within the circle where Father Dominique had dropped it. Walking across, he stooped to pick up the book, careful not to let any part of his body break the circle, remembering how easily the young priest had been plucked to his doom, and said, “You’ll have to complete the exorcism ritual.”

“What? Me? I’ve never done that sort of thing.”

“Neither had Father Dominique, until today.”

“And look what happened to him!”

“Only because he got careless!” pointed out Ernie. “You’re a priest! You have to do the exorcism, or, as you said, we’ll be trapped here until we starve to death!”

“But I don’t even believe ...!” said Father Benedict. He stopped in mid-sentence, having almost sinned, saying, “I don’t believe in God!” Instead, he said, “I don’t believe in that kind of thing!”

“How can you not believe, when the proof is right before your eyes?” demanded Ernie. He pointed to where Agnetha Chambers’ withered corpse stood just outside the circle, cackling with glee at their distress, confident that sooner or later they would risk making a run for it, knowing that as soon as they left the safety of the protective circle, they were doomed.

“Well, yes ... I believe in that creature,” he admitted, “I had no choice after seeing it run up the side of the mountain. What I mean is that I don’t believe in the power of mere words to drive something like that back to Hell where it belongs.”

“Well, whatever you do or don’t believe,” insisted Ernie, “you’ve got no choice. You have to finish the exorcism or we’re both dead.”

“But I can’t ... I can’t!”

“For God’s sake, you’re a priest, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but ... but I’ve never been a very good priest!” he admitted with shame.

Ernie stared at Father Benedict with a mixture of contempt and sympathy. Although sickened by the man’s weakness, Ernie knew how difficult it must be for him to suddenly have his lack of faith so brutally shattered. Also, remembering his own terror two years earlier when first faced with a supernatural monster, aware of his own terror right now, Ernie knew that he had no right to be too harsh on the priest.

Trying to be firm but sympathetic at the same time, he said, “I know it won’t be easy for you, but you have no choice. If either of us is to ever get off the mountain alive, you have to perform the exorcism. Then even the death of Father Dominique won’t have been for nothing ... If it allows you the chance to prove to yourself for the first time that you can be a good priest....”

“But I don’t ...” began the priest.

Realising what he was about to say, Ernie cut him off: “Many priests suffer a loss of faith at some stage in their vocation. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But I don’t know how to perform an exorcism,” he protested.

Handing the Malleus Maleficarum to the priest, Ernie said, “It’s all down in there ... All you have to do is read straight from the book and try your best to believe in what you are reading.”

“I ...” hesitated the priest again, but then he took the book and reluctantly started to read through the ritual to himself to locate the place where Father Dominique had reached before being killed by the ghoul.

Giving the priest a small pat on the back of encouragement, Ernie said, “Have faith, I know you can do it!” thinking, ‘I just hope I’m not sending you to your death as well!’

As soon as Father Benedict started to recite the exorcism, Agnetha Chambers let out a hellish shriek and clutched her hands to her ears in a vain bid to block out the holy words. Gibbering from terror, she turned and tried to race away across the clearing toward the edge of the cliff; however, as before, the power of the words held her within the clearing.

Unable to flee from the area of the holy circle, Agnetha Chambers began to roll around the circle, hard against the circle, which, like the portal to the church earlier, gave off a blinding flash of light each time she touched it. Again and again, the monster threw itself against the circle, desperately attempting to get to the two men before the exorcism drove her into the ground.

“Noooooooooo!” shrieked the ghoul, hammering her fists repeatedly against the circle, impervious to the blinding flashes, which her pummelling fists produced.

Seeing the blinding flashes of light going off like a million flash bulbs, Father Benedict hesitated from terror, thinking that the skeletal creature would somehow break through the Gregorian Circle to murder them as she had murdered Father Dominique.

While the priest hesitated, the monster seemed to grow stronger, as though drawing power from his fear. Slowly, she began to push forward, her features began to flatten against her rotting face as though she were trying to make her way through a wall of transparent rubber.

A thin outline of her body began to push into the circle and, fearing that she would somehow break through to them, Ernie rounded on the cowering priest, saying, “For God’s sake, get on with the ritual!”

Father Benedict looked toward Ernie, his eyes wide, staring, seeming to look right through Ernie, his lips pursed in a question mark as though unable to comprehend what he was saying.

Ernie started to repeat the warning; however, the message finally filtered through to the priest, who buried his face in the book as though afraid to look up for fear of seeing the ghoul again, and began reciting the exorcism ritual again, at first hesitantly, but then with slowly mounting confidence.

The instant that the priest began reciting the exorcism again, Agnetha Chambers’ shrieks took on a shrill note, and a blinding flash from the protective circle sent her flying backwards, head over heels to the ground.

Despite the pain that had already had inflicted upon her, the monster picked herself up and started forward again, still hoping to force her way through the circle wall somehow. Again, there was a blinding flash the moment that she touched the space around the circle, and again she was thrown backwards. Although this time, with difficulty, she managed to retain her footing.

Failing to break through into the circle and unable to move more than a metre or so away from it, she began to creep around the circle until she was standing as close as possible to the chanting priest. Apart from the invisible wall above the circle, she was within reach of the priest. Shrieking loudly in a bid to attract his attention away from the book again, the ghoul began to swing her talon-like hands against the protective circle, knowing that she was unable to reach him, but desperately hoping to attract his attention and possibly even frighten him into dropping the book outside the circle to prevent him from chanting -- and also in the hope that he would be foolish enough to step out of the circle to try to pick up the book again.

Ernie watched the performance in horror, afraid that somehow the ghoul might succeed in luring the priest out of the circle to his death. However, Father Benedict wisely kept his head well down in the book, refusing to be distracted by the hellish creature, and as the exorcism continued, the monster’s shrieks went up a pitch until Ernie had to cover his ears for fear that his eardrums might burst.

As her screams reached a fever pitch, Ernie could barely hear the priest’s words any longer. Although he realised that Father Benedict was now shouting in a bid to make himself heard above the sound of the creature’s howling.

Then, to Ernie’s astonishment, the ghoul of Agnetha Chambers began to sink slowly down into the ground. At first, he thought that she had simply dropped to her knees, but then he noticed that she was actually being swallowed up into the earth as though the ground outside the Gregorian Circle had somehow turned into quicksand.

While she sank into the earth, she continued to scream hysterically and thrash about like a mad thing, frantically trying to pull herself back to the surface. When only her head remained above ground, the creature turned toward Ernie and shrieked a plea for help. But seeing the horrid fleshless skull shrieking at him, Ernie’s only thought was to stay in the circle where it was safe, until the monster was completely below ground. As she finally sank below the surface, her last scream was smothered into a drowning gurgle, as the earth closed over her head and filled her screaming mouth with soil.

Looking up from the book at last, as Agnetha Chambers’ final scream was cut off, Father Benedict strayed from the exorcism ritual to finish, “Rest in peace.”

“Amen!” responded Ernie.

Having worked right through the night, the two men knew that they were both too exhausted to be able to safely climb down the mountain. So they pitched camp upon Mount Hargreaves and slept upon the lush grass for nearly seven hours. After waking, they had a quick breakfast and then packed up their rucksacks, ready to descend the mountain.

As they started to descend, a thought suddenly struck Ernie, and he said, “My God, what if she can return in the guise of Father Dominique? Isn’t that possible?”

“I doubt it,” reassured Father Benedict. “He didn’t die on the mountain itself, but fell off to die on the forest floor below.”

Ernie had no choice but to accept the priest’s assurance. However, he determined to make certain that the dead priest was buried in hallowed ground as far away from Mount Hargreaves as possible.

At the bottom of the mountain, they located the broken corpse of Father Dominique and carried him to Ernie’s Range-Rover, and then set off for Glen Hartwell.

Back at the Glen, they stopped off at Mitchell Street to report the death of Father Dominique to Bear Ross. Knowing that there was no way to lie about the manner of death -- since the body had been badly broken in the fall from the mountain -- they admitted that he had fallen off the side of Mount Hargreaves.

“What the Hell was he doing climbing the mountain in the first place?” demanded Bear, a little suspicious of Ernie’s explanation of the priest’s death, and on edge after the continuing harassment he had been receiving from Mike Mannas, who was still manoeuvring to take Tony Frankland to Melbourne and out of Bear’s safekeeping.

Quickly ad-libbing, Ernie said, “Father Benedict came down from Strathfield in New South Wales to visit his long-time friend, and since all three of us were experienced mountain climbers, we couldn’t resist having a go at Mount Hargreaves.”

“But the damn mountain has never been successfully climbed!” pointed out Bear. But seeing the state of shock that the surviving priest was clearly in, he decided not to push the two men any further. Going across to his desk, he started to ring the coroner, saying, “I’ll get Elvis Green to come over to collect the body.”

After examining the corpse, Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green (so nicknamed because of his long, bushy black sideburns) said, “By the looks of things, he’s been dead at least twenty-four hours.”

“That’s right,” agreed Ernie. “We were climbing in the evening and had just reached a level section when he fell. It was too dark to climb down again, so we pitched camp on the mountainside and climbed down the next morning to collect the body.”

Although neither man was completely satisfied with the answer, both Bear and Elvis were close friends of Ernie, so they agreed to let the matter go at that.

As they left the morgue and stepped out into Baltimore Drive, Ernie said, “Well, that’s half the battle over!”

“What do you mean?” asked Father Benedict.

“Well, we’ve managed to send that hell hag back where she belongs, but we still have to find a way to get Tony released from the charge of having murdered Leonard Moffett. Since we know that bitch wasn’t Moffett.”

“Of course,” agreed the priest, climbing into the Range-Rover beside Ernie, “but what chance do we have of convincing your police sergeant, or anyone else for that matter? I didn’t believe it myself until I saw that hellish ghoul, and I’m a priest!”

They returned to the police station in Mitchell Street to visit Tony Frankland, and told him everything that had happened on Mount Hargreaves, and then discussed the question of how to get him released.

“Frankly, I think it’s hopeless,” admitted Tony. “Without being able to prove positively that that monster I shot wasn’t really Leonard Moffett....”

“That’s it!” cried Ernie, snapping his fingers. Inspiration struck. “That’s the answer!”

“What’s the answer?” asked Tony, looking up at Ernie, who stood in the small walk space in front of the hard bunk bed upon which Tony sat.

“We have to show that whatever you killed that day, it wasn’t Leonard Moffett.”

“But how can you do that?” asked Tony, puzzled.

“By digging up the remains of the real Leonard from where you buried him upon the side of Mount Abergowrie forty years ago!”

Which turned out to be easier said than done. Mount Abergowrie had been razed by bushfires in the Ash Wednesday holocaust of February 1983, leaving most of its original foliage black and charred.

As they climbed the mount, Ernie was dismayed by the sight of so much blackened ruin -- black trees looking like giant sticks of charcoal stood up from black grass and leaves, with just an occasional smattering of new green shoots among the forest of ash and charcoal.

Despite Tony’s detailed instructions, the mountainside had been so thoroughly altered by the forest fire that it took the two men more than a week to locate the area to dig up the skeletal remains of Leonard Moffett.

“Well, there it is,” said Father Benedict, crossing himself as they gazed down at the small skeleton that they had unearthed.

“There’s not much here, is there?” commented Ernie, alarmed at how badly decomposed the skeleton was, worried that after forty years, there might not be enough left to identify.

“No,” agreed the priest, realising what Ernie was thinking, “but it’ll have to be enough or Tony is doomed to spend the next twenty years in gaol.”


“But how can it be Leonard Moffett?” demanded Bear Ross when he and Mike Mannas stared down at the small skeleton after reluctantly agreeing to go to the mount to investigate what the two men had found.

“Come off it,” protested Mannas, “we saw your friend Frankland blow Leonard Moffett’s head apart like a rotten watermelon. So whoever this was, it can’t possibly have been Moffett.”

“I assure you that that is exactly who it was, Inspector,” insisted Father Benedict, deciding that at last it was time for him to become a good priest. “Surely you wouldn’t accuse me of lying?”

Although taken aback by the priest’s words, Mannas quickly recovered his composure to say, “No offence, Father, but if the Pope himself told me that this is the skeleton of Leonard Moffett, I still wouldn’t believe it.”

Nevertheless, Mannas had no choice but to believe it, when the identification of Leonard Moffett’s remains was confirmed two days later by dental records.

“But it can’t be Leonard Moffett!” protested Mike Mannas. However, he readily agreed to take part in a cross-examination of Tony Frankland with Bear Ross.

Tony repeated to the two policemen the story he had already told Ernie of how Leonard Moffett had died on the side of Mount Abergowrie when they were playing as teenagers forty years earlier, and how an impostor had turned up to take his place.

“An impostor?” asked Mike Mannas, wondering whether he had heard correctly.

“That’s correct,” agreed Tony, who had decided that it was wisest not to try to explain to them how Agnetha Chambers had taken over the life of Leonard Moffett.

“Well, it’s got me stumped!” admitted Bear Ross as he, Mannas, and Terry Blewett sat around his large, blackwood desk in the front office of the police station a short time later.

“He’s lying!” insisted Mannas. “His whole story is a load of crap!”

“But what about the dental charts?” demanded Terry.

“Oh, he’s telling the truth about that much of it,” conceded Mannas reluctantly, “but he’s lying about the impostor just appearing out of nowhere. I mean, let’s face it, how likely is it that a fourteen-year-old look-alike is going to just turn up to take the place of a dead kid?”

“A look-alike close enough to the real thing that even his parents, Doreen and Arthur Moffett, never suspected a thing!” pointed out Terry Blewett.

“Exactly,” agreed Mannas. “No, Frankland knows a lot more about the impostor than he’s telling. But don’t worry; I’ll get the truth out of him over the next week or so, one way or another!”

However, Mannas never got the chance to get the truth out of Tony. To Bear Ross’ astonishment, the Melbourne Police Inspector and the whole squad of big city cops who had been swarming around Glen Hartwell for weeks were suddenly all recalled to Melbourne.

Even more surprising, the next day, Bear received a telephone call from the Prime Minister’s Department in Canberra, informing him that two Federal Special Agents would be coming down from Canberra to take charge of Tony Frankland.

“Yes, sir, certainly, sir,” said Bear sheepishly, having never dealt with anyone so high up in the Australian police system before. Hanging up the receiver, he repeated the gist of the telephone conversation to Terry Blewett, who said:

“Well, what the Hell was that all about? What does the Prime Minister’s Department have to do with a simple murder investigation?”

“You’ve got me,” admitted Bear, “I guess we’ll find out when the two special agents arrive.”

The next morning, the two agents, Jon-James Spencer and Robin Harper, arrived. The two men were complete opposites: Spencer, in his late thirties, tall and lean yet with a powerful physique, fiercely blond, with shoulder-length hair; Harper, in his mid-fifties, short, dumpy, with a great potbelly, and crew-cut black hair.

“All right,” said Jon-James when the two agents were alone with Tony Frankland in the small holding cell at the back of the Mitchell Street police Station. “How much of this story is true?”

“All of it,” insisted Tony. “The dental records prove that....”

“We’re not talking about that,” cut in Robin Harper. “As you say, the dental records prove that part of it. We’re talking about the other part.”

“The other part?”

“The part about Agnetha Chambers and the exorcism performed atop Mount Hargreaves,” explained Jon-James.

“But how did you ...?” began Tony, half wondering whether they had already interrogated Ernie and Father Benedict before coming to see him. ‘Maybe one of them cracked under pressure!’ he thought.

The two special agents exchanged a glance, and then Jon-James Spencer said, “Look, let’s cut through the crap and get down to brass tacks. Three days ago, the Prime Minister received a special phone call regarding your story....”

“The Prime Minister?” asked Tony in amazement. He wondered whether Ernie or Father Benedict would have dared to ring the Prime Minister on his behalf.

Aware of what he must be thinking, Jon-James smiled broadly then said, “No, no, this call was from someone a little more influential than either of your two friends....”

“Then who ...?”

“To put it bluntly,” said Robin Harper, “it was from the Pope!”

“The Pope?” asked Tony stupidly, wondering if they were pulling his leg.

“That’s right. It seems that your friend, Father Benedict, rang through to his Monsignor in New South Wales and related to him in detail everything that happened upon Mount Hargreaves. The Monsignor was sufficiently impressed with the priest’s sincerity to phone through to the Vatican, where he related the story. Not directly to the Pope, of course, but to someone high enough up in the Vatican hierarchy to be able to pass the story on to His Holiness.

“Anyway, it seems that although the Vatican no longer openly encourages the performance of exorcisms, there have been rare occasions in recent years when they have admitted the existence of demonic possession or obsession.”

“This apparently is one of those rare occasions,” explained Jon-James, sitting on the bunk beside Tony. “However, the Prime Minister of Australia isn’t quite as religious as the Pope and wasn’t as ready to accept a story of demonic possession, so he sent us down to verify your story, before we release you from gaol.”

“Before you release ...?” asked Tony.

“That’s right,” agreed Robin Harper, smiling at the seated man.

They continued to question Tony at length over the next week, during much of which time he was hooked up to a polygraph machine, operated by Harper. Finally, to Bear Ross’ astonishment, the two special agents used their authority to have Tony Frankland released from custody.

“Oh, thank God! Thank God!” cried Samantha Frankland, crying with joy as her husband was returned to her.

“But how, why?” asked Rowena, as Ernie brought her father home to them.

Ernie shrugged and said, “It’s a long story, Rowie, and frankly, I don’t think you’d believe it.”

Three days after the release of Tony Frankland, the Prime Minister’s Department released the official version of the shooting committed by Tony: “In 1944,” Ernie read out of the Merridale Morning Mirror, “a teenage boy named Leonard Moffett was murdered by the Soviet secret service and a Russian double was substituted. The double was so exact in every particular that even Leonard’s parents did not suspect what had happened. The double took over the identity of Leonard Moffett with the intention of subverting Australia to a pro-Soviet stance in the event of a future war between the USSR and Britain or the USA. However, Tony Frankland, a resident of Glen Hartwell, where the real Moffett was born and raised, discovered the truth and killed the Soviet double to prevent him from becoming premier of Victoria, which would have only been a stepping stone to his ultimate goal: Prime Minister of Australia.”

“Do you think anyone will believe that?” asked Tony Frankland as he and Ernie sat around the living room at the Frankland sheep station, drinking cold beer straight from the can. “I mean, in 1944, World War II was still going strong, and the Russians were the allies of the USA; the Cold War was years away in the future.”

“That’s true,” agreed Ernie, “but most Aussies don’t know enough about recent history to pick that up. Besides, I think most people would find it a hell of a lot harder to believe the truth about what really happened after Leonard Moffett died.”

“That’s true,” agreed Tony, reaching for another can of Foster’s Lager.


A Month Later

The small Piper Cherokee was flying over a large mountain in the south-eastern Victorian countryside when it started to develop engine trouble.

“Hold on!” warned the pilot, “we’re going to crash.” Fighting to keep control of the plane, he attempted to glide toward a clearing that he had spotted a few hundred metres to the left.

“I think we’re going to make it,” said the young co-pilot, his eyes shining from fear. Yet even as he spoke, the plane was caught in a down draft and dropped like a rock, to smash into the side of the mountain.

The front portion of the plane disintegrated on impact, tossing the two young flyers across a clearing upon the mountainside.

The engine of the plane broke free and raced across the side of the mountain for a moment before finally coming to a halt. After the initial tumultuous burst of sound as the plane disintegrated upon the mount, the mountain soon returned to silence; not a cricket chirped, nor a cicada; not a bird cheeped....

Until a few minutes after the crash, when one of the two young flyers opened his eyes and started to pull himself to his feet. Looking down at the corpse of his companion, he said, “You were right, Father Dominique ... How can you find any piece of ground anywhere in the world that hasn’t had and won’t have human blood spilt upon it?”

Stumbling toward the clearing jerkily, still a little unsteady on his feet, the pilot walked over to the edge of the mountain. Looking down, he saw a sheer drop of nearly two hundred and fifty metres. After a second’s hesitation, he stepped out over the edge of the cliff and began to lope down the mountainside -- running vertically down the cliff face in defiance of the Laws of Gravity.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia