The Goonges

The Goonges

1

Richard stretched as he lay on the couch, trying desperately to push his body aches out of his mouth. The third straight episode of Kidchef was beginning to become nauseating.

“Isn’t teaching young people in a vocation like this a little bit like child labor?”
His wife Ainsley glared at him. “If you don’t like it, you can always go to bed.”
This was the opening he was looking for. Now all he had to do was wait for the catch.

“Just make sure you take the garbage out on your way.”
Not so bad, he thought. He sprang to his feet, said “Good night honey”, and made his way to the kitchen.

The garbage smelt of sweet tomato sauce from the can of baked beans at the top of the bag. He had given his son David baked beans on toast for dinner.

He carefully grabbed the bag out of the garbage bin so as not to tear it. Then, tying the bag at the top, he made his way to the door.

He opened the door to an unusual summer night. There was a chill in the air, which was very welcome in a Sydney summer. However, the chill felt unnatural. Not only had it been a hot day, but the chill didn’t seem to be cold. It was like elemental knives compelling his body to shiver.

As he walked up to the garbage bin, he also noticed the uncompromising silence that had fallen over his property. He was near the bush, so it was natural to hear at least the rustling of the trees even in a gentle breeze. Just as natural would have been the deafening soprano chorus of cicadas, interplaying with the more gentle tenor hum of the crickets below.

But tonight, there was nothing. I silence like the silence of a closed tomb. Richard’s shivers intensified as he came to notice it.

He made his way slowly to the large garbage bin and slowly placed the garbage bag inside. He tried not to disturb the silence too much, so he could hear anything that might pierce it.

His ears scanned the darkness for a sound, finding nothing. Every second the silence prevailed made him even more desperate.

When the silence was broken, he wished he hadn’t been so eager. He heard a powerful inhale coming from the darkness, a sound he felt was like a dragon taking a breath before it burnt you alive. He stole a glance in the direction of the inhale and saw a shape. It stood on his car in the driveway, crouched down, showing little definition other than an uninterrupted darkness.

The figure slowly pointed an appendage his way, as the inhale suddenly changed into the ear numbing ring of a single cicada, far louder than the noise a single cicada could make.

Every part of Richard’s body pulsed, turning into a scream when it left his mouth, and he immediately ran for the front door. He felt a desperate hunger chasing him, but he couldn’t look back. He opened and closed the door in a single movement, leaving him inside and the terror outside.

He stood at the door for a moment, panting quickly.

Ainsley walked in from the lounge room. “What happened? I heard a scream.”

Richard’s breathing had returned to normal. “Nothing, honey. It was funnel web spider. It surprised me.”

“Did you kill it?” Ainsley asked. “We can’t have those around the house with David here.”

Richard smirked. “We can’t have them around the house if David wasn’t here, darling. I killed it, and I will call the exterminator tomorrow to see if there are any more.”

“Good,” Ainsley replied. Night honey.”

“Night.” Richard made his way to the bedroom, avoiding looking out the windows as he passed them. He tried to trick himself into believing the story he had told his wife, that it was a funnel web spider he had seen and not…what he had seen.

He was convinced it was a delusion, a problem with his senses. The cicadas were ringing all along, his ears were blocked and they cleared while he was outside. The shape he saw was just a shadow, a conspiracy between the trees and the streetlight on the road. He vowed to get his ears and eyes checked, so this wouldn’t happen to him again.

He couldn’t sleep. His ears strained to hear horrific noises from outside the house, and in his mind his bed was full of funnel web spiders.

2

The clock radio pulsated with advertising, making the world around Richard feel less mysterious. He rose stiffly to sit on the side of the bed, sleepily staring forward into the familiar void of the closet.

His experience last night freshly entered his mind, and he woke up immediately. Without opening the blinds, he opened the bedroom window so that he could listen outside for a sound.

Nothing, not even the birds.

He grabbed his work clothes and made his way to the bathroom. As he shuffled through his morning routine, he felt a subconscious pull towards his body, persuading him to make his way to the other side of the house and check his car in the driveway.

He slowly made his way to the glass slide door on the western side of the house. From this vantage point, he could clearly see the car from the driveway.

The blinds were drawn, allowing a small amount of the dawn light into the room, but no full view of the outside courtyard or the driveway. As he grew closer, he carefully peeked through the blinds, towards the car.

The dawn light shone unnaturally over the courtyard. It appeared as if all light coming into his property was being polarized, similar to the effect of light shining through a car windscreen – a general illumination with no glare.

The creature he had seen the night before was still there, crouching on the roof of his car.  Richard jerked his body away from the window, being careful to avoid being spotted.

The creature was scanning the entire property for movement. Richard could see it more clearly than the night before. Although the body was still poorly defined, it was marginally humanoid, and had a profoundly black color like the depths of an ocean abyss or an unlit cave. There was a slight definition under the eyes that suggested a mouth.

The eyes. Like white pearlescent bulbs, searching every corner of Richard’s land for the slightest incursion or notion of escape.

Richard came a little too close to one of the blinds, and it moved under his breath. The eyes that were terrifying when fixated somewhere else were paralyzing when directed at you. Richard found himself helpless against the creature’s merciless stare, and the accusing appendage that so savagely found him out the night before, slowly found the pathway towards his quivering body once more.

The creature’s mouth slowly opened. Richard could only imagine what was coming out, the cicada scream – although behind the protection of the sound proofed glass door he could not hear its accusing intensity.

Richard’s peripherals caught something that froze his blood. From the roof of the house, only a foot from his face, with only the glass saving him from direct contact, three frightening black appendages speared their way into the concrete ground. He did not wait around to see what was at the end of the appendages. He backed away awkwardly, running backwards on all fours, before turning and running towards the bedroom.

His wife was twisting her way through her waking routine. Richard shook her intensely, not feeling like he was doing anything, so strong were his fearful convulsions.

“What, honey?” Ainsley asked in an annoyed tone. “What’s the matter?”

Richard tried to compose himself. “Th…th…there’s something outside.”

Ainsley gave him a pitiful look. “Where?”

“Out front.”

She made her way to the study, where the window looked over the courtyard and up to the driveway. She opened the window so she could listen to what was going on.

The watcher spotted her immediately, and she was greeted with an accusing black appendage and the cicada scream. Her bravado melted immediately.
What she heard next melted everything else. The watcher went silent, and she heard a bloodcurdling scream attack her ears, like the sound of a strong man being subject to unbearable torture. Both her and her husband screamed in reply.
The creature which made the sound showed its monstrous presence at the window. The only definition the creature showed was the amalgam of thousands of nightmares each of them had endured from their childhood. It hungrily sniffed and smiled at them, displaying teeth that gleaned and jutted in a chaotic dance. The creature suddenly broke into a mockingly evil cackle, a laughing attack that destroyed all hopes and prayers in its wake.

Ainsley’s frightened paralysis broke momentarily, and she was able to close the window on the creature’s face and close the blinds.

The both of them grabbed each other, desperately trying to cease shaking by using the other’s stability, to no avail. They backed away from the study and into their bedroom.

“Wh…what are we going to do?” Ainsley asked, still unable to come to terms with what she had seen.

Richard was beginning to compose himself more effectively. “I will call the police. That is all I can do for now, see if they can’t capture or kill whatever these creatures are.”

Ainsley looked at him, defeated. “I doubt it, darling. Whatever it is out there, it knew how to scare us. I’m sure it will do the same to any police officer that walks in here.”

“We have to do something, honey,” Richard replied, “Or we will just sit here and starve to death.”

They heard a stirring from David’s room. Their nine year old son was awake, and would likely open the blinds to view the creatures at the front of the house.

Richard instinctively raced to his room, making sure he did not see the scene before he was ready for it. He swiftly stood between his son and the blinds.

David gave him a bewildered look, accentuated with sleepiness. “What’s the matter, Dad?”

“There is something outside, a creature. I don’t want you to see it until you are ready. Come into the bedroom.”

David, although compelled by curiosity, obeyed his father and went into his parent’s bedroom, where his mother was waiting for him on the bed.

“Hi Mum, what’s going on?” David asked.

“There is something very scary out the front of the house, David. I’ll let your father explain it.”

Richard searched for the right words, wanting to prepare his son but not wanting to scare him too much.

“We have both seen two creatures that are prowling the front of the house, David,” he started. “They are very scary looking, and we wanted to tell you first as the surprise of seeing them is the worst part of it. We can see two – there may be more, we are not sure. The first is the one who watches, and all it does is point and make a sound like a cicada – scary, but harmless. Then there is the one that scares you. That one is really scary, and you will be very afraid. But so far, all it has been able to do is look scary. They don’t attack you, and neither of the creatures has tried to come into the house.”

“So what are we going to do, Dad?” asked David.

“We are going to call the police to see if they cannot kill the creatures,” Richard replied. “Apart from that, we are not leaving this house.”

3

Through the polarized light of the late morning sun trying desperately to reach his courtyard, Richard could see the police car pull up outside the house. He had the windows closed, so that he did not have to hear both the Watcher and the Scarer screaming him into submission. The Scarer convulsed menacingly in an attempt to get his attention, and then just stood there passively staring at him when it knew Richard was ignoring it.

The police officer made his way down to the front door at the south western corner of the house. From there he could surely see both the Watcher and the Scarer in full view. There was no change in his behavior to show that this was the case, however. Richard began to fear that the beings were supernatural, and that they were connected somehow to him and his family.

Ainsley answered the door politely. “Thank you for answering our call so soon, officer.”

The police officer replied warmly. “It is my pleasure to be of assistance, madam. If you can show me where you saw the wild animals, we can start from there.”

“Right this way.” Ainsley ushered the police officer into David’s bedroom, where they had the best vantage point to see the Watcher, and possibly the Scarer.

Richard watched the police officer’s face as he surveyed the courtyard intently. No signal on his face suggested he had spotted anything untoward with the scene.
Richard opened the window in a hope that the unusual quiet would convince him.

“Am I missing something here?” asked the police officer. “Seems like a usual courtyard to me.”

Richard lied. “It was up on the car only a moment ago, officer,” he said, knowing that he could still see the Watcher perched on the roof of his car. Richard wanted the officer to go outside, just to see whether this would trigger the visions of these creatures that already plagued the eyes of his family.

The officer was already impatient. “Alright, I’ll check the driveway and the courtyard,” he huffed, “but I will filing charges on you people if there is nothing there.”

The officer moved quickly to the glass sliding door that separated the living room from the outside courtyard, with Richard and Ainsley following behind.

“I would pull out your weapon if I were you, officer.” Richard suggested nervously.
“I will pull out my weapon if I believe I need it,” the officer replied, as he stepped through the sliding door and out into the courtyard.

This time, Richard noticed the expression on the officer’s face change. He had immediately seen the Watcher as he stepped outside, pointing towards him. The cicada scream was deafening for the officer as well as for both Richard and Ainsley.

The officer pointed his pistol at the Watcher and fired several shots. The Watcher absorbed the shots in the same manner as a tree – there was an impact, but no resulting internal damage or bodily reaction to indicate that the creature was injured. The Watcher continued to point and scream, unfazed.
Richard looked around for the Scarer, but could not see it anywhere. “Where is the one that scares you?” he asked Ainsley.

Ainsley did not answer. She pointed a trembling finger toward the roof above the carport, where a different creature poised itself to attack the officer. It moved so quickly that the officer, upon noticing it, had no time to react. The creature opened its mouth and engulfed the officer’s body in one mouthful.

It sat on the paved courtyard for what seemed like a minute, its body busily convulsing and straining as if it was digesting its victim at a remarkably rapid rate. Its body, black like the others but eyeless, seemed designed for one purpose – eating. Richard could hear the muffled screams of the police officer inside his horrific prison.

When the creature finished its convulsions, a slow moving torrent of blood and mangled body parts seeped from between its upper and lower lips. It clogged the small storm water drains in the courtyard like the floor of an abattoir.

Richard and Ainsley looked up to see the Scarer spying them, getting ready to laugh its mocking laugh, designed with the intention of destroying their spirits. Richard closed the sliding door so as not to hear it.

Ainsley looked up at him, her face white and her eyes defeated. “I guess there are now three,” she said morosely, “the one that watches, the one that scares you, and the one that eats.”

They turned back to the courtyard. The Eater and the Scarer were gone, leaving only the Watcher to regard them with its eyes absent of everything but sight.

4

Ainsley had known her friend Harriet for nearly ten years, having met each other at a mother’s group at the time David was born. “Madame Solstice” as she was called, Harriet had a seriously considered and proven reputation as a clairvoyant and expert on the supernatural – she had successfully identified two defendants in different murder cases over the years, and she made a comfortable living from her clairvoyant activities, even where she did not have the luxury of having the dutiful husband that her friend Ainsley had.

Ainsley watched Harriet approach the house cautiously, taking measurements with a strange looking machine as she approached the front door.

Ainsley opened the door, grabbed her friend roughly and dragged her inside the house.

Harriet was slightly taken aback. “What’s the problem, love?” she asked. “I can’t seem to notice...” Harriet was immediately silenced, her face pale with fear.

Ainsley saw her face and knew what was going on. “You sense it.”

Harriet burst into tears. “Uncompromising dread and death. No relief. No happiness. Just…..hell. Exclusively for everyone in this building.”

This sent a chill down Ainsley’s spine. She composed herself enough to ask weakly, “Would you like to see it?”

Harriet, resigned to the fact that she would be staying anyway, replied, “I don’t want to, but I should.”

Ainsley led her to David’s bedroom. They kept every room that faced the courtyard locked, so that they did not have to endure the Watcher’s incessant stare, and the Scarer’s occasional shocking appearance. They had not seen the Eater since it had killed the police officer.

Carefully unlocking the door, Ainsley led her friend into the room, allowing her a full view of the courtyard and the driveway above it. As was typical, the Watcher stood on the roof of Richard’s car, and immediately greeted them with its accusing point.

The window was closed, so they could only faintly hear the cicada scream.

Harriet shivered at the Watcher’s horrific appearance.

“There are three.” Ainsley replied. “This is the harmless one, the one that watches. He warns the others of our location.”

“What are the others?” asked Harriet, numb from fear.

“The one that scares you, that’s the one that will make you scream and will send you mad from fear. It is like looking at everything that has scared you in your life. However, it is not the one you want to avoid. There is one that does nothing but eat. When it attacks you, it is so quick that you will have no time to escape. It digests you within a minute, and then slowly dribbles your body mass out of its mouth.” Ainsley pointed to the nearby drain. “There are the remains of its last victim, a police officer who came to help us.” Ainsley felt a morbid sorrow, picturing the police officer’s family frantically trying to find his whereabouts.

“Do they come into the house?” Harriet asked, trying to maintain some sort of professional façade.

“Never. They don’t come into the house, and no one can see them as they approach the house. However, once someone has entered the house, they cannot leave.”

“This is not a human spirit.” Harriet mused. “But it is a spirit connected to this area. I really have no expertise in these types of spirits.”

“What types of spirits?” Ainsley asked.

“This is probably a spirit related to the culture of the people who were originally here – which in this area, I believe is the Dharawal tribe.”

“Do you know anyone who could possibly help us?” Ainsley pleaded. “Anyone who could at least tell us what we are dealing with?”

Harriet thought for a while. “I colleague of mine, Gina – you know Mystika? She knows a Dharawal elder in La Perouse. They went to university together. I could give her a ring and tell her the situation. Meanwhile, keep to the other side of the house as much as possible. Where is David?”

“He’s in the basement room, with Richard.” Ainsley replied. “That room has small windows, high up in the wall, so we don’t have to look outside. It’s the only room in the house where we feel safe.”

“I notice Richard hasn’t rushed to give me a lowdown of the situation,” Harriet said. “Does he still think I am a fraud?”

“You know how he is darling,” replied Ainsley. “If it’s not Catholicism, it’s governed by the laws of science.”

“What a hypocrite.”

“Please try and get along,” Ainsley pleaded. “We are all going to be under a lot of pressure, we will need to work together.”

Harriet gave a reassuring smile. “It’s okay, honey. After what I have just seen, my pride is dead and buried.”

5

The car swerved at an unexpected turn, the tires letting out a slight scream of defiance before complying with the steering wheel.

“Take it easy, fella.” The lady in the back seat said.

“I’m sorry, Aunty,” said the driver. “I can’t believe it though. Where is everybody?”

“I don’t know,” replied Aunty. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

Aunty spotted the police car parked on the opposite kerb.

“There it is – stop here.”

The young driver stopped within a meter of the police car, in a position that would normally have been an illegal park.

“Do you want me to come in, Aunty?”

Aunty turned her wrinkled face towards him with an unusual intensity. “Do not move from this car, you understand? I don’t care if the world falls apart around you. STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” She shouted the last sentence, trying to burn the words into her young driver’s scalp.

“OK, Aunty,” the driver replied, left wondering what the problem was.

Aunty made her way slowly down towards the front door of the house, quietly whispering protective phrases in the Dharawal language. Though she did not sense the spirits she was dealing with in the traditional sense, she had experience with the way the land spoke to her when spirits such as these ones were present. Her mother had warned her not to go into areas where they were present:

“Don’t go near there, the Goonge will get you.”

6

Richard had initially disliked the idea of getting spiritual assistance to solve the problem of the creatures, but he began to warm to the idea as every day passed. The more he watched the creature’s behavior, the fact that you could only sense their presence when they wished it, led him to the conclusion that these beings could be nothing but supernatural; by the time he had heard of Harriet’s suggestion to consult a Dharawal elder, he was almost ready to suggest the same idea.

He opened the door to an old aged indigenous Australian lady, her hair gray and wild, falling down over her head like the branches of a wise willow.

Richard smiled kindly. “Thank you for coming so soon,” he said. “My name is Richard, and this is my home.”

“My name’s Aunty,” the elder replied.”It’s your home now, but it wasn’t always that way. Be certain that the Goonge couldn’t care less.”

“The Goonge?”

“A Goonge is a protective spirit from our dreaming. It protects an area of the dreaming from being invaded by other spirits or entities. This property here is now under the control of a Goonge.”

Harriet interjected. “Hi Aunty,” she asked politely, “It appears as if the Goonge takes the form of three spirits – one that watches, one that scares people, and one that eats people.”

“Sure,” Aunty replies. “They seem to be the functions of any particular Goonge. You have to understand, that our people usually don’t encounter Goonges. Where there are Goonges present in an area, we don’t enter the area. From the stories of our dreaming, we know that this is what a Goonge does – it watches over the area; it scares away trespassers; and where it cannot deter them, it gets them. But we never go out of our way to encounter a Goonge, so very few people know what they look like.”

Richard thought about what the elder was telling him – something didn’t add up. “Aunty,” he asked, “If the Goonge was protecting this area from others, then it would be preventing others from entering the property. In this case though, the Goonge is stopping anybody from leaving, not caring who enters the property.”

Aunty thought about this. “Then you’re the problem,” she replied. “The Goonge is protecting the rest of the dreaming from you.”

Richard snorted. “I’ve just about had enough of this. We have lived in this house for five years, and suddenly we are not welcome? Why didn’t the Goonges approach the property then? What has changed between then and now?”

“I can’t explain why you are under siege from a Goonge, mate.”Aunty replied. “All I can say is that there is a Goonge here, and they are here because of someone in this family. It is not necessarily all of you; it may be just one of you. One person in this family does not belong to the dreaming in this area.”

“Then what do we do?”

“You will continue to sit in this house until someone tries to escape. That person will die. The next person will try to escape. They will die. This will happen until the Goonge gets the person they want. Then it will go away.”

“That doesn’t leave us much hope,” Richard said.

“That’s right,” replied Aunty. “You have no hope. Unless you can figure out who it is after. Until then, save your food. Every day’s worth is an extra day alive.” She motioned to leave.

“Are you just going to leave us here?” Richard asked. “Is there anything you can do to help us? Please!!!”

Aunty sighed. “I’m sorry mate; there is nothing I can do. I will be lucky to get out of this house myself.” She opened the front door, muttering in Dharawal as she left. “All the best,” she said as she left.

Richard watched as the Dharawal elder made her way back to the street. He saw her cringe at the cicada scream of the Watcher. The Scarer approached her, sniffing around her with a hungry curiosity. It showed little of the outright animosity that it showed to him or his wife.

Richard also heard heavy footprints on the roof. The Scarer looked up to the roof and the footprints stopped. Aunty stared at the creature on the roof, paralyzed and shaking, trying desperately to chant her protective phrases in an attempt to
connect with the spirits.

The Scarer growled at her threateningly. It was a warning rather than an immediate threat. Aunty was allowed to leave without harm, and the Dharawal woman took total advantage of the reprieve, racing to her car and driving away without hesitation.

7

Richard, Ainsley, Harriet and David sat in the basement room of the house, dining on a mixture of the food that was perishable in the house. They were trying to keep the non perishable food for a time when they were increasingly desperate.

While the room they had chosen for their solitude was cold and damp compared to the rest of the house, they had found that the Goonges stayed away from it. The room had two small windows that they could open for ventilation, and a glass door to the yard that they kept shut and locked at all times.

Richard started speaking first, his mouth half full of egg and buttered toast as he spoke. “I must make the first sacrifice,” he said with a resigned voice. “I am most likely their target. Then Ainsley must make the second. After that, I don’t know what is going to happen.” Richard didn’t want to imagine that David was the target. “All I know is, Harriet should not have to sacrifice herself, as I’m sure she isn’t the target.”

Harriet smiled at him, appreciating his honesty. “Thank you, Richard.”

Richard smiled back. “It’s okay. I’m sorry we’ve got you into this.”

Harriet felt increasingly emotional as she went to reply. “There is nothing you should be sorry for,” she replied in a voice with as much sternness as she could muster. “Nothing at all. You don’t deserve this – nobody does.”

“Whether we deserve it or not, it’s happening.” Richard replied. “All we have to do is work out the best possible result from the predicament we’re in.”

“What if you and I tried to escape together?” Ainsley asked. “We would then have more chance of getting one person past the creatures.”

“What if I’m the target, sweetheart?”Richard replied. “Your life could be wasted for no reason.”

“I understand. But if they get you first and you’re the target, then they won’t come after me. If I am the target, I could escape, and our son will be spared.”
“If you are the target honey, our son will be spared regardless of what happens to you.” Richard replied. “However, I do see your point – I don’t want to see you needlessly sacrificed. Tomorrow, we will make a break for it. I’ll go out the courtyard door, right in front of the one who watches. You leave via the front door. Hide until the one that eats is busy with me, and then make a break for it. You should be able to get away before than one that scares you can get to you.” He gulped as he mentioned the fact that tomorrow, he would be eaten alive.

“Okay, honey,” Ainsley replied.

Harriet looked on with deep regret. While she had previously not seen eye to eye with Richard, she felt in him a quality she wished she had taken more time to become acquainted with. It appeared that what Richard believed had nothing to do with who he was, and Harriet felt ashamed that she had ignored that.

David watched on in silence. While he had not seen the creatures that were outside the house, he had heard their horrific screams from time to time, and had heard stories of their exploits from his parents. It appeared that they thought that hearing the details was much worse than seeing them, but David felt that it was worse, as he was left to imagine the worst. The most frightful beings a mind could conjure would scour his dreams at night, searching for his eternal victim self, the one that always runs away from danger but can never quite escape it.

As they sat completing their meals, they saw the light flicker in the room.

“Turn it off!” Richard cried. “It will only be a matter of time before the Scarer sees it.”

It was too late. They heard a heavy, asthmatic wheeze attack their ears. It floated past the open windows of the basement room, slowly becoming louder and softer depending on the distance from the open windows. It came to a stop outside the glass door. The four of them moved to a spot where they could not be seen from the door.

The door itself was not a continuous glass pane, but a series of smaller panes set in a wooden frame. The glass itself was patterned which made it difficult to see fully fledged shapes, except when they moved.

Harriet saw a glimpse of breath fogging one of the glass panes. It appeared a green color to her, as if mixed with a toxic gas. David imagined that it was like chlorophyll being vomited into the air.

There was a single tap on the glass, like a claw, acting like an electric pulse to the heart. Richard held his son in his arms, more to abate his own fear rather than David’s.

Tap, tap, tap. The four of them could feel the presence of the creature as if it were breathing down their necks. It sniffed ferociously at the glass pane, as if trying to smell them through it.

The tapping started again, becoming more frequent, until it was like a woodpecker against a tree, hammering away in a delirious rhythm. The tapping started in the same fashion on a second pane, then a third, until all that could be heard was a cacophony of tapping, sounding more like a jack hammer than a single digit tapping on glass.
Then there was absolute silence. Even the sniffing had disappeared. It felt as if the creature had disappeared.

Richard went to close one of the open windows to the room. As he grabbed the latch, he felt an unimaginable appendage grab him around the wrist. Its grip was completely unshakeable, even as he struggled like a wild animal to be free of it. As he pulled away from the creature, the grip suddenly gave way and Richard flew across the room, hitting his head on the opposite wall.

They knew that the maniacal laugh that followed could only be the product of the Scarer. Too frightened to close the window, the three left over cuddled each other in the far corner of the basement room, trying not to listen to the psychotic squeals, the impatient snorts, and the soul destroying cackles that came from the Scarer, while Richard lay blissfully unconscious at their trembling feet.

8

Richard woke before the others. He rubbed his forehead tenderly, feeling the large bump that had developed there overnight.

Then he remembered. Today I am going to be eaten alive. His stomach trembled at the thought, but he steeled himself by thinking of his son growing up because of what he had done. He managed to get up and get himself a drink of water.

Ainsley woke up next, not stirring the others as she raised her weary body from the floor. Though the Scarer had kept them up for most of the night, it had given them a reprieve two hours before the dawn, and all three of them had duly fallen asleep.
She made her way up the stairs to the kitchen, seeing her husband sitting with a glass of water.

“Do you want me to fix you some breakfast, honey?” Ainsley asked.

“No thanks honey. I don’t think I would be able to keep it down.”

Ainsley let out a little instinctive cry for her husband. She then moved over to him and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. Richard lifted his head and kissed his wife on the lips, not wanting to let go.

“Let’s get this over and done with before the others wake. I don’t want David to see this.”

“Agreed,” replied Ainsley, “let’s write them a note first.”

Richard wrote began the note he knew would be the last words he would say to his son:

Dear David,
Please forgive us for not saying goodbye to you properly son, but I felt it was more important that you do not see what is going to happen to us.
We do this, hopefully, to guarantee your survival. Nothing could make us more proud than to see you grow into a mature man. I would give my life a hundred times to see that happen.
Do not cry for us, we are doing exactly what we want to do for you.
If the Goonges are still there, do not go outside.
Love, Mum and Dad

The note was left on the kitchen bench, and Richard turned to his wife, who was readying herself at the front door.

“I will try to scream to warn you,” Richard said. “Try not to leave until the one who eats has got me.”

“OK darling. I love you.” They had one final embrace, and Richard made his way tentatively to the courtyard door.

He kept out of sight of the Watcher, careful not to warn it in advance that he was going to enter the courtyard. He peeked out of the blinds, catching a glimpse of the Watcher scanning the property with its white, lifeless eyes.

Here goes, he thought to himself, I’m about to be eaten alive. Be brave, Richard.

He strode into the courtyard, bringing his pace immediately to a gallop. The Watcher’s call rang in his ears as he ran for the fence separating his property from his neighbor’s property on the northern side.

He started to leap for the fence, but his athletic ability froze in the presence of the Scarer. It smiled a hungry, expectant smile, following it immediately with a scream that not even the bravest person could face. Richard immediately ran in the opposite direction. Then he remembered to scream for his wife. He managed to deliver a delirious “HELP!” before his body was pierced with what felt like a hundred knives, each slowly penetrating his flesh as he screamed in agony.

Ainsley raced towards the road from the front door. She did not look to see what had happened to her husband, or whether the Watcher was looking at her.
It’s worked, she thought, as she made her way up the driveway without detection from the Goonges.

Then her body jerked painfully to a stop.

She turned to face the obstacle. The Watcher, now turned away from her husband, its eyes staring at her body with a mindless hunger, had launched its appendage at her, holding her inside the property by her arm. The creature’s grip was as solid as the stump of a tree – Ainsley could not move, and was forced to watch the Eater slowly digest the body of her poor husband.

The Scarer looked at her and smiled. “HELP!” it screamed, mocking her husband’s final words.

The Eater completed digesting Richard and slowly made its way towards her from the courtyard. The Scarer stared into her eyes silently and passively, which was even more disconcerting than its usual behavior. The Watcher’s grip remained immovable.

The Eater began to open its mouth in front of her. Its mouth was filled with hundreds of razor sharp teeth. It was clear that it digested the body by moving its teeth in various directions, slicing the body into tiny pieces before allowing the remains to ooze out of its mouth.

As it opened its mouth wider, Ainsley could see the few remaining parts of her husband, impaled like meat on a stick. She noticed a gold ring hanging at the bottom of one of the teeth.

Her grief slowly turned to pain and dread, as the eater enveloped the lower half of her body up to her waist. She screamed in pain as the Watcher released its grip on her arm, leaving the upper half of her body, quickly becoming weaker with the loss of blood, to watch the lower half of her body being torn to shreds inside the mouth of the Eater.

Thankfully, she passed out before she could see or feel any more.

9

David awoke after a horrible dream, where he pictured his father and mother being devoured, screaming.

He noticed both his mother and father had gone. He shook Harriet so furiously that she bumped her head on the wall as she woke.

“What’s the matter son?” she asked. As she was asking the question, she knew the answer – her friends had gone, and she could not hear either of them in the house.

Harriet dragged her drowsy body up to the kitchen, the boy following closely behind. She immediately spotted the note and began to read it silently, with David reading it with her.

They were both crying by the end of the note, locked together in grief.

David was the first to speak. “I can’t believe my Mum and Dad are gone. What am I going to do, Aunt Harriet?”

“I’m sorry my boy. I’m so sorry.” She repeated the apology over and over like a mantra.

“What should I do, Aunt Harriet? I’m scared.”

Harriet stared into the boy’s bloodshot eyes intensely. “You should be,” she whispered.

David looked at her strangely. He then made his way to his bedroom, where the blinds remained closed since the first appearance of the creatures.

He pulled the blinds, revealing the courtyard.

The Watcher immediately pointed at him and screamed.

10

“So what happens when I die, Aunt Harriet?” David asked. He was lying in his bed, wrapped tight in his blankets.

“You go to heaven, David. Your soul makes a great journey. At the gates of heaven, there is a man that only lets good people in. All children go to heaven.” Harriet grabbed a blue pill from a medicine container and fed it to the boy. She gave him some water to wash it down.

“Who will I see there?” asked David.

“You will see your mum and dad,” replied Harriet, giving him another pill. “Everyone that loves you that has died. They will give you a massive party when you arrive, where you get to eat all the cake and ice cream you could ever want. Then, here’s the best part – you get to have cake and ice cream every day from then on, and you get presents like it was your birthday every day. You get to do your favorite things every day, forever and ever and ever.”

David had fallen asleep. Harriet had been feeding him pill after pill for about fifteen minutes. She couldn’t remember how many pills she had given him, but she knew that even if he woke up and vomited some of the pills out of his system, he would not experience consciousness again.

She felt ashamed about the lies she had told him, and even more ashamed that she had done it to save her own skin. She only hoped that by coaxing this child to death, her own child could live two life times in his place with a loving mother.

She opened the blinds. She watched the last of the Goonges, the Scarer, dissipate into the ground, its terrifying face frozen in an expression of apathy.

She made her way to the courtyard door and walked outside. The feeling of natural sunlight kissed her face, a phenomenon she had not seen since she had come to the house. She walked up the stairs, up the driveway, and out on to the footpath by the side of the road, leaving the property with the ease in which she had arrived.

She had moved close to Ainsley and Richard a few years ago, so that they could help her as a single mother. The walk home was pleasant after the ordeal, looking fondly on the eternal azure sky that warmed her thoughts.

As she approached the top of the driveway to her home, she couldn’t contain her excitement. The thought of seeing her daughter Aria drove her legs forward faster, and she almost crashed into her front door.

Her excitement eroded to dust as soon as she stepped into the house. Her daughter, eyes red and filled with tears, embraced her anxiously, her body shaking with fear.

“Mummy,” she whispered into her ear, “there are monsters outside.”