METHUSELAH

Willy Williamson was walking through the sweet-smelling pine and eucalyptus forest outside Westmoreland township, in the Victorian countryside.

Westmoreland had once been a thriving town. But after some disaster c.1978, Westmoreland and neighbouring town Wilhelmina, had both been abandoned. Their buildings and shops were left to decay. But after Australia's super-inflation in house and land prices from the 1990s to the present day, the properties had become far too valuable to leave rotting. So a local entrepreneur, Willy Williamson, had bought up the land in both towns and had made himself a multi-millionaire, refurbishing houses he paid $200,000 for and then reselling them to people who wanted to get back to nature for $850,000 each.

For the last twenty years, more and more people have been moving out to Westmoreland on the Glen Hartwell to Willamby line. And more and more millions had been pouring into Willy Williamson's bank account.

"Rubes paying Willy millions," said the entrepreneur laughing at his cunning and also the stupidity of the city-slickers whom he had been out-slicking.

Of course, it didn't hurt that the Victorian Government had said publically that their proposed new superfast train, would include a line to Glen Hartwell.

"Rubes," said Willy, smirking a shit-eater grin. The Victorian Government had been talking about having a superfast train network since the 1970s. And after fifty years that's all they were still doing. Talking about it.

Not that Willy cared. As long as the rubes kept pouring cash his way, he didn't care. And if they got sick of living nine hours train ride away from Melbourne, he would graciously offer to buy back their Westmoreland or Wilhelmina houses for half what they had paid him for them. Either way, Willy won, the rubes lost!

"Rubes," he muttered again as he saw a tall, lean figure looking like a negative of the Grim Reaper. Wearing a long white robe, with a hood that came down to conceal most of his face. He also carried, what seemed to be an ivory scythe.

"You know ivory is illegal these days, even if it was legal when you got it, it's still illegal now," cautioned Willy. Who had always been careful to never do anything so crooked that the shit might hit the fan.

Then when the white figure didn't answer, Willy walked across to him, saying: "And you're a week late for Halloween."

Looking around at him, Methuselah said: "You're the one who's late."

"What're you mean?" asked Willy. "I'm not late for anything."

"In fact, you might say that your time is fast running out."

"Hey, is that a threat?" demanded Willy, stupidly walking across to the tall white-robed figure.

"No," said Methuselah, tapping him gently on the right cheek with his ivory scythe.

"Hey whatcha doin'" said Willy Williamson. He was used to people being courteous, even fawning toward him. No matter how much they might secretly loathe him. "That thing coulda cut me."

"It's not sharp," said the man in white robes. Holding it out so that the entrepreneur could see the ivory edge was rounded off.

"Yeah, well..." said Willy starting to feel a little faint, struggling to stay upon his feet.

Finally, the property huckster collapsed onto the dry pines needles and gum leaves. Starting to moan in arthritic pain. Something that had never afflicted him before.

Smiling broadly, Methuselah watched in delight as Willy Williamson started to age before his eyes. The forty-something man, soon became fifty-something, then sixty-something, seventy-something, eighty-something, ninety then a hundred-something. His flesh drying out, and his body becoming thin and emaciated as he continued to age.

Finally, Willy died. Then his corpse began rotting in minutes, finally turning to fine dust. Which blew away, leaving his clothes and shoes still looking new.

Methuselah laughed as the huckster's life essence fled into him, helping him to grow stronger and to stay young, as it had done for millennia now.



"The boss is late," said Jilly Jameson, the receptionist at Willy's business rooms at Cockerall Road Westmoreland.

"Yes, we noticed," said two prospective buyers. "Maybe he doesn't want our business."

"I'm sure he does," said Jilly, knowing what a leech Willy was when it came to sucking the money out of potential home buyers. She thought: The boss would deal with the Devil, if he thought he could con cash out of him.

As the customers started to get antsy, Jilly said: "Maybe I'd better phone him on his mobile."

"What a good idea," said Roselyn Parker, looking at her husband she raised her eyes as if to say: What a bimbo.

Leonard Parker, nodded assent, as Jilly tried ringing her boss without success.



By the end of the day Jilly, a tall leggy anorexic ash blonde was seriously worried. Her boss had missed five appointments that day potentially losing three or four million dollars in sales. Knowing how Willy worshipped like a false God what the Yanks called the Holy Greenback, she knew that something had to be seriously wrong.

Taking a spare key to his house from the safe, she climbed into her electric-pink Mini Minor, then drove around to his house-cum-small palace in Philomena Street Westmoreland.

Carefully knocking first, with the Lion's Head shaped knocker, she then opened the front door and called out: "Mr. Williamson?"

Receiving no reply, she tentatively stepped inside and searched the ground floor carefully, finding nothing to suggest that he had been there that day. Except for the breakfast dishes on the kitchen table. But no lunch or tea dishes.

Which means he hasn't been in here since 7:00 AM, thought Jilly, more logically than the Parkers had given her credit for.

She slowly climbed the gold-carpeted stairs to the first floor, which she also searched thoroughly. Without finding any sign that he'd been there since breakfast.

She was going to miss out the second floor since it only had his private PC, games room, and books. But then she remembered that the indoor swimming pool was also on the second floor.

"My God, he could have slipped, hit his head, and drowned," she said. So tentatively she searched the second storey also. Relieved to find no sign of him in the pool. But dismayed to find no sign of Willy anywhere else.

Finally, she sat at Willy's computer desk, not considering that she might be corrupting a crime scene. She picked up the phone to ring the newly installed police chief, Jessie Baker, in the combined Westmoreland-Wilhelmina police station in Chatterton Road Wilhelmina.



Half an hour later Jessie Baker (a tall well-muscled man with strawberry-blond hair), plus Paul Bell police chief at LePage (a tall, lean wiry man with raven hair) were checking out the ground floor. Like Jilly they found nothing. Not even the breakfast plates, since while waiting for them to arrive the secretary-cum-receptionist had kindly washed the plates and put them away. Again, not realising that she might be corrupting a crime scene.

After they had finished Jessie Baker said: "Well, he's definitely missing. So I'll put out an APD on him."

"Is that a real thing?" asked Jilly: "Or did somebody just make it up for a cop show?"

"Well, I've never put one out," said Paul Bell. "I just ring around to my mates at other local cop shops and ask them to keep an eye out."

New to the police business, Jessie said: "Oh, then I'll do that instead."



Mitchell Warren was out walking through the sweet-smelling pine and gum forest outside Westmoreland. Enjoying the pleasant forest. But more enjoying the escape from a nagging wife, and six, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" kids.

A heavy, thickset man, barely a hundred and sixty-five centimetres tall, Mitch had done little walking or other exercises in his entire life. At forty-five he prided himself that the only exercise that he was interested in was watching his Beloved Collingwood Magpies in the Australian Football League. And watching the Aussie cricket team, hoping that they would win The One-Day International World Cup.

Usually, he was lying on the sofa drinking Carlton Draught, with Jeannie, his wife, sitting in a lounge chair, doing her best to distract him from the TV. While his six kids swarmed all over him crying, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" for whatever nonessential 'must have' toy or game that they wanted him to buy them.

So it made a change for him to be out walking. Although he didn't plan to go far. He had brought a six-pack of Carlton Draught and two newspapers with him. Mitch never read anything except newspapers. As far as he was concerned novels were pointless because they weren't true.

"You're such a Philistine," Jeannie would nag him. "Novels allow you to enter new realms, real and unreal, that you could never encounter in nonfiction."

"Unless I start reading travelogues," he would counter. Although that rarely shut her up.

So today he had broken his lifelong ban on walking further than to the car parked outside so that he could have a day of peace and quiet. With no nagging, and no "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"

"Lazy bastard, you take the car to cross the road," Jeannie would nag him. Only exaggerating slightly.

He lay down on the soft bed of pine needles and gum leaves, took out a Carlton Draught, flipped the ring tab, and took a long swig. For once no, "Ah you drink too much," from Jeannie.

He took out the Melbourne Recorder, which far from being his eyes on the world, as Mitch thought, was a gossipy yellow rag, not above printing UFO stories. They sold a lot of copies to the UFOlaloonies around Australia.

He was laughing at their latest UFO story in which they 'revealed' that Barack Obama was really a Martian, which is why there was so much trouble locating his birth certificate when he was U.S. President. When Mitch suddenly had the feeling that he was being watched.

Lowering the tabloid to look over the top, he saw a tall man of indeterminable age, dressed in white robes, carrying an ivory scythe. The man was walking toward him.

"Listen Skeletor," Mitch said. "Halloween was last week. So who are you supposed to be, Darth Vader in negative? Or maybe wearing his winter coat," he added laughing at his own joke.

"No," said Methuselah, lowering his scythe to touch him gently just above his right wrist.

"What the Hell," said Mitch, ducking, thinking the white-clad man was going to hit or cut him with the scythe.

"Relax," said Methuselah, holding it out so that Mitch could see, "It's not sharp."

"Oh yeah," said Mitch, starting to think that the man was a harmless loony. Then his hands dropped the newspaper, his arthritic fingers no longer able to grip.

"What...?" asked Mitchell Warren, staring at his aged, claw-like fingers.

"What the Hell is happening?" he asked as he rapidly aged through his fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, through to his early nineties, when he fell over dead.

His body quickly began to decompose, and then turn to a skeleton. Which began to yellow, and then crack into tiny shards. Before reducing to dust, then, along with the pages of the Melbourne Recorder, began to blow away in the cool breeze.

"Glorious," said Methuselah, revelling in the energy that he received from Mitch's premature death. "In life, he was a waste of space. But in death, he has managed to finally accomplish something. Giving me renewed life."

Turning, he walked away feeling refreshed.



It was the next day, that Dougie O'Farrell, a child when his family fled Wilhelmina in 1978, now returned, stumbled across the empty clothing of millionaire huckster Willy Williamson. He had to check through the clothing looking for identification. He found Willie's wallet, with fifty brand new green hundred dollar bills in it.

"Five grand!" he thought, tempted to help himself. Then his better nature took over, and he thought: No, then I'd be no better than Williamson himself.

So resisting the urge to steal, he rang through to Jessie Baker, and Paul Bell in the police station in Chatterton Street, Wilhelmina, to report the find.



Half an hour later the two policemen, plus the local coroner, Elvis Green (so named due to his long sideburns and worshipping of the dead singer), the local coroner arrived on the scene.

After looking through Willie Williamson's empty clothing, with his jockey shorts still inside his trousers, shirt and vest still inside his coat, and his dark blue Carlton Football Club socks inside his shoes.

"Almost as though he just jumped out of his clothing, as the saying goes," said Jessie.

"How likely is it that such a fat man could have been running around the forest naked for twenty-four hours without anyone seeing him?" asked Paul Bell.

"Then there's this stuff," said Elvis Green bagging up a large sample of grey dust found in the missing estate agent's clothing.

"Dust, so what?" asked Jessie.

"So do you see much other dust around her?"

Paul, Jessie, and Dougie O'Farrell looked around the forest. Then Dougie said: "No it's mainly pine needles and gum leaves."

"Exactly," said Elvis. "Plus this dust was throughout his clothing. Yet it certainly isn't talcum powder. What other dust would you sprinkle through your clothing? Presumably before putting them on."

Paul and Jessie took photos of the clothing, removing them one layer at a time. Then went back to the light blue Land Rover that they had arrived in to head for Elvis Green's morgue in Dien Street Glen Hartwell.

"Do you want a lift," they called to Dougie O'Farrell.

"No thanks," said Dougie. "I'm only halfway through my daily laps."

With that, Dougie took off into the forest while the others headed toward Elvis' Morgue.



Back at the lab, unaware yet of Mitchell Warren's disappearance, Paul and Jessie sat around, watching while Elvis ran a vast string of chemical tests upon the grey ash.

Finally, he looked up and said: "I now know what the ash is."

"Great," said Paul Bell.

"There's the remains of a human body."

"Willie Williamson?" asked Jessie Baker.

"Probably not, since they are at least a thousand years old."

"So that's an indefinite maybe?" asked Paul.

"If we were in Melbourne, or some other sane place, I'd say definitely no," said the coroner. "But so much weird stuff has happened in the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area over the last forty years, that I don't want to make any definite statements yet."

"So it is an indefinite maybe," persisted Paul.



Late that afternoon a jogger named Leo MacDermott, found the clothes of Mitchell Warren in the forest. Not long before, his wife Jeannie had rung up to report him missing.

Paul, Jessie, and Leo stood around watching again, as Elvis Green examined the clothes, taking more samples of the grey ash that was spread throughout them.

"Has streaking suddenly come back into vogue, without anyone telling me?" asked Paul Bell.

"Why, did you want to get in on it?" asked Elvis, making them all laugh. "There are a couple of nude beaches not far from here."

"Very funny, ha-ha it is to laugh," said Paul, quoting Daffy Duck.



Back at Dien Street, Elvis Green ran the same tests on this new dust and confirmed again that it was a thousand-year-old human detritus.

"So?" asked Jessie, "are we dealing with some nutter, stripping and kidnapping people, before scattering thousand-year-old bone ash everywhere? Or is there a less mundane explanation as to what is going on?"

"Jessie," said Elvis. "Between when your family fled this area in 1978, and when you returned in 2022, there has been so much weird stuff happening on the Glen Hartwell to Willamby line ... that frankly, I would not rule out evil magical elves at this stage."

"Actually that's what I'm betting on," said Paul Bell. "Either that or an evil Genie getting even with us for Captain Cook trapping him in a bottle and throwing it overboard from the Endeavour in 1770."

"Well, that makes sense," agreed Elvis Green, and they all laughed.



Nessie, so named because he could be a bit of a monster, Maynard O'Brien's prize bull on the O'Brien station, trotted across in surprise as he saw the white-clad figure daring to walk across his paddock.

"Moooooo!" lowed Nessie, in his deepest, most threatening voice.



Inside the farmhouse, a hundred metres away, Maynard O'Brien, a fat, balding fifty-something farmer, looked at his wife Dorothea and said: "What's riling Nessie at this hour?"

"Don't ask me," she said. Setting down in front of Maynard a plate of baked beans, sausages, mashed potatoes, mashed pumpkin, and Brussel sprouts, all favourites of his.

"Probably nothing," said Maynard, getting stuck into Dorothea's wonderful cooking. But as the bull lowed again, this time sounding frightened, Maynard put down his knife and fork and said: "Keep that hot for me Dotty." Oblivious to the fact that his wife hated to be called Dotty.



Out in the front paddock, Nessie had started to lope toward the trespasser, expecting him to run screaming, as people usually did, when he approached them.

Instead, the white-robed man continued toward the bull, grinning broadly.

Angered, Nessie started to charge the stranger, who stood his ground, as though too terrified to move away from the attacking bovine. However, at the last second the stranger leapt aside, whacking the bull on the behind with his ivory scythe, as the bull whizzed past him.

Snorting in anger at this outrage, Nessie started to turn to charge again. Then the bull staggered, lost his footing, and collapsed to the paddock, as his feet were no longer strong enough to support his seven hundred kilogrammes.

Struggling to rise again, the bull lowed in distress as Maynard O'Brien came running across from the farmhouse. Behind Maynard, Dorothea stepped out onto the back veranda, and then stopped.

"Nessie, what's wrong?" cried Maynard, at first not even noticing Methuselah standing there beside the struggling Brahma Bull.

"He's dying," explained the white-robed man.

"Who the Hell are you?" asked Maynard climbing into the bull paddock to run across to his prize-winning bull.

"They call me Methuselah," he said honestly. "I have lived for thousands of years, by sucking the life forces out of humans and other strong creatures that I have killed."

"You're totally barking!" cried Maynard, wishing that he had brought his shotgun with him. Then, as he watched, poor Nessie began to age rapidly, then reduce to a mouldering corpse, before he became a skeleton, which soon aged and disintegrated into fine bone ash.

"Nessie!" cried Maynard, one of only two people who could walk into the bull paddock without being charged. The other being Dorothea."

Turning to run back for his shotgun, Maynard was surprised when the white-robed- man gently tapped him on the shoulder with his scythe.

Maynard managed to run most of the way back to the farmhouse, his steps becoming slower and less certain as he ran. Until he collapsed fifteen metres from where Dorothea stood watching on the back veranda.

Then, as she watched Maynard visibly aged to death in front of her. Before turning to a festering corpse, then a yellowing skeleton. Then finally reduced to a pile of grey bone ash, the same as his prize-winning bull, Nessie.

"Aaaaaaaaaah!" screamed Dorothea fainting on the deal wood veranda. She had never fainted before in her fifty-something years of life.

"A two-fer," said Methuselah proud of himself. He couldn't be bothered with Dorothea, she was too fat with no noticeable musculature. The stronger his victims, the more life energy the ancient man consumed from their deaths.



A couple of hours later Elvis Green, Jessie Baker, Paul Bell, and Jesus Costello (pronounced 'Hee-Zeus'), the chief surgeon and administrator of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, were all sitting inside the kitchen of the O'Brien cattle station, five kilometres outside of Pettiwood, listening to Dorothea's incredible story.



Later, outside Elvis collected two samples of the grey bone ash, marking them 'Maynard?' and 'Nessie?'

"If that's what's left of Maynard and Nessie...?" began Paul Bell.

"Then what I've got in the morgue, must be what's left of William Williamson, and Mitch Warren," finished Elvis for him.

"But how the Hell could they have got into that state?" demanded Jessie Baker.

"Ah, now there you've got me," said Elvis. "If we rule out magic elves, evil witches, and Great Cthulhu risen from sunken R'lyeh, then there ain't much left."

"So what about this white-robed figure that Dorothea claims to have seen in the bull paddock before whatever happened, happened?"

"She said she didn't see him do anything to Nessie or Maynard, but he was there when they both died."

"Except," pointed out Jessie, "she said that the figure stayed in the paddock while Maynard ran across to the farmhouse."

"Which means that he wasn't in touching distance of Maynard when he prematurely aged," pointed out Elvis Green. "Well, you've got me?"

So, they left for the morgue in Dien Street Glen Hartwell, leaving Jesus Costello to stay with Dorothea until the ambulance finally arrived to take her to the hospital.



At the morgue Elvis began testing the latest samples, having reclassified 'Sample 1' as 'Willy?' and 'Sample 2' as 'Mitch?"

"So who do we know who wears long robes?" said Jessie thinking aloud.

"Monks," said Paul Bell. "But they usually wear poo-brown robes, not white."

"You could have said 'chocolate brown," chided Elvis Green.

"Poo was what came to mind," said Paul.

"Who else?" asked Jessie.

"Well, Darth Vader. But he wears black robes. Likewise, the Grim Reaper wears black," said Paul.

"Then there's that guy in Battlestar Galactic, played by Alec Guinness, he wore white robes."

"I doubt that Alec Guinness has come back from the grave to age three people, and one bull a thousand years."



Early the next morning fifty or so people were waiting at the Pettiwood Railway Station in Torres Street waiting for the Midnight train from Melbourne to arrive. It was 8:55 ten minutes before the train was due, when the station master, Tony, noticed the tall figure in the long white robe standing at the further end of the platform.

"What's that he's carrying?" wondered Tony. "Some kind of a sword, maybe." He carefully checked that he had his small handgun in his vest pocket, then walked down the platform.

"Hello, I'm Tony," he said. "That some kind of a weapon you've got there?"

"Not at all," said Methuselah, holding it out for Tony to observe closely. "The blade is completely blunt, it's a prop from a play that I'm auditioning for. If this train ever arrives to take me to Melbourne that is."

"Yeah," said Tony risking his job. "Privatisation hasn't helped at all. Trains are even worse than when the government owned them."

"That's true," said Methuselah. Then seeing that no one was watching he touched Tony with the ivory scythe.

"What...?" said Tony, starting to look weak, he managed to stagger across to the baggage room, before collapsing to the floor.

"Oh my God, what happened to him?" asked the ticket girl who happened to be in the baggage compartment checking some invoices.

"This," said Methuselah, touching her gently upon the cheek with this scythe revelling as the station master and ticket girl both died, soon vanishing into two small mounds of grey bone ash.

Then when the train had not yet arrived, he walked slowly down the platform touching people with his scythe.

"Hey," said a tall, ox of a man, looking like he loved a good fight.

"Sorry," said Methuselah without stopping. Until he had touched all forty-nine people waiting for the train. Either to head down to Sale or Melbourne or to collect friends or family from the train.

"What the Hell," said a twenty-something blonde noticing the piles of bone ash on the platform behind her, and also the people in various stages of decomposition. "Aaaaah! It's COVID, it's killing everyone on the station."

There was an attempted mass exodus from the platform, but soon everyone on the station had lost the ability to stand and were lying, dying on the platform. More and more of them started to putrefy, then turned to bones, which yellowed, then turned to small piles of thousand-year-old bone ash.

Finally, whistle blowing, the steam train pulled into the station.

"Where is everybody?" said a teenage girl hanging out of the window in one of the doors, expecting to see her Mum and Dad waiting to collect her.

Walking quickly past, Methuselah touched her cheek with the scythe, making her curse him, and then he walked down to enter the guard's van.

"Sorry sir, you're not allowed in here," said the conductor, flinching as Methuselah touched him with his scythe, reducing him to ancient bone ash.

Then the white-robed figure disembarked to enter the closest carriage. He slowly walked along the train touching everybody still aboard, missing only those who had already left.

Finally, he climbed up into the steam engine where the stoker told him: "Sorry sir, you're not allowed..." Then Methuselah touched his cheek, touching the back of the neck of the driver, who barely noticed, so intent upon his gauges to notice the white-robed figure.

When Methuselah disembarked from the engine, people were in a panic, trying to find their friends and family. So he decided not to risk trying to touch them all. He had killed over ninety people on the platform, in the train, in the baggage room so, smiling, he thought: I can settle for that for now. I don't want to get greedy.

Trying his best not to laugh, afraid of startling the already near hysterical people who had alighted from the train, he walked out into Torres Street, walked across the road, then down the street until he came to the edge of the town and started back out into the forest. He had had a very successful time at the railway station. But he didn't really like staying long in towns during the daylight hours. He preferred the forest by day; and the city by night.



An hour later, after answering dozens of phone calls about missing persons reports Paul Bell, Jessie Baker, Andrew Braidwood, and Donald Esk all local cops, gathered at the railway station in Torres Street.

Paul and Jessie, backed by Elvis Green had already told Andrew (a tall rangy man with long stringy yellow hair) and Don (a tallish man, well-muscled, with short hair, almost in an early Beatles mop top style) about what they believed had happened to Willy Williamson, Mitchell Warren, Maynard O'Brien, and Nessie the bull earlier.

"In any other part of the world, we would think you were all insane," said Andrew.

"But in the Glen Hartwell area, such weirdness undoubtedly does go on," admitted Don.

Looking around the station in horror, they tried to collect a sample of bone ash from every pile on the platform, then aboard the train, then finally in the luggage compartment.

"Including the other three, plus Nessie, there are over ninety," said Elvis Green who had arrived at the station with a large box of sealable evidence bags, to help out.



Leaving Elvis Green to do whatever he could with the bags on bone ash, Paul Bell and Jessie Baker went out into Dien Street, Glen Hartwell, where their pale blue Land Rover was parked.

As they climbed in Paul asked: "Where we going?"

"Around to see an expert on myths, legends, and monsters..." said Jessie, starting the Rover.

Half an hour later they stopped at the grocery shop in Chappell Street, Harpertown.

Inside the shop, they met an elderly Indigenous Australian.

"Bulam Bulam," said Jessie Baker, holding out his hand to shake hands with the grey-haired elder of the Gooladoo tribe.

Instead, Bulam Bulam hugged him, saying:

"Long Time No See, Jessie. How is your dad?" Although the Aborigine lived outside the township of Harpertown in the Victorian countryside in a lean-to in his tribal village, he owned and worked the small grocery shop in town.

"He's remarried, although it took a long time to get over Mum's death in '78. But he's getting along now. My stepmum is wonderful," replied Jessie. "Although we're really here for your knowledge of legends and goofy stuff."

"All right, so tell me."

As quickly as possible they filled him in on the ninety or so strange deaths that had happened in the local area over the last few days."

"It's a wonder the Jackals of the press haven't started swarming yet," said Paul Bell, who settled for shaking hands with the Aboriginal Elder. Speaking too soon.

Bulam Bulam thought for a while, saying: White robe carrying a white scythe, which he uses to age people to death...? That sounds like some kind of ancient Christian-Judean legend. And I'm afraid I'm not very savvy on that kind of legend.

"But I have a friend in Melbourne, Rabbi Hershel who is. So, let's go phone him."



The next day they were at the Pettiwood railway station waiting for the rabbi to arrive, when the Jackals of the press began swarming at last. Soon the Torres Street station was surrounded by a dozen or so news vans, with reporters from all of Australia's five main TV networks (7, 9, 10, ABC, SBS), plus the numerous rags, radio news, and even podcast news shows.

At the front of the procession was still beautiful sixty-year-old Melbourne TV reporter Lisa Nowland, whose platinum blonde good looks plus pouty cupid's bow lips made most men, straight or gay, putty in her hands.

"Is Mr. Klein here?" shouted Lisa, trying to push past Andrew Braidwood and Donald Esk, who were standing in the gates to stop the press from flooding into the railway station.

"No, Colin Klein has gone back to England," lied Don, knowing that the redheaded Englishman was still somewhere in the local area.

"I find that hard to believe," said Lisa indignantly. "He's not likely to have left for London without saying goodbye to me. We're very close friends, you know."

"Sure you are," said Andrew, knowing full well that despite her obvious attractions Colin Klein, like most of them in the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area, actually couldn't stand Lisa Nowland.

Eventually, the train arrived, like usual late, and a tall man, with a long beard, wearing a black hat and gown alighted.

"Rabbi Hershel?" asked Jessie Baker holding out his right arm.

"Yes," said the Rabbi, going on to shake hands with all of the police, plus Elvis Green. "Such a reception committee for one unimportant Rabbi."

"You ain't seen nothing yet," said Elvis as they headed across to the gate, where Lisa and company waited to interview whoever the police were there to meet.

"Rabbi," guessed Lisa Nowland correctly, "do you have anything to say to the press?"

After a few seconds, he said, in Yiddish: "Yes, get lost!"

"Huh?" said Lisa, puzzled.

Pushing past her, the police led the Rabbi through the press, shielding him as best they could as they took him across to Jessie Baker's pale blue police Land Rover. And started around to the Westmoreland-Wilhelmina Police Station in Dunscombe Street Wilhelmina, with a dozen news vans and a couple of dozen cars following after them.



Inside the small, white-walled police station, Rabbi Hershel pulled out a small, ancient-looking black-covered hardback book.

Sitting he said: "The creature you are dealing with is called Methuselah."

"Methuselah? We've all heard of him," said Paul Bell.

"Yes, but you've only heard lay legends, bowdlerised down the millennia. In truth, Methuselah has lived for thousands of years by using his staff-cum-scythe to touch people. They age to death in minutes and he obtains their life force to extend his own evil existence.

"After the mass murders at the railway station yesterday, he has probably added another thousand years to his life ... If we don't stop him."

"And can we stop him?" asked Elvis Green.

"With the help of Yahwe, that's Jehovah to you gentiles." He held up the book to show them. "There is an ancient Hebrew ritual in here, which I have to recite, while you somehow break his scythe ... Being careful not to let him touch it."

"So, we have to break it, without touching it?" asked Andrew Braidwood, sounding as puzzled as the others looked.

"Exactly," said the Rabbi. "Piece of cake, hey."

"How do we break it without physically touching it?" asked Jessie Baker.

"You can touch it, just not with your skin. Smash it with a shovel or something."

"Oh, well that makes sense," said Elvis Green.



Over at the O'Brien farm, Dorothea was hanging out some washing, with the help of her two daughters who had come to stay with her for a few weeks to help her get over her grief at the loss of Maynard.

"Who the Hell is that?" asked the appropriately named Sassy, a tall, attractive raven-haired woman.

Turning round they saw the tall white-robed figure of Methuselah heading toward them.

"That's him," cried Dorothea, "the man ... the thing that murdered your father."

Sassy turned to start after the creature. But Dorothea grabbed her arm to stop her: "No, don't he can age you to death with that poll thing he's carrying."

Looking unconvinced, nonetheless Sassy allowed her mother and sister to lead her back to the farmhouse, where they carefully locked all windows, doors, and shutters.



Methuselah smiled grimly. He accepted that it was easier if he had the element of surprise. But he had decided that he might as well finish off the job at the O'Brien station, even if Dorothea O'Brien did not have the same life energy as Maynard, her husband, or Nessie the Bull had possessed.

But seeing that there were three women at the station, two of them young and fit, with plenty of life force, the white-robed figure grinned evilly, thinking: Looks like it was worth my while after all to return to the scene of the crime. He couldn't help laughing at his perceived wit.



In the farmhouse, Sassy had already rung Jessie Baker at Wilhelmina telling him of Methuselah's return. While outside the white-robed fiend approached.



"Got him," said Jessie to the others, "if we can get there in time. He's returned to the O'Brien farm to finish off Dorothea and her two daughters."

"Let's go," said Rabbi Hershel grabbing up his holy book, as they all ran out to the cars outside.

"A breakthrough in the case?" demanded Lisa Nowland smiling her poutiest, sexiest smile as the men ran past her.

"Drop dead, woman," said the rabbi in Yiddish.

"Huh," said Lisa, puzzled. Then she raced across to her news van to tell her driver-cum-cameraman, follow them for God's sake!"

"You're the boss," said Davo. Not being patronising, since he had learnt early in their working relationship that Lisa gave the orders, and he obeyed without question.



At the farmhouse, Methuselah touched the screen door which aged and fell apart into kindling. Then he touched the heavy red gum outer door with a similar result.



Inside Sassy said: "He's getting through." Grabbing her mother by one arm, her blonde sister Evangeline grabbing the other arm, they raced down the long corridor to the rarely used front door and ran out onto the patio.

"We'll have to run," said Evangeline. They couldn't risk going round to the back of the house where they had parked their cars. Not with the white-robed figure there.

Opening a chain link gate to a large sheep paddock, the three women, still holding hands raced across the paddock toward the gravel road a few hundred metres away.



"Faster damn it," said Rabbi Hershel as they raced toward the O'Brien station.

"I didn't think rabbis were allowed to say, 'dammit'?" said Elvis Green,

"In emergencies, we're allowed," teased the rabbi.



The red gum front door, once beautiful had aged a thousand years and lay in splinters in the doorway. Methuselah quickly checked all ten rooms of the farmhouse, then started down the corridor toward the front door. This time he opened the door and stepped outside, sighing in frustration as he saw the three women racing across the paddock.

"It's definitely best to have the element of surprise," he said, starting at a run across the paddock after them, thinking: Why must they always make it harder than it needs to be?



Reaching the end of the paddock, Sassy and Evangeline helped their mother over the barbed wire fence. Then effortlessly leapt over the fence themselves. Then the three women started trotting down the gravel road, heading toward Pettiwood, five kilometres away.

"We'll never make it," said Dorothea, not as fit as her daughters, already starting to pant.

"Hopefully we won't have to," said Sassy, "the police should meet us soon ... hopefully."



At the barbed wire fence, Methuselah didn't bother to climb. He merely touched it with the scythe and the fence for a hundred metres in each direction started to rapidly rust, then fell apart into pieces no larger than grains of salt.

Slowly he started down the road toward Pettiwood, deciding that the three women would soon tire out so that there was no reason for him to get fatigued.



Despite panting in exhaustion, the three women managed to get nearly two kilometres, before hearing sirens racing in their direction.

"Thank God!" said Dorothea, ready to collapse.

Looking back, Sassy saw that Methuselah was only half a kilometre behind. She said:

"Not yet Mum, we have to keep going till they actually get here."

So they continued on with Sassy and Evangeline having to almost carry their mother, to keep her going.

A few minutes later the ambulances, police cars, and new vans caught up with the three women.

Pushing her way to the front of the precession, Lisa Nowland almost slammed her mike into Dorothea's face, saying: "Any words for the press?"

"Yeah, fuck off," said Sassy giving the beautiful blonde a shove that send her sprawling to her backside on the wild grass and nettles.

Derek and Cheryl helped Dorothea into the first ambulance, and her daughters went to the second ambulance, then they both started back to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.



Now running down the gravel road Methuselah found himself facing a hundred or so people. He hesitated for a second, then looked at his scythe and thought: I killed almost that many people at the railway station. So, I can do it again.

But as he approached, Rabbi Hershel started reading in Yiddish from his holy book.

Standing up, with help from her cameraman-cum-driver, Davo, Lisa Nowland grabbed out her writing pad and said, could you repeat that more slowly?"

Ignoring her, the Rabbi continued to chant in Yiddish.

Methuselah had stopped approaching them. He stood still, his face flushing a healthier red shade as the holy words began to affect him.

"You can't kill me with mere words, old man! shouted the white-robed creature.

"No, but we can with this," said Jessie Baker. Racing forward he hit the ivory scythe three times with a short-handled spade.

On the third whack the scythe, thousands of years old, shattered into millions of shards no bigger than grains of sand at the beach.

"Nooooooo!" shrieked Methuselah, as this time he was the one who began to age rapidly, soon dying. Then turning to a festering corpse. Before reducing to yellowing bones, then finally to pale greyish bone ash.

"Please tell me that you got that on film," said Lisa Nowland.

"Sorry Lisa," apologised Davo, "I got him approaching, then the film ran out!"

"Nooooooo!" shrieked the beautiful platinum blonde as though in imitation of Methuselah.

"Plenty of other cameramen got it though," said Davo, not realising that he was only digging his grave deeper. "Maybe one of them will let us have a copy."

She looked around to where a hundred other journalists were smirking at her, if not actually laughing, and said:

"Yeah, right!"

"Oy vay, blonde bints," said Rabbi Hershel.

"Was that in English or Yiddish?" asked Lisa, wondering if she had just been insulted.

Her cameraman-cum-driver, Davo, shrugged.

"That's all folks," said Jessie Baker, doing the worst ever Bugs Bunny impersonation. "So you might as well, clear out now."

"That's okay," said a tall blond reporter, "we've all got great stories here." He looked at Lisa, resisting the temptation to laugh out loud, then said:

"Well, most of us." Unable to resist laughing as he headed back to his news van.

"Drop dead, get buried, and go mouldy!" shouted Lisa Nowland after his retreating form.

"You wish," said the reporter, as nearly a hundred journalists raced back to their cars or news vans, racing back to be first to put in their sensational story complete with graphic film footage of Methuselah dying.

"What's the matter, Lisa, didn't you get satisfaction?" Jessie Baker asked the platinum blonde.

"Forget it Bozzo," said Lisa Storming back to her news van with Davo in pursuit. "You couldn't satisfy me if you were a professional gigolo."

"Besides, you couldn't afford her price," said Davo, grimacing as he realised that Lisa would put him through Hell for weeks over his careless choice of words.

"No, she looks high-classed," teased Jessie.

Lisa stopped and raised her shoulders in anger, then walked on, refusing to be baited by some local yokel cop.

"I don't think Lisa likes you," said Elvis Green, coming over after collecting up all of Methuselah's ashen bone.

"I think you could be right," agreed Jessie still watching her retreating form. "Which is a pity since she may be sixty, but she's still one Hell of a hottie."

"Yeah, but she'd only bed you to get exclusives out of you," pointed out Paul Bell.

"Hell, I'd give her all the exclusives that she wanted, if I could get her into the sack with me."

"Professional as ever, Jessie," said Elvis Green, and laughing, the policemen and Rabbi Hershel headed across toward their own cars.

THE END
© Copyright 2023 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia