Stanley Ashmore was panting, on the brink of exhaustion, when finally he reached the outskirts of Westmoreland.   His heart pounded in his ears, loud enough to deafen him to the sounds of his pursuer.   But Stan knew he was still being followed, knew that the pursuer would never give up until he was dead.

In his youth Stan had been considered quite an athlete, at least by the standards of an Australian country town.   But for the last thirty-five years he had been slowly going to fat, sitting behind a teller’s window at the State Bank in BeauLarkin.   So Stan was now in no condition for running.

Yet running was just what he had been doing, seemingly for hours.   Running through the dense forest of wattles, pines, and eerie, grey-white ghost gums, all the way from Mount Abergowrie on the northern edge of Glen Hartwell, to the outskirts of Westmoreland, nearly five kilometres away.

“A ghost town,” said Stan between panting breaths, looking out at the narrow streets of decaying, weatherboard houses.   Westmoreland had been deserted en masse in the late 1970s when a plague had decimated the town and its neighbour Wilhelmina.

Stan hesitated for a moment, catching his breath, and then decided that perhaps a ghost town was as fitting a place as any to hide…Considering what was chasing him.

“Can’t…go…much further…anyway,” wheezed Stan as he stumbled out of the forest and started down the pot-holed bitumen road.

Westmoreland is nothing more than twenty or so single-fronted weatherboard houses, a bank, and a general store lined up along Cockerall Road (which is paved), and Phillomena and Harvey Streets (which are both mere dirt tracks).

Stan stopped at the corner of Cockerall Road and Phillomena Street and looked down the dirt track for a moment.   ‘Bitumen burns, dirt doesn’t!’ he thought, wondering if it would be safer to head down the dirt path.   But then, realising that his pursuer could take the fire along the dirt road, Stan continued up along Cockerall Road, looking first left, then right as he ran.

The neglected houses looked like wooden faces, sneering at Stan for his feeble efforts to escape the monster that followed him.   The glass-fronted West Pac bank, on the corner of Cockerall and Harvey, seemed friendlier after his years as a bank teller.   But as he started toward it, he realised that the large plate-glass window front provided no protection against his pursuer.   So, reluctantly he forced himself to head toward one of the sneering-faced weatherboard houses.