The seven men and six women were dressed in ordinary street clothes; however, there was nothing ordinary about what they were doing.   In the centre of the living room, a magic Cone of Power had been laid out on the floor.   Within the white circle, on a wooden table a beautiful young woman lay naked, while the thirteen men and women danced round her anti-clockwise, chanting a simple eight-line mantra.

For a long while nothing seemed to be happening.   Then, unexpectedly a loud explosion resounded upon the corrugated-iron roof.   The thirteen people looked up startled and were almost blinded as the room was filled with a great burst of yellow light.   Stunned they fell to the floor for a moment, covering their eyes, some moaning in agony.

When at last they dared to look up, they saw great tendrils of smoky white ectoplasm spraying upward from the wooden table, gushing from the mouth, ears, nostrils, nipples, and vulva of the young woman on the table.   Ectoplasm is a vital part of human beings, the link between their physical and astral bodies.   Losing even a small quantity has been known to kill trance mediums.   Yet, as the men and women watched, the young woman gave off seemingly litres of the foamy white matter, which sprayed out of her body orifices and slowly began to form into a solid mass about a metre above where she lay.

As they watched in astonishment, the swirling mass of ectoplasm rapidly began to shape itself into the figure of a beautiful woman.

“Oh my God, it’s Vera!” cried one of the women in the coven.   And indeed the ectoplasmic woman was an exact double of the young woman lying naked on the table.   Or rather a cruel caricature of the woman.   Physically it resembled her, except for a wild, insane look in the fiery eyes and a twisted sneer that spoilt the otherwise sensual mouth.

At first the witch coven was too stunned to react, but finally they began chanting, calling to the White Goddess, Hecate, to return the spirit of their neophyte into her body.

“Return the soul of our beloved sister, Vera Hilliard!” pleaded the High Priest.

Snarling with rage the ectoplasmic woman began to twist and turn furiously, using her own powers to summon up a great wind, which tossed the tall priest about the room like a twig and blew out the ceremonial black candles, scattering them across the living room floor.   The yellow light that had heralded the coming of the evil creature began to build in intensity, forcing the coven to shield their eyes again.

Then, still snarling her rage at them, the ectoplasmic woman sailed up toward the ceiling, which seemed to dissolve into water to allow her to swim through it, taking the blinding light with her, leaving the cowering coven of witches to tend to the lifeless body of Vera Hilliard, which was dry and brittle like scorched paper and had shrunk to only half its living size.

*      *      *

The Following Night

Des Hutchinson lay awake in bed, too het up to fall asleep.   Tomorrow Warren would be going home to Cherrytree Farm to live with his brother Brian.   Although a big, burly man in his mid thirties, Warren Horne had the intellectual capacity of a seven-year old and had been unable to look after himself, or the sheep station after his brother Brian had been savaged in a dingo attack three months earlier.

So Des and Elizabeth Hutchinson had agreed to take care of Warren at their small cattle station upon Mount Drynan outside East Merridale.   Although Warren wasn’t always easy to look after, he had been a godsend to the Hutchinsons, helping them to get over the heartache of the loss of their own son, Leon, who had been murdered in December 1992 by Donald William Sears, a brutal sadist whom three years earlier had killed Helen Horne the mother of Brian and Warren.

By rights Mel Forbes should have contacted the Glen Hartwell branch of the Community Services Department of Victoria, to have Warren taken away to a Family Group Home until Brian was able to look after him.   However, the small town police sergeant had stuck his neck out, agreeing to let the Hutchinsons take care of Warren for a few months.   The sergeant’s act of kindness had been a blessing to Elizabeth Hutchinson, who had been virtually a zombie for the last six years.

Brian Horne had been released from hospital just over a month ago, and, to Liz and Des’ dismay, Warren would be going home tomorrow.   Des would hate to see the retarded man leave, had grown used to having him around the small farmhouse.   But even worse he hated to think what it would do to Liz, who had been her old perky self for the last twelve weeks.   The change in her had been little short of miraculous, so Des dreaded to think what would happen to her after Warren left.

Des was still brooding over the departure of Warren, when the soft, white thighs suddenly descended over his face.   Although unable to look up far, he could see the firm, strong legs on either side of his head and the full-lipped vulva hovering only centimetres from his face.

For just a moment he thought it was Liz, returned to her old sensual self, from the days before the death of Leon.   Then hearing her steady breathing, he realised that she was sleeping soundly on the bed beside him.

As he watched the mysterious pale-skinned woman continued to lower her pubis toward him as though demanding cunnilingus from him.   However, as the outer labia began to open wide, Des saw the first hint of the row upon row of sharp, pearly white teeth that lined the inside of her sex mouth.   Sharp teeth that bit and tore at Des’ face, literally chewing away skin and bone alike as it ate right down into the soft pulp of his brain itself.

*      *      *

Reluctantly Rowena Singleton allowed the thin beam of sunlight projecting beneath the bedroom blind to wake her and found herself looking into a black, furry face.   For a moment she was startled, recalling her experience fifteen months ago when she had awakened to see a large black wolf lying upon the bed beside her.   After tumbling out of bed to find the wolf gone when she untangled herself from the bedclothes, she had allowed herself to believe that it had been the station’s Barb-Kelpie, Blacky lying upon the bed beside her.

For just a second she thought that it was the black wolf peering at her.   Until the large Barb-Kelpie began to lick her face with his long, rough tongue, wagging his tail furiously in greeting.

“Ugh, ugh, get away!” ordered the beautiful honey blonde, swatting at the black dog with one hand while sitting up on the bed.

“He’s just telling you it’s time to get up,” said the five-year-old girl who stood in the doorway, holding the tail of a red Kelpie dog to stop it from rushing into the bedroom also.   The dog, Marg, Blacky’s mate, looked back at the little girl, however, since her grip was too weak to hurt her Marg decided to ignore it and began to wag her tail, sending short, sharp jolts up the little girl’s arm.

“What are those two dogs doing in the house?” demanded Rowena.

“They’re allowed in the house,” insisted young Kirsty, who had inherited her mother’s honey-blonde hair and good looks.

“Not before breakfast!” insisted Rowena.   However, the once hard and fast rule had started to be relaxed over the last six months or so, since neither Rowena nor Ernie was able to resist the feisty little girl’s entreaties.   So now more often than not one or even both of the farm dogs slept on the little girl’s bed with her.

“Time to get up,” said Kirsty, wisely deciding to change the subject.

“Oh my God yes,” said Rowena, glancing across toward the clock on the bedside table, “it’s nearly five-thirty.   I’ve overslept.”   However, the sarcasm was wasted on the little girl, so, reluctantly Rowena swung her long, shapely legs over the side of the bed, eased on her slippers, struggled into her dressing gown, then was almost bowled over by Blacky and Marg as the large Barb-Kelpie and smaller red Kelpie raced each other out of the bedroom and down the corridor to the kitchen, both hoping to be the first fed.

“Me first!” insisted Kirsty, kicking one of the dogs away from the kitchen table, as she climbed up into one of the four red-vinyl chairs.

“Yes madam,” said Rowena going across to put two slices of bread into the toaster, before reaching up to take down a box of cornflakes from the overhead cupboard.

It was ten minutes later that Ernie Singleton finally wandered down the corridor to join the others at the breakfast table.

“You overslept!” rebuked Kirsty.

“Yes, I did,” agreed Ernie kissing the little girl, then his wife.   Unlike Rowena, however, he was only half joking.   The Singleton property was only a small-to-middling sheep station, which rarely required more than eight or nine hours work, seven days a week to be kept running.   However, for the last few months Ernie’s workload had been doubled because he had also been tending to Brian Horne’s Cherrytree Farm, a few kilometres away in East Merridale.

*      *      *

Despite its name, Cherrytree was a small sheep-and-cattle station, or at least had been before the stock had been viciously slaughtered when the farm had been attacked by a dingo pack three months ago.   Brian Horne had been savaged by the dingoes, requiring eight weeks’ stay in the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, followed by a month’s convalescence at home in the care of Ernie’s mother Victoria, and other local women, while Ernie had taken over the work of rebuilding and running Cherrytree.   With a little help from other local farmers, but not a lot since the Singleton station had been one of the very few local farms that had not been raided by the dingoes before their pack had finally been hunted down and destroyed.   As a consequence Ernie did most of the manual work on Cherrytree Farm, after it had been sparingly restocked with a handful of sheep donated one or two a piece by station owners less severely hit than Brian Horne, plus eight red Kelpies donated by Ernie himself — to the relief of Rowena, who was forever pleading with him to reduce the number of their farm dogs.   (Although the dogs paid for part of their keep by helping out around the farm, they were mainly an expensive hobby for Ernie, who was forced to concede that their station was far too small to justify the forty to fifty Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies, Border Collies and other breeds that it usually contained.)

“Eat hearty,” said Rowena placing a large bowl of porridge before her husband.

“Don’t I always?” joked Ernie.

“You sure do,” agreed young Kirsty, looking puzzled when both her parents burst into laughter.   There’s no doubt that farm life breeds healthy appetites, and having to work from before sunrise until after sunset seven days a week, to tend to two sheep stations had done nothing to dampen Ernie’s voracious appetite.   However, there was another reason for Ernie’s oversized meals.   For the last dozen years, since February 1983, Ernie Singleton had been infested with the werewolf taint!

Two or three times every month he transformed from man to beast to roam the countryside at night as the black wolf, a huge creature that looked like any other wolf, except for having Ernie’s almost navy blue eyes.   The shape changing from man to wolf then back again, along with the hours spent loping through the night forest, burnt up a tremendous amount of energy, which Ernie built up again over the next few days with almost non-stop eating binges, during which he could go through a normal week’s food in two or three days.

*      *      *

Five Hours Later

As Ernie, Rowena, and Kirsty drove up along the dirt track toward Cherrytree farm, they could see a small crowd standing on the patio of the farmhouse waiting to greet them.   Ernie could make out the tall, lean, Celtically dark figure of his mother Victoria and couldn’t help thinking that something good had come out of the dingo raid on the sheep station, if only in bringing Victoria out of her shell a little.   For the last decade Victoria Singleton had lived by herself in a small log cabin on the outskirts of LePage, a few kilometres away, mourning the death of her husband, Gregory, who had been killed in a farming accident.   Although Rowena and Kirsty went to visit her every couple of days to bring her supplies to live upon, Victoria had refused to budge from her small cabin, until six weeks ago when she had shifted to Cherrytree Farm to take over the main responsibility of cleaning and maintaining the farmhouse, as well as looking after Brian while he was convalescing.

Beside Victoria stood the operatically large Georgina Hart and her seventeen-year-old son Victor.   Like his mother, Vic Hart was short and swarthy, however, he had inherited his father’s lean physique and fine-boned features.   Beside the Harts, waving furiously stood Rowena’s parents: Samantha and Anthony Frankland: Tony tall, powerfully built and fiercely blond (having given his coloration to his daughter and granddaughter); Samantha a full head shorter than her husband; a very shapely and attractive redhead, who despite being in her fifties hardly looked any older than her daughter, or her niece Gloria Baradine who was standing last in line.

Like Victoria Singleton, Gloria Baradine had been a virtual recluse in recent years, since the shock death of her younger sister Holly Ulverstone in the Megarithe Chemicals Factory fire in February 1993.   At thirty-eight, Gloria was five years older than Holly would have been and six years older than her cousin Rowena, however, the three women (all honey blondes) had once looked so much alike that they had sometimes been mistaken for triplets.   But since the death of Holly, Gloria had aged fifteen years and now looked more like Rowena’s mother than her sister.

As the car drove up the three occupants each concentrated on a different member of the waving crowd: Rowena stared at the frumpy figure of Gloria, remembering how lithe and attractive her cousin had been only two years earlier; Ernie concentrated on Samantha and blushed with embarrassment as he found himself sexually aroused by his attractive mother-in-law; little Kirsty stared at Victoria.   “There’s Grannie,” she cried, leaning forward to peer out through the front windscreen of the car.   Although both of her grandmothers were waiting for them, Samantha Frankland looked years too young to be addressed as Grannie, a title that Kirsty reserved for Victoria.

*      *      *

Ten minutes later the women (and girl) were inside the farmhouse tending to the needs of Brian and preparing for the imminent return home of Warren.   After a quick hello to his lifelong friend, Ernie settled dawn to the chores of the farm, with the help of his father-in-law and young Vic Hart.

By noon the men were exhausted and ready for a break.

“Oh well, the worst of it’s done,” said Ernie in relief, as the three men walked across the sheep paddock toward the farmhouse.

“And Des’ll probably lend a hand when he arrives later today to drop off Warren,” suggested Tony Frankland.

“It’ll be all finished by then anyway,” said Ernie.   “If not I’ll have to leave you to it; I’ve still got my own place to see to yet.”

*      *      *

It was perhaps an hour after lunch that the three men heard the crunch of tyres approaching on the gravel road leading to the front of the farmhouse.

“Sounds like Des now,” said Tony.   However, even from a distance they could recognise the purring sound of Mel Forbes’ Holden Rodeo Ute, as distinct from the rattle-chunk noise made by Des Hutchinson’s twenty-year-old Land-Rover.

Wondering what was wrong, the three men headed toward the farmhouse as fast as their legs would carry them.   As they neared the back of the farm, they saw Mel and Danny “Bear” Ross standing on the back porch talking to Victoria and Samantha.

Mel and Bear were both hardy rural types: Mel (sergeant of the Merridale Police) nearly 185 centimetres tall, one time amateur boxing champion of the Willamby and Glen Hartwell regions.   Though now in his early fifties and grey-haired, Mel was still a powerhouse of a man.   Danny Ross, nicknamed “Bear” by his colleagues in the Glen Hartwell Police, because of his powerful physique and great height: at 200 centimetres he dwarfed even Mel Forbes.   Together the two police sergeants could make an intimidating sight.   Except that Mel looked ashen-faced as though about to pass out and Bear Ross’ eyes were shining, misty with emotion as they talked to the two women.

As they approached within hearing range the three men heard Mel say — “We thought it best to leave him with Liz for now…To help calm her down a bit –” and realised that they were talking about Warren Horne.

“Warren’s a lot more aware of death than many people give him credit for,” said Bear, remembering the way the retarded man had risked his life three months earlier to rescue his brother Brian from the dingo attack.   “But he was the only one who could get through to Liz at all.”

“What’s up?” asked Ernie sensing as he asked that he would regret the question.

“Des Hutchinson’s dead,” said the third man, standing hidden behind the two policemen.

Ernie, Tony, and Vic all looked round startled, seeing the short, weasel-faced figure of Sam Hart for the first time.

“Dead?” asked Tony, wondering if he had heard correctly.

“That’s right,” said Sam almost with glee — there had been no love lost between Hart and Hutchinson for as long as anyone could remember.

“H…how?” asked Ernie.

“Killed by the black wolf!” said Sam, his voice tinged with anger.   His hatred for the black wolf went back almost as many years as his hatred of Des Hutchinson.

“The black wolf?” asked Ernie, astounded.

“We don’t know that for certain,” insisted Bear Ross.   Unlike Hart, Bear had no animosity toward the black wolf.   An animal-lover all his life, Bear still remembered with a sense of wonder his first encounter with the creature.   Almost unbelievably large, with a thick, glossy black coat, the wolf had loped into a clearing to escape an approaching bushfire that the big man had been helping to fight.   Then wagging its long tail dog-like, it had almost allowed Bear to approach close enough to pat it — almost but not quite! — before turning tail to flee from man and fire again.   Recalling the gentle look on the creature’s face even after a dozen years, Bear felt compelled to stand up for it and insisted, “We have no proof that the black wolf is a man killer.”

“We have Des Hutchinson with his face chewed away!” insisted Sam.   “How much more proof do we need?”

“He’s got a point,” conceded Mel reluctantly, although like Bear he didn’t want to believe ill of the wolf.

“I still say it wasn’t the black wolf!” protested Bear.

*      *      *

‘It can’t have been the black wolf!’ thought Ernie.   ‘I’m the black wolf and I didn’t even go out last-night!’   Since the night he had first transformed from man to wolf in early 1983, Ernie had lived in fear of what he might do in wolf form.   Haunted by hundreds of badly written werewolf novels and shoddily made films, he had lived in terror that in wolf form he might become the archetypal crazed werewolf, stalking the forest at night, killing his friends and family first, before moving on to seek out other human prey.   Going steady with Rowena before his first shape change, he had almost jilted her to submit to a life of loneliness.   But four-and-a-half years later Ernie had been reasonably confident that he was no killer.   As the black wolf he remembered only smatterings of his human life, but as Ernie Singleton he remembered everything that he did and saw in wolf form, so he soon knew that he had no urge to terrorise or kill, so he knew that he had no urge to terrorise or kill, and he had finally summoned the nerve to propose to Rowena in July 1987 and they had married that October in St. Margaret’s cathedral in Blackland Street, Glen Hartwell.   Three years later, in December 1990, Kirsty had been born and ever since they had lived a happy if exhausting life on the farm, with Ernie able to enjoy his romps as the black wolf two or three nights a month, without fear that he would ever harm his wife or young daughter as the black wolf.

“It can’t be the black wolf!” protested Bear again.

“It has to be!” insisted Sam Hart.

‘It can’t be!’ thought Ernie.   ‘Last night was the wrong night!’   He had last changed into the black wolf seven days ago, so the next transformation was not due for at least another three weeks.

“Look!” said Mel raising his voice to quieten the others.   “All I know is that something chewed the face off Des last night and left Liz a screaming hysteric after waking to find herself awash in Des’ blood!”   Seeing he had cowered the others to silence, he looked back toward Victoria and Samantha, “There’s a policewoman with Liz now, but it might be best if one of you could go over to try to comfort her.”

“I’ll go,” volunteered Victoria and she set off with Mel in the Holden Rodeo, leaving the others to break the news of Des Hutchinson’s death to Brian Home and explain why they hadn’t brought his retarded brother home as planned.

*      *      *

During the ride to the Hutchinson sheep station, Bear and Sam argued incessantly on the question of the guilt or innocence of the black wolf in Des’ killing.   Rut Mel Forbes hardly heard them.   His mind had channelled back to three months earlier when the sheep and cattle stations around Glen Hartwell and Merridale had been raided by a pack of crazed dingoes.   Mel and the local constabulary had hunted the pack in vain as they raided farm after farm killing and devouring the entire stock of sheep or cattle, even butchering the station dogs.   Then the pack had made the mistake of attacking people, wounding Brian Horne and Ernie Singleton and devouring an elderly couple.   Unable to stand back and do nothing any longer, the Melbourne Police Force had sent over a hundred trained riflemen to the country area.   They had tracked the pack to their camp two-thirds of the way up the side of Mount Abergowrie on the northern side of Glen Hartwell, and had blasted the dingoes to pieces.   Although a strong man, not easily upset, Mel had been sickened by the sight of the massacre, the pitiful yelping of the large, yellow dogs as their bodies had been torn apart by the barrage of bullets and buckshot.   But just as shocking was the sight that confronted them after the firing finally ceased.   The carcase of a large, grey-brown bull terrier-headed dog with strange tiger-like stripes running down across its rump and tail.   Although not recognising the strange beast, Mel had realised that he had uncovered an anomaly and had had the massacre site cordoned off and called in Federal Government CSIRO scientists to take charge of the carcase.   They had never reported their finding to Mel, however, with the help of the head librarian of the Glen Hartwell City Library, Glenda Pettyjohn, he had soon located the creature in the Encyclopaedia of Australian Wildlife.   “That’s it all right,” said the grey-haired old lady gazing at the picture in the book that she held, “The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.   It has been extinct in Tasmania since 1936 or thereabouts and on the mainland for three thousand years.”   As shocking as that revelation had been, even more shocking was the fact that the “tiger” had not been killed in the hail of bullets that rained down on the dingo pack.   The tiger had had its throat torn out hours before the massacre had occurred.

‘But what could have killed you?’ thought Mel Forbes as he drove toward the Hutchinson farm.   Although smaller in size than the black wolf, unlike a wolf the Tasmanian tiger was a vicious killer, naturally aggressive and born with an evil disposition.   Though matching it in temperament, the dingoes were barely more than half its size and were unlikely to have attacked the thylacine, even less likely to have been able to kill it.   ‘So what could have killed you?’ thought Mel again.   ‘Another Tasmanian tiger perhaps?   Could there be another tiger roaming the countryside around Merridale, killing people again?’

As unlikely as the idea seemed, it was less likely that the Tasmanian tiger could have been alive in the countryside since 1936: fifty-nine years.   Obviously it had to have been born only a few years earlier, so by rights there had to be at least a small herd of other tigers somewhere in the Victorian countryside to have reared it.

‘So could Des have been killed by another Tassie tiger?’ thought Mel.   Remembering the sight of the thylacine, still ferocious looking even in death, Mel hoped not.   He would rather it was the black wolf on the rampage.   At least wolves could be fought.   Tigers on the other hand were a totally unknown factor having been driven to apparent extinction before anyone ever got around to properly studying them.   So they were a frightening enigma.   Their strengths and weaknesses (if any?) still unknown to mankind.

*      *      *

They reached the Hutchinson farm to find Liz Hutchinson tossing and turning in a drug-induced sleep.   Standing near her bedside the willowy, dark-haired figure of Gina Foley, Chief Co-ordinator of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.   A close friend of Mel Forbes, she had agreed to come round to treat Liz in person.

“She’s sleeping…Not soundly, but at least sleeping,” said Gina, upon seeing the gaggle of men and women standing in the doorway, among them the powerfully built Warren Horne.   Dwarfing even Bear Ross, the retarded man was a gentle giant, usually occupying himself with silly jokes and games.   But now he had a serious look on his face as he watched Gina tending to the sleeping woman.   Although they had tried to hide it from him, Warren knew that Des had died somehow in the night.   But Warren was no stranger to death, he had seen the carcases of sheep and the station dogs strewn about the paddock after the attack on Cherrytree farm three months earlier and, of course, five years before that, just before Christmas 1989, it had been Warren who had discovered the bloody corpse of his mother Helen, after she had been killed by axe-murderer Donald William Sears.   So the handicapped man knew something of death and the agony that it caused those left behind and knew that it would be a long haul if Liz Hutchinson were ever to recover from the shock of her husband’s death on top of the death of their son Leon in December 1992.

*      *      *

Garrick Dempsey lay in bed in their home on the outskirts of LePage, brooding about life in general, his wife in particular.   After nineteen years of unhappy married life, Garrick still didn’t know how they had ever thought that they were compatible.   He couldn’t remember a time when they had ever had any real love for each other.   They were about as opposite as two people could possibly be.   Garrick shy and retiring, an almost elfin 162 centimetres and anorexically thin, Roberta loud and extroverted, almost elephantine.   At 190 centimetres she dwarfed her diminutive husband in height, but even more so in weight.   Roberta had stopped weighing herself after 110 kilograms; however, her size was never stable, continually increasing kilo by kilo like a dirigible being slowly but constantly inflated.

Tucking his hands beneath his head to raise himself slightly, Garrick peered through the doorway to the small en suite where his wife was still preparing herself for bed.   Gargling like a sperm whale blowing water through its air hole, Roberta was still dressed.   Garrick winced at the sight of the tight, flame pink slacks that she wore.   Never very fashion conscious; Roberta had outdone herself in bad taste with the pink slacks, which made her look enormous.   ‘But then she is enormous!’ thought Garrick shaking his head in dismay, wondering what he had ever seen in Roberta?   Why he had ever proposed to her?   “I must have been drunker than I thought,” he would say with a wry laugh if any of his friends ever asked him.   But the truth was that he had never been drunk in his life, so it couldn’t have been that.

He was still brooding over his life shackled to Roberta, when he felt the bed ripple as his wife joined him.   Garrick was surprised that she had got to the bed without his hearing her, and was alarmed when she started to crawl up along his side of the bed.   ‘Oh God, not that!’ thought Garrick, shutting his eyes tightly in the hope that it was all a bad dream.   Although obscenely fat, Roberta fantasised that she was every man’s lust object.   People stopped in the street to stare at her amazed at her gigantic size, but she insisted that the men stared at her out of lust, the women out of jealousy.   Driven on by her imagined sensuality, Roberta had developed a tremendous sex drive that kept her long-suffering husband struggling to satisfy her.   He had almost wished at times that she would take a lover to give him a rest, but then he realised that he was fantasising.   ‘What man in his right mind would be a lover of such a disgusting, bloated creature?’ he thought.   But at least, until now, she had always been content to lie under her husband while they coupled.   Now, however, as she climbed up the bed toward him, Garrick shuddered from nausea at the thought of all of that weight on top of him.   He remembered in his single days reading men’s magazines that had cartoons showing thin men being squashed paper thin by gigantically fat women while coupling.   Though he had laughed at such cartoons once (before his wife had banned them from the house saying “Why would you need to look at Elle McPherson or Jerry Hall, when you’ve got me?”), he wasn’t laughing any more as his wife slowly moved up along the bed toward him.

To his horror Roberta did not stop at his groin, but continued up along the bed until her lower body was straddling his face.   ‘Oh, my God, I’ll be smothered!’ thought Garrick in panic, picturing his wife’s colossal pink thighs wrapped around his head.   However, when at last he dared to open his eyes, the flesh that surrounded him was soft, sleek and milky white.

For the moment forgetting his wife, Garrick watched in fascination as the soft, white flesh lowered toward him.   His mouth watering in expectation at the sight of the full-lipped vulva that approached.   Until the sex mouth opened to reveal row upon row of dripping, silvery, needle-like teeth.

Garrick opened his mouth to scream, but his voice was cut off as the vulva descended and the teeth began to rip and tear at his face, biting deep into his skull while above him the unseen woman bucked and twisted around as though in the throes of sexual release.

*      *      *

In the small en suite Roberta Dempsey finished her toilet, carefully preening herself before the mirror, confident that she was still a fine figure of a woman, who would make any man’s pulse race from excitement.   She toyed with the flimsy string of the sheer black nightie, wondering whether she should give Garrick a real treat by entering the room naked.   But then seeing herself in the mirror behind the bathroom door, she decided against it, thinking, ‘He’s in for enough of a treat as it!’   She was certain that the sight of her full, sensual body in the see through nightie would be more than enough to arouse him.   ‘Besides why rob him of the pleasure of seeing me undress?’

She paused for one last look at herself, pushed the bathroom door wide and strode into the bedroom, stopping almost immediately from shock at the sight before her.   The centre of the room was bathed in a bright orange-white light, making her think for a moment that the room was on fire.   But then her eyes adjusted to the blinding luminosity and she could see that it emanated from the bed against the opposite wall.   Or more accurately it seemed to radiate out from the thin woman who squatted over the face of Garrick Dempsey, rolling her head in her arms in obvious sexual delight, while beneath her rolling hips Garrick thrashed about like a man possessed.

Roberta’s last thought before fainting to the bedroom floor was, He’s never offered to do that for me!

She awakened a short while later to find her husband dead (his whole face chewed away), in a pool of blood that coated the floral sheets that she had just purchased.   ‘Ruined, my beautiful sheets are ruined!’ thought Roberta irrationally — her mind using the loss of the $200 sheets as a focus to aim her attention away from the horror of her husband’s brutal death.

*      *      *

Half an hour later Roberta was being comforted by two policemen, while Sergeant Mel Forbes and his constable, Andrew Braidwood, examined the corpse of Garrick Dempsey and the scene of the murder.

Andrew peered down at the corpse whose head looked like a bloody chalice.   A great chasm chewed down completely obliterating the face and the bone at the front of the skull, along with most of the brain.   One look was enough, however, and he quickly turned away, fighting against the bile that threatened to rise in his throat.

After a quick search of the room in the futile hope for clues, Mel and Andrew returned to the living room leaving the murder scene to forensic scientists from BeauLarkin.   However, even as the officers began dusting the room they weren’t hopeful.   There had been no fingerprints or clues of any sort at the Hutchinson sheep station after the murder of Des Hutchinson, no sign even of how the murderer had gained access to the farmhouse.

Returning to the living room they found Roberta sitting on the sofa, apparently calm now, talking almost casually to a young policewoman who sat beside her, “I’d just bought them a few days ago.   Over $200 and now they’re ruined.   Completely ruined…”   As she rambled on and on about her precious sheets, the young policewoman glanced up at Mel, who gave her a quick nod then went across to where young Stanlee Dempsey sat on an armchair a few metres away.

Although he had just turned fifteen, the boy had a good head on his shoulders and had been the one to stay calm in the crisis.   He had telephoned the police after hearing his mother’s hysterical shrieking.

As the two policemen talked to the teenager again, getting him to repeat his account of how he had found his mother standing over the mutilated corpse of his father, Andrew Braidwood felt a strong affinity for the boy.   This was their second official encounter with young Stanlee; the first had been four years earlier after Garrick Dempsey had almost run over the black wolf while driving home late one night.   On that occasion it had been Stanlee who had kept his head while his parents panicked; now again be kept calm while questioned by the policemen.   ‘We could do with a few like you in the force!’ thought Andrew from admiration.

*      *      *

“Well, what do you make of that?” asked Andrew an hour later as they walked across the back paddock to where Mel’s Holden Rodeo was parked.

Mel shrugged his shoulders.   “Frankly I don’t know what to make of it.   No doubt Sam Hart will insist that it’s the black wolf on the rampage.”

“But you don’t agree?”

Mel considered the question carefully for a few moments before answering: “No I don’t.   There’s no evidence that the black wolf has ever attacked anyone.   Besides no wolf would ever attack in such a savage way, brutally tearing the face off its victims…That’s more like what you’d expect from a hyaena.”   He paused for a moment, before musing, “There was a series of killings in South Africa in the early 1970s where a band of hyaenas killed in almost exactly this way.   They scissored their jaws under the victim’s jawbone and over the bridge of the nose and literally bit the face away in one crunch while the person was sleeping.”

Startled by this revelation, Andrew Braidwood turned to look toward his sergeant and asked, “You don’t mean to say…?”

“No, no,” said Mel cutting him off in mid sentence, “I’m not saying that I think there’s a band of Hyaenas on the rampage around Merridale, and for God’s sake don’t let anyone else get hold of that theory.   Things are bad enough around here with Sam’s paranoia about the black wolf, without everyone going hyaena crazy as well.”

*      *      *

There was little that Mel Forbes, or anyone else could do to stop the country folk from panicking as aver the next three weeks a different man was found dead every morning.

After Garrick Dempsey in LePage, the next victim was Julian Hoerschlieffer, an accountant employed by the Victorian Department of Agriculture.   As Mrs. Hoerschlieffer explained, her husband had been delighted by his recent promotion to the Glen, since they lived at one end of Boothy Street Glen Hartwell, and his office was at the other end.   Which meant that he could easily jog to work each morning without the endless hassles over public transport that had driven him to the point of distraction when he had lived in Sunshine and worked in Melbourne.   “Every morning at 7:30 sharp I’d get up to prepare Julian’s breakfast.   I’d set the bacon frying, then walk to the corner milkbar to pick up a copy of the Glen Hartwell Herald Daily Mail and buy a carton of Rev…That was the only kind of lo-cal milk that Julian would drink.   When I returned I’d put on Julian’s eggs and toast and prepare a cup of Nescafe instant coffee.   Usually Julian’s alarm clock would go off about then and he’d hurriedly dress, rush down to eat his breakfast in five or ten minutes, then race off to work.

“This morning though he didn’t appear.   His alarm clock just rang and rang until I went upstairs to see if held fallen asleep again…And I found him…Found him lying there…on the bed…covered in blood…his whole face gone…I must have been lying there next to him like that, without even noticing anything when I got up…Of course it was still dark out, being winter and all…and I just slipped on my dressing gown without even turning on the bedroom light….”   At which point Nancye Hoerschlieffer broke down and was unable to go on with her testimony.

Despite the efforts of both Mel Forbes and Bear Ross to play down the killings, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that they had a crisis on their hands.   For five nights running there were new deaths in Glen Hartwell (in Boothy, Blackland, Lawson, and Howard Streets, and one in Baltimore Drive, only a few hundred metres from the local morgue).   Mel had virtually handed the entire investigation over to Bear, with great relief, when two more killings occurred in the Merridale region, followed by deaths in Lenoak, Pettiwood, Harpertown, Daley, then again in Glen Hartwell.

With the local newspapers using the rising death toll as fodder to sell papers and the local population demanding immediate action — which Bear and Mel were forced to concede they were unable to deliver — and a very tricky state election looming in a few months, the Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, called for an emergency task force to be set up to investigate the murders.   It would comprise elements from both the Melbourne Police and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Composed of over fifty scientists, the medical branch would be headed by Gina Foley and Jerry Green (the local coroner), and a CSIRO senior scientist from Melbourne, Dwight Sandifort.   The police arm would have nearly as many officers and would he under the control of a Detective Inspector from Melbourne, Kenneth Fisher (who had risen to prominence a few years earlier after single-handedly capturing the Carlton Ripper, a psychotic killer who had slashed to death then raped more than twenty-five women over an eighteen month period).

While Fisher was assembling his team, with permission from Jerry Green, Gina Foley had all of the victims’ corpses transferred from the morgue to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital where autopsies could be carried out more systematically.

It was a cold winter morning when Jerry and Gina started to perform their surgery.   Not so much autopsies in the normal sense, since it was obvious how the victims bad died (by having their faces chewed away), so much as exploratory forensic surgery, in the hope of discovering what kind of creature had committed the killings.

“It’s clearly the work of some kind of animal,” said Jerry “Elvis” Green — so nicknamed because of his long, bushy black sideburns.   “No metal instrument that I know of could have done this kind of damage.”

“Then you think Sam Hart is right about the black wolf being the culprit?”

“No.   No wolf could do this kind of damage,” said Jerry peering down into the gaping cavity of what had been a man’s head, but now looked like a crudely scooped out melon.   Then having taken sides in that argument, he was left thinking, ‘But if it’s not the black wolf, what the hell could do this kind of thing?   If this was Canada or the USA, I might think a bear could have done it, but there are no bears in Australia.   Except in zoos, and we would have heard if one had escaped.’   He took another look at the gaping cavity that had once been a man’s skull and thought, ‘And anyway I doubt if even a bear could do this kind of damage!’

Looking up he saw Bear Ross standing out in the viewing room, watching the autopsy through the observation window and thought, ‘Speak of the Devil!’

The examination didn’t take long, since there wasn’t much that they could do except study the cavity, throw up wild theories and, of course, watch on as the hospital photographer took photos of the corpse.   After it was finished Jerry and Gina walked to the door to greet the policeman.

In any country town most people know each other by sight, however, Bear and Jerry had been close friends since they both had moved to Glen Hartwell in the early 1980S.   So the coroner was ready with a warm smile and a firm handshake as they approached Bear.

“How’s it going?” asked Jerry.

“No better than with you,” said Bear, with a wry smile.   “This big Melbourne Inspector has had us all running round in circles looking for clues, trying to tabulate statistical facts and figures about the murders.   So far all we can state for certain is that all the victim’s were men, not women as usually is the case with mass murders.”

“Well, that’s something, anyway,” suggested Gina Foley.

“Not really.   Normally serial killers go for women because the killers themselves are always men.”

“Then in this case your killer must be a woman,” pointed out Gina, half jokingly.

Bear looked startled at the simple conclusion that had somehow eluded him.

“There’s a very devious mind behind that great face and figure of yours, Gina,” said Jerry drawing a small laugh from Gina, who went on with preparing her report on the autopsy that they had just performed.

Without looking up from her clipboard, Gina said, “It wouldn’t be the first time in this country that a woman has been a mass murderer.   There was the infamous ‘Poison Ivy’ in Sydney in 1987, who posed as a prostitute to get picked up by men, then drugged them and robbed them in their own hotel room.   Then in early 1991 there was the ‘Vampire Woman’ in Queensland.   A notorious lesbian who, with the help of her girlfriends, lured men to their deaths then drank their blood.

Bear considered the suggestion for a moment before protesting, “But how could a woman do…do what has been done to these men?”   He pointed to where the corpse still lay on the examination table in the autopsy room behind them.   “How could a woman…Scoop their faces out like she was scooping ice cream out of a plastic tub?”

“How could a man?” countered Gina and Bear could only shrug his resignation at a question for which he had no answer.

*      *      *

While Gina and Jerry were conducting the autopsies, Detective Inspector Kenneth Fisher arranged with Bear and Mel to be allowed to re-interview all of the widows and next-of-kin.   This created some hard feelings among the local constabulary who were already more than a little put out by the way that the Melbourne cops had taken charge of the investigation, and now thought that even their ability to question witnesses was being held up to ridicule.   It also raised the hackles of many grieving relatives who were already up-in-arms after the State Premier had enacted special legislation to allow Gina and Jerry to perform autopsies on all of the victims without the usual consent of the next-of-kin.

*      *      *

Despite the premier’s concern that it was politically advantageous to solve the killings in as short a time as possible, by the end of June the police were no nearer to a solution.   Over the last month or so the local newspapers had had a field day throwing up wild and woolly theories to explain the killings.   However, after nearly a month, despite the death toll reaching twenty-five, most of the local rags had started to run out of steam.   But not the BeauLarkin Evening Star, a paper renowned for its tackiness, often described as “The Sunday Tabloid published Monday through Saturday”.   Having started the month with stories about vampires and giant mosquitoes “Which suck the faces right off their victims!” the Star ended the month with an interview with the local eccentric, Old Man (Crazy Joe) Frazer who claimed “It’s the Slime Beast that done it!”   The slime beast being a local legend: a giant aquatic monster reported to live at the bottom of the Yannan River, supposedly the slime beast had risen from the depths to abduct swimmers or people out punting, from the early 1880s through until well after World War Two.   Crazy Joe himself claimed to have been abducted by the slime beast in 1952 and to have managed to escape to tell of it.   And tell of it he did, claiming that the slime beast’s sunken lair was nothing less than mythical Thule, fabled home of Hitler’s blond-Aryans.   “After Germany fell in World War Two, thousands of Nazis, Hitler among them, fled to Australia and escaped to the bottom of the Yannan, where they still live today, ready to reappear to start the second Third Reich,” insisted Crazy Joe (a retired garbage collector, who for the last seventeen years, to the indignation of local residents, had camped in a two-man tent in a small paddock that he owned on the outskirts of the town of Merridale) in an interview.   “They almost succeeded a decade back in Queensland with their Sturmbannführer Joh Bjelke-Peterson.   Now they’re rising up again sending out the slime beast to chew the faces off people to terrorise the community as the beginning of the New Third Reich…!”

*      *      *

If the first month of the killings ended with a rather pathetic whimper, the second month most definitely started with a bang, with Old Man Frazer himself the twenty-seventh victim of the still unknown killer.

NAZI INVASION UNDER WAY, AS PREDICTED IN THIS PAPER! Proclaimed the page one headlines of the Evening Star the day of Joe Frazer’s death.   “Earlier this week the Star pointed out the fact that the Glen Hartwell Slasher [as the Star had earlier dubbed the killer] is really a campaign of terror being launched by Nazis hiding in myth-riddled Thule, at the bottom of the Yannan River, a fact proven to us by eminent Glen Hartwell citizen Joseph William Frazer.

“Despite the mountain of evidence that we presented to him, Senior Sergeant Daniel Ross chose to ignore or laugh off our claim.   Now thanks to his incompetency, Mr. Frazer has been cut down in his prime by Nazi henchmen…How many more local men have to die before Sergeant Danny Ross will admit that he just isn’t competent to solve the local crisis?”

*      *      *

“Cut down in his prime?” asked Rowena Singleton, turning round where she stood in front of the gas stove cooking dinner, to read the newspaper over the shoulder of her husband who sat at the table.   “Old Man Frazer was ninety if he was a day!”

Ernie nodded his agreement.   “Poor Bear, the case was taken out of his hands over a week ago by this fancy big city cop, yet Bear still gets bucketed when the killings go on.”

“What does cut down in his prime mean?” demanded young Kirsty.   She sat at the table beside her dad, knife and fork already in her hands, occasionally tapping on the enamel table top to let her mum know that she was ready to eat.

“It’s not right,” agreed Rowena, hurriedly placing a plate of food on the table in front of the little girl to stop the tap-tap-tapping knife and fork.

“What does cut down in his prime mean?” demanded Kirsty, a little louder than before. Refusing to be ignored by her parents, already pouting, ready to turn on the tears if need be to get some attention.

Sighing, Rowena looked toward her husband who chuckled but kept his head well down in the newspaper.   “It means he was only young,” explained Rowena.

“Does that mean I’m cut down in my prime?” asked Kirsty innocently.

“You will be in a minute, if you don’t hurry up and eat your dinner,” responded Rowena, drawing a laugh from Ernie and a half pout from Kirsty who wasn’t quite certain whether she needed to turn on the tears yet.

Ernie started to eat his own dinner, however, his mind was still on the killings.   Up until a month ago the worst mass-murderer in Victorian history had been Georgio Banagnostopoulos, the “Carlton Ripper”, who had killed over twenty women in Melbourne in the early 1990s.   But already the “Glen Hartwell Slasher” had half-a-dozen victims more than Banagnostopoulos, who had required eighteen months to notch up twenty killings, whereas the Glen Hartwell killings had been going on for only a month.   And already there was talk of the Australian Army being called in to comb the countryside around the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area in the hope of flushing out the killer.

Sighing heavily, startling Kirsty and making Rowena glance across the table at him, Ernie reached around to place the paper on top of the refrigerator, and then went on with his dinner.   But while he ate his mind was on the killings.   Despite the backbreaking work of looking after two sheep stations, Ernie had spent the last three nights scouring the countryside as the black wolf, in the hope that his heightened werewolf senses would pick up some clue that the police and their dogs had missed.

Normally as the black wolf Ernie did his best to avoid populated areas, sticking mainly to the countryside.   However, after two fruitless nights searching through the surrounding forest of wattles, pines, and gum trees, he had risked capture, or worse, by roaming the dark streets of Glen Hartwell the night before.   Fortunately the killings meant that everything shut down early for the night and very few people now dared step outside after dark.

Nonetheless Ernie had felt conspicuous and very vulnerable as he stalked the bitumen streets of the Glen, patrolling down the middle of the road, sniffing at the air from time to time in the hope of sensing something — anything!   Although he didn’t know what.   However, by four o’clock in the morning he had had to admit defeat and turning tail had thundered off toward Merridale, having to return home before dawn or risk turning back to human form stark naked in the middle of the forest.

So now he was stuck with a full month to go before he could metamorphose into the black wolf again.   A full month in which another thirty-one men would be killed, if the murders continued without check throughout July.

Ernie was still brooding about the month-long wait, when, without realising it he finished the last of his meal, having eaten robot-like while pondering the murders.

“Hold up, or you’ll eat the plate,” teased Rowena, startling Ernie, making him look up at her.

Kirsty giggled and said, “That would be funny, daddy eating his plate.”

Ernie tousled the little girl’s hair as he stood up (receiving a dirty look from young Kirsty, who immediately put down her knife and fork and started to straighten out her long blonde hair), then gave Rowena a peck on the cheek before heading outside to continue with his day’s chores.

Although Brian Horne was now back on his feet, he was still a little unsteady, so Ernie was still doing most of the work on Cherrytree Farm.   Of course Ernie was under no legal obligation to work himself into the ground, he could have stuck to his own work and left Cherrytree to go broke.   However, Ernie and Brian had been the best of mates all their lives and he admired Brian for the way the young man had sacrificed himself to keep his retarded brother Warren at home, instead of letting him be taken away by the Community Service Department after the deaths of both of their parents half-a-dozen years ago.   So, despite the cramps that wracked his frame as he headed out to work in the dark with Blacky and Marg skipping happily round his heels, Ernie decided that he could make the Herculean effort to look after both sheep stations for a few more weeks until Brian was properly recovered.   Originally Des Hutchinson had been going to come over daily to help out — more as an excuse to allow Liz Hutchinson to come over with him each day to see Warren after they brought the retarded man home, than anything else.   However, with Des’ death in early June their plans had been thrown into chaos and Warren had stayed at the Hutchinson farm, until a fortnight ago when Liz’s older sister, Margaret Donaldson, had come down from Sydney to help care for Liz.   Five days ago she had persuaded Liz to return to Sydney with her, so that Warren had finally returned to Cherrytree Farm.

“Get down you bastard!” growled Ernie, giving Blacky a none-too-gentle prod with one thick working boot to shoo the large Barb-Kelpie off him as they trekked across the farm yard toward the sheep paddock a hundred metres or so behind the farmhouse.

*      *      *

By the time Ernie had finished his chores it was after 11:00 p.m. and when he stumbled into the bedroom he found Rowena already sound asleep.   As he gazed down at the sleeping woman, Ernie realised how lucky he was to have such a beautiful wife, and despite his fatigue, he felt the stirring of his libido.   However, he was too tired to be able to complete the act of love making, even had he been selfish enough to wake Rowena only an hour or so after she had retired to bed.

Somehow he managed to drag his thick working clothes off his aching body.   However, he was too exhausted to struggle into his pyjamas and stumbled naked into bed beside Rowena, barely having the strength to turn off the bedroom light before falling asleep.

*      *      *

Half an hour later Ernie was wide awake again.   Blinking against the blinding light, he wrongly assumed that he had left the bedroom light on earlier.   He started to sit up, but was brutally pushed back onto the bed as the glowing white light descended upon him and two almost pearl-white thighs were clamped on either side of his face to hold his head in place as the milky-white vulva of an as yet unseen woman lowered itself toward Ernie’s face.

Astonished by the strange goings on, half thinking that he was still asleep and dreaming, Ernie was not yet afraid, although he had found that the soft thighs had strength enough to hold him still, no matter how much he tried to break away.   However, as the full lips of the vulva began to part to reveal the first hint of gleaming, shark-like teeth, Ernie was almost overcome with terror.   He began to thrash and weave beneath the “woman” above him, desperately trying to escape the knife-like teeth approaching.   In a flash of revelation Ernie realised that this was how the other men had died, their faces chewed away by the monster above him.   But at the same time he thought that the knowledge would do no good, since he wasn’t going to live to communicate the information to anyone else.   But just as he had given up all hope of survival, the adrenaline surging through his body began to take effect and, to Ernie’s astonishment, for the fourth time that month he transformed into the black wolf.

As his head changed shape from man to wolf, for just a second the powerful thighs lost their grip.   But that second was time enough for the black wolf to twist out from underneath the demon woman, spin round, then bound away from the bed.   After one last look at the sleeping form of Rowena, Ernie turned and sped toward the bedroom window.   He hated to leave Rowena and Kirsty in the house with the creature, however, like Bear Ross he had already worked out that the killer only attacked males, so they were both perfectly safe (he hoped and prayed!).

Without a second glance back he leapt straight through the closed window, then raced out into the farmyard, ignoring the shards of glass that cut his face and body.

With the adrenaline racing through his body, he thundered across the farmyard toward the nearby forest.   Not really hopeful of out-racing the monster woman, whatever it was, the black wolf knew he had no choice but to try.   So on and on he raced through the dense forest of wattles, pines, and eerie, grey-white ghost gums, until the small hours of the morning, too terrified to stop, or even look back, for fear that the slightest easing in his velocity would allow the hellish monster the opportunity to overtake him, pull him down, chew away his face with the lethal teeth that sprouted from her vulva.

When at last he stopped, well beyond the reaches of LePage, the black wolf was panting furiously, almost collapsing from exhaustion.   With his heart boom-boom-booming in his ears he turned slowly, expecting to see the demon woman almost upon him.

To his amazement, however, there was no sign of the creature.   And as he slowly began to pad back toward the Singleton sheep station, the black wolf realised that he had not heard the woman following him at any stage after leaping through the bedroom window.   (Not that he had any real idea what the creature would sound like in motion.)

*      *      *

It was already dawn when Ernie reached the outskirts of the farm.   He changed back to human form a kilometre away and had to walk naked through the frigid winter forest the rest of the way.   Freezing, his flesh aching from being cut by the window glass, he was desperate to get back inside the farmhouse before Rowena, or worse Kirsty, discovered him traipsing round naked outside.

Shivering against the cold, it was all he could do to keep his teeth from chattering as he carefully climbed back in through the broken bedroom window.

Then, grabbing up his work clothes from the bedroom floor, he headed to the bathroom for a quick shower before dressing ready to start work again.

By the time that Rowena awakened, Ernie was washed, dressed and sitting at the kitchen table, snoring loudly

“Wakey-wakey, sleepyhead,” said Rowena, giving him a gentle shake with one hand as she went past the table.

“Wakey-wakey sleepyhead,” echoed Kirsty, giving her father a none-too-gentle shove, which almost sent him sprawling to the kitchen floor.

Rowena stopped on the way to the back door and asked, “Did you notice that our bedroom window was broken this morning?”

“Yes, it must have blown out in a storm,” suggested Ernie, too tired from lack of sleep to think of anything more elaborate.

“Get out of it!” ordered Rowena, kicking at Blacky and Marg as the two farm dogs tried to push their way in through the back door as she went out.

When she returned from the wash-house with a whisk to sweep up the broken glass, Ernie offered, “I’ll go in to the Glen to buy a sheet of glass today.”

“Will you have time?   What with two farms to tend to?”

“I’ll have to make time.   We can’t have water pouring into the house if it decides to rain,” said Ernie.   But in truth he had another, more important reason for wanting to go into Glen Hartwell.

As it was, however, Ernie was kept working flat out on the farm until nearly 10:00 a.m., after which time all thought of going into the Glen was set aside:

Ernie had just returned from hunting up stray ewes from a back paddock, when he saw a thin line of flying dust away in the distance, which meant that someone was driving up.   By the time he’d let Blacky and Marg out of the back of the Land-Rover, he could make out the approaching vehicle as Bear Ross’ pale blue police Fairlane.

‘Wonder what he can want in such a hurry?’ thought Ernie as the Fairlane sped down the dirt track toward them, wondering why Bear hadn’t telephoned if it was so urgent.

Ernie stood half-a-dozen metres from the back patio, watching the approaching car.   For the last four hours he had debated the wisdom of telling Bear what had happened to him the night before, or rather what had almost happened.   Although he had jealously guarded the secret of his werewolf taint for a dozen years s now, he had been tempted more than once to reveal his secret to Bear.   The two men had been close friends ever since Bear Ross had transferred to the Glen from BeauLarkin in late 1982, so Bear was one man Ernie felt he might be able to trust his secret with.   In their twenties they had often double dated, while Ernie was courting Rowena and Bear her cousin Gloria Ulverstone, and for a while Brian Horne had joined with them, dating Gloria’s younger sister Holly.   For a while their parents had joked that there would be a triple-wedding, but Holly and Brian had soon drifted apart and Holly had died just two years ago in a huge industrial fire in Megarithe Chemicals in Glen Hartwell, where she had been employed as an industrial chemist.   In the late 1980s, Gloria had gone to America for a short vacation and had returned with a new boyfriend, Mallory Baradine, whom she had soon married.   Of the three couples only Rowena and Ernie had stayed together.   However, the three men had remained close and Ernie loved Brian and Bear like brothers, and on a number of occasions over the last decade he had almost entrusted his most closely guarded secret to one or the other of them.   However, he had never quite been able to bring himself to do so.

As the pale blue Fairlane pulled up near the chain-link fence around the farmhouse yard, Ernie started across the yard to greet his friend, but was stopped by the sound of Rowena’s shrill screams ringing out from within the farmhouse.

For a second Bear and Ernie stood facing each other as the screams continued.   Then as Bear effortlessly vaulted the metre-high fence, Ernie reversed direction and the two men raced toward the back of the house.   For a second Ernie stopped in the kitchen, thinking that Rowena had burnt herself at the stove, then as her hysterical cries continued from the front of the farmhouse, he headed down the narrow corridor and found his wife standing holding the receiver of the telephone so tightly that her knuckles were white; her shrill screams now turned to hard sobbing.

“Oh my God!   My God, he’s dead!   He’s dead!   Dead!” cried Rowena, collapsing into Ernie’s arms as he reached the front of the house.

Reaching them an instant later, in answer to Ernie’s puzzled look, Bear explained in a low voice, “It’s Tony, your father-in-law.   He was killed last night by the…killer…monster… Whatever it is that’s terrorising the Glen.   Samantha found him this morning in bed with her.   His…his face chewed off like all the others.”

“Is grandpa dead?” asked a tiny voice behind them, and the three adults turned round as little Kirsty burst into tears now.

Shocked back from her own hysteria by the unexpected appearance of her young daughter, Rowena broke away from Ernie to bend down and scoop the little girl up into her arms, so they could cry together.

Then, while Ernie did his best to comfort mother and daughter both, Bear went across to attend to the telephone whose receiver still hung down from where the phone was attached to the wall.   Hearing the repetitive brr-brr-brr he knew that no one was on the other end, but found out later that it was Rowena’s mother Samantha who, in her hysterical state, had rung through the bad news to Rowena before Bear had had the chance to try to soften the blow by telling her face-to-face.

Holding his wife as she sobbed for her lost father, Ernie knew what she was going through.   He had lost his own father a dozen years earlier when Gregory Singleton had died in a farming accident.   Gregory had mortgaged the sheep station to the hilt to buy a new tractor to do the heavy farm chores.   Two days later he was killed when the tractor slipped out of gear and rolled back down a small hill, running over him.   Although he had been hard put for years making the farm pay enough to meet the mortgage payments (which he had only recently paid off), Ernie had left the tractor at the bottom of the hill, where it was now little more than a rusted-out hulk.

Also he felt more than a little responsible for the death of Tony Frankland.   In the month that the killings had been going on two facts had emerged so far: all the victims were men, and the murderer killed once every night — unlike most serial killers who may go weeks or even months between victims, then may kill two or three people in one night.   And last night, Ernie knew, had been meant to be his night.   For some reason the creature had selected Ernie for last night’s victim, but under attack his adrenaline had surged through his bloodstream, causing the transformation to black wolf to occur, allowing Ernie to survive and sealing Tony Frankland’s fate.

Ernie now knew the answer to the question that had puzzled him the night before: why had he been able to escape so easily from the demon woman after changing into the black wolf?   For the same reason that Rowena and Kirsty had been safe from the woman.   She was only interested in men.   When Ernie transformed into the black wolf he had ceased to be a man and had become a wolf, so the creature had immediately lost interest in him and had gone in search of an alternative victim.   So while Ernie had been fleeing terrified through the forest in wolf form, the demon woman had been heading away from Merridale on a path that would lead her to Lenoak (the town after LePage) where she would locate and brutally kill Rowena’s father.   ‘Instead of me!’ thought Ernie burying his head against his wife’s and crying with her for a while.

Although a giant of a man, Bear was not afraid to show his emotions and while Ernie held Rowena, comforting her, Bear put his great arms around Ernie and Rowena and held them both close to his broad, powerful chest.

*      *      *

Half an hour later Ernie’s mother Victoria had arrived from LePage to look after Rowena for the next few days.

“She’ll be all right with me,” said Victoria, looking up at the two men from where she sat beside the bed where Rowena lay sleeping, thanks to two Mogadon capsules.

“I’ll get Gina Foley to stop in later on, if she can,” said Bear, one arm tightly around Ernie’s waist, helping to support his friend, who was in almost as deep a state of shock as Rowena.   “She’s pretty snowed under at the moment, of course, with the hospital taking care of all the bodies.”

“How is Samantha holding up?” asked Victoria, looking concerned by the state of her son who looked as though he would have collapsed to the floor if he weren’t being held up by the policeman.

“I left two policewomen with her and rang for Georgina Hart and Gloria Baradine to go and look after her.   But obviously they didn’t get there fast enough to stop her from ringing through to Rowie….”   He paused; silently cursing himself, wrongly blaming himself for what Rowena and Ernie had gone through.   “But I rang through after calling you and it seems they’ve got her sedated now.”

After a few minutes more small talk, Bear half led, half carried Ernie to the living room and sat beside him on the sofa in the dark, until gradually after nearly an hour, Ernie started to slowly come out of his daze.

“Oh my God, it’s all my fault! ” cried Ernie.

“What is all your fault?” asked Bear, startling Ernie who hadn’t realised that there was anyone in the room with him.

“That Tony is dead.”

Puzzled, Bear said, “There’s nothing you could have done to stop it.”

“Yes, there was, I caused it,” said Ernie.   Then, after a moment’s hesitation, the words flowed out of him in a rush as he related his experience the night before and his theory that the demon woman had to kill one victim every night, so that by eluding her he had sent her into the night in pursuit of another victim, thereby sealing Tony Frankland’s fate.   He left out nothing except the fact that he had managed to escape the creature by transforming into the black wolf.

However, Bear was too astounded by the whole tale to pick up the one missing link.   A God-fearing Catholic all his life, Bear had been taught to believe in the supernatural in the guise of Satan and all his minions of demons, so he did not discount the story out of hand.   However, he knew that Ernie had been devastated by the death of his father-in-law and wondered whether in his current state of shock he might have hallucinated the entire incident.

Realising that his friend didn’t believe him, Ernie decided that he would have to be the one to track dawn and destroy the demon woman.   Although he had no clue yet what the creature was, he had no doubt that it was of supernatural origin, so nothing that Detective Inspector Kenneth Fisher or his legion of police now swarming through the local townships did could possibly have any effect on the monster.

*      *      *

Ernie awakened before sunrise the next morning.   He quickly looked in on Rowena (who was sharing the double bed with Victoria and Kirsty, while Ernie had slept in Kirsty’s bedroom) to see that she was sleeping soundly, and then set out to do the most urgent of his farm chores.   Then after ninety minutes or so helping Brian Horne at Cherrytree Farm, he headed the Land-Rover for Glen Hartwell.

The Glen Hartwell Public Lending Library in Dirk Hartog Place had been founded over a century and a half ago and was one of the best reference libraries in the state of Victoria — second only to the State Library in Melbourne.   So Ernie was confident that he would soon find some reference to the demon woman.   However, after more than an hour of futilely flicking through mythology texts in the non-fiction section at the back of the library, he was ready to ask for help.

Looking down the long aisle between the rows of floor-to-ceiling length bookcases that separated the library into different sections, Ernie could see the head librarian sorting through yellow index cards at her desk near the front of the library and thought, ‘Not old Glenda?   Surely I couldn’t ask her?’

Glenda Pettyjohn had been employed at the library for as long as anyone in the area could remember.   Barely 150 centimetres tall, she was grey-haired and wrinkled, wore her hair in a tight bun high atop her head and looked to be frozen in her late eighties.   Although she never seemed to grow any older, no one could recall her ever looking any younger either.   When Ernie had first started high school twenty-one years earlier, it had been Miss Pettyjohn who had attended to their needs during the two-hour-a-week library period.   And before that Ernie’s father had claimed (perhaps as a joke?) that thirty years before that when he had started high school Miss Pettyjohn had already been ensconced at the library, already looking as though she was pushing ninety.

‘But how could I?’ thought Ernie, remembering with terror the sight of the pearl white thighs and what they held between them lowering toward his face.   ‘How could I even hint of female genitalia to old Miss Pettyjohn?’

Yet when at last he summoned up the courage to approach her, weaving a weird and woolly tale about having heard vaguely of a legend that he wanted to read up on, the old lady didn’t bat an eye at the talk of female genitals that opened to reveal razor-sharp teeth.   Without a word she led him back toward the reference section at the rear of the library.

After hunting through the various encyclopaedias of the occult that Ernie had already flicked through for a few minutes, she extracted a large volume that was obviously less than a decade old, titled Legends, Myths, and Magicks of Glen Hartwell and Willamby, by Professor William Morrissey-Blaxland (from the notes of the late Pr. Daley Bromby).

The old lady searched through the book for a moment before locating a chapter called “THE NIGHTMARE”, which included an extremely graphic frontispiece from a sixteenth century woodcut of a demon woman like the one that had attacked Ernie, lowering herself onto the face of a sleeping man.

“That’s what you’re looking for, young Ernest,” said Glenda Pettyjohn, “the Nightmare.   It’s where the word originated from.”

Although looking as though she was about to relate the whole legend to Ernie, Glenda was soon called away to attend to someone wanting to take out books, leaving Ernie to read through the chapter to himself: “Originally the term ‘nightmare’ referred to a female monster who was (depending on the locality of the legend) either a ghost (or disembodied spirit), a demon from Hell, or a living woman over whom a sorcerer’s spell had been cast.   The nightmare (so named because she was a mare — female — who always appeared at night) appeared as a beautiful woman who usually arrived bathed in an aura of blinding light, which made her seem angelic to those she visited.   Until she descended upon her chosen victim (always an adult or adolescent male), straddled his face with her powerful thighs, then began to lower her genitalia toward him.   At the last instant as the man had resigned himself to performing cunnilingus on the woman, her sex mouth opened to reveal row upon row of salivating, pearly white teeth, which would chew and tear at the man’s face, literally eating away the insides of his skull, leaving it hollowed out like a great gourd with the insides scooped out.

“Undoubtedly the legend of the nightmare springs from man’s secret fear of women.   Throughout recorded history man has liked to portray himself as the strong sex and woman as the fair (or weak) sex.   However, man’s slavery to his overwhelming sex drive has actually made him the weak sex.   So much so that most men (even those who are happily married) have a secret fear of woman — the strong sex!   Which explains why throughout history most mythical monsters have been female, including (usually) the vampire, until Bram Stoker’s Dracula gave the vampire a sex change.   (Although even there you have four or five female vampires: the three wives of Dracula, Mina Murray, the Bloofer Lady; and possibly even Lucy Westenra as well.   Whereas the only male vampire in the novel was Dracula himself.)

“The legend of the nightmare dates back thousands of years, to the days of the classical Greeks and Romans in one form or another.   And it was the basis of many more modern legends such as the incubus, the succubus, the Irish Sheila-Na-Nigh, the Jamaican Kull (also known as the Vagina Dentata) as well as the common vampire, of course….”

Ernie continued to read through the chapter, all twenty-nine pages, however, it told him little that he didn’t already know.   And, to his chagrin, although the book went into great detail about what the nightmare was and how a sorcerer could turn a living woman into a nightmare, there wasn’t a single word about how to protect yourself against a nightmare, or better yet, how to destroy the monster.

After flicking through the book for a while, in case there was a special chapter reserved for defence against the creatures covered elsewhere, Ernie took the book to the front desk to check it out of the library.

Ernie watched old Glenda Pettyjohn flicking through the racks of yellow library cards for a moment, before summoning up the courage to say, “I was wanting to look at some of the myths in this book in greater depth.   And I…I wondered if you could tell me how to get in touch with Professor Morrissey-Blaxland?”

“You could try looking in the local telephone directory,” suggested the old lady without looking up from the library cards.   “I believe be lives in LePage.”

Finally Glenda matched Ernie’s library card up with the file index card, then he departed, determined to ring the author from the red public telephone box on the corner of Dirk Hartog Place and Boothy Street.

After flicking through the white pages for a few minutes, Ernie located a listing for MORRISSEY-BLAXLAND, Pr. W. E. A.

“William Morrissey-Blaxland,” announced the voice on the other end of the telephone when Ernie finally managed to ring through after miss-dialling twice.

“The author?” asked Ernie.

“That is correct.”

With a lot of stammering, humming and hawing, Ernie explained that he was hoping the professor could give him more background detail on one of the legends in the book.

“Why, of course, young man,” said the professor, to the surprise of Ernie who had expected to be told that he was much too busy for such nonsense.   “In fact I’m free right now, if you would care to come around.”

*      *      *

Still a little dazed by the professor’s unexpected generosity, Ernie pulled up outside the author’s house in Weaver Street, LePage, just over twenty minutes later.

Five minutes later Ernie was nestled in a large armchair enjoying the warmth of an open log fire, sipping coffee and trying to explain his presence there.   After a little humming and hawing he finally said, “The real reason I wanted to speak to you was that I’ve noticed that although your book chronicles many types of monster, it doesn’t mention how to deal with them, how to kill them or drive them away?”

“Well, of course not,” said the professor, looking surprised by Ernie’s comment.   “After all none of them are real.   They are only myths and legends.   So what would have been the point of detailing fictitious methods of dealing with them?”

“Then you don’t know…?”

“I may have the formula for dealing with whichever demon you’re interested in.   As you may know, I wrote the book from the research notes of my long-time friend and mentor, Daley Bromby.   At the time of his death in late 1979, Daley left behind thousands of pages of notes for his intended book.   It took me nearly two years just to read through everything to decide what to put into the final manuscript.”

“And the rest?”

“All the notes are stored away carefully,” said the professor getting up from his armchair.   Signalling for Ernie to follow, he led him down a corridor to a large room at the back of the house.   The room was devoid of furniture, apart from a dozen four-drawer metal filing cabinets that lined the walls, and three reading stools.

“This is where I keep my research materials and newspaper clippings for possible use in future books.   Those three comprise the notes left behind by Daley.”   So saying he led Ernie across to three cabinets, whose twelve drawers were almost overflowing with sheets of single-spaced typing.

Seeing Ernie’s bewildered look, the professor chuckled.   “Don’t worry,” be said, “it’s not quite as hopeless as it looks.   In the two years it took me to read all of this, I had the sense to sort it all alphabetically by name of each legend.”

“It…it’s the legend of the nightmare that I’m interested in,” explained Ernie.

Morrissey-Blaxland looked startled by the choice, however, he quickly recovered his composure and selected the third drawer in the middle cabinet.   After leafing through the mass of papers for a while, he lifted out nearly five hundred pages and said, “There you are.   Everything that my friend and mentor was able to unearth about the legend of the nightmare.”

“My God,” said Ernie taking the great mass of papers.   “It must have taken him years to research each legend?”

“Yes.   He researched the legends of the occult off-and-on his entire adult life, and spent the last six years, 1973 to 1979, researching them full-time.”

Ernie stared at the wad of papers, not knowing where to start.   Seeing his dismay Morrissey-Blaxland said, “Take them away with you, if you like.   Read it all through at your leisure, there’s no hurry.”

“But there is,” said Ernie, almost going on to say, ‘Every day wasted means another life lost to the nightmare of Glen Hartwell!’   However, he stopped himself just in time and said instead, “I wonder…if you’ve noticed how similar the method used by the nightmare seems to be to the killings going on around the Glen at the moment?”

“Why yes…yes of course,” admitted the professor.   “From the sounds of what has been reported of the killings, the state of the corpses is identical to what you would expect with a nightmare victim.   But, of course, there cannot be any connection, since the nightmare is a mere myth.   Nothing more.”

“Yet Professor Bromby devoted his whole life to investigating such myths?”

“Why yes…yes, I’m afraid to say that Daley did believe in the physical reality of every one of the legends that he researched…But then most brilliant men have their little idiosyncrasies.   Daley’s was that he could not always tell where reality left off and fantasy took over.”

Ernie considered that for a moment before asking, “Professor Bromby finished his researches then died before he had a chance to write his intended book?”

“That is correct.”

“What did he die of?”

“A cardiac arrest caused by old age.   Born in late 1889, Daley had just turned ninety a few weeks before his death in October 1979.”   He paused for a moment, and then added, “Of course there were those who believed otherwise.”

Looking surprised, Ernie asked, “How do you mean?”

“Well, in researching Legends, Myths, and Magicks…Daley locked horns with a local magic society called the OTA: Ordo Templi Australis.   Which translates as the order of the Templars of the South, and who were a breakaway from Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Australis, the Order of the Templars of the East.

“So the story goes the Ordo Templi Australis was founded by Crowley himself during a brief trip to Australia and New Zealand (where the OTA also has covens).   However, a major rift soon developed between the two occult groups and Crowley returned to Europe, threatening psychic death against the Ordo Templi Australis….

“Although the OTA stridently deny this, claiming to be related to an ancient order whose roots go back a thousand years or more in southern Europe.   Remembering that throughout most of European history Europe believed itself to be the whole of the world, so that southern Europe was regarded as the southern land — or in Latin Australis, which is why Austria in the Northern hemisphere rather strangely has a name meaning “the southern land”, the same as Australia does.   So the Ordo Templi Australis‘ claim could well be true….

“Also, of course, there is no record extant of Aleister Crowley ever having set foot on this continent.   Although one of Crowley’s best known courtesan-cum-high priestesses, Leila Waddell, or ‘Sister Cybele’ as Crowley preferred to call her, was an Australian violinist and may have taken Crowley to Australia for a short stay.   Remembering that in the early part of this century customs and passport checks were not as efficient as they are today.   So they may have been able to slip into and out of Australia unnoticed by officialdom.

“Nevertheless, whatever the truth may be, despite his basically sympathetic treatment of the OTA in his notes, somehow Daley had a falling out with the OTA leaders.   So, for nearly a decade after his death local occultists insisted that Daley Bromby had died as a result of a psychic attack from the Ordo Templi Australis.”

“A psychic attack?” asked Ernie, having never heard the term before.

“Psychic attack assumes that since thought is made up of measurable rays — alpha, beta, delta, and gamma rays — that these rays can somehow be transmitted out of the brain like radar waves, to scramble someone else’s thought waves to make them dizzy, forgetful, nauseous, or even in very rare cases to kill them.”

“Is that really possible?” asked Ernie.

“No, of course not,” said Morrissey-Blaxland emphatically.   “No more than the nightmare is possible in real life.”

‘But the nightmare is possible in real life!’ thought Ernie, knowing better.

The two men talked for a fair while longer, then, still clutching the great wad of papers, Ernie started to leave.   They had almost reached the front door of the house, when Ernie turned back to say, “I wonder if you could put me in touch with the Ordo Templi Australis?”

Seeming surprised by the question, Morrissey-Blaxland hesitated for a moment before finally saying, “Why yes…if you like…But I wonder if that is really wise….?   I don’t know what you are really after young man, but it could be that you’re already in well over your head, without tangling with the likes of the OTA.”

“I…I can’t tell you why I need to get in touch with them,” said Ernie.   “You’ll just have to take my word for it that I do.”

The old man considered this for a moment, before saying, “Their current leader is a man named Alwyn leLean.   His address is 226 Providence Street, Glen Hartwell.”   Seeing Ernie’s puzzled look, he added, “Providence Street is in the older quarters of the Glen.   It crosses through Boothy Street right near where Boothy fades into Theodora Drive, at the border between Glen Hartwell and Wilhelmina.

*      *      *

When Ernie finally returned to the Land-Rover, he was surprised to find that it was already dark out, which meant he had spent a lot longer with the professor than he had suspected.   Although he knew that it meant allowing another death to occur, he decided that he would have to wait until the next day before approaching Alwyn leLean.

*      *      *

It was after 11:00 a.m. the next morning before Ernie had finished with the most urgent of the farm’s chores.   However, he was relieved of the duty of helping Brian Horne look after Cherrytree Farm by Bear Ross, who had been granted leave of absence with full pay by Inspector Kenneth Fisher from Melbourne.   Fisher had made it abundantly clear that they could solve the murder investigation without any interference from Bear or Mel Forbes.

“Interference indeed!” muttered Mel, as the two policemen arrived at Cherrytree Farm.

“It was our bloody investigation in the first place until that bloody big city copper came and stuck his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

Wisely Bear Ross kept silent.   Although he agreed on principle with Mel, he couldn’t forget what Ernie had told him two nights ago about his encounter with the demon woman.   Although not fully convinced, he believed enough of the story to be relieved at being assigned to help out on the Horne sheep station for a while.

*      *      *

Ernie had not known what to expect when he finally arrived outside 226 Providence Street.   He had visions of 226 being some kind of ramshackle mansion, with endless gables and gambrels and innumerable storeys, and of Alwyn leLean being a sinister looking, black-robed, pointy-hatted sorcerer.   Instead the house was a plain, double-fronted single-storey, white weatherboard, and leLean a tall, distinguished looking man in his late fifties.   Dressed in cardigan and slacks, wearing fashionable wire-rimmed glasses, he was anything but what Ernie had expected him to be.

“Come inside Mr. Singleton,” greeted leLean, “or should I say black wolf.”

leLean laughed at Ernie’s startled look and explained, “Not all occultists are charlatans, Mr. Singleton.   It was my pronounced Extra Sensory Perception, a gift or curse (I’ve often wondered which it is), that I’ve possessed since childhood, which made me interested in the Templars of the South in the first place.”

Leading a slightly dazed Ernie down the corridor toward the living room near the rear of the house, leLean continued, “For years my sixth sense has told me that the black wolf was a werewolf living in the Merridale area.   However, my powers were never strong enough to localise it…Until you spoke to me over the telephone this morning.   Then my ESP tingled, but when I saw you standing in the doorway just now, there could be no doubt about it.   No doubt at all.”

Seeing Ernie’s worried look, leLean was quick to assure him, “Relax my friend, you have nothing to fear from me.   My powers tell me that the black wolf is benevolent, not the mindless killer that certain sections of the yellow media have made him out to be.   That was why I never committed myself to making a major effort to use my powers to track him…to track you down.   If I had wanted to, I could have tracked the black wolf to your front doorstep in perhaps a week or ten days.”

He paused to invite Ernie to sit at the sofa, in front of which a coffee pot sat on a small, glass-topped table.   As he poured coffee for them, leLean said, “But all that is mere trivia.   Of more importance is the nightmare stalking Glen Hartwell.”

At this Ernie stared gape-mouthed at the older man and started to speak, however, leLean hurried to say, “Yes, I know all about the creature loose in the Glen.   In fact….”   He hesitated for a moment.   “In a way I am responsible for what is going on.”   Seeing the look of astonishment on Ernie’s face, he quickly added, “Not deliberately you understand, but rather it happened through my efforts.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Ernie accepting the proffered coffee cup.

“Despite what you may have read about us in Professor Morrissey-Blaxland’s book, or heard from the professor himself, the Ordo Templi Australis is an order dedicated to using paranormal powers strictly for the performance of good deeds.   White witches, if you like.   However, many of the rituals we perform are highly volatile.   Though we are always extremely careful, accidents do happen.   Sometimes members of our coven have had epileptic seizures while performing rituals.   Others have even died.   On one occasion, twenty-five years ago, our leader at that time, Lambert Stephenson, died as a result of massive third-degree burns, reportedly the victim of spontaneous human combustion….”   After pausing for a moment to attempt to gauge Ernie’s reaction, he asked, “Do you understand what that term means?”

“Yes,” answered Ernie, “spontaneous combustion is when a person bursts into flames for no apparent reason and burns to ashes in seconds, often without their clothing being more than singed.   Dickens mentions it in Bleak House.   But surely such a thing isn’t really possible?”

“Coming from a werewolf who is chasing a nightmare, that seems unusually cynical,” pointed out leLean, forcing Ernie to smile his tacit agreement.   “Spontaneous human combustions not only are not impossible, but aren’t nearly as rare as you might expect.   There have been a plethora of documented cases where there have been dozens of reliable witnesses present and the phenomenon has been studied and written about by Harry Price, Arthur C. Clarke, and many other highly regarded scientists.   However….”

He stopped for a quick sip of coffee, “To return to the matter in hand, six weeks ago our coven was performing a ritual to attempt to cure the ailing daughter of two of our members, Sebastian and Eleanor Hilliard, by sending out positive thought rays to her.   Something went horribly wrong, and during the ceremony the young neophyte, that is apprentice witch, metamorphosed into the creature that you are hunting.   At first we didn’t realise what had happened.   We thought that it was just her spirit loosed from her body.   But then after the onset of the nightmare killings we realised that Vera, who had been a sweet, charming girl in life, had somehow become transformed into a monster after death.”

“But how?” demanded Ernie.   “If your neophyte had been good in life, how could she have become so evil after death?”

“We’re not quite certain,” admitted leLean.   “At first we thought that we had made some horrible mistake in our ritual.   Although it was simple enough and we had performed the same ritual many times in the past.”

“But you think you got it wrong this time and somehow turned young Vera into a monster?” suggested Ernie.

“At first we thought so, however, the idea doesn’t really make sense.”   leLean stopped for a quick sip of coffee before saying, “Bad occult writers ramble on with a lot of nonsense about the need for witches to use the absolutely correct words for mantras or spells, the correct ingredients for potions and elixirs, and equal nonsense about the rituals having to be performed identically each time.   In some special costume or uniform (which needless to say must have every button and thread in the correct arrangement), or even in the nude!   Using, of course, the correct implements: athames, black candles, and spells from the Book of Shadows.

“Actually all of that is garbage!   Traditionally witches were illiterate (as were, of course, most people the world over until the mid twentieth century), so they owned no special books and were certainly too poor to be able to afford any magical paraphernalia, most of which — including the original Book of Shadows — were invented by the self-styled King of the Witches’ Gerald Gardner in the 1950s, or by Alex Sanders in the late ’50s and early 1960s.

“As for performing spells, or concocting potions ‘authentically’, originally this meant going through the act sincerely with emotion and natural aptitude for the Craft.   It’s a lot like baking a cake or mixing a chemical reaction, or having a green thumb for gardening.   All three require you to put in something of yourself to make it work.   An uninspired cook could use the best recipe in the world, using the ‘correct’ ingredients in the ‘correct’ amounts and orders and still not produce a great cake.   Likewise with chemical reactions, which sometimes other scientists cannot readily reproduce.   Often leading to the original scientist being labelled as a charlatan by his peers and dying in shame and poverty.   Only to be vindicated years, or even decades later, after some other inspired scientist has finally managed to reproduce his results.   So it is with magic also:

“The exact words and ingredients aren’t as important as the sincerity of those performing the rituals: you must believe magic will work, before it can work for you!   If you do believe you can virtually make up your own spells and charms.   And although magic potions sometimes require specific ingredients, usually a sincere witch can make them work with a few substitutes.   Which is particularly fortunate with some of the more ancient recipes handed down by word of mouth from century to century, since they often ask for weird ingredients such as Belladonna, Faery saliva, dragon teeth, Devil’s semen, and so on.   Which either don’t exist outside of fairy stories, or if they do exist in the real world, no one knows what they really are, or what their modern names are.

“Likewise with costume.   It doesn’t matter one whit whether you perform your rituals naked, in ceremonial robes, or in street clothes.   Whatever your coven feels comfortable in (or out of) is right for you….”

Ernie had been following the monologue carefully and now looked more puzzled than before.   “But in that case,” he asked, “how could the ritual you were performing have gone wrong and have turned Vera Hilliard into a demon?”

leLean shrugged his shoulders.   “That had us puzzled as well…at first.”

“At first?” asked Ernie.

“For some decades the Ordo Templi Australis has had trouble with a rival coven, of black witches’ as much as I hate to use that term — situated in Lenoak.”   He paused for a moment and sighed heavily.   “As much as I hate to think it…I now believe that they launched a psychic attack upon us while our ritual was in progress.   Possibly they were attempting to conjure a nightmare to launch at us and their magic fused with ours somehow, to turn poor Vera into the nightmare, or possibly…?”

leLean sighed heavily again and shrugging, conceding that he was only guessing.

The two men talked for another half an hour or so, but Ernie learnt little more from the white witch.   He went away from the house in Providence Street feeling a mixture of success and failure.   At last he had discovered what the demon woman was, but they were still no nearer to stopping her.   leLean had admitted that he didn’t have any idea how to lay to rest the spirit of Vera Hilliard, although he had promised to keep poring through his books of occult lore in the hope of finding a solution.

*      *      *

Ernie returned to the Singleton sheep station to find Rowena, Victoria and Kirsty feeding the last of the farm animals.   (Although to young Kirsty it was more of a game than a chore.   While her mother and grandmother meted out corn to the chickens, the little girl gleefully called out “Chook!   Chook!   Chook!” at the top of her lungs and tossed handfuls of corn into the air, clapping her hands in delight as corn rained down onto the unsuspecting fowl, sending them running squawking for cover.)

“Hello darling,” greeted Rowena, trying to sound casual.   Although she had a strained looked in her pale blue eyes and Ernie knew that she was worried about him; not understanding his strange behaviour of late, neglecting his farm chores.

Ernie loved Rowena and wished he could reveal his secret to her, but realised that she would not believe him.   Either she would think him mad, or if he proved his sanity to her by metamorphosing to the black wolf in front of her, he was likely to frighten her away from him.

*      *      *

While Ernie was waiting, hoping to hear from Alwyn leLean again, he went out again as the black wolf that month, walking the dark streets of Glen Hartwell in wolf guise, looking for the nightmare, not knowing what he planned to do if he located her.

Each night more killings occurred and by the latter stages of July the whole neighbourhood was on edge, with people afraid to go to sleep for fear of being murdered in the night; afraid of their own neighbours and friends, in case he or she might turn out to be the killer.   As the death toll passed fifty, the police were forced to admit themselves unable to cope with the situation and a state of emergency was declared by the Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, who called on the Prime Minister for help.   The Keating government responded by sending in a troop of more than a thousand soldiers from the Australian Army and Army Reserves, in a bid to throw a cordon around the whole Glen Hartwell area.   However, with over a dozen small towns in the murder area, an effective cordon was impossible and virtually pointless anyway, since the killer had shown no inclination to invade the rest of Australia.   All it managed to do was put further strain on the already tense country folk.   As Cherylyn Carroll, of Harpertown put it, “It’s not to keep the killer in!   It’s to keep us in!”   And in a sense that was true.   As in any plague situation, the national government was perfectly prepared to sacrifice the whole local population if necessary to contain the problem.

It was about a week after Ernie’s first visit with Alwyn leLean that he was telephoned by Bear Ross and told, “Get over to the Hart station as fast as you can!”

“What’s up?” asked Ernie with Rowena and Victoria standing nearby in the corridor listening in on the phone call.

“All Hell’s about to break loose out here?”

“Why?” demanded Ernie.

“It…”   Bear hesitated for a moment, searching for a good way to break the news and finding none, “The killer got young Vic Hart last night and Sam’s gone crazy!”

“Oh no!” cried Victoria when Ernie told her, having only fond memories of the seventeen-year-old boy whom she had known since his birth.

Ernie reached the Hart station to find Georgina Hart in a drug-induced sleep being attended by Gina Foley, and Sam ranting, “I’ll kill him!   I’ll bloody well kill him if I ever get my hands on the murdering bastard!”

“But we don’t even know who the killer is,” pointed out Bear, trying his best not to antagonise the short, weasel-faced man.   Although a giant of man who towered over the dwarfish Hart, Bear knew how dangerous Sam could be in one of his explosive screaming-swearing-crying rages having had to tackle him on more than one occasion after Sam had gone berserk in either Bateman’s Hotel in Lawson Street, Glen Hartwell, or the Dorset Inn at LePage, two of Sam’s favourite drinking and fighting places until a few years earlier when he had been banned for life from both places.

“I know who it was!” insisted Sam, drawing stares from both Kenneth Fisher who was still officially in charge of the murder investigation, and Andrew Braidwood.

“Who?” asked Ernie, already knowing whom Hart would nominate.

“The black wolf, of course!” insisted Sam, making Ernie fear that he would start a wolf hunt to avenge the death of his son.

“We don’t know for sure that it’s the black wolf,” insisted Bear, looking from Sam to Ernie.   Remembering what Ernie had told him about the creature that had attacked him, Bear still felt a tinge of guilt that he hadn’t passed Ernie’s report on to Fisher, although he realised that the Melbourne cop would only have laughed at it.

“What the Hell are you all talking about?” demanded Ken Fisher.   So Bear and the others filled him in on the history of the black wolf, which had roamed the local area at night since the early 1980s.

“Ridiculous,” scoffed Fisher.   “How could a wolf live that long in the wild?   More than a dozen years!”

“Wolves can live sixteen years in the wild,” said Ernie, stopping when the others turned to look at him.   Seeing Sam Hart staring at him, Ernie hoped that Sam would not remember his words and come gunning for him if he did decide to hunt the black wolf.

However, Ernie had nothing to fear on that point.   Despite his ranting and raving the day of his son’s death, Sam Hart quickly calmed down, making everyone think that he had returned to his usual callous, self-centred state.   However, two days later they had a change of heart after he lapsed into a catatonic state, staring sightlessly ahead, and had to be taken to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital for treatment.   A week later, after Gina Foley declared that there was nothing more that she could do to attempt to bring him out of his trance-state, Sam was transferred to the Queen’s Grove Sanatorium on the border between Glen Hartwell and Westmoreland.

A week later Ernie forced himself to pay a visit on Sam Hart, not knowing what to expect.   As the white-robed matron led him down the long, white hallway, Ernie couldn’t help thinking of the many “long walk” films that he had seen on television.   In which the convict was always led down a seemingly endless corridor to the electric chair, the gas chamber, or perhaps the gallows.

When they finally stopped before the last door, Ernie, lost in thought, almost collided into the back of the Matron.

Taking a large key-ring from the pocket of her uniform, the matron unlocked the steel door and edged the door open a few centimetres.   “Try not to tire him out,” she advised.   “When he first came here he was only a vegetable.   He has improved remarkably over the last few days, but too much excitement could easily reverse all of the good work that we’ve done.”

The matron stood aside to let Ernie enter.   After a moment of indecision, when he half wondered whether there might still be time to change his mind, Ernie stepped inside and heard the metal door clang shut behind him.

The room was a tiny, single-bed ward.   At the back of the room was a separate room with a sign on the door saying WASHROOM AND TOILET.   In the bedroom there was a ceiling height wooden cabinet, which Ernie correctly guessed to be locked, a metal-frame bed, a small, grey metal cupboard beside the bed, and two plastic, lime-coloured chairs, tucked neatly under the bed.

On the bed, propped up with four foam pillows, sat a grey-haired old man who looked at least ninety.   Puzzled, Ernie’s first thought was that the matron had made a mistake and had led him to the wrong room.   He was about to apologise, when he recognised the grey-haired old man as Sam Hart (who was in his early fifties and had had a full head of jet black hair the last time Ernie had seen him.)

“Sam…Sam I…” began Ernie hesitantly, uncertain how to treat him.

It seemed at first as though the old man hadn’t heard him, and Ernie wondered whether there was still time to sneak back out into the corridor.   But then Sam turned his head quickly to the left and peered at him with a glassy, fish-eyed stare.

“How are you doing?” asked Ernie, slowly approaching the bed.

Although Sam Hart’s eyes never left him, he didn’t answer and Ernie wondered whether the man even knew who he was.

“All your friends have been worried about you,” persisted Ernie, walking across to pull out one of the chairs from under the bed and sit down.   However, he had lied: most of the local folk were too concerned with their own troubles, paranoid about the continuing nightly murders, to be worried about Sam or anyone else for that matter.   Particularly since Sam Hart had never gone out of his way to be friendly with anyone since coming to the area nearly thirty years earlier.   In fiction country people are usually depicted as cold and hostile to newcomers to the area, refusing to accept them as anything but outsiders, even after they have lived in the area for decades.   But in truth the people of Glen Hartwell would have been happy to accept Sam Hart as one of their own when he had first moved there in the mid 1960s.   It had been Sam himself who bad chosen to be an outsider.   Born and raised in an inner suburb of Melbourne, Sam had always regarded himself as too good to associate with country yokels, even after thirty years of working his own sheep station.

“Georgina has been worried about you,” said Ernie, this time speaking the truth.   Despite her heartbreak at the death of their son, Georgina Hart had snapped out of her own hysteria the moment her husband had gone into his catatonic state.   Although still hurting from the brutal murder of Victor, wisely Georgina realised that the living needed her more than the dead.   It had been everything that Bear Ross and Gina Foley could do to keep Georgina away from the asylum until someone else had been there first to see if Sam was in any state to see her.

Looking at Sam now, seeing the glassy, fish-stare as his eyes looked right through him, Ernie wondered what he could tell her.   He knew that Georgina was almost bursting from the need to see her husband again, but knew that the shock of seeing him in this condition, on top of the death of her son, might be too much for her.

Ernie talked to Sam for another twenty minutes, telling him as much of the local news as possible, while carefully steering around the mounting hysteria concerning the still unchecked death toll.   As he talked Sam’s fish-eyed stare never left him, but Ernie didn’t know how much of it he heard, how much he understood, if anything.

He didn’t hear the sound of approaching footsteps, so Ernie was surprised when the metal door clanged open behind him.   Poking her head round the door, the matron said, “Is everything all right?”   Ernie nodded and felt overwhelming relief when she said, “Perhaps you had better leave now.   We don’t want to tire him out.”

Murmuring his agreement, Ernie allowed himself to be led back down the corridor toward the checkout counter in the lobby, where he returned his plastic security pass and signed out in the visitors’ book.

‘What the Hell can I Possibly tell her!’ thought Ernie, knowing as he left the building that Georgina Hart would be waiting expectantly for his return at the Singleton sheep station.

*      *      *

It was nearly a fortnight after his visit to Queen’s Grove to see Sam Hart, that Ernie finally received a telephone call from Alwyn leLean, the leader of the Ordo Templi Australis.

Hoping to hear that leLean had tracked down a ritual to free the soul of Vera Hilliard from the horror of the nightmare, Ernie was disappointed when he said, “No, no I haven’t, however, I’ve made contact with Morton Matthews, the leader of the black coven in Lenoak, and he’s agreed to help us out.”

“Can he undo the evil that he’s caused?” asked Ernie uncertain whether Matthews’ offer was good news or bad.

“He claims he can, however, I’m afraid he has rather a reputation as a boaster.”

*      *      *

It was two nights later, in mid August that the two covens, plus Ernie, gathered in Alwyn leLean’s living room, from which the furniture had been removed.

Morton Matthews (a tall, lean man, whose widow’s peak and exaggerated goatee made him exactly the caricature of a sorcerer that Ernie had expected Alwyn leLean to be) seemed shocked by the appearance of Ernie at the ceremony.

Ernie in turn was shocked to see the twenty-six witches arrayed in long, flowing, purple-silk gowns, having been led to believe that ceremonial garb was unnecessary.   Seeing Ernie’s surprise, leLean explained, “The Ordo Templi Australis usually performs magic in street clothes, however, Morton’s group prefer to perform in ceremonial robes.”   In a law voice he added, “So we agreed to go along, rather than get embroiled in a length argument over an irrelevant point.”

Despite his initial displeasure at the sight of an outsider, when introduced to Ernie, Morton Matthews did his best to be charming.   “A great pleasure to have you here with us tonight, Mr. Singleton,” he gushed.   As they talked Matthews tried his best to appear contrite about any part he may have played in unleashing the nightmare onto Glen Hartwell, however, Ernie soon realised that his main concern was that if the killings continued much longer he would have to answer for them to the police.

After five or six minutes of gushing from Matthews, Ernie was introduced to the other witches in the two covens, including a grey-haired couple who were obviously husband and wife.   The man tall, lean and distinguished looking; the woman nearly a head shorter and still beautiful, although in her mid fifties.   Without being told Ernie recognised them as Vera Hilliard’s parents.   Until now he had only thought of Vera as a monster that had killed over fifty men and needed to be destroyed.   But seeing the pain in her parents’ eyes, for the first time Ernie realised that the nightmare of Glen Hartwell was every bit as much a victim as those she had killed.

When the preparations began, to Ernie’s surprise, Matthews unrolled a large, black silk square, upon which a white circle containing a five-pointed star had been woven, in the middle of the living room floor.

Seeing Ernie’s surprise, leLean explained, “Although the magic circle can be painted on, or formed with dirt or special powders, in the middle ages, during the witch-hunt hysteria, it was found to be more convenient to have the circle, or Cone of Power to give it its correct name, embroidered onto a silk square.   That way it is lightweight and can be carried great distances, and if the witch-hunters suddenly descended onto your gathering, it could quickly be thrown into the ritual fire and in seconds their most valuable piece of evidence against you would be destroyed.”

Embroidered outside the circle, and in the centre of the pentacle (five-pointed star) was writing in Hebrew.   In each of the points of the pentacle was placed a black candle.   A small brazier was placed in the centre of the pentacle and lighted.

As Ernie watched in astonishment, Morton Matthews started to chant in Hebrew, flicking pinches of finely chopped herbs into the brazier as he chanted.   Each time be flicked the herbs the small flame flared up and began slowly to increase in size until it soon seemed much too large to be contained within the goblet-sized brazier in which it burnt.

After a few minutes the initial stage of the ritual was completed.   Now decked out in purple robes like the others, Ernie found himself becoming part of the daisy chain of witches, holding hands and dancing anti-clockwise around the Cone of Power, while Morton Matthews began to chant again in Hebrew.

Ernie couldn’t help blushing from embarrassment as he took part in the ritual.   He could not believe that this could possibly do any good.   Although he had been assured that the dancing could help to work powerful magic, to Ernie it was just like when as a child he had joined hands with the other children to dance ring around the rosy around the maypole on May eve

*      *      *

Although it was only 9:30 p.m., Bear Ross was exhausted after a hard day helping out on Cherrytree Farm — he almost wished to be back in the team of police and soldiers traipsing about the countryside in quest of the killer.   So he went to bed and almost immediately fell asleep.   Only to awaken an hour later to find the small room filled with a blinding yellow light.

‘Oh my God, the apartment’s on fire!’ thought Bear trying to struggle out of bed, only to realise that his limbs were frozen in place.

Unable to move, he lay back watching the blinding light, from which a small white pin-prick emanated near one corner of the ceiling.   As Bear watched the white dot slowly began to increase in size, until it took on the form of a beautiful naked woman, whose bleached white skin seemed almost transparent as she slowly floated down from the ceiling toward him.

Despite her outward beauty, Bear recognised her as evil and tried with all his might to break free from the “glamour” that held him bound to the bed faster than any iron chains.

Seeing the barrel-chested man powerless beneath her magic, the nightmare lifted back her head and broke into peals of cackling laughter, as she continued to descend until she was kneeling upon the big man’s chest.

As her white thighs wrapped vice-like around his face, Bear remembered Ernie’s tale of a beautiful demon woman whose vulva opened to reveal long, pearly white teeth, and even before her genitalia opened Bear began to scream from terror.

For a moment the nightmare was content to match Bear’s shrieks of fear with cackles of laughter, but finally her mouth began to open to reveal the razor sharp, salivating teeth that Bear already knew to be there.   Centimetre by centimetre the nightmare lowered herself onto Bear, until the gleaming teeth were just touching his flesh.   Then, as Bear futilely attempted to pull himself down deeper into the mattress to escape them, her vulva teeth gaped open wide over his face and prepared to take the first lethal bite, that would tear away Bear’s face from beneath the chin to just above the bridge of the nose.

*      *      *

Ernie Singleton wished that he could leave the circle of dancing, purple-robed witches, now firmly convinced that Morton Matthews was a charlatan.   He had actually started to break away from the procession, when above the Cone of Power the air began to crackle like static electricity.   Again and again it crackled, until Ernie could see small specks of white light wavering in the air, increasing in size and number with each revolution that the witches performed, with each repetition of the simple eight-line mantra that Matthews was now almost shrieking over and over again.

*      *      *

Bear Ross had given up all hope, given up on life itself as the lethal teeth slowly poised to bite down.   Hearing the nightmare let out a tremendous shriek, at first he thought that it was a shriek of triumph.   Then to Bear’s astonishment, as she started to rock from side to side, he realised that it was a shriek of anger and dismay, as some unseen force attempted to pull the demon woman away from him.

A deeply religious man all his life, Bear had been praying silently to the Blessed Virgin as the teeth lowered over his face.   So he now believed that She had answered his prayers, as kicking and writhing wildly, the nightmare was dragged backwards up off his face.

Immediately Bear rolled onto the floor, in case the creature fell back onto the bed.   He lay on the carpet watching in fascination as, still struggling furiously against the unseen adversary, the nightmare was pulled up backwards toward the ceiling in a strange, jerky motion as though someone had her on a gigantic rubber band and was slowly reeling her in.

As Bear watched she hit the ceiling with a strange plopping sound.   The surface of the ceiling seemed to have become elastic and bulged in upon itself for a moment against her twisting bead, until slowly, still screaming her indignation, the nightmare began to disappear headfirst into the very fabric of the ceiling, centimetre by centimetre, like a diver slowly disappearing into the water in a slow-motion replay.   Except that she was defying gravity by “diving” upwards, through hard plasterboard, not down into soft water.

Finally even her toes had disappeared.   Then the yellow light that had heralded her arrival began to seep up into the ceiling like shiny dust being sucked into a vacuum cleaner, until Bear was alone again in the darkness, terrified by his close encounter with death, yet grateful to still be alive.

*      *      *

Now even Ernie was chanting and dancing with vigour, as slowly the static crackle began to build up until the atmosphere inside the living room was flashing like lightning.

Throughout the “calling” Morton Matthews had continued to throw pinches of varicoloured herbs and powders onto the brazier in the centre of the five-pointed star; each sprinkle of powder making the fire flare up for a moment.   As Matthews threw his last pinch onto the brazier, there came a loud crash upon the corrugated-iron roof, followed by a high-pitched screech.   Then blinding yellow light began to flaw into the living roam through the solid ceiling.

After a moment, to Ernie’s astonishment he saw five toes seep in through the fabric of the ceiling, followed by a delicate foot, then the start of a shapely leg.   The second foot soon appeared, followed by the lower body of the nightmare, which still writhed around wildly, shrieking her fear and rage at this unexpected treatment.

As Matthews continued his chanting, the nightmare was dragged down into the pentacle within the Cone of Power, until she was almost being pulled into the now blazing fire within the small brazier.

Realising Matthews’ intention, Alwyn leLean protested, “No, she must not be destroyed by the fire!”

“Purging with fire is the only way to make her atone for the evil she has committed!” insisted Morton Matthews.

“No!” protested leLean.   “The evil isn’t hers, it is ours!   We made her what she now is!”   Pointing toward the twisting, snarling creature he added, “Somewhere within that creature is the spirit of Vera Hilliard.   A spirit poisoned by us.   We turned her into a demon, against her will!”

Aware that he meant that it was his fault, Matthews flushed red from anger.   But reluctantly he consented to leLean’s demand and began to perform a healing ritual, to draw out the psychic poison from the spirit of Vera Hilliard.

Almost as complex as the charm that had pulled the nightmare from Bear Ross’ apartment, the healing spell continued into the early hours of the morning.   At first the creature snarled and glared at the circle of dancing witches, shrieking her disapproval each time a part of the “exorcism” ritual was completed.   But slowly the evil look on her beautiful face began to dissolve away, allowing her features to soften, becoming gradually more and more human, less and less monstrous.   Gradually her strident shrieking began to dim, began to lower in pitch and volume, until it tapered out entirely as bit by bit the evil was drawn out of her to be sent spiralling down into the flaming brazier, making the flames flare up brightly for an instant, leaving the soul of Vera Hilliard a little less polluted.

Until finally, barely an hour before dawn, the ritual cleansing was completed and the last of the psychic poison was gone.   With it went the nightmare, leaving behind the soul of Vera Hilliard, still almost supernaturally beautiful, but now a pure innocent beauty, not the leering, sensuous beauty of the nightmare.

“Darling…darling you’re back!” cried Eleanora Hilliard, sobbing from joy at the sight of the spirit of her daughter, finally cleansed of Morton Matthews’ evil.

“Don’t cry mother,” said Vera.   She reached out through the magic circle, which could no longer contain her now that the evil that it had been designed to imprison had been cleansed from her.   For a few moments Vera took her mother into her ghostly arms and hugged her, before finally pulling away, saying, “It’s time for me to go on, mother.   On to the next level of existence.”

Sebastian Hilliard put a loving arm around his wife’s waist and gently pulled her away as the spirit of their daughter began to fade from sight.

While they were packing away their magic paraphernalia, Alwyn leLean explained, “As I said before, the nightmare of Glen Hartwell herself wasn’t evil, she was merely the victim of human evil.”   Looking pointedly at Morton Matthews, he added, “Hopefully this will be a lesson to us all, that magic should only be used for good purposes, never evil!”

*      *      *

Although the killings stopped in late August, remnants of the Army Reserves and Melbourne Police stayed in the area until Christmas 1995.   Although no murderer was ever caught, Detective Inspector Kenneth Fisher returned to Melbourne a hero, credited with having scared away the killer.   To the annoyance of Mel Forbes and Bear Ross, Fisher received a Certificate of Merit at a special police awards ceremony and later picked up an Order of Australia in the Christmas Honours List.   “But he didn’t do a bloody thing!” protested Mel when told of Fisher’s awards, drawing a nod of agreement and an ironic laugh from Bear Ross.

Though Glen Hartwell is a large town by country standards, nearly five percent of the adult male population had been killed over a three month period and Ernie Singleton knew — as he tried to comfort Rowena, who still grieved for her father, Tony Frankland — that it would be years, if ever, before Glen Hartwell and Merridale fully recovered.

THE END