Today I’d like to share the first chapter of Australian Gothic for your reading pleasure. Things are coming along and I hope to have a release date finalised very soon.
ONE
Sunday, 10 August 2025
Logistically speaking, his father had died at a convenient time. A downturn in project work had seen employees who had accumulated excessive leave sent on a conscripted sojourn. This, coupled with a recently serviced car – the same second-hand Toyota Corolla he’d bought in June 2007 – meant that Locrian Smythe had acquired a new reason to get lost somewhere old. It was news of a deceased patriarch that now saw him careening down the Princes Highway, but four new tyres certainly helped the situation as well. Nobody knew that he had left Sydney. Locrian had tried to inform his manager; the phone call had been as awkward as any other tete-a-tete shared between them;
“It’s who?”
“It’s Locky Smythe, sir,”
“Locky. Drop the ‘sir’, mate, c’mon. Look, if you’re calling about your last pay cheque, the girls in HR are working on it. Problem at the bank or something. I don’t know; I’m just the messenger,”
“Was just saying – or wanted to say – I’ll be away for a few days out of town. If that’s ok.”
“Right. Mate, you’re on leave. I don’t care what you do, bud. Where to? Should hit up somewhere warm, relax, you know?”
“Southern Highlands, actually. To Dad’s place. Or his old place. He died, yeah,”
“Oh, shit mate I’m sorry. But mate, why are you telling me? You do what you need to do.”
There wasn’t anything he needed to do though. His sister Leah was the executor of the will, and it had only been a delay on her end that saw Locrian head to Major’s Crossing in her stead. It had actually been Locrian who had suggested it, with Leah reluctantly agreeing, whilst imploring she’d only be a few days behind. Locrian hadn’t asked her why she’d be held up. Leah didn’t ask why Locrian had offered to help. It didn’t matter.
The August sun set early, and so had begun its descent by the time Locrian turned onto the Kings Highway at Batemans and headed inland away from the sea. The Great Dividing Range cut its sawtooth peaks into the amber sunlight, and it was difficult for him to recall what day of the week it was. The lack of working routine had made it so, and yet he knew it must have been the weekend because of the footy match playing out on the radio. A cold wind met him from the south, flitting the sepia grass in a turgid swell bespeckled with a golden afternoon sun. The eucalypt shivered at the wind’s caress, towering in ancient silence all about the roadside, and Locrian’s maudlin trance was shifting to frustration as the radio signal shuddered in and out. Truthfully, he’d been driving too long, and would do well to stop to stretch his legs and refresh himself. Braidwood wasn’t too far off now; from there it was only another hour or so drive to his father’s property. It was a small town, Braidwood, a couple of thousand residents tops – at one stage Locrian might have called himself one of them, but that was far further back in time than he often cared to remember.
The Corolla ambled past a decrepit sign marking the entrance to the town. The few people who walked the streets looked in his direction with accusing eyes; or at least it seemed that way to Locrian. In reality the car passed too quickly to discern proper expression, but he was often one to assume negative intent in others. Still, there remained the feeling of heads turning; of wide, sparsely animated streets; a stray dog wandered aimlessly about; cockatoos ransacked a garbage dumpster foolishly left open by a shop owner; and curtained house windows illuminated pockets of living rooms with an indifferent glow in the increasing dusk.
As he pulled into the petrol station, Locrian turned the headlights of the car on, before realising he’d need to turn them off again immediately anyway. The ignition cut, and the silence that struck was palpable; the radio may have dropped out miles earlier, but Locrian had left the console on, and only now in the shivering quiet did he realise he’d been hearing that buzz of static for a solid hour. His cheeks tingled; he felt the blood in his veins pulse menacingly in his temples.
The attendant was an older looking man, so slouched in his chair behind the counter that he seemed melded to it, as if he had come with the place when they bought it. Sightlessly he worked the eftpos machine with his eyes fixed on a television screen in the corner playing the same football match Locrian had attempted to listen to in the car.
“Pump two, on card,”
“Sixty-seven today, mate,”
“Port up?”
“Nah, Freo by a kick,”
“Bastards.”
“Still time.”
It didn’t matter. Sport was like life – getting so invested in these small pockets of time, only to forget them almost immediately. In the heat of the game, winning or losing was the only relevant focus, but there’d be nobody who’d still remember some random match between Port Adelaide and Fremantle in the years to come. Small pockets of time – wasn’t all of life like that?
Awash with a swathe of embered orange and bruised lilac, the sky began its nightly exchange of lanterns as the western sky grew dimmer, the sun passing the torch, as it were, to the silver moon coin emerging in the east. Grief was easier to find at the day’s end; Locrian fought back the welling heat of tears as he continued on his way with the morbid realisation that nobody awaited his arrival at the property. He decided that the distraction of a short detour around town might settle his nerves. Braidwood was different, yet entirely the same in the way that childhood haunts are upon revisiting; it startled him to see how small everything looked. The old Catholic church that had once towered over him in awe as a child now seemed ruinous; a park that had once seemed an untouched frontier now little more than a hectare of grass where an old statue of a miner stood vigil beneath a line of poorly manicured oak trees.
An acrid odour of petrol had spilt onto Locrian’s hands, intruding on his thoughts despite his best attempts to ignore it. He pulled up out the front of a small grocery store and searched in vain for a spigot or fountain – anything – where he might wash his hands. No matter; he’d buy some hand soap, and maybe something to eat while he was at it. He recognised Gymnopedie No.1 playing softly in the store, and thought it to be such a strange place to hear a piece like that. The simple melody helped though; words were too much to bear at the present moment. The harmony waltzed slowly from D major to minor as he perused the aisles, his focus dropping in and out much like the radio signal from earlier; the light battens casting their fluorescent beams on the colourful and reflective plastic of various wares.
Food, right.
Concentration was difficult, and he was in no mood to make any sort of decision. Grabbing the basics of a small grocery shop, he hesitated for a brief moment before a packet of peanut butter pretzels. Normally he’d do his best to avoid eating anything he would deem unhealthy, especially after he had taken to long-distance running in his early thirties, but tonight could be different. There would be no parent to tell him to eat his vegetables first, and that sad thought made him vehemently stuff the packet into the basket and proceed to the counter. A weary clerk added up his wares while her daughter sat behind her running a pencil over the staff lines of some sheet music – Gymnopedies by Erik Satie.
So that’s why that piece was playing – this girl must be studying it.
“Practice well,” Locrian smiled.
Both mother and daughter curled a corner of their mouths in a sort of half smile; between the two they’d have a whole.
“I do my best to teach her,” the clerk replied.
“It’s important,” said Locrian, not entirely sure what he meant by that. He was the only one who considered it though; the clerk had finished the transaction and returned to helping her daughter whilst he slipped out of the store.
The clock beamed twenty-five minutes to seven in orange and black as the Corolla curled back onto the road, out the southern side of Braidwood. With any luck he’d pull up at his father’s property at half past seven. There had been no change to the chill wind, but now in the darkness of the evening the temperature had plummeted considerably. It was a cheap heating system in Locrian’s car, groaning in protest as he aimed the vents towards the steering wheel where his hands clung tightly. The warmth was worth the lingering smell of fuel blowing into his face, as he turned off the main road onto the dirt trail that wound through the bushland forests of Major’s Crossing.
There was no township here, just a smattering of dwellings across plains of farmland, interspersed with forest of both Australian natives that grew bedraggled, and the conifers that grew erect and sentinel for a nearby logging company that used the colder climate to grow such pines. In fact, nothing of note (with exception to a small hamlet by the name of Captain’s Flat) could be seen anywhere between here and Canberra. Locrian already knew that the isolation had suited his dad – just enough interaction with the outside world to raise two reasonably functional children was all he had required, and once Leah and Locky had grown up and out, well, he had been free to vanish within himself ever further.
The road dipped and turned, tossing him this way and that as the car struggled over the uneven terrain – it wasn’t a car built for any sort of off-road venturing; he felt his chest tighten at this mild annoyance, for this part of the drive required a focus that he was unwilling to conjure; he desired a return to the flat highway where his mind could drift. Instead, he decided to take in the surroundings as best he could (although the darkness now made it almost impossible to see), as it had been years now since he’d last made the trip down to his childhood home, and much the same as Braidwood, the surroundings felt paradoxically familiar yet alien. He crossed the weir which in times past had flooded under heavy rain and prevented him and his sister from attending school; it had obviously been a dry few months of late, since the creek was little more than a sluggish trickle over weed-strewn rocks. A barbed-wire fence would then hug the trail, stopping livestock straying away from their properties where they might be at the mercy of reckless drivers that often passed by much too quickly.
Presently he found himself on a straight stretch of road that tumbled downhill, and Locrian spotted a dark shape on the road ahead of him;
A rock?
Perhaps it had tumbled down the slope and onto the road. But no, this was different, and as he drew closer, he realised it had to be some sort of creature – a wombat – that blocked the way forward. Locrian pulled the handbrake on with a crunch and stepped out of the car, the headlights illuminating the furry beast that lay dead on the dirt road. He nudged the thing with his foot, despite already knowing it no longer lived; it yielded somewhat to the touch of his boot before gravity rocked it softly back into its slumped position.
Poor thing, some bastard’s hit you, haven’t they?
It was hardly an unusual occurrence, yet Locrian still found himself pitying the creature as though he’d known it personally.
“Too much death,” he sighed to no-one.
He nudged it again with his foot, applying more pressure this time to see if he could shift the body off the road. It would need to be moved before he could proceed – wombats were heavy creatures, and this one was a monster of a thing; no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move it with his feet; he’d have to try something else. Locrian looked around for a thick branch he might use to use to lever under the wombat, but the night had descended and he could see no further than the headlights of the car.
“Fuck,” he hissed through his teeth.
The trunk of the car was popped open and he began to rummage about for a solution. The wheel jack might have worked had it have been longer, and the only other objects in the car besides his duffel bag were a bunch of old towels covered in engine oil. He would have to use his hands and shove the beast off the road himself. Residing to the fact that his hands were already soiled by traces of petrol, he placed a begrimed towel across the wombat’s broad back and pushed. The beast was heavy – much heavier than Locrian had anticipated, and only after several minutes of exertion was he able to roll the corpse onto the dried grass by the roadside. It rolled onto its back as Locrian stumbled forward, almost crashing on top of the thing. When he had gathered himself, he caught sight of the joey that lay still in the pouch of the wombat.
So, it had been a mother.
Locrian felt his heart flash with grief as he staggered backwards and choked back a sob. He observed the smaller creature in vain, but knew it to be dead – there was no denying it. Around him the night was silent; the nightjars had ceased their song; the engine hummed as it idled in the darkness, and the doomed creature at his feet would never move again.
How long had he stood there? It can’t have been longer than a few minutes; the cold discreetly seized Locrian’s arms in a frigid embrace, and his breath hung in the air in staccato puffs. Above him, a cauldron of bats flew northward, screeching off into the distant sky and shaking him from his trance; he could no longer look at the mother and child. He walked to the other side of the road and plucked a handful of twigs from a shrub, laying two of them in a cross-shape on the wombat pair; someone would be around to spray-paint the same shape on the corpse eventually – it was done to confirm passers-by that no joey had been left alive near the dead parent. Then, feeling a little silly for doing so, Locrian lay two more sticks in the shape of a crucifix next to them, before deciding against it and kicking the sticks away.
“Stupid,” he muttered; head down and sniffing, he steadily recomposed himself.
He threw the towel back into the boot of the car, knowing he’d probably end up throwing it away now anyway, before sitting back behind the driving wheel and resuming the final leg of his journey. It was perhaps less than ten minutes later that he rounded a steep corner where, hidden amongst the trees, he spied the familiar metal gate and mailbox that marked the entrance to his father’s property.
Here marks the end of chapter 1 of Australian Gothic. Look forward to reading the rest upon its release!
P.S.Clinen 