The Darkening

their handwritten names: Madeglass Street, Ithaca Lane, Myrtle Street. The thirty-two perch house blocks hung like ribs from the spines of roads. To the east of them sat a large rhomboid flanked by Carmichael Road on one side and cradled by a loop of river: ‘Arnold Estate’.

Nicholas realised what the Arnold Estate was. The woods. He leaned closer to the screen.

Dotted lines ran through the rhomboid: ‘Proposed subdivision. Raff amp; Patterson, Surveyors’.

He wrote down the names.

Another link — a flyer for an auction from 1901: ‘Fifty-eight magnificent new sites! High-set views!’ Again, the area of the woods was divided into dotted lines of proposed streets. ‘?5 deposit. Thorneton amp; Shailer, Auctioneers’.

He wrote down their names, too.

‘Flood damage to jetties and boat houses, 1893’. A jetty on leaning piers seemed to slide down into still, sepia waters. Nicholas blinked. Of course, the ’93 flood. The river would have broken its banks in lots of suburbs, including Tallong. He flicked back to the auction flyer, its map showing the loop of river around the woods. The river waters would have torn right through them. A memory rushed back of leaning trees festooned with bent iron, and the heaved, rotting boat, her nom de guerre, Cate’s Surprise, flaking away to show her real name.

But what was it?

For a silent room, the library was annoyingly noisy: rustling paper, the phlegmy clearing of throats, the sotto voce titter of chatting librarians.

Nicholas shut his eyes and tried to silence his thoughts, ignored his racing heart, emptying a space for the memory. What was the boat’s name? It had been written in black, cracked and faded, barely visible on the grey, splitting timber. One word, it was one word. Started with ‘W’. .

Nicholas opened his eyes.

He typed ‘Wynard’, then ‘Boat’. Search.

He held his breath.

‘Search results: 1 hits’.

He clicked the link.

The caption of the photograph read: ‘Former ferry boat Wynard docked at private jetty, Sherwood, 1891’.

There she was. The sepia photograph was of the same boat he’d seen resplendent in fresh paint on a mirage pond, then decrepit and collapsed in a choked gully.

Here’s proof I’m not crazy.

Nicholas sipped his water as his heart thudded. What did this all mean? He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to get all the images he’d seen into some order in his mind.

The woods. Many planned subdivisions. Many scheduled auctions. Yet none had transpired; the woods had remained undeveloped and untouched. Why? Had the auctioneers been unable to sell them?

He opened his eyes and typed ‘Auctioneer, Thorneton’. Search.

Three thumbnails: that same flyer for the Arnold Estate subdivision; a photo of a rakish, smiling man in a boater hat accompanied by a heavyset woman in a bustle that was an explosion of tulle; an old photo of the stone Anglican church where Gavin’s funeral service was held.

Nicholas felt a flutter of fear. But why should that be surprising? The church had been the centre of Tallong for more than a century. He clicked to enlarge the image.

The caption read: ‘Funeral service for P. Thorneton, Auctioneer. 1901’. The photograph showed undertakers in top hats with black ribbons sitting atop a horse-drawn hearse. Mourners grim as crows were grouped around the dark stone church. Pritam’s Anglican church. The church of the Green Man. The building, only decades old then, looked centuries old, as grim and severe as something that had forced its way bitterly up through hard earth.

Nicholas typed another search: ‘Surveyor, Raff, Patterson’. He bit his lip, then typed ‘Funeral’.

He sipped water while the search bar filled.

‘Search results: 2 hits’.

The first photograph was unrelated — it showed the tombstone of a Glynnis Patterson from Toowoomba. But the second made Nicholas’s breath hiss in through clenched teeth. ‘Funeral Service for Elliot Raff, Surveyor, 1881, Henry Mohoupt, Undertaker’. The image was cracked, making the dull grey sky look fatally wounded. A crowd of mourners beside a horse-drawn hearse outside Pritam’s church. The trees were shorter and the dresses were fuller, but otherwise the photograph was almost identical to the one taken twenty years later.

Nicholas wrote a note to himself: ‘Church?’

He sat back and rubbed his eyes. It was midday. The surrounding carrels were full. He looked outside. The river ran alongside the library, swollen and brown. Its opposite bank was laced tight with an expressway that ducked and weaved in and out of itself, feeding into a business district studded thickly with skyscrapers and office buildings. Bruise-blue clouds loitered discontentedly at the horizon.

Nicholas stretched his neck, trying to get all the new facts straight in his head. Auctioneers plan to sell the woods. Each dies the same year they try to sell them. Surveyors plan to divide the woods. Each dies the very year he plans to slice up the woods.

He turned back to the monitor and typed ‘Water pipe, construction’.

‘Search results: 21 hits’.

It took him ten minutes to reach the last, telling image. The caption didn’t surprise him: ‘August 3, 1928. Workers boycott construction of water pipeline through western suburbs following multiple fatalities’. The photograph showed a bullock team and an empty dray beside dislocated sections of three-metre-high pipe. Behind the dour men and lumpish oxen, the woods glowered. He skipped to the end of the text accompanying the photograph and read the words: ‘. . the unpopular pipeline was diverted through a neighbouring suburb’.

He reached into his satchel and pulled out Gavin’s cigarettes, slipped one into his mouth. A woman opposite levelled a scornful stare at him. The middle-aged man sitting next to him sent him a thundery look, then got up and walked away. Nicholas jiggled the cigarette in his mouth; the dry whisper of the filter on his lips was comforting. The woods had been unassailable. Auctioneers, subdividers, council pipes. . something wanted no one in those woods. But the church. . why did the church keep cropping up?

He typed ‘Anglican church’, then hesitated. What had he seen written on the foundation stone? He closed his eyes and concentrated. Standing outside the cold, mossy church in the rain, peering over to the marble stone, reading the lead letters. . ‘Dedicated to the Glory of God, 1888’. He typed the year. Search.

‘1 hits’. He clicked the link.

He stared. His good mood vanished as suddenly as if a door had opened and an arctic night world of cold had sucked away all warmth.

‘The Right Reverend Nathaniel de Witt stands beside Mrs Eleanor Bretherton who lays foundation stone for Tallong Anglican Church, 1888’. While the Reverend de Witt smiled, Bretherton looked at the camera with undisguised contempt. In one gloved hand, she held a guide rope attached to the heavy stone that was suspended by an overhead crane outside the frame. But it wasn’t her expression that held Nicholas’s stare. It was that he recognised her.

Eleanor Bretherton looked exactly like the old seamstress from Jay Jay’s haberdashery that he remembered from his childhood. The old woman who’d freaked out Suzette. Mrs Quill.

That’s impossible, he thought. How could Mrs Quill appear identical nearly a century later? Bretherton must be her grandmother, or great-aunt or something. But those explanations rang hollow. Certainly, Nicholas was trusting memories twenty years old, but the similarity between Bretherton and Quill was an uncanny coincidence.

Only the voice in his head said it was no coincidence.

He typed ‘Quill, Haberdasher’. Search.

‘Search Results: 0 hits’.

He thought a moment, then typed ‘Myrtle Street’, hesitated, then, ‘shop’. Search.

His jaw tightened as he watched the search bar fill. ‘1 hits’.

As he reached for the mouse, he saw his fingers were vibrating. He was shaking. He moved the cursor over