Chapter Eleven
“The Apostle of Girangar”

He stepped through the swirling mist, aware that at any time he must be prepared to act and act quickly. A large rock face became visible in the gloom. Sheltering under a minuscule overhang was the seven of them, huddled together. Their faces reflected mortal fear. There were five men and two women, well perhaps three men and two boys. The women were teenagers themselves. They stood arms around each other for warmth and protection, the act of physical contact salvaging what little semblance of sanity remained. A glimmer of hope shone in some eyes as they saw him approach, confidently stepping through the mire and obviously heading toward them. Salvation! They had been found! Their confidence was boosted by his sudden, soundless appearance.

“Ho” he called to them.

“It’s just a boy,” one of them whispered, one who was barely older himself. “Can you help us?” he said as the figure stopped directly in front of them. The boy that spoke had a comforting arm around one of the girls.

The figure smiled a happy and confident smile and nodded. “I surely can, I surely can. Which one of you is Errol?” he asked looking directly at one of the men.

“That’s me,” Errol acknowledged, a considerable vibrato betrayed his fear.

“Errol, come here,” the boy motioned to a position beside him. Errol stood his ground, looking at the others for support, any support. “Come on Errol, I won’t bite, I promise,” the boy grinned.

Errol slowly detached himself from the group and moved forward. A hand reluctantly released his shirt. His steps were slow and his body trembled. He faced the boy but turned side on so that he could still see the others. The boy appeared to ignore him as he addressed them all again, but to his horror Errol recognized that it was a question meant for he, and he alone to answer. He glanced sharply at the kid.

“How much did you drink tonight?”

“I didn’t, only, had a couple,” he shook even more, the pitch of his voice almost a squeal.

“Try seventeen,” the boy smiled at the group again. “And your two mates there weren’t much better. How did it feel driving with a blood alcohol concentration so high that you could have been considered clinically dead?”

“I, I didn’t, couldn’t …,” Errol turned and addressed the group himself, pleading almost.

“You could and you did,” the boy interrupted conversationally. “And how did it feel when you launched your car off the median strip at seventy-five miles an hour? Did that feel like flying!”

“No, no, I wasn’t…”

“You were, you were flying, and your car still hadn’t hit the ground when it struck these kids standing innocently at a taxi rank. Do you know they had just been out celebrating Julies’, ” he pointed at one of the girls, “sixteenth birthday? You killed them Errol, and your mates, and there is another six people still in hospital because of you Errol. Look at them,” he commanded, as Errol let his chin slump to his chest. “LOOK AT THEM!”

Errol raised his head at the shouted command. He tried to stare defiantly but failed. Everybody stared back, their hate smoldering. One of the other men spoke.

“We’re dead? “Coz of him? We’re dead?”

“Yup!”

“You was drinkin’ just as much as me,” Errol shouted.

“That’s a lie. After I got to the pub, yeah, true, I had three or four, just like you did, but you’d already been there for a couple of hours, and I wasn’t driving,” he responded accusingly. “Seventeen schooners Errol? Man, I knew you drank a bit, but seventeen? You got a real problem.”

“You all have a problem. He killed you all, just as if he’d gone out and bought a gun and shot you down, he killed you. You ALL have a problem now. So what you gonna do about it?”

The boys’ invitation elicited some confused looks and one of the girls, the other girl beside Julie spoke. “Why can’t I cry?”

“Because of him,” he nodded at Errol who now stood hands on hips, defensive, face set. One of his legs still trembled though. “He killed you and now you can’t cry. You can’t cry and you can’t love, but you can hate and you can wreak revenge. So what are you gonna do about it? I said what are you going to do about it?”

There was a pause of a few seconds, then one of the men growled out an oath. “You barstard” and he leapt, smashing Errol to the ground in a flying tackle.

The rest followed, jumping, kicking, punching, even the girls flailed into the melee. Their terror and fear released, there was satisfaction when their nails connected with a face, and not a care about whose face it was! The boy smiled, turned and walked away. He heard Errol utter his last screams of protest, and then the desperate screams of the others as the darkness descended. With the darkness came the lights, many, perhaps hundreds of them. Panic turned to horror as they were set upon. He heard Julie, the sixteen year old, and her final pitiful scream. He imagined the creatures as they consumed her young body. It was a shame; she was pretty and about his age.

“Don’t think like that,” a voice beside him spoke and an arm draped over his shoulders.

The boy didn’t jump. He didn’t even look in the direction of the speaker. He continued to stride confidently down the sloping, wet and broken ground before him.

“How’d I go?”

“You did well, very well. But next time, be more careful about when you invite them to react. You may have to incite them a little more first, but it worked, this time. Girangar was pleased.”

“So he should.”

The boy was stopped by the arm, which grasped at the collar of his cardigan and turned him to face the speaker. “Shhh. Girangar is not a he, nor a she. Refrain from applying gender, or any human title to Girangar.”

The boy looked into the normally smiling face of the speaker, but there was no smile. The speaker was deadly serious, and a little frightened. He had never, ever seen that before in this man.

“Then what do I call, it, him, just Girangar? What is, who is Girangar?”

The smile returned with the man’s reply. “Girangar is everything, the earth, the ocean, the rivers, the mountains, the only true misanthropist.”

“Miss who? I thought you said there was no gender?”

Again, the fear returned. “Shh. You mustn’t. Misanthropist, a true hater of mankind. Now, speak no more. Go back and we will continue your training later.”

“How am I doing?”

“Excellent. Just watch your mouth.”

“When can I come in, you know, go back?”

“You are doing very well but it has only been a year. We shall see.”

“How long does it normally take, this training?”

“For some, a matter of weeks, months, but they are the failures and they are passed on. Normal? Well, there is no normal because there has been so few, but I believe that you should be ready in another three or four year’s maybe. It is but yet early days. Now, no more. Go.”

“Just one more question, please?”

The man smiled. The curiosity of the boy, his maturity, these were the things that were making him a brilliant student – not that he would ever be told that. “Okay, one more question.”

“Why do I have to hide? Why can’t I just be me?”

“That’s two questions. And you know the answer to them both. It’s the element of surprise. Don’t worry, you will understand, by the time it’s necessary for you to know.”

“You don’t know do you?”

“Enough! Go!” And there was no smile in return.

“Really, seriously, I have a last question. Why did you say don’t think that way about the girl?”

“Because it isn’t necessary. When you return to Life and begin again, you will have a girl, or as many girls as you want. They will be at your beck and call, they will all want you, they will see that you are different, unique. But there will be one, a special one that you will want rather than any number of others, and she will look after you. She has been trained to look after you – and she waits for you now.”

“How will I know her?”

“You will know her. She will know you. Don’t worry, you have been fated to meet. It will happen.”

“Can’t wait,” the boy shrugged and moved on.

Chapter Twelve
“Living With Tony”

Billy always knew that Tony was resilient. He’s one in a million. He was on a hiding to nowhere really. He sees Billy for the first time in over four years and accepts him back as if he’d only gone yesterday. Four years without a phone call, a letter or any other bloody thing, and there were no recriminations, no aggro, nothing but acceptance. It was almost the welcoming back of the prodigal son and that’s probably what stopped Billy from going off again after the shock about Jen. Billy felt obligated to stay.

Perhaps before, when he really was a fifteen-year-old kid, Billy wouldn’t have felt the same. Coming to terms with the fact that he was suddenly a twenty year old, an adult, he knew there was a certain way adults are supposed to act. His composure and maturity as a teen stood him in good stead.

Apart from the obvious, like the Ten Commandments, there are the unwritten rules of Life that most people follow and try to engender into their offspring. Not that Billy learnt much like that from his parents. Excuses, excuses, fucking wimp. This moron couldn’t find his way to his own shithouse if he had the worst case of diarrhea imaginable. It’s all bullshit. Yes, bullshit! Duran is the Angel and Girangar will lead us to the new world. So stick your fucking heads down between your knees and kiss your arse goodbye, because we’re coming to get you. And we will. You can’t hide, so there’s no need to panic. Just go. That’s right, go. Ha, go fuck yourself!

Tony was a true friend. After dropping the bombshell about Jen he helped pick Billy up and put him on the road to recovery, so to speak. More or less, that’s what he did. He took Billy home with him, set up the spare bed in his room and that’s where Billy lived from then on. Tony’s parents were cool about it, they were pretty laid back sort of people. They’d always liked Billy and his steadying influence on Tony. Especially after the debacle with their eldest son, who had served his prison term for drug dealing only to get out and re-offend within two weeks, while he was still on probation! Once a fool always a fool, eh!

Tony’s parents even rang the Gold Coast Police and made sure that everything was hunky dory with them, that Billy wasn’t actually wanted for anything. The gist of their response was that a missing person case was the last thing they were worried about, and seeing as he was no longer in Queensland it was out of their jurisdiction anyway. Billy hadn’t expected to make the Top 10 Wanted List or anything but he had been hoping for maybe a couple of answers. At least he was in the clear so to speak.

It took a fair while to get over the shock of Jen. Tony couldn’t understand. It had been four years for him, but only four months for Billy. Billy and Jen had truthfully believed, like so many fifteen year olds do, that they had been meant for each other.

Billy learnt the hard way to embrace and recognise fate otherwise Life is a constant compromise. He knew his Life was different, that he was different. He had grown up alone with that knowledge. Alone except for the guys from the other side. He supposed he was a hypocrite because of what he did, leaving Jen and his Mum. But he felt he hadn’t left them, just went away for a short time to grieve and recuperate. His intention had always been to return. He really believed that she would be there waiting when he came back. He missed her. He continued to grieve for her.

He felt guilty too. If he hadn’t gone away maybe she would be alive today. Billy thought of this often. If that was her fate, to die horribly like that, perhaps that could have been him, you know, the guy with Jen that got decapitated? But Billy knew it wasn’t so.

Billy only knew his destiny did not lie in Life. It wasn’t apparent to him how he knew, he just did. He had to live his Life first to find out. He lay in some sort of middle zone, the only one there that anybody knew about anyway. He was both alive, and not. He is neither here nor over there. He can go here, and there – whenever he liked! But he had to finish his business here before he can find out what is there. Billy was a kid when he began shouldering that knowledge, and to have remained relatively normal to those around him was testimony to his insight and ability. He’s not a kid anymore, or normal. But he was when he digested that much about himself. And as for normal, well, that’s for each individual to decide.

So here he is living with Tony and his parents now. It’s been several weeks and Billy still feels so hollow inside. It’s the most “human’ he’d ever felt. Thankfully, the involuntary tears and sobbing had all but disappeared. He had found that embarrassing after awhile. Jen had been the only one to ever see him cry before and that time had been from happiness. Billy learnt a lot about emotion from the past few weeks, that’s for sure. He had felt and observed enough before so that he could have known, but the grief about his Dad was nothing compared to this. Even having seen more death than anybody can ever imagine. Seen it every single bloody day, almost every minute of every frigging day in fact, in the presence of the transits. But now it was up close and personal, he knew what it really felt like. And wished he hadn’t found out.

Billy soldiered on and Tony got him going to the jam sessions again. They all wanted him to actually sing in the band. In the back of his mind though was his one and only public performance, with Mr Cocker no less. He still thought if he hadn’t gone there, to the Top Pub that night, or to tennis, or Tonys’, or to the drive in, that he might have been able to save his Dads’ Life. And because it was his Dad, family, blood, maybe he could have done something that time.

A minor “problem’ at home was that Billy’s Mum and Dad knew about him and some of his abilities. His Mum accepted it, recognised it for what it was and let him be, but his Dad, no way! To his Dad Billy was a freak and he refused to accept it. Billy even stood in front of him one night and went off then came back, right before his very eyes, which isn’t a bad trick for a four year old! He tried to convince him for so long, even telling him about events to come, sad events, and they always came true but still he refused to listen or accept. What he did do though was to start sitting in front of that television as his escape from his spooky kid. Everyone must learn to accept Reality, and to make the most of whatever fate deals you. Billy knew that very few made it. His Dad didn’t.

Billy and Tony lived in a little town about ten kilometres south of Ballina named Wardell. So he and Tony were not being lazy by catching a bus to school. Billy wondered how he would have gone if he had finished school? Billy lived in town itself. Tony’s house was about half a kilometre away, just past the outskirts. Tony’s parents had a few acres they grew pineapples on which is probably where his big brother got his horticultural skills! Jen used to live on the other side of town, about two kilometres away on the back road to Lismore. Her Father bought the school bus run from Wardell to Lismore, which is how they ended up moving here.

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