Evil in Arcadia

Nicole & Dave - Chickens

July 10,  2013— Arcadia, New South Wales

She lay wide-eyed as a curtain flapped against a window frame. She strained to listen: a chorus of crickets drifted across their darkened lawn. A squawk sounded from the chicken coop at the back of the garden. The crickets stopped. After a moment’s deathly silence, they picked up their song again. A dull, anonymous thud came from a different direction—out front near the road. She sighed and rolled over taking the sheets. Next to her, Dave groaned and rolled away in a semi-conscious struggle for bedclothes.

A familiar metallic tone rang clear in the night. 

Who would send a text message at this hour?

Knowing sleep was unlikely, she stumbled out of bed and found the luminous screen of her phone glowing in the gloom of the kitchen. She never intended on reading the message.

The door is open. Her breath quickened when she saw who it was from.

‘Dave, wake up, wake up.’ She shook his groggy shoulder, pulse pounding at her temples.

‘Wha nowmh?’ He tugged the sheets up over his chest.

‘Dave, get up. You need to check the doors.’ She thrust the bright screen at his face. He squinted vaguely at it.

‘Its from him! The cleaner.’

 He sat up, stumbled from the bed and groped for his robe.

‘Don’t turn the lights on.’ His voice was suddenly clear. 

He stopped at the door on the way out. ‘I’ll check on Dan first.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

Nicole heard the monitor in Daniel’s room crackle as Dave entered. She hoped it was Dave.

‘He’s fine, fast asleep. I’ll go check the doors now.’ 

His voice sounded sleepy again. As long as Dan was okay, she thought, that was the important thing to him. Despite his warning, she followed down the hall turning on lights as she went, double-checking the doors and the windows. 

He walked back down the blazing corridor from the front door and cocked an eyebrow at her in disbelief .‘I’m glad you didn’t turn the lights on then.’

‘I feel safer with them on.’

‘Do we need them all on?’ He looked at the time on the oven clock. 

‘Jeez, its three-thirty in the morning, we’ll be waking the rooster next door in a sec. With all the light we’re giving off he’ll think its daybreak.’

‘Thanks for checking everything out.’ She smiled indulgently and gave him a quick hug. Then she turned and went back through the house switching the lights off again.

‘Don’t worry love,’ he murmured as they settled back into the bedclothes. ’He probably sent that text to you by accident. You know, hit your name in the contacts list instead of … whoever. Not sure what he’s doing awake at this hour though.’

A silence fell between them and she sensed him drifting off to sleep.

‘Dave?’

‘Ungh,’ he recoiled as her hand touched his shoulder. ‘Why do you always wait until I’m half asleep to do that?’

‘Dave’ she asked sweetly. ‘Can you check on the chickens for me? I’m worried about them.’

‘Ah for heavens sake darling, what next?’

Dave plodded across the back garden in his gumboots and dressing gown cursing the chooks. It had rained earlier in the day and the ground underfoot was slick and muddy. They lived on an acre, a semi-rural plot on the outskirts of Sydney. He got grumpier as he walked.

The chickens this and the hens bloody that, he thought to himself in a huff.  She waited on them hand and foot, it was unnatural. It was just wrong. She even worried if they’d be cold at night!

‘They’ll be just fine darl, they’re just chooks!’ He’d told her. ‘Yes they’re getting plenty of food — and yes they always eat scraps.’

 Bloody city people. Mum warned him not to marry a city girl.

They’d lost the last of their dogs, Dicko, just before Dan was born. Daniel was almost theee years old now and Dave suspected Nic was channeling some of her excess maternal energy into these damn …

A strange blue light glowed briefly in the darkness of their neighbours’ yard. He turned off his flashlight and watched the blue light flare brighter and then disappear. He stared at the black space where it had been. If his calculations were right the light had come from the middle of a thicket on the far side of his neighbour’s yard. Was his mind playing tricks on him? He turned on the flashlight again but it didn’t reach far enough into the darkness to reach the thicket. The beam  played across the hen house. A feathered form sprawled awkwardly on the floor. The hatch near the roost hung open.

What’s going on here…?

There was blood spread around the inside of the henhouse. All six  chooks lay dead on the floor. He knelt down. Someone had slashed their throats, their heads hung loose, blood still oozing out.

He heard the sound of his own front door slam closed. 

Adrenaline surged through his body, he turned and bolted.