A simple farmer receives a horse from the gods, a man sells ice creams named after missing schoolkids, the demolition of a hotel brings an old horror to light, a wounded soldier finds the real enemy is in his own camp, a family inherits a peculiar r...
One day I came home from school to find nobody there. Mum was at work. My sister was at band practice, where she played the clarinet, an instrument almost as annoying as she was.
Did I say nobody was home? I lied. Muffy was there.
"Hello stupidcat," I said to her as I dropped my bag on the floor and went into the kitchen to make a snack.
Actually she wasn't stupid at all – she was the smartest cat I'd ever known. But she didn't care what I called her. In any case she didn't look up from what she was doing, which was chasing flies. It was a hot day, and there were heaps of them buzzing around the lounge room. Just one more benefit of living in a shack with no screens on the doors or windows. In winter cold drafts got in through the window panes and down the chimney of the ancient wood stove and under the doors; in summer it was a veritable zoo. You could hardly sleep at night for the things buzzing and whizzing through the air above your bed and bouncing into walls and crawling over your face. Beetles and spiders invaded when it rained. When we came home from a holiday we'd found two tiny bats doing circuits of the lounge room. Mum had to chase them outside with a broom. My sister was completely hysterical. One night hundreds of gigantic moths decided to come in; we spent most of the next morning catching them one-by-one and putting them outside. It was bug city. The only one happy with this arrangement was Muffy. Flies, spiders, moths – she wasn't fussy about what to chase. Oh and she'd eat them too. Gross.
I made a cheese sandwich and came out of the kitchen just in time to see Muffy chase a fly into the study. There was a heavy flump! from inside.
"Muffy?" I said.
She didn't appear.
I went to the doorway and looked in.
The fly was buzzing madly at the window. I expected to see Muffy up on the desk swatting at the fly, but she was nowhere in sight. Had she slipped back out again without me noticing?
"Muffy?" I said again.
No cat.
I turned to leave. That was when I heard a sound behind me. I turned back expecting to find Muffy there after all.
It wasn't Muffy.
It was the rug.
It reared up before me like a cobra. I yelped and fell backwards through the doorway. There was another flump! as the rug struck the place I'd been standing a moment before. I pushed myself backwards on my hands on knees, my heart hammering in my chest. I didn't stop to think about what I was seeing - how completely insane it was. If I did I'd probably go crazy. If I did, I would die.
The rug was snuffling around the doorway now. It was searching for me by smell, and I realised it must have been blind. Of course it was. It didn't have eyes, did it?
I saw it tense up suddenly. It had caught my scent.
As I scrambled to my feet it pushed itself out through the doorway into the dining room. It moved like a caterpillar does, only much faster. I couldn't believe how fast it was. In seconds it was rearing up before me again, its filthy underside rippling like a ship's sail. I could see no mouth, and I had a moment to wonder how it had eaten Muffy. Perhaps it had absorbed her, like a sponge.
I raced for the back door, hearing the rug thwack! down on the floorboards behind me. Foul air ballooned out from under it and washed over me.
Then I was through the door and out into the hot sun. If I could only get the door closed in time – but the rug was too fast and too strong - its full weight crashed into the door, bursting it open. I stumbled out into the yard.
I could try running for it. Maybe I could make it to town. It was a good kilometre to town, all uphill. But I had no idea how fast the rug could go.
I looked around the yard and spotted the shed. It would have to do.
I sprinted across the yard to the shed, not waiting to see if the rug would follow me, ducking under the boughs of the quince tree that grew outside the kitchen window, almost slipping over and falling on the grass, my breath roaring in my ears. I didn't stop to look back even when I reached the shed door and fumbled the latch open. It was lucky I didn't. I'd only just pulled the door shut behind me when the rug slammed into it. The whole shed shook.
Now all that stood between me and a man-eating rug was this flimsy wooden door. How long would it hold? There was no bolt or latch on the inside. If I let go of the handle the door would swing open. The shed itself had been thrown together from scavenged hardwood and corrugated iron. There would be a weak point somewhere. Eventually, the rug would find a way in.
It crashed into the door again. The door held.
I could hear it snuffling around the edges of the door now, searching for a way to prise it open. I tightened my hold on the handle.
Then a horrible thought occurred to me.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
