THE EVIL, BIG-EYED ONE (2025 Edit)

A DREAM-TIME MONSTER ARRIVES AND STARTS DISSOLVING PEOPLE TO CONSUME THEM

Erlick Norfolk wended his way slowly through the forest as he headed up the side of Mount Abergowrie, on the Northern side of Glen Hartwell, in early February 1992. A big man -- nearly 150 kilograms -- Erlick found walking even on level ground fatiguing. So, the steep slope of the mount soon had him gasping, sweat pouring like hot rain down across his face and body, until his shirt and trousers were plastered to his flesh like a soggy body stocking.

As he walked, Erlick clutched the wooden stock of the .32 revolver in his sweaty fist. He carefully kept one eye on the dingo spoors that he was following, the other eye on the bushes for fear of what might be lurking there.

A hot breeze blew down the mount, bringing with it the smell of charcoal, from where most of the original foliage had been lost in the Ash Wednesday bushfires of February 1983. The hot breeze also brought with it the smell of new growth -- wattles, pines, red-, blue-, lemon-scented-, and eerie, grey-white ghost gums -- plus the pungent body odour of kangaroos, wallabies, and the unmistakable wet-dog smell of the dingo that the fat man was following.

Erlick had climbed nearly two-thirds of the way up the mountain and had started to fear that he would follow the prints to the top, when suddenly the spoors veered to the left and started around the side of the mountain. After a few hundred metres, the foliage began to thin out, and Erlick looked out over a small grassless clearing. At the back of which was a wide cave leading into the side of the mount.

Erlick hesitated to approach too closely to the cave for fear of being attacked by dingoes. When he tentatively peered into the cave, he saw something white and formless hiding a few metres back in the darkness. As he leant forward, his huge body blocked the cave mouth, and the white shape seemed to come to life, moving toward him with a strange, almost knitting-needle-like clickety-clickety-click.

Fighting the urge to scream aloud, Erlick backed away from the cave, careful not to allow the “dingo” to approach too close. But when the white shape emerged from the cave, it was not a dingo after all. It was unlike anything that Erlick had ever seen or heard of.

‘An egg!’ he thought. ‘The damn thing looks like the white of a great poached egg, with a gigantic yellow yolk in the centre!’

Despite his revulsion at the sight of the living egg, Erlick couldn’t help stepping forward as though hypnotised by the yellow “yoke” in the middle of the great white splodge.

Hearing a liquid splat, as though he had stepped into a large cow turd, Erlick looked down. And saw that he had stepped into the white albumin-like substance of the “egg”.

It was only as the yellow “yoke” suddenly flipped open to reveal a huge, black pupil that Erlick saw the black insectile abdomen and thorax behind the “egg”, a hard chitinous frame like the segmented exoskeleton of a gigantic ant or spider, with six long, hairy legs projecting from the thorax.

‘My God, that’s its head!’ thought Erlick, realising that the “yoke” was the creature’s eye, the white splat-like albumin the creature’s head.

‘But it’s got no nostrils or mouth!’ he thought. ‘How does it breathe or eat?’

His feet suddenly began to burn as though immersed in a vat of acid. Looking down, Erlick saw that the leather of his expensive Italian shoes had dissolved in the “egg white” which was now eating into his feet.

‘My God, acid!’ he thought. ‘Its head is made of acid!’ And as the creature advanced, with a spider-like scuttling of its chitinous legs, Erlick realised, ‘That’s how it devours its prey! By dissolving them!’


The two couples sat together at the round table in Bateman’s Hotel in Lawson Street, Glen Hartwell: Geraldine Gleeson, a tall, willowy brunette, sat with Joseph Garbarla, a handsome light-chocolate coloured half-breed Aborigine. Beside them sat Daniela Butler, a tall, lithe, ash blonde, and Danny “Bear” Ross -- so nicknamed because of his great height, barrel-chest, and bulging muscular arms and legs.

Noticing Bear’s embarrassment, Garbarla couldn’t help smirking. Over the last four years, since breaking up with his former fiancé, Bear Ross had rarely dated, and Garbarla knew that the big man felt uncomfortable with the tall, gorgeous blonde, whom they had set him up with.

“Come on, drink up!” Garbarla teased Bear, who had been nursing the glass of Foster’s Lager for half an hour.

“Yeah, don’t worry, we won’t ask you to pay for the next round,” teased Geraldine. She threw Garbarla a sly wink.

They continued to tease Bear for half an hour or so, taking wicked delight in his shyness around Daniela. Finally, the big man was saved by the arrival of Terry Blewett.

“Look out, it’s the cops,” teased Geraldine as the tall, thin, raven-haired man in uniform strode across toward their table.

Terry stood by the table, looking as uncomfortable at Bear for a moment, before finally blurting out, “You’re needed up at Mount Abergowrie. We have a possible killing.”

“A possible killing?” asked Bear.

“We’re not sure,” admitted Terry. “Elvis is at the mount now. He thinks that the remains are human ....”

“Thinks that the remains ...?” asked Bear. “He's not sure?”

“You’d have to see for yourself to understand,” said Terry a little sheepishly.

Bear stared at Terry for a moment, clearly astonished. Then, sounding relieved, he stood and said, “Well, I guess I’d better go out there.”

“Elvis asked you to bring Geraldine along. He said he could use the assistance of a good biochemist, if she doesn’t mind,” said Terry.

“Not at all,” said Geraldine, “I’m eager to see these remains, which could be human.”


On Mount Abergowrie, they found the coroner, Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green, so nicknamed due to his long, black sideburns, and Mel Forbes -- police sergeant of nearby Merridale -- standing in a clearing before a cave mouth. In the short grass before them was a large, whitish-grey liquid blob, like an albino cowpat.

“Oh my God, what is that?” asked Geraldine.

They all stared at the thick, vomit-like mess in amazement.

“We’re not sure yet, but we think that it could be the remains of Erlick Norfolk,” said Elvis as she walked across to him. “Careful, it’s highly acidic,” he added as the brunette knelt on the grass to examine the whitish splat.

“How could this ... this sludge be the remains of Erlick Norfolk?” asked Garbarla. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the strong sulphurous odour wafting from the white mess, along with the disturbing burnt-pork smell of half-cooked human flesh.

“We think that he’s been dissolved in some kind of acid,” replied the coroner.

“Sulphuric by the whiff of it,” said Geraldine.

“But how could he have been dissolved down to that ... that cowpat?” asked Garbarla, pointing at it.

“Ah, my friend, now that is the burning question,” agreed Elvis. “In theory, you can dissolve a man down to this kind of sludge in enough acid. But Erlick Norfolk was a big man, so you would have needed a lot of acid and a lot of time.”

“How much time?” asked Bear Ross.

“At least forty-eight hours to reduce him to this state,” said Geraldine.

“Give or take a couple of hours,” agreed the coroner.

“When was he seen last?”

“Lunch time today,” said Terry Blewett, reading from a small notepad. “For the last few years, he’s been employed by the Department of Forestry and Wildlife. He set out around 1:00 PM to investigate claims of a dingo sighting around the mount.”

“That’d be ...” said Geraldine, glancing down at her wristwatch, “eight-and-a-half hours ago.”

“Then he wasn’t dissolved in any kind of acid that I know,” said the coroner.

“Besides, he couldn’t have been dissolved up here anyway,” pointed out Geraldine. “You’d need a gigantic vat with hundreds of litres of acid to dissolve a man as large as Erlick Norfolk. And I don’t see any sign of an acid vat up here.”

As she spoke, Geraldine turned her head left, then right to look about the mount. The wattles, pines, and grey-white ghost gums grew thick across the mount, starting only a few metres from where they stood or knelt examining the grey-white sludge. Seeing Geraldine scanning the mountainside in the dark, Terry and Bear turned on their police flashlights and sprayed the beam around the forest.

“Nope,” said Geraldine, “no sign of any tracks, or any flattened foliage caused by taking a large vat up and down the mount.”

“Anyway, why go to the trouble of taking it back down the mountain?” asked Garbarla. “Why not leave it up here?”

“So it wouldn’t be found, and possibly identified, I guess,” said Elvis. “But you’d need a helicopter to get it up and down Mount Abergowrie without leaving any tracks behind. Even if you did have an acid strong enough to dissolve a big man in eight or nine hours, which seems unlikely.”

“Then, if acid’s out, what happened to him?” asked Garbarla.

Geraldine and Elvis exchanged a look. Both shrugged, obviously hoping that the other would field the question.

“Who knows,” said Elvis.

“A disease of some kind?” asked Bear, looking embarrassed as he suggested it. “Some strain of leprosy perhaps?”

“Lepers don’t dissolve into sludge,” insisted the coroner. “In fact, outside of a Peter Straub novel, no one ever dissolved, except in acid, to the best of my knowledge.”

Garbarla watched Geraldine and Elvis poring over the human sludge for as long as he could stand it. But as Terry Blewett moved forward with a shovel and plastic bucket to collect the sludge for the coroner, the half-breed Aborigine was forced to look away for fear of throwing up. He only wished that he could hold his hands up to his ears to drown out the sound of the shovel squelching through the remains of Erlick Norfolk.

Instead, he turned and stared into the dark cave before which the sludge lay. ‘I wonder if there’s room in there to hide a vat of acid?’ he thought. He almost articulated the question, but stopped at the sight of something large and white lurking a few metres in from the cave mouth.

Without considering what he was doing, Garbarla started forward into the cave toward the white object.

“What’s up?” called Bear Ross. Turning, he shone his torch toward Garbarla.

At the burst of yellow light, the white object scuttled backwards deeper into the cave.

“I’m not sure ... but I think I saw something inside that cave,” said Garbarla.

“Maybe that’s where the acid murderer hid the vat after he landed it here by helicopter,” joked Geraldine.

“In that case, our murderer must be Cecil Rhodes out at Willamby,” joked Bear. “Cecil’s old Bell Huey is the only helicopter within yonks of this place.”

“All right, why don’t you go and arrest him?” teased Geraldine.

“Oh, you’d just love me to make a fool of myself like that, wouldn’t you?” asked Bear.

“Sure would,” agreed Geraldine, grinning widely.

Leaning down, Bear shone his torch down the cave mouth. Once more, the whitish object scuttled deeper into the cave, out of reach of the light, like some form of cave-dwelling vampire.

“What the Hell is it?” asked Garbarla.

“A dingo, or some other animal,” said Bear. “No way of telling. This cave could go back kilometres into the mount. No way am I risking getting lost in that just to track down a stray dingo.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” agreed Garbarla reluctantly. However, the scuttling hadn’t sounded like any noise that might have been made by a dingo or any other mammal. More like the noise that might be made by a crayfish or a large spider. ‘God help us if there are spiders that large in the bowels of the mount!’ thought Garbarla.

After the remains of Erlick Norfolk had been scraped up into two plastic seal-top buckets, they prepared to leave.

“I’ll take these back to the morgue for examination,” said Elvis Green, as they started down the mountain. Then to Geraldine, “If you’d like to stop by any time after 11:00 tomorrow morning, you’re welcome to give me a hand.”

“Sure, I’d love to,” said Geraldine with almost childlike glee.

“Each to their own,” teased Bear.

“Yeah,” agreed Garbarla, “personally I’d much rather stay home and spend the day throwing up at the thought of what’s inside those two buckets.”

“Anyone for yoghurt?” teased Geraldine.


An hour later, Garbarla and Geraldine arrived back at Geraldine’s Lawson Street flat. They made love for an hour, then Geraldine fell asleep on her stomach, snoring like a cattle dog.

Garbarla lay on his back staring up at the darkened ceiling, unable to get to sleep. Not because of Geraldine’s snoring, but because of something which kept nagging at the back of his head. ‘The answer to this whole thing is up there on Mount Abergowrie!’ he thought. Recalling the white, scuttling thing in the cave, he thought, ‘Whatever it is that's in the cave, is somehow connected to what happened to Erlick Norfolk!’ Yet he knew that that had to be impossible. Elvis Green and Geraldine had both insisted that no known acid could dissolve a big man to sludge in eight hours. ‘So, whatever’s in that cave can’t have anything to do with Erlick’s death!’ But the logic failed to convince him.

Garbarla looked across toward the bedside table, where lime-green flashing numbers told him that it was 1:30. ‘Too late to do anything about it now!’ he thought. Yet the urge to return to the mount was overwhelming.

Doing his best not to awaken Geraldine, Garbarla climbed from the bed and began hunting around the floor for his clothes. He had almost finished dressing when the bedside light suddenly went on.

“What’re you doing?” asked Geraldine, sitting up in bed.

“Just going out for a little walk.”

“At this hour?” she asked. She picked up the digital clock from the bedside table.

“I couldn’t get to sleep,” explained Garbarla. He wondered if it sounded as phoney to her as it did to him. “So I thought I’d go out for some fresh air.”

“Okay, I’ll go with you,” offered Geraldine. Returning the clock to the table, she threw back the blankets and swung her long, shapely legs over the side of the bed.

“No, no, you go back to bed,” said Garbarla. “You have to get up early tomorrow to be at the morgue when Elvis starts his autopsy on that mess.”

“Nonsense, that isn’t till 11:00 AM,” insisted Geraldine. Dropping to her knees, she began hunting around under her bed for her clothing.

Garbarla watched her for a moment, then said, “Well, in that case, I guess you’d better tag along with me.”

“Where are we going?” asked Geraldine. She threw on her bra and pullover together -- as she had taken them off.

“Back to the mount,” said Garbarla, watching with interest as Geraldine’s breasts kept falling out of the bottom of the jumper as she struggled to do up her bra. Finally, in frustration, she threw away the flimsy bra and pulled down her jumper.

“What for?”

“I want to have another look at that cave where Erlick was killed.”

“You think that whatever you saw in the cave had something to do with his death?”

“Possibly.”

“Then we’ll need some heavy-duty torches.”

Clicking on the overhead light, she trotted out into the lounge room, then turned left into her spare bedroom-cum-laboratory. A few seconds later, she returned carrying two heavy halogen torches.

“I use these when I go out looking for wildlife specimens.”

“To dissect for the entertainment of your high school students, no doubt?”

“That’s right,” agreed Geraldine, refusing to be baited.


Half an hour later, Garbarla and Geraldine arrived at the base of Mount Abergowrie. By the time that they reached the clearing two-thirds of the way up the mountain, they were both panting.

Although it had been nine years since the bushfires that had ravaged the foliage on the mount, there was still a strong smell of charcoal as they breathed deeply to help their panting breath return to normal. A metre or so in front of the cave mouth, they found the last half-dried remnants of the organic sludge.

“Wait a minute,” said Geraldine. She grabbed Garbarla’s arm to prevent him from starting into the cave.

“What’s wrong?”

“Let’s check it from the outside first,” she warned. She aimed her torch down the cave and turned it on full. The halogen beam lit up the cave tunnel for a long way. However, the beam failed to reach the back of the cave.

‘Deep, isn’t it?’ thought Garbarla. He looked across at Geraldine, who nodded in agreement.

Waving a hand toward the cave mouth, Garbarla joked, “Ladies first.”

Refusing to be baited, Geraldine started forward. However, Garbarla pushed past her, saying, “Those of us who are about to die ...” as he entered the cave ahead of her.

“Shush!” said Geraldine in mock anger.

Her whispered voice boomed off the walls of the cave, startling Garbarla so that he almost dropped his torch.

“Shove across,” said Geraldine, giving him a playful pat on the backside. Garbarla eased across to the right-hand side of the tunnel, wary of touching the dirt sides or roof of the cave. Hearing (or imagining?) all kinds of scuttling in the dark, he thought, ‘Is this a good time to mention my acute arachnophobia?’ But he thought better of saying it aloud for fear of being teased.

As he moved to the right, Geraldine leant to the left, so that she could shine her torch beam past Garbarla to help light the passage ahead.

“Is that better?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Garbarla. He thought, ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t light up something so awful that we wish that we hadn’t seen it!’

The tunnel seemed endless as they crept forward. Garbarla remembered Bear Ross’s remark that it could go for kilometres into and under the mountain.

“We should have brought some string or something so that we wouldn’t get lost,” suggested Garbarla. Although it had been his idea to check the cave, he now hoped that this might give them an excuse to return to Geraldine’s flat.

“Too late now,” said Geraldine, dashing his hopes.

‘The walls are not really closing in!’ thought Garbarla, trying to ignore the scuttling, rustling sounds from the walls of the cave as they crept forward. Although the tunnel was almost tall enough for him to stand erect, Garbarla crouched low, afraid of brushing against the things that went scuttle in the night.

“It’s starting to widen out,” said Geraldine.

Shining his light around, Garbarla saw that she was right. Instead of tapering out as he had expected, the tunnel began to widen until he could stand safely without crouching. Then it enlarged until they could stand side-by-side. Finally, it enlarged into an underground cavern.

“Wow!” said Geraldine. She shone her torch around the cavern, whose walls seemed to vanish for kilometres in front and on both sides of them. Her eyes shone with excitement.

“Maybe we’d better not go any deeper?” said Garbarla, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

“Yeah, all right,” agreed Geraldine. However, she sounded entranced by the cavern; obviously not sharing Garbarla’s unease.

“Pooh, what’s that smell?’ she suddenly asked. At the same time, there was a loud scuttling which echoed off the cavern walls, booming like the footsteps of a SF-monster movie giant spider.

Smelling the strong sulphurous odour which had made Geraldine cry out, Garbarla shone his halogen beam behind her. And almost dropped the torch in shock at what he saw.

“My God, what is it?” cried Geraldine.

From the front, the creature looked like an oversized fried egg: a large white mane ringed its head, which was dominated by a single great yellowy eyeball. But as the creature turned slightly to one side, they saw the black chitinous body. A segmented torso like that of a gigantic, hairy spider or ant.

‘SF-movie giant spider is right!’ thought Garbarla, shining his light directly onto the monster.

As the beam of the halogen fell on it, the creature lowered its “egg-white” head and raised two long, black limbs -- feet or feelers -- over its orangey eye and backed away a little.

“It doesn’t like the light,” said Geraldine. She shone her own torch onto the creature, and it scuttled backwards a couple of metres into the darkness.

Although the creature had already shut its eyelid, the bright light still seemed to affect it, and the creature managed to curl up the egg white-like mane to a degree to partially conceal its eye further.

“What the Hell are you doing?” demanded Garbarla as Geraldine started toward the creature.

“We have to go that way,” she said. She pointed back behind the scuttling monster to the tunnel, which they had come down to reach the underground cavern.

“Oh God, yes,” said Garbarla. He looked back behind him at the great cavern, which seemed to go as far as they could see under the two halogen beams.

‘There’s no way out back there!’ thought Garbarla. So, reluctantly, he joined Geraldine. Together they stepped into the tunnel ahead of the retreating, egg-faced beast.

“Not too quickly,” warned Geraldine. “Let it stay well ahead of us until we’re back to the surface.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” said Garbarla, making her laugh. However, it was all that he could do to force himself to keep going at all -- forced as they were to keep both halogen beams shining on the insectile creature, to keep it backing down the tunnel.

As it scuttled back down the tunnel, the creature kept its head bowed. Its front antennae or legs held like hands over its one orangey eye.

‘Shoo!’ thought Garbarla. He almost said it aloud as he flashed the halogen beam directly onto the creature’s eye.

With an almost whipped-puppy mewling, the creature scuttled backwards quickly until it was almost out of reach of their torch beams. This forced Geraldine and Garbarla to hurry forward to keep the creature within sight.

“Don’t startle it,” warned Geraldine. “Although it doesn’t like the light, if you panic it, it just might run the wrong way. Toward us instead of back to the surface.”

At first, they stood side-by-side, shining their torches onto the black, chitinous creature before them. But as the tunnel began to narrow further, Garbarla took the lead, with Geraldine sticking close behind him, doing her best to shine her halogen beam around him to add to the light of Garbarla’s torch.

They were -- Garbarla hoped, his back aching from the strain of crouching so long -- almost back to the surface, when Geraldine’s torch suddenly went out. Startled, Garbarla almost dropped his own torch, and the light temporarily fell away from the egg-faced creature backing away ahead of them.

Hearing the creature scuttling rapidly toward them, Garbarla hurriedly span up his torch beam into its large, orangey eye. The creature immediately let out its whipped-pup mewling cry, threw up its legs to cover its eye and raced backwards as though jet-propelled, to escape the dreaded light.

Behind him, Garbarla heard Geraldine frantically tinkering with her darkened torch. Finally, she announced, “Sorry, but the batteries are dead.”

Glancing down at his own torch, Garbarla asked, “How long before this one goes dead too?”

Geraldine shrugged. “Who can say. I bought new batteries for them both at the same time. But I think I’ve used that one less.”

“Think?” demanded Garbarla, trying to keep the snap out of his voice.

Geraldine could only shrug again.


The trip back to the surface seemed to take hours. But now Garbarla knew better than to attempt to force the pace. Particularly since the orange-eyed beast ahead of them seemed less afraid of the light since Geraldine’s torch had given out, halving the strength of the beam.

‘Let’s just hope that it doesn’t decide that it's not afraid of the light till we’re back on the outside!’ thought Garbarla. And almost as he thought it, Garbarla could smell the sweet aroma of wattle, pine, and eucalyptus trees and knew that they must be nearing the surface at last.

“Don’t panic it now,” warned Geraldine, as they stepped out onto the small clearing atop Mount Abergowrie.

For a second, Garbarla was blinded by the light of the full moon as he stepped out onto the mount. Head swimming, he almost dropped the halogen torch, but grabbed for it and caught it moments before it could hit the ground.

Geraldine gasped, wide-eyed in shock. Covering her heart with one hand, she said, “And don’t panic me now, either.”

“Sorry,” said Garbarla. “So what do we do now?”

Geraldine considered for a moment. “Try to keep driving it down the mount ahead of us, I suppose.”

The chitin-bodied creature seemed to have other ideas, though. Inside the restricted tunnel, it had readily backed away from the glare of the torch beam. But once out on the side of Mount Abergowrie, the insectile creature backed away a few metres, then squatted on its chitinous black rump like an oversized dog, and sat watching them with its one orangey eye.

“Keep going!” ordered Garbarla, more out of hope than from any real expectation that the creature might obey him.

“Shine the light right onto it,” suggested Geraldine, and Garbarla did as instructed.

“My God!” gasped Garbarla.

“Notice anything?” asked Geraldine.

“Too damn much,” replied Garbarla. He couldn’t decide whether the six black, hairy legs made it look more like a giant ant or the black, jointed thorax and abdomen like a monster spider from some 1950s sci-fi flick.

Geraldine sighed at her lover’s obtuseness and shook her head.

“All right smart-sexy-arse, what have I missed?” demanded Garbarla, deciding that attack was the best form of defence.

“It’s got no mouth!” pointed out Geraldine. “How does it eat?”

Garbarla stepped forward to examine it more closely. “You’re right!” he said. From the pointed tail and segmented ovoid abdomen and thorax, right up to the black, chitinous neck, the creature looked like a grossly oversized insect. But instead of a head, it had the white splash like the albumen of a fried egg, and the huge orange eye to show that it was a living thing. But below the eye was no sign of nostrils or a mouth of any kind.

“But that’s impossible. How does it eat? How does it breathe?” Garbarla asked.

“Possibly it breathes through those,” suggested Geraldine.

Garbarla shone the halogen beam up to where she was pointing. On top of its abdomen, not far behind the head, were rows of half a dozen long slats which rhythmically opened and shut. “Like the gills of fish,” said Garbarla. “Except that it’s breathing air.”

“Exactly,” agreed Geraldine.

“But still, how does it eat without a mouth?”

Geraldine could only shrug.

Instinctively, Garbarla stepped forward to have a closer look at the creature. His curiosity temporarily outweighed his fear of the beast.

“Watch out!” warned Geraldine. However, at his approach, the insectile creature rapidly backed away, then began scuttling sideways crab-like, rather than reverse further down the mount.

“What’s it doing?”

“I don’t think it wants to stray too far from its cave,” guessed Geraldine.

“Well, if that’s what it wants, it can have it,” said Garbarla. Keeping the torch full on the orange eye of the creature, he began walking around in a 90 Degree arc, hoping to encourage the monster to sidle around toward the cave mouth.

When at last it was between them and the cave, the creature stared at them for a moment, as though no longer afraid of the halogen beam. Then, turning tail, it raced back toward the cave mouth. The clickety-clickety-click of its receding footsteps told them that it was vanishing deeper down the tunnel.

“This looks like a good time to get the Hell out of here,” suggested Geraldine.


Forty-five minutes later, Garbarla was parking Geraldine’s yellow Mini Minor at the outskirts of his tribe’s Aboriginal village three kilometres beyond Pettiwood.

“What are we doing here?” asked Geraldine as they started through the dirt-path “main street” between two rows of one-, two-, and three-room corrugated iron huts that made up the village.

“I want to have a word with Weari-Wyingga,” said Garbarla, referring to the “head man” of his village; the only surviving male Elder after a disaster in late December 1984.


It was nearly dawn when they rapped on the unpainted corrugated iron door of the three-room hut in almost the exact centre of the village. After a minute or so, Garbarla raised a hand to knock again when, with a metallic squeal of protest, the door opened inwards.

Garbarla started to apologise for waking him up. But Weari-Wyingga brushed the apology aside, saying, “Old men don’t need so much sleep as the young.”

Although only in his eighties, Weari-Wyingga looked well past a hundred. His once tall frame was now bent almost double with age; he was grey-haired and grey-skinned, with a face that was pitted and lined with time. But for all of that, he could move with surprising nimbleness when the need arose. As he did when ushering them into the grey-walled hut.

Feeling a little uneasy, Garbarla and Geraldine sat on grass mats on the dirt floor near a low red gum table -- the only furnishing other than the mats in the front room.

Geraldine and Garbarla exchanged a look, both obviously waiting for the other to speak. Finally, it was Garbarla who told Weari-Wyingga -- with occasional interruptions from Geraldine -- what they had discovered upon the side of Mount Abergowrie. And about the great insectile beast that they had encountered in the cavern deep within the mountain.

As dawn came up, the sun shone through the four-paned window of the front room, almost blinding them. And heating the metal wall so much that Garbarla and Geraldine had to ease forward as their backs began to be stung by the hot metal.

For a moment, Weari-Wyingga watched as a young mother and three naked children strode past the window. The mother carried a bowl and a stone to grind grain; the three children carried toy boomerangs or short, blunt toy spears. After a moment, the old man looked back at Geraldine and Garbarla and said:

“The Dream-Time Heritage tells of the black insect-like creature with a great orange eye. It is the Aboriginal equivalent of the Whiteman's bogeyman; used by mothers to frighten naughty children. One story tells of a young mother, Wungala, and her small son, Bulla. They were away from camp one day, gathering seeds. Afterwards, Wungala ground the seeds into flour, then added water to make a thick dough. Little Bulla played with a toy boomerang while his mother worked. When the sun began to go down, Wungala warned Bulla to stay close and remain quiet, or else the Evil, Big-Eyed One would creep from his cave in the side of Mount Abergowrie and eat them both up. After a while, Bulla forgot his mother’s warning, and when his toy boomerang did not come back, he ran out into the dark to find it. Soon, he came running back screaming in terror, crying that he had seen the Evil, Big-Eyed One. Although she had also seen the black, insect-like beast, Wungala chided her son for having too vivid an imagination: ‘Nonsense, there is nothing out there, but shadows thrown by trees.’ As she spoke, she watched the hot dough cooking on a stone by the small fire that she had lit. The Evil, Big-Eyed One came as close to the fire as it dared and roared at them, making Bulla cry from terror. But Wungala consoled him, saying, ‘It is only the wind roaring through the desert.’ Puzzled, wondering if it was invisible to the woman, the monster stepped up close to Wungala. She grabbed up the dough from the fire and threw the sticky mess right onto its big orangey eye, making the creature whine like a whipped dingo....”

“The white, albumin-like substance around its eye!” cried Geraldine.

“Yes. According to legend, the dough stuck to its small black head, making the eye look like a large egg yolk,” agreed Weari-Wyingga.

“That’s all well and good,” said Garbarla, a little impatiently. “But what we need to know is how do we kill this ... Evil, Big-Eyed One?”

Weari-Wyingga glared at him for a moment, as though offended by the outburst. Finally, the old man shrugged and said, “The legend doesn’t tell of any method to kill the Evil, Big-Eyed One. Only that it is a creature of the shadows, afraid of bright light. Which is why it only appears at night, lives in a cave upon a mountain, and retreats from the glare of your flashlights.”

“Oh no!” cried Geraldine, articulating Garbarla’s feelings as well as her own.

“Other legends say that the Evil, Big-Eyed One’s head is shaped like a frying egg to attract starving people who run toward it,” said Weari-Wyingga. “When they step on the egg white, they are stuck to it and cannot escape as it eats them.”

“How?” demanded Geraldine. “From what we saw, it had no mouth. How can it eat them?”

“It dissolves them,” explained the old man. “Its digestive juices are powerful acids which dissolve them into a thick sludge, which seeps into its body through its egg-white head.”


“Now what?” asked Geraldine as they departed in the yellow Mini Minor -- this time with her driving.

Garbarla considered for a moment, inhaling the sweet smell of pine and eucalyptus as they entered the forest. Finally, he said, “Back to Glen Hartwell, I suppose, to tell Bear what we saw.”

“And hope he doesn’t lock us away in Queens’ Grove,” joked Geraldine -- referring to the local insane asylum.

When they reached Glen Hartwell, Geraldine said, “Do you mind if we stop at the morgue first? I want to check up on the autopsy of Erlick Norfolk.”

“Yeah, okay,” agreed Garbarla, as she turned the Mini onto Baltimore Drive. He was not looking forward to having to tell Bear Ross what they had seen at Mount Abergowrie. ‘He really might have us locked away in the nuthouse!’


When they reached the morgue, however, they found Bear there, waiting to watch the “autopsy” along with his constable, Terry Blewett.

“Now this I have to see,” joked Bear as Elvis Green carried the two plastic buckets into the autopsy room. “I’ve always wondered how you perform an autopsy on a bucket of yoghurt.”

Elvis turned and gave the policeman a mock glare, then began to carefully analyse the gluey substance. Since there was nothing solid enough to dissect, the autopsy consisted of Elvis and Gina Foley (head surgeon at the local hospital) dipping small portions of the sludge into beakers of varicoloured liquids. Then they would reel off great strings of observations -- which could have been in Mandarin for all that Garbarla could understand them -- while Daniela Butler scratched down reams of notes on a large notepad, and occasionally changed the tape on a recorder which was also recording their observations.

‘I didn’t know that there were that many different chemicals!’ thought Garbarla hours later, as finally Elvis turned toward them to announce, “That’s about all I can do with it.”

“So what’s your verdict?” asked Bear Ross as Elvis and Gina began to wash up.

“It’s definitely human remains. Although without a DNA or blood sample of Erlick Norfolk, I can’t prove that it’s him,” said Elvis.

“Yes, but how did it get into that state?” demanded Bear.

Elvis and Gina exchanged a long, hard look, then finally the coroner said, “It -- or he -- was dissolved by some form of very powerful acid.”

“I thought you said that that wasn’t possible,” Bear reminded him.

Again, Elvis and Gina exchanged a troubled look. Finally, Elvis shrugged and said, “It isn’t in eight or nine hours. Not with any known acid.”

“But then, this isn’t any known acid,” Gina put in for him.

“That’s right,” agreed Elvis. He and Gina stepped out into the corridor, leaving Daniela to tend to the tapes and notepads. “Don’t ask me what this acid is, but I could think of a dozen mining and industrial firms which would pay a bloody fortune for it.”

Geraldine, Elvis, and Gina happily exchanged technical mumbo-jumbo about the corpse -- while Bear and Garbarla watched on, bemused -- as they headed down the slim, yellow-walled corridor, toward the front of the building.


“Well, so much for that,” said Bear, gazing out into bustling Baltimore Drive after Elvis and Gina left. “Frankly, I’m still no nearer to knowing how Erlick died.”

Garbarla and Geraldine exchanged a worried look. Neither of them was anxious to tell Bear what they had seen on Mount Abergowrie, afraid of their friend’s ridicule. Garbarla watched the stream of cars flowing up and down Baltimore Drive for a moment. Then, finally, he cleared his throat loudly then hurriedly told Bear what they had seen upon the mount a few hours ago.

“A giant, black chitinous ant-like thing with a poached egg for a head?” asked Bear. He glanced at his watch, then said, “April first must’ve come around early this year.”

“It’s no joke, Bear,” insisted Garbarla.


Despite his understandable scepticism of their tale, Bear agreed to accompany Geraldine and Garbarla to the clearing two-thirds of the way up the side of Mount Abergowrie.

“What now?” asked barrel-chested Bear Ross as they approached the cave mouth where the sludge-like remains of Erlick Norfolk had been found the previous day.

“Now, ideally, we mount an all-out hunt through the tunnel network under this mountain with every cop on the payroll from BeauLarkin to Willamby,” said Geraldine. She shone one of the two halogen torches -- which they had stopped to purchase new batteries for in Glen Hartwell -- into the cave mouth.

Bear leant forward to peer into the cave -- careful to avoid the grey-white smudge of Erlick Norfolk that remained a metre from the cave mouth. Finally, he looked back at Geraldine and said, “Not until I’ve seen this overgrown cockroach for myself.”

So saying, they started down the tunnel, with Bear Ross in the lead.


They reached the cavern an hour or so later, without encountering the Evil, Big-Eyed One.

“Well, what now?” asked Bear.

“Well, we ...” began Geraldine. She stopped as the beam of her torch lit up something silvery a few metres away.

“What is it?” asked Garbarla as they knelt to examine the long, white line. “It’s like the line down the centre of a road.”

“A slime trail more like it,” guessed Geraldine.

“Slime trail?” asked Bear, astonished. “You mean like snails or slugs leave behind?”

“Exactly.”

“But the damn thing’s eighteen centimetres across and seems to run for kilometres,” he protested, reaching out a hand to touch it.

“Look out! Take care!” shouted Geraldine. Her voice boomed off the cavern walls, startling the two men. “That slime trail is of whatever acid dissolved poor Erlick.”

Bear Ross leant down and sniffed at the slime. “Sulphur,” he said, wrinkling his nose, “like the sulphurous odour of the sludge found outside.”

“Yes,” agreed Geraldine. “Whatever this creature is, it secretes an acid similar to sulphuric acid, but many times more powerful.”

“How many times more powerful?” asked Bear.

“Well, it dissolved Erlick in eight hours or so, whereas sulphuric acid would have taken at least forty-eight hours. So roughly six to seven times as powerful.”

Bear let out a low whistle. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, and they set off to follow the slime trail.

They followed the trail across the cavern, into a tunnel at the other side, then down the tunnel for seemingly kilometres, before finally the trail tapered out. They continued down the tunnel for almost another kilometre, until the tunnel suddenly branched off into half a dozen different directions.

Bear and Geraldine shone their halogen beams down each of the brown dirt tunnels in turn, hoping to detect some sign that the creature had gone that way.

“So which way now?” asked Garbarla after they had been examining the different tunnel entrances for nearly fifteen minutes.

“We can’t afford to risk getting lost,” said Geraldine. “These tunnels could run for kilometres underground.”

“Okay, you win,” said Bear, reluctantly. “I’ll organise a full-scale search of the tunnel system by as many cops as I can get down here.”

He looked around the half a dozen tunnels again for a moment before saying, “God only knows how we’re going to explore this tunnel network properly; even with a dozen or more cops?”


After what seemed like hours, they emerged onto the surface of Mount Abergowrie. Garbarla had half expected to see stars overhead, and was surprised to find that it was only early afternoon when they stepped out onto the mount again.

“So who feels like lunch?” asked Bear as they started down the mount. “My shout.”

Ignoring the offer, Garbarla said, “Assuming that you can find that thing tomorrow, how are you planning to kill it?”

Bear considered for a moment before saying, “Shoot it. Surely bullets will stop it?”

Garbarla and Geraldine exchanged an uncertain look.

“Weari-Wyingga said that there was no known way of killing the Evil, Big-Eyed One,” pointed out Garbarla.

“You’re assuming that it is some kind of supernatural Dream-Time monster,” said Bear. “Even if it is this Evil, Big-Eyed One, there’s no reason to think that it’s magical. It could be just some freak of nature, or the last member of some underground species seen in ancient times by Aborigines when their weapons -- boomerangs, spears, stone clubs, and so on -- weren’t powerful enough to penetrate its thick steel-like exoskeleton. But with modern weapons -- high-powered rifles, magnum bullets, etc. -- we ought to be able to squash this oversized bug.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Geraldine, sounding unconvinced.


Bear Ross spent the rest of that day on the telephone organising more than a dozen police from all the neighbouring towns to take part in the underground hunt the next day.


Geraldine and Garbarla were lying snuggling up together early the next morning, trying to ignore the insistent chirping of the birds outside and the sun glinting beneath the bedroom blind, when the hammering started at the front door of Geraldine’s flat.

“Open up in there, it’s the police!” shouted Bear Ross, hammering his fist on the door again.

“Oh, for God’s sake, go away, it’s only 7:30!” shouted Geraldine, holding up the lime-green dialled bedside clock to look at it.

“Wakey, wakey!” insisted Bear, hammering again. “Time to go look for the giant cockroach.”

“Go on then,” shouted Geraldine. “I’m going into BeauLarkin today to collect some stuff.”

“What?’ asked Garbarla, sitting up in bed beside her. “What stuff?”

“Some stuff that I hope might help us to kill the Evil, Big-Eyed One.”


Sixty kilometres from Glen Hartwell, BeauLarkin was still classed as a country town. However, the Beau (as the locals called it) was much larger than the Glen, with a population of nearly 4,000 to Glen Hartwell’s 2,000. BeauLarkin also had a large industrial and petrochemical sector. It was to the industrial sector of Bailey Street that Geraldine and Garbarla arrived shortly after 10:00 AM.


At the same time, Bear Ross and a dozen other cops were assembling inside the cavern deep within Mount Abergowrie.

“Thank God for that,” said one of the policemen, articulating the thoughts of them all as they were finally able to stand up straight again.

“So what are we supposed to find down here?” asked grey-haired Mel Forbes.

“Some kind of large creature that exudes acid,” said Bear.

He had decided against telling them what Geraldine and Garbarla had told him about the Evil, Big-Eyed One. Instead, he told them about the dissolved sludge that had been Erlick Norfolk and about them following the slime trail deep into the tunnel network the previous day.

“So what is it?” asked Ted Whyte -- a freckle-faced redhead who looked sixteen, although he was nearly thirty. “Some kind of giant slug that produces acid?”

“God knows,” said Bear. “Just shoot on sight any kind of large animal you see down here. Especially if it’s like nothing that you’ve ever seen before.”

“Just be sure not to panic and start shooting each other,” advised Mel Forbes.


Geraldine drove down several streets lined with wire-mesh-fenced factories. All of which looked much of a muchness to Garbarla. Then, finally, she turned into the car park of a factory.

“‘Aussie Kitchen & Bathroom Supplies’,” read Garbarla as they climbed from the car.

They walked across the bitumen car park to a large open-ended “hanger” in which were stacked seemingly millions of non-enamelled bath tubs, wash basins, taps, sinks, and other metalware.

“Come on,” instructed Geraldine. She began striding down the dirty concrete walkways between the pallets stacked to the ceiling with metalware.

As they approached the other end of the factory, Garbarla saw Geraldine take a handkerchief and press it over her mouth and nostrils. At the same time, he smelt a strong sulphurous odour and began to cough -- despite his best efforts not to. The further they moved down the concrete aisle, the heavier the sulphurous fumes became. Garbarla soon followed Geraldine’s example of covering his face with a hanky. Yet still he coughed until he sounded like an eighty-cigarette-a-day smoker.

At the rear of the “hanger” they saw five vast rectangular vats, five metres tall, three metres wide and perhaps ten metres long. Three young men were pushing around wire-sided cages full of bathroom and kitchen fittings, which looked rusted almost completely through.

“What is this place, a scrap metal yard?” asked Garbarla, through choking coughs.

“How dare you!” demanded a tall, lean, yet muscular-looking man who turned and started across the walkway toward them. Then, seeing Geraldine, the man’s angry look turned into a broad smile.

“Hello, Barry,” said Geraldine. She leant over and kissed him on the left cheek.

Turning toward Garbarla, Barry explained, “The fixtures here are brand new.”

“They’re coated with rust, though?” protested Garbarla.

“All right, almost brand new,” Barry conceded. “Rather than manufacture our fittings in dribs and drabs all year round, it’s cheaper to produce them all in two big working bees in March and August. But that means that they gradually rust through the year and have to be cleaned up before enamelling for sale.”

“That’s what the five giant vats are for,” explained Geraldine. “The first two vats contain concentrated sulphuric acid to burn the rust away. The second two have a strong alkaline substance to neutralise the acid, and the last one has plain water to cool down the metal afterwards.”

“Cool it down?”

“Yes, they’re not kidding when they talk about acid burning, it sure does.”

As she spoke, Barry took hold of a large, five-button handset, attached to a thick, insulated cable hanging down from the ceiling. The cable operated an overhead pulley system on rollers moving back and forth above the five vats. Barry pressed a red button on the handset. With a shriek of metal on metal, a thick iron hook began lowering toward them. When it reached head height, Barry pressed a blue button on the handset, and the hook stopped. One of the other men -- actually a dark-haired boy who looked no more than fifteen -- raced forward and grabbed the hook. Scaling the side of a metal cage full of rusty taps, the youth linked the hook through a heavy iron loop atop the cage.

“All right, haul it away,” instructed the youth, jumping down to the concrete walkway again.

Barry pushed a green button on the handset. Again with a hellish metallic grinding, the hook began to move. This time, raising the cage from two wooden trolleys on which it had been sitting. Slowly, Barry raised the cage toward the first acid vat, then very slowly lowered the cage into the vat.

As soon as the cage touched the acid, the acid began bubbling furiously. Thick sulphur fumes gushed from the vat, almost choking the people below, who doubled up in intense coughing fits.

“For God’s sake, let’s get out of here,” gasped Garbarla, starting back down the walkway the way they had come.

“You go ahead,” said Geraldine between coughs. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”


Five minutes later, standing on the bitumen outside the hangar, Garbarla was still coughing slightly as Geraldine and Barry finally appeared.

“So do you think you can sell us a couple of 200-litre drums?” asked Geraldine. They started across the tarmac toward Garbarla.

“I don’t see why not?” said Barry. “I guess I can trust you with it. If I can’t trust a biochemist, who can I trust?”

“Can you get it delivered to the Glen?”

“How soon?”

“By tomorrow morning, preferably.”

Barry looked a little put out at first. But after a second, he shrugged, then said, “Sure, why not? We’ll get it down there by 10:00 AM tomorrow.”

“Thanks, you’re an angel,” said Geraldine. She kissed him on the mouth, to the annoyance of Garbarla.

“Who is that bloke?” asked Garbarla five minutes later as they walked across the car park toward the Mini.

“Just an old lover,” teased Geraldine.


Bear Ross and Terry Blewett were exploring a dark, dirt-walled tunnel together, deep under Mount Abergowrie. Neither man was keen to take the lead, and it seemed as though they travelled at barely a crawl.

“Where to now?” asked Terry as the tunnel suddenly forked into four directions.

“Well ...” began Bear. However, his reply was stopped dead by a blood-curdling scream which rang out in the tunnel network, apparently kilometres behind them. The scream rang on and on seemingly without end.

“Come on!” shouted Bear above the scream, which still reverberated. However, both men were already running back down the tunnel the way that they had come.

As they ran through the tunnel, despite the ever continuing scream, they heard the sound of many running feet, as men either ran to assist, or fled in terror.

They were almost back to the cavern when the screaming suddenly stopped. A few seconds later, they heard a loud scuttling clickety-clickety-click of chitinous feet not far from them. ‘The giant cockroach!’ thought Bear, no longer thinking it a joke.

Finally, rounding a corner, they saw grey-haired Mel Forbes and two other local police sergeants standing in a group with their backs toward them.

“What’s wrong?’ asked Bear. But when the three men stood aside to show him, he wished that they hadn’t.

“It’s Ted Whyte,” said Terry, seeing the freckle-faced redheaded constable.

Then he looked down and realised that it was only the top half of the young man. From the waist down, Ted had been reduced to a grey-white paste like the remains of Erlick Norfolk.

“Holy Mother of God!” said Bear. He instinctively crossed himself as Terry turned away and began to throw up.


“What are we stopping here for?” asked Garbarla as Geraldine turned the Mini Minor into Davidson’s Road, Daley -- one town before Glen Hartwell.

“I have to see if I can borrow some equipment from the fire station,” said Geraldine, pulling up in front of the redbrick firehouse.

“Not another old lover?” joked Garbarla.

“Yes, I’ve got a string of them right around Australia,” teased Geraldine. “Didn’t anyone ever warn you that I break hearts everywhere I go?”


It was late afternoon when Garbarla and Geraldine turned into Mitchell Street, Glen Hartwell. However, a note pinned to the screen door of the white weatherboard police station directed them to the morgue on Baltimore Drive.

At the morgue, another note directed them to the viewing area at the back, where they found Bear Ross and a very white-faced Terry Blewett watching Elvis Green and Gina Foley performing another autopsy, while Daniela Butler took notes.

“What’s going ...?” began Garbarla. His words were cut off as he stared in horror at the naked upper half of the freckle-faced Ted Whyte lying upon the stainless steel autopsy table.

“How did it happen?” asked Geraldine.

Bear shrugged. “We weren’t there, thank God. We were kilometres away in the tunnel network when we heard the scream. It seemed like it took hours to get back to him, but it was probably only twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes?” said Geraldine in disbelief. “But if it only took twenty minutes to half dissolve him, then it could have dissolved Erlick Norfolk completely in under an hour!”

She did a quick mental calculation then added, “In which case, instead of being five or six times as strong as any known acid ....”

“Whatever that thing produces has to be at least fifty times as powerful,” Elvis Green finished for her, from the autopsy room.

“My God!” said Bear Ross. He instinctively crossed himself again.

“You’ll never get me down those tunnels again,” said Terry Blewett, articulating the thoughts of his Chief as well.

“But you must go back with us!” protested Geraldine.

“What,” asked Terry, pointing toward the half-man on the autopsy table, “and end up like Ted Whyte?”

“Not necessarily.” Geraldine went on to tell the policemen of their visit to Aussie Kitchen & Bathroom Supplies.

“And this stuff they’re sending us will kill this Evil, Big-Eyed One thing?” asked Bear. He sounded sceptical.

“I hope so.”

“You hope so?” asked Terry.

“Well, when I arranged for it, I thought that that creature’s acid was five to six times as strong as sulphuric acid. Not fifty or more times.”

“God help us then if you’re wrong,” said Bear. “All right, I’ll put your plan to the other cops and see how many will agree to go back into the tunnels.”


Bear Ross spent that afternoon and well into the night trying to convince the other local cops to return to Mount Abergowrie the next day. However, when they assembled outside the tunnel mouth, there was only Bear, Terry, grey-haired Mel Forbes, Mel’s constable Andrew Braidwood, Garbarla, and Geraldine.

“Oh well,” said Geraldine as they pulled on the fire-proof suits and foam-throwing backpacks she had borrowed from the Daley City Fire Department, “it’s probably just as well. We don’t have enough suits or backpacks for anyone else.”

“What the Hell is all this stuff for?” asked Mel Forbes as they set off down the cave, not long before noon.

“To protect us from any fumes from that stuff,” said Geraldine. She pointed toward the two 200-litre drums on trolleys that they had to push into the tunnels at least as far as the cavern.

Mel looked at the writing on one of the steel drums, trying to decipher what it meant: Ba(OH)2, plus a great string of other letters and numbers. Finally, he shrugged and gave up.

Once more, they wandered into the tunnel within the cave. This time slowed by the steel drums, so that it seemed to take hours just to reach the underground cavern.

“What now?” asked Garbarla, rubbing at a crick in his back as he finally straightened up and looked around the cavern.

Geraldine considered for a moment before saying, “I guess we load our backpacks, then go look for the Evil, Big-Eyed One.”

“We’re going to split up?” asked Garbarla, not very keen on the idea.

“No, I think we ought to stick to two teams,” suggested Geraldine to the relief of the men. “Bear can come with us. Mel, Drew, and Terry can make up the other group.”

“Okay,” agreed the men, not questioning Geraldine’s role as leader.

“Be careful,” advised Geraldine, as they cautiously unplugged one of the steel drums. They wore rubber gloves and looked almost like astronauts, covered from head to toe in protective gear.

It took more than half an hour to fill the backpacks, then they were ready to, reluctantly, head off down the tunnel network beyond the cavern.

Although he had never been claustrophobic, Garbarla found the anti-contamination suit very unnerving. At times, the walls of the cave seemed to be closing in on him. However, he forced himself to take long, deep breaths to calm himself. ‘Now’s not the time to panic!’ he thought, seeing Geraldine creeping ahead of him. ‘Time enough to panic when we come face-to-face with that monster!’


After nearly three hours of searching through the tunnels, Bear, Geraldine, and Garbarla had found no sign of the Evil, Big-Eyed One. And had heard nothing from Mel Forbes’ team. ‘They can’t have got into trouble,’ Garbarla tried to reassure himself, ‘we would have heard the screaming! Surely it couldn’t kill three men before any of them had a chance to scream out!’ But then he realised, ‘Unless they were so far away that we couldn’t hear their screams?’

“So what do we do now?” asked Garbarla when they stopped at the intersection of two tunnels. As the tunnels seemed to suddenly close in on him like a larynx snapping shut, he had to close his eyes to fight off the mounting feeling of claustrophobia. His throat went as dry as sandpaper, and as his head began to swim, for a moment, he wondered if he had suddenly stepped into a 1960s psychedelic LSD-dream movie.

“It’s a pity that we didn’t think to bring along walkie-talkies, so that we could get in touch with Mel’s team,” said Bear.

“Yes,” agreed Geraldine. She glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s past the time when we agreed to start back anyway, so we might as well return to the cavern now.”

Garbarla somehow resisted the temptation to heave a sigh of relief.


“No luck?” asked Mel Forbes as Geraldine’s team returned to the central cavern.

“It depends on what you mean by luck,” joked Garbarla. “Personally, I regard it as very lucky not to have met that thing again.”

“So what’ll we do now?” asked Terry Blewett.

“Leave the steel drums here,” suggested Geraldine, “so we won’t have to keep lugging them back and forth to the surface.”

“I take it that that means that we have to return here tomorrow?” asked Garbarla, not overjoyed at the prospect.

The other men made sounds of frustration at the suggestion, but Geraldine refused to be put off: “We’ve got to keep coming back until we find and kill that damn thing, or it’ll keep right on killing people.”

“If we can kill it,” said Bear.

Garbarla and Geraldine exchanged a troubled look, both realising that Bear was right. ‘What if this stuff won’t kill it?’ wondered Garbarla. ‘What do we do next?’

“We have to assume that it will kill it,” insisted Geraldine. However, she sounded less sure of herself than she had been when they had first entered the tunnel system hours earlier.

“What about the backpacks?” asked Terry Blewett.

“We’ll leave them just inside the tunnel near the surface,” said Geraldine. “Best not to take them off till we’re safely back onto the mount.”


Geraldine’s caution turned out to be warranted. They were still almost a hundred metres from the surface when the tunnel was suddenly filled with a strong sulphurous smell. Seconds later, they heard the knitting needle clickety-clickety-click of the insectile creature scuttling down the tunnel from behind them.

“Look out, it’s coming down the tunnel behind us!” called Bear. However, the others had already heard it.

“Let’s try to get up to the surface, where there’s more room to manoeuvre,” suggested Geraldine. And running as best as they could in the cramped quarters, still dressed in protective garb, they headed back toward the outside of the mount.


As they ran, the scuttling feet seemed only metres behind them and closing fast. However, despite their fears of being trapped in the tunnel with the Evil, Big-Eyed One, they were all surprised at how soon they reached the surface.

“Now what?” asked Garbarla as they stepped out onto the grassy clearing. Only just able to resist the urge to charge off down the mount, he hoped that Geraldine would suggest just that.

“Now we stand and fight,” said Geraldine. Ignoring the frustrated sighs of all five men, she instructed, “We have to form a semi-circle around the cave mouth to allow us all to spray the Evil, Big-Eyed One at the same time.”

“What if we don’t have enough of this stuff to kill it?” asked Garbarla, as they moved into position as instructed. “The rest of it's inside the cavern, remember.”

“Then we run like Hell down the mountain and hope that we’ve incapacitated it enough to slow it down so that it can’t catch any of us,” said Geraldine.

“So that’s Plan B, is it?” said Garbarla, in the hope of lightening the mood a little. “I’m glad to hear we’ve got something in reserve. Just in case Plan A doesn’t work. Although I get the feeling that Plan B is a bit ad hoc.”

Doing her best to look stern, instead of giggling, Geraldine instructed, “Just get into position in the semi-circle. And don’t get too close to the cave mouth. We don’t want to frighten it back into the cave. Or be too close in case it decides to attack.”

The five men and one woman crouched at the ready, around the cave opening, which vaguely looked like the entrance to an underground railway. And from the tunnel, the clickety-clickety-click of the Evil, Big-Eyed One’s feet sounded almost like the wheels of an express train roaring up from the depths of an underground tunnel.

“Look out, here it is!” shouted Geraldine as the fried egg-like head of the black, chitinous-bodied creature loomed into view from the cave mouth.

When it emerged from the tunnel, in its haste, the Evil, Big-Eyed One almost overshot the semi-circle of people. Terry Blewett had to leap to one side to avoid a head-on collision with the giant insectile creature as it raced past him.

“Get after it!” shouted Geraldine, thinking that the creature was fleeing down Mount Abergowrie. However, it did a surprisingly rapid U-turn and started back toward them at high speed.

“Don’t let it get back into the tunnel!” warned Bear. “We don’t want it escaping underground again.”

Terry Blewett and Garbarla raced across to stand with their backs toward the cave mouth, as the chitin-hided creature stormed back toward them.

“Shoot it! Shoot it!” shrieked Geraldine.

For a second, Garbarla thought that she was telling Terry to draw his service revolver to shoot the monster. Then, realising what she meant, Garbarla raised the nozzle of his backpack, thinking, ‘This had better work!’ and began spraying the white foaming substance toward the Evil, Big-Eyed One, as Terry and the others began doing the same.”

“Eeeeeeeeeeek!” the creature shrilled a surprisingly human-sounding shriek of agony as the foam splashed onto it.

“Over its head and eye!” ordered Geraldine. She moved in closer to obey her own order. “Don’t waste it. Try to spray the foam across its fried-egg head and orange eye. This stuff probably won’t hurt its chitinous exoskeleton at all.”

Trying to ignore the childlike “Eeeeeeeeeeek!” of alarm and agony, the six people advanced slowly upon the Evil, Big-Eyed One, spraying generous amounts of the foaming substance onto the creature’s head and eye.

When the foam made contact with the white albumin-like head of the insectile creature, great clouds of thick sulphurous smoke began to pour from the creature’s head as though it were dissolving, as the creature had dissolved Erlick Norfolk and Ted Whyte earlier.

“What’s happening?” demanded Terry Blewett.

“It’s neutralising the acid that it produces. This foam is a powerful industrial alkali, barium hydroxide. Alkaline substances neutralise acids,” Geraldine explained.

“So this creature ought to be unable to harm us if this stuff works right?” asked Garbarla.

“With any luck it’ll be dead,” answered Geraldine. “That thing’s whole head and digestive system is like a giant sponge soaked in an acid similar to sulphuric acid, but fifty times more powerful. If this works, its entire head and digestive tract should be virtually obliterated.”


As Geraldine predicted, there was very little of the creature’s fried-egg-like head left once they had finished spraying it. Even the great orange eye had shrunken from the size of a soccer ball to that of a baseball.

“It’s dead, isn’t it?” asked Garbarla. He stared down at the still terrifying-looking giant bug-like creature as the last of the alkaline foam was expelled from his backpack.

“Oh yes, it’s dead,” assured Geraldine. Like Garbarla, she felt a touch of remorse at the probable genocide that they had just been forced to commit.

“So what’ll we do with it now?” asked Bear.

“I suppose we could take it back to Glen Hartwell for Elvis Green and Gina Foley to study and publish a paper on,” suggested Geraldine.

‘Man, wouldn’t the sparks fly in the scientific community then!’ thought Garbarla.

“Or we could pile it high with all the old wood we can find and burn it away,” she offered as a second option.

“I vote we burn it,” suggested Garbarla. He just resisted the temptation to put up his right hand as though back at school.

“Yes, you’re probably right,” agreed Geraldine. “I doubt if the scientific world is ready for the news of something like this.”

So it was agreed. The six of them spent nearly half an hour gathering dried fallen tree limbs to build a great pyre around the insectile creature.

But as Garbarla stepped forward to light the pyre, the chitin-hided creature suddenly jerked violently, sending wood scattering every which way.

“Look out, it’s still alive!” shouted Bear Ross, and they all backed away hurriedly.

“No, it’s not. It’s just its final death throes,” insisted Geraldine. And on cue, the Evil, Big-Eyed One collapsed back into the pile of wood.

This time, it remained still as Garbarla hesitantly stepped forward again to light the funeral pyre.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia