THE NIGHTMARE OF GLEN HARTWELL (2025 Ed)

A 'Nightmare' has come to Glen Hartwell, and is killing the local men

The seven men and six women were dressed in ordinary street clothes; however, there was nothing ordinary about what they were doing. In the centre of the living room, a magic Cone of Power had been laid out on the floor, and within the white circle, on a wooden table, a beautiful young woman lay naked, while the thirteen men and women danced around her anticlockwise, chanting a simple eight-line mantra.

For a long while, nothing seemed to be happening. Then, unexpectedly, there was a loud explosion on the corrugated-iron roof. The thirteen men and women looked up, startled, and were almost blinded as the room was filled with a tremendous burst of yellow light. Stunned, they fell to the floor for a moment, covering their eyes.

When at last they dared to look up again, they saw great tendrils of smoky white ectoplasm spraying upward from the wooden table, gushing from the mouth, ears, nostrils, nipples, and vulva of the young woman on the table. Ectoplasm (the substance spirit mediums use to conjure up ghosts) is a vital part of human beings, the link between their physical and astral spirit bodies. Losing even a small quantity has been known to kill mediums during trances. Yet, as the men and women watched, the young woman was giving off litres of the foamy white matter, as it sprayed out of her body orifices and slowly began to form together into a solid mass a metre or so above where she lay.

As the coven watched in astonishment, the swirling mass of ectoplasm rapidly began to shape itself into the form of a beautiful woman.

“Oh my God, it’s Vera!” cried one of the women in the coven. And indeed, the ectoplasmic woman was an exact double of the young woman lying naked on the table. Or rather a cruel, twisted caricature of the woman. Physically, it resembled her, except for a wild, insane look in its fiery eyes and a twisted sneer that spoilt its otherwise sensual mouth.

At first, the coven of witches was too stunned to react, but finally they began chanting again, calling to the White Goddess, Hecate, to return the spirit of their neophyte into her body.

“Bring back the soul of our beloved sister, Vera Hilliard!” pleaded the High Priest.

Snarling with rage, the ectoplasmic woman began to twist and turn furiously, using her own powers to summon up a great wind that tossed the tall priest across the room like a twig and blew out the black ceremonial candles, scattering them across the living room floor.

The yellow light that had heralded the coming of the evil creature began to build in intensity again, forcing the coven to shield their eyes again.

Then, still snarling her rage at them, the ectoplasmic woman sailed up toward the ceiling, which seemed to dissolve into water to allow her to swim through it, taking the blinding light with her, leaving the coven of cowering witches to tend to the lifeless body of Vera Hilliard, which was dry and brittle like scorched paper, and had shrunk to only half of its living size.


The Following Night

Des Hutchinson lay awake in bed, too hetup to fall asleep. Tomorrow, Warren would be going home to Cherrytree Farm to live with his brother Brian. Although a big, burly man in his mid-thirties, Warren Horne had the intellectual capacity of a seven-year-old and had been unable to look after himself or the sheep-station after his brother Brian had been savaged in a dingo attack three months earlier.

So Des and Elizabeth Hutchinson had agreed to take care of Warren at their small cattle station upon Mount Drynan outside East Merridale. Although Warren was not always easy to look after, he had been a godsend to the Hutchinsons, helping them to get over the heartache of the loss of their own son, Leon, who had been murdered in late 1992 by a brutal sadist, Donald William Sears, who three years earlier had killed Helen Horne, the mother of Brian and Warren.

By rights, Mel Forbes should have contacted the Glen Hartwell branch of the Community Services Department of Victoria to have Warren taken away to a Family Group Home until Brian was able to look after him. However, the small town police sergeant had stuck his neck out, agreeing to let the Hutchinsons take care of Warren for a few months. The sergeant’s act of kindness had been a blessing to Elizabeth Hutchinson, who had been virtually a zombie for the last six years; as well as being better for Warren than being stuck in a Family Group Home -- that was nothing more than a miniature orphanage.

However, Brian Horne had been released from hospital over a month ago and, to Liz and Des’ dismay, Warren would be going home tomorrow. Des would hate to see the retarded man leave; he had grown used to having him around the small farmhouse. But even worse, he hated to think what it would do to Liz, who had been her old perky self for the last twelve weeks. The change in her had been little short of miraculous, so Des dreaded to think what would happen to her after Warren left.

Des was still pondering over the departure of Warren when the soft, white thighs suddenly descended over his face. Although unable to look up far, he could see the firm, strong legs on either side of his head and the full-lipped vulva hovering only centimetres from his face.

At first, he thought that it was Liz, returned to her old sensual self, from the days before the death of Leon. However, hearing Elizabeth’s steady breathing, he realised that she was sleeping soundly on the bed beside him.

Des tried to open his mouth to demand to know who it was who had invaded his bed; however, the soft, ghostly-white thighs possessed an incredible strength and were able to hold his head still in a vice-like grip, preventing him from speaking.

As he watched, the mysterious white-skinned woman continued to lower her pubis toward him as though to demand cunnilingus from him. However, as the outer labia began to open wide, Des Hutchinson saw the first hint of the row upon row of sharp, pearly white teeth that lined the inside of her sex mouth. Sharp teeth that bit and tore at Des’ face, literally chewing away skin and bone alike to eat right down into the soft pulp of his brain itself.


Reluctantly, Rowena Singleton allowed the thin ray of sunlight streaming in beneath the bedroom blind to awaken her, and found herself looking down into a black, furry face. For a moment, she was startled, thinking that it was the black wolf peering up at her. Until the large Barb-Kelpie started licking her face with his long, pink tongue, wagging his tail furiously in greeting.

“Ugh, ugh, get away!” ordered the beautiful, honey blonde, swatting at the black dog with one hand while sitting up on the bed.

“He’s just telling you it’s time to get up,” said the little girl of six or seven who stood in the doorway, holding the tail of a red Kelpie dog, to stop it from rushing into the bedroom also. The dog Marg, Blacky’s mate, looked back at the little girl; however, since her grip was too weak to hurt her, Marg decided to ignore it and began to wag her tail, sending short, sharp jolts up the little girl’s arm.

“What are those two dogs doing in the house?” demanded Rowena.

“They’re allowed in the house,” insisted young Kirsty, who had inherited her mother’s honey-blonde hair and good looks.

“Not before breakfast!” insisted Rowena; however, the once hard and fast rule had started to be relaxed over the last six months or so, since neither Rowena nor Ernie was able to resist the feisty little girl’s entreaties. So now more often than not, one or even both of the farm dogs slept on the little girl’s bed with her.

“Time to get up,” said young Kirsty, wisely deciding to change the subject.

“Oh my God, yes,” said Rowena, glancing across toward the small clock on the bedside table, “it’s nearly five-thirty. I’ve overslept.” However, the sarcasm was wasted on the little girl and the two dogs, so, reluctantly Rowena swung her long, shapely legs over the side of the bed, eased on her slippers, struggled into her dressing gown, and then was almost bowled over by Blacky and Marg, as the large Barb-Kelpie and the smaller red Kelpie raced each other out of the bedroom and down the corridor to the kitchen, both hoping to be first to be fed.

“Me first!” insisted Kirsty, kicking one of the dogs away from the kitchen table, as she climbed up into one of the four red vinyl chairs.

“Yes, madam,” said Rowena, going across to put two slices of bread into the toaster, before reaching up to take down a box of Kellogg’s cornflakes from an overhead cupboard.

It was ten minutes later when Ernie Singleton finally wandered down the corridor to join the others at the breakfast table.

“You overslept!” rebuked Kirsty.

“Yes, I did,” agreed Ernie, kissing the little girl and then his wife. Unlike Rowena, however, he was only half joking. The Singleton farm was only a small-to-middling sheep station that rarely required more than eight or nine hours of work, seven days a week, to keep it running. But for the last few months, Ernie’s workload had been doubled because he also had been tending to Brian Horne’s Cherrytree Farm, a few kilometres away in East Merridale.

Despite its name, Cherrytree was a small sheep-and-cattle station, or at least it had been three months ago, before the stock had been viciously slaughtered when the farm had been attacked by a herd of dingoes. Brian Horne had been savaged by the dingoes, requiring an eight-week stay in the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, followed by a month’s convalescence at home in the care of Ernie’s mother, Victoria, and other local women. At the same time, Ernie had taken over the work of rebuilding and running Cherrytree -- with a little help from other local farmers, but not a lot, since the Singleton station had been one of the very few local farms not raided by the dingoes before their pack had finally been hunted down and destroyed. As a consequence, Ernie did most of the manual work on Cherrytree Farm, after it had been sparingly restocked with a handful of sheep donated one or two a piece by station-owners less severely hit than Brian Horne, plus eight farm dogs (red Kelpies donated by Ernie himself. To the relief of Rowena, who was forever pleading with him to reduce the number of their farm dogs. Although the dogs paid for part of their keep by helping out around the farm, they were mainly an expensive hobby for Ernie, who was forced to concede that their station was far too small to justify the forty or fifty Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies and Border Collies that it usually held.)

“Eat hearty,” said Rowena, placing a large bowl of porridge in front of her husband.

“Don’t I always?” joked Ernie.

“You sure do,” agreed young Kirsty, looking puzzled as both her parents burst into laughter.

There’s no doubt that farm life breeds healthy appetites, and having to work from before sunrise till after sunset, seven days a week, to tend to two sheep stations had done nothing to dampen Ernie’s already voracious appetite. However, there was another reason for Ernie’s oversized meals: For the last dozen or so years, since February 1983, Ernie Singleton had been infested with the werewolf curse!

Two or three times every month, he transmogrified from man to beast to roam the countryside at night as the black wolf, a huge creature that looked like any other wolf, except for having Ernie’s almost navy blue eyes. The transformation from man to wolf then back again, along with the hours spent loping through the night forest, burnt up a tremendous amount of energy, which Ernie had to replenish over the next few days with almost nonstop eating binges, during which he could go through a normal week’s food rations in two or three days.


Five hours later

As Ernie, Rowena, and Kirsty drove up along the dirt track toward Cherrytree Farm, they could see a small crowd waiting to greet them. In comic contrast stood Ernie’s mother, Victoria, tall, lean, and Celtic in her dark features; beside the short, operatically large figure of Georgina Hart, followed by her seventeen-year-old son, Victor. Like his mother, Vic Hart was short and swarthy; however, he had inherited his father’s lean physique and hard-faced looks, although not his father’s mean disposition. Beside the Hart’s, waving furiously stood Rowena’s parents; Samantha and Anthony Frankland: Tony tall, powerfully built, and fiercely blond (having given his coloration to his daughter and granddaughter); Samantha a full head shorter than her husband; a very shapely and attractive redhead, who despite being in her mid fifties hardly looked any older than her daughter, or her niece Gloria Baradine who was last in line. Like Rowena and Kirsty, Gloria was a honey blonde; however, her once great beauty had faded over the last couple of years since the shock death of her younger sister, Holly, in an industrial accident.

“There’s Grannie,” said Kirsty, leaning forward to peer out through the front windscreen of the car. Although both of her grandmothers were in the gathering, Samantha Frankland looked years too young to be addressed as Grannie, a title that Kirsty reserved for her paternal grandmother.

Ten minutes later, the women (plus girl) were inside, tending to the needs of Brian Horne and preparing the farmhouse for the imminent return home of Warren. After a quick hello to his lifelong friend, Ernie settled into the chores of the station with the help of his father-in-law and young Vic Hart.

It was perhaps an hour later that the three men heard the crunch of tyres approaching on the dirt road leading to the front of the farmhouse.

“Sounds like Des Hutchinson now with Warren,” said Tony Frankland. However, even from a distance, they could recognise the purring sound of Mel Forbes’ Holden Rodeo ute, as distinct from the rattle-chunk noises made by Des Hutchinson’s twenty-year-old Land-Rover.

Wondering what was wrong, the three men headed toward the farmhouse as fast as their legs would carry them. As they neared the back of the farm, they saw Mel Forbes and Danny ‘Bear’ Ross standing on the back porch, talking to Victoria Singleton and Samantha Frankland.

Mel and Bear were both hardy rural types: Mel (sergeant of the Merridale Police), a hundred and eighty-plus centimetres tall, one-time amateur boxing champion of the Willamby and Glen Hartwell regions. Though now in his early fifties and grey-haired, Mel was still a powerhouse of a man. Danny Ross, nicknamed ‘Bear’ by his colleagues in the Glen Hartwell Police, because of his bulging, muscular arms and legs and powerful barrel chest, at two hundred centimetres, he dwarfed even Mel Forbes. Together, the two police sergeants could make an intimidating sight. Except that Mel Forbes looked ashen-faced, as though about to pass out, and Bear Ross’ eyes were shining, moist with emotion as they talked with the two women.

As they approached within hearing range, the three men heard Mel say, “We thought it best to leave him with Liz for now ... To help calm her down a bit,” and realised that they were talking about Warren Horne.

“Warren’s a lot more aware of death than many people give him credit for,” said Bear Ross. He remembered the way that the retarded man had risked his life three months earlier to rescue his brother Brian from the dingo attack. “But he was the only one who could get through to Liz at all.”

“What’s up?” asked Ernie, sensing as he asked that he would regret the question.

“Les Hutchinson’s dead,” said the third man standing hidden behind the two police officers.

Ernie, Tony, and Vic all looked around, startled, seeing the short, weasel-faced figure of Sam Hart for the first time.

“Dead?” asked Tony, wondering whether he had misheard.

“That’s right,” said Sam Hart, almost with glee -- there had been no love lost between him and Des Hutchinson for as long as anyone could remember.

“How?” asked Ernie.

“Killed by the black wolf!” said Sam Hart, his voice tinged with anger. He had hated the black wolf for almost as many years as he had hated Des Hutchinson.

“The black wolf?” asked Ernie, astounded.

“We don’t know that for certain,” insisted Bear Ross. Unlike Hart, Bear felt no animosity toward the black wolf that, despite roaming the countryside around Merridale and Glen Hartwell for a dozen years, had never been known to attack anyone.

“We have Des Hutchinson with his face chewed away,” insisted Hart brutally, “how much more proof do we need?”

“I still say it wasn’t the black wolf!” insisted Bear.

It can’t have been the black wolf! thought Ernie Singleton. I’m the black wolf, and I didn’t even go out last night! Since the day he had first transformed from man to wolf in early 1983, Ernie had lived in fear of what he might do in wolf form. Haunted by a hundred badly written werewolf novels and as many shoddily-made movies, he had lived in terror that in wolf form he might become the archetypal crazed werewolf, stalking the woodlands at night, killing his friends and family first, before moving on to seek out other human prey. Going steady with Rowena before his first transformation, he had almost jilted her and submitted to a life of loneliness. But four-and-a-half years later, Ernie had become confident that he was no killer. As the black wolf he remembered only smatterings of his human life, but as Ernie Singleton he remembered everything that he did and saw in wolf form, so he had soon realise that he had no urge to terrorise or kill, so in July 1987 he had finally summoned up the nerve to propose to Rowena and they had been married that October in St. Margaret’s cathedral in Glen Hartwell. On December 1st, 1989, their daughter Kirsty was born, and ever since, they had lived a happy if exhausting life on the farm, with Ernie able to enjoy his romps as the black wolf two or three nights a month, without fear that he would ever harm his wife or young daughter.

“It can’t be the black wolf!” insisted Bear again.

“It has to be!” asserted Sam Hart.

It can’t be! thought Ernie. Last night was the wrong night! He had last changed into the black wolf seven days ago, so that the next transformation was not due for at least another three weeks.

“Look!” said Mel Forbes, raising his voice to quieten the argument. “All I know is that something chewed the face off Des Hutchinson last night and left Liz a screaming hysteric after waking to find herself awash in Des’ blood in their bed!” Seeing that he had cowed the two men into silence, he looked back toward Victoria and Samantha, “There’s a policewoman with Liz now, but it might be best if one of you could go over to try to comfort her.”

With that, the two women agreed to go with Mel in the Holden Rodeo, leaving Ernie and Tony behind to break the news of Des Hutchinson’s death to Brian Horne and explain why they had not brought his retarded brother home as planned.


The Next Night

Garrick Dempsey lay in bed in their home on the outskirts of LePage, brooding about life in general, his wife in particular. After nineteen years of unhappy married life, Garrick still didn’t know how they had ever thought that they could be compatible. He could not remember a time when they had ever had any real love for each other. They were about as opposite as two people could be: Garrick, shy and retiring, an almost elfin one hundred and fifty-five centimetres, and anorexically thin; Roberta, loud and extroverted, almost elephantinely fat. More than two hundred centimetres tall, she dwarfed her diminutive husband in height, but even more so in weight. Roberta had stopped weighing herself after she went past a hundred and thirty kilograms; however, her size was never constant, continually increasing like a dirigible being slowly but constantly inflated.

Tucking his hands beneath his head to raise himself slightly, Garrick peered through the doorway to the small en suite where his wife was still preparing herself for bed. Gargling like a sperm whale blowing water through its air hole, Roberta was still dressed. Garrick winced at the sight of the tight, flame pink slacks that she wore. Never very fashion savvy, Roberta had outdone herself in bad taste with the pink slacks that made her look absolutely enormous. But then she is absolutely enormous! thought Garrick, shaking his head in dismay, wondering what he could have ever seen in Roberta, why he had ever proposed to her. “I must have been drunker than I thought,” he would say with a laugh, if any of his friends ever asked him. But the truth was that Garrick had never been a drinking man, so it could not have been that.

Garrick was still brooding over his life shackled to Roberta when he felt the bed ripple as his wife joined him. He was surprised that she had managed to get to the bed without him hearing her, and alarmed when she started to crawl up along his side of the bed. Oh God, not that! thought Garrick, shutting his eyes tightly in the hope that it was all a bad dream. Although obscenely fat, Roberta fantasised that she was every man’s lust object. People stopped in the street to stare at her, amazed at her gigantic size, but Roberta insisted that the men stared out of lust, the women out of jealousy. Driven on by her imagined sensuality, Roberta had developed a tremendous sex drive that kept her poor husband struggling to satisfy her. But at least in the past, she had always been content to lie under her husband while they coupled. Now, however, as she climbed up the bed toward him, Garrick shuddered from nausea at the thought of all of that weight on top of him. He remembered in his single days reading men’s magazines that had cartoons showing thin men squashed paper-thin by gigantically fat women while coupling. Though he had laughed at such cartoons once, he was not laughing anymore as his wife slowly moved up along the bed toward him.

To his horror, Roberta didn’t stop at his loins, but continued up along the bed until her lower body was straddling his face. Oh my God, I’ll be smothered! thought Garrick in panic, picturing his wife’s colossal pink thighs wrapped around his head. However, when at last he dared to open his eyes, the flesh that surrounded him was soft and sleek and milky white.

For the moment, forgetting his wife, Garrick Dempsey watched in fascination as the soft, white flesh lowered toward him; his mouth watering in expectation at the sight of the full-lipped vulva that approached. Until the sex mouth opened to reveal row upon row of gleaming, silvery, needle-like teeth.

Garrick opened his mouth to scream, but his voice was cut off as the vulva descended and the teeth began to rip and tear at his face, biting deep into his face as above him the unseen woman bucked and twisted around as though in the throes of sexual release.


In the small en suite, Roberta Dempsey finished her toileting, carefully preening herself before the mirror, confident that she was still a fine figure of a woman, who would make any man’s pulse race from excitement. She toyed with the flimsy string of the sheer black nightie, wondering whether she should give Garrick a real treat by entering the room naked. But then, seeing herself in the mirror behind the bathroom door, she decided against it, thinking, He’s in for enough of a treat as it is! Certain that the sight of her full, sensual body in the see-through nightie would be more than enough to arouse her waiting husband.

She paused for one last look at herself, pushed the bathroom door wide and strode into the bedroom, stopping almost immediately from shock at the sight before her. The centre of the room was bathed in a bright orange-white light, making her think for a moment that the room was on fire. But then her eyes adjusted to the blinding luminosity, and she could see that it emanated from the bed against the opposite wall. Or more precisely, that it seemed to radiate out from the tall, thin woman on the bed: squatting over the face of Garrick Dempsey, rolling her head in her arms in obvious sexual delight, while beneath her rolling hips, Garrick thrashed about like a man possessed.

Roberta’s last thought before fainting on the bedroom floor was, He’s never offered to do that for me!

She awakened a short time later to find her husband dead (his whole face literally chewed away), in a pool of blood that coated the floral sheets that she had just purchased. Ruined, my beautiful sheets are ruined! thought Roberta irrationally -- her mind using the loss of the $200 sheets as a focus to aim her attention away from the horror of her husband’s brutal death.


Half an hour later, Roberta was being comforted by two policewomen, while Sergeant Mel Forbes and his constable Andrew ‘Drew’ Braidwood examined the corpse of Garrick Dempsey and the scene of the murder.

Drew peered down at the corpse whose head looked like a bloody chalice: A great chasm chewed down completely obliterating the face and bone at the front of the skull, along with most of the brain. One look was enough, however, and he quickly turned away, fighting to keep down the bile that threatened to rise in his throat.

Returning to the living room, they found Roberta sitting on the sofa, apparently calm now, talking almost casually to a young policewoman who sat beside her: “I’d just bought them a few days ago. Over $200 and now they’re ruined. Completely ruined ....”

As Roberta rambled on and on about her precious sheets, the young policewoman glanced up at Mel Forbes, who gave her a quick nod, and then went across to where young Stanlee Dempsey sat on an armchair a few metres away.

Although he had just turned thirteen, the boy had a good head on his shoulders and had been the one to stay calm in the crisis. He had telephoned the police after hearing his mother’s hysterical shrieking.

As the two policemen talked to the teenager again, getting him to repeat his account of how he had found his mother standing over the mutilated corpse of his father, Drew Braidwood felt a strong affinity for the boy, thinking, We could do with a few like you on the force, son!


“Well, what do you make of that?” asked Drew, a tall, lanky blond man, an hour later as they walked across the back paddock to where Mel’s Holden Rodeo was parked.

Mel Forbes shrugged his shoulders. “Obviously killed by the same thing that killed Des Hutchinson, but don’t ask me what. No doubt Sam Hart will insist that it is the black wolf on the rampage ....”

“But you don’t agree?”

Mel thought carefully for a moment before answering. “No, I don’t. There’s no evidence that the black wolf has ever attacked anyone. Besides, no wolf would attack in such a brutal way ... Chewing the face right off its victim ... That’s more like what you’d expect from a jackal or hyaena ....”

Startled, Drew asked, “You don’t mean to say ...?”

“No, I’m not saying that there’s a hyaena on the loose around Merridale!” said Mel, cutting him off in mid-sentence,. “And for God’s sake don’t let anyone else get hold of that theory. Things are bad enough around here with Sam Hart’s paranoia about the black wolf, without starting a hyaena scare as well!”

There was little that Mel Forbes or anyone else could do, however, to stop the country folk from panicking over the next three weeks, as a different man was found murdered every morning. For five nights running, there were new deaths in Glen Hartwell, one in Baltimore Drive, only a few hundred metres from the local morgue. Mel Forbes had virtually handed the entire investigation over to Bear Ross, the Senior Sergeant of the BeauLarkin to Willamby area, with great relief, when two more killings occurred in the Merridale region, followed by deaths in Lenoak, Pettiwood, Harpertown, Daley, and then again in Glen Hartwell.

With the local newspapers using the rising death toll as fodder to sell papers and the local population demanding immediate action -- that Bear Ross and Mel Forbes were forced to concede that they were unable to deliver -- and a very tricky state election looming in another few months, the Victorian Premier called for an emergency task force to be set up to investigate the murders. It would be comprised of elements of both the Melbourne Police and government CSIRO scientists.

Composed of over fifty biologists and research scientists, the medical branch would be headed by Gina Foley (chief co-ordinator of the local hospital) and Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green (the local coroner) and a CSIRO senior scientist from Melbourne, Dwight Stafford. The police arm would have nearly as many officers and would be under the control of a Detective Inspector from Melbourne, Kenneth Fisher (who had risen to prominence a few years earlier after single-handedly capturing the Carlton Ripper, a psychopathic killer who had slashed to death more than twenty women over an eighteen-month period before finally being run to ground).

While Fisher was assembling his team, with permission of Elvis Green, Gina Foley had had all of the bodies of the victims transferred from the morgue to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, where autopsies could be systematically carried out on all of them.

It was a cold June morning when Elvis and Gina started to perform their surgery. Not so much autopsies in the normal sense, since it was obvious how the victims had died (by having their faces chewed away), so much as exploratory forensic surgery in the hope of discovering what kind of creature had done the killings.

“It’s clearly the work of some kind of animal,” said Elvis -- so nicknamed because of his long, bushy black sideburns. “No metal instrument could have done this kind of damage.”

“Then you think Sam Hart is right about the black wolf being the culprit?” asked Gina.

“No. No wolf could do this kind of damage,” said Elvis, peering down into the gaping cavity of what had once been a man’s head, but now looked like a crudely scooped-out gourd. And having taken sides in that argument, he was left thinking, But if it’s not the black wolf, what the hell could do this kind of damage? If this were Canada or the United States, I might think a bear could have done it, but there are no bears in Australia. Except in zoos, and we would have heard by now if one had escaped.

Looking up, he saw Bear Ross standing watching the autopsy through the observation window and thought, Speak of the Devil.

The examination did not take long, since there was not much that they could do except study the cavity, throw up wild theories, and, of course, watch on as the hospital photographer took photos of the corpse. After it was finished, Elvis and Gina walked to the door to greet the policeman.

In any country town, most people know each other by sight; however, Bear Ross and Elvis had been close friends since they both had moved to Glen Hartwell in the early 1980s. So the coroner was ready with a warm smile and a firm handshake as they approached Bear.

“How’s it going?” asked Elvis.

“No better than with you,” said Bear, with a wry smile. “This big Melbourne Inspector has had us all running round in circles looking for clues, trying to tabulate statistical facts and figures about the murders. So far, all we can state for certain is that all the victims are men, not women, as is usually the case with multiple murderers.”

“Well, that’s something anyway,” suggested Gina Foley.

“Not really. Normally, serial killers go for women because the killers themselves are men.”

“Then in this case your killer must be a woman,” pointed out Gina half jokingly, not realising how close to the truth she was.

Bear looked startled by the simple conclusion that had somehow eluded him.

Without looking up from her clipboard, Gina continued, “It wouldn’t be the first time, in this country, that a woman has been a mass murderer. There was the infamous ‘Poison Ivy’ in Sydney in 1987, who posed as a prostitute to get picked up by men, and then drugged them and robbed them in their own hotel rooms. Then, in early 1991, there was the ‘Vampire Woman’ in Queensland: a notorious lesbian who, with the help of her girlfriends, lured men to their deaths then drank their blood.”

Bear thought about the suggestion for a moment before protesting, “But how could a woman do ... do what has been done to these men?” He pointed back to where the corpse still lay on the examining table in the autopsy room behind them. “How could a woman ... Scoop their faces out like she was scooping ice cream out of a plastic bucket?”

“How could a man?” countered Gina, and Bear could only shrug his resignation at a question for which he had no answer.


Despite the premier’s concern that it was politically advantageous to solve the killings in as short a time as possible, by the end of June, the police were no nearer to a solution. June 1995 ended with twenty-five victims to the still unknown killer. July started with the twenty-sixth victim and a blast to Bear Ross.

LEADING LOCAL LIGHT CUT DOWN IN HIS PRIME! read the page one headline of that morning’s Glen Hartwell Herald Daily Mail, which went on to give a full and lurid account of the murder of Joseph ‘Crazy Joe’ Frazer. A retired garbage collector, for the last seventeen years, to the indignation of many residents, Crazy Joe had camped in a two-man tent in a small paddock that he owned on the outskirts of the town of Merridale.

“How many more local men have to die?” demanded the newspaper, “before Sergeant Danny Ross will admit that he just isn’t competent to solve the local crisis?”


“Cut down in his prime?” asked Rowena Singleton, turning around where she stood in front of the gas stove cooking dinner, to read the newspaper over the shoulder of her husband, who sat at the table. “Old Man Frazer was ninety if he was a day!”

Ernie nodded his agreement and said, “Poor Bear, the case was taken out of his hands over a week ago by this fancy big city cop, yet Bear still gets the blame when the killings go on.”

“What does cut down in his prime mean?” demanded young Kirsty, sitting at the table beside her dad, knife and fork already in her hands, occasionally tapping them upon the enamel table top to let her mum know that she was ready to eat.

“It’s not right,” agreed Rowena, hurriedly placing a plate of food on the table in front of the little girl to stop the tap-tapping knife and fork.

“What does cut down in his prime mean?” demanded Kirsty, a little louder than before. Refusing to be ignored by her parents, already pouting, ready to turn on the tears if necessary to get some attention.

Sighing, Rowena looked toward her husband, who chuckled but kept his head well down in the newspaper. “It means he was only young,” Rowena explained.

Satisfied with the answer, the little girl stopped pouting and started to eat her dinner, to the great relief of her parents.

Ernie started to eat his own dinner; however, his mind was still on the killings. Up until a month ago, the worst mass murderer in Victorian history had been Georgio Banagnostopoulos, the ‘Carlton Ripper’, who had killed over twenty women in Melbourne in the late 1980s. But already the ‘Glen Hartwell Slasher’ (as the local newspapers had christened the unknown killer) had half a dozen victims more than Banagnostopoulos, who had required a year and a half to notch up twenty killings, whereas the Glen Hartwell killings had been going on for only a month. Less than five weeks, yet already there was talk of the Australian Army being called in to comb the forestlands around the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area, in the hope of flushing out the killer.

Sighing heavily, startling Kirsty and making Rowena glance across the table at him, Ernie reached around to place the newspaper on top of the refrigerator and then went on with his dinner. But still, while he ate, his mind was on the mysterious killings. Despite the backbreaking work of looking after two sheep stations, Ernie had spent the last three nights scouring the countryside as the black wolf, in the hope that his heightened werewolf senses would pick up some clue that the police and their dogs had missed.

Normally as the black wolf, Ernie did his best to avoid populated areas, sticking mainly to the countryside. However, after two fruitless nights of searching, he had risked capture -- or worse -- by roaming the dark streets of Glen Hartwell itself the night before. Fortunately, the killings meant that everything shut down early for the night, and very few people now dared step outside after dark.

Nonetheless, Ernie had felt conspicuous and very vulnerable as he stalked the bitumen streets of the Glen, patrolling down the middle of the road, sniffing at the air from time to time in the hope of sensing something -- anything! Although he didn’t know what. However, by four o’clock in the morning, he had had to admit defeat and, turning tail, had thundered off in the direction of Merridale, having to return home before dawn or risk turning back to human form, stark naked, in the middle of the forest.

So now he was stuck with a full month to go before he could metamorphose into the black wolf again. A full month in which another thirty-one men would be killed, if the murders continued without check throughout July.

Ernie was still brooding about the month-long wait, when, without even realising it he finished the last of his dinner, having eaten robot-like while pondering the murder.

“Hold up or you’ll eat the plate,” teased Rowena, startling Ernie and making him look up at her.

Kirsty giggled and said, “That’d be funny, Daddy eating his plate.”

Ernie tussled the little girl’s hair as he stood up (receiving a dirty look from young Kirsty, who immediately put down her knife and fork and started to straighten out her long blonde hair), and then gave Rowena a peck on the cheek before heading outside to continue with his day’s chores.


By the time that Ernie had finished his chores, it was well after 11:00 PM, and when he stumbled into the bedroom, he found Rowena already lying sound asleep in their bed. As he gazed down at the sleeping woman, Ernie realised how lucky he was to have such a beautiful wife and, despite his fatigue, he felt the stirring of his libido. However, he was too dog tired to be able to complete the act of lovemaking, even if he had been selfish enough to wake Rowena only an hour or so after she had retired to bed.

Somehow, he managed to drag his thick working clothes off his aching body. However, he was too exhausted to struggle into his pyjamas and stumbled naked into the bed beside Rowena, barely having the strength to turn off the bedroom light before falling asleep.


Half an hour later, Ernie was wide awake again and blinking against the blinding light; he wrongly assumed that he had left the bedroom light on earlier. He started to sit up, but was brutally pushed back onto the bed as the glowing white light descended upon him and two almost pearl-white thighs were clamped on either side of his face to hold his head in place as the chalky white vulva of an as yet unseen woman lowered itself toward Ernie’s face.

Astonished by the strange goings on, half thinking that he was still asleep and dreaming, Ernie was not yet afraid, although he had found that the soft thighs had strength enough to hold him still, no matter how much he tried to break away. However, as the full lips of the vulva began to part to reveal the first hint of gleaming, shark-like teeth, Ernie was almost overcome with terror. He began to thrash and weave beneath the ‘woman’ above him, desperately trying to escape the knife-like teeth approaching. In a flash of revelation, Ernie realised that this was how the other men had died, their faces chewed away by the monster above him. But at the same time, he thought that the knowledge would do him no good, since he was not going to live to communicate the information to anyone else. However, just as he had given up all hope of survival, the adrenaline surging through his body began to take effect and, to Ernie’s surprise, for the fourth time that month, he metamorphosed into the black wolf.

As his head changed shape from man to wolf, for just a second, the powerful thighs lost their grip on his face. But that second was time enough for the black wolf to twist out from underneath the demon woman, spin around, and then leap away from the bed.

After one last look at the sleeping form of Rowena, the black wolf turned and sped toward the bedroom window. He hated to leave Rowena and Kirsty in the house with the creature; however, like Bear Ross, he had already realised that the creature only attacked men, so they were perfectly safe.

Without a second glance back, he leapt straight through the closed window and then raced out into the farmyard, ignoring the shards of glass that cut his face and body.

With the adrenaline racing through his body, Ernie thundered across the farmyard toward the nearby forest. Not really hopeful of outracing the monster woman, whatever it was, the black wolf knew that he had no choice but to try. So on and on he raced through the thick forest of wattles, pines and eerie, grey-white ghost gums, until the small hours of the morning.

When at last he stopped, well beyond the reaches of LePage, the black wolf was panting furiously, almost collapsing from exhaustion. With his heart boom-booming in his ears, he turned back slowly, expecting to see the demon woman almost upon him.

To his amazement, however, there was no sign of the creature. And as he slowly began to pad back toward the Singleton sheep station, Ernie realised that he had not heard the creature following him at all after leaping through the bedroom window. (Not that he had any real idea what the creature sounded like in motion.)

It was already dawn when Ernie reached the outskirts of the farm. He had changed back to human form a kilometre away and had had to walk naked through the frigid winter forest the rest of the way. Freezing, his flesh aching from being cut by the window glass, he was desperate to get back inside the farmhouse before Rowena, or worse Kirsty, discovered him traipsing round naked outside.

Shivering against the cold, it was all he could do to keep his teeth from chattering as he carefully climbed back in through the broken bedroom window.

Then, grabbing up his work clothes from the bedroom floor, he headed to the bathroom for a quick shower before dressing, ready to start work again.

By the time that Rowena awakened, Ernie was washed, dressed and sitting at the kitchen table, snoring loudly.

“Wakey, wakey, sleepy head,” said Rowena, giving him a gentle shake as she went past the table.

“Wakey, wakey, sleepy head,” echoed Kirsty, giving her father a none-too-gentle shove that almost sent him sprawling to the kitchen floor.

Rowena stopped on the way toward the back door and said, “Did you notice that our bedroom window was broken this morning?”

“Yes. Must have blown out in a storm,” suggested Ernie, too tired from lack of sleep to be able to come up with anything more elaborate.

“Get out of it!” ordered Rowena, kicking at Blacky and Marg as the two farm dogs tried to push their way in through the back door as she went out.

When she returned from the washhouse with a whisk to sweep up the broken glass, Ernie offered, “I’ll go into the Glen to buy some new glass today.”

“Will you have time?” asked Rowena. “What with two farms to tend to?”

“I’ll have to make time. We can’t have it pouring into the room if it decides to rain,” said Ernie. But in truth he had another, more important reason for wanting to go into Glen Hartwell.

As it was, however, Ernie was kept flat out working on the Singleton sheep station until nearly 10:00 AM; after that time, all notion of going into the Glen was set aside:

Ernie had just returned from hunting up stray ewes from a back paddock when he saw a thin line of flying dust away in the distance, which meant that someone was driving up. By the time that he had let Blacky and Marg out of the back of the Land-Rover, he could just make out the approaching vehicle as Bear Ross’s pale blue police Fairlane. Wonder what he can want in such a hurry? thought Ernie as the Fairlane sped down the dirt track toward them, wondering why Bear had not telephoned if it was so urgent.

Ernie stood half a dozen metres from the back patio, watching the approaching car.

For the last four hours, he had debated the wisdom of telling Bear Ross what had happened to him the night before, or rather what had almost happened. Although he had jealously guarded the secret of his being the black wolf for a dozen years now, he had been tempted more than once to reveal his secret to Bear. The two men had been close friends ever since Bear Ross had transferred to the Glen from BeauLarkin in late 1982, so Bear was the one man whom Ernie felt he might be able to trust his secret with. However, he had never quite been able to bring himself to do so.

As the pale blue Fairlane pulled up near the chain-link fence around the farmhouse yard, Ernie started across the yard to greet his friend, but was stopped by the sound of Rowena’s shrill screams ringing out from inside the farmhouse.

For a second, Bear and Ernie stood still, staring at each other as the screams continued. Then, as Bear effortlessly vaulted the metre-high fence, Ernie reversed direction and the two men raced toward the back of the house. For a second, Ernie stopped in the kitchen, thinking that Rowena had burnt herself at the stove. Then, as her hysterical cries continued from the front of the house, he headed down the narrow hallway and found his wife standing holding the receiver of the telephone so tightly that her knuckles had turned white; her shrill screams now turned to hard sobbing.

“Oh my God! My God! He’s dead! He’s dead! Dead!” cried Rowena, collapsing into Ernie’s arms as he reached her.

Reaching them an instant later, in answer to Ernie’s puzzled look, Bear explained in a quiet voice, “It’s Tony, your father-in-law. He was killed last night by the ... killer ... monster ... Whatever it is that’s terrorising the Glen. Samantha found him this morning in bed with her. His ... his face chewed off like all the others.”

“Is grandpa dead?” asked a tiny voice behind them, and the three adults turned round as little Kirsty burst into tears now.

Shocked back from her own hysteria by the unexpected appearance of her young daughter, Rowena broke away from Ernie to bend down and scoop the little girl up into her arms, so that they could cry together.

Then, while Ernie did his best to comfort mother and daughter, Bear went across to attend to the telephone whose receiver still hung down from where the phone was suspended on the wall. Hearing the repetitive brr-brr-brr, he knew that no one was on the other end, but found out later that it had been Rowena’s mother, Samantha, who, in her hysterical state, had rung to break the bad news to Rowena, before Bear had had the chance to try to soften the blow by telling her face-to-face.

Holding his wife as she sobbed for her lost father, Ernie knew what she was going through. He had lost his own father a dozen years earlier when Gregory Singleton had died in a farming accident. Gregory had mortgaged the sheep station to the hilt to buy a new tractor to do the heavy farm chores. Two days later, he was killed when the tractor slipped out of gear and rolled back down a small hill, running over him. Although he had been hard put for years making the small farm pay enough to meet the mortgage payments (that he had only recently paid off), Ernie had left the tractor at the bottom of the hill, where it was now little more than a rusted-out hulk.

Also, he felt more than a little responsible for the death of Tony Frankland. Ernie now knew the answer to the question that had puzzled him the night before. Why had he been able to escape so easily from the demon woman after changing into the black wolf? Because the creature was only interested in men. The moment that Ernie had transformed into the black wolf, he had ceased to be a man and had become a wolf, so that the creature had immediately lost interest in him and had gone in search of an alternative victim. So while Ernie had been fleeing, terrified, through the forest in wolf form, the demon woman had been heading away from Merridale on a path that would lead her to Lenoak (the town after LePage), where she would locate and brutally kill Rowena’s father. Instead of me! thought Ernie, laying his head against his wife’s and crying with her for a while.


Half an hour later Ernie’s mother, Victoria, arrived from LePage to look after Rowena for the next few days.

“She’ll be all right with me,” said Victoria, looking up at the two men from where she sat beside the double bed where Rowena lay sleeping, thanks to two Mogadon capsules.

“I’ll get Gina Foley to stop in later on if she can,” said Bear, one arm tightly around Ernie’s waist, helping to support his friend, who was in almost as deep a state of shock as Rowena.

After a little more small talk, Bear half led, half carried Ernie to the living room and sat beside him on the sofa in the dark, until gradually, after nearly an hour, Ernie started to slowly pull out of his daze.

“Oh God, it’s all my fault!” cried Ernie.

“What is all your fault?” asked Bear, startling Ernie, who had not realised that there was anyone in the room with him.

“That Tony is dead.”

Puzzled, Bear said, “There’s nothing you could have done to stop it.”

“Yes, there was, I caused it,” said Ernie. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, the words flowed out of him as in a rush he related his experience the night before and his theory that the demon woman had to kill one victim every night, so that by eluding her, he had sent her into the night looking for another victim, thereby sealing Tony Frankland’s fate. He left out nothing except the fact that he had managed to escape by changing into the black wolf.

However, Bear Ross was too astounded by the whole tale to pick up that one missing link. A God-fearing Catholic all his life, Bear had been taught to believe in the supernatural in the guise of Satan and his minions of demons, so he did not discount the story entirely. However, he knew that Ernie had been devastated by the death of Tony Frankland and wondered whether,, in his current state of shock, he might have hallucinated the whole incident.

Realising that his friend did not believe him, Ernie decided that he would have to be the one to track down and drive away or destroy the creature terrorising the area. Although he had no clue yet what the demon woman was, he did not doubt that it was of supernatural origin, so that nothing that Detective Inspector Kenneth Fisher, or his legion of police now swarming through the local townships, did, could possibly have any effect upon it.


Ernie awakened before sunrise the next morning. He quickly looked in on Rowena (who was sharing the double bed with Victoria and Kirsty, while Ernie had slept in Kirsty’s bedroom) to see that she was sleeping soundly, and then set out to do the most urgent of his farm chores. Then, after ninety minutes or so helping Brian Horne at Cherrytree Farm, he headed the Land-Rover for Glen Hartwell.

The Glen Hartwell Public Lending Library in Dirk Hartog Place had been founded over a century and a half ago and was one of the best reference libraries in the state -- second only to the State Library in Melbourne. So Ernie was confident that he would soon find some reference to the demon woman. However, after more than an hour of futilely flicking through texts in the non-fiction section at the back of the library, he was ready to ask for help.

Looking down the long aisle between the rows of floor-to-ceiling length bookcases that separated the library into different sections, Ernie could see the head librarian sorting through index cards at her desk near the front of the library and thought, Not old Glenda? Surely I couldn’t ask her?

Glenda Pettyjohn had been employed at the library for as long as anyone in the area could remember. Barely a hundred and fifty centimetres tall, she was grey-haired and wrinkle-skinned, wore her hair in a tight bun high atop her head and was at least in her late eighties.

But how could I? thought Ernie, remembering with terror the sight of the pearl white thighs and what they held between them, lowering toward his face. How could I even hint at female genitalia to old Miss Pettyjohn?

Yet when at last he summoned up the courage to approach her, weaving a weird and woolly tale about having heard vaguely of a legend that he wanted to read up on, the old lady didn’t bat an eye at the talk of female genitalia that opened to reveal razor-sharp teeth. Then, without a word, she led him back toward the reference section at the rear of the library.

After hunting through the various encyclopaedias of the occult, which Ernie had already flicked through, for a few minutes, she extracted a large volume that was obviously less than a decade old, titled Legends, Myths and Magicks of Glen Hartwell and Willamby by William Morrissey-Blaxland (from the notes of the late Pr. Daley Bromby).

After a short search through the book the old lady located a chapter called “THE NIGHTMARES”, that included an extremely graphic frontispiece from a sixteenth-century woodcut of a demon woman like the one that had attacked Ernie, lowering herself onto the face of a sleeping man.

“That’s what you’re looking for, young man,” said Glenda Pettyjohn, “the Nightmare. It’s where the word originated from.”

Although looking as though she was about to relate the whole legend to Ernie, Glenda was soon called away to attend to someone wanting to take out books, leaving Ernie to read through the chapter to himself:

“Originally, the term ‘nightmare’ referred to a female monster who was (depending on the locality of the legend) either a ghost (or disembodied soul), a demon from Hell, or a living woman over whom a sorcerer’s spell had been cast. The nightmare (so named because she was a mare -- i.e. female -- who always appeared at night) appeared as a beautiful woman who usually arrived bathed in an aura of blinding light that made her seem almost angelic to those she visited. Until she descended upon her chosen victim (always an adult or adolescent male), straddled his face with her powerful thighs, and then began to lower her genitalia toward him. At the last instant as the man had resigned himself to performing cunnilingus on the ‘woman’ her sex mouth would open to reveal row upon row of salivating, pearly white teeth that would chew and tear at the man’s face, literally eating out the insides of his skull, leaving it looking like a great gourd with the insides scooped out.

“Undoubtedly, the legend of the nightmare springs from man’s secret fear of woman. Throughout history, men have liked to portray themselves as the strong sex and women as the gentle (or weak) sex. However, man’s enslavement to his overwhelming sex drive has actually made him the weak sex. So much so that most men (even those who are happily married) have a secret fear of women -- the strong sex! This explains why, throughout history, most mythical monsters have been female (since, until recently, most storytellers were male).

“The legend of the nightmare goes back three or four thousand years in one form or another, and was the basis of many more modern legends such as the incubus, the succubus, the Irish Sheela-Na-Nigh, the Jamaican Krull (also called the Vagina Dentata), as well as the now commonplace vampire (almost always female before Bram Stoker’s Dracula) ....”

Ernie continued to read through the chapter, all twenty-nine pages; however, it told him little that he did not already know. And to his chagrin, although the book went into great detail about what the nightmare was and how a sorcerer could turn a living woman into a nightmare, there was not a single word about how to protectyourself against a nightmare, or better yet, how to destroy or send a nightmare back to the grave.

After flicking through the book for a moment, in case there was a special chapter reserved for defence against the creatures covered elsewhere, Ernie took the book to the front desk to check it out of the library.

Ernie watched old Glenda Pettyjohn flicking through the racks of library cards for a moment, before summoning up the courage to say, “I was wanting to look at some of the myths in this book in greater depth ... And er ... I was wondering if you could tell me how to get in touch with Mr. Morrissey-Blaxland?”

“You could try looking in the local telephone directory,” suggested the old lady without looking up from her library cards. “I believe he lives locally in LePage.”

Finally, Glenda matched Ernie’s library card with the file index card, and then he departed, determined to ring the author from the red public telephone box on the corner of Dirk Hartog Place and Boothy Street.

After flicking through the white pages for a few moments, Ernie located a listing for MORRISSEY-BLAXLAND, Pr. W. E. V.

“William Morrissey-Blaxland,” announced the voice on the other end of the telephone when Ernie finally managed to ring through after miss-dialling twice.

“The author?” asked Ernie.

“Yes, that is correct.”

With a lot of stammering, humming and hawing, Ernie explained that he was hoping that the professor could give him a lot more background detail on the legends in his book.

“Why, of course, young man,” said the professor. To the surprise of Ernie, who had expected to be told that he was much too busy for such nonsense. “In fact, I’m free right now, if you would care to come around.”

Still a little dazed by the Professor’s unexpected graciousness, Ernie pulled up outside the author’s house in Weaver Street, LePage, just over twenty minutes later.

Five minutes later, Ernie was nestled in a large armchair, enjoying the warmth of an open log fire, sipping coffee and trying to explain his presence there. After a little humming and hawing, he finally said, “The real reason I wanted to speak to you was that I’ve noticed that although your book chronicles many types of monsters, it doesn’t mention how to deal with them? How to kill them or at least drive them away?”

“Well, of course not,” said the professor, looking surprised by Ernie’s comment. “After all, none of them are real. They are only myths and legends, so what would have been the point of detailing fictitious methods of dealing with them?”

“Then you don’t know ...?”

“I may have the formula for dealing with whatever demon you’re interested in. As you know, I wrote the book from the research notes of my longtime friend Professor Daley Bromby. At the time of his death in late 1979, Daley left behind thousands of pages of notes for his intended book. It took me nearly two years just to read through everything to decide what to put into the final manuscript.”

“And the rest?”

“All the notes are stored away carefully,” said the professor, getting up from his armchair. Signalling for Ernie to follow, he led him down a corridor to a large room at the back of the house. The room was devoid of furniture, apart from a dozen large four-drawer metal filing cabinets that lined the walls, and three tall reading stools.

“This is where I keep my research materials and newspaper clippings for possible use in future books. Those three comprise the notes left behind by Daley.” So saying he led Ernie across to three cabinets, whose twelve drawers were almost overflowing with sheets of single-spaced typing.

Seeing Ernie’s look of bewilderment, the professor chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, it’s not quite as hopeless as it looks. In the two years it took me to read all of this, I had the foresight to sort it all alphabetically by name of each legend.”

“It ... it’s the original legend of the nightmare that I’m interested in,” explained Ernie.

Morrissey-Blaxland looked startled by the choice; however, he quickly recovered his composure and selected the third drawer in the middle cabinet. After leafing through the mass of papers for a while, he lifted out nearly five hundred pages and said, “There you are. Everything that my friend and mentor was able to unearth about the legend of the nightmare.”

“My God,” said Ernie, taking the great mass of papers. “It must have taken him years to research each legend?”

“Yes. He researched the legends of the occult his entire adult life, and spent the last six years from 1973 to 1979 researching them full-time.”

Ernie stared at the wad of papers, obviously not knowing where to start. Seeing his bewilderment, Morrissey-Blaxland said, “Take them home with you, if you like. Read it through at you leisure, there’s no hurry.”

“But there is,” said Ernie, almost going on to say, Every day wasted means another life lost to the nightmare of Glen Hartwell! However, he stopped himself just in time and said instead, “I wonder ... I wonder if you’ve noticed how similar the method used by the nightmare seems to be to the killings going on around the Glen at the moment?”

“Why ... why yes ... yes of course,” said the professor hesitantly, “from the sounds of what has been reported of the killings, the state of the corpses is identical to that of a nightmare victim. But, of course, there cannot be any connection, since the nightmare is a mere myth ... Nothing more.”

“And yet Professor Bromby devoted his whole life to investigating such myths?”

“Why yes ... yes, I’m afraid to say that Daley did believe in the physical reality of every one of the legends that he researched ... But then most brilliant men have their little idiosyncrasies. Daley’s was that he could not always tell where reality stopped and fantasy started.”

Ernie thought about this for a moment before saying, “Professor Bromby finished his researches and then died before he had a chance to write his intended book?”

“That is correct.”

“What did he die of?”

“A cardiac arrest caused by old age. Born in late 1889, Daley had just turned ninety a few weeks before his death.”

The professor paused for a moment, then added, “But of course, there were those who believed otherwise ... In researching Legends, Myths and Magicks ... Daley locked horns with a local magic society called the OTA: the Ordo Templi Australis. Which translates as the Order of the Templars of the South, and who were a breakaway from Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, the Order of the Templars of the East.

“So the story goes, the Ordo Templi Australis was founded by Crowley himself during a brief trip to Australia. However, a major rift soon developed between the two occult groups, and Crowley returned to Europe, threatening psychic death against the Ordo Templi Australis.

“Although the OTA stridently deny this, claiming to be related to an ancient order whose roots go back a thousand years or more in Southern Europe ... Nevertheless, whatever the truth may be, despite his basically sympathetic treatment of the Ordo Templi Australis in his notes, somehow Daley had a falling out with the OTA leaders. So, for nearly a decade after his death, local occultists insisted that Daley Bromby had died as a result of a psychic attack from the OTA.”

“A psychic attack?” asked Ernie, having never heard the term before.

“Psychic attack assumes that since thought is made up of measurable rays -- alpha, beta, delta, and gamma rays -- that these rays can somehow be transmitted out of the brain like radar waves, to scramble someone else’s thought waves to make them dizzy, forgetful, nauseous, or even, in very rare cases, to kill them.”

The two men talked for a fair while longer, and then, still clutching the great wad of papers, Ernie started to leave. They had almost reached the front door of the house when Ernie turned back to say, “I wonder if you could put me in touch with this Ordo Templi Australis?”

Seeming surprised by the question, Morrissey-Blaxland hesitated for a moment before finally saying, “Why yes ... if you like ... Their current leader is a man named Alwyn leLean. His address is 226 Providence Street, Glen Hartwell.”

When Ernie finally returned to the Land-Rover, he was surprised to find that it was already growing dark, which meant that he had spent a lot longer than he had expected with the professor. Although he knew that it meant allowing another death to occur, he decided that he would have to wait until the next day before approaching Alwyn leLean.


Ernie had not known what to expect when he finally arrived outside 226 Providence Street. Providence Street is in the outermost reaches of Glen Hartwell (what some people insist on calling the Not-To-Be-Named sector of the Glen), where, although still officially part of the town, each house sits on a half-hectare lot. Rumours of mad scientists and assorted lunatics abounded regarding the area.

Although Ernie didn’t take the rumours seriously, he still had, had visions of 226 being some kind of ramshackle mansion with endless gables and innumerable storeys, and of Alwyn leLean being a sinister-looking, black robed, pointy-hatted sorcerer.

Instead the house was a plain, unassuming, double-fronted, single-storey white, weatherboard and leLean a tall, distinguished-looking man in his late fifties. Dressed in a smart cream cardigan and slacks, wearing modern wire-rimmed glasses, he was anything but how Ernie had expected him to be.

“Come inside Mr. Singleton,” said leLean warmly, “or should I say black wolf.” Ernie looked startled, making leLean laugh as he explained, “Not all occultists are charlatans, Mr. Singleton. It was my pronounced Extra Sensory Perception, a gift or curse (I’ve often wondered which it is) that I’ve possessed since childhood, that made me interested in the Templars of the South in the first place.”

Leading a slightly dazed Ernie down the corridor toward the living room near the back of the house, leLean continued, “For years, my sixth sense has told me that the black wolf was someone living in the Merridale area. However, my powers weren’t ever strong enough to localise it ... Until you spoke to me over the telephone this morning. Then my ESP tingled, but when I saw you standing in the doorway just now, there could be no doubt about it. No doubt at all.”

Seeing Ernie’s worried look leLean was quick to assure him, “Relax my friend, you have nothing to fear from me. My powers also tell me that the black wolf is benevolent, not the mindless killer that certain sections of the yellow media have made him out to be. That is why I never committed myself to a major effort to use my powers to track him ... to track you down. If I had wanted to, I could have tracked the black wolf to your doorstep in perhaps a week or ten days.”

He paused for a moment to invite Ernie to sit at the yellow floral sofa, in front of which a coffee pot sat on a small, glass-topped table. As he poured coffee for them, leLean said, “But that is mere trivia. Of more importance is the nightmare stalking Glen Hartwell.”

At this, Ernie stared gape-mouthed at the older man and started to speak; however, leLean hurried to say, “Yes, I know all about the creature loose in the Glen. In fact ....” He hesitated for a moment. “In a way, I am responsible for what is going on.”

Seeing the look of astonishment on Ernie’s face, he quickly added, “Not deliberately, you understand, but rather it happened through my efforts.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Ernie, accepting the proffered coffee cup.

“Despite what you may have read about us in Professor Morrissey-Blaxland’s book, or heard from the professor himself, the Ordo Templi Australis is an order dedicated to using paranormal powers strictly for the performance of good deeds: white witches, if you like. However, many of the rituals we perform are highly volatile. Though normally careful, accidents do happen. Sometimes members of our coven have had epileptic-like seizures while performing rituals. Others have even died. On one occasion, twenty-five years ago, the then leader of our order, Lambert Stephenson, died as a result of massive third-degree burns, reportedly the victim of spontaneous human combustion....

“Nevertheless, to return to the matter in hand, six weeks ago our coven was performing a ritual to attempt to cure the ailing daughter of two of our members, Vera Hilliard, by sending out positive thought rays to her. Something went badly wrong, and during the ceremony the young neophyte, that is apprentice witch, metamorphosed into the creature that you are hunting ... At first we didn’t realise what had happened. We thought that it was just her spirit loosed from her body. But then, after the onset of the nightmare killings, we realised that Vera, who had been a sweet, charming girl in life, had somehow become transformed into a monster after death.”

“But how?” demanded Ernie. “If your neophyte had been good in life, how could she have become so evil after death?”

“We’re not quite certain,” admitted leLean. “At first, we thought that we had made some horrible mistake in our ritual. Although it was simple enough and we had performed the same ritual many, many times in the past.”

“But you think that you got it wrong this time and somehow turned young Vera into a monster?” suggested Ernie.

leLean shrugged his shoulders. “That is what we thought,” he admitted. “At first ....”

“At first?” asked Ernie.

“For some decades, the Ordo Templi Australis has had trouble with a rival coven, of ‘black witches’ -- as much as I hate to use that term -- situated in Lenoak. leLean paused for a moment and sighed heavily. “As much as I hate to think it ... I now believe that they launched a psychic attack upon us, while our ritual was in progress. Possibly they were attempting to conjure up a nightmare to launch at us, and their magic fused somehow with ours to turn poor Vera into the nightmare ... Or possibly ....” leLean sighed heavily again and shrugged, conceding that he was now only guessing.

The two men talked for another half an hour or so, but Ernie learnt little more from the white witch. He went away from the house on Providence Street feeling a mixture of success and failure. At last, he had discovered what the demon woman was, but they were still no nearer to stopping her. leLean had admitted that he did not have a clue how to lay the soul of Vera Hilliard to rest, although he had promised to keep poring through his vast library of occult lore in the hope of locating an answer.


Ernie returned to the Singleton sheep station to find Rowena, Victoria and Kirsty feeding the last of the farm animals. (Although to young Kirsty, it was more of a game than a chore. While her mother and grandmother meted out corn to the farm chickens, the little girl gleefully tossed handfuls up into the air, clapping her hands in delight as the corn rained down on the unsuspecting fowl, sending them squawking for cover.)

While Ernie was waiting, hoping to hear from Alwyn leLean again, he went out again as the black wolf that month, walking the streets of Glen Hartwell in wolf guise, looking for the nightmare, not really knowing what he planned to do if he located her.

Each night, another killing occurred, and by the end of July, the whole neighbourhood was on edge, with people afraid to go to sleep in case they were murdered in the night; afraid of their neighbours and friends, in case he or she might be the crazed killer. As the death toll passed fifty, the police were forced to admit themselves unable to cope with the situation, and a state of emergency was declared by the Victorian Premier, who called on the Prime Minister for help. The Federal Government responded by sending in a troop of more than a thousand soldiers from the Australian Army and Army Reserves, in a bid to throw a cordon around the whole Glen Hartwell area. However, with over a dozen small country towns in the murder area, an effective cordon was impossible and virtually pointless anyway, since the killer had shown no inclination to invade the rest of Australia.

All it managed to do was put further strain on the already tense country folk. As one local put it, “It’s not to keep the killer in! It’s to keep us in!” And in essence, that was true. As in any plague situation, the federal government was perfectly prepared to sacrifice the local population if necessary to contain the ‘sickness’.

It was about a week after Ernie’s first visit with Alwyn leLean that all Hell broke loose in the East Merridale area, with the killing of seventeen-year-old Vic Hart, on the last day of July.

“I’ll kill him, I’ll bloody well kill him!” shouted Sam Hart, seemingly impervious to the state of his wife, Georgina, who had had to be sedated by Gina Foley.

“But we don’t know who it is!” pointed out Bear Ross, trying not to antagonise the short, weasel-faced man. Although a giant of a man who towered over the dwarfish Hart, Bear knew how dangerous Sam Hart could be in one of his explosive screaming-swearing-crying rages, having had to tackle him on more than one occasion after Hart had gone berserk in either Bateman’s Hotel in Lawson Street, Glen Hartwell, or the Dorset Hotel in LePage; Hart’s two favourite drinking and fighting places until a few years earlier when he had been banned for life from both places.

“I know who it is!” insisted Sam Hart, drawing stares from both Kenneth Fisher (who, despite Bear’s presence, was still in charge of the murder investigations) and Drew Braidwood.

“Who?” asked Ernie, knowing in advance who Hart would suggest.

“The black wolf, of course!” insisted Hart, making Ernie fear that he would start a one-man wolf hunt to avenge the death of his son.

“We don’t know for sure that it’s the black wolf,” insisted Bear Ross, looking from Sam Hart to Ernie Singleton. Remembering what Ernie had told him about the creature that had attacked him, Bear felt guilty that he had not reported Ernie’s claim to Fisher, although he realised that it would have made him a laughing stock.

“What the Hell are you talking about?” demanded Fisher, so Bear and the others filled him in on the history of the black wolf that had roamed the local countryside at night since the early 1980s.

“Ridiculous!” scoffed Fisher. “How could a wolf survive that long in the wild?”

Despite his ranting and raving the day of his son’s death, Sam Hart quickly calmed down, making everyone think that he had returned to his usual callous, self-centred ways. Until two days later, when he lapsed into a catatonic state and had to be taken first to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, and then later the Queen’s Grove Sanatorium on the border of Westmoreland and Glen Hartwell for treatment.

It was nearly a fortnight after the death of Vic Hart that Ernie finally received a telephone call from Alwyn leLean. “I’ve made contact with Morton Matthews -- the leader of the black coven in Lenoak,” said leLean. “And he’s agreed to help us out.”

“Can he undo the evil that he’s caused?” asked Ernie, not certain whether Matthews’ offer was good news or bad.

“He claims he can. Although I must admit that he has the reputation of being a boaster.”

It was two nights later, in mid-August, when the two covens, plus Ernie, gathered in Alwyn leLean’s living room, from which all of the furniture had been removed in advance.

Morton Matthews (a tall, lean man, whose high widow’s peak and exaggerated goatee beard made him exactly the clichéd picture of a sorcerer that Ernie had expected Alwyn leLean to be) seemed shocked by the appearance of Ernie at the ceremony.

Ernie, in turn, was shocked to see the twenty-six witches arrayed in long, flowing purple-silk gowns, having believed that ceremonial garb was unnecessary. Seeing Ernie’s surprise, leLean explained, “The Ordo Templi Australis usually performs magic in street clothes; however, Morton’s group prefer to perform in ceremonial garb.” In a very low voice, he added, “So we agreed to go along, rather than be embroiled in a lengthy, pointless argument.”

Despite his initial displeasure at the sight of an outsider, when introduced to Ernie, Morton Matthews did his best to be charming. “A great pleasure to have you here with us tonight, Mr. Singleton,” he gushed. As they talked, Matthews tried to appear contrite about any part that he may have played in unleashing the nightmare onto Glen Hartwell. However, Ernie soon realised that his main concern was that if the killing continued much longer, he might find himself answering to the police.

After five or six minutes of gushing smarm from Matthews, Ernie was introduced to the other witches in the two covens, including a grey-haired couple who were obviously husband and wife: The man tall, lean and distinguished looking; the woman nearly a head shorter but still beautiful, although in her mid-fifties. Without being told, Ernie recognised them as Vera Hilliard’s parents. Until now, he had only thought of Vera as a monster that needed to be destroyed. But seeing the pain in her parents’ eyes, for the first time, it was brought home to Ernie that the nightmare of Glen Hartwell was every bit as much a victim of Morton Matthews’ evil as those whom she had killed.

Finally, the preparations began. To Ernie’s surprise, Matthews unrolled a large, black silk square, upon which a white circle containing a five-pointed star had been woven, in the middle of the living room floor.

Seeing Ernie’s surprise, leLean explained, “Although the magic circle can be painted on, or formed with dirt or powder, in the Middle Ages, during the witch hunt hysteria, it was found to be more convenient to have the circle, or Cone of Power, as it is called, embroidered onto a silk square. It is lightweight and can be carried great distances, and if the witch hunters descended onto your gathering, it could quickly be thrown into the ritual fire and in seconds, their most important piece of evidence against you would be destroyed.”

Embroidered outside the circle and in the centre of the pentacle (five-pointed star) was writing in Hebrew. In each of the points of the pentacle was placed a black candle. A small brazier was placed in the centre of the pentacle and lighted.

As Ernie watched in astonishment, Morton Matthews started to chant in Hebrew, flicking pinches of finely chopped herbs into the brazier as he chanted. Each time he flicked, the small flame puffed up and began slowly to increase in size, until it soon seemed much too large to be contained within the goblet-sized brazier in which it burnt.

After a few minutes, the first stage of the ritual was completed. Now dressed in purple silk robes like the others, Ernie found himself part of a daisy chain of witches, holding hands and dancing anticlockwise around the Cone of Power while Morton Matthews continued to chant in Hebrew.


Although it was only nine-thirty, Bear Ross was exhausted after a hard day traipsing through the countryside as part of Ken Fisher’s squad. So he went to bed and almost immediately fell asleep. Only to awaken an hour later to find the small room filled with blinding yellow light.

My God, the apartment’s on fire! thought Bear, trying to struggle out of bed, only to find his limbs frozen in place.

Unable to move, he lay on his back watching the blinding light, from which a small white pin-prick emanated near one corner of the ceiling. As Bear watched, the white dot slowly began to increase in size until it took on the form of a beautiful woman, whose bleached white skin seemed almost transparent as she slowly floated down from the ceiling toward him.

Despite her outward beauty, Bear recognised her as evil and tried with all his might to break free from the ‘glamour’ which held him bound to the bed faster than any iron chains.

Seeing the barrel-chested man powerless beneath her magic, the nightmare lifted back her head and broke into peals of cackling laughter, as she continued to descend until she was kneeling on the big man’s chest.

As her soft white thighs wrapped vice-like around his face, Bear remembered Ernie’s tale of a beautiful demon whose vulva opened to reveal long, pearly white teeth, and even before her genitalia opened, Bear began to scream hysterically.

For a moment, the nightmare was content to match Bear’s shrieks of terror with cackles of laughter, and then finally her sex mouth began to open to reveal the razor-sharp, salivating fangs that Bear already knew would be there. Centimetre by centimetre, the creature lowered itself onto Bear, until the gleaming teeth were just touching his flesh.

Then, as Bear futilely tried to pull himself down deeper into the bed to escape them, her vulva teeth gaped open wide over his face and prepared to take the first fatal bite that would tear away Bear’s face, from beneath the chin to just above the bridge of the nose.


Ernie Singleton wished that he could leave the circle of dancing, purple-robed witches, now firmly convinced that Morton Matthews was nothing but a charlatan. He had actually started to break away from the magic circle when, above the Cone of Power, the air began to crackle like static electricity. Again and again it crackled, until Ernie could see specks of white light wavering in the air, increasing in size and number with each revolution that the witches performed, with each chanting of the simple eight-line mantra that Matthews was now almost shrieking over and over again.


Bear Ross had given up all hope, given up on life itself as the lethal teeth slowly poised to bite down.

Hearing the creature let out a tremendous shriek, at first, Bear thought that it was a shriek of conquest. Then, to his astonishment, as she started to rock from side to side, he realised that it was a shriek of anger and dismay, as some unseen force attempted to pull her away from him.

Bear, a deeply religious man, had been praying silently to the Blessed Virgin as the teeth lowered over his face, and now believed that She had answered his prayers, as kicking and writhing furiously, the nightmare was physically pulled up backwards off his face.

Quickly, Bear rolled onto the floor, in case the creature fell back onto the bed. He lay on the carpet watching in amazement as, continuing to struggle against the unseen adversary, the nightmare was slowly pulled up backwards toward the ceiling in a strange, jerky manner as though someone had her on a giant fishing line and was slowly reeling her in.

As Bear watched, she hit the ceiling with a strange plopping sound. The surface of the ceiling seemed to have become elastic and bulged inward for a moment against her twisting head, until slowly, still screaming in indignation, she began to disappear headfirst into the very fabric of the ceiling, centimetre by centimetre, like a diver slowly disappearing into the water in a slow-motion replay. Except that the nightmare was defying gravity by ‘diving’ upwards into hard plasterboard, not water.

Finally, even her toes had disappeared, and then the yellow light that had heralded her arrival began to seep up into the ceiling like shiny dust being sucked up into a vacuum cleaner. Until Bear was once again in darkness, terrified by his close encounter with death, yet grateful to still be alive.


Now even Ernie was chanting and dancing with vigour, as slowly the static crackle began to build up until the atmosphere inside the living room was flashing like lightning.

Throughout the ‘calling’, Morton Matthews had continued to throw pinches of varicoloured herbs and powders onto the brazier in the centre of the five-pointed star; each sprinkle of powder making the fire flame up for a second. As Matthews threw his last pinch onto the brazier, there was a loud crash upon the corrugated-iron roof, followed by a high-pitched screech. Then blinding yellow light began to flow into the living room through the solid ceiling.

After a moment, to Ernie’s astonishment, he saw five toes seep in through the fabric of the ceiling, followed by a female foot, and then the start of a leg. Quickly, the second foot appeared, followed by the lower body of the nightmare, which still writhed around wildly, shrieking her fear and indignation at this unexpected treatment.

The nightmare was pulled into the room by Matthews’ magic that dragged her down into the pentacle within the Cone of Power, until she was almost being dragged into the now flaring fire within the small brazier.

Realising what Matthews intended to do, Alwyn leLean protested, “No, she must not be destroyed by the fire!”

“Purging with fire is the only way to make her atone for the evil that she ha,s committed!” insisted Morton Matthews.

“No!” protested leLean. “The evil isn’t hers, it is ours! We made her what she is! We turned her into a demon!” Pointing toward the twisting, snarling creature, “Somewhere within that creature is the spirit of Vera Hilliard. A spirit poisoned by us against her free will!”

Realising that leLean meant that it was his fault, Matthews flushed red from anger, but reluctantly consented to the white witch’s demand and began to perform a healing ritual to draw out the psychic poison from the spirit of Vera Hilliard.

Almost as complex as the charm that had pulled the nightmare from Bear Ross’s apartment, the healing spell continued into the early hours of the morning. At first, the creature snarled and glared at the circle of dancing witches, shrieking each time that a part of the ‘exorcism’ ritual was completed. But slowly the evil look on her beautiful face began to dissolve away, allowing her features to soften, becoming gradually more and more human, less and less monstrous. Gradually her strident shrieking began to dim, began to lower in pitch and volume, till it tapered out entirely as bit by bit the evil was drawn out of her and sent spiralling down into the flaming brazier, making the flames flare up brightly for an instant, leaving the soul of Vera Hilliard a little less polluted.

Until finally, barely an hour before dawn, the ritual cleansing was complete and the last of the psychic poison was gone, and with it went the nightmare: leaving behind the soul of Vera Hilliard. Still almost supernaturally beautiful, but now a pure innocent beauty, not the leering, sensuous beauty of the nightmare.

“Darling ... darling you’re back ...” said Eleanora Hilliard, sobbing from joy to see the spirit of her daughter cleansed of Morton Matthews’ evil.

“Don’t cry, Mother,” said Vera, reaching out through the magic circle that no longer could contain her now that the evil that it had been designed to imprison had been cleansed from her. For a few moments, Vera took her mother into her ghostly arms and hugged her, before finally pulling away, saying, “It’s time for me to go on, Mother. On to the next level of existence.”

Sebastian Hilliard put a loving arm around his wife’s waist and gently pulled her away as the spirit of their daughter began to fade from sight.

“As 1 said before,” said Alwyn leLean as they were packing away their magic paraphernalia, “the nightmare herself wasn’t evil. She was just a victim of human evil.” looking sharply toward Morton Matthews he added, “Hopefully this will be a lesson to all of us, that magic should only be used for good, never evil purposes!”


Although the killings stopped in mid-August, remnants of the Australian Army and Melbourne Police stayed in the area until Christmas 1995. Although no murderer was ever caught, Detective Inspector Kenneth Fisher returned to Melbourne a hero, credited with having scared the killer off. To the annoyance of Mel Forbes and Bear Ross, Fisher received a Certificate of Merit at a special police awards ceremony and later picked up a minor award in the Royal Honours List.

Though Glen Hartwell is a big town by country standards, nearly 5% of the adult male population had been killed over a two-and-a-half-month period, and Ernie Singleton knew (as he tried to comfort Rowena, who still grieved from the murder of her father, Tony Frankland) that it would be years before Glen Hartwell and Merridale fully recovered.

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