FOLLOW THE LEADER

A new girl, Leader, appears in G.H. and other girls start dying in mysterious ways

         SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 2025

         The three sisters, Sheree, Toni, and Maggie Mayfield were walking through the forest a couple of kilometres outside Daley in the Victorian countryside, a little after 1:00 PM.
         “Smell that sweet lemon aroma,” enthused Sheree, a tall, leggy blonde. At fifteen, Sheree was the oldest, if not necessarily the wisest of the three sisters.
         “I didn’t know there were lemon trees outside Daley?” said Maggie. At thirteen, Maggie was the youngest of the girls, a strawberry blonde like her mother.
         “No, Dingleberry,” taunted Toni, at fourteen, short and raven-haired like her father, “they’re from lemon-scented gum trees.”
         “Don’t call me Dingleberry,” said Maggie, pouting.
         “Well, you are!”
         “Lemon-scented gum trees are prolific between BeauLarkin and Willamby,” said Sheree, trying to change the subject and protect her youngest sister from Toni’s teasing.
         Breathing in deeply, Maggie said, “Well, they’re sure nice smelling.”
         “You can keep them, country girl,” teased Toni, “when I’m sixteen, I’m gonna leave school and go to Melbourne; get away from the damned smelly countryside. All we smell on the farm is shit ... horse shit, cow shit, dog shit, sheep shit ... You can’t go anywhere without smelling shit!”
         “Yeah, like Mum and Dad are gonna let you leave school at sixteen,” pointed out Sheree.
         “I won’t tell them till it’s a done deal.”
         “I’ll tell them,” said Maggie, regretting it immediately.
         “You dob on me, squirt, and you won’t live to reach sixteen.”
         As Toni started toward the youngest girl, Sheree stepped between her two sisters, to stop Toni bullying Maggie.
         “Leave her alone, she won’t dob on you.”
         “No, I won’t dob on you,” agreed Maggie disingenuously, since she intended to tell their parents as soon as they got home again.
         “Better not, squirt.”
         “Am not a squirt,” protested Maggie, but too quietly for Toni to hear.
         The argument might have raged on longer, if not for the tall, white-blonde girl striding through the forest towards them.
         “Hi, I’m Leader,” said the girl, who looked eighteen, but may have been only fourteen or fifteen.
         She held out her hand, and the three sisters shook hands with her, introducing themselves as they did so.
         “Leader, that’s a strange name,” said Maggie.
         “Not as strange as you, squirt,” teased Toni.
         “Sisters shouldn’t argue,” insisted Leader.
         “If you had to live with her, you’d feel like arguing too,” insisted Toni as, without even realising it, the three sisters started following Leader through the dense forestland.
         After a few minutes Toni asked, “So where are we going?”
         “Following Leader,” teased Maggie.
         “Quiet, squirt!”
         “Don’t call me squirt!”
         “Sisters shouldn’t argue,” repeated Leader, without looking back.
         “She’s right,” seconded Sheree, then to Leader: “So where are you leading us.”
         “Hopefully not into temptation,” teased Maggie, closer to the truth than she realised.
         “Quiet, squirt!”
         “I’m taking you on a fabulous adventure, a wonderful new experience, a new world even,” explained Leader.
         “A new world?” puzzled Maggie: “Unless you’re Doctor Who, that isn’t possible.”
         “Quiet, squirt!” protested Toni, then to Leader: “Ignore her; she’s just a silly child.”
         “And what are you, a silly adult,” taunted Maggie, backing away quickly, as Toni started toward her.
         “Now, now, girls,” said Sheree, stepping between them.
         
         Over at the Yellow House in Rochester Road, Merridale, they were sitting down to one of Deidre Morton’s sumptuous dinners.
         “So what delights have you prepared for us today, Mrs. M?” asked Sheila Bennett. At thirty-six, Sheila, a Goth chick with black-and-orange striped hair, was Chief Constable of the BeauLarkin to Willamby region, and was Mrs. Morton’s favourite tenant.
         “Roast Turkey a L’Orange, with lemon meringue pie for dessert,” said Deidre, a short, dumpy, sixty-something woman, trained as a cordon bleu chef before inheriting the Yellow House – so nicknamed due to Deidre’s obsession with the colour yellow.
         “Yum, yum,” said Terri Scott. The same age as Sheila, Terri was a beautiful ash blonde, and the Senior Sergeant of the local area, Sheila’s direct boss.
         “Hopefully you’ve put plenty of brandy in them both,” said Tommy Turner, a would-be alcoholic, forced off the wagon by Deidre confiscating his stash of alcohol.
         “Brandy in lemon meringue pie?” asked Natasha Lipzing, at seventy-one the tall, grey-haired woman had lived for just over half of her life at the boarding house. “You really are a philistine.”
         “Well, at least I hope you’ve smothered the roast in brandy?”
         “Actually, I think cretin is a better word for him,” said Freddy Kingston, a tall, balding retiree.
         “There is no brandy, rum, or alcohol of any sort in either the roast, or the lemon meringue pie!” said Deidre pointedly: “We’re not all alcoholics like you, Tommy.”
         “I’m not an alcoholic! I just think life is rosier when I’m plastered like a judge! It takes an edge off the world.”
         “In other words, his vision gets blurry,” explained Colin Klein. A tall, fifty-year-old man with deep red hair, Colin had worked for thirty years as a top London crime reporter, before coming to Australia to research a book on local legends. He was now a constable in the Glen Hartwell Police, and was engaged to Terri.
         “Don’t worry, Tommy, I won’t forget the tot of brandy I let you have with your meals,” assured Deidre.
         “I’d prefer a slug.”
         “Lean forward and I’ll give you a slug,” teased Leo Laxman, raising his fists. A tall black Jamaican, Leo was employed as a nurse at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.
         “Ha-ha, it is to laugh,” said Tommy.
         “Actually a snifter of brandy would go down nicely with our meal,” enthused Terri.
         “I agree,” seconded Leo.
         “Three snifters of brandy coming right up,” said Deidre.
         “You should at least ask me if Leo and Tare can have some of my brandy,” protested Tommy.
         “Very well, may Leo and Terri each have a snifter of your brandy, Tommy?”
         “No!”
         “Three snifters of brandy coming right up,” said Deidre.
         “Well, she did ask you,” said Sheila Bennett with a laugh.
         
         Stopping not far from Mount Hargreaves ten kilometres or so outside Westmoreland, Leader held her arms up sideways and said:
         “Take my hands, and we can fly through the air like birds.”
         “Fly through the air like birds?” asked Maggie warily.
         “Haven’t you ever wanted to fly?”
         “No, I get air sick.”
         “Coward!” taunted Toni.
         “Am not a coward, I just get air sick ... You’re the one who’s afraid of mice ... so you’re the coward!”
         “You little squirt,” said Toni, advancing upon her sister, until Leader and Sheree got between them. “I’m not afraid of mice ... I just don’t like the verminous little bastards!”
         “Anyway,’ said Maggie, turning back the way they had come, “I’m going to tell Mum and Dad that you plan to leave school and go to Melbourne when you turn sixteen.”
         “You, little dobber!” cried Toni, however, Maggie was already out of reach, running back toward their parents station outside Daley township.
         “You dobber!” shouted Toni, turning to start after her.
         “Forget Maggie,” said Leader, holding her arms out toward them again.
         After a moment’s hesitation, Toni turned back, and Sheree and Toni took the blonde girl’s hands in theirs.
         “Now as Maggie said earlier, Follow Leader,” teased the blonde starting to walk forward slowly.
         At first straight along, then gradually she started walking up into the sky, as though climbing invisible stairs.
         “Hey, we’re going up like on an invisible staircase,” enthused Sheree, perhaps more willing to believe that anything is possible than her two younger sisters.
         “How is this possible?” demanded Toni, despite her tough act, starting to feel a little light headed.
         “Don’t worry about how it’s possible,” instructed Leader, “just enjoy the view.”
         Looking down they could see the sides, then eventually, as they climbed, the tops of pine, wattle, and gum trees.
         “Anything is possible ... if you only believe,” insisted the white-blonde, leading them higher and higher into the air.
         “How high are we going?” asked Toni, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
         “As high as you like,” said Leader with a laugh, “all the way to the moon, if you want.”
         “Wouldn’t we burn up as we left the Earth’s atmosphere?” asked Sheree.
         “Besides, there’s no air outside the Earth’s atmosphere,” protested Toni, more in the hope of returning to the ground where it was safe.
         Laughing, Leader said: “Then let’s just settle for Mount Hargreaves.”
         Looking forward, Toni and Sheree could see they were slowly approaching the mountain. The fifth tallest mountain in Australia, Mount Hargreaves had sheer sides for the first two hundred and fifty metres, making it difficult, but not impossible to climb. The three girls, however, were walking along at least three hundred metres in the air, and could easily see the large, rocky tor which acted as a base camp just above the two hundred and fifty metre height of the mountain.
         “Is that what we’re heading for?” asked Sheree, pointing with her free hand.
         “Yes, the rocky overhang.”
         If nerd girl were here, she’d probably call it a rocky tor, thought Toni Mayfield.
         “Yes, it is also called a rocky tor,” said Leader, as though hearing Toni’s thoughts. “Let’s go down there for a rest.”
         “Yes, we could do with a rest,” agreed Sheree, who was surprised at how tired she felt after a relatively short time walking through the air.
         Leader expertly lead them to the tor, where they landed softly, well short of the edge.
         “You can release my hands now,” said Leader.
         “As long as you’re not planning to leave us up here, two hundred and fifty metres above ground level?” asked Toni, starting to regret having agreed to go with the white-blonde girl.
         Laughing for a moment, Leader said: “Of course, I don’t intend to leave you stranded up the sheer face of the mount.”
         After a further moment’s hesitation, Sheree and Toni released the blonde girl’s hands, and followed her across to a patch of blueberries growing at the back of the rocky tor.
         “Are those safe to eat?” asked Toni walking across to the bush.
         “Of course,” said Leader, “they’re blueberries or huckleberries as the say in the southern states of the U.S.A.”
         “Is that where Huckleberry Hound gets his name from?” asked Sheree eating a few of the berries: “Because he’s blue.”
         “Exactly,” agreed Leader, smiling broadly.
         All three girls went across to eat their fill of the blueberries, for twenty minutes or so, before Leader said, “Time for us to go, girls.”
         “Yes, our parents will be worried about us,” said Sheree.
         “Especially if that squirt has been dobbing to them,” said Toni, although in truth, she was a little afraid of heights, and would be grateful when they returned to Earth.
         Holding her arms out again, the white-blonde teased, “Hold my hands again, or you’ll be left behind.”
         “Racing forward, the two Mayfield girls each grabbed one of Leader’s hands, as she started walking up into the air again.
         This time they did not stop until they were at least a kilometre into the air.
         “Wow, look at that view,” enthused Sheree, staring down at the matchstick trees below them.
         “You look,” said Toni, a little green in the face, “personally, I’m regretting eating all of those blueberries.”
         “They would have been nicer with sugar and whipped cream on them,” teased Sheree.
         “Ha-ha, it is to laugh,” said Toni, before projectile vomiting a blue mess, almost dropping Leader’s hand as she did so. “Oh, God!”
         “It can affect people like that sometimes, on their first flight,” apologised Leader.
         Laughing a little at her sister’s distress, Sheree explained, “I don’t think she’s very good with heights.”
         “Sorry, but isn’t flying wonderful?”
         Still green-faced, Toni said, “Technically, we’re not flying, we’re walking through the air.”
         “I can fix that,” said Leader, and then before the two girls could ask how, she released their hands and the two girls started plummeting to Earth. “Now you’re flying.”
         “This isn’t what we meant!” screamed Sheree.
         “Well, like those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, you went ‘uppty dup dup,” teased Leader with a broad shit-eater grin, “now you’re going ‘downty down down’!”
         “Help us!” shrieked Toni, before projectile vomiting again.
         “But that would spoil all the fun. The fun bit is where you both go splat on the ground.”
         “Nooooooooooooo!” shrieked Toni and Sheree, until they passed out from terror.
         “Damn it!” complained Leader: “I like it best when they scream in terror all the way down, then go ‘splat’! Fainting halfway down takes all of the fun out of it!”
         
         Over at the Mayfield Sheep and Cattle Station five kilometres outside Daley township Bethany Mayfield was milking their cows by hand, while her husband, Jonas, prepared food for them.
         “Where have those three girls got to?” asked Bethany, a.k.a. Beth, thirty-eight, a tall, busty, strawberry blonde.
         “Supposedly walking to help their dinner go down,” said Jonas, forty-five, short and raven-haired, but well muscled, “but in truth skiving off. They’ve always been afraid of hard work.”
         “That’s not fair, Jo,” protested Beth, “they work hard at school five days a week, and need some time off. After all they worked on the farm on Saturday.”
         “I worked hard on the farm Monday through Saturday, but now it’s Sunday and I’m still working. Do you see me skiving off?”
         “No, Honey,” said Beth with a sigh, knowing after twenty years marriage to him, what her husband expected her to say, “you’ve never skived off in your life.”
         “Too true,” agreed Jonas, missing the irony in his wife’s words. “If only the girls ....”
         He stopped as he saw a cloud of dust rapidly approaching at the forest end of the farm: “This could be them now.”
         After five minutes or so, Maggie, exhausted and gasping for breath, reached her parents.
         “Maggie May ... field,” teased her father, “where are Sheree and Toni?”
         After struggling for a moment to answer, Maggie sat on the bottom railing of the cow pen breathing deeply for a minute or two before she could answer:
         “They’ve gone off on some fabulous adventure with Leader.”
         “Who or what is Leader?” asked Jonas.
         “What fabulous adventure?” asked Beth.
         “Leader is a blonde chick, we met in the forest, and she said she could take us on a fabulous adventure.”
         “In other words, helping them skiving off?”
         “Dad, we work hard five days a week at school, then on the farm on Saturdays ... we need some time off!”
         “I work the farm from 4:00 AM to 9:00 PM seven days a week, without any time off!”
         “Yes, Dad, but you’re ....”
         “Be very careful how you finish that, girl,” warned Beth.
         “But you’re a strong, grown man ... we’re only teenage girls, we’re still children ... we need some time off ....”
         “Well, you’ve got me convinced, if not your Dad,” said Beth.
         “I still say, they should be helping us work the farm.”
         Suddenly seeing a chance to get Toni back for bullying her, Maggie said, “That reminds me ... Toni says as soon as she turns sixteen, she’s going to quit school and go off to Melbourne ... without even telling you two.”
         “Toni says what?” demanded Beth and Jo in unison.
         “Like Hell she is leaving school as soon as she turns sixteen!” insisted Jo.
         “How do you plan to stop her?” asked Beth.
         “I’ll get Terri Scott to put an ankle-bracelet on her, if necessary, so she can’t leave town without it blaring.”
         “You’d treat her like a criminal?” asked Beth.
         “Great idea, Dad,” said Maggie cheerfully, “that’ll teach her to try putting one over on Mum and you.”
         “Damn straight it will!”
         “Don’t say damn in front of Maggie.”
         “Toni says much worse than that in front of me,” lied Maggie, “she uses the F word all the time when you and Dad aren’t around.”
         “What?” demanded Jonas and Beth together.
         “All the time,” repeated the strawberry blonde girl, doing her best not to give herself away by smirking.
         “We’ll have to talk to her about that,” said Beth.
         “Damn straight, she’s not too old to get her bum whipped!”
         “Whip her good, Dad!” enthused Maggie, unable to resist smirking this time.
         
         By 6:00 PM Terri Scott and the others were getting ready to go home for tea, when Maggie, Bethany and Jonas Mayfield walked into the Morecambe Street Police Station.
         “Beth, Jo, what can we do for you?” asked Sheila Bennett.
         “Sheree and Toni are missing,” said Beth, close to tears.
         “We were walking a kilometre or so outside Daley, after lunch,” explained Maggie, “then this tall, blonde girl, name Leader, came up to us. She said she would take us on a fabulous adventure, a wonderful new experience. So we went with her through the forest for a few Kays, then I got sick of it and returned to the station.”
         “And the other two kept going with her?” asked Colin Klein.
         “Yes, it’s like she had them hypnotised.”
         “Do you know where they were when you left them?” asked Terri Scott.
         “I think they were within a kilometre or so of Mount Hargreaves outside Westmoreland.”
         “Okay, that’s a good place to start looking,” said Terri, taking out her mobile phone. “I’ll contact Stanlee Dempsey, Jessie Baker, and the others to meet us there.”
         
         An hour later, Terri, Sheila, and the others were at the base of Mount Hargreaves, along with two of Glen Hartwell’s six ambulances, four paramedics, Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green, Tilly Lombstrom, and Jesus Costello. Three other ambulances had taken Maggie, Bethany, and Jonas to the hospital, heavily sedated since they had been there when the two bodies had been found.
         The medics waited, while Sheila took the crime scene photographs with her mobile phone.
         Finally, the medics were allowed to examine the two bodies.
         “So what’s your initial thoughts?” asked Terri.
         “It looks like they’ve both fallen from a great height,” said Tilly, a tall, attractive fifty-something brunette.
         Terri and the medics looked up the sheer face of the mount.
         “They can’t have been trying to climb the mount on their own,” said Terri, “well, them and Leader?”
         “Who the Hell is Leader?” asked Elvis Green, nicknamed due to his long, black sideburns, and adoration of the late King of Rock and Roll.
         “According to Maggie, some tall, blonde girl, who promised to take all three Mayfield girls on a fabulous adventure, a wonderful new experience,” explained Terri.
         “Hopefully not skydiving,” said Sheila, “or else they forgot to wear their parachutes.”
         “Sheils!” protested Terri, Colin, Tilly, and Jesus.
         “What, I was just saying!”
         “Actually it could be,” said Elvis, “although God knows what plane they departed from. They certainly fell from at least a kilometre up.”
         “Well, who would take teen girls skydiving in this area, and not check that they were wearing parachutes?” asked Colin.
         “Louie Pascall has a Bell Huey,” reminded Sheila.
         “But Louie’s a good bloke,” said Terri, “he would never take teenage girls skydiving without written permission from their parents.”
         “And he would certainly make sure that they were wearing parachutes before jumping,” pointed out Terri.
         “And what happened to the blonde girl?” asked Tilly.
         “Leader,” said Terri.
         “Yes, since her remains are not here, clearly she had a parachute, or ... Or it’s another of Glen Hartwell’s wacky backy occurrences,” said Tilly.
         “Perhaps this Leader chick had a small plane somewhere?” suggested Sheila: “Took them up, then pushed them out?”
         “Maggie never mentioned a plane,” said Terri. “And even if they reached it after she’d headed back to her parents station, she would have heard it taking off.”
         “So what’s the other possibility?” asked Jesus (pronounced Hee-Zeus), “she flapped her arms like wings, and flew them up into the sky?”
         “Around G.H., anything is possible,” reminded Elvis.
         “So, where do we go from here, Chief?” asked Sheila, as the medics started to take Toni and Sheree’s remains to the ambulances.
         “First up, we have to try to find this Leader girl. All we know so far is that she’s tall, blonde, aged anything from fourteen to eighteen. We can’t interview her tonight, but after breakfast tomorrow, we’ll have to go to the hospital, to see what else Maggie can tell us about the girl?”
         

         MONDAY SEPTEMBER 15, 2025

         Straight after breakfast, Terri, Colin, Sheila, and Suzette Cummings went around to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, in Biblical Road, to talk to Maggie Mayfield.
         When they arrived in the puce-coloured room, Maggie was being helped with her breakfast by Topaz Moseley, a gorgeous thirty-something platinum blonde nurse.
         After Maggie had finished eating, Terri said: “I’m sorry, I know it’s still a shock, but we need to ask you about this girl, Leader, while it’s still fresh in your mind.”
         “Ask away,” said Maggie in a fragile little-old-lady voice.
         “Well, did she mention her surname, or where she lived?”
         “No, just said her name was Leader.”
         “And she was a blonde?” asked Colin.
         “Yes.”
         “What kind,” asked Terri, “an ash blonde, like me?”
         “No, her hair was white-blonde.”
         “A platinum blonde, like Topaz?” asked Sheila.
         “I ... I guess so.”
         
         In the forest, just outside Glen Hartwell, Iris and Poppy Llewellyn were skipping along, still with plenty of time to reach Glen Hartwell High School, also in Biblical Road, but at least a kilometre from the hospital. They saw no reason to get to school early, since being labelled as brainiacs by the other kids they had no real friends at school.
         “I don’t know why we can’t be homeschooled?” said Poppy, a tall, attractive raven-haired girl of fourteen.
         “Mum says she doesn’t have the time to teach us,” insisted Iris, a short, thirteen-year-old brunette.
         “How could she teach us? Neither Mum nor Dad is anywhere near as smart as us.”
         “That’s true. I guess they disprove the theory of hereditary I.Q.”
         “Anyway, we’re smart enough to teach ourselves ... with a little help from an online tutor.”
         “I guess that’s true,” agreed Iris.
         “Maybe we should talk to the head master at high school, to see if he can convince Mum and Dad to let us get online teaching.”
         “In which case, we’d better stop dawdling, so we can see Mr. Brierley before school.”
         “Good thinking, sis.”
         Before they could start walking faster, however, a tall, white-blonde girl stepped out of the forest and introduced herself, saying:
         “Hello my name is Leader,” She held out her right hand toward the two younger girls.
         Looking startled by the sudden appearance of this girl, whom they had never seen before, the Llewellyn sisters stood their ground for a moment. Finally Poppy stepped forward to shake hands and introduce herself. After a moment, Iris did the same.
         “So, are you new here, Leader?” asked Poppy, forgetting their plans to race to school to talk to Mr. Brierley.
         “I’ve been around a long, long time ... but I’ve only been in this area for a couple of days.”
         “You can’t have been around that long,” said Iris, looking puzzled, “you only look like a few years older than us.”
         “Looks can be deceiving,” said the tall blonde, “I’m actually older than I appear.”
         “So, are you on your way to Glen Hartwell High, like us?” asked Poppy.
         “No, I haven’t been to school for ages. School is for idiots.”
         “That’s true,” agreed Iris. “Poppy and I have been thinking of trying to get homeschooled, since the other kids pick on us for being too smart.”
         “Sadly, most people are morons,” said Leader with authority, “they’re always going to pick on smart kids, because they’ve envious ... because they know that you’re better than them.”
         “That is so true,” agreed Poppy, “you’re a pretty smart girl yourself.”
         “I guess, I’m in good company,” said Leader, doing her best to cosy up to the two teenagers. “Smart girls like us will always be ostracised. The boys are scared of us because we don’t simper and giggle at their feeble jokes; and the girls hate us for being smarter, better than them.”
         “That is so true,” agreed Iris, “we are better than them.”
         “Sure are,’ agreed Leader.
         Even as they spoke, the tall, blonde girl had started leading Iris and Poppy back into the forest, further and further away from Glen Hartwell High School.
         
         Finally finished talking to Maggie Mayfield, Terri, Colin, Sheila, and Suzette headed back outside to Terri’s police blue Lexus GX.
         “So what now, babe?” asked Colin.
         “I think we need to get a sketch of this Leader girl to take around the local towns,” suggested Terri, “maybe even get published in the local rags.”
         “You don’t really think a teenage girl could have killed them?” asked Suzette, a short raven-haired teen. “They fell from at least a kilometre.”
         “Which leaves us desperate to find out how they got at least a kilometre in the air,” pointed out Terri.
         “Maybe they flapped their arms like wings and flew into the air,” suggested Sheila.
         “Sheila!” said Terri, Colin, and Suzette.
         “Well, I don’t know. I failed aerodynamics at police college.”
         Half an hour later, they arrived at the teachers’ car park at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology.
         “Where we going?” asked Suzette.
         “To see a very talented painter,” explained Terri, leading them into the main building.
         “I remember this building with a due sense of trepidation,” said Sheila, looking uncomfortable, as they headed toward the arts and crafts wing.
         “Afraid they might still fail you, if they find out you cheated off Terri in all your exams?” teased Colin.
         “No, I’d arrest them for being a bum-pain in public, if they tried to do that.”
         “Still, the same dowdy off white walls that I remember from all those years ago,” mused Terri.
         “They have to use dowdy colours,” explained Suzette, “the idea is to demoralise the students so much that they do whatever they’re told.”
         “Sad but true,” said Colin, “that is one thing that Australia and the U.K. have in common.”
         “Besides our common love of fish and chips,” added Sheila.
         “Now she’s made me hungry,” complained Suzette.
         Finally, Terri stopped at the arts department, where she hoped to find Kayley Hoffman, the head painting instructress.
         Through the glass doors, they could see a tall, powerfully built, Amazonian brunette, who looked more like a builder’s labourer than the talented artist that she was.
         After entering the classroom, Terri quickly told Kayley what they needed.
         “Sure, I can do that,” agreed Kayley. She picked up a sketch book and some drawing supplies, and then followed them back out into the corridor. “Boy, these off-white walls are depressing.”
         “That’s intended to depress the originally out of the students,” explained Suzette.
         “That might work for Maths or English, or whatever, but in art class I need my students to show originally.”
         
         They had been walking for a kilometre or more through the forest, when Poppy, Iris, and Leader approached a large rock, perhaps four metres tall.
         “Don’t tell me that you want us to climb that?” asked Poppy, as the three girls stopped at the boulder.
         “Yeah, we’re brainy types, not athletic,” agreed Iris.
         “Don’t worry, we won’t be climbing it,” assured Leader, “we’ll be walking through it.”
         “Walking through it?” asked Poppy.
         “Unless that boulder is a sci-fi holograph, that isn’t possible,” assured Iris.
         “It is if you believe ... as the song says, ‘All things are possible ... if you only believe’.”
         “I think that’s a religious song,” protested Poppy, “it means miracles are possible, if only you believe in Jesus.”
         “I don’t think even Jesus performed the miracle of walking through the large boulder,” said Iris, “and I’ve read the bible from cover to cover ... three times.”
         “Haven’t you girls ever seen Superman?”
         “Do you mean David Corenswet, James Gunn, Henry Cavill, or Tyler Hoechlin  ?” asked Iris.
         “No, I meant the best Superman: George Reeves. He played Superman on television for six seasons in the 1950s.”
         “Strangely enough, we weren’t watching TV in the 1950s,” teased Poppy, “because we weren’t alive then.”
         “It gets shown on late night TV sometimes,” protested Leader, “but that’s not the point. In one special episode, Superman has to break through an impenetrable building to catch some gangsters before the statute of limitations means that they can’t be tried for their crimes. Having failed to break through with his super strength, he finally does this....”
         Pressing her hands against the boulder, the blonde girl slowly pushed forward, until both hands vanished into the boulder, followed by her arms, head and then her entire body.”
         “But that’s impossible,” protested Poppy.
         “Why?” demanded Leader, her voice muffled from within the boulder. “If Superman can do it, why can’t we?”
         “Because, we’re only teenage girls,” pointed out Iris.
         “And not even Supergirl,” reminded Poppy.
         “So you’ve heard of Supergirl, or Kara Zor-El, to use her real name,” said Leader, clearly this time, having exited the other side of the red-brown boulder.
         “Duh, even brainiacs girls have heard of Supergirl,” explained Iris.
         “Good, well if she were here, I’m sure Kara could walk through the boulder slowly, the way George Reeves’ Superman did,” said Leader, her voice becoming gradually muffled as she turned and walked back through the boulder toward the two sisters. As she emerged again before the Llewellyn sisters, she asked, “So, who’s game to hold my hands, so we can walk through the boulder together?”
         “Well ...” began Poppy, uncertainly.
         “You saw me do it, didn’t it look easy? Remember, ‘All things are possible ... if you only believe’.”
         “Well, we guess so,” said Iris, not wanting to look chicken in front of their strange new friend.”
         “Good girls,” said the tall, blonde girl, holding her arms up from her sides, she said, “take my hands, and I will lead you into the boulder.”
         After a moment’s hesitation, Poppy and Iris stepped forward to each hold one of Leader’s hands.
         “All right, Leader, live up to your name,” teased Poppy.
         “Don’t worry, I will,” said Leader as they started forward.
         “What?” said Iris, struggling to hear her own voice as they slowly entered the boulder, seemed to merge with and become part of the red-brown fabric of the boulder. Although starting to feel frightened she did not dare to admit it in front of the two older girls.
         “Don’t be afraid,” said Leader in a muffled voice, as though hearing Iris’s thoughts.
         “I’m not, this is exhilarating,” said Poppy, enthralled, unlike her younger sister, who was very close to panicking.
         Exhilarating isn’t what I’d call it, thought Iris.
         “Relax, Iris, let your mind run free,” insisted Leader, “remember, ‘All things are possible ... if you only believe’.”
         Somethings are possible, but should never be done! Iris thought.
         “Things aren’t good or bad in themselves,” insisted Leader as they continued at a snail’s pace through the thick boulder, “it depends on what you make of them.”
         
         At the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, Terri, Kayley Hoffman, and the others were standing around Maggie Mayfield’s bed in the puce-walled ward as Kayley sketched Leader from Maggie’s description. After more than an hour, Maggie said:
         “Yes, that’s her. Her skin is a pale pink-white colour, without freckles or blotches, and her hair is white blonde.”
         “Excellent,” said Terri Scott, as Kayley took out her paints to colour in the drawing.
         After she had finished painting, she held up the finished work, and Maggie said excitedly, “Yes, that’s her. That’s the girl that Sheree and Toni went off with.”
         Then the teenager started crying, so Topaz Moseley raced across to comfort her, while Terri and the others departed.
         Out in the cream-walled corridor, Terri said, “Now we need to run off some copies of the painting, post them around G.H., and distribute them to the local rags.”
         
         Taking advice (a.k.a. nagging) from his wife, Tory, that he needed to lose weight, Mannie Questal had taken to walking three kilometres to and from work each day. Tory thought he was jogging, but Mannie figured, Six Kays walking a day has to be good enough to burn the kilos off!
         He was less than a kilometre from his villa house in Westmoreland, when he reached ‘Questal Rock’ as he had chosen to name the large brown-red boulder, since it did not seem to have any other name.
         “Thank God, I can rest against you for a few minutes,” he said to the boulder,
         He sat with a crunch upon the dried pine needles and gum leaves which blanketed the forest floor, and began gasping to get his breath back. Of course, Tory thought he jogged the three kilometres not stop, but he thought, What she doesn’t know can’t hurt me.
         As his breathing settled, enjoying resting, and the solitude of the forest, Mannie started falling asleep. But then as the cold began drawing in, he awakened, shivering and climbed ungainfully to his feet, careful to rub down the back of his trousers, so that Tory would not know that he had rested halfway home.
         “Well, my beloved rock, I’ll see you on the way to work tomorrow,” said Mannie as he started off again slowly, saving his energy, so that he could put on a burst of speed the last hundred metres or so to impress Tory.
         As he passed the boulder, he turned back, as though expecting it to answer him, Instead he saw Poppy Llewellyn’s face protruding from the rock.
         “What the Hell?” said Mannie.
         Thinking that it was some kind of weird graffiti, he almost ran on, but some instinct made him return to the rock.
         “It’s very lifelike,” he said aloud, reaching out to touch the face, whose eyes were open, staring, showing no recognition.
         Jumping back at the fleshy feel of the face, Mannie and almost fell over.
         “What the Hell?” he said, tentatively touching the face again.
         “Help me!” said a voice, but Mannie did not know whether it was the girl trapped in Questal’s Rock, or whether it was all in his head.
         Before he could decided what to do, he felt his head swimming and he fainted, sending up a great puff of dried pine needles and gum leaves.
         
         Having run off a hundred or so colour photocopies of the painting of Leader, Terri and the others spent nearly two hours distributing to newspapers in local towns and posting the paintings, with a request to ring Terri if anyone saw Leader, to power cables.
         “Well, it’s been a weird day,” said Terri, “can we drop you home, Kayley?”
         “Yes, thanks,” said the painter, seconds before Terri’s mobile phone rang.
         “Terri Scott,” she said, before listening on her phone for a minute or two. Disconnecting she said, “That was Cookie and Morrie Llewellyn, Poppy and Iris didn’t go to school today, and haven’t returned home.”
         “Maybe they’re just with girlfriends?” suggested Colin.
         “No, being brainiacs, they don’t have any friends,” explained Sheila.
         “I know the feeling,” said Terri, “being a brainiacs I didn’t have any friends at school, until Sheila befriended me ... so she could cheat off me at exams and tests.”
         “You’re never gonna let that go, are you, Tare?”
         “We can drop Kayley off at Wilhelmina, and then head round to the Llewellyn property,” suggested Suzette Cummings, “with any luck the girls will have arrived home by then.”
         They had just dropped off Kayley and had turned the Lexus to head toward Bromby township, when Terri’s phone again.
         “Terri Scott,” she said into her mobile. Terri listened for a couple of minutes, then disconnected and said: “That was Mannie Questal from Westmoreland. He’s at Questal’s Rock ....”
         “What the Hell is Questal’s Rock?” asked Colin.
         “The name Morrie gave to that big brown-red boulder a kilometre or so outside Westmoreland,” explained Sheila, “he asked around and found no one had ever named it, so he bagzied naming it before anyone else could.”
         “Can you even bagzie naming a boulder?” asked Suzette.
         “If no one did first,” insisted the Goth chick.
         “Be that as it may,” said Terri, “getting back onto the subject, Mannie insists that there is the face of a teenage girl sticking out of Questal’s Rock.”
         “You mean like a sculpture?” asked Colin.
         “According to Mannie, it’s flesh and blood, but seems to be dead, as you might expect from a human face sticking out of a large boulder.”
         “Questal’s Rock,” corrected Sheila as she turned the Lexus to head for the boulder.
         “Only in Glen Hartwell,” said Colin, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last time.
         
         An hour later, Terri and the others, plus an ambulance, and medical staff were standing around Questal’s Rock, along with removalist Oliver Burnside, a tall, burly, grey-haired man who looked a decade older than his fifty years.
         After they had all tentatively touch the face protruding from the rock, Sheila had taken a few crime scene photos with her mobile phone, then stood aside to allow Jesus, Elvis, and Tilly to have their turn.
         After poking the face a few times, Jesus Costello, administrator and chief surgeon at the Glen Hartwell Hospital said, “There’s nothing we can do here, she’s clear dead.”
         “Although how the Hell she became part of the boulder ....”
         “Questal’s Rock,” corrected Sheila.
         “How the Hell she became part of Questal’s Rock is beyond us,” said Tilly Lombstrom.
         “We can’t do any examination, till we cut her out of the ... Questal’s Rock,” said Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green, the local coroner.
         “So I guess it’s up to me,” said Oliver Burns, taking across a wheeled heavy-duty winch to lift the rock.
         “You will return it here, after you’re finished with it?” asked Mannie.
         “We’re gonna have to X-ray it, then slice it up to see what happened to Poppy ... And possibly Iris,” explained Jesus.
         “Oh,” said Mannie, sounding more dismayed by the death of his rock, than the deaths of Poppy and Iris Llewellyn.
         “And I better ring Geraldine Lewis to see if we can borrow the waterjet cutter from Glen Hartwell University,” said Terri.
         “Excellent,” said Oliver, “more work for me means more moola.” Seeing the others glaring at him, he added, “Hey, a man has to make a living, which is becoming increasingly difficult with you women stealing all of the jobs.”
         “Excuse me?” asked Sheila.
         “It’s true, before you and Terri took over, the Senior Sergeant and Chief Constable in this region had always been men. Now we’ve got two women in the positions.”
         “I think you should stop digging, Ollie,” advised Colin, “so we can shovel the dirt in on top of you.”
         “I’m just saying,” insisted Burns as he took Questal’s Rock across to his removalist’s van.
         “Well, stop saying,” said Terri.
         
         An hour or so later, they were in the basement morgue at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital. While Tilly and Jesus X-rayed Questal’s Rock, Geraldine Lewis, a tall, extremely thin, fifty-something woman with long raven hair, set up the waterjet saw, with unwanted assistance from Oliver Burnside. Geraldine was the head of the Science Department at G.H. Uni. and had assisted Terri before.
         “Okay, run and hide while we do the X-rays,” warned Tilly.
         As they were hiding behind a dissection table, Oliver Burns said, “Wow, how times have changed. According to my dad, back in the sixties when they had to X-ray you, they called in any passing doctors, nurses, patients to come in and watch, it was the proverbial party where everyone was invited. Now they shout ‘Run for cover’ and we all do that.”
         “I’m guessing that knowledge of X-rays wasn’t as great in the 1960s as it is now,” said Tilly, hiding beside Oliver.
         “According to Stephen King, in America in the 1960s shoe shops had X-ray machines to X-ray your feet,” said Oliver.
         “Which raises the question,” said Jesus, “of just how many people in America in their sixties or older now have mutated feet?”
         “Actually, I was wondering that myself,” admitted Oliver.
         After a moment, Tilly went out to set the machine for the next X-ray, before returning for cover.
         “Fortunately this X-ray machine can adjust three-sixty degrees sideways and upwards,” said Jesus, “because I’m damned if we could keep moving that boulder to take the X-rays.”
         “Questal’s Rock,” corrected Sheila.
         After forty-five minutes of adjusting the X-ray machine, then running for cover, they had all the X-ray pictures they needed. Jesus, Elvis, and Tilly studied the X-rays with increasing puzzlement.
         “So what’s the verdict?” asked Terri.
         “The X-rays suggest that the rest of Poppy Llewellyn is inside the boulder ....”
         “Questal’s Rock,” corrected Sheila.
         “The rest of Poppy Llewellyn is inside Questal’s Rock,” amended Jesus, “and there’s a lighter patch in the centre the rock, which certainly resembles a smaller girl.”
         “Poor Iris?” asked Colin.
         “Presumably,” said Tilly, “but until Geraldine cuts up the boulder ... Questal’s Rock for us, we can’t say for sure.”
         It took nearly an hour of careful use of the waterjet to remove the remains of Poppy Llewellyn from the boulder. Although the face which had protruded from the boulder was flesh and bones, the remainder of the teenage girl was calcified as though she had become fossilised.
         “Jesus, how do we tell Cookie and Morecombe?” said Tilly, thinking aloud.
         “Best bet, we bring them into the hospital and sedate them first,” suggested Elvis Green.
         It took more than ninety minutes, even with the help of the X-ray pictures, to cut the remains of Iris out of the boulder. This time none of her was flesh and bloody, she had completely turned to stone.
         “Poor little bitch,” said Oliver Burnside, thinking aloud.
         “What the Hell could do this sort of thing to them?” asked Colin.
         “The same sort of thing that dropped Sheree and Toni Mayfield from a kilometre up, without a plane or helicopter,” answered Terri.
         “In other words, God only knows,” said Jesus, and for once no one teased him about his name.
         

         TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 16, 2025

         Maryanne and Morwella Collins were on their way to school at 8:30 that day. Unlike Poppy and Iris Llewellyn, they were looking forward to their day at school. Not brainiacs like the Llewellyn sisters they were both beautiful and had a plethora of school friends and would-be boyfriends.
         “I’m thinking of dating Daryl from our class,” said Maryanne, fifteen, a tall, ash blonde girl, a beautiful airhead.
         “I don’t know,” said Morwella, thirteen, a medium height brunette, and beautiful airhead like her sister, “maybe you should play the field more. Most of the boys want to date you.”
         “Yeah, but he did give me this ring,” said Maryanne, flashing a diamond ring, which if it had been real would have put to shame most of Elizabeth Taylor’s baubles.
         “Wow it’s huge ... It’s gotta be fake.”
         “Yeah, but it’s impressive enough to let him take me to the pictures, and maybe buy me some fish and chips.”
         “Don’t let him start getting feely-feely though.”
         “No way, he’s okay, but I’d never make him my boyfriend. I mean this fake diamond looks good, but it is fake, if he ever gives me a real diamond, I’ll let him feel my tits at least.”
         “Hey, wait a sec,” said Morwella, “wasn’t there a gem store robbery last month in G.H.?”
         “Do you think Daryl and his mates might have pulled it off?”
         “I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
         “That’s true,” admitted Maryanne.
         So intent were the sisters on talking about the ring, and whether Daryl had stolen it, that at first they did not even notice the tall, white-blonde girl striding through the forest towards them.
         “Hi, I’m Leader,” said the girl, holding out her hand, and the two sisters shook hands with her introducing themselves as they did so.
         “Leader, that’s a strange name,” said Morwella.
         “It’s been in my family for thousands of years.”
         “Really,” said Maryanne, “your family goes back ages, ours only since immigrating to Australia.”
         “Would you like to go on a fabulous adventure, a wonderful new experience?” asked Leader.
         “A fabulous adventure?” asked Morwella.
         “Take my hands, and we can fly through the air like birds.”
         “Fly through the air like birds?” asked Maryanne.
         “Haven’t you ever wanted to fly?”
         “Well yeah, but I always thought you needed a plane, or a glider or something to fly?”
         “No, that’s only what the adults think, as the song says, ‘All things are possible ... if you only believe’.”
         “Hey, I’ve got that song on ‘Elvis’s Gospel Favourites’,” said Morwella.
         “She’s a massive Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry fan,” explained Maryanne.
         “I once met Elvis Presley, he was a cool guy,” said Leader.
         “Nuh-uh,”protested Morwella, ‘Elvis died in 1977, long before you were even born.”
         “I’m older than I look,” said Leader truthfully. Holding out her arms she said, “Now take my hand and we can fly through the air like Superman.”
         “I like Superman, especially Christopher Reeve,” said Maryanne taking Leader’s right hand.
         After a moment’s hesitation, Morwella took the blonde girls left hand in her right.”
         “Now we play follow the Leader,” teased the girl.
         She started to lead the Collins sisters along, at first through the forest just outside Glen Hartwell, then gradually she started walking up into the sky, as though climbing invisible stairs.
         “Hey, we really are flying,” enthused Morwella.
         “Wait till I tell Daryl.”
         “Ah-ah,” corrected Leader, “no boys allowed, I only take girls on my magical ride, and you must never tell boys ... or adults.”
         “No even Mum and Dad?” asked Morwella, not used to keeping secrets from her parents.
         “Mum and Dad would have us locked up in Queen’s Grove Sanatorium if we told them we had been flying, just by walking up into the air,” insisted Maryanne.
         “You’re not wrong!” agreed Morwella.
         “Isn’t this wonderful?” asked Leader.
         “Sure is,” said Maryanne.
         “Like wow,” agreed Morwella, “so, like where are you taking us?”
         “To the old growth forest,” explained the tall, blonde girl, “see those trees below us, some of them are over a thousand years old.”
         “Like wow, I don’t think Australia was that old?”
         “They look like matchsticks from up here,” said Maryanne.
         “Yes, but they’re really five hundred metres or more tall.”
         “Like wow, I didn’t know trees could grow that tall.”
         “Not in Australia, anyway,” said Maryanne, “maybe on Mount Everest or something.”
         Resisting the urge to drop the Collins Sisters immediately, Leader started walking toward the old-growth trees, and also downwards until they were a little below the top of the trees.
         “Like wow, they are big,” said Morwella.
         “Look out, or we’ll crash into them,” said Maryanne.
         “Not crash, simply land,” explained Leader, and true to her word, she landed high on a giant blue gum, which was nearly four metres wide. “Now hold on girls.”
         Doing as instructed, the Collins girls released Leader’s hands and clung to the tree for dear life, standing on a thick branch.
         “Hey look, blue flowers,” said Morwella, “I didn’t know gum trees produced flowers.”
         Resisting the temptation to ask how she could not know that, while living in the countryside, Leader said, “All gum trees flower in the warmer weather.”
         “Like wow.”
         Deciding that she had had enough of the two slow-witted girls, Leader pushed off from the gum tree, started walking through the air until she was a good five metres from the two girls.
         “Hey, like don’t abandon us up here,” pleaded Maryanne.
         “Sorry, I have to go now, but I’ll come back just before tea time. If you’re still up here by then, and haven’t fallen, I’ll take you back down to Earth.”
         “Don’t leave us up here!” shrieked Morwella, almost falling, except for Maryanne grabbing her by one arm and pulling her back to the tree.
         “She’s left us!” said Morwella puzzled, not understanding what they could have done to upset the older girl.
         “Don’t worry, she’ll be back soon,” hoped Maryanne, “I’m sure she’s just teasing us.”
         However, as the minutes, then hours started to pass, the two girls started to have their doubts.
         “Like it’s nearly 12:30,” said Morwella, risking looking at her Loud House wristwatch, “and I’m getting hungry.”
         “We’ve got our lunches with us,” reminded Maryanne.
         With difficulty, she reached back with one hand to take her cheese and Vegemite sandwiches out of her backpack.
         “Like, yeah,” said Morwella, almost falling as she reached back for her own sandwiches. “Also some shortbread bikkies that were for play time.”
         “Be careful sis. If we’re gonna be up here till tea time, we need to keep the bikkies for after school time.”
         “Like yeah,” agreed Morwella.
         The two girls slowly ate their sandwiches, then washed them down with small bottles of chocolate milk that they had in their backpacks.
         “Now hold on for dear life with both hands,” advised Maryanne.
         
         Morrie, Lawrie, and Horry Zabinski drove their lumber trucks through the forest outside Glen Hartwell. Logging old-growth trees was illegal; however, the brothers had been poaching the old growth trees around Glen Hartwell and the surrounds off and on for nyears now.
         “Told you, there were still plenty of big trees left,” insisted Lawrence (Lawrie), forty-two, as the three, tall, burly men climbed down from their rigs.
         “Just so long as Terri Scott doesn’t catch us,” said Maurice (Morrie), aged forty, the worrier out of the Zabinski family.
         “Don’t worry about Terri Scott,” insisted Lawrie, “she couldn’t catch a cold in Antarctica.”
         “I don’t know, she’s pretty hot,” said Horace, Horry.
         “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind shagging her.”
         “I think he meant she’s hot at her job,” explained Morrie, she didn’t get to be top cop of the area because she has nice tits ... although she has got nice tits.
         “I still wouldn’t mind shagging her,” insisted Lawrie, as the three brothers started their chainsaws to start culling the old-growth gum trees.
         For the next couple of hours the poachers logged trees and used winches on their rigs to lift the lumber aboard. They had almost finished for the day, when they stopped to have a quick coffee and sandwiches.
         
         Up high in the blue gum tree Maryanne and Morwella Collins had been watching the three men, terrified in case they felled the tree that the girls were stuck up. But as soon as the three chainsaws stopped the girls started shrieking for help.
         
         Morrie had scoffed a cheese and tomato sandwich, and was washing it down with extra sweet, creamy coffee, when he heard the screaming from above.
         “What the Hell?” he said starting to look around.
         “What’s wrong, bro?” asked Horry.
         “I could swear I can hear girls screaming.”
         “Around here?” asked Lawrie: “Not bloody likely.”
         Nonetheless he could hear the screaming to, and started looking around.
         “I can’t see anyone,” said Horry.
         “Neither can I,” admitted Morrie, “but I sure as shittin’ can hear girls screaming.”
         Standing, the three brothers looked around the forest, without being able to see the two girls, finally it was Horry who realised:
         “I think it’s coming from above us.”
         “How could it be coming from above us?” demanded Lawrie; however, the three brothers looked up and soon saw Maryanne and Morwella clinging to the blue gum tree for dear life.
         “Jesus, what’ll we do?” asked Morrie.
         “Leave’ em there,” said Lawrie, “it ain’t our beeswax.”
         “We can’t do that,” said Horry, “they’re only kids.”
         “You know you’re too soft hearted to make a good crook,” teased Lawrie.
         “I don’t care, I’m going up to get them,” insisted Horry. Going across to the cabin of his truck, he took out a pair of crampons, metal, spiked frames attached to boots to provide grip for mountaineering or tree climbing. Returning to the blue gum, he carefully started up the old-growth tree toward the girls, shouting, “Hold on girls, help is on the way.”
         “Soft bastard!” said Lawrie, nonetheless he put on his own crampons and started up the other side of the tree to get the second girl.
         Climbing slowly and carefully, it took nearly a quarter of an hour to reach the two girls.
         “How the Hell did you two girls get up here?” asked Lawrie; however, the girls were sobbing from relief that they were about to be saved. So grabbing Morwella, he threw her onto his back, and said, “Hang on for dear life.”
         Morwella did not need telling twice, and came close to strangling Lawrie, she held him so tightly around the neck.
         Repeating the procedure, Horry tossed Maryanne onto his back, and the two men started back down the old-growth blue gum.
         As they neared the ground, Morrie lifted Morwella down, having to fight a little since the girl was reluctant to let go of Lawrie’s throat. Then he lifted down Maryanne also.
         “So girls, how the heck did you get up there?” asked Morrie as his brothers jumped down the final metre from the tree.
         “If we told you, you’d never believe us,” said Morwella, before bursting into tears of relieve.
         Putting his arms around the girl, Morrie hugged her, as she cried herself out. Finally he said:
         “You know what we were doing here?”
         “Logging the trees,” said Maryanne.
         “Illegally,” admitted Horry, “so if we take you back to Glen Hartwell you won’t mention that, will you?”
         “You saved our lives,” said Morwella, “so of course we won’t dob you in.”
         “Good girls,” said Morrie, as he helped them up into the cabin of his rig.
         “Well, I guess that’s it for today,” said Lawrie heading toward his own rig, adding, “softies.”
         “You climbed up to save one of them too,” pointed out Horry, grinning like the fool on the hill.
         “That was only so you wouldn’t start crying,” insisted Lawrie, “now never mention it again.”
         “You old softy,” teased Horry.
         “Shut up, bro!”
         
         An hour or so later, Terri, Sheila, Colin and Suzette listened with amazement to the Collins sisters’ story.
         “She literally flew you both up to the top of the tree?” asked Colin.
         The two girls nodded.
         “Looks like I owe you an apology, Sheils,” said Terri, “she really could fly.”
         “Well, more like walking through the sky,” said Maryanne explaining exactly how Leader had taken them up to the top of the blue gum tree.
         “Close enough,” insisted Sheila, “I’m still claiming a correct guess.”
         “So, how in aitch do we stop her?” said Suzette, thinking aloud: “If she can fly ... or at least walk up into the air.”
         “I’m sensing something witchy here,” said Sheila.
         
         1/21 Calhoun Street, Glen Hartwell was the right-hand half of a subdivided yellow weatherboard house. It contained a lounge room, a small bedroom, a kitchen, and a small shower room-cum-toilet cubicle. Inside, the turquoise coloured lounge room, Magnolia (nee Mavis) McCready, a tall, attractive redhead with electric-blue eyes, handed around cups of green tea. On the lush carpet lay her white, fluffy tomcat, Timmikins, who watched with interest as she handed around a bread-and-butter plate holding apple-flavoured Monte Carlo biscuits.
         “Watch out for Timmikins,” she warned, “he adores Monte Carlo bikkies.”
         “Yes, he’s a terrible bikkie-moocher,” agreed Sheila.
         Breaking her biscuit in two, she held out the biggest part toward the fluffy cat which raced across to grab the treat and scoff it, before leaping up onto her lap to try to snatch the other part.
         “Hey, don’t get greedy,” said the Goth chick, although, laughing, she handed the rest of the biscuit to the tomcat.
         “You’re too soft,” chided Magnolia, then to Terri, “so what’s the problem this time?”
         Terri quickly told the Wiccan about Leader and what she had been doing over the last few days around Glen Hartwell.
         As she listened Magnolia started to go white-faced from worry.
         “Yes, I’ve heard the legend of Leader. Some people say that’s where the saying ‘Follow the Leader’ comes from. That it’s actually a warning against following Leader. She looks like a teenage girl but has been around for millennia. Some experts insisted that the line in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Lead us not into temptation’ is a mistranslation. They claim it actually says, ‘Protect me from Leader’s Temptations’!”
         “So the bitch has been around for two thousand years?” asked Sheila, feeding another Monte Carlo biscuit to Timmikins, who was now purring contentedly.
         “Some people claim that she was around in ancient Sumer when writing was invented and that some of the earliest surviving examples of Sumerian writing are warnings against following Leader.”
         “Yeech,” said Suzette Cummings, “so how do we stop the bitch.”
         “Ah, now there you have got me,” admitted the Wiccan, “none of the legends mention how to send Leader away, let alone kill her.”
         “What!” said Terri, Colin, Sheila, and Suzette as one.
         “Hey, we aren’t paying you simoleons, buckeroonies, lettuce, cabbage, or even broccoli, unless you can help us get rid of the murderous bitch!” insisted Sheila.
         “Relax,” said Magnolia, sounding less than confident, “I can always try using a calling spell to bring her to us, then a sending spell to get rid of her.”
         “It’s that word ‘try’ that has me worried,” said Terri.
         “What if you call her here, but then can’t get rid of her?” asked Suzette: “Can she slaughter us?”
         “I don’t see how,” said the Wiccan, “she is a temptress who needs us to trust her ... Oh, and most importantly, never touch her hands, if you do, she can walk you up into the sky, then drop you back to earth.”
         “Yes, we’ve seen the results of that,” said Terri, recalling the state of Toni and Sheree Mayfield’s corpses.
         “So how long will it take you to prepare the calling spell?” asked Colin.
         “About an hour,” said Magnolia, “then we need to get a kilometre or so into the forest, I’m not calling her into my home.”
         “No we can’t risk her hurting Timmikins,” said Sheila, tickling the tomcat’s chin, before feeding him another part Monte Carlo Biscuit.
         
         Seventy minutes or so later, they alighted from Terri’s police-blue Lexus, a kilometre or so outside Glen Hartwell, Terri and the police sat on the bed of pine needles and gum leaves blanketing the forest floor, while Magnolia McCready started chanting a calling spell, while mixing together a potion in an Earthenware pot.
         For forty minutes or so, Magnolia continued chanting and mixing without any success.
         “I see now why she said she could try using a calling spell,” whispered Sheila, just loud enough for the Wiccan to hear her.
         “Quiet Mad Goth chick, no interruptions,” said Magnolia before continuing her mixing and chanting.
         After another ten minutes or so, there was a suddenly puff of smoke in the air above the mixing pot, and when it cleared Leader was hovering above the pot.
         “What is the meaning of this?” demanded the Millennia-old hag, who looked like a teenage girl.
         “The meaning is that you have to stop murdering teenage girls in and around Glen Hartwell!” ordered Magnolia.
         “Says who?” demanded the white-blonde.
         “Says me,” said Terri Scott standing, “I am the Senior Sergeant of Police in charge of the area from BeauLarkin to Willamby, including Glen Hartwell.”
         “Is that supposed to impress me?” asked Leader defiantly: “I have had legions of royal guards try to stop me. The Atlanteans sunk their continent, committing mass genocide, in a misguided attempt to kill me. I have watched great societies – Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome amongst them – rise and fall. And yet still I go on, without fear that anyone can stop me. So let me repeat, who the Hell are you?”
         “I am justice in this area,” insisted Terri, removing her handgun from its holster.
         “Justice is in the eye of the beholder,” taunted Leader.
         “I thought that was beauty,” said Sheila, getting shushed by Colin.
         “Don’t force me to shoot you,” warned Terri.
         “Shoot away Senior Sergeant, down the millennia I have been stabbed, speared, burnt alive, shot with bullets, buckshot, even cannons, and none of them could kill me.”
         “Then we’ll have to send you away,” said Magnolia starting a new spell: “Now where should I send the bitch?”
         “I hear Venus is nice this time of year,” teased Sheila.
         “Venus it is then,” said the Wiccan starting to mix a new potion in a second Earthenware pot, while chanting again.
         “How dare you?” shrieked Leader, trying to fly away; however, the chanting held her firmly to the spot as Magnolia mixed her potion. “No matter where you send me, I shall return to kill you all.”
         “Didn’t Douglas MacArthur make the same threat?” asked Sheila.
         “Nooooooooooooo!” shrieked Leader as she futilely struggled to escape the hold of the Wiccan’s spell.
         “I was only asking,” teased the Goth policewoman.
         For twenty minutes or so Magnolia continued chanting and mixing, then with another puff of smoke Leader vanished.
         “Do you think she really went to Venus?” asked Suzette Cummings.
         “She could go to Hell for all I care,” said Terri, “as long as she doesn’t ever return to Glen Hartwell.”
         “Well called, babe,” said Colin Klein as they all stood up and began to help Magnolia McCready to pack up her apparatus.

         THE END

         © Copyright 2026 Philip Roberts

                   Melbourne, Victoria, Australia