A simple farmer receives a horse from the gods, a man sells ice creams named after missing schoolkids, the demolition of a hotel brings an old horror to light, a wounded soldier finds the real enemy is in his own camp, a family inherits a peculiar r...
For the next two weeks David hardly gave a thought to the Steam Packet. He had three other jobs on. He'd given the hotel's demolition over to his foreman to handle: a man called Steve, who had started out with his father when David was just a kid.
It was Steve who called him and gave a report on the demolition.
"Floorboards?" David said.
"Good. Few rotten ones."
"Bring em back to the depot. Oh and that window. Can't remember if I asked you to -"
"Yeh you did. No we didn't."
"Come on Steve, that's money."
"Sorry mate. Your old man would've killed me."
David smiled. His old man's passion for salvage had verged on mania. It had become a long-standing joke between David and Steve.
There was a long pause from Steve. In the background David could hear men shouting, chains rattling, caterpillar treads churning through rubble. "Something you want to tell me?" David said finally.
"One of the fellas just phoned in. Quit."
"Who?"
"Bannon."
"Really?"
"Yeh."
Chris Bannon had only been with Wheelers for two years, but David had liked the boy. Always on time, never jerked around, got along with everyone.
"Say why?"
"Nope."
"Think he's gone to Clarkson?" Clarkson Demolitions was Wheelers' main competitor. Its only competitor: all the others were too small to pose a threat. Even Clarkson wasn't much to worry about. Melbourne was a one-horse town; Wheelers had had it stitched up for years.
"Don't think so," Steve said.
"He say anything?"
"Been having nightmares."
David didn't laugh. He'd once seen a concrete wall fall on a man. When it was lifted away all they'd found was a long bloody smear. Then there was his father - he'd seen that one too. Demolition could be a fearsome business.
"You sent him out first," Steve said.
Now David remembered. It was Bannon he'd sent to pry up the floorboards. To salvage that stupid window. He remembered thinking that Bannon was capable enough to handle it alone.
"Wish he'd told me before we knocked her down," Steve went on. "Almost like he wanted it demolished." A pause. "Anyway, he had to take a wall out upstairs to get to the window. Reckons when he pulled the wallpaper away he found a bricked-in doorway. Knocked it out. There was a room behind it. Filled with cobwebs."
Steve's voice had dropped to a whisper, as if he were afraid he would be heard over the din in the background.
"He found a kind of nest in there. Big skeleton in the middle of it. Said it looked like it was all legs. That's all he kept saying: all legs. Buggered if I know what he saw."
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