The inner city glow reflects off the dispersing cloud cover, as strong winds blast Melbourne. Branches crack, grown and screech against windows while the front gate bangs open and shut, as I try to peg my clothing to the clothes-line. Fumbling with pegs as I hold the hills hoist still with the other hand, spinning, catching the wind every time I bend down to the basket; the temperature is mild and the sky is moonless but the fluorescent incandescence of the public housing tower down the road casts an odd light onto the backyard. Ever since I was a kid weather like this had inspired in me a sense of drama. I’d watched a TV documentary when I was eight or nine about Nostradamus as wind had whipped around the house (much like this) and I had been convinced that this was the beginning of the end that he had prophesied.
What a shitty night I’ve had, I think to myself: dinner with the family in some Indian restaurant in Camberwell that started with an argument and ended in almost total breakdown in communication. The family got on fine that is, light hearted, amiable chatting going on all around me… except I spent the night staring intently at my curry, the waiters, the chef preparing naan or roti or whatever in some glass booth extension to the kitchen. Anything to distract myself from the fact I was sitting there sullen not talking to anyone. In the end I made my excuses and left placing a twenty on the table. I arrived home feeling miserable and sorry for myself and with little else to do I set about doing the washing.
There seems something wrong about drying your clothes at night- relying on the wind. More than sheer lack of organization and planning, but something more base and primal, it feels unnatural. As if I were abandoning the sun and light, the true partner of the dried cloth for the unholy night: a pact with the devil. Maybe there is some verse in Leviticus that prohibits all this. I think this as I hang my clothing, dead palm leaves drop from the tree behind me as I stare out between my t-shirts, towel and pants as they rotate in the wind, to the alleyway that runs behind my place. A chill runs through me and I almost expect someone to walk past. Shaking my head, I decide to concentrate on the task at hand: pegging up my undies.
It is late and the rest of the house is asleep, silent and all I can hear is the sound of the wind, the gate and the trees rustling around me. I remember the childhood feeling of being the last left to fall asleep, listening to the sounds outside, scared to look out behind the blinds, to go to the toilet, afraid of what I might see or who or what might be out there. Aware the heavy darkness that enveloped the house, something menacing on the other side of the wall: an ashen face that would appear at the window if I paused just long enough in front of it.
I recall the story of Albert Fish that I read a couple of months ago: a house painter who drifted across the United States in the inter-war and boasted to having killed a child in twenty-three American states. A frail and emaciated old man with grey hair and moustache, Fish lured children away from their homes (many of them African-American) with money and candy where he molested, tortured, murdered and ate many of them. In New York the three year old witness to an abduction, found on the roof of his family’s appartment block, was asked about the disappearance of his four-year old playmate: he replied “the boogey man took him.” Sentenced to death by electrocution, Fish was executed on January 16, 1936 and in the end could offer little if any account for his crimes other than what he called his blood lust and a psuedo religious cause, citing imaginary bible verses like “Happy is he that taketh Thy little ones and dasheth their heads against the stones.” Had God thought what he did wrong, Fish reasoned, then “an angel would have stopped me, just as an angel stopped Abraham in the Bible.”
I looked at the fence again and accuse myself of doing this on purpose, trying to freak myself out.
Grabbing the clothing basket I dart up the pathway to the backdoor making sure not turn around. Closing the laundry door behind me, locking one, two three locks with inner city ease and I dump the basket, reaching around to turn out the porch light only to see a man’s head silhouetted through the opaque glass only to flick the light switch. FUCK! I jump back. Too scared to turn the light back on, to move, I stand perfectly still. I listen and hear nothing, just the afore mentioned wind, trees and gate.
BOOGEY MAN!
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