Unholy Writ

Unholy Writ

An extract from my crime novel Unholy Writ.

This is the Prologue to the main narrative which tells the story of how Courtney Frome, a cool young journalist becomes interested in the murder of a student from a creative writing school. Courtney’s investigation into the novel the victim wrote just before she was killed takes her into many weird places among even weirder people, the origins of the crime stretching back in time and far far away from the mineshaft where the body was found.

PROLOGUE

the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain
Isaiah 26: 21

The shafts and drives which honeycomb the mountainside are the lost remains of the Long Tunnel mine at Ginnungagap in Victoria. The shafts have flooded since the mine closed in 1914. In its heyday this was one of the richest mines in Australia, being worked down to a level of 1,000 metres. It yielded thirty tonnes of gold in its time. Crumbling brickwork, squared timbers, and the overgrown face of the mullock heaps above Blackjack Creek are the other relics of the Long Tunnel. Feral goats, cats, pigs and dogs roam the area which is thick with brambles, and the sounds of gunshots are not unusual. This ghost town, with its handful of inhabitants, has never had electricity, and is therefore a curiosity. It has been ravaged by fire and floods, and has become a tourist attraction, deep in the wooded hills.

On a clear winter afternoon, two boys exploring the historic town, climbed the hillside. The mouths of many of the shafts had been obliterated, choked with blackberries. When the children came upon openings, they would toss down stones and stand still and listen as the stones hit the water below. One place appeared to be an open shaft, but it was stuffed with dead, torn foliage. The boys threw in a rock, it disappeared through the leaves, but there was no sound to tell them it had gone into the water. They threw another rock. It fell on something solid. They peered down between the leaves and small branches that blocked the opening, and what they saw just below ground level was old and mangled meat. It was the remains of Brooke Ferguson, the parts that the animals had left. It explained the awful smell in that area of the bush, and the boys could see that it was human.

Brooke had been killed by two shots to the head, then stabbed in the belly twenty-six times with a short-bladed knife. Her hands had been smashed to pieces, her wrists bound to her ankles, and her body pushed into the top of the mine shaft. Her killer hoped that she would just disappear into the mountain, but she had caught on fallen branches within the opening and had snagged, resting just below the surface of the earth. The killer had then covered her, hastily, inadequately, with more broken branches and bracken, screening her from view, incidentally making it difficult for wild animals to get free access. A dentist from Ballarat identified her by her teeth. Seven of her eight little earrings were there, as was her bracelet made from a silver table fork, hammered to fit round her wrist. Her hands had been smashed to pieces with a rock. Tufts of her bright scarlet hair still stuck to her skull. She was three months pregnant.

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