Maybe coming this way had been a bad move. Or maybe it was just going to be a different sort of night. Aaron looked around to see if there was anyone close to him. He shook his head. These people were out of their heads.
“Listen mate, you probably think I’m crazy, but I’m not. Mel did see something and you need to go talk to him. Your angel agrees with me. And let me tell you, there was something evil going on here today.”
Aaron nodded and started to walk away, but a voice in his head made him pause and turn back. He thought about Mackenzie, thought about God, thought about strategy. “If I did decide to see Mel, where would I find him?”
“Pub at the end of the street. It’s open for a few more hours. He’s easy to find, he wears a red and blue cap with ‘The Demons’ on it. I keep telling him to throw that cap away, but he won’t; it’s his footy team and someone in the family gave it as a gift. Go find him. He’ll be sitting near the bar. Listen, mate. He’s a storyteller, but he tells the truth.”
“Do you have a name?” Aaron asked.
“Chris, but everyone calls me Churchie.”
Yes, there was something familiar about him. Maybe it was at the sausage sizzle. Pushing that thought aside, Aaron focused on the situation he was in. So, there is a big angel standing next to him and he was to look for a man wearing a cap with the word ‘demons’ on it. Maybe he was really still in bed and this is all a dream. How do you know? He thought about the book Angels and Demons and wondered if it had any relevance.
He decided to go see the man with the cap just so he had a good story to tell Mackenzie when he found her.
<°)))><
Aaron walked into the bar. The place looked and felt crummy. It had its own atmosphere. His feet seemed to be sticking to the floor—a few too many spilt drinks. Not a hotel that Aaron would want to frequent.
Aaron looked over at the barman who was cleaning a glass. A man with a red and blue cap was leaning on the bar, his head towards the barman so Aaron couldn’t confirm if the cap had a logo. Aaron strolled over.
“G’day, how are you going?” Aaron asked.
The man turned and stared at Aaron. “You look like an army fellow.”
“You’re right . . . your name wouldn’t happen to be Mel?”
“It is. Do I know you?”
“No . . . but when I think about it, I did help out at a sausage sizzle a few months back and think I may have seen you before. A friend of yours told me you saw something today.”
“We have lots of sausage sizzles.” He made an adjustment to his sitting position. “And the friend must’ve been my mate Churchie. Call him that because he always hangs around that church. He sees things, you know. He reckons I have some nasty characters hanging around me but I can’t see ’em. That’s why he hangs around the church; he reckons those nasty things can’t get past something there.”
Aaron raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Could I buy you a drink?”
“Just lemonade will be fine, mate. I’m not a drinker. Used to be. I just sit here most nights for the company. Monday’s a quiet night—the rest of the week gets more entertaining.”
Aaron ordered the drinks.
“As I said, I used to be a drinker. Got me life in a pretty bad state with the evil drink . . . me name’s not really Mel. I had to get out of Melbourne, and when I first got here for some reason the name Mel Bourne stuck with me. The mob I hung around with when I first got here were a strange lot. They got their wires mixed up somewhere.”
“So what’s your real name?”
“Whatever you want it to be mate, because it doesn’t matter. Could I tell you about my fall from grace?”
Aaron wanted to be courteous, so nodded. “I was warned you like to tell stories.”
“And my mate Churchie must have told you that, too. You know Gracie, the portable toilet people?”
Aaron knew of portable toilets but wasn’t sure of any particular company but then he remembered the truck he saw earlier today with ‘Gracie Rentals’ on it. He nodded in confirmation.
“In my drinking days I’d leave this pub in a pretty bad way. Started heading up towards the place close to where those people vanished. Was walking past a building site, noticed a portable toilet and realised I was hanging out badly for a pee. After thanking the Lord, I opened the door, did what I needed to do. I thought at the time that it was the strangest sensation I ever had, like I was flying.”
Strange topic Aaron thought. But it must be heading somewhere.
“You know why I felt that way. Because I was going up.” He started laughing. It was a funny laugh, and made Aaron feel self-conscious.
“You see, the portable toilet was attached to a crane and was being lifted up to a high-rise building. The crane driver didn’t realise there was someone in it. Well, I opened the door and stepped out . . .”
“And . . .?”
“Well, the Lord was with me. A canvas sail broke my fall, followed by some branches and then some cardboard boxes. I worked this all out because a loud rubbish truck woke me up hours later. I was in a large recycle container with scratches on my face and some broken branches around me. I looked up and saw the sail I must have broken. It’s true, mate. That was my fall from grace.”
Aaron now had doubts about what he was doing here. He finished the last of his drink and told Mel he was about to go.
“Hold on, mate, let me tell you what I saw today. It’s all true. I was sitting on the park bench that looks down on where those roads cross. People bug me. Bike riders bug me, pedestrians bug me, cars bug me, but I love just sitting watching these things from on high. Maybe it’s because I can whinge about it because a lot of those folks break the law. I saw a girl get killed down there not too long ago. Talking on a phone and just walked straight into the line of a car—ignored the red man and everything.”
Aaron wondered if it was the same incident he was involved in.
Mel continued. “Well, I was watching this morning and people just vanished—which, of course, is quite unusual.”
Aaron nodded in agreement.
“I sort of got a bit panicky and stood up and looked around to tell someone and that’s when I saw it . . . a big white van, like one of those live news coverage vans. I’ve seen it before. The van drove off straight away. As it drove past, the driver stared at me and I took off.”
So what does one make of this? The white van could have been anything. Aaron took a punt. “Did the driver have a goatee and moustache?”
Mel straightened up. “Come to think of it, he did. How did you know that?”
