Neville the Less

  * * *

  To take them one by one, Shoomba Territory (also sometimes called ‘Hell’s Half Acre’ or ‘The Shambles’) was to the south, across the driveway from Home Country, through a narrow but dark grove of solemn paperbarks. Beyond the paperbarks, Shoomba Territory was mostly a sea of knee deep grass; a waving expanse where no bush, tree or shrub had ever been allowed to take root and where no child or animal, apart from Terrible Bill, had ever managed to linger unobserved. Nevertheless, the yard had islands of interest, not the least of which was the mouldering little ship known as Lightning Bug.

  Neville liked to imagine her as she must once have been - new and fresh and proud. Before she was caught up by the great cyclone. He sometimes saw her in his dreams, twisting and floundering desperately, past the paperbarks blown nearly to horizontal, even while the house in Home Country hung like a kite from its magic iron bolt. A single enormous wave, it would have taken, to toss her to her final resting place in the back yard of Shoomba Territory.

  Not far from the Lightning Bug was Holden Rock which, in its former life, might’ve been an actual car. In its present life it was a dead, weed-raddled lump of rusting metal which had settled so deeply into itself and the grass that its roof reminded Neville of an ancient boulder. And not much further along was Apollo Dungeon, a mildewed van whose dank and rotting interior Neville had only dared to peek at once, through a blackened window. Inside there, Mister Shoomba had warned him, was the deadliest collection of scorpions in the whole northern half of Australia. A raggedy homeless vagrant, he said, had once crawled in there, thinking it a quiet place to sleep the night. The door had locked behind him and he, too terrified to sing out for help, wasn’t found ‘til three months later, bloated with scorpions that he’d eaten, their venom having vaccinated him against death for all time.

  “What happened to him then?” Neville had asked. “Did you make him go away?” And Shoomba had cried, “Couldn’t! By then ‘at raggedy man was half scorpo’ himself! No Sir! Chinee folks’ll tell ye, scorpo’ poison - if ye survive it - puts ye in touch with the invisible world, don’t ye see!”

  “Invisible world?”

  “Oh yeah!” Shoomba had said, groping the air like a blind man. “All around us, young Nev’! Sometimes ye can feel it, workin’ away at changin’ things! Hidin’ somewhere’s right in fronna yer eyes! Knew a mystical preacher in Jimmy-stan once who told me, there’s as much what ye can’t see in the world as what ye can see! Maybe more! Nope, for all I know, ‘at raggedy man’s still there! Beady, poison eyes watchin’ out over the whole neighbourhood! Pullin’ invisible strings! Keepin’ hiself hid! Best you stay right away from there!”

  At first Neville was doubtful but ‘Soon, when he mentioned the tale to her, had assured him that in this one thing at least, Shoomba was right.

  “In Afghanistan, many people know about such things,” she’d assured him. “The jinnd - the demons that haunt lonely night time places - they are spirits of the invisible world. Sometimes they appear as a man and can, if they want, be not so bad. Other times they appear as scorpions and will steal away your soul while you sleep!”

  “Waah! What can you do then?”

  “You can do nothing, of course, while your soul is gone. I think then wise men are needed to chase the demon out, maybe with chains and whips and prayers to Allah. The Things you have in your Under, Neville - if they are such demons, you will never be able to go there at night.”

  “What can I do? Can I chase them away?”

  “No! No way! Not on your own! But I will tell you a thing to say, Neville. You are not a Muslim person, so it might not help but if you can remember this: La-ila-ilala-Muhammed-rasul-i-Allah, they are words that demons cannot bear to hear.”

  La-ila-ilala-Muhammed-rasul-i-Allah. To Neville, the words were meaningless, but he nonetheless worked at them until sometimes they would roll from his lips even while he slept.

  Back in Shoomba Territory though! While the invisible world apparently hovered over it as ominously as it did over everywhere else, most of what was there was very much part of the visible world. In the centre the high house, like the eye of a dark gyre, seemed to draw in endless quantities of partially decayed detritus, pulling and piling it against its towering sides. “It’s a Shambles,” the neighbours sometimes said, wagging their heads in dismay, and though Missus Shoomba sighed in agreement, Mister Shoomba never did.

  “Nosey Parkers!” he would grizzle. “Look to their own back yards, I says! Wanna change sump’m in mine, they gonna have to call in the Es Ay Es!”

  The only other acknowledged inhabitant of Shoomba Territory (apart from the possibility of an invisible raggedy man and his scorpions) was evil-tempered Terrible Bill, the big old, square-headed grey tomcat who, when he was not lurking like a panther amongst the ruins, went swimming invisibly and lethally through the tall grass, like a small, furry shark.