They get the stolen gold from the Kalgoorlie gold room, under a rainless thunderstorm that rattles the sky and dims the cameras. Ethan knows the codes, muscle memory from the smelter before the failed test and the escort out the gate. Marcus handles the rest. Two kilos each, ten bars apiece, strapped flat around their waists like ugly corsets. 

Ethan remembers the pour. The crucible tips, the molten gold breathing as it settles, bubbles rising and collapsing before it cools to skin. He has always liked that moment, the metal alive, deciding what shape it will keep. 

They meet Cory outside town. He is local. Wangkatha and English, easy switch between the two. Claims Waljen mob. Marcus nods like that means something. 

‘You’re darker than him,’ Ethan says once, jerking his chin at Marcus. ‘Thought you’d be more…’ 

Cory smiles and lets the sentence finish itself. 

The shortcut is his idea. A tidal estuary that drains clean at night. Saves hours. At low tide you can walk it. Locals do. 

The moon is climbing when they reach it. The water has peeled away, leaving a skin of mud shining like oil. It trembles faintly, as if breathing. Small bubbles rise and pop, neat and patient. 

‘That’s air,’ Marcus says. ‘Means it’s soft on top.’ 

Cory shrugs. ‘Means something underneath’s alive.’ 

They step out together. The first few metres are fine. Then Ethan’s foot goes, swallowed to the ankle. He laughs, hauls it free, takes another step. 

Waist-deep comes faster than expected. 

The mud doesn’t grab. It yields. Each movement loosens it, bubbles breaking around their thighs, their belts. 

‘Don’t panic,’ says Marcus, panicking. 

Ethan tries to lift a leg and can’t. Tries to lean forward and bends double, the gold biting into his gut. He thinks absurdly of the smelter again, how bubbles mean the metal is still moving, still dangerous. They never taught that part in induction. He can see the lantern now, a small boat waiting beyond the flats, its light steady, infuriatingly close. 

Cory stands where the mud firms. 

‘Help us,’ Ethan says. ‘You said this was safe.’ 

Cory watches the bubbles rise, counts them, then unclips his belt and drops it. It floats. 

Empty. 

He shifts sideways, feet angled, steps short. He moves where the bubbles are smallest, where the surface tightens after each breath. His mother showed him that as a boy on the Kukuburu flats, telling him to slow down. 

Half Waljen from his father, Kwini from his mother. Custodians don’t cross this country. They read it. 

‘Tide’s early tonight,’ he says. ‘Happens.’ 

Marcus screams when his chest dips. The sound cuts short as the mud closes over his mouth. Ethan claws at him, then stops, breath burning, the weight dragging him lower with every twitch. 

Cory steps on, calm, deliberate. 

‘Our Gold Squad prefers retrieval to pursuit,’ he says mildly. ‘Off the record.’ 

The tide whispers in. The lantern bobs once, then turns away. 

Behind him, bubbles break the surface. One by one. 

"From the outset a suspicion of insanity is almost suggested and a tinge of the Whitechapel murders is hinted. The body hacked and mangled, the cool manner in which the cementing was carried out... all these things suggest the malevolence and craft which can scarcely accompany the sane murderer." — The Age (Melbourne), March 5th 1832

A Spectral Historical Noir Tale

Hosier Lane after midnight was a sealed wound. Shadows thick on the graffiti covered walls, neon flickering like a failing pulse, casting sickly green and purple across wet cobblestones. The sharp stink of old urine and damp concrete clung to Elias’ throat, coating every breath. He pushed through the narrow passage, camera strap digging into his neck, hunting one last shot of a fresh mural before the rain washed it away.

A late busker’s soap bubble drifted, slow and deliberate. It swelled, catching the coloured lights in its fragile curve. Inside, not brick, rather floorboards splitting open like rotten fruit. Small pale hands reached up from the dark beneath, fingers outstretched in silent plea. It brushed Elias’ cheek, cold, metallic, and then burst, leaving a chill smear that lingered like a bruise. Pressure followed. Damp thumbs settled into the hollows under his jaw, pressing slowly.

Elias froze. He knew the ghost-tour stories whispered in this place. Frederick Bailey Deeming, a killer so notorious he was once thought to be Jack the Ripper. His first wife and four children were buried back in England under Rainhill floorboards. His second wife, skull fractured, throat cut, concreted beneath a fireplace just up the road in Windsor. He was hanged in 1892 in the Old Melbourne Gaol. Now his spirit haunted this lane.

The grip tightened. Vision blurred. A silhouette took form. Moustached, dapper once, eyes dark hollows. Deeming watched, lips curved in a smile that never warmed.

Elias’ fingers rose, curling into a trembling blade. They scraped his throat raw, drawing thin beads of blood that welled black in the neon glow. He tried to scream, only a wet rasp escaped, tasting of iron.

Memories tore open. Lena’s face last winter, her eyes wide as the knife arced. Hot arterial spray painted the kitchen tiles. The frantic drag to the backyard, concrete slopping over her limbs with heavy slaps. He’d called it blackout, rage, an accident. Buried it deep in the smooth shell of denial.

Deeming’s ghost leaned closer, breath cold and damp, voice bubbling like phlegm. “Clammy hands for the next drunk fool pissing in my lane.”

Pressure peaked, trachea squeezing, stars blooming black. Elias dropped to wet stone. Sirens rose nearby. Rain had cracked Elias’ backyard slab. Workers had uncovered something small, curled, waiting beneath the grey.

Deeming poured inward, cold ink through veins, thoughts dissolving. Elias’ name sloughed away like wet newspaper. What rose wore his face but carried the old smile.

Sirens reached the lane. Red and blue lights cut across the graffiti. Officers advanced, voices sharp with concern, flashlights sweeping shadows.

The figure that was once Elias stood, palms sweaty, reeking faintly of copper and cement. It stepped forward, calm, smiling.

Cold hands closed around the nearest throat. Cartilage cracked softly. A flashlight clattered, beam spinning wildly. A second gasp joined the first. The lane drank them down, greedily, silently. The smile never wavered. More would come. Throat by throat, night by night, until the entire city choked.

As a child, Elena was unable to distinguish between her Nonna’s religious beliefs and her superstitions. To her, it was all religion. A wooden cross above each door, never crossing the path of a black cat, the oil painting of Padre Pio above her bed, never gifting an empty wallet.

Elena grew up anxious, then became a self-proclaimed atheist when her parents died, but the superstitions stuck like honey to her soul. Nonna would want me to, she’d tell herself as she picked up spilled salt and threw it over her left shoulder. To blind the devil, she’d explain with feigned mockery to anyone who saw her. When she first met James, he loved her quirks. That’s what he called them.

When James moved in, he spent months brewing all sorts of wonderfully fragrant Italian liqueurs in the cellar. This was Nonna’s idea of bonding. Whenever they made a new liqueur or improved a recipe, James would try coaxing Elena to try some over dinner — to no avail. Elena’s Nonno had passed from liver failure, and shortly after, Nonna started drinking. Elena knew this made Nonna feel closer to him. Every night, after they finished mopping up the sauce on their plates with ciabatta, Nonna would raise a toast to James with a smile. She always held Elena’s gaze at the end of the toast, eyes sparkling with all the lights of a Venice evening. Sometimes her stare was so intense that Elena thought she could read her mind— or see the bruises she tried to hide beneath her clothes.

James proposed. There was only one answer a man like that would accept, and so a date was set. Nonna, delighted, seemed to become part of the kitchen itself. Elena felt as if she were being fattened for slaughter. Whenever she thought about telling her the truth about the wolf who shared their table, she couldn’t bring herself to break the old woman’s heart.

The night before the wedding, Elena took herself to the hospital. James told Nonna she’d missed a step and had broken her arm. ‘’ She must have thrown the salt over the wrong shoulder’’ he smirked. Nonna gave him a saccharine smile. ‘’Come, I have a wedding gift for you.’’ 

She took a vintage crystal bottle off the cellar shelf. A faded handwritten label read: Amore mio, per sempre tua. Nonna poured the glasses and handed one to James.

‘’You remind me of my late husband’’ she sighed with melancholy. ‘’I want to wish you good luck for your wedding. In Italy, we have a saying.’’

‘’Here we go’’ groaned James jokingly.

‘’No, no — this one is nice’’ laughed Nonna.

They held their glasses up.

‘’In bocca al lupo’’ Nonna announced.

James sculled his drink. His stomach warmed instantly from the potent citrusy liqueur. He shifted as he felt something bubble up his throat, stinging on its way out.

‘’Crepi il lupo’’ Nonna replied for him, as his body fell from the stool.