THE TAR BABY

Bulam Bulam a grey-haired elder of the Gooladoo indigenous tribe outside Harpertown, and his almost eleven-year-old grandson, Bobbie, walked up the gravel path toward the double-fronted log cabin on the outskirts of neighbouring town LePage.

"Are you sure this is the place?" asked Bobbie, looking back at their Land Rover sceptically.

"It says 'The Lodge'," pointed out his grandfather.

"I thought The Lodge was in Canberra."

"No, the one in Canberra is where the thieves and vagabonds hang out. Hopefully, this one is where Mr. Klein is living now."

They stepped up onto the polished wood porch, but before they could knock, the front door opened and a tall, thin, redheaded man, smiled at them.

"Mr. Klein," said Bobbie, delighted that they were at the correct address.

"Hello Bobbie, Hello Bulam Bulam," said the redheaded man, holding out his right hand to shake with the grey-haired old man. "Come on in."

He led them inside, seated them around a roaring log fire, and then asked: "Tea? Coffee? Lemonade?"

"Lemonade!" cried Bobbie.

"Lemonade will do for me too," said Bulam Bulam.

"Lemonades all around then," said Klein going across to a large fridge, the only modern appliance in the otherwise authentic-looking 1880s-style log cabin.

Unable to wait any longer, young Bobbie asked: "Have you been to the tar pits yet, Mr. Klein?"

Sounding shocked at the suggestion, Colin Klein said, "Now would I dare, without waiting for my two favourite people in the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area?"

Bobbie grinned broadly then swallowed most of his lemonade in one gulp.

"How many tar pits are there, do you know?" asked Bulam Bulam.

"Seventeen I think," said Klein. "It's small pickings compared to the La Brea tar pits in Las Angeles. They have at least a hundred tar pits. And they charge admission for you to see them."

"Are we gonna have to pay?" asked Bobbie.

"No, the LePage City Council hasn't worked out yet what a gold mine they have here."

"I thought they were tar pits," said Bobbie, making the two men laugh.



Walking through the thick carpet of pine needles and gum leaves, Jill Hodges and her boyfriend, Lennie Craddock, approached one of the newly discovered tar pits.

Covering her nose with her left hand, Jill said, "Smelly."

"Well, tar is a petroleum product, so it's bound to be a bit whiffy," said Lennie.

"You might have warned me," said Jill, nonetheless laying out a red-and-white coloured Bulldogs Football Team blanket a couple of metres from the pit.

"This is it, Tar Pit Number Seven," said Lennie, as he helped her unpack their picnic lunch.

Sounding impressed, she asked, "How do you know that?"

He pointed towards a small yellow sign, which said, "This is Tar Pit Number seven."

"Oh," said Jill, suddenly less impressed.

As they were eating, suddenly something small climbed out of the pit and raced into the forest.

Startled, the young couple spun around to try to see what it was.

"Just some small animal," said Lennie.

"Yes, I suppose so," said Jill. Staring as she saw a small black child's face hidden amongst the shrubbery on the other side of the tar pit.

"No, it's not. It's an Aboriginal child," she said.

"Indigenous youngster is the politically correct term," teased Lennie.

"Ha, ha," said Jill, "whatever the correct term is, it's a small child, wandering alone, dangerously close to that tar pit."

Putting down the chicken leg she had been nibbling, Jill rose to her feet and started into the forest, however, seeing her advancing, the small child backed away further into the forest.

"There's no need to be frightened," called Jill, yet still the child backed further out of her reach.

"It's probably frightened because it knows what your ancestors did to its people," teased Lennie.

"Very funny!" said Jill. "Anyway the human rights crimes committed against the Aborigines in this country were by early English settlers, not Aussies."

"Aren't you an Anglo, though?"

"Yes," she conceded, "but my ancestors were Welsh and Scottish with just a tiny bit a the blarney thrown in for good measure," she said, doing a terrible Irish accent. "I'm proud of the fact that I have no English Ancestors."

"Especially after the infantile way they behaved in the ashes in the middle of the year," agreed Lennie.

Ignoring his teasing, she picked up the chicken leg again, then started into the dense forest after the small child.

"Come on, honey, how would you like to have some lovely cold chicken?" she asked, racing around the tar pit, in the hope of catching the child by surprise.

But as she ran, the child turned and ran deeper into the forest.

As she started after it, Lennie called out, "Don't go too far, you might get lost."

Then, as she started to run through the forest, he sighed, climbed wearily to his feet, and started after her, calling: "Wait for me."

However, as the young child took off at a run through the forest, Jill ran after it, doing her best to avoid being whacked in the face by pine ferns, or gum tree branches as she ran.

"Come to Jilly," she cried. But her voice only seemed to make the child run faster.

"Where is it," she asked in bewilderment, as the child vanished from sight behind some sweet-smelling red gums. She wondered whether she should go back, but looking around herself, she realised that she didn't have a clue which way was back to Tar Pit Number Seven. Let alone to LePage township.

Besides, the child could get hopelessly lost, or fall into a tar pit while we were getting help! she thought, deciding that she had no choice but to keep on chasing it.

"Come to Jilly," she called again as she entered a small clearing.

"Aha," she said seeing that the baby had stopped a few metres away, in a bushy shrub on the other side of the clearing.

"Oh, my God," cried Lennie finally catching up to her. Not as physically fit as Jill, who often nagged him about going to the gym after work with her. Maybe she's right, I am outta shape, he thought.

"Shoosh,' said Jill, afraid that he would frighten off the small child. But seeing them approaching the child smiled in a manner that was hard to fathom. In an adult, Jill would have called it an evil smile. But in a child, barely more than a baby?

Holding hands, Jill and Lennie walked slowly across the clearing, while the baby stayed half-hidden in the shrubbery, watching their approach.

"That's it, you have nothing to fear from us," said Jill quietly. Then shrieking loudly as suddenly the ground seemed to collapse from under them.

"What the Hell?" said Lennie, as suddenly they were up to their knees in foul, black, smelly sludge.

Then smelling the natural gas seeping up from it, he said, "My God, we've wandered into one of the tar pits." Looking across the clearing he saw a yellow sign which had been half hidden by branches thrown across it.

"Tar Pit Number Twelve," he read, making Jill scream at his words. "We've wandered into Tar Pit Number Twelve."

"But how?" asked Jill having sunk almost to the waist and starting to realise that there was no escape for them.

By way of an answer, the Tar Baby grabbed a handful of dead leaves and raced across to throw them into the pit.

"Oh, my God!" said Jill almost fainting. "It covered the pit with dead leaves then tricked us into walking out into it."

As though in affirmation, the Tar Baby grinned its most evil grin yet. Its head seemed to almost split right open, like the head of a cartoon character as it grinned.

"Here here," said the Tar Baby, the closest it could come to laughing.

Up close they could see that it looked more like a marmoset than a human child, and was naked, but drenched in tar.

"Oh God, save us!" cried Jill, making the Tar Baby snicker almost uncontrollably, until finally both Jill and Lennie had sunk from sight into the depths of the cool tar.

Grinning idiotically, the Tar Baby leapt into Tar Pit Number Twelve and dived below, past the corpses of Jill and Lennie, underground, until it came out at Tar Pit Number Seven, where their picnic lunch was still lain out on the Bulldogs blanket.

Trotting up to the blanket, the Tar Baby sat and began gorging itself upon the leftover chicken and baked potatoes.



"So, any particular pit?" asked Bulam Bulam as the two men and one boy departed the log cabin.

"Tar Pit Number Four is supposed to be only a couple of hundred metres behind the cabin," said Colin Klein, "so we might as well head that away."

"I'm gonna lead," insisted Bobbie. But his grandfather grabbed his left arm to hold him back.

"Tar Pits are dangerous, you could fall in and drown," warned Bulam Bulam.

"Is that true," asked a sceptical sounding Bobbie, as they set off with a squelch across the slightly damp pine needles and red gum leaves.

"Certainly, it is," said Klein. "In the La Brea pits in L.A., they've unearthed thousands of animal skeletons, including an almost intact mammoth skeleton early this century."

"What's a mammoth?" asked the boy.

"The ancestor of modern elephants," said Bulam Bulam, "but huge."

"Huger than an elephant?" asked Bobby sounding sceptical.

"Many times huger," said the redheaded man, enjoying the sweet eucalyptus smell from the red gum trees.



Finally, they stopped at Tar Pit Number Four. While Colin Klein and Bulam Bulam ooed and aaed at the bubbling tar, Bobbie looked sadly unimpressed.

"That's it?" asked the boy, not bothering to keep the disappointment out of his voice. "A hole in the ground full of hot tar."

"Actually it's cold tar," said Klein. "The bubbling, which makes it look hot, is caused by natural gas seeping up through the tar."

Waving a hand in front of his nose, the boy said, "That explains the pong."

The two men laughed, and Bulam Bulam asked, "What else did you expect, lad."

"Something more exciting than this, and much less smelly. At least the odd dinosaur skeleton."

"Any animals sunk in the pit will be many metres down," explained Klein. "And in the La Brea pits the oldest skeleton found, of a young Indian woman, was carbon dated at twenty-thousand years. The dinosaurs died out sixty-five million years ago."

"Well, I can't even see the remains of a dead Indian woman," protested Bobbie.

"I told you, any remains would be metres, or kilometres down. Besides we don't have red Indians in Australia."

"What about Mr Patel in Harpertown, he says he's an Indian."

"The wrong kind of Indian, I'm afraid," said Bulam Bulam, and the two men laughed, making the young boy blush from embarrassment.

"Well, if that's all there is to see, we might as well go back to the cabin," said Bobbie.

"And drink some more lemonade," said Colin Klein, making Bobbie smile for the first time since they had reached the tar pit.



They were still drinking, coffee for the men, lemonade for Bobby, a couple of hours later when surprised by a knock on the door."

Opening the front door they saw a middle-aged blond couple.

"Mr. and Mrs. Hodges," said Colin Klein, "please come in."

"No time," said Gillian Hodges, "and it's Gill and Steve. We just came to ask if you had seen our Jill and Lennie Craddock, her boyfriend."

"Um, no," said Klein.

"They went to have a picnic lunch beside Tar Pit Number Seven, wherever that is," said Stephen Hodges. "And they haven't returned yet."

Returning to the cabin, Klein opened the drawer of a small cabinet and took out a hastily drawn map of the forest.

"Tar Pit Number Four is two hundred metres behind this cabin. So Number Seven should be... " He studied the map again, then pointing with his right arm said: "About a kilometre to the right."

"Can you come with us?" asked Gillian.

"Oh course," agreed Klein.

"We all will," offered Bulam Bulam.

"Not me," said Bobbie. "You seen one stinky tar pit, you seen 'em all. I'll stay here and drink more lemonade if that's all right."

"All right," said his grandfather, "but don't leave the cabin until we get back."

"Unless it catches on fire, then you can leave," said Klein as they headed back into the sweet-smelling eucalyptus forest again.



Half an hour later they reached Tar Pit Number Seven, where they saw the blanket laid out with the now foodless picnic basket upon it. But no sign of Jill Hodges, or Lennie Craddock.

"Where could they be?" demanded Gillian Hodges.

They looked around for a while, without locating the two young people, then Bulam Bulam said, "You take them back to LePage and notify the police, Mr. Klein, I'll see if my native tracking skills are worth a damn, while you're gone."

"All right," said Klein, leading the distressed couple back to his cabin, so that they could notify Leslie Harrison, chief of police at LePage's two-person police station in Gordon Street.



At first, the old man was hesitant. A great tracker in his youth, he had not tracked anything except his son, then more recently Bobbie, over the last thirty years. However, he soon noticed the tracks where Jill and Lennie had charged through the damp pine needles, plus a few broken pine ferns and small branches of leafy trees from where the running couple had collided or had been whacked in the face while chasing the third set of footprints. Small, five-toed prints, which seemed too small to belong to a human child young enough to stand, let alone run.

For forty-five minutes he slowly followed the tracks, almost falling into Tar Pit Number Twelve when the footprints continued into it.

Pulling back just in time, he fell onto his backside on the damp leaves and pine needles and stared in horror as he realised that the two sets of human footprints went straight into the tar pit.

"Oh Lord," said Bulam Bulam. He sat there for a moment, then returned to the log cabin, so that he could lead Leslie Harrison and Colin Klein back there when they returned.



An hour later Steven Hodges, Colin Klein, Bulam Bulam, Leslie Harrison a short wirey black-haired policeman, plus Paul Bell and Andrew Braidwood from the nearby Harpertown police force were all standing around Tar Pit Number Twelve.

"Oh, my God they can't have ...?" began Steve Hodges covering his eyes with his hands.

"We'd better get the pit drained," said Leslie Harrison. "Can we borrow your Public Works crew from Harpertown?"

"Of course," said Paul Bell, a tall lean, well-muscled man. Like Jill Hodges, he enjoyed spending time at the local gym - also in Harpertown.

After trying their mobile phones, without success, Paul Bell and Andrew Braidwood, a tall lean man with long, stringy blond hair, headed back to the cabin to ring from there.

When they had gone, taking the distraught Steve Hodges with them, Bulam Bulam said:

"They were following a third set of tracks." He showed them the baby-sized footprints leading to, then circling around the tar pit. Before heading back into it on the other side.

"What does it mean?" asked Leslie Harrison.

"It means that they were led to their doom by a Tar Baby," said the Aboriginal Elder.

"A what?" asked Colin Klein.

"Tar Babies are a local indigenous myth," explained Bulam Bulam. "According to legend, thousands of years before the coming of the white man, this area was full of hundreds of tar pits. These almost baby-like, almost marmoset-like creatures haunted the forest around the tar pits, gulling naif mothers, daughters, the elderly, and young children to their deaths, tricking them into going into the tar pits."

Leslie Harrison and Colin Klein exchanged a puzzled look. Despite their deep respect for the elderly man, the story he had told was difficult for them to swallow.



Two hours later they had drained Tar Pit Number Twelve as much as possible since it led underground to the other tar pits. In the process, they uncovered the bodies of Jill and Lennie. As well, as a family of four, a mother a father, and two young girls.

"Who the hell are the other four?" asked Andrew Braidwood, as they prepared to ship all six tar-soaked corpses, to the local coroner, Jerry Green, in Dien Street Glen Hartwell.

"Best guess, the Wilkinson family," said Leslie Harrisons. "The Wilkinsons were an American family touring the area about two years ago when they vanished without a trace. Despite their overseas relatives paying a fortune to hire private investigators, they were never found."

"Until now, maybe?" said Colin Klein.

"Until now, maybe," agreed Leslie, following after the men stretchering the corpses back toward Klein's cabin, where they had parked two ambulances.



Exhausted the men finally reached the cabin. Leslie Harrison and most of the others drove away, leaving Bulam Bulam and Colin Klein to stagger inside.

"You've been a long time," said Bobbie. "Did you find them?"

Looking puzzled, his grandfather asked, "Didn't you see the trucks and police cars outside the cabin?"

"Sure, I saw them, but you said to stay in the cabin, so I stayed here."

"Still scoffing lemonade, I see," said Colin Klein with a smile.

"Well, if you wet your bed tonight, you'd better not tell your mother that we let you drink litres of lemonade," said Bulam Bulam.

"I haven't wet my bed in months," said Bobby indignantly.

"You can stay here the night if you like," offered Klein. "There's some small cots in the attic."

"No," said Bulam Bulam, sounding as if no really meant yes. "Miriam, Bobbie's mum, my daughter, will panic if he doesn't come home."

"Doesn't she have a mobile?" asked Klein.

"Nah, she's gone native," said Bobbie, making the two men laugh.



It was almost dark by the time that the eight elderly people finally located Tar Pit Number Sixteen.

"It's too damn dark to see anything," protested Tosca Merriweather.

"Oh, Tosh," said his wife Jeannie.

"We don't wanna get lost," protested Ashley Merkle. A close friend of Tosca, he backed him up on everything, no matter how wrong Tosca obviously was.

"We've got the torches," protested Julia Cott.

"We've wasted hours finding this smelly hole," said her husband, "Timmy."

"All the more reason to stay here and enjoy it for a while," persisted Julia, a strong-willed redhead, used to getting her way.

"Enjoy this pong?" protested Tosca. "We might as well go to the nearest sewerage refinery and enjoy the smell there?"

As the men laughed, their wives glared at them, not seeing the funny side of things.

"That's hardly the same thing," insisted Willy (Wilhelmina) Corduroy, bucked up by her husband Gino:

"Of course not," said Gino, "this has local character and historical value."

"That's what the historical society said earlier this century when they heritage listen an 1880's outdoor dunny," pointed out Tosca.

"Complete with ancient faecal matter,' added Ashley, backing up his friend as always.

"Don't be sarcastic," said Willy.

"It's a true story," insisted Tosca.

"I know it is. But that doesn't mean you weren't being sarcastic. The fact that Heritage Australia is insane, doesn't mean that you can compare this tar pit to an 1880's outside dunny."

"Complete with ancient faecal matter,' repeated Ashley Merkle.

They were still arguing twenty-five minutes later when they heard rustling in the trees on the other side of the tar pit.

"It's a small black baby!" said Alice Merkle, shining her flashlight on it,

Shining his torch upon the small figure, Tosca said, "Yuk, it's the ugliest baby that I've ever seen."

"Oh, Tosh, you think all babies are ugly," protested his wife.

"Well they are," said Tosca. "But this one is even uglier than most."

"You said it," agreed Ashley.

"What the Hell's it doing out here at night?" asked Julia.

"Who cares, it's not our concern," insisted Tosca.

"Of course, it is," protested his wife. "We can't leave a small baby out here alone, dangerously close to that pit. It might fall in."

"She's right," said Ashley. Startling everyone, including himself, by disagreeing with Tosca Merriweather for the first time in his eighty-one years of life.

"All right, let's go get the ugly thing," said Tosca, and they started around Tar Pit Number Sixteen, toward the naked black baby.

The Tar Baby waited until they were almost up to it, then raced forward and leapt into the tar pit.

"Aaaaaaaah!" shrieked Alice Merkle, fainting. An action that saved her life, since the other three women unthinkingly raced out into the tar pit to save what they thought was a human baby.

Equally unthinkingly, the four men leapt into Tar Pit Number Sixteen with some misguided idea of rescuing the three women.

Grinning almost moronically, the Tar Baby eluded capture by the four women, lay forward, and simply swam out of the tar pit. Climbing up onto the bank, the Tar Baby looked back and seemed to glow, almost with sexual pleasure as it watched the seven humans fighting for their lives.

Seeing how the Tar Baby had escaped the pit, the four men tried the same thing. However, they had sunk too deeply into the sticky tar.

"Jeannie!" cried Tosca Merriweather as his wife, sunk out of sight below the surface of the tar pit. Instinctively he grabbed her by the hair, trying to pull her back to the surface.

Instead, she pulled him down with her, so that the two Merriweathers were the first two of the seven people to drown in the tar pit.

"There's gotta be a way out!" insisted Julia Cott hysterically. However, she was soon the third person to submerge out of sight.

Followed by her husband, Timmy, who gave up struggling, when he realised that his wife of fifty years was probably now dead.

Now only Ashley Merkle and the Corduroys remained alive in the tar pit.

Hearing a murmuring sound, they looked around and saw that on the bank Alice Merkle was starting to revive.

Slowly she sat up and screamed when she saw the three people remaining in the tar pit, "Ashley."

"For God's sake don't faint again," said her husband, "use your torch to get back to the car, then phone for help. You're the only chance we've got." He hesitated then added, "The other four are gone."

"Gone?" asked Alice, not understanding.

"Below the surface of the pit," explained Wi;helmina. "And we'll soon follow them, honey, if you can't stay calm and get help."

"All right," said Alice. Climbing to her feet she turned and almost ran straight into a sweet-smelling pine tree. Then remembering her heavy-duty torch, she clicked it on and ran back the way they had come ... she hoped.

Seeing what she was doing, the Tar Baby snarled at her, startling all four of the remaining elderly people. For a moment it looked as though it was going to follow her, to try to stop her. But in the end, it couldn't pull itself away from the sight of the three remaining people fighting for their lives. For thousands of years, long before white habitation, the Tar Baby had lured people to their deaths in Tar Pits all around Australia. Yet each new death brought it unfailing pleasure. Despite its dismay when one of its intended victims, like Alice Merkle, had somehow managed to elude being lured into the tar. Or worse, when one fell into the tar, but managed to escape again, by swimming out, rather than fighting the tar and being pulled down.

"Hurry," pleaded Ashley Merkle, although his wife was long out of hearing range. And already he was beyond saving, the tar had pulled him down to the neck.

Willy and Gino Corduroy were only down to the waist, however, and still held faint hope that Alice would manage to bring help in time to save them.

"Allllliiiiiice," cried Ashley Merkle, his last word before sinking from sight below the tar.



In the forest of sweet-smelling pine and red gum trees, Alice Merkle tried her best not to collide with the trees, while keeping the flashlight pointed down so that she could follow their footsteps from earlier back the way they had come.

Got to get help. Got to save Ash, she thought, unaware that her husband was already dead. While Willy and Gino Corduroy were sinking fast.

Despite her best efforts, she got hopelessly lost, and it was nearly two hours before she found her way back to where they had left their cars, just outside LePage township.

Trying not to collapse from fatigue, she managed to reach the Gordon Street police station, which was closed for the night. Unlike its big city relatives, LePage did not have enough police to keep the station open 24/7.

Almost crying from frustration she ran from shop to shop, house to house banging on the doors trying to rouse someone.

"What is it?" cried a crotchety old man of well over eighty years of age, when she finally managed to awaken someone.

"Who is it, Arnold?" called his wife, Victoria."

"Some old biddy hammering at the door."

Trying her best to recover her breath, Alice finally managed to say, "Help, I need help. Seven of my friends fell into Tar Pit Number Sixteen. At least four of them are already dead."

"Shit!" said Victoria Finchley, hurriedly racing for her mobile phone. She quickly rang Leslie Harrison at his home number, then considered ringing her son, Ernie Singleton, at his sheep station outside Glen Hartwell. Instead, she rang through to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital. Which gave her emergency numbers to ring to notify the proper authorities.



An hour later a gaggle of people with flashlights and Very Lanterns were standing around Tar Pit Number Sixteen where there was no sign of life. The Tar Baby had fled the scene, and all seven people had long sunk below the surface of the tar.

"Ashley," sobbed Alice, realising that she had failed to save her husband. Not realising how soon after her flight he had sunk from sight she sobbed: "If only I hadn't got lost."

"Don't blame yourself," comforted Colin Klein, whom Leslie Harrison had awakened, along with Bulam Bulam.

Trying to distract her from her grief, Leslie asked: "How did it happen?"

"I ... " she said, hesitant to tell them what had really happened, not thinking that anyone would believe her. Finally, in a rush she blurted out what had really happened.

"A Tar Baby," said Colin Klein brushing his long red hair out of his sensitive eyes.

"A what?" asked Alice.

Klein and Bulam Bulam exchanged worried looks, then between them they managed to tell the bewildered crowd about the Aboriginal legend of the Tar Babies. And Bulam Bulam told of the baby-sized footprints that he had pointed out to Colin Klein earlier, around Tar Pit Number Twelve.

"Tar Babies, again?" asked Leslie, wondering if he would have to send them both to the psychiatric ward of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital (known locally as G.H. & DCH).

"Before you lock them away, Sarg., come and have a look at these," said Andrew Braidwood. He shone his torch upon some baby-sized footprints amongst the damp pine needles on the other side of the tar pit.

Sighing, Leslie Harrison said, "All right, let's get the heavy equipment in, to get this pit pumped as dry as possible. And someone please take Alice Merkle around to G.H. & DCH."

"I'll do that," offered Andrew Braidwood, half leading, half carrying the sobbing widow back to where they had left their vehicles.



It was daybreak by the time that the pit had been pumped dry. They had found the Merriweathers, Cotts, Corduroys, and Ashley Merkle. Plus another thirty-two unexplained corpses. The flesh that many still had indicated Aboriginal origin. Many looked as though they had been down in the tar pit for centuries if not millennia.

"Shit!" said Leslie Harrison. "Something tells me I'm gonna have to have the other fifteen tar pits drained as well."

"I'd advise it," said the redheaded reporter, Colin Klein.

Sighing with frustration, Leslie arranged to have the thirty-nine bodies shipped to the Morgue in Dien Street Glen Hartwell, thinking: Jerry Green will have fits when he gets all of this lot.

Jerry had been less than thrilled about the first six victims arriving. Let alone almost another forty.

Coming over to Colin Klein, Paul Bell, the police chief from neighbouring Harpertown asked: "How is it, Mr. Klein, that wherever you go monsters seem to crawl out of the woodwork? Or in this case tar pits."

"I am an investigative reporter," said Klein. "News stories just seem to follow me wherever I go."

"So, you're not a disaster magnet, as I was starting to think?"

"That's a little harsh," said Bulam Bulam.



It would be the best part of a week before they had all seventeen tar pits pumped as dry as possible. Another three-hundred-plus corpses, some ancient, mostly Aborigines, had been locate.

Looking at the last load of smelly tar to be carted away, Paul Bell said: "What a mess."

"The tar, or all the bodies?" asked Colin Klein.

"Both," said the policeman.

"Well, that seems to be the last of them," said Leslie Harrison. "Three-hundred-and-thirty-three corpses, plus the forty-six from earlier. My hopes of keeping this quiet from Melbourne are long gone."

"And from the press," added Paul, since they had been invaded by crews from all five of Australia's main TV networks (channels 7, 9, 10, SBS, and ABC). Plus seemingly dozens of newspapers and radio news stations.

"So much for your exclusive, Mr. Klein," said Leslie Harrison.

"So much, indeed," he confirmed. Then looking round, he was startled to see the small Tar Baby ten metres or so away, glaring at them as they devastated its killing pits.

Has that monster been watching us for the whole week, wondered Colin Klein. T0rying his best not to startle it, he whispered to Paul and Leslie what he had seen. Trying to be inconspicuous the two policemen turned and stared in horror at the tiny, tar-covered creature.

They signalled to Bulam Bulam, but he had already noticed the Tar Baby.

"Do we try to capture it?" asked the grey-haired Elder.

"No, we kill it," said Leslie Bell. And with a quick draw that Wyatt Earp would have been proud of, he pulled his service revolver from its holster and fired five shots. The first two went wild, but the last three hit their small target.

The Tar Baby shrieked in rage and pain and tried to run off, then fell to the nest of dead leaves and pine needles and died.

Grabbing one of the Hessian bags that they had been using to place body parts it, Paul Bell raced across to quickly bag the small body, before the press could see what had happened.

"What's going on?" demanded Lisa Nowlands a platinum blonde journalist, from Melbourne, who was still gorgeous despite having recently turned sixty.

"Just shooting a fox," lied Paul Bell. "It must have been attracted by the smell of the bodies."

"Oh, I see," said Lisa, disbelievingly. An inveterate liar herself, she could instinctively tell when someone else was lying. And I smell a rat! thought the veteran reporter. Smell of the bodies, how could it smell them over the pong of the tar?

Trying her best to be inconspicuous the beautiful journalist tried sneaking along behind the police to see where they took whatever they had in the bag. It's much too small to be a fox, she thought correctly.

By the time that they reached their police cars, Lisa was still unobserved, but to her dismay, she found that her news van was blocked in by SBS & ABC vans.

Climbing into the front seat she demanded, "Follow that police car."

"How?" asked Davo, her cameraman-cum-driver.

"Aaaaaah!" she growled almost tiger-like.

Wisely Davo kept his mouth shut.



At the Dien Street Morgue, in Glen Hartwell, Paul Bell dropped the Hessian bag onto a table and said, "Got something else for you."

"Thanks, that's all I needed," said Jerry Green, whose long black sideburns made him look passably like his idol Elvis Presley. "I had to ship most of the bodies to Russell Street, Melbourne. So if you were hoping to keep a lid on this, kaputski, as the Russians say in B-comedy-spy films.

"What the... " he added removing the dead Tar Baby from the Hessian bag.

"That's what murdered around three hundred and eighty people," said Paul Bell.

"We think over a period of a thousand years or more," added Bulam Bulam. "There are probably a lot more corpses that we didn't find."

"A thousand years ...?" said Jerry Green.

"Yes," said the Aboriginal Elder, going on to tell him the legend of the Tar Babies.

"Shit in a handbasket!" said Jerry, wary of touching the tiny corpse. "You're sure it's dead?"

"I put three bullets into it at close range," said Leslie Harrison. "That'll usually do it."

"So now you won't need to do a native dance to kill it," teased Colin Klein.

"Woo woo woo," chanted Bulam Bulam, sounding more like a caricatured movie red Indian, than an Indigenous Australian.

"No funny dance?" asked Klein.

"Sorry, my arthritis won't let me anymore."

"Well, we'd better be heading off," said the reporter.

"How long are you staying?" asked Leslie Harrison, not quite saying, 'Get out of town before sunrise!' But certainly wishing it.

"Only another day or two," said Klein as he and Bulam Bulam headed for the door. "Somehow I've lost my fascination for tar pits. Don't worry, I'll stay well away from LePage and Harpertown from now on."

Paul Bell heaved a sigh of relief but somehow resisted the temptation to say, Thank Goodness.

THE END

© Copyright 2023 Philip Roberts

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia