BEHEMOTH

Behemoth, an elephant monster, comes to Glen Hartwell and starts eating people

Take now behemoth, whom I made as I did you;
He eats grass, like the cattle
His strength is in his loins,
His might in the muscles of his belly.
He makes his tail stand up like a cedar;
The sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His bones are like tubes of bronze,
His limbs like iron rods.
He is the first of God’s works;
Only his Maker can draw the sword against him.
The mountains yield him produce,
Where all the beasts of the field play.
He lies down beneath the lotuses,
In the cover of the swamp reeds.
The lotuses embower him with shade;
The willows of the brook surround him.
He can restrain the river from its rushing;
He is confident the stream will gush at his command.
Can he be taken by his eyes?
Can his nose be pierced by hooks?
— Job 40:15-24

It was Wednesday, 23rd of April, 2025, school had just let out for the day, and a number of kids were on the way to a travelling circus which had just opened up in the forest outside of Glen Hartwell in the Victorian countryside.

"I hear they have real animals in the circus?" said Tasha Harriman, a seventeen-year-old honey blonde, eyes wide in delight.

"I've never seen a live animal circus," said Raylene Harriman, Tasha's younger sister. Raylene was only fifteen, also a honey blonde.

"You must have seen animals?" insisted Seth Ryan, a tall, raven-haired fifteen-year-old. "You're living in the countryside."

"Sure, I've seen koalas, kangas, emus, kookaburras and the like," admitted Raylene. "But I meant exotic animals like elephants, giraffes, lions, hippos and such like."

"We had a lion on the loose here a week back," said Talia Robson-Ryan. Her family having recently been killed, she had been fostered to Seth's family. Talia was a short redhead aged fifteen.

"Yeah, but that was a wild one killing people," said Raylene. "I don't want to be killed by a lion, or see it killing people. I want to see it in a cage, being trained by a lion tamer."

"Scaredy cat," teased Chet Morrissey, a sixteen-year-old, dark-haired boy, who dated Talia.

"Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!" taunted the other teens, except for Tasha.

"Leave her alone!" cried Tasha.

"Or what?" demanded Chet.

"Or, I'll thump you!" said Tasha, holding up her right fist.

"You think I'm afraid of a girl, with a tiny little fist like that?" asked Chet, although his own fist wasn't much bigger than hers.

"Yeah, I do!" said Tasha, punching him in the chest.

Despite wincing in pain, Chet avoided saying ouch.

"Never felt a thing," he said with difficulty.

"Oh, yeah!" said Tasha, raising her fist threateningly again.

Deciding not to risk it, Chet moved away from the blonde girl.

"Come on, kids, we're here to see exotic animals and stuff," said Seth, "not to beat each other up."

"I wasn't about to get beaten up!" said Tasha defiantly.

"Neither was I," insisted Chet, although he moved a safer distance away from the blonde.

In the distance, they heard an almost deafening trumpeting of an elephant.

"Either we're closer than we thought," said Talia, "or that's the granddaddy of all elephants."

Starting to run out into the sweet-smelling eucalyptus and pine forest, the kids soon came in sight of the vast Big Top, with seemingly hundreds of people crowding to get inside.

"Uh-oh, looks like we won't get in," said Chet.

"We'll get in, if we have to sneak in under the canvas," said Tasha.

"Don't worry," said Ryan, "that tent's big enough to take a couple of thousand people. There can't be that many in the crowd."

"Unless there's already a lotta people inside," said Raylene.

Although they had to wait almost half an hour to get inside the Big Top, the kids managed to get in and even sat together.

The show started with the clowns doing corny vaudeville routines that wouldn't have made Ritz Brothers fans laugh. Then they moved on to the highwire act with two beautiful Amazonian blondes around thirty flying through the air with the greatest of ease.

"Now those are my kind of exotic creatures," said Seth Ryan, staring almost glassy-eyed at the two acrobats.

"Quiet, Romeo," said Talia, giving him a gentle elbow in the ribs.

"I'm with him," said Chet, drawing a glare from Tasha, who secretly fancied him, but wouldn't admit it, since he was dating Talia.

After the highwire, there came some juggling, including juggling of flaming torches, then came some more buffoonery by the clowns. Followed by the strong man lifting his petite female assistant into a cannon to fire her safely into the highwire net.

"Ooh, now there's an exotic creature," said Chet, gazing at the human cannonball.

"Creep, she's only a teenager!" said Tasha.

"So am I," insisted Chet. "So it's okay for me to perv at her."

Then came a tall, leggy blonde training dancing horses.

"Another exotic creature," said Seth, just beating Chet to the punch.

"If you're looking for trouble, you came to the right place," said Tasha, quoting from the Leiber and Stoller song, Trouble.

"Ah, you females all like showing off your stuff," teased Chet, "but you pretend you don't want us to look."

"We don't want you to look at other chicks' stuff," insisted Talia.

Next came the lion tamers in a specially prepared cage.

"Hey, see that huge one," said Chet, pointing at a massive lion that whacked repeatedly at the chair being held forward by its trainer.

"Yeah, so what?" asked Raylene.

"That's the one that ate all those people around Glen Hartwell last week," teased the boy. "It's named Killer."

"Ha-ha, very funny. Not!" said Tasha.

"Seriously," said Chet, stopping as a near ear-shattering trumpeting of an unseen elephant rang out.

The lion trainer looked startled, and even the three lions jumped down from their stands and tried to run out of the cage.

"I thought lions were King of the Jungle?' said Raylene. "You wouldn't think they'd be terrified of an elephant trumpeting."

"Yeah, but you haven't seen the elephant yet," teased Seth prophetically. "It makes woolly mammoths look tiny."

"Yeah, it's called Boolaroo, the man-eating elephant," added Chet.

"Ha-ha, it is to laugh," said Talia.

Next came the elephants, five adults and two calves, holding tails in their trunks as they circled the Big Top.

"Oh, aren't the baby ones too cute?" enthused Raylene.

"You wouldn't think so, if one of them wanted to sit on your lap," teased Chet.

"Leave her alone!" ordered Talia. "We girls think all baby animals are cute."

"What about a baby shark?" teased Chet. "Or a baby black widow spider?"

"Or a black eye for Chet," said Talia, holding up her fist again.

"The trouble is, girls have no sense of humour," said the boy.

"The trouble is, all boys think they're funny," said Tasha, "but most aren't."

"Touché," said Raylene.

Again, the near-deafening trumpeting came, clearly from outside the tent.

"That wasn't one of these elephants, was it?" asked Chet.

"No, they'd have to drop each other's tails to trumpet," said Seth.

At the trumpeting, the two baby elephants tried to run into the crowd, but were soon herded out of the Big Top, along with the adults, all of whom were soon trumpeting in terror. Although their trumpeting was drowned out, by the ear-shattering trumpeting emanating from outside the Big Top.

"Is that part of the act?" asked a terrified blonde sitting behind the teenagers.

"I don't think so," said her husband. "It's supposed to be a circus, not a house of horrors."

As the trumpeting came again, the circus workers stopped and stared toward the rear of the tent, then the ringmaster, actually an attractive leggy brunette in tights, held up a megaphone and announced:

"Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our show for tonight. Kindly depart the Big Top in an orderly fashion."

However, as the deafening trumpeting started to ring out repeatedly, nearly two thousand people panicked, all trying to rush to the exits at the same time.

"Don't panic," shouted the ringmaster, trying to make herself heard above the screaming of the crowd.

"Let's get outta here!" cried Seth, as, still trumpeting, Behemoth tore through the flimsy circus tent and entered the arena.

"What in Hell is it?" asked Raylene as the elephant-like creature entered the arena. It was like an elephant, but many times larger, with protruding, knife-like teeth clearly designed for eating meat.

"It's a woolly mammoth," cried Seth, trying to lead the girls through the panicking throng to escape into the forest beyond the circus.

"Even mammoths weren't that big!" cried Tasha, grabbing Raylene by the hand to try to pull her sister to safety.

Trumpeting, now in excitement, Behemoth head butted the stands, causing a dozen or so people to fall toward it. Opening its jaws almost impossibly wide, it caught most of the people and started chewing them noisily.

"Oh, my God! I thought elephants only ate plants and grass!" said Talia.

Then, despite her best intentions, as the slurping, chewing noises continued, she turned and threw up into the seats in front of her, which fortunately were empty, their hysterical occupants being trapped in the bottleneck at the exit from the tent.

"Follow me!" cried Seth, grabbing Talia and Chet by the arms.

He led them toward the back of the stands, where he used a pocket knife to cut away at the fabric of the tent to get them out, into the relative safety of the forest.

"Now, run for it!" shouted Chet.

"What about Tasha and Raylene?" called Talia.

"They're on their own!" cried Seth, as the three teens joined the panicked rush back toward the outskirts of Glen Hartwell.

"They'll probably get back to town before us!" said Chet, hopefully.

So the three teenagers ran back toward the town, trying to block out the sounds of screaming and the hideous sloshing, slurping noises as Behemoth devoured nearly seventy Glen Hartwellians ....

Including Tasha and Raylene Harriman!


Over at the Mitchell Street Police Station in Glen Hartwell, they were sitting around the huge blackwood table near the doorway, scoffing down tea or coffee, with scones with cherry jam and whipped cream.

"Yum, Mrs. M. does treat us well," enthused Sheila Bennett. A Goth chick with black-and-orange striped hair, Sheila was the second in command of the local police, although only in her mid-thirties.

"Yeah," enthused Suzette Cummings. An eighteen-year-old trainee with long raven-haired, Suzette still had to sit her final testing in Melbourne at the end of the year. "If I pass my exams, I definitely want to come back to the Glen. Despite all the monsters and maniacs locally, it's worth it just for Deidre's delicious tucker."

"Yes, she does spoil us," said Colin Klein. A retired London crime reporter, Colin now worked as a constable for the Glen Hartwell Police and was engaged to Terri Scott.

"We can thank Sheils," said Terri, a beautiful ash blonde and top cop in the area. "Mrs. M. has taken a shine to her, like her own daughter, so we all get spoilt rotten."

"Here, here, Sheils!" said Paul Bell, a tall, thin, dark-haired sergeant nearing retirement age. He raised a half-eaten scone in salute to the Goth chick.

"Here, here, Sheils!" said the others, also raising scones or cuppas to salute her.

"Ah, you blokes," said Sheila, blushing from embarrassment.

She was about to say something more when, from outside, they heard screaming as panicked circus goers raced through the town trying to reach the imagined safety of their own homes.

"What's going on now?" asked Colin as the five cops abandoned their afternoon tea to race out into Mitchell Street.

"Either it's an unscheduled parade, or something weird is going on ... again!" said Sheila Bennett.

They headed toward Terri's police blue Lexus, then, realising they could not drive it through the panicking throng, the five cops raced onto the road and tried to talk to the flee-ers.

"What the Hell is going on?" shouted Colin, wishing he had a megaphone to make himself heard above the screaming of the crowd.

Inspiration struck, Sheila raced across to turn on the motor of the Lexus, then start the siren to get the attention of the fleeing crowd. Most of the panickers kept running, but a handful stopped, and seeing the five cops, raced across to the police station.

"What has happened?" Terri shouted directly into the ear of a bald man in his fifties.

"The elephant!" he screamed back at her.

"Elephant?" asked Colin.

"At the circus tent," said a redheaded teen, "it stampeded and started eating people."

"Eating people?" asked Sheila. "But elephants only eat plants and grass."

"Yes," agreed Suzette, "they're herbivores."

"Not the giant, killer one," said the bald man, before deciding to run back to his home after all.

"No, wait," Paul called after him. But the man had no intention of stopping.

"A giant elephant eating people?" asked Terri, when the throng started to taper out enough for them to be able to hear themselves speaking. "Is that possible?"

"Anywhere except Glen Hartwell, no," said Colin Klein. "Even woolly mammoths, that would tower over modern elephants, were herbivores."

"But in Glen Hartwell, anything is possible," Sheila finished for him.

As the panicked throng started to dissipate, the five cops finally climbed into the Lexus, Sheila driving as usual, to head toward the circus outside town. Only to have all six of Glen Hartwell's ambulances roar past them, sirens blaring.

"They always like to get there before us, don't they?" said Sheila, accelerating to try to catch up with the ambulances.

In the forest, they found over a hundred trampled bodies. Some by other flee-ers, others trampled by Behemoth, plus a dozen or more shattered carny booths, plus the ruins of the Big Top, which had been shredded by the monster, including half of the wooden stands having been splintered.

"Jesus," said Sheila, crossing herself, despite not being a Catholic. "Unless there was a herd of them, this wasn't done by any ordinary elephant."

"There was just one," said the leggy, brunette ringmaster, who identified herself as Rita, "but it was a gigantic bugger. Five or six times as large as any ordinary elephant. And I was born and raised in the circus, so I've seen dozens of elephants, including massive bull elephants. But they were like mice compared to this big bastard!"

The five cops exchanged puzzled looks, not wanting to believe her, but looking round at the shattered stands and the shattered people, they knew something extraordinary must have happened.

"Is it true that it ate people?" asked Colin.

"Yes, up to a dozen at a time, it had teeth like cutlasses!"

With the medics struggling to deal with the injured and dying, the five cops went across to try to help them out.

"I thought the Chimæra caused mayhem," said Tilly Lombstrom, a tall, attractive, fifty-something brunette, and a top surgeon. [See my story, 'Chimæra.'] "But nothing compared to this."

Topaz Moseley, a gorgeous platinum nurse in her early thirties, was desperately trying to stop the bleeding in the stumps of a tall, fat man who had had both legs chewed off at the knees.

"Jesus!" said Sheila, going across to see what she could do to help.

The cops and medics were in the forest until well past midnight, before all of the living had finally been transferred to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, along with most of the dead.

"You'll have to get by without us for the rest," said Terri, as, yawning widely, she and the other cops headed back toward the Lexus.

"We'd better be relieved soon, too," said Topaz. "We're supposed to be the afternoon shift, and it's way past afternoon."

"Yeah, it's rarely this dark in the afternoon," said Colin.

"Except in London," Sheila teased the Englishman.

"I'm too tired to even take the bait, Sheils," said Colin, yawning widely.

At the Yellow House at Rochester Road, Merridale, they found Deidre Morton sleeping on the stairs, having tried waiting up for them. With their help, the sixty-something brunette managed to stand up and headed toward the kitchen.

"Follow me," said Deidre, "I'll just warm up your tea for you."

"Bonza, Mrs. M., I'm starving," said Sheila, "we didn't even get to finish your scones, jam and cream."

"What was it," asked the chubby brunette, "another killing?"

"A massacre more like it," said Terri, "over a hundred people killed or eaten."

"Eaten?" asked Deidre, shocked.


Over at the Mannering Piggery outside Harpertown, Behemoth tried to control its natural urge to trumpet as it trampled its way from the forest, smashing its way through wooden fencing as it went. Below it, at the front of the farm, was a weatherboard farmhouse, before which was a long corrugated iron sty, where the farm's livestock slept at night.

Not bothering with subtlety, Behemoth ripped the corrugated iron roof off the sty, hurling the roof back toward the forest, then leaning down into the sty, the giant elephant-like creature began swallowing down the squealing, terrified pigs, like kids bobbing for apples at a Halloween party. Although there were over two hundred pigs in the long, corrugated iron sty, by the time it had finished, the massive creature's hunger had barely been touched.

Frustrated, Behemoth raced toward the farmhouse, not stopping until it had trampled the house to kindling, then slowly it picked through the remains. Finding the corpses of Howard and Florence Mannering, it eagerly swallowed them down, although its mammoth appetite had still barely been touched.

Trumpeting its frustration, Behemoth turned and raced back into the forest, looking for kangaroos and other wildlife to devour. It plucked over a dozen sleeping koalas out of their gum trees one at a time, to devour, along with a handful of much larger tree kangaroos. But its insatiable hunger still raged unabated.

Realising that the slim pickings from the forest would never satisfy it, Behemoth headed through the forest until finding itself at the outskirts of Joshua Jolie's stud farm, also outside Harpertown, but deeper into the forest. Joshua bred champion thoroughbreds, which had won him three Melbourne Cups, half a dozen Caulfield Cups, plus numerous other races in Australia and around the world. Including at Ascot and the Kentucky Derby.

Scooping the tiled roof off the stables, Behemoth leant down and started bobbing again. This time for stallions and mares.


Although sound asleep inside the farmhouse, Joshua Jolie, a tall, strongly built farmer in his late fifties, suddenly found himself wide away. He lay awake in bed beside his wife, Brittany, 'Brit', for a couple of minutes, wondering what had awakened him. Then, hearing frantic neighing, he said:

"Something's after the horses!"

He leapt out of bed, struggled into his slippers and dressing gown, then headed across to the lounge room to grab a pump-action shotgun, which he quickly loaded, filling his dressing gown pockets with extra shells.

"What's up, Josh?" asked Brit, a fifty-something, chubby brunette, having heard her husband rise.

"Something's after the bloody horses!" cried Joshua, waking up their sleeping daughter.

"What's going on?" demanded Stephanie Jolie, a tall, strawberry blonde, poking her head out of her bedroom.

"Nothing, Steffi, go back to bed," said her father.

"It can't be nothing, when you're going outside in the middle of the night, carrying a shotgun," insisted the strawberry blonde.

"It's nothing, go back to bed," said Joshua, unaware that his wife and daughter followed him down the corridor to the kitchen at the rear of the farmhouse, then out into the farmhouse yard.

At first, in the darkness, despite Brit turning on the patio light, Joshua was unable to see what was going on, then as his vision began to adjust to the dark, he saw Behemoth standing over the stables, gulping down his prize-winning horses.

"What the fuck is it?" asked Joshua, at first too terrified to move. Then, hearing the disgusting slurping noises the creature made as it swallowed down his animals, Josh finally unfroze and started firing the pump-action shotgun at the towering monster.

At first, Behemoth ignored the slight stings caused by the shotgun blasts. But then, when the last of the horses had been devoured, it looked around and saw the three Jolies staring at it. Without hesitation, it bent down and scooped up the three farming people and hurriedly chewed them up, then swallowed them.

The creature burped loudly, then trumpeted its satisfaction, before finally turning to head back into the forest outside Harpertown.


The next morning at six thirty, they were sitting down to breakfast at the Yellow House, so named due to Deidre Morton's obsession with the colour yellow, with which the house was painted and furnished inside and out.

"What delicacies have you got for us this morning, Mrs. M.?" asked Sheila.

"Well," began Deidre, stopping as Terri's mobile phone shrilled.

"Damn those early risers," said the Goth chick.

"Sheila, we're up at six thirty," pointed out Colin.

"To have our brekkie, not to stop other people from having theirs!"

After disconnecting, Terri said, "That was Tyler Mannering. He says the farmhouse at his Uncle Howie's piggery has been stomped flat -- his words, not mine -- and the roof has somehow been lifted off the pig sty and looks like it was hurled down the farm yard."

"The pig sty?" asked Natasha Lipzing. At seventy-one, the old lady had spent more than half of her life at the boarding house.

"No, the roof. Oh, and the pigs are all gone," finished Terri.


At the Mannering piggery, after photographing the sty roof, which, apart from being a hundred metres away from the sty, was in perfect condition, they went to examine the sty itself.

Inside, they found a few trotters and other remains, suggesting:

"Something has definitely eaten all of the pigs," said Tyler Mannering.

There were also great teeth marks in the soil, much of which seemed to have been swallowed along with the pigs.

"Well, leaving out a T-Rex, because they're extinct," said Colin, "what do we know that could make giant bite marks in solid earth, like that?"

"A gigantic carnivorous elephant, maybe?" guessed Sheila.

"A what?" asked Tyler. "But aren't elephants herbivores?"

"Most are," admitted Sheila, "but were had a catastrophe outside Glen Hartwell yesterday, and the survivors all reported it was a gigantic meat-eating elephant."

"Of course, they were all hysterical," Terri hastened to add, glaring at Sheila.

"What?" asked Sheila.

After taking the usual crime scene photos, Terri rang around to arrange for as many cops as possible to join in an elephant hunt, as well as Bulam-Bulam, an Aboriginal Elder from the Gooladoo Tribe, who sometimes acted as a tracker for the Glen Hartwell Police Force.

Almost an hour later, a white Range Rover and Donald Esk's rusty blue Land Rover arrived, carrying Paul Bell, Stanlee Dempsey, Drew Braidwood, Don Esk, Jessie Baker, and Bulam-Bulam, as well as Slap, Tickle, and Rub -- Don's three Alsatian-cross tracking dogs.

Making a point at looking at her watch, Terri said, "I'm glad you all came as speedily as possible."

"Too right, Chief," said Stanlee Dempsey, a huge, raven-haired man.

"We had to stop at Harpertown to pick up the old fellow," said Jessie Baker, a huge, redheaded ox of a man. He patted Bulam-Bulam on the back.

"I keep telling you ..." began the Elder.

"We know," said Sheila.

"Since sixty is the new forty, you're really only forty-six," said everybody except the Aborigine.

"Oh, I've told you before, have I?" asked Bulam-Bulam, pretending surprise.

"Only about a trillion billion times," exaggerated Don Esk, a tall, strongly built man with shoulder-length brown hair.

"Well, let's set out," said Terri.

They drove the three cars, including Terri's Lexus, slowly down toward the rear of the pig farm. With footprints almost the size of T-Rex prints, they had no trouble following them to the back of the farm, then into the neighbouring pine and eucalyptus forest.

As they entered the forest, the trees started to become crushed and broken, some leaning precariously, others having already fallen to the ground. In a couple of cases, they had killed koalas or tree kangaroos which were in the felled trees.

"Jesus, it looks like a tank has driven through here," said Colin Klein.

"All those old-growth trees being crushed," said Stanlee Dempsey. "Whatever this elephant thingy is, it's a big bastard all right."

"And look at the poor colas and tree kangas crushed," added Sheila.

"In English, we say koala, Sheils," corrected Terri.

"You know she can't speak English," teased Bulam-Bulam.

As they continued along, the devastation to the trees and wildlife started to become greater, until they reached the banks of the Yannan River, where the creature had stomped a huge foot into the river, creating a dam blocking half of the river, causing flooding on the other bank.

"Well, Big Foot doesn't tire easily," said Colin Klein.

"I prefer to call it Stomposaurus," offered Sheila.

"I think we'll stick to Big Foot, till we know otherwise," suggested Terri.

"Whatever you say, Chief."

They travelled for kilometre after kilometre through the crushed forest, until finally the forest started to give way to desert, which eighty-five percent of mainland Australia is made up of.

With red sand over hard rock, the footprints gradually faded from sight.

"At last we need the old ..." started Sheila, before correcting herself, "the young fella to start tracking for us."

"That's better, mad Goth chick," said Bulam-Bulam.

"There I was complimenting him, and he puts the boot in," complained Sheila.

She pulled up, so the Elder could sit on the bonnet of the car in the hope of still being able to detect the rapidly fading animal tracks. Soon, however, the tracks became so dim that Bulam-Bulam had to get down and walk in front of the three cars. Finally, they faded out altogether.

Going back to the Lexus, the Aborigine said, "I think it might be time to give the dumb mutts a go."

"I heard that, old man!" shouted Don Esk. "They are not dumb mutts."

Stopping his Land Rover, Don opened the back and called out the three Alsatian crosses, "Slap! Tickle! Rub!"

Answering their master, the three dogs leapt down from the truck and allowed themselves to be led along.

"Sheila, Stanlee, take one of the dogs each, the three of them are too much for one person to hold onto."

"Yeah, they go like greasy lightning!" said Sheila.

However, when they led the dogs back to the last print that Bulam-Bulam could discern, they sniffed, then started to howl.

"Go on, you worthless mutts, start following them," said Don.

When they failed to respond, he put his boot into the backside of Slap and tried to nudge him forward. Which only made the dog howl even louder.

"This is your idea of going like greasy lightning, Sheils?" teased Jessie Baker.

"I can't explain it," said Don. "I've known them to turn tail and run whimpering back home, rather than chase something spooky. But I've never known them to refuse to even follow the tracks before."

Stepping in front of the Alsatian cross, Don tried pulling it along by the leash. However, Slap sat down and did his best to plant all four feet into the gravelly sand, fighting to stay still.

"Come on, you worthless mutt!" cried Don.

When he kept trying to pull the dog along, Slap bit into his leash, finally chewing through it. Then, still whining loudly, the Alsatian cross turned tail and raced back in the direction of his owner's house.

"You worthless mutt," shouted Don. Then he walked across to Sheila, saying, "Let's see if two of us can force Tinkle forward."

"Worth a try," agreed the Goth chick.

However, when they started pulling on his leash together, Tinkle bit through the leash and raced after Slap.

"Should we try three of us with Rub?" asked Stanlee Dempsey.

"Nope," conceded Don. "Well, I've learnt something important today."

"That they really are worthless mutts," suggested Sheila.

"Yes, but also that I need to stop into the Animal Welfare Centre at Baltimore Drive to buy chains for the dogs. Let's see the buggers chew their way through them."

"So what now, babe?" Colin asked Terri.

"I guess we risk blowing out our annual budget by hiring Louie Pascall to fly us around the forest in his chopper," suggested Sheila.

"Shotgun!" called Sheila.

"You always sit in the shotgun seat," pointed out Colin. "But I think it will take a lot more than a shotgun to stop our giant pachyderm friend."

"I thought it was an elephant," teased Sheila. "All right then, rocket launcher!"

"I'm not sure Louie will agree to you sitting in the front next to him with a rocket launcher," remarked Terri.

Forty-five minutes later, they heard the whur-whur-whur of rotors, signifying the arrival of Louie and his Bell-Huey helicopter.

As they climbed into the chopper -- Sheila in the front, Terri, Colin, and Bulam-Bulam into the rear -- Terri shouted, "Make certain someone drives my Lexus back to Mitchell Street Station."

"What do you think," teased Stanlee, "should we leave the Chief's car out here in the desert?"

"Don't you dare!" called Terri, although knowing he was joking.

As they took off, Terri explained to Louie what had happened over the last couple of days.

"And the prints just tapered out?" asked Louie.

"Maybe it has wings and can fly," said Colin, "like H.P. Lovecraft's Shoggoths? They were described as elephantine."

"Yes, but is that elephantine in form, or only in size?" asked Terri.

"If we're lucky, the bugger has headed interstate," suggested Sheila. "With any luck, it's stomping the Hell out of Sydney or Penrith at this very moment!"

"Sheils, what is it with you Melbournians, and Sydneysiders?" asked Colin.

"We prefer to call them New South Wankers," said Sheila.

"I repeat, what is it with you Melbournians, and Sydneysiders?"

"They stole the capital of Australia from Melbourne."

Before they could argue any further, Terri's mobile rang. She opened her phone and spoke for a few minutes before disconnecting, and saying:

"That was one of the trainers at Josh Jolie's Stud Farm. It seems it's happened there too."

"While we were hunting for it in the forest?" asked Colin.

"No, he thinks it was done last night."

"The greedy bugger must have done Mannering's and Jolie's one after the other," said Bulam-Bulam.

"Looks like it," agreed Terri, as Louie changed direction to head into the forest beyond Harpertown.


Fifty kilometres or so outside East Merridale, Ralph Varney, a tall, muscular man in his late fifties, was feeding his herd of Jersey cattle.

"Come on Nellie, come on Bessie, come on Chelsea," called the farmer, not wanting any of his pride and joy to miss out, as he shovelled the hay into the paddock.

"Is he going to call them each by name?" asked his teenage daughter, Beverly, a tall redheaded fifteen-year-old.

"Bev, we have over two hundred cows," pointed out her mother, Janice. A tall, strongly built brunette, pushing fifty.

"That's what I meant," said the teen.

"Now, Bev, your dad just loves his work. Loves being a farmer," explained Jan. "He wouldn't give up country life for all the money in the world."

"What if he won Powerball or Tattslotto?"

"He doesn't gamble."

"What if some unknown rich relative died and left him millions of dollars?"

"Then he'd buy up more land, buy more cattle, and hire some hands to help him work his extended plantation."

"He has no imagination," protested the fifteen-year-old. "Personally, I'm planning to become a model and get rich and famous."

"Yes, you've told us all a trillion billion times," said her younger brother Trevor. A ten-year-old blond boy, who looked remarkably like his mother. Unlike Beverly, who looked more like her father.

"Who asked you, squirt?" demanded Bev.

"Don't pick on your brother," said Jan, stroking the blond hair of her pride and joy.

As Ralph continued naming his cows, calling them over, Bev said, "I knew it, he's gonna call every one by name. He'll probably kiss them all goodnight, after they've eaten."

"Bev, go easy on Dad!" called Trevor, not realising that, although he was his mum's pride and joy, Chelsea and the other cows were his father's pride and joy.

"Well, he'd better not try to take two hundred blankets from the linen cupboard to tuck them all into bed," insisted the redheaded teen.

"Beverly, your dad isn't strange! He just loves his work, and loves his cows!" insisted Janice.

"Yeah, well, if he starts bonking them, I'm disowning him!"

"Beverly!" cried Janice.

She reached across to slap her daughter's backside. However, squealing, Bev raced back into the farmhouse, narrowly avoiding the slap.

"Give her a good whacking when she comes back down to eat her tea," advised Trevor. "That'll get the strange idea of being a model out of her head."

"There aren't enough redheads in modelling at the moment," called Bev, who had stopped just inside the screen door.

"That's because they don't photograph as well as blondes, ravens, brunettes, black chicks, or Asians," teased Trevor.

"You come in here and say that, you little squirt," ordered Bev.

"You come out here, and get whacked by Mum," countered the ten-year-old.

"Mum, you wouldn't really whack me, would you?"

"After what you said about your dad, I ought to use a dust pan on your bum."

"Oh," said Beverly, heading up toward her bedroom beyond the kitchen.

"She'll come down once you start serving tea," said Trevor, "then you can whack her good."

Over at the cow paddock, Ralph had finished dishing out hay to his pride and joy, still he stayed by the paddock to watch with a smile on his face as they ate contentedly.

"There's my good girls," soothed the farmer.

Maybe he is going to tuck them into bed? Janice thought.

She turned to head back into the whitewashed weatherboard farmhouse when a sound like thunder suddenly approached from the forest beyond the cattle station.

"What the Hell is that?" said Ralph.

Puzzled, Janice and Trevor walked out into the farmhouse yard, then down to where Ralph stood by the cow paddock.

"What do you think ...?" began Janice, stopping as an almost deafening trumpeting came from just beyond the cattle station. "What was that?"

"It sounded like an elephant," said Ralph as the trumpeting continued.

"The newspapers said there'd been an elephant attack at a circus outside Glen Hartwell," said Janice.

"Well, it'd better not attack my pride and joy," said Ralph, not scared by the near-deafening trumpeting.

"Don't worry, Dad, I'll run into the house to hide," said Trevor, turning to race back to the farmhouse. Still unaware that he was not his father's pride and joy.

"Maybe you'd better go with him, Jan," said Ralph as the trumpeting continued, followed by the thunderous sound of hoofs approaching.

"Sounds like a whole herd of elephants!" cried Janice, turning to run after her pride and joy.


Over at Joshua Jolie's Stud Farm, outside Harpertown, they had landed Louie Pascall's Bell-Huey, and were talking to Geoffrey Danefield, a short, dark-haired man in his mid-forties.

"I sometimes stand in as a jockey in an emergency," explained Geoff, "but I mainly work as a trainer and help feed the horses." He turned to point toward the kindling which had once been the stables, and said, "But today I found it like this. No horses to feed, no stables to house them."

"Nothing much left of the farmhouse either," said Sheila, pointing toward another huge pile of kindling.

"Don't know what's happened to the horses," said Geoff. "Maybe a storm hit, destroying the stables, and they ran off into the forest in terror? Maybe not?"

"Well, I'm afraid we don't have time to help you hunt for them," said Terri.

"We've got a rogue elephant on the rampage," said Colin, before he could stop himself. He tried to look away as Terri turned to glare at him.

"You're not saying an elephant did this?" asked Geoff. "It'd have to be a bloody big elephant to do that much damage."

"It is bloody big," said Sheila, before she could stop herself.

"It'd need to be a bloody mastodon to do that much damage," insisted Geoff.

"I'll ring through to the hospital to have them check the ruins of the farmhouse for Joshua, Brittany, and Stephanie," said Terri, "then we really do have to get back to mastodon hunting ... I mean elephant hunting."

She phoned through to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, then the three cops returned to the helicopter. As they were taking off, Sheila asked:

"So what is the difference between a mastodon and a mammoth anyway?"

"A mastodon was a subtype of mammoth, found only in North America," explained Colin.

"Gee, those thirty years as a reporter turned him into one smart cookie," said Sheila. "Or as we say Down Under, one smart bikkie."

"I'd throw her out of the chopper if we didn't need her to fistfight the giant elephant," teased Terrie.

"I took on the Chimæra single-handed!"

"With the help of lead-tipped spears."

"Which I had to throw accurately, while keeping a safe distance from the thing!"

"That's true, I saw her fell it!" agreed Louie Pascall.


Over at the Varney Cattle Station, outside Harpertown, Ralph's pride and joy were running around the cow paddock frantically as Behemoth continued trumpeting as he thundered through the nearby forest.

Over at the farmhouse, Janice Varney grabbed two pump-action shotguns and two boxes of shells and raced back toward her husband.

"No, no, Jan, go back!" called Ralph.

"Whatever it is, we can fight it together," insisted Janice. She handed one of the shotguns and a box of shells to her husband.

As they started to load the shotguns, Behemoth thundered up from the rear of the cattle station, trumpeting in delight at the meal he was about to consume. And in the hope of terrifying his intended prey as much as possible.

"Oh my God, Ralph, what is it?" asked Janice, staring up at the monster.

"Papers said there was a giant elephant on the loose," said Ralph, "but I never thought it could be that huge!"

Nonetheless, as the monster approached, Ralph started firing the shotgun at Behemoth. After a few seconds, Janice started firing her gun also.

Trumpeting its rage, the creature ignored the farmer and his wife and loomed over the cow paddock to start bobbing for cattle.

"Leave my pride and joy alone!" cried Ralph, firing off shot after shot at the monster.

However, Behemoth ignored what were no more than pin pricks to it, until it had consumed all two hundred-plus Jersey cows. It burped loudly, the smell causing Janice to faint, and Ralph to stagger backwards, falling across Janice, causing him to fire a shot up into the air, missing Behemoth by many metres.

Trumpeting again, the monster reached down to scoop up Janice and Ralph in its trunk, then tossed them straight into its open mouth to chew sloppily, before swallowing them.

Behemoth looked up at the farmhouse, not knowing if there was anyone in there, but after eating two hundred-plus cows, as well as Janice and Ralph, it was full and could not be bothered to crush the farmhouse. Instead, it turned, still trumpeting, and thundered back toward the forest behind the rear of the farm.


Louie Pascall and his passengers were carefully scouring the forest below, without finding any sign of Behemoth, when Terri received a panicked call from Beverly Varney, telling her of the attack upon the Varney cattle station.

Disconnecting, Terri told the others, and Louie changed direction.

"They were bloody lucky, the kids," said Colin. "Up until now, it hasn't left witnesses at the farms it attacks."


At the cattle station, Terri and the others listened to Bev's stop-start explanation of what they had seen through the kitchen window. While Sheila comforted poor Trevor, who seemed to be in a catatonic state.

Terri rang round to the hospital, then they went to examine the now-empty cow paddock. Empty except for a few hooven feet, blood, and entrails.

"How many cows did you have here?" asked Colin.

"Nearly two hundred and twenty."

"That must have sated its appetite," said Terri.

They kept talking until the ambulances arrived, without learning anything more.

When Tilly Lombstrom tried to take Trevor Varney from Sheila, at first the blond boy resisted, wanting to stay with the Goth chick. But Tilly gave him a strong sedative, then Derek Armstrong, a tall black Paramedic, lifted him up and carried him across to the first ambulance. Although clearly shocked, Beverly followed Tilly across to the two ambulances.

"So now what?" asked Colin as they lifted off again.

"So now we go see our witchy friend," said Terri.


1/21 Calhoun Street, Glen Hartwell, is the right-hand half of a subdivided yellow weatherboard house. In the sitting room, Magnolia McCready, a tall, busty redhead with electric-blue eyes, handed around cups of peach tea, with jam-filled raspberry lamingtons. On the floor by her feet, lay a huge, fluffy, white Tom cat, watching the lamington she held in her left hand.

"Bad Timmikins," said the Wiccan, pointing her right hand at the Tom cat. Then, to the three police, "So what's the problem this time?"

Terri quickly outlined what had been happening, causing Magnolia to look startled.

"Sounds like you're dealing with Behemoth," said Magnolia. She chewed off two-thirds of the lamington, then threw the rest to Timmikins, who scoffed it down hurriedly.

"I thought a Behemoth was just anything huge?" asked Sheila.

"Not a Behemoth, the demon Behemoth. In the Old Testament, Behemoth is described as a powerful grass-eating animal whose 'bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron' (Job 40:18)."

"But our Behemoth prefers flesh and bones," said Terri. "He's scoffed down over a hundred people, plus hundreds of cows, pigs, horses, and Lord knows what else."

"Interesting," said the Wiccan, considering for a moment. "Of course, Job was written thousands of years ago. Perhaps Behemoth has had a change of appetite since then."

"So, how do we get rid of this Behemoth?" asked Colin.

"Among various Jewish legends, one relates that the righteous will witness a spectacular battle between Behemoth and Leviathan in the messianic era and later feast upon their flesh."

"Leviathan," asked Sheila, "isn't that like a gigantic sea monster?"

"Yes," said Magnolia, smiling. She scoffed half of another strawberry lamington, then threw the rest to Timmikins, who caught it and finished it off in seconds.

"So Behemoth and Leviathan have to duke it out?" asked Sheila.

"Yes, in the messianic era and later, the righteous will feast upon their flesh."

"That sounds like a lot of meat for so few people," said Colin.

"So, how do we time travel Behemoth back to the age of the dinosaurs?" asked Sheila.

"What?" asked Magnolia, for the first time stumped. "No, you great Goth idiot, the Messianic Age, in Abrahamic religions, is a future period often associated with the coming of a messiah or saviour. It's foreseen as a time when all humans live in peace and prosperity, without war or suffering, and with a renewed relationship with God."

"So we're talking about somewhere in the Twilight Zone?" asked Sheila.

Magnolia sighed, then said, "Yes, at the moment it does seem to be something more likely to occur in the Twilight Zone than in the real world."

"Donald Dum-Dum has announced he has to conquer Canada for the good of all Canadians," said Sheila. "He's also started sending illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to have them water-boarded and murdered."

"I hear NATO has sent nuclear subs to guard the waters around Canada," added Colin.

"Yeah, not exactly a time when all humans live in peace and prosperity, without war or suffering, and with a renewed relationship with God," said Terri, throwing a piece of raspberry lamington to Timmikins.

"Yes, I don't think any of us are going to live that long," admitted Magnolia. "However, if I can bring Leviathan here, using a calling spell, we might be able to start their battle to the death a little early."

"Then what?" asked Terri. "Assuming they don't wipe out all life between BeauLarkin in one direction and Willamby in the other. Including us."

"Then I send the survivor back to Leviathan's world, assuming there is a survivor," said Magnolia. "Oh, by the way, it'll be two hundred buckeroonies this time for my help."

"Last time it was only one hundred smackeroonies!" complained Terri.

"I've got overheads, such as the cost of herbs and spices to use in my calling ritual."

"You grow them yourself behind your house!" pointed out Sheila.

"That doesn't mean I have to give them away!" said Magnolia, holding out her right hand.

"I'll pay you if we survive calling Leviathan here."

The Wiccan considered for a moment, then said, "Fair enough, I suppose I won't need payment if we all die."

"That's reassuring," said Sheila.

"It will take me about six hours to prepare all my herbs and unctions," said Magnolia. "Then we'll need to find a place way, way away from Glen Hartwell and the other towns and farms. So, if they destroy a lot of stuff, hopefully it won't include people."

"What about in the desert where we hunted for Behemoth earlier?" Colin suggested.

"Sounds good," said Terri, "but how do we get Behemoth there?"

"Behemoth will know when Leviathan has arrived and will seek him out," insisted Magnolia McCready.


It was after midnight when Louie Pascall flew Terri, Colin, Sheila, and Magnolia out to the desert, almost an hour's chopper ride from Glen Hartwell.

"So what's the plan?" Sheila asked the Wiccan. "You call Leviathan and Behemoth here to duke it out, then we piss off real quick, back to hide in G.H. while the shenanigans are going on?"

"If you can refer to a fight to the death between two gigantic monsters, each capable of destroying the universe, as shenanigans ... then, yes."

"Okey dokey," said Sheila as they climbed out of the chopper.

"I still think we should have called the R.A.A.F. to send down Barbara and Jennifer with a rocket-launching chopper," said Colin.

"Any non-nuclear rockets they fired would be like ant bites to it," Magnolia said. "And we're still too close to Glen Hartwell to risk a nuclear blast."

"And the Aussie military doesn't have nuclear missiles," said Sheila.

"Well ... that's what they claim," said the Wiccan.

"What, you're not saying the Aussie government would lie to us about ...?" began Sheila, before rethinking. "Oh, yeah, I see what you mean."

With that, while Terri and the others sat or stood around watching, Magnolia McCready began the casting of spells and mixing of potions, which should call Leviathan from his dimension to the Earthly realm.

For more than an hour, nothing happened, then thunder started crashing and lightning booming directly overhead.

"This is the wrong time for a thunderstorm in Victoria," said Terri. "They're normally from September to January."

"I don't think it's a normal thunderstorm," said Colin, being shushed by Magnolia, as she continued her ritual.

After another twenty minutes or so, a large glowing, white cloud appeared a hundred metres or so directly overhead.

"Hey, that's just like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail," said Sheila. "If the face of God appears in that cloud, I'm pissing myself."

"You can be so crude sometimes, Sheils," said Terri, getting shooshed by the Wiccan as she continued chanting and mixing her potion.

Eventually, a face began to appear in the cloud, which was looking more like a portal now than a cloud. But not the face of God. Rather, it was the mouth of a gigantic fish, with seemingly hundreds of tree-sized, gleaming teeth.

"Yeech!" said Sheila. "I'm not sure Leviathan is gonna be any better than Behemoth."

"Shut up!" called Magnolia, still performing her ritual.

Gradually, the portal in the sky began to stretch open wider and wider, until they could see more of Leviathan, which looked like a vast grey-brown whale, but with four huge lizard legs, and a tail as powerful as a crocodile's.

Letting out a roar that almost deafened the five people on the ground, Leviathan began to wriggle its way forward, until metre by metre it started to lean out into Earth's realm.

"Watch out, it doesn't crush you," Sheila cried to the Wiccan.

This time, Magnolia stopped her ritual and saw that the massive beast was indeed directly over her. Risking breaking the spell, she carried her pot and mixing spoon across to where the others looked on, then continued the ritual.

Roaring again, like the sound of death, Leviathan continued squirming through the portal until more than half of the colossus was in Earth's realm. Then, finally, with one last massive wriggle, the monster fell through into Earth's realm and landed with a crash, which set up a small Earthquake, sending Terri Scott and the others flying backwards to land heavily upon the sand.

"Thank God, she didn't perform the ritual in the forest," said Colin.

"Yeah, we might have been shattered against trees," said Terri. She clutched at her back as it was as she tentatively climbed back to her feet.

"Do you think Leo, can give us a back massage, if we get back?" asked Sheila.

"Shut up!" called Magnolia. "I still have to try to call Behemoth here, so Leviathan will fight him, not just gobble us down."

However, from the distance, they heard the mighty trumpeting of Behemoth, and Sheila said, "I don't think that will be a problem, he's already coming."

The Wiccan said, "He must have sensed as soon as Leviathan started to break through into our universe."

As Behemoth kept trumpeting, Leviathan started roaring again, no longer showing any interest in Terri and the others.

"He knows his mortal enemy is approaching," whispered Magnolia, as the five people raced across to Louie Pascall's Bell-Huey, in the hope of watching the fight from the safety of the air.

Although Behemoth's trumpeting was loud, it took nearly twenty-five minutes before they glanced his massive elephantine figure thundering through the forest, sending trees scattering every which way. Before loping across the sand covered rocks of the desert lands.

Not waiting for his enemy to appear, Leviathan began striding hurriedly across the desert in the direction of the trumpeting, roaring his own hellish roar continuously as a challenge or threat to his mortal foe.

Finally, Behemoth stormed into sight and the two titans met head on, each, trying to chew the face off the other. Although Leviathan was twice the size of his opponent, Behemoth was more mobile, and raced around behind the sea monster to chew a great chunk out of its fishy tail.

Roaring in rage, Leviathan swung its powerful tail and send behemoth flying backwards across the red sandy desert.

Trumpeting its anger, Behemoth climbed back to its feet and charged Leviathan's middle section, its weakest point. However, the great monster spun around with surprising agility and ripped off part of the elephantine monsters face, and one great ear, with its tree sized fangs.

Roaring in rage and agony, Behemoth charge the sea monster again. This time Leviathan opened its great jaws almost impossibly wide, and literally bit off and swallowed Behemoth's head.

For a few seconds, Behemoth staggered as though going to fight on, but finally the elephantine monster fell over onto its left side.

"So now what happens to Leviathan?" asked Terri Scott.

By way of answer, the sea monster swam up into the sky, as though through water, and passed back through its portal, which conveniently closed behind it. In seconds the portal had vanished and there was no sign that two colossuses had fought there. Other than the massive headless carcase of Behemoth.

"So, what do we do with that?" asked Sheila, pointing at it.

"Buzzards gotta eat too," said Magnolia McCready.

"Do we have buzzards in Australia?" asked Colin Klein.

"All right then, dingos and foxes gotta eat too," corrected the Wiccan. Holding her right hand toward Terri, she said, "Two hundred buckeroonies, please?"

"I know, Wiccans gotta eat too," said Terri reaching for her wallet.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather take Behemoth's carcase?" teased Sheila. "Lots of good eating there, woman."

Avoiding the temptation to smile, Magnolia said, "Two hundred buckeroonies, please."

"I'm getting it!" said Terri, before counting the money out into the Wiccan's right hand.

"So what chance of getting a soothing back rub from Leo when we get back?" asked Sheila. "He is a nurse after all."

"He'll probably expect payment for it," advised Colin.

"I think our petty cash box can pay for it," said Terri. "Would you like to come and have a free back massage, Louie?"

"Sounds good to me," said the pilot, accelerating the chopper as daylight started to break slowly.

"What you two get away with being so far from Melbourne," teased Colin.

"If you don't want a free back massage, my love," teased back Terri.

"No, no, a free back massage would be great."

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia