Short Story: Tompkin’s Peak
Tompkin’s Peak
By Skotti Portal
Rural NSW, Australia.
It’s weird, she thought; how the fog just kept on coming and coming like that. Rolling down the mountainside, like a slow motion avalanche.
Mists sometimes gathered there in the winter, or the peak hid in cloud; but nobody had ever seen this before.
The fog was swallowing the mountain whole; top to bottom. Billowing and boiling, with a high rolling bank like a wall.
The entire community of Tompkin’s Peak had turned out to watch. All 580 of them.
Except for Jim Whelan, of course. Taken off last night. Gone; on another bender, most likely.
“Kath!” Cried a voice in the crowd.
“Ka-ath!”
She turned to see her best friend, Justine barging through; a triumphant grin on her face. She was drawing attention to a packet of cigarettes, clutched in her hand. “Let’s go, man.”
They skipped off.
It was late, when the spectacle finally ended. The fog had stopped at a line, encircling the town.
The wilderness was utterly lost in white now.
Everyone had left, save these two; sat staring from a park, at the sky.
“At least you can still see the stars,” said Kath.
“Yep.” Justine drew in some smoke. “But that fog is like totally weird, dude. I mean what the fuck? It was like smoke or something…alive. I dunno. And now it’s not moving at all. Fucking. Weird.”
“Yeah. What the fuck?”
“Fuck it. I’m gonna crash. No school tomorrow. Let’s get up, and get outta here early. Fuckin hate this place.”
Justine agreed, crushing out her cigarette. They went their separate ways, to go sleeping.
Kath sat on her bed, once home, looking out of the window. The view from her house was dominated by the mountain peak every other day. All she could see now was white.
She sighed and flopped down. The house had trapped in all the heat again. It was going to be sticky to sleep.
Four hours later, a too bright light burns into her eyeballs.
And she’s suddenly wide awake.
“Mnhh… wha?” She squints at what’s shining. Why is there light? Who?
Raising her head, she looks out the window.
And stares.
And then stares some more, a slight whimper escaping.
“Dad!” She yells. “Da-ad!”
“Daaaaaaaad!” And now she is yelling it over and over. Bright sunlight aglow on her face.
But the sun never shines in her window.
Not ever.
The mountain always gets in the way.
Only now, there’s no longer a mountain.
Tompkin’s Peak is gone.
It’s not there anymore.
“Daaaaaaaad!”
Before long, everyone is gathered on the east side of town. Looking at a low lying forest where the ground used to rise. They all wish their eyes were deceiving, and want proof. But that’s the problem. Nobody’s phone seems to be working.
In fact nothing seems to be working at all.
“A mountain can’t just vanish,” says Gary Fleming, mayor of the community.
“Well it has, mate.” drawls a councillor.
“Well how the bloody hell does that happen?”
“Look. It doesn’t matter how it bloody happened.” Says Mick Dunning, town constabulary. “One of us, ie – me, has to bicycle down to mount Elizabeth now, and get some…help?” He looks around, uncertainly, raising his palms in want of an answer.
“You all know very well why this is happening.” A rich, baritone reaches them from the periphery.
People make way for the Reverend Wakefield.
“Didn’t I say this was coming?” He booms,
and all gathered look down, or simply elsewhere.
“Did I not warn of this, just last Sunday?”
Everyone is silent.
“Were you not, all of you there?”
The sense of shame is thick, in the sticky air.
“I warned of signs. I warned of wonders!”
“Yes, reverend, but…” Mick Dunning doesn’t know where to begin. He’s not the bloke to figure out all this spiritual nonsense. This was a freakish nightmare that his daughter, Kath had woken him into just an hour ago.
Only he can’t wake up from it.
He’s not certain what they actually need right now.
He’s sure a beer wouldn’t hurt him.
“But me no buts, Mick; you’re a good man. You’ve served as protector to the Lord’s flock here from the threats of evil men.”
He looks around him, at each and every one of them, as he carries on.
“But the threat now comes from evil times. When evil men rule the world in the name of the Beast. Their voraciousness has the mouths of ten heads, swallowing everything.
“Who then, can protect us from this type of evil? Not Mick here, unfortunately.
We all know the answer. All of us, in our hearts, know there’s only one Name we can turn to, in this, our hour of need. Only one Name we can call upon.”
“Batman,” breathes Justine, and now Kath is fucked. She’ll never keep a straight face.
“Jesus!” Cries a voice, and then another. Taken up by a few more.
Before long, the name is repeated again and again; with additions of “praise…” And “… help us.”
Mick is struggling with how to calm them now.
Everybody is staring at the stark blue sky above, crying out to their savior.
Only Justine and Kath are bowed over laughing, and so they happen to be looking toward the end of the street, when the road out of town simply vanishes.
But so does the out of town.
The wilderness there is now a featureless white plain, a blank canvas; which is spreading. Surrounding the town slowly with nothing.
And then the screaming begins, as one by one they look about and realise, and then; one by one, they go blank.
[Continues below]
Dolly Parton, yes sir. He thinks. Now there’s a woman who can sing.
He starts laughing.
Turning up the volume, he beats time on the driver’s side door, singing along.
Closing his eyes, during the emotional parts.
He is in a good mood this morning.
After all this time. All this sneaking around, and disappearing and coming and going at the godforsaken;
(Fuck only knew what the gossip in town was)
She’d said yes.
And actually married him.
Jim Whelan is the happiest man in the world.
Or perhaps the luckiest.
So far.
She’d signed the policy readily enough.
Now, to just deal with the “towns-flock”, and he can be on his merry way.
He enters the town around eleven, wondering why it’s so quiet. It’s a Saturday, the sun’s out and strong again. Even though it’s midwinter.
Nobody.
Not even parked cars.
Is everyone asleep? He wonders.
But there was nobody around at all.
Not anywhere.
They were all gone.
Vanished.
The town had become empty. And the more he thought about it, as he packed his, and a few other people’s belongings; and gathered up all the cash.
The more he realised how wrong that silly old Reverend had been.
Because, in the end; it was his prayers, that had been answered.