I pull over the car and call my sister. Tell her I need might need backup. She can’t drive right at this minute she says. She’ll enlist Bobby to drive her out. Bobby is her boyfriend. I tell her to meet me in Lilydale, then we’ll go from there.

I buy McDonalds and show the girl at the checkout a card trick, where I pull her card from inside her own register. I put it there when I ordered, but she thinks I’m spooky as hell. She almost asks for my number, I can tell, then any attraction she was feeling slides from her face and she hands my Big Mac meal and goes into the back room. I know what happened there. Sometimes, after people spend a little time around me, they start to notice somethings wrong. I’m told it starts with a feeling of general unease, then one of sudden, personal danger. She’s gone to call her mother and make sure she’s still breathing.

I sit in my car, eating my food and listening to the radio, until Sam and Bobby turn up. Bobby waves at me with one gloved hand, Sam spins a finger in a circle next to her head. Regroup, move out.