The Cottage

“There’s a kind of quiet that doesn’t calm you — it listens. Like the world’s holding its breath, waiting to see if you’ll make the mistake it already knows you’re going to.”

The ute's suspension groaned in protest as I navigated the uneven terrain, each jolt travelling up through the chassis and into my spine, a physical reminder of the increasingly uncertain path I'd chosen. The wheels jostled over an unforgiving mix of pebbles, rocks, and potholes that pockmarked the narrow dirt road like wounds in the earth. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary, knuckles white against the worn leather, as if the strength of my grip could somehow anchor me to solid ground, to rational decision-making, to the version of myself who didn't drive into isolated hills for suspicious job offers.

The dense native forest—a green wall on either side—loomed over me, their branches almost touching overhead to form a living tunnel. Eucalyptus and sassafras pressed close, their leaves filtering the grey morning light into something dimmer, more primordial. This natural tunnel, whilst objectively beautiful in that haunting Tasmanian way, had a method of making the space feel constricted, feeding into the growing anxiety in my gut that had been building since I'd left Mount Nelson.

The further I drove from civilisation, the more pronounced my unease became. The road—if you could even call it that—had deteriorated significantly in the last kilometre. Branches scraped against the sides of my ute, their skeletal fingers leaving faint trails across the paintwork, creating a sound like whispers, like warnings I was choosing to ignore. The canopy above blocked out most of the sky, creating an artificial twilight that my headlights struggled to penetrate.

This was ridiculous. No legitimate fencing job required clients to live in such inaccessible locations. Even for the most remote properties I'd worked on, there'd been maintained access roads, clear driveways, some evidence of regular human passage. This felt more like bushland that had been reclaimed by nature, as if I were driving into somewhere that didn't want to be found.

My phone had lost signal three kilometres back. The realisation had sent a cold spike of alarm through my chest, though I'd tried to dismiss it as normal for the area. Lots of Tasmanian properties were in mobile dead zones. Nothing sinister about that. Just geography. Just the limitations of telecommunications infrastructure in sparsely populated regions.

But it meant no one knew exactly where I was. The address Luke had texted me was just coordinates and a property name. If something went wrong—

I shut down that train of thought aggressively. Nothing was going to go wrong. This was a job consultation. That's all. Luke was a former client, someone I'd worked for successfully before. There was no reason to transform normal professional caution into paranoid disaster scenarios.

Except for the hundred thousand dollars in cash. Except for the urgent timeline. Except for the mysterious "friend" Luke was helping. Except for every single red flag I'd been cataloguing and systematically ignoring because I was desperate.

As I emerged into a spacious clearing, a flicker of recognition danced across my mind, welcome as sunlight after the oppressive tunnel of trees. The space opened up dramatically, revealing a property that memory confirmed I'd seen before. "Owen," I murmured to myself, eyes settling on the name adorning the rough-stone mailbox at the clearing's edge.

The name triggered a cascade of recollections. The Owens. An older couple, maybe late fifties, who'd hired me for a boundary fence—when was it? Four years ago? Five? Mrs Owen had been lovely, constantly offering tea and biscuits, whilst Mr Owen had spent most of the job telling me elaborate stories about the property's history, about finding aboriginal artefacts in the upper paddock, about the logging industry that had once thrived in these hills.

The memory should have been reassuring—proof that this place was real, that the Owens were real people, that this wasn't some elaborate trap or scam—but instead it raised new questions. Why was Luke conducting this meeting at their property rather than his own? What was the connection between Luke's "friend" and this isolated cottage? Or perhaps the Owens are the “friend” I am supposed to be meeting with?

I parked the ute under the protective arms of a towering gum tree, its massive trunk suggesting it had stood here for a century or more. The tree's leaves whispered in the slight breeze, creating a sound like distant conversation, like gossip exchanged in hushed tones. Leaning forward, I peered through the windscreen at the quaint sight before me—an old stone and cedar cottage that seemed to belong to another time, its walls holding stories untold.

The cottage was exactly as I remembered it, perhaps slightly more weathered. Built from local stone—that distinctive Tasmanian dolerite that gave so many historic buildings their distinctive grey-blue character—with cedar weatherboards filling the gaps and forming the upper storey. A tin roof, rusted in places but fundamentally sound. Windows with thick, hand-blown glass that distorted the view of the interior into abstract shapes. A front verandah running the width of the building, its boards silvered with age.

It was beautiful in that way old Tasmanian cottages are—solid, practical, built to last by people who understood the climate, who knew how to survive winters up here in the hills where snow wasn't uncommon and cold was a given. The kind of place that spoke of self-sufficiency, of people who'd carved lives from difficult country through sheer stubborn determination.

And it was completely, utterly silent.

No smoke from the chimney. No lights visible in the windows despite the dim morning. No sign of the Owens, or Luke, or anyone else. Just the cottage sitting there like something from a photograph, beautiful and still and somehow wrong in its emptiness.

Memories stirred as I opened the door and climbed out, the hinges creaking in protest. The sound seemed obscenely loud in the quiet. I felt the heel of my boots sink into the soft, mildew-laden earth, the ground yielding beneath my weight with a slightly unsettling give, as if the earth itself were less solid here, as if the boundary between one thing and another might be more permeable than it should be.

I could see where I'd installed the fence—the boundary line along the southern edge of the clearing, the posts still straight and true, the wire still taut. Good work. Solid work. The kind of craftsmanship that would last decades. Seeing it gave me a small surge of professional pride, a reminder that I was good at what I did, that I'd built my reputation on quality, that I was here because I had skills worth paying for.

But why that amount? Why the urgency? Why cash?

Before I could take more than three steps towards the cottage, before I could formulate answers to any of the questions crowding my mind, Luke's voice cut through the still air.

“Hey, Nial,” he called out, his tone brimming with a cheerfulness that felt forced — performative, slightly too bright for the grey morning and the isolated setting.

I looked up sharply. He stood on the front porch, framed by the dull light that filtered through the mist like watered-down milk. The first thing that struck me wasn’t his voice, but what he was wearing. Jeans, a plain T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers — thin ones, the kind you’d wear to a barbecue, not in the middle of a Tasmanian winter morning. His breath didn’t even fog much in the cold air, as though he’d stepped out of a different season entirely.

The casualness of it was wrong — jarringly so. It didn’t fit the chill that gnawed at my fingertips or the damp scent of frost still clinging to the grass. Everything about him seemed designed to suggest ease, normality, yet his stance betrayed it. His weight was pitched slightly forward, balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to move. From this distance, I could see the tautness in his shoulders, the coiled readiness of someone waiting for something to happen — or to begin.

My heart responded before I could reason with it, quickening with a faint, inexplicable pulse of adrenaline. It wasn’t fear exactly, but something close — a tightening in the chest, a whisper of caution that I couldn’t quite locate or justify.

Why am I so nervous? I chastised myself silently, jaw tightening. It was ridiculous — he was just a bloke on a porch, a former client offering work I needed more than I wanted to admit.

Still, the unease didn’t fade. It sat low in my stomach, humming.

It’s just a friendly chat about a job, I told myself, as though saying it firmly enough could make it true. Get a grip.

With a deep breath that did little to settle my racing pulse, I closed the door of the ute with a solid thunk and began striding towards Luke. The sound of the door closing had a finality to it that I didn't like, as if I'd just committed to something irrevocable. His figure became clearer with each step—Luke Smith, early thirties, maybe thirty-three or thirty-four, though he looked older around the eyes, as if he'd seen things that had aged him prematurely.

He was thinner than I remembered, I realised as I approached. Not unhealthily so, but noticeably leaner, with a wiry tension to his frame that suggested stress, or intensive physical activity, or both.

But it was his hands that drew my attention—constantly moving, fingers tapping against his thighs, then crossing his arms, then uncrossing them, then finding his pockets, then emerging again. The nervous energy was unmistakable, feeding into my own growing apprehension like a feedback loop, each of us amplifying the other's tension.

A blend of anticipation and wariness accompanied me as I moved closer to uncovering the mystery behind this lucrative job offer. The distance between us closed as we approached each other—fifteen metres, ten, five—and with each step I could see more details: the slight sheen of sweat on Luke's forehead despite the cool morning, the rapid movements of his eyes as they darted from me to the driveway behind me to the interior of the cottage, as if checking for something, monitoring for some expected development.

"Hi Luke," I greeted, extending my hand to meet his.

The handshake was firm, perhaps too firm, his grip strong enough to be almost uncomfortable. A professional gesture that somehow did little to ease the tension I felt mounting within me. His palm was damp with sweat, his grip lasting just a fraction of a second too long, as if he were trying to communicate something through the contact, trying to hold onto me, to anchor me here before I could change my mind and leave.

"I'm glad you came," Luke responded, his hands falling aimlessly to his sides after the handshake, fingers immediately resuming their rhythmic tapping against his legs. His nervous energy was almost palpable, feeding into my own growing apprehension like an infection, like something contagious.

The statement hung in the air between us. I'm glad you came. Not "thanks for coming" or "good to see you again" but glad you came, with an emphasis that suggested my arrival had been uncertain, that he'd been worried I might not show, that my presence here was somehow crucial to plans I knew nothing about.

"No worries," I said, trying to sound more at ease than I felt, trying to project the confident professionalism that had served me well in countless client meetings over the years. But my voice came out slightly strained, the words tight in my throat. Luke's tension was like a mirror, reflecting and magnifying my own unease. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more than a little curious about the job."

That was an understatement. Curious didn't begin to cover it. Suspicious, anxious, desperate, hopeful, terrified—all of those would be more accurate. But you didn't say those things to clients. You maintained professional distance, project calm competence, kept your own uncertainty carefully hidden.

"Good," he replied, his voice tinged with a mix of relief and something else I couldn't quite place—anticipation? Dread? The word came out in a rush, as if he'd been holding his breath. "That's… that's good."

The repetition was odd, unnecessary, filling space whilst his eyes continued their restless movement, never quite settling on my face for more than a second before sliding away to check some other angle, some other possibility.

I studied Luke more carefully, noting the erratic edge to his demeanour, the way his jaw was clenched, the muscle jumping beneath the skin. This wasn't the relaxed, friendly bloke I remembered from that fencing job years ago. That Luke had been easy-going, full of terrible dad jokes, the kind of client who made the work pleasant with casual conversation and cold drinks on hot days. This Luke was wound tight as a spring, vibrating with barely contained energy that set off every alarm bell in my head.

"Are the Owens home?" I asked, injecting a hint of surprise into my tone, making it sound casual, conversational, whilst actually fishing for information about the concerning absence of the couple who owned this property.

Luke's expression flickered—just for a moment, just long enough for me to see something cross his face that might have been guilt, or fear, or both—before he quickly side-stepped my question, his hand playfully slapping my shoulder in a gesture that was clearly meant to seem friendly but instead felt performative, forced.

"Oh, I've got the plans lying on the kitchen table. You'll love them!" He gestured towards the cottage with enthusiasm that seemed manufactured, as if he were reading from a script, playing a role. His voice had taken on an almost manic brightness, the tone of someone desperately trying to redirect attention, to move past an uncomfortable subject without actually addressing it.

A warning growl of intuition rumbled in my gut as I followed his lead, walking beside him towards the cottage entrance. Every instinct I possessed was screaming at me to stop, to demand answers, to get back in my ute and drive away whilst I still could. But I didn't. Because the hundred thousand dollars was still there, still possible, still the solution to every problem that had been crushing me for months.

And so I followed him, even as my gut churned with apprehension, even as my hands curled into fists at my sides, even as some primitive part of my brain recognised danger and prepared for flight or fight.

"So, a hundred thousand?" I couldn't help but voice my scepticism, trying to grasp the reality of the situation as I fell into step beside him. The number still seemed absurd, disconnected from any economic reality I understood. I needed him to say it again, to confirm it wasn't some misunderstanding or misheard figure from our phone conversation.

"Cash," he confirmed simply, not breaking stride, not looking at me.

The single word hung in the air between us, heavy with implications. Cash meant no paper trail, no documentation, no official record of the transaction. Cash meant operating outside the normal systems of commerce and taxation. Cash meant secrecy, and secrecy meant either privacy or criminality, and I had no way of knowing which.

"Must be a pretty important job?" The question came out more tentative than I'd intended, revealing more of my uncertainty than I wanted to show. My curiosity was wrestling with my caution, each trying to gain dominance whilst I walked this increasingly uncomfortable tightrope between opportunity and danger.

"Probably the most important you'll ever do," Luke said, his gaze fixed ahead, staring at the cottage door as if it held answers to questions I hadn't yet learned to ask.

The statement added an ominous weight to his words that settled over me like a physical thing, pressing down on my shoulders, making each step towards the cottage feel heavier than the last. The most important you'll ever do. What did that even mean? Important how? Important to whom? Important in what context?

But I didn't ask. I just kept walking.

My heavy work boots made a solid clomp as I took the few wooden steps that finished at a modest verandah stretching across the front of the cottage. Each footfall was loud in the morning quiet, announcing my arrival, my commitment to seeing this through despite every warning sign my body was registering.

The verandah boards were old but solid beneath my feet, cedar that had weathered to that distinctive silver-grey that only came with decades of exposure to Tasmania's harsh climate. I could see the grain in the wood, could see the marks of hand tools where some long-dead craftsman had shaped these boards, had built this porch with care and skill.

Luke held the screen door open for me, his arm extended in silent invitation. The door itself was vintage, the screen mesh patched in a few places but fundamentally intact, the frame bearing layers of paint that told the story of the cottage's maintenance over the years.

"Thank you," I muttered, stepping towards the threshold.

As my hand gripped the doorframe—rough-hewn timber, solid and real beneath my palm—a wave of nausea swept over me, powerful and sudden. My stomach twisted in a knot of doubt and fear, the physical manifestation of every warning I'd been ignoring. The world tilted slightly, my vision swimming, and for a moment I thought I might actually be sick right there on the Owens' porch.

Am I making a colossal mistake?

The question crashed through me with the force of revelation, cutting through the desperate rationalisations I'd been constructing since Luke's phone call. This was wrong. Everything about this was wrong. The isolated location, Luke's nervous energy, the absent owners, the impossible sum of money, the secrecy, the urgency—every single element was a red flag, and I'd been so blinded by desperation that I'd ignored them all.

I hesitated, my body rebelling against what my mind had decided, every muscle tensing with the primal urge to flee. I turned back to face Luke, my resolve faltering, crumbling beneath the weight of common sense that was finally, belatedly, making itself heard.

"Look, Luke, I'm not sure I can do this," I confessed, my head dropping, unable to maintain eye contact as shame and disappointment washed through me in equal measure. Disappointment at walking away from the money, yes, but also disappointment in myself for having come this far, for having allowed desperation to override judgment.

My mind wrestled with itself, the lure of the money still there—a siren call that promised salvation, security, solutions to every problem—battling against the screaming alarms of my conscience, the fundamental knowledge that this wasn't right, couldn't be right, could never lead anywhere good.

"Oh?" Luke's expression shifted to one of surprise, his eyes widening slightly as he registered my hesitation. But beneath the surprise, I caught something else—concern? Fear? As if my backing out now would have consequences that extended beyond simply losing a contractor, as if there were stakes here I didn't understand, investments I couldn't see. "What's wrong?"

His voice had lost some of its forced brightness, becoming more genuine, more human. It was actually the most real he'd sounded since I'd arrived, as if my hesitation had punctured whatever performance he'd been maintaining.

"I dunno. It's just… it's a lot of money. And in cash," I confessed, letting out a deep exhale that felt like it carried the weight of my swirling thoughts and doubts, all the anxiety I'd been suppressing since I'd climbed into my ute that morning.

"I get it," Luke responded with a short chuckle, an attempt at lightening the mood that fell slightly flat but was nonetheless appreciated. His shoulders relaxed fractionally, and he leaned against the doorframe in a posture that seemed more natural, less wound-up than before. "I suppose I have been a little mysterious about it all, haven't I?"

"Maybe just a little," I replied, feeling a slight easing in the tension that had been knotting my face, the muscles around my eyes and jaw unclenching fractionally.

Luke's acknowledgement of the weirdness of the situation, his admission that he'd been mysterious, should have been reassuring. It suggested self-awareness, understanding of how this appeared from my perspective. But it also raised new questions. If he knew it seemed strange, if he understood my hesitation, why had he presented it this way? Why the mystery? Why not just explain everything upfront?

His smile widened, a genuine display of reassurance that transformed his face, making him look more like the Luke I remembered from years ago. "I promise it's legit. It'll all make sense once you see the plans."

The plans. Everything came back to these mysterious plans lying on the kitchen table. Plans that would supposedly explain everything, that would make sense of the money and the secrecy and the urgency. Plans that I would "love," according to Luke's earlier statement.

"Are you sure?" I pressed, my voice laced with a mix of hope and persistent unease. The battle between wanting to believe in the opportunity and the nagging suspicion that something was fundamentally off continued to wage within me, neither side gaining decisive victory.

Luke nodded, his eagerness apparent, leaning forward slightly as if physical proximity might help convince me. There was a sincerity in his gesture, in the directness of his gaze as he finally met my eyes and held them, but it wasn't enough to completely dispel the discomfort I felt. How could it be? Sincerity and wrongdoing weren't mutually exclusive. People could genuinely believe in terrible things, could commit crimes whilst convinced they were doing the right thing.

"And the Owens?" I probed further, returning to the question he'd avoided earlier, unable to let it go. "They're not home?"

Their absence bothered me more than anything else, actually. More than the money, more than Luke's nervous energy. Because this was their property, their cottage, and they weren't here. Which meant either they'd given Luke permission to conduct this meeting in their home whilst they were elsewhere—odd but possible—or they didn't know he was here, which was deeply concerning.

"Come, let me show you," Luke said, sidestepping my question once again, though this time with less of the manic cheerfulness from before. His tone was encouraging, almost persuasive, as he gestured for me to follow him further into the house.

The evasion should have been my final warning. Should have been the moment I turned around, climbed back into my ute, and drove away. But I didn't. Because beneath the fear and the suspicion, the hope was still there—stubborn, desperate, refusing to die.

They're just plans, I reassured myself, attempting to quell the rapid beating of my heart that had become so loud I could hear it in my ears, feel it in my throat. Looking at plans can't hurt. I can look at plans and then make a decision. I'm not committing to anything by just looking.

The rationalisations came easily, familiar patterns of thought worn smooth by repetition. How many times had I told myself similar things over the past hour? The past six months? Just one more credit card. Just one more overdue payment. Just one more compromise. Just this one thing and then I'll have time to figure everything out.

"Okay," I conceded, the word emerging with a resignation I couldn't quite hide, turning toward the hallway.

I was committing now. I knew it even as I told myself I wasn't. I was crossing a threshold, and some part of me understood that whatever waited on the other side of that decision, there would be no easy path back.