The Fire and the Knife

“The Outback doesn’t need monsters—it just needs the wrong people in the wrong place.”
— Rebecca Monk

The Outback night enfolded them like a vast, unseen creature, its breath in the stirring gum leaves, its claws in the jagged shadows stretching across the dust. The air was cool yet close, and with every step Violet felt it gather more tightly about her, as though the darkness itself were conspiring to herd them deeper into its heart.

The crunch of dry leaves underfoot seemed deafening, brittle twigs snapping like rifle cracks in the stillness. Each sound ricocheted through Violet’s chest, making her flinch inwardly, certain that someone—or something—was listening. Her ears strained, desperate for confirmation of her unease, but the silence pressed back, thicker for their intrusion.

Her heartbeat surged, a frantic drum keeping pace with her cautious tread. She became hyper-aware of the brush of her sleeve against her skin, the whisper of her breath escaping into the cold, the faint swish of Michelle’s jacket beside her. All of it fed the sense that they did not belong here, four intruders trespassing on a land that had its own unfathomable laws.

The immensity of the Outback yawned around them, a black void that seemed to erase the very notion of distance. Stars punctured the sky in impossible profusion, cruelly beautiful and unhelpful, their light doing little to soften the darkness below. The horizon was nothing but an invisible line, a boundary between the endless desert and the unblinking firmament.

Without warning, Michelle jerked to a halt. Her arm shot out and seized Violet’s sleeve, her grip sharp enough to startle. Violet stumbled, her breath catching.

“Wait,” Michelle hissed, her voice ragged, as though it had snagged on the night itself. “Where did it go?”

The others froze mid-step. Four sets of eyes turned as one to the horizon. The glow—the strange, pulsing light that had drawn them from the safety of the verandah—was gone.

Mandy hugged her arms tightly around her chest, her voice quivering despite the bravado she usually wore like armour. “It was just there. I swear it was just bloody there a minute ago.” Her eyes darted across the darkness, wide and frantic, as if she half-expected the glow to burst back into life. “I don’t like this. It feels like… like the whole bloody Outback’s watching us.”

Rebecca, steady as ever, reached for her hand. Her grip was firm, the small gesture an anchor against the unsteadiness gnawing at them all. “It’s just nerves,” she murmured, though Violet caught the faint tremor beneath the calm. “You know how it is out here—the stars, the shadows, the vastness… it does things to your eyes. Makes you see what isn’t there.”

But her reassurance drifted into the stillness, vanishing like smoke. The silence swallowed it whole, leaving only the sound of their breathing—quick, shallow, betraying the fear none dared name aloud.

The girls edged closer together, their shoulders brushing, four small figures clinging to one another in the vastness. Their warmth, their nearness, should have comforted. Instead it only underlined how fragile they were against the enormity pressing in.

Violet shook her head, her voice low but firm, as though to cut through the doubt. “No. We all saw it. It was real.” She bit her lip, her words tasting of desperation as she sought reassurance. “Wasn’t it?”

Her question lingered, unanswered, suspended in the night.

A thread of doubt unravelled inside her, unwelcome but impossible to resist. She had grown up beneath this sky; she knew the Outback could twist perception, conjuring shapes in shadow, whispers in silence. Yet the memory of the glow pulsed within her mind with too much clarity to dismiss.

Still, a colder thought crept in: perhaps the trick was not in their eyes at all, but in the land itself—something ancient and watchful, drawing them out, then concealing its hand.

They lingered in uneasy silence, the night pressing tighter with each heartbeat, when a faint shimmer tugged at Violet’s eye. At first she thought it another trick of the stars, a reflection caught in her vision—but no, it moved differently. She narrowed her gaze, her breath hitching in her throat.

“Look,” she whispered, pointing. Her arm trembled more than she meant it to. “There—do you see it? Is that… a campfire?”

The others followed her gesture, squinting into the distance where the darkness thinned to a fragile glow. A small, wavering flicker licked upward, golden against the ink-black horizon. Unlike the pulsing light they had followed before, this was steadier, familiar in its rhythm.

The glow breathed like a promise: warmth, safety, human company. Yet Violet felt no comfort, only a tighter knot in her chest, as though something about its very presence was wrong—too far, too out of place.

Michelle’s voice broke the hush. “Should we keep going?” she asked. Her gaze darted back over her shoulder. Behind them, the scrub and shadows had closed ranks, swallowing any sign of the path they had taken. The camp might as well have been on another continent.

The stillness pressed harder, the silence now thick with implication: forward or back, but not both.

Violet wetted her lips, tasting the dryness of dust. Her eyes clung to the flicker, to that stubborn thread of fire holding out against the vast dark. Slowly, she nodded, the decision weighted but inevitable. “We’ve come this far,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt. “Let’s see what it is.”

She drew a deep breath, as though filling herself with borrowed courage, and added, “Besides… if it’s people, we might be able to ask for directions back to our camp.”

The words sounded thin even to her own ears, an excuse laid over the truth. What drove her forward wasn’t the hope of safety, but the tug of something deeper—mystery, compulsion, the gnawing sense that the glow held answers she couldn’t yet name.

The others shifted around her, hesitant silhouettes in the starlight, waiting for her to move first.

As they pressed on, the glow resolved itself into something tangible. At first it was just a smudge of light bleeding through the trees, but step by step it thickened, flaring gold against the void until at last the fire itself revealed its restless dance. Flames licked upward in sharp tongues, bending and snapping, their movements almost purposeful.

The shadows they cast writhed across the ground, stretching long and spindly, the shapes grotesque in their distortion. They seemed to reach for the girls with bony hands, beckoning them closer even as every instinct whispered they should turn back.

The air was cooler here, the chill needling against their bare arms, but it carried scents that rooted them in something raw and primal. The sharp menthol breath of eucalyptus. The smoky bite of burning timber. Beneath it, fainter still, the dusty tang of red earth warming under the fire’s reach. Together, the aromas tangled into something both familiar and unsettling, like a half-remembered childhood camping trip shadowed by a dream you could never quite shake.

Michelle tipped her head back, closing her eyes as she drew in the smoky air. When she spoke, her voice was hushed, touched with awe. “Smells like… adventure,” she murmured, letting the word linger as if she were savouring it. Then, with a crooked smile that tried to disguise her nerves, she added, “Like we’re the first people to ever set foot out here.”

The line made Violet’s chest tighten. She understood it perfectly. Despite the icy thread of unease winding through her veins, there was a pull to the moment—an exhilaration that hummed in her bones. For an instant she felt transported, as though they were no longer four restless girls sneaking from camp, but explorers stepping into a story much larger than themselves.

“I know what you mean,” Violet whispered back. Her eyes remained fixed on the flames ahead, unable to look away from their strange, hypnotic sway. “It’s terrifying… but also exhilarating, isn’t it? Like we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.”

Rebecca gave a small, tight laugh, the sound cracking in the cool night air. She tugged her jacket tighter around her frame, shoulders hunched against both cold and fear. “Bigger than ourselves is overrated,” she muttered. “I’d settle for being back at our own camp right now. This place gives me the creeps.”

Her honesty broke through the tension like a pin through fabric, grounding them again in their own frailty, even as the fire ahead continued to burn—waiting, beckoning, daring them closer.

The fire’s glow grew clearer as they inched forward, the crackle and pop of burning wood breaking the stillness. Then, through the veil of heat-haze and smoke, a figure took form.

He sat utterly still, shoulders hunched towards the fire’s warmth, his back curved in on itself like a man carrying too many burdens. The flames licked up, illuminating him in uneven flashes—one moment half-hidden in shadow, the next starkly revealed. His face was set and unreadable, gaze fixed on the flames as if they alone tethered him to the world.

The sight rooted them where they stood.

Michelle’s sudden gasp sliced through the night, sharp and involuntary. The others flinched, their eyes whipping to her. Recognition bloomed across her features, mingled with confusion and unease.

“It’s Liam,” she breathed, the words scarcely more than a ripple of sound above the crackling fire. Her brother’s mate. The name carried an edge of familiarity, but not safety. “He’s Gordon’s friend.”

The revelation did not bring relief. Instead, it curdled the air between them, deepening the tension. An unspoken unease cloaked the group, settling over their shoulders like a thin but suffocating veil.

Violet’s stomach tightened. A cold shiver ran the length of her spine, settling at the nape of her neck where the fine hairs now stood rigid. It was as though her body knew, before her mind could shape the thought, that they had stumbled into something they shouldn’t. Every instinct urged her to step back, to vanish into the scrub before the figure noticed them.

Rebecca leaned close, her whisper urgent, her breath warm against Violet’s ear. “What’s he doing out here?” she hissed, her frown etched deep in the starlight. Her hand sought Violet’s sleeve, fingers trembling as they clutched at the fabric. “Same night as our Girl Guides camp. It can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

Violet shook her head slowly, unable to tear her gaze from the man by the fire. “I don’t know,” she murmured, her voice tight with dread. “But I’ve got a bad feeling. Something’s not right.”

Mandy shifted uneasily, hugging her arms tight around herself. Her voice was a quaver, threaded with remembered warnings. “Dad always said people vanish out here without a trace,” she whispered. “Said the Outback doesn’t give up its secrets easily.”

Michelle forced a scoff. “Oh, come off it,” she muttered, her attempt at dismissal unconvincing. “Those are just stories to scare tourists. Liam’s probably just… camping. Same as us.”

But even as she said it, her eyes refused to leave the man by the fire.

Despite the cold knot twisting tighter in Violet’s stomach, Michelle surged forward with a barely concealed thrill at spotting someone familiar. Rebecca’s eyes gleamed too, that dangerous spark of curiosity she sometimes wore when daring herself into trouble. Together they propelled the group closer, though every nerve in Violet screamed for her to hold back.

The nearer they drew, the stranger the scene became. Liam did not stir. He sat like a figure carved from stone, his body angled toward the fire, gaze pinned to its restless dance. The flames painted him in fleeting contrasts—cheekbones stark, hollows of his eyes cavernous, mouth pulled thin in the shifting shadows. For one heartbeat Violet could almost believe he wasn’t Liam at all, but something older, watching through his skin—an unwilling sentinel to secrets no one should keep.

Her throat tightened. His stillness was not the comfortable sort of a man resting, but the brittle stillness of something holding itself unnaturally in place. A statue waiting to break into motion.

“Liam?” Michelle’s voice cracked the hush, thin and uncertain. “It’s me—Michelle. Are you alright?”

Her words seemed to hang in the smoke, unanswered. The air itself felt poised, waiting. Then—

A sharp rustle tore the silence apart. Twigs snapping. Leaves shifting in a rhythm too deliberate to be wind. The sound came from just beyond the circle of firelight, close enough to freeze the blood in Violet’s veins.

All four girls stiffened instantly, breath catching, every muscle primed to flee. Violet’s mind flooded with half-seen terrors: a feral dog, a prowler, one of the nameless predators her father used to warn her about when she wandered too far. Worse still—the thought of human eyes watching, waiting.

Liam moved. His head snapped up, eyes suddenly blazing with awareness, all traces of trance gone. In their place was something taut and coiled, like a spring about to snap. The firelight glinted off metal in his hand. A small pocketknife. He held it easily, casually, yet with such certainty it felt less like a tool and more like a natural extension of him.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said, low and urgent, the words cutting through the crackle of the fire. “It’s not safe.”

Violet instinctively shifted a step back, her body pulling her friends with her. Fear coursed through her veins, but she forced her voice steady, willing herself not to show the tremor beneath. “What do you mean, it’s not safe?” she asked. She angled herself slightly ahead of the others, a protective instinct she barely recognised in herself. “What’s going on, Liam?”

His eyes flicked restlessly around the circle of trees, knife grip tightening until his knuckles showed pale. His voice came out a near-whisper, but it carried a weight that sent a shudder straight into Violet’s bones.

“There are things out here,” he murmured, scanning the scrub as though expecting something to lunge from it at any moment. “Things most people don’t know about. Things that… hunt.”

The words sank into the night like stones dropped into water, sending ripples through the air around them.

A silence followed, thick and oppressive, punctuated only by the fire’s spit and the far-off, mournful cry of a night bird. Violet’s gaze darted to her friends. In each of their eyes she saw her own fear mirrored back—raw, unguarded, undeniable.

“What kind of things?” Rebecca asked at last. Her voice was barely above a whisper, her curiosity straining against the fear that laced every syllable. “You don’t mean… animals, do you?”

Liam gave a short, rasping laugh that held no trace of humour. It was the kind of sound that scraped the nerves raw. “I wish it was just animals,” he muttered. “Animals you can track. Animals you can predict. They’ve got patterns. Rules. This…” He gestured vaguely towards the darkness pressing in on the firelight. “…this is something else entirely.”

The girls exchanged uneasy glances, the tension between them tightening like a cord. Violet felt her skin prickle, as though the shadows had crept closer.

Liam leaned forward, his face hollowed by the flicker of the flames. His words came out low, deliberate. He began to tell them a story—not the sanitised sort whispered to children around campfires, but one raw and brutal.

“There was a backpacker once,” he said. “Came through here a few years back. Alone. They said she went missing, and the papers called it an accident—dingoes, or maybe she got lost in the heat. But I know the truth. I saw her. Or what was left.”

The fire popped sharply, the sound making Mandy flinch. Liam’s gaze flicked towards the scrub just beyond the circle of light.

“They found her body right over there.” His hand lifted, pointing into the dark where the trees thickened. The girls’ eyes followed, though none of them wanted to. “Or what was left of it, anyway. Torn flesh. Blood in the dirt. Not a dingo. Not anything you could explain away with teeth and claws. The kind of thing they couldn’t let get out. Bad for tourism, bad for the town’s reputation.” His eyes hardened, as though reliving it. “But I saw it. And I’ll never forget it.”

The words clung to the night air like smoke, refusing to disperse. Violet’s stomach lurched violently, bile stinging the back of her throat. She tore her eyes from the darkness where Liam had pointed and glanced at her friends. The horror was mirrored in them all—Rebecca white as chalk, Michelle’s jaw set but trembling, and Mandy’s eyes glassy, brimming as though a single word might spill them into tears.

“But… but that’s impossible,” Michelle stammered, her voice stripped of its usual confidence. “If something like that happened, we’d have heard. It would’ve been everywhere. On the telly, the radio, in the papers.”

Liam shook his head, his expression grim, unmoved. “That’s just it. You won’t hear. They made sure of it. Covered it up neat and tidy, like it never happened. Told the family it was an animal attack. But I know what I saw. No dingo did that.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Even the night creatures seemed to withhold their voices, leaving only the hiss of the fire.

Michelle cleared her throat, forcing a bravado she didn’t feel. “But we’re together,” she said quickly, almost tripping over the words. She gestured at the group, huddled tight within the thin safety of the fire’s glow. “There’s safety in numbers, isn’t there? Whatever it is, it wouldn’t go for us. Not all of us.”

Liam’s gaze slid back to her, flat and cold. When he spoke, his words were soft but merciless.

“It makes no difference to a psychopath.”

The syllables landed heavy, each one an anchor dragging their stomachs lower. Violet’s mind conjured faceless shapes waiting in the black—watchers with patient hands, knives glinting just beyond the light, waiting for the moment the fire faltered.

“We should go back,” Mandy whispered, her voice breaking like brittle glass. She clutched at Violet’s sleeve with both hands now, tugging urgently, her knuckles white. “We shouldn’t be out here. It’s not safe. Please, Vi—let’s just go back to camp. Please.”

Violet glanced at her, and in the firelight Mandy looked so young—her courage stripped away, eyes huge with terror, lip trembling as if she were a little girl again. A wave of protective instinct surged through Violet’s chest. She nodded quickly. “You’re right. We should head back. This was a mistake. We never should’ve—”

The words died in her throat.

Before anyone could move, the night itself seemed to tear open.

A blur of movement erupted from the black behind them. Rebecca’s scream split the silence as she was yanked backwards, her body arching in panic. A tall figure loomed out of the scrub, faceless in the dark, hands clamped around her arms.

The sound that tore from the girls was not just a scream—it was a raw, primal chorus of terror. Four voices shrieked together, the sound so piercing it seemed to rip through the very fabric of the Outback night. It echoed off the gum trees, carried on the wind, rolling across the vast silence like a warning cry from another age.

Violet’s heart stopped, then slammed back into life so hard it hurt. A cold wave shot through her limbs, stealing her breath. She lunged forward, her fingers clawing desperately at the air where Rebecca had been, but her hands closed on nothing.

“Let her go!” she shrieked, her voice hoarse, ragged with fury and fear. She felt the strength rise in her body, wild and reckless, terror twisted into something close to rage. Every instinct screamed at her to fight, even as another part of her mind whispered that they were all about to die.

Then the world lurched sideways.

Rebecca was suddenly released. The looming figure doubled over, laughing. The firelight caught his face—and the horror dissolved into a grotesque parody of relief.

It was Gordon.

Michelle’s brother.

His laughter was loud, brash, echoing horribly after the girls’ screams. It rang wrong in the tense night, a coarse guffaw out of place in the fragile silence they’d broken. He slapped his knee, shaking his head in glee, as if nothing in the world were amiss.

“You should’ve seen your faces!” he crowed, wiping at his eyes. “Absolutely priceless! I thought you were going to wet yourselves!”

The girls stood frozen, their bodies still locked in the grip of terror, hearts hammering too fast to let go. Their relief was real, but it came jagged and unwilling, tangled with anger and shame at how thoroughly they’d been caught in the scare. The adrenaline still churned through their veins, leaving them trembling.

Violet felt fury bloom hot in her chest, burning away the paralysis. Her fists curled tight at her sides. “That wasn’t funny, Gordon,” she snapped, her voice shaking with emotion. “You scared us half to death! What the hell were you thinking?”

For the first time, Gordon’s grin faltered. He raised his hands in mock surrender, still smirking but less certain now. “Aw, come on, Vi. It was just a bit of fun. No harm done, right?”

Rebecca spun on him, her face pale and streaked with tears, her whole body trembling like a taut string. Her voice cracked, raw with outrage. “No harm done? Are you serious? I thought I was going to die! You—you absolute prat!”

The word snapped out sharp as a slap, and for a moment the night seemed to breathe with her fury.

Gordon sprawled carelessly on the ground beside the fire, his lanky frame lit in uneven patches by the flicker of flame. Liam, quieter but no less self-assured, leaned back on his elbows, his pocketknife now sheathed but his presence still taut, watchful. The two of them laughed easily, their voices loud in the silence of the bush, as though determined to smother the tension that still clung to the clearing.

Michelle and Rebecca joined them, drawn in despite themselves. Cigarettes were produced, shared between nervous hands. The flare of lighters briefly ignited their faces in orange glow, carving them into fleeting masks of bravado before shadows reclaimed them.

They inhaled deeply, the acrid smoke trailing upward in thin ribbons, curling into the immensity of the star-choked sky. Their laughter followed after, brittle and high, the sort of laughter that frayed at the edges, betraying the tremor beneath.

Violet lingered at the edge of the circle, her arms crossed tight against her chest. She watched the scene with a sense of dislocation, as if her friends had slipped into another world entirely. How could they sit there, giggling and passing cigarettes, when the night still pulsed with threat? When only moments ago their screams had torn the silence apart?

Her skin prickled with the same unease that had stalked her since stepping from the verandah. The darkness pressed in like a living wall, heavy with the unseen, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was listening.

“So,” Liam said at last, his tone casual but his eyes too sharp. He handed Michelle another cigarette, his fingers steady. “What brought you girls out here anyway? Bit of a dodgy spot for a midnight stroll, don’t you reckon?”

Michelle shrugged, exhaling smoke in a long, deliberate plume. “We saw this weird light,” she said, her words wrapped in nonchalance she didn’t feel. She flicked ash to the dirt, her voice lighter than it should have been. “Thought it might be worth checking out.”

Gordon barked a laugh, shaking his head. “A light? Out here? Probably just a shooting star or something. You girls watch too many sci-fi movies.” He smirked, clearly amused at the thought. “ET in Silverton, eh? That’s one for the papers.”

Violet’s jaw tightened. His mocking tone scraped at her nerves. She sat forward, her voice sharper than she intended. “It wasn’t a shooting star. I know what I saw. It was different. It was… pulsing. Like it was alive. And then it just—vanished.”

Her words fell heavy in the firelit circle.

The boys exchanged a look. Quick. Weighted. Unspoken. Liam’s brows twitched ever so slightly, Gordon’s smirk faltered for the briefest moment. It was enough.

A chill coursed through Violet as she caught it. They knew something. Something they weren’t telling.

“I… I need the bathroom,” Mandy said at last, the words barely more than a tremor. Her face, caught in the firelight, looked pale and hollow, the freckles on her nose standing stark against skin turned chalk-white. The admission seemed to puncture the fragile bubble they’d built around themselves, dragging them back into the awful awareness of where they were—alone, exposed, in the vast and indifferent Outback night.

Gordon gave a vague wave of his arm, pointing somewhere into the dark. “There’s an old dunny over that way,” he muttered, his voice dripping with careless amusement. “You’ll find it. Just don’t trip.”

The throwaway remark was followed by a short bark of laughter, but the sound landed cruelly. His casualness jarred against the tension that still wrapped itself tight around the girls. To Gordon it was a joke, nothing more. But to them—to Violet, to Mandy—it was a reminder of the gulf between their worlds, how easily he dismissed what felt to them like a matter of survival.

“I’ll go with you,” Violet said firmly, already rising to her feet. Her voice carried no room for argument. The thought of Mandy stepping alone into that crushing dark made Violet’s chest tighten with dread. If there was any chance Liam’s stories held truth, she wouldn’t let her friend face it by herself.

The two girls slipped from the fire’s fragile halo, their departure swallowing them in shadow almost at once. The darkness pressed close, thick and suffocating, held back only by the thin, wavering beam of their torch. The cone of light carved a narrow path through the black, its edges swallowed greedily by the scrub. Every step forward felt like trespass, like entering a place they were not meant to walk.

“Vi,” Mandy whispered, her voice tight, close to breaking. She clutched at Violet’s arm with clammy fingers, nails digging through the thin fabric of her sleeve. “I’m scared. What if… what if Liam’s story was true? What if there really is something out here?”

Violet swallowed, the dryness in her throat making the act painful. Fear clawed at her chest too, but she forced it down, tried to find words that would anchor them both. “We’ll be alright,” she whispered back, wishing her voice didn’t shake. “We’re together. And we’re not far from the others. Nothing’s going to happen.”

But even as the words left her lips, Violet felt the lie of them.

The night seemed to pulse around them, alive in its stillness, watching. Every rustle in the undergrowth sent her heart leaping, every brittle twig snapping underfoot a gunshot in the silence. She held the torch higher, but the light seemed feeble, a child’s toy in a world that was suddenly vast and predatory.

The thought she didn’t dare voice was the one she felt most keenly: that something out there wanted them to keep walking.