3.

Or at a pinch, left over from the Second World War. So I thought as I scoured the internet. Even when I found a photo of it on a military antiquities website I still couldn’t believe it. I’d dug up an anti-chemical warfare mask typically used in the First World War.

Sitting at my antique Jerker office desk, I again experienced that queer sensation of being watched.

Was this tan-coloured gasmask somehow haunted? Possessed by the ghost of some Unknown Soldier shot in the ass while trying to summon Beelzebub through clouds of brimstone on the battlefield?

Catching a shadow outside my gecko-footed window, I jumped from my chair, cardiac muscle accelerating into the red zone. I must have presented quite a sight because that shadow behind the mosquito screen cracked up with laughter.

“You big sissy,” she sniggered.

“For god’s sake, Sonia!” I cried out, genuinely irritated. “Why can’t you use the front door like everybody else?”

“Because that would take away all the mystique of my evening visits.”

“One of these days I’m going to turn up at your bedroom window unannounced.”

She was still giggling as she dislodged the screen and climbed in through the window. With flowing ginger hair, oversized glasses, a smattering of pimples and plenty of freckles, she was the very picture of a nerdy duckling trying to catch up with a body that had outgrown her overnight.

“Heard you digging up your garden with that midget bulldozer,” she said, grinning at my filthy, shirtless appearance.

Standing opposite her, I was made acutely aware of those added centimetres she’d piled on top of me these past years. My ex-wife had also been taller than me. Not that I considered myself short, more like having a gymnast’s build minus the walnut deltoids and tight pants.

“You never told me you were going to install this pool yourself though,” she added.

“No choice,” I said, replacing the mosquito screen in the window frame, where a procession of ants was being picked apart by the geckos. “The cowboy mafia wanted a fortune for the extra depth. Just couldn’t afford it.”

“What about the Blue Lagoon? Your friend Pauli works there, doesn’t he?”

“Pauli already gave me a discount on the deluxe kit, but the Blue Lagoon won’t install any pool with a diving board.”

“Why not?”

“You know that guy in a motorized wheelchair who cruises around town, mostly from one pub to the next?”

“The quadriplegic? The alcoholic called Nuggets or something?”

“That’s him alright. Years ago he did a suicide dive from a springboard installed by the Blue Lagoon. You know, when you dive headfirst with your arms plastered to your sides. Nuggets did this into a pool only half full or something and broke his neck. He was drunk as a skunk on rum and Coke. Still ended up with millions. The settlement brought the Blue Lagoon to its knees. After that they swore no more springboards.”

“Well, I think it’s way cool you’re doing this pool yourself. You’re like some kind of handyman hero.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“Yep. I wanted to be swimming in your pool next week, not next year.”

“Don’t fret, I’m on the clock. Need to get this thing finished and filled before the next big one.”

“Think it will really come to that?”

I shrugged noncommittally.

She went and plopped herself in the recliner. It was flanked by the Wi-Fi router and a ghoul-framed mirror I’d picked up from a nickel-and-dime theme park in California. Their amusement park having been gutted by wildfires, the family owners had no option but to sell off their scorched props and Halloween heirlooms to vultures like me.

Could well be my own fate one day very soon. Yo karma.

Long milky legs anchored over the armrest and coppery hair hanging loose, Sonia began thumbing away at her screen like a junkie who’d been without a fix all day. I was the only resident smart enough or lucky enough to get a telecom up here before Wonga Heights was deregistered as a suburb. As a result, the neighbours leeched off my Wi-Fi reception, none more so than Sonia, especially towards the end of each month when her 5G allowance was running dry.

“I thought your mother didn’t like you spending so much time around a hunky sex symbol like myself,” I said, “that I might corrupt your innocence.”

She burst out laughing at the sight of this short, middle-aged man flexing his paltry muscles in front of his private funhouse mirror. She laughed even harder when she saw my distorted reflection. Framed by wood-carved demons singed black by that carnival blaze, the mirror rendered my lantern jaw and the rest of my head disproportionately large, making me look like a lascivious dwarf trying to amuse the fair-skinned princess.

My place was full of this funhouse crap and movie memorabilia – posters, statues, Star Wars figurines, lightsaber-dildos; you name it I’d wasted good money on it. Some of the best pieces I’d inherited from my dad, the rest I’d amassed from shady comic shops and geeky websites during my Los Angeles years.

And here I was back in Oz, stranded in a suburban ghost town soon to be besieged by exploding trees.

Did this suck?

Oh boy oh boy, you bet it did. But one tiny advantage was being able to finally get all these collectibles out of cotton wool and on show. My fastidious ex-wife would never allow such wanton displays of kitsch. On the other hand, if she hadn’t forced me to put all this kitsch into storage it would never have survived the blaze that tore through our three-storey mansion back in the day.

Burning Down the House by Talking Heads, press play, as my dad would say.

Sonia meanwhile was engrossed in her hPhone holograms. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she was texting school friends and scrolling through underwear models or sending topless 3D photos of herself to all the boys. I’m sure she indulged in these frivolous teenage pursuits, but she also performed a lot of extracurricular nerd-searches that were at odds with her teenage demographics.

“Have you heard about these new faecal microbiota transplants?” she asked out of nowhere, thumbs dancing, “where they transplant the faeces of a normal healthy person into a patient in order to restore that patient’s gut bacteria? It used to be just for people with hospital-acquired infections, antibiotic resistance and all that, but now you can get these poo pellets from vending machines in Tokyo.”

“For real?” I replied, returning to my own online research. So many ex-military gasmasks for sale online. Who would’ve thought there were this many sadomasochists and ritualistic serial killers out there. Then again, nearly all houses these days were equipped with a respirator or two. Maybe the mask thing just ballooned into a full-blown fetish for some, like sanitizing soap and surgical-mask sex orgies. Eccentric old deviants forever scarred by the pandemics and forest fires and declassified presidential sex tapes. Hey, it was a theory.

“…. they freeze-dry the healthy faeces and put it in capsules before making it available in the vending machines with different ethnic floras and from different eras. Hey, what’s that on your desk?”

She sprung from the armchair.

Throwing a glance at the chipped statuette of a possessed Regan in the act of spider-walking on her back down a cutaway staircase, I said, “It’s from a 20th century romantic comedy called The Exorcist.” My house was probably a little too crowded with suchlike funhouse crap. “This scene didn’t appear in the original version because—”

“No, no, no, that thing next to it.” She moved in closer to point at the dirty gasmask lying next to the demonic girl statue.

“Oh that,” I feigned, knowing full well what she’d been referring to, just wanting to show off my infallible film knowledge. You bested this teenage prodigy wherever you could. “As far as I can tell it’s a smallpox respirator, standard issue for British soldiers in World War One.”

“Smallpox?”

Checking my screen again, I said, “Sorry, small box respirator.”

Pinching one end of it between thumb and finger, she grimaced in exactly the way you would when holding a dead manta ray connected to a hip flask via a human umbilical cord. “Where’d you get it?”

“Found it buried in my yard.”

“Is that why you were on your hands and knees in the dark out there?”

“You were spying on me!”

Dropping the soiled gasmask back to my desk, she leaned over my shoulder to see what else the website for military sadomasochism had to say.

“I wasn’t spying, just trying to get away from my mother. She was on the phone, flirting with some new guy at the animal shelter, telling him all about her new swimsuit, uggh.” She shoved her fingers into her mouth to intimate projectile vomiting. Regan from the Exorcist would’ve been so proud of her. “But why should an antique gasmask be buried in your backyard?” Almost immediately she answered her own question. “The bootlickers!”

“The military?” I murmured, surprised I hadn’t made this connection first.

“How long has that base been there? Surely not since the First World War?”

“Maybe longer,” I shrugged. “Pauli’s family have lived in this town forever and they can’t even say for sure when the first British or American soldiers turned up.”

“Even if this gasmask is connected with the military base,” she said, cleaning her glasses on the hem of her tank-top, “that doesn’t explain why it’s buried around this side of the mountain.”

“And not just any gasmask,” I added, “but one specifically designed to protect its wearer against early chemical warfare … all that nasty Siegfried Sassoon stuff.”

I was testing her, trying to best her again.

“Mustard gas,” she nodded shrewdly.

“How the hell could you guess that one?”

She had devoured Oscar Wilde at age nine, finished Wallace’s Infinite Jest at twelve – actually finished it – and then read the works of Borges at fifteen, in original Spanish, backwards, standing on her head with a mouthful of golf balls, or so she claimed. She wasn’t averse to showing off. These days she spent her spare time devouring university-level microbiology and Japanese manga, sometimes in original Japanese. No wonder she didn’t have any friends her own age, aside from online acquaintances, like that chemistry student in Fukushima who was always bitching about radiation in his soil.

“Maybe I can sell this gasmask on eBay for you,” she suggested.

“Not a bad idea.”

“But what if the rumours are true? What if the Yanks have been testing chemical weapons up here, or something else?”

“You believe all that village gossip?”

Officially, that military complex was merely a satellite tracking station for the benefit of our American allies. The local yokels swore blind, however, it was a secret testing facility and hey, these were the guys who delivered food up there and fixed the bootlickers’ plumbing. Buy them a beer and they’d tell you in a low conspiratorial whisper that the base was in fact another Area 51, full of all sorts of alien shit that had crashed to earth over the years. Small-town drunks crying out for love and attention.

“Maybe they’ve been testing up here for ages,” she said. “Starting with mustard gas and gradually working their way up to weaponized viruses.”

Kinky gasmasks. Biological weapons. Faecal transplants. All I wanted was a swimming pool, was that too much to ask for?

“What are you thinking about now?”

“I’m thinking we need a drink,” I said, getting up.

I soon returned with two glasses and an open bottle of French red I’d bought in bulk during my halcyon days. You knew it was expensive because it came with a real cork.

Sonia was hunched over my laptop.

“I just had a look at some other hundred-year-old gasmasks. You actually wouldn’t get that much for yours, it’s in such bad shape.”

I poured a small glass for her and a far more liberal helping for myself. Besides the internet, this was another reason she came over here: easy access to alcohol, and I’m not talking about rum-and-cola suicide dives, but the good shit from France.

Glancing up at me with a frown, she said, “There’s another problem.”

“What?” I was swirling my wine and imbibing the lovely aroma.

“Putting this gasmask up for auction might attract attention from the wrong people.”

Staring at her inquiringly, I said, “Crap… you’re absolutely right.”

If that military base could go to all the trouble of shutting down an entire nascent suburb, who knew how they’d react to news of one of their semi-illegal residents digging up embarrassing evidence of their secret history of unlawful weapons testing.

In any event, our cosy little soirée was gate-crashed by a screeching voice from next door. “Sonia! Sonia! Get yourself home right now, young lady! You’ve got school tomorrow!”

“I think your mother is calling,” I said.

She sighed with a flutter of the eyelashes before downing her wine in one graceless swig. One of these days I was going to have to teach this kid how to appreciate a good wine.

After she left, I put a frozen pizza in the oven and got stuck into appreciating the rest of that Crozes-Hermitage.

The more I drank, the more convinced I became that Wonga Heights must have been a landfill site during the early days of that military complex. And if my backyard was indeed a former dumping ground, then maybe there was other military treasure buried here right under my nose.

Then again, maybe my land was a toxic waste dump and all I’d be digging up was mutant Fukushima potatoes.