The Eden Effect

David Finchley
was born in in 1946, in post-war Germany. He moved to Australia with his family at the age of ten. After completing school, he studied Medicine at Melbourne University, going on to specialise in Neurology.

He continues to practice Neurology. Having been able to reduce his workload, he has now had the time to pursue his long-held desire to write.
The Eden Effect
is his first novel.

Published in Australia by Sid Harta Publishers Pty Ltd,

ABN: 46 119 415 842

23 Stirling Crescent, Glen Waverley, Victoria 3150 Australia

Telephone: +61 3 9560 9920, Facsimile: +61 3 9545 1742

E-mail: [email protected]

First published in Australia March 2015

This edition published March 2015

Copyright © David Finchley 2015

Cover design, typesetting: Chameleon Print Design

The right of David Finchley to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to that of people living or dead are purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Finchley, David

The Eden Effect

ISBN: 9781925280296 (eBook)

Digital edition distributed by
Port Campbell Press
www.portcampbellpress.com.au
eBook Conversion by
Winking Billy

It's like sitting on top of the world. The boy often had that same thought when the car was on the crest of the Westgate Bridge. Sometimes he would say it out loud, ‘Grandfather, this is like sitting on top of the world.' And grandfather would smile and reply ‘yes it is son.' And grandmother, in the passenger seat would smile and nod. It was grandfather and grandmother, never anything else. Not pop or nana or even grandpa or grandma. They were very formal people, grandfather and grandmother, but they were the only parents the boy had ever known. His mother had died only hours after giving birth to him. ‘She lost a lot of blood' is what he had been told. He knew nothing about his father. ‘He left,' was the only explanation ever offered.

The boy knew that his mother had been his grandparent's only child. What he did not know was that after years of failing to conceive, his grandparents had given up hope of ever having a child, only to be shocked and delighted when grandmother became pregnant at the age of thirty eight and gave birth to a beautiful, healthy daughter they named Hope.

He also did not know that at the age of nineteen the beautiful and much loved Hope had become pregnant to a man much older whom she barely knew. And if that was not bad enough, the man disappeared once he found out about the pregnancy. It was said that he went to the United States, no one really knew. Certainly not grandfather and grandmother. They were initially devastated and beyond solace. After much soul-searching, prayer and counselling from their priest, they had just begun to accept the situation when they tragically lost Hope to uncontrollable blood loss following what appeared to be a routine delivery.

So, in their sixties grandfather and grandmother had no choice but to raise another child. They did so with all the love and care that their broken hearts could muster. Their home was warm and their love was unconditional. Grandfather put off plans for retirement and continued running the dry-cleaning business which he had been on the verge of selling when Hope died. The boy was sent to a private school where he excelled. Grandfather and grandmother received glowing reports from teachers and it was clear that the boy had a bright future ahead. The boy knew he was loved and reciprocated with all the love that he had. They were, for all intents and purposes, his parents and more wonderful parents he could not wish for.

It was a sunny, warm Sunday morning in November. They were heading to Scienceworks, one of the boy's favourite places. He had been there many times before and if he had his way he would go there every weekend.

The car has passed the crest of the bridge and grandfather put on the left indicator as he approached the Williamstown Road exit. As grandfather slowed the Commodore down, the semitrailer which had been chugging up the bridge behind them started to overtake. The boy looked to his right and saw the truck. The faded markings of Thomson Steel appeared at his eye level. He could see rows upon rows of steel beams on the truck trailer. Some of the beams gleamed at him in the bright morning sun of that November Sunday morning. The truck was still alongside the car when the boy saw the truck jerk and then saw smoke coming from the truck's braking tyres. What the boy did not see was the sleek black Porsche 911 will which had cut in front of the truck from the third lane of the bridge and then into the left lane and out onto the Williamstown Road exit.

At the wheel of the truck was Bill Newman. In his mid-fifties, with thirty years' experience of driving semis, he cursed the Porsche but managed to slow down in time to avoid clipping the fast moving car. ‘Stupid bastard' Bill muttered to himself. The whole event took no more than 10 seconds. Grandfather was about to take the left exit off the bridge. He had seen the Porsche but was well back as the Porsche sped away. ‘An idiot' said grandfather as he watched the speeding car.

The steel had been loaded onto the truck the day before on the Saturday morning. It was Darren Galea's job to secure the steel beams, a task he had performed dozens of times before. That Saturday morning Darren was not at the top of his game. Friday night had been a big night. Earlier that day, Linda, his sometime live-in lover announced that things were over and that she was sick of the sight of him. To add insult to injury, she had conveyed the message by SMS. Gutless bitch, he thought. Didn't even have the balls to tell me to my face. So, Friday night had been a big night, even bigger than usual, and on Saturday morning Darren was nursing a hangover and carrying on his shoulders a head that weighed a ton. He had to take two Panadol and two Panadeine Forte just to make it work. The Panadeine Forte had made him feel a little lightheaded and reduced his concentration which was not the best even when Darren was at his best. But he got through the morning, clocked off and headed home to bed where he fell into a deep sleep and did not wake until 7pm. He missed the cricket game where he should have been opening batsman. He slept through the numerous phone calls from his teammates who were a player short and cursing him as they lost the match. He slept, also oblivious to the fact that his performance at work that morning was even by his standards well below par. Oblivious of the fact that amongst the beams of steel there that he had managed to lash down securely was an almost inconspicuous flat, thin, thirty foot piece of steel that he had failed to secure safely. That beam had managed the journey from Dandenong to the crest of the Westgate Bridge with no difficulty despite its precarious state. But it could not survive the sudden braking of the truck as Bill the driver avoided the Porsche. At that precise moment it came loose from its fellow beams and left the tray of the semitrailer.

No one knows what fate has in store for them. The laws of physics do not adequately govern the behaviour of a thirty foot, flat, thin and razor edged steel beam once it leaves the back of a truck and sails through the air on a beautiful, sunny November Sunday morning. And on such a beautiful Sunday morning, grandfather had both front windows open enjoying the fresh warm air as it streamed into the cabin of the Commodore. And as luck would have it, or to be more precise, bad luck, that errant steel beam also streamed into the cabin of the Commodore, sailing through the front of the cabin in grandfather's window and out of grandmother's window, along the way its razor sharp edge lopping off in a neat, almost surgical fashion both grandfather's head and grandmother's head. At the precise moment of his beheading, grandfather's body went into a tonic spasm, his right foot suddenly pressing down on the accelerator, propelling the Commodore forwards and for some reason to the left where it hit the side barrier with a loud thud. Grandfather's lifeless body then became limp, his foot slid off the accelerator and the car stopped at a forty five degree angle to the side barrier of the bridge, engine running.

After the head comes off, the heart continues beating for a few more seconds. In those seconds four jets of bright red blood rise vertically out of the neck, two large jets from the carotid arteries and two smaller jets from the vertebral arteries. The heart then stops and the blood flow stops. On that sunny November Sunday morning there were eight such jets of blood rising to the ceiling of the Commodore and in splashing back onto the interior of the car and its occupants. The steel beam, while carrying out its lethal mission, tilted a little, propelling the severed heads of grandfather and grandmother over the head-rests and into the back seat. The heads landed quite neatly on the boy's lap and stuck there, probably anchored by the deluge of blood which covered everything inside the Commodore including the boy all the way from the top of his head down to his feet.

Within seconds, pandemonium broke out on the bridge. At least a dozen cars screeched to a halt, three running into the back of each other. People came streaming out of their cars and rushed to the Commodore. They were met with a sight that could only have come from hell. The Commodore, its engine still idling contained in the front the two blood covered, headless occupants. In the back, the boy, sitting motionless as if frozen in time, covered head to toe in blood and with the two lifeless heads on his lap their faces with a strange, eerie smile. One man threw up on the bonnet of the Commodore, women started screaming, sobbing. One woman's voice could be heard over all the commotion: ‘Oh my God. That poor child, that poor, poor child.'