The Generator’s Yellow Eye

The farm sprawled across two thousand acres of ochre earth and saltbush, with the homestead at its heart—a hundred-year-old colonial relic of corrugated iron and jarrah beams. The veranda wrapped around the house like a skeletal hand, and the tennis court lay before it, a rectangle of cracked asphalt that absorbed the heat of the day and released it in shimmering waves at dusk. On the far northwestern boundary, nearly lost in the haze, stood the ruins of St. Jude’s, the old church that had been abandoned before the First World War, its steeple long since fallen, leaving a jagged tooth against the sky.

I grew up in the girls’ room, a vast chamber with three single beds aligned against the wall facing a fireplace that never saw fire in my time. Later, it became a guest room with a queen bed that dwarfed the space, but the room held its secrets. The window looked out over the veranda and the tennis court, and beyond, the endless fields that turned to black at night. The dark out here was absolute, a solid weight that pressed against the glass. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face—I tested it many times, my fingers inches from my eyes, and saw nothing.

Electricity came from the old generator in a paddock near the shearers’ quarters. At night, its yellow light glowed like a sickly eye, and the quarters themselves cast long, distorted shadows. We were among the last to get mains power, and in those days, the hum of the generator was the farm’s heartbeat. It would stutter and cough, and sometimes the lights would dim, and you’d hold your breath, waiting for the dark to swallow you whole.

I remember the summer I turned twelve. My cousin Elsie had come to stay, and my younger brother, Tom, was still in his crib in the nursery down the hall. That night, the heat was oppressive, and the air in the girls’ room was thick with the scent of dust and eucalyptus. I lay on my bed, staring at the window, watching the yellow glow from the generator. The tennis court was a pale rectangle, and beyond, the fields stretched into nothing. The ruins of St. Jude’s were invisible in the dark, but I always felt them there, a presence on the edge of perception.

Elsie stirred in her sleep. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered, her voice thin and dry.

I listened. The generator hummed, steady. But there was something else—a faint, rhythmic tapping, like a finger on glass. It came from the direction of the window.

We crept to the sill. The veranda below was empty, but the tapping continued. It was coming from the roof. We looked up, straining to see—and there, pressed against the glass, was a shape. A hand. Pale, with impossibly long fingers, splayed as if crawling.

We screamed, and the hand vanished. My mother rushed in, turned on the lamp, and found us trembling. ‘It’s just a branch,’ she said, though there were no trees near the house. She closed the curtains, and we huddled in Elsie’s bed, listening to the generator’s hum, which seemed louder, almost rhythmic.

The next night, we heard the tapping again. This time, we didn’t look. We buried our heads under the pillow, but the tapping grew more insistent, and then came a voice—a woman’s voice, muffled, as if speaking through cloth. ‘Let me in.’

We told my father the next morning. He laughed, but his eyes were uneasy. ‘That’s just the old generator,’ he said. ‘It makes all kinds of noises.’ But he checked the roof, found nothing, and that night, he slept in the room across the hall, leaving his door open.

On the third night, I woke alone. Elsie was gone. The room was dark, but the window was open, and the curtains billowed like ghosts. I called her name, but only the generator answered. I went to the window. The tennis court was bathed in a sickly yellow light, but at its center stood a figure—tall, gaunt, wearing what looked like a long black coat. It was facing the ruins of St. Jude’s, and its head was tilted as if listening. Elsie stood beside it, her nightgown glowing.

I ran to the hall. My father was already up, his face pale. ‘Stay here,’ he said, and he went out with a flashlight. The beam cut through the dark, but when it reached the tennis court, the figure and Elsie were gone. He found Elsie in the kitchen, drinking water, as if she’d never left. She said she’d had a bad dream, and that the woman in the coat had told her to come to the church.

The next day, my father took us beyond the tennis court, across the paddocks, to the ruins. It was the first time I’d seen them up close. The walls were crumbled, the roof gone, and the floor was littered with broken pews and faded hymnbooks. In the center, where the altar would have been, there was a hole—a deep shaft that seemed to go straight down into the earth. My father peered in, then backed away. ‘Don’t come near this,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe.’ But as we turned to leave, I heard it again—the tapping. It was coming from below, from the hole.

That night, the generator failed. The house plunged into a darkness so total that I could feel it pressing on my eyes. My father went to check the generator, carrying a lantern. He was gone for hours. When he returned, his face was grey, and he wouldn’t speak. In the morning, he told us we were moving to town. He’d sold the farm. He never explained, but I saw him look at the ruins, and I saw his hands shake.

Years later, after he’d died, I came back to the farm, now a crumbling shell. The generator was rusted, its yellow eye extinguished. I walked to the ruins, overgrown and silent. The hole was still there, but now it was filled with water, black and still. And as I stood at its edge, I heard the tapping again—soft, insistent, from somewhere deep below. I turned to leave, but I caught a reflection in the water. It was the woman in the long coat, her face a blank pale oval, her fingers reaching up through the surface. I ran, and I didn’t stop until I reached the road.

Now, I live in the city, where the lights never go out. But sometimes, when I hear a generator hum, or when the dark presses in too close, I remember that place, and I know that something is still waiting there, tapping patiently beneath the ruins, waiting for someone to let it in.