The Mulga Man

The wet season in the Kimberley is a pressure cooker. The air hangs thick and heavy, and the cicadas scream like they’re being tortured. My family had just moved to a remote property near Kununurra, a sprawling block of red dirt and spinifex that backed onto the jagged Ragged Ranges. The nearest neighbor was forty kilometers away, and the only sounds at night were the dingoes and the wind in the boabs.

I was out by the bore-fed pool with my cousin, Leo, a wiry kid with a laugh that echoed off the tin shed. We were playing a lazy game of cricket on the cracked clay, the ball thumping into the dirt and sending up puffs of ochre dust. The heat was a physical presence, pressing down on us, and I could feel the sweat trickling down my back. That’s when I saw him.

He was standing at the edge of the bush, half-hidden by a ghost gum. He was impossibly tall, at least seven feet, with long arms that hung almost to his knees. He wore a battered Akubra hat and a long, duster coat that should have been suffocating in that heat. I froze, the bat in my hand, and stared. He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at the house, his head tilted as if listening to something I couldn’t hear.

‘Leo, who’s that?’ I whispered, pointing with my chin.

Leo squinted into the glare. ‘Who? There’s no one there, mate.’

But he was there, a dark silhouette against the sun-bleached grass. I dropped the bat and started walking toward him. He waited until I was within twenty meters, then stepped behind the gum. I broke into a run, my boots crunching on the dry earth, but when I reached the tree, there was nothing but a faint indentation in the sand, like a heavy footstep, and the smell of old ashes and something metallic, like blood.

I told Leo what I’d seen. He laughed, called me a bloody dreamer, and went back to bowling. But that night, I couldn’t shake it. I lay in my swag on the verandah, the air thick with the scent of rain that never came, and I thought about the old stories the Aboriginal stockman had told us when we first arrived. He said there was a mulga man, a creature of the bush, who came to take things that didn’t belong to him. I’d laughed it off as campfire talk, but now I wasn’t so sure.

The next day, the strange occurrences began. I was in the kitchen, filling a glass from the filter, when I noticed something on the floor near the back door—a small, perfectly round stone, black and polished like obsidian. I hadn’t put it there, and neither had Mum or Dad. When I picked it up, it was cold, despite the heat, and it seemed to hum against my palm. I dropped it into my pocket and tried to forget about it.

Later that week, I was out checking the fence line with our old dog, Bluey. Bluey was a tough old kelpie, never bothered by anything, but as we approached a stand of mulga trees, he stopped dead, his hackles rising. A low growl rumbled in his chest, and then he bolted, tail between his legs. I called after him, but he wouldn’t come back. I walked into the mulga, the leaves whispering around me, and that’s when I saw the tracks.

They were huge, bare footprints, each one the size of my forearm, with five distinct toes and a gap that suggested something between a human and a lizard. They led in a straight line toward the house, then stopped abruptly at the fence, as if whoever made them had simply vanished into the air. I felt a prickle of fear, and I ran back to the house, my heart hammering.

Mum noticed I was pale. ‘What’s wrong, love?’ she asked, her hand on my forehead. I told her about the tracks, and she gave me a long look, the kind that says ‘your imagination is getting the better of you.’ I tried to be rational. Maybe it was a kangaroo. But I knew it wasn’t.

Then came the night of the storm. The sky turned a bruised purple, and the wind picked up, rattling the corrugated iron roof. I was in my room, trying to read, but the electricity kept flickering. Outside, the first drops of rain hit the tin like gunfire. I went to the window to pull the curtains, and that’s when I saw him again.

He was standing in the yard, about fifty meters away, his coat billowing in the wind. He wasn’t wearing a hat this time, and I could see his face—long and gaunt, with skin like cracked leather and eyes that were too white, no iris or pupil. He was staring directly at me, and his mouth was open, as if in a silent scream. I stumbled back, grabbing the rifle that Dad kept in the corner, but when I looked again, he was gone. Only a single, black stone lay on the windowsill.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept the rifle by my bed and listened to the rain hammer down. Around 3 a.m., I heard a noise from the kitchen, a scraping sound, like claws on the lino. I crept down the hallway, my heart in my throat. The kitchen was empty, but the back door was wide open, swinging in the wind. On the floor, in the middle of the room, was a pile of ash and a small, dead thing—a goanna, its belly slit open, its entrails arranged in a perfect circle. I stumbled back, bile rising in my throat, and slammed the door shut.

The next morning, I found Dad outside, staring at the ground. ‘Look at this,’ he said, pointing. There were the same huge footprints, leading from the bush, right up to the back door, and then back out again. Dad was pale. ‘Something was here last night,’ he said. ‘Something big.’ I told him about the stone and the goanna, and for the first time, he didn’t dismiss me. He just nodded and said, ‘We need to get rid of it.’

We tried. We set traps, we sprinkled salt across doorways, we even had an elder from the local community come and do a smoking ceremony. But the presence didn’t leave. Instead, it escalated. Objects moved on their own. Windows would shatter for no reason. We’d find piles of dirt in the shape of a man on our doorstep. The heat grew worse, as if the thing was feeding on our fear.

One afternoon, Leo and I were out on the verandah, trying to stay cool. I was reading a book, when Leo suddenly started to scream. I looked up, and he was pointing at the water tank. There, etched into the rust, was a face—a gaunt, screaming face, with the same white eyes. I could see it was fresh, the metal curling as if being carved by an invisible hand. Leo ran inside, and I followed, slamming the door behind us. We could hear a deep, rumbling laugh, but it wasn’t coming from anywhere in the house. It was coming from everywhere.

That night, I decided to fight back. I grabbed the rifle and a torch, and I went out alone, my heart a war drum in my chest. The moon was full, casting long shadows across the yard. I walked toward the mulga trees, where I’d seen him first. The air was thick, and I could feel something watching me. I called out, my voice shaking. ‘Show yourself, you coward!’

For a moment, there was nothing. Then, a rustle in the trees. I swung the torch beam, and there he was, standing in a gap between two trunks. He was closer than ever, and I could smell him now—a putrid, rotting smell, like a dog that had died in a drain. He took a step forward, and I raised the rifle.

‘Stay back!’ I shouted. He didn’t stop. He took another step, and another, his long arms reaching out. I pulled the trigger. The shot echoed across the flat, and something fell. But when I ran to the spot, there was nothing. Only a black stone, still warm, and a voice in my ear, dry and crackling like dead leaves: ‘You can’t kill what’s already dead.’

I ran back to the house and locked myself in my room. I didn’t sleep. I just held the rifle and watched the door. In the morning, my parents and Leo were gone. The house was silent. On the kitchen table, there was a note, in my father’s handwriting: ‘We’ve gone to town. Don’t wait up.’ But something was wrong. The writing was shaky, the letters too neat, like a child’s copy.

I walked outside, and the sun was huge and red, a strange light over the land. The black stones were everywhere, scattered across the yard, each one humming a different note. And in the distance, I saw him again, standing at the edge of the bush, with his hand raised in a mocking wave. I knew then that I wasn’t alone. He had been here all along, watching, waiting. And he wasn’t going to leave until he had taken everything.

I don’t know what he is. Some kind of spirit, maybe, or something older. But I know one thing for sure: he lives in the mulga, and he will always be here. And if you ever see a tall man in a long coat, standing under a tree, don’t run. It’s already too late. He’s already inside your head. He’s already inside your home. And he’s not leaving until he has you too.