Chapter 1
Wendell had felt like a fraud from his first day at The Silver Spring. He'd never worn a crystal, meditated or burned an incense stick in his life, so it came as a surprise to him that he was offered a job at the country's largest weekly New Age newspaper. It surprised him even more that he took it.
His other jobs had been refuges for careerless drifters like himself. He'd handed out condoms and syringes at a needle exchange, and a while ago he'd built a web site for a friend who ran a surfing school. For a few months he'd been a storeman at a casino, responsible for checking in and out all the booze being guzzled in the glitzy building until the boss started laying into one of the apprentices and Wendell decided to leave. And for a while he'd waited on tables in a suburban Chinese restaurant. That had been a pretty good gig until the owners had sold up and moved to Queensland.
His colleagues had largely been drifters like him - people with no ambitions, plans, qualifications or dreams beyond deriving some enjoyment from the day that lay in front of them. Wendell had dabbled at uni for a few years; a bit of physics here and a little philosophy there. He had even studied Russian for a semester or two. But after a couple of years he decided that he didn't really see the point. The people he met at university bored him, and the only pleasure he got from his day was sitting in the central courtyard watching first-year girls wander by. He didn't have to be a student to watch girls, so he dropped out and got a job driving a tourist bus around the city.
Wendell had gradually drifted apart from the few friends he had made at university. After they started graduating their jobs eventually became careers, their shags became spouses, and their share-houses became mortgages. They had sensed they were losing Wendell and had tried to help him.
"Wendell, you've just got to get some direction in your life."
"You just need to get a plan, mate. You know, settle down a little."
"Think of your future. What's going to happen to you fifteen years from now if you don't set yourself up while you can?"
But he rarely listened to this advice, and after a while his friends stopped offering it.
Wendell's job was simple; he was an organiser. He did the bits and pieces that kept the paper running, while the editor, Frank Thornton, planned articles and fretted about declining advertising revenue. A marijuana-scented cloud hung around Frank's shoulders and followed him throughout the office during the day. Frank was a tall soft-voiced man with a bald crown and a lanky ponytail the colour of a shadow hanging down his back. When Wendell had first met him, Frank's pinched face, bucked yellow teeth and the limp thread of hair had given him the appearance of a rat. He constantly trembled, as if he was forever sniffing the air, readying himself to scamper out the office door at an unexpected noise or a change in the wind.
"Your job is simple," Frank had told Wendell in on his first day. "You answer the emails and open the mail - forward anything interesting to me in case there's a story in it. You answer the phone. If people ask for me always take a message unless it's Wanda," he had paused, looking Wendell in the eye, "My girlfriend."
Wendell had nodded solemnly, though he wasn't sure why.
"All the stuff from our regular contributors: the horoscopes, the numerology column, the celebrity palm reading, you'll receive by email. The horoscopes come in from a syndicate in America that sells them to newspapers and magazines across the world. They're written by an American guy called Charles Finlay. He's got a fair following here. He writes horoscopes for all the big papers across the world; the New York Times, the Sun in London. Lots of people buy our paper just for those horoscopes."
Wendell had nodded again as he watched Frank's nose twitch above his rodent teeth. His eyes briefly darted towards the door.
"So it's your job to store all the articles, the horoscopes, and the letters that are going into the next issue. I'll send you all the articles when they're finished, and then you send them on to the designer to get it all laid out. Every Tuesday we get the proofs, I approve them and it gets printed the following day."
It wasn't long before Wendell discovered that Frank didn't do much of the approving around the office. The source of his skittishness was his girlfriend, Wanda, a shrewish clairvoyant with a shrieking voice that sounded like an air horn. Every day Wanda's beach ball figure would fill the doorway and her words would boom through the tiny office.
"Frank, what's this I hear about you running an article about Kundalini on the front page? Didn't I tell you that you need to reserve that for a review of the Psychic Fair in Kingsvale this weekend?"
Wanda and Wendell's relationship had started on rocky ground. On his first day at The Spring, he had been sitting at his desk flicking through some old issues when he'd felt a presence at the doorway. He'd looked up to see a short woman clad in a black dress with long black hair reaching down to her thick waist. She leaned against the doorsill biting her painted fingernails as she stared. Wendell noticed she was smearing blood red lipstick over her sausage fingers.
"So you're the new one."
Wendell tried to smile. He couldn't.
"Hello."
"You got a name?"
His voice caught in his throat. Wendell felt like he was ten years old, and winced at the feeling.
"Wendell."
"Hmmm." She'd squinted her piggish eyes at him before turning down the hallway to Frank's office. Wendell had heard Frank's soft voice for a moment before the sound of a slamming door echoed up the hallway.
Wendell was surprised at the number of emails The Silver Spring received. He hadn't realised there were so many people out there who were interested in aliens, urine therapy, crop circles, past lives and dancing naked under a full moon. Wendell read many of the submissions with raised eyebrows and a hidden grin. It seemed every palmist, conspiracy theorist, astrologer, dream analyst, numerologist, medium, tarot reader, herbalist and cult leader in the country had something they wanted to publish.
His favourite submissions were from the contributors who received rejection slip after rejection slip, but never gave up sending their material. Every month or so the Spring received a submission from a phrenologist in Adelaide citing the shape of the Prime Minister's skull as the reason why he was unfit to lead the country. A guy from somewhere in the Blue Mountains regularly sent 'evidence' that aliens from the planet Xanthia were preparing to take mankind to the next plane of existence. Every couple of days Wendell would receive an article from a woman in Perth who was convinced that the dolphins at Monkey Mia were delivering her messages from the lost city of Atlantis.
Wendell found these regular submissions funny, but they unsettled Frank. After receiving a particularly agitated Xanthian article from the Blue Mountains, Frank told Wendell of a similar publication in America whose entire staff had been wiped out by a gun-toting subscriber who was convinced that the magazine was sending secret messages to a hostile alien race. Frank never laughed at any of the submissions the paper received, no matter how crazy they sounded.
But Wendell believed they were harmless enough. Unlike Frank, Wendell had difficulty discerning the difference between the crackpots and the actual articles. When Wendell had first started at the paper he had regularly been caught out by Frank or Wanda when they were discussing an article that Wendell had imagined was a joke. Wanda had spent a few months being particularly passionate about urine therapy as a cure for all ailments, from genital warts to myopia. Wendell had thought Wanda was kidding when he heard her telling Frank that she wanted him to feature a page of urine recipe ideas, including a urine-based salad dressing and a recipe for a urine margarita. Despite Frank's meek protests, the next issue had featured the recipes. Wendell had received some interesting emails after that issue.
As far as jobs went, Wendell didn't mind The Silver Spring too much. It beat dealing with junkies and hookers at the needle exchange, and it was better than taking photos of gaggles of Japanese tourists. Besides the occasional steely-eyed run-in with Wanda, Wendell quite liked his job. There was always something or someone to have a chuckle at, and there weren't that many jobs where you could go outside and share a joint with the boss.
Chapter 2
"So Wendell, how's the new job?"
Wendell sipped at his beer and shrugged.
"Not too bad. The boss is pretty cool, but his girlfriend's a witch."
Wendell's friends didn't realise that he wasn't kidding when he said Wanda was a witch. He couldn't begin to explain what he had seen when he had opened the door to Frank's office that morning, so he let it go and took another pull at his beer.
"Where's Cassie?"
"Drinks with the girls after work. Should be along soon."
Cassie was the only one of his friends who had never quizzed him about his directionless life. Five years ago Wendell had introduced her to Tom, one of his tutors at university, and the two of them hadn't looked back.
After another few rounds of drinks, Cassie arrived with a friend. She took the seat next to Wendell and lit a cigarette.
"So, what's this new job I've been hearing about?"
"It's for a newspaper called the Silver Spring."
"Never heard of it."
"You wouldn't have. It's about reincarnation, astral travelling and all of that stuff."
"You don't believe in any of that?"
It was Sophie, Cassie's friend. She'd been sitting quietly next to Tom since she arrived, and Wendell had forgotten about her after their brief introduction. He glanced up at her when she spoke. Her voice had been soft and deep. The pub was noisy, but her quiet voice still commanded attention over the music and the hubbub coming from the nearby tables.
She smiled enquiringly at Wendell over the glass of wine at her lips.
"Not really." He shrugged. "I mean, all day I read letters and emails from people talking about aliens, past lives and that kind of stuff. When you read that sort of thing it all sounds kind of crazy. I guess I would want to see proof of something before I'll believe in it."
"So why did you take the job?"
The table fell silent. A hard note in her soft voice had unnerved him. It was a question his friends had wanted to ask but hadn't in case it would send Wendell running inside his shell like he did every time they asked him about his work, or indeed, his life.
Wendell shifted in his seat.
"Don't know. I needed some work, and it sounded ok."
Sophie stared at him, and then laughed.
"So you take a job in a place where you think everyone is crazy, working in a field that you have no belief in or respect for?"
Wendell blushed as Cassie stood up from the table.
"Oh, Sophie, don't be so rough on poor Wendell. Look at me. I'm a solicitor, and I don't have much belief in the law or respect for it, but I don't see you giving me a hard time!" She downed the remains of her beer.
"Anyone up for a game of pool?"
Sophie stood up and mumbled something about the ladies room before leaving the table. Several others grabbed their drinks to take to the pool table.
Cassie placed her hand on Wendell's shoulder and gave him a fleeting kiss on his cheek.
"Don't mind Soph. She's having a rough time at the moment. She's having problems with a dickhead boyfriend. Come on, come and play some pool with us."
But Wendell stayed at the table and finished his beer before heading home. | 
