Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills Ch. 07

More reports from Friday in Sydney's inner Eastern Suburbs came in. There were reports of the group talking about gorillas outside a bank in Coogee, a four wheel drive and a car matching the descriptions of those missing and owned by Alistair Hawkins and his daughter-in-law speeding through a pedestrian crossing in Kingsford knocking over three old people and then a confirmed sighting of Faye Hawkins at a bank in Randwick when bank staff reported her cashing a cheque, and dressed in a 1970s pantsuit and a bizarre tin foil hat.

From up the coast came a line of sightings. A truck driver called to report he had seen a group of six people acting very strangely in a rest stop on the Central Coast not far from the turn off to Gosford. Alistair Hawkins was seen on security cameras buying binoculars at a shop in Gosford. Another report came in from staff at a Newcastle service station who reported that later on Friday the group had been there to purchase fuel and attracted much attention for their weird behavior.

The teenage daughter dropping her pants and squatting behind a dumpster to piss was just the tip of an iceberg, as was the son hiding in one of the cars after fueling up. The father of the group verbally abusing a Downs Syndrome boy before taking his bag of lollies and throwing them to some dogs was about the worst.

With regards to this incident at the service station with the intellectually disabled boy, Alistair's boss at the lift company received an official complaint from an irate father about how on Friday at a service station in Newcastle one of the employees had verbally abused and traumatized his intellectually disabled son. The description of the man matched the abrasive foreman of one of the teams Alistair Hawkins, a man the manager dreaded confrontations with. But the problem was that Hawkins wasn't even in New South Wales on Friday, he had flown to Adelaide with his wife for a family emergency in South Australia. The manager had not seen the case on the news but when his PA showed him coverage of the case, the manager immediately passed this information to the police.

It was soon evident that the Hawkins family had spent the Friday night at Nelson Bay to the north of Newcastle. A motel manager named Tom reported them matching a group of six who had stayed in a chalet, although they had given a false name and address, saying they were from the Queensland Gold Coast. Tom recalled bizarre behavior from the group, such as the mother being dressed like it was the 1970s and the group sprinkling holy water on their cars and kneeling around them to pray.

Then later that evening they had returned with the son wearing an empty bucket of chicken over his head and acting very strangely. After reports of strange noises from the chalet from other guests that morning, Tom had found the group had fled, leaving the door wide open, tin foil all over the windows and the place in a mess. Unpaid drinks from the mini-bar was the least of the problems.

Staff and customers at a Nelson Bay Chinese restaurant and fish and chip shop also had strange tales to tell, but more significant were reports from a fried chicken restaurant where the eldest son had a complete meltdown in front of everyone and had to have an empty chicken bucket placed over his head to calm him down. Then the teenage daughter had her own meltdown in the car park screaming abuse at a chicken statue, and who appeared to be the daughter-in-law also becoming disrupting, swearing at a rooster on the roof of the restaurant.

Some police investigations already launched in the Blue Mountains on Saturday seemed to link to the missing Hawkins family. Roseanne, the woman from the bakery had no problems identifying the trio who had abused and threatened her as Alistair, Cornelius and Danielle Hawkins. A shooting incident late that evening also seemed to be connected to the Hawkins family, a scoutmaster reporting that he was sure that the man who had fired a shotgun at the terrified scouts was Alistair Hawkins, but as it was so dark he could not be sure.

However, it was easy to ascertain that in the afternoon the Hawkins family had been in Katoomba. A young woman from a café who had served the group sandwiches was sure the group was the Hawkins family, reporting that the son Cornelius had made her feel quite uncomfortable. Several tour bus drivers and quite a number of tourist passengers reported that the Hawkins family had definitely been at the Three Sisters that afternoon. One of the more clear reports was from a family of four who had been on a tour, reporting that these strange people had been staring at them and their young son and daughter in a very odd manner, and of all things seemed to be afraid of the teddy bear and doll carried by the son and daughter.

There were vague reports from a group of backpackers who were camping not far from the Belanglo State Forest of faint gunshots in the area but whether this was connected to the Hawkins family could not be ascertained. What was clear was that they had driven down to the Southern Tablelands during the night and were in Goulburn by early morning.

A farmer filling up his tractor at the service station called in to confirm he had seen the Hawkins family minus one of the sons. The young console operator and several customers had confirmed the women had been in there to get more toilet paper, all of them saying they remembered this because of how rude Danielle Hawkins was.

One of the more difficult witness statements to take was from three women at the same Goulburn service station who had seen Erica Hawkins -- or a girl who looked much like the missing teenager -- in the service station toilets on their way to church. Extremely pious and prudish, the three women had insisted on speaking with only two female police officers. Using the word 'toilet' was apparently very offensive, they would only just tolerate the term 'lavatory' and fretted that if the matter ever came to court they would have to reveal under oath that they had been to the lavatory.

Reporting that Erica Hawkins had her jeans and underwear pulled down at the sink was also difficult. The women were most offended when one of the female officers used the term 'knickers' to describe the Hawkins girl's underwear, and it wasn't much better when the other officer used the term 'panties' which was equally offensive. When one policewoman used the term vagina to describe what part of Erica's body she was washing at the sink, the women seemed to think it as offensive as using a four letter word starting with C. And describing that Erica had accidentally passed wind when pulling up her pants was also a challenge, the police officers discovering the women thought that the term fart was just as offensive as another four letter word starting with F.

Police in the Australian Capital Territory already had their own things to investigate, such as a group of six that had been acting oddly in a restaurant -- the son wearing a children's party hat on his head -- and generally making a nuisance of himself, before the family who had also been disruptive got into an altercation with another restaurant patron, a grossly overweight man with whom the father and brother had previously clashed. They had accused him of following the teenage daughter to the toilet and of being a pedophile, before the angry father had tipped a table over him, the group leaving before the police arrived.

The Canberra police then had a bigger mystery on their hands when an elderly woman from Tuggeranong called them later that evening to report that her son Nick Watson had gone out for brunch that Sunday morning and not returned by nightfall, with no phone call to tell her of any problems. Nick Watson at over 200 kilograms did not seem a likely candidate to go missing, but a missing person he was. After storming out of the restaurant he had not been seen since, but his car was located near the lake, covered in offensive graffiti that suggested he was some sort of child molester.

Now the missing person's police in New South Wales and the ACT were investigating both cases together, as the people in the restaurant who the missing man had an altercation with were almost certainly the missing Hawkins family. Another call came in from the manager of a Canberra hotel and his son to say they had checked in a family matching the descriptions of the Hawkins family on Sunday morning, only they gave a different surname and claimed to be from Swan Hill Victoria.

After the father had said no end of inappropriate things and paid extra to get into their hotel rooms early, the family had then rushed out early, stating that there had been a death in the family back in Victoria and they had to return home quickly. Other hotel guests also came forward to give statements to the police that these six guests who looked very much like the Hawkins family who were all over the news on every channel and that they were in such a hurry to go that they ran up and down the stairs to get their things from their rooms rather than wait for an elevator.

Where the Hawkins family went next was not clearly known, but some witnesses thought they had seen them in the coastal town of Bateman's Bay later in the afternoon. Some fishermen claimed they had seen them driving the vehicles that matched those supposedly driven by the Hawkins family, but they did note that the four wheel drive sported Queensland plates and the car Victorian plates that didn't match the New South Wales registrations reported on the news, so they could not be sure.

A park ranger had reported hearing gunshots in the early hours of the morning in the forests outside of Bateman's Bay, but whether this could be linked to the Hawkins family was not so sure. However, a woman working the overnight shift at a service station further up the coast at Nowra confirmed that a group matching the Hawkins family had purchased fuel in the early hours of the morning, and handed over surveillance tapes. The footage showed the Hawkins family in the two cars, however the plates had been changed to Queensland and Victorian plates. A quick check on the computer confirmed that these registration plates were false.

Police in Wollongong already had a busy Monday morning. A young man had been bashed with an iron bar and left for dead on a quiet street, possibly in a case of road rage. There had been a very serious road accident, a young man swerving onto a building site in a series of driving errors and winding getting up decapitated. There had also been reports of a man going around chasing people in the Port Kembla area, one time a black man, the other time a young white man. The man appeared to be completely nutty and acting like a deranged lunatic and he had also chased a car while roaring at it, but was long gone when police arrived in the area. However, they did note from witness descriptions that the man did bear a resemblance to the missing father from the Hawkins family.

And there was proof positive that at least one of the missing six -- the daughter Erica's boyfriend Gavin -- had been in Wollongong that morning. His own grandparents had seen him in the park, but he had ran off when they tried to speak to him, and the police who arrived in response to the grandparents' call could find no trace of him nor any of the others, if indeed they were all still together.

For the Baxter family, the Hawkins family with the exception of Granny who was too far out of it to understand her son and his family were missing, and Faye's family both those in Sydney and her sister who had moved to Adelaide this was positive news that they had been sighted in the past few days. If they had dropped off the planet completely and not seen since Friday this would have been a bad sign, possibly suggesting they had met their ends. However, the bizarre situations the family seemed to be involved in added to everyone's anxiety.

Speculation raged across the Australian media as to what had happened to the Hawkins family to flee their home in such bizarre fashion and take to the roads along with their daughter's boyfriend, but the television and radio news programs nor the newspapers preparing to go to press nationwide could not pinpoint the exact cause.

One other thing that remained unexplained was the complete absence of the second Hawkins brother Brendan, also listed as missing, from the road trip. All sightings of the family as a group mentioned six people, never seven. True, it would be harder to identify Brendan given the lack of recent photos of the young man, but still he wasn't showing up anywhere on their travels. Unless the others had dropped him off somewhere and continued on without him?

Around noon there came from the northern Wollongong suburb of Fairy Meadow two promising phone calls to the police within a minute of each other, one from a retired lady and the other from a postman. Both reported seeing the missing Hawkins family in an ordinary suburban street.

Two cop cars raced to the area at top speed and immediately confirmed that there was a group of six people in the street. They were a tall bearded father, a petite red-haired mother, a tall lanky son, the son's wife with short bobbed blonde hair, the skinny teenage daughter with glasses and the daughter's boyfriend, a handsome young man with brown hair.

Unfortunately, this group of six were not the Hawkins family, they were a Jehovah's Witness family out door-knocking in the area. In one of life's amazing coincidences their appearances just happened to resemble the missing group of six. The police returned to the station most disappointed, having thought they had located the Hawkins family. Throughout the rest of Monday afternoon there were no confirmed or unconfirmed sightings of Alistair, Faye, Erica, Cornelius or Danielle Hawkins, nor of Gavin Baxter, either together or apart, in their vehicles of on foot.

It was much disheartening for the relatives wanting news of the missing group. Where could they be?

*

All during Monday afternoon, the Hawkins family kept out of sight from those who pursued them. They drove around or parked for extended periods in the national parks and rural-urban fringes of southern Sydney and the Illawarra region. The closest they got to a major place was the outskirts of Campbelltown and Minto in far South-Western Sydney, but otherwise they kept out of sight.

But danger prevailed. All day silver UFOs flew overhead high in the sky, leaving contrails behind themselves on a humid and partly cloudy day and the family had to be careful they did not track their cars, frequently pulling over to the side of the road and hiding.

Stopping at a scenic waterfall at a national park should have been relaxing especially for Alistair who was still attempting to recover from the shenanigans of Cornelius that morning and the strain it put on his heart, but soon Gavin picked up danger on a nearby ridge.

The others all looked across through binoculars and saw a group of twelve men marching through the bush. But these were not ordinary men, they were made of stone, all stood some 14 feet tall and were clearly Pacific Islanders, like the famed Easter Island giant statues had been brought to life.

Quite certain that any confrontation with a dozen stone giants would end badly, the Hawkins family quickly left the area. The road on which they travelled had high voltage powerlines running alongside it, and all six family members could hear the evil voices of demons coming out of the wires and getting into their heads.

Danielle heard them taunting her that they were going to go to Newcastle and kill her family one by one until she gave herself up and agreed to be taken away on a UFO. Cornelius heard the voice of the vampire, telling him that the robots had lost patience and now were going to capture, torture and finally execute him.

In the four wheel drive, Alistair Hawkins was tormented by the whispering voices of black people, Asians and homosexuals all mocking him, while the demons taunted Faye by telling her that Brendan had already been removed from the house and fed to a hungry tyrannosaurus.

The back seat brought no relief to Gavin or Erica. Evil voices informed Gavin that there was nothing he could do to save Lisa, the aliens had already taken her away and she currently was on a spaceship headed through the Kuiper Belt and into interstellar space, never to see Earth again. The menacing voices also reminded him that this was all his fault. If he had only given himself up to the aliens earlier they would not have abducted Lisa in his stead.

Erica twisted in her seat in terror, as the toilet demon's voice reminded her that it would be waiting for her the next time she sat on the loo, and she would never be able to escape. The voice of the power point demon was also heard, the vile presence reminding Erica of all the bullying she had been subjected to as a younger teenager, mocking her distress at the memories, the hysterical laughter of the clown that had been in the mirror watching her on the toilet also audible.

"Alistair -- kids -- don't listen -- to them," Faye stammered as she tried to drive with the distraction of the voices from the electrical wires getting into her head, and the terrifying sight of evil demons perched atop every massive metal pylon that held up the cables.

Finally they drove away and were free of the influence of the voices, and the journey to nowhere continued, but not without more dangers. Mid-afternoon and near the coast, the group had to stop for a toilet break. The guys only needed to pee which was easy for them, and Faye only had to take a length of toilet paper behind a tree to squat for a pee to so it wasn't too bad for her either.

Both Danielle and Erica needed a poo, so each girl had to go into the bush with a roll of toilet paper and a bottle of water to wash her hands. To Danielle's relief, her period had finished for another month and there was no more blood -- either the normal dark red or the weird bright blue blood -- coming out of her vagina.

After wiping her arse clean with plenty of toilet paper and pulling up her knickers and jeans, Danielle exited the bush after washing her hands to see the petite figure of Erica also come out of the bush having also just finished going to the toilet and wiping her bottom, the young girl carrying her loo roll and water bottle in one hand and adjusting her knickers through her shorts with the other.

Erica seemed transfixed by something ahead, staring blankly through her glasses. Danielle looked over her shoulder and not far away was a wind farm, lots of large wind turbines turning in the breeze. Erica was staring at the turbines, clearly not aware of the danger, but the older Danielle was. The aliens were using the turbines to hypnotize Erica and put messages in her mind.

"Erica, stop that, look away," Danielle urged, waving her hands and clicking her fingers in front of the younger girl's face until Erica broke out of her trance.

Then Danielle saw more danger, with Alistair, Faye, Gavin and Cornelius standing in a line, all staring at the wind turbines and in a trance. It took close to a minute of yelling, water and splashing them with water to get them out of their semi-hypnotic states, back into the cars and away from the dangerous wind turbines.

By mid-afternoon Alistair had recovered enough to have another stint at driving the four wheel drive, but unfortunately there were more problems with Cornelius not because he had decided to dress up in blackface again, but because he was a bad driver.

Alistair came to a stop in the four wheel drive but the irresponsible and reckless Cornelius was driving too fast and close behind, Danielle's car skidding to an emergency stop just inches from his father's car and narrowly avoiding a rear-ender. Again, Alistair's face went bright red as he shouted at Cornelius, then ordered Danielle back behind the wheel of this car again.