by Ben Yallop
Eventually, although it had begun to seem impossible, they reached the edge of the clearing. By now the pressure against them meant it was all they could do to force themselves forward. It was like walking into a hurricane. The voices had become increasingly angry as the kobolds had pressed on and the violence had increased. Both kobolds were covered in burns and scratches. Both had bruises where heavy objects, mostly rocks and branches, had appeared out of thin air a moment before they had struck. Both kobolds had had to bow their heads and push forward, bodies at an angle, driving forward as though part of a rugby scrum. It felt like being an airplane and trying to pull out of a steep dive, engines screaming, noise and effort filling every molecule. The pressure was immense, the pounding relentless, yet neither kobold was able to hit out at anything tangible. It was an onslaught which could only be endured. An invisible army tried to hold them back.
And then blissfully they reached the clearing, side by side. The epicentre of everything which was wrong with that haunted forest. With a final Herculean effort they pushed into the clearing and suddenly, as they left the last of the trees and moved into the open space, the resistance suddenly vanished and both kobolds fell forward onto their knees at the sudden absence of it. The whispering and occasional screaming which had battered them since they had entered the forest suddenly stopped and the silence was almost overwhelming. Both kobolds pulled themselves to their feet feeling suddenly incredibly light of body.
Hödekin nudged Hob and pointed to a dark patch directly opposite them, under the trees, at the other side of that empty circle where only grass grew. There, in the shadows, a pair of green eyes caught the light.
Hödekin looked to Hob and saw that his face was grim.
‘Shuk,’ he muttered ‘The worst of the garoul.’
The beast stepped out of the treeline. Shuk was much more wolf-like than the other garoul they had ever seen. Or certainly less man-like and more like a beast. He was a huge black dog, with massive powerful shoulders. He walked on all fours whereas many garoul moved fluidly between walking on two legs and four. His face, under his green eyes, was all blunt muzzle and sharp teeth. He ambled over to sit on his haunches at the very centre of the circle, immediately next to where the line would appear. He spoke with a deep snarl.
‘Come, little kobolds. Come open the line. If you are quick enough to reach it I will let you use it.’
Neither kobold spoke, but Hob extended his presence towards the line and pulled it open. Then he reached into his pack and pulled out a golden circlet, unadorned with precious stones but no less a crown for that. He set it on his head and standing tall spoke to Shuk in a voice that was loud and clear.
‘You will let us past. You will let us return to Kalapa.’
He took a single step forward. Hödekin followed.
‘Why Shuk, do you do the bidding of the Riven? Why do you stand here for an age whilst the Riven go about their business, leaving you to work for them like a guard dog.’
A low growl began in the back of the garoul’s throat and his lip curled showing a row of massive teeth.
Hob and Hödekin took another step forward.
‘Why not leave this place? You are not Cerberus, bound to guard a gate.’
Another step.
Hob now took the crown back from his head.
‘I only want to take this crown back to the Palace where it belongs. That is important to us kobolds.’ He tossed it gently into the air and with a push of presence sent it spinning into the line so that in a moment it had vanished.
Shuk came to his feet and his snarl grew suddenly louder.
Hob held his arms wide placating. Another step.
‘We are just two little kobolds. There is no need to fear us.’
That was too much for Shuk.
‘Fear you!’ he roared. ‘I fear no-one.’ And he leapt towards them.
‘Run!’ cried Hob and he pushed Hödekin before him as they sprinted as fast as they could sideways across the clearing. Shuk bounded after them, incredibly quick. Hob was able to turn and use his presence to just enough effect to off balance the garoul as he thundered towards them. He barrelled past before using his claws to turn quickly in the long wet grass and push back towards them.
It was then a straight race towards the line. A flat out sprint. It was a race the kobolds were never going to win. Focused on the line ahead and on keeping the path open Hob wasn’t able to do much with his presence. Suddenly he was swept off his feet. He felt a spray of something patter across his face and he knew within a split second and with a cold certainty that it was blood. As he fell he saw Shuk go past in a blur. Then Hödekin crumpled to the ground next to him, his chest already a red tangled mess. Hob hit the ground hard, winding him and for a moment his hold on the line faltered. They were so close to it. Must keep it open, he thought, knowing that it was their only chance of survival. As quick as he could he had a hand on Hödekin’s collar and Hob was up, driving forward, towards the line, dragging the other kobold behind him.
Shuk came back like a bullet. Hob was a footstep away from the line when he was again knocked to the ground, landing heavily on his back. He looked into a dark sky and had a single frame image of a ginormous dark paw, claws outstretched in the air above him, the last image that a seal pup must see before the killing blow from the ice-bear, and then all went black.
*
Pueblito de Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico
8 February 1969
Ana Maria climbed out of her bedroom window and onto the flat roof above the porch. She hesitated for a moment and then reached back to scoop up the teddy from her bed.
‘Okay José,’ she whispered. ‘You can come too, but you have to be quiet or mama will kill us.’
The bear had been a recent Christmas present and she had not yet done anything without him. Tonight she would show him the stars. Tucking him into the top of her nightdress she nimbly crossed to the tree which stood in the dusty backyard and silently crept down to the ground. Once her feet touched the dirt she was off and running towards the edge of town and out into the Mexican desert.
She knew the best paths to take where she wouldn’t be seen but this late it wasn’t too risky. There was no-one around but dogs. She had been creeping out at night for as long as she had been able to climb. She often couldn’t sleep and tonight was one of those nights. She had waited until the middle of the night before making her bid for freedom. She had once left too early and had been caught sneaking past the house. She had been in so much trouble. Now, she always waited until the dead of night and always made sure she was back before dawn.
Finally, she cleared the last few houses. But she kept going on towards a favourite spot atop a hill away, from the town. From there, away from any light, the views of the night sky were spectacular.
Eventually, she reached the top of the sandy hill and flopped down in the dust, pulling her jumper closer around her. She lay back and looked up at the stars, carefully positioning José so that he would have a good view. It was a very clear night with no moon to drown out the view. Even without any moon the starlight was bright enough to see by. The heavens were incredible. This view was just about the only good thing about living in Pueblito de Allende, Chihuahua.
She guessed that was why the mysterious stranger came here, the man who, local legend said, had given the tiny town its name. He had apparently been coming here for many, many years and did nothing but stare into the sky reaching his arms towards the stars. Some of the older boys said that he was a devil and that he came here because there was a door to hell nearby. Ana Maria didn’t believe any of that but, as the thought that he might be near occurred to her, she pulled José near and hugged him tightly.
She looked hard at the stars using the edges of her vision to see the best parts of the sky. The starry swirl was mesmerising. Every now and then a shooting star crossed her field of vision, long bright scratches of fire against the blackness.
Then suddenly, her skin prickled and she
shivered as if someone had opened the door to a cold store nearby. She sat up, feeling nervous, and looked around. All of a sudden a black-cloaked figure appeared as if out of nowhere. Ana Maria’s heart froze in her chest. It was the mysterious stranger. He was here.
After a few seconds, during which she was paralysed with fear, Ana Maria decided that he hadn’t seen her. He was some way away and she couldn’t see any detail other than the black cloak which he wore. He seemed to be facing the other way. As carefully as she could she crept behind a nearby bush. She crouched there holding José tight, shaking with fear as she watched the man.
She had been right about one thing. The stranger seemed to be intent on the stars above. Why would anyone come to such a small place as Pueblito de Allende? Why would someone come so often as to give the place his name? The stranger stood, his head back. Ana Maria followed his gaze into the sky. Another shooting star, a large and bright one, flashed its way through the night.
Quick as a whip the stranger thrust an arm towards the night sky. Ana Maria whimpered in terror and hid her head in her lap. A low hum had begun to fill the air and when she looked up again the stranger had both arms reaching up as if he was grabbing something heavy and pulling. He seemed to be under enormous strain. He gave a low cry of effort as though he was under some terrible force. It looked as though some invisible rope was trying to pull him into the air, but he yanked back hard.
Then his arms began to move down and Ana Maria saw with fear that a new shooting star had appeared in the sky, high above the earth, and it was falling straight towards them.
As the tail of star grew longer and larger Ana Maria could see that it was going to fall some way away from them, further out into the desert. But what had the mysterious stranger done? Had he managed to pull a rock out of the sky? Was that magic? What would happen when it landed? She trembled as she watched it approach. She didn’t have long to wait. Suddenly, there was a massive flash which lit the entire sky like a huge lightning flash followed a few seconds later by a bang so loud that it blew her off her feet and made her ears ring. She landed in the dusty sand, winded. As she pulled herself to her feet she heard strange whistling sounds and then a series of thumps. One thump was close by, louder than the others and she scurried over to the place on her knees. There a piece of rock the size of her fist had made a big dent in the sand. The star had exploded before it had touched the ground!
A new noise started then and it was a moment before Ana Maria recognised it. The mysterious stranger was screaming in frustration, an eerie inhuman noise. She caught sight of him in the distance striding through the dust then suddenly there was a small flicker of lightning and he vanished.
Unable to understand what had just happened Ana Maria sat alone in the desert and cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
‘Father, I’m back and I’ve brought Sam.’
‘Good,’ said Tarak turning to Kya. ‘Well done. How is he?’
‘Angry still, but he thinks he might have useful information. He wanted you to have this set of papers.’ Kya handed over the bundle of things which Sam had printed in the library. Tarak took the pages greedily.
‘Sam is asking to see Weewalk.’
‘Oh, he’s already gone,’ said Tarak distractedly, flicking through the bundle of papers Sam had printed, looking only at the headlines and titles. Then suddenly he stopped. ‘Tamam Shud,’ he whispered. His face paled.
‘What is it?’ asked Kya.
Tarak read aloud as he looked in worry at the page.
“The Somerton Man Mystery. On 1st December 1948 at 6:30 in the morning a man was found dead on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, South Australia.
When the police arrived they went through the usual process of checking the body for identification and clues as to how the man had died. Unusually, they found neither. The corpse was lying on the sand, with his head resting on the seawall as if he had laid down to sleep. In his pockets were a used bus ticket to the beach, an unused train ticket, a comb, some chewing gum, some cigarettes and a box of matches.
The police made an immediate plea for witnesses. Some came forward to say that they had seen the man lying in the same spot at around 7pm the previous evening. They had presumed him drunk or asleep and had not checked him closely. No-one seemed to have seen him arrive or could offer an explanation as to how he had died.
With nothing to hint at the cause of death the police left the body with a pathologist and concentrated on uncovering the man's identity. The man was thought to be around 40-45, perhaps British in appearance and in top physical condition. He was slim, healthy and had the kind of muscle structure in his legs which one might see in someone who did a lot of running. He was 5 feet 11 inches tall with hazel eyes and fair hair. He was wearing good quality clothes consisting of a white shirt, a blue and red tie and brown trousers. Unusually, given how hot it gets in Australia in December, he had been wearing a brown knitted jumper and a fashionable coat. Also unusually, for a man wearing a suit in 1948 anyway, he was not wearing a hat. It was strange that he was so warmly dressed, almost as though he had suddenly arrived from somewhere colder. But, more strangely, all the labels from his clothes had been removed. The police began to suspect that this was a man who did not want to be identified. They could not have been more right. The mystery was to deepen.
Whilst the police were making inquiries the pathologist continued his work. Dental records were checked and matched no known individual in Australia. The autopsy offered little by way of evidence. The man seemed to have suffered some kind of internal bleeding. He had eaten a pasty about three or four hours before his death. The pathologist thought it likely that some kind of poison had been used, but he could not say for sure what the cause of death was. Normally, with a poison one can see evidence of vomiting or convulsions. Here neither was present.
So unusual was the case that the decision was taken to embalm the body to preserve it. This was the first time the police had ever taken such steps. An inquest into the death was postponed for, as it happened, about six months whilst work went on to uncover the man's identity.
The day after the body was found a small article appeared in an Adelaide paper about the grisly find. The next day, whilst announcing that the Somerton Man's fingerprints were not on any database the police also released a photograph of the dead man to the media.
This triggered something quite extraordinary for over the next five years the police collected testimony from people who claimed to know the Somerton Man. Over that five years the police had hundreds and hundreds of witnesses assert that they knew his identity. Literally hundreds of people came. They all knew him, knew him without a doubt. So, why did the police not make public the man's identity? Every one of the 250 names they received was different. It was as though the man had cloned himself and every one of his clones had gone off to live different lives.
One of the first witnesses to come forward was a man who claimed to have had a drink with the man a few weeks before. The Somerton Man had given his name as 'Solomonson'. A month later the body was identified as a wood cutter named Robert Walsh by several people. However, this was soon proved incorrect when the absence of a defining scar was noted, leading to much confusion from those identifying the body. Others identified the body as a missing friend, a missing stablehand, a steamship worker and a Swedish man. 28 people from the Australian state of Victoria said they knew him. He was identified as a seaman named Tommy Reade but this was soon disproved, just like all the other identities suggested.
So far so strange.
Around six weeks after the discovery of the body a brown suitcase was discovered in the cloakroom of Adelaide train station. In the suitcase, along with items of clothing, was a reel of orange thread not normally available in Australia. It was an exact match to some thread sewn into the pocket of the dead man's trousers. The clothes in the suitcase had all had their labels removed apart from some which showed the name T. Keane. A worldwide search revealed that no-one named T. Ke
ane had been reported as missing. But what about the orange thread sewn into his pocket?
When unpicked it was found that the dead man had a hidden pocket within his trousers. Inside this tiny pocket was a tiny piece of rolled up paper. On that piece of paper were printed the words 'Tamam Shud' in a distinctive font. When translated it was found that the words were taken from the last page of an unusual book called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The words meant 'finished'. The police released this clue into the public domain and a man came forward to reveal that he had found a very rare first edition copy of the 1859 version of the book in the back of his car, parked near where the body had been found. The central theme of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is that one should live life to the full and have no regrets when it ended. This seemed to be relevant. When checked it was found that the words Tamam Shud had indeed been cut from the back of this book.
Where the words were torn out there was a series of letters written in faint pencil. At first it was thought that this might be something written in a foreign language but subsequently it was realised to be a code.
W R G O A B A B D
W T B I M P A N E T P
M L I A B O A I A Q C
I T T M T S A M S T G A B
A small x appears above the 'O' in the third line. To this day the code has never been translated despite analysis by professionals and amateur experts from all over the world.
Also found in the book was a telephone number. This was traced to a woman who had owned a copy of the book but had given it to a man named Alfred Boxall. The woman was asked if she could identify a plaster cast of the body. She agreed to take a look and assured the police that she did not know the man but it was noted by the police that on seeing the cast she had been completely taken aback and had nearly fainted. It was as if she had seen a ghost.
