The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

“Arrogant bastard,” one of the farmers shouted. “I don’t know why you bothered to come here at all. You’re not listening. I tell you, that swamp isn’t safe.”

  The Company man shrugged. “I’m a man of science,” he said. “I’ll leave the superstitious nonsense to you.”

  “Don’t say we didn’t warn you,” the farmer said. He turned his back in disgust and strode out of the meeting.

  I could see that the Company man didn’t care. He had made his point. How could I speak up, after that? I know that more things will be endangered than any of them could ever guess. And it won’t just be the wildlife that’s at risk if they antagonize the Darkness: the Dark owns this swamp. I fear the Dark will fight back.

  September 28th

  Things just got worse—much, much worse. The Company is pushing ahead with its development. Today, I found out that I am personally involved. They want me out of here. Today, a Company man came to my home. He marched right up to my old caravan with its peeling ply and mouldering annexe. He didn’t even knock.

  “Move it or lose it,” he said.

  I could smell his sweat, could see the dark rings under his armpits where his shirt clung uncomfortably. He had had a long, hot walk to my campsite, and he oozed an acrid mix of perspiration and bad temper. His smile was nasty, the smug smile of a man who enjoys the pain of others, the thin smile of a small time bully. Blind Freddy could see I couldn’t move it—I have nothing to pull it with, even if the tyres hadn’t perished long ago and the axles rusted slowly as they settled into the soft ground of this campsite that I chose so long ago. This is my last refuge, and he can’t wait to smash it down. I saw the corners of his mouth quirk again, relishing my distress.

  “The access road goes right through here, lady,” he said. “You’ll have to be out by then.”

  * * *

  There was a single line in the Company records: “Advised residents about route of access road through swamp.”

  The Inspector looked thoughtful. For the first time he felt a glimmer of sympathy for the old lady. She might have been crazy, and some of the things she’d written were truly shocking, but Dyson was beginning to suspect foul play of the more ordinary, criminal kind. He made a note to interview the Company employee who had visited the woman’s campsite.

  September 30th

  When my friends found out, they were outraged. I told them it wouldn’t help, but they called the shock jocks anyway. I listened in on my tinny little transistor radio: I couldn’t help myself. It was hard to think it was really about me when the Talkback radio program buzzed with discussion about the eviction of an elderly woman from her solitary caravan on the edge of the wetlands: the morals, the ethics, the economics of it. I was bemused by the support, amazed at the vilification.

  * * *

  Chief Inspector Dyson paused, clicked on his email. The recording of the talkback session had arrived, as requested. He turned up the volume, listening:

  “What was she doing there anyway?” a lot of callers wanted to know.

  “In other cultures, hermits are respected,” one woman said. “A lot of our saints chose a life of solitary contemplation. We should leave her in peace.”

  This, it transpired, was a minority view. The caller was howled down: the lady in the swamp was an inconvenience; she was in the way of progress; she was clearly crazy, poor thing, and should be taken somewhere institutional for her own good—perhaps a nice hostel for the homeless.

  “Which is what the poor woman will be if you demolish her home,” the first caller had replied tartly.

  The logic of it didn’t matter. The lobby groups got into the act, then the shills for the Company.

  Dyson had heard it all before. He wondered how long it would be before someone accused the old lady of witchcraft, imagined her blackened billy into a spell-brewing cauldron. It was that kind of program. He turned back to the diary.

  * * *

  I switched off the radio, at the last. I couldn’t bear it. I felt cold, numb with terror. I know how it will end: I am to be cast out once again, and this time with violence.

  October 1st

  The reporters found me, of course. I think I surprised them. I think they expected a crazed hermit, not an educated woman. They wanted to know why I was living in the swamp at all. I told them the truth, for what it’s worth:

  “When my husband died, I managed to keep the farm going for a while. But I missed too many payments. The bank foreclosed. They took everything. I wasn’t fit for company, then. The doctor diagnosed depression: a compound of grief, loss, and humiliation. I was so ashamed. I didn’t want to be in anyone’s way, so I brought the old caravan here: I needed to think, to put myself back together. I found the solitude soothing, and I stayed. My husband and I used to come here, bird watching. It was always peaceful here. I didn’t drop out—life dropped me.”

  * * *

  Dyson pulled up the transcripts of the interviews. The diary account checked out. These pieces were falling into place.

  He read on, still listening to the recordings, cross-checking.

  It was a young cadet, clearly embarrassed, who asked the next question. He demanded to know why the old woman was obstructing progress.

  “What progress?” she said.

  “We need a clean energy future,” he replied. “We need new technologies.”

  “Who’s we?” she asked.

  “All of us.”

  “I don’t use power. I don’t need coal seam gas.”

  “Nobody should have to live like this, like you!” he said. His voice dripped contempt.

  “Millions do,” she said mildly.

  “But not here: not in this country.”

  His ignorance was breathtaking.

  “Perhaps you should investigate some of the outlying settlements,” the woman said. “Perhaps you’d like to put an access road through a humpy.”

  A senior reporter intervened, diverting the argument. “Let me ask you about the bigger picture,” he said hurriedly. “Surely you would agree that we need better energy sources if we are to avert future disasters.”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  * * *

  Dyson chuckled. The old woman was no fool. She had seen the trap.

  * * *

  “But saving the planet by destroying its wildlife isn’t very clever,” she went on. “Our beloved leaders have a lot to say about maintaining biodiversity. Surely that means the animals should survive too.”

  “What would you do then?”

  “Think smaller,” she said. “If every building had solar panels you wouldn’t need to pollute these wetlands to feed big expensive power plants.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit naïve?” It was the cadet again.

  She lost patience. “Naivety is believing that power brokers and energy corporations care about anything other than the bottom line,” she said. “Politicians can’t think small—they want the grand gesture, the big political erections, the large party donations. They want the photo op when cut they cut the ribbon on the next financial disaster.”

  That did it. The cadet lost it completely.

  “What could you possibly know, living rough in a swamp?” he shouted. “It reeks.”

  “You mistake poverty for ignorance, young man. You’re disappointed that I’m not dressed in rags and muttering incoherently. I’m sorry I’m not the story you expected.”

  “Well,” said the senior reporter, wrapping it up. “Thank you so much for your time.” And that was more or less it.

  * * *

  Dyson skipped the formalities and fast-forwarded to the coverage that had gone to air. As he had expected, there was no sympathy for the woman’s plight: she was the shrill, vituperative, opinionated hag in the swamp—a self-confessed depressive, a post-menopausal neurotic who couldn’t see reason. She was standing in the way of a carefully orchestrated urban dream. She’d have to go.

  Dyson checked the diary again, curious to see her reaction.
r />   * * *

  “The reporters couldn’t leave fast enough. I was photographed and thanked for my time. I watched them straggle back to their city-shiny four-wheel drives. I knew I’d blown it. I knew I sounded too strident, but I couldn’t help myself. The words just tumbled out. These people were trespassing—they had come to my home, judging me, telling me what to think. Lord knows what they’d have said if they’d found out about the child.

  October 12th

  The Company man came back. “The press won’t save you,” he said. “The road still goes through here. Bulldozers don’t care what rubbish they clear away.” He poked a stubby finger at my plywood caravan. “This’ll splinter like matchsticks.”

  “What happens if I don’t move?”

  He smiled his mean little smile. “We’ll go right through you,” he said.

  “Murder?” The word hung in the air between us.

  “Let’s just say we will have you out of here, one way or another.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “In that case, lady,” he said, “we know where you live.”

  There was no mistaking the threat. For the first time in all my years of solitude I feel truly afraid of other people. I am afraid of the Company men.

  I was too scared to sleep in my van that night. I packed my rucksack and headed for the safety of the cave.

  * * *

  And now, thought Dyson, we come to the crux of it.

  October 13th

  I have never told anyone about the cave. At first, I thought that if I revealed its existence, if I told the press about its wonderful paintings, the find would be of such significance that work on the access road would stop. But now I know otherwise. Now I have seen what the press will do. Now I have decided to protect this place from a process that would surely end in its destruction. There’s been enough desecration already in the wetlands. I cannot save the animals. I will shield this cave, if I can, from industry archaeologists.

  The reporters think I am crazy. They won’t listen to me anyhow. And after that trumped-up environmental survey, I know what will happen if I tell the Company about the cave. Carefully chosen experts will declare the cave paintings to be of no particular significance, and the bulldozer men will go right ahead. But others will know of it. There will be graffiti here within the week. The cave is almost impossible to see, even close up. And the Company men will not be looking. It will be safe enough. I think, perhaps, that I will hide here, when I am finally hunted out of my home.

  * * *

  Dyson picked up a folded piece of notepaper that had fluttered to the floor. He glanced at it, about to put it aside. But then he saw the date on the top of it. This note had been scrawled, hastily, and tucked inside the lid of the biscuit tin. He hoped this was what he had been looking for.

  November 15th

  Last night was terrible. I did not dare to light my lamp. I saw flashlights splintering the darkness of the wetlands, and I did not wish to be found by the men who wielded them. I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Then I heard the screams. I was lying alone, awake in the darkness when the screaming started. I put my pillow over my head until it stopped, abruptly. I did not go outside to look.

  I know the carnage will be terrible. I do not need to find the exact place of it to know what has happened out there. I know that the Company men have trespassed where they should not: they have been setting up their campsite, killing where they pleased, killing for sport. The Dark is angry.

  And now the Dark has been hunting: I wonder if those men had a last, terrifying glimpse of fangs and claws and dark muscle before they were torn apart. I can’t feel sorry for them. People tried to warn them. They wouldn’t listen.

  The animals will be feeding now: fresh-killed meat is always a bonanza for scavenging eagles, crows, foxes—and if there’s anything in the water, the eels and fishes will be nibbling on the dead.

  * * *

  Dyson shuddered, but pressed on, hoping for more clues. If the note was right, some of the killings had happened a day earlier than he had thought. There was no phone signal out there—no reason that the other workers heading out to the site would have suspected that anything was wrong until they got there. And then . . . It seemed that the forensic team was right—the massacre had occurred over a couple of days.

  November 16th

  Today will be my last day in my old caravan. I will sleep in my old bed for the last time tonight.

  The weather is hot. I have tidied my home for the last time. Everything has been cleaned and put away. Nothing is out of place. I have put my diaries into an airtight biscuit tin, in case they may be found, in case they may be of some future use. My diaries are the record of my life in the swamp, and of the secrets I have uncovered but never told. The secrets have been safe with me. I have hidden the tin in the cave, a secret within a secret.

  I have decided, now, as the last day approaches, to stay with the animals, to stay with my van. I know that if am seen near the cave, its secret will be out. I feel old, and spent, and defeated. I do not know how to start again. I feel a chill, creeping sort of horror at the thought of being stuck in an institution for the elderly and destitute. I know I cannot survive that. I cut my ties with such close-pressed humanity long ago. I cannot bear to leave the swamp, or the Dark that holds me here—my life is here, my child is here.

  * * *

  The day is dawning.

  Today, as always, the animals come to her, drawn to the familiar cadence of her voice. Shyly, quietly, they approach her where she sits upright on her campstool on the edge of the swamp, reading. She wraps her woollen shawl tightly around her thin shoulders, breathes in the sharp air, and reads aloud in the chilly dawn mist. She is not reading a holy book—St Augustine or Lao Tze. The animals do not need improvement: lumbering wombats, elegant wallabies, shy echidnas, darting quolls, a tubby antechinus, an elderly koala in the fork of a tree—they are all listening. Where the water pools in the shallows there are lizards, frogs, and snakes.

  There are other things in the swamp, things she cannot name: older things, darker things. They have had a busy night, hunting, and now they are slithering home, sliding into sleep. They will not attack by daylight—it is not their time. She knows that she is not in danger: in her left hand she holds the smoky quartz crystal that guarantees her safety—a crystal so dark it is almost black, a crystal that draws warmth from her hand, rising quickly to blood heat. She has paid her dues, has earned her place here. Her wrinkled, papery old skin is criss-crossed with scars—she has given blood, she has let her child feed. Even monsters have to feed.

  As the sun rises, the air is full of the morning chorus: she hears carolling magpies, the liquid song of a native thrush, the short notes of rosellas and king parrots, the tiny chirruping of fairy wrens and thornbills and spinebills and honeyeaters, and then a raucous wattlebird, sounding like an old motor bike kick-started into morning. Further out in the swamp, black water swirls and eddies and gurgles around a rotting log where something misshapen and muddy has dived to the inky depths. Above it, she hears black swans, and the stirrings of shell duck and black duck and wood duck, even tiny grebes, and the calls of the moorhens and swamp hens and coots. She glances upwards at the piercing sound of thin cries, sees that the raptors are rising: the wedge-tailed eagles are riding the first thermals of the day. There’s a peal of manic laughter from the kookaburras, and a tawny owl hoots, once, not yet abed.

  Today she is reading Pride & Prejudice. Perhaps the wombat twins will be encouraged to make good marriages, finding strong partners with glossy coats and superior burrows. She smiles at the thought, knowing that they will be as solitary as the rest. It is a sad smile. Today the bulldozers will come. Animals will die. She will not move. Perhaps she will die too. She hopes she is ready.

  As she waits, she thinks back over her life in the swamp. The animals have grown accustomed to her now. She recalls the testing, early days: the smash and grab raids by possums bef
ore she moved every scrap of food into airtight tins; the swooping attacks of territorial magpies at nesting time before her own space was firmly established; the wombat that pushed over a wooden bench every night until they reached an accommodation about its location. For the younger ones, she has always been here. They will even creep towards her fire on cold nights, sharing warmth, sheltering from the denizens of the dark.

  She has helped where she could. She remembers sitting up all night with an eyedropper to trickle-feed warm milk to an orphaned baby wombat, found still alive in its road-killed mother’s pouch. It lived curled up in a hand-knitted beanie until it was old enough to toddle about her camp, and it stayed with her for a while, until one day it simply left to establish a territory of its own. Since then she has raised a succession of orphans, has often had a joey sleeping snug in an old cardigan slung from a tent pole. She has waded into the swamp to rescue injured wetland wildlife, feeling vaguely responsible for the debris left by human visitors. She has removed hooks from beaks and wings, and patiently extricated tangled egrets and herons from discarded fishing line. But experience has taught her to draw the line at snarled snakes: snakes just aren’t grateful.

  Today, she has pinned up her long white hair and is wearing her best clothes—her dark blue pants, her cream silk blouse, clasped at the neck with her mother’s pearl-and-diamante brooch, the only thing of value that she owns. Her favourite blue shawl completes her outfit—the ensemble of things that she is prepared to be seen dead in. She feels calm now. She clutches her quartz crystal as she sits.

  The animals are blissfully unaware of the fate that approaches them. They are busying themselves with the demands of the day—the foraging, the feeding of young, the digging of burrows. Her reading is simply another part of their routines, a gentle morning sound that is familiar, safe. The sun is shining now: the water is smooth, unruffled; there is a faint scent of gum blossom in the air, and the native bees are busy. It is a perfect blue day in the swamp.