The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  “Shit,” said Kevin and turned back to look into the redness, his mouth slightly open.

  “Besides,” said Jason. “It can’t last forever. We’ve got plenty of water. We’re fine. We’ll sit it out and then be on our way. What else can we do?”

  The sound of dust against the outside of the car was like a whispering susurrus of voices.

  “Shit,” breathed Kevin again, turning to look in every direction, and then, with nothing to see, slumped back into his seat and returned to watching the nothingness ahead of them.

  Instant by instant, the temperature inside the car was starting to rise. Jason could smell their sweat, their bodies, the dry chalkiness of dust. He reached over to grab himself another bottle of water. This was just what they needed. Outside, the sound of dust, that gentle whispering seemed to grow in intensity, mouthing shapeless words that he could almost decipher, and then faded again. He paused before opening his water bottle, listening.

  “Do you hear that?” he said.

  “What?” Kevin swung to face him, a slight look of worried panic written in the wideness of his eyes.

  “Nothing, just... listen.”

  Again, the sound swelled, then lessened, swelled, and then faded once more.

  Kevin was leaning forward in his seat, his shoulders hunched, staring with narrowed eyes out of one side of the front window.

  “I thought I saw...”

  “Huh?” said Jason.

  “No, look.”

  Kevin pointed at where his attention was focussed and Jason leaned over to peer through the obscuring curtain as well. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like... it looked like there were shapes, barely visible, moving across the blank redness, shadows in the dust, slightly darker. The shapes became marginally more well defined, loping, long-legged, one coming into sharper focus, followed by another, and then fading into the dust in front. They were camels. Or at least they looked like camels. It was hard to tell. They were little more than shadows. But camels hadn’t trod this route for decades, or at least he didn’t think they had.

  “Hey!” yelled Kevin. “Hey!” He slapped with his open palm against the side window, once, twice and then again. He reached for the door handle, fumbling with it.

  Jason grabbed at his shoulder and pulled him back.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Them. They’re out there.” He reached for the door again, but Jason grabbed him harder.

  “They can’t be out there,” he said. “You can’t open the door. Look at that. Look!”

  Kevin turned back to the front, but any sign that there had been anything out there ever was gone.

  “What the hell?” Kevin shook his head, once, twice. “I’m sorry, man. I thought...”

  He took a deep breath and slumped back into his seat.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s the bloody Track. It’s trying to fool us.” He rubbed his hand across his forehead.

  The whisper of voices grew loud and then faded. Jason thought he heard words, but they were no words that he could understand. Around them, in every direction, the redness swirled.

  Something slapped against the glass beside his head and he swung his face to look. There was something pressed up against the side window, and behind it was a figure, a man, just standing there in the swirling dust. It couldn’t be. Jason leaned back from the window, his breath catching in his throat. It was a man, a big boned man with a pale face, his eyes looking hollow, shadowed, filled with despair. He was mouthing words that Jason couldn’t make out. His gaze tracked from the man’s face down his arm to whatever it was being pressed against the outside surface of the window itself. It was a scrap of paper, block letters hastily scrawled.

  Ran out of Petrel.

  Jason’s heart went cold in the heat. His gaze held, transfixed by those words on the scrap of paper held flat by the man’s hand. He tracked back up to the man’s face. Thinning dark hair, short, sat combed over the squarish forehead, not moving, unruffled by the swirling winds around him. Jason’s attention went to the man’s lips, making out the words, the shapes in the whispering silence.

  Help us, said the man’s lips. Help us.

  Jason shrank from the window, pushing himself as far away as he could from the glass, but then realised that his belt was restraining him, stopping him from moving any further. He fumbled with the buckle, desperately struggling to release the belt, his eyes glued to that scrap of paper held there against the dusty glass.

  Ran out of Petrel.

  The belt buckle finally popped and he scrambled backwards across the seat, ignoring the gearshift and the brake as they dug into him. Kevin pushed at him from behind, forcing him back towards the door, but Jason fought against his hands.

  “What the hell are you doing?” yelled Kevin.

  Jason turned back briefly over his shoulder. “Can’t you see? Look!” he yelled, then turned back.

  Outside the window was nothing but swirling dust.

  Jason, his mouth gone dry, his throat tight, clambered back off Kevin and into his seat.

  “There was...”

  His heart was still hammering.

  “What?”

  “I-I don’t know. I...”

  “Jesus, Jason.”

  He had been there. The man had been there. Jason had seen him. He swallowed a couple of times, forcing his breathing to steady. He hadn’t imagined it. He couldn’t have. He looked down at his lap, his fingers clasped together, just simply staring down at them.

  It was the bloody Track. It was trying to fool them. They always said weird things went on in the desert. He looked up at Kevin.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess...” But his words trailed off to nothing. He turned, once more to face the swirling dust.

  The Track had a mind, and it was all around them.

  Just never leave your vehicle, he thought. Stay with the car.

  LATER, MUCH LATER, as the dust thinned, it revealed a car, slightly angled, sitting at one side of the Track, coated in fine red dust, the windows obscured. Across the plain, a solitary dingo stood watching. It held its gaze for a minute or more, then silently turned, and loped off across the baking stony expanse.

  If there were any to see it, they might have said that it seemed to be grinning.

  DAGITI TIMAYAP GARDA

  (OF THE FLYING GUARDIANS)

  ROCHITA LOENEN-RUIZ

  When the road comes it has not just an environmental impact, but an impact on the stories the land tells – legends are concreted over, folk tales are exterminated by the march of ‘progress’. But some legends simply shrink back into the darkness, there to be re-discovered. Rochita’s tale is a story of myth re-discovered, as well as being a warning to the curious about the consequences of travelling with a stranger.

  If you go walking and you meet a spirit

  Bow your head and pass on by.

  Do not meet their eyes.

  Do not follow after.

  – Things our Mothers Tell us,

  collected sayings.

  THE CALL CAME at dawn on the second day of Arbo’s heat. It was faint but clear and shot through him like a bolt of lightning.

  How many seasons had passed since he’d last heard that high, ululating cry echoing through the space that stood between him and the possibility of future progeny?

  After that summer when he was too young to battle for the one female, he’d thought there were no more females left in the world. But now...

  Ruwaaarrr...

  Plaintive and trembling on the last note – he lifted his head and scented the air. Perhaps he would catch a whiff of her. Anxiety trembled through him. What if there were others who had heard her call?

  He flexed his limbs, his claws tearing away at the fiber he’d swaddled around himself.

  He stretched his mouth into a wide grimace and sounded out a reply. If there were any males left, they would hear his claim and his challenge. He was full-grown and well-able to fight for his own
.

  At once, the jungle fell silent.

  His breath came in quick pants and he waited. What if the female’s call had been nothing more than a figment born of his rampant heat?

  Then, the reply came.

  Ruwaaarrr...

  The call did not tremble this time. It pierced the dawn with its clarity.

  Wherever she was, it was up to him to find her now.

  IN THE HALF-LIGHT preceding sunrise, Arbo emerged from his refuge. Before the valley dwellers settled here, guardianship over the forests, the mountains and the creeks belonged to Arbo’s forebears. Timayap Garda: the flying guardians – that was the name the first dwellers gave them. Not that they cared what names they were called. Their existence belonged to the wild places and to the wild creatures, not to the two legged beings who infiltrated their world.

  But as the number of valley dwellers grew, the world of the guardians shrank. The Timayap Garda’s fearsome countenance lent fire to the rumors of their ferocity, and so they had been hunted down, killed and put to the spit.

  Arbo’s flight had taken him here, to this forest overlooking the valley. Here, amidst the twisting trees and dangling vines, he’d found refuge. When the hunt died down, he’d been content to remain hidden, for the valley dwellers did not like the jungle, and while they sometimes wandered through it, there were not many who lingered long.

  Now, he stretched himself to his full height. He delighted in the brush of fresh wind. How long had it been since he’d basked in the open like this?

  He cracked his fingers and flexed his wings. Pain rushed through him and he stifled a roar. A hunter’s spear had caught him once and there were times when he was still pained by the injury.

  Panting, he folded his wings close around himself.

  This would not do, of course. To traverse the distance in this form would give rise to fresh speculation. There would be talk of monsters, there would be hunts, and his chosen female and their eventual offspring would forever be unsafe.

  A memory came to Arbo as he stood there contemplating transformation.

  Once, a valley dweller had come to the grove he called his own – brown-cheeked and brown-eyed, she had looked straight at him and shown no fear. She left a garland of berries and leaves beneath his tree. She would come at random periods and she would sit and babble to him in the words of the valley people.

  He’d watched for her until one day she did not return. He heard the gongs and the wailing in the valley, and when the scent of her death came to him on the wind, he realized she would never come again.

  Long after she was gone, he’d pondered the absence of fear in her. He’d wondered that she never called the hunters and that she had looked at him and treated him as if he were not different.

  His bones bent and folded into themselves. His heart quickened as muscles reshaped and rearranged to fit his temporary form. It seemed to him that such a creature would walk straight towards her goal, never faltering, unquestioned.

  KAGAWAN HAD JUST returned from the night hunt when he saw the girl emerge from the forest. He rubbed his eyes because he thought no one dwelt there except the madwoman named Injuti.

  He stared at the girl and wondered if he had ever seen the madwoman with child. She was always bundled up in her rags and chanting and throwing dust at passersby. He could not imagine a man being so desperate as to lie with a woman who shouted curses and banished demons all the while.

  Where would be the pleasure in that? And could a man endure her stench long enough to lie with her and get her with child?

  He examined the girl closely and realized that, slender as she was, there was nothing childlike about her form. She walked past him now, her hair a fall of black swaying behind her. There was strength and certainty in her stride and she looked neither to the right nor to the left.

  A feeling of resentment rose up in him then. She was only a girl, he thought. And her mother was a madwoman at that. What did she have to be so proud of that she walked onwards without even a sideways glance?

  It wasn’t that he was vain. Kagawan understood that the body of a warrior was desirable, but he wanted more than to be liked for his looks. Also, there was something about the girl that called to him. Perhaps it was her straightforward gaze, maybe it was the way she measured out her strides, and then again it could be that he was simply annoyed that she had not turned to look at him.

  Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but follow her with his gaze and when she reached a curve in the path, he leapt up from where he was sitting and chased after her.

  ARBO SLOWED AS he reached a bend in the road. The smell of the valley was heavy in his nostrils now and he wondered that it had taken such a short time for the valley dwellers to imprint their presence on a place that had once been completely wild.

  He heard a rush of footsteps behind him and the clatter of pebbles as the one following him came to a stop.

  “I’m sorry,” that one said breathlessly. “I didn’t see you stop.”

  Arbo had seen the male sitting at the side of the road, but he had felt no need to acknowledge that seeing. What use was there in trying to wind his tongue around unfamiliar syllables when he would only be passing through?

  A presence pulsed in the air, like a lodestone, reminding him of his mission. The path across the valley was not so long that he would need to stop and speak with any of its dwellers. He would simply follow the road that wound down through the rice fields. In his true form, he could have sailed across the deep gorges, but he was restrained by this body and by the memory of the hunt.

  “I have never seen you before,” the male said now. “You must be Injuti’s child. My name is Kagawan. I am a hunter and a warrior.”

  Arbo stared at him, and after a while the male looked away. Red crept up the male’s neck.

  “Ah,” Kagawan said. “You are proud. Even if you are beautiful to look at, you are hard and cold and without a heart.”

  Kagawan’s words were harsh and angry, but beneath the words there was pain. Remembering his own agony in the time of the hunt, Arbo reached out his hand.

  Instantly, Kagawan looked up. The red receded and understanding dawned in those eyes.

  “Ah,” Kagawan said. “I have been rude and wicked. Forgive me. It’s not your fault that you can’t speak.”

  KAGAWAN.

  Arbo tested the name inside his head. He thought of the sound it made and of the being it was attached to even as he resumed his journey.

  Kagawan strode beside him. Lean muscle bunched and stretched with each stride. If he had been a guardian, Kagawan would have been a formidable opponent. But like this, they were equal. Arbo could not and would not challenge him to battle.

  Arbo wondered that this Kagawan insisted on walking beside him, when he had not extended an invitation. But perhaps it was the way of the valley people and so he decided to allow it.

  As they passed through the village center, they were stopped by groups of young males and young females. The young males wished to know who Kagawan’s companion was, but when they heard whose daughter she was and that she could not speak, their interest dwindled.

  The females stared at them, and some of them came up and spoke boldly to Kagawan.

  “Who is that?” they asked. “And why do you walk by her side?”

  “A friend,” Kagawan said. “I met her on the path coming down from Hungduan.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Somewhere? Why won’t you tell us, Kagawan?”

  The females cajoled with their smiles and their voices, but they could not conceal their jealousy or their desire.

  “I am her escort,” Kagawan said.

  Arbo turned his head and met Kagawan’s gaze.

  “Going to the river, then?” one of the older females asked. “To the waterfall, maybe?”

  Kagawan made a sound that seemed like assent.

  The females smiled now and emitted an odor that made Arbo sneeze.

&
nbsp; “Oh,” said one of them. “But if she catches a cold, she won’t be any use at all, will she? Wouldn’t it be far better to take one of us then?”

  “I won’t take one of you,” Kagawan said. “I have given my word and I won’t break it.”

  WHILE KAGAWAN EXCHANGED words with those they met, Arbo absorbed the changes in the valley. Metal carriers moved by making put-put sounds and expelling a noxious white smoke. Once dusty paths were now covered with a rough black top that smelled like burnt rubber.

  Foliage still grew wild beside the road, but stone walls had been erected all along the edge. Memory rose in him of a time when there was nothing more than a path trampled down by bare feet. A recollection of drums thrumming and voices shouting and the screaming of his kin as they were hunted down and slain–

  A hand on his arm drew him back to the present.

  “I’m sorry for the delay,” Kagawan said. “We can go on now.”

  He stared at Kagawan and saw uncertainty dawn in the young male’s eyes.

  “Please don’t be angry,” Kagawan said. “I won’t talk to the girls anymore. Not if it upsets you.”

  Arbo shook his head. It was not the conversation that had unsettled him. It was the rush of memory and the sudden knowledge that if he was found out, Kagawan would not hesitate to kill him as those other hunters had killed his kind.

  He must have made a distressed sound for Kagawan’s hand shot out and imprisoned his wrist.

  “Don’t,” Kagawan said. “One more step and you’ll fall off the mountain.”

  Behind him, a piece of wall had broken away and if Kagawan had not caught him he would have fallen into the gorge.

  He stared at his wrist and at the hand encircling it. Kagawan’s hand was browned by the sun and calloused by years of wielding knife and spear in the hunt. He could feel the strong pulse of something that felt like fear. He looked up. There in Kagawan’s eyes was a look that was kindred to that which was mirrored in the eyes of the females they had talked to.