Fear of the Dead
SHANNON must have glanced at his wrist-watch, for he said:
“Ten past four. Wonder what’s on the ice.”
“Pack your kit,” Bony commanded. “We may have to move in a hurry.” The American uttered a “But-” and was faintly surprised by the brittleness of Bony’s voice, a note absent even when he was bailed up at pistol-point. “Don’t talk. Pack.”
In the pitch blackness they worked on their gear to the accompaniment of the increasing noise of the dray. They heard the hotel licensee curse the horse.
“Simpson!” Shannon said with soft sibilance.
“Your quart-pot,” snapped Bony, pushing the utensil against him. “A few yards along the passage, on your right, there’s a space between the rocks. Take the swags and leave them there. Then go to the entrance and watch Simpson.”
Shannon departed, dragging the swags with him, impressed by Bony’s abruptly assumed authority. Without light Bony entered the chamber on his hands and knees and made his way to the site of the now cold fire. Feeling for it with his hands and finding it, he scooped a hole in the sand, dragged into the hole the ashes and the semi-burned wood, then, covering the hole, threw handfuls of sand upon the site.
The necessity for speed blunted the horror Shannon had created with words and, still on hands and knees, he worked smoothing out the tracks on the sandy floor and giving a final touch by flicking a towel over the surface. Having done all possible within the chamber and withdrawing from it legs first, he worked back along the short passage to its junction with the main passage, the floor of which was covered with granite chips. There he paused swiftly to survey mentally what he had done that nothing should be left undone to betray Shannon and himself.
He joined the American, who was standing just inside the “front entrance”. Simpson had made a fire by the creek, and the light enabled them to see him bring from the creek a kerosene tin filled with water. The horse was still harnessed to the dray near-by. Tiny electrical impulses flashed up and down at the back of Bony’s neck as Simpson set the tin of water against the fire and then took from the dray an enamel basin, a towel, and a cake of soap.
“Shall I start in on him?” whispered Shannon.
“Certainly not. What did you do when you came out after filling in the grave?”
“Washed my-” Breath hissed between the American’s teeth. “You reckon he’s come to transplant the body?”
“It’s probable. Do nothing to stop him. If he comes this way I’ll go in ahead of him. You lie low-where you are. Look!”
Simpson lifted from the dray a hurricane lamp and a shovel and came towards the mountain of rocks. The American melted into the void between two boulders, and Bony backed silently down the passage and waited at the first bend. He saw Simpson appear at the entrance, silhouetted by his fire, and there the licensee dropped the shovel and lit the lamp. He was wearing old and tattered slacks, a grey flannel under-vest, and a pair of old shoes. His hair was roughed and his cold grey eyes were small.
The hand which had held the match to the lamp was shaking, and the lamp itself trembled in the other. He came two paces inside and then uttered an expletive and set the lamp down so violently it was almost extinguished. He went out again and Bony waited. On returning, he was carrying a partly filled sack.
The sack, in addition to the shovel and the lamp, was quite a load to manoeuvre through the passage, and as the licensee progressed, Bony went backwards before him, never once moving a betraying stone until, arriving at the space where Shannon had placed the swags, he slewed into it and laid himself flat. Simpson passed him on his way to the chamber, and instantly Bony rose and stole after him, gambling on the man’s nervous tension preventing him from seeing the necessarily rough efforts to clean the sandy floor.
It was a sure thing that the man would not spend time on anything save the main objective, and with all haste governed by natural caution, Bony reached the short passage to the chamber, edged his face round a corner of granite, and became one with the rock.
The lamp was set on a low ledge, and the shovel was lying on the place where Bony had sat with his back against his swag. Against the creviced roof and the broken walls a monstrous shadow writhed like something on a gridiron over a Dante’s hell. From the sack Simpson was withdrawing a roll of light canvas, and this he spread upon the ground between the grave and the entrance. Also from the sack he drew a waterproof sheet, which he arranged on the canvas, and a quantity of heavy twine rolled round a short length of board.
Bony had never before seen a man’s face so tortured. Simpson stood with his back to the site of Bony’s fire, his eyes wide and brilliant as they surveyed the preparations. He was not quite satisfied with the waterproof sheet upon the canvas, and his eyes moved rapidly to find something with which to overcome a difficulty. Then, when he lifted a heavy stone and dropped it upon one corner of the square of canvas and sheet, and another stone on the second corner nearer the scene of the intended operation, Bony knew the difficulty and the necessity to overcome it.
One who appreciates music and can play it as Simpson could is the antithesis of theexhumator. His breathing was laboured, and as though he realised that this could not go on and had foreseen it, he managed to take from a pocket a flask of spirits, draw the cork with his teeth, and swallow the entire contents as one might swallow water.
Then the work began.
Without conscious volition Bony’s feet turned away from the horror. His body became as iron to the magnet of the pure night without, so that with his hands he was obliged, without being conscious of it, to grasp projections of the rocky corner that he might continue to watch. A thousand demons came to tug him away. The electrical impulses which had been playing up and down his neck became needles of ice lodged into the base of his skull. Instincts became sentient beings that warred about him and for him. The fear of the dead was like an octopus wrapping its tentacles about his brain, compressing it into a pin-head of matter in the centre of a vast and otherwise empty skull. And somewhere beyond the void a million voices sped to him along the aisles of Time, screaming to him to run.
The mission baby who grew up to the boy who played and adventured with the aborigines, who went away to high school in the city, who spent every vacation with the aborigines to study the great Book of the Bush, who passed into the university and out again with a brilliant record, who went bush for three years to perfect himself for his intended profession, had become a man who commanded the ice to melt and the demons to flee and the voices to be hushed, commanded and was not obeyed.
Into the heat and the cold, the turmoil and the terror, came the voice of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, saying stiltedly:
“I employ my talents with nothing short of major crimes. I have never failed to finalise a case. A murder has been committed and there, before my eyes, this murder and this murderer are the effects of a cause. To arrest this murderer now is unlikely to establish the cause, the motive for the crime, the pattern into which it fits-must fit. Why Simpson murdered O’Brien is of less import than why Simpson is now digging up his victim. Murder often begets murder, and this is the one begotten.”
“Run!” screamed the million voices. “Don’t look! Turn your head! Run, or you’ll see the picture you’ll never forget.”
“Must stay! Watch! Wait!” commanded Inspector Bonaparte. “Be still! You are a man. Simpson is a man no longer. Look at him!”
Simpson had dug out the sand and had removed the stones. Like a monstrous insect, he was dragging his victim towards the spread sheets. Backwards he went, crouched, his two arms stretched taut, as though he must keep the horror he dragged as far from him as possible. He had dragged it to within a yard of the nearer edge of the sheets when it parted about the middle, and all movement abruptly ceased, save the movement of the living man’s eyes alternately directing their gaze from that part of the thing still clutched in his hands and that part which had been left behind.
Simpson backed on to the spread sheets and dragged the thing over their edges, the heavy stones he had placed keeping those edges to the ground. Then he returned for the remainder and dragged that upon the sheet, slowly, as though knowing that haste would part it also.
What happened now was akin to the screened film abruptly rushed into abnormal speed. Simpson flung himself down and whipped one edge of the waterproof sheet over the dreadful remains, rolled and rolled, flung inward the sides, and rolled again. He leaped to the far side, his breathing hissing like escaping steam, his body doubled upon itself so that his arms and legs were in proportion, like those of a spider. Snatching up the hem of the under sheet, he proceeded to roll the bundle in it, tucking in the ends. He leaped upon the twine, snatched it from the ground where he had so carefully placed it, and bound and bound it about the bundle.
The knots were tied, and he straightened up, his chest heaving, his lungs fighting for air, his mind struggling to maintain sanity, to return from the pit of obscenity. Once he looked at his hands, and his stomach sharply deflated, like that of a dog vomiting. Then, springing upon the spade, he worked like a man beneath the flailing whips of the Gestapo.
Having filled in the vacant grave, he smoothed the surface. The spade he pushed into an opening between the wall rocks. The bag he pushed inward after the spade. The lamp he picked up and looped the handle from the elbow of his left arm. He stooped and picked up the bundle.
Bony retreated, not unlike a sleep-walker, his conscious mind seeminglydisenthroned. His body conducted his brain along the passage, took it into the space where were the swags, laid itself down. Then nausea triumphed, and the bonds were broken and the ice needles melted.
He saw Simpson pass with the lamp and his burden, fought with nausea, smothered his face in the towel he had used to smooth away the tracks. Shannon’s heavy pack was beside him and he moved so that it was beneath his stomach, and an aid to prevent the retching and the noise of it, till Simpson was clear of the little mountain of rocks.
Presently he felt better. The pack remained a comfort and he lay still whilst the turmoil subsided. A waft of cool air fanned his wet face and neck. The dead had departed, gone on the back of the living, and with it passed fear of the dead. The dawn wind was blowing through the passage, coming down through all the crevices, sweeping away the smell of the dead.
Lurching to his feet, Bony leaned against a rock wall and was forced to wait whilst strength mounted within him. To him was the tribute that as he made his way to the entrance not once did a stone betray his passing.
Shannon was watching from the entrance. He said nothing, and Bony leaned against a rock and was glad to do so. Simpson’s fire was leaping high. The horse and dray were still close by. There was nothing of Simpson. The bundle was not in view, nor was the lamp. In the air was the stink of burning cloth.
“Gone to the creek,” Shannon said softly. “He put what he brought out into the dray. Then he stripped and tossed his clothes and shoes into the fire. Then he picked up the soap and the can of hot water and went over to the creek. Quite a character.”
Bony made no comment and Shannon asked:
“Did he dig it up?”
“Yes,” Bony managed to say, and found relief in the power to speak.
“Must be going to plant it some place else,” surmised the American. “I’d like to know what happened to make him take on the job. The old guy was comfortable enough where he was. No one would have found him.”
“You did,” Bony pointed out, and added: “I would have done so.”
They observed Simpson coming from the creek into the radius of the firelight. His powerful body glistened with water. They watched him towelling himself. They watched him dress in clothes and shoes contained in another sack and, having dressed, from the sack draw a bottle from which he drank, and a tin of cigarettes, one of which he lit, standing with his back to the blaze whilst he smoked.
“Wegonna tail him?” whispered Shannon.
“No need to. We can track the dray.”
Simpson was gazing towards them, and for the moment Bony thought he had detected their presence. Then he saw that Simpson was regarding the crest of the range against the sky, seeing the serrated line of black velvet against the heavenly opal of the dawn.
He smoked another cigarette and drank long from the bottle, and by now the youthful day was struggling with the ancient night. Simpson flexed his arms and opened his shoulders, as though from the growing day he took strength and poise into himself. He tossed bottle and towel and basin into the sack, and the sack he carried to the dray.
He led the horse away. Bony and the American continued to stand at the entrance of the desecrated pyramid, listening to the diminishing sound of creaking wheels. A bellbird offered its tinkling chimes to the glory of the day.
“I’m going in for the swags,” Bony said. “You make a fire down the creek, away from that fire.”
“Do we brew some coffee and eat?” Shannon asked.
“You may eat, certainly,” Bony replied. “Strong tea is what I need, as a drowning man needs air.”
“Two drops and a half of bourbon is what we both need, Bony, old pal. There’s a bottle of brandy in my pack. Did you see Simpson doing his digging?”
“I did. Brandy, did you say? Did you say you had brandy in your pack?”
“A full and unopened bottle.”
“I wonder, Shannon, that I can wait. Yes, I watched Simpson. It wasn’t nice. I’ve been very sick.”
Shannon nodded. He said:
“Be easy, pal. I’ll fetch the packs. You’re as tough as hell.”