Poisoned Ground

Poisoned Ground

Starshipwriter

Copyright 2013 caelin day pty ltd

Some of the nature’s most ruthless battles are waged in the rain forest. Here every niche is filled; every chance at life is limited: there are only winners and losers in this unrelenting war. Occasionally, by storm or age tree will fall, and briefly sunlight bathes the thick undergrowth. Seedlings that having waited years will at last feel the warmth of sunlight and burst into a race for life. A carpet of soft green spreads as they thrust up immature leaf, basking together in their infancy. In weeks their young canopies will deny the weaker; or slower their chance of sun. In their adolescence a few will overwhelm their siblings. In their youth even fewer will crowd each other from the light. In maturity only one can win: only one can take the space that nature has created for it. The others: the losers in life’s battle will weaken return to the forest floor to wither and die. So it has been since life first began. Never is there left an empty place where the sun can bake the soil of the rain forest. with its heat. Never… but the one time.

Poisoned Ground

The House: in its neat garden, surrounded by a roughly hewn timber fence, had been there for longer than any living person could remember. Some said it had been home to the districts very first family: saying that they meant a European family, but it implied much more in such an ancient land. Black or white it was so long that all recollection of who they were had been forgotten.

The white haired men of the district could; when encouraged with a glass or more of amber fluid, vaguely recall that for a time before and after the Pacific War that two brothers had once lived there; even less vaguely of a family before, but of them, every detail had been erased from memory. In most minds there had just been the two brothers.

Two brothers. The men would reminisce draining the dregs from an upturned glass. And… there was a girl… a young girl.

Opinions varied, some said she had been a sister, others a wife. None could remember for sure, after all it was a long, long time ago.

But they did agree when it had been. The war had ended, and the two brothers had been discharged from the army that had suffered so badly in the jungles of New Guinea.

The boys had returned along with the thousands of relieved and hopeful young men, who came flooding back to a world, and a life, that would never be quite the same. Though few ever considered it might have been they, who had changed.

The brothers had left, as excited boys. They along with the others came back as old men, in broken young bodies. Weary beyond their years: trying to pick up the pieces of shattered lives, and destroyed families.

The war had touched the whole generation, but it was over. Now was the beginning of a new future, and families were forced to come to terms with injuries to their young bodies, horrific as they were.

Though for many the hurt showed little on the outside, their scars had lain hidden deep inside. But emotion was a female thing, and men were men, they were expected to be strong. No one admitted their fears and nobody looked for such deep wounds. Peace had come, and it was a time of rejoicing, and renewing.

In the midst of euphoria, life on the side of the mountain seemed to have returned to what it had been before the war; or as normal as lives could be with the shortages of those hard post war days, and the boys set to clearing the land after the years of partial neglect. To farmers, especially dirt farmers the land was always first, raise a crop and then attend to the house. Income and survival; both depended on the land. But the time never came when they could tend to the crumbling house. Before then they had disappeared.

There was no warning; in fact at first no one even noticed that the place was empty. For days: week’s, people assumed they had just kept themselves apart.

Eventually, questions were asked, and curious neighbors knocked on the only door in the district that they had not been welcome at.

They were gone, that much had been obvious. No trace was ever found of them. No bodies or bones, to prove that they had died, other than those of the young girl. Laying peacefully under the fresh white cross, in the small family Graveyard.

To all intents and purposes the brothers had apparently just walked away. Inside rough sawn wardrobes still hung their simple clothes. Nothing was missing from the meager belongings that the dirt farmers had. Not a pot, not a pan; not a hammer, or screw. For a while the mystery gave rise to the wildest of criminal or even, in the fad of the time, alien explanations. And in truth it did seem as if they had just woken one morning, and had been spirited away into the very air. But gossip and rumor aside there was nothing that could be proven suspicious, and the vivid rumors remained no more than fantasized stories.

The less imaginative in the valley believed that the boy’s had, had enough trying to work the mineral deficient soils, and just up and thrown it in. On the face of it, this seemed a more than a reasonable explanation.

Right or wrong, it never stopped the talk, and the brother’s disappearance, so soon after the young girls body was pulled from the swollen creek added more to them. But who could blame the boys, grief and association never leave your mind, and there did seem to be a sense of guilt that hung about the place, a guilt that smothered the house, like the hot still air before a summer monsoon.

Years passed and they never came back, people lost interest in speculation when the land was going to waste. Someone had to be found to take responsibility for the place, and eventually blood: although very weak blood relations were found living in Glasgow, the families ancestral Scottish home.

The news of an inheritance failed to have the desired effect, and it was soon obvious that these distant cousins had no interest in a weed-covered block on the other side of the Earth. Their only act as rightful new owners was to contract a local lawyer to put the house up for sale. But by that time it was already too late; the lights had been seen….

There are always properties that are hard to sell, but for the house there were no takers at any price. It stayed on the real estate brokers lists until the yellowed cardboard folder gathered so much dust that no one; not even the most eager of new salesmen, bothered to brush it off and open the cover.

In time, the government took the land in lieu of unpaid taxes: That was when they made the entire mountain a national park.

And so it had stood there. Abandoned, decrepit, and in time forgotten as the rain forest took back, what it had never given away.

Intimate relations………

The worn wipers thrashed across the windshield. Each sweep throwing a spray of water to one side or the other of the old green Land Rover, while barely making any difference to the torrent of rain that cascaded down the flat glass. The six young occupants were silent and moody. Listening to the radio, crackling with static, didn’t improve that mood.

... category five. Cyclone Fiona is expected to cross onto coastal areas within the next few hours... It is expected to maintain its present speed and direction. Destructive winds are imminent as far inland as Mareeba and Atherton. Residents within this area, and the adjacent coastal area, between Port Douglas, and Innesfail, are advised to take cover and make final preparations ... Stay tuned to this station; we will bring you the next cyclone advise immediately it is issued. The announcer’s voice died away as Cathy turned the volume down.

I told you we should’ve left as soon as the warnings started, she said angrily. Don’t blame me if we get caught out in the open when it comes.

Paul gripped the steering wheel tightly. He refused to even look at her as she continued with her briefly interrupted criticism.

It’s not his fault, Max interrupted, leaning forward, defending his friend from the rear bench seat. We couldn’t have left any sooner. Not without abandoning all the gear. And what would happen next semester if we turned up at Uni without their equipment?

I don’t give a damn about their equipment, Cathy snapped back, now honing her attention to him.

Dianne sat quietly listening to them, and to the others. They had all become more hostile as the rain had become heavier. She was as worried as anybody, but fighting between themselves wouldn’t help. Maybe we should stop somewhere and ask if we can take shelter? She said nervously.

Don’t talk stupid, snapped Jason cruelly from the front. He waved the folded map in his right hand. Like where. We’re kilometers from anywhere....

You mean you actually know where we are, interjected Cathy.

I hope one of you does. Because I can’t see a damned thing, muttered Paul, craning his head forward, squinting out to where the dim headlights clawed between the arched trunks, crowding the track from either side.

Dianne spoke again, her voice excited. There it is again.

What? Said Paul?

A light. I saw a light again.

For a moment they were all quiet as their eyes strained to see.

Up ahead; over there, she pointed off to their left.

What did you see? Said Max belatedly. The bespectacled youth trying to look in the direction she indicated.

I saw a light.

Rubbish. You can’t have, we’re at least ten kilometers from the nearest road, grumbled Jason as if he actually knew.

I tell you I saw one, flickering through the trees over there. She pointed into the bush, closer now. There must be a house.

Even Paul glanced quickly, taking his tired eyes, momentarily from the rutted mud; straining his vision into the almost impenetrable darkness.

There’s nothing there, said Max in disappointment.

It’s just your imagination, added Cathy.

I’m sure I.... But they had already returned to their bickering.

...Are you sure were on the right track Jason. I don’t remember coming this way before, started Max.

Jason’s angry face was highlighted from the faint glow of the instrument panel. We came out in daylight, with no rain. He replied, drawling the words out in a sarcastic tone. Everything looks different in the rain, and it looks different at night, is that too hard to understand?

I saw it again, cried Dianne, interrupting him. There: through the trees.

Oh for god's sake: where? Grumbled Joanne from besides her.

I can’t see anything. Is it a house? Said Max. It can’t be a house. This is National Park. Nobody lives in a national park.

Maybe it’s the ranger, or a hikers hut. Said Cathy hopefully.

For once and for all, started Jason. There’s no… He stopped in disbelief as the headlights picked up a break in the trees. …There’s a driveway."

Paul was already slowing; they were almost up to it when he accelerated, and drove past.

Where you going? Stop. Aren’t you going to stop,