ILLUSIONS AND LIES: Chapter 8

The trees swept by swiftly before giving way to open plains, and the road ahead seemed endless. The headlights rendered the moonlight idle making the darkness appear darker beyond them. The only sounds were the thrum of the engine and the gentle sobs of Bailey and Sarah in the backseat.

“It’s okay, babies. The bad guys are gone.” My voice was shaky and unconvincing. In the back of Richard’s Monaro Abigail had an arm around each of them.

“They are gone,” Richard said. “How exactly did that happen?” He looked at me.

I shrugged. “I thought they’d killed Abigail. I got angry.”

“Remind me not to piss you off.”

“I guess I should thank you,” Abigail pulled my children a little tighter against her sides, for her comfort not theirs. Her eyes were wide with shock. “Charlie, I think they did kill me.”

I knew what she was saying, I’d seen it with my own eyes, but I still didn’t believe it.

“What do you mean?”

“I was watching everything. I saw my body on the floor, I saw you… I watched you kill them. And I saw that thing float into my body, then I woke up.”

“Well, that settles that argument,” Richard said.

“What argument?” Abigail and I said in unison.

“Whether there is life after death,” He smiled.

“I think you’re right,” Abigail replied without humour. “How did you do that, Charlie?”

“I told you, I got angry and it just… happened.” My cheeks were flushed with a mixture of bashful pride and confused annoyance. “What’s the big deal plenty of our kind can do it, right?”

Richard stared at me for a short moment –I could have sworn there was fear in his eyes, fear of me– then at Abigail and back at the road.

“What?”

“None of our kind can do that. Not that I’ve seen, anyway.” Abigail thought for moment, eyeing me like some discovery in laboratory that should be studied, before continuing. “Our powers manifest in different ways, I mean, we all have slight variations in what we can do and the strength of our abilities. But we all fall into either the healer or telekinetic categories. What you did wasn’t healing, Charlie.” That same look of fear was now on Abigail’s face, too. “I don’t know what to make of it, but I’m sure glad you’re on our side.”

An amber radiance engulfed the land as the sun slowly crept over the horizon. The open plains had begun to be populated by an abundance of dark-leaved trees with mossy trunks, soft earth, and damp air. We’d driven through the night, and according to Richard we were nearing the turn off that would take us deep into the Kakadu rainforest.

Bailey and Sarah had fallen asleep again, after their last snack, juice-box, and consequential pee-stop. Abigail, too, was taking the chance to get some much needed rest, my children pressed against her –Bailey tucked under her left arm and Sarah’s head in her lap– her head bobbing from side to side atop the cushiony seat.

No one had really spoken since the convoluted non-explanations of what had happened at the shack. There were a million questions screaming inside my head, scraping and clawing to get out. But the only one I asked was whether there were other children hiding out with the resistance. Richard told me, ‘There are, not many, though. There is a school which consists of one classroom, one teacher and a makeshift playground’.

Soon we turned right, off the asphalt, and down a narrow dirt path. Its surface was deceivingly smooth, like travelling on the delicate laxity of a wispy cloud. And I could feel it, the subdued energy of the damp forest floor, the gentle pulse of breath from the trees, and the powerful beat of the life that dwelt within the ancient forest. The perfect rhythm of living and dying coursed through me like a primitive drumbeat.

“We’re close, aren’t we?”

Richard glanced at me, a gentle upward turn in his lips. “Only a few hundred metres more. You can feel it can’t you?”

“Yeah. I can feel something. It’s strange, like a musical beat in my veins.”

“It’s amazing, huh?”

“Yeah.” And it truly was. With every metre that we drew deeper into the forest, and closer to HQ, the stronger the pulse grew until it throbbed through me with such ferocity it almost hurt. Though, not a painful hurt, a visceral release that brought with it a calm pleasure and contentment.

I was busy analysing the energy around me when the track we were on ended. A seemingly impenetrable wall of vegetation stood before us. Richard leaned out the driver’s window and held a palm toward the trees. Like a theatre curtain being pulled by a stagehand, the wall of green parted, and we drove through.

My mouth gaped in awe as the curtain of green closed and I beheld the sight before me. The dirt road seemed less like a road now and more like a cathedral floor. The trees on either side of the track were tall and straight, and less messy than those on the other side of the wall of green had been –they stood like man-made pillars, in perfect lines astride the track which we now edged slowly upon. Above us the trunks bent toward one another, meeting in the centre where the trunks and branches platted together to form an ornate peaked ceiling.

The magnificence of it astounded me and my eyes were wide with wonderment. Surely this was the most spectacular and curious thing I had ever seen, or so I thought. I would see things more spectacular, and more curious, in the days ahead, one of which lay directly before me. As my eyes moved from the cathedral-forest to the path ahead, a shallow gasp escaped my lips.

Ten metres in front of us the trees opened up like a blossoming flower, onto a small meadow. Beyond the flawless blanket of emerald-green grass was a pool of water that glistened like diamond, a little stream trickling away from it to the east, returning to the forest which surrounded the meadow. At the west end was a cliff-side with a narrow waterfall tumbling over the high rocks, completing the constant flow of the crystal pool. The cliff reached out to the north, and higher on the south so that the water flowed alongside the rock as it fell, and met the trees on both sides, creating a perfectly circular lea hidden by the wildness of one of the densest rainforests in the world.

I felt like an insect in a terrarium built by the hand of God himself –and I don’t even believe in God. The tribal drums that beat beneath my skin, which grew stronger as we approached, ceased the moment we entered the meadow.

Richard brought the car to a halt on the velvet-like grass, and we all climbed out. Sarah yawned and stretched and came to my side. Bailey’s eyes blinked furiously as they adjusted to the splendorous sight.

I wrapped an arm around my daughter and raised my brow at Richard, “Why can’t I feel it anymore, the pulsing inside me?”

Richard came around the car and leaned in, “Maybe I don’t turn you on anymore.” He pulled back to examine my reaction, and when my eyes rolled he said, “That is the pulsing you meant, right?”

“Save it for the bedroom, Richard.” Abigail shook her head. “You can’t feel it now, Charlie, because this is where it all begins. All the energy in this world originates here.”

“Then shouldn’t it be strongest here?”

“Think of it like a Van Gogh painting –when you look at it from a distance you see the entire picture, the beauty of the overall product. The closer you get the more detail you can see, until you are so close all you see is a single brushstroke. No picture, no detail.”

“So I’m too close to it?”

“Exactly. Now, Richard, hide that car and we can get going.”

“Hide the car? How is he going to do that?”

The forest was dense and the meadow completely open, the cathedral-like track we had come through seemed the only place to hide the car from view, but hiding it in the middle of the only access point wasn’t the best of ideas.

“Just watch,” said Abigail. “Your boyfriend is quite talented.”

“Mummy, is Richard your boyfriend?” Bailey sounded excited at the prospect.

“No, Sweetie. Abigail is being…” my words trailed as I watched Richard.

His arms outstretched, his palms flat, faced the nearest edge of the cliff, where it met the trees. It wasn’t the trees that moved this time, but the rock. The entire cliff-face shuddered and rumbled, and a large portion of rock began to fall away from the centre. The falling rocks rolled to either side, revealing a tunnel. Richard dropped his stance, climbed behind the wheel of the car, and drove it across the meadow, into the tunnel.

My eyes followed him through, but saw only darkness. Richard emerged a moment later, on foot, and closed the passage behind him. He leaned against the cliff-face and kicked one leg out in a most nonchalant gesture –just another day at the office.

Abigail motioned us, “Come on.” And began walking to where Richard waited. I noticed the tyre tracks disappearing as I followed, like the ground and grass upon it were part of a giant memory-foam mattress.

Once there, Richard grabbed me around the waist and pulled me into an embrace. “I think we need to rectify this.”

“Rectify what, exactly?”

“This, me not being your boyfriend, thing.”

“Are you asking me to be your girlfriend, Richard Armstrong?”

“Yes, Charlotte Rose Palmer, I am.” He put his lips to mine and kissed me fervently.

“Can’t you pair wait until we get inside, and find a room?” She slapped the side of Richard’s head playfully. “Come on.”

He pulled his face back from mine. “So?”

“So, what?”

“You didn’t give me an answer.”

“Yes, of course.” I leaned forward and kissed him again, quickly. “Now we better do what we’re told, before Abigail grounds us.”

“I don’t mind being grounded, as long as we’re grounded together.” He winked.

As Abigail turned away from us her eyes rolled, but the smile on her face told me her irritation was feigned. Nevertheless, I grabbed Richard by the hand and tugged him along as I followed Abigail, alongside the wall of rock, toward the waterfall.

As we approached the falling torrent, Richard lifted a hand a flicked it outward. The water moved to one side, as though flowing around some large invisible object, revealing a shelf of rock behind. The grass reached all the way to the rock, and we walked easily from one to the other. The water fell, in its original, natural way, behind us and we faced a damp, cave-like staircase.

Sarah clutched at my hand and told me she was scared.

“There’s nothing to be scared of, Sweetie. The bad guys can’t get us here.”

“But snakes and spiders can,” she insisted.

Bailey offered to hold her other hand, though I think it was as much for his own comfort as it was for that of his sister’s. So we made our way, in the dark staircase of damp rock, three athwart, Abigail leading and Richard trailing. The tunnel wasn’t long, light soon touched the ground a few steps ahead, and I caught the first glimpse of the place we would call home for some time to come.

At first all I could see were the base of a tree and the leaf-litter surrounding it. And the dappled light, fractured by the prolific canopy. I don’t know what I expected, a few tents, maybe some makeshift shacks thrown together with gathered branches and thatched rooves. That was far from the sight I beheld as I stepped out of the stairwell.

The forest was dense and the canopy thick. Amongst the trees were cabins constructed from broad logs, with rooves made of recycled car tyres, and army-style camouflage nets strung beneath the canopy. Two larger buildings were in the centre of the alternative village, and had been built around a number of the ancient redwoods.

I heard Abigail breath a deep sigh and whisper, “Home.” I guess she had missed it here. It was easy to see how one could miss a place so perfectly divine.

There were more people than I’d expected too, thirty or forty at first glance, and more were coming and going, this way and that. A few of them looked at us like intruders, unknown outsiders, but mostly they smiled and waved at us, as if we were long-lost friends. It was rather comforting, to be so instantly accepted.

“Who are all these people, Mummy?”

“They’re just like us, Bailey,” Richard answered for me. “People who are different, and need a place to hide from the bad guys.”

“So these are the good guys?”

“They certainly are, Mate.”

Sarah stayed silent, her hand clutching mine tighter than ever. Strange people, and strange places, were not among her favourite things. And from her limited experience, it didn’t get much stranger than this.