The seed fled towards the prospect of new beginnings, dancing aerial 3 dimensional thermals transcended terrestrial worlds, blown at whim above storm shrouded aquas kingdoms, splashed by salt and spray it prayed for a safe prosperous beginning. It had been born many miles away, a rare marriage of diverse genetics, swept sprightly off the bows of an ancient pine, during an astonished gust, torn from its parent that reared dominion like over its younger predecessors and swept towards a new world and away from the old. It had circumnavigated a forest praying again to be released, before being swept seaward and now it despaired for its future, what safety could it find amidst this fierce and otherworldly sea? Where was the soil that would nurture its future, where were the rains free of the biting salt spray from the Southern Ocean, where were the nutrients that would become invested in its future, reworked into flesh by the power of the sun?
They were here…. Lost in oceanic solitude, a small rise of terrestrial promiscuity, reaching only sparingly above the aquatic maelstrom that surrounded it, a poor forgotten land in the lonely cradle of the ocean and the forgotten apex of the night. It landed at last, microscopic structures helping it to find lodging, over weeks it began the painful process of making this land its own. At first small roots began to tunnel down, anchoring it to the land so it no longer had to fear the ocean, soon it began to also rise up, a small fragile stem of brave proportions fighting with every cell the encroaching hostility of its surrounds.
Where was the sun? Where was the sustainer of life? Above and above, sometimes peering through the tangled web of wind lashed grasses that surrounded it, where was the sun? When the storms rolled in with characteristic frequency and the air was as wet as the ocean. Where was the sun when it seemed to sink, not long after it had risen, and this nocturnal world surrounded it swept in to comfort it amidst this lonely inhospitable habitat. Soon it sent out leaves, sparingly and voraciously there must be something for it somewhere. This was now home, and it would need to find something in this place to sustain it, something to encourage it, something to appease it and yet as its young new roots tunneled down into the wet earth they only found nutrition amidst the horrid cruelty and misanthropy of the past, for bellow the surfaces of soil and sky their resided only death, the ancient victims of ancient cruelties and it was within these dark fluids that it found nutrition and though it grew strong it all so grew cruel.
The bowl break of the boat was jarring, seemingly to break the dark surface of the ocean before it could reveal the seas dark insides. The boat went against the wind, it had little choice, the men’s backs bent with fury and concentration, on and on. The boat meandered desperately against its commander’s presence seeking an easier route through the dark clutch of the ocean and yet it did at its own peril, guided elsewhere, by fate or providence it was forced to continue its foolhardy course elsewhere accompanied by the groan of men that resembled corpses and ropes that sounded like dying men.
The vessel made its painful progress against the tenacity of the ocean, on and on as it had done many times before. The boat’s crew, aside from the rowers, huddles miserably in the bow, sheltering themselves in vain from the growing fury of the ocean. They had come such distances, from the sun dappled horizons of the east coast and a seemingly perpetual summer to this, a dark perpetual winter that was spread thick over the land.
At last ahead, signs of land, a spire of sorts, shrouded in the same weather, a broken crown of civilization affixing its heights, the regularity of brick and mortar damp and cold with the incoming storm, their was to be no sanctuary here. The boat was forced into the narrow inlet, and amidst the slight calm of its sheltered surrounds the small patch of water was momentarily transformed into a millpond flat and smooth with a hidden opaque darkness and each passenger was able to glimpse the last human part of themselves within.
The bow bit into the sand and everyone fleetingly lurched forward, as ankles were bitten painfully to remind all of perdition as the smell of blood and iron filled the air. They disembarked reluctantly for the island seemed to offer no more shelter than the sea. The river side habitat was rich with bog, the pessimistic sulfur stench rising up from below like the rot of a corpse. When they went to aid their travel with help from the surrounds, their hands were cut raw by the vegetation. When they tried to raise their heads to see their destination they could only look into the ferocious eye of the storm and so they moved onwards blind to their destiny following the barking commands of the officers in order to progress forward. On arrival there was no ceremony, no welcoming community, there was no need, they all knew why they were here and why they had come. Any greeting would shame the place ferocious in reputation and any communication would only counteract their real level of importance, for they were no more than workhorses of the crown.
The damp touch of night found them before their evening meal did. It joined with them in the darkness, finding its way inside them, first from any surface in contact with the ground and then anything exposed to the air. It crept with a trail of numbness that hurt on all its many edges and even the body warmth of reluctant companions was nothing to its ceaseless penetration. They huddled together, but in each of their own private contemplation. Food was served with no ceremony, divided unfairly amidst the men to promote disunity, we knew their tricks, spiced with ingot, fungal life forms to poison the bread if it were stored. They took it nonetheless, the warmth consumed like the food. They contemplated the night away amidst the miserable amounts of sleep. The depravity that the human spirit can be subjected to is only in comparison to the next level of torture that could be delivered upon it. They lay miserably upon the cold damp ground, the wind close and yet distant behind the walls of their confinement and in their dreams they pictured the forests sweeping out around the mountains towards civilization and the sea vest and impossible in the other direction.
They met their captor at day break, when a miserable sun crept sparingly along the northern horizon and lost most of its radiance in the persistent westerly drizzle that hovered in the air around them At first he appeared the usual tardy spankster, probably made one to many mistakes in the colony and received an unkind ultimatum, but we all knew there was something else, something different about this greasy fellow. We had seen the plethora of cutthroat conformist soldering and the greasy pole sliders that inhabited the officers’ warrens. Everyone had their own unique set of cruelty. Their own little basked of despair, their life experience imagination tweaked pain amalgamation that they had spent a lifetime feeding with fear thet they could pull from.
This one though was different and of course we had heard all the stories, there wasn’t much else to know and yet, reputations even here seldom met expectations. It seemed we weren’t after all gathered for mid-morning pleasantries and as none of us had taken tea and scones yet we weren’t wholly unsurprised. The man paraded out before us, as miserable as they come, a wretched tangle of hair and bone and the rabid stare and stink of insanity. He battled against his captors all sinew and bone against the soldiers who strained earnestly to contain him. He was at times a ball of rage bent over and then he would explode upwards his captors momentarily surprised before a third joined to subdue him. All this time he muttered fowl atrocities, cursing the forests and the mountains here. Spitting darkly and gesturing darkly in the direction of the commander, who waited poised patiently for the distance to close. This scene had surely been embezzled with a pre-arranged theatrical flair. It seems our commander was not without vanity. Ane well all exchanged looks knowingly.
When the man was within a foot the men held him captive. “Ahh Alexander, you have returned to the morning, again and again you come and yet the pain by now must be vast and yet you return. He turned then as though distracted also looking towards the mountains. You see James, you crave this I think, this communion between us, this intimacy, and the change, how it changes you James and you evolve and evolve and become closer to us close to us and god”. We did not understand this mad mumbo gibberish and yet it seemed quiet at ease in this part of the world. “The only thing I come closer to my friends he gestured to us all off script. “Is a monster” a flesh eating monster that has evolved all it needs to survive out their save becoming a plant. “And all you my fellow captive friends, it will happen to you too, the change. Oh you will convince yourself that its this place, human tenacity, but deep down you wont at all be feeling anything human”. You think I am the only one? Many have made it across the wilderness, aided by this man’s suasory, to be snatched up my solders on the other side. “And you and you and your mission and the crown, I know what is going on here my captain. The ore, this sliver of darkness that adorns your chest. Doing to you, what the wilderness does to us. “Enough Alex, I always detest these ramblings when you at last come back to us. We can have mercy, but listening to these ramblings is truly beneath everyone here, including yourself. Now lets proceed, this drizzle is only thickening and you know what that does to our outfits”.
The 9 sisters descended with impartial immunity, only a part of and not an agent of pain. The swish was like the strike of primitive desert snakes that’s flesh is as dusty as the earth. The instrument of his discord was unnatural and we all startled the 9 tails as it was known was different at its ends where knots should have been only darkness The whip as it began its ritual sparkled and darkened its edges seemingly to ripple in and out of reality as it began and ended its parabolic centrifugal delivery at the apex of the flesh.
And the contact when momentum became inertia and for a moment everything balanced, the small knots embedded within sinew. And then to begin again and again, with no pause and no ceremony and until flayed flesh littered the earth and a man sagged forward like a tethered animal in a pool of his own human excrement.
James seemed oblivious to silky lips, he’d heard it all before, and yet striving through consciousness when our leader stepped in close, things changed. “I can feel it sir, Close to us, Close to you” and perhaps even now within me”. It’s there isn’t it around your neck where even the light of the morning can muster the courage to enter. Alexander grimaced momentarily before again gesturing to the soldiers to begin the process of returning him to his cell. The man was bent forward over the log at the waters edge, the tide lapping at his ankles as he looked towards the sun. What changes would come now he whispered as he looked longingly towards the mountains.
The settlement was in agitation after the strange morning proceedings. Little was said of the words that had been exchanged, but each dwelt silently upon how these stories might affect them. They were weeks from civilization and potentially isolated from the world for weeks more during winter. There was a reason the lands were already askew with shipwrecked sailors’ tracks if things went particularly wrong here there was no help coming from anywhere and now with Alexander back and his new appetites it was only a matter of what might happen next.
The next few days proved to be surprisingly uneventful, the drama of the day’s proceedings losing its contemplative appeal in this harsh environment that buried stray thoughts that didn’t depend on survival and encouraged not thinking at all. They spent the days learning the ways of this land. Learning the essential rituals that allowed this precarious monster to exist. They were given privy over the ways to survive, at least those that didn’t disfavor anothes prospects.
They learnt about the site and all its essential locations. Most unwritten laws were transferred in a meaningful torrent of goodwill and enthusiasm. The new men felt heartened. The work was devastatingly cruel, day upon day the felling of timber, but then occasionally smaller, more precise excavation right up inside the mountain’s interior, where they would dig deep excavations into mountainsides, most were abandoned within days, and yet a current one had persisted in becoming something more than a quarry and it currently snaked into the mountainside to a depth of 25m. They had been here for days, making no sight of precious metals or minerals, digging at the whim of their imprisoners. And then seemingly all at once after days of continues toil the sight was closed. To never return, it was said that official boats were still making the voyage to the mine, but not the prisoners who had no further involvement.
Of course, the precarious rumor mill of nightly prevacation helped spin wild tales concerning these nefarious events and no one had the ability to communicate with Alexander, the oldest and the original, the one who had bore the cruelty here the longest, as he had spent the sum of his ordeal on Grommet island and the other part in delusional delirium so was impervious to integration.
To coincide with these events, to their dismay was an increased focus on corporal punishment, a higher tendency towards cruelty and a steady increase in general meanness. Of course, we all weathered it all, those that have never been imprisoned never grasp the existential process of incarceration. The complete foreclosure of free will. The complete abandonment concerning the duty of the body towards anything but the lessoning of discomfort towards the flesh. They lived in status, they gave no thought to sentence length, the shear monotony of their condition meant the time between sunrise and sunset was the only time that existed and they counted the passage of time with the growing degradation of their bodies And yet cruelty persisted and grew with its depravity. The lash was felt by all in tern, seemingly mediocre infringement elevated to major transgressions and each night at least one of the men dripped himself dry in the darkness. Alexander came back every so often and not just from Grommet rock and madness, but genuinely there. His back had healed, the sea water and rest producing barely a scar. In his wilder moments he told them that he no longer feared the whip he welcomed it. And yet he said it barely did anything to him anymore, his skin was harder, and he demonstrated by biting it as hard as he could, but we couldn’t tell if he was tricking us, and yet when we tried ourselves, we could not penetrate his flesh with teeth, bone, or stone. Alexander, what had happened to him in those distant hills? Had he truly walked those distances powered by the blood of man, was it even true that even now he could no longer digest the convict fair and was given sweet meats from the captain’s tables to sustain his life, the master and his loyal treacherous hound. Alexander had been here for 4 years, and he seemed born to it. A strangely unnatural creature of contemplative silence. When lucid and sane he kept himself working in the wilderness as far as was allowed. He had an uncanny ability with the land predicting and avoiding multiple tragedies that would have befallen other men. He seemed tireless and many jokes were made as to who was missing. He talked nothing of human flesh and its taste and yet we all wondered what would occur if the sweet meats stopped. Alexander was the only man on the island who seemed to truly like the land.
He would baptize himself in ocean spray, the rain seemed drawn to him, and he bathed naturally in wind washed torrents that would have felled lesser men. He swam in the ocean, the soldiers confident that he could never swim away, confident like a seal amidst the west coast swell. At night he was like a ghost, scaring those around him, moving through the damp air with a daylight confidence, he knew, the prisoners knew that he stayed because he wanted to. This smack of agriculture industrialization was what he liked. He knew to the wilderness he could always return.
And always this unnatural relationship with our commander, they knew of each other, something deep dark and intimate existed between them, you could see it when they were in each other’s company, like dogs sniffing out weakness, they were always conscious of each other, testing, probing, embracing and avoiding, they were like lovers each playing their own private games. Stories, events, transpirations in time had long ago merged them together, captured and imprisoned them to some indefinable event, palatable, the air between them, something that had cut cold scares into each of them, and yet each seemed to also sooth each other’s wounds liking them delicately when they abided each other’s company as though were the only one who knew how such wounds could be made.
It was nearly ten days since they had found their incarceration. the prisoners looked upon this land like we looked upon a very bad day back home. This place an unpredictable testament to misery. They became married to its ways, stifling the continues curses at the weather that turned the bay to a mill pond and moments later a maelstrom. They learnt the ways of the lands, the baron expenses of button grass that clutched figuratively at the rainforest’s edges. Places that bore no shelter from the drizzle winds that set in for days, but at least did not hamper their every step across this land with endless obstacles of wet, rot, rock things.
The quicksilver threads of willow wisp waterways that filled the space between mountains were their connection to solace for endless cascades roaring down the mountainside fall forever into inky dark rockpools chasing the limited light of the sky into their hidden secretive channels where we hoped to one day travel.
The banks locked tight in a quagmire of life, plants growing over the top of each other as though to pull the sun from the sky. They ventured amidst those ancient shorelines the most, searching for pine trees, occasionally bathed in gods light when the sky momentarily opened up and the world around for a moment came back to life. And while they could find no love for this land, they came to respect its distant uncomfortable beauty.
Of course, this dramatic isolation was tempered with the company of soldiers and condemned men so often for every item of piece that nature lent, the company of men soon took away. In ten days, the place had changed, and what a small degree of welcome and warmth granted to the new arrivals was quickly withdrawn.
The fresh onset of cruelty brought forth by the soldiers over the previous week had scattered any degree of camaraderie, everyone was now on their own, not willing to sacrifice a very certain personal advantage for a debatable communal payback later. In this way each of the men fell back into their primitive protective shells, shunning each other’s company and soon the companionship of man was given over to the kinship of madness, sewing the moments with seed of distrust, that would some time later bare their sickly pale fruit.
The company later that week when the lands began to steadily deliver their cargo deeper into winter spent their usual time huddles together after the communal meal, no man talking each contemplating his own internal thoughts as the inside turmoil of suspicion and mistrust and the outside frigid cold in the evening of discontent ate each of them alive. Alexander had disappeared again; his birth and bindings were empty, and later as it was discovered another prisoner to and the commander had had us all out in the mist searching for them in vain, as their calls tore holes in the suspended silence with the cruelty of his commands created a further hindrance to their recapture, but the commander cared not.
He seemed particularly distraught this time, at times pulling down all manner of threats from the rule books of hell and at others times all most pleading in a desperate attempt to have Alexander return. The night had progressed like this a quagmire of unstable thought and contradictory commands until the prisoners and the whole garrison were overcome by the turn that seemed to have taken the commander. Long into the night we searched those haunted shores, long after it was safe or even worthwhile to do so. Alexander had decided that for now enough was enough and even now he had already begun his second foolish attempt at the interior. The soldiers collectively wished him well, for all the rumors concerning his condition, he had been nothing but a gentleman for the men in the camp. We wished him the best, if any man could make it, it would be him and yet it was only days later that he was returned to us, discovered only miles from the station, and with him the remains of his companion, according to the stories disemboweled and partly consumed, Alexander had allowed himself to be led away and he now resided somewhere secret upon the Island awaiting his deportation and eventual hanging in Hobart.
Despair does strange things to a man, cruelty becomes immaterial, intangible, just a process, like any other. It dulls feelings perhaps so the mind can preserve its sanity, action becomes a process of preservation because this is the only drive that this little can sustain. What most would see as cruelty was purely a means to an end and over the following days a strange new despair filled the camp.
The illustrious leader was not himself, during the day his eyes were filled with the hidden demons of his soul. The captives could see something else alive in his expression, a new level of insanity. Of course, the man had access to Alexander, and we feared as they conversed deep into the nights that the strange relationship, they shared would overcome what little peace held his soul together. His cruelty again raised a notch and the feverish spewing of strange narratives accompanied him when he was at his worst, his hand buried beneath his tunic clutching something as he decanted forth a visceral spew of obscenities amidst stranger stories of dark buried places.
We tried to locate Alexander, despite the stories and for some ghastly reason even in the light of this so-called murder we craved his guidance amidst this rising darkness even if the whole thing had partly been orchestrated by his hand. Of course we wanted more, this whole story reeked of some fabrication. Its stupid simplicity did nothing to alleviate the prisoner’s curiosity and yet they could assert nothing as they had access to nothing, amidst the natural imprisonment of nature and the entrapment of manacles and the whim of the crown which gave them only the right to breathe. Had Alexander been denied his sweet meat from the commander’s table and revolted in a torrid overwhelming and yet calculated response? And why Thomas? They were not at all enemies and had been described as friends and yet it had been Alexander himself who had spoken the words “The good one can do on a full stomach”. So, we were lost as what to believe.
That Sunday the ship arrived sailing in from the east amidst a surprisingly glassy calm ocean to collect Alexander from his solitude to condemn him for his execution of murder and cannibalism. He would hang in Old Hobart town and be buried in an unmarked non concentrated grave unless he repented his sins. We did not see him leave, his departure was a mystery to us all and we could only presume after the vessel left that he had gone on that day.
Over the coming months we heard distant tidings from the mainland, Alexander had been executed and there had been quiet the turn out, of course there was nothing like a hanging to bring out the best in people, one only needed to add a tad of cannibalism, murder and feats of inhumane perseverance to guarantee the whole town made an appearance. Other rumors also surfaced, rumor had it that the execution hadn’t gone as expected, the man for what ever reason had been denied last words and this had put the crowd into a bit of a stink with a lot of hoo-ha and hollering, when the time had come, that momentous moment where every person contemplated their own mortality and left feeling overjoyed and immortal was ruined, the man had refused to die and the last of the procedure had been completed behind a curtain. Other strange stories had surfaced regarding the man’s body, apparently a complete medical dissection had occurred immediately after death and rumor had it that his scull had been sold to a collector.
In the growing gloom of winter Sarah Island was set upon by the worst of winter storms that rolled in mercilessly from the west. The prisoners felt the last of their humanity leave them as it was flayed away by the roaring westerly winds, their pride was washed from them by the ceaseless tides that rose up wild and furious about the island and the cold replaced whatever warmth that still lay within them. Many of them reflected on Alexanders words as the salt sting air bathed their backs in the cold creep of sea water the words recited before the flaying on their second day. T
They all felt it and yet they did not speak, strange things were occurring within them, something changing, something consuming, they were becoming as Alexander, and each looked as he had to the east contemplating the distance to civilizations across the great expanse of wilderness. Wanting, desiring to test their fortitude against this great journey. Each now feeling at home here gradually acclimatizing to this environment. Their work increased, each finding new strength to complete the tasks of their imprisonment and all the time the swamy expression of their commander looking on as though he had personally orchestrated this diabolical change. Physiological changes were now apparent, like Alexander their skin impervious now to the harsh land, they moved through the bush, quiet and confident like him, their sensors acute in the night. Their hearing tuned to the smallest sound of animals around and with these skills they learnt to kill and to kill quickly, consuming the flesh of the native animals, quietly and quickly, their bodies requiring energy to complete their diabolical metamorphosis. After a while they too felt little want for the moldy stale affair that was their food, so they buried it as they became something else.
Soon their strength gave them a new confidence, the metamorphosis was most apparent to the soldiers who even with sword and muscat were nervous around the prisoners, wary beyond measure the soldiers took no chance and triple checked manacles every night, returning to their barracks to reflect on their mortality and this new disparity, they huddled together miserably. The tables had turned, and this new sense of vulnerability was not healthy for their continuity.
It was not long before nefarious plans were devised. The men were convinced something was amiss, and their commander as Alexander suggested knew more than he let on. What secrets did that glob of unnatural darkness that seemed to hang around his chest allude to and what was its mysterious relationship to the whip and its dark cargo that splayed open their backs for the simplest of sins? Soon it seemed that even the commander was concerned, at first he seemed to look on in delight after all work had almost doubled, but now he appeared uneasy, he seemed to sense the growing strength of his prisoners, as one Alexander had not been a problem and for him a solution had been found, but for the 8 remaining he knew the outpost was severely lacking in man power to effectively contain their desires and with the next supply vessel weeks away he feared an uprising.
The soldiers came for them in the darkness of night, believing that the prisoners were asleep and manicured and hopefully full on the ergot that had been placed upon the fresh bread to weaken and poison them so that their dispatch was all the cleaner. The surprise was theirs when their manicures were found twisted and broken upon the dirt floor of their imprisonment and the men resting silently in the shadows dispatched them quickly and quietly with no more than a shot fired. They used the weapons that nature had supplied them, and this new strength and tenacity proved beyond the powers of the soldiers to stop. The violence was brief and silent, the men renewing the strength of the flesh with that of the solders. This was new for them, no more the gammy meat of rodents and reptiles, they suckled succulently on the raw flesh of soldiers and felt a new strength fill them. Why had not Alexander spoken of this ecstasy, because he had waited for them to understand for themselves, he had known the trajectory of their imprisonment, he had foreseen their metamorphosis.
They came for him in numbers that he could not prevent. He fought like a devil rapacious and raging, he singly dispatched the first two prisoners who entered his barracks with lightening fast ease, until the numbers around him forced him to the floor, with foresight they may have ascertained an understanding of their predicament, forced answers from the blind mouth of chaos, but they were beyond that and the commander was consumed as though rabid dogs had been left to him and they held their prize above his body, their heads bowed to the dark mineral that had become their master, they took the flay from its prized position upon the wall and also divided the crystals among themselves. There plan was to take the vessel, only recently finished west, west to the Coast of another continent.
The boat moved with solemn progress into the eye of the tempest, its white sail like the flag of surrender, a tear in the night sky, appearing and disappearing as the waves grew high around it. It moved west through the imposing Hells Gates and yet the prisoners steered it with ease, familiar with its traps, they would never fear it again. The boat moved upon the tide, sucked through the opening into the southern ocean, it was their a moment and finally gone, the prisoners slinking into new and disturbing storylines woven into the future. Who could imagine success for a voyage such as this, they had chosen their path and each burdened with the weight of human blood fled into the future.
The night air was full of swarming flurry, black wings and obsidian eyes, the murder of ravens moving east through the night air. In this mythology they were the 9 men returning to their home.
CRAG CRY DARKNESS 