Dead Tree Forest (5 page)

Once Chris had finished, a heavy silence fell over the group. Ray realised then just how quiet the forest was—there were no birds calling, no wind blowing.

He then heard a sound rolling around the forest. It was faint, almost like wind whistling through the leaves, but...different.

It almost sounded like someone was crying, but it was an all-encompassing sound. It was as if all the trees in the forest were weeping. The crying sounded like a girl; it sounded a lot like...

Gemma?

No, he knew that wasn’t possible.

The sound had to be in his mind.

“So this treasure that’s supposed to be in the lake, the girl had it because…?”

This one Ray made sure he answered. He heard Chris draw breath, but before Chris could utter a word, Ray said, “She stole it from some settlers. The three men who murdered her didn’t know she had it, or else they would’ve taken it from her before dumping her body. Lucky for us they didn’t, huh?”

“Yeah, lucky,” Brian said, sounding suspicious, and also out of breath.

Strange
, Ray thought.

He felt out of breath, too.

And Chris had sounded short of breath while recounting the story.

Perhaps there was something wrong with the air in the forest after all.

Makes sense
, Ray thought.
Take a look around; there is obviously
something
wrong with this forest—and if it isn’t the soil, then it has to be the air.

I just hope it’s not toxic
.

“Come on, we’d better get going,” Ray said, and as they continued through the dead forest, their footsteps silent on the soot-like forest floor, that sound, like a ghost’s cry, seemed to grow louder in Ray’s head.

* * *

At the lake, Ginnumarra and her family had eaten some of the tiger that Dad had caught the previous day, and drank from the water container. Moodoo went swimming while Mum looked after Grandma, who looked exhausted. Truganini sat and stared at the lake, not speaking. Dad sat on a nearby rock, spear in one hand, looking out at the forest.

Ginnumarra was sitting by the edge of the lake, feet in the water, lazily wondering about her friends and extended family, if they had gotten away safely, when the sound of horses shocked her to her feet. She turned around and saw Dad standing, spear raised and ready for attack.

From out of the forest came three horses, and sitting on top were three ghosts.

The three white men stopped and pointed their guns at Dad.

Dad drew back his spear. Three shots rang out.

Grandma screamed, Mum shrieked, Moodoo remained in the shallow part of the lake, crying, Truganini sat staring, as Dad was hurtled backwards, landing on the ground, spear falling nearby.

The white men dismounted their horses, still with their guns pointing at Dad, who was groaning.

“Nicholas, grab that older girl, Bill, deal with the old lady and the woman.”

The two ghosts nodded and took off, while the man who had given the orders stayed with Dad.

Ginnumarra noticed that one of Dad’s shoulders was red, as was the hand clutching at the wound.

As one of the white men grabbed Truganini, who barely put up a struggle, the other one stopped by Grandma and Mum. He casually raised his gun, aimed it at Grandma’s head and fired.

Her head exploded and she went down like a strong gust of wind had knocked her backwards.

Mum screamed, but her scream was silenced when the white man smacked her across the face with the end of his rifle. She dropped to the ground.

“No,” Dad whimpered.

Ginnumarra remained standing by the lake; behind her Moodoo had stopped crying.

She watched as one of the ghosts carried Truganini over to one of the horses. There he grabbed a thick loop of rope and began tying her up.

“You’ll make a nice love slave, my dear,” the white man said and laughed.

“Don’t move,” one of the ghosts said as he stepped towards Ginnumarra. She didn’t want to be taken by these white men, so she picked up a stone and hurled it at the man’s head.

She didn’t wait to see if the stone hit. She turned and started running.

“Grab her, Nicholas!” the man by Dad screamed.

Ginnumarra ran hard through the forest, but she didn’t get far.

A great weight was soon on her and it drove her face-first into the forest floor of small stones and leaves and twigs. Pain flashed through her skull, then bright lights, and then she fell unconscious.

* * *

“Guys, I need to take five,” Ray said. “Have to catch my breath.”

It was just over an hour since the incident with the lighter, although it felt like they had been walking for at least three times that long.

“You feeling okay?” Brian asked.

Ray bent over at the waist, braced his hands on his legs, and sucked in the thin air. “I’ll be fine. But I think there’s something wrong with the air in here.”

Once he had drawn enough air into his lungs, Ray straightened and turned towards Brian. His gut went icy cold. “Brian?”

“Of course. Who else do you think it is?”

“But...but you...”

Ray wanted to say
...look about twenty years older
, but he didn’t have the breath to finish the sentence.

He figured it had to be a trick of the light. It was, after all, gloomy in the forest, even though it was only around three o’clock in the afternoon.

Yes, that’s all it was. The shadows were making Brian look older than he was. Or perhaps it was the strain of all this walking causing a temporary meltdown in Ray’s brain. Or a combination of the two.

“But I what?” Brian said.

Ray shook his head. “Nothing.”

Brian frowned. He took a few steps towards Ray. “Ray?” he said, voice low and shaky.

Up close Ray saw that it was no trick of the shadows. It wasn’t simply a case of exhaustion altering his perception: Brian had definitely aged. His face was wrinkled and his once reddish-brown hair was dusted with grey, like someone had sprinkled ash over his head.

“Ugh,” Ray breathed.

Looking equally as shocked as Ray, Brian dropped the gym bag. The bag dropped to the forest floor with a dull
thwamp
. A cloud of dark grey dust rose into the air. Eyes wide, he took a few more steps towards Ray. “Jesus Christ, man...you...you look like your old man!”

Ray’s father had always been old. Even when Ray was ten and his father only thirty, Charles Lambert had looked more like a grandfather than a father: hair almost completely grey; face hard with lines; lips thin; eyes hollow. By the time Charles dropped dead of a heart attack at forty-five, he looked like something out of a Romero movie.

“Brian, what’s going on?” Nathan said.

“Be quiet,” Brian said.

“But Brian…”

“Shut up I said!” Brian shouted, then he doubled over in a fit of coughing. His coughing was deep and hard; it sounded like he was trying to expel a demon lodged deep inside his gut. He coughed so hard he vomited, but what came out wasn’t a horned beast but black phlegm.

Nathan, looking forty years old, sobbed, “Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell’s going on?” He dropped the Esky and then threw off his pack.

Still in mild shock, Ray turned to Chris. Chris now had streaks of white through his once jet-black hair and his eyes were dark and heavy with fear. “What the hell’s going on?”

Chris opened his mouth to speak, but instead he exhaled a breath and cast his gaze to the black earth.

“If you know something, spill it,” Brian said.

Chris whispered, “I don’t know for sure, but I think...”

“Yeah?”

“I think...it’s this forest. It’s making us older.”

There was silence. Then:

“Bullshit,” Brian said. “Bullfuckingshit. How can a forest…?” He left the sentence hanging in the dead forest air.

“It’s Ginnumarra,” Chris said. “Can’t you hear her?”

“All I can hear is a load of bull,” Brian said. “There has to be a logical explanation for all this. Maybe the air is fucked in here; maybe it’s got something to do with the imbalance of oxygen and carbon diwhatsis.”

“I don’t wanna die,” Nathan cried. Jerky sobs rattled his skinny body.

“We’re not going to...die,” Ray said, voice breaking. He dropped the rope—keeping a hold of Chris no longer seemed all that important. “But we do have to decide what we’re going to do.”

“We should get the fuck outta here,” Brian said. “Like we should have done earlier.”

Ray’s body tensed. He shook his head. “No, we can’t leave.”

Brian cackled. “Why not? Because of the treasure? Well fuck that shit. I’m leaving before anything else happens.”

“I wouldn’t,” Chris said.

All three men looked at Chris.

“Why not?” Brian said.

“You don’t know what could happen.”

“What do you mean?” Ray said.

Chris swallowed. “We’ve all aged around twenty years since entering this forest. So if walking forward through this forest has aged us, there’s no telling what will happen if we turn around and head back.”

“It’d probably be reversed,” Brian said.

“Yeah, reversed,” Nathan echoed, wiping his snotty nose with the back of his hand.

Chris shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think Ginnumarra would’ve made it that simple.”

“I say we head the fuck back,” Brian said. “No treasure is worth this.”

Ray could see it all slipping away; all his time, research, and most importantly, his hope. And all because of what...a cursed forest?

Damn it!

“I have to get out of here!” Nathan cried and started running.

“Nathan!” Brian shouted.

Brian started after his brother, but Ray managed to grab a hold of him. Brian struggled fiercely, but Ray had always been the stronger of the two.

“Let me go,” Brian growled.

“We don’t know what will happen,” Ray said. “Best to just let him go.”

“But he’s my brother!”

Ray hated keeping Brian captive; felt like a bastard for doing so. But he had to do it.

“Ray, if anything happens to...”

Nathan barely made it ten metres when it happened.

His hair started growing at an alarming rate. What just seconds ago had been moderately short and messy with silver sprinkled through, now sprouted into long flowing whiteness that first reached his shoulders, then moments later his back; then, just as it reached his backside his hair started breaking away.

Screaming, Nathan raised his arms, presumably in an attempt to stop his hair from falling out. Ray saw that his hands were now bone, with bits of skin flapping off the skeletal remains.

Nathan’s running slowed to a jog, which soon became a lumber as his body started to shrink and curve.

Finally, his back hunched and all sorts of strange noises burbling from his body, he dropped to the forest floor, as dead as the trees that surrounded them.

“No,” Brian whispered after a tense silence.

Ray turned to his friend.

Brian blinked tears from his eyes; his chin trembled.

Without warning, Brian broke free from Ray’s hold.

“Brian!” Ray cried and managed to tackle Brian to the ground before his friend got too far.

“Get off me!” Brian screamed. “Nathan needs my help!”

“Nathan’s dead, there’s nothing you can do,” Ray panted, fighting hard to keep Brian under control.

“Let me up! I have to go to Nathan!”

“You’ll end up the same way if you go over to him.”

“I don’t care!”

“Yes, you do,” Ray said. “Think of Claire; she needs you.
I
need you.”

He had never said such a thing to another man before.

Brian stopped struggling.

“So you cool?” Ray said.

Brian nodded.

Ray let go and stood up.

Brian got to his feet, brushing dirt off his jeans and shirt.

“I’m sorry about Nathan,” Ray said.

Brian looked over at his brother’s corpse: a skeleton wrapped in Nathan’s clothing.

“Brian?” Ray said, softly. “Hey, mate, you okay?”

Brian’s face started twitching, like a million tiny bugs were scurrying just under his skin. Finally his face split and he screamed an almighty scream. In any other place, the sound would’ve reverberated for miles. But in Dead Tree Forest, the scream that spewed from Brian’s throat—loud and raw—stopped the moment it left his mouth, like an invisible wall had stunted the scream.

But the emotion that brought forth the scream wasn’t stunted; Brian’s rage was unleashed in full force.

He picked up a branch lying on the ground nearby and, still screaming, started hitting the branch against any trees within reach. Yelling, tears flying off his cheeks, he slammed the branch against tree after tree, disintegrating both the branch and the trunk with each violent hit.

After a few minutes of stomping through the woods, Brian threw away what little there was left of the dead branch and then he fell back against one of the trees and, choking back tears, slid down the trunk until his arse met the ground.

Then he put his head between his legs and remained locked in that position.

Ray breathed in deep; winced as some of the blackened soil was sucked down his throat. It tasted like old musty books, coupled with ash.

He turned to Chris. “I think we should stay here for the night. Will you help me set up the tents?”

Chris nodded. He raised his arms. “Though it’s going to be difficult with my hands tied.”

Ray knew there was no point in keeping Chris bound. They were all trapped in this forest. “Okay,” Ray said and he stepped forward and started untying the rope.

* * *

Nights in the mountains were cold enough; but without any heating, it was like they were covered by a sheet of ice.

Ray was lying in his one-man tent, nestled in his sleeping bag, staring up at the shadows of the slanting tent roof. His belly was still rumbling—the can of cold baked beans had done little more than give him gas—but the beers had been good, comforting.