Then again, I'd argue our last night digging deeply into the injustice that occurred in Yirrimburra is probably a very close second, especially since none of us could control our own dreams...
When he was a young man, he said, he was the prosecutor on the MacKenzie case. He had thought there was a strong case against the larrikin and his friends for the deaths of those natives, and he had a witness willing to testify - one Bill Poul. Unfortunately, at the very last minute, Poul pulled out, admitting he had falsified the testimony. King was not convinced it was false, however, and had a strong suspicion that Poul had been threatened into silence - something later confirmed by Poul before he disappeared. Disgusted by the turn of events and eventual freeing of MacKenzie and his friends, King resigned from his position as prosecutor, and has felt bitter about the case ever since.
There was one other thing, however, that he mentioned to us after giving us an odd look. When we pressed further, King's mood changed and he began to speak of an incident that occurred not long after his resignation. He said that not long after the trial, he was interrupted one night by a knock on the door. When he opened it, he found a horribly injured Aboriginal teenager, standing on his doorstep and bleeding terribly from the horrific shotgun wound to his face. Slurring his words, the youth stated a phrase that had haunted King for his entire life: Bad thing coming. Very bad. The Law is broken. All die. All die...
Disturbed and in shock by the boy's condition, King took the native in and made him comfortable, then left to alert the police. By the time the police got there, however, the youth had left, and rather than make a fool of himself, King dismissed them. Since then, he assumed the boy must have died. When we told him we'd seen just such a scarred Abo, King was shocked and mentioned one more thing the boy had said - Wrath of Sand-Bat come. Consume all. All die. Well, this got us all interested, and we realized the boy, now an old man and somehow still alive, had to be some sort of sorcerer that had cursed Yirrimburra... or perhaps just the people who wronged his tribe. I hate to agree with someone who apparently worships an evil creature, but in this case...
That, I think, was also about the point the weird things started to happen. I just remember odd glimpses. Neville's rifle becoming a spear. The trees outside looking weird. There being a fire that wasn't really there, in the center of the room. I glanced to the others as we conversed, confirming we'd all been seeing the odd shit, and then King realized our behavior and was puzzled.
"You lot must be terribly tired, to be seeing things," he said. "Perhaps you should rest here before you return to Yirrimburra, or wherever you're going after this."
"Well, not bloody likely back to Yirrimburra," replied Neville, shifting on the couch. "I say let 'em rot in Hell for all I care. Real nice of you to let us sleep here, though."
"No problem at all! Rest well... and if you do need anything, please let me know."
With that, David King crept to his room to rest, leaving us all to settle into our own uneasy slumber. I say uneasy because the weirdness only got weirder, and I mean really damn weird. I don't know if I slipped into sleep or what, or if I just never realized I slept, but I swear we were all talking and when I next checked... we weren't in normal clothes. We'd gone Native, literally, and were in some sort of lean-to structure. When we crept outside... it wasn't King's home at all, and we certainly weren't in Traralgon anymore...
I want to say we wandered some several miles, half-hovering, in this bizarre landscape before coming to any sort of building whatsoever. It was half-camouflaged in a swampy area, where giant dragonflies hummed and hovered and croc-like things with long legs lumbered after giant wombats. Like a great half-gelatinous dome it rose from the water and reeds, and inside we perceived through the semi-translucent walls a very tall figure moving about. One very clearly inhuman... or was it? We couldn't really tell. Neville however, he swore up and down he remembered something like this sort of architecture, as if from far away in some dream...
Francis was the brave one, having just dreamed himself a replacement leg of something shimmery like mercury. He knocked with the new limb, gleefully, and we then all heard a familiar enough voice.
"Oh, uh. Hang on man, I'm like, busy... Kakakatak, that you? Wasn't expecting anyone..."
A vague look of confusion crossed my features. Roxy? Here? But it couldn't be... I thought at first I had been hearing things, but then the oddly smooth door slid open like a latch, and the... thing that answered... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't alarmed at the sight of it. It was maybe 9 or 10 feet tall, and cone-shaped, with four long limbs. On two, it bore crab-like claws, on one, some sort of bizarre bouquet of trumpet-like appendages, and on the fourth, a head with three purplish-red eyes and many filaments that moved oddly. It wore some strange circular symbol about its neck, and a headband with flowers upon the head, and never blinked. Yet, somehow it spoke, with no visible mouth, and seemed glad to see us.
"Oh man, long time no see!" It said, in Roxy's voice, and we soon realized it was indeed the being that had been in Neville's body. "What are you cool hominids doing out here?"
I think Neville just about fainted, because he began stammering in confusion and recognition. "I was in that thing!" he kept muttering. "That thing was in my head! That bloody thing!"
After about five seconds of calming him down, Roxy - the real Roxy this time - welcomed us inside. We found there a strange sort of laboratory or mechanical setup, which it seemed very insistent we didn't touch any of, and on one table in which we presumed was a kitchen was some sort of strange squishy fruit, like a sack filled with water but covered in small tendrils. Muuzaji, being a braver man than I, took a bite of the fruit and it burst in her mouth as she declared it tasted something like a peach and mango mixed together. Not that I particularly know what a mango tastes like, mind.
It wasn't long after that when Roxy drew our attention to something like a great metallic screen, which projected shapes and odd spiraling glyphs out of itself into the air. It told us there were some other humans it had been monitoring, that they had not moved at all, and that it was concerned. Then, it showed us an image, one of about fifteen to twenty Abos near what, for all I could tell, was Rainbow Rock! They were staring forlornly into the distance, not moving, not even their tamed dingoes. It was right eerie, seeing them stock still like that. Then Roxy said they had no vital signs, which I for the life of me don't know how it knew, but one look at these natives' eyes, and I understood. They were dead, all of them. Some even scarred and marked with what seemed to be bullet holes. This had to be the tribe that MacKenzie and his larrikin friends had so callously slaughtered all those years ago...
I was about to explain what had happened when something like a great shadow fell over the dome, and Roxy began to grow nervous, shifting color to a sickly green in alarm like some sort of great octopus. Its squid-like pupils shrunk to slits in fear, and it shrunk into its cone-like body slightly, somewhat like a sea anemone.
"Oh, that's not good," murmured the alien. "That's bad news, bears..."
"Francis, you see that?" I pointed out, indicating a strange reddish glow near one of the walls. "What is that?"
"Let me check," he said, cupping his hands and peering through the window with them. Then something shifted about the great ruddy light, and Francis became pale and backed away in dread.
"Lucas," He murmured. "We're in deep shit now. That's not a light. That's an eye..."
"This way," Roxy urged, pressing some sort of indentation on the wall and grabbing what looked like a massive tube with grips. A hum of electricity was heard from the object, and a door outside - an emergency exit - spontaneously opened in the semisolid wall. All we could see outside was shadow, infinitely black shadow, as far as the eye could see, but we followed. Then Roxy ran into something, like a great leathery wing, and the vast eye Francis had seen shifted to face us. But this was no normal eye. It was curved into three lobes, the pupil tripartite, shining and glowering red as it faced us... and that was when we realized exactly what we were looking at, and I became pale as a sheet.
"Run! Game over, man!" Roxy cried, and it didn't need to tell us twice. "I'll distract the Crawling Chaos, you run!"
We never found out what happened to our unearthly companion, because we ran for it. But that great shadow that was Sand-Bat, it followed. Flapping vast wings the size of entire forests, that hellish eye fixed upon us, enjoying the chase as if we were mere prey to it. As if this were a game to it. We just ran, and tried to wake ourselves. Ultimately, we did succeed... but we were not where we slept when we awoke.
We stood before Rainbow Rock, and an amazing thing happened. A great serpent, a living rainbow, emerged from it and arced across the heavens to land at a spot we soon recognized as the scrap heap. An explosion of color and thunder followed its landing, a forceful blast enough to shatter the glass sky and reveal the void of space beyond...
We finally did awake then, in our impromptu beds in King's house. Outside one window, a vague and diffuse orange glow could be seen on the horizon. And King himself was standing in the hallway with a grim look on his face.
"Yirrimburra," he gravely said, elderly eyes tired. "It's burning."
Neville and I perked up at that immediately, realizing what he meant. A bushfire is a problem at the best of times, but so close to a town as Yirrimburra, and with such a glow that could be seen miles off? We didn't have time to wait around and deliberate. There were innocents in that town, and the town itself was too small to have a fire brigade of its own. We had no choice but to return, and to help. I don't think that two hours ever went by so fast as we hopped aboard the fire brigade's engine that King had called, and just drove and drove.
Francis immediately switched to combat mode, as did the rest of us. He took charge by finding Mick, and asking for dynamite. Neville pointed out the water tower before running off to help Francis, and Ludwig and Muuzaji were left to deal with the fire's main front by helping guide people out of the inferno's path. As for myself, I immediately ran to kick the door of the boardinghouse down, and it splintered readily. The voice I'd heard... I ran through blazing heat and flames with a cloth around my face, suffering from the scalding heat as I slammed the half-burnt door of a room open, and there on the bed I saw an elderly woman, suffocating to death on smoke and ash. I didn't hesitate to pick her up and run out the door, lying her on the ground where her thankful niece began to try reviving her.
Ludwig saw this, and ran to help. His medical skills probably saved that woman's life, and the niece burst into grateful tears as she helped her aunt up. Meanwhile, a great boom and a splash were heard as Francis blasted the tower, and water rushed over the path of the flames, quenching at least the middle of it. But the terror wasn't over yet - two fires had now begun, one edging around in a bizarre manner towards MacKenzie's manor, and the other upon the lacquered train tracks. MacKenzie, who had run out to help, screamed in terror and drove like a bat out of hell towards his home; meanwhile we turned our attention to the fire blazing towards the church.
That was when Francis got a rather stupid idea. The bloody Yank decided to blast the railroad tracks, which only succeeded in spreading the fire further, and now we were caught in a right fair cow if there ever was one. Muuzaji and Ludwig, realizing there were innocents in the MacKenzie home, got upon the horses he had let us borrow and rode. Meanwhile Neville and I helped the idiot American put out the fire he'd helped spread to start with, quite the task.
I don't know what happened between the time we put that part of the fire out and got ourselves to MacKenzie's place, but the home was ablaze when we did. We could hear screaming voices inside, those of a woman and two little girls. Muuzaji was unconscious, and half-covered in nearly melted and burned wrappings that Ludwig had quickly discarded. He was trying to revive her, and yes, we now could see she really was a woman. Neville's eyes blazed with anger at knowing a woman had been hurt, and he ran into the home against my protestations to save the woman and her children inside as Francis followed suit - but it was too little, too late. The home was a flaming holocaust of smoke, breaking beams, and danger. They couldn't penetrate it to save the family, and MacKenzie himself was less than useless with horror.
Townsfolk gathered to try and put the blaze out, but nothing helped, and not long after Neville and Francis escaped, the entire manor collapsed in on itself. MacKenzie's tortured and sorrowful screaming nearly rivaled the roaring flames, and a new regret for his poor family settled into my heart. The townsfolk tried to assuage MacKenzie, but he was a man mad with grief. None of us showed the man himself any sympathy - after all, this was what he deserved for what he'd done to that poor tribe.
"No, don't try to comfort him." Francis stepped forth. "MacKenzie really did kill those tribesmen back in 1884. He shot them all, for no reason. That's why they all died. That's why this fire happened. He was cursed, and he cursed the whole town."
The townsfolk turned to their leader, and he broke down and confessed. He confessed to everything, sobbing. I thought it was enough, but Neville... well. Neville had other ideas, ideas I'm shocked even he would bring up.
"Yeah, you right cunt, this is what you deserve innit for killing that tribe? You and all your slimy friends. You thought all this happened by chance? You were fucking cursed! All this time. You bloody cunt! You tell them, you tell the town what you did, how you cut them down with a shotty and killed all those women and children and fucking babies. You killed babies, are you proud of yourself?! You got the town to lynch Bill Poul for no bloody reason too, didn't you? Might as well kill yourself, you right bastard! Go on, then! Do it! Kill yourself!"
MacKenzie looked at the man gobsmacked, grief intensifying on his face, tears streaking through the ash there. He barely spoke a word, and began to pull something from his pocket as he knelt, defeated, in the dirt.
"I... I..." he stammered, and we realized it was a pistol he held. "I'm sorry. He's right. God forgive me, I'm so sorry..."
Before we could do a thing, MacKenzie put the barrel in his mouth, and fired. Then the townspeople turned to Neville, horrified, and murmured in disapproval. Neville's eyes grew wide.
"Bloody fuck..." He muttered. "I... I didn't think the bastard would actually do it..."
I'm pretty sure Yirrimburra disowned Neville that day, because none of the townsfolk would talk to him after that. Neville for the record never talks about it much anymore, and to be honest, I don't blame him. Sometimes, the man needs to learn to shut his bloody mouth, even if he was right to be upset...
The rest of us, we helped get the rest of the blaze put out and then stayed on a few weeks to help Yirrimburra rebuild. It's been rough going, but we've been working like Billy-o and the place is nearly good as new. Mick Keelor is running for mayor of the town next month so I hear, and the scrap pit's metal has been melted down - from what I hear, the town's so grateful for our help it's putting up some sort of monument, made from that scrap metal. As for Rainbow Rock and the tribal graveyard, from what I understand they're being made memorial landmarks. Pretty sure I even saw a rainbow form over that area the other day, and I knew all was well when I saw that. I might not believe those Abo myths, but I figure you can't go wrong with a blessing from Rainbow Snake itself, can you?
We've been in Yirrimburra about a month now helping rebuild, it's sometime around July. I know it's July, because that bloody Yank Francis wouldn't keep his damn mouth shut about the Fourth of it earlier in the month. Guess that's their Independence Day or something like that, and he insisted on at least shooting off some dynamite as impromptu fireworks. Well, us and the rest of the town, we humored him - it made him happy, and under the pretense of celebrating the new Yirrimburra, we got to have a damn fine cookout and good beer courtesy of the Yirrimburran Arms for it. I have to admit, that one-legged bugger's got a certain panache about him that's starting to grow on me, even if he is an American.
We should be heading out to Cuncudgerie to get back on track in a few more days or so. I reckon it won't be much longer before we're actually in the Outback proper, and then Neville and I can really show these foreign bastards what our country's all about. I doubt any of them have ever seen anything quite like the bush during wet season!
-- Lucas Bradford, Paying It Forward (July 28th, 1928)