The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  ‘I shall be hungry by and by!’ he sings.

  Taking up his karko on the end of a length of string – his min-tum, newly adapted for its purpose – Brippoki, as Moo-by, whirls it around his head. The makeshift device produces a lowing noise, much duller than intended, nothing like the roar of a true mooryumkarr.

  His disappointment is keen – his opponent unlikely to be discouraged by the weak sound.

  Brippoki makes his way inland, back to the dilapidated Greenwich graveyard. Even the dark time empty places fill with echoes of old suffering, solitary places the least lonely.

  Sky filled with cloud, the new moon is no longer visible.

  ‘A man am I!’ Moo-by sings, louder now. ‘I don’t want to go back to the grave!’

  The evening breeze moans louder still, stirring the treetops overhead. A burial place, likeliest haunt of evil spirits, is doubly worth avoiding. He has already risked much by returning there with Thara in tow. What more harm can now be done? Brippoki weighs the odds. Opposing his troubles is his only chance to end them – his one last chance remaining.

  To be a man, Brippoki must be a man. He will face down the terror seeking his life in the place that he released it. Meeting on home ground, he might persuade the Spirit to return to its camp, a trial by combat as much as an ordeal of magic. In fighting back, he may reclaim his honour, and – possibly – make a name for himself.

  Everybody was accountable, somewhere along the Revenge Trail.

  Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.

  Sarah struggled not to scream.

  Truly…

  It couldn’t be, but it was.

  Truly ye bear witness, that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them…

  Killer.

  …and ye build their sepulchres.

  In one swift motion, she set aside the candlestick. A single blow would not be enough.

  Under a mountain was a volcano, at the very bottom of the sea. It was filled with souls, after death, torturing other souls. There, the dead waged endless war, one with another – killing, as surely as Cain killed his brother, over, and over, and over again.

  Sarah kept her hands firmly pressed across her chest, lest her heart should burst from its cage.

  Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

  But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

  Blackfellow lies motionless on a rock, as one dead or asleep in the sun. If he takes a piece of fish or flesh and holds it out in his hand, a careless hunter might think it easy prey. Then, when he swoops down on the offering, the blackfellow leaps up and seizes him – throws him on the fire and makes a meal of him.

  This is the way to catch him crow.

  If Brippoki’s scheme is successful, Deadman will be obliged to enter into his liver and his service, as his woorie, a vital protector against enchantments – including evil spirits such as the In-gna.

  Standing some way off, he first checks over the cleared ground around the grave for any signs of disturbance that could indicate the provenance of the murderer. Satisfied, Brippoki gathers fallen branches, which he arranges in a half-circle from head to foot, on the south side. On top of this he adds grass, and a length of log dragged and heaved into place with no little effort, covered over in turn with more disguising grass.

  An attack would be most effective just before dawn, when the victim is drowsy. He means to lure his enemy with expectation of the same.

  Finally in position, Brippoki, disguised as the demon Moo-by, forces the breath in and out of his mouth. He sits up in his grave, crying out for Deadman, and stamping his feet on the bare earth. Hands held together in front of his face beat out a matching rhythm.

  Polpol the Hero Ancestor cries and sings for the dead.

  ‘Alas! Alas! For me, the younger brother!

  My elder brother has left me all alone!’

  He hears the soft swish of bat wings, coming from everywhere.

  It is time to race the devil.

  Sun, moon, tide – Moo-by is fast travelling. A restless spirit of diabolical vengeance follows in close pursuit, and gaining. Through darkness he runs, between pools of light, through the crowding dead, through wastelands empty of life. Deadman comes on, never turning aside. Step by step and line by line the figure in shadow advances, relentless, unstoppable – no longer fart-catcher, three paces behind, but closing, almost on him.

  Run, faster.

  In a dash across open ground, speed counts for all.

  At the bitter end of their race, cornered Moo-by turns to confront his aggressor, showing off his true colours. Casually he discards his mooryumkarr, making much display of throwing down his weapons. Apparently unarmed, he walks forward, a green bough carried in the hand as a sign of peace. He drags a foot along the ground, spear gripped between his toes. With a dextrous flick it appears in his hand, as if by magic.

  He brandishes the spear and roars his challenge, fakes a throw, then retreats to where lie his waddy and modified karko. Picking these up, he beats them together – advances, retreats, advances, shouting the while, and furiously kicking up dust. Taking up the firebrand, he sets light to the grass and bushes.

  The deathly peace and quiet of the grove is shattered.

  A voice shouts, ‘Is this the body I formerly inhabited?’

  ‘We are not dead,’ comes the reply, ‘but still living.’

  Moo-by hops from one foot to the other, shaking and pointing his spear. ‘Wia ma pitja,’ he growls, ‘nungkarpa lara pupinpa!’

  Brippoki contrives a convincing guttural menace. He spits and bites his beard in defiance. ‘Come you, God damn it son of a bitch! BAASTID!’

  Legs distended, he quivers his thighs and rolls his eyes – showing the whites. He cries out lustily, taunting his adversary, deriding their weaponry, their skills in the arts of war.

  ‘Yelo!’ he shouts. ‘Coward! I will eat your kidney fat!!’

  ‘I shall be hungry by and by,’ a small voice says. ‘A man am I. I don’t want to go back to the grave!’

  ‘Back you must go!’ Moo-by insists. ‘This place is forbidden!’

  Bellowing out his triumph, he mimes victory – cooks the head of his vanquished enemy, scoops out the eyes and, lip-smacking, eats them, cheek-flesh too. Presenting a madcap dance, Moo-by pretends to trample the skull around, working himself into such a pitch that he picks it up and, hips thrusting, fucks its gaping sockets.

  Exultant at the climax, he offers up his bare breast for the striking. A step forward and he bows his head, offering up a free hit. The death blow is invited, a mercy killing – invited, and refused. When no club falls, Moo-by snarls.

  ‘Ma pitja! Ma pitja! Miriwa!’

  With a flick of the wrist he turns his back, derisively slapping at his buttocks.

  ‘Then begone!’

  More than one fellow, overconfident, has turned to mock a foe he thought at safe distance, only for lightning and thunder to bring him down.

  Body of destruction, a misshape rushes forward, clawed hands before its face. Not Deadman’s Spirit but an In-gna, three white hairs on the tip of its tail. Uttering a terrible cry, it seizes Moo-by by the throat. Fighting bravely, he chokes it back. Baggy flesh there, like that of a goanna – grey. Attempting to take in its power, Moo-by hugs it close. He is too weak. Raking claws open him up. A deep cut, breast to loins, and his bowels are exposed. Flesh ripping, his kidney is removed, weeka, his liver, torn to pieces and gobbled up – sweet meats. Fiendish appetite feeds the True demon’s red smile.

  Fallen, Brippoki lies helpless. Looking down, he sees life’s blood pool in the hollow of his ribcage, where his innards used to be. The raw head of the In-gna dips, and it drinks.

  As one dead, he feels no pain. He cannot move – doomed to watch his destroyer adorn its self before his own eyes.<
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  Wearing his intestines for a necklace, the In-gna regards him dispassionately, before resuming its gruesome operations. His body is tugged open wider, and the fiend takes the fat from about his kidneys, rubbing itself liberally all over, pleasuring in its victory. Musculature glistens moist as an eel. Flipped over onto his back, Brippoki feels his skin being stripped. A chill on his ribs, and then limbs are wrenched behind and broken. Sharp teeth nip through his tendons.

  Another few seconds and he will be on the fire. In a last-ditch effort he reaches for his waddy with his one good arm, takes it up and, raining down blows, beats the bloody demon into a shapeless mass.

  Doom.

  Doom.

  Doom.

  Through the depths of the earth itself, Brippoki feels the pulse-beat of the world. Agony – it hurts too much to move, to even try and open his eyes. Events are too far gone. He has failed. Might as well stay.

  No, he must open his eyes. He must move.

  Brippoki opens his eyes.

  The dead wood whirls in the rising winds. Insides afire, his head has been struck off, lodged between hot stones, and set to bake in the hollow of a tree.

  Some hours after nightfall, Brippoki has lain himself down with the dead man under his bark sheet, and, log for a pillow, face towards the blank sky, prepared himself to Dream the sleep of death. Curadjie men say that anyone who dares spend a night like this will thereafter be free from the influence of evil spirits – if they survive it. They only know this through having survived it themselves.

  A night successfully spent on a grave binds and lays that spirit to rest, for good or ill.

  His magic was weak, as he is weak – his desire to harm not as strong as that of his rival. Moo-by’s race run and lost, Brippoki’s body lies unmoving on the ground. A cold rock hardens in his belly, his straggly beard clogged with dribbles of the drying clay he ritually ingested hours earlier – a lifetime ago. Head back on the log, he looks skyward. The cloud-cover only now begins to separate, scudding swift overhead.

  He struck too early. There are still some hours to go before dawn.

  Had he been successful, Deadman’s Ludko would have returned to Pindi, never to die or be born again. He has the feeling he has not entirely failed. Time will tell.

  Brippoki sits up and examines his side. Far more frightening than having seen himself eviscerated, he has received a mortal wound, guts replaced and the wound sewn up with thread invisible to the eye.

  A death Dreamed is a death in Truth. Death does not scare Brippoki so much as he is terrified of having been cursed.

  CHAPTER LXI

  Monday the 22nd of June, 1868

  WORLD WITHOUT END

  ‘This town’s a corporation full of crooked streets,

  Death is the market place, where all men meets.’

  ~ epitaph

  The iron tongue of midnight echoed down the hall.

  Lambert grabbed Sarah by the wrist.

  Sarah yet stayed her hand. She would not give him succour, or comfort. The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses; from their children have ye taken away my glory for ever.

  With a frenzied look Lambert turned his eyes to heaven, and then away.

  Furious at himself for his inability to embrace death, he alternately raged and then lay mewling at its prospect. His high and holy words, that had been comfort to so many, were but a goad to himself. His convictions drained him of all courage.

  To have lived a lie, and to die in doubt – where was God the Father in this, his own hour of need? Where was his Faith?

  Sarah wrested her arm from his. She wished him dead.

  Lambert knew the choices he faced: oblivion after having been burnt to ashes; or burning forever without end. Moreover, the choice was not his.

  What should he dread but enfolding darkness, terror by night, the pestilence that walketh in darkness – unless it be the light; the arrow that flieth by day, the destruction that wasteth at noonday. He had made an enemy of God himself, to all Eternity.

  Sarah’s back stiffened, her limbs chill even though fire crackled in the grate. She saw how fixedly Lambert stared ahead, and knew fear herself. If he died in this dreadful state – and it surely was dreadful – the blood would be on his head as it was on his hands; and his sufferings, everlasting.

  Sarah crossed her chest – an ineffectual gesture.

  ‘“If our heart condemn us,”’ she said, ‘“God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”’

  She couldn’t be sure whether she made the effort in order to soothe, or with more pitiless intent – to slight him further, a man who held so tightly on to what he called his rights, over what he called his debts.

  ‘What was it all for?’ Lambert asked, weakly. ‘What is any of it for?’

  God, or Death, was implacable, indiscriminate – good or evil it came to all, and nothing. In the greater scheme of things the human concept of time, the span of any one life and its achievements, was meaningless – time was on Nature’s side, a grand plan superseding all others; or else none. Given the circumstances, the idea of illimitable chaos no longer seemed so very terrible.

  ‘Was it for nothing?’ he asked.

  ‘It is God’s plan,’ she said.

  ‘…Of course.’

  His soul, though it wandered, still aspired to heaven…where the wicked ceased from troubling, and the weary were at rest.

  ‘“The Lord is my shepherd,”’ he rasped. ‘“I shall not want.”’

  Lambert’s voice threatened to falter, unheard – until Sarah’s joined with his.

  ‘“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters.”’

  They spoke together, two souls in Abraham’s bosom.

  ‘“He restoreth my soul, he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake…”’

  The heart of the father must turn to the child, and the heart of the child to the father, lest the earth be smitten with a curse – and for the Final Restitution of All Things.

  ‘Remember,’ said Sarah, ‘what Jesus said to Martha. “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”’

  Lambert wept silently.

  ‘Believest thou this?’ Sarah asked. Loyal beyond reason, she admonished him. ‘“Be strong in the Lord,”’ she said, ‘“and in the power of his might.”’

  For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.

  She leant further forward so he might see her better, her elbows resting on his coverlet.

  ‘“Open ye the gates,”’ she said, steadfast and strong. ‘“Let favour be shown to the wicked”,’ she asked. ‘“Therefore…”’ Sarah turned to address Lambert directly ‘“…prepare to meet thy God.”’

  She took his palms and pressed them together, herself not so composed.

  The kingdom of God – Lambert marvelled. ‘Lord, Lord,’ he said.

  ‘“Lord,”’ said Sarah, ‘“now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.”’

  Lambert wept and gnashed his yellowed teeth. He overflowed with remorse. ‘I have used the head of an angel,’ he lamented, ‘for a writing desk.’

  Sarah did not hear. Pious verses from childhood and The Parent’s Poetical Present replayed in her mind.

  ‘Who taught me first to read and pray

  To kneel to God, his word obey,

  And holy keep his Sabbath-Day,

  MY FATHER.

  ‘And, as thou ever wast my guide,

  I’ll sit and watch thy couch beside,

  Should ill thy eve of life betide,

  MY FATHER.

  ‘My breast thy dying couch shall be;

  I’ll watch thy parting breath from me,

  ’T’will bear a blessing unto me:

  MY FATHER.’

  ‘“Be then the Lamb
of Atonement,”’ she directed. ‘“Seek ye the Lord while he may be found.”’

  Their voices in cracked chorus pronounced the Apostle’s Creed. At the very middle point of their recital, the mention of hell, Lambert collapsed in abject tears. Sarah took the time to quieten and reassure, bringing him back to the point where they might continue – and finish.

  Parched lips took in another gulp of air: he yet lived.

  Lambert’s final decline was swift. Thin and wretched, skin nigh transparent, he shook with fever and chills, a bundle of bones kept in place by the dry parchment of scripture.

  ‘“In him was life,”’ said Sarah, ‘“and the life was the light of men.”’

  She waited, hoping for some sign of response, but none came.

  Her fingertip cleared his brow of matted hair. His eyes rolled back, in retreat from the light. The poor creature stood on the brink.

  ‘“The light shineth in darkness,”’ she said; ‘“and the darkness comprehended it not.”’

  …systole, diastole, systole…diastole…

  His lips moved, forming one last word.

  ‘…God.’

  ‘May God forgive you,’ said Sarah.

  ~

  Fresh rain showers stop an hour or so before dawn, the sky filled with fastrunning cloud.

  On deserted marshland above the Salmon’s-lane Lock, the last remnant of gunya collapses in on itself. It has not been built to last.

  Four miles or so west, as the crow flies, leaves of discarded newspaper blow the length of Great Russell-street. Striking the iron gates that seal the grounds to the British Museum, they stick there, obscuring a sign that warns visitors of temporary closure.

  Number 89 is in total darkness. All the windows are shut and the curtains drawn.

  Frustrated, Brippoki turns away – but not before rummaging in the depths of his dilly bag to leave Thara something there. He would have liked to see her, one last time, gliding about in that mysterious way of hers.

  ‘Parramatta,’ he says, giving it his blessing.