I kick the ground hard as I walk along the dusty dirt path and the dirt forms a brown cloud around my feet. Fuck this, I’m going to get myself out of the woods and find my way home, and I will email the gallery saying that I would be chuffed to be part of the show. I’ve suffered for my art, even though this time it’s not technically my art. Helena has stolen so much work from me and now kept me from two wedding assignments because there’s no way I’m going to make it to that other job tonight; I don’t even have my phone to inform them that I won’t be there, another bitterly disappointed couple, another potential lawsuit.
I keep my head turned right to examine the dense bush of dry branches and ferns that form a secure wall. I can sense that the car park is just beyond this wall. I try to recall if there was an entry from the front of the house to the back, what kind of house doesn’t have a side entry?
Shit, have I walked too far? I push aside branches that are dry and unbendable. A few of them break off to let me in. I am crawling now, my knees scraping the broken twigs on the ground. As I shuffle my knees along the dirt I disturb the fresh ground and a dank smell of wet earth drifts up to my nose.
I stop crawling when I am satisfied I’m sheltered by a large fern. But to my dismay, when I glance back I can see the path I’d been walking along. Looking ahead, my planned route is a tunnel of darkness, the foliage only gets denser. I change my position to a squat and brush dirt and bark from my knees. I can see flecks of red blood peeping through the dirt, and the cuts don’t start stinging until I look at them.
There is a shuffling of leaves, I look around and feel a sense of relief that no one larger than I am would be able to crawl through the shrubs toward me… an animal then? But shuffling leaves? Surely a human not an animal is searching through the leaves while treading the path. I freeze. It could be the wind blowing the leaves, but it isn’t windy. There are his boots; I think his name is John – that’s the name I heard through my internal screaming. My blood runs cold when I remember him carrying me through the house, his hands where they shouldn’t have been. But I cannot let my mind wander, or I will end up in the same place on that giant’s shoulder much too soon.
I am still squatting, and my muscles have seized up. I would be much more comfortable kneeling but I don’t move, one snap of a branch and I’ll be discovered. I am thankful that there are a few larger ferns in front of me and if he doesn’t lean down, I will be easily overlooked. I think I am holding my breath and my palms are becoming sweaty. Here is not the place to have a panic attack. I need to keep crawling further into this dense bush, towards the car park. That’s where I need to be so I can run onto the main road. The vegetation here is too thick, and I can hear the branches telling me ‘we let you come this far but don’t go any further’. They must be working for her.
I listen for the footsteps but the sound his boots were making has disappeared, he must be further up the track now. If I go back to that main path and keep following it, I could risk him catching me. I think again about the option of heading back to the house, barging my way through but no, I am decisive there is no way I will risk being in the same house with her again. If I have to fight I will do it out here in the open.
I feel a crawling on my hand and shake it off, afraid to look down to see what it is. Time to break out. I leave the security of the ferns and crawl through the branches that scrape my skin eerily, wishing me either good luck or goodbye forever.
I am visible on the path. I stay close to the edge of the bush that has me foolishly thinking I could jump back in there if John appeared, but of course you can’t go into that forest without clearing an entry first.
I make it to a fork in the path without being caught, although I don’t know if I’ve been spotted.
The two paths look similar to each other. The winning answer would be to go down the path that he didn’t choose. If the ground was muddy, I could see footprints, but now all I see is leaves pointing in a hundred directions. Any leaf could have been stomped on by his feet.
Shit. I am standing in one place for too long. I quickly search for differences in the two tracks. One seems to be heading up a slight incline while the other leads downhill. I choose the track to the right of me that leads up the hill, because apparently what I learned recently is I’m a sucker for pain. So going up a hill in the Australian bush with no water is my final choice. I walk along my chosen path, now that I have bought the idea of water into my mind I begin to feel thirsty. I look to the sides of the path in case I need a quick hiding place. This part of the bush doesn’t look as dense as the section that was keeping me from getting to the front of the house.
I look back over my shoulder and realise for the second time during this escape that I haven’t walked as far as I thought I had. From where I am positioned next to a large eucalyptus tree I can see the place I was standing when I was choosing which path to take. Suddenly I hear the familiar sound of feet shuffling. I drop down, crawl behind the tree, and stick my head out enough to see which direction the sound is coming from. I’m squatting again; I have to squat because if I kneel, it’s harder to get up and sprint.
I watch him saunter, and I hear throbbing in my brain that is actually saying, please don’t explore another path to find me. He doesn’t. He is bounding down the path that leads towards the house, a camera swinging from a strap around his neck. What, why? In a moment he has disappeared out of sight. I turn and run.
Helena
I pour water from the kitchen tap into a glass decorated with palm trees. I’m not sure where Chantel had disappeared to, I can hear the floorboard creak upstairs; that could be her up there, always doing what she’s not supposed to. I wanted to keep an eye on her; she has started to act as if she’s not happy about what she’s become involved in. I’ve suspected for some time that those two have become too friendly with each other.
I look out the window and wonder how the chase is going. If he catches her and brings her back to the house, we would have to go through the same process of tying her up, and truthfully I’m slightly bored of booby trapping her.
I sense movement on the track. John. His eyes focused straight ahead, big wide steps, camera swinging. He makes a sharp turn onto the track that leads back to the house, his eyes searching the porch expecting to find me still there.
His large form is at the sliding door, pulling it open. “Helena, Helena,” he says, his voice rough from keeping words and sounds inside his throat, not even daring to let out a murmur while pursuing her.
“I couldn’t find her, I walked to the waterfall, and she wasn’t there,” he says. He makes a movement with his stumpy fingers indicating waterfall.
“You came to a waterfall, so that means you went down a track that was to the left of you, did you bother to explore the other track, the one to the right?”
John shakes his head.
“It’s my turn to look for her now, stay here until I return,” I instruct. “If I am not back here in two hours, come and look for me, but if you do need to go out searching for me make sure you search both tracks.”
I take out a water bottle I had packed in my overnight bag and put it under the tap until the water reaches the rim. Armed with my water, I leave the house. I have no weapons or restraints, but my journey has just begun, and I am fresh and full of strength – the opposite of how Zody is equipped, she will be weak, worn out and thirsty.
The time is 2:45 pm. There are still a few hours before the sun sets. How will I explain to Archer my delay in returning? I didn’t calculate that this chase might take many hours – even longer than a wedding reception.
If I come back to the house without Zody I will accept defeat. When I return home, I will tell Archer that Zody was photographing the wedding alongside me (lucky me to be able to work with such a prestigious photographer!). I’ll explain how Zody went for a walk and we couldn’t find her; she nearly ruined the brides day. If I do find her, then well… time will tell what I will have to say to Archer.
I walk along the same dirt track taken by Zody and then John. To the right of me, there is a dense hedge of bush. Zody may have tried to crawl through this dense scrub thinking freedom lay on the other side. There is freedom on the other end of the hedge, but she would have to scrape her skin off to achieve it.
I had moved into this house with my mother when I turned ten. My father had been admitted to the hospital for the mentally ill close by, and my mother thought we should move to be near him. During one school holiday when my father was released from the hospital, he tried to cut this hedge with kitchen scissors. He was sent back to the hospital shortly after that incident, and he stayed there until the hospital closed their doors a number of years later.
I pick up a long rough stick and poke it into the bushes, picturing her sitting amongst the ferns crouched into a ball. I poke the stick deeper and harder into the hedge. I skim the stick along the hedge until I arrive at a fork in the tracks. Making the correct choices are not something I am best at, so I am glad I know which track not to take. I wonder why Zody chose the steeper track. If I didn’t have water with me, the steeper option would be my second choice.
Both Zody and I have disadvantages while we are walking through the bush, hers is that she doesn’t have water and mine, that if I step on a dry twig and it snaps, she will hear me approaching. She could then play hide and seek with me.
I sense the familiar burn between my thighs as they rub together. The stick I used for attempting to coax Zody out of the bushes will now be used as my walking stick. But I am not a slow person, even though I am large, I can keep a fast pace. On either side of the track I walk amongst trees with crooked trunks and rusty coloured bark. I suspect that she could be safely hiding behind them because I may not spot her behind a gnarled tree.
With my trusty walking stick, I hit the trunks of the trees on the left of me, and I whack the trees on the right of me. I scrape off large flakes, and they swirl around me; I walk onward through the fanfare I have created.
The treetops above me are offering too much shade; I lean my stick against a tree trunk, take my red jumper from around my waist and pull it over my head. Clumsily, I mishandle the water bottle I am holding as I switch it between my hands and it slips out of my fingers, the lid of the bottle cracking as it hits a protruding tree root. Annoyed, I pick up the bottle and decide not to waste time standing around inspecting its lid.
Stepping on a slippery surface, the loud crack explodes inside my head; I can see my ankle meeting the surface of the moss covered rock. I let out a yell and instinctively clutch my ankle, which is already ballooning to double its size as I hold it. I put my hand out behind my back and touch the edge of the velvety moss-covered rock. I will have to drag myself back onto the rock before I attempt to stand. I form my knuckles into balls and press them into the dirt. My fists firmly in place at my sides I tense my arms; a pain shoots through the arm that hasn’t yet healed from my unfortunate tumble earlier in the week. I focus all my attention into my back and pull my backside off the ground onto the rock. The rock is cold; I wish I had ice to hold against my ankle.
The earth is dampened by water dripping out of the bottle’s cracked lid; my water is being wasted and I need it to continue my journey. I stretch out my leg to touch the bottle and roll it back to me. When my leg has done the job of delivering the bottle, I reach my arm out to pick it up and pour the cool water into my dry mouth. I check how much water I have left in the bottle. The situation is not looking favourable – a nearly empty bottle and a sprained ankle. I reach into my pocket and take out the two phones I am carrying. I put the phone that does not belong to me back into my pocket and check the reception on the other. No reception. I move it around above my head but here, amongst the canopy of trees, my searching for a signal is futile.
I put the phone into my pocket. I am going to have to try to stand up, but before I do, I just need to rest for a moment. I put my hands behind my back. I touch warmth, not cool rock. It moves from under my hand.
As I turn my head to see what I have touched, I hear ominous hissing, but it’s too late to move my hand away any faster. I have already spooked it. I watch its black head attach to the side of my hand. I close my eyes and wait to feel the sharp fangs pierce my skin.
Zody
I abandoned running away ten minutes ago and turned back onto the track that I presume leads back to the house. There isn’t any other option than the painful walk back, even if I have to attempt crawling through the dense hedge again, I will do it even if the branches rip my skin off.
I can’t see the white colour of my shoes any longer; somewhere along my walk the earth had turned from brown to rusty red and now they are covered in red dirt. That was the same moment that I noticed I’d come to an opening in the bush, I thought I was safe, but I wasn’t even close to safety. I was standing at the top of a cliff. I stood close to the overhanging cliff edge, looked out over the majestic valley beneath me, and realised that this was the same view I’d seen from the window of the room I had stayed in, the room in which I was drugged.
As I stood on the jagged cliff face my foot bumped a loose rock, and that caused another rock to tumble. I stepped back, closed my eyes and started to imagine that this cliff edge may even be close to a main road. I pictured tourists seeking out these places to stop and take photos but there were no tourists at this lookout because when I opened my eyes, it was still just me.
Warily I left the rock face and kept wandering in search of the road I had imagined, thankful to be able to enjoy a moment of light. But as I walked further away from the top of the cliff I came to an opening of trees. I had entered the darkest part of my journey thus far. There was no light filtering through those trees, there the trees had thick branches, and they were strangling each other. Once where there may have been a path now lay massive moss-covered logs. Carelessly I had tried to step over two of the logs when my foot slipped and was trapped between them. I pulled and tugged at my ankle, yelping from the pain. I had heard a rustling in the bushes behind me, I pulled harder. I felt my bone crunch but I gripped my leg and continued to yank it repeatedly until my foot hung limply above the logs and not in between them. Extracting my lodged foot had scraped the skin off both sides of my ankle until it revealed the white cracked bone under glistening blood. It was there, through the searing pain that I realised these woods were not going to let me travel through them and live. If I attempted to enter any further, they would claim my life.
Now as I hike back along a track that I think may be familiar to me, I can feel warm blood soaking through my sock, the pain has turned to a dull ache that wakes miserably every time I take a step.
It feels to some degree better when I drag my foot behind me, so I don’t have to anticipate that shot of sudden pain although this act of dragging my foot makes we walk slower. How would I run now if they caught up to me? If anyone does find me I hope they have water because I have become so thirsty, I’m thirsty because the pain from my foot has made me feel nauseous. I’m so nauseous, I feel a need to vomit, but if I throw up now, I will lose precious fluids. I don’t think I have even been walking for long; people walk longer than this on their daily bush walks. Why am I so thirsty? How dry my mouth will become if I keep on walking endlessly. I think maybe I would sacrifice freedom for not feeling parched. I lick my dry lips; I heave, I suck back my saliva, I heave.
I am fortunate the path I am dragging my foot along is straight, and I didn’t have to walk around a bend to come upon her. She is still far away from me sitting on a rock, waiting for me. I lift my bloodied foot and turn back in the direction of the dark forest but stop as I consider what I would do once I get there. If I creep towards her, she won’t see me coming, and I could push her then move away as fast as I can while she regains her balance. Yes, that’s what I will do. I start to walk towards her. I listen to the sound my foot makes dragging along the dirt to see if she will hear the scraping.
I hold my breath as I approach her from behind, my f
ingers tingle. They know that they are about to touch her back.
“Help me,” she says faintly, turning her head so I can see only her profile. I don’t move. I know it’s a dirty trick. Again. I look at her leg stretched out in front of her, red ankle flesh peeks out between her shoe and pants hem. Mmmh, it doesn’t look worse than my injury. But at least she cannot run after me. At last, an incident that happened in my favour, not hers. I drag my foot and stand in front of her. I can feel a knot form in my stomach as in slow motion she lifts a bloodied hand from her lap. This could be another trick.
“It was a snake, a red-bellied black snake bit me, I think that’s the snake I saw, but now I’m not sure,” she says.
I kneel down in front of her and take her hand, avoiding her eyes. I am not her prisoner I tell myself as I examine her clammy hand for the bite, but I can’t see fang marks due to the amount of blood. It’s possible she is tricking me; what if she covered her hand in blood. But who’s blood?
No, no, she has been bitten. How do I get rid of all the blood?
“Do you have any water, to clean the wound?” I ask.
She looks in the direction of her water bottle and shakes her head.
No Reception Page 11