Kaylee, Ava and Jarrold would be wild walking together by Lake Turner. I tried to picture it – paranoid Kaylee yelling at Ava to go find sticks for the fire, suspecting her of sneaking illegal time with her beloved Jarrold every step of the way. Neurotic Ava too scared to stand up for herself. Jarrold the Outsider and still a possible killer, not permitted to talk but hey, who cared? He was definitely the type to break every rule in the book.
It would never work, I decided as the group split up and Jean-Luc offered to take me to visit his stepfather at Trail’s End.
6
‘Tell me something,’ I said to Jean-Luc as we walked. ‘If Jarrold is an Outsider on a no-talk regime, how does he integrate and become part of the River Stone band?
‘Good question,’ he replied, striding on.
I ran to keep up. ‘So?’
‘You’re right, it’s difficult,’ he agreed in that so-charming accent. ‘An Outsider is forbidden to speak to the band or share in band activities.’
‘To be alone with his pain?’ I quoted Aurelie then waited.
‘Yes, until he can’t stand it any more.’
‘And then?’ Trail’s End was twenty metres away, set back on a bank of golden grasses that waved in the cold breeze, so time for conversation was running out.
Jean-Luc stopped and shrugged. ‘Then Jarrold breaks through a spiritual barrier, he finds peace.’
‘And it works?’ I couldn’t hide my surprise at the unconventional methods used here.
‘According to my stepfather, yes.’
‘And you – what do you think?’
He gave a second shrug and knotted his dark eyebrows, dropping his voice so that he couldn’t be overheard from Amos’s cabin. ‘I wouldn’t like it to happen to me – alone in the wilderness. I don’t know, maybe I’m not strong enough to come through such an experience.’
‘Does it ever go wrong?’ I asked, looking down on the lake, on monsters hidden in the depths, on bones floating free of their coffins, on the secret dark side of what might happen here at New Dawn.
‘I sank beneath the surface fifty years back,’ a corpse confides. It’s night-time, he is whispering in my ear. ‘The water rose, I drowned. I am bone, I am buried in the depths of the lake. I am dirt, I am weed, I am water.’
Three words rise to the surface – Death. Darkness. Suffering. The corpse floats away on the black water, his voice fades.
‘Are you OK?’ Jean-Luc checked as I halted my stride and felt the usual chewed-up pain in my gut. He took my arm. ‘Listen, don’t let Antony scare you. He’s just a regular guy.’
I steadied myself. ‘Yeah, a regular guy who happens to have made some of the highest-grossing movies of the past two decades,’ I quipped. ‘Evil Birth, Main Street Massacre, Dark Secret …’
‘Yeah, well now he’s returned to his roots and found a new role,’ his stepson reminded me.
‘Here at New Dawn, as a kind of spiritual leader?’
Jean-Luc nodded and, putting his arm through mine, began to walk on slowly. ‘Scratch the regular-guy surface and you’ll find he’s busy working on his charisma.’
‘Wait – you mean, he’s faking it?’ Honestly, I hadn’t expected this level of frankness from my guide, who paused a second time.
‘No, he believes it,’ he corrected me. ‘The Native American stuff about the Great Creator, the existence of ancestral spirits within the rocks and lake – all that.’
‘But?’
‘But it leads him into extremes. In my opinion, his methods are a little harsh.’
‘I hear you,’ I murmured, eager to learn more. But then Antony Amos appeared at the door of his cabin.
‘Tania, here you are!’ he said with outstretched arms. He wore a collarless white shirt over loose black chinos, his silver-rimmed glasses perched on top of his head. ‘Again, welcome. Step inside.’
‘So this is the video shot by the Black Crow band,’ Amos explained, pressing the remote to start the show. ‘Richard just gave it to me so I haven’t had a chance to view it yet. Remember, it’s totally raw and unedited, shot on a hand-held camera. See what you think.’
We were in his cinema room at the back of the cabin – a small, claustrophobic space without windows and with only a black leather couch facing a large screen on a wood-panelled wall.
‘Conner, Jarrold, Ava and Kaylee – they were wild walking up on Carlsbad. You know it?’
‘Yeah, it’s the highest peak around here.’ Carlsbad was where I’d ended up with my dark angel, where black, bat-like monsters emerged from shadowy crevasses. It was white, it was frozen. It was endgame. I concentrated on the screen and tried hard not to remember.
‘I won’t talk any more,’ the great director promised in his flat, rather dry voice, which reminded me of a physics professor or a hospital surgeon. ‘I’ll let it speak for itself.’
So we watched four Explorers set out from a campsite in the foothills of the Carlsbad range. They were dressed like any other group of hikers in Ts and combat pants, wearing heavy laced boots, with their thick jackets tied around their waists. Their feet crunched on grit, the long morning shadows of the tall lodge pole pines fell across the pinkish granite rocks.
‘OK, so we’re about to head above the snowline,’ Jarrold explained to camera when the band stopped for a break. His broad, regular features filled the screen. At this point it felt like one of those wildlife programmes for TV, where the presenter is sent on an adventure into the Brazilian jungle, along an African river, whatever. They carry sharp knives to hack through undergrowth and spear their supper. They know how to create a spark by rubbing sticks.
Only Jarrold didn’t exactly fit the presenter profile – instead of photogenic smiles there seemed to be resentment lurking close to the surface. ‘We make a shelter out of what we can find on the mountain and spend the first night.’
Turning the camera on his three companions, Jarrold went close in on their faces. Ava, wide-eyed and on edge, looked scared to death as she put on her jacket and zipped it to the chin. Cut to Kaylee, who stuck out her tongue then put up her hand to knock the camera sideways. Her blurred fingers obscured the lens. Cut. Then Conner appeared. He stared straight into the lens and grinned.
My heart missed a beat. Conner Steben’s wide eyes and smile made him look twelve years old. His fair hair was curly, he had a chip on one of his front teeth. That was a week ago. He was relaxed, confident, full of life. ‘Enough already,’ he eventually told Jarrold, who focused on him for maybe a full minute. ‘Dude, point that thing at someone else.’
There was more hiking, fewer trees, a midday sun. Conner walked with Ava, Jarrold with Kaylee. At times Jarrold had his arm around Kaylee’s shoulder and she didn’t shake it off. Conner patiently waited for Ava, who often lagged behind. All four covered a lot of ground until they reached a place where the trees stopped and the dazzling white snow began.
‘So last week Jarrold wasn’t an Outsider?’ I checked with Amos, sitting beside me on the couch.
‘That came later,’ he confirmed. ‘Right now he’s walking in peace.’
Walking on up Carlsbad into the frozen wilderness as daylight dimmed and snowflakes fell.
The next shot was of mountain peaks through flurries of snow. We heard Jarrold’s low, back-of-the-throat voice-over.
‘So would I rather be locked up in the Denver correctional facility or hiking up Carlsbad in a blizzard?’ A long pause. ‘The mountain wins,’ he decided with a hollow laugh.
I glanced sideways at Amos who seemed happy so far with what he was seeing and hearing.
‘Conner caught two salmon in a creek,’ Jarrold went on. ‘That’s supper. Ava doesn’t eat fish, but she will tonight. It’s only her second walk so she doesn’t get it yet. Kaylee found berries. She got it from the start – we eat what we find, we share everything.’
Cut. Fade in again on a setting sun. The snow had stopped falling.
‘Jarrold, quit talking into that machine. Come and eat,’ Ka
ylee’s voice said.
The Black Crows had built a shelter in a rocky gully, rising sheer on either side. They’d found a ledge where the snow didn’t fall, used rough poles bound with rope, covered by a blue plastic tarp. The space was unisex and basic.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Conner told the camera as the last daylight faded. He was hunched over a steaming cooking pot. In the background you could make out Ava wrapped in a red blanket, sitting cross-legged on the ground. There was no sign of either Kaylee or Jarrold.
‘Jarrold’s heart isn’t at peace,’ Conner confided to the camera.
‘What did he do?’ Ava came to sit beside Conner, her doe eyes unblinking.
Conner shrugged. ‘He ignored a guiding principle, that’s all I can say.’
Cut.
Fade in. A cold grey dawn. Jarrold spoke urgently to camera. He was unshaven and looked like he hadn’t slept. ‘I can’t do this any more.’
Amos paused the video, frowned, reran the sequence of Conner confiding that Jarrold had broken a guiding principle, then Jarrold alone and obviously in trouble.
Cut to Kaylee and Conner in the entrance to the gully, arguing with each other but too far away to be heard. Conner tried to grab Kaylee. She pushed him off and strode towards the camera. ‘Ava, quit filming!’ she demanded.
‘Where did Jarrold go?’ Ava’s scared voice asked.
There was no answer. Cut to a long shot of a lone figure walking in the snow.
The figure was wrapped in a blanket. He was leaning into the wind, walking hard. The wind blew and the blanket flapped like wings. It was Jarrold, striding on and not looking back, like he wanted to walk off the edge of the world.
Red Cloud stands with his blanket around his shoulders, arms folded, watching his people die. He will die fighting. His name is in the wind, his footsteps mark the snow. Rattle of guns, stain of blood. The sun rises and sets on our land.
I stared at Jarrold growing smaller and smaller on the mountain. What made him walk away?
‘Excuse me, Tania,’ Antony Amos said as he left the video playing but stood up from the couch. ‘I need to speak with Aurelie. Please stay here and watch the rest of the footage. When I come back, you can give me your views on how we should edit.’
Alone in the wood-lined, claustrophobic cinema room, I watched the filmed events of last week grow jerkier and even more disjointed. There were endless long-distance shots of Jarrold walking up the mountain, a couple of sequences showing Kaylee and Conner still arguing.
‘I don’t see why,’ Kaylee said angrily, her back to the camera. ‘Why does anyone have to know about me and Jarrold?’
It must have been Ava who kept the focus on Kaylee while Conner did his best to calm her. ‘I’m not saying I blame either of you, especially Jarrold – he’s my buddy. Besides, I know how it feels. All I’m saying is – you two should be more careful.’
‘Oh yeah, mister squeaky clean.’ Kaylee weighted this one short phrase with scorn – jab, jab leading to knock-out punch.
Conner stood his ground, his face mostly hidden by the peak of his black cap.
‘If you break the first principle, you don’t do it while the camera’s rolling,’ he warned.
‘Do me a freaking favour!’ More scorn, more poison.
‘Kaylee, you know how it works – officially no emotional attachments here at New Dawn, no romance. It’s basic. And if I don’t spill the beans, which I totally won’t, someone else sure as hell will.’
I hit pause. ‘No romantic involvement.’ Huh. This was new and fascinating.
And in a way it made sense. New Dawn obviously couldn’t allow their kids to form relationships here in this closed community where the focus was firmly on spiritual development. In other words, they were celibate – guiding principle number one.
Jeez, how hard was that! Totally unnatural, actually. It demanded more self-control than I would have in this situation, I guarantee that for sure.
I pressed play to see Kaylee laughing and glancing over her shoulder at Ava who was still holding the camera. ‘“Attachment”?’ she scoffed. ‘We all know that’s code for fucking.’
‘I didn’t say that.’ Conner felt the killer punch and backed off. The camera wobbled in Ava’s hand.
‘But that’s what you mean – that we’re fucking, Jarrold and me. Anyway, Ava won’t say a word, will you, Ava? She has too much to lose.’
‘So they’ll pick it up on the footage,’ Conner pointed out.
‘Not if we edit it out before they get their hands on it.’ She turned direct to camera and put her hand across the lens. ‘Quit that, Ava, for God’s sake!’ she yelled.
Pause again. So that was it. Kaylee and Jarrold were a couple, even if Ava had doubted it. They hadn’t been able to stop Aurelie getting hold of the unedited documentary and that was obviously one of the reasons Jarrold had gotten the label of Outsider.
That was a gigantic grudge for Jarrold to hold, I thought queasily. And chief suspects on his list of sneaks and betrayers would be Conner and Ava from the Black Crow band.
And where did this leave the idealistic stuff about the kids learning trust and to respect each other, about turning hearts and walking in peace in the sight of the Great Creator? Yeah, in theory. But in practice how soon did these all-too-human, hormone-driven cracks begin to show?
I pressed the play button, gearing up for more dirty linen being laundered in public.
Maybe it was the wrong button – I don’t know how it happened but no way was this the Black Crow wilderness walk.
I stared at the screen and saw coyotes stealing between trees, through undergrowth, then a close-up of a bison’s huge head and wide nostrils, curved horns like deadly weapons of war. There was mist and hissing rain, a long shot of a lake.
Where am I? What is this?
Rain blurs the creatures who trample the prairie grass and creep through the undergrowth. It hisses through the grey air, turns the land to mud.
One bison locks horns with another – a mighty clash, a writhing and twisting of muscled, sweating heads and shoulders, a roar from deep in the chest. Rain lashes down.
And wolf man, more man than wolf, hides behind a rock. His jaw hangs open, a wolf pelt forms a cloak around his bare shoulders. His amber eyes stare at me. Will he snarl and leap, will he carry me to the island in the lake? No – a dark creature rises from the lake, teeth bared. It has no shape I have ever seen before – snake head, body of a mountain lion, broad black wings. Cold green eyes stare from a flattened, scaly face, a forked tongue flicks. It is huge, it fills the screen. It emerges from deep below the surface, sloughing off water, shaking itself and spreading its leathery wings.
The bison, the coyote and the wolf man flee into the forest, but not fast enough. In the mist, in the pouring rain, the monster’s claws sink into a coyote’s back, they tear into its flesh. The coyote is dead, its bloody body scattered. The bison too – torn to pieces by cruel claws. Only the wolf man escapes.
Death, darkness, suffering, the bones in the lake remind me.
I am cold, like snow, like ice. I am deaf. I cannot speak. My hair writhes like snakes on my head – Medusa. I sink into the mud, in the shadow of the beast’s wings. I grow small, I am a child crying out as the water rises, surrounded by snakes.
I am that corpse, sinking without trace, turning to bone.
When I came round, Jean-Luc was beside me. He held my hand.
‘Tania, what happened? Are you OK?’
I nodded. My skin felt cold and clammy, I was sick in my stomach. ‘I guess so.’
‘Did you pass out? Do you need more air?’ Offering me his hand, Jean-Luc led me from the cinema room, out through the living room on to the porch.
‘It’s cool. This happens to me sometimes.’ I told him that I had blackouts.
‘That’s not good. Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Yeah, and I researched it on the Internet. There’s a medical name for it.’
‘So it’s a neurol
ogical reaction?’
I nodded, went deep into the science to distract him from any idea that I might be certifiably insane. After all, Jean-Luc’s good opinion mattered to me. ‘It’s kind of like epilepsy – a small seizure, where something interferes with the electric signals to my brain.’
‘So not good,’ he repeated, growing more sympathetic by the second.
‘I get temporary memory loss. It can happen when I’m exhausted or stressed, and it’s triggered by flickering lights.’
In non-medical terms, this is me connecting with the dark side, tapping into my psychic powers, but that was something I didn’t tell Jean-Luc. I stuck with the medical labels and kept the super-sensory stuff to myself.
‘Should you see a doctor right now?’ he asked as he sat me down on the porch swing.
‘No, I’m good, thanks.’ I asked for water and he disappeared back inside Trail’s End, returning quickly with a glass.
‘I walked in and found you lying there, completely out of it,’ he explained, crouching beside me. ‘One of my stepfather’s movies was playing onscreen – a scene from Evil Birth, the one based on a native American myth about the end of the world.’
‘I guess that was it.’ The monster rising from the lake, ripping its victims to shreds. All except the wolf man, who escaped.
‘Antony did a lot of research on the figure of the wolf in these legends.’ Jean-Luc seemed keen to go into more detail than I needed to hear. ‘In Navajo culture, for instance, witches regularly disguised themselves as wolves. If they appeared to you in a vision, they sent you crazy. Some victims even died.’
‘It sure scared me,’ I agreed.
‘For the Avesta tribe, the wolf was the most cruel of all animals. They called him Ahriman. Antony used this figure in Evil Birth.’
The information flowed over my head as I realized that I was a victim too. I realized no dreamcatcher, no net of string and feathers could protect me from being sucked into these new nightmares, the reawakened visions.