Chapter 7
It was Dali who suggested the split. She had said she wanted a stroll somewhere quiet. Rane had other ideas. With quicksilver finesse he led Juno away from the lake’s edge to the path up the cliff. As they weaved their way into the mangroves, they waved back at Dali and Lamont who stood awkwardly among the cedars like Hansel and Gretel with their breadcrumbs. In the shadows Rane and Juno clambered up the cliff until they reached the ledge where they began the cumbersome crawl to the cave. She had no idea of where they were heading. There was an enthralment in trepidation as she shifted her overcoat from her knees and followed Rane along the ledge.
‘Terrific view!’ Rane called back to her.
Juno lifted her head momentarily to see the expanse of peninsular and sea where balloons of black cloud floated over the beaches to the north and dropped grey cylinders of rain down on the earth. Elsewhere, the sun poured its rainbow prisms obliquely through the panorama of open sky and pillars of downpour.
Far below, she could see her brother and Dali. Then she noticed the figure of what looked to be a man lurking in the trees adjacent to them. She had an urge to wave and shout. But Rane had dismissed the scene and was assisting her past the lantana and into the cave.
Juno removed her overcoat and laid it across a smooth mossy rock. She wiped her perspiring forehead and eased her underpants from the furrow between her legs. She panted slightly as she examined the wondrous cave. ‘You know,’ she spoke slowly without realising what she was to say next, although after she had said it, she knew it was on her mind all along, ‘guys have gone to great lengths to get me alone with them, but this ... ’ she swept her arms expansively as an indication of her wonderment.
Rane understood what she meant. Nevertheless, the hint of suggestiveness caused him to stir uncomfortably as he riveted his eyes upon the full body of his companion. ‘Juno! If I were in the mood for a fuck I wouldn’t waste my time and energy scampering over these cliffs. My bed’s a lot more comfortable and warmer.’
With that he led the girl further into the cave and down the narrow corridor to the sanctum and its tabernacle. ‘Follow my voice. It’s completely black for a bit then it brightens. You’ll be okay if you stick with me and listen to me. Okay?’
Descending to a chamber in the ground, with the touch of feet against the floor being the only point of relevance, following a disembodied sound into the blackness can be a fearful experience. Persons can fall, believing the surface their feet are touching is no longer underneath but to the side, or on top.
Juno realised her panic was increasing. She scrambled after Rane and grappled with his arm. She was trying to retreat to daylight. Another step forward was a step into space, away from the mother ship, frightening, little girls dreaming of falling, falling, falling ... her steps turned to shuffling, sliding, skating movements, afraid to lift her feet from the surface, stiff, robot, mechanical grinding of her feet against the floor.
‘Hey! Loosen up, will you!’ Rane demanded with humour. ‘It’s not that bad. You’re alright! Relax!’
‘God! I’m paralysed!’
‘It’s not far.’
Rane knew her fear had receded when the beam of soft green noctilucence eased the awful grip of dead blackness. Her movements became more supple and sure. She squeezed through the shaft into the chamber and gasped in astonishment at the sight of the three spongy rocks glowing weirdly within the tabernacle.
‘It’s like a mausoleum.’ she whispered uncertainly as her eyes roamed the chamber, over the smooth walls to the tabernacle.
Rane’s face had all but disappeared; only his eyes and hair and teeth shone as apparitions in the green. A smooth carpet of moss extended to all surfaces, reducing resonance and creating a comforting, snug as a bug in a rug feeling.
‘How did you find this ... place?’
‘Tell you later.’ said Rane as he stood and guided her to her feet. ‘Just watch out for that hole.’ he indicated a colourless area of the floor where form ceased to exist. ‘It’s very deep.’
The gap in the floor invited inspection and Juno crawled to the edge. It was about two feet across, smooth rimmed and terrifyingly vertiginous. She shivered slightly and nervously shuffled away from the hole. Then she approached the tabernacle and pushed out her hands to touch the rocks. She was hit in the face as her hands were gripped by a force and flung violently back.
‘God!’ she cried as she staggered away from the rocks. ‘What is this place, for God’s sake?’
Rane cradled her hands within his as she stuttered and trembled. They sat at the end of the chamber with their backs content against the wall. The rocks glowed evenly with a hypnotic ambience. The pulse of life had been reshaped. Their hearts slowed as their minds began to see without their eyes.
The tabernacle had gone. At the far end of the cave the lights from fires illuminated the dense smoke rising above. Figures like wraiths had gathered about and were looking at them. There was a sense of excitement as voices rose and a solitary figure moved toward them. It was the old woman who appeared to Rane on his first visit to the cave. She was sweeping the air before her as she crossed the cavern floor. Then she stopped and stared at them. With another sweep of her hands her eyes seemed to bulge and float from her face to orbit about her head. Her mouth opened and distended until it was absorbing her entire head. She seemed to eat herself to oblivion, with her eyes hovering in witness to the incredible event. Then the eyes were gone and the tabernacle resumed its surreal comfort to the chamber.
*
Outside where the sun was low they sat and gazed out onto the vista. Sheaths of coloured rays all pointed to the sun like images of a Hindu painting. The rain clouds had gone and the lake was coloured by the sky.
‘A strawberry milkshake!’ Rane whispered while he held her coat for her. And she understood as the pink came over the sky.
She moved into her overcoat in a gesture of insecurity. Her face was pale and her eyes carried the trauma of shock. A hot wind had blown through her mind, like some ghost with the thoughts of a thousand years. Suddenly she shuddered and felt a pain splitting her chest. For a brief spasm of time her mouth opened in a terrible silent scream. Then she relaxed and her arms became slack by her sides and her eyes blurred vacantly in her face.
*
Lamont had become ungainly. Alone with Dali he had difficulty joining her small talk. His throat had become dry and constricted. Images of a syncopated love visited him. He was awkward in understanding his attraction to her. His tall robust frame dwarfed the fragility of the diminutive girl. As they had watched his sister and Rane disappear into the mangroves, he had the feeling he was intruding and that he should offer to take her home. He was adolescent confusion.
They spent much of the afternoon around the lake’s edge, watching the sky change its colours, and generally being polite to each other. Slowly her laughter drew him away from his dilemma and he began a gradual courtship of her. Still clad in his overcoat he offered her the protection of his body when the day chilled, drawing her to his chest and wrapping the coat around her. Then he would fluster as his libido caused him to swell with blood and press hard against her stomach. Lamont had become a casualty of a wily girl’s design.
The peninsular had been for most of the day a necropolis of empty wet streets but with an almost messianic interruption the sun erupted in a violent flash of colour and the streets came alive again with children and their games. As the reserve by the lake received a trickle of kiddies in search of sport, Lamont and Dali sought the seclusion of an isolated bamboo patch on the edge of the mangroves. The water lapped gently through the reeds and came to an abrupt end as the bank rose sharply to the woods. Within the bamboo was a hollow circle where they crawled and felt alone.
‘Here, this is private enough.’ suggested Dali as she turned to face him.
‘Yeah.’ said Lamont uncertainly as he looked down into her beautiful black eyes.
‘I don’t think that lonely-looking guy will bother us here.’
‘That character with the big hands?’
‘You’ve noticed him too?’ smiled Dali.
‘That clown’s been popping in and out of view for most of the afternoon. You seen him before?’
‘He’s our neighbour.’ Dali replied matter-of-factly, as if that explained everything. ‘He’s a bit of a weirdo. But that’s his life. He doesn’t bother us. Dad ignores him. He ignores us. Well, sort of.’
‘Why doesn’t he talk to you, then?’ Lamont asked as he removed his overcoat and spread it over a dry patch of ground.
‘We don’t talk to him. It suits us.’ Dali said with finality. ‘Forget him.’
They sat together on the coat until the shadow of the cliffs engulfed them. It was an evening when the setting sun spurts its kaleidoscope across the sky. It was one of those times when the human spirit is restless and wanton. Suddenly with a reckless laugh from deep in the throat Lamont began undoing her clothes.
‘No, Monty! Stop!’ Dali insisted. She removed his hands from her buttons.
Lamont’s face screwed in embarrassment then paled to a sickly look of guilt. He moved away from her and fiddled with a stick on the ground.
Dali brushed her long hair from her face. ‘Stand up!’ she ordered gruffly as she moved to him.
He did. Then Dali knelt in front of him and undid his zipper. Her right hand reached inside his trousers and gently exposed him. He stood transfixed in a parody of some primordial rite of passage with his female discovering the deliciousness of his manhood. Her head vibrated against his groin like a woodpecker and the fierceness of her onslaught caused him to topple backward. Dali hung tenaciously to his body as they fell, her arms grappling his buttocks as they hit the ground.
She felt his body shake and she waited for the rush of his fluid into her mouth. The fury of his convulsions made her look up. She screamed into the cushion of her palm. Her face was of death. A bloodied point appeared through his pullover as the crimson stain spread across his chest.
Lamont had become impaled on a short sliver of bamboo.
*
Juno followed Rane in a bewildering flurry down the steep track. He had muttered something about a spear. He was quickly leaving her behind as he bounded toward the mangroves. Now Dali was running wildly toward him. They both turned in her direction. Rane came forward. He held his hand to slow her. Then he took her hand and together they followed Dali into the bamboo grove.
Lamont was stricken by his predicament. He was sitting against a bamboo bole with a lunatic grimace on his face. It appeared Dali had heaved his torso off the bamboo spike with surprising ease, ‘like slipping a fillet from a skewer’ quipped a laconic Lamont. Her shredded blouse had plugged his wounds successfully. There was surprisingly little leakage as the bamboo sliced neatly between his scapula or collarbone and his upper ribs.
Lamont gurgled softly as he breathed. Rane leant over him and wiped saliva from the wretched mouth. Then he removed his own shirt and gave it to his sister. ‘Get Dad.’ Then he turned to Lamont. ‘Jesus!’ he grinned, ‘what some people will do for a laugh!’
‘Fuck you, Rane!’ Lamont gasped in a sepulchral tone, his bass voice bubbling to the surface of his throat.
‘Haven’t you had enough, mate?’ Rane guffawed crudely.
‘Fuck you!’ Lamont repeated with a twisted, frothy smile.
Juno was standing in a composition of alarm and hilarity. Her brother had been seriously injured. Yet the comedy of his situation forced her to smile. And she was ashamed because of it.
*
The man with the hopeless eyes did not miss a thing. Maurice Murphy kept the dark-haired girl and her boyfriend in view as they merged into the dense bamboo grove. He sought the height of an old cedar tree nearby. Pulling his flaccid body up into a fork within the cover of the canopy he adjusted his weight so that he could perve through the foliage at the couple down below in the bamboo.
He kept vigilance as he had since he was old enough to feel the thrill of movement through his loins. This was his way; close enough to see, hear and almost taste, and yet undetectable in his role as voyeur.
He nearly fell out of the tree when Dali knelt before her lover. He anxiously wriggled his body so as to reach his aching erection, shaking the branches of the tree with his struggle. At the sight of the awful penetration of Lamont’s chest, Maurice Murphy cupped his sperm in his hands and wiped the sticky liquid over his bloodshot face. He had never experienced a climax like it, and he loved it!
