Keepers of the Lost City

16 This is not Australia

What Cecil Harding saw inside the house was not what he had expected. He stormed in through the back door under cover of the enormous sycamore that had been uprooting that side of the veranda for years. Inside, he followed the mad din deeper into the farmhouse, and when he rounded the corner, he found his brother crouching in the corner.

“Gary?” Cecil shrieked. “Jesus, Gary! What is going on, bro?”

Gary said nothing. Upstairs gunshots rang. They could hear the sergeant barking orders at his sidekick and the whistling ricochet of bullets piercing glass and brick. Cecil crouched beside his brother.

“You okay, mate?” he whispered. “Mate!”

His brother did nothing in response. He stared into space, his lips chapped and his face covered in a week-old beard. Gary’s clear green eyes showed no clarity or even coherence. Dirty nails showed evidence of digging in the black sand and his filthy clothing smelled of sweat and old piss.

“Hey, Gary, hey. What happened, bro? Please j-j… just … tell me what happened and we’ll sort it out okay? I brought the cops to help, see?” He urged his brother while the torch in his hand threatened to char his hand. The burning fabric of his shirt had begun to peel off in embers and fell on his forearm as they parted from the broomstick, but he could break from the engagement with his brother right now. “Are you hurt? I don’t see any blood on you, mate,” Cecil kept talking.

On the second floor, the shots fired had ceased completely, and what sounded like a war zone was now reduced to the two police officers’ footsteps on the wooden floor above. “Put out that bloody fire, Dr. Harding!” the sergeant shouted as he came down the stairs. “You want to burn down the fucking place?”

“I was going to use it to help you fight them,” he explained as he doused the makeshift torch in the fireplace.

“You’d do better to burn your bloody hand off with thinners, mate,” the cop advised him. “Besides, we found nobody.”

“Then what was all the shooting about?” Cecil asked, scrutinizing his brother’s condition.

The constable looked totally frazzled. In a minor way, her demeanor almost reminded Cecil of his brother’s — shocked and frightened.

“Oh there was movement in the back room and the broken staircase up to what I think is one of the turret attics,” Sgt. Anaru said. “We just could not see them.”

Cecil stared at him in disbelief. Annoyed at his ineptitude at seizing and arresting the intruders, the sergeant snapped, “Oh, don’t look at me like that! I am not saying the bastards are invisible. They just moved really fast and we could not catch up quickly enough to plant them. When we got to the staircase they were just gone.”

“Even though the rusted padlock on the trapdoor at the top of the smashed stairs was still intact,” the constable muttered to herself. The men gawked at her confession. It was true. It was true and terrifying to think the attackers were still inside the house and knew it well enough to evacuate so smoothly.

“We have to get out of here,” Sgt. Anaru commanded. “Now, before they bring their friends. I will call back-up from the squad car and get a few extra men up here in a jiffy so we can smoke them out.”

As the police officers staggered out of the house, Cecil tried to help up his brother. “Gary, where is Dad?”

Suddenly Gary reacted for the first time. He looked at Cecil with the fear of God in his eyes. His dry lips quivered as he tried to speak for the first time in a week, but he could utter nothing but grunts. Tears drowned his eyes and trickled over his face before his face changed from terror to abject sadness. From outside the house, the sergeant yelled for the two brothers to join them.

“Come on, mate, let’s get somewhere safe. Then you can tell me all about it, alright?” Cecil reluctantly coaxed his brother. In truth, he was dying to know, right now, what had happened to their father. He wanted to know, right now, who the intruders were and what they had done to his brother. All these things had to wait, though, because the immediate threat was greater than information. With a struggle, he pulled his brother’s unwilling body up to his feet. Gary’s body felt like a sack of lead; dead weight in the arms of his desperate brother, but he made a small attempt at walking.

With every step further away from the house, Gary’s feet moved faster. His burden on his brother became less as he started to move on his own. The four of them trudged hastily downhill towards the foreboding gates of Nekenhalle, each with their own sense of misery attached to recent experiences. The sun licked at the horizon, soon to fall away and introduce the night. Over the treacherous frame of corroded iron and steel, the four people struggled to scale their way to safety.

Immediately after landing on the sand of the road, Sgt. Anaru grabbed the com device in the police vehicle and rambled off on a tangent about the urgency at Nekenhalle. Cecil and Gary, now far more animate than before, helped the lady officer from the last steel bar of the gates.

“Gary, do you have a key for this gate?” Cecil huffed.

“I had one, but Dad was wearing my jacket when we went up to clear the bush. I don’t know where his set is,” Gary answered, sounding almost normal again. Again, his brother ached to ask that simple question, but it was not the time for it.

Cecil motioned for his brother to get in his car. Before Cecil got in, he stood on the stepping and asked Sgt. Anaru, “Will you be coming back to look for my father?”

“Absolutely, mate, but we have to take a statement from your brother at the station first, alright?” the sergeant answered.

“How long until we can get back here with a small army?” Cecil inquired again.

“As soon as they get here, Doctor,” the police officer answered. “Now come down to the station with us so that we can get the formalities out of the way. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can get some men out here.”

The interior of the SUV was silent as Cecil and Gary followed the police car on the dusty road, heading toward Moana. Cecil was terribly concerned for his brother’s well-being, but he knew him too well. Voicing such concerns would just elicit some demeaning name calling from the macho younger brother, who’s slightly homophobic remarks had always irritated Cecil.

“When last did you eat?” he asked Gary. It was a good way to break the silence, he figured.

“That depends,” Gary replied. “What day is today?”

“You are fucking with me, right?” Cecil gasped.

“Nope,” his brother replied indifferently, “have no eaten since Tuesday morning, actually.”

“Crikey, Gary!” his big brother wailed. “You haven’t eaten in three days, mate?”

“It’s Friday today?” he asked sincerely. “Jesus.”

“Exactly. Here, here is some shepherd’s pie in that lunchbox,” Cecil offered, fumbling between the seats to retrieve the container Sally had given him when he left. “Good stuff, this, made by the neighbor’s wife. You know them?”

“Who?” Gary asked, ripping open the lid to have at the delicious nosh inside. “The Cockrans? We met briefly when Dad and I came to the farm with the truck, you know, with the furniture and all that.”

“Oh, good, because we are sleeping there tonight,” Cecil smiled.

His brother was stuffing his mouth with the pie, wolfing it down in less than four bites, but he did not look too happy about the accommodation arrangements.

“You don’t like them?” Cecil asked.

His brother shrugged, “I don’t know. I suppose it is better to sleep there than at Nekenhalle.”

Cecil was just happy that his brother did not kick up a storm over the arrangement. Normally Gary could be a bit headstrong, but Cecil reckoned that the trying experience he must have suffered pacified him somewhat. After all, his first meeting with old Nigel Cockran was less than pleasant as well, so he could not really fault his little brother for not liking the idea of staying over at the Cockran’s.

As they drove into Moana, Gary fell silent again. Having had some food, he felt reasonably strong, but it was painful to gobble down mash potato and meat so quickly after such a long fast. His hands locked over his gut and he winced at the discomfort. “I think I ate too fast, mate,” he told Cecil. “But Christ, I was so hungry.”

“Why didn’t you make something to eat?” Cecil finally asked. “Even in the state you were in, I am sure you could still whip up a meal, right?”

Gary gave him that same look as when he asked about their father back at the house. It was a glare of raw emotion that covered a few different hues. “I was too scared to eat anything, Cecil,” he admitted.

“Why?” his brother asked, narrowing his eyes at the sharp red brake lights of the police car in front of them.

“I was worried that it was poisoned,” Gary replied weakly, hoping that his brother would dismiss the answer if he kept it timid.

“It was what?” Cecil pushed, acting exactly as Gary had hoped he would not.

“Look, on Sunday last we found Harrington’s head lolling to the side, killed, dead, broken neck and all, you know?” Gary started explaining, referring to one of their dogs. Harrington had been with the Harding’s since they were teenagers, along with two other family dogs.

“What?” Cecil gasped. “Harrington? Oh God, no, mate.”

“True,” Gary continued. “But what we found when we put him in the ground, is that his front paw was swollen up like a cricket ball. It was a snakebite! A fucking snakebite!”

“That’s impossible, Gary. We’re not in Australia,” Cecil scoffed.

“No shit, mate!” his brother exclaimed. “Then we found Gina next day out on the cistern. Same thing. But she was not chewed up, just died of poisoning. I mean, Jesus, I know what a snakebite looks like. I spent some time in South Africa and Australia when I was in high school, Cecil, remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” his brother concurred, hoping that the conversation was not about to take a turn into rugby and how Gary excelled at it in Wellington.

“Now, she vomited her guts out before she died. Like the poison was not enough to kill her at first, but made her just sick enough to die overnight, you know? Cruel, man, cruel. We buried her with Harrington,” he recounted.

“And Sparky?” Cecil asked, fondly remembering the fox terrier they acquired right before he left for the big city life.

“No sign of Sparky, mate,” Gary answered. “I hope he is somewhere, still alive. You see, then Dad and me, we started thinking maybe the dogs were poisoned by someone who was on the farm, you know, someone who squatted there and thought the dogs would out them, see?”

“That makes a lot more sense that snakes,” Cecil agreed.

“So I was scared that, if they could poison the dogs, they probably poisoned us too,” Gary speculated. “That is why I could not eat any of the meat we had left.,” he suddenly caught his breath and grew upset at what he was hiding. “Plus, after what I saw happen to Dad, I did not have much of an appetite, and I did not want to move a goddamn inch from the spot where I collapsed on Tuesday. I think, maybe,” he looked at his brother in bewilderment. “I did not even wake up, you know, woke up like in brain function, until I heard the cops break down the door.”

“My God, Gary,” Cecil sighed. “I am so sorry I did not have the guts to come in and find you earlier. I guess Dad’s right about me not being close to Bill Best, hey?”

“You and me both, bro,” Gary chuckled dryly. “You and me both.”