LEFT, A thriller in parts. Part 3
Michael Gray Griffith
“How can you trust the only person who can help you, if that person is your murderer.”
This novel was written in the lock down. I’d had the idea for years but finally found the time, thanks to Covid.
Now trying to find a publisher who would back me as a writer, with my activist work, is never going to happen, so I’m sharing the piece in parts here, allowing the piece to attract its own audience, if it’s good enough.
If you are enjoying it, perhaps you could consider making a gold coin donation, here.
Or taking out a subscription.
Michael
Left, Part 3
Sonya’s bound hand is now bright blue, and her shoulder feels like it is being ripped from its socket. "Help me!"
Outside the truck, Steve gets ready to smash the windscreen. "Close your eyes."
"What?"
Steve smashes the windscreen, and it implodes. Chunks of glass rain into the pit and all over Sonya. She closes her eyes, then, once it's done, looks up. Steve is climbing in. He’s trying to be careful to make sure that he doesn't fall into the pit. Using the back of the rear seat as a ledge, he reaches over and grabs her bound wrist. As she hangs above the dark abyss, supported by her husband, Steve looks at the darkness below her, and she looks up at Steve.
Jarrod is surrounded by five ravens, but they are not touching him. He is yelling at them to go away while trying to free himself. But the ropes won't give, and the birds don't move. More ravens land. Jarrod yells some more, then the first one flies up and lands on his head, its claws digging into his skull. He wants to close his eyes so as not to see what’s coming. To try and stop the beak piercing his eyes with his tightly closed eyelids. But he can’t. His survival instincts demand to see. More ravens land, and at them he swears too and rants while waiting for the beak to crack open and rip out one of his eyes. But it doesn’t.
A raven moves even closer to his scrotum as the claws of the one on his head dig deep. He can feel his own blood dripping down his face. Then, from behind his left shoulder, a shadow falls over his legs. It is the shadow of a person. Jarrod turns to his left, looking for Steve, but he can’t turn his head that far. "Steve, is that you? ... Steve?"
No one answers.
A gunshot sees the ravens fly off. Steve is approaching from the other side, and the shadow is gone. Sonya is with him. She is covered in blood, cradling her swollen hand. Steve stops and looks down at Jarrod, then he looks at Sonya, then he shoulders the rifle and strides off. "Where are you going?" asks Sonya. "I said, where are you going?"
Steve keeps walking. Sonya stops asking. "It’s ok," says Jarrod. "Somebody else is here."
"What? Who?"
"I don’t know. Someone. I saw their shadow."
Sonya looks down at Jarrod, then up at the landscape, then, upon finding nothing but scrub, she glares back down at Jarrod and scowls. "The land will do it."
After the inland sea had drowned into the history of the rocks, taking with it the dinosaurs and other creatures that the rocks did not bother to record, a great lake was left. It was created from this mountain, which time was wearing down to its broken bones, forming an island. The fresh water became a generous and tireless womb, but it too finally relented to the sun and began to dry. Somewhere in this time, a herd of diprotodon, each looking like the love child of a rhinoceros and a wombat, chose to head south in search of food, but the lake’s mud refused to let them go. For days they struggled against the stubborn suction of the ever-changing world. Even the moon, with no humans around to create from it a fear-placating God, could not free them from this mud grave that would, in turn, turn to stone around them before releasing them all and seeing their bones travel to new homes in museums around Australia and the world.
But that discovery had taken place decades ago, and the archaeologists’ abandoned dig had long been reclaimed by the latest ocean, whose waves were now the red dust and whose tides weren’t managed by this moon but by its own rules, each one long and no longer interested in offering life a gentle quarter.
This was when the Pitjantjatjara people arrived and filled the nights with dreamtime dance and sparks lifting off their fires, but in the longer droughts even they moved towards the coast in search of food and water. It was the sun, always the sun, who was the master here, and this current drought was already nine years long. Many of the animals who were currently alive on its baked altar had never seen nor had any memory of rain.
It was the sun who told Steve to stop. Steve had wanted to reach the summit to see if from the perch of this mountain’s last remaining vertebra he could see anything human other than them, but it was too hot. Since the time he’d been left out here to die was both a weakness within him and a destiny returning, he leaned against the slender trunk of a desert oak and swept away the flies who only returned and then returned again.
From the height that he had reached, there was nothing to see that could help. Exhausted, he sat down and laid the rifle on the ground next to him, then he pulled out a water bottle, his last, and drank. This finished, he brought out Jarrod’s phone, and silently it asked him for a code. He tried his luck until it locked him out, first for a minute, then for fifteen, finally for an hour.
He gave in and, taking in the view, he asked the distance: "If, by some miracle, I did get the truck out, and if it was still driveable, what would happen?"
"You’d go to jail," said Boris, whose imaginary Russian eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses that were not there.
"You shot them both?" said Dena. "What were you thinking?"
Steve smiled to himself, then shaking his head, stood up and walked to the edge of the desert oak’s shade. But he was about to confess.
"Under torture," said Dena.
"So inadmissible," said Steve. Then, after wrestling himself into a smiling grimace, he swore and threw the phone as far as he could. He stood there knowing that was wrong before he heard it land on rocks that, in the history of time, had never once been touched by man.
Lasseter died like this. After heading back to find his glorious seam, he vanished into an immortality that remained even after they found his bones in a cave. It’s used to lonely deaths, this land.
Steve looked around, and any detectives, real or imaginary, were gone. So he was reminded by the sun and the complete lack of humans that he was alone. Already thirsty, he knew there were only two places he could go, and one of those was hopeless.
He realized, to his mild surprise, that there was no fear, but what surprised him more was that there was no sadness either. Suddenly at peace with himself and his story’s last page, he walked back to, bent down, and picked up his rifle. Sitting back against the tree, he took his time to get comfy, for his burnt skin was burning. But then that’s ok, for ‘time’ is all he has.
In the inner space of these last moments, he managed to reach his children. Teenagers, he had crossed to them over an ancient bridge of love. His son was looking at him in the way all boys try to see the mysteries they know are stored inside their fathers, and his daughter was smiling because to her there had never been any mysteries. There had only been the truth, which is that she had always known she could take for granted his love. And it is a love so deep it brings with it a freedom that is already liberating him from the sun’s wrath.
Kicking off his right boot, he decided that he would use his big toe to pull the trigger. But it took a moment for his big toe to learn this new skill. Then, after a brief rehearsal, Steve opened the dry lips of his mouth and wrapped them around the end of the barrel.
"Can you see him?" Sonya asks, squinting as she peers up at the hill.
"I’m not looking for him. I told you, I saw a shadow. Somebody else is out here. They saved me."
Sonya looks around for a while, then scoffs and looks back down at the truck that is snugly stuck in the mine shaft.
"I’m serious," says Jarrod. "Someone else is here."
A single gunshot echoes down from the hill. They duck for cover, then look up to the hill but can see nothing.
"What is he firing at?" asks Sonya.
"I don’t know. Not us."
"Maybe he’s seen someone and fired a warning shot."
"Maybe he saw who I saw?"
"But then why would he shoot at them?" asks Sonya before she groans and raises her throbbing hand to her blood-soaked shoulder.
"Here, let me check that for you."
At first, she jerks away, but the pain sees her quickly relent. Carefully, he peels back and peers down the rear of her shirt. Half her back is blood. The bandage she placed over the wound is saturated.
She catches his expression. "Is it that bad?"
"No."
"Liar. Am I going to die?"
"No."
After a moment, she looks away, and he gently pulls her shirt forward and checks the front. There is less blood here, but only by a few degrees.
"It is bad, isn’t it?"
"It’s gone straight through."
"I know. And is that good or bad?"
"Good."
"Why?"
"I’m not sure, but I know that it is," he says. "There are some more bandages in the truck. Wait here. I’ll get them."
And then he sees it, and when she looks, she also finds it. A single raven is flying down from the hill towards them. As they wait and watch it, it flies around them once before landing on a nearby tree where, perched, it studies them.
"I hate those birds," she says.
"Stay here. I’ll be right back."
"How are we going to get the truck out?"
"I don’t know yet."
"Well, let’s just winch it out."
"We can’t."
"Why not?"
"The angle’s all wrong. The winch would either break the tree or rip off the bull bar."
"Well then we’ll do something else."
"OK."
"What?"
"I don’t know, but we’ll find a way. There is always a way."
"What way? You don’t even have a thumb on that hand."
"Let me get the bandages."
"No one is coming. I know that, because we made sure that they wouldn’t," says Sonya. "So if we want to get out of here, we need that truck, and we need it now, before we die of thirst or worse. And in case you haven’t noticed, our truck is stuck down a hole."
"Ok."
"Ok? No, not ok. We have to get it out," says Sonya. "Do you hear me? We have to find a way to get it out, now, because I am not dying here."
Jarrod slides down into the shaft and then lowers himself through the broken windscreen. More glass rains as his bum knocks them free, the crazed squares vanish into the hole.
Inside the truck, everything is quiet and wrong. On the back seat, he finds the open first-aid kit. It is covered in blood. Always careful of his throbbing hand, he maneuvers his way to it and, making sure he won’t slip off and fall down the hole, he takes out a bandage and wraps it around his hand, then uses one of the clips to secure it. Then he begins repacking the kit before zipping it up. Done, he looks around for water. He checks under the seats, then in the rear, but the entire rear is empty. Whatever was there is now down the shaft. He checks in the storage compartment between the two front seats. No water. He moves back to the front, carefully checking his footing as he does. His entire being aware of what is waiting beneath. There is no water in the front seats. He checks the glove compartment. No water. Then, while thinking about this, in the rearview mirror, he finds his face. His now melted wound is a horror story. Add this to his limp, and he can see that if there is any future outside of this hole for him, he will be a walking tragedy. His hand too, or what’s left of it, will be a chapter all on its own. A deformed cripple.
Outside, he gets Sonya to sit in the shade, and as she glares up at the raven, he takes off her shirt and redresses her wound. Both front and back, the hole is bloody but neat.
"Give me some water."
"I couldn’t find any."
She nods to this, then grabs his hand and stops him at his work. "How do we get the truck out?"
"Do you want a laugh?" he asks. "The only chance we have is if Steve helps."
"Why the hell would he help us?"
"Because I don’t have a choice," says Steve. He is here, behind them. Looking down at them, and he does not have the rifle.
Jarrod stands, and as Sonya pulls back her bloodied shirt, Steve looks only at Jarrod. "Isn’t that right, brother? I don’t have a choice."
Jarrod says nothing.
"Tell me," says Steve, "just how long have you two been fucking?"
"What the fuck does that matter now?" says Sonya. "What we need is water. Otherwise, we are all fucked."
"Look at me and say that, you bitch."
As Sonya tries to button up her shirt, she looks up at Steve and says, "We need water."
Steve follows Jarrod down into the truck as Sonya, hand to her wound, stands on the mine’s edge, looking down.
"How deep is it?" asks Steve.
Jarrod shrugs.
"Deep," says Sonya.
Jarrod moves a degree closer, and Steve backs up defensively.
"Oh relax," says Sonya. "Why would he push you? You die, we all die."
Steve looks up at her for a long time, then he looks at his brother. "How long?" he asks.
The ember is back. Blown by other old breaths, it burns in Jarrod’s eyes, and its flames are mirrored in Steve’s.
Jarrod releases a rock he’s brought into the pit. It takes a while to hit the bottom.
"It’s deep," says Jarrod.
"Shit," says Steve, before descending until he reaches the border where the rear doors of the truck hang open to the drop.
Steve inspects the shaft’s walls.
"Climbing down is going to be difficult. Climbing up while holding a water container, impossible," says Jarrod. "I’ll have to lower you down."
"Me?"
Jarrod raises the hand that has no thumb.
Steve is pacing. The ravens are watching.
"Oh grow up," says Sonya. "We can’t leave you down there. We need water too."
"Fuck you," says Steve, heading further away, only veering off course to try and stay in what shade there is to escape the sun’s laser. The flies are like paparazzi on crystal meth.
"Do you have a headache?" Jarrod asks Steve.
"Yes," says Sonya.
"That’s dehydration," says Jarrod.
Steve storms back to his brother’s face, "I know what dehydration is. Someone just gave me a crash course, remember. Now fuck your hand. You are the one who’s going down there."
"And if he can’t do it?" says Sonya.
"Oh he can do it," says Steve, nose to nose with Jarrod. "Can’t you, brother?"
Jarrod says nothing, but his eyes don’t waver.
"The longer it takes you, the weaker we get," says Sonya. "And we haven’t even started trying to get the truck out."
She’s right, says Jarrod. "We don’t have time for this."
"Then you better get down there," Steve says. "I’ll lower you. You find the water, attach the hook to it, and I’ll winch it up. And if you’re good, and I mean very good, I might even winch you back up."
"We can’t use the winch," says Jarrod. "It runs off the battery."
"Then just start the car," says Steve.
"We can’t," says Jarrod. "At this angle, the oil would all be at the back. We could cook the engine. If we do that, then it won’t matter if we do get it out. Plus, we’d be filling the shaft with carbon monoxide."
"Then how are we going to do it?" says Sonya.
"Again, Jarrod lifts his wounded hand for his brother to see. "I’m going to lower you down into it. Me, again? Like fuck.
There is no other way. And we’ll use the rope you tied me up with."
After a pause, Steve asks, "Is that strong enough?"
"It should be if we just lower you down gently. Then, once you are down, there is more rope down there. You tie that rope to this one, then I’ll lift that up, and from then on we’ll use the other rope to pull you up."
"Me, always me. And after what you two just did to me. Nuh. No way. I mean it, there is no way I’m going down there."
Jarrod again lifts his shot hand.
"Jarrod’s right," says Sonya. "And if you wanted him to go down for you, maybe you shouldn’t have shot him."
"You don’t talk to me, ok. At all," says Steve. "And you, you are going down there, not me."
"And if something happens?" says Sonya. "If he can’t get up with that hand?"
"I just told you to shut up."
"He can’t do it," says Sonya. "It has to be you."
"I said shut up!"
"We’re already dying," says Sonya. "All of us. Now get over it."
"Fuck you," says Steve. "I mean it. Just shut the fuck up."
"Don’t you yell at her," says Jarrod.
Steve stops and turns and grins. "This isn’t yelling, brother. This is just what married people do, and in case you’ve forgotten, that psychopath is still my wife."
"I won’t be anyone’s anything if we don’t get water."
Silence. Sun. Flies. Steve pacing.
"If you won’t do it for us," says Sonya, "then do it for your children."
"Don’t you ever mention my children, ever!"
Jarrod steps between them, and he and Steve stare each other down.
"Oh fuck this," says Sonya. "If you want to see your kids again, then get down that shaft, now."
Steve glares at Sonya, but then behind her, he notices three more ravens. They are perched on the branches of a bloodwood, and all four birds are now watching him.
Steve is constructing a makeshift rig using the rope he tied Jarrod with. It’s strong enough to tie someone down with, but will it hold his weight? If it breaks and he falls, what will he land on? Rocks? Their gear? And how far would he fall? What if he broke his leg, his back?
He uses a non-slip mono knot to create the rig. It takes him two goes, but once complete, he tests it. Then, for a moment, he falls into a portal hidden within the knot and lands effortlessly in another moment at a scout club. He is eleven years old, and the same completed knot is waiting in his hands as his scout master appraises it. Next to him, Jarrod sits on the same floor, undoing his own successful non-slip mono knot.
When he looks at his brother, this young Jarrod looks up and smiles, then their scout master says, "No, Steven, it’s wrong. Do it again," and then Steve is snapped back to here. To these older hands, sunburnt and covered in dust, and when he looks up, Jarrod is here too. Jarrod has a corrupted face and has tied his own shoulder brace on the other side of the rope using the same knot.
"Do you want me to check yours?" Jarrod asks.
"Fuck off," says Steve, then he slips his legs into the loops.
Steve is preparing to slide into the truck via the broken windscreen. Harnessed up, he stops and looks back up at the waiting pair.
"What’s to stop the truck from falling down on top of me?"
"It’s jammed in pretty tight," says Jarrod.
Under Steve’s weight, the truck suddenly creaks.
"Shit!" Steve waits a moment more, then presses down hard. The truck doesn’t move. He does small jumps to test it.
"Stop that," says Jarrod. "We don’t need it jammed in any harder."
"Fuck you."
Sonya and Jarrod glance at each other, then breathe as Steve moves deeper into the truck. When he reaches the bottom, the rope is feeding through the broken windscreen and rolling over the bull bar.
"You idiot," Steve whispers at himself as below him the darkness waits.
Jarrod backs away from the hole until the rope is taught.
Sonya, standing on the edge of the shaft, nods at Jarrod, who nods back, then she looks down and asks Steve, "Are you ready?"
"Ready," growls Steve.
"Go," Sonya tells Jarrod.
Jarrod can’t use his damaged hand, so with the rope tied tight around his shoulders via the harness, he leans back to cope with the weight of Steve. Then, as Steve descends into the mine, Jarrod moves forward, step after tiny step, each one digging into the hard earth as the sun burns. It’s as if they are playing tug of war.
Inside the pit, Steve can see that the stone walls have been roughly hewn with what looks like a wide-edged pickaxe. Down he goes, descending past these stone walls, and with each meter, it grows cooler and darker as the truck above gets further away.
Steve looks down to his destination, but the floor is not generous and offers nothing but darkness.
Then the rope stops. Steve looks up. "What are you doing? Why’d you stop?"
"That’s all there is," says Sonya as a sweating Jarrod, who is now close to the edge, grunts with the strain.
"Have you reached the bottom?" she calls.
"No."
"Can you see it?" she asks.
"Pull me up."
Nothing happens.
"I said, pull me up!"
Sonya looks at Jarrod. Jarrod is straining. Leaning back, he is almost horizontal to support the weight.
"Hurry," he says.
"Can you see the bottom or not?" asks Sonya.
"You fuckers," Steve mumbles. "Pull me up, now!"
Steve makes a grab for the walls. He tries to get a handhold, but then slips off and spins back to the middle. His time alone has left him weaker.
Up top, Jarrod is groaning.
"What the fuck is he doing?" says Jarrod.
"Stop that," Sonya yells down.
Again Steve grabs for the walls. This time he gets a grip, then pauses to rest.
The rope going limp allows Jarrod to breathe and rest. "Can he see the water?" he asks.
"Can you see the water?" Sonya asks.
Steve grits his teeth, then using all his rage, he starts to climb out. But his rage has limits, and he pauses again.
"Is he on the bottom or not?" asks Jarrod, now that the rope is limp.
"No, he’s climbing back up," she says, then she asks, "What are you doing?"
"Fuck you."
But the other handhold is not secure, and as the rock peels out of the wall, Steve, with no grip, falls back, and the rope pulls tight. Steve groans to the jerk and spins, his arms and legs out and powerless as Jarrod cries out to the load as the thin rope cuts into the skin of his shoulders.
"I can’t hold him," says Jarrod. "I can’t hold him."
"Pull me the fuck up!!"
"I can’t hold you," cries Jarrod.
But as Steve goes to yell again, the mono-non slip knot that he tied incorrectly slips.
"Oh shit," Sonya says as she watches a flailing Steve vanish backwards and silently into the dark as Jarrod falls back and lays there on the earth, panting now the rope has gone limp.
"Great," says Sonya. "He’s gone."
"What?" says Jarrod. "Steve!" he yells. "Steve!"
Breathless, Jarrod is up and looking down into the pit. "Steve!" he calls. "Answer me. Steve!"
Sonya is so angry she storms away swearing, but then she is so dizzy due to the loss of blood that at first, she doesn’t fully acknowledge what she is seeing. Before her, there is a small, distant, and dark shape in the sky. A shape that appears to be coming closer.
"Steve!" yells Jarrod.
"Jarrod," says Sonya.
"Steve, answer me."
"Sonya comes closer to Jarrod’s side. Jarrod."
"Steve, can you hear me?"
"Jarrod."
"What?"
"There’s a helicopter."
As Jarrod spins around, Sonya is already moving towards the approaching chopper while waving wildly with her good arm. "Over here! ... Over here!"
Jarrod sees the dark approaching shape and joins in.
"Here. Over here!!" They yell, and then Jarrod says, "Wait. What do we tell them?"
Sonya thinks, then she turns back to the helicopter and waves again. "Over here!"
"OVER HERE!! Help!!! HELP!!!!"
"I mean it," says Jarrod. "What do we say?"
Michael Gray Griffith