Shaman's Blood (34 page)

“Well, I can’t say that makes me feel any safer about going to sleep,” said Suzanne.

“Ah, but it ain’t the dingoes the blackfellas fear at night, nosirree.”

“What do they fear?” Ned asked.

“Quinkans, of course.”

“What?” Ned sat up, his brain wide awake. There was a distant murmur inside his head.

“That, mate, is where yer sorcery pictures come into play. Quinkans are evil spirits who like to eat people, just like our old dingo lady, and like her, they lure people into their trap by tricking ‘em.”

“How?” Susanne asked. Ned avoided her eyes.

“Mimicry, basically. They call to the child who strays away from the campfire, imitating the parent’s voice and then grabbing him. They don’t like the daylight, or even firelight, and you might encounter them mostly in dark corners of caves or outside at night. They mostly go after children, but they’ll eat an adult if they don’t find anything better on offer.”

 “What do they look like?”

Ollie yawned and swirled the tea in the billy. “Now, that’s hard to say, ‘coz they can take any shape they like to try to lure their victims. The Aboriginal blokes from Wujal Wujal, who took me to the sites I’m gonna take you to, showed me their pictures and told me what they were. They were right spooked by ‘em, too. Couldn’t wait to get out from under those particular overhangs, and then sat up all night yarnin’ and telling stories to keep the Quinkans from snatching them up when they fell asleep.”

Ned was sitting stock still although every nerve in his body was quivering. After so many years, he was finally getting the backstory on his childhood stalker.

“What were the shapes … the ones you saw on the walls?”

“Tall, skinny, stick figures with funny little round heads and blobs on either side like ears, although some are squatty and round, like the ugliest frogs you ever saw, with white eyes or outlines around the body. Most of those paintings are very old, maybe thousands of years, and pretty faded. The paint’s red ochre. Even the Aboriginals of today recognize them for what they are: Quinkans—evil spirits of the shadowland.”

Ned’s head was pounding, and he was finding it hard to breathe. He realized Suzanne was looking at him, her eyes wide.

“Neddy?” she whispered.

Ned doubled over and held his head, his tea cup falling to the ground. The din of voices was like the sound he’d once heard when he’d put a football-sized conch shell to his ear: surf roaring, but with the added difference of an occasional articulated voice. Sounds around him magnified, almost beyond enduring; the crackling of centipedes crawling in the grass and flying foxes stroking the air with leathery wings tore at his eardrums. His arms were on fire.

“Gnnnh,” he moaned, rocking slightly. He could feel Suzanne’s arms around him and her soft hands on his face while he fought the pull of that other world where the Rai held their ghostly vigil in the still gray lagoon. He heard Ollie’s voice on the periphery of his consciousness, but it was inconsequential. His only thought was to cling with all his energy to his bright flame, his Suzanne, whose will to save him was at least as strong as that of those who wished him dead or worse.

Suddenly, an acrid odor of ammonium carbonate filled his nostrils, and the tumult in his mind receded. His blurred vision clearing, he wiped tears and sweat from his face and sat up.

Ollie held a broken capsule under his nose. “Smellin’ salts,” he said, giving another wave of the unpleasant stuff. “Kept it in my first-aid kit for a couple of years and never had a use for it, until now. Still seems potent enough.”

“Neddy, what’s happening? How do you feel?” Suzanne held his hand against her chest, and he could feel her thudding heart.

“It’s better, I’ll be all right in a minute.” She held her cup of tea out to him, and he took a few sips, breathing deeply of its slightly medicinal aroma.

They sat silently, the only light coming from the fire smoldering beneath the ring of coals around the billy.

“Well, now,” Ollie said, removing the bucket and stoking the fire till it roared awake, tossing orange sparks above their heads. “Why don’t you just give me the duck’s guts and explain why you and this lovely lady are really out here in the back blocks looking for dingoes and Quinkans? I’m bettin’ it ain’t to draw their portraits.” 

Chapter 28

December 1969

Ned and Suzanne looked at each other. Ollie chewed the stem of a eucalyptus leaf, waiting. Finally, he spat the stem out.

“The thing is mates, I like to know where I stand when it’s a job I’m hired to do. I don’t think you’ve been quite honest with me. In fact, Neddy, I’m thinking you’re a right bullshit artist.”

Ned studied the toes of his boots. “I’m sorry, man, really. You’re right; we haven’t told you the straight story.”

“Well, let’s have it, then. Fire away.” Ollie strained the rest of the billy tea into his cup.

Ned bowed his head. This was it, the moment of truth where all his pretenses fell away. “I’m not what I seem,” he said, staring at the ground. “I’m not what you’d call a normal person.”

Ollie exploded into loud choking laughter, nearly falling backward off his campstool and spilling his cup. “Spare me days, mate!” he yelped. “I know you’re not normal; I’d have to be barkin’ mad to believe that! D’ya think I’m blind? I’ve been watching those so-called tats o’ yers, going darker, and yer eyes do funny things. Yeah, I do notice things like that though you think I’m not payin’ attention. And the way you wigged out just now … fuck yeah, you’re not normal. My question is, what the bloody hell are you?”

Suzanne put a protective hand on Ned’s arm. “Ollie—”

Ned shook his head. “He’s gotten us this far. We owe him the truth.” He looked at Ollie and took a breath. “I’ll lay it out as plain as I can. My father was …” Ned hesitated, searching for the quickest way to describe his understanding of Lacy Rider, “a seer, you might say a shaman, and my mother pretended to be. She had her own skills, but true ‘seeing’ wasn’t one of them. She used me for that. What she did was serpent conjuring.” Ollie’s eyes widened, but Ned kept going. “She used my blood as the fixing agent in her curse potions. By the time I was twelve, I had little scars all up and down both forearms. But the year I turned sixteen, something happened that changed them to this.” He held out his arms, the dark green-gold scale patterns pulsing in the firelight.

Ollie sucked in his breath. “That's a real dog's breakfast, innit?”

“If you mean fucked up, yeah, it is. You don’t know the half of it!” Ned could feel the heat rising in his face.

“Neddy, you don’t have to—”

Ned brushed Suzanne’s hand away. “No, he wants to know.” He mopped his face with the tail of his T-shirt. “The bloody truth, as you would put it, is that I’ve been stalked most of my life by a creature that I now believe to be a goddamned Quinkan, and the reason I’m here in the frigging Outback is to try to get rid of it!”

“Jesusmary,” said Ollie, his eyes round. “Don’t shout shit like that out loud. Nobody says things like that at night in the bush unless you got a mutherfukin’ campfire the size of Sputnik.”

“Then you believe me?”

“I’m not saying I do or I don’t. I’m saying you don’t muck around with the local legends when you’re in the bush at night.”

“I thought you were the one who said there was nothing to worry about when those dingoes were howling,” said Suzanne.

“Flesh and blood dingoes are one thing, but bloody Quinkans! You’re not just havin’ a go at me for fun, are ya, mate?” Ollie retrieved his stick and poked the flickering coals awake.

Ned slumped over. “I wish to hell I was.” Suzanne buried her face against his chest. He could feel her sweat, or tears, dampening his shirt. “There’s something else you ought to know. I have a totem, a guardian of some kind, that tries to keep the Quinkan away from me. It’s an animal totem that shows up in my dreams and trance states.”

“What kind of animal?” Ollie asked, poking the fire and cutting his eyes up at Ned.

“A snake.”

“What kind of snake?”

“A taipan.”

Ollie put down the poker and stared across the fire at Ned. “Fer fuck’s sake, is there anything else you want to blow m’doors off with? Huh?”

“That’s about it.”

Ollie shook his head. “I can’t believe this. Taipans and Quinkans. So all that shit about art books and illustrations and publishers was a snow job.”

“I’m afraid so.” 

Ollie finished his tea in a single gulp. “Well, let me ask you this: d’you have any flaming idea what you’re really looking for out here?”

“Suzie, hand me the pack, will you?” Suzanne eyed them both silently and reached for Ned’s backpack. Ned opened the zippered side pocket and pulled out the one drawing he hadn’t shown to Ollie. Now he handed it over. “Do you know what that is?”

“Sure, that’s a sacred clan object. Tjuringa, in the lingo. Don’t tell me you stole it and got a mob of angry blackfellas after you.”

“Not exactly, but close.”

“How close?”

“I didn’t steal it myself, but I think one of my ancestors did. Whatever happened way back then is what caused the Quinkan to come after my father and now me. The taipan showed me a vision where this stone was made by some dingo-god. An Aboriginal taboo got broken somehow, but I don’t understand that part of it. She keeps telling me I got to return this thing, but I don’t know where it is or who to give it back to even if I could find it.”

“She?”

“Taipan Ancestor. Sometime she looks like a dark-skinned woman with bronze-gold hair that streams out from her head in these long spirals.” Ned gestured vaguely.

Ollie laughed. “I wouldn’t mind havin’ a gander at yer visions, mate.”

Ned shivered. “You wouldn’t want to meet her in snake form.”

Ollie stood up and went to the brush pile he’d collected up earlier. He fed the fire until it was blazing up as high as a meter stick, with bright streamers swirling upward. “Okay, I’m getting’ a picture here. You’ve been seeing this Quinkan in your dreams or visions or whatever, but didn’t know what to call it. A Dreamtime Ancestor sends you on a quest after a Dingo Clan tjuringa. Maybe this taboo involves a curse, which is why you’re so keen to find sorcery figures, which you’re hopin’ will lead you to a ceremonial site where you can do … something. ”

Ollie looked at Suzanne. “I’m assuming none of this is news to you?”

“I believe Ned, and I want more than anything to help him get free from this thing you call a Quinkan. I believe it exists, because I’ve seen those same transformations in him you’ve seen, only worse. I want to help him make it all stop.”

“Maybe lay off the dope?” said Ollie.

Ned glared at him and said nothing.

“Sorry mate, cheap shot.” Ollie smiled with half his mouth. “So. You said a ways back down the road you were sure this is the right place. How do you know that?”

Ned shrugged. “I just feel it.” He didn’t have the words, or the energy, to try to explain to Ollie what it was like to have your head invaded against your will and your body pulled by forces you couldn’t control.

Ollie stared at Ned, unblinking as a desert goanna. Ned wondered what he was thinking. Was he going to ditch them and be gone when they woke up, or would he decide to stick it out and help them? Either way, Ned had no intention of turning back.

“Neddy,” said Ollie, poking at the fire, “you got any Aboriginal blood in yeh?”

“What? No, how could I? My parents were both born in Florida, in the USA.”

“Hm. Just asking, ‘coz what I’m hearing sure sounds like bloody ‘clever man’ work to me.”

“Is that the same as a senior man?” Ned asked, remembering the old man at the Foundation in Sydney.

“Righto. What you blokes might call a witch-doctor, or maybe a shaman. When Aboriginal men learn mysteries beyond the regular coming-of-age initiations, they’re called ‘clever’ or ‘senior’ men of knowledge. Then they can do things like diagnose what’s wrong with sick people or go walkabout in the spirit world where they have supernatural guides, ghostly critters my bushie pal calls ‘Rai,’ and these spirit guides take them places where ordinary people can’t go. The Senior man interacts with other spirits, good and bad, to help out their clans.”

“I don’t know how that could apply to me, except for maybe the spirit world part,” said Ned, seeing the dark waters of the twilight billabong in his mind, with the storklike boatman in the canoe offering him a ride to the land of the dead.

He didn’t want to remember any of that or the horrid burned man-thing in the hut of grass who’d cursed and shouted at him as he’d turned away, heading down the gray bank to the still waters of the lagoon in search of the shining cord that would lead him back to his body. Ned felt weary to the marrow, and at this moment wanted nothing more than to chill out on the floor of his Miami apartment with a joint and Jimi Hendrix on the turntable. The distant flap of flying foxes and the mournful howl of dingoes beyond the campsite were as surreal to him as any of those visions. If it weren’t for Suzanne’s firm clasp on his arm, he might have thought this place just another hallucination.

But she was solidly here, as was this person called Ollie Barnes, as was the crackling fire he tended. The sound of distant thunder and the scent of rain on the night air seemed real enough. Ned tried to pull his scattered thoughts together.

“My father called it ‘seeing far.’ I never questioned how we did it, or where that ability came from. It was just something the two of us could do, a fact of life I grew up with.”

Ollie shook his head. “Well, too bad we don’t have some of my Wujal Wujal mates here. I’m thinking they’d be more use to you than me right about now. For a Yank, you’ve just spun me the damndest Dreamtime yarn I’ve heard in years. But here’s the deal. I’m a man of my word, and you paid me to help you find this place of yours, so by jingoes, I’ll make a stab at it.”

“Thank you,” said Suzanne, “you don’t know how much this means to both of us.”

“Oh, I have some idea,” he said, grinning. “You’re a lucky bloke, Neddy Waterston, if that’s your real name.”