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| Ends of the Earth | |
| By Espiral | ||||||
| 10 May 2006 | ||||||
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I posted the beginning of this a while ago, and I've now made a short story of it. Please let me know what you think... The colour of the sky today is grey; the clouds are hanging just above our heads and they obscure all but the lower skirts of the great volcano Osorno. It’s dark and freezing here at the ends of the earth, giving the handful of tourists the constant impression of impending dusk. From the diminutive harbour you can almost see the curvature of the earth where the sea stretches out to the white horizon, calling to mind legends of the water pouring off that distant rim like a plate, and monstrous tentacled creatures that engulf entire ships. This town sits wet and cold and dejected like an abandoned animal, in the shadow of its colossal guardian Osorno. In these lands the inhabitants believe in spirits resident in the sea, the volcano, the mountains, and after a few days here you find yourself permeated by sensations of a dormant but breathing earth. The vanishing of a local boy last night is met by the people with a stoical cynicism, and a notable lack of surprise. They are tranquil and quietly spoken, perceived at times as apathetic. A disappearance does not appear to perturb, though it causes visible sadness. Elderly faces look out to the horizon and murmur, their dark creased faces expressionless and weary. The men frown, the women grip their shawls in their hands. Little is said, but the consensus is that the boy’s death is a certainty. It has happened before in this region. Two brothers in their early twenties disappeared from a neighbouring settlement, and were found a week later at the bottom of the massive and furious river. The families mourned, the authorities investigated and the press speculated, but things fell quiet after a few months as nothing new came to light. To an outsider, drugged already by the oppressive perpetual gloom, such disconcerting happenings seem oddly normal, almost expected. You feel here that the barriers keeping death at bay are different, stretched and thinned by the memory of brutality that is centuries old, inherited by each generation. Then there is the stark and current violence thriving in the poverty – from bitter alcohol-induced disputes to these unexplained disappearances which are often the outcome of territorial feuds between desperate families to whom land is everything. These are suffered by every community and borne with the same unspeaking resignation. Death is not a stranger in any sense. This is a race that believes the souls of their ancestors walk at night alongside grotesque supernatural beings. Today’s headline in the regional newspaper announces what everyone has now heard. Down at the seafood market by the harbour it is referred to only in the mute nodded greetings that pass between the people. Normally swelling with an animated rabble, the discourse of bargaining and shouts from sellers advertising their produce, on this day the market’s banter is tamed. The women's gossip is hushed as they rifle through the piles of knobbled deep-sea shellfish stacked on tables and in buckets. The odour of fresh fish is mixed with that of the rotten, trodden into the rank water that fills the indents in the muddy cobbled ground. During the afternoon a fog of icy drizzle descends onto the town, emptying the streets. Circling seagulls are grouping overhead and moving further inland as a wind picks up. In a steep cobbled sidestreet, leading up towards the viewpoint, two young women are taking the chance to shelter in a decrepid doorway and share new rumours they have heard. A young girl, small, shy and still at school, is pregnant. Passing by the doctor's house you can hear the scandal through the flimsy walls. The girl is crying as her trembling father demands a solution. The doctor questions the scratches and bruises on the father's hands and forearms but the man avoids his gaze and mumbles his concern for his daughter's health. On the outskirts of the town, just before the dirt road peters out and the last few ramshackle houses give way to barren farmland, is the small cafe in which the boy was last seen, late last night, drinking beer with the other farmworkers. It had grown busy and rowdy as always, the beer staving off the cold night and the fatigue. No one had noticed the boy leave and gave him no thought until this morning when his family began to murmur that he had not been home all night. ***** In the heart of the woods it is still and cold. Rain dripping through the leaves and onto the dank branches creates a hypnotic musical tapping. The boy is lying at the base of a tree, bushes obscuring his lower body. Occasional chirps from a bird up in the cold uppermost branches disturb the quiet, and his eyelids flutter. He is dimly aware of the weight of his limbs, the smell of beer still wafting from his stained jacket, the dried blood on his face. Both his eyes are swollen, and his mouth is thick and his throat choked, his shallow breath rasps in and out. It won't be long now; he wants to sleep and can feel it coming. He has few thoughts as he lies among the dank wet leaves and drifts back towards unconsciousness. A girl's face is among the delirious dreams that flit across his fading mind. She is young and tender and is holding out a baby to him. He sees a man then, suddenly in front of him, his face reddened with alcohol and fury, the brick gripped tightly in his raised hand; the boy's heartbeat begins to quicken at the memory, but the girl is still there with him, smiling, holding their baby. ***** By the evening people are murmuring about the horror of this particular case, and the speed at which it is unfolding. In the woods beyond the farmland that borders the town, the body of the disappeared boy has already been found.
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