Amma Alcheringa.
The original image and idea for this story was taken from a picture in some long-forgotten magazine read several years ago. The picture was uniquely Australian and showed the rocky interior of an aboriginal cave with ochre, white and black hand paintings on the sloping ceiling. Long, angular rocks jutted up from the sandy floor of the cave. There were no signs of life, or any kind of remains within the cave, hence the word ‘sterile’ used in the story.
It was mysterious; an image frozen in time. Who made those markings, and why? Were they of symbolic importance?
If so, were they still relevant? It offered a beckoning, a landscape to explore. There were no captions, or story with the picture yet it commanded one. This image of that cave was the beginning of the idea for the story.
The title ‘Amma Alcheringa’ is a from a Northern Territory aboriginal tribe dialect that means men’s cave. The plot idea formulated for the story from the image was to combine a mixture of cultures and gender issues. The perceived timelessness and nebulousness of the Aboriginal Dreamtime combined with the supernatural seemed to be an interesting way to evolve this storyline meant to portray its ‘Australianness’’ intermingling with other levels of reality.
The subject matter of the cave paintings is meant to depict a surreal situation that gets more surreal the further Kelly enters the cave.
o0o
Kelly tilted the water bottle to her lips and sighed as the fluid ran down her parched throat. The heat outside the cave was intense and perspiration saturated her clothes and trickled down her body.
She grinned as she looked inside. Yes! I made it. She laughed and thrust her fist into the air. Amma Alcheringa, the Aboriginal men’s initiation cave from the Dreamtime. I’m really inside.
Flicking her halogen torch on Kelly swung its strong beam into the cave. Man-sized pinnacles of rock rose like sentinels from the red sandy soil, throwing grotesque shadows into the darkness.
She flashed the light onto the floor. Strange. There aren’t any animal signs, she thought. She sniffed the air. No bat smells either. It feels ... sterile.
Kelly guided the torch beam over the domed ceiling and discovered the hand paintings patterned there. Well, some unknown artist had been here and daubed his ochre, black and white colours onto the rocky canvas, she thought.
The paintings followed the roofline, ending at a narrow opening at the back of the cave. Kelly moved toward it.
Shining her torch through the gap Kelly could see a round passageway. A feint current of air touched her face and with it a feeling of foreboding.
“Turn back, “a voice hissed inside Kelly’s head. “Enter and be lost forever.”
Kelly froze, hardly breathing. What was that?
The voice repeated “Enter and be lost forever.”
Goose bumps popped up on Kelly’s arms. Her gaze slid around trying to locate the speaker. She whispered into the void. “But I’ve only come to see the cave. I’m not going to take anything.”
“Women are forbidden. Powerful men’s magic is here. If you enter, you never leave.”
Kelly wavered, undecided. She thought of her struggle to get here. Of battling to keep her four-wheel drive on the bumpy track through the desolate rocky country to this cave. A cave few white people knew about - and no aboriginal would enter.
She thought about Steve Parker, her boss. The derogatory remarks he made a week ago when she told him about the cave and asked for funding so she could lead a group of other archaeologists to it. Even when she showed him the map he had laughed in her face.
“An attractive woman like you should just find some male to settle down with and raise kids as you are biologically programmed to do” he had told her. “Leave the field work to the men”. Chuckling, he turned and walked away leaving a furious, red-faced Kelly staring after him.
In her mind’s eye she was a child again in the family’s small fibro home at Liverpool. Mum cooking, washing, mending, always trying to please. No life of her own outside the home or wishes of her family; dad calling to her from the lounge-room. “Jeanie,” he would call and Mum would stop whatever she was doing, rush into the room and change the television channel or do whatever else dad was too lazy to get off the old brown velvet lounge and do for himself.
Kelly remembered her father’s reaction when she said she had won a scholarship to Uni and was moving to Darwin.
Her family’s look of disbelief when she said she didn’t want to marry, stay home and raise kids. She wanted a career.
To do something with her life, she told them, but she could see by their looks that no-one understood. “Your room will always be here for you when you get this foolishness out of your system” was all her father said – and that was that. They expected her to fail.
Steve Parker reminds me of dad, Kelly thought but despite their low opinions of me I have made it on my own. There was no going back now.
Probing the darkness with the torchlight and seeing nothing, Kelly called defiantly into the darkness. “I’m here now and I’m going to be the first woman to enter Amma Alcheringa.”
Kelly held her breath and waited. Only a current of air registered on her awareness. But to make sure I do come back I’ll use my precautions, she thought.
Unclipping a fishing spool from her belt Kelly carefully wound the loose end several times around one of the large rock sentinels. She tugged the line to test its firmness and, satisfied, Kelly entered the tunnel.
The smooth round walls were about two metres high and flowed out of sight. This must be an old lava tunnel, guessed Kelly. She swung her torch toward the wall and the beam illuminated the drawings there. Kelly stared in astonishment.
Wow, I've never seen Aboriginal art like this. They’re more like hieroglyphics.
Kelly moved along slowly, studying each drawing. Men were depicted hunting large animals. She recognised emus and kangaroos but blinked in surprise at wombats as big as cows. At the next drawing Kelly gasped and moved her torch closer to get a better look. It was of a mammoth and next to it was a sabre-toothed tiger. Where would the aborigines have seen these animals, she wondered?
“Look, see here,” she called excitedly. “Here’s a picture of a centaur.” Then she froze. She had spoken to the person she felt standing next to her.
Galvanised, Kelly turned and flashed her torch up and down the tunnel. It was empty. She shone the torch onto the floor but the only imprints were her own in the soft red sand. Groping for her lifeline she tugged on it. It held firm so, summoning her courage, she moved on.
Pictures were drawn all along the wall and Kelly concentrated on them. I recognize the figures from the Aboriginal Dreamtime, but these are Maya drawings. Where did they come from?
She laughed excitedly; her nervousness forgotten. This is fabulous! When I bring the archaeologists and the scientist back here, they're going to have a wonderful time working this out. I’m going to be remembered as the woman who changed what we know of early Australia.
Kelly stopped and had a drink from her water bottle. Slipping the bottle back onto her belt she shone the torch on her watch and stared in amazement. Hey, I’ve been walking for two hours but it only seems like ten minutes. This tunnel must go on forever.
The feeling she was being watched intensified the further Kelly moved into the tunnel and she kept flashing the torchlight along the passageway to see who was there. Without warning the tunnel opened into a huge chamber. Kelly started in amazement. Where did this come from? It had to have come out of thin air.
Kelly paused, reluctant to go inside. I’m not so sure this was a good idea after all, she thought. She flashed the torch into the cave. It’s creepy. Anything could be in there waiting to grab me. An oppressive feeling of resentment surrounded her and now she could feel many hostile eyes watching. Her mouth had gone dry and she licked her lips, undecided on what to do.
A strange low wail started in her head and spread out, growing, filling the huge cave the moans of didgeridoos and the sounds of bones being struck together. “Amma Alcheringa, Amma Alcheringa,” the didgeridoos kept repeating like a mantra.
Kelly clamped her hands over her ears trying to shut out the noise. Something flew silently at her, striking the torch out of her hand and it broke as it hit the floor throwing the cave into total darkness. The didgeridoos stopped suddenly but the bones tapped furiously in time with Kelly’s heartbeat. She screamed and her voice echoed around the cave.
As Kelly backed away, groping for the tunnel, her hand brushed against the reel on her belt. Thank God! I can get out of here.
Unseen forces filled the tunnel and Kelly's nerves snapped. She screamed into the darkness “Let me go! I promise I’ll never tell anyone about the cave. I don’t want to die.”
“I don’t want to die ...” Her voice reverberated, trailing away.
Skin scraped off Kelly’s upper arm and left pieces of her flesh on the rock wall as she pressed against it. Her nails were torn and her fingers raw from the fishing line but she only registered it feeding through her fingers as she edged toward safety.
Kelly’s foot struck something in the sand and it broke her concentration. Whatever it was her lifeline was twisted around it. Easing on hand down Kelly ran her fingers over it. It’s a torch! How long has it been here? It wasn’t here before. She flicked the switch on and the beam shone into the darkness. Kelly screwed her face up while her eyes adjusted to the light.
“No! Oh, no! It can’t be. The string should have led me back to the cave opening: Not ... not ...” She felt her mind slip as uncontrolled terror overwhelmed her.
“No, oh, no ...” Her high-pitched scream echoed, mocking her. She was back in the huge cave with the sinister forces.
The didgeridoos started softly resounding “Amma Alcheringa, Amma Alcheringa.”
Craters.
This short story was an exercise in our writing group. I was given the word ‘ craters ’ and the first line “ He didn’t look back as he boarded the ship and I never saw him again”. I had to complete the rest.
I wanted the story to portray how a bond of pure love can be forged between two men. The part with the three Japanese soldiers gave a different slant to the story and was inspired by the three thieves I read about in Chaucer’s
‘Canterbury Tales’.
o0o
Craters was billeted in the bed next to mine at the barracks. Chalk and cheese the other soldiers used to call us, and I guess we were, but we hit it off from the start and became good mates.
Small, dark haired and wiry was Craters. Always on the go, his sharp blue eyes never missing a trick, or his brain an opportunity. Street smart, from the slums of Sydney, was Craters.
Next to him I was a muscly lump of lard. A red headed, freckled, sheep shearer as green as grass until the Army conscripted me to fight for my country. As mates, we shared, did everything together and he became closer to me than a brother.
Basic training was a breeze. I was fit and had grown up with guns. Craters was a natural crack shot and when our unit was shipped to New Guinea, the two of us went on regular jungle patrol together.
Craters ‘doctored’ his bullets so they exploded on impact, blowing a hole like a crater in whatever they hit. Said he'd read about it in some book when he was a kid. Said it gave him an edge. Anyhow, that was how he came to be called
‘Craters.’ His Army papers had him as Stephen David Martins, but everyone called him Craters, including me.
On patrol, I’d pull my khaki hat low to cover my ginger hair and we’d smear mud over our skin to camouflage ourselves. We carried light packs of rations and wet weather gear on our backs. Metal water bottles, grenades and extra rounds were on our webbing waist belts. Our rifles were always ready in our hands and after nearly five years together we had devised a system of body language to communicate in the jungle.
This day, Craters was leading, treading carefully on what was more like a slim parting of the undergrowth than a track.
The weather was steamy and the place crawled with leeches and insects. It felt like hell on Earth and I tried not to think about snipers and a bullet with my name on it.
A large insect dropped from out of the canopy and onto my neck. I went to flick it off but it moved too quickly and crawled inside my battle greens. Before it had a chance to bit me, I grabbed it, crushing it between my index finger and thumb, but in death it retaliated, its revolting, pungent odour stinging my nostrils. Nauseated, I quickly wiped its soggy, stinking remains away from my face, off my fingers and down the side of my pants. God, I hate the jungle.
Suddenly Crates stopped. He’d heard something. We moved cautiously forward. Ahead, in a wider part of the track, under a banyan tree, three Japanese soldiers squatted, talking intently around a small shoebox sized container one of them was holding. We slid into the undergrowth and watched through the leaves.
Grinning, I glanced at Craters and gestured with the tip of my gun. Their rifles were propped against a tree and unarmed, they were sitting ducks. Craters moved his head a fraction. No, he signalled; let’s see what they are doing.
The Japanese holding the box looked about forty. He wore wire-framed glasses and could have been an office worker, or a schoolteacher in civvie street. The second one seemed a few years younger and was the biggest. I guessed he’d been a farmer, or manual worker of some sort. The third looked and acted like a student. Small, with glasses, about twenty, he deferred to the other two.
Something rolled out of the opened box and the farmer picked it up, and bit into it. He held it and said something and they all started jabbering excitedly. We craned to see what he was holding. Craters’ eyes lit up and he flashed me a triumphant smile. The box was full to the brim with gold!
A bird nearby emitted a loud mournful cry scaring the hell out of me. The three men jumped up, grabbed their rifles and pointed them in all directions into the thick undergrowth. They didn’t see us.
Relaxing, the farmer laughed and slapped the teacher on the shoulder before turning and saying something to the student. Nodding, the student moved along the jungle track away from us. I think he was to check that the coast was clear.
The farmer gestured toward the track the student had gone on, then, whispering to the teacher, pointed to the box. The teacher licked his lips before slowly nodding. It looked to me like the two older men had made a deal about the gold, cutting the student out.
Craters nudged me and nodded and I shifted my gaze to where he had zeroed in. The student was hiding in the undergrowth, watching his comrades.
The two men were silent now, both looking at the gold. The farmer slid his bayonet out of its sheath and hid it under his outstretched leg. My eyes swivelled back to the student to watch his reaction, but he’d disappeared.
Birds screeched their noisy protest and flew from the trees as a shot exploded into the silence, followed by another.
The first bullet hit the farmer in the throat. The second bullet took the teacher in the chest. They collapsed; blood oozing down their sweat soaked uniforms.
Cautiously, the student entered the clearing, his gun ready. He edged toward the farmer and watched, waiting for a movement from him. When there was none he leaned over and spat in his face. Then he kicked him and, turning to the teacher’s body kicked it too. Apparently satisfied he dragged them out of sight behind the banyan tree.
The student leaned over to grab the gold when Craters took aim, fired once, his dumdum bullet shattering the student’s skull like a burst watermelon and sending the birds into frenzy. I raced over and threw the student’s body behind the banyan tree, grabbed the box and raced back to the shelter of the undergrowth. To the victor the spoils! I thought as I happily waved the box under Craters’ nose.
We split the gold into two equal lots and carefully buried them in different locations near our base. We intended going into business together when we were demobbed, now we had the money to do it. All we had to do was sit tight and wait the war out.
But about six months later, while on patrol, a sniper’s bullet blasted into Craters, dropping him like a stone. He lay unconscious on the damp track, his life’s blood bubbling up, seeping in frothy pink foam out of the cavity in his chest.
