White and Other Tales of Ruin

Max frowned, chewed his lip, fighting with contradictory thoughts. He scratched his bald head, peeling scabs to reveal fresh ones beneath. If there was pain he seemed not to notice. “I think he had more of a chance than we like to let ourselves believe,” he said, finally. Then, as though reading Roddy’s mind: “It wasn’t hopeless.”

A sense of futility grabbed at Roddy, dragging any hidden hopes he may have had out into the open and butchering them. The black rock stood before him, soaking up his fears, reflecting only the weirdness the scarred area imparted. He turned to Max for comfort, but the big man looked as frightened as he felt. More so, if anything. To see a face usually so full of intelligence and good humour reduced to this — wan, pale, bloodied and empty of hope — was soul-shattering.

“If Ernie was here he’d pray to God,” Roddy said, and Max nodded.

“I reckon that’s why he’s not with us.”

They left the markings to fulfil whatever purpose they had been created for. Norris asked what they had found, and Max told him that the rock was naturally formed, not artificial as they had first thought. The cook seemed disappointed by this, and Roddy was tempted to show him the markings. To show him that if the rock was not natural, then whatever had made it was way removed from the human Norris may have hoped for.

They headed on up the mountain. The further they moved away from the rock, the more Roddy felt watched. And the more he thought about the processes which must have conspired to carve the rock out of the land, the more feeble and insignificant he became. If it had been formed by nature, then it was never intended for the likes of man. It was a secret thing nature had done, for its own inconceivable purposes. Now it had been seen, touched, mused upon. Roddy wondered just what must become of those who viewed something never meant to be seen, touched something intended only to be kissed by the wind, scoured by dust.

He looked at his fingertips, where grime from the rock markings clung to his sweat. He had left something of himself on the rock, both physically and mentally. Most dust is human skin, he thought. In decades and centuries to come, he wondered how much of the dust coating the monstrous monolith would consist of Butch, or Ernie. Or any of them. And where would their souls be residing? In the hands of God, becalmed and soothed by the promise of salvation and goodness in the life everafter? Or in the rock? Buried in blackness. Trapped forever within sight of life. Teased and tortured by purely human needs.

The island seemed to be changing, becoming even further removed from the outside world. It was as though by discovering this place they had driven it further into itself, allowing greater disassociation with the world at large. A world of people and machines and war, where pride-scars marred every real achievement and genocide was considered fair sport.

Roddy looked up towards the head of the mountain, then back at the receding rock and the jungles beyond. Further down, across the slowly waving heads of trees and through spiralling flocks of birds, the sea stretched out, past the reef and on towards civilisation. A timeless power, pounding itself to pieces on the sharp shores of the island.

They needed food, water, rest and shelter. They craved all the basics, even while immersed in the extraordinary. There was a sense now, between the three men, that they had to reach the top of the mountain, to see whether there was anything else on the other side. To see, simply, whether there was any hope at all.

But hope too needs feeding. It fled, once and for all, before they even got there.

4. NOT QUITE ALONE

The three survivors, hardly talking in an effort to conserve their meagre energy, worked their way up the steep incline. The pinnacle of the mountain still lay above and ahead, perhaps only three hundred feet higher. The slopes here were pierced by dark holes, small in diameter but disappearing into invisible depths. Max threw stones into the first few and listened to the rattle and echo of their descent. He soon stopped, because they could not hear them striking bottom. He said they were volcanic, but to Roddy they looked more like throats.

The landscape had changed drastically from the grasslands around the black rock. Instead of bushes and undergrowth, rocks of strangely twisted formations grew from the ground, with a low, loamy grass coating the intervening spaces. Its blades looked sharp. The rocks were shattered into points, shining with oily colours, changing texture and shade depending upon which angle they were viewed from. Heathers sprouted intermittently, strange, sick-looking plants which gave off a stale stench.

It was late afternoon and the sun was dipping towards the horizon behind the men. They were following their own shadows. Roddy found it agreeable. That way, he would be able to tell when something rushed him from behind.