Sunlit Shadow Dance (41 page)

Soon the night was done and just one
ceremony remained.

It
happened a fortnight later. Alan and
Sandy were just returned from their honeymoon. It was a much
smaller and more somber gathering, just her, Vic, Alan, Sandy,
Buck, Julie, Charlie and Antonio, uncle of the man, Mark, his
surviving next of kin.

They waited together in the front office
of the coroner’s building while two parts of a man were released
from its custody. These body parts had sat for over three years now
while the legal processes around his murder and the inquest about
his role in the disappearance of the “Lost Girls” had rolled on.
When all the lawyers were done this man’s mortal remains, a skull
and a forearm, the parts had been forgotten about.

Finally, almost as an afterthought, as
Sandy tidied up in preparation for her own wedding and to take
three months off work, perhaps to try for a baby of her own, she
had come across these two preserved items resting in a storeroom
cabinet. At first she had not known what to do. There was no
obvious family seeking return of the remains.

So she had talked to the two
best friends of the man
Vic and Buck, about what should be done. While
Mark’s father was still alive Mark had explicitly rejected him
having any role in his estate or other parts of his affairs, in his
will. So they contacted his surviving uncle, who remembered Mark
with affection as a child, and the three had agreed on a
plan.

What remained would be cremated and the
ashes divided into three parts, one to go to his mother’s family in
Italy. These grandparents were too frail now to make the journey
but wanted to bury some part of the grandson they never knew in
their own family graveyard. The second part of the ashes would be
returned to the billabong from whence they came. Vic and Charlie
would do this together, it was to return a part to the crocodile
spirit which had brought this to pass, whose power they had both
known.

The third part belonged to Susan. It was
for a role given by the man’s own request, something he had asked
Susan to do in his farewell note, to take a part of him to a place
in the desert which he had shown her long ago.

She said she was not ready to do it yet.
She said she would only do this with remembrance of who he had
been. This memory had not come back. So she delayed her part, in
hope that one day this memory would return.

T
oday was the beginning. When the small
coffin shaped box, into which the parts had been placed, was
brought out, Charlie took his agreed place in the front to lead the
man’s spirit home. The other four men each took a corner of the
little box. Their wives walked with them, each with a hand resting
on the box as a mark of respect. They placed the coffin box into a
waiting hearse and followed it in funeral cortege, in two cars
behind.

They brought it
to a private chapel
next to the crematorium. Here a priest of the church of his
ancestors would say his Catholic ceremony, so as to meet the
request of his Italian family. Gathered inside the chapel were a
handful of other friends, come from across the outback by personal
invitation. They included Vic’s mother, uncle and sister, some
miners from leases in unknown places, a store trader from
Borroloola, Mick, fey Irishman from Top Springs and a few others,
mostly with black skins.

There were no outside observers of this
unannounced ceremony. It was not something to advertise; too many
had been hurt by his actions. Yet in these gathered people’s hearts
was a part which held real affection for the life of this man and
the good he had done.

Four p
hotos of the man in life adorned the
chapel. One was from Buck. It showed him astride a horse, intense
concentration on his face as he tamed a wild spirit. Another showed
him arm in arm with Vic and Vic’s mother, his second family. A
third showed a small boy going fishing with his Uncle many years
ago. The final one was of a mother with baby in arms, Rosalie
holding little Vincent Marco Bassingham. Together they seemed to
make a fitting tribute to the tragic story of the boy’s passage
into manhood. It was little enough, but it felt as if at least some
good parts of his memory were held and valued by his true
friends.

The Uncle, Vic and Buck each told a story
of the boy, become man, who was a friend to many in the bush. A few
others told their own stories too.

Then it was done. As the words, ‘Dust to
Dust, Ashes to Ashes’ were spoken what remained of the man they had
known passed from sight.

Vic and Buck had tears on their
faces as did Mi
ck and some others. Susan remained dry eyed, wishing for a
memory to give her own tribute.

Vic felt very nervous. Today he
and Buck, with Charlie and Alan
, planned to take a part of the ashes to
the place of the crocodile, a billabong on the Mary River, a
hundred odd miles to the east of Darwin. He had hoped to limit it
to just the four of them but the others from the funeral cortege
said they were coming too, except for the Uncle who had caught a
plane to Italy, taking with him his own small casket for the family
there.

What frightened
Vic was not the
crocodile, or other unnamed terrors. It was bringing his wife to
this place of horror. He had been staunchly opposed to her coming
from the outset.

He had discussed it with Charlie, and
Charlie had agreed. “Bad medicine, best she not come. Bad spirit,
maybe try take her again.”

Vic knew that her mind was held together
with not much more than sticky tape. The calm outside belied a
place of turmoil within. Since the ceremony for Mark she had begun
dreaming again, and it seemed the crocodile stone was losing its
power. She would push it away from herself in the night and then
she would dream. At first Vic tried to push it back into contact,
but it was as if it burnt her night time skin, she would flinch and
recoil from its touch. During the day she would hold the stone, at
least at times. But he would also discover times when she had set
it aside and then she would sit there in a semi-dream state,
unaware of the world around her. He felt he was losing her all over
again, and this time it was totally beyond his power to stop
it.

Part
of him felt he should abandon his
plan to return to this land and instead go back to Scotland. It
seemed as she came closer to the place of the crocodiles so their
power to invade her mind grew too. He discussed it with Charlie and
Ross and neither had a real solution. Ross suggested either a dream
centre for night observation or some psychological tests; that was
all medicine could offer. All Charlie could suggest was that he
talk to his own medicine man and then that this man would talk to
the Baru people, those entrusted with care of the crocodile
spirits, to see if there was anyone who knew how to take this
possession away from her.

Part of the problem was that
Susan did not seem to understand what was happening. So she
was determined to
go to the place of the crocodiles, to return Mark’s ashes and,
along with them, the part of his spirit that seemed to belong to
the crocodiles in this place. As her wishes coincided with his
plans there was no keeping her away. It seemed to Vic that, even
though she said she could not remember the man, some part of the
crocodile spirit which connected both Mark and her to this place,
drove her on.

So, despite all the cautionary words from
Charlie and the alarm running through his own mind, he found that
he was unable to stop her. She said it was something she must do;
it may help her regain her memories. She said it with such a hunger
of anticipation that it both frightened him and gave him hope.
Perhaps she was right; she had to meet the devil in his lair to
know it, in order leave it behind. But Vic knew it was fraught with
danger.

So his fear and caution was to no avail.
They were going today and she was coming, there were no ifs and
buts. The one thing that reassured him was that Sandy was there
too. She still seemed to have a power to see inside Susan’s mind.
So Vic had to trust her to be the watcher and pull his wife back if
danger threatened.

I
n the early dawn, with first traces of
light in the sky, they loaded up and got ready to go. The children
were staying with Charlie’s wife, Rosie, for the day. Rosie would
take good care of them, along with his own mother who was there
with them too, so Vic had no concerns in this regard.

Just as they were climbing into the car to
depart another car pulled up and the occupants got out. It was Ross
and Beck. It turned out that Sandy had invited Beck and Ross was
determined to go where Beck went. Sandy told Vic of the day she and
Beck had held the crocodile stone and how their minds had linked
through it like crocodile sisters. So they decided to come
together, two minds and two bodies watching Susan were better than
one.

N
ow they divided themselves between Alan
and Charlie’s two Toyota’s and headed away. In the back of
Charlie’s vehicle was the body of a small pig, it was one that
Charlie had bought from a pig hunter friend, only a bite sized
morsel for a large crocodile. They had placed a small slit in its
belly. In that place were the ashes, now embedded in a ball of
solid glass. That way this part of Mark ashes would end up inside
this huge crocodile, present within its own perpetual crocodile
stone. So, if it swallowed the pig it would have a part of Mark
within it.

Charlie had advised that
to placate the
crocodile spirit they should return a part of Mark’s body to its
belly. He wanted to return the forearm. When this was not agreed by
the others Alan came up with the idea of a newly formed glass
crocodile stone, inside this food offering. A glass craftsman had
taken the ashes, placed them within a small bottle and melted it
into a casing which sealed the contents inside a half inch of
glass, a sort of time capsule.

All too soon they came to the side of the
billabong. Susan at first stood back, as if watching within a
dream, holding the flat black crocodile stone Charlie had sent her
within her hand.

Vic felt relief at her apparent
willingness to watch from a distance. On either side of her, each
with a hand resting on her shoulder, stood Sandy and Beck, as if
communing with her
, spirit to spirit.

Charlie carried the pig towards
the billabong, Buck and
Vic flanking him on either side, while Alan walked
just behind and to the side. He carried the Baru crocodile totem in
one hand and his police service revolver in the other. The revolver
was pointing away from the others, but he had it at the ready lest
some saurian beast should emerge from the water.

They reached the side of the
water. All was still and nothing was in sight. They placed their
pig offering at the water
’s edge and stepped back a few paces, continuing
to watch.

The water was completely still,
not a breath of air
moved; its surface was like glass. They stood in a half
ring facing east; it was two hours after dawn. The sun was yet to
clear the trees and light the water, which sat in gloom. As they
stood, watching and waiting, the first shafts of sunlight struck
the water far out across the billabong, reflecting directly into
their eyes.

As the sun ball rose clear, the
water
surface turned to gold, dazzling and blinding them in
reflection. They stood still, unable to move from the blinding
golden light. A living essence sat at the centre of the ball of
golden light.

It was the time of the
crocodiles. They
knew it in their souls; the crocodiles were coming to claim
their own.

Susan felt an implacable
determination to see this through. So when Vic had tried to tell
her not to come
, out of fear of what this place might do to her, she had
dismissed this as irrelevant. She knew it could do her harm, Vic
was right in that, but not to come was inconceivable, it was
required of her.

That she could not remember that fateful
day when she had been here before made no difference. She had been
here before. Her hand had ended this man’s life; she had a duty to
fulfill. She did not know what was required of her, but she knew it
would come to her once she returned.

So she stood at the back and waited. The
stone gave her calm and connected her to other eyes through which
could see the colors, so she held it in her hands. And she found a
comfort in the hands of her friends which rested on her shoulders.
She knew this link let them see through her eyes as she could see
through theirs.

It was a strange sort of linkage, as if
four sets of images were running together through her mind. One was
what her own eyes actually saw in the here and now, another two
came from her friends’ eyes and minds, what each now saw, mixed up
with what they remembered or knew about this place. In this stream
of images from Sandy she could see Sandy’s memories of when she
first came to this place, she with Alan, together seeing the giant
crocodile, Sandy with Anne and seeing the giant crocodile again as
it called for the return of its own.