Bluewood Mountain

Lapping waters splashed the cold pebbles and cobbles of the mountain lake shore. No two stones were alike; each was stout and flattish, but shaped and painted, uniquely, by nature’s timeless patience. According to Bluewood’s ancient people, the rocks were ageless bulwarks for lives that had been lived and lost.

Inca Roe—a carefree reader, weakened by tales of romantic lands—looked over the bleak beach, and she shivered for its wintry sorrow. The hopes and dreams of the dead crept into her heart like the chill crept into her toes. Surely, she thought, this place was as somber a repository for human sentiment as any of her people’s cemeteries.

She looked up from the misty water. Something was creeping in the blackness between the conifer trunks. Inca strained her eyes across the distance of the lake shore. “It’s them,” she mouthed to herself, clutching her bundle of books like an anchor latching onto sunken rocks.

As she wandered and wobbled across the stony shore, she wondered, would her excitement be sealed in stone one day. If so, she hoped her soul would become an agate. Maybe a little girl or boy would find her lingering foothold in the material world, and carry it home, cherished, in a jacket pocket.

She imagined, as she continued to navigate the edge of the lake towards her friends down the way, that maybe her eternal agate would be sat… in a little box of memories. What an honour, she thought, to be held precious alongside hopeless love letters and postcards from the world’s disparate corners.

“Gosh!” she exclaimed, as she twisted her ankle on an irregular cobble. “Am I really in such a hurry to die?”

Inca’s friends didn’t turn around to see her coming. Even when she shouted out into the blue—“Hey, guys!”—they just kept looking at something. Something on the ground. A brown sack on the ground. It was the kind of sack used to store grain or root vegetables. And some of the sack’s brown fabric looked darker; the icy lake water was rippling against the old bag, wetting it, turning it almost black.

She humphed loudly. It was tough for Inca to be ignored, because she’d always been the quiet one in the group. So, she tossed her book bag down, away from the waterline to keep it dry, and yelled again. And again. And again!

“Guys!”

Nothing.

“Hey, you guys!”

Nothing.

“Guys? What are you looking at?”

What were they looking at? Whatever it was, it was able to turn the world around them to black. Inca’s friends—River Roe (her cousin) and Martie Berch—were uneasy, looking down at the bag and kicking at the pebbles and cobbles. Inca could see they were anxious. And their anxiety was infectious, Inca started to panic. What could possibly be wrong with them, she wondered. To her, they were acting so strange...

“INCA!”

River finally bellowed back at his cousin. When he turned around to shout, she saw that his eyes were strained with worry.

The uneven substrate was dangerous, but Inca Roe broke into a frantic run nonetheless. As she reach her friends, she stumbled right into Martie’s arms. Martie Berch was the proverbial third wheel in their crew, but in fact she was the fourth of four.

“It’s bad,” Martie said to her dear friend Inca. Using both of her hands, Martie grabbed Inca by the shoulders and steadied her. Slightly emboldened by a deep, deep breath, she tried to continue. “Inca,” she whimpered, “it’s a dead body… we found a dead body. In the bag.”

That was when Inca knew. She knew whose body was in the bag. She just knew. In fact, all three of them knew. And that’s why they just stood there, looking down at the fingers sticking out of a hole in the side of the brown sack. They were all too scared to pull the damn thing open to find out what they all already knew.

The warmth drained from River Roe’s hands. His eyes filled with water, and he wiped away the nascent swell with his cold hands. Those hands slipped down from his eyes and rested on his nose, making a cup over his mouth. River tried to talk through his fingers, “I’m gonna do it,” he mumbled. His words were slow, sinking with the sodden march of certain despair.

Inca and Martie flanked River, each girl placed a gentle palm on his back. They meant to console him rather than encourage him, even if they didn't realise it. River could hear them stifling the tears, and he whimpered himself as he bent down to grip the edge of the sack. As he left their touch, the two teenagers leaned into each other, buttressing their grief together.

As he pulled back the coarse fabric, he knew it was the beginning of a miserable chapter in a rotten story.

Drizzle trickled down little panes of glass; that was the only window in Constable Dodo’s five-by-five office. Bluewood Mountain’s police chief creaked back in his well-worn chair and wheezed a mumble out of his tight, old lungs. “It sure does rain a lot here,” he said to the smile of his wet and broken reflection, “and I love it…”

Some young’uns ran by, splashing almighty in the puddles; and the Constable watched with a wrinkle in his dimples. To the town’s kids—they blew raspberries as they sped by—Dodo seemed as old as the world itself. In truth, his identity card placed his date of birth as 53 years ago.

The children’s vibrancy brought the old timer’s past to the surface, he was overcome by thoughts of love and life (fond and fraught alike). “When did Yorman make me the constable? Has it been...”

á—·Oá‘­ á—·Oá‘­ á—·Oá‘­

A knock at the door interrupted Consntable Dodo’s reflection. “Oh, yes,” he said, struggling to move his chair between his desk and his files in the tiny room. “Come in, of course—it’s unlocked,” he wheezed.

Lo and behold, what are the chances… “Dodo, my old friend, hello,” they were the words of Yorman. And Yorman Wilverson was the mayor of Bluewood Mountain. “Don’t get up,” insisted the mayor when he saw his friend’s belly stuck between a rock and a hard place. “I don’t want you to suffer this terrible news on your feet. Like I had to.”

Dodo took on a little air, bracing himself. He placed his pale digits on the edge of his desk and clenched his lips. Dodo stared at the mayor hopefully. Yorman was still standing in the doorway. Heck, the room was so small, he had to stand in the doorway.

“It’s the kids,” the mayor chanced ruefully.

“I just saw the kids running by!” Dodo snapped back.

“No Constable,” the mayor continued. “It’s,” he hesitated, “the older kids.”

It was then that the constable understood. Bluewood Mountain had a way of tangling teenagers in terrible troubles. In a flash of anger, Dodo shoved his chair back into the cobwebbed brick behind him and dragged his gut free of his desk.

“YORM YOU OLD BASTARD DON’T CALL ME CONSTABLE.”

Yorman steadied his friend with a firm grip. “There’s been a murder,” he conceded.

“Who?” the constable asked, lip quivering and eyes stout ahead of the tears.

The mayor sniffed, squared his shoulders and said, “Autumn… young Autumn Jack. Arteur’s little girl.”

The rain rolled in with the constable and a couple of his deputies. Together, the lawmen walked the shoreline’s rocks like the kids had before them. Dodo blocked his subordinates with his right hand in one’s belly and his left hand in the other’s. “Fellas,” he said with five decades of compassion, “wait here—I wanna talk to the kids, first.”

“Okay.” / “Sure.” <– the replies from each of them.

Dodo did the cobble wobble and came up behind the kids. Inca, River, and Martie were soaked to the bone, shivering, and still suffering the sharpest edge of a jagged trauma. Inca's was crying her eyes out. River was wailing words like “no” and “why”. Meanwhile, Martie had her back turned and longed for the opposite shore and the lie that everything was going to be fine.

“I got your call,” Constable Dodo said calmly. “A couple of my best guys are over there.” The constable pointed to the two belly boys a way down the shore. “They’ve got blankets and coats—some warm soup. I want you to go back to town with them.”

Nothing.

Constable Dodo waited.

He corrected the hood of his raincoat with a tug and dug his hands into his pocket.

There was a chill, and together with the rain, it worked to cement the details of a day that nobody in this lonesome town would ever forget. Mountaintop gusts bit their faces. The clouds were low enough to touch and black enough to haunt. The psychosphere conspired with the atmosphere and the very mountains themselves to isolate the sorrow-ridden people of Bluewood Mountain.

“I’m sorry, guys,” he said after a minute. “I’ve got to get you back to your parents.”

River sniffed and snarled, “what about Autumn’s parents?”

“River,” the constable said, stiffening his lip against the tragedy, “I’ve got to get Autumn out of here as well. You know that. I have to get her back to her parents… even still. I have to do it. And I have to begin the investigation right now.”

Snorting and driving his feet into the substrate, River Roe reluctantly conceded. The young lad was like a young bullock, yielding to life's worst moments like cattle yield to a stern master. He grabbed Inca by the shoulder and tugged her under his arm. “Mart,” he shouted, trying to snap her out of her traumatic trance. “Let’s go,” he insisted. “MARTIE!”

She snapped, “SHUT THE FUCK UP! OKAY?”

River flared his nostrils. Inca thumped him in the solar plexus. River didn’t budge. She thumped him again.

“Fucking stop it, guys,” Martie said turning away from the water and dragging her two friends by the wrist. “Autumn’s gone, she’s not there. That’s it.”

The three teenagers and two officers of the peace headed back to town.

Dodo was left alone with the body.

Together, they all went down to Bluewood Mountain Infirmary. They saw their baby there, stretched out on a cold steel table. Autumn Jack was so sweet, so calm, so fair. So dead. The victim’s ripped dress—and all her clothes for that matter—had been removed as a matter of course. For decency’s sake, her body had been draped with a clean, white sheet. Only her face and her bare shoulders were uncovered. Autumn’s lively blonde hair bounced over the edge of her cold, cold bed. Xanga, the girl’s exotic mother, fixed her daughter’s hair with the push of a slim finger. Meanwhile, Arteur simply stood behind his wife; he shivered and wept uncontrollably.

The constable—waiting at the back of the room—had done the family the favour of closing the hopeless girl’s eyes. As an officer of the law, he was familiar with lifeless eyes and their wicked capacity to inflict trauma. Sleeping eyes were the best, thought Dodo.

After some time, the infirmary’s broad doors gently crept open to welcome a procession of the Bluewood Mountain’s mourners. Chief among them came the crying tears of River and Inca Roe. In contrast, the Roe family’s adults ambled with the solemn silence of those previously acquainted with grief. Rosa Roe grabbed Inca by the shoulder and squeezed, relieved that her precious child wasn’t on the table.

“Uncle Juck,” River asked quietly, “how long will they keep her here?”

“Probably just today,” his uncle replied. “Because of the way it happened they’ll want to do tests,” he conceded with a long, drawn out sigh.

River bit his lip and sniffled.

The constable, meanwhile, cast himself with decorum. He carefully guided the townspeople in to pay their respects. But, internally, the detective’s mind was wandering through the possibilities. The boyfriend, River Roe. Naturally, that’s where the investigation would begin. Martie, Inca. Dodo watched, maintaining his blank expression, while each of Autumn’s family members and friends walked by. The parents. Over the years, the constable had watched with ease while criminal after criminal exposed their own guilt—body language, for most, was difficult to subdue.

In the dim light of the infirmary’s viewing room, Constable Dodo watched hands shake hands, he watched hugs and he watched tears, he watched the movement of their eyes. Yet, for all his watching, nobody screamed out in sin. For the first time in a decade, Bluewood Mountain’s principal policeman had a real mystery on his hands.

Who killed Autumn Jack...

One of Dodo's deputies poked his head through the door and winked at the constable. "It's the doc," whispered Dodo's underling, "he's out here acting like a-"

The constable cut off his deputy with an thunderous brow and mouthed back, "TELL. HIM. TO. WAIT."

Chimney pot smoke swirled into the watercolour sunset. Night threatened, haunting Bluewood Mountain, reminding them all that it was just another day. Beneath the winter sun and red tile roofs, full glasses of this and that were poured and drank to ward off the morbid truth.

Meanwhile, under a roof of a different colour, Autumn’s corpse was almost alone. The infirmary had closed its doors to the public, leaving the venerable and impatient Dr. Square to happily work out-of-hours. The short man scurried through the building with his weasely hands stuffed into his candy-filled pockets. Square preferred the evening’s echoing corridors to the unsolicited geniality of his daytime colleagues.

“This girl was strangled,” he sniffed to himself as he rolled the body out of the morgue and into the candlelight of his workspace. “That much is obvious,” he insisted dismissively. The doctor scribbled as much in his report. “But,” he coughed, “it would be a dire, dire, dire dereliction of duty to leave a stone unturned.” Square licked his lips. “Especially,” he sneered, “in a murder case!”

Dr. Square tugged the leather strap on his busy magnifying goggles. “Yes,” he said fixing the buckles, “that’s it!” What the doctor meant by it was always a moving target. “It” was synchronicity, an alignment of things (any things) that felt perfect. In this case: the goggles were snug, visual details were enhanced, and his mood for slicing dead flesh had been aroused. So, the doc had found his vibe, his groove, his imaginary beat to jive to.

Square brought the lens of his goggles up to the dead girl’s cloudy pupil. Then, he pierced it with his scalpel. Blood squelched from Autumn Jack’s lifeless eyeball. The congealed liquid bullseyed Dr. Square’s magnifying lens. “Hmm,” he said while pulling the length of his apron up to his headset to wipe off the blood. “That’s a first,” he mused to nobody but the damp stone walls of his coroner’s chamber. He looked inside the open eyeball, nodded, and then swung back to his desktop notepad and jotted down his findings.

Every morsel of the young woman’s rigid body came under the skulking doctor’s magnifiers and knives.

“Time to drain the rest of the blood!” he bellowed with bucket in hand. From there, the viscous fluid was divided into tubes and flasks for a raft of tests.

Evening gave way to midnight, and the autopsy continued.

Autumn’s rib cage spread under the duress of Square’s rusty spreader. Then, pop, slop, pop, slop; every organ came out and ended up on the scales.

Dr. Square steamed ahead, driven by duty or lust, into the darkest hours of the night…

Meanwhile, Xanga Jack grieved behind the stained glass sanctuary of their capacious study.

The long exorcism was beginning: by firelight, she whipped her pen across a fresh sheet of paper. Electrified with fury, and embittered by the gods, she scratched her anguish onto the page. To Xanga’s regret, her tears pattered the paper and blotched the ink—but, she didn’t start over. The initial regret faded, and she went on with renewed vigor; the message, she grew to believe, had been galvanised through the manifestation of her bereavement.

She lifted the flap of an envelope and thoughts of its destination streamed out, flooding her mind. Again, she charged on, casting the anxiety aside. With no more thought of the consequence, she pushed the note inside and began to address the correspondence in earnest.

Master Shaman, Gum do Mugu

Before she could finish writing the address, her intense conviction was interrupted by a knock at the door.

á—·Oá‘­ á—·Oá‘­ á—·Oá‘­

Her palm slammed over the name she had written, obscuring it.

“I just,” the voice crept into the room like a lament set to the solemn wail of the door’s hinge. It was Arteur, her husband. He repeated his chorus—“I just...”⁠—and stepped, sheepishly, into the room's fiery glow. He sniffled. “I just,” he tried. “I just,” he tried again. And then, it happened, he crumpled to his knees and bawled into the swirls and lines of their Raiaeran rug.

"Oh, Arteur," she said, biting back at her own distress. Unlike her husband, Xanga had hope; it was written on that page and, without fail, she would ensure the letter's safe arrival.

“Right now we’ve got a job to finish!”

“Let’s find Dr. Asymmetry!”

The conversation spooked the sleeping starlings from their silver birch roost. “Shhhh!” Two hooded men were willfully lost, gripped by the darkest hours of the night, and tangled in the brambled thickets of the mountainside forest.

Little Hood sniffed, long and hard. “Do you spell that pine?” he said, smiling in the darkness.

“Pine smells so clean,” enthused Big Hood.

Twigs snapped between their feet, and the leaf litter rustled with each leg swing—the two unknowns forged blindly ahead.

“Where is the damn lodge?”

Bluewood Mountain
Participant: Gum du Mugu

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