THE BOX - The Awakening of the Seer, Chapter 1: The Past

     "It is a known fact that ye not speak the name of them that cared for the dead when they do die," reverently whispered Jarrah as they peered through the thorny Australian wattle bushed at the well-dressed group of mourners.  "They need respect.  That is the peace they seek, so the Father has told me."

     Geoffrey only nodded.  His throat parched with fear, while his sandy hair prickled with the unspoken thoughts of someone who knew that what they were doing was--unjust.

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The Box & The Awakening of the Seer
Chapter 1: The Past

By S. C. Gardner

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Beware of those whose claims are as of old,
Whose thoughts betray, engulf, beguile;
Of memories claimed for purposes unknown,
To enslave the mind, the thoughts, the soul.
To entice the very faithful into acts of despair,
To raise their own statues in memoriam,
To be esteemed by their own glory!

~ Translated from the 'Archivist's Codex'

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~ Early Spring 1918 ~

     “It is a known fact that ye not speak the name of them that cared for the dead when they do die,” reverently whispered Jarrah as they peered through the thorny Australian wattle bushes at the well-dressed group of mourners.  “They need respect.  That is the peace they seek, so the Father has told me.”

     Geoffrey only nodded.  His throat parched with fear, while his sandy hair prickled with the unspoken thoughts of someone who knew that what they were doing was—unjust.  They had lain on the damp crab grass for over an hour, his faded woolen pants and thin torn shirt chilled his tanned skin while the late afternoon breeze limped by, sending warning shivers through his mind.

     The preacher’s voice was muffled from where they lay, undistinguished from the sounds of the birds in the young Karri trees that sat above them, but his exaggerated actions sent images of death and damnation through Geoffrey’s soul—his damnation.

     “Look,” Jarrah nudged him.  “Da widow has fallen!  Does she not know he is in heaven with Jesus?”

      The young widow’s legs wavered and went limp.  Fortunately, her sister’s husband caught her just in time before she could prostrate herself upon the coffin, but he was not stout enough to hold the weight of such a large woman for long.  Her ruffled, black petty coat flung up and knocked over little Benson Collins, her sister’s bratty son, who would gleefully turn them in if he knew they were hidden a mere fifty paces from the gathering.  Fortunately, the widow seemed to regain some composure, merely buckling her knees, regaining her balance, thus saving both her sister’s husband and herself from a disastrous fall into the newly occupied grave.  Young Benson was not as fortunate, and he lay wailing upon the hallowed ground, his distress being comforted by the young widow’s sister.

     A sudden chuckle erupted from Jarrah’s throat.  “Da mean one has fallen.”

     Geoffrey glanced at his companion, whose charcoaled skin and ratty hair was in rude contrast to the cheerful grin that plastered his face, enhancing his broadened, yet slightly bent nose.  Jarrah’s clothing was in harmony with his—torn, ratty, and worn.  The current war in Europe had disrupted everything, even in the far distant lands of the Commonwealth of Australia, where food shortages and war rations had been enforced since 1915, leaving orphans such as themselves to fend for life’s necessities by any means possible.

     Jarrah’s life was always in a troubled state.  It started with his birth about fourteen years earlier when his white ghost-Mother was brutally beaten to death only a couple of days after he was born.  Jarrah was taken in by the local Aboriginal tribe and claimed by a man who later confessed to be his true father.  He learned from both worlds, the ways of his Father’s clan and the religion of his Mother.  An Anglican Priest known as Father Bishop mysteriously appeared one day proclaiming to be sent by God to bring the true faith to the local natives.  An old, gray bearded man, who walked with a stiff limp and whose face was worn and fatigued, yet whose eyes were strangely purposeful.  Geoffrey had known him as well, but only from a safe distance.

     “I feel as if I was chosen,” Jarrah confessed to Geoffrey one day.  “The Father had taught me special.  He gave me your language, read to me from your God’s book, and told me who I really was.  I was chosen, he said, the gift would go through me.  But I knew not what he means.”

     With the mark of two worlds upon him, Jarrah was an outcast from the white English society of his Mother and brutalized by the members of his aboriginal tribe.  His father had passed away the year before the war from some mysterious fall, which left Jarrah to find his way in the world through his own ingenuity.  Father Bishop had vanished the next day after his father’s death leaving Jarrah on his own.

      It was the spirit of Jarrah’s Mother that had spoken to him in an altjeriga, or dreamtime, that had brought them to the cemetery.  Though skeptical, Geoffrey had followed his friend more out of something to do then out of belief.

     “I still don’t understand,” Geoffrey whispered.  “Why you need what is in the coffin?”

     “Ah, because I have not told you all I have been told,” Jarrah replied as they both watched the mourners slowly depart.

     The Preacher had stayed behind to mind the grave, while the mourners drifted away toward the carriages that waited to take them back the town, a mile to the south.  As the living pulled away from the Cemetery, the sky began to dim, quietly turning colors of deep reds and subtle purples.  Turning toward the bush, the Preacher motioned with an impatient air of indignation.  Moments later Jonathan Hawks, the aged caretaker, limped out using a shovel as a crutch, obviously intoxicated.  Pointing toward the open grave, the Preacher made a few instructive gestures and departed.

     The boys watched impatiently as Hawks awkwardly began heaving the burial dirt over the polished coffin.  After only a few agonizing attempts Hawks paused and looked around sheepishly, pulled out a flask and consumed the contents.  The boys heard the caretaker grumble, thrust the shovel into a mound of parched dirt, and shuttle off, vanishing amongst the darkening bush.

      “Don’t sees why we should wait,” Jarrah eagerly announced.  “We might gets the box before the light goes.”

     Geoffrey nodded.  The warmth of the approaching summer night would soon pass, and the sooner they completed their task and left the grounds of the departed, the more comforted Geoffrey would feel.  They shuffled out from their hiding place and quietly approached the open grave.

     With calm agility, Jarrah jumped into the grave and landed quietly onto the coffin, slightly slipping on the dry dirt that lightly covered the richly adorned coffin.  “The Ghost-Mother told me,” Jarrah began, “to watch for da death of Master Evans, da box would be wheres he lay, she had said.”

     “But what is in the box,” whispered Geoffrey.

     Jarrah looked up and chuckled.  “I do not know!”

     Geoffrey was even more puzzled then before.  “Why then are we getting it?”

     A loud clang pierced the air as Jarrah snapped the latch on the hallowed lid while Geoffrey watched the eager hands of his friend purposely explore the coffin, attempting to find the secrets of how to open it.

     “Why are we getting it,” Geoffrey quietly emphasized.  “Why?”

     Another snap rang out from below, accompanied by a rasping of escaping air.  The putrid smell of the dead whipped past them, temporally overwhelming their senses.  Geoffrey choked momentarily as images of ghostly spirits haunted his imagination, chilling his soul.  The troubled sound of bending wood and rusting metal pierced Geoffrey’s mind as Jarrah slowly opened the coffin’s lid, revealing the contents of a pasty-faced Master Evans, adorned in a black, woolen suit, his cold, dead arms clasping a solid wooden box edged with metal bindings.

“The Father showed me da box once,” Jarrah sounded, awed with reverence as he peacefully removed the hands of the dead and lifted the heavy object from its resting place. “He only tells me that da box has the secret, and dat it must be passed on.”

     “The secret?  The secret must be passed on to who,” Geoffrey asked.

     “It is not me to knows what it is,” Jarrah stated.  “It is for dem’ that comes after me, the Father taught me.”

     “What do we do with it then,” Geoffrey asked, puzzled by his friend’s eager eyes that stared up at him from below, holding the box up toward him.

     “The Ghost-Mother said to give da box to you!”

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...There is more to "The Box" that must be Discovered...

What is in "The Box" no one knows.
Who are the Voices from the Past.
Why does the Seer not know who he is!

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© Copyright 2018 S. C. Gardner