Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
It was a small town at the foot of the mountain ranges that stretched in the far distance. Originally, the mountains were full of green trees. Further away from the village, deeper into the mountains, there was a sacred forest, called the Daintree Beauty.
The name sounded more like there were beautiful princesses living in a castle, trapped, ready to be rescued by handsome princes. But, that wasn’t the case. The trees in this forest were dark green, not too dark and not too light either. Almost like the kind of green military officers wore during the war, not quite long ago. Instead of princesses and princes and castles, there were prisoners of war camps within Daintree Beauty during the wartime. The dead were long buried, but the villagers believed the forest remained a prison to their souls.
Adam Bastian, a 25-year-old tour guide assistant, had led foreign tourists to many other locations in the nearby towns but he always managed to avoid Daintree Beauty. He grew up witnessing his grandfather suffering from episodes of unexplained hysteria after a failed hunting trip at Daintree Beauty and died not too many moons after. He heard stories during his childhood of those men who braved the forest with imprisoned spirits and never made it back home. With his sleek style and social knack, Adam convinced Jeremiah, the lead tour guide, to take the tourists to other attractions in the area.
It was a rainy Saturday in November, when the bus couldn’t get through the flooded road to a nearby tourist town. The recent heavy downfall had caused some serious damage to a main road that connected a number of main tourism spots around the area. The Great Holidays Tourism Company wasn’t about to risk losing business that was already on the way downhill due to the wet season. They needed to find other spots for the enthusiastic holidaymakers.
Adam looked down at his muddy brown boots and then looked up at Jeremiah. He whispered, with a slight tremble in his voice, “I really think we should find somewhere else to take them…uhmm…the forest is sacred…we all know that…the souls are trapped in there, my grandmother told me all about it. We all know it. I haven’t even been to the village itself in a million years!” Jeremiah bursts into a loud laughter, “Adam! What are you talking about? It’s Daintree Beauty! There’s nothing scary about the place. Those are the rumours of the past. After all, we are not even taking them in too far, we’ll be there for an hour tops, and then we leave. What can happen, really?” Adam looked at Jeremiah in disbelief. He could feel his blood boiling in anger and his face becoming warmer. He opened his mouth, about to shout at his boss, but changed his mind in a split second and quickly withdrew. He turned around quickly and walked away to the bus, parked with the tourists waiting impatiently.
The bus approached the village slowly. It was mid-day. The bus stopped by the roadside, not far from a worn-down bamboo hut. The stakes supporting the hut were old and faded. The hay roof had holes. Adam came off the bus hesitantly and walked towards the hut slowly. The sun was prickly on the skin. He looked in; there was no sign of anyone. It had a bench in the middle and a few worn sandals under the bench on the dirt floor. Feeling more tensed than ever, Adam walked quickly back towards the bus. He saw several tourists were stretching and walking outside the bus. They seemed restless. Suddenly Adam felt sick, his stomach churned and he swiftly sprinted into the nearby bushes and retched. Jeremiah, who had been watching him, walked quietly, tried to act normal, towards the bushes. Adam was catching his breath when Jeremiah got there. He turned around, “I’m sorry, Jer, I can’t do this. I just can’t. You really need to continue without me.”
Danu, the bus driver, pushed the brake pedal gradually as they approached the gate of the forest. The bus stopped with a loud screech that woke several tourists that had dozed off. Jeremiah climbed down the bus and saw the clear sign Welcome to Daintree Beauty, the Forest of Your Dreams. He looked around; there were a few carts selling food and souvenirs. Several of them walked fast towards the bus and carried with them some items for sale, noisily offering them to the tourists that were starting to climb down, out of the bus.
Jeremiah walked further out and saw there were more buses parked at the parking spots with tourists walking towards the direction of the forest. He pulled one of the food sellers to the side, “hey, I heard this forest is haunted, is that right?” The seller, a muscly young man laughed, “yes, it is haunted. It’s definitely haunted.” Jeremiah looked at him bewilderingly. The young seller had seen the look before, “The old tale talks about the imprisoned souls, everyone kept away from this place. The village deteriorated because there was no source of income. Since we started coming back here, selling food and souvenirs, and inviting people to come and visit the forest, there was nothing but good fortune for us, the villagers. This place has history that we want to share with the world, and it has a great landscape. We realised, it wasn’t the souls that were imprisoned, it was our minds!”
After a long walk, Adam found a lift on the way home right before sunset, when the blue sky turned into a few shades of orange in streaks. It was almost dark when he arrived at his grandmother’s small brick house, with two white wooden chairs and a small brown table neatly placed at the veranda. His grandmother slowly arose with the support of her walking stick, when she saw him coming in. He smiled at her. She looked relieved when he wrapped her skinny figure in his embrace. Although she looked like she was 100 years old, the glow that she was radiating reminded him of the time when she young, strong, and beautiful, “It’s time for your medication, dear.” He sighed, nodded and slowly let go of her. He left her in the living room to continue with her knitting. In the bedroom he opened the wooden drawer next to his bed, took out the pills and pushed them down his throat with a few sips of water. He waited for a few minutes before climbing on to the bed, placed his head on the pillow and dozed into a deep slumber.