Jocko had seen the Gympie Gympie at work before, seen what it did to people who touched it, but that was always a brush. A glancing blow and then agonised screaming for hours. Days even. Fellas topped themselves over it, usually after weeks without sleep. But he'd never seen anything like that before. Never a bloke take a face full of the stuff.

He shouldn't have even been here. Jocko'd thought if he went to Sydney he could study architecture and build a way out of living a life on the border between the desert and the rainforest. But his father had put that to bed. Dragged him back to Jimboomba, and forced him to abandon drafting. Jocko couldn't see a way out of that, and he couldn't see a way out of his current situation.

They'd followed this Kanaka deep into the rainforest, and he wasn't exactly sure how to find his way back out again. The Abos followed some invisible fuckin' trail through the jungle, but he couldn't make hide nor hair of it. Jocko was a smart man, he knew, but he couldn't see what they did with their black eyes.

Then the fancy tracker made another horrifying discovery. Laying in the middle of the path was a bird near the size of a man, its head gone, its spine ripped out through the back. The group stood around staring at the corpse, not speaking. Maybe I actually know something they don't, Jocko thought.

"What the fuck did it do to this emu?" Jocko said. Emus were giant flightless birds, he'd seen a few of them in Sydney being marched down the street. Quite the spectacle, there was an intelligence behind their eyes that scared him a little. This emu, excusing the missing head, seemed like a shorter, fatter version of what he'd seen in those better days in Sydney.

"Not any emu I've ever seen," replied David. Jocko could hear the fear in his voice. It was nice to know it wasn't just him scared. David bent down to the desecrated corpse and lifted one of its feet, showing off three huge railway-spike claws. "Dunno what this is. Maybe the Ghindaring can change shapes."

John spat and bent down next to David. "It's not the fuckin' Yaut-way." John grabbed the other foot and held it up to find the moonlight. The foot was missing its largest toe, and bright green blood spattered across the foot, mixing with the red. "The fuckin' islander killed this thing for a spear or a knife or something."

"What about the green though?" Frederick asked.

There was an uncertainty in the gunfighter's voice Jocko hadn't heard before. It heightened his fear further.

"It's nothing," John replied. There was no fear in his voice, just anger. "Plant sap or something. Old Jock-arse over there reckons the Kanaka knows the plants around here. Maybe he used the green shit to slow this giant fuckin' chicken down."

"I don't think so, John," David said quietly. It didn't matter how quietly he spoke, the rainforest was dead silent. "I think Jimmy was right. I feel like something's watching us."

John stood up and threw the foot to the ground. In the moonlight, Jocko could see the man's face twisted into a sneer before the fancy tracker shook his head, visibly changing his mind on what to say next.

"Well instead of watching us the blackbird shoulda been watching where he was going, because he's trapped himself." John said, gesturing to the trees in the direction they'd been heading. Jocko looked, but he couldn't see anything notable about the trees. "The way the trees are sloped, he's walked straight to a dead end. No way out there."

The trees didn't seem to be sloped at all, far as Jocko could tell, but he kept the thought to himself.

The trail, invisible as it was, led them to a natural cliff formation, exactly as the tracker had said. He'd seen the topographical surveys of his father's station, and he didn't remember anything like this on it. It caused him a great deal of consternation.

The cliff face gave way to a cave, a gaping black mouth that could be a few metres deep or could go on forever. Jocko couldn't look at it without feeling a similar cavern develop at the pit of his stomach. The trackers built a hasty fire at its mouth, but even with the light from the flames licking at the cave’s lips, Jocko found himself looking anywhere else.

In the natural clearing before the cave, Jocko could see the tops of the trees now. They seemed to shimmer in the pale moonlight like the sand did near the house on a hot summer's day, the air dancing and waving about. He looked down at the fire and saw the half-caste bushranger girl beaming back at him, her face swollen and purple, her mouth a mess of missing teeth and dribbling blood, her lips turned upwards into a spiteful smile.

It was as if there was nowhere Jocko could look. His eyes found their way back to the cave again. The walls were painted, adorned with 'graffiti' of Abos long dead holding their spears aloft, standing together, looking out from the cave like ghosts. There was something off about the drawings to Jocko's appraisal.

The animals were drawn with incredible attention to detail. Despite what seemed like primitive art materials, whoever had painted these beasts had gone to great lengths to present them. Using only lines, no shading, the cave paintings showed the rippling muscles of a big red kangaroo, the mottled scales of a snake, a dog mid-yawn, its neck muscles straining. The painting of the emu creature had a great crest upon its head, and swords for feet, and despite only using perhaps three colours it leapt to life on the cave wall, lit only by the adjacent flame.

And yet the natives were stencilled, depicted in negative space only, except for one who towered over the rest. The others were white space in the red ochre painting, but this one was a behemoth, with long hair to his shoulders, painted in charcoal black. Jocko knew for certain that it was Big Joe.

He looked at the cave, and the overwhelming darkness engulfing him. The trackers weren't that smart. Big Joe had known exactly where he was going: he'd lured them here.

"I'm not going in there," Jocko said. He stated it firmly, to hide any fear from his voice.

Frederick smiled as he turned on Jocko. He could hear the cowardice in the man's timbre, the yellow in his soul. Jocko had been a craven piece of shit this entire time, Frederick had seen it, heard it, but somehow that cave scared the up-jumped cattle rancher more than anything in his life. "You've spent how fuckin' long telling these black fellas that they're yella, and now you're not gonna go into a fuckin' cave?" he sneered.

"Yeah," Jocko replied, and unsubtly swung his shotgun to face Frederick. There was some steel to his voice suddenly. Mettle. "You got something to say about that?"

Frederick half respected the gumption as he eyed the weapon, but Jocko was all bark and no bite. "Think I've already said it," he replied, goading the station owner's son to do something. There was a long pause, but nothing came of it. Having laid bare the spinelessness of Jocko, Frederick's smile widened and he continued, "Fine. You stay out here and guard the bitch. If we come back out and she's not here, I'll make sure you never leave that fuckin' cave."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"You're never going to leave it yourself," spat Anna from next to the fire. Frederick's smile disappeared. This fuckin' cunt doesn't know how to shut the fuck up, he thought, seeing red. He stomped across to her and kicked her in the torso. Time to shut her up for good, payout be damned.

Frederick drew his knife from its sheath and grabbed the girl by her face, lifting her up off the ground, his fingers pinching between her upper and lower jaw, forcing her mouth open. "I'm gonna cut your fuckin' tongue out, whore," he snarled.

Anna yelped, her spite gone as pain took hold. Frederick could feel her jawbone crunch beneath the skin, an existing fracture expanding to a break as he lifted her up. He raised his knife high in the air, so she could see it coming. A flash of light cast across her face: the reflection of the moonlight off a blade.

Frederick's forearm roared in pain as a white-hot fire burnt through it just below his raised wrist. He saw Anna's eyes widen. Frederick looked across and saw his hand, gripping the knife, falling to the ground below. Something dragged its way through the air above him, whistling as it passed. Frederick bellowed a roar at his missing hand and dropped Anna to the ground.

Twenty metres away, a chrome metal boomerang lodged into a tree. On the ground beside Frederick, his severed hand still gripped the knife. Frederick reached across his body and drew his gun with his off hand. Blood spurted from his open arm wound in large spurts, but he paid it no attention.

Frederick looked about to find his assailant, but there was none to be seen. The air around the cave shimmered, a visual trickery, like the haze after a cannon fired, and Frederick shook his head to clear it. As he finished, part of the air above the cave coalesced into a man-shaped figure.

It was too big. A giant. Frederick couldn't estimate its height, but it was much larger than any man he'd ever seen. It had hair in long ropes down to its shoulders. It had huge limbs, bulging with muscles, like a few Big Reds he'd taken down, and no shirt that he could see. In a heartbeat, Frederick raised his gun and fired at the behemoth. He had long practised with his left hand and while it wasn't perfect, it paid off, hitting the creature in the torso. Bright green blood spurted out, and the being roared that same sickening noise they'd heard too many times the last day.

Is this Big Joe? Frederick thought. Is this the Yowie? He glanced around. Joe and David were halfway in the cave mouth. Jocko, the coward, had fainted out of fright. His black boys were scrambling to help, but they didn't have an angle.

He'd bled it though. He could do more. Frederick slapped at the hammer on his gun with his ruined right forearm, blood spraying everywhere as he did, and he fired again. Faster than lightning, the creature leapt down off the cave entrance and onto the ground. Frederick grimaced at the miss and slapped back the hammer on his revolver again, ignoring the pain it caused in his stump.

The creature effortlessly slapped the handgun away as Frederick fired. It was so big. It had to be seven foot, at least. It wrapped its left hand around his face. Its fingers ended with claws like spider fangs, and they dug into Frederick’s skin as it held him tight. Frederick felt the other hand of the beast grab him at the shoulder. And then he felt a wrenching pain as the left hand lifted and the right one dragged downwards. Something in his back seemed to tweak. The agony was excruciating, beyond anything he could imagine. Frederick refused to let the pain win. He tried to swing his arm, to hit the thing, but nothing happened. He couldn't move at all.

David watched in horror as the Ghindaring ripped Frederick's spine from his body. Beside him, John was firing. David didn't join in. He watched as the beast flinched off one shot and then leapt into the trees. It dropped his boss' head and spine on the ground as it went. David watched as Frederick’s head blinked.

He fell apart. Overcome with rage and sadness, David couldn't bring himself to do anything. Paralysed by emotions, he tried to process them as quickly as he could. He had lost everyone he knew in the span of a few hours. John is still alive, but for how long? To what end? If we make it out alive, what will we do then? David didn't know any other life than this, and he was just now coming to terms with the idea that he barely knew this one.

And then there was the rage. David had told them the Ghindaring was following them. He had said time and time again that there was something off about the bush. About the outback. He hated the rainforest, and now he was to be vindicated in his hate.

He hated himself, for not having more backbone. For just going along with what Terrence had done to him, for following suit when the others had committed violence. For failing to insist they leave the rainforest when he knew they would die in it.

David drew his barker. He was done letting things happen to him. David looked into the trees. The Ghindaring had leapt back up again after killing Frederick and it had gone invisible. But the bush would show it anyway. And he was done failing to act. A branch moved, away from the cave. David saw it from the corner of his eye. He snapped across, levelling his revolver at it.

The young tracker watched the chrome metal boomerang fly away from the tree trunk. It hurtled in a wide arc through the trees themselves, passing through them or missing, David couldn't tell. It cut low as it spun its way into the hastily made camp site. It whirled through David's torso without losing any speed, and David marvelled at how it arced back up again to return to where it was thrown.

The two pieces of David fell to the ground as John looked on. The kid let out a pitiful moan as he lay in the dirt, his organs spilling out of both parts. John thought about putting the kid out of his misery, but decided he couldn't spare the ammo or time. It was long past time for John to admit that he'd made a mistake. It was rare, but it was the case. Big Joe had the spirit of the Yaut-way in him, that was a certainty.

John wasn't just any fuckin' killer, though. He wasn't some halfwit blak like David, who acted on feeling and never learnt nothing. He wasn't a trumped-up gub like Frederick, who thought he couldn't be beaten. If the spirit of the bush was in this blackbird, well, he was still a fuckin' blackbird. Still an islander, from a long way away. And this was John's fuckin' land.

He'd shot the thing, he was sure of it. When it had torn Frederick apart, John had drawn down and shot it in the back. Green blood had spewed from the hole he'd made and then it had leapt off into the bush again.

But John knew better now than to look for the blood. This thing was invisible, after all. Its blood was probably invisible too. He hadn't been able to see it when it had cut David in half. The boomerang it had thrown had come from up in the trees, but there hadn't been any green blood anywhere up there.

What he needed to do was watch for the evidence of absence. It was Jimmy's old tracking trick, the one he'd refused to teach John. When there was nothing to see, you looked for what wasn't.

In this instance, John could see a gum tree nearby with a clean trunk high above its fuel ladder line, where the tree typically shed branches to survive bushfires. At the height he was looking, those branches should still be there.

John lifted his shooter up at the space and smiled as he saw the telltale glint of the boomerang fly from the space, and he hit the deck, letting the chrome weapon whirl harmlessly above him. John sprang back to his feet when it had passed, and watched it continue its path. It would return to the Yaut-way, so he would shoot where it stopped.

The metallic projectile ripped high through the tree line again and lodged itself into a vine-covered red cedar tree: next to a space conspicuously absent of branches. John held his revolver with two hands and emptied at the space, quickly ratcheting back the hammer to fire as many shots as he could.

The noise of the revolver was such that he couldn't hear the Yaut-way as it uncloaked itself mere metres behind him. It held a spear made of the same chrome metal as its boomerang. The Yaut-way waited patiently for John to stop firing, and then it emitted a low growl.

John spun on the spot, gun raised, but he knew already that he was out. He didn't bother trying to fire. The Yaut-way stabbed the tip of the spear into John's torso, just below the sternum. It wrenched him forward, lifting him off the ground as it did. The spear tip slid deeper into John as the Yaut-way lifted him. It inched its way up John's torso as the spear dragged him closer and stood more vertically.

John could barely feel it. As the spear punched its way up out the top of his chest again, all John could feel was embarrassment at having been beaten.