Afraid of the Dark

By Sel Seivad

A sweeping narrative from the Great Victoria Desert of Australia, to the North Shelf of Alaska and from present day to the Late Palaeolithic era, Afraid of the Dark is a gripping adventure of life-threatening events and dangerous journeys. A strange tribe of native Americans, attacks by moose and grizzly bears, criminal activity in the modern day, a mysterious watcher and a near disaster in the air over the Atlantic. With a twist you will not see coming and an ending that begs for more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie Davies
• Release date: Sep 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648952213

Book preview

Dedication

With grateful thanks to the late Dr. Russel Hall

for his insights into palaeontology.

Also, to Pilot Captain Craig Rabie

for his knowledge of aircraft.

Lastly to Mike Roberts

for his interruptions and silly jokes.

Prologue

North Dakota, USA.

Two years before present (b.p.)

Chief, Chief! A loud banging on his door and children calling him with panic in their voices had the old man leaping out of his bed and running to the door. A ten year old girl and a boy a couple of years younger were standing at the door, both of them were crying.

The girl spoke, Come quickly Mom is dead, Dad has killed our Mom. He put on his slippers, and grabbing his dressing gown, ran after the children towards a portable cabin at the outer edge of a cluster of similar cabins and caravans. He pushed past the father who was, himself, crying on the veranda. Inside, the body of a skinny woman lay on her back on the floor in a pool of blood, her face beaten to a pulp. He felt her neck and found a weak but definite pulse. Pausing to put her into the safe position, he ran back to his caravan to phone for an ambulance. Before he had gone a short distance, he heard a police car siren sound a single ‘Whoop!’ to warn of its approach.

The Mclean county sheriff had driven the ten miles up from Washburn, North Dakota to the settlement just south of Falkirk. The large, rotund police officer emerged from the driver’s seat. He gave a salutary wave to the old man and turned to the back doors of the car.

The older man waved and called, Sheriff! Can you use your radio to get an ambulance urgently, it may prevent a murder? The Sheriff looked bewildered but called the ambulance anyway.

It will be here in about fifteen to twenty minutes.

He followed the old Chief back to the crime scene at the portable cabin. After a look at the scene and a quick explanation, the Chief attended to the woman and the Sheriff started to question the distraught man on the veranda. The ambulance turned up and quickly and efficiently loaded the limp body of the woman before driving off, sirens blaring and lights blazing.

Will she live Chief? The Sheriff asked.

Without a doubt. She was never a good-looking woman, but her looks will be a lot worse when her face heals. I think that she has a broken arm and maybe a finger or two but she will heal and be fully functioning when she does.

What about Jake Desert Storm there? The Sherriff said, pointing to the piece of human garbage still wailing on the steps.

Arrest him and tell him his woman is going to die and he will get the chair.

Why?

She’ll recover, he’ll beg and plead with her and tell her how much he really loves her. He then swears on the great Wakan Tanka that he will give up drink and never do it again. She will refuse to give evidence against him and he’ll walk. The least we can do is to make him sweat a little, so keep him shitting himself for as long as you can.

I’ll stick him in my wagon anyway. Hell! I forgot I have a few of your guys to deliver, that’s the reason I came.

Which of my tribe of deadbeats has he picked up this time? The old man wondered. Hundreds of great tribal groups of native Americans and I have to end up looking after the worse bunch on the North Dakota grasslands, even on the continent.

Three skinny, bedraggled men just about fell out of the car. Long Finger, Wolf Tail Williams and Skunk; look at Skunk, he’s vomited all down his front and where the hell did Williams get money for booze at this time of the month? What a bunch of arseholes. All these thoughts passed through his mind as the men staggered off to their respective huts or de-mountable cabins to face the wrath of their wives, see their hungry kids and to sleep off the residue of their previous night’s alcohol intake.

The sheriff stuck Jake Desert Storm in the back and locked the police car, navigated around a couple of kids with runny noses and distended bellies and strolled over to the old man’s caravan. He was waved in to the welcoming aroma of brewing coffee.

Ah, that smells good, Chief, he said.

The old man smiled at being addressed by his title but, for what it was worth, that is what he was, a Chief. He was Chief of a small tribe that no other American tribe would admit any relationship to. As the Sheriff sat down there was screaming and swearing from one of the cabins.

That will be Bad Apple beating up his squaw, as you wacusin would call her, or his wife beating him up? Either way they’re both worth less than the contents of a spittoon. Leave them, they’re not as nasty as the specimen you have now, muttered the Chief bitterly. Do you know why we call him Bad Apple. No? We call a Native American Apple when he tries to act like a wacusin, red on the outside but white in the middle - but he’s just rotten in the middle.

The Sheriff took the mug of hot, black coffee that the Chief had made just the way he liked it, stared at it thoughtfully and then looked up at his friend.

I don’t understand you Chief. You worked so hard to get through a Medical Degree and win one with honours, you could get a top paying job in any hospital in America and yet you bury yourself with this bunch of losers. Why?

You forget my good friend that I was born into this bunch, but that aside, I believe that I was born with something the rest of my people didn’t have.

What was that, intelligence?

No, it’s not that, they aren’t stupid even though they act as if they are. There is something else that’s not there and I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to figure out what it is. One day the great Wakan Tanka will tell me and then I will be free.

The two older men sat, drinking their coffee and talking of things in general whilst, outside, little stirred except dust and flies.

Well! I have a town with plenty of problems of its own so I’d best be on my way. Keep searching for your answer, Chief, we’ll both get benefits. I’ll keep you posted about this guy, pointing to the back of his car. The Sheriff heaved his bulk out of the chair, shook the Chief’s hand, climbed in his car and drove off.

The Chief watched the car disappear into the distance and muttered, Thank you Wakan Tanka for sending me that man as our Sheriff. He turned back to his little stove, cracked two eggs into a pan and laid out a small table for his breakfast. The eggs cooked, he switched off the gas, and then heard a scream.

She was at his door, Chief! Chief! The middle kid was making a noise so Bad Apple belted him, now the kid is unconscious and Bad Apple is going to kill himself, she pulled at the Chief’s arm. With a bit of good luck, he may succeed, he couldn’t resist the thought as he grabbed his medical bag and chased after her, his breakfast forgotten.

Chapter 1

Late Palaeolithic Era.

10000 b.p.

The tracks led down the slope towards the valley. Not a good sign as they needed to catch them on the heights. Durra was cold and his feet were wet where the snow had melted into the soft grasses and moss he had used to line his skin boots. Some of the old people never wore boots even in the worst of weather but Durra had worn footwear from an early age. These were good boots, made from the thickest part of the hide of those same beasts that they were tracking. The cave bear hides gave the best skin for warmth, but were very heavy and so they were used only on those parts of the body where the most heat was lost. It was the rumblers that gave the wear for boots and the strength for shields. They had been tracking these rumblers for six days through the early snow that covered the tundra. Even when caught they would have to use fire to drive them to the top of the cliff and even more fire to drive them over the edge.

They were five mature men and one boy in the group, barely enough to handle a herd of this size. Durra himself was close to forty summers, although he wasn’t too sure of exactly how old he was, an age when time, old war and hunting wounds made him slower and less able than his companions. His value to the party was his knowledge and experience. The boy was a big lad and very fast and strong, compensating for Durra’s shortcomings. He suspected the lad of being one of his whelps, but even his mother wasn’t sure. The boy had the task of towing the sled at the rear of the party with all their supplies on it. There were sure to be injuries or even death on this hunt unless the spirits of the old people joined them.

The sun was lower in the sky every day and the long night would soon be upon them. If they were successful, his tribe, his family, would have food and warmth to keep them through the harsh northern winter that was rapidly approaching. Failure was death to all. The slope was becoming steeper; the herd was no longer spread but moving into file and walking onto a diagonal track that beasts had worn over many centuries.

Leave the sled, he called to the boy, we’ll come back for it, and to the rest of the party, We’ll have to get in front of them before they get to the bottom, shouted Durra.

Borr was heavily muscled, younger than Durra and next in seniority in the hunting party, very strong and quite fast; his one major fault was that he was impulsive. It was as if his body had a habit of acting without instruction from his mind.

I can do it, he shouted and leaped off the side of the track. He started with giant strides down the slope, the strides became even longer and unsteady, and then he lost his balance as the angle of the slope became more acute. He fell on his back, started sliding wildly down the hill and, near the bottom, tumbled head over heels over the remaining distance.

The watchers above saw a small figure lying prostrate below and after the way they’d seen him descend they assumed he was dead. Durra groaned: the implication of having to stop everything and correctly prepare the body for Borr to meet his ancestors was disastrous for the hunt and for the future of the tribe.

He’s alive, the boy shouted with delight and the distant figure could be seen struggling into a sitting position.

Durra gave the boy a torch and told him to wait there at the top. If we get them back up then try to keep them going west, towards the cliff he instructed the boy. Let’s go he shouted to the rest of the party who followed him over the edge and slid rapidly but with considerably more caution down the slope.

Reaching the bottom, they looked back up the hill and could see the herd filing down the Track. Time was critical. Durra ran to where Borr was sitting,

I think there is something broken in my ankle, Borr shouted even before Durra reached him.

We’ll come back for you. Try to keep your leg still, Durra shouted as he turned back to the group. They quickly ensured that all their torches were well alight and started to run towards the base of the path. The younger ones soon began to leave Durra behind but even with their speed it looked as if the herd would beat them to the bottom of the track. Once they were on the flatland the hunt was lost.

The cold wind from the north was getting stronger, blowing tiny ice crystals into their faces as they ran. Durra, running at the rear and suffering badly from shortage of breath, tried to shout encouragement to the younger runners but he was losing heart and already preparing himself to tell the tribe that starvation was close. Tears began to form ice crystals in the hair on his face as he screwed up his eyes to look ahead. He was tall, skinny, with arms like blades of grass and unusual bright red hair. Given to spending a lot of his time daydreaming Goch was not respected as a warrior or as a hunter. The one thing he was really good at was his art and he was always the one chosen to depict all the tribal hunts on his wall paintings. He was, however, well liked despite his failings.

As they ran desperately towards the path, Durra’s heart sank, for it seemed to be another wasted hunt. Then he saw Goch, eyes wide and wild, nostrils flared and his long thin legs looking as if they were becoming even longer. They stretched out into incredible strides as Goch, screaming nonsense, passed everyone and, racing to the front, closed in on the herd. Durra felt his heart miss a beat. The lead cow and seniors in the herd had reached the bottom but Goch run right into the middle of the herd, waving his torch wildly, screaming and dancing. The animals at the rear of the herd looked as if they were going to trample him into the ground but one and then another stopped in their tracks, lifted their trunks, bellowed to the herd and stood, stamping their feet while twisting their trunks from side to side. He had delayed two younger cows and a calf on the path.

The remainder of the hunters caught up and combined to drive the three animals back up the path. The old matriarch turned and charged back up to rescue her herd. She was trumpeting and swinging her huge tusks but Goch was still yelling, waving his torch and dancing like a maniac as she closed on him. Fortunately for Goch she didn’t have the courage to charge him down and retreated, still trumpeting.

They reached Goch just behind the rumblers but the boy, helped by the trumpeting of the herd on the plain below, had already turned them west. It was no easy matter keeping them going in the right direction. The two cows must have weighed five or six tons each and the three beasts were mad with fear, often charging at the hunters but being turned by their fear of the fire in the torches.

It was a long and exhausting chase but the animals were finally trapped on the cliff edge. More torches were lit, brushwood quickly collected and containment fires lit in a semi-circle around the prey. Using poles, the men slowly pushed the fires closer and closer. The animals were screaming with fear, even lifting themselves onto their hind legs and swinging their trunks and tusks. All the while the rest of the herd below was calling to them.

The fires were almost touching the animals, their cries and the calls of the herd below were deafening. Durra gave the order that each man light two new torches and on his shout they charged between the containment fires towards the animals and tried to prod them. This, and the calls of the herd below, was too much: one cow jumped, then the next and last of all, the calf.

They were all cheering and dancing and for the first time in his life Goch was the centre of attention, accepting hugs and slaps on the back, bathing in the respect of his fellows.

Durra squatted and regained his breath, and composure. He allowed a short time for celebration then shouted, let us get down there before a stabtooth cat or pack of big wolves smell the blood.

They quickly went down the track but not nearly as fast as their former descent. Running from the track’s end to the base of the cliff they arrived at a scene of bloody carnage. The two cows had died in the fall; and the impact had been so great that some of their internal organs and bones had burst through their skin. The calf had landed on top of the cows and had not died but was so badly smashed that it would not survive for long. The boy ran to spear it and end its misery.

Stop, yelled Durra, keep it alive as long as possible, it will prevent it freezing before we can cut it up.

Accompanied by the screams of the calf, the hunters started setting up a perimeter of fire, partly to keep away the remainder of the distressed herd and discourage carnivores and partly to slow down the freezing of the carcasses.

Durra left them to it and went to see how Borr had fared. He was sitting up when Durra arrived, rocking backwards and forwards in pain. After a bit of a struggle to remove his boot, a quick inspection revealed a badly swollen ankle but no broken skin around his foot. There were small cuts on his arms and face but they were of no consequence. He gave Borr some of the leaves from his pouch and some tree bark that he always carried.

Chew the leaves now and they will deaden your pain. As soon as you feel the pain returning chew a small piece of the bark, but don’t wait until the pain is bad before starting to chew the bark. It is better if the pain is not allowed to fully return.

He then took some very thin strips of hide from his pouch, started to chew them and, when they were soft and wet, bound Borr’s ankle with them.

They will get tighter as they dry and will hold your ankle. He called the boy over. Go back to the caves and bring as many people as can walk and as many sleds as possible to carry the meat back. Borr, you go with him. Walk when you can but take the sled, put some meat on it, and leave room for yourself. The boy can pull you if he has to. Take fire and guard it because there will be many hungry fangs on the way and they will be attracted to the smell of fresh blood.

He returned to the kill, where the other three were busy butchering the carcasses and laying out the pieces to freeze. They had cut large squares of hide off the beasts ready to wrap frozen portions of meat and bones. Their faces and hands were bare for the work but were covered in blood. The reward for being at the kill was a feed on the warm, fresh meat eaten raw off the beast.

The calf was now groaning rather than screaming and the rest of the herd had accepted the fate of their former companions and were wandering off. The biggest threat now was large predators like the stabtooth cat, lions, large packs of big wolves or a cave bear. They had to keep the fires going.

The boy had strapped himself to the sled. Borr was hopping alongside with a broken branch as a crutch. Tied to the back of the sled were two blazing torches and among the supplies they were taking with them were two bladders of fat and oil to keep the torches burning. The pair set off with a shout and a wave and soon faded from sight in a frozen mist.

Chapter 2

United Kingdom.

Two years b.p. and earlier.

It was raining, as it often did in Wales, when two boys in their early teens climbed into the Mitchell’s bus that would take them from Cymmer Afan secondary school to their respective homes in Prossers Terrace, Abercregan.

What’re you doing this afternoon, Gus? The tall, thin boy turned to his companion.

I have to go for a run and have a spell in the gym before I have my tea. What about you?

Unless Mam or Dad have any jobs for me, I’ll be going up the shed. I’ve made a little circuit that I can fix into a car that will let a driver change the speed of the wipers. Finding someone with a car who will let me try it out may be a problem though.

I’ll come down after training if you like?

It sounds good to me Gus.

**

The door of the ‘Bundle of Wheat’ public house on the Winchester road just outside Shedfield, England was still open for the last drinks that evening. A slim man of over six feet and a man who was more muscular looking but shorter were both hustled out by the licensee with an admonition.

If you try standing on a table once again I’ll bloody well ban you for life, you freaking idiot. Bob Morganson, a Welshman who’d been running the pub for over twenty years, had no intention of banning either of the amiable pair, however he felt it was his duty to say something about their behaviour, even though it was harmless. With a sigh he returned to his duties behind the bar and his conversation with a long term regular.

Why do you put up with them, Bob?

Well! There are a couple of reasons. They’re from the same village as me in Wales so our families know each other. Even though I’m a bit older than they are I remember them from high school. That’s where all those of us who failed to get into the Grammar schools were sent, so that’s the second reason. Besides they’re really quite harmless, just a bit excitable in beer, that’s all.

Oh! Didn’t know you knew them. What were they like in those days?

The stocky guy, Gus, was the school’s star sportsman, Gerry was very quiet and I only knew him as Gus’s very close friend. It was a good thing for him as the boys in the school could be a rough lot, but they’d dare not upset Gus.

What? It was a pretty bad school, hey!?

No! Not really, in fact it was quite a good school and most of the teachers were very good at their job, he paused then with a laugh said, after all look how talented I turned out to be.

**

The muscular man meandered unsteadily to a parked car, opened the passenger door, climbed in and then got out carrying two electric torches.

They’ll put frigging street lighting around here one day, he said as he handed one of the torches to his companion. The tall man stopped his loud rendition of the Mammas and the Pappas’ ‘California Dreaming.’

Nah, I like it the way it is Gus. They both weaved their way down the road, torches waving as they murdered Unchained Melody without a thought for The Righteous Brothers’ sensitivities.

Hang on Gus, the tall man turned and went behind a tree at the road side; he returned and they continued for a short distance when he again stopped, held up his hand, turned and walked back behind the tree. After a while Gus, wondering what had happened, following his companion behind the tree. He found him stirring a pile of vomit with his shoe.

What are you doing Gerry?

I can remember the peas and the corn, but when did I eat those carrots? Both laughing they continued on, supporting each other as they staggered in concert. Turning into a large but unpretentious double gate, which opened automatically at their approach, they walked up a wide, gravel drive towards a large mansion. Built during Georgian times but renovated a matter of ten years before and incorporating every modern convenience, it was officially called Alfred House but was locally known as ‘the Soroken place’.

It was to this building that they were headed and where the locals believed that they were both employed by the mysterious and reclusive Mr. Soroken. The truth was that Gus was Gustav Parry and was the chauffeur to Gerwyn or Gerry Soroken, electronic and financial wizard and close to being one of the World’s richest men and it was a long time since they had first forged their friendship as boys in Wales.

**

Are you all set for tomorrow morning, Gerry?

Why? What’s happening in the morning?

For Christ’s sake, Gerry, we are off early to California first then on to Rawlinna after that and it’s an early start too.

Oh! I forgot, came the slightly slurred response, do you realise, Gus, that you are more like a Granny to me than my Granny was and boy! She was a fusspot to me. I will be ready at the same time as you are but don’t be surprised if I have a snooze on the plane. They were due to meet with the manager of their administrative centre in California in two days’ time and then to the ‘Sorokenation’ research facility located north of Rawlinna and east of Laverton in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia.

With a great deal of money and a lot of work Gerry had changed this huge establishment set in one of the most cruel and inhospitable areas of the world into a green and pleasant oasis, irrigated with water pumped from underground.

Is there any specific reason we’re making this trip again? It hasn’t been so long since we did it last time.

Well Keith in the Los Angeles office needs me to look over some papers and do some signing. He paused and thought, I don’t really know, I just have the feeling that I need to get my special project there moving a bit faster than it has been.

Gerry had been spending increasing amounts of time, not just at the desert facility but at a part of the facility that he segregated from the rest of the establishment with every means of maintaining secrecy that could be imagined. It was one part of Gerry’s life that Gus was not a party to and did not usually attempt to intrude into.

Chapter 3

North Shelf of Alaska, USA.

Two years b.p.

Amie Court wiped her forehead, lifted her face net and spat onto the ground. The weather was too hot, Alaska was supposed to be cold to outrageous numbers of degrees below zero but now it was sweaty, sticky and hot and she had made a wise decision when she had cut her dark hair into an almost boyish style in the interests of comfort and hygiene. Whatever was done it was done with mosquitoes, millions of large, stinging mosquitoes. Bully beef sandwiches became bully beef and mosquito sandwiches, between opening the packet and raising the sandwich to the mouth. The whole meal had to be eaten completely under the cover of a net if a thick, crawling layer was not wanted on the bread. What it meant was that, despite the heat, everyone had to work covered from head to toe with clothing, the smallest gap would be found by the little devils.

The main team was working on the steep bank along the Coleville River on Alaska’s North Slope and cutting at right angles into that bank. This was being done during the very short arctic and sub-arctic summer. It was the time of the midnight sun, the short, warm summer that offered the only period during which progress could be made on the dig.

Once the sun set and the ice giants of the north began their march south the ground became too hard to work and the weather too harsh for humans to work in.

Further along the river bank, excavations had been done by tunnelling into the side but so much information had been missed with that method. Brian Morse, a dedicated, or in the opinion of some, an obsessed palaeontologist who had sold his own home to help finance the project, was trying to find out why, throughout history, so many mass extinctions of living things had occurred. He and his team had worked their way along the steep river bank until, at the present location, they had found that erosion had exposed the richest concentration of fossils. The most recent lay at the top while the oldest were exposed at the bottom. On this evidence they decided that this would be the place to continue their exploration.

To do this they had started at the top of the bank by cutting a trench at 90 degrees to the river and slowly working their way down, sampling and recording as they progressed. They were cutting into the past, from modern day at the top of the bank down to what was deposited 250 million years before, at the end of the Permian age. Even earlier, if the dig went well enough before the money ran out. As they cut further and further into the bank they looked for the clues, in the deposits and fossils they found, that would answer some of the mysteries of mass extinctions of life.

The trench was over 100 feet long and between 40 and 50 feet in depth; at the bottom was an average of six inches of water over which duckboards had been laid to give a semblance of reasonable working conditions. They had only just returned to the dig after being evacuated two days before when the trench had flooded. The Alaskan summer also had violent rainstorms and Amie Court, a postgraduate student working towards her Masters’ degree, was mentally cursing the last downpour. She was a slim, five foot eight, 26 years old and very fit. At that height she was tall for a woman and was a couple of inches taller than her boss and mentor, Brian Morse. The dig had progressed much faster than they had dared hope. They’d gone through layers collecting evidence that gave them a line right to the end of the Cretaceous period. This was the entry from