Shortfiction: The faceless

THE FACELESS

I will tell you there is nothing more enjoyable than travelling in a roofless Willys Jeep on a cool September morning through the bush, the sunlight warming you through the branches of eucalyptus trees, and the speargrass pushing over as you roll slowly forward. The Top End, with all its secret places hidden off the Stuart highway, gone now. Gone but not forgotten.
I was twelve.
We had camped that morning near Adelaide River in a tent, and went west off the Stuart highway a few miles north. My father, Francis, had driven us into the bush as he had done many times before, the Jeep taking us over the edge of the Stuart highway dropping off what was higher than the land around it. Once again we would see the unexplored wilderness where no man had set foot...and with wonder and attention I watched, searching the wilderness, thinking will I get to see an emu or a kangaroo this time, as all territory children had apparently been lied to, and were utterly convinced you could not trip over a red ant hill or walk behind a tree without spotting a dozen giant red kangaroos. There were none this morning. Humanity had apparently chased every sensible kangaroo from this part of the Territory, though I didnt consider the Jeep engine all that loud.
It must have been aproaching eleven in the morning, the Jeep pushing through the wilds of what might have been crown land. Still there were no kangaroos.
What truly confuses a twelve year old is the impossible and out of place. There were no words to describe what I was seeing. They were suddenly around us, perhaps half a dozen of them, tall and pale, scattered amongst trees. No, not kangaroos. Not emus. They were people. Naked people. Human isnt the right word. They were not aboriginal or any other human. Human is most certainly not what I was seeing. Seven feet tall, and faceless. And as the Jeep slowed to a halt, confusion at what I was seeing was the singular gift this unexpected experience had burdened me with.
Aboriginals talk about the Wulgaru...or rather they dont. All you need to understand is that the story is seperate to the truth. The very first people who came to Australia were Neanderthals from northern Europe. The Aboriginals of Australia are a culmination of many peoples migrating to Australia, converging into one people over a hundred thousand years. The future remembers the past as a story, so modern aboriginals remember those Neanderthal ancestors as a people who were not human. A people, tall and predatory, who snatched away law breakers, like giant shadows moving through the trees. The Wulgaru.
These were not Neanderthal. These were Wulgaru in the sense of the lie that had been built around them. The illusion of the story teller told and retold. The idea. And yet there they were. Wulgaru. Faceless, tall, alien. As relatable as though we had driven into a herd of kangaroo and they had not simply hopped away.
I wonder what my father was thinking to this day, taking me...us into the bush. And now he had halted the Jeep in their midst. I wonder often whether he had even seen them. Did he see them? We simply sat there in the Jeep and waited...for something to happen. One of the faceless, without eyes, or nose, or mouth, or ears, or hair, came silently forward through the grass like an inquisitive kangaroo interested in a new smell and having halted by the right side of the vehicle, touched my father and in that moment it was as though Francis had died, slumping in his Seat. The confusion I felt was overwhelming. What had happened? Who were they? They were certainly not anything I had ever heard of as a child. I felt no sense of fear. They were just a confusing discovery.
I didnt see the one that came up behind me. A hand on my shoulder? Was that what happened? My journey ended there in the bush.
I woke up in my bed in Darwin, and though my confusion as to the events of that day subsided and were forgotten, I will tell you... Even as I write these words, I think, there is a Jeep parked somwhere in the wilderness, likely burned by thirty plus years of bush fires, and rusted away by rain, forgotten,  with human remains nearby. And we did not make it home.
I think of the hundred of old burned out and rusted vehicles, cars, trucks, and airplanes scattered across the Top End; and you, safe in your little lie, with only a vague sense that you may have had a similar dream. That you who went bush alone, or with your parents, or children only to wake up in your bed did not make it home either.