Indigenous specters
Among the Living (2024) by Tim Lebbon
[Dean does some first aid for Goyo. They and their teams (rare earth prospectors versus environmental monkey-wrenchers) are isolated above the Arctic Circle and may have been exposed to a something in the melting permafrost.]
“So?” he asked.
“So…”
“What else have you seen that you can’t explain?”
“Oh. Right.” Another rip of a gauze pack being opened. “Er, you okay if I cut—”
“Not the ponytail.”
“Sure. I’ll leave that old thing hanging there. Source of your strength, right, Herc?”
“That’s about right.” Goyo didn’t push him this time.
“I guess you know a bit about me and Bethan?”
“A little.”
“Right, well, I’m not here to defend myself or change your mind, or whatever. She did what she did, which I still think was fucking awful. Can’t say my reaction made me feel any better, but for me it was—”
“I didn’t ask about you and Bethan. Not my business.”
“No, sure. You asked about what else I’d seen that I can’t explain. That’s a lot to do with Bethan, actually. You know we travelled a lot together, climate activism, all that.”
“Got plenty of that in my past, too,” Goyo said.
“We were in Brazil this one time, trying to gather evidence against a bunch of illegal loggers,” Dean said. “This was just after the government there changed and finally embraced the whole ‘don’t kill the only planet we’ve got’ ethos. We were in the forests, lying low during the days and creeping closer to the logging camps at night, taking photos and filming, gathering faces and vehicle registrations. All turned out to be fucking useless, but anyway. And one day in the forest, we saw maybe fifty people from a tribe that had vanished forty years before. Just walking, carefree, right on by. Didn’t seem to see us, or if they did they chose to ignore us. When they died out, they’d remained virtually uncontacted by the outside world, one of the world’s last. Really sad time. And there they were, walking through the forest as if…”
“As if they still belonged there,” Goyo said.
“Exactly that.” Goyo heard scissors working, and the crunch-crunch of knotted hair being cut away from his burns. It hurt, but he tried not to flinch. Dean was doing his work, and telling his story, and Goyo was grateful for both.
“We described them to each other afterwards. The same thing. We saw exactly the same thing. We heard them brushing past trees and undergrowth, smelled the scent of their bodies and the paint they used as camouflage.”
“Photos?”
“This was during the daytime, we were hiding out from the loggers, didn’t have our cameras to hand. I’m not sure… not sure they’d have shown up on photos.”
“You think they were ghosts.”
“I can’t say for certain they were really there. I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”
“Huh.” Goyo waited for more, but Dean seemed to have said his piece. And moments later he sat back with a sigh.
“I think that’s all I can do for you for now. Got some gauze left, but I’ll save that for just in case. You know.”
