The Ghost Gate

"The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window."

It was one of those dark blue nights that lay hushed and still. Any sudden movement threatened to shatter the cold, icy air. A three-quarter moon sailed in a cloudless sky. Its pale light dimly illuminated the track that meandered, here again, gone again, from the little pub in Goondaburra township to Glenmorris Station.

Father Benjamin Glennis was almost asleep on his horse. It knew the track well and had been ambling along under its own steerage, but it came to a halt and snorted a protest into the crystalline night. It was this sound, rather than the lack of motion that brought the priest suddenly awake and alert.

The horse tossed its head again and took a step backwards.

“What’s up, boy?” Ben leaned forward to stroke the animal’s neck. Nervous muscles quivered under his touch.

He peered ahead into the indigo darkness. A frost had settled, and reflected dusty pewter under the moon. Nothing moved. There was not a sound.

Before he had dozed, a pair of stockmen had been riding some distance in front of him. They had moved away now, for his own horse must have slowed while he’d been drowsing. He could no longer hear the steady rhythm of the other hoof-falls or the intermittent bursts out of key singing from the riders.

Yet something had frightened Rusty. His reluctance to move forward when Father used his heels was surprising. Rusty shook his head and dropped his neck in an effort to free himself of the reigns. This was most unlike the animal who was usually of an extremely easy and biddable nature.

Ben knew better than to try to force an animal in Rusty’s state and he looked around for any clue as to what had happened. That was when he saw the light. It was nothing more than a tiny yellow prick in the vast expanse of the valley. In the dimness, Ben could just make out the outline of a stockman’s hut. From it’s one and only window, the fragile glow shone gamely between the trunks of silvered grey gum trees.

Ben pulled on the left reign and was relieved that Rusty only objected to going forward and had no hesitancy about moving off the track, to the left, and heading towards the hut. As they drew near, Ben could make out another horse tethered to a hitching post in front of the dilapidated dwelling.

He dismounted and tied Rusty’s reigns to the same rail.

“Who is it and waddoo ya’ want?”

A rough voice gave warning into the silence, and turning towards it, Ben saw a man on the veranda. The moon cast a line of silver along the barrel of a shotgun, pointed right at him and he raised both his hands above his head.

“It’s me, Father Glennis.”

The man on the veranda stepped forward and peered through moonlight at him.

“I’m on my way to Goondaburra Station,”

Ben slowly edged closer to Rusty.

“I’ve been called out there to give the last rights to a worker who got injured yesterday.”

The man on the porch said nothing but Ben was relieved to see him lower the gun.

“Something spooked my horse out on the track,” he continued, “Then I saw your light and came to see what’s happening. I’ll just go on my way and not disturb you any further, shall I?”

“S’allright, Father,” the man said. “It’s me, Danny Harrigan. I didn’ recernize ya. A man can’t be too careful out ‘ere on his own y’ know.”

In the dark, Ben smiled at the irony of this statement. He recognised Danny as the rouseabout on Goondaburra; a young man who presented himself at every fete and shindig in the area but far less often to church services.

“What are you doing here?” Ben asked.

“I was drinkin’ in town,”

Danny ducked inside to prop the gun beside the doorway.

“Me and somma the boys were having a farewell for old Smithy. I reckon that’ll be him yer on y’ way to see.”

Ben nodded, guessing that the farewell in question consisted of a great deal of gambling at the card table and an even greater deal of Bluestone Rum consumption.

“Got later than I realized,” Danny continued, “An’ as we got closer to the ghost gate, I got more n more worried. Last time I went through it at night I saw that damned ghost! True, Father. I wouldn’ lie to a priest. I saw it flying through the air an’ I ‘eard it. Hollered like somthin’ terrible!..Made me blood go cold! I reckon it was one of them banshees, the way it screeched!”

Ben listened with fascinated interest. It wasn’t so much the tale being told that captured his attention, but rather, the note of truth that rung clear in the telling.

“I told the boys I aint goin’ through that gate after dark,” Danny concluded. “They had ‘emselves a good ol’ laugh, they did, and called me all kinds’a fool, but I wouldn’ change me mind.”

At last, Danny, by way of a beckoning hand, bade him to come inside.

“S’not much warmer in ‘ere,” he said. “But it’s a bit better.”

There was a hurricane lantern in front of the window, its glass blackened and its light dim. Danny took possession of a rickety chair and re-wrapped himself in a blanket he’d obviously cast aside moments before. A fireplace was bare and unlit, all evidence, Ben decided of the truth of Danny’s last-minute decision to stay in the hut.

Danny might like to tell a good yarn, Ben decided, but he would not admit, to the other men, to being scared of something he did not genuinely believe. That would not be keeping to their code of toughness.

“Did the gate open by itself?” Ben asked, finding a stump in the corner and pulling it up to sit on.

Like everybody in the district, he knew the legend of The Ghost Gate. It was reputed to open on approach, without the traveller needing to touch it, and then to close itself after they had ridden through.

Danny nodded. Even in the darkness Ben could see that his eyes were as big as saucers and bright with remembered fear.

“Sure did,” he said. “But tha’s not what give me the willies. Tha’s happened to me before, but this time, I saw it and I heard it screamin’ like nonthin’ I ever ‘eard before or again. Me horse took off on me when it flew right over me and, by the time I got back in the saddle proper like and went back, the gate had closed again and me horse wouldn’t go no closer. Then I saw it at the edge of the trees floatin’ about in the top branches. I got outa there real fast and I swore off the grog for a month afterwards.”

Ben had to smile at the thought of Danny’s four-week abstinence. Pity it hadn’t lasted, he thought as he inhaled the rum fumes on Danny’s breath. Time was pressing, however and his errand at the station was urgent enough to make his get to his feet. He explained this as he rose.

“I’ll come with ya,”

Danny jumped to his feet as Ben reached the door.

Surprised Ben blinked and saw the other man scurrying to roll his blanket and blow out the lantern.

The darkness, immediately after the light was extinguished, was total. However, Ben’s vision returned quickly and by the time he got to the dangerously leaning porch he could see well enough to pick his way safely across it.

“I’m cold ‘ere” Danny explained, hastily stumbling after Ben and stowing his rifle and blanket on his horse. “I’d rather spend the rest of the night in me bunk and I reckon I’ll be safe enough with a priest. No ghost is gonna argue with a man of the cloth is it now?”

They led the horses back to the track, mounted the animals and rode in silence, each tacking a lane in the cart wheel ruts that made up the track. Rusty must have taken courage from the presence of another horse for, although he still tended to skitter nervously, he walked forwards without too much objection.

Around the next corner the bleached wooden gate came into view, closed and gleaming wraithlike across the track. Ben sensed the young rouseabout holding his breath as they drew closer. Rusty had to be urged on with some determination from Ben’s knees and heels.

There was no doubt that an aura of something brooding and malevolent hung like a tangible presence in the cold night air. Ben had noticed the same feeling on previous journeys. It was no wonder this place had become the subject of ghost stories and frightful tales.

Australia was full of places like this, for it was a vast, yet sparsely populated country. Wherever man trod, however, blood stained the earth. Old tribal leaders would have known what happened and passed on to later generations the events of the Sorry Business. But they were gone now, leaving no record. With no robust populace and its cleansing lifeforce to wash away the evil, it didn’t dissipate as time went by, but stayed… and it brooded, and festered… and the earth remembered… and waited and watched. Eventually, a smattering of newcomers; white people, came and were left to invent ghost stories to explain the sinister atmosphere.

Lost deep in such thoughts, Ben was doubly startled when the silence was abruptly splintered by a blood curdling, soul destroying scream of a woman in mortal terror.

The gate swung open before them.

“Hi Yaaaah!”

Danny kicked his horse into a gallop with the harsh, guttural yelp.

The terrified animal needed no urging and they bolted away down the track while Rusty reared, whinnying his own panic-stricken cry. Ben fought to retain his seat and bring Rusty back under his control, but even the midst of the maelstrom, he saw a shadowy phantom soar above his head.

Later, he could only describe the apparition as a disembodied head and arms, with the pale limbs waving in the moonlight. The distraction was enough to completely unseat him and he hit the cold, hard earth with a thump that completely knocked the wind out of his body.

For a long time, he lay dazed in the ditch beside the gate, struggling to breath and, with every agonised breath, sure he was about to die. Gradually though, the pain subsided, and he was able to draw air into his tortured lungs at last. He did not try to sit up, but lay there in the frosty grass. The silence closed back in around him. Not even a cricket chirped.

From nowhere it returned. A silent shadow swooped out of the trees and hovered towards him.

Unable to look any further, Ben closed his eyes and muttered The Lord’s Prayer, hoping against hope to get it finished before the thing took him. He finished it, however, and nothing else happened. With great caution he opened his eyes and was startled by a pair of large round saucers blinking at him from the gate, which had closed, once more of its own volition.

A barking owl was sitting atop the gate, glaring at him, but when he tried to sit up, it took off, heading for tall gums on the other side of the track. Under the weight of its take-off, the gate swung open on finely sprung hinges. Ben watched the shadows of speckled plumage alight the tall eucalypt branches and wondered what it would look like if it had flown directly over his head. Like a spectral head and arms?

It barked its annoyance at his continued presence, sounding so much like one of the station dogs that, for a moment, Ben thought Danny was coming back with help.

Long moments passed as man and bird, alone in the moonlight, surveyed each other from a distance. Finally, Ben got to his feet. It was far too cold to stay sitting on the frosty ground. Rusty had galloped up the track after loosing him and there was nothing for it but follow after the way the horse, along with Danny and his mount, had gone.

Several time’s Ben looked back and on the last check, he saw that the gate had closed and the owl was perched on top of it, a pale shrouded blur in the nocturnal dimness.

He was grateful to find Rusty waiting for him around the next bend in the track. He mounted, stiff and sore from his fall but otherwise unhurt, and rode for the station and the sad duty he had to perform there.

The stockman died before the sun rose and it was not until Ben was back in town, preparing his Sermon for the next day when he suddenly remembered that the Barking Owl was also called The Screaming Woman Bird because of the blood curdling sound of its alarm call.

For years after that night, Danny Harrigon drank well for the telling of his tale. “And you know I’m not lyin’,” he always concluded, “Cos Father Glennis was right there with me.”

When questioned, Ben had to admit that he did not know what he had seen before he came back to his self in the ditch. Honesty forced him to describe the disembodied head and waving arms he thought he’d seen. It was an owl he had seen afterwards, but he could not say, with complete certainty, that it was the Screaming Woman Bird that had frightened him and Danny and their horses on that cold, blue night.

Nearly two hundred years later, the track had turned into a road. The boundary hut had gone. A memorial had been erected where the gate once stood, with the statue of a barking owl and the legend told on a plague. Other tales of ghosts and mournful apparitions had risen at the uneasy place.

Then evil returned to those same frost silvered lands beside the track. They became the burying ground of one of Australia’s most prolific serial killers. Twenty-first century journalists went there and noted and tried to described the strange, unsettling presence. It lingers, still, on what has become known as The Ghost Gate Road. For new generations, just its mention strikes fear and revulsion into the hearts of those that know it.

“Because some things are much scarier than ghosts” Ben would have said, by way of explanation, “When man commits unspeakable acts, it can leave an indelible presence on a place… and evil always begets more evil.”