Monsters and Metaphors by Poppy Gee

A ski lodge in Tasmania, during the summer. 

What stories scared you to death when you were a kid? Did you learn anything about storytelling from that? 

In the 1980s and 1990s, my siblings and I spent almost every winter weekend staying in a ski club on Ben Lomond, Tasmania. Our club was a communal lodge in which everyone sleeps side by side in big dormitories and shares the kitchen and lounge room. At that time, it was a free range place to be a kid. The adults would sit downstairs, drinking and revelling, and upstairs, the kids mucked around and did whatever they wanted. We liked turning the lights off and telling scary stories. I wrote one of the scary stories into my ski lodge mystery. This story has remained crystal clear in my mind ever since I heard it as a kid. 

TASMANIAN SKI LODGE, 1996:

The children flop on the cushions and mattress on the floor of the upstairs lounge. They cover their legs with blankets and turn eager faces to her.

“Turn off the lights,” she says. “Scoot in closer.”

In the dark their faces became ghoulish. Someone makes a ghostly noise and they giggle.

Willa begins. “A man and a woman – they’re a couple – are on a long drive, following an old logging road that snakes through the forest below Marsh Mountain. The road weaves past ancient rocks and enormous gumtrees.”

She savours the ripe silence of their anticipation.

“The man knows a shortcut, but the woman doesn’t want to take it. She wants to stay on the logging road. He insists, saying it will cut two hours off their journey. She falls silent as they turn onto a track. The trees grow closely together, blocking out the moonlight. They drive along, listening to the radio. Suddenly, the announcer cuts in.

‘We break this song with an urgent news bulletin. A man has escaped from the Mental Asylum, located on the edge of Marsh Mountain national park. His name is Morris Gruber.’”

The children scream at the mention of the serial killer.

“‘He’s dangerous. If you see him, police advise do not approach him. I repeat: do not approach. Call police immediately. Residents in the Marsh Mountain lowlands are advised to lock their houses. Stay inside.’”

The children squirm.

“The woman in the car is frightened. The road is rough and the car bumps along. Except for the headlights, there’s no light.

‘Maybe we should turn around,’ the woman says.

The man is quiet, thinking about it.

‘Please,’ she says. ‘I’m scared.’

‘There’s nowhere to turn,’ he tells her.

It’s true, the road is hemmed in with the dense forest. She locks her door, and the one behind her, and tells him to lock his side, too. The road narrows. Thin gnarled trees gather tighter like bars on a cage. The radio fizzles and spurts, the music distorts with static. The song is interrupted again. This time the announcer is panicked, but the static makes it hard to understand what he’s saying.

‘Warning… Marsh Mountain lowlands… Gruber…’ and then the radio cuts out.”

Silence follows, broken by nervous laughter. One of the boys hums dramatic horror movie music.

“Shhh,” someone says.

“They drive deeper into the lowlands, where the stunted old trees are leafless, and the wind blows down from the frozen mountains. Fog shrouds the windows. The woman rubs at the windscreen with her sleeve.

‘How much further?’ she asks.

‘We’re halfway.’ The man’s voice is trembling, he’s terrified.

The road becomes sandy and the tyres spin. The sand deepens and the car grinds to a stop. Fearfully, they climb out and try to push the car out of the sand trap. They push and push but it won’t budge. The wind whistles through the tree branches, and animals rustle in the underbrush. They hear devils fighting over a carcass and it sounds like children being strangled.

The woman starts crying and they get back into the car.

‘I think there’s a farmhouse not far along the road,’ the man says. ‘I could walk there and get help.’

‘I don’t want you to leave me,’ she says.

She begs him to stay. He tells her there’s no choice.

‘Lock yourself in,’ he says, ‘and hide under the blanket.’

And then, he leaves.

The woman huddles on the backseat, pulling the blanket over her. She hears creepy bush noises, creaking branches and helpless animal crying. And then, something else.

At first, she thinks she’s imagining it. But it gets louder. It sounds like a nail being dragged across a blackboard, a knife on a porcelain plate, a fingernail scratching down a window. She’s so scared she can’t breathe. She clenches the blanket and can’t bring herself to look.

A horrible voice calls through the night.

‘Open the door.’

It’s not a human voice.”

Willa repeats the words in a quavering screech, her fingers clawing in the air, like she’s scraping a windowpane. “‘Open the door’.”

No one is laughing now.

“The woman pulls the blanket back. In the moonlight, she sees a hand with long fingernails scraping the window. It’s Morris Gruber. She slides across the bench seat to the other side of the car and unlocks the door. She jumps out and runs in the direction her boyfriend went. Her heart pounds in her throat as she follows the thin, sandy road through the forest. She’s breathless, exhausted, and she slows down, listening. Silence.

Perhaps he’s not chasing her. Perhaps, she’s safe.

And then, she sees her boyfriend. He’s raising one hand, like he’s waving at her. Blood-covered, eyes unblinking, he’s impaled on a post. He’s dead.

She screams and bashes through the forest, trying to find somewhere to hide, to get away from the horror. The scrub scratches her legs, tears at her clothing. She hears Morris Gruber chasing her, but she keeps running. And then she feels pain in both her shoulders, as pfftt,” Willa claws the air, “ten fingernails pierce her skin.”

Screams fill the room. A smaller girl starts to cry, and Thom draws her onto her lap.

“Right now, he’s hiding in the ceiling of a lodge on Marsh Mountain, looking for his next victim.”

The kids scream and scramble around, bashing each other with pillows and smothering each other with blankets. It’s too much for one little girl, and Thom cuddles her until she’s no longer scared.

How did my love of these stories shape my writing? There's a subtext to every domestic horror story that reveals social anxieties and cultural fears. That's what interests me. This story is indirectly about the stigma of mental illness; female safety and the perils of female reliance on male protectors; fear of the Tasmanian wilderness where every year people vanish without trace, and issues of identity and class, as well as the fear of being cleaved off from the herd if we socially transgress. I like stories within stories and this one mirrors themes from the novel. The best scary stories are thought provoking, they linger with you, but they need to be exciting and entertaining too.