Free Great Australian Ghost Stories by Richard Davis Page A

‘me an’ me mate ’ere, we wouldn’t let ya go off on your own on such a night … there’s some real bad lots in these parts. Ya never know what might ’appen to ya! As you’re goin’ south an’ we’re goin’ south, we’ll keep ya company an’ show ya tha way.’
    â€˜Very kind of you, sirs,’ (or some such polite words) replied the innocent and the three men and the brindled dog disappeared into the night. The young man never turned up at Alexander Berry’s and his two erstwhile companions disappeared without trace. Months passed and the fate of all three might never have been known had one of Berry’s assigned convict servants not become lost in the wild country around the present-day township of Gerringong. Search parties found the servant after four or five days, cold, wet and hungry. Despite his ordeal theman appeared to be in full control of his faculties and had a incredible story to tell.
    In dense fog he had wandered from the track that ran south between Kiama and his master’s property and had become hopelessly lost in the drearily uniform grey bush. Without food he soon tired; and as night closed in and rain began to fall he built a rough shelter out of branches and curled up on the cold ground to sleep.
    The second day was spent fruitlessly searching for the track and another night, even wetter than the first, huddled in the rude shelter. Sleep was long in coming and short lived. A distinct tap on the man’s shoulder woke him. He raised his head to find a bloodstained hand and forearm, raggedly severed at the elbow, on the ground beside his head and from the distance he could hear the faint sound of a saw cutting timber. The ghastly limb twitched just centimetres from his nose and the fingers stretched and clenched as if trying to reach for him, but the man was so terrified he could not move a muscle. After a few seconds the gruesome sight vanished and the sound ceased.
    The man lay shivering with fear and cold through the rest of that long night, finally dropping back to sleep just an hour before dawn. But again, he was rudely awakened, this time by an agonising human scream that echoed through the bush. The sound of the sawing returned, too. He peered in the direction the sound was coming from and caught a glimpse of two tall figures sawing a log over a sawpit that he was sure had not been there in daylight. One figure was down inside the pit with only his head and shoulders visible and the other stood on the rim. Their clothes appeared dry but their faces were wet with perspiration and their hair and eyes clogged with sawdust. Their lips were drawn back in painful grimacesas they strained at their work and the long two-man cross-cut saw flew up and down as it bit into the timber, its rasp ringing loudly now through the bush.
    Morning came but not the sun. The wind picked up to gale force and icy rain pelted down. Terror, tiredness and hunger reduced the lost man to a state where he could only crawl about fifty metres to a large hollow log and ease himself inside (where it was blessedly dry) before collapsing into a deep but troubled sleep.
    Night returned and with it came a violent electrical storm. One deafening crash of thunder woke the man. He rolled over inside the log and looked towards the open end. There, to his horror, he saw a head, blood-spattered and with terrifying, blood-shot eyes, staring back at him. In the distance he could see a dark shape lying on the ground with what looked like a dog beside it, but the horrific head held his attention. Its battered, blackened mouth was moving as if speaking, but its words were lost in the fury of the storm.
    To the terrified man’s relief the head vanished after a few seconds and he was able to climb out of the log. Shielding his eyes from the rain he stepped closer to the dark shape on the ground and realised it was the body of a man to whose neck the ghastly head was now