Christopher Golde

It was June the sixth in the year nineteen ninety-six, and six prisoners alighted from a prisoner transport van at one of Australia’s lowest security prisons called Morwell River Prison.

They had just spent five hours in a windowless steel box on wheels being transported from one of the most infamous prisons in Australia, HMS Pentridge Prison, AKA the Bluestone College of crime, to this comparative paradise, minimum security establishment that had no walls or gates. For the six it must have been overwhelming.

As they stood in front of the prisoner transport vehicle listening to the welcoming introduction from the female warden and two of her prison guards, the six were more than likely hearing little of what she said, distracted by their new bushland surroundings. After all, most of them had now been in total confinement behind bluestone walls lined with razor wire for months, where the only green they would ever see was the uniforms that all the inmates wore as standard dress requirement. The horror of their confinement had in three steps from that transport vehicle morphed into so much natural beauty that to most of them it would have surely been surreal.

They stood along the edge of a small bitumen road that was lined by what seemed like a small village of huts with one large building at the centre they would later know as the mess hall. Their surnames, crimes or even who they were, was not important, but what they would come to represent in the formation of thought became the foundations for the novel ‘The Darkness’.

The first in line and the future owner of this thought travelled through life at this time by the name of Shane and by providence, he and the inmate next to him, called Charlie, were assigned to hut sixty-six. They had just been told that due to overcrowding of the prison, six new huts had just been built down along the river’s edge and they were lucky enough to be the first residents to call them home.

Charlie was an Australian Aboriginal, a professional boxer, and for the most part of his thirty-six years on Earth had been incarcerated. Standing to the other side of him was Jason, young, good looking and extremely reckless by nature. Next along was Nigel, or the professor, as the other inmates called him, more because of his age and looks than his wisdom, though the occasional philosophical statement when let loose would surprise all who bothered to listen. Next on from Nigel, with his usual silly grin, and handsome European features, was Aldo the preacher, and on the end of the line somewhat despatched from the rest, as usual, was the Japanese born, Eko the ageless. The others referred to him as such because he had evidently been inside a long time and no-one could guess his age. As far as anyone knew, he spoke no English.

Later in the evening, after they had settled in and had their first meal in the mess hall of their new home, Charlie the Australian Aboriginal and Shane sat on the bank of the river next to a small wooden bridge talking for the most part about what they would like to do the next day in these new surroundings. Charlie was giving a lesson on how to make a rabbit trap from elements of the bush and planned to set them the next day. He also explained how he would cook and eat them the traditional way of his people. Shane thought to himself while he listened that Charlie just was not made to be locked behind brick and steel.

After a while, Charlie quietened becoming calmed by the surroundings. Shane had wandered off in his thoughts and started to realise the irony of what date it was, where he was and what hut number he and Charlie now lived in. He looked at his prison purchased a cheap electronic watch just as it ticked over to rest exactly at 6.00 o’clock. Oh my god, he thought to himself, but there was no point in saying anything, it was just one of those moments that are obviously a sign only to the one person who witnesses it.

He began to think about his life and where he was. He had always thought of himself as somewhat special and yet at this moment, it seemed very unlikely he would realise his early life ambitions. He was smart enough to realise that probably everyone thought their lives were special, as they should, but he really thought that the things his beliefs had created for him in his early life really meant something.

There was his uncanny ability to always have been able to predict the future even though it was just usually about the small day to day matters. There was his unusual imagination that had created an image in his mind when he was young of a tall dark hooded creature who came to him in his dreams and took him on the most fantastical journeys. As a young boy, he had written stories of these fantastic journeys and the adults in his life had marvelled at his imagination and creativity.

He had taken to reading obsessively about all of the world’s religions at the ripe age of seven and new more than most adults ever would about them all by the age of ten. Other children treated him with amazement at a young age because he seemed to possess such wisdom and knowledge that they just had to accept that everything he said was true. As he had grown older this had turned into mistrust and he was often outcast by groups of children as he just should not be like what he was at that age. They could not trust what they could not understand.

At twenty he was in an accident where his very much beloved girlfriend had been killed. Even that had so many strange twists he could only tell a few very close people and amazingly they believed him. That event had changed him and the rest of his life seemed to swerve off course. He struggled to be a normal person and mix with normal people. Prison in some ways had provided him with experiences he had never expected and introduced him to types of people both good and bad that he had never really expected to meet in his life. Charlie was one of those.

He started to think about the purpose of life, his and others, and why? Was there something to all of this? Was there a reason on the sixth of June nineteen ninety-six at six o’clock he would find himself living in hut sixty-six with an Australian Aboriginal? It must mean something! He would make it mean something because he just realised it can’t be just a coincidence. He had gone through life believing there was no such thing as coincidence.

The next day he found a pen and paper and began to handwrite a story. He called it ‘The Beast Prophecy’ because of the ‘666’ element. Over the next months in Morwell Prison, he took computer classes and then began to type his handwritten notes. He would read to other prisoners at their request and they would beg him for more.

When he left that place for freedom he had ten chapters written in their rawest form. They are still in the end product called ‘The Darkness’ but not at the beginning where they started out. Some of the original handwritten pages still exist and as the novel grew strange events he had written about became a reality which spurred him on even more.

For many years the end was not obvious and it became a dilemma for him, although he suspected it would work itself out like everything else in the book had. It was the constant thought another prisoner had put in his head about the end of the world that spurred him towards the eventual ending but he could not bear the thought that all mankind’s endeavours were for nothing.

Over the next twenty-three years, he wrote and he read more and more science that suggested there was a lot more to our existence than molecules and atoms. It was a natural course that eventually his scientific knowledge would come crashing in on to his religious beliefs and he found an existence where they could both live.

This ‘afterword’ was the final piece he would write to conclude his novel, in 2019, twenty-three years after he had written the first sentence.  

‘So often in life, we seem to take one step forward, only to then be forced to take two steps back, when in reality, Nigel was beginning to realize, it was most likely the opposite.’

 

 

“Rejoice,” said the Beast, to the Darkness, “for the one thing we know mankind will bring with him, is the light.”

                        The Beast Prophecy – Shane Christopher de Gelder (Golde’)


 

In Search Of Prophecy.

The Beast Prophecy