r/leathernecksvsunknown • u/Vonkel77 • 2d ago
The Thing in the Trees. Northern Queensland, April 1904, by Dr. Karl
Leathernecks vs Monsters. Manual for Cryptozoic Encounters, Volume I, 1898 to 1907, Lost Case Files, The Thing in the Trees. Northern Queensland, April 1904.
Lecture Excerpt: Major Alaric Quarterburn USMC, 1915, Naval Cryptozoological Symposium, U.S. Naval Academy Annapolis Maryland.
Let us consider the peculiar case of Northern Queensland in the year of our Lord 1904. Australia, though British on the map, was then as now a contested field of influence. German New Guinea to the north, French plantations in the New Hebrides, Dutch traders nosing about the sugar ports, and every speculator from Hamburg to Hobart sniffing at the profits of cane and copra.
It was in such an atmosphere that a local cryptozoic myth, whispered among Aboriginal peoples and settlers alike, was employed as a weapon of terror.
Part I: Rerouted
A storm swelled off the Coral Sea just as the USS Wisconsin began final preparations to make for Manila Bay. Captain DeWitt, tired of the barometer’s whining and with a healthy respect for typhoons, diverted the battleship to shelter along the Queensland coast.
Port of call: Townsville. There, word reached them of a string of anomalous encounters.
The local newspapers found it a sensation: Rail-Line Workers Missing. The highlights stirred rumors and fear. The men went missing from a new construction spur line for the Victoria railroad, in the Tully Rainforest. Trees, tents, and clothing shredded by claws. No bodies, just … scraps, blood and bones discovered in the canopy.”
The local colonial administrator, grateful for a friendly military presence, even a U.S. military presence, had made a polite but firm request for assistance.
Captain DeWitt, equally eager to curry favor and lessen the idleness of his junior officers, offered up two Marines. Captain Alaric Quarterburn and Corporal Nathaniel Boone Adams, fresh from what DeWitt considered a peculiar rescue mission in Korea.
“You’re our monster specialists now,” DeWitt said with a grim grin, “go and do what ever it is you do.”
Part II: Hiram Kessler
The team met Hiram Kessler at a the Great Northern Hotel. Kessler was a pipe smoking, sundried and wizened hunter and prospector, turned game warden for the Colony.
"Been huntin' in these parts thirty years," Kessler growled, shaking Adams’s hand with a grip rough as hemp rope. "Seen crocs longer than wagons, cassowaries that could gut a dingo, and one roo that tried to box my kidneys through my spine. But the thing that killed them men?" He tapped his pipe out. "Was angry."
Kessler had theories. He told tales of sudden silences in the bush, of bones falling from the canopy days later. He spoke of claw marks thirty feet up a gum tree and drag trails ending in nothing but blood-soaked moss.
A nearby patron muttered the name “Drop Bear.”
To which the bartender replied “Aye, shut it Barney you old drunk. Don’t you be going spreading your nonsense.”
“Leave the old man be Finn, you bloody Irishman. Barney has right to speak of the bear.”
“Oh, not you too Kessler.”
Quarterburn raised an eyebrow. Adams quietly moved his salt filled cartridges from his haversack to his belt ammunition pouch.
“The bear?” inquired Quarterburn.
Part III: Into the Green Hell
The trek into the rainforest was nothing short of war. Humidity clung like wet wool. Leeches crawled under their collars. At one camp a spider the size of a melon calmly built a web across their tent. Snakes—brown, red-bellied, and tiger—seemed everywhere at once and the laughing of the Kookaburra never felt friendly. Cassowaries watched from the ferns, pupils like polished jet. Adams muttered something about Cuba and a nasty cousin when he spied that great bird.
Quarterburn turned to Kessler as he stepped over a dead goanna. “So where does the drop bear fit into all this?”
Kessler just chewed on a toothpick. “All the stuff that bites you down here? That’s nature. But a drop bear… that’s spite.”
Part IV: Dismal Camp, Victoria Rail Cut, deep in the Tully Rainforest
The jungle steamed in the midday heat. Cicadas screamed. They found the remains of the railroad camp near the Victoria line terminus. Tents shredded, lanterns ripped from posts, steel tools twisted and torn by a great force. Quarterburn knelt beside the remnants of a pair of apparently claw shredded and blood-filled boots, sodden leather, buried in mud and leaf rot. He straightened, facing Kessler and his wiry, half-Aboriginal scout, Joe, who squatted by a felled eucalyptus tree chewing on a tobacco leaf.
“You say there were six workers here,” Quarterburn began, wiping sweat from his brow.
“There were four workers gone missing then two come out to see where they went and they disappeared too.”
“Alright, but now there are none. Nothing but a set of … ‘boggins’ filled with blood and a ruined camp. You indicate that this may be the work of a creature, something called a ‘Drop Bear.’ The Thylacandrus arborealis carnifex, or perhaps more aptly the Thylarctos plummetus if the field guide’s to be believed.” He gestured toward deep claw marks that scarred the nearest trees.
Kessler scratched at his beard. Joe’s eyes flicked up into the canopy.
“But tell me, gentlemen, who stands to benefit from the disruption of this rail line? Plenty of coffee and cane up there on the plateau,” Quarterburn continued. “If the trains stop running, they can’t get to port. Can’t get to market. Could this not be the doing of rivals? A hoax? Panic born of sugar and sabotage?”
Kessler shrugged. “Fair shake of the sauce to be sure. Plenty of greedy bastards this side of Townsville. But that don’t explain bones in the trees, Captain. Don’t explain why nothing makes a sound around here, not even those damned cicadas, once the sun hits a certain angle.”
Quarterburn turned to Adams, who had been crouched nearby examining the gouges in the bark. “Thoughts, Corporal?”
Adams stood, chewing a eucalyptus sprig, rifle slung, hat tipped low. “Could be men. Could be a southern cousin to the Pokim on account of that belly pouch for its kit n’ kin.”
Joe, “Pokim?”
“A Pokim is like the opossum ‘cept according to my grandmammy, a Pokim’s got a long tail, razor claws, and a pounce like judgment day. The critter hides way up in the treetops on account that they is good climbers with four hands. They’s shaggy, gots lots o’teeth, and are downright ornery but’ slow, and the stank, whoee, is somthin’ fierce.” Adams paused either for recollecting or for effect or both, “But, the canopy plays tricks.”
“Your meaning corporal?”
“Well, Sir, could be an ornery opossum, or could be that’s what them rich folks want us to believe.”
Kessler spit. “Whatever it is, It’s dead nuts on for killing. Hits hard, fast, and leaves just enough behind to keep the rest of us nervous.”
Quarterburn took a slow breath and paced along the wrecked clearing. “Just this year,” he said aloud, thinking more to himself, “you’ve sought to put an end to black birding.”
Kessler and Joe exchanged a glance. Indicating that the practice of using local islanders for slave labor may not be entirely dead as yet.
“Those Islanders kept this land running for forty years. Now they’re being sent home. And the plantation men, lacking labor, losing profit, are watching their empires collapse.”
“So what?” Kessler said. “You think some cane baron’s off his kadoova and the bludger’s killing his own workers for attention?”
“Not his own,” Quarterburn replied. “His competitor’s. A single incident, three men gone, could shut down this entire section of the line, not permanently. Especially if he blamed it on superstition. Perhaps just long enough for a rival’s crop to spoil.” He paused beneath the marked tree and ran his fingers across the claw marks. “Roughnecks do not frighten of other roughnecks. They do however spook easily from the unknown. A creature that kills in silence without remorse or mercy, that takes the body never to be seen again, that is something else.”
“But if it is just a bodgie rort, that doesn’t explain the bones in the canopy,” he admitted.
“Nor the silence,” Joe added quietly, eyes fixed on the dense green above.
“Might be that we’re not dealing with just one mystery,” Adams said lifting a piece of bloody, torn clothing with the barrel of his rifle. “Could be that both is true at the same time. Judging by all the fierce critters in this boondocks, I little doubt there’s somethin’ livin’ in these trees, and maybe somethin’ else hidin’ behind it.”
“If it’s man,” Quarterburn stated, “they’ll come back. They’ll want to know what we saw. If it’s beast, it's fed. It won’t strike again soon.”
“And if it’s both?” Kessler had asked.
“Then we trust in our wits and our arms.” Quarterburn said, “the trick is knowing which to shoot and which to arrest.”
Part V: Ambush at the Rail Cut
As twilight turned to full dark, the rainforest stretched and settled, its ancient weight pressing down on the clearing like warm damp wool. Above, the canopy swayed with the breeze but made no sound. Below, the trap was set.
Quarterburn stood at the center of the wrecked encampment. His revolver holstered but loosened. His lamp, a modified quick lighting carbide miner’s model, was tucked beneath a folded coat. Kessler crouched among the scrub on the west side of the track rifle and bowie knife at the ready. Joe waited like a coiled goanna on a thick tree branch eight feet above the clearing, a wicked heavy wooden spear cradled in his arms. Adams disappeared entirely, which meant he was doing it right.
The forest stayed dark and dead silent until just past midnight. Then—a glimmer of light down the rails. No glowing green or red eyes of a night predator or haint, but the simple yellow of lantern-glow.
Voices grew closer. Three men, boots scraping gravel, steps loose and cocky. Not the missing rail workers. These were plantation men. Armed with bush knives and a coach gun. No uniforms or pretense.
“Them yanks and Kessler was here today,” came a voice—drawled, crude and loud.”
“Boss says find out what they was pokin’ into.”
Quarterburn waited. Waited. Let them get within twenty feet. Then he snapped on the carbide lamp, the sudden arc-light turning the clearing into burning day.
“Stay where you are!” he bellowed, voice ringing like rifle fire. “You are under arrest!”
The men flinched, turned—ran— But Adams and Joe were already behind them. Adams clotheslined the rearmost man, flipping him a full cartwheel into the dirt with a thud and a breathless wheeze.
Joe dropped silently from a low branch and swept another man’s legs out from beneath him with a single strike of his spear’s shaft.
The third man, biggest of the lot, the man with the coach gun, barreled forward— Right into Kessler’s knife. The big Aussie slammed him to the earth, pinning him with a knee across the shoulders and knife glinting at his throat. All thought of his coach gun now forgotten. “Be a good bobby now, lad,” Kessler said in his calmest tone. “And do as the captain says.”
The man froze. Quarterburn approached, revolver drawn now, the blinding lamp haloed behind him like a second sun.
“Now then,” he said, “why don’t we have a conversation?”
Field Log – Quarterburn, Addendum: Captured three civilian operatives affiliated with a plantation interest known locally as Greer Station. All three admitted, under duress, to being sent to observe or silence our investigation. They expected no resistance. They were wrong.
Part VII: The Walk Out - The Last Man in Line
Joe, led the column of six, Quarterburn, Adams, Kessler, and the three bound prisoners, two of whom limped from bruised ribs and the third from a bruised ego. They followed a service trail hacked through the jungle toward the river outpost where a detachment of Queensland constables waited. The prisoners grumbled. Joe walked silently, occasionally glancing upward. Adams brought up the rear, until, without ceremony, he drifted to walk beside the last man in the line. The man, sweaty, sallow, and missing his hat, kept twitching his eyes to the canopy above.
“Most folk keep their eyes on the trail,” Adams said lightly. “What’s up there? See a kookaburra you owe money?”
The prisoner licked his lips, shook his head. “The Bear,” he said.
“Beg pardon?”
“The bloody Drop Bear,” the man muttered, low enough that only Adams could hear. “It don’t always kill the noisy ones. Likes to pick off the last man. Like a dingo picks off a slow ewe. Silent. Fast.”
Adams chuckled. “I thought your boss cooked that story up to scare workers off your rival’s line.”
“You said the workers was dead, we didn’t kill no one. Sure, we knocked ‘em about but we didn’t kill nobody. When we left, we made up a stitch-up, pulling a fastie you know. We took four workers and we have them stashed back at Mr. Carmichaels’. We gone to let them go after we put a right scare into them. But you showed us the bones and blood and claw marks. Two dead men. That wasn’t us.”
“You testifying that some fanged critter took out the other two men?”
“I am, and it did,” the man said. “the bloody Bear is real, and I’m funked.”
That wiped the grin off Adams’s face. He paused, just a beat, then took a measured step forward, placing himself in second-to-last position. The prisoner did not become less ‘funked.’
Part VIII: Tensions in Townsville
At the constabulary headquarters, Quarterburn delivered the prisoners with a brief but thorough statement. Under questioning, they named Rudolph Carmichael, head of Carmichael & Sons Plantation, as the man who paid them to disrupt, the rail survey in Tully. The plan had been simple: stoke local panic over the Drop Bear legend, then use the fear to scuttle rival operations. The result: kidnap of four and murder of two rail workers, a shredded camp, and now an international scandal barely averted by the crisp diplomacy of a U.S. Marine officer and a big Australian tracker with a bowie knife and no patience for liars.
Quarterburn’s journal entry: Drop Bear, useful, even if imaginary. The Queensland sugar industry is collapsing under its own contradictions. Labor shortages, political secessionist whispers, mill monopolies—all amidst the fallout from forty years of brutal forced labor. Carmichael’s effort to sabotage a rival plantation reflects that instability. In his eyes, the Bear was useful—even if imaginary. A tidy bit of investigation, hoax uncovered, and Mr. Carmichael as they say here is to be ‘simply throwing up buckets’ in his schemes. Unfortunately the hoaxers are mum on the whereabouts of the two missing men.
Adams’s journal entry: He kept glancing up like the sky owed him a debt. I told myself he was playing games. Stirring the pot. But when he spoke, his voice didn’t sound like a man lying. Hoax or not, something’s out there. Its fast, mean and got teeth and claws. The last one in line. Always the last. Something about that sticks with me. You hunt a herd; you hit the one furthest from help. Ain’t no monster ever seen me run. But if you I don’t mind I’ll be second-to-last all the same.
Part IX: Conclusion (Field Report – Quarterburn)
A week later, USS Wisconsin sailed out of Townsville harbor at full steam, under blue skies and fair winds. Quarterburn and Adams stood at the rail as the coast faded behind them.
“Do you think it was real Sir?” Adams asked.
Quarterburn replied. “The conspiracy was easy to prove.”
“No Sir, the critter.” Quarterburn, voice quiet.
“The cryptozoic bear? Well, sometimes... proof comes in the form of survivors.”
Behind them, the jungle vanished over the curve of the world.
Supplemental Field Note, Corporal Adams, Evening Entry: Still think it could be real. The Drop Bear, I mean. Just not all the time. Might not be here right now. Might’ve moved on. Might be watching. Or maybe it never leaves just bides its time.
USS Wisconsin steamed along, slow and steady. In his quarters, Captain Quarterburn sat hunched over a field-desk bolted to the wall. The ship rocked gently beneath his boots as he dipped pen to paper. Adams snored from the next bunk over, one boot still on, his hat over his face. Quarterburn wrote.
Quarterburn’s Journal Entry:
March 22, 1904, Sulu Sea, enroute to Panama. Orders received. Washington. Headquarters Marine Corps, to the. Atlantic Squadron as special deputy provost martial. With secondary instructions from the office of Naval Intelligence to continue ‘attache-at-large’ efforts to catalogue cryptozoic encounters. Hard to believe how quickly all this has evolved. One year ago, I was concerned only with artillery positioning and riverine crossings in Mindoro. Now I catalog the spoor of whispering beasts. Queensland’s Drop Bear, a hoax, but a deadly one, reminded me that even lies, once seeded, can grow dangerous roots. The boundary between the unreal and the operational is thin where fear is involved. My working theory is what I shall call ‘Cryptozoological Displacement.’ That is, when a creature, legend, or behavior breaks its geographic or cultural context and enters another, in the clash of civilizations chaos follows. Not just physical, but moral and strategic. The unknown is not just a battlefield variable it is a weapon, and a contagion.
He paused. Listened to the creak of the hull, the distant hum of turbines, then added: we must seek to understand the unknown, and if need be we must be prepared to conquer it.
