Literature / Strange Objects

Strange Objects is a 1990 YA novel by Australian author Gary Crew, the author behind The Watertower.

Half psychological thriller, half historical fiction, the story takes the form of a scrapbook assembled by Steven Messenger, a kid living on the coast of Western Australia, charting the discovery of a collection of artefacts found during a school trip to the local cliffs: an iron cauldron, a leather-bound journal, and a mummified hand.

The discovery triggers a major archeological investigation, revealing that the artefacts once belonged to Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom, two mutineers from the Dutch vessel Batavia marooned in the uncharted land long before Australia was settled by Europeans. Wouter Loos' journal is quickly translated and published in local magazines, forming a story within a story as Steven collects the serialized chapters.

However, it's soon revealed that Steven accidentally removed a fourth artefact from the cliffs: a gold ring, once owned by Jan Pelgrom and kept on the mummified hand before it slipped off and landed in Steven's sleeping bag during the initial discovery. Secretly keeping it for himself, Steven's own diary entries gradually bearing witness to a deepening obsession with the ring and its secrets - one that only worsens once local Aboriginal elder Charlie Sunrise discovers Steven's thievery...

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This novel features examples of:

• Apocalyptic Log:
  • The journal of Wouter Loos gradually becomes progressively more desperate as his exile continues, having to face the threat of starvation, disease, and Jan Pelgrom's murderous insanity. In the final chapter, Wouter is seeming dying of a horrific illness, deliriously claiming to have seen Pelgrom become a Humanoid Abomination and Plague Master. Based on the disordered testimony, Wouter died soon after hiding the journal and other artefacts.
  • Steven Messenger's own journal starts to get increasingly stressed as his visions continue, growing increasingly horrific as a monstrous intruder begins stalking him. The story ends with Steven mysteriously vanishing - either simply running away while under the influence of a psychotic break or becoming a victim of the intruder.
• Ax-Crazy: Jan Pelgrom was not the most stable man on the planet, easily swinging between childish cowardice and murderous psychopathic rage at the drop of a hat. Having already been marooned for multiple counts of rape and murder, he kills and butchers a puppy, tries to get Wouter to shoot the Aboriginal tribe they meet, and in the final chapter of the journal, brutalizes his lover Ela, then murders her in cold blood for taking the ring from him.
• Beta Test Baddie: One of the articles provided in Steven's scrapbook is a discussion of "inadequate" psychopaths, namely individuals driven to kill due to their need to compensate for perceived weaknesses. According to the article, Pelgrom is a textbook case, eager to impress chief mutineer Jeronimus Cornelisz and prove himself capable of murder, reportedly throwing a temper tantrum when deprived of the chance to kill someone. The fact that Pelgrom spends most of Wouter's journal as a weak and sickly coward doesn't help. He also fixates on the ring, presumably believing it to possess mystical powers that can bolster his constitution just as Steven does many centuries later, even appearing to grow in strength once he starts wearing it on his finger. Appropriately, he's finally undone when Ela manages to steal it from him, either driving him off or reducing him to a wraith - depending on how supernatural you believe the story really is.
• Bad People Abuse Animals:
  • Steven tries to shoot down gulls with a slingshot before Kratzman stops him, and later stabs a lizard to death with a sharpened car arial so he can use it as part of his "life frame," effectively feeding the corpse to an ant nest so they'll clean the meat off the bones.
  • In Wouter's journal entries, Jan Pelgrom kills, cooks, and eats the puppy that was marooned alongside the two mutineers, despite being in no danger of starvation. For good measure, he follows this up by threatening to kill Wouter as well.
• Body Horror: In the end of the journal, Wouter Loos is deathly ill, mentioning that his lips are covered in sores, his eyes are leaking something horrible, and flesh falls from his face every time he touches it.
• Despair Event Horizon: In the final chapter of his journal, Wouter gives up on writing in the months after Pelgrom murders Ela, burying the journal with the last of his trinkets from home and abandoning all hope of seeing his mythical City of Gold. He presumably dies soon afterwards.
• Dirty Coward: Jan Pelgrom is gung-ho to murder Wouter Loos and eat his flesh... up until an Aboriginal tribe happens by, whereupon Pelgrom collapses in a sniveling heap and begs Wouter to defend him against what he thinks is a Cannibal Tribe.
• Due to the Dead: According to Charlie, the severed hand must have belonged to a highly respected individual, as the mummification process was reserved only for individuals greatly honoured by the tribe in death, with severed appendages from such individuals being revered for their use in magic. It's eventually revealed that the honoured individual was Ela, who died taking the ring from Pelgrom - either driving him away or outright destroying his power in the process.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Influenced by the stories of El Dorado, Wouter Loos believes that there's a City of Gold just over the mountains, and when an Ela gives him a precious-looking crystal, Loos is even further convinced of the imagined kingdom's prosperity. The footnotes reveal that the crystal is ordinary quartz, sacred to the Aboriginal peoples but of zero monetary value to anyone.
• Foreshadowing: Towards the end of the journal, Wouter records that several members of the Aboriginal tribe are demonstrating runny noses and aren't moving as quickly as they normally can. By the final chapter, a huge number of them are dead as a result of the illness they caught from Pelgrom.
• Mirror Character:
  • Steven might as well be Jan Pelgrom's reincarnation: both are tall, slim pretty-boy types, both suffer from spates of respiratory illness, both abuse animals, both obsess over the ring, and both regard Aboriginal people with fear and contempt. Steven even appears to demonstrate "powers" like Pelgrom does while wearing the ring. And both seemingly vanish while consumed by the ring - or by madness, depending on how you interpret the novel.
  • Nigel Kratzman is uncannily similar to Wouter Loos in many ways: not only are they both short and dark-haired, but they also spend much of the novel obsessing over something largely pointless (the El Dorado legend for Wouter, the Dream Machine for Kratzman), try unsuccessfully to reign in their behavior of their increasingly psychopathic friend, and ultimately fail to save an innocent life - Charlie Sunrise in Kratzman's case, Ela in Wouter's.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Kratzman's desperate attempt to get the mortally-wounded Charlie Sunrise to the hospital results in him getting stopped by the cops and facing criminal charges for driving an unroadworthy vehicle - which costs him his precious Dream Machine. Worse still, Charlie dies in the hospital anyway, and Steven gets off scot-free for it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After witnessing the full extent of Steven's heartlessness and suffering for it, Nigel Kratzman leaves him a letter raking him over the coals for it.
  I am sorry I ever met you and I hope I don't meet anyone like you ever again in my life. You think you are better than everybody but you're not. You're like a thing that lies on its guts in a dark hole, just lying there, watching and waiting.
  You are a bastard and no friend.
• Teens Are Monsters:
  • High-school student Steven is a racist, a creep, an animal abuser, and a thief. By the end of the novel, he's also a murderer - and even if you could excuse the death of Charlie Sunrise as manslaughter, Steven's total lack of empathy wouldn't help the verdict.
  • Jan Pelgrom was the Batavia's cabin boy before he took in the rapes and murders directed by Jeronimus Cornelisz. Being marooned doesn't improve his character in the slightest.
• This Is My Boomstick: Subverted. After being taken in by an Aboriginal tribe, Wouter Loos attempts to impress them by using his rifle to help them on a hunting expedition... only to end up missing, scaring off the prey, and pissing off the entire tribe. For good measure, they smash his rifle soon after.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The supernatural elements of story are left deliberately ambiguous. It might be possible that Steven might be seeing visions of the past, that Jan Pelgrom become a Humanoid Abomination through the power of the ring, and even that the story ends with Steven being killed by Pelgrom... or it could be that Steven is a teenage schizophrenic and that Wouter Loos hallucinated the supernatural events of the journal over the course of his illness.
• Patient Zero: In the journal, Jan Pelgrom apparently spreads his illness to the rest of the Aboriginal tribe, resulting in a huge number of deaths, as none of them have any resistance to the new plague. To add insult to injury, Pelgrom not only survives his own illness but is described as inhumanly glorious afterward.
• Pet the Dog: In one of the later chapters of his journal, Jan Pelgrom provides Wouter Loos with a sea slug, pointing out that its ink can be used to replenish Wouter's dwindling inkwell. It's a surprisingly sweet gesture, especially considering that Pelgram spent the earlier chapters either annoying the bejesus out of Wouter or threatening to murder him.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Steven is prejudiced against Aboriginal Australians, using the slur "Abo" against Charlie Sunrise and characterizing him as a drunk. It's for this reason that he has zero remorse after impulsively killing Charlie.
• Scary Symbolic Shapeshifting: Possibly. In the final chapter, a delirious Wouter describes Jan Pelgrom as a Humanoid Abomination - as an inhumanly beautiful figure flying above the water while he has the ring, and a monstrous, pale wraith without it. This could just be hallucination... or it could be a real transformation.

Each night he comes, calling softly about the camp, outside the firelight. None dare face him. The young men, the warriors, the grey beards — all live in terror of darkness, for he moves by moonlight, his dreadful body pale and crouching low. He is the sickness. He is the vile one who brought them death.

• Shout-Out: Pelgrom's ring seems to draw a great deal of influence from The Lord of the Rings, with Pelgrom seemingly empowered by wearing it and apparently fading to nothingness without it ala Sauron, while Steven Messenger obsesses over it in a very Gollum-like fashion. Even the phantom monster that haunts Steven is eerily akin to a Ringwraith, though if the story's supernatural aspects are taken at face value, it might actually be Pelgrom's ghost.
• Uncertain Doom:
  • Wouter Loos is incredibly vague about Jan Pelgrom's fate. Though he's definitely dead by the present-day chapters, the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane nature of the narrative means that it's not known if he died of starvation and thirst in the wilderness, or if Ela taking the ring from him resulted in him fading away without its power.
  • The story ends with Steven mysteriously vanishing from his home after sending the complete scrapbook to Dr Hope Michaels. It's possible that he's just run away from home to avoid police attention, but as he records his "other self" stalking him more aggressively, it's possible that someone or something killed him.
• Unreliable Narrator:
  • Wouter Loos is honest enough... up until he comes down with a serious case of delirium in the finale, drawing everything he witnesses into question.
  • Steven Messenger is prejudiced, arrogant, and not inclined to take the perspectives of others into account. As such, his viewpoint portrays Charlie Sunrise as threatening and untrustworthy, Kratzman as an easily bribed mercenary, and everyone else as fools. In the ending, it's suggested that he may be mentally ill and quite a few of experiences may be hallucinations.
• Villain Protagonist: It soon becomes clear that Steven Messenger is not a good kid in any sense of the word. On top of illegally hoarding a priceless artefact, he also treats First Nations people like Charlie Sunrise with utter loathing, enjoys killing animals, and has no empathy for anyone. He ends up inflicting fatal injuries to Charlie in a fit of a rage and responds with utter apathy after being called out on it.