by Perry, Kyle
About the Book
At the bottom of the world, there is an island. It is a land of rugged wilderness, of ice and snow and blistering heat, of the oldest trees on earth . . . They say tigers still roam there. They say other things roam, too.
When a school group of teenage girls goes missing in the remote wilderness of Tasmania’s Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert. Three decades ago, five young girls disappeared in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legend of ‘the Hungry Man’ still haunts locals to this day.
Now, authorities can determine that the teacher, Eliza Ellis, was knocked unconscious, so someone on the mountain was up to foul play. Jordan Murphy, the local dealer and father of missing student Jasmine, instantly becomes the prime suspect. But Detective Con Badenhorst knows that in a town this size – with corrupt cops, small-town politics, and a teenage YouTube sensation – everyone is hiding something, and bluffing is second nature.
When a body is found, mauled, at the bottom of a cliff, suspicion turns to a wild animal – but that can’t explain why she was discovered barefoot, her shoes at the top of the cliff, laces neatly tied.
What happened up there on the bluffs?
Somebody knows . . . Unless the local legends are true . . .
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Imprint
Read more at Penguin Books Australia
Firstly, to my family
I pay my respects to the Traditional Custodians of country, the Pallitore of the North tribe, who are the custodians of the Meander region. I pay my respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, to whom Kooparoona Niara – Mountain of Spirits – is of cultural significance.
I acknowledge today’s Aboriginal community on all Lutruwita, who are the custodians of this island, and I recognise their continuing connection to land, waters, and culture.
Today I thought I saw him. He was at the tree line, watching the school. I think he saw me, and then he was gone. Rose said I’m not the only one who’s seen him. I’m never leaving the house again.
From the diary of Victoria Compton, sixteen years old, one of the five girls taken during the 1985 abductions in the Great Western Tiers.
Up in the hills, he hides and kills.
Down in the caves, he hides and waits.
The Hungry Man, who likes little girls,
with their pretty faces and pretty curls.
Don’t believe what the grown-ups say,
the Hungry Man will find a way.
So I won’t walk alone by the mountain trees,
or the Hungry Man will come for me.
Schoolyard rhyme, found written on the wall of a girls bathroom, Limestone Creek District School, 1985.
PROLOGUE
ELIZA
Present day, the Great Western Tiers, Tasmania
The rain woke her.
She needs you.
Eliza opened her eyes. She was facedown in the gravel of the hiking track, the smell of wet earth in her nose.
You have to get up.
She sucked a breath through her teeth. Everything ached. The back of her head stung. Her glasses dug into her temple, the left lens cracked. Her puffer jacket and hiking tights were soaked through to the skin.
The icy mountain rain grew heavy, slapping against the gum leaves with the wind. A yellow wattlebird called off in the bush: the sound like a cork pulled from a bottle.
Get up. She needs you.
At the edge of the track grew a native laurel, peppered with white flowers. She leaned on it, dragging herself to her feet, spiky leaves cutting her palm, the crushed flowers releasing their sweet wild scent.
Her hiking boots were gone, her socks were gone, her feet numb and tinged blue in the alpine cold.
She spun, scanning the fog. The motion caused her skull to throb. She put her hand to the back of her head and it came away red.
She realised her honey hair was stuck to her cheeks by something sticky-brown. She pinched it away from her cheek, confused.
A human voice – distant, but growing closer.
Eliza froze. All her half-thoughts snapped into one decision. She lifted a white gum branch off the track: thick and smooth. She stepped into the ferns at the edge of the path, her clothes catching on the laurel. Was there a place she could hide? Did she really want to leave the track?
The sound of breaking branches behind her. ‘Miss Ellis!’
Eliza shouted, spun, and swung her stick.
The figure – a teenage girl – scrambled back with a yelp.
‘Jasmine!’ Eliza could have cried with relief. ‘No . . . Carmen?’
‘You tried to hit me!’ Carmen backed away, her long dark hair slick against her face. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
The stick fell from Eliza’s frozen fingers. ‘I’m sorry.’ She grabbed Carmen’s wrist and pulled her closer, into the cover beneath the trees.
‘You’re freezing, Miss Ellis.’
The rain stopped, like a tap turned off. The bush was suddenly fog-quiet, save for gentle dripping. Waiting.
‘Where are the others?’ whispered Eliza.
‘Everyone’s at the bus, but they can’t find Jasmine, Cierra, Bree or Georgia. Mr North says we need to call off the hike because of the storm. He’s already called the bus.’ Carmen seemed unaware her own voice had grown hushed. ‘You weren’t answering your phone. He sent me and Mr Michaels to find you.’
‘No one has seen those girls?’
‘Aren’t they with you? Is it true there was a fight?’ Carmen peered closer. ‘Is that blood on your face?’
‘Where’s Mr Michaels?’
Carmen was looking at the blood, at the bruise on Eliza’s face, at her cracked glasses. Realisation dawned.
‘Carmen. Where is Jack – where is Mr Michaels?’
‘We split up, he took another track. We’ve been looking for you for ages,’ said Carmen. ‘What’s happened? What’s happened?’
‘You were on this path alone?
’ shouted Eliza, and Carmen scurried another step back, panicked.
Eliza’s world lurched and she steadied herself against a gum tree.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket – maybe it had been buzzing the whole time and she hadn’t noticed. She had to see to Carmen’s safety first.
‘Where’s your phone, Carmen?’
‘We left them at school,’ said Carmen, voice shaking. ‘We handed them to Mr North before we left. Oh, God. Don’t you remember? Oh God, help . . . w-what happened to you? Where are the others?’
‘Carmen, I need you to listen carefully . . . in just a moment, I need you to run back to Mr Michaels. Run. Don’t stop for anything.’ She picked up the stick she had dropped and handed it to Carmen. ‘If you see anyone you don’t know . . .’
‘Miss Ellis?’
‘If you can’t find Mr Michaels, just run back to the bus. Stay away from anyone else. Do you understand me?’
‘Wh-what’s going on?’ Carmen whimpered.
‘Just wait there a moment.’ Eliza answered her phone. ‘Tom?’ she said. ‘Are all the girls back?
‘Eliza! Finally! Where the hell are you?’
‘The girls, Tom.’
‘We’re still missing Georgia, Bree, Jasmine and Cierra. I sent Carmen and Jack to find you. Are they with you?’
‘I’m sending Carmen to find Jack, and then back to you. If she’s not there in the next fifteen minutes, lock the other girls in the bus and come looking. I don’t know where we are right now.’
‘We’re j-just off the Lake Nameless trail,’ stammered Carmen. ‘W-west of it.’
Suddenly the rain started again, this time with ice in the water. Eliza’s skin stung in the sleet.
‘Carmen’s coming from the western track of the Lake Nameless trail. And call the police. Now.’
‘What the hell’s going on? Where are the others?’ said Tom.
‘I’ll find them,’ said Eliza. ‘Just call the police, Tom.’
‘Eliza, you shouldn’t —’
‘Tom. Call the police.’ She ended the call and looked at Carmen. ‘Go.’
Carmen hesitated, then crashed through the branches and sprinted off down the track. Eliza watched her disappear around a corner, then stepped back out onto the track.
Lightning flashed overhead and three seconds later it was followed by a long, echoing boom, pressing down on her eardrums, startling the yellow wattlebird into another cry.
The sleet grew heavier, making the bushland feel threatening in the cloud-gloom wet. This was a bad place to be in a storm: it was said anything could happen in the Great Western Tiers. Kooparoona Niara in language, or ‘Mountain of Spirits’, they were the stark bluffs that bordered the Central Plateau. They were dense, claustrophobic, and dangerous. You could walk in circles for days and never see a path right beneath you, you could freeze to death in the snowstorms that came from nowhere, you could fall off a fog-hidden cliff or into one of countless ravines and never be found.
Warmth and feeling slowly re-entered her bare feet, stinging against the sharp gravel and icy water. She’d walked barely a minute when she heard the sound of a different bird – a yellow-throated honeyeater – far up ahead, a harsh raspy call that keeps other birds away from its territory. Or warns about the presence of people.
Eliza stopped and shivered.
This is your fault. You deserve this.
She tried to shut out memories of the old rhyme, the one they’d banned students from saying, the one even she and her sister used to whisper at night, giggling with the thrill of fear. The town of Limestone Creek, nestled at the base of the Tiers, had only ever known one monster; the bodies of those girls had never been found.
She stepped off the path again, into a copse of mountain needlebush that scratched her skin, and walked beside the trail, creeping low to the ground. Her feet stung. Her jacket snagged and tore. She’d lost an earring – now a golden hoop dangled from only her left ear.
And then, a minute later, she heard heavy footsteps in the scrub, matching her every step.
She didn’t stop. She kept creeping.
‘Just your imagination,’ she whispered.
The scrunch-thud of footsteps, the scratch of ferns and branches.
She didn’t look.
If she didn’t look, she would be okay.
The legend said that if you didn’t see his face, he wouldn’t take you.
CHAPTER 1
MURPHY
The morning before
Murphy sighed. ‘We are not having this conversation again.’ He was shirtless, sitting at their rickety dining table, speaking loudly over the thumping Jon Bellion song playing from the bluetooth speaker in the corner. ‘Camping is good for you.’
‘I can help out at home,’ wheedled his 16-year-old daughter, Jasmine. She was leaning on the table, their chubby black-and-white cat Myrtle squirming in her arms. ‘I can mow the lawns. I can clean the windows —’
‘School. Get.’ Murphy lifted a clump of the sweet, sticky marijuana that covered the table and placed it on the electric scales.
The kitchen was falling apart, the cupboard doors loose and the fittings cracked, the wallpaper and the brown lino floor both peeling. Feline-safe houseplants covered most surfaces – devils ivy crawled above the cupboards, where the cats couldn’t reach. They were Jasmine’s additions, her latest attempt to purify the air of cigarettes and weed.
‘I can —’
‘Get,’ said Murphy again.
Jasmine was short and lithe like her late mother, her clear blue eyes smudged with shadow and dark liner. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail: once ginger like her mum’s, it was now dyed raven black.
Murphy, by comparison, was tall, bearded, and built like a lumberjack. Celtic tattoos covered a solid chest, big arms, thick legs. He was clad only in the crumpled Calvin Klein boxer-briefs he had slept in.
The cat mewled and leapt out of Jasmine’s arms. Named Myrtle after the Harry Potter character, the cat walked a few feet away, fell onto her side, and appeared to fall immediately asleep.
‘Look, Dad, I don’t think you understand what I’m offering here . . .’
‘I know exactly what you’re offering, sweetheart.’
‘But it’s hiking, Dad!’
‘And it won’t kill you.’
‘You don’t know that —’
‘She could stay and clean her room, lad,’ offered her uncle, Butch. He was in the kitchen with them, cooking breakfast, bopping along to the music, a joint in one hand and a pan frying bacon in the other. As always, he wore a navy singlet and dirty footy shorts.
‘Don’t,’ warned Murphy, focused on his task. He added more weed to the scale, until it was exactly an ounce.
The family resemblance between Butch and his younger brother Murphy was obvious, but Butch was much rounder in the cheeks and body. He also had daggers and a Mexican sugar skull tattooed on his neck. Butch had earnt his nickname in high school for his size, but both of them were an identical six-foot-three. No one called them by their first names unless they wanted a fight.
‘Uncle Butch, can I stay home?’ Jasmine skipped to his side, light as a feather. ‘Please? Can I?’
‘Sure thing, Jaz,’ said Butch, taking a drag from his joint. ‘Arty-pay at the Urphys-may.’
‘Your teacher called me specifically to check you’d be there,’ Murphy said. He put the ounce into a ziplock bag and sealed it with a vacuum tool, his movements careful and deliberate. ‘You’ve wagged too many days this year already. So you are going to school, and you are going on the camp, and you are going to like it.’
‘Yeah, Jaz, if Miss Ellis says so . . .’ said Butch.
‘That’s the only reason he’s making me go,’ said Jasmine in disgust. ‘He just wants to get in her pants.’
Murphy turned back to his work, taking the sealed ziplock bag and slapping a sticker onto it – one of the ‘THE CAPTAIN’ stickers they’d bought in bulk online at The Mad Hueys – that now identif
ied it as the best bush bud in Northern Tasmania. Even though identifying their product was risky, it had the added benefit of shoving it in the face of Sergeant Doble, their rival and constant pain in the arse, who seized as much of their product out on the streets as he could.
‘What makes you think I’m not in her pants already?’ said Murphy.
‘Dad, gross.’
‘Ayyy, Murphy, I had dibs,’ said Butch, winking at Jasmine.
‘And don’t think that if you miss the bus I’ll let you off,’ Murphy continued loudly. ‘I’ll still drive you up.’ He flashed a white smile with crooked teeth. ‘Just in my undies. I’ll even hop out to kiss you goodbye in front of all your little girlfriends.’
‘You’re such a creep. Please, Dad, it won’t matter if you tell them I’m sick or something . . .’
Murphy glanced her way, pausing. Her pale face, mouth a little too tight; up on her toes like she was about to fly out the window. ‘Jasmine,’ he said finally. ‘It’s only one night. Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll still be right here when you get back.’
‘Dad, I’m not —’
‘Sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere. I promise.’
Jasmine’s sadness turned to something else, cold and resigned. ‘Fine.’ She lifted one of the bags out of the box, pinched between two fingers. ‘Then I’m taking one of these.’