‘I can’t find him.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ve searched everywhere!’
She was still clutching her packet of chips – which can’t have been very hot, by that time. Richard rubbed his chin, looking a little confused. Then Mum took matters into her own hands.
‘Where have you searched?’ she inquired of Sylvia.
‘Everywhere. The restaurants. The toilets. All those rooms near the bar –’
‘The gift shop?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were about to head off home, weren’t you? Have you checked your car?’
Sylvia hesitated. ‘N-no,’ she admitted.
‘Why don’t you do that?’ said Mum. ‘Then, if you still can’t find him, you should go to the guides’ office.’
‘The guides’ office?’
‘To notify them that Paul’s missing.’ As Sylvia’s face crumpled, Mum stepped forward quickly, and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘I tell you what,’ Mum said, ‘what if I come with you? I’m sure it’ll be all right. Paul’s probably just hiding.’
‘Oh, no!’ Sylvia exclaimed, in great distress. ‘He wouldn’t do that! He knows I have to get him back on time!’
I caught Michelle’s eye, and we quickly looked away from each other. Personally, I was convinced that Paul was playing one of his foul tricks. But Ray cleared his throat, and said gently, ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to go back. Maybe he wants to stay with you for a bit longer, Sylvia. Have you thought of that?’
Obviously she hadn’t. But it seemed to cheer her up a bit. Mum removed the packet of chips from her hand, and gave it to Ray.
‘Get rid of these, will you?’ said Mum, before turning to Michelle’s mother. ‘Can you watch the kids for me on the bushwalk, Colette? I do think Sylvia needs some help, here.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Michelle’s mum replied. Then Dad, who was standing beside me, put a hand on my shoulder.
‘I can look after them, Judy,’ he growled. ‘I’m perfectly capable, believe it or not.’
No doubt Mum’s snappy answer to this remark was on the tip of her tongue. Luckily, however, Richard stepped in first. He pointed out that it was nearly one o’clock, and that he, Ray, Rosemary and Sylvester were due up at the sinkhole.
Hearing the word ‘sinkhole’, Michelle immediately informed Joyce that we (namely, Michelle and I) wanted to go to the sinkhole too, before we started on our bushwalk. Would it be possible?
‘Why, of course,’ said Joyce. ‘Anywhere you like. Unless someone else has another preference?’
Nobody did. So the group started to move, with most of us heading out the front door, across the road, to the flight of stairs that marked the beginning of the Six Foot Track.
As we marched away, I glanced back at Mum and Sylvia. Poor Mum. Poor Sylvia. But I doubted that Paul was lost or anything. I was quite sure that he intended to lie low until he’d caused a really major disturbance.
‘Maybe Paul got trapped in a cave,’ Bethan remarked chirpily. ‘Or maybe he ran into the Mumuga, and got eaten.’
‘We can only hope,’ said Ray.
But he spoke very, very softly, and no one heard him except me.
CHAPTER # eight
By the time we reached the sinkhole, a small crowd had already gathered there. It was a noisy crowd, dressed in brightly coloured clothes; in its midst was the guide – Philip – who was handing around lots of jangling equipment. What with all the commotion, and the bustle, and the large numbers of excited people milling about, I wasn’t surprised that we didn’t smell anything. No Mumuga, I thought, was going to hang around in these conditions. It was like a railway station platform at rush hour.
‘All right,’ said Philip, clapping his hands. ‘Can I ask if anyone here has ever been abseiling before?’
Ray hadn’t. Neither had Richard, Rosemary or Sylvester. So Philip began to instruct them in the proper techniques, until Ray interrupted him with a question about ‘possible gas leaks’ underground.
‘Oh,’ said Philip. ‘Are you the one who notified the office about a strange smell, this morning?’
‘Ah – yes.’
‘Well, we’ve checked it out, and there’s no evidence of any problems like that inside the cave. We had a private booking through here at nine, and no one complained.’ Philip raised an eyebrow. ‘So it’s up to you, really.’
Ray decided to go ahead. The others did too. Michelle nudged me in the ribs.
‘This is pointless,’ she whispered. ‘There’s too much noise.’
‘Too many people,’ I whispered back.
‘Should we wait until they’ve gone in?’
‘It’s up to Joyce.’
‘I hope Sylvester’s stupid bike shorts split right up the back!’
Colette heard that; I glanced at her, and saw that she closed her eyes briefly. Matoaka also had her eyes closed, but for a different reason. Her palms were lifted in front of her, and her head was thrown back. Possibly she was feeling for totemic vibrations, or something.
‘Come on,’ Bethan whined, tugging at Dad’s hand. My brother always gets bored when he’s forced to stand around for too long. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Are we ready to start, Joyce?’ Dad asked.
‘Any time you like, Jim. I thought we’d do a little bit of the McKeown’s Valley track, though perhaps not the whole round trip, which is supposed to take about three hours.’
‘I don’t think the kids –’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Where’s Gordon, by the way? Isn’t he coming?’
‘Oh, Gordon’s knee is playing up, I’m afraid. He couldn’t cope with a bushwalk.’
‘Bye, Ray!’ Bethan shouted, because Ray was disappearing into the sinkhole.
He looked pretty funny in his caving helmet.
‘Bye, kids,’ he replied.
‘It’s not fair,’ Bethan grumbled, as our bushwalking group began to move away from the sinkhole. ‘I really want to go with Ray.’
‘But you want to go with me too, don’t you?’ asked Dad.
‘No,’ said Bethan.
What he meant, of course, was that he preferred caves to bushwalks. Dad, however, probably didn’t understand. He said, ‘Oh,’ very quietly.
For some reason, I almost felt sorry for him.
‘There’s too much interference,’ Matoaka observed, opening her eyes suddenly. ‘I can’t pick up any trace of ancient energies, right now. Maybe if we all stand still, and concentrate . . .’
‘No,’ Bethan complained. ‘Let’s go.’
Michelle rolled her eyes at me. (She’s not much good at little brothers.) Joyce cleared her throat. Matoaka got down on her hands and knees, causing everyone else to hesitate.
‘What’s the matter, dear?’ asked Joyce. ‘Are you sick?’
‘Oh, no. No, I just need to feel the earth.’
‘Why?’ asked Bethan.
‘In case it’s trying to tell me something.’
There was a brief pause. Finally Joyce remarked, ‘It won’t tell you anything around here, I’m afraid. Too much traffic. If you’re looking for animal tracks, you’ll have to look off the path.’ She opened up her field guide, and showed a picture to Bethan. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘That’s an echidna track, and that’s a platypus track. Not that we’ll see any platypus tracks in this neck of the woods.’
Joyce was very clever. She let Bethan borrow her book, so that he stopped moaning. In fact, when he found all the coloured pictures of animal dung, he began to laugh. I don’t blame him, really, because they weren’t photographs. Someone had very carefully painted page after page of ‘scats’: great big brown ones like sausages, little black ones like seeds, long skinny ones like sticks, feathery grey ones, square shiny ones, pale pointed ones, pod-shaped, bean-shaped, nut-shaped . . .
I have to admit, I was just as fascinated as Bethan was. Who on earth had been given the job of painting such pictures?
‘Illustrations of scats, skulls
and shelters by Anne Breckwoldt,’ Michelle read, as she and I jostled Bethan from both sides. ‘Poor Anne Breckwoldt. Yuk! What a job!’
‘I think it’s a great job!’ Bethan protested. ‘Hey – let go! It’s not your book!’
‘It’s not yours, either.’
‘Kids,’ said Dad. ‘Let’s all share the book, please.’
‘I wonder if Ray’s ever had to draw animal poo?’ I remarked. ‘He’s had to draw trees, and flowers. They might have asked him to draw poo.’
‘You see how different all the scats are?’ said Joyce. ‘It means that you can always tell what might have been in a particular place.’
‘Yeah! That’s what I want to do!’ Bethan exclaimed. ‘I want to find some poo!’
So we looked. Walking along the sandy track, we kept our eyes peeled for animal pellets. Sometimes Joyce pointed out hollows in the tree-trunks, or clumps of leaves and twigs high in the branches. (These, she said, might be the homes of possums or birds.) Once she stopped to examine what she said was probably a ‘rabbit’s scrape’. She also told us to watch out for flattened patches of grass in protected areas – these, she explained, were often left by sleeping wallabies, especially if the ground was scattered with droppings. When we found a couple of little holes, Joyce announced that they could very well be echidna ‘poke-holes’, made while searching for ants.
Our most important discoveries, however, were scats. Dad found two near a tree: they were very small and dry, and Joyce said that they probably belonged to a ring-tailed possum. Then Joyce found another clump, which we all decided must belong to either a rabbit or hare. And Matoaka . . . well, let me tell you what happened to Matoaka.
We were on our way back to Caves House. It was nearly three o’clock, and Joyce had decided that we’d gone far enough. Bethan was still scouring the ground for poo; he had borrowed a plastic bag from Joyce, and was collecting whatever pellets he could (carefully, without touching them with his bare hands) because he wanted to draw pictures of them when he got home. No one else, however, was much interested any more. We were too hot and tired. Joyce was discussing English hotels with Colette. Michelle and I were talking about the Mumuga, wondering whether it really was something that the Exorcists’ Club should be following up. A Mumuga wasn’t a ghost, after all, though it was supposed to be a spirit creature. But if it was a spirit creature, Michelle pointed out, how could it have left such a terrible smell behind it?
‘Well – why not?’ I asked.
‘Ghosts don’t smell.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, why wouldn’t they?’
‘Because they don’t have bodies. They’re made out of air, or – or whatever it is. They’re like clouds, or fog. Clouds don’t smell either.’
‘Yes, but the Mumuga isn’t a ghost, is it? Ghosts don’t eat people, but spirit creatures do. So they must have bodies.’
‘Perhaps Aboriginal spirit creatures are like the yeti, or the Loch Ness monster,’ Dad suggested. ‘They may be real or they may not.’
‘Maybe.’ I didn’t really know what to say to Dad. He seemed to be dividing his time between me and my brother, either helping Bethan to find animal dung or butting into my conversations with Michelle. Sometimes Michelle and I would walk more quickly, hurrying ahead so that we could discuss the Exorcists’ Club in private. But Dad always caught up with us. The faster we went, the faster he went.
‘By the way,’ said Michelle, at one point, ‘what were you and Rosemary talking about? Back there at Caves House? I could have sworn I heard you mention a grave.’
‘Oh.’ I explained about Rosemary’s problem, and the solution that I had offered. ‘What do you think?’ I asked. ‘Do you reckon it’ll work?’
Michelle shrugged. ‘It’s worth trying,’ she answered. ‘Only I don’t know about going to the grandmother’s grave. Not if the ghost is stuck in Rosemary’s room.’
‘Unless she isn’t,’ I pointed out.
‘Right. But if she isn’t, then why didn’t she come here last night to bother Rosemary?’
‘Maybe Delora would know,’ I said.
We both agreed, however, that we probably shouldn’t mention Richard’s old girlfriend to his new one. Michelle insisted that it would only create a lot of bad feeling, because old and new girlfriends always hate each other. Dad (who had been eavesdropping again) said that this wasn’t always true. He said that many people were capable of embracing change in a positive manner; that Matoaka, for instance, liked my mum a lot. The words were no sooner out of his mouth than it occurred to me: where was Matoaka?
‘Where’s Matoaka?’ I queried, stopping in my tracks.
Everyone else stopped too. We all looked around. Colette cast her eyes to heaven.
‘Not again,’ she sighed.
We were on a winding, bushy pathway studded with rocky outcrops, not far from the sinkhole. You couldn’t see behind you for any great distance; spiky branches were blocking the view. Dad called out: ‘Matoaka!’
There was no reply.
‘She’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘She probably wanted to get away from our auras, for a while. They’d be causing interference.’
‘There are signposts everywhere,’ Colette added. ‘She’ll be able to find her own way back. It’s not exactly the Tasmanian wilderness out here.’
Joyce seemed unconvinced. She peered up at Dad, blinking behind her glasses.
‘Yes, but – she wouldn’t do anything silly, would she?’ asked Joyce. ‘I mean to say, she wouldn’t go climbing on ledges, or sliding down holes?’
It was a sensible question. In my opinion, Matoaka was exactly the type who might decide to stand on the edge of a cliff with her eyes shut, swaying back and forth. I turned to Dad. So did Michelle, and Bethan, and Colette. We all waited for an answer.
We didn’t get one, though. Before Dad could reply, we heard a scream. It was a distant, muffled scream, but it was a scream.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Joyce.
The scream was coming from behind us. It was followed by another scream, and then a wail. Dad bolted back down the path, retracing his steps.
The rest of us followed him.
‘Is it her?’ Michelle gasped, as we slipped and slid over loose stones.
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Listen.’
This time I recognised Matoaka’s voice, because she was actually saying something. ‘Oh, no,’ she was moaning. ‘Oh, yuk . . .’
She didn’t sound as if she was very far away. In fact, upon rounding a corner, we almost ran straight into her. She was hopping along, her face screwed up in misery, the hem of her billowy cotton dress spattered and smeared with something awful.
The nasty stuff was all over her left foot, too; her frail Indian sandal hadn’t given her much protection.
‘Look what I stepped in!’ she whimpered. ‘Oh, it stinks!’
It certainly did. Colette retreated. Joyce whipped out a handkerchief, but she didn’t give it to Matoaka; she held it over her nose and mouth.
Dad said, crossly, ‘What the hell were you doing?’
‘I thought I saw a rock painting,’ Matoaka replied. ‘Off the path –’
‘You’re covered in that stuff!’
‘I fell over!’
‘What kind of poo is it, Joyce?’ asked Bethan.
‘Oh – uh – I don’t know, dear. Nothing native. Pig, perhaps.’
‘Pig . . . pig . . .’ Bethan began to leaf through Joyce’s field guide. Matoaka leaned on Dad, holding her dirty foot aloft.
‘It was huge!’ she groaned. ‘It was twice the size of a cow pat! They shouldn’t let cows wander around here!’
‘They don’t,’ said Dad. ‘How could they? It’s practically perpendicular – and it’s national park.’
‘Did it look like that?’ Bethan inquired, thrusting the field guide at Matoaka. It was open at a page showing a series of squashed black boulders stuck together. ‘That’s pig poo.’
‘It was a puddle,’ sai
d Matoaka. ‘An enormous green puddle of muck.’
‘Maybe some bushwalker had diarrhoea,’ Michelle remarked, whereupon everyone began to look sick. For a second I felt as if I was going to vomit.
‘Oh, no,’ Matoaka shrilled.
‘Shhh!’ Dad didn’t seem very sympathetic. ‘Stop carrying on, it’s not going to help.’
‘I’ve got some tissues,’ Colette offered. She was quite a long way away, by then. When she gave Dad her tissues, she had to hold out her hand, and inch across the space that divided them both. After which she quickly retreated again.
‘And I’ve got water,’ said Joyce, surrendering her water bottle. With the tissues and the water, Matoaka managed to clean off some of the worst mess. But she still smelled bad – especially when she was in the sun.
Bethan said, ‘I don’t suppose I can put some of that in my plastic bag –’
‘No!’ we all cried, in unison.
‘I wasn’t going to.’ Bethan’s tone was impatient. ‘I said I don’t suppose I could – it’s much too soft. But if I go and have a look at the puddle now, maybe I could draw a picture of it later.’
‘No,’ said Colette.
‘But –’
‘No, Bethan.’ Colette spoke firmly. ‘You’d stumble about searching until you slipped in it, and your mother would kill me. No.’
Dad opened his mouth, then shut it again. I don’t know what he might have wanted to say. Bethan complained about Ray taking our camera on the adventure tour, at which point we all began to make our way back to Caves House: Joyce in the lead, with Bethan beside her, asking questions about pig dung (‘Why is it that funny shape?’); Michelle and I in the middle, practically treading on Bethan’s heels because we were trying to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and Matoaka (who really stank); and Dad bringing up the rear, holding on to his girlfriend, who still preferred to hop along rather than place the sole of her foot firmly on her wet, smelly sandal.
We had only gone a short way when a light bulb seemed to explode inside my head. I had been thinking about the green puddle – I couldn’t help it, when the stink kept wafting up my nose – and it suddenly struck me: the poo! The stink! The size of it!
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