The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller

by Gregg Dunnett

  “We’ll find out,” she said eventually. “When they find his body. They’ll do an autopsy. We’ll know for sure then. And then the police will know that I lied. What happens then Dave?”

  He didn’t answer this and it looked for a moment like she was going to cry again.

  Dave stood up and came back around the desk. He took her hands and pulled lightly so that she stood up, and for a second time he put his arms around her.

  twenty-one

  I’D BARELY THOUGHT about our secret spot while John had been with Cara, I was a bit busy wallowing in despair and misery I guess. But Darren had thought about it.

  It turned out he’d gone on another reconnaissance trip, alone. He’d taken another look at the map and realised it was easier to get to Hanging Rock if you first went inland following the road up past John’s house, and then cut across along a farmer’s track by some fields. You then had to jump over the wall that bordered the estate, but it wasn’t that hard to do and as soon as you were across, no one from the outside could see you. From there you could scramble straight down the side of the valley and follow it all the way back to the sea and Hanging Rock Bay. It was a bit of a trek, but the big advantage was that no one from the big house would be able to see you, which was much better than the coastal route where you had to pass in front of it in full view.

  The problem was the boards. Wetsuits fitted in a backpack, but you couldn’t hide three bloody great surfboards, and if anyone saw us on the road, it would be obvious we were headed towards the private estate.

  Between them, John and Darren worked it all out. The night before we planned to surf it, we would take our boards as far as John’s house. Then we would leave from there early, before there was any traffic on the country lane. If we got unlucky and someone did come along we’d be able to hear then, and we could stash the boards in the hedge. The track would probably be easier, it was unlikely that anyone would be out walking that early. Once we were over the wall it was commando territory - we didn’t know what we’d be facing, but we figured that if you were rich enough to have a massive house and an estate, then you wouldn’t feel the need to get up early. We hoped so anyway.

  It was all Darren and John making the plans. And if it hadn’t all taken place at the caravan, I might not have been involved at all. I didn’t know how to process the news that John and Cara had split up. On the one hand I was pleased, and of course I didn’t buy John’s bullshit that he’d split up with her, but on the other it made it difficult for me since John was around more than ever, and I still found it difficult to talk to him like before. I still found my stomach doing these stupid heaves when John mentioned her name. Darren didn’t help. He decided he wanted details and would pester him for hours, asking how many times they’d had sex and where and what positions and what it was like. John knew how it made me feel, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to brag about it.

  A couple of weeks later, the weather forecast looked good for surf that weekend, and we put our plan into action. I told Mum I was taking my board to John’s to fix it, not that she’d have noticed it was gone, and Darren and me peddled up the hill into a freshening breeze, each with a board under our arms. John met us at his gate and we stashed the boards under some bushes just inside his fence. We didn’t hang around for long but each went home and set our alarms for five the next morning.

  It was autumn by then, and only just light when I woke. My school backpack had been emptied of books to make room for my wetsuit and a few chocolate bars borrowed from the shop. Darren was already at John’s when I got there, and we set off right away, talking in whispers even though there was no one else around.

  A couple of cars came past while we were hiking single file along the road, and John - in front of course - called for us to quickly lower our boards into the ditch that ran alongside the road. The occupants couldn’t have been less bothered, but it was still a relief when we made it to the track, it would be just our luck for one of the local surfers to drive past and stop to ask where we were going. We saw one woman with a dog in the fields, but they were a long way in front and walking away from us so we just stalked along behind, ready to drop to the ground if she turned around, but pretty soon she turned away and out of sight.

  It didn’t take too long before we arrived at the estate’s perimeter wall. It had signs up saying “Private” and “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” but that didn’t look so likely since the wall was almost falling down in places. It was no trouble to jump up onto it, pass the boards up, and then drop down the other side.

  We went from farmer’s fields to land that I guess was used for grazing sheep. Just grassland, a few little woods dotted around, and like Darren had said, no buildings or anything in sight.

  Even though this was Darren’s route, it was still John that took the lead, and we followed him across a half mile of open land and then down into the valley. There was a lot of vegetation down here to push through and the path the sheep used sometimes disappeared, but we could splash through the stream for the few bits that had got too overgrown. Right at the end it got really thick and John had to go through first then we passed him the boards one by one.

  And then we turned a corner and we were there.

  twenty-two

  THE WAVE AT Hanging Rock was special. What happened that day - later on I mean, when things turned bad - that would never have happened if the wave hadn’t been something special.

  That first day we surfed it the wind was blowing strong and out to sea the horizon was lumpy from all the swell. Even inshore there were white caps everywhere, really it was no day for surfing. But right in close by where the rocky ledge lay unseen beneath the water, in there the surface of the sea had smoothed right off. Maybe it’s something to do with the steep sides of the valley, I don’t know, but where the wave was breaking it was like a different day. The swells would wallow in towards the reef like bloated whales, their backs ruffled and bothered by the wind, but in close they became spaced out and stretched like a strange creature waking up. And one by one they began to peel off down the point. By the time they were reeling past the Hanging Rock they looked like something out of a surf movie. Only better, for being real and unbound by some little square box in a magazine or on TV.

  I don’t know about the others but I never really expected to go surfing that day. Not there anyway. I thought we would get there to find the place wasn’t like we remembered it, that the wave didn’t really work after all. That it was just some crazy dream we’d all had, and we’d hike back without even getting wet and that would be it. We knew Town Beach would be OK later on and that’s where I thought we’d end up. Splashing around in the wind with everyone else.

  And because we’d arrived by Darren’s inland route it just felt such a shock to see it there laid out in front of us. We’d not seen the sea, just sheep droppings and branches scratching across our faces and then suddenly… this. This vast blueness stretching out in front of us and wave after wave after wave coming through like it had been sculpted by some giant machine. And no one there but us. It looked… I dunno how to describe it. It just looked fucking amazing.

  You wouldn’t believe how quickly three boys can get into wetsuits, but when we were suited up, we slowed down a bit - the launch was sketchy. The wave broke onto a flat reef that runs up the north side of the inlet, it stuck right out from the cliffs with the Hanging Rock right in the middle. But the reef was studded with boulders and deep cracks so that it was constantly washed by foaming white water surging up and drawing back down again. Getting across wasn’t easy. You might make it, or you might stumble on a rock that you’ve not seen, and there’s a lot of seaweed so it’s really slippery. Eventually we’d figure out the right way to launch at Hanging Rock - you jump in at the waterfall at the neck of the bay and it’s an easy paddle out behind where the waves are breaking. But that first time we didn’t think of that. So instead we picked our way all the way along the rocks right out to the point, and tried to mak
e the short paddle out through the breaking waves just before they began their long peel down the reef.

  It was hard going walking. You could feel the wind catching at the board, trying to whip it around and slapping the leash against the deck. It was cold too, still early in the day. I didn’t have boots and the barnacles cut at my feet. Lower down the seaweed felt greasy and slippery. Eventually I made it down to the water’s edge, the point where the last of the wave’s energy pushed the water it was carrying onto the rocks. John and Darren were there already, their feet in boots had made the walk a little easier. But something was holding them back.

  “Now what?” I asked as I stood close by to Darren. It was pretty much the first time I’d spoken that day.

  He said nothing but crouched lower, holding his board in both hands as a bigger swell pushed in, sending water foaming over his feet and up to his knees. He was braced for it and managed to stay upright, but it hit me by surprise and the force of it took my legs away. I found myself carried back up the rocks on my arse, the board clattering off the rocks behind me.

  “Shit!” I shouted when I got back to my feet, more to me than anyone else. “It’s got a lot of power.”

  Neither of them answered but Darren was watching me, hesitating. John didn’t though. Just as the next swell pushed in he shouted “Motherfucker!” and he leapt forward into the water, holding his board out in front of him. He landed with his chest on the board in his paddling position and began to dig in furiously, strong strokes of front crawl, trying to make ground before the next wave hit. When it did all we saw was a pair of black legs and feet disappearing under a bubbling wall of crisp white foam.

  “Fucking hell!” Darren shouted at the sky and he went next, copying John’s technique and disappearing the same way. I’d picked myself up by now and retreated a bit to higher ground. From there I could see the two of them paddling as hard as they could. They were paddling straight out, but the rip was so strong they were being dragged sideways faster, back the way we’d just walked. But they didn’t even notice. Every few strokes they had to interrupt what they were doing for another duck dive to get under a new wall of water that pushed them back and battered them around. It looked pretty full on.

  My heart was pumping like mad and I felt the wetsuit tight against my chest. It didn’t feel constrictive anymore, it felt thin, no match for the wind that cut across the headland. I didn’t know if I wanted to go in or not, actually that’s a lie. I’d have just sat down and watched from the rocks if I’d felt I had a choice. But there was no choice. How could I face John and Darren ever again unless I got in there? So I picked my way back towards the water until the ends of the swells were once again clawing at my knees. I locked my teeth together to stop them chattering, with cold, or fear, I don’t know. I got lucky then and there was a break in the waves, just a little lull, so before I could change my mind, before I even knew I was doing it, I threw myself forward and started paddling, ignoring the feel of rocks scraping at the tips of my fingers.

  Because I’d seen John and Darren get pulled so fast to the left, I aimed more to the right than they had, much more, and this seemed to help, or maybe I just got lucky. I had to make three fast duck dives, the last a deep one where I could feel the wave sucking hard off my back, like a beast clawing at me as it rolled over my head. When I surfaced you could hear its anger that I’d slipped through, this snarling moan that went on howling as it rolled away from me. Then it went quiet. Eerie quiet. I paddled fast through this long flat section where the sea was bubbling and swirling like a fast-moving river - the air pushed underwater by the waves was finding its way back to the surface. This was the impact zone and I knew you don’t want to hang around here. Ahead of me a new set was building and I forced my arms to work faster, ignoring the pain in my muscles as I dragged myself through the boiling water. I had to get over the waves before they broke, that was all that mattered in the world.

  Suddenly the first wave was right in front of me, still unbroken, but feathering and about to unload. I put everything I had into pulling my arms through the water. I was paddling uphill and the swell was transforming into a plunging, breaking wave not in front of me but around me, to my right it steepened and hollowed and threw itself out and down in a hissing, ugly roar that tore at my legs, way too big to duck dive this one. But for all the fear in my body I knew I was ok, just far enough out to claw my way to the top and over down the other side. Behind it the spray whipped around me and I felt the vacuum in the air try to suck me back, like standing next to a railway track as an express thunders through. There was no way back the way I’d just come. The scream in my arms made me slow my paddling, but I still kept heading out, pulling myself over the remaining waves in the set. Then it all went quiet. I was out the back.

  It was massive. There was nothing out there to give a sense of scale, that’s why we hadn’t seen it from the land, but now I was the scale. The swells were like roaming mountains with great ugly lumps of chop on them the size of cars. There were streaks of foam running like veins across the water surface, and when a wave broke, a way inside of me now thank God, great blizzards of spray lashed downwind for hundreds of metres stinging my face and eyes. My heart was nearly beating out of my chest. I’d have done anything to get out of there.

  I know I said I was good, that I ripped, but here’s the truth. I might have been OK at Town Beach. But what you’ve got to know is that Town Beach was the only place I’d surfed the last three years. And the wave there was soft as hell. Even before that in Australia I really only went out in small waves. So when I say I was a good surfer what I mean was, I was good at carving little turns and trying to punt airs on soft little waves. Kid’s stuff. I had exactly no experience in the type of big, scary pointbreak waves that I suddenly found myself in. And I was out there all alone. The others had vanished.

  I was kind of frozen with fear for a bit, just watching the horizon and paddling for my life whenever a set loomed up, but that kept taking me further and further out and eventually I realised I’d actually paddled right outside the inlet and was in danger of being swept down the coast. If that happened I faced a good few miles where big swells were crunching directly onto rocks and cliffs, all the way until I got to the shelter and sand of Town Beach. There was no way I could do that. I’d either drown, or more likely be beaten to death on the rocks if that happened. That thought knocked a bit of sense into me and I started trying to get back into the bay. I hadn’t seen the other two since I’d launched myself into the water, but then a swell lifted me up and I got a glimpse of them, sitting there, sort of huddled over their boards. They were right opposite the Hanging Rock, tucked in out of the wind just where we’d said we would sit. It looked miles away.

  Like a proper kook I was battling directly against the current and the wind, and I could see from the headland beside me I was putting all my energy just into staying in the same place. And I was tiring fast. I was crying too, it was like half my brain had shut down and was just whimpering inside my head. But fortunately the other half was still just about working. There was this one time back in Oz when the lifeguards came into school to tell us how to beat a rip tide. You never paddled or swam straight against it, but had to go diagonally, or sometimes even let it take you right out and around and choose another place to come in. They handed out these cartoons for us to take home and put on our walls. Panicking Peter did the wrong thing in every drawing, Calm-headed Cindy always got it right, and she looked sexy in her little bikini. I kept mine up until one of my friends laughed at me for having it there. But I still saw it every time I went to sleep for maybe four years. I guess it sunk in. I turned around and started paddling back out into the middle of the bay, even though it felt like the wrong thing to do.

  If you stand on the headland you can see what happens to the water. Hanging Rock Bay is shaped like a V, each side being maybe five hundred metres long. It’s the only feature in an otherwise straight section of rocky, cliffy coastline so there’s
little to slow the tides as they rip northwards on the push, and southwards as they ebb. And that tide was always at its worst right there on the corner. That’s where I was stuck, still quite close in, but right where all the tide was running and also where all the water flowing out of the bay. You paddle straight against it, you’re fucked. You’re Panicking Peter. You’re this little matchstick figure trying to beat the entire Atlantic ocean pushing high tide up the Irish Sea. But you paddle out and around - it’s a long way and still not a nice place to be, but at least you’ve got a chance.

  And sometimes the ocean does funny things to help you out. Another set made the horizon turn black and lumpy, but instead of turning towards it and trying to get over it before it broke, this time I was too tired. I just stopped and lay on my board panting, crying, watching it rumble toward me. Then just before it arrived pure fear made me do something. I didn’t want to face any waves, but I definitely didn’t want to face a whole set, so I decided to try and catch the first one. It might drown me or it might just tumble me back in through the impact zone. Either way, it didn’t feel my life was in my hands at that point.