by Baker Chris
Paki looked amazed. ‘Nobody in this town has been able to hurt them. What’ve you got that nobody else has?’
She shrugged. Kevin looked at her proudly. ‘It’s probably because she’s pure of heart.’
Paki looked sceptical. ‘Good thing somebody is. I’m certainly not.’
‘He isn’t either,’ Cheryl said. ‘But he tries hard.’ She turned to Alex who finished her tea and put the cup down. ‘And what happened with you?’
‘I used a softball bat,’ Alex said. ‘I knocked this thing that attacked Sean into a lavender hedge. That upset it more than anything, the bat or even the shotgun.’ From where they were sitting they had a view across Kahuika, a white sea of fog.
Cheryl shivered. ‘Nobody goes out at night any more,’ she said. ‘The Ponaturi have everyone scared stiff.’ Night after night, members of Cheryl’s family had been scrabbling at her window.
‘I know what they really are,’ she said. ‘But it just tears my heart out to see them. Paki doesn’t have that trouble. I don’t think so, anyway. He won’t say what he sees, but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to bother him much.’
‘There’s nobody I miss all that much,’ he said. ‘Only my nanny, and they haven’t cottoned on to her yet.’
Sean took Cheryl’s hand. ‘They’re like vampires,’ he said. ‘They can’t touch you if you don’t invite them in.’
‘Lavender, you reckon?’ Paki said.
‘And clean living,’ laughed Kevin. ‘But you should have seen Hoheria. She cracked this monster’s head open like it was a watermelon. Gunk all over the footpath in the morning.’
‘But no monster,’ said Hoheria. ‘I mightn’t’ve killed it.’
The next time they came to the markets everyone there was wearing lavender sprays. Clumps of lavender were being sold and traded. Even men were wearing lavender oil. Lavender water was being sprayed from old household cleanser bottles.
‘The place smells like my grandmother,’ said Kevin. ‘Like she used to, I mean.’
Paki and Cheryl greeted them from behind a table piled high with drying lavender clumps, pillows and cushions stuffed with lavender, bowls of lavender-smelling pot-pourri. Next to their tent two young boys turned a goat on a spit over a bed of coals. Occasionally one of them tossed on a few sprigs of lavender so that puffs of fragrant smoke rose and mixed with the thin mist that wreathed about the markets.
Paki looked like he had mixed feelings. ‘The idea really took off,’ he said. ‘We haven’t had any serious trouble for ages.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Except I’m sick of the smell already. And they’re still coming around. I can hear them at night. I sometimes see them in the fog during the day. Good thing I can run fast.’
‘What d’you reckon?’ Kevin asked Hoheria when they got back home. ‘Is the trouble over, or what?’
Hoheria looked at him, brown eyes wide with concern. ‘I don’t think so. Paki knows it too. It’s just a quiet patch. But I’ve got a bad feeling. I’m worried about what’s happening in Kahuika, especially with Cheryl and Paki.’
Two weeks later when they rode in to the markets Cheryl was distraught. She was sitting in the rear of their tent, her arms around a frightened small girl with haunted eyes.
‘What happened to you?’ said Alex.
Cheryl and the girl clutched each other. ‘The Ponaturi came back. They killed Tilly.’
‘Tilly? Who’s Tilly?’
Cheryl pulled herself together. ‘This is Desiree,’ she said. ‘Tilly was her friend. It’s horrible what happened.’
Paki took up the story. ‘Desiree and Tilly were staying with us when the Ponaturi came back. They must have gathered outside the window, even though we’d planted a lavender hedge and painted the sill with oil.’
Tilly let them in, Desiree said. They swarmed all over her and the last thing Desiree saw as she fled through the door was Tilly falling to the ground, covered in monsters.
‘Can you take her home with you?’ Cheryl said to Hoheria. ‘She’s too scared to stay in our house. She can’t sleep. She won’t eat.’
‘Sure I can. But I don’t know if she’ll be any safer if the lavender isn’t doing any more than irritate the Ponaturi, and they’re learning that it won’t hurt them. What do you know about her, by the way?’
Paki had found Desiree and Tilly on one of his trips to Ōtepoti and had brought them back with him after seeing the people occupying the old building where they were living. He’d found the girls at the markets in the Octagon, stealing food.
‘Don’t they feed you two at home?’ he’d asked.
‘Not much. They make us do the dishes, though. In cold water. Yuck.’
‘Are they good to you? Do you like them?’
‘Doubt it.’ Desiree and Tilly were both nine, old beyond their years.
‘I’m Desiree’s cousin,’ Paki told the denizens of the old boarding house who he’d found gathered around a bong in the kitchen. ‘Anyone got anything to say about that?’ They’d all looked at each other and at Paki’s towering bulk.
‘Through there,’ one of them said, indicating a room off the kitchen. ‘This isn’t the ideal place for them anyway.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Paki, stepping into the sunroom where he found Desiree sitting on a camp bed wrapped in a blanket, and Tilly perched on a hardbacked chair. Their faces lit up when they saw Paki.
‘We’re all packed,’ Desiree said. She had a pair of jeans and a jumper in her school bag. Tilly had her gear in a small back-pack. There was nobody in the kitchen when they left the house, and when they trotted off after Paki lifted the two girls up behind him, nobody waved goodbye.
‘Bad buggers,’ Paki said to Cheryl later. ‘One of them would have got to the girls eventually.’
When Paki and Cheryl visited that weekend they brought Desiree with them. She was washed and brushed and carried her school bag.
‘I’m going to stay with Auntie Hoheria,’ she told Alex.
‘Actually, you’ll be staying with Uncle Kamisese and Auntie Beatriz,’ Alex said. ‘You’ll love it there. They’re really looking forward to meeting you.’
‘How do you feel about that?’ Alex asked Cheryl when Kevin and Paki had taken Desiree around to Kamisese and Beatriz’ place.
‘It’s probably the best thing, but I’m heartbroken,’ said Cheryl. ‘Please don’t let her forget me.’
Alex put an arm around Cheryl’s shoulders. ‘Did you lose any children?’
‘Two,’ Cheryl said. ‘You?’
‘Same.’
‘What do you know about those people where Desiree’s going?’
Alex looked at Cheryl. Kamisese had ridden a mountain bike south from Auckland. Beatriz was a student from Columbia. Desiree would be getting an interesting life.
‘They’ll be good for the girl,’ she said eventually. ‘We’ll keep an eye on her anyway.’ She had a sudden thought. ‘They live next door to Jacqui and Pita. She’ll be spending a lot of time with them, too.’
Before the Ponaturi had come, Alex had a completely surprising run-in with Pita. Up till that point Pita had gone quietly about his business, first helping to bury the town’s original inhabitants, and then trading his considerable carpentry skills for food.
‘Where are you from?’ she’d asked him.
‘Greymouth,’ he’d said. He’d left a boarding house full of dead people and had driven a battered old Holden across the Alps, improvising repairs and cooking gourmet meals on the roadside. By the time he’d arrived in Kokopu Waters he was almost right round the twist, and he was slowly regaining his equilibrium. But Alex could see he still had his moments. Like the time he’d told Alex her portulaccas were planted too close to her black-eyed Susans. They didn’t look quite right, he’d said.
‘Don’t be so bloody picky,’ Alex had told him. ‘No woman wants a man like that. If you’re not careful you’ll end up with some old boiler from under a hedge in Kahuika.’
Nothing more was said, but a week later Pita ca
me home from Kahuika with Jacqui riding beside him.
‘She looks like she’s seen some action,’ commented Sean.
‘Pita’s been looking under hedges,’ said Alex, who immediately regretted her hasty judgement.
Within a week it was clear that Jacqui could hold her own, and that most of Pita’s picky ways were being discarded in the interests of domestic harmony. Pita had a loud voice, but Jacqui’s was louder, and the Kokopu Waters residents were soon being treated to high-volume discussions on the correct way to open curtains and the placement of furniture.
Jacqui had encountered the Ponaturi in Kahuika, and wasn’t in the least put out by the prospect of meeting them again. ‘I’m not afraid of those hungry enzymes,’ she told Sean when he tried to warn her she and Pita had best start working together. ‘Anyway, I know what I’m doing.’
I’m sure you do, thought Sean. And Pita’s finding out the hard way.
Beatriz returned with Sean and Paki. She was holding Desiree’s hand. The young girl wasn’t exactly skipping and laughing, but her eyes were open wide and she looked unafraid.
‘I’m going to live with Beatriz and Kamisese!’ Desiree announced, before throwing her arms around Cheryl. ‘When I’m staying here will you be my auntie?’
Cheryl hugged her back. ‘Of course, dear.’
‘Paki says we’re a great big family. He says it doesn’t matter where we live.’
The next day when they were riding back into Kahuika, Desiree settled in to her new home, Cheryl started crying. Paki reined in his horse, dismounted, and helped Cheryl out of the saddle.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That mightn’t have been such a brilliant idea.’ Cheryl sobbed. The tears streamed.
Paki put an arm around Cheryl’s shoulders. ‘Fuck those little demons. Things are hard enough anyway.’ He helped Cheryl sit on the roadside. ‘Anyway, I think we should try for our own.’ He embraced Cheryl, stroked and patted her.
She pulled free and glared at Paki. ‘It’ll be too bloody late by then.’ She sobbed and snuffled some more. ‘I can see what you’re trying to do, though. You just want what’s best for that girl and I don’t blame you. And I know you’ll do whatever you think is best for me.’ She sniffed. ‘I think I know what I want, too. I really want a baby, and a little kid is the next best thing.’
Paki sat beside her, the early spring grass damp and lush, birds chirruping. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s what I mean. Maybe we should have kept the girl with us. Maybe she’d have gotten over what she was feeling.’ He gave Cheryl a weak smile. ‘We’ll know soon enough, anyway.’
‘I know you’ll do your best,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure everything will work out. At least, I hope so.’
Paki remembered her words a fortnight later. They helped him ignore the warning siren that sounded in his head when he answered a knock at the door late one night. Standing in the candlelight was a small boy, about ten years old, grubby face, too-large coat and an onion-sack pīkau. A pathetic and heart-rending sight.
A little kid for Cheryl, he thought. A child for her to love and look after.
7
A Flesh-and-blood Human
Paki stood in the doorway looking down at the small boy before him. The first thing he saw was an answer to Cheryl’s prayers, but something awoke all his instincts about danger and self-preservation. They screamed at him to pick the boy up, to hurl him away, to slam the door, and it was all he could do to restrain himself. Then he heard his long-dead Nanny Riria, for the first time since the Fever killed both his parents and his younger brother and sister.
‘Have a good look,’ her voice in his head said. ‘There’s more going on than you might think.’
So Paki hesitated, but before he could speak he felt Cheryl behind him.
‘You poor thing,’ he heard. ‘Come on in out of the cold.’ The child moved forward, but hesitantly, full of mistrust. He sidled around the man and moved to Cheryl, embracing her legs. Paki’s heart sank.
He saw the small boy, his ragged clothes and forlorn appearance, and he saw as well an evil presence in the boy, a lurking hāpuku head and many-jointed limbs. But the boy was real. He was a warm flesh-and-blood human, not one of the Ponaturi shifted shape into something likely to gain him advantage. He wasn’t pretending anything, and Paki suddenly saw that the boy didn’t know what had happened. He was inhabited by one of the Ponaturi, and although he knew something was wrong, he didn’t know what. He just wanted to be released from whatever it was. He wanted help.
As if in a dream he heard Cheryl talking to the young boy, saying ‘You’re safe now, love, we’ll look after you.’ The boy was shivering, trembling. ‘Come on in. We’ll get some hot food into you for a start.’ Taking him by the hand she led him down the hall and into the warmth of the large kitchen where she stoked up the woodstove and lit another beeswax candle.
The light flickered and glinted on ornaments and utensils. Bundles of herbs drying as they hung from the ceiling threw grotesque shadows. The boy’s eyes were wide and dark as he looked around.
‘What’s your name?’ Cheryl asked as she moved the kettle and a pot of stew onto the heat.
‘Eric,’ said the boy.
‘Where are you from?’ The boy looked at her. Cheryl could see in the candlelight he wasn’t sure about his answer.
‘I don’t know,’ he finally replied. ‘I hardly know anything.’
‘Then how do you know your name?’
‘I made it up. I know I have to be called something.’
Eric-from-nowhere, Cheryl thought. Poor little bugger. Wonder what he’s been through? Where’s he been since the Fever? A chair scraping as Paki came in and sat down interrupted her and she saw Eric scuttle around to the opposite side of the table, looking across at Paki with a great uncertainty.
Paki held up a hand. ‘It’s okay, boy,’ he said. ‘I won’t hurt you. You really are welcome here.’ He took in the boy’s obvious fright and confusion. ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it? I can see it and you can feel it.’
Cheryl looked puzzled. What was Paki on about?
‘We can fix it,’ Paki said. ‘Remember doctors? Remember medicine? Being sick? It’s just like that.’ He hoped he was right, for the boy’s sake and for Cheryl’s too. He watched the boy, ready for flight, like a wild animal. This was going to be tricky.
‘What?’ said the boy. ‘What are those things?’
‘The memories must be in there somewhere,’ said Cheryl later when Eric was asleep on a mattress by the stove. ‘He’s got all the language.’ She looked at the sprays of lavender Paki had insisted on hanging about the room. ‘And what did you see anyway? What got you all jittery?’
‘Ponaturi,’ said Paki. Cheryl’s eyes widened. ‘But it’s not like the spooks at the window. This boy’s real enough.’ Cheryl was just breathing a sigh of relief when Paki spoke again. ‘It might be worse,’ he said. ‘Eric’s possessed.’
That night they slept near the woodstove, next to Eric. Neither felt safe with him out of their sight, and Cheryl kept bowls of pot pourri and cushions stuffed with lavender between their mattresses.
‘Maybe this stuff won’t do the business,’ Paki said. ‘But it’s the best we’ve got.’
They talked far into the night while Eric slept, and Paki described what he could see.
‘There’s a lost and confused little boy, but there’s more than that. I can see one of the Ponaturi, like it’s living inside him and Eric doesn’t know it’s there.’ He shuddered. ‘Who’s in charge, and what happens when he finds out?’
‘The poor little chap,’ Cheryl said. ‘We must be able to do something.’
‘Oh yeah. I’m sure we can. If the demon doesn’t get us first.’ Paki thought for a minute. ‘Did you ever see The Exorcist in the Old Times?’
Cheryl looked startled. ‘That was a horrible film. I hope we don’t have to go through anything like that.’
‘Me neither. But we have to drive the thing out.’ Paki l
aughed softly. ‘Just call me Reverend Mr Brown.’ He could feel the fear in Cheryl as she burrowed into him and trembled. He held her tightly.
‘Don’t worry, girl, I think we can handle it.’
‘Without hurting Eric?’
‘He should be okay.’
Paki could feel Cheryl slowly relaxing. Eventually she was breathing with the regular rhythms of deep sleep. He lay awake, far more worried than he’d let on. The boy might be fine, but what about Cheryl? He remembered Desiree. Cheryl had a big heart. He hoped it wouldn’t bring her too much pain. He hoped he was smart enough to outwit the thing they were confronting.
Eric didn’t stir all night. He slept soundly till mid-morning when he woke frightened and looking around, frantic and bewildered. Cheryl and Paki were waiting for him, sitting at the table, drinking lupin-flower tea.
‘You must have needed that,’ Paki said to Eric. ‘You okay?’ The boy stared at him, wild-eyed. ‘Where am I?’ he said.
‘You’re safe here with us,’ Cheryl said. She’d been waking up every hour to check on the young boy. Sometimes he’d been in a deep sleep. More often he was tossing and moaning, in the grip of some nightmare.
‘Breakfast,’ said Paki. ‘Then you can come to the markets with us.’
Eric was sitting in the back of the tent when the Kokopu Waters folk arrived. ‘Who’s the boy?’ asked Hoheria.
‘He’s possessed. One of the Ponaturi,’ Paki told her. Hoheria took another, closer look at the boy. She recoiled from the monster lurking in the boy’s flesh.
‘I didn’t know you had The Sight,’ said Paki.
‘I didn’t either,’ said the young woman. ‘But I found out dealing to all those kēhua.’ She looked hesitantly at Paki. ‘It spooks me sometimes.’ She shook herself and shivered. ‘What are you going to do, anyway?’
‘Don’t know,’ Paki said. ‘It’s a mystery what happens with the boy.’
‘What about Cheryl? Does she know about Eric?’
‘Yes, she does. And it’d break her heart if anything hurt him.’