I took a ragged breath, and opened the floodgates of sensation again. Thirst. My whole being craved water. I pushed that down, down. What else? Cold. Freezing. Ice cold. Wind. I realised I was still lying down, curled around the concrete plinth in the middle of the floor. I dragged myself inch by inch into a half-sitting, half-crouched position. The plastic tie had sliced into my wrist and the wound was raw and oozing, crusted with dried blood. There was a lot of blood too on my free hand, my face and hair. I figured it must have come from my smashed nose. The light summer dress I had put on for my dinner date with Robbie was filthy with blood and whatever else I had been lying in — it smelled like shit and urine from some animal, possibly human. Possibly me.
Both my legs were scratched, knees grazed. No one ever died of grazed knees, I told myself. No shoes. No feeling at all in my feet. Numb with cold. With my free hand I systematically prodded and pressed every part of my body, forcing myself to register pain so I’d know how bad a shape I was in. I was sore from bruises and abrasions over roughly eighty per cent of my body but no bones were broken as far as I could tell. There may have been some smashed cartilage in my nose — it seemed to be encrusted with a mix of blood and salt from the freezing southerly whipping spray up off Cook Strait — but my face was entirely numb so no matter how hard I pressed I couldn’t feel anything.
There was something I still had to check. My brain told me not to do it but I ignored that advice. My undies were gone, vulva swollen and sore to touch, pubic hair caked with dried semen. I registered what this meant. My brain said, ‘I told you not to do that’, and then everything went black again.
This time I knew I was dead. I was in a freezing cold hell. Spirits screamed all around me, and Satan’s eyes with their burnt-amber vertical irises studied me impassively. I tried to cry out but there was no sound from my swollen, parched throat. I was beyond thirst. Even the sibilance of the word ‘thirst’ tinkling in my head drove me mad. The constant shushing of the waves below was a torture.
Dawn. Cold, harsh, white dawn. The devil was no longer there but the thirst was worse than any pain I’d ever endured. I’d have done anything for water. I’d have killed for water. What a beautiful word it was. Water. I went over all the words — water, moisture, stream, liquid …
Seagulls circled overhead, screeching insults at each other. So that was the sound I thought was the screaming of spirits. It was only seagulls. If I was to survive, I knew I had to use my desperate craving for the one and only thing I still cared about — water. I thought again about the lake Sean and I had found, but I knew I could roam for days in these barren hills and never find it. I wouldn’t last days.
Reluctantly, I let that thought go, though the fantasy of it — a big blue mass of shining water — still shimmered in my imagination. Then, with a yip of pleasure, I remembered a trickle of water, maybe a couple of kilometres back along the coast road: a beautiful little run-off trickle of water that drooled down the hill and across the shingle into the surf. Sean and I had stopped to watch a line of ducklings follow that trickle across the track. The memory of it was a sweet torture. It was little more than a two-finger-width dribble of water, but it was a thing of shimmering beauty in my memory. If I could just get my hand free I could go to it. I could drink. The plastic tie looping my hand to the iron ring looked flimsy enough but proved to be unbelievably resistant to everything I tried. Yanking and tugging opened the wrist wound until it oozed and then poured, but even using the blood as lubricant I still couldn’t pull my hand free. My thirst was dreadful. I whimpered in a kind of shame as I licked at the blood.
What must have been an hour of rhythmical sawing on the rusted iron ring resulted in nothing more than a few scratches on the plastic handcuff and a lot more on me. I tried using my mouth but my cracked lips bled profusely before my teeth could get any purchase. I persevered, starting with my front teeth. I tried to snip at the tie and when that failed I snarled my lips back for the bicuspids to have a go. I worked away at it for a long time before I rewarded myself with a look at the result — just the faintest of fraying to one edge of the handcuff, plus bleeding gums, a cracked cuspid, and painfully split top lip. This wasn’t going to work.
From the position of the sun, I figured it to be late morning. I forced myself to do the maths while I scrabbled around looking for anything sharp I could use as a tool. Start with Tuesday. I was kidnapped on Tuesday night. My fingers closed on a small round stone and I tried rubbing that against the plastic handcuff. I was pretty sure a whole day had passed since then. A whole day of bright light and seagull cries. A whole day on which my brain had slammed a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign up.
The stone was useless. I put it in my mouth for comfort while I systematically searched every centimetre of the floor within my reach. Okay, after that full day, I’d seen the lights across the harbour as night was falling. That would have been Wednesday night. And now it was day again. So it must be Thursday. Late Thursday morning.
For the first time I allowed myself the luxury of a thought that until now I hadn’t let myself indulge: They’ll be looking for me. Someone will be looking for me. I’d been missing for two nights and a full day. As if in response to this realisation, my stomach clenched.
Manoeuvring my bum as far from the shackle as possible, I held my dress away from the hot, stinging shit that burst out of me. When I was sure the spasms were over, I used my bare foot to kick loose leaves and rubbish over the stinking acrid mess.
Squatting back at the concrete ring, forehead resting on my handcuffed wrist, I fought back waves of nausea. I’d never believed in tying dogs up, and vowed if I was freed from here I would never, ever tie any animal up, ever.
Dog-god must have been listening. I’d just finished making the vow when I saw it: the rusting lid of an ancient tin can. Whimpering in anticipation, I lurched towards it, almost severing my wrist in the process. It had been hidden under the leaves I’d scuffed up to cover my foul-smelling discharge. With some clever toe work I managed to slide the lid close enough to grab it with my free hand.
Half an hour of sawing and slicing at the plastic tie and I was free.
I stood and fell over half a dozen times before accepting that my legs wouldn’t hold me upright. There was no option but to slide down the hill on my arse. It ended up being more a scrabble than a slide. What looked like a smooth slope of tussock turned out to be deep clay furrows with ridges covered in hair-plug tufts of sharp reeds. Forced to grab at them to stop myself pitching forward was like being stabbed by a handful of bamboo skewers.
As I scrambled, crawled, and skidded my way down, I thought this is why girls should never wear dresses — in case they’re abducted and raped, have their underwear stolen, and are held captive on top of a hill in freezing cold weather and forced to slide down a slope covered in tufts of pick-up-sticks. But sliding was still easier than trying to walk down the practically vertical slope with legs that didn’t work any more. When I’d manoeuvred myself about halfway down, the sounds that had been background noise for what seemed like my entire life became louder and more distinctive. What I’d thought was the grinding of teeth was the rattle of beach pebbles being clawed back under by possessive waves.
When I couldn’t slide any more, I crawled on hands and knees. Half-moon shapes pitted the cracked, dry mud tracks. My spirits lifted. Hoof marks. Sheep! Not that sheep necessarily meant farmers but I let myself nurse this tiny spark of optimism.
The clay was softer now, and my heart pounded in anticipation of there being a puddle at the bottom of the hill. It helped me do what I had to do next. My knees refused to carry me any further. Stretching my body along one of the ridges, stomach flat against the tussock, chin tucked into my chest, I pitched myself off the edge. Niki and I used to roll down sand dunes. It was one of our favourite games. Actually, it was my favourite game because I usually won. We’d roll ourselves in beach towels until we looked like brightly coloured cigars, and then we’d pitch ourselves off the top of the
dune. The one who rolled the furthest won. Only now did it occur to me that I’d rolled further because I was bigger and heavier than Niki. At the time, both of us had credited it to my incredible older-sister skill.
At the bottom of the hill was a small depression like a gutter where the track met the incline, and in the middle of it was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen in my life: a little pool of water the size of a saucer. I crawled towards it, whimpering pathetically, and then, dropping to the ground, I rested my cracked lips in the puddle and licked.
It tasted of salt and the acrid bitterness of animal piss. It was divine. The salt on my split lip stung like a bastard. I knew I probably shouldn’t drink it all but did it anyway. There’s no way I could have stopped myself. It was a tiny cupful of urine-flavoured nectar of the gods.
I lay in the ditch holding the pain at bay and figuring what to do next. The taste of water had given me new strength, but I knew I couldn’t make it all the way back to Eastbourne. I knew too that I had no choice but to try.
Putting one foot down in front of the other, I could manage ten steps before my legs would fold under and I’d sink slowly to the ground like a camel. I’d count to a hundred, then make myself stand and put left foot, right foot again, one after the other, until I’d made another ten steps. I saw the blisters on my feet form, peel and then bleed. I didn’t feel a thing. I was too numb with cold, or maybe just too numb.
I used the tyre tracks in the middle of the road for the first few blocks of ten steps, and then realised the chances of finding water on the hill side of the trail were better, so moved closer to the bank for the next block. I staggered along like this, ten steps at a time, searching for any little dribbles of water leaking from the clay bank. My left wrist leaked blood into the crook of my right elbow where it was cradled.
That little trickle of water the ducklings had made use of had to be close by. I convinced myself it was just around each bend in the winding track, and each time it wasn’t there the disappointment was overwhelming. I staggered on, ten steps at a time, and died a little death every time I came to a bend and it revealed another identical bay and no little trickle of water. There was no end to this track.
On the left side of the path, waves clawed and raked at the foreshore. Oyster catchers prodded their bright orange beaks at stones, trying to convince themselves a slimy morsel was underneath, and shags perched on jutting rocks, their iridescent wings outstretched as if offering an embrace. I remembered this was where the Wahine survivors had huddled together waiting to be rescued. I’d seen photos of survivors on the backs of pickup trucks, grey emergency blankets wrapped around their shoulders, their faces revealing nothing but a kind of shamefaced acceptance. They knew even then that they’d be known as ‘the lucky ones’ forever after. They’d seen their fellow passengers drown out there in the crazy madness of the storm, or pummelled and shredded on the rocks as they tried to swim to shore. Not many of the survivors wanted to talk about it afterwards, except perhaps to honour someone else’s act of heroism. Mostly they wore that guilty look all survivors have. Why me? Could I have done more to save others? Am I pleased it was someone else who died instead of me? Was it a mistake? Were they supposed to live and I supposed to die?
I must have been walking for half an hour, but it wasn’t really walking, it was more a shuffle, and progress was tortuously slow. I reckoned at this rate it would take about three days to get to the Eastbourne gate. I knew I couldn’t make it, but was determined to keep going until I couldn’t get up any more. Each time I slumped to the ground, it took longer to struggle to my feet again. And then, finally, I knew the next time I folded would be the last.
I stumbled around yet another bend, and there in front of me, right in the middle of the track, was a goat. We looked at each other, that goat and I. He was definitely the prettier sight. Those amber marble eyes gazed at me with no sympathy. It was as if it had been waiting for me. Maybe it’s a hallucination, I thought, and stumbled one step closer. It stood its ground and just looked at me. These were the devil eyes I’d seen as I slipped in and out of consciousness up in the bunker. The creature had massive devil horns too.
Despite my exhaustion, I was curious now. Was it real? Was this thing simply a goat, or had the devil come to claim me, as the nuns had always told me he would one day? I staggered another step towards it. It stamped a petulant hoof in response, and then turned its head to look behind. For one moment I thought that head was going to turn right around and back again like the possessed girl in The Exorcist, but no such luck — it turned its baleful look back at me before walking stiff-legged towards the bank and leaping up it. Swaying on my feet I watched the unlikely legs continue to climb the hill to where an audience of smaller goats huddled together, waiting.
I told my foot to lift but it wouldn’t. I waited for my legs to fold — and that was when I heard it. The crack and pop of tyres on gravel. There was a vehicle coming towards me on the track. That’s what had spooked the goat, not me. Unable to move, I waited in the middle of the track, focusing the last of my strength on staying conscious. The truth of it was that I no longer knew if I was conscious. The driver would have water. I was sure of that. But now, at the end, I almost didn’t even care about water. Didn’t know if the mythical nectar I thought of as water even existed. Maybe I’d dreamed its existence like I’d dreamed the devil.
I was aware of a car coming into view and skidding to a stop in the middle of the track in front of me. I was aware of the cloud of orange dust, the sound of a car door slamming, someone coming towards me. It was all I could do to lift my head to look at my rescuer.
It wasn’t a rescuer. It was Chris Ross. He was carrying a rifle. He didn’t need it. I was dead anyway. My legs gave way, and I sank to the ground. It was over.
CHAPTER 23
A hand, Ross’s hand, clasps around mine, trying to close my fingers around something. Plastic. Cool. My palm is bleeding, raw from all that crawling. The thing he wants me to grasp drops to the ground, bounces once then just lies there. It’s a bottle of water. The water refracts light through the transparent plastic. I don’t care any more.
Ross picks it up, squeezes a little pool of the liquid into the palm of his hand, places his other hand on my neck and tilts my face into the water. I don’t want to drink, don’t want to help my captor bring me back to life, but at the taste of what it’s been craving my unfaithful body responds. I lick and suckle his palm obscenely, and then, when he lifts the plastic nozzle to my lips and squeezes a cool stream of water down my throat, I gulp the pure life-giving ecstasy of it until my gullet aches.
I hear his murmur in my ear telling me to sip not gulp it, and a desperate fear comes over me that he’ll take the water away. I grab the bottle off him and squeeze it and gulp the liquid until there’s none left. My stomach heaves, and there’s stinging bile in my throat, but I swallow it back down, gagging.
Maybe time had passed, maybe not. Sitting on the road directly in front of me was Ross, the rifle rested casually on his raised knees, his back against the Holden’s number plate. He was talking, but I’d tasted water and now all I could think about was how to get more of it. Instead of sating my thirst, that little tease of water had increased my craving tenfold. I had to have more.
I dragged my attention back to focus on what Ross was saying. I watched his mouth flap up and down, open and shut, noise coming out … I forced myself to concentrate. It was an unpleasant mouth, too sensuous for a man. Big lips the colour of loganberries with a darker defining line around the edges, as if he spent a lot of time licking at them.
Concentrate! The lips were saying..
‘… embarrassed? Damn right I was. I sure as hell never told my wife about it. No need, anyway. I was never going to ask her to be involved in something like that. I always wanted to be a good husband. Good father. I did my best to lead a normal life. Then it all just started to wear me down. I couldn’t control it. Eventually I rang one of those help lines. They told
me to get help. I said, “That’s what I thought I was ringing you for,” and the little faggot says, “We don’t give that kind of help,” like I was some … I don’t know. He said, “You need to get professional help.” And so I did. I’d never been to one before. Never really wanted to. I thought they were dirty. Diseased, you know. All that.’
His words were coming at me and I heard them, but they had little meaning. To me, anyway. It didn’t look like they meant much to him any more either. I don’t know why he chose me to confess to.
‘I met the other one first and she set it up, and that’s how I met your sister. Tell you the truth, I really liked Bonnie. She was … sweet. I thought she was a nice girl. Shows what kind of judge of character I am, but at the time I’m thinking, this isn’t so bad. I mean, no one’s getting hurt here. It was kind of expensive, but you know, it wasn’t like I had to do it that often or anything. Some people would spend more than that on booze or cars or whatever.’
He hefted the gun and I waited for him to point it at me but he just laid it on the ground, his hand resting on it.
‘A week later my twelve-year-old daughter brings me in a package she says was on the doorstep. It was a movie of the whole thing. Your sister had set me up. I knew as soon as I saw it the nightmare was only just starting. Sure enough, then came the big freak demanding money. I paid up. Yeah, I know, stupid sucker that I am. And it just went on and on. Even after she was dead, it went on. In the end I had nothing left to give. I was going to lose my house. I had no choice. I decided to come clean, I mean, my wife loved me, our relationship was okay I thought. I didn’t expect her to understand or anything but I thought she’d … I don’t know. So anyway, I told her. I told my wife about my — my problem. And I told her how your sister set me up, and that I’d paid, but she was still after me. Some part of me thought maybe she’d … I don’t know.’
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