by Sally Piper
‘Keep still or I’ll break your fucking neck.’
She was a rabbit, a deer, caught in headlights.
She was his.
Was he even nervous about taking her? Or did his belief that it was his right to do so keep him calm? His face, pressed so close to hers, looked excited. His eyes shone. He smiled. Triumphant.
It’s easy to use the word blame around these events. But she realises now that she can no longer shift responsibility for what happened. Move it about like a piece of furniture, looking for the best fit in a room, the most convenient position. Blame is convenient though, because it gives cause without the need to explore the truth.
In the retelling of her story – if ever she had retold it – she expects some would question why they were even there in the first place. Three inexperienced young women – in life and bushwalking – negotiating the unknown terrain of each. What did they know of hate and sport and the mixing of the two? And how much did they provoke him at his game?
What if Lisa had backed down in the car park?
What if Nicole hadn’t got so far ahead?
What if they’d just turned round and gone home instead of stepping over his shit on the second morning?
Nicole still shares her life with this man. He comes for her in her dreams. He clamps his part-animal hand across her mouth and she smells the dirt and grime and sweat of him once more as she wrestles with her sheets and tries to get her breath. She strips the sweat-soaked linen from her bed the next morning. Puts it on a hot wash. Takes fresh sheets from the cupboard. Like the set routes she jogs each day – brightly lit, busy, safe – this is who she is now. She struggles to imagine herself as anyone else.
When Nicole looks back on the girl snatched from this trail, she sees someone she barely knows anymore. This girl’s eyes are big and dark and glossy with adrenaline. She lashes out. Boots. Knees. Hands. Nails. Teeth. This girl is a fighter. Nicole admires her. But she squeezes her eyes shut to the memory of her because he was a fighter too. And alongside his greater strength, she proved no rival. He still managed to bind this girl. To gag her. Take her away from her friends.
The worst sound for Nicole that day was when she heard Samantha, then Lisa, call her name. Their voices were so muffled and distant that she didn’t believe she’d ever hear them again.
She had sobbed hard then. Her stomach muscles ached with the wailing sounds that were trapped behind the tape he’d put across her mouth. Snot bubbled back and forth in her nose. Tears dripped off her jaw.
He pulled her along at a trot. Their tent ropes served a purpose. He’d jerk her back up onto her feet with them when she fell. The thin nylon cut welts into her wrists. The weight of his pack seemed not to hinder him at all.
And all the while she felt the sodden tampon inside her drag ever downwards.
The breach when it came was sudden. Humiliating. Flooded onto her shorts. Trickled down her bare legs till it became a dirty brown smudge all the way to her knees. Wet, dry, wet, dry as he marched her on.
He seemed angry when he saw it. ‘Filthy cunt,’ he said and tugged even harder on the ropes that bound her.
Nicole thought her degradation was complete. Then he stopped and made her take off her clothes.
When she thinks back on it now, she wishes she’d walked proud with that menstrual blood staining her legs. Proud of her earthy, metallic smell.
See me, those stains said. Here is my difference. This is what I can do.
She doesn’t know the purpose of reliving these memories. What does it achieve? Who does it benefit?
Because her experience of memory is that it traps her in a place she no longer wants to be. Reminds her of the person she no longer is. Shows her things she no longer wants to see.
Some days she wishes she could haemorrhage all memory away. Send it into the white light. Lose it entirely and not once grieve its loss.
Chapter 16
Samantha feels a bond with the trail now. Place and mind intercept. Thoughts roll out beneath her feet like words on a scroll. History recounts. Geography connects.
When they set out four days ago, she was worried she wouldn’t be able to escape her thoughts. Now, she doesn’t even try. Because in remembering, maybe this place will give something back to her where previously it’s only taken away.
What she’s started to realise is that she lives with this landscape nearly every day, but in absentia. Its topography is a part of hers. It’s her dips and peaks. Her trudging defeats. Her victories, when she has them. She shouldn’t have denied its importance for so long. None of them should have. After all, this place expects nothing of her in coming back. The expectation is all her own. So does this make her a pilgrim? she wonders. She doesn’t feel like one. A pilgrim shouldn’t know the secrets of the land they cross. And neither should they have abetted them.
She looks down at her feet, to the gravelly ribbon they walk along. This trail has forced rule on the landscape. People travel the threads of it, clockwise or counter-clockwise. Equally, it has forced rules on her life.
Does anyone really know how to act in a crisis? Are there people in whom a switch flicks, some mechanism that alerts them instinctively to what they should do? Or do all people do what Samantha did, which was to stop and stare at Nicole’s pack, then turn away and vomit?
After Samantha had emptied her stomach, she went and stood alongside Lisa, hand pressed to her mouth. Like Lisa, she looked out across the mist-blurred bushland. Her heart thrashed inside her chest like a trapped bird and her hands shook. She fought to steady her breath.
Lisa cupped her hands round her mouth and called Nicole’s name. Samantha saw that her hands shook too.
She remembers the frustration she felt at not being able to see deep into the bush, even though she was terrified of what she might find. She could make out the ill-defined shape of trees and boulders, but nothing much else. She could see enough though to know it was rough, ankle-turning terrain.
‘He can’t have moved quickly with her if he took her through there,’ she said to Lisa.
‘No.’ Lisa turned to look at Nicole’s pack again.
She walked around it much as Nicole had walked round the last of the man’s footprints on the beach. Samantha studied the ground too. The gravel was scored with ridges and gouges. From boots she decided, during a tussle. Nicole had fought. She hadn’t just taken her pack off and walked away. She’d resisted. Good for her.
Samantha looked beyond the pack. A little further along the trail she saw an arrow drawn in the dirt. It indicated onward.
‘Come and look at this!’ The urgency in her voice brought Lisa to her side quickly. ‘Do you think Nicole’s drawn it?’
‘I think he probably has,’ Lisa said. ‘One of his messages.’
‘What if it’s a trick? What if he’s taken her some other way? Or he’s hiding her somewhere round here?’ Samantha looked about again.
‘No. I think he wants us to follow him.’
They unzipped their day bags from their packs then, filled them with a few essentials – a jacket, the first-aid kit, water. They hid the rest of their gear amongst the bracken just off the track, along with Nicole’s pack. They tied a tea towel to a branch further along to mark the spot. They did all of this with speed and urgency. There was no discussion. Somehow, they just knew what was needed and what wasn’t.
They ran then. Urged on by the adrenaline Samantha had felt weightless. Capable. Up to the demands of their pursuit. But before long she started to fatigue. She tried to pull more air into her lungs – sucking, sucking – but it was never enough. Still she kept running. Her legs worked like pistons – up, down, up, down. Before long a fire burned in her muscles and inside her chest. Soon her side was pierced with a stitch. She tried to run through it. It felt as though she ran with a blade inside her. She ran hunched. She slowed. Lisa pulled further ahead. Why coul
dn’t she do this one thing for Nicole?
Lisa glanced over her shoulder. ‘Keep up!’ she shouted and pulled further away.
But then Samantha did catch up with Lisa, who stopped suddenly in the middle of the track. Lisa turned as Samantha approached and held up Nicole’s beige shorts. There were dark stains on them. Blood. She felt the urge to vomit again, but knew her stomach had nothing left to give.
Lisa rolled Nicole’s shorts into a tight bundle and stuffed them inside her daypack.
They ran on.
Samantha still hears the echo of Lisa’s command some days, calling for her to Keep up. It comes to her anywhere. Anytime. At her desk while she sorts through invoices. The kitchen bench while she slices tomatoes. In the aisle of a supermarket.
Except Lisa doesn’t shout it as she had back then. She whispers those words in Samantha’s ear, over and over, like a criticism. And when she hears them she finds it hard to catch her breath and her heart quickens. It’s like she’s running all over again.
Chapter 17
When Lisa reaches the final headland, she looks out across the ink coloured ocean. Its oily undulations reach endlessly for the shore. At the foot of the rugged peak the sea crashes against the rocky shoreline in a turbulent fury of turquoise and white foam. There is a wrack line of brown, rubbery kelp that shifts backwards and forwards in the wash. Lisa hates the kelp. She hated it last time too. It looks too much like the hair of a drowned woman.
As she gazes around this dramatic point, she can’t imagine two more different days. This time it is cloudless and warm. When she finally reached this headland previously her body had quickly chilled inside her damp clothes. Droplets fell from the ends of her hair onto her T-shirt, dripped off the tip of her nose. They rested on her eyelashes, blurred her vision. Her bare arms goose-fleshed. But she hadn’t put her jacket on. She didn’t want to restrict her movement in any way.
Lisa tries to imagine what his intentions were in leading them to this high, exposed point. Had he felt God-like as he looked down on them from his kingly boulder? She’d wanted to believe there was some kind of certifiable madness to him. Some organic failure of his mind and with this, an understandable reason for his actions. She wasn’t looking to justify his behaviour, only to have something by which she could grasp it. But she knows now he was neither mad nor masterful. He was simply a man whose self-aggrandisement meant he never doubted or questioned his right to do whatever he wanted. She recognises this now as the most dangerous man of all.
They must have run for two or three kilometres that day. She hoped to come across Nicole round every bend, over every rise. But she didn’t.
The drizzle eased off but the low misty clouds persisted. They shrouded the tree canopy. Made ghostly shapes of their trunks. It was impossible to see the arc of the sun, so time had stalled. Sound was muffled in the damp air. Her breath burned hot in her chest. Mud was flicked up the backs of her bare legs. Later she would find fat black leeches feeding on them.
It was easy going to begin with, round the hip of the mountain. But it didn’t last. Before long they had to haul themselves over rocky outcrops again. Risked a turned ankle or a fall on wet, slippery descents.
They had to stop along the way. The first time to pick up Nicole’s shorts. Then her T-shirt. Her bra. Finally her bloodied knickers. These they found hanging from a timber sign at a junction in the track which had Lookout written on it. Lisa stowed them in her daypack along with Nicole’s other clothes. She expects he left this sordid Hansel and Gretel trail not just to shock them or to add to their fear, but to slow them down. All part of the game.
An arrow was scratched into the trail beside the sign. It indicated they head up to the lookout. Lisa bounded over it, strangely relieved. His trail of clues told her that at least Nicole was ahead of them. Not hidden somewhere amongst the scrub behind. She didn’t want to think that she was running away from Nicole, only towards her.
The lookout trail became a steep and scrabbly ascent. In her haste, Lisa’s feet slipped out from under her several times. She grazed her knees. Samantha dropped further back. She didn’t wait for her.
‘Keep up!’ she shouted over her shoulder. She didn’t want to lose her too.
She was breathless, flushed and uncertain as she neared the top of the headland. What if he’d tricked them with his arrow? What if he’d kept on the main trail instead? Gave himself more time to get further ahead.
But she found Nicole there. Gagged. Bound. Tied to a tree. Naked except for her socks and boots. She sat on the ground, knees pulled up to her chest. Her whole body shook.
All Lisa could focus on when she first looked at Nicole was the red. Different shades of it. Inflamed-red round the black leeches on her arms, legs and torso. Clot-red scratches and abrasions across her body. Brown-red smudged down her thighs. Her hands were tied to a branch above her head with their tent ropes. They were dusky-red.
Lisa gripped her stick firmly in both hands and looked around her. She suspected a trap. That he wanted to see all three of them bound and gagged. But there he was, sitting up high on a boulder.
Lisa went straight to her friend then. Tried not to stare at the blood that stained her thighs, even though the sight of it enraged her. What had he done to her?
She dropped her stick and slipped off her daypack. She knelt beside Nicole and carefully removed the grey gaffer tape from across her mouth. Nicole released the first of many big hitching sobs.
‘Thank God,’ she breathed, over and over.
Lisa worked to untie her hands next. She struggled. The knots were pulled tight and her hands shook. She watched the man from the corner of her eye as she worked to loosen them.
He sat well above them. The boulder was large enough for him to rest back on his hands, legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. His backpack lay beside him. He was a man relaxed with the world. His dark, damp hair hugged the contours of his skull. His ears poked through it. It added to his lean angularity. Lisa felt a thrill when she saw the red welts across his cheek. Another down his neck. She never doubted Nicole had made those marks. She felt a surge of pride.
Samantha arrived soon after Lisa. She left her to finish untying Nicole, to help her dress.
Lisa picked up her stick and stood with her back to them as she faced the man.
‘Learned your lesson yet?’ he called from his kingly pedestal.
‘This isn’t a lesson! It’s a fucking crime!’
‘You deserved it.’
‘Deserved it?’ Nobody deserves this.’ Lisa swept her arm behind her to indicate Nicole.
The man shrugged. ‘I’d have let her go eventually.’
Was that meant to make it okay? Abduct someone. Strip them. Bind them. Gag them. But at the end of it shrug it off like it wasn’t a big deal. Just some kind of life lesson.
‘Look at you up there. So tough when you’re safe.’
Lisa still believed herself invincible at that stage.
‘Lisa,’ Nicole pleaded softly.
‘C’mon, we need to get out of here. Now,’ Samantha said.
But Lisa ignored the quaver in Nicole’s voice. The urgency in Samantha’s.
‘You’ve been a coward the whole time. And from what I can see you’re still a fucking coward.’
The man stood with this challenge. Lisa was reminded of how tall he was. She didn’t care about his greater size though. Strangely, she felt no fear of him at all. He was just another bully. And she’d fought enough bullies by then to know her capability in the face of them. She widened her stance. Stood as tall as she could. Gripped her stick more firmly.
‘Lisa. C’mon.’
Lisa glanced back at Samantha. Nicole stood beside her, dressed again. Samantha had her arm round Nicole’s waist. Nicole leant against her. Both were pale. But Lisa could only focus on the shades of red that still marked Nicole’s body.
She turned back to the man. ‘The three of us could kill you.’
In retrospect she has no idea why she said this. All she knows is that her voice was steady and she meant it.
‘Lisa, just shut up.’ There was little fight in Nicole’s words and she started to cry.
‘Yeah, Lisa,’ the man mimicked. ‘Just. Shut. Up.’ He sat down again and bounced his boots in time to a beat of his own making.
‘I’m going,’ Nicole said.
‘Come on, Lisa,’ Samantha pleaded. ‘Let’s just go. Please.’
‘I love it when women beg,’ the man said. ‘She begged. I’d like to hear you beg. C’mon, Lisa. Beg for me.’
Lisa hated that he knew her name. It gave him something over her. Something of her. Up till then he had nothing but her attention.
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ he mimicked in a woman’s voice.
‘I’d jump off that fucking cliff before I’d beg you for anything.’
‘Lisa! Just leave it!’ Nicole snapped.
‘Ooh, now she’s got some fight about her.’
Samantha reached out and gripped Lisa’s arm. ‘Stop,’ she hissed. ‘Just. Stop.’
Lisa yanked her arm free.
‘What are you doing?’ Samantha asked.
The man put his hands behind him again and rested back. ‘I think Lisa’s too stupid to know what she’s doing,’ he said and laughed.
Lisa wanted to shove her fist in his mouth. Gouge his eyes out with her thumbs. Kick him till blood bloomed purple and black all over his body.
‘I’m going.’ Nicole broke away from Samantha’s side and headed towards the trail.