by David Hair
‘He’s a bit of a rogue, that fellow,’ she muttered to Tama as she joined him beside the door.
‘That’s an understatement. But he’s a fighter, and we need that right now.’
‘Aye. They say Churchill was a rotten PM in peacetime, but we needed him in the war.’ She looked up at him. ‘Tama, if we ever get out of this …?’
‘What?’
She met his eyes. ‘I’m thinking we should go live somewhere civilized where this sort of shite can’t happen.’
‘All lands have ghost worlds, Colleen,’ Jones said, coming up beside her and putting a hand on her shoulder. If anything, Colleen knew Jones better than any of them, having nursed him a couple of years ago. ‘You’re better dealing with one you know.’
She looked at him with fond worry. ‘Hello again, Aethlyn. Mat told me you were dead. I cried,’ she admitted, her features swelling with sudden emotion.
‘I am dead. Think of this as a visit only.’ The tall Welshman nodded to himself. ‘This will be my last fight. I’m not going back inside that carving.’
Fitzy had climbed onto a desk, and, with a sight-defying twist, he changed, his fur vanishing and a hairless torso and limbs appearing in a nauseating flow of bones and sinew, until a grotesque little goblin stood before them. None of the men seemed at all concerned, but Colleen and Nelly stared, horrified. ‘Phew,’ the little turehu exclaimed. ‘Much easier to talk without a dog’s tongue flapping about my mouth. I’ve just come from Te Papa: Kiki was there, but Wiri and Evie got in his way. He escaped with a flute: any idea why?’
Everyone shook their heads, listening as they prepared for the next assault.
Tama felt his fingers clenching tighter. Wiri was attacked — and that girl is in town … Tama wondered what it signified. He knew his son, knew he was drawn to Evie, but that there were complications. Her presence seemed dangerous.
‘Where’s Mat?’ he asked in a hoarse voice.
‘He’s gone,’ the little turehu replied. ‘Up into the clouds, seeking Aroha. Riki went with him.’
‘What do you mean “gone”?’ Colleen clutched Tama’s arm, her face a mask of dread.
‘It is a quest, a spirit quest, laid down for him long ago. He will return at dawn.’ The turehu paused, then looked away. ‘If he returns at all.’
Silence weighed on the room as the turehu fell silent. Colleen clutched Tama’s arm, bewildered and shocked. It would be nice if Mat could just occasionally tell us what’s going on, he thought furiously. But there was no time to dwell on it.
The next assault came in a flood; howling attackers of all sorts hurling themselves into the line of fire from both directions, while Tama, Jones, Seddon and Muldoon poured fire into their packed mass. Few of these attackers seemed to have guns, and dozens fell, dead or wounded, in the withering gunfire that met them. Some reached the salt lines, but none were able to cross, coming up against an invisible barrier as if running into a glass window, and milling stunned, until someone shot them. When they finally drew off, the hallway was filled with bodies.
For a long time, the building fell silent. Then a creaking old voice rumbled down the smoky hall.
‘So, an impasse.’ Kiki hissed. ‘Not for long. I’m going to destroy this whole city, and everyone in it. There will be nowhere to hide, when the hammer falls, and my protégé descends from above.’
‘Big talk, tohunga!’ Seddon shouted. ‘But you haven’t finished us yet. We’re Kiwis! We don’t give up until the game is over.’
‘Your game is over, fat man!’ Kiki snarled. ‘And yours, too, Aethlyn Jones. You can’t hide in there forever! The Wooden Head is waiting for you!’ His voice boomed deeper. ‘Return, slaves!’
The command went through Jones like a tremor, making his whole form ripple. In a second he had flashed from the position where he stood to the very edge of the line of salt. Tama and Colleen ran to him. Out of the corner of his eye, Tama saw the remainder of Kiki’s ghost-soldiers filing away towards the stairs, their faces filled only with obedience for their master.
Jones set his chin in silence, the despair clear on his face. He cocked his gun, and then lifted it to his temple.
‘No!’ Colleen grabbed his arm, and tried to force the gun away. ‘No!’
Jones turned his head to hers, took in the pleading look on her face. But his expression remained fixed, pained. ‘Colleen, I must — I can’t go back inside that thing.’
Tama saw clearly in that instant the underlying subtext. He had known that Colleen had spent months nursing Aethlyn Jones back from near death; but until now he had not realized the depth of emotion such a bond had created. His hopes, barely acknowledged, that he might win his wife back, seemed to crumble to dust before his eyes. I only ever wanted us to be happy together … But he knew that was a lie. He’d put so many other things in his life ahead of his marriage. This was the price.
Without a word, he pulled a kerosene lamp from the wall, pushed past the Welshman and shuffled off down the hallway, in the wake of Kiki’s ghosts.
‘Tama?’ Colleen’s voice, panicked. ‘Tama!’
‘Stay with him,’ he said, in a dead voice. ‘I’ll give him the chance to be free.’
My life for his.
Testing times
Before Mat had time to recover from the shock of Riki’s disappearance, the rest of the whare faded from sight as well. His shouts died on the still air, without even an echo. For a few moments, there was nothing at all, and his heart began to pound. Darkness began to permeate the grey mists, as if night was a living entity seeping in. All sight was lost, and the only solid thing was the ground beneath him, hard-packed earth. He probed the darkness, poking ahead with his taiaha, using it like a blind man’s cane. Very quickly he found a void to his right, and backing away from it he struck a stone wall.
Something about the wet stone cleared his mind, enough that he remembered to do the obvious: he lit fire on his fingertips, and the darkness retreated in a rush. The orange flame stained the walls around him as he slowly turned in a circle.
He was in a well, part-way down, standing on a semicircular ledge that covered half of the cylinder. When he went to the ledge and peered down, he could see the water table, black and oily, only about forty metres below. He stared at it for a long moment, then gasped as a big, pale eye came into view, like that of a squid or an octopus, only a few inches below the surface.
A long tentacle, some five metres at least in length and as thick as his leg, broke the surface and reached for him. Then another, and another, scrabbling for purchase on the slimy stone wall. A beak broke the surface, wider than Mat’s head and filled with vicious teeth. He shouted in fright.
When he was young, he’d had all manner of night terrors. Being highly imaginative and sensitive, and not strongly built, he was prone to being picked on by more aggressive children, before his recent adventures had given him the resources to stand up to the bullies. He was also prone to watching movies he probably shouldn’t have. Consequently, there had been several recurring nightmares. This tableau had been pulled directly from a whole bunch of them …… Trapped in a well, like the girl in the movie The Ring, doomed to die and haunt it forever …… Tentacled, toothy creatures, swimming towards him as he floundered helplessly, like in one of the Alien movies … And his pet hate and humiliation: his primary school gym’s climbing wall, from which he’d had to be rescued crying when he was ten, stranded and terrified. He’d slipped and been left dangling from the safety cable, while the whole school laughed at him.
If this was a test, it could not have been better designed to paralyse him with terror.
For long seconds he stared at the green, slick wall. Too slimy to grip, surely? And he could not even gauge how far up the lip of the well was, that ring of light far, far above, mocking him with its sheer distance.
Then he heard running water, filling up the well, and the sound of those tentacles, scraping the walls, reaching … reaching …
Shit!!!
/> Mat pulled the taiaha from his backpack, a plan beginning to form. Gripping the weapon, he leapt and slammed the sharp tongue into a point at the edge of his reach, between two rocks. It broke through, wedged there, and, with much panting and effort, he hauled himself onto it. He trusted the weapon not to break, no matter the weight: drenched in the mystical substance called Blood of the Land, it could survive almost anything. He clambered onto it, then with Mahuika’s fingernails he kindled flame and sought more hand-and footholds. Around them he burned the moss and slime away, leaving them dry and usable. It was slow and exacting work, and a huge strain on his muscles. In minutes his arms and legs were trembling from the exertion of both balancing and trying to prise his way into cracks. All the while he could hear the well filling below.
Next hole: he stepped from the jutting taiaha and wedged his shoe into a burnt-dry crack, and took the weight. Then he had to contort, reach down and wrench at the taiaha. At first it wouldn’t come, until he sent a small burst of force through it, using that energy to push the weapon back out of the crack. Finally it came, and he was able to straighten, bury it in another gap above, and haul himself onto it. By then he was almost spent, but when he looked down, the water could be seen, running below the ledge into the well-shaft, and the dark surface seemed much closer.
He groaned, and, though his arms and shoulders were burning, forced himself to find and burn more handholds. To climb again, terrified: one slip and he would be fall, and then— He shuddered at the thought of that thing in the waters, clutching him to it, beak opening, gorging on him while he was held helpless.
Another climb, and he was panting, exhausted. Dizzy with the effort, he clung to the taiaha, pulled himself onto it and sat, hugging the wall.
Below, the water poured inwards, and the tentacled horror thrashed in the waters, reaching for him, still below the ledge he’d left, but much closer. A taniwha could take such forms, the stories said. But this felt different: this felt like a creature of his own mind’s devising, a self-made horror. And it was ascending faster than he was.
I’m not going to make it — it’s going to catch me and it’s going to eat me.
Mat glanced up, panting. The ring of light above seemed no closer. He needed a new plan, but none presented itself. Teetering precariously, he burned more foot-and handholds, slid out, pulled the taiaha and jammed it in at the edge of his reach, then, as his feet began to slip, reached for it, gripped. His arms begged for mercy as he hauled, legs thrashing, shouting at himself to try harder, to just do it, to go on. When he made it he wanted to cry, because all he’d gained was another two metres and the top of the well seemed no closer. But he made himself go on, again … and again …
Below, a pair of tentacles groped blindly at the ledge, then the suckers gripped, and it heaved, flowing upwards in a terrifying rush, until it was fully on the ledge, gasping wetly in the air, its beak-mouth opening and closing as its sleek body pulsed and writhed. Out of the water, it looked from above like an inverted starfish, yet slick-skinned like an octopus, with many more than eight arms. Two disc-like eyes on either side of the beak peered at him intently. It shrieked at him, rows of teeth glistening, and began to grope at the walls, while the water rushed and gurgled up from below, to immerse and float it.
The sight almost froze Mat in terror.
Frantically, he burned another handhold, unrestrained now, focusing the heat narrowly. This lent the fire a new intensity, as though he were wielding a welding torch. He began to literally carve holes in the rock with the fire. He jammed the taiaha back into his pack, and simply melted his way up, thirty seconds per handhold, half of that to cool them enough to use. His speed multiplied, and the ring above grew perceptibly closer. But still the water rose, and the tentacled monster in the water floated closer, so that a glance downward had it only twenty metres away. He could see moko patterns etched into its hide, and he could smell it now, a rotting-fish reek that made the air barely breathable. It was beginning to reach his handholds and the patches where he had burned away the slime — helping it grip the walls.
Every part of Mat’s body was shrieking now, his knees and arms like jelly; only the strength built up by his physical training — the regime that Jones and Ngatoro had insisted on — kept him going. The ring of light above was closer, and the lid began to gleam in the light of his fires.
The thing shrieked in fury, heaving itself out of the water and reaching for him as it sucker-gripped his own handholds. He turned and poured fire down at it, the flames washing with a hiss over the creature, searing its hide. It shrieked and dropped back into the water with a splash, the water spraying up at him. For a couple of seconds he thought it might be gone, then with a hideous surge it erupted out of the water with tentacles flailing.
Mat yelled as it fell just centimetres short of him, and blasted it again. It fell, and this time its wash almost drenched him. He could sense it plummeting down, then turning to gain even more momentum for another leap.
He spun, and this time fire was burning from his fingers almost white-hot. Thrusting his fingers into the wall as though it was wet clay, he clambered hand over hand, both burning the stone and shielding his body from the heat, climbing up, up, up.
The creature shot from the water in a funnel of spray, and its lead tentacle lashed at Mat, striking his foot, its tentacles fighting for purchase. The slime defeated it, however, and it slid down again, shrieking enough to deafen him, a crescendo ending in another splash.
Mat reached the rim, dug his fingers in and pushed.
The lid wouldn’t move.
Bellowing in frustration, he saw the water boiling higher, could read in the turbulence that the creature was readying another surge. And it would get him this time, no question.
He pushed both hands into the gap about the rim, planted his shoulders and the back of his head, scrabbled with his feet and heaved. The rim gave, just. He shouted again, a primal scream of exertion and desperation, as he found a new, higher purchase for his feet. Levering them and straightening, with his back and thighs behind the movement. The rim toppled outwards behind him and slipped from the well, just as the water erupted below him.
Mat pitched forward and rolled over the rim, pulling his feet out of reach of a lashing tentacle. He sprawled, then lurched upright as four tentacles gripped the rim of the well. No!
Rising, he poured everything into his fire-burst, a jet so intense that it was almost solid. It seared into the bulk of the creature as it came over the rim, slicing its flesh like a laser. The creature shrilled, coiling in agony as two of its limbs were severed, then fell back into the water with a mighty splash.
Mat teetered back on legs so shaky he could barely stay upright, pulled out the taiaha and brandished it as he backed away. The water below was red with blood and swirling madly, still rising. He looked about him: he was in a wooded dell. There was a path and he ran for it, as water bubbled over the edge of the well.
As he reached the rim of the trees, he heard a sound and looked back. Something slithered and oozed over the rim, and slopped into the mud. It was the tentacled horror that he’d escaped, but as he watched it began to change, the tentacles becoming legs and a tail, the body lengthening, eel-like, massive, a serpentine head emerging from the body like a turtle’s head coming out of its shell.
It really is a taniwha …
He turned and ran, pelting through the undergrowth, sidestepping trees and hurdling fallen logs, while behind him he heard trees being bulldozed by the massive creature bullocking after him. The ground was rising, making the explosive effort even more draining. His clothes were soaked in sweat now, steaming in the cold air, his breath ragged. Every training run came back to him, every finish-line sprint to try to catch Riki, who ran like a gazelle. But this time he didn’t hold back. He drew in strength through the magical tap inside him, sucking in energy from all about him as he went, frantic but not panicked.
The hill rose before him and he shot up it, casting a look ba
ck and seeing a dark trail of destruction snaking through the bush in his wake, and the back of the giant serpent. He had no goal, no place to stop and do anything other than run. His eyes flashed forward again, and found the wooden palisades of a pa, gates open. He fled inside, gasping as he cast about for something to—
Suddenly the pa was gone … and the hill … and he was slipping and skidding along a hallway … the corridor of a school … his school … Boys’ High in Napier. Rows of lockers on a pale ochre wall. The sun shining outside. He cast frantic eyes behind him, but there was nothing, no sign of what he’d been running from.
He looked down: his clothes had been replaced by his school uniform, raggedand sweaty, as though he had been playing outside during a break then run inside as the bell rang for class.
‘Douglas!’ A crisp female voice belled down the corridor. A tall, slender Maori woman walked towards him. ‘Move, Douglas! You’re late for class.’
He gaped up at her, trying to suck air into his lungs as he dealt with this sudden change of scene.
Is that monster still out there? Is it her? Where am I? Is this still the test?
Then he studied the woman more closely. It was Aroha. She was wearing a crisply pressed knee-length skirt and jacket combo, and thin-rimmed glasses, her hair in a ponytail. Her moko was gone and she looked older, more mature, less alien.
‘What—? … Aroha?’
‘That’s Ms Atamure to you, Douglas,’ she replied sharply. ‘Stand tall!’
He obeyed, frightened this was another test and he was using up strikes. Then his fear and anger took over. ‘You tried to kill me! That thing in the well, I barely got out— and how on Earth could Riki ever escape such a thing? Have you killed him? Because if you have I’ll—’
‘You’ll what?’ she interrupted, with a voice so cold and precise that it choked the words in his throat. ‘Did you think this would be easy? Did you think all you had to do was walk through my door? I told you it would test you. And it’s only just begun, so get inside that classroom!’