Phantom of Terawhiti

by Des Hunt

One of Crawford’s purchases when they’d first arrived in Wellington was an LED spotlight. Zac had already tried it outside at night and found that its beam could reach all the way up to the turbines. If anyone was out there, this would pick them out.

  He didn’t find anyone. And when he thought about it, he realized it had been a stupid thought. What would they be after? There was no farm equipment down here; the only vehicles were the old ute and his bike — neither was worth stealing. After going to the toilet, Zac returned to bed.

  If there had been a sound, then most likely it was an animal, maybe a pig. That thought took him back to the Neanderthals and their story of pig hunting. That’s when he remembered the pistol, the one lying on the back seat of the pick-up. The rifle was definitely a dart gun, but the pistol wasn’t — there were bullets lying next to it. After that he had trouble getting back to sleep, and this time the insomnia lasted until daylight.

  Sometime during the darkness Zac had decided to tell his dad everything. Except as soon as he saw his father in the morning, he changed his mind. Crawford was listening intently to Dub Dub FM, and his expression said he didn’t like what he was hearing.

  Keith: Fat chance of that happening, Sally.

  Sally: I’m not so sure. The Virgin Islands are under American control. If anyone can get at Stanley Morris, surely the US government can.

  Keith: But why would they bother? If they start picking on every crook who has a luxury hideout in the Caribbean, their economy will collapse. The only difference between these people and the olden-day pirates is that they plunder finance companies instead of ships.

  Sally: Well, the Morris Investors Action Group believes they have a chance or they wouldn’t have taken legal action in the US. They think a forced sale of Morris’s Virgin Island assets could return most of the money stolen from investors. That certainly seems worth the effort.

  Keith: Not going to happen, Sally. The best chance they’ve got is to step up the action against the rest of the Morris family, especially Crawford. He must know a lot more than he’s letting on. Identical twins have the same genes. They’re like the same person. Put pressure on Crawford and Stanley is sure to buckle …

  There was no more, because Crawford had turned off the radio.

  ‘How can they get away with saying things like that?’ he said, stomping back to the kitchen. ‘That Keith person says anything that comes into his head, never mind whether there are any facts to support it.’

  Zac followed him. ‘Can’t you take him to court or something?’

  Crawford swung around at him. ‘What! And give them more opportunities to attack us?’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘No!’ he yelled. ‘There’s nothing … nothing we can do except wait for the storm to pass. Don’t you understand anything?’

  From years of experience Zac knew when to be silent around his father. He grabbed a bowl of cereal, added milk and returned to his room. He’d watch cartoons until things calmed down. Maybe there would be a chance for a decent conversation later.

  Two hours passed before Crawford knocked on the open door. ‘Sorry, Zac,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. My apologies.’

  Zac nodded his acceptance while still looking at the screen.

  ‘What have you got planned for the day?’

  ‘I thought I might take a ride later.’

  ‘You could go with Jess if you want. I’ve just had a call from Will. Jess wants to come over and go riding with you. I said I’d call back. What do you think?’

  Zac tried to mask his interest with a shrug. ‘Where does she want to go?’

  ‘Karori Stream was mentioned.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, I suppose so.’

  ‘You could ask her to show you the quicksand.’

  ‘Quicksand?’

  ‘Yes. Several of the books mention quicksand at the Karori Stream mouth. I don’t know how bad it is. Might not be there any more for all I know.’

  Zac stood. ‘I could check it out for you,’ he said. ‘You might be able to use it in The Book.’

  His father nodded. ‘I’ll give you my small camera so you can take some photos.’ He gave a little grin. ‘Be careful, though: I don’t want you disappearing completely.’

  Chapter Eight

  Have you fixed that Roldee?’ were the first words Jess asked when she arrived.

  Zac was sitting out on the deck waiting for her. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Good! Because I think the tune it plays is important.’

  Zac kept quiet.

  She continued. ‘I think the Neanderthals wanted it because that’s how they get the dog to come to them. That was a dart gun they were carrying. They’re trying to catch a dog.’ She climbed up onto the deck and sat beside him. She gave a smug smile. ‘What do you think of that?’

  ‘She’s called Tasha,’ said Zac.

  Jess’s eyes went wide. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘That’s the name they were calling.’

  ‘Tasha,’ repeated Jess. ‘That’s a good name for a Russian dog.’

  ‘Except she’s not a dog,’ said Zac. He paused for effect. ‘She’s a cheetah.’ Now it was his turn to give a smug smile.

  ‘A cheetah!’ shouted Jess.

  He put a finger to his lips and indicated the house.

  ‘You’ve seen it?’ she asked, more quietly.

  Zac nodded.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. On the hill above the cable building. I didn’t get a clear view, but I’m certain she’s a cheetah. An albino.’

  ‘You’re kidding me!’ said Jess, her mouth gaping. ‘This is so fantastic. You’ve got to tell me more.’

  Zac told the story as they pedalled across the homestead paddocks towards Karori Bay. Jess listened mostly in silence, asking just a few questions.

  The story was finished by the time they moved off the paddocks and onto a gravel track where a locked gate separated the flats from the hills. Jess unlocked the gate and soon they were on a bulldozed path which snaked around the contours of a steep hill.

  ‘We’ve got to do something about it,’ said Jess, after they’d ridden in silence for a while.

  Zac agreed. ‘I was going to tell Dad this morning, but he … he had other things on his mind.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean tell people. I mean, we’ve got to find her.’

  ‘That’s going to be hard. This is a big place.’

  ‘Big cats have good hearing.’ She confidently patted the bag resting on the carrier behind her. ‘This Roldee will find her.’

  Zac didn’t answer. A slip had come down over the road and all his attention was given to that. More slips followed, and it wasn’t until they were in sight of Karori Bay that the going became easier.

  They stopped to take in the view. After seeing the mouths of the Oteranga and Waiariki streams, this one was a surprise. There were houses — a dozen of them. He’d got so used to the remoteness of the place that he hadn’t expected others to be living nearby. Not that you could call it a suburb. There were no roads or fences or any of the other things you’d find in town. Just baches sitting on a sloping paddock, connected by a network of rough tracks.

  ‘Who lives here?’ Zac asked.

  ‘Some of them are holiday baches,’ said Jess. ‘A few people live here all the time. Lots of others come from town to mess about in their four-wheel drives.’

  Vehicle trails crisscrossed the flats around the stream and the shoreline, although there was a patch near the mouth of the stream that was clear of wheel marks.

  Zac pointed at it. ‘Is that where the quicksand is?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jess, with a smile. ‘You don’t want to go riding across there unless you know what you’re doing.’

  His eyes moved to the stream and traced it up the valley that led away from the beach.

  ‘That’s where the Terawhiti Ghost was shot,’ said Jess.

  He nodded.

  ‘That’s why I wanted to come here.’

 
‘You think Tasha’s here?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Jess. ‘If she was a dog, she could easily have made it here in a night. Cheetahs can probably travel even further.’

  Zac studied the valley more closely. There were cattle on the flats by the stream, with white dots high on the sides of the hill.

  ‘You think she might be attracted by those sheep up there?’

  ‘They’re goats, not sheep,’ said Jess. ‘Jim doesn’t run sheep on this part of the property. No one will be too upset if she kills a wild goat.’

  Zac wasn’t so sure. He looked across to the houses. A couple of them had smoke coming out of their chimneys. Outside one a child was playing with a ball. Zac pointed to the child. ‘What about him?’ he asked.

  ‘She won’t attack a child,’ said Jess. ‘If she’s tame enough to live on a boat, she’s not going to attack people.’ She rode off. ‘Come on, Zac. Let’s go find her.’

  ‘Hold on! What about the security guards? Weren’t they meant to be here?’

  That stopped her. She scanned around the bay. ‘Can’t see them.’

  Nor could Zac. He climbed on his bike and followed. Did the absence of security guards mean the Neanderthals had left as well?

  Jess and Zac kept to the Terawhiti side of the stream. The gorse-covered hill rose steeply from the valley floor, making access difficult, so they searched on foot, mostly around the bottom. Jess played the Roldee at full volume, the sound echoing off the sides of the valley. Clearly it could be heard on the tops, for the goats turned and stared at them.

  After going about half a kilometre upstream they decided to give up. If Tasha was around then she was ignoring the music. Maybe she had a full belly of goat meat and was sleeping. More likely she wasn’t here at all.

  When the houses came back into view, Jess turned off the music and put the Roldee back into the carry bag. ‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ she said. ‘Where should we look next?’

  ‘Didn’t your dad mention the Waiariki as a place a dog might go?’

  Jess nodded. ‘We could search there tomorrow. I can’t do it in the morning, though; I’ve got to go into town with Mum.’

  ‘I could do it,’ said Zac.

  ‘No!’ said Jess, glaring at him. ‘We do it together.’

  ‘All right! But you need to get a charger for that thing. The battery’s getting flat.’

  She pulled a face. ‘I don’t know anything about chargers.’

  ‘It’s nine volts DC,’ said Zac. ‘Just take it into an electronics store. They’ll give you one with the right fitting.’

  By then they had made it back to their bikes.

  ‘How much will it cost?’ asked Jess.

  Zac shrugged. ‘About fifteen bucks.’

  ‘I don’t have—aargh!’

  A man had suddenly stepped out of the gorse and was standing in front of them menacingly. It was Ivan.

  ‘Give to me!’ he ordered, stretching his hand towards Jess.

  ‘Give what to you?’ said Jess, recovering quickly.

  ‘The music,’ he said.

  ‘What music?’

  Ivan said something in Russian, and took a step closer.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Jess.

  Ivan’s face flared bright pink. All except the scar, which remained deathly white and made him look even more sinister than usual.

  ‘Give!’ he shouted, raising a fist.

  Zac pushed forward with his bike. ‘No! Leave us alone.’

  ‘You,’ snarled the Russian, turning on him. ‘You lie to me. You pay.’ He lunged forward, trying to grab Zac’s arm.

  ‘Go, Jess!’ shouted Zac. ‘Go!’

  Jess was on her bike and off before the words had died.

  Ivan growled. He took a couple of steps after her before realizing how futile it was. He stopped and waved his hands furiously at something in the nearby gorse. Then he turned back to Zac, lashing out at the bike with his foot. Yelling in Russian, he thrust forward, forcing the bike into Zac’s body. Zac fell to the ground with the bike on top of him. Ivan was about to stomp on both boy and bike when a horn blasted. It was the monster pick-up coming out of the gorse, with Yuri at the wheel.

  Ivan gave a final snarl as he turned and lumbered to the vehicle. Yuri gunned the motor. The wheels spun in a spray of grass and dirt, and then they were gone.

  Zac climbed to his feet to see Jess riding flat out towards the narrow track around the hills. If she made it, the pick-up would be too wide to follow from there.

  But she wasn’t going to make it. Yuri had his foot to the floor with the motor roaring. If she kept to that path she’d be run over. Zac screamed her name. Jess swerved away just as the pick-up came level.

  She splashed through the stream and onto the track that headed towards the houses. Yuri soon had the vehicle turned and powering after her. Once more the pick-up was gaining rapidly. Zac could hardly breathe: she’d never get to the houses in time. But again she swerved, this time down to the main track that followed the gravel around to the city.

  Zac was amazed by the speed she was travelling. It was faster than he could ever ride over a rough surface. But then, he’d never had to ride to save his life!

  No matter how fast Jess went, though, it wasn’t going to be fast enough. Despite bouncing all over the place, the pick-up was gaining.

  Jess didn’t wait for it to catch up. It was still some distance behind when she turned and raced towards the water. On reaching a line of dry seaweed, she turned and followed it, back towards Terawhiti. Yuri saw the opportunity to take a short cut and swung off the track, aiming straight for her.

  It was a big mistake. That part of the beach had quicksand. The huge pick-up powered through for about twenty metres before the wheels began sinking. Soon it was up to its axles and only inching forward. Yuri gunned the engine.

  That was an even bigger mistake. The pick-up stopped, and with each churn of the wheels, dug itself deeper into the sand. In a few seconds the sand was higher than the bottom of the doors.

  The engine stopped. Maybe Yuri had realized that he was the one digging them deeper, or perhaps the sand had clogged the fan belt. Either way, the Neanderthals weren’t going anywhere.

  By the time Zac had checked out his bike, bent the front mudguard back into place and climbed on, Jess had made it to the track around the hills.

  ‘C’mon, Zac!’ she called, with a big grin on her face. ‘What’s keeping you?’

  He caught her up at the place where they’d first stopped to view the bay. They did so again. Ivan and Yuri had somehow forced the doors open and were considering whether the sand would hold their weight. Ivan was talking on a phone.

  Yuri took a tentative step forward, holding on to the door. His foot started to sink and he quickly pulled it back up.

  ‘Can you walk on it?’ asked Zac.

  ‘I have,’ replied Jess. ‘As long as you don’t move around in one place, you can get across.’ Then she chuckled: ‘Be harder for those big lumps, though.’

  Zac took out the camera his dad had given him and began taking photos. This could make a good scene in The Book.

  ‘What did you think of my manoeuvre?’ asked Jess.

  He lowered the camera. ‘Did you do that on purpose?’

  ‘Yeah, of course! I wasn’t going to let those animals catch me.’

  Zac glanced across at her. She was studying the scene with a smile of satisfaction. He smiled too. He’d only known this girl for three days and yet already he was starting to like her.

  Chapter Nine

  There was no Dub Dub FM on Thursday morning when Zac joined his father in the lounge. Instead, the serious tones of National Radio announcers were commenting on the price of milk. It seemed that Crawford had had enough of Keith’s rants.

  But the change of station didn’t make the news of Crawford’s brother, Stanley, go away. By the time Zac was eating his cereal, the announcers were talking about a protest in Wellington later t
hat day. The Morris Investors Action Group — MIAG — were to protest outside Parliament Buildings, demanding more controls on finance companies. After that they were meeting with the United States ambassador to push their claim that Stanley’s mansion in the Virgin Islands should be seized and sold to repay investors. The leader of the group was on air discussing their chances. According to him, they were pretty good.

  ‘If that happens, will we be able to go home?’ asked Zac.

  Crawford shook his head. ‘If it’s going to happen, it’ll take years rather than months.’

  ‘So we’re going to be here for six months, no matter what?’ said Zac.

  ‘At least. I’m starting to think the book might take a little longer. I haven’t started any writing yet.’

  Zac returned to his cereal. He wasn’t sure whether that was the answer he wanted or not. Tasha was making him change his mind about the place. When he first arrived he’d thought there’d be nothing to do and no one to talk to — just six months of boredom. And yet here he was, getting up earlier each day, keen to get on with things. The problem was, would this continue when the school holidays finished and Jess had to go back to school? The way Crawford had things planned Zac was going to be homeschooled, with Crawford as teacher. Somehow Zac had to change this.

  ‘This protest is a darned nuisance,’ continued Crawford. ‘Stanley’s photo is going to be all over town again.’

  Zac nodded. Earlier protests had used Stanley’s photo as a symbol for business greed.

  ‘We need to go into town and get supplies,’ Crawford continued. ‘We’re running short of milk and bread. It would be just my luck to go into a shop and find Stanley’s photo on the front page of the paper.’

  Zac looked at his father and smiled. ‘Have you looked in the mirror lately?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Haven’t needed to.’

  ‘Well, you should. Because that beard is getting longer. I don’t think people will recognize you.’

  Crawford ran his hand over his face. ‘I don’t know, Zac. Our blue eyes are distinctive, and eyes are important in recognizing people.’ A pause. ‘Do you think you could ride in and get some stuff?’

  ‘How far?’ asked Zac, without enthusiasm.