by L J McIntyre
“Annie, you there?” I whisper as loudly as I can.
Nothing.
“Annie?”
Nothing.
I examine the ground. It’s too uneven, the grass too tall, and I’m surrounded by bushes. This isn’t the path anymore. This is forest, pure, unguided forest which could stretch for miles. The more I walk the further away from the path I’ll get. I stop and take my phone out of my pocket. There’s no signal but it may be possible to get GPS and figure out my location by using the offline map I have of this area.
When I open up the map it says no GPS available. I refresh the app over and over, my hands shaking until I hear something coming through the bushes. I crouch down. Footsteps rustle grass and weeds. Branches bend and snap back into place. And then breathing. Heavy breathing getting heavier and closer.
I clench my fists, ready myself to start swinging my arms. The noise is to my left. Closer now. It stops but I can hear breathing, slower, more focused. They’re just behind the bush, barely a metre from me. Without a thought, and fuelled by fear and confusion, I launch myself through the bush and land on someone. We hit the ground and become a tangle of leaves and branches, and they try to push me off.
Just as I steady myself to throw a punch, I hear, “It’s me, Annie.”
I pull away the weeds and branches and find Annie below me, her cheeks flushed red and eyes wide open, gasping for air.
“I’m so sorry,” I say as we lie twisted and snared in greenery. Her frame feels small under mine.
She pushes my chest, tries to get me off her, “You weigh a bloody ton.”
“Sorry, got my leg tangled in a bush.” I twist my back and rip away whatever’s ensnared my legs. I get to my feet and help Annie off the ground.
“I didn’t know it was you.”
“Who did you think it was? And why were we running?”
“There was a scary bloody woman in the house. Looked like a ghost or something. She didn’t want us being there.”
“So what now?” She pulls a twig from her hair and inspects it.
Chapter Sixteen
“We still need to find a way out of this town. Let’s go back to the trail and choose the other path this time,” I say.
I pull out my phone again and refresh the map app. This time it shows connectivity and pans into our location, before cutting out again. The brief view I got of the map showed that we’re northeast of the lake. If we head east, we should find the path again.
“How do you know the woman in the house didn’t want us there?” Annie asks as we navigate the forest.
“She did the same thing as the weirdo by the lake this morning.”
“Showed you her teeth?”
“Yeah, like how dogs growl and pull their lips back. Like that but without any sound.”
“That is some weird shit.”
We step through a line of trees and stumble onto the trail.
“Okay,” I check my phone. “We need to go that way.” We walk along the trail and this time follow the right-hand path, and all this time I have that woman’s face scarred into my brain.
“What did it say on the door?” Annie asks while we walk.
I pull up the photo I took and read it to her, “One must leave, or sometimes two, but yours or theirs, it’s up to you.”
“I don’t like that at all. What does it mean by ‘Leave’?” she asks.
“No clue.”
Ten minutes later the path leads to a gate, but beyond the gate the forest continues just as before. I push the gate open and we follow a winding path which leads to a two-storey house nestled among the trees. The garden around the house is filled with rusted metal items; barrels, a shopping cart, and a row of solar panels. Hollow music whistles through wind chimes strung up in the trees, and dream catchers are woven into a few branches.
We both catch movement in the garden and hide behind a tree. A dark-skinned man in his early thirties, naked as the day he was born and with a massive mop of brown hair on top of his head, strides out of the house, drops to the ground and starts doing push-ups. He’s medium height but very thick around the waist. Looks like he hasn’t exercised in years. He does about five push-ups before collapsing to the ground.
“I’ll go and introduce myself,” I whisper to Annie.
“Are you kidding? He’s naked,” She hisses back.
“Yeah, but apparently he’s living like an authentic Maori shaman, like they used to live.”
“I’m pretty sure authentic Maori shamans didn’t walk around with their willies out.”
“No, I think they did. Like they were one with nature.”
Annie pulls at my arm when I stand up, but I stride out of the forest and into the garden.
As the man is picking himself up off the floor, he glances in my direction, does a double-take, springs to his feet, looks down at his privates, and quickly covers them.
“Holy Christ, mate, you don’t just walk up on a naked bloke like that. I could have Kung-fud your head off.” He’s panting heavily and hopping from one foot to the other.
“Crap, I’m sorry. I just…I thought…I wasn’t—”
He runs into the house and returns with a towel around his waist, a blue towel with a big red Superman badge on it.
“Sorry, again,” I say.
“Nah, it’s cool. I was just doing my push-ups. Normally do a hundred but today I just fancied five.” He’s still panting heavily.
He talks like he’s ten years old, with a sort of all-knowing floaty innocence. Reminds me of a friend of mine, Phillip Coldfield, who argued with a teacher once. The teacher said actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger were normal human beings. Phillip insisted they were robots. In the end, the teacher gave up.
I look over to the forest, and Annie walks out apologetically.
He notices Annie. “Jesus, a chick? Listen, miss, it’s cold today.”
“Okay.” Annie looks at me.
“You know,” the man continues, “it’s just that things might have seemed a bit out of proportion.” He points down to his crotch.
“Are you Tamati?” I ask.
“Yep, that’s me. What you need? A curse lifting?” He scratches his head.
“Just a ride out of town,” Annie says. “We can pay.”
“A ride? With what? I don’t have a motor.”
“But the guy back in town said you had a van—” I say.
“Back in town? The crazies? Nah mate, you’ve been fooled. Everyone knows I don’t do technology.”
“So why did he say that?”
“Coz they’re crazy.”
“Shit,” Annie says. “We’re stuck in this dump. Can you help at all? We just need to get to the nearest town.”
“Maybe you’re cursed. I can lift it for you. Or a crystal. Got loads. Just $5 for one and it’ll bring you good luck.” He starts walking toward the house. “Come on in,” he calls back.
We enter his kitchen which looks like a possum has broken in, knocked over everything and thrown cereal all over the place. Dangling by string from the ceiling are small wooden carvings, surprisingly intricate. We follow him through to the living room and sit down on his sofa.
“Drink?” he asks.
“I’ll have some water if you don’t mind,” I say.
“Me, too,” Annie says.
He goes back into the kitchen and starts banging around.
The living room floor is covered in a dark green carpet with red and yellow cows printed on it, not at all attractive. Dozens of crystals and wood carvings are strung up along all of the wood-panelled walls. The place smells of Vic vapour rub and cheese.
He comes back in with two glasses of water and sits on a chair in front of us, now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Like my carpet?” He points at the floor with a smile on his face.
“Lovely,” I say.
“Had to put my wheelies on it. Pulled it all the way from town. Took four hours.”
“It was worth it,” I lie
.
“I thought you didn’t do technology.” Annie points to the phone and laptop on his coffee table.
“Yeah, but that’s essential for my shamanism.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“YouTube tutorials, that’s where I learn stuff like lifting curses and magic and stuff.”
“You learn everything from YouTube?” Asks Annie.
“And websites. HowToBeAShaman.com is good. I just learn anything useful, you know.”
“So you’re not an old school, authentic Maori shaman?” I hope he’s not offended by the question.
“You got to learn that stuff from a master kind of person, like I would be his apprentice, but they probably wouldn’t let me in because I’m more interested in modern stuff and other types of shamanism, so I just do my own stuff. Works good, too. There was a woman in town the other day. I lifted her curse and she stopped having nightmares.”
He leans forward, watches us closely as Annie and I take a sip of water. “How’s the water?” he asks.
“Fine,” we both say.
“It’s my piss.” He leans back in his seat, nods his head in satisfaction.
“Are you kidding?” asks Annie.
“Nah, for reals. It’s clean and all that.”
“That’s disgusting.” She pushes the glass away from her.
“It’s fine. I piss into a bucket, pour it through an old coffee filter, and swill it around with some soap and now it’s drinkable. I saw them do it online.”
“I really don’t think that would work.” I push the glass away and start to feel sick.
“Your faces,” he laughs and his belly bobs up and down. He slaps his knees with both hands. “Course it’s not piss. Just messing with you. That’s my thing.” He wipes non-existent tears from his eyes. “I mess with people, just for fun.”
“Haha, very funny,” Annie says.
“Do you get phone signal here?” I ask.
“Upstairs out my bedroom window. I built a little shelf out there where I leave my phone. I just create a Wi-Fi hotspot and link up to my laptop.”
“How is this helping us?” asks Annie.
“Yeah, you’re right, it’s not,” I reply. “Why did Gerald say you had a car?”
“Look, mate, like I said, they’re loonies. And him especially.”
“Why him especially?”
“Murdered his wife, didn’t he. Got away with it though.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say.
“Can you help us at all, Tamati?” Annie jumps in.
“’Fraid not.”
“Then why invite us in?” Annie is getting more irritated at the lack of progress.
“Gets lonely out here, is all. Just wanted a natter with someone.”
“We should go,” I suggest. Just as we all stand up, I notice a familiar carving on a wall: a triangle with a hand in the centre. “What’s that?” I point to it.
“No clue,” Tamati shrugs. “Something the locals love for some reason, so I make it and sell it to them.”
“I’ve seen it a few times, on the hanging tree, and on the crosses at the weird cabin at the end of the other trail.”
“You went there?” Tamati eyes us both. “You two must be mad as hatters.”
“Do you know the lady who lives there?” I ask.
“That cabin is empty.”
“But I saw her.”
“That cabin is empty.” He shakes his head and points his hand to the door, asking us to leave. When we walk through the kitchen, Tamati pulls down a carving that was dangling from the ceiling. It’s a pair of connected antler dears, intricately detailed.
“Here, take it. It’s got good spirits in it. They’ll look after you, keep you safe from the Nesgrove curse.”
“Nesgrove curse?”
“Yeah, course.”
For obvious reasons—namely, it’s bullshit—I don’t respond or ask him to elaborate.
He waves us off from the doorway of his kitchen, a large smile plastered on his face. We hike back along the trail and onto the road that leads to town.
Annie grabs my arms and asks, “Why don’t we just walk to the highway from here, hitch a ride to Queenstown? There’s no need to go back to Nesgrove.”
Chapter Seventeen
I think about all my photography gear back in the motel room, the thousands of priceless images on hard drives and memory cards that I haven’t had a chance to back up to the cloud. All lost if we leave now and hitchhike to Queenstown.
We could wait it out a few days in town, see if I can buy a car from someone, or hitch a ride from the delivery truck Gerald mentioned. But he lied about Tamati. Maybe he lied about the truck, too. The town has to get deliveries from somewhere. It’s just a case of when the truck is due back in town.
What am I thinking? Why am I even considering this? Of course we can’t get back to that town.
“Should we walk along the road or through the forest?” Annie asks.
“The forest?” I look into the dense foliage that borders the narrow road we’re following. “How could we survive if we got lost? No water, no food, bad GPS, no phone coverage, no tent. The forest goes on for miles.”
She nods. “Let’s stick to the road, then. Hope we don’t get seen.”
We walk along the stony shoulder of the two-lane road that leads to the highway. To our right, an impenetrable wall of thicket stops us from using the forest as cover while walking adjacent to the road. On the other side of the road is flat marsh.
My jaw is tensed so tightly a tooth might crack. No medication, no viral photo, career in tatters, police keeping an eye on me. God I feel awful.
The great misunderstanding about the shit trap that is anxiety, is that you’re expected to be terrified of everything, nervous, weak, like you can’t even muster the courage to look someone in the eye.
It’s a fallacy. Generalised anxiety disorder doesn’t have you shaking nervously the second you wake up. For some people it might, but every sufferer has their own flavour of anxious behaviour. For me it’s more like background noise that’s cranked up so high I just feel shitty about a lot of things all the time. Doesn’t matter what things. I tell myself that as soon as I resolve this problem, or I get X amount of online followers, or whatever, then I’ll be fine. No more anxiety. But that’s never the case. Once one problem is fixed, another magically attaches itself to that ever-present stress and becomes the new big thing to worry about.
It’s the opposite of rose-tinted glasses. When I look back at the past, at experiences that weren’t so great at the time, in hindsight they suddenly seem positively cosy and wonderful, as if the world back then was so much more innocent and loving. Anxiety, however, tints experiences in real-time, paints them with a feeling of impending dread in the pit of your stomach.
Since the anxiety is prevalent throughout your days, you just live with it, learn to act like everyone else. It doesn’t mean you’ll always try to curl up under a quilt every time the shit hits the fan, it just means that’s what you really want to do sometimes. And other times, you lose your temper.
Like everything else, it’s complicated. That’s why I’m not curled up in a ball, crying like a baby right now. Action first, nervous breakdown later: that’s the order of things.
Annie and I are stalking the side of the road, our feet kicking loose stones. The road is devoid of vehicles, which is a good thing. Until we get to the highway, the only cars passing us on this road will be ones associated with Nesgrove.
“What made you want to be a travel photographer?” Annie asks.
“To be honest, I wanted to be a writer but couldn’t cut it. Too much self-doubt. But I’ve always had this overwhelming desire to be creative somehow, and then one day a friend loaned me his camera and it just kind of clicked. And, I suppose I’m not really great with people, so just being alone with my camera in nature seemed to resonate with me, you know.”
“Isn’t it lonely?”
“Yeah,” I rub the b
ack of my head. “It can be. But if I just keep moving, I feel like at some point something amazing is going to happen. Just around the corner could be the perfect photo that no one else has.”
“So you’re searching for the perfect photo?”
“That’s the plan. Photography is all about online presence. Viral photos can make a career.”
“Hmm, that seems kind of sad.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. Just sounds like a popularity contest.”
“That’s exactly what it is.”
“And you don’t mind that?”
“It is what it is.” I shrug. “It’s better than my last job. Just sitting around in an office, doing nothing that I wanted to do, nothing that made me happy. And photography focuses me, lets me switch off from myself for a while. That’s one of the reasons I need it so much.”
“Interesting way of looking at it.”
“But you know, you’re travelling around New Zealand by yourself. That must be pretty lonely if you ask me.”
She lowers her eyes and punts a stone across the tarmac road. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“What is it?”
“I’m kind of lost,” she says, still looking at the ground.
“Lost how?”
“In life, I mean. In everything.” She scoops a handful of stones from the ground and throws one into the bushes.
“And I thought I was a miserable bugger.”
She smiles. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do, you know.”
“What were you doing before you went travelling?”
“I was a bartender, but I got sick of it in the end. Too many sleazebag customers and not enough pay. And I had a boyfriend who turned out to be a nasty bastard. Gave me this scar.” She points to a thin white scar on her forearm.
“Jesus, sounds like a—”
“Piece of shit…yeah, he was. And now I’m just wandering around like a loser, hoping that something good will happen.” She looks up at me.
“You win,” I say, “You’re more pathetic than me.”
She laughs and throws the rest of the stones to the ground. “Jesus, we’re both pathetic. It’s your fault, you know.”
