by L J McIntyre
“Mine?”
“Yeah, yours. You’re walking along, bearing your soul. Next thing you know, I’m blabbering bollocks that I wish I hadn’t said. You’re a strange one, there’s no doubt about that.” She smiles. “Strange in a good way, I mean. Not many people talk about that sort of stuff, especially not with a stranger.”
“Neither did I until a few years back. Feels good getting stuff off your chest though, doesn’t it?”
She shrugs.
We both turn around at the sound of a vehicle creeping up behind us: a truck. It’s driving slowly, quietly.
“Shit, we should run into the forest, get out of sight.” Annie grabs my arm.
“Bushes are too thick to get through. And it’s too late for that. He’s already seen us.”
The truck’s lights start flashing us. It speeds up.
“What should we do?” Annie asks.
“No idea.”
We take a step back, retreat further onto the gravelly shoulder and wait for the truck to pull up beside us. The driver window winds down and an older man flashes a snarling smile at us. His front tooth has been snapped into a sharp triangle.
“Where you two headed?” he asks.
“Just out for a walk,” I say.
“A walk.” He lets out a wheezy laugh before being engulfed in a nicotine riddled coughing fit. “Hell of a walk.” His words come out in a choke.
“Yeah, you know,” I respond.
The man, receding, wiry hair—brown with streaks of grey—looks ahead at the long road. Licks his lips. “I do know.” He takes his hands off the steering wheel and starts to pick under a fingernail. “Queenstown’s a hell of a walk from here.” He looks at us. “Couple of days.”
“We’re not going that way, so it’s fine.”
He looks back at the nail he’s digging dirt from. “Need a lift?” he asks, flicks dirt from his finger, shifts his eyes to us. The engine clicks and rumbles while in neutral. “Got plenty of space in the back.” He points his thumb to the back.
The rear of the truck looks like some sort of enclosure, maybe a small livestock space. Whatever it is, the only way I’d get in there is with a gun to my head.
“We’re fine, thanks. Just enjoying the fresh air,” Annie says.
“Fresh air?” He laughs and chokes again. He hocks up a mouth of phlegm and spits it on the dirt close to our feet. “Plenty of that here. Plenty.”
We don’t respond.
He eyes Annie, asks, “Where you from?”
“New Plymouth.”
“New Plymouth?” He nods. “And you?”
“England.”
“England?” He nods again, runs his eyes down me as if scanning for extra information. “Long way from England.”
“Yeah.”
“Long way from everywhere.” He licks his lips again.
He leans closer to the window, watches us both for a few more seconds. He nods a final time, looks ahead to the road, and puts his foot on the accelerator, softly, it would seem, as the truck gently rolls forward. A few seconds later, the engine roars and the truck starts barrelling down the road.
Chapter Eighteen
“Fuck,” Annie says.
“What the hell was that?” I ask while cradling the back of my head with my hands, fingers interlocked.
Annie shakes her head. “Let’s keep going.”
Twenty minutes later we spy the highway. The sight lifts my spirits, feels like I’m being dragged to terra firma out of quicksand.
Once we get to the highway I ask, “You’re a hitchhiker. What happens now?”
“I suppose we wait.”
“Should I hide out of sight?”
“Why would you do that?” Annie asks with a puzzled expression, head cocked to one side.
“You know. Like they do in films. Cars are more likely to stop if it’s just a girl.”
“Yeah, but won’t they feel kind of ambushed if you jump out from nowhere?”
I scratch my head. “You’re right,” I say. “So we just wait then.”
Pockets of strong sunshine have punched through the clouds, setting a harsh glare on the tarmac near us. Further along the stretching grey road, the light is softer, the glare less intense. And that’s where I fix my focus, closer to the horizon, and I pray a car is on the brink of coming over it. The wind carries a slight chill and that universal scent of greenery that I’ve never been able to credit to one particular plant.
We wait in silence for half an hour at least, while the road plays host to nothing more than a rabbit that made the mad dash to the other side. I shift my weight from one leg to the other every few minutes. My hands are in my pockets, my fingers nervously sketching along the edge of each object in there. I’m chewing chunks out of my bottom lip.
We don’t say anything because this task of staring at nothing demands our full attention. Annie’s looking right. I’m looking left.
That’s when I see it. A small insect breaks the horizon and rolls painfully slowly toward us. The insect grows larger the closer it gets until a blue car takes form, and that wonderful sound of an engine finally echoes in our ear canals.
Long before the car is near us, we begin waving our arms. We don’t look like hitchhikers. More like two people stranded on an island desperately trying to signal a passing ship. The roar of the motor gets closer, but not quieter, not slower. It isn’t slowing down.
I realise we look mentally unstable so I put my thumb out, try to look at the driver. It’s a man, going by his silhouette. He’s too far to make out but I stare at where his eyes should be and try to connect with him. The car gets closer. The man is dressed in a white shirt, and I can see his features now, I can see that he’s not looking at us, that he’s staring fixedly ahead, pretending we’re not there.
Annie shouts, “Please stop.”
The car flashes past us, its trailing wind hits us and pelts us with fine dust. Wiping my eyes, I see the driver doesn’t offer a single glance in our direction. We both turn to face the car, watch the man that could have liberated us disappear out of sight.
“I think we freaked him out,” I say.
Annie nods and puts her hands on her hips. There’s another engine sound to our left. We swivel and both instinctively throw our thumbs out. We hear a whoop, whoop, and my heart sinks.
A police car rolls onto the highway and toward us.
“What’s wrong?” Annie says. “They can help us, can’t they?”
“It’s the Nesgrove police. They told me not to leave town.”
“Shit.”
The police car, chequered squares of yellow and blue on the front and sides, creeps up to us, comes to a stop on the shoulder. The driver window rolls down, and Sergeant Davidson who I spoke to earlier looks up at me from behind the wheel.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asks.
“Just for a stroll.”
“A stroll?”
“Yeah, it’s a nice day.”
She looks up ahead and scratches her nose, looks back at me.
“I told you not to leave Nesgrove.”
“We’re just out for a walk.”
“Does this look like Nesgrove to you?” Sergeant Davidson points toward the landscape beyond her windscreen.
“I don’t know where Nesgrove territory ends,” I say.
“You being funny with me?” She looks left at the passenger seat, and that’s the first time I realise someone else is in the car. “Is he being funny?” She asks the other person. She turns back to us, her stare zeros in on me, “Nigel thinks you’re being funny with me.”
I raise my palms in the air. “No, I’m not. Honestly.”
Davidson looks Annie up and down, then she looks back to me. “You didn’t mention anyone else in your statement. Friend of yours?”
“We just met. She’s a tourist, too.”
Annie nods. Her face is pale. She’s nervously picking at her fingernails.
“A new friend, eh.” She eyes Ann
ie some more. “Very suspicious.” She nods her head. “Eh, Nigel? Suspicious isn’t it?”
“Yup,” a male voice comes from the car.
“Nigel thinks it’s suspicious, too.”
“What is?” I ask.
“You finding the body of a girl, murder weapons in the trunk of your car. That same car magically disappearing. And now this girl you never mentioned. What’s that Nigel?” She looks left before regarding me again. “And now you’re running away when the police have asked you to stick around.”
“Murder weapons?” I ask. “I thought the girl committed suicide.”
“Could be murder.”
“Well, we were just taking in the scenery,” I say.
“You can do that in the back of the car. Get in.” She says just as the sound of a deep, gravely motor comes from our right. A green van is travelling toward us. Annie and I watch it longingly, each knowing that if the police car had arrived minutes later, we might be in that van and en route to safety.
If the girl was murdered, that surely must bring with it a ton of crap and the possibility that I’m a suspect. And the stuff in my car doesn’t look good. Someone’s framed me.
This can’t be happening.
No, come on Jack. Don’t get panicked. This will all be fine. I’m innocent. I’m normal. People like me don’t get wrongfully convicted of murder. And why plant the murder weapon only to steal the car hours later?
The van passes us and Davidson smiles.
“In,” she says in a tone that doesn’t invite a response, and she flicks her head back.
I open the back door, let Annie climb in before me, and I slump in the seat.
Chapter Nineteen
No one speaks on the ride back to town. The car’s interior is pristine, brand new or barely used. It smells of rich leather and cheap car fragrance coming from the cow-shaped smelly that’s dangling from the rear-view mirror.
Nigel’s head is so devoid of hair, all the bumps and dimples in his skull are in plain view, like the surface of a skin coloured, pig ugly moon. He stares straight ahead while chewing loudly on gum, his jaw bulging and chins wobbling with each chomp.
Sergeant Davidson’s hands are clenched tightly on the steering wheel, her stare fixed on the road ahead. She’s leaning forward in her seat, her chest almost touching the steering wheel.
I stop chewing my lip when the light taste of blood touches my tongue. I can’t stop thinking about that girl in the lake, the possibility that she was murdered. And that I’ve been framed.
The silence makes me feel sick. No, it’s not the silence: it’s the anticipation within. The not knowing what our two captors are thinking, planning. The not knowing what will happen. Will they interrogate me, grill me, torture me? Are they part of the plan to keep me in town? Are they corrupt?
My voice breaks the silence with a question entirely unplanned and unconscious. “How do you know the girl was murdered?” I ask.
Davidson and Nigel look at each other before she responds, “We don’t yet. They’ve taken her to Queenstown for an autopsy.”
“You must know I didn’t do it.”
“Do what?” she asks.
“The murder.”
“So,” Davidson says, “you’re saying she was murdered?”
“No…what? That’s not what I said. You were the one who mentioned murder,” My hands are gripping the seatbelt.
“Hmm,” the sergeant manages.
When we get to town, the car stops outside the police station, the doors unlock and we all get out.
“You try to leave town again and you’ll be arrested. Understood?” Davidson says.
I nod.
Annie and I walk along the street and I’m struck with the thought that if the town truly wanted to trap me and Annie, then why let us walk freely as we are now? Why not just lock us up in the police station? Perhaps not for the first time, my paranoia has gotten the best of me and this situation is nowhere near as fucked up as it first seems.
Ben is standing outside his store. “Hi, Jack.” He waves at me.
“Hi, Ben. Can you tell me when the next delivery truck is due, please. Someone stole my car and we can’t get out of this place.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Jack. The next delivery truck is Saturday, so let me see.” He closes one eye while he counts in his head. “That’s three days from now.”
“Unless you want to give us a ride,” I say.
“No can do, Jack,” he rolls forward and up onto his toes, “Too busy running and feeding a town. And I hear you’ve been asked to stick around.”
I feel my anger rising. I say under my breath, “I hate this place.”
I didn’t say that as quietly as I’d hoped. Ben’s happy demeanour dissolves; a cold, emotionless face in its place. The shift in him is terrifying. The friendly act exactly that: an act. And now I see the real Ben in the raw.
“Enjoy your stay in Nesgrove,” he says.
Annie pulls at my arm, and we cross the street to the motel.
“Three days?” Annie says when we get into the room. “What the hell we going to do for three days?”
“Not to mention the small problem of the police and this girl’s death. I put my head in my hands and sit down on the bed. “Looks like we’ll just have to barricade ourselves in this room, but I have a feeling the weirdos will be back outside the window tonight. ” I reach over to the bedside table and grab my laptop, flick up Facebook.
“God, yeah, I hadn’t even thought about that,” Annie says. “Hey, why don’t you write about all this on your social media? You know, all the weird stuff that’s been happening.”
“I don’t think that would help. Once people make their mind up about you online, that’s it, you know, you’re screwed. You just end up digging a deeper grave for yourself if you try to defend yourself publicly.”
I quickly scan through my messages on Facebook, skimming over the more aggressive ones, until I come to one from a photographer friend. And by friend, I mean someone I’ve been connected to online for a few years but never met. It reads:
“Jack, you need to see this, mate. What the hell is going on?”
He’s linked to an article on bigpixel.com, one of the most popular photography sites in the world, and incidentally the trashiest. They thrive on click-bait, and a shiver runs through me when I realise I’m the bait.
Chapter Twenty
I click the link and read the article, titled: Photographer Publishes Image of Dead Girl Just To Go Viral.
Article by Liam Dunn.
It would seem a British photographer, Jack Coulson, is following the same route as JJ Brightside, the YouTuber who controversially filmed the body of a suicide victim in order to gain more followers.
Today I received an email from a resident of the town of Nesgrove in New Zealand, claiming that Coulson was photographing a nearby lake this morning. He allegedly spotted the body of Sally Adams, a resident of Nesgrove who committed suicide, floating in the lake. He took a photo of her and on his return to town he reported seeing the body to police. The image you see below is a transcript of his police interview, which is timed at 6:15 am.
Below the text is a photo of a transcript with my name at the top, today’s date, the wrong time, and the statement given below is not mine. It’s entirely fabricated and also makes no mention of the men in the forest.
Coulson then went on to publish an image of the lake twenty minutes later, and in that image you can clearly see something white floating in the water. The photo below is a screenshot of Coulson’s Facebook post which included the original photo. I’ve circled Sally Adams’ body in red so you can see it more clearly.
The town resident who brought this to my attention speculated that Coulson was hoping someone would notice the body in his photo. Coulson would then say he had no idea she was there when he posted the photo, and that he missed it when he processed the image.
Ultimately he would play Mr. Innocent while the world shared hi
s photo. But the Nesgrove Facebook page called him out, and minutes later Coulson deleted the photo from all of his social media accounts. I tried to contact him to hear his side of the argument, but he chose not to respond.
Why would his photo go viral, you ask? Well, why does anything go viral? It’s different. It’s extremely tragic. After all, suicide has touched many of our lives. And on face value, this is a story of a lone photographer innocently braving the wilderness only to find the dark side of humanity. What’s not to share? But Coulson couldn’t have known she’d committed suicide at that point. Maybe he was hoping it was something more sinister, something that would really get the public going. What’s more emotionally stirring than a murder, and for a photographer to accidentally capture the victim’s body?
If the allegations against Coulson are true, then I’m sure this article is not the type of virality he was looking for. And if we don’t do something about this sort of behaviour now, the likes of Jack Coulson and JJ Brightside will continue to profit from the suffering of others.
When I finish reading, my mouth is dry and I feel my face burning. The bottom of the article says there are almost four hundred comments.
“Jack, you okay?” asks Annie who is sitting on the bed with me.
I hand her the laptop and she reads it.
“Those bastards,” she says when she’s finished. “Hypocritical bastards, I should say. They accuse of you of trying to go viral, and they are doing the exact same thing with exactly the same picture of yours.”
“There’s something going on here,” I respond, “Something very dodgy. I feel like all of this has been planned. Like the town has been waiting for me.” I get up and start pacing around the room.
“A pitcher plant.”
“Something worse. At least a pitcher plant doesn’t play with its food. You and I, we’re not sitting here by accident. They’ve pushed us together.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“The town. All of them. Maybe not Tamati, but the rest are all in on it. My car wasn’t randomly stolen. The girl wasn’t in the lake by chance when I was there. Christ, they knew I was coming and they prepared for it. Even had some bloody Budweisers in the fridge waiting for me.”
