Kaitangata Twitch Read online

  Once again Meredith leaped sideways as the raw pink hand grabbed at her ankle, but though she was terrified, it was by now an old, familiar terror, something to be lived and leaped through. She had no choice. The dream was like a tunnel, caving in behind her as she moved on through it. There was no turning back from this journey.

  So, moving on through that brassy light, familiar now yet always strange, she avoided the hands, and ignored the great eye that opened in the little cliff beside the second beach to watch her go by. No way could she outstare Kaitangata. At last she scrambled across rocks and onto the third beach. MOUTH BEACH said the sign. Tethered to the sign was a boat she had seen before.

  ‘Surprise, surprise!’ said a voice.

  She looked up. Sebastian Cardwell was grinning at her, from above the tideline. The brassy light edged in on him from all directions and he looked like an actor on a sandy stage.

  ‘But why you?’ he said. ‘Where’s your sister?’

  ‘My sister?’ repeated Meredith.

  ‘I thought it must be your sister when I got the call.’ ‘What call?’ asked Meredith.

  ‘On my mobile!’ he said, then stopped and frowned as if he weren’t quite sure of what he was saying. ‘Mind you, the reception isn’t great on this side of the hill.’ He quickly overcame his moment of uncertainty. ‘Anyhow, what on earth are you doing here at this time of night? Isn’t it a bit dangerous for you to be paddling around in the dark?’

  ‘More dangerous for you,’ said Meredith, feeling, strangely, that she was not using her own voice. Something had chosen her and was speaking through her.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got nothing to worry about.’ Marriot’s expression was – not frightened, but somehow rather defensive. ‘I know the harbour like the back of my hand. And this island is mine – mine, d’ye hear? Your family will never forget it’s mine, because I meant what I said earlier. I’m going to build a holiday home here, and I’m going to sit on my verandah with my telescope, looking into your back yard and through your windows whenever the fancy takes me. As for you, you can just paddle back home again. I don’t want to see any of you Gallaghers on Kaitangata ever again.’

  Meredith looked out to sea. A wave, not much more than a frill of foam and water on the very edge of the ocean, splashed lightly onto the sand, but there were no words hidden in this sound. The sea had nothing to say for itself.

  ‘Anyhow, what’s wrong with what I’ve done over there?’ asked Sebastian Cardwell, pointing in the direction of Trident Cove. ‘There was nothing there before – nothing! No great stands of rimu. No heritage-listed rainforests. The slopes were eroding. The farmers were struggling. Most of them were bloody thrilled to sell, I can tell you that. Couldn’t wait. Same on this side of the bay. You ask the Pontys how they feel about it. Slogging their guts out for years, just to break even.’

  Meredith stayed silent. She found she was waiting for something.

  ‘As for that sister of yours, well, she’s got problems, that’s all I can say,’ Sebastian Cardwell went on. ‘Your dad should spend more time worrying about his own back yard, and less time worrying about mine.’

  ‘He just wants things to stay beautiful,’ said Meredith speaking at last. ‘The way it was when he was a kid.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ exclaimed Sebastian Cardwell incredulously. ‘He thought it was the bloody backside of the world when he was a kid, and so did I. I hated this blasted place. And it’s worse now . . . filled up with middle-class whingers who want the world to stay pretty just so they get a nice view from their picture windows. And what’s wrong with a speedboat or two – or jet-skis? Sure they’re a bit noisy, but people have fun with them. Gag your donkeys before you start raving on about jet-skis. But your old man has always thought his views were the only ones. He’s always been a real pain in the you-know-what.’

  Meredith could see that Sebastian Cardwell’s hurt was an old one, running back into the past like a muscle of pain, which twitched every now and then. Back then he had been a loser, and he couldn’t stand the memory of losing.

  ‘As for your mum,’ said Sebastian Cardwell, as if Meredith had mentioned her mother, ‘did she ever tell you that she and I were quite an item before your dad came dancing back from overseas, acting like a great international know-all. Quite an item,’ he repeated with emphasis. ‘If he’d come back six months later I reckon you’d be my kid. And you’d be going to a decent school – St Anne’s or one of those – and you’d have ponies and horses, not bloody donkeys.’

  He looked around the beach, then over at Meredith. ‘As for this island – can you honestly say you like it? Be honest . . . if a Gallagher can be honest, that is.’ Though he was looking at Meredith as he spoke, she could tell he was really arguing with himself, about past injuries that still infuriated him.

  Meredith thought about Kaitangata. She thought about walking around the shore, reading the various tales written there by the sea. She thought of the thrift springing from cracks in the rocks, the tough, tangled gorse and broom, the foxgloves, the pimpernels, and the heavy grasses bowed with last night’s rain. She thought of the larks, singing high, wandering songs with no beginning or end, and the watchful, pacing seagulls. She thought of the clear water and the scuttling crabs leading busy, scavenging lives of their own, and seemed to feel the grains of dream sand suddenly stir and transform into a thousand scintillations. She felt the island inside her as well as outside.

  ‘I don’t just like it, I love it,’ she said, speaking at last.

  ‘Love it?’ cried Sebastian Cardwell, wrinkling his face incredulously. ‘Bullshit! It’s a nothing place. But I’m going to burn off the gorse and broom, level some of the rough bits, spray it, plant a few nice English trees . . . not oaks, but poplars and willows, say. They take off quickly. Build a bridge to the mainland one day. And I’ll have that holiday home right up high, just below the rocks so I can look out to the mouth of the harbour. Believe me, even if I’m not living here myself, someone else will want to. And you Gallaghers will have my subdivision behind you, and – and some other place of mine in front of you.’

  Meredith looked up to where she knew the island’s rocky fist clenched itself against the sky. ‘I like it wild !’ she cried, punching upwards in a freedom sign of her own. And the island answered her. Meredith saw a ripple, not out in the sea, but right between her feet, rising and falling under the sand. Solid ground suddenly seemed to be nothing but a flapping picnic blanket with a spirit moving below it. A second, writhing ripple swept down the beach towards them. Sebastian Cardwell rocked from one foot to the other.

  ‘The Twitch!’ he exclaimed, and for the second time that evening Meredith saw him fall over, though this time there was no one actually hitting him. ‘Kaitangata Twitch!’ he was shouting as he pitched forward, this time onto his knees.

  The strange feeling that the world was simultaneously straining in two different directions surged under Meredith’s own feet, while Pudding raced south and Pie slid north, both barking hysterically. Then it was all over. It had taken less than a second.

  But it wasn’t over. Something had happened – was still happening. The bank behind Sebastian Cardwell was moving. Crumbs of dry earth began rolling, clods of clay pitched themselves forward like greyish-yellow dolls’ heads, withered and misshapen and wearing wigs of grass. Then a whole slab of the bank began to topple down onto the beach. Sebastian Cardwell scrambled towards her on all fours, shouting as he did so.

  Where the bank had been, an arched hole suddenly gaped at them. Torn moss hung down in shreds from its upper lip. The ribbed, upper inside surface of the new cave reminded Meredith of something that terrified her. She wanted to run away, but she couldn’t. She had to watch. In this dream it was part of her job to be a witness.

  ‘Oh God, look at that!’ said Sebastian Cardwell wonderingly, talking more to himself than to her. ‘An underrunner like – like a bloody throat. That roof ’s like the roof of a mouth.’

  He stood up and, half-stoopi
ng, moved towards it.

  ‘Be careful,’ Meredith said in a wavering voice. After all, she must warn him. He must have his chance.

  Sebastian turned his head. She saw his teeth gleam, but he wasn’t smiling.

  ‘No Gallagher tells me where I can go on my own land,’ he said.

  He bent to peer into the newly revealed cave. Brassy dream-light fingered fern roots dangling from its ridged roof. Further back, that dream-light was swallowed by blackness.

  And as Sebastian peered into the cave, something moved out of the darkness, coming up through the throat and out of the mouth, changing shape as it came.

  In the beginning, when it was at the very back of the throat, it seemed to be a host of people – it seemed to have many heads and many faces. The closer it came, the more it took a shape that Meredith recognised. It shrank, tightened, coloured up, until at last it stood in front of them . . . a little girl, wearing old-fashioned clothes, stiff as a white-headed doll, carrying a bouquet of flowers, and looking as if she were posing, right there in Kaitangata’s greedy mouth, for a birthday photograph. Both dogs set up a savage barking, then leaped in front of Meredith, pointing their noses at the figure of the girl, who did not move but simply smiled on.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Sebastian Cardwell, suddenly frightened and furious with his own fear. ‘Who set this up? What are you kids playing at?’ He glared at Meredith.

  Meredith saw that the fair-headed child was not quite right. As she stood looking out at them, her face puffed out on one side, and was then pulled back into line again. Her right eye swelled, and became a giant eye, mashing her nose to the left. But then, as if by some effort of will, she brought it all back into balance. One of her pale hands darkened as if it were bruising or rotting. All the time, she was looking past Sebastian to Meredith. Flick! Meredith felt something twitch in her, as if the island was reeling her in.

  ‘You don’t frighten me with this act,’ yelled Sebastian Cardwell. He lunged toward the strange child, right into that ridged mouth.

  Meredith knew he was seizing, not a child, but Kaitangata itself. She knew he was suddenly feeling, there between his angry hands, the weight of it all – grass, gorse, headlands, tide lines, and even that rocky fist. It was the island itself he was pulling down around him.

  ‘Don’t!’ she screamed, warning him – warning him even though she had, perhaps, led him into the island’s power. ‘Let it go! Let it go!’

  But Sebastian Cardwell would not let go. Perhaps he could not. Kaitangata embraced him, transforming, as it did so, from pale past child into a dark, muscular lash – a tongue, perhaps – while the great upper lip of the cave protruded above him. Sebastian Cardwell glanced up . . . stopped shouting . . . began screaming hoarsely, desperately, as Kaitangata swallowed him. Meredith fell flat on the sand and rolled over, hiding her face in her arms and screaming, too.

  The noise seemed to dissolve everything. Even time itself splintered. And no matter how loudly she cried out herself, she could still hear Sebastian Cardwell’s terrified shrieks ringing inside her head, echoing now as if they were ringing somewhere in the deep heart of the island.

  The horrified howling stopped. It stopped so sharply that the silence was like a blow. Meredith felt cold water soaking through her clothes and stroking her skin. The Kaitangata Twitch seemed to be rocking her again, but evenly now – on and on and on. It no longer felt like an earthquake. At last, the silence was broken by a familiar sound – the barking of dogs anxious for attention. The world beneath her hip and hands seemed to harden and take on some other form. Meredith turned her head.

  Everything had changed. She was lying in the bottom of the blue canoe, and the light that surrounded her was not the brazen light of her dreams, but ordinary moonlight, strange as moonlight always is and yet familiar – the very moonlight that had lured her out earlier in the evening. The moon was about to vanish behind the hills on the far side of the bay, but the surface of the water was so bright it was easy to see everything around her. In front of her sat Pie, looking alert, while Pudding peered over the side of the canoe, wagging her tail. Meredith was on Kaitangata, but on the southern shore, not the northern. She was on Shelly Beach. She must have wandered down the Zigzag in her sleep, put on her lifejacket and actually canoed across the narrow band of sea, dreaming all the way. She had journeyed in her sleep, but now she was awake . . . wasn’t she?

  22

  There was a soft, treading sound, shoes on sand.

  ‘Don’t worry!’ a voice called softly out of the shadows. ‘It’s only me.’ It was Lee Kaa padding up Shelly Beach towards her, as if he already knew all about her dreaming, and (maybe) just what to do about it. ‘There I was, wandering along, taking a midnight moonlight walk of my own, and I saw you taking off,’ he said. ‘I borrowed one of your canoes and took off after you.’ He pointed to the beach beside her, and Meredith saw the green canoe drawn up beside the blue one. ‘I did call out to you once or twice, but you didn’t answer. Thought you looked a bit strange somehow! Driven or maybe drawn! Now, how about I give you an escort home?’

  Meredith nodded.

  ‘OK, then!’ said Lee, feeling in his jacket pockets. He took some cord from one pocket, and a little torch from the other.

  ‘You never know when you’re going to need light or string,’ he said. ‘Just hold the torch for me.’

  Then, as Meredith held the light in a shivering hand, he looped the two canoes together.

  ‘We’ll both get into the blue one,’ he said, ‘that’s the biggest, isn’t it? Paddle home in style?’ Lee climbed in behind Meredith, treating her as delicately as if she were made of sea foam, then picked the paddle out of the sea. Pudding scrambled in behind Lee, while Pie stood, like a sort of figurehead in the front.

  ‘I think I’ve killed Sebastian Cardwell,’ said Meredith. Words and tears tumbled out of her. She found she was trembling violently, and clenched her hands together, trying to hold herself still.

  Lee stopped pushing the canoe out into the sea.

  ‘Where was this?’ he asked.

  ‘On the other side of the island,’ she said, shivering. ‘Kaitangata opened its mouth and swallowed him.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Lee, but it was more a sigh than a laugh. He was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘There’s no way you could have done that, because I’ve had you in full sight ever since I saw you setting out. You haven’t been round to the other side of the island. You only landed here about five minutes ago.’

  ‘But I called him,’ Meredith mumbled. ‘I called him and he came. And the island ate him.’ Somewhere behind her ribs, her stomach muscles tightened and heaved. It was as if the Kaitangata twitch had actually become part of her. Meredith looked away, struggling and clenching her teeth. She felt torn between fear of Kaitangata and fear of herself because of what she might have done. Sebastian Cardwell might have been a villain, but she did not want to be the one who had lured him into the dreadful mouth of Kaitangata.

  ‘Ha,’ Lee Kaa was saying again. ‘Is that right?’ The paddle dipped; behind them the moon dipped too, grazing the edge of the hills; the air darkened. ‘Fifty years back,’ said Lee, leaning forward, and speaking over Meredith’s shoulder, ‘I was a kid like you. A kid who dreamed. Now, my people – they’re your people too, come to think of it – they’ve kept clear of Kaitangata. Like I told you back a bit, it was – well, sort of tapu. A forbidden place. People had been taken there in the old times to be killed and eaten. That’s history. But when I was round about your age, maybe a bit younger, I thought I was beyond all that old Maori stuff – too clever for it. I used to row across and wander all round the island. And that’s when my dreams became special in a way. Not all the time, just every now and then!’ Lee was paddling in a dreamy way. ‘I know you need to get home,’ he said, a little apologetically, ‘but maybe I’ve got something to tell you that nobody else can tell. OK?’

  ‘OK!’ said Meredith, for Lee’s words were bringing the beginning o
f relief with them. Her twitching stomach had quietened down. She was glad to think she might not be the only dreamer of sinister island dreams.

  ‘The Gentrys!’ Lee exclaimed softly. ‘They had this plan, you know. They were going to build a boarding house on the island – offer people an island holiday. I don’t reckon it would ever have caught on, but that’s what they were planning to do. Access by barge, can you believe it? Of course, once Shelly disappeared they gave up on all that, and nobody remembers that plan these days. But the thing is – I had this dream, and since then I’ve always felt it might have been my fault – Shelly disappearing, I mean.’

  ‘Were you at her birthday party?’ asked Meredith.

  ‘Oh no. The Gentrys would never have asked me,’ said Lee. ‘I was a Maori kid from round the bay. No, what happened was I went to sleep out in the sun, and dreamed myself into that party. I dreamed that I climbed the track up to the top of the island, and that Shelly followed me, holding a dirty great bunch of flowers someone must have given her. And I dreamed that I was going to climb the rocks at the top of the island, but she said she was going to climb them first, because the island was hers, not mine. And the thing was, in my dream, I knew that she’d do that. I knew she was a pushy kid, and that telling her what I was going to do was a bit like daring her to do it first. So, up she went and I followed her. And I dreamed that while she was up there, the rocks somehow unfolded . . . rose up pointing to the sky like fingers, and then clenched down on her. Terrible! But it was only a bad dream. I woke up, yelling, back in my own garden, with my own mum rushing to see what was wrong with me.’

  ‘But Shelly did disappear,’ said Meredith. ‘Do you really think she was caught in the hand of the island?’

  ‘How do I know?’ said Lee Kaa. ‘Something happened, sure, and she disappeared, sure, but I reckon my dream was only the sign of it, not the thing itself. Look, they turned over every stone on that island. They’d have found her if she’d been caught in the rocks. See, my theory is that the island found a way into me when I was asleep, sort of plugged into me, like someone might plug a heater or a drill into some point where energy would flow, and I think it used the sort of energy it found in me, in my – my . . . let’s say my dreaming, to set something going in the world around it – to protect itself. Because it needed protection. Maybe the spilled blood of the old people, hundreds of years back, gave it the power to do that.’ He paused. ‘I think it is haunted,’ he said at last. ‘Haunted by history. So what? History haunts all human places.’