Waiwera

John Amos Comenius. Orbis Sensualium Pictus: A Facsimile (1659 / 1968): 232.

A wet day on the coast, at the hot pools. It feels strange to be floating in steaming water as cold sheets of rain fall from the sky.

All of the adults are sheltering under the garish awnings, munching hot dogs and chips, but groups of children keep on running out into the open to splash each other, screaming like banshees.

Lifeguards stand around in drenched blue raingear. “No t-shirts in the pool,” they shout. One kid (12 or so?) is ordered to strip off her top, only to reveal she has nothing else on above the waist. She runs off crying, arms cradling her chest.

What difference does it make, in the rain?

Rules are rules and must be obeyed.

The water is blessedly warm.

There are covered pools too, of course: hot spas. The most crowded one is the big screen pool, where you can wallow in comfort, watching movies or satellite TV.

•

The beach is grey and rain-swept too, but clean: sands stretching out to the island, bush-clad hills in frame.

– D’you want to play a game?

– What kind of game?

– Imagine you’ve woken up in a blue room, a room where the walls and floor and ceiling are all coloured sky-blue. There’s no door, no windows, no way in or out. You have absolutely no idea how you got there. How do you feel? Think of three words to describe it.

– Ummm … cold, frightened … lost, maybe.

That’s Car’ for you. Straightforward and uncomplicated. I guess that’s why I like her. I felt comfortable … off the hook … relaxed, the first time I played it.

– Okay, now think of your favourite animal. Three words that explain why you like it so much.

– Aren’t you going to explain the blue room?

– Only when we’ve got to the end.

– Okay, then, let’s see – my favourite animal. That would be a … koala bear. Warm, furry, and … trusting.

(I chose a wolf: beautiful, fearsome, unpredictable …)

– Okay, the last one. Think of a body of water: a lake, or river, or sea, or stream. Any body of water: a waterfall even. Describe how it makes you feel.

– Three words?

– Yep.

– Okay. That one’s not so simple. Umm … I think a mountain tarn: clear, deep, dark and clean. Oops, that’s four, isn’t it?

– It doesn’t matter.

(I chose the sea, the sea where it meets the shore: vast, turbulent and strong.)

– So what does it mean?

– Well, it’s just a trick really. It doesn’t mean anything much, I’m sure. But the idea is supposed to be that the blue room is your attitude to death.

– Oh! I felt all cold and scared. Is that good?

– Well, yeah, I guess so. It’s normal, anyway.

– What about the others?

– Well, the animal stands for …

•

Car’ says some people think we’re surrounded by ghosts all the time.

That every second person you see is a ghost.

It was the matter-of-fact way she said it that got to me. Maybe it comes of being religious, but I thought I was supposed to be the extremist. The idea of seeing a ghost totally freaks me out, but she just took it in her stride.

She told me she’d spent a night in a haunted house once.

It was when she was staying with some relatives of hers in Scotland: an uncle and aunt, or some cousins, or something like that.

They were driving along the road towards the old stone cottage they lived in, late at night, with some creepy ghost story playing on the radio, when suddenly, on an impulse, she asked if their house was haunted. They looked at each other and said, Oh, we’d better not talk about that now, which was really reassuring.

Then she had to go and sleep in the attic because there wasn’t enough space downstairs, and the house was so ancient that it didn’t even have an inside staircase – you had to go outside to climb up these old stone steps in the dark, up through a little door into this big room full of every piece of junk anybody had wanted to preserve for the past couple of hundred years – old books, and boxes, and chairs, even a set of deer’s antlers – and there was an oil stove burning in the middle of the floor, because it was so cold and snowy outside, and a little gas lamp for light, and she had to make her way across the floor to a camp-bed in the middle of the room, and then blow out the lamp and lie there with the oil heater huffing and puffing away, and throwing reflections and shadows on the walls, listening for creaks and expecting something to come and join her every minute.

But nothing did.

Next morning, at breakfast, she asked them again about the haunting and they said that there was a ruined monastery next door, and sometimes the monks had been seen holding services in the downstairs room (it used to be a boathouse, and coffins were put there before they were shipped over to the other side of the firth for burial.)

They also said that one of their children when he was really young had seen someone with a hood looking in on him in his cot, and they thought that might have been one of the monks. He wasn’t at all frightened, because apparently whatever it was looked friendly, but it made you think twice about being there alone.

•

There was a documentary on last night about psychic television.

All you need is a video camera and a TV monitor, apparently. First you tune the TV to a dead channel – just static. Then you set up the camera to film the monitor. If you play back the videotape frame by frame, sooner or later faces appear.

They don’t look like ghosts; more like still photographs. Not spirit photographs, but portraits: stiff and formal, lifeless. The German researcher who started it all wanted to contact his dead daughter. He got a picture he said was her, hovering like a balloon in a parade, her puny arms dangling beside her, face framed by bangs of hair.

Does it bring people comfort? Who knows, who can say? All you can say is, it works. You can get pictures of faces that way. What it means is anyone’s guess, the point is that it works.

•

I should tell you more about Car’. I must have mentioned her a few times now. She’s my best friend. We’ve been friends since primary school, in fact. We’re totally unlike. I don’t know what she sees in me, to be honest. I like her because she’s good – good inside, I mean.

Her real name’s Caroline, but I call her Car’ because of this old book we found together which had a character in it, a beautiful, cruel, Eurasian girl, called Cara Jolly (Car’ for short). It was an autobiography by an English army officer, about the women he’d slept with and the things he’d done with them and all that sort of stuff.

We found it in the attic at her parents’ place. She said it couldn’t have been her father’s (he’s a minister) but that it might have belonged to her uncle. It was really smutty. We read parts of it out loud, putting on funny voices for the different characters.

That’s the thing about her, you see. She’s a laugh, she’s fun, even if she does go to church on Sundays, and prayer-meetings all through the week.

She came to see me a couple of times in hospital, and since then we’ve been spending even more time together than we did before. I suppose she thinks it’s her Christian duty, but you’d never guess. It seems natural to her, as if it’s normal for her to be nice.

That’s what kind of fascinates me about her. She makes me want to be good as well.

•

Have you ever had a waking dream?

That was the thing I wanted to ask Car’, but somehow couldn’t. I guess I was afraid how she’d react. She’d probably have been cool with it, but you never know …

I don’t mean a daydream, when you’re just playing with a lot of ideas in your mind and drifting off somewhere; I mean a real waking dream.

Since the overdose, I’ve been finding it difficult to sleep. I used to get it only when I’d had caffeine before going to bed, but now it seems to happen for no reason at all. I don’t know how to stop it.

I was lying in bed, not stressed, like you usually get when you can’t sleep, but just nicely relaxed, with my eyes open, when I saw a hand reaching for me from the table at the side of the bed. It was dark, but I could still see the fingers coming at me. I wasn’t scared, just a little disconcerted. I knew my eyes were open, and that I wasn’t asleep, but I could still see this hand.

I picked up a cushion as a kind of shield and held it in front of me. Nothing came past it. Then I reached up and turned on the light. There was nothing there. But my eyes were open, they were still open! It was as if it had been real.

It made me wonder if I was losing my mind.

Last night it happened again. The exact same thing. My eyes would just not get heavy. Even when I held them closed they seemed alert behind the lids.

Looking down at the side of the bed, I saw a cat there, or rather a kitten – grey, I think, but you can’t really tell in the dark. It was standing on its hind legs and reaching up towards the bedclothes.

Again, it didn’t scare me, exactly, but it was odd. I was so sure I was awake.

I thought, Oh, that’s the explanation for the hand. There’s a cat living in here, and it started climbing towards me, so I thought it was a hand. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that was what I thought.

When I looked again there was no cat. There’s no evidence of a cat anywhere this morning. There never was. It can’t have been real, and yet I saw it – with my eyes open.

•

Dear Mum,

I didn’t think I’d ever write to you again. Everybody seems to agree that it would be a really bad idea. That’s the one thing they all do agree on. It’s your birthday though, today, and I couldn’t resist wishing you many happy returns.

Dad finally agreed to tell me a few things when he saw how much you’d been on my mind. He told me how you’d drowned yourself. Or maybe you just fell from the cliffpath. Nobody can actually say if it was deliberate or not.

I could see him thinking “Like mother, like daughter,” the whole time we were talking. He always looks a bit frightened these days. Like he doesn’t know what to do or say anymore, but hopes if he just pussyfoots around for long enough then everything’ll turn out okay.

What do you think? Will it?

What I really wanted to say was: Could you please stop bugging me?

I know I started it. I was the one who got in touch with you, not the other way round. But I’ve had enough of it now. Since that first time I’ve been seeing you everywhere. Not doing anything much, just waiting on a street corner, or disappearing through a door, but long enough each time for me to see it’s you.

If you keep it up I’ll tell on you. There’s plenty of people I can tell, too. There’s my new shrink, or Car’, or even Dad.

I’m ordinary, you see. That’s what I want to be. Car’ and I are like sisters. The more time I spend with her the more I learn to be just like her.

I can be like everyone else if I put my mind to it.

That’d make them all happy, wouldn’t it?

I love you. I do love you, but you need to leave me alone now.

your loving daughter, L.

---

Jack Ross: Monkey Miss Her Now (2004)


[4/8/2003]

[2052 words]

[Published in Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 127-33.]

•

The Money Pit

John Amos Comenius. Orbis Sensualium Pictus: A Facsimile (1659 / 1968): 12.

One fine summer’s day in 1795, a sixteen-year-old boy named Daniel McGinnis rowed over to a small island called Oak Island, off the coast of Canada. He hadn’t been there long when he noticed a track leading inland. He followed it, and found a little clearing with an oak tree at the centre. There was a depression in the ground beside it, and marks of ropes and pulleys on the trunk.

Next day he came back with two friends, and started to dig for the buried treasure they thought must be hidden there. Four feet down, they found a layer of flagstones, which persuaded them they were onto something. At ten feet, they found a layer of oak logs. At 20 feet, more oak logs. At 30, still more. That was as far as they could get by themselves, so they went back to town to try and raise money to dig further.

No-one seemed very interested in their project, so it wasn’t till 1804, ten years later, that they were able to return with the equipment to dig deeper. At 40 feet, they found another layer of oak logs, sealed with putty. Then there was a layer of charcoal, then more logs at 50 feet, 60 feet, 70 feet and 80 feet. At 90 feet they found a stone with strange writing on it, but none of them could read it, so they just kept on digging. By now the ground was very wet, and they were continuously bailing out water. At 98 feet they found a platform of spruce logs, and decided that the treasure must be hidden underneath. It was late on a Friday, though, and they decided to leave the last few feet for Monday morning.

On Monday, when they got back to the island, they found the entire pit flooded with water from about thirty feet down. There was nothing more they could do, so they were forced to leave behind whatever was buried there.

This was just the first of many attempts to excavate the “Money Pit” and decipher the mystery of Oak Island. Each new group who came to dig there messed the ground up more, making it more and more difficult to reconstruct the original arrangements.

Eventually they discovered there were tunnels leading to the pit from the nearby seashore, which is why it flooded at every high tide. As the mine shafts got deeper and deeper, the ground got more and more sodden with water, which is why nobody could ever follow up drills which seemed to touch metal objects down in the darkness.

To this day, nobody has succeeded in discovering just what was hidden at the bottom of this mysterious deep hole in the ground. In 1970 a special submarine camera was sent down over 200 feet. It filmed what looked like a treasure chest with a severed hand beside it. Divers were unable to find anything there, though.

Nobody knows who dug the immense pit – or why.

B(-). This is an interesting story, which you tell very well, but I wonder why it’s of significance to you, and what it tells you as a story? (I take it it’s true and not invented?) You might have included some character sketches of the main people involved, or some theories about who dug the hole (Pirates? Spacemen?) It isn’t really a history essay otherwise, I’m afraid, and can’t be seen as an answer to the question about the nineteenth-century event which seems most significant to you. [1]

•

Picking up her backpack, Laura slipped out the front door. Outside, everything was brilliant sunshine. The garden glowed green, a bright metallic green – no shadows anywhere.

She walked quickly, conscious of the need to hurry. It was bright but cold; a brisk wind had sprung up, leaves blew round her as she walked. Cars honked as they passed her, but no faces were visible through the mirrored windows.

There was a beggar on the corner, an old blind beggar with his hand thrust out for alms. “CRIPPLED IN THE WAR,” his sign said. It didn’t seem quite right somehow. Crippled in the war – what war? It was as if he’d stepped out of a book. Even his rags seemed wrong: too smooth, too oily, tightly wrapped around … he wasn’t accurate.

As she hurried past he pushed up his dark glasses and stared, then made a sudden grab for her. She’d been half-expecting it, and veered away from him, shrinking from the groping hands.

“Stay here for a bit, girlie, I’ve got some things to show you,” he croaked, as she broke into a run. “I’ll let you touch it; if you do things for me I’ll …”

His voice faded as she made her way out onto the main street, safe from his grimy gaze, his horny hands.

Now, as she walked along, she sensed a shift behind her. Everything fixed itself as she drew beside it – tried to look as normal as it could, here on her everyday route to school. But the instant she walked past it changed. It wasn’t a visible change. Each time she looked back, the street-scene shimmered slightly but held shape. She could feel it vanishing, dissolving in her track. In front, a heat-haze, fog, line of blurred horizon marked the place – perhaps the moment? – where all this began. It was like being caught in a film-loop, a Moebius strip of appearances.

When the school loomed up in front of her, she felt the effort most strongly – the effort of pretending it was so, that the buildings were like this, that this was all there was. She sensed a pressure of chaos waiting to break through it all, a darkness held in check by habit alone.

Her Maths teacher, Mr Blaine, stood by the gate. “You’re late,” he barked. The clock was striking nine. “Time for class. Let’s see your bag.”

“But I need it! It’s got all my books and notes and things.”

“I’ll keep it safe for you. I need to check your homework. You won’t be needing it first period, anyway. Your first class is Phys Ed today.”

She handed him the bag.

Passing into the school hall, she saw the hall monitor, a poisonous senior named Sandra, standing outside her first period classroom. “Hurry up, you’re late,” she prompted. “Hold on, you won’t need that” – pointing to her school blazer, the red one with the school’s embossed crest: SPEM SUCCESSUS ALIT – Success inspires hope.

In the classroom, there was a large message left on the whiteboard: First period maths is cancelled. This morning you’ll have your fitness tested. Make your way to the gym to change for the twelve-minute run.

It was like some tedious treasure hunt. The sheer normality of the school, the smells of chalk, badly-washed sheets, hung over the place like a miasma, somehow reinforcing belief in this odd set of events.

The other girls were out of the changing sheds already when Laura ran in. All, that is, except Brenda, still slobbing around in her unattractive undies. Whistles were blowing outside. Clearly something was being organised out there, and Laura felt a strong pressure on her to hurry.

“Can I borrow your skirt, Laura?” asked the girl. “I need to go to the office, and one of the others spilt shampoo all over mine. I won’t be a minute, I promise.”

Fuck off, fat cow, snarled Laura in her head, as she smiled and slipped off the heavy uniform skirt. This was getting a little out of hand.

“And the blouse? I need that too,” smirked Brenda.

Silently, Laura handed it over. The sounds in the hall outside had died down to nothing. Presumably all the others were off on their run by now. Nagging doubts were beginning to rise. What was she doing here? Wasn’t there some other dimension to this? What was happening seemed familiar, true, but then school days do resemble one another. No time to think about it now. She rushed out into the gym.


Sure enough, everyone had gone except Miss Prentice, the gym mistress, with her ugly white shorts and bright tin whistle.

“Shoes, Laura, shoes! No black-soled shoes in the gym hall, you know that! And where’s your gym gear? Did you forget to bring it?”

Looking down, Laura realised she was only wearing bra and briefs. Blushing, she bent to pull off her shoes and socks.

“You know you can’t go on the run like that! You’d die of cold! You’ll have to find Sandra. She’s organising some girls to help the caretaker.”

“But …” she began, and was immediately cut off.

“No buts,” said the teacher, scooping up the shoes and socks. “I’ve got to go, got to check the circuit in case anyone’s in trouble. Find Sandra. I’ll see you at the end of the period.”

And there stood Sandra, at the other entrance to the gym hall, smirking as usual, with her little blue monitor’s badge and her list of defaulters.

“Laura, over here! You and Brenda are to go down to the boiler room to help Mr Jones with clearing up some rubbish. Where is that girl?”

“But … I need to put some clothes on first.”

“No time for that. It’ll be a dirty job anyway. You might just as well go down as you are. You won’t need that either,” pointing at Laura’s watch.

The watch was gold, rather valuable, inherited from her mother. She couldn’t imagine why she’d come to school wearing it. Reluctantly, she slipped it off her wrist, and handed it to the officious Sandra.

“Brenda borrowed my clothes to go to the office.”

“Oh, did she now? We’ll see about that,” said Sandra with relish. “Off you go to the boiler room, then. Mr Jones’ll tell you what to do.”

I’ll bet he will, thought Laura, as she made her way through the freezing corridor, silent as a cat on the linoleum in her bare feet.


The boiler room could only be reached through a side door off the main entrance. It was at the bottom of a narrow flight of concrete steps.

“At least it’ll be warm down there,” she thought, pulling open the heavy green double doors.

She’d never been down here before. It was an almost impossibly baroque adjunct to the prosaic school buildings. The staircase quickly degenerated into a few scrapes in the clay, and the walls were positively sweating with moisture, running red down the sides to puddle at her feet. It’s a good thing I’m not wearing anything that could be ruined, she thought as she went lower and lower into the earth.

Mr. Jones was there, sure enough, stoking a boiler as large as a room. There was a heap of coal to one side, with a spade and a wheelbarrow, and wood for kindling stacked neatly beside it.

She didn’t know whether to speak to him or not. For the first time she felt nervous, as if she’d passed the bounds of her normal day and was breaking through elsewhere, somewhere outside.

He didn’t look round, simply muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “More kindling.”

“What type of kindling?” she asked, looking at the rough heap of logs.

“Cloth, paper, anything light. I need to get this fire burning properly or the coal won’t catch.”

“There’s only wood.”

“Nah, has to be lighter than that. Quick, or it’ll go out. It’s down to embers already.”

It was very important that the fire shouldn’t go out. Suddenly it had become the most urgent thing in the world. The boiler’s red mouth seemed to plead with her: Keep me stoked up! If I do go out you’ll be sorry …

Sighing, she slipped out of her bra and briefs, and handed them to the swarthy dark man.

The flames flared up, briefly, then died down again.

“More fuel, we need more fuel,” growled the man, handing his poker to Laura. His eyes flicked over her idly, as if he hadn’t even registered she was naked. “Keep it stoked as high you can.”

He shuffled off up the stairs. He didn’t resemble Peter at all, but that was who she found herself thinking about as she poked and prodded at the waning flames. More like her father, really. Back when he’d been big and strong, before the cancer …

God it’s huge. No wonder, really, when you think it heats the whole school, all those class rooms and halls and offices. You could hardly see the end of it. She bent over to see what success she was having, and glimpsed a expanse of black crust with red heat glowing beneath it.

There seemed to be an opening at the other end. Perhaps that’s where all the heat’s going, she thought, as her eyes slowly adjusted themselves to the flickering red light. Was that a face over there? Someone looking out at her, as if in a mirror? Was it a mirror?

She tried moving her hand to and fro to see if the other figure would do the same, but it was too hard to make out. There did seem to be some kind of corresponding motion. It was speaking, surely. She strained to hear what it was saying.

“Come on …”

That much could be made out, but there was something else as well.

“Over …”

“Come on over …” Hardly, through the middle of a furnace! Was there a way round the side?

She could see the face more clearly now. It did look a little like her, but it was older. Like an older sister, or herself in a few years, perhaps?

It was beckoning to her, unmistakably beckoning. She shivered. She’d almost forgotten her nakedness in the heat of the fire, but now it was dying down the chill of the day began to strike at her again. Suddenly the furnace seemed a less unattractive place to be.

The first part was all fused charcoal anyway. She tested it with her hands. Warm – not burning.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she crawled into the bright belly of the flames.

---

Notes:

[1] For more on the infamous "Money Pit", see the Oak Island Mystery entry on Wikipedia.

---

Jack Ross: Monkey Miss Her Now (2004)


[3/8/03]

[2368 words]

[Published in Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 109-15.]

•

Bird-girl

John Amos Comenius. Orbis Sensualium Pictus: A Facsimile (1659 / 1968): 48.

I was thinking about the bird-girl when it happened. Her name is Rima. She lives in the tree-tops. She’s slim and beautiful. I tried to read that book about her, Green Mansions [1], when I was a kid, maybe eleven or twelve, but it was too difficult for me. I remember all the pictures, though. She’s come back recently. I dreamed about her the other night.


I’d just put it in my bag, the little purse, when I looked up and saw him staring at me. His eyes were blazing, and I knew he knew what I’d been doing. I should have run out straight away, but instead I just stood there as he came over and said he wanted to look through my bag.

I let him, and he found the purse, and one or two things I’d taken from other shops. Then he told me to come into the back room, so I followed him in there. There were two shop assistants in there already, a boy and a girl. I guess they were on a break. The girl was leafing through a magazine. The man, the shop-owner, said he was going to ring the police, and that I should stay there.

The girl ignored me, and kept on reading her magazine. I was just sitting there feeling miserable, but also kind of strange, like I was excited. The way you get when you’re about to take something and you’re not sure if anyone’s watching, a creepy feeling down your skin. I felt like I was seeing everything really clearly – like it was the end of the world, but I was alive for the first time.

Anyway, the guy (who didn’t have a magazine to read and needed something to do), suddenly asked me, “What’d you take?”

“A purse,” I said, really humbly, like I had to do whatever he said. I was now a criminal, and he was still straight, so I was his slave. I asked him what was going to happen to me.

He looked at me like he was curious what sort of an animal I could be. “The police’ll come. We always prosecute now. Shoplifting is, like, sneaky theft, so we’ve got to be careful about it.”

There was nothing more to say, so I just sat there and tried to think about something else. I kept coming back to how Dad was going to react. He keeps on telling me to get out more and make friends – as if that’s easy when people think you’re a freak or a swot! Now I was a thief as well.

“We’ve caught quite a lot of people lately,” volunteered the guy (who was thin and had dorky-looking big ears), “but mostly they run off before we can stop them. Sometimes we get the stuff back, though.”

I could see he was going to have a lot to talk about this evening when he got home from work. (“We caught a thief today. This really weird girl. I sat and talked with her in the back room before the police came. She was such a loser. I bet she could have afforded to buy the stuff she stole, it was just she was so mean she thought she might as well take it.”) He didn’t even hate me. Just felt a kind of disinterested curiosity like you might about an animal in a cage (“Oh, do monkeys really live on leaves? I thought they ate nuts.”) He sounded so smug with that we – like all of society was on their side of the bars, and there was just me outside.

It was actually a relief when the police walked in. They led me out to their car, and I thought about making a break for it, but I knew they’d catch me, and then everyone would stare. I didn’t have the guts. Instead I climbed in, and they drove me to the police station.

It was kind of like this whole process had been started by just that one thing, that pair of eyes meeting mine, like that stare was the source of everything, the fingerprinting, the conversation, and then the questioning and the long statement they drew up and wanted me to sign. I signed it, even though there were some words spelt wrong and they’d rephrased what I said. I admitted everything they asked me, but I didn’t tell them how many other things I’d taken.

Then I came out, and Dad was standing there. His face was quite normal. I expected him to be red with anger, or all pale and sad, or even wiping away a tear, but he just looked like he always does, vaguely disapproving and disappointed. I have to admit he had good reason to look disappointed this time.

We hardly even talked about it in the car. It was just too horrible. I would have to go to court on Monday (this was Saturday afternoon), and I might even have to go to prison.

In a sense, it was a relief. At least they know I’m worthless now, I thought. There’s no point in pretending to be the same as everyone else. She’s just a loser-thief, they’ll think, and she’s totally disgusting. It’d be better if she was dead.

It turned out that the main thing he was worried about was how much other stuff I’d taken. “I can’t be a receiver of stolen goods,” he said. I said I had taken some other things, but I couldn’t really remember what. He said that I’d have to return them all or else pay for them.

I burst into tears at that point. I said I couldn’t face going back to those shops and handing things back to them. What if they decided to prosecute?

He said he understood, and that he’d send them back anonymously, but that I had to come clean on how much stuff there was.

I started drawing up a list, but there seemed to be so much when I went through my chest-of-drawers. Finally I faked it. I listed some of the things I’d taken, and fudged the rest. Even so it came to a couple of hundred dollars.

Dinner was bad. Dad didn’t say anything about it at all. Peter started lecturing me a bit on what a stupid thing it was to do, but even he gave up after a while. The funny thing was how normal everything felt. It was like the whole world had collapsed, but here we were living on just as if everything was normal.

After dinner I went to my room, because I didn’t feel I could watch TV with the others, and tried to read a kid’s book. I couldn’t concentrate, though.

I kept on expecting Dad to come in and really tear strips off me, lecture me on how disgusting and awful I was. I was almost looking forward to it, so I’d have something to react to, to resent, but he didn’t.

Finally I got into bed, but it was hard to sleep. I thought about going to court, and what they’d do to me there, and what I would say. Dad had announced at dinner that he’d arranged to have his lawyer there, and that we should drop in to see him before the court appearance, which was scheduled for ten o’clock.

The whole thing went round and round in my mind until the only thing I wanted in the world was to go to sleep. Actually, it would have felt better if I could have gone to sleep and never woken up at all. Then I started thinking about the bird-girl again. She was free, she was good. When bad things happened to her they weren’t her fault. Everything she did was beautiful because she was beautiful. She was the opposite of me in every way. I wanted more than anything in the world to wake up as her.


The bird-girl lives in the tree-tops. She never descends to the forest-floor if she can help it. She has one enemy, the monkey-man. He mostly comes by night. If you sleep out on your terrace in hot weather you may wake up to see him leaning over you. He likes to pilfer small bits of jewellery or food. Sometimes he kills animals, and sometimes babies.

People are scared of him, but he’s difficult to catch. The bird-girl knows about him, and knows where he nests by day. She’s always careful to hide when it gets dark. She has her own nest up there among the upper branches, a world of spiderwebs and humming-birds, eighty feet above the ground.

What does she eat? She eats honey from bees-nests, certain roots and flowers, which grow up there. She wears feathers from birds’ nests, which she weaves together with plant thread (she’s good at sewing).

Nuts, too, she eats nuts. Those are perhaps her favourites. She never touches meat. The monkey-man eats meat.


She never really knew her parents. They were ordinary people, people of the earth. They fled into the forest because they fell in love and couldn’t marry. He was poor, a wandering musician; she was a farmer’s daughter. But they both loved wild things, so they went there to avoid pursuit.

They built themselves a little shelter in a tree, and planned to live out their days together, in happiness. When she got pregnant it was hard for her to climb up and down their ladder, so he had to do everything – all the food-gathering and the preparation, too.

The baby came at night. There was a lot of bleeding, and he was unable to stop it – it went beyond the herbal remedies he knew. He set out to find a doctor, but by the time they got back it was too late. His young wife was dead. The baby, however, lived.

For a while, they moved back into the village. Nobody bothered them, but they weren’t made very welcome either. The village children said she was the daughter of a witch, and threw stones and hard words when she tried to play with them. Her father took her on long walks through the forest. That was the main thing she remembered about him, his slight figure pushing through the undergrowth, stopping to point out useful plants and berries, things to eat and to avoid. He didn’t want what had happened to her mother to happen to her.

When he died, too, after a brief illness, she was about five years old. The headman’s wife decided to take her in. But it soon became apparent that, young as she was, she was more of a servant than a daughter. She had to clean up after the other children, wield a broom taller than she was, never eat at the same table as the rest of the family.

When she was seven she ran away. She lay in the bushes for a long time hearing the voices calling for her, trembling when they came too near, but the search was a perfunctory one. She had never been a good enough servant for them to bother to hunt her down.

From that time on she was on her own. Trial and error taught her things about the forest even her father hadn’t known, but it was more like remembering. It was as if she’d known it all in a previous life. It grew cold at night, and her worn-out rags were little protection. It was then she thought of feathers, and used the skill at sewing that had been so laboriously beaten into her.

She carved herself a little flute from a hollow twig, as she’d seen her father do, and learned to play a few of his old songs. After a while, though, she stopped playing his music and began to imitate the birds. Their songs held far more mystery, and sudden swoops of tone and register which were almost like a language. She learned to speak to them, and call them, and they accepted her among them.

The monkey-man was different. She’d heard rumours of him long before she saw him. Birds would fly by in unusual numbers, leaving their nests behind (he liked to plunder eggs, and broke those he didn’t eat. Fledglings, too, he took). So she knew enough to be on her guard, the first night she saw him, snuffling along the ground, half bent-over, half-erect, yet with a terrifying agility. The slightest noise and he would bound for cover – standing leaps of fifteen or twenty feet.

Was he human, or an animal? The question scarcely required an answer. He was there, and that meant danger. She learned to keep her traces hidden better than before, and yet he must have known about her. She couldn’t fight him or face him, but sometimes she would take it on herself to save birds from him, warning them of his approach, carrying their nests and fledglings to a safer bough, so high he couldn’t reach it.

Once he had discovered the village, though, his attention turned that way. By day, while she was flitting through the treetops, he would hide in some dark burrow, then come out and prowl around the huts by night. The villagers grew nervous. They started locking things up, but he was cunning. If a way was left open, he would creep in and steal and spoil all he found. His teeth were very busy there at night.

Of course it couldn’t last. One morning after the gnawed corpse of a baby had been found at the edge of the forest, the preparations began for a hunt. They didn’t know enough to come in the dark, when he was active, so the first thing the bird girl knew of it was when she heard beaters thrashing down below.

Descending to observe them, she was spotted, and after that the hunt followed her. (The monkey-man slept on in his hole, unaware of the damage he was causing.)

She could run faster in the upper eaves of the forest than they could follow through the undergrowth, but there were many of them and they had dogs. Their strategy seemed to be to trap her in a tree away from the others. Even there, though, she felt safe enough; she could repel any attempts to climb up to her with ease.

She had lived so long without fire she didn’t even recognise it when the first red leaves began to creep their way towards her, up the trunk, eating and smothering all the plants and insects in their path.

“Rima,” the people shouted from below. “Rima, murderer!” They chanted it, like mad things, believing her their enemy. She didn’t try to speak to them, although she recognised one or two faces from when she had lived among them. Instead, she climbed up as far as she could go into the topmost branches of the forest canopy.

The smoke was curling up around her, already she was coughing, soon she would fall down among them, burn before their eyes, a little witch, shrouded in feathers, victim of their wrath. She tensed herself, and sprang.

Some say she missed her footing, crashed down through the branches, landed in the flames and was burnt up. I say, though, that her skin costume caught the wind, bellied out like a sail, and carried her lithe thin frame just a few feet further to the nearest tree. From there, she ran, scurrying like a squirrel, faster faster, far away from the village, to the heart of the forest, a place where no men come, beyond the great waterfall, and there she lives to this day, doing no harm, living among the hummingbirds and grubs, tending her nests, and fluting the songs of the bright birds.

---

Notes:

[1] W. H. Hudson. Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest. 1904. Foreword by John Galsworthy. 1916. Illustrated by E. McKnight Kauffer. New York: Random House, Inc., 1944.

---

evasion 2 (7) (2003-4)


[30/7-2/8/2003]

[2639 words]

[Published in evasion 2 (7) (2003-4);
Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 101-07.]

Jack Ross: Monkey Miss Her Now (2004)

•

The Blue Room

Clive Chapman & G. A. W.: The Blue Room (1927): 232.

29/3/2*. – At tea time a message came through, strong but broken, F.R. (? FLOWING ROBES), then COUNCIL OF MARS. Next, in answer to the question as to who was the sender of this strange message, I AM ERIN; THEA. While this message was being spelled out I felt a sensation as of a strong electric current passing over my head at the end of each sentence. I had never felt this before, and it gives rise to the thought that possibly Mars could open up communication with this planet by means of electric or magnetic currents controlled by our spirit friends beyond.

Why not?

•

10/5/2*. – While Pearl was sitting at the table – she was doing up her hair for the night [*] – the letters T-R-A-V-E-R-S were spelled out.

I asked who that was, and the answer came C-R-O-Y-D-O-N- A-E-R-O¬-D-R-O-M-E.

Following this came T-O-N-I-G-H-T-S P-A-P-E-R.

So I asked should I look in the paper, and Y-E-S was spelled out.

I looked through the newspaper, but could not locate the name, so I asked was it in the cables.

N-O was the answer.

Again I searched the paper, and at last found the name Travers in an article entitled “Dropping to Death,” which described briefly how young Travers was killed at the Croydon Aerodrome, London, over a month before. None of us had seen the article, and neither Pearl nor I had looked at the paper previously.

Mother was in bed.

•

14/5/2*. – A long message was written through Pearl by Sahnaei this afternoon, explaining how those who are teachers (like himself) love to come and please and assist those who are helping us here on earth – meaning Dorothy and others on that sphere.

Oh, if people would only wake up to the knowledge of the wonderful and beautiful thing that is at their very doors and try to understand the glory of what is beyond by the proofs that are given them. And it seems so wonderful that a child like Pearl should be chosen as an instrument to prove the life beyond, and that this instrument should be put in my care.

She is thus a gift from God to me, and I would not exchange her for all the treasures of this world.

•

9/6/2***. – I was in bed to-day with a bad cold, and during the night was awakened by Dorothy’s voice singing Tennyson’s beautiful “Song of Sleep.” And – I could scarce believe my senses – there she stood beside my bed, smoothing my hair, and, oh, so gently adjusting the blankets around me. I could feel her dear hands on my head, and as I was about to speak to her as she finished the song, she drew slowly away and vanished before my eyes. I could see her hand as she withdrew it from my head; she was solid and real, just as any mortal would be. I will never forget the experience or the wonderful happiness it brought me. The song I had not heard for two years, but it is one which holds for me very tender memories.

•

18/8/2**. – Wee Betty told us to-night that the trees over there have beautifully coloured leaves and flowers, all in harmony, not gaudy; and that the birds were beautifully coloured too. Also that they had roads there which were smooth and even, and each a distinct colour. “There are no fences around the houses,” added Betty, “just very low hedges of beautiful shrubs which anyone could step over.”

•

26/9/2***. – As I lay in bed thinking, and was just about to blow out the light, I heard a child’s voice (which I at once recognised as Wee Betty’s) right close to my ear. It was low but distinct, and said “I’s here, Uncle Clive,’’ in a plaintive tone. I was delighted to hear the little soul’s voice so direct (and when I was alone, too), and said something in reply. She then became excited, and said “Oo, look, look; See, Ooo,” as though some extraordinary thing had come into her sight. Then I just glimpsed a form shaped like a large and elongated Rugby football, or a small Zeppelin, about six feet in length. It was dark brown with a faint beautiful blue band across the middle (lengthways). It remained visible only two or three seconds.

These experiences give me great comfort, and I set them down here to show what can be given to those of us who really believe and trust, not in the ‘‘easy’’ way but by facing everything for it. That is the only way to help those dear ones to come close to us.

•

27/9/2**. – Last night I dreamed, or seemed to dream, that I was looking out over a stormy sea, where a fierce blizzard was raging. It was a big bay I was looking across, and I could see the foam-topped waves driven by the wind.

On the left, about half a mile away, was a rocky island with steep cliffs. On the less steep side, and near the foot of the cliff, was a large ship at anchor. She was fitted up with a big wireless aerial, the masts being latticed and very high. I could distinctly see the snow on the face of the rocky island, which stood about 800 ft. out of the water; the snow was also being driven into the rigging and recesses of the vessel at anchor.

Out in the bay I could just discern two other vessels fighting their way through the blizzard. One was small, like a tug, and the other, a large one, was further away and scarcely visible through the driving snow.

On the summit of the island was a large wireless station, the masts of which were built of lattice work, just as those of the vessel beneath were. And I seemed to hear someone speaking and saying that they had established communication with all parts of the world.

•

3/11/2***. – We held a sitting in “The Blue Room” this afternoon, of course in full daylight. Mr G— here. Betty gave him a great time, being in her brightest mood. Once she said something about smoking injuring him, remarking that he “was trying to get through a hole in the fence;” meaning, I suppose, that he was not taking proper care of himself and might come over too soon.

Again, she said, when he referred to his body, “Oh, we don’t want that here, we want your spook.” …

•

[Extracts from The Blue Room: Being the Absorbing Story of the Development of Voice-to-Voice Communication in BROAD LIGHT with Souls who have Passed into THE GREAT BEYOND, by Clive Chapman & “G. A. W” (Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd., 1927)].

---

Notes:

[*] Is “Uncle Clive” always in the room while Pearl gets ready for bed?

---

Jack Ross: Monkey Miss Her Now (2004)


[2-5/9/2001]

[1117 words]

[Published in Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 135-38.]

•

The Yellow Room

John Amos Comenius. Orbis Sensualium Pictus: A Facsimile (1659 / 1968): 90.

Wed, July 3, 188*. – … Uncle said something to Maud, who whispered to me that I was to go with her. As soon as we got into the hall, she told me I was to be taken to the yellow room and that I was a goose. I asked her why; she only laughed. Arrived there, she said she was very sorry, but must obey orders. She then strapped my hands firmly behind my back. My struggles were useless in the end, but kept her so long that she said, ‘I shall take care that you shall have an extra half-dozen for this.’ I could not think what she meant. [*]

It got darker, and still no one came. The yellow room was in an out-of-the-way wing, and I heard the tower clock strike ten. My hands behind me began to hurt, and I began to lose my temper. I wondered how long I was to be kept there, and then who had the right to keep me; and supposed it was called the yellow room because the curtains of the windows, the valances, and the bed-curtains were all yellow damask, and then I wondered what the ottoman, such an enormous one, was doing here, in company with a heavy oak table, a bar swinging from the ceiling, and – what with vexation and impatience I went to sleep.

I was awakened about half-past eleven by carriages driving off. It was pitch dark and the curtains had been drawn. I know it was about half-past eleven because about half-an-hour later midnight struck. There was a footstep in the corridor, and uncle came in. He said: ‘I am extremely surprised at your insubordination, miss, for which I am about to punish you.’ What followed I cannot write. …

•

Masturbation


Let’s start with masturbation.
This simply means the act of achieving sensuous gratification from artificial stimulation of the sex organs.

Is this a strictly male affair, or does it involve females as well?
The part of major sensitivity in the female is a little organ called the clitoris. This is located just above the vaginal entrance. It can be stimulated by hand to produce an orgasm. Innumerable methods have been used by young women over the years.

Now for the King-sized question. Is this form of activity harmful in any way?
Older views claimed serious mental and physical disasters awaited anyone practising the habit. The current thought is to entirely debunk the older authors and critics, and entirely sweep away their depressing beliefs. Nevertheless, a great many thinking persons today still do not condone the practice. The fact remains, it is unnatural. This cannot be denied.

•

Still reaching behind her to frig Henry, the girl let down her riding jeans.
“This is how you like to see girls, isn’t it, Henry?”

Alice seated herself – the straw seat of the chair pricking her bottom – resolved, however, to brazen out her nakedness, and wrote with a trembling hand:
“I pea’d like a mare before my uncle; I pea’d like a mare before my uncle; I pea’d like a mare before my uncle.”

Miss Jolly took three small balls, the size of blackbirds’ eggs, moistened them, and took them one by one into her mouth. Then, bow¬ing her head, she slid them on her tongue high up into Sue’s cunt.

“So you did, Alice,” said he, “so you did,” sitting bolt upright, “pea like a mare before me, and here is, I see,” turning over a page or two, “your own signature to the confession.”

Now Miss Jolly began in earnest. With one hand she manipulated Sue’s sensitive cunt lips and clitoris. With the other she moved the cigar tube in a gentle in-and-out movement in Sue’s bottom.

“Oh, yes, Car’! Oh, yes!” He was pouting kisses between the rear opening of her thighs, nuzzling Miss Jolly’s tight little cunt. He kissed her backside, tongued her cleft from the base of her spine until he was nibbling her clitoris.

Sue responded with wild, rising cries of joy. In a delirium she screamed the names of her lovers, as if calling them to witness her triumph.

At last, excited beyond his selfcontrol, gazing through his half¬closed lids at the splendid form of his niece at his feet – her bare back and shoulders – the breast which, sloping downwards from her position, he yet could see – her bare arms – the hands twiddling …

Henry’s head went back with a wild cry, his strong young prick spurted with such vigour that its thick streams spattered Miss Jolly’s bum-cheeks and the rear of her slim thighs …

Sue’s mouth opened, drawing in the almond-eyed girl’s tongue …
dear, pretty, cruel, ivory teeth …
the slim wands curled and clung to her rear cheeks …
her head went back, her eyes rolled …
with a positive howl of delight …
her suffering changed into a transport of …

“Dirty wretch!” she yelled, scrambling up and snatching a handful of grass to wipe away the trickling passion.

•


Since Ishtar went to hell
the bull won’t mount the cow
the ass won’t service the jenny
the man won’t love the virgin
the man lies in his own room
the virgin on her side

•

[Extracts from The Amorous Memoirs of Capt. Charles De Vane (NY: Grove Press, 1982); Suburban Souls: The Erotic Psychology of a Man and a Maid (NY: Grove Press, 1979); Dr John F. Knight, Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know (Victoria: Signs Publishing, 1971); Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia, trans. N. K. Sandars (Penguin, 1971)].

---

Notes:

[*] I think I can.

---

Jack Ross, ed.: brief 27 (2003)


[31/8-1/9/01 & 1-5/6/03]

[936 words]

[Published in brief 27 (2003): 94-96;
Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 97-100.]

Jack Ross: Monkey Miss Her Now (2004)

•

The Red Room

John Amos Comenius. Orbis Sensualium Pictus: A Facsimile (1659 / 1968): 74.

Have you ever felt like doing it?

Dunno. Maybe. You?

Yeah, a few times. It just seems kind of pointless sometimes. It’s all so much work. And people keep on kicking you in the teeth, and sneering at you … You just feel like you can’t be bothered?

[Silence]

I guess you think I’m being stupid? Like you have to have a really good reason for even thinking about it? And what it’d do to everyone around you too – your parents, and brothers and sisters, and all that.

And friends.

Yeah, and friends. But it’s hard not to sometimes.

As she speaks, her hands toy with a paspalum stem. There’s a clump growing next to the path, and she’s been plucking them one by one, stripping them of their heads, chewing the ends a couple of times, then flicking them over the edge.

Well, there’s the cliff.

Fuck! That’s not very nice! I know there’s a cliff there. We’re on the cliff-path, after all! But I didn’t come up here to chuck myself off.

Why did you come up here?

I dunno. Just to talk, I suppose. You don’t have to be so mean about it, though.

Sorry.

I mean, I know it’s really boring listening to people going on about how unhappy they are, but it’s not all like that. I can laugh at things, too.

Give me an example.

An example? We-ell … I saw this sign written up on a wall the other day. 19 Screw Suicide St. Like an address. That really gave me a laugh.

Why?

I guess I started thinking, why do I have to wait till I’m nineteen to say go screw yourself? Why not sixteen Screw Suicide Street?

That’s not very funny.

Nah. Maybe you’re right. You tell me something funny, then.

Okay, I will. I don’t want to stay sitting here, though. Let’s walk some more.

Okay.

The cliff-path is a ribbon of concrete between the well-fenced houses and the crumbling sandstone cliff-edge. There’s a wooden fence around the outer rim, but every storm erodes its foothold further. In places it’s overgrown with weeds and shrubs, in others clear and open, so one can gaze out over an endless blue horizon.

This is a story about a friend of mine. A friend I knew really well. Sure, he might have had a few problems, but he was okay.

Do I know him?

Yeah, I guess you know him. A little bit, anyway.

So what did this friend of yours do?

Well, he let things get on top of him. He got over-involved with things.

This is a funny story, right?

They have left the path and started to climb round the rocks at the end of the beach, below the sheer face of the cliff. The rocks are green and slippery and a little treacherous, but the tide is in too far for them to follow the safer concrete causeway.

Sure, it’s a funny story. I think so, anyway …

He – this friend of mine – used to wander round the rocks all the time. He liked being near the sea. I guess it reassured him somehow. The sea’s so big and endless, and it’s kind of like an escape route from human beings and all their shit. It’s stronger than we are, even though we keep on pumping filth into it – like through these concrete bunkers here. There’s still no way we can overcome it. All we can do is poison the life in it. The sea itself is beyond us.

So he would wander around down here, thinking these thoughts, and exploring all the little caves and rockpools and beaches all round the bays. It was like it was his domain somehow, like he was the guardian of the shore. He’d wag school just to get down here, to calm down.

He liked it best when it was really rough, when the waves were just pounding on the rocks like crazy, and you could sit up above them, on the cliff, and feel each impact. It wasn’t like the sea was angry, just powerful, like it was enjoying itself wearing out its strength on the rocks, like a boxer practising with a punching bag, sharpening up for the kill.

Other times, on calm days, he’d position himself so that he was staring right out to sea between the islands, where you couldn’t see anything that was developed or civilised, and you could just imagine the whole land clean and green – like an explorer could come sailing in between those islands at any minute, and there’d be no roads, no people, nothing.

He sounds like a bit of a geek.

They have reached the other end of the strip of rocks by now, and are walking across the soft white sand of the beach.

A geek? D’you think so? It sounds pretty right to me, I must admit.

Did he talk to you about it?

Yeah, he did. Quite often, in fact. In fact, you could say all the time.

[A short pause.] Go on, then. I’m still waiting for the funny bit.

Oh yeah, the funny bit …

One day he found a door, a door in the rock. There are lots of cliffs and little bays on this coast, but some of them are only accessible at low tide. Some you can only reach if you’re prepared to swim. This little cove was one of those. And there it was: the door.

There’s nothing especially strange about that! There are lots of boathouses and stuff built into the cliffs around here.

There are. But this one was different. There was just a sheer cliff and a mass of undergrowth on top. You would have had to dig down thirty or forty feet to reach the level of this door if you started from up above, and why would anyone bother? There were no signs of life up there. No houses near enough to make it seem feasible as an extension to the cellar, or an underground staircase.

You couldn’t see the door from up above, either – only from the level of the beach. It was hidden as effectively as something like that could be.

What did it look like?

Oh, like a really solid door. Made of wood, and painted green. It had no handle, no letter slot to look through – and there weren’t any gaps where it met the rock, so you wouldn’t have known if there was a light burning inside.

How could you open it, then?

It had a keyhole – a old-fashioned keyhole for a big long-stemmed key.

Couldn’t you look in through the keyhole?

There was something across it, something that blocked your view – I suppose it was one of those little metal covers you find hinged across keyholes on the outside. Only this one was on the inside.

Wouldn’t that have stopped the key from going in?

I don’t know. I suppose not, since the door was open sometimes.

Open! You mean he saw it open.

Yeah. He saw it open. He didn’t see it opened, mind you. He didn’t see who’d opened it, but one day when he swam into the cove, round the last little tongue of rock that blocked it off from the rest of the beach, he saw the door standing wide open.

Did he go inside, check it out?

He did.

And what did he find there?

Ah, now we come to the funny part …



It’s getting a little late to be out alone on the beach. It was already late afternoon when she had encountered her companion and struck up a conversation. She felt sure she knew him from somewhere. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t think from where. School, no doubt. You see so many faces there every day. At a big state school, the chances of your speaking to anyone outside your immediate peer-group are slim. You may know them by sight, but unless they have some relationship with someone you do know: brother, sister, cousin, friend – you can coexist for five years without ever exchanging a word.

He’d seemed so nice at first. Roughly her age, a bit dark and moody-looking, but really easy to talk to. She found herself opening up, sharing thoughts she’d never discussed with other people. Dark thoughts: depression, suicide …

Now she’s not so sure. They’ve been walking for ages, as his story meanders on, and the light is really going. All of a sudden, she wants to be back in a more populous part of the beach. That is, if there are any populous parts of the beach left by now …

Let’s go back. I’m getting cold.

Just a bit further so I can show you what we’ve been talking about.

I don’t know. Dad’ll be getting worried. I really should be getting back.

Just five more minutes. Just round the corner …

No!

Okay! It’s no big deal. I just thought they’d be lighting a bonfire a bit later on, down the beach a bit, and it made sense to wait for that. There’ll be people there, lots of people, if you’re worried about that. But we can just go on back if you like …

She feels a little ashamed. What is there, realistically, to worry about? [Rape – murder – ritual sacrifice] … Besides those things, of course.

Just five minutes, then.

Not even that. It’s just round here.

They walk around the final spur of rock. There’s a door in the sheer cliff in front of them. It’s standing wide open.



She stops, disconcerted. You knew this was here. You’ve been setting me up all along! Turning indignantly to have it out with him.

There’s no-one there.

You’re scaring me.

Phil … is that his name? Philip? Colin? He told her, she feels sure of that, but she can’t quite remember. They hadn’t needed to use each other’s names.

Come on – stop hiding. Where are you?

This is futile. He must be a real dork anyway, to play these kinds of tricks. Especially now it’s getting dark. Better go back right now.

But how? The waves are lapping round the rocks on either side of the little cove. The water looks deep, and the rocks are far too steep and slippery to climb. How did they get here in the first place? There isn’t anywhere to walk.

They were talking, and she was so absorbed in what he was saying, by that stupid story, that she hardly noticed where they were going. Funny, you get to know the rocks all round the beaches (though she’d noticed how much they could change – a single storm can strip away enough sand to alter all their shapes and contours), but she can’t recall this spot.

He must be here. He was right beside her, talking. He must have slipped away while she was distracted by the door, then somehow concealed himself in the shadows, and then … Where is he, then? With a growing sense of panic, she sees there’s nowhere to hide – not on a beach this small. Nowhere, that is, except inside the door.

The tide’s coming in. Funny, she hadn’t noticed that before – she’d thought it was going out. There was plenty of sand to walk on earlier. Now the water’s gradually creeping in, eroding the remaining space. Where’s the high tide mark, then? Half-way up the cliff? There is a line of seaweed there – no driftwood on the beach. She’ll be pretty wet before it gets that high.

Their footprints are already mostly gone. But there’s only one set behind her! He must have darted off and hidden the moment they crossed round into the cove. How did he avoid leaving any signs? Perhaps he’d climbed round the rock shelf, then nipped into the tunnel the moment she looked around. He must have done. There’s no other logical explanation.

As for her, what should she do now? Swimming’s one option, of course, but that water looks mighty cold, and a swell’s building up out at sea. The waves are already starting to crash on the rocks.

There’s the door. Surely its owners won’t mind if she goes inside? Even if it leads out into someone’s living room, she can say she got stranded down below. There must be some way out – some exit, or else it’d get flooded at every high tide, open or shut.

And yet, it’s so black inside. So forbidding and inviting at the same time, like something you know is wrong, but so alluring: that extra bar of chocolate, piece of gossip, apple stolen from the shop display.

And he’ll be waiting there, too – him with his ‘I’ll show you something really funny if you just walk this way.’

Oh fuck it, I don’t want to swim for it. I’ve got to go inside.

The waves are lapping around her feet as she steps in through the door.



As she foresaw, the red clay floor inside smells strongly of the sea. Obviously it does get flooded at every high tide. And, sure enough, there’s a rough flight of rock steps winding up twenty feet or so inside the tunnel. That’s as far as the waning light extends. After that there’s only the dark. Better than being wet and wave-tossed outside, though, she tells herself defiantly. And starts to climb the steps.

Crash! The sound of the door slamming shut behind her echoes right up the tunnel. She’s only gone a few yards, but already it’s darker and colder than any place she’s ever been in – ever imagined, for that matter.

That psycho bastard must have been hiding in the tunnel, waiting for her to go in, then slammed the door behind her. He must have found a key somewhere. All that shit about his friend! She’d known it was him all along – only it seemed cute, out there in the light, on the beach, trading stories, feeling a bit flattered that he wanted to spend the afternoon talking to her. And now he’s right behind her, coming up to show her whatever sick crap he thinks is funny.

It’s hard to hurry, here in the dark. The steps are rather uneven, and she’s already slipped a couple of times, bruising her shins quite badly. They’re steep, too – getting steeper all the time. It’s more like climbing a rock wall than mounting a staircase, and the voices in her head shouting Hurry! Hurry! He’s right behind you! don’t help.

Are there any openings off this wall? She feels there are – patches of blackness in the dark around her that might be tunnel entrances. Perhaps she can escape him yet if she can just get off these rock steps and into a crevice. He’ll have a torch, of course. If so, why doesn’t he shine it up here? She’d be easy enough to spot, spread-eagled halfway up the wall. Is he really following? She can’t hear anything. No telltale sound of falling pebbles, scraping, panting in the dark. Perhaps he’s just sitting down there, waiting for her to get totally freaked out before he comes up to collect her: Surprise! I’m a psycho killer! Hey, guess what? your worst nightmare just came true. That’s what’s so funny.

Got to get out of here – got to turn the tables somehow. She’s groping on either side of her with whichever hand is free, each time she hoists herself up another step. It feels so precarious up here, so exposed. Heaven knows how high above the rock floor she must be now – almost to the clifftop, surely?

And then, just when the footholds are becoming non-existent, and she’s starting to contemplate sliding back down this crumbling sandstone throat, her hand flaps on emptiness.

It takes her some time to manoeuvre herself near enough, then nerve herself to make the spring for the tunnel. She’s uneasily aware how difficult it’ll be to reverse the process – swing out from that darkness back onto the wall. What if this is the trap? What if this is the one way not to take? The way that leads to destruction?

There’re no noises from down below – no signs of pursuit – yet, what if a hand seizes her ankle in the next few seconds? She knows she’ll scream, lose her foothold, go tumbling down into the dark, down to her death on the rocks below.

That kind of stuff happens, too. There are plenty of stories about how dangerous it is to climb round the cliffs. Every now and then they insist on relating the latest horror story at school assembly.

The worst thing is that you never know if it’s an accident or not. Sometimes people do it on purpose, and that would be what everyone would think about her.

Fuck, I’d give anything to be back home right now, safe and sound, watching TV, listening to Dad going on about politicians and defence funding!

There was that guy a few months before, that kid from her school. She’d never spoken to him or anything like that, but she’d seen his picture on the noticeboard after he was found bumping round the rocks. He wasn’t entirely a stranger to her, though he was a year or so ahead. Actually, maybe that’s why Colin or Phil or whatever he told her he was called looked familiar, because he looks a bit like … Daniel, that was the name! Daniel – West. Yeah. That skinny kid. Waste of skin the other kids had been calling him. Waste …



Releasing her handholds, she lunges wildly in the darkness for the lip of the tunnel.

---

Jack Ross: Monkey Miss Her Now (2004)


[28-30/8/01 & 1-5/6/03]

[2943 words]

[Published in Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 117-25.]

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