The Ghost at the Point (9 page)

Dorrie felt as though her knees were melting.

“Poppy!” She snatched up the furious cat, searching anxiously through the bushes where the snake had exited. But it had well and truly gone; it was probably thirty yards away by now. “You
mustn’t
do that – ever again. You hear me?”

Poppy had once deposited a still-alive but paralysed tiger snake at the front door, two neat teeth marks on the back of its neck. Dorrie had felt quite sorry for it as Gah dispatched it with a shovel. Poppy was fast, but her battle with the snake could easily have gone the other way.

What of the loud thump that had distracted the snake? It had sounded like a rock.

And now she saw that there
was
a rock, a big white one, lying to one side of the path, half under a bush. She stared at it. The top part of it was crusted with dirt, but when she picked it up, the underneath was smooth and clean. If it had been lying there for a while, the reverse should have been true.

Somebody must have thrown it.

Her eyes darted up the hill and over the scrub, but nothing moved. Only the breeze stirring the leaves of the tea-trees and the stubby gums around the thunderbox.

Her palms were damp and her throat was dry, and all at once she’d had enough – of whoever or
whatever
was lurking nearby, helpful or otherwise.

“Who are you?” she yelled. Poppy took fright and leaped out of her arms. “Please, come out. Show yourself!” Then she waited, but there was nothing. She wondered if she was going mad.

Dorrie felt idiotic, but she had to know. She ran up the rest of the path. When she reached the clothes line, she sheared off down the path to the thunderbox, stopping in roughly the area where she imagined the rock would have come from. If it
had
been thrown. Then she shinnied up the nearest tea-tree, scrambling to where the branches forked and she could get a bird’s-eye view of the scrub.

Dorrie perched in the fork. She could see all the way to the path and the low cliff, the rocks and sea beyond. But nothing stirred; it was all ridiculously normal.

Perhaps she
was
going mad. She twisted around and looked in the opposite direction. Over the orange roof of the garage, the top of the tank, the white stones of the drive. And then back again, over the big sweep of bushland running down to the road. She turned her head slowly, taking it in.

Then she stopped. The sun was glinting on something, something a little way down the hill from the garage, in a thick clump of scrub. Something she’d never seen before, not in all her wanderings in the bush.

From where she sat it appeared to be a couple of sheets of corrugated iron propped up against a tree.

Dorrie climbed down and made her way around to the garage. When she got to the tank on the other side, she stopped and listened, every muscle in her body taut. But the only sound was the twittering of a wren in a nearby bush.

And the sound of her own heart, thumping as though it were between her ears, not in her chest. She felt almost sick with fear.

Again, she thought about the little wave that Jacky had given, to someone, or
something
, when he was standing in this very spot. It must be a someone, surely. Ghosts didn’t prop sheets of iron up against trees, did they?

If the intruder was human, what kind of human would make a hiding place in the bush like this? And steal stuff from the house?

Perhaps the boy she’d seen
was
Aunt Gertrude’s ghost, and this was someone else. A robber, or an escaped prisoner.

But whoever it was, she couldn’t just ignore it – she had to find out.

Poppy had followed her; Dorrie bent and stroked the warm fur. “Come on, Pops,” she whispered, plucking up courage. “Shall we see what it is?”

She started into the scrub, in what she hoped was the right direction, pushing past scratchy bushes and overhanging branches. Poppy followed, her tail high. When Dorrie’d gone a little way in, she realised that she was following a kind of path. There were lots of little tracks in the bush, made by roos, or wallabies, or possums.

Suddenly, she became aware of the faint sound of a motor down on the road. It seemed as though it was coming from the direction of Redcliff. She strained her ears, willing it to chug on past their turn-off. But to her horror, she heard the unmistakable sound of its engine slowing, changing down gears, and then coming up their track, bumping over the stones.

Uncle Harold and Aunt Janet – already! She wondered if they’d called into the Jennings’s place and found out she wasn’t there.

If she wanted to observe them without being seen herself, she’d have to creep up to the house from the other side of the drive, where the scrub came close to the verandah. She took a breath and scuttled across the track, hiding behind a bush a second or two before the vehicle came around the bend.

She was right. It was a green Chevrolet, containing her uncle and aunt, their expressions grim.

By the time she’d crept to a hiding spot near the verandah, they were already in the house, calling for her.

“Doris!”

“Dor-ree!”

Dorrie scrunched further down behind her bush.

“
Dorrie
! You here, Doris?” She heard the courtyard door bang, and more shouting out in the backyard. Then they came back through the house again.

“She must’ve gone to the Jennings’s,” she heard Uncle Harold say as they stepped out onto the verandah.

“But the truck and the horse are still here,” said Aunt Janet. “How would she have got there?”

“Goodness knows – walked?” Uncle Harold’s voice was a bit fainter; they were moving along the verandah towards her room. Dorrie pictured her nightdress tossed onto her unmade bed, her toothbrush on the washstand. She heard the familiar squeak of her screen door opening.

There was a pause, and then: “Well, it certainly doesn’t seem as though she’s packed anything. Though she’d be just as likely to go off leaving her bed unmade, and forget to take anything.” Dorrie could almost hear her aunt sniff. “Really, that child’ll be the death of us.”

Poppy rushed past Dorrie, scampered out into the drive and leaped onto the warm bonnet of the Chevrolet.

“Poppy!” she hissed, but Poppy was, as usual, suiting herself. There was nothing Dorrie could do but watch helplessly as her cat stretched out a back leg and commenced a thorough washing.

“There!” came her aunt’s triumphant cry half a minute later. “She must be here – she’d never go anywhere without that blessed cat.”

“Get off, you wretched creature.” Uncle Harold stamped his foot. “I’ve just washed the vehicle.”

Dorrie bit her lip, imagining the deathly stare he’d be getting from Poppy. Poppy wouldn’t, she knew, be moving in a hurry.

“Go on, scram. Ow!” he cried, as Poppy shot past Dorrie’s hiding place in the bush. “The damn thing scratched me.”

Well deserved, thought Dorrie, furiously. You probably tried to smack her.

“I tell you one thing,” she heard her aunt say, “Doris is not bringing that cat to our house.” Then they started arguing about whether to keep searching for Dorrie, or go and see if she’d turned up at the Jennings’s.

Dorrie, however, was no longer listening. Something, a small movement, had made her glance beyond them, in the direction of the cliff.

She had seen a flash around a bush. A human flash.

It was the boy, staring at her aunt and uncle. Then he turned his head, and he was looking at her. Their eyes locked, and then he was gone.

It must have been another couple of minutes before her aunt and uncle departed, after they had fetched some things to take to Gah in hospital.

Dorrie barely noticed. Every conscious part of her was fixed on that bush, those branches and twigs and leaves behind which the boy had vanished.

If he’d actually been there in the first place.

The Chevrolet had no sooner rounded the first bend in the drive, when she stood up and walked over to the spot. Slowly, barely breathing, she parted the vegetation.

Nothing.

And the sand was so stirred up by numerous possum feet, it was impossible to make out any human tracks.

She kept pushing her way through, until she was standing on a tiny path. This part of the cliff, above the little cove in front of the house, was not a sheer drop, but covered in bushes, gnarled tea-trees and small crannies and caves.

Further around a stick snapped. It was followed by the sound of a shower of stones and small rocks. She heard one bounce off a boulder at the bottom and thud onto the beach.

Her heart pounded painfully in her chest. Were ghosts that clumsy?

Dorrie continued on, as fast as she dared, in the same direction. The little path was becoming simply boulders and overhangs, and soon she was dislodging stones herself. When she came to a big wall of protruding rock she stopped. Beyond the rock wall, she knew, was a fifty-foot drop to the rockshelf below.

But she had to find out.

She inhaled deeply and started climbing, up over the top of the rock wall. Her sweaty hands grasped at flimsy bushes around the side; her toes groped for shallow footholds. And then she was at the top, peeping over the other side.

There he was. Ten feet away, clinging to the trunk of a tea-tree growing sideways out of the cliff. Wide-eyed and frightened, in a distinctly unghost-like fashion.

And directly below him was that big drop.

He cried out to her, a single word. A word she didn’t recognise, something obviously from another language. But the meaning was unmistakable: “Help!”

“Hold on!” she shouted. “Stay right there.”

There was nothing he could do
but
stay – he was stuck. He must have taken a wild jump, she thought, to grab onto the tree. His bare toes gripped a tiny ledge in the rock, and some of the roots of the tea-tree were coming away under his weight.

Dorrie’s stomach lurched. Her fingers gripping rock, she edged closer. Even before she stretched out her arm, she knew she couldn’t reach. Not sideways, nor if she tried from above. And those roots could give way completely at any moment. Any attempt at joining him on his precarious perch would send them both to certain death.

There was only one thing to do.

“Hold on!” she cried again, motioning with her free hand. “Wait!”

The boy stared back at her, a sheen of sweat on his dark skin. He glanced below and gave a little moan.

“I won’t be a minute.” And then Dorrie was clambering feverishly up the cliff, grabbing bushes and rocks, sending more stones and sand showering down. She reached the top, ran along the verandah and down to the shed. Yanking open the door without any of her usual caution about lurking snakes, she rushed into the gloom and grabbed a long coil of rope from its hook above the bench.

“I’m coming,” she shouted when she got back. She knotted one end of the rope to one of the thick concrete verandah posts, thankful that the verandah was so close to the edge. The post, like the rest of the house, was crumbling in parts, but compared to the spindly bushes and trees growing out of the cliff face, it seemed her best bet. She looped the other end over her shoulder and started climbing back down.

She had a sudden fear that he might already have lost his hold and fallen. But when she reached a large jutting rock and looked over, he was still hanging on. His eyes, huge with fear, brightened when they spied the rope.

“Are you ready?”

Dorrie steadied herself, gripping a branch, then tossed down the coil of rope. It hit the rock face and slithered down. The boy leaned sideways, grabbing wildly. To Dorrie’s horror, more stones and roots came loose, but all he’d managed to grasp was thin air. The rope hung, swaying gently, a tantalising foot from his outstretched hand.

“Hang on – I’ll try again.”

She found a spot further up where she could stand without hanging on and pulled up the rope. She positioned herself until she was directly above him and then tossed down the coiled rope again.

It bounced off the rock face above him and flew over his head. He gasped and stretched for it, more or less pulling the tree out altogether. Dorrie screamed and shut her eyes, but when she opened them she saw he’d somehow got hold of the rope. For what seemed like a sickening eternity he hung by one hand, his feet scrabbling at the rock. Then he managed to get a grip with his other hand as well. Dorrie breathed heavily as he hauled himself up the face.

When he had almost reached the top of the rock, he stopped for a moment, an indecisive look on his face. She realised with amazement that he was deciding whether to scramble up the remaining distance to join her, or take off again, into hiding.

What was he scared of?

“Come on,” she called, gesturing with her hand. “I won’t hurt you.”

He paused before starting up the rope again.

Dorrie stared down at him, all at once conscious of her own fear. His shirt and rolled-up trousers were filthy and tattered, his hair matted. He appeared to have been hiding out in the bush for some time.

And then he was in front of her. About the same height as her, and probably the same age, she thought. Smelling of earth and dried salt.